Wow, I don't know what to say. I'm sure Wkoti has the edge on all of us.
I enjoy good food, and I have been on a journey to learn to cook for most of my life.
I learned to cook over a campfire when I was a Boy Scout. It's hard to call that cooking though. One night we made baloney stew out of the left over cold cuts, and it was so bad the dog wouldn't even eat it. All the adults tried to tell us how good it was, but the kid on KP realized why it was so bad -- we had burned a hole through the pot!
My Mom gave me a cookbook and a few lessons before I went to college. On the second date with the hottest girl I met in college, I made her turkey chili and (instant) "cheesecake." During dinner she told me she didn't like turkey or cheesecake. I didn't tell her what was in the chili and I took the "cheesecake" home. I finally fessed up after we were married, and now she makes the real cheesecake.
For years after we were married, I'd watch cooking shows on PBS on Saturdays then go to the grocery store and buy the things to make what I had just seen. Sometimes dishes would turn out, but once I made a low-fat quiche and we invited the neighbors over to taste the results -- we took one bite and ordered a pizza. I've learned the most about cooking from Jacques Pepin back in the days before celebrity chefs were a thing that he helped create. In more recent years, Good Eats, No Reservations, Top Chef and Master Chef have inspired me to continue the journey.
Living in Japan for seven years gave me ample opportunity to expand my cooking skills. Food there is an art and how it looks is just as important as how it tastes; it's enjoyed by the eyes before it's eaten. I also realized that things were good if they weren't sweet or savory, but there was a whole spectrum of flavors and textures available to me. In Okinawa, goya (a local version of Chinese Bitter Melon) was the most prevalent vegetable and chocked full of vitamins and iron. I learned to appreciate it for what it was rather than something that was comfortable to me. I started to focus on why things tasted good or bad.
For a while I thought about going to culinary school when I retired from the Marine Corps. I didn't want to take up the profession; I just wanted to up my home game. But as I started to formulate a plan for transitioning out of the service and into civilian life I realized it wasn't the smartest thing to go to culinary school at that time. As it was, I was moving back from a foreign country, I didn't have a job, or a house, or a car; it wasn't really the right opportunity to take time to go to cooking school.
A couple years ago for my wife's birthday, I asked her to invite five girlfriends and I made them dinner inspired by Iron Chef America, where the secret ingredient was the egg. I started cooking after work on Thursday, and on Sat night I served a different course every 15 minutes, for a total of eight courses. Every course came with a wine or other cocktail and featured a different egg, from caviar to duck eggs, and I think I shared a picture of the main entree on CP. By the end of the dinner, the girls were drunk and I was exhausted.
I had to go back through the "What's on your plate today?" thread to see what I'd shared with you guys. Some of the photos aren't there anymore, but I remember every dish. I can see my journey though those photos.