About This Blog

- About Me -

I want to first start out by saying that I am not a professional chef or expert by any means. This blog was inspired by my much-younger friends and family that were inexperienced with cooking. I wanted to create a place where they could come and not only discover healthy ideas and recipes, but have an option to learn the basics of each ingredient and steps within these recipes. 

My mother was and still is a great cook. With that said, I never took the time to learn any cooking skills from her and by the time I was out living on my own I just had no idea where to even start. My solo cooking skills began with cooking everything from a box - boxed rice, boxed mashed potatoes, canned vegetables...you get my point. It was all heavily processed and unhealthy, but at the time I didn't know any better and I had nobody to teach me. Thus began my journey into not just teaching myself how to cook, but how to cook healthy. After 15 years, I am sharing my research and experience in a way that will hopefully help new cooks learn the ropes without having to go through all the trials and tribulations that I went through.

- About This Blog -

This blog is still very new but I am updating it every day to continue making it better for everyone. Though I am going on 15 years of cooking experience, I am still updating my knowledge base and learning every single day. If you see anything within my blog that seems incorrect or if you have any suggestions for tips and recipes, please feel free to contact me or leave a comment.

The main page consists of all my posts including recipes, research, and cooking tips. Each recipe is set up so that it shows the basic ingredients and directions at the top so that anyone can easily enjoy it. Toward the bottom is a link that, when clicked on, will show detailed instructions, tips for each ingredient included in the recipe, and anything that to an experienced cook would seem like basic knowledge but may not be to those less experienced.

Recipes may contain links to other pages that show basic steps on how to prepare ingredients, the proper way of chopping vegetables and/or fruit, and many other options. I will try to post an array of healthy recipes from meats to vegetarian to vegan to paleo, etc. I believe that there are positive benefits to all types of diets - it is up to you to choose which foods fit into your taste and lifestyle. For this particular blog, I tend to choose the recipes that I believe contain the healthiest and most natural ingredients. Recipes are taken from a wide variety of different sources including cookbooks, family recipes, and the internet. I cite my sources whenever I can or provide links to the original recipe. I believe credit is always deserved when due; however, all recipes listed on my blog may be changed from the original recipe and adapted as my own. This may be just a simple change of ingredients to provide what I believe to be the most healthy options, changing the quantity of certain ingredients, or revamping the entire recipe all together. The majority of recipes posted have actually been prepared by myself.

On the left sidebar you will notice a group of words. These are tag words. Each post on my blog has words associated with them depending on what the blog is about. For example, my Savory Bean and Spinach Soup recipe has the words "slow cooker", "crock pot", "beans", and "spinach" associated with it because those are the main things that post is about - these are tag words. Over on the left, if you were to click on the word "crock pot" it would bring up all posts containing that tag word which would include all recipes that use a crock pot.

If you are new to cooking and would like to see a "how-to" or recipe published on this blog please contact me with the details and I will do my best to get it published. Please keep in mind that I try to keep all recipes included in this blog as healthy as possible so any recipes you submit to me may be changed to what I believe is a healthier version, or it may be updated for a variety of other reasons - credit will always be given to whomever submitted the original.

In the Amazon box below, I have hand-picked six cookbooks for the new home chef. All of them have amazing reviews and go through the basics, up to some more advanced techniques, and provide some amazing new recipes and expert tips. If you don't have any cookbooks, or only have one or two, I highly recommend that you start your collection now. Coming from experience, building my cookbook and recipe collection has not only helped me learn but it also helps keep me motivated to eat healthy and cook at home rather than eating out.