Local Milk | The Dinner Special podcast

132: Luisa Brimble: Photography, Food and Relationships

July 20, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Luisa Brimble

Luisa is a food and lifestyle photographer, based in Sydney, Australia, who strives to capture images that exude warmth, simplicity, honesty, and connection. Her work has been published in numerous print and online publications, including Kinfolk magazine, Frankie magazine, and Food & Wine magazine, just to name a few. When she is not photographing, Luisa is collaborating with other creatives to hold food photography and styling workshops.

I am so happy to have Luisa Brimble of lbrimble.com joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Luisa’s.)

On Her Photography Journey:

(Photo by Hugo Sharp)

I basically started at being a wedding and portrait photographer. When Kinfolk magazine came along in 2011, that’s when I fell in love with the whole gathering and all the food. I started shooting food and mainly gatherings. It basically started when I started doing the Kinfolk gatherings in Australia and organizing workshops here and there. Since then, it just fell in and then I started shooting for Broadsheet in Sydney. They’re like the guide to where you want to eat around Sydney and Melbourne. They didn’t pay me a lot of money, but I actually did say to people that I think it’s like baptism by fire. If you wanted to get your foot in the door in photography, you do this stuff to get your name out there. I would not have gotten my first cookbook photography, without the experience of working with Broadsheet.

This is really amazing, and kind of story that I actually tell people every time I do workshops. This is the very first cookbook that I photographed, Community by Arthur Street Kitchen cookbook. Actually, I met Hetty McKinnon. This is the first cover. There’s only 1,000 copies of this being printed. I think in a space of three weeks or a month or something like that, the book was sold out, and then it was picked up by a publisher called Plum Books. This is the second edition of the book, and I think it’s about 60,000 copies now that’s been printed in Australia. So we photographed the cookbook, and her second cookbook in New York, which is called Neighbourhood. It’s actually going to be released in September, which is really exciting.

Anyway, because of the Community cookbook, because of love, I said to Hetty when I first met her photographing for Broadsheet, and we just started talking. We hit it off. We talked about…and I think the one common thread that we talked about is because we love Kinfolk. I loved it, and she loved the aesthetic, too, at the time. We were talking about it and then all of a sudden she said, “I really want to publish my own cookbook.” I said, “My God! I would love to shoot it. I will shoot it, I will shoot it for love.” There was money involved when we photographed this. It was both our time, her time and she paid for all the ingredients and her time cooking it. Anyway, I think when the book was released and it was sold out, it was just the biggest opportunity that I’ve ever had.

Then all of a sudden I started shooting. I shot a cookbook for Penguin, Lantern. It was one of the MasterChef guys. I’ve never been in such a legit photo shoot, where we had a stylist and we had props. It was an amazing experience. Since then, that’s when I just said, “No, I’m not shooting weddings anymore and I just want to concentrate on food.” So since then, I’ve just basically done cookbooks, shooting cookbooks and shooting food or shooting for small businesses which I love. Just doing lots of personal projects.

On Cooking and Food:

I could never be a food blogger, and the only reason for that is because I can’t concentrate on doing two things. I would definitely prefer to be behind the lens. This is why I was so glad I met Sarah Glover because I kind of could blog through her because she cooks all the food and I shoot it. I always wanted to have a food blog, but now everything is just that way. But I do cook at home, but I can’t create recipes. I get inspired, but it’s only to share around the house. If I do have a recipe book in front of me and I don’t like one of the ingredients, I would usually just swap it or kind of change a little bit of the method.

On Hosting Styling and Photography Workshops:

I think the first workshop was kind of initiated by the fact that I just wanted to collaborate with other people. My first ever workshop would’ve probably had been with Beth Kirby, Local Milk, which I organized here in Sydney at Glenmore House. That’s probably about three years ago now, and we did probably about three workshops. So she came back to Sydney. Since then Aran Goyoaga from Cannelle et Vanille invited me to teach a workshop in Seattle, which is like, “What? Are you serious? It’s like, Aran. Why would she even ask me to come to Seattle? Then since then, we’re like…I collaborate a lot with Sophie Hansen, Local Is Lovely, because they have a big property where she grew up with her mom. She’s got this property about two hours’ drive from Sydney, and she actually teaches art classes as well.

But it actually accommodates probably about 15 people, and we were able to do the workshops there. That’s how I started doing a collab. The one thing that Sydney is really hard to kind of organize a workshop for is finding the right venue. It’s really hard because it’s very expensive. By the time you organize a workshop and work out all the logistics and the people and the food, and the scenes and the props and everything, to really make money off workshops, you should be charging about $3,000. But we were charging half of that, especially for a Local Is Lovely workshop. Because, obviously, we didn’t have to pay so much with the accommodation, and that really helped a lot.

It’s basically giving people the chance of going to a workshop that is so affordable, and it’s three days. I like that workshop, because I feel like if we do two and a half days, we’re kind of giving people a lot more value for their money. And it’s really nice to get to know everyone. It’s like I say this a lot to people, I meet the next person I’m collaborating with at a workshop. I’ve met so many already that’ve been to a second shooting with me or I mentored them and all that sort of stuff. I do a little bit of a workshop now with Annabelle Hickson of The Dailys where it’s actually 10 hours’ drive. It’s all the way down to the country, 10 hours’ drive from Sydney, but yet, people still go there.

I think one part of why we do workshops is, this isn’t money making. We’re not making money off it. We have a big team of people and only because we like to hang out with people that we really like working with. I think it’s all about relationships as well. So collaborating with a lot of people is what I love doing best. This is why workshops happen. I only have two left this year. Next month we have Molly Yeh coming. This is with Local is Lovely with Sophie Hansen. So we’re now in full swing to kind of plan what we’re going to be doing next year in 2017. I think the plan is, hopefully, fingers crossed, there will be workshops in Europe. And that’s the plan. So we’re working on that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chef’s Table! But I do love the local ones, the Australian local ones. The ones that I really love is, I know there’s River Cottage and there is also Mathew Evans’ show, Gourmet Farmer. Gourmet Farmer is my favorite show.

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

I love following Hugo and Elsa and Local Is Lovely, obviously Sophie Hansen. I love her food blog. My Darling Lemon Thyme, obviously. Also Cook Republic. I also do love Local Milk, Lean & Meadow is great. Matters of the Belly, obviously, Noha. There are so many out there. I think once you can go from one place, it just spreads out. Those are some of my definite favorite blogs.

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

Number one is Lisa Marie Corso. She’s the editor or managing editor of The Design Files. I know it’s more interior. It’s not really food. But her personal Instagram makes me laugh all the time. I love it. Just really good with the way, with her words and all that. The Dailys, really beautiful aesthetics and country life and all the things that she shares. Amelia Fullarton, amazing work. Again, it’s not food. I find my inspiration not necessarily with food, and I think I feel like Instagram is so bombarded with so much food now.

I just want to get away from so much of that, and then follow people who are actually amazing at capturing the light and the shadows and all that. Saskia Wilson, she does fashion. She does a lot of fashion, but again, I follow them because of the way they work with the lines and the elements of design. Oli Sansom, again amazing portrait photography. Tim Coulson because of his family and the way he just shares his life and love of life.

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

I would probably say this one plate. The plate that…when my mother-in-law passed away probably about five years ago now when they sold everything, and they sold the property, and I said the only thing that I want from that house is the dining, everyday plates. Whenever we come and visit, an everyday plate. I think there was only one plate that was left. It was rescued and that was it. It’s this really simple floral, and I love eating from it.

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

Brussel sprouts. I’ve never really been introduced to that, only quite recently, actually. But Hetty McKinnon made me love it. I think when we were shooting for her cookbook, she made me look at it differently. It’s such a bitter vegetable, but she just put it in an oven, roasted it and comes out and it’s just really amazing. It just brings out the sweetness in it, sweet and bitter kind of thing.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Oh my gosh. Nigel Slater. When I buy cookbooks, though, I only really look at it for photos. Sometimes I do read…I read the recipes and just go through. I really like the way he just explains it. It’s just straight to the point. No beating around the bush, simplicity. I like it, just simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated. This is A Table in the Orchard by Michelle Crawford. I love it because it’s all about her stories and also her favorite recipes. It’s a beautiful book. Again, can’t go past Arthur Street Kitchen and Emiko Davies’ cookbook, Florentine. She now lives in Italy. And yes, there are some amazing, really great recipes there. Some of the pastas and some of the really nice cakes and biscuits. Again, also photographed by one of my favorite photographers, which is Lauren Bamford.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

You know what? I don’t have a favorite album or a favorite theme, but I do listen to Spotify and then I put like a playlist on the 80s. Just listen to the 80s music. You know what? When I’m cooking, I actually don’t listen to music a lot. But I listen to podcasts like, The Dinner Special podcast. Boom!

