In America, I would say New York and New Orleans are the two most interesting food towns. In New Orleans, they don't have a bad deli. There's no mediocrity accepted.

We would load up the yellow Cutlass Supreme station wagon and pick blackberries during blackberry season or spring onions during spring onion season. For us, food was part of the fabric of our day.

Chefs don't actually say 'That's a spicy meat-a-ball,' except to indicate that there's a bomb threat in the restaurant without alarming the customers. Terrorism is the spiciest meatball there is.

Look at cookbooks with your kids and ask them what sounds good.

I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe.

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.

We need to figure out a 'harvest system' to collect the produce that stores don't put out for customers to buy because it's not perfect looking. Frankly, the stuff left to rot in the storeroom is more beautiful to me than the perfect carrot. I'm a gnarly carrot kind of guy.