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126: Ice Sanford: Tasting Food from Around the World

June 8, 2016 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Ice Sanford of Foolproof Living on The Dinner Special podcast featured image
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Ice Sanford of Foolproof Living on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Tasting Food from Around the World.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 placed on an old farm style table is photographed from the top view.

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 is photographed from the top.

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.

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:

ce Sanford of Foolproof Living on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

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

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: A Daily Something, Adventures in Cooking, America's Test Kitchen, Artful Desperado, Atlanta, Aysegul Sanford, Cook's Illustrated, Feta Cheese, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Photographer, Foolproof Living, Huevos Rancheros, Ice Sanford, Jamie Oliver, San Miguel de Allende, Seven Spoons, Sia, Snixy Kitchen, The Bojon Gourmet, The British Virgin Islands, The Clever Carrot, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, Thomas Keller, Turkey, Virgin Gorda

068: The Food Gays: Sharing a Taste of Vancouver

August 17, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on The Dinner Special podcast
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Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the food and food culture in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

The Food Gays

Adrian and Jeremy love food, photography, and social media. And on their website, The Food Gays, they share healthy and tasty recipes as well as food news in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I am so happy to have Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on the show today.

(*All images below are Adrian and Jeremy’s.)

On How They Met:

Adrian: We met I think maybe close to six years ago.

Jeremy: Yup, we met through a friend.

Adrian: Through a mutual friend at a random party that neither of us were planning to go to.

Jeremy: We went anyways.

Adrian: And we didn’t really know anyone there other than the host. So yeah, we kind of just gravitated towards each other, and we’ve been hanging out and . . .

Jeremy: Doing our thing ever since.

On Collaborating on Their Blog:

Adrian-Harris-and-Jeremy-Inglett-of-The-Food-Gays-on-The-Dinner-Special-podcast talking about their food blog.

Jeremy: So it was probably July of 2012 when we decided to pursue the food blog, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into.

Adrian: We were just wanting to find a hobby to do together, something fun. I was blogging previous to this, doing a fashion arts kind of blog, and I think Jeremy was tired of me being on the computer all the time. So we thought we’d put our heads together and was like, “What do we both like?” And we were already cooking a lot at home and doing that, so we just started it not really knowing what was going to become of it, just something fun to do as a hobby.

Jeremy: Baking is kind of a specialty. So it just goes back to my roots. My grandma used to be a baker, and there are probably three or four other bakers in my family too. So it’s just in the family, and I feel comfortable with it.

Adrian: I guess I’d always been cooking too. Even as a little kid, I was in the kitchen making weird snacks and that kind of thing, left to my own devices probably a little too much. But I never ever thought that we’d have a blog, that it just started really organically. Neither of us had any sort of preconceived notions of . . .

Jeremy: What it’s gonna look like…

Adrian: . . . what it’s was gonna be…

Jeremy: what we’re gonna post in a month.

Adrian: Yeah, it’s really evolved a lot from three years ago, for sure.

On Their Separate Roles for the Website:

Adrian: We don’t really have anything set in stone, but we’ve, I guess, gravitated towards what . . .

Jeremy: we enjoy most.

Adrian: Or what each other’s strong suits are. So Jeremy’s definitely a lot more about the analytics and the planning and . . .

Jeremy: organizing and making sure things are up.

Adrian: And I’m probably more gravitated towards the styling and photography.

Jeremy: And then we work together on recipes and in the kitchen, so it’s intertwining. It’s a good nest.

Adrian: We pick up where the other leaves off. Because it’s hard, right? Being a blogger . . . We don’t need to tell you. It’s like there’s so much involved, and you don’t necessarily think of all of that when you’re first starting.

We definitely worked our way through it.

Jeremy: There’s no way I was thinking about analytics week 2 of our Food Gays. It was just like, “What am I gonna tweet about?” and “Who should I follow?” and stuff like that.

