Anytime there is Mexican food around, you can bet I'll be eating it.

I'm a terrific Mexican cook, and I just love Mexican food. And I love cooking Mexican food.

I grew up on a ranch with my father, so he educated us really early on about guns. We used to go target shooting all the time.

Baking is too precise for me. I cook with a pinch of this or that.

Even though I am very tied to and close to my heritage, I learned Spanish in college; I didn't grow up with it. Growing up in South Texas is different from Miami or L.A. where it is a necessity to speak Spanish.

But America was built by optimists. Optimists like my friend Amanda, who recently started a small business. When she went to buy her website address-her first and last name-she found that someone already owned it, but wasn't using it. So my friend emailed the owner of the site to ask if she could buy it. The owner wrote back.

I am treated no different than the other girls.