i am a food blog | The Dinner Special podcast

108: Emily Stoffel: How Cooking Changes with Parenthood

February 3, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Pig & Quill

Emily started The Pig & Quill in 2012, and most recipes on her blog are heavy on the plants and low on refined sugars and starches though she is a firm believer in moderation. She is also a new mom.

I am so happy to have Emily Stoffel of The Pig & Quill joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Emily’s.)

On Cooking as a New Parent:

It’s definitely driven a little bit more by convenience. I used to just cook whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and now, a lot of what we are doing in the house is meals, particularly dinners, where you can prep a lot of things in advance a little bit here and there throughout the day. I can prep a little bit during the first nap. I can prep a little bit during the second nap. And then by the time she goes to sleep, and we’re having dinner at night, there’s very little that’s required to bring it together, and we can still eat at a reasonable hour.

A lot of that is relying on things like a slow cooker, or, I use my rice cooker for everything. I’m cooking a lot of things in the broiler. I didn’t used to do that a bunch, but it’s such a fast way to cook protein. So that’s changed my game a little.

And my husband’s a great sport about the fact that we eat the same three or four meals in rotation, which we did not used to do. It used to be something different every night. We just have go-to’s that we know we can pull off in a moment’s notice. So there’s a lot of that, but still trying to keep things interesting.

I wasn’t such a really big proponent of the slow cooker actually before I had Lana. I know a lot of people are super hardcore slow cooker fans. I guess I just didn’t really give it a chance. I thought, “Oh, it’s for everything. Let it go…Whatever. I can do the same thing on my stove,” but it is really nice to be able to start something in the morning and then be able to leave the house and run errands or whatever and come back. I use my rice cooker for oatmeal which makes breakfast a no-brainer. So one of us can get up in the morning and start the oatmeal.

When we first had Lana, when she was a newborn, one of us would sneak out of bed before she would wake up in the morning, because she sleeps in our room, and put out all the oatmeal toppings and the ingredients and everything and set it. And then by the time she was up, it was ready to go. So we wouldn’t have to worry about making breakfast for ourselves. So yeah, I use that. I even hard-boil eggs in my rice cooker.

It’s pretty incredible. If you have a steamer insert, you just throw the eggs on top while you cook the rice. The time the rice is done, your eggs are done, and it’s perfect. If you want soft-boiled eggs, you can do it when you cook your white rice. And if you want hardboiled eggs, you do it when you cook your brown rice.

On Putting a Meal Together Quickly:

I mentioned that I like to use the broiler a lot. So I marinate a protein throughout the day. And then I can just pop it in the broiler when Lana’s napping or goes down for the night. And it usually just takes ten minutes to cook a protein that way.

I have a couple recipes on my blog. One is the shoyu chicken, and that’s super easy. It’s just chicken thighs that you marinate, and broil, and serve it with white rice or whatever side you want. And then the other one is a pumpkin curry which takes a little bit longer to do, but again, it’s something where I can do different elements throughout the day. And then it’s topped with a crispy, spice crusted tofu, and that is done completely under the broiler.

And even if you just look at the recipe for the tofu element, we put that tofu on salads. Sometimes, I just have it in a bowl with roasted veggies. So even if you’re not into curry or you’re not doing the pumpkin curry part of it, the tofu is super clutch. We do that all the time.

On How to Make Cooking Fun:

This is a cop out, but when we had Lana at first, we did a lot of the grocery meal delivery kits that are popular right now. I know that there’s Sun Basket, and there’s HelloFresh. And I know a lot of different ones that folks do. Some are organic, some are not. And that’s something that I probably never would have considered doing before I had kids. But it’s fun because they have the instructions written out so clearly step-by-step with those meal kits that it’s super easy for two people to tag team a recipe. You can just say, “Here’s where I started,” or “I left off at this step.”

Unlike some recipes, traditional recipes, including the ones that I write, a lot of times, the items that you have to prepare are called out in a different color or something like that, so you can see exactly what you need to do to this fruit or to this vegetable before it goes to the cooking stage. And you can break up the responsibilities that way.

We found those actually really helpful because it was a fast way to still be cooking together in the kitchen, something that was homemade. But A, you don’t have to go to the grocery store and B, just the way that the recipe is written, it’s really easy to do it on your own. But if you’re moving around the kitchen with multiple folks or something like that, it’s easy to make that come together.

The other thing that’s fun is we don’t go out a lot for dinner anymore. So when we’re feeling not super inspired, we’ll invite people over to just have hors d’ oeuvres here or something like that. And that’s a good way to get engaged about cooking again. You don’t feel like, “Oh my gosh, I’m just making dinner for myself to get by.” You feel like you’re entertaining which is a refreshing way to feel when you don’t get a lot of fun evening time. So that’s something that’s invigorated my time in the kitchen.

On Her Food Heroes:

Well, aside from my family, so my mom first and foremost, I learned so much from her just growing up in the kitchen, and her dad like I mentioned, just having exposure to that at a young age, and my dad as well.

In terms of people that inspired me, I guess if you think about the Nigella’s or Ina Garten, those types of folks even before Food Network was anywhere near where it is today, those were the types of folks where I just really admire. They’re cooking super un-fussy food that’s just delicious. It just tastes good. They don’t necessarily have a hook or a theme. They just make food that’s accessible and super tasty. And they deliver it in such a seductive and enticing way without really trying.

And I know that now, they’re these big brands, and they’ve got marketing up the wahoo. But back in the day of Yan Can Cook or The Frugal Gourmet, I used to watch those folks on PBS, and those were just people that cooked food that they knew they would enjoy. There wasn’t really any big spin to it.

Those are the types of folks that I think I learned the most from, just seeing their passion and seeing how that can translate into something that’s educational and entertaining. I also had a really unabashed girl crush on Giada when I was in college to the point where I would have dreams that we were best friends hanging out in Santa Monica. It was super creepy.

On Her Blog:

I had sat down with one of my good friends, and we were doing this life mapping of everything that we wanted to do in the next several years. And I told her that starting a blog was something that I really wanted to do, and I started The Pig & Quill without doing a lot of research, without coming up with a big plan for a brand or an image or even an idea of how the site would look.

It was just like I told her, “This is what I want to do.” We brainstormed a bunch of names. I bought the domain name, and then I sat on it for six months. And then it was bugging me that I had spent $13 to register this domain name and hadn’t done anything with it.

So Labor Day weekend of 2012, we actually stayed home that weekend, it was a stay-cation, and I was like, “Okay, this is the weekend that I’m going to start the blog,” and I launched it without a lot of research or anything. The images were awful, but it was exactly what I wanted it to be. It was just me talking about the food that I liked but also talking about how food fit into my life and adding a personal storyline to each post.

So yeah, it wasn’t really like, “Oh my gosh. I have this vision that I’m going to be a food blogger.” It was just something that I did spontaneously, and I’ve had to learn the ropes as I’ve gone along. Fortunately, there’s a ton of inspiration out there these days to help me grow, but it’s a crazy space, food blogging, because there’s so much opportunity and so many different angles and approaches that you can take with your blog. And I went into it with, like I said, with a really unclear vision. I was just like, “I’m going to get this up today.” And hindsight being 20-20, I would have mapped out my look and my voice a little more before I started, but finding my way has been part of the fun.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch Master Chef Jr. When I’m over at my in-laws or my mom’s house, I watch Chopped. That’s always fun. Sometimes, we pause it and say what we would do with the ingredients if we were given the basket. I don’t watch a lot food TV anymore these days.

