I'm 24 years old and live in Alaska. I'm a full time college student pursuing a degree in Elementary Education and also work part time. When I'm not at school or working, I'm spending time with my fiance, enjoying our three pet bunnies, reading, messing around on the internet, doing crafty things or outside digging in the dirt (aka gardening) if it's summer. I love cooking and reading cook books, but even though I have a lot of cook books I get most of my recipes from Allrecipes.com because I like the selection and the reviews. I really like making casseroles because even though they take longer, we have dinner for several nights. I also enjoy baking and making things that I know my friends and family will like. Healthy, inexpensive dishes are my favorites. I also like trying out different macaroni and cheese recipes. I've made more mac and cheese recipes from this site than any other kind of dish! I try not to cook too much meat, instead using beans, lentils, fish and extra veggies. I was a strange child in that the only cookies I liked to eat were my mother's Pumpkin Spice cookies (like thick pumpkin bread batter dolloped on a cookie sheet and baked). I have since widened my cookie horizons considerably, but still love Pumpkin Spice cookies. My mom, aunt and grandma also always made salad nicoise every summer when we got together and I have great memories of everyone sitting outside enjoying it. I guess I consider any recipe that turns out tasting like it came from a restaurant to be a triumph! Also, when my fiance and I started dating, he was a really picky eater but will now eat just about anything and enjoys almost everything I make. He even really likes tofu now. That sounds like a cooking triumph to me. I've had recipes not taste that great before, but I can only think of one time when I screwed up a recipe fantastically. Once when I was making my favorite broccoli cheese soup (Broccoli Cheese Soup III), instead of stirring corn starch into the soup, I accidentally used baking powder. We had recently bought a new brand of baking powder that was in the same type container as the corn starch. The soup foamed up and nearly spilled over the sides of the big pot I was making it in. It took me a minute to figure out what had gone wrong and unfortunately the soup tasted horrible because of my mistake. I did not include that little adventure in the recipe's review! Also, once my brother baked a triple batch of chocolate chip cookies and somehow accidentally used salt instead of sugar. I was the lucky person who had the first cookie.