Robyn | The Dinner Special podcast

119: Alexa Arnold: Seasonal Food and The People Who Produce It

April 20, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Best Bite of the Plum

Her blog, The Best Bite of the Plum, is where she celebrates the experience of eating, preparing, and sharing sustainable, seasonal meals.

Alexa is driven by her passion for food and the people who produce it, and can usually be found promoting healthy school food and farm to school efforts around the country, and browsing cookbooks and farmers’ markets for inspiration.

I am so excited to have Alexa Arnold of The Best Bite of the Plum joining me on the show today.

(*All photos below are Alexa’s.)

On Working in the Good Food Movement:

I’m really fortunate that my mom packed my lunch most days going to school, but there were a lot of kids who didn’t have that opportunity. Kids eat sometimes most of their daily calories in school. So the good food movement is trying to ensure that the food is healthy and nourishing.

On the Shift to Eating More Local:

I think so many people now understand the benefits of eating local and shortening the transportation between the food to their plates, keeping money in the local economy, and eating food when it’s at peak season. I think a lot of people are totally on board with that.

On Cooking What’s Local and Seasonal:

It’s okay to not be perfect and cook seasonally every time. Maybe you were just desperate for the tomatoes because it’s been a really long time. They’re not going to taste as good from the farmers’ market, but it’s okay to not be so strict about your values in terms of just only buying local.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

There’s a dish that’s on my blog, and it’s a Concorde Grape Focaccia. I’ve already talked a lot about tomatoes, but the thing that actually was a spark for me at a farmers market was the first time I had a locally grown grape. I’m not even sure what variety of grape it was. It was maybe a Concorde. But I took a bite of it in front of the farmer and was literally blown away by the taste. I was like, “Oh my gosh. If this is a grape, what have I been eating my whole life?”

Grape season is in September, October or maybe late August, but it’s my absolute favorite season. And so this dish is really special to me because it’s the epitome of things that inspired me. And the thought of putting grapes in bread was also really wacky to me at first. I was like, “That doesn’t make any sense.” But it’s awesome.

And traditionally, in Italy, during grape harvest season in September, they make this focaccia. The other wacky thing about it is, they often leave the seeds in the grapes. So, once it cooks and once it bakes, the seeds get a little softer and it’s this little crunch that at first can be shocking when you’re a person who doesn’t like seeds in your grapes, but then it’s kind of addicting and awesome.

That’s a dish that’s pretty special to me. It’s my favorite thing to make. I have a lot of frozen grape focaccia in my freezer because I made so much during grape season.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, I’m going to fail this question because I don’t really watch any, but I’ve been hearing amazing things about the Netflix series called Chef’s Table. I think that’s what it’s called. So that’s on my list to watch, so I’ll report back.

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

I think the one food blog that has really inspired me in a lot of ways is the blog, Happy Yolks. I’ve been following her for a really long time. I don’t know if she’s actually really blogging much anymore. Her writing is so beautiful and honest and vulnerable. And a lot of blogs that I go to, I go to also for the writing, not just for the recipes. And I think she just does such a beautiful job of pairing those.

I also follow Brooklyn Supper. I love her recipes because they’re simple, they’re seasonal. She’s based in Appalachia, I think, in Virginia. I’ve spent a lot of time in Appalachia and I know that there are a lot of people who are eager and hungry for really simple seasonal recipes with food that’s been grown there for a long time.

I’ll also mention my friend Katherine’s blog called Cook with What You Have. She’s based in Portland, Oregon. The name is perfect. She is the epitome of everything I want to be in a cook, which is a person who saves the scraps and the little bits and pieces and makes something really cool and beautiful out of them. And she also has a business where she teaches these awesome cooking classes about just that.

Those are some of my favorite blogs, among so many others.

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

I follow so many food bloggers on Instagram. That’s probably the main social media mode that I use. I love Baker Hands. She is this incredible baker who is also this incredible artist. And she makes this flower art on top of her loaves of bread. It’s amazing. It’s so beautiful. Dolly and Oatmeal, There She Cooks, Local Haven, The Roaming Kitchen, so many others. So many people that are doing just amazing things with food that are constantly inspiring me.

A lot of people that you’ve interviewed. I was looking through your list and was like, “Oh my gosh. I follow so many of these guys. They’re awesome.”

