I had always been interested in cooking and baking from the time I was little and dreamed of having the Robin Hood baking oven so I could bake tiny cakes with icing. I never got the oven but now I have my own kitchen to play in, though cleaning is on a much larger scale! I enjoy recipes that don't require a huge list of ingredients. As far as cooking goes, Chinese food was the norm in my house so I make a lot of vegetable and meat stir-frys, but I also cook stews and soups. I love making my own homemade noodles and dumplings, and crèpes. My baking favourites are scones, double chocolate brownies, snickerdoodles, pound cake, and lemon meringue pie. Hand-wrapped won tons have been a family tradition for years, as are Saturday morning thin, French-style sweet crèpes. Most of my "firsts" I consider to be triumphs, and all of those "firsts" were the result of careful searching on AllRecipes to find highly-rated and top-reviewed recipes. I also read reviewers' recommendations to ensure success. These "firsts" include pizza dough from scratch, meringue cookies, lemon meringue pie, sour cream scones (Grandma Johnson's), and eggless chocolate cake (II). I had heard that making mayonnaise from scratch was difficult, so my first careful attempt at homemade mayonnaise was successful. I botched my second attempt a few weeks later after thinking about how easy the first attempt had been. I added the oil much too quickly and I ended up with a runny, oily, useless mess. It wasn't until months later that I found out I could have restarted and salvaged the mayonnaise.