I am 45 years old, married for nearly 27 years (yes to the same man!!) with three children, 25, 21 & 15. I live in Newcastle, NSW, Australia. Newcastle is a large city on the east coast, 1 & 1/2 hours drive north of Sydney. We have beautiful clean, sandy beaches, pristine mountains/valleys and the largest coastal salt water lake in the southern hemisphere. Come visit Newcastle!! I'm not into cakes and sweet things (to cook anyway), but nearly always have chicken, pasta, bacon, cream, garlic, sundried tomatoes, onion. You can't go wrong with those ingredients. But other than that, I just browse through the supermarkets and design a recipe that I think would taste great. Mind you they don't always work that way, but it's a far way better to do that than to be bored with your cooking. Hmm, cooking traditions...I suppose I remember making gravy from scratch (pan juices, flour etc) just like my mum did. (Miss you mum xx oo -1998)I have a video recording of me making it in the kitchen of one of my many homes. But now I'm a bit lazy and use some of the pre-prepared gravies but also still add some of my own twists to them. Will have to think about that one a bit........ I remember a long time ago, maybe 25 years... I made a casserole with dumplings. Smelt really good, but I had used plain flour in the mix for the dumplings instead of self raising flour!!! We still refer to them as 'bouncy dumplings' as they were so hard they were like tennis balls!! So funny now that I look back on it but so upsetting and disappointing at the time.