Molly Yeh | The Dinner Special podcast

132: Luisa Brimble: Photography, Food and Relationships

July 20, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Luisa Brimble

Luisa is a food and lifestyle photographer, based in Sydney, Australia, who strives to capture images that exude warmth, simplicity, honesty, and connection. Her work has been published in numerous print and online publications, including Kinfolk magazine, Frankie magazine, and Food & Wine magazine, just to name a few. When she is not photographing, Luisa is collaborating with other creatives to hold food photography and styling workshops.

I am so happy to have Luisa Brimble of lbrimble.com joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Luisa’s.)

On Her Photography Journey:

(Photo by Hugo Sharp)

I basically started at being a wedding and portrait photographer. When Kinfolk magazine came along in 2011, that’s when I fell in love with the whole gathering and all the food. I started shooting food and mainly gatherings. It basically started when I started doing the Kinfolk gatherings in Australia and organizing workshops here and there. Since then, it just fell in and then I started shooting for Broadsheet in Sydney. They’re like the guide to where you want to eat around Sydney and Melbourne. They didn’t pay me a lot of money, but I actually did say to people that I think it’s like baptism by fire. If you wanted to get your foot in the door in photography, you do this stuff to get your name out there. I would not have gotten my first cookbook photography, without the experience of working with Broadsheet.

This is really amazing, and kind of story that I actually tell people every time I do workshops. This is the very first cookbook that I photographed, Community by Arthur Street Kitchen cookbook. Actually, I met Hetty McKinnon. This is the first cover. There’s only 1,000 copies of this being printed. I think in a space of three weeks or a month or something like that, the book was sold out, and then it was picked up by a publisher called Plum Books. This is the second edition of the book, and I think it’s about 60,000 copies now that’s been printed in Australia. So we photographed the cookbook, and her second cookbook in New York, which is called Neighbourhood. It’s actually going to be released in September, which is really exciting.

Anyway, because of the Community cookbook, because of love, I said to Hetty when I first met her photographing for Broadsheet, and we just started talking. We hit it off. We talked about…and I think the one common thread that we talked about is because we love Kinfolk. I loved it, and she loved the aesthetic, too, at the time. We were talking about it and then all of a sudden she said, “I really want to publish my own cookbook.” I said, “My God! I would love to shoot it. I will shoot it, I will shoot it for love.” There was money involved when we photographed this. It was both our time, her time and she paid for all the ingredients and her time cooking it. Anyway, I think when the book was released and it was sold out, it was just the biggest opportunity that I’ve ever had.

Then all of a sudden I started shooting. I shot a cookbook for Penguin, Lantern. It was one of the MasterChef guys. I’ve never been in such a legit photo shoot, where we had a stylist and we had props. It was an amazing experience. Since then, that’s when I just said, “No, I’m not shooting weddings anymore and I just want to concentrate on food.” So since then, I’ve just basically done cookbooks, shooting cookbooks and shooting food or shooting for small businesses which I love. Just doing lots of personal projects.

On Cooking and Food:

I could never be a food blogger, and the only reason for that is because I can’t concentrate on doing two things. I would definitely prefer to be behind the lens. This is why I was so glad I met Sarah Glover because I kind of could blog through her because she cooks all the food and I shoot it. I always wanted to have a food blog, but now everything is just that way. But I do cook at home, but I can’t create recipes. I get inspired, but it’s only to share around the house. If I do have a recipe book in front of me and I don’t like one of the ingredients, I would usually just swap it or kind of change a little bit of the method.

On Hosting Styling and Photography Workshops:

I think the first workshop was kind of initiated by the fact that I just wanted to collaborate with other people. My first ever workshop would’ve probably had been with Beth Kirby, Local Milk, which I organized here in Sydney at Glenmore House. That’s probably about three years ago now, and we did probably about three workshops. So she came back to Sydney. Since then Aran Goyoaga from Cannelle et Vanille invited me to teach a workshop in Seattle, which is like, “What? Are you serious? It’s like, Aran. Why would she even ask me to come to Seattle? Then since then, we’re like…I collaborate a lot with Sophie Hansen, Local Is Lovely, because they have a big property where she grew up with her mom. She’s got this property about two hours’ drive from Sydney, and she actually teaches art classes as well.

