My husband and I celebrated our 53rd anniversary this September. I have always loved cooking good meals for our family as our three children grew up. Now I love it when our children bring their children home and I get to cook for them, too. Through the years I have created, or helped create with others, cookbooks for nonprofit organizations as fund raisers. I am seriously thinking about publishing my very own cookbook before the end of the year. I have so many wonderful recipes from all the years of potlucks with friends. I have had quite a bit of experience cooking for large groups. Sometimes it was at Bible camps, special dinners, groups of hungry college students, or much larger groups at catering events which I did in the mid 80's. I don't do much of that anymore, I just help others with planning and they do the work! I love baking, mostly desserts and breads. Probably because I really like these foods. Over the years I have made bread from yeast and from sour dough starters. Some of my desserts that are so simple are loved and requested by our family and many of our friends. I am a great pie baker, too, and I have a pie crust recipe I have had for over 40 years. It never fails. I also love to make soups. I have quite a few recipes that are really yummy for those chilly fall and winter days. In Alaska, my husband and I both hunted for moose and I loved cooking a good first season moose steak. Also, I could fry up those fresh halibut chunks and were they ever tasty. My husband and I think it is great fun to be together with one or more of our children on the Thanksgiving or Christmas holidays. Since we have to travel to see our our children and their families, (two of them are in other states) it is a little more of a trip to be together sometimes. Our children have their favorites they sometimes ask me to have on hand when they all come home. Christmas Eve night is a special time, and I have done things like hors d oeuvres, soups and the kid's special desserts they like. It is just a great blessing to be together, I don't fret about the food, I just want to have plenty of it! I am not a competitive person with my cooking, and I don't have any 'triumphs' particularly or any blue ribbons. However, recently I entered a cake baking contest to benefit a mission fund and made a beautiful old fashioned German Chocolate cake, but didn't win. It was fun, tho, and it was very good. I am going to post it on this site for those who don't have the original '50's recipe. (This has been awhile back, bet they are not going to accept it because of its commonality.) I have made a few mistakes, but not much that couldn't be repaired. Ha! Kinda like quilting, you can hide a lot! Just this fall, I made my famous chocolate cake and forgot the eggs! We were visiting my daughter's home and there were a lot of people around, and my husband was doing some work in her kitchen, and well, I just forgot the eggs and buttermilk mixture! So I just made another one and it was great. Sometimes, my tube cake would not come out of the pan in one piece, or my pecan pies would be too runny or too done like chewy candy. But that is the fun of it all. You learn from each baking mishap. One time a young man who I worked with used to tease me because I couldn't make rice krispy bar successfully, it just wouldn't stick together, but I could cook just about anything else you could name.