I'm 26 and LOVE food. I've attended some culinary school with not much to go before graduating. I plan on attending a Cordon Blu school in the next few years. I was born in south-central Georgia and raised in TX. To me, that's the best combination of cooking styles ever. I love soul food (southern cooking) and there's nothing to compare to traditional Texas fare in my mind. I love cooking new and challenging things, I'm comfortable with baking and with savory foods. My boyfriend has a taste for many european, south american and mediterranean dishes which gives me a huge array of cooking styles to play with regularly. I'm so excited to have accumulated a large collection of professional cookware and kitchen tools/gadgets. My ideal weekends are the ones where I shut myself in the house and watch old movies while making love to my kitchen... I love to cook all sorts of sweets from pies to candies to cakes and cookies. I love to grill fruits and meats--I'm a big beef-eater. I love cooking complex/challenging dishes. I make a mean meatballs and gravy, meatloaf and can make an amazing steak (thanks Texas!). I suppose my favorite things to physically make are sweets. Any sort of sweet. I just love the rich ingredients, I love the batters, the smells, the anticipation of seeing the final beautiful product... Nice meats also get me going. Afterall, they are the heart of the meal. I love roasting pork tenderloin with a dijon crust. And I can't explain how much I love working with fresh herbs. I always hang the extras in my kitchen so it will permeate the air and it's just lovely. I've recently disvoered the joys of tenderized pork dipped in buttermilk then dredged in seasoned bisquick and quickly pan fried. Cheap and AMAZING!! My favorite tradition must be how I handle the weekends, especially Sundays. I revel in food when I have idle time and on Sundays I always make it a "pampered" day. Rich coffee, a late breakfast of stuffed french toast made with raisin bread or a dutch apple pancake, yummy finger-foods all day and in the evening something semi-gourmet. New Years is also a favorite of mine... Black-eyed peas, greens and cornbread. Thanksgiving has also become a steadfast tradition of cajun rubbed and injected turkey fried perfectly and homemade sides like dressing and cornbread, creamed corn fresh off the cob... No canned or prepackaged stuff for this meal! Perfecting recipes that my family created. My spiced pecans are just like maw maw's and my cornbread dressing tastes exactly like my moms. I can make my aunt Audrey's cheese straws and my papa's marinades. My dad taught me to cook over wood (and there's no other way to go, trust me) and I finally got my beans and cornbread to taste like my grandma's. To me those are true triumphs of cooking. Nothing can evoke a memory like tasting something you ate as a kid. I baked and decorated a cake to look like a soccer ball using a half-round pan and everything. I cut out all the little patches from black fondant, put grass made of icing around the bottom and it was gorgeous. The little girls party was scheduled for only a few hours after the cake was completed. On the way out the door I tripped and the cake ended up face-down in it's box on the stoop in front of my house. The little girl got a cake on time with a soccer theme... from a grocery store. I delivered it with a red nose and swollen eyes from how upset I got.