My name is Melissa, but everyone knows me as Missy. I am 31 years old and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. I share my life with my loving partner Becca, our 11 year old son Christian, and our 2 year old daughter Phoebe. I graduated from The Cooking and Hospitality Institute and I now work as a Kitchen Manager for Sodexo. I enjoy reading tremendously and, of course, cooking. I have been a vegetarian for nearly 3 years and find allrecipes.com very helpful in helping me plan meals for myself and my meat eating family on a tight budget. I love to try new recipes. I am always searching online for new ideas and this is the first time I have ever joined a recipe site. I love food from other cultures. I take a particular interest in middle eastern foods. My father is Puerto Rican, so when I was growing up, my mother cooked a lot of spanish food. It's all very good, but also very unhealthy. A lot of frying going on...so I try to steer away from that although I do make a healthier (and vegetarian) version of my mother's Arroz Con Gandules. I have had a lot of professional training, so I can use many techniques and methods for a variety of foods. I think my strongest area would have to be soups. I am pretty good at making any kind of soup. Baking! I'm not horrible, actually, I'm pretty good, but I have this anxiety when it comes to baking. I learned in school that baking is a science, and if you don't get it just right, your resulting product will suffer. So I am always so worried when I bake something.