Mind of a Chef | The Dinner Special podcast

118: Hannah Messinger: How Cooking is an Exercise in Patience

April 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Nothing but Delicious

Hannah graduated from Boston University with a photojournalism degree and started her blog Nothing but Delicious out of boredom. She had spent some time away from writing and photography, but through her blog, has learned many lessons like that she indeed wants to be a writer and that cooking is an exercise in patience.

I am so happy to have Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Hannah’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I had been reading fashion blogs for awhile. My favorite one is called Sea of Shoes, and they had linked to a blog called, La Tartine Gourmande. Which I’m sure I sound like a redneck. I’m from Tennessee. I’m really sorry. But I had this office job where I was just on the computer all day and talking to people on the phone, so I could look at whatever on the screen.

I ended up reading the entire blog, start to finish, like a book just because, I mean, what else was I going to do? I can’t sit still. I didn’t realize that food blogs were a thing. I didn’t realize they could be a cool thing. Back in the day when you thought of a blog, it was kind of a dorky thing, right? I was just blown away by her images of her recipes and the way she wrote. And I felt like it could be, if nothing else for me, good practice just to write and to photograph things.

Nothing else has brought me so much fun work. It’s not lucrative work. But I mean, my first job, I got from Twitter shooting a brand new chocolate company here, brand new then, not brand new now, called Olive & Sinclair. The owner is a real-life Willy Wonka, and he always just gives me a box with $200 worth of chocolate in it. It’s so much fun.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

When I was maybe three years old, my yaya – that’s Greek for grandmother – gave me a teeny tiny baking set for Christmas. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever received, to this day. She was a really great hostess and I have very fond memories of going to her house on every holiday and just Sunday afternoons. And everything she made was so intriguing. From Chex Mix to Jello salad, because it was the ’80s, to prime rib. Everything was perfect.

My mom, every Easter, makes lamb and manestra. Which is not the right name for it, it’s just what my family calls it, I learned recently.

It’s lamb baked on a rack so that the juices drip down. And then you put cherry tomatoes under it and they roast in the juices and let their own juices out. And at the end, you throw in orzo and it cooks in all the tomato and lamb juice. And you serve it all together on a plate with lots of lemon and herbs and feta cheese. And she also makes spanakopita with filo dough. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the filo until I was 18. But now she lets me do it, and it’s really fun.

On Her Food Heroes:

I think everyone in the blogging world. I learned almost everything I know from Alton Brown, as opposed to going to culinary school or anything like that. The book, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, was really life changing.

I also love this book called, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, which is by Tamar Adler, but it’s modeled on the book, How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher. It talks about toppling meals. That if you have steamed broccoli for dinner one night, the next day at lunch you make quick pickled broccoli stem salad. And things like that. Meals that make sense, that merge into one another. And that really changed the way I cook.

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

It takes time and there’s no way around that. If you mess up a recipe, a lot of times the store is closed, you’re out of ingredients, you’re out of money to buy new ingredients. You really have to wait until next week, if you’re a home cook, to try it again. And that can seem like such a long time for an impatient person like me. I feel like that’s an everyday challenge for me, not only cooking but things take time, and cooking has conditioned me, I think, to deal with that in my life.

I did a kinfolk dinner maybe three years ago in Chattanooga. It was all about infusion. And I had made a chai pots de creme. Which, in all my recipe tests, the cream broke because ginger is pretty acidic but it’s a necessary flavor in the process.

So I struggled to figure out how to get it in there. And then when I finally figured it out, I was baking them off at my parents’ place which…they were renting a really old condo at the time. And I put them in the oven and I thought, “This is it. I’ve finally got it.” And I swear, the oven door exploded. And I sat down in the middle of the glass and cried.

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

I struggle with custard pies. I mean, we all do. They’re very temperamental. I lose one to slumping or sogginess every now and then like everyone. But I try not to let that get me down.

I’m going to use custard pies as an example, because I just talked about it. And my advice would be just to take baby steps. If you can make each separate component by itself and succeed without combining them, which is to say you can roll out the dough and you can bake it in little rounds. You can make lemon curd, put it on top, top it with strawberries and a little whipped cream or something. Then you know you can do it next time and you feel good going into it. Just that you know what each thing is supposed to be like and that you’ve done it successfully.

My mom always says, “Take the next right step,” which sounds so frustrating when you have a really big and daunting task in front of you. It sounds like being told to think small. But small steps snowball. And that’s the only way you can get anywhere. You can’t do step nine before you’ve done step two. I get really mad at her every time she tells me that, but then I’m like, “Okay, wait, this has always been good advice.”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Obviously, I watch Mind of a Chef and Chef’s Table. And Great British Bake Off. Who doesn’t love that? But recently, my favorite is called, I’ll Have What Phil’s Having, on PBS with Phil Rosenthal. It’s so, so, so funny.

