Smitten Kitchen | The Dinner Special podcast

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.

115: Lilian: Inspiration from Old-School Food and Philosophy

March 23, 2016 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Chinese Grandma

Lilian is not a Chinese grandma. Rather she’s a mother of four who believes in old-school food and philosophy inspired by her Chinese grandmas. Her heart is in home cooking, which she describes as uncomplicated, healthful, and satisfying food you can live on, and thinks food should be fresh, comforting, and nourishing. Apart from her food, Lilian shares personal stories about being an adult and discoveries that inspire her. Her blog, Chinese Grandma, was a finalist in the 2014 SAVEUR Best Food Blog Award for Best Family Cooking Blog.

I’m so excited to have Lilian of Chinese Grandma here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Lilian’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

The funny thing is, well, I have four kids and when I started the blog five years ago, almost six years ago, my fourth child was nine months old or something like that. And it was a little crazy, of course, and we were living in Ohio, which was a temporary thing. And I’m from California, and all the kids were born here. I need some space that’s just mine, and I really wanted to write and I kept thinking, “I’m going to write a book someday.” And then I thought, “I have four kids, who am I kidding? I’m never going to have time to write a book.” I just want to do something that’s doable. And I thought, “If I can just get this thing started, I can keep up with it.”

We were going home to California for the summer, and I’d gotten this email from Stanford’s Continuing Education Program. And they have this great writing program. I’ve taken a class or two in the past. So they had this class on blogging, and the goal by end is to launch your blog. And we were going to be home for seven weeks, and it was a six-week course right in that slot. And I thought, “Okay, sign me up.” And I got it going that summer, and that was the beginning of it. And it’s been great.

On Sharing Her Personal Stories on Chinese Grandma:

I do share some really personal things. When my dad died, I wrote about it. And I write about getting older a lot. I write about parenting, because I just feel like being a new parent is so nerve-wracking. This is why the first kid is always the experimental child. You never feel like you know what you’re doing. And then the other kids have more relaxed parents, because you’ve been around, and you’re more of a veteran. I just feel like I really have always felt that if we can share our stories, that life gets easier for all of us, and I think that for the blog, it’s about the food and the stuff I’ve tried that I know works and I can count on.

The life stuff and the family stuff, I don’t write about stuff when I’m in it, but then afterwards, when I’ve had time to reflect, I think, “Okay I learned something from that.” And I want to share it. When you’re young, you always feel anxious and nervous about what’s ahead, and also just always striving. And then older people, like our grandmas, they have this sense of peace. I just feel like I’m a little of that now. So what I’ve learned now, I’m going to try and share with other people.

On Learning How to Cook:

My mom is an amazing cook. Chinese food is, of course, her focus. She came from China. And that is always a little intimidating to me. My mom, she makes amazing pot stickers, because she’s from northern China. And she and my dad were a great team. My dad would roll the dough, and my mom would make the filling. I would try to make them, really bad ones. You could always tell which ones were mine, but that kind of stuff was fun. But to me, my mom is just so great. Everything she did was very time consuming and intricate.

And I learned from messing around by myself. I’d check out other cookbooks in the library. And then I’ve learned from friends too. I had this friend from Italy when I was in college, and when I went to Italy to visit and just saw that whole food world, that was amazing too, and just the simplicity of it really appealed to me. Whereas I love to make things my mom makes, but it always pales, because my mom is this very seasoned pro. I think everyone with their grandmas knows, they don’t write down recipes. And when you replicate it, it’s never quite the same, even though I have tried to capture some of that in recipes on the blog.

But as a Californian, growing up here, and the whole produce thing, I really go for simple. And I really go for great ingredients, and not doing so much to it, and just enjoying the perfection of nature in a way.

On Her Idea of Chinese Grandma Cooking:

It’s funny, because my dad’s mom lived with us. She was a very independent person. She always cooked on her own, cooked her own food, she didn’t eat with us. She wanted to do her thing. She grew stuff. And I have no idea what she cooked, actually, because she had a little kitchen that’s set up back in her room behind the garage, and she did her thing. So I guess my idea of Chinese grandma cooking really does come from my mom, and I think her dumplings are the main thing. It’s about to be Chinese New Year. She’s going to make them. She puts little treasures inside. It tells your fortune for the year. And those are incredible. To me, that’s just the ultimate food from my childhood.

On Wisdom From Her Chinese Grandmas:

They are Depression era grandparents. They are just so super resourceful. They never needed anything, and they just got by. And I think that anti-materialism is so ingrained in me. It’s my dad too. He was an engineer, and he was like MacGyver. You need something? He’s going to make it out of whatever scraps he has. And I think that is, especially in this modern age, and I have indulgences that I love too, but to know that you don’t really need any of it, I just think it’s so powerful.

Also, to know that you are creative, and you can make something, and you can fashion something, whether it’s dinner out of the random scraps in your fridge, or fixing something that’s broken. I just think that to know that we have that creative power, that industriousness and that resourcefulness, that to me, is really a fundamental part of not just who I am, but I hope to pass that on to my kids. Because I think to know that you can be independent and make stuff happen is great.

On Being a Parent to Four Children and How it Changed the Way She Cooks:

Yes, my kids actually now, my oldest is 14, and my next oldest is 12, and even my 7-year-old, they love food and they’re open to all kinds of stuff. But for years, I had a lot of white food, plain pasta, stuff for the kids. And so I would make stuff for us, but then you’d have these dumbed-down version for my picky ones. I feel like we all have our right to our preferences. And taste buds do change. All of us who are adults know that.

I think I’m not into forcing anybody to do anything. I do try to appeal to their better nature. So they’ve always been great fruit eaters and a little mixed on the vegetables. But I feel like as long as you’re getting natural, good, fresh food, I’m not going to stress if you aren’t eating broccoli. It’s okay. But one thing is the kids do like food simple, and I do try and keep it simple. And sometimes we eat pancakes for dinner.

