I am a southern, sweet iced tea and lemonade sippin', porch swingin', stay-at-home soccer/softball mom and home educator. I love my family. I love to teach. I love music. And I love food. It takes me an average of about 3 hours in the grocery store. It relaxes me. I leave the unloading and putting away to my children when I get home. I don't think they mind, because they'd rather do something else while I do the shopping. I love cooking a well-balanced, healthy meal with a variety of color and texture. Fresh produce from the home garden or local farmer's market is popular by demand here in the south, and it doesn't need a lot of "fuss" to be ready in a jiff and taste wonderful. Soy products, soybeans (edamame), and tofu have been some of our easiest and most valued additions to our diet. Stirfrys, whole grain breads and muffins, fruit and yogurt smoothies, and fresh salads with homemade dressings are some of our favorites. My family is southern-rooted, and I do mean rooted. My husband's family is a mix of the east and northwest. My husband's mother is not really an accomplished cook, but she generally serves a healthy balance at each meal. I like to think I have evolved into a unique blend of the two, plus all the things I've learned over the past twenty years. Because of typical family health issues associated with that southern style of eating, I have spent a good bit of time researching nutrition, adopting more healthy eating habits into my own home. Some of my most favorite southern traditions have been sour cream cornbread, sweet creamed corn pudding, scratch buttermilk biscuits and pancakes, garlic cheese grits, fried chicken, homemade cobblers and cooked custard ice cream, deviled eggs, casseroles, a special cake my grandmother used to make that has no name but is similar to a caramel cake, her chocolate custard pie no one can duplicate, and of course, roasted turkey & homemade dressing. Learning to stir-fry soon after my husband and I were married was a novelty to me. We loved it, once I purchased the proper pan and mastered the techniques. Decorating a three-tier 25th anniversary cake for one of my best friends was the greatest challenge, sacrifice, and triumph for me before I was married. She furnished the cake layers, which were all lopsided. It took me about 14-16 hours with no sleep, but I did it, and it looked beautiful. I couldn't believe it. Another one I got lucky with was a Hummingbird cake I made not long ago. As I poured the batter into the pans, I knew something had to be wrong, because it spread so thin. After I had it baking for about 10 minutes, I noticed the bowl of sugar on the counter. Believe it or not, when I iced it, it tasted fine! Everyone gobbled it up!How's that for a lower calorie cake??!! And it took about half the cooking time - go figure! A spaghetti casserole recipe that called for raw spaghetti turned out crunchy and unfit to eat; I've used cooked spaghetti in it ever since. Overheating and charring my beautiful kabobs on the grill -it took me a while to figure out the right temp to use when grilling. I had to throw out a usually delicious squash casserole, because the squash itself was horribly bitter. Cakes that didn't rise - I'm not much of a baker. When I tried to make my grandmother's biscuits, they turned out like bland hockey pucks. My dog couldn't even bite into them, they were so hard!