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You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

This week, I'm talking to Millicent Souris, someone I have long wanted to make my friend. Millicent is to me just wildly cool. She talks about food equity and drinking bourbon, and there was no one I would rather talk to you about the dichotomy of being politically engaged with food justice, and also stocking your pantry with very nice olive oil. She's also one of my favorite food writers period; her pieces in Brooklyn Based, Bon Appetit, Diner Journal—they kind of redefined the genre. As a longtime line cook who now runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in New York City, she's someone who simply knows food—its highs and lows and is cool as hell. Did I say that already? 

Alicia Kennedy: Hi, Millicent. How are you, Millicent?

Millicent Souris: I'm doing all right. How are you, Alicia?

Alicia: Did I say your name right? 

Millicent: Yep! 

Alicia: Actually, we should have done that before. [Laughs.]

Millicent: I know. Yeah, my name is Millicent. And is Alicia correct for you?

Alicia: Yes. Alicia is correct. 

Millicent: Great.

Alicia: Yeah, I'm Alicia sometimes, but only if you're a Spaniard. [Laughs.]

Millicent: Fair, I'm not going to pretend…

Alicia: Yeah, yeah…well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Millicent: Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore City, and in Towson, Maryland, and Lutherville, Maryland—which is of course home to John Waters and Divine, and also in North Baltimore County. 

So my dad's parents had immigrated from Greece, so I grew up eating Greek food. And then my mom's family had a dairy farm, so I grew up drinking—when I was up there—unpasteurized milk, which I would say about 10 years ago, I made the connection was raw milk. And country food, you know—my grandfather would grow his own corn and tomatoes and zucchini, and that would be summertime. We ate a lot of crabs in the summer, because it's Maryland, and then also, like, oysters were definitely a part of my mom's family. Like we'd have oysters stuffing and raw oysters at Thanksgiving, because her dad would bring them and shuck them. 

But then also because it's the ’70s and ’80s, straight-up shitty American processed food, was a gift, you know, for our household because my mom worked and my dad worked, and there's three of us. And, you know, even on the farm, my uncle and his wife, they would buy Steak-umms, even though they had ground beef from the steers that they sent to slaughter. You know, we would drink Tang, and we ate Stouffer’s lasagna, so it was a real hodgepodge, I think, of all that stuff. 

And then there was, when my mom left my dad and there was the episode called “divorce food,” which was Lean Cuisines and Hamburger Helper and La Choy and a lot of Mandarin oranges in tins. 

Alicia: Wow. Yeah. Was that on behalf of your mom’s side?

Millicent: That was on my mom's side. And then my dad would just take us to his friends’ restaurants or bars and we’d eat there. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] My parents, when they got divorced, I always say, when I knew something was going wrong was when my mom started to make instant mashed potatoes. 

Millicent: Yeah…

Alicia: I was already like, 20. So it wasn't like I was a kid. But you know it was always seared in my mind that the instant mashed potatoes were the beginning of the end.

Millicent: It's the tell…it’s the tell… except I, when I did eat instant mashed potatoes and I think I was 21 I first had them, I was like, What is this magical stuff that just turns into mashed potatoes? 

Alicia: No, it's super cool. 

Millicent: It's…I mean, science. It's science.

Alicia: Yeah, well, you know, as you were just talking about the dairy and also your family had a bar as well, you know, how did you end up in food, personally? 

Millicent: I ended up in food…uh, I mean, my Yaya would cook—Souris’s started as a restaurant in 1934. And so it was a classic Greek restaurant, which is American food and then Greek specials. And then when my dad made it a bar, there was a grill, but there was a flattop behind the bar, and so my Yaya would make totally frozen hamburgers, but she'd also have really good Avgolemono soup. But I didn't—I was just a kid and I didn't really take in all of that. So I don't have that—it would be really cool if I could lie and be like, and then yeah, romantic version of food. 

I got a job at the Royal Farm Stores, it was my first job on the books, when I was 14. And that was the convenience store that had fried chicken and Joe Joe's, and then you take the leftover fried chicken and break it up and make chicken salad. So that was my first job in food and everyone who worked there hated it. And, it was cleaning cases of frozen chicken thighs and cutting potatoes and deep frying a lot of stuff. And then our neighbors owned a luncheonette in a pharmacy and I remember working there and being blown away by making salad dressing from scratch. 

So, what I knew is that I would always have a job in food because I was willing to do that hard work and for girls like, and teenage girls, I would never be hired to be the counter person or a waitress, because I wasn't cute; I was tall and big and strong and fat, you know. And this is not now—this was the late ’80s. And like, no one was…no one would hire me to be their waitress, but I could always work in the kitchen. And so I—it's not anything I verbalized; it's just something that I knew, that I could always get kitchen jobs. I know that's not really passionate, but you know, you got to make money…

Alicia: Right, well did passion emerge for it? 

Millicent: Yeah, I mean, I think for me I found a land that made sense to me. You know, I remember living one summer, and working um, finding a job at—I lived in Portland, Maine. And I was in this place Greedy McDuff’s, which was a brew pub, and it's still there, and English-style pub food and just working; you're just working with a bunch of heshers, you know, and a bunch of—you're hanging out listening to music, you're working hard, you're kind of gross, your skin's not great, you didn't get a lot of sleep, because you had to work the prep shift…

But, you know, I remember working with a guy where when Black Sabbath would come on, we’d take the melted butter and dip a brush in it and turn off the lights and hit the grill and the flames would come up. And it just, I don't know, it was that moment: It's just fun—somewhere that felt free when there's not a lot of places to be free, you know? 

And so I knew that. And then, when I moved to New York, 17 years ago, I helped someone open a restaurant. And I've just always been like, I'm a good worker—everything made sense for me. So I do, when I talk about food, a lot of it, I talk about work, but there has to be a sustained level of the community of people that you're working with and that you're buying from, and that you're feeding. And also the food itself, that is passionate. It's just, that's not just, I'm not one of those people who like has that language, you know, who’s just—I'm not very over-the-top with language about myself and what I like, but don't worry, there's plenty people who have that covered, you know…

Alicia: I'm one of them…so… [Laughter.] 

Millicent: I don't think so.

Alicia: Well, you know, yeah, you've worked in restaurant kitchens for years, you write, you've curated social justice film series, you've been a DJ, now you're cooking. You know, well, how would you describe what you do now?

Millicent: Right now, I mean, I work at a food pantry in a soup kitchen. And before the pandemic, I'd been there for over five years and I came on as a consultant to do a culinary job training program. We didn't—it didn't work, and it didn't get more funding, but I was I was the only person there who had worked in restaurants. So I kind of had an eye for the food. And I was like, I can work here part time, and we can get more produce and rescue food and things like that, get more produce to people, take care of the food better, increase our capacity for produce.

And then I did that, and then the pandemic hit, and then it was that times a million with just the whole world shut down, so where's all the food gonna go? And all the pantries shut down, so we just got dropped all this food. So then I became—then it just became something different. So now, I mean, I don't even cook there. I just, I'm the facilitator of the pallets, you know, and trying to—

There's a good grant that came out of the pandemic called the Nourish New York grant. And I think that's permanent now. And it was to really just keep the state going. And you have to spend it on New York State products. And this grant, the director and the head of the pantry, they were just like, What are we going to spend this money on? I was like, I got this, I got this, give it to me please—let me, let me have, let me buy things and not have it all just be like, donated Tyson evil meat. 

So those grants I take care of and I like to think it balances out all of the super-gross food bank tax writeoffs for giant companies and really just, because I've consulted on restaurant kitchens, I have a good eye for logistics in space. And so we just had to switch our entire building over to be a warehouse and I was like, the chapel can hold pallets and the waiting area can hold pallets. And if we open this up, we can fit pallets through here—so just really nerdy s**t, you know, and also where all the food goes. So that's what I'm working on. That's what I'm working on now. And now hopefully something new will happen. 

Alicia: Well, that grant is really interesting. Living here in Puerto Rico coming from New York, I'm always thinking about how—well, I never know if it's enough, or if it's actually good, what New York State has done to support local agriculture around the state and craft stuff. I know, I'm like, well, they support it in some way, so that's good. Whereas here, you have, there's nothing there, you know? So this grant sounds really great.

But what more should the state be doing, in your mind, to kind of help that?

Millicent: Well, this grant is great. Also, because I still remember the moment of, you know, you're talking about farmers or processors, or bakers, and truckers, and people were like, Thank you, you know, because there was nothing, and for all the people making food and growing food, all the restaurants were closed so there was nowhere for any of it to go. I mean, you never forget, I'll never forget, the first couple of times at different truck drivers were just like, Thank you for being open. 

So that grant is permanent and that's a really important grant, because in terms of, you know, everyone's like ‘supply chain supply chain,’ and then we see what horrible things happen when we're dependent upon such a consolidated supply chain and how, you know, the Trump administration got OSHA to lift their f*****g regulations and Tyson poultry workers had to process more chickens and there was no safety for them. And also, that was all the fear of, This is America, everyone has to have chicken, no one can go hungry. Where actually it's like, no, tons of people will go hungry. But to be able to have, the means, the tangible food system that you can see, I think more so, is so important. In terms of the state. I mean, I do see some holes in what's available, you know, and I do have some ideas, but I don't want to share them here, because, you know—

Alicia: —you need to get paid for them. [Laughter.]

Millicent: But we can't just—it can't just be restaurants and people who shop at the farmers’ market to support farms. Because those people have summer homes somewhere else. And they also have the ability to just pick up and go somewhere when the s**t hits the fan.

Alicia: Yeah, no, it's very complicated. But I'm glad to hear that that's happening. That's—that's…yeah, I wish… [Laughs.]

Millicent: It's also, I'll say also for a lot of farms and things like that, it has skewed their—and I work with a headwater hub; there's more infrastructure for schools, and food pantries and institutional food, which also because of brigade is turning into something that's so much more important in terms of like school foods and things like that. And we need that—we can't just be like, f*****g neoliberal people who care about what they eat and are—it's so short-sighted, the food, the food scene, which sometimes feels like the food system is so short-sighted and individualistic, it's gross.

Alicia: Yeah. Well, you did write an essay sort of about this in Bon Appetit in 2019. You know, where you wrote about finding kind of about—I don't know if it was about you finding a balance, but what is that balance that between the olive oil and hunger and—I think about this, of course, as a food writer, where it's, you know, what am I selling people on? Like, what is it that I want to sell people on basically, when it comes to food? Is it just that having a good olive oil is sufficient? Of course it's not, you know. But for you, what are the gaps here that need to be filled in when we talk about food?

Millicent: I mean, the gaps are major. Well, I feel there's personal consumption, right? And there's personal consumption that I prefer, and I know that, man, I know on paper, and if I told any of my co-workers the price of a glass of wine that I drink—I'm just some bougie white person, you know. Also, personal consumption is not about production and politics and everything like that—I don't quite know how to say that great.

But look at how much food writing there is, look at how people's lives are curated. And the people who have the most influence and are influencers, they only talk about political issues when they need to, to stay relevant, or unless it's something that they actually care about where they're like, Abortion…Abortion. You know, ‘Black Lives Matter,’ when you know, especially two years ago—

But the amount that we discuss food in conjunction with the amount of people who are hungry—and hunger can be such a vague thing, especially in this country, right? Like before, generally, it was like 10 to 12 percent [in] America, you’re like, all right. But to me, in New York, your neighbor is hungry, you know? You are moving into a neighborhood, you are opening a restaurant in a place where you have to just, where so many people are just, That's just what that corner is like. And I think that there's ambition and I think this city begs people, if you have ambition, to willfully ignore things, but the amount that food is written about… 

And like, I would say now, like Grub Street and Eater, and those places, now they're all also consolidated under the same media group, right? Before it used to be more competitive and they used to just be kind of a real content machine. And more 24/7, you know, because everyone's like, I can be on the internet all the time. And once it's out of the bag, then you're stuck with it. 

Let’s just say Salt Bae, he'll never go back; he’ll never go away, because someone's just like, Look at this guy. And then now he's there and he's validated. But think of all the people who got validated and all the s**t that we talk about. And we can choose so much of what we want to consume now, everywhere, and it's great to read about things that don't ultimately matter, because the things that matter are so painful. And it's only during a shutdown that we actually have this bandwidth to care about it. 

I mean, the food media is just, they're just—most of them are content creators. They shouldn't be able to write about anything that has any politics or systematic issues and anything to do with like actual workers, you know, who are they? They're not journalists.

Alicia: No, it's an interesting thing, because I think right now, everyone is always asking me—like, well, asking me personally—do I consider myself a food writer and then asking, what is a food writer? And I think that it's important to, I mean, I'm aware of the market forces that create certain types of content and how you have—you have to do things in order to have a career at all. Of course, you have to then ask the question, if I have to do this, why do I want this to be my thing that I do all the time? Why don't I do something else? And so it's difficult, because you know a lot of food writers will say, I just want to write a recipe and then just look cute, and like, get things sent to me, and that shouldn't be a problem. 

And I'm like, for me it, you know, it is a problem. And I've written about this, that food writers don't, at large, have even a basic consciousness that comes through in their work around climate change, around hunger, around, you know, conditions of factory farming, around like any ecological significance to anything.

Millicent: It’s sheer consumption. 

Alicia: Exactly. And that's becoming more and more, I think, because we're in this vague post-pandemic moment, so things are sort of going back to normalcy in terms of what gets covered. And it's just restaurants, restaurants, restaurants, like cookbooks, cookbooks, cookbooks. And then there's that moment where we were going to talk about the conditions, the labor conditions and the supply chains. And that moment seems like it's just going away. Now it's no longer relevant.

Millicent: It's gone. And I mean, you and I both really love Alice Driver, and she's working—she and her partners are working on that book. And I am kind of stunned by the consistency in which that topic, because I thought it would be one article, one out, and if you all don't know about Alice Driver—you gotta sign up for her. She's an amazing writer. And she has interviewed poultry workers, and consistently interviewed them. And she's worked with a photographer who takes portraits of them, and she has been reporting this since the beginning. I mean, I think for her kind of a bunch of b****y dilettantes, you know, and I think that we have been taught that you cannot hold all of this and, you know, I don't really believe in balance because nothing seems to be balanced—

But like, but what you were talking about before, like, How do I do these things and I know I have to do this—well, we certainly have to have joy. You know, and sometimes joy can't be just like—and trust me I know because I've been doing—working on a food pantry in the last two years during COVID. Like, there has to be joy. It's too hard to live like this all the time. 

But the sheer consumption and the way that the world is created, it's so easy for us on phones and the internet, of everything, is so unsustainable, climate wise, food wise, content wise. And our escapism isn't escapism anymore—it's our reality. And that's a problem. Because if everyone can be some f*****g content creator and influencer, is it possible that everyone's ability to figure out a way to survive like this means that we don't have anyone actually doing the real work? And that's why this world sucks so hard?

Alicia: I mean, the fact that Alice Driver didn't have a column immediately, you know, reporting ongoingly about the conditions when she was on the ground in Arkansas with the workers at Tyson—that is such a damning fact of food media, is that that wasn't some editor's dream to have someone on the ground—

Millicent: Just be like, Alice Driver, tell us about this, you know? And because—you guys, the answer isn't for all of us to buy sustainably raised chicken; the answer is for the conditions to be better for all workers and all chickens, you know? And that individualist notion of shopping, which you know, was in the early aughts was really just like, You're not going to change the world—it's such a neoliberal approach towards eating that your trip to the farmers’ market is changing systems. It's only changing you, your system, your house. And that's all part of it. 

You know, we're so broken right now. I mean, I think we've always been broken. But we're so broken, because the people who think that they're doing good work kind of really aren't, and they're like—I think of them as really affluent people and they walk amongst us. I am around them in New York all the time. I'm friendly with a lot of them or I might be friends with them. They might think I'm their friend. But they're not the one-percenters, so they don't think they're part of the problem. But they are part of the problem, because they're not doing anything. And their comfort is what allows so many things to happen. Like, if they actually wanted change to happen, it would happen more, because the one-percenters are untouchable to us, you know, unless there's crazy, systematic governmental and worldwide changes—that's why they're one percent. They're like, I have so much money, I'm gonna be on the moon, you can't touch me. 

But the affluent people who are never, still are never rich enough and someone already always owns one more house than they do: They're the ones who pat themselves on the back, because they read all the books, they went to some marches, their kids have Black friends, you know, they're doing all the good stuff, and they care. But they're not really sacrificing anything, they're not really doing anything to really change stuff. And right now, sometimes I hope, you know, I get a little tunnel vision, but I'm like, you guys got to do some s**t. And it's not what you think you should do. Because it’s never what you think you should do, because you're still very self—centered—

Alicia: This is—I'm reading a book called The Imperial Mode of Living, which is what you're describing basically, which is that the way we live in the West, or you know, the global North is on the backs of so much exploitation and ecological destruction that we don't see. And then, yeah, and it doesn't matter what class you are, necessarily, and exporting also the idea of this mode of living as the good life quote, unquote, being basically a means of ecological destruction. Like, our way of living and consuming and just thinking about things is part of climate change, part of destruction, like people—and I understand that, but people, when I've written or said anything about the way people will regard their access to the tropical as sort of a human right, just when they need the release or the idea of a vacation to buy a cocktail or a piece of fruit that they probably just shouldn't have, and so, or vacation, etc., but like, people do treat that as though it is their God-given right to have that.

Millicent: Yes, for sure. And they do it, they're like, I mean, that Noma pop-up in Mexico City was or—no, it wasn't it—it was in Tulum. Tulum has no infrastructure for what it has now. It certainly doesn't for a bunch of people who need to go to that. 

Look at all the people who have moved to L.A. I mean, look at California—we just have a straight-up fire season and all the people who moved to L.A., it's like, did you move to L.A., because you like the weather and because then you can have tomatoes all year round? It's kind of a bratty existence.

Alicia: It's very—

Millicent: To think it's a very—I don’t know if you can hear my neighbors come home from school—it's still consumption, you know? But also, what's fascinating is that this is all also done under the mode of “health,” you know, wellness and health and like, Oh, I get these mangoes or I have to go here. And the rest of us were just having drinks, and maybe there's a cigarette, or maybe there's some weed and more drinks. But we're not doing it for—we're not like, Well, I mean, it's wellness for a lot of us, but we're not lying to ourselves about that pedestal of wellness. 

Alicia: Yeah, it's no, it's interesting. Well, because especially here, here in Puerto Rico, where, you know, there's so much gentrification and displacement, because of people who come and get tax breaks for starting their businesses here. But it's been restructured so that some actual Puerto Ricans can take advantage in some ways. But for a long time, it's been, you have to have not lived in Puerto Rico for this consecutive amount of years before 2019, or [something] like it was like, or it went into effect in 2012. But you pay like a four, zero to four percent tax rate, and you don't pay federal taxes, because you become a bona fide resident of Puerto Rico. 

And then these are the people paying $2,000 for a studio, so that like now, none of our friends live anywhere near us because they've been completely priced out, you know— 

Milicent: It's all the loopholes. I mean, it's like everyone who holds on to their apartment even though they moved upstate, because it's their Airbnb, and you're like, or someone could live there.

Yeah, you know, my old apartment in Greenpoint. I've had the lease on that—I'm pretty sure my old landlord is not listening to this. Since I moved here, and when I moved out, my friend lives there. And yeah, because I'm like, You're not gonna find anything. It's rent stabilized, you're like, you're not gonna find anything this affordable. I mean, and that's also interesting, because I think about that—I thought about that before the pandemic, where the food pantries in Bed-Stuy, you know, and we're across, there's a rehab across from us. And then there's like, to the right of us, there's a lot of brownstones that a lot of like gentrifiers live in, and it's like, You're the ones who moved here, because this soup kitchen has been here in this building for like, over 14 years, and the rehab has been here, you know, but also what happens when people become displaced further and further away from the place that gives them the food that they need, and the services that they need? And where are they going? And how much further displacement can the city handle or Puerto Rico? Or, you know…

Alicia: Yeah, everywhere.

Millicent: Everywhere. And then I think, I mean I think about that so much is how, and I have moved in my life, like being able to move freely, and kind of make decisions based on you know, where you're trying to, just moving around, is such a privilege and we don't actually talk about that. 

I think that the people who—the media voices that we hear the most are the worst representational voices of who most of the people are. I think that most of us are living pretty fraught financial lives. I think that if you actually have student loans— I think that we're haves and have-nots now, you know, and if you have student loans, you have to actually work for money and not just work for what you hope your life is. But the voices that we hear the most that tell us like, where to eat, what Airbnb to [stay in], you know, who have like, the most exposure, are the people we should listen to the least.

Alicia: The least, yeah. [Laughs.]

But it's really interesting, because people—those people are successful. People want—they have a huge audience; people want that. And that's what's troubling to me. Like, I as a person, who does, who's a writer, and then like, I have to sell myself a little bit. I think I've come around now to being like, I'm done even trying to sell myself, you know, I'm like, What is is and whatever will be will be and so—but the idea that that's a popular mode of engaging with the world is so troubling to me, existentially, because it's just like, we don't want to grapple with reality—we don't, and it becomes increasingly more necessary to do so.

Millicent: Well, it's the question of do we not want to grapple with reality or are we still having problems with—because people are drawn to your work, you know. People are drawn and there's this, people would be like, That person is so real, but people are definitely drawn to it, you know. Which came first: is it like the influencer, or the following or the escapism and the inability to deal with reality.

Alicia: Yeah, no, it's definitely a chicken or egg thing.

Millicent: It's a chicken or egg thing. But I was reading an older essay that was in the Times, written by a woman who had moved upstate before the pandemic. And I was like, New York Times, isn't it time to stop just publishing this voice? Because this voice—do we really have that many white women in their 40s who we should be listening to about moving upstate and how they're ahead of the COVID people, because there's a slight patting on the back of like, I wasn't part of that wave. And it's like, Well, are you actually doing something or are you writing about it? But I'm like, it's the Times’ choice. And I'm like, don't do that. 

And then I saw that—was it the Times? They published something by a Chinese-American person who—it was all about the subway. And it was great. It was about the Sunset Park shootings, but just how this person has taken the subway his entire life, and how that mode of transportation is important. But for a moment, I was just like, Oh my god, they got an op-ed by someone who lives on the subway and don't take that away from him—Eric Adams and the NYPD, you know… And we're, I mean, look at it—media and all the people up top, how many people do they know? They just know—it is still super gatekeeper-y.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, it's hard. And I mean, I wanted to ask, too, because, you've written that Brooklyn is such a place of stark dichotomies, in terms of, you have the new restaurants and the extreme wealth, and you have—20 percent of its population [was] food insecure before the pandemic. And, you know, there was this moment of like, kind of what we were talking about, but there was also this moment where hunger was on the forefront of the conversation like community fridges, and mutual aid, and that sort of thing. 

Like, has that died down? Or, you know, what is the conversation? What is the landscape like?

Millicent: That has definitely died down, and it started to die down when people had to go back to work. And like, but also like, the community fridges kind of blew too big too fast. You know, like we worked with a bunch of community fridges, and there was a lot of in vogue writing about them and anyone could open them, but they also need a community to sustain them. So, that kind of ballooned and, and some have closed.

Mutual aid—there's still smaller groups that are really dedicated to their mutual aid and working with people and especially working with people who are being kicked out of shelters and all the really terrible things that the city is doing in different tenants unions. 

I feel like what really emboldened me over the past two years was how radicalized a lot of people became, like younger people. I'm 48, okay, so I'm Gen X. I think we've got—the boomers can move on, you know. Gen X, we're gonna die before the boomers because that's just—they got all the good stuff and we're just depressed, but it feels like a lot more people have been radicalized. But now the question is—I mean, it's a small percentage that I feel like is left because now that people are kind of going back to their really kind of decadent, made-for-Instagram ways. But things are really bad for people in this city, and there's not a lot of support. And I guess that's the part where I'm like, you have to be so willfully blind to people as you walk by them to not think that there's problems and to still stay so committed to whatever you think your life is supposed to be. 

And for me, I was just really tired of feeding rich people. You know, like working in restaurants, it was always a community and feeding friends and feeding community and whatever. And then it just became rich people, and I don't like rich people.

Alicia: When did that shift happen? Do you feel like you felt that shift, in terms of who was able to go to restaurants?

Millicent: I don't think so. I mean, I think that I challenged myself to work outside—like, I worked in Brooklyn restaurants for a while and it was when there were a lot of artists opening things because the rents were low. And then that slowly changed and I was really tired of how homogenous the kitchens were, where it was just this is all the same guy with the same liberal arts education and everybody's the same. And then I would go—and then I went to Manhattan, and I tried to learn more and it was way more intense. It was all—it's all intense, but I think there was just a point where, I don't like anyone here anymore. I'm not looking for validation from food-obsessed—I don't know. 

Because also when I moved here, it's not like I went out to restaurants all the time; I just worked in one. And I knew that when I was in the kitchen, friends that would come in, or people in the neighborhood that would come in and different kitchens and things like that. But through elevating or going into different restaurants or whatever, even just the concept of elevating, I just didn't—it wasn't for me. And I don't care for the status of it. You know, and also I was never the person who got the status of it, because I wasn't the chef or I wasn't the owner or I wasn't anyone.

You know, for me what's always been so confusing about food—I read Kitchen Confidential when I worked in a kitchen when I was 27 and I totally got it because I also grew up going to bars, like my dad's place. And when we would go to Rehoboth Beach, we would go to the Rusty Rudder and count the bartender's tips. I've been going to bars since I was born, so I got Kitchen Confidential. 

And then I just didn't understand when I moved here why no one—you know, I grew up on a farm, I grew up in the business and I've worked, but no one was ever interested in me, in writing about me or talking to me, or anything that I wrote. I mean, I can only assume it's because I'm not making anyone feel good about anything, you know?

Alicia: [Laughs.] They don't like that.

Millicent: They don't like that! Or the way that they like it is that you have to be—it has to make people feel edgy and you have to be super charming. And, yes, I'm really charming, but I'm not going to blow smoke up anyone's ass to make them feel better about how hard it is to be a farmer or work the line or anything.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah—no, that's so interesting. I feel like for me, I think leaving New York and kind of getting away from it made it a lot easier for me to divest from traditional notions of success as a writer or as a food writer. And so you know, it's been so freeing, which is great. But you know, yesterday, the James Beard media nominations came out or whatever, and someone was like, I can't believe Alicia Kennedy's newsletter hasn’t been—I didn't submit. I didn't pay $150. [Editor’s note: It’s now $100 per entry.]

Millicent: Right? You have to submit, right? Oh my god, I gotta say that I learned about that through one of your podcasts about submitting and how you have to pay, because I was like, I'm sorry—are you telling me that neither you nor I, in the year 2020 of what we wrote about food, are you saying that wasn't, that shouldn't be in an anthology? I mean, I'm not a very hubristic person. But that s**t that I wrote about the partially dried duck that I got during shutdown, that two-part thing and like, nobody's writing that, okay? Nobody's writing that. Nobody is coming at it from that—nobody's experiencing that dystopia and writing about it. There were plenty of people experiencing dystopia, for sure. 

But it's—you gotta pay to play. And how do you—so if you always have to pay to play, then you just have the same people in the room, and even if they're different people, they have to do the same things, so how are they ever going to be different? Or there's a f*****g scholarship, you know, but you're still working with the same systems of like, restaurants are perfect. You just want them to be perfect, so you can always go to them and feel good about stuff. But they're based on ultimately exploitative work. They're based out of people who couldn't afford servants, but didn't want to cook all the time. That's what restaurants are. 

And the systems are all the same and the people who try to keep opening the systems up, they still want themselves to be the gatekeepers, you know, and that's the media—that is totally the media, that the person who was criticizing all the memoirs by white chefs, white female chefs. And it's like, Well, you're still here, because you're gonna gatekeep who? The Black female chef whose memoir you're gonna do? You know, yeah, you guys still just want to be the gatekeepers and make sure that you stay relevant—because you have to stay relevant, so you have status—so that you stay relevant, so you have status, so you can still make money. 

And your perspective of moving to Puerto Rico kind of broke that. And for me, I feel I was still trying to chase that to be an outlier. But I was still—the only reason why I was in Bon Appetit is because a friend of a friend. My friend was having a pie contest at his shop, to raise money where I worked. It wasn't because anyone at Bon Appetit was interested in me: It was a friend of a friend who's connected who hooked me up with someone. And then anytime I pitched to them, they were like, No, no, no, but they were like, Tell us about the poor people, how's it going? So I had access, but only in one way. 

And then I feel the pandemic kind of—I was like, Millicent, you're part of the problem, because you want to be invited to everything. I mean, I'll spite-crash any party, you know, it's fun. But I wanted to be the kind of classic—I mean, this is a very white male thing, outlier, you know, but who's still invited to everything, and has status.

And like—

Alicia: But you only get to be that if you're a white male.

Millicent: You only get to be that if you're a white male or there's a couple, there's a couple of females—there's one who's grandfathered in. But you only get to be that. And I was like, my desire for status is not helping me and it's not helping anything. And so I'm like, f**k status. It's more freeing. But it's also something I have to keep in check. 

I mean, I'm always interested when you write about like, Vogue or the New York Times, and I think for a lot of us who feel like we're outside, how do we participate in these institutions? Like, man, if I was ever in the New York Times, my mom would be so excited. I've been a part of restaurants that are in the New York Times and I've never been mentioned. And it's so meaningful to our family when that happens. And also, I would imagine, for me at some point, but I'm not going to pretend that's ever going to happen. There's such weird relationships with those institutions. 

Alicia: Oh yeah, super weird. Like I—yeah, for me, it's always like, okay, it's nice to be seen, because it just allows me to keep doing my work. You know, if everyone stopped seeing me, then I don't get to do it anymore. And for me, and I've been really lucky, of course, like I wrote—my book will come out eventually, who the hell knows.

Millicent: Supply chain issues, right? 

Alicia: Supply chain issues and edit—like issues of… The funny thing is to have your book sort of pre-mentioned in the New York Times, like in the T magazine by Ligaya Mishan, who's a fantastic food writer, but my publisher doesn't talk to me, so I don't actually know anything. [Editor’s note: It’ll be summer 2023.] You would think they'd want to get the book out by me because I have had moments of success and should ride it. But no, they're making you have to keep it—yeah, I have to just keep going and—

Millicent: They're making you doggy paddle. They're like, when you've stuck your head up, keep your head up. And then right when you're like, I can't do this anymore, they're like, Don't worry, we got you a PR person. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Exactly, exactly. But until then I must just—doggy paddling is the best f*****g metaphor for that, for how it feels, because it's, you know, I don't want to be a food writer because I want everyone to look at me. I just want to talk about things. You know, that's what I like to do! [Laughs.]

Millicent: Well, and I really like how you've loosened that up for you. I mean, two years ago, we both know Melissa McCart from—she's an editor and she's great. And I had written some things for Heated. And she was like, You should be writing all the time. And I was also like, Oh, I'm out working during a deadly virus pandemic and trying to not kill my partner, or anyone I work with, and trying to figure out like, we're nowhere and we're everywhere. And I couldn't—and I had to let go of that feeling that I need to capitalize on this moment, because I had to figure out a new way to take care of myself or else I wouldn't have been able to do what I do. And it was also so physically brutal, just moving food. And I kind of gave that to myself instead of being like, I could have been somebody—because, yeah, I was like, I just I can't—I’ve just got to survive this. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. It's a hard negotiation. 

Millicent: It definitely is. It definitely is. I mean, hopefully I can change that. I mean, my goal is to write more and to actually have a newsletter. I've just, I think, two months ago I was like, Shut up, Millicent, just stop qualifying it and being like, there's too many newsletters and what if—just do it.

Alicia: Yours would be wildly different from anyone else’s, so.

Millicent: Well, because I'm writing anyway, you know, yeah. But they make it. They make it hard, does it ever—I mean, how does anyone read all the newsletters?

Alicia: I do. I mean, because I was a copy editor at New York Magazine, a digital copy editor, I became a very, very fast reader. 

Millicent: You're such a good reader, too. 

Alicia: But the reason I can read fast is because of that job. Like I would have to read 10,000 words of TV recaps before 9 a.m. So, like… [Laughs.]

Millicent: I mean, let's just talk about that for a second. When I was in my 20s, there was one person who had a job doing TV recaps, Heather—what's her last name? She's a great writer. She writes for…Heather Havrilesky? I'm not sure.

Alicia: Oh yeah yeah yeah, Ask Polly.

Millicent: Yeah, she would write about it. Now that can be a job for everyone. But shouldn’t someone who has a job writing TV recaps be in charge of making society better instead of writing TV recaps?

Alicia: I think—who is, uh Mindy Isser, she did—she is a great human, she's a great writer, too, but I think she's a labor organizer. But she was on Twitter the other day, quote-tweeting someone who was like, ‘Every job deserves, deserves respect,’ it's like, or ‘every job is a valid job,’ something like that. And she's like, Actually, a lot of people should be doing something else. Like, instead of being on their computers, they should be planting trees. 

And I agree for myself even. The nice thing about having the freedom of what I do, and now that my book is done, and so I don't feel like I'm going to die every day—because that's how that felt—but I'm like, I need to put my energy, my excess time and energy and fruits, you know, existence into doing something to make the world better, not to make anything better for myself, because things for me are as good as they're probably gonna get. Unless, you know—Okay, I have extra time and extra, so I gotta put that energy somewhere where it'll do good for the world, like and I'm gonna figure that out. [Laughs.]

Millicent: I'm always—I feel like that always, that's the balance, you know? And like, when people are like, Don't you feel good about yourself? And I was like, No, I don't feel good about myself—the world is hell. But we can't all just write TV recaps. Sorry, TV recap people, I read you, but that used to be 20 years ago; there was only one, and now it's just too much.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. No, there needs to be a big transfer of energy for doing things that actually matter. And I feel it for myself, and I feel it for the world. And I think a lot of people feel it, you know. I mean, even before, years ago, a lot of people find a lot more satisfaction in jobs that are physical, like in jobs or doing work that is not considered prestigious, than they do find in the job they do that gets them more money. And of course, you want to make an amount of money that makes you comfortable. I mean, there's a difference obviously between being comfortable and being a hoarder. 

But, you know, there's a reason for that. You want to—it's a way of protecting yourself and it’s way of protecting your loved ones, is to have a job that pays you a salary that is comfortable, and that's an ever-changing goalpost, especially with inflation, etc. But like, how much more satisfaction in my life did I get when I was baking, or when I was bartending, than I get from tapping on a computer? I mean, I don't know.

Millicent: The visceral aspect, and I think it's also, because I feel the same. I can be a real heady person, but that's why I liked line cooking. There's a certain point where—I love working with my body and it's a different relationship with it, because it's also a relationship not built out of being seen and how do you look, but how do you function and what can you do and how strong are you? And that's such a better way to live in your body, for me, which is also—so the work I've done, you know, I had moments of being a real egghead. But I've taken care of cows. You know, I've worked in restaurants. When I worked at a record distributor, there was certainly a lot of moving of boxes of records. And like, that is—whenever I'm living like that, it's better. 

But then there's also the capitalist exploitative line where you're like, And you crossed it, and now I'm crumpling, which is something that restaurants are really good at doing.

Alicia: Well, I mean to talk about your writing work, the issue of Diner Journal: Dear Island about doing private chef work upstate. I think upstate, right? When I say upstate, I mean New York.

Millicent: It was in the Adirondacks, so it's upstate, but not like upstate—it's like closer to Canada, around Lake Placid. 

Alicia: Oh okay, wow, that’s up there.

Millicent: It was great because it was mainly free of anyone from New York.

Alicia: [Laughter.] Yeah. Well, you know, it's such a—it's so good. And like, I meant to ask you more specifically about your writing in this conversation, but I was just kind of winging it. But you know, it's such—you really are such a brilliant writer—like self-reflection, humor, the self-awareness that I think anyone listening to this is understanding exists, which is always refreshing.

Millicent: I'm so red with anxiety and like, thank you!

Alicia: No, it's absolutely brilliant. And I was actually, I was super floored reading it. I just read it like a book and was like—holy s**t. I knew you were great from what you wrote on the internet, but then I was like, but here you're getting like—

Millicent: But the internet wasn't funny, that was COVID. That was like, Listen, and this is, What the f**k am I doing here? Who is this Wes Anderson family?

Alicia: And I think that's—I'm so excited for you to launch your newsletter because I would hope to see kind of that mix a bit. 

Millicent: For sure. I mean, I think I've just been real—I mean, the whole reason I started an Instagram account when I started that job, and it was private chef but it wasn't like private chef money, like what private chefs would make like, and of course, I have to qualify that because I'm all—‘I’m working class,’ but not really. 

But it was such a weird and interesting place. But I started my Instagram account, because I was like, I'm going somewhere very strange. And I just say that because then, if anyone follows me, and then they're like, Wow, she's so intense about politics and hunger over the past two years. And well, it's been a pretty intense past two years, but I am a funny person.

Alicia: Yes, yes. [Laughter.]

Millicent: Not that statement. No one ever believes that when someone says it like that. 

Alicia: No, no, no, but I mean, I think for me, I want to be thought of as funny, which is a terrible thing to want, I guess. Because it's corny. But for me, it's funny, because I'll make jokes, or what I think are jokes on Twitter, and people will just be so serious in the replies and I'm like, Forget it. But then I did see a comedian today make a joke and people be very, very serious in the replies. And I was like, All right, like this is just, this is the environment in which we’re living in…

Millicent: Our way of communicating—and you actually wrote about this, where it's like people are like, That person's right and I agree with all of it, or That person's wrong. And it's like, jokes never come across in texting. And it's real, it's real hard in any version of social media. It just doesn't work like this, and also, then that beg to—like we're communicating mostly with a really terrible means of communication, if these things aren't conveying humor and nuance, it's pretty shitty. 

Alicia: What good are they for? Yeah.

Millicent: Fights. They’re good for fights.

Alicia: Good for fights. [Laughs.] Well, I wanted to ask, because in the introduction to that, you wrote about choosing which cookbooks to take up with you and you wanted to bring Prune, and then you decided not to, and I wanted to ask, you know, what cookbooks you would take now to an island?

Millicent: I mean, I've thought about this, because I was also like, I don't feel like I've purchased a lot of new cookbooks. I would take—I did just get the Gullah Geechee Home Cooking… 

Alicia: Oh, nice. Yeah.

Millicent: Well, first of all, it's a matriarch of an island. And that is, you need someone who is on an island, because it's very specific. You don't have access to everything. Also, all of this, Emily Meggett, all of this is in my wheelhouse, of kind of like very country cooking. There's stuff, you know, there's crabs, I'm there. 

I would say the Olia Hercules books. Those are, I think this is what I know about cooking on an island, is that when you want to spread out a little bit, or any kind of like cooking that you're doing for hire, you don't want to like, jump to who you aren't, you need to kind of, for me, I need to have different ideas of variations on a theme and like I do, I can bake. I make pie crust, like I have variations of crust and ideas of things that I do. And I think that this cookbook, the Gullah Geechee and Olia Hercules. There's always variations on—she has so many doughs, you know, and things stuffed, greens and things like that. And I'm like, all right, that's a variation I can do. 

I always take a version of The Flowering Hearth, because I just want to live there. And then, I always take The Saltie Cookbook—I don't know if you have that one. 

Alicia: I need it! It was out of print.

Millicent: It’s out of print, you better find it because—

Alicia: I know, I have to buy a copy. 

Millicent: I use that one the most, because it's vinaigrettes, bread, desserts, and like, it's the most cross-referenced for everything. And then I always take—you ever read the Jim Harrison, the writer, Jim Harrison?

Alicia: I have one of his books on my shelves, but I haven't read it yet.

Millicent: You know, he's a big cook and hunter, and he had a column in Esquire called “The Raw and the Cooked”—the book is all of his essays. And for Saltie and for Jim Harrison, I always take them with me and whenever I've opened a restaurant and I haven't been able to see any friends forever, I read them because they're my friends’ voices. It's like Caroline, and A.D., and Rebecca, and Elizabeth and Saltie…

And then Jim Harrison. I mean, he is—whatever. He's an old white American male; there are going to be problems. But also, he was a screenwriter, along with a fiction and poetry writer. He has an amazing essay about eating with Orson Welles where they try to like both jump out of a check, and I think there's lines of cocaine somewhere during the meal. There's an essay about a gout flare-up in the airport wearing his favorite leather boots, you know. And so, for me, cookbooks, sometimes I feel like I don't cook from them, I just like to read from them. 

And then also, I would totally go with vegan or vegan baking because you can really stuff someone on an island. And so I think vegan baking, also because you can have more shelf-stable things to substitute. And I don't do it enough but I like cooking with different grains, just because it gives different textures and like AP flour, just—AP flour, sugar, butter, like, we've all done that, you know?

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'm in a big flour moment right now—

Millicent: What does that mean?

Alicia: [Laughs.] It means that, it means that people were upset that I am always doing recipes with AP flour, and not with whole grains. But I don't have access to a whole grain flour here. So I, now I have to, I'm trying to get into working with different root vegetable, quote, unquote, flour. 

Millicent: Oh, fascinating!

Alicia: Which is cool—and it's, but at the same time, I can't, you know, when I write a recipe for a cake, it's still gonna just have AP flour in it, you know. It's just because I need other people to make it.

Millicent: It's also about access, you know, and that's something that people don't talk about that much. And when you write about food accessibility in Puerto Rico, and when people write about Cuba and food accessibility there, that's really important, but also the access of people anywhere, you know? And we can get anything, I mean, this is—we talked about this—we can get anything all the time; we shouldn't be able to get anything all the time now. Things should be harder for us.

Alicia: In general, things need to be harder. And that's a hard thing to tell people, but I think if my writing has a thesis point that I haven't explicitly articulated, it's: things need to be harder.

Millicent: Things need to be hard, because guess what, they're hard for a lot of people. And we're—how many people for you to lead your life are exploited so you can do what you want to do? I mean, people—and I'm not, listen, there's nothing exploitation-free about me. But I think about it a lot. And consumption for me now, I’m finding how there's a shift in me where it's just what used to be satisfying isn’t necessarily satisfying for me. 

Alicia: No, absolutely. 

Millicent: I drink tea now.

Alicia: Instead of coffee?

Millicent: Yeah, I mean, now I think I'm back to a cup of coffee a day, maybe. But I have—that was just like the past two days. I was like, come on, let's get some life back into us. 

But yeah, COVID in December, and I had it again and I was like, Tea tastes so nice! But I used to drink so much coffee and smoke a pack a day and drink bourbon you know, but some things—and that wasn't right before the pandemic, but I'm just saying, I've noticed the things. I liked shutdown. 

I'm gonna say something real unpopular: I liked shutdown. I liked being—I also had a different life for everyone where I went outside and worked and my partner's a musician, so I had live music every week for his Instagram show. But the stretching everything and being really intentional and all of that, and not getting to have whatever, and really having social interactions sustain me—and for longer than they used to. Everything was way more meaningful. And I really appreciate that. And I hope that some of that has stayed with me, you know? 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Well, how do you define abundance?

Millicent: I think—enough, you know? The feeling of enough, because I think the feeling of enough is kind of contentment. Because abundance is dangerous, look at all—everyone who has abundance, it's never enough, you know?

Alicia: Right. Right. No, yeah. I think this question is about being, you know, redefining abundance to me and I have enough because, we're talking about so many people do not have enough. And so trying to reframe the thinking around what that means is, I think, a powerful tool, imaginary tool for reconsidering. 

Millicent: I think what they're calling it now, Alicia, is a perspective shift.

Alicia: Yes, a consciousness shift or consciousness raising. [Laughs.]

Millicent: I am not going to say that working at a food pantry makes me feel good about myself or like I've done anything good, but it has recalibrated what I think about my life. 

Alicia: Yeah, well, and for you, and in general, is cooking a political act?

Millicent: I don't think cooking is but I think feeding is, and I think that they're different. And that's got to be talked about more because cooking is—no. I think people pat themselves on the back too much thinking they're doing something political. 

And I know, years ago, a friend of mine, we were catering—it was a social justice food award that this Episcopal Church in Long Island gave out. And I was all, I work in restaurants; we buy from farms, and I grew up on a farm and I know—and I remember one of the farmers, he was from Iowa, and he was talking about how worried they were because they'd heard that white supremacists had moved into the neighboring county and so they're just really worried about the people who worked on their farm. 

And I heard his speech and I was just—and this was before Trump was in office, you know, this was, this was in—let's just say before Trump was in office. And I remember feeling humbled and being like, You don't know s**t, Millicent. You know, and money's politics, but systems or—money needs to be systematic for it to be political, you know.

Alicia: I think that's so important and that you allowed yourself to be humbled and have that change your approach to things is such a rare, I think, a rare characteristic to encounter.

Millicent: I'm humbled all the time. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here. This has been so, so great. And yes, it's been interesting of course, that I just get to meet people over Zoom and record it, that I've just wanted to talk to, and this was one where I've just—I just really want to talk to the person and so here we are.

Millicent: Well, you know, when you, when you come to town, we'll get some tea, or a martini.

Alicia: Okay!

Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Andrea Hernandez, the oracle behind the newsletter Snaxshot, which explores food and beverage trends with humor, broad insight, and gorgeous graphics. 

Nothing about the conversation went according to plan. I had to reschedule because of Puerto Rico's archipelago-wide blackout, my usual recording software wasn't loading, my laptop and Andrea's AirPods were dying, and we went totally off the prepared script to discuss the limits of tech that doesn't cross borders, having to be self-motivated as independent workers, adaptogens, commodification of culture, and much more. 

Alicia: Hi, Andrea. How are you?

Andrea: I'm good. I'm actually doing good. [Laughter.] Thanks for asking me, how about you?

Alicia: I'm good. I'm good. I know, you've had some power problems lately.

Andrea: I was honestly, yesterday, I was like, Oh, God, because yesterday, I woke up with no electricity. And then at night, the power went out too. And I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this. I was gonna have to— I don't know if tomorrow will be okay. But thank God, there's been no issues. I don’t wanna jinx myself. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. Well, yeah, we rescheduled this because there was a blackout in Puerto Rico and then there have also been problems in a lot of other places as well. It's interesting, because someone messaged me in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon, and was like, “We're having bad weather, I don't know if the power is going to hold.”

And I feel like this is something that's underestimated and that's not as discussed, I think, because people in New York and LA don't have these problems right now, you know, and so I did want to talk to you about that, about how do you get your work done, and how do you keep your kind of resolve because also, as independent writers—as I know, of course—we are self-motivated completely with kind of, these unpredictable issues that happen. 

Andrea: Yeah, it really sucks at times when, at night, because it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere else to go. My phone has been sort of like what I default to, which is, like, so funny that you put yourselves in these positions, like I've literally, like, learned to do like, writing on Substack on my phone, which is like the most tedious thing—I wish they would like improve upon that experience. But I'm also, you know, before my laptop battery died, I will literally use my phone as a hotspot, for whatever, [how long] it can last. 

But yeah, I think—it's just so funny, because I talk to a lot of people from literally all over the world, people from Sydney and London and all these places. [And] they are always surprised. They're like, Wait, like, you're in Honduras? And I'm like, yeah, and they're just like, so shocked. They can't believe that someone from an unknown hub could be putting out work that's recognized in their places. 

So I think, to me, it's like, you mentioned something, like the self-motivation. It's so true. I talk to people, constantly, that there's no hack. You need to get the work done. Nobody else is doing it for us; we don't have a team so that we can default to—it's on you. So you have to figure it out, and I think growing up, my parents taught me that sort of resiliency of, you have to figure it out. Like, there's no backup. So, you have to…there's a saying, it's called the “the law of the wittiest,” “la ley del mas vivo” in Spanish, which is like you just have to be streetwise and figure out, Okay, this isn't working, let's try to figure out which angle to work at, whatever. And so I think that's my approach to everything. And I again, we’ve got no power—okay, cool, my phone. Like, there's no, Oh, you know what, let me just, I'll nap and see if something happens. [Laughter.] 

Especially growing up in countries where you don't have infrastructures to depend on. Like, you can’t depend on your government; you can’t depend on the infrastructures. Even growing up in a politically unstable country has taught me I can't even rely on there being peace. There's gonna be unsettling things that happen and you kind of just have to figure out how to work it out. And also the emotional toll that these things take on you. I think I addressed this last week. I feel like I've internalized these things, but the reality is, it f***s with you. It’s like s**t, you know, I am not really competing, because I don't see myself and I'm like competing with mass mediums, whatever, because I'm like, kind of the antithesis of that. But I'm like, yo, there's so many people with so many resources out and I have to figure out how to,  on top of all the s**t that I have going on, like, Oh, f**k, I don't have like electricity, so does that mean that I get to miss out on publishing this on time or whatever. 

And I think it's something that's not really talked about because a lot of the main publications or people who get clout or—it's so funny when people send me examples of like, Oh, look at how these people are using Substack and yo, I don't even have the ability to paywall Substack, a lot of people don't even know that: having Stripe is a privilege in itself. And I've been very vocal about how it's frustrating; it does take at times, an emotional toll, but it's not like I can be crying and just sitting down, being like, Oh, look at how unfair life is like no, it's like, you have to work with what you got. So, yeah, I mean, that was a long-winded answer to your question. But yeah.

Alicia: And how do you deal with—because I mean, we'll get to obviously, my normal questions and everything—but how do you deal with people probably assuming you do have a team, right? And people assuming that you have all these resources? It's an interesting space to be in, because as you said, you can't even paywall your Substack because of their weird national borders that they maintain—

Andrea: Yeah, I don't even get it. I'm like, Why the hell do you tie your platform to just one thing? It feels like excluding the majority of the people. It's a f*****g paradox: You're supposed to be an equalizing career, whatever, but it's not really true. 

But yeah, it's so crazy, that at the same time validating, I literally had people say, I thought you were a team of 20. Like, I thought you were an actual publication. Like, there's no way that you could be doing all this, like as a one-person team, like, I had people telling me like, I can't believe that—I refuse to believe that, because it's not possible. 

And the funniest thing that happened to me was at this conference Expo West that I got a free press pass to, and I was going to be a speaker at a panel there. So I was there and I was walking and I remember someone coming up to me like, Oh my god, you work for Snaxshot? What part of Snaxshot do you work at? And I was like, That's so funny. I even joked that I should have brought all these different changes, like clothing changes. And I could have dressed up like different people…

When you have a fire lit up under your ass, you have to wear all these different hats because it's your default mode. And I think to me, it's just been extremely validating that you think, like that people think that this is, like the work is so—that I have value and that it’s got that much quality, that people assume that there's more people behind it.

But at the same time, I want to highlight just how much respect I have for people who have to do everything themselves because they don't have the resources. And also they have to deal with, on top of being underresourced like that, they have to deal with like f*****g infrastructural problems. To me, those people are like: mad respect. Who gives a s**t, you know, if you're, like, in The New York Times, whatever…like that, to me is like, okay, cool. They are a f*****g corporation, whatever. But like, I'm more about mad respect for the people who have to be doing their work on top of all these other things that serve as obstacles. 

So I don't know, I feel like I love to tell people like, Yo, if I could do this with the bare minimum, and on top of that, f*****g things like not having electricity, what's stopping you from doing it, dude? Like, seriously, especially Americans—like just f*****g go and do it. And I talked to Gen Z a lot about that, because I'm like, Stop letting people tell you that you have to be struggling and working without pay to get yourself somewhere and that they have to give you permission to make your space in this world. And, I think that I have also been able to prove that as someone who's living outside of a usual hub of where like, you know, media is a thing. And to show people like, I've scratched my way in dude. Yeah, it's possible, so anyways—

Alicia: But I love it because you're such a success story for—and like you're saying, there are so many limitations that I think we have to be talking about when we're talking about, to use that construction, these new ways of ‘supposedly’ equalizing the field. Because you know, Substack gives itself a lot of credit. We're on Substack platform; Substack is paying for this podcast to be edited. But, Substack is using a payment processor exclusively that isn't available to everyone.

And you know, for me, of course, Substack has been such a great opportunity for me to make my career, basically. But at the same time, you know, I'm aware that because of that, I think more people should have access to that around the world, too, because also considering you're going to be able to make money from currencies that might be valued more highly, for whatever reason, than your local currency. And you'll be able to really like…do something, you know, for yourself in a way that—that's what this should be about. It shouldn't be about the same people in the same places being able to continue to make money.

Angela: And I'm not gonna lie, I feel like Substack is lending itself to perpetuating that, more than the other way around. I love your story, I feel like to me, and I keep saying now, I feel like, you were also sort of an inspiration of, whoa, this person is literally breaking through from like, the established sort of ‘circle jerk’ of same things. It's true. 

And, you know, I feel like I love to be able to see that happening, and that I can see people that I want to sort of emulate sort of the same thing, where it's like, when I start, it's natural. And I remember, I don't want it to be the same, Oh, people are pitching to me. And they think that they can flood in and, you know, whatever. 

I have actively remained with that sense of like—I don't do sponsorships, I don't do advertising, because I'm like, How do I break this model? And how do I even, if it's hard, how do I test it to keep some sort of—how does it look like community validating a medium? How does it look like when I'm actually able to speak freely, without having some sort of conflict of interest, or whatever, or feeling that I have to censor myself? 

And I had publications come to me and ask me, like, Why don’t you pitch for us? We're talking like really big ones—I'm not gonna say names. But I've literally been like, after they've talked me through the process of pitching and the editing, by the time that you're done with it, that's not me. You literally trickled away the authenticity from me. 

So it's not valuable to me, and I have had some sort of—I don't know, for some reason, the younger generation, really loves to read Snaxshot. And I have literally 17-year-olds, coming to me, and college students, whatever. And I have had publications tell me, we want to bring you in, and we want you to pitch stories, whatever, because we want to see if we can draw that younger audience. And I'm like, Yo, you can't buy that s**t; it has to be like an authentic thing. And if you can't, if you have to continuously be extracting that and like, how do I keep getting more from you, without giving in return? You're not gonna make it with this new generation, because this new generation is all about more of, Let's level here. Yeah, you know, we call the b******t—

Yeah, it's been very interesting to see how Substack emerged as a creator thing, but no hate, no disrespect. But all the people I mean, I subscribe to the emails and all the stuff that I get, it's like—this person was a New York Times food reporter and now it's like, Oh, the food coverage, whatever, this person is coming from, then it's the same people who already had the platforms in the first place. So you know, Substack, obviously, I'm on that platform. Because, you know, it's easy and convenient for me, unfortunately, you know, obviously I had to find loopholes around trying to find ways to monetize it. But yeah, I feel like I would love to see more people, more success stories from people who weren't already in this industry in the first place.

Alicia: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. No, and it's really interesting to me how self-perpetuating those things are, and like you're saying, maybe we're gonna see a change in that from the younger generation. You know, what are you—because I love that you're very in tune with what people want, obviously, that's your whole job. And also seeing these patterns and these trends in a way that isn't tacky. Like that isn't like, it's not like these, you know, press releases I get where it's like, This is gonna be the flavor of the year because McCormick says so, but you really have your finger on the pulse in a real way. 

And what are you seeing? Are you seeing that, you're saying this—that people are getting back into maybe wanting to see that kind of homegrown authentic, maybe weird—

And I was thinking about this because I was reading an interview with Hilton Als, the writer from The New Yorker, on Dirt, which is another great newsletter, and it was about his Instagram and how it's like very old school in that he'd kind of just post whatever—he doesn't think about the algorithm. He posts kind of any image he wants to, long caption, short captions, not thinking of it. And he said, you know, the culture was different at a different time. And when I was growing up, you know, I read magazines to find out about things I didn’t know yet. And I feel like now, a lot of the cultural tide and the coverage has turned to be about telling people what they already know. And like, you can't write about things that are an unknown quantity. And so how do you approach this?

Andrea: Oh my god. You hit it like—this—just like, yes. Because I had this on my mind because Taylor Lorenz, I also love the way that she basically made her own beat. She wrote about that, she's like, Journalism should not be about telling people what they already know. It should be about the stories that don't want to get—like that people don't want you to know. And I was like, That's it, dude! Because I literally [wrote] about this. I'm like, Why are we regurgitating the same s**t? I think that's why the appeal of it: well, no one's saying this and I appreciate the ability to be able to do so because it is important. 

So one of the latest issues that I wrote was on how I believe that Expo West and all these fancy food conferences are actually a way of gatekeeping diverse founders, because they're so expensive. And you know, the majority of them, who the fuckcan afford $20,000 for the starting cost of a booth, you know? And so I wrote about this, and I just really let it out. And I was like, Dude, no one goes there to see—you cannot go predict what's coming up next there. Why? Because it's f*****g gatekeeping to like, people who already have the means for it. And I wrote about, and the title’s called, “This Could Be a Future,” because I'm like, our future should look diverse. Not the same f*****g people who just—the ex-CMO of Pepsi went and launched a f*****g snackbar, like, that's not the future. It shouldn't be. 

And so you know, I wrote this really just heartfelt, like my experiences. And I was like, no disrespect, you know, but to be honest, it felt like these conferences are losing the relevancy, whatever, especially amongst the younger generation. And one of the reasons why is because they don't see themselves reflected and represented, which makes sense. So, I wrote about that and every other Medium piece was “Five Trends That I Saw At Expo West!” [Laughter] Dude like, by the time that people can afford $20,000 worth of a booth, these companies already have venture money; they're already in Whole Foods—it's not a f*****g trend. You can't go and say… So I just got kind of pissed. That's just you regurgitating the f*****g obvious. 

And so like, yeah, I 100 percent think that you hit the nail on the head right now. It's like, we lost the ability, one, to think, the ability to say so like, these publications can't say s**t because they're so constricted with ad money, whatever. I do love how Dirt has used that web3 dynamic to improve upon, how do you go about financially sustaining media? Like, you know, a media that's different. That's not archaic [or] tied to engagement and views or whatever. So yeah, I think what you said is so f*****g important. I'm glad we brought this up. Because yeah…

Alicia: Well, I mean, to get to Web3, too, because I wanted to talk to you about this, because of course, people are very, you know, make a mocker. I make fun of it too and I'm skeptical, of course. But there are people like Daisy Alioto from Dirt, like you, who are talking about Web3 in positive terms. And I'm like, I think I'm definitely missing something if smart people are saying this… But I want to hear from you about what's going on, basically.

Andrea: Yeah, no, no, no, no. Skepticism is necessary in all things, by the way.  And when I wrote the piece about it, I was like, We do need necessary—it does have its necessary criticism. It does. 100 percent. I'm not your crypto bro about to shill you into some f*****g like, you know, like scam or whatever. 

So, literally, the thing is that you have to see this less about the hype. Web3 is not McDonald's putting outa f*****g NFT of their McRib. Like, who the f**k wants that, right? To me, Web3 is about, how does this dynamic improve upon, or even better, disrupt whatever it's trying to be used for? I'll give you—I guess I will say the rise of the DAO activism, like, why don't we take community and add economics into it in a way that's more transparent? And it's not tied to red tape, right? Because like, you go and try to open a bank account, like all the stuff that you have to give, whatever. So, to me that's one reason why this type of organization makes sense in the first place, right? 

Then second, I've seen people use this application in a way that's trying to go against, you know, the structures in place that continue to prey upon—I'll give you an example: Farmers Market-verse. At first your like, what the f**k is this? There's like farmers and whatever and you think like, just some sort of like, you know, another JPEG scam, whatever. But the reality is, like the thesis behind this, it's a bunch of small farmers who said, We'll use the capital we make from these NFTs that we're selling, and we have our own treasury, and they take some to mitigate the cost of running the organization. And the main idea behind it is to put a battle against ‘big agriculture.’ And so they are using that dynamic to empower themselves economic-wise. And, you know, really be more of like: Okay, we are aware of the collective and how do we help each other out? And it's not also tied to anything that's local.

And so, you know, I spent some time in their Discord. And I really loved it, because you can tell that there's that intentionality of like, help thy neighbor, right? They have, they choose, they do voting, and they choose, I think, each month or I don't know what the dynamic is now, but they choose, who do we help? Like, whose farm needs help? Like what organizations that are really trying to help our mission, can we benefit… It's like, literally an online farmers’ market and like, they post about what they're doing or whatever. And to me when I see that I'm like, that's the beauty of it. 

Austin Robey, one of the founders of Dinner DAO, which is like this dinner club that's Web3, he wrote about how DAOs and co-ops have similarities and what they can learn from each other, it's an incredible piece—highly recommend it. And then even Dinner DAO, which is a supper club that meets like this sort of dynamic. I love the idea of like, dude, we’re taking something that's very simple, but we're making it, we're improving upon it. So like, they're launching their second season soon. And what it entails is that you buy sort of the membership as an NFT. And it comes with, you get assigned a table, a group of people, and you get an allocated amount, and you can use that in however you want. Whether your group wants to use it all in one f*****g fancy restaurant, or you guys want to have like multiple meetups, whatever—that's pretty cool. You know, and you don't have to be worrying about whose card is going to be used, whatever—it's more about, like we’re doing this, and we're exploring the concept of what it looks like to use this dynamic to have an experience of community around food. 

There's another example, Friends with Benefits, which is the most well-known crypto-community that has been profiled now by The New York Times and all these other publications—and I'm part of it. I was graciously donated a membership, because I obviously could not afford it. But the community came together, a couple of people from the community came together and they donated whatever was needed for me to be part of it, which I greatly appreciate. And I have experienced their events and stuff and so, firsthand. And the latest proposal that they have as a collective is to buy and restore this like Chinatown, LA restaurant, and they want to convert it to a venue, whatever, but they want to use all the funds, or the stuff that they gained from that, not just to use within the community, but to properly restore something that's a historical place in downtown LA. 

You know, like those kinds of things, to me, they serve as a—look what we can do without all the red tape of having to subscribe as an organization, and everything can be traceable through the blockchain, which is basically receipts that can be viewed by everybody that has access to the internet. 

And, you know, there's another one, a guy that works in the spirits industry in LA, who's coming up with a project that is going to help bartenders in general to be able to, like pursue their passion and whatever else or you know, they're wanting to develop, and it's going to be sort of its own fun, but it's going to be tied to a physical spirits bottle. 

I 100 percent agree that there's a lot of skeptics, like the fact that you are spending half a million dollars on a f*****g JPEG. Well, that's ridiculous. I'm more bullish on the things that are really being disrupted, that are giving me a better hope of—we don't have to be like, strapped again to Stripe; Web3, crypto helps that in so many more ways, where it's like, the regulation isn't as tight. So like, look at Dirt, they're exploring how to make a medium that is not dependent on advertising revenue, whatever, that's more in pro of whatever the community is wanting. 

Do I believe it's gonna be a solution to everything? No, but I think it's an improvement and an exploration of what does it look like when we don't subscribe to archaic structures? Right, that we know that they're decaying, right? And people think for example that Twitter is the one to blame for a horrible attention span or fear-mongering, whatever. Yeah, well, I studied communications; I can tell you the history of 24/7 news, like it was not about keeping people informed. It was about, How do we share more f*****g ads on TV? Oh, we keep the news going the entire f*****g day. I feel like we just have to be a lot more like, conscientious, it's not going to be like one day everything solved. But I am very in pro ‘if this is giving me the ability to see what lies beyond having to succumb to these structures that are so predatory, then f**k it, dude,’ what else are you gonna—what else can we do? You know, like—

Alicia: Exactly, and that makes sense. And it's interesting, because I think this is a way I'm starting to think about things a little differently, too. Where it's like, just because the narrative tends to be that one thing is going to solve every problem that we have as a society doesn't mean that we have to think of it that way. You know, because I was on a panel last week with like, a grass-fed beef rancher, and lab meat—Isha Datar from New Harvest and other folks who are working, you know, to try and fix the way people eat meat in the United States, basically. 

And I, you know, I came away from it, thinking, you know, Why am I always taking such a hard line about these things, when maybe what we do need is to just stop pretending there's a silver bullet for climate change, and for our relationship to meat and say, let's use a combination of approaches to solve for this problem? It’s like, let's not just, you know, we don't have to say lab meat is the answer, because it's not because of scale, because of still using energy that's fossil fuel intensive, because of—maybe people aren't going to want to eat it, for all sorts of reasons. And also there’s still ethical issues in terms of how they even take cells from the animals. Like, they have to kill calves. 

And so and then, maybe, you know, protein cakes, like Impossible Burger and Beyond Meatm are part of a solution, and those SIMULATE chicken nuggets—maybe they're part of a solution, and maybe grass-fed beef as part of a solution. And maybe, you know, heritage pork and all of these things are part of a solution. Maybe these all work together to get us to a place where we stop killing the planet. And you know, and stop overconsuming.

Andrea: I think it's very important, too, to say, why are we also punishing sustainable cultures, and cultures who have historically worked with using every ingredient in the animal, you know, even kosher, which is like, supposedly like a more ethical way of making sure the animal doesn't suffer. And like, why are we casting upon these people, and in the same way…God, you're gonna love this. There's a newsletter called Goula, which is a lot of Latin American writers that are chefs and all these different backgrounds in the food industry. And I read an issue where this guy who's a chef, is talking about his experience in Oaxaca, the mushroom festival. And why I'm bringing this up is because he talks about how the Mixtec is the culture there, they don't call it hallucinogenic. They're like, this does not cause hallucinogens. We don't believe that, we believe that it amplifies your vision. So he talks about like, how are we so [hypocritical] with drugs, we don't even understand, like, the relationship to psychedelics in the Mixtec culture, Aztec culture, stems I don’t know, like thousands of years. It's literally in the Códices, like the Aztec Códices, which is basically hieroglyphics or the codes that they used to use—he talks about that we are trying to frame something that we don't understand, with lack of understanding. 

And so I think that the same happens with meat, right? Where it's like, I'm blaming, and I'm punishing a collective when it's—the reality is the meat industry complex is, what, like four or five businesses? So it's like, the same way that the whole carbon footprint came about as an advertising campaign for Procter & Gamble, to sort of put the blame on the consumer and not really focus on the negative externalities of this f*****g corporation that owns what, hundreds, if not thousands of brands that contribute to that, that I think that dynamic, we don't explore it as much. 

And I try to bring attention to it just from my background, working in marketing, and having gone to school to study that and study communications and the history of it, and no one's talking about specifically in the U.S., like, how the deregulation of children's advertising in the mid—’80s affected millennials and our overconsumption culture. No one talks about these things as the core root. It's more about like, I have to adapt and you know, buy expensive s**t because I'm bettering the planet. And it’s like inaccessible to the majority of people, you know? Yeah, you're going to Erewhon and you're feeling good about yourself, but who the hell can f*****g buy like a $25 shake, right? Or like now you're going to like McDonald's and you're getting yourself like an Impossible, or Beyond Meat—what, so like, it's vegan, and it's ethical because it’s no animal harmed, but what about the exploitation of the worker? Like, does that make you feel good? Or is that like, do you know?

So I feel like you said, there is no like black or white, it's very much about a gray area. And I think that we're, we're losing each other and fighting in trenches, when we should be bridging further and further toward the solution. And so I think what you said is 100%, where it's at, it's like, there's no one solution for it. Parts of the solution—yes. But at the same time, I would want for us to start sort of peeling back the b******t of these narratives. You know, like, what does it mean that Amazon's plant-based patty— it’s not going to save the world like, yeah, it also has to be like, very much like skeptical that that's going to be what solves our problem. 

Alicia: Yeah. No, absolutely. Well, to start the interview the way I usually do, now that we've talked for like half an hour, but [Laughs] can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Andrea: Oh, yeah, well, I mean, I'm still in my city, Santa Pedro Sula, Honduras. I grew up eating beans, rice, plantains—lots of plantains, the sweet kind, more than the other though. As I grew older, I did [get] a knack more for the salty plantains. 

But I grew up very close to my grandmother, very close to her and seeing her cook. One of my favorite memories is watching her pick out the beans, big plants, and the little rocks. She would go to the market every Saturday, she would bring us crabs, fishes and stuff; she’d make crab soup. She's from Nicaragua originally, but she came after the Civil War. And she had a lot of connection with food; she was the sole provider. She was not really divorced, but she ended up after the war, like her husband left them, her and my mom and my aunt. 

And so they were in Honduras; she was a sole provider, so she was basically the one who did everything, so she did all the meals, etc. And she was living with us when I was growing up and I loved just sitting—it was a kind of a meditative thing. Like you're just sitting there, you're picking apart a little bean. And also undoing the kernels of the corn. And I love when she would bring the corn becauseI didn't know this but maize  has different colors and stuff like that. I was like, Wow, you look at all the movies and stuff, especially when you're growing up with only American channels because we don't even have, you know, TV shows of our own, and you grew up with the yellow one. Like you see that everywhere now we'd just be like, Wow, the corn is white and purple? And like all these different weird mashes of color. And so yeah, you're picking up these little things.

And also, she would bring them to a molino—I don't know how to say it, like a mill? And I was like, That's so f*****g cool. Like, it would come in a powder. And she would also do, I don't know what it's called, but it's also like a corn-based drink, but the powder is made to use the drink. But she, yeah, so I grew up seeing the way that she prepared food and just taking a lot of like, even how to make the tortillas and stuff like that, and a lot of her, even remedies that she grew up with, for cramps, or tummy aches, whatever. Like, I don't know, I was very much, grew up close to that. 

So that's sort of how I came to be very interested in doing my own things. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of seafood for sure. Because my city is 30 minutes from the coast. We would go to the beach and have fish and—to me, it was never, because you're growing up and I would go to the market, too, on Sundays with my mom and she would be like, go, and I was the shyest person, she’d be like, here's money, go barter with the tortilla lady and make sure she doesn't charge us more than that. 

Because, you know, we didn't grow up rich; we were four kids. My mom was like, you know, always very much trying to save costs, whatever. And I love that she taught me how to barter when I was a kid. And I think that's one of the skills that I appreciate so much from her, but I remember going to the market and seeing these kids do tortillas, whatever, and then stuffing them here and there's people with half an avocado open, like trying to show you all their vegetables and fruits and stuff. And like all the fruits are laid out on newspapers, whatever, that's still here, that's still happening—

No, I don’t know. I just feel like I was very lucky, in a sense, even though, you know, I grew up with a lot of different things in Honduras that weren't that nice, to be able to experience that sort of connection to the people who were making the food that I'm ingesting, that I'm putting into my body. And it's such a sacred experience that we don't really think about, that's literally the pillar of our lives—putting food in our bodies, without that process...

And I think that to me, when I think about whether or not I subscribe to the idea of veganism—I get it, I understand it. It's horrible. It's horrific. The fact that you know that the mass industrial complex of this has created this monstrosity, but at the same time, when I grew up, it was more about, you knew the person that was giving you the crabs, and it was much more sustainable. But that was obviously when I was growing up. 

Yeah, I feel like I grew up very much experiencing sort of an array of flavors, obviously very acidic. Citric has always been where I gravitate towards. Spice. And yeah, I'm very thankful that I was able to come up with that, because I was never a sweets person. I was like, Oh, my God, we have a word for—it’s called empalagado, when you had too much sweet and you just feel super sick, you're like, Ah, I can't. And so I don't know. I think I was born in the perfect place. I have a theory that I used to be an iguana in a past life, because I thrive on sunlight. I have to have sun.

And so I think I grew up where I was meant to, and it also gave me a really rounded experience of what it's like to live in two worlds, especially as a bilingual person, where it's like, one language gives you an access to a different dimension, you know. It's like, whoa, as a writer—I don’t consider myself a writer, I consider myself a professional s**t-poster—but that my voice has a lot more, hits a lot more in this language than, you know, if I were to speak in Spanish. Unfortunately, that's just the dynamic that we live in. 

And I have been [advocating] about, like, why do we do this in the first place as a person living in a country where this language isn't needed? But you know, it gives you access to see, and I think that it has given me—this is tying it back to Snaxshot, why I have been able to pick up on stuff. Whereas U.S. people are very myopic as in, we're centric to ourselves beyond anything else, that I'm like, Well, this is all happening in all these different places. Let's see, you know, how, if this is playing out in the UK, is this playing out in Australia, is this playing out in Latin [America]? And then that's sort of how that seer, oracle, premonition kind of thing. Well, it's just paying attention to what's happening around you. Yeah, so I guess, you know, I grew up with an array of, I guess, Latin American…Mesoamerican, I would say, inspired flavors. Coastal, too. 

Alicia: And so how did you get so into snacks? Where did the—where did the snacks start to come in for you?

Andrea: Yeah, I would say that, since I do have friends that live in the U.S., I had been seeing—and again, because I can see two different sides of it. I’m like, Wait, like, why is ginger being made into this all-in salve—you know that you can just boil the ginger, right? All you have to do is like, peel it and put it in water and heat it up.

And so yeah, so I feel like I don't know. I feel like after seeing things like “Meditiation in a Can” and stuff like that, I just—because of my background, again, marketing, knowing what goes behind building brands, that I was just like, it feels like we're going through something and I want to know where it's coming from. But at the same time, I wanted to see if it's happening somewhere else. 

And so I don't know, it just [became] all about—I remember doing Twitter threads at first and people would be like, Whoa, I would love to learn more about this. And s**t, I may have landed on something. 

But yeah, it was more about getting sort of like, am I being catfished by brands? And if so, who was writing about this? And so, I don't know, it started off of that. And it felt like we entered sort of like a parody state, where it's like, I have to label water again, like thank you for letting me know I'm not sucking on bone broth. F*****g marketing, right? I don't know, I just wanted to use sort of that parody. And that's where the persona the SnaxBoi comes to be, which is the Erewhon meets F**k Boy persona, where it's like, you know, that person that spends too much time in the beverage aisle, spending so much money deciding between CBD and Nootropic, or THC adaptogens, like, Bro, like, you should be doing the same, but in therapy. [Laughs.] These are not solutions for your problems... 

But so yeah, I just wanted to talk about what I was seeing and, you know, making space for us to talk about, what is an adaptogen? You know, what's the idea behind them? Is that a novel thing? Why is it being attributed to f*****g Gwenny ‘Goop’ Paltrow instead of talking about how it’s been used by so many different cultures for centuries and thousands of years. Why is it that we're white-washing all of [these things]? And we're not understanding that we're trying to get back to our roots, that we're doing it in a way where it's the commodification of knowledge that's inherently human and that's been used by so many different cultures across the history of the world. I don't know, it just felt like the conversation was very much skewing towards the ‘Gwenny Goops,’ instead of, let's figure out where this is coming from.

Alicia: Yeah, there's so much, and I found this out, because when Eater gave me [an] assignment—I wrote about wellness drinks a couple of years ago, and they gave me this assignment; it wasn't really my idea. But I saw these new drinks, the new adaptogenic drinks as kind of a commodification of these older techniques, like you're saying. We used to love kombucha, and like fire cider and like these other things that anyone can make in their house. And then now we're like, No, you need this specific blend of adaptogens. And then I talked to an herbalist for that. 

And it's always stuck with me, I talked to an herbalist who is like, You can't willy nilly give people these things. They are powerful, and they will have an effect, but they might not have the right effect. You want to know what you're putting in your body when you're using, you know, herbs that have had real purpose and you want to work with someone who knows what they're doing and to get it to you. 

And so, I love that you do criticize this kind of vision of the world, but then you also come at it with such love and appreciation too.

Andrea: Yeah, because you know what, I like to be bridging that there is a reason and validity behind this. Just because scientists told you that psychedelics were like—you know, because I think about that. I think about that a lot, Why is it—and I wrote about this in my psychedelic issue, I was very skeptical—I was like, I'm skeptical that they're pushing for deregulation while there are big silos, that I call it, like all these corporations now set to gain from the deregulation of psychedelics. So you're telling me that something, not for what, half a century now, you've been telling me that is bad. Now that it's convenient to you guys, where we have Peter Thiel trying to patent like guided trips, like, f**k off dude. Like no. 

And so to me, it's more about like, Guys, of course, there's validity around adaptogens. But when it's been thrown [around] like a marketing buzzword where it's like adaptogen this, adaptogen that, where I joke that it's not really functional that doesn't come from La Fonction in France then it’s BS, you know, and it's a detriment to the movement in the same way that cannabis has experienced that backlash with the term ‘CBD’ where it's become devoid of meaning. We did the same thing with ‘organic.' 

I think to me, it's more about like, how do I do this a service and pro, where it's like, I am trying to parse through the BS, but because there is validity. I think that we also have to mention about the appropriation of where this is coming from, like the fact that everybody's making Oaxaca like a f*****g Mezcal Sonoma—nobody's talking about that! Instead, you're seeing the brands be like, Ooh, come stay at this luxury $1,000 new hotel in Oaxaca, whatever. And it’s like, what the f**k, $1,000 a night in f*****g—I'm sorry, what?

Seeing like brands be too comfortable using ethnic aesthetics, like, I got blocked by Kendall Jenner. I guess that's my claim to fame, because I called her out. I'm like, is she brownfacing? Why is she wearing braids? Why is she wearing a poncho? Why is she on a f*****g, like, horse through agave fields, you're not fooling me—I know exactly what you're doing. And, you know, playing upon these aesthetics in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable, that it's normalized, right? Like, that's not okay. 

And I think that there are some people like Yola Jimenez from YOLA Mezcal, who are doing it in ways where it’s like, she's not even having to hone in on like, Mexican aesthetics, that you know—that's where she's from. Instead, she's using this rise and popularity of mezcal to empower women in a region where women get screwed over. There's a lot of femicides that [are happening]—that to me is, that's how you do it. And if someone can do it, the same way that you know, Tony's Chocolate came out and said, like, Ooh, yes, it's only one percentage of child slavery—but it's good because then we can point it out, and it's like, F**k you, dude. 

Like, there's literally brands right now—there's a brand called Cuna de Piedra in Mexico, based in Monterrey. They work with Indigenous communities that have used the cacao practices that stem thousands of years. Like if they can be like intentional about forcing their s**t. There's another one based in the U.S. called Sonhab—she worked with the Bribri community in Costa Rica. If small brands with lesser resources than you can do it, then f**k you, dude, and your narrative that you’re trying to do some, like sort of service, you know, for the betterment of the world. 

So, I don't know. I feel like not just to be incendiary, but it's more about, can we just be having a conversation where it's like, I get it—PR dude, that's a huge thing, but just let me critical think like: Did we not make almond milk unsustainable and you're trying to tell them that 100,000 different plant-based brands are gonna be how we get ourselves out of f*****g extinction? I don't know, man, I would be a little skeptical. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, thank you so much, Andrea, for taking the time today to chat. This has been great.

Andrea: Thank you for thinking about me. 

And yeah, let me know when we can have a part two, I know we kind of like, went all over the place. But you know, it's a good time. You know, I love—I love when it flows. But thank you so much, Alicia. 

And thank you so much for the work that you do. You're also helping pave the way for people like me to also, you know, hone in on their own space. So, I appreciate you so much for that.  

Alicia: Aw, thank you. 

Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Angela Garbes, the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, and the new Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change. We discussed how her past as a food writer continues to inform her work, what mothers who are creative workers need to thrive—spoiler, it's basically what all workers need to thrive—informal knowledge building, and the significance of having an unapologetic appetite as a woman. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or adjust your settings to receive an email when podcasts are published.

Alicia: Hi, Angela. Thank you so much for being here.

Angela: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Angela: Sure. I grew up in rural Central Pennsylvania. So—people can't see this—but this is roughly the shape of Pennsylvania, my hand. And I grew up here in what I call the ass crack of Pennsylvania. And it was a very small town, about 4,000 people. And I was one of very few people of color. And my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. You know, I would say that from a very young age, I was, like, born different. But, you know, we have a fairly typical…like, my parents are both medical professionals. So we had a pretty typical, I would say, fairly typical as you could get, middle class upbringing. 

And as far as what we ate, I look back on it now and I think of it as like a perfect combination of like 50 percent American, quote unquote, American convenience food, like a lot of Hamburger Helper, a lot of Old El Paso soft shell tacos, a lot of Little Caesars Pizza, a lot of Philly cheesesteaks. 

And then the other half we ate Filipino food: sinigang, adobo, arroz caldo, tinola... and, you know, I remember my dad, like, hacking up pig's feet, you know, I would come downstairs and he'd be cooking up things like that. And so when I look back on it now, I think it was—I mean, I love Filipino food so much. But I also, I mean, I love all kinds of food. And I kind of eat anything. And it's partly, I think, because I was just exposed to a lot of things. 

But my parents, you know, we lived in this really small town, and they couldn't get all of the ingredients that they wanted to make traditional dishes. But they kind of improvised with what they had. And because they were so committed to cooking Filipino food, sort of against the odds, I would say, you know, we did a lot of…there were not vegetables that [were] available, like you couldn't get okra or green papaya. So we would use zucchini, and, you know, frozen okra to make sinigang. But it was such a way for them to stay connected to their cultures and I feel so grateful to them because what they did was really pass that down to me, from an early age. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is—this is my food, like, this is who I am. And I've never lost that. And I've always loved [it] and, yeah, so it was sort of this wonderful, healthy mix, I think. 

Alicia: For sure, and, you know, it was so interesting to realize, because I don't think I'd realized it before, that you were a food writer. [Laughs] Until I got into your books, I was like, Wait…

And Like a Mother, your first book, starts out like, so…like, such a rich piece of food writing. And I'm like, Wow, now I understand. And then I realized, I'm like, Oh, she is a food writer. So you know, you've come to write your two books about motherhood, but you know, you're also a food writer, and you're writing about food in these books as well. How did you become a food writer?

Angela: First of all, thank you for saying this now because I miss food writing. And I think at heart, I am a food writer. And I think it informs, you know, the way I portray sensory detail and physical experiences. But yeah, so the way I became a food writer was sort of, it was really my entry into writing. But it happened…the year was 2005, I think. And you know, I had gone to college and studied creative writing, but like a lot of things, I just thought just because I liked doing something doesn't mean I get to do [it], right?

And I think that's a lesson that a lot of writers could learn... [laughs] So I didn't work in these like writing-adjacent dying industries, you know; I worked as an independent bookseller. I worked for a nonprofit poetry press—which is still going, actually I should say, and then I worked as an ad sales rep at an alt-weekly. And, you know, I obviously wish that I was a writer there, but I had no designs on writing. I was, you know, I partying a lot with the ad salespeople, and we were just— I mean, alt-weeklies are— I'm so proud to have started all my writing in my career and adult life there. It was a good time. 

So I was working in ad sales. And at the time, David Spader and Dan Savage, who are the editorial people, they said, “Hey, do you want to write?” I was leaving to take another job. And they were like, “Hey do you want to submit a sample food writing piece?” And I was like, Me? And they were like, “Yeah,” and I was like, why? And yes, and why. And they both said, “Well, we know you write, we know that you have a writing background” because I was friends with a lot of writers. And they were like, “But you're just always walking around the office, talking about where you went to dinner, talking about what you cooked, talking about what you ate, and like, everyone in the office wants to go out to lunch with you. Everyone wants you to invite them over for dinner.” And I was like, Oh, okay! And so then I just did it as a one-off. 

And something clicked, where you know, I had been writing fiction, I had been writing bad poetry, but when I started writing about food, I was like, Here's everything that I was thinking about, like food to me—and this is what I think it has in common really with motherhood, and mothering really—is a lens to see the world. And it's a lens into—I mean, the sky's the limit about what you can talk about, right, or what you want to talk about. And so, I mean, when I started, it was like, here write a review of this place, that’s doing mini burgers at happy hour, right? And I started doing restaurant reviews, which was very service-y, which, in some ways I hated, but in some ways I'm grateful for, right—meeting a weekly deadline, and like thinking about your audience and being of use, that's something that I think about all the time still. 

But um, yeah, I mean, when I started doing it, too, I felt really—I came into it, absolutely, with a chip on my shoulder. I was like, Okay, so I'm Filipina. I never hear about Filipino food. Why do we call places holes in the wall? Right, like, that's racist. Why are we willing to pay $24 for a plate of pasta but people get up in arms when someone wants to charge $14 for pho? You know, I feel like this is where I was coming from. And there wasn't really a lot of space for that, I will say. So there was—I felt a little limited. You know, I think about sometimes, what it would be like to start my career now. I feel like people have created a lot of space. It's not like just the space has opened up. 

But the scene has changed. I took a forced hiatus from food writing, because of the Great Recession, where they were like, We don't need freelancers anymore. I came back to it, though—what year was this? It would have been 2012; 2013 and 2014, I was pregnant. And I had actually decided, you know, just because I'm good at writing doesn't mean I get to do it. I need to figure out something more practical to do with my life. So I had applied to go to graduate school, actually to get a master's in public health and nutrition. And I wanted to work with immigrant communities to help them have culturally appropriate diets. You know, like, not everyone was just gonna eat kale, which is what people—or shop at the farmers’ market. 

So yeah, I mean, I took classes at the local community college. I took biology, chemistry, all the s**t that I didn't take as an English major in the mid ’90s. And, yeah, I got accepted, but then when I was pregnant, The Stranger, the alt-weekly, called me and they were like, Hey, we're hiring a food writer, and are you interested in applying? And I was like—this chance is never going to come around. And so I was like, Yeah, I'll take it. 

And so this was, this is a really long answer, sorry, [this was in] 2014, and I started back, and it was restaurant reviews. But it was also when $15 an hour was going really strong here in Seattle. And I really wanted to explore the labor aspect of that, and what was that like for workers…and then my secret goal, I had a great editor who was Korean-American. And she and I were like, yes, like, every two weeks, there will be a picture of a Brown or Black person to go with the restaurant review. And so it was all this stuff. Like, I felt like I finally got a chance to do what I really wanted to be doing. It was like, moving towards that. 

And then I wrote this piece about breastfeeding, which, at the time, they asked me to pitch a feature. They're like, You've been here on staff long enough, like what do you want to write about? And I was like, I definitely need to write about breast milk. No one in the editorial room was like, it was just like, it landed like a dead bird and I was like, Well, I kind of want to do this for myself. I felt it was very much an extension of my beat. Because I was like, here I am. I'm thinking about food. I'm producing food. I am food. I'm eating food. And so I wrote this piece and ended up going viral, which is how I got the opportunity to write my first book and I wanted to take a leave of absence because I really wanted to come back to my job. And they said, No, we're not going to hold a job for you. We're just going to piece it out on contract. And so then I kind of had to figure out what I was going to do afterwards. And so then I was like, maybe I'll just try writing books. And that's my very long answer into how I got into food writing, it was like, the right place at the right time talking about it. Because yeah, that was just like, it felt very— It was just my life.

Alicia: No, I think that that's such a common—obviously, I talk to a lot of people. Like, why food, how food, how did that happen. And then, a lot of the time, especially with women who wanted to be writers, myself included, we didn't see it as an option necessarily, but when we came to it, everything kind of fell into place, which is what happened for me too. Like, once I started to focus my life on food, everything made sense, because I was doing like, copyediting and working for like, tiny literary magazines, and just thought I was gonna have like, a weird literary career, hopefully. 

And then I just started cooking one day and just never stopped. And like that, it just changed everything. I'm writing about this right now, actually, like how gender plays into this and whether, you know, the idea of being allowed to love to cook when you're a woman and that sort of thing, which actually, I wanted to ask you about, because there is a fabulous chapter in your new book, Essential Labor, called “Mothering as Encouraging Appetites” and it's so much about our gendered relationship to having an appetite, you know, like whether whether a woman, whether a girl is allowed to have an appetite and how you are actively encouraging your daughters to be okay with their appetites. 

And it reminded me of when I was a kid and like, I had this friend, who I took dance classes with, and our moms would be like, Oh, you're gonna have to like, date a rich man or something because you eat so much. And then this was like a joke about how like… when I recalled this memory, it's not a joke my mother would make. So I'm assuming it was the other mother, but um, it was just this whole thing.

Angela: But it's definitely like an ambient joke, right?

Alicia: It’s an ambient joke, yeah. And this chapter certainly reminded me of that. And I, you know, I was really lucky to grow up without anyone ever questioning my appetite in a real way. It was always something to be proud of a little bit, to be a girl who ate a lot. Like it was okay, in my world, at least. And so, yeah, I just wanted to ask, what was what was your inspiration for putting this piece in this book, specifically, and how that worked, because it is about the labor of feeding, but it's also about the labor of, like, self-acceptance and and excavating ourselves from these societal expectations. 

Angela: I mean, I want to back up a little bit to what you're saying about how when I started writing about food, and when you started writing about food, a lot of things started to make sense, right? And I felt that way, very strongly, like, inside of myself, but it felt like there wasn't quite an audience that was keyed into what I was trying to say. And I will say, at the time that I started writing about food it was very, like, you can have an appetite, and you can write about loving food. And you can be—there was a lot of, you know, like, I think people use the phrase like the, quote, golden era of food blogging. And to me, it was never really that; I didn't feel like those things. I didn't feel represented in that. It was a lot of, you can have a tremendous appetite for baguette. Right? But, um, no diss to baguette, right? But it was very Francophilic. And it was very, like, be fit and be white. 

So I don't, I just don't really understand. I didn't, I couldn't square having the sort of appetite and having the body that I had with, you know, quote, unquote, mainstream food writing by women.  I want to say that because I think that that's true for a lot of women of color. And I think that that space is thankfully growing. But I think it's because it's an insistence on taking up space, and an insistence on not being pushed to the margins, which is really what the motivation of that chapter was. I felt like there's so many things I have been thinking about in terms of food and that like, I mean, that chapter to me is very much food writing. I was real jazzed when I was writing; I loved being able to describe the flavors, and the Filipino food that I grew up with. 

And yeah, like, I wish that I could explain, and I write about this, and I was like, I don't know why I never—diet culture never got to me, you know, and I think for a lot of girls, who are lucky enough to come from a family where it is a beautiful thing to have an appetite, the thing that often happens, though, is around like when you're 12 or 13 or 14, then suddenly it's not great to have an appetite, right? Like or it's a thing to be managed, because everything's changing, everything's expanding, right? 

Everything's growing. Before, when you're eating a lot, you're chubby and you're healthy, and suddenly you become fat. And so I was sort of wrestling with that. And also this feeling that my body just never really fit into the culture, into that small town where I grew up in. And then my body is just larger than my mother's who's a very, very small, Filipina woman. And, you know, Filipina elders are the first people to be like, Eat, eat food, eat so much food, come in here, eat food. And then they'll also be the first people to be like, Wow, you got really fat. [Laughs] It's an interesting thing. 

So, you know, this chapter was me sort of working out a lot of those feelings and how I did it at a young age, I had just decided, well, I guess—I've never been interested in taming my appetites. And that's not just for food, it's like, for pleasure, for like, you know, I've always wanted another round of drinks, you know, I think I always just decided, like, being a little bit too much, being a little bit fat, that was okay with me, because I don't know how to control my appetite. And I didn't want to; I don't want to say no to that. And then I think there's something really powerful about, you know, again, like my love of Filipino food helped me take up space. And it helped me clarify who I was and how I wanted to take up space in this world. Like, I did not want to quiet that part of my identity to write about food, which also meant that for a while, I didn't write about food, or figured something else out that I would do. 

And so when I think about that, I just think about—it is about encouraging appetite in my daughter, but it's really, to me this book is—I hope it's relevant to everyone, you know, for me, a lot of this is like how I mothered myself, into the place where I am now and seeing the way I was mothered and the things that I kind of wish I could have had, and I don't fault my mother for this, but she just wasn't, she just wasn't able to do that. 

But the things that I had to mother myself into were acceptance. And that's like, work that I'm still doing every day. But I think you know, we don't write as—I don't hear as much about people who are trying to manage that, and who are trying to take up space, but who still struggle with feeling like, I wish I looked a certain way, even though I'm so proud of being who I am. It's really complicated. So yeah, I mean, appetite and identity and food. And all of that has, it's a very tangled web, in my mind. So this was kind of my attempt to, you know, just sort of unpack and understand.

Alicia: Right, no, and I loved it, because I do think…as women, especially when we're writing about appetite, we're writing about diet culture, and you very rarely hear from someone who makes the decision to just not ever decide to tame the appetite, you know, and what that means and what that looks like, and that's why I thought this chapter was really important, because of that, because for me, you know, yeah, I was like, Oh, I see myself, I recognize myself in this because, yeah, I love to eat, I've always loved to eat, and I'm never not going to eat a lot…[Laughs]

Angela: No, and that's one of the things that I love about your work is that I feel like you are unapologetic in your appetite and in your consumption. But you also are deeply thoughtful about it, like these things are like–they are nuanced. Do you know what I mean? And you'd never, I just feel like we're not allowed—we're supposed to not have an appetite. We're supposed to have an appetite, but somehow pretend that we don't have an appetite, or, I don't know, like, really, I mean, I think also like, when I am indulging my appetite, I feel like an animal. I feel I'm no different than an animal. I'm a human animal. And I just think like, we're not encouraged to do that as women, we're not encouraged to just fully inhabit ourselves. I mean, I think all people but especially women. And so I mean, I love seeing people out there doing [it], we are out here, you know. [Laughs] And this is my like, you know, a little bit of my stake in the ground, I'm planting a flag, you know, there would be no mistake—

Alicia: Well, to talk about the animal aspect of food and appetite and also being a mother, which is that you wrote, obviously, the piece that went viral is about breastfeeding. My only experience in thinking about this, of course, because I'm not a mother, is the way vegans or vegetarians write about the ways in which breastfeeding changes their relationship to dairy, like that's a really common thing. 

But I wanted to ask how that topic and writing about that topic and that topic changing the trajectory of your work, how did that change your relationship to food or food production, if it did?

Angela: Yeah, totally. First of all, I wish that you had been asking me these questions when my first book came out because like, I love how you're like, “It's really common for vegans to talk about, you know, dairy and how breastfeeding changed their relationship to it.” And I was like, I'm not aware of that, like, literature…[Laughter] And so I think it's kind of, just that question is really exciting to me. And I wish that there was more conversation around that. 

Part of writing, you know, this article about breastfeeding was me being like, why do we drink the milk of a cow? Right? Why is that? Like, that's strange, right? Like, it's strange. And why have we created an entire industry around this? And like, Why do, when we look at a food plate, dairy has a very large section? And that's because of the dairy lobby, right? That's not because of our innate biological needs as human beings, right? 

So, yeah, I mean, how I thought about food production, 100%. This, you know, sort of lays the path for so many things that I'm thinking about. It’s work, you know, this is what your body—this is what female bodies are built to do, right? That's just true. This is what sets us apart as mammalians, you know, like, we produce milk to feed our young, but I just went into it so naive, like, it was a job. You know, I was spending the eight plus hours feeding—eight plus hours that I was like, am I supposed to be being productive? Like I'm being productive, like I'm keeping, I'm doing nothing less than keeping a human alive. I'm not being paid to do this. I'm not being given time. I'm like, in a weird office with a noisy radiator, you know, with another woman—our breasts out, just like pumping. Right? 

So it made me think about time and how we value time. And it also like, again, like this was all happening when I was writing about food. And there was the fight for a minimum wage of $15 an hour. And my God, how that was so polarizing, and how people just showed their whole asses about how they don't think the workers are valuable or deserving of this thing. And so I think, you know, there was the labor aspect of it that really came into play for me, that made me think about—I grew up saying grace, because I grew up Catholic, right? And when we remember to say grace, my girls do it with my parents. So when we remember to say grace at our house, we say, you know, thank you to the people who grew this food, who picked the food, who you know transported the food, who prepared the food. 

So I think now this sort of supply chain of food and how it is produced is something that's always top of mind and like, how do you negotiate having like an ethical relationship to that? I know this is stuff that you have thought about. This is stuff that really came to the forefront, right? And then also balancing that economically because, you know, breastfeeding is, in a country that does not give paid leave, it’s an economic privilege to be able to do that. And then people who cannot breastfeed, there's very little money put into understanding that and seeing is that, oftentimes people feel like that's a failure on their part, not as opposed to like, is it a signal about something about the health of the mother, right? Could we be—this is sort of going off a little tangent, but I think that there's a lot of that kind of stuff, like in the labor of it, and how we value women's bodies. And also just like the general chain of food production, for sure. It 100% made me think of all of those things. 

And so now I'm always thinking about, someone made this food, right? Someone produced this food in some way, a being—a living thing, whether it is a plant or an animal, or a person. Yeah, it’s just, I mean mothering and becoming a mother really reframed everything for me. You know, it is that care that my body couldn't help but do, you know, like my body did. And then suddenly, I felt like, it's a very beautiful thing to be able to do this. It's a very important thing. It was very meaningful to me. It was also that I was chained to a chair and chained to a person. And so yeah, I mean, that's what—that's where I'll leave it. That’s another long answer. [Laughter]

Alicia: No, no…have you read the book To Write As If Already Dead by Kate Zambreno? It came out last year, I think you'll like it. She writes a lot about the body and like, I think it has a lot of parallels to your work. But it's also, you know, just more personal I guess, but she writes about having her first kid and then getting pregnant and then and like, amidst the pandemic, not being treated like a human being but a vessel and seeing the labor of the people bringing…anyway, I think you'll like the book. [Laughs] But you know, and there are so many parallels in both Like a Mother and Essential Labor to what I've been thinking about in food: formal versus informal knowledge, institutions versus communities, individual versus systemic, the political role of care…

And so I wanted to ask how the understanding of the significance of something like informal knowledge building when it comes to motherhood affected your perspective on, you know, other subjects as you've said. Motherhood changed your whole lens on the world, but specifically figuring out where, how to learn from community and informal knowledge rather than constantly just taking the word of the institutions.

Angela: Yeah, you know I mean, motherhood was a big part of that. But I would say that it was all, I don't know, I just feel like my whole life is learning. And I love that. And that's one of the things that I love about my life. 

I definitely feel like when I arrived at college—so again, I came from a very, very small town in Pennsylvania. And I didn't know about a lot of things in the world, you know, and I was like, I'm gonna go to New York City. I went to Barnard College, right? Like, I arrived there. And everyone there was like, I went to Milton Academy. I went to, you know, I went to Stuyvesant High, and I was like, like, Googling like, “what are the regents exams,” right? Like, I was like that. And I felt so out of place. Y’know what I mean, like, I felt unprepared. And I felt very self-conscious in a way about that. And I also feel like I came into, like a formal racial consciousness, right, and class consciousness. Like, I mean, when I was at Barnard was when I was like, Oh, this is how we re-create a ruling class, right? 

Like, what I'm saying is that I had a lot of informal knowledge. And a lot of wisdom growing up, you know, that I kind of trusted and knew. I was always like, why are we Catholic? So, is colonialism…like, what would we have been if we weren't Catholic? And my parents were like, God will provide…like, what are you talking about? Why are we asking these questions, right? And so I've always had it in me to like, question the institution, right, unfortunately, for my parents, and then our family institution for many years. 

So I came to college, and then I was like, Oh, it's also reckoning with for many, many years, my definition of success was, you know, grammar, spelling, right? Like, all of that s**t, which is like, those are just rules that some guy made up, right? Like coming into this and wanting to succeed on terms, you know, set by white people, being legible to white people, and being legible to institutions, which I will not deny, like, that has served me well. And this sort of like, ability to kind of code-switch in a way that I sometimes can't even tell the difference. Like, that's just been a part of my life, right? 

And one of the things, though, that happened is coming into consciousness as an adult, and just realizing like, Oh, no, like, I was privileged enough to, like, be educated in these institutions to figure out how to slip into these places. And then to realize, like, no, this doesn't, this doesn't speak to me. It's actually not my vibe, right? Like, but what is your vibe, then? So you have to kind of go and like, figure it out. 

And I felt sort of free in that, you know, when I always felt really drawn to creative people, but I was never encouraged to, you know, pursue the arts or to pursue creativite work, or my parents were supportive, but they don't really understand what I do. I think to this day, still, it's a little bit confusing to them. 

All of this to say that one of the other, before motherhood, one of the big things, and I really need to shout out is my spouse Will, who [when] I met, he was a community organizer. He's now a labor organizer. And there was just something about, we are so different, but when we met, there was a shared values. There was a belief in, everyone's story is important. You know, he was all about, his thing was, people come up, and they speak their truth to power. And that's when I realized, like, Oh, yes, like our lived experiences, our informal knowledge, when collected, just because it's not in a book, just because it's not what's reported, like, it is so real, and it is so powerful. And he really, like his work helped me see that. And I feel like that was kind of the start for me of being like, I want to take what I'm doing, and I want to put it in service of something else. And I want it to be a harnessing of collective energy and community knowledge. 

And then mothering with the whole sort of like, ask your doctor even though no one has, no one's done any studies on this and everything that's going on was something someone said in 1890, right, no one’s challenged this wisdom. Meanwhile, the greatest wisdom that came from birthing and mothering came from midwives and female elders. And that's informal knowledge that was never put in a book, y'know, doctors, when we created medicine, when people invented—when white men invented medicine, they discredited the experience of midwives. And at the turn of the 20th century in America, 50% of babies were born with midwives, who are mostly immigrants and Black women, right? This was very much a working class woman's job. 

So I mean, this is just my way of saying I feel like my whole life has been leading to this moment, and motherhood, sort of refined that lens, a place to put all of these things, but it's been multiple steps along the way, and it's been sort of painful. You know what I mean? Like feeling like, Oh, I wish I had known this earlier. But then realizing like, Oh, like, but I know this now. And I think there are many people who share these values and who want to put their faith in more informal knowledge, and who don't trust institutions, but don't really know how, you know what I mean? And I feel like that's a journey, like we're all learning. And I feel like, I don't know…I'm old enough to remember when we weren't supposed to know everything. I feel like now there's this pressure to have some sort of expertise in everything. And I'm like, I still don't know what the f**k I'm doing. Like, everything I'm doing is learning, and that's what's fun. That's part of why I like being a writer is just doing homework or whatever.

Alicia: That's so interesting. Yeah, I feel like this is something I've been thinking about a lot, is there is this kind of—you're not supposed to ask questions. You're not supposed to say “I don't know,” you're supposed to, we're all supposed to have sort of absorbed some sort of bastion of knowledge that we might not even know exists about things that we've never thought about before. But like, you're just not allowed to not know things anymore, you're not allowed to be learning. I don't know. It's very weird. I mean, that's more social media than anything else. 

But, because I'm always interested in this. So you went to college in New York? How did you come to live in Seattle?

Angela: So when I was in college, my parents—long story short, they had a midlife crisis. And my dad became very disillusioned by managed healthcare. This was 1997, by the way. And so they just decided to make a huge change. Like, my dad was miserable, and my mom was miserable; they're miserable together. And so they decided to start over, and they moved to Washington State. And I was in college, and I was just like, I need to get out of New York. So I was like, okay, and now they seem to be doing better, so I'm gonna go spend a summer with them. And the Pacific Northwest in the summer is heaven, it's so beautiful. And I was like, oh, I’ll like, come out here after I graduate, and I'll stay for a couple months, and then I'll go back and get a job in publishing as an editorial assistant. And that was 1999. And then I just never left. 

You know, I spent many years comparing it to the East Coast. And then I just was like, it's easier here. And I used to feel some sort of shame around that. But um, I don't know, it's just more laid back. I feel really—I've written about this—I just don't, I don't want to say that I'm not ambitious. But it's just like, there's ladders that you climb, there's like places you could try to put yourself into institutions, I guess. And I'm just really not about the hustle. I feel like I work really hard and I'm really not trying to work harder. Like, I like my little life. 

Before I had a chance to, you know, publish books, having a job as a staff writer at an alt-weekly, it was like—that was great. Like, you know, I feel like it's easier to do, I don't know, community building can be—I don't want to generalize too much. I just like being in a city. It's a young city. It's a weird city, in some ways. It's changing. But um, yeah, but I like the West Coast. I think I'm—

Alicia: I'm always interested in how people leave New York, because obviously, I'm from Long Island, but I spent a lot of time in New York City. And so then, because I left in 2019, but like, didn't really think about it, about what I was doing. So I'm always like, What was the choice? What were the choices that led you away from New York? [Laughter]

Angela: I think it was the thought that I would come back. And I think there's always a little bit of like—I couldn't go back. You know, like, it's all the same, like things are there. They're not going away. But New York also still has the same ugly, modern, new high rise weird, like townhome architecture that we get here in Seattle. It's not, you know, not to be I mean. I went to college in New York from ‘95 to ‘99. And, you know, I go back now and I'm like, This is so different. I was like, you know, it wasn't even like dirty New York, y'know. But yeah, I think I just like being a little bit outside things. 

How was it for you? Like, do you feel like returning or do you feel like you're home? Or do you kind of feel like it's all open?

Alicia: I would prefer to stay here in San Juan ’cause it's an easier life, like you're saying, and I talked to Jami Attenberg about moving from New York to New Orleans. And same thing. It's like, it's just easier, and for me, especially as a food writer, I feel like it gives me a lot more to talk about and I don't feel like I have to go to the same restaurants as everybody. And like, obviously, I don't even think I could move back until everything goes differently with the housing situation. Like it's just such—I mean, it's happening everywhere. But I'm just like watching on Twitter, and everyone is like, my landlord just raised my rent $700, $1,200. And I'm like, I'm never going back. I can never go back. 

But I mean, we have that problem here, too, because it's become like a tax haven. So there's like, all the real estate is absolutely mind-boggling. And like the daughter-in-law of the governor is sort of instrumental in it, which seems like a problem, so— [Laughter]

But, yeah, so everywhere has its challenges. But yeah, I feel really good. You know, having gotten sort of away from New York. You know, when I left New York, I was bartending and writing. And here, now I just have a newsletter. So, I'm working a lot less hard. [Laughs]

Angela: I mean, I think there's something to be said to of space—physical space. I have a house, you know what I mean, to have physical space, which is also, it's not necessary, but it does lead to mental space. You know what I mean, things feel more expansive here in a way that like, I can go on a long walk, the mountains are 45 minutes that way—wait, sorry, going West. Sorry, the East actually—

But I think there's just something there where I feel. I don't know. I just—there's something here where I just feel like I can be myself in a way that—I'm less like, thinking about myself in the context of other people and other things, like I could just sort of be in an easy—

Alicia: Exactly, no, no. And that's really key. Obviously, like I'm homesick a lot. But I, then I just go back, you know. And then I'm like, I'm sick of this. Goodbye. [Laughter]

But also, to get back to your book, in Essential Labor, you talk about the flattening of creative identity that came through being a mother in the pandemic, do you think that it is possible to change how work and caregiving are structured and perceived in the U.S.? And specifically, what do you think mothers who are creative workers, thus doing work that's kind of already devalued in our society, what is really needed to thrive?

Angela: That's a great question. I do think it's possible. I have to think it's possible, because—I'm glad that your question wasn't, do you, like, do you hope that this is, you know, like, I find it hard to be, I find it hard to be hopeful about it in this moment. But I mean, I wouldn't have written this book if I didn't think it was possible. And, you know, maybe it will take a very long time. But I think we are due for, I mean, the United States has never reckoned with all of its original sins, right. But one of them, you know, one of the biggest ones at this point, that's like a foundation to it is that care work doesn't matter and has no financial value. So I think, you know, we had these moments, there was the advanced check, tax child credit. And then also, when we were doing direct stimulus payments, that was not specifically like, here's pay for mothering and care work. But, here's pay for keeping yourself alive and keeping people alive, which is what care work is. 

So I think that people are—that conversation is happening, I think, you know, part of writing this book was, there were all these, there were so many people who were suddenly awake to, like the child care crisis is a pre-pandemic problem, right? Like that childcare workers are three times more likely to live in poverty. The fact that until your child is age 6, in the United States, like you're on your own, to figure all of that out, and suddenly a lot of white affluent women, to generalize, were realizing that, you know, when care structures fall apart, when your nanny and childcare and babysitters go away — they are left to do all of this work. And that to be a woman in America is to be defined by a condition of servitude. And that was a hard f*****g lesson. And people reacted in a way that they were rightfully so, really angry. And part of writing this book was, I was like, this is going to go away, right? Like when schools reopen, people are gonna think we solved the childcare crisis, right? When things are not inconvenient, when people can start outsourcing that care, and we're gonna lose that momentum. 

And so to a certain extent, like, why I also believe it's possible is because I know that for myself, and for other people, like, I will never shut up about this. This is something that is foundational and essential to our country and how it functions and until we properly value that, we're going to have an inhumane and dysfunctional society. So yes, I think it's possible. In this particular moment, I feel that it's a much longer fight, and then it's going to be a much harder fight. I don't want it to be a fight, but that's that's where I am on that. 

You know, and in terms of mothers who are doing creative work, I mean, I just think of all people doing creative work again, like, care is an issue that, obviously, yes, I'm writing about mothering but like, care is the work of being a human being, you know, needfulness is the state of being a human being. And so, you know, if I'm just like, allowed to say what I would like to do is like, we should just give people money. We live in a very rich country, there is enough money to do this. If we gave people a universal basic income, a guaranteed adequate income, which is not a new idea—you know, people were working on this, the National Welfare Rights Organization was doing this; they came close to getting it under Nixon. If we paid people money, if we gave people money and guaranteed a floor of what a decent life is in America, people could be creative. You know, people could do their creative work, people could mother, people could still be really f*****g ambitious and try to get a six-figure job, like six-figure salary job, like, they could still do that. 

You know, and I think that that's, you know, we made up money. [Laughter] We can, like, if we can make up a new system, you know, that, that gives people—you know, I did this interview for this the future of things, it was like the future of work. And I was talking about this, and the producer was like, So in your world, when you like, meet for drinks with your friends on Friday, and someone asks you how work is doing and you're like, well, Tommy's like, struggling with potty training. And I was like, No, dude, like, in my world, you meet your friends for drinks on Friday, and they're like, how are you? Like we don’t talk about work—we just talk about like, what are you doin’? Right? And so I think that, yeah, like, I think so what we need to do is like, guarantee—I mean maybe it's not just an adequate income or guaranteed income, maybe it's just like, health care, where you like, leave, like, they need people need to, like be able to live a dignified life, that doesn't involve work, you know, that is like, not defined by work that just that allows them to exist. That's what people need. And that's not just mothers, and not just mothers who do creative work that we need that. We need that. I mean, I think it's really like for me; it's for everyone.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, no, no, I mean, these are all the same answers I give when people are like, How do we fix the food system? And it's like, you have to make sure people have a good life. And then, that they don't have to work two or three jobs just to eat crap, and that they get to cook with, I mean, if they want to [they can] eat whatever they want, but like, you know, you get the option to cook, you know. Right now, it's like, so much of that moment, I guess when you started writing about food, that moment of like, go to the farmers’ market and eat kale and everything will be fine. It really stopped short of talking about poverty, it stopped short of talking about the systemic, obviously, disadvantages. It's like, some people won't be able to do this—sad for them. And then like, moving on—

Angela: Yeah, look, we don't talk about how poverty is a condition we have created —it's an unnatural condition. We made this, right? And there's so much, I mean, also like the farmers’ market thing. Like, what is it, maybe now it's higher, but it's something like 6 or 12 percent of people get their produce from a farmers’ market here. I mean, so not even like, forget, like how much money you can spend. It's just such a small—you're not tackling the system. And that's not to say they're not great and you should keep money in local economies. Like I think it's all of those things. But yeah, we're not even getting to that. 

And we're not talking about the profound way that we assign morality to food, like people who are poor make bad choices about food. Those are choices created by poverty and scarcity. Like, anyway, this is not like a…I think you and I are on the same page about this. 

I think it's like the conversations that we have about food are so not the conversations we need to read. Right, like we spend a lot of time on that. And I think the same is true for care and mothering, right? It is an issue that affects everyone. And it is an issue, it is systemic, like we're talking about, I think we're both talking about giving people a decent life, which doesn't—we've come so far from that, that it seems really radical to be like, let's just, you know, take it back a step. You know, like, it'd be like—money is made up, are you with me? Like, that seems really destabilizing to people, but it's just a truth. And I think like we just drifted so far from it, that it's really, it's discouraging.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm hopeful, I think that now people are more, even if it's just jokes or memes on social media, people are more willing to say— people are more willing to say that the all of this is bizarre. Like, even if it's just—today, we're talking on Tax Day, which is—I feel like vomiting because I still haven't done mine. But the idea that people are now talking about, why does the government let it be so difficult and complicated when they know how much we owe because they have the documentation and, you know, what are we actually even paying for? Like, I think it's important that we have a forum now for those like people to have that conversation, even if it's a joke, most of the time.

Angela: One of my favorite things that I've seen recently is like, I mean, I saw it on Instagram, but it was a tweet, you know, that whole thing. But it was like, you know, humans really could have had stargazing and like pottery making and drumming, and now we have credit scores, and like, you know, but this idea that, like, we could just be f*****g living. Now it's like, we need money we need like, I just, ugh—

Alicia: Yeah, we do need a general strike, and to not pay anything, not pay our taxes, not pay our student loans, not pay rent, just like let's stop and get this s**t sorted out before we keep moving.

Angela: Yeah, I mean it’s really…we shouldn't be privatizing human rights. We could have this conversation, like in a circle for like, a few days, and it would be great but we should probably move on… [Laughter]

Alicia: No, no, no, of course. No, well I just wanted to ask you what are the other things you're thinking about that you want to write about? I do love that you characterize being a writer is ongoing learning, you know? So what are you learning about these days?

Angela: I'm learning about—so again, since I started as a food writer, the fact that I've now written two books on motherhood and mothering seems like a great surprise in my life. I mean, I think it's very—it's been great for me. But I mean, this is really just one aspect of my identity. But right now, the things that I'm really drawn to are not privileging one kind of care. I mean, I think care is a conversation we need to continue to have. And so I want to explore care. Like, so I've been thinking about it in terms of, you know, raising young children, but what is it like to have everything from like, you know, how do we encourage people who are not parents to have meaningful relationships with the youth and the elders? Right, like elder care, disability care. And then also, how do we build, one of the things that we lack, our institutions don't care about people; care is not a value that's at the center of institutions. And so I'm interested in exploring, how might we make that happen? And so care in general, an expansive and inclusive and surprising view of care, is one of the things that I'm thinking a lot about.

I'm thinking a lot about the concept of service. Service, to me, is very clarifying. I think my work as a writer is about learning. But what gives me meaning is that it is definitely of service to people. And that's one of the things that I cherish about the feedback that I've gotten from people. And so this idea of service, and how we can encourage that, and people are exploring that.

And then the other thing that I'm really into is middle age. You know, I'm about to be 45. I never—and I don't mean this in a fatalistic way, but I just never really imagined myself at this age, and realizing that my imagination really was pretty short. And I feel like I have to believe and I do believe that, you know, some of my most interesting transformations are still ahead of me. And so there's really not a literature of middle age for women, there's like some menopause-y stuff. But the choices that we make, and I don't know, there's like in the pandemic, too, I've done a lot of self work and therapy. But I've also, like—I haven't been able to escape myself, even though I've tried very hard through various attempts and substances. But I feel like, I don't know, if I'm about to be 45, like I said, I just feel like I don't feel confused about who I am. And I really like that. And I'm kind of curious, like, where that goes. 

Yeah, so those are the things I'm thinking.

Alicia: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Angela: Yeah, of course. Thank you.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

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You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. 

Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a nontraditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel.

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. 

Today, I'm talking to Jami Attenberg, the author of seven novels, including the best-selling The Middlesteins. Her latest book is a memoir called I Came All This Way to Meet You, which grapples with ideas of success and living a non-traditional life. We talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, along with her move from New York to New Orleans, why she chose to write a memoir right now, and how the pandemic has shifted her relationship to travel. 

Alicia: Hi, Jami. Thank you so much for being here. 

Jami: Hi. It's so nice to meet you.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jami: Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago. I’m 50, so I grew up in the ’70s. And I'm Jewish, and so there was an emphasis on deli when we could get it. There wasn't a lot of deli going on out there where I grew up. I grew up in Buffalo Grove. So closer to Skokie is where they, where you can get deli. 

And then, a lot of Italian food. A lot of pizza. I don't know if you've ever heard of Portillo's before. That is an amazing Chicago chain, and the Italian—Oh. I want it right now, just thinking about it. They had this croissant sandwich with Italian beef that was really delicious. 

My mother would be upset to hear me say this, I do not recall having a lot of emphasis on healthy food in my household growing up. We were also latchkey kids. You come home and you sort of scramble for what you could find in the house, that kind of thing. I mean, there was food there.

So, I don't know. When I look back at it now, I just think it was that there was not a clear path to, not a clear aesthetic necessarily. It was a lot of what was around.

Alicia: Yeah.

Well, it's interesting that you say your mom wouldn't like that. In your memoir, you write about her making chicken noodle soup from scratch and insisting she'd done it. And it's interesting, because it brings up obviously—memoir, where your memories don't match up with other people's memories and the question of that. How was it to reconstruct those kinds of things? I liked that in the book, that you enacted the problem of memoir in the memoir with this kind of like, ‘Whose memory actually is the memory that's the memory?’ [Laughs.]

Jami: Well, I have a brother. So I think he would back me up on certain things. And he's a wonderful cook, and he’s very health focused and really into the farmers’ markets and has a big tomato festival in his house every year. It was like a goal of his to kind of learn how to cook and be connected with food in a different way. I mean, I'm not blaming my parents for it. They had, of course, a million jobs and things going on. 

So I mean, I tried to be as honest about it as I could. I mean, I think my mother genuinely wants to have cooked, made chicken noodle soup for me from scratch. I do not recall it at all. I don't think that happened. So when that did happen, it felt kind of special. I mean, she probably hadn't cooked for me as an adult and in a really long time. That story where she is looking after me and making chicken noodle soup, for me, probably happened when I was in my late 30s. I don't know how much you go home to see your family or what that looks like for you. But for me, I had lived in New York a long time and my parents lived in Chicago. And I went back maybe once a year, and when we would see each other we could go out to eat. Big going-out-to-eat family.

Alicia: Well, you write in the—that you're not a great cook, but you are a superb dinner party guest. And food and drink are present in the memoir of course, but they're also present in your fiction. So, how would you kind of characterize food in your life now that you're an adult, fully formed and all that?

Jami: I mean, sadly, unlike my brother, I don't, I'm not—Yeah, I didn't take on the challenge like he did. Yeah, I don't have much of a repertoire. Yeah, I make a lasagna every so often. It’s winter and I'll be like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna make lasagna, veggie lasagna, and I'm gonna drop some at friends.’ This year for Christmas. I just made a ton of spiced nuts for everyone. And like, so once a year I get excited about doing—

I throw a lot of parties though. I do that. I had, right after everybody got booster shots for the first time, I had a big oyster festival in my backyard. And it was really wonderful. I mean, it's just definitely a way for me to commune with my friends. It's just really important to me to connect with people. Everyone's happy. We like to sit down for long meals. I live in a city that's got a great food culture. I lived in New York City for a long time. And I have a great food culture. I just was there last week and had dinner with some girlfriends at Ernesto’s, which was wonderful. 

