The first 40 years of my life I didn't cook anything but chicken and fish. You couldn't pay me to buy a whole chicken and figure out what to do with it. Slimy thing. And steak? What's that? How on Earth do you cook steak? It was easier not to have the stress of taking on preparing meals so I stayed quite slender and enjoyed it. Then I had kids. Everything changed. Since I left my career and stayed home to care for them I figured I HAD to learn how to cook. More than just spaghetti. Fast forward a few years and I discovered this site and my entire world changed. So many phenomenal recipes at my fingertips! Things I would have never tried or knew about unless I had every magazine or cookbook in the world. Now I'm an adventurous cook and baker and try everything! I just made a castle cake! I make layer cakes and I buy all kinds of meat and look for interesting ways to prepare it! Cooking is so much fun and I'm delighted I can find such a creative outlet in cooking. I have my favorite recipes on this site... and I use my Recipe Box often.. choosing my favorites over and over again. I love chicken dishes (still!), but with pizazz! Like chicken scallopini, chicken with mushrooms, and chicken Angelo. I love many of the desserts too.. like mini pumpkin whoopie pies (to die for!)... several of these recipes have become our family favorites. I really enjoy mediterrannean food, Asian dishes, and Italian. But I'm really getting into desserts! Yum! My father used to make huge batches of pierogies, a native Polish dish, from scratch in our home. I learned to make them too and enjoyed how he put pepper jack cheese in the potato ones instead of cheddar cheese with potato. My mother cooked alot of Italian food, complete with making her own spaghetti sauce which we all loved. She made her own pizza, complete with homemade dough and sauce. She was also an avid baker and made everything from scratch. Her brownies won a city contest one year and we got our picture in the paper. Too bad I looked like a dork. ;) My daughter's 5th birthday castle cake! I bought a castle kit, which comes with turrets and cones for the rooftops, doors and windows. I had to follow directions to make it look just like the picture and made my first ever stacked layer cake! It took 5 hours but I did it! It was a huge success and received rave reviews from all who came to the party! I also have made lots of delicious recipes from this site which have wowed my family and had them begging for more. Too many to mention here.. just nice to know this site exists and has enhanced our eating experience on a regular basis! My cooking tragedies really came before I found this site. I think the main tragedy was that I never knew what to cook beyond a few tried and true recipes my mom gave me or my husband knew or my cookbooks taught me. I just rarely ventured beyond what I knew out of intimidation. I was a career woman who worked the evening shift and really never had a reason to cook dinner because I was at work during that time. I didn't have kids for the longest time so there wasn't a need to prepare meals. I ate out or ate sparingly or ate what my husband or others prepared for me. I had to watch my weight so I rarely bought things that would fatten me up.