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112: Sasha Swerdloff: Learning to Love Mornings and Hosting Brunch

March 2, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.
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Sasha Swerdloff of TENDING the TABLE on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning to love mornings and hosting brunch.

TENDING the TABLE

Sasha grew up on a farm in Oregon, and has always had a deep interest in food. With her cooking, she enjoys following the seasons and revels in the creativity, precision, tranquility and bustle required in the kitchen. Sasha is inspired by the food of the world and the simple things such as cooking from scratch.

I’m so happy to have Sasha Swerdloff of TENDING the TABLE, joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Sasha’s.)

On Growing Up on a Farm in Oregon:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about growing up on a farm in Oregon.

I grew up watching my mom garden all the time and helping her in the garden. So from that I developed this really deep love for where our food comes from and the whole process. And she also did a lot of preserving and canning. So we spent a lot of time in the kitchen together making jam and canning peaches and things like that. That was always really special for me. I always wanted to help in the kitchen too. She tells the story about how I stuck my finger in the food processor trying to– we were grating carrots or something and I was pushing the carrots down into the food processor and like shredded my finger because I was just so eager to help. So that sort of paints a picture of what I was like as a kid in the kitchen.

We also spent a lot of time walking around in the woods on our property and identifying plants and learning to forage and things like that. It was pretty magical and pretty special.

I grew up vegetarian. I didn’t have my first hamburger until I was 18 and I was abroad in Peru, before starting college. I went out to a bar one night and had a hamburger and that was my big rebellion. Actually my second semester at college I moved off campus into a house where we were able to cook all our own food because I just missed that so much. It’s always really been important to me.

On Learning How to Cook:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning how to cook.

Just practice. I taught myself. We ate out a lot actually, too. Our property is pretty close to Portland and so we would go into Portland and eat out a fair amount. I always loved trying new things. I think that’s really shaped my learning around cooking. Just tasting new flavors and new combinations and then wanting to try that and experiment at home. That’s a big part of how I learned and it’s just through experimentation.

On Her Cooking Influences:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her cooking influences.

Mostly her (mom). My dad is a big cook also. But they’re separated so I didn’t see him that often growing up. I definitely when I did visit, he was always cooking dinner, he was always the one in the kitchen. And he, I think, taught me about proficiency in the kitchen and being efficient and knife skills and all of that. He was the person who taught me those things.

My mom and I still can together a fair amount actually, when I go to visit. So we just–over the holidays, we made a really yummy pear ginger preserve that we gave away as gifts to people. And I will help her can peaches still in the summer or freeze blackberries. She goes and picks blackberries around the property and we freeze those. We still do all those things together.

On Learning to Love Mornings:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning to love mornings.

I feel like I’m the most efficient and productive in the morning. So I think that’s part of it. I like getting up and starting the day and feeling productive. I have a yoga practice. So that’s a big part of it. I have a morning routine. I get up and I do my practice. I like starting the day that way. I think that shapes the rest of my morning so that I do my yoga and then I sit down and I have some tea, and eat a solid meal before I charge into the day. Otherwise, I just don’t like how I feel.

I think just taking the time first thing in the morning to pause and just make sure that you’re taking care of yourself, and what you need to start the day off right, is really important.

We have the same thing a lot. And it’s usually toast with some sort of veggies, usually like sauteed kale or spinach and an egg. It’s simple but I feel like it’s really good and the eggs are from our chickens. We have some chickens in here Seattle. So really good eggs and good bread and some greens. I’m happy with that.

On the Food Culture in Vermont:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about the food culture in Vermont.

There’s a really, really wonderful food culture there actually. Vermont is a big farming state, there’s a lot of dairy farms so there’s lots of really good cheese. There’s also just a lot of emphasis on local farmers and organic growing. There’s a really great community around food. So people really care about where their food comes from. There’s a lot of farmers’ markets. People know their farmers. There are farm stands everywhere. You can just drive down the road and stop and go into some little shack and pick up a bunch of veggies and eggs and meat. It’s really, really wonderful that community support around food and everyone caring about the land and their food.

There’s a lot sugaring, maple syrup sugaring in Vermont. One thing a friend in college taught us about, he’s from Vermont, was sugar on snow. So they just pour maple syrup on the snow in the winter and eat it. I always love that.