You can’t be the parent following a kid around with a spoon, and making deals for one more bite, the kid doesn’t have a good relationship to food. You need to let them make their choices.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I actually don’t watch any, because I’m not a TV person. So I totally don’t watch any, although my kids did love to watch Barefoot Contessa, that was on quite a bit. I actually bought my first kid, when he was like your kid’s age, maybe a little older, but I bought him the series of Barefoot Contessa, because he loved it so much. It was next to Sesame Street.

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

Well, either ones of people that are just so amazing that everybody knows like Smitten Kitchen and David Lebovitz. And also the ones of people that I have met, like when I went to the SAVEUR event a couple of years ago, Molly Yeh from My Name is Yeh, she’s amazing, and Cynthia from Two Red Bowls. Her photography is so, so great. Josh from Culinary Bro-Down is really the funniest person on earth. I love him, even though…Actually, we’re talking about, he’s this UCLA kid and I’m this mom of four. So its Chinese Grandma, and he’s like, “Oh, so you’re a grandma?” And I said, “No, Josh. I’m not a grandma.” I tried not to make him feel bad, but, of course, I felt pretty ancient. But he is hilarious, and I love him, so all kinds of great people. Naz Deravian who writes Bottom of the Pot who was on your show, and Emma who was also on, My Darling Lemon Thyme. When you know the people, it’s also even more fun to see their work and read their work.

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

Yes, gosh, Cynthia is amazing, her photography from Two Red Bowls. Valentina, who was also on your show from Hortus Natural Cuisine, her photography is gorgeous. I do love seeing people’s photography even though it makes me feel a little bad about my own. But of course, Instagram is all about the joy in photography, so I love that.

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

My brother and sister-in-law had given me this Jiffy Pop, and it’s got the little crank handle. And it’s genius. With the air popper, you have to melt the butter and put all that on, and it never gets distributed evenly. With the Jiffy Pop, because you pop the popcorn in oil, you really don’t need to add anything, except salt.

I also love it because I make kettle corn, and if you use a regular pot, it is prone to scorching, because the sugar scorches the bottom. But if you use the Jiffy Pop, and you’re stirring, it doesn’t scorch, and you get this perfect kettle corn, and that’s so awesome to make in three seconds at home. My kids love it.

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

Anchovies. I don’t even know if I even ate anchovies as a kid, but you’re always scared of them on pizza. But as an adult, I love anchovies. And if I can get Caesar salad with anchovies, I love it. Anchovies are awesome. I like to sneak them in my pasta sauce when nobody is looking. I love them.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Okay, The River Café, they’ve got two books. I think they are called it, Italian Easy and Italian Two Easy. But Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers started this restaurant in London decades ago. It’s like Chez Panisse here. So many people, Jamie Oliver, I think worked at The River Café and all kinds of people have come out of it, just like all kinds of amazing chefs have come out of the Chez Panisse kitchen here. And it’s Ruth Roger and Rose Gray, neither of them were trained chefs, but they had a passion for ingredients and technique. They were hyper intense, but they have these cookbooks that are so accessible.

They have recipes that are mozzarella, arugula, balsamic, and figs. And that’s the recipe. It’s just put these flavors together. It’s going to be awesome. And I just think that those cookbooks, like Barefoot Contessa, I love her. I love her because she was a caterer. And I don’t tend to love the chef cookbooks, because they’re not geared toward the home cook. I love the people that are all about accessibility with food. Barefoot Contessa, she had a catering operation, and all this stuff is tried and true. It always works. I love the stuff that I can count on.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I have this play list on my iPod, and depending on what mood I’m in when I’m cooking, and also who’s around, so I’ve got a chill mix which is awesome. I like to grove out when I’m cooking, because it’s very meditative. And then I’ve got a dance mix, because I love to dance. And if I’m feeling a little like I want to really rock out in the kitchen. And then if no one’s around, which is rare, I listen to Missy Elliott. That’s awesome. I love that.

On Keeping Posted with Lilian:

I’m on Facebook, so I put all my posts there. And Instagram, I am not great, but I’m on it. And Twitter, I don’t tweet a ton. But anyway, I love keeping up with people through all these sources.

103: Kaitlin Leung: Connecting with Family Through Cooking

December 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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The Woks of Life

The Woks of Life is written by Bill, Judy, Sarah and Kaitlin a family that has been cooking and serving up meals for a combined 139 years. Their blog is for anyone looking to try their hand at grade A authentic Chinese cooking whatever their background may be. The Woks of Life were the 2015 Saveur Blog Awards winners in Readers’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog, as well as Editors’ Choice Best Special Interest Blog.

I’m so psyched to have Kaitlin Leung of The Woks of Life with me here today.

(*All photos are The Woks of Life’s.)

On Starting The Woks of Life:

Food blogs are not new obviously but there were a couple of big ones that we did follow, me and my sister mainly, which were The Pioneer Woman. So she kind of blew up and she has her own show and she is like a complete celebrity now and also Smitten Kitchen. So those were the two blogs mainly that we enjoyed looking at and that sparked the idea like, “Why can’t we start a food blog too?”

After she (Sarah) graduated she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to do and she had the whole summer to think about that. So she came up with this idea of starting a food blog. My mom and I were pretty excited to help out and start cooking things and take photos. So it organically became this family thing. She had the idea we could call it The Woks of Life, and we could be the four people at the center of it, and it could be a family thing.

At the time my parents were sort of transitioning into that idea of living in Beijing and then I think four months after the blog was started they actually did move. I’m getting my timing a little bit wrong but she graduated and they were moving to Beijing and everything was kind of in flux.

It was a good way for us to gather our family recipes and have a way to connect with each other across spaces. We communicated mainly through iMessage, Skype and emails. I would email my sister from the library at midnight being like, “Hey, I’m really bored what did you eat today?” That kind of little small talk, chit chat that you would normally have but you don’t really have when you are at two different schools and your parents are living in Beijing. It was all sending pictures of food that we made and we were almost already in the mindset. So to actually make it official was not that big of a job. It became a great family thing and a way for us to stay connected.

On Growing Up in a Family Where Food Played a Big Role:

Growing up it was always gathering around a big table full of food, and everybody reaching across loading up their plates. It was just a really great atmosphere. My dad was very active in the kitchen and his sisters loved to cook too. So from a young age we were like sponges just soaking up all this cooking knowledge and the Food Network. Those were the glory days of the Food Network, classics like Emeril Lagasse and Rachael Ray was just starting and Giada De Laurentiis, she was unmarried and without her baby so that was when she was starting out too. It was a really great time to be interested in food.

