Oh Ladycakes | The Dinner Special podcast

111: Amanda Paa: How a Gluten Allergy Inspired Her

February 24, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Heartbeet Kitchen

On her blog, Amanda shares food stories and recipes with the hope to inspire us to realize that the best meals are those made with fresh seasonal and simple ingredients. She believes that food doesn’t have to be fancy nor does it require expensive equipment. Amanda is also the author of Smitten with Squash, her cookbook with 80 original recipes on the squash family.

I am so excited to have Amanda Paa of Heartbeet Kitchen with me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Amanda’s.)

On Learning How to Cook:

There were some things that I just watched Grandma do, like my Grandma made the best loaves of bread. I never rolled them out with her, or kneaded, or anything like that. But I always ate what came from it and it was always the same and it was always so good. I could smell the yeast coming from her oven and things like that. So I think it was definitely a little bit of both. Some watching, some helping. With my other Grandma, she makes lefse every year, which is a Norwegian specialty, and I did help her, from rolling the balls to then putting it on the hot iron to getting it real thin, all of those little things, I did do with her.

It wasn’t really until about six years ago, I was living in Wisconsin and I moved back to Minnesota because I did grow up here. But moving into the Twin Cities, there were so many more farmers markets, so much more of a farm to table movement and just interesting food. I had never really taken the time to learn about or experience and so, I had this thing where I’d go to the market and every time, I would pick a new fruit or a new vegetable or even a cut of meat that I had never cooked with before. And I said, “We’re going to experiment. There is no judgment here. Just let the creativity flow,” and that is really kind of how my blog started too. It really forged this passion for telling the real story behind real food and real food recipes and it never gets boring. Because there is always something new to learn.

On Her Food Heroes:

There is so much inspiration that we are so fortunate to have because of the Internet. Years ago, it was just cookbooks which I still am inspired by today. But there is so much content out there and beautiful work being done all across the world. It’s eye opening every single day, and so when I think of my own cooking and who has inspired it a lot, I think of some of my favorite blogs like Lindsey of Dolly and Oatmeal, and Sherrie from With Food and Love, and Sarah Kieffer from The Vanilla Bean Blog.The way she is with baking and her precision and her beauty, you can’t look at it and not be inspired.

And then I think, even just typical sites like The Kitchn and Food52 have, whether it’s new ways of doing things or new ingredients that they are coming up with ideas for, and just the way that they look at food really inspires me.

I also have to say too, like even traditional people, I mean, I think Martha Stewart is phenomenal and she has gone through how many decades and not only evolved with but kept her brand. I only wish that I could throw a dinner party like her. Every little touch she does is really something special. And she takes the time to do it. I think that that’s part of what I love too and the change in me is that, cooking is an experience and I wrote about this on my blog. It’s much more than just for your health or for just putting it on the table. It evokes emotion, it can change mood, it can bring conversation. It’s just a beautiful thing.

On How Her Gluten Allergy Impacted Her Cooking:

So I have had quite a few autoimmune issues since I was young and still kind of battle it. But we finally figured out that one of the main stressors and causes was an intolerance to gluten. It was causing severe headaches and rashes and different things like shingles that I got when I was in eighth grade. I mean just very odd things, and finally, one doctor suggested that I stop eating gluten and it was basically like a miracle. Within three weeks, I was much, much better.

And at first, it was daunting. It was like, “What? You’re telling me I have to give up all of these foods that I love and I have to kind of relearn how to cook? How am I going to eat out?” All that type of stuff. And I can say today, that I would not probably be here sitting and talking to you if that had not happened, because what it did was inspire me to say, “Okay, here is what I can have. Let’s embrace this,” and what happened was it opened my eyes to all these new foods that I had never tasted or nothing that I grew up with, whether it be gluten-free grains like millet and sorghum, or teaching myself how to make flat bread that’s made from chickpea flour known as socca.

