
Food Network chef Anne Burrell died by suicide after mixing alcohol with prescription drugs; was found unresponsive in her bathroom: Report
Also read: Anne Burrell, Food Network chef, found dead at 55 after sudden exit from Worst Cooks in America
On June 17, the fire department rushed to Anne's home after a 911 call reported cardiac arrest. Her body was found 'unresponsive' lying on the bathroom floor. Paramedics tried to revive her, but she was pronounced dead on the spot. What shocked fans even more was that just five days earlier, the chef had shared a life update on social media, smiling and strolling through NYC. According to the official report, Anne had taken diphenhydramine and cetirizine (both allergy meds), ethanol (alcohol), and amphetamine, a stimulant usually prescribed for ADHD. Experts say each of these, taken alone and in the right dose, is generally safe. But mixed together, especially with alcohol, they can turn unpredictable and fatal. Anne's death was first confirmed by her family and rep, who called her 'a beloved wife, daughter, sister, stepmom, and friend,' and said her smile lit up every room she walked into, that her warmth and spirit won't be forgotten.
Anne was married to Stuart Claxton (a Univision ad executive she married in 2021). She used to live with her step-son Javier, her mother, Marlene, her sister Jane, Jane's kids Isabella, Amelia, and Nicolas, and her brother Ben.
Also read: Hulk Hogan Death Live Updates: Jake Paul, Varun Dhawan, JD Vance, Kane, Triple H, Donald Trump mourn demise of WWE legend
Anne rose to fame as a sous-chef on Iron Chef America, following which she signed up for her own show Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, which ran for nine seasons. Born in Cazenovia, New York, in 1969, Anne, who grew up watching her mother cook and was heavily influenced by Julia Child, pursued her passion in cooking and graduated from the Culinary Institute of America in 1996 and then flew to Italy to master European cuisine.
In her career, she hosted and appeared on multiple cooking shows including Chopped, Chef Wanted, Food Network Star, Cutthroat Kitchen, and Beat Bobby Flay. But she's best known for Worst Cooks in America, where she coached clueless home cooks with her signature style for 27 seasons. Her final TV appearance will air on July 28 with the newest season of Worst Cooks in America on Food Network, streaming the next day on HBO Max.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Hindu
3 hours ago
- The Hindu
How does the Indian harmonium produce its lively music?
The Indian portable harmonium is a close cousin of the larger foot-pumped organs once found in European churches and homes. It's a wooden box roughly the size of a small suitcase. You sit on the floor behind it and pump a pair of bellows with one hand and play piano-like keys with the other. All these instruments work on the same simple idea: air is pushed past metal strips called reeds; when they vibrate, musical notes are created. The sound of the harmonium has been a staple of both Indian folk music and mainstream cinema. How does a harmonium use air? A harmonium doesn't have strings, membranes or electronic circuits. Instead, its 'fuel' is air in motion. When the bellows attached to the instrument are pulled open, they suck some of the air in the room into their folded chambers, funnelled through inlet valves. When you push the bellows closed, the air is squeezed forward into an airtight wooden compartment that lies directly under the harmonium keys. Because the compartment's walls don't move, the air pressure within rises above normal atmospheric pressure by a small amount, usually a few kilopascals. The compartment also holds a slender internal spring or a weighted flap that helps maintain this pressure, even if you don't pump the bellows at a regular rate. In fact, as long as you pump the bellows every few seconds, the reeds will feel enough pressure to make sounds. How does a harmonium make sound? The keyboard on top of the harmonium resembles a piano in miniature. But unlike in a piano, each key is only a lever. If you press a key, its far end tilts upward inside the box, lifting a pallet lined with felt. The pallet covers a hole that leads from the pressurised wooden compartment to a single metal reed. When the key is at rest, the pallet closes the hole and no air flows. When you press the key, the pallet opens, allowing high-pressure air to rush through the hole and towards the reed. Most Indian harmoniums expose 1.5 to 3 reeds to each hole. A stop rod next to the keyboard allows you to choose which set of reeds, called a bank, is active at any time. If you slide out one stop rod, an extra airway opens so the same key can expose a second bank that is tuned to one octave higher or lower, creating a more organ-like tone. How does each reed operate? Every reed is essentially a tongue of brass or phosphor-bronze nailed on top of a rectangular slot in a metal frame. When air pressure rises on the front side, the tongue bends slightly