Nutburgers McGee (Kelly Bensimon) has a new interview in Harper’s Bazaar, and it’s just as crazy as you would think. But not to hear Kelly tell it – she begins the interview by declaring, “I am not crazy. I am unpredictable… I’m not in therapy.” Now that that’s settled. We’ve already determined that Kelly is really delusional and that it might be because of her strange diet – but Bazaar seemed to give this woman a free range for this interview. The full piece is here, and here are some highlights:

On being crazy: “I am not crazy. I am unpredictable,” Bensimon says. And in case you were wondering, “I’m not in therapy.”

On the big fight in St. John: “It went from an everyday scene to all of a sudden Housewives, Big Brother style,” says Bensimon, who has denied popping pharmaceuticals like those jelly beans. Off-screen, she points out, she was dealing with the stress of a nanny who had quit and fielding calls from her daughters, Sea and Teddy, who were begging her to return home.

Andy Cohen (Bravo executive) on Kelly’s breakdown: “I think it was deeply disturb- ing. It seemed like she had a break of some kind, but I can’t say exactly what it was,” says Andy Cohen, Bravo’s programming chief, who denies Bensimon’s claims that she felt “literally forced” to go on the trip. “She was not forced to go to Saint John by Bravo or the producers,” he says. “That’s untrue.”

On the episode’s good ratings: “I’m embarrassed that I allowed myself to feed into it, but I don’t think I would handle it differently. The ratings were amazing, so no, absolutely not. Whether it’s my nail color, my hair color, or the shoes I’m wearing, everything about me bothers them. I don’t have any regrets. I’m glad I went on Housewives because the show has made me more known. You say ‘crazy Kelly,’ that search engine’s going to go bananas, but if you say ‘sweet Kelly,’ it’s going to go nowhere.”

On Bethenny Frankel: “I wish her well. I don’t need to smear anyone.”

On her new life: “I’m 42, and I have this new life,” she says. “Yes, I’m more mass market. And that’s okay. It’s my job… I’ve worked so hard. It wasn’t always lollipops and unicorns. I tell my girls, ‘Your mom gets paid to engage in inappropriate behavior.’ It’s an amazing opportunity for them to see that being mean is not okay. I tell them, ‘If you’re in a situation like this, walk out. Don’t come back with jelly beans.’”

[From Harper’s Bazaar]

Kelly really does think she’s a star, rather than some train wreck everyone watches because it’s horrible and fascinating and you can’t look away. It’s The Kate Gosselin Syndrome, really.

In other Real Housewife news, did everyone watch Teresa’s beat down of Danielle on last night’s RHONJ? I missed it because of The Closer and that new Angie Harmon show (which was okay, actually). But New York Magazine had a funny write-up here, and here’s the video clip:

“Ya a coke whorah! A COKE WHORAH!”

Photo of Kelly courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar

Teresa’s shopping spree starts at :35 in

Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Teresa Giudice and her husband are prime examples of people spending themselves frivolously into the ground and then using bankruptcy to avoid taking personal responsibility for their debts. On the show, Guidice was shown regularly splurging on high end shopping sprees for her young daughters, blowing wads of cash on furniture, and bragging about spending money. Check out her introduction at the beginning of the series in the video above. (Starting at about :35 in.) She talks about how much she loves fashion, how her little girls “have to look perfect all the time,” and how she spends her husband’s money. She spends $120,000 on furniture in the segment above and then brings the camera crew on a tour of her mansion that’s in construction, saying “My whole house has nothing but marble, granite and onyx.” She also says she had her house built because “I didn’t want to go house shopping… it’s just skeeve looking at other people’s houses. I don’t want to live in somebody else’s house, that’s gross.”

Teresa and her husband Joe recently filed for bankruptcy, citing debts of a whopping $11 million. In a statement to People Magazine, Teresa blamed the poor economy and her husband’s failed real estate investments for their financial situation, and called bankruptcy a “fresh start.” On paper, Teresa and Joe made less than $100,000 a year.

Now Teresa is talking to Popeater and she’s still refusing to take accountability for the way she went through money like water. She says that her spending wasn’t all that bad and that the show exaggerated it for ratings. I’m sure they made her move into that $1.8 million home when her family earned less than six figures a year, too.

You have come under so much criticism for spending thousand of dollars on shopping sprees for your children just weeks before you filed for bankruptcy. Can you explain it?
You have to remember that what you see on TV is edited for entertainment and a lot of it was filmed years ago. Milania was 2 when we started filming and now she’s almost 5! It was a different economy back then for all of us. When the economy crashed, like most families, we tightened our belts and changed our lifestyle.

What have you learned from all this?
No matter what happens, rich or poor, if we have our health, our family and love, we’ll all be fine. You can be fabulous even if you don’t have a dime! It’s all about attitude, hard work and morals. We teach our kids all three and lead by example. I have lots of jobs: I film the show, I do appearances, I run an online boutique called TG Fabulicious and I have my writing. I’m working on my next book right now! That we’re still able to have dinner with our kids every night is such a blessing.

