Welcome to Dinner and Dirty Dishes. There are a ton of other food blogs and resources out there, so I am honored you took the time to visit this site. If you take a look around, I hope you will get a sense of my cooking and eating philosophy. I cook and eat a lot like I dress; most days are pretty casual, but some days deserve an up-do and a string of pearls. So, although I love to entertain and can get a little worked up about it, everyday meals are usually not too fussy.
You will probably notice that I try new things and experiment a lot. As a result, things are often “not my best work.” As we go along, I will share my successes and failures. You will also see that I am a messy cook. As my husband Andy loves to point out, I often use up just about every pot in the kitchen.
Also, meat is not a huge focus at our house. Although Andy is an omnivore (a garbage disposal, really–I love you Honey), I have been a vegetarian since I was sixteen. Andy is pretty good about eating meatless meals fairly regularly, but I often cook meals that can be easily made partially with and partially without meat.
Andy and I met in law school. He was Mister Charisma and I knew I wanted to marry him before we even started dating. We married in 2006 and live in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Although the weather is not always great, we really love living in our little part of the world. Best of all, we have two little boys. We do not always get it right, but we try to fill them up with mostly healthy stuff and to expose them to a variety of foods.
The boys are a large part of the reason I started writing this blog. I have been terrible at making the same dish on any kind of a repetitive basis, so I wanted to create some kind of record of what I’ve made in an effort to start whittling down a repertoire of dishes they might remember when they are older. I also figured I could use this site as a somewhat of a journal of our days together.
Since I am sure they will eventually grow up to be teenagers who will be embarrassed by everything I do, and since things published in cyberspace live forever, on this site I will avoid using my kids’names and just refer to them by their current ages. I may not include any readily identifiable photos of them for the same reason, but just know they are unbearably cute, wonderfully sweet and totally amazing. They light up each of my days (even the rough ones) and are teaching me how to be a better person. Being a role model is such a huge responsibility.
Dinner and Dirty Dishes 