Taylor Swift | The Dinner Special podcast

120: Katie Wahlman: Finding A Creative Outlet In Baking

April 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Butterlust

Katie’s blog, Butterlust, allows her to combine her love of food with the need for a creative outlet. She is open and honest about everything she makes on her blog and believes that she could quite possibly be the messiest cook on the planet.

I am so thrilled to have Katie Wahlman of Butterlust with me here on the show.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I would go back to that zucchini bread recipe that I was talking about because it is my grandma’s recipe and my mom grew up eating it and then I grew up eating it. Even my mom, who, like I said, isn’t a big cook, isn’t a home baker, isn’t a home cook, it’s one of those things that even neighbors growing up and my best friend’s moms and everybody would get so excited when my mom would bring over a loaf of zucchini bread.

It really is the first baking memory from scratch that I have. You have to grate all the zucchini – that would be my job. Then my mom would let me pour in the oil and do all the stirring. It doesn’t require a mixer. It’s a really simple quick bread. But it does have a lot of memories attached to it for me as well.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable. My boyfriend and I recently cut the cord and we don’t have a cable service, so I don’t watch a ton of food TV, but I do watch a couple food shows on Netflix. The Great British Baking Show is on Netflix now, and I’m still on season 1, but it’s absolutely adorable and I’m kind of obsessed with it. Everybody is so happy and supportive of one another, and they make really amazing things and you learn so much from it.

Sometimes while my boyfriend and I cook dinner, we watch Chopped reruns. It’s kind of an inspiration while we’re trying to make something out of what’s in the refrigerator. So we’ll do that. And my favorite thing that I rave about to anybody who will listen, is Chef’s Table on Netflix. The six-part series documentary is about some of the best chefs in the world. The cinematography is just so stunning. I’ve probably watched each of the episodes three to four times; I love it.

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

I follow like 200-plus blogs. There are so many inspiring bloggers out there. A couple of my go-to’s that I will check every once in a while if I’m in need of inspiration or just want to see what these girls are up to, I love Hummingbird High, Michelle Lopez.

Two Red Bowls, which is Cynthia. She makes these amazing beautiful dishes. And then My Name is Yeh. She’s Molly Yeh of North Dakota. She makes the most fun, just happy type of desserts, so she’s really an inspiration too.

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

Some of my favorite Instagramers are probably @ladyandpups. Her stuff is absolutely beautiful. Again, a lot of Asian inspired food but her photography is just really stunning. Beth Kirby of @local_milk. She’s kind of just exploded in the last few years. I can’t even understand how she can take such beautiful photos. They’re just absolutely stunning. And then I guess probably Eva Kosmas Flores from Adventures In Cooking, who I know that you’ve also had on the podcast. Her stuff’s beautiful as well. I love how moody and Pacific Northwestern it is. The lighting is just absolutely stunning.

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

Does a couch count? I feel like my living room and kitchen are just basically like one big room. I don’t really have anything super unusual. I would say my most treasured items would be I have this antique teal-blue Pyrex bowl that belonged to my great-aunt Aggie who lived to be 102. So I have that, and I’m like, “Don’t touch it.” My boyfriend tries to use it to cook in and I’m like, “Don’t! If you break it, I’ll die.” Probably also my KitchenAid mixer. As a baker, your KitchenAid mixer is your best friend.

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

This doesn’t necessarily apply to baking as much, but I used to hate, despise broccoli, and now I love it. I eat it everyday. It’s my favorite vegetable.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, like I said, I don’t have a lot of room for cookbooks. My collection is pretty slim currently, but the, Baking: From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan is probably my favorite baking staple.

I also have this cookbook called, Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson. She apparently found a box of old vintage recipes in the attic of a bakery that she bought or something like that, and tweaked them to make them a little bit more modern and created this vintage cakes book out of it, which kind of goes with the scheme of me really loving these simple, really rustic skillet cakes. A lot of the stuff in there is along those lines, and everything I’ve made from it has been totally spot on. So I actually really love that one too. I’ve been baking from it a lot lately.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Probably anything shamelessly poppy. I have a wide variety of likes when it comes to music, but when I’m baking, I want to dance around and have a good time in the kitchen. So, probably Taylor Swift’s, 1989. I think when that album came out, for the next three months, that was the only thing I listened to while I baked. I find myself listening to a lot of Hall & Oates and old pop music which is a lot of fun. So yeah, anything that I can dance around to and have fun with.

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

I’m probably the most active on Instagram, so my Instagram handle is @butterlustkatie.

086: Samantha Seneviratne: Cooking Up A Career in Baking and Food

October 19, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Love Comma Cake

Sam has been a food editor at Good Housekeeping, Fine Cooking, and Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. Today, she’s a freelance recipe developer and food stylist and recently released her first cookbook called The New Sugar and Spice: A Recipe for Bolder Baking. She was also a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Samantha Seneviratne of Love Comma Cake here on the show today.

On Baking and Sweet Things:

I think I knew I was going to be a baker from when I was a really little kid. I told my family that I was going to be a baker and a librarian when I was five. I always loved dough and sugar and butter. I always loved working with those things. So as soon as I knew that people needed jobs to keep afloat, I realized that dough was probably the way I should go. So I think it’s in my blood.

I went to culinary school and I studied both savory and sweet, and I worked as a food editor at different food magazines. So in doing that, I pretty much have to do both sweet and savory, and these days I do some styling and recipe development both sweet and savory. I do both. I love doing the baked goods. That’s what I really want to do all the time.

On Finding Her Career in Food:

Well, it took me a long time to figure how I was going to do it. I went to college. I went to a liberal arts college, and I studied Latin American studies, and Spanish Literature, and then I got a job after school in public television, and then worked for a different non-profit. I had a bunch of other things that I was directing my life towards. Then, all of a sudden, I just realized what I really loved to do is cook, and that I should just go to culinary school and make it happen. But it took me a while to figure out how to do it because I’m not really a restaurant chef. I have great respect for restaurant chefs but that’s not what I do, and I knew that wouldn’t be my path. So it took me awhile to figure out exactly how I was going to make a living cooking. And magazine test kitchens were the place for me for awhile and that worked out well.

I had a friend who worked at the magazine, and she played on a soccer team with an editor at Gourmet magazine. So I told her I was interested in food and she said, “Well, why don’t you meet this guy. He’s a food editor at Gourmet.” And he took me on a tour of the gourmet test kitchen and showed me what he did, and I thought, “That looks like a good job. That looks like exactly where I should be.” So after that visit with him, I went to culinary school and that’s what I did.

On Her Food Heroes and What She’d Make for Them:

I mean the baking heroes like Dorie Greenspan and David Lebovitz, and there are so many, Rose Levy Beranbaum. There are so many baking stars, so many classics.

I’m really into fried dough. Lately, I’ve been really making donuts and just this morning we made apple fritters and funnel cake. I think fried dough is what I’m really feeling these days. It’s not good for you, but it’s fun to make.

The thing is the difference when you fry it and then eat it right out of the oil, toss it in sugar and then eat it. It’s a whole other ball game. It’s so much more delicious than anything you can ever buy because it’s a timing thing. So I’d probably make some fried dough of some kind.

On Her Blog:

I wanted to get more of an online presence that was just me. I was working at different magazines, and I love working in magazine test kitchens because you’re really part of a team, and you’re all creating this food in this vision and under this brand name.

I wanted to have a body of work that was mine, and that I could contribute to and that was 100% my voice. Just exactly what I wanted to make whenever I wanted to make it and so that’s what I did.

I just was craving a place where I can have complete control over everything I did. So that means any whim that I had I just was able to do it.

On Simple Rules of Thumb for Baking for Greater Success:

I think people are more scared of baking than they need to be. There’s a little more flexibility than people think there is. Things could vary slightly depending on how warm your butter is or something like that, but your disasters are rare, right? So measuring flour is important, temperatures are important. I think measuring flour is number one. Once you’ve learned how to measure flour, things are going to improve greatly, or get a scale, also, a really good way to go.

