About Me

I've been accused of loving people with food. The accuser still eats my dinners without complaint and occasionally washes dishes, so no hard feelings. I started baking when I was little, painstakingly trying to follow the recipes in my mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. Most of what I made fell into one of two categories -- undercooked and overcooked. During the intervening 20-odd years I've gotten better at baking and cooking with lots of practice. I've also learned from other cooks, read way too many food magazines, watched Food Network (although Noggin is our most popular channel these days), and eaten new foods at great restaurants as often as I could afford. My buckshot approach to learning how to cook.

Recipes on Feeding Four are inspired by my personal obsessions, but also by what's affordable or what's on sale at the grocery store that week, what's in season, what's healthy, and what my kids will eat at the moment. I try to blog about foods that even picky preschoolers will eat and recipes that will serve four average-sized portions. If I make something my preschooler won't eat, I'll often show an easy way to make a kid-friendly version of the meal using the same ingredients. Because we shouldn't all have to eat like preschoolers! I shoot for a balance of healthy foods and ingredients without sacrificing taste. Most of the ingredients I use are inexpensive, easy to come by or handy in most American pantries. With our busy household, Feeding Four recipes are by necessity either super simple or easy to make in large batches and freeze.

Some of the recipes on Feeding Four are from my little black box--recipes I've collected over the past two decades and made over and over. If I know where I got a recipe from, I'll give the source credit. Otherwise, I hardly ever cook straight from a recipe. Instead I find two to three recipes for the item I want to make and use a bit of this and a bit of that, throw in something I had in a restaurant once, and use what I actually have in my pantry. The result is yummy (I don't bother to blog about it if it isn't).

A final word on recipes: I was raised to waste nothing. Nothing. I don't always live up to this mandate, but I do value resourcefulness and thrift. So if there's a way to make some aging produce, stale bread or sale-priced meat taste good, I'll find it. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all!

Reviews of books, cookbooks, restaurants etc. are my own personal opinion. I don't get anything for doing them. As a writer and foodie I do especially enjoy dishing about books, so let me know if you've read a good, food-related book lately.

What else is there to say? I love my life. I love my family. I love to cook. None of it is ever easy all at the same time, but I wouldn't change a thing. Come cook with me!