Under the apron with Chef Michael Smith

Renowned Food Network star and best-selling cookbook author, Chef Michael Smith is also North America's first food ambassador. As the food ambassador to Prince Edward Island, Chef Michael Smith is dedicated to promoting the island as a foodie destination and raising awareness of Island-produced food. Smith's recipes are greatly influenced by local products; he loves making food personal by knowing where it came from and the people who produced it.

Here, Michael Smith tells CanadianLiving.com about his guilty food pleasures, the first restaurant he worked in and much more!

CanadianLiving.com: Canadian Living catches you checking out at the grocery store at 5 pm - what's in your basket?
Chef Michael Smith: When I go to the grocery store, my focus is getting as many different colours in my grocery cart as I can. It can be that simple. It clearly focuses on the fruits and vegetables and very often we're sort of led to believe that this is difficult. All the stuff you have to think about, which one should I eat, which one's healthy? But if you're making sure to get every single colour of the rainbow into your grocery cart you're making a very healthy decision.

CL.com: It’s late at night and you're heading home. Where do you stop for a midnight nosh, or what do you cook up when you get home?
MS: Well I live in the countryside so I'm not coming home past restaurants or anything like that. But last week my wife and I were watching a movie and one of the things we like to do is break at the one-hour mark to go get a snack. I took a watermelon, chunked it up, tossed it with really good olive oil, salt and pepper and we chowed down on that. It's one of our favourite snacks. Click here to see Canadian Living's Watermelon with White Balsamic recipe.

CL.com: What's your "closet" food indulgence - that embarrassing thing you wouldn't want your foodie friends to know you eat?
MS: You know what? I love French fries. I like them crispy and deep fried and soaked in fat, tasty and no good for you – but not McDonalds.

CL.com: What's one ingredient you use all the time and we might not know about - but should?  
MS: The ingredients that I tend to rely on most are the ingredients from around me. As a cook on Prince Edward Island it's very important to me that I use the ingredients of Prince Edward Island. Everything that we cook in the kitchen there's always something from our farm, a friend's farm, from a local farm or from somebody who we know that's producing food. So those tend to be the core of how we cook.

CL.com: The first restaurant you worked in - how old were you and what did you do?  
MS: I was in college, I would have been 18 years old and I was a dishwasher at the university food services. I decided the cooks were having way too much fun so I asked around and got myself a cook's job within three days.

Page 1 of 2 - Read page 2 to find out what foodie knowledge Chef Michael Smith passes on to children