The other thing that we learned about recently was maple soda. So people will take the sap from the maple trees without even boiling it down into syrup and then you just mix it with soda water. And it’s got this really lovely flavor.

On Her Blog:

We moved to Seattle and I thought I was going to teach yoga. I’m an ayurvedic consultant also. So I tried that for a little while and realized that I really enjoyed practicing yoga more than teaching it. And I was floundering trying to figure out what my purpose was and what I wanted to do. My husband said, “Why don’t you just take some classes? Find some workshops or some classes that sound interesting and just try them.” So I took a workshop here with Ashley Rodriguez. She has a blog called, Not Without Salt. And the next day I started my blog.

It sort of just clicked for me that, “Oh, this is the perfect fit for me and all the things that I love to do. I can stay at home, I’m a little bit of a homebody, I can cook, I can photograph and tap into that creative side of myself and I can write about it.”

On Brunch at The Table:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about Brunch at The Table.

I host benefit brunches every couple of months. Sustainability is really important to me. And I think people’s food choices are a really important way to impact the planet and the environment. And so I’ve started hosting these brunches. And I invite–it’s usually 18 people. And all the funds raised go to a nonprofit that’s doing some kind of work in sustainable agriculture or local food. We just have a nice meal. I source all the ingredients, I try to source them locally. I feel like it’s a nice way to expose people to the idea of sustainability and local food, without hitting them over the heads with it. They can enjoy a nice meal and learn a little bit about what’s going on.

It’s pretty time consuming. And I do it in my house, which is a little crazy.

Mostly because renting a space just cuts into the amount of money we can donate. So I have a table set up in our yoga room and two tables in the living room and I have to move furniture. I plan the menu which takes a fair amount of time but it’s the kind of thing where I’m just thinking about it all day long, like as I’m in the car or going grocery shopping. I end up e-mailing sponsors to try to get people to donate. So that takes a fair amount of time and then I spend a lot of time also planning the table setting and what it’s going to look like, because I want it to be beautiful. So that’s a big part of it as well.

Anybody can come, it started out with just friends and people we knew because I didn’t really have a network to tap into. But it’s grown and now I can publicize it on social media and people who are in my area will sign up. I usually partner with someone else to help out. So they often publicize also and tap into their network. So it’s really fun to meet new people. The last couple– a bunch of people have shown up at my door who I’ve never met before. It’s like, “Who are you? How did you hear about this?” It’s really fun to feel like I’m meeting new people and spreading the word about the issues that are important to me.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None. I do not watch any cooking shows.

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

Some of my favorites, I really love Dolly and Oatmeal, she’s based out of Brooklyn. And Cannelle et Vanille, she’s based here in Seattle, her photography is really inspiring. So there’s a couple.

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

My friend Jessie Snyder of Faring Well makes me happy. She is always talking about happy dances and always has cute photos with silly faces. So that make me happy.

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

We had handmade pitchers made for our wedding as party favors. A friend who’s a potter made all these beautiful white ceramic pitchers. One of those are on the top shelf in the kitchen.

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

Apparently I used to hate avocados and now they’re my favorite thing in the world.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The new one that I just got that I love is Gjelina. It’s in LA, a restaurant there. And the photography in that one just blew my mind. It’s just a visual feast which I loved.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t even listen to music when I cook.

I’m too much in my head thinking about flavors and recipes.

On Keeping Posted with Sasha:

Sasha Swerdloff of Tending the Table on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

I’m on Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and Twitter and all those good things. But mostly Instagram. And then just following the blog, I post on there about once a week. So you can follow along there to see recipes and find out what’s going on.

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Ashley Rodriguez, brunch, Brunch at The Table, Cannelle et Vanille, Dolly and Oatmeal, Faring Well, Farm, Food Blog, Gjelina, Mornings, Not Without Salt, Oregon, Sasha Swerdloff, Tending the Table, Vermont

061: Kris Osborne: How Pleasure is an Important Part of Wellness

July 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast
http://traffic.libsyn.com/thedinnerspecial/TDS061.mp3

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Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how pleasure is an important part of wellness.

80twenty

Kris is a holistic chef, recipe developer, and food photographer and stylist. On her blog 80twenty, she shares vibrant and delicious food and drinks that aim to healthfully nourish us 80% of the time and satisfy our cravings and wants 20% of the time.

