Dennis The Prescott | The Dinner Special podcast

103: Kaitlin Leung: Connecting with Family Through Cooking

December 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Woks of Life

The Woks of Life is written by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin a family that has been cooking and serving up meals for a combined 139 years. Their blog is for anyone looking to try their hand at grade A authentic Chinese cooking whatever their background may be. The Woks of Life were the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards winners in Readers’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog, as well as Editors’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life with me here today.

(*All photos are The Woks of Life’s.)

On Starting The Woks of Life:

Food blogs are not new obviously but there were a couple of big ones that we did follow, me and my sister mainly, which were The Pioneer Woman. So she kind of blew up and she has her own show and she is like a complete celebrity now and also Smitten Kitchen. So those were the two blogs mainly that we enjoyed looking at and that sparked the idea like, “Why can’t we start a food blog too?”

After she (Sarah) graduated she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do and she had the whole summer to think about that. So she came up with this idea of starting a food blog. My mom and I were pretty excited to help out and start cooking things and take photos. So it organically became this family thing. She had the idea we could call it The Woks of Life, and we could be the four people at the center of it, and it could be a family thing.

At the time my parents were sort of transitioning into that idea of living in Beijing and then I think four months after the blog was started they actually did move. I’m getting my timing a little bit wrong but she graduated and they were moving to Beijing and everything was kind of in flux.

It was a good way for us to gather our family recipes and have a way to connect with each other across spaces. We communicated mainly through iMessage, Skype and emails. I would email my sister from the library at midnight being like, “Hey, I’m really bored what did you eat today?” That kind of little small talk, chit chat that you would normally have but you don’t really have when you are at two different schools and your parents are living in Beijing. It was all sending pictures of food that we made and we were almost already in the mindset. So to actually make it official was not that big of a job. It became a great family thing and a way for us to stay connected.

On Growing Up in a Family Where Food Played a Big Role:

Growing up it was always gathering around a big table full of food, and everybody reaching across loading up their plates. It was just a really great atmosphere. My dad was very active in the kitchen and his sisters loved to cook too. So from a young age we were like sponges just soaking up all this cooking knowledge and the Food Network. Those were the glory days of the Food Network, classics like Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray was just starting and Giada De Laurentiis, she was unmarried and without her baby so that was when she was starting out too. It was a really great time to be interested in food.

We would always just be in the kitchen like, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that,” it’s a passive and an active thing. You’re just watching but at some point you kind of have to roll up your sleeves and when me and my sister were teenagers my parents would have dinner parties and we were like catering staff. We knew so much and we could handle so much. All of my parents friends would be like, “Oh my God your daughters, they are so effective in the kitchen.”

It was kind of always growing up with that mentality of food is important and food is at the center and that’s the big reason why we get together, extended family too, it’s let’s get together and have a barbecue or let’s go get dim sum. It’s just an integral part of not just our family specifically but I feel like the Asian experience in general. You have a big extended family and what’s the best thing to do when you have all these huge amounts of people in the room? You eat.

On Learning About Chinese Cooking:

When we were younger you’re seeing Emeril and you’re seeing Rachel Ray and they’re not making Chinese food. So it kind of got to a point where it was… my grandma always loved saying this to her friends. She brags about us like, “Anything you want, they can make it,” it doesn’t necessarily apply to Chinese food. So when my parents moved to Beijing it was tough because I never ate Chinese food anymore.

You can’t go home and have a home cooked meal. That was another big part of why we wanted to start the blog, is documenting these recipes, which for years was like, “a little this, a little that,” like, “eyeball it, just pour it until it feels right.” You can’t really make that. So Chinese cooking has definitely taken on a bigger part of our repertoire, I guess for me and Sarah, but it was always within the expertise of my parents.

On What Authentic Chinese Food is to Her:

For me personally authentic Chinese food is the food that I grew up eating. It’s the Cantonese spread of salt and pepper pork chops and the pork bone soup and the big plate of green veggies with garlic and the steamed fish. It’s all that but I think that today when you think about traditional Chinese food it’s almost like it’s more about who made it for you.

