I Live In, Literally, The Same Home

When I Do A 30-minute Meal, For Instance, On Food Network, That's My Food You See At The End Of The Show And It's Not Perfect. And If Sometimes Things Break Or Drop Or The Pasta Hits The Wall When I'm Draining It, They Never Stop Tape. They Just Kind Of Let Me Go With It.

I Live In, Literally, The Same Home When I Was Swiping My First Bank Card And Wondering If I'd Have To Put Back The Charmin. We Still Don't Have A Dishwasher. My Mom Has Done All These Gardens So Now My House Looks Like The Garden Shack In The Middle Of Versailles.

I Used To Work In Kitchens, Doing 12 Or More Hours A Day Of Physical Labor, So Today, Eight To 12 Hours Of Cooking, Chatting Or Filming Feels Like A Vacation. When I Have A Scheduled 'day Off,' I Spend Several Hours Writing, Then I Clean Until I Crash From Fatigue. I Don't Relax Well.

Evoo Is Extra-virgin Olive Oil. I First Coined 'evoo' On My Cooking Show Because Saying 'extra Virgin Olive Oil' Over And Over Was Wordy, And I'm An Impatient Girl - That's Why I Make 30-minute Meals!

I Was Always A Person On My Mother's Hip In The Kitchen. My Mom Really Wanted Her Kids At Her Side As Much As Possible, And She Worked In Restaurants For Over Fifty Years. And My Grandfather Had Ten Children, And He Grew And Prepared Most Of The Food. My Grandmother, On My Mother's Side, Was The Family Seamstress And The Baker. So My Mom, The Eldest Child, Was Always In The Kitchen With My Grandpa And I Was Always In The Production And Restaurant Kitchens And Our Own Kitchen With My Mom. And It's Just Something That Has Always Spoken To Me.