Giada de Laurentis is one of the most renowned Italian American chefs who wrote various cookery books and hosted different food preparation shows on television. Presently she is hosting some of the famous television cookery programs such as Weekend Getaways, Everyday Italian, Giada’s Weekend Getaways, Giada at Home and Giada in Paradise.

Career

Giada was born in Rome, Italy in 1970 and at the age of seven moved to southern California with her family. Being the granddaughter of the popular personality and film producer Dino de Laurentiis, she belonged from the family who had entertainment business, but she never had the interest to be the part of the family business. Her obsession for food was sparked as a child as she learned to prepare different and famous family recipes for frequent family gatherings. Subsequently, she acquired a social anthropology degree after attending UCLA. Her culinary career actually started and got recognized when she attended LeCordon Bleu situated in Paris, with an ambition of making herself as popular as a pastry chef. With her intention to work in some of the famous restaurants, she returned back to Los Angeles. After returning to Los Angeles she worked in the several restaurants including Wolfgang Puck’s Spago. Soon after working and showing her talent in different restaurants, she started up a catering company named GDL Foods. Later, Giada started to work as a food stylist.

Achievements

The historic day in Giada’s career came in 2002 when Food Network noticed her styling piece in the journal called Food & Wine. She hosted her own television food show, "Everyday Italian" in 2003. Thereafter, she never looked back and kept on moving. Soon,Giada teamed up with Mario Batali in 2004 to hostanother TV special show named as An Italian Christmas with Mario and Giada. Adding to this, other shows that she hosted were Giada at Home and Giada’s Weekend Getaways. Apart from all these, her first cookbook was published named, Everyday Italian: 125 Simple and Delicious Recipes¸ in 2005. Presently, Giada owns four products: Balsamic Vinegar, Extra-virgin Olive Oil, Sea Salt with Fresh Lemon Zest and Tuscan Herb Mix.

Personal Life

Today Giada is one of the well known personalities in culinary industry and happily married to fashion designer Todd Thompson in 2003. She also has a daughter named Jade Marie De Laurentiis Thompson, born in March 29, 2008. Giada’s work, books and shows have always impressed and inspired people to taste and make Italian food right at home. This pretty women has managed to steal millions of American hearts with her easy to make cook books and made a significant position in culinary industry with a smooth pace.

Are you looking for some of the interesting facts about food or culinary? If your answer is yes, then here are some of the most amusing facts you must know. Share these facts and impress your friends.

Ice Cream

Ice cream is a Chinese food item. Marco Polo the famous explorer when returned to Italy, from China in the year 1295, he actually brought a well known recipe called “Milk Ice” among many other things. However, later Europeans substituted cream for the milk, and voila. Since then, ice cream has been a major hit.

Generally, the United States actually consumes on an average 48 pints of ice cream per person, per year. This is usually more than any other country in the world.

On an average, it takes 50 licks to polish off a single-scoop ice cream cone.

Pizza

The word pizza was originally spelt as “pitsa”.

Most pizza is ordered during the weather forecast or TV programs. Adding to this, the delivery folks also report that women, perhaps not surprisingly, are better tippers!

Generally, Americans consume or eat almost 350 slices of pizza each second.

Chilies

The color of a chili is no indication of its spiciness, but what matters is its size. Generally, it is important to note that the smaller the chilie pepper, the hotter it is.

Near about 140 varieties of chilies peppers are alone grown in Mexico alone.

Chilies play a very important role in making foods safer. They help in reducing the harmful bacteria on foods.

Potato

The potato is one of the most important non-cereal crops in the world, and considered as the fourth most important crop overall.

Irish were the first to eat potato. They were first introduced to Britain and Ireland in the late 1500s. It didn’t get popular immediately; many people actually held potato responsible for diseases as it was not talked about in the Bible.

Chips made of potato were first invented by a North American Indian named as George Crum

In the United States, if we compare the price between a pound of potato chips and potato, generally prices of potato chips is almost two hundred times extra than potatoes.

Miscellaneous

The flavor that is commonly associated with bubble gum all across the world is a mixture of wintergreen, vanilla and cassia, a form of cinnamon.

Cheddar is the most consumed and widely purchased cheese in the world.

Research shows that dark chocolate very similar to the red wine actually contains considerable amounts of flavonoid phenolics which in turn may be very helpful in lowering the risk of heart disease.

Today these foods are so common that it is really hard to imagine life without it. However, when these interesting facts were first brought into notice, it was considered as a myth, but slowly it turns out to be real. This list is just to give you an idea about some of the most important trivia that is related to about food and culinary items.

To understand what or rather who Vegans are, one must know the meaning of Veganism. Veganism is a form of vegetarian diet that excludes eggs, meat, dairy products, or any other kind of ingredient derived from animals. Therefore, a person following such a diet is said to be Vegan.

There are vegans who even deny food that is processed through animal products, most commonly, white sugar and a few wines. They even discard the products made of animals such as leather, wool or fur. Strong discussions are still on, on considering whether certain products such as Honey are vegan or not.

Nowadays, our diet is loaded with animal- derived products and ingredients. Most of the times we don’t realize how much we are dependent on such food items. In that case renouncing such food items from our daily diet is a tough challenge. Thus, it is very important to know what can be had as a vegan diet.

Vegan diet thus constitutes of grains, legumes, beans, fruits and vegetables. There is huge variety of dishes that can be prepared using these foods items. There are substitutes too that are available in the market so that you can be a vegan and still can gorge on hot dogs, mayonnaise, cheese and ice creams.

If you are on the way to become a vegan then you can either directly stop the eating the above mentioned food products or you can even be a vegetarian first and then later on skip eggs and dairy products, which ever suits you best.

There are a number of factors within a ‘vegetarian’ diet which can or cannot be consumed by certain kinds of vegans. Lets have a quick look at these factors below:

• A Vegan is allowed to eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, dairy products, poultry, and eggs.
• A Lacto-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds and dairy products. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, poultry, and eggs.
• An Ovo-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds and eggs. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish, poultry, and dairy products.
• A Lactoovo-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, eggs and dairy products. He eschews meat, shellfish, fish and poultry.
• A Semi-vegetarian can eat fruits, legumes, vegetables, nuts, grains, seeds, eggs, shellfish, fish and poultry and dairy products. He eschews meat.

So, based on this, one can see that even within vegetarians and vegans, there are many different things that one can and cannot eat. At the end of the day it is a personal choice made by one depending on the philosophy one believes in. Also, many a times, such food choices are made by people for health reasons.