The food itself is anything that tastes good that’s pretty traditional. I guess authentic is traditional. But I think that it’s almost more important who made it for you. Going into Queens to visit my grandparents and going to the restaurants around there, a lot of those places are owned by people that are technically Chinese citizens but they opened a restaurant in Flushing, Queens. It’s almost in my mind this set of dishes that my family makes most often and eats most often. So you could watch A Bite of China which is this documentary and there’s tons and tons of variety and dishes that you could have that are traditional and authentic, but to me it doesn’t resonate as much because I didn’t grow up eating it.

On Who in the Family is More Traditional and Who Likes to Experiment:

I would say my mother is definitely the most traditional which makes sense because she grew up China and she came over to the U.S. when she was 16. So she definitely has the most knowledge so therefore the most respect for those traditional dishes. I think my dad has a similar level of traditionalism but he grew up more on the Americanized Cantonese side of things. So he has more of an expertise in take-out dishes. He is the king of General Tso’s chicken and the pork fried rices and the lo meins, he can churn out anything.

In terms of who’s the most experimental? I think it’s probably a tie between me and my sister. I think we sort of alternate in our bolts of lightning moments of culinary brilliance. There’s one dish that she made that was so good. It was kimchi french fries and it’s this delicious kimchi mixture and then you put over french fries and then you put cheese on top and it’s 10 times better than chili cheese fries. But chili cheese fries are also good.

And then I’ll make something like Sichuan peppercorn Cacio e Pepe. Which is just cheese and black peppercorns but I wanted to incorporate an Asian spin so I used Sichuan peppercorns and white peppercorns and black peppercorns. It can become hard honestly to come up with those interesting ideas. You can’t fully hang your hat on just traditional Chinese food because that’s good but sometimes you just want something more interesting. We’re definitely always watching and seeing what the food world is doing and trying to get ideas.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch The Pioneer Woman just because it’s a wonderful escape from real life. She’s got this amazing ranch and she makes all this delicious, comforting, fatty food, it’s great. I love that show and Jamie at Home. That was a short lived show but that was a really good show by Jamie Oliver. He has a beautiful garden, he sits outside with a little cutting board and just cuts and reaches over and plucks fresh herbs, it’s great.

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

So the sense that we get in the food blog world is that there’s just so many blogs out there and I think a lot of them don’t get enough credit because everybody’s really passionate about food and just telling their story. A couple that we like, one of them would be, Omnivore’s Cookbook which is this girl named Maggie and she actually was living in Beijing at the same time as we were and my sister and her actually met up and talked about food. She has a great blog that has authentic recipes. She makes them a little bit easier and more approachable but they still have that good authentic taste of Chinese food. So we really like her blog.

Another blog would be Little Cooking Tips which is a really cute, really friendly couple in Greece named Panos and Mirella, and they are so nice. They have really good Greek recipes. I just was on their website today and they had a finger licking feta and sausage mac and cheese. That sounds really good. They have a lot of good fusion Greek recipes. So we definitely like them. Hummingbird High, I think she was one of your most recent podcast guest. Her photography is gorgeous and her cakes look so good. Every time I want cake I just go to her Instagram and then I visually eat it.

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

I’m not sure about Pinterest because that’s my mother’s domain. She is the Pinterest master but on Instagram we follow a bunch of people. But I would say a couple of really good accounts are…there’s one by Dennis The Prescott, his photography is gorgeous and all of his food just looks so freakin yummy. He’s just one of those people that I go to time and time again.

Another one that I really like is Symmetry Breakfast. I think it’s a couple and they just take pictures of breakfasts that they have together and it’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s just so perfect for somebody who’s a little OCD like me. It’s just beautiful, I love it. They’ve got really great stuff. They have like a bagette that’s cut open and baked with eggs inside. They know how to live. They eat good for breakfast. I just roll out of bed and I’m lucky if I have a piece of toast. So those are just a couple that I like but there are so many people on Instagram that have just amazing photography. It can be hard to keep up because so many people are just putting out amazing content but those are two that I love.

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

I would say unusual for a nonChinese audience that is actually very useful is a tong device for picking up plates. If you put a hot dish in a steamer you don’t want to grab it and it kind of goes like this and then you can grab the plate and lift it out. That’s a really amazing underrated and not that well known tool. So for anybody listening, you should go buy one.

