Serious Eats | The Dinner Special podcast

135: Meredith Steele: From Stay-at-Home Mom to Food Entrepreneur

August 10, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Steele House Kitchen

Meredith left her job as a graphic designer to become a stay-at-home mom after her daughter was born. During this time, she created her blog In Sock Monkey Slippers, started her own recipe development company, and was a finalist in the 2013 SAVEUR Blog Awards. At the end of 2015, insockmonkeyslippers.com evolved into Steele House Kitchen, a space where Meredith shares moments of laughter, inspiration, and creativity around good, honest food.

I am so psyched to have Meredith Steele of Steele House Kitchen joining me on the show.

(*All photos below are Meredith’s.)

On Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom:

For many years, I was in advertising and graphic design, behind the scenes, and photo shoots, and everything. Everything was just fast paced. And then my husband and I became pregnant, and very excited, but things just kind of went wrong from day one. And Mia decided that she wanted to come out four months early, which left me kind of… Everything stopped. Your job stops, your life stops, and you end up just living in the hospital. So we did. I lived in the hospital for five months. She came home perfectly healthy; just smart, great kid. But she came home and had immune sensitivity. So she couldn’t be out in the world.

We were imprisoned in our house for a year until her immune system could catch up with a regular baby and toddler at the time. So obviously, I had to leave my job. And you know, cooking has always been one of those things that I’ve just absolutely loved from the time I was little. It’s just always been in my life. It’s not that being a mom is boring. It’s the complete opposite, but I kept looking for something for me to do, just to have… So I can just take 30 minutes a day just to become myself again. I just went back to my passion which was cooking, and then also photography, which I’ve been doing ever since I was a teenager. So I realized that I wanted to cook for my daughter who was now able to eat foods, and she had very sensitive gastro problems because of prematurity.

Everything had to be very strict, and very pure, and no preservatives. Not even jarred baby food was good, because some had food coloring in it. She’s allergic to food coloring and just everything. So I just broke it down to basics and started making baby food. And I had the blog to let everyone know how she was doing in her transition from hospital to home.

And then all of a sudden, I was like, “Well, you know, we’ll just cook baby food. Let’s put this recipe,” because people were starting to ask for it. And then I had a baby food company come and say, “Could you start doing recipe development for our company?” This was crazy. Maybe this could be my next transition in life. It’s becoming a light-bulb moment. Let’s maybe try this out.

On Starting Her Company, MBS Recipe Development:

It really came in a time when my husband changed careers and decided he wanted to be a sommelier. So he wanted to go back to school, which left us with no income. I was already working for Disney at the time, doing recipe development for a few websites of theirs. I thought, “Well, you know, let’s pay more attention to the recipe development company. Let’s create a company, pay more attention to this. Put blogging on the sideline for right now, so I could basically pay the mortgage.”

And it worked, and it was something I really, really enjoy doing. So it’s really strange how blogging can take you other places than just a blog. It was just one company after one company. I started with Disney, then BBDO, which is a PR company, came and started working with a lot of their clients. And now, I work for pretty much almost all the major PR companies. I work with some small ones, too. PR companies are my most prevalent client, but, I also work for some local restaurants. A lot of editorial…I work with a lot of local magazines here, statewide magazines.

On Her Cookbook, Effortless Entertaining Cookbook:

I got a call one day from a publisher, and they just said, “We would really like to do a book with you.” I thought, “Okay. Am I ready for this?” I’m not really sure, and I said, “Well, what’s the timeline?” They said, “Well, you’ve got about four months.” I thought, “Oh, no. Sorry, go find yourself someone else because this isn’t going to work.” But I thought about it, and it was one of those very failsafe contracts where when you publish a book through a publishing house, they do, I wouldn’t say own the book, but they’re very responsible for the book. So if things fail, you kind of have a good padding to fail on. And I kept thinking, “Well, I know I want to write a book. Maybe this is the way to go,” just to get my feet wet and see if this is going to be safe.

I thought, “Okay, let’s just see how a cookbook is even written,” because I did not know the first thing about it. So they walked me through the process, and gave me a nice advance so I could leave work. And it’s been good so far. So we sat there and had a brainstorming session about what we were going to do, and I think it all just came along when I was in my office staring at racks of wine that my husband is hoarding for, you know, clients and everything. I thought how we entertain a lot. Like every weekend we’re trying to… I test recipes on our friends, he tests wine on our friends. So let’s write a book about that.

So we wrote a book about entertaining. How about we do it effortless? And I said, “Okay. Effortless Entertaining,” and that was the name of the book. It’s a collection of seasonal recipes that you can pull together ahead of time really simply or pull together in the last 20 minutes.

It’s available for pre-order now, and it’s called Effortless Entertaining Cookbook.

It was a fun book to create, because we had a lot of people come over and help me out with the photography and everything.

Another good thing about having my husband, you know, in the drink business was he was able to pair almost every recipe with wine or beer. So I think when you’re waiting for your party and you’re about to get in, you’re at the grocery store and you’re buying everything. You come to that wine aisle, and you’re like, “Oh, what I’m I going to serve? What’s cheapest or what’s the best?” It’s so confusing. And so he’s been able to provide a few options for everything, and make it easier.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Not that many. I totally missed the days of PBS, those cooking shows. If PBS is on rerun, I’d watch all those. I like America’s Test Kitchen. Sometimes I’ll just go with some old school Ina Garten. She’s pretty awesome, but I rarely watch cooking shows. I rarely have time to turn on the TV.

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

A Thought For Food, Brian Samuels. That’s a great blog. I absolutely love it. Brian and I have been on a few media trips before. And the way he cooks is very fresh, and very creative. And some of his recipes really inspire me on, “Oh, that’s a great combination. I never even thought about that.” So definitely that one. I also…I don’t know if it’s really like a food blog but Serious Eats. I like that one a lot. There is a cocktail blog I’m really into right now, it’s more of a website called Punch. I enjoy reading and look forward to their post. It’s really informative. Those are the three right now that I read a lot.

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

I’m not on Facebook too much. Snapchat either. But I do love Instagram. So a lot of food stylists I follow on Instagram, I like Jamie Oliver’s account. I know that’s just really basic, but I worked for him for a little bit and their whole department is really fun to follow.

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

My most favored item is my grandma’s strainer. It’s really cool. It was her grandmother’s. It’s like 1901. It’s this really punched metal thing that looks like it’s been beaten up. But it’s my most treasured thing. If that was not in my kitchen, I don’t think I could function. It’s huge. It’s like the size of a large wok. It’s amazingly that big.

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

Anchovies. I hated Anchovies as a kid, and I put them in everything now. Every salad dressing is gonna have anchovy in it. Sometimes I just…like pizza dough, like a flat bread. Put a little anchovy on it, and it’s just so good. It’s ridiculous, but like…and fish sauce. I didn’t like fish sauce and miso. Things like umami flavors that you can never even tell that they’re in a dish, but lend this nice blanket to kind of push up your flavor. So miso is definitely something that I did not like for a long time, but I’d put it in my chicken stock and it’s really nice. It brings a great flavor, and anchovies in my salad dressings.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There is one I’ve enjoyed and I look through it a lot, because it’s a seasonal cookbook. I think pretty much any seasonal cookbook really makes my life easier, because I know I can just switch to that season because we do eat very seasonally here. But there’s one called The Farm.

