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Women always try to see the one good part of The Weird Guy because the dating landscape is so bleak. Women will say, 'He's very odd, but he likes to cook. He's creepy, but he makes good pancakes!'

Cooking is about passion, so it may look slightly temperamental in a way that it's too assertive to the naked eye.

The most I like about cooking is eating what someone else has cooked.

For my birthday my husband learned to cook and is cooking one day a week for me. But he only likes to do fancy dishes. So we end up with weird, obscure things in the refrigerator.

'Outlaw Cook' was a revelation. Folks like Jeff Smith and Marcella Hazan got me interested in cooking, but John Thorne pushed me into the path that I follow to this day. This is the only cookbook I've ever read that understands how men really eat: over the sink, in the dark, greasy to the elbows.

Whenever I'd go to restaurants, the main chef came out and was cooking for me, and he's asking me how the food is. I get, like, VIP service, so it's weird.

My husband cooks fancier food for himself than I've ever cooked on-air. I call him from the road, and he's making champagne-vanilla salmon or black-cherry pork chop. Half of me is feeling unworthy. Not only am I not a chef, I'm not a better cook than my own husband!

Let me start with a confession: I don't enjoy cooking. The reason I usually do it at home is not because I'm a New Man or Jamie Oliver disciple, but because my wife's cooking is so bad. In fact, to me, cooking is less a pleasurable pastime than a defense against poisoning.