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I got exposed to so many different cultures and people.

I grew up in Harlem. My grandmother was one of the best cooks around, but the first thing she did on Sunday mornings when she started cooking a daylong meal was to take a big block of lard from the back of the refrigerator and throw it into the pan. I know how Hispanics buy their food, and it is not always nutritious.

We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Northwest D.C. I was essentially raised by a Panamanian man and a Jamaican woman. That's why I have such a fascination with Jamaican food.

I know when I was little, having my Thai mom, even I was weird about fish sauce and fish heads and clams. I kind of sided with my dad because he was a big American guy. So, we were very meat and potatoes, but I really wish I had grown up appreciating my mom's taste a bit more.

Going to Southeast Asia for the first time and tasting that spectrum of flavors - that certainly changed my whole palate, the kind of foods I crave. A lot of the dishes I used to love became boring to me.

I used to have a monthly cookery column, and am a big cook, so that whole sense of connecting what one does with food to one's cultural identity has always been fascinating to me.

I grew up in a wonderful blend of a lot of old culture.

My earliest memories are of watching 'Star Trek' and 'MASH' while my parents barbecued chicken in the back yard. I was an American kid, through and through.

I like to cook Puerto Rican food. That's what I grew up on: rice, beans, meat, some Italian-American food. I know my way around the kitchen.

I grew up in a food-obsessed Italian family, so food was always front and center in my life. I was a food obsessed person who morphed into a comedian and tried to figure out a way to make fun of my cake and eat it too.