The Farm, that makes my life a lot easier. It’s very simple recipes, and it’s such a great story. I love cookbooks that have good stories. April Bloomfield cookbooks are wonderful. And The Flavor Bible is my bible. It does not leave my desk. It is with me wherever I go. For those who don’t know, it is this compilation of flavor pairings, basically anything. Any food, any flavor, any season. Reads like a dictionary. You just pick it up, go to the food you want and see what will pair. I think I use it on a daily basis.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Everything, there is always music. Sometimes like I’ll have interns come in and they’re, you know…they put dance music on. I’m like, “Okay, it’s a dance day. Let’s do it.” But right now I’m listening to Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats, a lot of him right now. That just makes me want to cook. It’s like outrageous, kind of soul and got a beat. It depends on what I’m cooking, too. If it’s in the winter and it’s like a slow risotto, I get some Nina Simone or some Miles Davis.

On Keeping Posted with Meredith:

Instagram for sure, it’s just @meredithbondsteele.

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.

097: Lisa Lin: How a Lawyer Became a Food Blogger

December 7, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Healthy Nibbles and Bits

Lisa is a lawyer turned food blogger and on Healthy Nibbles and Bits is where she shares simple, healthy recipes with bold flavors. She loves experimenting in the kitchen and can talk about food all day.

I am so happy to have Lisa Lin of Healthy Nibbles and Bits with me here today.

(*All photos below are Lisa’s.)

On Being a Lawyer and Becoming a Food Blogger:

Long story. I’ve been cooking a lot for my family and then I kept cooking while I was in college. And then when I got to law school I actually devoted every Sunday afternoon to cooking. It was just sort of my time to not study and also I always cooked my own meals because I got tired of all the stuff that was around school. Just all of these sandwich shops. So I really cooked a lot during law school and that’s when I started following food blogs.

When I finished law school and I moved back to the Bay Area and I was trying to find a job, I just kept following more blogs just to distract myself. That’s how I fell into food blogging. I think my husband who was my boyfriend at the time just said, “Well, why don’t you start one yourself?” Which was actually really daunting because the last blog I ever had was a Xanga.

I wrote about stupid things like Backstreet Boys and what happened at school and I was thinking like, “There’s no way I’m going to write a food blog because it’s going to be the same stuff.” But I just fell in love with testing and creating recipes and talking about it and that’s just how it all happened. So there’s no real logical transition from lawyer to food blogging but it was just something that I’ve always been doing. It just sort of blossomed into a passion.

On Being Fearless in the Kitchen:

First of all I don’t really have formal culinary training and so the only way you learn is by experimenting with flavors and cooking. Sometimes I blend things that don’t make sense at all. I was trying to make a cauliflower cake once and I used purple cauliflower thinking the color would look good. It looks nasty. It was just this weird bluish color. But you have to do it and you do it until you learn and you write it down, make sure you don’t do it again.

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking and Food:

When I was younger I was just more into books and that kind of explains why I kept going through so much schooling. But there were always times my mom forced me to help her cook. So there are all these big Chinese holidays that we have to cook for. Chinese New Year’s, the Dragon Boat Festival we make those rice wrapped in bamboo leaf things. I don’t know what they’re called. Rice cakes. So I would help my mom with that all the time and so through that that’s how I started cooking.

I was always very interested because it’s very involved. All those cakes, my mom makes it from scratch so it comes from the dough and the flour, and you press it out and everything, and then fill it, and then fold it. I was very interested in the very difficult cooking projects. But then when my mom made me cook for the family just on week nights, I was definitely way less interested in that because stir fry is just not as sexy as making dumplings. But I’m very thankful that my mom forced me to cook for the family because otherwise I wouldn’t have cooked for myself in college and onward.

On Her Food Heroes:

I guess my mom is one of my food heroes. She loves to cook and she loves to experiment. And I’ve sort of, because of that, assumed that all Chinese moms love to cook which is not the case at all.

I think I took it for granted and she has an innate curiosity to try to recreate what she eats. I think I picked it up from her. It gets a bit annoying, but whenever we go to eat Dim Sum she’d say, “Well, I can make this at home.” And it’s like, “Yeah. That’s not the point, mom.” But I do look up to her. There’s a lot of Chinese dishes that I wish I could make or famous cake that I wish I could bake one day. So she’s definitely one of my early, early food heroes. And then I would have to say when I was a kid I loved Martin Yan.

His show always aired on PBS on Saturday afternoons and I always watched it. And I love the show and I really admire what he has done for raising awareness about Chinese food in America. I really think he’s one of the pioneers of introducing Chinese cuisine. And he’s done so much to travel around China and he’s written a lot of books. So I definitely admire him.

On What She Would Make for Martin Yan:

Oh my gosh. That would be so intimidating because I’m sure he’s had everything. But if I were to do something it definitely can’t be a traditional Chinese dish because he has done it so much, he has done it so well. You just don’t do that. He just won’t appreciate it. I’ve done a General Tso’s brussels sprouts dish. So you kind of get the General Tso’s chicken flavors and then you blend it into brussels sprouts so it’s something that might fit his pallet but a bit unexpected. I would probably make that for him.

On Her Blog:

When I first started I didn’t even think I was going to be doing food blogging to the extent that I would right now. But it’s definitely not what I expected. I just wanted, initially, to test other peoples’ recipes and just blog about what I tested because that’s what I had been doing for a few years. I didn’t expect that I would have to buy a new camera, learn how to edit my photos, be engaged on social media because I only had a Facebook account and Pinterest that I used occasionally at that point.

And I really didn’t expect the business skills you have to develop for running a food blog because we do have to make money, too. And if you asked me 10 years ago whether or not I would become a business woman, I’d be like, “You’re crazy.” Because I was always about books and being an academic. But this entrepreneurial spirit was nowhere inside of my blood. So those are definitely things I picked up and I didn’t realize I had to do when I first started it.

On Where She Finds Inspiration:

A lot of different sources. One big thing is what’s in season. Then I look at what I’ve been posting on the blog lately. Do I maybe tone down on sweets now and do something savory? Magazines, I subscribe to maybe six or seven food magazines just so I can learn and get inspired. And food websites. Sometimes it’s based on what I eat at a restaurant, too. Things like that and then sometimes other food bloggers, too.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

The Great British Bake-Off. I just love it.

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

I think if you’re starting out cooking you should definitely check out The Kitchn. They just have so many great tips on how to improve your cooking. Those articles are really short so you can digest it very easily. Or Serious Eats, they do a lot of cooking tips kind of posts. So I would definitely check out those two websites.

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

The accounts that make me really happy are actually non-food related if that’s okay. I like to get visual inspiration from sources outside of food. So there are definitely several Instagram accounts that I can think of, and Instagram’s actually my favorite out of all the different social media channels.

One of them is this guy named Sam Larson. He does a lot of sketches and they’re absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes he draws really tiny animals that are about the size of a penny, a U.S. penny. And so he takes a photo of the penny and the drawing just so you know how big it is.

It’s amazing. Definitely check him out. And I also like to follow DIY bloggers on Instagram, too because they’re all so colorful and it makes me really happy when I see color. I try to incorporate that on my blog, too. Oh Happy Day is a good one, The Crafted Life. They’re always very colorful so those are my favorite. They make me happy.

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

This is actually a really cool gadget that I don’t really use all the time because it’s a seasonal thing. But I have a cherry pitter. It’s one of those things where you stick the cherry and then you clamp it. It’s so much fun and I love it. I now bake a lot of cherry things in the summer time because of that thing because I hate pitting cherries with a knife and then you make such a huge mess. But with the cherry pitter you just do it inside a bowl or over the sink and you’re done. One of the best tools ever invented.