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

I live in New York City, and I have a very small kitchen. So I try to be very intentional with the kinds of tools that I keep in my kitchen. So I’m going to go with treasured, the most treasured item is probably my grandmother’s silver. She gave it to my husband and I as a gift for our wedding.

It’s a really lovely story about how she got this silver. My grandmother’s from rural eastern Kentucky, in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. She moved to Lexington, to the big city, and ended up working at the Capitol Building in Frankfurt, Kentucky. She was the secretary in the building.

And she had made it. She had really left her rural roots for the city, and one of the things she bought with her first paycheck was this beautiful set of silverware that she went home and gave to her mother. And so she gave that to me for my wedding. It’s my most prized possession that I own. It’s amazing. I use it in all of my posts on my blog, too.

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

There are a lot of things. I feel like I’m constantly teaching myself to like new foods that I didn’t like before. But the thing that I will say that I really love now, is pickles. I despised pickles. I hated pickles. I was like a person who, you order a sandwich at a restaurant and a pickle touched your sandwich and you’re like, “Oh my God. I can’t eat that part of the sandwich.”

But then somehow, I just started really loving pickles and started making a lot of pickles myself. Probably prompted by a lot of those farmers at that market who were like, “This is what you have to do to save this produce.” Now I’m totally obsessed with pickles.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I think the Ottolenghi cookbooks, Plenty More and Jerusalem, they are so creative and difficult in some ways. So those really push me because I think a lot of the cooking I generally do for myself on a daily basis is something that’s just really simple. So cooking something out of all of those cookbooks always feels like a challenge to me and an accomplishment once I’ve made it.

I’d say those cookbooks are some of my favorites. I’ll also mention The Joy of Cooking, which my mother made pancakes from almost every weekend, growing up. So The Joy of Cooking has a special place in my heart.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

My husband is the total music guy in our relationship, so I’m often all over the cooking and over in the kitchen, and he’s at the computer or at our record player, putting some tunes on. So I let him DJ most of the time. But I’m also really obsessed with Robyn and with Sia. Things that make me wanna dance and that I know all the words to make me super excited. So I’ll pick those.

On Keeping Posted with Alexa:

I probably post the most to Instagram. And then I’m on Facebook too but I use that a little less frequently. So yeah, I would say Instagram and just on my blog are probably the best ways to reach me.

075: Jeannette Ordas: Creating Delicious Meals from Making Do

September 9, 2015 by Gabriel

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Everybody Likes Sandwiches

Jeannette’s blog, Everybody Likes Sandwiches, is about the joy in preparing fresh food simply. She has fun creating delicious dishes from making do, and wants to let us know that eating and living simply and beautifully doesn’t have to be complicated.

I am so thrilled to have Jeannette Ordas of Everybody Likes Sandwiches, joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Jeannette’s.)

On Publishing Her Own Pop Culture Magazine:

I think at the time I was working at a record store and I just finished university and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had studied film in school so I wanted some sort of creative outlet and I loved drawing and I just thought, “Oh, I’m gonna start a ‘zine.”

I had seen them being in record stores or in little magazine shops, so I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna start one.” It was just folded, I did cut and paste. This was before Photoshop probably or before I had access to Photoshop. And it was just Xerox, staple, folded, copied at Staples and it was a good way for me to write about music. I originally started it just so I could get free CD’s from record labels.

Then I started having a food column called “Faster Pussycat Eat Eat.” I always wrote a little recipe in every issue and it was fun coming up with recipes. At the time I don’t think there were blogs so it was a good way to combine all my interests. Music, movies, food, so it was fun, and it was a creative endeavor that’s self controlled. I was the boss, I didn’t have anyone telling me what to do so that was a very fun creative project to work on.

On Her Blog:

I think just before I started, I came across a blog called, Chocolate and Zucchini, Clotilde, I think she’s from Paris. And so that was the first one I had ever seen and I was like “Wow, people are writing about food and sharing recipes.” And I really liked that, I liked documenting my food somehow.

I wasn’t sure what I wanted Everybody Likes Sandwiches to be, so I think I initially just opened up blogger. I couldn’t think of a name and I picked probably the worst name, because it’s so long. It’s so hard to type into a browser bar, and it’s not about sandwiches so, I don’t know. But I think it fits, ‘cuz sandwiches are simple, easy, and I think a lot of the recipes I choose to make are like a sandwich, very simple, easy.

