Sunday Suppers | The Dinner Special podcast

068: The Food Gays: Sharing a Taste of Vancouver

August 17, 2015 by Gabriel 2 Comments

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

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

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

On How They Met:

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

Jeremy: Yup, we met through a friend.

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

Jeremy: We went anyways.

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

Jeremy: Doing our thing ever since.

On Collaborating on Their Blog:

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

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

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

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

Jeremy: What it’s gonna look like…

Adrian: . . . what it’s was gonna be…

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

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

On Their Separate Roles for the Website:

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

Jeremy: we enjoy most.

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

Jeremy: organizing and making sure things are up.

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

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

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

We definitely worked our way through it.

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

On Deciding What to Make for the Blog:

Jeremy: Depends on the season.

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

Jeremy: Sometimes once a week.

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

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

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

On Their Blogging Process:

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

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

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

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

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

Jeremy: “Do this there. Try this.”

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

On Misconceptions about Healthy Food and Healthy Eating:

Jeremy: That it’s all green and boring.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Adrian: Just start slow. Just start somewhere.

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

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

On the Food Culture in Vancouver, BC Canada:

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

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

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

Jeremy: as much as we used to.

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

On Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner in Vancouver:

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

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

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

Adrian: Yup, and some soup.

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

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

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

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

Jeremy: MasterChef Canada.

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

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

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

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

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

Jeremy: I really love Dennis The Prescott stuff.

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

Jeremy: Just to name a few.

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

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

Adrian: The pressure cooker.

Jeremy: Yeah, steam pressure cooker.

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

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

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

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

Adrian: Mine would be cilantro.

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

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

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

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

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

It’s like an addiction in itself.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

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

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

On Keeping Posted with The Food Gays:

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

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

037: Bev Weidner: Getting Back into Cooking as a Parent

May 18, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

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Bev Cooks

On Bev Cooks, Bev is extremely open about food and family. She’s a mother of twins, Will and Natalie, who’ve been featured on the blog even before they were born, and she claims to dish out the worst parenting advice you’ll ever hear. Bev’s high energy and wit makes me chuckle more than usual.

I am psyched to have Bev Weidner of Bev Cooks on the show today.

On Leaving Her Job to Pursue Her Passion:

I was stagnant, I was in a stagnant place and not really knowing where to go.

I was working and it was fine, but it took a long time for us to get pregnant and have our kids. So that stress and just not being super happy with my life direction, we got to this point in Aaron’s career where we looked at our life and it was like, “I think I’ll stay home. I just want to garden and hang out. Just kind of breathe and take some of the stress off of myself, and the pressure off of myself.” Once I did, I was like, “Okay, I’m home. I want to start a blog.”

I’m very inspired by other bloggers and stories out there. So it was shortly after I quit that I started, actually bought the domain. I had started posting photos of my dinners on Tumblr and Facebook, but it was right after I quit my job that I bought the Bev Cooks domain and really made it a blog. So I don’t know if you’d call it confidence or stupidity.

I was just getting more and more into the whole thing about food photography and writing. I mean, it was a mess, it was a disaster back in the early days. But time goes on and you hone your craft.

On Her Blog:

I’ve read magazines like everybody. I didn’t really pay attention to the styling of food until I started blogging. I was like, I know this doesn’t look right. This pork looks funny. I don’t know how to do this.

So, like everybody, I would just study magazines like Real Simple because I don’t want a ton of stuff in my photos. I just like it clean and white, and the focus is not a load of good scenery. I think that’s beautiful but I also just want to keep it clean. So I would just study magazines like Real Simple and things like that and kind of maybe rip them off. No, I don’t know. Inspiration, just like literally looking at them going, “Now, this is the way they have this.” “That works. Okay, ding ding.”

On Cooking as a Parent:

I want them to eat everything, and they have been eating… I make them kale omelettes every single morning, I don’t know why. It’s really easy. I mean, it sounds super fancy but it’s not. It’s an egg and kale and a little bit of the tomatoes and done. Cut it up in little squares and they love it.

I just want them to be exposed to everything that I’m making right now so that the hope is that they’re not going to be picky eaters. Now I will say, Will, he’ll touch a third of it and Natalie eats 100%. She does not care, she just eats it all.

But I haven’t really changed that much in my style of cooking because I just want them to eat it too. I cut up everything or separate some things from the others and cut up the pasta, to where it’s tiny. Make it easy for them to eat but I want them to have all the flavors.

During the weekdays, sometimes can be hard. Oftentimes I do simple, simple stuff like peanut butter toast, some torn up deli chicken and a cut up fruit or a tomato. It’s just a hodge podge of things, but I always love to have leftovers from what I’ve made either for dinner or the blog, and then just give them that too.

