love of cooking is all you need...
My name is Monica and I’m the non-professional cook/baker around these parts. I’m not new to blogging. For the past 7 years, I have been spilling my guts writing over at Maca’s World where I share my thoughts on life, family, and things I like.
Sweetbites started because friends asked me to cook stuff for their small dinner parties and requested copies of the recipes. Eventually, I realized that my love of food, baking, cooking, and recently food photography needed an outlet and thus this blog was born.
My experience with food is all self-taught with lots of influence by my late Italian nonnas (grandmothers) and my mother who is a superb cook. There was a time when I thought I would go to culinary school, but using the money for traveling won out over that.
The recipes you find on this site are usually from my family cookbook, travels and inspiration that I get from my huge cookbook library and food blogs that I stalk every day. I’m also good at making things up as I go along, which has saved us from many nights eating a bowl of cereal or a grilled cheese sandwich.
I live in West Florida with my husband (Tom), our cat (Diablo), and our dog (Bluehop). I was born and raised in South America, lived in Europe, and now have settled in the US. Besides cooking, I love reading, sleeping, chocolate, technology, Apple products, traveling, throwing elaborate dinner parties and long brunches. My favorite foods to cook are Italian and Spanish food, but I love the simplicity and bold flavors of Asian cuisine. Who am I kidding? I LOVE food, period - and will try anything. If I like it, I will probably run to the kitchen to duplicate it and try to make it better.
All photographs on Sweetbites were taken by me unless otherwise noted. I use a Sony a55 DSLR Camera. I’m still learning things like aperture and white balance and that entire “learning photographic curveball”, so any suggestions, tips, tricks are welcome!
All photos taken on this site are copyrighted. If you want to use one of the pictures, please simply ask. In most cases, I don’t mind as long as there is a link back to my site and/or proper kudos. I maintain the right to withdraw that permission, and will request that a photo of mine be removed from another site, for any reason.
I’m flattered that you stopped by and hope that you stay for a while. I love comments and feedback and I try to respond to each and every one of them. Constructive criticism is welcome, as we all benefit from such advice. Rude, mean, or obnoxious comments (as well as spam) are not welcome and will be deleted.
Currently I welcome opportunities for recipe development or other food-related projects including food photography.
Side note: I apologized in advance for grammatical errors, typos, or misspellings in my post. English is not my first language - in fact, it’s not even my second… so sometimes I make dozens of mistakes. If you want to correct me feel free to do so by leaving a comment and pointing it out. If you want to be my copywriter and work for free, I welcome that too :)
Want to know more stuff that I did not cover, have questions? You can always email me
Now for some legal stuff…because we need to keep it real guys…