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

I’m assuming everyone knows about Molly Yeh. Everyone loves Molly Yeh. She’s so funny and so sweet. I’m just a super huge, major fan girl of Lady and Pups. I like her brutal honesty. I like that she has a series called, The Shit I Eat When By Myself. I mean, it’s embarrassing stuff that I eat shit like that when I’m by myself, too. And I’m like, “Yes! Yes, she’s so cool!” My favorite one, it’s like flaming Cheetos in a grilled cheese with arugula and gouda. It’s beautiful.

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

My favorites right now…do you follow Chef Jacques La Merde? It’s really some of the best satire our generation has ever seen. And then there’s another one called Kimi Swimmy. And I saw her via Munchies on Vice. And they say that she kills octopus with her bare teeth.

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

It’s not very unusual but I have this marble rolling pin that I bought at a thrift store years ago for $10. And two or three years ago, I was in this real freak accident with this semi that ran over my Subaru, and the only things I pulled out of the car, besides myself, were my dog, my camera, and my marble rolling pin. It’s been through a lot with me, so I’m a little attached to it.

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

I’m actually in the process of learning to like shrimp. I know everyone loves shrimp but I just never have. Actually, the restaurant group I work for has a restaurant called, Little Octopus, and the chef there makes shrimp ceviche. That’s really the first time I’ve ever felt like “Okay, I can do this.” I make myself try shrimp a minimum of three times a year, and I’m really glad I did because this was the first time I thought I could get somewhere with it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook right now, and maybe always, is Donna Hay’s, Seasons. It’s just photographed beautifully. The recipes are simple. They’re seasonal. They’re just beautiful. And then because I make pie a lot, I refer to The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook all the time. It’s really like the pie Bible. You can’t go wrong with a recipe from Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the album called, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the band Wilco. I don’t know, I have a lot of moods while I cook. I go up and down and everywhere in between. And it has a good range of songs that I feel like accompany that.

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

Definitely Instagram. And my handle is HMMessinger.

106: Edlyn D’Souza: An Introduction to Goan Cuisine

January 20, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Egeedee

Edlyn restarted her blog when she moved from Goa, India, to the U.S. in 2012. She is greatly influenced by the way her family approaches food and the way they cook. And though she is not a professional cook, she likes believing that she is.

I am so psyched to have Edlyn D’Souza of Egeedee with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Edlyn’s.)

On Her Blog:

It was about so many random things. I was really young. So picture that, picture like a young person’s journal with, “Oh, look. Look what I did today.” So it was kind of like Instagram but on a blog.

I think the fact that I had that space, not doing anything with it, when I moved here, I couldn’t work for, I think, a year almost, because I was getting my paperwork done and everything. So I was spending so much time at home, and I was getting kind of depressed even. I just needed to channel that energy into something creative, because that’s what I knew how to do.

Also, I was really hungry a lot, so first, I have to make breakfast. Now, what do I do? Okay. Then I make lunch. I used to go online and look for more American things, because I was afraid I wouldn’t find ingredients that I was used to back home. So I started reading The Pioneer Woman Cooks. I really enjoyed her writing style. My eating habits have changed a lot, so I don’t really cook from her blog, but I still really enjoy reading her writing. And then I figured it out from there.

If you read my blog, I try not to write too much about food when I do the writing part of it. I try to keep that still as a journal. That helps me keep in touch with my family back home, because I’m not really an open person. I find it hard to express myself just talking to people. So writing is that outlet for me and that’s the way I get to communicate with people like, “This is how I’m feeling right now. Leave me alone.”

On Growing Up in Goa, India and the Role of Food:

Oh, it played a huge role. I was listening to a podcast, I think your podcast, and the lady was saying how food was something people cooked every day, and eating out is like a luxury almost, it’s like for special occasions. That’s exactly how it was. I don’t think we really missed eating out as much. It was a huge task for my parents to do, cook every day. But now that I’m grown up, I kind of understand how much work it took and it makes me appreciate that. So, yeah, food is huge there.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

My dad is the primary cook in our family. My mother likes cooking, but my dad is much quicker and I think he enjoys the process more than she does. For her, it’s like, “Oh, it’s a chore sometimes,” but he loves it. But he also doesn’t like having other people interrupt. He’d always yell at us, “Go away.” So we watched. We would just watch and try and help but.

I wasn’t really interested because of that. I always thought it was something negative maybe. But I also enjoy watching, smelling everything. But I only started doing it myself once I moved here.

On Learning How to Cook:

I don’t think I’ve ever cooked anything with their direction, but just watching them and kind of seeing how things looked. As a kid, I’m just watching the onions brown and exactly when you add the tomatoes after and all those spices that you add one after the other. I kind of put those smells together more than anything else, I guess.

Like I was saying, I only started once I moved here. So it was just me feeding myself and my husband, that’s why I moved here. He’s a good cook too, but a lot of his dishes are pretty standard. He likes making a good steak or a good burger and I can’t eat like that. I need different elements on my plate sometimes. So, I encourage myself to add more flavors to our meals. That’s basically what motivates me.

