Since an early age I've enjoyed cooking, though for years I didn't get too adventurous. I stuck pretty much with old family favorites. A few years ago, I started cooking for friends who volunteered to bring all the ingredients, if I'd do all the cooking. We got together a lot of Friday nights and tried a whole bunch of new things. Since then, I've become a sucker for good cookbooks and have been working hard to figure out what really makes good recipes good. It helps having a resource like allrecipes.com. I've really benefited from the comments and suggestions left by other cooks, as well as the recipes themselves. Instead of cooking my way through Julia Child's cookbook, I think I'm cooking my way through "allrecipes". I love anything with pasta. I also love Cuban and Italian foods as well as soups and chowders. Definitely southern comfort food. I call it funeral food. It's what I remember the Mississippi church ladies bringing to a family suffering a death. It's terrific food and does bring a lot of comfort. I'm always trying to recreate these dishes. The worst was when I made a Turducken for Thanksgiving just last year. All I had to do was bake it, but between too many glasses of wine and family visiting, I overcooked it by over an hour. I may try again this year just to show everybody how good a Turducken can be.