I love Alton Brown's show 'Good Eats,' about the chemistry of food. It's really thoughtful.

Creme Brulee is the ultimate 'guy' dessert. Make it and he'll follow you anywhere.

You can get bogged down in a recipe that's got a lot of steps and a million ingredients, and it takes all day to make. And then you realize, you've just got one dish. For Thanksgiving, you want an abundance of choices, and so you want dishes that you can put together really quickly, but that doesn't mean less flavor.

I absolutely adore Thanksgiving. It's the only holiday I insist on making myself.

I think there are two ways of eating, or cooking. One is restaurant food and one is home food. I believe that people have started making food that is easy that you want to eat at home. When you go out to a restaurant, you want to be challenged, you want to taste something new, you want to be excited. But when you eat at home, you want something that's delicious and comforting. I've always liked that kind of food - and frankly, that's also what I want to eat when I go out to restaurants, but maybe that's me.

My extravagance is my garden - it's the first thing I look at every morning when I wake up. It gives me so much pleasure.

Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the ultimate comfort meal.