Welcome to Melanie's Kitchen!

I created this separate blog to post my favorite recipes. I'm on a bit of a food kick at the moment, and it's become a hobby of mine to search for and try new recipes. I have never really been a very domestic person, but lately I think that side of me is finally emerging. I am beginning to love to cook! And I love to use fresh, organic ingredients as much as possible. Jamie doesn't understand why I would spend 4-5 hours simmering a homemade spaghetti sauce when I could just pop open a can of Prego instead. But it gives me such a feeling of accomplishment to create a delicious sauce from scratch - and it's a much healthier way to eat too!

I want to have a list of recipes to pass along to Elise when she goes away to college. Given my lack of previous cooking experience, I figured I better start practicing and perfecting them now! I hope that someday she will refer to this blog when she is working in her kitchen. She will be able to read about the things we ate as she was growing up, and what she liked and did not like at different stages. It should be fun! :)

It will probably also be a little entertaining at times, since most of the things I'm posting at this point are my first attempts...and things don't always go quite as planned.

I tend to read a bunch of different recipes for a dish and pull bits and pieces from each one to create my own. For example, in the Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken recipe that I will post in a while, I removed the black beans, since Jamie doesn't like them. However, some recipes that I post will be the creation of someone else, and when that happens I will do my best to link back to the original recipe. In no way do I want to take credit for someone else's recipe. I am just building a collection of my favorites. So that is my disclaimer. I'm not looking to be a famous chef or publish a book or anything like that!

I'm excited to have started this blog! Now I will just need a bit of time to catch up and post some of the recipes I have been trying lately.