Once again, I was in a new school. So was a girl in my class named Lisa. That's where the similarities
ended.
     I was tall and she was small. My thick black hair had been recently cut short into an untidy style. Her
natural blonde hair flowed to her waist and looked great. I was 12 and one of the oldest in the class while
she was 11 and the youngest. I was awkward and shy. She wasn't. I couldn't stand her, considering her
my enemy. But she liked me and wanted to be friends.
     One day, she invited me over and I said yes-I was too shocked to answer any other way. My family
had moved six times in six years, and I had never managed to develop any friendships. But this girl who
wore the latest fashions wanted me to go home with her after school..
     She lived in a fun part of town that had two pizza places, an all-right bookstore, a movie theater and
a park. As we walked from the school bus stop through her neighborhood, I tried to guess which house
might be hers. Was it the white one with the perfect lawn or the three -story house with a front porch? I
got very surprised when she led me into an old apartment building. She lived on the fourth floor in a
two-room place with her mother, her stepfather, her two brothers and her sister.
     When we got into the room she shared with her sister, she took out a big case of Barbies, which was
my next surprise. I had never played with them. We sat on the floor, laughing as we made up crazy stories about the Barbies. We found out that we both wanted to be writers when we were older and both had
wild imaginations. We had a great day that afternoon.
     Lisa was loved by the whole neighborhood. The bookstore owners lent her fashion magazines; the
movie theater gave her free tickets…Soon I was included in her magic world. We slept over at each
other's houses and spent every free moment together.
     Lisa, my first real friend since childhood, helped me get through the rough years of early adolescence
and taught me an amazing and very surprising thing about making friends: your worst enemy can turn out
to be your best friend.

     Growing up in Philadelphia, Lieberman started cooking with his stay-at-home dad when he was
seven. His food-loving family had two kitchens, and he quickly learned what was the best way to bake
his cakes. Lieberman improved his kitchen skills greatly during a year abroad before college, learning
from a cook in Italy and studying local specialties(地方特色菜)in Germany, Spain and France. At Yale,
he was known for throwing dinner parties, single-handedly frying and baking while mixing drinks for
dozens of friends. Just for fun, he and some friends decided to tape a show named Campus Cuisine
about his cooking. Lieberman was a real college student showing his classmates how to do things like
making drinks out of dining-hall fruit. That helped the show become very popular among the students.
They would stop Lieberman after classes to ask for his advice on cooking. Tapes of the show were
passed around, with which his name went beyond the school and finally to the Food Network.
     Food Network producer Flay hopes the young cook will find a place on the network television. He
says Lieberman's charisma is key. "Food TV isn't about food anymore," says Flay. "It's about your
personality and finding a way to keep people's eyeballs on your show."
     But Lieberman isn't putting all his eggs in one basket. After taping the first season of the new show,
Lieberman was back in his own small kitchen preparing sandwiches. An airline company was looking
for some one to come up with a tasteful, inexpensive and easy-to-make menu to serve on its flights,
Lieberman got the job.