Since I was 8 or 9, I would stand there watching my mom cook dinner. I knew the basics of making scrammbled eggs and ramen noodles. When I turned 9, my mom for the first time let help her prepare by chopping all the meat and veggies. By the time I was almost 10, I was cooking dinner for my family. I never experimented with recipes though, I just made what my mom would ask me to prepare. A lot of stir-fry dishes, soups, and oven baked chicken or pork. Now that I'm in my early 20's, living with a man, I'm starting to try new dishes. I'm very excited! I'd like to try and cook ANYTHING! I am so thankful for Allrecipes. If it wasn't for this website, maybe I wouldn't experiment so much. I enjoy soups, chicken, pastas, pasta salads, pork chops, and I'm now experimenting with a slow cooker. I see so many recipes for slow cookers that I finally bought one. Being single and living with a man, I figure it'll be convienent for us, instead of slaving over a stove after work. We just don't have time for all of that. When I was living at home, we would always have pepper in handy. My mom made all sorts, but, I had a few favorites. The basic was red chilis, salt to taste, chopped up cilantro and green onions. You then smash it up with this tool my mom bought from an Asian store, that looked like a wooden carved stick. It was smooth, about the size of a hot dog, but, maybe longer. You dip meat into it, or just eat it on the side with your meal. Another one of my favorites was made with the basic as I mentioned up there, but, you add baked eggplant to it. You bake the eggplant I'd say 30 minutes or so, just until it gets soft, then you peel the skin and chop it into chunks and smash it with the already smashed pepper. Other good ones are the basic with either tomatoes or mushrooms. They are all delicious! I made lasagna for the first time last month. It turned out great! I've always wanted to learn. When I'm at the grocery store and I walk past the lasagna noodles, I want to pick it up, but, think, how do you even cook those huge noodles? So, after a visit up north, I learned with my neices and found that it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. I also tried the 30-Minute Minestrone recipe on this site...my first time making soup. I was so surprised on how good it was and so easy! I found a recipe on here for Sesame Chicken. It didn't look like the ones from the restaurant. I was making it for the man, on his birthday. =( He ate it still and said it was good, but, he could be saying it to make me feel better. Anyway, it was very dry and all you can taste was the Chinese 5 Spice. I don't really like that taste by the way.