To me, the kitchen is a place of adventure and entirely fun, not drudgery. I can't think of anything better to do with family and friends than to be together to create something.

I cook everything. I love Mediterranean cooking, I love Asian cooking. I do lots of Japanese noodles.

Two words to improve any dish. Ba, Con

It's very important to me that people who are actual chefs and other professionals in the culinary world, understand that I'm not, and have never held myself out as being, like a CIA trained chef.

You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.

Cooking for people is an enormously significant expression of generosity and soulfulness.

People want honest, flavourful food, not some show-off meal that takes days to prepare.

However, I was a restaurant critic at Chicago magazine before I worked at Esquire, and I've been a really enthusiastic home cook for a long time. It's just something I'm passionate about.

My place in Chicago is a 105 year old house, but I really like contemporary spaces too, so it's refreshing and fun to be in a space where you can do contemporary things.

If I have committed any culinary atrocities, please forgive me.

In actuality, there was casting for the show and it was pretty difficult.

When we think a thought enough times it becomes a belief and that belief becomes a pattern which, in turn, becomes how we live our lives.

The first story I can remember writing, that I truly set down on paper, was a Christmas story that I wrote when I was ten years old.

There has to be a balance between your mental satisfaction and the financial needs of your company.

In my dream the angel shrugged and said, if we fail this time, it will be a failure of imagination. And then she placed the world gently in the palm of my hand.

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

The only thing that can ruin a good day is people.

The brutal regime of the dictator fell, the regime that ruled Iraq for decades, the decades of darkness. The decades that were of tyranny.

As far as I'm concerned, I don't eat meat.

I watch TV all the time. Everything.

In every cradle decked with rosy wreath Lurk germs of death.