Most treasured I would say is probably my grandfather’s cleavers from my dad’s side. He was a chef and they actually had a Chinese restaurant for a number of years. We have his old cleaver that actually has his initials carved in the side. Because there are a bunch of chefs in the kitchen and you want to differentiate which one’s yours. We don’t use that one often but it’s still very sharp. It’s interesting. It’s years and years old but it’s still really good.

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

Cilantro. I didn’t hate it. There are some people out there that hate cilantro, I never hated it but I never really liked it maybe until I was 14. It adds so much flavor. If you have a guacamole that has no cilantro, I’m sorry, but that’s not real guacamole. You need it. When you’re putting it on steamed fish with soy sauce and scallions and ginger, you need the cilantro, it adds a little something.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Ina Garten has a cookbook that is… I don’t know exactly what it’s called but it’s the pink one so people that know Ina Garten’s cookbook, there’s a blue one and there’s an orange one. But the orange one is Barefoot in Paris and there’s a pink one which is her basics cookbook. There is a chocolate cake recipe in that cookbook called Beatty’s Chocolate Cake it changed my life. This chocolate cake recipe is the only one you will ever need. It’s so moist and the frosting is perfect. It’s kind of sad actually because if you flip through the whole book, almost every page is totally pristine, and then when you go to this chocolate cake recipe, there’s just schmutz all over it. There are stains and drips of buttermilk because that’s how often I make that cake. This is more of a PSA than an interview question I feel because that cake is truly the best. We make it for friends and they rave. They love it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

For my sister it would definitely be Nat King Cole. For me, I would say, if anybody’s ever seen the movie Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, that soundtrack is our favorite for cooking. It’s all French bistro music and whets your appetite and you feel so jazzy walking around the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with The Woks of Life:

The best way to keep posted is to follow us on Facebook or Instagram. If you use Twitter, definitely follow us on Twitter, and I would say subscribe to our email list because we send out an email noon everyday when we have a new recipe.

099: Dennis Prescott: An Unfolding Food and Photography Journey

December 14, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Dennis The Prescott

Dennis cooks, photographs and writes all the time. His food photography is incredible, and I have to confess I get instant cravings when I see his beautifully made, styled and photographed food on Instagram and on his blog. You can also find Dennis on Food and Wine’s FWx.com where he’s also got some really cool videos up.

I am so excited to have Dennis Prescott of Dennis the Prescott here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Dennis’s.)

On Learning to Cook:

I lived in Nashville for a while, being down there as a guitar player. And being a musician was a wonderful experience, as a full-time musician. Got to do a ton of things and travel and everything else, but I did not get paid very well, because that’s the musician’s lifestyle. But I had come to really enjoy all of these different foods, traveling, and so I kind of decided, well, I can either eat pasta with butter on it, eat at the dollar menu at McDonald’s essentially, or I could learn how to cook. And it was one of those three.

So I went to the Nashville public library, I got a library card, which was probably the first library card I’ve ever had in my entire life, and took out three cookbooks. And then just started working through them, and I became absolutely just obsessed with needing to know everything about everything about food, and how to make every dish. So that’s kind of where it started for me, honestly. Just innocently I just really wanted to learn how to cook some dishes so that I didn’t have to eat junk food anymore.

The people around me encouraged it for sure, because they liked to try it. My friends seem to call me “All or Nothing Guy.” If I’m really passionate about something or if I’m into it, I’m really into it and I want to know everything. It was the same when I was a kid and I wanted to learn how to play guitar, it’s the same. I really like history, it’s the same with that for me, and food was the same thing. And now food and photography are the same thing with me, I just want to know everything about everything.

I’ve never gotten bored of it probably because there are so many things to learn. I don’t know 4% of all of the foods that can be cooked in the world. It’s amazing and I find that really exciting, honestly.

On His Blog:

Initially I started taking pictures of the food dishes that I was cooking just to remember them. I was making so many, working through all of these books and I thought, “I want to be able to remember the dishes that I really like,” so I started taking photos. And then this thing called Instagram kind of popped up, so I started an account. I think initially I started an account for my band actually, and then I started a personal one. And I started posting these photos, honestly horrible, horrible photos, on Instagram. You can just scroll through a few years ago and check it out if you need. But really that’s where it started for me.

