Winner of Your Best Dinner Rolls

Congratulations to monkeymom (her monkeys pictured below), whose Heavenly Oatmeal-Molasses Rolls won this week's contest for Your Best Dinner Rolls -- earning her a lovely 6-piece bakeware set from Williams-Sonoma, plus big prizes from Viking, OXO and Tiny Prints, and a spot in the next food52 cookbook!

Q&A with monkeymom

• Describe an early food experience that has influenced the way you think about food and/or cooking.
• My parents almost always made Chinese food when I was growing up. So, in order to have anything different, my brother and I learned to make a few things. My brother learned how to make Buffalo chicken wings and tacos. I learned how to make fettucini alfredo. I once even got really ambitious and made prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, even though I'd never eaten Yorkshire pudding before. My parents were really supportive and happy to eat what we cooked.

• What's your least favorite food?
• I really don't like sea cucumber. I don't think I'll ever get over that it looks like a big slimy slug.

• What is the best thing you've made so far this year?
• I've been obsessed with the Tartine Bread cookbook by Chad Robertson. I fell in love with the bread and am very happy that I can make it at home now! I've learned a lot about bread making from it and am overcoming my fear of foreign sounding terms like "poolish".

• Describe your most spectacular kitchen disaster.
• Not that spectacular but I recently lit an oven mitt on fire when I left it too close to the stove top. "Hmm, what's that smell? Uh oh!" 

• What is your idea of comfort food?
• My mother's cooking. I was really happy to get her recipe for her eggplant, Criss-cross Pan-Fried Eggplant, for the Mother's Day contest theme. It's one of my favorite foods ever.

• Apron or no apron?
• I actually bought a cool-looking denim apron... but still don't use it much.

• What's your favorite food-related scene in a movie?
• There are many scenes in Eat Drink Man Woman that show amazing food preparation. The end scene always gets me when the daughter and dad connect over her soup. 

• If you could make a show-stopping dinner for one person, living or dead, who would it be?
• Someday, I will be very happy to cook for my future grandchildren. 

• You prefer to cook: a. alone, b. with others, c. it depends on your mood
• With others! Cooking food together is the best bonding experience.

• When it comes to tidying up, you usually: a. clean as you cook, b. do all the dishes once you've finished cooking, c. leave the kitchen a shambles for your spouse/roommate/kids to clean
• C. But I'm trying to do A more because being left with B or C is a pretty awful way to end an evening.