Lady and Pups | The Dinner Special podcast

120: Katie Wahlman: Finding A Creative Outlet In Baking

April 27, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Butterlust

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

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

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

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

118: Hannah Messinger: How Cooking is an Exercise in Patience

April 13, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Nothing but Delicious

Hannah graduated from Boston University with a photojournalism degree and started her blog Nothing but Delicious out of boredom. She had spent some time away from writing and photography, but through her blog, has learned many lessons like that she indeed wants to be a writer and that cooking is an exercise in patience.

I am so happy to have Hannah Messinger of Nothing but Delicious here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Hannah’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

I had been reading fashion blogs for awhile. My favorite one is called Sea of Shoes, and they had linked to a blog called, La Tartine Gourmande. Which I’m sure I sound like a redneck. I’m from Tennessee. I’m really sorry. But I had this office job where I was just on the computer all day and talking to people on the phone, so I could look at whatever on the screen.

I ended up reading the entire blog, start to finish, like a book just because, I mean, what else was I going to do? I can’t sit still. I didn’t realize that food blogs were a thing. I didn’t realize they could be a cool thing. Back in the day when you thought of a blog, it was kind of a dorky thing, right? I was just blown away by her images of her recipes and the way she wrote. And I felt like it could be, if nothing else for me, good practice just to write and to photograph things.

Nothing else has brought me so much fun work. It’s not lucrative work. But I mean, my first job, I got from Twitter shooting a brand new chocolate company here, brand new then, not brand new now, called Olive & Sinclair. The owner is a real-life Willy Wonka, and he always just gives me a box with $200 worth of chocolate in it. It’s so much fun.

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

When I was maybe three years old, my yaya – that’s Greek for grandmother – gave me a teeny tiny baking set for Christmas. It’s probably the best gift I’ve ever received, to this day. She was a really great hostess and I have very fond memories of going to her house on every holiday and just Sunday afternoons. And everything she made was so intriguing. From Chex Mix to Jello salad, because it was the ’80s, to prime rib. Everything was perfect.

My mom, every Easter, makes lamb and manestra. Which is not the right name for it, it’s just what my family calls it, I learned recently.

It’s lamb baked on a rack so that the juices drip down. And then you put cherry tomatoes under it and they roast in the juices and let their own juices out. And at the end, you throw in orzo and it cooks in all the tomato and lamb juice. And you serve it all together on a plate with lots of lemon and herbs and feta cheese. And she also makes spanakopita with filo dough. I wasn’t even allowed to touch the filo until I was 18. But now she lets me do it, and it’s really fun.

On Her Food Heroes:

I think everyone in the blogging world. I learned almost everything I know from Alton Brown, as opposed to going to culinary school or anything like that. The book, Ratio, by Michael Ruhlman, was really life changing.

I also love this book called, An Everlasting Meal: Cooking With Economy and Grace, which is by Tamar Adler, but it’s modeled on the book, How to Cook a Wolf, by MFK Fisher. It talks about toppling meals. That if you have steamed broccoli for dinner one night, the next day at lunch you make quick pickled broccoli stem salad. And things like that. Meals that make sense, that merge into one another. And that really changed the way I cook.

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

It takes time and there’s no way around that. If you mess up a recipe, a lot of times the store is closed, you’re out of ingredients, you’re out of money to buy new ingredients. You really have to wait until next week, if you’re a home cook, to try it again. And that can seem like such a long time for an impatient person like me. I feel like that’s an everyday challenge for me, not only cooking but things take time, and cooking has conditioned me, I think, to deal with that in my life.

I did a kinfolk dinner maybe three years ago in Chattanooga. It was all about infusion. And I had made a chai pots de creme. Which, in all my recipe tests, the cream broke because ginger is pretty acidic but it’s a necessary flavor in the process.

So I struggled to figure out how to get it in there. And then when I finally figured it out, I was baking them off at my parents’ place which…they were renting a really old condo at the time. And I put them in the oven and I thought, “This is it. I’ve finally got it.” And I swear, the oven door exploded. And I sat down in the middle of the glass and cried.

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

I struggle with custard pies. I mean, we all do. They’re very temperamental. I lose one to slumping or sogginess every now and then like everyone. But I try not to let that get me down.

I’m going to use custard pies as an example, because I just talked about it. And my advice would be just to take baby steps. If you can make each separate component by itself and succeed without combining them, which is to say you can roll out the dough and you can bake it in little rounds. You can make lemon curd, put it on top, top it with strawberries and a little whipped cream or something. Then you know you can do it next time and you feel good going into it. Just that you know what each thing is supposed to be like and that you’ve done it successfully.

My mom always says, “Take the next right step,” which sounds so frustrating when you have a really big and daunting task in front of you. It sounds like being told to think small. But small steps snowball. And that’s the only way you can get anywhere. You can’t do step nine before you’ve done step two. I get really mad at her every time she tells me that, but then I’m like, “Okay, wait, this has always been good advice.”

