About

Ahh… This is coming along slowly but I want to make sure it is done well.

My name is Wysteria. I am 26 years old. I live outside of DC with my husband, 2 dogs (Keva & Quinn) and my 2 cats (Tweek & Kitten). We have been in the area for going on three years now. I work at a veterinary clinic and for the most part love my job. The area leaves a little to be desired (there is a complete lack of mountains and I miss them being from a valley VT).

Some of my favorite things include baking, nutrition (animal and human),  photography, reading (mostly non-fiction), crocheting, candle making, and anything outside. I also enjoy traveling especially if I can take the pups (the husband can come too).

I got my degree in Biology. As a point of reference, I only was required to take two English courses all through school. I didn’t really grasp the importance of them until my senior year when I opted to take a rhetoric course. My professor sparked an interest that I never realize existed. You may notice spelling errors or grammatical errors thought my blog and I do apologize(please email me and let me know if you catch them! Thanks!). It isn’t easy training yourself to be a better speller and making a conscious effort to double check my grammar! Luckily my husband is a fantastic speller and great with grammar too.

It is my personal opinion that grains are very important in a person’s diet.  I work with a woman that is on the Atkins diet (or low carb) and when my husband and I started dating he tried it as well. My husband became a different person (bad mood all the time, never full or fulfilled) and that was my first direct experience with how nutrition can affect a body. I grew up with a large garden and my grandmother cooked all sorts of good things. I never had a problem with my weight, (my husband did that’s why he tried the low carb diet) not even in college. I have held on to the basic nutrition information that I gained just from watching my grandmother in the kitchen. She never used processed foods and made most things from scratch. Since I graduated college I have done a lot more of my own research and a lot of learning which was all spurred by getting my first dog (Keva). In the last six months I started baking my own bread because about two years ago now I started breaking out in hives when I ate certain things (processed foods mostly). I missed my beloved bread and couldn’t eat most of the store bought stuff (because a lot of it has “other” ingredients).

The learning curve has been a bit of a battle but I am getting it now. I started out with very basic breads but my passion is artisan bread. There is this wonderful little bakery that started up after I went to college (back at home) called the Red Hen Baking Company. Their bread was amazing and sparked a passion in me for true artisan bread. Then, when I ended up down here, I found that my husbands father was a corporate chef for a local company with an excellent little bakery in DC called Best Buns Bakery (owned by the same gentleman that owns Great American Restaurants). Best Buns does a lot of production baking for the restaurants but also runs a wonderful little bakery with all sorts of amazing grain based foods! A little light was sparked in me after dealing with the bakery for my wedding cake and some of the food. So the baking began here and there and then about six months ago, the bread baking began.

And here we are.