Give Kids the World Tweet Up with Sami Gayle

Yeah, that's good.

Thank you. Hey everyone, I'm Chef Dennis and I am here with Blue Bloods star Sammy Gale. Hi, it's so nice to have you here. And we're here at Give Kids the World in my hometown. And actually you could walk across— if I probably walked across the woods, it would take me as long as it did to drive all the way around because yeah, it's a roundabout way. Wow, I'm pretty close to, to here. But it's a great spot. It's a wonderful place for kids, and you've been involved with them for a while now.

Yeah, my brother has been involved with them since middle school, and when I came here for the first time, I just completely fell in love with the work that they do for these kids and the opportunities they present with them, and also just this incredible sense of hope that these kids have coming here. And I don't know, it just kind of puts everything into perspective for me. So I, I will continue being involved with this organization. As long as they will have—

I'm sure they'll have you for quite a while. Yeah, the one thing that I took away from it most was when I would hear the parents say for the first time in a long time they got to see their children smile or laugh. And that has got to be hard. I've fortunately never had a child that has suffered like that, but to be able to finally get that from them because of a place like this, that just changes their whole outlook on life and gives them hope hope.

Yeah, it's unbelievable. Unparalleled.

Well, you know, we're happy to have you here. And we did a tweet-up, you know, and we were talking about your—

teach me what that was.

I know.

What is a tweet-up?

And you were kind of unusual for your age group because you're not a technology freak.

I don't like technology. Well, that's okay. I like books. I'm very into the classic.

Do you still read paper then? Not a Kindle?

Oh yeah, oh my goodness. I could, I mean, I have a Kindle, but I hate on like a screen media. I have to feel pages, like a tactile thing.

Well, I'll say for as far as a Kindle goes, it's got me to read a lot more because it's easier to cart around. I love paper, I love books, and I will never get a cookbook on a Kindle. There's certain things you do.

See, that's how I feel about like the classics.

Yes.

I would never, read The Iliad on a Kindle.

No, and I agree with you there.

Plus with school, I feel like I'm always underlining, circling, writing important themes, so I couldn't necessarily do that the way I'd like to if I was doing it on a—

Now, are your teachers integrating stuff on Kindle at all? Because I see they have like a textbook Kindle version that's bigger. None of your college professors have done that?

I mean, I think some Some of my professors have online. Most of them, like us, to have the real thing. I went to a final yesterday for a literature exam I had, and I had all 15 books we had read this semester with me. Wow.

Yeah. Well, that could have been a little heavy.

Yes, it was. It was, especially because I had a government exam right before it, and I had all those books too. So—

So you still go around like a regular person then? You carry your books with you? You don't have someone carting them for you?

Oh my God, no, no, absolutely not. That is not okay.

Good, good, good. Well, that's good to know. There is hope for our youth after all. Okay, good. I'm happy to hear that. So what do you like talking about? You said you have a double major?

Yes, I am majoring in political science and art history, and then I'm doing a business minor. Okay.

So which one do you think you'll really use? Or what is your passion?

My passion is acting. I just have sort of this huge thrill for learning. So I'm very interested in art history. I'm very interested in political science. I'd love to merge the two in the future at some point, um, but not as a career.

Okay.

I think being able to travel with doing television and film will allow me to sort of integrate all these pieces together, whether it be the business aspect of handling myself, because when you're an actor, it's kind of like you're your own business, um, or, or traveling and going to different art museums or whatever. It's just like college provides a sense of fulfillment and community that is unlike anything I've ever experienced. I feel like I have a family on campus and I will never ever be able to verbally quantify how much that means to me. So I've just been having a great, great time.

So again, you're showing us that there is hope for the youth because you're not talking about drinking and partying every night.

Oh my God, ask my friends. I have never been out drinking. I'm underage. That's not okay.

I know that's not okay, but it's never stopped anyone. That's not okay.

Why would you? But I also like don't go to parties. I'm the girl that's in the library 24 hours a day reading to the Lighthouse. Like, that's, that's me.

Very cool. Well, that's good. Again, that's good. And, you know, it seems like you're connecting with what college is supposed to be. You know, it's about having a good time while you're there, but understanding what that good time is, and you're doing it the right way. You've got a family there, like you said. And a lot of people just don't think that way anymore.

Yeah, I just had my— this literature exam. The professor that has taught us this entire year, just, we've been emailing back and forth because we're so nostalgic about the year ending and the class is ending. And, you know, it is, it's, it's a true sense of community.

What was your favorite book that you read this year in the literature class?

Uh, To the Lighthouse. To the Lighthouse is like an eye-opening experience for me. Um, To the Lighthouse and the symposium.

Okay, now I haven't read either of them.