Every part of the dinner was wonderful. But then at the very last minute, we got dessert too. And there was this fried brioche. I don't even know how to explain it. We were talking about it, still this morning. But the fried brioche, it was kind of creamy in the center. It was kind of french toast, but something at—something else. It was so good. And we’re probably going to remember that fried brioche for the rest of our lives. It was really special. 

Alicia: Well, and so much of the memoir is about success and how it's difficult to define. And you can publish books and have no money. It was important for me to read, I think, at this juncture in my life, where I was like, ‘Nothing means anything, necessarily, until it means something.’ I don't know. [Laughter.]

How do you define success? How do you feel about success as a concept as a writer?

Jami: Well, first of all, let me say that, I have told you this before that I'm a fan of your newsletter. So I'm sort of following along your kind of existential crisis that you, that is sort of rolling out, in particular, the last couple of newsletters. And I don't want to be that person who's like, ‘It gets better,’ but I think it does get better. I don't know how old you are. And it's fine however old you are, but I think—

Alicia: I'm 36, yeah.

Jami: I think it gets better in your 40s. I hate to say it. But I have given that advice to so many people in their, in that age, where you're like, ‘I've been doing this for so long. When does it just get a little bit easier?’

And I think the answer is, as a writer is it got easier for me after I'd written four books, which is like when I was 40, 41, something like that, was when I'd had that moment where I was able to—and also there's just like this catch-up period where you're constantly waiting for somebody to pay for something that you've written. And it's like, ‘How do you ever get ahead of that?’ And at some point, you sort of do get ahead of that. Hopefully. I'd make no guarantees or promises to anyone. 

And so to me, I think that your question was notion of success. To me, right now, because I have a book contract, and I have—I can spend the next year writing that book, that I feel safe for now. And you're always kind of leapfrogging to the next, whatever the next project is. I mean, someday I might run out. And I might be s**t out of luck. 

And I don't know, if you ever really get to take—it's the only thing I envy about an academic existence, is that they get to take sabbaticals. Yeah. And I mean, I guess it's for us, on our own, I think it would be about applying for grants or something like that. I don't actually, don't think residencies are really a sabbatical. The only thing that gives you, that buys you time, is money. Which is, then you have to do more. I know. I get it, I get it. It’s hard. And then I feel bad. But then it's like double I know, I know. It's really tricky. 

I think it slowed down a little bit for me, or got a little bit easier. I mean, part of that was that I moved to a city that was more affordable. Yeah, I had looked around when I was 45. So I've been down here for six years, I looked around and was like, ‘I can't work any harder than I am. I can't do any more than what I'm doing. I'm not really gonna make any more money than this unless something magical happens, like somebody makes one of my books into a TV show. I'm operating at a pretty good level. I'm still not saving any money. And I'm still not getting ahead. So what's the problem here?’ And it was New York City. So no, I love you, New York. But it’s bringing me down. We have to sort of start making certain decisions as we go, get older about it. And you can always go visit New York. Or wherever.

Alicia: Well, New York is also my home, so yeah. But I get to go because that's where my family is. So I get to go back. But it feels so weird now, not living there anymore. I don't know how it feels for you to go back. The visiting is strange to me, to visit a place you lived for so long. 

Jami: Well, I don't go to Williamsburg where I lived for a zillion years. I just don't go there because—I do sometimes, because my dear friends own St. Mazie’s, a bar—restaurant there. So I'll go over there and say hi to them. But I don't go to the old apartment building that I used to live in. I know it's very different there now. I just go to see the people that I love, wherever that might happen to be. 

I just feel like such a country mouse when I go there now, too, because the buildings are so tall and it's so annoying and there's—it’s so expensive. It's all the things that you can work around if you live there. But when you visit, it's harder to avoid those things. And I'm not even complaining when I say any of those things at all. I had a great time there last week. It's just a sharp contrast to my existence. So I don't know if I could ever go back there. I mean, maybe you could ’cause your family's there. But I don't I wouldn't be able to take that step back, ’cause my life is maybe too quiet now. 

Alicia: Yeah, no. It feels very different now, life in general [Laughs.] having moved to a smaller quieter city, yeah. 

Jami: Do you feel happier now in that, in—with that?

Alicia: Oh, yeah. Yeah, a lot happier. I didn't know it was possible. Grew up on Long Island, moved to the city. The big thing you're supposed to do is move to the city. And then, I didn't think I'd ever leave or live anywhere else. And now, I just have such a more relaxed life. I can think more, I think. 

I think there's a reason I've had not success, but more success as a writer leaving New York, because I—I'm not constantly, especially as a food writer, going to different restaurants and stupid things. And then, feeling I have to eat the things that everyone's eating. [Laughs.] I'm free. I'm free from having to go to whatever new place people are going to, like Bernie's, I think it's called. [Laughs.] [Note: I meant Bonnie’s!]

Jami: But even as a non-food writer, I used to feel I had to go to all those places. And now I don't feel that. I don't feel that way anymore. I still have really good friends in New York who are really intuitive, or culture writers. And so, I can sort of keep track of where I might want to go through them. There's no reflection on me. It’s nice.

Alicia: It’s great to be free of that. [Laughter.]

Jami: Yeah, I don't know what I miss. I keep trying to figure out what I miss exactly. The only thing I've ever missed is the people.

Alicia: Yeah, the people, the culture. Going to a museum. There’s museums here, but they're not those museums. I miss public transportation. We don't have public transportation here. And that's what I miss, I think. 

Jami: I just want to do one more thing, which is it's just about—I just think we, as writers or as creative people, I'm trying to—

I'm starting to write this talk about how to carve out a creative life. I think as we get older and our priorities change, we really just have to go—we have to go all in on something. We have to if we want to really make it as an artist. 

And you can sort of see the people who—and this is not a criticism of them—but the people who say, ‘Alright, I'm actually not going all in as an artist. I decided I wanted to have a house in the Hamptons, or I've got three kids now.’ You can also, by the way, be an artist and have three kids. You know what you're choosing. There's no wrong answer. It's what is right for you, whatever works for you.

Alicia: Yeah. It's interesting you’re writing a talk on creativity—I've been thinking about this and wanting to write an essay, because I've been listen, listening to a lot of podcasts. My dog is afraid of these birds, these local birds that kind of swoop in, so we've had to not go to the dog park while they're nesting. And so, I've just done these really long walks with the dog listening to On Being. I've never listened On Being before. 

But like everyone says, you realize when all these patterns of things that people say about creativity and how to make it happen, and it's—there's these patterns of like, ‘It is work, it is labor to be creative, and you have to make these choices to do it.’ Whereas when I think, when we're—When I was growing up, I always was like, ‘Oh, to be creative has to have this magical quality. And it has to strike you like lightning, and it's not work and you don't sit down and do it every day.’ [Laughter.]

Jami: I just was on some panel where we were talking about this. It is a magical quality. But you have to show up in the first place to receive the magic. And that's the work part of it.

Alicia: Yeah. Yeah. 

No, and I love the line in I came, I Came All This Way to Meet You where you say, ‘I had to be a good writer. And I had to be a good salesperson.’ And it's interesting, because you just kind of plainly said the thing that I think we're not supposed to say about being a writer and the tension of selling and writing and creativity and how these—How are you feeling now about those things as a relationship?

Jami: I'm looking down as we're talking, ’cause I'm looking at my notes, ’cause I was thinking about it a little bit this morning. 

So I would say there's two things. One is that having been in the publishing industry for—My first book came out in 2006. So 16 years of it. I recognize that when you put out a book, it's more than just you. There's a marketing team. There's a book designer, there's an editor, salespeople. There's the assistants. There's everybody who does it. And so to me, them and also coming from a place where my dad was a traveling salesman, and my parents owned a retail store as well. I'm probably the perfect person for that to be sympathetic to this. Although frankly, I'm not a team player. I'm really about other people succeeding at their jobs. I appreciate it when people succeed at what they're trying to do. 

So I don't have a problem with doing certain things that are sales oriented in order to support my work, because I feel it's not—Me writing it is one piece. That's the art part of it. But once I sell it, then it's a product. That's a really seamless clear transition to me. When it's done, it's done. And now, what can I do to help you? And hopefully, you're gonna do things to help me. And so, we all have to work on it together. And I think that that has been beneficial to my career in a lot of ways. And I think it makes it, ensures that I continue to get published, because people know that I understand what the game is. 

Yeah, at this point in my life, through trial and error, I figured out things I don't want to do and things that I’m willing to do. And then also, the things that I'm good at doing. And I've been public facing for a long time. You had that thing in your newsletter recently about being public facing and reels, which is—I can't tell you how many people I know who are like, ‘F****n’ reels!’ And I'm not doing them. I just sort of refuse to do that. But I don't think I have to do that. 

But anyway, I've been public facing for a long time. And I've given too much of myself, certainly online. And then I've walked it back, meaning not, meaning I've regretted that, what I've done. And also my life is way less interesting than it used to be when I was 29, writing about my sex life online or whatever it was I was doing then.

But basically, I would say actually, summer 2020 was the kind of a turning point for me, where I was like, ‘I do so much stuff online.’ I have this, the 1000 Words of Summer that I do, which is I have my own newsletter, obviously. And then I do 1000 Words of Summer thing, where it's 15,000 people. Everybody's writing. And I was doing Zoom teaching sessions and things like that. I was really, like everybody else summer of 2020, just losing their mind. And I really had to sit down and reassess what I was doing, what I wanted the internet to do for me. I was just saying this morning on Twitter that my goal is always to get more out of the internet from the internet gets out of me. So I had to really sit down and figure out what I was, what information I was willing to put out there, what I wanted to accomplish, all this kind of stuff, especially because we were really living—we had been living online. And now, we're really living online. 

And so, I made a list of things I was, topics that I wanted to put out there. And I talked about, to myself, about how, what kind of help I can provide? Because that's really up to me. I mean this in a non-cynical way. But I think that if you can figure out ways to be positive online, and be helpful to other people, then it is beneficial to your career, or the—think of it as a project, right? The project of my life more than career, because there's plenty of things that I do that I don't make a dime off of. But they are all part of this huge art project of my life. 

Ok, I think that's all I wanted to say about it. [Laughs.] We can talk about it. But do you know what I mean? It's really about, yeah, wrestling control of it and say, and not looking at what anyone else is doing. But looking at what your skill set is and what makes you feel good. And I like entertaining people. My dog makes me feel good. I know it’s a total dopamine rush. But people like my dog. And that's fine., that's yeah. I just would rather be positive online than not positive online.

Alicia: No, yeah. I think I'm learning this too. That doesn't help anybody to be s**t talking or negative. And it's hard for me [laughter] as a mostly negative person. 

Jami: Yeah, and you’re a truth teller. I'm a truth teller, too. It's not that I'm not ever negative. I think you have to be honest about it. And especially as a thinker, a participant in culture, that kind of thing. But where you focus, you really choose to focus your energy. 

I sound very hippy dippy. [Laughs.]

Alicia: No, you don't ’cause it's real. And yeah, we've been on the internet for so long now, at this point, everyone, I think. But it's so different now. And I think that's the tension that I'm always teasing out, is that I used to have a relationship with the internet, like you were saying, where I got so much more out of it than it got out of me. And now that definitely changed. 

Considering how to reassemble a positive relationship with the internet, where it doesn't feel like a vampire to just open an app, is really important. I mean, I guess, or people who weren't on the internet all the time are here. And they have a voice, and they think that they need to—the way people are and be nasty and think that that’s ok. And that sort of thing.

Jami: It's out of control, but it's also it's too—it's so far gone that it doesn't even matter. It’s beyond me. So I'm just like, ‘Whatever.’ I'm just gonna do the thing that I do, and that's fine. And they can do what they're gonna do. And I can't save the world. And I can only just put out what I can put out because it's too—I'm not their mom. Or whatever. 

Alicia: But there are a lot of people looking for moms on Twitter. [Laughs.] 

Well, why did you want to write a memoir now after so many novels? I heard you talking about this on The Maris Review a little bit.

Jami: I don't know why I did it. No, I know why I did. I'm very shut down about it, I have to admit. 

So it came out on January 11th. It's April 4. So it's been out for a little bit. I basically put it out, did everything I was supposed to do for the month that I came out. It's also two months beforehand. So I do interviews and all this other stuff. So it's really two to three months. It used to be, in the old days, that you would have a book, you would do a bunch of stuff a month before it came out. And then, you really would talk about it for 2, 3, 4 months. And now, the cycle is everything happens before and then one month after. And then, the next thing steps in. Even the biggest sellers in the world. Hanya Yanagihara’s book was massive. And I think after a month, it was like, ‘Ok, she did everything she was supposed to do. Right, who's next? Who's next on the list?’

So yeah, so anyway, I put in a lot of effort around that time. And then, I immediately went offline for the month of February and worked, which was delightful. I wasn't on Twitter. I wasn't totally screen free. It felt real, real good. Now I'm back on a little bit. And I'm not really answering your question. I'm gonna answer your question, eventually. So now I'm back. And I'm going to start doing some touring again and think—this summer, I’m gonna do some stuff. And I have some speaking engagements and things like that. So I think I'm sort of back in the game. And I thought I would have perspective on it. 

I couldn't write another novel, because I had written seven. I needed a break from writing novels. So my way of taking a break, we don't get to take a sabbatical, was just to write a memoir. Fortunately, I had sold the book before that right before the pandemic hit. So I at least had that project to work on, and it was really poor—I thought I was gonna be writing it here and there. I'd be traveling, whatever. I just had a book come back. And instead, I was just really living with myself at home, really no escaping me while I was writing a memoir. I was a lot. 

I definitely think, because I was about to turn 50, that was part of it. I had some perspective, finally. It was really kind of spanning maybe 20 years of my life, my writing career, mostly focused on my writing career more than anything else. Left a little bit to childhood here and there, a little bit to the modern day here and there. I thought I had only been writing part of the truth the entire time that I have been reading nonfiction, 20 years of nonfiction, alongside 20 years of writing novels. And I thought that it would be worth it to try and explore these essays that I wrote that were 1200 words for the back of New York Times Magazine. What does it look like if they get expanded? How do they all fit next to each other? A lot of these chapters were like five essays that were not chopped up but had a very kaleidoscopic effect in the writing of the book. And then there were things that I thought were really important that I would have sworn would have been l huge focal points in the book, essays I'd written that ended up being just like a paragraph. And then I was done with it. 

It was really an interesting experience in that way. The process of it was actually, I learned so much from the process of it. I learned new things about my writing. I really just thought I needed to try something different, a different genre, and I thought I was ready to write about myself. I don't ever want to look at this book again. And right now that's how I feel. Yeah, I don't even know how to respond to it. I think I get that way with all my books. And then I look back a couple years later, and I'm like, ‘I knew a big word,’ or whatever. That’s a really fancy word that I put in there. How did I even come up with that? I don't know what it means now.

Yeah, I don't know. I can't wait to see. I will say that I'm getting really positive responses to it from people. I'm sure there are people who hate it. But I have been getting really nice emails that are different than the emails that I usually get for my fiction. Because it's me, so they're responding to me personally. Please do send me a nice email about my work. I'm happy for it to have meant something. You don't sort of, don't know how to respond to it. I really thought I was not particularly likable in that book. And I am fascinated that people emailed me and were like, ‘I'm pretty sure we would be friends.’ I’m like, ‘Are ya? I'm not that good. Did you read the same book? I’m kind of shitty. Are you sure?’ Anyway.

Alicia: I didn't come away thinking you were shitty. So I don't know. [Laughs.]

Jami: I suppose we all are. 

Alicia: Do you think it would have been different if you weren't writing it during the pandemic? Did you anticipate it being different? 

Jami: For sure. Because there's the present tense of the book became—I thought I would be writing it while I was traveling. Because I had had six months of touring planned out, because in my old life, it was—that's what I did. I had a book come out, and then I toured for the next year, with little breaks here and there. And then, I'd write here and there. And so I thought, 'I'm gonna be writing this while I'm traveling.' And that's gonna be part of the process. 

And instead, I was writing it from a, I think, a wistful or more full place where I might have—If I were traveling and exhausted and had written it, I might even have been more critical. Instead, I was like, 'Remember that time? I was so happy there, wasn't I?' that I think that was different. 

I think everyone had—Not everyone. Can't speak for everyone. I think a lot of people that I know had some come to Jesus moments over the last couple of years about who you are, what you're doing with your life? What kind of person you are? What you can handle? How are you a part of your community? How do you feel about your community? All that kind of stuff. And so that, I think, played into it in a way that I wouldn't have had to think about if I were still on the road running around. 

I'm certain it would have been a different book. I'm certain of it. And so then, you write the book that you can write.

Alicia: Well, has this time changed your relationship to traveling? Because you are moving in the book. Also in life, of course. You're traveling so much. Do you feel differently about travel now?

Jami: I will say, maybe it was my sabbatical. Even though I wasn't traveling. If you'd asked me six months ago, I would have been like, 'Great. I don't ever want to travel again. It's fine.' I feel I needed the break. And now, I'm so hungry for it. I can't wait to get out in the world. 

I'm doing a European tour in two weeks. And I just kept adding vacation time in there. I'm gone for three weeks. And I think I have seven events in three weeks, which means there's a couple cities I'm going to that are just kind of for fun. That's just for me. And I will be super broke at the end of it. But I don't, kind of don't care. I don't know. I will have to write a little bit more than I want to. 

The only thing is that I write a lot in the book about how—There's a big chapter about my flight anxiety, and I had really pushed past it. And have found now that I'm flying again enmasked that it has returned. I'm doing a whole layer of work on that that I hadn't anticipated having to do. I thought it was fine. And then I had set up meetings, all these systems into place when you have anxiety. A lot of those systems aren't really available to you when you're wearing a mask. And when other people are wearing masks. And so, that's my only challenge.

I think I'm gonna spend way too much money in my life on upgrading my seats. I just had this whole Twitter thing where I posted about aisle seats versus window seats. 20,000 people responded to it. Because I'm such an aisle person. But window people are super window people. 

Actually window people have their own form of anxiety, too. And that means to them, it feels like it's a cocoon and it's safe and everything like that. And it ended up being kind of exposure therapy for me in this weird way of seeing all these people talking about their feelings about where they sit on an airplane. Twitter was helpful for me in that way.

But I still don't know, those middle-row people.

Alicia: Very, very, very odd to me. I have to be in the aisle. I don't like to have to bother someone to get up. I would rather be bothered by someone than to be the botherer. I think that's the question really, is would you rather ask or be asked [laughs] to get up? I don't know what psychological meaning that has really, but it seems like something.

We talked about this though, yeah. How has New Orleans changed your life other than it being an easier place to live as a writer?

Jami: I now have a little house here. So I like that when you own a house, your life changes in certain ways. You have certain kinds of responsibilities. It makes me feel safe to have a mortgage, because I rented for so long. So I think being a homeowner means something to me.

I would say, I see people more. I see friends more. I really appreciate now that I have the opportunity to see people in my community all the time. I miss a little bit maybe of the anonymity in New York, where you could walk out your door and not see people and just go out about your day and make the choices that you want to make. And here, it's you walk out your front door, you're gonna run into three people you know. Especially with the dog. All the dog people know each other. Everyone lives in houses versus large apartment buildings, and things like that. 

It's just different. It's a much tighter and closer community. The weather's better. It really doesn't mean a lot to me to have better weather. New Orleans has many, many problems as a city, but I still love it here. I definitely feel happier here. Definitely feel happier here.

Alicia: Well, how do you define abundance? 

Jami: Well, I'm looking out my window, and there's just a huge loquat tree that is just full of orange. And I can walk out there right now and pull the fruit from the tree. And that feels like abundance to me.

Alicia: Well, for you is writing a political act? 

Jami: Yes, of course. Of course. What else are we doing here? 

Alicia: Usually asking people cooking, is cooking a political act? I want to be fair. They usually say yes, or no. 

But people, they'll say that 'me being in the kitchen isn't political.' Speaking of academics, I did a conversation with a professor, an English professor who has a novel out. And we were talking about this, and she was saying how there's so much labor involved in cooking. And I think that when people talk about cooking not being political when they're in the kitchen, and I think that they're doing a disservice to their own work.

Jami: I was thinking about how earlier you were talking about writing being labor, and there actually has been an internet discussion as of late about being a novelist being unpaid labor. 

I just have to say, no one's making you write a novel. No one's making you do any of this. You're choosing to do it because you want to. You chose it. You chose a hard path. We chose a hard path. But there are other paths that are even harder. And the fact that you even have a choice is amazing to do it. 

Sorry. I was just being a mom there. I was like, 'Oh, my gosh. I sound like such a mom.'

Alicia: Yeah, no, but thank you. Thank you for being here.

Jami: Yeah, sure. My pleasure.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in. 

Today, I'm talking to Daniela Galarza, the writer behind The Washington Post's Eat Voraciously newsletter, which goes out Monday through Thursdays offering suggestions for what to cook for dinner. We discussed how she went from pastry kitchens to food media, writing recipes for a broad audience with plenty of substitutions, and walking around Walmarts to see what kind of ingredients are available everywhere.

Alicia: Hi, Daniela. Thank you so much for being here. 

Daniela: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Daniela: I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, a few different suburbs. And my mom immigrated to the U.S. in her early adulthood, and my dad from Iran. And my dad moved from Puerto Rico to the mainland in—when he was 9 or 10 years old. And they met in Chicago and realized they had—I guess, they both loved to cook. Or they both loved food. And so growing up, I ate a lot of both of those cuisines, and also a lot of things that they kind of made up together. 

And then, when I started going to school, I started—my brother and I, who’s younger than me, started complaining that we weren't eating enough American food. I loved the Puerto Rican food and the Iranian food that I was eating. It's interesting that I, as a kid, just wanted macaroni and cheese and, from a box. And, I don't know, hot dogs, and—What else? Oh, and baked pastas. I wanted all of this Italian American food, which was so foreign to my parents. And they did their best to try to figure out what we would eat. That manifested in really interesting mas- ups. My dad's take on spaghetti and meatballs was spaghetti, really, really overdone spaghetti in, I think, a canned tomato sauce, and then a fried pork chop on top. And it would get cut up for me. Yeah, there were a lot of translations into American food that I ate.

Alicia: Wow. 

Well, and you've had such a long and varied career in food. So I wanted to start at the beginning. Why food? And how did you start your professional career?

Daniela: I don't know how I always knew I wanted to work in the food, in food, somehow doing something with food. I think I always gravitated towards the kitchen. It wasn't always a happy place in my home. I just loved eating.

Something I get from my mom that I'm more aware of now is a pretty sensitive sense of taste. And I think that that contributed to my enjoyment of eating different foods and different cuisines, whether I was cooking them myself or eating somebody else's at a restaurant or at their home. And that enjoyment—

I remember my parents. My dad was a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority. And my mom did many, many different jobs when I was growing up. And it was very clear that both of them worked to work, to pay the bills. And I came away from that experience never wanting to work a 9 to 5 and never wanting to work to just pay my bills. I wanted to figure out how I could work, how I could do something I loved and make a living out of it. 

And initially that was me wanting to go to culinary school. And I had a lot of notions of like, ‘Oh, I'll open a restaurant.’ Or ‘Oh, I'll be like a TV chef like Julia Child,’ whoever I watched on PBS growing up. And my mom had these very strong feelings about like, ‘Oh, you want to be, want to cook for people?’ And in some cultures that—there's a stigma. There's a class attached to that kind of service industry work. And I remember being so puzzled by that when I would hear that from family members just not understanding it at all.

Until I went into working in restaurants and saw how restaurant people are treated, saw how you were treated if you worked in the back of house at a restaurant in general and the assumptions that are made about you. And then, I understood her words a lot more. But I still had a lot of fun doing it.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, so you started out in kitchens, right?

Daniela: Yeah. Oh, I didn't answer the second part of your question. Yeah. 

I started out working in restaurant kitchens. My first job was working at a local bakery, selling the bread. And then my second job was at Williams-Sonoma as a food demonstrator in the local mall. And when I went to college, I worked in local restaurants to help pay for books and lodging. And that's when I started getting into pastry. I found some local pastry chefs that took me under their wing, and I got really excited about it and was a pastry assistant for a really long time. 

And then, after I finished college, I studied food history in college and found a number of really great professor-mentors while I was there who encouraged me to stay on the scholarly food path. They thought I would become like them, and I would teach food history or food anthropology. And then, I would write books about my research. Just that whole time, I was just like, ‘No, I'm gonna go become a pastry chef. I'm going to get this degree; I'm going to cross off my list. And then somehow, I'm gonna figure out how I'm going to pay these student loans back by working in restaurant kitchens.’

And so after I graduated, I went to the French Culinary Institute in New York City. And I had to work full-time while I was doing that. A way I found a job in New York was I just read. I started reading all of William Grimes’ restaurant reviews and looking for the ones that mentioned pastry chefs. And I cold-called all of those restaurants and just said, ‘I'm moving to your city. I need a job in a restaurant kitchen. This is my experience. Are you hiring?’ And most of these places hung up on me until one of them didn't. And I mean, I don't know if they still do trails, but I did a two-day trail where I worked for free for two days. And they observed my work and hired me. God, I had a job. I could move to New York, and I could go to culinary school. And I finally thought I had found my place—It's like, ‘I graduated college. And I found what I was, what I've always wanted to do. And I did it.’

I worked in pastry kitchens in New York, and went to France and studied a little bit more in France. And then got offered a job doing product development in Los Angeles. And I never wanted to leave New York. This was a really good opportunity. And it was also an opportunity for me to finally have health care benefits, which I hadn't had before. As you know, they're very rare in the restaurant. 

I went into that, and then the recession hit and this company basically went under. And a friend of mine at the time said, ‘Have you thought about writing about food?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it had been years since I thought about writing about food.’ I hadn’t thought about writing about food since I was in college. Yeah, they told me about an internship at Eater LA that was open, and I went and applied for it. And that's how I started writing about restaurants and food. 

That was really long.

Alicia: No, I love it. Because it gives me a better sense of—I knew you did all these things. But I didn't know how you know the chronology of everything you've done. And so now, it all comes together.

You've stayed really invested and interested in pastry. What keeps you so excited about dessert?

Daniela: When I was in pastry school, I didn't have a clear sense of what the North American public thinks of as pastry and how it fits into their daily lives and how essential it is. And then when I went to work in restaurant kitchens, they—that's where my first sense of pastry as a business came out. At the time, I was told by a number of restaurant people that the average restaurant sales for rest—in restaurants in New York City was about 30 percent, which was considered high nationally. So 30 percent of people that walk in the door of a restaurant were ordering dessert. And I just thought, ‘Oh, my God, that's horrible! It's so low.’

And it's about, if I'm devoting my whole life to this—but I also knew it from a practical standpoint, where it just so happened that the first restaurant I worked at the dessert sales were 90 percent. And that was because it was mostly a tasting menu. And the restaurant was known for its desserts as this sort of spectacle, and it was something that the chef really promoted. And so, I had this really early skewed introduction to how many desserts people would order at a restaurant. And then progressively in my career I realized, ‘Well, people are, just don't order dessert. They're always on a diet. They’re always making excuses. They’re too full.’

And I was the person at the end of the night. All the line cooks are cleaning up. It's 10, 11 p.m. The kitchen closes, but pastry stays open because people are having their after-dinner drinks. And then, they're gonna order dessert, or you hope they're gonna order dessert. And so, you have all your mise en place. You have all of your beautiful little cakes and the souffle ingredients and all of the things you have ready to go. And then they don't order dessert, and you have to throw it all away. 

And I was crushed. I was constantly crushed when people didn't order dessert. And then, you're walk home at 1 or 2 in the morning, walk 50 blocks home and would just be bummed out the whole time. And after that experience, few years of experiencing that, it just underlined for me the labor that goes into pastry, I feel is so much, can be so much greater than the labor that goes into savory food. And I want to value that. 

I find it exciting just because it's—Pastry is so many things, has so many different ingredients and involves so much chemistry. There's so many different components. And I feel it intersects with a lot of different arts, like architecture and the fine arts, and creates emotion for a lot of people in ways that savory doesn't always. And so, I appreciate it from that perspective, too. But I always think about the person at the end of the night that's waiting to see if you're going to order a slice of cake or a custard. I want to order it from them. Make sure they feel appreciated.

Alicia: I love that. 

You mentioned that you got that job at Eater LA after working in kitchens, working in product development. How did you transition? Because studying food history in college, of course, you have this bank of knowledge. And then, you have this wealth of experience of real restaurant labor. And you have this real knowledge, culinary knowledge. And so, how did that all translate when you ended up at Eater?

Daniela: It was a rough transition. I hope nobody goes back and reads my archives, I hope. I just want them to disappear forever. 

I mean, I was a terrible writer initially. But I was fortunate in that some of the people that I worked with—and Eater at the time was very small and scrappy. There was so much competition. There was always this feeling we have a chip on our shoulder ’cause we're just a blog. And so, we've got to really prove ourselves. And I don't know, I really glommed on to that. I don't know, I've also been sort of scrappy in my life and just had to make things work. And I think that I identified with that. I identified with ‘work long hours and do everything and don't get paid any money,’ because that was my entire youth and early adulthood. How to do it. I don't think anyone should have to do that. 

But that side of things, that's how I started reporting. I remember, we were always trying to be first on everything. I was just really good at talking my way into restaurants and asking if I could talk to people and asking a lot of questions and being curious. And I don't know, all of that, fortunately, came pretty naturally to me, because I didn't study journalism. But the parts of writing that didn't, and sometimes still don't come naturally to me, are just the practice of putting sentences together and building a story. I think I'm always gonna be learning that. I'm still learning that. I still feel like I struggle with it sometimes. 

But so, it was this progression from Eater LA. And then eventually, LA Weekly called and said, ‘We could pay you!’ Because I was working for free at Eater, and I said, ‘Wow, ok, yes, please pay me.’ And LA Magazine called and said, ‘Yes, we're hiring,’ and they paid a little bit better. And then, Eater came back to me after they got bought by Vox Media and said, ‘Well, we have more money.’ Because I basically said, ‘I'm not going back unless you can pay me a living wage.’ So they did, and I moved. That's when I moved back to New York from L.A., was to do that.

I mean, while I was sort of cobbling together this new, going from restaurant industry to journalism, I was working many small part-time jobs. I was working in marketing. I was working in consumer product PR, which was just a very bizarre space and weird time in my life. And I was working as a private chef. And so, I was doing a lot of different things at the same time. Oh, I was also doing farmers’ markets on the weekends; I was selling products for people that made pestos and tapenades and cheeses and things like that. So yeah, I was working many jobs all the time. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. That's such a hustle, my God. 

Well, and then you've been at Serious Eats and now at the Washington Post. And it seems you're doing a bit more recipe work right? In the last few years?

Daniela: This is the first full-time job I've had where I'm doing recipe development, and I'm so appreciative of it because I feel it ties all of my interests and skill set together. It was something I was looking for, was why I left Eater. 

Eater at the time didn't publish recipes. And they were really adamant about that. And I had pitched a number of avenues and ways for us to get into that space. They were shut down. And at the same time, I started getting contacted by other editors at other publications. And I was really curious about what it would be like to work for other New York publications. And so, I went freelance for a year and that was frightening. And also, I learned a lot—learned so much more, interestingly, about editing during my time freelance writing for other editors than I did at Eater. 

And then the Washington Post posted a job for a newsletter writer, and I really didn't think the world needed another newsletter. [Laughter.] I still kind of don't think the world needs another newsletter. It's shocking to me that people subscribe to my newsletter. Joe Yonan, the editor there, sent me an email and said, ‘You really should apply for this.’ And on the last day when the application was due, I remember I went for a walk around the block with my dog. And I thought like, ‘If I wrote a newsletter, what would it be like?’ And I wrote this application email and I got the job after a long interview process.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, how do you balance that now? Because you really are focused on the newsletter, but the newsletter is really intense the way you do it. It's Monday to Thursday. It's recipes. But it's also a ton of variations on those recipes for people who have different needs or different allergies. And then also, you're giving the context for the recipes as well, whether it's from a cookbook or it's from your own understanding. And that seems so much work.

How are you kind of balancing all of that now? And how has it been to have to be really kind of relentlessly creative in putting out this newsletter all the time?

Daniela: Yeah, that's a good question. It is a lot of work. And I tried to think about it as, manage the—

I guess when I feel burned out on the writing part, I go into the kitchen. It's using different parts of my brain. Just a weird way to say it. Sometimes I need to sit down and type my thoughts out. And sometimes I need to go into a kitchen away from a screen and put my hands in something. And that balance is really, I think, really helpful for me and really good for me, because I come up with ideas while I'm cooking. And then vice versa. 

Some people, I think, still think that I'm developing four recipes a week. No, that would be insane. I'm not doing that. I'm only developing one new recipe a week. And I develop those recipes throughout the month. And then I hand in a batch of recipes at the beginning of the month. And they go through an edit process and a testing process. And then, they get shot. They're styled and shot by a great team, shot by photographer Rey Lopez. And I just love his photos. 

And I'm so grateful that I get to work with this team of people who really help me remember that I have to keep this thing going. They're all these people who are depending on me to keep this thing going. Otherwise, I so admire people like you that have your own motivation. If I didn't know there were people waiting for my work in order to do their work. I don't think I would do anything. I think I would stay in bed all day. And it's this fear of letting people down that keeps me—Yeah, I do. really enjoy my work. And I'm really grateful I get to do it.

Alicia: How do you keep that fresh and provide so many substitutions too? Where did that idea come from? And how do you kind of conceptually think about that? How do you figure out where in the recipe, there's room for variation and play?

Daniela: I think that is something that came up organically as I was writing the newsletters. And it was initially inspired or prompted by the fact that the newsletter started kind of in the early days of the pandemic, or less than a year into the pandemic. And so, people were still really concerned about going to the market more than once a week, or more than once a month in some cases. And there was a lot more caution, and there was still an availability issue. The Washington Post also reaches an international audience. And so, when it was springtime for, let's say Washington, D.C., it was not springtime in Perth, Australia. 

I had information coming at me from many different places, many different sides. I knew initially, from the very beginning of the newsletter, I wanted to offer as many meatless options as I could, because it's just a way I'm trying to eat myself. And so selfishly, I was wanting to challenge myself to think more broadly about the way I eat and how I can, let's say, satisfy my cravings for certain things and maintaining a level of nutrition, but not always default to meat as the center of the plate. 

So, I started doing that, building off of what I learned. I lived in a vegetarian co-op in college for two or three years. And I learned so much from that crew of people. Shout out to the Triphammer Co-Op. I actually don't think it exists anymore. But it was a great, incredible group of people that were very committed to being vegetarian and vegan, and challenged my thinking as a person who grew up eating meat. That was my first introduction to taking a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet very seriously. And I learned so much from them. I learned all of the building blocks of what I know about vegetarian cuisine from them. 

And when I started writing this newsletter, I was thinking a lot about that. And I was thinking about how much I wished I could still talk to those people, and then just decided—it just sort of started to flow. Or it was like, ‘Alright, if I made this. If I got this recipe in my inbox, and I thought, ‘Ok, this sounds good, maybe I'll make it. But I'm looking in my pantry. And I don't have, I don't know, let's say all-purpose flour. I'm out of all-purpose flour, or I'm out of onions, or whatever. What would I do?’

And I think that most people who cook, who are very confident in the kitchen, and most people I happen to talk to like this the way we're talking? I think we know these things intrinsically. I think we know, ‘Ok, if I don't have lemon juice, I can use white wine vinegar. I can make it. I can make things work with these very obvious substitutions.’ But I also have a lot of friends who don't know how to cook at all. And I think about them in the kitchen. I think about them holding their knife, or I think about like, ‘Oh, if they saw this recipe, they would just assume they couldn't make it because they don't have rice in their pantry right now.’ 

And I'm just like, ‘Actually, maybe I can outline this in a way that's sort of easy to parse, and hopefully not too obvious for all the people that know how to cook, but also gives people ideas if there have an allergy to something, or they find cilantro doesn't taste good to that. What are the ways I can offer them ideas around that?’ And that has turned into this signature of the newsletter. I get dozens of emails every day from people who are like, ‘Thank you so much for putting that in there.’ I didn't consciously start doing it. It just started to happen. And I'm glad it's resonating with people. 

Alicia: Yeah, it's so interesting to find—when you are so obsessed with food, and you have kind of done all the trial and error over time. I mean, for me, I've learned how to cook through trial and error. You've learned how to cook in an actual formal setting. But for it to come really naturally, and that you think about these things is so obvious. It is a really delicate balance in recipe writing to speak to the people for whom it isn't a natural thing to substitute—

I made a Sohla recipe from Bon Appetit, an eggplant adobo, and it had pork in it. And I was like, ‘Alright, well, I'll just—I'll substitute that with minced mushrooms. And I'll just add more oil, so that there's fat there.’ But other people wouldn't think of that because they'll just be like, ‘Oh, it has pork in it. If I don't want to eat meat, I'm just not going to make this.’

And so that's why I think that your newsletter is so important, because it really does show people that thought process. And I think once people start to learn that, what can be substituted or what can be replaced and where there's room for adaptation, then their regular cooking is just going to get better because they're going to start thinking that way, too. Basically you're lending people your brain [laughs], which is a really great—the way you do it is so cool. And I love it because it makes it so clear and so simple. 

And I do think the Washington Post, maybe, it probably becomes more natural to you guys to be a little more open to meatless food, because Joe is the guy writing the bean cookbook and the plant-based cookbook and everything. [Laughs.] So is it kind of understood at the Post that you guys do these kinds of adaptations, or what is the conversation like if you can give any insight into how you guys talk about eating less meat or or giving those options?

Daniela: I mean, definitely think you should talk to Joe about it at some point. There really aren't conversations like that. Joe’s certainly never going to come out and say, ‘We can't publish this recipe because it uses this ingredient. And this ingredient is problematic, because whatever.’ He's just not that kind of person. He's a very open-minded person. And he's also just not naturally a judgmental person. I mean, he's definitely the best boss I've ever had. I'm not just saying that. It's one of two reasons why I'm still at the Washington Post, I can say that. And I so appreciate his openness.

It's more than when we talk about recipes, when we talk about what we're going to be making, he's so enthusiastic about his dishes. And it comes across in his writing, of course. And I think that rubs off on all of us in general. I think that approaching something from a place of enthusiasm, rather than limitation is a real—just so encouraging. It feels more encouraging to me.

Alicia: So I wanted to ask, you've lived in a few cities. How has that shaped your perspective on food and writing about food? Because yeah, you grew up in Chicago. You moved to New York. You lived in L.A.. Do your parents now, are in Arizona?

Daniela: Yeah. They're in Tucson. And I've been living with them in Tucson for the—almost the entirety of the pandemic, or almost two years now. 

And I will say, the assumptions that I want to say that maybe rural America makes of the coastal cities are entirely correct. And I say yes, just from having lived in those cities and been in those bubbles, and essentially still operating in those bubbles. And then living in Tucson, which is a much smaller city. I mean, it's landlocked, and it's also—It's west coast, but it's Southwest. And it has its own brand of politics. And I think it is a fascinating place to live, if all—if you've only ever lived in very, very large cities, because it really outlines for me the ways in which I'm biased, and the way I can make assumptions about anything. 

I mean, the way it plays out in the newsletter is when I'm developing recipes, I do actually go to Walmart and look and see what ingredients are available there on a regular basis because Walmart is the biggest supplier of food in the country. And it is still where most people are shopping. And if an ingredient can't be found there, it's—there's a good chance that the person reading the newsletter might not make that recipe. And I want to make sure things are available to people. 

Big guiding light from the beginning of the newsletter, and when I first—the newsletter concept was not my idea. That was Liz Seymour's idea. She’s a managing editor at the Post, assistant managing editor at the Post. But the way I conceived of executing her idea of this daily news, daily recipe newsletter was that if it was under the brand Voraciously, what does eating voraciously mean? 

And what it means to me is this really open-minded sense of what you're eating. I didn't want to just make whatever, 30-minute pasta dinners every night, obviously. I eat a variety of foods, and I eat from a variety of cultures, and I want it to represent all of that too. So it's a balance between understanding that not everyone lives in big cities. 

And I do hear from people who live in really small towns, and I constantly ask them, like, ‘What's it like?’ I want to know more. There's someone that emailed me who lives in a really remote place in Wyoming in a mountain town and can only go to a store once a month. And they just describe it as so peaceful. And honestly, that just sounds amazing. Sounds amazing to me.

Alicia: I love that you go to Walmart, because, while obviously I'm like, ‘Walmart sucks, is evil.’ But at the same time, I understand that.

The Walmart de Santurce is always packed, and they have a surprising variety that I think maybe if you never go to a Walmart you don't know that they have it. I found Brooklyn Delhi Curry Ketchup. I found Woodstock Farms pickles. They have a non-dairy section. Whenever I have to go for something random like a bike pump or a tube, I go and I look at all the food. And it is really interesting to see that it's actually not at all what people would assume. They also have local foods that they'll sell too. They adapt to what the culture is where they are, which it's not a black-and-white thing where they're forcing Kraft foods upon people or something like that. It's a lot more nuanced than that, which is super interesting. I think someone should write about how Walmart does food buying.

Daniela: I agree. 

And yeah, I want to reiterate, I go and look at what Walmart sells. I don't actually shop at Walmart. 

Alicia: It’s ok if you do. [Laughs.]

Daniela: But it's because I have a wide variety of places I can shop where I live. Tucson is not such a small city that there aren’t dozens and dozens of markets. But I respect the fact that a lot of people shop there, because they do have really great prices. I mean, really, it's a really affordable place to buy food, particularly if you're feeding a large family. If I was feeding a large family, I would definitely go there and buy an extra large bag of chips. Because, man, that's a good deal. 

Alicia: No, no, no. I mean, the food costs are insane right now. Everyone's doing Reels and TikToks about how much less food they can buy right now. Gas is super expensive. These are the things you have to think about when you are a recipe writer, is really, what are people actually going to have? And what are they going to have access to, and what's going to be affordable. I'm going to do a pantry series for the newsletter too. I'm thinking about that. 

But also, just by nature of living in a small city on an island have limited options. I don't have maitake mushrooms, as much as I would love to eat a maitake a lot. I can't get them. I can’t always even get organic tofu. I have to get just non-GMO tofu. And these are such little things, but they're things that I really took for granted all the time. 

And I think a lot of people take for granted all the time, is it—when you're living in New York or something is that you can go to a glorified, one of those glorified, gentrified bodegas and get Miyoko's vegan butter. I have to make a very special trip if I want to do that. There's so many things I have to consider when making decisions that I never used to think about. It makes things way more interesting if you do that, if you think about, like, ‘How can I break something down to its absolute essentials, and still make it really, really good?’ I think that’s where we're, where you get to change people's thinking about what it means to cook at home, and how delicious and how accessible that can be.

Daniela: Exactly. 

I want to go back slightly to something, that point of something we were talking about earlier, which is that this idea of giving people these other options and substitution suggestions opens the door for them to learn about how they want to cook and learn about—I mean, obviously learn about these options. 

It was also, for me, kind of a rejection of this notion that I think food media has had for a really long time that you must make the recipe exactly as written, or it might work, won't work. I think there was a lot of steering people away from trying things a different way, because then they're gonna come back to the publication and say, ‘This recipe didn't work.’ I think that there is a lot of almost satirical cases of this, where people are writing in and being like, ‘I made this meatloaf, except I didn't use any meat, and it didn't work, you know?’ And it's like, ‘Ok, well, obviously, it wouldn't work.’ But there are ways that you can make substitutions. 

And I think that it's also giving people permission to trust their instincts a little bit. I guess I don't make any recipe exactly as written, usually. And maybe that's because I'm more confident in the kitchen. But I can also see my friends who aren't as competent in the kitchen looking at a recipe and say, ‘Well, it’s telling me to add a whole tablespoon of salt. Maybe I don't like it that salty. I'm not going to add a whole tablespoon right now.’ I can see them making their own judgment calls. And I want to give them permission to do that. Because I think that's when you feel empowered in the kitchen, you feel more confident. And that's when you open the door to sort of a more exciting cooking life, I think.

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

And so I wanted to ask you, how do you define abundance?

Daniela: You, helpfully, sent these questions in advance. And I've been thinking about this for a while now. And I think just coming at—I mean, I still feel we're in a pandemic. And I have felt very closed off from my friends and family, some other family that I'm not living with. And I felt disconnected from the social environment. 

And so, I think of abundance as eating with other people. Really sharing a meal with people and relishing the experience of talking to them, whether it's about the food or something else, that makes me think of just a table, a table full of food, but also full of people. I miss people. 

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Daniela: Well, I think yeah, I think any kind of consumption in a capitalist society is political, can be political. But I also think that sometimes when I'm cooking—and this is again, before the pandemic, when I was cooking for people—I was cooking out of love. I was cooking because I wanted to make ‘em happy. So maybe I wasn't always conscious of the decisions I was making in terms of where I was buying my food or what I was buying or what I was cooking, or whetherIt was cooking on gas or electric, whether I was cooking in a stainless steel pot or aluminum. All of these potential decisions were fading into the background. But in general, it is a political act. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for coming on today. 

Daniela: Thanks so much for having me.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to “From the desk of Alicia Kennedy”, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I’m talking Robert Simonson, a contributing cocktail writer at the New York Times, Punch, and other outlets. He’s the author of many cocktail books, including one of my favorites, A Proper Drink: The Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World

We discussed how he went from theater critic to cocktail writer, the methodology behind 2016’s A Proper Drink, launching his newsletter The Mix, and the non-alcoholic beverage scene.

Alicia: Thank you so much for being here, Robert.

Robert: Oh, it's my pleasure.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Robert: Yes, I grew up in a small farming community in Wisconsin. It had the name Eagle with about 395 people in it. And my parents had moved there for a change of pace and their lifestyle, and we lived on a working farm. So my mother had a huge vegetable garden and my father raised pigs and other animals, so I kind of grew up knowing where all the food came from, all the vegetables came from our garden, all the meat that was in the large freezer in the basement, had once been living on our land, and we sent it away to a butcher and it came back. 

So I guess this kind of gave me a sort of a trusting attitude towards food, which is perhaps not well founded or well founded and how you look at it. I was very lucky in that respect. My mother was a good cook. She made a lot of, you know, home meals, mainly Germanic, the kinds of things that you would get in Wisconsin. And of course, you know, you eat a lot of cheese out there; you eat a lot of bratwurst. One thing we did every summer that I did not realize was special until the last ten years is, we took one of our pigs and we roasted it whole over a spit and we invited all the family over and we had this day-long pig roast. I think at the time as a kid, I probably thought it was pretty gross. But now of course, you know, that's, that's a very cool thing to have.

Alicia: [Laughs] Well, when did you end up coming to New York then?

Robert: I came to New York in 1988. I came here to go to graduate school at Hunter College.

Alicia: Nice. And what did you study? Did you study journalism?

Robert: I had studied journalism and English Literature at Northwestern University in the Chicago area. And I came here with the quixotic idea of getting a master's degree in dramatic criticism, which is not, you know, a going concern, not a way to make a living. But that's what I wanted to do. I really wanted to be a drama critic. My family is a theater family; they're a group of actors, directors and designers. I've… I've always been a writer, I knew I would be a writer from the age of 11, or 12. So that seemed what my role should be, although later on, I tried playwriting as well.

Alicia: What did you take from dramatic criticism that now sustains you as a cocktail writer? Because you really, you've spent most of your career writing about cocktails, right?

Robert: Yes, about 16 years writing about cocktails. There was a brief interval with wine, and before that, 15 or 18 years writing about theater. At first, I didn't see the parallels, but then they were very clear and right in front of me. Obviously, the bartenders behind the bar, many of them are former actors or current actors, but they are all performers, they are on a stage, we are looking at them, we are evaluating their performance, enjoying the show. The theater has a long and rich history, I always like the historical aspect if anything. And cocktails have been around for a long time, more than 200 years. So there was that history to dig into. There are a lot of traditions and superstitions; there are a lot of rituals surrounding both theater and the bar. So there's actually quite a lot between the two. And now… now in retrospect, I can see why I would have made what would seem like a very unorthodox career transferred from theater to cocktails.

Alicia: How did that transition happen? What got you actually started in writing about wine and cocktails and going more in that direction? 

Robert: I think after about 20 years of writing about the theater, I was, quite frankly, burnt out. The theater is a very small world, even in New York, and I felt I had written all the stories I had interviewed all the people I… I hadn't seen all the plays, but I'd seen hundreds upon thousands of plays. 

And I thought to myself, you know, does a person have to do the same thing their entire life? I knew I had to write but I was… I was tired of writing about theater. And I just looked around, like I said, I did wine for a while. I was always fascinated with wine. I educated myself and wrote about that for a while. But then I found out that the wine world is kind of stuffy, frankly. 

And also there were… there wasn't a lot of opportunity there. The people who write about wine are quite entrenched, and they don't really open the door for a lot of new people. And then I discovered—this was like 2006, and the cocktail world was just discovering itself, and at least bartenders are reclaiming cocktail history, bringing back all these classic drinks, opening cocktail bars. So I was able to kind of get in on the, you know, so called ground floor on that. I'd always been interested in mixology and cocktails. Again, this was a thing that was in the back of my head, I didn't really realize it. But my parents always, you know, steadfastly honored cocktail hour, my mother drank old fashioneds. My father drank martinis. I'm from Wisconsin; drinking is a big part of the culture. 

And so I was fascinated with how you put those drinks together and where they came from, and where the names came from, and all that stuff. And so I made that switch and I'm glad I did.

Alicia: Well, and your book, A Proper Drink: the Untold Story of How a Band of Bartenders Saved the Civilized Drinking World, is one of my favorites, because it caught me up to date on all these things that I had missed in the cocktail world, and then kind of came into it late. What was the research process for writing that book? Because it really is such a deep and extensive historical record, but also has a real narrative thrust to it as well.

Robert: Yes, that was the second cocktail book I wrote, after The Old Fashioned at that point, it was in the middle of the 20 teens, it was about 2014. And I was looking around and having this historical bent in my mind, I was thinking what history is happening right now in the cocktail world, in the bar world. And nobody's really writing it down. 

I mean, they're writing it down piecemeal, article by article, but they're not taking the broad view…long view. And part of what we were all doing as cocktail writers was trying to rediscover the past because it hadn't been written down very well. So we were going back, like, who were the bartenders who created these cocktails? Why do we drink martinis? Why do we drink old fashioneds? How do you make them all that kind of stuff? So I thought, Well, let's not, let's not go through that again… let's write it all down while everyone's around, and everyone's alive, and the bars are still alive. And you can interview everyone. I went to 10 Speed Press, which is my publisher, and they thankfully took the idea I was… I was happy and surprised. And then, of course, I had the task in front of me, which was a daunting task. And so I interviewed more than 200 people in several countries, a few continents. It was just a matter of doing one after another.

You just couldn't look at the entirety. So you started with one interview. And then it went on, I think I interviewed Dale DeGroff first, who seemed like the perfect choice for the first interview. And at this point, I had been writing about cocktails for about eight years, so I knew all the players and they trusted me when I interviewed them before and wrote about them. They knew that I wouldn't do a disservice to them or the history or this culture. I did the interviews and I think it took about a year and a half to do all the interviews. Then of course, you have to transcribe the interviews, which is absolute torture; it took so much time. And you know, just thinking about it right now, I'm exhausted. I could not… I can tell you right now, I could not do that again.

If you… if you had given me this book contract today, I could not do it. It's just too tiring. It's the hardest thing I ever did. But I'm glad I did it and I'm glad I did it at the time I did because as you know, some of the major characters in that book are no longer with us. 

So I got to talk to them. But while they… they were still here.

Alicia: Right, and, you know, there is a quote from Giuseppe Gonzalez at the start of chapter nine that ever since I read the book, I think about this quote all the time. But he said when you think of the classical bartender, it's always a tall white guy with a funny mustache. And he goes on to say how that erases people like him, Audrey Saunders, Julie Reiner. And that's been a real guiding point for me, but, you know, how have you tried in your work to kind of write the modern history of cocktails, not just in that book, but in your… in your journalism that you do, really do a justice to how diverse this… this job is really, and how diverse you know, the world of cocktails is. There's cocktail bars literally everywhere now in the whole world where they're all doing different things.

Robert: Yes, yes. That's a great quote by Giuseppe, that moment. Giuseppe was always a good interview, he was always very unguarded, and candid. And the moment I heard that, I thought, Well, that's gold. That's going in the book. 

Alica: Yeah. [Laughs]

Robert: And there's a reason I started a chapter with it, I knew it was a good quote. And it was an accurate quote; he was absolutely right. Happily, this world is becoming a more diverse world. I don't think it was when the craft cocktail movement began. All the people in it were just so excited about what was happening that bartenders were being respected again and cocktails were being made well again and seen as the liquid equivalent of what was going on in the kitchen. It was just this sense of discovery that they weren't necessarily looking around and aware of whatever inequities were right within the community. And they were, quite frankly, the same inequities that you see in every other field of enterprise, and achievement. One of the good things, I think, that has happened over the past two or three years is, the cocktail community has begun to recognize that and try to correct that. Bring more diversity, because it was an overwhelmingly male world, and overwhelmingly white world and these were the people who were interviewed. So I'm just as much at fault as anybody.

But, you know, with the #MeToo Movement and the Black Lives Matter Movement, it opened a lot of people's eyes, both within the bar world and the people who cover the bar world. And so you start to reapproach your job, reapproach your assignment and say, like, well, who have I been neglecting? And maybe I should stop interviewing the same people over and over again, and look a little deeper and find someone else, you know, and concentrate on bars that are owned by women, that are owned by people of color, also, to look back into history, and find out those forgotten figures, which were indeed, you know, forgotten, and written out of history. They were there, though. And so it's… it's been our job to tell their stories, bring them back, I still think there's, of course, lots of work to do. 

Alicia: Well, you know, you recently launched a newsletter called The Mix, which is about drinks, but it's also, you know, a really, really big mix of content and subject matter. So what was your inspiration for going independent right now?

Robert: Well, so many things changed during the pandemic, during the past two years, I think, you know, the scales fell from everybody's eyes. You know, what their lives were, what their employment was, what… what the greater culture was. Freelance writers are no different. You know, we fight and scrap and, you know, scrape together our living, you know, day by day. And then something like the pandemic comes along, and like, the scaffolds fall down, and then you realize you have no support whatsoever.

Alicia: Right. [Laughs]

Robert: It got harder to get assignments. I don't envy, uh, the editors and publishers; they didn't know what to do any more than we knew what to do. But at the same time, you have to make a living. And so I was lucky, because I was working on two book assignments during the pandemic, and that kind of kept me afloat. For much of it. 

But I knew that I had to reorganize my career to, I don't know, just find a new way to go about the same thing that I was doing. And I, quite frankly, I had never heard of Substack before the pandemic came along, and suddenly, there were lots of articles about Substack, talking about people like you, and people like you became an inspiration. You know, I was looking at what you were doing; you were charting your own territory, you were becoming independent and writing about what you wanted to write about. And that was very appealing to me. And it also allowed me a lot of freedom, because I can choose what I want to write about. I think there used to be a lot more generalists in journalism, who could write a little bit about everything. I've always been pigeonholed: I was pigeon holed as a theater writer and then I was pigeon holed as a cocktail writer. It's kind of a miracle that I actually got out of theater writing, because they… once you're in the box, the editors don't let you out.

And I love… don't get me wrong. I love writing about cocktails, and bartenders. It's a very nice box to be in. But it's not the only thing I'm interested in. And now that I have this newsletter, I assigned myself you know, I can write about food, I can write about travel, I can write about regional eating traditions, I can… I can even go back to the theater. I mean, once I left the theater, I sort of burned all those bridges, and they cut me off, you know, no more theater tickets, no more free theater tickets. But now if I choose to, I can. And we've been doing it for six weeks and it's well, you know, it's a tremendous lot of fun. I don't know if you thought… do you find it fun? I find it fun.

Alicia: I find it fun, it's… it's interesting. I mean, like you, I like to write about lots of different things. I started out as a writer thinking I'd be a book critic and so my first love is literature. And so I felt like I never got to talk about books anymore when I was a food writer, you know, and then… but even when I was, you know, writing about food, you know, as a freelancer and as some as not really a contributor, any… to any one place, I got to write about tons of different things, but at the same time, you know, people would be like, well, you sort of dabble in this world, but you're more of this world and then someone else would be like you're really of this world but you dabble in this other world like and so it was always this kind of trying to pin you down, always. So that was that… 

Now, as someone writing for myself and doing more essays and cultural criticism, I get to kind of combine everything that I care about. And I think that the reason I've had a moderate amount of success in this format is that people want that; people want to see, like—people love a voice, obviously; this is why we love art—but also people love to see connections between things, you know, we aren’t all people who just, we just go out to eat, or we just read books, like we all do all of these things. And so it's like, how do all of these things that I care about fit together? And I think that the reason we've seen so many writers really take to doing newsletters is because finally, they have a place to do that without editors saying like, no, you only can do this. And the only places I've found where I'm allowed to do that, at a bigger scale, are like literary places that don't pay well at all. 

And so, you know, you're doing 3000 words, and doing really what you want to do and like weaving all of these things together, and then you're getting like, you're spending hours and weeks on it, and you're getting not even the equivalent of a month's rent. So at least within the newsletter format, you can kind of set your own boundaries, and trajectory [laughs].

Robert: That's right… I mean… that's why I called it The Mix. I struggled with the title. And The Mix, of course, is evocative of mixology. You know, and I know that most people are going to come to the newsletter looking for that drink stuff. But it's also a mixture of material and hopefully are getting… people are getting that, you know that yeah, just like I'm going to get a little bit of this a little bit of that little from Column A, Column B. And, and then they like that, but it's wonderful, removing all those impediments. All those middle people, you know, between you and the reader. 

It's just wonderful. I will say that I have rather stupidly given myself 100 percent more to do. I write… I write twice as much as I used to and it's a little exhausting sometimes. It's a little overwhelming, because I'm still writing for the same freelance outfits that I did before, and I've still got a book too. But now I have to feed the beast, which is the newsletter.

Alicia: Yeah, no, finding that balance is really hard. How have you been? How have you been trying to structure your time these days?

Robert: Well, I've settled upon certain days that I post on the newsletter. And so the day before that is all work. You just wake up every day and you know what you have to write that day, and you get it done. The stuff for the newsletter doesn't seem like work, however, it just seems like fun. It seems like something that you're doing for yourself. I mean, I can tell you, most of the things that I write about are things that I would not be allowed to write about anywhere else. And whenever this story has been something that I really care about, and then really passionate about, or, or I'm just having a great time researching, it's never work.

Alicia: Right now is an interesting moment, though, in the cocktail world, like, how are you feeling about the rise of the nonalcoholic beverage and spirit and why? And you know, how is that? How is that fitting into your work? How is the, I would say, the rise of sobriety influencers as well—it's become a really interesting time to talk about drinking at all, because I don't know if you've found this, because people are really in a strange moment in their relationship with alcohol. How have you been experiencing this? 

Robert: Yeah, that's been an interesting trend and it's been going on for a few years. It was… it started before the pandemic came along but it was kind of pushed along by the pandemic. And we started out with low ABV drinks. I kind of think a lot of these things are often pushed by the bartenders themselves. I mean, we perhaps think that we're choosing our own drinking trends, but the person behind the bar decides what's on the list or what they're going to serve. And, you know, it could very well be you could argue that a lot of these people in the cocktail industry, perhaps overindulged for the first decade of this movement, and then they thought they took a, they took an appraisal of their life and said, I better take a few more steps back here, because this party can’t go on indefinitely. So they started drinking low ABV drinks. And then maybe some of them were actually quite a few of them stopped drinking altogether. And they said, okay, how can I have a good time in a bar if I'm not having an alcoholic cocktail? So they've come up with the low ABV drinks.

That's been interesting to see during the pandemic. There was a real swing toward the beginning. We were all in shock, and we're just trying to comfort ourselves. So there was a lot of overdrinking. And then after six months, it was like, okay, let's not drink at all. So it's just, it was a swinging from extremes. I quite honestly did not know how to approach the subject for some time. Because I have schooled myself on the history of cocktails and cocktails are alcoholic drinks. And that's how they were invented. That's how they were made. And the world of the bar—for much of the bar’s history was a place where you drink spirits, or beer, or wine, or whatever. And to a certain extent, I wondered if non-alcoholic drinks weren't better covered by food writers? Because I just kind of thought of them as soft drinks, you know? So maybe this should be written about by somebody other than me. 

But lately, I've begun to take them more seriously, look at them more closely. My wife recently decided to stop drinking for a while and so it became important to find good things to drink. And so I had to go out and she had to go out and find what were they offering in terms of non-alcoholic spirits? Every time we went to a bar, she would order the non-alcoholic option. And of course, I tasted all these, and then you, you come to find, you know, what are the faults with these things? Where are the good ones? Who's doing it well? Who’s doing it badly? Where do we have to improve? And I now see, one of the most important aspects of the genre. I think, to a certain extent, these things can only be made as well as they can be made, but I think the more important role they play is that they invite everybody into the bar. 

So everyone comes in the bar, everyone gets their special drink, they're comfortable, they have a good time, and they can hang out together, as opposed to hanging out in separate places. So I like the social aspect of it that has changed things in recent years.

Alicia: For sure. And you know, I'm not in New York anymore, so I feel very detached from what's going on. So now that we're kind of coming out of, I don't know, I feel like I don't want to say we're post-pandemic, of course, but I do want to say we're coming into a new phase, I guess, of the pandemic. And so, what's exciting about bars right now in New York, where are you finding excitement?

Robert: Well, bars have had to reinvent themselves in so many ways. We lost a lot of great bars during the pandemic here in New York, and the other ones have struggled mightily. I'm sure that they're still reeling. Actually, I think it… is it today, or was it yesterday that they lifted the vaccination requirements at restaurants and bars, which I personally think is a mistake. But that's how it is now and so they're gonna have to struggle with that as well. How are they changing, what's exciting? Right now, everyone's just so excited to go back out again and there are a lot of new bars opening, obviously, almost no new bars open for almost a two-year period. And now there's a kind of flood of them. And so there are conventional stories to cover, as there used to be. I think the smart bars are trying to figure out how to do business differently and better, because they realized their relationship with the government was broken… their relationship with City Hall, their relationship with customers was based on a lot of perhaps unhealthy assumptions and habits. Changes in how they deliver the menu. I've seen in real time, they offer a lot more non -alcoholic drinks, like we were talking about. It's been a big wake-up call. I don't think running a bar is—well, it never was really a carefree enterprise… running a bar is really, really hard. But I think there are more worries now. And it's just, it's also too early. 

Somehow after going through the pandemic, it feels frivolous and a disservice to talk about drinking trends. Like, you know, blue drinks are hot, you know, yeah, who cares? You know, we've got bigger fish to fry. You know, there are a lot more important things to write about.

Alicia: Well, that's actually really exciting to hear, because I can't wait to see what does change about… about cocktail writing and bar writing now that we've been through this and restaurant writing as well, because I think, yeah, when when you read a piece that kind of ignores all this context that we now have spent two years mired in, it feels very out of touch. And so like, how are people going to get back in touch with the audience? Is the audience going to be okay with talking about different things like labor issues, and you know, the policies that affect bars and restaurants, etc., etc.? So, it's going to be an interesting time for sure. 

So I usually ask people if cooking is a political act for them. Do you cook a lot?

Robert: I do cook a lot, and I cooked a hell of a lot during the pandemic. I'm pretty good. 

Alicia: For you, is cooking a political act, then?

Robert: Well that’s a good question. On one level, it's not because most of the time I'm cooking for my wife, or my son or my stepson. And so it's just a loving act, you know, a family act, but you do choose what you want to cook. I'm lucky enough to get a lot of cookbooks coming through the mail from 10 Speed Press and Clarkson Potter. And so I've been looking more at cookbooks of cultures that I'm unfamiliar with, or written by people of color and saying like, like, I've never made a dish like this, why don't we try? 

And so that's been eye opening, and very rewarding. So I guess you could say, in that small way, it's a political act.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here today and for chatting with me.

Robert: Oh, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Today, I’m talking LinYee Yuan, a design journalist as well as the editor and founder of MOLD magazine, which approaches food and the future from a design perspective. It’s one of the most innovative food magazines out there, with a global scope and an honest relationship to unpleasant realities like hunger, waste, and even fecal matter.

We discussed how the magazine came to be, how its point of view has been forged, and its trajectory from the microbiome toward its sixth and final forthcoming issue about soil.

Alicia: Hi, LinYee. Thank you so much for being here.

LinYee: Hi, Alicia. I'm so thrilled to be here with you today.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

LinYee: I grew up in Houston, Texas. I am a first generation Chinese American woman, and I basically ate all the things that kids in the ’80s ate in the United States. So Lunchables. I was obsessed with Cookie Crisps. I did the whole Pop-Tarts, all the things. But the difference is that my mother is a dietitian. And I just grew up knowing that those things were kind of foods that were just kind of special foods. So I would often go to friend’s houses to access those things. 

And because I'm Chinese American, we would typically eat some kind of Chinese-ish every night. My father is a man of ritual. And so, he's not super into being very exploratory with his kind of daily meal. So often growing up, my job when I got home from school–’cause I was a latchkey kid, ’cause it’s the ‘80s—my job was basically to make the rice. So I had to go into our chest freezer and dig out cups of rice, wash the rice, and then put it in the rice cooker. So that was very much kind of my experience growing up. 

My father was an avid gardener. And because I grew up in Houston, Texas, we had access to the water. And his other passion in life, besides gardening, is fishing. And so oftentimes, we would have fresh vegetables, fresh fruits from the garden, and fresh fish that my father had caught and then scaled and then cleaned and put them in the deep freezer. So that's basically how my parents still eat today. They do a lot of fish. They do rice at every meal. When the season is right, they eat a lot of vegetables and greens from their own garden. But we also would do at least a weekly trip to Chinatown to get Asian greens and other pantry staples that I grew up eating.

Alicia: And so, what first interested you in food? Can you give us kind of a bio, a rundown of your career?

LinYee: Well, I've always been interested in food, in the sense that food was always the centerpiece of any sort of familial gathering. As a child of immigrants, we would always make an excuse to come together over a meal. So whether that was just kind of weekend dim sum with my aunties and uncles and my grandparents, or going to my grandmother's house for a meal or something more celebratory. For example, now as adults, my family, we meet for Thanksgiving. And so, that's kind of our central purpose for meeting. Everything always revolved around what to eat. 

And so, I think that food always meant more to me than just a source of sustenance. There was always kind of a reason for celebration when it came to food. And it always meant family. And it always meant joy and connection. 

And so professionally, I have worked in magazines basically my entire career. And I was never really interested in food media and the way that we understand it today. I wrote about design. I wrote about culture. But the food media wasn't really something that seemed interesting or accessible to me. I wasn't really interested in restaurant reviews or recipe development even. 

But what I was interested in, especially in the kind of 2010s, was this culture of restaurant pop-ups. And so being from Texas, living in New New York, especially in 2010, there was no proper Texas-style barbecue here. And this was the kind of age of the Brooklyn Flea. And so basically, the moment I had access to a backyard in my personal space, I bought a smoker and started smoking brisket for friends with—over the summer. So I would host a little party at my house. And then I would just, I would smoke a brisket. 

And one of my friends who was also from Texas, who is also Asian American and first-generation was like, ‘Hey, we should just do this at the Brooklyn Flea.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, I just never thought about that. But ok, I'm down to try.’ And so we launched a little Texas-style barbecue business, and started slinging brisket sandwiches at the Brooklyn Flea. And so, that was kind of my first entry into a more professional understanding of food, besides being a waitress when I was in college and that type of thing. 

But again, not really interested in the traditional modes of working in food. I wasn't interested in opening a restaurant. Food has just always been part of my understanding of who I am and how I navigate the world and why I travel it. Why I would visit certain neighborhoods in New York, or even with friends at that age. And still today, we always gather around food.

Alicia: Of course. 

And so, how did Mold come to be?

LinYee: So I was working as an editor for an industrial design resource called Core77 when I started seeing a lot of really interesting food design projects. And they were primarily from students, often, or they were speculative in nature. 

But at the time, most design websites weren't covering anything to do with food design, because their focus was really on furniture and lighting, interior objects. And so I was like, ‘I love food. I'm interested in food. I am a design journalist. I'm very well situated to actually write about this.’ So I was like, ‘Well, let me just start a little nights and weekends project’ where I would write about these interesting food design projects that I would come across that didn't really have a lot of space in other places for publication. 

So Mold was just a nights and weekends project. I reached out to a friend who connected me with a designer. And I was like, ‘Hey, can you give me an updated Blogspot template, or maybe a Tumblr template for this project I want.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, actually, I can just design a whole website for you. It'll probably take about the same amount of energy.’ And so, I worked with him on creating a kind of vessel for these content ideas. And that was basically our online presence for the first seven years of Mold. And so, it kind of immediately became something that felt real. And that was the start of all of it. 

Alicia: That's so fascinating. Well, I worked in magazines, too. But I come as a writer from writing about literature, or writing about food, specifically on restaurants and the recipe development. So this whole other side of it that is more mainstream. 

And then recently, I've been reading so much about, not just with Mold, but also these writers, usually from the Netherlands, I don't know, doing, really thinking about food systems regionally and how design fits into all of that. And how architecture is a food systems issue. And things I hadn't thought about at all, because I never thought about those things at all. They weren't in my mental wheelhouse, I suppose. 

It's been so fascinating to find these actual connections, and I—it just seems such a lost possibility to talk about them more broadly, or in a way that's more accessible. It seems a lost opportunity for food media, specifically, not to be talking about how food fits into design and fits into landscapes. 

LinYee: I mean, it's insane because design is such this, a bit of an obscure profession in a lot of ways. Because on one hand, everything is design. Literally everything in your built environment was designed by a human. Somebody made a decision about the materiality, about its shape, about the way it was going to be produced, how it was actually going to—the system that not only makes the thing, but then gets it to you in a store or in your home is also designed. The system in which we live is designed. So everything that surrounds us is designed.

Yet nobody talks about design as a lever, as a kind of invisible kind of layer into the world that we live in. I think often because design is about complexity. The way that we're educated, especially in the United States, is not about complexity. It's about creating a lot of dichotomies. It's about enforcing binaries. It's about telling stories around ways that things cannot change. And so, I think that by introducing design as this kind of wildcard within the conversation about food, it makes people nervous. Because it's hard to explain why we have apples 365 days out of the year at every single grocery store, deli, bodega, whatever. You can get an apple, or one species of banana everywhere, all the time. So why is that? It's a huge question that nobody really wants to answer.

Alicia: It is so much complexity. And you're right. That is something we're trained not to do. I think the only time people in food media talk about design is to talk about a restaurant, how it looks. And that's literally the extent of it. 

LinYee: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

And so the one fascinating thing to me about Mold, and it's something that I'm—you can find in literature, you can find in art criticism, but you don't really find in food—is that it has a global scope. It's something that food magazines based in the U.S. tend to not be open to. Whetstone, always, is an exception, of course.

LinYee: Stephen’s incredible. 

Alicia: Incredible. 

And so, you claim the phrase ‘the future of food,’ too, without it being solely about food tech. Which is something I've been thinking about so much, which is how this phrase has become, to be the synecdoche for this one way of looking at the future in food. 

And so basically, how did Mold’s point of view come about to be global in scope, to be about the future, but to be so broad, basically, in what it will look at?

LinYee: So I started just being interested in food design as this weird emerging corner of the design world. And through the work of writing about a student project that was actually a poster project, I came to learn about the coming food crisis. And so in a lot of ways, this student project by an Australian designer named Gemma Warriner really did the job of what she had set out to do, which was to tell the story around the coming food crisis to raise this flag, that the United Nations basically warned that if we continue eating the way that we do today, that we will not be able to produce enough food to feed all 9 billion people by the year 2050. 

And that fact totally just stopped me in my tracks, I had A, no idea that there was a coming food crisis. B, didn't realize that it was literally like 30 years down the line. At that point, it’s 35 years or around the corner. And I was like, ‘That's within our lifetime.’ And there was consciousness around climate change at the time. But it's not the way that we talk about it, and the urgency that we talk about it today. 

And so, that student project completely shifted the course of the editorial focus for Mold, from being kind of a general interest in food and design into being kind of a warning bell to designers that, ‘Hey, you actually have the professional tools to offer solutions at various scales for this coming crisis.’ And so, that has been our focus and our mission since. 

And I think that the global scope of that is in a lot of ways the global nature of design, where oftentimes best practices and ideas from many different disciplines influence the way that we think about design. And also design, in some ways, it's kind of a—it's more of a scaffolding in a lot of ways. So designers are A, trained to ask the right questions. B, work in this very interdisciplinary way. 

And the future of design really lives in this idea of designing with people or designing with others, whether they're living or nonliving entities. And then there's a lot of space for that conversation, where that is not a—there's not enough space for that conversation in a lot of other fields. Just kind of planting my flag in the future of food was a way of signaling that we are facing this coming food crisis, but also to say, ‘Hey, we cannot address this in a kind of techno-bro kind of way.’ 

Design has always taught us that in order for something to be successful, it needs to be aspirational. It needs to be joyful. It needs to speak to the human condition. It needs to be emotional. And I think that those things, again, are kind of woven into the fabric of what design understands the world to be. And so, it's always grounded me in the fact that our solutions cannot be merely technological, especially when it comes to food. Food is not just a source of nutrients. Food is so much more, as your audience totally understands. And so, that's why I didn't think food tech was the sole answer. 

The other thing is that, let's just be honest, that food tech being heralded as the kind of future of food is about perpetuating systems of capitalism. Who owns food technology? I'm interested in design solutions or solutions that are grounded in systems that can be owned by people that are not—You don't have to pay somebody else to participate in this thing. But you have autonomy. You have agency. You have sovereignty to determine what your food future looks like for yourself, for your community, for your family. That's not the way that technology in the way that we think about it today works. It's very much about top down control. It's very much about hierarchies of like, ‘This is what you're going to eat,’ and this is how you're going to eat it. 

I mean, at the time, people were really excited about hydroponic greens grown in warehouses. And they were like, ‘That's the future of food.’ And I was like, ‘First of all, I am a person who doesn't eat salad, period.’ I mean, I do sometimes in the summer when I'm feeling a certain kind of way. But it's not part of my typical diet. And I'm sure, because I'm Chinese American, it's not part of a lot of people's diets. Basically, most of the people in the world are not eating salad every day. So I realized very early that those technological solutions were not for me. They want to try to solve for me. And once again, just being a little bit outside of that kind of, I would say, I—the person that those technological solutions are designing for allows me to be like, ‘Well, what else is there?’ and ask more questions.

Alicia: No, it's really funny that you brought up the garden, the hydroponic gardens, ’cause that's exactly how—that was my kind of introduction to food tech, and then, and the solutionism of it. And I was like, ‘But what is the end result of this? Is it we buy lettuce subscriptions? Am I going to have a Spotify subscription for lettuce?’ And just, ‘is that what you're envisioning? I don't understand what the purp—How is this literally the future of food?’ 

Also, a lot of that hydroponic lettuce has no freaking flavor whatsoever. What actually are we trying—’cause I used to work at Edible Brooklyn. For a few years, they had this event called Food Loves Tech, which was just my absolute nightmare. And so yeah, just trying to deal with that perspective on the future of food. I was like, ‘None of this makes any sense.’ And then, it just kind of got worse from there.

I think we're hoping, in a moment of a little bit of clarity around it. I don't know. This is what I'm asked to talk about to college students, like, ‘Wait? Are we supposed to be thinking about food like this? Is there another way we can think about food?’ So I'm hoping that we're kind of over the hump of food tech solutionism, because it is—It was a very troubling moment, and people made a lot of money off of it. People are finally kind of seeing the wizard behind the curtain of it all in terms of—Yeah. [Laughs.]

LinYee: I don't think that there's a single silver bullet for the future of food. And if you are somebody who eats salad every day, which is a lot of people in the United States, it's a great thing to be able to grow salad greens hydroponically. You're probably not eating them because you like the taste of radicchio. You're eating them for a different reason. So it's ok that maybe it doesn't taste the best salad you've ever had in your life or—

But I also am interested in how can we stop replicating the same extractive models that we have been working in over the last 100 years, this kind of industrial capitalist model? Where does that stop? And where can we find new models, or reach back for older models of producing nutrients, producing food that is culturally appropriate for the populations that are eating it? That reflect the actual capacity of the land that is being used to produce it? And I think that those questions are much more interesting than saying, ‘Ok, lab-grown meat or salad greens grown hydroponically is the only answer for the future of food.’

Alicia: Right, exactly. 

Well, Mold has had—as you know—Mold has had five print issues so far. How has the point of view of the magazine changed or not changed over the course of that time?

LinYee: So I think that this kind of interest in regional local solutions for our, models for our kind of new food systems, this interest has really come into sharp focus over the course of the last five issues. So if you look at the first issue, the order—The issues have been organized by scale, and in loosely, so from the micro to the macro. So the first issue was about designing for the microbiome. And the second issue was about designing objects for the table. The third issue was designing food waste. The fourth was about designing for human senses. And the fifth issue was about seeds, which we could talk a little bit more about later. But the idea was to go from the micro to the macro. 

And the first issue, there's a lot of kind of speculative projects. And I think that it was important to have more provocative ideas in the first issue, because it was a way to kind of capture our audience and engage them in these questions because they're visually interesting, but also asking you some hard questions about what your vision of the future of food should look like. But through writing about all these things, I realized that the most important thing is for us to actually have a relationship with our food, which is such a simple idea but one that is so divorced from our typical reality of eating and procuring foods. 

And so, now that we're kind of five issues in and then we're working on our final issue, right now, the focus on, ‘Well, let's ground these solutions in something that works for you and me, living in different places and recognizing that the solutions are probably going to be very, very different.’ There is not a single solution for the world. 

And there shouldn't be. That mindset is also a very kind of colonial understanding of the ways that work. So if we can just break out of this idea that there's going to be one answer for everybody, how does design that supports the kind of multiplicity, the complexity of living networks? And that living network includes the microbes in the soil, the pollinators in the air, the food itself that's being grown in the ground or not in the ground. All of these things are all networked together in this kind of what we think of as the food web. And what is the human place in all of that? How can it be more equitable for both—Or not both. Everything involved in this? Well, so that's kind of the progression. 

The nice thing about publishing an independent magazine without any sort of advertiser or kind of outside pressures is that we get to take that journey for ourselves. We get to come out the end and be like, ‘I'm in a totally different place than when I started.’ And I'm totally cool with that. But this is the thing that really gets me out of bed in the morning. These are the kind of intellectual—but also, I would say, life and death questions that I am most excited about talking about.

Alicia: I love that so much. Publishing independently, I think, is the only way to answer, ask those questions. Only way to really be engaged with the world. [Laughs.]

LinYee: And thankfully, we have new models and media that allow for that, because as you know, just a couple years ago, people were like, ‘Media is dead. Print is dead.’ And through that kind of fire, we have come with all these new, more interesting independent models that support independent people, independent ideas. And I'm so thankful for those conversations.

Alicia: Absolutely. 

And one of the things that strikes me in reading Mold is that it is a food magazine. It's about food, but it also acknowledges hunger. And it acknowledges the unpleasant aspects of food and the unpleasant aspects of food systems. And whether that's waste that is wasteful in general. Whether it's hunger, whether it's literally the fact that we excrete our food after we eat it—

LinYee: Well, s**t is food. [Laughs.]

Alicia: S**t is food! And so—[Laughs.] 

I mean, we've talked about how you've developed your perspective on these issues. But are there other publications, other media, other writers? Have you seen a different approach to food system issues emerge? And how have you gotten new insight, new perspective from, in food?

LinYee: Well, I think that the kind of reckoning of the last couple of years as mainstream food media has really brought a more, I'd say, global and diverse group of voices to the forefront. And I think that that's been very exciting for me, because we mentioned Whetstone earlier. But I love that Stephen has a South Asia correspondent for the work that he's doing. And even larger mainstream publications that we don't necessarily have to name are diversifying their editors and writers. And I think that's so, so critical just to have different voices that are going to reflect the reality of what it means to eat and drink today in the United States.

What would be really revolutionary would be to have people from various classes, actually, being able to participate in more mainstream food media? Food media comes with this understanding that you have access to all these things. And that's not true for the majority of people living in the United States. And so, what does it mean to have a complete, joyful meal for Americans or people living in the United States who don't have access to a grocery store in their neighborhood? Or a relationship with a farmer? I mean, what can food media do to support the idea that every person living in the United States should have access to—that would support both agricultural systems that are really floundering in the United States? A lot of small farmers are not making it out of this pandemic, with the people who actually need those nutrients. 

There's just so many ways that, I think, by talking about the food system as this kind of naughty, complicated place that is designed in a very inequitable fashion, just starting from that place of understanding would allow for so much more conversation to be had. A big difference, I think, between when we started and today is that many mainstream publications are recognizing that we are facing a food crisis. It's something that they might be wedging into the larger conversation around climate change, which makes a lot of sense, because agricultural production is one of the largest producers of greenhouse gasses. But also architecture and building and construction is one of the largest contributors of greenhouse gas. 

I mean, obviously, climate change is this urgent thing. But the way that we eat is very much entwined and entangled in this conversation. The fact that food media isn't ringing this bell every day is very, very disappointing and also, I think, a huge disservice to the people who read and enjoy media. 

Alicia: Yeah, no, it's hard. 

I did an interview last week that—when it comes out, that'll be very weird. But I was asked, ‘Why do I talk about sustainability and making one's food life sustainable, as though it is challenging? Why do I say it isn't easy to be sustainable?’ And I was like, ‘Well, because most people are floundering economically. Most people do not have the time, the access.’ And she asked specifically. And I was like, ‘Well, eating, caring about your food is a privilege because it is time expensive. And I think that you do a disservice to not talk about that time expense.’

And I think about that with how I write recipes, which is—A baking recipe is a different thing, because it's always going to be something kind of frivolous and unnecessary and whimsical. And that's what it's supposed to be. But when you're talking about a food item that you use to sustain yourself, it's like there's no reason for this to be unnecessarily complicated. There is a way to write recipes that tastes really good, but that are broken down into the bare necessities of what you need to get a certain flavor or a certain something. Basically I think that aspiration and accessibility can coexist. You just have to approach it in a way that is mindful of the constraints that most people live under.

LinYee: Yeah. 

And the capitalist constraints, right? Not to be harping on the capitalist system we live in. But I just think that if we're going to talk about the food system, we have to talk about capitalism. Because capitalism is telling you that your time should be focused on working. You are a worker within the capitalist system, and before our work was actually caring for our families and producing edible things to eat. And that was the work that we did. 

And so, if you really want to get into it with the time constraints, I have two very, very small children, so completely understand the challenges of what it means to feed your family with time constraints. But also, I'm interested in what it looks like to cook in a non-extractive kitchen, where we use things like solar cookers, or rainwater catchments, or thinking about kind of the circularity of the systems. And those things, in theory, are incredible if you live in a sunny place that also gets rain. But cooking on a solar cooker takes a really long time, and a lot of planning that you don't typically have the mind space to actually consider. 

And so yeah, I mean, I really feel for single parents out there, people who have multiple mouths to feed in their homes while working while trying to make time for themselves. It's an impossible task within the system. I think food is one of the best ways to be able to talk about these things, because it is—it affects everyone. It is a source of joy, typically, for people. And it's easier in a lot of ways to talk about how you make rice and—than it is to talk about the system in which it's produced. So starting to tie it by talking about what it is that you love to eat, and why is a great way to have these long, larger conversations around what the future of the food should look like. Because realistically, we should all be able to have a kind of voice in that, shaping what that is.

Alicia: Exactly, yeah. 

We've touched on it, but in the broader food media, because Mold is so singular and unique and cool in its design, what—Where do you feel that design and food media, outside of your own magazine, like are—Where could these intersect in a way that does make these subjects comprehensible for people or, where could food media be better about design?

LinYee: I think that just A, recognizing that design is a factor in our food and our relationship with food, I think is a great starting place. Because there is a kind of focus on design as this tableware aesthetic, or what we talked about as interior design with restaurants, which also, there's a place that could be really radical and interesting. But it's not that accessible. And those aren’t necessarily the projects that are being spoken about. 

Because as we mentioned earlier, construction is a huge contributor to climate change. So what does it mean to build a place in which you are ingesting natural things into your body—Or maybe unnatural things. Whatever. But literally bringing things into your body to be, become the person you are? What does it mean to do that in a space that is equally considered as far as its materiality, as far as it's designed for the physical hands that are producing those dishes, or cleaning the dishes or cleaning the space? What does that look like? I just think that by focusing on the-

Well, just recognizing that we're living in a very, very designed world is a huge starting place. I mean, Mold looks the way that it does, because our art director and designers are just incredible human beings. Eric Hu, Matt Tsang, Jena Myung, they really have created this very unique visual language for the magazine. And through their work, we have been able to reach our primary audience, which is designers. We want designers to pick up a copy of Mold, recognize that it is a design artifact to engage with and kind of dig into the more, I would say dense, naughty, complex conversations that are happening within the publication. And it's really through their design choices that that has been able to happen. 

And so, I just want to recognize that the magazine itself is very much a collaborative effort between our contributors, our editors, our art directors, our designers, to produce this really—I would say, we're kind of hard to pin down. We don't really fit in the current ecosystem of food media, which is great. And we don't fit in the ecosystem of design media, either. We kind of have our own little planet somewhere in all of that. So I'm totally okay with it.

Alicia: Well, that is interesting, though, because I do—Why do you think food occupies such a strange space when we're talking about it as a cultural subject? Because it does touch on all of these things. There are political aspects. There are economic aspects. There are labor aspects. There are ecological aspects. There are design aspects. Like most aspects of culture, it touches on a lot of things. But food isn't taken as seriously as other parts. Do you disagree with that? Do you see food as something that is taken seriously as an area of cultural critique and study? Is it not? I consistently feel people don't take food seriously, but do take other things seriously.

LinYee: Yeah, I agree. I think it's because food is multisensorial. And it's something that's kind of been historically relegated to the work of women. And so, I think that for those reasons, it's oftentimes not taken very seriously. I mean, our just weird society is just like, ‘Oh, anything that brings you pleasure? Can't be serious,’ right? 

I love sharing this little nugget of information, which is that eating is the only thing we do besides having sex that engages all of our senses. And it's a truth. And it speaks to how important it is to ground food and joy and community in being fully multi-sensory. Because we, as humans, are designed to experience it that way. But I think because of that, often, it's relegated to this kind of soft, murky place of feelings, you know? And that’s not considered serious. 

It's also just so fundamental. We can give a biennial to architecture, right? It’s in Venice. But once you talk about the biennial of beans, which is the thing that I want to produce and make in my life, nobody wants to talk about that. It's the foundation of the things that we do, every day we eat.

Alicia: How do you define abundance?

LinYee: This is such a critical question in the world that we live in today, because I think the concept of abundance is a very radical concept within a capitalist system. Because capitalism tells you that we—luxury is about scarcity. It's about what I can afford that you can't afford. There's only so many of these things, these wedges, and I have to own one. 

Whereas if we look to nature, we see that there are models of care models of network systems, trust and interdependence, that consistently tell us that nature is abundant. You think about a single seed creates a single plant that then creates hundreds, if not thousands, of more seeds. If that kind of scale of one to 100, or 1000, doesn't indicate abundance, then I don't know what does. If we can all understand that implicitly we are connected to one another, there is more than plenty for everyone. It's just about understanding the systems in which that interaction, that interdependence is nurtured and cared for as opposed to squashed and us living in these weird isolated bubbles.

And that's a very long definition of abundance. But that's how I think about it. I look to nature to kind of help me understand and remind me because I'm not always living in an abundance mindset. The other day the Spanish fashion house LOEWE, they dropped a Spirited Away collaboration. And I was just on the Internet window shopping, I was like, ‘Ah, I just went $5,000 so I could buy this T-shirt.’ I'm not a perfect example of that. 

But we do what we can. And honestly, just gardening, every season, planting seeds every season, knowing that some of those seeds aren't going to germinate. Some of them will, some of them won't survive when I put them outside. But then the ones that do survive will give me more seeds for next year. That cycle is just so humbling, and just a reminder that if we can just trust a little bit, that there's a lot more to access in the world that we can maybe understand in this moment. 

Alicia: Well, and for you is cooking a political act?

LinYee: Oh, without a doubt. I didn't fully understand this, or have the language for it, until I read this zine that came out in 2020 from Clarence Kwan. And his Instagram is 

thegodofcookery. And he is a Chinese Canadian creative director, but also cooks at a Chinese restaurant on the weekends. And he put this little zine out called Chinese Protest Recipes. And it just reminded me that cooking the food of my family of my ancestors is a form of resistance. Sure, I love to cook whatever thing is in vogue. Sheet pan dinner is great. I do serve that often for my family. 

But when I cook the food that reminds me of my grandmother and serve that to my children, it's a way of saying that like, ‘This cannot be homogenized. This can't be taken away from me. It can't be taken away from my family or my children.’ And I think that that is a great reminder for all of us, that what we cook and what we feed our families, what nourishes us, can and should be an act of resistance.

Alicia: Thank you so much for taking the time today.

LinYee: Oh, thank you so much. It's just been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Eric Kim, a staff writer at The New York Times food section and author of the just released cookbook Korean American. I've admired Eric from afar via social media, as well as his beautiful essays. And it was a thrill to finally get the chance to talk to him and find out that he comes from a literature background, which explains the beautiful writing. We discussed how he came to food, the way his cookbook took shape during the pandemic, going viral with gochujang glaze, and his relationship with meat. 

Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for being here.

Eric: Hi, thanks for having me. It's so great to finally meet you.

Alicia: I know. It's so great. I'm meeting so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time. [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah.

It's kind of funny. I won't say the person's name, but we have a mutual friend. And anytime I want to say something to you, I say it to this person instead of just—I should just DM you and be like, ‘Man, that latest newsletter was great.’ But instead, I just tell your friend and hope that they tell you.

Alicia: Yeah. I mean, we can be friends. We can be friends. That's ok. [Laughs.]

Eric: So great to meet you, though, seriously.

Alicia: For sure!

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Eric: Yeah, sure. 

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the suburbs. My parents moved there in 1983. And they've been there since. And I was there till I was 18. 

And I ate mostly my mom's food. She was a cook. She cooked a lot of Korean food, Korean American hodgepodge dishes. And I think when I got old enough to drive especially, but even before then, when I kind of was tall enough to stand at the stove, my brother and I were latchkey kids. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And I think that's a big part of my life and my nostalgia. It's become a theme in my work, because I just love these memories of these frozen meals actually span so much farther than myself. And I think about this all the time, actually, my—the way my micro life has macro resonances. And so you just say one thing, like ‘Remember this?’ And then thousands of people are like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And almost always they are children of immigrants and I think that is something I have discovered recently. And I feel it's a real power. It's a power to harness, I think. It's really nice. 

Oh, and just like in terms of dishe. I vaguely specifically remember this one after school snack that I ate a lot, which was the broccoli cheddar chicken hot pocket, which is the best one and kind of very substantial. It's got some vegetables in it, but what I would do is I would take the first bite and then squeeze it out onto a bowl of rice and ust mix that up. And then later in our, later—our Thanksgivings had this broccoli cheese rice casserole dish. It was like I was manifesting that or something as a kid. And now, it's a regular staple in our—on my Thanksgiving table. 

Alicia: Yeah. The combination of broccoli and cheese, I have to admit, is just unbeatable.

Eric: Sublime, for sure. Delicious. 

Alicia: I used to get the Stouffer's with broccoli. When I had my first job, I would put that in the microwave because I made no money. So I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna go to the supermarket, get a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. And because it has broccoli in it, it's fine. It's healthy.’ [Laughs.]

Eric: It was a classic. I mean, what a genius move, because that—once you eat the macaroni, there's still sauce. There's so much sauce. And so, kind of having that broccoli moment is really lovely. That's funny. Yeah.

Alicia: Well, you're one of those food writers who is a really good writer too. Not to say that there aren’t many. [Laughter.] But what came first for you, writing or food?

Eric: Oh, man. I've actually never been asked that. That's funny. Well, food. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't have consciousness of it until after writing. 

So I think about this all the time. Maybe this is a good story. But I was doing a PhD in comparative literature, and I had just taken an oral exam. It was kind of the big moment before you go off and write the dissertation. It's after your third year. And so what happens is all your friends show up outside the door of your exam room. And it's almost a formality, at least at the program that I went to. And you get flowers and you get a laurel, a thing around your head. And kind of that's your badge of honor, a rite of passage. 

And then I didn't pass mine, though. I was one of the few people who didn’t because I was horrible at speaking. And yeah, it was this huge wake up call for me because I'd wanted to be an English professor since 10th grade of high school or something like that. And there I was, kind of like halfway through a program that would let me do that. And I got a low pass. They called it a low pass. When I walked out of that room, my friend had this huge bouquet of flowers, and then slowly lowered it. 

My advisors were like, ‘You can either leave. You can leave the program with a master's degree, or you can take the exam again and then continue on to the dissertation.’ And I think at that moment, it was the first time in my life I really just realized that wasn't for me, the academia. And that writing was for me, though. And that was the part of the program that I excelled at, I think. And there was even a writing portion that was good that I did well on, apparently. 

And I remember looking at the room. And it was these four white men. I was like, ‘What happened? How did I fail this? Why didn't you prepare me?’ And I didn't ask it like that. I'm sure I barely spoke. I was like, ‘You said that the written portion was good, right?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, the written portion was good. But the oral part is really important.’ I think it was in that moment, I was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna want to pursue the thing I'm good at.’

So I didn't know what that meant yet. But what happened was, I called my brother after I was in my suit, or whatever the—it was probably the first suit I'd ever bought or owned. And my brother was kind of like, ‘Hey, Eric, you were never happy there. You love food. You're talking about food all the time.’ And at the time, I was Instagramming. That was my food blog mostly. Those Instagram captions, I would just write as long as I could until I hit the word limit. And that was sort of how I got started with the food writing, I think. 

And then, so my brother made me realize that food was always there. It was the one constant. And I happened to have an old boss at Food Network who was able to give me a job. And that's how it all started. So it's kind of a bit of both. It was writing first, but the consciousness—It was food first, but the consciousness was later. Yeah.

Alicia: What made you want to be an English professor? Who did you like to read?

Eric: Hmm. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can see it on my bookshelf here. But it's sort of my love for Michelle Branch. [Laughs.] Which I don't hide. But I think about this all the time, when you're so young and you have no frame of reference for anything. And then something comes at you. And it just really sucks you in. A certain song is super catchy. And then that person’s second song is super catchy, and that third song. And then you just realize, ‘Wow, I just really like this person's music.’

And then, for me, that was 20th century American literature. Throughout high school, just kind of breezing through my English classes and not really paying attention to it ’cause math was so hard. And all these other things were harder. And so, I just kind of didn't take it seriously. 

And then there was a moment in the 10th grade when I looked back on my favorite books, and they were all from John Steinbeck. Or they were all from a very specific time period in American and American literary canon. And I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this is it. This is my Michelle Branch of books.’ So yeah, I pursued that in college.

And I just loved college so much, which is such a lame thing to say. But I had a great time in college. And I had really lovely professors. The English department at the college I went to was just so supportive. And they were great. I just figured why not keep doing this, you know? And so, yeah, I kept doing it. And enjoyed the part of being a student, but I think I didn't enjoy being a PhD candidate. That was a very political thing, very performative. And I sucked at talking. So I was really bad at it. I was really bad at acting. 

Alicia: Yeah, I can relate. 

But you came to food media. You were at Food Network? How did you get into the recipe writing aspect, which you've had such success in?

Eric: Thank you. It happened randomly, I think. Oh, yeah. Like most things, it seems random. But then when you really narrate yourself, you can narrativize the trajectory. 

But so for me, it was Food52, the job after Food Network. I was mostly an editor at Food Network. And then, I became a senior editor at 52. And was sort of a really just—It's a messy startup place. It's a very disorganized kind of place, which meant that you could do whatever the hell you wanted. And so, I really felt that there were a lot of opportunities if I wanted them, and so there was no one—It's a really self-starting kind of place. So if you're a self-starter, I think that helped me when I went. When I was there. I was like, ‘I'd like to develop recipes and write about them.’ And so, I did that once in a while. 

It was a column pretty quickly, actually. I had this theme that I was really interested in, which was cooking for one. And ‘cause I was so depressed and lonely, I think that's where I kind of practiced. And I practiced on real readers, I guess. The recipes are pretty popular. And they did well. 

And I think what, the one thing I believed in always was that my food tasted good. I knew that I had something, I think in Korean, you would call it son-mat. It's called hand taste. But it's this magical quality of—it's called nafas in Arabic. I knew that I had something where my food just had a taste. I knew that when I put it in front of people, I loved seeing their faces light up with that first bite. That's how I knew that maybe I had something. 

And so, that was a good playground for it. And every week, I was able to see people's reactions and kind of watch them incorporate these dishes into their everyday lives. And so these readers became sort of my—they were my lab rats. 

And I think people don't realize maybe that wasn't that long ago. So I got to the Times and it became my permanent, my daily job of—So I cook every day now. And I'm flexing that muscle, or trying to hone in. I'm definitely learning so much, because I have so many people above me who are way more experienced. And they're teaching me every day. And it's just, if I forget about my past-

It seems random that I'm doing this now. But the other day, actually, I was looking—I went to archive.org. And I looked up my old website, which had this one section. It was mostly an academic website, a CV kinda. But it had one section that said ‘cookbook,’ and it was just where I put recipes, things that I cooked. And a lot of them were just Nigella Lawson recipes that I really liked and that I wanted to have down somewhere, cause I would have dinner parties and friends would be like, ‘Whoa, what was this?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it's this thing. You can just go to my website and cook it or learn how to cook it if you want.’

But I went back because I'm developing this loaf cake. And I had a cake that I would make all the time. And I sort of started from there. It was awful, by the way. Years later, I baked it in my own kitchen. And it wasn't very good. And I worked on it. But so, I was always writing recipes, I guess for years. And even after high school, I started a blog called Air cooks. It was a Blogspot. I just had been bouncing around just these food blogs. And so, it's always sort of been there. 

And it wasn't until the Food Network job though, actually, where I really learned how to write a recipe. Because my job was—I was called Digital Asset Coordinator, Recipes. So my job was to data entry from the Excel sheets that we got to the website. And so, I sort of saw this one style of recipe writing, which is pretty—they're very neat over there at the Food Network. So that's how I learned how to write recipes from that job. I would say, yeah. And then, I got to practice at length later in life. 

Alicia: Well, I promise that we're going to talk about your book, but because you mentioned her I wanted to ask about Nigella. How did Nigella become someone you look up to, an icon for you? How did that happen?

Eric: Oh, my God. Now I'm actually nervous, because I know she actually was—she listens to your podcast. She's a fan of yours as well. And so Nigella, turn, maybe turn off your, turn off the podcast at this moment, if you will. 

She's someone I watched for the first time on the Food Network, like many people. I think it was either a syndicated version of Nigella Bites, or it was Nigella Feasts, which was the Food Network program that they developed for that book, which actually is my favorite book of hers. And then from there, I made one of her recipes, I think, and then that made me a fan for life. It's like the Michelle Branch songs. I made the next one, and then the next one. They were all perfect. And they all tasted good. And I think it's because she's a good writer that she's able to translate those flavors to the home cook. 

And so, I think I just started following her. I bought her books, and then they were making me cry on the train to my Food Network job and then to my other jobs, and I kind of had this realization that I think this is something I'd like to do. I'd love to make people feel something. So I just, I'm a huge fan. 

And I think when I first met her, I was so shocked. It was at a 92Y conversation. I met her. I was so shocked that I barely said anything. She was really kind to me, and she wanted to sign my book. I had three of her books in my hands and I was embarrassed. She signed the first one, and I started walking away. She was like, ‘No, I'll sign the other ones.’ I was like, ‘No, it's ok. It's fine.’ She's so generous. 

And then, the second time I met her was actually for her book release for—Hmm, which book was it? I think it may have been either Simply Nigella or At My Table, maybe. But she was at the Food52 offices. And that was her launch. That was one of her parties in New York. And I had just accepted the job there. So I was meeting my colleagues for the first time and seeing my office for the first time and meeting Nigella and talking to her. And I just started bawling. [Laughs.] Sorry, this is so embarrassing. I couldn't hold it in. I remember exactly because it's—I just started crying. And she was like, ‘I don't know whether to feel good or bad that I've made you cry.’ And on top of that, my ex-boyfriend was with me. And he's a good friend. But it was just—It was also awkward. And I felt so lame. And then, she was really kind and generous, of course. But so, I was embarrassed. 

So after that, the very second piece I wrote for Food52 was about cookbooks that make me cry. I told the anecdote through my writing, and I made myself look better in the writing. That event was really embarrassing. And anyway, since then, she's sort of been checked—I think she reads my columns once in a while. And that always surprises me. I try to keep my distance, ‘cause I'm still—I haven't changed. She's still my hero. So it's a lot of pinch-me moments, I think. 

And anyway, she's a big reason why I'm here. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

No, I feel like crying just listening to your story, because thinking about—No! Just how generous she is, and to young—I mean, I'm not young anymore, but to anyone who's coming up, she just really is so generous. And that she responds to everyone on Twitter who makes her food or asks her a question. So, it's not something you get used to. She brought up a piece I wrote that came out the middle of last year, last week. And I was like, ‘She remembers my piece!’ [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. 

It's hard though, for me, because she is someone who—And again, Nigella, hope you're not listening. She's a big culinary influence of mine. I learned a lot about just regular cooking from her. How to Eat was monumental for me and for the world. But I would say that, because of that, it's really hard not to write her into my pieces, because that is my education. But I don't, because I know that she reads them sometimes. I just don’t want her to think I'm obsessed, and—which we all are. 

Alicia: We all are, yeah. [Laughter.]

Eric: She is very kind. That's the most important thing, I think. And that's the difference, I think, yeah. Her emotional intelligence really just jumps off the page.

Alicia: Absolutely. 

Well, and to finally get to your cookbook, Korean American, it is beautiful. It's about homecoming. It's a love letter to your mother. [Laughs.] I can't wait to see a physical copy, because I have a digital one. 

But how did you decide to approach your first book? How did this all come about?

Eric: It started off completely different. I was looking at the Publishers Marketplace announcement recently, just being all nostalgic. And it said, The Essentials of Korean American Cooking. And I was just like, ‘Oh my god. Can you imagine if that was the title?’ I don't know what I was thinking. 

But the original proposal was sort of this really deep reported culinary cultural history of Korean American, Korean food in America, the history of it. And I was gonna really travel and do the thing. 

But what ended up happening was we had a pandemic. We were in lockdown, and the book changed course completely. And it also was really appropriate, though, that it changed course. And I had to turn inward, and I had to make it about my family. Because not just logistically, but I kind of realized that in order to tell the right story I had to be really specific. And to be really specific, I had to go into memoir. And that was a relief when that happened, honestly, because that is my—the thing that I'm most comfortable with, I would say. And so, that's how that happened. 

And it was really fun too, because I was still able to kind of do the journalistic thing. But my sources were my parents. And it was fun to get to really dig in and see what they remembered, because it was really that, just mining their memories. Because my memories aren't that deep. They go back a few years, but not that—as far back as their food does.

Alicia: You write, ‘It's an American impulse to follow written down recipes to a T,’ which I loved, because I—for me, it's really difficult to follow written recipes. I've gotten better at it actually. But there is that fear of instinctual cooking. So how do you approach writing precise recipes for such a big audience? ’Cause not just for the Times, but for this book? It's going to be a big audience of people cooking. How do you do that? [Laughs.] 

Eric: Right. Yeah. 

That was the irony, right? The way my mother cooks is not with measurements, and then—as with the rest of us. So, having to measure something that I've always felt was immeasurable, even that quality of my mother's hands, the way her food tastes.

Melissa Clark actually, she was making my kimchi jjigae after—I published a version of the kimchi jjigae last year in the Times. And she wanted to make it, and I was just trying to give her tips. ‘Do this and this and this, and taste and do this.’ And the recipe tries to—What you do in those moments as you give precise measurements, but the rest of it's up to the person's palate. And so there are tasting notes, like ‘Add more if you want more of this.’ And so, you need to leave room for that kind of movement. 

But I remember in that moment, I just really wanted to kind of 3D print my tongue or something or have it be this USB drive that I can just give to her and be like, ‘It's supposed to taste like that.’ You have to resort to prose. That was a challenge with the cookbook. 

But in my day-to-day development, I owe a lot of that to Genevieve Ko. She's my editor. And she just kind of helms the NYT cooking recipes. And she just really knows how to translate it so that it's equal for everyone. 

Oh, I have a good story, actually. My very first recipe that I developed with her when I got on staff, it was the creamy asparagus pasta. And that one was just very loosey goosey. It was my style of just taste as you go. There's a moment where you boil the pasta in a kombu broth, like a dasima broth. And so it just looks like a very seaweedy dish. And at first it was like, ‘Fill the pot to a certain amount.’ 

But she said, ‘I think it should be a very specific number, should be a specific cup amount,’ because—I don’t know about you. But when you make pasta, you probably don't measure the boiling water, right? She was like, ‘I want it to taste the same for everyone.’ So that's why it says very specifically to boil this number of cups so that the broth has the right amount of concentration of the dashima, the kelp. And then because that broth is also used to finish the pasta, so it’s this transfer of flavor. It just had to make it as approximate as possible, while still leaving room for people's taste buds, because everyone tastes differently and everyone's ingredients are different too. 

Alicia: Right. 

Well, the gochujang glaze for the eggplant became this huge staple in my house. Well, I first made it because I wanted to interview you. And I was like, ‘Well, I have to make a recipe of his, and so I'm going to start with this one because it's already vegan. So I don't have to do anything.’ 

But my husband who is really—I mean, he'll be upset if he hears this where I'm like, ‘He's very difficult, He can be very difficult to cook for sometimes.’ It's good, though, because lately he's cooking a little bit more. And so, it's becoming more of a thing we do together, which is good, because I think I was actually losing my mind a little bit. The pandemic was making everyone lose their mind with cooking, where it's like, ‘I'm done.’ I thought this was the thing I like to do most. And now I'm just totally at the end of my rope.

But your recipe really reinvigorated my cooking and reinvigorated my kitchen. And we're very happy and we use it on so many things. And I know it was your first recipe to go viral, right? What was that like?

Eric: Yeah, I guess so. 

Trying to remember. That was during peak COVID, I guess. It was the peak of it. And I was at my mom's house. And I remember when it was assigned, it was just ‘eggplant banchan’ on it. It wasn't a thing yet. It was the one that I wanted to kind of play around with. I kind of asked her. I was like, ‘Hey, what are some eggplant banchan, umma? I have to write this story.’ And she was like, ‘Well, your grandma likes this one. It's called gaji bokkeum.’ There's also a gaji muchim,  but it's basically—she steams the eggplant, and then she tosses it, dresses it in a sauce. And it's usually like this sesame oil thing. But she liked to do gochujang. And she told me that that's something my grandmother really liked. So she would make it for my grandmother all the time. And I thought that was really interesting. 

So I kind of did my own take on it by frying it. And there's this thing called pa gileum, which is scallion oil in Korean cooking that's really prominent now. It's maybe popularized by this guy Baek Jong-won, I think that's the thing. Yeah, it's kind of the Emeril Lagasse—oh, we don't like doing that anymore, right? The Julia Childs?

Anyway, yeah, I think I made that dish. And I brought it up to my mom's room. That was sort of the process. She'd be like, ‘I'll help.’ And then, she doesn't help. And then she goes to her room. I would bring it to her room and be like, ‘Ok, it's time to taste this.’ And I remember that first bite, she was like, ‘Whoa, this is something. You should open a restaurant.’ That's like it. When she says that, it means it's good. And Koreans always want you to, Korean parents always want you to open a restaurant for some reason. I'm like, ‘That’s not who I am.’ [Laughs.]

I didn't know that it would resonate with people, because—I don't know. I think that that was the biggest surprise to see it on Instagram. That was when I kind of felt the power of Instagram. Yeah, that share function. And then I saw all these people buying gochujang for the first time, and it was so great. 

And I tried to do the same thing the second time, because I thought, ‘Oh, that's great. I got a bunch of people to buy gochujang. That's kind of my point, or my hope.’ So I did gochugaru salmon, hoping that people would buy gochugaru. And I think a lot of people did, but a lot of people ended up making gochugaru salmon from the gochujang they bought from the eggplants. [Laughter.] It worked out and it's all fine. 

There's always a reason for these recipes. And I'm glad that it's the eggplant that did well, yeah.

Alicia: Of course. 

Well, you describe your mom's garden in detail in the book, and you refer to yourself as a carnivore. And so, I wanted to ask about this. What is your relationship to meat as a food writer, as a person? [Laughs.]

Eric: Great question. 

Something I think about every single day, recipe developing, you're just sort of—There are so few reasons for meat to be in something, unless it's a roast or something like that. But yeah, so I’m always thinking about that, how to take out that fish sauce or take out that little bit of bacon that maybe I made it for myself the first time. 

Hmm. To answer this, I think I would go back to the way my mother cooked. And I think the Korean dishes that we liked as Korean Americans, Korean American children, a lot of meat, it's—All the meat dishes are the things that you kind of liked. And you'd go to potlucks, and it's kind of that marinated bulgogi that you leave in the freezer, and you bring that to a potluck and—or you fry it outside on the grill at a church picnic. And it's always this paper plate with the rice, and then that sticks to that plate like crazy. And then, the bulgogi on the side. That was a big component of my food growing up. 

But I would say that I sort of started eating less meat as I got older and pickier. And when I was younger, I actually didn't eat that much meat. I was always too skinny. And my mom was always worried. And she was like, ‘Eric doesn't like meat.’ So when we’d go to Korean barbecue, I would eat the egg—the gyeran-jjim, which is that steamed egg. I would eat all the vegetables. And I loved rice and the tongdak chicken. 

My palate’s changed so much. And I would say that it—it's recently that I forgot I even wrote that I was a carnivore. But I think it was professionally. Once I started cooking professionally for recipe development and work, I kind of realized that you're always thinking about food, and all the other angles around food and the politics of food. And so, I'm much more conscious of it now. I think I'm eating more meat than I would be if I weren't doing this for work, because I'm kind of the one who develops the meat recipes usually. It always ends up being that way. 

Sometimes when I'm pitching something, Iwant to give someone a really easy chicken recipe. And that service is something that really matters to me. But I mean, the dark side of this is that after developing that chicken recipe, I'm so sick of chicken, I'm so sick of meat. RIP. It's really hard to eat that much meat and you have all that leftover food and it doesn't go to waste. So it goes in my stomach. And so my relationship to meat has changed in the sense that I think it's a matter of just pitching fewer meat recipes, but that's not always-

Alicia: It's not always possible. 

Eric: It's not always possible. But I don't have to pitch a short rib dish or anything. It depends on the story. And I follow the story, but I am very grateful when it's a vegetable kind of dish because I know I can at least just eat a lot of that and feel a lot better.

So yeah, my relationship to being meat is really weird and probably a little disordered. But we'll tackle that in another interview. Or you can ask questions if you want. 

Alicia: I mean, I ask about it because—Well, one because you said carnivore, so I had to. And then two, because people do have a complicated relationship with meat. The first iteration of my podcast used to be called Meatless. And it was literally really focused on how people feel about meat. But it gets really complicated, like talking about it with people. But at the same time, it's interesting because people do bring up this—it just gets so heavy for people. And I'm like—Yeah. [Laughs.]

Eric: You're the one person I would love to talk about that with, because I just think—I love the way you write about vegetarianism and veganism. You recognize the nuances, and there's class involved. And there's privilege. And I just think that's all part of the story. 

And another way to talk about this, which is what's the point of that line, I think, if I’m looking back, thinking back on it, which is that chapter unveiled itself to me. Not to sound annoying, but it—there was a Korean barbecue chapter, and I replaced it with Garden of Jean. I replaced it with a vegetable chapter because I kind of just realized that there were so many more interesting things I wanted to write about and explore and develop. Not to mention, we were really—we were all so full all the time. 

I wanted a moment to celebrate those really special vegetable dishes, kind of like the discovery of that eggplant, you know? That I made in my kitchen. On the one hand, it's the chicken breasts I’m really sick of eating. But it's also, on the other hand, it's I have a newfound appreciation for vegetables now. Because as I'm developing them, I'm discovering new things about them. And that's really, really exciting. And that chapter was the most fun to write. So it's the one where I got to really, really kind of go off. 

One interesting story actually is, so this whole thing about appetite and being a recipe developer who constantly has to taste your own food. I was doing this crispy tofu dish for my column at the Times. It’s a great tofu dish. It has a sweet and sour sauce that tastes like McDonald's. And it's great, but after eating that much tofu. I don't know if you can tell, but my apartment’s tiny. So my apartment was so disgustingly flooded with just oil fumes. And I needed to feel better. So I made a vegetable soup with some of the leftover tofu that wasn't fried, and it was broccoli and vegetables. And then, it was chicken broth. I have Better Than Bouillon Chicken. I love that. 

And it was such a good soup. So I pitched it. I was like, ‘This is such a great creamy, broccoli soup that doesn't have cream in it.’ Yeah. I was like, ‘Oh crap, but it has chicken broth in it.’ It was greenlit. I developed it. And I was like, ‘This is easy. I'll just replace it with vegetable broth.’ Nope. No, it didn't taste good. I made 10 pots of that stupid soup. I was so sick of it. And yeah, each time it was vegetarian, vegan, but it just eluded me. I think that stubbornness of that soup, it really empowered me to just—I had to take a break, though, ’cause I was so sick of it. 

And then I discovered this.. And I think the recipe will be out by the time this airs. But I remembered a column that my former writer, and friend and—Kristen Miglorious at Food52—I was her editor at, on Genius recipes, there's a column at Food52. And she wrote about another writer of mine, actually. Yi Jun Loh, he's a Malaysian writer, wonderful. He had this coconut water ABC soup. So ABC soup is a Malaysian chicken soup, usually. He discovered that coconut water, tomato, carrot, and onion produced a really delicious broth full of umami. And it makes sense, hits all the right notes. There's that bone broth quality from the coconut milk, the cloudiness. Whatever they call it, a lot of qualities are in that coconut water, like just literally the thing you buy at the bodega. 

And so, it was this magic elixir that was much simpler than all of the rest of the versions of the recipe, the broccoli soup that I was trying. So I kind of went that route. And then, it was just like magic. I made the soup one last time. And it was so flavorful, so full of umami savoriness and all the qualities, all the glutamate crazy. It was so flavorful. I had to dilute it with water. And so I love the story of the soup, because I think it tells a story of my relationship to cooking with vegetables, which has been one of discovery and joy because it's so new to me, as a ‘self described carnivore,’ whatever. 

It's so funny that whenever someone points out something I've written, I just completely don't remember writing it. And yeah, I don't know if you feel this way. But I feel there's this thing where you blacked out after you write anything. 

Alicia: Yeah, I never want to be reminded, ever. No. It goes, and then it's not mine anymore. And then it's something else. I mean, I don't understand how writers—I respect it, because I respect all hustles. But anyone who can make a Canva graphic of their own words? I can't do it. But people do it. I can't see my own words that way. I can't see. I could figure out what might be a good pull quote, I guess, if I had to. I can't do my own pull quotes. It just feels vulgar. [Laughs.]

Eric: No, I totally agree. That's such a thing. I don't think everyone's like us, actually. But I think, I would love a psychologist to sort of examine but, why? Why certain writers black out like that? And I think it's probably self preservation or something like that. 

Alicia: Well, I think if you're writing personally—yeah, and if you're writing personally, and you're really trying to get at something or you're excavating your own emotions or whatever, the only way to get yourself to still put it out there is to detach from it, I think, in some way. I mean, you're gonna have a book come out, literally, in a few weeks. That's very personal. And you're not going to be able to be attached to how people respond to it. Because, no. [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah.

I'm really grateful to my editor and my publisher. They were very kind to me and generous with time, because I think I had trouble. This book was so hard to write. It's so personal, of course, but I think that's why—Each pass, I would read it. And I'm someone who, as a writer, I will use up as much time as you give me. That's the amount of time. That's why I had no idea this staff writing job would be excellent for me, someone who needs deadlines, who needs to be pulled away from the writing, before I overwrite. And there's so many moments when my editor will, after the second pass, second edit, she'll just actually take out everything I've added because she’s like, ‘It was good the first—It was better the first time. Stop.’ And I think that's a real lesson. I need to learn how to kind of let go sometimes. 

Yeah, this book went through it. I asked for an extra pass, because I just needed more time with my words. I wasn’t ready to let go, and it was so hard. And then, they were very kind and did that. And now, the book’s coming out a little later. But that's fine. 

Alicia: My book is coming out later. So the supply chain push has delayed everything. 

Eric: And the one thing it's that my book isn't is on the bottom of the ocean. So I'm quite grateful for that. I feel so bad for my colleagues, yeah. [Laughter.]

Alicia: It's horrible. [Laughs.]

Well, the photography of the book is really beautiful and bright and vibrant. How did that aesthetic emerge?

Eric: I think this is maybe the first time I get to answer this question. But Jenny Huang shot it, I think many know her in the industry. But she and I met at Food52. She was shooting a couple of my columns and kind of hit it off. And I think from there, we just maybe got dinner and kind of became friends. And she was also kind of just starting out, really. She had changed careers. And I won't tell her story. She should tell her story. Her photos were different. I loved even at Food52 that I could look at it, a photo, and be like, ‘Oh, that's Jenny. I can tell there's a crispiness. There's a Vermeer glamor.’ Vermeer's my favorite painter. 

Really, her photography really spoke to me. And I just love that you could look at it and be like, ‘That's Jenny Huang.’ And that's what I want, who I wanted on my team. Because I feel that way about recipe development; I feel that way about writing. I feel that way about talent. Yeah, I think people think talent means level of skill or something. But I actually think it means voice. 

And then not only that, she just really went into this with—The art direction was her, 100% her. It was barely me. I kind of was way too busy to worry about art. I was sort of like, ‘Yeah, Jenny, this is your book too.  I'll do whatever you say.’ And so, man, she asked for really specific tables. And I had to a specific traditional dress, and she asked for things. And I was kind of annoyed. And then once we were on set and we shot them, I was like, ‘Oh, I see.’ So I think after the first day I was sort of like, ‘Ok, just don't ask questions.’ She always had a vision, showing every photo you see in here. Well, not all of them sometimes. There's a lot of serendipity in the book, but she's already thought about how she wants to angle.

