My mom says it's in my genes. My grandma also had a tendency to trudge home from the library with her arms full of cookbooks. I got a late start, but sometime a few years ago I developed the same habit. Thinking back, I'm really not sure what got me started. I remember getting the bug to try making a cheesecake...or maybe it was the biscuits I made while visiting a friend in New Hampshire? But whatever it was that got me going, I believe nursing school solidified the habit. Baking was a fabulous form of procrastination, and during the busiest weeks at school, you could be certain that I would arrive at home with a new stack of cookbooks, only to show up at school with the product of my latest experiment.
Now that I am no longer in school and my free time is my own, I have only gotten more enthusiastic about food. Baking is what gets me truly excited (although every now and then I venture into the world of cooking "real food"), and I am usually drawn towards old fashioned comfort food - layer cakes, biscuits, pies, cookies, and bread. Sugar is usually involved in large quantities. My days off are spent offering diabetes-inducing treats to everyone in my path, then I go to work as a nurse and curse how rampant diabetes is becoming...I haven't quite figured out how to reconcile that, but the fact of the matter is that I can't stop baking. So there you have it.
