Tension translates to your guests. They'll have a much better time having chili and baked potatoes than they would if you did roast duck with a wild cherry sauce and then had to lie down and cry for a while.

I am not sure about facelifts because I wouldn't want to be someone who just looks like she's had a facelift.

There is a kind of euphoria of grief, a degree of madness.

In fact I am quite snappy and irritable, and I don't know if I'd like to make myself worse in that respect.

Also, in a funny way, if you have been happily married there are no unresolved areas, nothing to prove to yourself after the other dies.

I know the crew so well, so I forget I'm being filmed. It's like cooking with a friend in the kitchen - you're talking, as you do, and maybe you're telling her about this wonderful way to prepare lamb chops - it's more natural, more honest.

Sometimes...we don't want to feel like a postmodern, postfeminist, overstretched woman but, rather, a domestic goddess, trailing nutmeggy fumes of baking pie in our languorous wake.