Fusing cooking, chemistry, and comedy, Alton Brown has made a name for himself as a TV host and food network fixture.

His creative eye and quick-wit captivated audiences of good eats, cutthroat kitchen, and Iron Chef America.

Now he brings that same humor to the page in his new book, Food for Thought, a collection of personal essays.

Jeff Bennett spoke with him earlier this week.

Alton Brown, welcome to the News Hour.

Thanks for having me on.

You have had such a unique professional journey, starting from your beginnings and television

as a cinematographer for music videos.

Indeed.

When did you discover that food was your true calling?

I don't think food was ever my true calling, but I think telling stories about food was a true

calling.

And I think that it happened right when, this is early 90s, probably around 1992, when I started

thinking more about food when I was actually

on set shooting TV commercials, I was thinking about cooking. And that's why I thought, well,

that's a little backwards. So maybe I need to spend a little bit more time with this food thing.

We were talking earlier and you said that the process of writing this book, you didn't intend to do it.

Nope. And when you started writing, things just sort of fell out onto the page. What surprised

you about that process? You know, at least half of this book is what I'm going to call memoir.

I'm talking about myself in certain ways. And I did not expect that to come tumbling out the way

that it did. I like to say that I've lived my life without a rearview mirror.

I don't think a lot about the past.

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