I grew up with the belief that combining career with passion has always been the true and tested model for finding joy and purpose in life. Because of that, I found that the most rewarding aspect of being involved in the cooking industry is to do what I truly love for a living. When I was growing up, my mother would always experiment with all kinds of dishes in our kitchen. I remember one time when we were young, and had just moved into a new place, we were craving a specific type of round buns. We couldn&rsquo;t find a bakery around, and we didn&rsquo;t really know the area well enough to venture out and explore. So, instead of just letting it go or saying we&rsquo;ll try again in the morning, my mother concocted a way of baking the bun at home, using a recipe of her own imagination and a microwave. To this day, I&rsquo;m not exactly sure how she did it, but I remember the smell of fresh bread wafting through the kitchen and the excitement and surprise of getting to eat a meal I&rsquo;d been craving that I had no idea could even be prepared at home.&nbsp;<br />My entire childhood was filled with all types of pastries: Pizzas with types of stuffed crusts that were not even yet available on fast food menus, an entire table of cakes for every birthday, and a new recipe almost every day. I&rsquo;m 100% convinced that some form of magic was flowing in our kitchen. Some of it must&rsquo;ve ended up in me one way or another, because food became my favorite art form and the one thing I wanted to invest the majority of my time and efforts into.&nbsp;<br />I graduated from a Language Arts Faculty, majoring in Italian and English studies. When I first started my professional career, I worked as a secretary in a major firm. While I was there, I realized that if I didn&rsquo;t try to go after what I really wanted now, I will spend the rest of my life wondering what could have been, and I was not willing to do that. I took on a job as a Chef Assistant, but after 7 months, I&rsquo;d learned everything there was to learn in the position, and decided it was time to pursue my own thing. In Ramadan of 2014, I founded Molly Bakes; a baking startup that specialized in all kinds of pastries, with a focus on cakes, tarts and cheesecakes &ndash; a tribute to my sweet childhood (pun intended). The startup has gone through its ups and downs but we have kept it afloat for the past 4 years and we&rsquo;re still going strong.&nbsp;<br />Towards the end of 2017, I decided to adapt a vegetarian lifestyle because I noticed that my health was suffering incredibly from a lack of balance in my diet. And, because it has always been my approach in life, I didn&rsquo;t want to waste time in a state I wasn&rsquo;t satisfied with, and so a change was in order. This particular change led to discovering a lot of online vegan and vegetarian communities, and discovered a distinct lack of variety in types of cuisine and flavor palettes. The Egyptian cuisine has a different palette to offer, with a zesty, piquant and strong taste that is usually not associated with vegetarian meals.