Taylor Andersen loves to cook. She has been active in the Pro-Start program since it was first offered as a class. She loves cooking/baking because it was always something she was really good at. She decided to start taking classes, and thought it was fun, so she pursued this into her career. She started cooking at about 9 years old.

One of her first times in the kitchen, Andersen and her brother decided to make cookies, pancakes, and all of the easier foods, to cause less of a mess. She is most proud of cooking caramel banana nut muffins. Her favorite meal to cook is chicken rice casserole and the muffins. One of the weirdest food she’s made was gumbo. A lot of the odd foods she made were from Pro-start. She likes any kinds of food, but specifically sweets.

Andersen often cooks for her family. The most difficult aspect of cooking is the mathematics for it, to change the amount of something in a recipe, and what the cost for it is.

Andersen’s most memorable moment in her life was a surprise vacation to Florida for Christmas and Disneyland in 2015. “Florida was very warm and was better than the Iowa’s weather,” Anderson said. While in Florida, she went to her step-dad’s grandma’s and almost caught a bunch of lizards on the fence. She went through the Magic Kingdom in Disneyland, but didn’t go anywhere else because it would’ve cost more money. “Driving was the most boring thing about the trip. It took about a day to drive there,” Anderson said.