I'm a high school English teacher and poet. I live in Central MA with my husband and our cat, Taco. Yes, my cat is named after food, but her name is also "O cat" spelling backwards. One of my greatest joys is feeding my friends and family delicious meals. When I'm not cooking, I'm probably hiking, playing the guitar, reading, or writing. I've become a bread-baking fanatic--from yeast breads to quick breads, I love to bake it. Nothing makes the house smell more like a wonderful home. I also like to cook meals that involve lots of chopping. Standing in the kitchen preparing a meal is a bit like therapy for me. Each fall, we have an evening of "pesto fest," where we harvest all the basil we grew that year and turn it into pesto, which we freeze in ice cube trays. We make enough to get us all the way through until the next summer when we plant more basil. My biggest kitchen triumph was succeeding in making my husband's birthday cake. For his entire life, his mother has always made him the Silver Palate's Decadent Chocolate Cake. Two years ago, he decided I should make it. As much as I love baking bread, I'm not fond of baking that requires precision, so I approached the task with dread. I figured either it would be great or I'd never have to bake him a cake again. Let's just say my mother-in-law has since decided she's never baking that cake again. She's just going to leave it to me. Somehow thinking a meatloaf recipe that called for two pounds of beef would be a good thing to make for just my husband and myself. Mistake! Actually, that incident represents an entire category of mistakes in which I have sentenced us to eating the same thing for six nights in a row because I didn't think through the obscene quantities I was whipping up, and whatever I made wasn't worth freezing for later, but neither could we bring ourselves to throw it out.