We would always just be in the kitchen like, “What are you doing? Why are you doing that,” it’s a passive and an active thing. You’re just watching but at some point you kind of have to roll up your sleeves and when me and my sister were teenagers my parents would have dinner parties and we were like catering staff. We knew so much and we could handle so much. All of my parents friends would be like, “Oh my God your daughters, they are so effective in the kitchen.”

It was kind of always growing up with that mentality of food is important and food is at the center and that’s the big reason why we get together, extended family too, it’s let’s get together and have a barbecue or let’s go get dim sum. It’s just an integral part of not just our family specifically but I feel like the Asian experience in general. You have a big extended family and what’s the best thing to do when you have all these huge amounts of people in the room? You eat.

On Learning About Chinese Cooking:

When we were younger you’re seeing Emeril and you’re seeing Rachel Ray and they’re not making Chinese food. So it kind of got to a point where it was… my grandma always loved saying this to her friends. She brags about us like, “Anything you want, they can make it,” it doesn’t necessarily apply to Chinese food. So when my parents moved to Beijing it was tough because I never ate Chinese food anymore.

You can’t go home and have a home cooked meal. That was another big part of why we wanted to start the blog, is documenting these recipes, which for years was like, “a little this, a little that,” like, “eyeball it, just pour it until it feels right.” You can’t really make that. So Chinese cooking has definitely taken on a bigger part of our repertoire, I guess for me and Sarah, but it was always within the expertise of my parents.

On What Authentic Chinese Food is to Her:

For me personally authentic Chinese food is the food that I grew up eating. It’s the Cantonese spread of salt and pepper pork chops and the pork bone soup and the big plate of green veggies with garlic and the steamed fish. It’s all that but I think that today when you think about traditional Chinese food it’s almost like it’s more about who made it for you.

The food itself is anything that tastes good that’s pretty traditional. I guess authentic is traditional. But I think that it’s almost more important who made it for you. Going into Queens to visit my grandparents and going to the restaurants around there, a lot of those places are owned by people that are technically Chinese citizens but they opened a restaurant in Flushing, Queens. It’s almost in my mind this set of dishes that my family makes most often and eats most often. So you could watch A Bite of China which is this documentary and there’s tons and tons of variety and dishes that you could have that are traditional and authentic, but to me it doesn’t resonate as much because I didn’t grow up eating it.

On Who in the Family is More Traditional and Who Likes to Experiment:

I would say my mother is definitely the most traditional which makes sense because she grew up China and she came over to the U.S. when she was 16. So she definitely has the most knowledge so therefore the most respect for those traditional dishes. I think my dad has a similar level of traditionalism but he grew up more on the Americanized Cantonese side of things. So he has more of an expertise in take-out dishes. He is the king of General Tso’s chicken and the pork fried rices and the lo meins, he can churn out anything.

In terms of who’s the most experimental? I think it’s probably a tie between me and my sister. I think we sort of alternate in our bolts of lightning moments of culinary brilliance. There’s one dish that she made that was so good. It was kimchi french fries and it’s this delicious kimchi mixture and then you put over french fries and then you put cheese on top and it’s 10 times better than chili cheese fries. But chili cheese fries are also good.

And then I’ll make something like Sichuan peppercorn Cacio e Pepe. Which is just cheese and black peppercorns but I wanted to incorporate an Asian spin so I used Sichuan peppercorns and white peppercorns and black peppercorns. It can become hard honestly to come up with those interesting ideas. You can’t fully hang your hat on just traditional Chinese food because that’s good but sometimes you just want something more interesting. We’re definitely always watching and seeing what the food world is doing and trying to get ideas.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I do watch The Pioneer Woman just because it’s a wonderful escape from real life. She’s got this amazing ranch and she makes all this delicious, comforting, fatty food, it’s great. I love that show and Jamie at Home. That was a short lived show but that was a really good show by Jamie Oliver. He has a beautiful garden, he sits outside with a little cutting board and just cuts and reaches over and plucks fresh herbs, it’s great.

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

So the sense that we get in the food blog world is that there’s just so many blogs out there and I think a lot of them don’t get enough credit because everybody’s really passionate about food and just telling their story. A couple that we like, one of them would be, Omnivore’s Cookbook which is this girl named Maggie and she actually was living in Beijing at the same time as we were and my sister and her actually met up and talked about food. She has a great blog that has authentic recipes. She makes them a little bit easier and more approachable but they still have that good authentic taste of Chinese food. So we really like her blog.

Another blog would be Little Cooking Tips which is a really cute, really friendly couple in Greece named Panos and Mirella, and they are so nice. They have really good Greek recipes. I just was on their website today and they had a finger licking feta and sausage mac and cheese. That sounds really good. They have a lot of good fusion Greek recipes. So we definitely like them. Hummingbird High, I think she was one of your most recent podcast guest. Her photography is gorgeous and her cakes look so good. Every time I want cake I just go to her Instagram and then I visually eat it.

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

I’m not sure about Pinterest because that’s my mother’s domain. She is the Pinterest master but on Instagram we follow a bunch of people. But I would say a couple of really good accounts are…there’s one by Dennis The Prescott, his photography is gorgeous and all of his food just looks so freakin yummy. He’s just one of those people that I go to time and time again.

Another one that I really like is Symmetry Breakfast. I think it’s a couple and they just take pictures of breakfasts that they have together and it’s perfectly symmetrical. It’s just so perfect for somebody who’s a little OCD like me. It’s just beautiful, I love it. They’ve got really great stuff. They have like a bagette that’s cut open and baked with eggs inside. They know how to live. They eat good for breakfast. I just roll out of bed and I’m lucky if I have a piece of toast. So those are just a couple that I like but there are so many people on Instagram that have just amazing photography. It can be hard to keep up because so many people are just putting out amazing content but those are two that I love.

