Hi! I’m Mindy. I am a 35 year-old Chef with no stove…so to speak. I, personally, have a very nice stove, but a little over 3 months ago I did what my husband affectionately calls “career suicide” and quit my job of 12 years, so I have no stove that pays me as I type this. I am actually working toward correcting that problem, but thats a tale for another day!

Part of my inspiration for leaving my job was the realization that I missed working with food. Ironic that one would hold an Executive Chef title and miss food…but it happened. At the level I was at it was more about managing people than cooking. I never wanted to grow up to be an administrator and I wasn’t happy doing it. At all. So a bunch of stuff happened and I quit. That is the WICKED short version. You’re welcome!

So its been a few months. I found my passion for food again – it is amazing how stifling misery can be – and am working toward finding a space to open up a little place of my own, starting right here. I am going to give you a peek into the culinary brain of a pro and the kind of food that I prepare at home – savory & sweet – and some of the shortcuts and tricks to make it work for your table, too. Super Chef Secret – some of the things that appear to be the most complex are actually the most simple.

All of the content here is original unless noted otherwise, if it isn’t my recipe I will always give credit to whomever it came from. I am sure I have some “Shout Out” recipes up now, and will add more as I am inspired, that are things I have eaten and and attempt to duplicate with varying degrees of success; those also give credit back to the source of the inspiration. My point here isn’t to show you how to make recipes, although that is definitely a bonus side effect, but more to show how to cook and give you recipes to teach techniques to build confidence and ability in your kitchen; demystify some professional kitchen magic and cook some delicious dishes on the way.

Personally I am happily married to an amazingly patient man who loves to eat…well everything but sweets anyway. He is an avid home-brewer and craft beer geek as well as lover of all things edible, especially cheese. We live just a tick outside Pittsburgh in an old house with our 2 dogs – the Eldest at 4, Gizmo, is an adorable 40# Boston/Rat Terrier mix and the puppy, Buster Badass, who, at 5 months, is around 50# and growing daily. He’s going to be a big floppy cute as hell monster. I like my dogs more than I like most people and I have no guilt about that – meet my dogs, you will probably agree, they rock.

Just as fair warning I do swear occasionally. I really dont see that I will have much need or want to here, but you never know…so hopefully you wont be offended, too much.

I also cook with a lot of beer. With the husband brewing we usually have 2 beers on tap and keep a solid selection of bottles around. Outside of that I genuinely prefer to cook with beer over wine. There are a ton of different flavors there that I enjoy playing with, hope you will, too!

Lets’s go play in the kitchen!