I am the mother of 6 children. The oldest is 19 and the youngest will be 6 months on Christmas day. Some of the kids have Autism, or related disorders (on the spectrum, but not full blown autism) and cannot tolerate gluten or dairy. In addition to that, my 13 year old has Type I Diabetes, so I have a real cooking challenge on my hands. I have always loved to cook and have always loved a challenge, so I am enjoying experimenting with recipes. To some who know me, it seems strange that I would enjoy cooking so much, as I am a "geek" by nature - all things computer. But the two fit perfectly together for me. I love a challenge! On a day to day basis, this isn't possible, but for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter, I love it! That's when I get out all the interesting recipes that I love and that I usually don't have the time to make, like Buche De Noel, Resurrection Cookies (easy, but time consuming), Au Graten potatoes (from scratch) and almost anything from scratch. I love scratch cooking! I am thankful there are holidays that I can do so! My favorite family cooking tradition is the annual migration to my mother's house for cooking baking and candy making at Christmas. All the kids get involved with decorating the traditional cut-out cookies and dip the truffles in chocolate and help package everything up to give as gifts. My mother's entire kitchen and family room are transformed into holiday factory of wonderful smells and smiles. Learning to cook gluten free and dairy free for my children with Autism! My biggest challenge was the traditional birthday cake. I have long been one to adapt recipes and add little things here and there to "improve" them, but I hadn't had any experience in gluten free cooking. So with much trial and error I developed (with the help of Bob's Red Mill GFCF Flour package, whose recipe I based my creation on) a perfect cake that even my parents (not knowing that it was GFCF) said should be "the cake" from now on! They never knew it was actually good for them! My children have all loved fudge for Christmas. It has been a tradition in our family to make fudge. My father and I made it together when I was a little girl, and I had hoped to pass this along to my children. But when some of them became intolerant to dairy, I set out to see if I could "fudge" the recipe a bit. I am still searching for a good way to make this, as my "fudged" recipe never set up, and was more like fudge soup. We used it on "ice cream", but they were disappointed they couldn't have fudge like everyone else.