About This Food Blog

Well hello there, curious culinarian, and welcome to Arousing Appetites! We’re here to share with you cuisines from around the world – with emphasis on some of the cuisines that we love.

Brian Lejeune and Janine Do

We’re Brian Lejeune and Janine Do – two goofy grown ups who love to eat food! Janine Do a is a Vietnamese migrant who came to the States since she was 4, and she loves Asian food of all kinds – Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Thai. Brian Lejeune is a French Canadian whose parents migrated from Canada and he loves all things French, Mexican, and American.

We’re here to share with you all the recipes our moms and dads pass down to us – especially authentic Vietnamese cuisines – as well as all the flavors we discover and we travel and eat at restaurants.

Since you’re coming to this here page, we’re guessing that means you want to know a little about this food blog and what exactly goes on here.

Making International Cooking for American Kitchens

We aim to make international cooking more accessible for American home cooks. We believe that exploring different cuisines from around the world can be both delicious and fun, but it can also be daunting when you don’t know where to start.

Our goal is to break down barriers and make it easy for you to try out new recipes without having to buy a lot of hard-to-find ingredients. From classic dishes to lesser-known gems, we’ll take you on a culinary journey through different cultures, one recipe at a time. We keep some very authentic spices and flavors but give easier alternatives wherever we can.

Explore authentic cuisines without having to worry about buying too many “weird” ingredients for your pantry.

What is Arousing Appetites About?

Caricature of Heather and Cyrus hard at work preparing food for the food blog

We are (and this food blog is) on a quest to explore the depths and hidden treasures of one of our favorite subjects: food. More specifically, we’re all about the pursuit of learning the recipes, cooking methods, ingredients and anything else that makes cuisines around the world so special and unique from the rest.

Here’s a quick taste of what you should expect to get from this food blog…

  1. Exposure to new, delicious recipes from all over the world (no stone left unturned)
  2. Inspiration and meal ideas that you might have never otherwise thought of
  3. Careful, thoughtful analysis about every single recipe – especially when it comes to making healthier adjustments and re-proportioning for a true family dinner (i.e. not for an army)
  4. An unbiased second opinion about the actual “cookability” of any particular recipe
  5. At least one fun, whimsical backstory about the recipe and its hometown cuisine

And hopefully much, much more that we can’t figure out right now.

Join the Arousing Appetites Community

So if you too are a fellow cook and food-lover with an insatiable appetite for culinary exploration, then sit back, relax, enjoy this food blog and learn from our mistakes ☺.

And in case you’d like to join this little community of adventurous food lovers and broaden your tastes and horizons alongside us, then click the image below and enter your email address. Your first email will be a FREE 90-page long PDF ebook of our best 20 recipes, and then each week we’ll take you through a different journey around the world.

Explore food with us. We promise never to sell your email to anyone. Not ever!

click on the image to get a free ebook delivered to your email

PS: Ideas, Suggestions, Feedback Always Welcome

We’re always looking for ways to improve what we post on this food blog. Feel free to let us know anytime how we’re doing and/or if you have any special recipe requests for us. We love the feedback.