Step into our kitchen...

Now that we've had our first meal together, we'd like to formally invite you to our kitchen.  We're basically two twenty-somethings who love spending time in this particular room of our apartment (so much so that our son has permanent "kitchen toys").  First, a little about us:

Just a mere 5 years ago, Kayti's idea of cooking was a Betty Crocker "Meal in a Box" deal (barf).  In high school, she once murdered a box-mix of cookies by baking them with spreadable butter.  (Nice one.)  You'd never know it now though as she lives for baking delicious goodies from the oven and grieves over "burnt" pancakes.

Austin's first cooking memory is spreading about a half cup of Easy Bake cake mix into the bottom of a full sized cake pan. Apparently someone had bought him an Easy Bake mix, but not the pans to cook it in... needless to say, disappointment followed. Since then, his cooking has thankfully taken a turn for the better. Around college-time, when home cooked meals disappeared faster than you can overcook an egg, returning to the kitchen became the best alternative to the cafeteria and the "Freshman Fifteen." Though rarely revisiting cake baking (Kayti usually handles this part), he now throughly enjoys big fresh flavors and new recipes.

Our vision for this blog is to bring you:

• Simple Recipes: Not that our recipes will be dull or mundane, but we hope to simplify them for the amateur cooks (like ourselves) by explaining techniques that we've learned as well as deciphering cook-ish vocabulary along the way.
• Useful meals you can make: Most of our posts will be complete meals that we're making here at home.  Seriously, you're really just coming into our kitchen... except... you actually have to cook it again.  (We've done the planning for you though--so, yay!)
• Easy how-to's: There are some things that we'll trial-and-error for you... step... by... step.  No holding back either, if we screw up, you'll see it.  
• Fresh Ingredients: It is difficult (and/or expensive) to buy processed foods where we live (not to mention incredibly unhealthy to eat) so most of what we push out onto the dinner table will be made from scratch with fresh ingredients.  Don't be scared of "from scratch."  Most people don't understand how simple cooking from the ground up can really be!
• Entertaining Reads: Recipes can be boring in blog form, so we plan to talk with you and show you plenty of pictures.  This will make for lengthy posts, but we'll try to use font to highlight the important parts when you're going back in just for the recipe.  (We highly recommend copying down the recipe on a card or notebook though.)
• and of course... deliciousness!

We hope you'll comment, question, and contribute. We've made a lot of mistakes before, and sometimes it's hard to remember what we've done wrong so if something is unclear or if you have a problem that we didn't cover, please ask. You're probably not the only one with that question!