I live in the Seattle area but was raised on a farm on Vashon, a very rural (at the time) island in puget sound. We had a subsistence farm and I grew up with the idea of gardening, canning, raising and slaughtering stock and in generally being food self sufficient. Cooking I can do, but it's not as much fun to me as baking. Ever since I was young I've enjoyed making cakes, cookies and the like. Might just be the sweet tooth. We were a classic farm family, much in the way of meat and starches; sauces were met with suspicion. I've been working to build my pallet, but I'm afraid I will never be "gormet". Made my first angel food cake at 12. Well, there was the dubious "lets play with food dye" stage that ended up with some aesthetically unfortunate results. My greatest triumph/disaster was probably when my older sister bullied me into making her and her friend pancakes when we were young. I added catfood and managed to convince them they were roasted nuts (till they were finished eating of course). She's still a little bitter about that one.