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104: Jessie Oleson Moore: How Baking Led to a Healthier Relationship with Food

January 6, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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CakeSpy

Jessie is a writer, illustrator, baker, and founder of CakeSpy, which is a dessert detective agency dedicated to seeking sweetness in everyday life.

From write-ups on bakery visits and delicious recipes to art projects, Jessie encourages us to bake and live with sweet abandon. Jessie has authored two books, CakeSpy Presents Sweet Treats for a Sugar-Filled Life and The Secret Lives of Baked Goods. She is also an eating disorder activist.

I am so happy to have Jessie Oleson Moore of CakeSpy joining me here today.

(*All photos below are Jessie’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I was working at a refrigerator magnet company and I was actually the art director. It was the refrigerator magnet division of a greeting card company, and I know it sounds silly, but I had reached a point where I was not going to have too much more advancement in my job, so, I was feeling a little bit antsy, and I had wanted to start my own company for a long time.

At the time, I was reading a book called, The Purple Cow by Seth Godin, which is a fantastic book, I highly recommend it, but it gave a lot of great suggestions for how to start a business. And ultimately one of the things that I took away from it was that to start a business, you’ve got to start out doing what you love. So I was like, “Okay. Well, what would my ideal business have?”

It came to me right away. I was like, “Well, it would have writing, illustrating, and baked goods.” All awesome things, but how do you start a business with that? So I was like, “Well, all right, maybe I’ll start a blog and I’ll figure out what I want to do with the business.” This is 2007 when I could probably count the food bloggers on one hand.

So I started a blog, and I did not in any way think that the blog would become my business, but it had this beautiful fusion that allowed me to start a business doing all of the things that I loved. So I feel really fortunate that I’ve been able to do that.

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

Actually your question couldn’t come at a better time. I was at the conference of the National Eating Disorder Association, which was in San Diego this year, and that was a wonderful opportunity. There were over 600 attendees, and it was just a coming together of people who have suffered from eating disorders, people who have family or friends who have suffered, and also researchers and clinicians.

I suffered from an eating disorder from the age of about 12 until, I would say that I really actively began to become recovered in my late 20s and early 30s. So I’m 34 now, so that’s fairly recent. I think that eating disorders are something that, for one thing, nobody asks to have an eating disorder. Nobody aspires to that. And they’re rather insidious things because they insert themselves in your life so gradually, at least in my case and many other cases that I know of, that before you know it, it’s become part of you. Or you think it’s part of you.

And for me, who knows really what got me there. I believe that for me, it was not one thing that made me have an eating disorder, but maybe a few things. I think that to begin, maybe I had an anxious nature and a nature of perfection. And when you have that and you reach your tender teenage years where your body is changing, all of a sudden it becomes really enticing that in this world that feels really out of control, that your food is something that you can control.

So what began as kind of an after-school special type of worrying about food and dieting, escalated quickly into bulimia. And then when I stopped exhibiting bulimic behavior, I thought I was better, but secretly, somehow without realizing it, I had really just become anorexic.

So I suffered from a lot of food-related issues. And I think that actually my food blog, as funny as it might sound, was part of the gateway to recovery for me. I think that food is something that people with eating disorders have a very complex relationship with. But at first when I began to bake, I think that that was… even though it was before I really, truly, hardcore went into recovery, I think that baking was the gateway that led me to recovery.

Because at first, I think that I would only take the teeny, tiniest taste of anything that I baked, but it’s like I started to get to know my enemy. And all of a sudden, when you start baking, it’s like, “Whoa, there actually isn’t evil and the devil lurking in this cupcake. It’s actually just butter and sugar and flour and very real things. It’s not going to ruin my life.” So I think that by beginning to bake, that it helped me to, at first, maybe fear food less, and then to begin to understand it, and ultimately to have a much healthier relationship with it.

On What She Would Say to Someone Suffering from an Eating Disorder:

Number one, you’re not alone. You’re less alone than you think. Number two, this is a problem. You might think, “Oh, but I’m not anorexic so it’s not an issue.” It is an issue. If it’s affecting your life, then it is an issue. And it’s not okay, and it’s important that you get help.

And that leads into, get help. And what type of help you need, it will differ from person to person. I found that my best support was through an eating disorder support group, a physical, in-person group. I liked a group better than one-on-one therapy. I just felt like it had that aspect of connection, although I did have one-on-one therapy.