But it's hard for me to love the major Greek texts, the Hebrew texts, going into all of the, like, Don Quixote, Faust, Crime and Punishment, essays by Montaigne, like, just this amazing liberal arts education in literature. Um, so it's been pretty awesome.

I guess so. That sounds like it. You know, if you get to— if you love to read and you're in a class where you're reading classics, it's gonna make it so much more fun.

You know, the thing is, I never loved to read until I started taking this classics class, and now I can't imagine going anywhere without a book.

Well, I think a lot of our experiences with books— we, we need to experience something like the classics, as much as painful as some people think it is to read them. That's when you really truly start to understand what can be told, the story that can be told in a book, because these are masterpieces. You know, they may be old, but they're masterpieces. And the way they're written, it just makes you want to dive in more and read more.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the weird thing happens when, like, you're 6— you're probably, I don't know, like 300 pages into the Iliad, and everyone in the class is like, uh, and then you just fall in love with it. And from that point on, in the semester, straight up from there. And I think it's really important that people understand that sort of trajectory of the Congress because it allows us not only to express our own modern views on old times, but it also informs us of what came before us. So I think it's important.

Excellent, excellent. So you, you keep pretty busy then. So you have an acting career, and I was— I started to talk— think about what you were saying, a history, um, major, art history, art history. And do you think that'll help you with parts that you might get?

Oh yeah, so everything that I'm gonna inform, um, how I act in future roles. Um, yeah, I love— I just saw this, this play called The Heidi Chronicles. I saw it twice. It's I just totally fell in love with it. And she is— Heidi is an art history professor. So I feel like for one of those roles, it could be incredible. It could also be great, you know, if I do a piece from the 18th century or something, and knowing about that time period in every way possible is extremely valuable. And in these art history classes, you not only learn about the art, but you learn about the time in which the art was made, what the artists were responding to. So I think it'll be quite good for my acting career.

Gives you more perspective on it. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's real. It becomes more of what you're doing. That's, that's method acting, right?

Yep.

There we go. There you go. I'm not— I don't know much about acting, but although my wife will say I do because I'm always acting, acting up maybe. But anyway, we won't even go there. So Uh, but all right, so you're on a show called Blue Bloods.

Yes.

Which is phenomenal. And you got to work with some amazing people. Tom Selleck, who I mean, I grew up with as Magnum P.I. and everything else, and on Friends.

You want to know a secret? He knows this, so I can say it. I had never seen Magnum P.I. before the show. I didn't know about this. I didn't— I mean, I was like 14 when I met him, so I guess it wasn't my generation. But he's so— yeah, but he's—

it's—

he's so iconic, and I didn't, I didn't know, so I had to fix that quick. I, and then I, I saw like Three Men and a Baby and all of his amazing films.

Yeah, he is, and he's aged really well too. He looks great.

Yeah, he's, he's a very, very well-aged man.

Like, he is definitely, definitely, uh, Donnie Wahlberg is on his show.

So hard for me to talk about him like that because like he's like my grandfather, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like we have a We have a very like grandfather-granddaughter relationship, so it's funny for me to talk about it like that.

In that sense, I can understand that. It's— yeah, especially the show. Parts of the show, tremendous. It's action-packed, it's got a lot of good acting, but at the end of the show you have a meal.

Well, not necessarily the end of the show.

Well, in the show.

Yes.

In the show, sometimes you have a meal. Yeah, you're right. It's not family. Does it get— is that real at all at some point?

Oh yeah. I mean, it's real in that we also do it off set. So, you know, we're always getting together. We, you know, eat together once every 8 days, which is extremely rare for such a large ensemble cast, for all of us to be in the same room once every 8 days. It allows us to catch up not just, you know, about what our characters' lives are like, but what's occurring in our personal lives. And I think those scenes, being around 8 hours a day, you get to know each other pretty well. So Season 1, like, immediately we were just family. Now there's offset. You know, we're, we're very tight-knit group that happen behind me.

Very good. So it's got it. That makes it more enjoyable too. Yeah. To know, especially when you get to know people in real life.

I think that it spills over onto the screen too, which is so important. If you don't love each other in real life, never going to be able to convey it truthfully on the camera.

It makes it a lot more, you know, real. Real. And to those relationships on and off. So do you actually eat when you're at the table?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah, we eat and we eat.

Then you're happy, you want to keep eating. All right, you started— it's been on, what's the fifth season?

Or— yeah, we just finished our fifth—

just finished your fifth season. So you've been on this many years and we've seen you grow up over the course of the character. Uh, I, I went back and dived into season one because it had been so long since I've seen it. I start— I do things on Netflix and like Yeah, binges. Oh my God, I forgot how young she was when the show started.

I like to eat. You're a binge binge. I love it.

