I am married with 4 kids and am currently a stay at home mom. One of the reasons I LOVE staying home is the opportunity to spend more time cooking great meals and treats for my family. I love trying new recipes, and the recipes that you get from great home cooks are always the best! I have been cooking since I was a little girl; I started out making cookies and brownies and soon was cooking entire meals for my family. Living in the South, cooking and eating are a big deal--at any gathering of southerners, there's bound to be lots of good things to eat! Nothing is more rewarding to me than cooking a great meal for family and friends. I LOVE to bake; it's a great form of stress relief for me. The challenge is not eating too much of the products myself; I often end up sending treats to work with my husband. He's a doctor in the emergency room and the nurses and doctors there always appreciate something good to eat! I also love making yummy chicken and pasta dishes for family dinners. I'm currently working on becoming proficient at making yeast bread. Also, anything that I can cook with my 4 kids (ages 10, 10, 8 and 3) is great. My mom is the most amazing Southern cook. Her biscuits and gravy, coconut cream pie and fried chicken are legendary. We could always count on having 3 hot, delicious, home-cooked meals a day. She was a wonderful teacher and gave me a love of cooking that is a lifelong gift. My husband comes from a large family and I love to make big meals for the whole clan. I think that cooking and eating great meals are part of creating a warm and happy home for my kids; I definitely had that and hope I can create the same kind of wonderful food memories for them that my mom did for me. The kids argue about who is a better cook, me or my mom, so I must be doing okay!! Everyone says that my cookies and brownies are the absolute best ever. Several people have told me that I should think about being a caterer. Most importantly, my husband and kids love my cooking! When I was learning to make cookies, I melted the butter in a recipe that you were supposed to soften it; the cookies ran together and turned into one big, disgusting mega-cookie! I definitely learned my lesson about reading the recipe carefully. I am a perfectionist, so if a recipe doesn't turn out like I think it should, it's a big disappointment. I have found after years of cooking that you learn to weed out the bad recipes. One thing that I really appreciate about allrecipes is the great reviews and advice from other cooks--it really helps you to know exactly what to expect from a recipe.