Congrats on the new addition to the family. How's it going so far? Are you exhausted yet?

No, it's actually fine. He's ten weeks old now so we sleep a little longer. My wife [Lori Silverbush] and I decided to tag team with feedings. My feeling is you can go one night without sleep but two nights is too hard so we're trying to break it up a bit.

It's his first Thanksgiving! How is it done at the Colicchio house?

The last couple years I haven't done it. My big dinner is Christmas Eve — 99% of all Italian Americans have fish dinners. It's all seafood. It starts off with a frio miso and then we move into a couple of seafood dishes — a salt cod or baklava salad that we serve with a beet dish. Then there's usually marinated sardines and anchovies, and then we go into a cuchuco which is a big fish stew that I serve over linguine and finish up with a whole roasted cod with lemons, olives, parsnip and garlic. I love doing Thanksgiving but the last couple of years I've gone to my wife's mother's who is a very, very excellent cook.

So you can sit back and relax.

Yeah, or catch up on sleep.

Have you taken him out to a restaurant yet?

Sure. We were in Napa Valley the other day so we took him to [Thomas Keller's] Ad Hoc. I feel like before your baby turns one you can take them pretty much anywhere and they'll just go to sleep but after that, put them away for a couple years.

I used to be a waitress and we had some loud screaming babies in the middle of our restaurant.

My feeling is if the baby is loud and screaming, you've gotta leave. If something's going on and you can't get him quiet, just pick him and leave. Say, "Sorry, I gotta go."

Do you let your kids order from the kid's menu?

No, kids should order off the menu. I think they're better off ordering appetizers. Some kids are picky eaters but I think a lot of it has to do with parents saying, "Oh, you won't like that. You don't want to eat that." Why? You don't know what they like until they try it.

How would a parent go about exposing their child to new foods so they don't end up with a kid who wants to eat mac and cheese every day?

From a very early age, I think it's a good idea to open them up to new flavors, new foods and different ethnic cuisines. Traveling is always great. But again, I think a lot of the problem is that kids eat like their parents and their parents aren't trying. I remember giving my kid oysters and saying, "Here, try it. It's not going to bother you." But when they get to school, his classmates go, "Oh my god, you eat that? That's horrible."

So leading by example.

Right. My son's mother, she doesn't use mustard. Hates it. So my son hates mustard.

You're talking about Dante, who's sixteen. At that age, I thought my parents were the most uncool people ever. But he can't possibly think that — you're a judge on Top Chef!

Yeah, he was pretty easy until the baby came home and all of a sudden, he was like, "You guys don't know what you're doing!" All of a sudden he became a teenager. But no, I think he still likes hanging out with us.

Was he excited about becoming an older brother?

Oh yeah. He was actually in the delivery room at the very end — he wasn't at the business end of things. And he took a little video, which was pretty cool.

Did he get the cooking genes?

No, not so much the cooking the end of it. He's into food, he loves eating. He likes going out to dinner ? he gets that from both his mom and me. We have him try everything. If he doesn't like it, that's fine, but he can't not eat it just because it's green. He does help me every now and then but it's not something that he's passionate for. He's really into photography.

When did your interest in cooking start?

When I was thirteen. I loved food. Food was always very important. I would go fishing with my grandfather at a very young age and it was my job to clean the fish. For some reason I was interested in not just eating but also the process of it, and at thirteen I realized I was pretty good at it. I never thought [food] was a mystery. I was never afraid to cook. You put something in a pan, you change it, you look at it and you figure it out. It's not that difficult.

Could you have ever seen yourself with someone who just had no interest in food?

It would make things difficult.

So your wife's into cooking, I presume?

Oh yeah. We both cook. There are times when she cooks and there are times that I do. Usually at home it's very simple. The other night, I literally had a bunch of vegetables that were starting to turn in the refrigerator so I cut them all into thin slices. Butternut squash, leeks, green beans, shallots, turnips and a little bit of garlic. And I had this little tiny pasta. I started with a little bit of bacon I cut really fine, then added the vegetables and kept cooking it really slowly, adding some chicken until it was almost like a soup. Then I put the pasta in and finished it with a good amount of basil. And that was it. That was dinner. That's the kind of stuff we eat at home. Pretty simple. If I'm doing a dinner party, a simple roast or braised meat or something. Nothing fancy. I certainly don't do restaurant dishes at all.

