I am from Spain, but my family and I have made America our home. For the last 17 years, I have been cooking Spanish food in Washington, D.C.
The notion of 'we' is very important. I think, for any family, any community to be able to say 'we' in this family, it means something. It's dangerous to society when somebody will place himself or herself on the outside of 'we.'
I think family mealtime is really important. There's a lot of research that shows kids are going to do better in school and have more self-esteem if you can all sit down and eat together.
An increasing number of Canadians must juggle the demands of work with the need to care for children, or for family members who are ill or too frail to care for themselves. Our programs have simply not kept pace with these societal changes.
I have been able to have a family and to dedicate quality time to my two sets of twins and my husband, as well as to serve on the boards of The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research and Montefiore Medical Center.
So if you serve a whole chicken to your family like grandma did, you may be serving them 10 times as much fat than the days of yesteryear. That's a whole lotta fat, and big trouble for the waistline.
I do feel guilty. I do. Especially about my family, my children. I write about them, and I know that this will haunt them as well through their lives. Why did I do that to them?
I don't mind talking about my family and how to balance it all. But, in today's world, we should probably be asking both women and men about work and family and how to balance the two.
I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
We didn't have much money. My whole extended family used to help us, and buy us books and food. It was hard, and there were things I didn't want to talk about. But at the end I was a happy girl.
That case with my two sisters? That was a disaster. It was. They're really fine people. When my family and my two sisters' families - their children - grew up and so on, it just wasn't the same. But we took care of them very nicely.
I have mended fences with both my sisters. But do I have their families on my side? Not easily. My one sister, Florence, has two lawyers in the family and two doctors. Of course, I couldn't win that battle.
I am blessed to have married the man that God sent me. He's loving, compassionate, strong and supportive of my children, family and career. I look forward to our lives together.
I'd like my children to learn that anything is possible if you put your mind to it, and that when you make a decision to do something like pursuing the Olympics, like I have, it needs to be a family affair.
I grew up in a family where no one had written a newspaper or magazine article about anybody in my family for a hundred years, right? Then, all of a sudden, we're getting one millennium's worth of media attention in six months.
Other people might have family - three kids or five houses. In my case, that doesn't exist. I'm going to give everything away. Everything has been transferred to charitable trusts. There is no question about that. The question is where, not if.
When I became a novice monk, I lived in a temple where the atmosphere was quite like in a family. The abbot is like a father and other monks are like your big brothers, your small, younger brothers. It is a kind of family.
I grew up poor in India, and there were days when we struggled to find food and other basic necessities. Our mother worked odds and ends jobs to keep the family together and educate us.
One of the things that really got to me was talking to parents who had been burned out of their villages, had family members killed, and then when men showed up at the wells to get water, they were shot.
I am confident that nobody... will accuse me of selfishness if I ask to spend time, while I am still in good health, with my family, my friends and also with myself.
