A Daily Something | The Dinner Special podcast

126: Ice Sanford: Tasting Food from Around the World

June 8, 2016 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Foolproof Living

Ice was born with itchy feet. She grew up in Turkey, lived 10 years in the States, four years in the British Virgin Islands, and has recently moved back to the U.S. A food and lifestyle photographer and full-time blogger, she is a firm believer that if you know how to read, you know how to cook. On Foolproof Living, Ice shares easy to follow recipes that are helpful and full of flavor, as well as stories about her travels.

I am so happy to have Ice Sanford of Foolproof Living with me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Ice’s.)

On Her Favorite Food in Turkey:

A big plate full of Quinoa and Avocado Salad with Blood Oranges and Fennel.

I am a big fan of breakfast. I’m a morning person. I like to get up early and have breakfast. To this day, I do a lot of toast and feta cheese. Feta cheese is so big in Turkey, and olives, my American friends make fun of me because I eat olives in the morning, but olives, jam like cherry jam and homemade marmalade and different cheeses, but mostly feta cheese is big, big back home.

Feta cheese in Turkey, it’s amazing there. Really. It’s so fatty and so delicious, and I just love it. And I have a lot of friends ask me how can you live without this? It’s hard. It’s my favorite thing.

On the Food Culture in British Virgin Islands:

A bowl of braised baby artichoke salad with white beans and shaved manchego.

It’s a combination of a lot of food cultures. When you’re talking about the Caribbean, you have so many little islands and little cultures in there, and they are all living together. We were living on a small island called Virgin Gorda. It’s a nine-mile long island, half an hour ferry ride from the big island Tortola, which is the city, a big, big capital basically. Each island has islanders from the neighboring island like Jamaica, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Nevis and Kitts. So they all bring their own culture and we would have these little food gatherings every so often on the island, and you get to taste a lot of different cuisines.

We were just talking about it with some friends the other day. On one of those, we heard that Nevis and Saint Kitts. Those people eat a lot of monkey meat because they have so many monkeys over there, and it’s just a part of culture. I went there because I tried to eat everything, at least know the taste of it and it was gone. Right after they opened their area, it was just gone. And my husband was like, “I can’t eat that. It’s too close to home.” But for me, I wanted to taste it. A lot of curry, they eat a lot of curry, chicken, seafood is big, and a lot of sweet tastes like putting pineapple, coconut, those are obviously in abundance.

On a Recipe She Picked Up from Her Travels:

Mexican Style 2 eggs topped with guacomole, pasilla chile sauce, Mexican cheese, and fresh cilantro served in a Mexican dish.

One of my favorite recipes, it’s on the blog as well, is huevos rancheros, I am a big fan of huevos rancheros. A couple of years ago, we went to San Miguel de Allende, and there my husband and I went to different restaurants every morning and ordered huevos rancheros every single day just to find what is the best one. If you think about it, it’s just eggs served with some sort of a sauce over a corn tortilla. But this one place called Posada Corazon, a small inn in the heart of the city, had the best, like absolutely the best huevos rancheros because the cook made this pathia sauce, chili sauce, and it was just phenomenal.

She didn’t speak English and I didn’t speak good Spanish, and we tried to really communicate, but it came to the point where it was just not working. She was trying to show me what she used, but then I went to the hotel and made the person at the front desk call her and get the recipe. And since then, it’s our favorite, favorite dish. And I shared that on the blog.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

America’s Test Kitchen.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

I love Artful Desperado, Gabriel, his work, his photography takes my breath away. I love The Bojon Gourmet via Alanna. She is amazing. Her recipes, to me, they are all doable. I want to make everything. I also like The Clever Carrot, Emilie. She is really talented. There are so many, Snixy Kitchen, I love, and Adventures in Cooking. Those are some that I really like.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

Oh my God, there are so many people. There is an account on Pinterest and Instagram called A Daily Something. I really liked that. Witanddelight, I really like. There is another girl on Instagram, Mademoisellepoirot. Her photography is amazing, her color schemes, those are the ones that I really enjoy.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

My mom’s mixing bowls.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I can’t say I love it, but I’m working on it. And this is so in a way, embarrassing to say as a food blogger living in the U.S., bacon.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Flavor Bible, I go to the supermarket with The Vegetarian Flavor Bible. We have a Farmer’s Market here and you can find every kind of vegetable in there and some of them I’ve never seen, but I would like to try. So I go there and look at what would match with this. That’s a very good resource if you’re creating recipes or if you’re trying to finish stuff in your fridge and don’t know what matches with what.