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

I would say unusual for a nonChinese audience that is actually very useful is a tong device for picking up plates. If you put a hot dish in a steamer you don’t want to grab it and it kind of goes like this and then you can grab the plate and lift it out. That’s a really amazing underrated and not that well known tool. So for anybody listening, you should go buy one.

Most treasured I would say is probably my grandfather’s cleavers from my dad’s side. He was a chef and they actually had a Chinese restaurant for a number of years. We have his old cleaver that actually has his initials carved in the side. Because there are a bunch of chefs in the kitchen and you want to differentiate which one’s yours. We don’t use that one often but it’s still very sharp. It’s interesting. It’s years and years old but it’s still really good.

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

Cilantro. I didn’t hate it. There are some people out there that hate cilantro, I never hated it but I never really liked it maybe until I was 14. It adds so much flavor. If you have a guacamole that has no cilantro, I’m sorry, but that’s not real guacamole. You need it. When you’re putting it on steamed fish with soy sauce and scallions and ginger, you need the cilantro, it adds a little something.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Ina Garten has a cookbook that is… I don’t know exactly what it’s called but it’s the pink one so people that know Ina Garten’s cookbook, there’s a blue one and there’s an orange one. But the orange one is Barefoot in Paris and there’s a pink one which is her basics cookbook. There is a chocolate cake recipe in that cookbook called Beatty’s Chocolate Cake it changed my life. This chocolate cake recipe is the only one you will ever need. It’s so moist and the frosting is perfect. It’s kind of sad actually because if you flip through the whole book, almost every page is totally pristine, and then when you go to this chocolate cake recipe, there’s just schmutz all over it. There are stains and drips of buttermilk because that’s how often I make that cake. This is more of a PSA than an interview question I feel because that cake is truly the best. We make it for friends and they rave. They love it.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

For my sister it would definitely be Nat King Cole. For me, I would say, if anybody’s ever seen the movie Something’s Gotta Give with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, that soundtrack is our favorite for cooking. It’s all French bistro music and whets your appetite and you feel so jazzy walking around the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with The Woks of Life:

The best way to keep posted is to follow us on Facebook or Instagram. If you use Twitter, definitely follow us on Twitter, and I would say subscribe to our email list because we send out an email noon everyday when we have a new recipe.

080: Jennifer Yu: Choosing Food, Photography, and Colorado

September 28, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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Use Real Butter

In her past life, Jen was a NASA programmer, and today she is a freelance nature, food, portrait, and event photographer living and enjoying the outdoors in the Colorado Rockies. Her blog Use Real Butter is more of a directive for life and less about her cooking and baking though food is an integral part of her blog and her life.

I am so pumped to have Jennifer Yu of Use Real Butter joining me today.

(*All images below are Jen’s.)

On Blogging:

The first time I started blogging in 2004, I just began a LiveJournal blog, and it seemed that I had about a handful of friends who had LiveJournal blogs. So we just blogged personal stuff and commented on each other’s blog. It was, a dozen people at most, and it was very informal. It’s pretty private, and we were just goofing around. And the reason I started was because my sister had passed away in a car accident just earlier that year, and so I felt it was a good space for me to just get my feelings out and try and work it out in words. It was a little bit of therapy for me to get through that difficult period. And then I noticed over time, I started posting a lot of photos of my food. And so I would put dinner pictures on there, or if we went out to eat for a snack, I’d have a shaved ice on there.

After a while, I noticed there was a group called the Daring Bakers, which now is a huge, huge group. They’re the Daring Bakers and the Daring Cooks, and I think they comprise the Daring Kitchen now. But back then, they were 80 strong when I joined. It was just 80 people, and they would have a recipe designated to make for the next month, and everyone would make it and blog it on a given day. And we went around supporting one another and seeing how everybody had a different interpretation of the recipe as well as just a really nice community of people who liked to bake, people who enjoyed cooking, people who wanted to expand their skill. That’s why I decided to break off Use Real Butter because I wanted to be a part of that group, but I didn’t want all my baggage in with the recipes.

At the start, because the blog was a personal blog, it was all personal. All of my baggage was in there, and as I became more public, I think I’ve reined in what I’m sharing. It seems like I share a lot now, but actually, I don’t. I don’t share that much compared to what I used to. And it’s mostly because the more reach the blog has achieved, the more I am holding back because you get some odd readers who, I mean, there are some people, most of them are really well-intentioned and they just want to be your friend and they want to get to know you, and then others are a little less so. And so I withdrew a little bit to protect, not only myself, but also the people that I care about. But still, a lot of my friends know, like, “Oh, if you have dinner with Jen or if you go out to lunch with Jen, you’re going to show up on the Internet.”

On Her Passion for Food and Cooking:

I think since I was a little kid, I really enjoyed it. It’s odd but I like washing fruit and cutting it up. I used to try and sell it out of my bedroom to my family members as they pass by in the hall, which was kind of odd because if you think about it, my parents bought the fruit and then they’d have to buy it again from me. But I guess I added that extra service of cleaning and cutting fruit.

My grandmother lived with us from pretty much when I was an infant until about when I was nine years old. And she is my mother’s mother, and she cooked so many wonderful things. She was a fantastic cook. Both my parents are fantastic cooks. So when we got together to cook Sunday dinner, I was always there watching. And it was like this big family affair, and they would make Chinese dumplings. And it was just kind of a regular thing every Sunday, and I really enjoyed it. And I think that had a big influence on me.

When I was growing up, I would cook very simple things, and I would experiment with baking because nobody in my family baked. So I can’t tell you how many batches of meringues I have tanked, how many cookies have come out rock hard. But I learned all that when I was little, and in my parent’s kitchen. Then when I went away to college, there were nights when our dorm didn’t provide food or food plans. It was on the weekends, they didn’t provide meals. And so the undergraduates were left to fend for themselves, and I thought, “Oh, I’m going to make X, Y, and Z that mom and dad made at home.”

I could never remember what it was that went into the recipes. I didn’t have recipes, so I just called them up and said, “Mom, how do you make this?” And you know Chinese parents, actually, I think anyone beyond a certain generation, they don’t do recipes. They are just, like, off the top of their head, “Oh, a little bit of soy sauce.” “How much is a little bit?” “I don’t know, you know, a little bit.” And that’s how I got my feet wet with Chinese cooking, and then it became my way of connecting back to my family and my cultural heritage, which I rejected for a long time as a little kid.