Do you have any advice for other families that have had to ‘tighten their belts’?
One of the ways we’ve always saved money is by cooking at home, and I was so happy to be able to share some of those tips and recipes with people in ‘Skinny Italian.’

The book has done amazingly well. I was honestly shocked by its success. How does that feel when on the other hand you are broke?
I’m blown away by the response to the book. I can’t believe it’s been on the New York Times bestseller list for three weeks. I still have to pinch myself. But I think everyone is looking for ways to spend less and have more family time, and eating dinner at home every night gives you both. I have people write me saying how their kids are picky eaters and are finally eating vegetables, how families are eating together again, and it makes everything worthwhile.

[From Popeater]

Oh yes, Teresa has that cookbook she’s shilling which is inexplicably #164 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Now she’s getting her debts discharged so she can go back to her old money spending habits. All her homes and properties are in foreclosure and I hope this fool has to live in a small rented apartment crammed full of her tacky, worthless crap like on that show Hoarders. Let’s see how she likes living in “someone else’s” one bedroom, one bathroom apartment with her husband and three four kids – as if that would ever happen.

We reported yesterday that NJ Housewife Teresa Guidice and her husband were declaring bankruptcy after digging a whopping $11 million dollar hole for themselves. A lot of you were outraged that it would be so easy for the Guidices to discharge their debts, and that they would be able to keep the designer goods they squandered a fortune on. Well Teresa has an answer for you, and it’s all about how her husband’s real estate investments failed and not about the way she spent them into the ground. She calls bankruptcy a “fresh start.” People Magazine gently points out that Teresa was regularly seen on the show flashing money around and buying a ton of furniture and luxury goods. While some of you claim those moments were staged, it’s clear she was living way beyond her means:

“While this is a personal matter, I realize that certain aspects of my private life will always be subject to scrutiny and distortion,” Giudice says in an exclusive statement to PEOPLE. “What is true is that due to the economy, most of my husband’s real estate ventures failed despite his hard work and effort. As a result, we looked to the Bankruptcy Court for a ‘fresh start.’”

Indeed court papers filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Newark, N.J., show that Giudice, 38, and her husband filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which requires liquidation of assets in order to pay creditors, in October of last year.
Papers also show that the couple had to undergo credit counseling, and were awarded a temporary stay on payments for their Cadillac Escalade and mortgage payments for properties.

In the documents filed, the pair declared their personal assets, which include real property and personal property, as $2,261,150. But their liabilities — $8,709,831.34 — far exceeded that number.

In addition, the couple had to assess their monthly income. Combining Joe’s salary as owner of G&G Stucco and Stone Specialist in Clifton, N.J., with Teresa’s income from Bravo and “monthly assistance from family members,” that number totaled $16,583.33. Their expenditures, including their mortgage, food, clothing, dry cleaning, health insurance and other expenses, total $16,582.

The couple owes more than $33,000 on various store credit cards, $85,000 for home repairs and $91,000 for materials used to build their new home.

During the first season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Giudice, who famously flipped a table on the show, and her family moved into their $1.7 million mansion in Towaco, N.J. The reality star, who was often filmed treating her daughters to new clothing and expensive toys, was also depicted flashing stacks of cash while furnishing the house. And in a recent episode on the second season, she boasted of spending significant funds on her daughter Gia‘s spa birthday party.

“When people fall, the way to success is to get up and learn from our mistakes,” Giudice says. “We are in that process.”

[From People]

How can you share your life on a reality show and suddenly declare that bankruptcy is a “personal matter”? If you open yourself up to the world, you open up the bad parts too. This woman isn’t going to change. She’ll keep spending to fill some need in her life and trying to get other people to bail her out. She wants to live a gaudy, extravagant lifestyle without dealing with the consequences for living beyond her means.

Teresa Guidice, one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, is known for her spending sprees and high end taste. She has four daughters aged 9, 6, 5, and 9 months, for whom she regularly buys designer clothes and throws expensive parties, as seen on the show. She even outfits her baby daughter in tiny leopard print heels. It turns out that Teresa and her husband, Joe, are living way larger than they could ever afford. The couple filed for bankruptcy and they’re a whopping $11 million in debt. The best part of this story are the details about their monthly earnings. They earn less than $80,000 a year in legitimate business dealings, but somehow own multiple properties that are in foreclosure and live in a home worth $1.8 million dollars. I would guess they earn more than $80,000 a year and that seems to be hinted at in the bankruptcy filing, which lists $10,000 a month in support from “family.” I think we know what kind of family that would be.

Free-spending “Real Housewives of New Jersey” diva Teresa Giudice and her husband, Joe, make just $79,000 a year and are up to their tanned necks in liens, foreclosures and unpaid bills, according to bankruptcy papers filed in Newark federal court.

The Giudices say they owe creditors $10,853,648.04.

