Stock up your pantry and your freezer with things that aren't perishable: Your favorite jar of tomato sauce that lists "tomato" as the first ingredient, lots of grains, olive oils, vinegars, tomato pastes, onions, shallots. When you go to the store, you only have to pick up meats and produce.

I write everything down. I e-mail the second I think of something, or I write notes in my BlackBerry calendar. I set up reminder alerts on my phone. And I have a notebook by my bedside so I can write down any last-minute ideas.

When I was a kid, for my birthday every year, my mother made me pasta bechamel, which is rigatoni with a white cream sauce.

My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents, which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.

I'm not just a female chef. I'm a woman in a brand new hotel, and that's why I think it's so perfect to be at the Cromwell, in a corner of one of the busiest intersections of the world, with my name in lights. It's different in all those sorts of ways, and I'm hoping I'll be able to carry that through. Because if I can't, it's a step back for women in general. People will say - men will say - "See, that's why it's mostly men".

I always say to people that working full time and being a mom is probably the hardest job, because as a mom you think about your child 24/7.

You just need a little perspective. Warmed chocolate can give you that.