Hi, I’m Kris, and I’m a food lover, numbers cruncher, and adventurous wife and mama who used to spend a good chunk of her day wearing Army boots. Now that I’m working remotely, I still have the boots, but I’m just as often in flip-flops.
Most of my work is in data and analytics for HR, but it’s allowed me to do some pretty cool stuff. Stuff that will, if I let it, take over my life. That’s where Home Front Cooking comes in. As I navigate work and life on the home front, it gives me a creative outlet to explore my passion for food and photography, and a reminder that not everything has to be, you know, work.
Home Front Cooking started out as a hobby blog to help me decompress from work, have a creative outlet, and break my workaholic tendencies. Four years later, it’s still very much that – a creative outlet, a break from work, and a chance to experiment with getting good flavors and healthy ingredients on my table without a lot of fuss.
Yeah, that’s it. No magic transformation from hobby blog to side hustle to now full time job. I have a job I love, I just need a break from it. So here we are.
And that’s what I hope to offer you around here, just a break, a glass of wine among friends, some shooting the bull and handing over a recipe card or two because that dish we had while we sipped was great. I hope to offer up good flavors, good fresh ingredients (plus a few pantry staples), and not a whole lot of fuss.
I think of food as philosophy, in that what we serve on our table tells our stories, and what we like to look at on our plate and taste tells who we are. So here’s a quick snapshot of who I am.
I was born in LA and grew up right smack in the middle of California’s Central Coast, surrounded by the best you could hope for in fresh produce, seafood, sustainably ranched meat and poultry and eggs, and wine. Wine for miles. If it sounds like foodie paradise, you’re right, it pretty much is. But I had a healthy amount of wanderlust, so at 17, I decided I had a future as an Army officer, headed off to West Point, and embarked on an adventure. It’s been 25 years since I packed up my duffle bag and got on a plane to West Point, and the adventure continues.
I’ve since added to that adventure with Scott, my husband of ten years now, Marcus, our rambunctious son, Binker, our loud and opinionated eleven year old tuxedo cat, and Darby, our newest addition, a golden retriever puppy.
My culinary roots are planted solidly in all things Central Coast, which means you’ll find a lot of Swiss-Italian and Mexican flavors, a lot of farm-to-table, a lot of fresh seafood, herbs for days, tri-tip, Santa Maria barbecue, and the belief that you can turn just about any dish into fitting filling for a taco. Years of living around the world and travel, plus being integrated into a family with some solid Midwestern sensibilities, have flavored my recipe repertoire with some things that are distinctly not Californian, but my taste-buds try to make them that way.
We’ve landed, as of the past year now, in Orlando, Florida, and are hoping to make a semi-permanent home down here. You’re going to see a lot of Gulf Coast flavoring our food down here as well, because these are flavors I just can’t get enough of.
Welcome to my table! Pour yourself a glass of wine, sit back, relax, and enjoy!
Just to get you started, here are some of my favorite posts on food philosophy:
You may find some affiliate links and sponsored posts here, but this is primarily a hobby blog. Anything I share for sale around here is something I would buy – and probably have bought – anyway that I want to share with you, and I never accept a sponsored post for anything I wouldn’t use. For partnership opportunities, you can contact me here.
Thanks for visiting, and happy cooking!