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30-Minute cook started on Cape Cod

According to Rachael Ray, she grew up in food. "My first vivid memory is watching mom in a restaurant kitchen. She was flipping something with a spatula. I tried to copy her and ended up grilling my right thumb! I was 3 or 4," says Ray, who insists that cooking is a way of life she was simply born into. "Everyone on both sides of my family cooks."

Ray has parlayed that birthright into a wildly successful career as an iconic Food Network television show host, bestselling cookbook author and editor-in-chief of her own lifestyle magazine. Now she's tackling syndication as host of "Rachael Ray," an hour-long, daily talk show debuting in September 2006...

Her family owned restaurants on Cape Cod 

The story goes on to remind us that growing up in a family steeped in culinary tradition, she  was exposed to a wide range of cooking techniques, from her maternal grandfather who grew and cooked everything his family of 12 ate to her dad's family, which embraced the food-rich traditions of Louisiana.

The Ray family owned several restaurants on Cape Cod, before relocating to upstate New York, where her mother worked as the food supervisor for a restaurant chain.

"I was surrounded by all different styles of cooking and worked in the food service industry in just about every capacity you can imagine," Ray says...

 Read the rest of this CBS feature here, and comment below.