Grilling in the winter? In the fireplace?! Sure! Why not! After all, it wasn't really too long ago that home cooks did almost all their cooking in the fireplace. And it sure beats huddling around the outdoor grill while gazing at a vista of snow banks... More

Joanne Weir is an award-winning cookbook author (her new book, Wine Country Cooking just came out), a cooking teacher, a chef who cooked for five years at Chez Panisse, and a television personality.

When she's not leading culinary tours and classes through the Mediterranean, she lives and works in a thoughtfully designed, colorful and comfortable Grand Victorian house in San Francisco. The kitchen is an intensely personal space, much of it designed by her. Here she hosts spirited dinner parties, drinks wine with her fiancé, and whips up her morning smoothie. But her kitchen is also the set for one of her television show and her laboratory. It is a work/live space that works.