Hello. My name is Mary , aka Klutz in (and out of) the kitchen. 
I have always loved to cook. It's somewhat hereditary. My mom is a good cook, but my grandmother could barely boil water. I will never forget the Thanksgiving when I was about 10 and my mom was deathly ill with the flu so she put my brother and I on the train to Grandmother's house carrying the pies we carefully baked together. My grandmother suddenly had to prepare the entire meal by herself including (queue suspenseful music) the turkey. Turkeys are difficult to cook even for a pro, and my grandmother was far from that status. Her idea of a good turkey was dousing it in Grand Marnier (for flavor, of course...until I was in my mid-20s I never realized people actually drank Grand Marnier, I thought it was just for cooking) and then basting it every 10 minutes. I just remember walking down the stairs, watching my grandmother pull the turkey out of the oven for its ritualistic bath, and watching in horror as the juices which had run out of the turkey and into the pan splashed onto the gas flame igniting the turkey and my grandmothers eyelashes. My grandmother was ok, but the turkey....
Like I was saying, I have always loved to cook but I didn't truly learn how to cook until I was living on my own in a very, very small town in New Mexico. There were two equally bad restaurants and not much to do (the closest movie theater was 45 minutes away) so I taught myself how to cook to 1) survive and 2) entertain. Its amazing how many people become your friends when you offer them a free, home-cooked meal. Since then, I have fine tuned my skills, although it is a constant work in progress, (but it is still a good way to make friends). I love experimenting with recipes, but I am horrible about writing down exactly what I do. I don't expect this blog to correct all of my bad habits, but I hope that I will at least start cataloguing my recipes.
Besides cooking, I love yoga, hiking, biking, politics, and reading. I am a lawyer who lives in Washington DC with my wonderful husband (we have a great domestic partnership...I cook and he cleans), our sons Wyatt and Alex, and our two cats.