I don't know that I have a favorite meal. When I'm cooking I'm thinking about the person I'm feeding and I want to make them whatever they want. My husband's favorite meal is carbonara. I guess my favorite food is anything my mom makes. Because like anybody who loves their mother's cooking, if you try and make your mom's recipes, they never taste quite the same. And I don't know if that's because she's lying about what she's putting in there and just not telling me. Like when I turn my back, she's sneaking something in there. It just never seems to taste the same.

I never do the dishes, because my husband has an affinity for it. And I'm also not allowed to touch the coffeemaker.

Decide what it is that you are and then stay true to that thing. My brand is based very much on how I live my day-to-day life.

You do it with your own two hands, so there's a sense of pride. You really do forget all our problems, because you're focusing on the food.

Work hard. Laugh when you feel like crying. Keep an open mind, open eyes and an open spirit.

I was always a person on my mother's hip in the kitchen. My mom really wanted her kids at her side as much as possible, and she worked in restaurants for over fifty years. And my grandfather had ten children, and he grew and prepared most of the food. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was the family seamstress and the baker. So my mom, the eldest child, was always in the kitchen with my grandpa and I was always in the production and restaurant kitchens and our own kitchen with my mom. And it's just something that has always spoken to me.

I don't have to write jokes. I don't have to write insults. If you ask the man of the hour in the hot seat, my mere existence is clearly insult enough.