Food has always brought me comfort and the bingeing is triggered when I'm in a space that is not positive.
I kept thinking, 'Somebody has to make a food show that is actually educational and entertaining at the same time... a show that got down to the 'why things happen.' Plus, I hated my job - I didn't think it was very worthwhile.
You don't want flame to hit your food. Flame is bad. Flame does nasty things to food. It makes soot and it makes deposits of various chemicals that are not too good for us. The last thing you really want to see licking at your food while it's on a grill is an actual flame.
I spent a college semester in a small town in Italy - and that is where I truly tasted food for the first time.
You know most of the food that Americans hold so dear - things like hamburgers and hot dogs - were road food, but even before they were road food, they were peasant food.
I think a lot of food shows, especially when we started 'Good Eats' back in the late '90s, they were still really about food. 'Good Eats' isn't about food, it's about entertainment. If, however, we can virally infect you with knowledge or interest, then all the better.
I'm a filmmaker who decided to go to culinary school. All I picked up was the fact if I didn't understand what was going on with every single ingredient, I could be qualifying for, like, the lunch food job at my daughter's school.
I am a filmmaker. That is all I've ever been. You know, Martin Scorsese makes films about the mob. And I make movies about food.
Keep it simple in the kitchen. If you use quality ingredients, you don't need anything fancy to make food delicious: just a knife, a cutting board, and some good nonstick cookware, and you're set.
Food - I love nuts. I eat them all the time, they're easy to carry around, and I am never hungry all day long.
Most food you drop is still perfectly edible. If it was in your eyesight the whole time, you can pick it up and eat it.
There are a lot of food Nazis in the U.S., but I believe if you can show people what's really important, they'll judge the rest for themselves.
I think wine is such a big universe that it's kind of like food - it's intimidating to a lot of people, myself included.
People always comment about my clothes. They don't think a fashionable woman can love food and be knowledgeable and actually cook.
Without food, man can live at most but a few weeks without it, all other components of social justice are meaningless.
You know the great irony is that people think you have to have money to enjoy fine food, which is a shame.
I've always hoped 'Chopped' would telegraph our enormous affection and love and admiration for chefs and food, but at the same time, we are inflicting extraordinary cruelty on them.
In recent years, I've been writing because I'm fortunate enough to work in the world of food television, to travel and taste and learn about cooking from the best chefs in the business.
Believe me, I understand the need for easy and speedy. After a 12-hour day of shooting 'Chopped,' say, I'm talking stir-fry, spaghetti, heck, peanut-butter sandwiches. But that's not about the joy of food. That's survival.
I think what I do differently from a lot of TV chefs is that I break down barriers and make fine food more accessible to the regular person, who might be intimidated. I try hard, particularly with wine, to make it not intimidating. It's sort of a teaching job.
The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families.
Back in 1983, the United States government approved the release of the first genetically modified organism. In this case, it was a bacteria that prevents frost on food crops.
I used to eat because food tastes so good. I love food, it's one of the best things on this planet. But I changed the way I was thinking. I started asking myself, 'Hey, am I eating because it tastes good? Or because I really need some more? Am I really still hungry?'
I don't enjoy good food. I don't enjoy flashy cars. I don't care if I live in a dump. I don't enjoy good clothes. This is the best I've dressed in months.
It's all about who's where on the food chain. When I'm the story editor, I expect my writers to follow my vision. When I'm working for another editor, I'm obliged to follow their vision.
I moved to New York last year and I love it. It's a huge change and I've always wanted to spend time there. It's like a more intense London, and everything's up a few notches. The lights are brighter, the pace is faster and the food's better.
And I think of that again as I've written in several of my beauty books, a lot of health comes from the proper eating habits, which are something that - you know, I come from a generation that wasn't - didn't have a lot of food.
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.
Finishing food is about the tiny touches. In the last seconds you can change everything.
Everyone makes pesto in a food processor. But the texture is better with a mortar and pestle, and it's just as fast.
As far away as you can get from the process of mechanisms and machinery, the more likely your food's going to taste good. And that - that is probably the largest thing I can hand to anybody is let your hands touch it. Let them make it.
When you cut that eggplant up and you roast it in the oven and you make the tomato sauce and you put it on top, your soul is in that food, and there's something about that that can never be made by a company that has three million employees.
Bologna is the best city in Italy for food and has the least number of tourists. With its medieval beauty, it has it all.
Shop often, shop hard, and spend for the best stuff available - logic dictates that you can make delicious food only with delicious ingredients.
I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe.
Cookbooks have all become baroque and very predictable. I'm looking for something different. A lot of chefs' cookbooks are food as it's done in the restaurants, but they are dumbed down, and I hate it when they dumb them down.
When I was growing up in Mississippi - it was good Southern food... but I also grew up with a Greek family when other kids were eating fried okra, we were eating steamed artichokes. So I think it played a big part in my healthy cooking.
I think the biggest thing is clean as you go. Wash all your knives, cutting boards, dishes, when you are done cooking, not look at a sink full of dishes after you are done. Cleaning as you go helps keep away cross contamination and you avoid having food borne bacteria.
It's fun to pick a cuisine and say I'm going to research Ethiopian food, and see what it's all about. You find that there are a lot of similarities in cuisines from around the world and a lot of similar flavors.
We incorporated new tastes and flavors into our kids' diets from a very early age, which helped to develop their palates and prevented them from becoming picky eaters. We don't buy junk food and give them options of fresh fruit, yogurt, raw almonds, or dried whole grain cereals for snack time.