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I'm from South Georgia, so my mom, she always cooked some dang good food when I was growing up.

I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.

I'm from Georgia, and everybody gathers around food in the South.

In the South, the food is outstanding. Down south, we eat to get full, and the people up north, they don't do that.

I grew up in Doraville, Georgia and I ate barbecued ribs and chicken fried steak, and all kinds of cheesy grits, you know, and I never even thought twice about it.

The dirty little secret is that I grew up in a household where there were no carbohydrates allowed, ever. No cookies, no bread, no potatoes, no rice. My mother was very extreme in terms of what she served. Since I left home more than 40 years ago, I've been making it right for myself.

Food has always been in my life. Being born in Ethiopia, where there was a lack of food, and then really cooking with my grandmother Helga in Sweden. And my grandmother Helga was a cook's cook.