Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle – Details, episodes & analysis

This week on The Leftovers, never-before-heard audio from Alice Waters, award winning chef, creator of the iconic 54-year-old restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley California, food activist and author of the new cookbook, “A School Lunch Revolution.” 

In this week’s lightning round, Alice talks about a memorable school lunch from her own childhood, her signature holiday dish, and her favorite comfort food, as someone who eats extremely healthfully, local and organic.  

Listen to the full episode of Your Last Meal with Alice Waters here!

Become a Cascade PBS member and support public media!  

Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle.
Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) biweekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings.
Follow along on Instagram.
Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame. 

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

Alice Waters opened her iconic Berkeley, California restaurant Chez Panisse 54 years ago, introducing the concept of farm-to-table eating to Americans and only serving local, seasonal produce at peak ripeness. She’s also a food activist, and through The Edible Schoolyard Project, has spent the past 30 years showing schools how to integrate locally farmed, organic produce into their cafeterias. 

On today’s episode, Alice shares two life-changing experiences that inspired her to open her restaurant; what diners thought about being served two figs for dessert in Chez Panisse’s early days; how schools can afford to serve kids farm fresh food; and what she packed in her own daughter’s lunchbox. And we take a peak inside her her new cookbook, A School Lunch Revolution. 

Then the Director of Nutrition Services for California’s Sweet Water Union High School district joins the show to talk about how he flipped the district’s lunch program on its head, buying more than half of the food from local farmers and producers or having the students grow it themselves.  

• Become a Cascade PBS member and support public media!
• Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle. 
• Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) biweekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings.
• Follow along on Instagram. 
• Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame. 

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Yes, food TV host Tilly Ramsay is the daughter of famed chef and TV host Gordan Ramsay, but she is working hard to pave her own way! Tilly recently graduated from culinary school, which she paid for herself, thank you very much, and she tells me about her fateful first day of school, where she was faced with eating her three least favorite foods.  

Host Rachel Belle asks Tilly the elephant-in-the-room question: Does her dad shout at his family like he shouts at TV contestants? And Tilly explains why a classic Sunday roast is so special to the people of England.  

If you want to be a chef, do you need to go to culinary school? I chat with two chefs, a sister and brother – one who went to culinary school and one who didn’t – about the pros and cons. And they share a bit about their creative takes on Navajo cooking.  

Tilly’s new Prime Video cooking show is called Dish It Out.  

As Heard on the Episode:

Listen to the Gavin Rossdale episode to learn more about the history and culture of the British roast!

• Get tickets to Food Fight x America's Test Kitchen in Seattle November 8!
• Become a Cascade PBS member and support public media!
• Watch Rachel’s Cascade PBS TV show The Nosh with Rachel Belle!
• Sign up for Rachel’s (free!) biweekly Cascade PBS newsletter for more food musings!
• Follow along on Instagram!
• Order Rachel’s cookbook Open Sesame

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to the very first Your Last Meal Thanksgiving! We’re having a big Friendsgiving audio potluck, inviting past guests to contribute a dish to the holiday meal. Country music star Martina McBride is bringing the salad, actor Zosia Mamet defends marshmallow sweet potato casserole and opines on cranberry sauce, director Greta Gerwig shares her dad’s unusual stuffing recipe and Christopher Kimball is on pie duty.  

There are also some new friends at the table. Food historian Ken Albala stops by to explain why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, and comedian and musician Reggie Watts shares what his childhood Thanksgiving table looked like with a French mother.   

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lessons in Chemistry, an Apple TV+ show based on the bestselling book of the same name, is set in the early 1950s and centers around a young woman named Elizabeth Zott, played by Brie Larson. Elizabeth is a chemist and her entire life is consumed by her scientific curiosities. The only thing Elizabeth loves as much as chemistry is cooking because, well, cooking is chemistry! 

The show features quite a bit of food, conceptualized, cooked and styled by the show’s food consultant, Courtney McBroom — chef, cookbook author and former culinary director at Milk Bar in New York City. 

Host Rachel Belle sat down with Courtney to talk about a day–in–the life of her super-cool job on set; how many lasagnas she had to make for the show; and, of course, her last meal. 

Get the recipes for dishes featured in the show!

Follow along on Instagram!

Subscribe to my newsletter!

Get tickets to my Nov 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show featuring special guest Amanda Knox! Paid newsletter subscribers & KCTS 9 members get a discount and are invited to a pre-show hang with complimentary food and cocktails!

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Andrew Rea is best known for his super-popular YouTube channel, Babish Culinary Universe, where 10 million subscribers tune in to watch him host cooking shows like Binging with Babish, where he recreates dishes from TV shows and movies. 

The focus of his new (third!) cookbook, Basics with Babish, is cooking mistakes. He cheekily reveals every single mistake he’s made while attempting to cook each recipe, and gives readers advice on how to avoid them. 

