I am fortunate to live in the beautiful Pacific NW. I'm married, with three grown children, and one perfectly amazing 6 year old grandson. We have two four legged (totally spoiled) children still at home, black labs, Morgan and Aspen. My passion is photography, followed closely by cooking. I also love to sew, but it has really taken a backseat to photography since receiving my DSLR from my wonderful hubby. Anything that challenges me is my favorite thing to cook. My mother says I'm a food snob.. (okay, she's probably right :)).. but life's too short to eat bad food. LOL I love to bake.. breads, desserts, you name it. Love to make candy at Christmas. I'm not a fast and easy cook at all. Main dishes I always look for are the type you'd find at a 5 star restaurant and always welcome a challenging one. Making meatballs and sauce with my daughter was always a family affair as she was growing up. I had her on a stool, cooking slong side me, from the time she was knee-high to a grasshopper. She was making souffles on her own by the time she was 10, and is still a marvelous cook. Hmm.. oh, getting the temperature just right with coals to be able to cook a meal to perfection (including dessert) in a box oven while camping. The first meal I cooked for my ex FIL, which also just happened to be Thanksgiving. We had just purchased a new oven (the day before) and it had a handy temperature probe built into the oven, which I was dying to try. It was to turn off the oven when the correct temp was reached, although in my haste, I didn't quite read all the directions to know that. I carefully placed the probe in the turkey and went on with preparing the dinner. To make a long story short, I somehow displaced the probe while placing in the oven, and the oven turned off about half the time it should have. It took me quite some time to figure it out. I was young and extremely embarrassed, and decided trying something new while trying to impress the in-laws wasn't the best idea I'd had. :)