I've always loved being in the kitchen, though my first few cooking years were pretty unfocused and based on my own instincts, which only turned out to be right about half the time. A few years ago, I decided to get more serious and learn to become a decent baker. Somehow this felt intimidating, because so much of the technique required to bake successfully at first seemed beyond my abilities. Then I decided to approach things more intentionally, and chose a few role models so I could learn from their vast experience to try to improve my own skills. To me, this is likely a never-ending journey, one which I happily embrace as I try to sharpen my skills and learn more and more. I value deliciousness, natural ingredients, and substance - I'd much rather eat something homey and organic than something overly artistic made with anything artificial. I am not a fan of fondant or food coloring.

Over the years, I've been told lots of things that I now realize may have jump-started my interest in being a baker. The earliest example comes from my childhood. When I was in 4th or 5th grade, one of the classes offered as an extracurricular activity by my elementary school was a class in cake decorating, which was my top choice. As students were being assigned to activities, I overheard one teacher say to another that they refused to put me in the cake decorating class because I was a boy. I ended up in some team sports class that I hated, and spent the entire semester jealous of my female counterparts who got to learn the skills I was interested in. Note: I still loathe team sports.

Growing up I had a really good male role model for baking and cooking, though. My parents have always bucked the trend with regard to who does the cooking; while my mother makes the best green salad on earth, she otherwise only cooks one or two things, and doesn't really enjoy it. My father, on the other hand, has always been an excellent cook and baker, loves being in the kitchen, and is skilled at creating dishes without a recipe. I've always looked up to him for this, and I think I got my early confidence, or at least interest, in cooking because of inspiration from him. One of the many things I've learned since taking on any kind of food preparation more seriously is that I am not great without a recipe, and at the same time, I've also learned which recipes are trustworthy and detailed enough, and which don't work well. This has led me to closely follow a relatively small number of influencers (gawd I hate that word!)-slash-cooking pros in order to hone my own skills.

What you see on this website chronicles both my successes and my failures (or, rather, learning experiences) in a way that I hope makes the whole enterprise seem more approachable, accessible, and fun. The best part of cooking and baking, to me, is that It's Just Food, and when something goes awry, it's easy to learn from the experience and move on. And when it does work, the satisfaction of producing something delicious and hopefully pretty makes it all worth it, and involves at most a day's honest work. In other words, I get something close to the ever-elusive instant gratification, and that just feels great.