I think I would have appreciated being at home with my kids a little bit more. Raising a child, surely that in itself is the biggest thing we're ever going to do?

Once a month we have 'dessert for dinner' night. I'll make four separate desserts. They'll come home from school and eat as much cake and custard and ice cream as they can physically get in their guts. Because sometimes I think, let them just be children.

I feel like there's a dignity in silence and I think if I retaliate to negativity with negativity then we've evened out. And I don't need to even that out because if somebody's being negative, I need to be the better person.

I take everything out of the fridge and see what we can make. We talk about what we could possibly create, and if there is something on the turn that we could save, we chop it up and put it in the freezer.

I am as average as they get - there is nothing special about me. I'm just getting by.

But Sunday is our cleaning day: we give ourselves only one and a half hours and we clean everywhere. We do that together because we made the mess together. I refuse to get a cleaner, although I'd love one, because I don't want to teach my kids that we make a mess and then we pay someone else to clean it.

As a child my life felt like an adventure, because my dad is such a fun guy. I had a brother and sister who were in and out of hospital a lot – one had a congenital heart problem and the other had a cleft palate. But my parents never stopped smiling.

When I'm trying to get bread to prove, I am itching; I am so impatient.

I had an arranged marriage, and learnt you have to persevere and remember we are all human and all have faults. Obviously my husband Abdal has more faults than I do!

Arranged marriages get a bad reputation. Do they always work? No, but that's true of all marriages. As long as you aren't forced, who cares how you get together?

When I watch a TV show I wouldn't notice if someone was Muslim or wearing a hijab. It's nice to be on a show where your skin colour or religion is incidental.

My dad's an amazing photographer, and he loves a Sunday market. So the house was full of all the stuff he'd buy, and frame.

Islamophobia first appeared in my life on 11 September 2001. I was coming back from college and didn't know what had happened. A white van stopped and a man got out. He spat on me, yelled a profanity, and then threw a can of coke in my direction. I cried as I walked home.

When I am scared, I push myself and get the best out of myself.

Once you've had a panic attack you live in fear that another one is going to come. From the second it's gone, every moment every day is about the next one.

We live in a world where we often get told what we should and shouldn't do. I don't think we should worry so much.

As a child, I loved being outdoors. Our house had a railway track going past it. Of course, Mum told us not to go near it and, of course, we did. There were amazing blackberry bushes growing all along it, and we collected the fruit.

Most summers we went to Bangladesh and stayed in Grandad's village, filled with relatives. I'm one of 67 grandchildren.

For me, it's important to instil in my children that they can do whatever they like, that no matter what their religion and colour, they can achieve what they want through hard work.

Saying it out loud as a child is scary, but saying I felt unstable out loud as an adult with children was really scary. The fear of losing your children stops you from saying anything. It's a never-ending battle.

The longest I've gone without a panic attack is about two months. Even then I can feel it bubbling away under the surface.

Sometimes my feelings need to come out of my mouth and my head so the universe can have them. That's what the universe is there for: to take my bad thoughts away.

Cod and clementine is one of the things my grandmother cooked for my mum when she was a child. Never one for waste, she'd keep the peel whenever she had a clementine, and this dish puts it to work.

My own kids are absolutely allowed to help me cook it. They of course have the added bonus of knowing how to bake. That wasn't really a concept when I was a kid - I learned it at school in home economics, then started properly when I was home with my children. They love helping me.

I spent a lot of time with extended family when I was young. Every weekend, Dad would buy half a sheep and Mum would cook for about 50 people, and we would all eat on the couch, in the kitchen, spilling out into the garden.

When you are one of six, your brothers and sisters become your best mates.

I do identify as a Muslim and I do identify as a Bangladeshi girl, I identify as British, as well, and a woman and I'm a woman of colour, and why am I ashamed of that? And I used to not want to talk about it. But that is me.

But I understand the importance of being a brown, Muslim woman of faith who is in the public eye, because there aren't that many of us.

Everything is tested in my little kitchen. The recipes are mine and that's really important to me. When I do a cookery show I know these recipes really well, because every recipe I've ever published has been tested by my kids.

I really want my daughter to see that she can go out to work, but equally I want my sons to see it.

I didn't know my husband, and then we had two children, and then I fell in love with him.