I was never hospitalized. Some people require that or benefit from that. But the NEDA.org website, National Eating Disorder Association, is fantastic. They have a lot of resources, and they also have a helpline that you can call and get resources.

On Learning How to Bake:

I grew up in a household that was reverent to sweets. Everyone in my family loved sweets. And my mom is, while she was never a professional baker, she was a stay-at-home mom, but to call her an amateur baker would really not quite do it justice. She could have been a baker easily, a professional one.

For instance, my birthday cakes every year, I did not ever, ever have a cake mix cake. I basically had a wedding cake. My birthday cake every year was a three-tier homemade vanilla cake with pink frosting, and roses all piped on. And my mom would make this for me because it was my birthday dream. So for me, sweets have always been something that have been present in my life and that I have loved and appreciated.

And more than even just the sweets, but the culture around them. I can’t remember what I wore or what we had for dinner on my birthday when I turned six, but I remember the cake, and that is a happy memory. So that has always been present in my life. And I was always like a sous chef to my mom while she was baking, very intently interested on getting to lick the beaters at first, but I got more and more curious about the process as I grew up.

And I think that for a long time I felt like, “Oh, well, my mom’s the baker. That’s not really for me.” But it was funny because when I first started baking in earnest, which really quite honestly was when I started the website, I realized that I already knew more than I realized, I think just from absorbing it from years of watching her. So I’ve always had an interest in sweets, but I’m largely self-taught.

On Her Art and Illustrations:

I’ve always been artistic. My mom actually, while she was a stay-at-home mom, as soon as my youngest sister went to school, she pursued her dream of being a children’s book illustrator. So my mom, she is kind of famous, Margie Moore. So my mom is artistic, my dad is a super talented water colorist and painter. And once again, the culture that I grew up in, I was always artistic.

And I went to art school. That is what my training is in, and I studied illustration. I’ve always drawn characters, too. Actually, I was going through some old papers awhile back, and I actually found this drawing I had done of a cupcake and a muffin and they both had smiling faces.

On Her Cookbooks:

The first book, the nutshell story about that is that when I started my website and I started to gain some web popularity… and very early on, I was like, “You know what? I should get a book deal.” So a literary agent had approached me and I was like, “Yeah, I’m going to get a book deal. I’m going to nail this.” So I put together a book proposal, and every single person I sent it to rejected it.

Every single person. I was crushed. And my reaction was, “Screw you, publishing industry. You don’t want me? I don’t want you.” I put that to bed, and if anyone asked, I was like, “No, I don’t want to write a book.”

But then about two years later, actually one of the publishing houses, Sasquatch Books in Seattle who had actually rejected the book previously came back to me. All of a sudden, I guess the timing was right. So they asked me to come in for a meeting. I did.

And I had walked to the meeting, because at the time I lived in Seattle and I was maybe 15 minutes away. By the time that I got home from my appointment with them, they had sent over a contract.

So it’s funny because while it happened very quickly, it also did not happen very quickly. That book was put together largely from the archives of popular recipes from my website. And I actually wrote that book in about three weeks.

At that time, I had about four years’ worth of recipes. So while it was a tremendous amount of work to write headnotes that were cohesive and to format the recipes, I did have quite a bit of the work already done. And then I believe I had a leisurely five weeks to do all of the illustrations.

The second book, throughout writing on my website, I had become interested with baked goods with interesting backstories. My saying is that, “It tastes better with a backstory.” Even the most humble food can become far more interesting and rich when it has a great story behind it. So that book, I think, was born out of that love.

It was with the same publisher. And it was an idea that I had and they let me run with it. So the two books that I’ve written visually both in terms of recipes are quite different but I think that when you see them side-by-side that you see the common thread of the way that I write and my sense of humor.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I am embarrassed to tell you that I do not watch any food shows. The one that I used to watch though when I was in high school, which is not on anymore but I loved it, was the Sara Moulton show. It was so informative. I just loved listening to her voice. So I’ll say that in the 1990s I was all about Sara Moulton.

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

Well, if you’ve never seen my friend Peabody’s website, it is called, Culinary Concoctions by Peabody, and this is like my sister from another mister. If there’s a delicious, indulgent dessert it is probably on this website. Even indulgent desserts that you’ve probably never even thought of, they’re on this website. So I really, really highly suggest that one.

I also think there’s a lot of great foodie stuff on Craftsy.com, which is actually a website that I write for. That was how I first was exposed to them. But they have a lot of great food content on there so I’m often checking them out.

