Those of you who know The Love Diet story are left with questions and presumptions. Some of which are incorrect. I would like to try to start to set the record straight.

I’ve been put in the middle of a very difficult situation through no fault of my own. Obviously, I had no clue that this plan was in motion when I set to work on the book with my infamous co-author. However, being in the middle means that I am receiving pieces of the back story before everyone else who follows the “charged with murder-for-hire” saga.

I get most of my information through long-winded letters sent to me (written in pencil) from a prison cell. I receive letters from Juan-Carlos on a regular basis. Up until his plea was accepted they all contained vague notes like, “Please tell everyone that this is a love story.” And, “when you hear this story you will cry. Everyone who hears it does.”

But finally, this week, I received a letter that began to unravel the tightly wound spool around which this whole saga is wrapped.

This letter started out by stating that what he did to me was about the worst thing he has ever done to someone. Stop and think about this for a moment and you will understand what I am going through. These words were written by a man who is in jail for allegedly trying to kill his lover and best friend.

He went on to explain why he chose the plea deal. Months ago, my understanding was that the DA had heard the whole story and believed that JC was no rough criminal. But later his case was given to the domestic violence DA, a woman who was pushing for life in prison. What it sounds like is that this is a woman with a cold fist of hate in her heart for any man accused of doing harm to his wife. And frankly, I feel for the DA and can kind of understand this perspective. I certainly couldn’t do her job, could you?

So the best plan of action, according to JC, was to plea rather than go to court and risk life in prison. It is so hard to me to imagine gambling with your life like this but I have not, nor ever intend to be in such a position. After the fact, of course, TMZ revealed that the DA withheld the information that the star witness in the case-the homeless man known as Big Dave-was dead. (But seriously, did she think she could squelch it for long? Harvey Levin is like the great, all-knowing Wizard of Oz!) There was some talk of going back to the courts but I think all the fight was drained out of everyone and Juan-Carlos has accepted his new lot in life.

Juan-Carlos has yet to tell me the rest of the story other than the fact that he and Jennifer are choosing to stay together and that they are still very much in love. Her silence in the matter, Juan-Carlos tells me, is not out of terror but out of shyness. And I can, based on the years of knowing JC as my friend, verify that Jennifer is very shy.

I do not know when or if I will learn the whole story but his recent letter has helped to alleviate some of my pain. I at least can live with knowing that the reason for the plea was not because the Santa Monica police department was dangling some dirty secret over my book partner’s head. (Which, quite frankly, was what I feared when I first learned of the plea.)

Unfortunately, one of the greatest victims in this saga is The Love Diet. To those of you who scorned me for promoting the book in the face of controversy I would like to say this: My company, Life of Reiley, published The Love Diet. The book was published with money straight out of my pocket. Not only did I take an incredible emotional hit, I took a serious financial hit in this whole situation. And frankly, to some extent, I was duped. The entire plot was unfolding as I gave up my life to put the finishing touches on the book. A project of which I am extremely proud. A book into which I poured my heart and soul, palate, stomach and wallet. So to my critics, I ask you, what would you have done in my position? Had you stood in my shoes, would you have been so quick to judge?

I am now trying to move on, figure out how to salvage the book, how to heal the emotional scars. I’m thinking of developing a series of podcasts entitled either, “What Would Juan-Carlos Eat? (in prison) OR Prison, One Plate at a Time. Hey, you have to laugh or else you’ll cry and frankly, my tear ducts need a break.

But I have to be honest, I went to the Today Show with a heavy heart and a touch of anxiety. I spent the entire trip to NYC thinking about my co-author and feeling like an opportunist for going on the Today Show, in part, because he was locked in a prison cell. By the morning of the show, I was so stressed that I was going to cry on air that I practically forgot my recipes.

Right before the segment, which was hosted by Hoda Kotbe and Kathy Lee Gifford, the ladies (who I, incidentally, liked very much) actually suggested to the producers that maybe we shouldn’t bring up JC and just cook. But the producers felt that his incarceration was newsworthy and needed to be pursued, should the Today Show otherwise look neglectful of this golden nugget of information.

So right at the top, Hoda asked about Juan-Carlos. Here it was. And suddenly, I felt like I was swimming in jello and heard myself speaking at about the same pace. What do you say on national television when the co-author of the book you love so much is in prison and the case is still in the investigation stage but you know more about the situation than has been released to the general public? Oh yeah, and you’ve got a lump the size of a softball lodged in your throat? You find some way to tell them why the heck you worked with this guy in the first place!

And then Kathy Lee (who talked privately to you about your co-worker before the segment) has to add that he is your friend and you care about him very much but hey by the way, we have to cook this food that’s burning in the pan over here.

And what now infamous little gem comes flying out of my mouth? I promised I wouldn’t cry. I thought my fiance would have my hide for that stupid little sidebar. His comment about the segment was, “Don’t use a cliche! Next time just cry!” (Yes, he is a cold, hardened tv professional, but a wise one at that.)

