I love the world of food! I love to read cookbooks and collect them. I used to work with food professionally, but now I do it for love! I try to eat fresh and healthy and shop the edges of the grocery store, but fat happens. Life is short, if the food is screaming for a drizzle of olive oil and some extra parm, I don't have a problem with that. My favorites are fresh, colorful, balanced and delicious. I like to try new things a lot and imagine how I could make things I have tasted in restaurants. I love to make beautiful trays for parties and holidays with fruit, cheese, nuts and veggies. I also love to bake holiday items of all kinds. I don't like it when food looks like it has been handled too much, except for sushi and other works of art. I am blessed to have many absolutely amazing cooks in my family whom I have learned from along the way. My favorite holiday tradition is steamed cranberry pudding with what my grandmother called Gorgeous Sauce. It's the best. Ever. My grandfather's famous quote: "If you're going to be a pig, be a big pig." My grandpa is stylish, slim, and has eaten A LOT of good food in his life. My best triumphs have been cooking food that picky eaters like. I think picky eating better have a medical reason to back it up... Recently, my husband and I were cooking together. I had two identical pyrex liquid measuring cups. One had 1 c. of white wine mixed with apple juice (b/c I ran out of white wine). One had 1 c. of olive oil. So I was whipping up this lovely homemade Caesar dressing in the food processor, and slowly poured in all the white wine/apple juice instead of the oil!! It started smelling really strange, and when I realized what happened, I started to cry. Just kidding. I didn't cry. But I did have to go to the store and get more anchovies - who has anchovies sitting around? And it smelled SICK. Literally. Like someone had been sick in the food processor. Moral of the story: Sniff before you pour.