Welcome!

Welcome everyone! Before I start chatting all about food, eating and my love hate relationship with cookbooks, I should first introduce myself and give a run down of my credentials.

I grew up in St.Louis Missouri and went to school at the University of Missouri, Columbia (GO TIGERS! MIZ-ZOU!) where I got a BS in Animal sciences, and met my wonderful husband Matt. Matt grew up on a farm in Sedalia Missouri, raising cows, pigs, corn, soybeans and a variety of veggies in their garden. I grew up in the suburbs with a small "garden." My garden was more like a rock pit where I tried to grow various vegetables that I had no intention of eating but was interested in how the whole grow your own food thing worked. My garden was about 3 feet wide and 6 feet long, and some how I managed to grow tomatoes passably, some corn (the stalks grew nicely, the ears... eh, not so much), a few scraggly carrots and peppers that would be perfect for a teddy bear pick nick. Not exactly a bounty of harvest, but since I didn't want to eat them anyways, I didn't mind.

Falling in love and marrying Matt has widened my pallet quite a bit. I have come along way from the girl who thought that only corn and potatoes were OK for your veggie repertoire. Don't get me wrong, I cooked with other veggies, I'd just pick around them when I ate the meal, but staring in college and more so with Matt (and his family), I learned that there are more to veggies than just corn and potatoes! I have also broadened my horizons by "butchering" a calf. I put that in quotations because it was mostly just hacking off parts of meat from a blind calf my Father-in-law had killed and labeling the meat, Steak, Roast and Chunk Meat. Chunk meat turned into Kabobs and the best ground beef I'd ever eaten!

That's some GOOOD meat!

Around this time in my life I began canning. Matt and I had planted three 20'x25' plots in the backyard and I had produce coming out of my ears. What in the world do you do with more veggies than you can eat, or pawn off on unsuspecting co-workers and friends? You can! I had tried making pickles with my mom as a kid (Thank you Mrs.Grothe for the book that got this started!) and did well, but that was one summer and I wanted to try again. I had a few other friends who were interested in trying this out too, so we had a Pickle Party! This entails a number of friends you trust with sharp knives, salt and a boat load of cucumbers who help slice the cucumbers, fill the jars with brine and seasoning and then who are willing to play board games with you as you process the jars. One night of this resulted in over 70 jars of pickles. After 3 nights of this we had more than 200 jars.  Soooo seems I need to work on my scaling or just know a whole bunch of people who love pickles. I went with the latter and 3 years later, they were all gone! That's the joy of canning, this stuff lasts forever! Since the pickles worked out so well we started having Salsa parties. To most people this would include some Latin music and dancing. For us it meant 40 lbs of tomatoes, 30 jalapenos, 10 onions, Cilantro, garlic, lime juice adobo, and a few Salsa starter packs. Everyone got to make their own special blend, and take a few jars home at the end of the night. LOTS of fun! Lastly we decided Jam was another way to go. Especially if you have 240 linear feet of Black Raspberries and Black Berries growing in your back yard. Similar party theme and SO MUCH FUN!

Getting ready to make some salsa!

Look at the varieties and colors. This was the year of the Tomato jungle where Matt planed 36 tomato plants because I couldn't decide which varieties I wanted

 Jams & Jellies!

During this time we also helped some friends with their goats and made cheese with the milk. It never failed, that when the temperatures reached either the highest or lowest of the year, that was when we were taking care of the goats and milking. Even though that is a true statement I really enjoyed it! Well, most of it. Evian the goat is a glorious girl and a sweetie, but her herd mate Xandie (the goat with the name of a stripper) was ROTTEN. By the time we caught her I was pretty sure I'd be getting milk shakes out of her! Rotten rotten goat, but I still had a good time. As much as I have fun milking the goats and making the cheese I still can't bring myself to eat it because I really don't like the taste of goat milk, but everyone else liked it! We made chevre rolled in lemon rind, garlic and dill, mozzarella and tried making cheesecakes, ice cream, lotion and soap from the milk.

I'm milking a goat!

I am currently a 30 year old, chubby blonde post-doctoral fellow working in downtown Baltimore. The reason I mentioned chubby is because I've been told NEVER EVER trust a skinny chef! So, now that we've established I'm trust worthy, my research is on tick-borne diseases and all day long I follow very specific recipes (aka protocols) hoping to learn or do something new and interesting that will one day be published and only read by a other science dorks like me. So, since I follow these protocols all day long I don't want to follow a recipe when I come home! I want to be creative! So I take out this creativity in food. Lately, this has been in the form of trying out recipes I find on Pinterest. Some are good, some are bad, some cause cursing, and other cause blissful sighs of satisfaction. I tend to view recipes as loose guidelines that can be improved or changed depending on your pallet. I'd say baking is my most creative genre though I still haven't figured out how to bake bread without a bread machine.

In this blog I'll be sharing my Pinterest cooking adventures, some tried and true recipes, my favorite kitchen gadgets (ode to a ceramic peeler will debut), and some fun stories about farmers market visits, orchard visits and trying to fit my Midwestern sensibilities into the world of Baltimore and the east coast.

I am so thrilled you have chosen to visit and hope you check back frequently to find out what's going on in my kitchen or where food will take me next.