My favorite place is my kitchen! It is so relaxing for me to be mixing, stirring, baking. And I love to cook for others and set a beautiful table. Love to collect vintage Pyrex bowls and almost always have something sweet on my old domed cakestand. Cookies...I actually have a small cookie business. But my favorite thing to cook (and eat) is broiled cherry tomatoes tossed with fresh pesto & hot spaghetti. A little freshly grated Parmesan...yum. I grow copious amounts of basil during the summer for fresh pesto. Caprese salad is always a favorite. There is nothing better than simple, unfussy food like an avocado with a little lime juice & salt. Then again, i'll be the first one to devour an elaborate dessert:) Oh, I love food! My mom is the best pie maker ever; her crust is amazingly flaky. My family often ate "breakfast for dinner" while I was growing up. I still enjoy eating scrambled eggs with bacon in them as well as homemade blueberry pancakes. During the summer, we would make fresh peach and strawberry pancakes, too. My grandma is a great southern cook; she would always make chicken and dumplings & cobblers. My mom and aunt bake dozens of varieties of Christmas cookies each year to give away. My older sister and I started the same tradition last year. Hmmm...I invented a great tortilla soup recipe. My sugar cookies with royal icing are so pretty. I apply dragees and edible glitter with tweezers on each one. I have been trying to incorporate authentic Mexican recipes into our meal rotation as my husband is Mexican. His mom & abuelita are outstanding cooks and I try to use my "taste memory" to recreate some of their delicious food. When his abuelita was visiting, I watched her make homemade corn tortillas and dress them with her salsa & queso fresco. Wow-so good. I have been making these often since. She set the bar high! I decided to make popcorn on the stove and had run out of canola oil, so I just poured in a little olive oil, turned the stove on and walked away. Twenty minutes and a bad smell later, I enter the kitchen to see 7 foot flames coming from the pan. In my panic, I put the pan under COLD RUNNING WATER. Let's just say that the 14 foot ceiling was scorched.