Elaine Skiadas spent the summer before she started college seeing friends, going for runs and cooking. So much cooking. Finishing high school with a diploma and a book deal, she worked diligently to create over 50 new recipes for it. Her inaugural cookbook, “Fantastic Vegan Recipes for the Teen Cook” (Riviera Street Publishing, 2023), was released midway through her first year at UC Santa Barbara.
A communication major, Skiadas has turned her passion for making simple, comforting recipes into an Instagram account with over 50,000 followers (@wandering_chickpea), a website (wanderingchickpea.com) and now her first book.
“At the start of lockdown during the pandemic, I started an Instagram page to document the stuff I was making,” she says. “At first the page was mostly for me. Then I started to get followers and discovered a community of other people who liked the same food I was into.”
Skiadas revels in the creative aspects of managing her account and its accompanying website. “I really fell in love with the creative element of it, like the photography,” she says. Though not fully vegan herself, Skiadas likes vegan recipes because of her allergies to dairy, eggs and nuts. “I’ve always had an affinity for vegan food because it was often the only food I could eat,” she says. “I guess that’s what started me on this journey.” Her cookbook focuses on straightforward recipes aimed at teenagers — or really at anybody who’s short on time. “I created recipes that I craved as a teenager,” Skiadas says. “I made an effort to categorize them into weekend versus weekday recipes. Weekend recipes are more like family meals, or more time-consuming recipes. Weekday recipes are smaller portions and pretty easy to commit to memory.” One of her go-to recipes: an oatmeal cookie-inspired granola. Living in a dorm room, she’s had to get creative to get her fix. “My mom will actually make it and then mail me batches,” Skiadas says. “My friends refer to it as ‘The Granola.’” Soon, though, she’ll be whipping up her own granola and developing new recipes for her growing following. “I’m moving into my own place this summer,” she says, “so I’ll have a kitchen again!”