Cook’s Illustrated is a really good resource for me because if you don’t know something, just go there and look. And then, some food blogger cookbooks. I think those guys and gals, they are just doing an amazing job. Seven Spoon cookbook is like a go-to cookbook. I made a lot of things in there. Jamie Oliver is really good, Thomas Keller if you want to learn how to do certain things the professional way. Those are ones that I go to often.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like anything Sia. Lately, I’m really, really impressed with her voice and just love it.

On Keeping Posted with Ice:

I do update my Instagram regularly, as well as Facebook. Facebook is Foolproof Living and Instagram is aysegul.sanford. You can find me there.

107: Alexandra Lawrence: How Music and Food Come Together

January 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Keys to the Cucina

Alexe is from a large Italian family where food is the center of everything. She’s been a food lover all her life and plans for meals way too far in advance. Alexe is a musician, and on her blog, she integrates music and food because she believes they’re the most important elements to entertaining.

I’m so excited to have Alexandra Lawrence of Keys to the Cucina joining me here today.

(*All photos below are Alexe’s.)

On the Role of Food in Her Family:

“A big role” is definitely an understatement. My immediate family, we grew up in Northern Virginia, and my extended family’s in New Jersey. They’re a little louder and crazier. My mother grew up full Italian, and food was the center of everything that we did.

We ate dinner, my sisters and I, every night. My mom cooked every night except Saturday. She and my dad went on dates every Saturday, but it really was just the main thing that brought us all together at the end of the day. We could chat and catch up with each other. She also made breakfast every morning too, so we ended, began, ended our day with her food.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

I have a lot of memories of my sister Brooke. She’s 14 months older than me, so we’re really close but I have memories of her playing out in the cul-de-sac while I was in at around five or four helping my mom get dinner together. So dad was probably around eight or nine. She would let me snap the green beans, the ends off the green beans, and then I graduated to other things like stirring the risotto and helping season the tomato sauce. It was a very gradual process, but it’s always been in my heart for sure.

I think it was just about getting food day to day with four kids, going in four different directions. Things were definitely hectic so she was helm of that, and I would say in my teenage years, I helped out a little more. I also lived at home through college, so that’s when I really was able to take the reins from her a little bit and actually make things for my mom and dad. That gave me a really good taste of how to prepare things on my own and make full complete meals.

On Her Blog:

It started when I got my first full-time job out of school. I was working at a start-up here in D.C. I was also living on my own for the first time, so I really was in control of my kitchen and what I was making every single day, which was something that I never really had experienced. But my colleagues would tease me. I’d go heat up my lunch. I’d have a full plate of a proper starch and vegetable and a meat, and it looked like I just prepared it. They would joke and also ask, “How did you do that? You love to cook. I didn’t know that.”

So that sparked an interest and made me realize a lot of people don’t know how to really cook healthy balanced meals. Some of them, they didn’t grow up with a mom like me cooking every single night of the week. So that was in 2011, and I got a new job in 2013, and I wasn’t feeling very inspired. I would come home at night and watch the Food Network. I also started to read a lot more food blogs during that time period as well, and I realized I have something to share.

So I worked on it for about two months before I posted my first recipe. I went back and forth with the name. I always knew I wanted to fuse music and cooking, so basically it started out of feeling uninspired at the day job.

On How to Make Cooking Fun:

I try to experiment with different spices. I have a subscription to Hatchery, it’s a monthly box subscription that comes, and it’s artisanal ingredients from people who make seasonings to rubs, to barbecue sauces. So that opens my eyes to ingredients that I never had cooked with before.

I love doing that. I think changing up the spices, changing up the vegetables. Sometimes, I get in a rut with every week at the store getting green beans and broccoli and kale, but I started to buy cauliflower a couple of weeks ago, so I was doing a lot with that. I made a soup. I roasted it. I just think making small tweaks can change things drastically.

On Her Music:

I mainly write on the piano, so that definitely lends itself to more ballad-y, maybe blues-y. I also experiment a little bit with the guitar, and my voice is more soulful than you would think. And I love soul and Motown music. So that’s my style, catchy melodies. I love doing it. It’s a great creative outlet.

I grew up on Elton John and Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen, a lot of classic rock. When I’m writing though, I definitely get influenced by women singer-songwriters. People as old as Carole King to newer people like Sara Bareilles, really anything. I’m getting really into the indie scene now. Spotify really suggests under the radar artists, and I really will listen to anything, and as long as it’s got grit and soul, then I’m in.

