I love a challenge; I'm open minded about foods; however, I never cook with pork as it is against my religous diet. My mom is a very imaginative and inventive cook (cause she's a health-nut), so my tastebuds are well seasoned for any far out, unusual, foods. I've done alot of traveling and I currently live outside the US, so you put all that together along with "30-something" and you've got one heck of a cook who knows how to improvise and substitute when I dont see an item I need on the shelves in our markets here, I also love planning meals ahead (learned that from mom), it saves time and money and my family eats well. I love cooking indo-pak dishes mostly, but can naturally put things together to make dishes taste great (patting myself on the back, lol.) Biriyani is my most favorite dish to cook. I make a killer apple pie and sweet potato pie, and I make great pancakes.I guess you're saying, "gee, she's modest" lol I am a muslim and come from an Islamic family, so for us, the Month of Ramadan when we fast from food, drink, and among other things during the daylight hours. This time is where I experience my family's cooking tradition. During this time of the year we get up very early before daybreak to eat a meal called "sahoor". In our kitchen there is where you'll find my dad (who is a very hillarious man)waiting patiently for his meal and hurling extremely funny wise cracks at anyone coming to the kitchen (like my sister who joins in on the fun). Everyone is so excited to begin the day. My dad wants his cream of wheat and toast with milk tea which we eat as well (I cook this). This meal is a quick one though, then we pray the morning prayer and start our day. We end each fasting day with dates and water mostly and pray the dusk prayer.Then we eat a bigger meal called "Iftar". I love my mom's candied carrot glazed chicken and being grateful for the favors our creator(Allaah)has blessed us with Chicken Biriyani, chicken & greens w/ a twist and Parathas, fluffy pancakes, date bread, my mom's mayonnaise bread recipe, fried chicken, sweet potato pie, apple pie, corn tortias, and tacos (real ones) There was a couple, but I think the worst one was when I baked some chicken wings in a pyrex pan. I was very young and this was my 1st time baking in a pyrex anything . I saw my mother using them many times over the years, but never had I cooked in any of them myself. As my wings cooked to perfection, I glazed them with my home made duck sauce. I saw that I would need just a little bit of water to thin out the glazy sauce in the pan. Well I got a glass of water from the tap, which was very very cold at the time because of snow. Well, I opened the oven and began to pour a bit of the water alongside the wings in the pyrex pan, and when the very cold water made contact with the very hot pyrex pan, it (the pyrex pan with my beautiful wings cooking inside)shattered destroying my main course! Aaaagh, I was totally shocked as that was not supposed to happen and all I could do was laugh and cry all at the same time. Everyone was a good sport about it including my mom whose pan I had broken.