And to really too start to look at different cultures because, a lot of other cultures don’t use as much wheat or they use it in different ways, and so there are a lot of cultural things too that really were like, “Wow, this is good. I’ve been missing this for all these years?” And what I also started to realize was that most real food, that’s grown from the ground, plants, lean proteins and meats that are grown in a humane way, fruits, nuts, seeds, all those things are naturally gluten-free anyways.

It’s most of the processed food where the problem comes in. It made me feel good to get that burst of energy in the kitchen. And I wanted to share that with other people. Because as I was going along, I was meeting all these farmers or these artisans that were doing this really cool stuff that it didn’t matter if you were gluten-free or not. It was just really good stuff.

On Some Good Sources for Learning How to Cook with a Gluten Allergy:

It’s funny you ask that, because I had someone message me the other day. Their friend had just found that she was gluten-free. She was like, “Where do they start? How did that work?” And my first resource and still someone that I truly love and really think is such a benefit for the gluten-free community is Shauna from Gluten Free Girl, and her and her husband started a blog before gluten-free had really even been talked about. He was a chef and I read her book which was called, Gluten-Free Girl. It was more of almost a documentary but then also education on her whole transition, and it made me feel so much better. Like, “Okay, my world is not coming to an end. A, I feel so much better and now there is this whole new world of food that I get to explore,” and that was super, super helpful for me.

The other one, I don’t know if she blogs anymore. But her site is still very active. But Gluten-Free Goddess. There are so many beginner, basic recipes that will make you feel less intimidated, and that was really powerful for me too.

On Her Book, Smitten with Squash:

Smitten with Squash was published in July of last year. I was approached by the publisher who, they kind of do these, one book a year basically on a Midwestern fruit or vegetables that you love or that you’re very passionate about and the growing of it and history, because it is a historical publisher that publishes the cookbook. It’s the Minnesota Historical Society Press. They contacted me and were like, “You know, give us a few of your ideas, write a proposal around it. We’ve got a few others in mind.”

And I had always liked squash but what was interesting to me about squash, a couple of things is that, living here in Minnesota, our growing season is rather short. And squash, the family of squash between winter squash and summer squash, you can eat locally almost all year round here. Because summer squash is so abundant and then winter squash, you can store it for up to six months, and that will last you almost until summer squash is starting to arrive again. I thought that that was really neat because I do try to base my recipes off seasonal eating, because I feel like that’s when food tastes the best and you can become creative with what looks good at the market and things like that.

The other part that was really cool to me was that squash really is a part of every culture in one way or another and there aren’t very many foods that are like that. And so I just started formulating this idea about doing my whole book on squash and they accepted the idea.

There is 80 original recipes. There are about 40 summer squash recipes and then 40 winter squash recipes. And you’ll see everything from sweets to appetizers to pickles to main dishes, vegetarian to Paleo to kind of everything in there because it is so versatile.

The other real passion behind it is, you know how there are those foods that you had when you were young and you think like, “Oh my gosh, I do not like this because, this is probably the only way you can make it or this is the way I always see it served and I can’t stand this.” And when people talk about it, they are like, “Oh, yeah, well my mom made it, acorn squash. She baked it in a pan with some water and then when it came out she put butter and brown sugar on it. It’s just not good.” And I wanted to change that. I wanted to give people new ideas for what to do with summer squash in stuff like brownies or cake or things like that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chopped.

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

Well, the ones that I mentioned before. So The Vanilla Bean Blog, Dolly and Oatmeal, With Food and Love, Sara from Cake Over Steak has such an interesting food blog that has beautiful recipes but she also illustrates her recipes, and I know she’s been on your show, and she is fantastic.

If you’re looking for a wonderful vegan site, Abby from The Frosted Vegan has just a great way with words and she is one of those people that makes things very easy to understand. I love too, if you’ve never glanced over the blog, Green Kitchen Stories, just beautiful photography and wonderful, nourishing, healthy food that never loses flavor and is exactly what I love to do, which is cooking seasonally.

