You have to love a town where you can both smoke and gamble in a pharmacy.

I'm not going anywhere. I hope. It's been an adventure. We took some casualties over the years. Things got broken. Things got lost. But I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

I'm a guy who should not have a lot of free time. But when it comes to vacation, I like to pull the plug completely. It's all about my daughter - I'm no longer the star of my own movie.

I'm not besotted with the notion of being on CNN to the point that I'm going to suddenly morph into Anderson Cooper or Christiane Amanpour. I'm not a foreign correspondent.

Most of the time, I'm fighting guys who are 22 years old, former college wrestlers, athletes, kids who are in much better shape than me. Often people who are much bigger and wider than me. It can be dispiriting at first.

And now to sleep, to dream...perchance to fart.

For me, the cooking life has been a long love affair, with moments both sublime and ridiculous.