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Obviously, I watch Mind of a Chef and Chef’s Table. And Great British Bake Off. Who doesn’t love that? But recently, my favorite is called, I’ll Have What Phil’s Having, on PBS with Phil Rosenthal. It’s so, so, so funny.

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

I’m assuming everyone knows about Molly Yeh. Everyone loves Molly Yeh. She’s so funny and so sweet. I’m just a super huge, major fan girl of Lady and Pups. I like her brutal honesty. I like that she has a series called, The Shit I Eat When By Myself. I mean, it’s embarrassing stuff that I eat shit like that when I’m by myself, too. And I’m like, “Yes! Yes, she’s so cool!” My favorite one, it’s like flaming Cheetos in a grilled cheese with arugula and gouda. It’s beautiful.

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

My favorites right now…do you follow Chef Jacques La Merde? It’s really some of the best satire our generation has ever seen. And then there’s another one called Kimi Swimmy. And I saw her via Munchies on Vice. And they say that she kills octopus with her bare teeth.

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

It’s not very unusual but I have this marble rolling pin that I bought at a thrift store years ago for $10. And two or three years ago, I was in this real freak accident with this semi that ran over my Subaru, and the only things I pulled out of the car, besides myself, were my dog, my camera, and my marble rolling pin. It’s been through a lot with me, so I’m a little attached to it.

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

I’m actually in the process of learning to like shrimp. I know everyone loves shrimp but I just never have. Actually, the restaurant group I work for has a restaurant called, Little Octopus, and the chef there makes shrimp ceviche. That’s really the first time I’ve ever felt like “Okay, I can do this.” I make myself try shrimp a minimum of three times a year, and I’m really glad I did because this was the first time I thought I could get somewhere with it.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Probably my favorite cookbook right now, and maybe always, is Donna Hay’s, Seasons. It’s just photographed beautifully. The recipes are simple. They’re seasonal. They’re just beautiful. And then because I make pie a lot, I refer to The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Cookbook all the time. It’s really like the pie Bible. You can’t go wrong with a recipe from Four & Twenty Blackbirds.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I love the album called, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot from the band Wilco. I don’t know, I have a lot of moods while I cook. I go up and down and everywhere in between. And it has a good range of songs that I feel like accompany that.

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

Definitely Instagram. And my handle is HMMessinger.

077: Laicie Heeley: How Everything Always Comes Back to Food

September 16, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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A Thousand Threads

On her blog, A Thousand Threads, Laicie writes about more than just food and recipes. She shares a lot about herself, from her wedding, travels and everyday adventures, she really puts herself out there for her readers.

I am so happy to have Laicie Heeley of A Thousand Threads here on the show today.

On Her Blog:

I actually started my blog because I had a day job that was fulfilling, but not entirely. I was writing, but I was writing about a lot of technical subjects and didn’t have the chance to write about the more creative things or do the more creative things that I enjoy doing. And so, around the time…my husband and I had been together for probably around five years at that point. When he proposed to me, I decided that it was an excuse to write about something on the Internet.

I started writing about the process of planning our wedding and of our lives at the time. It evolved in that way, eventually, to really be a representation of our lives together, and ultimately that all came back to food, because, for us, it does totally come back to food, with everything.

The relationships that I’ve built on the Internet, because I’ve been open and been willing to have those conversations with people and go back and forth, I’ve made so many good friends. It’s really been a great experience, so I’m glad that I wasn’t overthinking it at first and it allowed me to open up and keep it that way.

When I was putting it out there on the Internet and there weren’t any faces to go along with it, there weren’t any reactions. And honestly, the people that I found on the Internet, when they did appear, were so supportive and so great that it was really a good experience for me from the beginning, that I was able to make those friends, who I almost felt more open with, in many ways.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

I’m a 4-H kid from way back in the day. I grew up in Oregon, and I was in 4-H, I rode horses, that was the biggest part of my 4-H. But from the time I was very young, I actually did the cooking side as well and competed in the cooking contests in front of a judge, and it was all a very fun thing for me. It was always made fun for me, I think, particularly by my mom, who was really always interested in cooking, especially in baking. And she makes these incredibly amazing desserts that are just nuts.

She taught me how to make those things, and she taught me and brought me through that whole process of, the terrifying process of cooking in front of a judge when you’re 12 years old. It is crazy but it’s awesome, and I think it really fostered my love of cooking. I had a family of cooks, my grandmother was constantly baking pies.

And in Oregon, we all had big gardens. The fruit that my grandmother always baked the pies with always came from her garden, that was something that was crazy, that you just don’t experience that as much over here, quite as much as I did there and growing up. And it made me love food very much, having all those people around me who also loved food.

Some places have 4-H, some places have FFA, it’s a country kid thing. Some kids raise cows, and then they sell them at the auction at the county fair. It’s a thing that essentially all leads to the county fair, which is where you exhibit your work that you work on throughout the year. It’s kind of like Girl Scouts, but with a very country lean to it.

