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082: Melissa Coleman: Tried-and-True Over Adventurous Foods

October 5, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.
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Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about tried-and-true over adventurous foods.

The Fauxmartha

Melissa admits to having a severe sweet tooth, and on her blog, The Fauxmartha, is where she shares her tried-and-true recipes that she brightens up to suit each season. She confesses to being an over-sharer, and believes that when you find something that works, and works well, it must be shared.

I am so excited to have Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha joining me on the show today.

(*All images below are Melissa’s.)

 On Cooking:

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about cooking.

I came out of the womb loving food. My mom said I was four years old, sitting at the breakfast table, and she said I would be asking what we were having for lunch and dinner while eating breakfast. And she always told me, “Melissa, eat to live, don’t live to eat.” And I still live to eat and I eat to live. I love food.

So it started with a love of food and as I grew up, probably even as a little girl I would go over to my neighbor’s house and make cookies. I even loved to bake as a young girl and then in high school, as soon as I could kind of clean up my own messes, my mom would tell you otherwise, but I started baking in the kitchen and experimenting with all sorts of crazy stuff. People were so nice to try my stuff. And that just kind of continued.

Once we went to Chicago and I was on my own, married, three meals a day, I needed to somehow prepare and I liked knowing how to do things. I liked knowing the science behind things, I liked knowing how things work and I think that’s kind of what fuels cooking: how does this work? How does baking soda work with liquid in the oven, at what temperature?

In college, I think I was probably the only one doing this, I was watching Martha Stewart on the weekends, that was really cool. And then that fuelled the interest, and she talked a lot about theories behind stuff, so I learned enough to be able to talk about it. And then one Christmas I asked for, I think it was King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Cookbook, it was this huge thick cookbook. I think it was a pale pink. I read that thing from cover to cover. I learned about wheat and the germ and the endosperm, and everything. I learned how wheat is bitter and how to cut the bitterness.

I liked food so much I had to watch myself, so when I baked I tried to use wheat flour and then tried to lighten things up for a long time. I still use a lot of wheat flour now. But I guess I would attribute a lot of that knowledge to the King Arthur Whole Grain Baking bible. It’s chunky, it’s thick.

I have not read through it in a really long time. I’m sure a lot of bloggers, and just home cooks in general experience this. You make a lot of other people’s stuff at first, a whole lot, until you begin to learn what the ingredients do together, and what you like. And so now I have my cake recipe, or my bread recipe, or my muffin recipe, like a base recipe, and then I tweak it from there. So they are my recipes, but it’s a long heritage of people and books that I learned from.

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her passion for food and cooking.

I always liked to create even as a kid, and I think that’s a little bit of what food is for me too, it’s creating. But my background is in design, so I’ve been a graphic designer for a long time. When we moved to Chicago I had a design job and I liked it for a while, and then I didn’t like it for a while, and I just kept thinking. I had these long drives to work and I would just think, “There has got to be a way to merge my two loves. There has to be a way to merge design and to merge food.” And at that point I was always blogging, and I didn’t really know that those two were so inter-connected. The way I think about food, the way I think about recipes and writing the recipes is the way I think about design. How do I communicate this in a really simple but beautiful and real fashion?

I talked to a couple of other people who were struggling to figure out what do I do? I don’t even know what I want to do. And I always tell them, “Just play.” And that’s what blogging was and cooking was for a really long time, and probably still is in a lot of ways. But just play, and natural things come out. And that’s what it was for me.

On Not Being Creative or Adventurous with Food:

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about not being adventurous or creative with food.

(Who she thinks is creative.) It’s Molly, Molly Yeh. She’s just so fun in the kitchen. She has fun with her recipes. She’s playful with her recipes. She plays, she really plays in the kitchen. I like her approach and it encourages me. Also, through the years, I’ve followed Turntable Kitchen and I like the spices that they use in recipes. They turned me on to cardamom and so did A Sweet Spoonful. Her granola recipe, marge granola that she makes, she uses cardamom. So things I wasn’t used to trying, I never grew up with, looking at their recipes, and making some of their recipes encouraged me to add those things into mine and explore a little bit.