But it actually accommodates probably about 15 people, and we were able to do the workshops there. That’s how I started doing a collab. The one thing that Sydney is really hard to kind of organize a workshop for is finding the right venue. It’s really hard because it’s very expensive. By the time you organize a workshop and work out all the logistics and the people and the food, and the scenes and the props and everything, to really make money off workshops, you should be charging about $3,000. But we were charging half of that, especially for a Local Is Lovely workshop. Because, obviously, we didn’t have to pay so much with the accommodation, and that really helped a lot.

It’s basically giving people the chance of going to a workshop that is so affordable, and it’s three days. I like that workshop, because I feel like if we do two and a half days, we’re kind of giving people a lot more value for their money. And it’s really nice to get to know everyone. It’s like I say this a lot to people, I meet the next person I’m collaborating with at a workshop. I’ve met so many already that’ve been to a second shooting with me or I mentored them and all that sort of stuff. I do a little bit of a workshop now with Annabelle Hickson of The Dailys where it’s actually 10 hours’ drive. It’s all the way down to the country, 10 hours’ drive from Sydney, but yet, people still go there.

I think one part of why we do workshops is, this isn’t money making. We’re not making money off it. We have a big team of people and only because we like to hang out with people that we really like working with. I think it’s all about relationships as well. So collaborating with a lot of people is what I love doing best. This is why workshops happen. I only have two left this year. Next month we have Molly Yeh coming. This is with Local is Lovely with Sophie Hansen. So we’re now in full swing to kind of plan what we’re going to be doing next year in 2017. I think the plan is, hopefully, fingers crossed, there will be workshops in Europe. And that’s the plan. So we’re working on that.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Chef’s Table! But I do love the local ones, the Australian local ones. The ones that I really love is, I know there’s River Cottage and there is also Mathew Evans’ show, Gourmet Farmer. Gourmet Farmer is my favorite show.

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

I love following Hugo and Elsa and Local Is Lovely, obviously Sophie Hansen. I love her food blog. My Darling Lemon Thyme, obviously. Also Cook Republic. I also do love Local Milk, Lean & Meadow is great. Matters of the Belly, obviously, Noha. There are so many out there. I think once you can go from one place, it just spreads out. Those are some of my definite favorite blogs.

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

Number one is Lisa Marie Corso. She’s the editor or managing editor of The Design Files. I know it’s more interior. It’s not really food. But her personal Instagram makes me laugh all the time. I love it. Just really good with the way, with her words and all that. The Dailys, really beautiful aesthetics and country life and all the things that she shares. Amelia Fullarton, amazing work. Again, it’s not food. I find my inspiration not necessarily with food, and I think I feel like Instagram is so bombarded with so much food now.

I just want to get away from so much of that, and then follow people who are actually amazing at capturing the light and the shadows and all that. Saskia Wilson, she does fashion. She does a lot of fashion, but again, I follow them because of the way they work with the lines and the elements of design. Oli Sansom, again amazing portrait photography. Tim Coulson because of his family and the way he just shares his life and love of life.

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

I would probably say this one plate. The plate that…when my mother-in-law passed away probably about five years ago now when they sold everything, and they sold the property, and I said the only thing that I want from that house is the dining, everyday plates. Whenever we come and visit, an everyday plate. I think there was only one plate that was left. It was rescued and that was it. It’s this really simple floral, and I love eating from it.

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

Brussel sprouts. I’ve never really been introduced to that, only quite recently, actually. But Hetty McKinnon made me love it. I think when we were shooting for her cookbook, she made me look at it differently. It’s such a bitter vegetable, but she just put it in an oven, roasted it and comes out and it’s just really amazing. It just brings out the sweetness in it, sweet and bitter kind of thing.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Oh my gosh. Nigel Slater. When I buy cookbooks, though, I only really look at it for photos. Sometimes I do read…I read the recipes and just go through. I really like the way he just explains it. It’s just straight to the point. No beating around the bush, simplicity. I like it, just simple. It doesn’t have to be complicated. This is A Table in the Orchard by Michelle Crawford. I love it because it’s all about her stories and also her favorite recipes. It’s a beautiful book. Again, can’t go past Arthur Street Kitchen and Emiko Davies’ cookbook, Florentine. She now lives in Italy. And yes, there are some amazing, really great recipes there. Some of the pastas and some of the really nice cakes and biscuits. Again, also photographed by one of my favorite photographers, which is Lauren Bamford.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

You know what? I don’t have a favorite album or a favorite theme, but I do listen to Spotify and then I put like a playlist on the 80s. Just listen to the 80s music. You know what? When I’m cooking, I actually don’t listen to music a lot. But I listen to podcasts like, The Dinner Special podcast. Boom!