(On baking with cold eggs.) You can totally warm them up. There are little tricks like you can keep your eggs in some warm water and that’ll heat them up. Or you can even if you crack them into a bowl and then let them warm up that way. That also works. You can warm up your butter by pounding it with a rolling pin or sometimes I even microwave it on a low 20% power, 50% power, you can warm your butter up. Which a lot of people don’t recommend because it’s easy to go from cold butter to melted butter and then you’re kind of screwed. But you can do it. It works. But I think measuring flour is number one.

On Her Cookbook, The New Sugar and Spice:

It was a long process. I probably started a proposal for that book four years ago. It took me a long time to write the proposal. I wrote a proposal for a book I wasn’t that happy with, and then I scrapped it and then wrote a new proposal, and it took a long time to get the proposal in good shape. And then I shopped around with agents. Then she helped me work on the proposal and then we pitched the book. It’s a long process, but I always had the dream of writing cookbook. So just finding the book that felt right and it took me a long time to get there, and I think I did. I like it.

It’s basically a baking book and I use spices and the chapters of the books are all organized by spice. The general idea of the book is that I try to use a little less sugar. I don’t like overly sweet desserts, and I think that it’s easy to fall to that trap. I think sugar can be a crutch. So I try to develop recipes that were a little bit less sweet and used spices to amp up the flavor in a more complex and interesting way. That’s not to say they are low sugar or diet or anything like that, but they seem to me to be a little less sweet and a little more interesting.

I also wrote a lot of history. I got into researching the history of certain spices and how that related a little bit to my family history because my parents are from Sri Lanka. I started digging into the history of cinnamon, I realized that my great grandmother grew clove trees in her yard, and my great grandfather grew vanilla beans. And I learned that my family’s history was intertwined with spices in that fun way, so I wrote a lot about that.

I had fun writing the intros that were all about spice history and my family history and having really personal head notes about my parents, and my brother, and things like that. That felt unique, and fun, and special to me because, as a food editor for a magazine, you don’t ever get to just write about yourself or write about why you like something. You don’t get that opportunity very often and so I took it in the book.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable television so I don’t watch anyone.

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

I have a lot of food blogs that I love. It’s going to be hard to list them. I love Brooklyn Supper, and I love Two Red Bowls. And I love The Fauxmartha. Those are three right now I’ll tell you that I love.

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

The only thing I do out of all those things is Instagram. So I would say, I think David Lebovitz is really funny and his Instagram account makes me laugh.

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

I have a little dowel that I got at a hardware store. I had them cut it down so it’s like a four-inch dowel. I don’t know what they’re for when you buy them at the hardware store, but I use it to roll out little pastries, and I love it. It’s the most useful tool in the world and it was a dollar.

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

I’m into anise seeds now and I didn’t think I was into it before. Actually the book, writing that book, I have a couple of recipes for anise seeds in a biscotti and in a pear tart, and I think they’re both delicious. I’ve really come around on anise seed.

I hate liquorice like so many people, but I didn’t realize that if you use anise seeds sparingly and if you pair it with something delicious, it can work in combination with other things. I just hadn’t figured that out yet, but I like it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Regan Daley’s In the Sweet Kitchen is one of my all-time favorite books in the whole world. I think that book is super smart. There’s a lot of information at the beginning. It’s a baking companion, and there are glossaries and flavor pairing charts and things like that, that make baking really easy and inspire you to do good things. And then the second half of the book is all these wonderful recipes. I think that book is genius. That book makes my life better.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Oh my gosh, anything. I just like Beyonce, Taylor Swift, and all those guys. That kind of music, I love it.

On Keeping Posted with Sam:

Instagram probably. You can find me at @samanthaseneviratne, and you can follow me there or you can sign up to receive all updates on my blog Love Comma Cake.

083: Michelle Lopez: Learning to Bake at High Altitude

October 7, 2015 by Gabriel 6 Comments

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Hummingbird High

Michelle started her blog in 2011 when she moved to Denver, Colorado. She is a self-professed stress baker and believes in using simple ingredients to create beautiful, delicious food that is unfussy. Michelle strives to create recipes on her blog that are as accessible as possible while occasionally indulging in more challenging experiments. Hummingbird High was a finalist in the 2013 and 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Michelle Lopez of Hummingbird High on the show today.

(*All images below are Michelle’s.)

On Her Blog:

I started my blog a few years ago, back in 2011. I just moved to Denver where I didn’t really know anybody. And I’d spent most of my life basically living an hour away from the ocean at most. So I was like, “Okay, this is a new city. I don’t really know anybody. My job is kind of stressful. So I’m just going to spend the weekend baking.”

I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks and just followed the recipe to a T and then everything terrible happened. It was a recipe for cupcakes actually. Vanilla cupcakes. And I made this recipe probably 20 times. It was the sort of thing that’s like my default recipe. I could probably make it in my sleep without the instructions. And I just followed it to a T in Denver and literally nothing worked. I pulled them out of the oven and they looked like puddles of goop. It was insane. So I did some research on this because I was like, “What is going on?” And it turns out that because Denver is high up and that affects the way you cook things, water actually boils at a lower temperature because you’re higher up in altitude and because there’s less air pressure there you don’t need as many leaveners, you don’t need as much baking powder or baking soda or something.

So, you actually have to do all these alterations before you start making any recipe because most recipes are for sea level. And I had no idea, so I was like, “This is kind of interesting. I’m going to start baking more and trying this out for myself and experimenting and seeing what my standard recipes look like but in high altitude and then kind of adapting them for that.”

On Baking at High Altitude:

So baking bread was something that I never mastered because I was only in Denver six months but yeast is like an entirely different beast. And I think you have to have. So how yeast works is basically you activate it with warm water and it comes alive and then that chemical reaction is what causes the bread to rise. And usually that takes a couple of hours, but in high altitude you basically just have that time because the air just doesn’t have any of the same resistance down at sea level. It’s crazy. So I’d say that’s the big one that’s insane.

Definitely temperature because you are at high altitude the air is thinner so things tend to dry out faster and tend to cook quicker. So always shorten your cooking time I’d say is the primary step. And then probably lessen your leaveners. Those are the two big secrets to high altitude baking.

I do think everything is really adaptable. That’s why people live in the mountains. It’s pretty and it shouldn’t be an inconvenience. So I was pretty lucky in that, it took a couple of tries for some recipes, and like I said, bread was kind of my big nemesis. I still never really nailed that one down. I do really believe that you can adapt anything to high altitude.

Cookies tend to work better. I have no idea why, probably because they don’t have that much leavener to begin with and because the sugar cooks quicker, they end up chewier. It’s really good. I have no idea why, but that’s probably the main thing that I’m like, “Okay, all of my cookies here seem good.” I don’t know if that’s in my head or what.

On Learning How to Bake:

I was baking before this but I definitely credit my baking through the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook as what really taught me how baking works. Before that, I was just looking up random recipes online or I was using some box cake mixes which now that I think about that I shudder. But yeah, the cool thing about cooking through a cookbook, especially one like the Hummingbird Bakery, which I highly recommend is they basically have a couple of master cupcakes recipes and then add flavorings and everything at different stages so you start to understand why things are done in the order that they are when you’re following a recipe and how ingredients really interact with each other, depending on what quantities they added and why they would take some away if they add something in them. So stuff like that. It was really helpful.

The Hummingbird Bakery, some background, is actually a pretty popular bakery in London and it’s funny because their whole thing is American baked goods so it’s like this weird middle British take on American goods. And one of my best friends, he and I met when I was in college, he was an exchange student from England and he sent me their cookbook and he was like, “My gosh, I saw this cookbook and I just thought of you.” Because I used to make a lot of cupcakes in college and I was like, “That’s sweet of him.” And then a few months later, I went to visit him and that was his first priority to take me to that bakery. And I was like, “Okay, this is really great.” We don’t get to see each other that often because he lives out in London so it was a nice way to just keep that connection alive.

Once I finished (baking through the cookbook) I was like, “Okay, well, I baked a ton of cupcakes, but I really wish there had been other things too like cheesecake is kind of a different beast too.” So yeah, there was a little bit of disappointment there. That’s when I really started branching out and using the Internet to find bloggers and other cooking sources that I thought would help out.

