(upbeat music) - I'm sorry, all I keep making about-- - My favorite color!
- Oh, thank you! You can have it.
- It's so beautiful. Your eye makeup matches it.
- I know! - Seriously though, the last time we saw each
other two years ago... - Yeah! - Can you believe how far we've come? - Yeah. Oh God. And I didn't know at the time-- - We were both--
- Yes, yes! At the same time going, oh
my God, this is really hard. - Oh my God. It's so hard. But! - But it also--
- Fresh new start! (laughing) (audience applauding) - And I gotta tell you though, so the album that you
released last summer, - "Chemistry."
- "Chemistry?" - Yeah.
- Oh! You probably related. - I'm like, has she
been in the room with me the entire time? Like every flipping song, like me, mine. - I'm sorry but also I'm glad.
- Red Flag Collector... I know! (laughing)
- Yeah! Boy. - So y'all have heard right?
(audience cheering) Her "Chemistry?" - No Red Flag Collector
is very fun to sing. (laughing) It's therapeutic. But you're dating again though, and unexpectedly so, right? You didn't plan on it?
- Oh God, no. I've said this a million times already. I thought I was gonna die
with my six cats and my dog. - Yeah.
- But this guy came outta nowhere. - Yeah! That's kind of
fun. Look at you. Oh, okay. - Yeah he's kind of amazing. - Oh, that's awesome!
- I know. - I love that feeling! And then the whole puppy
loves stage. Look at you girl. - I have not stopped! My butterflies in my stomach have been going on for three months now. - Oh, that's beautiful.
- Yeah. Okay, I'll shut up. - See, I get that just with myself. (laughing) Especially like a night alone.
- Oh my God. Yes! - Because I feel like in this industry we're always around people all the time. And I'm a single mom with two little kids. They're seven and nine, so any alone time, I'm not willing to share yet.
- No, no. - I hear, did y'all kind of start talking, like you slid into each other's DMs? This is so 21 of you!
- I know. - I'm like, what?
- I know! I'm shaking. Yes. So I started following him,
I think in 2016 or 2017. And then he waited until
2018 to follow me back. But you know, no judgment. - We'll talk about that later, sir! (laughing)
I'm just kidding. - We would just exchange
DMs once in a while. Really friendly. He's a really super funny,
incredibly talented writer. And I just would enjoy
his Twitter and Instagram. He's been very patient with me. (laughing) Like ridiculously so. And then we just started--
- Is that like at dinner and you're like,
did you really mean that? Like, what did you mean by that? - What do you mean you like me? What do you mean you like, like me? What does that mean? How can you like me? - (laughing) This is why I'm not ready. So no, I wanna talk about this because your son is killing it, Wolfgang. Last time we were here,
we were talking about, he was at the Grammys and then this time at the Oscars. - I know!
- This is incredible! - Look at my Wolfie!
(audience cheering) - Doin', "I'm just Ken,"
performing on this, which is like the best
part of that awards show. It was incredibly funny and great. - It was, I was a third
wheel with him and his wife. - Aw.
- And so when he went out Drea and I, his wife is Drea. Oh, there she is!
- Aw! - Beautiful Drea. So yeah, we stood up. We
were the first to stand up. And then like the song took
over and Ryan Gosling killed it. - Yeah. Oh God. Well, very
talented singer as well. - Yeah. And then so we're screaming, having a fun time and you know, I'm looking at Martin
Scorsese over there dancing... - And your son's on stage--
- And my son is on stage and everybody's watching him.
- That's so cool. - Kinda crazy.
- I know. As a mama, that's the most proud. All right, we are back
with Valerie Bertinelli. She's got a new cookbook,
it's called "Indulge Delicious and Decadent
Dishes to Enjoy and Share." So you did something pretty cool. You went back, was it your high school, and you did cooking classes?
- I did! My old alma mater. Yeah. - [Kelly] Were you ever in
that room, cooking before? - [Valerie] Well, it's changed in the last 40 some odd years. Because it was a long time
ago that I was in my teens. - [Kelly] Were there similar
things in the high school? - No, it's totally different than the room that I learned home ec in, and learned how to make a tuna casserole. It's totally different. It's amazing. - That did not look normal.
- No, no, no. It's an amazing school, right? - Yeah.