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

Well, on Instagram, I love following The Fauxmartha. She has her little girl that she posts pictures of, but her food scenes are just so incredible and simple yet they just make me want to start cooking. That is something that is obviously what we all aspire to do. Another friend, her blog, it’s called Sunshine and Sea Salt. And she is just a real good friend and is an amazing recipe developer as well, but her words that she writes on Instagram are almost like sometimes blog posts. They are just beautiful. Oh, Ladycakes too is a really fun one to follow along with, and I love following her. Those are a few of my biggest inspirations.

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

My most treasured, the one that I use the most that like, if you could only keep three things from your kitchen, would be my Le Creuset dutch oven because they are just workhorses. They do everything that you could ever want, and then I used to think it was strange that my mom gave me my grandma’s silverware and now, I love it and I use it in so many of my photographs, and it really means a lot to me when I see it. And then, thirdly, are some of my thrift finds that I find while I’m out. One of those is this real old baker’s scale. You’ll see it in a couple of my posts and on my Instagram but they just don’t make things like that anymore.

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

Ricotta cheese. I used to not like the texture. I only really had it in lasagna and I prefer cottage cheese over it in lasagna and that’s what formulated this dislike. Now, I think it is so great whether that’s baked with lemon and olive oil and herbs for an easy appetizer, or on salads. My favorite thing too is to put it into desserts where typically, you might use yogurt or something like that. It creates such a soft texture and moist, rich, just kind of like cake and it’s really a fabulous ingredient. But I thought I hated it. Now, I love it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Deborah Madison’s Vegetable Literacy is, I mean, that should definitely be in your kitchen because it’s all about cooking with families of plants and how they all go together. It’s just really simple but interesting recipes and I use that as not only a reference guide but something every week in my kitchen.

Another one that I think you just should have it is Joy of Cooking, because every single technique or question you ever had about food is in there. There are also vintage recipes and modern new ways of doing things which I think is really cool.

One of my newest cookbooks that I use a lot and that I love is Sheet Pan Suppers and it’s all different recipes and it’s not just suppers but things that you can make on a sheet pan and have so little clean up. Very little clean up, like a sheet pan is just another workhorse too. And it creates delicious meals.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I wouldn’t say it’s any particular album or anything, but 50s and 60s music, some of those classic kind of blues but like, pop hits too. They’re all so upbeat and all have such a happy tone. They don’t make you think too hard and that’s kind of what I always have on in my kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Amanda:

I am on Facebook and Instagram as heartbeetkitchen and beet is spelled like the vegetable, just for my blog too. And I am also on Pinterest and I am also on Twitter.

Snapchat: heartbeetkitchn

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.

092: Emma Galloway: Learning to Cook with Food Intolerances

November 18, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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My Darling Lemon Thyme

Emm went to culinary school and worked as a chef for almost eight years in restaurants, the pastry section of cafes, and catering companies in Australia and New Zealand. She left when she became a parent and discovered that not only do her children suffer from gluten and lactose intolerance, but so does she. Emm started her blog in 2010 to share gluten-free vegetarian real food recipes, and stories and tips on organic gardening. Since then, she has written a book, My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen, and her blog was the 2014 Saveur Blog Awards Winner for Best Original Recipes Blog.

I’m so excited to have Emma Galloway of My Darling Lemon Thyme here with me today.

(*All photos below are Emm’s.)

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I grew up on quite a large property, where my parents grew heaps of vegetables and fruit that we had. And being vegetarian, my mom used to put a lot of time and effort into preparing most of what we had from scratch. So it was part of who we are, and my family, I mean, we’re all into cooking, and from a very young age, I knew that I wanted to be a chef. So, even though a few people told me not to, because that’s a pretty crazy profession, long hours and stuff, I didn’t listen and I just followed my heart and did what I wanted to do.

On Working in Restaurants, Cafes, and Catering:

My preference was working in smaller cafes, so that’s where I worked in New Zealand, mostly it was smaller cafes. Smaller cafes, you generally have only a couple of you in the kitchen, so you’re basically covering all bases yourself, you’re doing everything. Sometimes, even doing the dishes as well, which is actually how I started off in the industry. Restaurants tend to be divided into sections, so you’re only in charge of the one section. And catering companies are quite similar. So I was in charge of the pastry section when I worked for two catering companies in Sydney years ago.