So you're passionate about eating too then? Oh yeah. Oh my God, are you a messy eater?

You know, my— I have a friend that, that has me in his phone as Not because of the person, but because it's very important. Piglet, because he says I'm such a pig when I eat. I mean, I just, I love food. I love to cook. I love to bake.

I just, uh, what is your favorite thing to eat?

My favorite thing to eat you would probably want it. Um, but I also— I make an amazing chocolate pumpkin bread. Well, I mean, potatoes. Love. I make these double-baked Oreo cookies, like, from scratch. They're, they're on point. Um, and then I was telling you earlier, I make these— this Cinnamon Toast Crunch crusted French toast that's like my brother's Total fave. Every time he comes— he's graduating college right now— but anytime he comes home, he's like, wakes me up at 8 in the morning, he's like, Sam, you have to cook for me, you have to make the cinnamon. I'm like, Chad, I'm tired, I have finals, I'm working. He's like, yeah. And I get up and I love doing it because I just, I don't know, I love cooking for people. That's like my, my thing. I love feeding people, like, and myself.

Best thing in the world. You know, I, I would always worry about eating myself, but I get a lot of joy out of feeding people.

Oh no, see, I eat in the process. So they're lucky if they get the food because like half of it has been consumed by me. But no, I love it. There's something very, I don't know, loving about the whole thing.

Yeah, food is love.

Food is love.

And I just went to a book signing with one of the judges from Chopped. He's on the Food Network.

Oh, cool.

And his saying, go everywhere, eat everything.

Mm-hmm.

So that's like when you stop and think about life, that's what you want to experience. Just don't ever be afraid to travel somewhere. Don't ever be afraid to try something because you don't know what it is, right? Because food is— food is an experience that people put love into the food that they cook, and you can learn so much about people.

And it's also something that you can bond over, I feel like. Like, I went out with a couple of friends of mine the other night, and it was very late night, turned in all of these papers I've been working on all semester, and we went and got fried Oreos, and it's just like perfect because this is just— is the perfect food for the perfect night. Like, it can really just embellish an experience in the best way.

Oh yeah, it can change your attitude in a matter of minutes. You can go from—

oh yeah, get some sugar in you and you're—

so yeah, not just the sugar, it's like you said, it's the bonding. It's It's just the fact of eating, how food satisfies us and just makes us happy.

Yeah.

Yeah. So what— so Tom Selleck, does he have any favorites that we know about?

Tom does not like vegetables. That's not much.

Really?

No. He likes certain vegetables, but he doesn't like a lot of green stuff.

He's a carnivore, huh?

Yeah. He loves— he loves to eat.

Very good. Very good. Well, sweet potatoes. I like sweet potatoes, but the missus doesn't, so we don't have them very often. But I make a mean sweet potato with apples and caramelized onions.

Oh my God.

So mix them together.

Why didn't you bring me this?

Oh, I know. We're gonna have to have an online cooking lesson sometime.

Okay.

We can do some private lessons. But yeah, food is just wonderful and it's a great way to express yourself. And like I said, it's a great way just to make people happy.

What does that mean that I'm defined by cinnamon toast crunch? French toast.

Well, yeah, because you're sweet, you're perky, and you're fun. There we go. Okay, so that's, you know, that would be it. No, I don't know.

I'll buy it.

If you define me with a roasted rack of pork, I don't know if I'd go for that. Although that might make Tom very happy. That's one of my signature dishes. But yeah, cooking can just be fun. And when I would teach it, I always said, don't be afraid. It's not rocket science. You know, go in your refrigerator, see what you have, pull something, make something, have fun with it. But you gotta enjoy it. If you don't enjoy cooking, it's never gonna be very good, right? Like I heard that—

I agree.

This guy, uh, Simon from the Food Network, was saying he would go into a restaurant and he could tell that the chefs weren't happy. The food wasn't good. He says the kitchen wasn't happy. He knew it. He said the food wasn't good. So if you're giving forth all of your, you your life and your just happiness into food, it's going to be good. And it doesn't have to be fancy.

I agree.

So what's on the horizon for you? Anything besides Blue Bloods? I know you've been in a few movies and you were in a movie with one of my favorite actors, Nicolas Cage. Oh, really? Yeah.

