I am married with 3 wonderful children. I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. I started cooking at an early age, mainly out of neccessity! I come from a large family. My Grandma is the best cook/baker there ever was! I would ask her for a recipe and she would just look at me like I was crazy! She never followed recipes, so if I wanted a recipe I would need to watch her make it first. If I can be as good a baker as her I will be very excited! I like cooking such a variety of things. It is hard to pick just a few! My favorite part is seeing how it all turns out at the end and how beautiful it looks and how good it tastes. Then watching my family enjoy it. My favorite family cooking tradition is baking right before Christmas. My sisters and I would get together and spend the whole day baking every imaginable Christmas goodie!! Well, almost! we would probably make at least a dozen different items and each go away with a ton of goodies. Now that I have moved away, I still like to carry on the tradition myself or with friends. My triumph in the kitchen would be the first time I made an apple pie that the crust and the filling turned out perfectly! It looked beautiful! The crust was flaky and not hard and the filling was thick enough that it did not run into the bottom of the plate when you cut out a slice. My nightmare in the kitchen was when I was making a homemade chocolate cream pie for a potluck. I was talking on the phone with my sister,something I should never do when I am trying to follow a recipe! After I took it out of the oven, I thought that it would set more after it cooled. Then I thought well, if I put it in the freezer it will set. It did, while it was frozen, anyway! As soon as it defrosted, it was a runny mess! Although it did taste good! I realized later that I forgot a crucial step in the recipe, because I was distracted by being on the phone. The next time I made the pie it turned out perfectly!