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

Fresh mint. I think it’s because when I was a kid I ate a lot of mint, artificial mint-flavored things like mint-chip ice cream or chewing gum. I had a perception of what mint should taste like and then when I tried fresh mint for the first time it was at a Vietnamese restaurant and we had Pho and on the side they always give you some fresh herbs to put into your soup. I remember thinking, “What the heck is this? It’s so disgusting.” But over the years I’ve started incorporating it in water. So I would have cucumbers, strawberries, and some fresh mint in there, and that’s how I reintroduced mint into my palate and I really like adding it to my cooking now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely anything by America’s Test Kitchen because there’s just a lot of cooking tips. I have their cooking school book. I flip through it all the time when I have some cooking questions. One book I really like is, Nom Nom Paleo. I’m not a strict paleo-eater but I think that Michelle Tam has very creative ways of using ingredients to reduce the amount of sugar intake. She has this cherry barbecue sauce in there. I frequently flip through it all the time to see if, “Oh, is there another creative way for me to use ingredients that’s unexpected, that doesn’t require adding sugar or anything like that?” And, Joy of Cooking, just classic American recipes that I need to flip through.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Going back to Ratatouille because I know it’s a cooking movie, if I heard the soundtrack, I would totally be all up for cooking. It just sets the mood but has a French restaurant vibe to the whole soundtrack.

On Keeping Posted with Lisa:

I’d say Instagram or Facebook would be the best. I post on there the most frequently so I would definitely check Healthy Nibbles and Bits for both of them.

073: Joanne Ozug: Cooking From Scratch with Natural Ingredients

September 2, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Fifteen Spatulas

Joanne has a deep molecular interest in food. On her blog, and YouTube channel, she not only shares recipes using whole foods and natural ingredients, Joanne focuses on explaining the how’s and why’s of cooking and tries to encourage us to cook from scratch.

I am so happy to have Joanne Ozug of Fifteen Spatulas joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Joanne’s.)

On Her Blog:

It was about five years ago. I had a background in finance and business and economics, and I just hit this wall where I was like, “I am not liking this at all.” I just was really unhappy, and I really wanted to do something in food. I loved food probably since I was in the womb. I love food. And at the time I was living rural Georgia. My husband is in the Navy, and he was stationed in this really rural part in southern Georgia, like an hour from Honey Boo Boo, just to give you an idea of how rural it was. So there wasn’t a lot of food opportunity down there. So I decided to start the blog as something that could serve as an online resume or like some body of work where I could pour my recipes and stuff into while we were stationed down there, because we moved around a lot. I knew it was going to be somewhat temporary but just something for me to do. I had no idea what it would turn into but that’s how I started.

On Her YouTube Channel:

Since the beginning of Fifteen Spatulas, I’ve always done step-by-step photos, because when I started there wasn’t a lot of that and you’d see a picture of a recipe and it’s like, “That’s great, but how does it look in the middle?” So I focused on step-by-step photos and then there were some recipes where the photos, it almost wasn’t enough. It would have been better explained if I could do it in a video. So I started dabbling a little bit in video, and it’s interesting because when I first started on YouTube, it was just kind of a hosting platform to post videos on my blog. But I discovered that there was a separate different community on YouTube, so again, like the story of how I started, is a little bit different from how it is now and how it evolved. Originally, I just wanted to give people a little bit more information visually on how to make the recipes.

On Her Process for Her Videos:

It’s interesting because even YouTube and my blog, they like different foods. I’m still making food from scratch on both places, but they like different kinds of recipes. So for my YouTube, again I have that list where I write out some ideas and then I’ll refine them further, and I’ll start story boarding them and planning them out. Most of the stuff now I try to storyboard and script. I didn’t use to but it helps to do that. And so from there I’ll go ahead and I’ll film all the close-ups and then the wide shots and then edit, and then put it up. It’s not too bad actually. I’ve got it down to the steps to get me to the end.

The thing that’s tough for me about the blog is the writing part. I will bang out the photos, the recipe, everything will already be set to go, and the last part that I leave for the end is always the writing. It’s the hardest part for me. For a video, you kind of script a little bit but it’s not fully scripted, you’re just talking. So I feel like that’s not as hard for me.

Video requires a lot more work but you have that writing part always like, “What do I say? How do I be witty on the Internet?”

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

That definitely started later. I think early on from a young age, you’re like food is delicious! I love food. But you start making it, I remember I think some time in middle school, I started watching Food Network, and I feel like that’s really where my curiosity for the how’s and why’s of food really started. Because there’s some really amazing people on there. Like Alton Brown is one of my favorite people in food ever, and he’s the god of cooking technique and how-to’s. So that’s kind of where it started.

I feel like if you know certain concepts, then you can stray away from recipes. And just cook based on what you find at the grocery store that’s interesting. There’s just a freedom that comes with knowing those basic things, where you can truly become a cook on your own instead of making recipes. There’s nothing wrong with that to start, of course, but that’s why I love it so much, is you can just play around a lot more when you know the rules of the road.

On Cooking From Scratch with Whole Foods and Natural Ingredients:

I ate so much junky processed foods when I was younger. The turning point for me was my freshman year in college. I was so sick. I was throwing up every night, going to the hospital, sometimes I had to have an endoscopy and seeing these GI doctors, and they couldn’t figure out what was wrong and why I was throwing up every day. I was not bulimic or any of that stuff, it was uncontrolled, I just felt so sick. And my GI doctor thought that maybe I should try making my own food. So he wrote me a letter to get out of the school meal plan.

It was just so processed and gross, so I started cooking just in my college dorm room from scratch, just with wholesome real ingredients, real food, and I wasn’t sick anymore. The thing that’s crazy about that is there have been times where I’ve gone to potlucks where I knew there was processed food, like when people are saying, “I made three boxes of mashed potatoes.” I’m like, “Boxes of mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes don’t come in boxes.” My husband and I both would get sick after we eat that.

So it’s just a reminder of that at least for my body, and I won’t speak for everyone, but for my body, I need to eat food where I know what’s in it and it’s wholesome real food.

It’s so funny because I think cooking from scratch can be laborious, if you make, beef bourguignon or something. But there are so many recipes from scratch that are quick and easy, and totally delicious. I feel like it’s just totally a stigma that exists for whatever reason for some people until they find out or, they’re shown by someone that, “Hey, that’s actually not hard at all.”

I’m not trying to knock on some of these products, but the pre-packaged pancake mix, for instance. I’d see someone make that and think, “You still have to add the eggs and the milk!” I have a great pancake recipe on my website called, 100% whole wheat pancakes, and I think it’s like five ingredients. People go absolutely crazy for them. They’re so easy.

On Some Resources For Learning to Cook from Scratch:

One publication I love that people probably already know about, but I really love America’s Test Kitchen and Cooks Illustrated. I love that they test things, like they’re science heavy behind the food, but they try to keep it relatively simple.

Probably my favorite YouTube channel right now is my friend, Gemma. Her channel is called, Gemma’s Bigger Bolder Baking. She’s a pastry chef from Ireland. She lives in California now. But she just has the most extravagant, ridiculous desserts, like totally out of control, but that’s how I think it should be. They’re just outrageous, but everyone can make them. They’re from scratch. They’re just gorgeous. My friend Alyssia from Mind Over Munch does a kind of healthier spin on some everyday foods, I really like that. I mean there’s so many, like SORTEDfood even. It’s four English guys and they just make food. It’s tons of banter and good eats and it’s a lot of fun.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I love Barefoot Contessa, and I love The Pioneer Woman show, Good Eats even though I don’t know if that’s on.

I love The Best Thing I Ever Ate, I love that show. Oh my gosh, I’ve gone to so many of those places they recommend to get what they love. I love Chopped too, even though it’s terrifying.

