About
Hi I’m Em 👩🏽🌾 Welcome to my digital cooking garden and home. I made this place as a home for myself off the platforms of the day to share writing, photography, myself, and all things food. It’s a recipe website, it’s a journal, it’s a portfolio, it’s many things.
Flip through the tabs to learn more, and if you’d like to get in touch, please do!
I am currently: available for hire ❇︎
Em Estrada (b. Los Angeles) is a creative poly-hyphenate. If we listed all the hyphenates, we’d be here all day. Instead, here’s a cute little overview:
For many years, Em focused on photojournalism. They centered stories of Indigenous, Black, and folks of color across intersections of the environmental field, from sustainability and food stories to climate protests, outdoor athletes to tribal leaders. This work took them all across the United States, partnering with organizations and individuals doing important work along the way.
On photography, Em’s photo work continues to be published in print and digital form, and they’re currently developing a couple photo art projects as an artist. They’ve been commissioned by brands and organizations such as Patagonia, High Country News, The National Park Service, and The Hewlett Foundation. They’re currently pursuing more work as it relates to food, as might be obvious.
Em is a writer and editor - they love working on prose and copy, and love zines and independent magazine culture. Em is still an active writer and is seeking writing opportunities of all kinds. On a more personal level, they will occasionally publish poetry, as well.
Em got their degree in Linguistics at UCLA. Among solidifying their love for language, it was also influential in learning how to learn. They’ve studied many languages, from Old Norse (right?) to Latin, Mandarin to Italian.
Once upon a time, they took an internship doing habitat restoration while living in a national park, their neighbors a family of deer and a lazy bobcat.
It was the kick off for all their work in the environmental and sustainability field since.
Em is open to work in all creative capacities (photography, design, writing, etc), workshops, speaking, and indeed, cooking. Get in touch directly at hi@em-cookery.com
Other interests include but are not limited to...
Being outdoors, identifying plants on hikes, swimming, climbing, sitting with trees, meeting people while doing daily activities, language, sprinting alongside their pup, music, reading articles discovered in quiet corners of the internet, observing how light hits differently in different parts of the world, and of course, all things food.
Em Cookery is playfully designed by Em Estrada (they/them), a creative poly-hyphenate, designer, writer, and passionate chef/cook of Indigenous Central American and MENA descent.
They call home somewhere in-between Southern and Northern California, Georgia, and New York City.
Upcoming: recipe philosophy. In short, it’s not AI, and it’s going to have themes. But most simplicity. Eventually...