But there's a photo—it’s the kimchi-jjigae—of my mom kind of having lunch. And I can't talk about my mom because, always makes me cry. But she knew that she wanted my mom in a hanbok and to be eating lunch, and it took—for it to be a certain angle and kind of from behind. And then, we saw the picture and we're just like, ‘Wow, that was in her head.’ I think that's why she's a good photographer. It's in her head first and then knows how to get it onto the page. 

And I just like that she also thinks about cultural context. So there were moments in the book where she scheduled the shoot. It wasn't dish-dish-dish-dish. It wasn't a food media shoot. It was more of setting scenes, so that she could like a documentary style, kind of go around. And that's how Korean food is. 

She's the one who described it like this. So I'm sort of paraphrasing her, but she described it to me, Korean food has edges. When you're setting a table, there's a banchan, there's a rice, there's a stew, there's a meat, there's a lettuce plate. And in a cookbook, in my cookbook, all of those recipes are on different chapters. So she wanted to show the edges of—If you were to cut and paste, you could find the same patterns and see, you can create a whole. But I think in order to show some semblance of connectivity, she was, she did that on purpose, kind of showing the edges of dishes. And I thought that was just so brilliant, and really different. Because I, having white photographers shoot your food your whole career. And sometimes, getting it wrong, on accident, but just because I'd be like, ‘That's not how Korean people eat it,’ or that's not—’No one would do that.’ She was incorporated into her art direction. And so yeah, forever grateful to her no one else could have shot this.

The whole team, I really need a credit. Oh my god, Tyna Huong was the food stylist. And she and I met at a party with Jenny, actually. And so the second I met her, I was like, ‘Ok, she's the one.’ And I just knew I wanted her to style the book. And then Beatrice Chastka is a wonderful prop stylist who works with them. They're kind of this trio. And I couldn't break up the trio. So that's how it happened.

Alicia: That's amazing. 

I mean, it does look so different from so many cookbooks that are out, coming out. It's vibrant. [Laughs.] Whereas I feel there's so much whitespace on covers now. And it's like, ‘Stop. I can't take it anymore.’ [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah. I did not want any whitespace on that cover. I was super adamant about that. 

Alicia: Well, how did you maintain this creative energy while writing the book and working? Like, this is my question for everyone lately, because it almost drove me insane, personally.

Eric: This was your last newsletter, right? That was like such a great—

Alicia: Yeah, a little bit, yeah, about productivity, yeah.

Eric: Productivity. This is something I've been working on. Because during the pandemic is when my workload kind of quadrupled. I was a freelancer for a year before I started at the Times, but even at the Times, I was sort of dealing with book stuff after hours. And so, it was really hard to find moments of rest. There was no time.

And what was really influential for me was my friend, Rick Martinez. I'm not going to pretend—His name does have a last name. He and I started this process together. Our books are coming out at the same time with the same editor. It was a lot of stars aligning, and we kind of quickly became phone call friends. We would call each other during the book writing process, because it's so lonely. And one thing that he said that was really influential for me was to take moments of rest and moments of joy. No matter how short that is, even if it's five minutes, because that's, that is restful. 

And I really have started to see this kind of be true in other parts of my life. My partner and I, he lives in Philly now. So we're still technically long distance. And so, whenever we kind of realized that we only get two or three days together, where before I would have been sad about that, I realized now that time is a circle and that it's the quality of the time that matters, not the quantity. And so for me, it's the quality of the rest and the joy that matters, not the quantity.

So yeah, I take power naps all the time. I had a bulgogi video come out where I was super busy during the shooting of that whole thing. I look tired. I look really messy, and my hair is not gelled because—and then a reader attacked me. They're like, ‘Eric always looks like he just woke up from a nap.’ And actually, it's true. I always am waking up from naps because I get through. So I get through on five, six hours of sleep every night. That's pretty good. 

But it's hard. It's hard to find time to slow down when there's just not enough hours in the day. And with this job, this new job, I just—It's so fun. It's a really fun job. And I want to be doing it all the time. But I just kind of had this realization that I need to take moments of rest to sort of make sure that I can come back and be and do good work. And yeah, once I realized it was—it had to be part of my routine. I tried to incorporate it more, but it's not always possible, you know?

Alicia: Well, how do you define abundance?

Eric: Yeah. 

So I know you asked this to other people, too. And I like to listen to a lot of podcasts to see those answers. And I'm not sure if anyone's done this. But this stumped me a little bit. So I looked it up. I found out that the Latin root is abundantia. Sorry, I don't speak—I never took Latin—but which means overflowing. And I thought it was really interesting that the last definition, it wasn't about overflowing. It's the quantity or amount of something present in a particular area. And this usually refers to natural resources, carbon and nitrogen and bees or whatever. And I realized that this is—

I like that definition. Because it describes abundance as a finite number. And I think, yeah, there's a colonial or environmental reading of this, which is abundance is something to be cherished and not exploited. And I think it's important that with anything in life, whether it's a cultural document or whether it's the environment, the climate, I think. Treating it something that should be preserved and sustained rather than something that's overflowing. I think that attitude about the overflowing fountain, it's really dangerous and very colonial. And I think that's what abundance means to me. 

Alicia: Well, that's always what I think I'm trying to get at, is that a little bit—Well, because I do think there is an idea of abundance, as just having a lot of choices in the supermarket, if we're talking about food context. And then I think that that is a colonial concept, is that ‘Oh, we have to have—’ I mean, look at the Defense Production Act, calling meat processing workers, essential workers, that is a colonial idea of what it means to have enough, because it means that other people are living in danger. And yeah, I think what I'm always trying to get at is the idea that abundance is the ability to share, basically. [Laughs.]

Eric: I love that. And the way to share that is to not overmine, so to speak. 

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Eric: Yes. 

So, I think this is also something—I was gonna be honest, I also looked this up because I was thinking about how I wanted to answer. I'm really bad at on the fly, I guess. But I appreciate that you ask everyone this, so I knew it was coming. 

But I think cooking is a political act, because politics are about power. That's the one question that I'm always answering. I'm always answering questions about cultural appropriation specifically, but when it comes to other kinds of politics of gender, or labor, I think food and specifically cooking can be—It's an opportunity to influence change. I'm not gonna say I think of my recipes as things that change or that are political, inherently. 

But I think editorially, as someone who's been on plenty of it, on plenty of editorial teams, I know how political it is to decide to make space for a specific type of cooking, a specific type of food, specific look. I've been told in the past that my food was too brown, I've been told that my contributor’s foods were too brown and that they needed a little green or parsley. And that centering of a very specific type of cuisine angers me, and this is—there's nothing more political to me. 

And it's been my life's mission after that experience in our really messed-up industry to try to kind of move the needle. And I just freaking love my team. I love my editors. And I'll have a brown dish, and no one will be like, ‘This needs parsley. This needs a sprig of scalings.’ No one's telling me that, because they're just like, ‘This is the way it looks. This is the way millions of people eat this. And this is now our new center.’ And I think that's super important.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here. 

Eric: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

This week, I'm talking to Sandor Katz, whom you likely know from his books Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Art of Fermentation, Fermentation As Metaphor, and now Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, which maps fermentation practices around the world, to show how traditions that preserve abundance have been maintained. It's perhaps my favorite of his books, because it tells so many stories through fermentation and introduces you to so many people around the world. 

Katz has become a legend for his work, but he maintains humility as a conduit of knowledge rather than a keeper. His approach is a real inspiration to me. It was wonderful to get to talk to him about how he organized this book by substrate rather than nation, that why he names the ills of neocolonialism, and a lot more. 

Alicia: Hey, Sandor. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Sandor: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Sandor: Well, I grew up in New York City, on the Upper West Side. And we ate all kinds of things. I feel very lucky that my parents liked different kinds of foods. They liked vegetables. We ate lots of different kinds of fresh vegetables. 

But I mean, I would say that my mom did most of the day to day cooking. She had her repertoire. I remember she liked to make pot roast. Sometimes she made great lasagna, but also lots of kind of simple things that she would leave me a note as I got older, just to reheat something. ‘Set the oven to this temperature, put this in the oven.’ My father also liked to cook. He was more of the classic weekend chef. But that also meant that he could be—He was very creative in his cooking. And he's 87 years old now. And he still loves to cook. 

And we were in New York City, and we ate Chinese food a lot. China-Latina food, the Cuban Chinese restaurants, we ate them a lot. My mother's parents, who I was close with growing up, were immigrants from what's now Belarus. And my grandmother was a great cook. And she would come over from time to time and make blintzes for us, I mean, she would make dozens of them. And we’d eat some fresh, and then she’d wrap them up and put them in the freezer. And we would defrost them and fry them to eat them. She made a chopped liver. She made matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, all these kind of classic Eastern European Jewish foods. We ate really beautiful versions of them at home.

Alicia: And you've written mostly about fermentation now, to kind of fast forward in life. But I also love your book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which came out in 2006. And I wanted to ask, because I recently reread it, how do you feel about the food movement it described in 2006 now in 2022?

Sandor: Well, I guess one thing I would say is that it doesn't describe a food movement. It describes a lot of different, grassroots movements. And I mean, I guess, some of them have been more successful over time than others have been. I mean, I think very much, it's not a centralized movement with a singular aim. I think people who get involved in grassroots movements or organized around food have a lot of different ideas and a lot of different objectives. 

I mean, certainly the local food movements have been very successful. And there's a lot in most parts of the U.S. at any rate, there's a lot more variety of locally grown foods available. In some places, I think that there have been more successful efforts to make that accessible. I've visited some farmers’ markets where they take EBT card, and they have some sort of a grant so they're able to double the value of the EBT purchases. So at least in some places, people have been making strides towards making that higher quality locally produced foods accessible to people.

In the seed-saving movements, I mean, I think that there's sort of been amazing strides. And a lot of different people doing seed saving at different scales with different emphases. But I’m really inspired by this project called Truelove Seeds. I buy a lot of seeds from them. And they're working primarily with immigrant and refugee gardeners and with African American farmers and trying to save and spread seeds of different kinds of culturally important crops. 

If we look at the big picture of centralization of production and retailing, that's only getting worse. If we look at issues of wasteful packaging, that's only gotten worse. So I mean, I think, as much as in 2006, more so than in 2006, we need grassroots activism around food.

Alicia: To get to your latest books, Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, it begins with drinking palm wine in Africa and talking about how traditional techniques are so different from the sterile, literally and figuratively, approach in the West. And this inevitably related to how people respond to fermentation, as well as alcohol. 

And so, how in your work have you adapted the traditional, more organic approaches to talk to an audience that might be skittish about fermentation? You talk about this in the book, when you go see the Chinese Chef Guan, who stirs in mold that forms on the top of his pickles, when many people new to fermentation would throw the whole crock out.

Sandor: Well, I mean, honestly, this is really what drew me into fermentation education. And the first time I was invited to teach a fermentation workshop was—which was in 1998, just because I had gotten interested in fermentation and not particularly had any fear about it. It really struck me at that first workshop, when one of the students picked up a jar of the vegetables that we just shredded and stuffed into the jars. And she said, ‘How can I be sure I have good bacteria growing in here, and not some dangerous bacteria that might make me sick, or even kill somebody?’

And I started to realize how easy it is, for people who've grown up with the idea that bacteria are so dangerous, it's easy to project this generalized anxiety about bacteria onto the process of fermentation, which actually is and always has been a strategy for safety in food. So I feel that's part of what drew me into fermentation education was the idea of demystifying this process for people.

So I'm always trying to tell people that like, ‘Oh, you can just skim off the top layer if it gets funky.’ But I also like to let people know that they have options. There do exist very effective technologies for, let's say, protecting the surface of your fermenting vegetables from oxygen. I tell them why I don't use them. Because if you like to smell it, and taste it as it develops, every time you open it up, you're letting the air and the oxygen in and kind of defeating the purpose of your specially engineered vessel or system. But there are options. And people who are really squeamish about that, they can ferment anyway. And there are ways that you can avoid that. But I also try to emphasize that, really, it's harmless, and just skim off the top layer. Don't throw the whole thing away.

Alicia: Right. 

Have people gotten a little bit more, as fermented products have become kind of more commonplace, especially in the US. Everyone's eating kimchi all the time. Everyone's drinking kombucha. Have people gotten a little more easygoing about fermentation, or a bit more interested in it?

(9) Sandor: Well, sure, sure. 

I would say since roughly 2011, maybe every year I've seen lists of the hot new trends in food that include fermentation. That always makes me chuckle a little bit, because fermentation is ancient. The products of fermentation have had enduring appeal. And if you think about ferments like bread, cheese, beer, wine, vinegar, they were just as prominent in our great-grandparents’ time as they are now. It's just that more people are aware of the process by which they are created. They're aware of fermentation. And I think that has everything to do with the microbiome and growing awareness that bacteria are not just our dangerous enemies, but they actually are our symbiotic partners, and we need them in order to function well. But people don't always know when to welcome them and when to fear them.

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

Well, I'm so struck. And this, I think, is related to the fact that fermentation is this ancient practice that no one can really own. But your writing and practice has such an openness that reminded me of Samantha Saville's concept of humble geographies, which asked geographers to pursue knowledge without assumptions of mastery. 

And so I think that in this book, you really approach a humble geography of fermentation globally, without pretense, without expectation. And I love that humility is reflected in calling yourself a fermentation revivalist rather than an expert. And so, why has that manner of working been important to you? And how did you develop your approach to being a revivalist of fermentation? 

Sandor: Well, I've never heard of this phrase humble geographies before. But I feel humbled.

I was 30 years old when I first learned how to make sauerkraut. I'd been eating sauerkraut and pickles since I was a kid. But my interest in fermentation really came in the middle of my life. And there are sort of so many people living in different cultural contexts where it just was part—Fermentation practices were just part of the landscape the whole time. And they're watching their grandmothers ferment something and their mothers ferment something, and they learned as a kid how to do it. 

So, I mean, I do feel humbled. I mean, I have developed this sort of wide ranging, sort of broad knowledge of fermentation. But in any particular format, I mean, there are just so many people with more experience than me. And that sort of forces me to be humble. 

Now, in terms of calling myself a fermentation revivalist, I mean, I guess that really came about because I have such a strong feeling that fermentation has been such an integral part of how people everywhere make effective use of whatever food resources they have available to them. But in recent times, as more and more people have moved away from direct involvement in the production of food, fermentation has largely disappeared from most people's households and from easy community views, so it sort of becomes mystified by disappearing into centralized production facilities. 

And then people sort of project all of this, I guess, technical mystery. ‘Oh, it must take a laboratory. It must take a microscope. It must take the ability to absolutely control conditions’ and imagine that they can't do it. So what I'm trying to revive is people's intimacy with this process. And people feeling it's something that they can bring into their culinary practice.

Alicia: Well, you bring up abundance often in the text as the origin point for so many global ferments. And do you think it's possible to reclaim that concept of abundance in the West to be less about having ‘choices,’ and more about using every bit of things, sharing. There's a clear focus on gift economies and friendship as a means of knowledge building in the book that celebrates a different kind of abundance than what we're sold in the U.S.? 

Sandor: Well, yeah. I mean, I hope so. 

I mean, I really perceive what I'm doing, I—Fermentation, for me, is not the ultimate point. It's a means of reclaiming our food. And reclaiming our food means me coming closer to the source of its production. And I mean, for me, that means having a garden and trying to really primarily eat out of my garden. And share when I have too much of, and ferment what I have too much of to use at a given moment so that I can enjoy it down the road. 

I mean, I think of it in terms of just reclaiming a relationship to food, that food is not sort of simply a commodity that you can get according to how fat your wallet is. Food is something more than that. Food is our connection to the biological world that enables us to physically sustain ourselves. 

Food is a relationship to cultural lineages. I mean, sure, in that context. I mean, I would love to see people think of abundance in this sort of different way. What are the food resources that are around me that are abundant? ‘Ok, there are all these oak trees dropping chestnuts. How can I sort of learn how to turn that into food?’ I mean, I just think that that's so important because that's what food is. And all of our elaborate systems that we've set up, turning food into a commodity turn out to be extremely vulnerable. And we're seeing sort of more and more disruptions to that.

Alicia: Colonization, cultural continuity, documentation. These are cited as significant concerns of yours in your fermentation work. And they seem, are so fundamental to food as a whole. And so I wanted to ask—And then, you've been publishing for nearly 20 years. Have you seen the dominant food narratives change to reflect the significance of how colonization and cultural continuity are necessary parts of talking about food?

Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm not sure that I could say that I've seen the dominant narratives change, but certainly I'm seeing a broadening of the voices that are talking about food. And I'm seeing more people who are kind of bringing up the ways in which food is related to these  sort of larger historical processes that form us and form our society. 

I mean, I think that there's a lot of people, whether it's in the form of articles and books, whether it's in the form of videos that people are posting on YouTube. But I definitely think that there are much more varied voices that I'm finding, and I don't believe that they are sort of the dominant voices at all. But they certainly are present. 

Alicia: Sure.

And your introduction mentions the ills of what you call our neo-colonial period. Poverty. Social and economic marginalization. Mass incarceration. Why was it important to you to name these explicitly in the book?

Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm writing about all of these cultural traditions, but I think it's important to acknowledge that not every cultural tradition has been able to have as much continuity as certain other cultural traditions, because we're part of these sort of larger historical processes. If you were in a native culture, where there was an active government policy to sort of destroy the culture by taking children away from their families and forcing them into schools to assimilate them, well, it's a lot harder for those cultural traditions to be able to continue because there's been such an active agenda of destroying them.

Alicia: And I think that's related to how the ferments in the book are grouped by substrate rather than national approach, which kind of demonstrates differences and commonalities between how these various cultures approach fermentation. I wanted to ask if you could elaborate on your choice to group the fermentations that way, and how you basically organized such a breadth of information? 

Sandor: Well, I mean, I certainly started the project with a geographic outline and imagining that I was going to organize it geographically. But as it went on, as the project developed, I guess I realized that my strength is connecting the dots. And the fact that I've had this broad exposure has enabled me to compare and contrast how people in different cultures that are fermenting vegetables are fermenting the vegetables. And honestly, there's more similarity than there is difference. But there's a lot of very particular distinctions. 

And it just evolved that way, so that rather than being, ‘This is my trip to China, and this is what I learned there. This is my trip to Colombia. And this is what I learned there.’ It just felt it worked a lot and certainly illuminated the fermentation processes a lot more to weave them together in a more thematic way. 

Alicia: Well, yeah. 

And another thing I was struck by is that you had acknowledged the incompleteness of your cumulative impressions from your travels. And so, I wanted to ask if you have advice for other writers, documentarians, people who are working in cultures that aren't necessarily their own, on how to approach being honest, I guess, about how you are documenting the work and the people you've met? 

Sandor: Well, I think you just said it. I mean, you just have to be honest. [Laughter.] I mean, when you're going into a situation where you're brand new and other people have been doing this all along, they're the experts and you're just the witness. So I mean, I just think that that's the reality. 

I see writers who are just trying to always assume the stance of the expert. But I mean, I just think that's ridiculous. I mean, it makes me bristle when I, I've been introduced as ‘the world's fermentation expert.’ And that, that's just utterly ridiculous. 

As I said at the beginning, I mean, I started exploring fermentation when I was 30 years old. I've been doing it for about half of my life. But the world is full of people who have been making idlis or dosas, or in Puerto Rico making maví, or lots of different formats, just as a, as an every day thing in their lives. And all of them know more about the particular ferments they're engaged with than I know about any of them.

Alicia: I think that's such an important lesson, too.

Sandor: Yeah. 

I mean, if I have an expertise, I mean, it's just that I have this sort of broad general exposure. And it's always incomplete. I do not believe that it would be possible for a human being to possess encyclopedic knowledge of fermentation practices, because they're so disparate. And it's not a unified set of practices. It's these very disparate practices that really only in the 20th century did we realize that they were unified by the fact that they all involve the activity of microorganisms that we didn't know about.

Alicia: For you, is cooking a political act? 

Sandor: Well, I mean, not intrinsically, certainly. I think it can be, but I—As I was saying earlier, in the context of reclaiming food, that's what can make cooking or other forms of food preparation of a political act. It's the spirit that we bring to it, not the act itself.

Alicia: Well, thank you so, so much for talking today. 

Sandor: Ok. 

Well, thank you for your excellent questions. And also thank you, just thank you for your appreciation of a lot of the nuance in my work. I really appreciate that.

Alicia: Oh. Thank you. Thank you. 

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Sarah Lohman, a food historian, and the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. We discussed how she went from art school to historic cooking, making a career as a blogger, and how she defines American for the purposes of her work. 

Alicia: Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. 

Sarah: Well, hello, Alicia. Good morning. [Laughter.] I feel we’re both still a little just rolled out of bed. Yeah, I did put a face on for you.

Alicia: Thank you, I put a face on as well. I was completely ready to have this conversation and was sitting at my laptop at like 10:50. Like, ‘All right.’ And then at 11:01, I looked up and was like, ‘No!’ [Laughter.]

Sarah: It's fine. I'm just here with my tea. Just getting a start on the day. We're just gonna have a lovely chat, as per usual.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Sarah: Sure. 

So I grew up in Hinckley, Ohio, which is a rural town about, oh, like 30 miles south of Cleveland. So Northeast Ohio. So I actually grew up in the house that my dad lived in from a teenager onwards. My grandmother gave it to my mom and dad the year that I was born. And so, that was how my family was able to have a little bit of property. And when I was growing up there, it was really pretty rural. I didn't have any really close neighbors, and we had a couple acres of our own. 

As far as what I ate, some of it was regional and some of it was at—the crap that we got fed in the ’80s and 90s that I look back on, and it's just totally remarkable. Do you remember things like Squeeze-its and Gushers? And I'm like, ‘I guess we just didn't know better back then.’ But those were real foods that we ate. 

And my mom was an exceptional cook. But it was very Midwestern. We did do some lasagna. We did do some chili, nothing particularly spicy. And then, kind of the regional cuisine in Northeast Ohio is very Eastern European. So there was also a lot of pierogi action. There would be some chicken paprikash, some beef stroganoff, those kinds of things. 

I think the most sort of resonant experience I had with food growing up is that my mom was an award-winning baker. So basically, as soon as I could stand, I was baking with her. Iit's funny, I didn't realize that baking was hard until food reality TV started coming out. All the chefs were like, ‘Oh, no, I don't bake, I don't bake.’ So it was really valuable to me to get that experience first and do the ‘harder side of cooking things.’

And then as I got a little bit older, my parents both went to work when my brother went to college. And so, it was sort of my job to come home from school and start dinner. And so, that was the moment that I started to learn how to cook.

Alicia: Wow. 

And so yeah, that's a really interesting mix of things. Because people associate, I think, the Gushers side of ’90s youths with other new processed foods, I guess. But it seems you had a real mix of home cooking and eating the—

Sarah: Oh, definitely.

I also feel many—at least in my world growing up, many families households are—I think a lot of families’ households are a blend. I think that we do a lot of culture and class shaming by saying, ‘Oh, you only go to McDonald's, blah, blah, blah.’ I mean, we can go into all of that, too. Yeah, of course, my family went to McDonald's, because how else you get a 6-year-old to shut up? McDonald's. And they wanted you there. And we’d go play on the playground afterwards, too. 

But yeah, my mom also cooked meals from scratch for me, because this was still the era where some people had the luxury of having a parent at home full time, which I feel is really hard for someone who would even, who would choose to want that and choose to want to spend time with that child. I feel economically, that's becoming less and less available. So my mom got to raise us up until I was in eighth grade, when she went back to work. And so, that allowed her the access and the ability and the time to be able to make meals from scratch as well. 

And kind of interestingly, her mom didn't really cook very much. Her mom did a lot with sort of processed food. But then, I don't know, my mom moved out to the country and just started baking pies and making stew from scratch. Something came alive inside her. And to this day, she's still an incredible cook and incredible baker. There's no stopping her from doing an all-out Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, even if it's just going to be the three of us eating it. And she’ll the table too. I think that’s her favorite part.

Alicia: Aww. That's really great. 

And I talk so much, I think, about—in writing and in interviews and stuff—it's like, how do people eat differently? And it's always that answer is, you give them the time and you give them the access. And that's such an important thing to talk about, I think, in terms of our food upbringings.

Sarah: Absolutely. 

And I feel that the time issue is one that I especially get very irritated with. I remember seeing a video a couple years ago with two very famous male food writers that are making a roast chicken with roasted vegetables. And they're like, ‘This only cost $14.’ And ‘Oh, isn't this so hard to do? People think this is so hard.’ And I'm like, ‘A*****e, you have no idea. You have no idea what it's like to be raising two jobs. You have no idea what it's like to be a single parent, and you have no idea the real choices that people are making. And you're just like, ‘Oh, just people hate making chicken. They're so stupid.’ It just pisses me off.

And then of course, the caloric content when you're like, ‘Man, I'm hungry. I've got all these kids to feed.’ Of course, you’re going to pick fast food as opposed to making a roast chicken with roast vegetables, which I had for lunch. I'm starving two hours later. It's just such a lack of connection to everyday people. 

But also, I think in my case, it was just the ’90s and you bought your kids Gushers and Fruit by the Foot. And that's just kind of what you did.

Alicia: Right? 

You fell in love with historical food while working at a living history museum as a teenager and went to art school. I wanted to ask, why did you go to art school?

Sarah: Well, I didn't really think history was my career. I ended up at that job because my mom worked there. And so when I turned 16, she was like, ‘You're too old to stay at home all summer. You’ve got to get a job.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, well, I'll apply at Hardee's and work with my friends.’ And she was like, ‘No, you're coming to work for me.’ She was a manager there. So I got the job. And I was, didn't want to. I wanted to go be with my friends and not do this super-nerdy thing of working in a museum in costume. 

And it ended up obviously changing my life. Mom was right. Because the people that I worked with were such just exceptional, passionate individuals. And for me, I just wasn't in history in high school because you're not really learning about the lives of people. You're memorizing dates, and it's always very war-focused as opposed to any of the life that people led in between, right? You're learning about sort of governments and dates that this happened, duh-duh-duh. There's nothing there that makes you think that history is populated with human beings. 

Yeah, but museums, like the one I worked at, or probably more famously people know Plymouth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, they are focusing on social history. So day-to-day life. And then in the house there that I worked in with my ‘family,’ there was a wood-burning cast-iron stove. And so, that's when I just loved working with the fire and with the stove, with this really kind of simple piece of equipment. And we were also working from historical books, too. I started to get the sense of what that era in history tasted like, and being able to read old recipes like that. 

But I went to art school because I liked art. And that's what I sort of excelled out when I was in high school. And I was lucky that there was a really, really excellent art school near, far enough away from home that I could move but close enough that I wasn't too scary. 

So the Cleveland Institute of Art. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But that was my plan. And then interestingly, it sort of led me back to food history. I majored in a digital arts major with a fine arts minor in food and—not food, in photo and video, which obviously I do a lot of food photography now. 

And it was a five year program. So I had to do a thesis project. And so I ended up doing an installation of what today would call a pop up restaurant that served colonial-era food for a contemporary audience. So although after that I sort of dropped it for a couple years ‘cause I was sick of it, it clearly was this combination that I had. I realized I had this sort of unique perspective, because of my—already for a couple years, had worked in this very strange work environment. And that I'd had this background in food and cooking at home, and it just kind of came together as part of this really great program that I was in.

Alicia: How has that art education influenced your career and food?

Sarah: Hugely.

It's funny because when people ask me ‘what I did in college,’ and I say that, ‘I went to art school,’ go like, ‘Oh, you’re really using the degree,’ which is just what people love to say to people who went to art students anyway, which I think is b******t. 

But I mean, in a very practical way, it has helped me immensely in that as part of my degree I received training in terms of working with freelancers. Working with clients, I should say. So being able to run my own business in a certain—just learning things, invoicing. That was all part of what I was learning. 

So when I wanted to quit my full-time job and start working for myself, that was much less intimidating. And I designed and launched my own website, because I knew both graphic design and some basic HTML when I first started blogging. Obviously, photography is a huge part of being in the foodie world. Whether you're blogging, or now, of course, a lot more on Instagram, or writing for a commission, you're often required to provide your own photographs. So my photography skills have been hugely helpful. 

And when I'm sort of working with people who want to get into food writing more, that is often one of the hard, most difficult hurdles, that food writing and food photography are often sort of intertjoined. You're building that Instagram audience. So I'm feel very, very, very lucky to have that background too. 

But I think in a bigger way, that sort of community and my professors that I work with, it, they encouraged you to think big. To think conceptually, to think of projects. And so, even formulating this idea of back when I got started: what if I did start a food blog and I looked at food history, and used to connect to the present, instead of doing all even the concept of doing this thing that I didn't really have any other—I didn't have a mentor at that point. I didn't have a concept of what my career could look like. Even just thinking about it and getting started on it, I think came from the education that I got in college, too.

Alicia: Right.

And you moved to New York, where that was—where you kind of got started doing this sort of work. Why was New York the place for that, at that time?

Sarah: I mean, I think a couple things came together. 

I mean, I mentioned to you earlier, too, that really professor—I was in my fifth year, and I'm doing this restaurant. And it’s all very crazy. And he was the one that was kind of like, ‘You need to go to New York. There just isn't space for what you're doing here right now.’

I went to school in Cleveland as well. And especially in 2005, when I was graduating, Cleveland wasn't doing great. People were already talking a lot about brain drain and college graduates leaving the Midwest and going to the coasts. It sounds harsh to say there wasn't the opportunity there. Because in a way, I did move back to Cleveland for a couple years, from 2018 to 2021. And it was because there were really exciting things happening here. And actually, because a lot of people had moved, went to the coast, got new ideas, and then brought them back to the Midwest. There's hugely positive things happening in Cleveland now. 

But I think to me, the tipping point was I'd never lived anywhere else in my life. I’d been on one trip out of the country at that point, which I felt very fortunate for. But my family just didn’t have the money to do a semester abroad or anything. I was working. I was paying for a lot of things myself. And I just thought it was really important to live somewhere else and get a different perspective on the world. 

And sort of a soft landing, I'd had a couple friends that moved out there the year before. And then really fortunately, I had a professor that said, ‘I'm from New York. I keep an apartment out there. If you ever need a place to stay for a month, just let me know,’ I was like, ‘Actually, thinking of moving there.’ So I had a place to stay when I first moved out there. And then I also then had roommates, and it just sort of happened. And then I ended up spending 13 years there. 

Alicia: Wow.

And now that you've left after being in New York for so long. How has that influenced your work?

Sarah: Yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day, because I really became an adult in New York City. And I do feel kind of douchey now being like, ‘Oh, but I live—I've lived here for a long time.’ [Laughter.] I moved when I was 23. And I left when I was 36. So that to me. I mean, obviously that's a time, a lot of growth. And a really incredible place to do that, as you know, being from New York yourself. 

But honestly, I decided to leave at the moment when I was really happy. I felt I had done it. I was a success in the city and my life was happy there. And it was the moment that I was happy as opposed to some great disappointment of disaster that I was like, ‘Ok, I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I've done this. I'm ready to go.’

So the first move, I decided to come back to Cleveland. My parents were still here. And it was in a way a test to see if my business could exist outside of New York. This was pre-pandemic, moved in 2018. But I moved somewhere that was both close enough that I was still planning on coming back to work every week or two months and seeing if—

I mean, God, when I moved to New York City, if you had an out of state or out of city telephone number, you couldn't get a job. There was so much of this very insular—you have to be in New York, have to be a New Yorker. That was the most intimidating part. You'd have seen like, ‘Can I still do events in New York? Will people have any respect for me?’ Obviously, a lot of that has changed since the pandemic. And if there's any positives to come out of it, the fact that you don't have to be located in a certain place, whether you want to be or not to do your job. 

So it was my first kind of experiment with it. And it did end up being a lot more traveling back and forth to New York, which could be really exhausting. But also part of the reason I moved at that moment to is I knew I was about to start a new book project. And I wanted to try living somewhere with a lower cost of living, and just a different pace of life. And I just knew that I didn't want to live in New York anymore. So I knew there wasn't going to be any sort of big regrets. Just wasn't quite sure what the next step was. 

So I was in Cleveland for three years. Well, a little more than. I’d said two to three years when I moved out there. But then there was this pandemic thing. I don't know if you heard. And I was really relieved to be there, too, because I could be there and support my parents, which would have been so scary. And I'm sure has been so scary for a lot of people. 

And like I mentioned to you, I just moved to Las Vegas at the end of August. A great new opportunity came up. I really love the city. I love its natural wonder. And so now, it's a little bit more of seeing like, ‘Ok, a lot of my money comes from doing live events,’ which obviously weren't happening during the pandemic. But it's also become sort of a weird time for doing online classes. People are sick of being online. But I did just come back from New York to try to do first in-person talks and events since the pandemic started. And people are also still a little hesitant to show up in person. All of it's understandable. I'm sick of the loss of connectivity that we get through Zoom too. But it makes total sense. If someone feels under the weather, they're not going to show up for class. 

Things have sort of hit a weird moment, but I'm just trying to ride it out. Hopefully, one day be able to expand the branded events a little bit more to the West Coast, too. And I don’t know, Alicia. I'm all about learning and experiences. And part of that is just I want to live in a different part of the country so I can understand that better, and maybe sort of understand our country as a whole better, too.

Alicia: For sure. 

And so, I know you started out writing about food as a blogger, you—Four Pounds Flour. How has your relationship to being a food person online changed since you started in the industry? Because it is, like you said now, probably a lot more visually focused than it was. When people were bloggers. You could take a real shitty picture and use it. [Laughter.] 

Sarah: You're not gonna get those Instagram likes!

And that's the coming from art school, too. I wasn't just like, ‘My content has to be good.’ So I didn't really think of myself as a writer. I still don't, in a way. The writing, to me, is a means to an end, a way to have a conversation about food and to express ideas. So coming from art school, it was like, ‘No, my photos are absolutely not going to look shitty.’ 

I'll tell you this. And bless him. My friend Jay, who I haven't talked to many years—Part of the article process is going through the critique process, which, I think, is honestly one of the most valuable skills I learned there. And so in my fifth year, and I'm in my major, and we're this really tight group of people. And I'm working on opening up this pop up restaurant, I’m and doing a website. And so, I did food photography for the first time. And so I had this critique of my food photographs, and my friend Jay went, ‘That's looking like some Chinese food. China, frankly—’ How do you say it? Some, he said, ‘That's looking like some Chinese fast food menu photographs.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, nooooo.’

So it was this real kick in the pants. I mean, I think maybe the closer equivalent is it looks—it looked a little bit more like the collages that you see on the sides of bodegas. That kind of photography I was doing. Because it is a really specific skill to be able to get in there and understand. Just portrait photography, or landscape photography, or animal photography, are all very separate skill sets. Food photography, there are certain tricks that you had to learn. 

And so I really had to push myself to get better very, very quickly so that I didn't have Chinese takeout slash side of the bodega. Which, by the way, I'm obsessed with bodega collages. And also noticed the aesthetic is changing recently, the last time I was in New York. Maybe that's a different definition. So to me, the visual elements were extremely important. And I knew the food had to look delicious, or at least interesting. Is every photo on that blog that I wrote from—what 2008 to 2018? Is every photo a banger? Absolutely not. But I do feel proud of that. 

It is super visual. But interestingly, a lot of my work has now shifted away from individual dishes to more broader storytime about food as culture. So my photography has become much more documentarian of the travels I’ll do and the people that I'm meeting, and then the foods that we're eating together.

So the transition to Instagram was super natural for me. See, this is the thing. I'm not in Writer Twitter. You're so in Writer Twitter and Food Twitter; I just kind of lurk and retweet. So in some ways, again, even though I have a book out. I’m working on my second book that started as a blogger. I'd never think of myself as a writer. That’s what I try to say when I’m—when somebody asks me what I do for a living. And I don't really want to have a conversation, but it still doesn't work. And they're like, ‘What do you want to write about?’ It's fine. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Can you tell me what your next book is about?

Sarah: Yeah, I can. 

So I'm looking at foods that are on the verge of extinction in America. And I traveled all over the country to talk to different people who were the shepherds and the harvesters and the farmers of these different foods. 

And the reason the foods are becoming endangered are for a variety of reasons. But I think most importantly, that all these foods are tied very deeply to, often, a people and a place. And the peoples that they belong to are peoples that within America have been historically and systematically oppressed. And so, that's one of the ways that America colonizes, is by taking away culture, which means taking away food. 

And it's looking at what happened, and honestly a lot about the history of American colonialism. But also, the stories of survival. Survival and thriving, too, and how these different peoples throughout America had been able to hold on to these foods, too. And then a little bit of call to action. My hope for this book is that the people and the products that I'm featuring will get the attention, the money, the support that they need and want. Maybe even the legislature. I'm hoping that this book serves these people and serves as a platform for their voices, too. 

I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm still writing it. Once it’s in the publication process, you can talk and talk and talk about it. But yeah, at this point, someone could probably write it faster than me. I don't think I'm a slow writer. It just takes time, Alicia. You know the work. 

Alicia: I know. It sucks. It's the worst thing I've ever done. And I am a writer and I hate writing a book. I mean, I hate writing a book because for myriad reasons that I probably shouldn't talk about publicly, but—

Sarah: It’s exhausting. I mean, I'll talk about them for you. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting. I mean, it gives me anxiety. I'm thinking about it all the time for multiple years of one's life. The financial support isn't there. You said something on Twitter that I was like, ‘Same’ so hard that you—Paraphrase. You said, ‘Writing a book takes a lot of thinking. But how do you have time for thinking when you need to pay the bills?’ 

And that actually, with both of these books, is the hardest part. The money runs out. People are gonna get in advance. Yeah, well, lasts me about eight months of living and doing the research. It all got invested back into the book. I'm not living the high life here. And then you have to work, because you still have bills to pay. So where do you find the time to get the space, not just to write but to think about these ideas of making a great piece of work when you're also doing whatever you need to do to get those bills paid? You're working two full-time jobs when you're writing a book. It’s absolutely exhausting. It’s exhausting.

Alicia: Yeah. 

The third of my advance that I've gotten so far, it wouldn't have paid my rent for two months. Yeah, it sucks. I don't know. I shouldn't have agreed to it.

Sarah: It absolutely sucks. And then yeah, I kind of did a second one. ’Cause I was like, ‘Wow, I don't know how to make money.’ And after this, I really have to give it a think. 

In some ways, I feel guilty, because obviously, this is—What we're talking about is aspirational for probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've spent 10 years of my life on two books. And yeah, I'm really proud of my first book. And I think that the second book is going to be something that I'm proud of, too. I've gotten to work with great editors, and we've made something great together. And I think that the book has done something—

I think that the big benefit of it, and probably the way you're motivated to do it, is that we can put something good and thoughtful into the world that will—I hope with my first book, too, bettered somebody's life in an indirect way. Just created more understanding around food and culture in America. 

But man, am I poor. I'm single. I should say to everybody. And happily so. This is where I want to be. Now I live with a housemate, but I was living by myself for a while. And I just read some big article about how society isn't designed for people to stay single who want to stay single. 

And so, it's really hard. It does feel like, really, an accomplishment every month that I do it where I'm like, ‘Yeah, rent, paid you.’ And it's hard to sort of juggle that between people's perceptions of me. And you probably feel the same way, too, where it's like, ‘I'm successful. I've got a book out. I've got some name recognition.’ I'm not a major food celeb. That's totally fine. But I think people need to look at what I'm doing. They're like, ‘Yes, that's what I want to be doing.’ But everybody—Phew. It's tough some days. It's a real haul. 

And I don't want to say that love makes up for money. To get through those times of real stressful uncertainty, you really have to be—love and be invested in what you're doing. So definitely after this book, I have to really think about what I want the next step of my career to be because it's just incredibly exhausting. This will be another five-year process from proposal to publication. The financial stress is real. The artistic physicality of writing a book is really draining and uncertain and difficult on your sort of mental health. 

But I got to meet amazing people and do amazing things that I wouldn't have had the excuse to do otherwise. And I think that that's the addiction and the appeal that keeps bringing me back. If I pitch this book, that means I get to go to this place and meet these people and meet them on their level and in their space and in their life. And to me, that is really—it's the access that being a writer gives you, both that people might be open to speak to you but also the allowance it gives myself to be like—

I went to the Navajo Nation and volunteered at a festival that celebrates the Navajo-Churro sheep, and assisted this cook and butcher in butchering a whole animal. I'm sorry. Course you're vegan. [Laughter.] I forgot about that. I’m so sorry.

Alicia: I’m a vegetarian, it's ok. [Laughs.]

Sarah: Oh, I actually am too. But for me, learning about, meeting people where they're at is also about learning about their food in every single aspect. I had never butchered an animal before. And especially someone who has eaten meat and does still occasionally eat meat, I feel—I've always felt that experience is really important to be with that animal. 

But I never, I'm not just gonna pick up and volunteer fly to Arizona and then drive for hours to volunteer at a sheep festival. And I do want to do that. If someone asked me if you want to do that, it’d be like, ‘Absolutely.’ But writing it in this book allowed me to do that. And now, I've met people that I feel so connected to. 

And I'm just rambling now. But, yeah.

This book is really special. I feel connected to the people that I interviewed and spent time with in a way that I didn't get to do in the first book. And in this really meaningful way. So that's amazing. That's a moving life, right?

Alicia: [Laughs.] It is great. I am too bitter about the book process. 

But I also like to talk about it because I do feel as writers, we feel a little bit like we owe it to the fact that we make a living being writers to be nice about it. And I think that that's not fair necessarily to people who are coming up and get a, an idea of it as something—I grew up looking at magazines and looking at the contributor page and being like, ‘These people are living the great life.’ And now, I know that that's not true. [Laughs.]

Sarah: It’s f*****g hard.

And you really have to fight to get paid. I mean, especially now, both the amount of money paid for both articles and books has just dropped in the past 10 to 20 years. And a lot of it comes from online. For some reason, when your words live online as opposed to on the page their value’s less. Which doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna write just as good, no matter where that's appearing. 

And I don't think that the publishing industry as a whole actually supports great art right now. I mean I appreciate that every publisher has got a couple authors that's making bank, and that they're essentially taking the gamble. It's literally gambling on us, where they're investing money. And they're gonna see if they get their investment back. But I have been with two publishers now. I have never felt financially supported. My third publisher, I feel supported in many other ways. But money is one of the most important ways to be supported. 

And I also don't like this culture of you’re an artist, you can't talk about money. I got bills to pay. I got food to buy. How do you have space to create good work when you don't feel secure in those things?

I teach a nonfiction book proposal and publishing process class with a friend of mine who published an amazing book about bedbugs. She's a science writer. And one of the things we talk about is we're also very brutally honest about what this process is like, what your financial situation is going to be like, especially as a new author. Unless you were already a super famous name, you're not going to be pulling in the big bucks on your first book. The fact that you might never see royalties. My first book, Eight Flavors, has done really, really, really well. I have not seen a dollar. 

That being said—and this will, I think, happen for you Alicia—is the best part about it, maybe even more so than the getting to go out and connect with people, not writing the book, is that then for at least a year after the book comes out, you get to talk about it. You get to engage in this conversation that you don't have to give any introduction to, because people have read the book. And you can engage with people about these concepts. After the first book, I got to travel for almost two years. There's no official book tour. People are surprised about that nowadays too. But now, they'll do a media tour. 

But for certain authors, public speaking becomes a part of your job. And I got to speak in a huge diversity of places. And that was really amazing, getting to talk to people about this work that I had done and have these conversations that I've wanted the book to prompt feels so good. And then that, for that one year, you're also just in the money. There's just money coming everywhere. And then you’re like, ‘You know what? I could do this again. I could do this again.’ And the cycle just repeats. And now, I'm 40. So this is why we have to figure things out going forward. 

But when your book comes out. It's going to be amazing. You're going to have great conversations and—about something that I know you're really passionate about, too. And then that will make you start to think you can do it again. And then you might.

Alicia: Ha! [Laughs.] The next one will be very, very different. 

But in your book that actually is out there that people could buy and read, and hopefully get you royalties, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine—

Sarah: But in the end, I don't care enough. Now that the work is out there, it's like, ‘Get it from your library. Buy it secondhand. Borrow it from your friend.’ To me, in the end, now that the work exists, the money part, in my mind, should not be on the reader. It should be the publisher, right? And the full system that doesn't support artists. Now the book exists. Don't steal it. Don't steal this book. Buy it from a small, independent bookstore, if you want to. Yeah, get it from your friend’s shelf. I don't care if you enjoy it.

Alicia: I actually did buy yours second hand at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Or was it Book Revue in, on Long Island? I don't know. But it has the price in pencil, so I know I bought it second hand. [Laughs.]

Sarah: I'm totally fine with that. I think that’s lovely.

Alicia: [Laughs.] But I wanted to ask how you came up with parameters for your definition of American cuisine.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the idea that I wanted to play within this book, because I think American cuisine is famously difficult to define, right? And if people do define it, it's in this really negative way. ‘Oh, it's all McDonald's, all hot dogs and hamburgers, or whatever.’ 

And I think that internationally, that's often what people think of American food. And I think that Americans often do that to themselves. When, in my experience, I find quite the opposite, that there's a lot of worry about American food becoming homogenized. But it's so often that I'm doing an event and people will come up and be like, ‘Oh, have you tried this local dish? And do you know about this thing? And if you go to this restaurant–’ People are so immensely proud of their local culture and cuisine. So I think a lot of American food is based on physically, graphically, where you grew up. 

And then of course, I think that saying American food is hot dogs and hamburgers presents a very narrow and, dare I say, racist view of who an American is. Because I'm an American. You're an American. Someone whose family immigrated from China in the 1840s is now fourth, fifth, sixth generation American. Someone who came from India in the 1960s is American if they want to define themselves that way. So it's both a, you mentioned the word sort of erasure when we were talking about this. Using that narrow definition of American is erasure of all of the facets and complications of who Americans are, right? 

That being said, the fact that—acknowledging the fact that we were a really diverse country, I then got curious about how individual ingredients. What cook doesn't have black pepper and  vanilla in their kitchen? So how can someone come from this huge variety of backgrounds—And I mean, when you travel around this country, it often felt like I wasn't going to different states. It feels like I'm going to different countries that both have their own idea of like, ‘This is what America is,’ but one state over, it's completely different. And they’re speaking a different language one state over, too. 

So why, then, are there these handful of ingredients that both define us and that Americans consume in massive levels compared to the rest of the world? Why do we have a particular love for these? I think American cuisine can be delightfully undefinable. I think that the idea of cuisine, of a certain way of eating and doing things has a more specific definition. And I think then there can be lots of arguments about what is or isn't American food. And I think that that's all a fun, interesting conversation to have. But so, then I got curious about what does unite us? And apparently it's a few pantry items. And why.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Which is so interesting. And I loved when you wrote about Food Network. Again, as a person who, born in the mid ’80s, watching Food Network, reading Food & Wine, reading Travel + Leisure as a kid was how I understood food other than what my mom was cooking. And you point to how they kind of led to this increase in sales for whole black peppercorns versus powdered. 

And I think that that's such an interesting thing, because we don't think in the U.S.—Or even I, as a food writer, it's difficult to talk about what ingredient people use that is actually, I don't know how to sit—But people don't use things in their whole forms necessarily in an American kitchen. It is a rare thing to grind your own coffee or grind your own peppers. But for whatever reason, whole black peppercorns really became a thing. It was a joke on SNL that, the huge waiter with, the waiter with the huge pepper mill. ‘Tell me when.’ [Laughs.]

But people take for granted the whole peppercorns now. But I wanted to ask, I don't think it's Food Network anymore that's influencing how people eat. What do you think is influencing how people eat now?

Sarah: That's a great question. 

I mean, the Food Network stepped in to fill such a gap that wasn't, that was there. A lot of food magazines, at that point, even in mid ’80s were super high end, let's say. Or very, very low end, Budget recipes. And the Food Network just sort of normalized cooking, and normalized olive oil. And just these whole and fresh ingredients that weren’t out of reach in any way, that you could get at your grocery store, that it didn't cost that much more money that we weren't using. It sort of leveled up home cooking in a lot of ways too. Even for people who mostly were just watching it, as opposed to try and replicate every recipe. 

I mean, I think that the major food influence right now is Instagram. And I think that there is some negative aspects to that, in that ugly food is delicious. And Instagram really only elevates beautiful food and incredible colors. I try not to be a crabby, elder millennial. Just hates things ’cause they're new. But something really bothers me about venues that are clearly just setups for Instagram pictures. You know what? I just like honesty and logic in any viewing. And so, I don't want food to be set up so that it looks good on Instagram. 

And I see that in retail and restaurants. They're like, ‘Well, this is going to be our Instagrammable dish.’ But then on the flip side,then I’ll get that. I'm like, ‘Oh, it's gonna be such a tight Instagram photo. I’m sure I’m gonna love it.’ So in some ways, it can be a really negative influence, I think, ‘cause if we're just thinking about—Obviously, we do eat with our eyes. But if we're just thinking about the visuals, we're missing the whole ugly, delicious panoply of amazing foods out there. 

That being said, it has sort of a positive things, too, because a lot of those really vibrant colors are coming from East Asian ingredients. And so, now things like ube and matcha—Matcha, I did predict being an up-and-comer in Eight Flavors, but I never would have called ube being a thing now, which is not only beautiful, but really delicious. And so, even though I think there can be some negative aspects to just judging food visually, I think that it has allowed us to not ‘ew’ when something is an unexpected color, which I think is a very Midwest, white Midwest, to do, to be like, ‘Eww, why is it that color?’ I think that embracing the beautiful, the beauty in food that often comes from around the world. And I would say particularly East Asian countries do these incredible exclamations of color with their ingredients and flavor and appearance and trompe l’oeil, and all these amazing presentation things that I love seeing embraced in American food, because that also means that those people are being embraced as Americans.

Alicia: Right.

Well, that leads me to my question of so many of the ingredients in the book are so many ingredients that we have come to kind of consume in the U.S., aren't indigenous to the U.S. And so, you write that in the conclusion that it's our lack of tradition that is allowed for this diversity. And of course, diversity is good in every aspect, but at the same time, I'm always wondering now, what is the difference between assimilation and erasure of origins of food. And what is lost when something becomes American versus retaining its identity at origin? 

One thing I've been talking about with my husband because he's applying for PhD programs right now in history, and he's going to focus his research on rum and Puerto Rico. And we were talking about people calling coquito ‘Puerto Rican eggnog.’ And then talking about how is that erasing the idea that it probably has roots that are deeper than U.S. colonization and industrial canned products coming. But it's so hard to find that. But then the story ends up just being like, ‘It's eggnog with coconut.’

And especially now that you're writing about Indigenous foods, but what is that difference between assimilation and honoring origin? 

Sarah: Yeah, couple things to comment on. And I'll see if I can start on a larger thought here. 

I do think that assimilation and erasure are the same thing. I think that when, we are for a large part, especially the last 100 years being an immigrant nation. And so when someone comes here and you say, ‘You have to speak English, you have to cook this way, you have to dress that way.’ That is both assimilation and erasure. And I think that's a horrid concept. And I think that it's a way that, luckily, immigrants have been able to resist in different ways, too. 

But I spent many years working at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum teaching immigration history about the Lower East Side, but in this broader way. And we did these tours in a way that we could also learn from the people's experiences on the tour. And maybe one of the most heartbreaking things that got sent to me said to me pretty frequently is that someone whose parents were, for example, whose grandparents are from Italy would talk about how they were so sad that they didn't know how to speak Italian because their grandparents would not speak it in the house. They’d refuse to and they're really upset they didn’t get that cultural connection, but then will turn around and talk about how immigrants from Central America don't want to be American and don't want to speak English. 

And luckily, I had a job where I could call people out. That was part of the process of like, ‘Oh, didn't you tell me earlier that you duh-duh this?’ So I hate that turning around and shitting on the next person, because it just means that we all sort of lose. And luckily, because of the stubbornness of Italian immigrants, we have this really incredible Italian American food way here to go get, to experience and enjoy. 

But one of the downsides, though, of having a culture that is made up of people all, from all over the world coming to this country, is that we also have erased Indigenous foods and Indigenous ingredients. And that was done purposefully, again, because the American colonial government wanted to come in and take that land, and just push Indigenous peoples into the least desirable sections, or in some case, people—It's an incredible story where people were able to stand their ground and stay, remain on their sacred land. In the face of the deception, manipulation and violence of the American government, that was a very, very difficult thing to do. 

So we have an incredible number of native ingredients and spices, plants. And in some ways, it has spread all over the world, like tomatoes, and peppers. But I'm seeing a resurgence of American spicebush, which is a native spice from the Midwest and the East that has notes of clove and nutmeg and allspice in it, that's just a plant I could probably go into the woods and find right now. But we’re totally unaware of it, because it wasn't cinnamon. It wasn't these spices that were revered in Europe.

That being said, too, Indigenous people have also adapted and brought in new ingredients and new animals and new ways of living. Indigenous people in the Americas are incredibly adaptive. And so, they took the best parts of the colonist’s culture and the parts that suited them, and then made that a part of their culture too. So of course, all of modern Mexican cuisine, a lot of that has to do—

I guess the biggest thing I can say is that the Americans didn't have many domesticated animals. And so, that was one of the biggest ways that Indigenous people's lives changed. And Indigenous food changed here, too. But of course, also, there's no way we can also say, ‘Well, that's not real Indigenous food.’ For example, coming back to the Navajo. They've been shepherding the Navajo-Churro sheep for 400 years. So we also tend to have different ideas of tradition. If a white person does something for 100 years, it’s traditional, but if a native person does something for 400 years, it's like, ‘Oh, we just took that from the colonists.’

So all that aside. I think that there's also a really positive ways to think about it. Because we are such a jumble of people, both in our country and our cities, we get to look in each other's cooking pots and go to someone's house to experience a new recipe, or Google a restaurant in our neighborhood. So there is also this mutual sharing of food, and I think in particular flavor. It's always like, ‘What is that spice? What is that ingredient?’ 

And I think that's why I was drawn to looking at individual flavors, individual ingredients, because often it's not necessarily the whole dish that comes into our broader culture at once. It's the sriracha sauce or it's the cardamom. It's this introduction of something that's new that we begin to play with. And when I say American, too, its broad American culture. You see that same kind of playing with a new ingredient for someone who is white Midwestern, or Mexican descent in the southwest. It is this broader idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is delicious, probably no matter where you're from, so that everyone gets to play as opposed to the dominant culture, I think. And maybe think about it as more mainstream than dominant. 

Alicia: No, no, that's super fascinating. And I think that that's a really great way of thinking about it. Because I do think that the conversation has been really skewed, especially online and food conversations around, what is cultural appropriation? And a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, does this mean I can't cook tacos in my house if I'm not Mexican?’ And it's like, ‘No, of course. That's great. Everyone should eat tacos.’

Sarah: Just don’t claim you invented the taco!

It seems very simple in some ways, right? I mean, one class I taught, I wish I'd gotten this woman's name. But we were talking about the importance of attribution. And we're talking about it specifically in just recipe writing. I was like, ‘Even if you were just inspired by somebody else, why wouldn't you attribute that person and create a community? Why is there this pressure that we have to—No item of food is new. It's all inspired. No item of art right is new. It's all inspiring to be something else.’

And this writer in my class turned to me and said, ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, when in doubt, shout it out.’ If you're worried that you’re appropriating someone's culture, shout it out. Credit somebody. 

But also, if you're worried that you're appropriating someone's culture, maybe don't do whatever it is that you're about to do. Is this appropriation? It probably is. I think that cooking within someone's culture is an incredible way to learn about someone else's life and mode of living, especially at a time when we can't travel very much right now, right? Because it's not just the food and the flavor. It's the process of making it that teaches you about how other people live. And that's an incredible bond. 

And interestingly, speaking of American erasure and assimilation, food is often the thing that people are the most prejudiced against. 100 years ago, we stopped eating garlic, because Italian and Jewish immigrants smelled like garlic. And that was seen as a negative. The ’80s or the ’90s, kids coming from India or South Korea, or opening up their lunchboxes and getting the ‘ew’ and all they want is Lunchable. So there's definitely that side of it. 

But at the same time, those same kids grow—Italian food exists because of stubbornness. We have an incredible amount of Korean food, Korean American food now. There's also a stubbornness in giving up our food culture that then ultimately benefits everyone. It's one of the things that almost a dominant culture allows people to maintain. But also, thankfully, it's one of the ways that we can make incredible connections with people, even if we don't speak their language or believe in the same faith. Sitting around the dinner table, experiencing those foods, we all taste, we all eat, we can all talk about food. And it's really an amazing thing. 

Alicia: Right.

And I wanted to ask, because working on my book, a lot of narratives around vegan and vegetarian food for the last 50 years, has—it's been historicized as a white thing, which is just so wildly inaccurate. Even within the United States, this is—there is diversity in people who eat ‘alternative natural foods’ or eat a vegetarian diet. 

And I wanted to ask, how do you—what are your techniques? What are your methods for helping you see beyond the narratives of the dominant culture, or the dominant historical narrative? Because also, a thing that is perpetuated because we're creating so much content online. I've perpetuated this myself, is that we're just writing stories. And we're grabbing a random source, and we're just repeating it. So as someone who's actually digging into history, what is, what are some good resources? What are some good techniques for not just perpetuating stories that are incorrect?

Sarah: Yeah.

I think that the biggest way I want to frame this is just because they're the easiest source to find, doesn't mean that they're the best source. Going into the book that I'm currently writing, someone is going to perceive this as racist. But here I go. I wanted to make an effort to include as few white men as possible, because when you do a Google search for anything, the first hits that people with the most media attention, that people with maybe the most sort of money and power and businesses, are going to be white men in this country, because they are the dominant people and have been for a very long time. Does that mean that that white man is the best resource for you? It absolutely doesn't. So the easiest, the most powerful, even the most written about person may not—and in fact, probably is not the best person to talk. Does that mean never talk to any white guy ever? No. Absolutely not. There are white guys in this book. 

But just making that promise to myself made me keep pushing and not be satisfied with the first answers that I got. Because even in maybe that first phone call with that white guy, they start talking about other people who have inspired them or who they support or who they're linked to. If I just stop at that one phone call, I wouldn't get to all those other people that actually that guy thinks is really important to talk about. 

There was an Amazon review for my first book, which you should never read. But of course I did. And someone said, ‘It seems like she went out of her way to be inclusive in this book.’ And the answer is, yeah. [Laughter.] Yeah, I did. 

But also, I also wanted to tell the real history, which is an inclusive history. That's why I study food history, because looking at what we eat finally allows us to access the stories of women and people of color in a way that traditional histories do not. And traditional histories are several generations of both saying that white male history is the only important history, and also because only white men were allowed to do things for so f*****g long in this country means that we never get to acknowledge that everybody else was there too. That we were all there at the same time. 

So my advice is to keep pushing. Don't go with the first Google search. Don't go with the first phone call. Keep pushing till you find the person you're like, ‘Whoa, this is it. This is where the story is. This is how I can understand this deeper.’

That being said, I think part of the issue is that the money doesn't support that kind of writing, whether things get repeated again and again online because maybe you're getting 100 bucks or $150 to write your 250, 500 or 800 word. Or maybe you’re not not getting any money, because you're trying to break into the industry. So when you are making negative dollars per hour to write an article, of course, you're going to take that first Google search. And of course, you're on deadline. And of course, your editor just pressure you to copy something else if they're not a very good editor. So that's how those stories get supported. So it also takes a certain denial of like, ‘Oh, man, if I didn't do this much work, I would be more financially stable.’ But that's also just not the right thing to do. 

So it really is a battle and it's not easy, and the system is not supporting good journalism right now. That I think is the biggest issue.

Alicia: No, absolutely. 

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Sarah: I've been thinking about this a lot as I know this is your question. 

I think for me, it is a cultural act, which is a political act in its own way. When we cook, when we cook from home, when we cook within our own cultures, it is an act of preservation. It can be an act of defiance. I mean, sort of speaking about veganism, a friend of mine who is a devoted vegan, which I really do respect, said, though, that he thought that everyone was gonna eat this way in the future and this is definitely the way that we should be going. 

And at that point, I had just come back from the Navajo Nation. And I'm like, ‘You're gonna go to these Indigenous people and tell them that they can't eat meat anymore, because it's bad for the planet, despite the fact that this particular animal has been a part of their culture and their religion for 400 years? So that's not like a colonizer attitude at all.’ So I realized at that moment that food is religion in a lot of ways. It can be directly tied to religion, but it is such a big part of culture to march in and tell someone you can't eat that way, is—it's really destructive. That can be erasure, too.

So just, I think sometimes living your life and eating the foods you want to is this political act, but I think that most people would see it as a cultural act. An act of preservation. And especially around the holidays, that is the time when even people who are maybe many generations removed from an immigrant or enslaved or colonist ancestor, that's when they're cooking the foods to reconnect to that story and to their own history.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah: My pleasure! Yeah, I got really riled up about some things. [Laughter.] I may have offended some people. It's probably fine.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Kristina Cho, author of the cookbook Mooncakes and Milk Bread. We discussed how studying architecture has influenced her recipe work, moving from the Midwest to California, and why it was so important for her to pay homage to the Chinatowns of the United States. 

Alicia: Hi, Kristina. Thanks so much for being here.

Kristina: Hi, so excited for this podcast.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Kristina: I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, technically, the suburbs, but my grandparents—And it's also where my mom and all her siblings grew up, but they grew up in Chinatown of Cleveland. And so, I ate a lot of Chinese food growing up, which makes sense. My family is a Cantonese Chinese family from Hong Kong. So I ate a lot of Chinese food. 

But I also ate a lot of, I don't know, I would say the classic Midwestern staples, ’cause my mom was always interested in learning how to make, I don't know, I guess American food and figuring out a way to make it palatable for my family that loves Asian flavors.

Alicia: Well, how would she do that?

Kristina: So there's two recipes in my mind that always stick out to me that are kind of this really interesting fusion. 

She makes this really great meatloaf, which I haven't had in a long time. But we had meatloaf a lot growing up. And her glaze on it, rather than just ketchup or whatever else you put in it, she would do ketchup in oyster sauce mixture. And she would put bread crumbs and green onions inside of the meatloaf. So it had a lot of that sweetness and also the umami flavors from oyster sauce. 

And also her—I call it Mom's spaghetti. Or Chinese spaghetti. Again, it's ketchup again. I think my mom probably growing up was like, ‘What's ketchup? I need to figure out how to use this in everything.’ She loves it. But her version of spaghetti, spaghetti bolognese was ground beef, ketchup, oyster sauce again. And later on in life when I described it to other people, there's a Filipino version of spaghetti that's very similar to it. So I just find that recipe very interesting to compare with other people's kind of immigrant history, Americanized version of classic American recipes.

Alicia: And you grew up cook—around cooking and food. And it's always been a significant part of you, your life as you write in your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread. But writing recipes down is kind of an entirely different set of skills from just eating or cooking. 

And you credit your training as an architect with your ability to test recipes to perfection. But when it came to writing instructions for home cooks, how did you get your voice together to communicate your style of cooking?

Kristina: It was quite a journey. I don't think I initially had my recipe writing voice at the beginning of my cookbook writing process. And it kind of just took me a few months throughout that whole writing process as I develop recipes to kind of figure that style out. 

’Cause you're right. Growing up in my family, no recipes were written down ever. It was just kind of ‘go by feel.’ Recipes were passed down orally. And I think working in architecture, a lot of it is just kind of creative, developing different concepts and ideas. But then there's the more kind of a practical side, when a building goes into construction; you document it in a very meticulous way so that someone else knows how to build it. And so, I think I took that mind-set into recipe writing, kind of noting what details are important for someone that I don't know what their kitchen is like and giving them everything that they need to be able to execute this recipe successfully. 

So I focus a lot on indicators. A lot of times recipes have times, but I'll say ‘until golden brown.’ And just talking to other people, it was just really important for me to emphasize cooking towards indicators. Everyone's oven’s different. Yeah, that was important to me.

And also kind of writing recipes in a very warm way. And it's only way that I know how to write, is to write in my own—how I would speak. So I wanted the recipes to sound like I am there in the kitchen with you to assure you that everything's going fine. So if anything, while I was making it—the Chinese sausage and cilantro pancakes are a good one. I like to say in there that while you're rolling it, if a bit of cilantro bursts out of your dough, don't panic. That is supposed to happen. So I tried to note where like, ‘Oh, someone might freak out here. I need to add a note to make sure that they’re ok.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. 

It's so hard to do, too—And that's such an amazing skill to have, is to know where to account for someone else's state of mind or someone's oven. It's really difficult. I mean, I'm kind of new to writing recipes down for people. And it's really nerve racking and it's really interesting, the questions you'll get that you never thought of, but from—

Kristina: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah.

Has that helped you as well, is knowing where people kind of falter and ask for advice?

Kristina: Yeah, absolutely. 

The book is out into the world. I can't really change anything that's on the pages. But my DMs on Instagram, I kind of treat it as an open hotline for people. And I probably shouldn't. I should probably separate that a little bit and not be on it so much answering people's questions. But I honestly live for it. I love hearing other people's experience making it. 

There's just one kind of maybe a little bit of a finicky cake in the book. It's a Malay cake. And she was baking it at a high altitude. And I was like, ‘Oh God, I don't know. I have zero experience with baking anything at a high altitude.’ So she's kind of picking her brain with figuring out what would happen. 

I love that stuff. I love troubleshooting, figuring out the little details. And I think post–book release, learning about all these things out in the real life of how these recipes were truly executed in the real world, I think, will just make me a better recipe developer too. And if I write a second book or another baking book in the future, all of the stuff—that is very, very valuable.

Alicia: Well, and you were kind of talking about this in discussing your mom's twist on different classic Midwestern American recipes. But I always think of the Midwest, ’cause I'm from New York, as having its own distinct food culture, too, which it does, obviously. How does it influence your cooking style, if at all?

Kristina: I think the biggest thing that growing up in the Midwest has affected the way that I cook is that I find it very difficult to cook for one to two people. But I do it all the time, because I just live with my fiancé and my dog. So it's just, I guess the two and a half of us. I don't make scratch food for my dog. 

But I naturally just love to cook for a lot of people. That's where I feel most comfortable. I like making family-style meals, or multiple desserts to share. Everything's family-style. You need options. And I think growing in the Midwest, even if you didn't grow up in an Asian American family, that's just how the Midwest is. Potlucks. school functions are bringing a bunch of casseroles and tray bake things, a ton of cookies. I think there's a very kind of warm and hospitable food culture in the Midwest. I think there's a deep appreciation of kind of fluffy doughy breads, and a lot of cheese and cream cheese that I love and have carried that on to adulthood. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Yeah, and now you live in San Francisco, which you also credit with influencing your cooking style. So how has California kind of built upon that style you developed around your family and also among friends, in growing up in Ohio? 

Kristna: Yeah, it's such an interesting hybrid of all these different influences based on where I live. So I actually moved out of San Francisco last year, but I live in the East Bay now just adjacent to Berkeley. So I'm still in the Bay Area. And I think even doing that move has kind of changed my food a little bit.

But just solely California, I think it—I think in a way it has almost spoiled me in the way that I cook, because we just have such incredible produce. Any fruit and vegetable I could ever imagine is here, and it's so incredibly fresh. And there's a lot of amazing Asian-owned farms here. So I have access to just, I don't know, heritage variations of bok choy and stuff. It feels there's an abundance of all this thing, all these things I can work with. 

But I try to maintain a really realistic approach with the way that I recipe-write. I know not everyone's gonna have this access to this very specific variety of bok choy or cabbage. But I think just being in California, just—it's a really wide palette of stuff that I could kind of experiment with. And I used to be kind of a picky eater when I was a kid, but now I have just this love of vegetables and like fresh produce and fruit throughout the seasons. And I think that's how California has changed me. 

And also just being in California, where there's so many different cultural backgrounds and so many restaurants that represent that, my own knowledge of food has just expanded so much just by living here.

Alicia: Well, and your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread is a love letter to Chinese bakeries and Chinatowns everywhere, including the Cleveland Chinatown where your family had its restaurant when you were growing up. Why was it important to you to give these places and their recipes their due in a cookbook?

Kristina: I think because these restaurants have been somewhat overlooked for a super long time. So my grandpa had a bunch of restaurants throughout the years, some in Chinatown, but the one that I actually grew up in, it was his last restaurant before he retired. He actually picked it, picked the location based on where my parents bought a house to raise my brother and I, which is in West Ohio. And so that was his last restaurant.

But our tie to Chinatown and also our love of just Chinese food and restaurants, I think that was just something that needed to be celebrated. And it's kind of shocking to me that even the year 2021, there's been more opportunities to highlight it. But I think that it deserves so much more celebration. Chinese American restaurants have been such an important part of, I think, general culture. Even entertainment, Hollywood culture, a background of different movies and things like that. But to be celebrated in a very real way is special. And I think that's why a lot of people really relate to this book, because they finally feel like it's seen.

Alicia: And it's such an illustrative book about, with techniques. Your hands are in it pulling on dough, or ways of illustrating the movements that you would make to make a certain type of bread. So what inspired your level of visual explanation?

Kristina: So it's actually interesting, ’cause a lot of people have brought that up. They're like, ‘I haven't seen a cookbook with so much step by step, visual guides before.’ And for me, it wasn’t even a question about whether or not I would include these things in there. I just naturally when I was—I shot all the photos myself. And so it was really great, that as I was recipe testing, I could kind of be like, ‘Oh, I should probably shoot this process too.’

And I think it was important for the success of a lot of these recipes. Because since this is the first comprehensive book that covers a lot of these Chinese bakery recipes, there's not a lot of frame of reference for a lot of people. Every recipe in this book has at least a photo to demonstrate what the final thing should look like. 

But in a different type of baking book, if someone just had a version of chocolate chip cookies and maybe there was no photo with it, I think people could still visualize what that would look like. But then with some of the breads, or how to laminate the pancakes in here, if you're like ‘I don't totally understand what that means?’ As hard as I tried to make the written recipe as clear as possible. I'm a visual learner. Just having the photos in there to show how many turns and what a coil looks like? Again, it encourages people to make the recipes more when there's something like that to help you.

Alicia: And I mean, people do tend to be really stressed about baking. But you have such a down to earth voice. And through that illustration and that kind of level of detail, you really do make each recipe approachable even if it has a lot of components. 

And has baking always come naturally to you. Has that always been something that you were good at?

Kristina: I think it's a complicated answer, because I love to also cook the savory. I almost would say that that comes even more naturally for me. 

But I love the process of baking, because—and I think you've already alluded to it. You can probably tell by just reading the book, I’m very process driven. I love figuring out the success of individual components and figuring out how they work together. Again, it's that architectural mind-set in a way. 

What really got me to love baking was that when I was in middle school, I kind of just got really obsessed with figuring out how to make the best cheesecake or really fudgy chocolate cake ’cause those are things that my family didn't know how to make. 

And when I set out to make those things in my kitchen, it was the one time in the kitchen that I would be alone because my grandma wasn't there and my mom wasn’t there trying to tell me like ‘Oh, you should do this and this and this.’ ‘Cause if I was trying to make dumplings, I would have 50 opinions about how I should mix my filling or my dough. So I think baking for me has always been therapeutic in that sense, that allowed me that kind of quietness to kind of really figure out my own style and methodically think about each step of a recipe. 

And I think that part of baking comes really natural for me. I feel I'm haunted by the process of making French macarons because, I have like a 30 percent success rate with them now. So I wouldn't say that all parts of baking come super natural to me. I still have my fair share of fails and struggles of different recipes.

Alicia: Well, they're very difficult. And I feel the weather is always going to be either on your side or not with them.

Kristina: Oh, totally. I feel when I made them in my apartment in San Francisco, I was like if the Muni bus barreled too hard by my apartment while I was making them it would mess them up. [Laughter.]

Alicia: But what also helped you to focus on bread and yeasted dough? That's also an aspect of baking that people get very stressed out or aren't, don't find approachable.

Kristina: Yeah, there's something about the word ‘dough’ that just strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of people for some reason. 

When people have asked me about advice on starting to work with dough, I actually tell them to work with a non-leavened dough first just to kind of get the feel of what a hydrated dough should feel like. And obviously, of course, it's if you have a good recipe. And so in the book, if you tried making the dumpling dough or the pancake dough in here, they're very similar. And that's a really good way and low stress avenue to kind of get used to kneading dough and knowing what it should feel like and handling it. 

And then if you feel a little bit more comfortable, you can start going into the milk bread or the other kind of yeasted doughs in there. Some people like to just add instant yeast into their dough and just call it a day. And it is really easy if you feel comfortable and know for a fact that your yeast is alive. But for some reason I've been burned. Different yeasts say that it was alive or it didn't expire yet. 

And even though I add in there, I didn't activate. And so, I think just getting used to using active dry yeast and blooming it in warm milk or water and seeing that it's literally alive and bubbling? I think that's a first step in kind of just feeling comfortable like, ‘Ok, this thing that is the deal breaker for my bread is alive? I'm good now that it’s really bubbly and stuff.’

So it's definitely a process, but I have a pretty extensive  intro to the milk bread recipe that kind of, ‘Here are all the different parts.’ And things that you should look for. Again, just making sure people feel comfortable.

Alicia: For sure. 

You mentioned social media earlier about how your DMs on Instagram have become sort of a recipe hotline. But I was noticing that you kept your blog up, that you have a huge following on social media and on Instagram. How are you balancing that? And what is your day to day life now, now that the cookbook is out?

Kristina: My life is sort of all over the place, but in a good way. 

So yes, I still have my blog,

https://eatchofood.com/

. And I feel there's this strange shift that people don't really have blogs anymore. They have newsletters and things like that. And I think it's all the same. It's just on sort of a different platform. And I think I'm going to have the blog forever, just ’cause it's been a part of my life for so many years now. And in a sense, diary entries in a way because I have to keep them very personal. 

But for a really long time actually, I was really consistent about sharing a recipe or even two recipes a week. And I think that since the book has come out, I've been just a little busy. I still have recipes that come out maybe every other week or so. But I think it's just a really great stable place to kind of house all these recipes that I produce for free for people. 

But I don't know. I try to be really good about balancing my social media and my cookbook writing, work balance and all that stuff. And I think right now because it's the holidays, it's a little crazy. I feel at the end of the year, for any profession, it's always really busy ‘cause you're trying to wrap up loose ends. But I think especially in the recipe development world, everyone wants a million recipes for their holiday baking, whatever and all that stuff. And so right now, I'm kind of in a rush to develop a bunch of recipes before I go home for the holidays. 

But I try to divide up my days. I'll have full recipe development day,  so that I'm in that mind-set. I block out full days where I am editing photos, editing videos, for Reels or TikToks. And then I do that. And then full days where I'm writing. That's just kind of how my mind is wired. I can't bounce around. It's really hard for me to—especially when we're writing. When I was writing my book, I had to lock myself in my bedroom. That was the only place I could actually write. I locked myself in my bedroom all day to write a bunch of headnotes until I couldn't anymore. 

So that's normally what I like to do. I wish I could say that I'm normally that organized. [Laughs.]

Alicia: No, I have the same struggle. It's trying to do newsletter days. I have a book deadline next month. So I'm—Yeah, it's the—Yeah. [Laughter.]

Kristina: You'll get there. It'll be done.

Alicia: I agree. I'll get there. It will be done. But at the same time, it's like, ‘How?’ How? So I'm always asking everyone like, ‘How are you keeping it all together? How did you do it?’ To try and understand how we're all supposed to balance these tens of thousands of things all the time.

Kristina: Everyone's just spinning in circles just trying to get it done. 

Alicia: Exactly.

Well, this is a question I ask everyone lately, but how, for you, would you define abundance? 

Kristina: That's such a good question. [Laughs.] It’s probably very insightful for whoever you ask for.

I almost see abundance as being content in what you have, if that makes sense. I think having too much is not exactly abundance in a sense, because having too much, for me, overwhelms me. And so I think abundance to me is one, feeling comfortable in what I have, feeling comfortable and content with what I have in terms of my life, my people, and maybe the groceries in my refrigerator. Just having the perfect, perfect amount that there's no waste and not too little.

Alicia: Right, right. 

It's interesting, because people either define it that way, which is how I think of it, or people are like, ‘No abundance is the gluttony of the American superwealthy.’ [Laughs.]

Kristina: That overwhelms me. That makes me feel uncomfortable. I actually hate when I—Well, I sort of love a big grocery store. Because it's not something I'm used to in the Bay Area. I love seeing like, ‘Oh, you have 20 different varieties of oats here. That's amazing.’ But in my own house, when I feel I have too much stuff in my kitchen, I feel trapped. And that's not necessarily what I feel abundance should make you feel. You should feel freedom, if that makes sense.

Alicia: Exactly. [Laughs.]

Yeah. For you, is cooking a political act?

Kristina: I think in a way it is. I will have to admit that I don't think I'm as vocal as I should be with different kind of my political beliefs. But in my food, I think it's my own way of kind of subtly expressing the way that I feel in terms of the cultural politics of things. Especially in the last year when there was so much Asian hate, especially in the Bay Area and stuff, my food, for me, is a way for me to share my pride in my own culture with other people and for other people to also share in that pride. I did a dumpling fundraiser, just to raise money for Bay Area Chinatowns and stuff like that. And so that's how I like to use my food as a political stance.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Kristina: Yeah, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. 

Today, I'm talking to Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and executive director of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit think tank that works on changing inequitable systems in food and beyond. We discussed how she went from business school to kitchens, cultural appropriation in fast casual restaurants, and launching a newsletter as a way to find her voice in writing. 

Alicia: Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for being here.

Jenny: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jenny: Yeah, of course. 

So I was born in Shanghai, but I grew up in New York. Both my parents were getting their PhDs at Albert Einstein University up in the Bronx. So I feel when I was little, I ate a lot of just food at home. My family was definitely the ‘Why would you ever eat outside? You're wasting money’ sort of vibe. So everything was at home. 

There was a lot of eggs and a lot of breads. And of course, every meal has to have a veg. So I kind of grew up with a lots of vegetables and never really understood that idea of like, ‘Vegetables are gross. Kids don't like vegetables.’ I think pea sprouts are my favorite vegetable in the world. Ate a lot of tomato and egg growing up; I think that's a classic Chinese staple. So things that were easy for young 20-something-year-old parents that had no cooking experience and worked all the time to make.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you grow up in the Bronx, or did you grow up in a different borough?

Jenny: Yeah, we grew up essentially in the student's compound within the Bronx. So there was some other, yes, children of fellow students that I hung out with. I felt we occasionally were actually able to go out and be with the rest of the Bronx. But a lot of times we were kind of confined in this little area, and so didn't really honestly get as much interfacing with the world outside as I think would have been beneficial to growing up, unfortunately.

Alicia: Yeah, no, I remember Albert Einstein College from driving past. I went to Fordham. So I remember just being like, ‘Ah, the signs.’ That's all I know of it. I'm like, ‘Oh, the signs for Albert Einstein on the Pelham Parkway.’ [Laughs.]

But that's so interesting, to grow up in that kind of environment with—and that's interesting, because I think when we think of the Bronx, we think of Arthur Avenue and we think of so much food diversity and that sort of thing. Do you go back now?

Jenny: Sometimes.

I mean, I try. But I feel I don't even know. Yeah, I didn't know to know. I feel sad about that all the time. I feel elementary school, at least I was able to go to public elementary and kind of learn about the fact that there are such a diverse group of folks up in the Bronx. But so many times when we were just in the student compounds, we’re so sheltered from everyone else. You don't interact with anyone. 

And I think this is now, in retrospect, when I have kind of conversations around race and class and social status and immigration with my parents, they were so busy being students, heads down, that they had no concept of what was kind of happening, which is unfortunate. But I think that is—that's kind of a manifestation of how so many things happen here in the U.S., is that you have your own little silo and you don't realize you're in a silo until you're out of it. And that can take years. That could take your entire life.

Alicia: Right.

Well, what was your route to getting into food and becoming a chef?

Jenny: So, I had always been a food person growing up. I loved eating. I planned all of our vacations around eating. So when I was little, my parents really liked going to Vegas. This is after we had moved to Seattle. We weren't going from New York to Vegas. Because of the buffets, and there's a lot of food. And it was fairly inexpensive to go and have a good time. And so, I remember—I think I was like 10. We were going to Vegas, and we never gambled or anything. We would just go and eat at buffets. And I'd be like, ‘This one has this and this one has that. And it was all about the food.’ 

And so, my mother and father had always been like, ‘Yeah, you kind of like food. But that's not a real career.’ It was never really encouraged or allowed, I think. So I never really thought about food in that way. Just saw it as a hobby or a thing that I want—I liked and wanted to do, but not as a thing that I should pursue, so to speak. 

It wasn't until after I had started my first job out of college. I was in management consulting, and realized, first of all, how miserable I was, but specifically because I was within fashion and luxury goods. I had this kind of sad moment where I realized so many of the people higher up on the food chain than me, they were filling their hearts, their metaphorical hearts, so to speak, with just stuff. And I could see it. And you never want to be in a position as a really junior person where you look at someone who's supposed to have their s**t together, and seems to have it all, and you just feel really sad for them. And that's how I felt all the time. 

And I don't want to editorialize on their behalf. Maybe they're super happy. But what I interpreted was a lot of sadness. And then I realized, ‘I don't like this job. I've never liked this job. I don't know why I wanted to be in this industry. I think it was for the glitz and the glamour. But inside, I'm really unhappy. So what can I do about it? What is the thing that makes me happy?’ And naturally, it was like, ‘Ok, I'm going to go cook. I'm going to go take this advanced cooking techniques class at the Institute of Culinary Education.’ At first, it was just recreational. But soon enough, I was like, ‘I want something formal. I don't want the sheltered student experience again. I really want to be fabricating my lamb. I want to be breaking down the chickens. I want to be making the stock, not just have stock delivered to me from stewarding.’

So I ended up going to a full diploma program at school and wanted to give myself a chance in the industry. Ended up leaving—I was going to Columbia Business School right afterwards. Ended up leaving that and was like, ‘I just need to figure out—I need to at least give it a chance to try and see where I end up.’

Alicia: Well, and then do you think that your training and your experience, even if it wasn't what you ultimately wanted to do, and then some studies at Columbia Business School, do you think that they influence your work in food now that you are working in food media? You're also working in activism. You've founded Studio ATAO? Do those things still crop up? Do they still kind of aid your thinking? 

 Jenny: Yeah, I think a lot of what I saw at culinary school really shaped how the work that I do now just seeing—first of all, poor representation of how things are taught. 

And just the lack of, I think, empowerment that culinary students and, in general, a lot of more junior-level workers within food, restaurant, hospitality, beverage are often imbued with, because you're constantly being told that your opinions don't matter. You don't have the right to stand up for yourself, and that the system is just like this. We were constantly indoctrinated in culinary school that you just got to go to these stages, and you're never going to get paid. And you're gonna to work a gazillion hours and make $10 an hour to start. And that's normalized. And that is a huge problem if we're normalizing literally hundreds of thousands of students to that sort of mentality every year. So I don't think I had the vocabulary for it then. But a lot of the micro- and macroaggressions that I faced in culinary school really informed the desire to even try to do this work.

And in a, I guess, a positive way, by interactions at business school—which I don't want to hate on too much because I did marry someone from the business school—but business school was such a jarring and terrible experience in that I was like, ‘Wow, are we really just out here to compete and make money?’ This kind of idea of constant scarcity, constant competition, it's so toxic. And what is the real value that we're trying to add to society at large?

But I think it's hard to get into that kind of mode when you're surrounded by people who are just telling you about their Goldman Sachs résumé, or telling you how great they have it because they made so much money last year. It's so easy to get into this keeping up with the Joneses sort of mentality. 

And I think shifting from graduating from culinary school, and then three days later going to Columbia Business School, that juxtaposition made me realize these were two different worlds. We're not talking to each other. Because we're so siloed in both respects, there is so much—there's so much that we should be doing. We could be improving both industries or industries under Columbia, and then food hospitality in general. But right now, we don't even understand the problems each other are facing. And we don't have any empathy for them. So how, what do we do about that? How do we bridge that gap?

Alicia: Right.

And so, when did you start to move toward food media?

Jenny: It's kind of a strange, roundabout way, I guess.

I first went into work at restaurants, kind of had to do that as part of my culinary school externship, started working in corporate food R&D. And I think from all the just toxicity that I've absorbed over those years, wanted to find some sort of outlet to write, write about it, talk about it. 

And as you're aware, it's really hard to land some of those more difficult reported pieces off the bat. So I had this, to start with the rigmarole of doing basic recipes, and then maybe a little bit more covered recipes with headnotes. And then slowly was able to move into ‘Oh, I really want to tackle really complex or uncomfortable topics within food media. Who's going to give me an opportunity to do that?’

And I think that journey also uncovered a lot of these problems that we have with the media of like, Who gets exposed? Who gets airtime? What kind of writing and language do we pay credence to, and which ones do we not? Ran into that constant issue of, ‘Can you really cover issues that aren't Asian American?’ So I think that journey continued to inform like, ‘Oh, ok, food media is a place that we can talk about it. But it's also not the end all, be all of how we're going to bring about justice or change.’

Alicia: Right. 

And do you think things have gotten better since you started to work in food media?

Jenny: Heh. I don't know. 

I would love to hear what you think, because I feel like I get this question. And I'm always like, ‘I want to say yes, I think so.’ But a lot of times, I am not sure. Because I feel optically we are saying and doing a lot of the right things. But I think systemically have we really made those big changes? I don't know.

Alicia: Right.

Well, my perspective right now is very skewed because I'm very focused on my newsletter. I think I've stopped really paying attention to food magazines, for the most part. 

I get Bon Appétit in the mail. And I read it, and I—it's very thin these days.And I don't say that to insult them. They have a huge reach and everything. And they've really hired a lot of writers that I really enjoy. And so, that's really great. But we're not seeing that much. 

Maybe this is the thing, and I would like to ask you about it, because this brings up a lot of your work with Studio ATAO, I think, which is how much does representation count if the stories and the narratives remain sort of the same? So what is your perspective on when you can have the representation, but maybe things don't really change at a deeper level?

Like you were mentioning, there's this pervasive idea in the media that people who, non-white people can't write about anything but their own background. And that is very pervasive. That continues. That I haven't seen really change in a real way. And so, in your mind, how much does representation count for in food media?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, I think representation is always going to be important. Of course, it's important that if you're a new reader to Bon App or Food & Wine, and you're flipping through the pages, and you see a face that looks like yours, of course, that's always going to be good. But I think what, when I say optically, we are doing that. 

However, the power dynamics of who picks those people, who gets to greenlight the pitches, who gets to shape the pitches, who gets to censor some of the words, that sort of chain of command is the multiple steps behind representation that I would like to see more change in. And there's a lot of obstacles to all sorts of those things. 

One of the things that we had been tackling through these two white papers with Well+Good and The Kitchn for the last year, so over the—over 2021 is how do we hire more BIPOC in these diverse leadership roles? And a lot of the problem’s that HR is saying over and over again is the pipeline is empty. There's no BIPOC in the pipeline. And yet, it's like yes, and no, right? I'm sure there is. But there probably isn't as many because BIPOC are regularly not promoted at the same cadence. They don't get the same titles, etc. So the pipeline probably does look a little bit empty. 

And so then it becomes ‘Well, is that one institution trying to hire additional diverse leadership going to be the person that trains that leadership? Are they going to start working with BIPOC students so that they can move them up the promotion ladder, so that in ten years, you're going to have an exe editor that naturally is BIPOC?’ 

That's a level of commitment that far exceeds just finding a BIPOC woman and promoting them. It takes a lot more planning, it takes a lot more investment, time, money, energy. And I think that's kind of the, where a lot of organizations are doing the ‘Well, that's not on us. That's an industry problem. That's not for us to solve.’ And that's what makes me nervous in terms of long-term change.

Alicia: Right, right. 

There's similar problems in terms of class or education level where the same—you have a whole team of people who have the same economic background, the same type of education background. And I think that also really comes through in terms of the content, which—and that comes through in terms of who you're speaking to, as your audience is like—

And that's a really interesting thing when you're writing about food, because the people you're writing about in restaurants, etc., are going to be probably super different from the types of people in the magazine office. And that's such a disconnect. That's a big loss, too. That's a loss for who your audience can be, like, if you're not even necessarily speaking to the people who work in, to the concerns of people who work in restaurants. That's a real loss. 

And it's a big problem to deal with. And like you were saying, it's a problem of a lack of commitment from folks in these higher-up positions to put in that effort to find those people and to really be a mentor to people, even if they look different, come from a different kind of place, come from a different kind of education. And that reluctance, it shows in how much people are really engaging with the work and it shows in what the work is. Because I think that it's been a really big loss of opportunity to talk about restaurant workers in a real way in the media, especially since the pandemic. I feel like it's been a bit—that distance has been very apparent lately. 

As someone who has worked in restaurants, how has this time been for you as someone who does work in the media, but also has that experience?

Jenny: Yeah.

I think it's tough because you have folks who are on the ground very concerned with day-to-day, like, ‘Is my restaurant going to stay open or not? I don't know if I'm going to get this paycheck or not? I don't know what's going on with unemployment.’ 

And then to ask them to also know kind of the fancy language terms that often are used when writers write for other writers, there's a huge disconnect, when you're supposedly supposed to be helping them understand, navigate this landscape. Because what we're getting in terms of directors from the government was confusing enough when we're talking about PPP, or we're talking about if some PPPs can be forgiven, or whatnot. There's already this barrier of people being able to access some of those funds, even if they were meant for everyone. Before we even start talking about how undocumented folks were not even able to access that, but yeah.

And then when you're covering it as a food media publication, who are you really interviewing? Are you taking the time to really interview people on the ground, versus talking to a PR company that represents a restaurant group that can easily pull you a couple sous chefs to interview versus getting into the kitchens and really asking the garde manger who's been there for 10 years, or the porter on this—and asking them like, ‘Hey, how are you dealing with this problem?’

I think that's a level of disconnect food media's always faced. I don't know how to fix that, because folks are not getting paid enough to cover their stories. They don't have enough lead time to write the stories that they want to write. There's not enough fact-checking that's happening. I don't know. It's a domino effect of all the problems from the top down.

Alicia: Exactly, yeah.

Well, with Studio ATAO, it’s a nonprofit think tank where you’re executive director, there's been a very broad approach to changing inequitable systems. And so, I was wondering if you can explain its founding and the work the nonprofit does.

Jenny: Yeah. 

So Studio ATAO is a community-based think tank. And what we mean by that is, how do we conduct research? How do we create spaces where we can really listen to the needs and recommendations of community members that are most affected by various different inequitable problems, and actually champion and put energy and money and time to support their recommendations from the ground up instead of trying to implement solutions to fix these problems from the top down?

And I think, because of the very complicated convoluted nature of the nonprofit industrial complex, which we can get into if people want, as well as think tanks, which kind of get wrapped up in all of that, and academia as well, a lot of times you have philanthropists and big level donors who see a problem. And they have their own take on what the solution is. 

The example I often use is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of great work in the world. But there's a lot of critique on how they handle child classroom access. And they're focused on getting small class sizes, which arguably, small class sizes probably is great. But was that the number one thing that communities with not great educational outcomes wanted to see in terms of structural change? Maybe not. Did they bother to ask anyone and figure that out before kind of putting all of that energy into it? 

And so what we've really tried to do is, first if we see a problem like equitable representation of the media, talk to the people who are getting affected by that and say, like, ‘What are the changes you want to see? Is it more leadership at the top? Is it changing pitch guidelines? Is it more transparency? What is the thing that you think would most make the biggest impact to make your life better, to make you feel your work is more equitable, that you have a space to have your voice be heard in some of these sort of companies?’

So, that's kind of our approach in general. And our main thing for this year and next year is looking at gentrification and hospitality, which is a whole can of worms. 

Alicia: That is really exciting though, because that is such a complicated topic. I am so excited to see what you come up with. 

Yeah, no, I'm reading a lot about gentrification because of where I live—well, so I'm from New York. So there's gentrification there in New York City. But here in Old San Juan, it's just so rapid and virulent, and it's having such a huge impact on the culture. And it's just a really, really, really intense situation to live among. Yeah. It's happening so rapidly that I don't think anyone is thinking—Well, locals are thinking enough about what it means. But in terms of the politicians and everything, there's just really no concern or no regulation, and just selling everything. 

And in terms of the food, it actually has—people always think of the impact of gentrification on the food, and that it becomes more bourgeois and inaccessible, and the impact here has interestingly been that the food is worse. And so, because locals can't open places, because it's too expensive, it's harder to get the capital to do so. And in general, the stat is 85% of food is imported to Puerto Rico. And so usually, we have really poor quality onions in the supermarket, the garlic is from Spain, etc., etc. So there's one or two good local restaurants in Old San Juan, and then other than that it's food for tourists. It's fast food. There's one local fast, a couple of local fast food places.

It's a very interesting thing, because you always hear that, like, ‘People bring the money, and then they bring gentrification.’ The way you tell that is through the food, but—or it's through the coffee, maybe. [Laughs.] But I mean, coffee is already part of the culture, so they can't really do anything with the coffee. 

And so, it's just an interesting dynamic, because it's just—it's the opposite of how I was told, or had always read that gentrification works with food and with hospitality. And so, I'm super interested in this topic right now because there's so much to understand that hasn't, that isn't as simplified as people make it out to be. And so, I'm really excited to see that work that you guys are putting out. 

And you do such interesting work around how cultural and political realities impact food and the way people get it. You wrote about cultural appropriation in fast-casual restaurants for Eater. I wanted to ask, how did that story idea come about? Why did you see fast-casual as worthy of serious critique? Because I was like, ‘Oh,’ reading it. And I read it when it came out, and I was reading it again to interview you. And I'm like, ‘Does anyone really talk about fast-casual in a rigorous way?’ And people should, because it is the way a lot of people are interacting with these cuisines.

Jenny: Yeah.

I think a lot of what I wanted to—well, maybe not just for that piece, but that that piece had a whole just fallout. Let's just put it like that, just an insane amount of hate mail. But I think what I wanted to do is point out these systems that we interact with in our lives, where we're normalizing things.

And fast-casual, I think, is often not scrutinized because we kind of dismiss it. We see it as a quick bite to eat. What harm is Chipotle doing if I'm just giving a burrito there? And whereas that we put a lot of worthy and important attention on things like Lucky Lee’s, or Lucky Cricket. And those absolutely should be critiqued. But why not the thing that you're quickly grabbing to go? Why not the thing that you are probably interacting with way more than this random restaurant in Minnesota that you might not ever visit? I think because of Internet outrage culture, it's easier to be angry at these kind of discrete things, versus acknowledging how these small little occurrences in your everyday life actually end up shaping your worldview. 

I think back to as a culinary student, as I mentioned earlier, it's not that anyone comes out and tells you, ‘You're garbage and you're not worth more than $10 an hour.’ It's just something that you implicitly learn over the course of your time there. And I think that's a lot more insidious and toxic. And we really do need to be not only pointing that out for ourselves, but getting, I think, surfacing that for people who are still going through it, the next generation of students. So that they can identify it when their mentor tells them that, when there's—when their instructor tells them that, when their career counselor says something like that.

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

Because we're talking about a lot of serious things, and now I'm sort of—I think we've sort of enacted maybe the thought process of where you launched a newsletter to do more personal writing, loose writing. Because you are known for the very rigorous looks at diversity and discrimination in the food industry. How has your experience been doing a newsletter so far?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, newsletter’s been so strange. But I think the big thing I've learned is just how differently I'm writing for the newsletter versus for any publication, and just how much of my voice I'm really tailoring. I think I just didn't notice because I never wrote for myself. So I know the kind of tone I need to strike for Serious Eats or for Washington Post or whatever. You read enough of their work, you get it. 

And I'm not discounting that kind of writing. And I very much enjoy it. And I'm going to continue reading the New York Times. But now I kind of see it—I'm like, ‘I'm not gonna structure my sentences like that.’ I love to have long things that are in parentheses that probably shouldn’t be in parentheses. Instead of feeling that is a problem or that is, there's something inherently wrong with that, it's like, ‘Oh, that's actually a quirk that I like to write in.’

I remember years ago, I wrote this piece that was very personal. And my editor shat all over it, and was like, ‘Stop anthropomorphizing your food.’ It was this whole thing. And that piece is fine. I'm fine with how it turned out. But I look back. And I feel like, ‘Again, see, this is those small things that get normalized.’ Editors say that all the time. And I was like, ‘There's something wrong with my writing style,’ versus ‘Oh, I'm just not writing in the tone that they want.’

So the newsletter has given me a little bit of that perhaps needed confidence to say, ‘These are my personalities.’ As a writer, I am allowed to find value in them, even if it's not well suited for a bigger publication. And also explore things that maybe some people don't want to talk about. I wrote a thing about fanfiction, and fandom. And that was really fun. I just had a good time writing about it. And so, I put my energy and time into that. And I hope that people care. And I think people, the response was like, ‘Oh, I never even thought about this before.’

And this is that problem with food media, or media in general, if you can't prove that people will care about it to start. You can't ever land the pitch. But once you actually get it out in the world, people did care. I don't know. Yeah.

Alicia: [Laughter.] No, that's so interesting! 

And I've found the same thing. And in my newsletter is like, ‘Oh, there is an audience for cultural critique, it—of all these food issues, but also for personal essays about why I eat oatmeal every day.’ It's such a shocking thing, I think, because we have been trained to think that we have no story unless people are already talking about it. And it's like, well, by the time people are already talking about it, it's like the story's boring. They've taken the story and they've gone with it, and then it—you have to find a new angle on it, and that sort of thing. 

And I think there's so much value in—and this is, I guess, what we sort of lost over the last—in the 2010s, the blogs kind of died out. And then we lost this really more informal and raw and voicey way of writing on the internet. And we had social media, but at the same time, it's very different. And so, I think newsletters are giving a little bit of a more informality and space and structure to the fact that people really do want that kind of work and want that kind of thinking and miss that kind of like, ‘Let me just hear what someone's thinking about something, even if they've never thought about it before.’ 

Because that's true. If the writing is good, and the writing is punchy and interesting, people are gonna read about anything. And that's, I think, something people have lost in this obsession with SEO and views, etc., etc. I published something on Monday that was just my thought process over a couple of weeks. And it's gotten 30,000 views in two days. And so it's like, that's not bad. [Laughs.] For just a person thinking out loud, I think that there is more space for that. People want that, then—I don't know. It is interesting. 

And my advice always to younger writers—and I've sent it twice today to two different people [laughs]—I was like, ‘You do have to write for editors,’ because now people think that they can just start a newsletter and then boom! Career takes off. And it's like, ‘It's probably not gonna happen.’ Even though it hurts a lot of the time being edited, especially when you're just starting out and you have to learn and you have—

But at the same time, you have to figure out that balance for yourself of where you're comfortable with an editor taking away from your voice, and sometimes where you can push back and that sort of thing, or when and where you can do a long parenthetical that maybe someone else would take out. You have to have that understanding of the rules in order to break out of the rules. It's interesting to hear you say that the newsletter now has given you a whole new lease on writing, because I think that that's true. And I mean, I don't want this to sound like gatekeeping or whatever. But I do think you have to learn the basics first.

Jenny: Yeah, I think it's important to understand where every—but where everybody's boundaries are. It's very difficult as a person who's starting any career, writing or otherwise, to set those boundaries for yourself. So the best way we usually go about them is by emulating other people's boundaries. So I think it's really valuable to have an experience at a corporate entity or a small organization or nonprofit, whatever, because you start seeing how different people approach the world. 

And similarly, with writing, if you don't ever get edited, you're never going to see other people's criteria of what they think good writing is or what they think good editing is or what they think something voici or newsy is. And then, you don't—you kind of can't set those parameters for yourself. And you also can't really discover what you—I know what a voice EP sounds like. Maybe I just don't want it to sound like that, because that's not what I'm feeling right now. But you can't really have that kind of self-reflection without having the experience first. 

Alicia: Oh, that's such a good way of putting it. [Laughs.] I'm gonna steal your work. [Laughs.] The next time, I'm gonna send a copy of the transcript. 

But I wanted to ask, because you do so much. You're writing for other outlets, you're writing your newsletter, you do—you still are doing recipes. You still are working with Studio ATAO. What are you hoping for this year, 2022?

Jenny: Yeah, I think the big theme for myself personally this year is to create more and to create things that bring me joy. Because what I think is very hard for any sort of creative type, whether a writer or a chef or whatnot, is at some point because of money, because of the world, you start creating things for other people so much so that you kind of forget like, ‘What actually brings me joy? I have no idea sometimes.’ I'm sitting around in my kitchen like, ‘What do I want to make today?’

And sometimes I do have the envy of people who are pure content creators, and they go in and they're like, ‘I'm going to create content. What do I want to make?’ Because I feel so much of that has been taken from me, because I have to think about what other people want. And not saying that content creators don't have that outside pressure as well. 

So that's number one for me for the newsletter, is how do I explore things that I care about? If 100 people read it, so be it. It wasn't for them anyway. Ithink it's really hard to have that mentality. And I'm already struggling with it three weeks into the year. So we'll see how that goes.

But for the studio, the big thing is sustainability. We have been actively trying to resist being part of the nonprofit industrial complex, to not have all our funds come from big donors or corporations or grants and big philanthropists. But it's very difficult to not only make sure that we can employ people, but give them the employment length and the benefits and whatnot. And we're really struggling with that. And it's kind of a what do we have to sacrifice in order to have some of the runway that we want without compromising our values? 

And I, we’re struggling through that, to be totally candid. It's just an ongoing struggle. I don't know how to fix it, because the whole system is broken. Everyone's heard this before. So I won't belabor the point. But I don't know how to make it better. I think we're just trying to do less, and figure out if the—we have four initiatives for this year. How do we do them the best we can with what we have?

Alicia: Right.

And is it on Patreon? 

Jenny: Yes. 

Alicia: Ok. 

Jenny: Yeah, you can support on Patreon. You can also give one-time gifts. We really would prefer most of our comes, coming from the community, because obviously we don't want kind of this big overlord telling us we can't say this, or you can say that.

Alicia: Right, right. That's very important. 

So how do you define abundance?

Jenny: I think it's feeling you don't have to worry. Abundance means kind of that absence of scarcity. So you don't have to worry about—the thought of being hungry never crosses your mind, right? It's the absence of that worry at all. 

I grew up in a very privileged environment where I wasn't worried about hunger, and I wasn't worried about shelter. And I don't know what it feels like to truly be actively worried about that. And I think that is a feeling of abundance in its own way. I don't think it's necessarily about having more. It's about like this—yeah. A lack of worry.

Alicia: Right. I love that. I love that definition of it. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Jenny: Yes. I think cooking is always a political act. And it doesn't have to be—And I think how people define political, of course, varies. To me, it's like it's always an expression of all the systems that be.

For example, last Thanksgiving, it was the first time that we had a Thanksgiving after my father-in-law had passed. And my family had come down. My husband's family comes down. Cousins were there. And I made an active effort to make sure to make food that people have probably had never had before, so that what—

Did they totally fit into the classic American Thanksgiving table? Probably not. But there were things that I knew that they probably would not be able or not have interest in going to those restaurants they experienced themselves and could give a little bit of texture and nuance to the conversations, which already there's kind of a cultural gap, right? Because we have different cultures. We have different backgrounds. People live in different places. 

So I think food served as both a connector in that way, but also as a way to kind of challenge people. And I think that is very political, where it wasn't like, ‘Hey, let's talk about Biden in this dish or whatnot.’ [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] It was more just like, ‘Let's talk about all of these interesting systems that brought this dish to be here.’

Alicia: I love that. 

Well, thank you so much, Jenny. 

Jenny: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Today, I’m talking to Preeti Mistry, a chef, host of the podcast Loading Dock Talks, and an activist for equity in hospitality. 

We discussed how they ended up a chef and closing their really well-received Oakland restaurant Juhu Beach Club, being on Top Chef, launching their podcast as an antidote to the whiteness of food media, and more. 

Alicia: Hi, thanks so much for being here.

Preeti: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: I think it's wild that this is the first time I'm interviewing you, because I feel like we've been following each other on Twitter for a long time. [Laughter.]

Preeti: I know! I was thinking that. I was like, ‘I don't think we've actually had a conversation that wasn't in 140 characters or DMs.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.]

Well, I'm excited to finally have that conversation. So can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Preeti: Well, I was born in London, and then we moved to the U.S. when I was five. I mean, I pretty much just ate Gujarati vegetarian food, traditional Gujarati vegetarian food, which is like dar, bhat, rotli, shaak, which basically means dar is dal. Bhat is rice. Rotli is whole-wheat flatbread, and shaak is just whatever vegetables are in season or that my mom cooks in various different ways, from things that are super saucy and spicy to things that are more of like a dry stir-fry. Could be okra and potatoes, which I was not a fan of as a kid. I liked the potatoes, not the okra. Or spinach, or eggplant, or cauliflower. You name it. 

And then, I really craved everything that wasn't that. I was super curious about what my family calls ‘outside food.’ And I always wanted outside food. I was just curious. I just wanted to know what other things, you know? You watch TV, and you're like, ‘What is Ponderosa? What happens at a steakhouse? I need to know. Red Lobster.’ 

I mean, especially the meats and seafood and stuff that I never experienced at home, or at anybody else's home. And my parents were not about to take me there. At least I mean, you don't know. But my parents were not going to take me to those places. I mean, mainly because we didn't have enough money to go to Red Lobster and my mom would just never even step foot inside. She’d just freak out. She's a very staunch vegetarian. My dad eats chicken and lamb and some other random things. I helped him try a scallop once. He was pretty excited about it. He enjoyed it. 

But yeah, I mean, so then it was like McDonald's, Taco Bell, that kind of stuff when it wasn't traditional Gujarati Indian food. And we would go out to Indian restaurants, which was the first time I tried all these things that people think that somehow Indian people eat at home, like chicken tikka masala and naan. Newsflash, my mom doesn't have a tandoor. 

And just yeah, Mexican, Italian. I don't know if you've heard that before. But generally speaking, most Gujarati Indians that moved to the U.S., the two foods that they generally gravitate towards when not eating Indian food are Mexican and Italian, mainly because they can be made vegetarian relatively easy. And also because they tend to use spices. Obviously, Mexican more so with the heat. And then, my mom is just like, ‘Make me a pasta, put vegetables in it, add chili flakes. I'm happy.’ [Laughter.]

And then for us, it was like, ‘Oh, we could order other stuff.’ So it was, ‘I want to try the chicken fajitas or shrimp cocktail,’ or just all kinds of things that we had never tried before. So, pretty  classic Midwestern fast food with a mix of everything from scratch vegetarian Gujarati Indian  cuisine most nights.

Alicia: Well, how did you go about getting a culinary education beyond the staples of what you grew up with?

Preeti: I didn't learn. I didn't really have an interest in cooking. I just saw it as another chore and women's work, and I didn't necessarily see myself in my mother. I didn't look at her and think, like, ‘I'm going to be like that one day.’ And so, I wasn't really interested in cooking as much as curious about food. 

So it wasn't until I left home. And Ann and I, my wife, we moved to San Francisco. And then I just started getting really bored of outside food. [Laughter.] And so, I started cooking. And that's all how it all started. I just started cooking. I would go to the now famous Bi—Rite grocery store in the Mission and look at what the vegetables were and what was in season, and they had really great fresh pasta, so I'd buy some of that. And I was starting meat, because I was vegetarian for a period of time in my late teens and early 20s. So it was the gateways. It was ahi tuna, salmon. 

So I would get out of things and experiment with cooking them. A lot of Williams Sonoma, Deborah Madison, Mollie Katzen kind of cookbooks. And all my friends were just like, ‘Holy s**t. You're good at this.’ And it wasn't cool then in the late ’90s. Twentysomethings were not having dinner parties and cooking. Just not at all what people were doing. So we were kind of an anomaly that we would have fancy dinner parties and tell people what wine to bring, and that they needed to dress nice and do the decor and everything. 

And so I mean, eventually, enough people were like, ‘You should pursue this.’ I wanted to be a filmmaker. Since I was a teenager, I wanted to make films. And I was working in film at a film arts nonprofit. So I really was like, ‘I don't know what the hell I'm doing.’ And then it just was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna try this.’ I don't think I ever thought growing up that cooking for a living was a career, that was an option, or something that people did at all. Again, it was the late ’90s. Food Network was just starting out. There wasn't the level of celebrity chef culture that we have today. And so, I just was kind of like, ‘Ok, well, I like this. It seems to come naturally to me, makes people happy. I guess I'll give it a try.’ 

So it was just, coincided. I made a five-minute film, and it was in film festivals. And then my wife got this opportunity to work in London. And it was just a perfect break for me to try something new. And I talked to people at the British Film Institute and stuff like that. And they were like, ‘We'll take you as an intern, but you're not gonna get a job.’ I'd graduated from college. I had a couple years of experience of working. I was an assistant. Yeah, it was the perfect moment to be like, ‘Ok, I'm going to do this different thing and see how that goes in London.’ And then, whatever. I can always come back to working in film in San Francisco if I want. 

So yeah, I went to Cordon Bleu. It was weird. Mostly a lot of Americans and Japanese. I met the most wealthy people in my life. And yeah, it was just a total 180 from the world I'd been living in. I'd been living in this gay bubble of college-educated critique people, people were into activism and queer politics. And all of a sudden, I was in the basement of a five-star hotel peeling ten cases of artichokes with these kids who are five years younger than me, but have been cooking for four years.

Yeah. Changed it all.

Alicia: And so from there, did you start—you started working in kitchens? 

Preeti: Yeah.

I worked in kitchens in London. It was really hard. I had a really hard time finding a place. And I mean, it's really not until the last four years I feel, since #MeToo, that I've actually connected with the fact that some of the failures that I had weren't necessarily my fault. 

But yeah, I had a tough time finding a place that I would fit in. Here's a funny story. I don't know if I've ever shared this on a podcast. It'll be an Alicia Kennedy exclusive. I really wanted to work at the River Cafe in London, because I thought of it as the Chez Panisse of London. And so I, as you do in the year—this was like 2002, I think, 2002 or ’03, before the internet and things like Poached. You take your cover letter and résumé and you go to the restaurant between lunch and dinner service, and you ask for the chef. And they come out if they want to talk to you, and they might put you to work right away, etc. 

And so, I went and did that. And April Bloomfield was the sous chef at the time. And so April came out and talked to me and was rather impressed with my letter, with all this flowery stuff about wild rosemary and Meyer lemons growing in California and how I was so excited about working on all this stuff. And she was like, ‘Right on.’ And like, ‘Cool. Someone will call you in a couple days.’

Nobody ever called me. [Laughs.] And I just think it was just one of those things. I called whoever Chef Ruth’s—I called her assistant once a week for two months. And then I was like, ‘This isn't happening.’ [Laughs.] And then, I found out later they just don't hire anyone right out of culinary school. Every single person, station is somebody who's has a level of experience and ability. So, for what it's worth, they don't hire very unskilled labor, which is what I was. I was educated but unskilled. [Laughs.]

Yeah. But eventually I found my place. I found a place called the Sugar Club. I was the only woman in the kitchen. They called me hermana. There were no British guys. It was Kiwis, Japanese, Venezuelan, and all the prep guys and dish porters were Ecuadorian. Yeah, but the main sous chef, who’s still my friend, Julio Flames. He lives in Spain, he’s Venezuelan, and his buddy—I call them the fabulous Venezuelan twins—Raoul is still in London. And he's actually a famous graffiti artist now. So, we are all doing ok, the three of us. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, how did you end up on Top Chef, then, in 2009?

Preeti: So we moved back to San Francisco in 2004. And I again struggled to find a place. My chef wrote me this glowing letter and was like, ‘Shoot for the top.’ And so, I went to all the fancy places. Again, at that time, it was like you—I looked at Zagat, and what were the top ten restaurants. [Laughs.] 

And I ended up at Aqua, which was horrible. It was just awful. It was just mean, scary chefs screaming expletives at you 24/7 for absolutely no reason. I mean, I just felt unsafe. And I have the words to say that now. I didn't have the words then. I just failed. 

Anyway, I ended up at Bon Appétit Management Company, which is a great company that does food service for a lot of corporates. But I was at the museum. So I was the executive chef of the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, which was super fun. I loved it, again, to prove the theory of when you're fully seen and supported, you could actually do really well. I did really well there. I was the catering chef. Within seven months, I took over as the executive chef of the whole operation and quickly became the CEO’s favorite. I catered a couple weddings for him. 

Then we lost the account, because—it was all contractual stuff between the museum and Bon Appétit. And so, they were trying to find places for us to be. And they didn't have an executive chef job for me at the time. This is a very long way to tell you how I ended up on Top Chef, but I swear it's relevant. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I think it's great. [Laughs.]

Preeti: I mean, essentially, I was super busy. And I was running two museums and a catering business for two museums. I had no time at all. I never would have been able to leave. 

And so, they put me as Executive Sous Chef at the ballpark, the steakhouse at the ballpark, which was also under Bon Appétit Management. The consulting chef who—she showed up for management meetings every couple of weeks—was Traci Des Jardins. And then the executive chef was Thom Fox, and he needed help. And baseball season was starting. And so in the words of the CEO, Fedele, said, ‘So I'm going to park ya here. [Laughter.] And then, we'll see what we can do.’ And I was like, ‘Ok.’ 

And they were amazing. I mean, it was great. And so basically, it was like I was the number two. And so, there was a way for me to be able to leave for five weeks, and not be a huge hindrance to the business or just an impossibility. 

So I went. And it was horrible. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Well, I mean, yeah. So how did that change? I mean, it seems it was a life-changing thing. But was it, really? ’Cause I mean, everyone knows how things look from the outside is never how they actually are. 

Preeti: I mean, I think that the thing that was life changing about it is that a lot of people all of a sudden knew who I was. And after I got through the embarrassment and agony of doing really shitty, and having a lot of media outlets say really shitty things about you when they don't even know you. Let's remember, Eater was super f*****g snarky back then. They were not the lovable, amazing, ‘we get the industry,’ supportive people that they are right now. They were just mean. [Laughs.] They were just super mean.

Yeah. I mean, once I got over all that, I was just like, ‘Ok, well, the one thing I have is that everybody knows who I am.’ And so, even though in my opinion, there's—chefs around the city could cook circles around me. Regular people don't know who the f**k they are. The industry does. But the average American has no idea. But now they all know who I am. Yeah. And so I thought, ‘Ok, well, I'll just—’ 

And honestly, it was really hard to find a job. I left Google because I hated it. And they were just making my life hell, and they weren't supportive. They were just embarrassed and like, ‘Oh, you made us look bad.’ So I was like, ‘This sucks.’ Yeah, it was really hard. I was kind of blackballed for the first time. And that's when I started the pop up in the liquor store across the street from my house. I was just like, ‘I'm just gonna do something. And hopefully, people come. And hopefully, they like it. And we'll see what happens.’

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, when did you have the vision for what you wanted to do to express your own self as a chef?

Preeti: I think it was, it started when I was still at Google. I mean, I always knew I wanted to cook Indian food eventually. I wanted to learn professionally how to cook and work in restaurants and all that stuff. And I mean, obviously, Bon Appétit was great in terms of the management side, of P&Ls and all that. 

But I think at that point when I was like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ I think I kind of felt I had cooked for enough people and other people's food that I was ready to start expressing my own point of view. And I think it was a constant work in progress. 

I had no idea. I feel chefs today, that are so much younger than me, they sort of come out of the gate and it's like they know exactly what they're doing. And it seems they have this exact vision of what their cuisine is going to be. I opened the pop-up in a liquor store with three sandwiches, samosas, and a mango lassi. And I was like, ‘Let's see what happens.’ And then when there was some leftover something, I was like, ‘Oh, let's turn it into this,’ and just had the idea in the moment. And sometimes, it became a flop. And sometimes, it became something that became a signature dish that stayed with me for years. 

I don't know. I started getting the feedback from my friends outside of the industry that were like, ‘You're cooking your food now. I can see it. I can see what you're doing. And I can see that this is its own authentic expression.’ 

And fast forward a little. I would say the hardest part was probably 2014, ’cause we opened the restaurant in 2013. So we were open the whole year. We opened in March. I wasn't ready to leave the restaurant to other people. And so, we closed it for two weeks and went to India. My wife and I just co-owned our restaurants. 

I mean, I think we both kind of agreed that what people really loved about the restaurant was not what I thought it was going to be at all. As I said, I started with sandwiches and a samosa. And the whole thing was Indian street food. So in my head, I thought, I'm gonna just do this kind of replicable fast-casual model of all these sliders and fries, and just this fun kind of Indian play on Indian street food. 

But what we found in the first nine months of running the restaurant is that the community that we were in, in Oakland, they were really stoked that there was an Indian restaurant where there was actually a chef that they could talk to that was connected to the local seasonal ingredients that was inventing new things. And that was the thing that really struck people and our regulars. 

And so, what became the pressure point for me, it was kind of basically this moment of like, ‘Yeah, we have to push this more. We have to, for lack of a better word, continue elevating what we're doing.’ I don't love that word. But the concept to me is like, ‘What is there beyond sliders and masala fries?’ And it was daunting, because I hadn't really thought about it. 

And then we were in London on our way back from India. And I was looking at the year-end stuff, because it was December, January. And Eater does that thing where they ask people like, ‘Oh, what are your sort of thoughts about next year, and who's up and coming, and what's hot?’ And this and that. And Kerry Diamond said something like, I'm really looking forward to seeing what chef Preeti Mistry does at Juhu. I was simultaneously super stoked and terrified. 

You put one foot in front of the other and you start seeing what happens. And then, I think probably by the summer, I looked back in 2014, and was like, ‘Look at what we've created. [Laughs.] This is really something. And we did it. Now we can keep doing it.’ And I think that there's a way in which once you get past that initial holy s**t, ‘People are expecting so much more of me than I thought I was prepared to do.’ And once you break past that initial anxiety, it's really like, ‘Wait a minute. This is fun.’ I get to kind of decide and do, and everyone's following along and is like, ‘Ok, yes, we're with you. Go for it.’

So I mean, I think that eventually worked out. But yeah, it was scary for a minute.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I think that that's so interesting, and that that is always a compelling way for something to evolve, is that kind of organic creativity, that spontaneous creativity. I think that that's always a lot more compelling and has a lot more longevity, maybe, than someone who does come out of the gate saying, ‘I know exactly who I am and what I'm doing and exactly what I'm supposed to be.’ And I think that that, I think there's always a bit more excitement in that in the spontaneous and organic way of going about creativity. 

But that might be because I don't plan anything. So, [laughter] I have to see virtue in it.

Preeti: I just think there's more beauty in parameters and confines. And I mean, if there's anything that we've learned over decades and decades of—the best art comes out of some amount of struggle. And to me, I feel I do my best work when I'm being chased by a thousand-pound gorilla. All of a sudden, inspiration strikes. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yeah.

