If you're going to spend an afternoon making lasagna—dicing and roasting a farmer's market worth of vegetables, making your own ragu from scratch—whoever's eating it better be worth it. In Guy Fieri's life, there's no question: His sister, Morgan, was worth it.
"She was younger than me, but I'd dedicate a tremendous amount of my success to the education she gave me," he says. "She opened my eyes quite a bit."
Morgan—or Bips, as Guy knew her—was the free-spirited one, the "hippie," the vegetarian-sometimes-vegan. She's a big reason why Guy will repeat your name after meeting you, making every effort to remember it (no matter how brief the interaction), and why he'll agree to stay a few minutes longer, just to make sure you have everything you need from him before he leaves, be it a selfie or tips on the best way to drain excess water from sautéed spinach (use a cheesecloth, if you can, or a really thin dish towel, to wring it out).
She's also why he has that 'namaste' tattoo stretching from his wrist to his elbow—and why, if he could show you any recipe from his new cookbook, Guy Fieri Family Food, it'd be that fire-roasted vegetable lasagna he made his sister at every family gathering, year after year.
It's a labor of love—and it's one of the ways he feels connected to her. It's been five years since Morgan died from cancer, a battle she'd been facing, off and on, her entire life.
"My sister was a great cook," he says. "She was always introducing me to new ways to cook with vegetables, going, 'try this' or 'try that.' She got me to be more creative with my vegetarian cooking, and now I'm much more veggie-centric on my plate."
Lasagna is one of Guy's specialties; it's one of two foods that sustained him throughout college (that and homemade egg rolls, actually). And when it comes to making the dish, Fieri doesn't take a single shortcut: He roasts the vegetables until the edges have curled and charred—"that's the key to all of the flavor!" he insists—pulsing it in a food processor to make a chunky, homemade ragu.
Morgan loved it so much she'd pack up the entire tray to take home with her.
"I'd go, 'wait, wait, wait—where are you going with that?' And she'd say, 'well, I can't take the meat one home,' and that was that," Fieri laughs.
Morgan first faced cancer at four years old; Guy was eight. The Fieri family stayed at a Ronald McDonald house as she underwent chemo, eventually beating the disease. "There was all of this craziness going on," he told us earlier this year. "I don't even know how to explain it; it was a weird time."
Seeing the way the community rallied around his family struck a chord with him, inspiring him to do everything he could to help other families affected by cancer, like inviting Make-A-Wish families to his Food Network tapings.
At 38, Morgan was diagnosed with metastic melanoma. She died one year later, but in her final week, Morgan taught him one of his greatest life lessons.
"As she was passing, we were all there, at home with her. I remember talking to one of her friends, and I said, 'what's this namaste thing she always says?' I would make fun of it, like 'hey nay, Namaste, don't say namaste' I'd make it rhyme with anything I could, just for fun," he says. "So they educated me on it. It's 'the power in me recognizing the power in you.' We talked about a person's power, and how important it is to take the time to recognize that, and acknowledge other people."
That word was Morgan's mantra, and in that word, Fieri realized it captured his sister's personality perfectly—and an outlook on life he always wanted to maintain.
"That's what my sister always did. She always took the time to recognize the power of other people," he explains. "That really grounded me and taught me a lot, because I move at a pretty fast pace. It's about taking the time to understand how difficult someone's job is and giving them what they need. It's opening doors for people, random acts of kindness—it's all those things."
Fieri got the word tattooed on his forearm; a perpetual reminder that in a world where great food is often just a hop in the Camaro to the nearest diner, drive-in or dive away, it's worth it to clear your schedule every now and then to show someone they're worth the lasagna.
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