Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.
Baking is how you start kids at cooking in the kitchen. It's fun whether it's baking bread or cookies. With baking, you have to be exact when it comes to ingredients.
Christmas is more stressful with present buying and making sure everyone gets included, but Thanksgiving is really not that. I don't ever really get stressed out about the food.
Instead of doing cinnamon, nutmeg, and all those baking spices I'll have one spice that's for sweets, and that's pumpkin pie spice.
You don't need Montreal steak seasoning on everything.
I'm not sure that some of the food purists are in touch with what really goes on in American households.
Nobody makes bouillabaisse from scratch. It's all a bunch of malarkey. Even the restaurants buy a commercial-grade product. I had a very famous chef tell me that.
I'm the only girl on The Food Network who grills - I have two bestselling grilling books. I try to really focus on what men and women can do outside together out on the grill. I think it's really fun to have men and women out there together, having fun, working and enjoying themselves.
Yes, I love white, and I'd wear it all the time if I could. Some people think I have an issue with cleanliness, but to me it's just so pretty.
I like to create what I call 'tablescapes.' It's so much more fun when you organize your table around a theme, don't you think?
Give yourself permission to get the most out of your life. If you're spending all your time scrubbing corners with a toothbrush, you're kind of missing the point. Taking shortcuts doesn't mean shortcutting the end result.
When I came to the Food Network, I didn't want to do a cooking show. I told Kathleen Finch for nine months I didn't want to do a cooking show, I wanted to do a home-and-garden show.
Seventy percent store-bought, ready-made plus 30 percent fresh allows you to take 100 percent of the credit.
Lack of sleep makes me less productive. I need a good seven or eight hours a night.
I'm an activist for gay marriage equality and children's rights. I'm the face of Share Our Strength.
I always buy the smaller turkeys. On the pre-baste put pats of butter on the meat under the skin, put the skin back on, put a bunch of seasoning on the top, call it a day, put it in the oven. With a 10 - 12 pound turkey you are done in a couple of hours.
When you're young, you think you can do anything, and that was really a gift. That's why I can never understand someone telling me 'no' today. 'No' just isn't an option.
Why I have had such a huge career and why I have sold over four million books, is that people can do what I share with them to do.
My brand is a demography-breaker. It speaks to all homemakers and women from all walks of life and all across society.
I can certainly be part of the socialite group and walk those carpets every day, but I choose not to because I prefer to be grounded. You can't be at home and on the red carpet.
