A Tennessee native and lived in Knoxville all my life. My love of cooking is born of my love for eating good food and sharing good food with others. By far, my favorite things to cook are those that come from the smoker or charcoal grill. There's nothing like sipping a Guinness and basking in the intoxicating aroma of smoke and fire. My second favorite type of cooking would probably be soups and stews. They have an easy pace and you can build and change the flavors as you go until it's just the way you want. My greatest cooking triumph may have been years ago. Our family and extended family were caravaning to the Smoky Mountains for a picnic which of course always involves fried chicken. Someone else was frying the chicken so I got a crazy notion to fry up a batch of chicken livers, made it up as I went with no measuring, pure instinct. Everybody raved about them, even people who don't eat livers. Unfortunately, I had no idea what I actually put in them and have never been able to duplicate them. When I was a very young man I decided to try making my first Chinese dinner complete with fried rice. The egg rolls were tasty but unfurled and looked like conch shells, the chicken was edible, but the fried rice....it clumped together in the most hideous glob I've ever seen. Rice is still not my best friend.