On Her Cooking Influences:

I think that my mom is hands down my greatest cooking influence. My love for baking, in particular, is completely shaped by my mother. And also my love for gathering people, I think, was shaped by my mother. Just a week ago, she had this huge event at her house for all of the women from her graduating class from high school. I don’t even know if I could track down the people from my graduating class from high school.

I’m really impressed by her. She had all the women from her graduating class over and had this beautiful, beautiful brunch party out on her patio and cooked everything and made this huge spread of desserts. My mom’s cheesecake is the craziest cheesecake that you’ve ever had.

Chocolate éclairs are something that she had always made and always brought. She was always this amazing home cook, but also one who never shied away from something that was tougher, like a chocolate éclair. She would make these fantastic cakes for my birthdays and just things that were just amazing. And I always really respected that, and still do.

On Working With Her Husband on the Blog:

We manage it quite well, actually. We both are really busy all the time, we have a lot going on. I have a nine year old stepson as well, and so we have all these things happening. And I think that ultimately, the blog and our various projects, because we’re both so passionate about them, they bring us back together in this way that we’re creating something together.

There’s nothing like creating, being able to create something with your spouse and really be excited about the outcome of it and just geek out over whatever this thing is. We both cook for the blog as well, and we shoot things back and forth.

He’ll have an idea, and I’ll add to it, and it’ll go back and forth and become this thing that’s really incredible. Even with the photography, I’ll style it, and then he’ll take the picture, and then I do the editing. So we have this very collaborative relationship that goes back and forth, and it makes us stronger in every way.

On Being Oregonian at Heart:

It’s not hard for me to live on the East Coast, but I’m certainly sad not to live on the West Coast still. I grew up in Oregon, I truly think that it’s the most beautiful place in the world. My parents are there, I love it there, I love the people, I love the food. The food scene in Portland, it’s always been amazing, but over the last 10 years, it’s really gone crazy. I go back there, and I just feel so completely close to home. I grew up on the coast, near the ocean, and there’s things about that that I miss. The East Coast is very different, it’s got a very different ethos, it’s got a very different approach to food.

But also, I’ve learned a lot, I actually live just outside of D.C., in the country, and one thing that I love about that is that we visit a lot of farms in the area, constantly. We get our eggs from the farm, we get our milk from the farm, we get everything that we can as locally as possible. And that’s really, really a cool aspect of this particular part of the area, that I didn’t necessarily have in my coastal town in Oregon, that I really appreciate here.

On the Difference in Food Culture Between Washington, DC and Oregon:

I was a vegetarian for many years, and that will make the difference very stark for you if you go from the West Coast to the East Coast, in general. It’s much harder to find good vegetarian food on the East Coast than it is on the West, because there’s a real love for meat here. And I respect that too, because I’m no longer a vegetarian, and there’s a reason, because it’s delicious. That’s one really big thing.

It used to be more so that there was a real love for local food that was easier to find on the West Coast than it is on the East Coast. I think a lot’s changed in the last few years, definitely, the restaurants have changed completely in the way that they approach things, and everyone is starting to appreciate that sort of thing more. And that’s really refreshing, that changes a lot. It’s amazing how much food can impact your love of living in a place, because it’s so much a part of your daily life. I really missed that when I first moved here about 10 years ago. Now, I would say it’s very different.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I watch whatever’s on the Cooking Channel. Obviously, I watch Anthony Bourdain, anything that he does. I watch him on CNN now, because I love his travel show and what he does. I also love Ina Garten, she’s amazing. The things that she does, it’s really wonderful.

Mind of a Chef will always be the most amazing…Netflix, just binge on Mind of a Chef, I could do it over and over and over because it’s so awesome.

I’ve had a lot of really amazing food inspiration on Netflix, Jiro Dreams of Sushi and all the good ones that are on there that are just incredible.

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

There’s so many great people making good food. I love all the big ones, I love Joy the Baker, I love Not Without Salt. I love Smitten Kitchen, she’s just incredible. I don’t even know how she does it, but every single recipe that she makes on Smitten Kitchen is just out of this world good..

I feel like there are always awesome ones that I’m discovering too, like Lady and Pups is really a cool one that does some awesome things. And I love My Name Is Yeh and all awesome newer people as well. Not totally new but just doing crazy, amazing things. I’m blown away by the blogosphere and all the great cooking being done.

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

On Pinterest and Instagram, I’m on there all the time. My friend A Daily Something is really awesome. Her children are the cutest. What she does on her Instagram blows me away. And so many great photographers, like With Hearts, who really are so inspiring and also are often in the Pacific Northwest and remind me of home and are so incredible.

On Pinterest, there are so many people who are awesome as well, and so prolific. Local Milk, obviously, I follow her on Instagram, she’s amazing on Instagram. But she’s also really prolific on Pinterest and has this awesome Pinterest account that is constantly making me discover new, awesome things that are really, really cool.

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

I love picking up vintage things, I love bringing vintage things home, and you don’t always use them. Sometimes, they just sit around and they’re props or whatever they might be, and I’ve stolen every little weird vintage thermometer and various things from my grandma’s kitchen and have them in my drawers.

