Baked | The Dinner Special podcast

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

January 6, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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CakeSpy

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

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

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

(*All photos below are Jessie’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

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

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

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

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

On Her Journey and Relationship with Food:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Learning How to Bake:

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

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

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

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

On Her Art and Illustrations:

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

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

On Her Cookbooks:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Jessie:

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

068: The Food Gays: Sharing a Taste of Vancouver

August 17, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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The Food Gays

Adrian and Jeremy love food, photography, and social media. And on their website, The Food Gays, they share healthy and tasty recipes as well as food news in and around Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I am so happy to have Adrian Harris and Jeremy Inglett of The Food Gays on the show today.

(*All images below are Adrian and Jeremy’s.)

On How They Met:

Adrian: We met I think maybe close to six years ago.

Jeremy: Yup, we met through a friend.

Adrian: Through a mutual friend at a random party that neither of us were planning to go to.

Jeremy: We went anyways.

Adrian: And we didn’t really know anyone there other than the host. So yeah, we kind of just gravitated towards each other, and we’ve been hanging out and . . .

Jeremy: Doing our thing ever since.

On Collaborating on Their Blog:

Jeremy: So it was probably July of 2012 when we decided to pursue the food blog, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into.

Adrian: We were just wanting to find a hobby to do together, something fun. I was blogging previous to this, doing a fashion arts kind of blog, and I think Jeremy was tired of me being on the computer all the time. So we thought we’d put our heads together and was like, “What do we both like?” And we were already cooking a lot at home and doing that, so we just started it not really knowing what was going to become of it, just something fun to do as a hobby.

Jeremy: Baking is kind of a specialty. So it just goes back to my roots. My grandma used to be a baker, and there are probably three or four other bakers in my family too. So it’s just in the family, and I feel comfortable with it.

Adrian: I guess I’d always been cooking too. Even as a little kid, I was in the kitchen making weird snacks and that kind of thing, left to my own devices probably a little too much. But I never ever thought that we’d have a blog, that it just started really organically. Neither of us had any sort of preconceived notions of . . .

Jeremy: What it’s gonna look like…

Adrian: . . . what it’s was gonna be…

Jeremy: what we’re gonna post in a month.

Adrian: Yeah, it’s really evolved a lot from three years ago, for sure.

On Their Separate Roles for the Website:

Adrian: We don’t really have anything set in stone, but we’ve, I guess, gravitated towards what . . .

Jeremy: we enjoy most.

Adrian: Or what each other’s strong suits are. So Jeremy’s definitely a lot more about the analytics and the planning and . . .

Jeremy: organizing and making sure things are up.

Adrian: And I’m probably more gravitated towards the styling and photography.

Jeremy: And then we work together on recipes and in the kitchen, so it’s intertwining. It’s a good nest.

Adrian: We pick up where the other leaves off. Because it’s hard, right? Being a blogger . . . We don’t need to tell you. It’s like there’s so much involved, and you don’t necessarily think of all of that when you’re first starting.

We definitely worked our way through it.

Jeremy: There’s no way I was thinking about analytics week 2 of our Food Gays. It was just like, “What am I gonna tweet about?” and “Who should I follow?” and stuff like that.

On Deciding What to Make for the Blog:

Jeremy: Depends on the season.

Adrian: Yeah, nowadays probably, it’s really seasonal for us. We cook a lot with fresh plant-based ingredients, I guess you could say, so what’s fresh at the market. I really love farmer’s markets and going at least once or twice a month and getting inspired…

Jeremy: Sometimes once a week.

Adrian: Well, depending on what we can afford. But I don’t know. I guess before we were very much just cooking . . .

Jeremy: to experience cooking and to get to do that.

Adrian: I guess now we are probably trying to be more creative and inventive with flavor combinations and what can we come up with and that kind of stuff.

On Their Blogging Process:

Jeremy: First, create, of course. I think I’ve tested out a few things over the couple of years, but I think right now we’re doing the Instagram test first.

Adrian: Yeah, a lot of times, we’ll post stuff to Instagram now because that’s where we really put our primary focus in the past few months. So we’ll put something up and if it gets a lot of interest, then we’re like, “Okay, that’s definitely worthy of a blog post,” and we’ll then go to the next steps.

But generally, if we do post our recipe to the blog, we’ll try to have tested it a few times at least and make sure it’s a solid recipe because that’s important too, that you’re putting something out there that’s going to work for people. But it’s different every time, I guess.

If we were doing it, say, for a client or something, if it was a sponsored post, then there would be a lot more involved time-wise.

