When I was growing up in north-west London, our milkman's cart was pulled by a horse, and cattle still grazed on the meadows near Church Farm.

At school, I never had a hold on English history, and cheder was a place run by sadistic incompetents, so I felt alienated from the Jewish part of my past.

This was the wonder of advertising; the complete absence of cynicism. It may have many mansions, but it has no room for Doubting Thomases.

My own zigzag path through life led me back to Santa Cruz in the early Eighties, and I have revisited regularly since. The place hasn't changed: head in the clouds, backside on the hills and feet in the ocean - one of the most decent and beautiful places on earth.

I always tell my family - and they laugh about it - but someday, I will write a vegetarian book. My cousin, who's a big vegetarian, tells me flat out, 'You're my favorite vegetarian chef.'

I've completely changed what I eat and how I view food. My friends and family eat really healthy and they've been encouraging me. I feel great!

My mother was a doctor, and I grew up with her in a little apartment belonging to my grandmother, because the Soviet Union never saw fit to let our family have its own apartment.

There's this unspoken assumption when you're the child of a doctor that nothing is ever wrong with you - or at least nothing horrendous enough to warrant your father leaving work.