Welcome to my kitchen!
My name is Amy, but I’m also known as Amythyst.
Cooking has always been a huge part of my life, and many of my core memories involve food:
- I have a fond memory of my older sister, Angela, pulling a chair up to the stove for me to stand on when I was about 7 years old. so she could teach me how to make scrambled eggs.
- Growing up, I would spend my summers at my grandmother’s house in the Southern United States. She showed me how to bake cakes and other sweet treats, which we would eat on the little plastic plates from my play tea set, while sipping Kool-Aid from the little plastic tea cups.
- Even though we didn’t have a lot of money, somehow my mom always managed to pull together meals, to ensure that no one in our household went to bed hungry. She taught me that you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to make a delicious, filling meal — and how to use what’s in my kitchen to pull together a meal, without needing a recipe or a plan.
Being able to cook and bake things for my loved ones gives me such a sense of fulfillment. To say that food is one of my love languages is an understatement.
Unfortunately, in 2020 I started suffering from health issues that resulted in me not having the energy to cook the way that I used to. As I lost the ability to spend as much time in the kitchen, I got to experience a different sort of joy — teaching my husband, Justin, how to make some of his favorite meals that I used to make for him.
I started this website as a way to digitize, organize, and categorize my vast collection of recipes so that they are easier to find and access. It was just becoming too difficult trying to find anything, when my recipes were spread across bookmarks in my browser, documents in Google Docs, paper format, images in my phone, and digital notes across various devices. This site was the answer to a better way of pulling everything together in one place, organizing it so that recipes are easier to find, and being able to easily share access with others (like my husband).
So please, make yourself at home and share in my journey. First, I’d like to introduce you to the cooks that have influenced my cooking, and are responsible for some of the recipes you’ll find on this site.
Nancy
My mom, Nancy, (and by extension, my mom’s side of the family, like my Grandma Dolly and my Auntie Helen) was a huge influence on me as I learned to cook. She grew up in the Southern United States, and so much of what she taught me were classic Southern recipes, like chicken fried steak and biscuits with sausage gravy.
She also taught me how to take what’s in my pantry and pull together a meal from what I have on hand. Growing up, there were times that we struggled financially, and a lot of what we ate would have been classified as a “struggle meal” by today’s standards. As a child, I didn’t realize that my mom was making dinner work on a shoestring budget. All I knew was that I never went to bed hungry.
Now, as an adult, I have had moments in my life where money was tight and I had to do the best that I could to ensure that my daughter, Bryanna, didn’t go to bed hungry. Thanks to my mom, I had the skills to be able to create meals without needing a recipe or a plan. I also credit that skillset to my ability to create my own recipes, many of which can be found on this site.
Teresa
I love to learn, and have always believed that you’re never too old to learn new things.
My mother-in-law, Teresa, has taught me a lot of recipes that Justin enjoyed growing up. It has been so interesting over the years to learn about the foods that give him a sense of nostalgia.
Their family also had periods where they ate on a budget and enjoyed meals that we would call a “struggle meal” today. But since I grew up on the West Coast and he grew up in the Midwest, there are definitely some differences in the types of things we grew up eating. Even when we grew up eating the same dish, it was often prepared or served differently.
I greatly appreciate my mother-in-law. When I started having health issues, she made the time to come stay with us periodically, to help cook meals and keep up the house. She even agreed to make our wedding cake for us when we got married, since we were on a very tight budget and couldn’t really afford to pay a professional baker. But when our caterer decided to ghost me a couple of weeks before the wedding, not only did she bake and decorate a gorgeous multi-tier cake, she also ended up also making all of the food for our reception.
Teresa isn’t just an amazing cook, she’s also an amazing person, and I’m incredibly grateful for everything she does to help us.