Lots of iconic food and drink, from potato chips to champagne, were allegedly created by mistake. In this episode we focus on the chimichanga, accidentally created in the 1950s at El Charro in Tucson, Arizona. 

Is there a food you love so much you’d get it tattooed on your body? Andrew has a tattoo of one of the only foods he hates! He’ll tell his story, and then YLM listeners call in to share their tasty tattoo tales with host Rachel Belle. 

Follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram! 

Subscribe to my newsletter!

Get tickets to my Nov 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show featuring special guest Amanda Knox! Paid subscribers & KCTS 9 members get a discount and are invited to a pre-show hang with complimentary food and cocktails!

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Comedian and writer Sarah Cooper rose to fame in the most modern of ways: through TikTok! Her viral videos, lip-syncing Donald Trump’s speeches during the pandemic, eventually landed her a Netflix show (Sarah Cooper: Everything Is Fine), and she just released a memoir called Foolish. 

Before Sarah could pay the bills with comedy, she worked at Google, where employees are fed three incredibly delicious (free!) meals a day. Host Rachel Belle scored a rare, coveted interview with the director of Google’s food program, and we’ll take you behind the scenes of their 400 worldwide cafes. 

Sarah is a Jamaican ... who doesn’t like Jamaican food! But what she does love is Girl Dinner, a viral TikTok trend that assigned a name to something we’ve all done: creating a casual meal-for-one out of the tastiest bits and bobs you can find in your fridge. Meet the creator of Girl Dinner and the writer who wrote about it in The New York Times.

Get tickets to the YLM November 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show, with special guest Amanda Knox!

Follow along on Instagram!

Subscribe to my newsletter!

Check out Didn’t I Just Feed You, a top-charting weekly podcast about feeding our families, hosted by Stacie Billis and Meghan Splawn, who, between them, have over 20 years experience as food editors, recipe developers, and cookbooks authors/producers — but who, above all, know what it’s like to feed a family as busy, working moms. 

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Zarna Garg immigrated to the United States from India alone, at 16, without a penny to her name. Fast-forward to 2018: She’s a stay-at-home mom with three kids and bored out of her mind. At her children’s insistence, Zarna got on stage at an open-mic night. Five years later? She has her own comedy special on Amazon, “Zarna Garg: One in a Billion!”

Zarna loves to top many of her meals with a big ol' pile of raw onions, but laments that Americans are sensitive to onion breath. I chat with a cognitive scientist who researched whether smell preference is cultural, personal taste or universally disliked among humans because of its chemical compounds.

And we’ll learn the fairly modern history of masala chai with Indian-American food writer Leena Trivedi-Granier (click for her recipe)– just don’t call it chai tea! We’ll tell you why.

Follow along on Instagram!

Subscribe to my newsletter!

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill are longtime radio partners who spent decades moving around the country together, hosting all kinds of big-market radio shows. And YLM host Rachel Belle was a part of The Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio for a decade!

Ron and Don have worked together since they were teenagers, in all sorts of professions. What keeps two people working together for 40 years? We will discuss!

Don adores cherry pie, so I chat with a 25-year-old entrepreneur from Traverse City, Michigan, who is trying to reclaim his hometown’s lost Guinness World Record by making the world’s largest cherry pie.

And could you make it through a 50-course dinner? We’ll talk about the pros and cons of fancy tasting menus with food writer Charmaine Mok

Listen to my other cherry pie episode featuring actor/comedian Jenny Slate & Warrant guitarist Joey Allen (who played on Cherry Pie!)

Follow along on Instagram! Subscribe to my newsletter!

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you've ever had a tomato sandwich, then you know this is the best time of the year! In honor of *tomato season* (and host Rachel Belle being on vacation) we are re-airing this episode from 2019.

Iron & Wine sounds like a band but in fact there is just one man behind the music: a soft spoken, North Carolina singer-songwriter named Sam Beam, who unintentionally stumbled into a music career later in life.

A true Southern boy, Sam wants a stack of tomato sandwiches for his last meal. Just ripe summer heirlooms, squishy white bread and mayonnaise. A simple summer snack so sacred in North Carolina, locals get riled up at the mere mention of adding bacon or lettuce. We called upon a couple North Carolina culinary queens to talk about the do's and dont's of the tomato sandwich: veteran food journalist Kathleen Purvis and chef, restaurateur and cookbook author, Vivian Howard. And sticking with the Southern theme, food historian Robert Moss joins the show to tell the true history of the boiled peanut.

Lucky for us, tomatoes are still hanging heavy on the vines, because you'll be hankering for a tomato sandwich by the end of this episode.

Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast and follow host Rachel Belle on Instagram!

Subscribe to Rachel's newsletter!

Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.