They all have their challenges. It’s a pretty high stress environment, working in the kitchen. Especially when, like I said, if you’re working in a cafe, where there’s only one or two of you in the kitchen and you’re doing two, three hundred covers a day, it’s a lot of work and a lot of stress and a lot of running around. So, yeah, they’re all pretty high stressed.

I think cafes in the winter time generally are nice and calm and that’s when you have your time to play and be a little bit more relaxed. I don’t know if it’s the same in the States, but in New Zealand in summertime, if you work in a cafe, it’s extremely busy, especially if you’re in a cafe anywhere near the ocean, which is where I used to work. People are always going to the beach in the summer and then they’re wanting to go and eat, so it’s pretty busy.

On Starting Her Blog:

When I left the kitchen when my daughter was born, I didn’t even know what a food blog was. We’re a little bit behind in New Zealand and Australia. Five years ago when I started my food blog, there was probably only two of my friends that had ever heard of a food blog before. Even though, I mean, there’s people like Heidi Swanson in the States, who have been blogging for well over 10 years. We’re a little bit behind here, so I had no idea when I left the kitchen at all. And it was actually from finding Heidi Swanson’s cookbook in the library and then getting onto her food blog that I even discovered what food blogs were. So that was only five years ago.

For years I’ve always recorded recipes. If I find a great recipe in a magazine, I was always the crazy person who would be frantically writing out recipes and trying new things. And after I got onto food blogs, I thought, “Well, I’m at home.” Just looking after my kids, my kids were four and two at the time when I started it, so I wasn’t working professionally. And then I missed that creative side of cooking, where you can just experiment. So, at the start I had no clue of what I was doing, didn’t really know how to take photos, but just started.

On Recognizing Her and Her Children’s Food Intolerances:

When I was pregnant with my daughter, I had basically just a sore tummy the entire pregnancy. I just thought that’s just what happens when you’re pregnant. Being my first pregnancy, I had nothing to compare it too. And then when my daughter came along, she was extremely upset 24/7, wouldn’t sleep and was just in a lot of pain, basically. And so, my midwife at the time suggested that maybe I try cutting out some of the foods in my diet that might be affecting her through my breast milk. So, that’s when I cut out gluten and dairy, but I’d always been interested in alternative food. Being vegetarian, I’d always look to vegan foods and loved seeing how people get creative with vegan food, but the whole gluten-free thing was quite a challenge at the start.

I didn’t really know what I was doing and I don’t think I was 100% gluten-free, because I hadn’t figured out that it’s in basically everything at this stage. So, when my son came along two years later, and showed a lot of the same symptoms as my daughter had, I got quite serious and went and got us allergy tested. That’s when it showed up that we can’t handle any gluten. We can handle small amounts of dairy, and more so as the kids have gotten older, but yeah, gluten is not our friend.

On Tackling a New Approach to Cooking and Food (with Food Intolerances):

I think the easiest way to approach it, is to focus on what you can eat, rather than being all upset that you can’t eat that donut in the store. Although, there are a lot of gluten-free donuts and things around these days, but I think focusing more on what you can eat, and naturally gluten-free and dairy-free things.

I’m very lucky in that my husband is Vietnamese, and so, all of our night-time meals are based mostly around rice, which is gluten-free and dairy-free. So I find that eating a more Asian-inspired diet or a Mexican diet, where the core ingredients are naturally gluten-free is usually the easier way to go to begin with, until you get your head around working with different gluten-free flours and dairy-free alternatives.

I’ve never really used the pre-packet gluten-free flour mixers, I prefer to just use my own individual flours. I think, when you’re first starting out, by all means, if you’re overwhelmed by gluten-free, then going that way is totally acceptable. You’ll probably get to a certain point where you would love more flexibility to add different flavors or different nutritional qualities to what you’re making. So that’s when you can use your own flours, but it’s totally acceptable at the start. When it all feels too much, I just think, do whatever you can do to make it easier for yourself.

