Hello there, and thank you for visiting! I have enjoyed cooking and trying new recipes for quite a few years now. Many of my friends have asked that I share my recipe findings with them and told me that I should start a blog so here I am! I can’t wait to get to sharing with you all.
A little about who I am…
I have always enjoyed food, but have not always been good in the kitchen…just ask my mom! She claims I never had the patience for it. I loved watching her prepare meals in the kitchen, but when it came time to me cooking something for myself, there was always something else that would distract me. She didn’t have much hope for me. Fast forward a few years, starting college and not having someone there to cook for me and I found myself figuring things out on my own. As time passed, cookbooks became favorite books of mine and I realized just how much I enjoyed cooking. When I got my first job after college (the 2nd time around!) as a 2nd grade teacher, I knew there would be no “running out to go grab a bite” for lunch, so I had to get creative. I started out eating those easy, frozen go-to lunches that seemed so easy and good, but then I started learning about processed foods and started really looking at the ingredients that I was putting into my body. At the time I was living on my own so I had to be creative with making dinners that I could easily take for lunch the next day as well. I will admit, it is not fun cooking for one, but it does require you to step out of the box a bit, which then, for me, turned into meal planning for the week.
My cooking really started evolving once I discovered Pinterest while planning our wedding. I found myself pinning recipe after recipe and looking forward to trying each and every one of them. I remember Matt, my now husband, asking me one time how many weeks we could go by just following the recipes I had been pinning on Pinterest. I laughed and said, “Try how many YEARS!” Yes, I was then, and still am a bit of an addict when it comes to pinning recipes. I have to admit though, I am learning from every one of those recipes that I try. I see something that I don’t think that works and I try something else and take notes. Or, I will take the idea and put my own spin on it to make it my own. It has really taught me a lot! I have realized that cooking allows my mind to be quiet of anything else going on other than what the recipe requires and it has become one of my happy places (that and gardening, but we’ll get to that at another time!). Thankfully, I have a husband, Matt, (that handsome guy in the photo with me!) that loves food as much as I do and he actually enjoys trying all of the new food as well. He also happens to be my awesome photographer and occasionally my very own Sous Chef 🙂 I absolutely love that he loves eating and cooking as much as I do! He loves to experiment with me and comes up with helpful ideas when I am struggling to figure out what we will be eating for the week. This is priceless in a partner, especially when you cook in every night of the week. Another “person” that you will be seeing quite a bit of is my other “sous chef”, Shafer, our lovable Golden Retriever that also loves to be in the kitchen with us!
What you will find here…
I am still in the process of working on how to write my own recipes, which I will also share with you, but in the mean time, I will be sharing a ton of recipes that I have found from some of my favorite foodies that I follow and learn from. I will also be sharing my experiences with mine and my husband’s fitness journey (which has been quite interesting as we get older!). And, of course, I will be sharing stories of our boy, Shafer, who just so happens to be named after my maiden name and also a favorite wine of ours from California. Who doesn’t love a good wine with their very own name on it? At this point, you can also follow my Instagram which has a lot of my food posts as well as other every day life stuff. I’ll update you when I have any other platforms to follow. Starting simple for now. 😉
Anyway, as I have said, balance is key and I don’t believe in restricting anyone’s diet or lifestyle. The recipes you will see are of all sorts. The most important thing, I feel, is that they are homemade with real and fresh ingredients (and, of course, love!).
