When she's not Everything Rachael Ray, she's a lawyer, all raw beef and business. But in the kitchen, she's a klutz.
"Everything was Shake 'n Bake or came out of the freezer," said Miller, who grew up in Grass Valley, Calif. "Before I started cooking, I had never eaten broccoli."
Then she got engaged. Then life turned serious. One epochal evening, she and her fiance were watching the Food Network. Miller decided to make Rachael Ray's recipe for country captain chicken. For the first time in her life, she walked into a supermarket produce section. The recipe turned out well. Her fiance, eating, was speechless.
She bought an RR cookbook. Started putting favorite RR recipes on the refrigerator. She looked online for a Ray blog, found nothing, and decided to start her own last year.
Today, Everything Rachael Ray averages about 700 to 900 visits a day. Miller, who has never met Ray, said she puts in about 20 minutes on her postings and, no, it doesn't interfere with her legal career. If anything, it has enhanced her life.
"I just found some happiness in it," she said. "I have 12 cookbooks. I write, I take photographs, I have this niche I'm filling."
VANILLA GARLIC
www.vanillagarlic.blogspot.com
Black-bottom cupcakes, butternut-squash cupcakes, pumpkin with curry spice cupcakes, even chocolate with pink peppercorn cupcakes. Vanilla Garlic seems to be on an insatiable odyssey to find the perfect cupcake.
Garrett McCord is Vanilla Garlic. Just 23, he has an English degree from the University of California at Davis and is working on his master's at California State University in Sacramento.
The kid can whip up the words!
