Started cooking when I was 6 yrs old, making choc chip cookies. Have branched out since then, and now love to cook just about anything and really enjoy cooking for other people.I am constantly trying new recipies and love to read cookbooks. I don't know how many ccokbooks I have, but I enjoy reding them like other people read for lesiure. My husband used to say I never make anything twice. As a nurse, I like to cook healthy food, but also love to cook gourmet, Italian, German, eastern European food,with an occasional Tex-Mex meal, but also plain old American food. I also enjoy basic, comfort food. Everyone in the family gets to select their own dinner menu on their birthday from start to end. Frequently they select a pie rather than a cake for dessert. For Christmas I always make German Stollen fron a very old family recipe, passed down from my Fathers family in Germany. Growing up, on Sunday night, Mother always made a nice dinner of a roast of some sort with all the fixings on the side, a tradition I try to maintain as I enjoy the time with my family. When cooking for other people and they ask for the recipe. When making yeast bread (before I got a bread machine) I would put the dough in my extra large Tupperware bowl and then put it in the oven. I would then turn on the heat for 60 seconds to raise the temperature to about 95-100 degrees to speed the rising. One day, just as I turned the heat on, the telephone rang. After I answered it, I forgot about the bread and talked for a long time. When I was done talking, I walked by the oven and saw flames from the burning plastic!! Needless to say the whole thing was a loss.