Sarah's in the kitchen.

"Am I the only gay chef on TV?" asks Sarah Carey with humorous incredulity. "I am unique," says the chef by phone. She's taking a break from shooting Everyday Food, a cooking show from Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia that premiered earlier this year on PBS. Carey and her four costars together are the new face of the Martha Stewart brand, teaching viewers how to make delicious, nutritious meals in under an hour.

Carey's enthusiasm is apparent as she whips up bow-tie pasta with salmon and basil during the show's first episode. She touts the benefits of fish oils and relishes wielding her chefs knife. All the while her long red ponytail makes her look more like a college coed than the seasoned veteran she is.

For the past few years, Carey, 38, has been a senior editor at Martha Stewart Living magazine, where she often worked with Stewart on her television show. That's where Carey met her girlfriend, Maryann Vanderventer, then an associate director on TV's Martha Stewart Living. They've been together for 4 1/2 years, and just as the other Everyday Food hosts might refer to their husbands on the air, Carey is apt to refer to Vanderventer.

"I try to talk about Maryann in every segment I do," says Carey, who wears her commitment ring on camera. (The couple registered as domestic partners in New York). "I figure she's part of my life, and I want to include her just like anyone would include their family in their segments."

Heidi Diamond, president of Martha Stewart Living Television, says that Carey's television appeal is found both in her ability to teach and her penchant for ethnic and vegetarian food. "She is an individualist who conforms to nothing, which I love," says Diamond. Carey says she owes much of her style to her unusual upbringing. She was raised on a commune in Woodstock, N.Y., where a different adult cooked every night. She had her share of bad '70s health food--think soy loaf--but she was also exposed to a variety of foods at an early age.

Today, Carey continues to pursue her passion for unusual flavors in her Jackson Heights neighborhood in Queens, N.Y. "I can walk outside and there are Colombian, Ecuadoran, South Asian restaurants and markets. Then there's Korean, Filipino, and Indian. It's just amazing." She's also learning what it means to be a TV personality. One recent afternoon at a market in Brooklyn, a female fan "said she liked me because I seem more off-center than the other hosts and because I like ethnic food. That's not so bad," she supposes. "I like being the off-center spicy one."