into the slot, allowing a puff of air to slip past to the rear. The same puff now exerts pressure on the back side of the tongue, pushing it forward again. This rapid seesawing motion sets up a vibration with a frequency of hundreds of hertz for higher notes and around 100 Hz for the lower ones. The vibrating reed shreds the air stream into pulses, which bounce around inside the box before spreading into the room as sound waves. Because the reed is fixed at one end and free at the other, its pitch depends mainly on its length, thickness, and mass. The shorter or thinner the reed, the higher its natural frequency will be. Unlike flutes or trumpets, the harmonium's reeds sit inside a wooden cavity rather than an open pipe. As a result, larger cavities produce lower notes and vice versa. The wooden compartment, the leather that makes the bellows, and even the player's lap all absorb or reflect certain frequencies, giving each instrument a unique timbre. Because warmer air is less dense, reeds in such an atmosphere will also have a slightly higher pitch. Professional players thus often carry small screwdrivers to tweak the reeds' sounds before a performance. Why does the sound seem 'alive'? The harder you pump the bellows, the louder the sounds will be. This is simply because stronger pumping raises the pressure in the compartment and moves the reeds harder. Fluent players often use quick pulses on the bellows to produce sharp accents and ease off to create graceful decrescendos. Many designs also include a coupling lever that, when engaged, connects a key to the key one octave higher, so pressing a single note automatically depresses its octave partner without forcing the player's fingers to stretch. Second, because the reed's vibrations feed on the pumping, the instrument can be made to respond to the smallest motions. Players can brighten a note by pumping in a short burst or stall it to thin the note. More fundamentally, the sounds of an Indian harmonium seem 'alive' because the instrument doesn't run on the clinical power of electrical energy but on a human body in motion. This may also explain why it became a staple of Indian classical, devotional, and folk music, including its willingness to accompany singers outdoors, through power cuts, and even play through the humid monsoons.


Indian Express
17 hours ago
- Indian Express
A brand beyond the founder: Lessons from Rohit Bal Designs, a year after his death
When couturier Rohit Bal, who drew the contours of Indian fashion with a unique cultural imprint and a well-cut European elegance, died last year, the sorrow quickly turned to many questions. The most important one that bothered the fashion fraternity was: Would his brand survive, considering that fashion houses in India are personality rather than brand-driven? A boy from Bihar's Hajipur, a graphic designer from Delhi, a girl from Meghalaya's Shillong, and many dream-chasers from middle India upended all the assumptions. This creative core team of Rohit Bal Designs scripted another chapter in India's fashion history at the just concluded couture week organised by the FDCI (Fashion Design Council of India). They proved that just like Chanel and Prada — each of which took about a 100 years to transform into a sustainable legacy brand despite the aura of its founders — Rohit Bal Designs could well become a legacy brand in a far shorter time. This becomes a point of critical discussion at a time when the untimely death of another of India's maverick designers, Wendell Rodricks, left his label rudderless. Of course, it was bought over by retail entrepreneur Abhisek Aggarwal and now has an external creative director, who is deep-diving to understand Rodricks' essence. But that oeuvre seems to be missing. What then is different with Rohit Bal Designs, which many in the industry still feel would be a prime pick for a corporate takeover? It is the talent pool that Bal had democratised and expanded in his lifetime with pan-Indian and cross-cultural participation and fair play. It's the human capital he built with his craftsmen and weavers as stakeholders, sitting by their side and sharing food with them for 25 years and more, all of whom are keeping his legacy to date. Rather than naming a successor, he has bequeathed and imprinted his DNA in an artist's collective of youngsters who not only think and imagine like him but feel incentivised to give their own spin on his work. The boy from Hajipur and Rohit Bal Designs' creative director and CEO, Fraze Tasnim, began as a design intern whom Bal selected from Symbiosis, Pune. When Tasnim wanted to acquire knowledge of merchandising and retail, Bal hand-held his way to IIM-Ahmedabad. Growing with Bal and learning the ropes, Tasnim learnt to think like his mentor. So did Ayaz, who was a backroom graphic designer and became part of the design team by sheer dint of talent. As did Manbha Diengdoh, who learnt to refine designs besides sharing passionfruit and smoked chicken from Shillong with the late designer. Little