No, my book has only come together in the last couple of weeks, I think. And it's due next month. So, exactly, yeah. [Laughs.]

Preeti: There you go. 

Alicia: Well, I know you closed the restaurant in 2017. And you’ve been interning at a farm. You've launched a podcast, Loading Dock Talks. I wanted to ask if you think that there is maybe more potential for you now to change the way that this industry works, and how accepting it is of people who have historically been marginalized in the industry? Is your role as a facilitator and more of a cultural figure than restaurant chef, is that your future? Do you think you've kind of taken those roles on?

Preeti: I mean, a lot of it has just been really happenstance, you know? I mean, we closed Juhu—it was actually 2018, very beginning of 2018. So we rounded the year and closed in January. Part of that was—we were like, ‘Yeah, we're gonna open another one. We're just gonna open a bigger snazzier one.’ And then, pandemic. 

But I think that for me, the biggest thing that's changed is between those two things, so the beginning of 2018 and beginning of 2020, I would say the biggest thing that changed for me is like I really was on this mental thing of like, ‘I need one more run. But look, I want to have one more restaurant or concept or something that I put out into the world where I feel I can really—’ 

I don't know. I felt I still needed to prove myself or something. And through the pandemic, I just feel I reached this point where I'm like, ‘I don't f*****g have to prove. I don't care.’ And then I think, from there, starts to open up your brain in this way where it's like, ‘Well, what is the point? You can't make money at running restaurants. You run yourself ragged.’ 

I mean, we were trying to finish the deal to sell the place. I remember my wife saying this to the broker, like, ‘This is a life or death situation.’ And the broker kind of laughing, and then my wife was just like, ‘She doesn't f*****g get it, does she? I'm worried you're gonna end up in the emergency room.’ And I was just like, ‘Yeah.’ 

I mean, it was rough. I was working nonstop. And that thing that you're really transparent, and you're like, ‘Hey, everybody, we're going to sell the restaurant, but not right now. But please, stay with us. [Laughs.] Don’t leave me.’ It's a tough tightrope there where it's sort of like, ‘What are you gonna do? Fire me.’ So yeah, I was working more and more and more. 

But now I just look back. And I'm like, ‘So you don't make any money. You work your ass off. Why?’ I don't need to make food solely for being like, ‘Hey, look at me. Look at what I can do.’ And having people be like, ‘Oh, wow. Ohh ahh.’ I need it, whatever I do, to have more meaning than that. Whether that's the creative meaning, which I feel also in that realm, and we can talk a little bit about this more if you want. 

But I'm sort of definitely departing in a lot of ways from what I, the food I've been cooking for the last decade. And a lot of that is just again evolution. And I look back and I'm like, ‘Yeah, in 2011, when I started the pop up, people were like, ‘The f**k is this? [Laughs.] It was just like, ‘What?’ And when I opened the restaurant in 2013, I'd say myself and maybe Mirawa and Chai Pani. There were very few people that were doing anything different, outside of the-

I’d just search the Internet to see what other people are doing, not out of a competitive way, of just, ‘Who else is doing something interesting?’ And it would be like, oh, you see some cool inventive thing. And then it'd be like, ‘It's pretty much just chicken tikka masala inside paneer. They just gave it some different bells and whistles. It's just still the same thing. They're not really doing something different.’

But now I feel there's a lot of people all over the country and the world that sort of have a different understanding of what is possible with Indian food. And it can be in a lot of different lanes. And you can have a butter chicken calzone and Indian tomato achar on avocado toast or whatever. And those kinds of things were just really bizarre a decade ago. And so, now I also just feel like, ‘Well, why should I just keep making that same stuff? I'm ready to do something different.’

Alicia: Yeah.

What are you ready to do?

Preeti: I'm kind of getting really into just traditional Gujarati food. It's coming from a few different places. 

One is something I think you probably might remember, I've been very—and probably—know I've been very critical as a view of Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park and what's going on with a lot of the fine dining and plant-based food. And I said something on Twitter a while back where I was like, ‘10 courses. Daniel Humm against my mom. She would destroy him.’ And then I was telling my wife later that night over happy hour. And then I was like, ‘Wait a minute! I could do that.’ I mean, I'm not gonna have some fancy restaurant in New York with an abused beet on the menu. But, I mean, that's one of the inspirations. 

Another one is the farming and just getting—I'm not volunteering anymore at the farm. But I've just gotten a lot more involved with farms in general, because we've stayed here in Sonoma County. We're actually moving. We're moving in a week and a half, because we're staying. So we're moving to a slightly bigger house and yard and also just a little more convenient, because right now we're in the woods, so everything's 30 minutes away. So we're just moving a little bit closer to civilization. But staying in Sonoma County in a very—it's a country house. It's cute. It's very exciting. I feel so grown up. 

So yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it, too. Seasonal Gujarati cuisine is something that, again, which is something else I've been about for a while, is sort of people don't think about Indian food when they think farm to table. I remember having this experience with guests. Oakland's, all these cute hippies would come in and be these cute old white people. And they loved everything we were doing and would be like, ‘Oh, well, you don't do anything with rhubarb, do you? I mean, that's not really an Indian vegetable.’ And I'd be like, ‘Actually, I made a strawberry rhubarb chutney. You want to try it?’ Because I like rhubarb. And I live in California. And it's what's at the farmers’ market. 

So I think that, for me, probably focusing more on slightly more serious Gujarati vegetarian food. Maybe some meat, but I've done a lot of meat cooking with Indian cuisine. 

And then the last desire is really getting to this point of realizing that, without sounding too morbid, at some point, the people who have the keys to the kingdom have all these recipes in my family won't be with us anymore. And who is going to make sure that we keep those recipes? I sort of look around all my cousins and siblings, and I'm like, ‘I'm pretty sure it's me.’ [Laughter.]

Yeah. So, yeah. I've been working with a lot of wineries, doing wine pairing, but also really just focusing more on—

At Juhu at one point, I was like—when I say getting a bigger snazzier space, it's, I wanted to do more. And we had so many limitations. We just had such a small space. The kitchen was tiny. We had no walk-ins; it was all reach-ins. And we were doing like 120 covers a night. So it was really like, ‘Crank it out!’ It was like, ‘Yeah, more manchurian cauliflower,  manchurian cauliflower for days. We can't make enough. We will sell out every night.’ 

But it was like, ‘’Crank it out! Get that cauliflower in the deep fryer and toss it with the sweet and sour sauce.’ I mean, and all the food is delicious, but I just—I longed to have the opportunity to do things that take a little bit more time and care and nuance in their plating, in their technique of how they're prepared, etc. And that was just not really possible with the type of staff I, that I had, who were all, aside for maybe one or two people, pretty green to the kitchen, etc. It was just not possible. I've been wanting to do something more focused. 

And I'm not against fine dining as a whole concept. There's just so much b******t I see and read and experience. I have ideas for dishes that are more complicated than deep-fried cauliflower all the time. I just don't necessarily realize them in the current environment that I'm in. And so I think, figuring out and finding-

There's one project. I can't tell you who—I am working with a rather large winery on a guest chef series that will be me and two other chefs. And we're basically doing a five-course wine pairing menu. And it's basically the—everything that I've been talking about in terms of one, people thinking of both wine pairing and farm to table as the Super European thing. Doing five courses that are all Indian, or and then the other two chefs will also be from non-European cuisines.

And some different projects like that, where it's really just getting to, I don't know, getting to create something beautiful without breaking your back. I hate to say it. I was joking with a friend who's in fine dining the other day, ’cause I do have some friends in fine dining. Not everyone in fine dining hates me. And I was like, ‘I might do something that's a little more fine dining.’ And they were like, ‘It’s not that bad.’ 

And I was like, ‘I just want to get paid well and make nice things.’ And if I can figure out how to keep that somewhat accessible, so that it's not totally something that's only accessible to the one percent. And also, again, just the original passion, motivation for me behind Juhu was, There's all this food that people have no idea about. All they know is naan and curry. And that was a whole thing, was wanting to bring different, cool, interesting, fun things to people. And I feel this is the same thing. 

I mean, my mother harassed the hell out of me last Thanksgiving like 20 times with questions about a carrot ginger soup, where I'm like, ‘I don't understand this. You have like a cookbook’s worth of recipes just in your brain. You can literally make like 7 to 10 different types of breads. And you can cook all these vegetables and make all these dals and all these different snacks and steamed fermented cakes and fries and stuff. But you're confounded by this, because it's all just in your brain.’

It's second nature to her. She doesn't even have to think about it. And the moment she actually has to think about something because it's outside of her wheelhouse, it's like, ‘Oh, I don't know what to do.’ But when I think about that wheelhouse, I'm just like, ‘It's just such a vast, you know, sort of chasm of knowledge. There's so much there.’ I mean, knowing me, as my mother would say, ‘You and your creative ideas.’ Of course, they probably will not be exactly her food. But there's just so much more—

I know some of the chefs on the East Coast in New York and stuff have been really understanding Indian cuisine beyond tikka masala, through Dhamaka, and Surbhi just opened Tagmo. And those guys also opened a South Indian place, which looks amazing. And I feel like people are starting to understand different Indian cuisines. 

My theory always has been one of the reasons that Indian cuisine never gets the glow-up is because hierarchically in terms of class, the higher class you go, or caste, the more vegetarian people are. And the West doesn't understand how to value food that's vegetarian. The goat brains and stuff that are on some of those menus at Adda and those places in India, that's considered some low class, low caste food. It's looked down upon. 

So, yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of a weird mindfuck of how people understand Indian cuisine. And I don't really care. I mean, I like goat brains. And I like vegetarian food. I'll eat it all. So for me, I'm just—I want to see the food of my culture specifically—which is very vegetarian, almost vegan, aside from yogurt and ghee—be appreciated and seen for what it is, because it's beautiful. It's delicious. 

I mean, there's so many chefs, Indian chefs I know from other parts of the country. Like Asha Gomez. She's from Kerala. She grew up eating beef and fish and all this seafood and, but she's like, ‘Oh my god. I love Gujarati food. It's so, you know?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I know. It's great.’ I didn't even realize when I was a kid. I was like, ‘I hate this.’ And now I look back, and I'm like, ‘Holy s**t, there's so much interesting, good stuff that people just don't—the Western world doesn't really, totally connect with.’

Alicia: Right, right. 

No, it's interesting because I’m looking so much at the way foods are assimilated and erased in ‘American cuisine’ and the ways in which things are valued if they are adapted into that kind of middle-class white pantry. And that's the only way that they obtain value in the United States in the cuisine. And so it's interesting to hear about the idea that Gujarati food can't be, it hasn't had its due because of the vegetarianess of it, because Americans, basically, and most of the West can't absorb the significance of vegetables anyway. So if you make something that translates into the American palate, it has to be very, very specific. That becomes some sort of marker of its worth and greatness, is such a—is everything I think a lot of people are working against at this point. [Laughs.]

Peeti: Yeah.

I mean, I'm working on it. I got some ideas. I'm excited about January, ’cause I'm also getting—through this move, I get a bigger kitchen. So I'm excited to start playing around with all these ideas that right now are just in an Excel spreadsheet.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Well, I wanted to ask, too, because you talked to KQED out there in the Bay Area about starting your podcast specifically to create space in the very white world of food podcasting. So there's also been all this conversation in the last year and a half: is food media becoming more inclusive? Is it not? 

And so, in general, though, power and capital are still concentrated in the same hands. Gatekeepers are basically the same at the end of the day. What would a more kind of inclusive food media look like to you? What would it be, basically?

Preeti: Yeah. It's hard. 

I think one of the big things that I have experienced is just this annoying, trendy, popularity contest. And I've been on both sides. And I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't know. I'd like to think that maybe I've transcended it, that ‘hot or not’ thing. I just hover above it all. I mean, mainly, because I'm just not going to do anything just for popularity or whatever. 

Yeah, I mean, when you have the same gatekeepers in place, I think what the problem is that this sort of like, ‘Oh, this person's the person. Now, this person is the person.’ And one of the things that I see—and this is not just true for food media. I think this is true for all media. And it's also true for just any type of business or organization that's trying to keep the same gatekeepers in place, but still trying to be more inclusive. 

And that is that they'll oftentimes pick the young, trendy, hippest hottest person to put on a pedestal and give all of this power to when that person, first of all, just got here. Two, has no historical context. And therefore, it does a disservice to a lot of different things. First of all, the disservice it does to that person is it kind of sets them up to fail, and it sets them up as a shooting star that's gonna burn out. Yeah.

It also sets them up in a way where because they don't have the larger historical context of food media, or whatever it is, they're apt to say yes to things and be manipulated in a way that somebody who has been doing this for a while, that also would be of that identity, wouldn't. And I feel like that part is intentional. I think it's very intentional. I mean, this thing that has become a mantra of mine, because it comes up so often, of ‘difficult to work with’ means ‘difficult to manipulate’ is that it's really easy to take that 26-year-old that's the hip cool thing. 

And they might be awesome people. They might be totally rad people who have great politics and are super talented, but they probably haven't had enough experience to make the right decisions all the time. And when you're getting that type of attention, and all of this sort of thrown at you, it's also really easy to say yes. Because it's really hard to not accept when people are trying to give you opportunities or feature you, or what have you. And you might not realize that what you're doing is not necessarily the right decision. 

And then on the other hand, of course, there's the thing of—yeah, whether it's folks—I'm just a bitter old person—folks like me, and many of my colleagues who've been at it for a long time, or who actually are about it, as opposed to the big thing. I think that's frustrating is also within food media is like, ‘Oh, we need to—someone who fits this identity.’ So they find somebody who fits that identity who that's it. They're not about anything else. They just happen to be brown and queer, and from some cool country that is trending. They might not actually have any real politics, necessarily. And so giving them the mic gives you this really milquetoast version that then just makes all of the gatekeepers pat themselves on the back and feel really great. And like, ‘Ok, check. We've done it.’

I mean, first and foremost, I think what needs to change is there needs to be change in gatekeeping. Period. I mean, I just told you this opportunity that I have, and the first thing I'm doing is bringing on two more BIPOC women colleagues. I mean, that was the whole point of my podcast. Yeah, let's talk to a whole bunch of people that—some people that I interviewed are people that millions of people know, like Your Korean Dad. And then there's other people that not as many folks know, or they haven't had an opportunity to really share their story and their point of view. So for me, that's the first thing. 

And then secondly, I think it's really important that publications really look at who's been doing this for a long time. Who has a real point of view beyond just like, ‘Yep, I check the boxes.’ Because I think you're gonna get a lot more out of whatever you do if you actually give people the power. 

I mean, jeez, the two times I've been in really large national publications would be because Ava DuVernay really likes me. And we became friends. Both Time magazine, I got to write something. And last year, I was in Harper's Bazaar. It's because those magazines gave someone like her the gatekeeping that a different group of people were allowed to be honored and featured. 

I mean, that's really what it comes down to, is you have the white male gatekeepers. And they're like, ‘Ok, maybe you guys shouldn't be picking the ten people of color. Maybe hire somebody as that guest editor or if you're not ready to give up your job and let them do it full time, at least do a guest editor thing. Do an editor residence, and give them the opportunity.’

And then the other side of that is—because I've been doing a lot of consulting up here in trying to help folks be more inclusive. And the other thing that you run into is media needs to take a chance. they're so afraid of taking chances and going beyond the sort of prescribed lane that they're given that—

One of the things I've run into is I've been recruiting chefs for some events up here. And then these people hire me. They're all like, ‘Yeah, we don't want it to be a bunch of old white guys. We're so excited to have you on board.’ And I'm like, ‘Ok, here's this list.’ And then they're like, ‘Mmm, that person is not really a big enough star.’ And I'm like, ‘How are they ever gonna be a big enough star if you never give them the opportunity?’ It's gonna be the same. 

I find myself in this thing. And I'm like, ‘Oh, all the people of color are men and all the women are white. And that's safe.’ Yeah, or those people have got the—they got the, broke through. It's this mediagenic thing, too. It's like, ‘Oh, that person's model gorgeous.’ And some of these people are my friends. And I think that they're fantastic. And I'm glad that they're getting all these opportunities. And I also can see why.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

No, it's really interesting to me, because I've always wanted to be a writer and work in magazines. And then when I got to magazines, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, we don't care about building up new people. We just care about giving attention to people who've already gotten attention.’ And if you're a new person who gets attention, it has to be fitting in a very specific box in order to get—

It was always really shocking to me, when I would pitch stories about people who were not famous yet, and it would just be like, ‘Well, they're not famous.’ Well, how do I get the opportunity to talk about their work then ever? And you have to just wait. You have to wait it out. And then it's like, ‘Well, what are we doing here all the time?’

There's so many hurdles to get and in your—in front of anyone's face, or get your food in anyone's mouth when, despite the the constant chatter about like, ‘Oh, I want to know what the next big thing is. I want to know.’ And it's like, ‘No, you actually don't, though, because you don't want to put in the work of challenging yourself in any sort of way. You don't want to put in the effort that's going to be needed to find the new people to support them to get—’ It's really maddening. 

But it works. It's in both places. It's in media. It's in restaurants. It's everywhere. Yeah, it is a struggle. [Laughs.]

Well, I was on a panel with Reem Assil recently, and she was saying that the media attention also doesn't translate necessarily to material change. And that's a real problem. And I think that that comes with a lack of self-interrogation in the industry, too, of media, where it's like, we're not looking at what the effects of what we do are. We're just kind of doing it and checking boxes. And wherever the chips fall, that's where they fall. And it doesn't matter whether we really affect a restaurant space in a good way with our attention, or a bad way. We never ask those questions. And it's a lot.

But I did want to ask you how you, what you're hoping for in 2022. I think you kind of told us a little bit, but maybe there's more.

Preeti: I'm hopeful for, I mean, for myself personally, which has been challenging for the last couple years, because the pandemic really slowed it down. Which is, I'm so tired. I'm a person who talks a lot. I always have since I was a child, but—my mantra lately is like, ‘I'm so f*****g sick of talking about s**t. And I'm so ready to just be doing something.’ And I think that that part has been frustrating for me, which just goes back to the whole thing of having a business and access to capital and who gets those opportunities, and who investors line up for etc, etc. 

So I think that, first and foremost, I think, yeah, I'm looking forward to doing more cooking. And I will be doing some more farming, both personally, because I now have a yard with fruit trees. And also, professionally, activating a lot of different spaces with different folks I’m working with to be growing stuff, to be creating new dishes, to be also adding to the conversation. 

I think that's the biggest thing is like, ‘I want to be able to add to the conversation with a thing, instead of just the constant criticism.’ I get frustrated where I'm like, ‘Do I seem like one of those people that just talks a bunch of s**t about other people, but never does a goddamn thing? But that's not true. You know, I did this podcast thing. I got some spices. [Laughs.]’ 

But yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to just doing. I'm looking forward to cooking and moving the conversation through action and not just words. Which in addition to all the things I just talked about in terms of access and networks, it's also just the pandemic. So we've just been in this place where it's—Ok, it hasn't necessarily been safe unless you're already in that space, and how safe—whatever. Everybody's different in what feels safe for them. So that part has been also challenging, is just feeling like, ‘Oh, I just want to like, do things.’

So I feel, definitely, doing more collaborations. I see a lot of that sort of work with other chefs, hopefully more events and dinners and things on farms. I mean, there's just a lot of cool stuff happening up here in Sonoma County in terms of BIPOC folks starting to kind of take up a very small amount of space. So and the only thing that's really fun about that is that when there’s so few of us, we’re all like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, we need to do this together. Let's hang out. yay, you're here. Yay.’ So there's that kind of thing that's kind of interesting up here.

I mean, I hope that people continue to have this vision that I feel started last year that has continued of a certain amount of folks have become disillusioned with the Michelin star, kind of BS attitude and just smoke and mirrors, pomp and circumstance BS. So I hope that that continues. 

I hope that more people get leadership roles that actually know what they're doing. But I'm not super hopeful. Honestly, I feel if anything, the doing is also I just need to focus on doing my own thing and not even worry about the bigger picture, because it’s just probably going to continue to suck. [Laughter.] But then, it’s just carve out your world, whether that's physical or virtual. Carve out that piece of the world that works for you, and that you can be creative and make some sort of positive impact. We can't all change the world, but we can do our little part and just really put energy into that.

I also want to do products. It's one of my many—what's the word—sort of epiphanies or discoveries through the pandemic has been. So working on farming, growing vegetables and trying to sell them makes less money than running a restaurant and is even harder work. And so, then I started thinking about, ‘Well, who actually makes money at this?’ And obviously, the most obvious example would be wine. But a value-add product, which is a term that I learned in the last year and a half. 

And so, that's kind of my big interest right now, is really focusing on, I don't need to grow my own kale and potatoes. We get a CSA box. The farm is great. I love them, all those kinds of staples. So when I think about growing stuff, whether it's professionally with some of the projects I'm working on, or personally, which might turn into something professional, I really want to grow things that are specific in order to create added products, whether that's a beverage or a preserve, or a pickle, or what have you. A spice, a sauce. Because I feel that's really the one area where one can be mildly successful and not kill themselves doing it if they do it. 

I did have a line—we had the line of curry sauces in 2005. And it was horrible. My wife was a business person, she has an MBA, and she very—I was like, ‘We just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘We lose three cents a jar.’ And I was like, ‘So we just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘That means the more we sell, the more we lose.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhh. [Laughter.] That’s why you're the business person.’

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Preeti: Yes. Yeah, I have said that. 

Cooking food of my personal cultural heritage is f*****g political. Yeah. 100 percent. I mean, I think that from the lunchbox stories to just our conversation earlier about vegetarian cuisine and how it’s seen in the US, and thinking about my mother and all the stuff that she cooks. 

And, yeah, it's a political act because it is in danger. It is literally endangered. Even a lot of Gujaratis that I know that are my age—and this isn't a diss. It's just everybody's different. But their moms didn't cook everything from scratch the way my mom did, like this, where I'm like, ‘Yeah, I made this.’ And they're like, ‘My mom never made that. And we always got it frozen.’ And I'm like, ‘Really? I've never seen it frozen.’ The only thing frozen in my mom's are peas and blocks of tamarind. [Laughter.] Which, why are there brown ice cubes? My mom's like, ‘Leave it alone. It’s not important.’

I mean, honestly, just f*****g existing and opening my mouth. I feel it's a political act at this point in this world, because we can sit here and feel very safe and a certain set of people. And yet, we know what's going on in our larger world. So it's totally political. Food is political. Whether it's about access or what and who is valued, all of that. [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] Or who has access to food, which is other stuff that I'm working on here in terms of food insecurity.

Alicia: Amazing. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Preeti: Thank you. 

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy. 

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Today, I’m talking Karon Liu, a food writer at the Toronto Star. I’ve long been a fan of his work and perspective, which is accessible but has an eye toward sustainability; has humor and deep understanding, but is authoritative in his perspective.

We discussed how he got into food despite never cooking growing up, shifting definitions of authenticity, and being a writer who can convey the totality of Toronto to an international audience.

Alicia: Hi, Karon. Thank you so much for being here and chatting with me today.

Karon: Thank you very much, Alicia. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Karon: Oh, my God, my origin story. I think my origin story is quite different from a lot of your previous guests. I feel when you ask a food writer what their relationship with food was early on, they'll say like, ‘Oh, I used to gather around the dinner table with my grandma for Sunday night dinners. And it was such an important part of the week. And I would be in the garden. I would watch my mom cook. And it was so important in my formative years.’ And mine is the complete 180.

I think a lot of kids who grew up in the early ’90s were, who were raised on television and were latchkey kids, we just completely absorbed all the junk-food commercials that were blasted at us. So what I think about what I ate growing up, it was all the golden brown, deep-fried junk. So it was a lot of pizza pops, which I think is—the American equivalent would be Hot Pockets. Mini-microwave pizza, Kraft mac and cheese. Sorry to be a Canadian stereotype, but I did eat Kraft mac and cheese growing up. Instant ramen. A lot of that. 

But I lived with my grandmother, as well, in our house, and she was an amazing cook. She cooked a lot of really fantastic Cantonese dishes, but I didn't really appreciate it back then. I think a lot of immigrant children growing up in Canada, or in the U.S., they were—they wanted to assimilate into ‘American, Canadian culture’ so much that they kind of looked down or didn't appreciate the cooking of their heritage as much. 

And I remember my grandma making fantastic stews, and all these really big beautiful steamed fish and these fermented things and pickles and stuff like that. And I didn't appreciate it because I wanted McDonald's and burgers. That’s what I ate growing up. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, I'm the same way when people ask me about this. There is a lot of beautiful, great food that I ate. But I also, all summer, was responsible for me and my brother and would just boil cheese tortellini. I would be horrified—I ate meat then, but when my mom accidentally bought the meat tortellini, I would want to die. And a lot of Ellio's pizza and everything, so. And a lot of putting a hot dog in the microwave. I don't know why I did that. [Laughter.]

Karon: I mean, at least you used the microwave. I didn’t use the microwave, but I didn't know how to use a microwave. I'm trying to, try to remember back then. Because I think my parents wanted me to focus on studying and be great at academics, to—sorry to be a cliché. [Laughter.] Ayy, Chinese immigrant fam with Chinese parents. 

I wasn't encouraged to cook. They were like, ‘Study. Study, study. Don't go to the kitchen.’ So I didn't know how to cook. I don't even think I knew how to turn on the stove growing up. I didn't think I touched the stove until I was in my twenties. It was awful.

Alicia: Yeah. I didn't know how to make an egg until I went to college. And I had to learn how to scramble an egg, and I was on the phone with my mother. I was Googling how to do laundry. I didn't know how to do anything. So I'm right there with you. It's okay to grow up not knowing how to do anything.

Karon: But I think it helped us in the larger part. I think our experiences are quite similar,  or quite similar to a lot of people right around the world. I think there's more people like us who grew up on junk food and convenience foods, and were taught to not stay in the kitchen and to focus on our studies than who grew up on a beautiful farm and there’s the garden. Whenever I read a cookbook jacket, and it starts off with that, I'm like, ‘I'm out.’ I don’t know how to relate to it.

Alicia: I always come from that perspective in my work, which is just like we do have nostalgia for crap sometimes. But it is funny because the other day I posted on Instagram stories that I love Wendy's barbecue sauce. And so, when barbecue sauce tastes like Wendy's, I love it. And someone was like, ‘That's sad.’ Ok, sorry. I didn't grow up in the south eating—I don't know what kind of barbecue sauce they eat. I don't know. [Laughs.]

Karon: Did Wendy's give you that spon-con deal yet? Or are you still figuring it out?

Alicia: I will not take a spon con deal from Wendy’s. I just mean, I just like that the smokiness and sweetness I think are really well balanced in their barbecue sauce. I don't know. 

But you studied journalism. And I was looking at your résumé and you seemingly went right into writing about food. When did you decide you wanted to be a food writer? And how did you make that happen?

Karon: So I went to journalism school. And at that point, food writing wasn't really talked about outside of being a restaurant critic. And those jobs, they open up when the critic retires or dies. That's pretty much it. So I went into journalism school thinking I was going to be a general assignment reporter, which is basically covering anything and everything that happens in the city. 

So I graduated, and then I did a few internships, and I realized that general assignment—so covering courts, crimes, everyday city stuff, I was horrible at covering. Breaking news, hard news, I hated it. I hated covering courts, because I was so scared that I would accidently cover, write something wrong or publish something that was under a publication ban. Or going to a crime scene, I was so nervous. It was so stressful. It took so much out of me emotionally, and I just couldn't do it. 

I just applied for an internship at this magazine called Toronto Life, which I guess is the—I have to give American equivalents every time I talk about, make Canadian references. New York Magazine would be the equivalent of it. And it's a city magazine. And the week that I started, they started a food and restaurant blog covering what's hot, what's new. Because this was the early—the late 2000s, early 2010s, when the rock-star chef persona, that whole food culture starts to come up. The third wave of independent restaurants, the 30-seat chef-owned restaurants where they played, like, rock music. I sound like such a dweeb.

That genre of the post-2008 recession restaurants came about. So it was a really exciting time for food. And they started that restaurant blog, and I didn't know anything about food but I needed clippings for my portfolio, so I just kind of wedged myself in there. And that's how I got started writing about food. 

I don't think I still turned on the stove at that point. I might have graduated to learning how to use a microwave. Still didn’t know anything. But when you're out in the field, and you're talking to cooks and learning about cooking in restaurants, it starts to seep in. So it starts to encourage you to cook and to try different ingredients, and to really just get your, force yourself into the kitchen.

Alicia: In what direction did you go to force yourself into the kitchen? Were there books, were there TV shows, were there ingredients or flavors that inspired you to actually cook?

Karon: I actually didn't watch food TV that much, ’cause I think it just reminded me of work. I think around that time Top Chef Canada came out, and I think I watched one or two seasons when it first came out. And then I just stopped, because it was like, ‘Oh, I recognize that person. Oh crap. This reminds me of work.’ Or like, ‘Oh, I have to call that person back for an interview.’ I was like, ‘No, this is eating into Karon time at night.’ I didn’t like it.

And I think around that time, food internet didn't really take off yet. I think maybe Deb Perelman might have been around at that time, but I didn't know of her work. I think a lot of it was just being in the kitchens and seeing how chefs work and asking them about, ‘Oh, why is this dish like that? Or why do you do this?’ And then when they explained it to me—very patiently, because I'm pretty sure they knew I didn't know anything and they were explaining things to me three or four times, so I didn't get it wrong. 

So I think because they reiterated cooking techniques and flavor pairings so much, that it just seeped in subconsciously. When I'm passing by the St. Lawrence Market, which is Toronto's large farmers’ market, I would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that's in season. I remember the chef telling me about it.’ And like, ‘Oh, right, that's how they would do it. Maybe I should just pick up some of this stuff and take it home and try it myself.’ So it kind of worked very organically that way. 

I also didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't buy any cookbooks.

Alicia: [Laughs.] They are so expensive.

Karon: It didn't hurt me that a library was right there, so. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I know you've had some big changes lately at the Toronto Star food section. What has been going on there?

Karon: Yes. Well, thank you very much for letting me plug the new food section. 

We're in our first month. We just have a new food section coming out. And it's me and my good friend Suresh, who has been through writing for much longer than I have, at least 15 years. And the two of us, we love eating around the city. And we just love the city so much. There's just so much that I think people don't know about that needs to be celebrated. 

The higher-ups at the Star, the big mucky mucks, were like, ‘Hey, you guys like writing about food. Here's a new food section. What do you want to do?’ And we were more or less given carte blanche, and it's just so much fun. 

And the places that we always eat are the places in the strip malls, the plazas outside of the Toronto downtown core. In the suburbs, and places like Scarborough, Markham, North York. I'm sure this is the first American podcast where they're, like, the word North York and Richmond Hill were mentioned. Vaughan, Woodbridge, Etobicoke. All these little suburbs outside of the downtown area that most people know about, where all the big expensive splashy restaurants are. Those are the places that I love to eat at and Suresh loves to eat at, but it hasn't really been covered before in a lot of food media here for reasons that—We know. We know. We know why.

Look, we've been given that opportunity to do that. It’s really, really exciting to be able to go to these places, and let more people know about them so that they can go out and eat and explore the city that they think they know but there's still so much to learn.

Alicia: In this job where you're at, The Star, you've done so much. You're editing, you’re feature writing, you're writing restaurant reviews. You were doing recipe development as well. And so, how have you juggled all of that? And what are you looking forward to focusing on now?

Karon: Yeah, it's so much, because unlike the newspapers, in, say, the New York Times and San Fran Chronicle or L.A. Times, where they have a fairly sizable food team, in Canada, it's a lot more bare-bones. Everyone has to wear multiple hats. So I'm just really happy that I get to have a more focused mandate again, just kind of just exploring and eating out and being able to tell the stories of a lot of these cooks and people who work in the restaurant industry that don't really have a voice and be able to talk about different cuisines and what it's like to work in the restaurant industry. 

Yeah, it's a lot more focused and a lot more fun. ’Cause before it was a lot, doing a lot of different things and hoping that I didn't screw up.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, I think of you and Suresh as well as being more focused on your cities than other food writers. Well, Jonathan Nunn in London, he calls himself more of a city writer. I think the other person that's pointed to as more of a city writer was Jonathan Gold at the L.A. Times. You are really conveying the entirety of a city in your work. You're doing service and lifestyle for people who live there. But you're also sort of defining and expanding the idea of what Toronto is to people who read your work outside of that city. 

How does that city inspire your work? You were just talking about going into the suburbs and everything. How do you see the food media outside of Toronto kind of influencing your work, if it does?

Karon: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. I think that's part of the reason why I don't really do recipes anymore. Because even people in Toronto, when they want a food recipe from a food publication, they'll hit up Food & Wine or Bon Appetit, places that have such a, not monopoly, but they're like juggernauts when it comes to recipes. New York Times Cooking. So it didn't really feel it was necessary for me to go into that, because I don't think people come to me for recipes. 

But what I think I can do and Suresh can do is to just really put the Greater Toronto Area, which encompasses North York, Scarborough, all those surrounding suburbs, into an international spotlight, because there's just so much good stuff there. And I think there's very few people doing it right now on such being—or doing it on, or being able to do it on a large platform. The Toronto Star, that's one—I think that's one area where we think that we can really excel at and shine. So we're like, ‘Ok, let's just do that.’

I think Toronto always bills itself as a very multicultural city. And it's been repeated so much that we kind of just like, ‘Yeah, of course, whatever.’ It's a given. But it's not until you go, you're traveling and you're outside Toronto. You're like, ‘Oh, wow, Toronto really is a very multicultural city.’ I think our last census report, more than half of the people who live in Toronto, I think, English is their second language or something like that. 

It is wild how many different types of cuisines are are in the city, and how many different types of new cuisines that form when the second, the first and second generation kids take the cuisines of their heritage and combine it with the cuisines that they ate at a friend's house, or the different restaurants that they go to. There's always these new mash-ups that come up and eventually become a very uniquely Toronto tradition. There's always stuff happening, and it's always inspiring me and my food writing.

Alicia: You recently wrote a piece on the concept of authenticity and how Chinese chefs in Toronto are challenging it by doing what you just explained, being authentic to their own lives and experience rather than kind of a historical or nostalgic ideal. How did that story come about, and how does it relate to your own life in cooking? 

Karon: Yeah, I think that being a millennial and having a lot more people in my cohort, becoming chefs and opening the restaurants now and being more authoritative in their jobs, that's kind of really helped shift the definition of what authenticity means in cuisines. 

So going back to my example of what I ate growing up. It was a lot of junk food. It was a lot of stuff from the food court, where it’s a lot of the Canadian Chinese food, like the chicken balls, the fried rice, the spring rolls and the chop suey stuff. And then if you were to ask my parents if that was real Chinese food, they’d be like, ‘I didn't eat any of this stuff in Hong Kong.’ 

But for me, it was authentic, because it was what I grew up eating. It's my authentic childhood, my life experiences. Who's to say that all those years of eating, I was not doing it authentically? What does that even mean? So I think that now there's a lot more cooks and chefs in their 30s who grew up eating like I did, and are taking inspirations from that childhood and merging it with the food that their parents ate or something like that, and creating this whole new cuisine and saying, ‘That's what I ate growing up. That's my authentic experience. Who are you to say no?’

And I think that now the definition of authenticity has really changed. It’s no longer referencing a fixed point in time in a specific region. But it's very fluid. And it really depends on who's cooking it and how that authenticity that they're trying to push references their upbringing and where they ate and where they're going and what they cooked with. Because yeah, it's so weird to think that authenticity in cooking points to one region, one specific time. That's not how food works. It’s constantly evolving.

Alicia: No, I did a piece last year on translation. That was something that people brought up, was that when you're not translating the food writing or you're not investing in finding food writers who are on the ground in different countries in different cultures, you are perpetuating these kinds of historic ideas of a cuisine. You're kind of putting them in a box in a museum and saying they can't change, when on the—if you're letting a diaspora define, and also not get out of a box of what their ancestral cooking is, then you're—it's not doing anyone any service. It's putting a cuisine in a museum and saying, ‘Certain cuisines need to go in a museum and other cuisines are allowed to change.’

Karon: Yeah, especially when you're a cook now. And you have so many different influences. I think a lot more people are traveling now. They're living in different cities. There's the internet. The whole idea of globalization, it just really affects so many cuisines. And that's just how it's evolving now. And to ignore all of that, and try to cook the way that things were at maybe one point in your life in an area that you don't even live in anymore. Is that authentic to you? Is it authentic to ignore where you live, where you've worked? Your neighborhood, the restaurants that you grew up eating at, the places where you shop? Is it worth it to ignore all of that, in order to fit some sort of arbitrary standard that a Yelp review wants you to.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Right. 

And I mean, in a related way, you've always on Twitter—I've always loved your commentary on the fact that you grew up thinking of soy milk and cow's milk as separate products, and not one being an alternative for the other. Because so often, there's this really ahistorical narrative around these ‘alternatives.’ It drives me mad, which I think everyone knows.

But I wanted to ask how, if you've seen, kind of food media at large, understand what the nuances are of growing up eating a non-Western cuisine. Because I think, like, we're just talking about, I think that even when food media wants to escape its Western gaze, it continues to be a bit less inclusive than it thinks it's being, if that makes sense.

Karon: Yeah, for sure. 

I think it's starting to get a little bit better, as more food writers who didn't grow up in a Western household are coming up and saying, like, ‘Oh, no. This isn't weird or new. This is  how I've been doing it.’ And it's starting to get there. 

But I think in order for more sweeping or permanent changes, I think it's—you have to look at the people at the top. The people at, who are the editors, the publishers, the people who are making those ultimate editorial decisions and choosing who to hire, what to commission, how things are edited, how things are displayed, how things are shot and styled. 

[Laughs.] And I say styled, because one thing that always irks me is that more often than not, when I see a bowl of noodles with chopsticks, the chopsticks are always crossed. Or they're stabbing into the bowl of noodles, which is a big no-no in Chinese culture. It's rude or a bad luck thing. That always gets me. Or when you see a pair of model hands, and they're not holding the chopsticks correctly. I'm like, ‘Oh, you're never going to get the noodles holding them like that.’ 

I think that really has to change. And I hope it's getting there. There's more writers who have more voices. At the end of the day, they're the ones who are at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. They're not the ones that have the voices who are able to make these calls at the end of the day to stop perpetuating stereotypes and misinformation about cuisines.

Alicia: Yeah, no.

And that's, I think, why I always come back to the idea of translation, too, where it's like, ‘Ok, if you're not going to change who's at the top. You claim, still, to want to actually change how things are perceived. Then maybe be more open to like a global—Especially in American food media. Because American food media claims to be the arbiter of taste, and yet it's so siloed and so provincial. It's so provincial. They would send someone to Toronto rather than interview you about Toronto, you know?

Karon: That has happened. That has happened just to me the past summer.  You will see it in the New Year. If you're wondering why I'm not in there, just let you know. I was reached out to; I responded; I gave my list of suggestions. I said, ‘Get out of the proper Toronto, come to the ’burbs.’ And I never heard from them again.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Wow. 

Well, [laughs] I also wanted to ask, because we've talked about before—I did a piece at the New Republic about how food people who do food as lifestyle should also be concerned about sourcing and sustainability. 

And then we talked about shrimp for a different piece about how difficult it is to source well. So when you were doing recipe development, you weren't including shrimp, because you just didn't want to be suggesting people buy this cheap shrimp that has such terrible labor conditions and terrible environmental impacts. 

But I wanted to ask now that you're not doing recipes, but you are still kind of an arbiter of taste online for food people, how do you bring balance to what you share online? Because people will see you as an authority.

Karon: Yeah, it's such a difficult thing to do. 

I remember once I posted something where I used avocados, I just sliced some avocados on my toast.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Karon: [Laughs.] Yeah, I'm a real arbiter. I made avocado toast. Revolutionary. 

And I think I had someone in my comments like, ‘Oh, that looks really good, but I don't use avocados because it's X, Y and Z.’ I’m like, ‘Ok, yeah.’ So you kind of start going down a spiral, because you're like, ‘This is this. Is this that.’ It's so hard to think about without driving yourself nuts or bumming you out. 

And I think you've written about this before, in terms of be as educated and make as informed decisions as you can. So I think being a food writer and knowing more about the environmental and labor consequences of purchasing decisions has really shifted the way how I cook at home, and where I eat as well. 

So our house has—I can't remember the last time we bought beef, my gosh. I really can't remember the last time I even cooked with beef. So we stopped. We stopped buying beef. Maybe not so much environmental, it just got really expensive here. Pork, as well. We don't really cook with pork anymore. We go with chicken, which, I mean, I'm sure, Alicia, you can also argue that's also not good. We go through a lot of eggs as well. 

People can’t see this. She's tilting her head a little bit, going like, ‘Mm-hmm. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Eggs are great. Yeah, eat more chicken. I'm not judging you at all.’ But I've eaten more seasonally now. Right now, I think the only fruit that I'm eating is apples. That’s what’s in season here in Ontario. And I'm just trying to be as mindful of my eating as possible. But at the same time, I'm not positioning myself as perfect. 

What should I do. Alicia? What should I do? Help me.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I think you're doing great. I think you're doing great.

I mean, the funny thing is, and the reason I was making that face, is because everyone—people cut out beef completely. Basically, people are really good at cutting out beef completely from their diets, which is fantastic. But then yeah, of course people eat pork, especially when they go out. Pork is a big thing for when you go out to eat, I think, more than people are cooking it at home necessarily other than different occasions.

But chicken is the thing that people just, once they make a decision to try to eat meat sustainably, they just eat so much. I understand it's part of this—it's part of that transition to thinking about these things, is to just eat a lot more chicken. And I don't think that that's actually bad. I think it's part of that process of understanding the role of meat in your life. 

I posted about my Montreal trip on Instagram today and in my newsletter. And I was like, ‘Oh, people are gonna tear me to shreds about all this Parmesan cheese.’ So, I'm at a level where it's like, I can't even have some Parmesan on a kale salad publicly without feeling like people are going to lose their minds at me.

Karon: It's a balance, because I think living in a city like Toronto that is so multicultural, there are cuisines where beef is so integral to so much of the history and the cuisines of it. And for me to be like, ‘No, that's wrong.’ That’s such a douchebag move, right? And who am I to say like, ‘No,’ all across the board?

Alicia: And there are places where beef is sustainable. I know that in Ethiopia, they traditionally eat a lot more beef than chicken. But it's beef that has been reared in a fashion that is actually good for the soil and good for the environment. And it doesn't have that impact the way we rear meat in the United States.

I did want to ask you, you're always eating such good food out and posting about it. And I'm always so jealous. But do you have a methodology for eating out?

Karon: So a lot of it is just Suresh and I, my co-collaborator, I guess, on our food section at the Star, we just text each other. ‘Hey, have you tried this?’ Or like, ‘Oh, I passed by this. Have you tried it before?’ 

And on weekends, it's—when I go on my exploring trips, and I'll just randomly pick a place, somewhere. And I'll just head there. And I'll do some preliminary research. Very scientific, I just go on Google Maps and type in restaurants. And I just see what's there. 

The thing is, a lot of these places that I'm interested in don't have websites or social media presence, so I just have to go there and see. There is some use in Yelp reviews, because it does—I don't treat it as the Bible. But it kind of gives you an idea of what the selection is, what kind of cuisines that they serve and stuff like that. 

So I just go there. And I get asked this question a lot, like, ‘How do you find these places? Or how do you determine where to go?’ And I just say. ‘You just go.’ It doesn't mean that it's always good. I don't post everything that I eat. I'm not wasting time posting something that I don't like, right? It messes up the vibe of my grid. 

So, you just have to go out and eat. If you see a place that piques your interest, if it's this little storefront, if you see some activity going on or you see a really interesting bakery shelf, or you're seeing people come out with a bunch of takeout boxes, go in and just just ask. Because you never know. Just go in and be like, ‘Hey, this is my first time here. Is there anything you would recommend?’ And I've done that so many times before. And I'm always pleasantly surprised, because a lot of places don't have menus, because they don't need to, because they just spread by word of mouth. People already know what they need. 

So you just have to almost kind of think like a reporter and just be very curious about your city, and just go anywhere and everywhere. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Karon: Oh, yeah. For sure. 

I mean, I think we've talked about considering the environmental and labor consequences of the ingredients that we work with, and sometimes how it sends us into a spiral of sorts. Whenever I talk to people who want to get into food writing, I always say, ‘Food, it's never just a recipe. It's never just 800 words about whether or not this restaurant is good.’ Food is just tied to everything. It can be a labor story. It can be an environmental story. It can be about culture and history, because so many cuisines are formed as a result of colonialism and people making these cuisines out of desperation because they couldn't find jobs elsewhere. 

That's kind of how Chinese American cuisine turned out. It was out of desperation, because they needed jobs, or ingredients were sourced because they couldn't find it anywhere else, whether some ingredient was very scarce due to global warming so they had to find something else. 

It’s also issues of power, of being, having—being able to have food, unfortunately, is a luxury for a lot of people around the world. And so, you're talking about issues of inequality. I'm going down another spiral right now. This is my writing process. You have to go down this giant path about—it's never just a recipe. It's never just about the food. There's so many different things, issues that overlap each other when it comes to food. 

You look at a tomato. It's like, ‘Well, how has it grown? How are the people growing it and harvesting it being treated?’ Here in Canada, we have a lot of migrant workers who have been here for decades. It's very hard for them to get Canadian citizenship or to make enough money or to have worker rights, especially during a pandemic. Oh my god, the pandemic just added a whole other layer of mess to everything in our food system in issues of equality and its supply chains and how the global economy works. Oh, my goodness. It’s a lot. 

But yes, to answer your question. It is political.

Alicia: Well, I want to always end on a more positive note. So now I'm asking: how do you define abundance?

Karon: Oh, I'm gonna bum you out again. Sorry. 

My definition of abundance has really changed in the last two years because of the pandemic. And by that, I mean, whenever I go to the supermarket, it's always so nice to see endless aisles. And in the produce section, just oranges stacked into like a beautiful pyramid, even though—even if I'm not buying it. I'm just like, ‘Oh, it's so nice to see.’ Or if I go to a farmers’ market, and you see a stall that has maybe four or five cabbages as opposed to this big mountain. I'm like, ‘Oh, that's a little sad looking.’

But because of the pandemic, and the shortages that we had in March 2020. I think it really made me redefine what abundance is and that it's nice to have. I think that you have to walk that fine line between abundance—and that means being able to have options and not have to make concessions—and walking that fine line between that and excess. 

I don't know when this is coming out, but it's Cyber Monday today. I’m getting bombarded with all these deals, and it's like, ‘Yeah, it's abundance. I get free shipping, and I have all these options. But do I really need it?’

And during the pandemic, I've—I went to a lot more smaller stores, because the supermarket is a nightmare sometimes. And the selection is smaller, but it's also making me appreciate the different items that I'm getting, because I'm not lost in this endless aisle in this endless sea of options. I'm more mindful of what I'm buying, ’cause I'm also buying less. 

And a lot of these stores, they have a lot of products by local Torontonians that would never be able to scale up to sell at a big department store or a big supermarket. So it really makes me pause and look at these products more. And of course, they cost more. It's a treat, I don't consider it as a grocery item. But it really makes me rethink my shopping habits and my relationship around the word abundance. And now I'm kind of like, ‘Ok, maybe I don't need abundance. Maybe enough is a good enough baseline for me to be at.’

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. 

Karon: Does that bum you out? I’m sorry.

Alicia: No, it doesn't bum me out. I think that that's perfect. I think that we have to reframe abundance to mean enough, and to mean sharing and to mean—not just abundance for ourselves personally, but thinking of abundance as everyone has enough. 

[Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.]

Karon: Thank you. Just summed it all up in one sentence.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. This has been super fun.

Karon: All right. Thank you, Alicia.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Frances Moore Lappé, with the 1971 publication of the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet, eventually changed mainstream conversation on food by popularizing the reality that hunger was a human-created problem—not an issue of food scarcity, but of distribution. Now, in the new edition for its 50th anniversary, there is updated information on hunger as well as urgent writing on the climate crisis. (I have a recipe in it, and we partnered to make this conversation public.)Here, we discuss what has influenced Lappé’s work over the last 50 years, how her thinking has shifted, and how we still need to reframe the significance of protein if we’re going to save the planet. Listen above, or read below.

Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé was released in 1971, making the statistic that 80 percent of farmland provides only 18 percent of calories through livestock a rallying cry for better, more equitable agriculture systems. This book gradually grew to sell over 3 million copies and irrevocably changed the way we talk about food, hunger, and culture. Fifty years later, there is a brand-new updated edition, out now, to meet the urgency of our current environmental moment. Visit dietforasmallplanet.org to learn more and get your copy.

Alicia: Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for being here today.

Frances: Thank you so much. I love it.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How are you? Where are you? You're in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

Frances: I'm in Belmont, which is just very close to Cambridge, where our office is. But I'm working at a cottage in my home now because of the COVID isolation.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Frances: [Laughs.] I grew up in Cowtown, literally called Cowtown as a nickname, Fort Worth, Texas. And the stockyards were never far from my smell distance. 

That was the ’40s and ’50s. And we ate meat at the center of every meal. ‘What's for dinner, Mom.’ ‘Oh, pork chops, or meatloaf,’ it was, that was the center of the meal. And, I mean, we ate healthfully in the sense that my mom never got on to the processed foods. White bread was a really big deal when I was growing up. We had a big, white bread factory on the way to town. You could smell the smell. But my mom always served us whole wheat bread. When she made after school cookies, she always put in a lot of nuts and things that were good for us. 

But generally, we ate the typical diet, but we—without the soda pop in the fridge, we never had that. But it was pretty standard.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, as the author of such a historically significant book on diet and the environment, I would think people are curious about how you eat and shop for food on a regular basis. So I wanted to ask what your weekly kind of eating and food shopping and acquiring look like.

Frances: Well, for years now during the summer—and we still are getting them—we are part of a community-supported agriculture. So we get this huge bag of veggies every week, too much for me and my partner to eat, so we share them with a neighbor. So that's a lot of our veggie, fresh veggie intake. We're very big on eating organic, and the only access is primarily Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as we're trying to get Trader Joe's to carry more organic. But when we don't have our community-supported agriculture, we rely on those sources for fresh veggies. 

My kitchen—if you could see it, it has this huge shelf of jars with all the various, the quinoa, the brown rice, the black beans, the chickpeas, all dried. And so, I have a lot of stuff. We could probably live for a few months on what we have on those shelves. 

I'm a cook, but I kind of wing it. I really encourage people not to be intimidated by recipes, but just to be inspired and motivated by recipes and think of recipes as just a source of ideas. But not, you don't have to be a slave to them and to feel free to add more or less of your family's favorite herbs and substitute veggies. 

It's funny that somebody with so many recipes in her book [Laughter] is not—I’m advocating, ‘Don't be a slave to them.’ I guess I've always hoped that our recipes would be inspiration and motivations, that ‘Oh, I didn't know you could do that with that.’

And I was just talking to somebody yesterday about one of our recipes from the very, very first edition called Roman Rice and Beans. And the concept was to take the basic Latin combo, but just try throwing Italian herbs in there instead of the more traditional cumin and that sort of thing that you associate with a beans and a rice.

So yeah, and just try new stuff. This is not the best thing I've ever made, but just instant—dinner the other night, I had a frozen roasted corn so it's corn, shelled corn but roasted so it has that smoky flavor. And I threw that in the blender with corn—I mean, excuse me—with carrots that we'd gotten from the CSA. And I didn't prepare either. I just washed them, washed the carrots and threw them in the blender with a—and then I added some veggie, veggie, what’s the word? 

Person 3: Bouillon. 

Frances: Bouillon. Thank you.

I added some veggie bouillon and some liquid, and it made it into delicious soup. I was really pleased ’cause it was—I was using what I had on hand, and it was so fast and it was so healthy.

So that's the spirit of Diet for a Small Planet, really, to free us and to—because when I first moved into the plant-centered eating world, people thought, ‘Oh, you're sacrificing? Oh, how do you make that big sacrifice?’ And I said, ‘Oh, no.’ It was discovery. 

Because I was the classic female—maybe it's not true anymore. But in the ’50s, there was just this weight fixation. And I was always counting calories, even though I was never overweight statistically, but I felt I needed to always lose ten pounds. And I think a lot of women feel that way. And so, I was always counting calories in my head. I was a slave to obsession about counting calories. And I'd finish one meal, and ‘Oh, how many do I have left for the next meal?’ It was terrible. 

But I just thought that's the way one lives until I started eating in the plant world more. And all of that just evaporated. And my body just wanted what was healthy for me. And I did lose those ten pounds over time, but I never counted calories from that time on. And I've never changed my weight in 50 years, pretty much. 

I felt my body was just so much more in tune. And I didn't have any more cravings. I’d look forward to eating but it wasn't that, ‘Oh, I've got to have that’ kind of feeling. And so, it was freedom. It was just freedom for me. Maybe my metabolism is different from others. But all I can really share is my own experience, of course. And that was my experience, that it was a win, win, win, win, win. I felt so empowered, that I was aligning with the Earth, best for my body, best for the world in terms of abundance for everyone. And so, it never felt like a sacrifice.

Alicia: And do you use that phrase to describe your diet, ‘plant-centered’?

Frances: I do now. Because I think that's the most all-inclusive. 

Well, I use that. And I use plant- and planet-centered. Because now, we know so much more about the implications of our very, very wasteful use of the land and destruction of rainforest to support the grain-fed, meat-centered diet. So, I wanted to emphasize plant-centered but planet. We're taking the whole planet into our consciousness. And I like that better than vegetarian, because it doesn't send a message. 

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

Well, there have been regularly released editions of Diet for a Small Planet in the last 50 years. So readers have been able to understand the changes in your perspective, changes in information that you've been sharing. But what are the most significant ways you, do you think that your thinking has changed from 1971 to 2021?

Frances: I mean, I think all of us have learned, or all of us who are attending to this piece of the puzzle, we have learned that how we use our land so greatly affects climate. 

And we think about smokestacks, when we—typically, we have thought about smokestacks, about car emissions, when we think about the human creation of this climate catastrophe. But very, very important, very central is the role of food and farming. And it's estimated that our food system could contribute as much as 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock alone 14.5. And some say even higher. And they point out that if cows were a cow country, it would be contributing about a six, six greatest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. So it's right up there with the problem. 

And therefore, the more we align with our bodies, which thrive so much better with a plant-centered diet, we then align with our goal of stopping this climate catastrophe. And we also prevent all sorts of harm to other species. 

And I think the two things that I emphasize in the new edition, so much that I've learned is that one, is the climate factor. And the other is that natural historians tell us that we are at the brink of the sixth great extinction. Something like a million species now are threatened with extinction. And that we've lost something like 40% of insect species. So that's huge. 

And it's something that I didn't appreciate, when I've—in earlier editions. And so, that's why I call it now this broader—it's not just a climate crisis. It’s an assault on nature that our food is implicated in. And is the real crisis. Because, of course, biodiversity, as I'm sure, is the basis of all life. 

In the new edition of Diet for Small Planet, I use the phrase of my hero, Jane Goodall. And she talks about the tapestry of life, and how we have to both stop tearing it and mend it. And so, I use that metaphor and talk about the tears and the tapestry of life. And one of them certainly is this species decimation. And that is through so much of the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture.

Alicia: And also in the last 50 years, what are the books that have come out that have influenced your thinking more than anything? Or what are the most significant texts on environmentalism and the global food system? I seehttps://thenewpress.com/books/eating-tomorrowEating Tomorrow on your shelf.

Frances: Ok, I had jotted down some titles, but maybe I can remember them. 

Yeah, Eating Tomorrow by my ally and colleague, Tim Wise. And of course, my daughter's book. Diet for a Hot Planet; I think she was one of the early people to focus on the contribution of our food system to climate change. And Raj Patel's books,https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/127985/stuffed-and-starved-by-raj-patel/Stuffed and Starved. And course, Bill McKibben’s book back in the ’80s, The End of Nature. I can still remember where I was, the time when I first read that book. 

So, those are some of the books that have really made a huge impact. I've been influenced also by the work of David Korten. Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning. He's also a very integrated thinker. So those are some of the people who have been in, close to me a great deal. 

Alicia: And one of the things, the common refrains that people say about changing personal—they don't want to change their personal behavior because they're, that's not as meaningful as regulating emissions by corporations and that sort of thing. And I have the 10th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet. And I was on a podcast about cars, the War on Cars, talking about food stuff. But I quoted from your book about how—I should have written down exactly [Laughs]. But you wrote, oh, a change in diet is a way of saying simply, ‘I have a choice.’

And so, I always think of that. And that's what I talked about on the podcast, too, is that I like to get up every day and do and feel I have agency in the world. And that the foundation of my work in the world is my own personal actions. But it's becoming more and more of a common refrain to say that your personal choices don't mean anything, even as the climate crisis worsens. And so, I wanted to ask what your response is to that, to people who say that their personal changes and consumption changes are too small?

Frances: Well, it's just the false frame for me in a way, and I think for so many human beings, that the more that we don't feel like a victim. You said agency. That's it. The more that we feel that we do have power, the more likely it is that we're going to take the next step and the next step. And we'll be attuned, and we'll read what we need to know. And we'll talk to people about it and get people awake. 

To me, it's an absolutely false, a false dichotomy. It's ‘Oh, yeah. I'm not a victim. I can make a difference. And every time that I align my life with the world I want, I am stronger. I'm more convincing to myself.’ And I think that makes us automatically more convincing to other people. 

I mean, if we preach about climate change, and then they said, ‘Wait a minute, you're running your—’ Oh, you know what? I just heard about leaf blowers. They’re the worst thing ever. They almost were too noisy for this interview, but they turned them off across the street. 

But the more that we can align with the world we want, absolutely, the more credible we become. And I think people sense that and they say, ‘Yeah, it's possible.’ I guess that's the thing. If we don't think that change is possible for ourselves and demonstrate that by changing our behavior, then how can we think the world can change? 

Yeah, I just really hate that. So I'm all for all of the above. Our institute is very much a player in the democracy movement. And I encourage people that wish to say about President Gerald Ford, ‘You can chew gum and walk at the same time.’ You can be part of the food movement, and you can't be part of the democracy movement. It's not a trade-off, one can alert you to the other.

And ’cause I do believe that, yes, we have to change the laws and the—I like to call them enforceable standards rather than regulations. But regulation will do too. But we have to, as a society, set the rules so that we're encouraging more plant-based eating and we're getting rid of this very, very harmful diet. 

Because I'm sure you know, it's not just for the sake of some distant children who have to grow up in a climate chaotic world. But I think everyone should know that processed meat, that is a fifth of all of our meat consumption, is a carcinogen as defined by the World Health Organization. And red meat in general is a probable carcinogen. So it's on every level of responsibility and health and alignment that I think our diet choices are so important.

Alicia: And in the popular imagination—I'm a little bit obsessed with this right now, because I just did a lot of research into lab meat and other types of meat, which—anyway. So ‘the future of food,’ this phrase, people only use it to refer really to technology-based kind of solutions to climate change. And so I wanted to ask, if you were to define or to reframe how people think of the future of food, how would you want people to think of it instead of being something about technology? What is your future of food?

Frances: My future of food is that we are much more integrated. I think of this curious foray into agriculture as a symbol of that or an example of it, that where our food comes from is much more local and personal in that way. And farmers’ markets are everywhere. We have one in our town. And in our office, we have one across the street on Fridays that I love. So one, that we're closer to it. And we're closer to our farmers, and they are honored in a way that they are not today. 

And that we have the rules that insist that we're not using chemicals that can make farmworkers sick. I think the statistic is that half the world's farmers and farm workers are poisoned each year. I mean, no. That means that we're poisoned, too, as consumers. We do not need that. And that we are using our resources very efficiently so that we are—I'm not saying that no one should ever eat meat, of course. I mean, that's not the point. I honor vegans and others who take that stand. 

But my vision is that, yes, that growing is much more integrated into our lives. Every school has a school garden, so little kids can actually grow food and then eat the food they've grown. So that, and then that we just obviously set the rules to protect our health because we have democracy that's really answering to us and not to the Monsantos of the world, not to the large corporation. 

So I just see us much healthier than we are today, and much more just feeling good about ourselves because we—our bodies are more aligned. I mean, just on that point. 60 percent of the calories we now eat have no nutritional value. I mean, and just tragic, if you add all of those who are pre-diabetic to the actual diabetes, it comes to about 45 percent. Almost half of us are either pre-diabetic or diabetic. And that's so debilitating and so life threatening. 

So I just see us much healthier, more integrated into our environments of food and food production, and much less obsessed about our bodies because they're working for us. And we become the shape, sort of, that our metabolism and our genes meant us to be. And there are a variety of shapes that are fine. There's no body shaming anymore. 

So all of that is what I hope, which is reduced so much depression and ill health. And our medical bill would go way down because something enormous—I don't have an exact number, but billions and billions of dollars of our health expenditures are related to our diet. 

Alicia: I wanted to ask also about the idea of lab meat as a solution to meat consumption issues and livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions. I wanted to ask what your perspective is on lab-grown meat, which has a ton of money behind it right now, both private venture capital and also now from the USDA.

Frances: It's such a diversion. Well, I don’t know what I can say about it. It’s such a diversion, because we're still—it's still highly processed, so we're not getting the kind of fiber we need. It's still filled with additives, all of which—we don't understand all of the implications of those. 

And it keeps us fixated on one piece of the meal, when it keeps us from this attitude of, ‘I can be a creator in the kitchen, and I—it can be fun. And I can be experimental.’ It keeps us locked into a certain definition of what a meal is, still has to have meat at the center. 

And it keeps us obsessed about protein, which we now know that Americans eat about twice the protein their bodies can even use. And I just want to underscore here that, I'm sure you know, we don't store protein, so that if we eat more than we need, it just becomes more calories that we use as if it were carbs or a fat. 

So it doesn't really help. And it leaves power in the hands of the corporate sector, so it helps to concentrate control in our food system. Yeah, I guess, fiber additives. All of these questions come into play, and—but most importantly, it kind of keeps us obsessed with meat and protein.

Alicia: No, I agree. That is the—a huge aspect. And I think that's why people, the media has been latching on to it is because people are obsessed with protein. It is still people's first comment when they talk about, ‘Oh, maybe I'll stop eating meat. But I just worry so much about protein.’ And I personally never worried about having—I haven't eaten meat in ten years. There was a point where I was exercising a lot, and I did have to think about it. But for the most part, it's really not that, it's not that difficult.Your body tells you what you need when you're eating what you should be eating. 

Yeah, it's such an obsession.

Frances: I hope we make clear in Diet for Small Planet, is virtually every food has some protein in it. Some has more than others. And we know in the plant world, where we really get the protein hit is in the legume world of peas, beans, lentils, and nuts. By the way, peanuts are a legume, I learned years ago. And they're packed with protein, but all nuts and seeds. I love seeds. So they have a lot of protein.

But yeah, those are the main sort of protein, high-powered protein in the plant world. But all veggies have some protein. You don't have to sweat it. And that's what the scientists are telling us: if we eat a healthy diet with a variety of foods, we're covered.

Alicia: And so, even though plant-based eating has kind of gotten more traction lately, it's still considered niche. And I wanted to ask what you think food media's role is in educating the public on issues around food and sustainability and basically all the things you've written about in Diet for a Small Planet, which remain kind of under covered, I would say, in food media, where you're giving res—you're talking to the people who are cooking and shopping for food, but you're not really giving them the tools to understand the implications of what they're eating and what they're cooking. 

And so, I wanted to ask, do you think food media has done any sort of job, good or bad, on communicating about climate change and sustainability?

Frances: I don't think I’m an expert on it. Just so much of my focus of my life has been, is certainly in recent years, on the democracy movement. 

But I think, certainly, food media can—with every recipe we put out, I think about the New York Times that I read, whenever it's putting forward anything about food to remind people, if that would be easy to do, remind people that getting enough protein is not a problem in the plant world. And this dish that, this recipe, ‘by the way, without any major protein-focused addition to it, it's offering plenty of protein.’

So I think there could be more awareness for sure in debunking the myths that do make people hesitant and just underscoring always the benefits to our health. I mean, I think that's so important, the evidence that plant-based eating actually contributes to longevity. When I started out 50 years ago, the only control group we had, so to speak, was Seventh Day Adventists who were vegetarians. And they had longer lives typically. But now, we have much more evidence of how plant-based diets can contribute both to disease reduction and to longer lives. 

Alicia: You said before that whereas earlier editions of Diet for a Small Planet were focused on hunger, now, it's—you're focused on climate change more. What do you think is the next pressing issue that we can talk about in the food system?

Frances: I would say it's not a shift, it's a both. It’s adding the climate focus, the climate, to all of our thinking about food. Tragically, hunger is still very, very much with us. One in three people in the world still does not have access to an adequate diet. The most heartbreaking statistic on hunger is that one out of every four young children suffer stunting, which is a devastating condition that has—it's not just being short. It has lifelong impact on functioning. 

But then, making clear that has nothing to do with the actual food supply, because we have about a quarter more food per capita than we did back when I wrote Diet for Small Planet. So, hunger is still very much a human-made tragedy. And in addition to that, the climate crisis is very much worsened by this grain-fed, meat-centered diet, which is a product of economic and political systems that don't reflect the majority view. So, it's all connected. 

And that's what's so beautiful about an ecological worldview, is that we can see those connections. In the new book, I quote my dear friend, now deceased, but German physicist Hans—Peter Dürr said to me, ‘Frankie, in biological systems, there are no parts. Only participants.’ And that's throughout all of our social and biological. We're all participants, and everything we do and don't do is shaping the larger tapestry of life. 

Alicia: Absolutely.

Well, I wanted to ask to finish, how do you define abundance for yourself, for the world? [Laughs.]

Frances: Well, I think—I never have been asked that question. I can feel my body, and by my body, it's just my shoulders, relax. 

Abundance just means that I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about feeding myself, my partner. If I had kids, I’d just not have to worry that I will have what I need to live a fulfilling life and to be a good parent. I mean, that to me is abundant. It's not about having two or three homes, or a million dollars in savings. It is about knowing that I'm okay. I can really get up in the morning and do something purposeful and be responsible and know that there's, there is enough for me to live healthy and take care of my loved ones. That is abundance. 

And there's more than enough in this beautiful, beautiful earth of ours to allow everyone of us to live that way. More than. And that is so tragic, that anxiety and fear is so ingrained. And I think very much that it's that anxiety and fear produced by this concentrated wealth that infects the political system. That's what leads to the finger pointing and the blaming, because we're told to blame ourselves for our struggle, rather than the rules that are created by our broken and corrupted democracy. 

It's a spiral, then. If we blame ourselves and feel shame, then we want to find somebody else to blame, and—rather than looking at the underlying rules and norms that have been created that so limit us. So I think the shift of understanding to an ecological worldview is totally key, and letting go of the finger pointing. 

Alicia: Absolutely. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Frances: Oh, my great pleasure. What fun. Thank you.

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I met Rachel Signer years ago while we were both freelancers living in Brooklyn. We were at a press dinner for a restaurant called Gristmill, which I just checked on: It’s now sadly closed. We’ve kept up with each other’s careers ever since on social media, and I’m so thrilled to see her memoir—ˆYou Had Me at Pét-Nat, a beautiful and enthralling work that enacts Signer’s restlessness and eventual homecoming—in the world and discuss her life in Australia, where she’s making wine, raising her daughter on a farm, and continuing to show the world the significance of natural wine.

We discuss how she defines natural wine, leaving New York City, how she maintains such vivid memories to write from, and more. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Rachel. Thank you so much for being here.

Rachel: Hey, Alicia. Yeah, thanks. Happy to be here. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Rachel: Yeah, I love this question. 

I grew up in Arlington, Virginia. And a typical weekday dinner was a dish called salmon patties. And the salmon came in a can. And I think it was probably lightly floured and seasoned, and shaped and then kind of fried in a pan and served alongside peas or broccoli. And I loved it. I definitely really liked that dinner. And I imagine for my parents it was good, because it probably took like 12 minutes to make. And my mother grew vegetables. And I remember in the summer there being a lot of corn, corn on the cob. I remember there being tomatoes, and all of those summer veggies. 

And also very important—sorry, I have a cold. Very important meals were around Jewish holidays. So we would have a beef brisket, which I'm pretty sure would have been a Passover dish. Because you don't eat flour around that week, so you tend to have a roast meat. My mom would braise it with Heineken. It had to be Heineken. And she would sip half a can as she cooked. And then kugel, which is an egg noodle pudding. That happens around the New Year.  

I also was a vegetarian from ages 12 to 20, which was, honestly, sort of a random decision. I only started reading all of the kind of literature, like Diet for a [Small] Planet, after I'd made the decision. So I don't quite know where it came from. I was not a very model vegetarian. I subsisted on granola bars, bagels with cream, and quesadillas for a long time. That’s what I ate.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah. I love that. 

And then you came to natural wine eventually. And I'm going to jump a lot. And I'm sure we'll work our way backwards. But I wanted to ask, how do you define natural wine? Because I think it's important to have how you think of it first before we talk about your life, your book, because it is such a huge part of everything, and—including the memoir. 

Rachel: Yeah, I'd love to get into it.

There's never enough that can be said about what it is because it’s still not a legally defined term. However, that is slowly changing. France has introduced a category called vin méthode nature, in which they—I think they visit the winery, and they analyze the wines to make sure they meet the definition. And we might see more of that in the future. 

But yeah, it needs to be from an organically farmed vineyard. And I'll put that first and foremost, ’cause nothing else matters if the grapes are coming from poisoned farming. So no, herbicides, fungicides. And those are really the main things. Pesticides as well. So organic farmers will use copper and sulfur and lots of plant-based treatments to manage grape vines. And grape vines do need a lot of spraying and a lot of management.

Then we're talking about wine made with very minimal intervention. And a lot of wine drinkers will be surprised to know that stuff is added to wine, because since it's not considered a food, it's not required to list any of those additives on the label. So if you walk into a winemaking store, there's a whole section of stuff that makes your wine taste a certain way. 

Before that, there's packaged yeast. And there's nothing evil about adding packaged yeast. It's an altered way to make a wine. And once you start with an altered way, you've interrupted the natural process, and you're going to need to keep adding stuff. So no yeast, no flavorints, no added wood chips, no mega purple. No fining and filtration. So, you're just getting the grapes. 

Quite a lot of people we consider natural winemakers do add small amounts of CO2, sulfur dioxide, commonly known as sulfites, or sulfur, a very hotly debated word and topic. And personally I would say when you're getting past 30 parts per million sulfites added, we're not really—I'm not sure it's a winemaker who really cares about being natural. However, I still celebrate biodynamic farming, so if they're adding 60 parts per million sulfites, I'm not so mad.

I'll just add, Alicia, that, especially in the past couple of years, I've really come to think about the idea of being anti-capitalistic as something part of making natural wine, to an extent.

Alicia: Well, can you talk more about that?

Rachel: Yeah. And I think it's definitely in theory, because I don't know when there will ever be something that measures if you're anti-capitalistic. But natural wine is definitely a culture based around personalities and relationships, and kind of passing on what it was like when you visited this winemaker. 

Yeah, I mean, if a wine is made as part of a big corporate thing and LVMH is the owner of that winery, I'm not interested. Even if they farmed organically, I'm just not because where's the spirit? I want something where the winemaker touched the bottles and touched the wine. 

And even very small, natural winemakers do have someone full-time helping in the cellar. So I'm not under the illusion that there's one person doing everything-everything. That's not the case for us, either, where we make wine. But yeah, I want it to be a small operation because that is more caring for individuals. 

And there was a case last year, a winemaker in Puglia that was in the news a lot really showed us what can happen. I mean, that's a massive operation. From the beginning, everyone—a lot of people suspected something was not right, which turned out to be true. 

And I think all of that is very tricky. You really have to ask someone selling you the wine for as much information as possible. How are you going to know all that stuff? It’s hard.

Alicia: Yeah. 

No. And I love that because I think that we have to talk about, in food and beverage, when someone is scaling up and is readily available, it's always a red flag. It's always a red flag for something to be always abundant, always available in every store. We know that the alcohol we see in every single bodega is not going to be necessarily the best made, the most caring for the environment, the most caring for the labor that went into it. 

And that's what I love—I love that about natural wine is that it's so specific, and it's so maker-driven, and it's so place-driven. I got that too from your memoir, which is called You Had Me at Pet-Nat, which follows you from being a waitress and journalist in Brooklyn to a writer and now a winemaker in South Australia. How has delving into this world affected you as a writer and how has being a winemaker affected you as a writer? How has this influenced you and your work?

Rachel: It has helped me so much in understanding the year-long cycle of winemaking. I mean, as a journalist living in a city, you're—generally, you're invited by some kind of regional association. They buy your flight. And you have the privilege of spending seven days in a region seeing a very selected group of winemakers, and you just don't get the full story. 

And I've really benefited from doing it myself and seeing other people throughout the year and what they struggle with and the challenges that they face and the choices they make and their attitudes and what—you see it as this delicious wine and this blend, whatever. And from their point of view, that wine started out as a disaster because kangaroos attacked that patch. The grapes were so hard to pick. And then they decided this. They decided that, and then finally got blended with this because they didn't know what to do. And then suddenly, it was good. 

And that backstory is really important in terms of what questions I ask people and how I choose to write about them. I think I write about winemaking less and less, and I write more and more about lifestyle and the choices people make, which influence, ultimately, their wines. So it's helped me immensely. It's a really good thing to be, to have your—even if you just had one hand involved in a project, I think it would really help writers definitely.

Alicia: Right, for sure.

The memoir is—in its detail about the wines you've drank over the years—is just stunning that there's so much detail. I was like, ‘Have you kept tasting notes and diaries over this time?’ And how did you re-create those memories in such a specific and vivid way?

Rachel: Yeah, I'm looking at this spot on my desk right now. Because when I moved to Australia, that spot was stacked high with notebooks going back to 2014, when I first went to Burgundy. So almost seven years of journals. And I refused to throw them out, because I was—even then I was like, ‘Maybe I'll use this for something.’ And eventually, I was like, ‘I'm gonna write a book.’

Yeah, I've kept pretty intense notes about all the wines and all the winemakers, and to some extent, personal notes as well in a separate journal. I really recommend that. Have one journal for your personal stuff, and then one for your professional. And I filled in some things with emails, going back to emails with friends and family, like, ‘When did we go here? And when did we go there?’ Photos on my iPhone to re-create things. Yeah, ’cause that's really important. 

And in terms of the chapter at Domaine Mosse, where I worked hardest, I basically just spent every night writing in my journal there for like 45 minutes. And I think because it was such a vivid experience also, scenes from that—I mean, I remember those two weeks more vividly than I remember half of my childhood. It's just so vital to me right now. 

Alicia: I've lost a lot of journals. I have all of my teenage and childhood journals in the garage at my—the house where I grew up. But I lost a journal from a very important time. And I am still really upset about it. I'm so concerned. It was very thorough notes that I'm like, ‘How am I going to ever re-create this?’ I guess I just won’t. The writing of things does make it more concrete in your mind, anyway. You really do inscribe it on your mind, which is something.

But I was so impressed and actually inspired by those tasting notes. Because I always have this idea that I'm going to be that person who takes extensive notes on things, and then I'm like, ‘I am just not.’ I have pictures of everything I've eaten and drank for the last six years, though, on my phone. So, that's useful. I pay Apple a lot of money for the storage. 

But another thing I loved about your memoir is that you don't shy away from describing hangovers, but they're very neutral. You don't talk about being hungover in, like, a self-loathing or self-critical way. It's kind of just like, ‘This is an effect of living this life, doing this job, drinking these wines.’ And I've read, I'm sure you've read people talk about how you don't get hangovers from natural wine, which is funny. 

And so, why was it important to you to just to document those effects and not shy away from those side effects of being in this world?

Rachel: Yeah, I think it was important for the personal aspect of my memoir. I mean, as you know, I'm kind of using natural wine in a way to document a personal transformation. I changed a lot in the past few years, and I went to some pretty dark places. And I think when you're in that place, alcohol, no matter what kind, can be a form of self-harm. 

And to say that that doesn't exist in the natural wine world is just ridiculous. There's lots of overconsumption and partying. And I've had some amazing times drinking Magnums until 3 a.m. 

But yeah, I think it can be a form of a lack of self-care and self-harm. And so, I think I documented that because that's where I was. And yeah, I thought that I was going to be living the dream. And I wanted it to look on social media like I was living the dream. But I was not. 

And yeah, I guess a bit more broadly speaking, the idea that natural wine doesn't give you a hangover can have some relevance because I think if you drink a few glasses of natural wine compared to a few glasses of wine from a supermarket, you will probably notice that you feel better. And I've heard that from so, so, so, so, so many people. But when we're talking about someone that drinks natural wine on a regular basis, yeah, they're gonna go out on a Friday and drink a whole bunch of wine. And they're gonna have a hangover the next day. It’s the alcohol that does that. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, it's funny because we've only really—natural wine has only just arrived in Puerto Rico. And so, we've been going a little overboard for sure. So it was funny to read. It's not funny—yeah, as you say, it is a dark description of the time. But at the same time, it's like, ‘Oh.’ It was actually, for me, reassuring in that I was like, ‘Oh, right. Even though I've been told in this wellness way that natural wine isn't supposed to have the same effects, it's like, ‘No, actually, overindulgence of all kinds has the same effect.’’

And you have a real love for Paris that's so well-documented in the book. You're now in Australia. I also left New York in the last couple of years. How has being outside of the U.S. and specifically New York City affected your work, do you think? Not just as being a winemaker, but just that perspective of being outside of a place that—I think once you get out of New York, you realize that it's very parochial and a bit shut off from reality in the world. I don't know if you feel that way. How have things changed for you since you left New York?

Rachel: Yeah, I just think broadening your perspective and living abroad is so important. I don't know if all Americans realize how myopic the viewpoint from within the States can be. I am sure that quite a lot of people do realize that. 

But it's been really good to actually just be able to see the world from a broader standpoint. I mean, Australia is such a bizarre kind of place in the world. For us, Japan is more of a neighbor. We have different benchmarks and different relationships with the world here. Southeast Asia is very close. So, it's been really interesting. 

I think I just needed to leave New York. And I mean, I've seen a lot of people move upstate as well. New York is so hard if you're not from money. How long can you go on accumulating credit card debt and living in sub-optimal situations and not being able to fully—and I did offer myself some things. I went to the bath houses in the East Village once a month during winter. I used to go to a Chinese body worker on the Lower East Side. I tried, I tried. But it's really hard when you're not making the big bucks. 

But I gained so much. Being there and taking fiction writing workshops and journalism workshops and meeting people going to literary magazine events, I took that all with me. And it's just here. It's just with me. And now I get to enjoy other perspectives, people that have grown up in other places and learn about their lives. I feel pretty good about the decision. 

The pandemic has been incredibly hard. I haven't been to the States in 2018, haven't seen my family or my friends. I didn't mean to have such a clean break. I wasn’t trying to abandon ship. And we've been back to New York. It was like four days. Went to The Four Horsemen, went to Roberta's, saw a handful of people. And that was it. That's not how I imagined it. So it has been really hard in some ways, too.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, like we were saying before we started recording, that it's interesting that you have to leave New York especially when maybe your life up till moving there was—well, I grew up on Long Island, so it's a different—but is guided toward this, and you think that it's an achievement in and of itself to be there. And you have to make the most of it, and if you're not happy then that's a personal failing of some kind when it's really the city making it so unlivable for people who aren't doing six figures, and now probably honestly like more than that. [Laughs.] High six figures. 

And it is interesting to, for me personally, too, to have the success that I wanted. But I had to leave New York for that. But I didn't even know that I had to do that. It just was reality. The universe pushed me out, and then that was when anything good actually started to happen for me. 

But it's wild that that is the reality, because I do love New York. I wish it worked. [Laughs.] 

Rachel: Oh, I know. Exactly. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

But similarly, you write a lot in the book about the pains of being a freelancer, which I obviously know well, and that mainstream media wasn't interested in work about natural wines. I wanted to ask, how has that changed in recent years? Is self-publishing still the best route for good writing on natural wine?

Rachel: Hmm. Probably still.

I mean, there's, there's The Wine Zine based in New York, which is this really cool publication. To be honest, I've never gotten my hands on a copy. But I think it's widely available in the States. Punch Drink, Punch magazine has been doing a little bit of coverage on natural wine over the years. And that's a nice viewpoint. And I have seen some increased interest in mainstream and in smaller publications. It does seem to kind of reiterate some of the same topics. 

I mean, the thing that Pipette has always done is that—which no mainstream publication will ever do—is just profiles of natural winemakers. And these are people who are important if you definitely love and care about natural wine. And so a mainstream publication would not assume that about their audiences, whereas I can assume that about my readership. 

I don't know. I guess for me what's been more interesting is just seeing in the past year and a half the well and true diversification of voices and topics, finally. It’s great. It's really, really great. I'm like, ‘Wow, so many more interesting articles are coming out, interesting people kind of being elevated.’ And I'd love to just see more of that. 

And, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what will be filling kind of the space now that Pipette is going to stop publishing regularly. But I'd love to say something else come up.

Alicia: Yeah.

Why did you make that decision to stop publishing right now?

Rachel: The amount of admin and kind of computer work involved has just become hard with being a mother.

And I'm looking out the window at the farm. ’Cause we planted vineyards in the past two years. We have 6,000 baby vines, and we work them basically by hand. And I make wine. I would like to maybe slightly, possibly slightly increase. I mean, I make less than 3,000 bottles. It's all done by hand. 

And, yeah, I'd like for our daughter to be more a part of our lives on the farm. Yeah, I don't think I can justify the time spent in front of the computer, especially now that it's slightly less fun, ’cause I can't fly to Paris and go around Europe for two months visiting winemakers, which was kind of the original idea for the mag. 

It just feels right. I mean, 10 issues was great, that accomplishment. And I've loved working with all the people involved. Just because something seems like a success doesn't mean you have to keep going. I might do an encore edition one day. I'm very interested in doing a podcast. I love having conversations like this. It’s much more rewarding, actually. 

Alicia: Yeah, then doing admin work. [Laughs.]

I think that's why I decided to do—I needed to figure out something for paid subscribers. And I was like, ‘Well, I can just talk to people. That seems sweet.’ [Laughs.] And it's not as hard as you think it is to do a podcast at all. 

And I think that would actually be really great. I know there are wine podca—That's a niche that you still are one of the few people that could fill. But yeah, it's funny. Pipette was being sold here in San Juan. I don't know if you know that. There's a cafe that was selling the magazine. 

Rachel: Yeah, yeah. Café—Is it Cafe Regina?

Alicia: Café Regina. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I was like, ‘That's so funny.’ Just something that ended up in this tiny city, which is so cool. 

But I wanted to ask what are the biggest misconceptions you see about natural wine that are still talking points, because I—even as a casual reader of this kind of stuff, I'm like, I feel there's still like a lot of narratives that are wrong. [Laughs.] I don't know. 

Rachel: Ok.

I hear the idea that you can't find it anywhere, or it's too niche. And like, ‘Oh, but it's not in just regular restaurants, right?’ It's this niche thing. I think we can partly blame this mentality of if you know, you know. And we're all guilty of that to some extent in the natural wine world, because there are some bottles where it's if you know, you know. ‘A guy makes 300 bottles of this in a tiny shed in the mountains of the Rhone Valley. And it's amazing. And you wouldn't like it anyway.’ And the attitude just comes up a lot. 

But I have seen so many companies really just do the opposite in recent years, and really push to educate and share and actually distribute natural wine to places where it did not exist. So one example is a company called MYSA, M-Y-S-A. And they're in the U.S. just distributing amazing natural wine, and they do lots of education on their Instagram posts. 

And yeah, the proliferation of small businesses selling Pipette in small towns around the world has really shown me that it is everywhere. And it is a force. 

Yeah, I'm curious if you had any other misconceptions in mind.

Alicia: No, no, no. I'm probably thinking of maybe past thing. 

I think maybe that's actually exactly the misconception that has prevailed, which is that it's just people in Brooklyn guzzling orange wine. And it's not a thing anywhere else. It's not something that's interesting to the regular person. It's not something that's interesting to older people, that it is—just occupies a very niche space, that a lot of it is bad or flawed, and that sort of thing. 

I liked in your memoir, you talk about enjoying things that might seem off or wrong to other people, just finding the beauty in any piece of it. I think that if we change—it's the problem of the narratives of food and drink, generally, I think, is to think that there is a right—Something is correct, or there is one correct thing. And anything that deviates from that is incorrect or something.

Rachel: Well, it's a big problem with vegetables and produce. That's a really big problem. But with wine, yeah, you reminded me that there's the misconception that it will go bad and spoil and rot because it doesn't have preservatives. Sulfur dioxide is a preservative. 

And I'll just touch briefly upon that. It's not true. You do find volatile acidity, which is sort of a vinegar sort of flavor in some wines, but that happens from fermentation. That happens from day one. And it does not mean that the wine has gone bad. It's not spoile. And natural wine ages phenomenally. It just needs to be in a refrigerated condition, like 55 degrees Celsius. Sorry, we can work out later what that is in Fahrenheit. So, I've had natural wines that are like 10 years old. Basically, no sulfites added. Stunning, pristine. 

And so, yeah, I do talk a lot about flaws and where they come from in winemaking from my experience making wine in the book. I'm always happy to talk kind of more about that, because it's a very complicated topic. 

But my takeaway is if you want to support people that make wine organically in this very beautiful, artisanal way without chemicals, then you might occasionally get a wine that tastes a little wild, because it has a little bit of volatile acidity. But we don't want chemicals on our prop—chemicals on our farm. Our daughter can walk around the winery and play with stuff. And I don't have to worry she's gonna put her hand into some chemicals. We don't have them at all.

Alicia: [Laughs.] And for you, how do you define abundance?

Rachel: Ok, I love this question. 

Abundance is such an interesting word, and—because I think it hits upon a problem of being human, which is this persistent idea that we lack something. It's a very, very fundamental part of being human. 

We grow food. We make wine. If the climate crisis ended capitalism as we know it tomorrow, we'd probably be able to sort of be self-sufficient with all the things people around us that make other things. And at the same time, I would absolutely miss—I would miss so much. And I do right now.

A lot of the book is about a friendship with someone who is in Paris who I haven't seen in years. I feel abundance is having that person who can come over and just make ravioli with you on a Tuesday afternoon, and drink wine and go to the market and eat oysters on a Thursday morning. That is abundance, having that person in your life. So, I think it's always a bit, very human of us, that no matter how much we have, we can feel a lack. And I think accepting that is something important to work on for me.

Alicia: For sure. Yeah. 

The pandemic has been hard in Australia. How has it been for you?

Rachel: It's surreal, not being allowed to leave. I don't know if people outside Australia fully understand that we are not able to leave. You have to get permission to leave and they're denying it to most people. And then if you do leave, it's almost impossible to get back. Very, very, very hard to get back. Very expensive, two weeks of hotel quarantine. 

Australia provides Medicare. It provides a high minimum wage. Certain things are provided. And so like, there's this kind of relationship with the state where when they tell people what to do, it's kind of expect—it's a totally different concept of what the state is. And I guess the American in me just hates it. 

But at the same time, would we have gone abroad with a one year old baby who’s, that’s vulnerable? Or would we go abroad, now that she's not vaccinated but we are? Yeah, I mean, we probably would given data around kids, which I've listened to on every podcast available and read about in every scientific paper available.

The pandemic has been hard everywhere, but I've never felt so isolated. As a new mother in a country I've only lived in for a few years, which is literally an island at the end of the world. I've never felt so isolated. 

It's hard not to be able to go to the States for my book release. It sucks. I'm hoping that I'll get feedback from people that will be sort of, lift my mood a little bit, that people would be kind of sharing their experiences of reading the book and reaching out. I would love that. I read basically all messages in some form. So I'd be thrilled. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, what do you have planned for the launch, at least virtually? 

Rachel: At this point, I'm still researching that. Your podcast will be part of that. I'll probably do some kind of online tasting. So yeah, I will be sure to share any update on that on my Instagram, which is @rachsig. 

And I also have a newsletter. It's just like a monthly-ish thing. And you can sign up. There's a link in my Instagram profile. I recommend natural wine and books. I read a lot. I read literary fiction and non-fiction. So for people who care about things other than wine and food, I'm your person. I don't know. Yeah, I talk about what I'm reading or stuff that I'm listening to. Sometimes I talk about music. It's a bit of everything. Yeah, I talk about the magazine, obviously, of course, too.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Wonderful. 

Well, thank you so much for taking this time so early in the day. [Laughs.] 

Rachel: Yeah, it was great to talk with you. Yeah. Awesome to connect. Thanks so much.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

I burst into the Zoom with Andrew Janjigian—a writer and the baker behind the newsletter Wordloaf—as though he were an old friend, telling him about my drama with the dentist that was happening that day and explaining precisely how much I was already sweating despite the early hour of our interview. There are some people whose energy, even virtually, I just like and how I express this like is, frankly, by extravagantly complaining in the hopes of amusing the other person. This is all to say: Andrew is very smart and cool, and I was excited to talk to him.

He has done so many things in his life, and it is all wildly impressive. He’s worked as an organic chemist, got a master’s in biology with a focus on fungi, and then ended up at America’s Test Kitchen, where he was the resident bread expert. That led, eventually, to Wordloaf, where he makes sourdough approachable. We discussed it all. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Andrew, how are you?

Andrew: I am very well. How are you?

Alicia: I'm good. Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Sure. It's great to be here.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Andrew: Sure. Ok. 

So, I grew up in a Boston suburb. And I live in Cambridge now, so basically in Boston. And what I ate was—I come from a big Armenian family, and Armenians are pretty serious about their food and their cooking. A gathering of any two or more Armenians is basically an excuse for a feast. And holidays and parties are sort of studies in excess. 

So there was a lot of food and a lot of cooking and recipes between my mother and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. And so, I was exposed to kind of people who love to cook pretty early on. 

And beyond the Armenian stuff, my mother is a very good cook. And she was pretty adventurous, sort of, as interested in experimentation and research as anyone, and I think that's where I started having the same sort of tendencies. I grew up in the era where it was sort of where cooking shows were all on PBS, and Julia Child, if you didn't know how to cook and all those sorts of things. It was a time when food culture was just starting to become mainstream. And my mother was a part of that. 

I think that kind of sums it up. Boston was not particularly interesting in terms of food at the time. It's definitely improved since then.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How has it improved? What's changed in Boston?

Andrew: Well, I think it's mostly that the culture has grown to support the presence of just more interesting restaurants. I mean, I'm sure there were plenty of restaurants in, within cultural enclaves. But when I was growing up, you didn't know about them. There probably were fewer then, simply because there wasn't the support. 

But I think Boston is kind of a provincial place, or has been. And I think people are finally waking up to the, sort of the importance of foods from other cultures. And so, those restaurants are finally getting the due that they deserve. And so, it's definitely better. I mean, I lived in New York for a long time. And so I still kind of gripe about how much better it could be. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you've explained your career trajectory to me before when I've interviewed you. But can you explain how you ended up in food?

Andrew: Sure. Yeah. 

I mean, I started out in it, and then came back to it. But the whole trajectory is really kind of convoluted. And I'm sort of somebody who has always had a lot of interests, and I kind of never do anything halfway. And so that sort of leads me to follow paths far away from one thing and come back to them. 

So I started out working in restaurants during—a little bit in high school, but in college in New York City as a way to have pocket money to pay the bills. And then in summers, where I was paying my own rent and things like that. 

I was a waiter working front of the house in a couple places. There was a chef at one particular restaurant who sort of took a liking to me and understood my interest in cooking. And he said, ‘Would you be interested in working in the kitchen?’ And he let me, kind of, with no—without real proof that I could do anything, to work garde manger. It was a small restaurant, and so I immediately just jumped in, do it. And then, never went back to waiting tables after that, because it was really much more my thing. 

And I did that for a few years and eventually worked my way up. For the longest time, I worked at a place in the West Village called the Universal Grill, which was a great place to work. It was a really tiny little restaurant. It was very unique in every way. It prided itself on, or at least thinking itself, as the gayest restaurant in New York City. Or the gayest restaurant in the world, I forget what their tagline was. But it was very a kind of a hub of a lot of gay cultural activity. 

And it was just a fun place to work, especially since the—while the food, it was important that the food be of a certain caliber, the owners didn't really want to have anything to do with that. So they left the few of us in the kitchen to our own devices to kind of come up with recipes and be creative. And it was small enough that if I was cooking, I was the only person—eventually I worked my way up to sous chef. And if I was there, I was in charge of the menu for the night. And so, it gave me a lot of creativity. That was kind of where I forged my skills. 

And then, I stayed in restaurants for a little bit longer after that. I moved back to Boston. But I kind of found sort of other interests pushing in against that one. And I eventually decided I want to go back to school. I had studied literature and film in college, and—but was, sort of caught the science bug. And so, I decided that I was going to be—I wanted to be a doctor. It seems kind of crazy now, I thought that. 

So I go back to school, do pre-med courses. I hadn’t particularly done any of those kinds of classes in college. And I started out in chemistry and found that I had this kind of acuity for it. I found it really interesting. 

And while I was doing some of these courses, I kind of talked my way into an internship at a pharmaceutical company here in Cambridge. And that internship ended up getting renewed several times. And eventually, it just became a full-time job. And I sort of dropped the pre-med idea in favor of just kind of becoming an organic chemist. Organic chemistry is basically cooking, at least in the practical aspects of it. It's just like cooking. You have a recipe, put a bunch of stuff in a container, you heat it up, and it transforms into something else. And I'd always been good at recipes and good cooking. So it's sort of like it was an easy shift for me.

And I did that for 12 years, ’cause it was—working for a corporation, it paid well. And I enjoyed it most of the time. And then while I was there, I caught another bug and this was in the study of mycology and mushrooms. And one of the benefits of working there was that they paid for higher education. And so I was able to get a master's degree—or most of it, I didn't finish it until after I left there. But in biology, it was a study of fungi and in, called mushroom cultivation and foraging and things like that. 

That's where I was when, just by coincidence. I met somebody, a friend of a partner of my brother-in-law who worked at America's Test Kitchen and shared my crazy resume, my story of how I—what I'd done all these years. And they go, ‘You'd be the perfect candidate for a job at America's Test Kitchen.’ They love people with all those kinds of backgrounds, and also the sort of skill set was perfect for it. So I applied and I took a massive pay cut. And the rest is history. And I was there for about the same, about 11 years, up until last year.

Alicia: When did bread become the focus?

Andrew: So it's funny because I was thinking about this in—I worked in two bakeries in high school, and it didn't register as a thing that I was at all interested in. And during college, I went—I spent a semester in Paris. I'm sure I ate lots of good bread. But somehow, the idea that I was surrounded by all these amazing bakeries just never, never even occurred to me to think about it. While I was there, I was kind of more interested in spending time in movie theaters and art museums. 

And so, I didn't come to bread until very late in the game. And the thing that kind of sparked that was probably—this is probably true for many people—was the no-knead bread. I think I made it right after the article came out in ’09. It both kind of sparked the idea that good bread can be had at home, and that actually, maybe, at home, homemade bread is better than you can get, at least from bakeries at the time. Or just the fact that you're pulling it hot from the oven yourself means you're getting it at the peak of its freshness. 

I quickly was like, ‘Oh, I think I need to dig into this more deeply.’ The fundamentals, the foundation had been there all along. Because the thing that I, that brought me to cooking in the first place when I was a kid, before I started working in restaurants, was pizza; I was obsessed with pizza. I think the first cookbook and kitchen tool I ever personally owned was a pizza pan and a book that my mother gave me as a birthday present. And so, that had been something that all throughout my life since that moment, I've been tinkering with my own recipes. 

And Cook's Illustrated started in ’93. So that was as I was—during college. I think I subscribed to it from the beginning at that point. And so, I understood that iterative testing process for recipe development. And I did a lot of that with my pizza recipe over the years. 

And so, I sort of laid the groundwork for where I ended up. After no-knead bread, I started digging into recipes and taking classes. And that was really where I kind of fell hard for it. 

But yeah, that—Sorry, go on.

Alicia: No, no.

But yeah, how did you come to your kind of current approach to it? 

Andrew: Well, so there's a lot of aspects to it. I think that no-knead bread itself is something I came to realize is just, I don't know. It's weird to find something so basic that you didn't realize you could be in love with when you ate it all the time. And maybe it's just because I never had good bread, but I'm sure I did. But there's so many things about it that I love about it it's hard to even narrow it down. 

I think one of them is simply that bread bakers are kind of, they're really great people. The people who work in the industry and the teachers I've had, they're just really—they're really generous and they're fun to be around. And so when I was a student of it, at the beginning of my time, I just was like, ‘Oh, these are my people’ in a way. And their passion for it kind of quickly became my own. 

But in terms of the bread itself, and what—one of the many things I love about it, one of them is just like that it's, unlike any other kind of cooking, it's a relationship. It's a dynamic thing that is never complete. You never perfect a technique. Sometimes it works amazingly, and sometimes it doesn't. And you have to kind of constantly bring yourself back to the-

I mean, it's a living organism. And if you're not paying close attention to it, if you're not kind of adjusting to it, then it kind of resists being what you want it to be. And so, you need to kind of bring yourself down to its level—up to its level, I should say.

I do a lot of overnight recipes, in the fridge overnight or on the counter. Every time I come downstairs from my bedroom and see what's happening in the kitchen, it's a little mini Christmas morning. I'm so excited to see what I, what it's managed to do for me in the interim. So there's just a lot of little joys in it. Yeah.

Alicia: And you left your longtime post at America's Test Kitchen to focus on your newsletter as well as freelance. And you recently wrote about competing recipe style guides, which I thought was really interesting, because—for myriad reasons. One, that I develop recipes. Two, that I was a copy editor.

How has that transition been for you into working for so many different places plus yourself? Because I know that it is very difficult. [Laughs.]

Andrew: Yeah, that's been one of the many challenges of doing this, all solo. As I said, I came to America’s Test Kitchen as a cook and a science person, and not as a journalist. I had no training in journalism. And so, the style guide wasn't even something—I mean, I'm sure I had MLA or whatever in college, but I didn't know that it was a thing. 

And so when I learned how America's Test Kitchen did their thing, I didn't think, ‘Oh, that's their style guide.’ I just thought that's how everybody does it. And I absorbed that over time. But then after leaving, I realized, ‘Oh, this isn't how everybody is doing it. It’s just one idiosyncratic approach to it. And other places do it differently.’ 

And that makes sense. Every place has a different kind of needs and a different audience to cater to. But it's maddening to have to—it’s like having to speak a different language every time you do, pick up the phone to speak to somebody else. And it's really hard to adjust. But it is what it is. I wish we could have like an International Congress of Recipe’s style guides and just kind of come up with one thing. Yeah. 

Alicia: No, it's funny, because I wrote about salt today and how I'm going to try and not use Diamond Crystal anymore. It was so funny.

Andrew: The Cargill thing?

Alicia: The Cargill thing [laughs], where I found out that it's owned by Cargill since 1997. I had like literally no idea. That's never the point of anything anyone's talking about when they're talking about salt and which one to use. It's always about what's accessible and the volume, and  it's never—

I also want this standard recipe conference, because I want the salt issue to be resolved. Because The L.A. Times is like, ‘Ok, we're only going to use Diamond Crystal.’ And then The Washington Post is like, ‘We're only going to use fine sea salt.’ But how many salts do you expect a regular person to have in their kitchen? I don't know, and I think it needs to be resolved. I'm just really horrified that people have always been like, ‘Diamond Crystal is the best’ and no one's ever said that they're owned by Cargill.

Andrew: Yeah, that was news to me until I think you probably retweeted somebody a couple of days ago, and it never occurred to me. I mean, somebody down to make a bespoke salt that had the exact same weight to volume ratio and is as, just as good in terms of the way it sprinkles or whatever? And then we can stop using it. 

I was a kosher salt, Diamond kosher salt person until maybe that also sort of swayed me in the other direction. But I do think that it's annoying as hell that kosher salt comes in these two different volume to weight ratios. And I think I'm now in the sea salt’s better camp because sea salt is sea salt is sea salt.  

Alicia: Exactly. 

Yeah, no, apparently there's a Norwegian kosher salt that is the same as Diamond Crystal. You're not getting a 10-pound, 5-pound box of it. So that's the issue here, is how much—yeah, how much you're getting, how much bang for your buck, which I guess is why Diamond Crystal really owned the game for so long. [Laughs.] And continues to! I don't think I'm going to change the way chefs act. But at least I can let people, more people know that Cargill owns this and to make their own choices now. 

Andrew: Yeah.

Well, the other thing is that's kind of a very niche question, but like the bigger question’s metric versus imperial and weight to volume and baking recipes and that stuff is just maddening. 

So you asked about my own style and what that was like. I feel like a style guide should always be logical and clear. It should also teach people something. To give people options is to not encourage them to pick one over the other. And so I decided I'm getting rid of volume measurements, because I think it forces people to do something that eventually they'll come to see is easier.

Alicia: Right. 

No, and I agree. I hate volume recipes. I mean, the only thing for me is that, to keep batteries in my scale. [Laughs.] It's remembering whether it's double A or triple A when I go to the store. That's my struggle. 

But I wanted to ask how you're maintaining creativity and balance between the work you're doing for other people and for your newsletter, because people ask me all the time. And for me, I think it's kind of obvious, most of the time, what's for the newsletter and what isn't. Speaking, again, of the salt piece, I know how I could expand the salt piece and make it really a lot better and 3000 words and a lot more effecting, but I'm not going to do that for my weekly blog. 

But, yeah, so basically, how do you balance those things that you're doing?

Andrew: Well, I think I'm sort of in a similar camp with that. It took me a while to figure out that that was what it was, but I use it as a sort of a scratch pad for whatever's on my mind. And I don't necessarily feel like things need to be kind of resolved when I write about them there. 

And I think maybe from the outside—I hope this isn't the case—but maybe from the outside, it sort of seems very disjointed. One week, I'll be giving a recipe and the next week, I'll be talking about style guides. And so I hope that when you see the overall arc of things, you can see that I keep circling back to certain themes. 

But I find it very useful as a kind of idea-generating place. And I'm kind of grateful that people are willing to kind of follow along there. People pay to subscribe, and that seems like an amazing thing that people want to kind of hear me just think out loud.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah. And I like that aspect of newsletters. I think a lot of people don't really get that. Maybe because they don't do it; they don't understand the value of having to be consistently creative. And that it's not necessarily an ends in itself, but it's just a way of thinking. It's just a practice that you can have. That people will go along with it is really interesting. 

And have you found a real connection with your audience there?

Andrew: For sure. I've found that the fact of their presence in—I mean, I guess one nice thing about having a paid option is that if people are paying, they don't have to comment to show their appreciation for what you're doing.

I feel like the one thing that I've wanted to—Well, it's not the only thing, but one of the things I want to develop more of a sense of community. I feel it's probably on me to figure out a way to foster that more. Because there is some of it, but not as much as there perhaps could be, where people are not only commenting and interacting with me but also communicating with one another more. And maybe that's the question of starting open threads or encouraging questions where people get to weigh in. 

The hardest part, or a hard part, of doing the newsletter and being a full-time freelancer is just finding the time to implement all these different ideas I have for making it better. It's very slow.

Alicia: It's really slow. It's very hard. I want to open up to new, have other people contribute. But I have to make sure I'm fully available to do the best editing work and everything like that. 

I don't know. It's funny how Substack is, say, it’s all like, ‘Independent newsletters are the future, blah, blah, blah.’ It is, in a way, but at the same time, it's not sustainable at all to do without support. It's impossible to grow into the way that you might have a vision for without the support of a team. 

Andrew: Yeah, definitely. 

I can see so many places where it could be more than it is, and maybe it will be someday. But part of it's just a question of time. If I didn't have the freelance work, then I might be able to double the amount of stuff I do there. The problem is that I actually enjoy most of the, or nearly all of the freelance work I'm doing are things I'm interested in. So I'm happy to have it. Maybe there just needs to be more days in the week, although working more is not a good idea.

Alicia: No, no. 

Yeah, it's a hard balance. For me, the struggle right now is finishing my book, and then—and also doing a newsletter.

Andrew: Yeah, that I couldn't imagine. Although I have a book project that I need to get going on. So, I don’t want to talk about it much. But the idea of trying to juggle that seems impossible.

Alicia: It's hard. It's really hard. The newsletter, in a great way, it became my—the bulk of my income. But I didn't know that that was going to happen. Thank God it happened. And then I have to keep it up to write the book, because the advance was so shitty. [Laughs.] And I sold the book before my—literally weeks before my newsletter kind of popped off, I guess, last year? I don't know. So, it's constantly maintaining this balance in this kind of work where you're weighing the pros and cons of literally every small decision. 

But I remember when I quoted you about flour in a past newsletter, and you talked about ingredient sourcing and flour sourcing, it caused a little bit of controversy in the artisanal flower community. I talked to Roxana Jullapat about this recently while talking about Mother Grains-

Andrew: Which I loved.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

And we're all constantly trying to find this balance—or we're all, I think, people who try to care both about accessibility and taste and ecology, and trying to juggle all of these ideas at once. You have to think about what's good for your local ecosystem, and what's also realistic. 

And so, what are your thoughts on flour and accessibility right now?

Andrew: So, yeah, I got kind of yelled at by somebody, for use—[laughs] for using the term ‘fancy flour’ to refer to sort of fresh milled local, regional, flours, which I love and use all the time and, I think are important to—it's an important aspect to the industry to promote.

But it's only a piece of the story. There's so many issues with making that kind of thing accessible to everyone. It's very expensive. It's not accessible in terms of, most supermarkets don't carry anything like that. And mail order is definitely possible, but not only does that add to the cost but it adds to the carbon footprint of the thing. 

I try in the newsletter and elsewhere to encourage people to seek out those kinds of things if they're in their local economy, and to—I think a great deal of my audiences likely can't afford to spend as much as possible on flour, and maybe-

So I think the person that wasn't happy with that term was coming from that perspective is—and like, ‘You need to kind of almost force people who can afford to use better products and more sustainable, whatever.’ And so, I think that's a good thing. But I think it's important not to forget that there are people who can't afford that, and some of those people might not be part of my audience, but they—maybe I'm not attracting them, because if I'm kind of limiting myself to boutique ingredients. I kind of want to come at it from both sides. 

There's another aspect which is kind of related to that, which is that you—the thing about flours, flours that are kind of boutiques, is that each one needs to be—the recipe needs to be developed specifically for that flour. Whereas if you called for a commodity, or sort of a well-known flour, they're consistent across the—people can get King Arthur flour from one side of the country to the other, and it's going to behave the same way no matter where you get it. And so then, all of a sudden, the recipe becomes accessible to more people. 

And so, it's a challenge, because if you want to encourage those kinds of things, you need to teach people how to use them and how to how to adapt to them, in a way, like to say, ‘I don't know what your flour is going to be like, but here's what to look for and how to adjust if that's the case.’ 

But still, I mean, it's really important, because I think maybe flour’s one—I think Roxana said this, or maybe she was talking about sugar, but I think they're similar in that it's one of those unexamined monoliths in our food culture that we don't—we just think flour is just the thing you get. You buy some flour. Whatever, it doesn't matter. As opposed to thinking about how huge the industry is and how difficult it would be to dismantle that sort of thing and replace it with something that is more sustainable and equitable. 

I think we have to start somewhere. And talking about flous that are made from grains that are grown locally—I'm lucky to live in New England, which before it was the heartland, was the breadbasket of America. And so, good grain can be grown here, and more and more is being grown. And so, I have access to really great local flour, but not everyone does. 

Although I think there's probably opportunities to grow flours that can be adapted for whatever

environment you live in. I mean, there's some cool flours that grow in the desert, wheats that grow in the desert that are being built into flour. 

And actually, we might need more of them, because I haven't really delved too deep into it. But they're saying, this year has been really bad for droughts in the Midwest and Canada. I don't know if it's the end, or if it's just a blip and the kinds of things that we're gonna see more and more of over time. So it's a little scary to think, because if we can't grow—I mean, me being able to have, make my bread is important to me. But beyond that, access to something like flour going away is hard to fathom how damaging that would be to our economies and our lives.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, I think about that a lot, especially because living in Puerto Rico, I can get King Arthur, but I have to go to the special store and I have to pay way more than I would have paid in New York for it. And then it's funny, because I think if I tried to learn how to cook here, every recipe would be a nightmare because of the humidity and the—and so, because I already know how to cook, I'm—I know how to compensate for things. 

But I just want to see more recipes, I think, written—and I guess I should start doing this—for the gluten-free flours that are more locally produced like the cassava flour and the breadfruit flour and everything, and plantain flour even. Because, as we keep saying here, it's like, ‘Well, soon everyone will know what this is to live in the tropics.’ New York is subtropical now. 

And so yeah, it's just really interesting to think about and to kind of try to reframe—yeah, I use the local grain thing to question or whatever to think about, yeah, how we might make things in the future that are recognizable to us. 

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. 

I mean, it's just hard to imagine a world, or it's hard to imagine living in a world where something as fundamental as wheat or, were to go away. It's scary. And I love alternative flours, but you can't get a baguette out of cassava flour.

Alicia: Yeah, exactly. Thinking about life without a baguette is kind of depressing. [Laughs.] Yeah. That's what I'm gonna have for breakfast. I have some. Anyway. [Laughs.] Let me enjoy it while I have it. I’m not thinking about that. 

But through your newsletter, you're also kind of—you're teaching classes on Zoom. And we talked about the different styles of writing recipes. But just to write recipes down in a methodical manner is so difficult for me personally. What is your process for doing that? What tools have maybe helped you do that? How have you found your teaching voice, basically?

Andrew: So it's really interesting, because I'm deeply introverted. And so teaching is the farthest—especially in person—but in front of people, Zoom, or in a room full of them. But I actually have come to love it. And I never would have guessed that would be the case. 

I started teaching baking and cooking because I saw it as an opportunity to get to kind of hang out in spaces that I was just a consumer of where I wanted to—I wanted to be able to go to places like King Arthur and, on their dime instead of mine. And so I was like, ‘Ok, I'm just gonna see if they’ll let me teach something.’ But I quickly realized that actually, I really liked doing it. And so, I do it for its own sake now. 

It's challenging, but also it's a great tool for figuring out and kind of codifying what I know and what I don't know. If I have to develop it, I often will propose classes for things that I haven't quite finished figuring out but knowing that it'd be an opportunity to get it done. And so, there's something fun about jumping without a net into something like that. 

And so, in terms of a newsletter and the recipes, I think I've figured out how to teach, or learning how to teach. And in classes, I think I have converted some of that into how to write about it. But I'm still developing that a little bit more early on in the process. I feel I've been cycling through saying things and figuring out the best way to say something. I often talk about the same kinds of the same topics, how to work with a sourdough starter, or how to do techniques like folding and what not. And I'm never quite sure how to pass that along to somebody who, for whom it—they're naive to those concepts. But I've spent a lot of time thinking about that. 

And I feel like the thing that I think about most in sort of an abstract way is, how do you teach people to think like a baker does? It's not straightforward. I don't know if it's true for every skill, or, but I spend a lot of time thinking about, like, ‘What is it gonna flip the switch in somebody's head when they're doing a technique?’ It's not just straightforward, do this and get that result. It's more like, ‘Think like this, and you'll be able to figure out how to get that result.’ It's one step removed from the process. But I'm still trying to, still trying to get my head around that.

Alicia: Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

Andrew: Yes, it is. I feel like it's important to keep that in your mind when you're doing it. I think it's such an easy thing to forget that food and cooking have—it's such a fundamental thing. Is breathing a political act? It's almost the same, but—air is important, too. 

Food is so fundamental that it's just easy to forget that it has so much, so many implications in terms of—the flipside to eating is hunger, and maybe you're satisfying your own hunger but other people don't even have the option to satisfy it. Or equity in terms of who's making our food or who's growing, picking our fruits, and then all the impacts on climate and resources. And so, I feel I try to deliberately keep that in mind. I mean, it's not always there, but I just feel it's important not, never to forget that. It's part of a system that is not great and needs a lot of work. And I think that, especially if you're in the world of food and cooking, you can have an impact, a positive impact in that if you keep it in mind. 

Alicia: Right. 

Thank you so much for being here.

Andrew: Oh, it was my pleasure. I'm so happy to be here.

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I loved talking to Erin Alderson because I think we have a similar mission that we go about in different ways, and that mission is to just get people to eat more vegetables. (Her recipe-driven way might work a bit better, if her 134K Instagram followers are any indication.)It’s also fascinating to me to hear about those folks who came up in the heyday of food blogging about how self-publishing both has and hasn’t changed. Alderson didn’t approach blogging the standard way, though, by making herself into the main character and putting food second, and that’s why it’s not so surprising that she’s quit that world to put out a recipe zine instead, guided by seasonality and inspired by dinner parties, called Cook Casual.

We talked about how she came to the decision to launch a zine, how she came to be vegetarian, and why she reminds animal-rights vegans about farmworkers. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Erin. Thank you so much for being here, 

Erin: Thanks for having me. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Erin: Yeah.

So, I am originally from the Midwest, I grew up in Illinois, Central Illinois, and was there until I was about 27. I was very surrounded by corn, soybeans, pretty much, was what we were surrounded by. 

And I did not eat the best. It's kind of funny, because I feel people in food are—have all of these rich histories, and they have family members who are really into food. And I ate McDonald's growing up.That was kind of my family. My mom cooked some, but it wasn't a huge part of our household. And so yeah, it was a lot of fast food. And we were always on the move. So it’s, I don't really have this rich childhood history with food. And then, it wasn't until I was really well into college that I started connecting more with food. 

Alicia: Right.

What made you connect more with food? 

Erin: My dad had a heart attack when he was 45. 

Alicia: Wow.

Erin: Yeah, so that was kind of a big wake-up call for our family. My mom's a nurse. And so she was really, already well into trying to bring in more fruits and vegetables into the house and everything. And then finally, when my dad had his heart attack, it was kind of like, ‘Oh, s**t.’ I was 20 at the time, I think? And so, it was definitely a big—’Ok, I need to start taking care of myself more.’ And so, I really dove into eating, just trying to figure out like, ‘Ok, what does my body need?’ It definitely was not always the healthiest path at times, but it's kind of what kickstarted up until now, really.

Alicia: Right. Right. 

And when and why did you become vegetarian?

Erin: So. it was all kind of tied up with that. I wasn't at the start of my journey. But then as I started trying to eat a little bit better, I was kind of realizing—I was like, ‘Oh, I really don’t like meat.’ And so, as I started eating more vegetarian—but being in the Midwest, rural Midwest, my options were really limited. We didn't always have the best produce. Going out to eat, I ate a lot of salad and french fries. [Laughter.] Or mushroom pasta. I feel like that was—it was either/or.

I'd been vegetarian off and on for various different reasons. Just because a lot of that where it was I didn't have access to everything. But when I got out to California, which was about eight years ago, it really started to kind of change even more my perspective on food that had already started in Illinois when I had joined a CSA, but it was a really unique one in that it was a u-pick. And so every week, you would go out and they’d have bags, and you could just really get your hands dirty. And the farmer who ran that was always around, always asking, available for questions. 

And so, that kind of really, again—that was the other push that I needed in a direction to really just fall in love with vegetables.

Alicia: Yeah.

And so, how did you get into writing about food and developing recipes?

Erin: Purely accidental.

I had a LiveJournal in high school. 

Alicia: Me too. 

Erin: Yeah, I think we're about the same age. 

And so, sharing your life online was already kind of ingrained a little bit. And so, when I started trying to eat a little bit better, I was just like, ‘I'm going to share my journey.’ I got a Blogspot. It was called Berry Delicious, right? I mean, really, nothing. 

And I had worked in restaurants. I had been both front of house and back of house. I knew that I really liked food. But I did not ever know that that was a path that I could take, just because I—growing in the rural Midwest, you didn't really know that that was something. 

So, I started the blog as just a way to share random stuff. And then I just kept going with it for whatever reason. I thought I wanted to open a bakery, ’cause, I mean, I feel like that's a lot of people's ambitions at some point in time in life. 

Alicia: Same. [Laughter.] 

Erin: And so, I was sharing a lot of baked goods. There's a group called Tuesdays with Dorie’s where we were baking through Dorie Greenspan's book, one of her books. And it made me realize, ‘Ok, this is kind of a cool community,’ even in 2008, I think it was. And so, I just kept kind of sharing what I was making. And it just continued to snowball. And for whatever reason, I stuck with it, just—I think it was just one of those things. It was my creative outlet during the rest of my college career.

And then when I started to work after college, then I decided that I was like, ‘No, I really want to try and pursue this bakery thing.’ So I started a job at a bakery, getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning to get to work by 4. And after a year of that, I said, ‘Oh, hell no. [Laughter.] This is not me.’ Although, the dream did not die then. 

So, I went back to grad school for music. I always oscillated between music and food. But the blog stayed with me for that whole time. At the end of grad school, I tried to buy a coffee shop and bakery and it was taking—the paperwork was kind of there. And then I got a job to teach college music. And the day after I got that job, the baker was like, ‘Ok, we're ready to move on.’ And so, I just kind of took it like, ‘Ok, this isn't where I'm supposed to be in life.’ So I taught college for two years, but was still writing about food. 

And then at the end of that time, was when I got my first cookbook deal to write about grinding your own flour at home. That was it. That was it for me. When I moved out to California, I was just in food at that point. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

What brought you to California from—

Erin: My husband's job.

Alicia: Oh, ok. 

Erin: We knew nothing. We had no family here. We knew nothing about the area. We just knew that we needed to change, and it was quite possibly the best thing to ever happen. 

Alicia: Awesome. 

When you began your blog in the aughts, it was a big time for lifestyle blogging. You've written two cookbooks, too, but it seems like you yourself, you keep yourself out of the spotlight a little bit. 

I was looking at the about page on your website. And it's about the blog. It's not about the person, which is like such a different thing, I think, with blogging. How did you kind of approach your—and how did it evolve over time, too?

Erin: Yeah, I mean, it was definitely really personal in the beginning. I mean, through many years, actually. Just, again, like you said, it was—that was what people did. 

I mean, there's a lot of conferences that revolve around how to do food blogging, and there's people who write food blogs or blogs about food blogging. And it's always like, ‘Make yourself a personality and make it about you and the food secondary.’ I would try that. I'd be like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna do this.’ You're told, ‘That's how you grow your audience. That's how you make money.’ And I tried it. And I was like, ‘I hate this.’ It made me deeply uncomfortable. 