On Keeping Posted with Luisa:

Definitely Instagram. I’m always just posting. If not, Snapchat. Same name, Luisa Brimble.

125: Posie Harwood: A Career Cultivated from Growing Up on a Farm

June 1, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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600 Acres

Posie grew up on a farm that is just over 600 acres where here family had access to the freshest of milk, eggs, and harvests from their well-attended garden. On her blog, 600 Acres, is where she shares some of her memories as well as the new things she is cooking and trying in places far from her home. Posie had worked as a food writer and editor for Tasting Table, Food52, King Arthur Flour and she contributes to Sift Magazine.

I am so pumped to have Posie Harwood of 600 Acres here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Posie’s.)

On Growing Up on a 600 Acre Farm:

I look back and I think how lucky I was because we grew up drinking raw milk and my mom made everything from scratch. We didn’t have chips or any of that stuff. But I never felt like, “Oh man, I feel so deprived.”

When I got older and people started talking about organic food and all that kind of stuff, to me, I always thought, “What else is there?” That’s what I’d always known. Now I realize how lucky that is. Some people have to learn that or seek it out. So, it was a really cool experience. I think it is responsible for what I ended up doing.

On Her Interest in Cooking:

My mom, she cooked every night and we always had family dinner, but she is an incredible baker. She always made bread for scratch. Just watching her, I learned a lot of the things I’d love to make and cook and bake. And I also think I just watched her have that natural rhythm in a household and picked up on that.

I never went to culinary school. I didn’t start working in food until a little while after college. So, I just always knew that was what I wanted to do. And not even what I wanted to do. I just felt like, “What else is there?” That is just in me. I feel I don’t have a choice. I have to.

On Leaving the Farm:

I’d spend a decent amount of time in spaces away from home. And then, going to college. I went to college in New Jersey actually and then I moved to Manhattan. I think New York took a lot of getting used to for me. I am really not a city person. I love New York. I think it is an amazing place to live and there is lots of food.

But I have always missed open space and fresh air. I know I won’t stay in New York forever. That’s always been a hard thing to just get used to. It is a pro and a con. It is an exciting, huge place. But sometimes I want to speak to no one for the next four hours, but you can’t when you are in New York. It is an adjustment. It is always a little bit of a balance. Now I work for a company in Vermont. So, fortunately, I get to spend a lot of time up there, which is a really nice balance.

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

I guess I would have to say baking is my one main love. I feel like the first thing that ever really made me excited about food was baking bread. As I said, my mom, we never had store bought bread. She makes everything from scratch. My favorite thing is just white sandwich bread that she makes. It is the most delicious.

When it would come out of the oven we had all my sisters waiting just like rabid animals and she would cut off the loaf, the heel, and give it to one of us and we spread it with butter, which we always would have because we had cows. And she would churn it. So it was this really bright yellow Jersey cow butter and she packed it in these little ramekins. So, she would take a big swipe and put it on the bread and eat that.

That is the ultimate, that is the best thing. Now, every time when I bake bread, which is a lot, I am always making just that white sandwich bread loaf. And I am like, “Ah, this is heaven.” The thing is it is so easy to make. I think a lot of people are intimidated by yeast bread, which I feel like it is the kind of thing if you make yourself do once, it is totally magical and you realize, “Oh, okay, that is actually easier than so many recipes cooking- wise.” I mean, what are there? There’s like three, four ingredients. It just is all a matter of touch and just getting used to what it feels like, bread dough, and how it should feel.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Top Chef. I’m obsessed with Top Chef. And The Great British Baking Show. Also obsessed.

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

I love Smitten Kitchen. I love Food52, former employee, I have to say that. I also love The King Arthur Blog where I work now because it is incredibly informative, super good step-by-step baking. If you ever want to learn how to bake, or frost a cake, or make sourdough, check it out.

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

I love following Molly Yeh.

Funny, playful, great flavors, love her farm life snap shots.

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

Treasured item probably my stand mixer, I guess I have to say. It is bright red and I love it, and it does so much for me.