On Keeping Posted with Luisa:

Definitely Instagram. I’m always just posting. If not, Snapchat. Same name, Luisa Brimble.

121: Beth Manos Brickey: Taking Control and Making Healthier Choices

May 4, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Tasty Yummies

Beth has been 100% gluten-free since 2005 and was inspired to create her blog, Tasty Yummies, after significantly changing her diet and her life in 2010.

Her goal is to inspire us to get creative with our food and to live and eat well with food intolerances and allergies. Her work has been featured in America’s Test Kitchen, Huffington Post and The Kitchn, just to mention a few. Beth is also an artist, a certified yoga instructor and adventurer and lover of all things yummy.

I’m so excited to have Beth Manos Brickey of Tasty Yummies joining me here on the show.

(*The photos below are Beth’s.)

On Whether or Not to Try a Gluten-Free Diet:

The longer I’ve been in this world, the more I see that it’s different for everybody. We’re all such individuals and there’s obviously classic signs of gluten intolerances, or you can have an allergy or you can have Celiac disease, which would also bring on the intolerance. There are varying degrees of symptoms. I would say, certainly chronic digestive issues, it’s worth looking into.

Brain fog, skin issues, just feeling generally run-down. I know people that have a very classic allergenic response, hives. So, it can take on many forms and there’s also different ways but I also think that sometimes people think, “Well, I don’t have diarrhea every day, so clearly…and I eat gluten every day, so clearly, I don’t have an intolerance,” but as I was saying previously, our bodies actually are really smart and they’re built with these mechanisms to protect us. If you’re constantly exposing your body to something that it doesn’t want, it will learn how to protect you from it by building up a tolerance. So, just because you don’t have itchy skin and you don’t think you’re tired or brain fogged or digestively challenged, it doesn’t mean that there’s not something else going on. So, it’s worth experimenting. I tell everybody, if there’s any question, just try it.

On Relearning to Cook Gluten-Free:

There were a lot of fails, a lot of fails, but I think that that’s what made me love food. I’ve always loved food, I’ve always had an appreciation for it but it really connected me in a different way. I built this different relationship with food, where I started learning that I had to listen to the food and what it wanted and what I wanted to do with it. Just getting back to basics but also, realize that there is so much exploring that can be done, and sometimes the most basic things can be the most beautiful things.

On a Simple First Step to Making Healthier Choices:

If I had it my way, I’d tell every person that I ever met to never eat a processed food again because it’s just garbage for you. Your body doesn’t recognize most of what you’re eating as true food. There’s no nutrition to it, so it’s not sustaining any sort of life force within your body. So, start to take note of the things in your kitchen and be aware of what’s in them. And obviously, we’re all in a world of convenience and needing to eat on the go, so if you’re going to pick a processed food – again, this comes from Michael Pollan – but my rule is five ingredients or less, and know what those ingredients are. If you cannot pronounce a word on a box, don’t buy it, just don’t.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

It’s actually under my website as a tutorial because it’s a little bit more step-by-step of a recipe. My family is Greek. My dad is 100% Greek and I grew up very surrounded by traditional Greek foods and everything that you see in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where Greek people eat, someone passes away, someone gets sick, we eat, we always eat. Food is celebration. So, growing up, my grandmother, my yaya, always made stuffed grape leaves. We call them dolmades; they’re called different things in other cultures. And it’s something I always loved, I thought it was a ton of work. I would love when she would make them and I would come over and I never made time to have her teach me how to make them. It’s one of those things, she passed away. Ironically, the month that I did that cleanse to remove everything, to find out if I needed to remove gluten, that was the month my yaya passed away, smack in the middle of that. I remember then and even now being like, “My gosh, I learned so much from her in the kitchen.” She was a great cook but I never learned how to make dolmades. I moved in to this house here in southern California about three years ago and when I moved in, the whole back alley of the house right behind my bedroom window, it’s all lined with grape vines.

And I was like, “Oh, I know what I need to do. I need to make stuffed grape leaves.” So my parents came out to visit and we got my grandmother’s old church cookbook that they – all the women of the Greek Orthodox Church in Buffalo – put together and we followed the instructions and followed her notes of the things that she changed and added and we learned, taught ourselves how to make stuffed grape leaves, with fresh grape leaves nonetheless. And after we did that, the first year I was like, “I need to make this a tutorial on my website. I need to show people that even though it’s cumbersome in the sense it’s a lot of steps and there’s a lot of hands-on aspect, it’s not just dumping stuff in a pot.” It’s also such an amazing and beautiful process that it’s one of those foods I have never once ever made them on my own. I always make them when my parents are here or when I go back home or something where there’s like a community, family love aspect to the meal.

It’s cool, it’s a recipe that I have a lot of pride in, even though it’s not anything original and it’s really simple but it’s just such a fun and beautiful connection-type recipe. And then I also – in the tutorial, because I generally avoid a lot of grains and I know a lot of my readers do as well – I offer the option to replace the rice that’s in the stuffed grape leaves with cauliflower rice. So, it’s kind of a different option and then you can make it with meat or without meat, you can eat them hot or cold. So, it’s amazing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

This is not going to be a popular answer but I don’t really watch cooking shows anymore. I got sick of always turning on Food Network and always seeing Guy Fieri and a bunch of garbage food that I didn’t really want to get excited about. So, I just don’t watch it anymore. Although, Aida Mollenkamp, a friend of mine in L.A., she works with Tastemade and does a series, it’s a web series. She travels around the world and does a quick 10-minute show about the food of that area. And so, I guess I do watch a little bit, just not the traditional stuff. So yeah, that would be my pick.

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

Some of my favorites are Nourished Kitchen. This woman, Jennifer, who does an amazing job sharing how to enjoy real food and get into the kitchen; very similar mind-set to mine, get in the kitchen, make it yourself, real food. I really love Salt & Wind, also created by Aida Mollenkamp, who I mentioned before. She travels the world, she has a bunch of contributors, it’s really focused on travel and the food of travel and all around the world and being inspired by that. I think the other one that really makes me happy right now is a blog called Will Frolic for Food. It’s a friend of mine, Renee Byrd, and she’s just a beautiful photographer, beautiful photos. Everything she makes is just gorgeous and you can tell she really puts time into every detail of every dish and there’s just this level of love in every recipe. It makes me happy to see somebody slowing down and taking time with food.

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

So on Instagram, I follow a whole bunch of people that stemmed from this one person, in terms of what she was doing. I really love Beth of Local Milk. She just takes beautiful photography that has so much emotion in it and most of the time, it’s food-focused. So, I just love what she does. There’s a feed on Instagram called How You Glow. It’s two girls from L.A. and they also seem to travel a lot and they promote healthy living and getting out and experiencing your world and experiencing all the different things there are, but also mindful living; they’re very focused on yoga and healthy eating. I love The Feed Feed feed, just because it’s a really great way to find new bloggers, new recipes, new people. And then I follow a lot of people that are very much in line nutritionally with what I’m doing. Some of them happened to be Paleo food bloggers, but Diane Sanfilippo, Mickey Trescott, Liz Wolfe, Robyn Youkilis, who I just discovered recently, who wrote a book that came out this month. I think it’s called Go With Your Gut. It’s about gut healing and food. So yeah, those are just some of my favorites. Again, I could probably go on forever.

