Healthy Hollywood: Try It On Tuesday – Valerie Bertinelli’s Most Intimate Affair!

Nothing gets Valerie’s heart-pumping more than cooking!

She calls a night in the kitchen her “most intimate affair.” “The Hot in Cleveland” stars reveals in November’s Prevention magazine that she knew her husband, Tom Vitale, was the one after they first cooked together.

“When I saw how much passion Tom puts into his cooking, I thought, Oh, OK, he’s a giver. But if you’re the only one doing the cooking and he’s like, “Hey, where’s my food?” then, well not so much.” Plus, Tom does the dishes – which Valerie told him right from the start is like “foreplay.”

Valerie shares her love of cooking and family recipes in her new cookbook, “One Dish at a Time.” Valerie dishes to Prevention that her grandmother and mom taught her to cook, but that she really found her “cooking voice” after she became a mom and wanted to feed her family healthy meals. “I believe the kitchen has a voice, an energy, a heart. It’s an old cliché, but it’s true. Everyone ends up hanging out in the kitchen, and that’s why mine is so huge now. When Tom and I cook, we’ve got music going, we’ve got the kids, and then we play games after. It’s a family event.”

The 52-year-old actress wowed the world when she posed in bikini for People magazine after she lost 40 pounds on the Jenny Craig plan.

Valerie says the most important lesson she learned was “To eat more fruits and vegetables. In my refrigerator, the first thing you’ll see is cut-up vegetables, so I can grab something to eat that won’t hurt me. I’ve learned that food is about nourishing your body and not using it to suppress a feeling you don’t want to admit to.”

Check out a few of Valerie’s recipes at www.prevention.com/valerie-bertinelli-recipes

— Terri MacLeod