Padma Lakshmi Quotes

I'm the kind of girl who thinks about what she's gonna cook for dinner when she's finishing her lunch.

Flowers die and wine gets consumed. Both are lovely. I appreciate both. Wine and roses. I actually had someone bring me a lobe of foie gras once.

I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York.

My first taste memory is pickle. Even as a kid, I was really weird. I liked chillis. I used to climb up the shelves in my grandmother's pantry. The pickle jar was kept right at the top. One time, I dropped the jar and it broke. I was totally busted.

She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could. I

I'm not attached to things at all. I'm very lucky to have quite a few beautiful things, but if I look back at my life, I was often happiest when I had very little.

For a while, I became an atheist; now that I'm grown up, though, I'm not hard-edged enough to be an atheist. Even though I live with a flaming atheist, I love going to temple. I love all the rituals.

Once in a while we burned a wok trying to make our churan, and Jima, Bhanu, or another matriarch would banish us from the kitchen. "You should've told us," they'd say. "We would've helped you." You're not getting it, Neela and I thought. This is our party and you're not invited. To this day, the elder women of my household in Chennai still regard Neela or me with suspicion whenever we enter the kitchen to make anything other than tea. No matter that I host a cooking show or that Neela has raised two healthy daughters who clearly haven't starved or been disfigured by a kitchen accident.

I once asked her if she was happy. "That depends on what I am able to get done today," she said, laughing. She told me that the completion of her daily tasks was the only thing she felt she had control over. They were a form of meditation, of salve. Kept busy, she had no time to ruminate and no time for opinions, certainly not feminist ones. I pressed her: "I mean, are you happy with your life, Rajima?" "I don't know," she said uncomfortably, as if she'd never really considered such a question. "When there is little you can do, you do what you can." Happiness for my grandmother seemed to be a verb rather than a noun. She had so little control over her own life. Yet she took control, out of thin air for herself, when she could.

The great thing about living today is that there is this thing called the Interweb, and you can just look up anything.

In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the "endo-whatever," had stained so much - my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn't take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did I not go on? How many times had I not been able to be there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap. The impediment of expected pain would shackle my days and any plans I made.

I did not see my own womanhood as something positive or to be celebrated, but as a curse that I had to constantly make room for and muddle through. Like the scar on my arm, my reproductive syst

I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian.

Commitment is easy before a relationship requires compromise and obligation.

experienced a bout of atheism. With adolescent self-importance, I wondered why God would allow all this to happen to a fourteen-year-old girl. When

I am as omnivorous as it's possible to be. I always say there's nothing I won't eat and nothing I won't wear.

I usually doze off between 7:30 and 9 p.m. while putting my baby to sleep. Then I suddenly wake up remembering I'm an adult with no bedtime. I spend the next four hours catching up on reading, e-mails, and other adult pursuits until I collapse for good until sunrise.

I'm not of the American ilk that, you know, your lover needs to be your best friend and know you inside out. I think he should know you well enough to please you. Otherwise, what secret will there be to tell him when you're ninety?

Wine, like food, is so emotional. If you think about it, so much of the courting ritual is surrounded by wine and food. There's a built-in romance to wine.

I grew up a vegetarian. Then, because I grew up in the states, I started slowly eating meat. First it was bologna sandwiches, or pepperoni on pizza.

The insidious reasons for a brown girl's self-loathing won't be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations - and what they mean about your worth - might not dawn on you while you're playing cricket in the sand. What's at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards.

I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other.

Beauty is no accomplishment on its own. It's what you do with it.

Auguste Escoffier into what we now know as the five mother sauces of French cuisine. It's funny

I always think, after the second glass of wine, you should be putting something in your stomach.

Back then, eating was also a means of beautification, since the more aloo tikki and murukku you consumed, the more likely you'd reach a voluptuousness akin to an American size ten or twelve, required for looking good in a sari.

Every country I would go to, even if it was just on a modeling job, I would go to their markets. If I went to Morocco for 'Elle' magazine, I would be in the spice markets during my off time and just come back with a suitcase full of stuff that I really wanted to try.

From the simple stringing together of lemon garlands for the goddess Durga, to dividing the prasadam or blessed foods for the children first, I came to associate food not only with feminity, but also with purity and divinity.

I always thought that what Rajima did with those cast-off peels was a metaphor for how she dealt with her arranged marriage. She transformed those peels, with palm sugar for sweetness and tamarind for tang, into something precious.

I am a sufferer of endometriosis. I didn't want any young women to go through what I went through. I thought that people should know about it.

She raised her hand, bony fingers spread. "Don't worry. She is supposed to cry. Her life will never be the same. You can't give her everything."

I realized what Rajima meant. Until that moment, I had been almost exclusively providing everything Krishna could want or need. I was her sole succor and haven. But her needs were changing. She would now need sustenance from the earth, from Mother Nature, from the world, or at least Whole Foods. She would need more than what I could give her from my own body. We

She had sculpted the mist, the way those who have no choice do. She had willed a life for the two of us in a new land.