On Where She Turns for Inspiration:

I have so many go-to sources it’s actually a little bit intense. I love Food52 for basic solid recipes that I know that will work because I’m pretty sure they test almost everything that’s on their site. I love anything that Food 52 features. And I have a handful of go-to bloggers that I really like. Molly Yeh for cakes. She is incredible. I am a big fan of hers. And right now I’m really into Fix Feast Flair. She just won Saveur’s Best New Voice this year. And anything that comes out of her, that she publishes on her blog I’m like, “Why isn’t this in front of me, I want to eat this right now.” Those are probably my big two.

On Which Cookbook She Would Cook through Today:

That’s a tough one because again, my cookbook collection is a little out-of-control, but the one that I’ve always kind of flipped through whenever I need inspiration is probably the Mast Brothers Chocolate Cookbook. So what it is it’s just like a series of recipes, they even have savory ones. But all just features chocolate and I’m such a big fan of chocolate and it would be interesting to approach learning how to cook something just through one ingredient. So I think that would be really cool.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do watch one cooking show, it’s called The Great British Bake Off. It just recently started airing on PBS in the U.S. But I’ve been streaming past seasons that were only available in England and it’s so good and it teaches you so much about baking. It’s just like this reality TV show where they take bakers from all around the U.K. and get them to bake traditional British desserts. And there’s the judges and everything. It’s great. It’s so good.

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

This is like choosing between my children or somebody because I read a ton of food blogs. But right now I’m really into some of the smaller blogs that haven’t gotten as much attention yet. So I’d say I really love Renee Kemps for her photography. She’s just the nicest person in real life. She’s so sweet. And so I’m probably pronouncing this wrong but Le Jus D’orange. It means orange juice in French. It’s this girl Betty in Boston, she’s Chinese, she makes a lot of dishes that her mom used to make and a lot of fusion dishes, too. She’s awesome, too.

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

Okay. That’s another tough one because I follow so many people. And fun fact actually, I’m being an old person my Snapchat doesn’t work on my phone so I don’t actually have Snapchat so we can eliminate that.

Pinterest, I follow so many people, but there’s this 17-year-old girl who I think lives in Southern California. Her name is… My gosh, what is her name? But she has a blog, too, It’s called Lace and Lilacs and she’s going to go study photography in Paris and for a 17-year-old she has such a good eye. She’s always pining such beautiful photos, not even just food but of flowers, people so she’s a big inspiration. And on Instagram I really like Coco Cake Land who posts these really cute Instagrams of cakes frosted-like animals that are so cute. She does a lot of tiger cakes and really cute, highly recommend following. And Linda Lomelino is the other one on Instagram who is amazing. She does cakes as well but hers is kind of the opposite direction from Cocoa Cake Land’s. Hers are just really pretty, classic cakes that are adorned with natural flowers.

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

Most unusual I’d say is, I have an office label maker in my kitchen, I’m kind of a neat freak when it comes to the kitchen and I have all my ingredients in glass jars that are easily accessible. And my handwriting sucks so I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to get an official label maker so I can label these,” and it looks great. So that’s probably the weirdest item that’s in my kitchen. And I use it a surprising amount but that might just be me being insane, so there’s that. And I’d say the most treasured item is probably my KitchenAid mixer.

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

Another really good one cause I used to be actually a picky eater. So, cinnamon. Actually that’s kind of weird and boring I know. And it’s a weird controversial thing to say cinnamon because it’s in everything but I used to really hate that fake cinnamon taste from Red Hots and cinnamon Altoids. And for a while I was using really cheap cinnamon that was five years old. But then my friend got me some designer cinnamon. I don’t even know where it was from, from some fancy shop in New York and she’s like, “Okay, you’re so weird, here try this.” And it’s actually pretty good.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would say the one that just really improved my baking skills most recently was The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Cookbook. I’ve always had a really hard time making pie. I don’t know why, that’s my big Achilles heel when it comes to baking. My pie crusts were always soggy and ugly. But I got their book because I went to their bakery in New York. This is how I get my books, I go to their bakery and get sucked in. And they had such beautiful photos of the pie making process, what it looks like after you rub the butter in, so that one was super helpful in helping me learn how to make pies. The other one that I really like and this one’s relatively new is Food 52’s Genius Recipes. One of their editors went out and found recipes that produce really amazing results for a pretty simple process and I’ve made a couple of things from there and it’s so good.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like listening to Taylor Swift’s latest album when I cook. And yeah, if there was a movie… It’s crazy, this is going to sound really weird but I like having action movies as a background because they are easy to follow along to when you’re baking and you can step out and not pay attention but then come back and be like, “Okay, I get it, something exploded.” There’s not really any twists or anything in most action movies so they are always fun to bake to.

I listen to a lot of Top 40 radio while I bake, which is really weird because in college I didn’t listen to any of the Top 40 at all and I used to listen to the most pretentious music. I still like lots of small indie bands and everything but just not while I bake because it’s just not as fun.

On Keeping Posted with Michelle:

Just follow me on Instagram. My username Hummingbird High and of course just check out my blog. I post once a week so it’s pretty easy to catch up with me.

055: Liz Harris: Turning Food into Her Career

July 1, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Floating Kitchen

Liz is a cook, photographer, and writer. And on her blog, Floating Kitchen, she explores and shares seasonally inspired recipes that are sometimes healthy and sometimes indulgent, but always fun and delicious.

I am so psyched to have Liz Harris of Floating Kitchen here on the show today.

(*All images below are Liz’s.)

On Her Career Before Food:

Before I started blogging, I was actually a research scientist. I went all the way in school. My undergraduate focus was biology, and then I went on to get my PhD in Biochemistry. That was five years of training, post undergrad degree.

Then I went and did a post-doctoral fellowship in Cancer Biology. That was another four years of training. I spent about thirteen years working towards becoming a research scientist, and then I was working in that field. It just wasn’t clicking for me anymore so I made a drastic change in my life.

Making the change was very hard, mentally, because I had committed so much time and you feel compelled to continue on this path.

I still love science. I find it really interesting. I love reading about it in my free time. I liked actually doing it, but at the end of the day, the lifestyle that I had created for myself around this career wasn’t very healthy for me anymore, and so I needed to change that.

On Her Introduction to Cooking:

My family is pretty into food. I come from a line of great cooks. My grandmother, my great aunts, my mom is a big cook as well. I was always just in the kitchen or around the kitchen with them. So I was always very interested in it. My family also owns a farm and a wholesale distribution business in New Hampshire, so food is just something that we think about a lot and have always been really interested in. It’s just what we do.

My great auntie, Dot. She was probably the best cook in the family. She also was always very patient with me and she let me help her. She didn’t get mad if you messed up or anything. Because I’m sure I messed up a lot when I was little. I owe a lot of my cooking abilities to her.

On Turning Her Hobby into Her Career:

About five years ago is when I really started doing it. It was still a hobby at that time, but I started being a lot more serious about cooking every day for myself, cooking for friends, having people over.

That’s when people started suggesting to me, too, “Hey, you’re really good at this. Have you ever thought about having a blog or doing something with it?” And I was like, “No. Computers hate me. I would never have a blog. I can’t even do email!” That just seemed really out of reach for me.

I was spending so much time on my career, so it was like, “No way I could do that on the side.” So that’s when I really started getting into it. Around 2012 or 2013 is when I made this choice to leave my career as being a scientist, and that was the obvious thing to do, is to pursue something in cooking.

I think whenever you make a really big drastic change like that, there is a fine balance between courage and sheer stupidity. You just have to say, “Alright, I don’t know what’s going to happen and I’m just going to do it and go for it.”

My parents obviously were really supportive. I didn’t feel like I was going to be letting them down. I also was giving up a paycheck and all these other practical things. They were encouraging me and telling me that it would be okay. It gave me the guts to do it.

I’m just a really determined person. Once I get something in my head, it does not escape my head until I do something about it. So I just decided to do it and now here I am.

When I first left science, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was mulling around for a few months, figuring it out.

