My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce some warm French bread - works all the time. I think I've been eating pasta for 26 years.

A few years ago kids from poor areas in France were asked to draw items of food. For a chicken they drew a drumstick. For a fish they drew a fish stick. Those are extremes but there is a lot that needs to be done to help children discover good food.

I always knew the importance of it since I was three or four years old my mother used to feed me wine and water. I grew up with wine as liquid food.

This June I'll travel once again to the Food and Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen Colorado. For many years my dear friend Julia Child and I have teamed up to teach classes together at the event for the past seven years my daughter Claudine has been my cooking partner on stage.

When I wrote 'Fast Food My Way' in 2004 I hoped that my friends would prepare my recipes. Now more people cook from that book than any other I've written in the past 30 years.

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 mom who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.

Food during my early years was a very difficult issue for me. I grew up in an addictive family. My mother had serious problems with alcohol and prescription drugs. I was an overweight kid. I can remember back in those days there weren't the strategies that there are today to deal with those issues.

I used food as a coping mechanism for many many years and it was my best friend for a long time.

My goal is to make Italian food clean and accessible and beautiful and tasty with simple ingredients that people can find at a local grocery store because people don't want to go to a gourmet shop in search of items that will sit in their pantry for years after they use just a teaspoon or pinch of them.

I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It's not all about the cooking but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.

I will come up with a project that will wipe out poverty in the Philippines in two years. I want to remove the people from economic crisis by using the Marcos wealth. Long after I'm gone people will remember me for building them homes and roads and hospitals and giving them food.

The vast amount of waste and sheer stupidity in government - from the Pentagon to the Food and Drug Administration - could fill committee agendas for years.

I do remember how it was to be poor. I do remember that in my early years we had to grow and raise all of our food even our animals. And I remember in my early life we didn't even have electricity. So it was very very hard times then.

I do the same exercises I did 50 years ago and they still work. I eat the same food I ate 50 years ago and it still works.

For years I always thought it was hilarious that I was this fitness guru because fitness was just a tool I utilized to help people improve their confidence. For me it's never been about fitness. It's always been about helping to empower people.

The main thing is that it's nice to see these young people - 9 to 14 years old - take the opportunity to get more involved in their health and fitness. We need more kids to be more active.

Once you are over 30 35 years old I think everyone should get down to the gym and start moving again.

Everyone knows in the industry that when these great roles come up every two years there's a huge number of people up for them. I'm not one of those top five females that can personally finance any film.

Actually criminal sanctions that are given could be up to five years for violating the rules and regulations under the campaign finance reform. This is like the Alien and Sedition Act of years and years ago decades ago.

Three years after starting by physically doing everything from raising the finance to special effects we'd finally cobbled together our low budget film.

Now both my films have been number one at the Australian box office and it took about two years just to get the finance for this film so if it's hard for me then God help everyone else.

Thirty to 40 years ago most financial decisions were fairly simple.

I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.