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It was Thanksgiving 1982 (or '83?), in Seattle. The windstorm of the century (well, the storm of the month, at least) was due to hit the northwest, but it wasn't clear if Seattle would be affected. We went to my grandma's, and as was tradition, she timed dinner to be ready at 1pm. The turkey came out of the oven at 12:45pm, and she finished up some sides. At 1pm, the power went out (turns out, Seattle was in direct path of the storm), but the oven still had plenty of heat to finish cooking the potatoes and rolls, and we sat down to a lovely turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and plenty of candles to make it cozy. What I most remember is not the food itself (which was excellent, as always), but that Grandma was so tickled with herself at her timing.

@Erin Zimmer - the Paula Deen pie is an exclusive at WalMart. Food Network Humor has a great mashup of public reaction to said pie. I haven't seen/tried it, but I understood it to be a bakery item, not frozen.

That gratuity alone would have paid off the balance of my student loan. Sigh.

Lasagne - the recipe my family likes is easy to prepare since the noodles aren't precooked Paired with a salad and garlic bread, it is always an easy, must-eat-at-the-table kind of meal.

Growing up, my parents firmly believed in the family dinner. Until I left for college, my parents, sister and I had dinner together at least 5 nights a week (TV and telephone turned off), and then we'd go over to my grandma's house on Sundays for her excellent cooking. When my mom returned to work when I was in high school, I became responsible for cooking dinners and grocery shopping, and I felt entitled to the family dinners, if only so everyone could see how hard I worked! (okay, I was a bit self-absorbed as a teen). My dad was great for dinner-time conversation - we always had something interesting to talk about. When I lived at home during grad school, it was just my parents and I, and every person for themselves - my 24/7 schedule and dad's graveyard shift made it hard to get everyone together. Now that I live alone, I miss that togetherness - spending time as a family, and having someone to cook for (food that you cook for yourself just doesn't seem to taste as good).

I don't use Twitter at all - I don't even text (I was getting too many spam text messages that I had to pay for. Because my cell-phone provider has an all-or-nothing policy regarding texting, and because no one I know would text me anyway, I just disabled it altogether).

The first cookbook I remember using was something called "Kids can Bake", which was published in the late 70s. It had a great recipe for popcorn balls - I remember helping my mom make some for my kindergarten Halloween party. The first cookbook I owned was a small pamphlet of recipes compiled by women at my grandmother's church - she had bought copies for my sister and I when I was 9. It had recipes such as lime-jello mold, green bean casserole and more chicken casseroles than I could count. Yum.

Hearing about funerals always makes me sad - I've been to more than I'd like to count in the last few years. My dad is an only child and his mother had no other family in the US. She did not want a funeral, and instead requested that our family go to her favorite restaurant to celebrate her life (she made sure my dad had the money to pay for it). It was a special moment for us (about 12 total). The food was excellent, and the staff took great care of us when they learned why we were there. Of course, this works best when the number of guests is manageable.

My maternal grandmother's church has a funeral ministry that provides a dessert buffet. They asked what grandma's favorite desserts were, and some of grandma's favorite pies, cakes and cookies were among the offerings at her funeral.

A cousin, who is a caterer, prepared a salad and sandwich buffet for her father's funeral (with help from her business partner). There were six different salads (2 each of vegetable, pasta and fruit) and fixings for hoagie sandwiches (her father's favorite). The items were easy to prepare ahead of time for a large, multigenerational crowd (about 100), and the funeral home staff did all the set-up so my cousin could just be with her family on the day of the funeral.

I always wake up hungry, so eating breakfast is the 2nd thing I do every morning (after getting ready for work). I don't have a dedicated home computer, so pulling my laptop out of its case (where I pack it every night so I don't forget to take it to work), waiting for the DSL to kick in and opening the requisite software seems like too much effort before 7am to justify the few messages I actually receive.

My biggest/most memorable baking disaster: I ruined an Angel Food cake, from a mix no less. The first problem was not correctly positioning the rack in the oven. The second problem was not using an oven thermometer. My oven ran too hot, and the cake pan was too close to the upper element. Within 15 minutes, the entire top of the cake was completely burnt, while the batter was liquid goo. Angel Food cake smells heavenly (no pun intended!), but burnt cake smells awful.

Like pjracz10, I grew up in Seattle, so it is "dinner" and "pop". However, like flavacrisp, I think it was also generational - my maternal grandparents called it "supper" (breakfast and lunch were the other two meals of the day), but my parents called it dinner. Interestingly, my dad's parents (immigrants from Norway during WWII) took ESL classes in Seattle in the 1940s and 1950s, and were taught that "Sunday dinner" was not the same as a week-day "supper" (Sunday dinner was more formal), so if my grandmother invited us over on Sunday or a holiday (like Thanksgiving), it was for dinner, but any other night of the week was for "supper".

A crafty friend of mine once knitted a bunch of sleeves, but, being so used to paper sleeves, kept accidentally tossing them with the cup when she was done!

On Sundays, when I am cooking my big meals for the week, I have to have music to keep me company. Often, it's the local adult-contemporary station (which features 80s hits that I can sing along to), but if I want commercial-free music, it is either classical (kid you not, Carl Orff's great chorale, Carmina Burana, is excellent music to cook by), or Enya (especially her 2nd album, Watermark).