On Music and Food:

I definitely think that they complement each other. For me, the ultimate relaxation is coming home—when I’m not too frazzled—coming home from work, I put on music right away, and I usually opt for something a little more mellow and that matches my relaxed state that I get in in the kitchen.

When it comes to entertaining, we actually just had a dinner party for 10 people here, Saturday night. I let my husband make the playlist. He’s really into music as well. But I definitely think you have to know your audience, like who’s coming over, what you’re serving, what the mood is going to be like. We did more of electronic, indie tracks during the dinner party.

Knowing your audience, I think, helps me determine what kind of music. I know when my parents come over, they hate weird electronic or hip hop or rap, so I definitely don’t play that. So I think that’s the best tip. Know who you’re going to be entertaining.

I love listening to Van Morrison, The Eagles, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. I like the old stuff, and then I’ll put on Pandora sometimes and let it shuffle through like Alabama Shakes and John Legend and those kind of artists.

On Choosing Between Music and Cooking:

At this point in my life, cooking is playing a bigger role. All through middle school and high school and college, I was really pursuing music very strongly. I made a couple of CDs. I was writing all the time, and I had a ball with it. Everybody knows the music industry is very cutthroat and very difficult. And I wasn’t sure if I had the guts to go full-fledged into it and sacrifice a lot of the things that I loved about my life. Not to say that you can’t have both, but there’s definitely a level of sacrifice I wasn’t sure I was willing to make.

So at this point, I would choose cooking, and the food blog has really opened up my eyes to all the opportunities that are out there. As far as I see it, they’re endless. Especially this day and age, my mom is always like, “You guys have so many opportunities at your fingertips these days.” So I felt a lot of momentum. With the blog, I’ve gotten to do great partnerships with brands. So I feel the results from it much quicker than I ever did with my music.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love anything with Bobby Flay. I’m obsessed with Chopped, and I love Giada at Home.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Okay, so there’s one called Feastly, the website is eatfeastly.com and basically, it brings together home cooks like myself. You can post meals and sell basically a seat at your house for people to buy and come experience a dinner with you.

So if you’re looking to experience D.C. in a different way instead of going out to restaurants, come to my home, and I’ll prepare a fresh cooked meal for a much cheaper rate than you would pay going out to a fancy restaurant. So I love that.

I actually hosted my first meal back in the winter. I’m trying to get ramped up again because I think that’ll help grow a local following here in D.C. versus the blog I’d see as more national stuff. But actually bringing people into my home and feeding them live and seeing their reactions, I think that’s where all the magic happens.

I also follow this website. He’s an entrepreneur guy named Gary Vaynerchuk.

He’s crazy, and I love his no-bs attitude, and he’s very motivating. So he helps me if I’m feeling like I’m in a rut, just to keep pushing and gives great tips on how to become the ultimate entrepreneur.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I would say definitely somebody on Instagram since I spend a lot of my time there. I would say there’s this handle called, A Daily Something. It’s actually a blogger based in Northern Virginia so not too far from here in D.C., and she’d post basically little glimpses of life, and that always makes me feel warm and cozy and happy.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

It’s like a silver pot that was my great Aunt Connie’s that my mom used to make her sauce in, and she passed it down to me.

A lot of good food was made in that pot.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I never really cooked a lot of Indian food, so it’s curry. It always smelled weird to me, but I love it now in Thai food and in Indian food.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Anything with Ina Garten. She has a great one I think it’s 10 or 12 years old. It’s called Make it Ahead, and she just has such a clean simple way of showing you how to entertain and make delicious meals that can feed a lot of people, which is something that I love to do.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say Tumbleweed Connection by Elton John. Most people my age don’t know it, but it reminds me of my dad and my family and feeling warm and cozy, which are some of the feelings that cooking conjures up for me.

On Keeping Posted with Alexe:

I would say Instagram. I post on that pretty consistently, so my handle is @keystothecucina.

077: Laicie Heeley: How Everything Always Comes Back to Food

September 16, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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A Thousand Threads

On her blog, A Thousand Threads, Laicie writes about more than just food and recipes. She shares a lot about herself, from her wedding, travels and everyday adventures, she really puts herself out there for her readers.

I am so happy to have Laicie Heeley of A Thousand Threads here on the show today.

On Her Blog:

I actually started my blog because I had a day job that was fulfilling, but not entirely. I was writing, but I was writing about a lot of technical subjects and didn’t have the chance to write about the more creative things or do the more creative things that I enjoy doing. And so, around the time…my husband and I had been together for probably around five years at that point. When he proposed to me, I decided that it was an excuse to write about something on the Internet.