I am so happy to have Kris Osborne of 80twenty joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Kris’s.)

On Growing Up in a Family-Owned Restaurant:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about growing up in a family-owned restaurant.

My family owned actually a restaurant and a motel, so we lived in an apartment above the motel and the restaurant was in a building adjacent. And so my whole life, up until I was 13 years old, I spent  in and out of the kitchen or in and out of the rooms, and my life was always filled with my family feeding people. It was a really common theme. When we weren’t feeding people in the restaurant, I remember my mom and my aunt always having dinner parties and having friends over.

I come from a family of people who shows their love through feeding people and so I was always surrounded by food.

My mom describes me as being a bit mischievous, I guess. She would say that I would, even as a three year-old, I would be wandering around the restaurant and I would go up to customers’ plates and steal french fries from their plates, for example.

I think probably because I was three, people thought it was adorable. But also because I grew up in a small town, people also got to know my family and got to know me and my siblings. I don’t remember necessarily helping out in the back or anything like that, but I was always in the restaurant scene.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved food. I’ve always loved cooking and learning about food and sharing food with people.

I’ve always had an interest in healthy food. So that’s always formed the backdrop of how I wanted to live my life. And I never intended necessarily to work in the restaurant industry, because when I was a teenager, I served. And then eventually when I was old enough, I became a bartender. I had quite an entrenched life in that world and so I wanted to have a professional career.

All of my off time was spent reading cookbooks and visiting whole food producers or local farms or things like that. And so it’s always been integrated into part of my life.

I think probably a lot of bloggers that you interview, I imagine, would have a similar perspective on this. And that is that food is such an integral part of our life. We use it for, obviously, sustenance and nourishment, but we also use it to celebrate and we use it as a reward and we use it to show love. There are so many reasons that we use food in our lives. And I feel so fortunate that I get to somehow do this in a way that also involves my career and my passions. Probably other bloggers feel the same way, where we are hoping to connect people with that same meaning that we get from it.

On Starting Her Blog:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

It’s not really that interesting of a story but I wanted to start a food blog for a long time, mostly just as a way to share what I was already doing. My partner kept encouraging me to start it and I kept thinking, “Well, I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to take photos and I don’t know what to write and I don’t know what to post.” So literally I had a URL for a year or two before I even posted anything.

The blog name was something different and I was just talking one day and I said, “You know what? I think what I want to be able to convey to people is this idea of, I want people to eat healthy food, and I want to inspire people to eat healthy food, because I think we get a lot of the other stuff all the time anyway, so why not do what I’m passionate about?” But also if I want to eat pizza on a Friday night, then I want to be able to talk about that and share that with people because that’s also part of life and part of wellness.

And so, I was speaking about that and I said, “It’s kind of like 80/20,” and then the name came out and I was like, “That’s it, that’s the name. It’s 80twenty.” Then it evolved and when I was in naturopathic school I often thought that it was going to be a way for me to get potential patients interested in what I was doing, but then life changes and shifts and here I am today doing something totally different.

On a Kitchen Experiment that Didn’t Turn Out As Planned:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about an experiment that didn't go as planned.

This happens regularly. I don’t know if it’s going to be interesting or not. I can just tell you the thing that comes to mind. So this was somebody else’s recipe actually that I had to modify, and it had already been modified by somebody, which I didn’t realize. I was in the third iteration of it. It didn’t make sense, there’s a lot of mistakes in it, and the ingredients were off and the proportions were off. But of course I didn’t know this until I started working with it, and I made it and it didn’t taste very good. And so then I had to go back to the person and say, “I think there’s a problem with this.” But in the end ultimately I actually had to take that recipe, the original recipe, and make it workable.

One of the components that’s involved in the recipe is, you simmer tofu in a marinade essentially, and I eat tofu pretty regularly, but I’ve never essentially boiled it or simmered it. It sounds not very appealing when you think about it.

You might have tofu in soup and then it takes on the flavor of the broth, but this was actually going into a stir fry so it was going to be simmered in the marinade and then go into the stir fry. I went through this recipe five times. I kept trying to make it work, and I eventually got to a point where I was like, “Yeah, I think this is good now. I think it’s okay. It’s not my favorite.”

