"... I was interested in cooking long before I even knew there was a computer. ... I started, I think when I was nine years old — I discovered s at the local library. And I announced to my mother that I was going to cook , all by myself. So I got this armload of cookbooks, and I cooked Thanksgiving dinner. It wasn't that great by my current standards, but it wasn't such a disaster that it turned me away from the topic."