I'm a busy speech therapist who works long hours and doesn't like to eat frozen dinners for lunch or fast food for dinner. My cooking adventures began when I decided to start buying and cooking more vegetables to help make up for the candy bars I ate for lunch. Vegetables led to dessert, which led to soup, which led to fish... Now I'm an organic produce and farmers' market devotee. Soups and desserts! They're both portable so I can take them to work for lunch. Way more filling than a candy bar. Lots of basic comfort food. I grew up on potato-carrot-hamburger stew, spaghetti, hot cereal, and scrambled eggs. My mom made her own hamburger patties. The big turning point was when I learned how to make jam and pickles. I make delicious pickled green beans. And I make a mean fruit crisp. Well... Nearly much everything up until I started graduate school. I scorched pots, boiled over everything you could think of, started a few small fires, and burned a lot of food.