I am 24, and have been cooking for as long as I can remember. My challenge now is to scale back from cooking for a family of 6 (or 5 roommates!) and master cooking one serving at a time. I'm also very health-conscious and love modifying rich dishes into healthy ones, and finding new ways to cook my newly-discovered love - vegetables! I'll never give up the cheesecake and cookies; now they're just made with neufchatel, whole grains and applesauce. :) As much as I love new, creative recipes, I think I get the most joy out of the comfort foods. My boyfriend raved for days over my meatloaf, and a friend begs me constantly for chicken and dumplings after I made it for a dinner party. Being relatively new to living on our own, I love giving my friends a reminiscent taste of home. My dad did a lot of the cooking when I was growing up, and I loved helping him out in the kitchen. His recipes are famous in our family; I felt so honored to get to dump the raisins in the stuffing or choose which nuts went in that batch of Christmas fudge. At 17, I learned the hard way that if you over-whip cream, you get butter. I was so proud of the prospect of beautiful mounds of fresh whipped cream topping my made-from-scratch caramel-pecan pie, and subsequently devastated when I had to make a last-minute switch to Cool Wip. I'll never make that mistake again!