Castmate Mazar Quotes

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

We have friends in Italy who have these old stoves, and they turn out the most beautiful food. All you really need is time, the best ingredients, and love. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

I don't think it's unusual to spend time with your castmate. ~ Isabel Lucas

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.' ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

I have a very high metabolism, and I have to constantly eat to keep on going. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

When entertaining, it's great to wow your guests with an outstanding recipe, but it's also very important to design a menu that's not too demanding of yourself, otherwise everybody will have fun but you. A great appetizer or simpler dish is a good way to work a menu that's delicious but does not impose too much effort or time spent in the kitchen. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

Desmo is my guard dog, but he has a sweet side, too. Nothing entertains him (or me) more than when I blow bubbles and he can chase them. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

In Italy, everybody buys silver for every special occasion. Baptisms, weddings, you get silver. ~ Debi Mazar

I'm not in the business to make people aware of me, and publicists are very expensive - they're $3,500 a month! I don't want to spend that kind of money so I can get a stupid article in 'Interview' magazine. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

For me, its like go ahead and eat. Live your life. I mean, I've just seen so much death, you know, as of late, being in my 40s, of people getting sick or, you know, whatever, that I just feel like, you know what? You never know with life. Eat. Enjoy yourself. Just try to be healthy and, you know, and watch it. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

Some people in LA are addicted. They have to be here. My personal life is stronger than my professional life, in terms of priorities. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

Doing makeup was a way to create characters, only I got tired of doing it for other people. ~ Debi Mazar

I need savory sauces, stews and pastas. I can't live without pastas. My butt, you can tell I like to eat. ~ Debi Mazar

I like acting. I really like acting. The career, it can keep you interested. With 'Entourage,' the characters are living a lifestyle that is kind of troubling. But the challenge is to make Shauna a person. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

I've always been a foodie. My grandmother got me hooked on cooking. ~ Debi Mazar

I'm never sloppy, and I never wear jeans. I don't work one look in particular, but it's usually retro - I'm a flea-market freak. And detailed - I'm always very done, even at the gym. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

Michael Freeman was thirty-five years old – a former Special Forces soldier turned policeman. He was a tall and slim black man, with grey-flecked hair and dark almond-shaped eyes. His smile was tight-lipped – half knowing and half strategic. It hid a mouthful of craggy teeth. A childhood in Detroit's East Side with an aggressive, alcoholic father had taught him to play things close to his chest, to look and listen. His colleagues knew him as a patient thinker, sedulous, missing nothing given time. Intellectually savvy and emotionally guarded, he exuded certitude. In Afghanistan, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, he spent several weeks as a mounted outlier with the Northern Alliance in the Alma Tak Mountains, beyond the range of reinforcement or rescue – drinking filtered ditchwater and eating nuts scavenged from corpses – and calling down massive airstrikes on Taliban positions. He gained a certain reputation. Word spread the length of the Darya Suf River valley, through the Tiangi Gap to the stronghold at Mazar-i-Sharif that there was a monster loose in the mountains and the Taliban called him 'bor-buka', which seemed to mean black or devil or whirlwind, and, at times, all of these things. ~ Simon Conway

For holidays, I like doing special cheery touches around the table, like color-coordinating the plates and napkins to fit the theme. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

As a matter of fact, I've been to Italy many times before I met my husband, which he can't even imagine that I could possibly know anything about Italian food. But, you know, Italian food's really basic, and there's so many different variations on it that what my husband did is he broke it down for me. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar

I have a full Tuscan lunch and dinner every day in my home; my husband's a fantastic chef. ~ Debi Mazar

I'm a girl who's curvy, and I'm Latvian, but I don't have hips, and I have a tiny waist. ~ Debi Mazar

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante. ~ Debi Mazar

I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show. ~ Debi Mazar

With the breast-feeding, I really love the bonding. Real life is more important to me. ~ Debi Mazar

Life is just too short to count calories forever! ~ Debi Mazar

I like to watch Bourdain and Andrew Zimmern, because I like them when they travel. I like Ina Garten, 'The Barefoot Contessa.' Giada is really nice, but I get a little bit bored with just staying in the kitchen. ~ Debi Mazar

I always had dreams. I knew I wanted to have money to buy things at the flea market. That's worked out well. ~ Debi Mazar

I have a fuller figure and sometimes like to hide my legs. Palazzo pants accentuate my small waist and make me feel a little like Katharine Hepburn. ~ Debi Mazar

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. ~ Debi Mazar