I am a single woman, so cooking anything not already prepared presents an immediate challenge: it has to be good enough that I can stand to eat it several times in a week! Also, I've been a vegetarian for over a year now and have discovered several "staple" meals but still love to experiment, and I've also recently gotten very excited about baking from scratch. I've been trying all sorts of recipes that use whole wheat flours, but I am also really getting into cake flour recipes. I use as much whole grain/non-processed ingredients as I can get my hands on, and I love that cooking from scratch allows for such control over what you put in your body. I like to experiment with all kinds of rice and soy products for meals; I've recently discovered the joy of tempeh (yes, one has to get past the appearance!). I also always experiment with the spices that recipes call for - I always have to throw in an extra dash of this or another dash of that - I'm kind of like a mad scientist in the kitchen, but it's SO rewarding when an "experiment" comes out delicious! My mom makes a traditional Swedish rice pudding at Christmas (it's pronounced "OOst-a-caca," and I have no idea of the correct spelling) that I have made her PROMISE me she will teach me how to cook. My grandmother was the best pie maker in the world, and I greatly wish I'd learned how to make her chocolate pie... but I have her rhubarb pie filling almost right! Just before I went vegetarian, I prepared a Thanksgiving meal, complete with turkey, for the first time for my family and then some... and I pulled it off without a hitch. The turkey came out great, and I didn't set anything on fire for having forgotten about it cooking. :) Most recently, I prepared a tempeh dish that my decidedly meat-and-potatoes brother in law LOVED and asked for seconds - that was a major triumph! I can't melt chocolate chips in a pan. I just can't. I tried to make puppy chow (you know, the peanut butter-chocolate-powdered sugar Crispix stuff) when I was about 12, and I fried the chocolate chips right to the bottom of my mom's best pan. Filled the whole kitchen with smoke. It was terrible! Since then, I haven't had any major mishaps in the kitchen... but I will never forget that one- and probably never try to make puppy chow again!