Jean U
@CocoaVan
My passions are food/cooking, gardening, collecting a few antiques, reading, my dogs, and my husband - though not necessarily in that order! At one point in my life I spent several years in the restaurant/food industry. I collect cookbooks of many types and enjoy reading and learning about almost everything related to food as much as cooking & sharing it. Some of my favorite cookbooks are Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, Mme. Beguin's Recpes of Old New Orleans Cookery, The Around The World Cookbook, BH&G Heritage Cookbook, Rose Levy Berenbaum's The Chocolate Bible and Rose's Christmas Cookies, and Monisa Bharadwaj's The Indian Spice Kitchen. I also collect older (pre- 1940's) cookbooks because it's fun to get a glimpse of what cooking was like in another era - fascinating! I believe that chocolate is one of the major food groups and that you can learn alot about a person by looking at the contents of their spice cupboard!!