But one that we have is a juicer that we use constantly, which is actually vintage. Every time I use it, I think it’s gonna fall apart because it’s so old. But it’s also so effective and fantastic, and it really just has a handle, and you can squeeze down the handle, and juice. It’s a very, very good vintage juicer that we probably don’t need in our kitchen, but I like having it.

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

Corn. I love it if it’s made a certain way. I eat a lot of foods, I’m really pretty open to almost…put anchovies on something, I’m totally fine. I like all olives and things. I taunt my husband with olives because he hates olives, and I love them. But I never really liked corn, which is a pretty basic food that I think that growing up, I just never had it cooked in a way that I really liked it.

As I’ve grown up, I have found that the fresher the corn the better. And there are definitely awesome things that you can do to corn, like chili lime seasoning or things that are really good that make it a much more awesome dish. I wouldn’t necessarily say that I love it now, but I like it a lot more than I did when I was younger.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Sugar Rush is a fairly new cookbook that I’m so impressed by, because the level of detail in the cooking and in the breaking down the processes that make for a good pastry kitchen are really broken down in a way that’s just so awesome. Also, I’ve always had my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and the ones that I’ve had sitting around forever that my mom got me when I first moved out of the house and will always be on my shelf. Those are some that I return to the most often, because they’re really those staples that you have in the kitchen, and they have these recipes that you can take, and you can run with them as far as you wanna run with them and make them crazy. And that’s something I always love doing.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

The song or album right now that makes me want to do all of the things and get up and jump around is Shakey Graves’s new album, who is pretty awesome, and every song on there is really good. We saw him last year in this tiny little venue. We love going up to Newport Folk Fest in Newport, Rhode Island, and he was there and really knocked our socks off. So lately, when I’m in the kitchen, that’s what’s been playing on my speakers.

On Keeping Posted with Laicie:

I’m on Instagram a lot, @laicie, and I’m on Pinterest a lot also, on Twitter and definitely the blog, of course.

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.

058: Erika Council: An Introduction to Southern Food

July 13, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Southern Soufflé

Erika was introduced to the art of biscuit-making at the ripe old age of four and was nicknamed Southern Souffle in college when she was dishing out meals from the hot plate in her dorm room. On her blog Southern Soufflé, she shares her love of Southern soul food through not only her recipes, but the warmth in her writing and stories.

I am so excited to have Erika Council of Southern Soufflé here on the show today.

(*All images below are Erika’s.)

On Growing Up Around Food and Cooking:

My paternal grandmother owns a restaurant in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and it’s been there since 1976. A lot of my summers were spent in the back of that kitchen, not always happily, but you learned how to make things like biscuits and fried chicken. She owned what we call a Southern style meat and three, and that’s where you get the meat and three vegetables and side of cornbread or biscuits. So you can imagine how much meat and three we’re turning out on a daily basis.

It was really kind of a drop biscuit that she taught me. It’s kind of a wet dough and you use the scoop and just drop it. You make a lot of batches at one time like that and that was my experience actually just scooping it and dropping it on the pan.

Then my mother’s mother made fancier angel biscuits, which use yeast and rise real high.

When you’re 13, 14, 15, you don’t really appreciate it as much as I do now that I can make fried chicken with my eyes closed. I will say that I learned a lot of valuable lessons just working back there and meeting the average people that wash the dishes, not a lot of the top chefs you see that live this glamorous lifestyle on Food Network. It’s just so far from that actually really running a restaurant and just trying to maintain success over a decades’ worth of time.

I think I learned more about the importance of food and how it was important to the people making it, rather than the whole glamor, a beautiful picture of food, you know.

She (grandmother) is older now and my uncle does most of the cooking in the back, but we do go and visit.

I’m in Atlanta so it’s about seven hours from here. I’ll go every now and then and visit her at home, but she doesn’t do a lot of actual cooking in the restaurant. You can find her every now and then sitting at a booth in the front when you walk in drinking coffee. She kinda makes it her way to introduce herself or speak to everybody, but if you’re from the North Carolina area and around there you know who Mama Dip is.

On Southern Culture:

I guess Southern culture, in my opinion, is kind of the backbone for a lot of things that you see everywhere. I’ll go to San Francisco for work and see someone rolling up collard green wraps and I’ll think about, just actually picking those collard greens out of the ground and hot liquor which is the liquor and the juice from the actual greens boiling down.

The South for me is just so many things. This is where I was born and raised and lived the majority of my life. It’s the people who have a complicated past, but I mean the most hospitable. Everyone says Southern hospitality but you would think it’d be a bunch of disgruntled angry Southerners, but we’re far from that.

It’s a lot of things you don’t see, where communal tables with all different kinds of people sitting together. It’s a melting pot, which is what the South has always been.

On Southern Food:

I think that Southern food is a mix of all cultures. From the very beginning, without getting into historical aspects, you have plantation cooking, which is a combination of European and African, West African cooking, and you’re seeing this sort of Southern revival, everywhere, but here, I think a lot of people are getting more back to the roots, which is, Southern food really was a plant-based diet.

