I've been married to a really great guy for 40 years. We have 5 children and 9 grandkids, with another due in a few months, none of whom live close enough for me! I love to cook, and began at an early age, before 10, and have attempted dishes in the gourmet range several times. Since there are so many recipes I haven't tried, I consider myself at the intermediate level. I still have a lot to learn! Some of my favorite things to cook include chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies, chicken and dumplings, from-scratch fruitcake which is not the usual door-stop cake some folks complain about, Tex-Mex dishes and slow-cooker stuff. I'm willing to try most anything once, except recipes with a gazillion ingredients. It makes me tired to read those! Some of the Tex-Mex dishes I cook are dishes that my mother cooked when I was growing up. I try to make her cornbread dressing, which is the same recipe my grandmother made, but I don't have quite the same taste yet. Maybe next year! Some of my cooking triumphs include a fantastic beef stroganoff, an improvement over the Toll House chocolate chip cookie (just ask my oldest daughter who is an afficianado), an equally good oatmeal-raisin cookie, and according to my husband, pie crust that is better than his mother's. High praise, indeed. The one tradegy that eclipses all others was a dish called Salmon Stroganoff. The dogs wouldn't even touch it. It was truly awful. My husband made me swear on my wedding ring that I would never ever try anything like that again. Believe me, I didn't have a problem with that oath!