It's my belief that cooking is a craft. I think that you can push it into the realm of art, but it starts with craft. It starts with an understanding of materials. It starts with an understanding of where foods are grown.

I dont know too many parents that want to feed their kids soda, but high-fructose corn syrup is cheap. The price of soda in 20 years has gone down 40 percent while the price of whole foods, fruits and vegetables, has gone up 40 percent and obesity goes up right along that curve.

This is what people don't understand: obesity is a symptom of poverty. It's not a lifestyle choice where people are just eating and not exercising. It's because kids - and this is the problem with school lunch right now - are getting sugar, fat, empty calories - lots of calories - but no nutrition.

Im not a fan of grilling meat, since that tends to dry it out, and I find grill marks leave a bitter taste. A good steak house will offer different options for preparation, and I would ask them to broil or pan-roast the steak and finish it with butter. It ends up a dark chocolate color and stays very juicy.

I know from personal experience, if a chef yelled at me in a kitchen, the first thing I'd want to do is hit them with a pot.

I think the patterns are set very early when the kids are young. But at the same time, there are some flavors kids just don't like.

Once you have your basics down, you can start breaking the rules.