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

I don’t know if it’s unusual, but right now, it’s my most treasured. It would be a toss-up between my Vitamix and I just recently bought a pressure cooker, Instant Pot. I do a lot of batch cooking because I want to make sure that even when I’m busy and life’s crazy, that I can eat well. I drink bone broth every week. Again, another gut healing thing, and there’s just so many nutrients and I used to make it in a big stock pot and let it cook for 24 to 48 hours, and I don’t think that’s really safe to leave a pot on a gas stove that long. It doesn’t make me feel good. So the pressure cooker cooks it in a couple of hours and it’s the best. I buy a bunch of organic chicken thighs and cook that in there and I’ve been cooking sprouted grains in there. So, sometimes at the start of the week that thing doesn’t leave the counter for two days while I just cook a storm up.

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

It’s kind of a weird thing. I laugh now but I used to think that maple syrup was really gross because the scent of it I felt like it would linger if you’d have it on pancakes. When you were a kid it would just, the smell of it would just stay on your body and then it was just all you’d smell. I probably realize now that it wasn’t real maple syrup and maybe that was what I was not loving. Now, I love it. I use it when I bake and it’s always in my kitchen.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One that jumps out is Danielle Walker of Against All Grain, put out a meals-made-simple cookbook. It’s Paleo but I just like that it’s simple. It’s not, you have to have a million crazy ingredients you’ve never heard of; it’s casseroles made with cauliflower, rice and chicken, and comfort food and the things that you grew up with. I often just turn to that for when I want something easy that I can throw it on the Crock Pot and not think about. But I know it’s well tested and it will be great.

I actually don’t cook a lot from cookbooks but another book that I turn to a lot when I want some sort of inspiration, I love Indian food but I obviously didn’t grow up with Indian food. It’s just called India Cookbook.

It’s beautiful and it’s huge, and beautiful color pictures through the whole thing. But, it’s a really nice way to look at a very classic, traditional culture’s food and how they would make it, and nine times out of ten, it’s way more involved or ingredients that I don’t have access to, but it’s a good inspiration for something that maybe comes from it that’s inspired by it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

A lot of times when I cook I don’t have music on, but it’s when I’m taking my photos that I turn music on and then that’s so dependent on my mood. And it’s so dependent on my mood that if you looked at my stream on Spotify, you’d be like, “Is this person bipolar or are they like schizophrenic? What’s going on?” Because it would be Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and the next day it will be Fleetwood Mac and Beyonce, and then it will go to traditional Indian yogic-style music and then jazz, and then Sigur Rós. I am all over the map with music. I just don’t like country music, it doesn’t make me want to dance. But depending on my mood, I would say almost everything else will make me dance and depending on the day.

On Keeping Posted with Beth:

I’m at Tasty Yummies on pretty much on every platform, so take your pick. I’m on Snapchat and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook. The blog is always a good home base for recipes and just stay in the loop, probably with Instagram. I have a new website coming in the next few months. So hopefully my new website will be an even better platform to keep up with the yoga events I have and retreats I found working as a nutritionist, and all the different things that I’m doing.

120: Katie Wahlman: Finding A Creative Outlet In Baking

April 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Butterlust

Katie’s blog, Butterlust, allows her to combine her love of food with the need for a creative outlet. She is open and honest about everything she makes on her blog and believes that she could quite possibly be the messiest cook on the planet.

I am so thrilled to have Katie Wahlman of Butterlust with me here on the show.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I would go back to that zucchini bread recipe that I was talking about because it is my grandma’s recipe and my mom grew up eating it and then I grew up eating it. Even my mom, who, like I said, isn’t a big cook, isn’t a home baker, isn’t a home cook, it’s one of those things that even neighbors growing up and my best friend’s moms and everybody would get so excited when my mom would bring over a loaf of zucchini bread.

It really is the first baking memory from scratch that I have. You have to grate all the zucchini – that would be my job. Then my mom would let me pour in the oil and do all the stirring. It doesn’t require a mixer. It’s a really simple quick bread. But it does have a lot of memories attached to it for me as well.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable. My boyfriend and I recently cut the cord and we don’t have a cable service, so I don’t watch a ton of food TV, but I do watch a couple food shows on Netflix. The Great British Baking Show is on Netflix now, and I’m still on season 1, but it’s absolutely adorable and I’m kind of obsessed with it. Everybody is so happy and supportive of one another, and they make really amazing things and you learn so much from it.

Sometimes while my boyfriend and I cook dinner, we watch Chopped reruns. It’s kind of an inspiration while we’re trying to make something out of what’s in the refrigerator. So we’ll do that. And my favorite thing that I rave about to anybody who will listen, is Chef’s Table on Netflix. The six-part series documentary is about some of the best chefs in the world. The cinematography is just so stunning. I’ve probably watched each of the episodes three to four times; I love it.

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

I follow like 200-plus blogs. There are so many inspiring bloggers out there. A couple of my go-to’s that I will check every once in a while if I’m in need of inspiration or just want to see what these girls are up to, I love Hummingbird High, Michelle Lopez.

Two Red Bowls, which is Cynthia. She makes these amazing beautiful dishes. And then My Name is Yeh. She’s Molly Yeh of North Dakota. She makes the most fun, just happy type of desserts, so she’s really an inspiration too.

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

Some of my favorite Instagramers are probably @ladyandpups. Her stuff is absolutely beautiful. Again, a lot of Asian inspired food but her photography is just really stunning. Beth Kirby of @local_milk. She’s kind of just exploded in the last few years. I can’t even understand how she can take such beautiful photos. They’re just absolutely stunning. And then I guess probably Eva Kosmas Flores from Adventures In Cooking, who I know that you’ve also had on the podcast. Her stuff’s beautiful as well. I love how moody and Pacific Northwestern it is. The lighting is just absolutely stunning.

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

Does a couch count? I feel like my living room and kitchen are just basically like one big room. I don’t really have anything super unusual. I would say my most treasured items would be I have this antique teal-blue Pyrex bowl that belonged to my great-aunt Aggie who lived to be 102. So I have that, and I’m like, “Don’t touch it.” My boyfriend tries to use it to cook in and I’m like, “Don’t! If you break it, I’ll die.” Probably also my KitchenAid mixer. As a baker, your KitchenAid mixer is your best friend.

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

This doesn’t necessarily apply to baking as much, but I used to hate, despise broccoli, and now I love it. I eat it everyday. It’s my favorite vegetable.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, like I said, I don’t have a lot of room for cookbooks. My collection is pretty slim currently, but the, Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan is probably my favorite baking staple.

I also have this cookbook called, Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. She apparently found a box of old vintage recipes in the attic of a bakery that she bought or something like that, and tweaked them to make them a little bit more modern and created this vintage cakes book out of it, which kind of goes with the scheme of me really loving these simple, really rustic skillet cakes. A lot of the stuff in there is along those lines, and everything I’ve made from it has been totally spot on. So I actually really love that one too. I’ve been baking from it a lot lately.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably anything shamelessly poppy. I have a wide variety of likes when it comes to music, but when I’m baking, I want to dance around and have a good time in the kitchen. So, probably Taylor Swift’s, 1989. I think when that album came out, for the next three months, that was the only thing I listened to while I baked. I find myself listening to a lot of Hall & Oates and old pop music which is a lot of fun. So yeah, anything that I can dance around to and have fun with.

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

I’m probably the most active on Instagram, so my Instagram handle is @butterlustkatie.

098: Brita Britnell: All About Nashville and Hot Chicken

December 9, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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B. Britnell

Brita is a Nashville native and on her blog B. Britnell she hopes to inspire us with recipes we’ll enjoy making, love eating and most importantly, be eager to share.

I am Gabriel Soh and I am so happy to have Brita Britnell of B. Britnell here with me today.

On Growing Up in Nashville:

I wasn’t born in Nashville, but we moved here when I was young, and I’ve lived here basically my whole life with the exception of college. I went to college in DC. So I’m very much a Nashville native. I absolutely love Nashville.

I will say I’m not into country music at all. I went through a year spurt in high school this one year where I really loved country music and since then I can’t stand listening to it if I’m being perfectly honest. But I love Music City. I love what it is to this city that I am in and just what it has become.

I feel like what it’s become is when people ask, “What do you do in Nashville?” part of me feels like I don’t have an answer, but it’s only because all I want to say is food and music and there’s 101 million different food and music things you can do every night in Nashville and I absolutely love that.

