Here is the first of the winning entries for my Jamie Oliver "What’s Cooking?" Contest made possible by Cookstr.

It is entitled Home Made Burgers and it comes from Priya at Food and Laughter. She lives and blogs from India. She is a “working mom, juggling a career with three young kids, an adorable husband, a house and a garden…”

I can’t vouch for her husband, but from what I have read she is totally adorable her own self. So I guess it makes sense she’d have an adorable husband and 3 adorable kids.

Originally, I liked this entry because I loved the universal theme of kids and, McDonalds and birthdays. I don’t even have kids and I can relate to this tale.

She may be blogging from India, but her sweet story, of a mother's love, could happen in any one of many tens-of-thousands of cities across the globe. Because it illustrates, in the simplest way, how alike we humans are. Race, Gender, Creed, Nationality, Religion, Sexuality…the DNA ain’t that different!

Still, it’s easy to get caught up in cultural idiosyncrasies. And certainly there are cultural differences. But they too often get in the way of our perceptions of one another.

I loved Priya’s story because it got past all that.  Ultimately it is a purely lucid, genuinely felt story about a mom and a son and a special day. Oh yeah, and they happen to live in India.

But the cultural aspects are an interesting aside in this story too. And this is what put her entry over the top and into the winner’s circle for me. I have a feeling there are some tangible and exciting “cultural differences” between their McDs and ours. I mean McAloo Tikki Burger, what’s that?