i am 64 years young, an old er nurse. i cooked for years to sustain my family(three children)and had no joy in cooking. for the past three or so years i am really enjoying cooking and do most all recipes w/my husband(who has had two heart surgeries) in mind. thus i need good taste and healthy. we now like the taste of healthy food - lots of vegetables. i enjoy trying most all pasta dishes and chicken recipes. i love all vegetables and try every recipe for them. we also use many fish/seafood recipes. i no longer bake except bread. my husband's family is italian and that was a staple at their table all year long. i make lots of italian dishes, but i try making new ones mostly. for christmas eve, they always had lasagne(italian turkey) and so we have also. i make homemade bread weekly and it is delicious. after seeing julie/julia, i made boef bourguignon. it took me all day long and i had friends to dinner and used pearls as my decor. the dish was just scrumptious(and i made sure to have real beef lovers who don't get that kind of stuff here over) but terribly unhealthy. once my husband and i made sushi(japanese food being our favorite) and it was really good and pretty. there have been many - not really tragedies, but they felt like such after spending lots of time on something and it turning out poorly. most nights of the week, i try a new recipe and many are great and some are disasters.