Everymom preps for her dream

PLYMOUTH -- Susannah Locketti scrapes corn kernels off the cob, rinses a can of black beans in a strainer, and slices open an avocado. Two little dogs scramble underfoot and scratch at something in one of the open cabinets of her kitchen. Her 3-year-old son is napping, her husband is poking around in the garage, and her 7-year-old is on the other end of the phone, asking when he should come home from a neighbor's for dinner. ''Oh, boy, here's where it starts," she says. ''This is where I go on autopilot."

Diva the mini-pinscher and Jackson the mini-dachshund pull a can of low-fat cooking spray onto the floor. Locketti tells her son Evan to be home in 45 minutes, then swoops down, returns the can into place, closes the cabinet, and reaches over to shake a skillet of sizzling shrimp.

If this is the juggling act of Everymom, then Locketti, 32, seems to have it down: cooking healthy meals, trying to get her family to eat them, and staying in shape, all while managing a career. But for Locketti, the stakes are higher. As one of the finalists on the Food Network's upcoming reality show, Locketti also wants to prove that her philosophy of healthy cooking with decadent touches can translate into such entertaining television that her name becomes synonymous with the show's title: ''The Next Food Network Star."

Meanwhile, she is determined to keep off the 90 pounds she lost three years ago, an achievement that changed the direction of her life.

''I am just your everyday girl next door, an everyday person struggling with the same issues that everyone faces," Locketti says on a drive home from Plymouth Fitness, one of two gyms where she teaches aerobics. ''Yet I made it work. And that's what people need to hear, not a movie star telling them, 'Here's how I did it.' "

One day in 2001, three weeks after her younger son, Aidan, was born, Locketti wasn't such a picture of health. She weighed 216 pounds. ''I was on the couch watching Jerry Springer and eating Devil Dogs, one in each hand, double-fisted, and my feet were up, and I was nursing Aidan, and the thought hit me: If anybody could see this now they would think it's such a cliche," she says. ''And then a commercial for Weight Watchers came on."

She counts herself as being on one diet or another since age 13. But this was different; she had reached her ''absolute rock bottom," and made up her mind not to merely go on another diet, but to change the way she lived. She retooled her favorite recipes, started exercising regularly, and worked her way down over the next year to 127 pounds.

Along the way, she trained to become a certified weight management consultant and an aerobics instructor. And when most of the weight was off, she decided to get back to her first career interest: television. Locketti had studied broadcast journalism at North Adams State College, now Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She had been the youngest student ever to host her own show, but when college was over, she realized that while her talent was made for TV, her appearance wasn't. A binge eater and food addict, she couldn't manage to change the way she looked, so she went into graphic design.

The education ''definitely prepared me for a career in television," she says, in between apologies for the mess in her car. ''I just needed to prepare my body for a career in television."

The weight loss gave her more than a TV-ready look. It gave her a message. In June 2003, ''Decadent Delites" was born. The monthly show on Plymouth's cable access station offered Locketti's healthy cooking with fitness tips. On the first episode, she flexed her triceps as she stirred together fat-free cream cheese and other ingredients for a slimmed-down crab rangoon, and called it ''an excellent upper-body workout."

She told viewers: ''I don't want to see anyone making these with a mixer."

Meanwhile, she had bigger things in mind. She vowed to her staff at ''Decadent Delites" that she would be on the Food Network within two years. But how?

''I had been looking for ways to become somebody without it costing a ton of money," she says. ''You know, I come from a small town, I have a state school education, I'm self-employed. I don't have a lot of opportunities available to me."

Then she saw that the Food Network was looking for reality show contestants; the winner would get a six-episode contract. She put a handheld camera into the hands of then-fiance Chip, who filmed her while she made curried Thai chicken, explained her philosophy of healthy cooking without deprivation, and demonstrated four ways to ''plate it up."

She remembers the tape as ''so amateur." But Locketti's name was still on the list of eight finalists announced in February. ''She just connects so well to the camera," says Bob Tuschman, the network's senior vice president for programming and production, who saw her audition tape and is one of the judges on the new show. ''We were just mesmerized. We thought, she's ready for prime time already. And she's totally relatable to our audience."