I love Nic. Oh, he's the best. We did a movie together, yeah, it was 2— no, not 2 years ago, like 4 years ago in New Orleans. I had such a good time. I love— that's a great food spot. New Orleans is probably where my— there's a restaurant there called Delmonico's, and it is the greatest restaurant in the country, I think. Like, I, I love New Orleans. But, um, yeah, Nick's, Nick's an unbelievable actor. That movie that he did, um, I love, like, Leaving Las Vegas, Adaptation. Adaptation is a brilliant film. But, um, now what's the, the famous one? Moon—

Moonstruck. He's been in so many good ones, you know, it's just, it's hard to pick a favorite. But, uh, oh, the one where he was the Secret Service agent for the president's wife, that was—

I love that. Yeah, Saving—

Guarding Tess. That was really good because he seemed so real. He seemed like, uh, I mean, he was heartbroken at the thought of the president dying and then taking care of her, how much love there was. But yeah, he's always been one of my favorites. So do you have any other movies coming up? Anything you can talk about?

Um, yeah, my, my brother actually wrote a script that we're in the midst of producing now, and I will star in, hopefully.

Very good.

So that's kind of what we're working on now, getting that done. By the end of this year. And yeah, and then I'm also going to college. And then with the show, it's been kind of nuts, but all really great. I'm very thankful.

How many— well, you just started college, right? So you still have a while to go.

I'm— I have one more final on Monday, and then actually two more, another one on Wednesday, and then I am off for the summer, peacing out. No, I don't know, I hate not being like intellectually stimulated. So I feel like I might take a class over the summer, but just like one. Right now I'm taking 5 and I'm working, and it's kind of a lot all at once. Um, so I think I need to cut back on the amount of classes I'm taking over the summer.

Yeah, you know, it's good to enjoy yourself a little.

Yeah, well, even this semester, like, I don't need to take 5 classes. That's not usually many people— what people do. So I was like, I got into all these classes, I tried them out, and I was like, oh, this is so incredible. Like, I love these courses. And then, you know, now I'm just assiduously studying away, but it's all worth it.

Yeah. And when do you start season 6 for, uh, Ms. Butz?

Um, I can't talk about—

that's fine, I understand—

any of that. Okay, no problem.

Well, we hope it comes back, let's say. Let's put it that way. And we'll be looking forward to it and anything else you do. And I hope you get to do some traveling. Have you gotten out to see the world at all?

Yeah, I've gone to the Cannes Film Festival. I spent some time in France. I've been to Switzerland. Spent 3 months living in London shooting a movie, which was like, I am just so in love with London.

London's pretty cool.

It's awesome. I think the next stop for me is Paris. I want to go to—

that is my favorite city in the world.

Yeah, although I think I might go to Toronto in a couple of weeks, maybe just for a fun trip with my friends. Niagara Falls and then Toronto.

Canada's pretty nice. We went to Toronto and, uh, one thing they had was they had moose everywhere.

Yeah, I went for the Toronto Film Festival. It's, it's a really fun place.

Yeah, that was a surprise. I wasn't expecting that. That was the first place I tried moose tracks too.

Oh yeah.

Yeah, it's a good ice cream. Wonderful. So many things in it.

So much stuff.

There's so much. So many.

There's so much stuff.

Yeah. Well, if I was a flavor of ice cream, what would I be? And I right away didn't even think about it. I said Loose Tracks because it's got so many layers of flavors.

I don't know what I'd be if I was a flavor of ice cream. Probably cookie dough.

Oh yeah, recipes. Do you have a favorite recipe, something you wanted to share with us, or something that you'd be able to send me later and I can put it on the blog for all my viewers to read too?

Maybe my cookies. My cookies. I make a salted pretzel chocolate chip malted milk ball cookie. And what you do is part of the flour is made from the pretzel, so you grind the pretzel down to put it in with the flour, and then you sort of mix it in with all the other ingredients, and it is— it's like the perfect mix of sweet and salty.

Wow. And you use a salted pretzel?

Yes, yes, yes, of course, of course. Extra salt, always extra salt. I have— I'm— I take like a lot of pride. I have this mixer that— well, I have one in Florida, I have one that's like, like a, a white, like, artisan mixer. And then in New York, I have a pink, like a light pink, very '60s mod kind of like electric mixer. That's where my heart's at.

Yeah, they're great. I have a couple of them at home and it's just, you know, you can— I always feel you can never have too many mixers. I don't know what it is. People think—

You just need a lot of them.

And everywhere I go, they're also, "Would you like a new mixer?" I go, "I got enough now, thank you." for now anyway. But they come out with so many neat colors now that they're beautiful, so you just want to have more than—

yeah, all the like pastel. I love the teal. It just makes me happy.

Again, and if you're happy with food around, you're going to make more creative, happy dishes. That's at least— that's what I find. So, well, this has been a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much for your time today and for coming to Give Kids the World Village, such a great place for kids. And, uh, I look forward to the next time you're around here. And if you'd like a private cooking lesson, we can do this in a private Hangout. Happy to walk you through some stuff.

Okay. Thank you.

Well, thank you so much. And thank you for watching. And we'll be back some— next week on Wednesday for Around the Kitchen Table. See you soon.