I love cooking from scratch. The more hands-on the recipe is the better! I'll take fresh ingredients over canned, processed, or frozen anyday! I love cooking comfort food - not necessarily fried, but good down-home southern stuff that's so good it'll make you wanna' slap your momma! I love going to visit my parents. My mom and I can stay in the kitchen all day long. We both enjoy trying new recipes and adding our own personal flair to them, though sometimes this backfires and we end up with a complete disaster on our hands - either way we have a good time and end up laughing a lot. I have a handful of dishes that always result in people asking me where I purchased them. People are always shocked to learn that the stuff on their plate was made in my kitchen. It is also nice when friends rave over a dish months or years after the meal was served. Several years ago I saw a magazine cover with 2 bundt cakes stacked and decorated to look like a pumpkin. I decided I could mimic the concept and used a cream filled cake recipe for a Thanksgiving feast with my extended family (50+ people). The entire event was a comedy of errors. The weight of the top cake forced the bottom one to collaspe, causing it to sprout little pudding leaks. We waited until the last minute to frost it and discovered that my mom didn't have enough red food coloring so the icing was more yellow than orange. The dark color of the cake showed through the icing. It ended up looking like a cheeseburger without the bun. Imagine a huge meat patty covered in melted cheese - that's what this looked like. I took it to the dinner anyway because it had provided so much entertainment value for my mom and me. Every single person who passed by the dessert table would ask, "hey, what's this big cheeeseburger looking thing?" To this day, I can't think about it without laughing