And then all of a sudden I started to realize, I was like, “Wait a second, these photos, if you catch the light a certain way or if you do this.” I started to have these glimpses of what a pretty good food photo could be, and then I was like, “Oh wait a second, there’s something more to this here, right?” But initially it was all iPhone shots for honestly probably about two years, so just on my phone snapping photos for documentation.

I only had an Instagram account for quite a while, and probably just because my friends drove me crazy saying like, “You need to write your recipes down, you need to start doing this.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And honestly it was quite a scary thing for me initially because writing those recipes or writing that blog I found to be a pretty vulnerable thing. And so jumping in I had a really hard time.

On Honing His Photography:

There’s been some mentors in my life. Some of them I know and some of them don’t know me at all, but I just really love their work. I’ve tried to find people along that way that I find really inspiring, both from a styling standpoint and from a photography standpoint. And then meeting people personally and saying, “I love your craft, can we sit down and have a coffee?,” something like that along the way.

The Internet’s an amazing thing where you can really go online and see all of this amazing work and put that into your own perspective and take that and say, “I’m not going to do it like that, but I love how this is lit.” Lighting is the biggest thing in photography. You can’t really recreate that necessarily unless you practice it. I took hundreds, if not thousands, of really bad shots to get some pretty good shots. And there’s still days where I struggle, because I shoot in natural light. So there’s some days where it’s really dark on the East Coast and you’re just like, “Okay, it’s not working today. It’s just not working for me.” But I really think it’s just this journey where you constantly try to get better and you look back.

The other thing that I try to do often is take a look at shots that I did maybe six months ago or something along those lines and go, “Okay, so what was I doing here? What am I doing now? And how did I get from A to B?,” so I can realize what I’ve learned along the way and keep learning that way. But aside from that, it’s just shooting, constantly shooting. My Instagram is only food for sure, but I shoot people all the time. When I’m lucky enough to travel, I probably take 1,000 shots in Philadelphia or New York City or Toronto or wherever that are just for me, but all of that helps you practice on how to capture composition and lighting and everything else. Which can then cross over into how you do food photography and how you do styling.

On His Photography Inspirations:

David Loftus is fantastic; he shoots most, if not all, of Jamie Oliver’s stuff. Daniel Krieger is a great friend of mine. He shoots cookbooks and for the New York Times and everything. So those two guys for sure for me are probably the ones who I gravitate towards their work. But there is Alice Gao, who has a great account on Instagram, who does some food but she does a lot of lifestyle shots, too. I try to follow a lot of those people, as well, who do travel and do everything, and just be able to constantly be inspired. But in terms of food, those two guys for sure are the ones that I initially fell in love with what they do.

On His Work on Food and Wine’s FWx.com:

Food and Wine, they’re wonderful. I’m not on staff, but I’ve been working with them for over a year. Some of their staff reached out to me through Twitter and sent me a message, said that they really enjoyed my stuff and wanted to see what we could do to collaborate. I was just going to do a project for them, or I didn’t even really know. I honestly freaked out because it was a huge deal for me, and still is, to be able to work with them. It’s a magazine that I read long before we had anything to do with them. So then we just had creative meetings along the way, and then eventually decided how could we kind of take this.

And a videography friend of mine, who’s my partner in the videos, we made a video together with no plan, aside from we thought it was a really great idea. And then that turned into the series. And there’s more of them coming along the way.

I don’t know why I started doing the stacking things, but I did. I don’t want to sound weird, but it did happen organically. I really just enjoyed it. And with that Twitter reach-out, we just decided that that made the most sense. It seemed like I was stacking things and we could go from there. I still do that a little bit, but the column’s branched out a little bit beyond that where I will do other things now, but definitely I guess its main focus is like let’s pick the biggest, boldest, craziest comfort food possible, whatever that is. It could be stacked in a huge burger, it could be ice cream sandwiches, it could polenta fries with some dipping sauce, whatever. But it just has to be over the top.

On Which Creative Outlet He Enjoys the Most:

I definitely enjoy Instagram the most, for sure. Because, as far as the social media world, it’s my first love. It’s the thing I gravitate towards. It’s the thing that I personally go on when I am looking at other people’s social media accounts and what they’re doing. But I really do enjoy Snapchat and I started doing Snapchat with my friends because living in Nashville for a while it was just a really easy way to connect back and forth with them. And then some people were asking me some questions about, this was before I did any videos at all, they were saying, “How do we cook X, Y and Z?” So I was thinking, “Well, how can I do this, and do this cost-effectively and quickly and just get this out there?”