I think your TV audience likes to assume you're having gourmet meals every night.

Chinese, sometimes we'll order pizza. Chefs are notoriously bad eaters. It's this mystique that we go out and have gourmet meals every night. Are you kidding me? I eat steak and cheeseburgers.

You make it look so easy doing all these things — judging Top Chef, running your Craft restaurants, being a Dad — where do you get the time?

How much time do you think I spend on Top Chef versus my regular stuff? I like to see how people view what I do.

Maybe thirty percent?

Top Chef takes one month to shoot. That's the whole season. And I work every other day when we're shooting, so I spend about twenty days doing the whole season. It's a tiny part of my life. But the assumption is that I spend the majority of my time on the show and I'm not a cook anymore. Today, I came home early because we're hosting a dinner party, but other than that I'm in the restaurant.

So when you're not doing Top Chef, what's an average day for you?

An average day if I'm home in New York is usually wake up around seven, hang out with my wife until 10:30, then go to the gym. Then after the gym I'm in my office from noon to around five, then in the kitchen for a few hours, then either doing something at night that's work-related. I'm usually out from about 10:30 to midnight every night. Occasionally, I'm home. So the question of how I do it all? I have a great staff. I have great people. I have a great assistant. My wife is obviously very accommodating, but she has a career herself. I have great people in the restaurant. And the show is not nearly as difficult as it appears to be.

And you're happy?

Oh yeah. I enjoy doing the show for reasons that probably aren't so apparent. I end up meeting a lot of talented chefs I normally wouldn't meet. I don't know if I'd meet the guy who has a restaurant in Maryland, but I meet him on the show and realize the guy's very talented. So that's great.

Do you keep in touch with former contestants?

I stayed close with Harold [Dieterle] from Season 1 because he works in New York and we have a lot of mutual friends. In fact, he goes fishing with me. I've also kept in touch with Tiffani [Faison] from Season 1 who I thought was really talented — every now and then we'll exchange e-mails and I'll occasionally run into her at an event. Sam [Talbot] from Season 2; he lives in New York and we have a lot of mutual friends so I'll occasionally see him out.

If I'm traveling, it's to where I have a restaurant. It's business. If [a former contestant] pops in, we'll have a beer or something. But I try not to. I've never hired anybody who was on the show because I don't want anybody to get the idea that there's favoritism. I try to keep that very separate from my workplace.

We hear there's a Top Chef Desserts coming.

It's called Just Desserts. It's in Top Chef format so it's eight pastry chefs living in a house and competing with elimination once a week. I don't think it will be seventeen cast members, more like ten. I'm not 100% sure of the actual number. They just started casting.

Are you attached to it?

I think so. I may make an on-air appearance but I'm not going to have a prime judge's role on that show. Just like Masters I wouldn't do it because the [contestants] are all friends of mine. They're my peers. I can't judge them. A young chef that's up and coming, fine, but I'm not gonna judge Jonathan Waxman. I've known the guy forever. I couldn't do that to him.

Last question. What do you want for Christmas?

The two things I do outside of cooking and hanging out with family is fish and play guitar. So another guitar or a matched set of Accurate fishing reels. Yeah, the BX 600 Extreme. That would be great.

Hungry yet? Check out three delish recipes from Tom's book, 'Wichcraft:

Meatloaf with Cheddar, Bacon and Tomato Relish

Oatmeal Cream'wich

Gruyère With Caramelized Onions

This article was written by Andrea Zimmerman for Babble.com, the magazine and community for a new generation of parents.

In 2007 writers Sharon Brown and Lyn Mikel Lamb published Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing our Daughters from Marketers' Schemes, a book about the messages girls get from marketers and what parents can do about it. From the beginning, they also wanted to write a book about boys.

