Hmmm, about me, well, I'm 20 years old, I'm engaged to a wonderful man, he and I have been dating and living together for 2 and a half years. I've been cooking for about 4-5 years now, and I have realized in the past year just how much I love to cook, especially when its from scratch, and most of all when its baked goods. I am always trying to cook new and different things. I have started a cook book, full of recipes that I have made before and that either my fiancee or I have liked. I hope to pass this recipe book on to my children in the future. I love to bake... but anything that I cook for the people I love, are my favorite things to cook! Oh wow, I can't begin to list them off, there's too many. Although I can't say that there are any cooking traditions in my family, it seems to me that every person in my family has an impecable talent for cooking. But as a little girl I always loved helping my mom or grandma bake, at this point I have to add that my mother is an amazing baker, and I have always admired her cooking. So I guess you can call passing down recipes and cooking tips as our family tradition. Well, this Christmas was my first time cooking the entire meal myself! It turned out amazingly, and now I know who I'm having over next year, because they all want to come back! I made about 200 holiday cookies, which then went out to family and friends in pretty holiday tins. All the cookies I made this year I had never made before, and did so from scratch. Some of them were a struggle (like shortbread) and some were super easy, but they all turned out well. Needless to say I am very proud of myself! Hmmm, a couple of weeks ago, i tried this recipe for peanut butter and jam cookies. The recipe said to put the jam in an indentation in the center of the cookie before baking. I took them out half way through baking, because by that time they looked more like little piles of slop than cookies, and couldn't hold together anymore. So a little tip, if you plan on making these, put in the jam 3/4 of the way through baking, I did and they turned out great (the second time around).