I know in the part of my brain that understands good television that he was right but I was there to cook and gosh darn it I was determined to do just that! So I smothered the rising tears with truffle salt and made my lasagna like a good guest. And, I am happy to report that they loved the Love Diet food. No-they really loved it! What the audience didn’t see was that cast and crew stayed and finished the whole pan, and some cocktails, after the segment ended.

All would have ended on a high note except that The Soup decided to pick up the clip as one of their oh-so-funny moments of pop culture. (Really? It must have been a slow week!) The clip was meant to aim jabs at both the hosts for asking me about the case and then expecting me to demo recipes like any chipper cooking guest and at me for trying to give props to a man who’s in jail for allegedly committing a pretty horrible crime.

Ok, I can live through 2 minutes of The Soup getting their jollies. Except that the show airs about 20 times throughout the week. Seriously, does E! have so little programming that they need to put the half hour of pseudo pop psychology on at regular intervals?

As if that weren’t enough, Eater, one of the country’s most prominent food blogs picked up and picked apart The Soup piece as their regular feature yesterday. Oh come on! This is supposed to be a legit source of national food news. There are Americans starving in cities across the nation, cows being tortured in slaughter houses with illegal practices, small farmers being run out of business and all Eater can find to write is a rehashing, with incorrect interpretation I might add, of my The Soup clip.

But you know what? How often do you see a food-related clip on The Soup (and I’m not talking “Chat Stew”). So you go ahead food website editors and celebrate food on mainstream, popular tv-even if you feel the need to do it with your snarky attitude. Because I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing. And even if it winds up as the punch line to a joke, you know what? I am still getting good, quality, interesting food out their to a more broad audience than you could ever hope of reaching!

So I was THRILLED to hear that Redbook was going to run recipes from The Love Diet in their August issue. Actually, an editor originally contacted me because they were interested in a story on foods for a woman’s libido and I offered to give them recipes from my upcoming book. (Yes, I was trying to sneak in some publicity for the book–can you blame me? I mean, REDBOOK! What a great audience for The Love Diet.)

Now with any article there’s a chance that the story will be “killed” before publication. (Often there isn’t room for everything planned for the issue and sometimes stories are killed because of an error in accuracy. That’s life in publishing.) So when I was contacted by an editorial assistant for a final fact check last week, I was elated. That means the story is in! (Remember, a monthly magazine usually has to go to print weeks in advance of its publication date.)

Or maybe it doesn’t. Apparently, the final fact check is not the last word. It seems that the Editor-in-Chief didn’t review the issue until it had been fully fact checked and put to bed.

And when this Editor-in-Chief spotted the book that she’d seen in the media (she’s probably a secret TMZ junkie) she threw up her wildly conservative red flag. “Redbook will not allow itself to be associated with someone like this.” is how it was conveyed to me, (I probably paraphrased slightly. I doubt an editor would end a sentence on a preposition.)

As far as I was aware, the article was about my advice to women on food and libido, not a story on Juan-Carlos Cruz. So, are they saying that I am evil by association and they don’t want my cooties?

Huh. Kind of makes me want to do a background check on the friends and family of all the Redbook staff. If there’s a slew of parking violations or a shoplifting charge, should I be canceling my Redbook subscription? The mere thought of those cooties are creeping me out!

Ok, jokes and snarky jabs aside, Ms. Editor, this is a man’s life we are talking about. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Oh the ups and downs of book publishing!

We have worked closely over the past nine months on The Love Diet. I know him as a giving individual who is passionate about inspiring others to change their health through diet in the way Juan-Carlos changed his own.

It was this passion that sparked our collaboration on The Love Diet, a book that combines our love for food, his knowledge of diet and mine of aphrodisiacs and sexual health to get home cooks excited about eating well by eating for a better libido. In fact, leading by example, Juan-Carlos even speaks candidly in the book about the role of health in maintaining a loving 30-year relationship with his wife.

It is because I still believe that, no matter the outcome of this situation, it is a good book filled with great recipes and valuable information, the publication of The Love Diet will continue on schedule. The Love Diet will be released on June 15, 2010. I hope you can look past this terrible situation and see the book and its recipes for how fantastic they are.

–Amy Reiley

Our testers are the best! They play a vital role in creating a final cookbook that is easy, practical and (relatively) foolproof. But there is just one thing that has made me want to go into several of their homes and steal one piece of equipment that these zealous, fanatic, type A cooks cannot seem to keep themselves from doing: peeling. As in fruits, vegetables (and even shrimp).

When they see the word unpeeled, most of our testers see (un)PEELED. If I write do not peel, they see PEEL. If I say nothing, as in wash and cut your potato, they see wash, PEEL and cut your potato. UNLESS WE’RE TALKING ABOUT CLOTHING I AM NOT RECOMMENDING THAT YOU TAKE IT OFF. (Just to protect myself legally, for those of you who now intend to cook in the nude, you should always wear an apron when working with hot oil.)

You know, I can forgive the sweet potato eaters who chose to wash their nutritious skins down the drain because they hallucinated extra instructions, I totally get the girl who peeled the pears before adding them to a smoothie but the one I will never be able to get over is the tester who peeled the shrimp before cooking them in rock salt. (The shells act as a vital barrier between the sweet shrimp flesh and the salt in which they are baked.) He emailed to tell me that he thought the dish was awfully salty. Ya think?!?!

