Anna Pedrosa: High-Protein Takes on the Comfort Food She Loves

Anna has cooked for herself since her teens, long before any of it was for an audience. For years it stayed at home, something she did purely because she enjoyed it. She had a sweet tooth and a habit of experimenting, and she would save recipes on Instagram by the hundred, watching other creators without ever picturing herself among them.

"I never thought Instagram was for me," she says. She loved the idea of watching and creating, but starting her own page was never part of the plan.

The shape of her cooking, higher in protein and lower in calories, came from the gym. When she joined and started learning about nutrition and the importance of protein, she began turning the things she already loved into food that fit that way of eating. The sweet tooth did not go anywhere. Instead of setting desserts aside, she worked at making them healthier, testing versions until they landed. Back when she was working full time, that meant high-protein breakfasts she could prep after the gym and throw into a container for work, and it is still the logic behind much of what she posts: real food, made a little more nutritious, without much fuss.

The push to go public came on holiday. Anna told her husband she wished she could do something like the creators she followed, and he answered simply: why not set it up?

"I just wish I could do something like this," she remembers saying. She set up the Instagram there and then, walking around trying to land on a name. The account was meant to be the two of them, which is where the AJ comes from: Anna and her husband, Johnny, a head chef who cooks well but never took to being on camera. In the end the content became hers, and she found she loved every part of it.

Not long after she set up the page, back home in England, Anna found out she was pregnant. The page kept going anyway, and much of its early growth happened while she was on maternity leave. She celebrated every small milestone, twenty followers at a time, and still remembers the day the count hit a thousand. There was no business plan and no expectation attached to any of it.

"When your first reel starts doing well, you get a real buzz out of it," she says.

Seeing people actually watch, enjoy, and cook her recipes was reward enough to keep her going through the stretches when it felt like a lot of effort for little return.

What people notice first about Anna's recipes is how easy they are to follow. That is deliberate. She found that long, complicated instructions overwhelm people, so she keeps things clear and focused on one thing at a time.

Her advice to anyone starting out is to narrow the niche rather than try to do everything at once, the way she once did when she was saving hundreds of recipes and chasing every idea. For her, the through-line was always practicality: what would she actually make? Often the answer was something high in protein and easy to prep, and that instinct still guides the page.

Asked what she would eat for the rest of her life if she had to choose, and setting desserts aside, Anna lands on pasta. She calls it a boring answer, but she means it, partly because it is endlessly comforting and can be made a hundred different ways. Coming from Poland, she also has a soft spot for the heavier, potato-based dishes and dumplings she grew up with, the kind that appear at Christmas and Easter alongside cabbage and plenty of pickled things. Those take time she does not always have now, but the flavors are still there. Her kitchen today runs on more than one tradition, with Polish, Portuguese, and English cooking all in the mix.

Anna does not work from a script. After doing this for so long, her recipes tend to come to her naturally, shaped by what she feels like making on a given day. The harder part, she says, is writing it all down and communicating it clearly to other people. That is really the work: turning an instinct into something someone else can follow in their own kitchen.

For a long time Anna stayed out of frame, letting the food do the talking. Lately she has been trying to change that.

"I was hidden behind recipes for so long," she says,

and now she wants to show more of her personality and let people see who is actually behind the account. She does not think in terms of what sets her apart from other creators. She figures everyone has their own skills and vibe, and the food creator community she is part of feels more supportive than competitive. Showing herself on camera does not come naturally yet, but she treats it like everything else on the page, as something that gets easier with practice.

Instagram has been home base, and Anna describes it as community-based and genuinely supportive. TikTok is newer territory, and not her favorite, but she is learning it because the reach works differently there. A reel that does well on Instagram can fall flat on TikTok, which runs on its own logic of retention and engagement, and figuring that out has meant starting over in some ways. Much of her energy right now goes into editing, a part of the craft she genuinely enjoys. Getting there took plenty of trial and error, including, by her own count, tens of tripods and a lot of fiddling with lighting to make everything look right.

None of this happens with much free time. Anna still works part-time in the NHS, she has a young child at home, and the page sits on top of both. Recipe testing, which she loves, gets more complicated when a failed attempt means another trip to the shop with a toddler in tow. She keeps coming back to how grateful she is, still slightly amazed that something she started for fun has grown into what it has. People she follows online keep her motivated, watching them grow and, in some cases, leave jobs they did not love to do what they enjoy.

"Just sticking with it is key, despite the hardships," she says.

She has ideas she is quietly working on, including an ebook, though she is keeping the details close for now.

When the conversation turned to the home cooks who might read this, Anna kept it simple.

"Just keep doing what you're doing. Despite the hardships, it's always worth it in the end," she says.

It is the same thing she tells herself, and after nearly two years of building something out of a hobby she never expected to share, she has earned the right to say it.

Anna's page is the result of a private habit that finally went public, a husband who told her to just set it up, and a couple of years of steady, patient work fit around a job and a young family. The recipes she shares are the ones she actually cooks, made a little healthier and kept simple enough for anyone to follow.

Follow Anna on Instagram at @ajfoodie, where she shares high-protein, lower-calorie takes on comfort food and desserts. Chefadora is proud to spotlight creators like Anna who are making everyday cooking more approachable and sharing their recipes with a growing global community.

Updated on 17 Aug 2026