About

Welcome! My name is Jennifer and I’m so grateful you’re here!

It all started with a seed and a plot of dirt at the corner of my yard, sectioned off with a railroad tie. My first garden. 

Well, let’s back up. You could say that it all started with the most delicious watermelon sold by a man at a farmstand in the parking lot of an abandoned Dairy Queen. He only sold produce during the summer and his watermelons were the best I’d ever had. I would sit at the kitchen table cutting chunk after chunk of red, ripe melon from the rind and eating until my stomach ached. My mom would look down at my distended stomach and literally take the knife out of my hand so I couldn’t eat anymore. 

I swiped a few seeds from my plate. I knew that if I could grow watermelon myself that I wouldn’t have to wolf it down as quickly as possible. I would just grow them year round. Never again would I have to worry that the produce man wouldn’t be at his stand and taking with him my glorious watermelon. This was my first brush with the power; the idea that I could grow my own food. 

Back at my garden plot, I raked back the dirt and tossed in about five seeds. I watered it for about ten minutes and waited for the fruit to roll in. Little did I care when my mom came out and told me that watermelon wouldn’t grow well in this part of the yard, under shading oak trees. I was sure I’d have a melon patch in a few days; probably because my prior gardening experience was limited to Skittles commercials where planting a handful of Skittles resulted in a downpour of candy. Unfortunately, the seed never sprouted and I didn’t grow watermelon or much of anything that year. At that point, I just gave up, but my dream of growing my own food was planted. 

Now that I think about it, it might have started with watching Julia Child with my mom as I fell asleep at nap time. We watched reruns and what I took from watching was that I wanted to be a “cookie baker” when I grew up. In my teen years, I leveled that up to watching Top Chef and wishing I could cook with such fresh ingredients. Many episodes had the obligatory shots of someone growing the vegetables on a rooftop garden and my desire to garden so that I could cook with the produce was sparked yet again. 
Or it could have started when I collected flower petals, blades of grass, a stick or two, and dirt to mix with water to make potions with my sister. We’d pour the concoction into a Cool Whip tub and freeze it. I would assure my sister that once it was frozen, we could use it to cure any ailment you could think of. Mostly, it just convinced my mom not to let us have old Cool Whip tubs because she was tired of wading past them to take out meat to thaw for dinner. 

All of these anecdotes seem like snapshots in time; cobbled together to show a rough picture of my childhood, but they make up the passions that led me back to the garden and the kitchen. As soon as I could form that desire into words, I set off to learn everything I could about them. I started with growing herbs in pots on my apartment balcony. Using herbs that I grew gave me a connection to my food in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Just a little shift in perspective was enough for me to dive in. 
And dive in, I did. Though at every turn, I found that there was so much to learn and implement in my life. I became overwhelmed, then paralyzed. I ended up not doing much of anything, but wishing and dreaming that one day, I would just be a gardener and home cook through osmosis. 

After years of yearning for a garden and a fancy kitchen equipped with a butler’s pantry, I finally had to realize that I was the only one standing in my way. So I buckled down and refused to give into the excuses and justifications I always gave myself to quit when I hit a bump in the road. I had to let go of the bluster and burrow down with books, research, and hand-ons experimenting to learn the skills I wanted to acquire. When life gets crazy, I can brew a calming cup of tea, water my plants, and create a nourishing meal for me and my husband. All of these things enrich my life and I’d like to share them with you. 

In seeking to learn about gardening, cooking from scratch, and making herbal remedies, I found lots of great information. But sometimes it felt incomplete or that steps I desperately needed to understand a concept were skipped over. Steps that seemed unnecessary to the author were vital for me to continue with a project. I find that as a relative newbie, I am able to see the holes that more experienced teachers take for granted. 

Nowadays, I’m an elementary school teacher. I know first hand that to be able to teach something, you have to know and understand it. Reading, researching, and experimenting have led me to be able to implement cooking from scratch, gardening, and making herbal remedies within the margins of my day and I’d like to teach you how to do the same. 

With this blog, I hope to educate, inspire, and convince you that growing your own food, making your own herbal remedies, and cooking from scratch are vital to your sense of peace and contentment. Whether it’s throwing sage in the pan to roast a chicken or tossing homegrown tomatoes and cucumbers onto a bed of greens you purchased from the store, forging a connection between you and your food awakens a sense of well-being that’s truly primal.  

With step by step tutorials and recommended reading to help you on your way to growing the kind of garden that fits into your lifestyle and circumstances. I’ll share recipes that nourish your body and your soul. And I hope to inspire you to just get started in any way that is most accessible to you. Whether that is herbs on a windowsill or a raised bed in your backyard. Baking your first loaf of bread or cooking a Thanksgiving spread from scratch. Using apple cider vinegar for a cold and flu preventative to a shelf of tinctures to ward off what ails you (I won’t recreate any Cool Whip potions from my youth in this blog). 
When all is said and done, it doesn’t matter where you start or how you start, if you have a few misfires or false starts, just that you start. And that’s where I come in. Join me through my journey to learn and grow in the garden and the kitchen. Take what you need and leave the rest behind; I promise you won’t be disappointed.