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

Mushrooms. I used to hate mushrooms and now I eat them all the time. I eat scrambled eggs and mushrooms twice a week for dinner.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Definitely the Joy of Cooking. That is a huge one. Always referencing it. And probably, I have the Cook’s Illustrated Best Baking Cook Book. That is another go to with everything I bake.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I really like cooking to reggae music. I listen to Bob Marley a lot when I cook because it just makes me want to dance around.

On Keeping Posted with Posie:

Definitely my blog, which is 600acres.com and Instagram. I am always Instagraming twice a day. So you can always check out what I am doing in my kitchen there.

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.

083: Michelle Lopez: Learning to Bake at High Altitude

October 7, 2015 by Gabriel 6 Comments

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Hummingbird High

Michelle started her blog in 2011 when she moved to Denver, Colorado. She is a self-professed stress baker and believes in using simple ingredients to create beautiful, delicious food that is unfussy. Michelle strives to create recipes on her blog that are as accessible as possible while occasionally indulging in more challenging experiments. Hummingbird High was a finalist in the 2013 and 2015 Saveur Blog Awards for Best Baking and Desserts Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Michelle Lopez of Hummingbird High on the show today.

(*All images below are Michelle’s.)

On Her Blog:

I started my blog a few years ago, back in 2011. I just moved to Denver where I didn’t really know anybody. And I’d spent most of my life basically living an hour away from the ocean at most. So I was like, “Okay, this is a new city. I don’t really know anybody. My job is kind of stressful. So I’m just going to spend the weekend baking.”

I pulled out one of my favorite cookbooks and just followed the recipe to a T and then everything terrible happened. It was a recipe for cupcakes actually. Vanilla cupcakes. And I made this recipe probably 20 times. It was the sort of thing that’s like my default recipe. I could probably make it in my sleep without the instructions. And I just followed it to a T in Denver and literally nothing worked. I pulled them out of the oven and they looked like puddles of goop. It was insane. So I did some research on this because I was like, “What is going on?” And it turns out that because Denver is high up and that affects the way you cook things, water actually boils at a lower temperature because you’re higher up in altitude and because there’s less air pressure there you don’t need as many leaveners, you don’t need as much baking powder or baking soda or something.

So, you actually have to do all these alterations before you start making any recipe because most recipes are for sea level. And I had no idea, so I was like, “This is kind of interesting. I’m going to start baking more and trying this out for myself and experimenting and seeing what my standard recipes look like but in high altitude and then kind of adapting them for that.”

On Baking at High Altitude:

So baking bread was something that I never mastered because I was only in Denver six months but yeast is like an entirely different beast. And I think you have to have. So how yeast works is basically you activate it with warm water and it comes alive and then that chemical reaction is what causes the bread to rise. And usually that takes a couple of hours, but in high altitude you basically just have that time because the air just doesn’t have any of the same resistance down at sea level. It’s crazy. So I’d say that’s the big one that’s insane.

Definitely temperature because you are at high altitude the air is thinner so things tend to dry out faster and tend to cook quicker. So always shorten your cooking time I’d say is the primary step. And then probably lessen your leaveners. Those are the two big secrets to high altitude baking.

I do think everything is really adaptable. That’s why people live in the mountains. It’s pretty and it shouldn’t be an inconvenience. So I was pretty lucky in that, it took a couple of tries for some recipes, and like I said, bread was kind of my big nemesis. I still never really nailed that one down. I do really believe that you can adapt anything to high altitude.

Cookies tend to work better. I have no idea why, probably because they don’t have that much leavener to begin with and because the sugar cooks quicker, they end up chewier. It’s really good. I have no idea why, but that’s probably the main thing that I’m like, “Okay, all of my cookies here seem good.” I don’t know if that’s in my head or what.

On Learning How to Bake:

I was baking before this but I definitely credit my baking through the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook as what really taught me how baking works. Before that, I was just looking up random recipes online or I was using some box cake mixes which now that I think about that I shudder. But yeah, the cool thing about cooking through a cookbook, especially one like the Hummingbird Bakery, which I highly recommend is they basically have a couple of master cupcakes recipes and then add flavorings and everything at different stages so you start to understand why things are done in the order that they are when you’re following a recipe and how ingredients really interact with each other, depending on what quantities they added and why they would take some away if they add something in them. So stuff like that. It was really helpful.

