I love to cook and bake and write about it on my blog: http://choiceofpies.blogspot.com. Cookies, cupcakes, soup, biscuits, pizza, ribs, risotto. My grandmother is a very talented baker. She taught me how to pipe frosting when I was very young, so I've been helping her and making my own cakes and cookies since I was about seven or eight years old. Her decorated Christmas cookies are an important family tradition; in 2008, she passed the mantle to me. I once supervised the creation of a seven-course Japanese meal for fifty guests. When I had my first apartment, I tried to make a dish of chard, chickpeas, and feta. We had just moved in and I didn't yet know that the stove ran hot. I left the pot unattended for a few minutes and came back to find my chard charred, and the pot completely ruined!