After 12 years in the corporate world, my life as a full time wife and mother beats any quarterly bonus. As soon as I could drive, I was grocery shopping and cooking. My father had a friend who showed me all she knew! The knowledge gained still helps me in the kitchen today. Other influences include my grandmother. I videotaped one of her specialties, since she was the only one in the family that made it. Then of course my mother, her baked beans and mashed potatoes were out of this world! I will never forget one year she and I made thanksgiving. We left the wooden spoon in the blender while making cranberry sauce! I simply love to cook. The kitchen is my “science lab” for sure. You can always here me say, “I put a lot of other stuff in it” when I was supposed to follow a recipe. For me, the recipe is a “guide”. I find the more you cook and read recipes; you start to see the patterns to the “formula”. Baking is my first love, so baking chocolate chip cookies are my favorite. I remember memorizing the recipe on the back of a bag of chocolate chips in 7th grade. I made cookies for the boys, of course! Since then, I have since evolved the recipe to my taste. I rounded up all the measurements to make it easier to remember. Also, you can never put too much REAL Vanilla Extract in a recipe. I like semi-sweet chocolate the best and the mini-chips go further (two batches a bag!). Now I make them for my mother-in-law one of my biggest chocolate chip cookie fans. I will have to think about this one. This will have to be a recipe I found on the back of a soup can label. I replaced most of the ingredients except the ground beef and kept out the celery. It called for pasta, I used rice. It seemed to be an Italian type dish and I made it more Latino/Mexican. It was spicy but not too bad for us light weights. Without the rice as a main dish, you can use the meat mixture as a dip or a topping on a taco-type salad. I was so excited to create a dish that could be used in so many ways. With a family, you need something that can be versatile. To achieve that in my kitchen, on my budget, is a feat! I was helping my mom make cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving and we turned on the blender... with the wooden spoon in it! LOL!