I live in Calgary with my wonderful husband and my psychotic kitty. I once considered going to cooking school, but my love of eating good food would have suffered greatly if I had to cook for other people all day long. I had visions of stopping at a burger joint every night because I just couldn't stand the thought of cooking another thing. I love making soup, all kinds of soup. In my opinion, there's nothing more satisfying than a steaming bowl of thick, hearty soup on a cold winter night. Christmas baking was always my favourite. Whipped shortbread, butter tarts, and of course, candy cane cookies! A family reunion about 10 years ago, when I offered to make Eggs Benedict for my mom and stepdad for Sunday brunch. Unknown to me, my mom had been bragging to the family all week that her daughter made the world's best Hollandaise sauce, and before I knew it, I was making Eggs Benedict for 17 people! It was like an assembly line, but the sight of my uncles holding their plates up to their chins and scraping the last of the sauce into their mouths said it all! Hmmm...so many to choose from! Well, let's go all the way back to the mid-70's. I was a young girl, desperate to help my mom in the kitchen, so when I saw her bang a bag of frozen peas on the counter to break up lumps, I thought "Perfect! I can do that!" Well, I now know that the average breaking strength of a bag of frozen peas is about seven good hard whacks against the counter. Needless to say, we were finding shrivelled peas in the strangest places for a very long time after that!