I use other cookbooks for inspiration. I must say I tend to cook from my own cookbooks for parties.

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.

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

I learned that the hardest party to pull off successfully is Saturday night dinner. This meal is expected to be elaborate: appetizers, first course, dinner, dessert, and coffee. People arrive at 7:30 or 8 p.m. and stay for hours - definitely past my bedtime - and they all go home exhausted.

I love to take something ordinary and make it really special.

I don't like sitting at a table that's too large, where everyone is too far apart. That's a party killer.

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.