Started cooking as a child and love it. Have won tasting competitions for apple pie, chili, potatoe salad. Have been into healthy, low fat/low carb cooking for 5 years and have been amazed at just how delicious food is with just some herbs and lots of vegetables. Have been experimenting with vegetarian eating and enjoy it but not as a lifestyle. Fish and chicken dishes are my favorites. I love to bake desserts that taste decadent but are completely sugarless. I eat nothing but homemade bread so I have lots of bread recipes. Thanksgiving will always be a turkey but I change up the dressing and sides every year. Prime rib is Christmas dinner; I never have any left over and this last year I had 6 guests and an eight pound roast. It is always a hit. Easter is fun to experiment with; sometimes a ham but mostly I go for the latest Mediteranean dish I've found with lots of lamb and spinache. Birthdays are Italian feast and dinner parties are Mexican or Mediteranean. My husband is into Indian/Middle Eastern style and he helps to change things up a bit. We also do a lot of fresh game since he is an avid hunter. I've had so many but mostly because I rate my recipes on ease of preparation and variety of presentation. I reject a recipe immediately if it calls for very time consuming preparation (like more than an hour) or ingredients I need a food encyclopedia to figure out what it is. My spice/herb cabinet is extensive so it really has to be out there to be something I'm not familiar with. I read a recipe carefully for the blend of flavors, colors and textures. But if it doesn't have an appetizing presentation, I won't make it. I like my family and guests to be tempted by what the food looks like as well as how it tastes. I've burned my share of meals, forgotten a key ingredient, served my meal half-cooked, had the dishwasher break on a major holiday, etc. None of which stands out as a real tragedy. Whatever circumstances have dictated, I've managed to work around. I have never had to throw it out and go out to eat. The worst I've ever had was a chicken dish that I made with bad chicken and we wound up with omlets for dinner. The chicken was so bad even the varmints that lived around the farm avoided the trash when I threw it away. But that was the worst.