It's been about the food first. It’s never really about me. And I like it like that. Because also, again, I don't feel I need to share my entire life on the internet. I like having kind of the dichotomy between who I am on the internet and who I'm—I'm the same person, but my lives are a little bit separate. 

It's interesting, because it's—again, things evolve over time. And when I started, it was just about sharing my journey. But then as time went on, it was like, ‘Oh, people can make money from this. Oh, people can make a lot of money from this.’ And that becomes the focus for so much of what you feel you're supposed to be doing, where it's like, ‘Ok, I'm creating content. I'm creating recipes to satisfy Google.’ That's how we end up with thousands of e—or thousands of recipes for basic cashew cream or something like that. Just things that ‘Do I need to reinvent the wheel?’ And I kept feeling this pressure to, just to make money. So, I didn’t like that, either.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And now you’ve—you took time off and now you are launching Cook Casual. Can you kind of tell me how that happened? You took a break, and you decided to launch a new vehicle. And it's really awesome, and people are really into it, it seems. But what kind of inspired this new trajectory?

Erin: So, a lot of it was kind of the burnout from blogging. I knew I wanted to quit for years, like three years ago. My husband had to talk me out of it all the time. I'm like, ‘I'm gonna burn it down. It's time to burn it down!’ It's a lot to run a website. Even just the tech behind it, it can be a little intense. And then on top of not really feeling I'm creating content for myself. I'm creating content to satisfy SEO results. 

And then the other thing that really kind of pushed me over the edge was the partnerships, sponsored content, which is a huge industry. It’s probably one of the main advertising industries at this point in time, because people, they see the benefit of having a personality online say, ‘No, this is the product I use.’ 

I tried to be the most conscious I could about the partnerships that I had. It just got to be over time that even the company was like, okay, no, I like working with you. But it really limits what I can talk about. So if I had a company that was selling grains and flours and all of that, all of a sudden, I felt I couldn't talk about the local products that I was using. Just because then I worried like, ‘Are they going to be mad at me that I'm saying, ‘No, you should also buy flour from this other place?’’ 

And so, it kind of just really got to me where I didn't know what to do. And how to make money anymore, which is not always—I mean, unfortunately, the society we live in is—it’s a little necessary. So it's like, ‘How do I still do what I love?’ At least, I thought I loved, which was really trying just to excite people about eating vegetables, right? 

I don't care if people go vegetarian, right? I want people to eat less meat. I don't want to do it through fear. We're told, like, ‘You have to eat less meat because of climate change. You're all gonna die.’ It just seems very fear-driven. And I mean, I have a 6-year-old. He won't do anything through fear or stuff like that. Positive reinforcement essentially. 

So I stopped the blog, because I was like, ‘This is not sustainable for me. I hate it.’ And so, I just let it be for a while because I was gonna take it offline. But then I realized—I was like, ‘I still use a lot of the recipes on that website.’ So I'm still trying to figure out what—it just sits there. 

And so, I took time off. I wasn't even sure I wanted to come back or do anything, because I was with my son for the past year and a half. 

Alicia: One second. [The mailman came.]

Erin: ‘Kay.

Trying to remember where I was now. I was at home. Yeah, I was at home for the pandemic. Because my son wasn't at school. And so, I was just trying to figure out what comes next. What kind of career do I want? But what I kept doing was just sharing what we were eating pretty much every day, because I was still cooking a lot. I actually feel like I was cooking more during this time. And so, I just kept sharing what I was doing on Instagram. And of course, people on Instagram are always like, ‘Recipes!!!’

I was like, ‘No, I really love being in this space. I love creating food.’ It always comes back to I love creating food that inspires people to eat more vegetables, right? I do want it to be something that is really positive, that's really, that I want people to engage. I want someone to eat something that I've made and say, ‘Oh, this is delicious’ and then go ‘Oh, wait, is this—this is vegan, right?’ To have that realization that you don't need to eat meat to have this beautiful food. 

And so, I kind of kept just trying to figure out like, ‘Do I go back to a blog?’ I tried Patreon for a while. And it just felt like a really weird platform for me. I kind of felt in debt a little bit because it felt like, ‘What do people expect from me on this platform?’ And I could never get a hang on what I wanted everything to feel like on that platform. So, that lasted maybe four months, and I was like, ‘This isn’t for me.’

Ok, so then I decided that I really—I missed print. I've done the two cookbooks. I've experienced what that is, and it's a lot. I know you're writing a book right now. So I feel like any books are a lot. I am a very tactile person, and so I love the idea of holding something in my hands. But the idea of doing another cookbook was just, I don't—for various reasons, didn't really seem what I wanted to be doing. And so I was like, ‘Ok, well what can I do?’ 

And that's how I kind of came to the zine format. because it allowed me to do something tactile that people can hold, but also still give people the digital option. But then using that as a way to support all of the information that I share on Instagram, whether that is kind of off-the-cuff meals. I like to share a lot of articles, because I do think that to be really informed about what we're eating, you need to know what goes into that food. 

Moving to California, that's kind of what changed my entire perspective on everything. ’Cause,

we’re living through climate change right now here. There's a fire that’s right up the road that's destroyed tens of thousands of acres. Every day, we have to check our air quality, because I don't know if I can open our windows or not driving from north to south along the 101. You see all, so much of the food that is grown in California for the rest of the country. And you start to question like, ‘Ok, well, what about those workers?’ Just being in California is being at the heart of a lot of food issues. And to me, it's unacceptable to separate what we eat from those issues. The zine allows kind of my ability to share some of that. 

I think that's—[Laughter.] Sorry, think I went on a tangent there. 

Alicia: No, no, it's really useful to hear that, because I think—it's funny, I'm actually talking to a class at Penn State this Friday that's going to be—it's literally a class about, I think, independent creation. They're now teaching the journalism students how to be their own, I guess, business because everything is so broken. 

And it's really interesting to hear about how someone recovers from burnout, having a successful blog, it becoming not what you want anymore, and how do you go, move on from there? That is a huge question. And I think, I mean, people will think of this work that I would say we both do around food as maybe not as significant as food policy or something like that, where it's—we are talking to people about how to live in your daily life about food. And I think that that's such a significant thing, but it also takes so much out of—it's so much work. It really is so much work. [Laughs.] 

Cause you just started doing reels and stuff, right? Yeah, I hate it. I hate it. I mean, I'm finding a little bit of a creative—I'm finding my own way in it I suppose, but I only am doing it to make Instagram happy. My feed is unrecognizable to me at this point, which I shouldn't have—I shouldn't care about anyway. My engagement is so low, even though I'm doing these stupid reels and they take forever. And so, it's like, ‘Why? What am I supposed to do?’

Instagram doesn't matter as much, I guess. I do recipes, but it's not my bread and butter. And it's more of a bonus thing. And then, people get my essays and interviews in their inbox. So I don't—and that's where I need people to engage, not necessarily on Instagram. But at the same time, I'm not an idiot. I have to be extremely curated on all social media. On Twitter, I'm—I say whatever the hell I want. But on Instagram, it's like—it's just such a weird platform, I think. 

It started out so easy and fun. Now it's just like, ‘Why is this?’ I'll never make it part of my real work. It's bonus content, I guess. I don't have the capacity, nor the interest, to make a slideshow in Canva about different things. But also, I just see it as so ephemeral. And they can change anything at any time. There's no reason for me to invest that much in it.

But yeah, I mean, it's interesting. 

Yeah. Go, go. 

Erin: I kind of felt the same way with the blog, too. Google Search would do updates, and all of a sudden you'd go from getting 100,000 hits from Google Search a month to 50,000 And people would lose lots of money over this, and it was just always this—in Facebook groups I was in, people would be freaking out. Or Pinterest. People drive a lot of traffic from Pinterest, too. I hated the reliance on one platform to do that. 

It's interesting, because I remember being, I think, at IACP, the culinary professional conference a few years back. And people were just bashing food bloggers, right? Because they were like, ‘Well, they're not real food media people,’ and all this stuff. People try to really say, ‘Well, they're not professionals.’ And what I come back to is that, you know, bloggers are meeting people in their home. They're connecting with the people who are cooking meals every day. They have extreme influence. 

And that's one of the reasons, too, that I felt that I needed to start sharing more as well, was because I have people's ears. People trust me. I think that it's important to take that, to not take that responsibility lightly. And so to just move away from all of that—I mean, as much as you can, ’cause obviously social media is still a huge part of any self-promotion. 

Alicia: No, it's really difficult to walk—I don't know, to be a person on social media. 

I noticed you did this. You created a different account for Cook Casual, and—instead of kind of folding it into your own—your account. Was there a reason you made that choice?

Erin: I couldn't change my username. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Ok. [Laughs.]

Erin: Yeah, so once you're verified on Instagram, unless you have an inactive Instagram. 

So, it's funny. So, it's my initials. Ella is my initials. And I regret that every single day. Primarily because there's Deliciously Ella. I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but yeah, huge, right. And so, I cannot count the amount of times I would get invited to events in the UK because people—I would get confused with her a lot. 

To start fresh, to build something from scratch, I wanted to completely divorce myself from what I was doing, because it—people on the outside probably were like, ‘What is she doing?’ But to me, it felt like such a difference. I needed that switch, I needed to say, ‘No, this is something new. It's something that is not what I was doing before. It's not just a food blog.’ I want to create something that really engages people.

Alicia: Right, right. 

And how did you kind of get to your style? Because people think of vegetarian food—and I think that this is even in contrast to how people think of vegan food—but people think of vegetarian food as like a very 1970s thing. Macrobiotics and just tons of cheese. And not a lot of nuance and freshness. But hopefully that's changing.

But your style is super fresh and vibrant. You share so much about your own garden, that your gar—what you're growing. How did you kind of develop that style not just in recipes, but in photography? How did you develop your gardening skill as well? [Laughter.]

Erin: Full disclosure, this is my first year having an actual garden. I used to do pots. I'd have a bunch of pots in the backyard. 

So it started with that CSA, just because it got me to have my hands in the dirt. It was just something about being able to go out every week and connect with the soil plants and be like, ‘I know where my food is coming from. I'm picking it.’

And then moving to California, I remember the first time I walked into the co-op here. Honestly, I just froze because the produce section was unlike anything I had ever seen before. Anything you could possibly want was in that produce section, and all of a sudden it was like, ‘What is this magic?’ Where I'm at there's, you can pretty much go in any direction and there's the farmers’ market almost every day. And so, just having that proximity to all of this beautiful fresh produce. 

It's kind of like, ‘Ok, well, I'm not going to layer it with a bunch of cheese.’ I don't want to hide it. I don't want to act like I'm trying to hide it from a 5-year-old. I have probably overused the word beautiful too much, but I am just completely inspired by the produce that I want to really showcase it the best I can. And then having that added layer this year of being able to grow my own and really—I’m like, ‘Ok, I need eggplant for this?’ Just walk out to the garden. It's a really freeing feeling to just have that. 

And so, I am really inspired. I love cookbooks. I mean, as you can see, that's pretty much that entire shelf behind me. And I think that one of the—trying to think the right word, access to cultural cookbooks. I think that that is also one of the other things that really pushed my cooking over the edge was that there are so many other cultures that do vegetarian cooking amazingly well. Using different spices and flavors and, or just vegetables in general. So many cultures treat them with such respect and have such great flavor behind them, that it started to really inspire me to kind of blend what I've been doing up until—I really started diving more into cookbooks, and in bringing a lot of that knowledge into cooking. 

And then just, it's odd to think of some positives to come out of the past year and a half. But cooking three meals a day of just stuff that I wanted to cook. Just being like, ‘Ok, what sounds good? What can I make today,’ I think, has really pushed me over into this territory that I can really make my cooking my own and run with it.

Alicia: And what can people kind of expect from Cook Casual that might be different from what they got from Naturally Ella?

Erin: So really, the inspiration behind the zine, it's not—the zine is pretty much purely recipes. Because again, I just wanted that tactile experience. But the way I structured the recipes, I really wanted it to be as though people were coming over for a meal. One of the things I love doing is that when I have people over for dinner, I really make sure to try and balance the meal out. 

I have a really specific memory of when I was at this fancy restaurant downtown and I was going on this farmers’ market tour with the chef, and they brought us back and they had prepared a meal and everyone else got this beautiful fish with beans under it. And I literally just got the pile of beans. And I'm not complaining, I love beans. But it was literally just beans and oil was my main course. And I was like, ‘Really, dude, you couldn't have done-’

It always felt to me that being a bit like the vegetarian meal was always the second thought, right? It was always the like, ‘Oh, what can we shove on a plate for the vegetarian? I'm so sorry, what was the question? 

Alicia: Oh, no, what can people expect from Cook Casual that’s different? 

Erin: And so really how I build out the recipes is it's like I go with a main course and two sides. And I'm always trying to balance texture, flavor, protein, ’cause that was another thing that I always felt lacking in vegetarian meals, right? How am I having a balanced meal? 

And so, I really orient the recipes. There's four sets of three recipes that are meant to—people can make them as a meal. It's how I would serve them. Because I do really try to keep in mind—if I have a rich dish, I want to balance it with something fresh and maybe a bit acidic, and then something that maybe has a little bit of heat to it. And so, the recipes are kind of oriented towards that. But at the same time, they don't have to be prepared like that. 

And then I just try my best to make sure that—because the way I cook is very component based, right? I constantly have all these sauces and other things in my refrigerator. So I want to inspire people to be like, ‘Ok, well, you can make this one thing, but then you can make it five different ways. Using this one thing five different ways and create completely different awesome meals from it.’

Everything I feel like I've been doing comes back to this inspiration side of things, just to be like, ‘It's awesome.’ I want to look at eating less meat as a glass half-full kind of thing, right? We don't need to compare it to the meat dishes, right? It can be its own thing. It doesn't need to be compared to anything. It's completely just live like this. 

My son and I have conversations about the idea of eating meat. So, we're primarily a vegetarian household. My husband was not. I remember the first time I made him breakfast with whole-grain pancake mix and made my own maple syrup. He was like, ‘What is this? What is this weird stuff?’ And so, over time, though, we, as a family, have grown into eating this style, to the point of—my son, the other day, he's like, ‘Wait, there are people who eat meat every day? What?’ And I looked at him and I was like, ‘Yeah, dude. Society.’

To realize, though, that change can happen. My husband's like, ‘You can use me as an example that we can eat less meat. And it doesn't have to be a bad experience.’

Alicia: No, for sure. Yeah. 

I mean, I've had that impact on my fiancé as well, I guess, where he doesn't really eat any meat unless someone is eating something he would like in front of him. Then, he’ll share with people. If my family was eating lamb chops, and he loves lamb. And of course, I'm like ‘Uch’ about that. But I can't tell him what to do. 

Of course, the occasional meat, I guess, makes people realize that it's like, ‘Why would I do this every day?’ I think once you make that consciousness shift to ‘I don't eat meat every day of my life,’ when you do eat meat a couple of times a year: Why would I need to do this every day? This is enough.

Erin: And you know, too, I think that it really helps with the idea that when you do eat meat, it should be something that is special. 

Alicia: Special, yeah.

Erin: Yeah. And it should be treated as such. And you should source it as such.

I have a lot of respect for people who buy whole animals and—if you're going to eat meat, do it well. And I have a lot of respect for that. Because again, I'm not naive to think that we're gonna be a planet who doesn't eat meat. 

Alicia: Same. [Laughs.]

Erin: Yeah, right. 

And so, I actually really love seeing when people talk about that. And there's a dairy that I get some yogurt and halloumi-like cheese from. And they're very much trying to steward the land. They talk about that. You can tour. I want to see more transparency, and more support of farms that are doing that, whether that's meat or dairy or eggs or any animal product. Just because I think that that's really the key forward or the path forward. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

And I've noticed that you use your platform a lot to talk about different political and social justice matters. I saw you respond in real time to some criticism, that was—it was really interesting. And it's funny, because I think I talked to my friends about when that happened. And we were like, ‘Oh, wow, she's really cool’ about you. 

The food world is really conservative, and really, sometimes sort of anti-political in some ways, or apolitical. And people really try to keep those things quiet, despite how much these things are tied to our foodways and our ways of cooking and our ways of talking about cuisines.

And so, how did food and politics become connected for you? And how did you decide to kind of be open and transparent on your platform about your own politics and concerns around social justice?

Erin: I think again, moving to California really played a key role in that. Just because, again, I feel to be here, it's really hard. You can't ignore it. I mean, you can. People do. 

There's many different facets to why I've chosen to do that. The other one was, I know that this tends to be something that people get really frustrated with me about. When I say I actually have a problem with people who are really, really on the vegan train, animal-rights style. Because I'm like, ‘Ok, great. I'm all for animal rights. But what about the farmworkers?’

It just seems to me we throw away a lot of other things that are really important. Because  without farm workers, we don't have our food. We're in a huge drought right now in California. Many of the reservoirs are at the lowest they've ever been. Groundwater is drying up. There's communities that don't know how much longer they're going to have water. 

And agriculture here in California, I think, accounts for something like 40 percent. I like throwing out statistics, but not always know the exact amounts. I think it's around 40 percent of water usage on a given year. And so people are always talking about like, ‘Well, agriculture needs to use less water,’ but at the same time, it's—we're feeding people. What is happening here?

And so, for me to be living here, it just kind of felt wrong to not share about it. Because I know when I lived in Illinois, I didn't really pay attention. When you're not in a space, it's much easier to ignore what's happening, for better or worse. 

I already had this audience that in some way already does care about food, right? They follow me because they're either trying to eat less meat. They just want to eat more vegetables. Any of this stuff, right? They are people who are already looking at the way they're eating. And so, I felt like I could continue to provide more information to really get people to think more about ‘ok, well, so you're thinking about what you're eating. Now, let's talk about where it comes from, the transparency behind that.’ I think that's such a big thing, because it's so easy to just assume we're always going to have these things. But that's not necessarily the case for many reasons. 

So yeah, I think that it's really important to talk about that stuff. And yeah, it's not always popular. Because people don't really want to be challenged. A lot of people don't want to have to think about it. They have the privilege to not to not have to think about it. And that's tough. Because I think pretty soon we're all going to have to think about this, as climate change continues to change how we view the world. How we grow things. I know that there's a lot of farmers right now who are struggling. I've just read, I think, an article recently about almond orchards. They just walk away from the land. There's no water to do anything. 

I think that as we go forward, it's only going to be more important to know about these things and what's going to happen and any ways that we can kind of help to maybe mitigate that.

Alicia: Sure. 

And this is wildly different topic. But I wanted to ask you about pizza and how you got into making pizza, because you make the most gorgeous pizzas. And I really want to get one of those ovens. But I haven't taken the plunge yet. [Laughs.]

Erin: I love cooking with fire. And that's one of those things that I feel I wasn't always—it's not something that I would have just randomly picked up. Especially, I feel anytime anyone sees a woman cooking over fire, they're like, ‘What is happening here?’

And so, I had already kind of started really getting into making pizza. It's something that we eat weekly. There wasn't really not a great pizza place near us. And so, it was kind of a necessity to try and figure out like, ‘Can I make something delicious here?’ And then I started researching the oven, and I was like, ‘I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna do it. It sounds like fun.’

And I regretted it for about six months. Because I was like, ‘This is horrible. I can't figure this out at all.’ Since it’s something that we do week after week, I just kept figuring it out. And now, it's my favorite thing that I look forward to every week, just ’cause there's something really fun about throwing wood in the back of an oven and churning out a pizza. 

People love pizza. And so, it's a really easy way to also show people creativity in vegetarian cooking. My pizzas are not traditional. I will throw that out there. My pizzas are not traditional. But I think that it can be really fun to play around with toppings and ingredients and the seasonality behind it. 

It's an easy way to show cooking in a seasonal setting, and kind of get people excited. Because people—it's so funny. I feel I should just become a pizza account, because those were the most engaged posts on my Instagram because people love pizza. And so I found it a really easy way to showcase kind of, again, more inspiration for eating vegetables. 

I'm like, ‘Do you need the oven? No, you don't. You can make great pizza in your regular oven. Is it a lot of fun? Hell yes, it is a lot of fun.’ [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, I think you've sort of answered it, but I'll ask anyway. For you, is cooking a political act?

Erin: So, it's so funny. When I read that question, I just kind of chuckled because I know over the past year and a half in food media, it seems like people are like, ‘Well, duh. Why would you need to say that?’

But it's interesting, because anytime—it kind of goes back to what you talked about, what you asked about earlier, where it's anytime I post stuff that's not necessarily directly related to food. It could be something like immigration, right? People are like, ‘Why are you talking about this? Stay in your lane. Stick to food. Yeah, yada.’

But at the end of the day, so much comes back to food. Obviously, immigration is tied to food. And so, yes, food is extremely political, I think, because of where we're at across the board. And I think that's why it's important to keep talking about it as such. I think a lot of people in food media know it is, but to the average person who is just a home cook, they haven't made that mental switch yet, necessarily. They haven't looked at something that they're cooking and been like, ‘Ok, what all goes into this?’ 

And so, I think it's really important to continue talking about food through that lens. Because I think the more we do, the more we can change, kind of potentially have impact, essentially, because demand drives supply. And so, the conglomerate food companies aren't going to change until people demand it. And so, I think the more that we can get just the average home cook to be thinking about this stuff, I think the better chance we have at some sort of impact. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. 

Erin: Yeah, thank you for having me.

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Listen now | Talking to the author of 'Food in Cuba' about how agriculture works on the island, what makes for "a decent meal," and more.

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People assume I’ve interviewed Tunde Wey—the artist, writer, and cook whose work has been the subject of other people’s award-winning profiles—before because I’m a big public fan of his work, but I hadn’t felt myself properly prepared. His work touches on everything from racism to immigration to colonialism to capitalist extraction, and I didn’t really know my way into a focused interview. I was nervous, basically. But I think we had a good conversation, one that gets at a lot of issues with food as a lens toward bigger systems and problems.

In many cases—most cases, if I’m honest—I’m doing an interview in order to work out a problem I’ve been thinking about, and this one was no different. We waded into whether food can really be an agent of change in a capitalist world, because I’ve been wavering on that idea myself, and Wey has the economic knowledge to discuss why it isn’t so in depth. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Tunde. Thank you so much for taking the time. 

Tunde: Thank you. 

(:07) Alicia: And I know you are in Lagos, now. Can you tell us about how that's going, what you're doing there?

Tunde: Oh, I'm actually not in Lagos. [Laughs.] I was supposed to fly two weeks ago, and my COVID result didn’t come in time. So I just pushed for my flight till a couple of months from now. Next month or something.

Alicia: Ok, cool. 

Well, can you tell us about where you grew up and what you ate?

Tunde: Yeah.

I grew up in Lagos. I ate regional Western Nigerian food, I guess. So I'm Yoruba, so I ate Yoruba food. My mom is Edo, so I ate that food as well. My dad is also part Efik, so I ate that as well. So I'd Yoruba, Efik, and sort of the Delta region food, so Edo, Itsekiri food. And then we ate, I guess, white food too.

Alicia: Which white food? 

Tunde: When we were growing up, we used to call it breakfast things. But when I came here, then it was lunch meats and s**t like that. So sausages and hams and stuff like that. So, we ate that. So it was a mix. 

We usually would eat that on Sundays. My dad would cook, and we'd go out to this store. My data would buy a whole bunch of things, and then he'll cook. Pasta. My mom would mix s**t like beef stroganoff, just random s**t. She went to school in England, so she came back with certain notions around food. So, we have those kinds of things. 

And growing up in Nigeria, I came from a middle-class background. It wasn't out of the norm for folks to eat that kind of stuff. So cereals and pancakes, stuff like that. Plus, we also watched a lot of American television with that kind of stuff on the TV.

Alicia: Right, right. Yeah. 

And you self-identify as an artist, a cook and a writer. And I wanted to ask, which were you first and how did the rest come? [Laughter.] 

Tunde: Which was up first? [Laughs.] 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Which identity? Or which came to you first, in terms of your work? 

Tunde: Right. 

I don't know how to answer that question. I feel like it just depends on who I'm, who I am talking to. I think I say I'm an artist because it's just easier to convey what I'm trying to do. I remember, I was trying to raise money for a restaurant. And I was telling people that this restaurant is not going to make any money. And they couldn't understand that. They were like, ‘Huh, what does this mean?’ But then if I was talking to, say, a curator, and I'm like, ‘Well, this project is this and I need this amount of money,’ then they get it. So it just depends on who I'm talking to. 

So I guess in the chronology of what is on public records? Artist came last, and it's probably still not on record. So, maybe that’s the first time.

Alicia: Well, it is difficult, I think, for multi-disciplinary people to use that word, to make themselves legible, I suppose, in a world where you have to make everything legible to obtain what you need to do your work at all. You have to be very, very strict about what you are. That is really funny that saying artist allowed you to get the capital for the projects that you needed, that you wanted to do. [Laughs.]

Tunde: Yeah, I have a friend who's a curator. She's a friend, but she's also a colleague. She's based in Pittsburgh, Chenoa, and she was the first person—I did a dinner in New Orleans, and she happened to be there ’cause she was there for the opening of some hotel or something. And she had read about it. She just came through. And then, that's how we became friends. But she saw it as art. And then she gave me sort of the words to be able to describe myself to myself and to other people. And then she sponsored the project as art. So I'm like, ‘All right, I f**k with this.’

Alicia: Right. 

And your work focuses on power, colonialism, capitalism, racism. You've written for food sections and food outlets. But lately, you've been self-publishing, I wanted to ask if that was a conscious decision to move out of traditional media, or whether this is something that—if you're just not finding the space in food media.

Tunde: Yeah. 

So I'm not sure how it is for you. But I never pitched anything, just because that's not—I didn't grow up. I mean, I wasn't a journalist or anything so I didn't understand pitching. And the way I got my writing gig with the Chronicle was through a relationship. All that to say is if I want to publish something, I don't know who to contact. And I also don't like rejection. 

And then also, I'm not necessarily interested—because this has happened a couple of times, when people will reach out to me and then I’ll propose something and they have a different idea of what I should do, which is fine. But I just tend to want to write what I want to write. So I think that the medium of posting on Instagram or using my newsletter just seems to make more sense. And I have been recently fortunate where I'm not reliant on my writing to bring in an income. So it's fine to just release it on Instagram.

I remember when I put it out, when I put out—when I started putting out my essays on Instagram, a friend told me, she was like, ‘This is very difficult to read.’ [Laughter.] I think it was this awkward, ‘I can't read your 75-post essay on food.’ And I was like, ‘All right, f**k it.’ And I kept doing it.

But I think there's something about, interesting about playing with the medium, at least, on the ‘Gram, which making the posts be these essays that nobody wants to read. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, I mean, you've been written about a lot, interviewed a lot . People kind of set you up one way as sort of a provocateur in food. Do you feel that that gets your work right? It's funny to ask you this while interviewing you, but when you're—when people interview you and write about you, do you—How does that feel? Do you see yourself when someone actually is writing about you?

Tunde: I mean, I guess it depends on what was written or, you know? 

Yeah, I don't know. I think sometimes I step into—and I think you get this too—people writing about you, too, right?

Alicia: Not really. [Laughs.]

Tunde: Then you do more of the writing?

Alicia: I mean, I do want to understand this because it is—I have a book coming out and everything. And I know it's going to be a weird position to be in.

Tunde: Oh, right. To be quizzed. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Tunde: Yeah.

I guess it just depends on who was writing and what they’re writing about. I think this is not because of anything that I've done but just just who I am, that when I read something about me, I'm interested. So I separate myself from whoever—from the person who's reading it, me, from the person who is being portrayed in whatever the piece. And I'm just looking at it interestingly. So if it's interesting, I'm interested. If it's not interesting, then I'm not interested. 

But then all these labels too, they all find it—they all find use for me in context. If somebody is calling me provacautour, depending on the context, that's true. Other times, that's not true. Depending on how I feel, too, that's true. So yeah, it's just all those things. 

How would you describe me to yourself?

Alicia: I think of you as a writer and an artist. And I don't think of you necessarily as a provocateur. I think of you as someone who bends the narrative in different ways than we are accustomed to seeing in food especially, which is a very, very boring cultural field. [Laughs.] It's a young cultural field, I suppose, in terms of cultural criticism. And so, I do think that anyone who says anything somewhat outside the norm of the narratives we get gets labeled an activist. A provocateur. 

Tunde: Yeah. 

I imagine that, depending on who is talking about your work, they are saying the same thing. So again, the context is everything. To a lot of folks, I am—people have told me this to my face—I'm not radical at all.

Alicia: Yeah, no, I feel that way, too. Just by doing anything for money, I am ultimately a bad person and not radical enough. And that's fine with me. I've really made peace with that. I think in the last year or so, it's like, ‘I'm sorry, I have to live.’ [Laughs.]

Tunde: Did you make more peace as you made more money? Is that how it happened? 

Alicia: Exactly. Yeah. [Laughter.] 

I was like, ‘You know what, there's no use for—I'm of better use to people this way. [Laughs.] I'm of better use to people when I'm not broke and worried and have to go work in a bar, or do whatever the f**k to to keep myself going. I'm a better writer when I don't have to worry about those things.’

Tunde: Yeah.

I think having resources, whether you want to call them money or whatever, that is pretty pertinent to survival. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, you can't do good work if you're not—if you're worried about survival, and so it is what it is.

Tunde: Some people don't worry about money, and so their resources are different. But most of us need it.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, I wanted to ask you about last year’s ‘Let It Die’ essay was a big hit. Was it the first time we wrote an essay on Instagram? Or maybe it was just it really took off. People were obsessed with it. 

Tunde: Right. I don't know if it was the first time. I don't remember. 

Oh, sorry. Was that a question?

Alicia: Yeah. Tell me about ‘Let It Die,’ yeah. [Laughs.]

unde: Oh. Yeah, well, I do want to correct one thing, but transgression is just part of how I see the media landscape, which is I don't know how much it took off until Helen Rosner wrote about it. I'm pretty sure it didn't take off until Helen Rosner wrote about it. [Laughs.] So yeah, so that was it. It just happens to be the essay that Helen Rosner decided to write about. Not to say that the essay is not strong. But to say that for it to get to a certain critical mass of people, it needs a lever, and the New Yorker was the lever.

Alicia: Right. 

And around that time, though, you did tell WBUR ‘What is important to us is not necessarily how it tastes. It's more about the theater around the thing.’ And I think this is what I was talking about when I was saying you've been bending narratives that we're not used to seeing. 

And that most people take things very literally, I think, ’cause I wrote something about the death of the chef and people were totally up in arms about, I want to put the guillotine on chefs or something. And it's like, ‘No, that's not the idea. The idea is like, ‘What does this idea mean to us? What does this narrative mean to us? How can we change that narrative so that we create different systems that are better for people?’ But food media at large, I think, is extremely literal in its thinking.

And so, I wanted to ask you what do you expect as a result of your work? Do you have an expectation around anything concrete, or do you have an expectation more around changing ideas and changing narratives?

Tunde: Yeah, so I think that I'm interested in really big things. To be very specific, I'm interested in changing the material conditions of people who are disenfranchised, specifically people in Nigeria, West Africa, Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa. That is my interest. 

So, do I think writing is gonna do that? No. Do I even think that any of the work that I do affects the material conditions of folks in such a way as to change them permanently, or even temporarily? No. But then maybe people impacted by some of the work to think differently, to act differently on an individual scale, and depending on their sphere of influence, have that different action influence other people? I think, possibly. Yeah, that's what I think.

Alicia: Yeah.

No, and in your recent essay about returning to your home of Nigeria, you write, ‘All these convoluted numbers to say that Nigeria is fucked, and it is this ‘fuckedness’ that is termed underdevelopment.’ And I love this essay. It was such an immediate—it was just really good. The writing was really good. 

And so, there are so many types of food system futures that are discussed from the global north perspective. And I saw connections between this piece and your piece, ‘what is profit, and how is it made,’ where you wrote, ‘for capitalist food production to flourish it has to eliminate indigenous food production, and one important way this dismantling occurs is through displacement.’ 

And these are connected by the idea that Indigenous food production, the ‘underdeveloped country’ , requires change by colonialist entities by capitalist production, which we already know is unsustainable. And so much of what I get stuck on right now in my writing is that one of the only ways we've created concrete responses to these problems and to these structures developed by colonialism is that we have fair-trade food. And we have these other food projects working in the global south. You've worked with Burlap & Barrel. And it's kind of just a re-tinkering of the old systems where the capital is still concentrated somewhere else. It's just through these sort of really pined means that we are kind of trying to make more equity there. 

And so, you know, I guess I wanted to ask you what do you think of these kinds of food projects? What are the limits of working with them, and what are the possibilities of working with them?

Tunde: Yeah, wow. 

Yeah, I think the problem is big, obvious. Ok, the problem that I'm talking about, which is a racist problem, talking about Nigeria, which is kind of getting to West Africa and the continent as a whole, because Nigeria is the biggest country on the continent in terms of population size, and GDP. Fair trade doesn't solve that problem. By fair trade, I mean this—engaging in global capitalist trade, we're trying to do it with sort of fair, more ‘fair terms.’ That doesn't solve our problem. 

Yeah, that problem is historic. It’s contemporary. So I don't know, I know that that is its own problem. I know that. What solves the problem? I don't quite know yet. I'm still thinking about it. 

And I also know that there’s a solution. So it's not the end of my thoughts, and after it’s going to emerge. I think that whatever people are terming radical, whoever is talking about that, that sort of radical progress happens in stages. 

We're not going to end capitalism tomorrow, or in 10 years. At least, the people who I f**k with who think about this kind of stuff think about it in in terms of transitions and long periods of time and a continuum. I don't think of our economic system or capitalism as this system that holds everything that is bad. I think that what is true to all the different economic systems possible is—as humans, we are the constant. What is inherent in us is to a certain extent to be selfish and to—not selfish, but to have differences in wants and needs and perspectives.

Anyway, all that to say is we can move from a capitalist mode of production to, I don't know, socialist or communist, and we could still experience the same, or some of the same things that are happening with the degradation of the planet with exploitation and other things. So, fair trade is not the answer. That's what I’m saying. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Yeah, no.

I was writing a piece about sugar, and I just had this moment of being like, ‘Everything—there is no way to fix this at all.’ I mean, there are ways to fix it, but it's so historically rotten at its core that it is—the whole world would have to change for our relationship to sugar to not be something completely extractive and completely—Just to take one thing, one foodstuff and look at it. The whole system would have to change for this to not be an absolutely terrible product for us to use every single day. When we think about equitable trade, it's just such a limited idea. 

Tunde: Well, just to be just to be specific, when we talk—I'm assuming that when we're talking about fair trade, we're talking about the stickers they put on products. Not talking about global trade, which is a completely different thing, which—that will change everything if it was actually fair trade between countries.

I'm reading this book, and the writer talks about—or at least so far has referenced this idea of comparative advantage, which, when I was in school, in primary school in Nigeria, so—or secondary school—I learned that comparative advantage is how you grow your economy. It’s you find out what you're really good at, and then you develop that and you sell it to other people and people buy them. Then you have this trade. 

But the way the global system is what happens to be what, say, Nigeria is good at is what Nigeria has been shaped to be good at to benefit the West. So Nigeria happens to be good at having mineral resources in the ground. Then it has a, an overdeveloped extractive sector to the detriment of everything else. 

So all of that to say is that real fair trade doesn't happen on a product by product basis.To your point about sugar, the whole ship needs to change.

Alicia: Change. Yeah, exactly. 

No, and as you mentioned before, your project is about getting resources to those who have historically lacked access to resources. And whether that's you charge white people more for food, or you price an issue of Sandwich that you get started at $100, or the salt that was $100. 

And I think about these things constantly. There's a literal law where Americans from the U.S. get, can pay 4% in their taxes. But Puerto Ricans aren't able to get that same break. And then now, there's this problem with the bitcoin people buying up all the property. The tourists have made where I live, Old San Juan, so unlivable that basically anyone who owns property is looking to sell it to the highest bidder, which is going to basically just mean displacement by bitcoin bros ‘cause they have the capital In cash to buy it. 

And I think, of course, in terms of food about everything. So I'm like, ‘All right, how if we-’ I think we just talked about this, but if you—if we saw those real changes on a fundamental global level, what would the food world look like? What would change in the way we have a relationship to food? 

Tunde: Yeah.

Full disclosure, I'm invested in Bitcoin. Not on that scale. 

Ok, so maybe I’ll say something controversial. I think that there's a difference between fault and responsibility. So we're all responsible, but—and responsibility has their degrees of responsibility. So I think as long as you're born and you participate in the system, you're responsible. But depending on your power and your sort of subjective position, that responsibility either grows or shrinks. But then there's sort of people at fault, but even that is a very complicated thing, too. 

So I feel it’s maybe a little disingenuous to complain about the effects of the economic system if you are actively participating in the economic system. And by that I mean that what—the sort of speculative nature of Bitcoin is the same, is not the exact same thing, but it's connected to, say, the continuous production of vehicles every year. Last year, Ford produced 1.5 million vehicles. Tesla produced 500, or manufactured 500,000 vehicles. That sort of investment in consumption goods, and the proliferation of credit and debt and all that s**t. That s**t is connected to Bitcoin. That s**t is connected to the housing market soaring. That s**t is connected to everything. 

So we can pick and choose. We can pick and choose if we want to, but the truth is that it's all connected. So, of course, that's what's gonna happen in certain communities, because that's what money does in this economic system. That is not to say that it's right, or it's going. I'm just saying that. 

And I feel if maybe a lot more people were talking about the, were actively trying in little ways and big ways to address the economic reality, in general, as opposed to specifically when it makes them uncomfortable, then things would be—I don't know about better, but things would maybe be different. 

I'm also just not very interested in the food system as a lens to experience transformation, just because it's connected to everything else. I don't necessarily think that it is the lever that could change things. I’m sure it’s one of the many levers, but I think that it's probably not the first lever, if that makes sense. Did that make sense or not? 

Alicia: That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. [Laughs.]

Tunde: Just be more specific. I think that monetary policy, fiscal policy, reining in, say, the financial industry, financial services. That drives the economy. And addressing that probably has a greater impact than working on, working directly on food policy. But they're all connected.

Alicia: Well, do you feel that you're getting away from food as a lens then to look at the world and politics?

Tunde: No, I don't think so. 

Food is a lens to appreciate all the politics. I think that when you're talking about policy and changing things on a global scale—if you're talking about sugar, for example. Changing how sugar is produced is just a, maybe a really difficult way to change the system if the whole system needs to change. But focusing on, say, the global mechanics of fair trade is a better way to do that. But if you look at sugar production and consumption, then you see the global mechanics of trade, and these other aspects of the system that are kind of fucked up. But when it comes to actualizing change, I'm not sure that food is the place that we start from.

Alicia: No, that makes complete sense. Yeah. [Laughs.] We don't maybe acknowledge that enough. When I say we, I say food writers, that we're not enough engaged with all the other aspects of the world and the reasons these problems ultimately exist. It’s all about—Yeah, these small things that maybe allow you to see the bigger picture, but don't give you the tools to necessarily engage on a deep intellectual level with those issues. If that makes sense. [Laughs.]

Tunde: Yeah, that makes sense. 

Alicia: But well, actually, to get back to food, because you have—I know that you worked with the Beard Foundation. And then also on the Sandwich Magazine you worked with—I think, Sir Kensington's owns that, which is owned by Unilever. So you've worked with these big organizations that have a lot of kind of power. But you also have written that ‘And in all spaces, food and society, we see the faithful and continuous reproduction of this social control, which reinforces the idea that white domination is the natural order of things.’

Tunde: I’ve said some s**t, huh?

Alicia: I'm sorry, I read, re-read everything you've written, obviously, to talk to you. I know, it's weird to have your stuff read back to you. 

What do you see the role of interacting with these kinds of—the Beard Foundation with, a magazine owned by a company, what is the purpose of this engagement? 

Tunde: I do want to shout out my partner Ruth on the magazine. 

So, I guess it just depends. So, what did I work with the Beard Foundation on? I don’t remember.

Alicia: Did you edit some pieces, I think, for the blog? I know Mayukh wrote a piece for you. 

Tunde: Yeah, I wrote a piece. Yes. I just wrote a piece about the work that I was doing. At the time, Mitchell was the VP. Yeah, he reached out and I wrote a piece. 

Yeah, it just depends. But if we're talking about money and capitalism. This is how I feel about money. Nobody owns money. That s**t is for everybody. Like they say, money belongs to the game. I don't care. I don't have a problem taking money. I think there's certain monies that I wouldn't take, not because I think the money is ‘bad.’ It’s just that it’d make me look crazy. Yeah. And I don't want to look crazy. 

Money’s so not real. And it has such real consequences. And nobody owns it in my mind. It belongs to everybody, or it should. So I'll take money. All that to say, organizations and just the way our economy or the global system is structured is that capital accumulates in certain places. It accumulates in the states and accumulates in corporations and organizations and individuals. It is unevenly distributed. So I don't care who you are. If you're looking for some sort of sustenance, you're not printing dollars or mining gold by yourself. You have to go to the deposits where they are. And huge corporations—they have the money. The state has the money. By the state, I mean, the nation state’s structure. 

Sir Kensington, specifically, and Unilever, the kind of work that we were trying to do at the time, Ruth and I, was to talk about certain global systems. It was fantastic that it was Unilever, because Unilever is an antagonist in our story. And we had conversations with them about that. Ruth and I were interested in the possibility of extracting just something so small from them, something tiny relative to how much they've taken from Africa, from Nigeria, in particular for me. So to me, that made sense to work with them on that. 

So, yeah, it depends on the opportunity. But I think when we're talking about money and resources, the folks who have that money are the ones who are distributing that money. And so if you want it, whether you get it directly or indirectly from them, you're getting it from the same source. So, that’s how I think about that.

Alicia: No, it's a really useful way of thinking about things. [Laughs.] ’Cause I think if you're very online, and you're sort of on the left, all of this becomes a very, very personal responsibility issue rather than an issue of taking the money from who has it when you need it. And every move you make is sort of either an endorsement or a rejection of massive things, when actually it's really none of that. It's a useful way of thinking about things that I think isn't—it doesn't get enough attention, to talk about it in that way.

Tunde: Yeah.

There's obviously money that comes with caveats. And most money does, soif  the caveat sort of infringes on certain things for me, then I won’t take that money. But if it's relatively chill—for example, with the magazine, I think they told us that we couldn't specifically—we couldn't make the whole magazine about Unilever as an evil corporation. That would be a little too much, right? And then we're like, ‘Sure.’ It doesn't mean that we didn't critique what Unilever's stands for? Whatever. So there's that. 

But I think more about now, more about how—I just think about how I'm hoarding money, as opposed to where I'm getting money? So, if I get money, I think about like, ‘Okay, this money that I have now, what am I going to do with this money? How can I use money to further my mission?’ And then I think in that way, I think of my stewardship of resources as opposed to wondering about the optics, which is like, ‘How do I get it?’ Which is I do, but I'm less interested in the optics and more interested in how the money that I have can maybe do something different. But it's such a small number that—

Alicia: [Laughs.] That's extremely useful. Thank you for that. 

—film projects. 

Tunde: I'm sorry, I lost the first part of that question. 

Alicia: Are you working more in film now?

Tunde: Yeah. 

So my production partner and I, Ruth and I, we got a grant. And we're working on a docu—series on food, using food to explore the sort of larger questions. So yeah, that's sort of what we're doing. 

Alicia: That's exciting. Yeah. 

Tunde: And speaking of money, and—sorry, just one thing and the grant. We got money from a couple of foundations. So you have people who maybe take money from foundations, but then criticize how other people make their money off foundations. A lot of them are invested in the stock market. I don't care if you're invested in ESG or whatever. You're invested in a very speculative medium. And that sort of speculation, that sort of idle capital that is sitting in bank accounts, or what do you call them? In ledgers? That is money that is, or that is a system that is deeply exploitative. 

So, we don't get to pick and choose. I try not to, especially, even with money. And I just think about how the money that I have, again, to what I say, can be used differently. 

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is cooking a political act? 

Tunde: Just at home, just chilling and cooking?

Alicia: Cooking in general. 

I ask this question to everyone. It's usually just a kind of a Rorschach test of what they think of the word ‘cooking’ and the word ‘political.’ [Laughs.]

Tunde: I don't know. I mean, if I'm just cooking by myself, no. If I'm doing a dinner series, or something, then possibly. I could be wrong, but I don't think of cooking—I think identity is political. So, sometimes just being is political. But all of this is contextual. Your identity in a particular place is political. But I don't think of cooking as an identity. I think of cooking as—yeah, it's an act. I don't think of necessarily actions as inherently political. Most things are contextual. I think it’s not everything. So, just depends on the context. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Tunde: Yeah, I have a question for you, actually.

Alicia: Ok. [Laughs.]

Do you want to ask me while we're recording, or–

Tunde: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Alicia: Ok.

Tunde: So something that is just fascinating about—to me—about your work is, and I could be wrong, because I get your newsletter, but I don't read it every week. But I read enough to know that you talk about the same things. By that I mean, your perspective is the same, which is anti-capitalist. I want to say anti-racist, but I'm not sure how you describe yourself.

But you have this perspective. And you keep writing like every week, right? Every week you’re writing, every week. And just, how haven't you exhausted? No, really, I'm so serious, ’cause I feel I—when I wrote for the Chronicle, I wrote four essays. And I'm like, ‘The next four are going to be about the same thing. And the next eight after that.’ And so I'm just curious about how you keep the s**t fresh.

Alicia: Right.

No, I mean, I think a lot of people would say I don't keep it fresh, that I have a shtick, that I’m just always saying, ‘Capitalism is bad. Climate change is bad. We have to stop climate change. We have to eat less meat,’ like that. I just bang the same drums over and over again, which is valid. I think I have a beat, so to speak, as a writer. These are the things I cover, is how our cultural relationships to food are part of these larger systems—of economy, policy, white supremacy, all a part of larger systems that control our everyday ways of being and thinking. And that is my beat. That is what I write about. 

But I do think, obviously, within that there is so much to write about. There is so much to think about. I don't know. I think during the more peak of the pandemic, I really exhausted everything that I had to say for years, but no one ever let me say as a food writer. And then I think now, I'm interacting more with the world again and finding more ways into the things I have always written about and thought about, but they're more rooted in my interactions with other people. 

I don't know. I've always been a compulsive writer. So it's not hard for me. This is the natural way in which I communicate. It's easier for me to write something down then it is to say it. Yeah, just to communicate in writing. That's my way of communicating. Yeah, I'm happy to talk to you, but I find it is—I'm going to feel tired after I do this, because I—it's a less natural way for me to communicate, you know?

Tunde: Yeah, no, I dig it. I think that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, if that's easier for you, then it makes sense that you do that. Because most people say the same thing, anyway, over and over again with their mouth. But you’re just writing it. 

Another thing that I want to tell you is I met a man through you. Mr. Byrne.

Alicia: Mark Byrne. 

Tunde: Yeah, from Good Vodka. I was in Lagos. So this is a super short story. We're filming for the docu series in Lagos in Kogi State, which is central Nigeria. And we had this really delicious local drink. I was blown away by it. And I just kept thinking, ‘F**k, this is so delicious. I need to f*****g bottle this and sell it or something.’

And then I was in Lagos a couple of—a month after.I had read the interview that you did with him. And then I'm like, ‘I need to call this man or email this man and see if he'll work with me.’ So I emailed him, and he agreed to work with me. So I don't know, sometime in some soon future we will be releasing a Nigerian palm spirit. 

Alicia: Oh, that's amazing!

Tunde: Yeah. It's not a commercially viable product. I guess it's a project about exploitation again. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, Good Vodka is basically that as well. I mean, it's a product and it's a commercial product. But it's also more about how spirits exist and are made. The history of spirits is, it's usually made from waste rather than growing things to make spirits, which is a bad way of doing it. [Laughs.]

But that's amazing. I love that. I love talking about—and maybe when it comes out, we'll talk again, but I love talking about spirits. [Laughs.] I love talking about alcohol. Because I do think people have a really weird and complicated relationship to it, obviously. But it's nice to talk about it on a level of appreciation rather than the very, very American perspective on alcohol, which is wildly problematic. [Laughs.]

Tunde: I don't know much about spirits. I just know to the point, earlier point about seeing all the systems and everything, I just know that just a really small thing, the Indigenous production of alcohol at scale. That s**t is happening. Folks in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria servicing half the country with this s**t. And you're doing it from these small, small camps, all these different small camps by the water. And so just thinking about thinking about what that means, and thinking about how the disparities that exist between, say, African production and European production is what inspires me to do this kind of thing as opposed to like the actual food product or beverage product. So yeah, I’m excited about it. 

Alicia: That's awesome. Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, thank you again, I'm so excited about that, and everything else. 

Tunde: Absolutely. Thank you.

Alicia: Thank you.

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Hannah Howard, author of the memoirs Feast: True Love In and Out of the Kitchen and the forthcoming Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family, is a wildly generous writer. She gives of herself and her experiences with such vulnerability and verve, to the point that I wanted to ask her if she is holding something back for herself. The new memoir chronicles becoming a wife and a mother, as well as leaving the restaurant and food retail world for writing. She spends time with women in food that have influenced her life and work, but haven’t yet gotten their major accolades. It’s a beautiful testament to the complications of a life of food and words. We talked about why she’s drawn to memoir, how becoming a mother has changed her writing, and the differences between writing and working in restaurants. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for being here. 

Hannah: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia. I'm a big fan, so I’m very excited that you asked me. 

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Hannah: Absolutely. 

I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, with a food loving mom who loved to cook and try new recipes for new cookbooks. So we didn't often have the same thing for dinner twice, which was kind of disappointing when I loved something. 

But one of my best childhood memories is just our Saturday morning grocery procuring pilgrimages, where we would go to our local farmers market. And we'd go to Ma Stallone's, which was this tiny Italian grocery store owned by Mrs. Ma Stallone, who would be making fresh mozzarella in her arm. She had these big arms that would be flapping along, and she would give me a taste. And we would go to this little Egyptian grocery store and stock up on olives and halva, and just just go home with all these goodies. And it was so exciting to see what my mom would concoct from them.

Alicia: [Laughs.] That's really an exciting way to grow up, I think. Wow. 

Hannah: I feel really lucky. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

I was thinking recently about my mom, how on Long Island we didn't have that kind of abundant diversity of things, and when-one day my mom was obsessed with cooking with bulgur wheat, and we went to a million stores and no one had it. 

But yeah. [Laughs.] And then you went on to study creative writing and anthropology at Columbia. So, how did food become such a major force in your life?

Hannah: I really have always loved food. Hanging out in my mom's kitchen always felt like a great place to be. I loved restaurants. I felt the kitchen was at the heart of where the action was. 

And in college, I wanted to have a job. And I was reading Kitchen Confidentialat the time, and I thought that I wanted to work in a restaurant. And I found a job on Craigslist as a hostess for a very old school Michelin-starred French restaurant on the Upper West Side called Picholine. 

And I just fell in love. I fell in love with this whole world that felt both kind of familiar and foreign to me, familiar because that excitement about food and ingredients and what they could become, and that felt so innate to what I cared about. But this whole world of fine dining in New York City was a new territory for me. And it was intimidating and fascinating and very alluring to my 18-year-old self, for sure. So much so that I really dove in and worked in restaurant jobs throughout college and thought that I wanted to have my own restaurant until I spent a bunch of years managing restaurants, and realized that I wanted to be close to restaurants but that maybe the day-to-day operations weren't the best fit for me.

Alicia: Right. It's a hard life for sure. 

And so, you really got super into cheese. There's so much cheese in your books, and you have a very deep expertise about it. What is it about cheese that keeps you excited, engaged, and just really obsessed?

Hannah: There's so many things about cheese that I keep coming back to. One is just that whenever I tell people that I work with cheese, or—people really love it. There is something about cheese that just has a power to make people happy. I don’t know what it is, but there’s that. And I mean, I'm one of them. 

But I think there's also something cool that there's this whole history and tradition and world of cheese, and you—mostly from Europe. Cheese only has a few ingredients. It’s milk, salts, culture, and rennet. And from those ingredients, you can make a creamy brie. Or you could make a super-aged gouda that tastes like butterscotch, or you could make a really nutty cheddar. I think it's kind of this magical alchemy that you just can milk and you can get so much from it. 

And then, I've also really gotten fascinated by learning about how cheese has played a part in humanity and how an-alpine cheeses kept people in the mountains basically alive through these long brutal winters. In Greece, it's the fresh cheese and feta. It's such an integral part of all these cuisines. 

And then in today's world, there is also something about cheese that just seems to attract some really quirky and really amazing people. So I've just loved getting to know the cheese-makers and mongers that I've gotten to connect with.

Alicia: Right. 

And your forthcoming memoir, Plenty, is about forging a career and a community around food. And when did you know that you wanted to move from the restaurant and retail side of food to food media, and how did you make that happen?

Hannah: It's funny that you say that. I just had this kind of pep talk with my husband, because I still work in a way in the retail side of food. I do a lot of food copywriting, which is kind of how I pay my bills. But it's very true that my love is more, is, I write memoirs. My next book is coming out. And I love writing personal essays, and I love writing some journalism as well. 

It's kind of been slow, because I think there's a part of me like, ‘This is the big dream.’ And it feels too good to be true, or it feels intimidating. Definitely not the easiest way in the world to make money. It's definitely a slow-burn book. I know you're in the process, so you know what a long haul it is. 

Alicia: It sucks. [Laughs.]

Hannah: It sucks. It sucks.

It's like this low-hanging fruit of things that I can do and get paid for is much more instantly gratifying. So, there's a lot of reasons that I've been kind of reluctant to dive in. But the more I have, the more I’ve felt happy. So I’ve really tried to kind of find that balance between work that pays the bills and work that brings me creative, juicy joy.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Right. 

And why do you think you’ve focused on memoir? ’Cause this is your second.

Hannah: [Sighs.] [Laughter.] I don't know. And people ask, I think totally rightfully so, they ask-I'm relatively young. I'm 30. I’m almost 34. But that's relatively young. I was 30 when my first book came out. Like, ‘Right, who are you to be sharing your life story?’ 

Alicia: No, I'm not asking that question. No, I'm saying, ‘Yeah, what is as a genre—what about memoir engages you so much?’

Hannah: I feel that I've always had this kind of compulsion to share, maybe to transform things that happened in my life into something, to make something of them. When I was in middle school, I wrote a zine about me and my friends. I just love telling these stories.

For me, it does help me make meaning of things, make sense of things to turn them into stories and share them with people. And I do think some of the memoir—my first one was a lot about my eating, struggling with an eating disorder. And I think too, that whole situation just felt incredibly lonely and difficult and really shameful. Not that it was easy, but being able to take those, even the really embarrassing things, and then turn them into something that I could share with other people. It made it feel a little bit worthwhile, and my hope was that some people would feel less alone. 

And I think that has happened. And now it feels like another really cool sort of alchemy, is to take something really shitty and make something good come of it.

Alicia: Right.

And have you found in food writing the same kind of community that you find when you work in a restaurant or in a store that sells—because I think that those places, when working in a magazine versus working at a bar. It's much more communal. It's a real sense of being in a fight together. And I think that, yeah, writing, it's harder to come by. But you do talk in the book about finding a little bit of that.

Hannah: Yeah.

I think that's one of the biggest things I miss from working in restaurants, for sure. And I think I even mention in the book, one of the women, Tammy, who I wrote about, who has this beautiful restaurant, invited me just to her pre-staff meeting. And just being a part of that, I remembered what I-

Yeah, I really felt oftentimes when I worked in a restaurant, it was a sort of a family. And I don't really get that sense from writing. I think writing can be incredibly lonely. It's you and your laptop. 

But yes, I think in the book I spent a little bit more time with the women I wrote about then just if I was writing something quick and I would talk to someone for an hour, and then write it and then that would be that. But I tried to spend days, multiple days and multiple experiences with these people. And that did feel much more rewarding and satisfying in that kind of connection realm, which I think, ultimately I find, is what I care about and is one of the things I keep coming back to about food, is that it provides that. 

But that's been one of the biggest challenges of being a full-time writer for me. It can be really lonely, especially during the pandemic.

Alicia: Yeah, of course. Yeah. Usually, we would be able to drink and complain together. [Laughs.]

Hannah: Yeah, my days would be—even just these people that I am writing a quick story about, it was so cool to get to spend an hour with them at their kitchen, an hour with them in their olive grove, instead of an hour with them on Zoom. 

Alicia: Zoom, yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, and the book is also a love letter to women in food. And it brought to mind Skirt Steak by Charlotte Druckman. I'm not sure if you've read that. But it's really, I think still, even though we're in the year 2021, such a new thing to still talk about women in food and in the kitchen in a way that really captures all the nuance of what gender has meant in food for so long, where women have always been cooking but it's the men who have gotten the credit for it. And that continues still. 

And so, I wanted to know why you wanted to write the book about the women you've worked with in food. Do you think that women in food are getting more attention? What is kind of your perspective on how things have changed, or how they've stayed the same in terms of the ways we talk about gender and food?

Hannah: Yeah, it's kind of astonishing how far we still have to go, I think. Although women have been cooking and feeding people forever, when men do so it seems to automatically get taken more seriously and garner more respect and more rewards, rewards and awards and all of that. 

But I do feel really hopeful. And one of my reasons for writing about women in food was kind of selfish. I was kind of answering for myself why I've had so many food jobs, and men have almost always been my mentors and my bosses and oftentimes my co-workers. And just like, ‘Why was that?’

And the book started out when I was just in that really early idea stage I had—I was thinking a little bit more about sort of profiles of more prominent, big deal women in the food worlds. But then I kind of was more interested in people in the trenches doing this work every day. And I did find myself completely inspired and impressed. And it just made me feel like if these women's stories are in any way representative, which I think they are, that there's going to be a much more-

And I think, too, in these last few years, people are paying a little bit more attention to the voices they're listening to and caring more about where their food is coming from. And I’m hopeful. I'm optimistic.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah.

And you write so candidly and vividly about your experiences with an eating disorder, a miscarriage, pregnancy. Why has it been so significant to your work to document those vulnerable aspects of womanhood? And how do you decide—because I think every writer is always making these choices, how do you decide what to tell people and what to keep to yourself? How do you walk that line?

Hannah: Yeah.

I mean, I think for me, these kind of personal things are, do occupy such a big part of my headspace and heart space. And so, not sharing about them would feel like I was missing such a big part of the story. 

Same thing about how eating disorders to me felt so secretive and so shameful, and then getting to share really shifted something about that. I think that was a similar situation with having a miscarriage, which I did—I was kind of surprised, because I hadn't really thought much about the whole thing until until I experienced it. And then I started to realize that I knew—Why didn't people talk about this? And I was almost hungry for these stories. 

I watched on YouTube about Beyoncé’s miscarriage. And I was so heartened to read about Michelle Obama's miscarriage. Of course not because this happened to these people, but just to be like, ‘Ok, this is a part of life. And I'm not alone.’ So being able to kind of pass that along and diminish some of the weird stigma in silence, I think, is really important to me. 

I think that is such a fine line, hard question, as someone who writes about personal things, is how personal, how much. One of my writing teachers that I really admire kind of reminded me that we also get to decide what we don't share. I think that's just as important, right, as what we do. And I share a lot. I do open my heart to the page. But I think of it just as kind of one part of me and one part of the story. And then sometimes, you look—I look back on it. And I cringe. But I think that's life too.

Alicia: I think that's definitely life as a writer, where you put things out there and you see what lands. I mean, so much of understanding writing comes from how people interact with it, I think, even more so than what we think we're doing when we write. [Laughs.] 

But one thing I wanted to ask you is because I don't think we hear enough about what it's like to be a writer and a mother. And when people do write memoirs about this, I'm thinking of Rachel Cusk’s A Life's Work, people are wildly critical. You are just not supposed to talk about being a mother and being a writer, because—I don't know why. 

But as a freelance writer, especially, you write, it's about—we have a life of constant anxiety, where it's like, ‘When is our next work coming? When is this check coming? Do I have the stamina today to write anything at all?’ And so, how has motherhood changed your relationship both to writing and to food, if it has?

Hannah: So, I've been a mother—also, I became a mother right as the pandemic started, in April of 2020. So everything changed in the world and everything changed in my little world. And sometimes it's hard for me to separate out which was which. And I feel like I'm still a new—so my daughter is six, about 16 months old. So I'm still, feel I'm still very much figuring it out, for sure. 

And I don't have it figured out. I have found the whole—I don't think I've ever been so challenged creatively as in this last year and a half. I have found it enormously—being a mom has been so consuming and relentless. And it just really requires a huge amount of, such a different part of your brain than writing, but some—one part, and then it's hard to find sometimes that energy with the other part. 

But I've also surprised myself in how the process of being, becoming a mom has made me value writing in my creative work more in a way. I think it just feels almost more sacred than it did before. I don't know if that's just the kind of silver lining of having such time constraints. The time I do have feels magical. In April 2020, like so many people, my life shrunk in such a way that it was this tiny world of me and my little family, that was something about writing and getting to—and being a freelancer in a way, just doing work that felt valuable to someone, where I got to connect with other people. And it just felt really rewarding in a way that being a new mom didn't, because it was just so thankless, rote tasks over and over again.

So it's been interesting. But I think it keeps changing for me, right? Yeah, definitely. And I'm pregnant again. I'm expecting another in, around Thanksgiving. That's one of my biggest fears, because I feel like I'm barely managing with one. But I'm really excited, and I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't also find it such a amazing challenge,

Alicia: Right. Of course, of course. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Hannah: I think cooking is always a politi—I thought about this question a lot. And I know it's very much at the heart of your work. Yeah. I think it has to be. I think that there's, like so many—I think there's a part of me that would like it not to be, because after a long day, cooking can feel, for someone who loves to cook, it can feel like an escape. And I think it can be that, and it can still be political because it's part of who is—who creates, produces, makes, feeds our world, is a political thing. So, yes.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much, Hannah. for taking the time. Good luck to you with your book launch and everything, and also having another baby, which is so exciting. 

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Cathy Erway came to food writing through home cooking and that’s also how she has maintained her career. It’s a pathway that is rarely tread anymore, as restaurants have become so central to how we talk about and think about food.

But Erway has stuck to her guns and somehow carved out a space for herself as someone who cares about where food comes from, both in terms of the actual land it was grown in and hands that tended to it, as well as with regards to cultural significance. We discussed how she came to create her food-writing niche, the way she framed her cookbook The Food of Taiwan, and how she told readers to use the entire chicken in Sheet Pan Chicken. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Cathy. Thank you so much for being here.

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Cathy: Yeah.

So my parents were living in Brooklyn Heights when I was born, and then they moved to a town in New Jersey in Essex County called Maplewood. So that's when I was a baby, like 2. So, that's where I grew up. 

And I remember—well, my parents always cooked a lot. But if we did go out to eat, I remember in the earlier sort of part of my childhood, we would go into the city. And sometimes we would go to Chinatown or something like that. But then over the years gradually, my parents became more attuned to where some other Chinese—not some other because there was no, not really much of a Chinese American community were in our town. So they figured out where some of these spots were and where some of these good restaurants that they wanted to go to were, and had more of a Chinese American sort of community of families that they would go to. And for a while there, we were going to like dim sum every weekend with this sort of clan of just Chinese American families that were sort of eating buddies. Very important to have. 

And then we would also get-there's tons of great pizza and Italian food where we lived. Great bagels. The kind of New York stuff. We would try everything. There's a new Ethiopian place, we would try it. There was a Malaysian place, we would try it. 

So yeah, I mean, I'm pretty blessed in that sense. [Laughs.]

Alicia: For sure, for sure. 

And you don't have formal culinary training, but from your blog, Not Eating Out in New York, which you turned into a book, to your cookbook,The Food of Taiwan, and then your latest cookbook, Sheet Pan Chicken, you've made food and cooking your life. So how did that happen, and was it what you intended to do?

Cathy: Oh, gosh. I mean, I guess, yeah, I have no full formal culinary training. But I've always sort of tried to focus on home cooking, and try to show my real practical home cooking, like through my blog, Not Eating Out in New York. So just kind of keep it, kept it real, sometimes mistakes and all. Share some of those failures. But yeah, so I hope that that's helpful for home cooks. 

Yeah, I mean, I think I wanted to be a writer always. I studied literature and creative writing. And after school, I was just sort of trying to do some journalism. And I never really thought of food as something—I guess before that, it wasn't something I thought of that you could study, food writing or something like that. 

But I guess sometime in the—oops. That's my phone. 

Alicia: That’s ok. [Laughs.]

Cathy: Yeah, sometime in the mid-2000s when blogs were blowing up, I started a food blog in 2006 because I couldn't get published elsewhere. I would write these horrible pitches.

I actually took a class in food writing that was taught by an organization that no longer—it's called Mediabistro. And then for a while, they had food writing courses. And my course was taught by Ramin Ganeshram, who was an amazing food writer. And I actually just caught up with her recently. What I was taught was that you had to identify editors at these glossy magazines, write them a pitch. And then I would do that and crickets, of course.

So, I just started a food blog and said, ‘To heck with it.’ And I think everything just happened from there. People were reading my food blog, and then they—I got a, an offer to write a cookbook, right? I was approached by an agent. And actually, two years later, I finally kind of wrapped my head around what a proposal would look like for that cookbook, ’cause at first I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ 

And so, everything kind of just fell from doing the blog. And so, I've been-—yeah, I just kind of been doing freelance writing and cookbook writing. The Food of—

Alicia: Yeah, my question was, how did you come to make food writing your life, which you—is what you’ve done? And you had another book come out last year, another cookbook.

I think you answered the question, which was that you did your blog and you just kept kind of going at it. Which is, I think, when people ask, ‘How do you do—how do you become a freelance writer?’ The answer really is being persistent and consistent, and a lot—just taking more risks than you would think you would want to do.

Cathy: I also like to create community, and I threw a lot of events when I was starting out. Especially when I was doing my blog, I would throw a lot of kickoffs, and other potlucks and stuff like that. And it was just a great way to meet people and just form a community around it. 

In terms of how I make a living today, yeah, it is also—it has actually always been sort of a mixed bag, where I did a lot of freelance copywriting sort of on the side all along. And now, I do that full-time. And sort of the freelance food writing is my sort of night happening. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Well, you in your blog—which you don't have, you don't update anymore, right? 

Cathy: Yeah, yeah.

I only write about things for money now, instead of—I spent a lot of time and effort on the blog. So it's just like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna try to move those projects into a different and more visible field.’

Alicia: Yeah.

But you maintain your focus really on home cooking. And what is your advice, and how is that kind of changed? Has your approach to cooking changed since you had the blog to now? I know you were always about local and seasonal and no waste cooking. How has your cooking changed since you were starting out as a blogger?

Cathy: Oh, that's a great question. 

I think that I always like to sort of learn something new from every season of vegetables that crops up in my CSA or at my farmers’ markets. And you do see trends come and go. You do see new ingredients all the time. So I think that that just experience and working with all different kinds of stuff that—

And joining a CSA is a great way to have this, because you get all these things that you didn’t intentionally set forth to buy. And so, it's kind of great. So I think that it just, it's only enriched my cooking. 

I've also been really interested in learning about all every cuisine in the world, basically, I want to learn more about. So, I've been collecting cookbooks along the way. And yeah, so I hope that it's just kind of enriched my awareness of—and it's also led to a lot of clutter in my pantry of random, not random, but just a lot of spices and stuff. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. The spices and the vinegars really take up a lot of space when you get going. Yeah. 

But yeah, with that focus on home cooking, you have a James Beard award for writing about home cooking. So what is your relationship to eating out these days, since you built your career on cooking at home?

Cathy: Oh my god.

I've always sort of thought of eating out as the special treat, rather than—I know a lot of people who are not used to cooking, they see cooking as a kind of big to-do. And it's a little bit nerve-racking. And so that was always sort of the reverse for me. So I've always treated going out as like a special occasion, whether it's to try something I could never make at home like dim sum or to celebrate somebody's birthday. 

I feel the last year—I usually don't get takeout in my local neighborhood, but in the last year I've been doing a lot just to support my local restaurants. So, the last year has really changed my relationship in a big way in that sense. 

Alicia: Yeah, that's interesting. 

And there has been so much conversation about the ethics of restaurants and hospitality in the last year. And I was going to ask you, how did the pandemic kind of change your approach to food? And how did it other—obviously, a little more takeout. But what was it like for you?

Cathy: I mean, it didn't really change my day to day terribly much. And I'm so fortunate and I'm so privileged to say that, because I always sort of cooked—I always sort of had a stocked pantry of things that I could whip together if I needed to with rice, or some nice sauces and an egg and I'm happy. So it didn't really change my cooking routine too much in that sense.

So I was really looking around and seeing what other people were doing, what other businesses were doing to stay afloat. And I saw so many of them started pantries and grocery stores, weird kind of pop-up thing—or not pop-up, but delivery things. I got some partially cooked stuff and then threw it together as a meal cooked from one local restaurant. And all these kind of solutions and pivots that folks were doing, I really wanted to support that. 

And I really wanted to support by buying gift cards. So I've just used a few of the gift cards I bought a year ago by eating out. I think that it's just really important to show up for your community. And a lot of restaurants are really struggling, and I tried to hear them out and wrote about some of them as well.

Alicia: Yeah.

And you're also well-known as a podcaster, for Eat Your Words and Why We Eat What We Eat. And how did you get into podcasting, and how did it kind of open up different creative avenues for you versus writing?

Cathy: Yeah.

I think it happened really organically through Heritage Radio Network, which was a project from Heritage Foods USA, which is a heritage meat distributor. And I was friendly with the folks who ran it, and they just started this radio-back then, they called it a radio station, they still do-outside of this little shipping container at Roberta's Pizza in Brooklyn. 

So, I was friendly with some of those folks. And they invited me on a show, on my friend’s show Snacky Tunes. And I was a guest, and then they, the producers, asked if I wanted to come up with a show. And they were creating a show about—their show was like food and music. There was Anne Saxelby’s cheese show. And so, I created a show about home cooking. And then, it evolved into being about books and food of all kinds, books about food basically, whether it's a cookbook or a food memoir.

So, it just was totally organic. And it was a great way to again form community and meet people that I wanted to talk with and kind of support their work and showcase it however I can, without having to sit down and write a whole long profile about somebody. It's just like, ‘Hey, let's have an organic conversation.’ And so, that was a lot of fun. 

And then from there, yeah, I guess, Gimlet Creative reached out to me when they were looking for a host for their food show, what was Why We Eat What We Eat. And a longtime friend of mine who used to be a food blogger, James Boo, decided to start Self-Evident, which is a community-based podcast that's exploring Asian American experiences. I had experience as a-being a host. And I was really dedicated to the mission, so that's how I became the host of Self-Evident.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Nice. 

Well, something I love about your book, The Food of Taiwan, is that it starts by giving a cultural, political, agricultural background on the island, which you would say or think is necessary to understanding any cuisine. I think a lot of cookbooks don't necessarily start with all of that background, which is something interesting about yours.

Have you always considered those factors important when talking about food? And if so, how did you kind of develop your consciousness around food, politics and agriculture? Because it's not always a significant angle for a lot of food writers, especially talking about home cooking.

Cathy: Right.

Yeah, I definitely think it's essential to understanding the food of a certain place to understand ‘What are some of the people that have emigrated here over the years? What is the climate? What is the agriculture situation?’ I mean, that's how cuisine is formed. Cuisine is just a totally social construct that is formed with, from people and the land. 

Especially in the case of Taiwan, where I think it was really hard for me when I was shopping this book around 10 years ago or so, to explain without getting into a long history lesson about what Taiwan is. It's still like a kind of a long winded thing to—its political situation is a little bit tricky, right now, and it has been for quite a while. I felt like it was really important for that book. 

But that said, I really enjoy cookbooks that give you that really thorough glimpse into the people who have created the cuisine. So I definitely think that that's important to understanding any, any cuisine. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

And have you always been interested in food politics and how agriculture works in that way? I know you said you have a CSA, so you're obviously supporting local farmers. But was that always part of your kind of food consciousness?

Cathy: Oh, definitely. Yeah, I mean, just from the very first sort of-I think when I was in high school, or maybe it was during college is when I read Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. And I also read a book called Grub by Bryant Terry and Anna Lappé . And it just really just that that book, I think, in particular, really just changed my consciousness. And I always felt food was intertwined with politics. And we all have an ability to enact change with every decision we make around food and how we interact with it and how we talk about it, especially if we're going to be a writer of some sort. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Right.

Well, what are you working on now as a food writer?

Cathy: Right now, I’m working on a story about sugar. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Oh, I just filed a story about sugar. [Laughter.]

Cathy: I hope you figured it out, because I can't figure out my story. I can't wait to see yours. 

Basically, I've been working on this story. And it turned into a much bigger story than I was initially thinking it was, and much thornier, and much more difficult. So I don't know how it's gonna turn out right now. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, it's interesting, because I do think that you do—you tackle thorny topics in food with, in a very accessible way. You do take thorny things and make them easy for people, not easy as in digestible, but you make it understandable and approachable. 

And one thing I did want to ask you, especially talking about politics and agriculture is you have written vegetarian recipes. You've written about the Buddhist history of mock meat, which I love that piece and reference it in the manuscript of my book I'm working on. 

But you did a book called Sheet Pan Chicken. And obviously, I'm a vegetarian. [Laughter.] And so, I wanted—

Cathy: I wanted to add you to the press list, but I was like, ‘Wait a minute. No, no, wait.’ [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, no.

But what I wanted to ask, because how did you regard that? The politics of chicken, the sourcing of chicken, the impact of its production? How did you kind of deal with that? Because you are a writer who asks those questions.

Cathy: Thanks. Yeah. 

There's a section in the introduction where I talk about how to shop for chicken. I sort of run you through some of the labels you'll find on chicken nowadays, and what they mean and why they're important. And I encourage people to be curious and look beyond the grocery store and hit up their local farmers’ market, if they're going to buy meat. And they can ask even more questions.

But I think beyond that, I hope that the book demonstrates the type of cooking that I really like to emphasize, which is just using every little piece of meat and just maximizing the full value of all the flavors that you can get out of it and have it carry through other ingredients. And that's just the way I tend to cook is, if I'm using meat, it's a small amount that just lends their drippings and flavors to vegetables or starch or tofu. And then, I think something kind of magical happens with that synthesis of both things.

I tried to kind of emphasize that in this book. The worst thing I think you can do is cook a chicken all alone with nothing to catch its fat or juices. So chicken should always be cooked on top of or with some vegetables around them to absorb and kind of trade off one another's flavors and benefits and whatever. 

So that's what I hope people get out of the book, ’cause I have you do things like scrape the brown bits from the pan and make a sauce out of that reuse. I have them use bone and chicken with the skin on and then say, ‘You can make stock with it afterwards, or like keep the fat.’ And I don't know, in my fridge I have jars of duck fat or bacon fat from whenever I've cooked these things. So, suggesting you can use them next time you're cooking vegetables. 

That just feels very harmonious to me if you are going to eat animal meat, even more than using olive oil that was grown in a Mediterranean climate that is very far from New York City. But I still buy olive oil, because I love it, but keeping fat also just makes a lot of sense to me.

Alicia: Yeah, for sure. 

And for you is cooking a political act?

Cathy: Yes, definitely. 

I mean, I don’t have a great answer for that. [Laughter.] But I think that, again, every day, you choose what you put into your mouth to eat and to nourish yourself. And I think that it's a very important decision. It’s more important than what color nail polish and what the hell my hair looks like today, or how I present myself to the world. To me, that's reflected in what I'm cooking and eating and talking about with regards to cooking, and eating and shopping for food. So these are all decisions that are made on an everyday basis three times a day. And I think that's a huge opportunity. 

Alicia: Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Cathy: Thank you so much, Alicia. That was fun.

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It’s almost funny that I haven’t had Mayukh Sen on my podcast yet. But the truth is, I’ve been waiting for his book, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (out November 2—preorder it!), to be available so that we could discuss it in all the glory I knew it would achieve.

Here, he presents what we discuss is an Almodóvar-esque constellation of women who all moved to the United States and made their mark on its cuisine—to various ends. Their stories are rendered cinematically, richly. It’s a book you can’t put down until you finish. It’s an absolute triumph that challenges popular and dull liberal assimilationist narratives.

In full disclosure, Mayukh and I are good friends. But I think that only enriches this discussion of his work and especially this text. We discussed how food media has and hasn’t changed over 100-plus years, what it’s like to receive Establishment accolades at a young age, and how teaching food writing at NYU has influenced his work. (I didn’t end up quizzing him on Best Actress winners since 1960, but I trust he’s still got that knowledge.) Paid subscribers can listen and access the full transcript.

Alicia: Hi, Mayukh. Thank you so much for being here. 

Mayukh: Thank you for having me, Alicia. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Mayukh: No, I can't.

Yeah, so I grew up in suburban New Jersey, two towns: Edison and North Brunswick. So most of my food memories from my childhood revolve around my mother's home cooking. 

So my mother is an immigrant from the Indian state of West Bengal, just like my late father was. And so, every night for dinner, she would cook some sort of Bengali meal that had rice and dal, some sort of vegetable preparation, and then a non-veg protein. So those were most of my memories, kind of just her home cooking.

We didn't really go out to eat at restaurants very much. I grew up comfortably middle class, I'd say. But I don’t know, there's something about the etiquettes of going out to eat at restaurants that just seemed very foreign to our family. So what we considered luxury, when I was growing up at least in the ’90s and the aughts, was places like P.F. Changs and Cheesecake Factory. Bertucci's was a really big event in our family to go there, but that was kind of the extent of our restaurant-going experiences. So I didn't really grow up with a sense of what it was like to go out to eat at restaurants and partake in the culture in that way.

Alicia: Do you maintain the kind of eating at home that you grew up with, that your mom gave you?

Mayukh: I am such a bad cook in general that I find that a lot of those kinds of dishes are probably too involved for me to pull off as well as she could and still can. Sorry, she's not deceased or anything. [Laughter.] She's still with us. And she's still cooking this stuff really nicely. 

The stuff that I cook at home now, over in—Brooklyn is where I live—is just staple stuff that is enough for me to survive on. I purely just only cook well enough to feed myself and exist in this world. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, and I mean, that brings me to my next question, which is that you didn't come to food writing out of a passion for food, which is what so many of us do. And that also is why you're such a unique voice in the field. You're not interested in why people cook well, that's not an interesting thing to do in your work. I mean, maybe it is interesting to you. That's sort of the least interesting part of why people cook and why food is interesting. And you're not kind of dazzled by that. [Laughs.]

Mayukh: Totally.

Alicia: Yeah, how did you come to write about food and how did you kind of find your way to create your voice in this field?

Mayukh: For sure. 

First of all, I just want to say thank you for even regarding my initial lack of passion for food as a qualification, because I think that a lot of people who we call colleagues and peers in this industry would consider that a demerit or disqualification for me existing in the space at all, but whatever. So, thank you for that. 

But in terms of how I came to food, so I have been a professional food writer for five years now. Can you hear the exhaustion in my voice? [Laughter.] I never imagined that I'd be doing this with my life for this long. 

But what happened was, so I grew up wanting to be a film critic. And I was the kind of kid who devoured Entertainment Weekly. I memorized everything about the Oscars in high school. I could name every Best Actress nominee from 1960 onward. Now I'm a little rusty, but we can end the conversation today with some tests and see how good I still am. But I was very hell-bent on becoming a film critic in the vein of Pauline Kael. And that didn't quite happen just yet, even though I still do write about film.

But basically, I graduated from college in 2014. And in 2015, when I was living in New York, I started to freelance a lot about topics like film and television and music. Everything but food, basically. I had only written one food piece, and it was for the RIP Village Voice. The OG Village Voice. And that piece was held indefinitely. And I think that the editor just didn't have the heart to actually kill it, you know? So, maybe that was a sign that I actually don't belong here.

But regardless, fast forward to summer 2016. I got an email from an editor at a site called Food52, which many listeners, readers may know. And they were just like, ‘Yeah, we're hiring for a staff writer position right now, someone who is not necessarily a food person in terms of home cooking or going out to eat at restaurants.’ And that’s like, ‘I'm your guy. ‘And someone who is going to be able to write about food to a broader cultural lens, and perhaps tap into a segment of the audience we haven't quite reached just yet.’

And initially when I got that email, I was like, ‘This is hilarious. Please. Absolutely not.’ But I took the meeting, because back then I was 24 years old. I was a freelancer. I wanted to write more ambitious, deeply reported stories. That was back when I still equated the length of a story with narrative strength in some way. I was like, ‘I want to write long stories,’ which I've now kind of moved away from. But we can talk about that later. 

But anyway, so I took the meeting. And I really wanted the trust of an editor to allow me to write those kinds of stories that I just did not get as a young freelancer. And the fact that this was a salary job with benefits, those were hard to come by in 2016 just like they are today. A salary culture writing job with benefits? Excuse me. It’s a rarity. 

So I kept interviewing for it, and then I got the job. But I just remember in the days leading up to me realizing that I was going to accept this offer, I was kind of laughing to myself. And I was just like, ‘Wow, I'm going to be a food writer. That's hilarious.’ 

Because I had grown up—and I'm not sure what kind of cultural depiction is responsible for this. But I'd grown up thinking that food writing was very much the domain of straight, white, affluent men. And I was one of those things. I was a man. But otherwise, I was a queer person of color and child of immigrants. I grew up speaking two first languages. It just seemed so not an option for me career wise, and so I never even considered it. So, I just thought that the whole little ride was kind of hilarious. So just like, ‘Strap in, Mayukh. See what's in store for you here.’

So, it was definitely a challenge in those first few months. It remains a challenge, of course, to be in this industry coming from marginalized communities and having leftist points of view. But back in late 2016 when I started that job at Food52, I had to struggle for a few months to really find my footing in that site because I was the only person of color on an editorial team of white women—wonderful white women. A great collection. [Laughter.] But I was just writing from a different center of gravity than everyone else. And it was quite apparent that I was a new voice to the site in the sorts of comments that I got that were just so allergic to my point of view, and the way that I expressed that point of view. 

So it was tough, but the way I started to kind of ease into the job was writing a lot of personal essays, because throughout my life I had never really considered what food meant to me beyond providing me mere sustenance. I was always like, ‘Ok, cool, this is something I need to do. I need to eat, and then I'm going to go to sleep and wake up and do this over again the next day.’

But being in the job at first really asked me to consider like, ‘What does food mean to you, especially as a queer Bengali person?’ All that stuff. And so I wrote a lot about my identity and how food is tied to it, and how I'd never really considered all these things and how food had shaped me in ways that I just was not aware of, so early on in my life. 

And after I got all those personal essays out of my system, I started to grow extremely bored with myself as a character. I was like, ‘I've exhausted every story that lives inside me, so let me move on and turn my gaze outwards.’ So what I started to do was write a lot of profiles of figures who were like me, kind of on the margins of the food industry, were not from the dominant, over-represented populations within this industry and really made an impact with their food or their writing or both in some way. 

So often, these figures tended to be people of color, women of color, immigrants, immigrants of color, queer people of color like myself, etc. And I found a lot of comfort in exploring these stories, because they made me understand my place in this industry a bit better because I just felt so alone and so confused and those first few months had me be just like, ‘What am I doing? How did I get here on this planet?’ And I still feel the same way, but just less intensely now. 

And it was also kind of a way of me educating myself, because there's so much about culinary history in America that I was just so unaware of when I stepped into that job. You think that that's kind of a prerequisite for taking on a food staff writing job, but I was just like, ‘I'm an idiot. I've seen Julie and Julia.’ That was kind of the extent of my culinary history education. So, writing these stories as a way of schooling myself in a very public manner. I was learning on the job, in that sense. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

I mean, it's funny because I think still, the picture of food writers in movies is so far from what it actually is. [Laughs.] Well, it's funny that you thought food writers were straight dudes, because I was—I think restaurant critics have always been straight, white men generally. And then, the people writing about lifestyle like Craig Claiborne or James Beard or—it's always been women or gay white men. It's always been such a segregated field where—and maybe now we're getting better. I don't know. 

Mayukh: Oh, I don’t know. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: I mean, there is a movie I really like because it's one of those—one of the last middlebrow adult movies, which I hope are making a comeback. But it has Toni Collette and Greg Kinnear. And they go to dinner at a friend's house, and I can't remember—is it Dinner with Friends? 

Mayukh: Little Miss Sunshine? I don't remember that scene. 

Alicia: Wait, there's a different movie where it's them, I think. 

But anyway, the people whose house they go to are writers for Saveur. And they're just going on glamorous trips, and they have kids and they have a huge house. And it's like, ‘Wow, I did think that that's what it would be like to be a magazine writer.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my life is going to be so glamorous. And I'll have money.’ I had no conception of how difficult and poorly paid this job was. 

Mayukh: What are you talking about? It pays so well. 

Alicia: It pays so well!

Mayukh: Scrooge McDuck over here just swimming in money, you know? 

Yeah, I'm trying to think of what film kind of made me think of food writers in that way. You're definitely correct that I equated food writing with restaurant criticism. Maybe it was Mystic Pizza. I don't know. But I remember—

Alicia: Oooooh.

Mayukh: Yeah, ’cause I remember—there's that scene near the end where the restaurant critic comes in. 

But yeah, I can't think of what else. [Laughter.] But anyway, my point stands, which is that however you cut it, whether food writing was the domain of those white straight rich dudes or gay white men or white women, there—there's not a place to me there at the table, so to speak. 

Alicia: No, yeah, we could go on forever about that. 

But in your book, Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America, you profile seven women. You put them in there chronologically, which I think tells a really great story and really kind of contextualizes an evolution of food in the United States in the 20th century. And you kind of vary your selections between popular people like Marcella Hazan and also the less obvious choice like Julie Sahni. The obvious choice, if you wanted to talk about a woman immigrant in America who did Indian food, you talk about Madhur Jaffrey, right? 

But by making these choices, you get to present some really interesting contrast between reception of how people were received and how people really change things. And even what kinds of books were successful, like I—so much about what someone's book would look like versus someone else's book, and how that also influences the reception. 

And so I wanted to ask how you decided on those women? I know you write about it a little bit in the afterword, but how were your—what was your process for deciding?

Mayukh: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. 

It took me many months. And it even changed after the proposal writing process, because the women who were in my—whom I had selected for my proposal were not the ones who ended up in the book, which is funny. In terms of selecting people like Marcella Hazan, I realized that I needed to provide some sort of entry point or way in to readers who might be scanning books at a bookstore or online and be like, ‘Oh, this sounds kind of interesting. Is there anyone I know here?’ And Marcella Hazan is close to a household name for people who are home cooks. 

And actually once I selected her, it really illuminated why certain other women were kind of in that book as well, because Marcella Hazan is someone who I obviously have great affection for. And I have even more affection for after reading about her. Yet throughout her career, she was dogged by so many accusations of being a ‘difficult woman.’ We now recognize that as a sexist dog whistle to call a woman difficult when she stands up for what she believes and fights for the integrity of her work. 

But it's interesting how those sorts of criticisms, you could say, did not torpedo her career in the same way it may have for other women who didn't possess the same advantages of her, that she did, you know. 

And so, that's why I selected someone like Madeleine Kamman, who is from France, who was so brilliant, had just an incredible sense of French technique and how to apply it to different styles or—cuisines rather, excuse me, like American cuisine. Throughout her career, however, her brilliance was overshadowed by the fact that she was very openly critical about Julia Child and Julia Child's position as a white American woman being this ambassador for French cooking in the United States. And as a result, throughout her life and career, Madeleine Kamman faced all these accusations that she was just this bitter woman who could not stand to see other people succeed, etc. 

And so I start to wonder, ‘Why is it that someone like Marcella Hazan did become a big name in spite of these perceived difficulties versus someone like Madeleine Kamman, her road to recognition was so much more rocky.’

And in terms of selecting other women—so, I initially did not set out to write about Julie Sahni, because I did go for the obvious choice, Madhur Jaffrey. This didn't have much to do—Sorry, how do I say this? This had a lot to do with the fact that she was a film actress, in addition to a food writer. And of course, my whole topical passion and interest is in film. So I was like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be fun for me.’

But then I realized, in spending more time with Julie’s work, I realized that there has not been the kind of deep appraisal of her work that she certainly merits and—A. And then B, I think that her whole philosophy in general is just so admirable to me. She is someone who truly focuses on the strength of the work. She puts her head down, lets the work speak for itself. She's not always out there and trying to grab eyes or attention. Which is okay, if she were to. No judgment there. 

But that's just such a fascinating way to live as a creative. And it's really aspirational, to be honest. And I think that there's something to say in his story about the kinds of—what it's like to live as a creative person under American capitalism and how to survive in public memory through that. And so that's why I was like, ‘Julie Sahni might actually be a more interesting challenge to me.’ Also, I had written about Madhur Jaffrey before, back at Food52. So I was like, ‘This is kind of worn territory for me. I want to tackle a fresh story.’

So, those were the kinds of considerations I had when I was curating this list, let's say—cast of characters rather. It’s a more diplomatic way to put it. 

And then in terms of my last story subject. Surely you know, she was from Jamaica. The way I landed upon her actually was, I googled ‘the Julia Child of.’ Just that phrase, literally. And so many hits for people like Marcella Hazan and Julie Sahni. They've been called respectively, Julia Child of Italy, Julia Child of India. 

But Norma Shirley is a name that came up as well in one article. And she was from Jamaica, and I thought that her story was so fascinating because she did live in America for a few decades, from the ‘60s ‘til the ‘80s. But then she went back home to Jamaica, and she became a star there. And I think that her story had so much to say regarding the hurdles that Black immigrant women from the Caribbean had to face in terms of getting enough capital to make their creative dreams a reality in this country, in culinary terms. 

Alicia: Yeah. No, I love that. 

Have you written about the phrase, ‘the Julia Child of’? [Laughs.]

Mayukh: I would love to. There's an op-ed in there. 

Alicia: There is definitely an op-ed. [Laughs.]

Mayukh: I have a little spiel about it in the Norma Shirley chapter. But originally, it was this long thing, super blown out. But then, I had to cut in subsequent drafts. But yeah, it was there originally. So yeah, thanks for the reminder.

Alicia: ‘Cause I want to read about it. There's a cookbook author from Puerto Rico, who's been referred to as the Julia Child of Puerto Rico. I actually have to open her cookbook today. 

Mayukh: What's her name? Do you know?

Alicia: Her name is Carmen, and I can't remember the rest of her name. [Laughters.] But she wrote Caribbean Cookery, I believe. Oh, no, Cocina Criolla.

Mayukh:, Right. Ok. Ok, that’s what I figured. 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Your appreciation for the difficult women is maybe part of—And you also mentioned this earlier that you knew the Best Actress since 1960, was the winner of the Best—You have a love of women and drama and glamour. And I think that you bring that to the book with how you write about them. You really bring them to life, and you see all sides of them. And you just appreciate them in such a way that is—I don't know, it's just so alive and vivid and cinematic. 

And so, did you think about that while you were writing the book? Did your love of film and of actresses influence your appreciation of these women and your ability to render them so vividly? 

Mayukh: First of all, thank you for saying that. That’s a huge compliment, because the last thing I want anyone to say about my book is like, ‘Oh, this is boring as s**t,’ you know? That's my big fear. And that's what I asked myself when I'm self editing is like, ‘Is this boring me to tears? Does this feel like homework?’

Yeah, I would absolutely say that my love of cinema, and actresses in particular, influenced the way that I approached these stories. When people ask me what my favorite films are, of course, I have a list. The conversation almost immediately pivots to, what are my favorite film performances? I have that running list. And my favorite performances in the film are ones by actresses who just dominate a whole movie and their performance just overtakes the entire film. 

So I'm thinking of, like Jane Fonda in Klute. That was one performance that when I first saw it in high school, I just—it completely expanded my notion of what a movie performance could be. Because her skills such that you are able to understand what this woman, who is a sex worker and actress in the movie—it's a wonderful movie. You should watch it if you haven’t yet. You're able to understand what she is feeling at any given moment in time, without the need for dialogue or narration. First-person narration, excuse me. 

And so many of my other favorite performances in film operate along those same lines, like Barbara Stanwyck in Stella Dallas and the Indian actress Sridevi in English Vinglish. They don't need dialogue to tell you what they're feeling. And I wanted to bring something similar to these chapters. 

And that's why I took the approach that I did, which is that I don't necessarily—I did a lot of reporting for this book. Of course, yeah. I don't directly quote those people. It's like ‘Julie Sahni’s friend said this to me about—’ The kind of journalistic gaze there just feels so apparent in a way that feels antithetical to the kind of book that I want to offer, a book experience that I want to offer, excuse me, to readers. And so, I decided to instead just kind of write this book in a way that would allow readers to kind of step through these women's lives as this woman lived those lives.

So that's why it was really important for me to find women who had memoirs or were still alive, like Julie Sahni, Najmieh Batmanglij, whom I could speak to about what it was like to experience all of these different things at different junctures in your life. So that's one way in which performances, the performances that I love really influenced the way that I approached these chapters. I wanted readers to feel what these women were feeling at any given moment in time, as intimately as possible. 

And you might appreciate this because I know you're a fan of his as well. But the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar really influenced my work so much and my writing, because he is someone who, like me, is a queer man who has tremendous affection for female stories and renders them with—sorry, not to compare myself to him in saying that I've done—He, not myself, does such a wonderful job of rendering these stories with such love and care. 

In my favorite movies of his, he really works in such a broad canvas. I'm thinking about All About My Mother and Volver, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. All of those movies have so many characters and so many vivid women who are interacting with one another. And I want to do something similar with this book as well. That was kind of my approach because, of course, the question that was hanging over me as I was writing is how will people react to the fact that I am someone who presents the world as a man writing these stories? And so he was kind of a very helpful model for me to follow in terms of what sensitivity looks like in that regard.

Alicia: Right. 

And I think you really achieved that sort of—what would be the adjective form of Almodóvar? [Laughs.]

Mayukh: Almodovarian? I don't know. Sure.

Alicia: Yes. [Laughs.] No, but your book is Almodovarian. 

Mayukh: Or esque. Yeah.

Alicia: Almodovarian-esque. [Laughs.]

But I mean, I was thinking—when I was writing, when I was reading the book, when I was writing these questions, I was thinking about that because I know it's been a criticism that you've anticipated that you’d sort of superficially maybe received. 

It never would have occurred to me because I do love Almodóvar. Another of my favorite writers, Reinaldo Arenas, is a queer man who wrote a lot about women. I think most women love being seen and—by queer men. I'm going on a weird tangent now. It really is when you see Almodóvar films, when you read your book, when you read Arenas, when you like Manuel Puig, too. And so much honesty and humor and affection and warmth. It's not the male gaze or something. It's not the same thing. That criticism is completely off the wall. If it does come, it's off the wall. And I'll head that off at the pass right now. [Laughs.]

Mayukh: Thank you. Thank you for going to bat for me prematurely. 

And I think that what's difficult for me, that I didn't have words for until I was kind of done writing this book and I write this in the intro in the book itself, but as a queer person, I, like many other queer-identifying people, have a very complicated relationship to gender and gender expression that my appearance might not necessarily reflect. And so I wish that more people who would come for me in that regard would understand that about me, and not try to erase my queerness and all its attendant complications. And it's really hurtful. And we live in a very inhospitable world for queer people. And so, it's not easy to kind of live with this. 

So yeah, whatever. If that comes for me, I'll go to bat for myself. Well, whatever.

Alicia: Well, and the book’s introduction also takes aim at the kind of milquetoast nature of food media, which is where you might see this kind of baseline really banal criticism that doesn't engage with people in their entirety. 

And that's also expressed in the text. Craig Claiborne comes up so much from the New York Times, how he named Elena Zelayeta the definitive voice of Mexican cooking, then later switched it, made it Diana Kennedy. And the contrast between how Madhur Jaffrey was received against how Julie Sahni was, despite the fact that Sahni has restaurant experience, which would later be erased, which we can talk about. 

And that is a constant theme in the book, how women were pitted against each other, how being white and/or American allowed you to have authority where lived experience did not. It tells these stories, but it's also a critique of how narratives about women in food have been constructed. 

And so, what do you think is the contemporary significance of the food media narratives that you portray in the book itself?

Mayukh: Yeah, that is a wonderful question. 

I would definitely say that a lot of these sorts of patterns still persist. I think that food media, regardless of what lies it wants to tell itself, is still infatuated with stars and stardom. And as a result, that creates a culture in which there's a hyperfixation on one specific person as a sort of representative of a movement or cuisine or whatever, and that can sometimes blot out other figures who are doing equally commendable mark—work, excuse me. So, that definitely is still a thing. 

In terms of who gets to be assigned authority, this kind of dovetails with my answer to your last question, but—the previous question, excuse me—But it is interesting how there's maybe a bit more scrutiny regarding white folks with material power, and how they get to ascend to positions of authority on cuisines or cultures that are not necessarily the ones that are inherent to them, or the ones that they grew up with, etc. Yet, I don't know that those kinds of questions are asked as urgently as they should be, at least by the people in power. 

Just speaking from my own perspective and position, I think that I have gotten so much blowback from people in power about being a queer man of color writing stories primarily about women in a way that does not feel equal to the sorts of questions that, I don't know, a white woman writing a cookbook about Mexican food does, a white woman who is not native to Mexico, excuse me. And it just feels like there might be an imbalance.

I definitely think that, well, everyone should be asking those questions about who benefits materially from telling what stories based on their position. That's what diligence looks like. That's what accountability looks like, etc. Yet, I do find that whiteness is still quite powerful in this industry, and it goes unquestioned. And there's usually more scrutiny reserved for people from marginalized communities telling stories that people perceive to not be their own. 

Alicia: No, I mean, it's really incredible how the power structures don't change at all. Yeah, we would still rather Diana Kennedy than a woman who appears and is indigenous to Mexico. And when I say indigenous, I mean actually. 

We would rather have it filtered through Diana Kennedy who does learn things from people. I mean, nothing against her. I think she's actually pretty wonderful and a real spitfire, and that's great. But the narrative really hasn't changed from a sort of pre-feminism idea of how hard a white woman has to work to be equal to white men. And the narrative hasn't adjusted from that. We still are like, ‘Women have to work so hard to be the same as white men.’ It's like, ‘Well, that shouldn't be our goal. Our goal should be a bit more nuanced than that.’

Mayukh: Yeah, it should be in terms of equity for a lot of other people who are quite oppressed, you know? Yeah, so that's certainly true. 

I also will just add that this is probably stating the obvious, but there's this presumption of objectivity, that dirty word, when it comes to folks like Diana Kennedy—and who I agree is she's really put in the work. And in spite of some troubling things that she said in the past, I have a lot of respect for her labor. I'm so sorry to put her in the hot seat. 

But yeah, there's still this presumption of kind of like, ‘Oh, this person is coming to this culture, this cuisine from a very even-keeled place. And they're going to be able to be the interlocutor for this presumed white affluent audience.’ And so, I think that presumption of the reader remains the same, as well, on food media, it's still kind of, at least in the mainstream food media, you see stories that are kind of written with white rich audiences in mind. 

Alicia: Exactly. Yeah. 

And one thing I noticed also throughout the book was how teaching was a really essential part of many of these women coming into their own in food. Julia Child was teaching before she was writing a cookbook. I think Marcella was cooking, I mean, teaching before she was really writing a cookbook. And also, you are teaching food journalism at NYU. How has teaching complemented or not your writing practice? How did it work with the book?

Mayukh: Well, I love teaching. So I've been teaching at NYU since 2019. That was the same year I was working on the first draft of the book. And I teach two classes there at the journalism school. First is an introductory class to food writing, and the second is advanced reporting food journalism class. 

And so, that first semester I was teaching, it was the introductory class. And so, I was dealing with a lot of students who were not necessarily used to writing in any sort of journalistic capacity. So I had to really revisit the basics and figure out how to communicate those basics to students who really wanted to learn. And so, I talked about story structure. I talked about sentence structure. I talked about varying your sentence length, and resisting cliche when you describe food as an object. All these kinds of one on one things that were incredibly helpful for me, as I was writing.

One lesson that I impart upon my students, for example, I kind of said earlier, which is that if this is boring for you to write, chances are it's going to be boring as hell for the reader to absorb. And they’re gonna put the book down. You don't want to lose the reader in any way. And that is something that I really tried to tell myself as well, as I was going through multiple drafts of this book. It's like, ‘Are you bored as s**t? Let's go back to the drawing board here.’ 

Yeah, so it was immensely helpful. I will say this. Teaching is a lot of work. Grading is so much work. And I was definitely a disaster trying to balance book writing against the demands of teaching. But ultimately, I do hope that it served this book well, because it really asked me after years of just kind of feeling as though I had gotten into my little groove as a writer, really asked me to take a step back and be like, ‘Ok, are you being as disciplined as you can?’

The flip side of that, of course, is that when you do kind of have that rigorous self editor in you, you risk kind of, I don't know, losing a sense of play or whimsy in your writing. And that's something that I worry about with my own self. I'm not fishing here for compliments. Please don't reassure me being like, ‘Oh, yeah, no, no, it's so playful. I’m really into it.’ I'm not looking for that. No pressure there. 

But when I revisit my early writing, I'm like, ‘Damn, this is so overwritten.’ But there's also a sense of kind of throwing s**t at the wall and seeing what sticks. And I don't quite have that anymore. And so, that's something I'm trying to get back. And trying to have more flexibility with what I teach my students as well. I encourage them to kind of experiment a little bit rather than hew to some sort of trusted format. 

Alicia: Right. 

Do you write for yourself? Do you journal or anything?

Mayukh: I don't. I really fear just writing something that I'm going to revisit a few weeks, months, years down the line and being like, ‘Oh, my goodness, this is just this incredibly mortifying time capsule. And I don't want to revisit what, these raw thoughts in my mind.’ It takes me a long time to write something these days. I like to give myself that time, so I don't. I know so many writers who do. Just never worked for me because I'm so, so repulsed by myself.

Alicia: Oh, no. [Laughs.] 

Well, I mean, it helps with the editor and the—and shutting yourself down, I think. If you do the stream of consciousness thing a little bit. I think this isThe Artist's Way, this is what The Artist's Way teaches you. [Laughs.] I've never done it. I think I have a natural inclination toward whatever it tells you you're supposed to do, which is write indulgently and take yourself on dates. That's easy for me to do. I can do that. [Laughs.]

Mayukh: Yeah. 

I will say this. I reread my first draft of this book. It's a total vomit draft. I don’t love that phrase, but it's just like, damn. I had to do so much culling after that point. But yeah, yeah, no, I did kind of indulge my worst tendencies as a writer in the first draft. I got it out of my system. 

Alicia: I think it's important. It's important to do.

And in the book—this is jumping into a different area. But many narratives about cuisine in the U.S. are all about assimilation. I wrote about this when I wrote about Taste the Nation. And I wanted to ask how did you resist that easy pull about how they were only significant in terms of what they taught and brought to whiteness and to Americanness?

Mayukh: Yeah, that is a wonderful question. Because you're right, in that assimilation has been kind of the dominant narrative when it comes to talking about immigrants and cooking and cuisine in America. And I am no longer interested in assimilation just as a concept when it comes to immigrant cuisine, ‘immigrant cooking,’ because it is in service of white supremacy. 

One of the things that's so troubling about a lot of these texts, including one of the ones that you just mentioned, being very diplomatic, is that it doesn't quite question the idea of the nation itself. And I personally, as a leftist, I am troubled by these alleged notions of America being predicated upon ideals of inclusivity and being a melting pot and everything like that. 

And that's what I want to trouble with this book. And I want to show that there's so much struggle involved in creating that picture of America, and it can be really unsustainable for the people who are making that happen because they have to survive under capitalism. 

So, I know that there have been books over the past few years where writers are writing about cuisines from the Global South or adopted from the Global South, they try to assert, ‘X food is American food. My mother's cuisine and what it represents is American food.’ With all due respect to those writers, that's ok that that is their prerogative, but it's not mine. Because ultimately, it centers the comfort of a white affluent reader, which is what food media has done for decades. And it's just useless. Why seek approval from white institutions?

And I think that it's easier for me to say this and come to this realization now, because I was very fortunate to get that approval, those crumbs of attention, let's say, from white institutions that gave me access to opportunities and capital that I would not have had otherwise. And I understand what that kind of recognition is useful for now. And I realized that that's not necessarily the world that I want to be a part of. And it's more gratifying to write for your own communities, or people from typically underseen—underseen by whom? Underrepresented communities, let's say. I think that's a little more careful. Yeah, it's more gratifying work to do than just seeking the approval of white institutions in any way. 

And so, that's why I ended the book, excuse me, on the story of Norma Shirley, because it's kind of an indictment of people's conception of how wonderful America is because you can get a taco down the street and then you can get saag paneer on the next block or something. This was a woman who is a Black immigrant woman from Jamaica who tried to get her concept and vision of Jamaican cuisine filtered through French technique, tried to get it off the ground in New York in the ‘80s but it was incredibly difficult for her because she could not secure the capital to make that happen. So she literally had to return to Jamaica to make those possibilities and dreams come true. And it was only then that the American food media started to pay attention to her and her enormous talent. Yet, she literally had to leave America to make her creative dreams a reality. And that should embarrass readers, I hope, especially readers who are like, ‘Oh, America’s great, you know?’

Yeah. I'm not interested in assimilation. 

Alicia: I'm really interested to see how people engage with that, or if people ignore that. That they ignore that there is an anti-assimilationist, anti-obsession with the nation state as a significant cultural force. And I hope that people do engage with that.

Mayukh: Yeah. I mean, I hope they engage in positive terms, because I'm sure that some people will be like, ‘What is this trash? I was expecting some heartwarming story of American food or whatever.’ 

Yeah, I do hope that point is not lost on the readers who need to absorb it. 

Alicia: Well, has the experience of writing the book, as well as your experiences in food media, changed how you consider the ways in which white supremacy and capitalism kind of use identity? You really resist in the text that simplicity that—the circa 2019, 2016 response to Trump where it's like, ‘Immigrant restaurant, immigrants feeding America.’ This really patronizing perspective that does continue. People say that food media from 2016 really learned a lesson about something. I don't think it did.

But anyway, you in this text really resist that. How have you responded to that? I think you answered this, but also how do you perceive that sort of tendency in food writing?

Mayukh: Totally.

Well, I actually am so glad you brought this up because those 2016, 2017 conversations, those talking points that were so pervasive in food media, that was what kind of animated me to start working on the proposal for this book. Because I just found it so, as you say, patronizing, so condescending. It's almost always white liberal gatekeepers, both men and women, talking about immigrants as the other immigrants, as people who only exist to serve the white, affluent consumer. And it's just plainly dehumanizing. 

And it also rests on all these assumptions about what America is and what it represents, of course. And I really, really wanted to disturb that notion, and actually put those voices and stories of these actual immigrants who are treated like abstractions by these white liberal gatekeepers. I wanted to put their stories first. 

So, I don't think that whole attitude has gone away in food media, at least from my observation. It's still quite pervasive, and I wanted to write against that. I think that's through writing this book, and also experiencing just a comical level of racism and homophobia in this industry. Comical, to me, at least. Also traumatizing. But made me realize that a lot of people who posture as being down with the cause or whatever, their politics are not fundamentally rooted in care. And that sometimes comes out in really ugly ways. 

I think of people who in 2017, 2018, would say things like, ‘Screw Trump. Immigrants are great,’ in front of a stage of hundreds of people. They're the same people who turn around, and they look at my queer brown ass. And they're like, ‘Oh, you're too loud. You're too obsessed with ‘political correctness.’’’ Talking to me like they're a Fox News commentator or something. And it's just so plainly discriminatory. 

And those sorts of moments just reveal how hollow a lot of these talking points are for a lot of these people because they don't see people from marginalized communities as actual humans. They don't treat them with care. And I wanted to restore some of that dignity in writing this book, and I definitely wrote through a lot of my anger at what I had experienced from people who were quite powerful people I very naively trusted because I got Establishment approval early on in my career. So that's definitely a thing. 

I think also, I came to become aware through experiences like that, and also writing the book about how white supremacy and capitalism, these twin terrors, let's say, they commodify people based on their identity. 

I think that there are probably a lot of people throughout my career who have aligned with me, because they see me as this queer brown young writer who they perceive to be someone they should publicly support in some way. Yet, how often do those people actually engage with my work? Do they read the substance of what I have to say? And do they realize that my politics are very far left? They're not kind of just stroking liberal preconceptions of the world. They usually don't. They just see me as this little toy. 

And so, I became cruelly aware of all this as I was writing the book, and dealing with various episodes that exposed just how racist some people in this industry are. And it's very scary when those people who are very racist, very homophobic also have a lot of material power, and you do not. But I hope that has resulted in a richer, more sensitive book. 

Alicia: Yes, and it has. [Laughs.]

Mayukh: Thank you.

Alicia: No, it's interesting. There are so many people who, yeah, will be kind, so to speak, to your face, or your virtual face. And then once there's some sort of upheaval or something, they're always looking for a reason to discount the people who are critical of the Establishment. And it's a really delicate balance to strike how outspoken and how—yeah, just how outspoken to be, because they do not actually want to reward anyone who is critical. 

Mayukh: Totally.

I mean, everyone loves an underdog until they stop becoming an underdog, A. And B, I think, when—at least this is something that I felt, and maybe it's totally bogus, or whatever. Just my own kind of paranoia. 

But as someone who did get Establishment recognition when I think I was like 26, I think that there may have been a perception in some corners of food media, especially in its highest ranks, that I was being a brat and getting all this stuff handed to me, as if I didn't have to work for it. Getting all this stuff handed to me, and then having the audacity to bite the hand that feeds him. [Laughs.] No pun intended. Yeah, that stuff. 

And that's why I think in the past year, really reevaluated just how much of myself I put out into the world because I realized that no matter how righteous I felt in what I was articulating and broadcasting to the world, my mental health was suffering and my work was also suffering, because I was giving these uncharitable, ungenerous readers a reason to discredit me before they actually care to engage my work.

Alicia: Yeah. No, it's such a lesson that everyone needs to learn. [Laughs.] 

Mayukh: Yeah, sometimes it comes in a really hard way. But whatever. That’s therapy. Therapy’s the answer. [Laughter.] Gotta do it.

Alicia: And since you are teaching food journalism, are you optimistic about the future of food media?

Mayukh: Yeah. Oh, sorry. I did not mean to say, ‘Yes, I am.’ [Laughter.] I meant, ‘Yeah, that's a good question.’

I am a cynic by nature. But I will say that I see fewer students these days, at least the ones I teach at NYU, who see writing for Establishment publications and the dominant mainstream publications as the best path forward. There was a time—and certainly, this was true for myself, where writing a story for a very big newspaper in a metropolitan area was considered just the Holy Grail. And once you did that, you've arrived. 

And yet, I think that there are more students who do not see that as the only way to find success, in part because writing for those publications does not, is not always easy, especially when you have points of view that are a little more radical let's say than the left of center/center ideals that these papers champion. It's not easy to write about Palestinian food for a major newspaper. There's a lot that is compromised. 

And what I've tried to tell my students is that you don't necessarily want to put your name on things that you know are going to compromise your integrity or your sense of how you view the world. And so that, coupled with the rise of independent food media like Whetstone, for example, I think that has convinced a lot of my students that writing for these big name publications is not the only way to find success. 

So, I do hope that we see less fixation on those big publications. I'm cautiously optimistic. But I don't know, I'm not going to hold my breath. These institutions still have so much power and influence. And that's also where capital is concentrated. And I want my students to be able to eat. I want them to survive. Where's the good money? Where's the stable money? I don't know. [Laughter.] 

But yeah, so sure. Cautiously optimistic.

Alicia: Well, usually I ask people, is cooking a political act for them. But you cook for sustenance. And I respect that. And so I wanted to just ask you, for you is writing a political act?

Mayukh: Right. Is sustenance political? Yes.

No, writing is absolutely a political act. For me, I think it's the most meaningful form of political expression that I can think of for myself, because it's a way for me to distill my thoughts on who I am in this world as a person of color who has leftist politics in a way that is more direct than any other form of political engagement or action, you know? Yeah, it is absolutely a political act for me. 

But I hope others perceive it as that. I do worry sometimes that, like you said earlier, that some readers who want those more milquetoast narratives will pick up a book like mine and just be like, ‘Oh, how nice,’ and not truly absorb the more radical points of view that I have to offer. 

But, whatever, one reader at a time. That's all I can hope for. If I make a convert of one person, then I'm good. I’ll see.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much. 

Mayukh: Thank you for having me. Appreciate it.

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There are eras of the recent culinary past that I was only able to experience through reading magazines and retroactively digging into cookbooks, and what I find most exciting was the development of farm-to-table “New American” cuisine in New York City. How chef and author of What’s Good? A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients Peter Hoffman came to be a major figure in that development through his restaurants Savoy and Back Forty is an absolutely fascinating story, thanks to his candor and ability to self-critique. The book also explores the significance of certain ingredients, showing how local ecology and cuisine develop hand in hand.

Going back through the transcript to get this conversation ready for publication made me realize how deeply it dug into my psyche, that I have been thinking about its themes ever since we spoke in mid-July. This conversation forms the foundation of a lot of my forthcoming essays, because it is a rich and generous one that I know I will revisit again and again. We discussed the cultural significance of the embrace of olive oil in the U.S., why it’s important to name Palestinian cuisine, and how difficult it is to run a restaurant while maintaining one’s ideals. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Peter. Thank you so much for coming on today to chat. 

Peter: Yeah, it's wonderful to be taking this time with you, Alicia.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Peter: Yeah. 

So I grew up in Bergen County, New Jersey, a suburban town just over the George Washington Bridge from the city, where most parents commuted and traveled into the city. But my dad was a dentist. And so, he was locally based. My mom taught little pre-K, and then taught moms how to play with their kids in educational ways. And so, she did that locally as well. 

And our food, it was interesting, sort of what the food world was like there for us. My mom was born in Germany. She was an émigré from Hitler's Germany. And so, there were some strong European influences in some of the dishes, but clearly in the sensibility. And so, she was not one to embrace industrialized food for the most part, and really cooked with real ingredients and insisted on that in many ways. 

It's not like she was cooking German dishes. She was 10 when she left Germany, and actually got her culinary grounding from the Joy of Cooking, which her mother-in-law gave her when she married my dad, since she needed to know how to take care of her darling son. She was always grounded in good ingredients simply prepared. There was no Jolly Green Giant in our house. There was no Wonder Bread. When I was a young teenager, health food stores started to pop up. And she was packing me rice cakes and little gorp combos as part of my lunch. 

So my parents also brought us into the city a lot to experience the diversity of life and culture, whether it was art or cuisines. I was exposed as a young person to Middle Eastern food and Hungarian food. And an important sort of dining experience for me was when I got taken to a Brazilian spot and I ate feijoada.

The world is diverse. And it's exciting, and food is part of that discovery of difference. And whatever homogeneity was part of my experience in the suburbs, or deadening about being in the suburbs, they counteracted that with a lot of exposure to the world. So, grateful to them for that.

Alicia: And in the book, you write about this very food-centric upbringing. But was it different from how your peers were growing up, this no Jolly Green Giant, no Wonder Bread, and going into the city a lot? Did you have a sense that this was in contrast to kind of the dominant ways of eating?

Peter: I mean, we had other friends that ate good food. But my mom, if I think about my peers at the time, we definitely stood out as not completely outliers, but definitely on the good food edge of things. But in the dominant culture, in the school cafeteria, where lots of people were buying what the cafeteria ladies were preparing, I always brought my lunch. And so, that was always an expression of my mom's values. 

And so yeah, I had to explain lunch to people. [Laughs.] What are those rice cakes? But I don't remember it being a source of too much embarrassment. But it definitely was a shift there to say that I didn't look like everybody else. But there were lots of ways that I didn't look like everybody else.

Alicia: [Laughs.] And I've read a lot of memoirs of farm-to-table chefs that really aren't grappling with kind of economics or restaurant realities in the way that yours does. You write that your first jobs in French restaurants, you saw them as serving rich foods for rich people, but you kind of came around to the idea that a restaurant could have a bigger purpose through reading Wendell Berry. How did you establish your own politics, and how did they evolve while you went from working in restaurants to owning restaurants?

Peter: I mean, my politics — it's about how did I realize that food had a political side to it? Because my politics were always liberal. I mean, my parents were lefties, and so that kind of thing was always in the household looking through a leftist lens of politics. I don't think they had much awareness of what the cultural politics were. And a lot of people didn't. And some of that's only coming into conversation now. It's just what paintings hang at the Met or in MoMA is a conversation that nobody was really having about whether that was just white guys, or were looking at objects that were stolen from peoples who lived in other lands. And there was sort of the discussion about the Elgin Marbles being stolen from Greece, but that whole larger conversation about colonialism and wasn't one that was being had until very recently. 

So in the world of food, once I said and expressed the idea that I was interested in becoming a chef, it was well, ‘Go for the best.’ And so the best was defined as what's at the top of the pyramid, which is old cuisine, French old cuisine. 

And so, I tried to pursue that. And I got a job in a, what I say in the book, is sort of a second-level French restaurant, the holy trinity of Le Cirque, not La Cremaillere—Le Grenouille, and Le Pavillon. Those restaurants weren't interested in taking me, and—La Côte Basque, that's actually the three. And they sent me somewhere else. And so they needed some help. And I found it a completely oppressive kind of cooking and bogus in this sort of wonderful chapter. 

Speaking about your latest thing about wounds, I write the chapter about how I burned myself terribly in trying to hold on to my job. We were opening cans of escargot that were—that came from Taiwan and stuffing them in little shells and plugging them with herb butter. And the specials would be developed by the chef when he came back and was just kind of this interchangeability of this garnish mixed with that garnish, therefore, it has this name that Escoffier created 100 years ago. And it had no relationship to ingredients, to freshness, to anything inspirational. And I was like, ‘I hate this place.’ And I got fired. But I got fired because I didn't belong in that culture. 

And so, I found my way to—I mean, there probably were some other jobs. But I found my way to a job at La Colombe d'Or, which was cooking the food of Provence. And so, that was my first entry into regional food as opposed to old cuisine. And with that comes a very different approach to ingredients. It's not about making it richer and adding lots of butter and making it so refined that you didn't need a fork and a knife. You could eat it with one hand, or that you're attenuating the taste by adding all this butter to it. 

Regional food is much more direct. I worked unsuccessfully. I tried to get into the old cuisine world of Midtown, high-end French restaurants. It was a culture that I didn't belong in. And I also realized it wasn't food that was exciting me in any way. And slowly, I found my way to a job at La Colombe d'Or, pretty much the first Provençal restaurant in New York City, and certainly one to put it out there in a modern way for diners at that time. 