I love to make sure people know, that if they’ve never been to Nashville or maybe they’ve been, but they just walked down Broadway or went in all of the honky-tonk bars, is that there’s such an awesome music scene in Nashville outside of country music. We all appreciate the country music but there’s a really awesome rock-and-roll scene and a really awesome Indie scene and really anything that you can imagine. There’s just so much music in Nashville. It’s really great.

On the Role that Food Played in Her Home:

My father was born and raised in Italy in Sicily and moved here when he was in his twenties and my mom was born and raised in Georgia and so I got a very southern taste. My mom’s entire side of the family is fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits and sweet potatoes. And then my dad knows how to cook nothing besides traditional Italian food, honestly, and he loves to cook and he cooked all the time. Pretty much all he cooked was, I don’t want to necessarily say it was all spaghetti, but it was all Italian-inspired, for sure.

On the Food Culture in Nashville:

I had a big group of friends come and visit recently and I mentioned hot chicken to them and they didn’t know what I was talking about.

This is such a huge phenomenon in Nashville. I don’t think people understand until they get here. There’s a fried chicken place to every McDonald’s that we have. The myth behind the story is that this woman owned a restaurant and she found out that her husband was cheating on her and so she put a ton of paprika and cayenne and all this pepper in his chicken to punish him. He ended up loving it and started a restaurant and that restaurant is Prince’s. And so, since then it’s just hot chicken.

It’s essentially fried chicken that’s unbearably spicy. I can’t eat it. But there’s a hot chicken festival every year that the mayor comes to and it’s a really big deal here.

On Hot Chicken:

I always tell people you have to go to a hot chicken place. I think the absolute best place is Pepperfire. It’s a newer place but I just think that their recipe is the absolute best. I do a lot of Nashville food writing and do a lot of Nashville food photography. So whether or not I like it, I’m around hot chicken all the time. I always force myself to try it. That way I can at least say “They have good hot chicken. Or I don’t like theirs as much.” They’re all very spicy to me.

I actually have an article that I wrote for Thrillist that’s something like “X Number of Under the Radar Hot Chicken Dishes“. And there’s everything. Hot chicken tacos. Hot chicken taco salad. There’s everything. So I would definitely recommend the hot chicken.

Besides that, there is a place here in Nashville that I really like called Biscuit Love Brunch. I like to recommend that specifically to people just because I think it’s got a new-age new American feel while also having that southern-like “it’s all biscuits”, and they do have a hot chicken biscuit there.

On Her Blog:

I was just really bored at work, and during the summer it was super slow, and so I just felt like I needed a creative outlet. It was just this desire for a creative outlet and I did it because I wanted to write.

Honestly I didn’t know what it was going to be. I will say food had nothing to do with it. I never started my blog thinking that it would be a food blog.

I did think, “Oh, maybe once or twice a month I’ll share a recipe. That’ll be fun. I like to cook.” I never imagined that it would turn into a food blog. When I started doing those once or twice a month recipes I realized that was the part of it that I loved the most. It in a way felt like I had purpose as opposed to this “Let me come up with this witty article.”

On How She Learned to Cook:

I just figured it out. I didn’t cook a lot in college. I actually didn’t cook a lot growing up at all to be perfectly honest. It was one of those things that my mom jokes about now. She’s, “I always tried to get you in the kitchen and you wouldn’t even fry an egg.” But I’ve always loved to eat, I feel like, more than the average person. I’ve always been really into food but I just loved to have other people cook it for me.

At a certain point I just dove into it and I just wanted to know everything about it. I listened to lots of food podcasts and read everything I could. I would like to say I’m just self-taught. My husband is also a great cook. In everything that he does, he’s very technical.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a huge fan of Chopped. I have it in my mind that they should do a Chopped blogger version. I really like Chopped. I like to watch Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. There’s always a lot of Nashville places on there so I think that that one’s fun.

My husband’s really loves watching Mind of a Chef. So we watch that a lot. Chopped and Mind of the Chef are two of my favorites.

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

I already mentioned Joy the Baker’s blog. I absolutely love it. I will be honest that for me food blogs are a lot about the photography. So my favorite food blogs are mostly my favorite food blogs because of the photography. There’s a food blog called Local Milk. She caught my eye because she’s local. She lives in Chattanooga and does a lot in Nashville so in the same State as me, and her photography is just the most beautiful photography to me. She also does have really great recipes on her blog. I’ve made quite a few. And I also really like My Name is Yeh. She does, I want to say mostly baking, but she definitely does other stuff. Those are for sure some of my favorites.

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

I’ve not gotten into Snapchat. I tried. Literally the only person I’ve ever snapchatted is my husband. I keep saying I’m going to get more into that. And Periscope. I haven’t even downloaded Periscope yet. But I’m really big on Instagram and again just going back to the whole food photography thing, I just love pictures.

I’m a very visual person and I just love the pictures. Local Milk has really beautiful pictures so I love looking at hers. Who else? I follow this one account called This Wild Idea and it’s a Tennessee account and it’s actually a dog, but it’s the same thing. The pictures are really beautifully done and I love that. So again, it’s a lot about the photography for me.

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

I will say I have this spinny thing that you put eggs on and it sits on the counter top. I could never use it because in America we refrigerate our eggs and you keep them in the carton. About six months ago, earlier this season, we got chickens which has been such a great fun experience and so now I’m able to keep the eggs out on the counter.

I love walking in my kitchen and seeing this. It’s this circular thing where the eggs go around it and when you take one egg off the rest spiral down and it’s a neat thing to me. I just love that I have my own chickens and that I have the eggs in the kitchen. I love it. It’s a really cool thing to me. I like to brag about my chickens.

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

This is going back a little bit but when I was a child I absolutely hated peanut butter. I hated peanut butter. I don’t know why, and now I love it. I do a lot. I have a lot of peanut butter recipes on my blog. I have a peanut butter pie that is one of my most popular recipes and I have no idea why.

The smell of peanut butter made me sick. I couldn’t stand it but I absolutely love it.

I want to say a lot of spices. I never really cooked with spices until I got into my mid-twenties and now it’s like I’m obsessed with spices. I just love messing around with them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have both of Joy the Baker’s cookbooks and I absolutely love them. I think she’s working on a third one. I have a cookbook of hers that I want to say it’s called Homemade Decadence.

If you go back and look at my earlier posts from when I first started, I often referenced how much baking made me nervous. I loved to cook but baking was such a complicated thing for me, which kind of goes back to the macaroons, but that one was a great thing for me because I was able to take some of her recipes and I think she does a great job of spelling it out.

We also have the Joy of Cooking which is different from Julia Child’s book but just the Joy of Cooking and it has every recipe you can imagine. I want to say it’s at least 500 pages if not a lot more. I’m not really sure but it’s a ton and it has just everything you can imagine. It doesn’t have more popular or more modern stuff in it. I don’t think it has anything quinoa in there, but it’s got every kind of main dish every kind of bread that you can imagine and it’s an awesome go-to.

It’s been a fun way for me to experiment. My husband and I sometimes literally will be, “We want to cook a dessert. Let’s do something we’ve never done before, but that we should know how to do.” I made cheesecake for the first time recently and so it’s just been neat having that cookbook. I highly recommend that one. I think it’s a good bit of money. I think it’s $50 but I think it’s everything that you could ever want to cook from fried chicken to cheesecake to just every kind of bread. It’s awesome.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I just started this thing on my blog. Every time I post a recipe I’ve just been posting a YouTube video. And I told the story about how I love to listen to songs on repeat. So I often do. I just will put something on and whatever catches my attention, I’ll hit that repeat button and it will play the entire time that I’m cooking and photographing. I think it drives my husband crazy but it kind of keeps me going.

I’ve been really into lately Lucy Rose. She’s a British musician and I think I heard her in something on HBO, like she was in the end credits. I Googled the song and I’ve been really into her recently.

On Keeping Posted with Brita:

I would say that if you go to my blog www.bbritnell.com, I’ve got all my social media there. The one that I’m most active on is Instagram and my Instagram handle is @b.britnell. I use Instagram the most.

