I lived my whole life in south Fl but moved to MI in April of 2007. I grew up with an amazing Nana that could make anything better, Even her sandwiches cant be beat. So naturally I started cooking very young with the family. I'm use to very European/German cooking since that is where my family is from. I love baking and find that the more stressed I am the better I bake. Normally never looked up recipes but found this site to be the best when the family cookbook didn't have just what I wanted. People say my peanut butter and sugar cookies are the best around. I don't know if its true but I love making them (though I will never share that recipe, its a family thing). I make pretty good cakes too and soon going to try my first cheesecake (going to try that White chocolate raspberry recipe). Has to be when we make our rum cakes. They take over the house from late Oct to Mid Dec. They have become so popular that since I was a kid I'd bring them for my teachers before xmas break and my parents took boxes of them to work for co-workers. Seems every year we have to make more and more. But I just love our way of making them, we always have to add more rum to soak them in. You can get drunk just by smelling them but boy are they good! I first started really cooking in 7th grade when you have to take home-ec. thats also where I learned I loved to bake. I won a few awards for best recipe for cookies and one for cake (my families recipes) in my class. Ended up taking cooking class again in 8th grade. Sadly due to my passion for music Concert and marching band took over my life in HS so I started baking for our fund raisers for the band. That really became a hit and found all my spare time was spent practicing or cooking. But its nice to know that people rather have me cook some treats for them than buy a gift. Oddly I don't believe I've ever had one. Once while baking cookies I noticed I didn't have enough butter (honestly only about half of what i needed) and no shortening. Though most would have ran to the store or trashed the whole thing I worked with it and made an amazing batch of cookies that were surprisingly soft. I believe that no matter what goes wrong you can always turn it for the better, after all it goes in the same place as everything else.