I have a real passion for food - I love to cook for my family and friends and relish any opportunity to entertain.

I love Thanksgiving because it's a holiday that is centered around food and family, two things that are of utmost importance to me.

What I love about Thanksgiving is that it's purely about getting together with friends or family and enjoying food. It's really for everybody, and it doesn't matter where you're from.

I have an addictive personality so anything I do I want to go 110, so even with food I love it. I mean I'm Mexican-Italian so anything around my family is always food-oriented somehow.

I've got my huge Greek family. I mean, I don't know how many cousins I have - I can't even keep track. There are just so many of us, and we love all Greek food - we have Greek night every Sunday night.

Food is so important - it sustains us, it provides a social focal point, and it is fun. I cannot unravel the difference between love in my family and the preparation of food because they are so closely woven.

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.

It was very confronting after growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne, then going to India. There's such a different emphasis on everything: food, family, hygiene, love, marriage. It's why it's so exciting, why it's so beautiful.

I love anything to do with cooking, from watching the Food Network to reading recipe books by Gordon Ramsay, Jamie Oliver and Levi Roots. My favourite types of cuisine are Asian and Caribbean, and I love cooking new recipes for my family.

As a little kid in a sometimes hard place, I went to the movies as often as I could. Movies - making them, seeing them - is not something that could ever lose its pleasure for me. That puts them on a short list of things that eternally give me joy - love, family, food, movies.

All I watch is the Food Network. I took a cheesemaking class a few weeks ago, and I told my family and friends to only get me kitchen stuff on my birthday. I'm into every kind of cookbook and anything by Anthony Bourdain. I'd love to own a restaurant if I could find the right chef.

The traditional family table is round. No corners. No sides. No head. No tail. Everything is smooth. The food is in the center, and each family member reaches over the same distance. Someone you love is next to you on each side, and no one is last or at the end. The person farthest away from you is also the person facing you.

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