I'm a 20 year old nursing student at Grand Valley State University. I love to cook, especially when it's for people I love. Flavorful chicken recipes, vegetables, and desserts from scratch. After making cake, cookies, brownies and pies from scratch, I never want to eat a store-bought box dessert again! I love using fresh ingredients. I live in an apartment now but am excited to have an enormous garden when I get out of college and use my own vegetables, fruits and herbs in the meals I prepare. My family has always gathered with lots of food, so I always associate food with good times. When there's good food and people you love around, how could you be unhappy? Thanksgiving 2008: I made the turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie (all recipes from this website). It was a complete success! My entire family raved and raved, and say that they're going to make me do Thanksgiving every year! It was a great experience, and made Thanksgiving even more enjoyable because I had a hand in most of it, and got to see everything come together into the huge meal that made my family so happy. My roommates and I made an elaborate family dinner one night, and everything was coming together perfectly. One thing I had decided to make was cake from scratch, and it was looking fabulous when I took it out of the oven. It appeared to be done--but I was very wrong. I let it cook awhile, then tried to flip it out of the pan onto a serving dish, and it all fell apart, because the middle was completely undercooked. I was so disappointed because I had thought the cake would be a huge success. Luckily, my roommate suggested that we break it up into pieces w/ a fork and make it into a crumble cake, bake it for a little longer, then drizzle the frosting/glaze over it. It turned out to be a huge hit. I suppose it's not a complete "tragedy", but could have been if my roommate hadn't suggested the crumble!