Another nice thing was that I would type out letters home for the admiral's stewards. They would then feed me the same food the admiral ate.

Be what you would seem to be - or if you'd like it put more simply - a house is no home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.

I wouldn't say that processed food ready meals and even takeaways aren't relevant to modern life it's just that over the past 40 years there are three generations of people who have come out of school and gone through their home life without ever being shown how to cook properly.

My grandmother was the greatest cook in the world. She could just go in there the whole kitchen would look like a tornado hit it and then she'd come out with the best food. Then she'd sit at the table and she wouldn't eat!

I don't feel any pressure to lose weight - and in any case if I didn't have my food I'd be a nasty piece of work and wouldn't be able to function.

I worked for the Office of Management and Budget in the White House on nuclear energy policy. But I decided it would be much more fun to have a specialty food store so I left Washington D.C. and moved to the Hamptons. And how glad I am that I did!

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef ' I feel is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

If newspapers were a baseball team they would be the Mets - without the hope for those folks at the very pinnacle of the financial food chain - who average nearly $24 million a year in income - 'next year.'

A human being has been given an intellect to make choices and we know there are other food sources that do not require the killing of a creature that would protest being killed.

I would say stay the hell away from the party scene. Anything you put in front of your goal and especially something like that whether it's too much gambling too much food too much cold beers on the weekend - anything that you put in front of the prize is going to end up getting in the way and hurting you in the end.