I live in Rockville, MD which is 20 minutes north of Washington DC. I love to cook, read, go bike riding with my Hubby, Salsa dancing with Hubby, cook out with all our friends and travel. My favorite cookbook is one my mother wrote, From My Grandmother's Kitchen by Viviane Miner. It is a Safardic cookbook and has every single recipe my mother has ever made. I used to have a BIG black cat named Danzig, but he passed away the summer of 2005. We now have 2 cats, a calico who is mostly white (AH! White hair everywhere)and a black and white "Tuxedo" cat (He looks like he's wearing black tuxedo tails) They're names...Lilo and Stitch! And as pet-peeves go - why can't people use the ear piece for their cell phones when driving their cars?! I was never really into cooking when I was younger. Even when I was just out of college, I was living on Can openers and Mircowaves. I don't even know when the change happened. All of a sudden, I wanted to cook. I wanted to bring joy to everyone'e mouths. I wanted to be.....a chef. Well, I've come a long way from the can opener; I put it down and just never looked back. Now the microwave is just a big defroster and I use the can opener occasionally (hey, friends are friends! Just because I grew doesn't mean I had to completely dump my old friends. Right?).