Hi! I’m Heidi! I live in Northeast Ohio with my husband, Jeff. Together we pet-parent our two mischievous but crazy adorable cats, Sangria & Cabernet. What? No one else names their pets after adult beverages. No? Just me? When I’m not in the kitchen, you’ll find me growing sunflowers and vegetables, reading a good book or wandering the West Side Market in Cleveland. I started this blog to share my love of cooking, baking & crafting cocktails. I want your breakfast, lunch, and dinner to be yummy but not complicated. I’m thrilled you are spending time with me. It means the world! I would love it if you would zip an email to me and introduce yourself. You can contact me at yumsandkisses@gmail.com. If you’d like to learn some super random and silly things about me, keep reading.
- I LOVE watching movies! Any movie by Nancy Meyers is my jam! It’s Complicated, The Holiday, Somethings Gotta Give… I’ve seen them all a ridiculous amount of times. Not to mention, she cast two of my favorite actresses. Diane Keaton and Meryl Streep.
- I was born in August (Yay! For the Leo’s out there!) precisely two months before I was due. Apparently, I didn’t like being in tight quarters. I swear this explains why I must stop a BAZILLION times on a road trip. Don’t ever road-trip with me. I’m a nightmare. Honestly. Every 50 miles we. are. stopping.
- In my 20’s, I worked as a flight attendant. I was once called a “peanut pusher” by a child who confessed his father taught him that terminology. Nice.
- Jeff & I owned a whole grain bread bakery together for five years. We sold the business 11 years ago and I still miss our customers but waking up at 2 a.m. every day is exhausting!
- I was a vegetarian for over 20 years. It was the bacon that brought me back to the dark side. LOL! Now I pretty much eat everything. Except for Spam. No. Never. Not Happening!
- Ingredients I can guarantee you’ll never find on Yums & Kisses: green peppers, large chunks of raw carrot (shredded carrots are always welcome),
bologna . Yeah. No. Not a fan. My parents ruined me on green peppers; they put them in everything, including our Thanksgiving stuffing. It was just wrong. For that reason, I never ate stuffing until I was 25 and cooked my first Thanksgiving meal. - Twenty years ago, Jeff & I purchased the farmhouse his great-grandparents built after they arrived in the United States from Germany. The property and house were auctioned off back in the ’70s after they passed away. It’s so cool for my husband. He spent weekends here with his grandfather when he was a child.
- We have 117 acres of farmland with no farm animals. I don’t do manure.
- If I could marry one spice on this planet, it would be smoked paprika. I’m obsessed with it.
- I am seriously obsessed with food. I go to bed at night thinking about what I am going to eat tomorrow. I read cookbooks like novels and plan our vacations based on restaurants we want to try.
Enough about me. I would love to hear