The Hummingbird Bakery, some background, is actually a pretty popular bakery in London and it’s funny because their whole thing is American baked goods so it’s like this weird middle British take on American goods. And one of my best friends, he and I met when I was in college, he was an exchange student from England and he sent me their cookbook and he was like, “My gosh, I saw this cookbook and I just thought of you.” Because I used to make a lot of cupcakes in college and I was like, “That’s sweet of him.” And then a few months later, I went to visit him and that was his first priority to take me to that bakery. And I was like, “Okay, this is really great.” We don’t get to see each other that often because he lives out in London so it was a nice way to just keep that connection alive.

Once I finished (baking through the cookbook) I was like, “Okay, well, I baked a ton of cupcakes, but I really wish there had been other things too like cheesecake is kind of a different beast too.” So yeah, there was a little bit of disappointment there. That’s when I really started branching out and using the Internet to find bloggers and other cooking sources that I thought would help out.

On Where She Turns for Inspiration:

I have so many go-to sources it’s actually a little bit intense. I love Food52 for basic solid recipes that I know that will work because I’m pretty sure they test almost everything that’s on their site. I love anything that Food 52 features. And I have a handful of go-to bloggers that I really like. Molly Yeh for cakes. She is incredible. I am a big fan of hers. And right now I’m really into Fix Feast Flair. She just won Saveur’s Best New Voice this year. And anything that comes out of her, that she publishes on her blog I’m like, “Why isn’t this in front of me, I want to eat this right now.” Those are probably my big two.

On Which Cookbook She Would Cook through Today:

That’s a tough one because again, my cookbook collection is a little out-of-control, but the one that I’ve always kind of flipped through whenever I need inspiration is probably the Mast Brothers Chocolate Cookbook. So what it is it’s just like a series of recipes, they even have savory ones. But all just features chocolate and I’m such a big fan of chocolate and it would be interesting to approach learning how to cook something just through one ingredient. So I think that would be really cool.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t watch a lot of TV but I do watch one cooking show, it’s called The Great British Bake Off. It just recently started airing on PBS in the U.S. But I’ve been streaming past seasons that were only available in England and it’s so good and it teaches you so much about baking. It’s just like this reality TV show where they take bakers from all around the U.K. and get them to bake traditional British desserts. And there’s the judges and everything. It’s great. It’s so good.

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

This is like choosing between my children or somebody because I read a ton of food blogs. But right now I’m really into some of the smaller blogs that haven’t gotten as much attention yet. So I’d say I really love Renee Kemps for her photography. She’s just the nicest person in real life. She’s so sweet. And so I’m probably pronouncing this wrong but Le Jus D’orange. It means orange juice in French. It’s this girl Betty in Boston, she’s Chinese, she makes a lot of dishes that her mom used to make and a lot of fusion dishes, too. She’s awesome, too.

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

Okay. That’s another tough one because I follow so many people. And fun fact actually, I’m being an old person my Snapchat doesn’t work on my phone so I don’t actually have Snapchat so we can eliminate that.

Pinterest, I follow so many people, but there’s this 17-year-old girl who I think lives in Southern California. Her name is… My gosh, what is her name? But she has a blog, too, It’s called Lace and Lilacs and she’s going to go study photography in Paris and for a 17-year-old she has such a good eye. She’s always pining such beautiful photos, not even just food but of flowers, people so she’s a big inspiration. And on Instagram I really like Coco Cake Land who posts these really cute Instagrams of cakes frosted-like animals that are so cute. She does a lot of tiger cakes and really cute, highly recommend following. And Linda Lomelino is the other one on Instagram who is amazing. She does cakes as well but hers is kind of the opposite direction from Cocoa Cake Land’s. Hers are just really pretty, classic cakes that are adorned with natural flowers.

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

Most unusual I’d say is, I have an office label maker in my kitchen, I’m kind of a neat freak when it comes to the kitchen and I have all my ingredients in glass jars that are easily accessible. And my handwriting sucks so I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to get an official label maker so I can label these,” and it looks great. So that’s probably the weirdest item that’s in my kitchen. And I use it a surprising amount but that might just be me being insane, so there’s that. And I’d say the most treasured item is probably my KitchenAid mixer.

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

Another really good one cause I used to be actually a picky eater. So, cinnamon. Actually that’s kind of weird and boring I know. And it’s a weird controversial thing to say cinnamon because it’s in everything but I used to really hate that fake cinnamon taste from Red Hots and cinnamon Altoids. And for a while I was using really cheap cinnamon that was five years old. But then my friend got me some designer cinnamon. I don’t even know where it was from, from some fancy shop in New York and she’s like, “Okay, you’re so weird, here try this.” And it’s actually pretty good.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would say the one that just really improved my baking skills most recently was The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Cookbook. I’ve always had a really hard time making pie. I don’t know why, that’s my big Achilles heel when it comes to baking. My pie crusts were always soggy and ugly. But I got their book because I went to their bakery in New York. This is how I get my books, I go to their bakery and get sucked in. And they had such beautiful photos of the pie making process, what it looks like after you rub the butter in, so that one was super helpful in helping me learn how to make pies. The other one that I really like and this one’s relatively new is Food 52’s Genius Recipes. One of their editors went out and found recipes that produce really amazing results for a pretty simple process and I’ve made a couple of things from there and it’s so good.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I like listening to Taylor Swift’s latest album when I cook. And yeah, if there was a movie… It’s crazy, this is going to sound really weird but I like having action movies as a background because they are easy to follow along to when you’re baking and you can step out and not pay attention but then come back and be like, “Okay, I get it, something exploded.” There’s not really any twists or anything in most action movies so they are always fun to bake to.

I listen to a lot of Top 40 radio while I bake, which is really weird because in college I didn’t listen to any of the Top 40 at all and I used to listen to the most pretentious music. I still like lots of small indie bands and everything but just not while I bake because it’s just not as fun.

On Keeping Posted with Michelle:

Just follow me on Instagram. My username Hummingbird High and of course just check out my blog. I post once a week so it’s pretty easy to catch up with me.

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

October 5, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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The Fauxmartha

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

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

(*All images below are Melissa’s.)

On Cooking:

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

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

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

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

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

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

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

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

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

On Not Being Creative or Adventurous with Food:

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

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

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

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

On Her Tried-And-True Recipes:

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Melissa:

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

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.

020: Ileana Morales Valentine: Grow Closer by Cooking and Eating Together

April 1, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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A Little Saffron

On her blog, Ileana documents the food journey of her and her fiancé (now husband), Danny, and all the stories behind their meals. Besides writing for A Little Saffron, Ileana pens a column for the Tampa Bay Times called In Our Kitchen, which is based on the blog, and she’s also written for the Associated Press and the Miami Herald.

I am so delighted to have Ileana Morales Valentine of A Little Saffron joining me on the show today.

On The Idea Behind Her Blog:

I think it was brewing for a long time. In college, I was studying, you could say, studying food blogs, just obsessively looking at them. Then, I moved to Tampa and met Danny and I think it took me a year just to settle on the name. It was easier to start cooking more regularly when you have someone else to cook for, so it just started from there. He was really encouraging and I just started one day.

On Being a Writer and Her Inspirations:

Growing up as a kid, I always loved to read. I was a bookworm. When I was really little it was Roald Dahl, stuff like that, and then I got into teen stuff. I’m trying to think of one writer. I’m so terrible at picking favorites, but if I focus on food writers, one person I really love is Molly of Orangette.

I think she has an incredible knack for writing about such everyday things, but it’s from her perspective and it’s so interesting. I’ll read anything she writes.

The focus on food came in the last few years. I’ve always been someone who loves to eat. I think maybe that’s where it comes from. I was a chubby middle schooler. I’ve always loved food. Then when I went to college I had to start cooking for myself. I was a vegetarian too so I really had to pay attention to what I was doing, go do groceries, and it sort of started from there.

On Her Passion for Food:

The women in my family take pride in what they cook for sure, but they have their staples that they stick to. They don’t have a ton of cookbooks the way I have. They don’t have a cookbook problem at all. They just have their tried and true recipes, which is great too because then I can request that when I go home. I could ask my grandma, “Can you make arroz aguado,” or one of the other things she makes. It’s great.

I always loved to eat but growing up we mostly stuck to Nicaraguan Latin food. I grew up in Miami so that was pretty much what we stuck to, but once I left for college, I was in Gainesville, such a vegetarian-friendly town, I tried things like tempeh and tofu. It was a whole new world.

On What Cooking Means to Her:

My mom cooked, especially when I was growing up–I’m the oldest–she cooked all the time and there was always a homemade meal on the table. It wasn’t a dinner unless it had rice. It’s not a full meal without rice.

