**Tinkerbell**

About Me

Hi! I am happily married with a 20 year old son & a 6 year old daughter. I have been the Food Editor for the Mill Creek View Newspaper in Mill Creek, WA for almost 4 years. To read some of my columns from the newspaper, go to my blog at Tink's Treats. 

Here on Food.com, I am a forum co-host with Katie in the UP in the Kitchen Gadgets & Appliances Forum. Come check it out!

In Summer of 2011 I won my first RecipeZaar/Food.com recipe contest!  The Dining on a Dollar contest featured the under a dollar ingredient of zucchini.  My First Place recipe is Spicy Zucchini Omelet and the other recipe I submitted is Mexi-Ghetti. 

These are some of the demos I've done here on Food.com:

48 Hours with the Magic Bullet

Cookie Press Demo

Holiday Apples - Fun & Fast!  Peeler, Corer, Slicer Demo

Lorilyn's Dinner Roll Dough & Taco Ring Demos:

Cherry-Almond Baked Oatmeal Demo:

Here is a bit about me...I love to cook, bake, quilt (machine piece, hand quilt), ceramics, wood crafts, create greeting cards and scrapbook our family memories.

I have been licensed in cosmetology and radiology and have worked in many different fields from waitressing and dry cleaning to sales auditing and office managing for multiple alternative care doctors.  I practice level 3 Reiki, as well as other types of energetic healing.  I started a gluten free bakery from scratch and it was my dream job, but I am no longer working outside the home.  My time these days is full with going back to school for my bachelor's degree in child development and volunteering at my daughter's charter school.

I am a recipe junkie! Cookbooks, magazines, magazine clippings, you name it. I have been a loyal subscriber to the Taste of Home magazine since 1994 and until I found Recipezaar, that is where i found most of my favorite recipes.

In October 2011 I got a big surprise when I received the annual hardbound holiday book from Taste of Home with a letter saying they had printed one of my recipes.  The book is called the Taste of Home Holiday & Celebrations Cookbook and the recipe they printed of mine is Artichoke, Spinach & Sun-Dried Tomato Dip, a recipe created for the Recipezaar (Food.com) Ready, Set, Cook! contest, RSC #11 in January 2008. 

Even though I'm famous for tinkering with any recipe, I've become a bit of a stickler about trying to use the exact ingredient & exact measurement on a new recipe just so I feel the review is as honest as possible. But, subs happen. lol
I've also made more of an effort to write down the ingredients in those, "Don't know what's for dinner, but we'll throw in a bit of this & that!" recipes.  Although, this habit is definitely a work in progress.  It never fails, the night I'm too tired to write it all down as I do it, my family will rave over it & request it again. 

I am a self-taught cook. I've had many people make comments about how my mom must have been a great cook. And no doubt, she is. But that's exactly why I didn't learn from her. My philosophy was: "Why did I need to be in there helping her when she made everything perfectly to begin with?"
It wasn't until my first year of marriage (DH#1). I was giving a friend a perm & was irritated that she had to keep getting up during the wrap to stir something on the stove. Finally, when dinner was done & we sat down to eat I realized she'd been cooking hamburger for spaghetti. I was shocked! I thought to myself, "Ah Ha! So that's how you make hamburger! I can do that!" So I made a trip up & down every aisle at the grocery store with a pound of hamburger in my hand, wondering, "Now what do I do with it?" That's when I saw a magical box of "Hamburger Helper"!
Ahhhh, the old days. We ate hamburger helper nearly every night for a year & then I thought I'd puke if I had to eat it one more time. There HAD to be something else to cook!
That's when I dug out that one Betty Crocker cookbook I got for our wedding. I just started following the recipes. After that I was hooked. I've also had people compliment me on my cooking & I've always just said, "I can follow a recipe. That's all." At least until I discovered how much fun it is to create my own recipes.

My biggest cooking tragedy: Eating hamburger helper for a year.
My biggest accomplishment: When I very first "widened my horizons" as my dad used to say to me about trying new foods. I tried a recipe & loved it. It was a delicious grilled vegetable sandwich. Not a hard recipe, but I was a beginner & by the time we'd eaten it was 11pm. I called my dad & woke him up to tell him I'd just eaten eggplant... & I LIKED it!

Here are a few photos of the special people I like to cook for:

Bryan & I got married in Aug of 1998 & our reception was at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle, WA.



Nick & Sophie (14 & 1) Sophie (3) Go Broncos!