I started writing about the process of planning our wedding and of our lives at the time. It evolved in that way, eventually, to really be a representation of our lives together, and ultimately that all came back to food, because, for us, it does totally come back to food, with everything.

The relationships that I’ve built on the Internet, because I’ve been open and been willing to have those conversations with people and go back and forth, I’ve made so many good friends. It’s really been a great experience, so I’m glad that I wasn’t overthinking it at first and it allowed me to open up and keep it that way.

When I was putting it out there on the Internet and there weren’t any faces to go along with it, there weren’t any reactions. And honestly, the people that I found on the Internet, when they did appear, were so supportive and so great that it was really a good experience for me from the beginning, that I was able to make those friends, who I almost felt more open with, in many ways.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I’m a 4-H kid from way back in the day. I grew up in Oregon, and I was in 4-H, I rode horses, that was the biggest part of my 4-H. But from the time I was very young, I actually did the cooking side as well and competed in the cooking contests in front of a judge, and it was all a very fun thing for me. It was always made fun for me, I think, particularly by my mom, who was really always interested in cooking, especially in baking. And she makes these incredibly amazing desserts that are just nuts.

She taught me how to make those things, and she taught me and brought me through that whole process of, the terrifying process of cooking in front of a judge when you’re 12 years old. It is crazy but it’s awesome, and I think it really fostered my love of cooking. I had a family of cooks, my grandmother was constantly baking pies.

And in Oregon, we all had big gardens. The fruit that my grandmother always baked the pies with always came from her garden, that was something that was crazy, that you just don’t experience that as much over here, quite as much as I did there and growing up. And it made me love food very much, having all those people around me who also loved food.

Some places have 4-H, some places have FFA, it’s a country kid thing. Some kids raise cows, and then they sell them at the auction at the county fair. It’s a thing that essentially all leads to the county fair, which is where you exhibit your work that you work on throughout the year. It’s kind of like Girl Scouts, but with a very country lean to it.

On Her Cooking Influences:

I think that my mom is hands down my greatest cooking influence. My love for baking, in particular, is completely shaped by my mother. And also my love for gathering people, I think, was shaped by my mother. Just a week ago, she had this huge event at her house for all of the women from her graduating class from high school. I don’t even know if I could track down the people from my graduating class from high school.

I’m really impressed by her. She had all the women from her graduating class over and had this beautiful, beautiful brunch party out on her patio and cooked everything and made this huge spread of desserts. My mom’s cheesecake is the craziest cheesecake that you’ve ever had.

Chocolate éclairs are something that she had always made and always brought. She was always this amazing home cook, but also one who never shied away from something that was tougher, like a chocolate éclair. She would make these fantastic cakes for my birthdays and just things that were just amazing. And I always really respected that, and still do.

On Working With Her Husband on the Blog:

We manage it quite well, actually. We both are really busy all the time, we have a lot going on. I have a nine year old stepson as well, and so we have all these things happening. And I think that ultimately, the blog and our various projects, because we’re both so passionate about them, they bring us back together in this way that we’re creating something together.

There’s nothing like creating, being able to create something with your spouse and really be excited about the outcome of it and just geek out over whatever this thing is. We both cook for the blog as well, and we shoot things back and forth.

He’ll have an idea, and I’ll add to it, and it’ll go back and forth and become this thing that’s really incredible. Even with the photography, I’ll style it, and then he’ll take the picture, and then I do the editing. So we have this very collaborative relationship that goes back and forth, and it makes us stronger in every way.

On Being Oregonian at Heart:

It’s not hard for me to live on the East Coast, but I’m certainly sad not to live on the West Coast still. I grew up in Oregon, I truly think that it’s the most beautiful place in the world. My parents are there, I love it there, I love the people, I love the food. The food scene in Portland, it’s always been amazing, but over the last 10 years, it’s really gone crazy. I go back there, and I just feel so completely close to home. I grew up on the coast, near the ocean, and there’s things about that that I miss. The East Coast is very different, it’s got a very different ethos, it’s got a very different approach to food.

But also, I’ve learned a lot, I actually live just outside of D.C., in the country, and one thing that I love about that is that we visit a lot of farms in the area, constantly. We get our eggs from the farm, we get our milk from the farm, we get everything that we can as locally as possible. And that’s really, really a cool aspect of this particular part of the area, that I didn’t necessarily have in my coastal town in Oregon, that I really appreciate here.