Adrian: I really focused a lot in the last few months practicing, and Jeremy definitely is very important part of the process though. He’ll tell me if something’s not working or if I can’t figure something out.

Jeremy: “Do this there. Try this.”

Adrian: Or use his hands a lot in the shots.

On Misconceptions about Healthy Food and Healthy Eating:

Jeremy: That it’s all green and boring.

Adrian: We really try and show people that it can be fun and that you can really make fun interesting things and use new ingredients. I think it can feel really limiting for people.

We’re not vegetarian, and that’s why I think we can have so much fun with it. But for those who are and who have food allergies and limitations that way, it can feel really like the same thing. I think you can get into a bit of a food rut. So, yeah, I think that’s our biggest thing, just that it can be different and you can have fun with it and have great, amazing flavors.

Adrian: And get to know your farmers too because that starts to inspire you too.

Jeremy: Yeah, he’s glad to know this really, really wonderful woman for his edible flowers.

Adrian: I’m talking about her flowers all the time.

Jeremy: Well, eating-out option is kind of hard in itself.

Adrian: Yeah, I think eating out can be a challenge.

Jeremy: You’re not gonna go out and buy a nine-dollar salad when you can easily make a three-dollar salad at home and that can fill you up.

Adrian: I think pick your splurge moments, I guess. We definitely eat junk food, and not everything that we eat is on Instagram. And then we have just regular routine meals and stuff.

Jeremy: But just incorporating it into your routine is just a good way to do it.

Adrian: Just start slow. Just start somewhere.

And cut down on your meat. That’s something that we’ve done a lot. We love protein still, and we’ll eat it maybe a few times a month now, as opposed to it being like it felt like it needed to be every single night of the week. That, with the side of your vegetables.

If you shift your focus . . . And I think cookbooks. Cookbooks and blogs, that’s a really great way because a lot of the work is done for you. You don’t need to sit and worry about trying to come up with something super creative. Just go online and find it. Someone’s done it. Try it out.

On the Food Culture in Vancouver, BC Canada:

Adrian: You can probably find a little bit of everything here. For someone who’s really well traveled, maybe Vancouver still has a lot of growing to do, but in a lot of ways, if you’ve been here or if you’re from here, you know it’s a bit of a small town. So in that respect, we do have a lot of options, and we’re spoiled.

Jeremy: There’s still a lot of restaurants that we have never been to.

Adrian: People ask us where we should go eat, and we’re like, we haven’t dined out probably, nearly . . .

Jeremy: as much as we used to.

Adrian: Yeah, nearly as much as we used. Can’t keep up. It’s like a full-time job.

On Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Vancouver:

Adrian: I think breakfast, we’d probably say Café Medina.

It’s a good solid spot. Go early so you’re not waiting in line for too long. But they do a really good breakfast.

Jeremy: Lunch, there’s this really cute spot, Japanese spot, Basho Café. They do these lunch sets, so you get three little pastries, or two pastries.

Adrian: Yup, and some soup.

Jeremy: A lunch bowl and a soup and a drink.

Adrian: It’s made by this little Japanese family. It’s super authentic, really, really good, just solid home-cooking lunch. And dinner, we’d probably say Kessel&March. That’s one of our favorite restaurants.

And we live in the distillery and brewing district of Vancouver, so there’s literally within a 15-minute walking span four or five different places that you can go drinking.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jeremy: MasterChef Canada.

Adrian: Love Nigella Lawson, which I mentioned, Nigel Slater.

Adrian: Oh, and we just started watching Food Network Star, which is just ridiculous, but… Cutthroat Kitchen.

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

Adrian: I’m sure you probably know about a lot of them, but stuff we love, Feed Feed, that’s a really great place for just dinner inspiration. Artful Desperado, yeah, we love him. And then we’ll give Baked a shout because we just started contributing for Baked, the blog, so that’s a really good baking website.

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

Jeremy: I really love Dennis The Prescott stuff.

Adrian: Yup, Dennis Prescott, for sure. Again, Feed Feed for sure, Artful Desperado, Molly Yeh, I am a Food Blog, Vanilla and Bean…

Jeremy: Just to name a few.

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

Jeremy: Ironically, the appliance we didn’t use for maybe two years, which we’re now using almost every other day.

Adrian: The pressure cooker.

Jeremy: Yeah, steam pressure cooker.

Adrian: And we just got it and we never used it, and then it sat there for literally two years. We finally figured out how to use this scary-looking object, and yeah, it’s really great.

Adrian: We make dog food for our dog, so we have to steam vegetables.