So one day I posted on an Instagram picture, I said, “Follow me on Snapchat, I’m going to show how to make a steak this afternoon, like a restaurant-style steak.” And I had, I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of people that added me on Snapchat, it was crazy. So then I thought, “Well, I better start using this now.”

I really enjoy it, to be perfectly honest. It’s something where I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in to that world and how best to use that medium for me. But I really like it and I love being able to connect with people. I feel like it’s a different way to connect with people. And I’m able to Snapchat things about my daily life, which I try to do, too. And it’s not necessarily food. Like I was dressed up in a suit and tie yesterday, so I took a selfie of myself. I wouldn’t put that on my Instagram account, but I’ll put that on there. So it’s a cool way, I think, for other people.

And I follow other accounts that do that, too. It’s a way to get a background scene of what that person is actually doing at the time and what’s going on in their daily life, which I think is really cool. I always thought, when I was a kid I was a big Radiohead fan, and I was like, “What are they doing today? What are they eating? Are they at a record store? Are they at the mall?” I just wanted to know that stuff.

I think that’s really cool that we live in a world today where we can get a glimpse into what those people are actually doing. Because they’re probably not making a movie that day or recording a record, they might just be out with their kids. But I think that stuff’s really interesting and it helps you to develop this relationship with the person because you’re like, “Oh, I actually know you, you’re a real human and I appreciate you even more.”

That’s why I like that, as well. So it’s more for me to get that investment in what those people are doing in their lives. And if I can be a part of that, that’s really cool.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

That’s hard. Any of the Jamie Oliver stuff.

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

Definitely FWx. I won’t say my own, but you should probably go check that out sometime. i am a food blog is great, I love that, I love everything she does, too.

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

Definitely my friend Daniel Krieger is great, Alice Gao is great, Stephanie from i am a food blog is great. Diala, her name is Diala’s Kitchen, is great. She’s from Toronto and posts a lot of Toronto shots. If you’re Canadian it’s specifically great.

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

I collect antiques all the time. So I’ve got an antique citrus…like a juicer, and an ice cream scooper from 1880, 1870, and I absolutely love them.

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

Dates. I hated them. When I was a kid I hated dates. And my dad would eat date squares growing up and just try to force feed them on me. I was like, “No,” I was not having it at all. And now I think they’re the most delicious thing in the world.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

When I started cooking I started cooking to the Jamie Oliver cookbooks. As a little plug for a guy I don’t know at all obviously, they’re great, they’re fast, they’re easy. Anyone can make all of those recipes, and it’s really great to build your confidence and learn basic, easy steps that then you can take from there. So for me that’s initially how I started doing it.

I love older cookbooks, so kind of collecting ones. I actually just was looking at one the other day that it was a White House cookbook from the early 1900s and all the recipes that the White House made for the President.

I like a lot of those weird and wacky ones for sure, too. But reading through newer ones, as well, at the same time. So it’s kind of hard to pin exactly one. But if I could say ones that helped me out, for sure initially it was definitely the Jamie Oliver books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love alt-J; I cook a lot to the alt-J records. Foals is a British band that I really love. Anything kind of atmospheric. Anything with a really great drum beat, a little bit of atmosphere. I actually cook to a lot of hip-hop, too, surprisingly. So I love listening to Jay-Z and Kanye and stuff. I’m not nearly cool enough to actually say that I’m a fan of theirs, but I really actually love that when I’m cooking.

On Keeping Posted with Dennis:

On Instagram for sure, on my website, Twitter, Facebook, it’s all @dennistheprescott. If you want to check out FWx, I’m on there, as well. And then if you just google “Dennis the Prescott,” that will come up with different…because I’m very fortunate enough to work with other companies and that kind of thing, like Reynolds and Frigidaire and stuff, so a lot of different recipes are on there that I’ve been able to do for them. Dependent upon what they are, if you’re looking for chicken wings, if you’re looking for whatever, you’ll find it somewhere out there.

068: The Food Gays: Sharing a Taste of Vancouver

August 17, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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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:

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:

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: 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: 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.