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Rachael Ray wrote that her mom showed her “how to make something outta nothing” in a Mother’s Day post
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She recalled being “very, very poor” while living in New York as a young woman
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While she hosted a show called $40 a Day, she says that was her budget for a whole week
For Rachael Ray, Mother’s Day was a chance to reflect on a valuable lesson from her mom that shaped her life and career.
“My mom taught me a lot more than how to cook,” Ray, 56, wrote on Instagram on Sunday, May 11. “She showed me how to make something outta nothing—and how to do it with love. 💛🍲.”
“Whether it was dinner on the table 🍽️ or how to pick yourself up when things got tough 💪💫… she just had it,” she added.
In an accompanying video, the celebrity chef went on to explain how she learned to be resourceful when she was just starting out in New York.
“When I lived in New York as a very young woman, I was very, very poor,” she shared. “And I didn’t want to bother my mother. I didn’t want her to feel scared for me. So I would never ask for money. And I didn’t have any.”
“Eventually I did a show called $40 a Day,” the culinary star recalled, referring to the Food Network show she hosted from 2002 to 2005. “And that was my budget for a whole week. I would buy a week’s food and I only had $40.”
The I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead podcast host shared the key ingredients that nourished her during that period.
“I always felt so grateful that I came from people that taught me how to buy dry beans, a few vegetables, very little protein, and to live on that for a long time,” she said. “And I am deeply grateful for it. It has changed the course of my life. It’s made my life what it is.”
Rachael Ray/Instagram
Rachael Ray and her mother
Ray paid tribute to her family in another post last month, when she shared a video of her and her older sister Maria Betar in the kitchen together for National Siblings Day in April.
The throwback clip saw the siblings squabbling and laughing as they made carrot cake.
“Had I thought, I would have put it in Bubble and Brown,” Betar, 65, said while pouring batter into a glass dish, noting that the cake looked “beautiful” in Ray’s cookware brand.
“Yeah, thanks a lot for not using your sister’s product to bake your cake in!” Ray joked.
“I forgot!” Betar admitted. “At home, I always put it in a Bubble and Brown and then I don’t have to take it out. It’s beautiful.”
Ray said she was thinking of her sister when she designed the dishware. “I created them because you like to bake. Way to not show my dish, thanks a lot!”
In the caption, Ray wrote, “We laughed, we ate cake, I gave her a little grief 🫢 business as usual 💼 Happy National Siblings Day to the ones who keep you grounded and still take your crap 👯♀️”
Read the original article on People