Now, I love him dearly. I love them all for sharing with me that the average American loves to peel. (Seriously, who knew?) But HOW am I supposed to finish a cookbook with lots of dishes calling for unpeeled ingredients in a world full of peel freaks? If anyone can suggest to me an alternate wording for keeping your skin on in which the world “peel” does not appear in any guise, I’d be so grateful I’d send you the first copy of The Love Diet off the press, on me!

I was inspired from this trip by the forward thinking of one particular chef, Brad Farmerie. No, his cuisine wasn’t “molecular” in its modern interpretation but it was equally detailed and sensory invigorating as the latest craze of chemistry in the kitchen. Every dish, be it a plate of food or morsel-sized amuse, offered a variety of textures and temperatures. There were things like a fresh out of the fryer croquette topped with a cool, slippery anchovy fillet all topped by crunchy, cold pickled onions.

Eating Brad’s food was an experience, not an act. His cuisine forced you to be present in the moment with new sensations constantly dancing across your tongue. THIS is an aphrodisiac, (even without oysters or chocolate or any other innuendo.)

That food and the experience stuck with me long after I returned home from the city that never sleeps. And when JC and I started working on The Love Diet, I realized that this was the key. Our book of romance-related recipes were not only going to offer the health benefits of libido-boosting foods. We needed to make a book of recipes that wake up the senses and afford home cooks the fun of food that speaks in more than flavor.

As we develop our recipes, we’ve made our goal to try to incorporate at least two textures and two temperatures into every recipe. Sometimes we succeed in blending four or more, (like the highly experimental sous vide salmon with cold fennel and dried apricot slaw topped with salmon roe – 4 textures, 2 temperatures.)

I believe that varied sensory pleasure is a part of the future of home cooking. As our senses become more and more bombarded by variety of experience – ipod in one ear, phone in the other as we surf the web, drink vitamin-enhanced water and work our abs sitting on a stability ball all at the same time, I believe that home cooking will have to evolve to serve our sensation-craving society. But, unlike the overload we experience the second we leave the house, I believe that sensory-focused cooking will help to bring us into the moment, forcing us to pay attention to what is on the plate and enjoy the rainbow of sensations we can experience by just tasting. This is really what the haute cuisine craze of molecular cooking is all about. I just think we can do it at home in a much simpler but equally delicious guise. And I hope that our book will be on the forefront of a delicious, dine-at-home trend.

Juan-Carlos is a me-first kind of guy, so we’ll start with his CV. A few years back, he was a happy fat guy—his words, not mine! He was a gainfully employed and highly regarded pastry chef (who was not afraid to enjoy that which he created). For the sake of his marriage, his wellbeing and health, Juan-Carlos decided to break up with pastry. The weight melted away, his sex life heated up and the Food Network came calling. Yep, if you thought this guy seemed familiar, that’s because he’s the Calorie Commando. Today JC spends his days promoting the Calorie Countdown Cookbook and traveling as an American Heart Association spokesman. Now, with the Love Diet, he’s branching out into the matters of the other heart, the one that flutters, flips and loves love.

Next there’s me, I’m Amy Reiley. I’m the author of Fork Me, Spoon Me: the sensual cookbook, the owner of the publishing house Life of Reiley and an expert on aphrodisiac foods. I started out as a wine journalist and as you’ll soon discover in the Love Diet, wine is one of my greatest passions. But while I was studying for my Master of Gastronomy at Le Cordon Bleu (same school as Julia Child, thank you very much!) I discovered my passion for… passion. And so I dove headfirst into the much-misunderstood world of aphrodisiac foods. Since then, although I still work as a sometimes wine critic, I spend most of my days developing aphrodisiac recipes, consulting with award-winning chefs and speaking on the foods of love. Lucky me, this hot, Latin pastry chef walked into my life a few years ago and we’ve been developing recipes and exchanging ideas ever since.

You see, great food, great health and great sex all go hand in hand, which means JC and I are a match made in heaven.

What we’ve done together is to, essentially, create a road map for a lifestyle, a Love Diet. We can’t promise that the Love Diet will find you love, but we speak from experience in saying that much of what we have to offer can bring romance into your life, keep your love life fresh and help keep things moving to, you know, go the distance. Not every element of the Love Diet will work for everyone. Every body is different—some of us need a little more of this, and others need a whole lot of that. But trust me, in this game, the trial and error is all a part of the fun!

Our journey is based on nutrition, it incorporates seasonal eating, encourages exercise (particularly the kind that starts in the bedroom, or shower, or living room floor, hotel suite or kitchen island or somebody else’s guest room…) Remember kids, exercise can be fun!

Now for the disclaimer: Keep in mind that we come to our whole lifestyle from the food perspective. Neither one of us is a doctor, has a degree in nutrition nor any other aspect of the medical field. But we do have an extensive knowledge of food, ingredients and their physiological effects, all of which we’ve learned through years of studying, cooking and some very delicious life experience. We are both professional bon vivants!