096: Meg Dubina: About New England and Family Dinners

December 2, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Bread + Barrow

Meg is a proud New Englander who grew up on the sandy beaches of Cape Cod. Bread + Barrow is her space, where she shares her love of New England and recreates the magical moments from her childhood. Like memories of her dad’s culinary genius over a camp fire and her mother passing down the importance of family dinners.

I am so happy to have Meg Dubina of Bread + Barrow joining me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Meg’s.)

On Growing Up on Cape Cod:

Growing up on Cape Cod was really great. It’s a really beautiful spot to be a kid. It’s funny, the summers are so bustling, there are so many people, it takes an hour to get to the grocery store some days, where normally it would just be a 10 minutes drive. And then the winters are really desolate. So you kind of have this polar opposite. But it was a great spot to be a kid. The summers were full of beach days and going to the vineyard, and then the winters were very quiet and rainy. We didn’t get much snow on the Cape. I think that’s why we spent a lot of time in New Hampshire on the weekends, because I think my dad would go a little stir crazy if he was on the Cape all winter long. But some of those rainy, wet winter days were some of my favorite. My mom used to take us kids down to Woods Hole and have a cup of chowder, overlooking the wet landscape, which I still love to do. So it was a magical childhood.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I think it was when I was little, I actually really did, my Easy-Bake Oven was probably my favorite. But other than that, growing up, I wasn’t so interested in it. My sisters and I often played restaurant, so that was one of our games. We had a little, now that I think about it, kind of creepy setup in our basement where we had, like, lawn chairs and a table, and we had a big menu that we’d write on the walls in chalk. But then in my teens and early 20s, I wasn’t interested in it much until I moved in with my now husband. That’s when I started looking back to things that we had made, because I was cooking for myself for the first time and was like, well, what am I going to make tonight? That kind of made me get more into cooking for myself and for other people.

My mom is actually a really good cook, she cooked for all of us. I’m the eldest of four, so there are six in my family. She always had a home-made dinner for us. She definitely taught me my basics. My aunt is also a really great cook, she’s been cooking her whole life, it’s been her passion, she’s obsessed. So they’re both resources that I always go to. Like, “How do make a Béarnaise sauce? How do I do this?” Roasting a chicken was one of my first things that was, like, “I don’t know how to do this,” so I would call them. But I also did look to bloggers and websites and cookbooks and a lot of it was trial and error. There was a lot of really bad cooking at first.

On the Importance of Family Dinners:

My mom was fortunate enough to be a stay-at-home mom. So that definitely helps, because you have your day to prep. Being a stay-at-home mom is a crazy job in and of itself, but I have also been a nanny for a really long time, that’s what I was doing to make money before I got into cooking and writing and things. I worked for quite a few families that found this to be challenging, because it really is. It’s hard to manage a full-time job, a household, children, and get dinner on the table by 6:00. It can be crazy. So obviously organization is key.

I think if you have children and you work and you’re planning on doing nightly meals, I think prepping on Sunday, knowing what your meals are going to be, either making them all and keeping them in the freezer or just, if you have a crock-pot, setting that, and just saying like, 6:00 or 6:30 or 7:00, or whenever it’s easiest for you, is dinner time and that’s that, we’re doing it.

Set a table. I think setting the table is huge, because sometimes if you just throw down a pile of forks and a pile of plates and say, “Okay, kids, dinner is ready.” It doesn’t always end up the way that you want it to. If you set the table and say, “Okay, five minute warning, we’re having dinner.” Then it gets the family to think about, okay, we’re sitting down together to eat and share a meal.

I like to start a meal with a prayer or something to say, because then it also gets the family all on the same page, you’re not thinking about, “I really still need to mow the lawn or do that laundry, or someone needs to do his homework.” You can get yourself all together in one space for a little bit of time.

On the Food in New England:

New England has a reputation of being stuck in their ways, and I mostly feel that that’s still true. Which is hard, it makes it a little tough for table sharing. Sharing these meals together or having the local spot to go, I don’t think it’s a very popular thing to do in New England, which is a little bit tough. But that being said, I feel like there are a lot of younger chefs that are coming out with these awesome ideas.

Island Creek Oysters is an Oyster company out of Duxbury, which actually happens to be where I went to high school. They have been doing some really cool things with getting the community together and doing an Oyster festival and really getting people involved with what they’ve been doing in their town. I know a chef, Patrick, who just started a restaurant at Applecrest Farms in New Hampshire and he too is really into, not only showcasing what New England cuisine could be, but also bringing people in and really getting the word out there of, like, wanting to bring in other people, collaborations and things. I think that that is really cool and that’s the way that I hope that New England cuisine is going to go. Because right now it can really be just stuffy pubs with chowder and fried clams. There is nothing wrong with that, those are great, too, but sometimes people I think are a little wary of changing their direction.

On One Thing She Wants Us to Know About New England:

I would like people to know that while we still are pretty old fashioned and that a lot of things haven’t necessarily changed, I still think that there are people here that are willing to see what we have to offer, and really use those resources, whether it’s the ocean or the farms or the mountains. I hope that people know that you can catch a fish one day on the ocean and then be frying it in the woods of the mountains that afternoon, which is pretty cool. I guess, I just hope that people realize everything that there is here and use it to their advantage.

On Hosting Photography and Styling Workshops:

I think how it all happened was Betty and I both realized that we were in the same State, we were like, “What? Let’s get together.” So once we actually met and realized that we not only both loved food, but we really like each other, that we wanted to start sharing that. I think that was the main reason for both of us in starting our blogs, was to share our heritage and where we’re from.

She has some amazing Chinese cooking on her blog and we want to showcase that with people, and really bring people that may not know each other together, and she’s a brilliant photographer. So I think that was another thing that we were, like, “Why don’t we just get people together, show them our cooking, show them how to use their cameras and make a beautiful meal out of it?” That’s where that whole thought process went.

We wanted to incorporate some unusual activities that maybe someone doesn’t do often, and we also wanted to base it around where we’re going to be. So we did a daytime workshop in Boston where we went to the SoWa, which is the south end of Boston, the Farmer’s Market. And we then cooked a meal with the produce. So in that vein we kind of decided that with going to New Hampshire, this little town of Tamworth is adorable. They have the New Hampshire Mushroom Company there as well as Sunnyfield Brick Oven Bakery, which you’d never think, like, these two awesome companies were in this one little town. So we were, like, maybe we can do some mushroom foraging. The man that owns the company is so sweet and he does this, basically a 4H club every Sunday, where he takes people out foraging and teaches them about the poisonous and also edible mushrooms. Then the bakery is inviting us in to watch them with their sourdough bread baking process. That’s something I’m really interested in, because growing a yeast culture scares me. I’m really intimidated by it.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Oh, none, I’m so bad. I love Ina Garten, but she’s probably the only show I can tolerate.

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

I love Sini from My Blue&White Kitchen, I love her blog. You already know Betty, but Betty is great. Beth from Local Milk, everybody knows Beth but her’s is just so stunning.

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

Krissy from Cottage Farm, her stuff is beautiful. She was a floral designer, I believe, she just has a great aesthetic. I love also following Anna from Rifle Paper Company, hers, too, she just has a great vision. Really inspiring.

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

I would say my copper pots that my grandmother gave me, I love them. But they’re really hard to keep clean and my KitchenAid, my husband bought it for me our first Christmas together, so that one is really special.

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

I don’t think that there is one that I used to dislike. I’ve pretty much eaten everything since day one except beets. I still can’t handle beets.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Renny Darling, I don’t know if anyone even knows who she is but she has a really old cookbook, it’s called, Quick Breads & Cakes and I just love it. I don’t even know where you can find it anymore, you can probably order it online, but her banana bread recipe is the best. Then I have recently been going through The Original Boston Cooking School Cookbook, which is really interesting. I think it was from, at least the copy I have, is from the early 1920’s. Just seeing the ingredients in there, it’s so interesting. But it’s really cool, it’s inspiring.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

So I’m a huge dork and I listen to a lot of Broadway musicals if I’m by myself in the house, but if I have company over I usually put on like Edith Piaf or Regina Spektor, something a little more calming, a little less dramatic.

On Keeping Posted with Meg:

I’m @breadandbarrow on Instagram, that’s probably the place I update the most, which is kind of ridiculous, because I don’t update it that often. But there and then just on the blog.