So you think fried chicken and greasy and all this, but it was really the plants, like the greens, and the onions, and things of that nature. And I see a lot of people just getting back to that and just having the greens and their vegetables being the focus of their dish.

I would say that soul food is Southern food. I think that anything that you cook, and you put your heart and soul into it, that is soul food. So whether it is a Boston Cream Pie that you’ve taken your time, you’ve sat down and you made it from scratch, that’s your soul food. When you look at the definition of it, it’s a term actually that came around about the 1960s to describe African American Southern cooking, but the actuality of soul food is, it is the origins of Southern food, because Southern food started out with plantation cooking and you have to look at that and then you look at soul food as being fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread. Which commercially it is, but a lot of African Americans will say if you’re cooking something from the heart and soul, that’s your soul food.

I absolutely love fried chicken and I love crawfish. It’s hard to get crawfish here in Atlanta like I could get it in Louisiana, but definitely those two items. Any way you got em’, I’ll take em’.

On Some Resources to Learn More about Southern Cuisine:

So my grandmother wrote a cookbook. It’s an older one, Mama Dip’s Kitchen. It’s a great basic book. The basics, she’s got a good forward in there about her life. A huge one is Mastering the Art of Southern Cooking and that’s by Nathalie Dupree and Cynthia Graubart. Nathalie Dupree is the grand dame of Southern cooking. She’s actually been nominated for Who’s Who James Beard Award this year and that book was nominated for one of James Beard’s Awards. So I definitely would say that book, it’s like 730 pages of Southern food and it’s talking about Southern food.

There’s so many. Charleston Receipts is another one, that’s a Junior League cookbook. It’s an old school book from Charleston. A friend of mine, Adrian Miller, he wrote a book called Soul Food. So that’s a great book to read about the origins of soul food, it won a James Beard Award too.

On Her Blog:

My mom actually never was a cook, and she mentioned to me one day she was reading someone’s blog and she sent it to me. She was like, “Hey, you know what? You should do this.” So when I started out, I just kind of was doing the recipes. I used to email my mom recipes that I would cook and she would try it. So I would just type up a recipe and it’d be a really short little passage or whatever.

Actually, what kind of turned it around for me was, I went to a food blog conference and it just was everything I didn’t want to be. And that kind of made me turn my back towards what I thought was cool and just kind of go with what was actually me. I hate to say that, it’s awful, but it’s just the reality.

I used a different camera, the camera I was using to take pictures of my kids, before I was using my iPhone. You know, I started out kind of, staging the food, but that really wasn’t me either, so now it’s more just taking the pictures as I go and just how I cook it, because that’s really what it’s about to me. If I could make elaborately beautiful layouts of food, then I would do it, but I can’t, so I’m not even going to try.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t. I used to watch Top Chef.

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

So I’m obsessed with Two Red Bowls and Lady and Pups. Those two blogs are amazing. I guess from learning about different types of Asian style cooking, just how they incorporate different things, I love that.

The Bitter Southerner, if you like to read. They post a kind of journal entry every Tuesday and it’s something that’s about the South. Sometimes it upsets people and sometimes it’s beautiful, but I would definitely recommend reading The Bitter Southerner.

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

What makes me happy on Instagram, Megan from Take A Megabite, because her food is so happy with the animals and the different flags. So definitely Take A Megabite on Instagram. She definitely makes me happy with all her photos.

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

The most treasured item I have is my grandmother’s apron. It’s in a lot of the photos. My maternal grandmother passed away a few years ago, but she was a history teacher back in the ’40s, ’50s. She and my grandfather were huge civil rights activists. I learned so much from her as far as just African American history and just things that they don’t teach in school, things that you wouldn’t even know, just having to have been in her presence, learning how to make cakes and along with the struggles of the past, and her apron was always what she wore. So that is probably my most prized possession in my kitchen.

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

I like beets and I used to just be extremely anti-beet. The rest of the people in my family, not so much, or in my house, but I’m trying to slowly get them into it. I definitely would say beets.

I think that when they were made for me, they weren’t made right perhaps, but gosh, this was probably about ten years ago and someone made these little appetizers with goat cheese and they had pickled beets on the top. And it sounds disgusting, right, but it was so good, and I think then on, I’d say, “Well, you know what? Maybe I can find a way to make it better.” In the South, we pickle everything.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Joy of Cooking is a good one. Right now, I’m kind of on a baking kick. The Bread Bible is one I’ve been using. Definitely those two have been helping me.

So there’s a chef in Kentucky named Edward Lee, and he’s American or he’s Korean-American and his book is Smoke & Pickles and it’s a great… I hate to say fusion because I don’t like that word. It’s a combination of Southern and Asian food, and he’s just done an impeccable job. It’s an older book but I’ve been kind of cooking my way through that just lately. There’s so many. I have a lot of cookbooks but definitely those.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Right now, Rihanna. I won’t say the name of this song because it’s explicit. I’m a big hip hop fan. We listen to a lot of rap music. Kendrick Lamar and Drake are really kind of on repeat. They make me want to cook. I listen to that all day.