In their new book, Packaging Boyhood: Saving Our Sons from Superheroes, Slackers and Other Media Stereotypes, writers Brown, Lamb and Mark Tappan analyze all types of data, all the way down to the valentines Johnny and Joey can give to classmates and how they're riddled with menace (one Transformer card features the police car robot shouting: "I've been looking for you"). 

The Valentine's Day cards are just one tiny example of how stereotypes and other media images play out to boys. The message that boys get is that they have to be strong — and not just strong, SUPER strong. They have to play games, but they always have to be the winner.

What does this mean for boys? And what options are left out? What happens when they don't win? If they're not strong? Why exactly is a PG-13 movie (Batman: The Dark Knight) linked to T-shirts in 2T?

It's a story in which those with the most power too often have the wrong kind of power — they are the bullies, the narcissistic athletes, "dogs" or "players" — the ones who call the shots and get the scantily clad, booty-jiggling music video girls. It's a story that teaches boys that they need to avoid humiliation at all costs, seek revenge if wronged, dress to impress and intimidate, be tech-savvy, show wealth and take risks all while pretending that they don't care about any of it.

Think this doesn't apply to your little tot? In one hilarious and frightening example, the authors use movie quotes and invite readers to tell whether they were spoken by Rambo or Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. (The quotes are equally violent.)

Authors Lyn Mikel Brown and her husband Mark Tappan talked to Babble about what to do and what you can say to your kids to combat the media bombardment.— Jennifer V. Hughes

Your work has turned me into an advocate. I'm always pointing out things from your first book, like how few classic children's books feature girls as the hero.  But I often get the "what's the big deal" response. So what if a kid's t-shirt has Spiderman on it? Who cares if boys are obsessed with sports?

Lyn: The series of messages and a kind of typing about boys that happens pretty early on sets up an ideal that is pretty narrow and pretty hard for boys to fit into. The ideal of always winning and being a superhero closes out a whole range of options, for example, being able to talk about being vulnerable or feelings, the complex things we want to support in our children that make them healthy as they grow up.

Mark, how did you see this kind of thing growing up?

Mark: Things have really changed since I was a boy. One of the things we noticed was how pervasive it is, in toys, movies, books, everywhere. The other side of it is the slacker stereotype, the "I don't care," Bart Simpson character. It's the alternative to the hyper super macho. If you don't measure up to that, you can be a slacker and still be popular.

You talk in your book about how boys are pushed towards certain subjects, superheroes, for example. What's so bad about boys identifying with Spiderman? He's a good guy, he works hard, he's flawed and human?

Lyn: Part of the problem is that the old comic books have been transformed over time. Now they're these over-the-top action movies. There is a lot to like about Spiderman and for the most part he's good. But now there's also bad Spiderman, there's Batman and The Dark Knight. It's gotten a lot darker, a lot more scary and more dramatic. These are PG-13 movies that are really on the border of an R, and yet they're marketed to the littlest boys.

Mark: We're not against superheroes, but if it's the only thing that boys have, then it's a problem. Boys should have a range of toys to play with and people to identify with. Superheroes are a place for parents to have a conversation with their sons. In our culture, it's just sort of accepted — what's the big deal, boys will be boys. It's different for girls; we have a sense that girls need to be protected. But it's almost as if boys don't matter as much. They'll goof off in school, they'll cause trouble, they'll raise hell, they'll fight and it's normal. We think the media plays a role in that; it's not just boys being boys in a natural sense.

I do think that there are some inherent things about boys: they usually are more high-energy, they usually do gravitate toward a ball instead of a baby doll. How do you accommodate a boy's natural tendencies and still adhere to some of your ideals?

Lyn: What we're talking about is the way that energy is translated into a very narrow stereotype. Why is action translated into violence? Action can be channeled in other ways.

So how do you try to address some of these issues of violence? Do you ban Bakugan? Say yes to Spiderman but no to X-Men? How do you decide?

