If you go to chefs all across America and ask them, 'What's your biggest problem right now?,' It is finding people to cook in their restaurants. They're having an enormous, countrywide problem here staffing their operations.

There is no Final Resting Place of the Mind.

There is no other place on earth even remotely like New Orleans. Don't even try to compare it to anywhere else.

My mom had Julia Child and 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook' on top of the refrigerator, and she had a small repertoire of French dishes.

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one's life.

It seems that the more places I see and experience, the bigger I realize the world to be. The more I become aware of, the more I realize how relatively little I know of it, how many places I have still to go, how much more there is to learn. Maybe that's enlightenment enough - to know that there is no final resting place of the mind, no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom, at least for me, means realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she's proud of the fact that her food is f---ing bad for you. If I were on at seven at night and loved by millions of people at every age, I would think twice before telling an already obese nation that it's OK to eat food that is killing us. Plus, her food sucks.