I get up every day, do the best that I can do, and go home and have a good time.

The most overrated tool: a pasta maker. Why make it when you can buy it? It's a lot of work!

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

I always have music. I love it to be very upbeat. When you're having drinks, I like something like Cesaria Evora. During dinner, I like the much more traditional - old Frank Sinatra and things like that.

You don't have to do everything from scratch. Nobody wants to make puff pastry!

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.

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.