About Homemade Food Junkie!

Welcome! We’re Diane Williams and Kayti Lavergne, the mother-daughter team behind Homemade Food Junkie — a food blog dedicated to from-scratch recipes, sourdough baking, garden-to-kitchen cooking, and practical food preservation for everyday home cooks. We also share ideas for entertaining, including homemade cocktails, appetizers, and desserts.

Thank you for stopping in to learn more about us and the story behind the blog.

Our Story:

Kayti and I started Homemade Food Junkie in August of 2014 as a way to share our love of home cooking and the food we make for our families.

We believe some of the best meals come from simple ingredients prepared in our own kitchens. Homemade food nourishes the people we care about, brings families to the table, and helps us live well in everyday life.

Through this blog we share recipes, kitchen tutorials, and cooking inspiration built around from-scratch meals, seasonal ingredients, and practical food skills that home cooks can use every day.

Our Cooking Focus

Homemade Food Junkie specializes in:

• from-scratch recipes
• sourdough baking
• seasonal garden cooking
• practical food preservation
• homemade drinks and entertaining recipes

Much of our cooking is inspired by seasonal produce, hands-on kitchen experience, and traditional methods like fermentation, freezing, drying, and preserving food for later use. From sourdough bread and appetizers to garden harvest recipes, cocktails, and pantry staples, our goal is to make homemade cooking approachable and reliable for real families.

OUR MISSION:

Our mission is to help home cooks confidently prepare wholesome homemade food through reliable recipes, practical kitchen guidance, and inspiration drawn from sourdough baking, seasonal ingredients, and everyday home cooking.

Meet the Creators

Meet Diane

Diane Williams is the co-founder of Homemade Food Junkie and the primary editor and publisher of the blog today. She develops recipes, writes many of the in-depth tutorials, and manages the day-to-day publishing work that keeps the site organized and growing.

Over the years Diane has developed many recipes for the blog, often inspired by the produce grown in the family garden. Her cooking frequently focuses on turning seasonal harvests into practical meals, preserving fresh ingredients, and helping home cooks understand the techniques behind successful recipes.

Since 2018, Diane has developed much of the blog’s sourdough content. Her sourdough posts focus on helping home bakers understand fermentation, proofing, shaping, and troubleshooting common bread challenges through detailed tutorials and practical baking guidance.

Diane also oversees the organization and ongoing development of the blog, working behind the scenes to maintain the recipe archive, improve site structure, and ensure the content remains helpful and up to date for readers.

Meet Kayti

Kayti Lavergne is the co-founder of Homemade Food Junkie and a driving force in building the blog from its earliest days. What began as a collaboration between a young mom and her mother sharing recipes online gradually grew into a long-running food blog and creative food brand.

Over the years Kayti has developed many recipes for the site, particularly desserts, cupcakes, appetizers, cocktails, and party-style foods designed to be fun, approachable, and perfect for family gatherings and celebrations.

Kayti’s approach to recipe development often begins with researching ingredients, seasonal trends, or new food products and then designing recipes that are visually appealing, festive, and still achievable in a home kitchen.

Today Kayti publishes and manages the social media side of the brand where she connects with readers and shares recipe reels, cooking videos, and behind-the-scenes kitchen content across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

Kayti and her husband Brian also operate a professional media company that produces all the video content for many of the recipes featured on the site and Homemade Food Junkie social channels. They also make reels and longer-form cooking content for our growing Homemade Food Junkie YouTube channel.

As their media work continues to expand, Kayti remains closely connected to the blog. She manages the Homemade Food Junkie social media community, produces all the video content for the brand. Kayti continuously collaborates, contributes and inspires recipes and the creative direction of our content. Recently her role has intensified as she moves more strongly into the business side of Homemade Food Junkie brand.

How We Develop and Test Recipes

Every recipe shared on Homemade Food Junkie comes from real home kitchens and is created with everyday cooks in mind.

Many recipes are developed collaboratively and prepared in both Diane’s and Kayti’s kitchens. Testing recipes in two kitchens helps ensure the instructions are clear and the results are consistent for other home cooks.

Recipes published on the blog are cooked and photographed by Diane during the writing and testing process. Kayti and Brian often develop and film video versions of recipes for social media and video platforms.

If a recipe doesn’t work well in our kitchens, it doesn’t get published.

Sourdough Baking

Sourdough baking has been an important part of Homemade Food Junkie since 2020. Both Diane and Kayti bake and test sourdough recipes, developing tutorials and guides that help home bakers understand fermentation, proofing, shaping, and troubleshooting common sourdough challenges.

These posts are designed to make sourdough baking more approachable for interested home bakers.

Gardening and Seasonal Cooking

Gardening has always been part of the Homemade Food Junkie story. Growing our own ingredients naturally led to experimenting in the kitchen with fresh produce, seasonal cooking, and ways to preserve the harvest.

Diane writes much of the gardening content connected to the blog and often develops recipes inspired by ingredients grown in the garden.

Diane’s husband Dave is a devoted organic gardener who enjoys testing growing methods and building practical raised-bed garden systems that support the kitchen.

We grow a good deal of what we eat from our organic garden and  Greenhouse. We freeze and put by our extra produce for winter cooking.

Our Family Story

Homemade Food Junkie grew out of a life centered around family, gardening, and cooking at home.

Diane and her husband Dave lived on their small rural property for almost 40 years, raising their five children with a strong connection to home cooking, gardening, and farm life.

During those years the family garden, home-raised animals, and hands-on learning through 4-H projects shaped much of the food culture that later inspired the blog. The children raised pigs, sheep, goats, rabbits, and other animals while learning responsibility, business skills, and respect for the land.

Those experiences continue to influence the way food is approached at Homemade Food Junkie today — cooking from scratch, valuing real ingredients, and sharing practical food knowledge with the next generation.

Our Community

Homemade Food Junkie has grown into a vibrant cooking community across several platforms where readers discover recipes, share their results, and connect with us about food.

Today our community includes:

• Instagram — over 223,000 followers
• Facebook — more than 261,000 followers
• Pinterest — active recipe inspiration and discovery platform
• TikTok — over 78,000 followers
• YouTube — a growing channel featuring recipe videos and cooking demonstrations

These platforms allow us to share recipes, connect with readers in real time, and bring Homemade Food Junkie recipes to kitchens around the world.

Our Commitment

Homemade Food Junkie has been sharing recipes and kitchen guidance since 2014. We continue to cook, test, photograph, and update our content so readers can rely on the recipes and information we publish.

Contact Us

We appreciate your recipe ratings, shares, and comments on our articles.

Email us at:
HomemadeFoodJunkie@outlook.com

We enjoy hearing from our readers and value the ideas, questions, and conversations that help make Homemade Food Junkie better.

Explore Our Recipes

If you’re new to Homemade Food Junkie, here are a few great places to start:

• Sourdough Bread and Baking
• Appetizers and Party Food
• Drinks and Cocktails
• Desserts and Baking
• Weeknight Dinners
• Garden and Seasonal Cooking