There’s no crying in food, Rachael Ray says

Rachael Ray thinks she’s got a blue-ribbon recipe for a winning talk show: no crying, no couch talk, no lecturing.

“We’re limited by the host,” Ray says with the trademark effervescence that has helped to make her one of the food world’s most ubiquitous personalities. “No one in their right mind would take me talking about anything serious seriously. So there is no crying.”

She’s about to find out whether that recipe sizzles or slumps on network television. After four years as the darling of cable’s Food Network, Ray is adding a daily hourlong syndicated talk show to the already breathtaking array of programs she headlines.

“Rachael Ray,” at 3 p.m. weekdays on KIRO, Channel 7, premiered this week with enviable pickup – 59 of the nation’s top 60 markets.

Ray, who frequently bemoans her audience-free Food Network shows as “talking to vegetables,” said during a break in taping last week that she relishes the chance to do a show with and about real people.

Celebrities have their place, but Ray says much of the show – which feels like one part Martha Stewart lifestyle lessons and two parts Jay Leno-style gags – focuses on audience and viewer participation. In one early episode, she lets them vote on what she cooks.

Still, Ray doesn’t waste time trotting out the show’s star lineage. Oprah Winfrey, whose Harpo Productions is producing the series, makes an appearance on day two. And fellow Oprah offspring Dr. Phil is on the set a week later.

When the stars are on, don’t expect much pimping of their latest projects. Ray says she isn’t interested. When Diane Sawyer visits, she discusses the contents of her purse (which includes lipstick with a built-in flashlight for night applications).

That’s one way Ray hopes to distinguish her program from that of other talk show hosts – and the implication here is that includes Oprah. She says she wants the sort of light chatter you have at the kitchen table, not the serious couch talk of other shows.

“We just don’t sit on the sofa and show like a book and a clip and be all serious about stuff,” she says. “We can have kitchen table talk even if we’re on a sofa. We like people to have a more relaxed conversation,” she says.

Anybody she doesn’t want on her show?

“Oh! I’m not going there. Momma didn’t raise no turnip,” she says. “Yes, I do have a very long list of, ‘Yeah, not so interested.’ But that’s for me to know and everybody else to guess. If we’re on for a while it will become evident.”

Ray is adamant that the point isn’t to tell people how to live their lives, but to help them deal with and laugh about them.

“I’m not an authority on anything and I think that’s why people will watch our show,” Ray says. “We are very, very average and they can totally see themselves doing anything we do.”

Anything but keep pace with her taping schedule. Before starting on the talk show, Ray already had taped 100 episodes of her signature “30-minute Meals” for this season on the Food Network. And don’t forget her other shows, “$40 a Day,” “Inside Dish” and “Tasty Travels.”

“Things kind of take on a life of their own and I just kind of go with the flow,” she says. “I was having so much fun doing stuff like “Inside Dish” and the travel and the food, I thought it would be kind of fun if I could put it all into one thing.”

“I don’t know if it’s humanly possible,” she says. “We’re about to all find out together.”

She’ll also test viewers’ saturation point. Press materials for the talk show include the line “everybody needs a little R&R.” A little? Between her new show, four others on Food Network, a magazine and more than a dozen cookbooks, there’s a lot of Ray going around.

Though she’s the first Food Network star to get a network talk show, others have broken out of cable, with mixed success. Chef Ming Tsai has had successful shows on both cable and PBS, and Emeril Lagasse had a short-lived sitcom that flopped in 2001.

And Ray knows that despite a massive fan base, plenty of people dislike her. The Internet is awash with sites ripping into her, especially for the cutesy phrases she’s coined on “30-minute Meals” (such as e-v-o-o for extra-virgin olive oil and “How cool is that?”).

“They run me like 900 times a week on Food Network,” she says. “There’s a lot of channels on the television these days. There’s like 500. If my voice is really that annoying, there’s certainly options. People can change. I get that.”

Ray is particularly proud of her new show’s set, which resembles a massive loft (complete with service-style elevator from which she enters the show each day). Audience members sit on a giant lazy Susan that swings them around to wherever the action is.

With the pace Ray sets, they may find themselves getting dizzy. Each show will cover plenty of ground.

“I am the 30-minute girl,” she says. “I’m not very patient. I don’t think I could stick with any one topic for a whole hour.”