My name is Stacy, and I’m a mother of 7. ❤️

When I was a young single mom going through cosmetology school, I worked in the food industry, namely a popular fast food chain (they have the meats!), and a cool, cozy local coffee shop. I learned some baking skills from my kitchen manager at the coffee shop, but my cooking and baking skills at home still left a lot to be desired!

Once I graduated beauty school I became a full time hair stylist and nail tech, and left the food industry behind. I met and married my husband the next year. Shortly after that, I began staying home and learning to work my homemaking muscle.

One day, I was in the kitchen making a grocery list for our oldest daughter’s birthday party, and boxed cake mix was one of my essentials. My husband asked if I would be willing to try baking it from scratch, because it tastes so much better that way. I thought that was kind of silly, and would take unnecessarily long, but I decided to give it a shot since he asked.

Well, since I was trying harder to make a nice cake, I tried harder to make better frosting and put more effort into decorating it, too. (Our local library at the time had a baking section, so you could just borrow cake pans and decor and return them with your books – no buying extra pans or figures to put on top of the cakes that you use once and forget about. I loved that!) It turned out so much tastier, and so much cuter than my previous “let’s just get this over with” style of baking!

I. Was. Hooked.

What I thought was going to be a tedious process, turned out to be a fun and rewarding experience for me, and made our daughter very happy with the results too. It gave me a great outlet for creativity while feeding my family.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed building up my kitchen skills to cook and bake for my large family. I learned about the benefits of sourdough baking, and after some trial and error, got my own starter established. Since then, I started baking and selling sourdough in my local community.

I’ve talked with many people who wanted to do sourdough baking too, but were so overwhelmed by the process of making a starter, and intimidated by all the complex recipes out there. I’m a firm believer that anyone can make their own sourdough at home! I believe the process can be very flexible and simple. It does not have to be extremely precise.

My biggest goal with this blog is to share my passion for cooking and baking! I want to encourage people who want to get into sourdough, but feel like they can’t, to share other kid-approved from scratch recipes, to offer you my grocery tips that are tried and true in my large family, to explore nutritious food and healthy living, and for us both to grow together in our skill sets and tackle new challenges!

Join me on our baking, cooking, and healthy living journeys together! And in the words of the great Ms. Frizzle, “Let’s take chances, make mistakes, and get messy!”