TV chef Rachael Ray knows what it's like to be you

It's as seductive as losing 10 pounds in 10 days.

The promise of a home-cooked meal in 30 minutes. And it has spawned cable and network television shows, books and magazines from its inventor, Rachael Ray.

The promise is a siren song to anyone arriving home hungry at 6 p.m., to novices cowed by Emeril Lagasse's restaurant creations, to women who think Giada De Laurentiis and Sandra Lee are too thin to be teaching them how to cook.

Ray is the Everywoman, the perky girl next door you run to for a cup of sugar and a recipe for fajita beef pie.

"People don't look at me and think, 'That's so fancy' and 'I could never do that,' " Ray said in a recent interview. "They think, 'I could totally do that.' "

Rachael Ray, she's just like you. Just like you, Ray can't spend hours cooking dinner. Just like you, Ray has a budget for how much she can spend on vacation — on her show "$40 a Day." Just like you, Ray says "EVOO" for extra-virgin olive oil, sandwiches are "sammies" and when something blows her away, "How cool is that?"

Less opulent than Oprah, less meticulous than Martha, Ray's accessible can-do philosophy has now grown into an empire of books, a magazine, her cooking show "30-Minute Meals," and coming next year, a daytime talk show, which Ray is doing in partnership with Oprah's company. The first issue of her new magazine, Every Day with Rachael Ray, sold 1 million newsstand copies.

This holiday, she is promoting her new book "365: No Repeats," which Ray calls her "no excuses" book. (Seattle was dropped from the book tour after Ray landed a spot on "The Tonight Show.") "There's gotta be something you like in here." It even includes a recipe for risotto based on a meal she used to cook for her dog. Her new daytime talk show will focus on "can-do lifestyle programming."

"If there are celebrities, they can't just come on and talk about their movie," Ray said. "It's come on and tell them how to get picky eaters to eat. Where do they hide their junk when people come over?"

Celebrities, they're just like you.

Ray grew up in upstate New York, where her mom supervised restaurants for a chain. "We weren't poor, but we were check-to-check people," she says. Her grandfather, a stonemason who moved here from Sicily, had 10 children.

Even so, Ray felt she had a rich childhood. Her mom took her to New York once a year, they saw a show, and she got to pick out one thing from FAO Schwarz.

"You can have a wonderful, much better quality of life than you think," Ray said. "You really do think you lead a rich life if you do something as simple as making dinner for yourself. You don't have to be left out of anything. Maybe you can't stay in the five-star suite, maybe you can just sit in the cocktail lounge and look at the beautiful view, but you can still go there."

Her thriftiness runs from her shows, like "$40 a Day," now reborn as "Tasty Travels," to her books, which Ray emphasizes are always priced below a music CD.

Ray got her start working at the candy counter at Macy's Marketplace in New York City. After working in gourmet food markets in New York, she moved back to the Adirondacks. While working as a food buyer for a gourmet market in Albany, Ray began a series of classes called "30-Minute Mediterranean Meals" to increase store sales over the holidays. That turned into a weekly segment on an evening news program in Albany, which led to the Food Network.

"I've just sort of gone with the flow and I ended up here. Crazy," Ray, 37, said. "I'm not going to start planning anything, my life is way better than anybody could have planned it."

Recipe remix

Just like us, you may spend more than 30 minutes cooking her meals. In Seattle Times testing, recipes from "365: No Repeats" required 37 to 47 minutes to complete.

To many, this might not matter — if your stomach has been empty since lunch, there's a huge psychological gulf between knowing dinner will be ready in 37 minutes versus in an hour. There is something empowering about finishing a meal in record time — as long as you also enjoy eating it.

Most of Ray's meals are gut-busting heartland dishes. Pork chops with potato salad. Baked chicken and vegetables covered with bread crumbs. Pasta dishes are a recurring theme. Other recipes provide a training-wheel introduction to international flavors — such as steak smeared with an Asian pesto.

Some of the meals may make you want to spend a full hour cooking your own version. For instance, a fish and chips recipe recommends cod dipped in pancake batter and a bag of frozen fries. If you're going to deep-fry fish, why not deep-fry potatoes while you have a pot filled with hot oil?

It's a hectic life

Ray is just like you, if you're inexhaustible. On the day of her interview, Ray had a book signing until 9 p.m. She then planned to get Indian takeout — yes, she does sometimes get takeout — and stay up all night wrapping Christmas and Hanukkah gifts. She usually sleeps 4 ½ to 5 hours a night.

The next day she was leaving on her annual eight-city holiday book tour. In each city, she signs 1,000 books. The stores hand out wristbands to control the crowds. She pops out two books a year.

Ray still tapes 80 new episodes of "30-Minute Meals" a year, scaled down from 120 episodes.

For every magazine issue, Ray writes four columns.

"Everything I do for magazine I pound out in 15 to 16 hours," Ray said. "I sit down at 11 a.m., get up at 1 in the morning and I'm done."

In the end, Ray's life is as similar to yours as Britney Spears' is when Us Weekly runs photos of her taking out the trash. Just like you.

Sharon Pian Chan: 206-464-2958 or schan@seattletimes.com