Jeremy: It just keeps all the nutrients in the vegetables that we’re cooking for him and because we only feed him real food.

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

Adrian: Mine would be cilantro.

Jeremy: Blue cheese for me. It was too pungent to eat before, but now I can just eat it, no problem.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Adrian: Definitely Ottolenghi’s cookbooks Plenty, Plenty More. Those are two really great ones. Sunday Suppers, love that book.

Jeremy: My school pastry book, that’s good resource.

Adrian: Yeah, Jeremy has a lot of books from school, and then we’ve got this Seven Spoons cookbook. We haven’t cooked from that yet, but it’s a really beautiful one. We actually laid off the cookbooks in the last few months because I kind of went a little crazy.

It’s like an addiction in itself.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Adrian: Right now we really love Galantis’ “Peanut Butter Jelly.”

It’s such a good song. They just released the album. It’s very good.

On Keeping Posted with The Food Gays:

Adrian: Definitely, Instagram’s our number one platform.

But Twitter, Facebook, we’re pretty much on all three, and we’re trying to post more recipes to the blog. So definitely, check us out there more, where you can expect more recipes this summer.

061: Kris Osborne: How Pleasure is an Important Part of Wellness

July 22, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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80twenty

Kris is a holistic chef, recipe developer, and food photographer and stylist. On her blog 80twenty, she shares vibrant and delicious food and drinks that aim to healthfully nourish us 80% of the time and satisfy our cravings and wants 20% of the time.

I am so happy to have Kris Osborne of 80twenty joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Kris’s.)

On Growing Up in a Family-Owned Restaurant:

My family owned actually a restaurant and a motel, so we lived in an apartment above the motel and the restaurant was in a building adjacent. And so my whole life, up until I was 13 years old, I spent in and out of the kitchen or in and out of the rooms, and my life was always filled with my family feeding people. It was a really common theme. When we weren’t feeding people in the restaurant, I remember my mom and my aunt always having dinner parties and having friends over.

I come from a family of people who shows their love through feeding people and so I was always surrounded by food.

My mom describes me as being a bit mischievous, I guess. She would say that I would, even as a three year-old, I would be wandering around the restaurant and I would go up to customers’ plates and steal french fries from their plates, for example.

I think probably because I was three, people thought it was adorable. But also because I grew up in a small town, people also got to know my family and got to know me and my siblings. I don’t remember necessarily helping out in the back or anything like that, but I was always in the restaurant scene.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved food. I’ve always loved cooking and learning about food and sharing food with people.

I’ve always had an interest in healthy food. So that’s always formed the backdrop of how I wanted to live my life. And I never intended necessarily to work in the restaurant industry, because when I was a teenager, I served. And then eventually when I was old enough, I became a bartender. I had quite an entrenched life in that world and so I wanted to have a professional career.

All of my off time was spent reading cookbooks and visiting whole food producers or local farms or things like that. And so it’s always been integrated into part of my life.

I think probably a lot of bloggers that you interview, I imagine, would have a similar perspective on this. And that is that food is such an integral part of our life. We use it for, obviously, sustenance and nourishment, but we also use it to celebrate and we use it as a reward and we use it to show love. There are so many reasons that we use food in our lives. And I feel so fortunate that I get to somehow do this in a way that also involves my career and my passions. Probably other bloggers feel the same way, where we are hoping to connect people with that same meaning that we get from it.

On Starting Her Blog:

It’s not really that interesting of a story but I wanted to start a food blog for a long time, mostly just as a way to share what I was already doing. My partner kept encouraging me to start it and I kept thinking, “Well, I don’t know how to do anything. I don’t know how to take photos and I don’t know what to write and I don’t know what to post.” So literally I had a URL for a year or two before I even posted anything.

The blog name was something different and I was just talking one day and I said, “You know what? I think what I want to be able to convey to people is this idea of, I want people to eat healthy food, and I want to inspire people to eat healthy food, because I think we get a lot of the other stuff all the time anyway, so why not do what I’m passionate about?” But also if I want to eat pizza on a Friday night, then I want to be able to talk about that and share that with people because that’s also part of life and part of wellness.

And so, I was speaking about that and I said, “It’s kind of like 80/20,” and then the name came out and I was like, “That’s it, that’s the name. It’s 80twenty.” Then it evolved and when I was in naturopathic school I often thought that it was going to be a way for me to get potential patients interested in what I was doing, but then life changes and shifts and here I am today doing something totally different.

