Rachael Ray: ‘I Cannot Make Coffee… or Toast Bread!’

Rachael Ray is all of us. She’s the celebrity chef who isn’t really a chef at all. She’s just a person who loves to cook and is trying to make all our lives easier. It’s not always easy to be her. She takes a lot of flack from what a lot of people consider to be “real chefs.” Anthony Bourdain has called her the anti-Julia Child, and has said that “the sooner she stops cooking, the happier [they’ll] both be.” Ouch.

The thing is, though, she’s not trying to be Bourdain, or Mario Batali, or Bobby Flay. She’s just trying to do her, and she’s got it right. She’s never pretended to be anything she’s not. She told the New York Times back in 2005, “I have no formal anything,” she said. “I’m completely unqualified for any job I’ve ever had,” and she’s said over and over again that she’s “not a chef.”

She does genuinely love cooking, though. She’s a user of one of our current favorite apps, li.st. Recently, she made a list called “Allow Me to Listroduce Myself.” Here’s what we learned about her:

1. She “loves making lists. [Her] favorite are grocery lists.”
2. She loves Pitbulls, and calls her dog Isaboo “the kindest most sensitive member of [her] family. She created dog at[sic] cat food made to the highest standard,” which Ray herself has taste tested. “To date Nutrish food has made over 12 million dollars for animal rescue organizations large and small, [their] biggest partner is North Shore Animal League America.”
3. She “really [does] love to cook.” She says, “Even if I’ve cooked for cameras or in an industrial kitchen for 12 hours in a day, I’d rather go home and cook in my pjs and slippers than dine at any fine restaurant. I’m lucky to work at what I love most: food, drink and conversation.”
4. When she’s not cooking, she’s “taking pictures, drawing and doodling, watching a great movie with my hubby and dog, listening to vinyl, watching a Jets game or a good match up in baseball, traveling to Austin TX or Copenhagen, Denmark or a region of Italy, jumping out of an airplane or reading a great thriller (probably by a Scandinavian author).”
5. She cannot “make coffee (it looks like mud or pee) or Toast bread (I set it on fire).”
6. She has two dream jobs:
   • “Bad ass rock and roll drummer”
   • “Jane Bond”
7. She does not like “negative thinkers and willful ignorance.”
8. She reads: “real books, the Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, food magazines even in languages [she does not] speak, Cook’s Illustrated and our magazine, Every Day and [she reads] lists!”

Related:

Anthony Bourdain Dishes on His Dinner With POTUS: He’s Great With Chopsticks

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