A little about me

I discovered my love of cooking roughly 2 years ago when I decided that I needed some time off from school and was suddenly put in charge of feeding my 2 teenage brothers. During this time I learned how to find the best deals on groceries during the week and at which stores, when to stock up and where to splurge. My first love in the kitchen was baking, which is all science and precise measurements, so I was definitely intimidated by the flexibility of cooking. I wanted to know exactly what to do,exactly what ingredients to put in I didn't know how to just "wing it". I basically learned from the food network shows I watched and researching recipes. Wow, have times changed!! I love being in charge of every ingredient that goes into my food and how much I put in. I'd rather cook from scratch than go out to eat or use prepackaged anything. I recently stopped using store bought sauce, thank God! Although my sauce is still to be tested by Italians, need their approval first.

I have had a number of friends ask me for quick and healthy cost efficient recipes to throw together quickly or for any of my favorites to cook. So I figured I'd put together a blog where they can go and sift through and pick what they want to make.

My own diet is dairy free, but I do use it when cooking for my family, I just make myself something without it. My sister is soy free and my dad has high blood pressure so I tend to avoid using a lot of salt and stay away from most soy products. However I will be writing about what products a person on a normal diet would use in these recipes if that's what you want to use, I just won't use them myself. I mostly cook with chicken and veggies, so don't be surprised by what most of my dishes have in common.

My hope is to make cooking seem more approachable to people who have no idea what's happening. It really doesn't have to be that hard. I seriously learned by reading the directions in the recipes.

As I said about my first love in the kitchen was baking, so in addition to posting cooking recipes I'll also be postin some of my favorite baked goods recipes, from apple cake to my favorite chocolate cookie and rice crispy treats.