On Some Good Resources to Learn More About Gluten-Free Cooking:

The main one that I have used over the years is glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna’s recipes are extremely well-tested. I guess with her teacher background, she’s extremely good at explaining everything, and why she uses certain flours, and for all the basic things that you’re missing, like pizza and bread and all those things. She has brilliant recipes on her site and in all of her books as well.

On Her Book, “My Darling Lemon Thyme – Recipes from My Real Food Kitchen”:

After a couple of years of blogging, I pretty much had made up my mind that I wanted to try and get published. Over the years, there were a lot of recipes I had been holding back from putting on the blog, because I thought they’re too good to share in this capacity and I wanted to save them for a book.

And so, I spent about a year trying to approach publishers and see if they were interested. And I got turned down by every single one. Basically, at that stage, this was probably going back at least three or more years, probably four years nearly even. At that stage, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian food was a little bit too specialized for most publishers, so they turned me down saying, “It’s just all too hard.” And basically, I was in talks with one publisher in New Zealand at the time, who said, “We’ll publish a gluten-free baking book if you’re interested in that.” But that’s not really what I wanted to do for my first book.

And so, I was extremely lucky when I was nearly giving up hope, Harper Collins, New Zealand, who I hadn’t approached, because you had to have an agent to approach them and I didn’t have one at that stage, they actually approached me from seeing my blog. So it all worked out well in the end – very, very happy and thankful.

The book is filled with a hundred of my favorite recipes. Most of the recipes in there are recipes that I have been making for a long, long time. Some are inspired by recipes my mum made when I was little and I’ve adapted them to be gluten-free. And there’s a lot of base recipes, which is what I wanted my first book to be, so that anyone can pick this up, that’s new to gluten-free, and it covers all the bases.

There are numerous breakfasts to choose from. There’s pizza. There’s a homemade sourdough. There’s how to make your own yogurt from scratch. Tomato sauces, everything like that. The whole book is vegetarian and gluten-free, and then most of the recipes are dairy-free also. There are little bits of yogurt and butter, which is what my body tolerates, so that’s in there.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I do watch MasterChef.

There are a lot of professional chefs that think cooking shows like that are just slightly embarrassing, but there’s a lot of talented people that go on MasterChef. Some of the dishes they make a lot of professional chefs would struggle to make. So, I quite like it.

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

I’m terrible, I don’t actually read heaps of food blogs. So, 101 Cookbooks is the number one, I don’t think I’ve ever missed a post of hers in the five/six years that I’ve been reading it. I love The Vanilla Bean Blog, Oh, Ladycakes, The First Mess and With Food and Love. All of those blogs, they make food that I want to eat, even if I can’t, like The Vanilla Bean Blog, my friend Sarah writes it. Most of it I wouldn’t even be able to eat, because it’s not gluten-free, but I just love looking at her gorgeous photos.

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

Green Kitchen Stories Instagram’s feed is amazing, absolutely amazing. Tara O’Brady, Seven Spoons. Luisa Brimble, Australian food and lifestyle photographer, her stuff is always amazing, and both on Pinterest and Instagram, she has amazing stuff on there. And Sarah Kieffer as well, from The Vanilla Bean Blog, her Instagram and her Pinterest even more so, it’s just amazing.

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

That would probably have to be all the vintage props that I’ve acquired over the years. I have a wee thing for bowls and plates and glass jars.

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

Mushrooms. That would probably be one of the vegetables I didn’t like as a kid, but now I can’t get enough of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love, I’m not sure if it’s available in the U.S., but it’s called Vegies, by an Australian chef called Simon Bryant, that’s one of my favorites. Heidi Swanson’s book, Super Natural Every Day is another favorite, and Afro-Vegan by Bryant Terry is another good one. I have so many cookbooks it’s hard to choose. I have stacks of them all around my house.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Anything reggae. So, I really love listening to Burning Spear, any of his albums when I’m cooking, it just makes me happy.

On Keeping Posted with Emm:

Instagram is a daily update, so probably Instagram. On Facebook as well, but yeah, Instagram is probably the best one.