Hi! Welcome to “Cooking With Michelle.”
 

What’s it all about?
 

Recipes. Food. Learning how to cook. Failing miserably…sometimes. Knocking it out of the park. Enjoying the fruits of your labor in the kitchen, and having some fun with it!
 

And when you create a lovely disaster? There’s always frozen pizza.
 

When I was growing up, I learned by watching. I really wasn’t allowed to attempt to cook anything. The result? I learned, after moving out, by trial an error.
 

The only thing that saved me from starvation was boxed meals (the “just add water” variety) and frozen pizza.

Even after I learned the basics of how to cook, frozen pizza to the rescue. Because, let’s face it, some things just don’t turn out.
 

For interesting stories on utter failure in cooking, check out the “fail blog.”
 

But, you say, it takes pre-heating the oven and then another 20-25 minutes to cook a frozen pizza? You could scramble some eggs… or something.
 

Not if you eat frozen pizza the way I cook it.
 

Microwave. 5 minutes. Maybe 6-tops. Done. Tear it apart. Don’t bother with the niceties of cutting it… or even putting it on a plate.
 

These are not the “fancy” frozen pizzas. The stuff I stocked up on were the 5 for $5 variety of party pizzas. Combination style…uh huh.
 

I could’ve ordered a pizza. Sure. Except the reason I was eating those particular pizzas is because I was living an extremely frugal lifestyle… also known as broke.
 

Girded with the metabolism of youth and no money to spend… they kept me from starving. Bonus!
 

Heck, I grew up on those pizzas as snacks. Especially if the parental unit didn’t want to cook. I learned how to make a frozen pizza… not really cooked… more like not frozen through, scalding hot and crunchy on the edges, and fairly chewy in the middle, at an early age.
 

Added bonus, when you’re working a 14- to 16-hour day, who really wants to come home and cook?
 

After so many years of trial and error, knowing how to make a couple of things just ok, I decided that I needed to learn more.

And off I went…to my favorite place. The bookstore.
 

I ended up with some fancy cookbooks. Way out of my experience range. And some basic cookbooks. And some “celebrity chef” cookbooks.
 

Needless to say, I spent far too much and didn’t use most of them. (See the rant on when cookbooks are more for the coffee table than the kitchen.)
 

It was an adventure though.
 

And it’s a guilty pleasure. Pour a cup of coffee and browse through a cookbook, looking for ideas and inspiration.

I also spent a considerable amount of time watching cooking shows. Which was what piqued my interest in the celeb cookbooks.

I learned a whole lot of stuff from those shows. Ah, how I miss them. Oh well.
 

This is about sharing what I’ve learned. Experiencing new stuff. Learning more as I go. And just having some fun.

There are links for neat things, which are affiliate links. I get a small commission from them. It doesn’t increase the cost you pay when you purchase through the links.
 

All the recipes that I share have been tested… by ME! The photos of the recipes in the works are from ME. This is my creation. Every recipe that I share has been tweaked by me to fit my taste.
 

If you like it? Wonderful! If you don’t? Well, there are about 50,000,000 other cooking blogs on the web. Take your pick.

And that, my friends, is my disclaimer. It’s about fun. It’s about the heart of the home, which I believe is in the kitchen.

Let's play nice here, which shouldn't need to be stated, but that's where we are.