Teresa, known for her lust for designer clothes and expensive bling on the Bravo show, owes nearly $20,000 on credit cards for Bloomingdale’s, Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus. In total, the Giudices show $104,000 in debt on at least eight credit cards.

The bank has moved to foreclose on the Giudices’ $1.8 million, 10,500-square-foot, eight-bedroom, 5½-bath marble-and-onyx manse in Towaco, NJ, the couple moved into during the first season.

Teresa and Joe defaulted on their $1,280-a-month payment for the family’s ubiquitous black Cadillac Escalade. They also didn’t have insurance on the massive SUV, according to GMAC.

Teresa — who this season told Joe to get a vasectomy — owes $12,000 to a Garden State fertility clinic.

* Banks have taken the couple’s $279,000 four-bedroom Jersey Shore house. The Giudices had three mortgages on the house and owed $325,000. The couple also handed over a $200,000 home in Lincoln Park, NJ, that had four mortgages — and an outstanding debt of $600,000.

* Teresa and Joe owed another $1 million for property in Clifton, NJ, that has been given back to lenders.
On the show, Teresa famously dresses her four daughters in designer clothes, and last season dropped $2,000 in 10 minutes of shopping.

Yet, in bankruptcy papers, Teresa and Joe claim to spend just $400 a month on clothes.

On a recent “Real Housewives” episode, Teresa boasted that she dropped “a fortune” on daughter Gia’s televised 9th birthday party. The child got an all-terrain vehicle, along with a trip to a spa in a pink stretch limo for her and her friends.
Joe, who “owns several successful businesses throughout New Jersey,” according to his wife’s Bravo bio, owes more than $5 million, including debts to former partners associated with his Section 8 real-estate deals.

In court papers, Joe, who owns a stucco and stone company, lists his monthly income as $3,250; Teresa pulls down $3,333 a month for her Bravo gig. The couple gets another $10,000 in “monthly assistance from family members.”

Behind the bankruptcy filing
What the Giudices make a year:
$79,000 (plus $120,000 in “assistance” from family members)
What they owe: $10,853,648.04
Credit Cards
$104,000
including $20,000 to Bloomingdale’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom
$1,280 monthly payment for Cadillac Escalade
Mortgages
$2.6M
for eight mortgages on three homes (two have been handed back to lenders)
$5.8M Joe’s business investments
$85,600 Home repairs
$12,000 Fertility treatments
$2,300 Phone bill

[From NY Post]

Neither Kaiser nor I watch Real Housewives of New Jersey, and while I avoid all versions of this show Kaiser only watches the NY and Atlanta shows. For those of you who watch this, is it surprising? Are we going to see Teresa downsizing on the next season as her houses and cars are seized by creditors?

Teresa has a new cookbook out, called Skinny Italian. Reviews on Amazon note that she makes multiple references to The Sopranos in the text. It looks like she was living that lifestyle at least.

Oh. My. Baby Shoes. This is New Jersey princess/ Real Housewife of New Jersey Teresa Giudice, and her new baby Audriana. Audriana is almost 8 months old, and she’s rocking those little leopard-print high heels. I know what some of you are thinking – leopard-print high heels on an 8-month old baby? Isn’t that crazy? The answer: of course not. Not if you’re a Real Housewife of New Jersey.

Anyway, this glorious photo comes courtesy of an In Touch Weekly exclusive. In Touch is helping Teresa promote her new cookbook, Skinny Italian. Here’s more:

When not filming Bravo’s hit reality show The Real Housewives of New Jersey, life’s still pretty busy for Teresa Giudice: She cooks, she cleans, and she takes care of her husband and her kids.

“I’m really a housewife!” she laughs. But the mom of four is now letting America in on a little secret in her brand-new cookbook, Skinny Italian, where she reveals that you can eat the foods you love and stay in shape.

“I’m hoping that people will see that Italian food is not fattening and that it actually can be healthy and nutritious,” Teresa tells In Touch while dishing out the pasta she made herself. “I want to keep the old traditions and incorporate them into modern-day dishes.”

Teresa says that she first learned to cook from watching her mom, and that the first recipe she perfected was a classic homemade Italian tomato sauce.

“My favorite recipe, though, is tagliatelle with peas and ham!” And that dish — along with other favorites like bruschetta — are easy to make, she insists.

“I used to buy cookbooks because I wanted to try all gourmet foods, but there were so many weird ingredients, like cumin. Spices I’ve never heard of,” she explains. “And then it tasted gross. It really did. My recipes are easy and simple and good for you!”

[From In Touch Weekly]

She’d never heard of cumin? Seriously? I can see how someone who never cooks would never know what cumin is, but someone who cooks regularly? Strange. Anyway, my mother loves this show, and she loves Teresa. I’m going to have to tell her about little Audriana’s baby-heels.

Here’s a close-up:

Photos are exclusive to In Touch Weekly, photo credit: Andrew Coppa, Vis Vitae/In Touch Weekly.