My given name is Marcia, and I was born and raised in beautiful Western Montana. The first 7 years of my life were spent on a farm, outside of town, where my parents grew wheat and alfalfa to take to the grainery in town to sell. My mother had a garden that was approximately 3/4 acre, where she grew almost every vegetable immaginable; as well as stawberries, raspberries, and rhubarb. Her garden seemed to rarely have weeds, unlike those I have grown. I have many memories from that farm life, from collecting eggs, ice skating in the winter on a frozen pond in a dipped area of my father's field. It was here I first experienced my mother's cooking of home grown vegetables, home raised animals that provided our meats, and my mother's most famous bread and cinnamon rolls, made without a recipe, but with the memory of what was needed in my mother's mind. My favorite food of all is stroganoff, made from a recipe that I had kept from my cooking class in high school. Another favorite, is a marinated flank steak, that must absolutely be in the refrigerator for at least 24 hours or more to get the full affect of the marinade. It is a recipe given to me by my sister. I love stews, Italian dishes, casseroles of all kinds, outdoor BBQ'd meats, and salads of all kinds. I do make dishes without recipes, changing ingredients, depending what I may have in my pantry at the time. I have only baked my mother's bread and cinnamon rolls occasionally, since I'm afraid if I become too efficient in handling the large mound of bread dough my mother's recipe made, that I along with my family would be making and eating cinnamon rolls more than our bodies could handle or need! I still think of my mother each time I am in my kitchen, especially during the holidays, as she made more food than any family could handle, but we still enjoyed the same. My favorite cooking tradition is making Thanksgiving dinner, with homemade stuffing, using the method my mother used. Probably six months before Thanksgiving, my mother would save every stale, dried-out slice of bread, especially the few end slices, along with dried-out rolls. I remember those slices would be so hard, that sometimes they were hard to break the morning of Thanksgiving, as that was one of my jobs in helping her cook that day. I even add the heart and gizzard, which are cut up and slipped into the stuffing, without the knowledge of my kids. The dressing has always been a favorite of mine and my family. My next favorite tradition is making cookies during the Christmas holiday, especially the cut-out cookies, using my mother's recipe, but instead of lard, using Crisco and butter. I usually double the recipe, as my 3 young adult children, love to use their talents in decorating the cookies. I love to BBQ year-round, and have become quite proficient in BBQing most anything from steaks to vegetables. Probably the biggest achievement, is cooking for a large crowd of at least 25 people, and having everything done at the same time. After preparing 31 years of Thanksgiving dinner out of 33 years of marriage, I have everything down to memory, and everything is finished on time and at the same time. About the 1st tragedy I can remember, I was making a barley side dish that was to cook for one hour. I had guests from Washington, when we lived in California, we were about to sit down for dinner to eat the marinated flank steak, when I discovered my side dish had not cooked, as my older guest helper had put the dish in the one oven I had not turned on out of the two to use. We kept the meat moist and hot, drank more wine, and waited another hour for the side dish to cook. That was before microwave ovens existed in homes. There are probably more tragedies, but at the moment I can only remember the one, since I had guests who were hungry and waiting to eat.