Never be a food snob. Learn from everyone you meet - the fish guy at your market, the lady at the local diner, farmers, cheese makers. Ask questions, try everything and eat up!

Work hard. Laugh when you feel like crying. Keep an open mind, open eyes and an open spirit.

I live in, literally, the same home when I was swiping my first bank card and wondering if I'd have to put back the Charmin. We still don't have a dishwasher. My mom has done all these gardens so now my house looks like the garden shack in the middle of Versailles.

I have a fat head - I get freaked-out looking at pictures of me.

Television itself is an intimate medium. It's in your house. You're visiting with these people... Not everybody's going to like it, just like not everybody likes everybody on the playground. I mean, that's life - especially if your job is to just go out there and be yourself.

I was always a person on my mother's hip in the kitchen. My mom really wanted her kids at her side as much as possible, and she worked in restaurants for over fifty years. And my grandfather had ten children, and he grew and prepared most of the food. My grandmother, on my mother's side, was the family seamstress and the baker. So my mom, the eldest child, was always in the kitchen with my grandpa and I was always in the production and restaurant kitchens and our own kitchen with my mom. And it's just something that has always spoken to me.

The most essential part of my day is a proper dinner.