I'm very Italian, so I love cooking for friends. Whether it's Valentine's Day and my boyfriend and girlfriends' boyfriends are away, or someone's in town, or someone had a baby, I cook.

In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.

This June, I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. For many years, my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event; for the past seven years, my daughter, Claudine, has been my cooking partner on stage.

I would like to host a show, something like travel or cooking or something like that, something I'm really interested in, and so I'm pitching a couple television shows.

I don't do much cooking because it's impossible when you travel so much. You go grocery shopping, buy everything, and then get a call to fly out for two weeks. By the time you're back, all the food is rotten.

I take a cooking class everywhere I travel. I find it's the best way to get to know a culture.

It wasn't the traditional cooking most people do. For me, as a young chef, Thanksgiving meant going to work in the kitchen at places like Gotham, JoJo and Jean-Georges.

I've always had fond memories of cooking Thanksgiving.

I'm a big cook and prefer to make meals at home when I can. I'm either cooking, or we're going to a drive-through somewhere. I'm really proud of my homemade sweet potato pie. At Thanksgiving I make five of them because they go quick.

When I was about nine years old, I announced to my mother that I was going to cook Thanksgiving dinner. And I went to the library and got this whole pile of books. I'd love to say it all turned out great. It didn't. But, sort of, from that point on, whenever there was serious cooking at home, I was the one who did it.

I've never considered myself a celebrity or even part of the entertainment business. I'm a cooking teacher.

I liked the energy of cooking, the action, the camaraderie. I often compare the kitchen to sports and compare the chef to a coach. There are a lot of similarities to it.

YouTube and other sites will bring together all the diverse media which matters to you, from videos of family and friends to news, music, sports, cooking and much, much more.

Cooking is always very romantic!

My husband and I have, in some ways, a non-traditional relationship - especially when it comes to domestic duties. He does most of the cooking, dishes, and laundry, while I do most of the yard work. I love to mow the lawn! And I take great satisfaction in planting and pruning.

My day job may be exhausting, but cooking is my peace. My dream is to have a big family with lots of grandkids. And we'll get together every Sunday for a hearty dinner at our house, and we'll all live in flavorful bliss, happily ever after.

I'm a bit of a dynamite fisherman when it comes to cooking as I don't have the patience, but I am a huge foodie.

A perfect chutney needs patience. If you are cooking it, cook it on a low flame; the flavors come out the best that way.

I recall my mum tried to teach me how to fry chicken once, and I almost burned down half the kitchen... I don't think I have the patience for cooking.

So when I do Chinese cooking, I mix everything together, then the kids have to eat their vegetables. They won't have the patience to pick them out.

Patience was not something that came naturally to me, but in cooking it is the quintessential skill.

Ah, the power of two. There's nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills, parenting, cooking elaborate meals, purchasing a grown-up bed, jumping rope and lifting heavy machinery. The world favours pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?

Cooking is not a craft to get into for money. The money may come, or it may not. But you must get into it for the craft and the culture.

I learned to cook from my mom. Most of what I ate growing up was Italian cooking.