On the Food Culture in Goa:

Things changed once the Indian economy opened up and more foreign products and packaged foods started coming in. So things kind of changed a bit, it became easier to cook at home. And people also wanted to experiment more with other cuisines and that’s where restaurants came in.

So growing up, yes. I don’t think we used to go out. Maybe one birthday or just for fun. But it’s changed a lot now. People go out more as, “Oh, we’re bored. Let’s do something.” And that would mean going out.

On a Traditional Goan Meal:

The staple in Goa is fish curry and rice. That’s one of the staples that you have to try. So the first thing you would need is coconut, because that’s what most of our curries are based, kind of like Thai cooking. But we use fresh coconut and other spices that have a very orange color. So turmeric, coriander seeds, cumin seeds, tamarind, and just whatever fish is fresh that day.

I would say fish curry or shrimp curry. They basically use whatever fish or seafood is fresh or whatever they want to add to it. But, yeah, that would be the first thing I would recommend, fish curry rice.

On Some Good Resources for learning about Goan Cuisine:

I don’t know if you’ve heard of A Brown Table, Nik. He does a lot of Goan-influenced food. It’s really delicious. So if you do want to learn a little bit more about Goan food, because I think he’s half-Goan and half-North Indian, I think, but he makes really good recipes with Goan food. And other more traditional recipes, there are a lot of home cooks and food bloggers that aren’t as popular as bloggers that we read every day, and they may not have the best photography, but they still have really good recipes. So if you just type “Goan food,” (in Google) the top three websites will always pop up.

On How Her Cooking Has Changed Since Moving to the US:

I think it has changed more so because in the beginning, I used to get really swayed by, “Oh, look at these healthy food bloggers, they eat so well.” And I kind of got pulled in that direction, like that was the only way to do things. But over the past few years since I’ve moved here, I realized that that’s an unhealthy way sometimes to cook if you don’t lead that lifestyle.

So over time, I started cooking more food that makes me happy and nourishes me as well. So I won’t shy away from making mac and cheese just because I like it. So what’s wrong with eating it? So my thinking has changed in that way and I’m happy about that.

On Goan Food in the US:

Pretty much everything is not the same, but Goan food is really hard to find in this part of the country, I think. I never get to eat anything from home unless I make it myself. But the North Indian foods and the South Indian foods, the dosa and the chicken tandoori, that’s really popular here. And I think the restaurants do a good job, but I can’t say for sure, because I don’t live in those parts, so.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Lately, I’ve been watching, it’s a PBS show called, Mind Of A Chef, and it’s all on my Netflix that I have.

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

If I had to pick a few, my first one would be Hungry and Excited and she needs to get her blog back up. Hi, Revati, do it. Okay. And my other favorites are, which I do enjoy for the writing, is Orangette. Also, I like Oh, Ladycakes, just because she swears a lot and she writes really good recipes. I like that, I like her honesty. And a blog that I can always immediately cook from is Sprouted Kitchen. She always uses ingredients that I know I always have. Those are my basics that I like a lot.

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

Instagram I like following Cats of Instagram. I like looking at cat pictures. They’re so funny. I do follow a lot of food people on Instagram too, but I enjoy looking more at animals — cats, dogs. Another one is, I think it’s called This Wild Idea, where he takes his dog and he puts her on random surfaces. I don’t know if you’ve seen that one.

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

My most treasured item would be my tea strainer. I’ve been wanting to own a tea strainer for the longest time, because when I make tea, I like to make it of loose leaf tea. So, yes, that is my most treasured item. And unusual would be a coconut scraper that it’s not a traditional scraper and sometimes I feel like I’m gonna scrape my palm off when I use it, but yeah, maybe that.

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

I used to really hate cardamom a lot, because whenever we would eat it in food in India, it would always be in a rice dish and it would be the whole cardamom. So when you’re eating it, you bite into it and it used to be a very unsavory taste. But now, I know that you can grind it into dust and use it in baking dishes. I like it a lot more now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t really read a lot of cookbooks, sadly. I do have a few that I own that I go back to every now and then. I like The Baking Bible, and the new Sprouted Kitchen cookbook is one of my favorites that I keep going back to every time I need to look up something or just look at beautiful photographs. Her husband takes really beautiful photographs.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Lately I’ve been listening to M.I.A. I thinks it’s her Kala album.

On Keeping Posted with Edlyn:

The best way is through the blog that I post on and other favorite social media platforms that I like are Instagram.

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.

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

September 16, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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A Thousand Threads

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

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

On Her Blog:

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

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

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

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

On Her Interest in Cooking:

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

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

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

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

On Her Cooking Influences:

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

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

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

On Working With Her Husband on the Blog:

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

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

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

On Being Oregonian at Heart:

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

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

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Laicie:

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

074: Aaron Clark: How to Make Every Bite Count

September 7, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Feed The Pan

Aaron is completely obsessed with food. On his blog, Feed The Pan, his goal is to inspire us to learn about food and help us find enjoyment in cooking and entertaining, and to encourage us to make every bite count.

I am so excited to have Aaron Clark of Feed The Pan here on the show today.