On Keeping Posted with Erika:

I do better on Instagram. I’m on Twitter, and then Southern Soufflé on Facebook.

011: Jaden Hair: How She Turned Her Love of Food Into A Thriving Business

March 11, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Steamy Kitchen

Steamy Kitchen is a family food blog, it’s actually a lot more than that. With nearly a thousand recipes, tons of cooking tips and how-to videos, not to mention three cookbooks, Jaden’s family blog is the family business.

Jaden is also the co-founder of food blog forum, an annual event for food bloggers and she’s been featured in numerous best-sellers including one of my favorites, Chris Guillebeau’s The $100 Startup.

I’m so excited to have Jaden Hair from Steamy Kitchen joining me on the show today.

On The Idea Behind Steamy Kitchen:

I grew up in North Platte, Nebraska.

So I’m Chinese. I’m from Hong Kong, I was born in Hong Kong, like the food capital of the world.

And when I was four we moved, we immigrated to the United States and we ended up in the middle of nowhere, it’s like the smallest of all small towns called North Platte Nebraska, and we lived there until I was 10 years old.

We were in this little strange food area where it’s all about beef, and cattle and mid-western foods, there were no Asian restaurants nearby that rivaled–came close to anything that I was experiencing in Hong Kong or anywhere in Asia.

We had to drive all the way to Denver, Colorado to go to the Asian market which was like hours and hours away, and so that’s the kind of environment that I grew up.

Then we moved to California luckily, and I got exposed to amazing types of all different types of food not just Asian food.

Long story short, when I got married, my husband and I decided to move to a small town in Florida because it was near the ocean, it was near the Gulf of Mexico, it was affordable, unlike in California where you can’t even afford a one-bedroom apartment, and we wanted to start a family so we moved to the small town.

When we got here, we bought a home, and I looked around like, “Oh my gosh where are my Asian restaurants? Where is my Chinese restaurant? Where are my markets? And I just realized I need to do something about this because it was just – I was getting homesick.

It turns out that right by, right in town, there was this restaurant called Bangkok Tokyo.

I went in waiting for my to-go order, and I overheard this lady sitting at the sushi bar with her beautifully manicured nails and her Gucci handbag and she’s like, “Oh, I’m having Sushi at the Chinese restaurant, come join me.” I’m thinking, “Sushi at the Chinese restaurant.” This is so weird, this is so strange.

First of all this is Bangkok Tokyo and you know Bangkok and Tokyo are not in China. I got really upset, and my husband’s like, “Okay, you can get upset about it, but we’re not moving, so you’ve got to find something to do about it.”

So I started teaching cooking classes at a local cooking school, and I started teaching people the difference between fish sauce and soy sauce, and the difference between Laotian food and Chinese food.

It wasn’t just all oriental recipes or oriental food and not all stir-fries and sweet and sour with a goopy sauce.

That’s how the blog started, it’s been eight years now, almost exactly eight years old.

On How Steamy Kitchen Evolved Into a Business:

Within three months of starting the food blog I said, “You know, I would love to make this a full-time business.”

If I was going to create a business, this would be it, and back then eight years ago, blogs weren’t businesses and there was no such thing as social media.

There was no such thing as creating an online business, very few and far between. So I said, “Well, there’s got to be a way.” What if I apply basic business principles and marketing savviness into a food blog and let’s see where I take this, so that’s how I started steamykitchen.com as an actual business.

I designed it specifically as a family business and within six months I got a book deal, I was offered a book deal, so it happened really fast, it was combination of one, I’m awesome, I’m a business and marketing rockstar. I know my stuff, I know how to sell, I know how to create and design a business, that was part of the equation.

The other part of the equation was just great luck in timing. This was right when the blogs were just starting to come up, so I was one of the early ones.

On Designing Steamy Kitchen as a Business:

A lot of people create business plans and when you start a business everyone always says, “Create a business plan, you need a business plan, a marketing plan and a financial plan,” but in all honesty those are the must boring documents in the world.

Business plans are meant for you just to put your thoughts down and not meant to really inspire you. I’m a very visual person and I need something a little more inspiring than a 49-page business plan.

What we did instead was we went back to our days when we used to do Tony Robbins, actually my husband used to work for Tony Robbins for like seven years. He traveled around the world with Tony Robbins and was his lead trainer for the three-day events. So, we went back to the Tony Robbins days and started creating a vision board, cut out pictures and magazines, cooking magazines, business magazines and created the business plan out of that and framed it, hung it on a wall and that was in front of me every single day.

It was like, you see something like that, that’s so inspiring, so specific, that evokes emotion of wanting to ignite my passion of cooking and being able to create a wonderful family business out of something I love to do.

