I'm in my mid-twenties, working as a real estate appraiser, and just finished remodeling my first house! I graduated college with a Bachelor's degree and moved to St. Louis in 2008. Since I finished school and landed a real job, I finally have time to pursue my passion of cooking. I dream to one day run my own sweets shop! Right now, I'm happy with my boyfriend of 4+ years, my Siamese, Ashes, and my addition in December: a mini dacshund named Embers. My absolute favorite thing to cook is any kind of dessert. I love to bake cakes, cookies, and cupcakes. I try to never cook the same dish twice in a month! I enjoy spicy dishes and Cajun style food. If I have a lot of time to kill, I like to make sushi rolls with lots of fillings! My mother makes the kind of food known fondly as "a home cooked meal." Lots of leftover bacon grease, fried chicken and pork chops, real mashed potatoes with tons of butter... very rich and very bad for you! But, it's always nice to visit and get treated to one of her meals, even if I have to work out on the treadmill extra hard the next day! She taught me the art of 'eyeballing' ingredients... I rarely follow directions... I'm always adding more ingredients to make a dish tastier! Lately, I've been branching out into cooking more extravagent meals. For Valentines Day, I made my first fabulous 'gourmet' meal... steaks wrapped in proscuitto with a merlot sauce, spiced shrimp, garlic mashed potatoes, roasted asparagus, and stuffed mushrooms. For the boyfriend's and my anniversary, I cooked horseradish encrusted steaks and crab stuffed mushrooms. I am most impressed with myself over the huge pot of gumbo I made for Mardi Gras one year... I combined ingredients from several different recipes and customized it to my taste! I have trouble cooking eggs over easy most days! But the dish that came out the worst of all was a King Cake I made a several Mardi Gras' ago.. it came out hard as a rock even though I followed the instructions! Needless to say, I've shyed away from making anything that requires yeast.