So I’ll just tell you a little bit about my embarrassing story that happens over and over again. I get to a meal. I am with other people who would call themselves foodies and food enthusiasts, and they bring out a plate of burrata cheese and I’m, like, “Oh no, not cheese.” A big pile of cheese turns me off big time. It’s a texture issue, and it’s a mental issue. I kind of have the palate of a child. But it’s embarrassing every time, and every meal.

I went to an event the other week and at multiple meals I had to talk about my distaste for cheese, or I had to tell them I like mild cheddar cheese. I like Parmesan, I like a certain Feta that I can get at my co-op. It’s super-duper embarrassing, but I’ve learned to own it. It’s like, I don’t like cheese. And that’s okay, and I like to bake, and that’s okay. So I think just figure it out, just own it.

My husband has taught me that. He tells everybody before we go over to their house, “She likes this and she likes that.” I’m like, “Don’t tell them that, that’s so embarrassing.” But it helps. It’s not awkward. It’s way less awkward. So just own it.

On Her Tried-And-True Recipes:

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her tried-and-true recipes.

Most of the times, it’s the food that we make over and over again. I find myself with blogging, I try to think of recipes sometimes for my blog, and I’m like I should just post the recipes we make. And I need to figure out how to articulate this recipe. But we make a lot of bowls, like food and bowls which start with a grain and some vegetables and some kind of protein which is usually beans for us and then a sauce, and it’s the things that we make over and over and over again. I almost want to delete any recipe that I’ve only made once. Because most of the recipes, we make them. My blog is my resource, that is what I cook from. And then I add new recipes that we make.

A lot of the inspiration has come from things that we have eaten out, or some of our favorite things that we have out, how can we make them at home? And, probably, how can we make them better and cheaper ourselves? And that’s kind of where they come from. We’re just pretty basic people, like when I am thinking up meals for the week, I start with a grain and then build the recipe around that. I either start with a grain or I start with the vegetable drawer.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None. None. None. I used to. We’ve just gotten Hulu. We were no cable people for a long time. I watch Rick Bayless sometimes on PBS because we can stream it through an antenna.

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

A new one to me is Renée Kemps; her photography is beautiful. I go to her site to just bask in the photography. And then Love, Cake. She is actually who I base my scone recipe off of. Her recipes are so good. It’s a baking blog. I think she even has a culinary background. Her photos are beautiful. Go to Love, Cake.

We make a lot of bowls, and they can get kind of mundane and redundant, so I go to Pinch of Yum because Yum has all the sauces in the world. They are quick and easy and they come together in no time, so go to Pinch of Yum for your sauces.

We eat a lot of vegetarian foods. We are not vegetarian, although people think we are, so I go to Cookie and Kate and Naturally Ella and A Couple Cooks for inspiration on that front.

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

So, I’m a Pinterest delinquent. I’m barely on Pinterest. Facebook, I follow Cookie and Kate again. I love her recipes. She has roundups, which are so nice, because I just need a lot of ideas.

I like FoodieCrush on Facebook, she also has a ton of ideas. She is fun and playful.

Instagram is my time suck. I spend all my time there. I love Instagram. Again, I love Renée Kemps; her stuff is beautiful. Gosh, she’s the one that stands out the most to me. I love her stuff right now.

And then Snapchat, I am not going to join. I have to save my time somewhere. I spend it all on Instagram, so…

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

I am going to go with treasured; it’s not unusual, it’s very every day but it’s my chef’s knife. I have used it so much; I use it multiple times a day. The handle is starting to chip away, which it shouldn’t. It’s never spent a day in the dishwasher, but I use it so much that it is well loved.

