I grew up in southern California and have in the past few years moved to Lynchburg, Virginia where the cooking is very different! I much prefer the variety of culture that food in southern CA typically consists of! I like to cook with lots of seasoning, I enjoy spicy food, and I don't make a lot of sweets. My husband and I hope to serve God in a foreign country sometime soon, so I try to keep in mind flexibility, with recipes and life in general! =) Chicken tortilla soup is simple and everyone loves it, so we make it a lot of the time when we have people over. Grilled chipotle-lime fish tacos are AMAZING, Cajun-chicken pasta is delightful, and my mom's sweet & sour meatballs on rice is probably right there with it. I like cooking things in my crock pot, and lately I've started couponing which has led me to inventing more recipes on my own out of the items I have on hand. My hispanic side of the family usually has tamales on Christmas day, and I think I might make it my goal to find a really good tamale recipe and do the same, even though I'm all the way in Virginia! I'm working on coming up with my own cooking traditions, but I still enjoy things eggnog while decorating the Christmas tree, and coffeecake on Christmas morning. I always test everything and I frequently add extra spices to compensate. Most importantly, I ask my public (aka husband and guests) what they think of any new meal, because nothing helps improve on a recipe better than some good feedback. -Never travel in a car with a crockpot full of Chicken Tortilla Soup on your lap... unless you have a cool snap-shut lid. -Don't turn on the front burner when you mean to turn on your kettle on the backburner. Especially if you have a pan sitting on the front burner with a perfectly good plastic stirring spoon! -Remember to adjust for the temperature of your oven if yours has a habit of cooking 70 degrees too hot. You will make delicious chocolate peppermint cookies into something with the texture of a gingersnap. -When making blueberry syrup don't grab the baking soda instead of the cornstarch... it turns bubbly, very blue, and nothing like the delicious purpley goodness it would have been. -Although some things work great when you throw all the ingredients in at once (like pancakes), coffee cake turns out rock solid.