And I also love Serious Eats which is another website I previously contributed to but that’s not why I suggest it. I just think that they always do a really great job. So I love reading what they have to say.

Oh, and another one that I always get a lot of great information from is the King Arthur Flour Blog. They always have great information that gets into the nitty-gritty of the process of baking. So I always really enjoy it if there’s a recipe that is on their blog, I really feel like I get a full story from their site.

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

I follow this one called The Purple Pug that posts pug pictures and also party ideas. The party ideas are wonderful and inspiring but the pugs are my main draw. If you put a pug in a costume – I am on it. I love my friend The Domestic Rebel, Hayley. She posts a lot of really delicious photos. So she’s always inspiring me. And, oh my goodness, I love following Big Gay Ice Cream.

They’re an ice cream company but they post ice cream and unicorns and funny pop culture. So basically they’ve won my heart.

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

Even though it’s maybe about six feet away from my kitchen, I think that my unicorn collection really sets my baking area apart from others.

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

I would say tomatoes. When I was little, I had a real problem with as I called it, “tomato thingies.” If I got a slice of pizza and it was the kind of sauce that wasn’t totally pureed, if it had maybe little bits of tomato skin in it, I could not abide by it. I just could not do it. I would not eat it. But now I’m like, “Oh my God, tomato everything.” So I’ve had a real turn around with that one.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook on earth, aside from my own, is the Betty Crocker Cooky Book. And this is the early 1960s edition where cookie is spelled C-O-O-K-Y. And this book you can easily find it on Amazon. They’ve reissued it. But it’s wire bound and I just love this book.

It’s got all sorts of cookies but it’s got these adorable headnotes like, “Mrs. Martin Flowers of Omaha likes to make these cookies when she’s not attending to her hat collection,” and things like that. So it’s very amusing, very telling of a different era. And it’s got those weird Technicolor photos. So I love that book.

I also love any King Arthur Flour book. I always love their books. I love all of the cookbooks by the proprietors of Baked, the Brooklyn bakery. And I also have a deep love of any self-published church cookbooks, the type of things that ladies auxiliary committees will do. Those cookbooks are my favorite. I love those.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

In art school I felt like anything Velvet Underground made me want to create art. But I feel like for me, it’s got to be good oldies to make me want to cook. So that could be Bob Dylan, like, Blood on the Tracks or Tangled Up in Blue.

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

Definitely on social media, I’ve been getting more into Instagram. I post lots of unicorns, pugs, illustrations, and baked goods, nothing not to love. So that’s a good way and via Facebook is a good way to keep apprised of what’s going on and of course the blog.

070: Cathy Barrow: Charcuterie and Pantry Building

August 24, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen

Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen was started in 2009, and it’s where Cathy shares her cooking, baking, preserving, and keeping of her practical pantry. Her recipes have been included in the Food52 cookbook. Al Roker made her Thanksgiving stuffing on the Today Show. And she has been featured in the Washington Post. Cathy recently released her first cookbook, Mrs.Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry, which won the 2015 IACP Single Subject Cookbook Award.

I am so thrilled to have Cathy Barrow of Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Cathy’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I had been a landscape designer for about ten years, and I was really a happy landscape designer. I have a big garden, a flower garden, and many, many clients in my general neighborhood. And in 2008, when we all suffered a little bit from the change in the economy, let’s say, my landscape business dried up, not just a little but sort of completely. And I know all the reasons for it now, but at the time, I couldn’t really see clear. I was pretty depressed. And several friends of mine who had come to my kitchen to eat, who I’d helped learn how to make pie dough, or learn how to cook with different ingredients, they all said, “You should be teaching cooking classes.”

And I said, “Well, that’s just a great idea. How will anybody ever find out about it?” And their response was, “Have you heard of this thing called a blog?” And I had not. I had never read one. I was really not part of that world, so I started doing some research. And one of those friends was a graphic designer and helped me set up the site, taught me a few simple tricks to figure out how to load a photo, and off I went. Nobody was more surprised than I was, that anybody actually read it.

I do feel there’s a very distinct line that you can draw from gardening to cooking, and particularly, the kind of cooking I do that is so seasonally dependent. My knowledge of the garden makes me a better preserver in many ways.

