Haylie Duff on Her Birthday in Miami, Braving Farmer's Markets, and Avoiding Maternity Wear

Haylie Duff has come a long way from her Napoleon Dynamite and Seventh Heaven Days. The actress turned food personality is on the tail end of finishing her second season of The Real Girl's Kitchen, which follows her through her Los Angeles adventures both in and out of the kitchen, and she turned her passion for cooking into a quaint food blog and an intimate and personal cookbook. But bigger than her inarguable success as a cookbook author and food blogger is her baby bumb; Haylie's due to have a girl!

We caught up with the soon-to-be-mom and celebrity chef before the South Beach Wine and Food Festival, where she told us about her 30th birthday plans in Miami (where she filmed her final episode of the season) and what she's up to now that she's expecting. Plus, she gave us a few pointers on how to brave a farmer's market, and revealed that beneath her calm facade at SBWFF's Grand Tasting Village, she was actually pretty nervous. "My plan is just to talk to them… I'm also very pregnant, so I'm hoping to get sympathy points!"

Thank you! It's a lot colder than we thought it was going to be, but it's so exciting to be here. I love Miami. It's my first time going to the festival too, so I was pretty excited for the weekend. I had a little work thing I had to go to early in the evening and then we went to a nice dinner at Cecconi's and kind of relaxed. You know, I'm pregnant so there was no big party going on for my birthday this year!

What did you have planned for the weekend?

We're actually filming an episode of The Real Girl's Kitchen about the South Beach Wine and Food Festival and my demo. My crew came down on Saturday and we shot on Sunday to finish out our last episode for the season. We were excited to get out of LA for a little bit and Miami was the perfect spot for us to do something fun. It's my first real big demo like this so it was nice to have a little documentation of it.  

The main focus of the episode is really about learning how to do a demo in front of people. It's very different than cooking in your own kitchen. So my friend Jet Tila, who's an amazing chef, came and gave me a little lesson when I was in LA on what to expect and how to roll through it. Then my girlfriend, Arielle Kebbel, who is actually here in Miami filming a new show called Ballers, was in LA and she came over and helped me practice my recipes and decide what I'm going to make. We will end the episode arriving in Miami and going to the festival, with a behind the scenes of the demo. 

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I did Soulcycle through my whole pregnancy and I go on walks with friends. You know, I've worked through most of it shooting season two of The Real Girl's Kitchen. So I've been active in general. Chasing my little nephew around and playing with him has been exercise enough! We've taken him to the beach plenty of times.

I was fighting the good fight on buying maternity clothes, but now I just have this massive belly and I can't deny that I'm pregnant any longer! James Perse makes these really great long tank tops, so I've been living in a bunch of those and Alexander Wang has some really good super stretchy but still really tight tanks that I've been living in. I have a pair of maternity pants from Monroe that are made of silk crepe. They are like trousers, almost, and are really comfortable. I've tried to not go too maternity, but at a certain point you've got to have room, you know? I also love David Lerner maternity leggings. Those have probably been my favorite the whole time I've been pregnant. I'm sort of sad to lose them once I'm done with them.

I think the best thing is to always bring a good shoulder tote bag so you're not carrying everything by hand. Definitely bring cash, and bring small bills. A lot of times you can make deals with people if you only want to buy one of something but it comes in a big bag. But going in with a plan would be the best advice. Know what you're kind of looking for so you're not buying a bunch of random stuff that you don't end up using. Because everything at the farmer's market is fresh, right? So it goes bad a lot faster than what you get in a grocery store.

Oh my god, I would love that. I probably need to get to the point where she's eating real food, not just milk all the time, to really experiment with what she's going to eat. But I definitely have some little baby food makers and I'm really looking forward to that part of her growing. I think that's going to be fun for me.