{alltv} Alton Brown barely has time to enjoy his 'Good Eats' green

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All things Alton Brown— the TV shows, the books, the brainy, quirky on-screen personality and, above all, the thoughtful man himself — can be traced not to the hustle and bustle of New York or Los Angeles, but to the southern charm of Marietta, Ga.

If only the host of Food Network's popular Good Eats could be home more.

Brown, 48, was out of town for eight weeks of his 10-year-old daughter Zoey's summer vacation filming the new season of hosting Food Network's The Next Iron Chef (Sundays at 9 ET/PT), as well as 20 upcoming episodes of Iron Chef America. And he's started a book tour for his new food-filled tome Good Eats 2: The Middle Years. He even plans to fly his plane to most of the tour stops himself .

Back in Georgia, though, is where both heart and work lie. In addition to the house he shares with wife DeAnna and their daughter, he has a complete facility where he and his team create Good Eats, as they have for the past 11 years. Brown has a 5,000-square-foot soundstage, test kitchen, walk-in refrigerator and a full-on editing room for his show, where he's the director, producer, writer and, of course, bespectacled star.

"As I sit here in my building in my five-acre compound, I'm responsible for all of it," he says. "That's also weight. I've got to carry that weight every day. It's great, but in the end, we only get so much time, and you can't accumulate that. I can sit here and say I've got an airplane, but I haven't been in it in a month because I don't have the time."

The homespun nature of Good Eats, his show about the science and history of food that's equal parts Julia Child, Monty Python and Mr. Wizard, has certainly allowed it to continue over the years, Brown says.

"If you were to look around at television today, this TV show wouldn't get made. It just wouldn't. I'm not sure it ever would have if we hadn't have just made two original pilot episodes without even talking to a network. I do think it would have become a different show were it not out in the boondocks, which it most certainly is."

Because the show's mainly all his doing, Brown doesn't get days off. He's constantly working on Good Eats, usually writing and researching to pull it off the way he wants. That's the main reason Brown hasn't had a vacation in eight years.

"Yeah, my family's getting a little irked," he says, laughing. "There's no time! But by the same token, it's kept us really focused as this little cottage industry that makes this little handmade product, which is very much what we do."

And Good Eats is definitely a family business. Zoey, who just started the fifth grade, has been an on-air presence in 15 episodes and is "quite the little actress," Brown says proudly. "She has the showbiz bug a lot more than she's got the food bug."

WifeDeAnna is his business partner who runs the company, dealing with all the money, lawyers and contracts so he doesn't have to. "She keeps us from going broke," says Brown, adding that starting Good Eats was partly her idea.

Brown, who was born in Los Angeles and moved south to attend the University of Georgia, comes more from a filmmaking background than a foodie one. He was a cameraman and a cinematographer before becoming a commercial director for eight years. DeAnna was the production manager of the company where they worked, and even before they were married, he had this idea for a crazy new food show, which she wanted him to do.

They quit their jobs, sold everything and moved, and Brown went to culinary school at New England Culinary Institute in Montpelier, Vt. "We started over again," Brown says. "It was like being college students again."

Brown says he still cooks about half the time in his household, and finds it therapeutic and a nice distraction from work. He enjoys feeding his family, and they have been equally supportive of his battle with weight.

Last year, Brown lost 50 lbs., even though it probably didn't seem to viewers that he was overly heavy. "I just seemed to have a very small head," he says. "People often said that: 'You look good, but your head is very small.' I put on fat perfectly in proportion around my entire body, from my earlobes to my toes. I was quite heavy — I just didn't carry it all in one place. Now my head seems bigger than it actually is, because my body has shrunk around my body."

His weaknesses are sugar and alcohol. "I've got a sweet tooth — not as bad as it used to be, but I do," Brown admits. "And essentially, I shouldn't eat carbohydrates at all. I could have one small handful of almonds, that could be my carb load for the day, and my body would be just fine with that."

Brown says he works out most every day — he's a fan of short-distance running — and his other hobbies also take him outside the home office. He's been riding motorcycles for 10 years, and owns a beautiful, old-school 1984 BMW R100, which is white with black and blue pinstripes. "I had a lot more bikes, but once you get an airplane, you don't have the money anymore."

On those business trips, he pilots a six-seat, single-engine Cessna 206 Turbo, and Brown says he had to sell his last really nice motorcycle to pay for new GPS for his plane, which costs in excess of $20,000.

But the bikes and airplanes he can afford after nearly 250 episodes of Good Eats are only "just stuff" to Brown. "It doesn't define me and it could be gone tomorrow. The stuff that's important — your work, your family — that's tangible. Everything else is frosting.

"You know what, cake is great with frosting, but if the frosting's gone, you've got to make sure the cake is good, too."