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

I would say I am working on cheese. Feta; I like certain Feta. It’s got to be pretty fresh.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Whole-Grain Mornings, it’s by Megan Gordon, I mentioned her earlier. I love that cookbook. It’s like a handbook for brunch, which is our favorite meal. And then naturally I love Erin’s new cookbook, The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen. It’s like a really resourceful vegetarian handbook, seasonal, so she’s got a base recipe and then how to make it across the seasons. I’d say those are the two dirtiest books in our house, which means they are well used and well loved.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I listen to Sylvan Esso. I don’t know if people know of her. We listen to her over and over again. Her song Play It Right is kind of a little too mellow, but it works for me, and my daughter walks around the house saying, “Play it right, play it right, play it right.”

On Keeping Posted with Melissa:

Melissa Coleman of The Fauxmartha on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

I am so simple. I find the one thing that works is Instagram. You can find me there always.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: A Couple Cooks, A Sweet Spoonful, Baking, Cookie and Kate, Food Blog, Food Blogger, FoodieCrush, King Arthur Whole Grain Baking Cookbook, Love Comma Cake, Martha Stewart, Melissa Coleman, Molly Yeh, Naturally Ella, PBS, Pinch of Yum, Renée Kemps, Rick Bayless, Sylvan Esso, The Easy Vegetarian Kitchen, The Fauxmartha, Turntable Kitchen, Whole-Grain Mornings

054: Stephanie Wise: Getting Started with Baking Bread

June 29, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.
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Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her passion for baking bread.

Girl Versus Dough

Stephanie is a writer and self-taught baker. And on Girl Versus Dough, she shares her love of baking bread, and recipes to keep us eating well from breakfast to dinner. She has also written an eCookbook called Quick Bread Love.

I am so pumped to have Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough, here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Stephanie’s.)

On Her Blog:

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

Back in 2009, so it’s almost six years, which is really long in blogging world, I had just gotten married and actually just graduated college. My background is in journalism, so I was looking for a job as a reporter, and just couldn’t find anything that was a good fit.

I had two things that I really enjoyed doing. I liked writing and I really liked baking. And so my husband was like, “Why don’t you do a blog?” And I was like, “I don’t really know this whole blogging thing.” But I started it and it was a hobby at the time, and turned into a lot more. But that’s how it got started.

Initially, I wanted to write just straight news articles or feature stories, food was never a thought that I had at the time.

I can’t really imagine myself writing about anything else at this point. That’s where my passion is. I am just so inspired every time that I write about food. I feel like I can write about it forever.

On Her Interest in Food and Baking:

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her interest in food and baking.

I grew up in a family that loves cooking and baking. I didn’t always participate in that. I participated in the eating part, but not the preparation. And then in high school and in college, I would bake for fun, but it was mostly boxed mixes or packaged food.

I think when I got married, I realized, “Oh, I should probably learn how to make a meal. We’re going to be living on our own, we should probably figure this out.” It developed as a hobby for me a little bit before I started the blog.

On Baking Bread:

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about baking bread.

I don’t even remember why I thought, “Oh, I should do this.” Of all the things, I think I wanted a challenge, and I knew I’d never baked any kind of bread before. I baked quick breads and muffins, and that kind of thing. So I thought, “Why don’t I just chronicle my adventures in that and see how it goes?”

It was rough to begin with, I’ll admit, the early days, which are still posted on the Internet for everyone to see. It was hard, but I feel like I’ve come a long way, and I obviously still have so much more to learn. It’s been a fun adventure to learn that type of food.

I think it really just comes down to trying it. For me, I found that practice makes perfect, especially with yeast bread. There are going to be fails. Something will happen. That’s just the nature of it.

When you practice, you start getting the feel of the dough. You know, like, “This is what pretzel dough is supposed to feel like. This is what a pizza dough is supposed to feel like.” I think there’s an excitement that comes from that, when you finally figure it out and you have the end product and it tastes delicious.

