Who I Am

My name is Victoria. I’m 23 and I’m originally from Chicago, spent a year in Los Angeles after college, and now I live in Indiana with my husband, Brent, and 2 dogs, Larry and Lucy. I love baking and cooking. In fact all love all things related to food, as is evident by my favorite hobby: Grocery Shopping!

When not in the kitchen making an extreme mess, I can most often be found watching some sort of marathon on TV (preferably some form of Law & Order), or somewhere in Illinois visiting my friends and family. I also love running and yoga, and I’m training for some road races this year. I work part-time and I’m returning to school. In August 2009, I will start my full-time two year nursing program!

I’m not a natural-born cook. The first time I ever tried to cook a dinner is a night my husband and I will both never forget. I had picked out some ridiculous meatloaf roll thing from Rachel Ray and went to the store and spent like $60 on the ingredients. Things appeared to being going according to plan, until I came to  the step that said “Lightly coat roll with oil.” I splashed a bunch of olive oil on it and sent it into the oven. 20 minutes later when Brent arrived home from work, he sniffed the air and said “Smells like it’s ready.” I replied, “No, it has 20 more minutes.” Five minutes later when smoke started coming from the oven, Brent recommended I check on it. As I opened the oven, black smoke billowed out and the smoke alarm started going off. I freaked out and dropped the pan, spilled the meatloaf on the kitchen floor. As Lucy started greedily trying to eat the mess, I noticed that the inside of the meatloaf was raw while the outside seemed completely black. Somehow, in the middle of all this I had also burned my hand and after I rinsed it with cold water and stopped crying, Brent and I walked down the street to get some fast food.

Since then, I’ve been slowly improving and now 99% of what I make is edible. It’s quite a feat considering the lack of culinary genes in my family. After gaining enough confidence, I started experimenting a bit more and tweaking recipes, trying to make them healthier or just switching ingredients around to suit our tastes. I want to use this blog to document some of my experimenting and encourage myself to create more of my own recipes, baked and otherwise.

MY LIFE IN PICTURES:

Cubs game!

My brother Matt and I before he left for the Army

Lucy, getting destinkified

Family party… moved to the hospital. Everyone is fine now.

We’re really into Halloween.

Casual Cher and Betty Boop

Larry, trying to be tall.

Told you he loves them.