Padma Lakshmi Reveals How Her Daughter Inspired Her Latest Project
The Top Chef host is getting ready to publish her first children's book.
After years of motivating competing contestants on Bravo's Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi is looking to inspire the next generation of culinary artists. The TV host is getting ready to publish a picture book— a project that she says was inspired by her own 10-year-old daughter, Krishna.
Entitled Tomatoes For Neela, the book, set to hit shelves in fall 2021, is an intergenerational story about a little girl who helps prepare her family's savory tomato sauce. Padma opened up about the upcoming children’s book in a recent interview with Parents, revealing that she first got the idea from her daughter.
“I’m ready to publish my first picture book, Tomatoes for Neela. It came to me when Krishna asked for pomegranates in July and I had to explain that it’s not their season here,” she explained.
Padma went on to reveal to that she hopes her book will spark an early interest in food, the way other titles did for her as a child. "I guess I’ve always loved books about food,” she explained. “When I was little, I had a fantastic book of poetry called Let’s Marry Said the Cherry, by N. M. Bodecker. I was fascinated by the references to foods I had never seen growing up in India, like watercress and clover. I recently found an out-of-print copy, and it’s as fantastic as I remembered.”
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