Toronto

Find all Toronto related posts here.

Our Toronto Chapter is home base, HQ, and stronghold. This may be where Fat Girl Food Squad was born but like most good eaters, she likes to travel. Here are your Toronto FGFS members:

Amanda (Ama) Scriver Head Bitch in Charge

When not hosting the Super Bowl of Mining at her 9 to 5 (lovingly known by many chefs in the city as PDAC), Ama writes about the weird and wonderful world of food as Food Editor for Toronto is Awesome and Toronto Events Correspondent for BizBash Magazine.  She has also by-lined columns for Little Red Umbrella, Pink Mafia and Here and Elsewhere.

Since beginning her quest into the world of food blogging, Ama has had the opportunity to interview several noted chefs & food personalities such as Chuck Hughes, Vikram Vij, Matty Matheson, Ricardo Larrivee, Patrick McMurray, Trista Sheen, Alexandra Feswick, Kevin Brauch, Eron Novalski, John Placko, Steve Gonzalez among many others.

She has a huge case of wanderlust, drinks Jameson whiskey likes it is water and is obsessed with drag queens.  You’ll normally find her dancing in the streets listening to all hip hop everything.

Fat Girl Food Squad was born out of Ama’s love for food and the need for more positive images for plus-size females building a relationship with themselves: mentally, emotionally and physically.  “I always felt like there was a little bit of a ‘fat girl’ living inside of everyone.  With Fat Girl Food Squad, I wanted to let people know to embrace their inner fat-girl regardless of weight, gender, race or sexuality.”

You can follow all of Ama’s adventures through Fat Girl and beyond on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.  Email: ama@fatgirlfoodsquad.com

Yuli Scheidt  Lead Photographer, Editor & Social Media Whip

Born and raised in Cow Town, Yuli left Alberta for bigger pastures at the age of 18 and found her way to the Big Smoke, but not before a lengthy stopover in Ottawa. It was in Ottawa that she continued her life long passions and studied photography and graphic design.

Yuli was raised by a village but mostly by her grandmother, someone who “was timid in the kitchen but always yearning to try new and foreign food,” says Yuli. Her love for seafood and Asian dishes arose from going out to eat with her granny. Being of German and Russian decent, Yuli says her comfort food will always be some variation of gravlax (salted and cured salmon with dill mustard sauce often served on rye crackers).

“Being a Fat Girl is a state of mind, everyone is a fat girl on the inside. If you express any kind of enthusiasms for food than you’re one of us,” says Yuli.

You can follow Yuli on Instagram, Twitter and Vine: @yulischeidt.

See her non-food photography, illustrations and graphics on her site yulischeidt.com

Email: yuli@fatgirlfoodsquad.com

Leigh van Maaren Squad Member

Leigh is a non-stop positive party babe and 4^th year advertising student at OCADU.  She’s an avid maker, music junkie, and general pop culture enthusiast.  You’ll find her writing about cooking, fashion, feminism, good vibes and body positivity.

She comes from a tiny Dutch family too small for a whole turkey at holidays, so curries were the special occasion meal of choice.  To her, the ready available of fantastic roti in Toronto is the equivalent of an awesome, inexpensive turkey dinner ready for take-out all year round.  She enjoys vegetarian cooking [but isn’t one], she loves seafood, and has recently embraced home deep frying as a way of life – homemade donuts and chicken fingers put take-out to shame.

In her free time, you’ll find her baking up a storm, making props and costumes, watching a boatload of TV, and fashion blogging. She loves a good dance party – after seeing hundreds of Toronto indie shows, she’s tired of standing still, so look for the extremely tall girl tearin’ up the dance floor at hip hop and EDM events.

For more, find her on twitter and instagram as @tuffcake, designer-y stuff at tuffcake.com, and fashiony stuff on tumblr @curvyleigh and curvyleigh.com.

