I do a lot of cooking. I've always cooked for my family and my father and I cooked together. It's just one of the things I like to do. If you came around my house for dinner, you'd watch me cook as we sat around the kitchen and cooked and talked. For me, that's centralised... friendship and family around food and cooking.
When I was nine or 10, I remember having a dinner party at my mum and dad's house. I wanted to have a Thanksgiving dinner because I'd watched so many films that had Thanksgiving in it and I thought: 'Why do we not celebrate this?' So I cooked this big Thanksgiving dinner for probably 10 people and I wouldn't let anybody help me.
Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view. Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view.
I didn't cook for the competition, I cooked for myself, I cooked for my loved ones, I cooked to represent my culture, I cooked to represent Chinese-American immigrants. I was proud of what I was able to accomplish under the conditions.
I grew up in a household where we cooked all the time. My mom cooked all the time; my dad cooked. My grandmothers cooked. I have memories of sitting on the counter and snapping green beans with my grandmother.
Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.
The way my family always did Christmas was on Christmas Eve, it wasn't really centered around a dinner on Christmas Eve. It was more about keeping the kids calm. Sometime after dark is when we were going to open all the presents underneath the tree from Mom, Dad and the kids and everything - just the family presents was every Christmas Eve.
In terms of the first Christmas when I met everybody, I went over to Nick's grandfather's house where they were having the big Christmas dinner, and they have this tradition of this thing called oyster stew.
Alcohol is certainly one of the most abused drugs since ever and ever, since Dionysus. They say have a glass of wine at dinner, which was done in the Latin countries. In Italy we always had a glass of wine at dinner. It is a good thing. But if you have dozens of glasses of wine at dinner it is not so good.
Christmas is all about exchanging gifts and I always make an effort to make my Christmas dinner a jolly affair.
...Humans were the only creatures in the world that ate their food cooked. You'd never find a Gorilla frying up some bananas for dinner or a lion charcoal-broiling a zebra steak. Cats don't often run to the oven with a mouse or bird they've captured, and a dog wouldn't naturally prepare its rabbit dinner in a stew.
Ive had one very bad ankle injury but otherwise Ive been incredibly lucky with my fitness. Ive worked hard at it and Ive always been fit even compared to other players. That sustains you through various parts of your career, but I am 36.
Ive had my share of difficult moments, but whatever difficulties Ive gone through, Ive always gotten a prize at the end.
One Christmas, when Freddie and I were flatmates in Kensington, we were trying to cook Christmas dinner, but all we had was a packet of bread sauce that you make with water. We used to dream of a can of beans.
I don't do dinner parties. I have people come to share the food I've cooked for the family.