On Deciding What to Make for the Blog:

Jeremy: Depends on the season.

Adrian: Yeah, nowadays probably, it’s really seasonal for us. We cook a lot with fresh plant-based ingredients, I guess you could say, so what’s fresh at the market. I really love farmer’s markets and going at least once or twice a month and getting inspired…

Jeremy: Sometimes once a week.

Adrian: Well, depending on what we can afford. But I don’t know. I guess before we were very much just cooking . . .

Jeremy: to experience cooking and to get to do that.

Adrian: I guess now we are probably trying to be more creative and inventive with flavor combinations and what can we come up with and that kind of stuff.

On Their Blogging Process:

Jeremy: First, create, of course. I think I’ve tested out a few things over the couple of years, but I think right now we’re doing the Instagram test first.

Adrian: Yeah, a lot of times, we’ll post stuff to Instagram now because that’s where we really put our primary focus in the past few months. So we’ll put something up and if it gets a lot of interest, then we’re like, “Okay, that’s definitely worthy of a blog post,” and we’ll then go to the next steps.

But generally, if we do post our recipe to the blog, we’ll try to have tested it a few times at least and make sure it’s a solid recipe because that’s important too, that you’re putting something out there that’s going to work for people. But it’s different every time, I guess.

If we were doing it, say, for a client or something, if it was a sponsored post, then there would be a lot more involved time-wise.

Adrian: I really focused a lot in the last few months practicing, and Jeremy definitely is very important part of the process though. He’ll tell me if something’s not working or if I can’t figure something out.

Jeremy: “Do this there. Try this.”

Adrian: Or use his hands a lot in the shots.

On Misconceptions about Healthy Food and Healthy Eating:

Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on The Dinner Special podcast talking about healthy food and healthy eating.

Jeremy: That it’s all green and boring.

Adrian: We really try and show people that it can be fun and that you can really make fun interesting things and use new ingredients. I think it can feel really limiting for people.

We’re not vegetarian, and that’s why I think we can have so much fun with it. But for those who are and who have food allergies and limitations that way, it can feel really like the same thing. I think you can get into a bit of a food rut. So, yeah, I think that’s our biggest thing, just that it can be different and you can have fun with it and have great, amazing flavors.

Adrian: And get to know your farmers too because that starts to inspire you too.

Jeremy: Yeah, he’s glad to know this really, really wonderful woman for his edible flowers.

Adrian: I’m talking about her flowers all the time.

Jeremy: Well, eating-out option is kind of hard in itself.

Adrian: Yeah, I think eating out can be a challenge.

Jeremy: You’re not gonna go out and buy a nine-dollar salad when you can easily make a three-dollar salad at home and that can fill you up.

Adrian: I think pick your splurge moments, I guess. We definitely eat junk food, and not everything that we eat is on Instagram. And then we have just regular routine meals and stuff.

Jeremy: But just incorporating it into your routine is just a good way to do it.

Adrian: Just start slow. Just start somewhere.

And cut down on your meat. That’s something that we’ve done a lot. We love protein still, and we’ll eat it maybe a few times a month now, as opposed to it being like it felt like it needed to be every single night of the week. That, with the side of your vegetables.

If you shift your focus . . . And I think cookbooks. Cookbooks and blogs, that’s a really great way because a lot of the work is done for you. You don’t need to sit and worry about trying to come up with something super creative. Just go online and find it. Someone’s done it. Try it out.

On the Food Culture in Vancouver, BC Canada:

Adrian-Harris-and-Jeremy-Inglett-of-The-Food-Gays-on-The-Dinner-Special-podcast talking about the food culture in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Adrian: You can probably find a little bit of everything here. For someone who’s really well traveled, maybe Vancouver still has a lot of growing to do, but in a lot of ways, if you’ve been here or if you’re from here, you know it’s a bit of a small town. So in that respect, we do have a lot of options, and we’re spoiled.

