RACHAEL RAY

Don't let anything limit your experimental spirit! The good news is that in cooking you DO NOT need hard-to-find ingredients to have fun and invent new flavors, textures and combinations! Cooking is so miraculously dynamic all you need is a piece of chicken, some onions and everyday ingredients like lemon juice, honey, Dijon mustard, curry powder, fresh herbs, soy sauce, jams, jellies, ketchup, relishes and any number of ordinary, easy-to-find condiments to create, literally, thousands of new concoctions. I swear, it's true. Focus on discovering your inner chef as it relates to balancing the four basic flavors: sour, salt, sweet and bitter. And if you really need exotic ingredients, the Internet has them all, just Google it.

You are so singing my tune! I love and adore mushrooms of any kind: fresh, dried, wild and cultivated. What you're describing is called "weeping" and it's actually a technique that is sometimes desired. Those juices are delicious so dare not throw them out, but if you want crisp, brown, dry mushrooms you have cook them in smaller batches in the biggest, heaviest pan you have on very high heat and you'll stop the tears.

Your comments are so sweet and generous! I truly appreciate that you've been a fan for years and have noticed my evolution as a chef and human being. Where do I begin? What I love most about cooking is its ability to break down barriers and create a space where you can enjoy the company and energy of other people unlike anything else I know. There is no greater gift you can give than to cook for someone. It's what I fell in love with my first day on the job in that Queens pizzeria when I was 11 years old and to this day nothing makes me happier. I have learned so much over the years including the value of humility, perseverance and a good work ethic but the most important lesson I have learned is that the minute you discover what you love to do, you never work another day in your life.

Yes! My mother suffered a massive heart attack and flat-lined in front of me the day before Thanksgiving in 2005 and after she was released from the hospital she was told "NO MORE SALT OR SODIUM OF ANY KIND" and in experimenting with her we have found that 1) the less sodium you consume the less you crave it and that 2) big flavors like lemon/lime juice, good vinegars, spices like cayenne, crushed red pepper, curry powder and aromatics like garlic and fresh herbs go a long way to make a dish taste great without all the salt. Try starting your dishes with a sweet and sour base and then flavoring them with spices and herbs, like lime juice with agave nectar, a touch of curry and cilantro, then add your favorite lean meat or fish. And that Nu-salt stuff is pretty good in low quantities too.

I currently have no plans to be in the restaurant business and am quite content working on my books, TV projects and competing in triathlons. If I have learned anything I learned that attempting to do too many things at the risk of only doing some of them well wasn't for me. So until I figure out how to work it back into my life I am going to continue to be a home cook for friends and family. The funny thing is between the cooking I do at home, developing my cookbooks and my charity work I do more cooking now than I did when I ran three restaurants.

To be honest my mother's meatballs are good, amazing even and I'd put them up against anyone's, any day, anywhere, but my true favorite is what I call "spaghetti for breath only a mother could love" aka Spaghetti Aglio e Olio. She can whip up this dish on a moment's notice and did frequently when unannounced guests showed up and it was always a crowd pleaser. The recipe is in my cookbook Rocco's Italian-American and I suggest you make it part of your culinary bag of tricks too. When she had time to prepare she would add cooked spaghetti squash to it and that dish is a bonafied show stopper. To answer your second question, I do try to make her dishes but I can't even come close to her results. She is a truly gifted cook.

Now that I too am a home cook, I too have to rely on high-quality, shortcut foods. My last three books make good use of the many high-quality, flavorful convenience foods out there. Food manufacturers and grocery stores have come a long way to satisfy the ever-increasing demand for high quality food and food solutions. Trader Joes is, in my opinion, an industry leader in this area. Uncle Ben's Ready Rice is another one of them and Bertolli (I work with them so I know) makes wonderful frozen pastas and sauces. Canned chicken broth, frozen peas, peeled garlic, prepared fresh salsas, clean and cut vegetables, salad mixes and my favorite — rotisserie chicken — make cooking at home a much easier proposition if you know what to do with them. The trick is combining convenience foods with fresh-from-scratch foods in a flavorful way and no one will ever know you're cheating.

Funny you should say that 'cause I call the Ironman diet the best diet in the world because when you are in training you can basically eat with impunity. In the serious training months a triathlete burns 5000-6000 calories a day and it's hard to keep weight on! But unless your physical activity burns more calories than you consume you will gain weight no matter what you eat. It's the concept of iso-caloric balance: calories in have to equal calories out to maintain weight and "cals-in" have to be LESS THAN "cals-out" to lose weight. While there are a few tricks out there in terms of diet, this is a universal truth. That said, we eat what all the smart diet experts out there tell you to eat; lean protein, fruit, vegetables and good carbs (carbs with fiber). Days before a race we carbo-load and during a race we consume mostly carb-laden foods like apples, energy bars and fruit gels to power up the carb consuming machine that is a triathlete.