 

Siobhan Özege Squad Member

When she isn’t handling all things communications at FACTOR, Siobhan is likely working towards her life-long goal of learning to make everything herself. Whether it’s pierogies, bow ties, or body scrubs, the girl’s got a natural knack for the DIY. Siobhan spends a lot of time writing and thinking about feminism, body positivity, and navigating the line between health, fitness and adhering to societal health standards. When she isn’t rage tweeting, you can likely find her taking photographs of some of Toronto’s best restaurants, or obsessively refreshing Tastespotting.

 

Acacia Christensen Squad Member

Acacia was born and raised in small town Southern Ontario, this big city lover splits her time 50/50 between Toronto and NYC. By day she is a professional TV enthusiast and by night she is a mix of a event promoter/DJ/burlesque dancer/circus performer/roller derby announcer/sassy you name it. And in between she is all about eating good food, having fun and looking good! Acacia is also a sucker for a good pun. On the side Acacia also runs a vintage plus sized pop up shop called “Fat Chance”. One of her many goals in life is to try as many forms of Mac and Cheese as possible but her weaknesses lay in the realms of candy, snack foods and hot dogs.

Despite being stereotypically Canadian she can fit in NYC with the best of them.

Acacia is extremely pumped about helping to rep the Fat Girl’s for this Food Squad on both sides of the border! Follow her on Instagram & Twitter.

Find Acacia at: Fat Chance | Instagram | Twitter

Megan Stulberg Squad Member

Megan Stulberg spends her days sandwiched between the Ryerson library and the patisserie she works at,
resulting in her spending long hours staring at food she can’t eat. Her lifelong diet of processed food came to an unwelcome (and necessary) halt last year, but her love for eating continues as she finds gluten-free, dairy-free cures for cupcake cravings and a drunken penchant for pizza. Megan’s all about being healthy, loving your bod and eating as much delicious food as possible.

In her spare time, Megan works as a freelanced artist, drawing old women and painting unicorns. She also tried guitar for a while but quit shortly after being forced to learn a Green Day song.

You can follow Megan on Instagram or Twitter.

See her illustrations and more with her portfolio here.

Simon Gilbert Squad Member, Resident Coffee Guy

Simon is mostly convinced that in a previous life he was a fat girl, but that she refused to drink from the river Lethe, but still got reincarnated. She is now stuck in the body of a lanky dude who is really into the food/beverage scene.

Mild-mannered barista by day, not-so mild-mannered b-/v-logger by night, Simon fights for peace, justice, and coffee. Except not so much those first two things. Mostly just coffee.

Besides coffee, Simon’s also into vidjya/board games, graphic novels, cool people, and his Mom. He does not like people’s knees, bananas, nor cilantro. He thinks it’s pretty lame that cilantro has two different names.

You can read his musings at Simon Drinks Coffee, or watch them here on Simon’s YouTube channel.

Aviva C. Squad Member

Aviva is a good kosher jew with a mac n’cheese six pack who mastered the cherpumple on her first try, her greatest accomplishment according to her Grandmother. She sometimes dreams about pastry school but does not think her lifestyle would be accepted. The lifestyle of baking monstrous food inside other foods that is.
Otherwise Aviva spends her time chasing the dream of completing Joanne Kate’s Top 100 Toronto Restaurants list year after year and visiting Michelin Star restaurants all over the world even though she would trade all to eat at a Waffle House again.

Aviva collects food socks, portraits of Jughead Jones and will be soon be getting her very own food column.

Follow her on twitter @suckingalemon.

Alexandra Cioppa, Squad Member

Alexandra is a sassy pants beauty blogger from Toronto, Canada with an insatiable appetite and an iron stomach. She likes to cook but loves to eat and won’t ever turn down a caesar.

You can find her on Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram

Rochelle Latinsky Squad Member

 

Rochelle would like it to be known that she’s a pop culture, indie rock, roller derby, bicycle lover who is secretly really really into fashion and hopes Toronto, the city she loves, can one day have order restored to it post Fordlandia. Also, don’t talk to her about pizza because she doesn’t care. 

 

Rochelle is awesome everywhere she goes and is behind the lens and at the keyboard for FGFS. 

Follow Rochelle on Twitter @rochlatinsky