(*All images below are Aaron’s.)

On What He Isn’t:

I like to set to set my expectations for my readers beforehand. I want people to know that when they come to my blog, they’re not going to see blow your mind photography, poetic writing necessarily right away, but those are things I’m working on. I think it’s important to set those expectations because I want people to really get at the meat, if you will, no pun intended there, of the blog and really understand what it’s about, and that is uncommon techniques and ingredients.

On His Blog:

It really came down to the evolution of my culinary experience. I started in college really watching a lot of late night Good Eats. I’d flip on Good Eats to relax, and Alton Brown really taught me the finer tuning techniques of cooking that my parents didn’t at home. They would cook with me and that’s really where the base started, but they didn’t explain to me why these things were happening and why they would do them.

Alton Brown really kind of taught me how to cook, but then after college, I had a kitchen of my own when I moved out to my first apartment, and I was able to start collecting tools and ingredients and have a good pantry. And I really found that I really liked to entertain. So from there, “how do I entertain better?” Well, learn how to cook better and really work with people, especially other cooks on how to improve a technique.

That evolved into, okay, maybe I should just start an Instagram page and start taking pictures of my food because the first thing you do is look at it. I want it to be a little bit better looking on the plate so that it pleased the eyes and the palate. And then a good friend of ours suggested I start a food blog, and it kind of all ran from there.

On an Interesting Ingredient He Enjoys Cooking With:

I thought about this a lot today, actually, when I was preparing lunch. Anchovy paste. It’s subtle. You don’t always taste that it’s anchovy paste, but offers a kind of savoriness, and umami if you will, to the food you’re preparing, whether you put together a pasta salad or put it into a spice paste that you rub on a chicken or a steak before you grill it. It’s got to be one of my favorites.

You typically get the same results from buying it in a tube from a store. Typically, it’s a product of Spain. If you go to any specialty or international grocery, you’ll usually find it there.

On a Cooking Technique We Have to Try:

I think if it’s in your budget pick up an immersion circulator. Sous vide is the type of cooking where you submerge food, vacuum seal food, or put food in a plastic bag in a water bath, and you can cook it to a very precise temperature for a very precise amount of time. I would say that’s something that everyone should try because it’s really convenient. If you’re not terribly comfortable in the kitchen with high heat applications or with grilling, it’s a great way to really cook expensive cuts of meat very precisely.

It comes out kind of gray and dull-looking, but what you can do is either throw it on the grill, a really hot grill or in a really hot cast iron pan for a few seconds on each side until you develop a nice crust. There’s charts and things all over the Internet so you can find the ideal temperature for different foods, including vegetables, meats, and everything in between.

You can season the food before you vacuum seal it or put it in your zip lock bag with olive oil. What I do with steaks is I put the traditional basting ingredients that you would do in a pan seared steak; thyme, garlic, and olive oil, and it comes out great. And then I throw it in a pan and sear it.

On How He Learned to Cook:

Definitely the Internet and late night television. That, in combination with my parents. At home, my mom was always a gardener and always had amazing produce she would bring to the table. And her idea of food was fresh, natural, and right off the plant, while my dad, being an engineer, he would always tinker with things. So if the crock pot broke, he would take it out to the garage into his workshop and fix it. So between his technique-based cooking and my mom’s ingredient-based cooking, I would say it really started from there. Then I got more curious and needed to understand the why. So the why really comes from, in my situation, watching a lot of Jacques Pepin on YouTube. If Jacques Pepin’s on YouTube in any capacity I’ve probably seen it. He’s the master of technique, and he really explains what to do in certain situations where you’re working with different ingredients.

I think my obsession really comes from working with other chefs as well, where you’re understanding what they’re doing based on what they’re showing you, hands-on action, and you’re getting a lot of knowledge through what their experiences are, and that’s my favorite way to learn.

On Making Every Bite Count:

What I found is that by putting a little bit of extra effort into anything you put in your mouth, through either just adding a little bit of seasoning or blending up some spices and finishing up with fat, really I want people to discover every ingredient for its best qualities. So if you’re going to roast a carrot, say, you make sure and season it correctly, use olive oil and salt. And then what a lot of people don’t really understand is there’s a difference between the kosher salt you would use to season something and a finishing salt. If you add this finishing salt at the end, it really brings out the carrot for what it is and that’s what I mean by make every bite count. Is to do it to its fullest and use what nature gave you at its highest capacity.

I’m a big fan of kosher salt for seasoning during cooking. I usually throw it in the pan with just about everything, even desserts. Sometimes I’ll use other salts for desserts that are a little bit finer than kosher salt. But kosher salt has a little bit of a bigger grain, while a finishing salt, say, Fleur de Sel, is probably the most common one. It’s not as firm and it’s a little bit less dense, so it has a little bit of a crunch to it without giving you too much of a salty flavor. What it does is enhance the flavor of the food rather than taste salty.

