When I was a child, our whole family cooked. All my cousins cooked. All my aunts and uncles cooked. It was part of our heritage.

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.

There are pockets of great food in Spain, but there are also pockets of very mediocre food in Spain, and the same in Morocco and the same in Croatia and the same in Germany and the same in Austria.

If you want your kids to listen to you, don't yell at them. Whisper. Make them lean in. My kids taught me that. And I do it with adults now.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

The passion of the Italian or the Italian-American population is endless for food and lore and everything about it.

I got some media coverage for using the tail, the ear, the oink.

Close your eyes and place your finger on a map. Wherever it lands, that's the theme of the evening. So many times we settle for routine dishes. This forces you to try new cuisines.

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.

The kitchen really is the castle itself. This is where we spend our happiest moments and where we find the joy of being a family.

One of the most important leadership lessons is realizing you're not the most important or the most intelligent person in the room at all times.

Self-education is open to all but it is taken only by those who refuse to live a small and purposeless life.

Life has a way of filling up one's time with many different things to do. So much so that you turn a blind eye to the things that really matter.

To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try.

My main point is to be funny; if I can slip a message in there, fine.

If you don't like the situation, if you are afraid and can't deal with it, nothing wrong with your legs, get out of there.

God is always doing 10,000 things in your life, and you may be aware of three of them.

You can't enjoy your life if you don't enjoy YOURSELF.

Rush to danger; wind up nowhere.

Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth.