About Me

ME AND THE FAM

A little bit about myself! I am 28 years old and am married with three kids. I (obviously) enjoy cooking and trying new foods.  I am a wife and a mother and a stay at home mom. Pretty standard. My dream growing up was to be a writer and a teacher. I'm somewhat of both of those things now! I got engaged in February of my senior year of high school and married just a couple of months after I graduated. Soon afterward, I found out I was pregnant with our first child and things haven't really slowed down since! I absolutely love being a mom (something I never really thought I'd say as a teenager ha ha) and take this incredibly sacred gift seriously!

Hubs. I have been married for 10 years to my dashing husband. He is currently a Chiropractor/Chiropractic business owner and a financial business owner (yes, he's busy). He loves food and Harry Potter as much as I do. He makes a lot of dad jokes, and he lies to our kids SO much that when they merely ask the time and he answers correctly, they immediately just ask me. Years of "it's 30:00 o'clock" type answers will do that to you ;). He is freakishly smart and every time we around each other I have a blast because he is so much fun and is a great conversationalist!

Our oldest child is 9 years old. She's a Harry Potter geek like us and has finished all of the books, including the screenplay (which I haven't read yet!). She is pretty girly, but is a self proclaimed "tom boy." A tom boy that really loves to sing. She also loves to BAKE. I wish I could say it was me that prompted her to get into it, but no. It was Kids Baking Championship on the Food Network. Once she saw that, she was all in. Check out her brownies she makes right here!

Up next is our (almost) 6 year old daughter. This girl has been crazy from the day she was born. And I love it. Most days ;). She is so full of life and empathetic beyond belief. She's very impulsive, silly and loves attention. She also really likes baking, but more just because she gets time with her sister. She is really more into cooking and proudly told me how she chopped up a bunch of lettuce with "the sharp knife" while I was in the shower the other day. She wants all the answers right now and wants to do everything right now!

Topping things off with our mama obsessed son who turns two soon. He just wants mom. That's it. Just kidding, but a lot of days that's exactly how it feels! He loves Clifford the Big Red Dog, cars, and his stuffed cow, Moo-Moo. He loves to dance down the hallway to his room singing "NIGHT. NIGHT. TT-TT-TT!" on his way to his nap or bed. He is insistent on everyone having a prayer pillow to sit on for prayers and gives us his very best art skills all over the walls with mysterious crayons and markers I can never seem to find.

We're a tight family that loves the outdoors, enjoys living in hicktown USA and know that real rain smells like dirt. And we love it.

ME AND THE FOOD

I spent three years living in Portland, Oregon, the foodie capital of the universe (slightly exaggerated) and currently living out in the middle of no where Idaho. I am a mother to my two beautiful daughters with the man of my dreams! I am a stay-at-home mom while my husband snaps everyone's back in half all day as a Chiropractor. :)

Cooking has not always been a passion of mine! I didn't grow up trying too many new foods or venturing outside of my foodie comfort zone, and, if I'm being honest, I was your typical picky eater. Right after I'd gotten married and was living in Salt Lake City, Utah, I was making the same small handful of meals, or we'd eat out. It didn't help that my husband was the Culinary Assistant at The Olive Garden at the time and brought home dinner most nights. I was just straight up not a brain in the kitchen!

It wasn't too long before I discovered how little knowledge I had of basic foods! We're talking pineapples (didn't try my first pineapple until I was 22 years old), red peppers (had not taken a single bite of one until my twenties, either) and basically any other typical food you can imagine. Suddenly everything seemed interesting to me and I wanted to mix things together and try new flavors and LEARN.

I knew I'd done a complete 180 when I was on a formal dinner cruise along the Willamette River. They had a fancy buffet and a zillion hors d'oeuvres. I had been eating things and just shoving things in my mouth without even knowing what any of it was, yet I could piece together the flavors and build up a pretty good guess! Somewhere along the way I'd subconsciously developed some type of mantra of, "don't ask, just eat."  I'd allowed myself true opportunities to try and enjoy new foods without being plagued by thoughts of, "oooooh...it has what in it? Yeah, I don't like that..not trying it," and it had changed my life.

Now here I am.  I am a firm believer in the idea that if you follow a recipe and use the ingredients called for, you can cook anything! No matter what. Later on down the road you can figure out what can sub for what, what you can add in, what to stay about 1,000ft away from, etc., but I always try out a new recipe exactly how it says the first time. After that, it's fair game!