On Getting the Most out of Food Experiences:

I guess in cooking big meals and entertaining, it really came from the way that I approach everything from the start of the meal, when I go to purchase the ingredients, to the end when I’m serving the guests or bringing their plates out. So it’s really a culmination of my thought process from beginning to end.

I was trying to make beef stock one time, and I have a very hot stove. I used to before I replaced the one I have now. It was an electric stove top, and I forgot to put the grate at the bottom of my stock pot. I put the beef bones in and brought it to a roaring boil, left the room, and they ended up sticking to the bottom. And then I fell asleep and everything burnt. Everything was smoky in the house and I couldn’t get that burnt smell out for about a week. So it took me a little while, but ultimately, I think patience being that virtue, I tried it again in about a month, and it worked out well. So I felt defeated for a little while, but then it came around to be a good thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jacques Pepin. Essential Pepin is probably my favorite show that he has done. I also watch
Fast Food My Way, and Jacques and Julia when they were together. It’s old and the resolution isn’t great, but those three are very high up there. Beyond that, Good Eats has always been my really sort of go-to.

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

Well, I have to throw this out to Elena Rosemond-Hoerr of Biscuits and Such. She’s a dear friend of my wife and mine, and she really is, a really strong motivation to get the food blog started. Her pictures and her writing are just incredible. And she’s an amazing cook. We see each other a few times a year, and we always throw it down in the kitchen, and her results are, oh man, mind blowing. Her biscuits are off the hook.

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

Instagram? I follow a guy called Creepy Chef. He’s a line cook out in California, and it reminded me of my days, my short-lived in the kitchen as a line cook. And he makes some really incredible dishes. I also follow Mind of a Chef.

ChefSteps is another one I follow a lot. They have a blog, an Instagram page, and they put together really, really cool, but very technology forward foods. And the pictures and the food staging that they present is really amazing.

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

Probably I would have to say my immersion circulator. It’s just really versatile, and I think anybody can use it from beginner to advanced, even though it’s a more pricey piece of equipment you would use in your kitchen. I’d recommend it if you like to cook, whether you just started or you are an expert chef, master chef, that this is probably an essential tool to have. And it’s quite unusual. People are really impressed when you pull it out.

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

Peas. Frozen peas, which I actually put in a lot of things. You can add those to a dish right at the end and because the surface area to mass ratio is really quite large, they cook very fast. You can put them in a meal with potatoes, with carrots, any other types of vegetable. Peas and carrots I know, kind of cliché, but actually that’s one thing I’ve really learned to like ‘cuz peas have a subtle saltiness to them that I really enjoy.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I really like David Chang’s Momofuku. What that does for me is really takes me outside of the traditional American realm. As diverse as it is already, but it gives you real insight into some of the techniques and ingredients that he uses in his kitchens in New York. He has several restaurants, and it really introduces me to a lot of the Japanese methods and ingredients. I’m a big fan of Japanese food, and this kind of helps me refine my own style in that type of cuisine.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I cook a lot to Andrew Bird. He’s a violinist and kind of a one-man orchestra. He has a plethora of music styles within his own band. And they take you from highs to lows, fast to slow, and he really picks me up in a pinch and helps me get motivated to cook.

On Keeping Posted with Aaron:

Always check my Facebook. That’s my go-to. Instagram, I always post my links under my pictures there. And between those two, you should be able to find me.

071: Kate Taylor: Whole Sustainable Foods and Healthy Eating

August 26, 2015 by Gabriel 10 Comments

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Cookie and Kate

Kate is a self-taught photographer and cook who daydreams about new recipes and devours cookbooks. She believes in eating whole, sustainable foods that delights the senses and nourishes the body. On her blog Cookie and Kate, she shares her vegetarian creations while keeping things fun and recipes flexible.

I am so delighted to have Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate joining me today.

(*All images below are Kate’s.)

On Her Passion for Food:

It’s funny because when I was a kid I was the pickiest eater of all time. We’re talking peanut butter sandwiches, no jelly and no crust for a while. Before I got sick of that and then it was just like mac and cheese. So I think that my taste buds expanded exponentially once I went off to college and tried new things, and it was kind of a whole new world. We just live in this awesome time where we can sample all these different ethnic cuisines, and sample the world in any decently sized city. So coming from, like, a suburb in Oklahoma, I just hadn’t tried any of that and it was kind of a revelation.

I think that my learning how to cook was more just out of necessity. In college, I was trying to live really, really cheaply. Actually I spent a semester in France that really got me interested in cooking because we’d walk all the way to the grocery store and we’d just come back with what we could carry. And we did not have a refrigerator, we did not have a microwave, we just had a stove.

The two girls I was with were pretty content just eating spaghetti with marinara sauce every night. But I’d be like, “What would happen if I added these vegetables, or what’s that sauce taste like?” And so I’ve just always been a creative person who likes to make stuff, and I found, especially in that situation, that cooking could be pretty fun. It was like I had all those constraints and I just sort of played around with them.