On a Kitchen Experiment that Didn’t Turn Out As Planned:

This happens regularly. I don’t know if it’s going to be interesting or not. I can just tell you the thing that comes to mind. So this was somebody else’s recipe actually that I had to modify, and it had already been modified by somebody, which I didn’t realize. I was in the third iteration of it. It didn’t make sense, there’s a lot of mistakes in it, and the ingredients were off and the proportions were off. But of course I didn’t know this until I started working with it, and I made it and it didn’t taste very good. And so then I had to go back to the person and say, “I think there’s a problem with this.” But in the end ultimately I actually had to take that recipe, the original recipe, and make it workable.

One of the components that’s involved in the recipe is, you simmer tofu in a marinade essentially, and I eat tofu pretty regularly, but I’ve never essentially boiled it or simmered it. It sounds not very appealing when you think about it.

You might have tofu in soup and then it takes on the flavor of the broth, but this was actually going into a stir fry so it was going to be simmered in the marinade and then go into the stir fry. I went through this recipe five times. I kept trying to make it work, and I eventually got to a point where I was like, “Yeah, I think this is good now. I think it’s okay. It’s not my favorite.”

If it was up to me I would have pan fried it or done something else, but this is how it’s supposed to be. So I did it and I had a ton of leftovers and I brought them to my sister’s place. My sister and her boyfriend, their reaction was, this is gross. And they actually refused to eat it. They waited for me to bring them dinner, and then when I brought it they didn’t eat it. I feel like that’s a big failure. That has never happened. Of all the years that I’ve been doing this, my family is usually pretty good about eating my creations but they ended up throwing it out.

On Her Studies in Naturopathic Medicine:

I have a passion for health and really all things health-related or wellness-related and I just decided to go to naturopathic school as a way to combine my love of food and nutrition. It seems kind of like an unlikely path and I think if you were to look at it objectively, people might think that I should have gone to nutrition school or to become a dietician, but I really believe in the philosophy that naturopathy offers, which is really a holistic approach to life in general, a holistic approach to eating. That really spoke to me.

I never intended, necessarily, to practice as a doctor. I just wanted to have the knowledge to be able to, essentially, inspire people to eat more vibrantly, I guess.

I learned things all the time that surprised me because you’re studying medicine, so you are constantly learning things that are surprising and interesting. But when it comes to nutrition, I would say that one of the nuggets that has stayed with me the most is . . . we all know that we should eat more vegetables. I don’t think that that’s a piece of information that most people would disagree with or that most people don’t know already. Even if they know little about health, they’ve probably heard that or they’ve probably considered that they should eat more vegetables. But one thing that really stood out to me and stuck with me is how beneficial raw olive oil is, and so when I say raw I just mean uncooked. It’s prescribed naturopathically for a lot of disease prevention, but also actually in disease treatment because fat plays such a critical role in so many of our body processes and, in particular, olive oil just does a lot of good things.

On Misconceptions of Eating Healthy:

I think maybe the biggest one that I see all the time still, that permeates mainstream culture, is that fat is bad for us.

There’s still an idea that we should be eating a low fat diet. And I think the research, to my knowledge, is pretty clear that that’s not really the way to go. Researchers present it in a different way and so we saw, when you look in the past, that if people were eating low fat diets they were typically replacing the fat with things like sugar and more carbs that were not necessarily satiating them and were also just giving them more calories, and not necessarily good things for their body.

It seems so simple but I just really wish people wouldn’t fear fat because fat is so good for you and it’s so critical for bodily processes but also just for feeling satisfied. When we eat a meal, when there’s fat involved or you have a snack and there’s fat involved, it’s so much easier to feel satiated.

I would also say that one thing that I come across pretty regularly is people saying that healthy food doesn’t taste very good. My challenge is always, “Okay, tell me what you want me to make. And I’ll make it taste good because I wholeheartedly disagree.”

In some ways this conversation is a bit scientific, and I want to bring a personal component to it. My opinion is that pleasure is a really important component of wellness and we never think about pleasure as a form of wellness. We talk about sleep and exercise and stress and diet. Those are very simplified but, of course, those are the main things we talk about and we never talk about pleasure. Pleasure brings us so much joy and releases endorphins and allows us to relax. There are so many things that pleasure brings us in terms of wellness.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I really like watching cooking videos online. I love watching Green Kitchen Stories’ videos and some bloggers who do videos. So I will watch those kinds of things.

There’s a chef here in Canada. Her name is Anna Olson. She’s a pastry chef. So I used to like to watch her show. I can’t even remember what it’s called. I think because she does things that I’m so unfamiliar with. Baking is something that I’m learning now, and I absolutely love baking, but it’s not something that comes naturally to me, and so I loved watching her show back in the day.