On Learning How to Cook:

I definitely took some cooking classes that were very helpful, and I read a lot of cookbooks. My curiosity led me to want to learn how to make certain things. I remember, maybe even 25 years ago, deciding that I wanted to learn how to make a baguette. And this was long before you could just Google how to make a baguette, or go to YouTube. And what I found, was that maybe the first one wasn’t good, but the second one was better, and the third one was even better than that. I recently read something Sam Sifton wrote in The New York Times, where he said that cooking is like yoga. It’s a practice. It’s not something that you’re born knowing, but the more you practice, the better you get at it. And I’ve been doggedly determined to learn how to make certain things, even in the face of failure.

I think I’ve been developing my own recipes forever, but it never occurred to me that it was something unusual, until I became part of a larger community. I think, for many of us, joining the Internet and starting to share recipes was a revelation. We either thought we were all alone in the world…because my friends, of course, were like, “You’re crazy spending eight weeks trying to figure out how to make a croissant.” And then I find this group of people who do the same thing I do, and it’s so thrilling to me.

So I’ve always gone to restaurants and tasted it, and then come home and tried to recreate things. Or I decided I’m going to study Sichuan cooking, and just cook everything in a book until I felt that I was confident enough that I could take that education, those flavors, and start to refine it a little bit. I definitely started working on my own recipes when I married a vegetarian, because Dennis would prefer not to eat much meat; he does eat a little bit but not much. He’ll eat a little chicken. I was pretty meat-centric when I met him, and now having to learn to take some of my favorite recipes and translate them into something that can become vegetarian, has been a big education for me. It’s a lot of fun.

On Charcutepalooza:

How it came together is really crazy. A friend of mine on Twitter, it happened that it was a late December Sunday morning. The tree was up, the presents were wrapped, the cookies were mailed. It was actually the first Sunday that I wasn’t crazy with things to do. I was hanging out in my kitchen and playing on Twitter, and a friend of mine said, “It’s so cold in my basement, I could hang meat.” And I said, “If you hang a duck breast, you’ll have prosciutto in seven days.” “Really?” was the answer. And I don’t know what kind of divine intervention happened, but I literary saw this whole program layout for me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I might do to push my blog up a little bit in terms of recognition, and it became clear to me that my knowledge of how to make charcuterie at home as a home cook could be the basis for an education program. So I got off of Twitter at that very moment and I sketched out a 12-month education program to go each month and learn something about charcuterie, following the guide of Michael Ruhlman’s great book, Charcuterie. And I came back online and said, “Hey, here’s the idea.” And a lot of people said, “We’d love to do that.”

And it became a blogger challenge over the next couple of weeks. After that, I started making random phone calls to see if I could find some sponsors. And one of my dearest friends now, who I didn’t know at all, Kate Hill, offered a week-long charcuterie program at her French retreat in Gascony. And that was gonna be the Grand Prize. So I was trying to establish how you would get the prize and how it would be voted on. Anyway, I worked out those details but I also realized that just offering somebody a week-long thing in France wasn’t enough. You had to get them there.

So then I found a travel agent called Trufflepig. I didn’t know them at all but I just went to their contact form on the web and said, “Hey, you got a great name. I got this crazy idea, would you give me free tickets to France?” And they came back and said, “Sure, and we’ll do train tickets and hotels. And how about a party?” I mean, they were so generous. And so I put this program together and about 400 bloggers around the world participated, and Food52 partnered with us and ran the whole program on their site. And it was just tremendously fun. What I loved is that in September of that year, Kate Hill invited me to her farm in the south of France, so I got to do that same charcuterie training. It was wonderful.

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

I always say to start with bacon. You can’t go wrong. Everybody loves bacon. And once you have it, you’ll join that forever club. You’ll never go back. Bacon, simply you get a pork belly, you cure it for a week in the refrigerator and then you roast it very, very low until it comes to a temperature that’s safe. So there’s no hanging it in the closet. There’s nothing dangerous or unsafe about it. It’s going to be refrigerated then it’s going to be cooked. It’ll change your mind about charcuterie right then and there. You’ll never go back.

Salting, and then you could add other flavorings, too. You can do plain salt but I personally have a combination in my book that is maple syrup, bourbon, and coffee. And those three things with some salt makes a really delicious bacon.

I think that the biggest mistake you can make is not buying really good meat. Buying commodity meats makes it more difficult to be precise with charcuterie, mostly because there’s too much water in most commodity meat. And you need to get the water out in order to make safe charcuterie. And sometimes that means that…what we look for, for instance, in most charcuterie, is a 30% weight loss will tell you that that meat is ready, if you’re hanging it. But if you have commodity or commercial pork, for instance, it might have such a high water content that it’ll need to reduce more. So I would say buying the best possible meat from sources that you know is going to guarantee more success.

