I collect cookbooks like some women collect shoes. My family thinks I'm nuts since I am single and work 2 jobs. When do I have time to cook? Not often, but I enjoy sitting, leafing through and just admiring the pictures. I tabs to the recipies that I want to try. I try to make at least two to three new recipies a month. I am 48 years young & work in the field of physical therapy. I try to keep my menus healthy because I have seen the effects of obesity on the body and it's not pretty. Being overweight wrecks havock on your knees, feet, and especially your heart. I love photography and if I had not gone into the healthcare field that's where I would have ventured. I also like to bicycle, I have participated in 3 years of GOBA, the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure with 3000 other cyclists. A family oriented event that takes place the 3rd week of June in different parts of the state. We camp, are up at the crack of dawn and bicycle anywhere from 45 to 75 miles a day. I like to experiment with veggie dishes, I found a great new green bean cassarole dish that was low in calories 2 Thanksgivings ago out of the newspaper. I also like to make healthy snacks with nuts, and I enjoy new cookie recipies. I really like pasta dishes, but limit myself to how much I eat! Baking is therapeutic for me, and I let all my co-workers reap the benefit of my efforts! My heritige is German, so I have alot of dishes that were my Oma's. On special occasions, I will throw my efforts into the two day process of making Kartoffel kloße, a raw potato dumpling that are the size of softballs. In Germany they sell packages of potato for premade, cutting the process, but from scratch are better. It is a regional dish from central Germany, Thüringen, and are available on menus at upscale restaurants. Dad goes nuts and usually tears up when I make them. Oma and he came here to this country in 1946. I also make the best German potato salad. We always have Rotkohl (sweet and sour red cabbage) on all holidays, and have yet to get it to taste like Oma's. She passed away in 2007 at 98 years young, and even though she gave us the recipie, it still does not taste like hers! The tragedy that comes to mind is the first time I made Roladen, a German dish that is rolled, very thinly sliced round steak. I forgot the bacon that is supposed to be laid in side before you roll them up, and I didn't know that you needed to cook them a long time to get the meat tender. I served them to my future inlaws after only simmering for an hour in the skillet. They were tough as shoe leather and could not be eaten. Humiliated as I was, we all laughed it off and I invited them back to dinner for the same dish about 6 months later after I had a "class" with Oma on how to properly make them!