Of course I will continue to share my favorite Southern recipes just like my mama grandmother and family shared with me over the years. And now I'll be adding a little bit of a lighter touch to some of these wonderful dishes.

It's a tremendous responsibility to be direct descendants of the prophet Muhammad. This family has had the burden of leadership on its shoulders for 1 400 years. I'm not going to drop the ball on my shift.

At this time when I turn 50 because so there's many of my friends and family who didn't get to see 50-years-old and so I'm celebrating for them too.

A rumor that followed me forever was that my family was in the mafia. For years I had to live with it. They'd call me the mafia princess so I rolled with it for the rest of high school. People even joke about it today.

From very early on in my childhood - four five years old - I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet because I felt disconnected - I was very tall and skinny and I didn't look like anybody else I didn't even look like any member of my family.

You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.

I'm still very connected to my family to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance payment on time. That will never leave me. It was how I lived until I was well into my adult years.

I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years and the American family audience. American jokes less fighting.

I sang in the choir for years even though my family belonged to another church.

One thing that was passed on from generation to generation in my family over seven generations in 200 years was never give up. That's the way we live.