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

I think Michael’s book is a really great place to start. And then there’s a new book by Jeffrey Weiss called, Charcuteria, and that’s more Spanish. There’s Jane Grigson’s classic charcuterie book from England. But I really think if you want to learn charcuterie, just start with Michael Ruhlman’s book and work from the front to the back. Or you can get my book, which has this small discreet and very simple chapter on charcuterie.

On Her Book, “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry”:

I set out to write a book that would really be a primer on all kinds of preserving, because as long as I’ve been doing it and looking for resources, I couldn’t find one book that had everything I needed. So I also wanted to make sure that the book not only would take you through all the steps necessary to learn how to preserve everything, like jams and jellies and pickles, tomatoes, also meats and beans and soups and fish and diary, like cheese. Then I worry that so many people don’t think about what they’re going to do with all those jars they’ve put on the shelf, so I included 35 recipes using what you preserved.

For me, there’s preserving at one level, which is making the jams and jellies and the pickles. And that’s great, but that’s not really sustainable. It’s hobby preserving. I’m very interested in more of that pantry building in this practical sense, and the sustainable nature of preserving and how that means that I can eat locally year-round, that I can keep my food money in my community by purchasing from my local farmers all summer, preserving that food and then eating it all winter long.

It means that I can come home from a long trip and I don’t have to run to the grocery store or call for Chinese take out, but I can just go downstairs into my pantry and find all kinds of things that are right there for me to eat.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’ll admit that I like the vintage ones best. I like to watch old Julia, especially Julia and Jacques Pepin. Those are great. I do love Sara Moulton. I think she’s just a solid cook. My husband and I used to watch her show a lot when we first got married, and so I always love to watch Sara.

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

I hope you know about Cheryl Sternman Rule. She’s been writing the blog, 5 Second Rule, for a long time, and had a beautiful vegetable book out called Ripe, a while back. But now she has a new book called Yogurt Culture, and a coordinating blog called Team Yogurt. And it’s a marvelous website. I love to follow my friend Mardi who writes the blog, Eat. Live. Travel. Write. And she’s been working with these young chefs, these young boys, in her chef class. It’s so fun to watch what they make. In the preserving area, Food in Jars, Hip Girl’s Guide, those are great resources. Well Preserved out of Canada, love those. I mean, I read a lot. Of course I’m smitten with Smitten Kitchen. She’s genius. David Lebovitz, I love. I guess that’s maybe a start.

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

I follow my friend Kate Spinillo on Facebook and on Instagram, because she raises chickens and pigs. She had polka-dotted pigs earlier this year. And sometimes I just had to go and look at those pigs because they’re so cute. I love following them. I’m passionate about Punk Domestics. I follow everything they do. Sean Timberlake collects all kinds of DIY on preserving information there. So I’m really always following what he’s doing. And I love Food52. Who doesn’t? I mean, they’re brilliant. They do everything wonderful.

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

I have three things that I brought back from the south of France. One is a handmade cassole to make cassoulet. It’s big terracotta and just beautiful. I also have a pepper grinder. It could be a coffee grinder, but I use it for pepper. It’s a little wooden box with a thing that turns on the top and a drawer that pulls out. And the pepper comes out in a large cracked form and it’s perfect to coat pastrami or to put on the outside of pancetta. And then on that same trip, my friend Kate’s sister, Stephanie, found these little (figures). Often, they’re babies that are put in the Mardi Gras cakes. You probably have seen it – if you get the baby it’s going to be your year, but in France, they have them for all the different professions. These tiny little pastries and sugars and confiture, just little ceramic things that sit on my stove and make me happy.

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

Anchovies. I can’t get enough of them. That’s the only one I can think of. I’m pretty much an omnivore, but for a long time, I wasn’t sure at all about anchovies. And now, I can’t get enough.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m really a fan of the old ones. I turn to Marcella Hazan and The Classic Italian Cookbook all the time. It’s just a brilliant book. I love the pairings after every recipe. So if you find one recipe you want to make, you know then what to make with what pasta. It’s really lovely.