Teddy taught me about kindness, about love that is unconditional; a sentiment not dependent on acceptance, approval, or the expectation of something in return. It was the first time I would ever feel this from a man who wasn't my grandfather. And I didn't know what to do with it at all. If only I'd embraced our differences sooner. I didn't know it then, but we had so little time left.

During the course of filming 'Top Chef,' I gain 15 lbs., so I'm used to needing two dress sizes.

You don't need expensive classes and all kinds of weird equipment if you really want to be in shape. There are great ways to do it that are very economical, it just takes a time commitment, even if it means waking up a half hour a day before the rest of the household gets up because that's the only time you have.

He was everything I wasn't. He was a lot of what I wanted to be.

The close proximity in which people lived in India was in stark contrast to my independent existence in America.

I think a great classic watch is the first staple every woman should invest in.

I work out all the time! I don't just sit around and eat burgers whenever I want. Oh, if I could I probably would, but I don't.

All chefs are like Jewish mothers. They want to feed you and feed you and impress you. It's an eagerness to please.

For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person.

Simply being born female in our society is to grow up being told your worth as a person is tied to how slim and attractive you are. Even for those of us lucky enough to have evolved parents, the message is still driven home by the world at large.

In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends.

The men on the show have it easy, in part because men on TV have uniforms: There's the jacket, in black, blue, or gray. There's the shirt, the pants. I can never tell whether Tom is gaining or losing weight beneath his boxy suits. He always looks the same. Tom also has the benefit of being Tom, a decorated veteran of the restaurant kitchen. Like so many chefs, he is practiced at the taste-of-this, taste-of-that eating regimen. I'm the one who has to look like a glorified weathergirl, with formfitting dresses and all, which, don't get me wrong, I love - at least until I don't.

You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree.

Cooking was something women did to nourish and nurture their families, whereas for men it was largely something they did professionally to gain money and status.

In southern Spain, they made me eat a bull's testicles. They were really garlicky, which I don't like. I prefer to take a bull by the horns, not by, um ...

Hearing doctors tell you that you can't get pregnant does not extinguish the hope.

I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body.

I've always thought the back is one of the most beautiful parts of a woman. I've created four versions of the front-to-back necklace which actually gives you two necklaces in one. I love the way they swing and catch the light as a woman is walking away. You almost want to pull on it and stop her!

People always comment about my clothes. They don't think a fashionable woman can love food and be knowledgeable and actually cook.

I really like to sometimes go into food detox and eat very simply.

I love clothes, but really I don't have that much to say about skirts. Before I was writing, I went to fashion shows only when the designer was a good friend and I was there to show support.

I have great empathy for all the contestants that come on 'Top Chef,' whether they go home right away or they make it to the finish line. It's a very vulnerable position they put themselves in and I feel for them.

I'm not tough. I'm tenacious.

And so I was left with a mantra, a sort of haiku version of our relationship: I don't regret one day I spent with him, nor did I leave a moment too soon.

The best thing you can do for someone is make them a beautiful plate of food. How else can you invade someone's body without actually touching them?

I never Tweet about my daughter. Never. I just want to be respectful of her privacy. My job as a mom is to know when to open my mouth and when not to.

I think eating in itself is the act of great sensuality, so all you have to do is point the camera in the right direction.

I think wine is such a big universe that it's kind of like food - it's intimidating to a lot of people, myself included.

went from hoping things would work out to seeing that they were working out. I am actually doing this, I thought. Maybe I'm not just flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't want to be passive anymore, personally or professionally. In that moment, I came into being as my real and present professional self.

At the end of a marriage, no one wins. There is only anger, sorrow, guilt, emptiness, and defeat.

Every woman has a record of her body - a closet full of jeans and bras of various sizes, albums full of photographs revealing periods of weight gain and loss.

One thing that happens when you're pregnant is that as your stomach starts to stretch. It itches! So I have to keep my belly really lubricated. Every morning, there's a buttering ceremony after I get out of the shower. It's really like basting a turkey with body butter.

I tend to sleep in the nude ... I'm a sensual-leaning woman. You have to use the word 'leaning' or it sounds like I'm boasting.

I always loved my bangles, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a bangle on.

I don't have any stigma attached to my body. When I'm in my own private space, I have very little on.

Like many immigrants, I had always kept my Eastern and Western lives compartmentalized.

I've always had a fantasy to write a cookbook, because everyone wants to know what a model eats.

we eat for our stomachs, but we hunger with our hearts.

I didn't wholly identify with the collective experiences of children in either place. I had one foot in each culture, but no firm footing in either of them. At

I didn't know what the future held in store for me, but I felt hopeful.

DON'T wear loud clanging bangles at work, it's disruptive and noisy and your coworkers won't appreciate it! Bangles should have a gentle wind-chimey tinkle, not the crash bang of a million pots and pans.