And what I realized in being there was that regional foods, and the cuisine of Provence in particular, was really diametrically opposed to what old cuisine, which was always trying to make things richer and more delicate and more attenuated as opposed to cooking directly with the ingredients. Maybe keeping the animal on the bone, but also that the vegetables were less adulterated. Not to say that we didn't chop things in brunoise or wanting it to look orderly, but that power and punch and zest and sort of explosions of flavor were goals in that cooking as opposed to delicacy. And that started to really change my head, and I never looked back from that and never really tried to get into the world of old cuisine again. 

But with it, there was also this conversation. I remember having a conversation with a fellow cook. And he was talking about, ‘Well, let's study the cuisines of the poor people of the world.’ And I was like, ‘Why?’ And I started to realize that this whole notion of old cuisine was wrapped up in a kind of colonialism and exploitation of cultures, in terms of trying to go out and conquer the globe. 

So then it sort of started to morph into ‘Well, who's in the dining room? And are these fat cats people that I want to cook for?’ And so there's always sort of that balance between what are we cooking and who are we cooking for? In a certain way, that was a choice that I made in terms of what kind of a restaurant that Susan and I opened, that it was never trying to be a high-end restaurant. It was not priced that way, because I didn't want to cook for those people and just be surrounded by that. It's not like it was cheap, or it—I mean, it was still a mid-priced or higher price restaurant, but I never wanted to develop a milieu in the restaurant, that this is food for the wealthy and what comes with that.

And I write about this a little bit as well, is that those restaurants are trying to sell—they're still selling you the idea that they have access to something that nobody else has access to. It's not just that the diners have more money in their wallet or on their credit card than other people. But it's this mythical notion of selling the idea that the chef, as the gatekeeper, has access to ingredients that nobody else has access to. And that's why you should come eat in my restaurant. 

And I've always sort of hated that notion. I want to be a good cook. I want people to like my cooking or appreciate what I'm doing, because I do it well and I deal with technique. And I make it delicious, or I make it beautiful. But I'm working with the same ingredients that everybody else is, has access to. And we can build the cuisine and a reputation based on abundance, not on scarcity. 

Alicia: Absolutely.

And I mean, how do you think about the role of a chef? In the book, you write about trying to have a non-hierarchical kitchen and trying to—and how that didn't work. Having an egalitarian kitchen didn't necessarily work. But we've been having these conversations now about how do we create an egalitarian, equitable kitchen space. And how did you take these ideas that you learned from what you didn't want and apply them in a way that actually made sense when you opened Savoy?

Peter: Well, we can only ever work with where we're at, historically, in a certain way. What might feel like standard practice today wasn't then, which was the idea that the front of the house was all pooled tips. And that was a way that I wanted to encourage cooperation and teamwork, now people have—

I mean, we understand even more acutely what's wrong with tipping today than we did then. But the idea that you were going to give a territorial section to somebody that they controlled the flow of dollars that came and went in that section. I mean, it's just absurd, right? 

So that was a change that we made and with it, the completely expressed values that we're going to work together. And we're also going to work together between the front and the back of the house. And so, that was always a challenge. Certain people came into the restaurant having had different life experiences or work experiences, and didn't always treat—cooks didn't always treat the front of the house with full respect and in the other direction as well. And so that was always a teaching moment, always an opportunity to continue to model for people that we need to treat people with respect. And so, that was an ongoing project. 

I opened the restaurant where we didn't have any prep cooks. Everybody did their own mise en place. And I was really dedicated to that idea, because I wanted people to take responsibility for how they—for what their mise en place was. Was it cut nicely? Was it clean? Was it fresh? It's not just sort of, like, ‘What is this product? Who did this?’ 

But people—It didn't always have efficiency to it. And there's this sort of a division of responsibility that is part of the manufacturing industrial model that people tried to convince me was more efficient, meaning more financially lucrative, that I needed to embrace. And they were right. I mean, they were right, because it's so hard to make any money in the restaurant business. And so, you look to what compromises can you make that still feel ok? That they're compromises, but they're not detrimental to the product? That's a whole project to, to say, ‘What am I comfortable with? What am I not comfortable with? And how do I continue to find that balance?’ 

I don't know. Without going deeply into the whole thing around the burger, there were compromises that then got made in the restaurants that then—I ended up going like, ‘This isn't the restaurant that I started out with, and that, that fed my soul. And I don't know how to get back to what I once was. And maybe I can't.’ And that sort of led to some discouragement, and ultimately to closing the restaurants.

Alicia: Yeah. 

In a similar vein, you write about butter, and you just spoke about butter as kind of representative of cuisine and of this French dominance of what good cooking is in the minds of people who both worked in restaurants but also went to restaurants, and how the rise of olive oil led to this kind of understanding that there were other cuisines in the world beyond continental European cuisine. 

And that was really interesting to me, because I think I remember the moment when everyone was, started to use olive oil. But I never, I think, thought about it in this way necessarily. And I wanted to ask, can you kind of expand more on that moment? 

And also, you, when you talk about other cuisines, you do talk about Palestinian cuisine. And that really made an impression on me, because usually, that's not something people in food media say. Palestinian cuisine goes a little bit under the radar. 

And so yeah, those I guess, are two questions. [Laughs.]

Peter: Yeah, those are two topics. But let's talk about them. 

So the butter chapter is really, to me, a very interesting chapter. In some ways, it really reflects some of the complexity of the book. I'm not just writing a memoir; I'm also sort of telling stories about ingredients and our relationship to those ingredients. And some of that's botanical stuff. And in the butter chapter, it's really historical and cultural. 

And I open that chapter by talking about the fact that there was only margarine in my house when I was little, and sort of what that, I think that grew out of rationing food, and specifically butter being rationed during World War II. And that my parents experienced that and got used to margarine and sort of—you come to like what you have around you because that's what it is. And then it was our Black housekeeper who introduced me to butter and showed me what a far superior cooking fat and tasting fat it was. And it wasn't long before there were two butter dishes sort of side by side that—there was this half-stick leftover that she hadn't finished when she cooked food for us next to the margarine. And then soon I was buttering my toast with butter instead of margarine. 

And so that part of the chapter is sort of about a Black cook who came out of the South and came—made the Great Migration to the north for better opportunity. Used a great skill set that she had, which was that she cooked with skill and flavor, and that was part of what she did in our family and that we cherished her for, all of us. But I took that with me going forward, and so I have some gratitude there for introducing me to that world. 

But what butter was doing in French cuisine was that they were always looking—the French cuisine is sort of looking for homogeneity, right? They want a sauce that is, whether it's a cream sauce, or a butter sauce or bordelaise, it kind of lays over the—whatever you're saucing and completely envelops it. So, the idea of emulsification, it's sort of going into this, the poetry or the philosophy of pursuing emulsification as opposed to the unemulsified. 

And so, Italian food and cooking with olive oil tends to be about unemulsified sauces, that is showing the different ingredients and that something is broken or not brought together, or we see the diverse and varied ingredients. And so, there's something kind of deep in that, that we're not trying to bring everything together. We're saying that herbs are herbs and oil is oil, and here's some chopped up capers, and some bits of olive. And that there's beauty in unemulsified life. And I think that that's part of what olive oil did. 

It's the beginning of shifting away from France as the center of old cuisine and beginning to look to, well, who else cooks with olive oil? And what did they do with it? And so that took me into the Mediterranean, and being excited by the foods of North Africa or the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, all of that. And all of those are such exciting flavors. 

I mentioned the Palestinian cuisine in the book, because I think it's important. I'm Jewish, and I write about some aspects of that. There's a chapter about Passover in the book, and then I used Passover to explore the world of Sephardic foods, that is the Jews who were expelled from Spain. And those are not my people. And my people are kind of the Northern European Jews, what are known as Ashkenazi Jews. And that was matzah ball soup and pot roast. And it had been served at my Passover table for decades. 

And I was like, ‘Oh, I'm so sick of this.’ All the jokes that people sometimes make about Jewish food not being very interesting, or just a hunk of meat on the plate kind of thing. And well, we've then over the last 20, 30 years, people have started to say, ‘Well, Jewish food can be really exciting. And it's really diverse.’ And so for me, I use Passover as a way of exploring all of that, and looking into ‘What are the Jews of Morocco eating? Tunisia, Greece, Turkey?’ All of that. 

And so with that, then you start to go ‘Well, many times those foods reflected the cuisine of the place itself. Where were Jews living? And is the food, really all that—aside from following the kosher rules, kashrut rules—is the food all that different from the people who were living there, around them, who were not Jewish?’ So a lot of those foods are similar, or the same. 

And so it led me to be able to then sort of say, ‘Ok, what is going on in Israel today?’ And specifically, sort of, at the same time that we have this rise of Israeli expansionism and Israeli exploitation of the Palestinian people and the conflict not moving any closer to any resolution in—it's been going on all my life, that there's this rise of interest and excitement in the food media around Israeli food and Israeli cuisine. 

And so, it immediately begs the question of what is this food? Where did it come from? What is—Not where did it come from, but I mean. It sounds like it's coming from outer space. It’s like, ‘What is this food about? What stories does it reflect and part of?’ Not all of what's being talked about in terms of Israeli cuisine, because there are many cultures and many Jews who have come to Israel. And so those dishes are diverse. 

But a lot of that is the food of the region, which is the food of the Palestinians. And what is that? And why isn't that something that we are really celebrating and paying attention to? And using that moment, to go, ‘How does this whole culinary story feed into the political story, and—or vice versa? Is the food story being used to color the political story that somebody wants to tell?’ And then, history is always told by the victor, right? One of the phrases that I think is important to look at, is like, ‘What is this history? Who's telling the story?’ And so, this is a good moment for us—a really important moment for us—to be looking at that, in terms of the cuisine as well. 

And so, yeah, our food is always has a political aspect to it and is always worth looking at and thinking about and—

I guess a while ago, you said something about Wendell Berry and all of that. It's just that moment of finding that essay, and that changed my whole outlook and my lens. So, it is expressive of our culture and our root values. And we need to be looking at that. 

One of the things that I, that I'm using as a signature and inscription in my book when I'm signing it for people who I don't necessarily know is ‘Our food is a self-portrait. Keep painting masterpieces.’ So, the part of the self-portrait is that what is it—

What is our food saying about who we are and what our culture is and what our values are? And so, we need to keep thinking about that and keep making choices and shaping that so that it really reflects what our values are.

Alicia: Right, right.

Well, you mentioned here also food media, where it was telling the story of Israeli food, and what does tha—what did that really mean? And what did it really reflect? And one of the first mentions, maybe the only mention of food journalists in the book, refers to complaints about ramps, about how they're trendy, they're not actually that great. The kind of stuff that food writers who have to write five things a day and put it out there do to just get people's attention. 

But I wanted to ask, what is your perspective on food media generally? Has it changed when you had a restaurant to when you don't have a restaurant? Do you really consume a lot of food media?

Peter: Big topic, Alicia. 

The world of the food media was a lot smaller when we opened the restaurant in 1990. But we still understood at the time that they had to generate content all the time. And so, that was both good and bad for us. We saw that if we could figure out that the reason people came around and were looking for things or that we could suggest ideas to them was that they needed content. But you also start to see where that's hollow. 

I also think that we’re in a moment where, independent of the food media, I think we've come to realize that reporters are not just innocent bystanders but they are actual participants in this story, in the shaping of the story and the framing of the way we think about things and how fraught that is in terms of the politics. And for a long time, I don't think we understood what that looked like in the food world. But now we do. We understand that in certain ways that as the gatekeepers, that certain people who write at certain publications, they are the tastemakers. And so, they tell you where to go or what to think about food experiences.

It’s fraught. And again, some of it gets shaped as white, elitist, sometimes male people being the ones who are anointed. And partly, they continue to reward the people who were part of the club that they're in. That gets back to the old cuisine thing, and it gets back to what paintings are hanging at the—in MoMA or at the Met, right? What is blue chip art, and what is blue chip food?

But we're starting to shake that up a lot, and in ways that are very, very profound and significant. And I think, still, where I'm most disturbed by where the food media hasn't really come to terms with their own role is that over and over again, we see that these chefs who are running toxic environments, whether it's sexual harassment or just a toxic workplace that is abusive of people's humanity in order to get the ultimate finest product of the night. Or the idea of that tough love is actually a valuable way of running a company culture. All of that the food media still hasn't moved off of that. 

And so that over and over again, we see all these James Beard winners or highly touted restaurants, then turns out the chef is a creep, or—I don't mean like a sexual creep, necessarily—but possibly—but not a good person. Not fostering good culture. I don't think the food media has come to terms with their own role in that. And we're still seeing it over and over again, that somebody gets called out and you go, ‘Well, how did they get here? How did that person rise to the level that they were at?’ And that's the story.

And even though some of the food writers have written, done deep research and gotten people to talk about it, it's like, ‘How did they get there in the beginning, and what is food media's role in that?’

And I have, I guess, I have some bad feelings about where and why I wasn't always considered part of the in crowd, whether it was the in crowd by other chefs or the in crowd by the food media themselves. And a lot of that had to do in its time, or in that time, had to do with that I didn't carouse in the way that was, what was the dominant social force in the food world at the time. And that was exciting, that people were living large, staying up all night and drinking hard and expensive—eating excessively and doing blowouts. I didn't want to live that way. 

So that's not as good a story as people who are living large. Still on my path and feel better about it. And my body feels better about it too.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Well, it is interesting, because I think that I've also wanted to see that sort of internal media criticism where when there's a great piece, maybe, at Grub Street, about—Mission Chinese Food was supposed to be this good restaurant to work at, but actually, it was terrible and toxic, the same as all these other ones. And you want to say like, ‘Well, where is the criticism of how this place was built up? It didn't come out of nowhere. Part of the fostering of the toxicity comes from the hype that we give to restaurants.’

But it's true. There hasn't been a real moment of looking inside and saying, ‘Well, what is our role in this, really?’ it's kind of just this vague correction, of course, that, you know—and I'm guilty of it, too, because I don't know how else to do my job, where we just kind of take chefs for their words on whether they're good people or not now. And we're not really still necessarily doing the real inquiry into how things really are in their kitchen. 

And now, Food & Wine changed its thing so that it was like 25 people doing good in the food and beverage industry. Why don't we just stop putting people on pedestals? Why don't we just tell stories? And it really is upsetting to me that we don't have a real reckoning because it's still trying to sell in the same old way, just kind of put it in new packaging.

Peter: Yeah, I agree with all of that, Alicia. And there's a way that as people, as individuals, that we still succumb to even if we are trying to get our politics right or we understand the stories that came before, there's a way that we are excited—or actually, maybe, I want to say titillated. I mean, that's part of it, too, is just like, ‘Where did it go wrong?’

Food is sensual, right? When we have great food experiences, it makes us feel great to be alive. It makes us thrilled. And what makes it tilt into sexual, right? 

And that's why I use the word titillate, right, because there are certain chefs who crossed that boundary. I don't mean with their workers or with customers. I mean, in their—in the way that they talked about food, that it crossed over into a sexual place. I mean, look what we called it. We called it food porn. Right? I mean, I was horrified when I first heard that term. I mean, it's like, ‘I love photographs of beautiful food, but food porn?’ 

All of a sudden, we've taken it to a place that is the debasement of one of the most glorious things that that our body has sensitivity to. And food is right there with it. It's such a debasement of people's beautiful cooking to call a photograph of their dish ‘food porn.’ And so, we continue to support that way of thinking about it through travel films, and what—

Look, I love travel. And I love food travel. It's been part of how I've expanded my mind and experience my understanding of what it means to be human and the glory of diversity on the planet, both in terms of what grows here and who lives here and what people have done with it. 

Alicia: Yeah.

And I mean, in the book too, you talk about Anthony Bourdain in a way that I think most people—I don't know. [Laughs.] We've kind of deified him in a way. And you write about how the early bravado, the devil-may-care attitude, and then the later coming to focus on land, labor, culture. For you, what was his influence when you were in the restaurant? And how do you perceive things now? What is, do you think, of his lasting influence?

Peter: Well, I think he gave license to a lot of the bad behaviors. And so, I hold him. I mean, it was there. But he romanticized that. And I think that was really detrimental to the restaurant world, to us, culturally. 

He moved off of that, and people really came to love his travel pieces and his exploration, that—and felt he had compassion and was able to connect to all kinds of people. There's truth there. I mean, he certainly was no longer following the old cuisine that he started out following in the same way that I was following that 30 or 40 years ago.

I think that what he moved on to certainly opened people's eyes to the wonders of the world and in different food and different cultures. But he still loved being outrageous, and got attention for that. And so, he continued to be a controversial speaker. And people love that. They love extremities. What we have politically going on in this country now to that, that we don't have real conversation, we have people who are at the extremities and saying outrageous things. And some people get behind it and vote for those people and other people are offended by it and vote against that person. So, he's complicated. 

Alicia: Yeah, no, very much.

[Laughs.] Well, to talk about kind of another sort of passing mention in the book, but it's actually—you're going to talk to Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy tomorrow for MOFAD. And she emailed me while she was reading the book to say that you mentioned working at Hubert’s, because we're—we had a conversation at the end of last year where she was like, ‘You're the only person I've ever heard talk about The Vegetarian Compass.’ 

So, we are both the only people who've ever talked about this book and this person together. So when you write in the book about working for her, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ If you could tell me more about that experience, because it seems there's not a lot of information because she passed away so young and before her cookbook even came out. And you mentioned that it was where you were introduced to going to the Union Square Greenmarket. And so, can you tell me more about what she was like, what the restaurant was like, and how a vegetable-kind of focused restaurant was operating in that time?

Peter: So Hubert's was a fundamental restaurant in my development and in my life for many reasons. One is, I met Susan, my wife, there. But there was a group of people who were cooking there. And maybe this is true for lots of people that they have sort of, they're coming-of-age restaurant, or they're still connected to those people. And Hubert’s was that coming-of-age for me in many respects. 

So after sort of doing my attempts at old cuisine, and then finding regional food by working at La Colombe d'Or, then I ended up at another restaurant that was sort of trying to do old cuisine but from an American point of view. And that was the Quilted Giraffe. I had a lot of problems with what that food was. But I learned a lot there. And at least it was being run by Americans. And so that, there was a culture there and an excitement about food that was different than what was happening, or my perception of what was happening in the French world at the time of Midtown French. 

Then I went to France and I studied with Madeleine Kamman, and she was all about the regional cuisines of France and Italy. And so, she really pointed me towards not just cooking with the seasons, but that all these cuisines, all these regional foods grow out of what was indigenous to the region. And these wonderful dishes are classics, because everybody cooks them, because that's what everybody has on hand. And so, I was very excited by that notion and exploring the world of food through that. 

And so, after riding my bicycle around France and Italy and a little bit of Spain, following my time with her, I came back to the United States. And I landed at Hubert’s. And what they were realizing that they were interested in, and we were part of shaping that, but it was this idea of new American cuisine, that is the historical foods of this land, and the different peoples who came to live here from different places, but also what grows here. What's great that we can work with instead of flying things in from Europe. And so, that's the beginning of the whole farm-to-table movement. 

And so Len and Karen, Len Allison, Karen Hubert, a couple. They married while we were working together, but they had been a couple for a long time. They weren't cooks, really. I mean, they weren't professional cooks. They came to it from the world of philosophy and filmmaking, and they kind of had this idea of a group project. And so, Len saw himself as an auteur that he was. He was a film director without knowing anything about film. He was a chef director without knowing anything about food. 

And so, he gathered interesting people together and threw them into the lab of the kitchen and said, ‘Let's see what comes out of it. And it'll be interesting, and we'll serve it to people.’ And that was an incredibly exciting and liberating experience to be part of it. It wasn't necessarily a good way to run a restaurant, but there was some very exciting food that came out of that. 

And people that we got to meet, one of them being my friend Romy Dorotan, who now has Purple Yam out in Ditmas Park and had Cendrillon in Soho for many years. Masami Kawata, who I met through—we did an exchange program with Omen restaurant, the Japanese restaurant on Thompson street in Soho ‘cause it was across the street from where I lived. And I was so excited by that Japanese food, which was again, kind of regional food of Kyoto. Not just trying to be a sushi restaurant, but cook with all these interesting ingredients. And so, we did an exchange, and Masami taught me all kinds of things about food and technique and Japanese approach to cooking. 

And so, Len and Karen provided the environment in which all of that exploration could take place and that was supportive to so many people. It was interesting, Len kind of ran the show because he was the bulldog or more dominant person in their relationship. But she was the one with the real food sensitivity. When she tasted something, that was a more important critique than when he tasted something. 

And I'm sorry to disappoint you, at least in this moment in her evolution or her involvement in the restaurant, she wasn't a very important culinary force. She had a vision, but she was letting him run the show in many ways. And then, of course, we were this force of all these food artists doing our thing. So I wouldn't say that I really learned much from her in terms of being vegetable focused. 

I think it's there in certain respects, some—I've always known that what was most exciting about flavor on the plate was not the protein, as in the animal protein, but rather the vegetables, what the garnishes were and what that—what those flavor combinations were. Len and Karen were very close with Evan and Judith Jones. They ate at the restaurant regularly, and they socialized with them. And I think that as they moved into the world, the professional food world, that they looked to Evan and Judith as mentors to them. I don't think that they always had their own voice yet. Again, that was to our advantage as a group of cooks who were looking to find their own voice. There was a structure, but not necessarily a dominant culinary voice there. 

I don't know. It's interesting. So she wrote a book. It's funny, Alicia, because I don't—I didn't even remember that she had, that this book came out. First of all, it came out after she died. It was sad for us that she passed away. Len and Karen had moved to Hawaii, had left New York, partly to be in an environment where they could deal with her illness better and try and treat her in some more holistic ways. We didn't end well. Mostly, again, my relationship with Len more than my relationship with Karen, but that was sort of—she came along for the ride. 

She wrote a book that was a thinly veiled, fictional version of life at Hubert’s. And she was completely ungenerous in depiction of me, and I was very angry about that. And I felt that I had given everything to them. It was the most important thing in my life at that point, and it was so ungenerous. Not to say that I didn't have faults and things to learn and ways to grow, but I—they depended on me. And I gave them everything I had, and all my good spirit. Not just hard work, but I gave them my spirit. 

And none of that, other than that—she called me a workhorse. It was in this way that she was just like, ‘We're going to exploit this workhorse, because that's what he's good for.’ And it felt so debased. And I remember telling Len after she died, that that hurt me. And he said, ‘Well, that was fiction.’ He was deflecting, because it was barely fiction. 

So, I didn't realize that she put out a cookbook. But when you sent me that on Friday or Saturday, I went online and bought a copy to have a look at it and read his foreword. And so, I'll see what it is he was thinking about.

One of the things I just thought of, ‘cause of your interest, they were also very good friends with Anna Thomas.

Alicia: Oh, right. From the Vegetarian Epicure.

Peter: The Vegetarian Epicure. 

And they were filmmakers as well. And so, I don't know what's in Karen's book in terms of recipes or whatever, but she would bring dishes to us that came out of there or the things that she was eating. 

And I want to tip my hat to Len and Karen was that they had—they, in realizing that they didn't really know anything about food, they brought in guest chefs. This is before my time, when they were in Brooklyn. And so they had developed relationships with, among other people, Madhur Jaffrey and Edna Lewis. And so I got to know those women, because they came around to the restaurant. Again, I don't know what's in the book. But Madhur was an important influence for them, as well as a respected cook. 

And Edna as well, who we—those of us who were in the restaurant on the times that she came to eat and came into the kitchen and discovering her book, which is about—and Judith Jones was her editor. And that book was about seasonal cooking, right? I mean, sort of, she's telling you, from the community, the free Black community that she was raised in about pig killing in November. All of that was a revelation to me, in terms of that the industrialized food supply has evolved to try to be ubiquitous, to be manufactured, that you can have this item any time of the year anywhere that you are. And that that's not what food has been traditionally, and rather to explore a way of living in the moment and responding to what's in season. 

And so, that isn't just a fancy, elitist project that I can do because I drift in and out of Union Square Farmers Market. But it's really the way people have lived, and is economical because we're not shipping things all over the planet so that we can have them all the time and burning fossil fuels in order to do that, causing climate change. What does it mean to try to have animal protein, or even perishable vegetables on a year-round basis? And what does that do to the flavor? What does that do to the people who are producing that food, and to be much more—that local is political in that way? 

It's not to say that local doesn't have issues of labor exploitation involved in it as well, because it does. But when we eat locally, there are fundamental societal changes that can come with that. And they have implications that are, as I said, about climate change, as well as just what's—enjoying what's here. And realizing that life is transient, and we can't have it just because we want it or because we have money all the time.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Well, related to that, there have been so many stories lately about fake claims of local seasonal food, on restaurant menus. There’s the Willows Inn thing where they were serving people Costco chicken and stuff. And in the book, you write about hiring a chef who wanted to put spring peas on a menu before they would have been available, and how that's a—that was a constant struggle to maintain integrity in that way. 

Why do you think that this has become kind of a thing? There was the big exposé in Florida also a few years ago about farm-to-table restaurants lying about being farm-to-table. Why is this something that people have, don't allow themselves to be honest about or to pursue nuance with or maybe explain why something couldn't be local or available, or that sort of thing? What is your take on that?

Peter: Yeah.

Well, it's complicated. Alicia, I'm not going to excuse any of it, right? Economics drives people at times to make decisions where you cheat or you fudge it. But the idea that this guy was buying Costco organic chickens when he was saying that he was sourcing food completely from the island, obviously is filled with deceit. 

I never maintained that everything that we cooked with and sourced was local, but some people thought that that's what I was doing and went after me for having a lemon tart on the menu or something. The extent to which people are interested in having the conversation about where our food comes from and how we source it is over dinner, or on the menu, is limited. People, on a certain level, lots of people just want dinner. And they don't really want to know the backstory.

But plenty of our customers were interested in the backstory. And that's why they came to us, but there's still plenty of people who aren't interested in it and have yet to embrace that or change with that. 

So farm-to-table was both political, but it was also the fashion, the food fashion of the moment. And in many ways, the food fashion has shifted away from that. And the political struggle, or the food awareness, has shifted away from farm-to-table in many ways. We're talking about labor a lot more than we are about how the food was produced or where it comes from. And we're talking about what are the conditions in the restaurant itself, whereas that wasn't something that we had a whole lot of awareness around when we were writing on our menu that the carrots came from Guy Jones's farm, or that it was Maytag blue cheese or whatever. 

I don't know whether that's the pendulum swinging in another, in the other direction. But it certainly is a shift of focus. It's a good shift to focus. I worry sometimes that some of the restaurants that are now all about identity have stopped sourcing in the way that is still thinking about the sustainability issues. Because, again, the financial pressures to run a financially viable restaurant remain. It's really, really hard. And to do both, that is to buy sustainably sourced ingredients good for the environment and good for people and run a restaurant that's good for the people that are there, it is a huge challenge. 

But it's where we're at, right? It's sort of what we face here and now today. And so, I think it's a great moment, an important moment to try and say, ‘We can do both. We must do both. And what does that look like?’ 

And most importantly, is in that part of the whole equation is, what is the—what then is the cost of going out for dinner? And are we really prepared to pay the full cost of food, of dining out? And I think people still want to buy their fancy cars and their fancy watches and restore certain ways of travel post-pandemic and aren't necessarily ready to say, ‘Well, yeah, I'm good with a 30 percent increase in the cost of dining out. And what that will mean for me, which might mean I eat out 30 percent less but I'm doing it in ways and in support of companies that are doing it in ways that reflect my values.’

Alicia: Awesome. 

Well, thank you so much for the time today.

Peter: Yeah!

It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to talk with you in this way, Alicia, and the fact that you read into those parts of the book is exciting to me. In that same way, that our food is a self-portrait, I mean people find things in the book that resonate for them. And there's lots there. There's lots of nuggets to be had in What's Good?And I'm so glad that you found nuggets that are really important to me and are there for people to think about. So, I'm glad you thought about them.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, I'm glad to have read the book and to have had this chat with you. So, thank you so much. 

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I’ve been thinking a lot about waves of interest in biodiversity and decolonization of various ingredients, and so it was the perfect time to talk to baker and co-owner of L.A. restaurant Friends & Family Roxana Jullapat about her book Mother Grains: Recipes for the Grain Revolution. Because who is really experiencing the grain revolution? And when will we revolutionize and decolonize global food systems, instead of just providing more artisanal choice to those with money?

Jullapat, who came up in some of the most influential farm-to-table restaurants on the West Coast, understands these issues better than most. We discussed how she came to bake with artisan grains, how we can think about flour differently, and how she managed to write a cookbook while still working in the bakery. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Roxana. Thank you so much for taking the time today to chat. 

Roxana: Hi, Alicia. Thank you so much for inviting me. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Roxana: So I was born here in the States, in California, to be more precise. But I actually moved to Costa Rica, where my dad was from, when I was just two. So my foods were just the foods of any typical Latin American kid, starting with tons of tortillas made with nixtamalized corn, of course. Tamales, tropical fruits like the ones you probably eat every day. And we actually start drinking coffee at an early age also. 

And then, of course, normal kids stuff, like, a spaghetti with tomato sauce and rotisserie chicken and all the things that kids like. But for sure, there were a lot more vegetables than you would imagine because there's just that access to produce everywhere year round. 

Alicia: And what was it about bread and pastry that drew you into working with them?

Roxana: When I decided to take a break from schooling, after I got my bachelor's degree, and before I commit—I was supposed to go to grad school. I was like, ‘Ok, let's do something manual. I need to use my hands and not study all day.’

And I went to cooking school, and I thought I was just gonna cook like any normal cook. At the time, I was vegetarian. And I had a real hard time in cooking school working with animal products. Really, really tough. I'm like, ‘Wow, this is so much blood.’

I remember having my first bite of steak that I had in a long, long time, like years probably, in cooking school. And so, bread and pastries seem so natural, right? These are ingredients that I’m not defensive about, ingredients that I use all the time even though there's a lot of dairy. But I was a vegetarian. 

And also my family, starting with my great-grandmother and my mom even, there's a lot of baking. So it didn't sound foreign. There were a lot of terms in Spanish and in French, which I was familiar with. So it seemed very approachable. 

Plus, by the time I graduated cooking school, having gone through the entire program, including all the savory food and all kinds of butchery and charcuterie, I was getting all these jobs in small restaurants. And I had been sent to the pastry station to plate desserts or make garnishes, etc. So I was like, ‘Ok, I guess this is it.’

And if once you know you like it, and you're kind of good at it. I found a really good job, which was working under Nancy Silverton. I was like, ‘Ok, let's go work at a great place that does this really well.’

Alicia: Well, what made you vegetarian and what made you stop being vegetarian?

Roxana: I was always not very—as a child, I was not super into meat. I thought it was really chewy and really hard and you needed a knife. And the flavors were really, really strong. Also I'm sure you're familiar outside of the United States, beef tends to be grass-fed rather than grain-fed, and it's not always confined so the texture and the flavor of the meat is very different. It's very forward, very meaty, very beefy. Almost barnyard. So I felt that was a—really hard for me as a child. 

I don't know what my parents were thinking. There were instances when we were very young. And in September we'd go pick the pig that we would sacrifice for Christmas. So, we’d go to a farm outside of San José, the capitol, and go visit the pig farmer and say, ‘Ok, this is ours.’ I mean, that's so cruel. Come Christmas, you don't want to touch that ham. So, I definitely felt like I couldn't separate the face of that animal with the meat on my plate. 

When I was allowed to say what I wanted to eat, in a family of five kids, you're—there's no menu to choose from. You eat what's in front of you. Once I had more freedom to say ‘I would rather eat this,’ I was a vegetarian. 

Alicia: And are you still vegetarian or no?

Roxana: I am very vegetarian-heavy in my house. I mean, we seldom purchase meat or fish. I mean, I think we have a can of tuna in the house, maybe in the pantry. So even though my husband is a chef, and we work in a restaurant that serves an omnivore diet, and we go to restaurants where we might enjoy the gamut of foods available to us, we eat very vegetarian, if not vegan-ish in my house.

Alicia: Oh, nice. Awesome. 

And I wanted to ask also how you developed your specific style of baking. You mentioned working under Nancy Silverton. You went to one of these—this really grand dame of baking. And how did you emerge from that and develop yourself?

Roxana: I think that the one thing that I felt very attracted to working in California, but also having come from a seasonal place, [where you] use what's available in front of you; there's not a huge amount of imports. I always found it very compelling and appealing to just go with that flow. Follow that seasonal rhythm. And that's what Campanile did so great, and why it was so important to me to work at a place like that. 

I'm very tomboyish in my baking, so I'm not into very intricate or meticulous technique. I want things to feel handmade and small batch–y. And that the ingredients are identifiable, that they didn't come in a jar or that they were in vacuum seal. I just want to feel that the process is more organic. It just unfolds unto itself, and you coax the ingredients just to do their thing rather than  impose on them your vision of the world. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, you just had a book come out called Mother Grains. What was the process like—because I'm struggling to write a book right now—of being in a bakery and writing a book? What was your process for writing it, and how did you find that time?

Roxana: It’s really funny, interesting, and dramatic, you know? And I'm sure you feel all of those things, because when we—by the time my agent and I sat down and said, ‘Ok, this is a book proposal,’ I had a table of contents with a vast number of recipes. 

Now, these recipes are probably—were in a large format. This is for a bakery that makes more than a couple dozen at a time. So the first and the most challenging thing, when to just to downscale all those things. And then you think that you're explaining things very well until people say like, ‘What is ‘Add water to wet sand?’’ That doesn't sound that clear after all.

So, I would say that it took me a while to figure it out. And if I were to write another cookbook, I would do this process, which is we work—I work every day. I'm on the schedule; I work a station. I managed one of the ovens, or today, for example, I'm doing all the lamination for tomorrow. 

And I don't want to stop doing that. 

So I want to come in, do my work at three in the morning, whenever it is, and then spend one to two hours testing recipes or looking at them, getting familiarized with them. If it's downscaling, do that. Which is what I did last year, only I was disorganized about it. And then you take one day to write, and that's the day that you're in your house with your cat, pot of coffee, and just go for it. 

Impossible. Impossible. And I've seen I work with people that have done this, and I have no idea how they do it, but it’s impossible to just go, ‘Ok, I have an hour left. Let's go write.’ Ah-ah, that's not gonna happen. That’s not how it works. But I remember when Suzanne Goin was writing the Lucques cookbook. That's how she did it. She would be in between orders, go punch in a recipe. 

But yeah, it's incredibly challenging. Your entire staff is involved in the process. I was lucky enough to have journalists and English majors among my staff. I even have a—had a biologist. So I had a lot of resources. And then eventually, you're gonna have to—I don't know if this is for you also, but I did have to look for help. Look to those professional recipe testers and copy editors and have them help you out, because it takes a village. 

Alicia: Right, right. 

And so in the book, you write about how you came up in these very formative farm-to-table restaurants on the west coast, like Campanile. But it was local farmers getting into grains. There were new mills out there in Los Angeles that you visited. The Washington State University bread lab, that was what really got you interested in grain as a seasonal ingredient. Why do you think grain hadn't been more deeply considered by chefs, even the ones who were actively interested in sustainable and local sourcing?

Roxana: That is such an important question, and really the gist of why Mother Grains came to be. Because at some point, somewhere in our recent history—where we were pushing forward towards food security and industrializing processes to ensure that we could all eat—at some point we lost connection with the fact that this flour comes from a plant. It actually grows in the ground, literally in the ground. And there's several steps that can be mechanized and sort of divorce us from that connection to the land where the actual seed comes from. 

Even for a person like myself. I'm a baker, I know stuff. We all know, chocolate grows in a tree, but we see it in a bar pretty much always. So to actually really slow down and say, ‘Wait a minute. This is important. This was alive. It isn't anymore. Why isn't it anymore full of all these things, just like the fruit that I purchased at the farmers’ market?’

So for us farm-to-table people, which is a lot of us, right? And we kind of have a chip on our shoulder about how we work with our farmers, and we have a personal relationships with them and how we are really pushing for sustainability in an industry that is not known for it. We're making no effort to connect this important, humongous food group under that umbrella. Why are we not looking at it with that lens? And I think I think it was just part of a conversation that happened among many of us. 

But it really is kind of you have to see it with your own eyes to believe it and really, really feel the—that sort of fire in your belly, that ‘Oh, god, what have we done? What did we do to ourselves? How did we forget this? Why did we neglect all of this biodiversity?’

Alicia: No, I mean, talking about biodiversity is so important. And I feel that this is why your book is important and this conversation is important, because, it—We seem to be getting back to biodiversity ingredient by ingredient rather than—it hasn't been kind of a wholesale revolution of our food system. It's been a few people realizing, ‘Hey, we actually could have a lot of different types of grain and work with them,’ and that sort of thing. 

And I was talking to a bread baker friend, because I'm writing about sugar right now, and we were talking about how grain has had this moment. Of course, it hasn't had this moment necessarily for everybody or everywhere, but it's had this moment, and like sugar hasn't had this moment. 

And so here in Puerto Rico, which used to be—sugar carries a significant—You see the abandoned sugar mills everywhere. And now, I was talking to a farmer at the market, and she had some sugarcane. And she's like, ‘Oh, yeah, we have two varieties. But for us, it's a weed.’ One person is cultivating it to make rum here now, recultivating it, but for the most part it's either made for pitorro, which is a kind of a crude rum that people make in the mountains. And then there's just farmers with sugar who just are like, ‘Oh, sometimes we cut it up and eat it. But it's not for sale. But we were talking about, when is the moment going to come for sugar? 

And so—

Roxana: Right.

And it’s fascinating. It’s amazing. I'm sure that you're looking at ‘Ok, well now brown sugar? And turbinados and muscovados.’ And it is so incredibly flavorful, right? And it's hard for us to say like, ‘It's flavorful. It's not just sweetness, right?’

Alicia: No, I can't wait for more sugar.

In your baking, how do you bring your commitment to artisan grains to the rest of what you cook? Obviously, you come from farm-to-table restaurants. But how does the commitment to grains influence the rest of the restaurant?

Roxana: To be a seasonal baker with fruits could not be easier. You go to a farmers’ market, you visit a farm. It's very obvious when the fruit is organic or even when it's not certified. You know when a farmer is following sustainable practices. It’s obvious in the fruit; it’s obvious in their orchards. So easy to understand. I know how to work with this fruit. I know it needs very little sugar. I can do it in my sleep. Not to be arrogant, but it's been 20 years of this. So, it comes easily. 

But the thing about grain is that you really have to do your homework, because we don't—can we tell from a bag of flour that it is good or not? No. We can smell it. I mean, it takes a little bit of getting accustomed to the feeling, the feel of it and the smell of it, to really just know at first sight. And also you will find yourself picking your battles, because it's a huge battlefield. So how are we going to win this war? 

And for sure, there's a lot of confusion too, right? Because there's a sustainable aspect, but then there's also the health aspect. So the health folks, health advocates are pushing for quinoa, right? But we're like, ‘Hold on a minute. Quinoa comes from way far over there. And can we guarantee that those farmers are getting a fair share? I don't know. And why are we adding all this eco-footprint to this grain?’ And it's also not ours in a sense. We appropriated and became the food of white chicks from Santa Monica here in LA. It’s so multifaceted that you really have to just be like, ‘Ok, let's slow down and pick up our battles.’

So my first goal, which was relatively easy to achieve and is the reason I like to say that it’s easy because I want to see other people commit to it, is my first goal when we open the bakery, which was only four years ago, was every single thing we make has to have an amount of whole grain flour in it. We even committed to a percentage, which was 20%. And that was sort of imitating a policy that the California Weed Commission was trying to set up for local farmers markets here in California. 

So once you have that wind in your arsenal, you get more ballsy. And you want to do more. So now you see a lot of recipes that are increasing their percentages of whole grain flour. And now we're getting so good at it. Now, we understand like, ‘Ok, no, you really have to add a little fat if you want that effect. Or you really have to hydrate more if you want to produce this other thing, or build acidity, etc.’

So, it really is sort of a process. And I want to call it a journey or an adventure so that people are incentivized to jump in, because it really is sort of a road that will take many, many different directions depending on how you choose—what do you choose to down the road. 

And it’s interesting because the—because grain is so regional. We all have different experiences. No two bakers have the same journey. And I feel like that's fun. Here in California, we all buy sonora wheat because it's so drug resistant and so multi-purpose.

But I really hope everybody finds their thing, you know? 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, that's so important and something that really has to—I'm really obsessed with people who write recipes and still maintain their originality and specificity. And I think there is still a point where you can still learn from a recipe even if you don't necessarily have those ingredients. You think about how you can approach this with what you have. 

And I think that we need more of that. We need more very specific, hyper-local and flexibility and originality and seeing originality as a good thing, because it promotes biodiversity and we definitely really need biodiversity. 

But at the same time, local grains, when you don't have that access—when I lived in New York, I would go to the farmers’ market and they would have the New York grain. Yeah, beautiful, and it's great. Lots of people are just going to the supermarket or just their—their local market hasn't caught up with that. So what do you think would be great steps toward making artisan grains more available and accessible to all bakers? 

Roxana: Thank you so much for asking this question, ’cause this is totally true. At the end of the day, I don't want to sound elitist and be like, ‘Go to your specialty mill, and buy a variety of wheat that has been rescued by this awesome woman.’ This is all true, by the way. This does happen. And those are conversations that I do have with people.

But we do have to meet each other where we're at, right? And at the end of the day, is it more important that you bake with the one bag of spelt that you can find in your local grocery store or is it more important for you to go and spend an outrageous amount in shipping flour from, say, Arizona or Pasadena, California, all the way to you?

So I think that we just have to kind of keep being realistic, and know that the market does—is a pushing force. And the more we ask for these products, the more we are telling the market, ‘This is what we want. We want to see more of this flour in the world and in our cooking. And this is the stuff we want to put in our body.’

I was just very recently in Costa Rica, visiting a baker friend who I met recently, actually, through social media. And I'm talking to him about the challenges of not—he does not work in a country that produces wheat. So he is actually having a completely different conversation. He is actually reaching out to the bread lab and saying, ‘Which wheat will thrive in the tropicals, tropicals region? What should we be doing to make this feasible?’ And he finds himself getting a bag of khorasan all the way from Oregon to Costa Rica. Just let me see what this is and what can we do?

So the thing about grains is that they are grains. And another friend that wants me to use the pejibaye flour, which is a fruit from a palm that grows in many Costa Rica—in Central American countries. Probably grows around you, and they all have different names depending on the country, right? 

But then we are changing the composition. A grain’s a grain and a root vegetable’s a root vegetable and fruit from a palm tree is fruit from a palm tree. Which means that at the end of the day, there's a lot to learn. And how do we build equivalences and become more adept at changing flour that comes from grain to be—how do we use those principles with flour that comes from our root vegetables like yuca, for example?

Alicia: Right. 

Yeah, no, that's the thing. Here in Puerto Rico, it's—we're not growing wheat, and we probably should be. That moment has to come where we have someone here who is interested and ask the folks like, ‘What is the grain that—’ 

I mean, we have seven different microclimates here. There's somewhere that grain could grow, and we could mill it and everything. But there is someone here at least who is getting wheat and milling it themselves. So we're getting closer, I think, to that. 

Roxana: Let’s not forget that wheat is an enormous multi-billion dollar business, right? There are forces at play here that are not interested in smaller groups making, adapting their own microsphere to their microclimate. It’s not important to them, it’s not—there's no revenue to be had. 

But this happened once before. We came from Europe only 500 years ago. And it adapted to the Americas, and now we're the top producers in the world between Canada and the United States. So this can happen. These are now heritage varietals that we consider precious.

Alicia: Right.

No, and it's just a mind-set change. Wheat is one of those things where there are big agribusiness lobbies behind the choices there. And I think it's kind of taken for granted. People are like, ‘Well, yeah, corn, there's a big lobby. Soy, there's a big lobby. Meat, dairy, big lobbies.’  But wheat is also one of those things. And yeah, we use it so much in everything we do. We should definitely be thinking more about that.

Roxana: When you mention corn, it's like, ‘We are the children of the corn.’ Yes, we are. Yeah. Let's not forget, it is literally our lineage, my very ancestors who tamed corn and actually made a flour out of it—a mush out of it. Now we can dehydrate and make, use almost as a flour. But there's also cornmeal, which is just that same kernel just dried up. 

So I mean, seriously, Mother Grains could have been Mother Corn. Corn is another mega-grain, another—is another juggernaut that is everything.

Alicia: No, I'm excited. There's folks growing corn here that I haven't tried yet, but I'm very excited about.

And for you, is baking a political act?

Roxana: 100%. Because everything is.

And I have to say that the last two years of social change, starting with even a little bit before the George Floyd assassination and the sort of reclaiming who we are and what belongs to us and the right to turn tell our own stories and the right to cook our own recipes. Leches be seis leches and all those things we were getting fights about, I always had this sense of advocacy. You really have to fight that good fight. And sometimes I have not been really good at finding my voice in the whole process, and let anger be the tone rather than persuasion, which is what we're—I'm leaning a little bit more. 

But yeah, it is a political act. But it's also an act of mindfulness. We talk so much about being in the moment and being present and ‘Let's meditate,’ but also what about that sort of moment in which you can make these decisions with calm—pure calm and are able to say, ‘This is the flour that I can see, that I can feel, that I can smell, is going to be different.’ So your whole senses are engaged, and you're going to taste something that is familiar but different. Your entire system is involved in that sole moment of producing a baked good.

I hope. I hope you're not that checked out, that you're like, ‘Oh, look at that cookie.’ It really pulls you in, and in doing so, you're 100% present. 

Alicia: Right. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. 

Roxana: Thank you so much for having me.

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Camilla Wynne’s new book Jam Bake: Inspired Recipes for Creating and Baking With Preserves can make anyone believe they can make jam—even me, a person classically impatient with all matters of preservation. But it also goes a step further by helping you figure out what to do with those jars of jam, thanks to Wynne’s training and experience in pastry. From nostalgic whipped shortbread cookies with a thumbprint of jam to mango cream pie, it can change how one approaches fruit in the kitchen.

We talked about how fruit has changed since our grandparents’ time, how she found a style for teaching preservation, and what makes people afraid of jam. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Camilla. Thank you so much for being here. 

Camilla: Thank you for having me. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Camilla: I love this question. I feel very lucky. Well, I don't know if I feel—

I grew up in Edmonton, Alberta. So in the prairies, in Canada. I left when I was 18. I don't know, as a teenager, if I felt so lucky. But I feel very lucky about what I got to eat. So I had a set of grandparents in the country, two hours north, who gardened, on the farm that my mom grew up on. And so I got to eat a lot of homemade, homegrown food. And then my grandparents in the city had emigrated from Europe. And so, they grew totally different varieties of stuff in their garden and made totally different homemade foods. And they were both delicious. And there was this huge variety.

And then at home, which I think is unusual for a kid in the ’80s, is my dad was the cook.

And I complained a lot looking back on it during the period—they were separated for seven years—that my mom only made like five things. But retrospectively she was a working mom going to university and she made my five favorite things, actually. So it's great. 

But my dad was a super creative cook. He never followed recipes and he shopped all over the city, Asian grocery stores mostly. And he was a truck driver, so he’d go to the Italian store and the Mediterranean bakery and stuff. And they'd always be giving him things. I always try to give delivery drivers something now actually for that reason.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Wait, what were your five favorite things that your mom named? 

Camilla: Lipton’s Chicken Noodle Soup.Ichiban ramen. Cheese tortellini with butter. Well, I guess this doesn't count as making ‘em. Little Caesars pizza.

Alicia: I've actually never had Little Caesars, but people tell me it's good. [Laughs.]

But that's interesting. I used to eat, make cheese tortellini and put nothing on it. It was one of those—the only things I would make for me and my brother during the summer, when both my parents were at work, I would just boil the cheese tortellini. And we’d just eat it plain, which is, I don’t know. I haven't thought about how kind of odd that is. [Laughter.] 

Camilla: I mean, whatever. I ate raw noodles and stuff. [Laughter.] With a stick of butter.

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.] 

Well, the first thing I did after reading the introduction to your book, Jam Bake, was look up your old band. And it's always interesting, because so many people in food have these very interesting backstories to before food. First off, it takes a while sometimes for people to get to food. Either you're really in it from when you're a teenager or a kid, or there's always these signposts along the way that food is your thing. But you don't listen until a little bit later. 

But you write about touring with the band and everything you ate. And I wanted to hear a little bit more about how that part of your life influenced your coming to food eventually. 

Camilla: Well actually, for me, it was a break in my food life. Well, I moved to Montreal to go to university and then dropped out to go to pastry school. In pastry school, I joined a band and then started working at fancy restaurants and had to quit for the first time because you can't leave for two weeks when you’re a pastry assistant. That's fully impossible. On a two-week tour of the States, I remember.

But I'm so lucky that the owner, pastry chef, co-owner pastry chef that was one of my mentors, he would always hire me back. Very lucky. But then they kicked me out, and then I joined the one that had some more success.

And I think it was sort of a no-brainer for me to leave on tour and leave the culinary world for like five years, just because I felt I would never get that opportunity again. It's pretty amazing to be able to make records and tour around the world and stuff. 

But at the same time, I came back and all my friends had opened their own shops or become pastry chefs. And I was like, ‘Oh, my band broke up. And now I'm coming back, and I'm gonna be your assistant.’ I'm glad I did it. But yeah, it was an interlude, I guess, you could say.

Alicia: Well, what was it specifically? Because you're a master preserver. What was it about that that was a specific attraction to you. 

Camilla: It had to do with both pastry and being a touring musician, actually, I think. Because in pastry, so much of what we make is so ephemeral. We had to bake off new financier every day and stuff like that. And they had a one-day shelf life. So when I kind of discovered—when I realized that I could start making my own preserves, I was like, ‘Whoa, it's so satisfying to make something that I'm going to be able to enjoy six months from now.’ That seemed kind of magical to me. 

And also the same thing when I was on tour: I was so infrequently home. And I have so many fruits and vegetables that I'm obsessed with that it felt really important that I be able to hoard the ones that I really cared about during those times when I was home. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about the process of becoming a master preserver? What is that like?

Camilla: So, it sounds a lot fancier then it is. It's a really cool program that I wish existed in Canada, and it doesn't. And it's funny, I often get billed as one of Canada's only master preservers, but that's just because that's not a Canadian program. My frustration with, as originally a self-taught preserver, was always wanting to know more and why, and how does this work? And I'm not allowed to change anything. Well, why? And no book seemed to explain it. And so, I really wanted to know more. 

And so, I looked all over for the program. But a lot of them happen every second weekend or something, so it's not viable to travel for that. They only accept people from residents of the county, stuff like that. But finally, I found one in New York state that was like a three- or four-day intensive, so I just booked a hotel and went down there. 

And, for me, I'm really glad I did it. It was the two most charming women who taught it. And I did learn a lot, but it's about teaching people to be home preserving teachers, essentially. And for me, I already started my business. And I just really even wanted to do more. I wanted to know everything. So after that, I got some more education that really helped. That really wrapped it all up, and I felt pretty cool after that.

Alicia: How did you kind of develop the style that came to be the book, where you are making jam but you're not just putting the jam on a sandwich on toast? How did you come to your style? 

Camilla: Well, the concept for the book, for Jam Bake, is twofold.

So I ran an independent, a little preserving company for—in Montreal—for seven years or so. And spent a lot of time behind tables at craft fairs and farmers’ markets and stuff with people literally asking me what to do with it, beyond just put it on toast. And the answer was always obvious to me as a pastry chef. 

But also, I think because of producing so much jam, at a certain point you sort of divorce yourself from the edibility of your products. I don't know if this happens to everyone. But I remember working really late one night and just being starving, so hungry and not ever cluing in that I was processing a case of apples and that it’s really reasonable for me to eat one of those. You just have such a different relationship to your food at that point. It still remains actually very rare that I do eat jam on toast at all. I do bake with it a lot, so I was-

Alicia: That makes sense. 

No, it's funny, because when I was—I used to do farmers’ markets and stuff with vegan cake and cookies. People would always be like, ‘How do you not eat all of the cookies?’ It's because I made them. And so I'm looking at them-

Camilla: It’s like eating money.

Alicia: You really have that relationship to it where you really see it as a product and not like a food. Yeah, so it's an interesting thing that happens. 

Camilla: It’s kind of a shame. 

Alicia: It is a shame. I mean, I still don't really eat things that I bake. I've been eating the shortbreads that I made out of your book this week, actually, though, because I've been dying for a snack every couple of hours. So that's good. And people love them. 

Preserving is a complicated kind of science. And people think of it as complicated. And your book is very, very approachable. How did you develop your style of teaching when the conversation has to begin with botulism, but I guess that's how all food safety starts is about botulism. But how have you made this process approachable? How did you kind of get into your own style of teaching?

Camilla: Well, for the most part, I made it up as I went. To date, I've never really been to a cooking class aside from pastry school. I really do intend to go see more of what people actually do, ’cause I kind of made it up.

I was really lucky. When I started out, I had a college teacher volunteering, assisting me to learn to preserve. And so she sat in on a lesson one night and gave me pages of super helpful notes, getting people to introduce themselves, easy stuff that hadn't occurred to me. 

I mean, this is going to be a decade of teaching preserving now. And I think, I mean, it depends. My classes definitely are for everyone—or the way my writing, either, certainly. I am really curious. And I want to know exactly how preserving works so that I know what’s safe. That's what I always wanted to know and could never find the answers to. So I want to give that to people. 

But some people show up just wanting to make some—a jar of jam with their friends. There's so many different styles of cooking classes out there. And I realize that mine are heavy on the science and heavy on the info, that I try to balance that by being heavy on the jokes. And I just think it's so interesting. 

And the whole goal also is, for me, if I can be creative, that's the most important thing in my life, I think. And so I want to give that gift to people, because so often canning is—preserving generally—is seen as something really formulaic. And otherwise, it's dangerous. But if you understand the science behind it, then you can change things and know that it's safe. That's the gift I want to give to people, is to be able to judiciously use some creativity when they're making preserves. I mean, my other big goal is to lower barriers to access. 

But the other thing I really just want to communicate about my teaching style, that the idea there is I just—I know a lot of people are intimidated by canning and I think that's such a shame because for me it's such a deep pleasure. The process of it, the knowing I have a cupboard full of jars, the connection to my ancestors. And so is this thing that really connects people, I think, to their foodways, and to their—and just seasonality, certainly, and sometimes to their histories. 

I try as much as possible to make it as easy as possible to make it as adaptable as possible time wise, ways to break it up, ways to fit it into your life, because I know everyone's overworked now. Ways to get by with the most minimal equipment. Hopefully, none. So, lower economic barriers. All of that stuff I think is so important. And I try. It takes practice is the thing, like anything else. And you're never gonna—maybe you are good at the first time. But it's something that’s simply improved by repetition, and so people should stick with it. So I just want to encourage people as much as possible. That's my teaching philosophy. 

Alicia: Right. Well, it's a good one. 

Yeah, I definitely need to get into it. And I always have these intentions of getting into it. I have every Sandor Katz book so that I could learn how to make pickles. And I'm excited about your book, having it so I can make jams with different fruits that obviously—here, the fruit is so hyper seasonal. Very short windows for things like guava and passion fruit. It would make so much sense for me to preserve them. 

And I wanted to ask you about the things people are afraid of, in preserving and making jam. I mean, this might be a technical question, but what are the things that people are afraid of? Why are they afraid of them? How likely is it that things are going to go wrong, actually?

Camilla: I mean, certainly, people come to class definitely being afraid of botulism, because that's the big, scary, fatal one. I have had people attend the class who have given themselves botulism, and their friends. So it's not impossible. 

But it's very close to impossible when we're talking about jam. He made water-bath canned pesto, which is a low acid food that should not be water-bath canned. Yeah, I’d be surprised if any of his friends ever have his preserves again. But good for him for coming back to a class. 

That's the thing. That's why I think it's such a shame that actually the North American way that we're taught to can jam at home is to do the whole boiling water bath thing, because it's so unnecessary. And I think it prevents a lot of people from doing it. 

Botulism is almost completely a moot point. There's a few fruits I talk about that you can't use, but otherwise, the main thing worth dealing with is the possibility of is mold. Of course, if your jars are improperly sealed or sterilized, which we know is gross, of course. And if you scrape it off it is not gone, either. That's a good thing to know. I call it informed consent in the book, so whether or not you're going to eat it.

But at the same time, the toxicity of it, unless you have an allergy at home, you can just scrape it off, and probably you'll be fine. So there's hardly anything that can go wrong that's catastrophic.

Alicia: I wanted to ask, in the book, you mentioned some things in passing about how our grandparent’s tomatoes were more acidic, North American expectations around jam texture and how your recipes are different to that. So I wanted to ask about your kind of food philosophy, so to speak. What is your approach to sourcing ingredients, and how do you decide what to eat?

Camilla: I mean, I think I was shaped a lot working in fine dining. I'm really lucky that I got to work—I think I say it in the introduction of the book—but I went to work at a vegetable-focused restaurant for my pastry school in 2002. And I got told that that was a fad. And it was like, I shouldn't go there. And not only is that pastry chef now probably the most well known in the—in Quebec, but obviously, we all know that vegetable focus dining is here to stay. Let's hope. 

There was such a focus around seasonality. We changed the menu so much. So that really shaped me as a young cook. I mean, it is what it is, I won't touch a strawberry that's imported that's out of season. Why would I eat that when strawberry season is for enjoying strawberries? I don't need access to all things at all times. 

Definitely, that was a real challenge running a preserving business with very little capital. So a lot of the time, I ended up having to resort to frozen fruits sometimes and stuff like that just to keep up with demand and be able to make enough just to stay afloat. So in that way, when I'm teaching, certainly, I don't ever—I want to encourage people to use whatever they can use and is accessible to them. I think that's important. But for me, it's really important to, as much as possible, be working—I mean, in a perfect world—with farmers and stuff like that, with seasonal ingredients.

And using also as much of the food as possible. I mean, I think I learned that working in a—I don't remember there being a conversation around food waste when I was a cook in the early 2000s. But it was just you had to do it, because the margins are so thin that we had to use as much as we possibly could. So the strawberries that were getting sad got steamed and turned into juice, and now into the Champagne cocktail or whatever. We didn't throw anything away as much as possible. So that really got ingrained in me as well. I make jelly and I save the fruit pulp, and I put it in my kombucha and as much as possible.

Alicia: What is it like to support local food in Canada? I talk, I think, so much about it in a U.S. context, but what is the relationship to agriculture there?

Camilla: I mean, definitely, we have shorter seasons, certainly, than the majority of America. That can be challenging in some senses. At a certain point, what you have that’s local is overwintered root vegetables and apples and stuff like that. 

But, I mean, I think it varies all over the country. And I'm new to this, relatively new, to the city I live in. In the city I'm in, there's so many farmers’ markets. There's farmers’ markets every day, probably in multiple places. So you have so much access to buying directly from farmers, which I think is really important. There are cool businesses that have come up. There's one I'm really obsessed with where you can order stuff. They liaise directly with farmers and then pick, I think, and deliver straight to you. Different organizations like that.

I mean, it's so hard—at least in the circles I'm in—I think it's quite possible to be, certainly in the summer, to be buying all local basically. 

Alicia: Right. That's awesome. [Laughs.]

Wait, where are you living right now? 

Camilla: I live in Toronto. 

Alicia: Oh, cool. I haven’t been there.

Camilla: Oh, well, I don't know how it is as a visitor. I really like living her. I mean, it's one of the most expensive cities in Canada, unfortunately. That's very challenging, but living here—I spent a lot of my life in Montreal, where there's a real culture of preserving food and transforming food. And I lived right by the market where they sell all the bushels of things. And in summary, you just buy huge quantities, and everyone's doing it. 

And here, it's a lot of people in condos and all the farmers’ market sell just pints of things. That's the biggest amount you can get, has been confounding me since I moved here. So I just got a tip off on a more old-school market that does the real granny stuff that I'm very looking forward to visiting on Saturday.

Alicia: Nice.

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Camilla: I think, yes. I mean, in as much as everything, I think, in a sense that we do is so undergirded by all of these systems. And there's so much potential in the path of where our food is grown, and all the ways it comes to our kitchens and our tables for abuse and injustice and—

So, yes, I think, certainly it's political. I try to make good choices. We just all have such different access, whether it's financially or mobility, or all these different things to be able to make the most ideal choices, right? 

But yeah, definitely, I think it is. And just in a broader sense, I suppose it's not exactly political. But what I think drew me to cooking, besides loving to eat, obviously, is just the spirit of generosity that I think—well, hospitality generally has. And I think, I mean, I think we really saw it in the pandemic so much with—there's so many pastry chefs raising money and stuff like that. Because I think that is the, this-

I mean, there's so many things obviously wrong with the industry. Obviously, hospitality as being a pure expression of generosity is not the reality, as is so often the case. But I do think that that is where a lot of people are coming from, at the heart of it, hopefully. [Laughs.]

I do think cooking is political. I struggle a lot with whether what I'm doing is explicitly political enough. So many of the people around me, my partner and my friends, have these very concrete jobs where they're obviously helping people, like harm reduction workers and nurses and midwives and doctors and stuff, that I get insecure sometimes that what I do is indulgent and unnecessary, and all these things.

I really think that's not true. I mean, I think people need delicious, beautiful things in their lives. But also, like I said, I try to bring the spirit of really wanting to bring people in and be able to—I mean, obviously, because I'm a business also, that complicates matters, of course. But you know, if anyone ever wrote to me and said they wanted to take a class and they didn't have enough money, I mean, I’d tell them, ‘Of course.’

But yeah, it's hard. It's hard. I try, and as much as I can by donating portions of sales from classes and stuff to things and trying to engage politically through my work as much as I can. But I guess it never feels like enough, because everything's just so messy. [Laughs.]

And then, just politically, I mean, it's the end of Pride Month, right? Which I think should, maybe isn't always anymore, but is a political thing. And I'm queer. And I think visibility is so important, and representation. And I didn't know, any hardly queer cookbook authors, I think, when I was a younger cook. And so there's also this struggle to balance—

I am not someone that people easily identify as being queer. And I think I struggle with that a bit, and wanting to represent my community, but also not—it never came up much in my book because it’s about jam making. It only came up as much, I think, as it's just a natural part of me.

So yes, that is also complicated. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, thank you. Thank you so much again for taking the time. 

Camilla: Oh, thank you. I’m just such a big fan of you. It's a real pleasure to—I feel very excited. Thank you so much.

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I got dressed up to talk to Mariana Velásquez for this interview. From experiencing the elegance of her cookbook, Colombiana: A Rediscovery of Recipes and Rituals from the Soul of Colombia alone, I knew I had to wear a nice dress. Then I browsed her apron collection, Limonarium, and saw ever more style expressed. But there’s also substance, in the exploration of the regional foods of her native Colombia, the recipes for foods she grew up with and adapted to her life in New York City, and the styling, which is drowning in light and dripping in color. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Mariana. Thank you so much for being here. 

Mariana: Hi, Alicia. It's a pleasure being here today. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Mariana: I grew up in Bogotá, which is the capital of Colombia. And it's a city perched up 9,000 feet up in the Andes. And it was a pretty urban life growing up. 

However, I had the gift of going out to the country on the weekends and over holidays to my grandparent’s little farm in the flatlands near Venezuela. And we grew up eating arepas, which are these great delicious corn cakes. Pan de yucas, which are also baked—you got flour and cheese biscuits. And lots of fruit, lots of tropical fruit. I feel like my childhood was all about smoothies and juices and desserts, and kind of going outside and picking mangoes for the—from the trees.

Alicia: And you write that you never wanted—your mother never wanted you to be a cook. But at 18 you were working at Sierra Mar in Big Sur. So what was it in your upbringing that led you to that at such a young age, too?

Mariana: Yeah, I mean, I realized pretty early on at about 12 or 14, 13, 14, that food had so much power. And in my family, the table has always been the center of it all. And so, I wanted to do something that really had a beginning, a middle and an end. That satisfaction that you get from cooking that it's pretty instant. You prepare a beautiful meal, and you see it. And the satisfaction from people enjoying it happens, and it's right there. 

And so I wanted to do something that I was good at. And I started to feel a lot of pleasure from the process of cooking. So I sort of ventured into the world and against my parent’s opinion back then, and started cooking in restaurants and exploring that life in the kitchen.

Alicia: And what did you enjoy about it? What kept you there?

Mariana: I love the process, the meticulousness, the—that exercise of finding ingredients and turning them into something. Making that scene, the beautiful plating, the ritual of the wine service. I love the dynamics, especially in the kitchen. And in restaurants. I really enjoyed seeing how people would come to these fine dining restaurants to really have an experience. And we would orchestrate all of that from the kitchen and the floor. And I loved it. I loved the rhythm. I love the discipline. 

Yeah, and kind of it was also in line.

Alicia: And in that kitchen that you write about working in when you were 18, you had a moment where you're cooking potatoes and eggs in the same pot like your grandmother did. And you were nervous that it wouldn't be okay, that the chef would see it and be like, ‘This isn't how you do this.’ But the chef was accepting of it. 

That anecdote that you tell brings up that difference that we think about between chefs and cooks, whether that's really real. And so how, from your experience, both working in home cooking and focusing on dinner parties and that sort of thing versus working in a restaurant kitchen, how do you see the difference, if there is one, between the chef and the cook?

Mariana: I mean, the chef has a lot of structure, and lots of rules. And there's thermometers and timers going off. And things have to be this way, because you need to have the repetition and the consistency.

And I feel that it also comes from a sense of pride in doing your craft in a very precise way. Of course, I cannot speak for all chefs, but in most professional kitchens, it's really about that structure. And a cook, which I consider myself much more a cook than a chef, especially because I don't run a kitchen. There's instinct that goes into play. 

And the other day, on my last trip to Colombia, I went on a road trip going from Cartagena to Barranca, a city that’s on the coast. And we stopped for breakfast to have these deep-fried arepa with egg. And this woman on a side, on the side of the road in her little stand, was frying oil in this big vat over hot coals. The oil was at the exact temperatures you needed for the arepa to be perfectly crispy. There's no temperature gauge; there's no thermometer. It's just she knows, as soon as she drops that tiny piece of dough to test the oil, that the bubbles are right. And so, I feel that that's the difference. 

Alicia: Well, what made you make that leap from working in professional kitchens toward food styling?

Mariana: After working at Prune in New York, and beginning to explore the magazine world, I worked at the recipe testing kitchen of Saveur Magazine. Later, I worked at Eating Well. And I found it really good, just a position of cooking research, culinary history, photography, art, that really fascinated me, was all the things I loved into one profession that I didn't even know existed. I sort of found out about food styling being a full-time job from someone who mentioned it. And it was a perfect combination of all the things I love.

Alicia: And how did you develop your style as a food stylist?

Mariana: So how did I develop myself as a food stylist there? It was a little broken there.

Alicia: How did you develop your style and your approach, and where do your influences in that realm come from?

Mariana: So I mean, I first assisted for at least three and a half years. I assisted different stylists in New York who taught me so much. And I learned the craft, and I learned how to find the great ingredients. I learned the—that set etiquette that you need to understand to be able to perform on set and know who's who and what's what, and what things are appropriate. And that research of amazing ingredients and make a photo, what do you want it to be.

And so over the years, I started to develop my personal style that I think sort of grew organically. I really have an obsession with botanicals, with things that are very organic and imperfect but have this beauty, this innate beauty to them. And it's all about the details. So I mean, all of the textures of fruits and vegetables, the veins, the colors, and really taking that and potentializing it for the images.

Alicia: And you've worked on so many other cookbooks. What was the process like for creating your own versus working on other people's books?

Mariana: I mean, usually, when I've done work as a stylist for other people's books, the process where I take it from is really the recipes are ready, they're developed, they're tested, and they give me the manuscript and then we do the photoshoot. I come into the process when it's pretty far along, right? 

And so, for me, that part is about really communicating with the author and understanding where those recipes come from, and what they mean to them and how to really present them faithfully to what they envision. And then for my own book, I had to sit down and start to develop it from the start. What are the chapters going to be? What is this book going to tell? What's going to be the story, and how am I going to choose those recipes? And so it was a pretty personal exploration of going back in time and looking at those recipes that I grew up with, or foods that through my years of culinary research have left a mark.

Alicia: And it's a very organic and social approach in which you kind of feel that there are people at the table in all of the images. There's not this sense of, it's happening divorced from the actual act of eating. The act of eating is present in the book. And, even the way you describe making breakfast, it's kind of an event to put on your kimono, I remember reading.

And so, what inspired you to make the book so social, to bring in the playlists and the menus and that sort of thing? Just focus on the actual experience of being at a table?

Mariana: Well, because for me, it's all about the ritual. If it was just for nourishment, we could eat granola bars and call it a day, right? We don't really, really need to serve a table and gather. So, our needs are really all about that. 

And for the book and in Colombia, food, it happens with many people. And recipes usually make large batches and there's family lunches and people get together to eat for lunch, for dinner. There's all these events where we come together as a community. So I wanted the book to feel that way, and to really represent that ritual, that ceremony. 

Alicia: And where did you actually test the book, because you're using so many ingredients that are so specific to Latin America? Were you testing it in Brooklyn? 

Mariana: Yeah, so I was developing all the recipes in Brooklyn, tested all the recipes here, had different collaborators help me with the testing to make sure that in different cities in the U.S., you were able to find these ingredients. I had to make some substitutions. There were recipes that I was like, ‘Instead of a substitution, I'm just going to replace the recipe because it just won't be the real thing.’ 

But I want this book to be approachable and the recipes to be familiar. And Colombian cooking is pretty humble. Nothing is out of the ordinary. It's fresh cheeses, it’s plantains, it's mangoes, it's lots of onions and garlic and scallions and hot chilies. And so, I also selected the recipes that I felt could be prepared, far from the tropics, essentially.

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.] 

And in such a diverse cuisine as Colombia, you really showed regionality. What was the inspiration behind doing that? And also, how did you choose the—which regions, which recipes, that sort of thing.

Mariana: So I chose recipes that really have a story for me, either recipes from growing up and foods I ate at my grandparent’s homes, or recipes that I discovered on my trips of research and that have a little anecdote behind them. I want every recipe to have a meaning and to have a backstory. 

And so the way I organized it, I sort of thought about the book through times of days. So in the morning, the midday feast, which is when most of Colombian traditional recipes happen, like the big lunches are usually red bean soup, they are ajiaco, which are served midday. 

And then the different moments like the bits and bites of el algo, that afternoon little thing that you eat, and then kind of weeknight meals, which I use as a chapter called Columbian-ish, which I—Colombian ingredients with my own interpretation and that kind of New York influence, which I've been here for 23 years and some of my cooking definitely reflects the food and the style that I've learned here. 

Alicia: Right, right. 

[Laughs.] I had a noise.

Mariana: I'm sorry.

Alicia: No, it's ok. 

Colombia is very close to where I'm living in Puerto Rico. But people think about very specific ingredients from this region and not—don't really understand the diversity that's available in all these very different climates. I think in Puerto Rico, there are like seven microclimates where different things are—can grow. And I know Colombia has a similar environment.

Was it important for you to represent the diversity of what Colombian cuisine is versus what someone from the States might have in their head, which might be just arepa, which might—that might be the only idea? What was your approach to the diversity of Colombian cuisine and making it translatable to a book for everybody?

Mariana: So the way I did that was through the menus of the chapter called “A La Mesa,” in which I took five different regions of Colombia and described everything about them. So for instance, there's this one menu called “Medellín’s Only Season,” which really celebrates that coffee region, the Andes, the beautiful anthuriums, the way people set the table, the furniture, the music. 

And so with these menus, my intent was to transport the reader to the scene so that they could re-create those Colombian moments. And in each one of those moments, I highlight the regions by—I left some regions out, only because I didn't have a personal experience in those places. So I included the ones that really felt like home to me. And hopefully in a future book, I can explore other moments and other regions, but these were the ones that were closest to my heart.

Alicia: Women are present in such a significant way. You decided to give the book an explicitly feminine title. And so I wanted to ask about the role of women and the role of the feminine in your experience of food, and why you decided to express it so—in such an explicit way, with your first book.

Mariana: So I wanted to really celebrate Colombian women who are the backbone of our cuisine. They're the carriers of our traditions. In a country that has been through so much conflict, the fact that we're still making sancocho and we're still maintaining some of those essential recipes, I feel that it's thanks to these women who run the households and maintain those flavors alive. 

And then here in the U.S., as a Colombian immigrant, seeing other women who in New York work in food and carry those flavors even away from home was really—it was essential to me. My mentors growing up, in Colombia and here in the U.S., were mostly women. And so, yeah, I wanted to pay tribute to them.

Alicia: Of course.

Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Mariana: Absolutely. I feel that with cooking, you make community. You bring people together to share each other's values, to share the table. It’s also the way you choose ingredients and where you buy them and who you support in that app. It depends on when you're—wherever your ingredients come from really, for sustainment. 

Alicia: Well, thank you so much again for taking the time. 

Mariana: Of course. Thank you for having me, Alicia.

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Amber Mayfield really knows how to work: She has started her own event hosting company, called To-Be-Hosted, as well as an annual magazine about Black food and drink called While Entertaining. The self-published magazine is printed on thick, beautiful paper and packed with essays, recipes, playlists, and ideas for hosting that come from some of the coolest folks working in food and drink right now—some that are huge, and others that Mayfield wants to see get more attention.

Because I love independent publishers, I wanted to talk to her about how she got into this business, what her vision is for a vaccinated world, and her vision for the next issue of the magazine. Listen above, or read below

Alicia: Hi, Amber. Thank you so much for coming on today. 

Amber: Yes, thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Amber: Yes. 

So I grew up in Rockland County, New York, in a small town called Nanuet. And I come from a very athletic family. So I was always an athlete growing up, so I ate pretty clean and balanced meals. I mean, most of my more exciting and vivid food memories come from holidays and gatherings and just country ham and mac and cheese and candied yams and cookouts with ribs and grilled sausages. So those are the things that stick out. They’re a little bit more exciting, that occasion type of eating.

Alicia: And now you live in New York?

Amber: Yes. 

Now I am in New York City. Which was always my goal growing up, was to be in the city and have that more what I thought was glamorous and exciting, and what I now know is just hustle and bustle and regular.

Alicia: Well, what made you interested in food and begin publishing While Entertaining magazine and launching To-Be-Hosted?

Amber: I mean, so many things. 

Growing up, I always loved parties and holidays and gatherings because I think I was always excited to see family and friends and even more excited about—that's when the more interesting food and flavorful food was going to come out, was through these events. I loved eating and dancing and laughing. And as I got older, I was like, ‘Ok, well, what does that mean as a career? I don't really know.’

Did you ever watch 30 Rock back in the day? 

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

Amber: Ok, so you recall Kenneth the page? 

Alicia: Uh-huh. 

Amber: So I was a page. That was my post-college job, ’cause I was like, ‘This is perfect. I can literally bounce around the company and figure out what it is that I want to do.’ And it was an exciting industry. And while I was there, I was always mesmerized by the parties and productions. But what would irritate me as much as I loved that environment was there were the same caterers and the same vendors that were getting all of this big business. So that's when I decided I was going to start my own event company. 

Yeah, it was a natural affinity for liking events, and then wanting to kind of problem solve and having an event company that was food focus, and would actually hire Black vendors and hospitality businesses. 

So I started To-Be-Hosted in 2017. It was kind of a side hustle of throwing dinner parties. And before long, I had all of these interesting clients to work with Nestle and Equinox and Netflix. And I started planning their dinners and hiring Black chefs and Black sommeliers and Black-owned businesses to produce them and really saw that vision come to life. 

And then I started the magazine in 2019, because I was like, ‘Ok, how can I take this energy and scale it a little bit bigger?’ Because dinner parties are small, I was only reaching 20 or so people at a time. So I came up with this concept for a magazine that would help other people throw their own dinner parties, but also tell these stories on a bigger scale than what I could add in-person events. 

So that's the shortest version of the story.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you have training in food or in publishing that lead, that also kind of—or are you self-trained in all this?

Amber: Yeah. 

So I mean, in college, I studied communications and PR. So that's what kind of led me into NBC Universal, and that page program was kind of—I don't know, TV, grad school and content grad school, if you will. 

But no, other than that, I kind of just always worked in these industries in the media industry. I worked in hospitality. I was an executive assistant for a celebrity chef, for lack of a better term. So just kind of being around and loving these things, I've just been figuring it out as I go. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, and you do have a very specific knack and niche, especially in food publishing, because you're not really focusing on restaurants to go to. You're specifically focused on the home and on hosting. Why did you want to focus on that, and how do you continue to find inspiration and creativity in the home and the format of the dinner party?

Amber: Right. When I was looking at the media landscape, I was like, ‘Wow. Everything really is about restaurant chefs, television chefs.’ And often that kind of created an environment of exclusion for Black chefs and Black beverage producers because we aren't always necessarily only in those roles. So I was like, ‘If I actually want to tell Black stories and cover the breadth and depth of Black food experiences and food ways, I can't be a magazine that champions the restaurant story.’ I think there's a place for that. But for me, I was like, ‘Ok, I've got to go a little bit broader if I want to be able to tell the stories that I want to tell.’

And everybody eats at home every day. We kind of have the random Tuesday night dinner, the dinner experience, and we all want to cook and we all want to host people. So I was like, ‘This is a way that I can tell more personal stories and meet people where they are.’ And I mean, when I started the magazine in 2019, I didn't know how much at home we would be doing in 2020. But I knew that enough people, their first affinity for food and their connection to food and people was at home. So, it just felt like a natural direction for me.

Alicia: And how have you been eating in the pandemic, and how has—how have things maybe changed for you?

Amber: I definitely eat and cook at home more. I think, pre-pandemic, in working in events and doing productions, I was always out and about doing meetings. So I was always stopping at the bodega or the deli or doing work. I was always such a solo diner with my computer in the corner that I had made friends with the restaurant staff, so they were cool with me being in the back working and eating for several hours. 

So, that of course had to change. [Laughs.] I had to do so much more cooking and meetings and virtual coffees than ever before. I really love food, and I find my creativity in trying new recipes and was briefly baking bread with everybody. [Laughs.]

But yeah, I think I'm still kind of trying to find those places where I can either grab takeout or be inspired by one of these chefs and make their recipe at home. So not too much different. Perhaps a little better on the wallet. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, yeah.

And in this second edition of While Entertaining, you—which was published during the pandemic—you focus specifically on what you call reflections and recipes. And it kind of just acts as a cookbook and kind of a capsule of how inwardly focused we were at a certain point in time. What inspired you to gather these specific folks together to make this collection, and how did you decide on that approach?

Amber: Yes.

I mean, this approach is the approach that I'll probably keep for all issues of While Entertaining magazine, giving people stories and putting them next to recipes and pairing tips and playlists and all of that, because I really want to start making food stories an experience that lives with us in real life. So I think that format will be the same. 

But in tackling this topic, at first I was kind of like, ‘Well, this is awkward, because I'm starting a magazine that's about entertaining and inviting people over to eat with you. And the CDC said we could not invite people over to eat.’ [Laughs.] So that was my first moment of like, ‘Ooh, this is about to get interesting.’

But then second, as I just was living in the pandemic and canceling all of my events and eating Thai, I was kind of really curious about how everybody else was experiencing this and how they were slipping into new routines and what they were thinking about or writing about or coping. So that kind of inspired the whole reflections part of the theme, was ‘I want to eavesdrop on what other people are thinking about and doing and how they're getting through this, because I know that I've got this new routine. And I've been reflecting on work styles and what it means to rest.’

So I just started asking people in food and drink like, ‘What are you eating right now? What are you thinking about? What are you writing about? What do you want to talk about?’ And that's kind of how I guess the issue. And it was so interesting to see the, just the vastness of that, right? We've got some chefs like Kalisa Marie Martin, [who] was writing about figuring out what her identity was when she wasn't a chef. 

And I thought that was something that everybody could kind of relate to. How often do we explain ourselves by our work, but when you strip that back, what is it that I like to do and who am I? What is my identity? It became this really normal and almost not food related, but kind of food-related conversations that were so interesting. So I just kind of kept leaning into that with everybody else that I talked to, and that's how we got here.

Alicia: And there are big names in here like Chris Scott and Mavis J. Sanders, Lani Halliday. Who else? Hawa Hassan. How have you made all these connections, and how did you decide to include these folks specifically?

Amber: Yes. 

So that's a really good question because we're a new magazine and a small magazine and a self-funded magazine. So approaching people at first sight was like, ‘Oooh, this is scary. They're not going to take me seriously.’

But then I kind of just leaned into the fact that I'm a human, and I'm passionate about something. And I want to share this, these stories in particular. So I just told people the vision for the project, and why I thought it was important to see if they would be willing to do it. And I was always looking for people who had a strong point of view about something and who would be open, or who would be really ready to rally behind this sort of publication existing and taking up space. 

So that's how I found people. 

And then, yeah, it was all about being friendly with people. I would just email them and ask them, like, ‘Do you want to talk? Here's what I'm doing.’ I would slide in their DMs if they posted something that I also related to or wanted to talk about. I would set up virtual coffees to learn what they like and what they might be interested in saying that they don't necessarily get to say in other publications or are approached about being in other publications, ’cause I think we've got the heavy-hitters, but then we also have people that have never been mentioned in the media but still do great work and still have an opinion. 

So it's just been a lot of talking to the people. There's nothing really else to do in quarantine but talk to people. So that's kind of how I've approached it.

Alicia: Right.

And you bring in the playlist with the QR codes. You have all these cocktail recipes. You have a lot of quotes in here. I love the illustrations that you have of everyone who's included.

How are you coming into this? I know you're working with Vonnie Williams. How are you making all these creative decisions for the magazine, and what does it mean to be self-funded to you? [Laughter.]

Amber: This is a great question. 

So making creative decisions for the magazine is—it's interesting, because I've always kind of started—I started To-Be-Hosted and While Entertaining as a solo-preneur, as the world would call it. But I've always had these incredible friends and these incredible industry friends, for lack of a better word and community that was around me that if I was like, ‘Here's my idea. I put it on a post-it on my wall, and I want to tell you about it,’ they will be awfully honest with me about what's gonna fly and what's not gonna fly. 

So leaning into the people around me, both who share the same vision as me and also other people who are like, ‘I really don't get it. I don't think this is smart.’ Or ‘What do you mean, you're only doing dinner parties? And what do you mean, you're only covering Black people?’ Having that balance of voices that contradict yours to kind of weigh in has been really helpful to me, just in terms of coming up with this creative vision and also not really looking to the left or the right. 

I'm aware of other magazines and other food media coverage and their approaches to it. But following my own vision and breaking my own rules, I kind of stick to that, right? We're a yearly magazine. The whole magazine has one theme or question or pros. We're kind of, again, including the pairing tips and the playlist and all the things that maybe not everybody is doing all the time. And I'm like, ‘This is just what we're going to do and who we're going to be.’ And if people think that we're a magazine, and people think that we're food media or not food media, or smart or not smart, this is where we're kind of sitting. [Laughs.]

And again, just leaning into all the voices. I remember chatting with Vonnie, and I'm being like, ‘Ok, so this is how I want to organize it. Do you hate this?’ And her feeling comfortable to tell me whether or not she hated it. I've been really lucky to have people that want to be honest with me and want to work with me and just see me figure this thing out.

Alicia: Right.

And in the landscape of food media, it is interesting and wonderful to see the success of Whetstone Magazine owned by Stephen Satterfield and the launch of for the culture by Klancy Miller. And where do you see While Entertaining and also-

Well, you know what? I’m gonna ask you that question, then I'll ask you what I have in my head next. But where do you see While Entertaining in the indie publishing landscape? Or do you? Do you feel a part of a wave of new magazines?

Amber: Yes. 

I certainly feel a part of it. And I love chatting with Stephen Satterfield for Whetstone. He was somebody from the beginning that has always taken my calls. And he answered my emails on how to do this thing from a business perspective, how to do this thing. And even Kerry Diamond from Cherry Bomb also has welcomed me into this indie magazine landscape. It's been exciting and new. 

And I definitely feel While Entertaining fits in, I think about our perspective is food and entertaining specifically, and then also looking at home and personal stories. So I think we've kind of created a lane that's very specific to us, but also fits in this larger indie magazine landscape and Black-owned publishing landscape. Again, we're only a yearly magazine. And we print on very heavy paper. Everything is independently shot and really leans into the beauty of it all. 

My vision is to be in the collector's category. This is something that's super functional. And you can cook from it, and you can read and relate and can spark conversation. But also, this is something that you want to have each one, because it kind of commemorates where Black food and drink people were in this moment of time for each year and kind of holding on to that. 

Alicia: And that's what I love about the magazine too, because it's going deeper and getting broader because of its specificity. You're bringing in so many people who might be not necessarily ignored by mainstream food media, but not get this kind of space and this kind of depth of spread.

And so, how do you see mainstream food media? Do you read it? Do you see it as good? Do you see it changing for the better? What is your perspective?

Amber: I definitely read it, because I love—I do love talking about food. So I do read other publications. 

And when I think about some of the mainstream media and the bigger food media, I wish we could challenge them even more than we have in the past year in terms of the different voices and the different stories that they tell. From a business perspective, I also respect your decision to not do so or not change your perspective or fields of voice. So in that case, I'd love to see them create more championing of the indie magazines and the more niche perspective media that is arising because of their lack of coverage for the stories that we want to cover. 

I think there's a need for all of this, right? We're always going to want to read a couple articles before we go try a new restaurant or understand why this person's concept for this location is different than that location. I think there's a place for all of it. But I think what I think about While Entertaining and what I want to do as an indie magazine, I think about making food-related art more so than just pumping out a lot of different stories or pumping out a lot of different recipes. We have the luxury of being able to slow down and not answer to any advertisers or any clicks and really do things that we're passionate about.

Alicia: And now that the world is opening up a bit, we're being told vaccinated people can gather at home. What are you envisioning for the next issue with this new new world and new ways? [Laughter.]

Amber: I envision so many things. 

I mean, first of all, I'm super excited for post-vax parties and dinner parties and to have that come back and have more people feel comfortable about doing shared plates. [Laughs.] So I'm really excited about that. 

I hope that people who have the magazine and who have gone through and read the stories are now starting to envision how this recipe lives on their table and who they want to cook it for and who they want to invite over to talk about different things. So I'm excited for people to start having that experience. 

I mean, I've already started thinking about the 2022 issue. We start working on it in the next month or two. I bounce between themes. I mentioned that I come from a very athletic family. And one thing that I recall hearing my dad say is this is a rebuilding year, in a reference to a basketball team that just lost a really big player. 

I'm like, ‘What is there about a rebuilding year? How are we rebuilding our businesses and rebuilding our families because a lot of people lost loved ones and, and just rebuilding our world and rebuilding our social calendar?’ Something like that feels really interesting to me. I also feel I'm on the fence. I could run away from the pandemic and pretend it didn't happen and do editorial and filing entirely based on something else. 

So I think that's the nice thing about the magazine is, I can just keep a running list of themes and find the right moment for that theme and then find the right people that want to talk about that theme.

Alicia: And what are your plans for To-Be-Hosted? Is it coming back in full force? Are you already making plans for new events?

Amber: Yes, we are already making plans for new events. We have a few books for this summer and the fall. And I'm really just trying to expand that brand. We’ll still focus on dinner parties. But I'd love to focus on more like video content, and storytelling in the experience world. 

I mean, this is a whole separate tangent. But I'd also like To-Be-Hosted to have a venue where we can be hosting our dinners and also recording content, because I think there's something to the necessity of safe spaces for Black creators and Black culinary talents have a space where they can go where the venue coordinator isn't going to change rules and change energy when they see that the whole staff is Black, right? I really want to build safe spaces around To-Be-Hosted. So I think venue is next on my mind.

Alicia: That's amazing. And I love that plan. I just think it's a brilliant idea. And it's a brilliant expansion of that concept. 

And I am a little jealous because I do love planning events. [Laughs.] I know how hard it is, like deeply, deeply difficult and exhausting. But also so fun. 

Amber: So fun and rewarding.

Alicia: Yeah, it’s really rewarding. And I mean, I get to plan my wedding, but that’s about it. [Laughs.] 

Well, for you, is cooking a political act? 

Amber: Yes.

I hesitate, because I am not a chef. I understand why a lot of chefs and food people have, feel that cooking is very politically charged. And historically, there's many reasons why it should be. But I'm hesitant to answer that question, because I don't feel I'm a chef or a professional cook that I can really do that question justice. 

Where my mind also kind of went when you said that into my specific niche of hosting and entertaining. For me, that is very political, because we exist in this kind of space where if Black people are talking about entertaining and hosting and cooking and doing kind things to people when they're in their home, you kind of lean toward these mammy vibes, right? And if you're thinking about for lack of a better term, the ‘domestic goddess’ of it all, those are all white women, or Martha Stewart–adjacent women. And I don't really fit that. 

So when I'm talking about entertaining and doing a magazine about entertaining and having a company about entertaining and having Black people lead those things? And those Black people not subscribing to either the stereotypes that America has put upon us, or the stereotypes that social media gives their energy too. But just being Black, being Black or brown, being a person of color, and being really empowered about cooking and entertaining and not feeling you're subscribing to anything problematic. But I work, I cook, I clean and I do these things because I want to and I want to make people feel good. 

And I want people to come over and have fun, not just to be the person that's serving them something. That, for me, is very political. And I take that part of my work very seriously about not subscribing to these really problematic views of perfection that comes with a domestic goddess, or problematic views of servitude that comes with being American. That's where the politics kind of hit for me.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much again for taking the time today.

Amber: Yes, thank you for having me. I loved this chat. And I love what you're doing with your platform. So I'm excited to be part of it.

Alicia: Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

I’ve been following the chef and writer Taffy Elrod on Twitter for years, and right now she’s having a moment. From teaching virtual classes while the restaurant she owns in the Hudson Valley with her husband has been closed to working with Rancho Gordo on a bean recipe booklet, she’s been making the most of a weird moment for a chef accustomed to working with the public.

We discussed her mostly vegetarian upbringing, studying at the Natural Gourmet Institute, and the thin line between hospitality and hostility. Listen above, read below.

Alicia: Hi, Taffy. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Taffy: Hi, Alicia. Thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Taffy: Yeah, sure. 

I grew up in southeastern Michigan, in Ann Arbor. My folks were from the Detroit area. And what I ate is [laughs]—mainly, the main story of what I ate is that I grew up in that healthy, whole food hippie home. [Laughs.] Whole food, meaning the foods, not the store, because that didn't exist in our area yet. 

So I grew up eating a lot of brown food. Brown rice and millet. And gosh, lots and lots of beans and tofu. And then sort of these re-engineered foods that—my grandmother was the head of the household and the vegetarian. So, she would make things like stuffed cabbage without the meat, and all kinds of things like that. And then, that was our mainstay. 

And then there were a few other things. My dad, his family's from down South. My dad's African American, his family's from down South. So sometimes with him, then my brother and I would eat completely different foods, because we would suddenly be having, gosh, be at McDonald's or having pizza or something. But for the most part, it was that sort of healthy hippie dippie, earthy, Earth mama food.

Alicia: What made your grandmother be vegetarian?

Taffy: I mean, she was way ahead of her time. She would probably be an amazing influencer if she were here right now.

She did it for two reasons. One, being ethical. She loved animals and didn't—she grew up on a farm and didn't like hurting animals. 

And two, she just had health problems in her mid-30s. She was a typical, sort of—not typical, but she was living, I should say, a typical sort of suburban working class life and—in Detroit. And she had health problems. And that through her research, she came up with this solution to her health problems of changing her diet, changing her lifestyle. She cut out all alcohol. She stopped smoking cigarettes. She cut out white sugar, she cut out white flour. She became vegetarian. 

And I mean, of course, there was a movement at that time that she was a part of. She worked in this—a food co-op in Detroit. Things like that. But that was her journey. It was about health and about—she loved everyone and everything, and couldn't stand to hurt anything. She didn't like to bring cut flowers in the house, a habit that I have continued. She didn't like to cut a tree for Christmas. She had like a little potted fir tree. 

Alicia: Wow. [Laughs.] 

Taffy: [Laughs.] Yeah.

Alicia: You write in your bio that you grew up in a family of artists and cooks. But I wanted to ask, what drew you into working in food yourself?

Taffy: It was kind of a long, slow road, I always was just deeply intrigued by food and cooking. And obviously, it was a big part of my family. But I didn't necessarily see it as my career goal. I think because it was so deeply ingrained in our family, that it just was there as this sort of backdrop. 

But as I got older, and I was doing—I was working retail and just couldn't figure out what to do with myself. And by older, I mean like my early 20s. I realized that what I spent all my free time on was food—and my love of food and collecting cookbooks and trying new recipes and trying to learn things. And that it really was my one great love, my one true love.

Alicia: Right.

And how have you expressed it in your life? What have been the ways in which you've worked in food and expressed this love?

Taffy: Well, first of all, when I was in school, I wouldn't—I was paying my way through community college, when—back in Michigan when I was young. And like everything I did in school, if we had a paper to write or project, I would always—it would be about food. 

So, I had to give a presentation in my French class. And I came up with a pie that I could make in like 10 minutes in class. And that was the beginning of my food demonstration career. I was like, ‘My French is terrible, but if I make a pie they won't care. Nobody will care.’ 

And I found this French cooking magazine and just pieced it, figured out how to give this presentation even though I couldn't speak French. My professor was like, ‘How did you do this?’ I basically just stole it out of this magazine. But the pie was this other pie, so I mashed it together and I made a pie. So that the end of my 10 minute presentation, there was a pie for the class to eat: this no-bake pie. 

So I was always doing things like that. No matter what I had to do, I would just figure out—food would be the way that I would do it. So at some point, it just sort of became—I would be taking a writing class, and everything I was writing was about food. 

My professor was like, ‘Maybe, I don't know. I'm gonna throw this out here: Maybe you're interested in food or something.’ I just kind of eventually realized like, ‘Oh, right. This is what I should just be doing.’ Then I made the decision to get into culinary school and pursue it that way, because I thought I needed to get out of my little pond and do—go somewhere bigger to pursue my career dreams.

Alicia: Where do you go to culinary school?

Taffy: I went to the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health in New York City in Chelsea. Yeah. [Laughs.] At the time, I was still very much ensconced in that lifestyle of the vegetarian, veganism, whole foods. And I was wondering like, ‘Well, where in the world am I going to go to cooking school? What am I going to do about this?’ And then I found out about them. And they have since been absorbed by ICE, by the Institute of Culinary Education. That ICE. Not any other ICE. 

But at the time, I mean, it was really interesting to be there. It was a great experience. I made great friends. And I loved it. And I moved to New York City to do that. It was a big deal. It wasn't easy for me to do. But it made my life, my career, a little bit maybe more difficult to get a good foot into the culinary scene in New York. Because, of course, to most people it was like, ‘I'm sorry, where did you go to school?’ [Laughs.] But for me, it was the right thing for me to do at the time. And it was a great experience.

Alicia: Well, where did you end up getting your feet into the culinary scene then? 

Taffy: So of course, I had already done some work back home. My mom had a cake decorating business. My dad worked in restaurants, and my grandmother worked in a bakery. And I had done some work already with them growing up. When I realized I wanted to start cooking, I had started segueing into food. So I had done some food work growing up in Ann Arbor.

And then when I left school in New York, I had two part-time jobs. I worked in a little—another grad had opened up this little sort of lunch café place in Chelsea. And then I got a job working on a nutrition study at Teachers College at Columbia University. It involved macrobiotics, so that was how I ended up there. 

So I was doing those two things. And then I’ve done so many different, so much different work. A little bit of restaurant work. But again, it didn't always click between my background. And at the time, 20 years ago, being a woman of color in the restaurant industry, it didn't, wasn't amazing for me. It didn't really click great in the back of the house. 

So I kind of just kept on this funny path of different—doing these different things. So a lot of health and nutrition, private cooking, and so on and so forth, and demos and things like that. A lot of teaching. Gosh, have cooked in so many different places. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, I mean, it's funny, because I was going to ask you wha—how you have such a varied kind of portfolio in terms of different diets and different dietary restrictions, which I now very much understand. [Laughs.] Which is that you went to the Natural Gourmet Institute, you grew up with a vegetarian kind of background. It's interesting that that is something that has both held you back seemingly, but also been a way forward for you.

Taffy: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. 

At one point in time, it was so unknown, so fringe in American culture. Now, it's become so much more accepted or popular, whatever you want to call it. And I always appreciated that I had that knowledge and that I had the understanding of it, because you can always—the other information and, is always there. And knowing how to make something taste delicious with butter was not really that hard to do. [Laughs.] It tastes good. We make stuff taste good.

When you know  how to approach food from a different angle, whatever it may be, and you know how to work with a minimum of ingredients or you know how to work with ingredients that might be outside of the ‘standard,’ that always, in my opinion, improves your cooking within the standard, because you have more tools to work with or this wider knowledge. And so, I was never undone by walking into a kitchen and finding out that there was nothing in there. [Laughs.] There was no equipment, or there was no—there's nothing good in here to cook. 

So, I worked in a place where I made gluten-free vegan soups five days a week, and—from pretty basic ingredients. So you can give me a couple turnips or a bag of lentils or whatever like, ‘I'm gonna make you some soup.’ You know what I mean? And that is obviously a skill that most of our ancestors have possessed until very recently. But it's also a skill that, as a professional cook, will really stand you in good stead. It's really great to be able to cook without needing to have the best of the best.

Alicia: Right.

Well, you live in the Hudson Valley now, right? And what are you doing now? What's your life like now?

Taffy: Hmm, yeah, that's a pretty big question. 

My husband and I are in Hudson Valley. We came up about six years ago to open our pizzeria restaurant that unfortunately is closed right now. And I mean, honestly, it was such a big change. It was such a culture shock for me—not just from New York City, obviously. But from my past life, even very different. We're in, I don't know, just a very different environment. 

And our lives changed completely almost overnight, because we found a place and just sort of took it on spec and just went from our—the lives we had in the city. I was working full-time as a cooking teacher. He was trying to sort of figure out what to do with himself next. And all of a sudden, we were just in this business. His brother was supposed to work with us, and he didn't. 

So all of a sudden, I went from having this, my job, to—we opened the pizzeria. And then suddenly, I was in the pizzeria all the time, too. Our other source of income was gone. And it was just the two of us in this pizzeria. And it was do or die. And suddenly, we were just together 48 hours a day and—just doing one of the most stressful jobs or businesses you can imagine. So I just really, there's not really words for it. 

And then of course the last year and a half, just everything ended up changing all over again. So I'm kind of starting over again. So it's just been one really wild ride, honestly.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Obviously, you've worked with your husband. You do recipes. You've also been a professional cook. How doyou approach cooking in a home way versus a professional way, or is there a difference?

Taffy: [Laughs.] 

That's a great question. A balance? I've never heard of it. 

I don't know. I don't think I do. When it comes to cooking, I'm like this amorphous blob. It's just all food all the time. And so, I obviously cook differently at home than I did in the restaurant. But at the same time, when we were in the restaurant 12 or 14 hours a day I cooked all our meals in the restaurant. Or he did. So home cooking didn't even exist. 

And then suddenly when we were shuttered, and I was home and I was by myself because he was stuck in Montenegro, where he's from and couldn't get home. I was just home by myself. So it was unbelievable going from cooking all day every day for our customers to just suddenly being home alone. 

But I've always had kind of this porous—I don't really see it as distinctly different. I cook at home similar to how I cook professionally. I mean, obviously, I wasn't at home making pizzas all the time. [Laughs.] But a lot of the things that I cooked in the restaurant, I’d cook them at home. I mean, the only difference for me is just the level of prep and the level of service and how I'm plating it. But I'm notorious for cooking enough for 100 people when it's two of us. Never mastered small portions. 

And the answer is, I don't. It's just me. That's what I do.

Alicia: Well, you've also been teaching online cooking classes. And why did you decide to go that route? They're very affordable, too affordable I noticed. And I noticed you're doing one called The Art of Salad. How are you deciding what to teach, and why are you teaching online?

Taffy: Yeah.

I just decided to keep that one like extra affordable, because I'm going off the cuff. I'm not giving recipes or anything, so I was like, ‘Whatever.’ 

Well, it came about because I had a couple companies that I was working with as a recipe developer doing some online work. And so at the beginning of lockdown, they had asked me to do some Instagram Lives when everybody was just doing whatever, just doing anything to pass the time. That was how I kind of got started doing virtual cooking. 

And then a couple opportunities came up in the last few months. And I had already done some filmed cooking demonstrations for a company I work with, so it was kind of natural. We didn't even think we were going to live in this apartment for more than a few months. I had never even cooked in this kitchen before we got out of the restaurant or got pulled out of the restaurant, whatever. 

So, it's been weird. It's been awkward. And that's part of why I've kind of just kept the bar low, because my kitchen is not up to a lot of demands here. But I realized that it was a good way for me—I miss people. I miss cooking for people. I miss my students. 

So, it's different. It's virtual. It's not the same, but at least it gives me an outlet to be able to share. Because I'm one of those people like, ‘Yeah, I'd love to cook,’ but if somebody isn't gonna be there to share it with—it's just half of s experience. It's not the whole experience. I'm definitely a nurturer, I guess.

Alicia: Right. 

No, I hate cooking for just myself. It's depressing. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I just make something weird. And then, it's not even satisfying. I eat it standing up. I think it is almost why I'm—I will often plate things nicely and take pictures and post them on Insta. It gives me content to make myself something, but at the same time I'm not that interested all the time in eating it because I just don't like eating—I like eating alone out at a restaurant or a bar. I don't like eating alone in my house. [Laughter.] It's simply not for me. 

Taffy: Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't mind the eating alone. But I just don't care then about the cooking. Just keep it simple. 

Once in a while, but rarely.

Alicia: Yeah, no, Maybe it's my Libra moon. I like to nest. [Laughs.]

But I wrote about hospitality for my newsletter this week. And when you quote tweeted, “Nothing’s ever made more sense to me than the connection between hostility and hospitality.” And I wanted to ask why you said that, and why that connection is so clear to you. 

Taffy: Wel. [Laughs.] 

So first of all, we had a restaurant. Or I don't know, sort of, maybe we still have a restaurant someday. We'll see. 

I worked in food service and in our restaurant for a long time with contact with our customers. In our restaurant, we had constant contact with our customers as opposed to having a lot of front of the house staff. 

And the truth of matter is, there's a lot of hostility involved. People are hostile. They feel very, I don't know, kind of—and around here, they tended to be really kind of aggressive and gruff. [Laughs.] And the first impression was always like, ‘Well, I don’t know you. Why do you hate me?’ So I mean, there's just kind of that—obviously, or of it-

But after having worked in this world for a long time, the reality is that—and I always think about this for myself. And I think I had posted something on Twitter about this. I used to work in people's homes and call myself a private chef, and I always in the back of my head used to sort of laugh at myself and think, ‘Private chef. Yes, right. But you do know that 50 years ago, you would have been the cook, right? [Laughs.] You know, this, don't you?’

There is this strange interaction, and sort of bristly space between people who are being served and people who are serving. My husband would always, always says, ‘I'm your server, not your servant.’ But the truth of the matter is that comes from—they come from the same place. It's a small difference. And there is, I think, from the people who are being served, a lot of times they actually feel very defensive about their needs or how they be treated, whether they think that if they don't tell you what to do, you're not going to do it. 

Or just that there's that uncomfortability. I mean, I remember that working in someone's home and in their kitchen and being all day with, around their kids and whatever. It was a strange feeling. You had to keep this sort of veneer of professionalism. And yet you're in someone's most intimate space, and you're doing something so incredibly intimate: preparing the food that they're going to eat, especially when it's right in their own home. 

And there is this sort of always this undercurrent of discomfort or almost—I don't know, you kind of have to be on the offensive. Or they're on the offensive. I thought, ‘How can I put this into words?’ I couldn't really, but it just seemed so clear to me. It's so obvious. I was like, ‘Yeah, totally.’ 

I mean, in our last place, it was our place. We had to be so defensive, so protective of ourselves. People would walk in and see a brown-skinned woman, an immigrant. I would get emails complaining about how the staff treated people when they were talking about me and my husband. 

There was so much constant, kind of this undercurrent of hostility and having to kind of be on the offensive to keep people in their place, because they just kind of wanted to come in and take over if they could. So yeah, it just really resonated.

Alicia: Well, I'm glad for that. But it is so interesting. As you said, your husband says the connection’s also between server and servant. These are very, very thin boundaries between these things: hostility, hospitality. Server, servant. And I think, yeah, people just aren't aware of it. They're hostile and they want a servant, and I don't know how that changes, really, on a broader scale. It's interesting. 

It's funny. When I worked at a bar, I ended up being the only employee that ever—someone ever emailed about for being rude. [Laughter.] As I remember it, I had a packed bar, and someone needed more time to decide what they wanted. And so I said, ‘Ok,’ and put my hand up in a way of kind of gesturing to say, ‘Ok, I've got what you said.’ And they were offended by that. Because I put my hand in the air and pointed to kind of make a mental note while I'm trying to remember what everyone wants?

It's just such a strange interaction all the time. If I ever go out with someone who ends up being weird or impatient with the staff, I'm like, ‘I'm never going out with you again.’ [Laughter.] I can't live like that. I can't be associated with that. Our friendship is never going to exist in these spaces.

Taffy: Yeah. 

It's weird. It's interesting. And obviously, I mean, if you've never worked in the food industry or in service, then I almost understand that you don't understand. If you have, then I really am confused by where you're coming from. ‘Well, I served people. Now I'm gonna take it out on somebody else’ attitude. [Laughs.] Just ignore the reality of the situation, I don't know. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I don’t know.

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Taffy: Yeah.

I mean, absolutely. I mean hopefully sometimes it isn't. Hopefully, sometimes at home, it isn't. But food is. And food is so political. And everything about the act of growing, selling, consuming food. Even the connections between the food and our perceptions of our bodies is so politicized. 

It would be impossible for it not to be, because we all have to eat. So therefore, food is a point of really powerful control. So whatever your choices are, you think you're making neutral choices about your food. Believe me, the ramifications are political. And if you have choices to make, if you have the privilege of making choices, that's political. If you don't have the privilege of making choices around what you eat, that's political. 

So to me, it's just—it just simply is. There isn’t, I don't think, in this modern day and age, a place where anybody can just choose to live off the land, be free and make their own food. So I think we're all very much caught up in the web of the politics of food. And cooking and eating are so—oh, boy. Especially in the modern American culture, is layer on layer upon layer of social ramifications and guilt. 

Alicia: Yeah.

No, I mean—because these industries aren't regulated at all. The state is not taking care of us or workers or the planet. And thus, it's all on our shoulders.

Taffy: Yeah. 

But I think that's what they—I don't know, whoever they are. It's obviously all about consumption and consumerism, literal consumption, obviously. But I mean about capitalism, consumerism, and money: the almighty dollar. And so I think that just throwing it back on the consumer and saying, ‘It's on you. You figure it out. You do it. You do something and it'll fix it.’ is really—I think it's really a scam. It's manipulative, and it's toxic. The average person didn't create the system, isn't benefiting from it. 

And then obviously, when you talk about less served populations and under, ‘underdeveloped’ nations, which—I don't know. I was thinking about it the other day. I was like, ‘Why don't they call some place like America an overdeveloped nation?’ Because we are. We're not nicely developed, we’re overdeveloped. As long as it's just finger-pointing things, like ‘You're responsible!’ Like me personally is gonna change what they're doing, so they don't have to take any responsibility for it. And it's always just another ploy to create another industrial mass produced food that will be this, ‘That'll fix the problem.’ Oh, that's weird. 

My husband always jokes about fasting kits being sold, like fasting came into vogue and now you can buy a fasting kit. I don’t know what's in it. I think that just sums it all up. You have to sell something to somebody for them to not eat or drink. So I mean, that's the world we're living in. I mean, I would like to feel like it were, it was a little different. 

I mean, I can make personal choices. And I can do my best. But you know what? Somebody else is eventually going to have to answer for themselves and do something different. If it’s gonna change, actions are actually gonna have to change. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Taffy: [Laughs.] Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

I knew I wanted to talk to writer Hannah Selinger when she was openly angry that her Eater essay “Life Was Not a Peach,” about her experience working for David Chang, wasn’t included in Best American Food Writing 2021. The rule is that we writers aren’t supposed to comment on whether we’ve been snubbed for an anthology or an award, even when it’s a clearly egregious way to keep a highly critical essay out of the canon, in an anthology edited by a fellow chef.

So we talked, not just about the anthology, but about her culinary and wine studies, her generalist approach, and being a year-round Hamptons resident. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk today.

Hannah: Thank you for having me, Alicia.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Hannah: Yeah, I had sort of a weird upbringing. 

I was born in New York City. And when I was seven, my mom moved to Massachusetts. So I actually came back and forth every other weekend between New York and Mass until I was 17. So, I grew up—

Alicia: Wow.

Hannah: Yeah. 

I grew up in a small town called Newburyport. It used to be Massachusetts’ smallest actual city. It's right on the New Hampshire border. 

What did I eat? My mother was a very, I would say, not inventive cook. So we had this cookbook called365 Ways to Cook Chicken. That was something she was really dedicated to. Bottled salad dressing and a lot of steamed vegetables, because that was very in vogue in the ’80s. 

My father, who lived in New York, was a little bit more adventurous. And he was more into cooking different kinds of meat and vegetables. But I would say that we were a pretty prototypical ’80s family. Nothing very interesting going on.

Alicia: Right.

Well, growing up between Massachusetts and New York is interesting in terms of the rivalry there. Do you have more of an affinity for one over the other?

Hannah: I have some pretty good stories. My father passed away, but he was a diehard Yankees fan. And my mother is from Massachusetts, and has always been a Red Sox fan. And I used to wear a Yankees Starter jacket to school in Massachusetts and was teased, I mean, just beyond all get out. 

Alicia: Right? Of course. 

I remember that moment when Etarter jackets were so popular, and my mom wouldn't let me get one. 

Hannah: They were very cool. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughter.] 

But you write about such a wide range of topics. Not just food and wine and travel, which kind of go together, but also parenting, real estate. How did you come to writing and built this career as a generalist?

Hannah: I definitely started in food and wine, which was where I was most comfortable. I had come out of working as a sommelier for some time, so that was kind of a natural segue for me. 

And more recently, as I've expanded my repertoire, I kind of follow things that are interesting to me. My husband is chief of staff for what we call out here a high net-worth individual. And so, he has a lot of experience in homes. We kind of GC’d our own renovation, and I got familiar with the real estate market, which granted me kind of some intellectual access, I would say. 

But I think I now view it as if something is interesting to me, and I feel like I have a base knowledge that's—if I'm, if I have enough understanding of the topic to be able to report it out, then it's something that I'll write.

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

And you are best known as a food writer, and were a sommelier and graduated from the International Culinary Center. And you have these huge credentials in this kind of field. So how have your experiences in restaurants and training for those careers influenced your work when  most writers about food and wine don't have that experience or background expertise?

Hannah: Well, first of all, it's granted me a lot of access, because I think that even at the very beginning when I was green in writing, I could always say, ‘Look, I'm clearly an expert in this field, because I've worked the floor. And I can tell you about X, Y, and Z,’ especially with wine writing where there are very few women in particular who write about wine just compared to the overall field. 

I would say that I have more empathy for what goes on in a restaurant and more understanding, and I would never—I think I would never find myself in the position of being a dining critic for that purpose, because I have too much kind of relationship to what's going on in the—both front and back of the house. 

Alicia: Right.

And what drew you to getting into that work?

Hannah: [Laughs.] It was born of necessity, I think.

I got a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing when I was like, 24. And I thought ‘Oh, I'm just gonna go to New York and write the great American novel, and I'll be cool.’ So I got a job waiting tables.

Alicia: But what got you deep into it into making it more of your career?

Hannah: It was sort of a series of accidental situations. I was working in restaurants. Bobby Flay was the first major restaurant I worked at in the city, and then was working for Laurent Tourondel at BLT Prime on 22nd Street in the city. And I felt when I would go up to a table, I could talk to them about food, which was something with which I was pretty familiar because everybody eats. But wine felt kind of intellectually inaccessible to me. 

And so, I started meeting with a sommelier after work and coming in and doing inventory, which just sort of set me up for this career as a sommelier. When I was working as a sommelier, there were kind of a couple of things about it that felt compelling to me. One, the mood of a restaurant, the frenetic energy, and the fact that you're kind of always doing something. It wasn't an office job. I was in my 20s. 

There's sort of like a vigor to it. I mean, there's a lot to know about wine. And it does cross into kind of the literary study that I had been accustomed to and that I based my academic career on. And that part of it felt like it wasn't just serving people things. There was an element of knowledge and understanding that went with it. And that, to me, was intriguing.

Alicia: Well, how does your MFA in fiction do you think influence your work now, if it does still?

Hannah: If I could go back in time, I think I would have done that differently. I think I knew that I wanted to write, but I didn't know what kind of writer I was. And so I picked fiction, but I think I was always a nonfiction writer. I'm not sure if that set me up and then I exercised the muscle of writing more regularly. And I saw it as something that you kind of had to produce within a set period of time, which is useful if you're a career writer. But beyond that, I'm not sure that I got too much strategy out of it. It took me a while to kind of get to this place.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Well, you did write a book review last year that made a big splash, I think in some circles. For Eater, you reviewed David Chang's memoir, Eat a Peach, which was also your memoir of working for him. And it was one of the best I and many have read on the reality of working for one of—a big chef whose behavior is lauded and excused. And it was really just such an eye opening kind of look into that world. And I just the other day opened the Goldbelly website, and the first main page is David Chang's face. And I was like, ‘Are we still doing this? Really?’ 

And I wanted to know why you wanted to open up in that piece in the way you did, and how the reception was to it. Because I talk a lot with friends about the cost of exposing our trauma and whether we gain anything from it, really. Why did you decide to do that piece in the way you did it, and how have you felt in the aftermath?

Hannah: So when I decided to write the piece at first, I was—I felt like I had to write it. It was sort of—I didn't have a choice. The whole process began when Peter Meehan stepped down from the L.A. Times last summer, it was like right around the Fourth of July. At that moment, I kind of had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. All of these people are suffering—accountability, if you want to call it that—in some small way, but Chang never really did. And why doesn't anyone talk about it?

So I actually just sat down and wrote a draft of what was, at that point, a completely personal essay. It had nothing to do with the book. And after kind of speaking with a bunch of different editors who were interested in it, and then ultimately landing with Matt and Aaron over at Eater, we decided that the best way to frame it was through the lens of his book because his book had just dropped at the point that I was still shopping the piece.

So when you're a public writer and you write about yourself, which I do sometimes, there's always an element of vulnerability and there's an element of blowback that can accompany that. I think that's sort of just par for the course with my job. And I talk to other relatively high-profile writers about this, is people feel like they know you and they feel like they have access to you. They feel like they have, they're entitled to tell you how they feel about your work and your life because your life is suddenly public. And that's always challenging no matter what the piece is.

I actually was surprised by the reaction that I got from this piece, because I was expecting blowback. Whenever something goes viral, you do. But most of what I got privately was actually deep empathy. And a lot of people who had worked for Dave during different periods and at different restaurants reached out to kind of sus through their own trauma, which was an unexpected consequence. I think I didn't necessarily know what people who were in it were going to feel. And they felt largely the same way that I did. And that was a very surprising, surprisingly rewarding part of all this. 

I've been disappointed that it kind of disappeared in the national narrative, and people just kind of let it go away. And they let his behavior kind of just continue to be what it is.

Alicia: Right? It's really shocking to me. 

And I don't know, I've always been curious how you feel in the last few months when I've seen his name just kind of pop up in a really neutral manner. What has been your response to that?

Hannah: That's hard. And of course, I got that PR email that was advertising a project that he was working on. And I was like, ‘I actually can't believe that someone wouldn't even put my name into Google before sending this PR thing out to me.’ What?

It's not that I think that he's all one thing. It's not that I think he's a terrible person, or even bad at what he does; I think he created something that was really cool. I was certainly driven to work there and eat there. Even after I left, I wanted to eat at the restaurant, or the restaurants. 

But I do think that I had sort of this moment at the end of my piece where I called for him to say something and step down, or pass the reins of his business on to somebody else. And that has really been met with silence. People like to say that we've come so far in this industry, and I don't know how far we've come at the end of the day. Powerful men are still the ones who run things in the restaurant industry.

Alicia: Right.

I've been thinking a lot about this. I think that writers are punished for it—for speaking out about chef behavior and for writing about it, even though we think that that's our job. But we are really expected to maintain the status quo when it comes to these chefs. We are expected to be nice, be accepting that it is hard to work in a kitchen, hard to run a kitchen. And so even though these people, usually men, are getting rich off the backs of other people's labor that perhaps they've been toxic to, we are supposed to not necessarily criticize that. 

And that came up for me this year because the person who was chosen to be the series editor, the editor for Best American Food Writing 2020 or 2021, was Gabrielle Hamilton, who—I saw my job, when I was writing for The Village Voice, to—as a food writer to be someone who kind of held powerful people to account for their decisions. 

But I wrote a piece about how when she was thinking of going into business with Ken Friedman to—yeah, to restore The Spotted Pig, and somehow related it to a natural disaster and that sort of thing. It was just really horrifying to watch in the midst of this big movement for accountability to see a female chef thinking that she could kind of fix a rapist and a restaurant with a rape room that anyone in the industry had heard the whispers about. I was told people knew not to work there if you were a woman. It was just really bizarre. 

And so I wrote about that—when it happened in 2018. And then when she was the—named the editor this year, I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I'm certainly not going to be in it.’ And that has consequences for us financially, of course. And that's why I was like, ‘How is it ok to put a chef in charge of deciding the best food writing when this is, of course, someone who's going to protect other chefs as well?’ 

And when your essay on Eat a Peach wasn't included in the anthology, you were very vocal on social media about your feelings about it. And I was really impressed by that because I feel most of us are—We're going to be Charlie Brown going home or whatever sad, being like, ‘Ok, whatever. I guess I'm just not good enough.’ But when we know that's not the case. We know that these things are not judged on a real meritocracy—meritocratic level. 

And so I wanted to ask you why it was important for—to speak out about that. I don't think we can really have hope that awards or anthologies are going to reward work that's critical of chefs, because they are bound to protect each other. And I mean, there was something included about  just being the girlfriend of a Michelin-starred chef. 

Hannah: I saw it. 

Alicia: And it's like, ‘Wow, this is just really collected work this year, when we had—we're talking so much about restaurants and the role of restaurants. But we're gonna have an anthology that just pretends that none of that actually happened.’

But yeah, so for you, why was it so important to speak out? And how did you feel about this person being the editor?

Hannah: I mean, I'm pissed about the whole thing. 

And actually that essay that you're talking about, that was in Grub Street. I very much like Alan, but the winner of that award tweeted out how honored she was to be working with one of her idols, Gabrielle Hamilton. And I wanted to scream into the void. 

Look, anyone who has read my essay who is, who’s tangential to the food world knows that that essay belonged in the anthology if for no other reason than it memorialized a certain period of time that we were living in. And that is what is supposed to be the point of an anthology that comes out annually.

And I'm not afraid to say that it was an excellent piece of writing. It's probably the best piece of writing I have ever executed, with great gratitude and debt to my editors who reigned me in. And this is my bad. I really just thought it was a sure thing. I was like, ‘I'm 100% going to be in the anthology. Why wouldn't I?’ And even Pete Wells was like, ‘You're definitely going to be in the anthology or whatever.’ When I didn't receive word from them, I was like, ‘This is shocking.’ And then I was like, ‘I guess it's not shocking. It's not shocking for Gabrielle Hamilton to be exactly who I thought she was going to be.’

And in addition to the Ken Friedman thing, there was the 10,000-word essay that she had in the New York Times Magazine last year, which people blindly praised when it had a lot of really questionable things in it, like, ‘Oh hey, I'm not going to take a GoFundMe for my staff because it bruises my ego.’ And then a recipe a few pages later for using $60 crab and an appetizer. 

I don't have a personal grievance. I just think that how—who made the decision to put her—it's mystifying. The whole thing is mystifying. I think it's widely understood in the food community that changes need to be made. And yet, here we are, after all of this, repeating the same narrative over and over again. Let's take the people who were abusive and put them in positions where they get to choose what is good and what is not good. Let's ignore the fact that this was the biggest year in terms of racial injustice that we've had to actually face head on as Americans in my lifetime, and put a white female writer, restaurateur of all things in the position of editing the collection. 

The food world continues to be tone deaf. Of course. I mean, we can talk about James Beard a different time. But this is just sort of another example. And I don't know if there's a correction on that. I tried to call it out so that more people would amplify the understanding of it. And privately, a lot of high-profile people reached out to me. Probably not so much.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And that's disappointing, because we really do. And I said this, I think I wrote about the James Beard awards and how basically I think writers, if they bring back the media awards, writers, especially freelance writers, should boycott putting their work in. Because something has to give in terms of the way these things work, in terms of how much energy we put out, and then are expected to also spend money to be—have our work considered for these awards, I mean, while we get paid garbage and are taxed to the hilt for that work. 

The expectations really need to change, and I think—the reason it was so disappointing that Gabrielle Hamilton was chosen this year is that this was the year that we were hoping to see changes. And I think that her decision, the decision to put her as editor this year, showed we're not actually going to change anything. We want to consolidate power at where it is, and keep it where it is. 

Hannah: 100%.

Alicia: Yeah.

And I think it is important for people to talk publicly about that kind of thing. But the thing is, it looks like sour grapes to some people. It looks like you're being rude to your colleagues whose work was chosen. But it's not that. It has to give that we reject the status quo and this concentration of power with chefs. And it's just high time. [Laughs.] 

Hannah: Right. 

And I think also the public may not know, for instance, that when it comes to these compilations and awards—I mean, Best American you don't have to pay, but you have to be the one to actively send her your material and be like, ‘Please consider me.’ It's not like it's just a bunch of people sitting in a room going through every piece of food writing from the year. 

And with ICP and James Beard, you have to send them money, and then you have to send them your links, and you pay for every single submission. Obviously, there's an access issue based on the financial part of it. But in addition to that, you have to have the wherewithal to even know when to do this stuff and who to send it to. The system is completely messed up, even apart from the person making the choices about what gets included.

Alicia: Right.

No, it's just really upsetting. And I think I'm glad that you were vocal about this, because it's such a conversation, it's a conversation that's wildly overdue to just really point out that what is called Best American Food Writing is simply one person's kind of idea of what that means, and not a real expression of what that year meant in food writing. I mean, if it was, we would have seen a lot more independent outlets, I think, included there. It was really a year of independent media. But yeah, no. [Laughs.] 

And yeah, it's really sad that more people aren't willing to kind of reject these things that we know are harmful. But that's the world we live in. That's capitalism, I guess, right? [Laughs.]

Hannah: Yeah. 

I mean, I think my feeling is also—a, I mean, you mentioned sort of the collateral damage that writers can suffer by vocalizing this kind of stuff. I mean, I continue to be unafraid of anything except cockroaches. So, don't put me in a room with roaches. If I want to write a piece about David Chang, I'm gonna write about a piece about David Chang. If I want to post about Gabrielle Hamilton, I’ll suffer the consequences. 

I don't believe for myself, because of where I'm positioned, that these people are going to come for me. I recognize that they are very much capable of coming for people who are less established. And in some ways I see it as an obligation, because I have a platform and because I have enough of a reputation of being kind of an iconoclast and just saying whatever I want, that I'm not sure it's harmful to me. And so I feel like it's my obligation to use that lack of harm to everyone's advantage. 

Alicia: Right. 

And I would hope it changes things, but I think people are a bit too comfortable with the way things work, even if it is to their detriment. Yeah. 

Well, to shift a bit, I wanted to ask about living in the Hamptons because I know you're living in East Hampton. I grew up in Patchogue on the south shore. So I know the Hamptons. Well, because I used to work at Hildreth’s Department Store in Southampton. I designed the website for a couple of years when I was in college. 

And I wanted to know, how is it out there? Where do you eat? How has it influenced your work? It really is, I think, more interesting a place than people give it credit for because of that kind of merging of the townies and the working class and the wildly rich. And I think it is more interesting than people give it credit for, though I do think it's weird how much the summer, places from the city kind of open summer residency is out there now. I think that's weird. 

But for you, how is it? How is the experience?

Hannah: Well, what's changed in the last year because of the pandemic really—there's this sort of beautiful off-season that we enjoy as members of a resort community and it's like until late March, early April. And there's nobody here from September on, and it's our own private Idaho or whatever. These past two years, everyone's been out here. So we haven't really gotten a respite in that sense. 

It has its pluses and minuses. Where I grew up in Massachusetts was a seasonal beach community also, although certainly not to this degree. And wealth was not part of the equation. So I'm used to the pop in the summer, and I always gravitate toward the beach. That's something that's very important to me. 

But actually, the townie element of it for me is maybe the most interesting thing. I really did not know moving up to the Hamptons six years ago that it's very conservative out here. There's a lot of conservative politics, which are a tough pill for me to swallow as a former Brooklyn resident. 

In terms of restaurants, more and more, we're seeing things that are opening year round, which is exciting. I love the Nick & Toni's group. Rowdy Hall is actually one of my favorite just sort of go-to places. 

It's actually exciting for all of us, even those of us who live here year-round, when the stuff starts opening for the season because it's something new is happening. And I get to go to a different place to eat. So that's starting now. I like to go to Montauk a lot, because I'm close by and I lived there for a few years. 

But I would say that the experience is—it's hard to explain to people who don't spend a lot of time here. The blend between the high and low and the absolute—the wealth is so unimaginable. But then there are just ordinary people who live here, too, and there's a huge undocumented community who lives here, which is something I really value about the community.

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, it's interesting. I used to work out there. And then also my dad used to drive Martha Stewart around. [Laughter.] So I have this very weird understanding of the Hamptons. ’Cause yeah, when I worked at Hildreth’s, it was all people who lived out there. And you have a different sense of what it's like from that versus—when I've been home in the pandemic and I went out to Carissa’s, which is so beautiful. But it's such a different vibe. And they had the Forthave Amaro, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ It's just a taste of city stuff, which is good. And I can't wait to go back, honestly. 

Hannah: I mean, I can't wait to get to the beach. Everyone's predicting kind of a banner year out here, which is not necessarily what you want when you have to drive on one lane of traffic.

Alicia: Yeah, that moment when Sunrise Highway becomes one lane is killer. [Laughs.]

But for you, is cooking a political act?

Hannah: Yes. 

I mean, I think I make choices in terms of what I purchase, and who I do business with, both cooking and dining. And that is sort of informed by my politics of what I choose to eat, what I choose to feed my kids. 

I've had a farm share out here for the entire time that I've been living out here, because I really feel like I need to be part of the local farm system. And I feel it's important for people to buy into their community in that way. There are places that I absolutely stay away from. I'm not saying Blue Duck, but maybe Blue Duck. [Laughter.] Very big Trump supporters. 

Alicia: Oh! I didn’t know that.

Hannah: Yeah. [Laughs.] Although it's tough to navigate that out here, because if you were really to go by that you would never buy fish. 

But yeah, I think there's political—everything is political. People like to say, ‘Oh, don't get politics involved.’ But politics absolutely governs everything you do, especially in a small community.

Alicia: Right. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Hannah: Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.

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Listen now | Talking with the interdisciplinary artist and 'Palate Palette' editor about hyper-specificity and locality in her work on Black foodways in Baltimore.

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Dianne Jacob has been writing since the 1970s, and she brings the perspective of someone well-versed in the industry to her book Will Write for Food, the fourth edition of which just came out this week. In the text and her online writing, she demystifies what is often thought of as the romantic world of food writing for anyone who might want to break into it. That’s required paying attention to how the industry has evolved in the last twenty years, especially, as people have moved away from restaurant reviewing and toward online work.

We discussed what drew her to food writing, how she’s adapted to a digital world as a self-described “print snob,” and how she defines diversity. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Dianne. Thank you so much for coming on today and taking the time out.

Dianne: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Dianne: Sure. 

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. And my parents were refugees. They came there in 1949 to escape Mao. They were from China, born and raised. So we grew up there, because my mother was British, and she could get into Canada, it being part of the Commonwealth. 

I think, in the beginning, my parents did not know anything about cooking because they had servants in China. But eventually, they missed their food and they had to figure out how to make it. There were a lot of phone calls with family. And I grew up eating three, maybe four or five kinds of food. Iraqi Jewish food, Bombay, Baghdadi Jewish dishes. Chinese dishes. My mother loved to make Japanese food as well. And every once in a while, she would attempt Western food, which she put her own spin on. Sometimes that went well, and sometimes it didn't. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: And what got you interested in food as something to spend your life focused on?

Dianne: It took a while to figure out why. But I think what it came down to is that, is because of my parents. They had a very weird background, and they didn't fit in anywhere. They didn't fit in with the Jewish community. And they didn't fit in with the Chinese community, because they weren't Chinese. They still wanted to express their identity, and they expressed it through food. 

And it was really, really important to them. My mother cooked every day. My father was in charge of pickling things and making leben, which is the Arab yogurt. So, they had a garden. And it was a major focus of their life. So I think I just took that for granted for a long time. And I didn't really understand that it was also a major focus of mine.

Alicia: How did you learn that it was?

Dianne: It was when I became self-employed. Before, I had a lot of different kinds of jobs as an editor and reporter and feature writer, and I just worked at different kinds of magazines and newspapers. And even a book publishing house, on whatever topic there was, ’cause I was an editor. 

And then when I became self-employed, I realized that I had to become an individual contributor. And before, I had always been a manager. And so I had to figure out what I wanted to write about. And what I wanted to write about was food.

Alicia: What has made you focus on food for so long? I mean, I'm sure we'll discuss this, but food media is not a really easy or welcoming place. And so, what has kept you writing about food all this time?

Dianne: Actually, I haven't been writing about food that much. Early in my career, I wrote restaurant reviews. I wrote a lot of service pieces. I wrote a column, a recipe column. 

But then, because I had such a long career as an editor and I missed working with writers, I got more interested in working with writers. So most of what I write about is how to be a food writer in all its glorious guidance, and how there are so many parts to it. There are endless subjects to keep me interested: food and politics, food and identity, ethics, how to write a good recipe, how to get a book deal, how to make a living, how to grow your blog. It's endless. And so, I've never been bored. [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah.

And you've just come out with the fourth edition of your book, Will Write for Food. What has kind of changed in your motivation and your approach to this book since the first edition in 2005?

Dianne: Well, I started teaching food writing at Book Passage, which is a big bookstore here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I couldn't find a book on food writing. So I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should write one.’ I figured if I was going to teach on the subject, it would be useful to have this book. 

So the first edition came out in 2005. And at that time, restaurant reviewing was really big. So there was a huge chapter on restaurant reviewing, and it was all focused on fine dining. And there's a chapter on fiction writing, which are—Mostly, the most popular genre in food fiction writing is murder mysteries with recipes, with great titles like, ‘The butter did it!’ 

And food blogs were just starting out. But I was still a print snob, then. And I thought, ‘Well, I don't really know what this is,’ and ‘Where are the gatekeepers?’ So I just ignored it. [Laughter.] And that turns out to be a big mistake. 

So in the second edition, I had to write a huge chapter on food blogging, which was in full swing. That was in 2010. And the Pioneer Woman was a big celebrity blogger then. And she wrote a blurb for my book. 

And then the third edition came out in 2015. And by then, people were more interested in how to make a living as a food writer—and mostly, especially online. They wanted to know how to make money online with recipes, or as content creators. I had to write about transitioning from a hobby to a business, more about photography, social media. A lot less on restaurant reviewing, because with the advance of Yelp, it just—restaurant reviewing has become a job that ten people have. [Laughs.]

And then for the fourth edition, which comes out on May 25, I got rid of the Eurocentric focus on food and writers. And I brought in more diverse voices, younger voices. There's a much smaller chapter on restaurant writing, more on making money. 

And I wrote a new chapter on voice, because the field has become very crowded these days, and a lot of people are writing the same kind of content. And so, how do you stand out in a crowded field if you're writing the same kind of content as other people? For me, it comes down to voice. 

Alicia: Right.

No, that's so important. And you also have your blog. You also send out a newsletter. Why have you gone sort of an independent route with your work?

Dianne: Well, I started the blog in 2009 because I knew I was going to have to write about food blogging. And I felt if I didn't jump in, I was never going to understand it. 

So I mean, I did jump in. But I didn't start a food blog. I started a blog about writing, particularly food writing. And at first I did twice a week, short posts about whether blogging is journalism, how adapting a recipe doesn't make it yours. It was really fun because in those days, people weren't on social media as much. I would regularly have like 50 or 80 responses. And I would get in theoretical arguments with people. 

I remember having a big argument with Shauna Ahern about whether blogging was journalism, all in the comments, going back and forth. And Paula Wolfert was one of my first commenters. It was a really heavy time. 

And then for the newsletter, I started that probably ten years ago. But then, it was just for anyone who had been a student of mine or a client. But now it has a bigger audience than my blog. And both of them together have me—they kept me on a regular writing schedule, and—which is really important. Because I don't want to just be an editor and coach for people. I want to keep my writing practice. 

And so I've been writing mostly service, what's called service writing, how-to pieces. Opinion pieces. And I bring in a lot of guest posters when they have wisdom to share.

Alicia: Right.

And how do you find it now? It's been over a decade that you've been kind of writing for yourself, writing directly to readers. What have you gleaned in that time from that kind of writing versus writing for publications?

Dianne: Well, the joy of not having a gatekeeper, and writing whatever you want, just can't be underestimated. But you still have to be relevant for people. 

This is something I learned as a writer early on, I think, when I was doing restaurant reviewing. What I learned was that people may never go to the restaurant, but they still want to read my review. And they wanted to be entertained. And I think I'm still learning about entertaining people. I tend to be very serious. [Laughter.] You are too, right? 

But entertainment is a huge part of writing for people. And so, it always has to be an element. I'm still figuring that out. I'm still figuring out how to be personal, and not just talk about what's going on in the industry. How much of myself to reveal. And of course, social media only amplifies that issue.

Alicia: Yeah. 

I don't know. I hope I'm not serious. I hope I don't come off serious. 

Dianne: Really?

Alicia: Yeah, the funny thing is that I'm not a serious person as a human being. So it's interesting that my writing that is popular is very serious. 

And it's a little bit frustrating to me, because I think I am trying to balance within one audience a few different ideas of what people want for me. And so some people like the personal writing and some people like the polemical, political writing. And some people like some more specific food writing about specific ingredients, or that sort of thing. 

And it's really hard to make all of those people happy all of the time. Which I guess the answer is—it's impossible.

Dianne: Yeah, it is.

Alicia: I find having direct contact with an audience that wants things from me pretty challenging most of the time. I don't know if I have the ability or the stamina to go on with it for over a decade, like you have. [Laughs.]

Dianne: A lot of what I write is not personal. I think that’s how I've been able to handle it, it's—just a while ago, I wrote a blog on how I noticed that I had a half-tablespoon measure in my drawer, but I never see half-tablespoon measuring recipes. And when I do, I usually edit it out and put one and a half teaspoons. Sometimes, you just never know if people are gonna respond to that or not. 

And people were all over it. And they were telling me, oh no, they've had this tablespoon for years. And they always use it in recipes. And it was the most minor subject.

Alicia: Right. It got people going.

Dianne: Yeah, it got people going. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, I think it's interesting to talk to you today, because while this is coming out in late May, we're talking in late April. And the people who are in the essays that are being included in Best American Food Writing 2021 have been announced in some form.

Dianne: Oh. I haven’t seen that yet. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

And I wanted to ask you, because you wrote about—you wrote a gorgeous and award-winning essay about mangoes for Lucky Peach in 2016. And then you wrote a blog post that just broke down the process. And I feel that was such a na—genius, kind of ahead of its time move to do that because I think it's only in recent times that we've really been having this conversation about what makes things successful in food media, and what makes a piece end up in an anthology or winning awards and that sort of thing. 

And so, I wanted to ask you why you wanted to matter-of-factly break that down for people.

Dianne: Well, thank you for calling it gorgeous. I appreciate that. And also, thank you for finding that post, because I've got thousands of posts now going back to 2009. So, I didn't even remember that one. So, I went back and read it. 

But I think what I wanted to get across is that people tend to think that writing is some kind of magic that people can just pour things forth, and it will be beautiful and fully formed. And that was not my experience writing that piece. That piece took a long time. And it appeared in various guises. And I just want people to know that it's work. It's work to get there. 

And also that if you do want to be recognized for your work a lot of the time, you have to—most, almost all the time, you have to apply. And I was so freaked out by the James Beard awards that I didn't even apply. I didn't even for that piece. I just couldn't get up the nerve. It was just ridiculous. The things you tell yourself are insane sometimes. [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, it's true. 

Has how you perceive awards changed since that time?

Dianne: Not really. You have to believe in your work enough to submit awards. And I'm always telling people on social media and in my newsletter, ‘Ok, the award deadline is coming up. You can’t wait anymore unless you apply. You've got to pay some money. You've got to believe in your work.’ And that hasn't changed. 

I think there are very few awards where you don't apply. Maybe the Art of Eating award, you don't apply for that. Even Best Food Writing, you can submit your work to it.

Alicia: No. Yeah. 

And I mean, it's interesting. The James Beard awards are, I think, the most expensive award to submit yourself for. And I don't know if you've ever judged the writing awards for them. But—

Dianne: I have judged them, but not journalism. I've judged books for the Beard Award. 

Alicia: Oh, ok. Right. 

Well, it's interesting to me that it's—people pay so much money to be considered, and then the people doing the reading aren't paid for that time, either. So, it's interesting. I mean, I've written before about how much I loathe the James Beard awards. [Laughs.] 

Yeah, it's a difficult thing. And that's why I appreciated that blog post, because I think that people often do think, like you said, that it's this magical process toward writing the great essay that will get attention. And it's not. It just is plodding to get there. 

Dianne: Yes, with a lot of self-doubt and putting it away and bring it back out. And yeah, just how it is. I’ve been a published writer since 1974, and I still go through that.

Alicia: And I didn't give you this question, ’cause I'm only really—I'm considering this right now this week, that the idea of being creative and working in a creative field is, I think, something that we're supposed to always talk about in a very lofty manner. And your whole work that you're doing now is about, and have been doing, is about breaking that down for people and making it about success and not shying away from the business end of it. 

And I wanted to ask how you kind of balance or decided to balance those things, and how creativity and business—how in your mind do they kind of fit together?

Dianne: That's a really good question. 

What I've decided is that there are some people who are entrepreneurs, and they’re business people first. And they apply their creativity to their business. Whereas food writing, I think, for so long has been a hobby and not taken seriously and things that people do on the side or they just do it for fun, or they do it because they're privileged enough to not worry about whether they're going to get paid for it or how much. That's a whole other kind of thinking. 

And so you can produce the same work. I mean, you can write a recipe and have either point of view. But the people who are making a business from it are focused on that. They're focused on financial success, however they define that. I've had people as clients who have made six, high six figure incomes. I've interviewed people who have made high, mid-six figure incomes. And they're just as good as writing a recipe as the people who get paid nothing. But they’re entrepreneurial about it. 

Alicia: Right, right.

That's an interesting way of looking at it, I think. ’Cause I think I have a lot of guilt about money in being a creative person. Guilt about thinking of my work as labor and guilt about thinking of my work in business terms, in a way that I never did if I was selling people cakes or cookies. I would never feel this way, but because I'm just writing—And as I say it, I say, ‘just writing.’ 

Dianne: Just writing, yup.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

I'm like, ‘Is this real work? Am I supposed to be caring about money? Is it gauche of me to need money to live?’ [Laughs.] 

Dianne: Exactly.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And so trying to kind of be honest about these things, and how it all really works, which is a lot—it's very complicated.

Dianne: It is, because money is fraught, especially in American society. Fraught with so many issues. 

I have the privilege sometimes of writing a piece for my own pleasure and getting paid very little for it. And I think, ‘Is something wrong with me that I do this, because at the end of the day, it's not—my labor isn't being paid for. So, is that wrong? Or do I just decide that I'm a privileged person?’ and then I have guilt about that. [Laughter.] You can make yourself crazy with this stuff.

Alicia: Right, right. 

No, and in this new edition, in the introduction, you talk about the diversity of voices that have emerged in food writing in the last decade and the major writers of color, or Black writers who've emerged in this time. And you yourself could be said to have a ‘diverse’ background. So, I wanted to ask you how you define diversity.

Dianne: Thank you. 

So first, I'll define it for the book. So my editor and I spent a lot of time on how we were going to define it. And she was very helpful. So of course, there's BIPOC, which means Black, Indigenous and people of color. But that's not everybody. 

I just looked up the new abbreviation LGBTQQIAP. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual. Got all that? [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yes. [Laughter.]

Dianne: We're leaving out people who are disabled. I know, it's not everyone. But at least we're enlarging who can write about food and how they write about it. 

And so I tried to describe the intersection of food writing and more diversity in the first chapter. And I don't fit into one category. I mean, I present as a white person, and I have the privilege of a white person. But my parents were Chinese refugees from—who were Iraqi. So it's kind of complicated. Identity for me is a huge topic, and I'm endlessly fascinated by it.

Alicia: And I wanted to ask if you've faced—I mean, you just said you, you're a white person with the privileges of a white person. How do you view the kind of gatekeeping that occurs in food media and the fact that we have taken so long to start seeing food media more accurately reflect the world at large? 

Dianne: Oh, yeah, it's taken a long time. I mean, I graduated from journalism school in 1974. And it was almost entirely white. And every job I had, the whole staff was almost entirely white and the writers I hired were almost entirely white. 

I never questioned it in the beginning. We weren't having those kinds of conversations. And it's taken a long time to start—for the publishing industry—to start having the conversation, and to own it that publishing is, what, 85, 86 percent white. Depending on which publishing you're talking about, but I think, for us, it is. It's just taken a really long time because the gatekeepers were not really aware of how, of choosing their own and how their own were always available. 

I mean, white writers came to me and want to be published. And I didn't think about seeking out other kinds of people for the longest time.

Alicia: Right, right. [Laughs.]

And how did that moment of clarity kind of emerge?

Dianne: Well, just in the last few years, it's become a lot more obvious that this system has to change. And I've had my own understanding about it also, and questioning what I could do about it. 

Last year, in honor of Black Lives Matter, I had—I said I would take on five new clients who were interested in food writing, who are all Black, for $100 instead of $800, because I know there's this disparity in the income of white people versus Black people. And so that was something new, for me to do that. And it went really well. I had really terrific people to work with, who were—or I could just suggest to them, they work very hard. And it was good. It was a good experience. And now I'm trying to figure out what else I can do. 

Alicia: Right.

How far in advance do you start planning your next edition of the book?

Dianne: Well, they've come out every five years. I guess, technically, it was supposed to come out last year, but because of the pandemic they pushed it. So this one is out every—on the sixth year. So I can keep a file of all the stuff I’ve forgotten to write about, and how to rethink what I wrote about.

When I first got into food writing, I was absolutely bewildered by the Eurocentric nature of it. And it was so foreign to me, because I didn't know about European food. I didn't have the income to go to fine-dining restaurants and eat continental food, as it was called at the time. And I just didn't understand why everyone was so excited about it. [Laughter.] So we've come a long way from that point.

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Dianne: Certainly. 

Yeah. Because you make decisions, you make decisions. Are you going to buy organic, and is that just for your own health or is it for the health of the people who work in the fields and for the health of the planet? Can you look beyond yourself and see why that would be a good idea? Are you eating a plant based diet to—for environmental reasons or for your own health? 

Are you claiming your food as being from one country or another? I just had a guest post about—that Nandita Godbole, I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name right, wrote about cultural appropriation. And I realized that I had written a recipe for some—a Chinese dish that my mother made. And I was very wrapped up in the memory of how she made it and how delicious it was and what my memories were as a child eating it. 

And then I realized after reading her posts that I hadn't thought about, ‘Was this a dish that existed in Shanghai? And did my mother eat it? And is that how she found out about it? And what do I know about the Chinese version of this dish?’ I hadn't thought about it at all. So, it just enlarged my thinking about how to write about food in a way that's more inclusive. 

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time out today.

Dianne: It's my pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Karla Vasquez is a writer and keeper of culture documenting the women who are keeping Salvadoran food tradition alive in the United States. Her project SalviSoul is putting oral tradition down on paper so that it can’t be lost, and it also points to the significance of specificity when discussing Latin American traditions: The U.S. considers the Latinx community a monolith, when it is actually wildly diverse.

I wanted to discuss with her the inspiration behind this, her experience so far working on a cookbook proposal, and how she expresses her voice authentically on social media. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Karla. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.

Karla: Of course! I'm so happy to chat with you today.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Karla: Yes. 

So I grew up in L.A. It's where I am right now. And I grew up in a very Salvadoran home. So, that meant a lot of—yeah, a lot of the Salvadoran staples. A lot of polea, a lot of rice, a lot of tortillas. The occasional carne asada over the weekend. Because we were new immigrants in this country, the food was really what told me we were from El Salvador because we didn't have things that I saw other Latino families had around in L.A. There wasn't tacos at the party. It was pupusas. It was tamal de pollo. Yeah, it was a very Salvi-saturated food upbringing.

Alicia: And so, what led you to working in food and founding SalviSoul?

Karla: [Laughs.] There were a few things that led me to this work that I'm doing now. And I guess I can summarize them by pointing to three reasons.

I mean, the fact that my family are just storytellers, and this was—we carried our histories through storytime. So I think wanting to do good storytelling just became a part of just legacy that my family has. When we would sit at the table, when we would have dinner time, it was automatic—we were going to know, we were going to find out more about where we came from and our histories. 

So apart from that, a huge reason that led me to SalviSoul and to starting this work was because I had a very personal experience with my health. I became a person who had to deal with a chronic illness. I am a Type 1 diabetic. And in my early 20s, when I was diagnosed, there were a lot of doctors who had good intentions. And a lot of what they said to me were, ‘Diabetes has everything to do with food. And you're Latina, and Latinos eat very poorly. So we would advise you not to eat XYZ.’

And as I mentioned, my upbringing, food was what told me we were from somewhere else. So when I got to experience my culture, it was at the table. And so hearing this kind of recommendation from several doctors and nurses, and it just broke my heart. And I felt like I had to make a decision of, ‘Do I cater my diet to my health, or do I try to figure out if they're—if they maybe don't know the whole truth?’

And that's really what got me into food justice advocacy. And before I did food writing, I was managing farmer’s markets. I was working in low—income areas here in L.A, doing cooking classes, free cooking classes, where we would talk about all the things you can do with all the harvest from the farmers. And so that definitely informed my work. 

And as I started to research different cookbooks and really just getting obsessed with the food world and becoming familiar with all the work farmers do to give us options at the farmer’s market, I started to look for Salvadoran cookbooks. And by this point I had been going to cooking school doing a cooking program here in L.A. 

And the results that I found when I started researching Salvi cookbooks, I found two. I found two books, and I just thought, like, ‘There's millions of us here, internationally.’ We have had to adapt a transnational identity because so many of us have had to leave El Salvador. And it just felt completely absurd that there wasn't a library, or that the library we had of cookbooks were so limited. 

And also that the two books available were not—they weren't things like books from 50 years ago or anything. They were recent, within 10 years—yeah, I think when I found the first English cookbook, it was 2015. And that book had been published in 2013. So, it was relatively new. And I longed to know more. I longed just to understand where—what foods did my family have for fest—for the days of festivals? What foods they have for lazy Sundays? Food was really a way for me to understand where I came from. 

And it was a way for me to know, in that passports were not there—I, for a moment in my life here in the U.S., I was undocumented. So when documentation can’t tell you where you're from, when the language on both ends is a struggle, food was the thing that didn't ask me to be any way. I just knew we were from El Salvador because we eat plátanos, polea, queso duro, pan francés. 

Those were the, yeah, I guess the veins of the work that eventually led me to say, ‘What if I started a project, and I interviewed my grandmother and ask her for my favorite dish?’ And there was a really incredible moment in working with my grandmother. And she's definitely the co-creator of SalviSoul, because without me saying too much about it, I didn't have a name. I didn't have much, but just a question of curiosity. And I pitched it to her. And she said, ‘Oh, sí, Karla. Esto se trata del legado de la mujer salvadoreña.’ Like, ‘Karla, this is about the legacy of El Salvadoran women. You're going to interview women, they're going to tell you stories. And we're going to get these recipes documented that no one has really bothered to look there.’ 

And that was it. That was the moment that really—yeah, it was the beginning of so many things.

Alicia: And when Patricia Escárcega wrote about you for the L.A. Times last year, she wrote about your desire to write a Salvadoran cookbook. And she specifically mentioned that what you were just saying, that the cuisine of El Salvador is kept alive by women. Can you tell me more about the significance of women in Salvadoran cooking?

Karla: Absolutely. My goodness.

So much of what we know, as a diaspora is because of women in the kitchen, and women feeding their families. There’s that entrepreneurial spirit in, with immigrants, where I can't be hired. I don't have documentation. I don't know anyone here. But I know how to make some bomb tamales. I can make 150 of them and sell them on a corner, and people who are hungry will come and try it. 

When I started this project, there was a lot of wanting to give credit where credit has been past due. We have so many enclaves of Salvadorans in this country, and a lot of these enclaves really surround little mercaditos, little restaurants who have been serving these foods. And it's because of their diligence. And I think cooking, especially within a Latino, Latinx context, for women, I think it's a very complex issue because of course, we have been forced in the kitchen. I definitely had a lot of that push and pull feeling of like, ‘I don't want to work in the kitchen, because that's what has been-’ A good girl will want to work in the kitchen. And I didn't want that.

This work taught me a lot of nuance that we haven't been able to really sit with as a community. And I speak for Salvadoran community that I've interacted with. I definitely don't speak for the whole of our community. But with the experiences I've had, so many folks will say to me, ‘Karla, I don't know where else I can feel I belong to El Salvador or that I belong to this culture if it weren't for the home-cooked meals that my mom makes me or that my grandmother makes me.’

And the tension I have with that is that it then becomes this granny practice, right? And I've had moments where people say, ‘I don't need to bother to learn a recipe because I can just go home and eat it there.’ And I always have to stop myself from reacting honestly, because I want to say, ‘It's up to us. It's up to us to practice. Any culture that’s alive is practiced. It’s participated in. And you can’t lament not being able to have access to it, or for it to be a part of your life when you’re kind of assigning it to a generation that’s the older generation. It's an unfair ask to then put the whole weight of preserving culture on a generation that's done the work.’

So absolutely, there's huge significance. And especially because a lot of the history in El Salvador, there's been a lot of violence towards women. And my project is a place to highlight Salvadoran women. And yes, to highlight their sazón, to highlight the vibrancy they have for life. But also to say, ‘This is their place. This is a place that's dedicated to them. They are amazing individuals. They have incredible stories, I will introduce you to them and give you a snippet of who they are.’

SalviSoul is very much Salvi woman-obsessed. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. [Laughter.] 

And you mentioned before knowing you were Salvadoran by virtue of what you were eating, and that you weren't eating tacos the way everyone else was. And I feel I haven't been to L.A. in a—I was there once, I think, maybe in 2008. 

But I know that L.A. is such an amazing food city. And reading Jonathan Gold and all that stuff, it really—it gives you a sense of what L.A. is about and how significant food is for L.A. How do you think your city influences your kind of culinary vision, or your kind of culinary understanding?

Karla: Hmm.

Alicia: If at all? [Laughs.]

Karla: No, it absolutely does. I feel like there's a few ways in which it will influence. 

And I mean, I can speak on it from my point of view as a writer. Being able to meet so many different food writers here. I mean, just last week, I was talking to someone who is a food writer. And she's working on a Hungarian cookbook. And her cookbook is very similar where highlighting a lot of the women in her life, who are these cultural hubs for a lot—for the community here in L.A. 

And I think when you see a place like this city like Los Angeles, and you see people who come from the same place as you or similar places, and you see them not having to make compromises of who they are, it's a very—I remember the first time kind of seeing El Salvadorania and kind of being it. There weren't many out there. 

But I was just like, ‘Holy s**t. This is really f*****g bad. I didn't know this was possible.’ Because I think being an immigrant and growing up here, you really are trying to check all the boxes so you can stay here, so you're not separated from your family. So you can flourish the way you believe you can. And sometimes in that thought process, you realize that there will be compromises or that you will have to stop being a certain way or that your Spanish will have to disappear or any of those kinds of things. 

But living in a place like L.A., you start to see beautiful food concepts for restaurants that are led by the people that they are representing. And they are beautiful. They're a breath of fresh air. There's a huge spirit of pushing back and punk attitude. And I definitely feed off of that, because the publishing worlds, when I pitched this to them, were very much like, ‘People won't know what this is. People won't know what to do with it.’ I had an agent who I was pitching to say to me, ‘The American public won’t know what this is.’ And because I am in a place where there's—thankfully, I have a lot of examples of pushback where I can say, ‘I am the American public. And I want this, and plenty of other people want this.’ 

So yeah, I'm so grateful. It would be interesting to know what SalviSoul would look like in a place that wasn't this kind of presence of thriving and not compromising.

Alicia: Right.

And I mean, to speak to that, too, you post your Instagram captions in a mix of English and Spanish. And so I wanted to ask how you came to your voice as a writer, and if anyone was an influence on the way you approach your voice?

Karla: Well, the one piece of—I have one quote that I always lean on, by James Baldwin. And it's, ‘The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.’ Of course, I always say her, ‘who produced her.’ 

That's kind of been a piece of advice that's been a North Star for me. This whole question of figuring out what your voice is, it's so vague. And it's scary. And you want to make sure, or at least I want to make sure, that I'm speaking to the people who are looking for me. And so I do think about who are the people who produced me and produced these kinds of questions inside of me. 

I think about my grandmother, and—she was a phenomenal storyteller. And I think about how she never, ever had writer's block. And she didn’t necessarily type out stories or anything, but she did share lots of stories. 

And I think sometimes, the fact that we're writing kind of gives us this, makes us neurotic people. Because we’re not just sharing it, where there's so much that comes with the actual action of writing. And she never had writer's block. She never doubted herself when she would share a story. She would walk into the kitchen, and she'd be like, ‘[Snaps fingers.] Karla, ¿Qué esto pasó?’ And she had the feeling in her body. And she knew how to capture her audience. 

And so, I think of her whenever I start to get too much in my head. And I think a lot of what I've learned is—it's not about my feelings of me as a writer. It's just the story, this emotion. Something I've been realizing a lot recently is that writing is really catching feelings. You're trying to catch as many as you can.

I mean, I've read a lot of people who have shaken something inside me, and yeah, those are there. I don't know that any of those folks I've read, like Jonathan Gold, any food people you read have helped me become the writer that I want to be as much as the quote from James Baldwin and the attitude of my grandmother and how she was a storyteller. But, yeah, I think there's been so many little pieces of guidance and wisdom that have found me 

I'm not sure if I’m answering the question, but-

Alicia: You are. [Laughter.]

Since that L.A. Times profile of you last year by Escárcega, have you found an agent for the project of your cookbook?

Karla: I have, and honestly I can’t believe it. I shouldn't say that. I really didn't think I was gonna find one. I was pitching and sending out my proposal. And people would say, ‘This project sounds wonderful, Karla, but we've learned that compilation books really don't do well.’ Or, ‘Karla, this sounds great. But there's too many voices here.’ I'm sharing stories of 25 different women, plus myself. And then, of course, getting comments about ‘Well, what is Salvadoran food? People are not really interested in it.’

So yeah, I finally found my agent. After having all these different experiences with these folks, I did have a few kind of rules. Like I said, ‘I'm not going to work with anyone if they're making me feel like they're doing me a favor.’ No, I am doing them a favor. There has not been a Salvadoran cookbook published in this country by a traditional publisher. They should be happy that I am giving them an audience, because this will only help them in the trajectory of their business. 

I have had to kind of have this attitude, because—yeah, it's just unbelievable the way some folks have treated me. And it's ridiculous that it's taken this long. But my agent gets so many things. From the beginning, just said, ‘Put me in. I'm ready to work. I'm ready for this to be on bookshelves. Let's get to work.’

So yeah, I am so close to finishing my proposal right now. We had to kind of fine tune a lot of it. And I'm sure you know all about the proposal business here. It's been hard. 

Alicia: It's hard. It's so much work. Before you even get to the book, it's so much work. And then when you get to the book, it's so much more work. [Laughs.]

Karla: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah.

Karla: The publishing industry is cruel. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.] But that's so exciting. 

You’ve been working with traditional kind of food media. Have you found a lot of pushback there? Have you found yourself feeling good working in food media?

Karla: Yeah.

I mean I will say, I think everything that's been happening in food media for the last year since last summer with the whole BA episode, I think the environment is different than when I started in food media in—beginning in 2016, I believe that’s when I started. 

Yeah, I would send out pitches back then saying like, ‘Hey, I want to highlight this restaurant. They are innovating Salvi food, and no one's really talking about this.’ And people were not interested, or—if they did, if I did hear back from them, they would say, ‘Oh, well, so-and-so already wrote about this.’ And I would say well, ‘That so-and-so is a Chicano writer who has no nuance. Can we at least consider a different angle perhaps?’

And now, it's different. I mean, I've had a few food opportunities knock on my door and say, ‘We want to feature you. There's a few things coming down the pipeline.’ So I can't say all the details, but I would have never imagined them knocking on my door and saying, ‘Hey, we would love if you could write a recipe or, and write an article. And we want to feature you.’ So I think it's a different world now for food writers like myself. We can start to see some changes. 

I do think that I'm also at a place where I have maybe a little bit of— all of the rejection you get kind of get to you. I don't care if they knock on my door now. I care less. Some of the places who have featured me—L.A. Times did feature me. But there have been some other ones who, they say they're really prestigious and nothing happens. Nothing happens, except that they end up looking maybe a little bit more inclusive or diverse, highlighted someone from a small country? Sure. 

I can’t honestly take you seriously as a food media when you haven't bothered to cater to this expanse, food media cultures that you haven't really bothered to look into. So, I take myself seriously. So, I will work with folks have demonstrated that they have been invested. It's a very small group of people. It's interesting how that happens, right? When they finally start calling you, you're just like, ‘I'm not interested in you. I am shocked that I ever thought you were that important, that I had angst about whether or not I'd ever be on your radar, you know?’

Alicia: Yeah. No, it's interesting. 

And I mean, you mentioned having the lack of nuance when a Chicano writer writes about a Salvadoran restaurant. And the U.S. media really has an idea of Latinx culture that is very one note. And you can kind of interchange one Latino for another. 

And how have you seen that get better, maybe, in the last couple of years if you have? I feel it watching coverage of Puerto Rico. Obviously, there's a huge Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S., but it's very interesting to see the diaspora prospective versus someone who lives here and that sort of thing. It's considered the same thing, though, from the U.S. perspective.

Karla: I mean, my gosh. 

I think that several things can be true at the same time. Things have gotten better; things have stayed the same. How do I say this? How do I express all the feelings? If there has been an opportunity for me to write something, I think that there are—because of Twitter, I'll be tagged in something that said, ‘They should have hired Karla to write this. She is one of the few Salvadoran food writers, but they decided to go with a Chicano.’ Those kinds of things are happening. Before, those things didn't happen. 

So it's not to say that they’re hiring me for the—that would be awesome. But they’re acknowledging—or the people are acknowledging, and that's how we accomplish anything. Enough people who have the platform's hopefully strong enough, big enough, that you start to see something change. That's what I'm seeing. Before if I wasn't really putting myself out there, pitching, kind of being in front of folks, it's not—it wasn't going to come my way, or it's not going to. 

But I mean, we'll see. I think this is why I want to do this cookbook, right? And why I decided not to self publish, but to pursue traditional publishing, because I do believe that having that kind of—it's almost like having that rite of passage for the community will create an environment where, ‘Hey, are we doing our due diligence if we aren't asking Salvadoran writers to write Salvadoran content?’ Or, as a bare minimum, asking Central American folks. 

So I think that there is a path that has been made. It's not a path that is very populated, but there—we're getting there. Yeah, I think that's the best I can say as far as—if I were to give a grade, I would add in the comments, ‘Shows huge improvements. Keep it there, but we’re not there yet, honey.’

So yeah, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with food media because historically, they've taken too much from everyone. I don't know that they deserve my satisfaction. So, I do think what I want is for the people, the powers that be, just to get out of the effing way. If you can't support, if you can't give up the jobs, get out of the way. Stop sabotaging. 

But anyway, I digress.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

No, but it’s real. And I know in that L.A. Times piece, again, you were talking about how Instagram following is kind of considered super important for selling a cookbook. But I have seen lots of cookbooks be published by people with 2000 followers on Instagram and 2000 followers on Twitter. And I think it's something I've seen be told to a lot to women of color, who are trying to push a cuisine that has—that the publishing forces-that-be don't think has a big audience.

But meanwhile, I have a Romanian cookbook. And it's great. And, of course, but that's a similar kind of a small country as well. But it has a cookbook, and I don't want to say that that writer didn't put in a lot of work. But it's, how many people in the U.S. have eaten Romanian food versus a pupusa? 

So how do you see social media? To me, it's this kind of necessary kind of evil of promoting your work. But what is your kind of relationship with that? 

Karla: Let's see. Gosh, heavy hitters.

Alicia: I'm sorry. [Laughter.]

Karla: No, I love it. I love them. Absolutely here for it. 

My relationship with social media has had to evolve. At the very beginning, at the onset of SalviSoul, bringing it into the social media scape, it was just such a nurturing place. All the folks who have kind of been that person and had that experience like I had, where I was really excited to look for Salvi cookbooks and then came up on two, and then the two were sold out. We were all finding each other. And it was just so beautiful. I kept having these feelings, again, and again, of like, ‘Oh, you too! You have this thing? Oh my gosh.’ So, it was a really beautiful thing. 

And knowing that the numbers kept going up, and I had—I remember when I just had a few hundred followers. And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh. I have 400 people who are with me on this, who think that this should be a thing. Oh my gosh, this is so f*****g cool.’ 

And then when I had made the decision to not self publish, but to pursue this journey of traditional publishing, I met a great agent. And she said, ‘This is an incredible project. There is an audience for this. We definitely can find you a publisher who will do right by you. However, you need more followers.’ And I think at this point in time, I maybe had like 4,000. She said, ‘I need you to have at least 10.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. That's a lot.’

And for me at the time, I think I also interpreted it as I can't connect to that many people. Because it was just like, ‘Connecting, connecting, connecting with—it was just I was finding family. And you do the catch of you go with friends. You go, ‘How you’ve been?’ And it was just organic, too. It wasn't a strategy of how to gain a bigger following. It was just like, ‘I want to know, where the rest of the diaspora is.’ Because people from Canada, from Abu Dhabi, from Tokyo, Savis all over the world, they're like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I've been waiting for something like this. And I'm so happy I found you.’

So then hearing, ‘We need 10,000,’ I was like, ‘There's no way I can get these by myself. I need to find people to promote my work. I need to get in front of more people.’ It's just this compounded stress of ‘I need to keep having these emotional connections people that I don't think I have capacity for.’ That had been the way that the community grew. 

And a lot of this too, I have to be very careful. Because I see this happen a lot, where you have projects or books that are about tough things that we've had to survive. It becomes the gimmick. You show all your pain and suffering, and then they say, ‘Oh, yeah, that's enough for us to humanize you. We feel something now, so we're gonna care now.’ 

I almost felt when this person said, ‘I need you to have 10,000,’ I felt like this person wanted me to do that, because that's the fastest way you can get attention or make a meaningful connection. And those were a lot of things to process. No one's in my family has ever been published. There's never been a freelancer in my family. I became one so that I could be available for this. I was Frankensteining income with whatever came my way. 

And now I just felt like I had this huge task of, ‘Go find another 5,000+ people that you need to connect with and that they need to find value in the work you do, when you have receipts to show that the general public has cared less about the Salvadoran community.’

So yeah, it was fucked up. I was like, ‘I don't know how to-’ I didn't know how to deal. But I just kept doing what I was doing. I kept posting, posting not really with a strategy in mind but just, ‘Hey, this is what I'm learning. I'm sharing it with you all, because this is what the page is.’ And then eventually, a few folks with—who are also Salvis and had larger, much larger followings, who were Salvis in fashion, Salvis in makeup sharing, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a food account and she's doing cooking classes. You guys have to follow.’

And then, we eventually got to 10,000 especially after the L.A. Times piece. That helped a lot. And I went back to that agent and I said, ‘Hey, guess what! I have the 10,000. It was amazing.’ And then unfortunately, they ghosted me. So, I don't know. Was she really serious, or was she maybe just giving me a number that felt difficult and she maybe thought, ‘It'll take her a really long time.’ Or maybe she really was—It was last year that I got back to her, so 2020. Have to have a bit of patience with folks, because we're all still going through it. 

So yeah, I think social media—it's hard, ‘cause that was the same year that American Dirt came out. And we were all talking about how does someone with 3000 followers. Three books, I think. She'd already published three books, get a six figure book deal. And she only has less than 5,000 followers on any accounts. How did that happen? How? So, we know how. 

So yeah, I think that I, as far as my strategy now with social media, I'm wanting to still connect with people. I'm choosing to create from a place that is of service to Salvi folks. creating beautiful things, creating informative things. 

The end of last year was really hard, because I had family who was hospitalized due to COVID. And thankfully, they're fine now, thank and goodness. Everything was just really difficult. And I think I didn’t post for like three months, which I think is—yeah, exactly. It's criminal when you think about it and everything you have to do. I stopped doing my cooking classes that I was doing weekly. I stopped posting. I didn't have it in me. 

Yeah, I’ve have had time to rest. I have help now, too. I have someone who helps me with social media. So yeah, I think it's always a habit of resetting what social media is there to do for you. And publishers, I'm sure, will want me to have hundreds of thousands. But if that's not what I have, then that's not what I have. And I'm not gonna buy followers. I'm not going to do anything that doesn't feel honest. And that's just what they have to deal with, ‘cause I have to deal with a lot more than just worry, worrying about how many followers I have. 

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Karla: I think so, yes. Yes. It doesn't always have to be. I think cooking, the intention behind it can be very much like eating. But sometimes we eat for health, sometimes we eat for enjoyment. Sometimes we eat because otherwise we're gonna die. 

Being a diabetic, my relationship to food almost feels like it's on this whole other level. Because there have been moments where—yeah, I'm not sure how familiar you are with diabetes, but you can—I have Type 1, so my pancreas, which produces the insulin that helps me break down all the carbohydrates that become sugar that become energy, my body doesn't make any. So I have to give myself between five to six injections a day of insulin. And everything I eat is a very conscious choice. 

And so naturally, anytime I cook is also very conscious. And when you add that layer of cooking Salvadoran food when there are so many policies that have meant to harm my community, cooking is definitely a very political act. To say that I'm going to learn and practice these ways in this country, and that I'm going to teach others to thrive at it as well, I think is the most radical thing I can do for my community and for us to feel strong. So absolutely. I think it's a political act.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time again.

Karla: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.

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Do I need to introduce Julia Turshen to a food crowd? Her cookbooks are best sellers and she’s written for everyone. Before I made my foray into food writing, I envied her quite a bit for seemingly having achieved all my dreams far before I was ready or able to do so, despite the fact that we’re the same age.

In this conversation, I wanted to understand her approach to creating “healthy” recipes and what inspired the one vegan chapter in her new book, Simply Julia, but I also wanted to discuss how privilege has manifested in her career and why she’s stepped away from the spotlight to work on a farm. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Julia. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Julia: Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting, and I appreciate it so much. Yeah, thank you.

Alicia: Of course.

Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Julia: Sure. I've listened to, I think, all of the interviews you've done. And I love this question so much. I love hearing everyone's response, so this is just very surreal and exciting for me to answer. 

So I grew up in Manhattan until I was about eight. And then my family moved to the suburbs, about half an hour outside of New York City. And I was raised by my parents, my mom and my dad, who both worked full-time since way before I was born. So I was also very much raised by my babysitter, Jenny.

And I would say the food I ate growing up, I ate a lot of food outside of our house. We depended on Chinese takeout a lot. We ate a lot of pizza. We ate a lot of Jewish delicatessen food, Ashkenazi, all different, chicken soup and knish and that kind of stuff. My family loves a diner. [Laughter.] Lots of bagels, and occasionally McDonald's. I was a chicken nugget kid. 

And I would say the food in my family's home—I was thinking about this, and I feel like it was divided between three basic food groups. Or not food groups, but items or themes. So there was a lot of packaged diet food. There was a lot of SnackWell cookies, Boca Burgers, stuff like that. In our house, there was a lot of food purchased from prepared food stores, so containers of pesto pasta, stuff like that. 

And then there was also Jenny's cooking. And this was the food that I loved the most when I was a kid. Jenny's food that she would mostly prepare for herself and share with me is the food that I feel, I guess, one of the foods I feel most deeply connected to. 

And it feels, I don't know, especially important to talk about right now because Jenny is from St. Vincent, which I'm sure you're aware of because of where you live. But there was just, or there continues to be, this really crazy volcano erupting in St. Vincent, looks like devastating the country. So thinking about Jenny and her family and St. Vincent right now is kind of top of mind for me. And if it's ok, can I just shout out a website? 

Alicia: Of course! Yeah. [Laughs.]

Julia: Ok, so there's a website called https://www.feedstvincent.org/. So it's S-T-Vincent, https://www.feedstvincent.org/. And the chef from Food Sermon in Brooklyn, who is also a Vincentian, he's started this kind of meal response thing, ’cause a lot of people are in need there. So I'm really grateful that he set that up. And it’s just a very tangible, easy place for people to go to support just a country that is going through a very rough time right now. 

That was a long answer. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: I love the Food Sermon. Yeah, it's a great restaurant. 

Where outside of New York did you grow up?

Julia: I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you just said.

Alicia: Where outside of New York did you grow up?

Julia: Oh, in Westchester County. My family moved to Harrison.

Alicia: I'm from Long Island, and so I always want to know. [Laughs.]

Julia: Yeah, totally. The bridge and tunnel connection, I’m with you.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

And also, what you grew up eating was so very similar to what I grew up eating, which is pizza, Chinese takeout, that sort of thing. It's very, very similar. And it's also funny, because I didn't realize that we were born in the same year until I was googling you because for the entire time I've been writing about food, you've been the—a presence in the food world and in food media. And so, what made you work in food and how did you kind of become focused on home cooking?

Julia: I have been interested in food my whole life. I have been cooking since before I can remember, since I was a little, little kid. And I've always wanted to be in the kitchen, and I think some of that is because I didn't grow up in a family where my parents were cooking. I didn't learn to cook at my grandmother's knee or anything like that. I think I was seeking that kind of, I don't know, sort of domestic life maybe in some way without even realizing it. But these are thoughts I've had as an adult. As a kid, I just wanted to be in the kitchen. I thought it was just the greatest place. And I continue to think that.

But the thing that is, I think, most significant for me in terms of working in food media as opposed to just food in general—‘cause as you know, the food industry is one million industries under one big umbrella. But my parents worked in publishing. So my whole life, I have been exposed to print media, to books and magazines. 

And I've had that early exposure. I've also had access to the publishing world since before I can remember. After school, when I would go to my parent’s office, I was walking into office buildings that I continue to go into now. I mean, I guess virtually [laughter] if I'm meeting with someone. But that definitely has informed my career. It's paved the way a lot of, for a lot of my work and everything. 

So I think that's super important to mention, because I think when we talk about opportunity, especially within publishing, which is the most opaque industry and is allergic to transparency, I just feel it's super important to just talk about how we got into it, which I appreciate how much you do that. 

And the second part of your question about home cooking, I have always been a home cook and I proudly identify as one. If someone calls me a chef, I feel like I'm always looking over my shoulder, like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ [Laughter.] 

And for me, home cooks and chefs are just different things. And I'm really happy to be a home cook. I think they're both worthy. They're both valuable. They're just different. And I try not to confuse them, because I'm really proud of what I accomplish in my home kitchen and I'm proud of what other people accomplish on a daily basis in theirs. And I'm so happy to be a home cook who writes for other home cooks. I try to share all my recipes and stories from that sort of shared place, I would say. 

And I guess the only sort of professional cooking experience I've had, in addition to recipe writing, is I did work for many years as a private chef. But that was always me cooking in other people's home kitchens. I still think of that—even though it's not just sort of the daily relentless grind of home cooking within your own home, and it is paid. And yeah, I guess you could call me a chef for that. Whatever, I don't care what you call me. 

But that, to me, just continued to inform my life as a home cook. And I just had access to many home kitchens and access to many families who had the ability to hire someone to cook for them in their home, which is a really interesting, fascinating experience. And at the end of the day, I think everyone just wants to feel very taken care of. I think that was a big takeaway for me. I mean, I have other takeaways from that time, but I won’t bore you. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you mention kind of the relentless grind of home cooking. How are you feeling in the home, cooking, after working on cookbooks—we're in a pandemic. How have you been relating to food over the last year?

Julia: I mean, it's made me appreciate the fact that I love to cook so much. I'm so grateful for that. 

I don't know. I feel like I'm always kind of ruminating about home cooking and home cooks, and always thinking about the labor that is home cooking. The undervalued, unacknowledged, just—I think, really—not very well-understood labor. And I'm someone who gets acknowledged and credited for that labor. I get to put my work out there. I get to make a business, a career out of it. But I'm doing what many people are doing everyday without any credit or acknowledgement.

And when we cook at home—again, you know, this—but we're not just making dinner. We are planning for it. We're maybe keeping a budget. We are keeping endless mental inventory of what's in our kitchens. We're trying to use things up. We're probably taking other people's needs and desires into consideration. We're shopping. We're also cleaning up. We do so much cleaning up. 

That's part of why I don't put—this is a sidebar in a tangent. But I don't put times in my recipes, ‘active time’ or ‘prep time’ or whatever, because I just feel like it's endless. Are we including washing the dishes and cleaning the counter and the grocery shopping? That's all part of making the recipe. So I just don't put that, because then I feel like I'm measuring myself against it or something. I don't know, it just makes my head spin. And am I asking other people to measure themselves against it? I just don't like that kind of vibe. 

Anyway, so yes, home cooks are just incredibly valuable. We sustain households, communities, and this is really important work that often just doesn't get the credit that I think it so deserves. So, yeah, I definitely am so happy and proud to be a home cook, especially over the last year. And I'm also really happy and proud to have the opportunity to celebrate my fellow home cooks who don't often get that—I don't know—cheer or celebration.

Alicia: Yeah, no. 

It's funny, because I think over the last year, it's the first time I've really thought of all that labor that you just mentioned that goes into it. I think it's been so apparent to me in a way that it wasn't before, where before, when I would cook dinner, it would be part of, more of a—what felt like a full day. And now it feels more just the only point of my day. 

I just see it also clearly. That mental inventory, I have felt the weight of that mental inventory of what's in the kitchen over the last year in a way that I never have before, which is interesting. And actually, maybe I want to explore that deeper because it really is such a—it’s so much pressure, I feel.

Julia: Yeah, for sure. I'm nodding out loud. [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, but it's funny. And, it's a lot of different complications there of trying to keep life afloat and also make sure if there's food in the kitchen, etc, etc. 

And, it's been better to get inspiration from cookbooks like your new book, Simply Julia. And I wanted to—it's hard for me, and I don't really talk about it. The only time I've written about kind of ‘health’ in my newsletter, it was—I literally put it in quotes, so that I wouldn't be kind of making a judgement because I do feel it's so difficult to talk about. People are so connected. You don't want to tell anyone a food is bad or a food is good. And health necessarily kind of says, ‘This is good.’

And so I wanted to ask how you kind of decided to approach that idea, as well as the issues of fatphobia, which are so deeply connected to ideas of health and how we talk about them.

Julia: I so appreciate you asking this, and kind of giving the context for how you've gone about it in your work or, or not gone towards it, because it's super sticky. I'll just back up for a second, because something I just heard you say that I feel is tied to this is just that feeling of pressure within home cooking. 

Having nothing to do with health, but that's something I just think about a lot. I think in the age of social media and cookbooks and stuff, I think, in general, I see and feel and observe the sense of pressure that home cooks feel, that I think a lot of people feel. I think this measuring of ourselves against each other and ourselves. And that's something I try to push against as much as I can in my work.

I basically feel like the kitchen is the one place where I don't feel anxious in my life. [Laughter.] Everywhere else, I am so anxious. And that's why I take medication and see a therapist and have supportive friends and boundaries in my friendships and all these things. Anxiety is a big part of my life. And it's really interesting to me that it's not a part of my cooking life. And I feel that's a place that causes stress and pressure for most people. So I feel like that is this big knot I am constantly trying to untie and understand and just be aware of.

And I'm saying all this, because what you mentioned just really resonated, but also because everything I just described to me, for me personally—I can only speak from my own personal experience—but that's all rooted in diet culture. In the sense of perfectionism, this sense of trying to attain the unattainable. And I'm talking about thinness. [Laughs.] 

And the more I understand about diet culture and the role it's played in my life—I mentioned I grew up in a SnackWell’s Cookie home. The more I understand the roots of diet culture being the roots of everything that's problematic in our world, which is racism and white supremacy and these things that, I don't know, you do such a great job of tackling in your work. 

And I've been the beneficiary of reading work like yours, reading work like, I don't know, Sabrina Strings’ book Fearing the Black Body, really understanding this—The Body is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. 

Work like this has really changed my life, because, as I told you, I've loved to cook forever. It's where I have found so much joy, so much curiosity, so much connection to other people. So much confidence. I feel my most confident in the kitchen, not because I think everything I cook is great. I just think that I can figure it out. And that feels really good. But I have not felt the same competence, or joy, or positivity when it comes to eating. Cooking and eating have been kind of separate things for me. 

And my whole life, I felt so drawn to food in ways that have sometimes felt obsessive. Which I think is true for honestly a lot of people in food. I've talked to a lot of people about this. I think that issues around eating, whether it's living with an eating disorder, or disordered eating, or just any sort of obsessive feeling about food, I think it's incredibly common. It's part of what brings us to it. I don't know, what you're asking and this whole topic is such a huge topic. And I think I need to just slow myself down while I'm talking about it, because I think I'm trying to talk about so many things. 

But basically, yeah, the subtitle of my new book is ‘healthy comfort food.’ And I know that those words bring up a lot for a lot of people, including myself. And I guess the reason I wanted to go in that direction and go for it is because these issues have been a big part of my life. I have loved cooking, but I have had intense issues with body image and disordered eating and restrictive eating. 

These are things I've been working through personally, and my work is really personal. So I chose to share with us more publicly, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to write a healthy cookbook that is not about weight loss. This is a healthy cookbook that doesn't equate the word ‘healthy’ with skinny. 

And I guess in terms of thinking about your question about why I've chosen to address this publicly, I'm not the first person to do so by any means. Some of those books I just mentioned, there's many more like them. I just do think fatphobia is everywhere. It's everywhere. Diet culture is everywhere. And so, I think it needs to be confronted from everywhere. 

And for me, that definitely includes mainstream cookbooks, because mainstream cookbooks, ones I've been lucky to produce and be a part of, they go a long way to influencing how we understand terms like healthy. And they have definitely informed how I've thought about healthy, and I used to think it just meant skinny. And coming to understand that it doesn't—it's just something I feel really strongly about sharing. 

And I guess in some ways, I think I wrote this book to kind of change my own definition of it just for myself and therefore kind of hold myself accountable. And hold myself accountable in a really positive way for myself to just, continue to treat myself with compassion, and to try and do that for other people. I don't know, I feel like everything I'm saying is a little bit vague. [Laughs.] But it's a big, it's—no pun intended—a very weighty topic. 

And I just think health is a really—it reminds me of the word ‘natural’ on food packaging. It's overused, so much to the point where it both means nothing and it also means something that it doesn't mean. It's come to mean that. And I just think that's honestly really dangerous. And I don't know, I feel I just want cooking and eating and food to be as safe of a thing as possible. 

So, I think this is an attempt to be part of that kind of conversation. I don't know. Those are some rambly, separate thoughts, but I'm happy to talk about all of this or more. But yeah, it's definitely—ok, I’ll stop. 

Alicia: No, it's so loaded. It's so loaded.

And I feel it, because I write about, not about veganism or vegetarianism. And people tie these things to restrictive eating. There's a big strain of vegans who are recovering from an eating disorder and veganism is a safe way to still be mindful, I guess, of what one is eating. 

But I've become really, really intense, like you were saying, about talking about the way that fatphobia is an expression of anti-Blackness. And the ways in which we have to talk about it as a European beauty ideal is the same as blonde hair and that sort of thing. We have to make it as though it's as neutral as that. Its meaning is as neutral as that, and we have to talk about the reason that we are kind of obsessed with it. [Laughs.] 

And so I really think it's important to address in the way that you have, because people are very weird about food. And because our culture has made us weird about food. And I don't mean weird about food in a negative way. We don't, especially as women, etc., etc., we don't feel very free to eat in a way that maybe our bodies are telling us to. We just don't. 

Julia: Yeah. I, again, am just nodding my head really vigorously over here. You can't see me, but just please know that that's happening. 

I could not agree more. And something that I write a little bit about in the introduction to the book, when I'm sort of talking about the word healthy and something I think about all the time, is the fact that I think it's a word and a feeling that I think is up for all of us to define for ourselves. And I think having the agency to define it individually is incredibly important, because we live in different bodies. [Laughs.] That is obvious, but I think that maybe isn't always obvious by the way these things are written about. 

And, for me, I definitely define healthy using that word you just used, which is free. It's feeling freedom. It's feeling freedom from these imposed sort of pressures and restrictions and everything you said, beauty ideals, and all these things. And it's feeling free from judgment, and it's feeling free to make choices. 

Freedom to me is an incredibly important part of what it means to feel healthy. And I also know that the word freedom is incredibly loaded as well. And I don't know, I just appreciate the opportunity to just talk about these things with people like yourself, and many other people. Because I think that's how these things can change is through these types of conversations, right?

Alicia: And to also talk about vegan stuff, you have a chapter on vegan meals in the book. Which I think is great, because I do think people think of eating a vegan meal as something daunting. I mean, it's funny to me, of course, because I'm like, ‘I don't even know where I would put cheese in a meal. I don't know where you put the meat. I don't know.’ [Laughter.] 

But I'm always kind of talking about people in food media having sort of a responsibility to talk about the ways in which meat is a destructive force in our planet, in the way that it is industrialized, etc., etc. And so, how do you approach that idea that the food system is a huge part of global greenhouse gas emissions? Meat is also the biggest culprit in that. How do you approach that personally, and also in your work in a way that isn't alienating?

Julia: Yeah, great question. 

I don't know that I have the answer here. But I can just tell you some thoughts I have on this. And I guess my disclaimer is that my thoughts on this are constantly evolving based on information that I am finding. Information that's new to me, that's not new information. 

And, yeah, not to keep saying this, but a lot of that information for me on this topic comes from you and your newsletter. It comes from other people I read and talk to who either identify as vegan or work in farming or work in policy work, or cook for their community or feed their community in other ways. People who are attached to the food system in very conscious ways. I would say people I've learned a lot from who I know you've talked about a lot in your work are people like Karen Washington, people like Leah Penniman. I don't know. The more I learn, the more I learn, which is true for all of us. [Laughter.] 

So I don't know. In thinking about this, I was thinking about ‘How do I decide what I put in my books, or what I put on my table?’ Which are very similar things. And most of these decisions come from the people I am feeding, the people I am cooking for. The person who I do that for the most—if that's a sentence, I'm not sure—is my wife, Grace. 

My home kitchen is me and my wife and our two dogs. I would say our dogs are the ones who consume the most meat in our household. So I don't know, that's maybe a sidebar thing, but would be interesting to talk to you about ‘cause you have a dog, right? 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Julia: Yeah. ’Cause veganism and dog ownership, I think, is a very interesting topic. Yeah, I could talk to you about so many things. But I'm going to try and answer your question. 

I think a lot about who I'm cooking for and what their needs are. And so in our household, I mean, I basically, I'll eat anything. I'm very lucky to not have any allergies or anything like celiac disease, like my body can handle most foods. I'm grateful for that. I try to be selective about what I eat based on what I like and what supports my local farmers and all that kind of stuff. 

But in terms of meat consumption in our household separate from our dogs, we—my wife, Grace, doesn't like red meat. She used to eat a lot of pork. She's Southern. But she just no longer really likes it. So we eat a lot of vegan and vegetarian meals, and we also eat chicken and fish. We have the privilege to be very selective about where we buy, those items or all these items. 

And something that's been on my mind, which was interesting to hear you talk about a lot of people who are recovering from eating disorders or disordered eating turning to veganism, the way I have continued to, I guess, just heal my disordered eating has been through the framework of intuitive eating. And this is something I would say I'm probably, I don't know, I don't think I'm at the very beginning stages of but I'm not out of the dark space altogether. This is something I'm just continuing to figure out for myself. 

And within the framework of intuitive eating, it's really important to me to not impose restrictions on myself and to just listen to my body and to get to know my body more. And the minute I imposed any restriction, I'm going to cut out whatever it is: sugar or dairy or vegetables. I mean, I'm not cutting out vegetables. But whatever the restriction is, it doesn't matter. But the minute I hear, ‘I'm cutting this out,’ that brings up a lot of not great stuff for me. So I try to not do that.What I tried to do, which causes no triggering things for me, is to just be really conscious of where I'm getting my ingredients. Which is a privilege to have that just time to think about, to have the money to choose where I spend it and all that kind of stuff. 

So these are things I think about. But in terms of the book itself, yeah, there's a chapter of—it's vegan one pot meals for the reason you kind of suggested. I think a lot of people think of a meal without meat in it as something like, ‘Well, what's it going to be? What's the centerpiece of this or something?’ I talk to home cooks all the time. I talk to home cooks on social media all the time, like, I am in this ongoing conversation with people who are cooking at home. And I know this comes up for a lot of people. So that's why I wanted to make it one pot meals. Make this feel really simple, because it can be simple, but also make it feel cozy and familiar. And I don't want to other it. 

But yeah, that chapter is in a book that also has a chapter of chicken recipes. And I don't know, in terms of being conscious of the food system and climate change or climate crisis and how it infects all this, I don't know. If I were to write this book today versus when I started working on it, that's something I've thought about. Would it still have the chicken chapter? I'm not sure. I don't know I'm continuing to learn and I'm just grateful to learn. 

I feel like I would like to share this with you if it's ok. And maybe we'll get into this with some of the questions that are coming up. I've taken a big pivot, and I, a couple weeks ago, started working and I'll continue to be in this job for the rest of the year. I have a new full-time job. And I'm actually working at my favorite local vegetable farm. And I have taken a step back from cookbook world and food media and stuff. Everyone I work with is vegan. We're talking about this stuff all day every day while we're farming. And I feel my mind and body just absorbing a lot of new information. 

So I don't know, maybe we can talk in a few minutes and see—I don't know. It's super interesting. 

Alicia: And I love that you're working in a local farm with people who are vegan, because a lot of the narrative around veganism that we get online, I'm gonna say. [Laughs.] And it's terrible, because in the pandemic, I've just been online. Twitter is the only way I know what people are doing or thinking about. It's affecting my book that I'm writing, obviously, because I'm writing it in a pandemic. I'm not out in the world talking to people. 

And so, I'm just hearing what these people online have to say. And I identify as vegetarian now, because I do eat local eggs and local goat cheese. And sometimes I'll eat pizza with—just out of just a sense of communal joy, I would say. [Laughs.] 

Julia: Yeah, pizza has a lot of communal joy. I agree. [Laughs.]

Alicia: People are really upset with me about this. Even though I am, all I promote is the idea of centralizing vegetables in your diet and stepping away from meat as the centerpiece of your eating. But the vegans are very angry with me all the time. 

And I think it's because they're not really understanding how ecological systems work. And I'm probably gonna upset any vegan who's listening to this, but sometimes there's just a real disconnect in terms of actual farming and how an actual agro-ecological system would function. And how localized food systems would work. I mean, obviously, you would eat very little animal product. That's just it.

Julia: Yeah.

I live in New York State. I live a couple hours north of New York City. And if I were 1,000% vegan who ate no animal products and was also very aware of all the things you just said, I would also never eat a banana, or a lime, or an avocado, or these things that I think are very prevalent in a lot of vegan recipes and stuff. And I don't know. It’s all fascinating. 

And it's just interesting about the sort of the conversations happening on Twitter, too, because this idea of upsetting the vegan stuff, which I'm sure we're both doing in many ways. But it's also like, yeah, upsetting the vegans who are active on Twitter, which I think is one group. Again, I just keep using the word interesting. 

And I don't know. I think, again, there isn't a one-size fits all for everyone. I think that's why we have to define healthy for ourselves. I care about you as a person in the world, but I don't care what you eat. That doesn't matter to me. But I am interested in it. I'm curious about how you make these decisions, but what you eat has zero impact on my life. 

I mean, maybe the decisions about who you're supporting and stuff, maybe it does have an impact. I don't know. This is complicated. But I think the judgment and the measuring against each other, which I think, again, rooted in white supremacy and racism and diet culture. Everything we're talking about is connected, even if it doesn't maybe seem that way. I don't know, I think that's something I'm very passionate about, is just trying to remove judgment.

Alicia: Yeah, no. 

And I mean, it's hard because there is—the collective impact of what we eat is real. And I mean, that's why we need systemic change, to make it easier for everyone to make choices that are healthy for the earth, healthy for us as human beings, because we do feel—and I mean, this is a bit woo-woo. But we do feel the impact energetically of how healthy and how good other people feel. That has an impact on all our lives. 

Julia: I mean, I am a gay woman who's working at a vegetable farm in the Hudson Valley. I'm all for the woo-woo. That's fine. I'm with you. You don't have to explain that to me. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: But it's real. And I think it's important to talk about. Yeah.

It's hard, because I want to talk to vegans about my own choices and my own kind of—but then I'm kind of considered an ex-vegan. And that's a really bad thing. [Laughs.]

Julia: It's really interesting, ’cause it almost—there's a parallel here to me about conversations I have with people in the queer community, where what does it mean if you, I don't know, have always been a lesbian and then you date a cisgendered man or something? 

I think these communities and cultures where labels take on a lot of, I don't know, weight and import and stuff, I think the world isn't black and white. [Laughs.] And there's a lot of nuance. And it's hard to figure out where you sit in the community that relies on labels to define yourself. And I think that gets really amplified when you enter spaces like Twitter, where there's very little room for nuance, which is why I don't spend much time-

Alicia: I need to stop. [Laughs.] And it's hard to get off when you're a writer, and when my work really depends on—I can look at the hits to my newsletter, and they're mostly coming from Twitter. I have to engage somewhat, but I am trying to engage in a more healthy way. Which, obviously, this is not what we're talking about, but I am engaged in a more healthy way. I don't see any one's responses to me unless I follow them, and so that's changed my whole life. 

Julia: That's cool. That’s smart. Good for you. That's great. 

I mean, I know, this isn't what we're talking about. But it's also-

Alicia: Social media is such a big part of our lives. I love to ask about people's relationships with social media, because I think it's useful also for the readers or the listeners to know what it's like for people who are kind of, I hate this phrase, but creating content and having to be on social media on this professional level. But it is work. It is labor.

Julia: Yeah, no. 

And it definitely feeds into our income. If you're getting hits on your newsletter that you're getting—there's paid subscribers, including myself. Highly recommend it. Very good investment. I get it.

I'm trying to get people to buy my book. Because, yes, I believe in my book, but I also have a mortgage I'm paying. These are actual things. And I think we don't talk about a lot of stuff like money and all that. I mean, you talk about it, but that's rare. And I don't know, the way social media plays into this, I think it's tied to everything we're talking about. This kind of sense of pressure, or exceptionalism. 

For me, when I used to check things like likes, or comments, or my ranking on something like Amazon or something, which is just not something I recommend anyone do. When we're checking these numbers, to me, it always just felt like how I used to feel when I would step on a scale and check my weight, which I haven't done in a long time. I threw out my scale a while ago, because it didn't make me feel good. 

And this kind of constant measuring. I feel like you kind of spoke to this earlier. I just feel it's worth mentioning now because I think there's a connection between these things. And something that's been really helpful for me is like, ‘Who provided these numbers? What are they getting out of it, because they're probably the person getting, or the institution getting, something out of it?’

This constant checking, we're doing it because someone provided these things. These rankings, these numbers. It's a big part of why I joined the farm crew, because it means I'm spending at least eight hours a day not on my phone or computer. And that feels revolutionary for me personally. And even in just a few weeks, I've noticed the difference in just how I feel. And honestly, to go back to this word, I feel healthier. I feel more free. I feel less judged, I'm judging myself less. I just don't care about these things, these numbers. And that feels honestly a relief.

Alicia: No, it's real.

Julia: Sorry, we can continue.

Alicia: Yeah, I mean I love the—any tangent is good. [Laughter.]

And I wanted to talk about your past cookbook Feed the Resistance. The website Equity at the Table, which is a database of food professionals who ID as queer, Black, Indigenous, person of color, women, non-binary. As a white food writer with a big platform, why have you taken on these political projects in food?

Julia: Excellent question. 

I have taken on these projects because I feel like I have the time, the money, and the access to do so. And it feels like a responsibility to do so. I don't consider myself a leader in these projects. And when I say that I'm not trying to abdicate responsibility, I just want to be very clear, again, about how I see myself. Sort of the home cook versus the chef thing. I think that leaders in the space know a lot more than I do. I am someone who's trying to actively learn more all the time, and trying actively, to connect with more people all the time. Because that makes my life more interesting and richer. There's a lot of really wonderful things that come with that. 

And I don't know, I've been thinking about this in anticipation of talking to you because you were kind to share some of these questions ahead of time. And because of these relationships, I have had the tremendous opportunity to have people be generous with me and call me in. That is incredibly valuable. I try to surround myself with people who hold me accountable. And I try to hold myself accountable, as a white woman with a lot of privilege in the community. And the space I work in.

I mentioned to you, I grew up in publishing with white parents. It wasn't like I had to figure out how to get in the door. I was on the other side of it. And so I just think, I don't know, I think my thoughts on this position and these projects and stuff are again constantly evolving. 

And that evolution is, it happens in conversations like this one and ones I've had with many people. I try to talk to people who have had different experiences than I do, different perspectives, who have different levels of access than I do—both less and more. And I know what it's like to have the kind of access and agency I have. So I just basically feel I just try to do whatever I can to create more of that for more people. I feel really grateful for the moments and people who have talked to me along the way. 

You mentioned Feed the Resistance, which came out in 2017. I was thinking about, because you have interviewed Tunde Wey. 

Alicia: No, I haven’t, actually. I love Tunde Wey. I've never actually spoken to him. Which is funny, because I think we're fans of each other's work. But I haven't invited him for an interview yet, because I feel like I'm not ready. [Laughs.]

Julia: Yeah, no, I get that. I mean, I think you are, but I mean whatever. You’re a person, he’s a person. That's so funny. I really am totally a very regular reader and listener. Maybe I've just heard the two of you talking about such similar things, I imagined I've heard a conversation. Whatever. Anyway, you can cut this out. 

But Tunde was someone who—he wrote an essay for Feed the Resistance. He was part of it. I had reached out to him. And I was thinking about a conversation I had with him where he called me, basically—I don't know, I haven't talked to him about sharing the story, but I hope it's ok. 

He was like, ‘Are you the right person to be doing this book?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don't know if there's a right person. I don't know that I am the right person. Here I am, the person doing it.’ And I don't know, it's just a really interesting conversation that I just really appreciate. But he took the time to have this conversation with me and not just about me. 

That's something I try to do in my life, personal and professional. I try to talk to people rather than about them as much as I can, ‘cause I have definitely benefited from that. I'd rather throw a lot of darts against the board and see what sticks and learn from the mistakes I make along the way, and just try and create safe spaces within my own life personally and professionally for the people I care about to have the same kind of space to get it right. And also get it wrong, ’cause we're not always going to get it right. So yeah, those are some thoughts.

Alicia: No, for sure. 

And I wanted to ask you about kind of—and I ask a lot of people about it. Do we think that the big moment of Adam Rapoport stepping down from Bon Appétit, has it—is it really going to change anything. And I've always said, I'm a mixed race white woman. And I've always been kind of conscious about how much easier it is for editors to give me an assignment or put me in a position than it would be for a Black or visibly Latinx writer. And what has kind of been going through your head during these moments, and how have you kind of decided to respond to it using your work?

Julia: Sure. Again, really appreciate this question, and all you do to ask other people the same question. And yourself.

I guess what's been going through my head right now, is what's been going through my head for a while. I know it's been going through yours as well based on things you've written about, and the Food Writers’ Workshop. I remember the first one, I went. And it was right after Equity at the Table started, within days, I think. It just felt really great to be there.

It was awesome to see what you and your fellow—I don't know what you would call them, colleagues, organizers, or whatever—put together just a conference that cost exactly what it costs to put on. Wow. That felt novel.And just with this tangible information, and I think all of that is very true to Equity at the Table, which was free to use, always will be. Free to join. This is not something that's scaling. And, anyway. 

So yes, I think that this ‘reckoning’—I put it in air quotes, because I'm not sure it is actually a reckoning. I'm not sure. But I feel like it's—I know it's overdue. 

And in terms of what I'm thinking about now, I'm actually working on something that I'm really, really excited about that has not been a very—it's not been a public thing at all, because I don't think it needs to be. But I think it's worth just kind of talking about here, because I think it answers your question. 

So I have been working with a really wonderful literary agent, which is not a unicorn. That is a thing that exists. There are few and far between. But this wonderful literary agent, Cindy Uh, who is an agent at CAA, which is a huge agency. I know Cindy, because she's a member of Equity at the Table. 

And she reached out to me, it was a few months ago, about working on a book with a client of hers, working as a co-author, which is something I've done a lot of. And I just didn't think I was the right person for the job, and I also wasn't looking for that job. I was approaching the burnout that has led me to work on the farm, which is maybe funny. I don’t know. [Laughter.] 

But I got to talking to Cindy about how did my name become one of the very small number of names on the post—it that someone like her or a cookbook editor reaches out to when an author is looking for a collaborator? ‘Cause it's not a very long list of names. And we got to talking about this. 

So we have, over the past few months, been working on this—I don't know what to call it. Workshop, I guess, that we started. We’re in the middle of it now. And basically, we are working with five writers who are all either women of color, or queer, and or queer. Basically all the same people who are part of Equity at the Table. 

But five people. And we are doing this workshop where we're meeting every Sunday afternoon on Zoom, and we're basically giving all the information of what it is to make a cookbook, what it is to be a collaborator. And we've broken it down. We've made this whole syllabus. Cindy has really taken charge on that. That's awesome. 

And what I think sets us apart from other things is it's not just the information. We're also trying to create a lot of connection and access. So, we are not the ones giving this information. We have brought on agents and editors,  high powered cookbook agents and editors who are sharing the information and getting to know these writers. 

And I think the combination of those two things, the information but also the access and the relationships and the connection, that feels incredibly important. Because, as you know, because you've done this, you can provide information. Someone can Google how to write a book proposal. I can give you ones I've done before. I can tell you exactly how I make them. I'm happy to do that. I do that all the time. But that's not the same as helping create a connection between the gatekeepers who get to make the decisions about who gets to be hired. And working on this is something that has just fueled me, and it's honestly left me feeling much more positive about the industry that I am taking a pause from because I have not felt so positive about it for a long time. 

And I guess what's going through my mind right now, to answer your question, is the difference between working on a large scale, working on something like Equity at the Table, which has a lot of members, that reaches a lot of people. That's very big, right? Working on something like Feed the Resistance, which, again, had a lot of contributors, got a lot of press, tried to reach a lot of people. These large scale things. 

What I am really interested in now is something on a slightly smaller scale but that has a lot of impact. These five writers, that will make a very big impact, ‘cause that is literally doubling the number of go-to collaborators. And that feels important. 

And it's not that the other stuff doesn't feel important. I guess in general, I've tried to reach a lot of people with my work, whether it's in cookbooks or in other work I do. And I think I'm just at a point in my life right now when I'm just much more interested in much more personal connections, including stepping away from cookbooks to work on the farm and work with a small group of people in person every day, and not try and reach thousands of people online. 

I want to know the people who are buying the vegetables we're growing, and I want to know the people that I'm working with. And that feels just really—it's nice to have both these things in my life. And I guess that's what's on my mind, right now. I don't know, this is incredibly cheesy what I'm about to say. 

But something that has helped me just—it's given me a really helpful framework for everything we're talking about as to just try and think about food media, making it and consuming it, in the same way I think about making and consuming food. And I just try to think about, ‘Where does it come from? Who is making it? How are those people treated? What is the level of access and agency?’

I don't know, I think all these things apply for both. And that just helps me organize the stuff in my head because otherwise, it feels really overwhelming.

Alicia: No, it is overwhelming. And we do need our own little methodologies for dealing with. Because it's overwhelming. The world is overwhelming. It's so hard to do any right thing ever.

I was having this conversation with friends yesterday about whether it's okay for us to go to Costco in Puerto Rico, because—and it's like, I cook all the time. I bake all the time. I make recipes for other people to make, to influence other people to do vegan baking. And I need a lot of stuff, unfortunately, to do that. And the way to do that is in an affordable manner is to go to Costco. 

And I don't know, we don't have a car. You take kind of the climate impact of being people who don't drive every day, who don't put a car on the road. so what is it to kind of have some imported food in that— Anyway. 

So the whole thing is this whole kind of arithmetic around what choices can you make that are good for the planet and your local economy? And what choices are good for you as a human being who has to also work? [Laughs.]

Julia: Totally.

Yeah, I mean, I'm so with you. And these are things I think about often as both, to use this dreaded phrase that I think we both don't like, but as a creator of content. But also just as a person who feeds myself and my loved ones, and exist in this world. 

And I just think, I don't know, hearing what you just said, trying to figure out the right thing? I'm trying to understand that. I think with the options that exist and the systems that exist, I don't know that the right thing is available to us. So I think we are just, all, just, I don't know, doing the best we can with what we have. And we have different things. I just feel calmer about it when I'm like, ‘Oh, there isn't a right answer, because these things aren't built to support the right answer.’

So I think we're figuring, I think we're building the plane while we're flying it, whatever other analogies work here. And I don't know, I feel like I get things wrong all the time. But I'm trying to understand that that just is what it is. And part of why I get things wrong is because we're not set up to get things right. And that is the issue. Not so much my personal choices, though those are important.

Alicia: No, they are important. And I mean, to get now to this question, why for you is cooking a political act?

Julia: Again, hear you ask everyone this. I'm always like, ‘How would I answer this?’ And now? Oh, my gosh, we have reached the moment. 

Is cooking a political act? Absolutely. It's a political act. 100%. I don't think it's always a conscious political act. I don't think every single time I, I don't know, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich am I like, ‘This is political.’ 

But I think that every time we spend money on anything, including food, we make decisions that have a political impact and make decisions that give feedback to systems that we are very attached to, whether we want to be or not. 

I think also another sort of part of this is that I think every time I share something I cook, whether it's a cookbook or an Instagram post, I think that sharing, that amplification, that attempt to communicate something, I think that is inherently political. So that's something I think about a lot. 

I love that you ask this question, because I think it reminds us that, or at least it reminds me, that I think we often think about political as something like capital P, right? ‘This moment, I'm voting. I'm advocating for this politician or something.’ These things that are incredibly important. But I think our lives are political. We exist in political systems. So everything we do is attached to that. And I think that it's kind of designed to make us not realize that. 

So yeah, I think my everyday cooking at home is totally political, as are so many other parts of my life. And the fact that I don't realize that often is, I think, part of both the problem and maybe the solution, or a solution. 

Oh, my gosh. I have so many other thoughts based on everything you ask, and that is just, I think, a testament to the work you show. So thank you.

Alicia: Thank you. 

No, you're too kind to me through this. I keep saying I need to get some people on who are going to be contentious. [Laughs.] I don’t have to do that. ‘Oh, are people bored? Are these too kind? Am I not challenging myself enough by not sparring in any way?’

Julia: I think that's the Long Island in you. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, again, I appreciate so much you taking the time out today to talk about all this. I'm so excited to hear and see more about your work on the farm and to continue to get inspiration from your cookbooks.

Julia: Well, thank you so much. And I really appreciate your time. I appreciate the time you make for all the amazing people you have on this. I'm really grateful to be one of them. And I just continue to look forward to learning from your work too. So I guess this is some mutual appreciation. And I think that is A-ok. I don't think you have to get the haters. That’s fine.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Aja Barber and I have been following each other online for years, while we were both working various jobs and trying to get anyone to pay attention to our work. Contrary to how most people are taught these things work, we only got anyone to pay attention when we started our own independent ventures: for me, this newsletter; for Aja, her incredible Patreon. She also has a book coming out, called Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism & the Need for Collective Change.

Her work on the subject of mindless fashion consumption and waste has many parallels to mine on food, which is why I was so excited to discuss it with her: In both discussions, classism is used to defend cheap goods that rely on extraction from the Global South. In both discussions, personal feeling is made to be more significant than political and economic reality. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Aja. Thank you so much for taking the time out today.

Aja: Thank you for having me. It's nice to finally chat. We've been Twitter friends for close to a decade. But this is the first time we're talking.

Alicia: It's amazing, and I love it. 

How are things over there in the UK right now?

Aja: Well, you know what, everything's better when spring comes. That's the reality, is that the—there's more sunshine. It gets really dark here during the winter, and when you're already in a pandemic and you can't see friends and you don't really feel like going out, it just—it was a hard winter. 

So, things are feeling way more positive just because there's more sunshine. And  things tend to be sort of loosening up here. Of course, still being precautious. But it feels more hopeful. So you've caught me on one of my better days.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I'm so glad.

This week, I think we're switching from—to summer, basically. If you came to Puerto Rico from a temperate climate, you wouldn't notice the seasons. But since living here, I noticed the changes. And I think we got two weeks of winter, where I could sit and work and not be sweating all day. But we're back to that. From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., it is definitely hot all day. [Laughs.]

Aja: My family's in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. So, I totally get-

Both: Yes. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Aja: So I'm from Northern Virginia, right outside of D.C. I’d say it's like zone 6 on the tube, basically. So Northern Virginia, DC Metropolitan. And I grew up eating a lot of plants and fish, because my parents are actually pretty healthy and pretty progressive as far as food goes. And I was definitely the kid that got made fun of for having whole-wheat sandwiches, stuff like that. 

And we see all of these ideas that are popping up, and everybody's sort of talking about it like it's new, but my parents belonged to a food co-op when I was a kid. And it made them weird. [Laughter.] We would get really great, fresh vegetables. And my dad would buy things from the local farmers’ market. So the way I hear people talking about how we should be eating now, it's actually how I grew up, which in some ways is really privileged. And I totally recognize that, but as a kid, it made you a weirdo.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, and you have a book coming out called Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism and the need for Collective Change. I love the alliteration here. 

Aja: That was my editor. [Laughter.]

Alicia: And we're gonna get a little deeper into this, but hearing about that kind of upbringing in terms of food, what was your journey to understanding sustainable fashion?

Aja: So that's the entirety of the book basically, was talking about fashion and consumption, but also the fashion industry as a whole and how it really uplifts white and privileged voices and doesn't leave a lot of space for anyone else. But then when you look at the cycle of how things are produced, it makes sense because from start to finish, marginalized people are pretty heavily crapped upon by the system.

When we think about where the resources that go into our fashion comes from, it’s countries in the Global South. So we have these countries in the Global South that are resource rich, labor rich, but for some reason not incredibly economically wealthy. And the fact that we're not questioning that: We should be. You can look around my living room, and you probably can find a few things that are actually made in England. I live in London, even though I'm American. And I don't think that that's a—I don't think that that is an outrageous reality. I think that's the reality of the system, but nobody's really actually questioning that like we should. 

And so, with the fashion industry, your clothing is produced in the Global South. The cotton is grown in the Global South; the fabrics are made in the Global South. And it’s shipped to the Global North where it's consumed really rapidly, because we know that the multinational brands have really sped up the seasons and made us think that it's normal to buy 20 pieces every season, when in actuality, that's not normal at all. 

And then we go through our clothing so quickly that the resale market is booming, but charity shops are chock-a-block of fast fashion. And then, because we can't just recycle our way out of this, it gets dumped on the Global South, where, in our heads, we think that we're doing something charitable, but in actuality, we've created an ecological problem. And it's being left on countries like Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda to basically mitigate. 

And we've had this idea in our head because of colonialism, white saviorism, that sort of stuff that like, ‘Oh, if you donate it to a charity, somebody in a poor country will really want it.’ When in actuality, No, nobody wants crap clothing. If you bought something that didn't last five wears, there's a very good chance that that person in Ghana doesn't want it either. 

And it ends up being this disaster system where the government of Ghana, the municipal branch, has to really deal with all of these imports. And I, as an American, there's one thing that Americans hate the most, it's having to pay their tax dollars to sort out someone else's mess. But that's essentially what the clothing problem is doing to countries in the Global South. 

So I talk about my personal experience, as someone who's always sort of been on the outside of the fashion industry looking in. I use the analogy, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with all the little rich kids are singing and dancing with the Candy Man? That was me with the fashion industry. But sometimes not being invited in means that you take a really critical and shrewd eye to these systems. And as someone who felt I was always trying to be in the room, but never really let in the room, what I realized was that I don't actually want to be in that room because this is a problem and it needs to be sorted out.

Alicia: I mean, what did you like about fashion? What really attracted you to the fashion world, to begin with? 

Aja: So, the thing that attracted me most to the fashion world from the beginning was the need to fit in through material items. So I said my parents were sort of hippie-dippie for their time, but my mom has always been someone who did not understand the need to fit in through material items. She's always been a secondhand shopper, which I grew up in the ’80s, ’90s, that was not that cool. It was cool in the late ’90s. Kurt Cobain, God bless him, really sort of made the whole thrifting thing, grunge, that sort of thing. 

And even then, people still didn't get it. I remember in the eighth grade telling this guy that I had been friends with that I had bought something from a charity shop. And he said, ‘Oh, gross. You're wearing dead people's clothing.’ That was the response. So after that, I was like, ‘Ok, keep that s**t to yourself, Aja.’

And so in general, thrifting, secondhand shopping, wearing hand-me-downs has always been something where I didn't want people to look too closely at me because there were plenty of other reasons why I was socially ostracized. I didn't need it to be my clothes. But because I didn't have the right clothes, which when I was growing up, that was the Gap and the Limited, before the Limited Too started looking like a rainbow barfed inside of it. But at one point in time, the Limited Too was the s**t. 

And I didn't have that stuff. And so I became really obsessed with labels and wanting to have the right clothing. But then from that obsession for being socially ostracized came a genuine interest in the fashion industry. It became, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is actually really cool. And I want to learn as much as possible about this.’ 

But I knew that I couldn't tell my parents, ‘I’m gonna go to fashion school!’ because they're Black. And they're going to be like, ‘No, you're going to get a degree where you can get a job.’ Because we know that there are certain industries that just were not welcoming to marginalized people. 

I mean, I feel like the time period where you and I met on Twitter, that was when I started to see a lot of my other Twitter friends who happen to be Black and brown women finally get booked deals and their books sold. I believe you and I met through a tweet that had mentioned Roxane Gay as someone you should pay attention to. Do you remember that? 

Alicia: I do. [Laughs.]

Aja: It was a friend who had said, ‘These are the people that I follow. These are the people you should pay attention to.’ This was before Roxane Gay’s groundbreaking success. She was also a person where people just really weren't paying attention, and that it just seemed like at some point the doors opened. And Ijeoma Oluo was publishing a book that would become a New York Times best-seller. My friend, Sam Irby was publishing her essays. And they're hilarious, they become best-sellers. So it just seemed like there was a moment where the world was like, ‘Oh, wait, maybe we should actually listen to Black and brown women.’

And, for me, I sort of had to take a roundabout path to getting to where I am. Because one, my parents were not going to encourage me to go to school to study fashion or to study writing. And two, I didn't feel like there was space for me in these worlds at all. So I threw stuff at the wall until it stuck. 

And eventually, I began to realize the fashion industry in its current iteration is actually a disaster, and all the things that we talk about whether it's racism, intersectional feminism—I was writing about these issues really separate from the fashion industry, ’cause they were important issues. For a lot of people, people saw, people like me saw the rise of Donald Trump. And I began to actually talk about race really honestly in a way I never had before, because I could tell what was happening. But I was talking about these issues very separate, in a silo. And what I began to realize was that actually all these issues apply to the fashion industry. So then, I began to talk about them together. And that's where my platform sort of came about from.

Alicia: And so much of what you say about fashion relates to food. And so it's sometimes, just this really mind-melding kind of thing to read. ‘Wait, this is also food.’ 

And we need to talk about these connections, too, because, I don't know, I feel these are both issues where people—it's feminized. People don't want to think about them very much. These are just things people have to do. They have to get up and dress themselves. They have to get up and eat something. And we're kind of taught not to make a big fuss necessarily about these things, because we're taught that they're frivolous.

Aja: Yeah. Frivolous, silly, you know? 

Alicia: Yes, exactly. 

And so it's such an uphill battle to get people to care about these things, and to talk about them in a serious manner. And one of the things that kind of really drives me nuts, and that you also talk about, is how people defend cheap prices out of class concerns without thinking about the exploitation of the worker at the beginning of the chain, as you discussed. We're exploiting the Global South for fashion. We're exploiting the Global South for food, too. 

And people defend cheap clothes and cheap food, and dismiss the relevance of individual choice. And I wanted to get your take on how do you see individual action as meaningful even as we seek systemic change?

Aja: So I think that there's a few myths that people love to peddle about fashion. And that's one of the things that I debunk, because it actually really annoys me. 

There's this idea that only poor people buy fast fashion. That is not true. Everybody buys fast fashion. One of the things that I did within my book was I talked about class. And the Resource Generation really helped me out big time with this, because they have some really great breakdowns of what class and wealth looks like. 

So one thing I learned in my book was in America, poor and working poor people account for —1% of America's wealth. And then the next class group is working class. And that group accounts for 3% of America's wealth. And then you start getting into middle class, managerial class, and then ruling class. 

We’ve just come out of this pandemic, and there were people lined around the block to buy from Primark, which is not an ethical or sustainable store. But when you critique it, people accuse you of classism. Here's the thing: The vast majority of people in that line probably are not the people that are within that 4% of net wealth. So if you look at the fact that all these major multinational companies that people claim are where poor people shop are actually billion-dollar companies, then it is not just poor people shopping from those places. It's literally everyone. 

And I find in our society, nobody wants to be poor and everybody wants to be poor when it comes to the system that they want to participate in. Does anyone actually want to be poor? No. Being poor f*****g blows, and it's systemic, and it's hard to climb out of. And we love a rags to riches story in America, where we talk about, ‘Oh, well, this person was poor and now they're not.’ Where the actual reality is, a person that comes from generations of poverty is really unlikely to be able to find their way out of it, because you—being poor is actually very expensive and very hard. 

And so, we have this system of fast fashion where literally everyone participates because our entire mind-set is that of a consumerist identity. And that is beat into our heads, that you're gonna become a consumer. And it's subtle. It's pernicious. It's in films. You name a film that we love that's a cult classic, that doesn't have a really great makeover scene, right? Where the main character gets this amazing makeover that involves buying loads of clothing, and all of a sudden they're a new person. Everyone treats them differently. That's a pernicious message that's really pushed pretty hard in media. 

And so we have a real consumer mind-set as a culture. And I want to unpick that basically, and get people to think about that mind-set. Because once you do, you begin to see the ways in which all of this consumption is sort of pushed on you whether or not you need to consume.

Alicia: I think that's where fashion and food diverge, because food is absolutely 100%, you need to consume it. So there's different levels of complication there. 

And I wanted to know how you feel about the way the fashion media covers sustainability and inclusivity? [Laughter.] I think I know the answer to this question. But how are these issues being addressed, if at all?

Aja: You're never going to get the honest truth about the scale and scope of the fashion industry's problem from magazines and publications that depend on those same multinational polluters in order to fill their pages with advertisements. If you say something bad about a brand, and you're a fashion editor, you'll get barred from things. 

And so, everybody's very much afraid of these brands. So why would someone who's dependent on a paycheck from that group of people who's polluting and harming the earth actually tell the honest truth about the reality? Why would they do that? There's no incentive there. And so, I think if people are looking for traditional media to be the one who stands up to the ills of the fashion industry, they're going to be looking for a very long amount of time. That's never going to happen.

I mean, one of the things I cover in my book, one of my favorite stylists, Lucinda Chambers did this interview after she was ousted from Vogue where she basically just lets it all out. And Vogue apparently tried to get the interview removed from the internet, British Vogue. But she talks about things. She remembers having to do a cover where she put Alexa Chung in this cheesy Michael Kors T-shirt. And she was like, ‘I didn't want to do it. It was a cheesy cover. But Michael Kors was a major advertiser.’

So, so much of what you see in the magazine is very much manipulated by the magazine's relationship to the brands. And so, you're never actually going to get accuracy with the scale and scope of the problem from traditional media. If there's any skin in the game, if there's any connection to the money. 

And I also say even for people that claim to be ethical rating scales, right? There's a few ethical rating scales that people keep trying to tag on my page saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I use this.’ Ok, so they rate brands, but they also email spam you every day with affiliate links from ethical and sustainable brands. So if consumption and scale is the problem, which it is, if someone is making their money and it's reliant off of you buying things, how trustworthy of a source can they be in the accuracy in which they’re reporting?

Alicia: And both of us are independent people, culture workers. And you use Patreon. Why did you decide to go that independent route?

Aja: Because my Instagram was growing really quickly, and I knew that the vast majority of funding that's available for people on Instagram is through selling people s**t they don't need. 

There's other things out there. But in general, I don't want to be an Instagram that's pushing you to buy stuff. I've done one advertisement on my Instagram, and it's literally with a sustana—with a resale platform, Vestiaire Collective, because we have so much clothing that I feel you can't go wrong by buying secondhand. The enormity of the clothing that's circulating our planet right now, we're all gonna have to start shopping secondhand. There's no way around it. If there's anything that I can push and not feel like I’m really, really cheapening out, it's definitely secondhand. 

But in general, you really can't be the person who's telling everyone why the industry’s s**t stinks, and then turn around and go, ‘Oh, by the way, buy this thing.’ It doesn't work. 

And also, I also know that brands love to hop on a social justice movement when it's the moment, but they do not like people talking about things like race before it's of the moment. And so five years ago, if you used the phrase white supremacy, the hysterics and the fragility you’d have to endure. When in actuality, today, people are kind of like, ‘Ok, I get what white supremacy means.’ But if the majority of white people are not comfortable with the things that you're saying, a brand's not going to want to sponsor your page.

Now that I have a six-figure following, now, everybody wants to throw stuff at me. But before that happened, nobody wanted to throw anything at me. And I had to do Patreon, because it wasn't one of those things where I could really monetize my Instagram in any way that felt good to me. And I wanted to create a space where you weren't having things pushed on you constantly, because so much of Instagram, now, it's advertisement. 

So I want it to be that account where you're scrolling and you see a dress on another account that you probably don't need. And then the next thing that you see is my post, which tells you that 60% of materials on this planet are petrochemicals, so polyester, which is essentially oil. And then I talk about the fashion industry’s links to oil. We all talk about how fossil fuels are ruining everything. Well, that's another way they're ruining things for people. People don't make that connection. 

And so, I basically want to be a counter argument to all the consuming that goes on through Instagram.

Alicia: I mean, that's amazing to me. 

I think this is maybe a selfish question. I don't use Instagram the way you use Instagram. How do you balance what you post on Patreon and what you post on Instagram?

Aja: The thing is the sustainable fashion conversation and basically the fashion industry getting its s**t together is moving so quickly that people can't keep up with it all. 

So I sort of run my Patreon as a sustainable and ethical fashion newswire. So one of the things I noticed is that I do get a lot of people who are journalists, are people within the industry, who follow me because they know first thing in the morning, I will have gone through the news stories that I see and pick something that's interesting and relevant to discuss on my Patreon. 

So I managed to basically become a newswire for this topic that I'm really interested in, but a topic that a lot of people don't know how to mitigate because once again, the fashion industry is also very closed off from people that might not know. It's one of those things where the fashion industry has always had an air of mystery. And I break things down in layman’s terms for people so that they can have a conversation about these topics with their friends.

Alicia: And as you use Instagram so much, you use your face, your body, yourself to promote your work. And I think I'm struggling with that a little bit. 

But how is your personal visibility a significant aspect of your work?

Aja: I feel really exposed now, to be honest. I didn't used to feel that way, but now it's when I'm out and about in London, I will bump into people that follow my work. And that's a really weird feeling. But everyone's really cool, but I do—I feel more exposed now than I felt before. 

And it's not bumping into people, I don't mind that. It's when you just tweet something benign and then it ends up in a major newspaper. That happens to me a lot now, and that's a bit like, ‘Mmaww.’ [Laughs.] You know what I mean?

So there's a part of me that sometimes just wants to just pull back from that space, because I don't think that there should be any one face of the movement. And I also feel this space still isn't diverse enough. I don't want to be the face of like, ‘We need a Black person to talk about the fashion industry and sustainability. Someone call Aja Barber.’ No, there's a lot of people you can call. It's not about there just being one of us, which sometimes I do worry that is the direction that sometimes things go in. I think there's room for many voices. 

But yeah, I think I worry about being overexposed. And sometimes, I'm sick of looking at my own face. And I think about boundaries as well. If I have a kid, for instance, I am never going to be the person that talks about my pregnancy on Instagram, because, one, I don't want to. It doesn't interest me. Two, social media can trigger people. You don't know who's experiencing infertility or having issues with that sort of stuff. And three, I don't want my Instagram to become parenting, ’cause there's plenty of good parenting Instagrams and I don't need to be one of them. So, I do think sometimes about just pulling back and doing more infographics and less style and less-

But at the same time, I also think my visibility as a Black plus-size body is also really important, because that has been so crucially missing from the conversation for so many years. So I go back and forth. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, it's very difficult, because to balance that and the ways in which people respond when you have a platform is just—it's horrible. I really struggle now with posting anything saying anything, because it is—

Aja: You get targeted.

I have an account that's like, ‘I am so sick of your b******t.’ And it's all about how the person hates me. And I'm just like, ‘Wow? What did I do?’ 

And they're mad because I called in a brand that they really liked who had been very disingenuous in the plus-size conversation, and then were trying to sort of present themselves like they were gonna lead the moment. When in actuality, myself and other plus-size people have been asking them for years to be inclusive with sizing.

’Cause this is a brand that makes one particular item. So it's not even that they roll out a new 16-piece collection every year. No, it's pretty much the same thing. And if you're only making one item, then you should be the first person to scale that item up in different sizes. But they just flat-out refused. And I'm just kind of like, ‘Just say you don't like fat people and go, but don't pretend it's rocket scientists or rocket science sacred geometry to scale up a pattern. It's hard, but it can be done because small brands do it every single day.’

So this brand had been very avoidant, ignorant, and negligent in the conversation. Particularly in private conversations they'd had with me, to the point where I stopped wearing their product on my grid, took down all of their photos. I still wear the clothing, ’cause you should wear the clothing that you buy regardless of whether it's fast fashion or a brand that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Give it a good life. But I don't wear it on the grid and I don't promote it. 

So when they came out with, ‘We're going to do a podcast about plus-size inclusivity,’ I was just like, ‘Oh, go f**k yourself.’ So I said publicly, I talked about everything that happened and how for two years plus-size people had been asking them to be inclusive. And we'd have more respect for them if they just said, ‘Yeah, we really weren't doing a good job with this. And now we really want to do it, and we're really committed. And thank you everyone who pretty much tried to open our eyes and ears, and we didn't listen.’

Yeah, but instead they tried to present it like, ‘Oh, we're gonna do a podcast and we're so great.’ And I was just like, ‘No, we need an accountability moment here.’ And what I found was that that brand had some cult-like fans who raged against me for weeks. One of them is still holding a grudge. Why? Because I asked a brand to do better. Which, by the way, you are defending a corporation, not a person. Get your f*****g life. That's weird. I’d rather kick my own ass before I’d defend a corporation the way some of the fans of this brand have defended them. It's bizarre. 

Alicia: That's really ridiculous behavior. 

And it happens in food media as well, being someone who has been writing about vegan stuff, plant-based stuff, whatever you want to call it, for years. And then all of a sudden, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. And it's I get called to do an interview with someone who doesn't know anything about anything, but got assigned to write about it. This is really frustrating.

Aja: Yeah, yeah.

It's annoying when people really try and commodify stuff in really disingenuous ways. But one of the things that I just think is so bizarre about our society, and I think social media is a real impactful part of this, is the ways in which people try to humanize corporations. 

One of the assignments that I always give my readership is to watch the film, The Corporation. I watched that in the early 2000s when it came out, and it was life-changing for me because social media is one of these things where corporations are—they try to be in on the Twitter jokes. They try to use the lingo. And when they f**k up, they try to make it seem like they're an individual instead of a multinational company. 

And that's really dangerous, because what we know is that a corporation can only act in its own best interest. That's the only thing that can do, because it's not a human with emotions. And if a corporation were a person, it would be a psychopath. So when people get really overly invested in defending companies, I'm just like, ‘Nah, get your life.’

Alicia: Yeah, no, for sure. 

And how do your perspectives on fashion, if they do, influence how you consume in other kinds of arenas? Food, media, etc. 

I think I gave a quote recently. Someone was asking me for recommendations for a newsletter. And I was like, ‘Well, the thing I'm obsessed with now is making sure my—what I wear expresses my ethics that I talk about in terms of what I eat.’ I mean, obviously, I like clothes. [Laughs.] But also at the same time, it's really important for me that if I am visible in this space, talking about these things, that I'm not also promoting similarly exploitative chains in other industries.

And so, how does it—Yeah. [Laughs.]

Aja: Yeah, for me, totally. I think about it in everything. I don't have a Spotify account, because artists that I really like who happened to be musicians talk about how they don't make any money from Spotify. So even though everybody has Spotify, I'm just the person who’s buying all the music on Bandcamp because most of my music is locked away on several different computers. Thank you very much for that, Apple. That's so cool of you. And so I'm just basically rebuying music. 

And, yeah, I think about it a lot. I think about the food. Now, I also know that as a person who lives in London, I am so lucky we have access to so many different types of food. We have different markets nearby. We can buy from all sorts of different cultures. And so I know that I have a lot of access and privilege in that way. And that's part of why I can only stick to really fashion, because food is more complicated in that way. 

But yeah, I think about it in all areas of my life. But in general, I truly believe that most of us with significant privilege just need to do less. Do less. The excess that comes when you have a significant amount of privilege in our culture isn't normal to the rest of humans on this planet. 

One of the things that was crucial to everything was moving to London. When I moved over here, my partner and I had been dating long distance for three years. I had to get rid of so much stuff. I was in my 30s. So I had 30 years of a life in the States, and I'm still mitigating that stuff. Because as someone who does the work that I do, I know that just dumping it on a charity shop’s doorstep is actually really bad. That actually doesn't help anyone. 

And so from the time I knew that we were going to get engaged and I was going to move over here, I basically tasked myself to thoughtfully get rid of all of my items that I wasn't planning on taking with me. Some of it was clothing that had grown too small, because we have this weird thing in our society where we pretend it's natural that every person should stay the same shape, no matter what. That is not natural. I mean, some people do, and it's natural to some people. But it's not natural to every person. 

And so a lot of the clothing from my early 20s was too small, basically. I'm someone who has uterine fibroids, so things around the waist, it just—some of that stuff was, I wasn't going to get into it again. And so I basically tasked myself with shedding myself of the stuff that wasn't going with me in a thoughtful way. Which meant for clothing, picking up the things that can be resold, reselling the stuff that can be resold, putting up stuff in Facebook galleries for all of my friends and saying, ‘If you want it, just get the shipping and I'll send it to you.’ But really, really trying to be very thoughtful about how I was going to pare down essentially. 

And that is still a work in progress. Every time I go home to my parents’ house, I task myself with going through stuff and trying to rehome it in a way that's thoughtful and helpful. And I feel that will be my life chore. 

And then also, moving over stuff slowly. So I've got a bunch of really great coffee table books that I love, and I just have to bring them over one at a time because they're all so heavy. 

[Laughter.] 

If you have to do a big move and you do it in a way where you really, really shed stuff in a way that's impactful and thoughtful, and keeping as much stuff out of the landfill, that what you'll find is now that I'm here, I think about everything I bring into this flat. One, London doesn't have closets like the U.S., so that's something you got to grapple with. 

But before it comes home, I genuinely think, ‘Where is it gonna go?’ We're very limited in space. And that really helps me in how I consume stuff. 

But then also when you talk about the fashion industry every single day and read about what's happening and how it's impacting the environment, if you have to do that for a living, you're just like, ‘I don't want anything.’

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, it's real. It's real. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Aja: Mm-hmm.

Sorry, I just took a sip of my tea. 

Alicia: No, it's ok. [Laughs.] 

Aja: Clothing will always be political. You cannot separate politics from clothing. You can't separate labor practices from clothing. You can't separate exploitation from clothing. You can't separate outsourcing and things like NAFTA from clothing. 

You can't separate what clothing means to certain people. How it can be religious, how it can be political, how it can be cultural. People know the uniform of the Black Panthers, right? There's certain clothing items that are evocative of social movement eras. But where you tend to shop and buy is political as well. Absolutely. 

And one thing that people need to really step, take it a step farther, pull back the curtain of your favorite brand and see what politicians and what policies they're supporting. Because one thing that people really—I think some people know about it, but they ignore it. But Richard Hayne of Urban Outfitters used to give a lot of money to the right-wing. Yeah, and he owns Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People. So free, so hippie. Yay.

So it's about all of these things. It's about our world. And when you think about how many jobs the fashion industry provides for on the planet, it's political. When you think about the fact that 80% of garment workers are women, hence, intersectional feminism, it's political. It's all very political.

Alicia: My question is, is cooking a political act? But I think you answered it anyway. [Laughter.]

Aja: I thought you said clothing. I totally thought you said clothing. Sorry.

Alicia: You answered in the same way, I think.

Aja: Cooking is absolutely political. Too. Who grows your food, where it comes from. Cooking is cultural. Cooking is—yes.

And when you also think about appropriation in cooking, that's a whole ’nother kettle of fish. Which you see it all the time, where a restaurant run by people from a certain ethnicity doesn't survive. And then all of a sudden another shiny and new restaurant opens up, which is run by white people who are selling a watered-down version of the dish. And they're doing great and they're getting write-ups and everyone's saying, ‘This is delicious and amazing’ when in actuality, that's somebody else's culture and somebody is profiting and not even doing it in the right way. 

So yeah, it's all political.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, thank you, Aja, again for taking the time. And it was so wonderful to finally talk to you.

Aja: Oh, my goodness, we're done already? That went really quickly.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughter.]

Aja: Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

Irene Li is a hilarious writer on serious issues, which I discovered when she sent me her piece, “8 Totally Achievable Ways to Show Up for Racial Justice… When You’re White and Own an Asian Restaurant!” She’s also the chef of the former restaurant Mei Mei in Boston, which has become a packaged dumpling company, as well as a project manager at Commonwealth Kitchen, where she’s helping Black and Latinx restaurant owners make their businesses work better for them.

We discussed how her social justice work influences her cooking, and vice versa, as well as her new job. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Irene. Thank you so much for coming on to chat today.

Irene: Thanks so much for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Irene: Yeah.

So I grew up here in the city of Boston. And my family is Chinese American. And so, we ate lots of Chinese food at home and also all the other things that a kid can find to eat in Boston. So tons of grilled cheese and pizza and mozzarella sticks. Cheese was a big theme. And we ate kind of more classic Chinese homestyle food for dinner every night, like white rice and stir fry. And it was a while before I figured out that not everybody ate that at home every night. So I definitely remember some sort of consciousness around that developing at some point for me.

Alicia: Well, what did that consciousness kind of mean for you?

Irene: Well, I think there were the points where I started going over to friends’ houses and realizing that there was not always a rice cooker on the counter but always a microwave. 

But having a lot of fun with trying different foods, and bringing friends over to try food at my house, I feel like I was really lucky in that the friends who I had were always really interested in eating what was going on in the Lee house. Rice porridge, like shee fun or zhou, is a big feature of my childhood. So if you need to make a big pot of something and you only have a little bit of rice, that's how you do it. 

And one of my favorite memories is taking the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, and making a big pot of rice porridge out of that. And I have some great memories of my friends and I just lying on the floor of my house on this really plush rug, because we had just eaten so much rice porridge and we couldn't bear to move. So there was a lot of that. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you are now a chef. And you work at your family's restaurant. But you did a lot of other things before you decided to do that. Can you tell us kind of what you did before that and what made you want to get into the family business? 

Irene: Yeah, so it's actually kind of funny. 

The family business for my grandparents was owning and operating restaurants. So my paternal grandparents had one restaurant in New York City, and then one in White Plains, New York. But as is the sort of tale of so many immigrant families, they ran a restaurant so that their kids could pursue higher education. And so both my parents are actually doctors. We kind of joke that it skips a generation. But I'm fortunate in that my—where I fall in the sort of generational path is that I had pretty much all the things that I needed when I was growing up, and so I could sort of choose based on my sense of self-actualization to go into restaurants. 

And so my brother initially had been working in fine dining, and he had this idea to open a food truck. He was watching way too much Food Network, and he's definitely an ideas guy. And so it was his idea for us to open the food truck in 2012, and then we opened the restaurant in 2013. So in a way, it's kind of a full circle around the kind of immigrant restaurant owner story. 

And prior to opening the food truck, I was really interested in different social justice and food justice issues. I was going to school in upstate New York and getting really interested in farming and the kind of economics of farming, and just going to the market every weekend and buying a vegetable that I had never seen or heard of and then take it home and try to figure out what to do with it. And so all of those things kind of collided when I got the call from my brother.

Alicia: And so, how does that prior experience that you had influence how you work in a restaurant? 

Irene: Well, I think that for a while I thought of food as kind of an escape from the very sort of complicated political and social issues that I was interested in. When I was at Cornell, I worked in a men's maximum security prison facility as a college level course instructor. I was really interested in a lot of issues around the living wage and the One Fair Wage, and cooking on the weekends was kind of how I got away from that. 

But of course, things came full circle. And the more I got interested in food and the restaurant industry, the more I saw that a lot of these issues that are deeply rooted in our history of slavery in the U.S., in so many of the struggles of different immigrant groups—those are very much present in the restaurant industry to this day. And so I kind of feel I came all the way around this corner. And now that's what's most interesting and exciting to me about the restaurant industry, is addressing those issues.

Alicia: And how do you do that? Is it something that manifests only in your writing? Or is it something that really manifests in the day-to-day work in the kitchen and in the restaurant?

Irene: So I would say prior to COVID, we were trying to build Mei Mei Restaurant as a model for a fairer form of employment, as a business that really invested in its team. And there were a few different ways that we did that. 

We had a very, I would say, sort of positive culture overall. No yelling, no throwing things, which is—in a way, it's kind of wild that you have to say that. But of course, we're talking about restaurant kitchens. 

So we had a staff that was typically majority women-identifying, majority person of color-identifying, and with a very big LGBTQI group as well. And so in a lot of ways, we were able to kind of cultivate this space that for the most part, I hope and believe was safe for many people who may not have felt safe in other parts of the restaurant industry. 

We also did a lot of work to try to educate our staff and also our guests on how the industry really works, what's sort of going on under the hood. And so in early March of 2020, we hosted this public event where we showed everyone our profit and loss statement for 2019. And we really wanted to just kind of start a conversation about when you buy a $20 plate of pasta, where does that money go? 

And I think consumers are very narrowly focused on what's on the plate, because it's the most immediate thing. And so that's why you read so many Yelp reviews, where people say, ‘I could have gone to the grocery store and paid $4 and made this myself.’ And yeah, that's the secret of restaurants, is they’re scamming you and food costs are only 20 percent of the menu. 

And so, that financial transparency is something that we had been practicing internally with the staff for several years. And so, we really wanted to take that conversation kind of on the road and see what people would think about what the kind of realities are in the industry, where the average, independent mom and pop restaurant only clears about 4 to 6 percent profit in an—in a pretty good year. And then of course, days later the pandemic hit, and we were all in even sort of deeper water than we were before.

Alicia: And what was the response like to that event from the public?

Irene: The event was awesome. We also broadcasted on this thing called Zoom that I had never heard of before. It was wild.

We got such a great response, especially from the people who were able to attend in person. They asked tons of questions. And as a speaker, I tend to be a little bit more honest than maybe my partners or team would want me to be. But people asked about my salary. They asked about the ways that I still felt we had to improve. 

We did a feature with Eater, and that generated a lot of conversation on Facebook. And some of it was not entirely positive, but even that felt great. Yeah, if you think I'm a moron because of what my books say, let's talk about it. You can show me your books, or we can just have a conversation. And all of that felt really generative.

Alicia: And so, how did the pandemic kind of change the way you ran the restaurant and the business model? I know that a lot of restaurants that didn't have a tipping model, that had a kind of hospitality-included model and were more transparent around the business side of the restaurant and those tiny profit margins kind of weathered this switch a little bit better simply by the nature of their-how they ran their businesses and by how they—how much money was in the bank, because they knew they had a big payroll anyway.