I actually simultaneously started my blog and started working in restaurants. I had never had a restaurant job before in my whole life, so that was a really fun and eye-opening experience. So I started on those two paths; I had the blogging and I had the restaurant work. After doing both those simultaneously for about a year, I decided that I just wanted to pursue the blogging for now. Restaurant work is hard. I mean, it was fun but it’s a lot of work for not a lot of gain. And my blog was picking up and was growing, and I decided to put all of my energy into that.

On the Type of Cooking that’s Most Natural:

I think the savory dishes come more naturally to me. I’ve developed a style where I just like to throw things together. I cook mostly vegetarian food and it’s just easy to roast up a bunch of vegetables and make some grains, make a quick dressing. That is definitely more my everyday style. Although I do love the baking.

I think the enjoyment I get out of the baking is not the actual doing it but it’s the sharing it. Because that’s the stuff that’s easy to share, and that’s why I loved cooking to start with. I loved bringing people food or inviting people over.

Cookies and brownies are something I would take to work all the time, or bring to my neighbor’s house. So I like that aspect of the baking. But in terms of the following the instructions, I can do it and I’m great at it, but I just prefer to not have to think that much about it. Which is funny because being a scientist, all you’re doing is thinking about instructions all the time.

On Where She Finds Inspiration for Her Blog:

Mostly from other bloggers.

I read an enormous number of blogs. I have like 400 blogs on my feed. It’s insane. Because people are just doing so much great stuff, so I love just seeing what everyone else is doing.

I’m really inspired by cooking with the seasons. That’s something that’s important to me. Growing up in a family that has a farm, I’ve always been aware of that and try to follow that as much as possible. It’s better for your wallet and the environment. It’s good for your body. It tastes better when you buy food that’s in season. I love going to the local markets and looking for things that look great, and bringing them home and making something from them.

On Things Not Going As Planned in the Kitchen:

I feel like at this point, I’m pretty knowledgeable of what is going to work together, what flavors will go together, and what techniques are going to work.

I guess the only things for me, that it’s not actually the cooking part, it’s always something else that happens. I remember I made this huge tray of eclairs and they were glazed. And I dropped them and they went glazed side down on the rug, with dog hair stuck in them. It’s that kind of stuff.

I will finish a whole thing and then I’ll have some klutzy moment at the end and ruin everything, which is very unfortunate. But those things happen to me more than actually with the cooking part.

In the beginning, when I was in graduate school and during my fellowship when I was learning to cook, I was very strict about following recipes. I had to have a recipe or I couldn’t make something. Because I didn’t have that awareness of what things went together. But now that I have been cooking for so many years, it’s easy for me, just something that I’ve picked up.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do like to watch the Barefoot Contessa.

A show I used to love to watch that’s not on anymore is Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Of course, that’s like a science-y cooking show, so you know I’m going to love that one. I don’t really watch any food competition shows because they kind of stress me out. I get nervous for the contestants.

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

From the 400 that I follow, let’s see. One blog that I love is called Local Haven. Her name is Ashely, and she has really great photography and really authentic, unfussy recipes that just feel good when I’m on her site and look at her photos. So I think everyone should check out Local Haven.

I also really love Foodie Crush by Heidi. Heidi has great recipes and great photography, but I think the thing that I appreciate most about her site is that she spends a lot of time talking about other bloggers and other blogger’s recipes. It’s really refreshing in a job where you talk about yourself all the time. I mean, that’s really what we have to do, is promote yourself. So it’s so nice to see somebody who is talking about other bloggers so much. I’ve been introduced to a lot of new sites through her blog. So I think that’s a good one everyone should check out.

And I love How Sweet It Is by Jessica. Her stuff is just so over the top and fun, and it just makes you feel good when you read it.

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

On Instagram, I love Sweet Paul Magazine. He has a lot of not just food pictures, it’s food and crafts and gardening. All the photos are really bright and fun and whimsical. He has a great feed.

I also love, on Instagram, all the meta-sites, like Food 52 and The Kitchn. Great photography, great recipes, and again, they reshare a lot of stuff from the community. So it’s been a great way to connect and find new Instagram accounts and new food bloggers.

On Twitter, I love Sarah from The Sugar Hit. She is just hilarious. She has really funny tweets. I definitely recommend people checking her out.

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

I guess the thing that would be the most treasured, is I do have recipes from my great aunt. She was the one that was sort of the biggest cook in our family. And all the recipes from my grandparents and other family members, and I think those are probably the most treasured things, just having those cards with the stains on them and the handwritten notes. It’s just really fun. You feel like you’re cooking with them when you’re using them.

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

This is a tough question because I used to dislike everything. I was that kid that only ate grilled cheese, chicken, and peanut butter and jelly for like twenty years. So it’s very surprising now that I will eat everything.

I think one of the main things is tomatoes. I used to hate tomatoes, raw tomatoes. I didn’t like tomato sauce. I would wipe the sauce off of my spaghetti, which horrified my parents. But now, I love fresh tomatoes. I love making sauces.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I really like Vibrant Food by Kimberly Hasselbrink. It’s really colorful. I want to eat everything when I flip through the pages. It’s just a spectacular book that I think everybody should own.

I love Joy the Baker. She’s one of my favorite bloggers. I love Homemade Decadence, again, really fun and whimsical, and of course, totally makes you hungry when you’re looking at it.

I also love all the Ottolenghi books. I don’t cook from them that often, because all the recipes are really involved, but just such a great source of inspiration and great photography as well.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I really like something upbeat when I’m cooking, like Stevie Wonder or Taylor Swift. Anything with a good beat deserves to be in my kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

The best way, the first way is my blog, of course, floatingkitchen.net. I post new recipes two to three times a week. So you can check me out there. Instagram is my favorite, so that’s a fun place. I love connecting with people on Instagram.

041: Nik Sharma: Exploring the Culinary Arts and Food Photography

May 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Brown Table

Nik grew up in India and the United States. The non-traditional dishes on his blog represents this experience. He believes in using fresh, seasonal whole foods and knowing where his ingredients come from. A Brown Table was recognized by Better Homes and Garden in 2014 as a top ten healthy food blog. Nik recently gave up his job in the pharmaceutical industry to follow his dream of learning more about the culinary arts.

I am so happy to have Nik Sharma of A Brown Table here on the show today.

(UPDATE: Since recording this episode, A Brown Table was chosen as the winner of the International Association of Best Culinary Professionals – Best Photo Based Culinary Blog of 2015, and is a Finalist in the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Photography.)

On His Upbringing in India:

I come from a mixed background where my dad is from the north and he grew up Hindu and my mother is Goan who grew up Catholic. So it’s an infusion of cultures which is what I try to reflect in my food, but it’s also something that I grew up with where you eat everything.

That is something that my parents gave us, both me and my sister the opportunity to do that. We were very fortunate in that sense to try everything out at least once. But make up your mind about it and then you decide. That is something I strongly believe in. I think people should explore food. There’s a lot out there. And have fun with it more than anything.

On His Interest in Cooking:

Growing up, both my parents had day jobs. I think Thursdays were my day off from school and I had to take care of my sister at a certain point. So she would come home from school and she hated my mother’s food.

My mother’s a good cook but I feel like my grandmother, her mother, was a better cook. We always lean through with my grandmother’s food. Anyway, I started learning how to cook at that age because neither of us wanted to eat what my mother cooked. It was good food. It just wasn’t something that we were interested in so I started exploring, going through my mother’s cookbooks and notes that she had collected before getting married, and I started exploring those recipes by myself.

A lot of them were desserts. I have a strong sweet tooth that shows up quite a bit on my blog. So that’s when I started to cook.

I also spend a lot of time with my grandmother where I’d watch her cooking and she would talk about how you need to cut all the vegetables to the right size, they should all be similar, and stuff like that.

On His Culinary Influences:

For me, it’s been more to explore and see what’s out there because my personal belief is that I do not want to get restricted to be in one genre. I’d like to learn as much as I can because there’s so much out there and you live once. Why stop yourself?

Definitely when I moved here, there was definitely that stage where I wanted to taste a lot, get an idea. Because in Indian food, I think the flavors are a little stronger and there’s definitely a mix of what doesn’t match can actually be mixed and brought together in Indian cooking.