When it was time to head to New York for the 12 days of filmed challenges that would become the reality show, Locketti was still recovering from dysentery she had picked up on her honeymoon in Aruba. But once she saw the cameras and the lights and the 75 crew members, ''I went into job-search mode, and that was that."

The contestants didn't have to live together, so there was no ''Real World"-style roommate drama -- just work: making a pizza for Mario Batali, cooking for Bobby Flay, and improvising an egg dish, with on-camera tests of the ability to explain technique, impart personal tidbits, and deal with such technical issues as teleprompter breakdowns. ''A lot of it was, what's your personality, and why would people watch you?" she says. ''The staff did a really good job of pulling that out of you."

Judges eliminated one competitor at a time, until two remained. When the show airs starting June 5, the network's viewers will end up deciding which contestant gets to film six episodes for the network's ''In the Kitchen" daytime block. Locketti is contractually restricted from saying how the later challenges went and whether she is one of the final two, but she does allow that plenty of drama awaits, and that her clumsiness with a knife may have had something to do with it.

Back in Plymouth, Locketti has stopped production on ''Decadent Delites" with only weeks to go before its second anniversary. She won't say why it's on hold, but she seems prepared for bigger things. She even chooses to be photographed not in her street clothes but in a chef's jacket with the Food Network logo on it. ''I was meant to enter this, and I was meant to win it," she says. The only person she's allowed to talk to about the show's outcome is Chip, her second husband, whom she married in January. He, too, is keeping mum. ''I'm just like everybody else, waiting to see what happens. I'm like that character on 'Hogan's Heroes,' " he says, putting on a German accent: ''I see nothing."

Even parents Dan and Nancy Sapir are in the dark, but her mother knew that her daughter would make it to the finals. ''I'm never surprised by what my children accomplish," says Nancy, 57. ''In Suzy's case, when she says this is what I'm going to do, that's the end of that. She will do it, or she will die trying."

Growing up in Kingston with three siblings, Locketti was exposed to media (her father owns the Kingston Observer) and to a love of food (she calls her mother a ''gourmet quality cook"). Both parents are Polish, but Nancy Sapir says that by the time she was raising her own kids, she was so sick of Polish food she only made it at large family get-togethers. Instead, she systematically cooked her way through the ''Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook."

These days, Sapir is a Food Network ''junkie," and her favorite host is Ina Garten, whose approach is at the other end of the spectrum from Locketti's. ''I give no truck to low-fat," Sapir says. Nonetheless, she marvels at her daughter's commitment, and understands the appeal. ''Most women want to lose weight and do it without sacrificing everything," she says. ''I probably should do it her way, believe me. I've tasted her dishes, and I do think they're delicious. I just may be too old to change."

By about 7:30 p.m., Chip and the kids are ready to eat. Evan is back from a bike ride with his friend Ryan, and a still-sleepyheaded Aidan has staggered into the kitchen. Locketti tastes the simple pan dressing she made for a warm shrimp salad with black beans and corn and proclaims it a touch too tangy. ''I'm going to add a little honey," she says.

Evan and Aidan are hard sells. For them, she has made an Everymom standby. ''This is all Evan will eat: chicken nuggets, on a paper plate, with honey on the side. I know a lot of moms can relate."

On Aidan's plate, she adds cherry tomatoes, black beans, and corn (which, it turns out, he won't touch). But before she hands over the plates, she asks Evan if he wants to demonstrate his justifiably famous impersonation of a French waiter. He stands, straightens his posture, and adopts a thick accent: ''Dinner," he pronounces, ''is served."

Rail-thin Chip doesn't always eat his wife's cooking. He describes himself as having a fast-food palate, ''and she's all about the fiber, and I don't want to be all about the fiber." She convinces him to try her shrimp salad -- and he devours it. ''Can I eat this green thing on the bottom?" he asks.

''Of course, honey. It's lettuce."

Joe Yonan can be reached at yonan@globe.com.