That was my start, and I remember it was late at night and I just started my first post. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even have a camera back then. It took a few months, but I remember I started getting people commenting, and it just kind of freaked me out. I didn’t think people were reading it. And, yeah, it was kind of fun, because I realized there was actually like-minded people, and they would link to their blogs so then I realized there’s actually a whole little community out there.

On Blogs She’s Followed Since Starting Her Blog in 2005:

Molly from Orangette. I think she was probably my second commenter. And she’s super successful, she has her amazing podcast which I listen to all the time, Spilled Milk. Yeah, so that is probably the one I remember best that’s still around.

All of a sudden a lot of people had food blogs. There’s still plenty I think from around that time, not 2005, but maybe end of 2006, 2007 maybe. That’s when I think people like, Tea and Cookies blog, I think she started probably around then too.

On Her Passion for Cooking and Food:

I think it comes from my mom. When I was little my mom would always have a ton of cookbooks and she had this big recipe folder that, I don’t even know what it was, a case, a giant plastic case that she used as a file folder. She’d always be clipping recipes from newspapers and magazines, and my mom loved baking, my mom loved cooking, so food always was going on in the kitchen.

We helped out, me and my brother helped out but I really loved helping my mom stir cake batter and then when my mom started working full-time again, she would always leave a little note, “There’s chicken legs in the fridge, Jeannette. Can you make dinner?” So I would have to look up a recipe, figure out what I wanted to make with that. Sometimes she’d leave me a recipe, I think, initially, but then it was just like, “Oh there’s chicken legs, use those up.” So, yeah, I think it was just something to help out the family, it wasn’t a chore exactly, I really liked doing it and, I think, I would get all kinds of ooh’s and ah’s from my parents, so that was very encouraging.

I think there’s a certain point I became a vegetarian and my family was not vegetarian. And I think I was a vegetarian for 10 years, probably in my late teens, early twenties. That I think really helped me love cooking. It was something unusual that I didn’t become a vegetarian for any sort of reason other than to sort of piss off my parents, maybe? It was just a little rebellious kind of move to become a vegetarian. That was just something I sort of figured out on my own, like cooking with beans and cooking with lentils and just using vegetables and tofu.

I think still most of our meals that I cook now are probably 70% vegetarian anyways, so I love vegetarian food.

On Make-Do Cooking:

I think it comes from maybe not having a lot of money. When I moved to Vancouver I worked at a record store, so I didn’t make a lot of money. And as a creative I’ve always been sort of struggling. So yeah, I hate wasting food and then I tend to postpone cooking dinner sometimes. It will be late so stores are closed or I don’t wanna run out to the store and buy anything, so I have to scramble and look, what’s in my cupboard or here’s some celery and some lentils. It just comes from our grandmother’s type of cooking where, yeah, they didn’t go to the grocery store and buy the best cuts of meat. They couldn’t buy whatever they wanted, because they had a strict budget. So I think that’s how my style of cooking developed, part laziness, part that I didn’t have a lot of money, so I think it all comes from a little quirkiness.

I remember once just having, this was years ago, and I was having a friend over for dinner when I realized I have no money. So I bought a little bit of Parmesan cheese and I had celery and pasta and onion and so I made this pasta dish that was basically sautéed celery and onions with some hot peppers topped with celery and then little bread crumbs. And I was just like, “Wow, this is very delicious.” It’s probably not what you want to serve someone coming over for dinner necessarily, but the person I was with probably was in a similar situation, and they were happy to have a free meal.

I think it’s probably good to have some good herbs on hand, dried is totally fine, fresh is better. I love having rosemary on hand or like Herbes de Provence, which is this herb mix that has lavender and thyme and rosemary. I think generally you should be playing with recipes. Like I don’t have a lot of things sometimes, and I hate bananas so most smoothie recipes always call for bananas so I use pineapple instead. But yeah, I have lentils. You should have aromatics like onions and garlic on hand. I think you can do a lot if you have an onion and some garlic.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch TV and I would have to say we just started watching The Great British Bakeoff. I only started watching the newest season and it’s perfect. Everyone is so polite, everyone is so kind and gentle, there’s no ego and there’s lots of luscious cakes and baked goods, so that’s pretty great. And then we also started watching, my husband and I, it’s a Netflix show, I think it’s called Chef’s Table. And it’s by the director of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, so each episode is a new chef, one-hour documentary about a certain chef, and it’s probably the most inspiring television I have seen in a long time. Not even if you’re interested in cooking, but I think obviously that helps, my husband who could care less about cooking finds it very inspiring. I think if you’re a creative person it’s really great hearing from people who are creative and have passion for what they do and do well.

