I was born in Indonesia, spent my childhood in the States, and am etnically Chinese, so I'm lucky to know several different styles of cooking - though most of the time I prefer food with eastern spices :P. Recently I moved to Netherlands to continue my studies, and I'm not so homesick if I cook my own meals. You can find out more about me and my rantings on http://summerain.wordpress.com I've always loved cooking cakes and cookies and deserts for as long as I can remember... Now in Holland I tend to cook asian dishes more often. I love making dim sum and lumpias and little things like that, because its so fun to do when a friends over!! I am a bit guilty when it comes to the authenticity of western main dishes...somehow some eastern ingredient would end up being added into it :P. Now that I'm working, I can't spend as much time as I want in the kitchen... Hmm...I have pictures of me standing in front of a wok when I was 5 years old...my mom loved cooking and would often have company over, so I helped a lot in the kitchen... Living in Indo, we have so many celebrations: birthdays, anniversaries, national holidays from different religion and culture, etc...the mai in common is that it ALWAYS involves is a big meal with friends n families... Maybe that's why I love having ppl over to eat :) This february '05 I cooked for my friends family for Chinese New Year. In my family, special occasions would be celebrated with 'cia jiu', which litteraly means nine foods, so I did just that, cook 9 different chinese dishes... I was worried about it for weeks, having so many things to prepare, but everybody loved the food!! (the meal itself lasted 5 hours or so :P) When I was in junior high, me and my friends had to bake a cake at school, so we divided which ingredients each had to bring from home. Everything went smooth, until the cake started BOILING in the oven!! The teacher asked for package of flour we used right away...it was tapioca!!! No wonder... Hmmm...actually if I look back, that wasn't the only disaster we created in the school practice kitchen...I sure had a lot of fun though!