In July 2016, my family and I took a wrong turn somewhere between the cities of Porto and Evora in Portugal. We stopped at a dessert stand run by an older woman dressed in a simple light pink shirt, her short blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. We bought a few local pastries, and because we’d been driving for a while, we decided to eat them right there. Although she didn’t speak much English, she knew one word: family. And this is what she kept repeating to us, her kind eyes welling up with tears. I gave her a hug, and despite the language barrier, we learned each other’s stories. I snapped a picture of her with my polaroid camera and asked her to sign it with a Sharpie. She wrote “Anna Maria” in neat half-print, half-cursive letters on the blank space of the picture.
This amazing experience is what jump-started my two passions in life: seeking adventure in the form of meeting new people and tasting desserts. The best present that I ever received was a polaroid camera from my brother on my sixteenth birthday. With this blog, I want to put it to use by taking pictures of the people I meet on my dessert runs and sharing their stories with you. My ultimate goal in writing Cookies and Crowds is to discover the best desserts and the best people in the world and I hope that this blog will inspire you to do the same.
Here’s to eating cookies and meeting crowds, Anokhi Kholwadwala
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