Rachael Ray
Rachael Ray
Rachael Domenica Rayis an American television personality, businesswoman, celebrity cook and author. She hosts the syndicated daily talk and lifestyle program Rachael Ray, and three Food Network series. Other programs to her credit include Rachael Ray's Week In A Day and the reality format shows Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off, Rachael vs. Guy: Kids Cook-Off and Rachael Ray's Kids Cook-Off. Ray has written several cookbooks based on the 30 Minute Meals concept, and launched a magazine Every Day with Rachael...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth25 August 1968
CityGlens Falls, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I work too much to be an appropriate parent. I feel like a bad mom to my dog some days because I'm just not here enough. I just feel like I would do a bad job if I took the time to literally give birth to a kid right now and try and juggle everything I'm doing.
My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.
I don't know that I have a favorite meal. When I'm cooking I'm thinking about the person I'm feeding and I want to make them whatever they want. My husband's favorite meal is carbonara. I guess my favorite food is anything my mom makes. Because like anybody who loves their mother's cooking, if you try and make your mom's recipes, they never taste quite the same. And I don't know if that's because she's lying about what she's putting in there and just not telling me. Like when I turn my back, she's sneaking something in there. It just never seems to taste the same.
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.
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.
Good food and a warm kitchen are what makes a house a home. I always tried to make my home like my mother's, because Mom was magnificent at stretching a buck when it came to decorating and food. Like a true Italian, she valued beautification in every area of her life, and I try to do the same.
My mom worked in restaurants for 60 years, and what I learned from her is a lot. But if I had to boil it down, take your work very seriously, but don't take yourself too seriously. Work harder than everyone else and never complain about it. Don't go to bed if you're not proud of the product of your day; stay awake until you are.
My mom said the two most important kitchen utensils are attached to your arms... you cannot mix up meatballs with a wooden spoon, get in there, get your fingers dirty!
Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats: A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners
Everything I do for magazine I pound out in 15 to 16 hours. I sit down at 11 a.m., get up at 1 in the morning and I'm done.
You can have a wonderful, much better quality of life than you think. You really do think you lead a rich life if you do something as simple as making dinner for yourself. You don't have to be left out of anything. Maybe you can't stay in the five-star suite, maybe you can just sit in the cocktail lounge and look at the beautiful view, but you can still go there.
We have a queen-size bed and the dog sleeps in the middle. John and I are sort of these little quotation marks on either corner.
She said the first rule is to be myself.
I've just sort of gone with the flow and I ended up here. Crazy. I'm not going to start planning anything, my life is way better than anybody could have planned it.