If it was up to me I would have pan fried it or done something else, but this is how it’s supposed to be. So I did it and I had a ton of leftovers and I brought them to my sister’s place. My sister and her boyfriend, their reaction was, this is gross. And they actually refused to eat it. They waited for me to bring them dinner, and then when I brought it they didn’t eat it. I feel like that’s a big failure. That has never happened. Of all the years that I’ve been doing this, my family is usually pretty good about eating my creations but they ended up throwing it out.

On Her Studies in Naturopathic Medicine:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her studies in naturopathic medicine and culinary school.

I have a passion for health and really all things health-related or wellness-related and I just decided to go to naturopathic school as a way to combine my love of food and nutrition. It seems kind of like an unlikely path and I think if you were to look at it objectively, people might think that I should have gone to nutrition school or to become a dietician, but I really believe in the philosophy that naturopathy offers, which is really a holistic approach to life in general, a holistic approach to eating. That really spoke to me.

I never intended, necessarily, to practice as a doctor. I just wanted to have the knowledge to be able to, essentially, inspire people to eat more vibrantly, I guess.

I learned things all the time that surprised me because you’re studying medicine, so you are constantly learning things that are surprising and interesting. But when it comes to nutrition, I would say that one of the nuggets that has stayed with me the most is . . . we all know that we should eat more vegetables. I don’t think that that’s a piece of information that most people would disagree with or that most people don’t know already. Even if they know little about health, they’ve probably heard that or they’ve probably considered that they should eat more vegetables. But one thing that really stood out to me and stuck with me is how beneficial raw olive oil is, and so when I say raw I just mean uncooked. It’s prescribed naturopathically for a lot of disease prevention, but also actually in disease treatment because fat plays such a critical role in so many of our body processes and, in particular, olive oil just does a lot of good things.

On Misconceptions of Eating Healthy:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about misconceptions of eating healthy.

I think maybe the biggest one that I see all the time still, that permeates mainstream culture, is that fat is bad for us.

There’s still an idea that we should be eating a low fat diet. And I think the research, to my knowledge, is pretty clear that that’s not really the way to go. Researchers present it in a different way and so we saw, when you look in the past, that if people were eating low fat diets they were typically replacing the fat with things like sugar and more carbs that were not necessarily satiating them and were also just giving them more calories, and not necessarily good things for their body.

It seems so simple but I just really wish people wouldn’t fear fat because fat is so good for you and it’s so critical for bodily processes but also just for feeling satisfied. When we eat a meal, when there’s fat involved or you have a snack and there’s fat involved, it’s so much easier to feel satiated.

I would also say that one thing that I come across pretty regularly is people saying that healthy food doesn’t taste very good. My challenge is always, “Okay, tell me what you want me to make. And I’ll make it taste good because I wholeheartedly disagree.”

In some ways this conversation is a bit scientific, and I want to bring a personal component to it. My opinion is that pleasure is a really important component of wellness and we never think about pleasure as a form of wellness. We talk about sleep and exercise and stress and diet. Those are very simplified but, of course, those are the main things we talk about and we never talk about pleasure. Pleasure brings us so much joy and releases endorphins and allows us to relax. There are so many things that pleasure brings us in terms of wellness.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I really like watching cooking videos online. I love watching Green Kitchen Stories’ videos and some bloggers who do videos. So I will watch those kinds of things.

There’s a chef here in Canada. Her name is Anna Olson. She’s a pastry chef. So I used to like to watch her show. I can’t even remember what it’s called. I think because she does things that I’m so unfamiliar with. Baking is something that I’m learning now, and I absolutely love baking, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me, and so I loved watching her show back in the day.

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

Okay, so I’m going to try to pick blogs that you probably haven’t heard about. Well actually, that’s not even true. You’ve probably heard about them.

Another colleague of mine, her name is Ashley Colburn, and she writes a blog called Butterfly Food and she has some of the most stunning photography and she is just a really lovely person. But her photography is, I think, some of the best out there. And she recently had a photo of hers used as a cover photo for a National Geographic Book.

Another blog that I just discovered within the last few months, and she’s now been nominated for a Saveur Award, so I’m sure everybody knows, but Faring Well. Again, really beautiful photography and also a nice peek into her life. She lives in Colorado and I feel like it’s always really nice to be able to see an element of people’s lives beyond that. There are also some nature photos incorporated into her blog and into her Instagram feed, and I really love that.

