I was inspired to start cooking over the summer of my freshman year of college while living with my grandparents. My mom didn't cook much while we were growing up, so I never thought much about it until I stayed with my grandparents...each night my grandmother would make these fabulous dinners, and occasionally enlisted my help. I enjoyed learning my way around the kitchen, and more importantly...EATING our creations!! Since that summer, cooking has become one of my passions and I spend a lot of my cooking time trying out, combining, and modifying recipes...wanting to creating the "perfect" dishes! There's nothing better than FINALLY putting everything together and having a recipe that knocks your socks off! Especially when it comes to winning over the heart (and stomach) of a certain guy you've had your eye on!! :P I've never been a big sweets eater, and for that, I definitley consider myself lucky!...so I enjoy cooking main dishes and appetizers the most. I've been putting together a cookbook for a couple of years now with all of my favorite recipes...in hopes that I will be married someday soon(-ish) and have a slew of recipes to impress the new hubby! :) Many generations of my family hail from southern Louisiana...which means I've grown up eating lots of good Cajun food!! Instead of traditional Thanksgiving Day stuffing, my family always had rice dressing instead...and we usually started off each meal with an appetizer of boudin (rice, sausage, seasoning stuffed into casings then grilled or broiled until crispy--YUMM!). I recently took a trip out to Boston to visit some friends who had moved there from Arizona. Since the time they arrived in MA, they had expressed their anguish of not having any good Mexican food, so I decided to surprise them by "bringing" an authentic Mexican Fiesta to them! I spent MONTHS coming up with some really good recipes...and after much trial and error, created the most awseome red chile burros I have EVER had (restaraunt or not!), perfect mexican rice, and Chile Rellenos you would SWEAR could not be homemade. I loved being able to share these recipes with my friends who so desperatley needed some good "home cooking"! (in AZ, Mexican food IS good ol fashioned home cooking!! :P ) I always judge a Mexican food restaraunt on how good their enchilada sauce is. I'm a red sauce fiend! :P I've been trying to come up with a good recipe of my own...but I think I'm further away from this goal today, then I was when I first started!! I think I've tried every recipe on this site, and any other I can get ahold of...as-is AND with modifications...and I just can't find one that's even close to being good! :( Also, any time I try to bake ANY type of sweets...it's a tragedy. BUT, considering I'm not much of a sweets fan anyway, I haven't put alot of work into figuring out why it doesn't work...