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

Some of my favorites are thelittlekitchen.net, Love and Olive Oil, that one is awesome. It’s my friend Lindsay. A farmgirl’s dabbles. I love Serious Eats, it’s not really a blog but a site, I love them.

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

I’m not on Pinterest much to be totally honest. I’m not a Pinterest person. I’m not having food people coming to mind, because Instagram I love following fashion people like Wendy’s Lookbook. Yeah, Wendy’s Lookbook comes to mind instantly.

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

I have this amazing, beautiful bowl that my best friend’s parents got for my wedding. It’s just a fruit bowl and I put onions, or bananas, whatever in there. And it just feels special because it’s for our wedding and I keep it out all the time, it’s really personal.

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

Cilantro. Oh, my gosh. I don’t know what on earth happened. I hated cilantro for so long. Now, I want it in everything.

I think I ate out at a couple of places and I’m like, “This has cilantro in it, but you know I feel like it’s doing some good here.” And it just kind of crept its way into my heart.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Okay, this is not really a cookbook. It’s more of a reference, but the Flavor Bible is the best cooking related book ever. You just go in and you’re like, “Hmm, I have some mangoes. Let’s see what pairs well with mangoes.” And it will tell you all the flavor affinities. What else do I love? I love Thomas Keller’s books too, I have a bunch of his.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Arctic Monkeys band, they have a lot of albums.

On Keeping Posted with Joanne:

I would say my Instagram or my Facebook. Those are my two favorites, so I tend to be on them a lot.

056: Autumn Giles: Black Sheep Ingredients, Gluten-Free and Beyond Canning

July 6, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Autumn Makes and Does

Autumn is a writer and home cook who shares her greenmarket-focused gluten-free food on her blog. She’s also a poet and produced a podcast called Alphabet Soup, a project about food and language from fall 2011 to spring 2014. Autumn’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Serious Eats, and Buzz Feed Food, just to name a few.

I am so thrilled to have Autumn Giles of Autumn Makes and Does here on the show today.

(*All images below are Autumn’s.)

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

I always remember being fascinated with food. I can recall when I was just old enough to be left home by myself with my little sister, we would make up a lot of experiments in the kitchen, and my mom getting home and feeling frustrated with me. Because not all of my experiments were edible at that time. But I did that. I remember always having that interest, wanting to experiment, I guess, and cooking up weird stuff and making my sister eat it.

Then, both my parents, I gardened with them growing up. And my grandmother always gardened, so I think that grew my interest, and cooking came from that as well.

On Her Blog:

It was at a time when I had been out of graduate school for about a year. It was nothing that I had thought about or considered, but it was sort of because of the prodding of my friends and family saying, “You might have something to share. You might have some knowledge that could be useful for other people.” I didn’t go into it with any kind of expectations. It was very casual at the beginning. And my blog is still very casual, you know, crappy camera, crappy pictures, that kind of thing, like, “Here’s what I cooked.” And it just evolved from there.

The writing (is most challenging) but it’s a specific aspect of the writing that was difficult for me and remains difficult because I think I’m a pretty private person. As I moved more toward writing my blog more regularly and writing online more regularly, I never really had that impulse to write about what was going on in my life. I didn’t have that drive. I actually felt like I was resistant to that. Because I was feeling like not really wanting to put all the details out there on the Internet.

I’ve worked on striking a balance. So I can still be a blogger who writes about what’s going on in my life, but also keeps a comfortable level of privacy for me as a person.

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

I guess I just mean weird stuff. When I lived in New York, I was a regular greenmarket shopper and was so lucky and privileged to be able to have access to the amazing greenmarkets in New York with such an insane variety of food that’s grown locally there. I would go to the greenmarket week after week and new things would show up.

That’s what I would get most excited about, and just learning about those new ingredients by cooking with them and tasting them.

In the past year, I moved to the southwest and one thing that I tried when I first moved here that completely blew me away was nopales. Nopales, for folks who don’t know, are the flat, teardrop shaped part of a cactus. The cactus have flat paddles. So someone had prepared those smoked and it was so amazing. The texture was very meaty. The flavor was very smoky but also very tart. And I guess as an ingredient in general, cactus pads also just blew me away because they have a tartness that is really surprising for folks who haven’t tried them. I think I expected them to be more bland. Because I’ve heard people compare them to tofu, like, they can take on flavors and textures. But I found them to be very tart and very surprising in that way.

There are different varieties that have varying level of spikes on them. So they have the big long spikes, and then they have tiny spikes called glochids. And one of the ways that people will help remove the glochids is grilling them, and it burns the spikes mostly right off. I did a post on my blog about harvesting the prickly pair of fruit, and also a way that people get the little glochids off the fruit.

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

There’s a lot of reasons that people eat gluten-free. The reason that I eat gluten-free is because I have celiac disease. So I have to be pretty careful.

I think a misconception that I’ve encountered is, “Oh, you can’t eat the bun on this hamburger. Let me just take the bun off for you and here’s the hamburger.” I would be really sick if I ate that hamburger. I think there is just frustration, like, gluten-free people are a pain, that they don’t like to eat. That’s probably the big one, like, “Don’t you want to eat something?” And I love food, I just happen to need to eat gluten-free food all the time.

For someone who needs to eliminate or reduce gluten in their diet, my first tip is to always focus on foods that are naturally gluten free. There are just so, so many. When you really focus on that and really find things within that to get excited about and explore, you definitely don’t feel limited in your diet.

I am writing a preserving book right now, and that’s something that in very rare cases, encounter any gluten in those recipes. So that’s an area that I connected with, got excited about, and I’ve explored a ton. And I didn’t really have to worry about gluten in that arena at all.

I think trying different and sometimes a little more odd or less likely used cuts of meat because they’re usually cheaper, you can buy higher quality meat and explore something that you have not cooked before. Also, without having to worry about gluten.

On Her Podcast:

I started Alphabet Soup on my own. About halfway through, my friend Kelly from Kelly Bakes, joined me.

In grad school, all my poet friends were always getting together to cook, and it just seemed like most of my friends who were writers were also very into food. It was sort of the impetus for me to start a podcast – talking to writers about food and talking to food people about writing. That was how it started.

I started out with just myself doing interviews, and then it went into Kelly and I having conversations along that topic as it continued.

As I probably don’t have to tell you, producing a podcast is a ton of work. It wasn’t like I got tired of doing it; I would still love to maybe explore in the future. But I think at that time, Kelly and I were both ready to shift our energy towards other projects. I felt like it had come to a natural conclusion in a way.

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

It is about preserving and it focuses on three main techniques, which is preserving with vinegar, fermenting and sweet preserves, like preserving sugar with jam. It’s really trying to focus on unique flavors, different textures, and something new to the conversation around food preservation.

I have no formal culinary training. I most definitely consider myself a home cook. And when I started with preserving and did it more and more, I learned what I liked.

I definitely see it more as a really great tool for home cooks, not something that should be separated to the side, like you cook and then you preserve, that they can really be incorporated together to make people more savvy home cooks. And of course my love for the greenmarket had a big part of it.

Almost all the recipes in the book are quite small batch. So if you are in a CSA or you go to the greenmarket and you find something beautiful but they’re quite expensive, you can buy a few and make something great out of them that you can enjoy later, and incorporate into your cooking and make your cooking better.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I have to say I’m not a big cooking show person. However, the last cooking show I watched was my friend Dan who has a blog, Renegade Kitchen, who’s also an actor, just joined…I think it’s Home and Family TV. It’s on the Hallmark Network, a whole new family show on Hallmark Network.

He does an awesome job of talking to people. So we were saying like black sheep ingredients… He talked about black garlic. I think he did a DIY corned beef. I have to give him a shout out and say that was the last food show I watched and I really enjoyed it.

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

There’s so many. It’s so hard to name. But my friend Elizabeth who has the blog, Brooklyn Supper, I think she is consistently making awesome food, seasonal food, and really accessible delicious recipes that are also unique, which is so hard to do.

I love the site, Wayward Spark. It definitely has some food but it isn’t just food. And then Southern Soufflé; Erika is a phenomenal writer and takes gorgeous pictures. As the name suggests, focuses on southern food and really is an incredible storyteller.

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

The one that I engage with the most and the most naturally that doesn’t feel like work for me is Instagram. The people who make me the happiest on there are ones who are very inspiring home cooks who aren’t just posting about composed pictures but are sharing what they cook every day. I know that bugs some people but I love it when people share what they cook everyday. It really gives me inspiration for what I’m cooking.

Folks on Instagram that really make me happy are Michele who is at Cider and Rye, who makes phenomenal cocktails and posts lovely pictures. Dan, who I mentioned at Renegade Kitchen. The Joy of Cooking, Megan and John, the folks behind The Joy of Cooking are always posting super inspiring stuff and gorgeous photos. Hector, who is at Mexicanity is a phenomenal example of someone who is cooking insane amazing stuff, and it is just super inspiring. My friend Julia Sforza is another person who is just always cooking and is an awesome home cook. And Nicole Taylor, who is at Food Culturist, who is also working on a book.

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

I think the most unusual, it’s not technically an item, but my home is a very old home and it has a cellar which is just literally a cave dug into the hill. A hundred year old cave is definitely the most unusual thing in the kitchen.

I want to track the temperature a little better. Because I’m wondering if I could use it as a cold storage. I do live in Arizona and it’s pretty chilly during the winter months, but I figure it probably wouldn’t be as chilly during the summer.

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

As a child, I really hated tomatoes. And I think it was partially a texture thing. And also just the issue of eating tomatoes out of season from somewhere far away, which is still to me not a very pleasant experience.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis is a favorite one of mine.

I’m a huge community cookbook fan, so like the church. I mentioned I was into casseroles. So huge big collection of community cookbooks which really make me happy.

And Saving the Season by Kevin West is one that I really look up to, and I think is a great book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Definitely Beyonce. As I mentioned, I’m finishing up my cookbook right now. I just need to get motivated, get things done, it’s Beyonce.

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

I’m probably most active on Instagram. I would love if folks joined me there. I am Autumn Makes on Twitter and on Facebook.

043: Kelly Carámbula: How to Become a More Adventurous Eater

June 1, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Remedy Quarterly, The Best Remedy

Kelly is the publisher, editor and designer for Remedy Quarterly an independent magazine about food memories and the recipes that inspire them. She also has a blog called The Best Remedy where she shares seasonal food and cocktail recipes and classic comfort food.

Blogging since 2007, Kelly’s work has also included a column called Drinking in Season on Serious Eats.

I am so thrilled to have Kelly Carámbula of Remedy Quarterly Magazine here on the show today.

On Why She Started Documenting Her Food Adventures:

My family cannot believe that I’m in food because when I was growing up I was the quintessential picky kid, like butter and noodles, chicken fingers. I eventually got up to spaghetti sauce on my noodles.

I was just really, really picky.

When I was in college I studied design. For my senior thesis I created a cookbook for people who didn’t know how to cook basically, I think that’s even what it was called. So that got me going on cooking. Then after graduation I moved to New York and realized that while I can cook spaghetti for myself and warm up some chicken, when we went out to eat there weren’t a whole lot of options for me. It got to the point when, who was my then boyfriend and now husband, and I would go out with friends, it was embarrassing for me. There wasn’t anything that I would like to eat.

It got to this tipping point where I was like, “Okay. We’re living in New York City. There are amazing options to eat and I’m going to a sushi restaurant and I can’t find anything.” There’s nothing that I’ll try.

It just got to the point where I decided to start trying things. Eat, Make, Read initially started as, my thought was a restaurant blog where I would document new places that I went and it would give me a reason to go out and try things, I had to be held accountable.

I also started cooking, too. I would go to the farmer’s markets, get something new that I hadn’t tried before and just share it with people.

The restaurant thing fell by the wayside. We still went out a lot but the cooking thing really took off. From there I just started cooking, sharing and I found it really inspiring and energizing to go to the farmer’s market, meet people, meet farmers, meet other people shopping for their food.

Food is a topic that anyone can talk about. I found that was really inspiring to me and really helped me meet people too in a huge city. It just grew from there.

My husband was fantastic and when we would go out, he would order a safe dish and I would order a daring dish and if I didn’t like the daring dish he would take it. So, I always knew I would have a fall back and so that also inspired me to try and if I found something that I liked out at a restaurant, I would try and make it at home and post it on the blog. That’s kind of how things came to be.

On Her Magazine, Remedy Quarterly:

I see Eat, Make, Read as this little seed that was planted and out of that grew basically everything that I do now.

Remedy Quarterly is a magazine about food memories and the recipes that inspired them. Before I even did that, my senior project that I mentioned, my senior thesis, my mom had given me a recipe book. It was spiral bound, it was filled with recipes from our family and she wrote little notes about, “this is Kelly’s favorite, this is my favorite.”

My mom passed away and that’s just a real treasure to me and I feel like everyone carries around these treasures with them. Whether it’s from their childhood, from someone who’s passed away, from new adventures that you go out on vacation and you have this amazing drink and you just want to share it with everyone. I wanted a place for people to share those stories and the recipes. That’s what Remedy Quarterly is. It’s different from my blog, where my blog is what I’m interested in right now.

Sometimes I share things on my blog that are familiar to me that I made during my childhood, that my mom made. But really they’re more like what I’m interested in right now, now that I feel especially I’m more capable of cooking. I have years of experience under my belt. Remedy Quarterly is digging into the past or sharing recipes that are really special and tried and true.

What I love about Remedy Quarterly is that it makes people slow down and it makes them take some time for themselves, sit down and just get lost in these stories, think about when they’re going to make this or how this person felt.

I think our world, and I love our world, is just really fast-paced and can be overwhelming. What I aim to create with Remedy Quarterly is a place for people to feel good about taking a break and really indulge through reading and hopefully take that indulgence into the kitchen and try to make it, and then in turn make their own memories.

One of the things I love about Remedy Quarterly is I test all the recipes, so when I’m making them and when I sit down to the table I tell my husband about the story behind the recipe that we’re eating. It’s really cool, it sounds cheesy, but I love that when I’m eating something I know the story behind it and it makes it feel really special and intentional.

On Introducing New Foods to Non-Adventurous Eaters:

One thing I like to do is introduce new things with very comfortable things. Don’t try to cook a whole meal that seems super scary or unfamiliar. Introduce a side . . . I remember when I first tried mushrooms, which was embarrassingly late in life, I ordered it out at a restaurant but it was mushroom fundido which is basically mushrooms and a whole lot of cheese. I’m not saying put cheese on everything. But, it was in the context of all these other things that I really liked and then there was the mushrooms and it turned out mushrooms are awesome.

I just roasted carrots for the first time the other day, I like carrots, I don’t crave carrots but I roasted them like I do sweet potatoes to make sweet potato fries. They were so awesome and I made them the next night again and then three days later because I was just like, “Wow.”

Ingredients can surprise you and the way they’re prepared too is really huge. I grew up in the 80’s and my mom and babysitters liked canned vegetables – I think that’s a big reason why I was so picky because canned vegetables . . . and we’re talking the kind you buy in the store not the kind your grandma puts up in the cellar. They’re just totally unappetizing. They’re kind of grey, at least they were when I was little. I understand why I was picky because if I presented my daughter with some grey green beans, I wouldn’t expect her to eat them either. I think presentation is big and freshness and flavor are really king.

