I'm a student at BYU studying molecular biology. I've only got another year and a half before I finish my undergrad work and then it's off to about 5 more years of grad school. I work at a call center that is really boring but pays the bills, but my favorite work is in a cancer research lab. I think the bench work skills I have there have helped to augment my desire and abilities in the kitchen. I picked up cooking when I was serving a mission for the Latter Day Saint church. I lived in Spain for 2 years where they don’t have a lot of pre-made food like the states. After buying a few pasta packets that had dismal tastes, I realized that I could easily make something similar but use fresh ingredients and it would taste a lot better. I also picked up a lot of Spanish recipes from the old Spanish women that I still love. I plan to take a cooking class in school this next fall. I hear it’s a great place for guys because the food is good and the girls in the class are really cute. I'm a busy student so my lifestyle doesn’t’ afford much time for cooking which is one of the reasons why I love cooking Italian food. Pasta is quick, easy, and provides enough energy to get me through the day. It also stores easily and can be readily reheated for those days when the schedule is tight. When things get really hectic I’ll submit and cook something super quick like instant noodles, but I usually feel bad afterwards. When I do find the time to cook, I like to create dishes that are crowd pleasers. I like to share food with my friends and see their reactions when they eat something they like. I’ve roasted whole chickens a couple of times which have been big favorites. Lemmon ies are fun for the summer time. If I really want to impress someone I’ll make sushi, but it’s hard to find a lot of sushi lovers here in Utah, and the smell of the seaweed usually annoys my Texan roommates. Somehow the tradition got started in my family of eating mexican food and lobster every Christmas eve. I always look forward to it because it's one of the only times that I eat lobster during the year. This one time we had a breakfast party in my apartment with about 20 people. I had made a couple of dishes before for mostly my self, but this was going to be a big social event and I wanted to be established as a good cook. I found this recipe for blueberry french toast casserole which I thought sounded really good. I made a practice batch for myself to practice. The next day we had the party and I presented my dish. Everyone loved it, except for one girl who is a self-professed picky eater, and it was quickly devoured. I received tons of complements and was from that point on recognized as a good cook. By far the worst foul up I’ve made while cooking happened when I was about 13 or so. I was home alone and I was going to make some macaroni and cheese for dinner. I had some trouble finding the butter I needed for the recipe, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed what in my mind was a suitable substitute; butter flavored Crisco. I went ahead and used the Crisco thinking that the only reason you added butter to the recipe was for flavor. I ate the whole batch of the mac and cheese and thought every thing was normal, but I did notice that there was this strange film covering my lip. Boy have I come a long way since then.