Welcome to my brand new blog, Bacon is a Food Group. First and foremost, I love food. I enjoy making real food from real ingredients, and bringing international flavors from my kitchen into yours. We travel quite a bit as a family, and food is an important part of every trip that we take. I’m often inspired to incorporate new dishes and tastes into my recipes upon our return, and I would like to share them with you. I’m also a busy working professional, and I’ll pass along the tips and tricks we use to get two meals out of one and make weeknight dinners a little easier.
I grew up in Minneapolis with two little brothers and two parents who worked outside the home. We ate a lot of meat, potatoes, and hot dish, but everyone who was available sat around the table every night and ate together. The food I make today is a little more varied that that, but the tradition stuck with me. I discovered pretty early on that I love travel, living new places, and experimenting with different foods. I was an exchange student in Japan as a teenager, and I spent most of my adult life in New Orleans and Florida. I came back to the Midwest after having children and finishing graduate school, and now reside with my husband and two little boys in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
I am married with two little boys, and work full-time as a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist at a critical access hospital in rural Wisconsin. My schedule is a little different than most. I’m on call a third of the time, which means I may have to run out the door with supper still on the stove if the phone rings, but in return I have every third week off. During my work weeks, I plan ahead to repurpose leftovers or make “set and forget” type meals on my call nights to minimize the burden of call interruptions. When I’m off, we travel as much as the boys’ school schedule allows. If we’re home, I take advantage of having a little more time in the kitchen to work on new recipes or make more intricate meals.
We travel as a family the majority of the time, and I’ll be including family travel tips here for each place we visit. Our boys are 3 and 7, and they enjoy travel as much as my husband and I do. One of my biggest travel tips with little kids is not to try to do too much. Don’t move hotels 4 times in a week-long trip, and don’t try to hit three museums in one day. We do try to fit a good mix of kid and adult-oriented activities into each trip, so that everyone gets to do things that they like while tolerating other people’s choices. We went to San Francisco and Yosemite a couple of months ago, and have Florida and Spain coming up soon.
Hopefully some of this is helpful to you! Please bear with me a bit as I learn how this blogging thing works. This site should start looking a little more polished as I progress, and I welcome comments and emails if you have any suggestions for me. If you have any questions about recipes, or about the places that we visit, please post them! I’ll do my best to answer everything as I see it. Thanks so much for visiting, and I hope to see you back soon!