NEW YORK -- Rachael Ray is multitasking.

The author and Emmy-winning chef is getting ready for next month's South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, where she again will be hosting all-day music performances with more than a dozen bands. One of those bands, The Cringe, is led by her husband, John Cusimano.

The food, of course, will be provided by Ray.

"It's like my Christmas," Ray said during a telephone interview Thursday from her home in upstate New York. "It's a marriage of my love for music and my love for food, in a city that I love."

On Thursday, she also announced the first two releases on her Rachael Ray Books imprint with Atria Books. The books, both out this fall, are Heather Bertinetti's Fake and Bake and Associated Press food editor J.M. Hirsch's Beating the Lunch Box Blues. Atria is an imprint of Simon & Schuster.

"I like supporting people who believe that the quality of life doesn't have anything to do with how much money you have in the bank," she said. "Everybody should be able to afford great food, and that's what I want the imprint to be about."

-- The Associated Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 22, 2013 D5