Kelly from The Gouda Life is one of the bloggers that I first discovered when I was starting to blog myself. And I remember linking to her blog something that I really liked and she wrote me back this really lovely email thanking me for linking to her.

I remember at the time thinking it was so nice of her because really there was nobody reading my blog and she had already had such a big following, I’m sure. But her photography really inspired me when I was starting out, and also she’s always been really supportive of me as a blogger and professionally, and now we work together on this blog called Baked. I think she’s really cool and unique. She’s got a really unique style of moody photography that you should check out.

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

I don’t really follow people on Pinterest or Facebook really that much but Instagram, I would say . . . I’m sure you’ve heard of this Instagram account called Momma’s Gone City, and it’s typically photos of her children with their cats and typically one child with a dog. But I’m a huge animal lover and so I love seeing photos of the animals and particularly animals and kids. Every time I look through her feed I’m always just so happy.

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

Perhaps not unusual, but treasured for sure is my cast iron skillet. I use it for almost everything. It’s amazing for pancakes. It’s amazing for pan frying anything, for making tortillas. I make fried eggs on it. And I even . . .it’s not maybe the best use of this, but because it’s always out, I always quickly saute spinach or kale or something like that for an easy meal all in the same pan. And that pan was probably $20 and it’s going to last me for my whole life.

I always recommend that if people are wondering if they should get . . . what five or ten things in their kitchen, I think a cast iron skillet is a really awesome thing to have.

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

Brussel sprouts and actually asparagus, anything that has a pungent, earthy flavor.

I was not a vegetable fan, ironically. When I was a kid I used to eat them, and my mom would probably put butter and sugar on things or butter and salt, things to make me like or make me eat them more often. But as I’ve gotten older my palate has fully, I think, been trained because I actually recall when I was in university in my undergrad, I would make myself eat vegetables. I was old enough to know that I should eat them. And so then I started making myself just eat more of them and eventually I started liking them.

I figured out that if I ate something three times I tended to like it by the third or fourth time. And now I just love those things. Asparagus, as an example. I just made an asparagus kimchi that I’m going to be posting for a column that I write. And years ago I never would have eaten kimchi or asparagus, so I’m really into things, I guess, with a lot more pungent flavors now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Mark Bittman’s, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, is a really good dictionary to have in your kitchen. If you’re in a pinch and you have a vegetable or you have a grain or anything in your life,  you can literally open up the book and go to the word millet or to the word broccoli and it will give you several recipes. It also has this great resource of tying things together so there will be a number of sauces and then there will be a table later in the book that says, 10 things you can add to tacos or 15 ways to make a sandwich better and it will incorporate other recipes from the book. Also, it’s showing you how to make simple things, but then it’s also showing you how to incorporate them into different dishes. It’s also a great resource for just basics.

I also love Donna Hay, any Donna Hay books because they’re beautiful to look at, and also her recipes are really simple. Usually using anywhere from between five and ten ingredients, depending, and I would say 10 is rare. So they’re very simple, they’re very straightforward, and they’re really beautiful and really tasty. So those would be my go-tos.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a particular song or album, but I am notorious for going on to Spotify now that Spotify’s a thing, and searching under the mood section, and finding anything that’s folky or acoustic. My vision of cooking is in this relaxed, airy kitchen, windows open and a breeze coming through, and you’re sipping a glass of wine and you’re laughing with a friend and you’re just casually, slowly easing into whatever meal you’re going to have.

It’s intentional and joyful and thoughtful and all of that stuff and so I feel like that music often brings that vibe to what I’m doing. So it’s not a direct recommendation but certainly Spotify has a lot to offer in that realm.

On Keeping Posted with Kris:

Kris Osborne of 80twenty on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

You can keep posted with me on Instagram or you can follow me on Facebook. But Instagram, I think, is probably the most up-to-date current.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 80twenty, Anna Olson, Baked, Butterfly Food, Donna Hay, Faring Well, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Green Kitchen Stories, Healthy Cooking, holistic chef, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Kris Osborne, Mark Bittman, Momma's Gone City, Naturopathic Medicine, The Gouda Life, Wellness

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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