On Her Blog:

I would say my blog kind of had a different story than most. Most food blogs start because the person already has a passion for cooking and loves to try recipes and share recipes with their friends. My blog just started when I was really bored at an office job, like, maybe a year and a half after college. I was working in online marketing, so I was learning a lot of stuff that was relevant to the more technical side of blogging. And I just felt sort of creatively stifled. I had always enjoyed writing and photography, I had taken several photography classes in college, and just wasn’t using those passions and skills. So when my friend introduced me to a lot of blogs that were out there I was like, “Oh, this is really fun.” And eventually it was like, “Hey, I can build websites and I like all the stuff that goes into a blog so why don’t I just start one?”

Cookie and Kate was just the only catchy name I could come up with for a blog that had no focus really. But I knew that myself and my dog would be involved somehow.

I wanted it to be really unique content that you could only get there. And when I started the blog I thought, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll dabble in interior design or, you know, some other topics that I enjoy, but there were other people out there doing a really good job with that.” It was like, “How do I add my own spin on this?” So one day I shared a salsa recipe that I’d been making at home and it was kind of a lightbulb moment, because I was like, “Oh, this is something I get to photograph, I get to wrap stories around it, I get to write about it. I kind of get to geek out because I really love projects that I can immerse myself in.” I also felt really, really good about sharing healthy recipes. You might not be able to buy that $200 top that I said was cute last week in a blog post I didn’t feel good about because I can’t even buy that $200 top, but you could probably stop by the grocery store and spend $4 on ingredients.

On Whole Sustainable Foods:

Whole foods, the basic definition, is just that they’re foods that are as close to the source as possible. In this day and age there are just processed foods everywhere you go. Even most breads out there have like 25 ingredients when there should only be five. So I just feel like somewhere in the last 100 years we’ve gone from whole foods, which didn’t even need definition, until now I just feel it’s really important to eat unprocessed, unrefined, whole grains. All the nutrition I have read reinforces the importance of getting enough vegetables and fruits and whole grains. It’s really just, we need more plant-based foods in our diet and less processed foods. If I have an agenda it’s just to try to get people to eat more healthy, whole foods and less processed foods.

I grew up in a pretty health conscious household. I mean, granted, for a while I only ate peanut butter sandwiches, but my mom was also really good about always just having a simple salad on the table, and fresh fruit, and she appreciated whole grain bread versus plain white bread. And I can tend to be hypoglycemic, so my blood sugar levels just get out of whack easier than other people, and so I learned very early on, if I just ate plain Bisquick pancakes with a lot of fake maple syrup on top for breakfast I would be seriously ill in a few hours.

For me I felt like the connection between what I ate and how I felt was more apparent than it is for other people. I guess my grandmother and my mom have been interested in healthy cooking and back then it was low fat so when I went to college I eventually picked up a book by Marion Nestle who’s a well-known nutritionist and I was just really surprised to learn, “Oh, maybe I don’t need three glasses of milk a day” and, “Oh, we need fat in our diet.” It’s not something I need to be scared of or avoid.

Another writer that I fell in love with his books is Michael Pollan. Very influential in convincing me to eat less meat.

On Misconception About Healthy Eating:

I think that the low-fat craze really did a number on everyone’s concept of healthy foods, because once you take the fat out of anything, it’s not going to be satisfying. So I would say don’t be afraid of healthy fats like olive oil or even some butter. They are fine, we need them in order to feel satisfied. I’d also say don’t even be too afraid to salt the recipes. I suggest to salt them, because I mean, really, you’re not going to get as much salt in anything you make at home versus the processed foods. And also just fresh flavors like fresh lemon, which I add to tons of stuff, like a squeeze of lemon juice or garlic, herbs, those aromatics just are bursting with flavor. There is no reason to think that healthy means flavorless. Also, vegetables are super tasty if you ask me, and if maybe you need to add some cheese to help you get there, go for it!

On Eating Vegetarian:

Well, I eat fish on rare occasions. I don’t have any problem in eating fish. I went vegetarian over five years ago. It was before I started my blog. I don’t really push vegetarianism much on my blog, it’s just that everything so happens to be meatless.

I think a lot of people that, maybe even most of the people, who follow my blog just appreciate healthy, wholesome, produce-driven meals like I do. I became a vegetarian, a lax one really, after reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. I just felt like he presented a really well-balanced view on it and frankly when I went to college and my taste buds expanded I was still very picky about meat, so I never ate a ton of it, if I did it was like chicken. I eventually learned to like burgers just because there is ketchup on them. It wasn’t a lot of meat that I loved, and once I learned more about it, was like, “Okay, well this is a really relatively easy way for me to do the environment a favor, because meat takes a lot of energy to produce. It’s another way to avoid antibiotic exposure, and just the growth hormones and the stuff we put in the animals these days.” It was just easier for me.

For a while after I went vegetarian I decided I would eat some bacon and pepperoni every now and then, but I don’t do that anymore. Those are the only meats that I really missed just because they are really tasty. I never once missed chicken. I missed some comfort food, stuff that my mom would make like chicken enchiladas but now she just puts beans in mine.

