Raised in Southwestern Kentucky, where my parents owned a 200 acre beef farm in addition to owning and operating a diner-style restaurant. This was in addition to maintaining a 2-acre garden, which meant lots of canning and freezing. After college, I moved to Lexington, KY and then to a suburb of Cincinnati, OH. I have lived in Ohio for the past 24 years. I have two sons, 20 and 14. Spent several years in Fortune 100 companies. Became a Realtor in 1990 plus working as a professional property management of HOA's and COA's. Love Cincinnati, but am eagerly awaiting the day that I can move South (FL, LA, AL, GA, etc.) I love the South, love being Southern (yes, Paducah, KY supported the South.) Not talking politics here, folks, just heritage!! Come taste my cooking and you'll see what I mean! I agree with Paula Deen that in the South bacon grease is a food group! Just a little does wondrous things to many vegetables! I've actually had friends here in Ohio ask me to cook summer squash, green beans, black-eyed peas, cornbread, and turnip greens for them, Southern-style. You'd be shocked at how many Northerners don't know what black-eyed peas are and have never eaten them. When they see them, they call them beans! I love to cook many different types of foods, not just Southern. Cooking Southern is something that I can automatically do without any conscious thought. So, I like to broaden my cooking skills by trying new recipes. Having been raised inland, the only seafood that I was exposed to was catfish. However, since learning to scuba dive and being around ocean areas often, I have grown to love fresh flounder and yellow-tailed snapper. But fresh fish intimidates me. So does working with yeast, but that's another story. Need to master both of these! Black-eyed peas, turnip greens, and cornbread on New Year's Day. Fresh cinnamon rolls (monkey bread) on Christmas morning. Roasted turkey and baked ham, along with cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving. I also like to make several different types of cookies, bars, and candy to give as gifts at Christmas. I've been cooking since I was old enough to stand on a chair and reach the countertop. In this day and age, ALOT of people don't cook at all or very little. So, I suppose that knowing how to cook and actually cooking practically every day is a triumph. Within a three-mile radius of where I live, there are more than 100 restaurants, fast-food and sit-down. They're waiting-list full every night of the week. That's how I know that alot of people don't cook. Almost all of the girls that my 20-year-old son has dated know absolutely nothing about cooking. How can a mother let her child, especially a girl (yes, that's sexist, but it's also a Southern thing!), go out into the world without knowing how to cook the basics?!! It boggles my mind! My sons know how to cook, do laundry, wash dishes, change the litter box, etc. Those things may not make their list of "my favorite things to do", but it does make them self-sufficient, which gives them the freedom to make it on their own. When you cook every day, you will have tragedies. What counts is figuring out how to turn the majority of these "tragedies" into successes. Most things can be salvaged. Not everything, not everytime. But a little logic and a lot of common sense goes a long way toward fixing alot of mistakes, whether in the kitchen or in other areas of your life. I'll let my ex-husband tell the story of where the ham ended up one Thanksgiving while I was slicing it! I salvaged the ham, but not the marriage! 'Nough said!!