My husband and I just celebrated 30 years of marriage. We have three amazingly beautiful, intellegent, talented daughters. My older two are living in the states, while our "baby" (aged 17) is here with us in China. Of the three of them, only my oldest enjoys cooking as much as I. I love to cook almost anything (except baking, which I do because I live with two cookie monsters), but I love the taste of anything cooked slowly, such as BBQ ribs and chicken; a roast that's cooked for hours, so that the meat is falling apart; gumbo that you have to cook in layers, so that it takes hours to cook...just stuff that you allows you to put your "love" into it. I love southern/soul food, but I don't cook those things all the time anymore due to health issues. However some of those things are major comfort foods and when I am in need of comfort, I get busy and make the greens with ham hock and make that big cast iron skillet with cornbread and fry that catfish! I can hardly write about this without tears coming to my eyes. Cooking around the holidays always bring back such wonderful memories. When I was young, beginning the week before Thanksgiving, my mother, grandmother and great aunt would get together and bake for DAYS and DAYS..lots of laughter and fun. Then later, it was my mom, my daughters and my sister in law who did the baking, while I had a major hand in preparing the main meal, with my mother always hovering over my shoulder to make sure I was doing it her way...We never, ever measured anything and to this day, I hate to do so. I learned to taste as I go, and that's something I will be forever thankful to my mother for. Now, my parents are long gone and holiday traditions will never be replicated, but when my daughters are all together, there's always activity in the kitchen. We love to sit around the table for a long time and chat, tell jokes, make fun of each other, etc... I would consider my biggest triumph to be years ago when I was asked to bring my dressing (some call it a stuffing)for Thanksgiving at my in-laws and everyone perferred it while the dressing someone else made sat basically untouched. My father-in-law who is the pickiest eater ever, would always ask me to make it for holidays. My middle daughter brought her boyfriend (at the time) over for Thanksgiving, which was the first time we met him. We decided to smoke the turkey overnight so that'd it'd be ready in time for lunch. (I usually cook it in the oven, but we sometimes we like to smoke one.) My husband and I took turns getting up during the night to make sure it was smoking, so it got plenty of attention. The next day we took it off of the smoker and let it sit for about 20 minutes and right when the new boyfriend showed up we sliced it, only to find it was a bad turkey--no meat inside at all---all gooey fat. I have never, ever seen anything like it. Thankfully I had made a ham as well, so all's well that ends well...