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

I think Dinner Was Delicious. I really like that one. Good photography, but it’s the writing that’s kind of snappy, sassy and fun. Kitchen Culinaire. She’s a local Vancouver blogger. I’ve been to her kitchen and pretty much the blog features her beautiful kitchen and her beautiful recipes that are quite simple but very beautiful.

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

I would say Kitchen Culinaire is really good on Instagram. I look at Instagram a lot. Wit and Vinegar is another food blogger who has a great Instagram. Coco Cake Land, another Vancouver blogger, beautiful, fun, photographs of tasty cakes.

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

It would probably be a split between, I have this old cast iron frying pan that was given to us by my husband Cornelius’s grandmother when she passed away, and it’s an old workhorse. I feel like it’s just something that I’ll never get rid of, and I use it all the time. I just made eggs for breakfast in it this morning. I use it for baking salmon, I’ve baked cakes in it, it’s really amazing. I also am very partial to my pistachio colored KitchenAid mixer, which I got as a wedding present so, I love that.

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

I have a lot of dislikes for being a food blogger and someone who supposedly loves food, but I think cucumber is one that I never really liked, and I still don’t really like when people flavor water with cucumber. That’s not very refreshing for me. But now, like last night, we had sandwiches and I had cucumber in the sandwich. I make cucumber salads all the time. I just find it really refreshing, especially during the summer.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, I think one of the first cookbooks that I really loved when I started cooking, when I became a vegetarian, was The Moosewood Cookbook. It has no photos and that doesn’t bother me and I just really loved it. It was hippy-ish, but it really sort of explained vegetarian cooking for me, so I really think that cookbook deserves the prime spot on my shelf and I’ll never get rid of it.

There’s a whole series of those books from I think it’s a restaurant in upstate New York, vegetarian restaurant, and all the recipes are really great.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably an album by the Kinks called Village Green Preservation Society. Very retro, it’s from the ’60s so it’s retro, but it’s just very pleasant sounding poppy. It would be a perfect cooking album, but if I really am feeling tired and I need a little something, I would probably throw on Robyn, something really fun to get in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Jeannette:

I would say on Instagram. My handle is kickpleat so that would be the best way.

060: Dinner Was Delicious: Chicago and Its Food

July 20, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Dinner Was Delicious

Based in Chicago, Lucy and Rachel share recipes, photographs and love food enough not to take it too seriously. They’ve been destroying kitchens together since 2011.

I am so happy to have Lucy and Rachel of Dinner Was Delicious joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below belong to Dinner Was Delicious.)

On How They Met:

Rachel: Lucy and I both worked at this really weird tech start-up in Chicago. Chicago has this awesome tech scene.

Lucy: We were lucky to have this job.

Rachel: And it was great, but it wasn’t super creatively fulfilling. So we just bonded together over our shared love of food and gossip of the weird architecture in the office space.

Lucy: We found each other in the midst of a strange company. For our Parks and Rec enthusiasts, we describe it as Entertainment 720. We just talked about what we wanted to do and became good friends outside of work.

On What Made Them Want to Collaborate with Each Other:

Lucy: Rachel was baking a lot. My job was already creative because I was a graphic designer. And Rachel was doing operations and needed a creative outlet and would bring us the most incredible desserts. I started with cupcakes and pies and all kinds of really incredible desserts, and I was always like, “If you ever want to collaborate, we should be documenting these. These are beautiful. Have you written down the recipes? What’s next? Let’s do something with this.”

Rachel: So Lucy was doing her photography business, and I was baking more and more and then started actually baking as a little side project, just for some extra cash. I baked for a wedding that was for one of our mutual friend’s siblings, and Lucy was shooting photography for it too. So I was doing a bunch of cupcakes, and Lucy was like, “Well, I’ll come over, and I’ll take pictures of the cupcakes. It was super fun and we decided, “Well, let’s do it.”

Lucy: It was kind of intimidating to think about getting it started, but really, we just put a Tumblr theme up. I made a logo in five minutes that wasn’t really the logo that we wanted, but we just needed to start and it just started there.