094: Sarah Nevins: Cooking and Eating with Celiac Disease

November 25, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Saucy Kitchen

Sarah moved away from everything familiar in Arizona to Sheffield, England in 2014, and busied herself in the one place where she was always comfortable, the kitchen. She feels strongly that the food we eat has a huge impact on the way we feel in our daily lives. This really hits close to home for her because her husband was recently diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Sarah created A Saucy Kitchen to share their journey to better health through their stomachs.

I am so excited to have Sarah Nevins of A Saucy Kitchen here with me today.

(*All photos below are Sarah’s.)

On the Role Food Played while Growing Up:

I was really lucky because both of my parents are really good cooks. My mom more so just regular, everyday meal cooking, and my dad’s really great on the grill. So I was pretty spoiled with that and I guess that’s why I got into it because I always had good food around me. If I wanted that to continue growing up, I needed to figure out how to do it myself.

For local foods, being so close to the border, I think we were spoiled with Mexican food. That’s something now, that I live in England, that I really miss. But other than that, I don’t know if there is anything… just lots of really cool coffee shops. That was probably my favorite part, going and just finding different things that you’d see featured on the Food Network and trying their cupcakes and the coffees. All that was really great.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

It started really young. I was thinking about it and I remember having an Easy-Bake oven when I was really little. That’s the little microwave sort of thing where you just make single cookies and I loved that. Then my mom actually got me into baking quite young to help me learn fractions. I’m a very visual, kinesthetic learner and I felt it was really helpful to measure things out and figure how it adds up to a whole. I’m not good at math, but I am good at baking and it’s stuck with me since then.

I was around them cooking a lot, and I’d see what they did. When I was little, my mom had a shelf of cookbooks in our pantry that I’d often go to and pull them out and I just did it. Most summer vacations in Arizona, it’s really hot. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to turn the oven on in 110-degree weather, but that’s what I would do. I’d just spend time trying out different cakes and things like that just getting my hands dirty and doing it myself.

On the Difference in Food Between Sheffield, England and Arizona:

I feel like in Sheffield or in England, in general, they have more of their staples that you recognize. And I don’t know if it’s just because Arizona doesn’t have anything that’s specific to them. But here you have a lot of fish and chips, and you get the classics like Yorkshire pudding, which I really love. There was a lot of different food. it was the same but very slightly different, which is kind of confusing.

We went to Liverpool, which is not at all like Mexico, and we went to this pub, which is not where you should buy Mexican food. And I was just really curious because I saw taquitos on the menu so I’m like, “Hmm?” And they were really nice but they were not taquitos. I feel like there’s a lot of things that they say is something like enchiladas and they’re great, but they’re not enchiladas. It’s funny seeing how different it is not having that influence there. But then they have a lot of really great food here. They’ve got a lot of Indian food because there’s a large Indian population. So you can get great curries. That’s something that’s unique to here, I think.

On Celiac Disease and What it Means:

Celiac Disease is an autoimmune disorder which is basically when your body confuses itself or things inside your body as being foreign invaders and attacks itself. With Celiac Disease, what happens is when you eat gluten, which comes from wheat products like bread. When it gets to your small intestine, your body kind of freaks out and starts attacking itself because it doesn’t know what to do. That just leads to a whole host of problems. When I looked it up last, there were about 300 symptoms of Celiac Disease. Which can be really difficult because, for the most part, people only think of the stomach issues when, in reality, you can have arthritis that you got from eating gluten and not even know it.

It is because he was diagnosed only a couple years ago but sick for about 10 years without even realizing it. It can take years and years for people to finally get a diagnosis.

It’s difficult too because it just affects people in so many different ways. His dad actually found out when he did that he also had Celiac Disease because it’s a genetic thing. But with his dad, he goes through his entire life not really realizing that there’s something wrong. Whereas, with Mike, when he was about 10 years old he got sick and he just never really got better from it because of the same exact thing.

On Learning to Cook Without Grains and Refined Sugars:

It was a lot of trial and error. A lot of research went into it because I used to just bake anything. I would use real sugar, real butter, real eggs, everything. Then we found out that he had Celiac Disease. It’s like, “All right, take out the gluten.” And then as we started uncovering more health problems, it felt like it wasn’t quite enough, so it’s like, “Okay, maybe cut back on the sugar, cut back maybe even on the eggs sometimes.” Really, I think with something like that, you just have to try it yourself and figure it out. One thing that helped me, I think, is just reading other blogs and seeing what they have to say. That helps you piece it together.

On FODMAP Foods:

FODMAPs is an acronym. It’s Fermentable Oligo-Di-Monosaccharides and Polyols. Basically what that is, is they’re carbohydrates that your body doesn’t fully digest. For most people, like me, I can eat garlic and I can have no problem. But if you’re someone with a lot of stomach issues, what happens is it sits in your small intestines and it just sits there and ferments, and it causes a lot of IBS problems. High FODMAP foods can be anything from apples to garlic and onions and things like that. A lot of people have found that their symptoms of IBS pretty much go away if they take out these foods. For some, it could be that you have a problem with apples but not onions. It’s one of those things where you just have to take it out for a while and see how it is and then slowly, over time, add it back in.

I think a lot of people are turned off by the idea of doing the elimination diet, which is where you get rid of food for a period of time and enter it back in. But I think the people who have gone through so many different health problems, it’s almost just too easy for them to do something like that because if it can give you your life back, it’s really not that difficult of a thing. Because it doesn’t have to be forever, it could be until your body gets back to health.

On Eating Out with Celiac Disease:

It’s so difficult because the thing is it’s very difficult to be completely gluten free. Just because you take the burger off of a bun doesn’t mean that meat is gluten free. By just touching it, it’s got gluten residue on it because it’s such a sticky thing. So we haven’t really been eating out lately because it’s been such an issue. But whenever we do, we call ahead and we tell them the situation, and we’ll talk to the chef. Either they’ll tell us, “I’m sorry, we can’t guarantee this,” or they’ll say, “We can set something aside for you,” which is really great when that happens.

I think in England there are so many people who are getting diagnosed recently that it’s pretty easy. It can be difficult because it is also, to eat gluten free, a very trendy thing right now. So people say it’s gluten free when it’s not. But because there are many people who have this issue as well, restaurants are really needing to learn about it. We’ve got a couple of restaurants I can think of where the owners are Celiac, so they get how serious it is and those ones are great.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I quite like to watch Chopped. That’s one that I used to watch with my family. That one’s really fun. And I haven’t kept up this season but I really like The Great British Bake Off. For anyone who likes baking, that show is amazing. It’s just great.

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

I really like Not Without Salt. I think Ashley Rodriguez is a really great writer, and I really admire her. And I quite like Bev Cooks because she’s the opposite of her where she’s just completely zany, but it’s just so bright and fun, and I love it.

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

I follow so many people on all of those. I quite like following people with really great photography because I’m so jealous of it. So I like following Half Baked Harvest. She has such beautiful photography. Local Milk’s another good one. And this isn’t on any of those channels, it’s on YouTube, but my husband and I often watch someone called Greg from Ballistic Barbecue. It’s just fun because he just goes out and he just grills all these crazy things and makes these amazing hamburgers, and we quite like watching that. So I’ll add him to the list.

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

It’s not very unusual, but I treasure my coffee pot. After I moved to Sheffield last year, there were a few dark months when we didn’t have a coffee pot because they drink tea. So they had tea kettles and instant coffee, and I find instant coffee offensive. So I didn’t have coffee during that time, and I got one for Christmas and it’s amazing. It gets me through the day.

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

You know what’s funny? I cook almost exclusively now with coconut oil, and I hated the smell of it. I hated the way it made things taste. I don’t know if I just started off using really strong coconut oil, but now I really quite like it. I think it adds an unusual flavor to the dishes and it smells nice, makes your skin soft. So, probably coconut oil.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t own as many cookbooks as I’d like to because I tend to be on the more minimalist side, but I have Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything and that is a really great resource for anyone. It pretty much covers the basics. I grew up on the Taste of Home cookbooks, so those ones are always special to me. I think they’re just great and fun.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like listening to more upbeat things in the kitchen. And it depends on the week, but what I’ve found I’ve done lately is I just go on Spotify, and I find a Motown playlist and I just do that, and it’s a lot of fun.

