Ginger-Lemon Tea

Hello! My name is Helen. I got into cooking when I was about 16. My mother was going to college (for some silly reason she didn't think she was smart enough when she was my age... but she made really good grades and I'm proud of her. Now she's an RN! :)) and my father wasn't interested in cooking but still needed his dinner. My parents actually paid me to cook dinner during the weekdays. I absolutely loved the experience. My mother, while an excellent cook in my opinion, tended to make the same dishes over and over. Not all together a bad thing, but I had a lot of fun making and trying new recipes. It was all so different and intriguing. My mother had a lot of good cookbooks that had previously never received much attention. I stayed up late at night flipping through them, too excited to sleep. What was especially exciting was that no matter what recipe I wanted to make, I would put it on the shopping list and my mother and I would get the ingredients on Saturday, the grocery shopping day. So at night I would look at all the pictures in the books and think about how they were soon to be my own creations and how I couldn't wait to try them. I was very much into foreign language and culture at the time and so I especially loved trying foreign foods, and found Asian to be my favorite.