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When Greta and Janet Podleski wrap up filming the third season of their Food Network Canada show Eat, Shrink and Be Merry next month, it will mark the last time they ham it up on their farmhouse kitchen set.

Truth is, the 375-square-foot space — with its stone walls, wooden beams, plank floors, iron pot rack, stainless steel appliances, old general-store-styled, quartz-topped island, banks of cabinets painted "banana pudding with caramel swirl" and wood-burning fireplace in the adjacent sitting area — is not a studio set at all. It's Greta's own kitchen, that is, until she sells it and the rest of her 4,000-square-foot heritage home, just outside Kitchener, Ont.

Ms. Podleski, who along with her nutritionist sister gained fame writing and self-publishing fun, low-fat cookbooks such as Looneyspoons and Crazy Plates, is putting her 2-1/4-acre estate on the market May 1.

After living there for more than eight years, she says it's going to be tough to let go, but the home is simply too large for her and Lexi, her 10-year-old German shepherd-Lab mix.

"It's hard not to fall in love with it," she says of her U-shaped home. "It looks like an old rustic stone farmhouse, but then you come inside and it's huge," she says, explaining how a previous owner meticulously restored the 1860s two-storey farmhouse in 1991 and added a completely separate wing behind the kitchen.

"The West Wing," as Ms. Podleski calls it, has only been around for less than two decades, but it feels centuries older.

The cozy dining room, filled with antiques purchased in nearby Shakespeare (just east of Stratford), has 11-1/2-inch wide plank floors and reclaimed wood beams built into its planked cathedral ceiling. A wall of four western-facing windows casts a warm glow into the room, painted a deep russet to tie into the old stone wall, which was originally part of the farmhouse's exterior.

Down the wraparound hallway and off the garage, there's a second (albeit plainer, utilitarian) kitchen/butler's panty, currently used to store the TV show's food and dishes, and a charming doghouse built into the nook under the stairs leading up to the master suite.

Upstairs, the spacious yet modestly decorated bedroom has an ensuite bathroom, three walk-in closets ("every woman's dream," says Ms. Podleski, who uses one of them for her many shoes) and pair of wooden window seats that symmetrically frame her sleigh bed.

It's not the only bedroom in the home, though it may feel that way. The other two bedrooms and bathroom (used for hair and makeup during show taping) are accessible only by a second stairway in the original wing and connect to the master only by intercom, offering tremendous privacy.

Downstairs in the East Wing, a set of living rooms bookend the bright front hallway. "It's the way old houses used to be," Ms. Podleski says. "They had their formal rooms and their entertaining rooms."

She uses the more informal of the two as her TV room/home office, evidenced by the reproduction dining/sofa table she turned into a desk by fitting her computer keyboard into slide-out drawer. The comfortable room features another wood-burning fireplace (the home also has two gas fireplaces and two wood stoves) and built-in bookshelves.

But come the spring, it's outside where Ms. Podleski goes to relax amid the manicured lawns and "flowerbeds galore."

She loves how the "adorable garden shed" in the backyard could double as a bunkie with its front porch, church window, skylight and greenhouse, and says her mother has even joked about moving in.

But without a doubt, the focal point of the grounds is the octagonal gazebo Ms. Podleski frequents on warm evenings, unwinding on the wicker furniture inside. (The carpeted gazebo is winterized, but as things stands, she says, she already has more interior rooms than she knows what to do with.) Truly an exterior room, the gazebo is topped with a magnificent steeple roof made of metal shakes and clad in same blue board-and-batten siding as the main house additions, garden shed and Lexi's outdoor doghouse. Together, they resemble something out of a fairytale.

But for Ms. Podleski, life there has been very real. "Every single time I drive up the tree-lined driveway," she says, "I can't believe this is actually my home. It's just so beautiful and serene."

The estate is well suited for a family though it would also make a nice vacation home or bed and breakfast inn. It is priced at $1.195-million. "By Toronto standards, it's nothing," she says, but admits it's expensive for Kitchener-Waterloo. "Mind you, we do have a lot of wealth with all the RIM [Research In Motion] people," she laughs.

Whoever buys her home, Ms. Podleski says, one thing is for sure: "I know it'll be a sad day when I sell it. I'm never going to find another house like it."