On Blogs She’s Followed Since the Beginning:

I think Smitten Kitchen, Deb Perelman’s blog, was one of my early favorites, and it’s still one of my favorites because her recipes are just really solid and reliable. I guess I feel that I like her taste as well. I think that makes a big difference. There are some bloggers, they have gorgeous blogs or whatever, but their style of food is just not my style. So yeah, Deb of Smitten Kitchen. White on Rice Couple, that’s Todd and Diane. We started out around the same time, and we were blog buddies. And then we met in person, and we’ve been good friends ever since. They have a great blog. I love their recipes, but even more, they’re very dear friends of mine.

On Things Not Going as Planned:

Things don’t go as planned, that happens a lot. That happens more than most people would probably think. But do I wish that I were back in science? No, I don’t. I really don’t. That’s something I was happy to move on from. My husband, he remained in science. He’s in astrophysics. And I really felt that we didn’t both need to be in academia. So it’s kind of a nice balance, I think, to have us doing different things. I keep track of what’s going on in his career, and he will sometimes ask me, “Well, there’s a graduate student. This is what the student wants to do. How should I advise?” And I’ll give my take on it, especially if it’s a female student because I think it’s good for male faculty to be more sensitive to female students, and he’s particularly good about that.

But yeah, I don’t miss it at all. I actually like what I do, and I think that’s good because it’s what I chose. It would be terrible if you say, “I choose to do this,” and then you’re like, “This sucks.” So I chose to do this. I’m really happy with it. I think I like managing my time. I work more hours as a freelancer than I did working nine to five in a science desk job. But it’s worth it to me. I like the freedom.

On the Food Culture in Colorado:

It’s a pretty hip scene, I’d say. I think when we moved to Boulder, the first thing we noticed was kind of the sticker shock. Food is a little more expensive in Boulder than it is in where we were, which was Pasadena. Food in LA is, it’s so inexpensive, and it’s so, so good. But Boulder is a little different. The food is really excellent. But you’re going to pay a little more than you would at, let’s say, in San Francisco or in LA. That said, there’s definitely a dedication to local, seasonal farm food, local farmers. They have a lot of great restaurants that focus on, I’d say, modern cuisine, farm-to-table cuisine with European and some Asian fusion influences. That said, their Chinese food in general isn’t that great. They have lots of sushi bars, which is terrific, and there’s quite a bit of Vietnamese in the Denver area. But yeah, other than that, I’m missing a lot of the Asian that I used to get in LA.

Because I couldn’t get it elsewhere, I had to learn to make it myself. My grandmother, when she was alive, she was in San Jose, and so I would go out to visit her several times a year. And every time, we went out to visit, she would take us out to some Chinese restaurant that she had found. It just opened, or it’s been open for a while just down the street. And the food is just fantastic, and we would always get the latest and greatest from the Bay Area Chinese cuisine. I’d come home and think, “Oh, I’m craving this, but there is nowhere for me to get it.” And so I’d have to figure out how to make it myself or look up the recipe.

I don’t think there’s a signature dish (of Colorado’s) that off the top of my head comes to mind, but Colorado lamb in general is phenomenal. I was not a huge fan of lamb before I came to Colorado, and I felt that it tasted a little too, I don’t know if “game-y” is the word, but that’s what comes to mind. It was just the flavor was a little too strong for me. But when I tried Colorado lamb, it is sublime. Really, it’s a mellower flavor, but it’s fantastic. And a lot of the, like I said, Boulder restaurants are dedicated to sourcing their food locally, and so you get Colorado ranchers providing their lamb and it’s fantastic.

And actually, Diane Cu had a similar experience when she and Todd came out. We were doing a workshop together in Boulder, and I took them to dinner at Frasca. One of the courses was lamb, and so she immediately was like, “I don’t like lamb,” so she picked up all of her lamb and put it on Todd’s plate. And he tasted it, and he said, “No, no, it’s really good. You’ve got to taste it.” So she took a taste, and she picked up the lamb that she had put on his plate and put it back on her plate. And that’s how I feel about Colorado lamb. It’s that good.

Also, Colorado peaches (from the Western Slope) are the bomb. And I forage a lot in the mountains in the summertime – mostly porcini, chanterelles, and huckleberries.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

We don’t get television. So I don’t watch TV, which is probably why I can actually do things in my life because I don’t spend a lot of time watching TV.

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

Well, I would say Smitten Kitchen certainly is one of them. Leite’s Culinaria, David Leite’s blog, is fantastic. Simply Recipes by Elise Bauer and crew, that is one of my go-tos. When I have any question about a recipe that I just need to know off the top of my head, I’ll search for her blog first. And then David Lebovitz because he’s awesome, and he’s hilarious at the same time.

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

I don’t do Pinterest just because it’s a matter of time management. I just cannot get into Pinterest, and on Instagram, I have to say one of my favorite people to follow is Food Pornographer, my friend Kelly Cline. She’s a food photographer and food stylist in the Pacific Northwest. And everything she posts is absolutely stunning and creative and beautiful, and it just makes you want to eat and to cook and just get in there and experiment.

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

I don’t actually know what kind of odd things I have. I guess the only one is the dowels that I use for rolling dumplings. Most of the rolling pins you find in stores are the French style, the tapered ones, or they have the handles on them, but the simple Chinese dowel is just a straight cylinder. And that’s what I use for rolling dumpling skins, and it works best for me.

