Quotes from Padma Lakshmi

If you like a wine that you drink, now with your phone, it's so easy. Just take a picture of the label. You learn about it. You learn where it comes from and what the soil is like and why you like it. And that'll lead you to another wine.

I'm the kind of girl who thinks about what she's gonna cook for dinner when she's finishing her lunch.

I always loved my bangles, I can't remember a time when I didn't have a bangle on.

I know most people use their phones to tell time, but there's something very romantic and beautiful about a timepiece.

People are thrown off by someone who looks feminine, but is also strong. It's not that pretty girls aren't smart, it's that women aren't strong.

I've been a model for 15 years, and I've been on 'Top Chef' for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I've learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body.

Part of my job as a food writer is to describe food. So my work on 'Top Chef,' I feel, is an extension of that. When we give a criticism to the contestant, we want to make sure we tell them why it's not working and why it would work if they did it a different way.

During the course of filming 'Top Chef,' I gain 15 lbs., so I'm used to needing two dress sizes.

Don't use a different dish for every single ingredient. If you've got three ingredients that go in at the same time, put them all in the same plate. That way you have just one plate to dump in.

I'm a sucker for fried chicken - I really love it.

I'm not tough. I'm tenacious.

You don't want your jewelry to make you look fat. A lot of what's out there now does - you just wind up looking like a Christmas tree.

People always comment about my clothes. They don't think a fashionable woman can love food and be knowledgeable and actually cook.

I love seafood. I'm not a vegetarian but I'm probably a pescetarian.

I'm an immigrant kid who came to America from India when I was very young and grew up in New York City with a single mom and really was influenced by all of those immigrant cultures bumping up against each other.

I was the first Indian model to have a career in Paris, Milan and New York.

Whenever I'm in sync with the trends, it's always an accident. I still love wearing clothes I've had for ten years. I think understated luxury is the chicest thing.

I really love fried chicken.

Every city has a Donald Trump; ours is just the Trumpiest.

I've always had a fantasy to write a cookbook, because everyone wants to know what a model eats.

Jewelry should not upstage you. I pick one hot point on my body that I'm going to highlight. Let one area do the singing - you don't want to hear three songs at once.

One thing that happens when you're pregnant is that as your stomach starts to stretch. It itches! So I have to keep my belly really lubricated. Every morning, there's a buttering ceremony after I get out of the shower. It's really like basting a turkey with body butter.

I never Tweet about my daughter. Never. I just want to be respectful of her privacy. My job as a mom is to know when to open my mouth and when not to.

I really like to sometimes go into food detox and eat very simply.