Hi! I absolutely love cooking. Its been one of my very favorite things to do for years. I love that we are what we eat and I try to prepare my meals with love and care. I love to cook soups and stews. I also enjoy holiday meals and have been known to cook "Thanksgiving dinner" all year round. I like learning to cook new ethnic meals and want to learn more about baking and desserts. I guess my very favorite thing to do though, is take comfort food and improve upon it...add higher quality ingredients and make it kind of fancy yet obviously still comfort food. :) Birthdays at my Grandmother's were always a treat because she would always make her spaghetti and meatballs (the absolute best in the world). It was always so hard to smell that delicious sauce simmering on the stove and not be able to eat it yet!! Then we would always have her home-made lemon meringue pie for dessert. I've prepared amazing holiday meals since I moved out on my own to Portland. It would always be a huge production in the tiny kitchens I've been cursed with. Not enough room in the oven! But somehow it always turned out great. Too many to count! I'm great at cooking from recipes, but when I try to just create something out of nothing it can easily go one way or the other! There have been times when I've cooked an entire dish only to toss it in the trash because it didn't meet my standards. (all to the dismay of my hungry, salivating boyfriend who was waiting for dinner) This doesn't happen very often because I hate to throw away food, but sometimes I'm just embarrassed to serve it!