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

Oh, wow. There are a lot. I really love i am a food blog. Everything that Stephanie makes I want to eat it immediately. Two Red Bowls, the photography is ridiculous, Fix Feast Flair, Kale & Caramel. I’ve only been reading Kale & Caramel in the last, probably, six months, but her voice is…I feel like I just want to be friends with Lily in real life. She cracks me up, and she does a really good job of doing what I really like doing in food blogs, which is pairing a little bit more of personal anecdotes with recipes. She does a lot of that.

Bev Cooks was one of the first food blogs that I read back in the day. She is hilarious. And she has two kiddos. They’re twins, and they’re the most adorable people ever. Her Instagram is just ridiculous. Wit & Vinegar, Billy’s really funny. I think his aesthetic is really different from anything that anyone else is doing.

I really like reading Dessert for Two because Christina’s got a little one that is Lana’s age. So it’s been fun reading her blog and seeing her daughter at the same stage that Lana’s at. We were pregnant at the same time. We’re not BFF’s or anything, but I stalked her throughout our pregnancies, and that was really fun.

Chocolate and Marrow, I really like Chocolate and Marrow. Brooke just does crazy, creative stuff, really, really delicious things, really indulgent and just beautiful stuff.

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

Snapchat, I just haven’t really gotten into yet. I would say of those things, I probably use Instagram the most. Violet Tinder, she’s really great. She has just a super rainbow-hued, really fun Instagram. And she does a lot of candy-colored things and water colors, and everything is just super poppy, neon bright. Miss New Foodie is really funny. She has some pretty funny captions for all of her indulgent eats.

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

The thing that’s most treasured in my current kitchen is not even mine because I rent, but it’s our stove. We have a vintage Wedgewood stove in this kitchen that’s incredible. It’s really petite. The oven portion is really petite, but it heats up super-fast and evenly. It’s got a legit broiler which I mentioned earlier that really gets the job done.

In terms of an appliance, I have a garlic press, the same garlic press that I mentioned earlier where I think it’s called the Garlic Twist. It’s like this big piece of acrylic. And rather than crushing garlic through it, you put the garlic in, and you twist it. And because it’s one piece of plastic, it rinses out super easily. I use it probably every day. It’s not like the garlic presses where there’s all the little holes that you have to get all the stuff out of.

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

I don’t really love mustard or I didn’t really love mustard, particularly yellow mustard, but I didn’t really use any mustard. And now, maybe because my husband is a huge mustard aficionado, I’ve come around on mustard. I actually really like hot horseradish-y mustards more so than a yellow mustard. But I used to really not be a fan of yellow mustard. I can at least tolerate it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I’m an awful baker, so I have to rely on cookbooks for baking or at least for measurements that I can gain inspiration from, so The Williams-Sonoma baking cookbook is really great. It’s got tons of cool recipes. But it’s also just good for if I need a jumping off point for an idea that I have.

I mentioned i am a food blog earlier, and her book Easy Gourmet is great. I’ve given it to a bunch of people because it’s just exactly what it says, easy gourmet. It’s really accessible. Anything by America’s Test Kitchen is good for the same reason as the Williams-Sonoma baking book. You just know that everything is really thoroughly tested, and it’s a good jumping off point. I still have a subscription to Bon Appétit and Gourmet. I know that that’s not a book, but those are good for keeping me aware of food trends and things like that.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I always have this vision that if I ever quit my day job and I got to just spend all day cooking in my kitchen, that I would do it listening to Carole King or Adele on the record player. So I guess I’d say both of those ladies. Then for something maybe a little more poppy, I’ll dance in the kitchen to Britney Spears or Nelly Furtado, early 2000’s Nelly Furtado. The Who, it’s really fun.

On Keeping Posted with Emily:

I’m probably the most active on Instagram, and that is @thepigandquill or Facebook, and then Pinterest. I love Pinterest.

099: Dennis Prescott: An Unfolding Food and Photography Journey

December 14, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Dennis The Prescott

Dennis cooks, photographs and writes all the time. His food photography is incredible, and I have to confess I get instant cravings when I see his beautifully made, styled and photographed food on Instagram and on his blog. You can also find Dennis on Food and Wine’s FWx.com where he’s also got some really cool videos up.

I am so excited to have Dennis Prescott of Dennis the Prescott here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Dennis’s.)

On Learning to Cook:

I lived in Nashville for a while, being down there as a guitar player. And being a musician was a wonderful experience, as a full-time musician. Got to do a ton of things and travel and everything else, but I did not get paid very well, because that’s the musician’s lifestyle. But I had come to really enjoy all of these different foods, traveling, and so I kind of decided, well, I can either eat pasta with butter on it, eat at the dollar menu at McDonald’s essentially, or I could learn how to cook. And it was one of those three.

So I went to the Nashville public library, I got a library card, which was probably the first library card I’ve ever had in my entire life, and took out three cookbooks. And then just started working through them, and I became absolutely just obsessed with needing to know everything about everything about food, and how to make every dish. So that’s kind of where it started for me, honestly. Just innocently I just really wanted to learn how to cook some dishes so that I didn’t have to eat junk food anymore.

The people around me encouraged it for sure, because they liked to try it. My friends seem to call me “All or Nothing Guy.” If I’m really passionate about something or if I’m into it, I’m really into it and I want to know everything. It was the same when I was a kid and I wanted to learn how to play guitar, it’s the same. I really like history, it’s the same with that for me, and food was the same thing. And now food and photography are the same thing with me, I just want to know everything about everything.

I’ve never gotten bored of it probably because there are so many things to learn. I don’t know 4% of all of the foods that can be cooked in the world. It’s amazing and I find that really exciting, honestly.

On His Blog:

Initially I started taking pictures of the food dishes that I was cooking just to remember them. I was making so many, working through all of these books and I thought, “I want to be able to remember the dishes that I really like,” so I started taking photos. And then this thing called Instagram kind of popped up, so I started an account. I think initially I started an account for my band actually, and then I started a personal one. And I started posting these photos, honestly horrible, horrible photos, on Instagram. You can just scroll through a few years ago and check it out if you need. But really that’s where it started for me.

And then all of a sudden I started to realize, I was like, “Wait a second, these photos, if you catch the light a certain way or if you do this.” I started to have these glimpses of what a pretty good food photo could be, and then I was like, “Oh wait a second, there’s something more to this here, right?” But initially it was all iPhone shots for honestly probably about two years, so just on my phone snapping photos for documentation.

I only had an Instagram account for quite a while, and probably just because my friends drove me crazy saying like, “You need to write your recipes down, you need to start doing this.” I was like, “Okay, I’ll do it.” And honestly it was quite a scary thing for me initially because writing those recipes or writing that blog I found to be a pretty vulnerable thing. And so jumping in I had a really hard time.

On Honing His Photography:

There’s been some mentors in my life. Some of them I know and some of them don’t know me at all, but I just really love their work. I’ve tried to find people along that way that I find really inspiring, both from a styling standpoint and from a photography standpoint. And then meeting people personally and saying, “I love your craft, can we sit down and have a coffee?,” something like that along the way.

The Internet’s an amazing thing where you can really go online and see all of this amazing work and put that into your own perspective and take that and say, “I’m not going to do it like that, but I love how this is lit.” Lighting is the biggest thing in photography. You can’t really recreate that necessarily unless you practice it. I took hundreds, if not thousands, of really bad shots to get some pretty good shots. And there’s still days where I struggle, because I shoot in natural light. So there’s some days where it’s really dark on the East Coast and you’re just like, “Okay, it’s not working today. It’s just not working for me.” But I really think it’s just this journey where you constantly try to get better and you look back.

