Originally from the US, I started using allrecipes regularly when I started travelling and living in different countries and couldn't carry my cook books and often couldn't find the ingredients that I was used to. But I think that my cooking has improved dramatically because of it. It's taught me how to analyse and understand a dish, substitute and improvise with ease (And laugh at flopped dishes!) I love baking pies. There's just something really homey about homemade fruit pies.... A full thanksgiving dinner for my international friends made all by myself in one very fickle oven that was barely big enough for the turkey. Bean bread! I was in Ecuador at the time and the lady at the market assured me over and over that it was corn meal but it really was some sort of ground bean meal. Not really a tragedy, but highly amusing. (And not very tasty)