They need to eat constantly. I’m floating from the kitchen to their high chairs, every two hours, your snacks, here, do you want it over here? Do you want it on the top of the roof? I don’t know. They have mouths.

On Her Column on The FN Dish Blog:

I’m starting a monthly column with the Food Network. On their FN Dish blog which is on their main landing page, but I will be streamlining kids only meals, like the first part of the recipe will be kid friendly, the second part of the recipe will be fit for adults.

So take like a pasta with marinara. Most of the time you’d stop there for the babies, for your kids, and give them the pasta and the marinara and have them go at it. Then for the adults you would add the olives, and the anchovies. So I’ll be starting that.

The favorite dish that’s easiest, I love pasta dishes. If they’re shells, then that makes it easier for them to grab, like shells with shredded chicken in it. I try to avoid giving them too much sauce because the sauce gets everywhere. So I try to remove as much sauce as possible.

What I really like to make for them is just two whole wheat tortillas, and just chop up some chicken and sprinkle in some black beans and a little bit of grated cheese. Pop that in a microwave for 30 seconds, and then just cut it with a pizza cutter. So they’re having little burrito squares.

On Getting Back into Cooking Since Becoming a Parent:

I would say because it is my job I knew I had to do it. It was about four weeks in. I remember four weeks in, and they were a month old. I thought, “I’ve got to start cooking again, or I’m going to go crazy.”

I just got back in, It really wasn’t that hard. In the early stages, what you have going for you with infants, just any infant, two or multiples of one, they sleep all the time. So it’s so easy while they’re napping for their seven hours straight. I’m in there cooking, and then plan it where you know they’re going to be napping and you could go in and cook and do whatever you need to do. If you need to cook it early in the day and warm it up in the evening, great. Do what works. Just do what works.

Now is a different story. They’re down to, most of the time one nap a day, and if I haven’t gotten my work done by the time they’re up and they’re running around… They’re full on toddlers now, and that can get a little bit challenging but we make it work.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

America’s Test Kitchen. Martha’s Cooking School, I do watch that.

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

I love the Sprouted Kitchen with all my heart. I love Sarah and Hugh so much, it’s ridiculous. Of course, I love How Sweet It Is, Jessica’s a dear friend of mine. My New Roots, fantastic beautiful photography, Sarah Britton is just brilliant.

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

Instagram, all the way. Local Milk on Instagram. It’s just crazy, I just want to cry all over. Sunday Suppers, feeds like that. Feeds that have to do not necessarily with food, food could be in it but a slow approach to life, lifestyle.

Beautiful composition and everything has a certain shadowy moody, feel or bright. That’s what I’m drawn to.

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

Well, I have a cutting board that my husband made for me. He’s crazy talented with DIY. He’s a maker as you would maybe call him. He went to a reclaimed lumber place and got a piece of wood, I think it’s elm. I want to say it’s elm. And sanded it way down and made it food friendly, oiled it up and it’s just this rustic dark piece of beauty that I chop carrots, onions, and garlic on every day.

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

I used to hate fennel. I hate black licorice, I absolutely hate it, but for some weird reason, I can dig some fennel.

The licorice-y flavor is definitely there, but it’s masked by its delicateness.

What are a few cookbooks that have made your life better?

Okay, I have this cookbook called The Silver Steam that my mom gave me for Christmas many years ago. I have Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Julia Child. Not that I have made my way through it like Julie and Julia, and don’t ever plan to. But I have cooked a few things from that book, and her approach and her writing – it’s so different than modern cookbooks.

Everyday Food, the Martha publication. They put out a cookbook along, long, long time ago and that’s when I first got into cooking. It was about 10 years ago when this cookbook was released. It opened my eyes to chopping, dicing, sauteing, everything. It was just enlightening.

I used to be really into Jamie Oliver a long time ago, into his early cookbooks. I loved that.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, I love Fleetwood Mac, Rumours. You cannot go wrong with that album. I don’t know if it makes me want to cook, it makes me want to do everything. I love that record. I can just put it on and cook at the same time.

The Bird and the Bee is also another band but just their songs and the production. The approach to their production is very unique. Lots of layered vocals, it’s really beautiful, but cool. It’s poppy, little indie-rock and that just makes me dance in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted on Bev:

Well, food-wise, I would say Facebook, my Bev Cooks page on Facebook. That’ll have everything. Instagram, I recently just started posting. When I post a recipe, I post the photo and just always photos of the babies on Instagram. If you’re just looking for food specifically, I would just say either subscribe to my blog or Facebook.