I hope that people can see that on my blog and in my recipes, that I am completely self-taught. I just do this in my kitchen for fun, and I’ve been able to make some great tasting bread. And I think anyone can do that.

For me, pretzel dough is really, really easy. That one, you really get to know the feel of it quickly. And even if it doesn’t rise well, the end result ends up being delicious. It’s a pretzel, obviously. I think pizza dough is, too. I really love Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough. That makes some of the best pizza dough you’ll ever taste, and it’s so easy.

On Some Good Resources to Learn More about Baking Bread:

The first book that I started looking through was The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I really love that book still. She’s very specific but it’s so very approachable and readable. Every recipe I’ve made in that book has been successful.

The other book that I really love is Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, for the same reasons. He’s very specific, but the recipes are very simple and straight forward.

I’d say for any beginner, those two books would be perfect.

On Her eCookbook, Quick Bread Love:

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her eCookbook Quick Bread Love.

It’s got a little more than 30 recipes of quick breads, muffins, scones, biscuits, and coffee cakes.

It started as an experiment. I had a designer friend who was interested in putting together an eCookbook, and I was interested in creating recipes for it, so we collaborated. I think it was over the course of four months last year that I just crunched out a bunch of quick breads in my kitchen.

My husband still probably won’t eat a muffin, because I made him taste test everything. It was a really fun experience, and it’s gotten really good feedback from people who bought it.

I think quick bread is not only one of my favorite types of bread to bake, but it’s very easy. That’s a really good gateway into more baking. It’s nice because I actually put together a couple of pages of baking tips in the eCookbook, too, that I think are helpful for people.

On Being Flexitarian:

It’s kind of like the Wikipedia term for how we eat. It’s really not a hard and fast rule, but we just try to be mindful of where our food comes from, specifically meat and animal products. And for us, it just means trying to buy local beef or cage free eggs, that kind of thing. We’re not perfect about it by any means, but we just try to be aware of where our food comes from. And we try not to eat meat too often.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, we don’t have cable but whenever I’m at my parents’ house, they have cable. And I really love watching the Food Network.

I’d say specifically Ina Garten’s show is my favorite. I could watch that all day, every day.

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

I follow like 200 blogs. I have some really good friends in the food blogging world and they’re actually some of my favorite blogs too.

Pinch of Yum is one of my favorites. And Well Plated is another one, and The Faux Martha. I really love her recipes and her photography.

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

That’s a good question. I really love following Sarah Kieffer. She’s of The Vanilla Bean Blog, and on Pinterest, and Instagram. She takes really good photos, and I just really like the way that she curates the things that she pins on Pinterest. It’s just really pretty.

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

I’d say the most treasured item I have is my stand mixer, not only because I love my stand mixer; I use it for everything. But my late grandfather gifted it to me, and so it reminds me of him. So I really like that one.

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

Mushrooms. I used to hate mushrooms and now I love them. There are still some mushrooms that I’m a little weird about but mostly I love them now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I love the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. That one has probably food stains all over it because I’ve cooked out of it so much, and just everything is so rich and flavorful, and easy to make too.

I really like the book Home Made. It’s a little bit more challenging, I think, or just the ingredients are a little more unique, but I like that. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a little bit of a challenge.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

That’s a good question. I really love listening to the Bon Iver station on Pandora. I’m always in the mood to listen to that, and I really like listening to that when I’m cooking.

On Keeping Posted with Stephanie:

Stephanie Wise of Girl Versus Dough on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with her.

I’m on all of the social media, so Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. I’m Girl Versus Dough. So find me there.

 

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Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Baking, Bon Iver, Bread, Bread Baking, Flexitarian, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Girl Versus Dough, Home Made, Ina Garten, Pinch of Yum, Quick Bread Love, Smitten Kitchen Cookbook, Stephanie Wise, The Faux Martha, The Vanilla Bean Blog, Well Plated

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

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