On Keeping Posted with Sarah:

I keep my Facebook and my Instagram updated the most consistently so probably on one of those, and on both of them you can find me @ASaucyKitchen.

093: Sylvia Fountaine: Traveling a Winding Path Towards Food Entrepreneurship

November 23, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Feasting At Home

Sylvia’s path has been a winding one, and has included practicing as a therapist for a few years, starting and operating a successful vegetarian restaurant for 10 years, and now, she’s the chef and owner of Feast Catering Company. On her blog, Feasting At Home, Sylvia shares healthy, seasonal, and global recipes to help us get inspired to try something new in the kitchen.

I am so happy to have Sylvia Fountaine of Feasting At Home here on the show today.

On Her Journey To Starting a Restaurant and Catering Company:

In college, I started off my business degree, and I was living down in southern California, and half way through, I got the opportunity to go to Europe for six months and just play around. It was really the first time that I noticed beauty, I guess. And so, over there, I picked up a camera and just fell in love with photography. Six months after that, after I came home, and it was time to go back to college, I wanted to change my business degree to photography. But my father said, “No.” And he said basically, “If you change your degree, I won’t pay for your college anymore.” So I kind of didn’t have a choice. I finished my business degree, and then ended up getting married, and putting photography behind me, moving up to the northwest, and then, just went into a completely different field.

I got a Master’s in psychology and ended up being a counselor, which was also not really what I wanted to do. It’s funny how you end up doing what other people think you should be doing, without actually asking yourself. And so, two years into that, I would find myself daydreaming as I was walking downtown, I was still a therapist, walking downtown to go to lunch and I would always pass this empty brick building. And I’d look in the brick building, and I could visualize this restaurant in there. And all throughout college, I worked in restaurants, just waiting tables, and I just had this fantasy of having this other life.

It wasn’t until I was actually in a counselling session with a client, that I was telling this person, you know, “You can do whatever you want. You can do whatever you want. It’s not too late.” And as I was saying these words, it dawned on me that I could do whatever I wanted. And even though I just got my Master’s, and spent some money getting it, I could change careers. So I did.

I opened a restaurant with a friend, and just went on a completely different path. We had no idea what we were doing, but it was an adventure. Did that for 10 years, and it was the time to sell, we had a really good offer, so sold the restaurant. I took a year off and started asking myself, “Okay, Sylvia, what do you really wanna do?” And I never asked myself before, really.

I decided I wanted to keep cooking because I loved cooking so I started a catering business. And then, eventually, somehow that led to the blog, and so that’s what I do now, both catering and my blog.

On Learning How to Cook:

When we first opened the restaurant, I was in the front of the house, and then halfway into it, my friend and I switched jobs. So I became the chef and she became front of the house. But all throughout the time, I was cooking too. And basically I learned how to cook just by cooking. I learned how to do most things in my life by just doing them. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know how to open a restaurant. I didn’t know how to run a restaurant. We learned as we went.

It wasn’t always pretty, we created a lot of little messes here and there, I mean, it was a fun ride. But you learn as you go. Same with the catering business, I mean, when I first started, I didn’t really know what I was doing, especially with the blog. I had no idea what I was doing.

On Keeping Things Fun in the Kitchen:

What always inspires me are things like produce that’s in season. So whatever’s in season, if it’s a really good, like, tomato that is at its peak, I’ll look at it, and I’ll say, “What can I do with this tomato that I’ve never done before?” Or if I have a new spice, “What can I do with the spice that I’ve never tried before?” I think for me, it’s always grounded in the seasons, and then it’s also grounded in taking me away. In winter, I want to be warm somewhere, but we’re here stuck in snow. So I’ll think, “Oh, I want to go to Bali,” and then I’ll try to cook something from Bali.

On Finnish and Egyptian Cuisine:

Finland is a Nordic country. They have a lot of lakes there. They have a lot of fish. So, a typical meal is fish and little baby potatoes and dill and kind of mild flavors.

When my dad would cook Egyptian food, he would use really warming spices like cumin and coriander, onion, garlic, tomatoes, just really warm, almost Mediterranean flavors. My dad actually came from Egypt and my mom actually came from Finland. They moved to the United States when they were in their 40s. My dad grew up in a little, tiny village in Egypt, and he was very, very poor. And even though he had relative success when he came to the States, he still is extremely frugal when it came to food. And so, he often would make zucchini dishes, and just very simple dishes out of very humble ingredients, but then his flavors, like in spices that he would use, would really elevate them.

On Her Travels and Food:

They really exposed me to new ingredients. There’s just so many ingredients in the world, and we only see a small portion of them where we live. And so it’s just, kind of like, how a painter has a palette and there’s a certain amount of colors, it’s given me more colors to work with in creating meals, just giving more ingredients to work with.

I really love the food in Vietnam. I was blown away by the food there, just because it was just so flavorful and so fresh, and healthy, and hot, and spicy. Just all the things that I love. But I was really surprised by how relatively healthy it was too — light. And I would go back there in a second for this one banh mi stand. It was just amazing.

On Where Her Culinary Heart Lives:

That’s a tough question, and I actually thought about that for a while, because it’s hard for me to pick a favorite cuisine. And when I thought about, “Where does my heart live,” truly it lives wherever I am at, because that’s where the best produce is going to be — the produce that’s closest to where you are. So here, in the Northwest, I have access to some incredible locally grown produce, at its peak. It hasn’t traveled for days to get here. It’s already ripe. And to me, that’s where my heart is, because that’s where the best food is, wherever you are.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch Top Chef, or I have in the past. And there’s a show called A Chef’s Life I’ve been watching.

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

I think my favorite food blog is Local Milk.

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

On Instagram, I follow, this has nothing to do with food, Tasmania, the place, because, every time I see a photo of it, I want to go there. I follow Local Milk, that’s all I can think of right now.

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

My most treasured item is my mother’s salt cellar. It’s like a Finnish salt box.

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

That one’s hard, because I don’t think I disliked any ingredient, except for canned peas, but I still don’t like canned peas.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

For me, because I cook professionally, I like cookbooks that teach me things. Like Thomas Keller’s Bouchon and French Laundry. Cookbooks like that, that have a lot of new knowledge where I can learn.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is going to really age me a lot, and my husband is a punk rocker, so that aside, there is a song by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, that does The Mission soundtrack, and there is a song on there called, The Falls. And it’s just cello, playing this beautiful song, and there’s just something about that song that, when I’m cooking, I feel like electricity is flowing though me. It just gets all the creative juices flowing, it makes me really happy.

On Keeping Posted with Sylvia:

Either Instagram or Facebook, probably Instagram.

087: Nick Evans: Learning to Love Your Leftovers

October 21, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Macheesmo

Nick has a ton of fun cooking. He’s self-taught and loves experimenting with all kinds of food. On his blog, he’s shared over a thousand recipes since 2008, and he wants to teach us home cooks to be more confident in the kitchen. In 2014, he published his first full cook book called Love Your Leftovers and you might have seen him on TV. He was a featured home cook on NBC’s Food Fighters.

I’m so excited to have Nick Evans of Macheesmo joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Nick’s.)

On Learning How to Cook:

Well, I would say, three or four years of doing Macheesmo, I put myself through an informal cooking school. I would look up recipes that had really technical aspects to them and then just practice and practice and practice them in my home until I felt really comfortable with that method, comfortable enough that I could write about it, at least, in a funny way if not a successful way. So I put myself through a little bit of a culinary school, I would say. Not the culinary school aspect where I know how to run a kitchen like a professional restaurant, but a culinary aspect in a technical way, at least, so knowing how to make sauces and knowing how to do stuff like that. I feel pretty comfortable with some of that stuff. It’s mostly just practice, a lot of failure.

On Some Good Resources for Learning to Cook:

I think if you don’t subscribe to it, America’s Test Kitchen, and I do some work with them also so it’s a little bit self-promotional, but they are an amazing resource and the recipes are some of what I think to be the most clearly written recipes. They’re very well tested, they’re very well written and almost without a doubt fail safe. And they have a lot of really basic stuff too.