On Their Interest in Food and Cooking:

Lucy: We like to eat. I really like to eat. I became interested in food after I moved to Chicago, and I became interested in food out of the realization that I don’t know how to cook for myself. I moved into my own apartment five years ago, and so it’s just all on me. I couldn’t rely on my roommate to have dinner ready for me anymore. And Rachel had all this knowledge, basics that I didn’t know, and so that was really helpful to just be cooking with her. And then eating in Chicago, you are exposed to all kinds of different things that I became interested and curious about that.

Rachel: I’ve always cooked. My mother, bless her heart, she’s an awesome nurse. Briefly in the late ’90s, she was a super kick-ass body piercer. But she can’t cook to save her life, and she’ll say it as much as I will. So if I wanted to eat when I was a kid, I had to figure out how to make it myself. I cooked a lot with my grandma, a little bit with my grandpa too, and just figured out how to cook, always super-passionate about it.

Love cooking for people. Another part of why we started collaborating was Lucy wasn’t as proficient in the kitchen, so it was like, “Well, come over. I’ll show you how to fry an egg.”

Lucy: At the time, I was still a graphic designer, and I didn’t know how I wanted to shoot food. It was kind of a way to learn that and experiment with different techniques.

On Not Taking Food Too Seriously:

Rachel: So I think some people, many people who are really passionate about food start getting a little self-inflated about it. They lose the fun and the spontaneity of food and letting it be just what it is: something delicious to nourish you and share with people that you love. I think that we work really hard to keep the important things in mind: sustainability, seasonality, nutrient density, all of these things that we think about. But we let our love of food really shine through to be what it is, which is food. You eat it with people you love, and we’re giving food the space to be enjoyable, rather than something that’s stricter.

On a Kitchen Disaster:

Rachel: One happened last night. We’re in Lucy’s photography studio, and we were supposed to make Cheeze-Its, and I just . . . They just did not work. So even if you’re someone who’s proficient in the kitchen, screw-ups happen. Your recipe doesn’t always work out as planned. When you’re testing stuff and flying by the seat of your pants and maybe didn’t set your timer, sometimes things can get burned.

Lucy: There’s a lot of burning. Not a lot, but that’s my biggest.

Rachel: One of my favorite memories with us, though, was the day that we made the fried chicken at my place, and you brought the bone-in chicken. And this was way, way, way early on, like before I had any butchery experience, but I love taking carving on the meat now. I was still super squeamish. And so we were going to make a fried chicken dinner, and Lucy brought the chicken and it was bone-in because bone-in chicken is more delicious. But it was a whole chicken. I had to figure out, how do I take this bird apart?

Lucy: I was there for moral support, and it took a lot to go down.

Rachel: It took a lot of bourbon. This was four or five years ago now.

On the Food Culture in Chicago:

Lucy: People are really interested about food here, and there’s everything available. I don’t even know where to start. It’s overwhelming.

Rachel: People, when they think about Chicago food culture, they’re going to think first about deep-dish pizza.

Lucy: Yeah, that’s true.

Rachel: And people might not realize that it’s actually one of the most prominent culinary capitals in the U.S. We have Alinea. We’ve got Next. We’ve got Publican. We’ve got all sorts of really wonderful, creative restaurants. We’ve got a lot of ramen going on right now too.

It’s more than just meat and potatoes. It’s people who really care about interesting food. It’s not just white people with Western stuff.

Lucy: Yeah, food from all different cultures. The neighborhoods are so diverse that you can have food from all over the world and have it done well.

On a Dish That Captures What Chicago is About:

Rachel: That’s a really hard question.

Lucy: Because Chicago isn’t one thing food-wise for me. Hot dog, I guess.

Rachel: Because it’s got everything.

Lucy: It’s got everything on it. And we’re so particular about how we have our hot dogs. This is the least original answer I could give you.

Rachel: No, I love it.

Lucy: But it is the Chicago style, no ketchup and . . .

Rachel: You’ve got the mustard, which has lots of Asian and Germanic influences. You’ve got this beautiful pickle that’s like a fermented pickle. It’s not a brine pickle. So it has a long fermentation process rather than the vinegar. So lots of different cultural influences there. It’s everything on a bun and like, “Ugh!”

On a Food That Locals Love that Visitors May Not Know About:

Lucy: So there’s this one dish called a “mother-in-law.” It’s a hot dog and a tamale covered in chili in a bun with a bunch of cheese, and there’s also the Chicago original rainbow cone. It’s this huge stack of ice cream. It’s got orange sherbet, pistachio, this really special cherry ice cream, chocolate, everything all on one cone, and it’s so, so essential Chicago summer. In your cut-off jeans, you’ve got to get an original rainbow cone.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Lucy: I love Anthony Bourdain.

