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.
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.
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.
Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.
With the breast-feeding, I really love the bonding. Real life is more important to me.
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.
Being typecast is a great thing for an actor. I was considered one of the New York mob actors.
Sitting down at the table is a sacred event. It's the heart of the home. People have ginormous homes or crappy little homes, but the kitchen is where we always end up sitting. It's where the stories happen, the family happens.
I don't want to be 45 competing with 20-year-olds, running to go get Botox. I want to be an expressive actor hired for the age that I am, portraying women who are my age: 40. I'm just hoping I can find some of those roles to play. Otherwise, I have to find something else.
I need savory sauces, stews and pastas. I can't live without pastas. My butt, you can tell I like to eat.
I can't live without carbs.
My mother was really young when she had me, so she was a horrible cook, but we lived with my grandmother, who was fantastic. We eventually got our own place, and my mother started learning to cook. But it was also the '70s, so she was very experimental, and, well - thank God we had a dog.
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.
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.
For holidays, I like doing special cheery touches around the table, like color-coordinating the plates and napkins to fit the theme.
I started doing makeup to make a living. Then I said, You're not supposed to be putting powder on other people. You're supposed to be powdering yourself.
My husband is from Florence. And he has a 15th-century barn that is completely rustic and very 'Green Acres'-like.
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.
I haven't always had the money rolling in. I'm a character actor; it's not like I'm Gwyneth Paltrow - so I do have hard times still in my life. And that's even more why it's like you know what, I'm not that different from people going through it. I struggle; I look for a better deal at the grocery store.