Another place I’d look if I’m looking up a technique that I don’t know how to do is just YouTube. YouTube can be a nightmare. You have to be careful with it, but what I always try to do is if I’m looking up a technique, I will watch three or four videos on it, because there’s going to be a million. Try to pick up the similarities that the chefs are doing and that’s probably going to be right. And then if there are any weird outlier parts, maybe just be like, “I don’t know about that.” But YouTube is a great resource because a lot of cooking techniques are very visual, I think. It helps to actually see somebody do it, which is funny, because I don’t have a lot of videos on my website actually, I just do mostly photos and try to write it in a way that makes sense. I went through a phase where I watched a lot of YouTube videos on various techniques.

On Keeping Motivated to Learn:

My biggest thing, which I still do to this day, is I think it’s so important to go to different stores. Because you can look up all kinds of stuff on the Internet and I sometimes struggle with that because it seems overwhelming. But instead of going to your normal grocery store, go to a different one. Go to an Asian grocery store. Go to a Latin grocery store. And it can be a little bit intimidating and you’ll be out of your comfort zone, but at the same time, you’re going to find things that are different and you’re going to be inspired by, “Oh, there’s a totally different kind of produce there that’s not in my normal grocery store. Oh, there’s a different brand of this, maybe that tastes a little bit different.”

I’ll just pick up a few things that look interesting, then I’ll go back home and look up ways to use those things. So I start with the store and what I can actually find, and then I try to get inspired based on that instead of just trying to tackle the Internet or something and find something that looks appealing, because then it’s always a struggle. If you find some recipe and it has this weird ingredient and you go, “I can’t find that,” and so you just give up. So instead I start with what I can find, then maybe try a new place and then go the other direction and try to find something good to make with it.

On His Cookbook, Love Your Leftovers:

I came up with the idea a long time ago actually and just had a hard time wrapping my head around the best way to present it. But essentially I was getting a lot of feedback from readers and people that I talk to that they felt like they had to start from scratch every day. So like, “Oh it’s Tuesday, I have to get up, I have to chop all this stuff, I have to do all this stuff. Okay, now it’s Wednesday, I have to cook all from scratch.” So the idea is that instead of cooking from scratch, you cook like foundational meals when you have time, so big batches of things, and then those will store well and you can use those as jumping off points for other meals.

So leftovers is such a non-sexy word and it doesn’t get a lot of respect in America, but even great chefs will tell you that in really big restaurants, they’re taking stuff they cooked before and transforming it into something totally new and making it a special or using it in a different way.

The idea of the book was to take that into the home kitchen and it’s how I actually cook and how I actually feed my family, and so I thought it would be helpful to write a book around that. So that’s what it is. It’s fun. People e-mail me all the time like on Amazon reviews and stuff and say that it’s totally changed the way they think about how to cook, because it’s a little bit different of a method but I think the results are pretty awesome.

On Appearing on NBC’s Food Fighters:

It was very random. I saw something on a Facebook group that I’m a part of and they said, “Hey, this new show.” At the time, the show didn’t have a name or anything, but a production team was just looking for good home cooks. And so I just applied. I just sent in an e-mail and it was a very long process. They later told me that they got about 10,000 applications and they whittled that down to, I think, eight home cooks. So it was like a four-month process basically of interviews. We had to do in-person cooking. It was a big deal.

And now they’re on Season 2 of the show actually, and so I’m sure that that audition process is even more intense than the one I went through, because I was in Season 1, but yeah, it was super fun. It was a crazy experience. My family got to fly to LA and do the whole LA thing for a little bit, so that was fun. And I got to meet some awesome chefs. They’re all really cool and really down to earth, very fun, and I earned some money, so hey.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, I watch Food Fighters since I was on it and I watch Chopped a lot. I think Chopped is probably the hardest of any cooking show. I can’t imagine doing it. I think it would be really challenging but also that’s why it’s awesome to watch. Those are the two I watch most regularly.

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

There’s a new one that I’m reading recently called the The Beeroness. You’ve got to check her out. She’s awesome. Every recipe has beer in it and I’m a big beer drinker, and she takes beautiful photos.

My friend Nik, who I met last year, he runs a blog called A Brown Table, and he takes, I think, some of the most stunning food photos on the Internet right now. They’re very dark. It’s actually a look I’ve never been able to get down when I photograph stuff. They’re very dark but they all look so delicious. I just want to eat everything that he makes because it looks so great. So check out A Brown Table.

And then my other friend Dan. I like to read guy food blogs, because there are not a lot of them and I feel like there’s a guy food blogger community that needs some love. So Dan from The Food in My Beard, he just makes weird stuff. He’s just a weirdo dude, but he is a great cook and always funny and his food is like out of this world crazy and delicious, so check that out.

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

I don’t do Snapchat yet. People keep asking me that and I’m like I don’t understand it. I haven’t wrapped my head around it yet. I always tend to be a late adaptor to these things so I will probably get to it in a year when there’s some other cool thing that I should be learning but I’m not on Snapchat yet.

Instagram, I really like following Local Milk. Her name is Beth and she just has these beautiful photos which I think is what makes Instagram awesome, it’s photos, so I just follow people that take great photos, or my wife who posts only photos of our child. She’s a little creepy.

On Pinterest, honestly my Pinterest account is such a cluster of just… It’s thousands of pins because I follow every food blogger, so I don’t have a specific person really that I like.

But on Facebook, well, actually they’re on Pinterest too, but I really like Todd and Dianne. They write a blog called White on Rice Couple and they take really great photos. I’ve taken some of their photography lessons and they’re super helpful, very friendly people, and they are just an inspiration in the food photography world and also in the food blogging world. And they post really cool videos on Facebook, so if you’re a Facebook fan, their page is awesome because they shoot these beautiful, quick, little 30-second or 1-minute videos that are really beautiful. I always have to go cook something right away after I watch them.

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

Okay, so this is weird. It’s not actually anything I use to cook, but it’s something that appeases my son while I cook. I have an eight-month old baby and one of my friends got us… At the time I was like, “Well, that’s stupid,” but it’s like a net stuck to a ring that they can hold and you can put food in the net, and then they can chew on it and you don’t have to worry about it choking them or something. So I will stuff this net thing full of fruit like water melon, pineapple, and he’ll just chew and suck on it for like 30 minutes and I can do whatever I need to do. So that net, it must have cost like five bucks, but I’ve used it $200 worth of times already, so I love the net thing. I don’t know what it’s called. I can’t Google kid net thing. Don’t Google kid net thing. I don’t know what to Google, but it’s like a kid feeder net thing. It’s my favorite thing in the kitchen right now.

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

I think this is may be a common one for food bloggers but I used to hate beets. The only reason why is because my idea of a beet was a canned beet that was really soggy and bright maroon-red color and would stain everything. It was only later that I was like, “Oh, wait, you can get fresh beets that aren’t canned? Well, those are delicious,” so now I really love beets but I still don’t eat the canned kind.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, there’s one, well, Love Your Leftovers obviously but the one book that I’ve used, I probably got it close to when I started Macheesmo. I’ve had it for six or seven years I would say. It’s called The Flavor Bible and I still use it every single week to help just with my recipes. Basically it lists every food in the world and then it has complimentary foods with it, so you can look up apples, then it’ll say blue cheese, red wine, whatever goes to your list. And there’ll be a huge list so you can literally come up with recipes just by looking up these flavors and seeing what pairs well with them, so I use it all the time. My copy is beat to hell but I love that book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It depends if my wife is in the kitchen or not. If Betsy’s there, she really likes classic rock so we’ll listen to like Van Morrison, she’s a huge Van Morrison fan, and I just noticed they re-released one of his, like the essential Van Morrison or something and it’s awesome. So we’ll listen to that. If she’s not there, I like to listen to rap music when I cook, so like right now, I’ve been listening to the Fetty Wap album which is… I don’t know what to say about it. I just love it. I think he’s awesome and I love listening to rap music. And it gets me pumped up and I like to cook to it.

On Keeping Posted with Nick:

Well, as you might imagine, Macheesmo.com is my blog. I’m on every social media platform except Snapchat, and it’s all slash macheesmo. So Facebook, whatever, it’s all just slash macheesmo, you’ll find me. So whatever platform you like.