Mum of two little girls, I am french now living in France but spend most of my adult life until I founded a family living, studying and working abroad. Traveling broadened my mind and tastebuds and I joyfully discovered amazing food everywhere I lived in the world. I love food shopping for it, preparing and peeling, cooking it ... and all the time spent in the kitchen I have fun, more so from anticipating my guest's pleasure, my first real attempt at cooking was making chocolate mousse from scratch around age 6 ... seeing those egg white magically grow and fill up had me thinking there was something magical about cooking....I still think there is....its the best therapy there is on a grumpy day! Everything! I enjoy making finger food, baking, roasting, stewing, gourmet .... I love trying new recipes and I have a fondness for beef Wellington which is my fetish dish and which I serve at my husband request everytime someone comes to eat home for the 1st time . My 3 years old loves helping me since she is 2! It's a daily ritual that she will help me make dinner in her own little way, on saturday we usually bake a cake or make a desert for sunday lunch and during the week we bake breakfast cakes and bars. For the Kings cake (galette des rois) the youngest child that can speak sits under the dinner table, so he/she can indicate who receive which portion as we cut them, the person who has the FEVE (favor) in his portion is king or queen for the day and receive a gold paper crown and choose his or her king/queen to share the crown with. Kings cake vary from an area to another but in my family it has always been butter puff pastry pie filled with frangipane (almond filling). At the chandeleur we make thin crèpes (french pancakes) and everyone tries to flip one over in the pan with a coin in the hand to get good luck all year. For now the birthday cake of my eldest Emilie who just turned 3 and asked for a Dora cake, it may not have been gourmet food, it was a moist butter cake with chocolate ganache filling but the look on her face when she discovered the colorfull Dora's full adventure cake with all the edible scenery, lake, crocodiles, boat, rainbow and characters etc, was the best of compliment. (I do have one of the best pastry chef of the country in the next town but a mum loves to do what a mums got to do :-) Heaven knows why it once seemed a very good idea to make oatmeal with peanut butter in it, it was absolutely inedible....