Jeremy: There’s still a lot of restaurants that we have never been to.

Adrian: People ask us where we should go eat, and we’re like, we haven’t dined out probably, nearly . . .

Jeremy: as much as we used to.

Adrian: Yeah, nearly as much as we used. Can’t keep up. It’s like a full-time job.

On Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Vancouver:

Adrian: I think breakfast, we’d probably say Café Medina.

It’s a good solid spot. Go early so you’re not waiting in line for too long. But they do a really good breakfast.

Jeremy: Lunch, there’s this really cute spot, Japanese spot, Basho Café. They do these lunch sets, so you get three little pastries, or two pastries.

Adrian: Yup, and some soup.

Jeremy: A lunch bowl and a soup and a drink.

Adrian: It’s made by this little Japanese family. It’s super authentic, really, really good, just solid home-cooking lunch. And dinner, we’d probably say Kessel&March. That’s one of our favorite restaurants.

And we live in the distillery and brewing district of Vancouver, so there’s literally within a 15-minute walking span four or five different places that you can go drinking.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jeremy: MasterChef Canada.

Adrian: Love Nigella Lawson, which I mentioned, Nigel Slater.

Adrian: Oh, and we just started watching Food Network Star, which is just ridiculous, but… Cutthroat Kitchen.

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

Adrian: I’m sure you probably know about a lot of them, but stuff we love, Feed Feed, that’s a really great place for just dinner inspiration. Artful Desperado, yeah, we love him. And then we’ll give Baked a shout because we just started contributing for Baked, the blog, so that’s a really good baking website.

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

Jeremy: I really love Dennis The Prescott stuff.

Adrian: Yup, Dennis Prescott, for sure. Again, Feed Feed for sure, Artful Desperado, Molly Yeh, I am a Food Blog, Vanilla and Bean…

Jeremy: Just to name a few.

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

Jeremy: Ironically, the appliance we didn’t use for maybe two years, which we’re now using almost every other day.

Adrian: The pressure cooker.

Jeremy: Yeah, steam pressure cooker.

Adrian: And we just got it and we never used it, and then it sat there for literally two years. We finally figured out how to use this scary-looking object, and yeah, it’s really great.

Adrian: We make dog food for our dog, so we have to steam vegetables.

Jeremy: It just keeps all the nutrients in the vegetables that we’re cooking for him and because we only feed him real food.

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

Adrian: Mine would be cilantro.

Jeremy: Blue cheese for me. It was too pungent to eat before, but now I can just eat it, no problem.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Adrian: Definitely Ottolenghi’s cookbooks Plenty, Plenty More. Those are two really great ones. Sunday Suppers, love that book.

Jeremy: My school pastry book, that’s good resource.

Adrian: Yeah, Jeremy has a lot of books from school, and then we’ve got this Seven Spoons cookbook. We haven’t cooked from that yet, but it’s a really beautiful one. We actually laid off the cookbooks in the last few months because I kind of went a little crazy.

It’s like an addiction in itself.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Adrian: Right now we really love Galantis’ “Peanut Butter Jelly.”

It’s such a good song. They just released the album. It’s very good.

On Keeping Posted with The Food Gays:

Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted on them.

Adrian: Definitely, Instagram’s our number one platform.

But Twitter, Facebook, we’re pretty much on all three, and we’re trying to post more recipes to the blog. So definitely, check us out there more, where you can expect more recipes this summer.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Adrian Harris, Artful Desperado, Baked, Basho Café, Café Medina, Cutthroat Kitchen, Dennis The Prescott, Feed Feed, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Network Star, Galantis, Healthy Eating, Healthy Food, i am a food blog, Jeremy Inglett, Kessel&March, MasterChef Canada, Molly Yeh, Nigel Slater, Nigella Lawson, Plenty, Plenty More, Seven Spoons, Sunday Suppers, The Food Gays, Vancouver, Vanilla and Bean, Yotam Ottolenghi

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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