Just because you eat doesn't mean you eat smart. It's hard to beat a $1.99 wing pack of three at a fast-food restaurant - it's so cheap - but that wing pack isn't feeding anyone, it's just pushing hunger back an hour.

I'm a big fan of featuring all of the local shellfish and seafood provided.

Protein has been intensely over-represented on the plate. Now, the garden should be the main drag for main courses.

Italy itself has 21 different micro-regions. You go within each of those regions, there's even super-micro-regions; and the beauty is that when you go from place to place, although there's a common thread of pasta and joie de vivre - in the way that they approach their meals and the simplicity of cooking, celebrating more the product than the chef - there's still so much variety that as you go, it's always an exciting moment.

I just signed to do my next book with Ecco Press, a new primer or encyclopedia. This will be my take on what classic Italian cooking is.

The Gulf Coast has the potential to create a culinary raw ingredient paradise that smart cooks can capitalize on.

When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top, your soul is in that food, and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.