But how did the pandemic kind of come hit your restaurant, and how has it been in the over a year since?

Irene: So initially, I will say going back to having two parents who are doctors, we were very conservative about closing down and not asking anyone to come into work. We really did our best to keep people employed as long as we could. So there were some restaurants that laid everyone off in March, and we kept almost all of the team employed through June. And then, we laid off about two thirds of the team at that time. And that is probably one of the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. 

And at that point, we were kind of looking around and saying, ‘Oh, ok. The pandemic’s not getting better. It's been a couple months. And it's actually getting worse,’ because we're seeing what's happening in other parts of the country that maybe we thought no one would be as hard hit as New York City, for instance. But things looked really bad. And so at that point, we made the decision—I guess I made the decision with the help of my partners and my team—that we weren't going to reopen Mei Mei as a restaurant. 

And that had to do with a lot of different things, including the timing of our lease, which we felt didn't really allow us the time that we would need to rebuild. And so that, in addition to the fact that there was just so much uncertainty, we decided we were going to take things in a different direction. And so now, we are evolving Mei Mei into a packaged dumpling company. It is a really exciting project. And I have partners now who are going to sort of carry that forward, which has been amazing for me because it's opened up the opportunity for me to work more on supporting other restaurants. 

So I joined CommonWealth Kitchen, which is a food business incubator here in Boston, as a program manager for an initiative called the Restaurant Resiliency Program. And I work with eight Black and Latinx business owners to strengthen and improve their restaurant businesses. Honestly, it's just my dream job. So much of it is about not teaching them basics or mechanics, but really being there with them and making sure they have the confidence to do what they need to get done. So I just ordered eight kitchen scales. And I'm so excited to visit the restaurant and do some costing and really kind of get up to my elbows with them. 

And so for me, that really feels like trying to take what I learned from Mei Mei and the mistakes that I made, the mistakes that I could afford to make as someone from a privileged background coming into the restaurant industry, and really trying to pay that forward to support an industry that I hope will be made up of really diverse restaurants run by really interesting people with a lot of different stories. 

It's funny. At the event last March, I said, ‘If Mei Mei doesn't exist in ten years, that's too bad for me. But if there aren’t any cool independent restaurants to eat at in tneen years, then I'm going to be really pissed.’ And so for me, it's always been more about the industry at large and the restaurants that I want to be able to eat at than my business specifically.

Alicia: I mean, we've talked a lot about the government inaction during the pandemic in order to help independent restaurants. What do you think in the future, either from what you've learned, running Mei Mei or now in your new position, to-what could be useful to small business owners in the food industry, from a governmental-from a policy standpoint, really?

Irene: Man, where to start? [Laughter.] There's so many different things that could be done. 

I guess, for me, having access to federal aid and even state aid. Getting assistance to fill out the Payroll Protection Program application. I am college educated, and I could barely get myself through that. So I can't imagine not speaking English as a first language, for example, and trying to wade through all of that. So I think offering the technical support is really key. 

I think the government, the federal government, learned a big lesson with the Payroll Protection Program in that there are going to be large companies that take advantage of opportunities because they are qualified on paper. So, if you're really looking to help small businesses, then you have to be targeting companies that are posting revenue below a million annually, for example. 

I have been so moved to be involved in different mutual aid efforts, whether it is a community fridge or a grocery program or just neighbors helping each other navigate government paperwork. And so honestly, it's hard for me to imagine what better government support looks like because this funnel of people just saying, ‘F**k it. We have to figure this out ourselves.’ That has been really exciting to me. 

I will say, I am really optimistic about the American Rescue Plan. I like the opportunities that are built in there for restaurants. I am very hopeful, cautiously optimistic, that that money will go to the restaurants who really need it. And I think what is exciting about the way that bill is formed is that if you didn't get any PPP money, you can get more money from this plan. So hopefully, that will address some of the barriers that especially immigrant restaurant owners and Black and Latinx restaurant owners are facing.

Alicia: And as you're kind of getting into this mode of helping other small business owners not make mistakes, do you have—what are the top three mistakes that people make when they're getting into the restaurant business and making all these decisions?

Irene: I think all of it ultimately comes down to how often they're looking at the numbers, and how the numbers are organized. 

So I mean, I've observed over the years that a lot of small businesses early on, they're not paying attention to the bills necessarily, or they're paying the bills but they're not organizing them. And maybe, every invoice just goes into a shoe box and then at the end of the year you give the shoe box to your accountant and say, ‘Here you go!’

But having a profit and loss statement that is organized in a way that actually helps you make decisions, that is a luxury that not all businesses have invested in or have the resources for. Because there's a version of your financials that's just for taxes, and everybody has to have those every year. But there's also a version that provides a readout on how your business is doing that is so valuable. 

I think restaurant owners are incredibly smart. And their instincts are usually pretty dead-on. But there are a lot of little kind of details and finer points like, ‘Should we close an hour earlier? Should we open on Mondays? Should I take this dish off the menu?’ Those are questions that they can rely on their gut to some extent, but it's not going to get them necessarily to the point where they're really thinking about growing the business if they don't have the data to rely on. 

And so, I'm so lucky that I had a team that was really invested in getting the financials to the point where they would be useful. We also had a grant from the state of Massachusetts to work with a consulting firm that helped us implement open book management. And I am now at the point where I am so excited to see the profit and loss statement every month, because it's like, ‘Yeah, I want to know how I did.’ I hope that every restaurant owner can experience that excitement, and not just sort of the stress around putting financials together and then trying to read them.

Alicia: Yeah, I think that that's probably a problem for a lot of independent workers, speaking for myself as well, is that you don't like to look at the money because you're afraid of looking at it. I've learned so much better to just be aware and kind of go full-on and try and really understand what you're doing. But it's easier said than done. [Laughter.]

Irene: One of the other challenges in there that I'm sure applies to a lot of people in different lines of work is that as a business owner, for a long time, I didn't really know what accountants and bookkeepers did. Right? 

Alicia: Right. 

Irene: So I didn't really have a way of telling like, ‘Are you doing a good job or not?’ It's kind of when I take my car to the mechanic, right? And I don't know anything about cars, and so I kind of just shrug my shoulders and say like, ‘Ok, yeah, sounds good.’

And so, I think some of what we're doing through this program is kind of teaching the restaurant owners how to speak accountant or how to speak bookkeeper and to give them confidence in those relationships. And I think for some of these folks, they do not have the confidence working with professional services to really say like, ‘Hey, this is what I need. This is how I want you to do it.’ And so, they're going with the flow but it's maybe not as useful as it could be.

Alicia: Before I ask specifically about a couple of the pieces you've recently published, I wanted to ask what inspired you to start writing about certain issues in the restaurant industry? Do you like writing, or is it more about something that you just feel there are things that need to be said? 

Irene: Yeah.

I will say, I love writing. I am so in awe of anyone who can do it on a schedule, ‘cause I really have to be in the right place with the right idea to produce anything. I did write for the local public radio station WBUR for a few months, and that was great experience just in terms of working with an editor and on deadline and all of that. And I think I figured out that it wasn't for me. 

But in this case, I usually write when I feel moved to. And usually that is when I feel there's a story that's not being told or a perspective that's not getting shared. So often, it comes from a place of wanting to tip the scales of a conversation, or make sure that things don't get left unsaid. 

Alicia: And one of those pieces that you wrote is the-a bit of satire called ‘8 Totally Achievable Ways to Show Up for Racial Justice… When You’re White and Own an Asian Restaurant!’ And I wanted to know, how did you arrive and feel inspired to tackle that subject from a satirical angle? I mean, this is a subject that's been written on. This is a subject that is just shockingly persistent in the white dudes owning Asian restaurants. That's very persistent. And so, I mean, I guess the reason you maybe wanted to approach it that way is because it is at this point such a joke and a trope, a cliché.

But yeah, what inspired you to go about it that way?

Irene: Yeah.

Well, one of the things I've said as I've talked a little bit more about the piece is, I've been writing this piece in my head for years. So it didn't come out of nowhere. But I guess it came out of my desire to engage on this topic that typically is not really engaged on. It's more an unstoppable force hits an immovable object, and where he says, ‘Hey, you can't cook that!’ And then that person says, ‘Yes, I can! I can cook whatever I want.’ And then the conversation goes nowhere. And actually, everyone leaves that discussion feeling angry or resentful. And then, I don't think we get anywhere productive out of that. 

And so, especially in getting involved in the restaurant industry myself, I felt these chefs are—they're not bad people. It's not about whether they're good or bad. And there's actually maybe some really important conversation and exploration that we can do here. 

And so my goal in writing the piece was, in part, to share my views without alienating anyone. And I don't think that's always necessarily the purpose of writing, but it felt like something that I could do pretty effectively. I went to prep school. And so, I feel I have been educated all my life in how to talk to well-meaning white people about how to be better. [Laughs.] 

And so I think that, I wanted to write a piece where by the end of it you couldn't really disagree with me. I mean, of course, a lot of people did, which is fine. But I wanted to sort of take the reader by the hand and be like, ‘Ok, let's go look at this thing together.’ 

And so, I didn't use the phrase cultural appropriation, which I didn’t notice until after I had written it. But I think that I wanted to accept that there is both something very complicated and uncomfortable about this topic. And at the same time, there's a lot of stuff that most of us just agree on, like, ‘Racism is bad, and taking credit for other people's stuff is bad.’ And so, how do you kind of weave those very simple truths in with this very complicated, scary territory? And so my hope was to kind of lead the reader through that space, so that they could come out on the other side feeling not like, ‘Oh, I am now bereft of my purpose. And everything I've created is for not.’ But to make them feel like, ‘Oh, there are some next steps I can take. And I can keep showing up to this conversation and be part of it.’

All of that being said, I did get a lot of calls from people who were like, ‘I read your article. It made me think so much. And I'm just wondering, what do you think I should do?’ And, well, I did write a list. So let's start there. And I think that that kind of response is about what I expected, and I think it's totally appropriate for someone who has never really engaged with these ideas to come right to me and say, ‘Help.’ And so, I welcome that. And I am glad that they wanted to call me and talk to me. 

But it's just so new to some people that even after reading a list of eight things that you can do, the question is like, ‘Wait, what? Sorry, now?’ How? Where do I—’ It's fascinating to watch.

Alicia: And as you mentioned, you did not mention, use the phrase cultural appropriation, which I think actually did serve the piece to make it a bit more powerful because you didn't-It was so straightforward. 

And cultural appropriation, as a phrase and as a concept, I think, has been—it's screwed over as an idea because of the right and the way that the right has taken it and suggested that its meaning is something that it's not. 

Irene: For sure.

Alicia: And that's just ruined it, because no one can say it anymore without being called—I don't know how the right talks. I just know that they like to take phrases and just be like, ‘Look at what they're saying. They're saying you can't cook a—if you're white, you can't make a burrito in your house.’ And it's like, ‘Dude, how dare you? That's not it.’

And so, how does that phrase play into your life right now or thinking at all about food?

Irene: I guess to me, the phrase invites a lot of argument because it is—it invites opinion and asks for nuance. And sometimes, those two things don't go hand in hand. And so, while part of me wanted to write ‘8 ways for cultural appropriators,’ I felt like, ‘Ok, if I really want to get the attention of the people I'm talking to, let me use phrases and facts that they can't argue with. Are you white, yes or no? Do you own an Asian restaurant, yes or no?’

And so yeah, my hope was to kind of get my foot in the door with that, and to not, to try not to make kind of value or moral judgments about them. And to just say, like, ‘Hey, you meet these qualifications so maybe we should talk about this thing.’ And I've had some really great conversations with white folks who own Asian restaurants. And I am hopeful that this conversation goes somewhere. 

My incredible friend, Tracy Chang, who is a restaurant owner in Cambridge, she said to me, ‘Just make sure they know it's not Monopoly, where you land on Community Chest and the card says like, ‘Ooh, mass shooting! Pay an Asian American organization $500, and then go on your way.’ And so, I think the longer term accountability is another really interesting piece of this that I'm hoping to be able to sort of keep up with.

Alicia: You also wrote about Raise The Wage. What is your involvement in that, and why did you decide to get into that?

Irene: Yeah.

Well, I've been working with the Restaurant Opportunity Center and high-road restaurants, which is their sort of employer-side organization, on the campaign around One Fair Wage. So in both wanting to raise the minimum wage, and abolish the sub-minimum wage, which is what servers are paid if they receive tips. So federally, the sub-minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. And locally in Massachusetts, I believe it's $5.55 an hour. 

And the piece that we wrote on Medium was from a group of Asian American women, talking about how these laws disproportionately affect women and people of color. And so in a way, there's kind of a similar message, which is like, ‘Do you like racial equity? And do you think that the way people are paid should support racial equity?’ And then, ‘If you do, which I'm sure you do, the only logical conclusion is that we have to change tipping policy in this country.’

Of course, it's not that simple. But I think that to me, the motivation for changing the way we do things is so clear. And so, I'm hoping to get more involved in that conversation. Even though I'm not a restaurant employer anymore, I actually feel like maybe I can play a different role in that community and in highlighting this issue.

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Irene: Oh, yeah. 

I mean, I think cooking is partially political. What really feels political is when I feed other people. So to kind of wrap that in, then I would say definitely. I think that we so undervalue food and everything that goes into it. I think that is deeply tied to the history of slavery in this country, and you know, the way that, that capitalism works now. 

But I think that, for me, cooking is a way to imbue food with the value of my time of my love and energy. And that you can literally bring people to the table and make them, or ask them to listen, or to experience your perspective. I think that, that's what the magic of food is for me. And working with a lot of immigrant restaurant owners in particular, I think that the storytelling that happens through food is 100 percent political.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much.

Irene: Thank you.

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Ronna Welsh, owner of Purple Kale Kitchenworks in Brooklyn and author of The Nimble Cook, is an expert at using waste that others wouldn’t think twice about throwing in the garbage. I wrote about her cookbook when it came out in 2019 for Edible Brooklyn, and I was most taken with the recipe for garlic skin vinegar. This was a book in the vein of Abra Berens’s Ruffage and Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat that took an old-school approach to recipes: Here, you’re taught how to cook, how to use ingredients, rather than just how to make some specific dishes. It is invaluable.

We recorded at the end of 2020, but because of myriad technical difficulties, I’m running it now because it’s only just been stitched together. We discussed her path to being a teacher, her approach to food waste, and true sustainability. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Ronna. Thanks so much for taking the time. 

Ronna: Yeah. Hi. 

Alicia: Thanks so much.

Ronna: Thank you.

Alicia: Yeah, for those listening, we've had some technical snafus today. But we are getting through it. 

So, Ronna, can you tell me where you—about where you grew up and what you ate?

Ronna: I grew up outside of Philadelphia, in the suburbs. And I don't recall much about what I ate. 

Well, food was really important. We were really big eaters in my family. What I most remember is holidays and holiday food and Jewish holiday food in particular, and the stuff that my mom made for those holidays. 

But growing up, we ate a lot of convenience foods day to day. We relied on canned vegetables and powdered mashed potatoes. My mom worked. So for her, the luxury of getting dinner on the table in an instant was really valuable, was really important. High school years, we ate a ton of frozen meals and canned soup. So I grew up eating, really a voracious eater, but with very little experience cooking.

Alicia: Right.

And so, how did you end up as a professional cook?

Ronna: Almost by accident, because I was in my twenties and a graduate student in Texas at the University of Texas. And I was in a field that was really academic, really cerebral. I was in my head a lot, and became disillusioned with my studies just at the point where I was finishing a degree. And one day stumbled into a friend of a friend, who told me that she was leaving her job as a cook, and did I want to apply?

So as I was finishing my graduate degree and writing my master's thesis, I also took this job in a sweet little café in Austin, Texas. And that was my first taste of what it was like to get my hands dirty and make something. And it was the process of making something, I think, which was so compelling to me. 

Alicia: You stayed in the kitchen instead of, I guess, pursuing what you were studying in graduate school. Why? Why was that your direction, your path?

Ronna: Everything was tangible in the kitchen. I loved the reward of cooking, of taking raw ingredients and turning them into something that then somebody else ate: of going into the kitchen in the morning, turning on the lights, filling the pots with water, filling the dish sink, getting the cash register ready, cooking all day, working really hard. And then taking the kitchen down at night so that you closed it and put it to bed. And then the next day, you got to repeat the whole thing over again. 

There was a satisfaction in that [that] I had been missing for me in graduate school. And there was an immediacy and a gratification to it, to getting my hands dirty, to the physical work, to producing something in real time and witnessing others make use and love it. And that itself became something I felt I needed to have.

Alicia: And you note in your bio that cooking professionally wasn't a help when you began your family and started up children and needed to cook at home. What were the differences there for you and how did you learn to overcome them?

Ronna: Cooking professionally teaches you tremendous skill. It teaches you how to move fast. It teaches you how to create good systems of prep and production. But at the same time, you have a lot of support that you don't have at home. We don't have dishwashing crews at home. We don't have people bringing us ingredients. 

And the real, for me, the fundamental difference is that when you are working in a restaurant, even one where a menu might change pretty frequently, you're always working with a menu or a set of dishes that then you set out to prepare. So, you come into the kitchen in the beginning of the day and you slice the onions so that you can put it on your station for this one particular dish. And you get everything ready so that when orders come in, you can make these various dishes with the highest quality, really efficiently and seamlessly. 

The difference with home is that an infant becomes sick, or your fridge stops working, or you drop the chicken on the floor. And so this nice tight system of planning and prepping and executing falls apart with the mishaps of life. So I quickly realized that it wasn't skill or experience that was going to serve me well as a new parent, but it was the ability to adapt, the ability to be nimble. So to start from where I was, which was a tired new person, I'm sorry, tired new parent, and then to be able to craft systems that enabled me to feed myself and my family in spite of my new circumstances became really important to me. 

And that's how I made the shift from cooking professionally to then beginning to teach.

Alicia: For Purple Kale Kitchenworks, how did you kind of blend these two approaches to cooking, the professional and the home, into something that was accessible to new cooks?

Ronna: Well, accessibility was really key. And, for me, I felt that the home cook needed, benefited from a change in perspective, one where you focused on ingredients rather than recipes, on what you have rather than an idea of what to make. And while that initially feels pretty intimidating for cooks, it actually is the simplest and most accessible place to start. 

So for me, I try to teach people to look at the ingredients they have in front of them and ways to prepare those individual ingredients, and then ways to take those individually prepared ingredients and build dishes with them. So it's sort of an elemental, fundamental approach that starts not with an idea of what you're going to eat but ends up with something delicious by just using what's in front of you. 

Alicia: And then in your cookbook, The Nimble Cook, which came out at a time when it seemed that cookbooks were starting to kind of refocus on teaching techniques and methods rather than recipes to be followed to the letter, yours focused a lot on reusing waste. What was your vision for that book, and how did you adapt teaching in person to teaching in writing?

Ronna: The food waste part became, was kind of a bonus, I think. 

While I had done a lot of writing and incorporated the idea of minimizing food waste into my classes, it was never the point. Nobody likes to waste food, and I didn't need to tell anybody that. But I did need to provide people with some ideas about using food, whether it's parts of ingredients that they might otherwise throw away or leftovers from a dish they made the night before, about using these ingredients so that they could follow them to where they might lead. 

So for example, if you have a head of cauliflower that comes with all of its greens intact—and it's a fresh head of cauliflower, not one that's been sitting on the shelf for a while—then you begin to nibble around at the leaves and realize that they taste very much like a cabbage and can be used on their own. And what you've done is you've seized an opportunity to make use of something in front of you rather than throwing that opportunity away. 

A lot of what was in my book was just a direct result of materials that I used in class in combination with so many conversations that I had in people's homes and in the classroom itself. The workbook that I used in my class became fatter and fatter as time went on and my classes became harder to fit into even five hours, that it became clear I had more material than just for the classroom. And I set out to try to take the things that people most wanted to know, and distill them down into a system where I could teach people through the book.

Alicia: And how did you kind of figure out the recipes in the book that would be the most kind of accessible? For Edible Brooklyn, I wrote about the garlic-scrap vinegar that you make. And that's something that sounds very kind of heady and very nerdy and maybe not something that the average home cook would like to attempt, but at the same time you make it very approachable. How did you create that voice in the book?

Ronna: Well, I had to really balance the emphasis on strong, simple, good technique paired with really good ingredients with this option to explore ideas, and explore dishes and combinations of flavors that were—these ingredients could take you.

In the case of garlic, if you looked at a head of garlic on its own, then it leads you to mince it or to slice it or to do what you would normally do. But if you had a bunch of garlic, then all of a sudden in preparing that garlic, you have a whole bunch of peels that—and when, in moving them to the trash, becomes sort of more to reckon with as an aggregate as a pile of peels than they would have if you had peeled one clove at a time. 

And it's in seeing possibilities in things like that, that then help you build new ways to use them. So the garlic-peel vinegar came about, because I had a whole bunch of garlic that I had long neglected and was not able to use up just by mincing and chopping. And so one day, put them in a pot of water and said, 'What the hell?' I turn the stove on and cook them away. What I got in the end was delicious, soft poached garlic that I had no plan for, but was—I could immediately put to use, because of how good it was. 

But then I also had this kind of broth in the pot as a result of cooking so much garlic in this amount of water, and I saved that broth. And then I had the peels themselves, which were all of a sudden soft, but when they came off of the garlic cloves were tacky with some of the garlic itself. And so, it's just a simple act of putting those peels into a bowl instead of straight into the trash can, which clued me in to the fact that maybe I could do something with them. 

So in the same amount of time that would have taken me to dump them in the trash can, I instead got a bottle of just cheap red wine vinegar and glugged it on top. Came back to it the next day and was fully prepared to still throw it away, but instead realized that I had a delicious garlic-infused mellow vinegar at my disposal. 

I think the trick with the cookbook is to remind people that the point is never the garlic vinegar. The point is just to see an ingredient through to the extent that you want and it's possible for you, and understanding that even though the garlic vinegar does not give you dinner, it remains part of your kitchen toolkit and your arsenal. So that maybe in a couple months’ time, if tomatoes come your way, you slice some, remember that you have this garlic-infused vinegar that you can drizzle on top. 

And what you've done is create a little plate of food with the ease of opening a package of cereal, but one that is as presumably elegant and thought out as if you were sort of brainstorming new options for a new tomato menu. 

The thing about food waste for me is that whatever you can save has value if not immediately, then certainly later on.

Alicia: And yeah, as food waste has been kind of the most, I think, popular aspect of sustainability conversations in food. And I do think that people find sustainability in their—when they think about it in terms of food and in terms of cooking, they find it very overwhelming. How do you broach the subject of this in your classes?

Ronna: Well, I think that people come at it in their own way. And I personally believe in smaller local food economies and certain kinds of growing practices. 

But it's not up to me to tell others what to believe. So I think the most powerful thing I can do is show them that by choosing the very best ingredients they have access to, that will make them better cooks. 

Again, back to the head of cauliflower. If you have a head of cauliflower where its florets taste almost sweet because it's so fresh, then you need to do little to it to make it into something you can enjoy, certainly less to it than you would if you had a head that was wrapped in cellophane and maybe tasted more of plastic or supermarket shelf then of itself. Then it needs more work, then it needs to be corrected. 

So to let people know that great ingredients actually make it easier to cook well, I think is more compelling than to tell them they should spend their money at the farmers' market than at the large chain grocery store.

Alicia: And for you, is cooking a political act?

Ronna: I think that to the extent that it is an act itself, to the extent that I make things, maybe. For me, it's about bonds between people. The idea of nourishing somebody else is really powerful. It's also really elemental. It feeds me at the same time that I'm feeding others. 

When this whole pandemic struck, and we all were at home, as much as I cooked before the pandemic, I found that I cooked nonstop all of a sudden at home; I cooked everything and all the time, and it was just for my family. My classes were canceled. My studio was shut. But it was the fact that there was something I could do, something that I could make and something that I could contribute that made me feel a little less helpless in the face of all the things going on. 

I don't know that that's a political act. But it is one that I approached with intention and trying to support and nourish others. So, I suppose it could be extended into one. 

The other thing I think that I want to try to do with cooking but also with teaching is—and this comes back to the question of sustainability—I'm really interested in helping people cook the way they want to over the long term for the long haul. For me, true sustainability is making it work day in, day out, not only when you have time to make a menu plan or only when you have time to go to the grocery store. 

I want you to be able to walk into your kitchen and to find a source of confidence, a source of  empowerment in it to be able to say, 'Ok, what have we got? Let's figure this out together.' That, to me, is how cooking becomes part of your life, how it becomes less of a task and a chore, and more of just a practice and a habit. 

The only way that we can truly sustain feeding ourselves and feeding our community is if it's something that makes us feel gratified rather than tired most of the time.

Alicia: And I think most people are feeling quite tired, right now? [Laughs.] Yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Ronna: Thank you so much, Alicia.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

My fiancé is making me a martini as I put together this interview with Jackie Summers, and I think he’d appreciate that. What we have in common is that we are writers and boozehounds. But Jackie is much more than that: He was the first Black distiller to be licensed in the United States since Prohibition, to make his delicious Sorel liqueur, and is a fabulous public speaker on matters of equity in hospitality. I first came across him when I was assigned to write about Sorel, and I’m thrilled that we’ve been in touch ever since. But I’m more thrilled that we got to have this conversation about his work. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Jackie. Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat today.

Jackie: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to talk to you. 

How have you been? 

Alicia: Oof. 

Fine, good. A lot of work lately, which is a double-edged sword, as we all know. [Laughs.] Thankfully, people are getting vaccinated, so hopefully things will be different soon, but just kind of missing inspiration a lot. 

How have you been doing?

Jackie: Like you, I have been busy doing the pandemic. As you said, it's a mixed blessing in that the way in which you're busy is not always the way in which you anticipated.

Alicia: Right. Yes. 

Well, how did you anticipate being busy, and how are you actually busy?

Jackie: I had all of these plans for 2020, which did not happen. And things went entirely different directions, which I'm sure we'll get into in this conversation.

Alicia: Yes.

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jackie: So I was born in Queens, even though my company is called JackFromBrooklyn. The interesting part about the story is my father was Muslim, and my dad—my father was Muslim and my mom is Christian. So right off the bat, there was no pork in the house whatsoever. My mom and dad had a conversation early in their marriage that they were just going to worship their gods and not ever discuss it. But there was just no pork in the house. 

And I remember having this revelation. We were on a road trip; I was five or six years old. And the family stopped at a Bob's Big Boy diner for breakfast. And I smell bacon for the first time. And I said, ‘Mom, what is that?’ And my mom said, ‘Well, that's bacon, son.’ And I said, ‘Mom, can I have some bacon?’ And she kinda looked at my dad, and I could tell that the look—the look, in retrospect, said, ‘We're not at home. Technically, yes.’ And my mom let me have bacon for the first time. You remember that scene in Close Encounters, where he just makes a mountain of mashed potatoes? Six years old with a mountain of bacon. [Laughter.] Was looking at my dad thinking to myself, ‘Why did you keep this from me?’

But really, I'm Caribbean on both sides. On my mother's side, from Barbados. On my father's side, from Saint Kitts [and] Nevis. Well, I didn't know there was a word for this when I was a child. We were largely pescatarian. We ate a lot of seafood, fish, vegetables, fresh fruit, fresh greens, baked goods. My mom was a home mom, so there was always something fresh baked in the house. But the general rule was, you could pick it out of the—off of a tree, pluck it off—out of the ground, or cook from the ocean, because those were the options that my ancestors had.

Alicia: How did you end up getting into food? I know you've written a bit about becoming the cook in your family. How did that happen?

Jackie: So, I mentioned that my mom was a home mom. My relationship with her developed by hanging on her apron strings, literally. So, she would cook. She would bake. She would fix all this food for us. And my job was, I was the family taster. She would pick something and then give me a taste and go, ‘Tell me what this needs.’ And I was like, ‘Mom, I'm a kid. I don't know what things need.’ She’d walk me through spices and herbs and go, ‘Well, this is basil. Here's how it tastes. This is oregano. This is how it tastes. These are the different things that are our tools to cook with. And here's how you use them.’

But what I figured out in retrospect as an adult, was all of the recipes had stories with them. So learning how to bake, there were stories about my mom baking as a kid. Learning how to make hot sauce hearing stories about my grandmother's hot sauce. So what I realized was, as the person who inherited mom's recipes, the responsibility for cooking, I also became the steward of the family stories because all of our stories were tied to food. 

Alicia: And I know that you had a different career before you got into working in beverage, writing about food. Can you tell me about that career? [Laughter.]

Jackie: I had a few different careers, actually. I spent 5 years on Wall Street. I spent 10 years in advertising marketing. I spent 10 years as a publishing executive. Somewhere mixed in that I was an underwear model, and somewhere in that—true story—mixed in that, I was a music producer. So I did a bunch of different things before I found myself in the spirits industry, specifically, in hospitality, in general.

Alicia: And so, how did you end up in food? I know you wrote for Esquire about starting Sorel, your liquor brand. And your main motivation you said was in wanting to day drink and enjoy life. And for me, too, I think, choosing to go the independent route means a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of insecurity and uncertainty. But at the same time, it also means actually getting to enjoy every day of your life, if you're able. And so, how has that dream that you had when you launched Sorel come true?

Jackie: Well, it's funny. I was a director of production in digital for a fashion magazine a decade ago, and I had a cancer scare. And they told me pretty much I had a 95% chance of death. And the thing that made most sense to me to do right before my surgery was go on vacation. So I consented to this surgery that I didn't expect to survive, and then nine friends went and rented a beach house in Cancun. And just the best vacation in my whole life, and just great food and great conversation and good booze. 

And when I woke up from the surgery that I didn't expect to survive, I thought to myself like, ‘I can't go back to my old life now.’ I have this very specific memory of my first week back at my day job, getting into a four-hour argument with the director of photography because she felt the pinks on the cover of the magazine we just printed were too pink and the grass wasn't green enough. And I thought to myself, ‘This is my life? I can't do this anymore.’ And again, having just come off that vacation, what I really want to do is I wanted to be on vacation again. 

So yes, in a sense, the idea of being around cool people all day long and talking about things that mattered over good food and good drinks is born of this moment in time where I'm surrounded by just great friends and having the best time of my life. The reality is, there's responsibility tied to this. There is business that needs to be conducted every single day, which affects people's lives that allow me to do this thing. There are difficult conversations around racism and sexism and ableism and homophobia, and all of these issues of our day that I'm engaged in daily. 

The idea of eating and drinking for a living sounds great. And I'm not going to say it's not great. It is. I love what we do. I've seen the world. I've traveled. I've had just fantastic meals. I've met amazing people, but it is not frivolous. There is a seriousness tinged to everything that we do.

Alicia: Did you want to address that seriousness? Was that a part of what you wanted by entering this world, or was that just kind of a necessity?

Jackie: A little column A, little column B.

Alicia: Yeah.

Jackie: I don't think it was what I initially intended, but the year that I launched my business was the year Trayvon Martin was killed. And I couldn't not speak up. And I noticed that talking about this in a public way was considered divisive. It still is considered divisive in many circles, but I had to reconcile the idea that a lot of the people that I was doing business with were, if not outright, downlow racist. You have this choice you have to make. ‘I'm a new business person. What do I really want to do? Do I want to keep my mouth shut and just try to make as much money as I can? Do I need to speak up?’ And I had to speak up. I had to address these things. 

I didn't mention this. But when I got my liquor license in 2012, I was the only Black person in America at the time with a license to make liquor. So being that guy, and having those conversations, in 2012 was difficult. It was difficult. 

But the interesting thing about having that conversation is it leads you down the path of the entire spectrum of privilege and oppression. I am a cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied male. I've got so much privilege, despite the fact that I live in a country that has been racist from its inception. Do I have oppression? Absolutely. Is there anyway that I can address my own oppression and not intrinsically fight for everyone else who's oppressed? No. Addressing racism, by definition, means I've got to speak on sexism. And I've got to speak on ableism. And I've got to speak on homophobia. I've got to speak on all of those things. They all matter. It all connects. It all intersects. You cannot fight for your own rights at the expense of anybody else's.

Alicia: Why do you think that the food and beverage industry has put these conversations off? And do you think that the conversation has gotten better and louder in the last few years since you began your business and started doing public speaking and writing on these issues?

Jackie: I think that food and beverage, like all other industries that are mired in white supremacy, didn't have to have these conversations. Nobody was making them talk about this. And because no one was making them talk about this, folks were willing to just continue business as usual, with the idea that if you talked about these things, you are going to be shunned and wouldn't be able to conduct business. 

And I always feel like that's—you have to be able to pick and choose the fights that are worth fighting for. And that moment in time, when Trayvon Martin was killed, I think we will mark in 50 years as the beginning of the new Civil Rights movement. I do not see how that doesn't become the—from the death of Trayvon Martin to the death of George Floyd, that period, this decade that we just lived through, starts off this whole—we're going to have this conversation, and you don't have to like it, but you're going to—Can I curse? 

Alicia: Of course.

Jackie: You are going to f*****g deal with this. You're going to f*****g deal with this. There was a time in this country when you could kill enough of us to keep us quiet, and that time has passed. You cannot kill enough of us to shut all of us up anymore. We are done. We're done. 

So the conversations in food and beverage, I don't think, are in and of themselves essentially different from the conversations of any other industry that is mired in white supremacy. But I do think we are uniquely positioned to have these discussions, because so much of what we do is born from people of color. We can't talk about rum without having a conversation about colonization. You can't talk about whiskey now without addressing the fact that Jack Daniels was taught how to make whiskey by a slave. Thank you, Fawn Weaver with Uncle Nearest, for making everyone know the story. We can't talk about dive bars or cocktail bars without David Wondrich doing the history and acknowledging that Black people started all of that in this country. All of it. 

And for the detriment to all of us, most of that history was erased. And we're fighting. We're fighting, not only to make sure that all these stories get told, but that they're being—that the history that's happening right now is told as well. All of this matters. And this is something that I've become very passionate about. You have to really make it a—you have to consciously elevate these stories. The people who write history decide. And what you don't elevate, you’ve consigned to the midst of history. 

Alicia: And I mean, that's why it's so important that you write I think. Because in that Esquire piece that I mentioned earlier, you wrote, ‘And in this country, where a lot of drink culture is owed to Blackness, very little of it is owned by Blackness.’ And I know that you went through a situation recently—it might be ongoing, I don't know, if they issued a correction—the New York Times named a different distillery the first Black-owned distillery in the country, though you have proof that it is you. 

And I think about that, and the significance of narrative and the significance of who tells these stories and what gets erased and what does not. So as a writer, you own your own narrative, but at the same time, you're still always having to work against the miswritings of this history. 

So, how is being a writer significant to this, in your experience of being a distiller?

Jackie: So this was fun, and it is ongoing. 

New York Times did put out a story recently, where they named somebody who was not me, the first Black distiller post-Prohibition. And I wrote them a letter that said, ‘Oh, love the article. By the way, you made a mistake. I actually had my license a year before that guy.’ And the first response I got was, ‘Yeah, we're not going to bother with that. It's just not important.’ 

So I did the thing that I do, ’cause I have a platform. And I took it to social media. Always on social media, then they called me. And they said, ‘Oh, well, we discussed it with our experts. And our experts said, ‘You don't have a distillery.’ And I said, ‘Your experts are wrong.’ And I kind of feel like it's necessary at certain points in history, to say to whoever people think the experts are, ‘You're wrong.’ At a certain point, the Supreme Court said, ‘Women can’t vote,’ and someone had to say, ‘You're wrong.’ At a certain point in history, someone said, ‘Marriage is man and a woman,’ and someone had to say, ‘You're wrong.’

I got into this argument with the New York Times and sent them a copy of my liquor license, which has the words distiller and distillery on it, with a date. And they didn't print the correction. What they said was, ‘It is now unknowable, what the first distillery is post-Prohibition.’ And I said, ‘That's not true. You made the statement before. And you had no problem making it before. I don't know what your research was before. I don't know who fact-checked it before now. But now you're saying, you're unwilling to do the research.’

And this is the funny thing about erasure is, it can be intentional or it can be just laziness. There’s that which is unknown, and there’s that which is unknowable. The size of the universe is unknowable. Finding out who had the—who was the first licensed distiller post-Prohibition, that—There are records for this stuff! You could know this if you wanted to. So to choose not to do the research is willful erasure. And erasure is violence. Erasure is violence. 

So, I happen to be someone who got—who has feet in both worlds, as you mentioned. I am a distiller and I'm a writer, which means I have a platform to speak my own voice. And I'm at the moment of pitching a story, which hopefully will be published in a publication that has as much gravitas as the New York Times, about the nature of erasure. Who gets to tell history?

We only have Black History Month, because so much effort went into erasing Black people from history for centuries. We only have Women's History Month, for the same reason. Women were systematically erased from history. Women are women all year long. I'm Black all year long. Your history isn't limited to one month, and neither is mine. But until we get to the point where we get to tell our own stories in our own voices, and they're elevated to the same height as the people who have, up until this point, controlled the narrative, we have to fight for this. 

So, having my own platform is one thing. But I still need access to the people who control the narrative to go, ‘Here's the real story.’

Alicia: Why do you think that they did not offer a correction? Do you think it really was just laziness? I think the New York Times got rid of all their copy editors and fact-checkers, which would explain a lot. But yeah, why do you think that they have no interest in changing what they publish?

Jackie: I don't believe it was laziness. I believe this was intent. Again, the opportunity, having made a definitive statement, the opportunity to make a secondary definitive statement was presented to them, and they declined. There's a lot of what I'd like to call performative wokeness that happens at the Times because their newsrooms, like most media newsrooms are predominantly white. And so, they literally get to decide whose story gets told them and who doesn't.

And the interesting part to me was in the middle of this fight with the New York Times about erasure, their editors put out this page-long article about how they know, how they're aware that they have racial problems in their newsroom. 

So, if you're going to ask me why? Polite white supremacy. Just to be clear on what I mean when I say that, there are lots of people who think that storming the Capitol with Confederate flags is white supremacy. And they’re right. White supremacy is also going, ‘Yes, I'm aware that you have the license that says you're the first Black person to ever have a distillery after Prohibition. But no, I'm not gonna bother to make it a point to say that. Thanks anyway, though.’ Both are violence. Just because one is polite, doesn't make it any less violent than the other.

Alicia: And to kind of go backwards, can you tell us about Sorel and what it is, how you make it? Obviously, no proprietary secrets. And the kind of process that you figured out to create the shelf-stable liqueur.

Jackie: So, you've got to go back 600 years for this story. This is tied, like most things to do with colonial capitalism, to the slave trade.

They begin to import hibiscus flowers from West Africa around the same time they start to import human beings. And they make a tea out of the flowers, ’cause it’s got all of these great medicinal values. It's an antioxidant, and it's an antimicrobial. It has more vitamin C than most citrus fruits. It's a natural aphrodisiac. Hibiscus is great for you. 

British naval officers all had a stipend of rum as part of their pay. So, they would put rum in the tea as a preservative. And so this beverage, which came to be known as sorel, S-O-R-E-L, gets distributed throughout the Caribbean. 

And depending on where you fell in the slave route, in the spice trade, it would have different other spices mixed in. For example, if you were in Jamaica, you would get hibiscus with rum, with almond and allspice. If you were deep in the spice round like Trinidad and Tobago, you would get Indonesian spices like cinnamon and nutmeg. 

This goes on, again, for centuries. My grandparents emigrated to this country exactly 100 years ago. And so I got this culture from my parents, who got it from my grandparents. So this is a beverage I was raised with. I've always known it. I've been making a version in my kitchen for 20 years, more than 20 years. God, I’m old. And like all Caribbean families, I believed my version was the best version. 

But when I decided to launch a liquor brand, I thought to myself, ‘Of course, I'm going to try to bring my heritage to the world.’ At which point you ask yourself, ‘Why has nobody done this before?’ And the joke I tell at this point is if you think you have an idea so good, and no one's ever thought of it before, it's probably a terrible idea. [Laughter.] There’s probably a reason why no one has done this before. 

And to be clear, Alicia, I had, I have zero background as a food chemist. None. I am not a food scientist. I had no background in liquor. I knew no one in hospitality. But I am stubborn. The first 600 attempts were discouraging. [Laughter.] On attempt 623, I came up with a version that can't be broken. You can open it, close it, come back in six months, boil it, nuke it, freeze it, leave it sitting out in the sun, leave it in the back of the car. Both through stubbornness and research and luck, I developed the version of the spirit with which you can't break. 

And the thought behind my general company is, if sorrel sat in the Caribbean for hundreds of years, waiting for somebody to discover how to make it stable, how many other beverages like this exist with centuries of culture, with distinctiveness that only the culture that consumed it really knows about, that are waiting for somebody to bring it to light? 

So, I really believe that my mission somehow has become twofold. The first is to find these things, these hidden gems that have been laying up there for centuries, figure out how to make them not just shelf-stable and commercially saleable, but legitimately authentic. If a Caribbean person tastes sorrel, they know. If it was in any way not true to itself, you would never hear the end of it from Caribbean people. These things have got to be authentic. 

At the same time, we have to have the conversations about the cultures that make these things and why, again, they've been erased for centuries. Because what we don't elevate, we erase.

Alicia: And how was it getting it to market?

Jackie: It was interesting in that no one had ever seen a Black liquor brand owner before. So most of what I got when I walked around New York City was, ‘Oh, deliveries are in the back.’ No one believed I owned the brand or created the brand from scratch. 

But it was so critically received that people tended to get over that. It performed incredibly well in bars. It performed incredibly well in stores. And I'm looking forward to having to get back on shelves by summertime.

Alicia: And can you tell us about how that's going to happen, because this is exciting news?

Jackie: Not really. But stay tuned.

Alicia: Ok. [Laughs.]

Yeah, no, I'm very excited that it's going to be back. I think people are going to be more ready for it, maybe. Do you think so?

Jackie: I think the world changed in necessary ways. And it had to. It had to. I cannot take credit for the fact that the world changed. 

But I can say, I've been running my mouth about these things for a f*****g decade now. And now, you can’t enter spaces in hospitality and not have conversations about how we can keep women safe, and how we can kill sexism, and the fact that we should have equal pay, and the fact that we need to normalize Black bartenders. Now, these things are part of our everyday discussion, as they should be. 

And again, I don't take credit for this. I am glad to be part of a movement where a lot of people have decided to get on board, not just the people who are part of oppressed groups but people who have seen a need to use their privilege to make things more equitable for everybody. I am glad and proud to be part of this conversation, but the world changed because we're changing it.

Alicia: Absolutely. 

And as hospitality comes back to life after the pandemic, what are you hopeful for?

Jackie: So, one of the things that everyone said, as soon as all of the restaurants shut down was, ‘How are we going to get back to normal?’ And my intrinsic response to that was, ‘Why would I help you get back to a normal where I was never welcome?’ So my feeling is, there has never been a better time than right now for people who have been marginalized, whatever that marginalization is, to figure out how to build your own table. 

I spent years teaching this seminar course across the hospitality circuit, ‘Build a longer table.’ It's a great slogan, build a longer table. I mean, it sounds good, right? It was, ‘Be inclusive, and I have some, and I'm going to extend to other people who don't.’ Alicia, no one did a damn thing. Sound and fury and anecdotes and statistics signifying nothing. I stopped teaching that altogether. 

I'm hoping that in a post-pandemic world, whenever that happens, people will be more motivated to figure out how to do their own thing, and establish structures from the ground up that aren't based in white supremacy. And for the structures that continue to exist, post-pandemic that were there before, it is a worthy question to ask any individual or organization, ‘What are you doing to undo your complicity with white supremacy?’ It is one thing to say that the problems are systemic, but systems are maintained by people. And people can change things if they are so inclined.

Alicia: And how do you feel your personal writing fits into your larger work as a distiller as a speaker on these issues?

Jackie: I feel like there is a depth of understanding which I need to reassess on a daily basis. The things I perceived yesterday, or a week ago, or a decade ago, those things have changed today and they'll be different tomorrow. And I feel the need to continually ask myself whether or not I am full of s**t. 

There's a James Baldwin quote that stays stuck in my heart like a knife. ‘Your slogan hides your truth.’ You have to have the courage to despise your slogan. It's easy to string pretty words together, and be pithy and quotable. But am I hiding behind something that sounded good as a quote, instead of actually digging deeper and going, ‘Well, here's the truth behind that statement. And it's painful to admit this, but here's what really needs to be said. And it might not be as pithy but it's honest.’

So, I feel like with my writing, I'm trying to be more honest about my understanding of the world and my understanding of my role in it. 

Alicia: Are you planning to write a book?

Jackie: I've got a publisher of works, just shopping—I've got my agent, who I love. I'm signed to Pande Literary. It’s fantastic. And they're shopping a book of mine right now, but it's not what you’d think. An illustrated fairy tale for adults about how to deal with social justice fatigue.

Alicia: Wow, that sounds great.

Jackie: And it is called The Garden of Infinite F***s.

licia: I think that'll be really success—People will love that name. I think that'll go well.

Jackie: The idea is, everyone makes a joke about how they're all out of f***s. And they have been out of f***s. You have run out of f***s. F***s mean you care. So if you find that you are out of f***s, you're not allocating correctly. That's a distribution issue. 

And so hopefully, the book, when it gets published, will show in a fun way how people can effectively manage the firehose, systemic abuse that we're dealing with today. It’s always something. But if you let yourself get upset about all of it, nothing gets done. So hopefully, this book gets out. And it will give people a fun manageable guide to how to not run out—how to have infinite f***s, and how to not burn yourself out.

Alicia: Right, which is so important. That's all we talk about now, is burnout. [Laughs.]

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Jackie: So I think not only is cooking a political act, I think grocery shopping is a political act. I mean, you can't really do your own cooking unless you're doing your own grocery shopping. It is important to know the food supply chain, and I think that’s gotten extremely brought to fore during the pandemic. 

Where is your food coming from? Who's pulling your roots out of the ground? Who's slaughtering your animals, if you’re eating animals? How is this getting to your door?I have been on a long path for the last few years away from eating meat for highly personal reasons. To be clear, I'm one of these people—I think meat is delicious, person. But I have privilege. And privilege means I've got responsibility, and responsibility means, ‘Am I acknowledging my role in the fact that meat production in this country is a horrific thing that's destroying us?’ I can't change the industry, but I can change my own behavior. 

And this is one of the things that I learned from your writing. You're one of my favorite writers. This is true, I’m psyched about this. One of the things I learned from you was that veganism, it's not a pure course towards clean hands of the food processing industry. There is industrialism with processed foods. Someone's picking your food out of the ground. How is that person being compensated? We live in a country that happens to be incredibly focused against immigrants right now, but at the same time, unwilling to pick or grow their own food. How the f**k does that work? 

So I feel like not just cooking, but grocery shopping is an incredibly political thing that one has—you have to be aware of these days. ‘Where's my food coming from? And to the extent that I can make the difference in my life, what's my footprint like?’ 

One of the biggest differences that I made over the pandemic is, there's a guy who ran—there’s a guy in Astoria, Queens, who was running his parents’ Chinese restaurant. And they hit hard times when the pandemic started, and he decided to convert his restaurant into groceries and get the groceries into delivery. 

And whereas I was initially getting my grocery delivery from Whole Foods, now I get all of my groceries delivered from asian-veggies.com. I know who's doing it. I know where it's being sourced. It's a local business. It's all good food. And I don't have this weight of, ‘I'm supporting this organization that may or may not be caring for workers in a particular way’ weighing on my shoulders.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much again for taking the time out today. This was great.

Jackie: It is always a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much for your time today.

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When the opportunity to interview Dr. Badia Ahad-Legardy upon the release of her book Afro-Nostalgia: Feeling Good in Contemporary Black Culture (next Tuesday) landed in my inbox, I couldn’t say no. To discuss food with a literary scholar? Of course.

There is an entire chapter on food in the book, relating current expressions of Black identity in cookbooks and restaurants to past Black power movements. It is illuminating, especially in its discussion of Bryant Terry’s Afro-Vegan, for making connections that would usually go unstated, because—simply put—we so rarely see literary scholars or critics talking about food. It is vital and necessary.

We discussed the under-sung deliciousness of carob, the “complicated space of food studies,” food and the Black Lives Matter movement, and the cultural role of the restaurant. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Badia. Thank you so much for taking the time out today.

Badia: Thank you for having me. I'm excited.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Badia: Sure. 

So, I grew up in Chicago in the Hyde Park community. So, I think it was made perhaps most famous by Barack Obama. That's where he lived in Chicago. But we were there long before Barack Obama got there. [Laughter.] My grandparents actually migrated to Hyde Park in the 1940s, so it's where I grew up and where my mom grew up and so forth. So yeah, that's where I grew up. 

It's really interesting, because I have actually very few recollections of what I ate between the ages of, I guess, between when I was born and nine years old. And I was thinking about that, like, ‘What did I eat in those years?’ And it's so interesting, because my parents got divorced when I was nine. And I literally cannot remember the foods I ate prior to that. I don't have a recollection of what my mother cooked during that time. But after that, we moved in with my grandmother once they divorced, and I remember so many of those meals. 

And it's, I guess, a cliché, but my grandmother was an amazing cook. And my favorite food was okra. [Laughter.] One of the few people who's really attracted to, I guess, the slimy texture. I really loved okra. She would make these wonderful Parker House rolls that I used to schmear with a ton of butter and grape jelly. And desserts, of course. So I think five-flavored pound cake was my favorite. 

And interestingly, my aunt, who was also living with my grandmother at that time, she was and is a naturopath. And so she would take me to the health food store and buy me all kinds of treats. And my favorite ones were the carob covered raisins and the root beer sodas that were clear because they weren't—they didn't have the artificial coloring, so they tasted just like root beer. So, those were my favorite things to eat growing up. 

Alicia: Wow, I love whenever carob comes up in a conversation. [Laughter.]

Badia: Yeah, I was really—I shouldn't say I, but my aunt was really an early adopter of carob.

Alicia: Yeah, it's always just very, very specific. And it's just a very specific time. And I love that. And yeah, I'm always saying, ‘We should bring carob back.’ I don't think it was as bad as people remember at all. [Laughs.]

Badia: Well, the interesting thing is I actually don't like chocolate. Yeah, I'm not really a chocolate eater. Never have been. But carob was my jam as a kid. So, I don't know.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Amazing.

Well, why was it important for you to include a chapter on food in your new book, Afro—Nostalgia?

Badia: Sure.

I didn't really think that I could write a book about nostalgia and Blackness and get away with not writing a chapter about fo—about food or some reference to food. I think food and music are such key touchdowns of nostalgic memory. So, you hear something and you get transported back to a moment in time, or you eat something and it has the capacity to take you back to a particular kind of memory or a set of memories. So that's a really personal, I think, relationship between food and memory. And nostalgia plays such an important role in that. 

So in the book, I wanted to go a little bit beyond just kind of the personal nostalgic relationship that we have with food and really think about how it plays out in the Black culinary space. So, showing how chefs can play really important roles in evoking memories of this imagined historical past, and how those are really kind of tied to a certain kind of politics but also a sense of the future of Black food. 

Alicia: Right.

And you note in this chapter the “complicated space of food studies.” And I wanted to see if you could elaborate on what you mean—define as food studies and why you see it as a complicated space.

Badia: Sure.

Food studies is very broad, which is one of the reasons I think it's really complicated. And as I understand it at least, it's really about exploring the relationship between food and identity. And you can approach that from so many different angles. So you have public health, or environmental sustainability, or literature and folklore, sociology. I mean, all of those areas can really speak to the relationship or a certain kind of relationship between food and identity. And I think just because it's so vast, and it's so nebulous—and it's also a really, a fairly new field. That's one of the reasons why I think it's really complicated. 

It's funny. I was listening to Eve Ewing, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with her, but she's—yeah, amazing sociologist, writer, speaker, poet. I mean, just a brilliant individual. And she did a little Instagram Live mini-talk. And it was so fascinating, because she talked about the notion of pre-existing health conditions and how that's being played out right now in the trial of Derek Chauvin, and—being used as an attempt to prove that George Floyd's body was already broken, that there were kind of pre-existing health conditions at play. And we've also heard a lot of that around Covid, especially when it comes to communities of color. 

But when we think about something like pre-existing health conditions, so much of that is tied to issues like poverty and food access and food deserts and food justice. And these aren't natural conditions, but they're the product of a myriad of social injustices. And I think food plays a really important role in that. So there are many reasons why I think it's a conversation—complicated space. There's so many conversations happening about food and food waste. There's so much to say. 

And I think for me, at least when I was writing the book and just doing some reading around this, it was really hard to try to find a way in, actually, as someone who's coming to this work from a very different vantage point. And that's probably why this chapter on food was the most personal for me, because I actually used my own food memories as a way to participate in what I saw was a really kind of expansive conversation.

Alicia: Right. 

I mean, it's funny, because I started reading a book this morning, published in 2003. And the writer, who I think is a philosophy professor named Lisa Heldke, she was saying, ‘It's in the last ten years that food studies has emerged a little bit.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, boy.’ And it is still such a fractured area of study. 

And I think part of it is that nostalgia connection that it is—you have to come into it from a personal perspective. And you're talking about you using your memories. She begins this book as well with her own memories. And I'm like, ‘I don't think you can get into food without connecting it to nostalgia, connecting it back to your own identity, which is such a fascinating—’ Yeah, that's why it's so wonderful when other people write about food. I'm a food writer, so I only write about food, really. [Laughter.] That’s why I love reading other people write about it.

Badia: My background, obviously, is as a literary scholar, right? And I write about a lot of things, but I usually write about books. [Laughs.] But I do eat a lot. And I read about eating, and I read a lot about food. Again, I could not really figure out how to situate myself in this conversation without delving into the personal. But I think that's one of the reasons why that chapter for me, at least, was one of the most rewarding to write as well.

Alicia: Of course.

And the lack of pork in your home growing up is part of that, as well as the focus on Dick Gregory and Bryant Terry, who are big parts of this chapter. So, I wanted to ask ’cause I—I always ask people about this—but what is your relationship to meat as an omnivore? And I know you don't eat fast food. That seems like an interesting kind of relationship to food, as a conscious omnivore. [Laughter.]

Badia: Well, again, I guess going back to thinking about how your memories or food or your relationship to food is really formed, I think, at such a young age—or at least for me, it's formed at such a young age. And until you posed that question, I have to say, I had actually never really thought about my relationship to meat. Do me and meat really have a relationship? But I guess we do, because I do consume it. What's really interesting is that in high school, my mom and my stepdad stopped eating red meat. But I didn't. I still eat red meat. [Laughter.] My husband does not eat red meat at all. But I do and our kids do. 

So if I'm honest, I'd have to say that I think my relationship to meat really is the result of having had such a restrictive diet as a child. So growing up in the Nation of Islam, and then also on top of that, I had a lot of food allergies, which I have now outgrown thankfully. So if I'm honest, maybe my unwillingness to not eat meat is pushing back on what I perceive to be a really confining way to live for a good part of my kind of growing up. 

And honestly, you know, I don't know if I reject ‘fast food.’ I definitely preach the gospel of moderation. And I think if you want a fast food meal every now and then, get after it. 

But I'll share with you a really striking memory. When I took my kids to this art fair in Chicago, and—they were about ages around 8 and 11 at the time. And I got them popsicles. And the popsicles were made from fresh fruit, but they weren't unsweetened or anything and there was still obviously sugar present. And both of them said that their popsicles didn't taste right. And I was like, ‘What’s going on with these popsicles?’ 

I tasted the popsicles. And they tasted like the fruit that they were labeled as. So, the strawberry popsicle tasted like strawberries. The mango popsicle tasted like mango. But they were so used to that kind of artificial strawberry flavor, and an artificial citrus flavor, that the recognition, or the kind of expectation of having a popsicle that was the flavor of the actual fruit was something so foreign to them. And that was, quite frankly, heartbreaking for me, right? And I was like, ‘Ok, yeah, we're gonna do some things differently here.’

So, I think when I'm thinking about the kind of choices that we make as a family, I don't want them to feel as though or understand that natural foods in their natural form are something that's foreign. I want them to at least be able to recognize the foreign thing is the actual foreign, artificial thing that you're eating. I think that's why, at least for us, fast food isn’t a—we don't do that on a regular basis, I'll say.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah, no. And it's always interesting to talk to parents about this, because you have to negotiate food in a whole new way and figure out how to pass on your relationship to it without making that the whole thing and that sort of thing. I asked because you mentioned your kids asking for fast food in that chapter, and I was—it's always interesting to understand how people, yeah, make and negotiate those aspects of life because—yeah. [Laughs.] 

Badia: And I think that what I've tried to do also is not make them feel guilty about having it because then that is a whole other thing. And I talk a little bit about this in the book, but I had a lot of shame around food growing up. And that's never a healthy relationship to anything. So, I don't want them to feel if they're out with their friends, and the choice is to—they're both teenagers now, so—and the choice is to go to McDonald's or whatever, that they have to feel bad about doing it, or they lie and tell me that they went somewhere else or something like that. But I do want them to be able to strike a balance. 

Alicia: Of course.

Yeah, in the chapter you also write that Bryant Terry's Afro-Vegan is about making tangible and accessible the relationship between food and emancipatory politics. In what kind of ways and venues do you see this relationship being made nowadays in culture broadly, if you do? I mean, I think that's such an important intersection, of food and emancipatory politics. And I've talked to Bryant Terry about this before. As you are a literary scholar, how do you see that manifesting? Because I also want to understand how food for non-food-focused people, where you see it and where you see it as important?

Badia: Yeah. 

Well, interestingly, I just think that, right now, we see it kind of everywhere, right? So in the aftermath of the summer of 2020, where we saw national racial unrest and second wave of Black Lives Matter, the notion of Black radicalism and imagining Black freedom, I don't know if it's been more visible to me. [Laughs.] So, it certainly is more visible now then even when I was writing the book. 

So if I'm thinking about even renewed attention to Black cultural creators, and I—I'd be remiss not to mention folks like Thérèse Nelson and her Black Culinary History project. Also, the work of Cynthia Greenlee at The Counter, anti-racist projects happening everywhere, even popular culture. 

Oddly enough, I just saw the first episode of the new season of Top Chef last week. [Laughs.] And something that I was immediately struck by was, I don’t know if I want to call it an eagerness, but it kind of felt like an eagerness to really put West African cuisine on display. And that was something that was really fascinating to me. And I think it would be easy to kind of critique that as like, ‘Oh, this is empty symbolism,’ and ‘What does this really mean?’ But I also think the restaurant industry, like so many different industries, faced a racial reckoning in that moment. And it's clear that a lot of folks, at least to my mind, are—seem to be trying to do things a little differently. 

So I see this relationship between food and kind of a politics of liberation honestly operating in so many different spaces. Musically, in terms of literature, in terms of obviously food. But certainly, I think in a kind of popular cultural sphere we're seeing a little bit more of that conversation come to the fore. And I think it's a direct result of, again, the events of summer 2020. 

And I think it can be really easy to see these endeavors as merely historical. But in the book, I talk a lot about this notion of nostalgic reclamation, or nostalgia as an act of reclamation. So, what are you reclaiming? What are you trying to kind of get back to? And I think it's really a way to imagine the past. It’s a particular kind of memory. But it also does a lot of work for us in the present and provides a good deal of inspiration for the future, which I think is really at the heart of nostalgic projects. 

So, I see that—see it all over the place. It’s interesting. I was talking about Hyde Park earlier where I grew up, and there's a new-ish restaurant there, Virtue. And the chef is Erick Williams. And even if you go on the site, he has these kind of archival images of the American Black South on the website, and really kind of pointing to that space and that time as a mode of inspiration for what he's doing in the restaurant now. But I would say that it's not just kind of trying to recapture that very moment or the cuisine from that very moment in that space, but it's about kind of using that as a starting point to create something anew but also, really not forgetting the foundation of where all this came from.

Alicia: And in the chapter as well, I mean, to talk about restaurants, you discuss Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster and specifically Sam Sifton’s review of it. And you bring up the difficult role that a restaurant has in changing its neighborhood, especially—this is a Black restaurant in a historically Black neighborhood in Harlem. 

Do you see the restaurant as having a duty to occupy a role that is not simply about gastronomy, a role that actually kind of is in service to the neighborhood and in kind of anti-service to gentrification? [Laughter.] We've been talking a lot about what is the role of the restaurant, especially because in the pandemic they've been laying people off. It's been a site of transmission. Line cooks have been deeply impacted by the pandemic. So we're talking about, ‘What is the restaurant?’ And so do you think the restaurant has a cultural function beyond being kind of just a business, that's a showcase for a chef, especially kind of in that context of Red Rooster?

Badia: That's a great question. 

I mean, I have to say, normally I get really nervous when I hear words like ‘duty’ and ‘responsibility,’ especially attached to roles that Black people are supposed to play. [Laughs.] And I am definitely, just by the way, anti-gentrification, just to let everyone know. 

I would say that honestly when a restaurant or any business for that matter occupies a space within a neighborhood, especially neighborhoods that have been neglected, that have been forgotten, marginalized, there really has to be—to my mind, at least—some sense of responsibility for how your presence in that community is going to affect the lives of the people who existed there long before you. So, I do feel like there is some responsibility there. 

And the reason why I even talk about Red Rooster in the book is because it's—it really does exemplify how complicated nostalgic projects are, right? So, on the one hand, nostalgia is a feel-good emotion, which is really what the book is about, right? So it has the capacity to be energizing. It can be life-giving; it could be comforting. And even in the name, Red Rooster, is obviously an homage to the Red Rooster of the Harlem Renaissance era. So you kind of think about that moment, and the kind of images that it evokes of this vibrant Black Harlem. But nostalgia also has a really dark underbelly. And it's one that is often informed by historical erasure and violence. 

So with Red Rooster, we see a little bit of both sides of nostalgia at play. And I see it as a space that's really grappling with that. So, that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to kind of focus on it, because it obviously—even in its name, invokes this kind of historical relationship. But we have to think about the work that it's actually doing in that, their community right now. 

In terms of whether restaurants have a cultural function? I would obviously say yes. I'm not sure if restaurants, though, always know that they have that function and they're aware of what that function is and what role that they play in it. So when I think about a restaurant, I think about things—again, not as a person entrenched in the food space, but location, menu items, price points, waitstaff, seating arrangements, decor, music. I mean, I think about all the things that go into the making of a restaurant. And it is such an overtly political space.

I was thinking about a time when a few friends and I went to brunch in this neighborhood, Wicker Park, which is a bit of a tony, predominantly white neighborhood in Chicago. And my friends and I were the only Black patrons in the restaurant. And if anyone knows Chicago, we are a deeply segregated city, right? So you go to the North side, it's mostly white. Southside, mostly black. 

So, we're in Wicker Park. We're having brunch at this restaurant, only Black people there. And this Biggie song comes on the loudspeaker. And it's a restaurant, so it's still somewhat muted. But you know Biggie, you hear the song, that must be the explicit version. And the N-word is all over the place in the song, right? So, here we are in this space. The patrons are mostly white, the waitstaff is mostly white, the cooks look to be mostly Black and Latinx. And I was thinking in that moment about how our experience of the space in that moment was very, very different. 

So, restaurants are not neutral spaces. I think that some of them seem to intend to operate from a place of neutrality without recognizing that for many people, whiteness functions as a neutral. So I think that restaurants would do well to think more deeply about the cultural functions that they serve, and the roles that they play in the communities in which they exist, right? 

Alicia: Yeah, no, I think I asked that question, of course, out of interest. But also I'm writing a list of restaurants in San Juan for a food website, the essential restaurants of San Juan. And thinking about that, these questions of these areas that have been so deeply gentrified. And here in San Juan, gentrification is tied to Airbnbs. It's not necessarily tied to actual residents, because the economy is so based on tourism. And so thinking about, ‘Who is this restaurant for? Who is this serving? And how is it changing the neighborhood?’ is just such an important consideration. 

And yeah, that idea of like, ‘Who is comfortable in these spaces?’ is such a big one when it comes to food that I don't think people think about enough. From farmers’ markets to restaurants, who is comfortable and who is being served?

Badia: Yeah, exactly. 

And also, you kind of think about—I'm not a restaurant owner, I don't aspire to be one. But I imagine though that you do have a vision of the space. And I honestly don't think that, especially in many of the spaces that I've been to, there is a good deal of consideration for the kind of diversity of people who potentially could occupy that space. And I think when you're coming into, especially, again, particular kinds of neighborhoods, you really have to be mindful of the power that you wield within those spaces, and also how your mere presence, again, can really alter not just the lived experiences of the people who are there, but really the future of those communities in irreparable ways.

Alicia: Right.

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Badia: Ok, so I'm going to be the consummate academic here. [Laughter.] Nothing that we do or say escapes the realm of the political, so I would have to obviously put cooking in there. 

And can I just tell you how much I love this question? Because I thought about this, and I'm like, ‘It's cooking. It's not just food. It's not just eating. It’s the act of cooking.’ And so yes, I would say that food is—I mean, that cooking is definitely a political act, and—as much as our politics are reflected in the choices that we make on a day to day basis. So, ‘Am I going to get takeout, or am I going to cook in my kitchen? Am I going to fry, or am I going to bake? Am I doing the cooking, or is my husband doing the cooking?’ And how these decisions get made, I think, are inherently political. So, I would have to say that cooking is very much a political act.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much again for taking the time to chat today.

Badia: Thank you for having me.

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I met Emily Stephenson one day years ago at a café right by our then-apartments in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. She had emailed me because I was an editor at Edible Brooklyn at the time and wanted to discuss my work. I was jealous of her work, though, because she developed recipes for cookbooks. Eventually, we collaborated on the Food Writers’ Workshop, along with Layla Schlack, attempting to demystify food media for a bigger group of writers through a ticket price of $13.50.

Emily has since written two brilliant cookbooks with her own name on them: Pantry to Plate and The Friendsgiving Handbook. We talked at the end of last year, when Pantry to Plate was coming out, and I wanted to hear about her decision to leave social media that has become such a big part of being a writer and cookbook author. (This was the second to last of my interviews done with poor internet, so please excuse any audio glitches.) Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Emily. Thanks so much for coming on to chat. 

Emily: Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. 

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? 

Emily: Sure, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago.

We grew up eating—we had a lot of takeout and fast food, for sure. We also—I've been thinking a lot about this, like, service that no one I've talked to has ever used, but kind of like saved my family since both my parents worked full time. It was called Market Day, but basically, kind of like a Costco, Sam's Club thing where you order in bulk, but then pick it up and buy it at the school. And so like, once a month, we would go and just pick up a bunch of boxes of frozen entrees and stuff that then would help with quick meals during the week.

Neither of my parents are super into cooking. And were just, you know, stressed with having two kids and time jobs.

But my mom is also super into gardening. And so like in the summer, you know, she would grow green beans and tomatoes and stuff. So we would have that for a couple months a year. There was a really great farmers’ market in the town where I grew up, but because it's the Midwest and the climate doesn't really allow for like an abundant farmers’ market, you know, for more than maybe like three or four months a year, that was kind of like just limited to the summer.

Alicia: Right, right. And so how did you get into food? Because I know you went to culinary school, you worked in restaurants—what was your path—

Emily: No, I didn’t go to culinary school

Alicia: You didn’t go to culinary school!

Emily: It started as just like an interest. I think from just watching a lot of Food Network in like junior high school I got, like, into cooking as a hobby.

But, you know, I don't know, just like, as a high school kid didn't occur to me that I could be like cooking our dinners every night and also was, you know, like, busy with schoolwork and extracurriculars. And then when I went away to college, the way that it worked at the school, I was you lived in a dorm for the first year, and then most people moved to apartments.

And so I just kind of was forced to learn how to cook when I was 19. There weren't any good restaurants in town. And you know, I was on a budget anyway. So that's when I got really into it and more into cookbooks and just doing a lot of research. 

The first year I was cooking, I wasn't a vegetarian, but I kind of didn't do a great job staying healthy as I learned to cook and felt kind of terrible after that first year, so decided to become a vegetarian. And so that also required a lot of education and research and just trying to stay inspired and like what to eat, that would be exciting and kind of healthy.

And I kind of had journalism dreams. They were very vague and not formed when I graduated, but was hoping to get a magazine or newspaper job or something and kind of keep food more as just like a hobby.

But I graduated in 2008. And, you know, it was just not a good time to pursue that work. I remember having like this, like, you know, a few steps removed connection. He was like an editor for a news wire or something. I talked to him a few months after I graduated. And I was like, yeah, I'm like, I would love to work for like a newspaper or magazine. You know, like, do you have any advice and he was like, just find another industry. Do not attempt to get a job doing this. And I, I don't know, I think I was just a little bit overwhelmed and really took that to heart and so kind of went another direction. 

I had gotten an internship at Slow Food USA. It combined my interest in food and politics. I was working on, they were sort of taking a turn towards more actual advocacy. And so I was working on a campaign about the Farm Bill and the school lunch portion of that. And so I worked in food nonprofits for a few years and it just wasn't quite satisfying. It still didn't have the writing component that I wanted, and had always just continued to just be interested in, reading about and learning about food and buying cookbooks and cooking for people all the time. I ran a supper club for a couple of years and just cooked for big groups in my apartment.

And I this moment after my second job where I just I realized that development in programs and nonprofits just was not what I wanted to do. And my current job was comfortable enough where I had the space to sort of figure out what it is I did want. 

I went on a vacation and I bought a book while I was there. It was one of the few souvenirs and it was Claudia Roden's The Book of Jewish Food. And I was flipping through it on the plane on the way back and I was like, I want to do this somehow. Claudia Roden has turned it into a job. And I just imagine she's sitting in her beautiful  London home and she's just writing cookbook after cookbook.

I was like, I want to figure out a way to do this. Like, I want to write. I love cookbooks. I love cooking. I think that maybe I could do this.

Which was very ambitious for someone who had made very safe career choices until then. But I

had talked to a few people who are kind of in the food media world. Everyone had told me that like culinary school was a waste of money. And if you just got restaurant experience, that would be enough. 

So I had made a plan to work in restaurants for a couple of years. And then after that would try to figure out how I could get into media and publishing. And just by coincidence, or chance, I saw that Food52 was looking for an intern to work on their first cookbook. They had signed a multi-book deal with Ten Speed. And I don't know, I just think because it was exactly what I wanted to do, my cover letter just stood out.

I got the internship, which was great. So I think I was like, 27 at the time, it was like a little bit of a career change. Thankfully, it was weekends only. And so you know, since it was an unpaid gig, I was able to work. And also get that really great experience.

That was Genius Recipes, Kristen Miglore. And it was mostly just doing recipe testing, research, kind of some like admin and project management stuff as the book went on. And it was great. I loved it. I was like, Oh my god, this is like exactly what I want to be doing. And when that ended, I went to work in restaurants for a little while, just ’cause I didn't have anything lined up. So I worked as a line cook. Sorry, this is like very detailed. 

Alicia: Oh, it's great. It's great. To be detailed. 

Emily: Um, it was like kind of a windy path. But once I got started, I felt like things kind of fell into place. So I was in restaurants for a little over a year. And thenI guess at some point, yeah, maybe like a year and a half later, one of Mark Bittman's longtime employees was going to grad school and so he was looking for someone to come join his team. And he got my name from Food52. And I remember being—I was working at the restaurant, and I checked my phone after service one night and I had this email that was just like, from Mark Bittman. Subject, Hello.

I thought It was a weird promotional email from the New York Times or something.

But yeah, he said he'd gotten my name. He was looking for stuff, was I interested. And so yeah, I applied for that. I did an edit test. I wrote, I think, like an outline for a cookbook chapter, went through a few rounds of that, and got hired. And so that was not too many steps away from deciding that I wanted to write cookbooks, to getting a job that was pretty much full time and writing, you know, working on his books, and I knew, kind of from the outset, I think, because I had started researching and also just loved cookbooks and was really familiar with them that I had started to see a lot of names pop up, in multiple books, and especially working on Genius Recipes, since that is a collection of like other people's recipes. Like you look through a lot of books and you look at the credits. And, you know, I would start to see Melissa Clark's name appearing in places that I had never seen or, even, you know, like Peter Meehan co-authored a few books, and I was like, oh, like, this is a job like I could find a way to like, pay my bills, writing other people's books.

And that was really appealing to me at the time because also it's like, you know, you get to work with someone who's really knowledgeable. Get to do the thing that you love, and then I get to learn and make a great product. So that was always kind of the goal.

And I've been trying to get into restaurant co-authoring for quite a while. I have yet to make that work, but in the meantime, I was able to also write to have my own small cookbook, and that kind of came about because I had been working kind of in publishing with Food52, with Mark Bittman, and was just like really hustling and emailing any editor, agent, whoever who would respond to me, meet with me, let them know what I was looking for and if they needed someone kind of behind the scenes, whether it was like ghostwriting, co-authoring, recipe editing

At that point, I knew because I didn't have like a following of my own, that was probably more the work that was going to come my way than writing my own big cookbooks.

I think you know within the last however many years it's become fairly clear that you need to have quite a following of your own to for a publishing company to take a risk on you 

Alicia: I mean, do you want to have a following of your own? I mean, I think you don't, right?

Emily: Something that i've just come to accept is like Ii have such a fraught relationship with that part of me who would love to be a public figure, and Ithink fame is always—famous is perhaps a strong word, but at least being well known in a smaller professional community, but there's also something really unappealing about it to me and I just—I  don't have the desire to do what it takes to build that and I feel like if it's kind of, for a while everyone was like, ‘Oh, you should have a blog. That's the secret to success now,’ and I was like, ‘I know, but it's a lot of work. It's just not quite what I want to be doing and if I am doing it just because I have to and i resent it, what's the point? It's not going to be engaging. It's not going to be original.’

I don't know, and I am at this kind of crossroads now where it's like i don't want the Instagram following and so like do I need to rethink what I want to do because it has become again in the last like however many years a big part of being a writer and being in publishing? I don't know. I think there's maybe like a ceiling for people who don't have that kind of following and maybe I’ve reached it.

I also just like have such a fraught relationship with social media. Ii've been taking a break from Instagram and Twitter for like the last maybe two months or something and it's been pretty great. I don't want to go back.

Alicia: I can understand this completely because even though I like enjoy social media and always have and, you know, since I was a preteen, have been on LiveJournal and just on the internet and have you been like—I love, I love, I love posting.

I think because for me, I have a lot of social anxiety about actual human interaction, so for me it's always been very nice to have the medium of the internet, and that's always been that way. I’ve been able to express myself kind of more honestly as a person, but now that like my newsletter has been quote unquote successful and I have more followers on Instagram and Twitter, it's so annoying and so toxic for my mental health and I've had to, because, you know—

Before I was pretty much in control of stuff. I didn't have tons of random people in my DMs or tweeting at me and so I just didn't have a fraught relationship with it, but now I’ve had to really control who can respond to me and that sort of thing because it's just so taxing.

Having to try to have boundaries and like, for me, I feel like i don't know is it rude if someone DMs me asking—like, someone I've never talked to before and I post like an Instagram story of a necklace that I'm wearing and they're like where did you get that—I just get a request for like did you get that and like I’m then I'm like is it rude if I just delete this because I don't want to interact with this person and I don't know this person, like the knowledge of where my necklace is from. 

I know so many people in our world, in the food world, who have assistants who deal with that stuff now because it becomes too overwhelming and that sort of thing and I'm like—I don't think i'll ever get to that level to actually pay someone to do that, but at the same time,now I completely understand like why someone has an assistant who filters through their email, because yes, people are really overwhelming.

Emily: Iit's like this tool that started out as something personal and then became professional and none of us really had a say or a choice in that. Maybe I'm sabotaging my whole career by feeling this way, but it's not like outlook or like Slack, even, a work tool that I can turn off at the end of the day. Especially the thing about the algorithm, you know, that it's designed toget you kind of like riled up. I feel like the algorithm, especially on Twitter recently, has really perfected itself that it just like—it was just taking over my life and I just don't want to feel like I have to do it, and that feels important to me enough that I might need to reconsider some some career choices based on that.

But I don't know, it just feels like a necessary boundary at this point.

Alicia: It's totally necessary and it's interesting to watch people who've tried to kind of like balance that. Like I know Korsha Wilson doesn't really go on in on social media unless she has something to say. I respect that so much and I wish I had that boundary for myself and I probably should try to cultivate it.

But it is really interesting to think about how these these platforms can affect one's career when one works in media and what a real effect it has, more than one's talent, frankly, on on what they're able to do.

It’s bad, but your latest cookbook, Pantry to Plate—it which ended up being way more timely than i'm sure you expected. How did that come about? Was that your idea, was that the publisher’s idea? What was the market—what were the forces that made this book come to fruition?

Emily: So both of my books, both published by Chronicle, were kind of a continuation of sort of what I talked about earlier where I, again, because I am not a public figure, kind of coming to writing a little bit more of a different way, and so because I had experience with Mark Bittman and some other projects I had worked on kind of being like a jack-of-all-trades, it was like you know, ‘here's the idea, go with it. Make something good.’ 

So that was sort of my skill and so Chronicle, for some of these smaller books, I think it's more identifying a need in the market, something that is timely and will sell well, and a lot of the ideas come from like editorial meetings and then it's a matter of finding a writer. The first one worked out perfectly because I had been hosting Friendsgiving since I went away to college at 18, so I had a lot to say on that one. This one, kind of similar—they were like we want to write a pantry book and the idea, the thing that will make this one stand out from all of the many, many other pantry books is that the ingredient list is going to be really small and tight and so it'll really be a book that stands alone. Then after some back and forth about what my ideas were and how I would make that work, then we can go to writing. So they came to me with the idea both of them but it was always just the prompt. First one was Friendsgiving; this was pantry book only 50 ingredients, go.

I liked that it was that collaboration, and I do feel like I've been really. I was able to have the connections and they thought of me for these books and also, I don't know, sometimes the market’s really saturated. There's a lot of books sometimes, it's hard to identify what is different and what will sell. I think it's like, publishing companies—it's their job to identify those things, so it was nice they were like, ‘all right, pantry book, we know we're gonna sign it, we know it will sell well, take the idea and run with it.’

Alicia: How did you kind of approach doing this? Is it a reflection of how you cook or was it kind of a more foreign sort of approach?

Emily: I think it was a little bit of a combination. I started because I knew it was a limited number of recipes and only 50 ingredients, so I made this giant spreadsheet of both the pantry ingredients that I like to use and also, because everyone's pantry looks different, but doing some research for a lot of the general servicey kind of stuff out there—all the pantry ingredients you need, you know, stuff that that gets mentioned over and over. It's definitely a very, you know, entry level cookbook, and so I wanted it to be ingredients that hopefully a wide swath of people will like to use and cook with. So anyway, making a spreadsheet with that and trying to figure out which ingredients will go the furthest and in that process, having to cut some stuff that I use all the time and depend very heavily on but wouldn't be able to use in as wide an amount of recipes. For instance, I love vinegar. I cook with vinegar all the time, but trying to get a variety of flavor profiles and dishes and ways of cooking, it seemed like citrus was going to be more versatile, so the acid in the book is citrus not vinegar. That kind of thing.

Once i landed on the list, I only made a few tweaks in the writing process, but once I got to that part, I think it is how I cook once I was able to start working mostly full-time writing cookbooks. I found that I had stopped using recipes when I was looking at them all day. It was kind of the last thing I wanted to do and so pretty much where I've at now and how i'm still cooking is just like, looking at what I've got and figuring out something from that

It was a great way to write because I would just reference this list of 50 ingredients and I was like, okay, I want to make a chickpea soup or something. Here's what I'm working with, what sounds interesting? So that was actually kind of a fun process, and again mostly how I cook in my day to day life.

Alicia: So what do you think makes a cookbook stand out in a very, very crowded market? And also I wanted to ask you like what, for you, what have been the formative cookbooks? Because you've talked about this but I don't think you've named yet what was super important to you.

Emily: Definitely How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. That one. I think I had been a vegetarian and cooking for maybe like three or four years at that point, but it's so helpful and it's so flexible, and I think it really does a good job of teaching you how to be nimble in the kitchen while also just having so many ideas. It’s a really great book to go to and you're like, alright like, you know, I bought this green at the store and I don't know what to do with it—what are some ideas? I have these greens from the farmers’ market that are about to go bad, what can I do with them? And so that's probably like the book that i've used the most

It’s funny. I've always loved cookbooks as items to collect and I think that maybe recently it's become more about the collecting than the using, especially as I am looking at cookbooks and recipes all day. I cook less with them and I'm trying to think if there's any in the last couple years that I really enjoyed or read, and I was just like reading them cover to cover. I think the storytelling and the philosophy and just the way that a person packages their cooking life is very fascinating to me. 

There's a lot of ngreat restaurant cookbooks that I've loved to read but have never cooked from. I remember getting I think it was the Night and Market Cookbook—I just really loved reading that; I felt like I learned a lot. It was a great book to spend time with. My Name Is Ice Cream by Dana Cree— I just loved that book. She made ice cream seem so technical but also appealing, but then I worked on an ice cream book for a little while and I never wanted to make ice cream again, so again, it just sits there as a book that I enjoy and love to reference sometimes.

You're also asking me at a funny time because all of my cookbooks are in boxes right now. So it's not like I can look at them and be like, Oh, yeah, that one. I'm kind of theorizing, like who do I

I know. Unfortunately, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian really stands out as the one formative one that really changed how I cook.

I know I've picked up so much from books. I'm sorry. I'm blanking on any other ones. I'm sure there's more.

Alicia: We worked together with Layla Schlack to try to create an equitable food conference with the Food Writers’ Workshop, which I think was mostly your idea. But right now, it's like, kind of I know, you're sort of like, working tangentially to food media now. But, you know, do you think there's hope for food media to become more equitable, more kind of open? I mean, we talked about how social media platforms and audiences are probably far too important in terms of one success in this industry. So like, do you have hope for food media? Like, what do you want to see change?

Emily: I don't know. I mean, I feel like you're catching me at kind of a, like, pessimistic time. But I mean, I guess like the flip side, right, to social media is that people who are good at it, and who are willing to put in the time and effort, it's a way to create a career outside of the traditional pathways. For me, it's like, I was able to get to where I am. I mean, maybe I could have taken a different route. But all because, you know, I was able to do an unpaid internship at a New York media company. And, you know, I do want to be open to the fact that that is a path for some people. It's not one that I think will work for me, but, I don't know, it's, I feel—it's like how much change can really happen if it's like these giant companies that hold so much power, you know, it's like Conde Nast, and perhaps the New York Times, or maybe like listening to some of the feedback they've been getting, but it just feels like we put so much emphasis on these big institutions and give them so much power. 

And like, I guess one hopeful point is maybe crowdfunding, and I think that there have been like, specifically with my interests, and I like cookbooks, you know, people who have tried to shop around a cookbook. Editors don't bite for whatever reason. And so they just decided to crowdfund it. And I think, you know, the problem with that is that it is just a lot more like time and effort on the writer’s part, but I think, you know, if someone believes that they have a good idea, and you know, and hundreds of other people do, too, that maybe some more kind of interesting, and different books can be put out, kind of like what we were talking about before, even with my book, there are a million pantry books and big companies kind of just often keep doing what works, but I think they do pay attention to crowdfunding as well. I feel I can think of one book off the top of my head, there's probably been more, the Eat Offbeat Cookbook. They're like a catering company in New York that employed refugees. It was like a work program through the

—I can't remember the organization—anyway, they had a super successful crowdfunding campaign. So much so that it got the attention of publishers, and they were able to finish the book.

I guess maybe it's a mind-set shift to  not needing the stamp of approval of a publishing company, either. You know, it's like you'd write, you write your book. And hopefully, if you can get the funding to support your time to get it out, and people will find it. And it's perhaps not the most satisfying answer, but I feel like it's like one bright spot in an industry. I'm otherwise feeling like, I don't know, I'm kind of like holding my breath and waiting to see what happens. 

Alicia: Yeah, no, it's true. And I do think that it's funny because when you ask people what are they optimistic about in food media, the answer usually is something like self-publishing. And that is a big shift, I think.

And I think it's a very interesting shift. And, I mean, it's also kind of a problematic shift. I mean, as a person who has a newsletter that I self-published, like people, there are people and there's been this backlash—I think it's over now—to the idea of newsletters and not having an editor, etc., etc. And it's like, well, this is what I do for a living and have done for a living, but I stopped being able to make a sufficient living at it, doing it in the, you know, traditional manner. And so what am I supposed to just like—what was I supposed to do? Especially independent, right? Especially if your backup plan is usually to just work in food, and cook people food, and then you're in a pandemic. This isn't the time to do that, you know, then it's like—this is kind of a way of getting through that. But yeah, I hope that the respect continues for self publishing. But I also think it's very, yeah, state of corporate food media that people have been like, we have to take this into our own hands, because there's no one who's doing this properly. 

Emily: As someone who has kind of invested in traditional publishing, and I don't know, though, it's—it's a tough time. I think, let's check  in like, a year and see if any of the stages of stocks that have been happening, I feel like that's kind of where I'm at at the moment. 

Alicia: And, you know, for you is cooking a political act?

Emily: I think I, you know, I, I feel like this is an answer that quite a lot of other people have given, but when I really do think about it, I feel perhaps not me at home cooking. I don't think of it as a political act. But I do think like, getting ingredients is and my only personal philosophy has been kind of all over the place on this. I feel like I started off, you know, working at Slow Food and a little bit, as they were trying to shift their mindset to is to how political exactly is cooking and eating, and then, you know, periods where, as a, you know, freelance writer, it's like, my budget was so low, I just felt like I didn't really have the ability to really think through where my ingredients are from, but—and I think it's one thing that I really appreciate that you speak so much about—but I do think that we have to put a lot of thought into where our food comes from, and how we get it, and to the best of all of our abilities in our situation, try to make choices that feel good.

It feels really overwhelming. I feel like there's so many different things to take into account. And it can be hard. But I think when you get on autopilot, and I don't know, just mindlessly buy things from the grocery store, I feel like the chain of effects is so much longer than any of us ever really think about. That is something that I definitely—I am trying, you know, to be much more mindful of. 

Alicia: I think that's so—that's interesting. And I'm excited to see how that manifests for you now that you're in L.A., as opposed to living in New York.

Emily: Everyone’slike, the farmers’ markets are so great. I'm excited to get back into that,that lifestyle. So yeah. 

Alicia: Well, thank you. 

Emily: And obviously there's more to it than that.

Alicia: Awesome.

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When I talked to Mark Byrne for my piece “On Booze,” I was so excited by the free-flowing conversation that I knew I had to do a proper interview. He’s a journalist turned distiller who has co-founded Good Vodka, made from coffee waste. While it hasn’t turned me into a vodka martini person (nothing could rip me away from gin), it is a gorgeously vanilla vodka with a rich mouthfeel that has changed my mind about the spirit. Someone once told me vodka is simply a “feat of engineering.” Good Vodka proves that’s not necessarily true.

We discussed how he made the decision to leave magazines (an easy one, it seems), how corporate booze green- and virtue-washes their real planetary impacts, and how alcohol can become sustainable again. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Mark. Thank you so much for coming on.

Mark: Thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Mark: Yes.

So, I kind of bounced around a little growing up. I was born in Southern California, and then moved to Kenya when I was very young and lived there for several years. And then we moved to Appleton, Wisconsin, which is a paper mill town in northern Wisconsin, in the early ‘90s. And then in the late ‘90s, moved back to Africa, this time to Zimbabwe for a year. And then back to Appleton. And then Appleton is where I graduated from high school, and then I never went back.

Alicia: Oh, ok. [Laughs.]

And what kind of food was present during those times bouncing around? Did you get a good sense of the kinds of differences and cuisines from those different places?

Mark: Yeah, definitely.

I mean, in Kenya, obviously the food was very regionally specific there. For I think about a year, we lived in a little village called Igunga, which is in the western part of the country, near Lake Victoria. And that was a very rural, very, very rural village. And so, that was kind of traditional Luhya food. I don't know. I just struggle to describe it in any way other than kind of maize-based staple dishes. And so, that was what we had over there. 

When I moved to Appleton, obviously, that was a very different type of cuisine. [Laughs.] Culture shocky. So, Appleton—there's a lot of malls and fast food and stuff like that. But my dad had actually been a chef when he was younger. He'd been the head chef of a restaurant in St. Louis, and he was a very confident, competent cook. I've never seen him open a recipe book in his life. He was the main cook in our household. I would say it was pretty traditional fare. I mean, he liked French food a lot. He was a Francophile. And, so I'd say on good nights we'd have a filet mignon with a couple of side dishes. And he was really into trimming the meat himself. 

And then around, when I was 12 or 13, my dad started working out of town. So, he'd fly out every Monday and fly back on Fridays. And my mother did not cook at all. In fact, I've never even seen her in the kitchen. So at that point, it became my mom would leave money on the counter and we'd order pizza. 

And then when I was 15, I got a job in a restaurant, kind of like a high-end, white tablecloth place. And I pretty much just every night, I just had a family meal there. And that's where I got most of my sustenance through the end of high school.

Alicia: Did you like cooking? Do you still cook?

Mark: I love cooking. Yeah, I'm the primary cook in my household now. Yeah, I love cooking. Absolutely.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Awesome. 

And you started your career in magazines. Why did you want to work in magazines, to begin with?

Mark: Uh. God, I don't know. I mean, that's such a complicated question. 

I'm gonna answer this in a way that I feel like is really cliched and apologize in advance for that. I've always been good at it. All my teachers had always been like, ‘You’re really good at writing.’ And I was kind of a really bad student in every other aspect. And so, that was kind of the thing that I latched on to and was like, ‘There's a pathway here,’ that seemed like one that I could excel at. And what I really liked about it was it was a portfolio-based pathway, where if I could present, if I could do a good job on a writing assignment, if I could publish something, then it kind of made up for lacking the other credentials around academics. 

And so, I kind of just took that path. I thought, ‘Ok, I'm gonna publish a lot. I'm going to be a real self-starter and pitch a ton in college and have a real clip book by the time I’ve graduated. And then, that will kind of make up for the fact that I'm just an astoundingly subpar student.’

Alicia: [Laughs.]

And did that work out? Is that how you got into your first jobs? 

Mark: Yeah, it did.

I got my first internship in Chicago, at Chicago Magazine. That was a fact-checking internship. And at that point, I had been working on the school newspaper, I was at Columbia College in Chicago. It's an art school. And I got an internship at Chicago Magazine that I wrote while I was there. I pitched a bunch of different sections and wrote for it. 

And after college, I applied to New York Magazine, having never been to New York. I'd been to New York at that point for like a week. But I definitely did not know New York from Chicago, from Appleton. None of it made any sense to me. But I used my cousin's address on my résumé to imply that I already lived there, which I did not. And I had a pretty good clip book at that point. I've been writing for a lot of small publications around Chicago, and probably five or six different magazines and zines. And coupled with the, what I would say, the minor lie that I already lived in New York, I got an internship at New York Magazine, which at that point was a full-time, minimum wage position, but full-time. 

I had to figure out how to move to New York. I moved to New York in like four days. I found an apartment on Craigslist, went back to St. Louis, where my family was at that point, and then drove back and basically moved into the first apartment I saw, which was this terrible loft in South Williamsburg. 

And then I started in New York, and I wrote for every section while I was there. I made myself kind of indispensable in that internship, and they kept me on afterwards. I'm good at being annoying until I get something published. 

Alicia: And then, yeah, what were you writing? What kind of stuff were you focused on writing?

Mark: I was kind of just doing everything. 

I mean, at that point in my career, I was like, 22, 23. I worked a lot with the books editor, Boris. And so, I was doing a lot of book, kind of collating reviews and figuring out what we would pass along to Sam Anderson, who was the critic at the time and kind of made myself in charge of the book galley room. I ended up editing this little section called Agenda, which was at that time-I think it's changed a lot since then-but at the time, it was five or six things that you could do in the upcoming week.

I did a thing called the Recession Index, which was a cool little-so, this was obviously 2008, and the economy had just tanked. And so, we started putting together a little-an index of, a documented data sets from the recession. So how many Lehman Brothers bankers had been fired that week, or things like that. They were kind of quirky. I'm struggling to think of a good example. How much Brooks Brothers stock was down. That kind of stuff. 

So I was doing that, and I was doing the book stuff and I was doing Agenda. And I was writing little culturally, things. I don't know. I mean, I was 22. So, I was writing basically anything that I could.

Crucially, I was also doing a lot of Party Lines reporting for Jada [Yuan], who was that time, at that point, kind of the queen of Party Lines. And that was great, because that meant I would get sent to some ridiculous celeb party, where I wouldn't have to buy myself dinner because it'd be passed hors d'oeuvres. So, that was a real like, act of kindness. And then, all I had to do was kind of find a couple celebrities and ask them questions. Unfortunately, that's the thing of my job that I was the worst at.

Alicia: Really? 

Mark: Oh, yeah. I'm incredibly shy about—I don't like to approach people at parties. It's not what I do. So, I ended up doing-kind of side kicking it with other reporters. But for the most part, I was just there for the hors d'oeuvres, to be honest.

Alicia: Right.

How long were you there? ’Cause I started there at the end of 2009.

Mark: I left in the beginning of 2009. So the middle of 2008 to around, I guess, mid-2009.

Alicia: Well, how was it that you decided to leave the magazine industry? And are you completely out of it now, or is it— [Laughs.]

Mark: I would say, I'm pretty pretty much out of it. 

So from New York Mag, I went to—I ended up going to grad school at NYU. In retrospect, I have no idea why I did this. It seemed like an opportunity to write a thesis and do another thing that I could then pitch into a portfolio. So, I was writing a thesis about the independent publishing industry, which I was really interested in at that point. And that was kind of I thought of it as an opportunity to just kind of write a book proposal, basically. I was really interested in how indie publishers were innovating against the big houses, which is still kind of a fascination of mine, just like in alcohol. 

And I was there for three semesters. And then, I was also working at Esquire. I'd gotten a job as a fact-checker at Esquire. So, I was doing that on a regular basis, too. And then I'd also was—had started working at this distillery, Kings County Distillery, which was where David Haskell, who's now the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine, had started this distillery and asked me to be their first employee. Which is another kind of great kindness of his, just teach me how to make whiskey. 

So, I was doing a lot. And this was 2010. And then, at the end of 2010, my dad died suddenly and I didn't finish grad school. I was one credit shy of it. I had to stop going to classes, ’cause I was kind of grief-struck. Like two weeks later, I got a job offer from GQ. And that was just kind of just very, very shocking to me, but also amazing. I quit grad school; I quit Esquire. And then I sort of wound down my time at Kings County Distillery and started doing—started working at GQ, and I kind of dove into that headfirst and was there for five years. 

And the reason I would say I left magazines is, I started to see a pathway around alcohol was opening up for me. It seemed like something that was worth pursuing. And at the same time, I started to kind of look down the line a little bit at what my magazine career might look like. It was looking to me there were maybe a handful of jobs that would be available in magazines in 10, 15 years. Perhaps this was imposter syndrome, or a lack of confidence or whatever. But I didn't see myself as one of the people that would have those jobs. I saw a couple of people I was working with, I was like, ‘These people will be the three remaining editors-in-chief in this industry.’ And I was like, ‘I'm gonna be fighting for senior editor scraps into my 40s and 50s, and still not going to have a retirement.’

At the same time, I'd started to do this consulting work around liquor. I've been writing about liquor for a long time. I knew how to distill, and the consulting work was a lot more interesting to me. So, I basically started thinking of it as basically writing display copy, coming up with a name for liquor brand, or, excuse me, writing a label copy for it. Coming up with brand voice stuff is really just writing a really good caption or a really good headline or a really good deck. And that's stuff that I've always been really good at. I'm really good at writing in brief. 

And so I started doing that for liquor brands. I realized it was an entire kind of niche industry there. And so I did that for about a year or so, to just kind of give myself the confidence that it was something I could actually do. And then I left GQ. At the same time, I knew in the back of my head, I was working on this vodka project—which I think we'll talk about—I was aware that I needed to focus more energy on that, more energy than I would be able to had I continued to have that full-time 10 to 7 job.

Alicia: Right, right. 

And working at Kings County Distillery, was that your real entry point into the spirits world or did you have any interest in it before that?

Mark: Yeah, that was my entry point. 

I mean, I had an interest in it, so far I'd like to drink and talk about drinking. At that point, I guess I had a liberal arts student interest in craft beer. [Laughs.] I was like, ‘Oh, cool, this IPA, whatever.’ 

But yeah, at that point, again, I was like 23 when I started at Kings County Distillery. And I very quickly was like, ‘This is fascinating.’ And that distillery was interesting, in particular, because it was the first licensed distillery in New York City since Prohibition. And David and Colin, who started it, were pretty much self-taught distillers. And so that meant, we had a little library there on one of the shelves in the distillery. And basically everything that we knew about making alcohol came from that library. It didn't come from apprenticeships or preconceived notions about how you should make liquor. It was us reading books on the chemistry of distillation, and trial and erroring our way around recipes. 

So, that was a really deep end kind of—jumping into the deep end way of learning about alcohol. There's nothing surface level about it. So by the time I ended that, I felt like I had a really clear understanding of not just how our bourbon was made, but how alcohol in general was made. And I took that with me to GQ and started writing about alcohol. And I’d say that experience really informed how I wrote about alcohol, because at that point I was really interested then in where grain was sourced and how it was sourced and how craft brands were innovating in ways that the big brands weren't. And that that obsession kind of led to just kind of how I wrote about it.

Alicia: How did your understanding of the big brands versus the smaller brands, how did you get there, too? Was there a moment where you were—you realized that there was a huge difference in these ways of doing things, and that maybe one way was a little bit more destructive rather than constructive? How did you bring that to writing about it, and how did you bring that to working in the industry?

Mark: Yeah, that's a good question. 

I guess the first thing that kind of tipped me off was the way that people would ask about liquor on tours. We would do these little tours over at our distillery. And it became really clear to me that there were all these preconceived ideas about what bourbon was and what it had to be and what it had to taste like that were not—that didn't occur naturally. They happened as a result of decades-long misinformation campaigns, where a lot of the big distilleries in Kentucky wanted you to believe that bourbon could not be made outside of Kentucky, even though that had never been true. 

And that kind of stuff, every tour, there was somebody that would ask about that, ‘How can this be bourbon if it's not made in Kentucky?’ And then there was also—they would taste it and they'd be like, ‘This doesn't taste like bourbon.’ And I'd be like, ‘Well, I mean, what do you—if you think that bourbon tastes like Maker's Mark, that's not true, right? There's something messed up there about how we're putting flavor profiles into the world.’

And a lot of it is because a lot of these distilleries basically share resources to the extent that a lot of their product is made in the same distilleries from the same grain and very, very, very similar mash bills. So, people would kind of come in there with this idea that if it didn't taste like Maker's Mark and Knob Creek, which are functionally identical, then it wasn't—then they were like, ‘Well, why does it taste wrong?’

And that was something that I just kind of mentally went to war with that. What is this idea that we have that something has to taste this way? Bourbon is just something that is made in America made from 51 percent corn and put in a barrel for at least a day. That's all that it is. And it can taste like so many different things. I really wanted to dive into where those misconceptions come from and how we can challenge them. So it was less about at that point the-specifically about the sourcing, and more for me about like, ‘What can we do to challenge the notions of what bourbon is and what alcohol is in general?’

Alicia: And I think that this is such an interesting thing, because then—we've talked about this before when I wrote “On Booze”. But the idea that brands really own the flavor, and they own the categories. And so many times people don't ask for a spirit, they ask for a brand. And I think that this happens across the spectrum in food, especially in the United States, where people really connect food products to brand products and that they won't think of maybe mayonnaise as something you could make with eggs and olive oil, but as Hellman's in a jar. Or chocolate isn't a pod of cacao, it's a Hershey bar.

But I think that it's less questioned, of course in alcohol. And I guess it was Prohibition, maybe you can talk more about that. But how this kind of understanding of where alcohol comes from was totally cut off. I mean, yeah, what do you think is the cause of this that—I mean, obviously, it's money, that the brands have money. There's this real disconnect between the origins and everything. And that's why there's brands, like Tito's Vodka can say that they're handcrafted, or they're—People make a big deal about a spirit being gluten free, and it's like, ‘Well, of course, there's no gluten in it.’

How is this misinformation so powerful in alcohol?

Mark: I think conglomerization is a big part of it. It's that conglomerization demands things to be kind of, processes to be combined. The entire reason that companies like Diageo and Beam Suntory and Brown–Forman, the entire reason they're so profitable is because they share so many resources across brands, and to some extent, it doesn't even make sense to talk about those brands as distinct things other than labels. It's that they're creating all this stuff in the same places, and then it goes to a bottling line and at the bottling line they kind of decide, ‘Which of these spirits is it going to be?’ 

That's kind of what happens in product generation, too, new products development is they have—the liquid is the last thing that they think about. What they first think about is, ‘What's the name going to be? And what's the path gonna look like, and how is that going to appeal to the demographic that we want?’ Because the liquid inside is the easiest part. It's already done. They're not interested in changing that, because it would be so disruptive to their efficiency to do that. 

These are companies that have these gigantic industrialized supply chains, one big farm feeding one big wholesaler feeding one big distillery, which is basically like a big ethanol plant. And then that's churning out neutral grain spirits, like 95 percent alcohol, basically pure, into a series of little, but also still big distilleries that are then putting it into barrels. It would be so disruptive to their bottom line to have to break out the different pieces of that into interesting parts. 

To say, ‘Okay, we're going to source at this one little farm that's making a really amazing batch of something this year,’ just getting like the logistics involved in that. The trucks to move that stuff from the farm to their processing facility is way more expensive than they would ever—then they would ever agree to. It's really they've built up these efficiencies. These efficiencies compound on one another, until you basically have something that if you want to start a new spirit at a big house, the question is not, ‘Where will the spirit come from?’ The question is, ‘Which of our pre-existing spirits are you going to put into a new bottle?’

Alicia: Right.

And how has the craft movement in spirits pushed back against this, and how are—do you think it's being successful in this, or is it being successful maybe only in tiny pockets where people really have access to these things?

Mark: Honestly, the latter. The latter, that’s the approach.

Yeah, yes, absolutely. That is a part of it. Has it been successful? I think it is in the process of being successful. And I think that you're seeing the big houses kind of realigning against these new expectations for the kind of numbers that craft brands could, can do. And to them, that means—and then, forgive my cynicism as I recount this, but to them it means purchasing a craft brand and incorporating it into their pre-existing supply chain. 

So if they see a small bourbon brand doing something interesting, they’re not interested in the liquid inside of it. They're interested in the label and people's relationship to that label. The way that it's changing the industry—and again, I understand that this is kind of a cynical way to view this—is that they're seeing that they have to talk about their spirits differently, because they're seeing that those craft labels are having an impact. They're not looking at that, though, and saying, ‘We need to make our spirits differently,’ because that is off the table. That's not a thing that they're going to do. 

So, I think that a lot of them see these craft brands that come up and say, ‘We use estate-grown corn.’ Or talking a little bit more about their mash bills, and what they'll say is, ‘Oh, that's interesting. That's ok. We can do that too. We can have some buzzwords about our harvest or whatever on the label.’ 

And if you pay attention to the way that some of these bigger brands—I'm not going to say which ones, but if you pay attention to the way their labels have changed in the last five years, you will see this influx of dialogue around sourcing. And it's almost always just vague to the point of nonsense. ‘The best rye fields in Poland,’ or whatever. They—

Alicia: Oh, I know what brand it is. [Laughs.]

Mark: Yeah. That was not as coy as I thought it would be. I would say that they're changing the industry in that way, although it is a label-deep change for the most part.

Alicia: No, and it's so obnoxious because it's such an obfuscation of the issues. 

There's so much virtue-washing, I think, in alcohol as opposed to other food aspects. When we're talking about food, it could be really difficult to feed someone like Oscar Meyer hot dogs or something and tell them it's like, ‘We're doing something good.’ But Bacardi—I mean, whatever. I'll say what brand because I don't work in the industry. But they'll pay someone money to support a festival or something that's about diversity in the industry, or education around the history of Black work in the industry or brown work in the industry. And then, where does their molasses come from? It's on another level in the alcohol industry with all this money. And it's just really upsetting constantly to see, because people don't really listen and people don't really have a consciousness about it. And also, that access point is really difficult. 

So with Good Vodka, which you've launched last year, how are you thinking about how to bring your product to more people, to not just have it at Duke's Liquor Box in Greenpoint? [Laughter.]

Mark: We are in more liquor stores than that now. We have expanded a bit, and I do want to expand a bit.

I see Good Vodka as a platform. I don't see it as a brand. I see it as an opportunity to rethink the way that not just how coffee fruit is processed and discarded, but also how alcohol can be made. And it's important to me that the vodka’s the proof-case in this. The vodka is how I say, ‘Here's what we can do with this.’ I'm not ashamed to say my sights are set on anything that has a neutral spirit base. I want to prove that we can make a number of different products from coffee fruit. That's what's interesting to me about it, not just—we're not just one product. That's something I'm working on. 

The reason this is so complicated is because it involves the supply chain that is—it’s new. It's novel. It's never been done before. There was no movement of the coffee fruit wastewater from point A to point B before we started doing it, and there would—it actually had never been imported to the United States before. So cascara is having a little bit of a moment, and there is now some importing of dried cascara. But what we use is a fresh, ripe fruit concentrate because that's where the sugars live. That's where there's the most sugar. And that's just every step that we grow is a new—it involves more logistical work just to get it from, again, from point A to point B. 

So that said, I've got a scalable model in place with the Colombian Coffee Federation. I'm seeing how the vodka does. I'm seeing how people respond to it. And then hopefully, later this year, we're going to launch our second product and—

Alicia: Ooh.

Mark: Yeah.

And that will be very exciting as well.

Alicia: Nice. 

Well, to step back, how did Good Vodka come to be?

Mark: I was doing some consulting work around liquor, as I mentioned. And I had become kind of disillusioned by some of the projects that I was working on, continued to work on for several years after that. [Laughter.] It was this time where the—like I said, the big clients, the big brands, were changing their label copy or coming up with new products that, again, they wanted to present as millennial-appealing. The way that they wanted to do that was by talking more about their sourcing and using this craft language, and in some cases also talking about sustainability.

But it was really frustrating to me because again, I would ask, ‘What is interesting about the liquid? What are the ‘product truths’ that we can put in a label copy?’ And the answer to that would be, ‘TK’ [magazine speak for, “to come”], right? They don't have them yet, because the product truths are the least important part. To them, again, it's ‘We're gonna take this label, we're gonna put it in front of some focus groups. And then if it does well, we're going to launch it into the market at a price point that we feel like there's an opportunity to carve market share out of.’ And that process precludes interesting spirits. It doesn't give an opportunity to really innovate there. 

And so, I was doing these projects where all I wanted was one to be like, ‘Here is an interesting liquid. We started at square one, accomplished some interesting s**t here, and we just need you to describe it.’ What I realized was that was actually—they would never give me that assignment, because that would be so easy. It's incredibly easy to sell a product that has an interesting liquid inside of it, but that's not what exists on the market. What you're selling is a vibe or a mentality or an emotion or a time to celebrate, or something. You're selling a captain character with his leg on the barrel, or like a sea creature. That's why they have these fanciful names and made-up backstories. Think about all these bourbons that have someone's name on the front. That name is not associated with the product. You can't trace back a history of Captain Morgan to how rum is made. 

So, I was doing that. And I was starting to feel someone needs to make a spirit from square one, where what's interesting about it is built into how we make it, not just—not the other way around, not, ‘We have this liquid and now we need five ways to describe it that are good.’ But what if the way we sourced it was already good?

And at the same time, my business partner, Tristan, was starting to play around with coffee fruit. He had gone to visit a coffee farm in Guatemala. He had seen this pile of fruit in the corner and become kind of fascinated—Tristan had worked at Kings County Distillery with me—he'd become kind of fascinated with the opportunity to distill it and play around with that. At that point, he was at Booker and Dax bar at that point, a very experimental cocktail bar in the Momofuku empire. And he kind of for a couple of years after that kind of kept this fruit in mind and thought about the opportunities there.

Then, we linked up. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is the opportunity to do the thing that I want with the thing that he wants,’ and kind of combine these ambitions and use the coffee fruit to build a spirit from the ground up that can speak to these things that people actually want in the spirit, which is transparency, traceability, eco-consciousness, and, at the end of the day, deliciousness.

Alicia: And how did you bring that to market? What would have been the challenges and the—-just the necessities of making a spirit like this and bringing it to market? 

Mark: Yeah, I mean, it took six years, so there were a lot of them.

First of all, we had to figure out what we were—where we were gonna process the fruit and how we were going to process the fruit. And then once we got down there, we also had to think about what piece of the fruit we we're going to process. So if you think about the piece of coffee fruit, there's the cascara, which is the shell, the husk around the fruit. And then there's a layer of pulp, which is kind of a mushy, sticky, pulpy stuff. And then there's the parchment, which is a kind of a paper around the bean. And then there's the bean. 

And like I said, around that time—so this is like 2015, early 2015—there's a little bit more of an economy growing around cascara as a tea, which is something that was actually—something that was occurring in East Africa for a while, traditionally, but hadn't really taken place much in Latin America at all and certainly not in America. 

And so we started looking at that cascara tea, this dried tea substance, but we realized that—two things. First of all, that we weren't getting as much sugar out of it because it had been dried and just wasn't retaining the sugar in a way that was efficient to distill. 

And two, that there were new economies kind of being built up around this that were subverting its byproduct nature, were becoming profitable to grow a coffee fruit specifically for the purpose of drying and selling the cascara. And I was looking at that, and—especially as Starbucks and Blue Bottle were kind of looking at that too. And to me, that was not a byproduct. That was a product-product. If you're gonna install tens of thousands of dollars of equipment on a coffee co-op to dry cascara and you're going to pick it for its ripeness, specifically for a kind of cascara flavor profile, to me that seemed a little bit like not what I was interested in. 

But at the same time, we started looking at the coffee wastewater. And the wastewater was really fascinating, because it was basically in certain types of coffee processing, semi-wet processing, they were washing the beans, washing the pulp off of the beans and ending up with this liquid that had a lot of suspended pulp in it. And in that pulp, sugar. And we realized that if we could take that wastewater and concentrate it, we could make a syrup. Kind of like an eco-conscious molasses. And that's where we started focusing then. 

So everything that I've described to you in the last two minutes was six years of work, but it was like—but each of those steps along the way took a year. And then eventually we got to this wastewater. We did a lot of tests on it. We shipped a hobby still down to an AirBnB in Colombia in Santa Marta and spent a month down there just distilling coffee fruit. 

And eventually we had a product that tasted kind of interesting, too. It was a brandy at that point, so it was one step before a vodka. And we tasted it. We thought, ‘This is delicious. It can only get more delicious. If we distill it one more time, it’s just going to be just incredibly pure but still have some interesting notes to it.’ And at that point then, we started working with the Colombian Coffee Federation to build out a logistics network with us to work with their pre-existing network of co-ops and farmers to source the wastewater. 

And the other thing I'll add to that is that this wastewater stuff can't be used as fertilizer. That was important to us, too. It's too wet, and it just ends up creating methane emissions. So, when we were looking at the cascara, one of the farmers down in Colombia said to us, ‘You can take this stuff, but basically, then an organic farmer is gonna have to go out and buy a new fertilizer source.’ And it became equally important to us to not disrupt that already good reuse chain. So, the wastewater was really interesting for that reason.

Farmers in Colombia also get fined if they don't dispose of it properly, but it's expensive to dispose of it properly. So, a lot of them were just eating that fine. So for all of these reasons, we started working on this wastewater material. And the Coffee Federation helped facilitate that.

Alicia: Awesome. Yeah. 

And how has the response been from consumers? I know you launched at an odd time when it's not like it's gonna be in cocktails and that sort of thing. But how has that been?

Mark: Yeah.

So, I kind of imagined it as being a well spirit. I wanted it to be in cocktail bars. I wanted it to go in cocktails. That's where our network was strongest. But for obvious reasons, a lot of cocktail bars aren't really operating full capacity right now, and many of them are closed down in general. So, we put it in a few bars just to kind of seed it out there and see how it got used and see how people liked it. I thought we'd sell a case a month for the first year. 

But what actually ended up happening was a lot of liquor stores reached out to us and asked if they could bring it in. And that's been really fascinating to watch. I did not imagine the spirit would have a life in liquor stores that it does. I struggled to imagine people trying a new vodka when they go to the wine shop. 

But I think it does a good job of kind of selling itself on the bottle. And I think that the same reason that we imagined bartenders would like it, liquor stores like it too. Because it's something interesting to recommend. There's an interesting story to it. There's an interesting thing about it, for the same reason that it was easy to write the copy on the front of it because it's not hard to tell that story. I think shop owners like to be like, ‘Here's a bunch of things about it,’ that aren't just ‘It's gluten free’ or ‘It's handmade in Texas.’

Alicia: And like you said before, that you want Good Vodka to be a platform. Does that mean you want it to be something that kind of teaches people where alcohol comes from and that it could be made from waste?

Mark: Yeah.

Well, when I said platform, I mean I want a lot of different alcohols to be made—I would love to sell neutral alcohol made of coffee fruit to somebody that was thinking about buying corn ethanol from a gigantic industrial ethanol plant. I would love over the next few years, as people imagine what their new, ready to drink spirits could be, if they went a step beyond thinking that it has to begin with neutral grain spirits from Kentucky or Indiana. 

I, at the same time, to your point, I believe that simply telling people more about their liquid challenges the bigger brands to do that as well. And so, as I've watched that happen, as I’ve watched the language change a little bit in the way the big alcohol companies conceive of their labels, what I see is them kind of getting challenged by the little brands to disclose a little bit more. 

And I think that they're doing it kind of weakly, but at the same time I think that that challenge we made. I think that we can say, ‘Here's the harvest season. Here is the specific region. Why don't you put a harvest season on a bottle?’ It's mystifying to me why more brands don’t do that. It's the thing you said, the coffee always comes from somewhere. The grain always comes from somewhere and it always came from some time, too. I've never wanted to overlook that about alcohol.

Alicia: Right. 

And yeah, it's interesting because I was talking to Helena from Haus. Did you guys collaborate on the ‘Know Your Alcohol’ website? 

Mark: Mm-hmm.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And we were talking about how she was able to kind of sell directly to consumer with the-their apéritifs and that sort of thing. And her whole thing is about accessibility in that way. But with ‘Know Your Alcohol,’ how did you decide on the most important things to say to the consumer? I mean, you said your thing was brevity in writing as well. How did you kind of figure out how to communicate with people?

Mark: I thought a lot about those tours that I used to give at Kings County Distillery, and what were the things that people asked that I wanted them to know going in. What were the things that sort of stopped the tour and had to be explained?

The fact that people don't know that—I hate to keep ragging on these two, but they are such a good example. The fact that people don't know that Maker's Mark and Knob Creek come from the same manufacturer. That's such a crucial point of how you look at the liquor store shelf, that you have to understand that 99 percent of these spirits are made by ten distillers. And that those distillers make them for pennies on the dollar. 

And not to get too specific about this, but most vodka brands, those big market vodka brands cost their producers about 75 cents to make, including everything, including the grain, including the distillation, including the bottle. And then, that's their entire cost of goods. So these are incredibly profitable. Their profit margins are something like 75 percent. They've been really, really successful for these companies. And it's really, really hard to compete with that as a craft brand. You can't get your cost of goods to 75 cents, unless you're buying 10 million bottles at a time. So, that makes them more expensive. That means that if you're going to have sort of a craft brand and you want to break even, you have to sell it for a little more, then that puts you out of this kind of this purchasable tier for a lot of people. 

I think that kind of thing is really important to me that people know why some of those brands are able to be so cheap, and why other brands need to be a little bit more expensive. At the same time, we sell Good Vodka pretty cheaply considering how it's made, and I'd say pretty much break even because I didn't want it to be a luxury spirit. I don't see any interest in making another Tesla when there's no Prius on the market. It's not interesting to me to have something that people have to conspicuously spend in order to do the right thing. I wanted it to be the exact same ‘consumer decision’ to buy the eco-conscious brand as it is to buy the regular brand.

Alicia: Right.

And I mean, you’d mentioned that you're living in New Paltz and you're the primary cook in your house. How do these ideas manifest in your everyday living? I feel like that's always the question people have for me. Especially living in New Paltz, I'm assuming you have some really good produce.

Mark: There's a really good co-op up here. One of the reasons we moved up here, my wife and I, was because it was a really amazing co-op in New Paltz.

I really like being near farms. I love being able to know where things come from. When I do eat meat, I prefer it to be traceable. I'm not gonna say that I'm any sort of vegetarian. I’m not, and I would like to be more of one. I do try to be intentional about how I choose meat products in particular. And it's important to me to kind of know where they came from and know that it's not a gigantic factory farm. 

And how does it manifest in my life? Oh, God, I don't know. Probably not in as many ways as it should. I don't know. I guess I don't want to make it seem I moved up here as a live off the grid kind of thing. I realize that when I talk about spirits I make myself out to sound like I'm waging war against the consumerists and all of that, but, and in a lot of ways, I fail those tests, too. 

I like having a little bit of space between me and my neighbors. I like New York, but I never really felt like that was a hometown. I don't actually feel I have any hometown. I never felt that way about Appleton. I didn't feel that way about Kenya or Zimbabwe. I didn't feel that way about L.A. I kind of feel comfortable anywhere, to be perfectly honest. I like traveling. And I like kind of parachuting in somewhere and making a home there.

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is drinking a political act?

Mark: Making alcohol certainly is a political act. Drinking, insofar as I try to be intentional about the choices that I make, and in that intentionality I think there is a kind of rebellion, then yeah, a little bit.

But to me, it's making alcohol, I think, because it is so much the—not the path of least resistance, because we've chosen to do it the hard way, is absolutely political to make those choices. It is hard every day to not just buy neutral grain spirit from the same place that all the distillers, that all the big distilleries do. It's challenging, and it's challenging to tell that story.

But at the same time, yeah, I think this is something that I think is important. And to take this full circle a little bit, I feel part of what growing up a little bit, just spending time in Africa as a kid did to me was it kind of made it so that I didn't see the self-pathology of America that I think is hammered into a lot of kids. And I have a great deal of skepticism about how—about America in general, and about how our, the things that we consume, are made and sourced. And a lot of that comes from having kind of moved to Appleton as an outsider with having come from a very rural village in Kenya. 

I don't know. I don't take for granted that we should be able to buy cheap alcohol from gigantic conglomerates. To put it how you do, it always comes from somewhere, right? That's kind of my mentality as well.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time.

Mark: Thank you. Thank you as well. 

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