I am fairly boring...retired and on a fixed income. We do ok though. One married daughter I adore and lives close. I am trying to teach her to cook and she is finally somewhat interested after all these years. I love animals and my dog; love birdwatching and attempt some gardening. I am learning to bake and really enjoy it. My favorite things to cook are desserts. I would like to fry more but it makes too much of a mess and smell. I have a very simple palate. Nothing too gourmet for me. My mother was a wonderful southern cook and exceled at baking. My grandmother as well. I really wish I had gotten their recipe for Chicken and Dumplings and my mother's recipe for (it sounds bad) prune cake with some sort of browned butter glaze..it was awesome. As well as her apple cake. No what I would call triumphs. I did play around with chicken and dumplings and got them pretty close to my mother and grandmothers. Trying to make yeast rolls from scratch and killing the yeast with water that was too hot...I was reading the centigrade side of the thermometer! Thank goodness I had frozen dinner rolls in the freezer. Also, I was attempting one of my mother's recipes for a sponge cake. It was my daughter's birthday and the cake was to be filled with strawberry cream. I am not sure what I did wrong, but I think it was the wrong type of whipping cream (I might have used half and half, I don't know), but anyway I had the bottom of the cake trimmed off and a large hole made for the cream...when I poured it in, the cake cracked in half as my daughter looked on. I was devastated! Ha! Now that they have a cake pan specifically for those type of cakes, she refuses to have me make another.