Edna Lewis’ book, The Taste of Country Cooking, I read that all the time because her voice is beautiful and the recipes are just intense and organic and natural, like, what you would do if you saw beautiful things growing and brought them back to your kitchen. I like to read Laurie Colwin’s, Home Cooking, and all her recipes. And the Canal House ladies, they were my photographers, Christopher and Melissa. And they can’t do wrong, as far as I’m concerned. Every cookbook they have, you can just open it up, point, and make it, and you’re going to be happy.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’ll admit. I don’t listen to a lot of music in the kitchen. It’s oddly distracting for me. More likely when things are processing, that I might turn something on and just dance. I’ve been listening to Ellie Goulding a lot lately. I just never know what I want to put on to dance around the kitchen. But while I’m cooking, I’m concentrating and I’m trying to measure ingredients. I find music, because I love it so much, totally distracting.

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

I’m Mrs. Wheelbarrow everywhere. You’ll find me on Instagram. On Facebook, it’s Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen. Twitter, it’s Mrs.Wheelbarrow. And I guess at the blog, on my contact form.

018: Jonathan Melendez: Guiding Home Cooks via Food Photography

March 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Candid Appetite

Jonathan is a cook, a baker, blogger and food photographer, and what is really great about his blog is that he is meticulous in photographing the steps in all his recipes and posts. You can basically figure out how to make his dishes by simply looking at his beautifully styled images.

I’m so pumped to have Jonathan Melendez of The Candid Appetite joining me today.

On Photographing Food:

I went to culinary school for a brief period, like right after high school, and all my life I thought I would become a chef. I quickly learned being in school that it just wasn’t everything that I thought it was. It completely took the fun out of cooking away from me. So I stopped going to culinary school, and I threw myself back into school taking all my general education classes.

I took one basic photography class and then that evolved into a passion that I didn’t even know I had. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that somebody told me like, “Hey, you should really photograph food. That makes sense because of your background,” and it was born through that, and I was able to combine two of my passions basically into one thing.

On Starting His Blog:

I needed a final project for my graduating class- the final class you need right before you get your degree. And for me I wanted to do something that was fun, and I thought I could incorporate this blog with my school work and get credit for it. The idea behind the step by step came to me because I’ve been following food blogs for many years. And I always come across the same questions of people asking like, “Oh, am I doing this right? Is it supposed to look this way?”

Most often you see a blog that only has one image of the final product and people don’t know the steps in between. So I guess I wanted a resource for people to be able to see it step by step, that there wouldn’t be questions for them. It would guide them through it and hold their hand, I guess, in the kitchen. So that’s how it came around.

The images are so predominant in it because of my photography background. But, you know, when it comes to the bottom line of it, I really want the food to shine. I feel like having those images there gives people the chance to be able to do it, gives them the confidence.

On What Comes Most Naturally:

I would say that cooking comes so naturally to me because it was something that I have always done ever since I was really young. To me cooking is a way to relieve stress basically.

You would think that even after a full day of shooting and making a bunch of recipes, I won’t want to make dinner. But I still do and I think it’s because it gives me that chance to forget about everything that I have to do. Get in the kitchen, and just kind of cook as I go.

Cooking to me is super easy because you could not think about it. You could basically whip up something without having to really measure everything out. Whereas baking is more precise and I have to go through the trouble of accurate measuring, and that sometimes becomes a little tedious. So I would say baking to me is one of the hardest things that I do on a daily basis.

On Who Inspires Him:

In the food blogging world, it would have to be Joy the Baker, Joy Wilson. She for me was one of my biggest inspirations when I first started my blog, and then Ree Drummond from The Pioneer Woman, for sure. I think she kind of set the way for all these food bloggers that came after her.

As far as just regular TV personalities, because I did grow up watching the Food Network a lot, I would say Ina Garten, Emeril, Mario Batali, and Sara Moulton were some of my all-time favorite people to see on TV.

The only person I’ve ever cooked for in that list is Joy, and I think it wasn’t even anything that fancy. I believe I made her soup. It was potato and kale soup or something like that.

On Doughnuts:

You never say no to a doughnut.

I’m from California, Southern California. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and there is a small shack in Burbank, California, that’s like a small mom and pop shop. It’s called The Doughnut Hut and seriously like the best doughnuts I’ve ever had.

I’m not a fancy doughnut connoisseur. I get down with the classics like the bare minimum. My favorite doughnut to get there is a cake doughnut that has just regular vanilla frosting and colored sprinkles. It’s the best thing ever. That place just knows what they are doing.