On Her Love of Cooking and Feeding People:

I’m fearless in the kitchen, I love to play and experiment and that’s part of it. Cooking to me is not just about following a recipe, one, two, three but, cooking to me is about looking for a recipe that serves as the basis and the foundation that I can play off of.

It’s a playful spirit, it’s fearless, being fearless, being absolutely playful and being okay to fail. If the recipe doesn’t work, I had fun trying but I also know next time how to fix it. That’s one part of it.

The other part of it was honestly in college after moving to my first apartment, I went to UCLA, and after the first year, I moved to an apartment with three other roommates and I was the cook. That was my job.

I would cook for everybody and they would go do groceries, they would buy the groceries, they would clean the apartment and all I had to do was cook? Really? How fun, right?

I made my way through three years of college just cooking for my roommates and friends.

Tips For Those Cooking Asian Food for the First Time:

I think there are some basic, basic recipes that just with a couple of pantry ingredients that you can buy, store in the pantry or store in the refrigerator, and you can make so many dishes.

I call these four condiments, I call them masters of Asian flavor. One of them is soy sauce of course, the other one’s oyster sauce, there’s fish sauce and then there’s miso paste. With those four ingredients you can make hundreds and hundreds of dishes.

Sometimes it can be intimidating when there are different types of condiments and ingredients that you’re not familiar with, but if you pair these four basic condiments that you can store in your refrigerator for months and months and months, and then with what I like to call the Chinese trinity, the holy trinity of garlic, green onion and ginger, you get the really amazing fresh Asian flavor.

What I also like to do is to take familiar dishes. Everyone knows what beef broccoli is, a lot of people know what sweet and sour chicken is, how do I take that, some flavor that they are already familiar with, and create a recipe that’s so easy with limited number of ingredients that use fresh ingredients, vibrant vegetables and make it so delicious at home.

Another way is if I’m trying to introduce something that’s a new ingredient like a preserved radish, I’ll make the recipe so super, super simple maybe three or four ingredients at the most, so that you’re not too confused. The only variable is this one ingredient that I have never played with, but I know what asparagus is, and I know what broccoli is and so I’ll try to make sure that I don’t overwhelm anybody with too many variables or too many new things.

On Her Cookbooks:

The first book The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook, that was when I first started the blog.

I got a book offer within six months of starting the blog and it was amazing. Each of these big books they take about two years to produce, one whole year for writing and testing the recipes, photography and creating all the content, then a whole other year for editing, layout, design, printing, shipping, and distribution. And then tack on another six months for promotion and media and so it’s a lot of work.

I did that first book with this small publisher called Tuttle publishing, and they’re amazing to work with, they’re very small, extremely focused on Asian cookbooks, and that was a fun experience.

The second cookbook I did with a big publisher called Ten Speed Press, and I had an agent and you know it was a pretty big production.

That was fun too, but the e-book I decided to do because we live in the social media world, we live in the blog world. If I wanted to post something, I’ll write it and then post it tomorrow. It was really hard for me to grasp a lead time of two years. It’s really hard for me to create something and have the patience to see it through and keep up the enthusiasm for something that’s taking two years, two and a half years to create.

I decided I’m going to try doing an e-book and it took me about a month to produce it. Within a month it was up for sale. I think I put in 15 recipes for Chinese takeouts that were made healthier, made more delicious, and that you can make at home. I plan on doing a lot more.

On Appearing in Best-Selling Books:

I got Tim Ferriss‘ 4-Hour Chef book, that giant book, and I had this book sitting on my desk and it’s so big, it’s one of those books where you’re like, “Oh I don’t have time to read it now, I don’t have the time to start it now, I’ll do it later, I’ll do it later.” It literally sat on my desk for six months.

I finally said, it’s been on my desk for six months and I should just open this book up.

I open this book, I look down, there’s my name. I had no idea I was mentioned in his 4-Hour Chef book. I don’t really remember how he got in touch with me, his team asked me to contribute a recipe for the 4-hour body cookbook that was an e-book and that was a long time ago, and it’s also funny once I saw my name in the 4-Hour Chef I’m like, “Hey, I remember I was mentioned or I contributed a recipe for 4-hour body. Maybe I should look that up and see if I can find it and it wasn’t until just recently that I said, “Oh yes, now I remember, this is what I contributed.” I’d never even seen it.

With Chris‘ book, I’ve known Chris for quite a while now.

I first got onto his website, we met on Twitter, and this was in the early days of Twitter. I’m a big fan of what he does, his work. I was hosting another food blogging conference in Austin that piggy backed south by southwest and Chris was there. I’m like, “Hey come to our party, we’re going to have an after party, just come, I’d love to meet you.” So he brought Johnathan Fields to my party and we just spent a few minutes together because we had a whole ton of people there, but that was the first time I got to meet him in person.

When he went on his book tour, the past two book tours he came to this area, did the Tampa area in Florida, and I just hung out with him. I had dinner with him, he interviewed me for his book, which is an awesome book. The $100 Startup is one of my favorite books of all times.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

None. I really, really do not watch cooking shows especially because my world is cooking, I can’t do cooking 24/7.