On the Gateway Cuisine that got Her into More Adventurous Foods:

That was Thai food. I think Thai food has really comfortable things like noodles but it’s prepared in a way that’s very different from anything my mid-western family ever ate.

We love Thai food so much. We went to Thailand on our honeymoon and took a cooking class there that was vegetarian. It was life changing in that I didn’t know vegetables could taste that amazing.

I think the way that different cultures use herbs and spices and just different vegetables in general, it was really eye opening and inspiring to know that flavor can be incredible by changing what you pair it with.

On Pairing Cocktails with Dishes:

When I started toying with cocktails, just to be clear I have no formal bartending skills, I just liked drinks and I liked fresh food. I basically started using ingredients that I found at the farmers market.

If strawberries and basil are good in a tart then they’d probably be good in a drink, so I’d use flavor pairings that I saw in food and use them in a cocktail and that really took off on my blog and was super inspiring to me because it’s easy.

It doesn’t take a huge time commitment and you can muddle together some berries and herbs, toss in some gin, add a little seltzer. A little squeeze of lemon or lime or citrus and you’ve got yourself this awesome cocktail. Once you do that once, it’s like, “Oh, what can I do next? And what can I do after that?”

One thing that I found is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be alcoholic.

I love my cocktails and I kind of built a career making these yummy, delicious cocktails and then having a drink, and then when I got pregnant I couldn’t do that and I would go out with friends to a bar. Everyone would want to serve me a ginger ale and I was like, “This is so boring. You guys get amazing drinks and I get ginger ale? No. Be creative.”

Fortunately my tastebuds were kind of low and so were my energy levels when I was pregnant. I did make a few fresh . . . I hate the work mock-tails, I don’t know what you want to call it, drinks to drink while I was pregnant. They were super flavorful drinks. They were delicious whether they had alcohol or not.

I also think that it’s important when you’re throwing a party to have delicious drinks for people who don’t want to drink.

On Virgin Cocktails:

Not every cocktail can be made into a virgin cocktail because some cocktails like a Manhattan are strictly alcohol so you would just be left with a cherry maybe.

I think most bartenders, or if you go to a nice restaurant that has a very curated cocktail menu, the type of alcohol that you use is a part of the flavor component of that drink. However, I think that a lot of drinks if they’re thoughtfully made and have a lot of elements in them, the alcohol can be taken out and it’s still a lovely drink.

If it’s a good bartender, they’ll know what to add to what the alcohol was bringing into it.

Vodka doesn’t have a whole lot of flavor so it’s not adding a whole lot. Gin adds more herbal flavor, whiskey of course adds a whole other component.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch much TV. If I do watch a cooking show, it’s the PBS America’s Test Kitchen. That’s the closest thing I get to watching T.V.

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

The one that I’ve been looking at a lot lately is my friend’s website called Yummy Toddler Food because I’m trying to find new things to make for my two year old and you can only do so many sweet potatoes and tortellini, you just want to find something new. So yeah, Yummy Toddler Food, myself I always go to Smitten Kitchen and or The Kitchn to find new recipes.

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

Well, Kimberly Hasselbrink on Instagram, her photos are just incredible and she just came out with a cookbook last year that’s super dreamy. She has a carnitas recipe and that cookbook is so good with an apple salsa, it’s awesome.

The people that I mentioned already, the Yummy Toddler Food and Deb from Smitten Kitchen.

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

The treasured is my mom’s cookbook, for sure.

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

I wouldn’t say that I love it now but I use it fairly often, mayo totally grossed me out for the first 28 years of my life. It’s white and jiggly and the texture, but now I can totally appreciate what it adds to a sandwich.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

There’s one called Simply Organic that goes through the seasons. It’s just really flavorful food that definitely makes me happy. Everything I’ve made from it is delicious and impressive.

Kimberly Hasselbrink’s Vibrant Food and Dinner, A Love Story.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

When I cook I listen to Jay-Z or Kanye. I like a lot of energy in the kitchen or Dolly.

They both are upbeat and have something that’s like, “I can do this!” Otherwise, I’ll just be like, “Oh I want to go sit down.”

On Keeping Posted on Kelly:

Instagram, my handle is Kelly Carámbula.

017: Phoebe Lapine: How to Up Your Wellness by Cooking Healthfully

March 25, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Feed Me Phoebe

Phoebe is a cookbook author, private chef, culinary instructor and caterer. And on her blog is where she shares her healthy comfort foods and gluten free finds. She has contributed to Food52, Serious Eats and the Huffington Post. And has been featured in O Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and Food and Wine, just to name a few.

I am so excited to have Phoebe Lapine of Feed Me Phoebe here on the show today.

On Starting Her Blog:

When people ask me how I got into the food business, I often answer, “out of boredom,” because I was a disgruntled corporate employee. I definitely had a great job, but I was not called to be sitting at a desk from nine to seven or eight every night in an industry that I wasn’t particularly passionate about – which was big beauty.

So on the side I started a food blog on how to cook as a 20-something in small spaces with limited budget, limited time, and for many people, limited skill. At the time I thought that that was not me but in retrospect was definitely me as well.

On Her Love of Food:

Well, I was really lucky. I grew up in a household with a mother who was at the forefront of the organic movement. She was very anti-junk food, she only would shop at the health food store and she has been dairy and gluten-free for as long as I can remember.

I didn’t realize for a long time how the healthy side influenced me because at the time all I wanted to do was just eat junk food. But I did realize, once I got to college, and didn’t have the joy of my mom’s home cooking around any more, how much the cooking side of things had really seeped into my general food outlook.

It’s obviously something that has really taken hold and influenced me a lot.

On Ina Garten:

I call her my Kitchen-Fairy-God-Mother. In addition to my mom she was of course an early influence. Her and my father actually went to high school together. So I have known her since before she was a Food Network sensation.

Fame came a lot later in life for her. I have great memories of cooking with her when she had the Barefoot Contessa shop, again, prior to the cookbooks and everything. She has been a big inspiration to me in terms of just using really good quality ingredients and keeping things really simple, and focusing as much about the experience and who is at the table with you as the food itself.

I definitely cooked her some things. I know I made her seared scallops with corn and tomatoes and some fish cakes. I think I probably did that whole meal but usually my mom and I collaborate.

On Her Wheat Allergy and Following a Gluten-Free Diet:

It was definitely really hard at first. Again, I felt like I had a really big step up because I grew up with a mom who cooked naturally gluten-free and serve me things like quinoa before people knew what quinoa was. Before Whole Foods existed, which is pretty much when people, I think, learned what quinoa was.

It was more eating out that I found challenging. And then of course at the time was right when my cookbook was coming out and so I couldn’t eat any of the recipes in it.

On Cooking Gluten-Free for Beginners:

I would just say keep it super simple, don’t over think it, don’t try and delve into recipes that are like gluten-free this and that, because you might not have a lot of the ingredients on hand. Anything that’s just vegi-centric and protein-centric is going to be naturally gluten-free.

In terms of cuisines, anything like mediterranean, middle-eastern, and anything with a rice base. Mexican is actually very gluten-free as long as you avoid flour tortillas.

And then, really for eating out, Asian cuisines are tough because of the soy sauce but if you’re cooking from home, you can just make this simple substitution of using Tamari so don’t worry about that.

On Her Wellness Wednesday Hangouts:

I just recently announced that I am working on a new book called The Wellness Project. And this year it will be taking shape on my site as I am taking on a different wellness challenge every single month.

I’ll set up the challenge if people want to follow along and then tell people how it went. For example, this month, I give up alcohol, sugar, and caffeine. But basically it all starts off with that one experiment, because last year, I was just dipping my toe into really overhauling other aspects of my life other than food. I felt like I didn’t really have a forum for that type of content on my site which had historically just been about recipes, not necessarily healthy living.

I had this seed of this book idea and I knew I wanted to start talking to tons of different experts. As a way of killing two birds with one stone, I thought about doing this Wellness Wednesday Series where I have a different expert every week, a different topic on everything from autoimmune disease to hair health or everyday exercise.

I’ve done one on feng shui. It’s just to create room for that type of conversation. I am so glad I did it because it definitely was some baby steps from my audience and reaching where we are now, which is really a site that’s dedicate equally to recipes and healthy living content.

On Writing Her Books:

I think that most bloggers’ goals are not to just be bloggers for their whole life, and certainly mine wasn’t.

Last year, when I was super burnt out just from doing so much recipe development and private cooking for people that, I was getting sick of my site, and I just felt I needed to balance the writing with the cooking a little bit more. Now, of course, I’m going to suffer the opposite problem. I’m going to be so sick of writing, and need more of the cooking, but I am definitely excited.

I think my food career has really been dominated by my own personal experience. I went from being all about cooking with limited resources, when I was a young twenty-something, I kind of grew up, kind of became more of a professional cook, so that didn’t really make sense as much as platform any more.

Got diagnosed with a gluten allergy, I have been dealing with this autoimmune diagnosis for many years, and realized that that was kind of my identity now, and really what I should be talking about, and the type of food and life inspiration I should be doling out.

Last year was when I decided to really take the reins of my health into my own hands and make some serious changes. So, I started to talk to the experts as part of Wellness Wednesday. In tandem, I started thinking about how this project could live as a book and a larger more organized project for this year ahead.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Well, the Barefoot Contessa, of course.

I used to watch a lot of Top Chef, but then as I started to cook more professionally, it just was too stressful.

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

I love Desserts for Two. My friend Christina Lane, she’s great, beautiful photography.

Domesticate Me, Serena Wolf, is hilarious and her recipes are like that perfect type of healthy comfort food that I love.

The Yellow Table, Anna Watson Carl, she’s got just such a lovely sensibility. She just came out with a cookbook that she self published, which is such an incredible undertaking. She did a whole blog series where she wrote every single day and really documented the progress. The way that she set that real process up for her audience was very influential and kind of how I positioned the Wellness Project on my site.

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

I like Hannah Bronfman on Instagram. She is really fun, HBfit is her new site. It’s a good message. Fit is the new skinny – using it as the inspiration for my exercise module, which I’m already dreading.

Who else makes me happy? How Sweet Eats, The Fat Jewish…

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

I would say canned tomatoes and a dried pasta of your choosing, because that is just the most bare bones makings of a really delicious dinner. I still have tons of pasta, even though I’m gluten-free, I just buy the gluten-free brands.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Lemon, fresh lemon. I go through at least a lemon a day.

I drink lemon water every morning, that’s one of the wellness practices I have really taken to, and then I love it in salads, as salad dressing, and just to brighten stews and things. I love using the zest, it’s the best.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Obviously, I love all of Ina’s cookbooks. I grew up cooking from Peter Berley’s book The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen which also has a lot of really interesting vegetarian preparations.

I have so many cookbooks. I am just always kind of dipping into the new ones. I really need to do a better job cooking from my archives.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I’ve already admitted to being a big Taylor Swift fan. I don’t listen to albums that much anymore. I’m always putting different songs of playlists on, that’s my thing.

Keep Posted on Phoebe:

Probably Instagram, it’s just my name, Phoebe Lapine, is my handle. (http://feedmephoebe.com/)

Have Phoebe’s Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now:

012: Maria Siriano: How To Have Fun Baking and Her Top Baking Tip

March 13, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

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Sift and Whisk

Today we’re chatting about baking and for me the best part of any dinner, dessert.

Maria is a self-taught baker and dessert maker whose love of baking and sweet things shine through on her blog and in her photography.

I am so pumped to have Maria Siriano from Sift and Whisk here on the show.

On Starting Her Blog:

I used to work in textbook publishing and I actually started off as an intern, literally the day after I graduated college. So I was doing that for about a year and a half and they brought me on from intern to being a temp. The company went on a hiring freeze right before I was about to interview for a permanent job so that kind of sucked. I then was able to go freelance doing publishing stuff.

So I was at home doing textbook editing and I was baking all time because it’s stress relief for me.

In Ohio, which is where I live, we have cottage bakery laws so you can have a home-based bakery, sell stuff at farmers’ markets and that’s what I started doing. I did that for a year and half while I was editing.

Because I was selling stuff I had a website that I created for my bakery and I was doing a blog. So I would put some recipes on there of the stuff that I didn’t sell because I really only sold cookies and occasionally cupcakes but I really enjoyed the blog process and the photography process more than actually going to farmers’ markets and selling.

I was making the same thing every single day which didn’t really appeal to me. So I was like I want to experiment and try new stuff and take more pictures. I was really into photography in high school so then I kind of gradually shut down the home-based bakery and picked up full-time with the blogging.

It has been a little over two years now, it was two years in November and I love it. It is the best job anybody could ask for. Now that’s what I do entirely.

I want to share things with people.

I find that I get a lot more joy out of sharing with a broader audience than I do in a really niche market of just my hometown. So it’s a great way for me to connect with people.

On The Process of Blogging and What Comes Most Naturally:

I still don’t think that it comes naturally to me and whenever somebody compliments me on any of those things I’m like OK what do you want.

But it takes a lot of work and I can see improvement in myself. I’m still trying to improve everything I do because I have my own style of writing. I am an English major. I was really good at writing essays about literature, but I’m not a fiction type person and I always say I’m just such a narcissist and that’s why I can do a blog because I can just write about myself all day.

It’s like journaling. For me it is really cathartic, and I like to have a sense of humor about it and I hope that people appreciate that sense of humor. I hope that I don’t offend anybody ever. I am always worried about that.

Then the photography, I am obsessed with looking at other people’s photography. I always feel like I am almost there, and then somedays I’m just like this is just crap. I still struggle with it, and feeling like it’s good, but if somebody else looks at it and thinks it’s good, I’m over the moon.

But basically my blog is exactly how I talk but with less cursing because I try to keep it clean because maybe a fourteen year old will want a cookie recipe, and then I’ll feel really bad if their parents are like, “Oh, stop cursing.”

On Her Connection to Baking:

In my family growing up, we almost never cooked homemade meals. We did a lot of the frozen. We were like Stouffers‘ people. We did the lasagna. My mom made a couple different meals that she would do like homemade meatloaf, but homemade is in quotations because she would do the Hungry Man or whatever that is in the can.

Both my parents worked, and she was going to college when I was a kid so it was all very take out and boxed food and all that. Whereas my husband grew up in house where they cooked dinner every single night, they rarely went out to eat. So when we moved in together, I was like, “Oh my gosh, he is cooking me dinner every night. This is the best thing that has ever happened to me.” But it took some getting used to. Because we never cooked in my family.

The one thing that we did was bake. For a while we did a lot of boxed mix stuff like cakes like that. We weren’t really fancy about it or precise about it, but we did a lot of cookies, which is my first from scratch baking experience. We did molasses cookies which is a recipe I did on my blog and is still one of my favorite recipes because it is my family’s recipe.

I always want to learn how to cook so what I started doing a couple months ago up until the Holiday craziness set in, I was saying “I am cooking dinner every Wednesday night because I need to learn to cook.”

