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

October 5, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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

The Fauxmartha

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

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

(*All images below are Melissa’s.)

 On Cooking:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

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

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

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

On Not Being Creative or Adventurous with Food:

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

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

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

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

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

On Her Tried-And-True Recipes:

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Melissa:

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

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

 

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

010: Ashley Rodriguez: How Dating At Home Helps Us Reconnect

March 9, 2015 by Gabriel

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about what drew her to start blogging.
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Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast on How Dating At Home Helps Us Reconnect

Not Without Salt

Ashley was on a path to becoming a pastry chef at Spago in Beverly Hills when she found out she was pregnant and everything changed.

Today she has a successful blog, named best cooking blog by Saveur in 2013, and a new book called Date Night In, an extension of a popular series on her blog called Dating My Husband.

I am so excited to have Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt here on the show.

On What Drew Her To Starting a Blog:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about what drew her to start blogging.

When my husband and I were living in LA and I was working at Spago, I would come home and have all these crazy stories from the night’s work. He was like, “You should start a blog.” And that was the first I’d ever heard of the word blog.

As I do often with his ideas, initially, I laughed it off and I’m like, “No, who would read that? What is that? I don’t know plus I don’t really have time for that. I’m working at the restaurant all the time.”

It wasn’t in the plan for me to leave the restaurant so abruptly. We found out we were pregnant and then things changed from there.

The blog initially started after we had moved back home to Washington State, and I started my own dessert catering and wedding cake business. And so the blog was my free website.

It started off like, “Hey, look at the cake I made last weekend,” that sort of thing, until it evolved into what it is now.

So it’s really the blog that taught me how to write recipes, how to take pictures of food, and even writing about life itself.

It’s really, really evolved over the eight years that I’ve done it.

On Blogging:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about blogging and her process.

I think the most natural is the recipe development or the idea for the food.

Recipe writing is a whole other subject just because I’m not a meticulous cook, and so it’s hard to write recipes in that way. But coming up with the food ideas, I think, comes pretty naturally for me and then also the photography aspect.

The writing is the hardest and I think I could have so many more recipes and so many more photos and things like that than I actually share. But it’s often the writing and what’s the story behind it and what’s the point of this recipe that keeps me from sharing more often.

It just takes so much time, and it takes so much attention.

I feel like I’ve lost touch with the blog through the process of writing the book because I’ve put all of myself into the book, which I wanted to do, but sadly the blog lost its way. So I’m hoping to find my way back to it.

Right now I’m in this crazy process having just launched a cookbook that my level of respect and empathy for others who have gone before me and wrote a cookbook, it’s just crazy. I just value cookbooks in such a different way now. So I’m going back and going through my library and finding inspiration from others in that way.

I look at the blog as kind of like this encyclopedia of what has inspired me, throughout the years, throughout the course of the years. It’s rare that I post a recipe that’s a straight recipe from someone else’s cookbook but there’s often inspiration there.

On Where Her Love of Pastries and Cooking Came From:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about where her love of pastries and cooking came from.

I don’t have a super romantic idea of having all these memories in the kitchen and all of that. There are a few of those, but what I do have is I grew up not being afraid of the kitchen, which I think is a huge gift that my mom taught me.

Even though I didn’t spend hours with her in the kitchen, I watched her and I watched her not following a recipe. I watched her coming up with a dinner in 20 minutes from whatever she could find in the cupboards and throwing in some spices here and there and just being fearless, and I think that’s a huge, huge gift.

So it’s never been intimidating to me, the kitchen and cooking.

But it really wasn’t until I lived in Italy for a semester where I fell in love with food and the culture around the food. I was studying there as part of my art degree, when I once thought I was going to be a high school art teacher. It was the first time I experienced a culture where life happens around the table.

Initially I felt guilty for spending all my money on meals that would vanish and what do I have to show for it. But I quickly realized that that’s silly because what was happening around the table was even more important than the food that I was absolutely falling in love with and enjoying.

I came back with just this renewed excitement and just having completely fallen in love with food.

And then the pastry, I’ve always loved sweets and I felt that pastry really married my love of art and food, so that’s kind of the route I took.

On Her Popular Blog Series “Dating My Husband”:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her blog series Dating My Husband.

That series started four years ago which is crazy to me.

We have three young children, and when I started the series they were very, very young. Our youngest was just a baby, and I remember in that time missing my husband.

We both worked from home so it’s not that we weren’t seeing each other, but we were completely not connecting and we were just basically trying to survive that time of our lives.

I remember always just looking at him and realizing that I see him more as my roommate rather than my husband or best friend. And I really didn’t like that feeling.

The way that we used to connect, we would go out every Friday night before we had children when we were dating and try new restaurants and new foods. We kept journals, going to these restaurants, on what we tried and I really missed that.

Going out on a weekly basis wasn’t really in the budget like it used to be, but I realized that the kids go to bed pretty early and the hours that we were using in the evening, I would often grab my computer and he would grab his. And I would go to the couch and turn on the TV and eventually fall asleep on the couch.

