I'm in my mid-30s and spend most of my time caring for my family and home. I've been vegetarian for 18 years but am moving my family towards a vegan diet... it's a creative challenge to satisfy my egg and cheese lovers! My daughers who are 6 and 9 love to help in the kitchen. They are more likely to try new foods when they have input on the menu and when they help make it. My best friend lives 6 time zones away from me, but I feel like I can visit her kitchen virtually by checking her AR Recipe Box.... such a fun way to keep in touch! Basmati rice, tofu, beans and vegetables. It is amazing to me how creative you can be with simple ingredients. Lately, I've been exploring vegan foods from other cultures: Indian (love the spices), Afghan, Mexican, and macrobiotic. I love to make salads: green, pasta and fruit. I also enjoy baking cookies and bread. I wish I could bake cookies more often, but I don't know anyone who is in need of the extra calories (certainly not me!) so I try to limit my baking to special occasions. I like to try new recipes, and I don't yet have very many recipes that I keep in rotation. Sometimes, I forget which recipes I've tried, even if my family loved them, but writing recipe reviews or taking pictures of the food helps, otherwise I'd have forgotten what I've made. Popcorn is my favorite food, so much so that I once dressed up as Orville Redenbacher for Halloween. I make mine the old-fashioned delicious way: in a pot on the stove. My tastes have evolved since I was a child. I have adapted a few of my childhood favorites to my current lifestyle, but most of the foods I grew up with have been abandoned. Making houska (Czech bread) at Christmas is a family tradition I love. I grew up in a military family. Both sets of my grandparents lived in the rural midwest, and I would see them every other summer. They always prepared our favorite foods for our visits, and I will always associate those foods with them. One grandma always made cream puffs for me and sloppy joes for my dad (and she felt so bad that I hated sloppy joes). My other grandma would make navy bean soup for my sister, dried beef gravy for breakfasts, and she taught every grandchild how to make kolace.... no gathering was ever complete without kolace. A pot of simmering sauerkraut takes me back. Several years back, my grandma and I were making dinner rolls; she had an elfin touch that I admired - her rolls came out perfectly round and smooth, while my rolls stuck to my hands and came out like bumpy blobs. Her only advise was that the skill comes with practice.The other day, my husband and I were preparing pizza dough, and he said to me, "how are you doing it without the dough sticking to your hands?" Ha-ha! I've got the touch at last!! I'm very conscientious about what I feed to my family. We follow an anti-inflammatory diet as much as we can, and through careful observation, we've been able pinpoint and avoid problem foods. We've been able to manage eczema, arthritis, headaches, canker sores, and behavior issues through better eating. I'm proud that my kids are rarely ill, even during flu season. "Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food." - Hippocrates I feel like I'll never truly perfect my cooking skills because there is always something new to learn and room to improve. Most of the time I feel like a kid experimenting in the kitchen, but looking back, I have learned so much. My mom still bemoans the time I tried to boil water in the mircrowave in her stainless steel pot - I was 9 and trying to make mac & cheese - I had failed to notice that macaroni was usually cooked on the stove - the microwave survived, but we had to buy a new handle for the pot.