About

I’m Vanessa Balchen and that is my husband Dave. We met and fell in love in 1984 while attending SIU-C. After we graduated in 1987 we moved to the lovely city of San Francisco, (aka Bagdad by the Bay) where we honed our eating, cooking, and foraging skills in one of the best places on earth. After Alex was born in 1992 we moved to the East Bay exurb known as Antioch where we had Dexter.

In 2000, seeking a better life and a shorter commute for the genius husband, we moved to Middleton, Wisconsin. It was hard for us to believe that eating in Wisconsin could be better than eating in California, but it is.

Dave is a programmer, an ardent open-source guy, and a musician. I’m a writer of poems, marketing blurb, and recipes. I’m a gadgethead, and a self-trained (in progress) html geek. I work a wage job as a part-time marketing girl, but its a cool job. I’m into supporting local farmers through my purchases and I’m an advocate for sustainable, humane farming. I write about food, gadgets, life, books, music, whatever.

As a family we can only be described as goofy. Our sense of comedy and humor is broad and it often lands in the area marked “British Humor” mostly because we love to talk in those high-pitched Monty Pythonesque voices. We all like to play video games, read books, listen to music, waste tons of time on the internet, watch TV (Heroes, Lost, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report) and movies, and eat. We eat dinner together, at the table, every night.

If you would like to read an article about me that was published in a local magazine click here.

These are the men in my life: Dexter, my sous chef, Alex, the film geek, and Dave the Genius Husband (aka GH)

This looks like an advertisement, doesn’t it. I’m not sure it is because I’m not asking you to use this to purchase things…I use it and I have it here to make my life easier. Do you think I’m wrong?