Purple.alien.giraffe,
I do believe your name has made my day! I am so excited to have stumbled upon this site; thanks for the welcome. Well, P.a.g., I have lived in Texas, Florida, California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Sicily and The Netherlands, and find myself now in Rhode Island. I have been to all but 6 states in the Good Ol' U.S.of A, and my American dishes near and dear to my heart that I cook routinely include: Mexican food, (Californian and Texan, mostly), Southern comfort, Cajun, and some New England dishes. When I lived in Virginia, I lived next door to a wonderful lady from Corinth, Greece. She taught me how to make mousaka, spanikopita, tyropita, Greek Meatball soup, tzaziki, dolmades, and a few others. To this day, whenever I cook Greek food, I think of Eva. I love that about cooking--how you can almost conjure up images of the people and places you were with or were when you first were introduced.
While living overseas, I visited Austria, Germany, Malta, Egypt, Greece, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, The Ukraine, Luxembourg, France, England, Ireland, Switzerland (got a lovely speeding ticket there!), and Belgium. More on the food later...
While living in Sicily, I took several cooking classesat restaurants, and stood side by side with my neighbors in their kitchens as they each taught me how to make the "perfect" caponata, tomato sauce, fish, salads, antipasti, egg plant parmigiana (Sicilian and Anconan), limoncello, etc. Funny, they were so competitive with each other--each touting the authenticity and age of the recipe , as well as lineage. I love Italians, and I love cooking their food. I routinely make all of the above, except limoncello--I'm having a hard time finding the organic lemons. I also love to make bolognese--it is a family favorite.
After Sicily we moved to the Netherlands for a 4 year tour with NATO. We lived about 20 minutes away from Germany and Belgium in the southern region of the country. So I developed a love of cooking more of those foods. The NATO organization had a wives' club, and it had a gourmet cooking club where each country's participants took turns featuring how to make nice meals representative of their country. I learned how to make many cuisines, but my favorite were either the French dishes or the Turkish, although I like to shake things up.
Favorite dishes/meals: Papperdelle with wild boar sauce-Tuscany, I really like the food of Bavaria, although I only know how to make few dishes, French food, sigh, too many favorites, too many pounds to prove it, Belgian Fries--oh my!, and Dutch asparagus and potato dishes. How about you???