Its me
Hello! First of all thank you so much for visiting here. I am Sharmilee Jayaprakash ,living in Coimbatore with my husband, mother and 2 kids.
I have heard my friends say that they learnt cooking only after marriage but in my case I was lucky enough to have my mother by my side even after marriage so I didn’t bother even to peek inside the kitchen as we had tasty food served everyday so I was happily spending time shaping up my career.
My mother is my greatest inspiration in cooking, I have grown seeing her cook a lot of dishes. She tried so many new recipes even in no internet era and the only source was from books. She continues to inspire me and I believe my passions would have triggered from her. I owe all the credits I get for this space to her as without her struggle all alone to bring me up, I wouldn’t have been in the place where I am now. Right from choosing my career to all of a sudden plan of quitting my job to take up Sharmis Passions full time she always supported me.
After marriage, hubby is my full time supporter for whatever I do! He is the one who accompanies for the shopping right from sourcing ingredients to all my props shopping.
Where it started
Back in March 2009 when I was working in Chennai after marriage and had mittu in me 🙂 I was looking for some respite from my day IT job and that is when food blogging was introduced to me.
Once when I was searching for a recipe and that lead me to world of food blogging and I loved the idea too – Cooking, clicking and sharing recipes online. I went crazy browsing and exploring many new blogs each day. I was working full time in a software firm, trying to squeeze in time for family, friends and my passion during those days.
So everyday while returning back from office I would shop the ingredients, cook for dinner and shoot. Those were the days I never knew food photography was meant to be shot only in sunlight. This was my daily pass time, sometimes I would wake up early and shoot before starting to office.
In June mittu was born and I had 3 months of maternity leave which I utilized fully for building up this space. It was a bit of struggle to be up with the new born through out the night then put her to sleep in the morning and get back to cook something just for shooting and updating recipes here.
Later in 2010 we shifted to Coimbatore because of hubby’s job and I was working here too juggling between this space and the IT work. But everything else took a back seat when my little one demanded me by her side, So I resigned my job in Jan 2012 to take care of her and to run behind my passions. So no more deadlines and commitments and I thoroughly enjoy the work I do!
Mittu was blessed with a brother(Gugu) in October 2015 so now my world revolves around them!
My Cooking Journey
I’ve become passionate about cooking through the days and now love to experiment different cuisines though my origin is south side cuisines. I tried new recipes, perfected our family recipes to record here.
You can find here a collection of recipes spanning continents, from sizzling street food to elegant dinner party delights. I have taken utmost care to present the recipes with step-by-step procedures, handy tips, making videos and mouthwatering visuals.
The recipes posted here are collective from my mother, relatives, friends, few from cookbooks, other blogs etc so most recipes posted here are borrowed, adapted and tested in my kitchen before posting here.
I have managed to share 1500+ recipes here since 2009. Thanks to all you readers and friends who give me constructive feedback which motivates me to post more recipes.
The Process
I thoroughly enjoy the process right from choosing a dish, building the recipe, sourcing the ingredients, choosing the props then finally cooking and shooting. I always write down the recipe first with accurate measures and keep this helps me to be precise in measurements while writing the recipe here.
There is a huge planning happening in the background as I don’t take things at the last minute. It is always proper planning before every shoot. If you want to see the process involved then here is a short BTS video for you :
Gadgets and Props
Over the years, slowly my interest towards cooking and photography grew and I started exploring them. Upgraded my camera, started buying new food props to present food and now I am kinda addicted collecting them.
I started with a simple point and shoot when I started this space then bought my first DSLR Nikon then years later I moved to Canon and still sticking with it. I use 2 cameras now one for shooting videos and other for pictures. I use Adobe Photoshop for editing pictures and Adobe Premiere for editing the videos.
I am greatly interested in food photography and this space has become a platform for all my learning for it. I started making videos in 2015 and updating old recipes with them.
My Team
Its only me as a cook, photographer, editor and author here in this space. I enjoy doing all these by myself and I doubt if I can outsource anything as I look for perfection in everything I do and satisfying myself is a tough task.
The credit for the successful running of this website should go to my family as they extend their fullest support. I have a back end team now to support the technicalities.
Image Copyright
There is lot of hard work put in right from cooking, arranging, composing a shot and finally editing before I present it here. So I request you to give credit where due and when you want to use the pics and recipes. Hope you would understand!
Get in touch!
I hope you enjoy your time at Sharmis Passions! Have any queries or suggestions, feel free to write to me at sharmispassions@gmail.com – Would love to hear from you! You can also find me active in my social media handles : Facebook, Instagram, Youtube.