The middle child of five siblings. Never cooked an entire meal until after I was married. Could not believe I had been missing out on something so pleasurable for so long. Born in Louisiana, hence my love of extra spicy foods. Anything that has extraordinary flavor and mixing ingredients that seem polar opposite in taste and function. I am not oppose to super simple foods even though I love to prepare a great gourmet recipe. I have really taken a liking to baking within the last couple of years. I cook Gumbo every Halloween and it is served to our entire street, and sometimes another street or two, that evening. Another tradition is that wonderful Thanksgiving day menu. Also, Christmas mornings never dissapointed me as a child and so I am hyper-focused even now to make sure my own kid's memories of these two holidays are full of smell, taste and emotion. I begin preparing well in advanced for both. hmmmmm..... learning to cook the perfect pot of gumbo. Let me say that again..learning to cook the perfect Roux for the perfect pot of gumbo. It's all in the Roux ya know. I remember as a child, me, my older brother and older sister taking turns stirring the Roux while my mother prepared the other ingredients for gumbo. We would have to stir it for so long and so constant that I thought my arm would fall off before my mother decided it was someone else's turn to stir. There have been a few but nothing that was earth shattering. The worst, I think, was many years ago after I was first married. I was asked to bring a green bean casserole (typical newly married dish) to a dinner. I unknowingly bought garlic cream of mushroom soup to go into the recipe and as we began eating the casserole, we all had the same look on our faces at the same time... it was that look that says "WHAT in the world is in this?????" I had NO IDEA what was wrong with it as I had followed the recipe verbatim. And as mentioned, I found out after we got home that the cream of M. had garlic in it. I don't think Campbells even makes it anymore. I have not seen it on the shelf in years. Every time I buy Cream of M., I am reminded of that little mistake and take a double take at the can to make sure it has NOTHING added.