I am a semi-retired regulatory bank compliance auditor. I own my own auditing company. I retired from the FDIC as an examiner in 2007. I did this so I would not have to travel too much since it is hard to cook in a hotel room. I am involved with a wonderful man and he helps me in the kitchen. He does not mind doing the dishes!! Whatta man!! I love to bake. You name the baked good and for the most part I have made it sometime in my life. I like making pies, cookies, cakes and quick breads. I also dabble at bread even though my significant other does not like bread that much. Since I am diabetic, I hardly ever eat what I make, but I have a very willing taster in the house. Thanksgiving and Christmas are my two favorite things to work on. Somewhere between planning the Thanksgiving meal to the last touches on Christmas candy and cookies I love that part of the season. Thanksgiving was always a wonderful holiday when I was growing up as well as Christmas. These were times when my Mom made a big "to-Do" over the holidays. I was always her sous chef at these times. I would say my biggest triumph was when I was selling my Jumbo Chocolate Chip cookies to two delis here in Albuquerque. At one time I was making 300+ cookies each weekend in my house and taking them to the deli's. Because I was traveling just about every week, I got to the point that the cookies were taking up all of my time on the weekends so I stopped. Now my triumph is making the ten different types of candy and six different types of cookies that I send out as gifts to family, friends, and clients. I have a plethora of tragedies. The worst ones that I can remember was when I made a quick bread and did not put any sugar in it. It was gross. My worst cooking incident occurred as a new cook when I left the giblets and neck in the turkey and the turkey caught on fire. Needless to say, we have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that night as the turkey, while smoked :-) was no longer edible.