Who Am I?

I am the kitchen tart...

I thought it would be fun to track the successes and failures on my journey to write and publish a cookbook.

I, like many other bloggers, love to cook. As I look at other blogs though, I see a lot of "my mother always made this recipe" or "I loved the smells of my mother's kitchen." While I can promise you that my children might be able to say that, I can equally assure you that I cannot say that about my own mother. To be clear, my mother is a wonderful woman with lots of great qualities, but the most common smell to come out of her kitchen is something burning. It is not that my mother cannot cook, anyone who puts their mind to it can, it is that she hates to cook. It is no coincidence that my sisters and I all cook a lot now, and one even married a trained gourmet chef. In all fairness to my mother there were two meals that she cooked well, albeit too often--Spaghetti and Lemon Chicken. I will also be including one recipe of hers in the cookbook, Key Lime Pie, and it is AMAZING. That is about where her culinary interest ends. So, if you are looking for a blog that reminisces about the smells of my childhood, this is not the blog for you. On the flip side, my paternal grandmother was an excellent cook, so the smells of my vacations might come up sometimes...those smells were delish and mostly responsible for my passion of cooking.

I am brutally honest, which while often a detriment, will likely work in my favor during the cookbook writing process...I am as honest with myself as I am with others and cannot convince myself into thinking that something that tastes terrible "might work". Fortunately, my husband is very honest (and picky) as well, so I am sure that the reader will find him both humorous and at times harsh. It is okay, he loves me very much and knows how lucky he is to have a wife that cooks as well as I do.

I have two beautiful and amazing children who my world revolves around (happily), but as they say in the beginning of Everybody Loves Raymond, this blog, "It's not really about the kids," so while they might come up from time to time, for the most part their mealtime consists of sitting in the kitchen eating cooked peas, peanut butter and jelly, and drinking milk...not the stuff of culinary genius, but perfect for small children.

So, here it goes...I hope that you enjoy it!