About the Author
As far back as I can remember, I have always enjoyed cooking. While growing up, my mother was not employed outside of the home, so she always had a home cooked meal on the table for dinner. Now, when I say home cooked, I mean home cooked . There was no such thing as instant potatoes or packaged gravy at my house. We made our own Hamburger Helper with ground beef and whatever noodles, potatoes and spices we had on hand. My dad is from Hamlet, North Carolina, so as you can imagine, he loves to grow things. We have always had a garden, and let me tell you, if you look up green thumb in the dictionary, you will probably see his picture. There was always an abundance of fresh vegetables to compliment my mothers cooking. Most everything we had was "home cooked" or "fresh from the garden".
Every Christmas we would spend an afternoon making sugar cookies. I looked forward to this every year. We would roll them out and use cookie cutters to cut them into stars, trees, angels and reindeer. After we had baked them and they had cooled, we would spend the rest of the afternoon (and sometimes the next evening) decorating them. We would brush them with corn syrup and then sprinkle them with colored sugars, chocolate sprinkles, cinnamon bites, etc.
Tragically, my mother was taken from us when I was in my early teens. I cannot really say why I continued to cook at that point. Was it because it was how I was raised, or was it because I wanted to honor her memory and keep up the tradition. Looking back, I think it was a little of both. As the years went by, I created some new cooking traditions of my own. I do not make the sugar cookies at Christmas anymore. Since my sisters and I are grown, and my nieces are either grown or living out of state, it is not as much fun to decorate them myself. Instead, I try to make tamales every year. I still use many of my mother's recipes, as a matter of fact, a few of them are my first book, 360° of Tailgating .
As the years went by, I continued cooking and trying to grow a garden. I have not been as successful at the later venture as I am with the cooking part. I had resigned myself to buying fresh produce rather than growing it. In 2006, my husband and I built a house on 2 ½ acres in a rural area of Phoenix, AZ. I think I am going to try the gardening thing again. I only hope that my dad realizes how much time he is going to have to spend here giving me advise on how not to kill everything I plant.
The other thing I have gained much more experience in is throwing a party. I love to have a party. I love the planning, creating the invitations, making the menu, deciding on the decorations, and then putting it all together. I spend over a month on my Christmas party every year. There is usually some type of a theme. One of the more popular ones was the tropical theme. For that one, we did not put up a traditional Christmas tree. Instead my husband had the idea to buy tropical trees, so we went to the local nursery and bought a couple of banana trees and a couple of small palm trees and put them in the corner where we usually had the Christmas tree. We decorated them with silk hibiscus flowers instead of ornaments. We served tropical food and drinks and asked everyone to wear Hawaiian shirts or dresses. We even ordered silk flower Leis and everyone got 'leid' upon arrival. There was a musician that played Jimmy Buffet music and we had a dance floor for everyone to dance on. After the holidays were over, our plan was to plant the trees and keep them in the yard. Remember the black thumb thing...needless to say, they didn't make it. That is also the reason that I have an artificial Christmas tree. I have not killed that yet, but don't put it past me.
In the recent years, I have expanded my parties from my home to the track at NASCAR races. I made my fair share of mistakes over the years, which is what prompted me to start making the lists of supplies to have on hand when at the track. Every race, I added and added to these lists until I had them down to what I needed to successfully host a party at the track. These are the items that I have supplied in 360° of Tailgating . For many days each race, the track is our home away from home and it is important to have what you need with you.
Like most cooks, I learned to cook without an actual recipe. You just add a pinch of this and a dash of that and a splash of that until the taste is what you want it to be. To actually write down the recipes with actual measurements was a challenge. I had a blast creating 360° of Tailgating . There were challenges, but there was definitely more good times. I got to prepare every recipe multiple times so I could make sure the ingredient measurements were right (remember the pinch and dash thing?) and of course, I had to have friends over constantly to 'taste test' the creations.
I hope you have as much fun using the tips and recipes from the book as I had making it. Visit my blog and tell me about some of your tailgating adventures and family traditions too.
HAPPY TAILGATING!
