‘Desperate’ and dead is not so bad

Sure, “playing dead” is a cute canine trick, but for actress Brenda Strong, it has proved to be a canny career move. The 6-foot former Miss Oregon first chilled out as the deceased wife of Treat Williams on the WB’s “Everwood,” but that was a mere warmup for her biggest role, playing one of the “Desperate Housewives” on ABC’s hit Sunday night soap. Despite offing herself in the series’ premiere, Strong’s Mary Alice Young has had narration duties and flashbacks to keep her in the mix on Wisteria Lane.

When she’s not busy being dead, Strong resides in the San Fernando Valley with husband Tom Henri and son Zak.

Valley-ya

On a Friday afternoon, the family will go to an early movie and then dinner at a fabulous sushi place on Ventura called Katsu-ya. My husband likes the tuna sashimi and the crispy rice, and my son goes for the tempura shrimp and miso soup. I get the spinach salad with sashimi. Then we might go to Universal CityWalk, where my husband and son get water massages at Zen Zone. You lie down on this bed and they cover you with plastic and shoot water on your pressure points.

Active dining

On Saturday, there are so many great places to hike that we’ll have breakfast and then pack a lunch and go to Malibu Canyon or Eaton Canyon in Altadena. If it’s baseball or basketball season for my son, we’ll be spending the day at the park.

I love to cook. I’ll usually do some kind of a stir-fry, so we’ll have a great dinner and a fabulous bottle of wine -- and then we’ll bring out the pingpong table. My dad was the Pacific Northwest champion, and I bought the table about two years ago. It’s the most fun thing you can do. We tend to be extremely competitive, and it’s a great way to work the dinner off. But if we’re not in the mood for a game, we’ll get a baby-sitter and it will be couples’ night out.

Om and yum

On Sunday, I get up before anyone’s awake and go down to the Studio City farmers market to see what’s fresh, and I start to put a menu together. There’s also the coolest lily guy there, and the flowers last all week.

After I bring everything home, I head over to the meditation and yoga classes I teach in Toluca Lake. It’s a way of reconnecting with the things that make you calm. My students have been with me a long time, so while they’re happy for my career success, it’s not a celebrity-sighting opportunity. Yoga is too hard for that; you work your butt off.

After yoga, my husband and son and I go to one of our favorite brunch spots, the Aroma Cafe on Tujunga. The thing I love about it besides the amazing food is the garden setting. We like to sit outside on a Sunday and read the paper cover to cover -- it’s so ritualistic. Even inside, it’s so comfortable that you feel as if you’re in someone else’s living room.

I get the Eggs Aroma -- phyllo dough stuffed with spinach, cut in half with scrambled eggs on top. There are usually other families we know there, so it turns into a real communal visit. After that, some window-shopping on Tujunga Avenue, where I found a great retro photo album for [“Desperate” costar] Teri Hatcher’s birthday. It was perfect.

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-- Mark Sachs