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

Cilantro. Cilantro, when I was little, my parents put it in everything, and I was like, “Mom, you’re ruining this dish.” They put it in the soup, and I am like, “I can’t eat the soup now,” or whatever. And now I love it. I put it in guacamole. I put it in my pho. I put it in Chinese dishes. It’s great.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I would have to say the one that I reference the most is probably The Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. And there’s this old Chinese cookbook that’s my mom’s, it was like a godmother put together in the 1960s or something. It’s this tiny little thing, and I don’t think it’s widely published. But we have a copy of it, and it’s just these traditional Chinese recipes, home-style Chinese recipes. And I’ve blogged a few of them, but I go to that one quite often.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Okay. I thought about this, and I was like, I don’t think there are any songs or albums that make me want to cook, but when I cook, I like to have music on. The White Stripes are one of my favorite bands, and so any of their albums or anything by Jack White gets me pretty pumped and happy in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Jen:

If you want to follow what’s going on with the dog, follow me on Instagram. Otherwise, I would say the blog itself is probably the best. I’m just getting really bad about keeping up with social media these days because I think I’ve realized that I’d rather spend my time living my life than just constantly writing about it.

079: Jennifer Farley: How Culinary School was the Right Decision

September 23, 2015 by Gabriel 6 Comments

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Savory Simple

Food is Jen’s obsession, so much so that she dropped her entire life and went to culinary school. She has since worked as a line cook, pastry chef, and cooking instructor. Today, Jen is a full-time recipe developer, food photographer, and she’s working on a cookbook. On her blog, Savory Simple, she focuses on well-tested recipes, bold flavors, and quality ingredients.

I am so happy to have Jennifer Farley of Savory Simple joining me here on the show today.

(*All images below are Jen’s.)

On Going to Culinary School:

I don’t know that you really ever get the courage to do it. You just have to go for it. A lot of people, I think, were trying to talk me out of doing it. But my boyfriend at the time, now my husband, was very supportive. He knew that I wasn’t very happy in my job, and we both really wanted a change and it just felt like the right thing for me to do at the time. I knew I wanted to do something. I had gone through a lot of different possible career changes over time and none of them seemed right. Culinary school is the thing that I kept coming back to. And finally, I just decided it was now or never, and you only live once, and I just went for it. I figured the worst case scenario, I could always go back to a desk job. But it worked out.

A typical day in school involved getting up extremely early, and I’m not a morning person. I think during the first phase of school, I was getting up around five in the morning, getting to school while it was still dark out, changing into my chef’s uniform. You had to change into it there, because you didn’t want any outside germs getting on it. Doing prep. I think it was a two-hour demo and then going into the kitchen and cooking everything that we had just watched the chef instructors make. They would come around and taste it and see if it was as good as what they had made.

If it wasn’t, they would yell at us and tell us to fix it. And then we would usually have about ten minutes to eat it really quickly for lunch before we had to scrub down the entire kitchen. Maybe we would have a couple of minutes to sit and relax. Then we would go in for an afternoon lesson. And then we would be finished by 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon. That would be it for the day, except then we would have lots of homework. And you really want to practice your knife skills and cook the stuff and type up the notes.

I’m a very hands-on learner, so it really helps me to see something right in front of me and then practice and have someone modify my technique and say, “No, you need to do it like this instead.” So that’s how I learned best.

On Her Blog:

I actually started the blog in 2009, I think about three or four months before I started school. The blog was initially meant to be a diary of my school experience, but you’re so busy while you’re there. I didn’t keep up with it nearly as much as I wanted to. And I was inspired to do it by this other blog that I had read at the time called Cooking School Confidential, which has since been pulled down, but it was an amazing blog. And I don’t know how she did it. She was writing these super long posts every single day after her classes.

After school finished, I actually had time to start really blogging and documenting my experiments in the kitchen with cooking and baking. And it was so much fun for me because for years before I got serious about cooking, I had a lot of friends that were very good cooks. And I would always ask them for recipes and they would go, “Oh I just threw it together. I don’t cook from a recipe,” and that always really pissed me off. And so I always decided I loved the idea of putting things down, of actually making recipes for people so that when they said, “Oh, this is delicious. Can I have the recipe?” I could go, “Sure. Here’s the recipe and here’s a photo.” And that’s where everything came from.

When I first started doing it, I had no idea that it was even something that I could evolve into a career. It was just really a hobby. I think I first realized it could be something more… I believe it was in 2012 I attended a food blogger conference, and I just wanted, for fun, to meet other people, to become more a part of the community. And all of the workshops were really eye-opening. There were workshops about how to make money and how to find your voice and how to optimize your blog. The whole thing made me go, “Oh wow, I can make money at this?” And that really set me off on the path to try to turn it into a business. And over the next few years, while I was working other jobs in the industry, I started trying to build it up on the side to get where I am today.

On Baking and Desserts:

I learned it in culinary school for sure. Every single day we did a three-course meal. We did an appetizer, entree, dessert. And it was very eye-opening for me, and I think that the desserts were my zen moment in the middle of chaos every single day, because there was this scientific precision to everything, especially when they would come around to check on us and make sure everything was right. It was a lot easier to get the desserts right, so I would gravitate towards them because I didn’t like getting yelled at. And I knew there was a better chance of me getting them right, and I also just found there was something very soothing about making desserts.

I liked it so much more than I thought I would, to the point where actually, halfway through the culinary program, I wondered if I should switch to the pastry program which was completely the opposite of where I was when I started. I didn’t think I was interested in doing desserts at all. I already had a blog called Savory Simple. I was there to learn how to cook. So it was a complete switch. But I absolutely love it now. I specifically went and worked as a pastry chef for a while before I stopped working at restaurants so I could get some additional experience, which was really, really helpful to this day. I loved doing desserts. They were my favorite things to make.

On Her Cookbooks:

I did a sponsored post for Zoku and they loved it. And they loved it so much that they asked me if I would do the book for them. It was exciting; it was amazing. It was the first time. It was one of many times, I think, where I’ve just sat back and said to myself, “I really made the right decision going to culinary school and changing my career because I just had a company offer me a cookbook.” And it was really exciting. It was my first cookbook but it was very guided. They knew exactly what they wanted. It was done in a very short period of time. It was all drink based. It’s technically my first cookbook. I made the recipes but it was just as much them, I think, as it was me.

It was a fun little device to work with, and I liked the challenge in some ways, because it forced me to think outside the box a little bit and I learned that some things did not work in it at all that I thought would. It was also difficult creating recipes for a company, because I would sometimes give them recipes that I thought were delicious and they would go, “No, we don’t like this at all,” and I was like “What, this is wonderful! Why don’t you like this?” And then they would come back with an idea that I thought was just not nearly as good as what I had given them, but I was working for them, so I would always do what they wanted. It was challenging but I think I came up with some good recipes for them.