Whereas in Western food, it’s a little more mellow and subtle; flavors are kept subtle. So over the years, I’ve definitely learned to strive to get close to a mixed balance between the two. I think I’ve become better at it. I don’t think I’m an expert in any sense. But I think with each recipe, I try and strive for that.

On Experimenting with Indian Flavors:

I always say start basic and simple. That’s how I’ve learned. I think a lot of the Indian food, we use a lot of combinations. So there’s like the garam masala, then there’s like when you make chana masala, there’s a separate mix. It’s nice for me. My experience has been to go back to the spice mix because that’s the root of all the flavor. Go back, make it from scratch.

You may find that certain ingredients in there, you may not like them individually but they actually make the dish up as a whole. So I think it’s important to go back to the basics. Knock everything down piece-by-piece and that’s something you learn in science.

When I worked in science, one of the things we do is hypothesis testing. Go back to the basics and break everything down and then build it up again from scratch. I think that really applies to food as well. I think not only with Indian food but any cuisine.

On Starting His Blog:

So I was in the habit of entertaining a lot of friends at home for a while. It’s something that I enjoyed doing. Then a couple of them, and I think this sounds a stereotypical way of friends or family members tell that, “You should start a blog.” I said, “Okay, let me go ahead and do this thing.” and it sucked. It sucked. It was way too much work for me and I decided to scrap the whole thing. Because I couldn’t keep up with it. I just started school. I was working full time. I was about to start in school in the evenings and it just wasn’t happening. It wasn’t coming together.

So then, a couple of months later, we had gone to visit my now mother-in-law’s house. She said, “I think you should go back and give it a shot.” So I said, “Well, I think my photography sucks,” number one, and all the blogs out there that I’m drawn to are visually just stunning. I can spend hours just scrolling back through the pages and I don’t have it.

I said, “Well, maybe I should invest a little money in a simple camera and then give it a shot.” So I went ahead and I did that. I started practicing a little bit. And then I thought, “Maybe I also need a concept and I wanted it to be something more personal. It didn’t matter if it’s mainstream or not.”

That’s the other thing in blogging. You have mainstream and then you have off-site, probably just never does well. And that’s where I was coming from. I said, “Let me talk about the food that I make at home. That’s a fusion of cultures. Let’s do that. Lets infuse things and see what happens. If it works, it works; if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work.”

So I tried it again.

I started finding my voice and personality which is when I started falling in love with it. I think the main thing for me there was I was talking from my heart. My food was coming from my heart. I think that’s important in anything that you do. Blogging or a job, it should come from your heart, and then you’ll enjoy. And that worked for me.

On Finding His Style of Photography:

I think it’s really important to find your own voice. It takes time.

When I started blogging, one of the things that a lot of food bloggers, we do as a community is you go and submit a photograph to photo curating sites, which is all good and done deal at the end of the day. It gives you traffic but also you have to remember why you’re blogging. For me, it was expressing myself through food and also getting to be creative which I wasn’t getting to do at work.

Photo curating sites are good to a certain point. Take the advice they give you with a grain of salt and move on. When I stepped away from all of that, I feel I grew as a photographer, as a cook. That helped me because I stopped caring about the numbers.

In blogging, we get really focused on numbers so much. As soon as I stopped focusing on that, I felt happier with my work. I’m not saying I’m perfect right now. I’m definitely not. I still see faults in everything I do. But as a person, I feel happier with my work now. I think that’s what people need to focus on. Just be happy with what you do.

Alot of the times, the style that I’m doing now is something that I’ve always wanted to do. When all these sites people come and tell, “Don’t do this because they don’t want this. This is not good.” For me, the biggest step was putting my hands out. You see my hands a lot with my photographs. I like to do a lot of process shots because I’m not very good at writing, so I like to visually tell people. If I’m making a recipe, I’d like them visually to see what’s going on.

For me, that’s an easier way to get that message across. So for me, that was something important but a lot of sites did not want that. I said, “Well, let me take a chance and see how this works out for a couple of months. So far, it’s been fortunate enough that people have been very receptive about it, so it’s good.

On Following His Passion for Food and Culinary Arts:

My husband has been my number one supporter of everything that I’ve done. As a kid growing up, I wanted to go to chef school. My mother said, “Well, a lot of chefs, all they do is they sit in the kitchens. I’ve seen them because this is what happens at work. They are sitting in those walk-in freezers peeling onions and cutting their fingers. I don’t think it’s meant for you.”

So I went the traditional route as all Goan Indian families push you to do. It’s either engineering, medicine or something more stable. I went with that and there were still those nagging feelings that I enjoy being creative. And I love biochemistry. That’s one of my things. And a lot of foods is especially based in the pastry field. It’s all about chemistry, like knowing biochemistry and why stuff does what it does in food.

I started noticing that as I started applying those rules from school into my food, my baking skills improved quite a bit. So in that sense, I found that I wasn’t really going to step away from all the knowledge I had gained in school, so it wasn’t a waste but it’s helped me quite a bit.

I talked to my husband a couple of months. We had moved from DC to San Francisco. I said, “I feel now that I’m at this stage where I want to take the dive. And if I don’t do it now, I’ll always regret it. I want to have a professional angle to my work.” So he said, “Well, okay. Go ahead. See what’s out there.”

I called out every bakery that was close by. No one responded. I had almost given up and finally got a call from this lady who says, “So you had called up both of our bakeries. It sounds like you’re really interested. Would you be willing to come in and talk with me?” I said, “Sure.”

So I went in with no expectations. Because a lot of the people that actually called me back, a few of them that actually called me back said, “You don’t have a culinary degree, so we’re not gonna take you in.” But then again, to that end, I had read a lot of blogs who had said, “Go out there. Get the experience before you do decide to do anything professionally because it’s so different. It’s not at all a glamorous field. You’re on your feet all day.”

So I met this lady and she was really nice and kind to give me a chance. She said, “Come on in. It’s definitely a hard business, especially pastry because you’ll get up at 5:00. You are in sometimes at 5:00 and you’re on your feet all day long. So it’s a hard life, but let’s do a trial phase. And if you like it and if we like you, we’ll keep you on.” So I did that for a long time, for a month.

The trial was a month, and then I asked them. I said, “Do you want me to come back? What’s going on? Because I’m still working at the other job I attend during the week. I’ve gone part-time on everything.” I said, “I’m still working in my pharmaceutical job and then this at the side. I’d really like to just really give it all up and come here? Do you want me?” She said, “Yes, we would love you to come back. But just remember, it’s going to be tough.” So that’s when I said, “Okay.”

I spoke to my husband at home. He said, “Go for it,” and did it and I’m happy I made the decision. It helps having someone who supports you emotionally during the whole phase because it’s scary. I’m still scared about what’s going to happen tomorrow because it’s such a risky business.

It’s worth the risk. I feel like if you feel like it’s something you’re questioning, give it a shot if you can. I’m not saying everybody can do it. It’s a financial risk. It’s a stability risk, I feel. So go ahead. Give it a shot if you can. Go for it a little bit. If you don’t like it, okay. At least you tried it. Move on. I think that’s critical.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

It’s called The Great British Baking Show on PBS. That’s one of my favorites.

America’s Test Kitchen is another great show to learn from, and Lidia’s Italy. That’s another really good show to learn about food and culture and flavors. I guess all those are all PBS shows.

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

Gosh, there are so many good ones so calling any specific ones up will be hard.

I’m sure everyone is familiar with the best blogs out there, so go ahead and look those up. But when it comes to some of the more different ones, I would say, feel free to choose a great community to get involved in and learn from them. America’s Test Kitchen, again. They have a great resource on their website, and The Kitchn is another great resource to learn from.

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

Dogs of Instagram?

I have a dog. I obsess over my dog like a crazy person. Yeah, so Dogs of Instagram.

Pinterest, I follow a lot of food photographers and photographers in general. So it’s hard to pinpoint any one person, but anything that I find different from stuff that I do and that visually speaks to me.

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

My ice cream maker. I love ice cream. I love making ice cream at home.

