I am a life long "foodie" inspired by the cooking of my Mother, who was inspired by HER Mother. I've had so many food epiphanies that I don't know where to start, but I would say my greatest inspirations have come from world travel and the accompaning experiences that allowed this country girl to get her taste buds awake and blown away by the culinary diversity of this planet. My food heros are Alice Waters, Julia Child, Mark Miller and Thomas Keller. I have owned and operated a restaurant, taken many cooking classes and I have attended one of the most recognized hotel and restaurant management insitutuions in the US. The restaurant/hospitality industry is my passion, but I'm now retired from this very physically demanding profession. I love the leisure of enjoying the privacy and creativity of my own kitchen...stocked full of hundreds of cookbooks from around the world. What is more pleasurable than having a table full of family and friends, enjoying great food and fellowship!! I am all about the cooking style of the lands that comprise "Mediterranean Style Cooking". I am also a big fan of the "Slow Food Movement" and I believe in supporting local and organic sustainable growers and gathers who live closeby. Fresh, colorful, pure and local. Unadulterated with fancy schmancy sauces, artificial ingredients or mass produced staples. I also really do love my hands in a big pile of dough and I love putting together an eye-popping desert. When our family is together we always cook up an amazing Gumbo that came of our years of living in the south and having Cajun friends. Texas BBQ...smoked brisket and sauced up ribs are a must. Bierocks...that fragrant and utterly sublime meat and cabbage stuffed bread roll that seems to have stemmed from Mennonite colonies in Kansas a century ago. (No German native I've ever talked to has ever heard of a Bierock :) Caprese salads of the most experimental kinds and platters full of preserved, sausaged and smoked game meats and melt in your mouth French cheeses. It gets no better than that!