(On her next cookbook.) It’s for Simon & Schuster. It’s going to be, I think, around 125 to 135 recipes. I’m doing all the photography in addition to the recipes. It’s quite a labor of love. It’s going to be out sometime next year. I’m not sure what it’s going to be called yet, but it is a full range of recipes, both savory and sweet. And I really hope everybody likes it. It’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I used to watch Top Chef. Now I don’t really watch any of them.

I watch Big Brother and So You Think You Can Dance, because I don’t want to watch anything that has anything to do with cooking. I just like to mentally escape.

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

I think that there’s great recipes on bonappetit.com. I also think Smitten Kitchen does lovely recipes. I love 101 Cookbooks. I know I’m forgetting some good ones. We’ll stick with those three for now.

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

Oh, there are so many wonderful people that I follow on Instagram and Pinterest. I tend to just gravitate towards people that share a lot of really beautiful photography. I love following Local Milk, and Call Me Cupcake, and Adventures in Cooking, and Reclaiming Provincial. I’ll stick with them.

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

My most treasured item in my kitchen is my Vitamix, and no one can have it ever. I use it every day for something.

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

I used to dislike rosemary and now I love it. I used to associate it with bath products. Same with lavender. They’re delicious. You just have to use them within reasonable, small quantities and not go crazy.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

The Flavor Bible is amazing. It’s really, really wonderful for anyone who wants to cook without a recipe, and I highly recommend it. It’s got lots of different ingredients and it pairs all of these different ingredients. So if you have broccoli and you want to know what to do with broccoli, it will list all of these other complementary flavors. I love that one. And I also love all the different cookbooks that have been released by America’s Test Kitchen and Cook’s Illustrated. Those are solid, well-tested recipes.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Something ’80s, new wave dance. We’ll say Depeche Mode, Violator. It is so redundant but I like dancing to the Xanadu soundtrack and working to it. It’s electric light orchestra. It’s disco-y. And Jeff walks home sometimes and catches me in the kitchen cooking and singing to it.

On Keeping Posted with Jen:

Definitely my Facebook and my Twitter. I’m very active on both of them.

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.

076: Rakhee Yadav: Discovering a Passion for Food

September 14, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Boxofspice

Rakhee is from India and lives in Holland and her life’s goal is to be more adventurous in trying new foods. On her blog, Boxofspice, Rakhee incorporates Indian spices in many of her recipes and shares her food creations as she navigates through her relatively new passion of food.

I’m so happy to have Rakhee Yadav of Boxofspice here on the show today.

(*All images below are Rakhee’s.)

On Her View of Food:

I grew up in India as you know and I wasn’t really encouraged to be in the kitchen or to cook. Because India is such a different culture, mostly in the middle class, which is how we were, food is cooked by someone else. A cook will come in, we had a lot of help and my mum was particularly finicky about her space. So I was not ever allowed in, so I think food for me was something that mum did.

We ate really only Indian food, and I’m a vegetarian and I was an extremely finicky eater. So there wasn’t a wide variety of food. I always said growing up that for me food was about surviving. I didn’t really enjoy food that much. I was sick a lot, it was just bland food.

It was really in my 20s that I began to somewhat experiment, and by experimenting I mean a little more spice in my food. I would not say no to everything. So food, yeah, food was not on my radar of fun things.

I was sick a lot, so I had a lot of tummy problems. I was not allowed to eat a lot of spices. So food was not an adventure, it was just something I ate to stay alive. That’s really how . . . it sounds very dramatic but that’s how I felt.

I think most bloggers would say that they love to cook or food was very interesting to them, therefore they began the blog. For me it was quite the opposite. I think it was because of the blog that I discovered that I could cook and not just that I could cook, but I did a pretty decent job of it. There were happy faces all around and that’s a big gratification factor I think for any cook, is to see the joy on someone’s face when they’re eating your food.

I never thought I could cook. I always thought I was a bad cook in fact, so for me to suddenly discover, and that’s what’s so funny about life, where it takes you … Boxofspice made me get out there and try new things and experiment with food and that’s how I realized I can cook.

On How She Learned to Cook:

When I moved away from India I was forced to cook. I lived in the US for a few years and suddenly there was no one, there was no back up, and even in the US again, it was very functional. Food was functional, but I realized that I had absorbed a lot of what my mother did for me, or made for me, and that’s really the basis of where it all began.

The rest is research, research, research, and recently I have decided to take the blog in a slightly different direction to where it is now. I want to explore the Indian aspect because Indian food is so varied. I have not even scratched the surface. So yeah, it’s research. It started from a base point and then building on that, from blogs, from cookbooks, from every source that I can find.

On India and Holland Influencing Her Cooking:

I grew up only eating Indian food. I mean literally. I think the first foreign food that I tried was pasta, and that was when I was 29. So I grew up purely on Indian food and really I did not want to try anything because Indian food is so vast.

Again, I was not experimenting at all with food at that time. I think the challenge in Holland is that I don’t get all the ingredients here, so the challenge is how to turn an Indian dish into an Indian dish, but with a limitation of ingredients. That’s where the Dutch aspect comes in. I have never heard of kale before I came here. So those kinds of things, like using kale instead of something else that was Indian. That is the kind of fusion that comes about in my food now, which is out of necessity and not really because I want to do fusion but because I have to.

On How Food is Enjoyed and Shared in India Compared to Holland:

I think everything that happens in India happens around food. We live in large families in India. You’re never really alone in India, and everything revolves around food, whether it’s tea time or lunch time or dinner time, and we as opposed to Holland, we eat three warm meals in India.

The women usually are always in the kitchen cooking and it’s always fresh meals. You will never have leftovers and stuff like that but in Holland again, it’s functional, breakfast is bread, lunch is bread. So it’s slapped on cheese and bread is put together just because it needs to be done, it’s lunch, done. And dinner really is the time when the family will come together. That is not the way in India. India is really . . . and when you see a table, even if it’s a regular meal in India, you will have four or five things to eat. It’s a lavish spread but in Holland again, not the case.

