I have always loved food and have been surrounded by good cooks. The only thing I might wish is that I had more time for cooking. With a full time job and taking classes, I do my "creative cooking" mainly on the weekend, and what I call survival cooking during the week. Mexican food, comfort food, stir fry, and barbecue. I like to find ways to streamline recipes, making them faster, easier and more healthy. The main tradition that comes to mind is turning my house into a bakery at Christmas. I make 6-10 different kinds of cookies; fudge; nutbreads, etc. My favorite was a dinner party, where I served "grill it yourself" kabobs on little skewers. An indoor electric grill was in the center of the table and we conversed as we made teriyaki beef, Thai chicken, and garlic shrimp skewers. The salad consisted of things from my garden. There were sesame seed bread sticks. The only side dish was a red potato and green bean saute'. The dessert I served was homemade raspberry sorbet on meringue shells, topped with a chocolate-raspberry liqueur sauce (which I also made). Our guests raved about the dinner for quite some time! My first attempt at microwave cooking, back in the 70's. We won't even go there....