- Yeah. It was a little different
when I was going there. - I think it's actually incredibly smart that they do things like this in school, because I would've
loved a class like that. Or even to teach nutrition, and that's medicine on some level. - Exactly.
- Or on the major level. - Cooking, art, music. They're taking all of these
amazing things out of schools. I mean, children need their
brain to go to the other side, not just be studying, but
really use their artistic side. - And cooking is a life skill! - Yeah. It is.
- That I wish I were better at.
(laughing) So let's talk about your new cookbook. You've had a few, so what's
different about this one? - This is called "Indulge" for a reason, because Indulge has been given-- - A negative connotation.
- A negative connotation. Yeah. Like, I'm gonna cheat,
I'm gonna indulge this weekend. What if we indulge every day? We just indulge in the joys of our life. We indulge in having fun with
friends. We just indulge. We have one life. And if I'm
lucky, I got 20, 25 years left. I want them to be great flipping years because the last few have
been so (bleep), sorry. - No, we just bleep it
out. They're used me. - Good, 'cause they really have been. So it's nice to be on the other side of it and just really indulge in life. Food isn't good or bad, it's just there to feed your body literally
that it keeps your body going. It's not good or bad. It
doesn't have emotions. We give the emotions.
- Yeah. - So once you stop
giving food the emotions, stop using food to numb, stop using food to not feel feelings. You start feeling the feelings, then you can really indulge
in the food and enjoy it. That's what I've worked
on for the last few years. - I love that. And it's also like a
relationship with food too, because that can be hard for people too. I've talked a lot of people about. - We've been taught so many things about how things are bad for us. Food's bad for us, women too much. - I remember when I was a little girl, I remember hearing my mother or other women talking
about counting calories. I was like, what's a
calorie? I was like, what? And it starts to kind of warp you. Not that they did anything wrong. - No. It's just that was the norm. We were made at a very young
age to be aware of our bodies when we never should have
been aware of our bodies at 11, 12, 13 years old.
- Exactly. How did you get to that place where Indulge didn't have
the guilty reference with it and you decided to make it positive? - You know how the universe gives you little taps on your
shoulder and you ignore it? Or a little shove and
you kind of ignore it and then you get down on your knees and you're still sort of ignoring it? Not until I was shoved on my ass and my life was not gonna get any better, that I decided to think
about it differently. I'm hard headed.
- Sometimes it takes that. And then sometimes one can
think you're in the basement and then you find the
basement of rock bottom. Yeah.
- Yeah. You think you've hit rock bottom
and you're like, oh my God, there's a whole other
level, that's so fun! - And then there's a level
under that one. Who knew? - It's so fun! I think it might be hell. (laughing) So you didn't cook for a while. - No, I was really depressed. - I know, but it's like
the essence of you. So how did Stella get her groove back? Why did you start cooking again? - Because I thought, I
don't love this anymore. And I used to love it. When I started to purposefully look and be intentional about joy, I thought, well that gives me joy. I don't wanna do it right now, but you know what, maybe if I, like smile until make it,
fake it till you make it. So I started to cook and I really started to find joy in the kitchen again. And I started writing all these recipes and started talking with my recipe-- And then all of a sudden we had a book because I was so happy
in the kitchen again. - You know what's funny is,
I haven't said this yet, and didn't even talk about it,
but this past week I've had like, a couple hours, I've
been waking up very early just so I can have time
for me, like at 5:00 AM. - Good girl! - And so I've been
cooking myself breakfast and just sitting with myself at breakfast. - I'm so impressed!
- And I'll tell you what, it has really changed. My whole week has been like so great because of just those moments. And I hate cooking.
I'll be honest with you. It's not my vibe.
- You have other gifts. - It's never been like, I
can't wait to get in there. It's just not the thing. Just simple things, but it's
just simply having that time and doing the task, it's made
me like it a little more. - It gets a little zen, just
the chopping or the cooking - It gets a little meditative. - It slows me down.
- Yeah, me too. - And I need that, 'cause
I'm like, (vocalizing). - Girl, we're the same.
- I know. - All right, let's do another short break. Again, Valerie's new cookbook is called "Indulge Delicious and Decadent
Dishes to Enjoy and Share." It's available now, so
you gotta check it out. And up next we've got a
game celebrating the book, which means we're gonna be indulging, which is incredible, we'll be right back.
