To think I didn’t even know how to upload an Instagram story. 🥹 And now I’m standing in Times Square looking up at Sivan’s Kitchen and celebrating 2 MILLION of you. How did we get here?! It all started during Covid. Everyone was home, everyone was on their phones, and everyone was cooking… At the time I had a little Instagram page called Sivan’s Kakes, yes Kakes with a K 😂 where I shared pictures of cakes I made. Yes, I was a cake designer! And if you want to go down that rabbit hole, all those pictures are still there. Then one random Friday my daughter Arielle came over. Our house was in full Shabbat mode. Challah, babka, breads, ovens filled with food, the stove covered with pots. Basically a normal Friday afternoon in our home. She looked around and said, “Mom, why don’t you share all of this? You’re good at teaching, your English is good, and I think people can learn from you.” She took my phone and changed my page from Sivan’s Kakes to Sivan’s Kitchen. And that was it. I started sharing recipes. One person became 10. Then 100. Then 1,000. Little by little, this beautiful community started growing. I remember helping women put together menus for Shabbat and holidays. One woman was so nervous because her mother in law was coming all the way from Canada and apparently hated her cooking. 😂 She needed me to help her plan the whole meal. I can’t even tell you some of the stories I have heard over the years. But as the page grew, I started realizing that this was becoming so much more than just sharing recipes. It was helping you cook. Teaching you. Inspiring you. Giving you the confidence to get into the kitchen, try something new and actually enjoy cooking. It was showing you that you can make good food at home for yourself and for your family and that it doesn’t have to be difficult. And then I started getting messages that meant even more to me. Some of you told me you grew up in homes where Shabbat and the Jewish holidays were not really celebrated, and now you have families of your own and want to bring some of those traditions into your homes. You started making challah, making Shabbat dinners, lighting Shabbat candles and celebrating the holidays. I even had someone tell me she made Havdalah for the very first time at 68 years old after watching me do it. 🥹 To know that somehow, through food and simply sharing what I do in my own home, I have inspired even one person to connect a little more to their roots means more to me than I can ever explain. ❤️ Food is really a language of love. It brings us together around a table. It’s there when we celebrate. It comforts us when we’re sad. It reminds us of our mothers and grandmothers and the homes we grew up in. There is so much more to food than just eating. Never in a million years did I think that sharing what I was cooking in my kitchen would bring me here. 2 million of you. I know this is my page, but this milestone belongs to all of us. You trusted me. You tried my recipes. You shared them. You told your friends and family about me. You brought me into your homes and let me become a little part of your families. Whether you’ve been here since Sivan’s Kakes 😂 or you just found me last week, thank you. I wake up every morning thanking HaShem that I get to do something I love so much every single day. And even with 2 million of you here now, I never want to lose what made this page special to me from the beginning. I still film my videos. I still edit them. I still read your comments and answer my DMs myself. I do have an incredible team behind me now. My hard working children and of course my husband Avi who is literally my right hand in everything I do. I could never do everything without them, but that personal connection with all of you means everything to me. I want to hold onto it for as long as I possibly can. So from the girl who didn’t know how to post an Instagram story to seeing Sivan’s Kitchen in Times Square, all I can really say is thank you. ❤️ #sivanskitchen #2million #grateful - @sivanskitchen