Welcome to It’s a Keeper – a blog that provides you with tried and true recipes that are easy to make and, most importantly, taste great!  It’s a Keeper is also about sharing my passion for cooking, recipes, helpful hints and ideas on how to cook more in your busy life.

If you’re looking for easy recipes that taste great, or inspiration for dinner or ways to get your kids more involved in the kitchen, you’ve come to the right place!

My name is Christina Hitchcock and I’m the chief cook and bottle washer in the It’s a Keeper test kitchen (a.k.a. my kitchen).  This blog is a way for me to share my cooking adventures (and misadventures) as I cooks and bakes her way through the pile of recipes I’ve collected.

About Christina

In addition to being the chief cook and bottle washer, I’m also a self-proclaimed recipe hoarder.  I like to read cook books cover to cover like most people ready a juicy novel.  I live in northeastern Pennsylvania with my wonderful husband and my energetic 6 year-old son.

I love to cook.  Cooking is very cathartic to me.  I’m truly in my element in the kitchen.  Maybe it’s that I’m using all of my senses – the feel of the dough, the smell of the sauce or the sound of the vegetables being chopped. Whether I’m making an old favorite that I know by heart or trying a new recipe, it’s exciting to see it all come together.

It’s a Keeper is a look into my kitchen.  You get a first-hand look at what we are really eating.  Most of the things I cook are not fancy and I don’t use hard to find ingredients.  They are everyday recipes for everyday life.

You can find me as a regular contributor on WNEP’s Home and Backyard program, WBRE’s PA Live! program and on www.HappeningsMagazinePA.com.

I’ve also had recipes published in Taste of Home magazine, Happenings magazine, The Scranton Times Tribune and The Moscow Villager.  I was also selected as the grand prize winner of the Williams-Sonoma “Easy Weeknight Meal” contest.

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What’s for Dinner?

This question is asked by millions of people every night.  And, if you’re like me, these three little words can cause enormous amounts of stress.

Like many of you, I’m also a busy mom.  After a long day, the last thing I want to do is chop, peel, simmer, sauté and roast.  My Dinner 411 section has a good variety of quick and easy recipes that are perfect for dinner. Whether you use it for inspiration or as your online recipe box, there are plenty of recipes to help you figure out what’s for dinner tonight.

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of tricks to help get a nutritious dinner on the table FAST.  And, I’ll share them with you in this section.

Get Your Kids in the Kitchen!

Every home chef needs a sous chef.  Getting your kids into the kitchen is a great way to teach them valuable skills and help them eat better.  It’s a proven fact that kids like to eat dishes that they’ve helped prepare. In my How to Cook with Kids section I’ll share kid-tested and mother-approved recipes and ideas on how you can get your kids to help you in the kitchen.

My Back Story

I started It’s a Keeper in January 2010.  Over the years, I had collected hundreds of recipes from friends, magazines, websites, calendars (seriously!) and television. Some are torn out of magazines and newspapers. Some are printed off the internet.  A few are written on recipe cards.  And some are written on scraps of paper.  Or, on paper plates.  Or, on those little subscription cards you find in magazines.  Whenever I see I recipe that looks good, I cut/rip/print it out and put it in the pile-of-things-I’ll-try-one-of-these days.  Well, my pile-of-things-I’ll-try-one-of-these days had 337 recipes* in it. Do you want to know how I know? I counted them.

As part of my after Christmas organizing frenzy, I vowed to sort through my mess and put it in some sort of order. The second part of my resolution was to actually try these recipes. Not just shuffle, organize and store them indefinitely. But to cook and bake every last one of them and, then, decide once and for all if it’s a keeper.  And, now, with the creation of a little website called Pinterest, my pile-of-things-I’ll-try-one-of-these days (albeit an electronic pile) has grown exponentially.

So here I am, armed with my motley pile of recipes and a promise to cook and bake my way through them and share the outcomes with you.  I’ll let you know how it turned out, how easy (or hard) it was, how I would tweak it, and so on.

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Let’s Work Together! 

Want to work with me? I’m available for:

• Speaking engagements
• Hosting events
• Blog and brand collaborations
• Personal cooking lessons in your kitchen
• Group cooking classes in my kitchen
• Freelance writing
• Media opportunities.

You can find me on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. Or email me at itsakeeperblog (at) gmail.com

Thanks for stopping by!

Disclosure Policy

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me.  From time to time, this blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.

The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.

The owner(s) of this blog is compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. Even though the owner(s) of this blog receives compensation for our posts or advertisements, we always give our honest opinions, findings, beliefs, or experiences on those topics or products. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the bloggers’ own. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question.

This blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.