On Some Resources for Learning More About Eating Vegetarian:

The book that I’ve been referencing most often is a new one that came out from America’s Test Kitchen called The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. They just have a vegetarian version of almost anything you can think of. If you’re just dying for pad thai they’ll tell you how to make it. I think that would be a good book for anyone who wants to eat less meat. I really love Michael Pollan so if you want to learn more about food. I always feel like learning more about the reality of what you’re eating, makes it so much easier to make good choices. So I would recommend anything by Michael Pollan.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable, but recently I’ve gotten into Mind of a Chef on Netflix. I’ve only seen season one so it’s all about David Chang and he’s just, like, kind of blowing my mind with his ideas, so that’s been fun.

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

Well my friend Tessa has a really awesome gluten-free baking blog. She has convinced me that gluten-free baked goods can be super tasty and she works really hard on them. So I would say Salted Plains, that is the name of the blog. And then I recently met with a researcher from Harvard and she told me about a newsletter that Harvard sends out that has like really solid nutrition advice in it. So I would say subscribe to that.

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

I am kind of a sucker for Instagram accounts that are full of animals. So, I like The Dogist on Instagram, and I like Esther the Wonder Pig.

It’s this pig that these two guys adopted thinking it was going to be a little pig, but it’s like a giant pig.

They even moved to a farm so she would have more space and they dress her up. I watch my friend’s little girl some afternoons and we always catch up on Esther the Wonder Pig.

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

I have this little spatula with a little wooden handle that I inherited from my grandmother. My dad said she was always walking around with that spatula in her back pocket. So I’m pretty attached to that one.

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

I use to dislike fennel, I really like it now.

I am so sure my mom never put fennel on the table. If you slice it super thin it becomes really palatable and kind of a surprising ingredient to add to salad.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Yeah well I definitely reiterate America’s Test Kitchen Vegetarian Cookbook. I also really love the Vegetarian Flavor Bible, which also came out recently, it’s like a flavor thesaurus and I use it for almost everything. If I’m wondering what to do with a tomato, I’ll open it up and see what goes well with tomatoes. Honestly, I just have the most enormous pile of cookbooks and it’s kind of just rotating inspiration.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say anything by Otis Redding just makes me want to move and hop around in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Kate:

I would suggest definitely subscribing to my blog posts by email or RSS. I post everything on Facebook. You can get some behind the scene stuff from Instagram.

067: Sarah Fennel: Baking and Picture Taking

August 12, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Broma Bakery

Since starting her blog in 2010, Sarah has inhabited seven different kitchens, graduated college, worked in marketing for a restaurant group and now works full-time on Broma Bakery. Her blog, Broma Bakery, is where she shares her love of food while indulging in her passion for photography.

I’m so happy to have Sarah Fennel of Broma Bakery on the show today.

(*All images below are Sarah’s.)

On Her Blog:

My dad’s a reporter, so I’ve always been around cameras and film and all of that stuff. So, from a very young age, I was always interested in photography, not necessarily food photography, but just holding cameras, taking pictures, things like that. Then, when I went to college, I really missed doing photography on a more regular basis.

At college, you get so stuck up with studying and not so fun stuff. So, I just decided to pick up my camera and started shooting food. The blog and the photography really came together in the same moment, in that, I missed my mom’s baking. I wanted to have some creative outlet and I just put them together.

I had no formal training. I had never done food photography before. I just picked up a camera and went with it.

On Her Interest in Baking:

I was always more interested in baking. My sister is a huge cook; she has been interested in cooking since she was 13 years old. She would help my parents cook almost every meal at my house, so she took on that role and I stepped back. But I’d always loved sweets; I’ve always had a huge sweet tooth. So, the baking came along more natural to me and it was a nicer reward for me in the end, to be able to eat desserts.

It’s a lot more precise and it takes, for me, my development is a lot of going to tried and true recipes I’ve used before, bloggers that I trust, and creating something new, but a lot of it is really taking stuff that you know is going to work and then working off of that, because there’s been times when I’ve tried doing things just thinking that I could make cookies or a cake and it’s really a science. You need be precise in what you do.

On Her Passion for Photography:

I was doing a lot of portraits. I did photography courses all throughout high school and then some in college as well, but I was really into taking pictures of people. I really liked engaging with different people. There was something about, when you put somebody in front of the lens and I guess have them shine through your pictures.

I, again, just really taught myself. I think that, if you look on my blog, my styling is very minimal, but there definitely is a style to it. I’ll use plain backdrops and things like that. And, in terms of that portion of the site, I thought it was really important to engage with my readers, just because there are so many people out there that are interested in food and food photography, but don’t really know where to start.

So many of my friends that have come over and see me taking my photos, the first time when they come over, they were like, this is what it looks like? I mean, the behind the scene is a lot more thrown together than you’d think. So, I thought it was really important to put that on the site, to make it seem a lot more accessible to people, and hopefully get them to be able to be inspired and start photographing food.

