I eat for a living, so working out is definitely part of my job, the same way that the eating, tasting, and drinking is.

Ultimately, I realized that in order to write about food you need to understand everything about cooking, so I moved to New York and enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education.

First and foremost, you have to remember that restaurants are businesses and they have to stay in business. And though everyone thinks they want grass fed beef, most people actually prefer the taste of corn fed - it is less dry, more marbled, and less gamey, not to mention much less expensive than grass fed.

I cook mostly vegetarian vegetable and bean stews. Quinoa salads. I make my mother-in-law's recipe for chicken and barley stew all the time.

My mother's kitchen was built to be the focal point of our house. I got into the kitchen often as a child.

I'm tempted by everything. My husband makes fun of me because every day it's a new food that I love. I have a weakness for butterscotch pudding, ice cream in any flavor and dark chocolate, although that's one thing I do keep in my house - 70% dark chocolate.

There are few women in America that don't want to lose 5 pounds, but I refuse to let that thought dominate my life. And there are too many other real problems in the world - real obesity problems and real hunger problems - to worry that much about a few pounds that I'd like to lose.