I was born, raised, and still live in San Francisco — one of the greatest eating cities on the planet — and I’ve been writing about food and teaching cooking for over 20 years. I trained at Tante Marie's Cooking School, completing the 9-month professional course and apprenticing at Chez Panisse Cafe, but I'm proud to call myself a cook and not a chef. In my view, chefs work in restaurant kitchens and cooks work in home kitchens and there is a big difference between the two.

For the past decade, I've been doing a lot of TV, from hosting 91 episodes (!) of Ultimate Kitchens on Food Network to a 9-person cooking contest on the web called In the Kitchen with Tori Ritchie. For many years, I did a series on The Early Show called the 5-Minute Cooking School with Hannah Storm. I've written over a dozen cookbooks; my latest is the Pressure Cooker Cookbook. Others include Braises & Stews; Party Appetizers; and Cabin Cooking.

When I’m not in my kitchen, I'm usually teaching food writing classes at Stanford Continuing Studies or cooking classes at the San Francisco Cooking School or at Rancho La Puerta or volunteering for Food Runners, a nonprofit that delivers food to the needy. The joy I get from giving hungry people something good to eat is the best part of my career.

Other than that, I’m probably in my kitchen cooking up recipes for this website or my next cookbook. Or I’m in the yoga studio. Or hiking my beloved Bay Area hills. If it’s a really good year, I spend part of it in Rome. Cooking is a wonderful life.