If you're coming to dinner at our house, you know you're gonna be well-fed.

My first season of 'MasterChef' was tricky. I took a risk going into TV. I was confident it was the right risk and confident I'd break down barriers as the first female judge - and one that was previously only known for the sweeter side of the kitchen.

I guess technically I am a female chef, but I don't really think of myself as such.

Most of my memories are of softball games in Falls Church with my sister, yard sales across town on the weekends with my grandma, grocery-shopping and errand-running with my mom, learning to drive an old Volkswagen bug down Old Keene Mill Road with my dad.

I joined the Marines the week I turned 17, and that led to a few experiences that might qualify as adventure - eye of the beholder.

There is a kind of adventure- and risk-seeking audience in classical contemporary music that is really empowering and part of what draws me to it. The people that come to these concerts are open-minded and curious.

Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.

My parents made no money whatsoever, but they really knew how to see, as artists. So a big adventure might be, on a hot, dreadful day with no place to go, to go out and draw our chickens with pastels. My parents gave me a sense of wonder.