I'm a semi-retired kid at heart. I love to travel, cook, read, go to movies and concerts. I've been with my husband since 1975 and he's my best friend ever. I have an adventurous spirit and I'll try just about anything. I've had a varied career, many years in aerospace, lots of years doing customer service, now I'm a circuit coach at a local Curves facility and I really enjoy this because I get paid to socialize and chit chat. How cool is that!? I love to try out new recipes and I try new ones at least once a week. My favorite things are Mexican, Italian and Middle Eastern foods and I love to make tasty casseroles. I'm a cook, not a baker. My "baking" consists of making cookies and the occasional quick bread. Can't bake a pie to save my life! I'm the go to person for potato salad in my family and I'm the one that everyone comes to for recipes. I can't really say there are any specific traditions as far as cooking in the family though. Some of my recipes have become classics in the family and that makes me happy; potato salad, creamy meat balls, spaghetti, various chicken dishes, ribs, all kinds of things. I've made meals for people I work with and they raved about them and I guess that's kind of a triumph for me. My latest thing has been using a stovetop smoker...so good. I've made smoked steelhead and salmon in that and vowed never to buy smoked salmon again because I can make it so much better. There have been a few, but the most memorable was my one and only attempt to make Shrimp Creole. When my husband and I were first together I was asking him what he liked and he said he liked Shrimp Creole. Great! I got an authentic recipe for it and at that time I wasn't at all familiar with just how hot cayenne pepper was. What a mistake! It turns out he liked the recipe his mother used to use, which was anything but a real Creole dish. I should have known this, he doesn't like hot spicy to this day. Well, that Shrimp Creole was like eating fire! It was horrible! It was so expensive that we had to eat it! We finally drowned it in Ranch Dressing and that was the only way it was edible. People I worked with laughed for years about that one!