I'm 26, have two young children, both toddlers. I've been learning to cook for the past 9 years. My husband has been my guinea pig. He has been there since my very first attempts at cooking and they were not always pretty. I feel bad for those first meals. Over the last 8 years I have improved so much. I feel like I could pretty much make anything, now. I love making healthy meals like veggie lasagna or stir fry. I like my family to get their vegetables. Quick and easy recipes are the ones I make for our weekday meals. Preparation time is always a concern for me. I also really enjoy making desserts, just not all the time because I always taste test as I'm baking and end up eating way too much. Every year on my husband's birthday I make clam chowder. It is so rich, I only make it once a year. It is delicious, though. Lately, I've been making cupcakes for every holiday or birthday. For a couple years I struggled with cooking. I thought I was terrible. Everything I cooked seemed to come out too burnt or too cooked on the outside and not on the inside. My mom suggested I buy an oven thermometer. I hadn't even thought of that. Low and behold, everything I cooked after that was wonderful. I was cooking a corn beef on the stove, and left the house thinking it would be okay. Well, it ran out of water and burnt to a crisp. The house was filled with smoke and smelled for weeks and weeks. It was a huge mess. Everything was covered with a greasy layer of smoke residue and had to be washed from the ceiling to the floor. I was also 9 months pregnant at the time and trying to get the house clean for the new baby - it was definitely a cooking tragedy.