There were many hours in the day where we were just not using because I often used that as my time, once the kids were in bed, I’m off the clock, I’m done.

But what happened then is I completely neglected our relationship and forgot how important that was and it was definitely taking its toll.

The weekly date nights that we started, I used it as a time to really stretch myself in the kitchen too.

Because the other thing that happens sometimes when you have children is you kind of get into these ruts and cooking becomes a chore and I wanted to continue to fuel my passion for it and love for it.

So I stretched myself in the kitchen and cooked the sort of food that I don’t cook on a regular basis and really make that evening feel special.

The initial part of the series was that yes, we would do this once a week, which we definitely tried to do. We still try to do it. It does not always work but that’s okay. It worked really well when I was writing a book about it because the accountability of writing a book made it.

On Her Book, Date Night In:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her cookbook Date Night In.

As I saw the response from Dating My Husband, I realized okay, I’ve hit on something here that people can relate to which was exciting.

The emails that I got from people from reading that series and the comments I received from those posts were by far just some of my absolute favorite.

As much as I love food and cooking and recipes, again, it’s really what happens around that food and around the table that’s what really excites me. And so that was really wonderful. Plus it put to use all the relationship classes and the relationship books that I read growing up. It married these two subjects that I find very, very fascinating.

There is this woman, she’s a Seattle food writer, Rebekah Denn. She was the one that actually said, “I think there is a book here” and at that point, this was really, really early on in the series.

The desire to write a book was definitely, definitely there. I had had offers of writing a cupcake book or things like that and none of them really felt right. I explored this Dating My Husband option every now and again, but we hadn’t been doing it long enough for me to write about it from a really genuine and sincere place. It felt to me in midst of it a very, very slow process but eventually it came to be, and I spent a year working on the proposal and eight months writing the manuscript.

It really stays pretty consistent to the original posts. In fact, there are still rewritten versions of some of the original posts. But the book itself is 25 chapters and each chapter is a different meal.

It’s arranged seasonally and lots of them have cocktails.

They all have desserts since obviously that’s where it kind of all started from. And it’s fun food.

It’s not how we eat on an everyday, weekday basis, but there’s fried chicken and the food that excites me and kind of lures me into the date.

Each chapter starts with a really honest narrative about dating my husband and about just the intention behind it and just what it takes to make a long-term relationship really work. And obviously, there’s much joy and happiness in that but there is a lot of work, so I speak really honestly about our marriage.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I just started watching Master Chef Junior with my kids, which has been so fun. I usually don’t like those kind of reality cooking shows, but to experience it with them and for them to see these young kids have so much talent and so much ability in the kitchen, it’s been really inspiring.

As a result of that, actually, I’m teaching my eight-year-old how to make an apple pie today. So I’m pretty excited.

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

I think probably many of them you already do know about.

I read Sprouted Kitchen, Seven Spoons, and actually both of those they have books coming out this year.

And another good friend of mine has the blog, A Sweet Spoonful.

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

I think Instagram is my most happy place right now as far as social media stuff goes.

I follow a ton of food people for sure, but I actually love following people who aren’t in the food world. So different artists. Right now I’m following Lisa Condlin who’s an artist/illustrator. Helen Dealtry, who’s out of New York, painter.

It’s fun to step outside the food realm.

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

Salt!

I think it’s one of the most important ingredients, if not the most, and I think home cooks tend to be a little bit afraid of using a lot of salt.

It still sort of has a bad rap although that’s changing, which I’m very happy about.

And salt of different kinds and varieties, it’s exciting to play around with that and different flavored salts and things like that. Although I usually tend to stick with vanilla and smoked salt. The other ones don’t do it for me.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Salt.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Anything by Nigel Slater just really, really makes me happy. It makes my life better.

I go through so many different phases. I’m inspired by different books at so many different times.

Last night I cooked from this Frankies Spuntino cookbook that was really fun and it’s a beautiful, beautiful book.

I have so many friends that have written books that are really fun to read and inspiring.

I love particularly the book Eat. I wish I could write a cookbook like that. It’s basically just a list of ingredients and how to put them together, but it doesn’t really give super precise measurements. Just a nob of this and a bit of that and so I love that.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I wish my husband was here to answer that. He is the family DJ.

He has such a great taste of music and he puts on music tailored fit to our date nights and all that kind of stuff, but I don’t really know what we’re listening to a lot of the time.

Keep Posted on Ashley:

Ashley Rodriguez of Not Without Salt on The Dinner Special podcast talking about how to keep posted with what she is up to.

I really like Instagram. I think that’s my most regular. That and my Facebook page for the site. So on instagram I’m @Ashrod and Facebook is, you can find me at Not Without Salt.

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    Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: 2013 Saveur Awards Best Cooking Blog, A Sweet Spoonful, Ashley Rodriguez, Beverly Hills, Cookbook Author, Date Night In, Dating My Husband, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Frankies Spuntino, Helen Dealtry, MasterChef Junior, Nigel Slater, Not Without Salt, Pastries, Rebekah Denn, Seven Spoons, Spago, Sprouted Kitchen

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

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