The only one I’ve actually sat down and watched was The Pioneer Woman Show on the Food Network but I was at her house watching her show.

That was the only time I was there. It was Nathan’s 10th birthday at her house and I think it was right after we got a massage in the morning and then turned on the TV and there’s Ree and I was like, “Oh, that’s this kitchen right here, it was kind of weird.

That was the last cooking show I watched and that was probably two years ago.

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

Some of my favorite sites that I go to regularly. I just rely on all the time, simplyrecipes.com is one. Elise is one of my dear, dear friends and she started her food blog probably close to over 10 years ago. Her recipes are tried and true. If you want to know a recipe for green beans or roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, that is a site to go to. If I’m looking for a recipe I’ll go to her site.

And then there are a couple of new ones that I’m just enthralled with. One of them is called Lady and her Pup, I’m probably saying that wrong- Lady and Pups-an angry food blog, she’s Asian as well, she’s Chinese and oh my gosh she’s absolutely amazing.

She’s got a recipe right now for Sesame noodle salad, the photography just draws you in. I’ve never met her, but I love looking at her food. Those are two that I really love.

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

The funny thing is, I used to be Miss Social Media.

I started Twitter early on and I used to be all over social media and if there was a food conference and they needed somebody to talk about business and social media, they always called me and said, “Oh, could you talk about this?” I’m like, “Absolutely I can talk about social media all day.”

And then about a year ago I decided, I quit. I quit social media, actually I quit Twitter with like almost 135,000 followers. I decided, you know this is not for me. I’d rather spend time with my kids than do social media.

With Pinterest, with social media now, it’s more for me as a marketing tool, rather than a consumption tool. I use those as business tools, I think I’m on the computer entirely too long already. So I decided to quit Twitter, and use Pinterest if I need inspiration for some decorating idea.

I use Pinterest to market Steamy Kitchen. They are our number two referrer for Steamy Kitchen so I use them to make sure that people know how to pin and can unpin the photos.

I’ve never done Instagram and with Facebook it’s more like friends and family and private groups, so I’m in several private groups and I host a private group for food bloggers for coaching but that’s really all I do.

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

It would be my homemade Sriracha. It’s so easy. You could make it in a blender and you can just leave it just like that. Or, you can just put it in a crock pot or even just on the stove top for 20 minutes and the result is this rich incredibly complex bright flavor that you can never get off the shelf.

So I would say make your own, it’s so, so, so easy.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

That’s a tough one. I’m going through my refrigerator right now in my mind, I’m going through my pantry right now.

Okay, right now it’s not necessarily an ingredient but it’s something I always have to have in my kitchen and that’s homemade beef jerky.

I’m not a big breakfast person, and I’m not a big snack person, but when I get hungry, I have to eat something. We’ve been making our own beef jerky at home, it’s always there in the kitchen everyday and it’s healthy. I cannot live without that.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Cookbooks with photos, like I said before, I’m a very visual person and I don’t necessarily read but I scan really well. I look at pictures and when I’ve got a moment, I will take just an armful of cookbooks from my library, sit down on the couch and just flip through them.

The photos just really inspire me and make me happy.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

There’s this movie called Big Night, and it’s not even about Asain cooking, it’s Italian.

It’s a story of how these two brothers came to the United States and started this famous restaurant and it’s a must see for anyone who loves Italian food or loves movies.

That album, the soundtrack from Big Night is my favorite because it’s fun and it’s lively. It’s got lots of instruments in it, makes you want to sing and dance, and it’s just a beautiful beautiful soundtrack, so that’s one of my favorites.

Keep Posted on Jaden:

Steamykitchen.com and then out of all the social media that I do, the only one I really do check is Steamy Kitchen on Facebook, it’s a Facebook fan-page. I post on there maybe once a day, once every other day but usually I will check in there.

I respond to any email that comes in, we have an email newsletter that I send out once a week, and I love it when people reply and I get to know some of the readers.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Katie:

On Starting Her Blog:

On Her Curiosity Around Food:

On Her Food Heroes:

On Cooking as an Exercise in Patience:

On a Dish She Finds Challenging and Requires Patience:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Hannah:

On Her Blog:

On Her Interest in Cooking:

On Her Cooking Influences:

On Working With Her Husband on the Blog:

On Being Oregonian at Heart:

On the Difference in Food Culture Between Washington, DC and Oregon:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Laicie:

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 Growing Up Around Food and Cooking:

On Southern Culture:

On Southern Food:

On Some Resources to Learn More about Southern Cuisine:

On Her Blog:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Erika:

On The Idea Behind Steamy Kitchen:

On How Steamy Kitchen Evolved Into a Business:

On Designing Steamy Kitchen as a Business:

On Her Love of Cooking and Feeding People:

Tips For Those Cooking Asian Food for the First Time:

On Her Cookbooks:

On Appearing in Best-Selling Books:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Jaden:

Have Jaden's Special Dish (That’s Her Mom’s Recipe) Sent To You Now: