I love horses, painting, photography,refurbishing furniture, plays and musicals,and city festivals. I love ethnic food and clothing and would pick take-out from my favorite Chinese restaurant any day. Friends are extremely important to me including fellow all recipes member ~LadyEquus~. I am gluten free and I love attempting to cook things that are challenging or that I have never done before. I like meals to be easy and generally not take half a day to cook but still have an element of gourmet to them. I love plating the food decoratively making them look even better. I love cooking with all kinds of foods and spices and making/tasting different flavors. I don't like dishes to be subtle. and if I am not sure what spices to toss in I use my old stand-by that has never let me down!: the nose knows. ;-) stir fry, onion rings, cream puffs, cupcakes, potato chips, chicken pot pies,things with a lot herbs and flavors to them. a lot of Italian and Asian dishes.I love creating dishes of my own! As far as traditions go, growing up my mom cooked a lot of pot pies, soups/stews, meatloaf, steak and fried potatoes, stuffed potatoes, shishkebabs, and of course chocolate chip cookies and the best devils food cake you would ever have! Me and ~LadyEquus~ smelled onion rings down the street one day and decided to make our own. one of the best ideas we have ever had! I also created my own stuffed peaches recipe with this caramel-almond-stuffing.needless to say when peaches are in season I am required to make them now! an artichoke heart wine sauce. ended up tasting like really light olive oil which was weird since there was no olive oil in it.