Hello and welcome to Eating with A!

Hello out there. My name is Adrienne...and I've decided to hop on the blog bandwagon. My blog is going to be about food. I love food. I love sharing new recipes I've made and showing off pictures of my latest creations, no matter how simple they are. So instead of annoying my friends on Facebook with my posts, I'm going to post here now.

I'm still new to the whole cooking/baking world. Growing up, my mom didn't really cook many true dinners. There was a lot of hot dogs, mac n cheese and frozen meals in my house. Forget about baking - my mom was no baker. I honestly can't remember ever baking cookies or cupcakes with her.

I went to college 4 hours away from home but never really cooked there either. In fact, I remember one night, either Junior or Senior year, my friends and I cooked dinner in the common space kitchen. That was the first time I ever encountered raw chicken. We just made one of those meal in a box type things but it came out okay. It was a start. Then, at age 22, I was on my own. Living 4 hours away from home, with a real kitchen and needing to nourish myself. I started slow and easy. There were a lot of PastaRoni and Lean Cuisines filling my cabinets and freezer. But I started experimenting.

One night I had some friends over to watch The Mole. I remember cooking pasta and shrimp using a PastaRoni base... and then I remember setting a paper towel on fire because I wanted to wipe a drip off the stove. Oops. Luckily there were no further incidents and the meal was edible. A few months later I made fajitas on my own for some other friends - without a mix! (well, besides fajita seasoning). I used raw chicken too. That was an accomplishment for me. From then on, I slowly started cooking more and more, with less boxed ingredients.

The worst meal I ever made, by far, was my first (and only) attempt at shrimp scampi. My roommate Laurie can attest to that, though she claims it "wasn't that bad" and ate her whole plate. I, on the other hand, threw mine out and made toast. The recipe called for minced garlic. Well, I had garlic powder in the house. Same thing, right? Umm, yeah, found out the hard way that it was not and I ended up with a nasty, gritty, garlic-salty covered shrimp. Oh, boy, was that gross. I did redeem myself to Laurie at another time by making really delicious mini chicken pot pies. Life goes on.

Today, my husband gets to enjoy my creations, and right now he's injured with an arm in a sling so I've been making his favorite desserts for him nightly - ice cream sundaes. It's actually been fun, thinking of new creations and I started taking pictures of them.

But I will share all of this with you as days go by. The good, the bad and the ugly. Come with me on my adventures of cooking and baking and laugh at my mistakes or drool over my successful recipes. Sometimes, I'll post about going out to eat if I come across something worth sharing as well.

I hope you enjoy my posts, I can't wait to share with you all.