Friday, February 26, 2010

An introduction

Cooking is a major hobby of mine. I've been cooking for pretty much as long as I can remember. During my teenage years I was responsible for cooking one dinner a week for my family as apart of my weekly "chores". When I moved out and went to college I was fairly good about cooking for myself and my boyfriend (who's my husband now). Towards the end of college I started to watch the Food Network and I was hooked. I was initially drawn into the cooking scene and wanted to try new and more complicated recipes. I found being able to watch and learn very appealing. My cooking learning continued to grow and I eventually took a 10-week professional cooking course (4 hours/week) at a cooking school in Los Angeles. It was an immensely gratifying experience. I continue to watch cooking shows, read recipes, follow food bloggers and just soak up information about food and cooking.

More recently budgeting has become more important in my life. A few months ago, our family made a big move from Los Angeles to Connecticut for my husband's career. This allowed me to become a stay-at-home mom to my almost 2 year old, something that was not possible with the high cost of living in Los Angeles. I still do some work on a part-time basis from home but my main "job" is to be a mom. This turned out to be great timing as our second baby is due to arrive in late May. But this doesn't come without some financial re-shifting and definite budgeting. And who doesn't like a good deal?

I've found many bloggers out there that locate deals, match weekly sales from store flyers to available coupons and lots more but what I haven't found is anyone who has turned those deals into actual meals that my family can consume. Often, the weekly sales are for items that seem to have no relation to one another. I hope to report on shopping trips as well as some meals that I create out of those trips. I hope to also add in helpful information I've learned about how to save money in the kitchen in other ways as well, include shopping at drugstores, warehouse clubs and natural foods stores.

Hope you follow along and please feel free to contact me: dealstodinners@gmail.com