While on AMC, Mattson turned her passion for cooking into a book, Soap Opera Cafe: the Skinny on Food From a Daytime Star, and a successful cooking show.

"I had a show on Lifetime [The Main Ingredient]. I did 90 episodes," she recalls. "I hosted my own show and then I guested on other people's shows and did cooking demonstrations for various companies. I did some work for Ghirardelli chocolate this year — demos and appearances and interviews for them.”

Mattson took the role of Sugar on THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL in 2003 and relocated to the West Coast. "I was out here [in Los Angeles] for a period of time and I had a project, a house I was renovating,” says Mattson. “And then I went back to New York for the holidays and I met [boyfriend] Werner [Roth]. So I pursued my food and wine activities and in fact I had enrolled in a very serious sommelier course, which is the study of wine. I was in the midst of that, but I had spent the last six months in a whirlwind romance," before beginning work on GH.

"A mutual friend of ours invited him to a party I was throwing at my New York apartment," Mattson grins of her new beau. "We’re trying not to let more than two weeks go by before he comes out here or I go out there. It’s working out fairly well. I can’t wait to see him. He’s coming in on Friday."