I am happily married. I have a precious dog, who is my best friend, and six cats. (Yes, we've had food stolen off of the counter!) I love to bake. I like making cakes from scratch. I like trying new things like new marinades and different types of sauces. My grandmother was a baker. She sold doughnuts in her brother's store. She made the best cakes, pies, and bread. My mother was also a decent cook. I started cooking around age 7 when I made my first cake for my dad. I really loved being in the kitchen with my grandmother and one of my fondest memories is the smell of her kitchen. Sometimes, my house smells like that and it brings me back and it's wonderful. I made some wonderful lemon bars for my mom (she loved lemon). It was the first time I had made them and they were totally from scratch and really good (and I am not a huge lemon fan). I've got some marinades that people have raved about. Whoopie pies, "triple" cookies (chocolate cookies with semi-sweet, milk, and butterscotch chips that I invented), triple berry pie, chicken marsala, and an easy throw-together sausage meal are a few triumphs! OK, we all have these: most recently a cream-based pasta dish with crabmeat that I made for a crowd but was meant to be in a small batch. A chicken dish with prunes in it from Silver Palate cookbook, truffle frosting that didn't set right and tasted like sweaty, creamy chocolate on my wonderful cake, trying to make a sugar glazed salmon but making a burning mess, and the baked brie was nasty (becuase we found out we didn't like brie AT ALL).