The other thing that I try to do often is take a look at shots that I did maybe six months ago or something along those lines and go, “Okay, so what was I doing here? What am I doing now? And how did I get from A to B?,” so I can realize what I’ve learned along the way and keep learning that way. But aside from that, it’s just shooting, constantly shooting. My Instagram is only food for sure, but I shoot people all the time. When I’m lucky enough to travel, I probably take 1,000 shots in Philadelphia or New York City or Toronto or wherever that are just for me, but all of that helps you practice on how to capture composition and lighting and everything else. Which can then cross over into how you do food photography and how you do styling.

On His Photography Inspirations:

David Loftus is fantastic; he shoots most, if not all, of Jamie Oliver’s stuff. Daniel Krieger is a great friend of mine. He shoots cookbooks and for the New York Times and everything. So those two guys for sure for me are probably the ones who I gravitate towards their work. But there is Alice Gao, who has a great account on Instagram, who does some food but she does a lot of lifestyle shots, too. I try to follow a lot of those people, as well, who do travel and do everything, and just be able to constantly be inspired. But in terms of food, those two guys for sure are the ones that I initially fell in love with what they do.

On His Work on Food and Wine’s FWx.com:

Food and Wine, they’re wonderful. I’m not on staff, but I’ve been working with them for over a year. Some of their staff reached out to me through Twitter and sent me a message, said that they really enjoyed my stuff and wanted to see what we could do to collaborate. I was just going to do a project for them, or I didn’t even really know. I honestly freaked out because it was a huge deal for me, and still is, to be able to work with them. It’s a magazine that I read long before we had anything to do with them. So then we just had creative meetings along the way, and then eventually decided how could we kind of take this.

And a videography friend of mine, who’s my partner in the videos, we made a video together with no plan, aside from we thought it was a really great idea. And then that turned into the series. And there’s more of them coming along the way.

I don’t know why I started doing the stacking things, but I did. I don’t want to sound weird, but it did happen organically. I really just enjoyed it. And with that Twitter reach-out, we just decided that that made the most sense. It seemed like I was stacking things and we could go from there. I still do that a little bit, but the column’s branched out a little bit beyond that where I will do other things now, but definitely I guess its main focus is like let’s pick the biggest, boldest, craziest comfort food possible, whatever that is. It could be stacked in a huge burger, it could be ice cream sandwiches, it could polenta fries with some dipping sauce, whatever. But it just has to be over the top.

On Which Creative Outlet He Enjoys the Most:

I definitely enjoy Instagram the most, for sure. Because, as far as the social media world, it’s my first love. It’s the thing I gravitate towards. It’s the thing that I personally go on when I am looking at other people’s social media accounts and what they’re doing. But I really do enjoy Snapchat and I started doing Snapchat with my friends because living in Nashville for a while it was just a really easy way to connect back and forth with them. And then some people were asking me some questions about, this was before I did any videos at all, they were saying, “How do we cook X, Y and Z?” So I was thinking, “Well, how can I do this, and do this cost-effectively and quickly and just get this out there?”

So one day I posted on an Instagram picture, I said, “Follow me on Snapchat, I’m going to show how to make a steak this afternoon, like a restaurant-style steak.” And I had, I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of people that added me on Snapchat, it was crazy. So then I thought, “Well, I better start using this now.”

I really enjoy it, to be perfectly honest. It’s something where I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in to that world and how best to use that medium for me. But I really like it and I love being able to connect with people. I feel like it’s a different way to connect with people. And I’m able to Snapchat things about my daily life, which I try to do, too. And it’s not necessarily food. Like I was dressed up in a suit and tie yesterday, so I took a selfie of myself. I wouldn’t put that on my Instagram account, but I’ll put that on there. So it’s a cool way, I think, for other people.

And I follow other accounts that do that, too. It’s a way to get a background scene of what that person is actually doing at the time and what’s going on in their daily life, which I think is really cool. I always thought, when I was a kid I was a big Radiohead fan, and I was like, “What are they doing today? What are they eating? Are they at a record store? Are they at the mall?” I just wanted to know that stuff.

I think that’s really cool that we live in a world today where we can get a glimpse into what those people are actually doing. Because they’re probably not making a movie that day or recording a record, they might just be out with their kids. But I think that stuff’s really interesting and it helps you to develop this relationship with the person because you’re like, “Oh, I actually know you, you’re a real human and I appreciate you even more.”

That’s why I like that, as well. So it’s more for me to get that investment in what those people are doing in their lives. And if I can be a part of that, that’s really cool.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

That’s hard. Any of the Jamie Oliver stuff.

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

Definitely FWx. I won’t say my own, but you should probably go check that out sometime. i am a food blog is great, I love that, I love everything she does, too.

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

Definitely my friend Daniel Krieger is great, Alice Gao is great, Stephanie from i am a food blog is great. Diala, her name is Diala’s Kitchen, is great. She’s from Toronto and posts a lot of Toronto shots. If you’re Canadian it’s specifically great.

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

I collect antiques all the time. So I’ve got an antique citrus…like a juicer, and an ice cream scooper from 1880, 1870, and I absolutely love them.

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

Dates. I hated them. When I was a kid I hated dates. And my dad would eat date squares growing up and just try to force feed them on me. I was like, “No,” I was not having it at all. And now I think they’re the most delicious thing in the world.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

When I started cooking I started cooking to the Jamie Oliver cookbooks. As a little plug for a guy I don’t know at all obviously, they’re great, they’re fast, they’re easy. Anyone can make all of those recipes, and it’s really great to build your confidence and learn basic, easy steps that then you can take from there. So for me that’s initially how I started doing it.

I love older cookbooks, so kind of collecting ones. I actually just was looking at one the other day that it was a White House cookbook from the early 1900s and all the recipes that the White House made for the President.

I like a lot of those weird and wacky ones for sure, too. But reading through newer ones, as well, at the same time. So it’s kind of hard to pin exactly one. But if I could say ones that helped me out, for sure initially it was definitely the Jamie Oliver books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love alt-J; I cook a lot to the alt-J records. Foals is a British band that I really love. Anything kind of atmospheric. Anything with a really great drum beat, a little bit of atmosphere. I actually cook to a lot of hip-hop, too, surprisingly. So I love listening to Jay-Z and Kanye and stuff. I’m not nearly cool enough to actually say that I’m a fan of theirs, but I really actually love that when I’m cooking.

On Keeping Posted with Dennis:

On Instagram for sure, on my website, Twitter, Facebook, it’s all @dennistheprescott. If you want to check out FWx, I’m on there, as well. And then if you just google “Dennis the Prescott,” that will come up with different…because I’m very fortunate enough to work with other companies and that kind of thing, like Reynolds and Frigidaire and stuff, so a lot of different recipes are on there that I’ve been able to do for them. Dependent upon what they are, if you’re looking for chicken wings, if you’re looking for whatever, you’ll find it somewhere out there.

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.

065: Danielle Oron: Feeding Her Obsession with Food

August 5, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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I Will Not Eat Oysters

Danielle is obsessed with food. Apart from her blog, I Will Not Eat Oysters, she is the chef, owner of Moo Milk Bar in Toronto, photographer, and the author of Modern Israeli Cooking, which is due out in the fall. As if that isn’t enough, she contributes to foodnetwork.ca and Pepper Passport.

I am so thrilled to have Danielle Oron of I Will Not Eat Oysters, joining me here on the show today.

(*All Images Below are Danielle’s.)

On Her Obsession with Food:

I have a mild obsession. And this is what I hear, “(Food is) the worst addiction to have because you have no choice in life but to eat.” And you can’t give that up, so that’s just an addiction that I have, that I’ve obsessed over food since the day I could speak, probably.

My mom used to tell me that I would ask what we were going to have for dinner the following day while eating breakfast the day before. I would just constantly, constantly think about food my whole life.

I was always obsessed with eating. And then later on, I developed a taste for things that I liked and things that I didn’t like. My mom would make a pasta sauce and I would tell her, “This pasta sauce is a little different than the one that you made last week.” And she’s like, “Yes. I forgot the oregano. How did you know?” And that came really young. Then, I would say, when I was about 16 or 17, I got my own TV in my room, so I was really excited about that. Food Network was the first thing I put on.

I think it was one of those Iron Chef episodes, like the old one, the old Japanese ones. I saw, I think it was Morimoto that made some miso filet, and he made it in seaweed, so it was a different cooking technique than I’ve ever seen. That’s what really got my mind thinking about cooking and actually making the food, and not just eating the food and how it’s an art form. That was probably when I really got into it.

On Her International Food Influences:

I grew up with my mom’s Israeli food, and then I would go to lunch, and then I told my mom like, “I don’t want you making me some weird Israeli stuff. I’m going to get pizza at school.” I was trying to fit in that way instead of having my mom send some weird Israeli food or Middle Eastern food that no one could recognize. So I had both Israeli food and Moroccan food growing up, but then I was very interested in fitting in, let’s say, in the American cuisine world. So that’s pretty much what I grew up with.

I fell in love with Korean food, probably still when I was in high school, and I used to go with my mom and we used to get Soondubu jjigae, which is just like the Korean seafood tofu soup. And I just fell in love with it.

My best friend growing up was Korean. I used to go to her house and we’d look through her fridge, and she’s like, “Oh, my mom only left weird Korean food.” I would start eating it. So I would have kimchi, and then she would have nothing else to drink but milk. So I would have kimchi and milk, and she’s like, “You’re disgusting.” But I really loved it and I just developed a palate for it.

Now, I go eat Korean food at a minimum once a week. I started cooking it, so I’m very familiar with the products now too. It came so naturally to me that I definitely believe I was Korean at some point in my life.

On The Idea Behind Moo Milk Bar:

When I met my husband, I was still living in New York. And moved there (Toronto), and wasn’t a Canadian resident, so I technically couldn’t get a job. Because I missed home, I started cooking and baking, and that’s actually when I started the blog as well. It was just out of boredom and needing to create something.

I started baking cookies and I was just obsessed with it and I missed home. So it made me feel nostalgic and reminded me of the times that I know my brother and I would just grab a roll of Pillsbury cookie dough and just eat it.

So I started just making a lot of really good cookies, and then my friends were like, “You should just open a bakery. Just open a bakery and just do it.” And that way, I could actually hire myself to work in Toronto. So that’s what I did.

I talked to my mom about it, and she’s like, “Well, you know, your grandfather had a dairy bar, a milk bar in Tel Aviv in Israel, growing up. He would have flavored milks. He would flavor his own milks that he would get from the farm down the street.” And I was like, “Oh, you know what? That’s great. That would perfectly work with this concept.” So it’s a combination of missing home, baking really good cookies, and then the inspiration from my grandfather back in the day that brought it all together for me.

I started, it was just myself. I was cooking, baking, cleaning, selling, everything start to finish. And then it hit a point where I had a line out the door, and then I realized I had no more products. I was like, “Oh my goodness. Okay, I need to hire more people.” So then you hire more people, and then you get the wholesalers coming to you. And a grocery would be like, “Oh, we would love your cookies in our store.” Then I realized, I need more people.

So the challenge was just keeping up with the growth and getting to that point where you can’t do anymore and getting more people on board and hiring the right people. I would say that initial growth and constant growth is really the biggest challenge that I’ve come across, because it’s not something you can plan for. It’s a Catch 22 where I can’t hire more people until I have enough business, and that was something that was learned. I’m sure not just with bakeries. But with every small business, this happens. So I learned a lot from that.

I take a lot of pride in our product too. I don’t like talking about myself. I can talk about this product all day long. But yes, it’s a very good product. That was our number one goal. You find cookies anywhere but they’ve got a shelf life of a week. Personally, I believe the cookies at least that we’re making, no preservatives, no nothing with butter. So they’ve got a shelf life of a day and a half, two days max, and that’s the best quality. So I really believe in that. I believe in the product.

On What’s Most Popular at Moo Milk Bar and What Could Get More Love:

So we’ve got this Brown Sugar Toffee Bit Cookie that is so buttery. As soon as you pick it up, your hands just get greasy. But it’s just so delicious. It’s so good. That is probably our most popular cookie. And then in the summers, we do special ice cream sandwiches, and we do S’mores ice cream sandwich. It’s so big you can’t pick it up to eat it. It’s so large. We use an oat brown sugar cookie, and then we make our own marshmallows that are probably about two inches thick. We toast it on the spot. We melt some chocolate. We put vanilla ice cream. We make a ground cookie crumble on top. It’s so good. That’s probably our most popular item in the summer.

There is a Banana Chocolate Milk. I mean, there is some love for it, but everyone always goes for, “Oh, I’ll take a Caramel Milk, a Chocolate Milk.” In Israel growing up, there were these popsicles; these popsicles you used to get on the beach where it was a banana chocolate popsicle. And it just reminds me of that. Maybe it’s nostalgic for me, but it is delicious. And we make our own chocolate syrup and we use a compound, a very high quality Italian compound made from real bananas. So it’s got a really good banana flavor to it. It needs more love.

On Her Cookbook, Modern Israeli Cooking:

I was approached by Page Street Publishing. I don’t know if you’re familiar with I am a Food Blog. They did a book with her recently, and they approached me as well, and they said, “I would love for you to do an Israeli or Middle Eastern cookbook, and it’s really trending right now.” I was like, “You know what? Yeah, sure. Let’s do it.” They gave me about 3 months to write 100 recipes, and that was so challenging but in a good way. I really, really loved it.

We did it and I photographed it all too, which is nice. So I was able to do the writing, the recipes, and the photographs. I got a lot of control over what was happening in the book, and I sent it all off. Now, they’re editing it. It’s going into print probably in the next few months or so. Really, really exciting.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch Chef’s Table, which is on Netflix. That was unbelievably shot. Really beautiful, great chefs. Francis Mallmann was probably my favorite. He cooked with a lot of fire and has got a great concept of food.

I love The Mind of a Chef on PBS.

I’m not really into the competition shows. I actually get very angry when I watch them just because I’m like, “No. What are you doing?” or, “That doesn’t make sense.” A lot of times, the best recipes come from development and feeling and thought. And I think when someone is just throwing things together, and this is what I came up with, sometimes it could be great. But most of the times, it’s not my thing. So that’s why I enjoy more of the specials, like the Chef’s Table and Mind of a Chef.

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

My favorite right now is Lady and Pups. She’s got some great recipes on there. Really smart and quirky. I love her writing. It mixes all these cuisines together. I really, really love her. So her.

Happy Yolks has great photography. I really love that one.

Pepper Passport is great. I give them some recipes occasionally. But they’re also great for travel. They’ve got a lot of different cities that they review. So that’s really cool.

And then, oh, Death to Sour Mix. It’s a cocktail blog. Really cool. And I’m really bad at cocktails, believe it or not. So I really like that one.

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

I forgot what the guy’s name is on Instagram. But the dog’s name is Norm, and he’s a pug. And he puts him on things, like on ledges… anyway, he makes me very happy.

Then there is a restaurant called Jack’s Wife Freda in New York that has a great Instagram. They always photograph. I guess, one of the owners, she dresses really nicely and she takes photos with products and holding different dishes in the restaurant. That’s a really cool one to follow too.

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

The item that I can’t do without is my, I’ve got a Japanese Mandolin. I mean, probably the most dangerous tool in the whole, entire kitchen, but I love it. I love my mandolin. Then I’ve got a pair of tongs that I’ve had forever. They’re just a pair of metal tongs. Also, I’ve got a pan. I always make omelettes in.

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

Dried cherries. I used to hate dried cherries. But recently, I rehydrated them in whiskey and I used them inside of a sausage mix. So I made pork sausages with whiskey-soaked cranberries, really delicious. So I’m really starting to love them when they’re soaked in whiskey.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I am in love with a cookbook called Prune. It’s a woman named Gabrielle Hamilton that wrote it. She also wrote Blood, Bones, and Butter. This cookbook is fantastic. It’s from her restaurant, Prune in New York. She’s got some great recipes. They’re those down home good comforting recipes but with a really nice, elegant, sophisticated twist to them. So I really enjoy it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I don’t know why I really love listening to Brazilian Girls and that just gets me going. I guess it’s the vibe of it. Especially in the summer, Brazilian Girls in the summer makes me want to barbecue for some reason, so that and any sort of Dave Matthews Band.

I like really bad R&B music too for some reason, like Trey Songz, and really bad stuff.

On Keeping Posted with Danielle:

I’m big on Instagram. I love Instagram. I’ll post there more than anywhere else. That’s definitely where to follow. I’m @iwillnoteatoysters on Instagram.

060: Dinner Was Delicious: Chicago and Its Food

July 20, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Dinner Was Delicious

Based in Chicago, Lucy and Rachel share recipes, photographs and love food enough not to take it too seriously. They’ve been destroying kitchens together since 2011.

I am so happy to have Lucy and Rachel of Dinner Was Delicious joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below belong to Dinner Was Delicious.)

On How They Met:

Rachel: Lucy and I both worked at this really weird tech start-up in Chicago. Chicago has this awesome tech scene.

Lucy: We were lucky to have this job.

Rachel: And it was great, but it wasn’t super creatively fulfilling. So we just bonded together over our shared love of food and gossip of the weird architecture in the office space.

Lucy: We found each other in the midst of a strange company. For our Parks and Rec enthusiasts, we describe it as Entertainment 720. We just talked about what we wanted to do and became good friends outside of work.

On What Made Them Want to Collaborate with Each Other:

Lucy: Rachel was baking a lot. My job was already creative because I was a graphic designer. And Rachel was doing operations and needed a creative outlet and would bring us the most incredible desserts. I started with cupcakes and pies and all kinds of really incredible desserts, and I was always like, “If you ever want to collaborate, we should be documenting these. These are beautiful. Have you written down the recipes? What’s next? Let’s do something with this.”

Rachel: So Lucy was doing her photography business, and I was baking more and more and then started actually baking as a little side project, just for some extra cash. I baked for a wedding that was for one of our mutual friend’s siblings, and Lucy was shooting photography for it too. So I was doing a bunch of cupcakes, and Lucy was like, “Well, I’ll come over, and I’ll take pictures of the cupcakes. It was super fun and we decided, “Well, let’s do it.”

Lucy: It was kind of intimidating to think about getting it started, but really, we just put a Tumblr theme up. I made a logo in five minutes that wasn’t really the logo that we wanted, but we just needed to start and it just started there.

On Their Interest in Food and Cooking:

Lucy: We like to eat. I really like to eat. I became interested in food after I moved to Chicago, and I became interested in food out of the realization that I don’t know how to cook for myself. I moved into my own apartment five years ago, and so it’s just all on me. I couldn’t rely on my roommate to have dinner ready for me anymore. And Rachel had all this knowledge, basics that I didn’t know, and so that was really helpful to just be cooking with her. And then eating in Chicago, you are exposed to all kinds of different things that I became interested and curious about that.

Rachel: I’ve always cooked. My mother, bless her heart, she’s an awesome nurse. Briefly in the late ’90s, she was a super kick-ass body piercer. But she can’t cook to save her life, and she’ll say it as much as I will. So if I wanted to eat when I was a kid, I had to figure out how to make it myself. I cooked a lot with my grandma, a little bit with my grandpa too, and just figured out how to cook, always super-passionate about it.

Love cooking for people. Another part of why we started collaborating was Lucy wasn’t as proficient in the kitchen, so it was like, “Well, come over. I’ll show you how to fry an egg.”

Lucy: At the time, I was still a graphic designer, and I didn’t know how I wanted to shoot food. It was kind of a way to learn that and experiment with different techniques.

On Not Taking Food Too Seriously:

Rachel: So I think some people, many people who are really passionate about food start getting a little self-inflated about it. They lose the fun and the spontaneity of food and letting it be just what it is: something delicious to nourish you and share with people that you love. I think that we work really hard to keep the important things in mind: sustainability, seasonality, nutrient density, all of these things that we think about. But we let our love of food really shine through to be what it is, which is food. You eat it with people you love, and we’re giving food the space to be enjoyable, rather than something that’s stricter.

On a Kitchen Disaster:

Rachel: One happened last night. We’re in Lucy’s photography studio, and we were supposed to make Cheeze-Its, and I just . . . They just did not work. So even if you’re someone who’s proficient in the kitchen, screw-ups happen. Your recipe doesn’t always work out as planned. When you’re testing stuff and flying by the seat of your pants and maybe didn’t set your timer, sometimes things can get burned.

Lucy: There’s a lot of burning. Not a lot, but that’s my biggest.

Rachel: One of my favorite memories with us, though, was the day that we made the fried chicken at my place, and you brought the bone-in chicken. And this was way, way, way early on, like before I had any butchery experience, but I love taking carving on the meat now. I was still super squeamish. And so we were going to make a fried chicken dinner, and Lucy brought the chicken and it was bone-in because bone-in chicken is more delicious. But it was a whole chicken. I had to figure out, how do I take this bird apart?

Lucy: I was there for moral support, and it took a lot to go down.

Rachel: It took a lot of bourbon. This was four or five years ago now.

On the Food Culture in Chicago:

Lucy: People are really interested about food here, and there’s everything available. I don’t even know where to start. It’s overwhelming.

Rachel: People, when they think about Chicago food culture, they’re going to think first about deep-dish pizza.

Lucy: Yeah, that’s true.

Rachel: And people might not realize that it’s actually one of the most prominent culinary capitals in the U.S. We have Alinea. We’ve got Next. We’ve got Publican. We’ve got all sorts of really wonderful, creative restaurants. We’ve got a lot of ramen going on right now too.

It’s more than just meat and potatoes. It’s people who really care about interesting food. It’s not just white people with Western stuff.

Lucy: Yeah, food from all different cultures. The neighborhoods are so diverse that you can have food from all over the world and have it done well.

On a Dish That Captures What Chicago is About:

Rachel: That’s a really hard question.

Lucy: Because Chicago isn’t one thing food-wise for me. Hot dog, I guess.

Rachel: Because it’s got everything.

Lucy: It’s got everything on it. And we’re so particular about how we have our hot dogs. This is the least original answer I could give you.

Rachel: No, I love it.

Lucy: But it is the Chicago style, no ketchup and . . .

Rachel: You’ve got the mustard, which has lots of Asian and Germanic influences. You’ve got this beautiful pickle that’s like a fermented pickle. It’s not a brine pickle. So it has a long fermentation process rather than the vinegar. So lots of different cultural influences there. It’s everything on a bun and like, “Ugh!”

On a Food That Locals Love that Visitors May Not Know About:

Lucy: So there’s this one dish called a “mother-in-law.” It’s a hot dog and a tamale covered in chili in a bun with a bunch of cheese, and there’s also the Chicago original rainbow cone. It’s this huge stack of ice cream. It’s got orange sherbet, pistachio, this really special cherry ice cream, chocolate, everything all on one cone, and it’s so, so essential Chicago summer. In your cut-off jeans, you’ve got to get an original rainbow cone.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Lucy: I love Anthony Bourdain.

Rachel: I love The Taste, though. Anthony’s on there, but Nigella, come on, give me a break. She’s perfect.

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

Rachel: Wit & Vinegar. Billy Green is the best human on the Internet. Love him so much. I’m super into I am a Food Blog.

Lucy: Yeah, I am a Food Blog is great. I always go to Smitten Kitchen. She’s great, solid recipes. She’s been around for so long, she has such a great library of recipes.

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

Rachel: I’m a grandmother on the Internet.

Lucy: That’s true.

Rachel: I follow lots of cat Instagrams, so I just get cat pictures in my feed throughout the day.

Lucy: Our friend Jana has an account called Bike a Bee that I follow on Instagram and Twitter and she’s hilarious and also shares all this cool information about plants. And she’s a beekeeper, and so she shares her process about beekeeping and selling honey, which is really cool.

Rachel: Speaking of Jana, there’s another, based in Philadelphia. There’s a restaurant and butchery space and education space about meat and sustainable meat called Kensington Quarters. It’s awesome. It’s not for vegans. If you’re squeamish about meat, you’re not going to love it. But they post the most beautiful, educational pictures about meat. They’re super great people I connect to.

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

Rachel: My KitchenAid mixer. I know that’s super cliché, but it has lived so many lives. It came into my life in the most . . . I was in a not super great relationship, and all that I wanted – and this was eight years ago, all that I wanted was a KitchenAid mixer because I had just started baking, and I was really passionate about it. And all that I wanted for my birthday was a KitchenAid mixer. But I was 22, 23.

Nobody has KitchenAid money at 22, 23. So I asked the guy that I was dating at the time, not a super great relationship, to talk to my friends and be like, “Everybody pitches in 10 or 15 bucks to get the KitchenAid.” And he did it, and I got my KitchenAid. And it was the best ever, and lived through a bug infestation.

It lived through 17 moves now, just going all over the place. It’s gotten me through everywhere. I love it more than everything. It barely works. It’s got this big nick on the top of it from one of my more urgent moves. My apartment flooded, and it was horrible. And I just grabbed the mixer and ran. Yeah, I love my mixer more than anything.

Lucy: I don’t know. My kitchen is kind of tiny. I don’t have any sentimental passed-on pieces yet.

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

Lucy: Pickles.

Rachel: Yeah, pickles? You didn’t like pickles?

Lucy: I didn’t like pickles. I wasted so much of my life not liking pickles.

Rachel: Weird. For a long, long time, I was really not into food. I didn’t eat asparagus until I was 25.

Lucy: Or things that were cute.

Rachel: I wouldn’t eat lamb.

Lucy: Rabbits.

Rachel: I still don’t eat rabbit. It makes me sad. I know, I’m an idiot. I didn’t have cauliflower until I was 27 and, oh my gosh, I love it now. If there’s anything that anyone is ever afraid of eating food-wise, you could be skipping your favorite food, the most delicious food you’ve ever eaten. Just eat all the things you’re afraid of. Everything is good if you cook it right.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Lucy: What to Cook and How to Cook it.

Rachel: That’s such a good one. I just got Edward Lee’s Smoke and Pickles, and it is one of the most beautifully written cookbooks I’ve ever seen. The recipes are amazing. They’re flawlessly tested. The photography is beautiful. And his prose, he has chapters in between with actually prose in it. It’s so wonderful and smart and touching.

Lucy: And What Katie Ate books are beautiful, so I look at that for inspiration sometimes for photography. It’s gorgeous, lots of good party recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Rachel: Everything. Music makes me hungry.

Lucy: Yeah, it depends on what mood I’m in. I’ll put on an old album, like Tom Petty and The Rolling Stones, or I’ll blast Robyn if it’s winter or summer.

Rachel: If I’m making pie, I want to listen to The Secret Sisters, for sure. If I’m eating my feelings, I want to listen to Neko Case’s latest album and just cry into my soup or whatever comfort food I’m cooking. But if it’s just like general, just hanging out in the kitchen, you can’t go wrong with Robyn. She’s the queen. She’s flawless.

On Keeping Posted with Rachel and Lucy:

Lucy: DinnerWasDelicious.com, so that is where you should keep going. And then follow us on Instagram @effingdelicious, and we’re also @effingdelicious on Twitter as well.

018: Jonathan Melendez: Guiding Home Cooks via Food Photography

March 27, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Candid Appetite

Jonathan is a cook, a baker, blogger and food photographer, and what is really great about his blog is that he is meticulous in photographing the steps in all his recipes and posts. You can basically figure out how to make his dishes by simply looking at his beautifully styled images.

I’m so pumped to have Jonathan Melendez of The Candid Appetite joining me today.

On Photographing Food:

I went to culinary school for a brief period, like right after high school, and all my life I thought I would become a chef. I quickly learned being in school that it just wasn’t everything that I thought it was. It completely took the fun out of cooking away from me. So I stopped going to culinary school, and I threw myself back into school taking all my general education classes.

I took one basic photography class and then that evolved into a passion that I didn’t even know I had. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that somebody told me like, “Hey, you should really photograph food. That makes sense because of your background,” and it was born through that, and I was able to combine two of my passions basically into one thing.

On Starting His Blog:

I needed a final project for my graduating class- the final class you need right before you get your degree. And for me I wanted to do something that was fun, and I thought I could incorporate this blog with my school work and get credit for it. The idea behind the step by step came to me because I’ve been following food blogs for many years. And I always come across the same questions of people asking like, “Oh, am I doing this right? Is it supposed to look this way?”

Most often you see a blog that only has one image of the final product and people don’t know the steps in between. So I guess I wanted a resource for people to be able to see it step by step, that there wouldn’t be questions for them. It would guide them through it and hold their hand, I guess, in the kitchen. So that’s how it came around.

The images are so predominant in it because of my photography background. But, you know, when it comes to the bottom line of it, I really want the food to shine. I feel like having those images there gives people the chance to be able to do it, gives them the confidence.

On What Comes Most Naturally:

I would say that cooking comes so naturally to me because it was something that I have always done ever since I was really young. To me cooking is a way to relieve stress basically.

You would think that even after a full day of shooting and making a bunch of recipes, I won’t want to make dinner. But I still do and I think it’s because it gives me that chance to forget about everything that I have to do. Get in the kitchen, and just kind of cook as I go.

Cooking to me is super easy because you could not think about it. You could basically whip up something without having to really measure everything out. Whereas baking is more precise and I have to go through the trouble of accurate measuring, and that sometimes becomes a little tedious. So I would say baking to me is one of the hardest things that I do on a daily basis.

On Who Inspires Him:

In the food blogging world, it would have to be Joy the Baker, Joy Wilson. She for me was one of my biggest inspirations when I first started my blog, and then Ree Drummond from The Pioneer Woman, for sure. I think she kind of set the way for all these food bloggers that came after her.

As far as just regular TV personalities, because I did grow up watching the Food Network a lot, I would say Ina Garten, Emeril, Mario Batali, and Sara Moulton were some of my all-time favorite people to see on TV.

The only person I’ve ever cooked for in that list is Joy, and I think it wasn’t even anything that fancy. I believe I made her soup. It was potato and kale soup or something like that.

On Doughnuts:

You never say no to a doughnut.

I’m from California, Southern California. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and there is a small shack in Burbank, California, that’s like a small mom and pop shop. It’s called The Doughnut Hut and seriously like the best doughnuts I’ve ever had.

I’m not a fancy doughnut connoisseur. I get down with the classics like the bare minimum. My favorite doughnut to get there is a cake doughnut that has just regular vanilla frosting and colored sprinkles. It’s the best thing ever. That place just knows what they are doing.

There’s a line around the block, I mean, it’s big and it’s not a big place at all. It’s like a little hut, you can’t even walk in. You order from a window on the sidewalk and it’s just the best doughnuts you’ve ever had.

On Collaborating with Joy the Baker:

I have these quirky weird things that go on in my life, and I kind of stalked her on her social media platforms.

I came across a photo of her cat and I commented on it, and we kind of became friends through this photo and my comments. I kept telling her how obsessed I was with her cat, so I saw her at a book signing once and I went up to her, and I was, “I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m the one that’s obsessed with your cat.” And then it kind of developed a friendship through that weirdness basically. That was, I think, two or three years ago, and now we’ve kind of become friends because of that.

I am currently shooting her third book right now that will come out in 2017, I believe.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chopped and Top Chef.

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

I’m currently obsessed with i am a food blog, which is an amazing food blog. I’m obsessed with it. Stephanie, who writes the blog is amazing. Her photographs just give me such inspiration, it’s amazing.

Souvlaki For The Soul, which is another blog that is very photo oriented. Very pristine photos that I could only wish I would one day be able to take photos like, and Top with Cinnamon, which is a food blog run by a 18 or 17-year-old. I’m thinking like I’m 25, there are people out there so much older who are all doing these food blogs, and here’s an 18, 17-year-old doing everything we can, but so much better than anybody else out there, and I’m obsessed with it.

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

I have to admit I’m really bad with Twitter, and I have it, but only because I have a blog, and it’s there. I hardly ever update it.

Pinterest, I wish I pinned more, and I don’t. So I don’t really follow anybody there.

Instagram, of course, is my number one favorite social media, and I follow Chronicle Books. The publishing house does a really good job with their Instagram account, and it’s nice to see them have this passion for books.

I feel like nowadays with all these ebook readers and tablets and iPhones and everything else that’s out there, I feel like actual books are becoming really hard to find, and books are going extinct. I feel like here is a publishing house that’s showing us cookbooks that are actually there, like actual physical cookbooks. I still find them exciting, and every time I see one of their photos on my feed, it just puts a smile on my face because they do such an amazing job.

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

I would say a black pepper mill because I hate already ground pepper. I feel like it doesn’t have the same potency and the same flavor as freshly ground, so I am always using that pepper mill.

Those coarse grounds instead of just the finely ground powdered stuff? I feel like it’s instantly better.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

I’m going to say potatoes. I’m obsessed with potatoes. I’m obsessed with a lot of things, but potatoes is definitely one of them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I have to say the first one is Homemade Decadence. I am biased towards it, but it’s a great book. I love seeing it.

Ceviche, by a man named Martin Morales. I love this book. I don’t know if you’ve seen this book, but it’s a Peruvian ceviche book, and the cover has this texture of white tile, like kitchen tile on it. It’s just really nice. It’s a great book.

There’s Huckleberry cookbook, it’s published through Chronicle Books, and I believe it’s a bakery also, but it makes me so happy because the sides of the book, like of the pages, have a design on it. It’s like a yellow color with white polka dots on it. I had never seen that before.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I go through these phases that I’ll listen to certain songs more often than not, and I guess right now I’m addicted to a song called Burnin’ Up by Jessie J. I don’t know if you’ve heard of that song because it’s very poppy, and it’s very upbeat and fast, and I feel like that’s something that you definitely want to be cooking to.

It depends on my mood, and the time of day it is, like at night after I’ve done a ton and have a full day of work, and a full day of shooting, the last thing I want to do is listen to something super upbeat. So I’ll put on a record and I’ll listen to something that’s kind of mellow. At the beginning of the day when I need to wake up, that’s when I’m listening to something that’s more fast and upbeat.

Keep Posted on Jonathan:

I’m going to say Instagram. I don’t think there’s a day that goes by when I don’t post something on Instagram, and I’m always putting my blog updates there as well as life updates. I just feel like it’s great. Since, again, I’m so photo oriented. For me it’s the perfect social media to update.

You can check out the blog at thecandidappetite.com.

Have One of Jonathan's Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now:

009: Courtney Chun: How To Find Inspiration And Learn To Cook From The Internet

March 6, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Fork to Belly

Courtney is relatively new to food blogging. She is a self-taught cook, and a true testament to how amazing the Internet is. Courtney claims to have learned everything, when it comes to cooking, from Google, YouTube videos, and other blogs.

I am so happy to have Courtney Chun of Fork to Belly joining me on the show today.

On Her Newly Discovered Passion for Food:

I would have to say it started maybe about a year ago. I was in my senior year of college.

Before then, I really never even spent that much time in the kitchen, and didn’t really have any experience working at a restaurant or anything. Then, I met my boyfriend. His dad owns a restaurant chain in Hawaii called Roy’s. He actually worked in the kitchen, so, I saw him making food in the kitchen, and I would help out.

I guess after that, I would watch YouTube videos of people making cupcakes or cookies. I would see different recipes on Pinterest, then I just started trying them myself. I mean, it didn’t always work out.

After a while, I got into cooking, and just really enjoying it. That’s how I got started with it. I never went to cooking school or anything. I don’t have professional skills. They’re still very basic.

On Starting Her Blog:

I always wanted to start some kind of blog. One of my friends mentioned to me, “You should start a food blog.” I was like, “Oh, yeah. That would be a good idea.”

I guess because on Instagram, I would post a lot of pictures of what I made. Another friend approached me, and she also started a fashion blog. She was just telling me you always think, “Maybe I don’t have enough experience, maybe my photography skills aren’t good enough, or my cooking skills aren’t good enough.” But that’s the whole point of the blog. If you don’t start it at some point, it’s never going to get done.

She was like, “Even if you don’t think you’re ready, maybe you should just go for it, and just see how it goes. Even if it’s not something you enjoy, then you can take a break, and stop.” So she helped me to get started.

I majored in Multimedia Arts, so I learned a lot of photography skills. I took a lot of web design classes, so that gave me a basis, a platform, to start my blog off.

I read a lot of blogger posts about how they got started, a lot of them say they have completely no experience with the photography or with web design. But they do have the cooking experience. I guess I’m a little opposite because I have the photography skills, and the web design skills, but I’m still really new to cooking. It’s kind of funny.

On Food Styling and Photography:

Food styling, sometimes I’ll be trying to put down all these plates, or arrange the forks, and it’s just not working out. I see other pictures on Pinterest and it looks so beautiful. I’m like, “I wish I could do something like that.” So I’m still definitely learning about the food styling. I’ve always been into art and design so maybe that background kind of helped.

The most helpful tip that I think I read on some blog, is that you just look at pictures that you really like. Let’s say for Pinterest as an example. You look at the type of plates they use, or maybe what kind of wooden table it’s on, or the colors. You learn that way. You read from the photo, internalize it, and think about how this can help when you’re actually doing your own food styling.

Photography’s just a whole other beast, aside from the cooking part. It’s huge. I don’t even have that much equipment. I know some bloggers, they have all the lights. They have all the different backdrops and stuff. They have really great lenses, a tripod, and stuff like that. I don’t even have all of those things.

On Learning How to Cook From the Internet:

I’ll look for inspiration through Pinterest. I use Pinterest a ton. If I see a photo of something that looks really good, like a cake or some kind of dish, I usually click on the link, and then I go to their page. I see the process about what the food blogger did to get there. That gives me inspiration.

One example is I’m thinking about doing these peach lavender Pop-Tarts because I saw a photo of homemade Pop-Tarts on Pinterest. I looked at how she did it. Then, I just go to Google, and I type in “homemade Pop-Tarts recipe.”

You know how sometimes when you Google recipes, you’ll see they have ratings on them? Normally, the higher rated ones, I’ll look at those. I’ll see what ingredients they used or the steps they took. For most recipes that are simple, it’s kind of the same process, so you can jump off it from that. You combine both, or all the recipes, and what you think might work out.

For certain recipes, like the ginger bread cake I made, and the one that you found me out from; I came across her ginger bread cake. I was like, “Oh my God, this looks so good.” Then, I search for other ginger bread cakes. They weren’t what I was looking for. So I just stuck with her recipe. It was a beautiful recipe, everything worked out really well.

For certain instances, I do use Google to help me. I also sometimes will just take a complete recipe from a blogger, then, of course, I credit them, and make sure they get some publicity from that, too.

On Cooking Through Trial and Error

I think sometimes I just may get really lucky with certain recipes, but I’ve definitely had my fair share of ones that have failed.

I did a lemon tart.

I was using my mom’s kitchen because I’m at home in Hawaii right now. I was using her kitchen for the first time. I never really cooked when I lived at home because she would always cook. She has an electric stove and at home I have a gas stove. So hers would heat differently and I didn’t really understand the temperature differences.

I was trying to make the tart filling. I guess the recipe said that you have to pre-cook it a little bit. I had it on the stove and I think I was doing something else in the kitchen. Then, all of a sudden, I hear bubbling on the stove. I run to the stove. I look and it’s like this omelet. I was like, “Now what do I do?” I used up all the ingredients.

I had to go back to the store. I was just so, “I want to be done with this recipe already.” Sometimes it doesn’t turn out how I want it to. I guess that comes with the territory, nothing’s always going to work.

On Good Online Resources for Learning to Cook:

I think YouTube is really great.

You just Google in, “How do I cut a mango?” I remember that was one of the things that I had to learn because when you cut through, it’s just the seed and you can’t really peel it away. It’s not like an avocado. It was just cutting around it and making this huge mess the first couple of times I did it. I eventually Googled about it.

I feel like sometimes it’s hard to explain certain things like that in writing. So it definitely helps to see videos on YouTube where you can just type in “How do I cut a mango?” You see a guy actually do it, and you have that visualization so that when you do it yourself, you understand it more.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I definitely watch Hell’s Kitchen. I love Cupcake Wars.

I love the one that Gordon Ramsay does where he fixes up restaurants or restaurants that aren’t doing well. It breaks my heart to watch it, and it makes me feel bad, but you can’t stop watching it.

I still love watching Ina Garten when she cooks, too, on the Food Network.

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

I love Food 52. I love their shop. I always look at everything on their shop and I’m like, “Oh my God. This is so expensive but I really want it.”

I feel like they have really good food recipes that they share from other bloggers.

I still love YouTube a lot. I like watching Nerdy Nummies. It’s just really fun. It’s just so creative. I just love watching her show.

I think my top three favorite food blogs to look at right now are Local Milk Blog, My Name is Yeh and I am a Food Blog. I love their photography. I love when they post new recipes.

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

In the food blog world, I definitely enjoy seeing Local Milk’s blog posts. She just blows my mind at how talented she is.

I really enjoy Two Red Bowls. I really like her posts because she does a lot of Asian foods, too. They’re not really well known Asian dishes, at least not to American people. That inspires me because I’m full Chinese. I enjoy sharing these dishes with other people. My mom’s third generation, so we don’t really have experience trying to make these really traditional dishes. When I see other food bloggers making traditional Chinese dishes, that’s a heart warming thing too because it’s getting to see your culture. It’s also the beautiful styling that she puts into it.

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

I definitely think my Ninja Blender has been a godsend. You can use it to make smoothies. It’s also a huge food processor because it has the long blades in it.

Since I’ve been back home here, I don’t have it with me. When I look at a recipe and I go to make it, I’m like, “Oh no. I don’t have my Ninja Blender.” My mom, she has this food processor where it’s manual. It’s this weird technology but you press it down, then the food processor spins. It gets so strenuous. I’m just missing my Ninja Blender so much.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

I would say butter or eggs.

I go through so much butter, and so many eggs. I literary, at one point, had three cartons of eggs in my fridge. I was trying to make a cake, and for a cake you need eight eggs or something. Those are the ingredients that I always need to have on hand.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

It’s not really a cookbook. My grandma, she used to write down all her recipes. She would put them together in this folder. I’ve actually been able to look back at her recipes, and see the things she’s made.

It’s kind of funny because I haven’t eaten it since I was really young. But then, I see the name and I read through the ingredients. I don’t have to see the finished product. I can just read through the ingredients, see the steps, and I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s what I was eating. Or that’s what she made me before.”

It’s been really nice to be able to have that, and be able to physically hold it instead of having the recipe written down on the Internet because you can see her handwriting.

It’s just really personal. It’s something I really cherish.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love listening to audio books. I really enjoy reading. A lot of the time, I don’t really have the time to sit down and read with my eyes. I wish we all had four arms and four eyes because then I could do two things at once.

When I’m in the kitchen, you’re cooking or you’re using your hands, and you’re using your eyes but you’re not really using your ears. I enjoy just listening to an audio book.

Then, I also have the book myself so later on I can go back to the book and continue to read. It’s been really helpful because I feel like sometimes in the kitchen, not that I get bored, but having something to listen to, to keep your mind going, really helps and makes me enjoy the process of cooking more.

Keep Posted on Courtney:

I definitely think just following my blog.

I just made a new place where you could subscribe to it and then you get emails when I post new dishes.

My blog is the best way because I don’t always post what I’m making on Instagram. So definitely forktobelly.com.

On Cooking as a New Parent:

On Putting a Meal Together Quickly:

On How to Make Cooking Fun:

On Her Food Heroes:

On Her Blog:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Emily:

On Learning to Cook:

On His Blog:

On Honing His Photography:

On His Photography Inspirations:

On His Work on Food and Wine’s FWx.com:

On Which Creative Outlet He Enjoys the Most:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Dennis:

On How They Met:

On Collaborating on Their Blog:

On Their Separate Roles for the Website:

On Deciding What to Make for the Blog:

On Their Blogging Process:

On Misconceptions about Healthy Food and Healthy Eating:

On the Food Culture in Vancouver, BC Canada:

On Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Vancouver:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with The Food Gays:

On Her Obsession with Food:

On Her International Food Influences:

On The Idea Behind Moo Milk Bar:

On What’s Most Popular at Moo Milk Bar and What Could Get More Love:

On Her Cookbook, Modern Israeli Cooking:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Danielle:

On How They Met:

On What Made Them Want to Collaborate with Each Other:

On Their Interest in Food and Cooking:

On Not Taking Food Too Seriously:

On a Kitchen Disaster:

On the Food Culture in Chicago:

On a Dish That Captures What Chicago is About:

On a Food That Locals Love that Visitors May Not Know About:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Rachel and Lucy:

On Photographing Food:

On Starting His Blog:

On What Comes Most Naturally:

On Who Inspires Him:

On Doughnuts:

On Collaborating with Joy the Baker:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Jonathan:

Have One of Jonathan's Special Dish Recipe Sent to You Now:

On Her Newly Discovered Passion for Food:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Food Styling and Photography:

On Learning How to Cook From the Internet:

On Cooking Through Trial and Error

On Good Online Resources for Learning to Cook:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Courtney:

Have Courtney's Special Recipe Sent To You Now: