The American Dream Is Ownership … A

If You Go To Italy And You Drive From The Airport To The Town, There Isn't 30 Square Feet That Isn't Planted By Someone. Even Next To The Train Tracks, They See The Joy Of The Interaction With The Planet As Integral To The Experience. The Idea That You Can Get Free Arugula Just By Planting Seeds... Because It Will Regrow Itself The Next Year. We've Come A Long Way From Foraging To Now Planting. The Next Step Of That Will Be Continuing That Expansion Of Planting And Really Owning The Crops.

The Idea Of Having Dinner Together Every Day With Your Family Removes The Pressure From Trying To Explain Everything. You Tell Us The Good Parts About Your Day, But You Also Tell Us The Bad Parts About Your Day. And At The End Of That, Because You're In A Ritual, You Remove The Pressure Of Admitting You Had A Failure That Day. And It Also Takes The Wind Out Of Having A Great Day. I Mean, It Makes You A Little Bit More Normal All The Time. That Moment Of Therapeutic Sharing Is Something That Happens In Food, That Doesn't Necessarily Happen When You're Watching Tv.

I Just Signed To Do My Next Book With Ecco Press, A New Primer Or Encyclopedia. This Will Be My Take On What Classic Italian Cooking 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.

I've Been Lucky Enough In 20 Years In The Media To Have A Nice Soap Box That Put Me In A Position To Describe To An American Viewership That Tuscany Is Different From Umbria, And It's Different From Emilia-romagna And, Not That That Was News, But It Was Never Presented To Them In A Way That Was, "hey, Look. This Is A Different Plate From That Different Place." And Although We All Think Of "spaghetti, Lasagna, Ciao," As What Italy Is All About, There's All Of This Great Stuff... I Was Merely An Interpreter. I Wasn't The Developer Of The Content.