I am a mother of 5 boys and 1 girl, 15 grandchildren, and 2 great grandchildren. My husband and I cook for 4 months every summer at our church's campground. Currently we're remodeling an 1875 farmhouse in another town. We both love to cook mainly down-home and bulk cooking. We often cook for out church fellowship dinners. Make-ahead bulk mixes really come in handy. Most everything we make is scratch but have lately began using quicker recipes using soups and mixes. I like mainly one-dish meals with vegetable sides. My husband is a baker but being with myself being diabetic, we're trying to find good baking recipes using Splenda. Family style meals with our family and church family. We will cook every summer for 50 to 250 people per meal for weeks at a time. I mainly will do salads with my husband being head cook for the hot foods and desserts. I'm interested in finding some good vegetable and fruit salads to prepare for hundreds at a time. We have ran a boarding house, cooking dinners for an average of 17 people each meal. I love holiday meals but with an ever growing family, we've began more buffet-style meals that seem to work out great. Three of my boys cook with one cooking professional at an Italian restaurant. Some of his meals blow me away. The best recipes we have are the ones passed down from our families. They are traditional and not fancy. We are not fancy people or fancy cooks. I think the worst thing we've ever tried was when we tried to use Splenda instead of sugar in our favorite chocolate cake recipe. What a disaster! Since then, and with some research, we've learned a little about cooking with a nonsugar sweetener. (We still could use some hints.)---When we pack up from summer camp a lot of our foods get put into ziploc bags for the transit home. One year when making gravy for Thanksgiving, we grabbed the bag of confectioners sugar instead of the bag of corn starch. You can guess what that was like.