I'm a 34 year old mother of two toddlers. I've been cooking since I was old enough to follow directions from my mother.I'm not a gourmet cook, but rather enjoy making my grandmother and great grandmother's family recipes. I love to cook casseroles and soups/stews. I am also getting comfortable using a slow cooker and love it! My Grandmother was raised in Northern Vermont during the depression. Her recipes were no frill as they couldn't afford fancy ingrediants or sprices, but she was a wonderful cook! She could throw together a meal for 10 people using just what she had on hand, and it would taste wonderful and be inexpensive! If my Grandmother ever put her recipes on here, she would be slammed by some of the "chef wanna-be's" on here because her cooking wasn't fancy, but we always ran to the table when Grandma put dinner on! I serve those same recipes to my family and friends, and often they can't believe that something tastes so good with such basic (and few) ingrediants! A local restaurant uses my pig marinade recipe for their summer Pig Roasts after their head chef came to our family pig roast (as a friend of a friend) and loved the flavor! One Thanksgiving I cooked a Turkey and forgot to take the bag of organs out (I mistakenly checked the wrong end and thought they "forgot" to pack them) Funny, but that was the moistest turkey we ever had...although the thought of leaving them in there grossed me out!