Please welcome Viviana, the subject of this week’s reader interview:

Name, Location, Family: Viviana Aaron, originally from Argentina, then USA and now Israel. Married, mom to two girls, one in college and one at home.
Describe family meals and your mother’s cooking style. Growing up we only had dinner at home, with breakfast and lunch at school. For dinner we always had soup, even in the summer, and some kind of protein with salad or potatoes on the side. My mom was always working so she did not invest much time in the kitchen.
How is your cooking style different from your mother’s? My meals are more varied than my mom’s. I like to experiment in the kitchen. Sometimes this bothers my family because if I cook something they really like I might not be able to reproduce it a second time. So they better enjoy it the first time!
How did you learn to cook? I was my grandmother’s helper since I was very little. I can still cook her recipes by remembering the way she used her hands to knead dough, mix meat for stuffing, cut vegetables in different ways and many other pictures that I keep in my mind.