The decisions you make are a choice of values that reflect your life in every way.

I feel that good food should be a right and not a privilege, and it needs to be without pesticides and herbicides. And everybody deserves this food. And that's not elitist.

Good food depends almost entirely on good ingredients.

It's a comfort to always find pasta in the cupboard and garlic and parsley in the garden.

It is a fundamental fact that no cook, however creative and capable, can produce a dish of a quality any higher than that of its raw ingredients.

I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.

Cooking creates a sense of well-being for yourself and the people you love and brings beauty and meaning to everyday life. And all it requires is common sense – the common sense to eat seasonally, to know where your food comes from, to support and buy from local farmers and producers who are good stewards of our natural resources.