I had learned to cook a few random dishes for myself since middle school, but I only really started getting into cooking some time around 1997. I love cooking for three reasons: one, I can "custom-cook" something to taste exactly the way *I* want it to taste; two, I know exactly what's going into my food if I cook it (but don't get me wrong, I love eating at restaurants and at friends' houses); and three, cooking is one of the simplest applications of the attitude that "if I put in the effort, I'll get the reward." :p

nutrition:

I'm a firm believer in "you are what you eat" - your body runs, builds, and repairs itself by using what you eat, so if you keep eating crappy things, what do you think that's gonna do to your body? :p And no, this isn't about weight loss or "keeping my figure" or even looking good or whatever - I just like feeding myself the best so my body gets the best. I try to eat organic stuff and natural foods as much as possible - however, I'm not a saint either and I'm not out to punish myself, so if I run into something I like to eat and it's not healthy, I'll have a bit anyway. As long as I don't eat unhealthy things routinely, I figure I'm doing fine. :p

I'm a wanna-be vegetarian. What I mean by that is that although my diet is mainly vegetarian (grains! veggies! fruits! legumes! *drool*), I love seafood too much to give it up. :p (And the stuffed chicken at the Russian Tea Room was WAY too good to pass up. :p) Sheepishly I must admit that I probably wouldn't be so into health food and veggies and stuff if I didn't actually like the taste of such things - I'm glad I do like the taste of them though, as it makes it that much easier for me to stick to healthy eating.

favorite foods:

Japanese, anything Mediterranean (Greek/Italian/Spanish), Thai, anything vegetarian, Indian, young men *har har* :p

favorite dishes (more specific):

Japanese: soba, hamachi sashimi, sushi (hamachi, unagi, maguro, sake), inari, unagi donburi, miso soup, nabeyaki udon, shabu shabu, oden
Italian: tiramisu, any pasta dish with a good pesto
Spanish: paella
Thai: meang kum
Korean: mool naeng myun
Chinese: dim sum, chow fun
Russian: good borscht
random things: chocolate, basmati/brown rice, sun-dried tomatoes, couscous, tabouli, all kinds of mushrooms, sea bass, good gardenburgers, fish and chips, avocadoes, veggies/legumes in general, pomegranates, dried cranberries, good stuffings, chocolate :p
beverages: water (can't stand tap water, though), rice milk, almond milk, soy milk, green tea, genmai tea, noni tea, jasmine tea, mint tea, guava juice, mango juice, ginger ale, hazelnut soda

"foods" I detest:

processed meats and cheeses, packaged foods, most cake frosting, fatty meats, bovine/ovine/porcine meats, milk (I love aged cheeses though), feline meat >:p

Joy Meadow:

Joy Meadow is a really great restaurant in my hometown of Redwood City, California. It's ostensibly a Chinese restaurant, but the dishes are very much influenced by Thai and Indian flavors as well as vegetarian cooking and healthy cooking (they give you BROWN rice with each dish, which I absolutely love, but you can get a lemony pilaf if you really can't abide brown rice :p), so Joy Meadow's dishes are usually classified as "New Asian" cuisine in instead of "Chinese" (or, in the words of my old Latin teacher, "Californian Chinese health food"). No bovine or porcine meats are served at Joy Meadow - they only serve seafood or chicken in their meat dishes, and at least half the dishes Joy Meadow serves are completely vegetarian, all of which are yummy in a very Epicurean way.

I mention Joy Meadow here because it's the only restaurant where I actually love nearly everything they serve, and because any restaurant that actually dares to serve *nothing* bovine or porcine, gives brown rice with each dish, and manages to pull it off so well as well as staying in business has my immediate respect.

Stash Tea:

Stash Tea makes awesome teas - I tried their licorice tea once with dessert and I was hooked. I personally recommend their dessert teas only, as I'd rather get my green tea from local Japanese grocery stores in my area, but if such stores aren't readily accessible for you, then by all means check out Stash Tea's other selections. ;>

macrobiotics:

My dictionary defines "macrobiotics" as "the study of prolonging life, as with special diets" - which is true, but it's about more than that. It's about studying nature (which food is a part of) so that you can live better in balance with nature and with yourself. Macrobiotic cuisine and cooking (also called "whole foods cooking") is just a type of cuisine and cooking that takes that into account. Although I don't go so far as to believe that if I eat too much shrimp I'll become a crusty person with a hard outer skin and a sweet center (not literally, I mean personality-wise :p), I do believe that what you eat can affect your body's quality and even your moods sometimes... I mean, I always feel happy when I drink good hot chocolate. :p

Christina Pirello:

My current idol is Christina Pirello, a master whole foods chef, whose cooking show Christina Cooks is shown on a number of public television stations around the country (her official website is ChristinaCooks.Com). This woman actually cured herself of terminal leukemia through whole foods cooking. That's right, CURED herself. She's not in remission or anything, she actually doesn't have terminal leukemia anymore. :p She got rid of all the cancerous cells back in 1984, and they haven't come back. Shows what the power of eating right can do for a person.

Anyway, I could gush on and on about Christina, but I won't, cause I'm lazy. However, do check out her book (Cooking the Whole Foods Way - ISBN 1-55788-262-2), as it is a great resource for anyone interested in macrobiotic cooking.

I can't believe that I blabbed about food for a whole page... :p