A hero is somebody who is selfless, who is generous in spirit, who just tries to give back as much as possible and help people. A hero to me is someone who saves people and who really deeply cares.
Debi Mazar
The kitchen is the heart of every home, for the most part. It evokes memories of your family history.
Life is just too short to count calories forever!
My mom had me at 16 and took me every place she went. I remember going on peace marches. She tried to take me to Woodstock - it was pouring rain. It was on my birthday, and I was crying so much in the car they turned the car around and dumped me at my grandmother's house... I had a little attitude.
My wrists, which are tattooed with my daughters' names, are always occupied by a watch.
On the morning of Thanksgiving, I would wake up to the home smelling of all good things, wafting upstairs to my room. I would set the table with the fancy silverware and china and hope that my parents and grandmother wouldn't have the annual Thanksgiving fight about Richard Nixon.
My husband is from Florence. And he has a 15th-century barn that is completely rustic and very 'Green Acres'-like.
I have lots of shoes, but I have to be comfortable. Lately, I've stolen my husband's big, ugly Uggs to wear around the kitchen. I want to have them on, then slide into a fabulous heel later. Truth is, I often forget the heel.
We go to Italy every winter, and my husband's mother has a bingo party on Christmas. Every woman brings a dish: lentils, cavolo nero, tons of beans, polenta, every type of cheese, bruschetta, fresh vegetables, and local olive oil and wine.
I'd love to give my girls a traditional Thanksgiving with turkey and all that jazz, but we've raised them to love Tuscan food so much that they don't care for it. My favorite is a nice polenta with beef stew and broccoli rabe on the side.
I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show.
I married a Florentine. We bought a house, had a family, and after a decade in our little Hollywood nest, we said, 'Let's go to Tuscany.' Tell God you can't make him laugh, but the next thing I know, my cooking show has become a hit, and they're asking for more seasons, and they want it to be in the States.
I think that my interpretation of Italian was a lot more southern than what my husband cooks. You know, I grew up in Queens and in Brooklyn, and we - really, it's more southern. It's Naples and Sicily. It's heavier. It's over-spiced. And like most Americans, I thought spaghetti and meatballs was genius.
Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.
My husband has the philosophy that if you can work a Nintendo control, you can chop an onion. So, we have our children in the kitchen. We sit down every night for dinner. We're trying to give our kids a sense of what's going into their bodies, and it's also good for family time.
I live in Italy part time, and they're obsessed with what's happening in LA too. They make fun of Americans, but the world wants to know what's going on in Hollywood.
Some people in LA are addicted. They have to be here. My personal life is stronger than my professional life, in terms of priorities.
Nobody has money right now. And eating is very important, but it doesn't need to be expensive. And to make - it doesn't need to be fancy, as long as it's fresh and simple. The simpler it is, the more fancy it actually comes out tasting.
Basically, I start my morning off with a Bustelo coffee made in a mocha pot - the Bialetti. I warm some milk on the side, on my stove, and I add one teaspoon or half a teaspoon of real sugar. I have two of these every morning. Even when I was pregnant.
I grew up on food stamps. I come from a very humble background. And I've had many friends that have been destitute - you know, running into trouble - and places like The Midnight Mission have given them hope and have fed them and gotten them back on the right path.
We sit down with the kids every single night, not that I want to every night - sometimes I'd rather be out with my husband having a martini at a swanky restaurant - but we sit down with our kids every night at dinner.
With the breast-feeding, I really love the bonding. Real life is more important to me.
I have a very high metabolism, and I have to constantly eat to keep on going.
In Italy, everybody buys silver for every special occasion. Baptisms, weddings, you get silver.
My mom did not have money. She was a single mom, on and off in periods between marriages. My husband, however, grew up on a wonderful farm in Tuscany, in Florence, and his family was so entertaining in terms of growing their own food and using the fruit of their land. We have very, very different experiences.
I've always been someone who can just move. Some people in L.A. are addicted. They have to be here; they come for pilot season and stay here.
I'm a girl who's curvy, and I'm Latvian, but I don't have hips, and I have a tiny waist.
We go to several farms and look at foraging, and throw backyard parties with friends. We want to let people know they can enjoy a sense of Tuscany anywhere.
I like to have my hair grow, because I need to have hair for different roles. But I'm a woman, so I'm always cutting my hair off and wishing that I hadn't.
We want to teach families how to cook Tuscan wherever you are. How to reuse your leftovers. How to trick the kids into eating whatever you want by putting it into a frittata.
I'm naturally a muscular gal with some curves, so eating a Mediterranean diet makes my body happy.
As cool as I want my kids to be, they're just like any other kid. They don't love eggplant unless it is covered in cheese.
When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.
Cook what's fresh for the day. When you're using fresh fruits, vegetables, and foods, it's easier to keep the weight off. And I eat whatever I want - just not a ton of it.
I always had dreams. I knew I wanted to have money to buy things at the flea market. That's worked out well.
My husband wrote me love letters while I was on location in Canada and pregnant. They turned into being about food, and it turned it into a cookbook. He called it 'The Tuscan Cookbook for the Pregnant Male.' It was kind of genius. When I took it a book agent, he was like, 'Men don't buy cookbooks.'
Doing makeup was a way to create characters, only I got tired of doing it for other people.
My husband, Gabriele, is a musician, and I love music, so you can bet it's a really important part of our home entertaining repertoire, even if it means Gabriele making a really good playlist for a dinner party.
I was born and raised in Queens and moved into the city as a young adult. Then I ended up acting and decided to run off to California.
Food brings back memories. I had a mom that wasn't a good cook, so I would eat my grandma's food. It was amazing because it brings back a time almost in Technicolor. I see her house, I see her stove; I think about what it felt like when I was sick, and it felt like love.
I have this fear of coming across as a Barbie doll who got lucky. Style is a big part of who I am, but it's not who I am. Ya know?
Well, you know, I have always had an issue with the whole weight thing with people in general because I happen to love how big women look. I mean, it's all a perspective. It's all an opinion, and I think sort of the Rubenesque, voluptuous body is a lot sexier than the boney bag of bones with fake everything.
Lunch is formal - that's when my husband and I have our dates. And dinner is formal: we sit down every day with the kids at seven o' clock.
Usually I wear my grandma's old aprons, or others I have collected in my travels. When I was young, I would sit and watch my grandma prepare stuff. She wasn't Italian, but she did really good Italian food.
I'm a chocoholic. I need chocolate every day, like one little piece of Droste. I'm not into milk chocolate. But I don't like it when its super bitter. I need a sweet factor in there. I go for the 75 percent - that's good enough for me.
I find it beautiful when we're in Italy that everybody sits down at the table together. My mother-in-law is like, 'It doesn't matter what's going on in the house, who is fighting, who is upset, who has appointments, you sit down at that table at one o'clock.'
There's so much importance in honoring your everyday hero. It doesn't take money. It doesn't take connections. What matters is that people get involved. Whether your passion is gun control or food or whatever it may be, everybody needs to stop being so self-absorbed.
When you come into our house, you get a flavor for our life, our travels, our kids, our 18-year-old poodle who is like, blind, deaf and incontinent but so happy.
I look great because I'm happy.
Thanksgiving was always a favorite holiday for me. The preparation was fun! My grandma and I would walk to the butcher on Jamaica Avenue in Queens, order the bird, and buy all the fixings at the market.
