While About To Eat put out videos with a distinct theme or objective like Three ways we use cast iron, I only made Korean food for 24 hours and How a master ice sculptor makes ice come alive, Lam’s were much more experimental and lighthearted.

At the beginning, after her initial behind-the-scenes video, Lam focused on documenting her attempts at recreating recipes from scratch—not unlike how her grandfather, who she says is an incredible cook, made everything from scratch while she was growing up, and indulged her many questions in the kitchen about how things were made. 

I made homemade brown sugar boba milk from scratch kicked off her channel in earnest, which was followed by videos on lemon meringue tart, flaky scallion pancakes and spicy beef noodles—all made from scratch, of course.

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As it turns out, Lam’s boba video (which has accumulated 1.6 million views to date) couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. Perhaps due to the lockdowns that kept people from going out and enjoying the food they loved, Lam’s videos, which are relaxed and almost therapeutic, carved a spot for themselves by allowing her viewers to live vicariously through her. 

Then she posted Taking a day off to make Pixar’s ratatouille in March 2021, more than a year after she started her channel, which stands as her most viewed video to date with 4.9 million views. And one year later she posted Making Ming’s congee from Pixar’s Turning Red. Lam tells us part of the reason she made the ratatouille video was because she loves animation, but it was also for her mental health.

Just before that first Pixar-themed video, Lam had made I only ate Pixar foods for 24 hours for BuzzFeed, which made her realise how rushed the production for those videos can feel, and she just wanted “to take my time on this one thing for myself. I was just trying to take a breath.”

Allowing herself the time to take a breath is still something Lam is learning to do, especially after leaving BuzzFeed to strike out on her own as an independent content creator. A decision she shared with her followers in A new beginning, a video she posted in January 2023. 

“I felt that announcing it to the world makes it real,” she says. “I’m the type of person who will tell you something before I do it … it’s like holding myself accountable.”

The reason Lam felt it necessary to hold herself accountable? Because change is hard, and this was no exception: “It was terrifying. I feel like a lot of people talk about the excitement and freedom [of working for yourself], but they don’t talk as much about the fear that comes with losing the security [of working for a big company].”

Lam describes herself as someone who prioritises security, and letting go of that certainty and familiarity was “really scary”. Still, she knew it was necessary to push through that fear and get into uncharted territory, because “comfort doesn’t stimulate growth, right?”

However, with growth comes growing pains.

Being the sole decision-maker for her content from conceptualisation to pressing the “publish” button, Lam found she had trouble balancing output volume with her own wellbeing, and struggled with unrelenting perfectionism. On top of that, Lam—who grew up in Hong Kong and whose father is from the city—wanted to share with her audience things they might not have seen before, like dishes from her culture. And for those who might relate to her content, Lam hopes it helps them feel seen, heard and acknowledged.

In time, Lam found she also had to address something many who hold themselves to a high personal standard know very well: burnout.

“Cooking brings me so much joy, [but] every time I wanted to cook something I felt guilty for not filming it,” she says. “Everything can be for content and that took away so much pleasure for me. I hated that.”

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Lam stresses that she knows she can’t speak for everyone, but she does think many of us fail to prioritise ourselves, often because of the hustle culture that seems to have become expected of anyone who wishes to succeed.

“[We think,] ‘if I get to this point, I’ll be okay’. Or ‘if I just put my head down and do what I need to do, I’m going to succeed’ … and so you keep going,” Lam says. “But sometimes, you just need to take a break.” 

Beyond that, she says it’s equally important to speak up about mental health and understand that it’s not an all-or-nothing type deal.

“It’s not weak if you’re tired,” she says. “It’s okay to tell yourself you’re tired and to take a step back. Take a few days off, or tell your friends and family. Because when we’re caught up in this headspace, we feel so alone. If you don’t talk about it, that feeling is just going to amplify.”

Through trial and error, Lam has learnt to see resting when tired as an investment in herself.

“For a lot of workaholics, we think [of rest] as time wasted, [but really it’s] time you’re using to make yourself even better. Your phone needs to recharge to function again, right? It’s the same thought.”

Taking that time to recharge also allows us the opportunity to consider our next steps.

“Give yourself a time limit, because you don’t want to aimlessly set goals,” says Lam. “But if you don’t explore your dreams now, when are you going to explore it—when you have more responsibilities? Maybe you’re going to fail, but that’s okay. But if you never try it, how are you going to know if you might have succeeded?”

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