Why would you ever want to cook??

Seems like a simple enough question.....and I guess has an easy answer.....I like to eat!! Of course you know I wouldn't stop there! I am a foodie, always have been, always will be I think. I am not so much a fancy foodie as I am just an all-american girl who likes to try a little bit of everything.....and then tries to make it at home.

Everyone needs a hobby, and I would say my most consistent one is cooking. I have gone through many phases.....I knit sometimes, I run sometimes, I ski sometimes, I scrapbook sometimes.....you get the idea. Two things I have always done...cook and travel. They actually go together nicely. When you eat in different places around this country and world usually you find something new you LOVE!!! Very rarely is it made in Lexington, where the grind of working in a hospital keeps you planted at least 75% of the time. So, you figure out how to make it yourself.....and try to put yourself back in the place where you found it.

I started cooking when I was tiny...with my mom....and have never stopped. I think the first thing I ever made was pizza toast. In Flatwoods, KY in 1980-something, I thought I was pretty cool! I toasted Betsy Ross bread, poured on some Ragu pizza sauce, and melted a Kraft single on top in the largest microwave you have ever seen. It was a great afterschool snack, and I thought I had made the best thing ever! Funny thing is....sometimes I still make that, and I swear it is just as good.

My enjoyment of cooking for my brother and I afterschool turned into cooking for friends, family, co-workers, and occasionally strangers. Sometimes, I think it is ironic that I went into a field where I work everyday to get neurologically impaired adults back to eating. I have cried more times than I care to admit to from seeing someone who had a stroke drink coffee or eat yucky hospital food! I even have been known to cook for my patients. I made some rockin' egg salad back in TN one year and spent my Easter working in the hospital and hanging out with an 80 yr old man who loved egg salad, but was still so sick he could only eat with his speech therapist.....so I made the salad and we celebrated right there at the ol' HS. It was a good Easter!

If I care about you, I will cook for you....that simple! Plus, I mean I have to eat everyday, so it might as well be yummy! Hope you enjoy reading this blog about some of the random things I serve up!