If and when I go to culinary school, and if I get to open a restaurant or a little shop, ice cream would be a special section. So yeah, ice cream maker.

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

Radishes. I hated radishes as a kid. I thought they were the nastiest things that existed.

I still don’t like the large, white radishes. I still find the flavor a little disgusting. But radishes, the Easter egg radishes, I’ve come to appreciate that they look cute. They’re not that harsh in flavor, so I like those a lot.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I do collect a lot of pastry books. Some of the ones that I really find useful are the ones, again, by America’s Test Kitchen because there’s a lot of talk process.

I like the books by Thomas Keller from Bouchon and The French Laundry. Those are really good books to own.

Also, a lot of the culinary textbooks from the CIA. If you don’t want to buy a lot of cookbooks, those are some of the good resources to learn from, so I always have those stocked.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

As of now, I would say Taylor Swift’s new album. I love that CD.

On Keeping Posted on Nik:

Instagram would be the best way. Then my second social media platform that I really use is Facebook. Those two are the two that I love.

027: Tara Austen Weaver: How to Get Started on a Garden

April 17, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Tea and Cookies

A life-long traveler and adventurer, Tara is trained as a master gardener and permaculture designer. Editor of Edible Seattle and writer of the award winning blog Tea & Cookies.

I am so excited to have Tara Austen Weaver, author of the new book Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow, here on the show today.

On Food Writing:

It’s funny, I actually fell into food writing completely by accident.

I had always been a writer, but I mostly wrote travel and then I went to graduate school and was writing some fiction and non-fiction. It’s funny, because I didn’t pick up on it at the time. But a lot of people in my workshop group, I was writing a novel that was in Japan, people would say, “When I read your chapters, I always find myself at the refrigerator afterwards, looking for something to eat. I love the way you write about food.” But it never occurred to me.

Then I got sick, this was at the end of 2005, after the holidays. I got really sick and I was in bed for two months, really just exhausted. We didn’t know what was going on. Years later, it was discovered that I had had mono. But the doctor never, it never occurred to him.

So I was just tired, but I couldn’t really do anything. I had discovered food blogs in about November of that year. I just followed a link. Blogs were pretty young then and I had never heard of a food blog. I thought, “Huh! I’m not interested in this weird blog thing but food blog sounds interesting.”

I just fell into this world, and here were these people who were so passionate about cooking and food. In the geeky way that I was. They are having dinner parties and talking about their recipes and posting pictures. And for a couple of weeks, I just read blogs.

No one had been blogging more than a year then. But it was wonderful and it was this community. They all seem to know each other.

And then, it was January 1, I just decided to start a blog. I thought that I would just do it for a couple of weeks until I felt better and could go back to work. And I didn’t even put my name on it. It was anonymous and it was just sort of my little secret. I didn’t tell my friends and I certainly didn’t want my writing clients or editing clients to find it. But it was the most fun writing I had ever done, and I was posting everyday.

It was so much fun to go to the market and have a reason to make these recipes and to share them, and then other people started leaving comments. It just sucked me in. And it was actually about three years that I didn’t have my name on it.

The food blog world was really small back then, but within a month or two, editors started contacting me and asking me to write about food. Maybe just one or two, but that never happens. I had been a writer up to that point. So it was just kind of amazing.

They responded to the voice on the blog and I said in my bio that I was a professional writer, so they sort of assumed that I would be able to do these jobs. It just took off. After three months, a friend of mine who is an agent, read a post and she said, “You should write a book about this.” So that turned into a book contract, it really just happened very organically.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I have a mother who’s a horrible cook. She will tell you this, the joke in my family is that my brother and I learned how to cook in self-defense.

My mom was a single parent when I was growing up and still. And we had a couple of babysitters who lived with us.

Some of them were horrible. But we had one in particular who really liked to cook. She would take the plums that fell off our tree and make jam, and make pickles. She would make kimchi, which was sort of hippie 1970s, 80s, Northern California, white person kimchi. But it was really good and she made like, we called it baby kimchi. A version for us without spices, but we really liked it because it was salty.

I think that that was the spark, seeing someone enjoy themselves in the kitchen. She was with us for awhile and then she moved away. And at that point, we were sort of growing out of needing babysitters. I was about 13 I think when I started taking over all the cooking for my family. I enjoyed it and my mom hated it and she wasn’t good at it, and so I would give her a shopping list and she would go and bring back the ingredients I wanted.

Mollie Katzen actually, who wrote the Moosewood Cookbook. I feel like she was my cooking teacher, because I would just make all the recipes.

When I was on the tour for my first book, she came to my event and I had sent her a copy of the book because I mentioned her in it. She had emailed me to say how much she enjoyed it. And she came to my event and I didn’t have my copy of the book to show her. I really, really wanted to.

It’s funny, because I came to this as a writer and not as a recipe developer or chef or anything like that. So I’m always surprised when people make the recipes. And in the beginning, I was actually terrified. Like it worked for me, I hope it works for you. But people do say, sometimes they’ll leave a comment and say, “I make this all the time, every time I get sick, I make this.” It’s like part of my family and my kitchen, goes into their kitchen and their family. It’s a lovely thing.

On Her Book, Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow:

The book is set in Seattle and it is a story of a somewhat broken family, which will be mine.

I was looking for property for my mom who wanted to move to Seattle, because my brother and I both live here. In the process, I discovered this sort of not totally exciting house that happened to be on half an acre of land within the city limits which was really, really unusual.

I put it on the list of properties to look at just because I was curious. I said, “If we have extra time, let’s go see it.”

We did, we went and we all just fell in love with this yard. It was completely overgrown. It’d been neglected for about 10 years. Blackberry vines everywhere and it just felt like a secret garden.

My sister-in-law and my nieces were with us that day and the girls were running wild in the sunshine and coming back with berry juice all over their face, and their arms full of Asian pears and it just was this magical moment.

My mother decided to buy the house and moved to Seattle, and all of us were going to work together to bring the garden back to life. Of course the garden sort of ends up bringing us back to life, bringing us together. So yeah, it’s about growing food but also a lot about family and community in Seattle. Which I find to be a really unique community, and discovering unexpected things and overgrown deserted locations.

I didn’t go into it thinking I would ever write about it. A friend of mine when she heard me talking and heard how excited I was about the garden, she was the one who said, “You really need to write about this.” It really has been a pretty unexpected journey but a really wonderful one.

On Getting Started with a Garden:

I recommend starting with herbs. Because they are not that hard, and tremendously rewarding and it will save you so much money because you don’t have to buy an entire bunch of rosemary to get one sprig.

I don’t know about you, but I always have these bunches of herbs that are getting slimy in my fridge because I didn’t use all of the cilantro. But they are rosemary, thyme, oregano. These are some very chives as well, very hardy plants. If you’re putting them in the ground especially.

I think a lot of people try with house plants or grow herbs in their kitchen and get discouraged because they die. The problem with putting something in a pot is that it’s going to dry up pretty quickly. And most people put things in pots that are too small.

So the plant looks great at the nursery, it’s in a pot. But when you get it home, you actually need to take it out of that pot and put it in a pot that it is generally twice as big. Those roots need somewhere to go.

I grow herbs in my kitchen in the winter, because actually this huge garden is at my mother’s house. I don’t live there, so I need some herbs for my kitchen. I generally expect that they are going to die at some point in the winter. Sometimes they make it through all the way and I put them in the ground in the spring, but often times especially if I get to travel anywhere, they die. I just accepted that that is part of the process.

I think that is another thing, is that sometimes plants when taken out of their native environment will die. One of the gardeners in my clinic, the master gardener says, “You just have to accept that this is part of the cycle of life and gardening means sometimes death.”

On Good Resources for Starting on a Garden:

I love Gayla Trail, who is is a Canadian garden writer and she has a site that she’s been keeping for probably a decade now called You Grow Girl. I think she has a fantastic approach, series of books.

Margaret Roach is out of New York or Massachusetts. She was the garden editor for Martha Stewart for years, her site is A Way To Garden.

