Author | The Dinner Special podcast

070: Cathy Barrow: Charcuterie and Pantry Building

August 24, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen

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

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

(*All images below are Cathy’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

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

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

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

On Learning How to Cook:

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

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

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

On Charcutepalooza:

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

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

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

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

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

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

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

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

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

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

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

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

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

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

July 6, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Autumn Makes and Does

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

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

(*All images below are Autumn’s.)

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

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

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

On Her Blog:

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

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

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

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

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

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

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

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

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

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

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

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

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

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

On Her Podcast:

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

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

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

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

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

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

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

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

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.

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

003: Jordan Reid: The Best Cooking Tool That’s Ever Happened To Parents

February 20, 2015 by Gabriel

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Ramshackle Glam

I am so happy to have Jordan Reid of Ramshackle Glam here on the show today.

On Ramshackle Glam, Jordan shares her very personal journey as a mother while also covering fashion, beauty, and entertaining tips. Her website has been featured in Time Magazine, Cosmopolitan, and The New York Observer.

Jordan has also authored a book called Ramshackle Glam: The New Mom’s Haphazard Guide To (Almost) Having It All.

On Studying Neuroscience at Harvard to Starting Her Blog:

I grew up in New York City and I was an actress when I was a teenager. I went to Harvard and I studied neuroscience thinking, “Oh, it’d be so wonderful to be a doctor, and make my parents extremely proud.” And then I was like, “I think I’m going to go be an actress again.”

They were as happy about that as you can imagine.

But then after a few years in Los Angeles, I realized what I really loved to do was sort of a mish-mosh of various things. I love entertaining and cooking and writing and photography and fashion and beauty.

I loved all of these things and I couldn’t figure out the best way to get to do all of them all at once. People told me it was impossible and I just never felt that it was.

Then sort of on a whim I started writing a blog. I had never read a blog in my life, ever. I had to ask a friend how to hyperlink. I didn’t know how to set one up.

It just took off very quickly and it’s been really exciting to get to explore all these different interests through this one channel.

On Being a Writer:

I said I wanted to be a writer when I was three years old. That was always what I wanted to do and I always wrote. I just never had a channel to express it because you write for yourself. But now a days, with blogs, you can get your words out.

It’s just such an unbelievable gift.

And with regards to writing about food, my aunt is actually a cookbook editor. She got me interested in reading Jamie Oliver cookbooks way back in the day and I would read them like novels, sitting down and cover to cover reading them.

That’s what really got me interested – that food isn’t just… it’s not just what you make. It’s the story behind it that’s always the best part.

On Cooking for Her Aunt Who’s a Cookbook Editor:

I am so scared to cook for my aunt because she’s a professional honestly.

And my thing is all about… I just don’t have the patience for fussing around in the kitchen. I wish I did and I wish I had all day to sit there and hand chop garlic. I just don’t care.

I want it to taste good, but mostly I want it to taste good now. So my aunt would be horrified to know that when I made that salad, I totally didn’t have a fresh lemon so I just grabbed the lemon squeeze-y bottle.

I actually had her edit my book, the section on recipes, and I was super nervous but she was very kind. She was gentle with me.

But no, I haven’t cooked for her but I’m going to make her Matzo ball soup the next time I see her.

On Cooking as a Parent:

I grew up in New York City and I lived in New York City for the first couple of years of my son’s life. Now we’re in Westchester.

We certainly could order in every night. It’s not like we have a dearth of restaurants around here. But for me, cooking is a joy and a passion that I have adapted to make space for in my life.

I don’t have the time or the ability or energy frankly to do it the way I guess I would like to. I’ve just had to find short cuts to make sure that I can cook in a way that makes sense.

The slow cooker is the best thing that has ever happened to parents.

Because my son, he’s three, and he loves to cook with me. I think it’s so important when you have kids, especially if you are a cook, to get them in the kitchen immediately. They’re going to want to be in there if they see you in there.

They’re going to want to touch, and they’re going to want to know about it. If you don’t teach them those skills really, really early, it’s a dangerous place. But, if you teach them, don’t touch this, do touch this, this is what you can do, the kitchen becomes a really special place for families to bond.

