Welcome to Carrie's Experimental Kitchen!
I am a wife and mother of two girls living in a
small town in Northern New Jersey along with my most recent title as Author to my first cookbook Carrie's Experimental Kitchen: A Collection of Mediterranean Inspired Family Meals available at many online retailers including Amazon.com, BN.com and Indie Bound. I'm also proud to be a recipe contributor for Kitchen Daily, a food sharing website owned by AOL. For more information, visit the Cookbook News Tab on the main page.
My love for cooking started when I was eight
years old, and I cherish the moments spent in the kitchen with all of my
maternal mentors, including my mother, stepmother, grandmothers, and aunts
who taught me all of the important basics while being extremely patient yet
never once asked me to leave the kitchen. I got the knack of
cooking at a fairly young age, but didn’t necessarily want to become a chef, so
I decided to head to Providence, Rhode Island, where
I graduated from Johnson and Wales University with a B.S. in hotel/restaurant
management. After graduation, I went to work for seven years in Corporate Food Services as an assistant food service director in facilities that fed over two thousand people a day. After the birth of my first daughter, I left the food business looking for something with more flexible hours, and for the next thirteen years, I worked for a local custom closets franchise as their marketing manager.
I started this blog, Carrie's Experimental Kitchen, in April 2011 to help organize my own recipes while at the same time helping out my friends and family who were always looking for new recipes to make for their own families. I never measured when I cooked (yes, I'm one of those!), but had to start if I wanted to show them anything they could actually use and follow, and creating this blog seemed like the perfect place to start.
At Carrie's Experimental Kitchen you'll find restaurant quality, family-friendly recipes created by experimenting with what I happen have on hand that particular day or what I find during my weekly jaunts to the market. I love the freshness of Mediterranean-style cooking; more especially fresh herbs and produce, so most of my recipes incorporate those fresh, aromatic flavors. My recipes are easy to recreate at home and are simple to follow, whether you're a kitchen novice or an experienced chef.
Here are some of the people I talk about on the blog:
 |
Acting silly in Venice, Italy
(...or maybe it was the wine!) |
Don a.k.a "The Hubby" We first met in college in 1988 and since he grew up 5 minutes from where I did in NJ, he was also my ride home on the weekends back and forth from Providence to NJ. He even charged me for gas, which I gladly paid. Then 3 years after graduating from college, we started dating, got married two years later and here we are 18 years later. I couldn't have asked for a more supportive and loving partner in this journey called life.
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| Her Sweet 16 party |
Rachael Is our oldest daughter and one of my main food testing "guinea pigs" as I like to call them. She likes just about everything I have tried over the years, but will certainly let me know if something isn't quite right. She's a high school competitive cheerleader and works harder than anyone I know with juggling school, sports, and this year extra tutoring to prepare for the SAT's and college. She's beautiful on the inside and out and is the most confident person I know. I'm so proud of the compassionate woman she is becoming and I love her more than words can say and I'm so happy I was chosen to be her mom.
 |
In Olympia, Greece doing
the "Firepower" scene from
Night at the Museum |
Gabrielle a.k.a. "Gab" Is our youngest daughter and is very spirited. She has one of those personalities that just light up the room as soon as she walks in and at times makes me laugh so hard I cry. She didn't eat a lot of different foods until I started this blog, but I was finally able to convince her to try new things by putting the food on my "blog plates" as she likes to call them. Actually, they're just one-off plates I use for my food photography. Hey, whatever works! Now she's my biggest critic and has even come up with some fabulous ideas on her own. She even did a guest post for Homemade Gnocchi with Sausage Bolognese Sauce here on the blog and she was only 10 at the time. See, my recipes are so easy even a child can make them! Love this kid to the moon and back.
Speaking of photography, I take ALL of my own food photography here on the site with a Nikkon DLSR D60 camera and generally use a 50mm lens with natural light. I do have a light set up, but try not to use it unless I have to on those days where it's already dark outside. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Carrie Palladino Farias of Carrie's Experimental Kitchen with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. I'm by no means an expert, so if I can learn you can too. It's definitely a work in progress, but I'm having fun experimenting and challenging myself to take better pictures each day.
Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to read my blog. I hope you enjoy experimenting with my recipes as much as I’ve enjoyed creating them!
xo Carrie
