I'm not pretentious. I swear.

Do I love cooking? Yes

Am I good cook? From what I’ve been told- better than most

Do I find something magical about how raw ingredients come together to form some fabulous? Yes

Do I have two small children and a husband that I have to feed regularly? Yes

Do I always have time to whip up a rockstar 3 course meal? Not on your life.

Thusly, are there times I want to pull a box of something (hamburger helper, brownies, Mac n” Cheese, etc) out of the cupboard and serve it? Heck yes.

Do I? Never. (Okay, not never. There are 2 things I make that involve box mixes. Cornbread and Irish Cream cake. You can find the recipe for the cake HERE.  Cornbread on the other hand, read the back of the box.)

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I'm not pretentious about food. I swear. I just can't make things out of a box. No really. I can’t. Yeah, those Betty Crocker brownies that look so good and chewy on the box.  They end up black and burned on the outside and RAW on the inside when they come out of my oven (any oven that I use actually, so no blaming my appliances please).

My friends make fun of me about it. Pretty regularly actually. They used to say that I was being silly and just didn’t want to admit that I was just snobby. So I decided to prove it.

For my husband’s birthday a few years back I made lemon bars out of a box. Can you say disaster??  My dear friend Nikki (whom I ADORE) was with me the whole time. She made brownies (the back up plan I insisted on). For the record: she made fun of me when I told her we would need to do a second dessert. And that if it was to be out of a box, she would have to do it. I was to have NO part in it.

So we mixed our boxes and the three other ingredients together. She dutifully watched as I did exactly as the box said. We put them in the oven at the same time (Yes they were to be cooked at the same temperature. We double checked.)

Low and behold 30 minutes later she had beautiful brownies and I had…yellow mush. So we figured it just needed more time. So we put it in and when we checked back…yellow mush in the center and blacked edges.... Sigh

My friends no longer make fun of my box disability. They just relish in the benefits of home cooked meals from scratch.

I guess there are worse things in the world.