Mark: There are choices parents have to make about what's appropriate. We'd like parents to pay more attention to the ratings of movies, for one, so they don't let their kids see PG-13 movies just because they got a Batman toy in their Happy Meal. We want parents to talk to their sons so the violence is a topic for conversation, not something that has to be banned. Ask them: "What does this mean? Why do you like it?"

Lyn: The important thing is to listen. We don't always know why they are attracted to something, say violent video games. One of Mark's students helped us see that boys often like these games because of the complex storylines. As parents, if we listen to them, we can help channel that in other ways, help them find other ways to get that complex storyline.

When it comes to violence — what is the difference between what kids see today and what we watched? I remember adults thinking that Wile E. Coyote trying to blow up the Road Runner was too violent.

Lyn: We have so many examples of how things are different from the way they used to be. We were totally struck by Nerf and how big the guns are now. There are also Legos now where it's not about creatively making what you want to make, it's about making the Transformer. We looked at racetracks; it used to be that the idea was to keep the car on the track, now the idea is to crash. We saw the word "hyper" in a lot of toys and other marketing; even the name has to be over the top.

In your previous book, Packaging Girlhood, one thing that stunned me was the part about how children's games show — by a huge margin — the boy winning or playing an active role with the girl as a passive observer rooting for the boys. Tell me one of the things that you were really surprised to discover in your research for Packaging Boyhood.

Lyn: With this book, after a while, we just felt like it was all too much. We started thinking of it as this frantic, desperate need to impose this on boys. I was thinking of all the little boys in their little bodies confronted with this all the time and the experience that they have to somehow live up to all of this in the guise of fun and action. It has to feed a kind of anxiety

Mark: Certainly for marketers, that's the technique: you increase someone's anxiety about not being pretty or smart or strong enough and then you sell them a product that will make them feel better. You tie that into the cultural anxiety about masculinity. One of the examples of that is, strangely enough, energy drinks. You start to listen to all those names — Full Throttle, No Fear, Monster, Tiger, Rock Star — it's that again and again, this desperate sense of you're big enough, you're strong enough, you're man enough, you're hyper enough to prove something.

I thought it was really interesting how you point out that there are a lot of great shows for young boys (and girls) — WonderPets, Thomas — where the focus is not all on competition and violence and destruction, with good messages about teamwork and cooperation and affection. But then it seems to go straight to X-Men. At least girls get My Little Pony in between. Why is there so little middle ground for boys?

Lyn: I think that's right. Not only that, but they go right into the tween shows, too. It's interesting how much the show "Drake and Josh," mirrors the show "Two and a Half Men": one is the player, and one is the straight man. The other shocking thing about [shows directed to boys] is the idea of drinking, how much we saw boys' characters getting "drunk." SpongeBob gets "drunk" on ice cream; on "The Suite Life" they get "drunk" on soda. In Toy Story, they get "drunk" on tea, in Open Season, they get "drunk" on candy bars. It becomes a right of passage for boys, and it goes to the littlest boys, that out of control, action thing.

You address the issue of race more in this book than the last one. What have you found about how race is addressed in movies, TV, and other media?

Lyn: I think we were aware of the fact that we didn't address race much in Packaging Girlhood, but at the same time I think it's more of an issue for boys because a lot of the hyper masculine images are of men of color, in sports or music. One of the big concerns was in reading, it was hard to find books, except history books, where boys of color were the protagonists or the leaders. It's pretty rare when you see that.

Mark: It happens in movies too. The character of color is typically the sidekick, like Donkey in Shrek .

Lyn: Of course, the lead character in Open Season is played by a person of color . . .

But of course he's too drunk to do much good.

Lyn: Exactly, he's getting drunk and saying things like "Bros before does" (referring to the adult version, Bros before Hos). That's the kind of coded stuff designed to bring in adults, but it really does sell out boys in terrible ways.

So what's your advice to parents, especially those with young sons, like four or five?

Lyn: That is the time when parents can introduce simple concepts of how they're being sold something, what a stereotype is. You can guide them away from things and channel their energy into more constructive things. The hope is that if we can do that with little kids, as they get old enough, they'll do the talking. We want to have a voice in their head with all that other media stuff.