I will never forget the look on my Mom's face when my brother and sister told her she should let me make the spaghetti sauce because they liked mine better (he is 7 1/2 years younger than men and she is 6 1/2 years younger than him)!  It's the only thing that any of our family has ever said tasted better when I make it than when Mom makes it.  We both use Ragu nowadays  .

 

 

I come from a long ling of simple basic cooks.  I really don't like following recipes too closely, so I try to stick with stuff I know will work.  Even when I do use a recipe, I wind up changing something - adding something or leaving out some ingredient we don't care for - to make it more "my own".  I used to be a pretty decent cook, but I just don't do very much of it any more, so I don't know if I still am or not.

 

 

My sister can bake anything.  She does not cook other than baking (the only meal she makes is lasagna).  She has a Kitchen Aid mixer (so does Mom), and about 100 cookbooks, mostly cookies and other desserts; and she has at least 500 cookie cutters, she collects them.

 

We make cookies every year in December to give as gifts to friends, co-workers and neighbors.  We usually make 25-30 kinds of cookies and 8-10 kinds of candy.  Sis mixes all the cookies, and we have had many people ask us where we bought our cookies, some of them are very fancy - like you see in magazines.  Mom and I get to do some of the baking, and I do most of the cleanup.  We take about 4 days every year to bake, we call it "cookie days"...and for some strange reason, neither of us ever has any trouble getting time off work to do this  .