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

They say that gardens look better when they are created by loving gardeners rather than by landscapers, because the garden is more tended to and cared for. The same thing goes for cooking. I only cook for people I love.

I think that I had a very clear vision when I started writing cookbooks what I wanted it to be, and that you would open the book, that you would look at the photograph and go, that looks delicious. And then you would look at the recipe and say, I can actually make that and I can make it with ingredients I can find in the grocery store.

If you think about a Thanksgiving dinner, it's really like making a large chicken.

People have more fun if they don't eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance.

If it's a cocktail party, I generally make five or six different things, and I try to choose recipes that feel like a meal: a chicken thing, a fish or shrimp thing, maybe two vegetable things, and I think it's fun to end the cocktail party with a sweet thing.

When I wrote 'Barefoot in Paris,' I wanted to make simple recipes that you could make at home that tasted like French classics.