I have had fun cooking since I was in junior high school, and I would come home on the school bus and head for the kitchen to see if I could help my mother work on dinner. She started me out cutting vegetables and making simple meals, but by the time I was in college, I was making the big holiday meals basically by myself, using many of my mother's recipes and some new and different ones. I am married to a lovely woman, we have three children and 2 grandchildren, and I do most of the family cooking. Since all the rest of my family has "gone vegetarian", I have been looking for and learning about a whole new way of cooking. I still do the occasional meatloaf for myself, chicken parts, but have gotten away from roasts, beef and pork. For myself, I am working with buffalo meat, venison and "fake meats" such as seitan, tempeh and tofu, as well as substituting frozen store bought soybean meatless meat. I enjoy cooking Mexican, Indian and caseroles. I make a lot of bread machine breads, as well as sweet breads in season. I have had gastric bypass surgery, so I use a lot of Splenda instead of regular sugar, low fat meals, artificial honey and fructose. I am prideful of my large holiday meals that we put on, with up to twenty family and friends, some even that I had not met until we sat down to say grace before the meal. Learning to cook vegetarian has not been an easy transition, but I am getting better with each meal.