Welcome to my blog!

When I was living in Paris five years ago, I bought a magnet with the phrase "J'embrasse mieux que je ne cuisine." This roughly translates to "I kiss better than I cook," which was a pretty accurate assessment of my cooking skills at the time.

For most of my life, I had no interest or aptitude for the kitchen, despite the fact that my mom is an awesome cook and I love to eat! Throughout my time as an undergrad at MIT, where I studied chemistry, I always heard, "Oh you're a chemist? Then you must be a good cook!" That one silly comment, combined with the fact that I was awfully tired of eating nothing but pasta for lunch and dinner, motivated me to get into the kitchen and start fiddling around until I made something worth eating.

Fortunately, somewhere along the way, between the numerous pots full of inedible glop that had to be tossed, I started to get the hang of things. These days, I have no fear of trying new recipes because I've finally learned my cardinal rule of cooking:

The process of cooking is not going to magically transform a list of ingredients you don't like into a dish that tastes great.

This might sound a little ridiculous or incredibly obvious, but it actually took me a long time to figure out. But now that I have a grasp on which ingredients I like and what can be substituted for what, I only rarely end up with a dud.

So why did I start this blog? 1) I want to keep track of all the recipes I've tried, how they came out, what should be changed, and how I could improve their presentation; and 2) I want to hear from anyone who might be reading this about their suggestions for recipes, ingredients, or their stories (good or bad!) about their own adventures in the kitchen. And if, along the way, I can give some one a good idea for a recipe or inspire some one to try a new ingredient (something I've been incredibly resistant to most of my life), then all the better.

Every recipe I post on the blog will receive a grade based on ease of preparation and taste.  Additionally, I'll try to add tags to each recipe so if you're looking for something, say, Mexican for dinner, you can use the labels on the sidebar to find some inspiration.

One final note: Most of my recipes are adapted from previously published ones, so I will always give credit to the source of my recipes. Most of the time, I find recipes in my arsenal of cookbooks, but sometimes I also use Epicurious.

So with that, I just want to say thanks for stopping by my blog, and bon appetit!