Email me if you have any questions about my recipes or my reviews of other recipes! I'm at listval (at) cinci (dot) rr (dot) com . Soups, stews, appetizers. We tend to be ingredient snobs. My dad grew his own asparagus and wouldn't send us out to cut them until the water was boiling. He refused to eat a tomato that wasn't homegrown, and won't buy corn that wasn't picked that day. I love to develop my own recipes by looking at several recipes and deciding which elements and techniques to incorporate into a sort of 'best of all possible' versions that is my own. I have had some great successes and some great failures, but it's always been more fun than simply following a recipe exactly. As a newlywed I once cooked a pot of beans for 12 hours and they never softened. I finally served my new in-laws grilled cheese sandwiches at 9:30 at night.