Hello, I’m Julia.

For more than ten years I have cooked in the Cantonese food-therapy tradition (食療), cooking for and caring for new mothers across Greater Vancouver — in Vancouver, Richmond, Burnaby and beyond. I am a Canada-registered postpartum doula, a Cantonese confinement-meal cook, and a mother of three. I have sat beside more than a thousand families through the quiet, exhausting, beautiful first month after birth.

I started this guide because so many of the questions I hear are the same — What should I eat in the first week? Is it true I can’t drink cold water? My mother in Hong Kong says one thing, the nurse here says another — who is right? These are good questions, and they deserve careful, honest answers rather than marketing.

So that is what you’ll find here: plain, warm guidance on confinement meals and recovery, written from a Cantonese tradition and grounded in modern nutrition — for families here in Canada, and for those still planning from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

The guides come first, and they are written to be useful whether or not you ever order from me. If you would also like to know what I actually cook and how it reaches you, our confinement meal service is described on its own page.