Every Valentine's Day, I pretend I don't care. Like many of us, I say I don't want the flowers or chocolates or a homemade card. How cheesy. I pretend that it's over-the-top to want the person you like to make you a ridiculously nice dinner, or do some showy gesture, ala John Cusack with the boombox in 'Say Anything.'

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.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

I have been doing merch' since I was 15 and in bands when I was a teenager - silk-screening shirts, making the emulsion in my mom's closet I converted into a dark room, through college. That's essentially how us bands survived was selling homemade t-shirts.

Growing up, my parents were health nuts who tried to deprive me of sugary and processed foods so that I would grow up with an appreciation for healthy, delicious homemade food.

My family lived off the land and summer evening meals featured baked stuffed tomatoes, potato salad, corn on the cob, fresh shelled peas and homemade ice cream with strawberries from our garden. With no air conditioning in those days, the cool porch was the center of our universe after the scorching days.

I love making savory stratas for Christmas morning. I get excited about it. It's a polenta strata with homemade bread, with a billion eggs and Parmesan cheese. I'll drizzle truffle oil over the whole thing, which will just destroy people. It's amazing.

On Christmas morning, we always make breakfast, and everyone eats before we open any presents. I make muffins and homemade applesauce, which I don't think anyone likes as much as I do... I just love the way it makes the house smell!

I remember debating the finer points of flaky pastry with my chicken-pot-pie-obsessed American dad. I remember the divine mix of Thai food, TV dinners, and hearty, homemade goodness that have shaped this palate of mine to this day. I remember all this, but I still Google my husband's birthday. Thank God he's famous.

Most of us have fond memories of food from our childhood. Whether it was our mom's homemade lasagna or a memorable chocolate birthday cake, food has a way of transporting us back to the past.

I think there's something about the homemade birthday cake, because my wife, on my daughter's first birthday, started the tradition where she takes a full cake and cuts the number birthday out of it.

Books are to me as homemade tattoos are to an inmate. Can't get enough of them.

All gods are homemade and it is we who pull their strings and so give them the power to pull ours.