i am married 20+ yrs. and have a eighteen yr. old hungry son! i love to cook and bake. i love to cook italian, i make a simple killer tomato sauce and use it as a base for my italian dishes. i like to make things from scratch whenever possible. i am happiest in the kitchen, however, when i am not in the kitchen and time allows, i love to paint with acrylic paints. mostly tole and folk art. i also have two puppies. actually jake is a shi-poo male,black and white and is 1 1/2 yrs old, and stella...ohhhh stella, she is a lhasa-yorkie, brindle, and is a year old. i call them puppies because they behave like puppies and they'll always be my puppies. italian is probably my most fav thing to cook. i grew up in an italian neighbourhood, so all of my girlfriends were in the kitchen with their mothers and so i was right there with them. lasagna,meatballs,veal, sausage and peppers etc. excuse me while i drool...lol! i also love to make homemade soups and stews and i love my crockpot! i love to bake cookies and squares and buttertarts. i must admit, i never really mastered the art of baking cakes from scratch. they never really stood up to what i thought a cake should be, texture wise, sooooooo, i use boxed mixes......there! i said it!!!!but i'm learning alot from this wonderful site (it's my new best friend:) ) that's goes double for breadmaking, and i've learned quite alot, again from the people on this site! favourite family traditions is the christmas get together with approx 25 family and extended family members. we have it at our house cuz we have the most room. everybody brings something ie. prime rib,turkey and ham, bread/rolls, salad, rice, potatoes, veggies, gravies, sauces, dips.i usually do the desserts and apps. i have to say that i love pies. and very picky about my crusts. for the longest time, i couldn't, for the life of me, make a pie crust that i would eat. it wasn't until i started making gourmet dog food for my dogs....i know, i can hear ya laughin'!, LOL i bought a food processor so that i could make large quantities, fast. i tried a pie crust recipe from this site with my new food processor, and it was the most amazing pie crust EVER!!! now if i could only remember which recipe it was!!! this one get's talked about alot!! at one of our christmas get togethers, i had sooooo much going on in the kitchen, i went to add some liquid to the prime rib that was in the oven in a pyrex dish. can you see it now? are ya following me? i didn't even pull the oven rack out. i just poured the "not warm enough" liquid into the dish and....KABOOM!!!! the roast was left sitting on the oven rack, while the pyrex dish, was in pieces at the bottom of the oven!!!! thankfully, the roast was salvagable and another excellent christmas dinner was served! and just recently i dropped a pot of spaghetti sauce, can u see it now? there was sauce everywhere....it looked a crime scene!!!!!