On Working on Her Blog Full-Time:

I guess it was fortuitous, really. I was working at this restaurant job and things weren’t working out. I wanted to make a switch and instead of jumping into something right away, I thought my favorite part of this job has been taking pictures of food.

I have this baking blog. It’s gotten good reception so far. Let’s give it a couple of months and see if I can really push this to be my full-time job. So, I just took a leap and went for it. Two months passed and I was like, I want to keep working on this. Then four months passed and it’s really just gone from there. It’s something I feel fortunate enough to be able to do as my full-time job and it’s definitely something that I want to have continue grow. But, yeah, it sort of happened and I went with it.

Doing it as a side project, I didn’t really set a schedule for myself. I didn’t set different tasks I had to do to keep up with things. Things that most people don’t realize is that, there’s recipe development and there’s photographing, posting, getting them out there, but then there is so much, in terms of social media and marketing and even just connecting with other bloggers, that goes into creating a successful blog, that takes so much time.

For me, I’ll wake up at 9:00 and I’ll just get a cup of coffee and go straight to my computer, and then I’ll comment on other blogs, see what’s been going on with blogger friends that I know and that usually takes about two hours to really go through and engage with other people. Then, I’ll switch to doing some Pinteresting. Pinteresting is really important, keeping yourself active on that. So, I’ll do that probably for another hour, take a break for lunch and then right after lunch, I’ll go into making a recipe and then photographing it as well. That can take anywhere from an hour and a half to the whole afternoon. Then sometimes, if I can get a workout in, I’ll do that.

On Some Misconceptions About Baking:

I think that there are two main things. In general, when people see baking and they see a brownie that’s perfectly fudgy or a cake that’s three layers, it seems like there is a lot that goes into it. And sometimes there is, but especially with my style of baking, it’s a lot easier than it seems. I mean, it is very precise, but as long as you’re following along with those directions and really making sure you have quality ingredients, those two things will take you far in baking.

Then, I’d say the other thing that really I’ve seen prevents people from doing things is things like Pinterest and all these blogs that have popped up, because you see this final products and they seem so unattainable, just because there’s so many of them and there’s perfect lighting and there’s these perfect bit shots and all of that. I think that really scares people and it makes them think that it’s something they can’t do.

My biggest piece of advice would be to just go out and try one of those recipes, and really see how it goes. More often than not, you’ll be surprised with what you can do.

On Messing Up in the Kitchen:

There have been so many times. It still happens all the time.

There was this one time when my sister and I were making a chocolate beet cake, like with beets. We followed the directions and we put the cake in the oven, and then we realized, “oh my God,” we didn’t put the oil in. So, instead of just a beet cake, we put it on the blog and called it a low fat beet cake. It totally worked, but things like that happen all the time.

There was one I did this winter. I was trying to do peppermint cookies, so I chopped up little circular peppermints and I baked them. They came out of the oven and they completely melted off of the cookies. There were these little candy drippings everywhere. And it was just absolutely awful. So yeah, it’s a regular occurrence in the kitchen.

On Some Online Resources for Those Interested in Learning More about Baking:

One site that I go to very regularly is Food52. It’s a fantastic site. It’s basically recipes that people submit, as well as recipes that the professionals at Food52 will recreate and photograph themselves, but then, in addition, they have this whole tips and tricks section, where you can learn things like if your baking soda is expired and how to make the perfect loaf and things like that. It’s been really helpful for me and it’s just beautiful photography. It’s a really nice site layout. So, I definitely would suggest that.

In terms of books, I really grew up with The Joy of Cooking and that’s the book that we constantly pulled out, anytime we wanted a recipe. So, just going to classics like that is really great, because you can’t go wrong.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m really into Chef’s Table, Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa and Mind of a Chef.

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

You got to know about Food52, How Sweet Eats is one of my favorite bloggers, Joy The Baker is like the queen of all things baking.

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

On Pinterest, I follow Half Baked Harvest. She’s an incredible photographer and she has really unique things. On Facebook, I follow Ambitious Kitchen. She does great healthy recipes, but then she also does some really fun workout stuff. On Instagram, Kale and Caramel. It’s really innovative desserts. I love it.

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

I don’t think it’s unusual at all, but my KitchenAid is my baby. My boyfriend got it for my birthday a couple of years ago and I use it at least three or four times a week, and you can just do everything with it. So, it’s the most worth it gadget I’ve ever owned.

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

I used to not like avocados. I thought they were overrated. I just didn’t get them and then one day, I just made avocado toast, because I was bored, and I’m obsessed with avocados now. I put them on sandwiches, I put them in my toast, put them with my eggs. Sometimes I’ll have them for dinner, love them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Joy of Cooking, absolutely. Back to basics, it’s all you need. Then, the Dominique Ansel baking cookbook is unbelievable. The photos are amazing, the recipes are amazing. You’ve got to check it out.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Motown, like always. Put on Motown and I’m like bopping around the kitchen. It’s just so fun and I love it.

On Keeping Posted with Sarah:

Instagram is my favorite form of social media, so you can check me out on Instagram.