@windy_moon
Married to a handsome husband, Mom to two handsome teenage boys and one handsome poodle. Day job in marketing, I like to cook whenever I can grab time. (Working on making that more rather than less as it has been for quite awhile.) Husband is a trained restaurateur and usually my toughest critic (grumble). We recently redid our kitchen and I'm itching to exercise all of the fun new toys, including my first ever new stovetop/oven. (GE Profile Dual Fuel convection bay-beee!) I enjoy both baking and cooking, and am constrained only by time, not patience. Er, patience that is except when it comes to pie crusts or anything that must be rolled. I simply despise rolling dough, won't do it, won't won't won't, so there! Generally, I look for recipes with fewer rather than more ingredients, but there's almost nothing I won't try (that doesn't need to be rolled!). Raised by a Southern mother, recipes from my youth appeal to me..but then so does Thai and Greek and (fill in cuisine here) as well. I'm also influenced by Jewish cooking (long story), so you can find a nice noodle kugel next to my black eyed peas prepared with ham. Enjoying this site and the energy of the community here immensely! I like reviewing and photographing your recipes, and am especially thrilled when I find an unreviewed or unphotographed gem that I can contribute to. I'm terribly new at this whole food photography thing, so most times my pictures fall in the "better than nothing" category, but I'm learning. Special thanks to my new friends in the food photography forum on the Zaar message board. --------------------------- Rating recipes, that can be a little tricky, can't it? I don't want to spend a lot of space on the topic, but maybe I rated your recipe and you'd like to know. Basically, I'm trying to use five stars for an exceptional "best of breed" kind of rating. Four stars is my "this was really good and pretty darn easy, too". Three stars, "we didn't care for this but I can see how someone else might". Anything lower than three stars, I haven't run into that yet. This is due in part, of course, to how wonderful Zaarites are...and due a bit to how I pick recipes to make. I look for well written instructions, a list of ingredients that my family already likes, and ingredients that are easily obtained without substitutions. Oh, and I follow instructions, that helps. Nothing is sillier than seeing a low rating on an otherwise fine recipe, where the reviewer then proceeds to go on about everything he or she changed, and then dismay at the final outcome...tres silly, don't you think? Zmail me for any reason, really. I've gotten to know some truly cool folks on Zaar already, and (assuming you are truly cool), I'd like to hear from you, too.