Food was important. My mom has a ton of plates and utensils because there are constantly people over at the house and it’s constantly around the food. It’s just a ridiculous amount of food.

When Danny came to my parents’ house the first couple of times, they just overwhelmed him with food. That’s how they show their love and to show you’re welcome here.

For Danny, who grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, his dad has a garden and seems to be kind of into food. He has a little cooking journal. His mom is very focused on working out, a high protein diet, but he grew up eating things like meatloaf and stuff that to me is very foreign, but very American classics like that.

I think we both are very good eaters and are so excited about trying new things. I think the interesting balance is that he’s such a stickler for the recipe and I try to tell him all the time, “A recipe is a guideline. You can improvise. If it calls for a scallion, you can use another kind of onion-y thing,” but he just wants to stick to whatever the recipe says.

On a Kitchen Disaster:

One of the kitchen disasters that comes to mind is–this was in our first apartment together–he was making some kind of spicy pork. We had been up late. The movie There Will be Blood is tied to this because we were watching it. It’s such an intense movie. At some point, Danny just took over the meal. I was like, “Okay. I’m tired. You’re going to exactly follow the recipe. Fine.”

It’s after midnight and the thing is still not done.

We finally sit down to eat it and it’s painfully spicy. You cannot even eat it, so I think I ate a cracker and went to bed.

Turns out he should’ve bought the Guajillo chilis. He got the only ones that were available at the store, these tiny little red ones. If it’s a tiny little red pepper, that’s your first clue. Don’t put the whole thing in there.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Definitely Ina Garten, Extra Virgin, Bitchin’ Kitchen, probably some others but those come to mind.

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

Definitely Food 52. I think it’s beautiful and smart and has so much great content on there.

Orangette. Molly Yeh. She’s just incredibly creative. She had a gummy bear sangria on there the other day. She’s just insane in a very good way. Two Red Bowls, I really like. She has beautiful photography and some very cool recipes from her background, her perspective, which is interesting. Local Milk has really beautiful photos and recipes as well.

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

On Instagram I follow Food 52, Jillian Guyette–she has a food blog. She has a really beautiful aesthetic. It’s very minimalist, and she cooks a lot with her fiancé, so I kind of relate to that. I like her stuff a lot.

On Twitter, I really like Naturally Ella. She’s funny. Who else? Kristen Bell–not food related–but since Veronica Mars, I’m forever a fan girl, and her husband Dax Shepard.

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

Canned beans. For me, I grew up eating beans and rice. That’s my comfort food. While I love beans made from scratch, I don’t always have the time to do it, and if you have a can of beans you can make dinner.

Name one ingredient you cannot live without?

Garlic.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

One that I got recently that is excellent is from my friend Molly Gilbert. She blogs at Dunk and Crumble and the book is Sheet Pan Suppers, which is a really brilliant idea. I love the oven, just to throw it in there and let the oven do most of the work.

She has a lot of really smart recipes in there. There’s one where you’re using the polenta that comes in a tube, which I don’t usually buy but I got for the recipe, and you put sausage and bursted grapes in there and thyme and it’s so good and it’s on one sheet pan.

So that’s definitely one, for sure. It’s so great. Then anything Ottolenghi. His book Plenty is constantly inspiring. I don’t necessarily make all that stuff, especially not on a weeknight, but it’s a lot of inspiration in the book.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I actually love cooking to Brazilian music, like samba and stuff like that. Brazilian music is great background noise.

Keep Posted on Ileana:

Instagram and on the blog, ALittleSaffron.com.

On Her Photography Journey:

On Cooking and Food:

On Hosting Styling and Photography Workshops:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Luisa:

On Growing Up on a 600 Acre Farm:

On Her Interest in Cooking:

On Leaving the Farm:

On a Dish That’s Special to Her:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Posie:

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 Baking at High Altitude:

On Learning How to Bake:

On Where She Turns for Inspiration:

On Which Cookbook She Would Cook through Today:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Michelle:

On Cooking:

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

On Not Being Creative or Adventurous with Food:

On Her Tried-And-True Recipes:

The Pressure Cooker:

On Keeping Posted with Melissa:

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 The Idea Behind Her Blog:

On Being a Writer and Her Inspirations:

On Her Passion for Food:

On What Cooking Means to Her:

On a Kitchen Disaster:

The Pressure Cooker:

Keep Posted on Ileana:

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