Cooking a lost art?

[Miss Z]

I find cooking to be a stress reliever. I love to experiment and I love watching people enjoy my food.

I agree with the above - cooking is a great way to unwind, when it goes right, that is. I'm a bit of a perfectionist with food and like putting effort into giving a dish some aesthetics as well as good flavours, so if it ends up collapsing even just in the slightest, I feel miffed. If I'm going to cook, then I do the whole lot from scratch - no cheating by buying ready made sauces or doughs. Filo pastry.... agony!

I've been cooking 'seriously' for about a year now, and started with a little student vegetarian cookbook in preparation for my uni days. I now have several giant hardback recipe books that are full of scribbles from where I've changed the amounts of ingredients and added new ideas.

In England, all they eat is SPAM.

Heh, but 'I'm a (supposed) Celebrity.... Get me out of Here!' taught me that the main diet of an Australian is witchetty grubs and kangaroo testicles.