Ann Cuiellette-Walter Marr's career in human resources is about making connections. "Finding the right opportunities for individuals and helping someone realize their full potential is what I like best," she said. "I approach my job and ask how can I add value to what I do? I work, too, with management to help solve problems with employees, sometimes with customers. I'm fearless; I go in and find a solution."

Her ardor for connection, her add-value attitude and bold thinking don't stop at the office. She's a passionate cook whose love of family, heritage and food come together when she re-creates the Creole dishes she learned to make from her mother and grandmother.

As the youngest girl, and the 12th of 13 children, Marr found her place early, by her mother's side in the kitchen. "My mother cooked every day. At school, kids would say they were having leftovers for lunch, and I thought, 'Leftovers? What's that?' When my mother made her gumbo, we'd be scraping the pot at the end of the meal, looking for that last little bit of sausage."

Her mother cooked gumbo in a pot nearly knee-high. She fried seven chickens for a single supper. Red beans and rice on Monday, the traditional wash day, cooked for hours until the beans were tender and the spicy sausage flavored all. "In a house with 13 children, my mother did laundry every day, but we followed the Monday tradition for red beans," Marr said.

"Everything was fresh," Marr said. "My dad would come home with a cooler full of live fish he'd caught. We kids would scale, gut and filet those fish right in the driveway, then into the kitchen where my mother cooked them up. Or he'd have a basket of crabs, or a sack of crawfish in season.

"Every night, he'd come in the house with four loaves of French bread still steaming so hot butter would melt right into it, and pretty soon, that butter would be dripping down your chin."

As delicious as the food was, Marr's memories of her mother's graciousness and hospitality are what give her the greatest pleasure. "My mother's house and kitchen was open. Other family members, friends; everybody had a place at her table."

Today, Marr combines that generosity of spirit with her cooking when she donates a Classic Creole dinner party for 10 to charity auctions. Marr provides the food, decorations and her time to local charities and organizations. "The dinners bring $3,000 at auction," she said. "I've been doing them for 12 years, four times a year."

Marr is currently finishing a project she's long held dear. Southeast Missouri University Press will publish her cookbook "Classic Creole," just in time for next year's Mardi Gras.

"It's my family recipes, each with little story about my heritage," she said.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, three of Marr's siblings lost their homes. "My sister had my mother's and grandmother's china and crystal in a cabinet, and it's all gone. Family photos were lost, too. I was determined these recipes and stories would survive."

"Our legacy is in the times we had growing up, often around food and family. Like the bread pudding. My father's family was English, so we had bread pudding for the holidays."

She's currently working to prepare recipes in the cookbook for photography. She wants to add a few family photos, too.

"My husband says, 'You can take the girl out of New Orleans, but you can't take New Orleans out of the girl.' That's me." As Marr's cookbook project demonstrates, legacy isn't just the things we hold in our hands. It's what we see in our mind's eye and what lives in our hearts.