That said, when my son was young I was like, “Get out of the kitchen! Get out of the kitchen!” He was just a whirlwind when he was just learning to walk. That’s when the slow cooker came in handy because you are just like, throw it in and you leave. Your kitchen cooks dinner for you and you don’t even have to think about it. I love it so much.

On Cooking Fish:

My husband, he’s like, “I hate fish.” And I was like, “I will change you to the dark side.” Because fish is so healthy and it’s actually so easy.

I was totally intimidated for a long time until I discovered this method. And it is actually the only way I cook fish on a day to day basis because it’s that easy.

You just take a piece of aluminum foil, throw in your fish, throw in some white wine and butter and a little lemon juice, and crinkle it up on top. 20 minutes, done.

And it looks so impressive.

If you have guests over you’re like, “Here is my foil packet of fish.” And they’re like, “Wow, you spent all day slaving.”

It’s like 20 minutes.

On Her Book, Ramshackle Glam: The New Mom’s Guide To (Almost) Having It All

It’s basically a style memoir so it’s really just stories of my experience of my first couple of years with my son. It’s sort of through the lens of style and by style I mean fashion, beauty, entertaining, food, home decor, all of that.

It’s about how I was always someone who really cared about things like making a really nice dinner, entertaining friends or wearing an outfit that made me feel lovely or whatever. And then once I had a child, I started thinking, do these things have any place in my life anymore?

I found that they absolutely do.

You just have to be more flexible. Just a little bit more flexible about how you eat that dinner. You might eat it balanced on your knee while balancing food over the head of your child but you can still eat it.

I just eat like a wolf. And I have to tell my husband, “I am so sorry. I am just such a disgusting dinner companion.” Because I am so used to shoveling food in as quickly as I can to get back to whatever crisis has developed.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Anthony Bourdain… anything… anything, the grosser the better.

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

My friend, Alejandra Ramos writes a website called Always Order Dessert that I really love and it’s my current go-to for baking because I can’t bake.

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

I mostly follow my friends actually because I feel like Twitter can sound like a huge ballroom full of people just sort of screaming and no one listening.

I like to follow people who I know personally.

On Pinterest I follow Cup of Jo. I really like her pins. I think it’s really beautiful.

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

I would say a slow cooker.

Everyone needs to have a slow cooker. It’s an amazing tool that once you get the hang of it, it will just revolutionize your life.

I think people used to view it as the lazy person’s alternative to making a real meal.

If you look at more old school recipes they were very creamy. It was like throwing a cup of mushroom soup, and it was just heavy rich meals, were what you used to make with it.

Now people have rediscovered it. And so now there are so many lighter alternatives to those more traditional meals that you made. But I think it’s having a comeback.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Garlic powder. Isn’t that classy? I can’t live without it. I love it.

Because you know what? The thing about garlic is it’s such a pain to mince. I’m either going to chop off my fingers or your fingers smell like garlic for two weeks. And they do sell those garlic mincers but those are annoying to clean out.

You know what makes your life easier? Garlic powder.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have the full collection of Jamie Oliver cookbooks but his first one is my favorite. I think he sounds just so fresh. He’s just got such a fun, original, sweet voice.

I also really like Mario Batali’s books. I find them difficult but that’s okay once in a while. They’re more fun for me to read and look at than to actually do.

Honestly, the recipes I actually make, I get off the Internet.

The cookbooks are for reading and for enjoying and for inspiration more than anything else.

Keep Posted on Jordan:

Instagram. I am @ramshackleglam. Ramshackleglam.com.

On Starting Her Blog:

On Learning How to Cook:

On Charcutepalooza:

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

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

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

On Her Blog:

On Her Interest in “Black Sheep” Ingredients:

On Gluten-Free Foods and Misconceptions:

On Her Podcast:

On Her First Cookbook, “Beyond Canning”:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted on Autumn:

On 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 Studying Neuroscience at Harvard to Starting Her Blog:

On Being a Writer:

On Cooking for Her Aunt Who’s a Cookbook Editor:

On Cooking as a Parent:

On Cooking Fish:

On Her Book, Ramshackle Glam: The New Mom’s Guide To (Almost) Having It All

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Jordan:

Have Jordan’s Special Dinner Dish Recipe Sent To You Now: