I am a full time wife and mother and part time nurse practitioner. I learned to cook out of my love to eat. I have many hobbies: cross-stitch, quilting, making bead jewelry, hiking, and backpacking. I would love to learn how to knit and have the time to go canoeing. As my boys grow, I try to instill the love of the great outdoors, so we can backpack as a family in the future. Lately, I've been getting into middle eastern dishes. I've been enjoying new spice combinations that indian and middle eastern dishes have. And I can never get enough asian food! Sticky buns on Christmas morning--it just isn't Christmas without them! And to cut the prep time, I converted the dough recipe and throw it into the bread machine on the dough cycle. When hosting the appetizer course during a progressive dinner, one guest commented, "I didn't know you were a gourmet cook!" Was it the decadent bundt cake that came out of the pan in crumbles? Or the rice that was hard and crunchy after 10 hours in the crock pot? Or the dry, tasteless chicken in a stir fry? Or the triangular hockey pucks I thought would be scones? Too many tragedies to list here....