Welcome to the inaugural post of Tasty Bytes!

Hey everyone. Welcome to the first posting from Tasty Bytes - a husband/wife team of geeky cooks. We're happy to have you here. This blog will be the place we share our original recipes or recipe modifications. We are by no means professional chefs and to be honest, we're not the best about measuring things, but we'll do our best here to keep our recipes clear, concise, and measured so that you can recreate them in your own homes.

Just a heads up that everything we make is GLUTEN FREE. This means that it is free of wheat, barley or rye. At the moment, we don't make our own flour blend, but use the awesome baking mix by Pamela's Products. I highly recommend Pamela's to anyone who is baking or cooking gluten free.

I guess the best way to kick this off would be to introduce "the team".

That's me, Michelle, currently knocked up (35 and a half weeks) with our first child. I'm a voice actor here in Los Angeles. It's a pretty sweet gig. I get paid to play pretend which is FANTASTIC since I never truly grew up. I've always loved to cook and bake. The first time I went "off recipe" was by accident when I was 13. I was baking zucchini bread to enter in the county fair. I accidentally grabbed corn syrup instead of the oil! I realized my mistake and just kind of improvised the rest of the recipe trying to compensate. It ended up turning out to be an amazing loaf of bread and I got a blue ribbon! I was hooked with being creative in the kitchen from then on.

This is my husband Jacob. He's a software engineer for a major company. He also likes to play around with photography, is a talented musician, and is a great cook. He's quite the guy, right? Jacob wasn't much of a cook until after we got married our sophomore year of college. One night, Jacob decided to surprise me by making orange chicken with homemade sauce. It was then he discovered that not only did he LIKE to cook, but he was quite good at it too!

Well that's enough rambling about us! Let's get on to a recipe or two.

The first recipe we're going to share is Vanilla Lemon-Limeade. This is based off of a vanilla lemonade recipe I found when I first discovered how awesome vanilla is when it's straight from the bean. I can't find the source anymore as I've had it handwritten on a post it note for awhile now.

Vanilla Lemon-Limeade

2 lemons & 2 limes
3/4 cup turbinado "raw" sugar
1 vanilla bean
6 cups cold water

Throw 2 cups of water in a blender with 3/4 cup raw sugar. Wash the fruit well and slice in half. Juice the fruit and scrap the pulp into the blender. Toss in half the rinds (making it half lemon/half lime). Take a knife, and split the vanilla bean length wise. Scrap out the vanilla caviar into the blender. Then toss in the scraped beans as well. Let stand in blender in refrigerator for 24 hours. Remove vanilla bean and rinds. Add the remaining 4 cups water and blend on low. If you'd like, you can strain it, but I just toss in a glass with some ice and it is good to go! Ahh, refreshing.

Well, I hope you enjoy this recipe! We'll have more coming later this week including Cup Pies and Cheesy Garlic Mashed Potatoes.