Four years ago I joined The Pampered Chef to make some money and stay home with my kids. I have been cooking for about 6 years, so I only had about 2 years of fumbling around a kitchen before I joined PC. Before that my husband & I had no kids and ate out ALL the time! A grumpy baby changed that and we had to eat at home so I had to learn how to cook. Now I love to cook, and besides a great income I have learned a lot about cooking since I began with The Pampered Chef! I like to tweak "comfort food" and "down home" recipes - I love to cook hearty soups and find delicious ways to make things like breaded chicken recipes healthier. I sneak veggies into my meatloaf via my food processor! Don't tell my hubby or kids that, though! From barely being able to boil water 6 years ago, I am happy to say I love to whip together killer soups from scratch. Every Friday night is Soup Night in our house and I make a huge batch and freeze half for a Friday night when I don't have time to cook. When my husband & I were first married I decided to make baked pork chops. I coated them with a sauce and then baked them for a long time to make sure there were no worms (my mother always baked them for extended periods of time to "kill all the worms" - no wonder they were always hard as a rock). Well, I must've baked them even longer than my mother usually did, because we could not even get them off the baking sheet, they were so burned on. We threw the pork chops away (pan and all) and went to Taco Bell for dinner and then my husband took me to Sears and made me buy a crock pot. Although I still have and use my crock pot, I am happy to report that I also now own a pocket thermometer, a lovely gadget that lets you know when the "worms" are dead (meaning, the pork's hit the right temperature)!