For awhile right after I got laid off at my publishing job, my parents were trying to kick me back some money so they were like, “Hey, come cook for us. Make freezer meals and we will pay you.” So I would cook everything for them and freeze it, and they’d give me a hundred bucks a week or something and I was like, “Thanks mom and dad.”

Everything I make always turns out really good if I follow the recipe but I can’t do what my husband does which is open the fridge and be like, “Oh, I will just throw all this stuff together and we have dinner.” I can’t do it.

On Baking Being More of a Science Than Cooking:

Whenever people are like I want to get into more baking, I am always like buy a scale. That is my number one advice is buy a kitchen scale. It’ll set you back 30 bucks and it’ll change everything.

My husband has had relative success baking with his kind of free-form method. There are certain things I think that you can do if you like dessert and want to make dessert but don’t want to do all the complicated stuff, and it gets a little what I call “semi-homemade with Sandra Lee.”

You can go to the store and you can buy pre-made pound cake. You can dice that and put some strawberries in it and some whipped cream and that’s really easy. You can just pour sugar or whatever and just toss everything together and that’s really easy to do. You don’t have to do a lot of measuring and things like that.

Even pie, if you don’t make your own crust, the filling you can guesstimate and if it’s not thick enough you add a little more corn starch or you bake it a little longer and it’s not so daunting, but there are certain things that I would stay away from.

Cookies can flop miserably if they aren’t very accurate and cakes, so I think that it just depends upon how desperately you want something.

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

I did a black forest pie for my husband and I got the wrong type of liqueur for the filling and I just ran all over town. I actually literally have the bowl of the first filling sitting on my counter top just sitting out right now because I’m like, “Maybe I can put this on French toast tomorrow morning.” I don’t know what to do with it.

There was one time I made, a couple years ago, and this didn’t even make it to the blog because I was so over it, but it was a lemon zucchini bread. It tasted like rubber. I don’t know what happened. It was so disgusting. I made two of them because I am always really hopeful that it’s going to turn out. Instead of paring back a recipe, I just go all in. So I had two of these loaves of rubber, and I just threw them in the trashcan because I will rage eat the bad stuff. I eat it because I am like, “I hate you so much.” I don’t understand it but that’s what I do.

I had that with macaroons. I made those literally ten times before I finally got one that was blog-worthy.

I was like, “I will go to the bakery down the street.” We have a really good French bakery down the street and they make amazing ones. I’m like, “Why do we even bother.”

On Getting an Idea to The Blog:

What I usually do is I start off with a seasonal ingredient and I do a lot research on that. If there is nothing seasonal then I go with chocolate, caramel, peanut butter, things like that, but I try to stick to seasonal because I am a big fruit person, and I know people are always like, “Make more chocolate.” And I’m like, “No.”

So I start off with finding something seasonal that I want to work with and then I have the book called The Flavor Bible. I will go through there and there’s a list of complementary ingredients and flavors and I will go through there and kind of get inspired by that.

Then I will just think of all the formats and I try to flesh out the categories equally so like pies, cakes, cookies, whatever, but I will say I tend to skew toward pie. I like pie. I will end up with so many pies and tarts that I am like, “Oh my gosh, I have to tone it down,” but I love making them. And then summer, ice cream, I’ll just do ice cream until my ears bleed.

And honestly, a lot of what I do is built off other people’s work because that is what’s great about making recipes is you can. A lot of the testing is done by other people for you so you can find a base or find something similar. Like the roasted plum, I knew somebody had done a roasted peach ice cream, so I said, “Okay, if she did it like this and used this method for peaches, I can do the same thing with plums,” and kind of build from there.

I always try my best to list my source because I’m not a genius. I can’t just make up scientific baking things in my mind.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

So this is embarrassing but I don’t have cable so I don’t watch a ton, but what I do have is some Alton Brown, Good Eats.

We actually have them downloaded and when we travel, we will put episodes on our iPad and watch those because they’re fantastic and full of science.

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

Everything.

I have a thousand in my feed. I am a huge fan of Serious Eats because again they do a lot of science so I love listening to all of that, reading all that.

Blogs, I love Bakers Royale, her photography is just ridiculous and I’m jealous. Also Half Baked Harvest, and my friend Sarah who does the Sugar Hit and my friend Elizabeth who does Sugar Hero.

Elizabeth does candy and she’s amazing because I cannot do candy to save my life.

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

Bonnie Tsang. I think she is the one that has the little daughter, and she is so cute and every time, she just posts really fun and brightly colored things. Every time I see a picture, it just makes my heart happy.

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

All home cooks should have chocolate.

I can’t tell you how much you can make with chocolate but if you don’t have it, it kind of stinks.

So the great thing about chocolate is if you have it, you can just eat it. If you don’t want to just eat chocolate, you can make all kinds of stuff with it like pudding, whip that up really fast, or just add it to any other thing and it makes it better.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Butter. It is very simple for me. I go through so much butter it is not even funny. Every time I do a vegan recipe, I am like, “Where is the butter?”

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Oh my god, everything. I collect cookbooks so I just love everything. My favorite cookbook is the Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook because it is just such a great reference. If you want to riff on something, they’ve got such a great base recipes.

I also really love, this isn’t baking but, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book. We cook a lot out of there, and since I’m not very good at cooking, it is really easy for me to follow. It’s got a revolutionary way of making rice that is just fantastic and lots of Indian food which I love.

I love all of the Baked cookbooks, Baked Bakery in New York. I get all of them as soon as they come out.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

This is really embarrassing, from West Side Story, the song, I want to live in America.

I am a big proponent of singing show tunes while I’m baking, it has such an up beat, it’s just very upbeat so it really gets me going and on track, and the solid beat of it makes me do everything in a timely fashion.

Keep Posted on Maria:

I’m best at updating Facebook. I’m terrible at Twitter, so yeah definitely follow me on Facebook because you will always see the new recipes. Any other things that are a little bit personal, and maybe kind of funny, is on Twitter, but I’m not regular about it.

On Becoming a Stay-at-Home Mom:

On Starting Her Company, MBS Recipe Development:

On Her Cookbook, Effortless Entertaining Cookbook:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Meredith:

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 Being a Lawyer and Becoming a Food Blogger:

On Being Fearless in the Kitchen:

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking and Food:

On Her Food Heroes:

On What She Would Make for Martin Yan:

On Her Blog:

On Where She Finds Inspiration:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Lisa:

On Her Blog:

On Her YouTube Channel:

On Her Process for Her Videos:

On Her Curiosity Around Cooking:

On Cooking From Scratch with Whole Foods and Natural Ingredients:

On Some Resources For Learning to Cook from Scratch:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Joanne:

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

On Her Blog:

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

On Her Podcast:

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

On Why She Started Documenting Her Food Adventures:

On Her Magazine, Remedy Quarterly:

On Introducing New Foods to Non-Adventurous Eaters:

On the Gateway Cuisine that got Her into More Adventurous Foods:

On Pairing Cocktails with Dishes:

On Virgin Cocktails:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Kelly:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Her Love of Food:

On Ina Garten:

On Her Wheat Allergy and Following a Gluten-Free Diet:

On Cooking Gluten-Free for Beginners:

On Her Wellness Wednesday Hangouts:

On Writing Her Books:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Phoebe:

Have Phoebe’s Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now:

On Starting Her Blog:

On The Process of Blogging and What Comes Most Naturally:

On Her Connection to Baking:

On Baking Being More of a Science Than Cooking:

On Things Not Going as Planned in the Kitchen:

On Getting an Idea to The Blog:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Maria:

Have Maria’s Special Recipe Sent To You Now: