Sayani: If My Kids Don't Love It, I Don't Post It

Sayani traces her love of cooking to her childhood in India, and specifically to the day her family brought home its first convection microwave. Roughly 25 years ago, she says, dishes like pizza weren't something most Indian households made, and the new appliance felt like an invitation to experiment.

She started small, using the microwave to make little sandwiches and whatever else she could figure out. The point wasn't any single recipe so much as the pleasure of making something herself. She credits growing up in India with shaping her passion for cooking, and that feeling stayed with her long after she left home.

In 2018 she moved to Canada, where she still lives, and the move introduced her to a range of different cuisines. Having children of her own, she says, turned that early curiosity into a daily practice: suddenly there were people to feed, and she could cook them whatever they wanted.

The dish Sayani returns to most from her own childhood is a simple one her mother used to make. Small-grain rice went into the pressure cooker with lentils, potato, and a few vegetables, and came out as a soft, porridge-like meal finished with plenty of ghee or butter and, ideally, a boiled egg on the side.

She still makes it. The night before our conversation, she had served it to her own kids, who count it among their comfort foods too. Part of its appeal, she says, is practical: everything cooks together, so you get a bit of everything without preparing anything separately.

Ask her to name the one dish she could eat for the rest of her life, though, and her answer is biryani.

Sayani's husband is Canadian, and she is raising their children in a multicultural household. Bringing the influences of India and Canada together through food is something she loves, and it keeps her in the kitchen for much of the day.

"So in my household, all I do is cook, cook, cook. Like, I just love to cook."

Everyone in the family has different food preferences, she says, and that inspires her to get creative with meals they can all enjoy together.

Sayani started with no experience in content creation. She created her page in late May 2026, only a few months before this interview, and until then her Instagram experience was limited to a personal account full of travel photos.

She had no idea how to make reels when she started, and she is candid that it shows. Scroll back to her first five videos, she says, and you'll see someone still working it out. She did her research, made videos that didn't land, and kept posting anyway, because the reason she started was to help other moms.

What began as a small creative outlet, she says, has grown into something she is passionate about.

Sayani says she doesn't really think in terms of standing out from other creators. What she does have are two habits that shape everything on her page.

The first is that nearly everything is filmed in one take. By her estimate, around 99 percent of her recipes are filmed in a single take, without retakes. The second is stricter: the food on her page is the food she actually feeds her kids, and if they don't love a recipe, she doesn't post it. When viewers see her son happily eating something on camera, she says, it's because he genuinely likes it, not because he was pushed into it.

"I just don't want to give wrong hopes to the moms or fake it for the views. If they don't like it, they don't like it. I don't post it."

That doesn't mean every recipe is right on the first attempt. She is always testing new ones, and plenty go sideways: too much liquid, too much egg, a step she wishes she had left out. What reaches the page are the meals that have genuinely worked for her family, and that commitment to sharing authentic, family-tested recipes is what her rule is really about.

As her audience has grown, a clear pattern has emerged in what people ask for. Many requests come from moms looking for vegetarian dishes and for meals that work around common allergies and intolerances in children, especially egg and dairy.

Those recipes perform well on her page, and Sayani understands why. In her view, most people already know how to cook meat. The harder problem is getting plant protein into a child, particularly one whose diet is already limited by allergies. When a family is that restricted, she says, finding a dish that works is a real win.

Her own children don't have allergies, but she takes satisfaction in hearing from other parents that a recipe was a hit in their homes too.

Sayani's page focuses on toddler-friendly recipes, but most of the meals she shares are made for the entire family, herself included. Her goal is to make nutritious, flavorful family cooking practical for busy parents, so they aren't preparing separate meals for everyone.

When her son was too young for salt, she would cook without it and season her own portion afterward. Now that he can have a little, she simply adjusts the seasoning at the end.

Her two children have different preferences, and Sayani sees that as a reason to keep experimenting. Every child is different, she says, and cooking for two has encouraged her to play with ingredients, flavors, and textures. Much of what ends up on her page comes out of that experimenting.

Instagram is Sayani's main platform, and she is still learning how it works. Keeping videos short enough that people watch them through has been one of the hardest parts; a reel that runs too long, she says, can backfire. Editing was a challenge at first, and she treats it as ongoing.

"Every day is a new learning day for me."

Engagement has its own learning curve. Working out how to reach an audience and interact with it genuinely was her biggest hurdle early on. For a while she replied to recipe requests by hand, which got harder to keep up with whenever a video took off. She has since started using ManyChat to send recipes automatically to followers who ask for them, and she says it has been a big help as her audience grows, especially while balancing content creation with motherhood.

Not all of the attention is kind. Most of her audience is supportive, she says, but there are always one or two commenters who try to police her reels and put her down. She takes it in stride. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, in her view, and criticism tends to grow along with a page. If people are talking about you, she reasons, you are probably doing something right.

Running a page alongside two little ones is not easy, Sayani says, and it takes up a lot of her time. Her daughter recently turned four and started school, which has given her a little more room for creating content.

What makes it worthwhile is the response from her audience. Seeing that love, she says, is when the effort pays off.

Meal prep keeps the rest of the week manageable. She cooks ahead, so in the morning she can put whatever her daughter wants into the oven, warm it up, and serve it, saving roughly half an hour of cooking before the day starts. She is also honest that parenting tests her patience in ways she didn't expect. Kids, she says, can pull every string.

Asked what inspires her, she says she draws on everyone around her, but one source comes first.

"Being a mom is my biggest inspiration. For the kids, for myself, for my family."

When Sayani first started posting, she pitched brands for collaborations, and not every reply was encouraging. One company told her to come back once she had 10,000 followers.

She says starting out as a new creator has taught her persistence, confidence, and the importance of recognizing her own value. In her view, authenticity, creativity, and the trust of her audience matter just as much as follower count.

For now her focus is on social media: creating new recipes, growing her page, and reaching more people. A recipe website is on her list as well, though between the kids and everything else, she calls it a work in progress. Good things take time, she says, and she is fine with that.

Sayani knows she is fortunate. Many families are working hard just to keep up with rising costs, she says, and being able to stay home with her kids rather than send them to daycare is a privilege she recognizes.

Still, her message to readers, whether moms or dads or whoever runs the household, is to cook a little, even if they don't love it.

"When you cook your own meals for your kids, you know what you're putting into the food."

Her family's health history is part of why that matters to her. It has encouraged her to be more mindful of nutrition and to focus on balanced, wholesome meals for her children. She also has doubts about what ends up in produce, organic or not. Her practical suggestion is to start small and try meal prep, which she finds fun and which, in her experience, makes busy mornings much easier.

Sayani started Tiny Table Tidbits in May with no experience in content creation, and in a few months a small creative outlet has become something she is passionate about. Its roots go back much further: a childhood spent experimenting in Kolkata, a mother's one-pot rice she now serves to her own kids, and a multicultural household where Indian and Canadian influences share the table. Everything she posts has passed the test that matters most to her, two young children who either eat it or don't, and parents navigating allergies and different preferences are finding meals there the whole family can share. She is building it the way she learned it, one reel at a time.

Follow Sayani's family cooking on Instagram at @tinytabletidbits. Chefadora spotlights home cooks like Sayani because our mission is to bring people together through food, and that often starts with one meal that works for everyone at the family table.

Updated on 04 Nov 2026