I am a single parent of 16 and 8 year old girls. I also have a 25 year old son. I am a survivor of colo-rectal cancer. Nutrition is very important to me. I always look for ways to provide optimal nutrition in very creative and delicious ways, especially for my kids. I am a metabolic nutrition consultant. I counsel people on their nutritional needs, especially for weight loss and disease prevention. I am on a mission to eliminate the current obesity epidemic in both adults and children. I love to cook just about anything. I like to take traditional favorites and make them more healthy and nutritious by changing ingredients and methods of cooking. I think fabulous desserts, especially when I can make them healthier, are my favorite thins to cook. I enjoy making fabulous appetizers as well. One of my grandmothers was from the south and the other grandmother was french. I was taught the very best of all kinds of cooking from a very early age. I joke that "I am from the south where they teach their girls to cook before they can walk"! To this day, I am always the one who is asked to make the turkey gravy on Thanksgiving. I'm not sure why my grandmother taught me how to make perfect gravy but didn't teach anyone else, like my mother! My mom and dad were both very good cooks. Now all of my children really enjoy cooking, especially my son. He considered culinary arts when he was considering his career options after high school. My youngest daughter has a Personal Trainer Cooking game for her Nintendo DS. My middle daughter, a vegetarian, likes learning recipes for Asian cuisine. I finally figured out how to make my grandmother's southern home-made banana pudding by age 30! When she said use a cup of something, she was referring to a coffee cup and I was never sure if my coffee cups were the same size as hers! I finally got it down to a recipe I could write down and pass onto my children. Learning to cook macrobiotic meals was quite a triumph too. My homemade buttermilk bisquits started winning me awards in elementary school. I was 6 years old when my grandmother taught me to make them. I was also 6 years old when I was reading a recipe to make oatmeal for breakfast. Instead of using 1/4 teaspoon of salt, I misread the recipe and used 1/4 cup of salt! Needless to say the dogs wouldn't even eat it! (and living on a farm, those dogs would eat almost anything!)