When not spending time with my 3 kids and gorgeous husband, I love to cook, eat and search for recipes. I'm a total food network geek and am always having my family try new dishes I've either discovered here or just made up on the spot. Luckily for me, they're not a picky bunch! Everything! I love spicy foods across the spectrum from Middle Eastern to Mexican. I love Italian and make a mean Chicken Parmesan. I love getting my son and daughter in the kitchen with me so we are learning basic comfort foods together too. It's a tradition passed down from my maternal grandmother to make hand dipped chocolate candies every Christmas. Now that I have 2 daughters myself, I can't wait until they are a little older and can really join in on this fun tradition. Anytime I can take something homemade to a gathering or function, or just even to the office for a little treat and I have lots of people compliment the dish or ask for the recipe is always a triumph for me. The first time I tried to roast a turkey for Thanksgiving. I was an unsupervised teenager and just didn't read the directions on the turkey carefully... Mixed up setting my oven to 180 and after hours and hours and it still wasn't cooked propoerly, finally re-read them and realized 180 was supposed to be the internal temp, not the oven temp.... Duh.