Student blog promotes healthy eating and self-care

You Thyme blog offers recipes and self-care tips

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Hannah Larson grocery shopping at Woodman’s for her next recipe. Larson started the blog “You Thyme” to provide fellow college students with recipe and self-care advice.

Food is so good. Besides keeping us alive, it is also one of the sources that can improve our health, but sometimes it’s hard to try and make something healthy out of it, especially in college.

Hannah Larson, a junior social work student, despite being in college and drowning in assignments, hopes to curb this idea.

A month ago, she started her own blog called “You Thyme,” which details her thoughts about food and self-care, Larson said, aiming to inspire others to use real food as a source of self care.

Her love for cooking and baking sparked when she was younger. She said her mom didn’t let her bake because she would just make a mess, so she would bake when she was gone and would try to clean up before she noticed. As she got older, she would always make food for her family, Larson said. Then she started cooking for her roommate.

“It’s just something I’ve always loved and done,” Larson said.

The contents of her blog is mostly recipes and self-care articles, alternating between them. She said she was initially inspired after she started writing a cookbook and was eager to share those recipes and the research she finds online.

“I love cooking and baking, and I want to help people become healthier and lead a healthier life,” Larson said.

Her recipes are mostly healthy, gluten and dairy free as well as not processed. She takes real sources of food (or buys food from places that are local so she knows where her food is coming from), such as buying better vegetables and not eating a lot of processed food and grains. Larson said from there she can create a dish that will be good and beneficial to her health. Doing this, she said, will also help people get the most out of their meal.

On the other hand, her self-care articles include tips for better ways to take care of yourself and why it is important to do so, she said.

Larson spends a lot of her time in the kitchen trying out different ingredients and putting together recipes. She loves grocery shopping and trying different things by experimenting with various ingredients most people wouldn’t think would work. She said her recipes are mostly inspired by food bloggers who inspire her to be better and more creative.

“There are those who have made something out of their blog and it inspires me to be like that someday,” Larson said. “I always see them come up with creative recipes, and I tell myself, ‘I got to get creative with my things.’”

Her goal for the blog is to get more people to read it and hopefully learn how to lead a healthier lifestyle, Larson said.

“I believe that my blog will be beneficial for anyone whether young or old, especially for college students because we assume we’re too poor to buy certain things or cook a healthy meal,” Larson said, “and some of my blog posts direct those issues about eating healthy on a college budget.”

Although creating recipes and taking the perfect photo may be difficult for Larson sometimes, she finds it very therapeutic and looks forward to posting her contents online. She said she loves when random people comment and share her content.

“What’s really fun and exciting about ‘You Thyme’ is seeing that people are involved and engaged by liking (my content) and telling me that they’re meaningful,” Larson said.

With her love for cooking, she said she looks forward to making it a part of her career by getting a degree in nutrition so she can inspire others.