Rachel: I love The Taste, though. Anthony’s on there, but Nigella, come on, give me a break. She’s perfect.

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

Rachel: Wit & Vinegar. Billy Green is the best human on the Internet. Love him so much. I’m super into I am a Food Blog.

Lucy: Yeah, I am a Food Blog is great. I always go to Smitten Kitchen. She’s great, solid recipes. She’s been around for so long, she has such a great library of recipes.

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

Rachel: I’m a grandmother on the Internet.

Lucy: That’s true.

Rachel: I follow lots of cat Instagrams, so I just get cat pictures in my feed throughout the day.

Lucy: Our friend Jana has an account called Bike a Bee that I follow on Instagram and Twitter and she’s hilarious and also shares all this cool information about plants. And she’s a beekeeper, and so she shares her process about beekeeping and selling honey, which is really cool.

Rachel: Speaking of Jana, there’s another, based in Philadelphia. There’s a restaurant and butchery space and education space about meat and sustainable meat called Kensington Quarters. It’s awesome. It’s not for vegans. If you’re squeamish about meat, you’re not going to love it. But they post the most beautiful, educational pictures about meat. They’re super great people I connect to.

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

Rachel: My KitchenAid mixer. I know that’s super cliché, but it has lived so many lives. It came into my life in the most . . . I was in a not super great relationship, and all that I wanted – and this was eight years ago, all that I wanted was a KitchenAid mixer because I had just started baking, and I was really passionate about it. And all that I wanted for my birthday was a KitchenAid mixer. But I was 22, 23.

Nobody has KitchenAid money at 22, 23. So I asked the guy that I was dating at the time, not a super great relationship, to talk to my friends and be like, “Everybody pitches in 10 or 15 bucks to get the KitchenAid.” And he did it, and I got my KitchenAid. And it was the best ever, and lived through a bug infestation.

It lived through 17 moves now, just going all over the place. It’s gotten me through everywhere. I love it more than everything. It barely works. It’s got this big nick on the top of it from one of my more urgent moves. My apartment flooded, and it was horrible. And I just grabbed the mixer and ran. Yeah, I love my mixer more than anything.

Lucy: I don’t know. My kitchen is kind of tiny. I don’t have any sentimental passed-on pieces yet.

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

Lucy: Pickles.

Rachel: Yeah, pickles? You didn’t like pickles?

Lucy: I didn’t like pickles. I wasted so much of my life not liking pickles.

Rachel: Weird. For a long, long time, I was really not into food. I didn’t eat asparagus until I was 25.

Lucy: Or things that were cute.

Rachel: I wouldn’t eat lamb.

Lucy: Rabbits.

Rachel: I still don’t eat rabbit. It makes me sad. I know, I’m an idiot. I didn’t have cauliflower until I was 27 and, oh my gosh, I love it now. If there’s anything that anyone is ever afraid of eating food-wise, you could be skipping your favorite food, the most delicious food you’ve ever eaten. Just eat all the things you’re afraid of. Everything is good if you cook it right.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Lucy: What to Cook and How to Cook it.

Rachel: That’s such a good one. I just got Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles, and it is one of the most beautifully written cookbooks I’ve ever seen. The recipes are amazing. They’re flawlessly tested. The photography is beautiful. And his prose, he has chapters in between with actually prose in it. It’s so wonderful and smart and touching.

Lucy: And What Katie Ate books are beautiful, so I look at that for inspiration sometimes for photography. It’s gorgeous, lots of good party recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Rachel: Everything. Music makes me hungry.

Lucy: Yeah, it depends on what mood I’m in. I’ll put on an old album, like Tom Petty and The Rolling Stones, or I’ll blast Robyn if it’s winter or summer.

Rachel: If I’m making pie, I want to listen to The Secret Sisters, for sure. If I’m eating my feelings, I want to listen to Neko Case’s latest album and just cry into my soup or whatever comfort food I’m cooking. But if it’s just like general, just hanging out in the kitchen, you can’t go wrong with Robyn. She’s the queen. She’s flawless.

On Keeping Posted with Rachel and Lucy:

Lucy: DinnerWasDelicious.com, so that is where you should keep going. And then follow us on Instagram @effingdelicious, and we’re also @effingdelicious on Twitter as well.