The third person I would point you towards is Willi Galloway, who is out of Portland, she used to live here in Seattle. She has a great book particularly if you are a food person, it’s called Grow Cook Eat. She talks about growing food but also has recipes, so you can trace the whole cycle. It’s a really inspiring book.

Those are three people who will not steer you wrong. And there is an entire garden blog community that I am just starting to explore.

The other book that I think is really great and I’ve had a copy since I was in high school, but it’s sort of encyclopedic but a good resource is Barbara Damrosch, who is a very famous garden writer and I bought her book when I was in high school. I think it’s a Garden Primer, that is a resource that I’m always going back to.

The Pressure Cooker:

(*The camera angle’s not the best but Tara shares a ton of really good information. Thanks Tara!)

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I’m watching a lot of garden shows these days, Alys Fowler‘s series out of the BBC is really fantastic. It’s all about edible gardening. So that’s kind of cooking and garden related.

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

I have a lot of friends who have been blogging since my early days and I’m sure you know all of them. So I’m going to tell you about a more recent blog, The Yellow House. She lives out of D.C. in the Virginia countryside, and it’s beautiful, beautiful writing. Really lovely recipes and gorgeous photography, I’m a huge fan of her work.

Who do you follow on social media that make you happy?

I’m going to call out a rising star here in Seattle, Brittany Wright, and her Instagram’s feed is Wright Kitchen. She is an upcoming food photographer and does these amazing color gradients with food, just go look at her feed. It’s really inspiring.

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

I have a lot of tea pots that people have given me as gifts that I really treasure. I actually love everything in my kitchen that has been a present, because every time I use it, I think of that person and I feel like I have my people with me when I’m cooking.

So even a set of measuring spoons that were a gift from friends, it really is, I feel like my people are around me.

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

Eggplant. When I was a kid, I used to lie to people and tell them that I was allergic to eggplant because I could not take it. It was often prepared in bad stir frys where it gets bitter and soggy.

I grew up in the kind of culture and hippies do not know how to make good stir frys. They needed some Asian cooking classes back then. But I went to Greece when I was 20 as a student living in Europe. I ate eggplant prepared well for the first time ever and now it’s one of my favorite things.

What are the few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m editor of a food magazine now out of Seattle and I get all of the new cookbooks that come out, so I’m drowning in cook books a little bit these days. But I have to say that Heidi Swanson, her site is a 101 Cookbooks, I love her work because she really looks at ingredients with a fresh eye.

She has a new book coming out that is inspired by her travels. I feel like she takes ingredients from different cultures and uses them in really fresh and inventive ways. And the other culture I know the best is Japan. Sometimes she’ll do things and I go, “Oh, I never thought that you could do that with it.” So I love people that make me think differently.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I listen to podcasts when I cook, I don’t actually listen to music.

I cooked all of the food for my book launch party, which is a bit of a crazy thing. I also actually grew all of the food, it was all from the garden. My kitchen looked like a caterer set-up. I was running around frantically and I actually put on a whole bunch of Taylor Swift and played it really, really loud to get me through the experience. So whatever works.

Keep Posted on Tara:

My blog is teaandcookiesblog.com and I’m on Facebook and Twitter. Instagram is my favorite, favorite thing.

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019: Amy Kritzer: Learning About Jewish Cooking and Culture

March 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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What Jew Wanna Eat

Amy is a cooking teacher, recipe developer, personal chef, and food writer. And her recipes have been featured in Cosmopolitan and Bon Appetite just to name a few. Today, we’re talking about Jewish food.

I am so excited to have Amy Kritzer of What Jew Wanna Eat on the show.

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

I was living in New York City and wanted a change, so I moved from where I lived to Austin, Texas.

I was working at a corporate job as a consultant and I just felt the need to do something a little more creative. I’d been reading a few food blogs and decided I might as well start my own.

My brother and I, growing up, we were always really into our heritage, our Jewish food, and we had this kind of running joke that we’d open the door for each other and say “after Jew”, instead of after you. So it’s just a Jew thing. It was always a joke we had, and he said, “Why don’t you do Jewish food? Like no one’s blogging about that kind of thing. It’d be different and fun.” So I said, “Yeah, why not?”

I just started it for kicks, and it ended up being my true passion. I looked forward to doing recipes every weekend and I would sneakily go on Facebook at work to update everything, and email my new readers.

It was so fun so I ended up quitting my job to go to culinary school, and that was three years ago. Now, I’ve been doing this ever since.

I’ve always been creative and definitely into writing. One of my prior jobs I had was as a conference producer, so I would write different copy and agendas and interesting things like that. So I’ve always loved writing. And I always loved cooking and baking.

Growing up I cooked a lot with my Grandma, who I call my Bubbe, which is Yiddish for grandma. I’d always cook with her. But I never thought of it as a career until more recently.

It’s definitely something I’ve always had a passion for.

On Where The Name of Her Blog Came From:

It was so my brother, as I mentioned, kind of did the “Jew for you” thing.

We were just kind of chatting about funny things, and I think it came up and we were like, “I don’t really know if that’s going to fly. Should I actually use it?”

In hindsight it’s definitely a name that stands out. People see it, they definitely have a reaction. And 99% of the time it’s a positive one like, “That’s funny. I get it, I get it.” And people are like, “Are you Jewish? Is that offensive?” “No, I am Jewish, that’s fine.” But it’s definitely helped me stand out I think, and it definitely says what my blog’s about right off the bat.

On Jewish Food and Jewish Culture:

In terms of Jewish food, versus maybe Italian food or Chinese food, it’s not just from a particular region. Jews have lived all over the world, and Jewish food’s actually evolved, so in different places the Jews have lived, they’ve taken the Kosher rules that they live by, and also some of the familiar recipes for holidays, like let’s say, matzah ball soup is a favorite of mine. It’s very traditional for Passover.

But if you go to Mexico where some Jews live, maybe they’ve added a little bit of spice or a little cilantro to their version. It’s evolved through the years.

Jews, unfortunately, have gotten exiled from a lot of different places. We lived in Eastern Europe and got kicked out of there. We live in America, and grabbed different things there. So living in Texas, I love to take some spices and local flavors and ingredients and adapt them to my food and my traditional recipes.

I think it’s okay to take something traditional and tweak it and add some modern foods and conveniences that we have.

A lot of the food I make is the Ashkenazi Jewish food. My heritage is from Eastern Europe. So I think if you were going to talk to Jews from the Middle East or Africa or anywhere else, they might have different staples.

Part of what I love with my blog is exploring these different types of Jewish food. And people always email me asking me if I can make a recipe that they grew up with, and it’s not something that I grew up with. So I’ve definitely learned a lot.

I would say you’re going to start with Jewish food with the Ashkenazi heritage, there are definitely some ingredients, such as matzah meal if you’re at Passover. Matzah is an unleavened cracker, and you can use it. It’s very popular around that time of year to make everything from matzah ball soup or you can use it to make matzah pizza. It’s a favorite of mine, or desserts using it.

Other Eastern European ingredients would be different kinds of cabbage and beets are really popular, so I like to incorporate those in different recipes.

The Jews had a lot of the tougher cuts of meats, such as brisket, or tongue even. So I’ll experiment with those as well. Things that people aren’t necessarily cooking. If you just give it a little love, you can make it really delicious.

On Some Good Resources to Learn About Jewish Cooking:

The good thing is Jewish food is kind of in right now, so there are definitely more books and restaurants about it.

A classic book, which is not Jewish per se, but Ottolenghi the Israeli chef. He makes gorgeous Middle Eastern-inspired food that definitely has some Jewish heritage to it. Joy of Kosher is a great blog, and she does some more kosher food, not necessarily always Jewish, but around the holidays especially it’s more Jewish food. The same with the Shiksa in the Kitchen, Tori Avey. She is a great resource. Jewish Food The Nosher, is a website as well.

On Cooking:

It’s funny, growing up I wasn’t that big into cooking. I was more of a baker.

I was more artsy, so I loved to make cupcakes and decorate them. I would definitely lean more towards baking brownies and cookies.

When I initially started my blog I wanted to start a baking blog. And then I starting thinking like, “Do I want to make cookies every day?” I’m like, “I don’t know if I want to do that.” So I started experimenting with more cooking, and I found that I loved it because you can be a little more freehanded with it.