There’s a line around the block, I mean, it’s big and it’s not a big place at all. It’s like a little hut, you can’t even walk in. You order from a window on the sidewalk and it’s just the best doughnuts you’ve ever had.

On Collaborating with Joy the Baker:

I have these quirky weird things that go on in my life, and I kind of stalked her on her social media platforms.

I came across a photo of her cat and I commented on it, and we kind of became friends through this photo and my comments. I kept telling her how obsessed I was with her cat, so I saw her at a book signing once and I went up to her, and I was, “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the one that’s obsessed with your cat.” And then it kind of developed a friendship through that weirdness basically. That was, I think, two or three years ago, and now we’ve kind of become friends because of that.

I am currently shooting her third book right now that will come out in 2017, I believe.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chopped and Top Chef.

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

I’m currently obsessed with i am a food blog, which is an amazing food blog. I’m obsessed with it. Stephanie, who writes the blog is amazing. Her photographs just give me such inspiration, it’s amazing.

Souvlaki For The Soul, which is another blog that is very photo oriented. Very pristine photos that I could only wish I would one day be able to take photos like, and Top with Cinnamon, which is a food blog run by a 18 or 17-year-old. I’m thinking like I’m 25, there are people out there so much older who are all doing these food blogs, and here’s an 18, 17-year-old doing everything we can, but so much better than anybody else out there, and I’m obsessed with it.

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

I have to admit I’m really bad with Twitter, and I have it, but only because I have a blog, and it’s there. I hardly ever update it.

Pinterest, I wish I pinned more, and I don’t. So I don’t really follow anybody there.

Instagram, of course, is my number one favorite social media, and I follow Chronicle Books. The publishing house does a really good job with their Instagram account, and it’s nice to see them have this passion for books.

I feel like nowadays with all these ebook readers and tablets and iPhones and everything else that’s out there, I feel like actual books are becoming really hard to find, and books are going extinct. I feel like here is a publishing house that’s showing us cookbooks that are actually there, like actual physical cookbooks. I still find them exciting, and every time I see one of their photos on my feed, it just puts a smile on my face because they do such an amazing job.

What is something all home cooks should have in their pantry?

I would say a black pepper mill because I hate already ground pepper. I feel like it doesn’t have the same potency and the same flavor as freshly ground, so I am always using that pepper mill.

Those coarse grounds instead of just the finely ground powdered stuff? I feel like it’s instantly better.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

I’m going to say potatoes. I’m obsessed with potatoes. I’m obsessed with a lot of things, but potatoes is definitely one of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have to say the first one is Homemade Decadence. I am biased towards it, but it’s a great book. I love seeing it.

Ceviche, by a man named Martin Morales. I love this book. I don’t know if you’ve seen this book, but it’s a Peruvian ceviche book, and the cover has this texture of white tile, like kitchen tile on it. It’s just really nice. It’s a great book.

There’s Huckleberry cookbook, it’s published through Chronicle Books, and I believe it’s a bakery also, but it makes me so happy because the sides of the book, like of the pages, have a design on it. It’s like a yellow color with white polka dots on it. I had never seen that before.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I go through these phases that I’ll listen to certain songs more often than not, and I guess right now I’m addicted to a song called Burnin’ Up by Jessie J. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that song because it’s very poppy, and it’s very upbeat and fast, and I feel like that’s something that you definitely want to be cooking to.

It depends on my mood, and the time of day it is, like at night after I’ve done a ton and have a full day of work, and a full day of shooting, the last thing I want to do is listen to something super upbeat. So I’ll put on a record and I’ll listen to something that’s kind of mellow. At the beginning of the day when I need to wake up, that’s when I’m listening to something that’s more fast and upbeat.

Keep Posted on Jonathan:

I’m going to say Instagram. I don’t think there’s a day that goes by when I don’t post something on Instagram, and I’m always putting my blog updates there as well as life updates. I just feel like it’s great. Since, again, I’m so photo oriented. For me it’s the perfect social media to update.

You can check out the blog at thecandidappetite.com.

On Starting Her Blog:

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

On What She Would Say to Someone Suffering from an Eating Disorder:

On Learning How to Bake:

On Her Art and Illustrations:

On Her Cookbooks:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Learning How to Cook:

On Charcutepalooza:

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

On Her Book, “Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Practical Pantry”:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

On Photographing Food:

On Starting His Blog:

On What Comes Most Naturally:

On Who Inspires Him:

On Doughnuts:

On Collaborating with Joy the Baker:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Jonathan:

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