Dutch meals revolve around meat and since I’m vegetarian, that obviously cannot happen. And the minute you take the meat out, all you are left with is mashed potatoes and boiled vegetables. So there’s very little spices involved in Dutch food, and for me, my food has to be pretty. Being a picky eater I needed my food at least to be pretty, and I think that’s what I try and achieve with my photography for the blog.

On Her Blog:

I think three years ago, that’s how nearly old it is, I had a ridiculous amount of time on my hands then. I’m trained as a graphic designer and I’m used to crazy hours and working really like crazy, and suddenly I was at a creative dead end, so to say. Again, food was not really that important to me then but design and photography are my life. So for me, I think the food kind of brought it all together, and why a food blog you might say? I think even at that point food was not really the deciding factor. I wanted to see if I could do food photography. So food was kind of by the way. It is only in the course of these three years that food has become . . . it really is an obsession at this moment and photography as important as it is has taken somewhat of a back seat.

Food I feel is not so different than photography because both are . . . I think it’s a lifelong process of learning, and I love the fact that I don’t know it all. I love the fact that I have so much to learn and the excitement and the adventure in finding out. I think that’s what keeps me going with the blog.

Sometimes I look at an ingredient in the supermarket which is seasonal and I may say, “Hey, that looks interesting. I have never used that before, I wonder how I can use it.” I will then go back to my computer and research how many possible ways I can use that particular ingredient, which will be the star of the dish. I’m extremely close to my mother and she was a brilliant cook. So I want to revive the dishes that she used to make. With the ingredients that are available to me here I want to see how I can do that or change it around a little bit so that it becomes mine.

On Becoming More Adventurous with Food:

I would still say I’m far from adventurous. I’m trying very hard and when it comes to trying anything vegetarian or even vegan I will try it absolutely. In the past it would have been a big no, but what I’m trying now is that even with meats I at least try it. I think that is something that is developed because of my daughter. Because that’s what I tell her. “At least try it.” If you hate it, we’ll put it aside, we’ll come back to it maybe a year later. I want to practice what I preach, so I do try but I’m definitely not there yet.

I have bad associations with meat, but I do eat chicken only if I make it at home. So yeah, it’s still a process. It’s baby steps.

I think in India we are kind of rice snobs, that’s what they call us. I would not eat any other rice but basmati rice. That’s a long grain, it really is fluffy when it’s ready and it’s just as beautiful rice. Risotto to me was just like . . . I looked at it and I was like “what is this rice?” It looks like it’s bad quality rice, but obviously that’s not true. And when I tried it, it’s one of my favorite dishes today.

How to Start Becoming More Adventurous with Food:

I think the people who are finicky are scared and I am scared and I think the biggest thing is to face your fear. It really is not that bad. I’ll give you an example. I recently tried cold cuts. For years I have looked at cold cuts and I thought I don’t understand what the deal is. It doesn’t look appetizing, but when I tried it, because this friend of mine said “try it for God’s sake, you may surprise yourself,” and I did and I have to tell you Gabriel, I was shocked because it was good.

So just go out on a limb and just put it in your mouth. What’s the worst that can happen? You hate it, or you spit it out, that’s really the worst that can happen.

And you never have to try it again. I can assure you that most often, at least in my case, I have tried it again, I want to try it again and it leads to other things.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I like to watch MasterChef just because I’m completely in awe of how the people are just able to make stuff out of nothing because that’s not my process. I think I would suck at that. So I love watching that, people who are so creative and just so brilliant. So yeah, I think that’s one show and I do like to watch Jamie Oliver Quick Meals.

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

I did just stumble upon a new blog recently, it’s called Oatgasm. It has the most beautiful photography, and the writing is just poetic, and she is just 17. You have to look at this website.

And of course there is Linda Lomelino. She’s a hero for any baker out there. So she influences me a lot in terms of the kinds of things she puts together, the pairings and also the photography. And there’s one more – Smitten Kitchen. I admire her immensely because for her it’s not only about the photographs at all, it’s just the recipe and that’s just fantastic.

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

I’m not a big social media person. I think I just got on Instagram a couple of months ago. I follow a few people but I don’t really watch out for any particular ones. I’m just drawn by a particular style of photography and I do that every day. So I look out for new people every day and I think because I’m so new to Instagram, I’m following new people every day. I don’t have anyone specific.

On Facebook I have a few like Will Frolic For Food, Our Food Stories. I think food blogs that are so organic, the ingredients are so beautiful, and the way they put it together is so beautiful. It’s not contrived, it all seems so natural. I like that about them.

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

I think it’s my handheld mixer. I refuse to buy a kitchen machine. I do every possible thing with that hand mixture. I go through them pretty fast, I have a new one every few months.

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

Maybe it’s not an ingredient but a vegetable. I used to hate spinach, I’d refuse to eat spinach and I love it now.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

I don’t really read cookbooks. That may sound really odd, but I think most of my stuff comes from talking to my mother or online food blogs.

Every week I say I’m going to go out and buy a cookbook because I see a lot of the blogs doing that, and I know I can learn a lot but I just . . . remember Gabriel, this is very still new to me, so I’m still in the process of trying everything.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

It would of course be John Mayer’s newest album, Paradise Valley. I love every song on that album. I just want to have a glass of wine in my hand and be cooking away.

On Keeping Posted with Rakhee:

I think the best way is Facebook or Instagram. I’m also on Pinterest. I’m not that active. I’m trying to be. It’s just an effort for me, but the best way really is Facebook and Instagram.

070: Cathy Barrow: Charcuterie and Pantry Building

August 24, 2015 by Gabriel 4 Comments

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Mrs. Wheelbarrow’s Kitchen

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

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

(*All images below are Cathy’s.)

On Starting Her Blog:

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

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

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

On Learning How to Cook:

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

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

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

On Charcutepalooza:

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

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

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

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

On Making Charcuterie for the First Time:

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

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

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

On Some Good Resources for Learning about Charcuterie:

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

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

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

On Keeping Posted with Cathy:

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