SAHM for 17 years. Cooking since I was 9. Things in which I don't use a cookbook or recipe. They taste better. Vegetarian Magazine's Holiday Cornucopias. My first dish ever, age 9. I called my mom at work and asked if I could make dinner. She said she was planning Rice Salad. I pulled out a recipe for rice salad. It called for 6 cups of cooked rice. I poured in 6 cups of uncooked rice not knowing it was going double in size! Talk about coming up with triple the spices to make it taste better than plain ol' white rice with the bare minimum of veggies to rice ratio! We still giggle over it.