I love cooking! To me, there is nothing better than assembling a disparate set of ingredients, and putting them together in a way that tastes just right. Sure, we eat for sustenance first, but golly there's nothing wrong with it being a delightful experience too, is there? We cook all sorts of things at home. we'll try our hand at "ethnic" (by which I mean "non-North American") foods. In fact, one such attempt is by far our most delightful triumph. I'll get to that later. Perhaps our biggest family tradition is one having to do with breaking tradition. Specifically, in the last 5 years, we've only cooked the "traditional" Thanksgiving dinner once. That takes me back to the story of the BEST meal we have ever cooked. Thanksgiving 1999, our first year together my husband and I. We decide we will cook a large chicken (more than enough for our little family of 4 at the time), but not your traditional roasted bird with bread stuffing. Instead, we're going for Morrocan flair. First, he deboned the whole thing. Yes, you read correctly, he DEBONED it. Only the wings and drumsticks were left. Then we rubbed the inside with the contents of one packet of flavoring from an "herbs and pine nuts" couscous mix. We stuffed the couscous mix in the cavity. Then we put it on our barbecue grill with some hickory woodchips and smoked it for a few hours. I think it took about 4-5 hours for a 6-8 pound bird. I'm sure we did a few other things to it, and we certainly served other things with it, but all we remember is the turkey. The flavor was SO wonderful, no one spoke for a full 5 minutes. It was smoky, it was moist, it was DELICIOUS, and we've never been able to quite duplicate it because we Frankly, I rarely goof, and when I do it's usually something silly like forgetting to keep an eye on things and burning it, or misreading a recipe and not noticing that some ingredient was supposed to be divided. OOPS! My biggest goof came from forgetting oil, in a COVERED pot, just long enough for it to be waiting to spring into flame. Which it promptly did the minute I lifted the lid. I'd never fried before, so I suppose I can be forgiven, but I gave myself a good scare... and learned a valuable lesson. No, I didn't burn down the house, I just put the lid back on and took it off the heat. I did smoke the whole house, though...