Science means simply the aggregate of all the recipes that are always successful. All the rest is literature.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then only a few feet away in the cookbook section just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

Recipes tell you nothing. Learning techniques is the key.

Cooking with kids is not just about ingredients recipes and cooking. It's about harnessing imagination empowerment and creativity.

I do 280 episodes of TV a year write 15 recipes for the magazine and publish an annual book. With all of that we try to get one weekend a month with Isaboo at our home in the Adirondacks to relax and recharge.

Obviously the easiest recipes are the most successful when it comes to the home cook because they're not intimidated by them. If I'm doing 'Boy Meets Grill ' and I do something very simple like grilled hamburgers or steaks or chicken those are the most sought-after recipes.

Jesus does not give recipes that show the way to God as other teachers of religion do. He is himself the way.

When I wrote 'Fast Food My Way' in 2004 I hoped that my friends would prepare my recipes. Now more people cook from that book than any other I've written in the past 30 years.

Recipes are important but only to a point. What's more important than recipes is how we think about food and a good cookbook should open up a new way of doing just that.

Of course I will continue to share my favorite Southern recipes just like my mama grandmother and family shared with me over the years. And now I'll be adding a little bit of a lighter touch to some of these wonderful dishes.

To a billion people around the world surviving on just a dollar a day the question of what to eat tonight is more about life and death than about recipes. The struggle of poor people around the globe weighs heavily on me especially now that I am a mother which is why I work with Oxfam.

I'm not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business. But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love.