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

Okay, so I’m going to try to pick blogs that you probably haven’t heard about. Well actually, that’s not even true. You’ve probably heard about them.

Another colleague of mine, her name is Ashley Colburn, and she writes a blog called Butterfly Food and she has some of the most stunning photography and she is just a really lovely person. But her photography is, I think, some of the best out there. And she recently had a photo of hers used as a cover photo for a National Geographic Book.

Another blog that I just discovered within the last few months, and she’s now been nominated for a Saveur Award, so I’m sure everybody knows, but Faring Well. Again, really beautiful photography and also a nice peek into her life. She lives in Colorado and I feel like it’s always really nice to be able to see an element of people’s lives beyond that. There are also some nature photos incorporated into her blog and into her Instagram feed, and I really love that.

Kelly from The Gouda Life is one of the bloggers that I first discovered when I was starting to blog myself. And I remember linking to her blog something that I really liked and she wrote me back this really lovely email thanking me for linking to her.

I remember at the time thinking it was so nice of her because really there was nobody reading my blog and she had already had such a big following, I’m sure. But her photography really inspired me when I was starting out, and also she’s always been really supportive of me as a blogger and professionally, and now we work together on this blog called Baked. I think she’s really cool and unique. She’s got a really unique style of moody photography that you should check out.

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

I don’t really follow people on Pinterest or Facebook really that much but Instagram, I would say . . . I’m sure you’ve heard of this Instagram account called Momma’s Gone City, and it’s typically photos of her children with their cats and typically one child with a dog. But I’m a huge animal lover and so I love seeing photos of the animals and particularly animals and kids. Every time I look through her feed I’m always just so happy.

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

Perhaps not unusual, but treasured for sure is my cast iron skillet. I use it for almost everything. It’s amazing for pancakes. It’s amazing for pan frying anything, for making tortillas. I make fried eggs on it. And I even . . .it’s not maybe the best use of this, but because it’s always out, I always quickly saute spinach or kale or something like that for an easy meal all in the same pan. And that pan was probably $20 and it’s going to last me for my whole life.

I always recommend that if people are wondering if they should get . . . what five or ten things in their kitchen, I think a cast iron skillet is a really awesome thing to have.

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

Brussel sprouts and actually asparagus, anything that has a pungent, earthy flavor.

I was not a vegetable fan, ironically. When I was a kid I used to eat them, and my mom would probably put butter and sugar on things or butter and salt, things to make me like or make me eat them more often. But as I’ve gotten older my palate has fully, I think, been trained because I actually recall when I was in university in my undergrad, I would make myself eat vegetables. I was old enough to know that I should eat them. And so then I started making myself just eat more of them and eventually I started liking them.

I figured out that if I ate something three times I tended to like it by the third or fourth time. And now I just love those things. Asparagus, as an example. I just made an asparagus kimchi that I’m going to be posting for a column that I write. And years ago I never would have eaten kimchi or asparagus, so I’m really into things, I guess, with a lot more pungent flavors now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Mark Bittman’s, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, is a really good dictionary to have in your kitchen. If you’re in a pinch and you have a vegetable or you have a grain or anything in your life, you can literally open up the book and go to the word millet or to the word broccoli and it will give you several recipes. It also has this great resource of tying things together so there will be a number of sauces and then there will be a table later in the book that says, 10 things you can add to tacos or 15 ways to make a sandwich better and it will incorporate other recipes from the book. Also, it’s showing you how to make simple things, but then it’s also showing you how to incorporate them into different dishes. It’s also a great resource for just basics.

I also love Donna Hay, any Donna Hay books because they’re beautiful to look at, and also her recipes are really simple. Usually using anywhere from between five and ten ingredients, depending, and I would say 10 is rare. So they’re very simple, they’re very straightforward, and they’re really beautiful and really tasty. So those would be my go-tos.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t have a particular song or album, but I am notorious for going on to Spotify now that Spotify’s a thing, and searching under the mood section, and finding anything that’s folky or acoustic. My vision of cooking is in this relaxed, airy kitchen, windows open and a breeze coming through, and you’re sipping a glass of wine and you’re laughing with a friend and you’re just casually, slowly easing into whatever meal you’re going to have.

It’s intentional and joyful and thoughtful and all of that stuff and so I feel like that music often brings that vibe to what I’m doing. So it’s not a direct recommendation but certainly Spotify has a lot to offer in that realm.

On Keeping Posted with Kris:

You can keep posted with me on Instagram or you can follow me on Facebook. But Instagram, I think, is probably the most up-to-date current.