I'm a person of conflicting interests. In the summer, I love gardening, hiking, camping and outdoorsy stuff. Fresh foods take precedence - I have little patience for cooking during the summer. Once fall hits, I renew my interest in indoor hobbies: cooking, learning to crochet and playing computer games. Anything that the ingredients are not too hard to find. I'm not ready yet to venture into strange marketplaces looking for odd ingredients. Maybe someday, but not yet. None. www.allrecipes.com is where I learned to cook, since I was raised on Hamburger Helper and t.v. dinners. My mom was pretty tired of cooking by the time I was born, hehe... Simple things, such as learning what spices will go with what foods, amounts to put in without needing a recipe, and every recipe I make that turns out great, plus being able to make it again without having to read the recipe. One time I tried a crockpot pulled pork recipe with homemade BBQ sauce and both me and my husband got really sick. I like to think the meat was bad, but he thinks it was my sauce. I was just learning to cook at the time, so it was particularly embarrassing!