On the Difference in Food Culture Between Washington, DC and Oregon:

I was a vegetarian for many years, and that will make the difference very stark for you if you go from the West Coast to the East Coast, in general. It’s much harder to find good vegetarian food on the East Coast than it is on the West, because there’s a real love for meat here. And I respect that too, because I’m no longer a vegetarian, and there’s a reason, because it’s delicious. That’s one really big thing.

It used to be more so that there was a real love for local food that was easier to find on the West Coast than it is on the East Coast. I think a lot’s changed in the last few years, definitely, the restaurants have changed completely in the way that they approach things, and everyone is starting to appreciate that sort of thing more. And that’s really refreshing, that changes a lot. It’s amazing how much food can impact your love of living in a place, because it’s so much a part of your daily life. I really missed that when I first moved here about 10 years ago. Now, I would say it’s very different.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch whatever’s on the Cooking Channel. Obviously, I watch Anthony Bourdain, anything that he does. I watch him on CNN now, because I love his travel show and what he does. I also love Ina Garten, she’s amazing. The things that she does, it’s really wonderful.

Mind of a Chef will always be the most amazing…Netflix, just binge on Mind of a Chef, I could do it over and over and over because it’s so awesome.

I’ve had a lot of really amazing food inspiration on Netflix, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and all the good ones that are on there that are just incredible.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

There’s so many great people making good food. I love all the big ones, I love Joy the Baker, I love Not Without Salt. I love Smitten Kitchen, she’s just incredible. I don’t even know how she does it, but every single recipe that she makes on Smitten Kitchen is just out of this world good..

I feel like there are always awesome ones that I’m discovering too, like Lady and Pups is really a cool one that does some awesome things. And I love My Name Is Yeh and all awesome newer people as well. Not totally new but just doing crazy, amazing things. I’m blown away by the blogosphere and all the great cooking being done.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

On Pinterest and Instagram, I’m on there all the time. My friend A Daily Something is really awesome. Her children are the cutest. What she does on her Instagram blows me away. And so many great photographers, like With Hearts, who really are so inspiring and also are often in the Pacific Northwest and remind me of home and are so incredible.

On Pinterest, there are so many people who are awesome as well, and so prolific. Local Milk, obviously, I follow her on Instagram, she’s amazing on Instagram. But she’s also really prolific on Pinterest and has this awesome Pinterest account that is constantly making me discover new, awesome things that are really, really cool.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I love picking up vintage things, I love bringing vintage things home, and you don’t always use them. Sometimes, they just sit around and they’re props or whatever they might be, and I’ve stolen every little weird vintage thermometer and various things from my grandma’s kitchen and have them in my drawers.

But one that we have is a juicer that we use constantly, which is actually vintage. Every time I use it, I think it’s gonna fall apart because it’s so old. But it’s also so effective and fantastic, and it really just has a handle, and you can squeeze down the handle, and juice. It’s a very, very good vintage juicer that we probably don’t need in our kitchen, but I like having it.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Corn. I love it if it’s made a certain way. I eat a lot of foods, I’m really pretty open to almost…put anchovies on something, I’m totally fine. I like all olives and things. I taunt my husband with olives because he hates olives, and I love them. But I never really liked corn, which is a pretty basic food that I think that growing up, I just never had it cooked in a way that I really liked it.

As I’ve grown up, I have found that the fresher the corn the better. And there are definitely awesome things that you can do to corn, like chili lime seasoning or things that are really good that make it a much more awesome dish. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I love it now, but I like it a lot more than I did when I was younger.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Sugar Rush is a fairly new cookbook that I’m so impressed by, because the level of detail in the cooking and in the breaking down the processes that make for a good pastry kitchen are really broken down in a way that’s just so awesome. Also, I’ve always had my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the ones that I’ve had sitting around forever that my mom got me when I first moved out of the house and will always be on my shelf. Those are some that I return to the most often, because they’re really those staples that you have in the kitchen, and they have these recipes that you can take, and you can run with them as far as you wanna run with them and make them crazy. And that’s something I always love doing.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The song or album right now that makes me want to do all of the things and get up and jump around is Shakey Graves’s new album, who is pretty awesome, and every song on there is really good. We saw him last year in this tiny little venue. We love going up to Newport Folk Fest in Newport, Rhode Island, and he was there and really knocked our socks off. So lately, when I’m in the kitchen, that’s what’s been playing on my speakers.

On Keeping Posted with Laicie:

I’m on Instagram a lot, @laicie, and I’m on Pinterest a lot also, on Twitter and definitely the blog, of course.