An Introduction

My mother always said, “If you need to follow a recipe, you can’t really cook.” My mother also always burned the potatoes and made dry pork chops, so there is that.

See, wasn’t that better than a “Hi! My name is…” opening statement?

My personal philosophy lies somewhere in between t0-the-letter-recipe-following (even with baking) and throwing the rules to the wind. I prefer, rather, to work with guidelines. I buy yeast by the 1lb bag and store it in the freezer for months. But I still at leas try to proof it. I turned a basic pizza dough recipe into a sour dough recipe by making too much and forgetting it in the fridge for a week. (It was, as it were, delicious.)

My name is Kay and I’m a 23-year old Customer Service Associate. Yes, I work at the bottom of the proverbial hill and, you know what, I enjoy it. The intermittent phone calls and generally dull days drive my co-workers absolutely bonkers, but they offer me a golden opportunity to spend time doing something I truly love. Or, rather, preparing to do something I love – cooking. I cannot begin to tell you the number of hours and days I have spent sifting through hundreds if not thousands of recipes online looking for that perfect thing to keep a Tuesday afternoon meal from tasting like something my mother-in-law whipped up. (Though her chili…now that I would kill for the recipe for.) The internet is replete with foods that I must-cook-right-now…no, you don’t understand – I must cook them right-now. And this is why I joined a 24-hour fitness center. Still, it is with a heavy heart that I admit I have food allergies. Not the cool kind that land you in the hospital because you ate a cookie. I have the crap kinds that are bad enough to make you completely miserable, but not actually bad enough to make anyone careful about inadvertently slipping you a piece of fruit.

Because this blog was started with Daring Bakers as it’s impetus, it seems appropriate to share my numerous allergies so that when you encounter a DB challenge of mine that seems entirely unlike anything that was assigned…well, at least everyone knows why.

The rundown as it stands currently. (This list changes from time to time. Kiwis and Plums have been added in the last six months. I expect it to grow to include the rest of the stone fruit family. Which is a bummer, because I love apricots.)

• peaches
• pears
• plums
• nectarines
• pineapple
• kiwi
• cherries
• vodka

I have transient and varying intolerance to:

• eggs

So, for now, I'm looking forward to sharing a few of my own recipes and trying a lot of new ones along the way.