wonder, then, that their all-new collection kept to Bal's grammar and interpretations, although the designer himself didn't leave behind a lookbook. Their design narrative was absorptive and inclusive, and carried a distilled Indianness and disciplined grace. This was because of the equal opportunity Bal exposed them and built the most important asset that cannot be ignored by any investor or buyer — brand heritage. That is a real luxury because of its rarity. It doesn't come because of entitlement or privilege, but a hunger to prove a point, a self-starter's excitement to stand out. That comes from allowing crosswinds to blow through the elitism that has far too long held the fashion industry hostage. Many wondered why Bal had never thought about setting a succession plan in place despite his failing health. He knew best that the karigar could also innovate if allowed that space and respect. That's how John Galliano, a plumber's son, Alexander McQueen, a taxi driver's son, and Vivienne Westwood, a factory worker's daughter, became leading lights in a fickle industry looking for the next big thing. Indian fashion is young, all of 35-40 years old, compared to legacy brands in the West. And succession becomes a challenge as the business is pivoted around the founders, most of whom had been born to privilege. But thanks to Rohit Bal or now even Tarun Tahiliani — whose talented design team and head of couture are youngsters who interned with him from across the country — there's a participatory expansiveness in Indian couture. In fact, one of the pioneers in this area is designer Ritu Kumar, who toured the country extensively to unearth our lost crafts, document and archive them in her research and books and even train traditional craftspersons in contemporary design vocabulary. That's why even a Zain Khatri from Ajrakhpur, a tiny village in the craft-rich Kutch district of Gujarat, has his own label at 21, retails on Instagram and scorched the ramp at the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai earlier this year. He has combined block printing with batik. The colonialists had wiped out every folk imprint in our weaves, textiles and craftsmanship. But if we want a Made in India legacy, then our fashion labels have to begin looking beyond the easy family business trap, create professionally managed enterprises and be representative of real skill and talent.
&w=3840&q=100)

First Post
18 hours ago
- First Post
Brad Pitt's 'F1' co-star Javier Bardem on Gaza genocide: 'Israel kills, the U.S. funds it, and Europe support it'
The actor also said, 'It is illegal to continue associating with Israel based on the continued violation of all possible human rights by the Zionist state.' read more Brad Pitt's 'F1' co-star Javier Bardem has spoken about the genocide in Gaza and shared a post on his Instagram account. The actor captioned it- 'MURDERING ZIONISTS !!! Break ALL ties with the genocidal state NOW! European leaders must be tried as accomplices by their inaction and consent. It is illegal to continue associating with Israel based on the continued violation of all possible human rights by the Zionist state. SANCTUARY ACTIONS ON ISRAEL NOW!! ZIONIST MURDERERS!!! STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Sever ALL relations with the genocidal state NOW! European leaders must be tried as accomplices for their inaction and complicity. It is illegal to remain associated with Israel given the ongoing violation of every possible human right by the Zionist state. SANCTION ISRAEL NOW!!' Javier Bardem was no longer comfortable being silent on Gaza. The Spanish actor spoke out about the Israeli-Hamas conflict upon accepting an award at the San Sebastian Film Festival last week. In his nuanced remarks, Bardem condemned the Hamas attacks as well as the 'massive punishment that the Palestinian population is enduring.' He called for immediate cease-fire, Hamas' release of hostages and for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leaders — some of whom are now dead — who ordered the Oct. 7 attacks to be judged by the International Criminal Court. In an interview with The Associated Press, Bardem explained why he chose to speak out. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD 'I believe that we can and must help bring peace. If we take a different approach, then we will get different results,' Bardem told the AP, speaking prior to Iran's attack on Israel Tuesday. 'The security and prosperity of Israel and the health and future of a free Palestine will only be possible through a culture of peace, coexistence and respect.' Israel's offensive has already killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents and destroyed much of the impoverished territory. Palestinian militants are still holding some 110 hostages captured in the Oct. 7 attack that started the war, in which they killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Around a third of the 110 are already dead, according to Israeli authorities. With added inputs from agencies