You wake up, your life is discipline: there's kids, breakfast, lunch box, go to work, discipline, organization, guests. Imagine the semi-final of Super Bowl. We have that every day: lunch and dinner. We play that game. Then you come home and you really just want to drink a beer. But then you discipline yourself and you have to do this thing, this journal. It was painful but I'm so happy I did it. I have newfound respect for people that write.

I still cook at home. A lot of chefs I think don't cook at home. But I still do, I love cooking at home, I love having friends.

When you get close to the raw materials and taste them at the moment they let go of the soil, you learn to respect them.

21 years ago when I started cooking, to be a cook meant that you were going to stay in the basement. Being a chef, you would never be on a book tour. You could never dream that 20 years later on you would be on a book tour. It wasn't a part of your dreams because it was just totally unrealistic. When did cooks - restaurant cooks, not cooks that have 15,000 television shows - when did cooks become part of pop culture the way they are?

I just love this idea of using, especially in terms of food, using that common sense. If you follow that - it's hard to talk about it without sounding like some New Age idiot, which I think is a bit unfair - but, if you do follow that natural cycle, you will inevitably eat better, cheaper, and much, much, much, much healthier.

I know every movement of my kitchen.

Learning about issues such as sustainability and locavorism are things that you need to have as part of you as a chef because it will make you cook more delicious food.