The danger of growing up surrounded by endless sweet and salty industrial concoctions is not that we are innately incapable of resisting them but that the more frequently we eat them, especially in childhood, the more they train us to expect all food to taste this way.

Learning to cook in the 1990s, I thought 'proper olives' meant black. The benchmark was Kalamata from Greece: purple-black with an almost mushroomy depth of flavour. Other fine examples were tiny Coquilles from Nice and plump round Tanches from Nyons.

Restaurant critics all struggle with the difficulty of writing about eating without resorting to the word 'delicious' and its synonyms.

I'd rather have a good food - lots and lots of different varieties of good foods - than search for something perfect.

As youngsters, my mother taught her children that while we might not be the smartest people around, we could be courteous, polite and considerate of others.

I actually have some family that's from Missouri, and my husband is an outrageous St. Louis Cardinals fan, so we go to St. Louis every once in a while to go see baseball games.

I feel like I grew up being babysat by a television, and all I ever wanted to do was be in movies, direct movies, make movies, but it took me a really long time to be honest with myself about it because my background is that my family was very poor.

I don't feel like I owe anybody other than my child and my family anything.