Look! She's wearing an apron; she must know what she's doing! (Spoiler: she did not.)

The other night, I made grilled pizzas for dinner - one with tomato sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil (FROM MY GARDEN, #bam), and the other with arugula, peaches, prosciutto and goat cheese (and both with store-bought dough, obviously, because dough-making is not my thing). We were sitting outside eating dinner and Kendrick said something about the peach pizza being good, and then he said, "Remember when you didn't know how to cook?"

To be clear: I still don't consider myself an especially proficient cook. I make things that are easy and that I think taste good, I cut corners virtually everywhere, and I never met a package of pre-marinated Trader Joe's anything that I didn't like. But what Kendrick was referring to was the fact that when I started this website six years ago, my idea of "making dinner" was boiling some ravioli and throwing a bit of Prego over it that I'd tarted up with diced onions and mushrooms (I still make this sometimes when I'm alone, because it may not be elevated cuisine, but it is GOOD).

The original idea behind Ramshackle Glam was that it would be a food and entertaining blog written by a person who didn't know a whole lot about either. I figured hey, I just got married and moved into a (massive-for-us, at 800 square feet) new apartment, I'm interested in spending time at home and cultivating a cozy home life (as opposed to spending as many nights as possible out at some bar or another) for the first time ever...I might as well try to figure out this whole "cooking and entertaining and decorating" thing. And I might as well write about it on the internet while I do it, because there are a hell of a lot of sites that explore cooking from an expert perspective...but I always think it's fun to watch someone figure things out as they go.