Application responses: Please help

I'm going to post the application questions and my responses. Let me know what you think.
1. Why do you want your own Food Network Show?
Recipes and techniques have evolved from rich cultural traditions. I have explored my own family's culinary heritage, now I would like to widen my horizon to encompass many other populations. Each week I hope to explore a different food, learn from masters --- grandmothers or grandfathers, chefs or cooks --- how it should be prepared, and then help guide my audience to do it themselves.

2. Do you have any formal/profession cooking training? If so, please describe. Did you graduate from cooking schoool?
No.

3. If you did not go to cooking school, how did you learn to cook?
I watched and listened to family, friends and food network. I asked questions to my Bubbee (grandmother) and mother about my own Jewish cooking traditions.

4. What is the greatest lesson you've learned about cooking?
To open myself up to every smell, taste and sight around me. In particular I have learned the most from watching people like my Bubbee, or my former Indian roommates mother, or my another roommates Bangladeshi fiance cook. By trying to reproduce or at least approximate the dishes I watch them prepare, I gain a better perspective about the ways of their respective cuisines.

5. What do you feel you can teach someone about food, or cooking? Please make something specific to you -- not about "having fun in the kitchen" or similar.
I can teach people to embrace thousands of years of knowledge and tradition which has created excellent dishes. People have learned to like diverse cuisines but too often do not have the chance to learn about or experience them prepared authentically. I will connect the audience to those people who holds these gems of culinary experience.

6. Who was the greatest influence on your cooking, and why?
Even though my great-grandmother, Bubbee Kerlin, passed away when I was young, I feel as though her nearly 100 years of cooking has lefts its mark deep on me. From my scattered memories of her apartment filled with Jewish delicacies, to her countless cooking stories and recipes I have been told, her kitchen legacy has driven my curiosity into my own heritage, and now into the heritage of others.

7. In addition to any cooking jobs listed above, list any other culinary experience:
None aside from preparing meals for friends and family.

8. What is the largest number of people you have ever cooked for? Please explain.
At my apartment, or during family vacations I have prepared meals for upwards of 10 people. While in college I volunteered at a homeless shelter and on a few occasions I prepared basic food for a larger population.

9. What makes you different from anyone else on food television?
Everyone wants to teach others how to cook. I want to be a learner alongside the audience as real greats, people who have been cooking for upwards of a century, teach their many lessons.

10. Briefly sum up your unique "Culinary Point of View." That us, what specifically makes you and your food different from everyone else's (not just "I cook with fresh ingredients."); what is special about what you can teach Food Network viewers?
Centuries of work has gone into creating many of the great recipes which our parents ate growing up and which we have only hear of. In the recent years people have become more open to diverse types of restaurants and foods and have even begun to draw on many different cultures in their food preparation. Much good has come from this. However, this trend has also contributed to many dishes being radically altered or discarded from culinary traditions. Before people learned their own kitchen traditions through fork, knife and stove. Now people learn through takeout menu. People recognize and lament their loss of culinary identity and will jump at the chance to learn about their own history and that of others.
My approach to cooking is to try to understand a recipe or a technique both at a practical level: why and how it works; and from an evolutionary perspective: why did our ancestors use the ingredients and methods they did, and why did it survive to us today?

11. Complete this sentence: "If I were an ingredient, I would be _______________." Why would you be that ingredient?
If I were an ingredient, I would be the seasoning on an old cast iron pan. Well seasoned cast iron (the only choice of our ancestors) has many layers built up over time to create a wonderful surface on which to cook. Every meal adds a layer to the pan, and every meal draws from the flavors and oils of the layers below it. In this way, every time I cook with my cast iron, I am connecting to all of my previous cooking experiences. In my show I will seek to establish this physical connection to our culinary history through interviews with and tutorials from people whose own cast iron (be it literal or figurative) has many more layers than mine.

There are the four questions below remaining, but they are of a different nature so I'm going to do them later.

12. Tell us 3 things about food, or ingredients, that demonstrate your food knowledge.

13. Do you have any dietary restrictions or food allergies? Are there any foods you cannot or will not eat? Please give complete details.

14. Clearly describe 3 of your "signature dishes" that best represent you and/or are most popular with your friends/family. Tell us why they represent you so well.

15. What are your top 5 original cooking tips? (Be specific, Give us information; teach us something. This is a chance to show us your technique and your culinary knowledge)