I'm a Seattle-area native with Scandinavian roots. I love to travel and explore different cuisines, and have an ever-expanding cookbook collection. Baking is my first love and pie is probably my favorite thing to bake. But I love making homemade pizza and pasta and anything with a poached egg on top. Christmas with my family brings out all the traditional Scandinavian foods: Dad's homemade pickled herring and charcuterie, Swedish ham, and of course lutefisk, which doesn't taste as bad as you've heard. There are also seven kinds of cookies - a Swedish tradition probably dating back to their competitive Viking ways. New Year's Eve 2011 we made homemade pasta with friends. It took longer than we'd planned, but thankfully it was ready to eat by around 11pm, so we still had time for a midnight toast. My first pumpkin pie looked and smelled delicious. I put it on my parents' back deck to cool and when we went to retrieve it after dinner there was an opossum feasting on it! Thankfully we also had an apple pie - safe inside the house and away from critters.