I love to cook. It's something that I wish I could do for a living, but instead I work in emergency response training for a non-profit organization. I am married and we have a german shepherd dog that is our pride & joy. We hope to start a family in the next year. We have a home in the historic district of our city which is nice. Love to watch movies & do jigsaw puzzles. Love to travel. Enjoy my church family & I play the piano (have since I was 7). Comfort food "like Grandma-use-to-make"... I love to challenge myself in making the decadent foods that bolster child-hood memories low-fat or healthy using the wide array of ingredients that we have available these days. I can make a beautiful flavorful chicken parmesan for example, with a fraction of the guilt... I love to do baked goods, especially hors d'oeuvre and finger foods for parties. Love soups, stews, and my favorite is the old-fashioned chuck roast slow-cooked in the oven smothered in mushroom milk gravy until it's tender & melting in your mouth. Yummm! I just plain enjoy cooking. Pies, first & foremost. My mother is the master of picture-perfect pie crusts & fillings to die for. Her specialty I think is her pumpkin pie & sugar crème pie. Another family fond-memory would be the stews/soups. Old-fashioned soup beans w/ham, beef stew w/root vegetables, creamy potato soup, and cabbage & sausage broth soups... very tasty & comforting. Of course there is my mother's specialty... one-dish wonders... if it can be done in 1 dish, she will do it. (Saves dishes you know)... From cheesy scalloped potatoes to layered meat & vegetable dishes, she is the casserole queen. I'd have to say the most infamous dish, the most favorite, & requested, is that broccoli casserole. Ambitious my first Christmas with my new in-laws, I did gift boxes brimming with homemade baked goods. Had it planned out with all the favorites. Of course... I wanted FRESH, so I decided I’d bake everything on Christmas Eve. To make enough pumpkin bread loaves, I quadrupled the recipe (maybe more, who can remember). In my huge stainless steel mixing bowl, I started adding the ingredients-one at a time, until I soon realized the error. After having cooked for hours on snickerdoodles, butter balls, etc. late into the morning hours, I saw there was no way all the ingredients would fit into the bowl. How to separate and know how much of what amount was in there? YIKES?! I measured, separated, covered the kitchen in half-done pumpkin bread batter, trying to make sure it was even enough to keep adding items- sounds like a failure! Nope. Not knowing how, I ended up with perfect, moist, pumpkin bread loaves, enough for everyone, and super-tasty to boot. Triumph/Challenge...definitely yes. Cabbage soup. A favorite I thought I’d try in the crock-pot instead. I started adding ingredients quickly before I had to leave for work. Smoked sausage, chopped onion, etc. I wasn't paying attention & had filled the pot with all ingredients & still had a head of cabbage & can of broth to add. Half asleep, I thought that adding the shredded cabbage in a mound/heap on top of the items, it would wilt down as it got warm and end up fitting. So, as I heaped it up, it was clear, 5 inches above the top, that the lid was NOT going to fit. Added the chicken stock and put a lg. aluminum foil dome as tightly as I could around the top of this contraption. Turned on high & left. Called my husband 4 hrs later to do damage control. When I got home… what a mess,… the cabbage had wilted but not before destroying the soup with it. The broth had overflowed onto the counter, it was left on high so the soup was scorched & burned to the sides of the pot. It was not good.