From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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.

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.

Alicia talks to food scientist Cheryl Mitchell, who developed Rice Dream and the Elmhurst Milked line of nut, grain, and seed milks. They discuss how she came to focus on vegan milks, the HydroRelease process she created, and why we need to diversify protein sources in order to keep feeding the human population.

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel

Alicia talks to Soleil Ho, food writer, host of B***h Media’s Popaganda podcast, and co-host of the Racist Sandwich Podcast. She’s co-authored a graphic novel about the professional and romantic life of a young chef with artist Blue Delliquanti called Meal: Adventures in Entomophagy—that’s eating insects, a field Soleil has become an expert in. They talk about the book, the tech industry’s obsession with cricket flour, and what it all means for vegans and vegetarians.

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel

Alicia talks to Chitra Agrawal — maker of the Brooklyn Delhi line of condiments, and author of the cookbook Vibrant India — about her lifelong vegetarianism, the word “curry,” and her punk rock youth in New Jersey.

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel

It’s not easy to make being vegan both funny and incisive, but that’s what writer Gabriella Paiella does both on Twitter and in her writing for The Cut. Alicia and Gabby discuss Tevas, bad jokes about vegans, and the relationship between veganism and body image.

Alicia talks to photographer Theo Samuels, who is a vegan, and writer Shanika Hillocks, who isn’t. They discuss the balance they’ve struck, including staying open to new foods while traveling and navigating a shared kitchen.

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel

Alicia Kennedy talks to the host of The Hangover Show, Cara Nicoletti, about her family butcher shop in Boston, what inspired her to cut down on meant, and why people should stop calling female butchers "badass."

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel

Alicia talks to Charlotte Shane, culture writer, publisher of Tigerbee Press, and author of the book Prostitute Laundry. Charlotte’s been vegan for 18 years, but doesn’t often discuss it. They talk about her anti-oatmeal stance, NYU’s recent conference on animals and the left, and whether WeWork’s new reducetarian policy could be good for the vegan movement.

Written and presented by Alicia Kennedy
Produced by Sareen Patel