I am a stay-at-home mom who loves to bake. I would love to become a pastry chef. Right now I keep it pretty simple. In the summer I use crock pot recipes a lot to keep the kitchen cool. Now that my daughter is 4, our new tradition is to make cookies for Daddy. We spend an afternoon each month looking for a recipe, getting out the ingredients, measuring, mixing and baking. We also make pancakes on Sunday mornings. Having both my mom and mother-in-law tell me that I am a better cook than they are. When I was 12 we got our first microwave and my first recipe was meatloaf, folloing the oven directions :) It was meatROCK, and we were stuck trying to eat it. Another time (also when I was 12) I misread a recipe and put a cup of baking soda into a cake batter. Fortunately I discovered the mistake before it went into the oven.