And so it begins...

I can't remember a time where food didn't feature prominently in my life. Whether it was the feasts we had growing up in a large Italian family, or my sister, Sara, and I trying to concoct food out of Play-Doh and then later in life graduating to cooking actual food (because really, only your parents can be so excited to fake eat Play-Doh food), it was always there.

Some of my favorite memories are smells - my mom's sauce bubbling on the stove, freshly cooked biscotti coming out of my Aunt Betty's kitchen, walking into my grandmother's house the day after Thanksgiving and getting whiffs of her turkey soup, waking up to the smell of my dad baking banana bread... the list goes on and on.

Now that I'm an adult with a kitchen of my own, I love experimenting with recipes. I do like to keep with the Italian traditions, but I branch out all the time, and find that I get bored making just one type of food over and over. I have binders of recipes - two full of "tried and trues" and one full of recipes I have yet to make. I usually find that with most recipes, I end up tweaking something or other, but not always. And I even have a few recipes of my very own up my sleeve. All you lucky readers will get to experience these recipes here on the blog - and a select few of you might even get to be my taste testers.

For me, cooking is all about sharing love with those you hold closest to your heart. I hope through the recipes I share here on this blog, you'll feel more confident stepping into the kitchen and also look at preparing meals as less of a chore and more of a gift.

I recently moved to the Seacoast area of New Hampshire, and also plan to review/document our meals out at the great restaurants that surround us. Because as much as I like to cook, who doesn't enjoy having food cooked for them?

Thanks to all those who encouraged me to start this blog - here's to the culinary journey ahead. Mangia!