You know, it's no secret that I absolutely love cooking.  However, it's not because I love to clean a mess, measure ingredients, or wait an hour for a delicious cake to be ready.  The reason I love to cook? 

Well, you see it there on the left.  It took me two days to make my giant birthday cupcake.  A moist, lemon pound cake decorated in swirled roses with a decadent lemon buttercream frosting.  And the muffin liner?  Homemade with luscious white chocolate.

See, for me, it's about the end result.  It's the "WOW" on my niece's and nephew's faces when they see something like that.  It's the fun we have when we make it together or it's all the dancing I do while I'm making it!  It's how I approach the process and the impact my cooking will have on others that drives me to make a delicious meal, dessert or cake for a special occasion.

Well, it can't possibly hurt, right?  But here are some tips that will make cooking fun, easy and even an event for the family to look forward to!

1.  Pick a recipe that the entire family will enjoy eating AND be able to help with.  Children love to help and they will eat almost anything when they've had something to do with it.  Yes, I had a five year old eating asparagus like french fries one time.  Because he HELPED!  He just HAD to eat his "fun project"!

2.  Read through the entire recipe and make sure you have all of the ingredients.  Have the family help measure everything out in the order that the ingredients will be used (this makes the process easy and go more smoothly.

3.  This is probably most important!  Pick out a favorite cd together and dance to your favorite music while you cook!  Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" will get everyone moving and singing and happy and looking forward to the next time you can all "dance" together again!  Hey, love her or hate her, Lady Gaga makes great cooking music!

4.  If it's a dessert, cooking can be a fabulous way to teach your children the power of sharing.  Take some cupcakes, cookies or the like to the neighbors and see your children's faces light up when they see how happy the neighbors are with what THEY made!

Well, I hope you'll trust me on this one.  But, if you're skepical, I have a couple of examples to prove my point.  In college, I cooked in exchange for sharing books with fellow students.  College tuition is expensive and the cost of books was killing me!

 One girl shared Spanish books with me in exchange for my cooking dinner.  Well, she came over one evening and thought I'd ask her to help me with a traditional Southern dinner.  We cooked together, laughed all evening, used our Spanish (blaring Santana and Maná - don't forget the music!) and by the time we got to our Spanish assignment, we were so relaxed and immersed in the language that what we had planned to take several hours, well; it only took about 45 minutes!

Next true story?  When I was single, living in my first apartment on my own, a new college graduate, I cooked all of my meals because I couldn't afford to eat out.  Well, it was tough to cook for one, so I cooked for neighbors and my maintenance technician.  Why?  Because I wanted to!  But the result I could never have anticipated!

Anything I needed fixed in my apartment was almost always handled the same day!  And my neighbors?  They were quick to tell me about anything suspicious going on in the building or if a package was left on  my doorstep, they would hold it for me, without being asked!

Cooking is a gift.  Cooking for your family, your friends, your neighbors, your service providers - it's a gift from your heart!  When you give a gift of yourself from your heart, it comes back to you ten fold, even when that's not your intention.  After all, I was just looking for someone to share my extra meals/desserts with so that they wouldn't go bad!

If none of that works, consider taking a cooking class.  Chefs make it fun, interesting and you'll have a fun, new repertoire to work with, including a few tips up your sleeves to surprise your family with (and cooking classes are GREAT fun to take with your significant other!)

I invite you to give "a love for cooking" a try.  I just KNOW you'll love it.  Please let me know how it goes for you!