I am a newlywed who is just getting her feet wet in cooking. My mother who is Irish and father who is African-American and Indian have passed down a broad knowledge of recipes that I am trying to learn. I am a Real Estate agent who works long hours and love fast and easy meal ideas or crockpot ideas. My absolute favorite thing to cook is spaghetti!! However I do love any down home southern foods mainly fried mac-n-cheese and the deep fried oreo's. Cold pizza works best for me 2. Favorite family traditons go back to when my nana was alive she cooked soul food from scratch her 2 best dishes were sweet potato pie she would get up at 3 am to boil her potato's then get a large bowl with a micro stainer on top and a plastic cup and sit for hours mashing and mashing then make her pie shell from scratch Hmmmm I miss her! Second were her clover leaf rolls not sure how she made them but I do know we would have family fights over the last one!!! I have failed at so many recipes but my biggest triumph would be baked mac-n-cheese no matter how many times I tried it would be to cheesy or not enough chesse it would fall apart or just be plain bad. Then I figured stop following recipes and try for myself. That was the key! I learned evaporated milk,mustard powder and 3 eggs with sharp and mild chedder with paprika on top tastes great and I been doing it that way ever since. Beef and Pepper steak OMG! That was the most horrible thing I have ever made it had no flavor was to tough and i burned the rice. Not only once but three times I ruined this recipe so I finally gave up.