My favorite foods are Japanese, Thai, Italian and Mexican. I also love American comfort foods and Southern and Cajun dishes. I love spicy foods too. Many of the meals I make are based off of what I learned from my mother - I usually don't have a recipe to read off of, it all comes from my memories. Although, since using All Recipes, I've been loving learning and trying out new dishes and adapting them to my tastes. It's great to read other reviews and the modifications that other people have done. I would definitely love to see more Japanese recipes on this website though, the ones I have been able to find haven't really been traditional - they are more the Americanized versions. I love cooking Japanese food. Since my mother passed away, I have been trying to remember all of the Japanese food she used to make. I really miss her cooking! I also love to bake. I'm always interested in learning new recipes and then modifying them to suit my taste. My absolutely favorite memory was New Year's Day. It's an extremely important holiday in Japan. I just remember my mother cooking for days - a week - before New Year's day to prepare all the huge variety of dishes. She would start making the mochi one week before. Mochi was so delicious. The aromas of all the food she would make would permeate the house and I just couldn't wait to eat it all on New Year's Day. On New Year's Eve we would always eat udon. I really miss my mother a lot. I will cherish these memories forever in my heart, and I hope that someday I can have just a fraction of her talent in the kitchen. I am happy every time I make a dish that my mom used to make and it tastes just like or almost like what she did. (My mother never had any recipes written down - it was all in her head - so I have to try to remember what she did.) I can't really remember any one time that I had a cooking tragedy. For me, I feel like it's a tragedy that I can't cook all the dishes my mom used to make. Oh, I do remember my husband once trying to teach me how to make traditional, Southern homemade fried chicken. He ended up burning all the chicken. It was his tragedy, but also mine because I was so looking forward to eating homemade Southern fried chicken. =)