When I’m cooking for my website, I measure everything to make sure I can let people know exactly how much I used. When I’m cooking for a fun, I’ll just throw a little bit of this and this in there, and clean out my pantry, and add different spices. You can really experiment, and I find it just very relaxing.

On Cooking Non-Jewish Food:

These days I definitely cook mostly Jewish food, I’m really busy with my blog and all my freelance work as well. But I like to experiment, especially with different kinds of Mexican cuisine. I like to try different Middle Eastern recipes that aren’t quite Jewish.

I don’t think I had any total disasters. I have had some times where, especially during Passover, when you’re trying to use weird ingredients, because you’re not allowed to have any leavened products. So you’re not having any flour during that time, so I’ll try to make a cake with some weird ingredients and it’s just totally flat and not the best thing. But I don’t think I’ve had any horrible, horrible failures, knock on wood, so far.

On Introductory Jewish Food for Beginners:

I think it may seem a little complicated, but I love making brisket, because you really can’t go wrong with it if you cook it. The only thing that can go wrong is if you try to boil it instead of cooking it at a low and slow temperature. It’ll take all day, but it’s really mostly hands off. You can even do it in your crockpot.

If you just let it go long enough, seven or eight hours, it’ll come out delicious every time. And you can really add whatever spices you want. I’ve cooked brisket in beer, in whiskey, in wine. I did a little spicy version, added some tahini, so you can really get creative with it, too. I think it’s impressive. People are always impressed.

I think that it’s a little more complicated, than maybe beginner, but it’s really not. I think people just think it’s tricky. That’s definitely a staple.

For more Middle Eastern I always make my own hummus now, and it’s not hard. I think people are a little afraid of using dried beans, but it makes a world of difference. And again, it’ll take a little time, but it’s way better than the stuff you can buy in the store.

One of my favorite hummus recipes is a hatch chile hummus. It’s a little spicy. And recently I did a pomegranate hummus, which is a little sweet.

And one of the most popular recipes on my site is for a whiskey and cranberry braised brisket that I did two years ago. Hanukkah fell on Thanksgiving, so they dubbed it Thanksgivukah, which was really fun. So I did a lot of combo recipes. This is kind of my Thanksgiving meets Hanukkah brisket, but I still make it all the time.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I am obsessed with Chopped, I could watch that all day. I just love to see what they do with these super weird ingredients, and I think what I would do.

I really love Top Chef, too. The chefs are just on another level, the stuff they come up with, and how fast they can cook things. It’s super impressive.

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

My Name Is Yeh is a really awesome blog. She’s actually half Jewish, so she makes some Jewish tweaks on her website as well.

One of my good friends, Little Ferraro Kitchen, she does a lot of ethnic foods. I love to see what she comes up with during Hanukkah. She did eight days of different Hanukkah food from around the world, so a lot of them were even new to me, so that was super cool.

Tori Avey, I mentioned. She does a lot of food history, too, so if you’re interested in history, that’s a great one.

And then you mentioned the Food 52. I love that. I don’t even know if I’d consider that a blog anymore, because they’re on another level. But they are great for discovering new foodies and their recipes are always on point.

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

Make me happy, let’s see. I’m really into Instagram especially. I just love the visual aspect of it. I just feel like that’s the new social network, beside Snapchat, but it’s like the cool one, I guess. I like to follow food people and non-food people, so for laughs I’ll follow Andy Cohen. He always has good stuff going on. I like to follow The Garden of Eatin, she’s in Toronto, and it’s E-A-T-I-N, The Garden of Eatin. She does just gorgeous food displays. It must take her an hour to set up these gorgeous shots. But I love following her.

And Infatuation on Instagram. They’ll repost different, other people’s stuff, and they’ll post a different restaurant. Their food always makes me drool, and I won’t even be hungry, I’m like, “I need to eat something.”

I love Instagram. There are so many interesting people.

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

I think besides the immediate staples, something I like to add is unique spices.

Something I’ll have for dinner all the time is just roast of some seasonal veggies with a different spice on it. Maybe make like with a spicy yoghurt sauce on top, or poach an egg and put it on top and that’s it. Especially if I’m eating something heavy during the day, or I’m going out to dinner, I’ll have a nice light lunch.

I think what makes the difference is adding a unique spice. I love using za’atar. It’s a Middle Eastern spice. It’s a blend of actually different spices. The main ingredient is sumac, which is a very citrusy lemony flavor, kind of subtle. There’s oregano in there, sesame seeds, thyme, and sea salt. So you can make it yourself, but it’s just got a really nice balanced flavor.

Then using smoked paprika I like a lot, especially if you’re keeping Kosher, so you’re not having bacon. It adds a nice smoked flavor to the foods, too, in different chilis or stews. It gives kind of a smoky aspect. So I would say a few unique spices can take your dishes, your staples you always make, and bring them to the next level.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Oh, let’s see. I might say tahini. I’ve been really into tahini lately.

Something that I always have in my fridge is Greek yogurt. I’m obsessed with Greek yogurt. I have it a lot as a savory thing, too, so I’ll make like a savory breakfast with some Greek yogurt, and I’ll put in some pumpkin seeds and some hot sauce, which it sounds really weird. But if you think of Greek yogurt as just a very neutral flavor, and you can do so much with it. I’ll even mix that with some tahini some thyme and make a sauce.

Tahini is a sesame paste used in hummus, or I’ll mix it with some hot sauce and put it over some veggies. It’s just extremely versatile. It has a lot protein, so it’s really filling, too.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I mentioned earlier the Ottolenghi, all his cookbooks are just gorgeous, even just looking at them for the food photos, I love. I always go back to the Joy of Cooking. It’s a classic.

There’s a cookbook called Schmaltz, and Schmaltz is a rendered chicken fat, and it’s a whole cookbook dedicated to what to do with this chicken fat and how to make it. So it’s your traditional Jewish ingredient, but to see it in different ways is really fun. I’d love to try to experiment with that cookbook a little more.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t know if I should, but I’ve been listening to a lot of Taylor Swift.

People who don’t like Taylor Swift are lying, I think. It’ll pump me up, and I’m really into 90s music.

I’m a 90s child, so I’ll put on like the 90s Pandora Station, or I don’t know, Whitney Houston, Pandora, and see what comes up. Just something kind of fun and pop-y, and it’ll get you in the mood for cooking for sure.

Keep Posted on Amy:

All my social media links are What Jew Wanna Eat, and you can sign up for my emails on my website. That’s the most consistent way. There’s a few boxes you can sign up there, or follow me on Facebook, Instagram, whatever your favorite way is. Instagram and Facebook are my favorites.

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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/)

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

On Baking and Sweet Things:

On Finding Her Career in Food:

On Her Food Heroes and What She’d Make for Them:

On Her Blog:

On Simple Rules of Thumb for Baking for Greater Success:

On Her Cookbook, The New Sugar and Spice:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Sam:

On Her Blog:

On Baking at High Altitude:

On Learning How to Bake:

On Where She Turns for Inspiration:

On Which Cookbook She Would Cook through Today:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Michelle:

On Her Career Before Food:

On Her Introduction to Cooking:

On Turning Her Hobby into Her Career:

On the Type of Cooking that’s Most Natural:

On Where She Finds Inspiration for Her Blog:

On Things Not Going As Planned in the Kitchen:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Liz:

On His Upbringing in India:

On His Interest in Cooking:

On His Culinary Influences:

On Experimenting with Indian Flavors:

On Starting His Blog:

On Finding His Style of Photography:

On Following His Passion for Food and Culinary Arts:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Nik:

On Food Writing:

On Her Interest in Cooking:

On Her Book, Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow:

On Getting Started with a Garden:

On Good Resources for Starting on a Garden:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Tara:

Have Tara's Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now:

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

On Where The Name of Her Blog Came From:

On Jewish Food and Jewish Culture:

On Some Good Resources to Learn About Jewish Cooking:

On Cooking:

On Cooking Non-Jewish Food:

On Introductory Jewish Food for Beginners:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Amy:

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

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: