Cookery by the Book

Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book 17th Edition

By Jan Miller & Jessica Christensen

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

Jan Miller:                  I'm Jan Miller, the executive editor of Better Homes and Gardens 17th edition of the New Cook Book.

Suzy Chase:                  I don't think there's another cookbook that's a good friend in the kitchen like the Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. They're all more like a collection of recipes.

                                    With the iconic red and white plaid, you don't have to put a title on the cover of that cookbook, people already know. Was the cover always red and white plaid?

Jan Miller:                  No, it wasn't. In fact, the very first book that was done in 1930, was sort of a greenish and had had a black square on it. It was not very cookbook looking and it started as a premium for the magazine. So if you ordered a subscription of the magazine, then you got this wonderful little collection of recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens Tasting Test Kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  Was it a pamphlet? Or was it a regular size?

Jan Miller:                  They did do a quick little bind up of just a few recipes that was a pamphlet that you could get for like 10 cents, and then it did grow. I think they had great response from that, so the very first book that they did was, like I said in 1930, and it was a ring bound right away and it was a full size book.

                                    And it's interesting, I love the editor's letter from that first book because she's really talking to the woman of the home, I mean, she's saying "you are an efficient, home business woman", and so the reason that we created this book in this format is if you stand that book up on its spine and you see all the tabbed chapter openers, those little tabs, then that was like their filing cabinet. And so they encouraged women to punch holes in other recipes and to add to this book, and that was the reason, initially, for the ring bound.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh! I thought it was so it would lay flat on your counter?

Jan Miller:                  It absolutely did that as well and that was the other reason that women loved it, but it was two-fold, it really was. They wanted it to be very functional and, honestly, as the years went on and the book just gained in popularity, the magazine did start to have little perforated lines to indicate that you should cut your recipes out of your magazine and punch them and put them in your cookbook.

Suzy Chase:                  I love the tab dividers. How come you got rid of those?

Jan Miller:                  Well, this 17th edition really took an entirely right turn. I think what people maybe don't think about this book is every time we redo a new edition, we're trying to make sure that we're speaking to the home cook today.

                                    And it's a book that you receive, maybe when you have a life change or you're getting your first home, you're leaving the house, you know, just to get your own first apartment. There's a lot of times that this is definitely a gift purchase, and so, we know that oftentimes it's a younger cook who uses this book, so we do a lot of research and talking to young cooks of the day, as we're trying to update the edition. And I had so much feedback from some of the folks. We do informal and then we also do very formal research as well, so you get quantifiable research but I also love the gut and I love research that you get and I love just talking to other people as well.

                                    But they really wanted a book that felt like they could leave it on their counter, that would really line up nicely with all their other cookbooks on their shelf, and the format just started to take on a life of its own. They wanted this heavy book that felt a little bit more modern. And so that was the reason for going to the hardcover this year, as opposed to the ring binding.

Suzy Chase:                  In the 17th edition, you've concentrated on what we're eating today. What are some of the modern trends that are included?

Jan Miller:                  Oh my goodness. We really picked up on ... there's a lot of bowls. You know, [now that 00:04:46] we're eating so many things in a bowl. There's grain bowls, there's noodle bowls, there's a smoothie bowl. We've included some of the boards. My Instagram is so full of all the boards, food on a board, and so we did a few of those.

                                    I would say the section that probably got the most love and the most updating was our meatless section. I mean there's so many great things out there, not just plant-based, but some of the other alternatives for protein and so, that just got an overhaul and a refresh.

                                    What else?

                                    Oh, for the first time, we also included fermenting in this book. And so how to make kombucha and kimchi, and there's a really yummy fermented whole grain mustard in the book.

                                    Those are the biggies. I would say also more global flavors. All the big three: the Latin flavors, and Asian flavors and Italian flavors, those feel so assimilated into our regular eating. But more Middle Eastern flavors and some Moroccan, Indian influences now are starting to creep into the book, which is how it should be. We really have a greater demand for more interesting flavors, as we're eating out too, so people are wanting to definitely bring those into their home.

Suzy Chase:                  This has been the go to cookbook for more than 80 years, and a crazy fact is that the one millionth copy of the New Cook Book was sold in 1938. That boggles my mind.

Jan Miller:                  Isn't that amazing?

Suzy Chase:                  That's crazy!

Jan Miller:                  I mean, I think we're somewhere in the 37 to 38 million now.

                                    It started, like you said at the start of this podcast, it really has an emotional tie to it. Mothers love this, they write in the pages, they send it, they pass it on to their daughters. Or grandmothers to their daughters, on to their granddaughters. There's just so much love that is associated with the book, that it just kept it going.

                                    We get letters even from people that, if they've been in, I don't care if it's been the hurricanes or just a personal loss of the book, so many people want their edition replaced because there is that tie. So it's got a great story and a great history.

Suzy Chase:                  One thing that I read was Better Homes and Gardens really pioneered exact measurements. None of the "little bit of this" or "little bit of that" or "bake until done". I love that one, "bake until done". Okay.

                                    Was this because housewives were fed up with vague measurements?

Jan Miller:                  Yes. I think housewives ... once again, they were really trying to speak to the woman who was in charge of her house. I mean, this was part of her just being on top of things and so, yes, exact measurements were so important to help make sure that she didn't have any more, you know, fails.

                                    I will tell you though, still in the first edition, there is a lot of "bake until done", and there was a level of knowledge that the home cook just knew then. We can't say that now. We can't say-

Suzy Chase:                  No. Uh uh.

Jan Miller:                  You have to practically say: take it out of the oven, put it on the counter, take the lid off, take the temperature-

Suzy Chase:                  Turn your timer off.

Jan Miller:                  Yeah. There's so much now that we have to tell.

                                    But exact measurements, and they did speak to that in that first editor's letter too, saying you can follow directions for mixing and handling and time and temperature, and we will also give you all exact measurements. And that was part of the test kitchen that started that.

                                    It used to be called the Better Homes and Gardens Tasting Test Kitchen, and that drove a lot of that language in the book.

Suzy Chase:                  Let's go over some highlights of the different eras.

Jan Miller:                  Okay. [inaudible 00:09:03].

Suzy Chase:                  What was the original publishing date of the very first cookbook?

Jan Miller:                  1930.

Suzy Chase:                  And then first in the '40s, during the wartime era, there was rationing. How was this dealt with in the cookbook?

Jan Miller:                  You know, it's interesting, as I can look through the collection of the books, you can see where they did different printings of the editions. Even, they would keep the guts of the book the same, but then they would add in certain things. And some of them were free little standing pamphlets that were tucked in. And so, you could see where they did things on victory gardens, at the end of the war, and some rationing pamphlets throughout. So, I would say, all of the recipes were always very efficient and used ingredients that were appropriate for the day, and so you see that reflected in just the general collection in the books back in that day.

                                    There's a lot of dates. There's a lot of nut breads in the dessert times. You can see there's a very practical nature about the meat recipes. Nothing fancy or over the top. And you start to then see some of that change as you get into the '50s. And what I loved about the '50s, we started to add grilling in 1950, because that started. The backyard barbecue.

                                    So it is fun to flip through all of the editions and see. It's definitely a reflection of what was happening in our homes.

Suzy Chase:                  In fact, during the '50s, Better Homes and Gardens coined the term "tossed salad". I thought that was funny.

Jan Miller:                  Yeah. Yeah.

                                    You know, it's funny, we talk about that and, I will be honest with you, I'm not sure we have had good luck going back to get the full story on the background of that. We see it in our pubs but I wish there was more detail there. And there just hasn't been. I wish I could find it.

Suzy Chase:                  On to the '60s, where housewives started getting interested in foreign food and gourmet meals. Also, the cook at the table phase and fondue were two biggies.

Jan Miller:                  Oh my gosh.

Suzy Chase:                  Describe the at the table phase.

Jan Miller:                  At the table, that was a big deal. That's the thing that I love about this at the table phase, it's reflected in the pages of some of those cookbooks and the tables are so done, you know with the different serving pieces. Fondue, you know what you're expecting, with the forks and the trays of the things to dip and everybody's around the table. But, I'm trying to think of what examples of the some of the food, but it just is amazing at the level of serving pieces.

                                    And the themes that we started to see, I think that's when some of that became very prominent in our "entertaining". You saw tropical themes, you saw Spanish themes. It's very fun and some of the photos, I feel like, look like illustrations from that time period and I just love them.

Suzy Chase:                  I think of Doris Day when I think of that time.

Jan Miller:                  Love that, me too.

Suzy Chase:                  I love her.

Jan Miller:                  Me too.

Suzy Chase:                  So, in the '70s, women started going to work because of inflation, so the cookbook introduced microwave meals. Talk a little bit about that.

Jan Miller:                  Yeah. Well, that was the big deal. That appliance was huge and so women wanted to know how to use it. And I think, when microwaves came into our world, they just thought that we were going to use that as our meal prep for the entire meal, and so they needed more guidance on how to not ruin a good piece of meat if you were going to do it in the microwave.

                                    So the testing in our test kitchen really was pretty extensive then, in that you had to have a variety of microwaves, a variety that had different watt levels so that you could give your home cook time ranges depending on what the wattage of their microwave was. And so baking was a big deal. There were so many things that came out to help people try to brown their baked goods in the microwave, so there was a lot of testing around that.

                                    Just a lot of guidance was required because there's good reason why now we just use our microwaves to pop popcorn and boil water and maybe bake a baked potato -

Suzy Chase:                  Totally!

Jan Miller:                  Because it just was not the best food. And again, so much help needed to navigate that. And we did whole cookbooks on that as well, so yes, certainly it was part of the New Cook Book, yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  I remember in the '70s, when my mom divorced my dad, finally, and my dad had this bachelor pad and he had this brand new white microwave and I was mesmerized by it.

                                    And he was like, "Suzy, how do I work this?"

                                    I was like, "I don't know."

                                    We didn't even know how to work it. Ah, the good old days.

Jan Miller:                  But, it was the rage and everyone had one.

Suzy Chase:                  It was.

                                    So onto the '80s, there was increased interest in low fat meals and nutrition information was added. And also, my favorite, table setting information was dropped. How come?

Jan Miller:                  Oh my gosh. You know what? You'll be happy to know that that was added back in not long after that.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh good.

Jan Miller:                  And we did include it in the new edition too because so many people want to know how to set their table. It's important.

Suzy Chase:                  It is. It is.

Jan Miller:                  The '80s were ... we definitely felt like we needed to look at our cholesterol and our sodium and fat. You know, fat was the big, bad nutrient. So people wanted to know what was in their food, and I would say the recipes weren't severely restricting of those nutrients, but as time went on, they got more so. I would say in our ... Oh my gosh. By 1996, that edition was very healthful and there was a section on health, and the recipes were ...

                                    Oh my gosh, well, I worked on the 12th edition as a very young editor here at Better Homes and Gardens, and so that was the edition that followed right after that '96 edition. And I remember us all sitting around taste panel saying, oh my gosh, we've got to put the flavor back in some of these recipes. Where is the butter? Where is the salt? Where is the pepper? We're going to be okay here, we've got to do something.

                                    And so, I would say that was the mark of just sort of walking away from that a little bit, but not entirely because to eat a healthful meal, makes everyone feel good. You know, moms feel good about putting wholesome nutritional food on the table and there's so many ways to accomplish that, and so I think, through the years, even from that point, when I kid about adding more flavor, we try to be very conscious about good, wholesome food and know that there are times that we want to splurge too and so there's certainly a lot of splurge recipes in the book as well.

Suzy Chase:                  So the '90s, you added preparation times to keep up with the fast-paced lifestyle. How did you figure out you needed to add that?

Jan Miller:                  You know, it's funny, we also added numbered steps for recipes. You just don't think about those things until you start to compare. But I think we just knew, and Meredith, we've always done a lot of research and known ... we've had a lot of conversations with our readers over the years and that just became so important to them. There was only so much time that they felt like they wanted to spend in their kitchen on a weekday, especially as both parents were working. And it got to the point where we knew that that's sort of how they started to filter some of their recipes of what they were willing to cook through the week.

                                    And so it needed to be included and it needed to be at the top of the recipe so that they could see it and use it as a "Mmm, I'm not going to do that one tonight, but maybe that's a weekend recipe."

Suzy Chase:                  Now, for the first time, the 17th edition has a photo with every recipe and helpful guidance. Talk a little bit about that.

Jan Miller:                  Think about how our world has changed, just in terms of how we look at recipes. There's so much. We, admittedly, do a lot online. Instagram is such a visual social media outlet. But we knew that the formatting from the past years, home cooks when they had more skill, as well, they didn't necessarily need a photo of a finished food and they certainly didn't need as much step-by-step photography and so, as the years have gone on, we just know that step-by-step photography was needed in places where you just needed an extra helping hand.

                                    And so, there are so many more how to images that have language about how to work through that step if it's really a key step. We tried not to put things in that were how to that just were how to images to fill a page because we wanted people to see what they really needed to see, when they needed to see it.

                                    But we did commit to a finished food image with every recipe, and that is no easy task in this book.

Suzy Chase:                  I can't imagine. How long did it take to put this book together with all of that?

Jan Miller:                  It really is a year of solid work. And I know that our edit team spent probably more days down in our studio than they did at their desks, so it was a process. But, you know, it's an awesome process because it's another chance to look at the recipe, because we test it up in our test kitchen and then the editors that are working on the project, they also are down on the photo shoot too, and so it's kind of fun to see, to get the reviews even from the studio staff, because we all tasted it, tasted things at the taste panel, we knew some of the things that we loved that were some favorites and it's good to hear all the love come back upstairs too, when they're eating. Because we prepare the food like it is written for camera.

                                    We do some things like maybe take back the amount of sauce, so you can see through, so that you see ingredients very well, but for the most part, our food stylists are preparing the food according to the recipe.

Suzy Chase:                  So you work out of an incredible test kitchen in Des Moines, Iowa. Give us a little background on the test kitchen, or as they used to call it the Taste Testing Kitchen.

Jan Miller:                  Yes, well that really has evolved as well. But I believe that we are the first test kitchen of this level and the length of longevity, I would say maybe we are the longest living test kitchen. But that started as just a way to give another stamp of endorsement. I think women, again, were needing a little bit more guidance and they wanted to make sure that they knew that they could trust a recipe.

                                    It's funny, some of the first images from our test kitchen were illustrated. I mean, back in 1926, I think, the first images that they put in the printed magazine, to show off the test kitchen, they were illustrated and it was just a small little crew of maybe three to four home economists, but they worked so hard, those women.

                                    Our Meredith Campus here in Des Moines, there's two buildings and the older building originally housed the test kitchen. And they would talk about how some of the executives would smell what was happening down in the test kitchen and take a wander down their way. There's so many wonderful little stories.

                                    But it has, of course, evolved and grown and now there's eight kitchens for, I think we have six full-time home economists and they all test about five recipes a day. We have people who shop so that time isn't taken up by them being out and about shopping, and they can test more recipes. We have a multiple array of appliances that the home cook would have in their own home, so that we know that we're not testing on anything that's too high end or not going to be a similar experience to the home cook. It has to be that we're using appliances that they would use and brands of pretty much everything.

                                    And I love that we're in Des Moines, Iowa because I think even when we're testing recipes for ingredients, we're a good example of what you can find across the US, in terms of ingredients.

                                    So that kitchen is a key to our success here, definitely, and we couldn't do this book without them, for sure.

Suzy Chase:                  If you're including classic recipes in cookbooks, do you still have to run through those in the test kitchen?

Jan Miller:                  Yeah. We do. We do. Because it's funny how, our expectations maybe change of what that should be. So nothing is, I guess, assumed that it's going to be good enough for that new edition. There's times where we have put just a good old basic chocolate cake ... I mean, there was one day we had four chocolate cakes side by side, because I don't think you really sometimes know the nuances of the difference between a recipe until you taste them side by side, so we did quite a testing to make sure that we had the best chocolate cake. It was not painful to do, but it's just what makes the book relevant every year.

                                    I mean, the best pumpkin pie. We've sometimes messed with our chocolate chip cookie formula, even to help with longer storage. So there's things that I think every classic recipe is up for a scrutinization, every time we do a new edition.

Suzy Chase:                  Have you seen on Etsy where people are patching and renovating their five ring binder Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book to make journals?

Jan Miller:                  Oh my gosh, I haven't but now I want to.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh my goodness! I went down the rabbit hole with that the other day on Pinterest. It's darling. It's so cute, you've got to look it up.

Jan Miller:                  Oh my gosh, I will.

Suzy Chase:                  Now to my segment called My Last Meal. What would you have for your last supper?

Jan Miller:                  Oh my goodness. I think ... We did, this is going to sound crazy-

Suzy Chase:                  No, it's not.

Jan Miller:                  Maybe. It might.

                                    We did this incredible fattoush salad. Doesn't that sound nuts? It sounds nuts maybe. There's just something about the fresh and the ... Oh my god, I just loved that thing.

Suzy Chase:                  Describe the fattoush salad.

Jan Miller:                  Let me find it for you. Well, I think probably what gets me is ... well of course, there's a little pita bread in it, and so it's like a twist on a panzanella. But it's got a little pita bread in it and then the dressing is olive oil, lemon juice, and garlic, and we did include a little bit of sumac, which was really yummy because it kicked the lemon up a little bit. And it had torn romaine, and cucumbers, and radishes, and green onions, and then ricotta salata cheese. It was delicious.

                                    I don't know. I just love that. And then the herbs were mint and parsley, and I just love that mint parsley thing. I don't know what it is.

Suzy Chase:                  That's perfect.

Jan Miller:                  But that was delicious.

                                    And then I would end on a double chocolate cake, because if you ever ask me, I'm always an eat dessert first kind of person and I just could never turn down a great piece of moist chocolate cake. So, if that doesn't tell you you can trust the chocolate cake in this book, I don't know what does.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook on the web and on social media?

Jan Miller:                  So if you just go to bhg.com and search red plaid, there is a link to purchase the cookbook. Otherwise, it's available anywhere ... this is our standard, anywhere quality books are sold, so you should find it on Amazon, at Barnes & Noble, at Costco and big box stores, and Walmart. I think everybody's carrying it this holiday.

Suzy Chase:                  Who knew a cookbook born in the lean and difficult years of the Depression would become America's favorite cookbook.

                                    Thank you Jan for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Jan Miller:                  Thank you for having me. I so enjoyed the conversation.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram at @cookerybythebook and subscribe at cookerybythebook.com or in Apple Podcasts.

                                    Thanks for listening to Cookery by the Book podcast. The only podcast devoted to cookbooks, since 2015.

Lunch!

By Olivia Mack McCool

Intro:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.

Olivia:                  Hi, I'm Olivia Mack McCool, and my cookbook called Lunch! is a guide to 10 weeks of flavorful, colorful, and powerful lunch bowls.

Suzy Chase:                  In the 1960s, nutritionist Adelle Davis said, "Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper." Your cookbook seems to dispel the myth that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Talk a little bit about that.

Olivia:                  Sure. Well, it's funny you should bring up Adelle Davis. Actually, my grandmother who had such a big part raising me, was a huge Adelle Davis fan, so I grew up with her.

Suzy Chase:                  Really, oh, that is wacky.

Olivia:                  Yeah, I have her book.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh my god.

Olivia:                  Yeah. So, lunch. I make a big case for lunch being the most important meal of the day, throughout the book, because, yes, breakfast ... Each meal is important, of course, and breakfast is important. But the kind of lives that we live now, especially in New York City, and people of my generation, you're working all day. And lunch is your time in the middle of that workday, to get your energy.

                                    And if you eat something ... If you cave and you have the cheeseburger or pizza, we all know. We've been there, you know what happens. And you have to take a nap. You feel like you have to crawl under your desk for 30 minutes. So, my feeling is that lunch is super important, because it fuels the rest of your day. It kind of makes or breaks it.

Suzy Chase:                  You were trained at Le Cordon Bleu, and you're a Brooklyn-based food stylist and recipe developer. What did you set out to accomplish with a cookbook about lunch?

Olivia:                  I am all those things. But also, I love teaching people. I love inspiring people to cook, especially people my age, and my friends and my peers, and my family members. And I really ... I think cooking even just really simple meals at home is such a ... I think it's like a survival skill, and everyone needs to have it.

                                    So I'm always trying to inspire people to realize that it's actually not that hard. It just takes a little time and a little effort. And a little inspiration, which I was hoping to give people.

                                    So, my goal was to show people that, if they just put in that two hours of prep on Sunday, I'm providing you with the grocery list, that you can make your lunch five days a week. And the other key is really accessible ingredients, ingredients that you can get at any supermarket, all over the country. You can have five homemade lunches, which is better for your wallet, and definitely better for your health.

Suzy Chase:                  For those of us who don't meal prep, it can be intimidating. What do you suggest to get over the initial anxiety?

Olivia:                  Oh, I definitely suggest that you read the whole meal prep instructions before you start. Because it might seem like a lot, but if you read all the instructions, and you know what's coming, and you'll realize that it's not so difficult. The other thing, major, major tip: clean your kitchen and empty your dishwasher before you start. Super helpful.

Suzy Chase:                  That's a good one. That is so good.

Olivia:                  Yeah. I don't actually have a dishwasher, unfortunately. But I make sure that my sink is empty and my dish rack, the drying rack, is totally empty.

Suzy Chase:                  So, if we're on a budget, what are some healthy items we should buy in bulk?

Olivia:                  Even though I do live in Brooklyn, I belong to Costco, because sometimes I do some private cheffing on the side, and it's been helpful for me. I also have a car.  But you'd be surprised, big box stores like Costco or BJ's, they are really on trend right now with healthy foods.

                                    I buy all my organic quinoa there. I buy all my organic extra virgin olive oil. They now carry avocado oil, which is so expensive at stores like Whole Foods. But if you buy it there in bulk, it's a really good price.

                                    So, I would say, all the things that aren't going to go bad, right: pantry items like extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, grapeseed oil. Things that you use all the time that aren't going to go bad.

Suzy Chase:                  Who are some of your culinary influences?

Olivia:                  Ah, good question. So, I have to say ... People ask me all the time, how did I learn how to cook? And of course I was trained at Le Cordon Bleu, but I was cooking for a long time before that.

                                    And when I was a child, I loved watching television, like any other child. But I really only watched the Food Network. So, I learned how to cook from Ina, Giada, and also when Martha Stewart had her show ... I forget, it wasn't on the Food Network, but I loved watching her, too. So I have to say, the classics. Classic American television stars.

Suzy Chase:                  In this cookbook, you have 10 weeks of lunches. The layout is a little different. Can you describe it?

Olivia:                  When my publisher and I started the process of ... When I pitched Lunch! to them, they had a bit of a framework for me, in the sense of, they wanted a book about lunch. But, they said, "That's all, and you run with the concept."

                                    So I knew right away I wanted to provide more of a formulaic layout for people, because I like I said earlier, I love accessibility, and I love ease. And I really want to empower people to actually cook from my book.

                                    So, when I was thinking about it ... There's quite a few books out there about bowls, and lunch bowls, and grain bowls. But each recipe stands alone, and you have to get all those ingredients just for that one bowl, and that's not really how we cook, in our regular lives.

                                    So, I knew that I wanted to provide a shopping list, and I also wanted to provide the Sunday prep. So, every chapter has a shopping list with everything you need, and nothing you don't need. It also has a two-hour Sunday prep, sometimes a little less than two hours, Sunday prep, where you're making all your grains, you're prepping all your vegetables, so you're ready for the week.

                                    It also has a few recipes in the beginning that are kind of the building blocks of each bowl that's going to come later in the week. So, once you're done with all that on Sunday, and you put everything in your glass containers, et cetera, then each night before the next day, you prep your bowl, and you're ready for the next day.

Suzy Chase:                  So, why did you choose to center the cookbook around the bowl?

Olivia:                  My publisher is called Dovetail, and their parent company is called W&P Design, and they manufacture some awesome products. A lot of their products revolve around cocktails, and kitchenware. So, in the beginning of last year ...

                                    They're a client of mine, I style a lot of their cookbooks, and we have a great relationship. And they came to me and said, "In the end of 2018, we're coming out with some products that are," for lack of a better word, they're very chic Tupperware, something that you'd want to bring to work, and that works really well. It's leakproof, and comes in really good colors.

                                    And they started out with this product called Porter, which is a bowl meant to bring your lunch to work. And I think the hope is that they'll have other products coming out next year. But they approached me and said, "We love your style, we know you really well. We'd love you to write the book that accompanies the product."

                                    And not that the book ... They're not sold together necessarily, but they're merchandised together, and they're a great giftable item, even for yourself. You know, you get the book, and you get the bowl, and you're all set up.

Suzy Chase:                  What are some lunch foods that travel well, in your Porter bowl, and won't get mushy sitting at your desk?

Olivia:                  Oh, really good question. I thought a lot about that, when writing this book. I think grains are an awesome things for lunch, for many reasons, but definitely because they hold up. You can put dressings on them, vegetables on them, and they hold up all day long.

                                    Same with rice noodles. I'm a big rice noodle fan, and chapter one uses rice noodles. And they soak up really delicious dressings, but they don't go soggy, and they're all ready for you right when you open your bowl at lunch.

Suzy Chase:                  For 10 chapters, you solved our lunch planning problems. Now, for chapter 11, you supplied us with some fun and easy treats. Describe chapter 11.

Olivia:                  So, chapter 11 was an addition to the book. And I told my editor, I said, "I have this idea for an additional chapter," but I was hesitant to commit. 'Cause, you know, I had a deadline. But I really wanted to add this chapter, and so I kind of half-promised her.

                                    But I'm really happy I pulled it off, because I love a little sweet treat after lunch. Or I even love my lunch with like a cracker, something crispy, that little extra treat factor. And I'm really into baking that is grain-free and refined-sugar-free, in my own life. So I wanted to pass on just a few really simple recipes, just to show people that if they had a little extra time, that they could make some treats for their lunch.

                                    I really love the lime and coconut cookies, they're my favorite recipe out of the chapter. And they have kind of a cult following now, amongst my readers and my friends. And they are using almond flour, and coconut oil, and lime zest, and maple syrup as the sweetener.

Suzy Chase:                  Did you do the food styling for this cookbook?

Olivia:                  I did do the food styling, which was so awesome. I can't even describe to you how exciting that was. You know, I'm on set every week with all different projects and all different clients, and I style a lot of cookbooks.

                                    And cookbooks are actually my favorite kind of job, because they're just ... I don't know, there's something about it, at the end, there's this physical thing that you get at the end of all your hard work. But styling my own cookbook was pretty thrilling. I can't deny that.

Suzy Chase:                  I made a few of the recipes from your week three menu, so let's talk about that. First was the farro ... Is it farro, or farro?

Olivia:                  Well, I think that's up to interpretation. I mean, I say farro.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay, we'll go with farro. Okay, so, I made your farro bowl, with chicken skewers. And the chicken was marinated in a yogurt mixture, and I really think that the cinnamon kicked up the flavor in that chicken.

Olivia:                  Yeah, so, cinnamon is something that I love cooking with. Of course, I love baking with it, but I love it in savory foods. I make a lot of, maybe like Middle Eastern or Indian-inspired dishes with cinnamon. And these chicken skewers are no exception. It really kind of adds that, "Whoa, what is that flavor?"

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Olivia:                  It's funny how cinnamon is really sweet, without having any sugar in it, but it just ... I don't know, maybe it just makes your brain think that this is sweet. And it's really nice, really nice, with chicken.

Suzy Chase:                  And I'd never made farro before. It's so fast.

Olivia:                  Oh, yeah, it's so easy. And you can just boil it just like pasta. So there's all different kinds of farro, too. I mean, if you ... Kind of like in the sense of oats, you know, there's quick-cooking oats, there's steel cut oats. Stores like Trader Joe's, they sell a quicker cooking farro, that's great if you're-

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, that's where I got it.

Olivia:                  Yeah, it's great, if you're on a time cramp, and you need to cook it quick, it's delicious. And it's nice and chewy. It's a really good grain.

Suzy Chase:                  The cilantro and mint chutney was a super fresh drizzle over the chicken.

Olivia:                  Yeah, so, that is a really delicious sauce, and it's really easy. I'm sure you saw it the same way. You just stick everything in the blender, you blend, just taste it to see if it needs more salt or whatnot. But cilantro ...

                                    I mean, we all want to eat our greens and eat our vegetables. But we forget that actually, cilantro and parsley are really, really healthy, and they have tons of antiinflammatory and antioxidants in it. But sometimes it's hard to eat a lot of it, 'cause usually it's just a garnish.

                                    But this sauce has a whole cup of cilantro leaves in it, so it's really concentrated. Along with mint, and garlic. And it's like this fresh, kind of savory, semi-exotic tasting sauce. It's really good.

Suzy Chase:                  I loved the roasted butternut squash with sage. And the kale and Brussels sprouts slaw. I put it all together for a whole meal, which, I don't know if I was supposed to or not, but. Like you just pile it up in the bowl, and it was incredible.

Olivia:                  Oh, yeah. I mean, I always tell people when I'm talking to them about the book, I'm like, "Make all this stuff, double the recipes, 'cause I know you're going to like it, and eat it for dinner, or eat it for whatever meal. Put it all together."

                                    The slaw is super delicious, and it's like a fresh, crunchy slaw, that has a really good dressing on it. And talk about healthy, I mean, it's kale and Brussels sprouts. And then, the butternut squash, you get that soft, roasted, warm flavor. I love sage, too.

Suzy Chase:                  I was so bummed. I didn't make the seed sprinkle, because I confused pepitas with pine nuts, at Trader Joe's. Big, big bummer. But that sprinkle looks amazing.

Olivia:                  Yeah, you should take some time and make ... Well, it doesn't really even take that much time. But, you should make it, and this is one I even say, in the note at the bottom, "Double the recipe. You're not going to be upset if you do."

                                    It has a huge cult following in my family. Every time we go see my in-laws in Minnesota, they ask that I bring quart containers of this stuff. And actually, all the books ... When the book came out, my publisher, the publicist there, she sent books to editors at magazines, and whatnot. And we sent a little jar of this seed sprinkle with every book, because it's so delicious.

Suzy Chase:                  Now for my segment called My Last Meal. What would you have for your last supper?

Olivia:                  Oh, that's easy. I would gorge myself on oysters, like as many oysters as I could fit in my stomach. I'm obsessed with oysters, and I like dirty martinis. So I would have unlimited, all you can eat oysters, and maybe not unlimited dirty martinis. I want to remember the experience.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Olivia:                  Definitely. So, on Instagram, my handle is @OliviaMackMcCool. And my website is OliviaMackMcCool.com. Easy to remember.

Suzy Chase:                  So, I have to give a quick shoutout to Sam Sabol, a fellow wing member, who introduced your cookbook to me. She has her cookbook club called CookBooking in Brooklyn, and S'more Stories. And I'm so thankful she hooked us up for this fun cookbook conversation. Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Olivia:                  Thank you so much for having me. And yes, shoutout to Sam, thank you so much for making this happen. It was a pleasure.

Outro:                  Suzy Chase is on Instagram, @CookeryByTheBook. And don't forget to subscribe to this podcast, over on CookeryByTheBook.com, or in Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery by the Book podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

Photo Credit: W&P

My 2018 Cookbook Year in Review with Bonnie Benwick, deputy food editor and recipes editor of The Washington Post. 

(Photo credit Deb Lindsey for The Washington Post)

Intro:                  Welcome to The Cookery By The Book Podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I'm Bonnie Benwick, deputy food editor and recipes editor of The Washington Post Food Section.

Suzy Chase:                  So you're the deputy food editor and recipes editor of The Washington Post, where you've worked since 1989. How old were you when you discovered your love of cooking and cookbooks?

Bonnie Benwick:                  I think cooking, definitely when I was about nine years old. My mom was a nurse and so she wouldn't be at home when I came home from school. There was an afternoon help to sort of, it was not quite a babysitter, not quite a maid type person, but just someone who was around because it made my parents feel better about that. But my mom would leave instructions or she would call me from the office and say, "Take this out of the freezer." She was a big freezer cook. Defrost vegetables, put them in a pot, do this, do that. I was kind of her prep cook from very early on.

                                                      I remember when I was nine I also had my first experience with a pressure cooker, you know those scary kinds with the-

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Reports things landing on the ceiling, which never happened to me, by the way. But my father really liked tongue and that's kind of one of the scummier things to cook in a pressure cooker, I think, but I was all in. That was my job. Also made borscht for him. He came home almost daily to have lunch and borscht was his thing. So between that and whatever, I was totally ... I'm just in love with making things in the kitchen, creative and fun and you get to eat it.

                                                      Cookbooks, I think I ... That's a little harder to pin down for me. My mom had an old settlement cookbook that we might talk about later that she got when she was married. I used to look through that a lot and ask her questions, but she wasn't really a cook by the book kind of a person. I had an aunt who devised her own recipes and everything that she made, she would label it with Aunt Sally's best blueberry muffins, Aunt Sally's best lemon pancakes. I just thought naturally, everything she made was the best.

                                                      So that was kind of a segue to looking in books that had really good recipes. I guess I landed in this ... That's a scary number, 1989, isn't it? I came to The Washington Post part-time and then went full-time when my kids got a little older. I've been in the food section for almost half that time that I've been at the Post and that's really where I wanted to be. Luckily, I've just landed in this job where I get to look at all the cookbooks I want all the time and talk to the people who put them together, which is always kind of been a little thrill for me.

Suzy Chase:                  In the first line of you December 11th piece in The Washington Post, you wrote, "To be honest, we compilers of Best Of lists are never quite sure about what you, dear readers, want most from the cookbook division." Could you take us through the process, like how many cookbooks do you start with usually and what's the criteria?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Well as you know since you have a cookbook podcast, they tend to come out in publishing clusters during the year. There's a spring graduating class and there are some in the summer that have to do with summer cooking and grilling, but the fall is really, heading into September, that's really the big crush where people tend to remember books most, and give them as gifts, and book reviewers like myself will test out of them quite religiously because we get these advance copies, galley copies way ahead, months ahead of pub dates.

                                                      So I try to remember the ones that come earlier in the year, but people tend to hold off and really wait. The big crush of them, like I said, is that fall time. I think I must look through several hundred books a year. I don't obviously get to write about all of them, but I can see a little bit about trends in publishing and what people were after. It wasn't hard to spot the dozens and dozens of instant pot titles this year.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh yeah.

Bonnie Benwick:                  So specific that it got down to six ingredients in 20 minutes in your so and so kind of instant pot. It was just like every ... And I think it's going to keep coming, by the way. But then the next sort of round, the books that I tend to stockpile on my desk, or under my desk, or in a special closet that we have.

                                                      I'll put Post-It notes. I'm a Post-It notes person. I'll tag recipes that I'm interested in, and if a book has got a hefty number of them, I set it aside for a possible best of the year, and try recipes. You also probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that not all recipes in cookbooks work very well.

Suzy Chase:                  Yep, exactly.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yep. For one reason or another, so we we just make sure that a book that I recommend to people I've been through and spot tested enough that I feel confident that they get good use out of it. I also tend to like a practical, tend to recommend a practical book, something that I think people will not just ... It's not really based on a trend or anything, but it's something that actually teaches them something, kind of a life skill like a bread book, for example, a bread baking book.

                                                      They've just gotten much better describing things and giving you step by step photos and sort of eliminating a lot of the anxiety in that process, I think, for a lot of people, or trying to eliminate what seems like a hard time and hard work and this that and the other thing.

Suzy Chase:                  I find I'm super interested in the story, if the cookbook comes with a story of a region or a culture.

Bonnie Benwick:                  You mentioned that you like, your Nick Sharma's Season is your favorite of this year?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I think a lot of what his success was, he had this column in The Chronicle, but other than the beautiful brown hands photography that he did that had such depth to it, I think, it was not only the cuisine that he was cooking, but the story of his life, and what food means to him, and what goes into it when he's cooking. Don't you think?

Suzy Chase:                  It was so heartfelt, and so real, and so honest. I think it's a story that we haven't heard before. That's what got me.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yes. It seems this year there were more voices. I went for ... I always try to have a more inclusive list in my list of the year, Best of the Year lists tend to be longer than everybody else's. I know I was kind of complaining about, how could I narrow it down, but it seemed to be echoed in several other end of the year lists that I've seen so far. It's like they're all, cookbooks are just getting better.

                                                      It's not necessarily that they're getting edited better, but we're just hearing from more voices and there are more cuisines out there that are more accessible to people because of the way we shop, or available things online, or that we're all so interested in. There are more people who are reading cookbooks for the stories they tell, not just for recipes that they give you.

Suzy Chase:                  Can you describe the overall quality of cookbooks released this year?

Bonnie Benwick:                  I was pretty impressed. Even the instant pot books, they went after trying to show you specifically what I think is the cuisines that call for a lot of long, slow cooking, Mexican, Indian, even French, all the braises that happen in French cooking, just translate really well to the instant pot. You have to know what buttons to push and how long to do certain steps. The fact that you can sautee chicken before you stew it for minutes instead of hours, that kind of thing.

                                                      I thought that was pretty good and there's also those books like the Japan book that I recommended. It was just to me a really beautiful attempt at picking and choosing Japanese recipes that are not intimidating, that don't call for a lot of ingredients, that don't have you making your own dashi every five minutes, although there is some of that. But I just thought it was a beautiful attempt at, and this has nothing to do with appropriation culturally.

                                                      But the author, Nancy Hachisu lived there long enough that she was able to study the cuisine and cook with different Japanese cooks and chefs. So I felt that she had that western sensibility to translate and explain those recipes and choose the ones that she thought would appeal to people like me. So if you've been to Japan, if you're in love with the culture, if you like that way of eating, I thought it was a really nice entrée. Plus, it's just a beautiful book.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. I find that all Phaidon books are beautiful, like coffee table books. It's interesting to hear how that cookbook rose to the occasion for you because sometimes I feel like they aren't really that practical, that they're more pretty to look at.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah, definitely. They care about the packaging of the thing, and usually there's some, I wouldn't call it a marketing device, but there's something about the way that they present the material and there's always so many recipes in every Phaidon book, right? There are like-

Suzy Chase:                  A million, yeah.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah, and that you can't really, unless it comes with one of those little ribbons, how are you going to keep that open?

Suzy Chase:                  Well, some of them come with two ribbons.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That's true, I remember Spanish Foods or something from years ago. Yeah, but again, it's not like I've cooked out of a lot of them. So this was a bit of a surprise to me. They always look really pretty, but unless I'm totally wrong about this, it seems like those are kind of giftable. Is that a word? That's not a word.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, I think it is a word.

Bonnie Benwick:                  They're good for gifts. It's a book that you present to somebody else. I'm not sure that I've ever seen one that someone has just demolished by cooking through it and breaking the spine and doing something like that. So coffee table sounds about right.

Suzy Chase:                  Cookbook sales soared 25% this year. Does that surprise you at all?

Bonnie Benwick:                  You know, my editor Joe Union and Cathy Barrow, who is the author of Pie Squared, was also on my list and she's a columnist for us and a friend of mine. Full disclosure, she lives in DC. We're talking about this recently and I think that number might be a little skewed by the overall sales, but the book that's really crushed everybody else, and I'm talking Ottolenghi, and Ina Garten, and Dory Greenspan, and all the people that you think sell really well, 10 times over their heads, five times over their heads is the Joanna Gaines Magnolia Table.

Suzy Chase:                  Really?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Have you looked through that?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. I've just flipped through it. Wow.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Well, it's almost like food is an afterthought to this empire that she and her husband and their multiple children have built. It's that lifestyle branding, I think, that maybe she took a page from Gwenyth Paltrow or something, but it really seemed to click in. She has far outstripped Pioneer Woman, a distant second she is. But I think Joanna Gaines, I think for just fall numbers for her, I heard something like she had sold a million copies.

Suzy Chase:                  Wow.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That's just in September. Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  People love her.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That's crazy.

Suzy Chase:                  They make pilgrimages to that darn place in Waco that they have.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah, I think she made it a whole, revitalized the industry, and more power to her. I just don't know really where her recipes come from. I haven't researched it enough and I haven't cooked out of the book, although it's on my desk at work. I feel like I need to give it a shot because people are buying it for some reason, right? That alone I think has skewed the overall numbers. If you look at Publisher's Weekly stats, it tends to be not that much different from last year if you take her off the top.

Suzy Chase:                  In the same vein, it's no shocker that I'm not a fan of celebrity cookbooks, so tell me about Cravings: Hungry For More, Chrissy Teigen's latest cookbook. That was on your list too.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah. The thing about her is I think she's funny. I do believe that she likes being in the kitchen, but the thing that she was really smart about is she got a very smart recipe developer-

Suzy Chase:                  Adeena Sussman, yep.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Absolutely. Don't we love her? We love her.

Suzy Chase:                  We love her.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Right. So you know the recipes are gonna be okay and it looks like and sounds like, by all accounts, they have a really good time when they're in the kitchen together. Plus, she's kind of, I'm a little bit of an evangelist in that if Chrissy Teigen has made it easier for some people to do more cooking or to see that there's a simple joy in it, then I can go there.

                                                      She even included, I came across one recipe in her book that she said, the head notes really are entertaining, as she is, that she said something like, "Yep, this recipe was in the last book. It's so good we put it in here again. Sue me." It was just a whimsical thing. She can do it. She's a super celebrity star, mom, whatever. I don't know, it just kind of tickled me.

Suzy Chase:                  I went to the book launch that she did with Twitter here in New York City. It was packed. The line was out the door and people were just excited about her food, about listening to her talk. She has a whole thing like Joanna Gaines going on too.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah. Does she have her own line of lamps, and sheets, and towels, and stuff like that though? I don't know if she's gonna do that.

Suzy Chase:                  I think she has her own line of pots and pans at Target.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Well, yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  So there you go.

Bonnie Benwick:                  We're just envious. We want our own line of pots and pans too.

Suzy Chase:                  We're just bitter.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Like I said, I'm happy for her and at least in celebrity cookbooks for sure, you're gonna come across 25 pictures of them in the pages of the cookbook? But hers are obviously staged and they're funny. Plus, she's kind of beautiful so it's something for everybody to look at.

Suzy Chase:                  So onto Nigella, it's her 12th cookbook. What was special about this one, At My Table?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Up front, I have to disclose I'm a total anglophile. Usually during the year, I troll BBC food, I read the columnists, I'm in love with Diana Henry. Ever since Nigella's first book, it seems like I've been following her. I think when the first one came out, the domestic goddess one, I was working in the commentary section, the outlook section of the Post, and it just so happened one of the editors had gone to Oxford with her and was a roommate with her for a time.

                                                      So she told me this story about how Nigella used to throw these dinner parties all the time when she was in college. It seemed authentic. It seemed like her love of food and the fact that she was this homegrown cook, not a chef, was doing her own thing. She's got such a love of ... She's such a good writer. I love the way that she plucks words out of the air, that she'll call something squidgy and she makes it sound like a million bucks.

                                                      She does have kind of an economy of language when she's writing recipes and head notes, but they tend to conjure these images that you get. I just like that she's keeping on, keeping on. It seems when a new book of hers comes out, and they haven't all been fabulous. I wasn't a huge fan of Nigellissima, whatever, her take on Italian food and stuff, but I just appreciate that she's still around and still doing her thing so well.

Suzy Chase:                  I used to love that show.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Do you like her?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, I loved her show. Remember that show?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Oh yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  What was it called? Something ... I don't know. But she was a lot curvier.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah, she was in the kitchen. Yes, and she-

Suzy Chase:                  And she loved to eat.

Bonnie Benwick:                  But she's also had this ... Yes, that sort of late night thing in the fridge was just genius, right? Who else was doing that?

Suzy Chase:                  We all do that, yep. I was so excited to see seven of the cookbooks on your list were featured on my podcast this year, which is super exciting.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Don't we have good taste?

Suzy Chase:                  Look at us. What about Secrets of the Southern Table by Virginia Willis? Talk a little bit about that.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Have you ever met or been in her presence?

Suzy Chase:                  She was on my podcast.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That's great. How long ago?

Suzy Chase:                  She kicked off season four in September.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That's really great. I totally admire her. I've known her for a long time. She has these kind of bona fides that I really admire. She's a trained chef, she did the classic French training thing, but she also very early on got into the business of making it accessible for people through television. She worked at Martha Stewart, she worked at the elbow of Natalie Dupree. She learned how to present food to people in a way that I think is not chef-y even though she's a very good chef.

                                                      She understands how real folks cook and in this book, she was explaining origins of southern food in a way and did a lot of research and traveling around for it that I'm sure she told you about. One story that I was particularly taken with was this almond pudding that you make very simply with almond milk and gelatin. It's a southern thing, but it was actually Chinese. She explained how the Chinese people came to the south, and how they learned to cook, and how their tradition sort of got melded into southern culture, which I really hadn't read much about.

                                                      So I appreciate the fact that she did the homework and is passing along information like that. For me it enriches, like you said, it enriches the story of a cookbook, don't you think?

Suzy Chase:                  I learned so much from that cookbook. I think she needs to do a companion PBS series just on what she learned traveling around in the south, the history of food in the south.

Bonnie Benwick:                  That would be great. She's really great on television. Plus, if you talk to her for three minutes, I end up sort of saying, "Well, hey," you know.

Suzy Chase:                  Hey, y'all.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Picking up her lovely Georgia accent. Yeah, she's just great. Plus, years and years ago she did a Thanksgiving menu for us that included her mom's pecan pie. Joe and I think it's the best one. It holds up year after year. It's the best recipe we've ever made. The ratio of goo to nuts is perfect and also, this blackberry cobbler, which is kind of genius, that she does in a skillet, very easy. Pour in the batter, pour in the fruit. It's kind of a perfect recipe. I think it got included in the Genius Desserts book by Kristen Miglore this year.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm gonna have to look up that pecan pie recipe because I always find that there's more goo than pecans and it always makes me mad.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Exactly, but this is, I'm telling you, this is the way to go.

Suzy Chase:                  I love Jessie Sheehan and that darling cookbook, The Vintage Baker. With all of the baking books on the market, why this one?

Bonnie Benwick:                  I just thought it was sweet. She doesn't overreach. I like the fact that it wasn't 800 recipes. Again, I like where she's been baking and how she learned it. But in this one, you're tricked a little bit. It's vintage baker but she's applying modern methods and tweaking very traditional recipes in a way that I think makes them, reintroduces them to us. So I appreciated that. I just think she has a nice feel for things. She doesn't make things too fussy, don't you think?

Suzy Chase:                  And yeah, she is modern. You feel like you're gonna be flipping through grandma's baking book with her refrigerator cakes, but it's not. It's so modern. I think she's onto something.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I tend to lard this end of the year list with a lot of baking books. Could you tell? I do. I like all forms of cooking and baking in the kitchen, but really, baking is kind of my jam. So when they come out in full force, all the cookie books and the ... There were fewer cake books this year, I noticed. I thought that was kind of interesting.

Suzy Chase:                  What is one cookbook trend or type of food you'd like to forget in 2018?

Bonnie Benwick:                  I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this. Cauliflower.

Suzy Chase:                  Thank you.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I've never liked it and just this year it turned into flower, and rice, and microwavable cup things where normally they would have some starch, they used cauliflower instead, which must smell so horrible to me, from the microwave. I can't even tell you. They made cheese crackers out of it, like fake cheese crackers out of it.

Suzy Chase:                  Those are awful.

Bonnie Benwick:                  And even ice cream. Have you had those?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, they sell them at Trader Joe's. They're awful.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Please. I really just would like that to go away.

Suzy Chase:                  What about kale?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Kale doesn't bother me. It got overworked a little bit, but I think it's settled back down into a happy place where people just aren't writing about it, but I think they're still using it. I like a good massaged kale salad. I like the way that it's a rich green. I like the way that it's a hearty green that will hold up in a soup. I like kale better than chard, I think. So for those Italian wedding meatball soups and things, I started using kale in it and I like it.

Suzy Chase:                  Well, okay.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I'm sorry.

Suzy Chase:                  You know who Mimi Sheraton is?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Oh yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  She hates kale. Hate, hate, hates it.

Bonnie Benwick:                  She hates maple syrup.

Suzy Chase:                  She hates everything. I love her.

Bonnie Benwick:                  She's funny when she hates it.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah.

Bonnie Benwick:                  She actually wrote this essay for us on why she hates the taste of maple. It gets overused this time of year. You should look it up. It's very funny. She gets so ... Talk about click bait. Everybody was just, what are you talking about? Now every time we use maple in a thing we're like, "Sorry, Mimi."

Suzy Chase:                  What is one trend you see on the horizon for 2019?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Probably already half trended out. Fried foods maybe? People are gonna rediscover them based on ... The re-tweeted food media seems to have picked up on the air fryer and they're all over it. They think that by spraying their food with cooking oil spray and basically putting them in a convection oven, which is pretty much something you can do in a convection oven, I think, is going to turn the tide. So we'll have fried zucchini and sweet potato fries.

Suzy Chase:                  Fried cauliflower.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Sure, all the time.

Suzy Chase:                  There you go.

Bonnie Benwick:                  At home. For me, it's not ... I think frying foods in general is something that people avoid maybe for the wrong reasons. They say they don't want a lot of overused oil, but I have this theory that in the vast middle of America, take away the coast, but I think people know how to fry. I think they reuse the oil and they strain it, reuse it. I think once you get a feel for it, it's not like it's in there soaking up buckets and buckets of oil. It's in, it's out. You have to learn how to do it, right?

                                                      Again, it's the sort of thing where I think if you know how to do it, you're not gonna buy an air fryer. If you, all the times that you maybe go out and you're guiltily ordering the fried mozzarella sticks or something, it's just funny to me that it's opened up this world of possibilities where there was a world of possibilities already there. But I could be totally wrong about this too.

Suzy Chase:                  We'll see. What cookbook is sitting on your bedside table right now?

Bonnie Benwick:                  The one that's on the top of the list is not a new book, it's an old book. It's a 2003 book called Cooking 1-2-3 by Rozanne Gold. Do you know it?

Suzy Chase:                  No.

Bonnie Benwick:                  It's like a game-changing book. She gloms on very early to this, it doesn't take a lot of ingredients, and if you want to get dinner on the table, this is how you do it. So the one, two, three is a minimal amount of ingredients, but it's just also very easy steps. I tend to have it on my bedside every now and then when I'm looking for inspiration for my Dinner In Minutes column, which is quick weeknight meals. Usually, there's something in there that I can start tweaking or playing off of.

                                                      You should look it up. She's very good in a very simple way. She's one of those people that might be under the radar for people who aren't on the east coast, but I have a lot of respect for her and what she's done. She's done several cookbooks, nothing recent. I don't know if she does that anymore, but she's also I think a driving force behind the cookbook section that was donated or created or something for New York Public Library. I'm getting that wrong, for New York University.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh yes. I've been to that.

Bonnie Benwick:                  I think it's called the spine collection or something. Have you? Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  The Fales Library?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Fales, that's it.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. It's incredible.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Then let's see, something that I have current on here is a galley for Solo, which was on my list. Was that on your list, by Anita Lo?

Suzy Chase:                  No, but I'm dying to talk to her.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah, I think she'd be a really good interview. I remember when she appeared on top chef she was someone you wanted to listen to. Every couple of years, people remember that people aren't cooking for groups of 12. They come out with a cooking for one book. Years and years ago, I think just after Joe had come to the food section, we came up with the idea of a cooking for one column and he did for several years. We started off with getting different cooking for one constituencies to author it, like somebody who runs and eats food for fuel, basically.

                                                      Obviously someone who was a widower who hadn't been cooking and then just had to start it up and give her her own life. Then Joe sort of glommed onto it and made it things that he likes to cook. It was very popular. What Anita has done in the Solo book is first of all say it's not all about her being by herself because she is in a relationship, happens to be, but even if you're living with other people, every once in a while you cook by yourself and these are empowering recipes that she'll give you that you can treat yourself well without making a whole big deal out of it.

Suzy Chase:                  I think she lives in my neighborhood.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Well, lucky you. You should definitely get together with her.

Suzy Chase:                  She had a restaurant a couple streets over. I cannot think of the name right now, but it closed and everyone was so sad.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah. Was it Annisa?

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Anyway, sure. Her restaurant closed and everybody is sort of waiting to see what she's gonna do now.

Suzy Chase:                  What is your favorite vintage out of print cookbook?

Bonnie Benwick:                  Probably that settlement one that I mentioned, just for sentimental reasons. The 1949 edition, again, was when my mom got married. That was the year my parents married. I downsized about six months ago and I had so many cookbooks that at some point, I just thought if it's in a box and I haven't looked at it in such a long time, I'm not even gonna open the box. I donated about 12 boxes to a local DC organization that teaches cooking skills and also provides food for the city through city support residents, and I gave it away. I don't have it.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh no.

Bonnie Benwick:                  When I opened up the books that I took with me to my apartment, it's gone. I feel bad about that, but she had written notes in the margins. I think I would just like it back in my life for comfort. I can see ... I've gone online before and looked for this edition, and it's hundreds of dollars through somebody who understands how sentimental somebody can be about it. It's really very solidly about the memories and not so much about everything that we made out of it.

Suzy Chase:                  It's interesting. I was just talking with Jan Miller, executive editor of Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook yesterday, and so many people feel the same way about their really old Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. It's like an old friend.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah. Did the old ones used to have that red and white gingham thing on the cover?

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah, and the tabs.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Tabs, yes.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  Aw.

Bonnie Benwick:                  There were also those, there were a series of, I think it was by Workman, those 365 Days of Chicken or something else books. I don't know if they're really out of print or not, but they were the same size and they came out in the same era that The Silver Palate came out in. It's the paperback book but it's kind of longer size. That 365 Days of Chicken might have been in the same format as Better Homes & Gardens where it had a hard cover and you could open up the pages, but there were some pretty good simple chicken recipes in that book. I think I dipped in and out of that quite a lot. That's another one that I let go.

Suzy Chase:                  I have an oddball question. Why aren't cookbooks critiqued? There are book critics but why aren't cookbooks critiqued?

Bonnie Benwick:                  You know, I should start something, Suzy.

Suzy Chase:                  You should. You're welcome.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Kind of interesting. I think for one, if you're gonna critique it, you can sit down even with a big fat book and read it and then you're done, but with a cookbook, you really need to cook your way through it to critique it honestly, to assess its abilities, and then you have to weight it against other cookbooks and maybe some people just don't have the historical background of reading so many cookbooks and working with so many.

                                                      I used to write regular reviews of cookbooks in the earlier days of the food section. Then we had other people writing them, and then we just stopped running them. Nobody said a peep. There wasn't one reader who wrote in and said, "What happened to those great cookbook reviews you used to have?"

Suzy Chase:                  Oh really?

Bonnie Benwick:                  No.

Suzy Chase:                  Huh.

Bonnie Benwick:                  When I went on social media and just asked for general feedback, not about us, but about in general, where did people read reviews, or how did they know what cookbooks to choose, overwhelmingly, they said they just read what's on Amazon. I just thought, well, who's writing those? You don't even know.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. What pro is writing that?

Bonnie Benwick:                  It's like the Yelp of cookbooks or something. It's like people find their names and they seem authentic, but it could be Russian trolls for all I know. I don't even understand why that's a good thing to go by. I think more than that, these days, people probably just gravitate toward bestsellers. Don't you?

Suzy Chase:                  Definitely. Look at Joanna Gaines. On every episode this season, I've been asking cookbook authors what their last meal would be. So, what would you have for your last supper?

Bonnie Benwick:                  It would be shrimp. I would have different kinds of shrimp. I like those pinky red ones from Maine that they can't seem to get out of the sea these days. I like glass shrimp, which I've had marinated a little bit as an appetizer. I like garlicky shrimp scampi type stuff, really low brow basic stuff. I like just caught gold shrimp that have been poached in a court bouillon and maybe I would just dip it aioli because it would be my last meal and I wouldn't care about anything that was happening to my insides.

                                                      But I grew up in a kosher eating two sets of silverware kind of house. I think I must have been in high school or college the first time I really had shrimp. I just went out or went off the reservation and I've never looked back. I never get tired of it, I can't eat too much of it. It makes me sad when it goes into the oven and comes out an hour later and it's just dry and rubbery and horrible in a casserole or something. But I'll always give it a try. I like sucking heads out of shrimp. So there you go. I’d be full of shrimp.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Bonnie Benwick:                  I would love for everybody to come and chat with us online every Wednesday from noon to one EST at live.washingtonpost.com. We have an online chat called Free Range and we have a lot of faithful followers and a lot of lurkers who can just look at the questions and answers afterwards. It's a really fun hour. Typically if there's a guest who's written something, we'll have people on there. Had a whole lot of cookie experts on the week that our annual holiday cookies issue came out, and that was fun.

                                                      People have questions and sometimes they start with, "This is a really dumb question but," and I'm like, "There's no dumb questions." It's all about being non-intimidating. I also have a Dinner in Minutes column. It's been doing a weekly quick meal column since, I don't know, maybe 11 years or so. That now appears in our vertical called Voraciously. I don't know if you have seen it, but it's about a year old and you can get it through Eat Voraciously or washingtonpost.com/food. That'll take you to another link that you can get in.

                                                      It's basically about non-intimidating learning basic skills. It's brought in a whole new audience for us. I like [inaudible 00:38:57] my column I maybe even come up with a set pantry so that if you buy into the pantry and if you stock what I stock, then you'll never have to go shopping to make the recipe that I've given you for that week. So that seems to be good.

                                                      On Twitter, it's just my name, first name and last name. On Instagram, I'm @bbenwick. I am not on Facebook. I got hacked a couple years ago and never went back on. Now it doesn't seem like a really good thing to do, does it? Although I think Facebook has Instagram too, but I don't share a whole heck of a lot of my personal life on Instagram, just mostly things I eat and make.

Suzy Chase:                  This has been so much fun. Thanks, Bonnie, for coming on Cookery By The Book Podcast.

Bonnie Benwick:                  Thank you. It’s been fun.

Outro:                  Follow Suzy Chase on Instagram, @cookerybythebook, and subscribe over on cookerybythebook.com or in Apple podcasts. Thanks for listening to Cookery By The Book Podcast, the only podcast devoted to cookbooks since 2015.

Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row

By Ty Treadwell and Michelle Vernon

Intro:                  Welcome to The Cookery by the Book podcast with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.

Ty Treadwell:                  Hi, I'm Ty Treadwell, and my book is called Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals From Death Row.

Suzy Chase:                  This summer at our beach house I read Last Suppers and it was fascinating to me. So much so, that this season on my cookbook podcast, I'm asking every single cookbook author what their last supper would be, and their answers are so thought provoking. What about death row meals captivated you?

Ty Treadwell:                  Well, I have to admit, the idea for the book Last Suppers came from my co-author, Michelle Vernon. She gets the credit or the blame, depending on what you think of the book. She and I were working together at a bookstore at the time, and she came to me, she already had a big interest in true crime in general, and especially true crime books, and she said "Hey, have you ever noticed every newspaper article about an execution mentions the last meal of the person before they died. We are working here in a bookstore, we oughta write a book about this." I said "Oh, you're crazy, nobody wants a whole book about this," but she twisted my arm, we did the research, we wrote the book, it got published, and we found out, yes, there is a big interest in this topic.

Suzy Chase:                  Since the return of the death penalty in 1976, over 1,200 executions have been carried out across the United States. What state has the most executions?

Ty Treadwell:                  Well, by far Texas has the most executions. It's very, very lopsided. They have performed more than a third of the executions that have taken place since 1976. Just to show the disparity between them and everyone else, Texas ranks number one with 556 executions to date, and Virginia, which is number two, only has 113 executions. California never executes anyone. I can't remember the last time they executed someone. I think executions and capital punishment in general are just something that the state of Texas takes very seriously.

Suzy Chase:                  Execution rituals vary from state to state, but one ritual that remains constant throughout every state is the act of feeding the condemned man or woman a special meal before the execution. Why is this ritual so important?

Ty Treadwell:                  I think that the last meal ritual is just as important for the people who are preparing and giving the food at is to the condemned person who is receiving the food, because when you look back through history, different countries, different cultures, there are many different rituals involving death that also involve food, and I personally think that food plays a very unique position in life. Food is a necessity. We have to have it to live, but it's also a luxury because most people love food, they eat what they like to eat, they make fancy meals at home, they get out for fancy meals. It's a necessity and a luxury, it's also, I think, a way of doing something nice for the condemned person that doesn't seem like it's really going overboard for the prison officials.

                                                      It's their way of saying "Okay, we can do this small thing for you before you die, but you are here for a reason, you did something bad, so this is one little small concession we can give to you."

Suzy Chase:                  Were there any connections between what they requested and their crime?

Ty Treadwell:                  As a writer and someone who writes satire, I always hope that there may be some kind of connection. A killer who smothers his victims, maybe he orders a last meal that's smothered in cheese, or someone who stabs his victims, maybe he orders something on a shish kebab. Unfortunately, that rarely happens. Most of the time, there is no connection between the crimes and the last meal, or between the names and the last meal. There was someone named, last name was Eggers, recently executed, and I was really hoping he would order an omelet or something similar to that, and he didn't. Unfortunately not a big connection there.

Suzy Chase:                  Some of these meals are elaborate. Who prepares them?

Ty Treadwell:                  If the meal is prepared in the prison, most of the time it's just the usual prison chefs. I know here in Florida where they cook the last meals in the prison, it's the food service director who cooks it. They do not bring in chefs from outside, so it's always just whoever is working in the prison kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  Are there guidelines for ordering?

Ty Treadwell:                  There are. Actually, the guidelines vary from state to state, and they are widely different. For instance, in Texas where most executions are taking place, they have completely lost their right to order a last meal. This happened because a few years ago, a man named Lawrence Brewer ordered a huge last meal that had everything in it, it had pizzas, it had burgers, it had barbecue, it had Mexican food, just a ton of food. It took many, many people just to carry it in to him, and once they brought it, he said "You know what? I'm not hungry after all." He didn't eat a bite of it.

Suzy Chase:                  I love that.

Ty Treadwell:                  Texas law makers said "That's it, nobody gets to order a special last meal after this." In Texas, the rule is you get whatever is on the daily menu. Whatever everybody else on the prison block is having, that's what you get. But, like I said, the guidelines vary widely from state to state. In Florida, my new home state, you can order up to $40 worth of food, which will be bought from a local grocery store, and then prepared in the kitchen. In Oklahoma, very different story, you can only order fast food with a cap of, I believe $20. They won't cook anything for you, but they will go and get takeout for you. There are very strict guidelines, but they vary from state to state.

Suzy Chase:                  Let's go over a few convicts that caught my eye in your book. Okay, first, Thomas Grasso, executed 3/20/95 in Oklahoma by lethal injection. He robbed and murdered two women in their 80s and strangled one with her own Christmas tree lights on Christmas Eve, that's awful. God.

Ty Treadwell:                  I know, I know.

Suzy Chase:                  So his last meal was a dozen steamed mussels, a Burger King double cheeseburger with mustard, mayo, lettuce, and tomato, a can of Franco-American spaghetti and meatballs, a mango, half of a pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and a strawberry milkshake. He also requested steamed clams and a Cornish game hen glazed with sweet and sour sauce, but those two items were denied. Why is that?

Ty Treadwell:                  Requested items can be denied for several different reasons, we're talking about Oklahoma here, which their protocol to now only allowing fast food, obviously back then they allowed items to be ordered from grocery stores and then cooked in the kitchen. The items may have gone over the spending limit, these things may have been too expensive, they may not have been available in the store at the time. The prison cook may have thought that he didn't have the means to prepare them. There are a lot of different reasons why they may have been denied, but that is one caveat to the guidelines. Just because the state says that you can order whatever you want, doesn't mean that you will get whatever you want.

Suzy Chase:                  Tell the story of his can of spaghetti and meatballs.

Ty Treadwell:                  Oh, he was so mad about this. He had specifically ordered a can of Spaghetti O's, Franco-American Spaghetti O's, as part of his last meal. He only got just regular old canned spaghetti. He was so mad about this, that in his last words, before he was executed, he said "I did not get my Spaghetti O's, I got Spaghetti, and I want the press to know this."

Suzy Chase:                  Wow. Okay. Henry Charles Moore, executed 5/16/97 in Oregon by lethal injection for murdering his half sister and brother-in-law. His last meal was a bit odd. Two green apples, two red apples, a tray of fresh fruit, and two two liters of Coke. That's just weird.

Ty Treadwell:                  It is. You can't help wondering maybe he was thinking about, oh, an apple a day keeps the doctor away saying that he was hoping to, you know.

Suzy Chase:                  Maybe.

Ty Treadwell:                  Maybe it would help him out in the execution department or something, but from what I understand, fresh fruit is very rarely given out in prisons, most of the time if they get fruit, it's canned fruit. If they do get any fresh fruit, it tends to be spoiled, or near spoiled. Maybe not even farm animal grade, so maybe he really liked apples and was hoping to get a few fresh ones for a change. That's another possibility.

Suzy Chase:                  Eric Schneider, executed 1/29/97 in Missouri by lethal injection. He shot two school teachers, murdering one. His last meal was sirloin steak, baked potato, onion rings, a chef's salad, low calorie cheesecake, that's another weird one, and a large Pepsi.

Ty Treadwell:                  Yeah, it always cracks me up when things like this happen. They will order a huge last meal, and a low calorie cheesecake, or they'll order a huge last meal and then a Diet Coke to go along with it. I can only imagine that they just like the taste of these diet foods and beverages, because they're about to go on a state sponsored diet anyway where they will lose most of their body weight, so it really can't be a diet issue.

Suzy Chase:                  You wrote in the book there are more Lees on death row than a Chinese phone book. That's hilarious.

Ty Treadwell:                  It's true. You would be amazed at how many first or last names of death row inmates are Lee. Occasionally a last name. But, yeah, it's interesting.

Suzy Chase:                  Frank Coppola executed 8/10/82 in Virginia by electrocution for beating a woman to death during a robbery. He had an egg and cheese sandwich, and asked for a wine recommendation, and you wrote "We're not sure about the significance of his last meal, but at this point in time, there are no regions of the world where eating an egg and cheese sandwich is considered especially macho."

Ty Treadwell:                  Right. Frank Coppola was a real tough guy. He would do things like swallow razor blades, or eat live spiders to show how tough he was. It would have made sense if for his last meal he had said "Give me a pizza with ground glass and thumbtacks on top." But, no, it was just a plain old egg and cheese sandwich.

Suzy Chase:                  David Castillo, executed 9/23//98 in Texas for slashing a liquor store cashier to death has perhaps my favorite last meal. Okay, here we go. 24 tacos, 2 cheeseburgers, 6 enchiladas, two whole onions, five jalapeno peppers, one quart of milk, and one chocolate milkshake. Whoa.

Ty Treadwell:                  Now, I have read, once again, you don't always get everything you order. This was in Texas, where at the time before they took away their right to order last meals, they could order anything that was in the kitchen at the time. Other than that, there were no limit. They could ask for as much as they wanted of any item that was already in the kitchen, so I have read that he ordered this huge meal, but did not actually get all of it, and what he did get, he did not eat all of it. I think this is another one of those cases where the prison officials looked at this and said "I think 24 tacos is maybe a little excessive. I don't know that he'll even have time to eat all of that before the execution." So they may have taken that one with a grain of salt.

Suzy Chase:                  And two whole onions, what are you gonna do with two whole onions, just eat it like an apple I guess?

Ty Treadwell:                  I don't know, the two whole onions, the five jalapeno peppers, maybe he wanted to just put them on top of the other food, I'm not sure. I shudder to think about it.

Suzy Chase:                  How long do they have to eat the meal?

Ty Treadwell:                  I believe they typically have maybe an hour, probably not more than that. I don't think they rush them, but they also don't let them drag it out unnecessarily.

Suzy Chase:                  What's the most unusual request?

Ty Treadwell:                  The most unusual request by far is something that is not even actually food. A man named James Smith ordered a lump of dirt for his last meal. He was a self styled voodoo priest, and he actually didn't want to eat the dirt, he wanted to mark his body with it as part of a voodoo ritual before he did, but I believe ordering it as his last meal was the only way that he thought he could get it. The prison officials, one again, said "No, that's too weird. We're not giving you the dirt." And it wasn't just any dirt, it was a special kind of dirt. They said no, and he settled for yogurt instead. Now, when it comes to actual food items, one of the most unusual ones was ordered just recently.

                                                      A man named Edmund Zagorski, who was executed in Tennessee last month, asked for pickled pigs knuckles and pigs tails, which I have never heard of before.

Suzy Chase:                  Ew. Did he eat it? Did they give it to him?

Ty Treadwell:                  He did. They did. He apparently loved it.

Suzy Chase:                  What's the most common request?

Ty Treadwell:                  In states where the inmates can order what they want, it is predictably things like steak, lobster tail, shrimp, if they're being executed in a state like Florida where they can get what they want, they tend to order those things. If it is a state where they can only order what's available in the kitchen, or they have a lower price limit to stick with, it tends to be very predictable junk food, fast food, things like fried chicken, hamburgers, pizza, really no surprises. Every once in a while, there may be something that you can tell is a comfort food, chicken soup, or meatloaf, and mashed potatoes, something like that.

                                                      Most of the requests are very predictable, not a lot of ethnic food, not a lot of strange gourmet foods. Like I said, just the kind of things that these guys probably ate when they weren't in prison.

Suzy Chase:                  Who eats with them?

Ty Treadwell:                  Once again, it depends on the protocol. A lot of the time they at alone. Sometimes they are allowed to have a spiritual advisor with them, the prison Chaplain, someone like that. There was a very unusual case in Indiana a few years ago, a guy named Gerald Bivens, who asked for a certain type of German ravioli for his last meal. He wanted it because it was something that his mother used to make. It was one of his favorite dishes. The prison officials actually allowed his mother to come in and cook the meal for him, and then stay with him while he ate it.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh my god.

Ty Treadwell:                  That was a very unique case.

Suzy Chase:                  Reading through these last meals, I couldn't help but think, these were childhood favorites. Lots of milk came up, sometimes a piece of fruit where you could almost hear their mom in their head. Did you think the same thing?

Ty Treadwell:                  I thought the same thing as you did, and another thing is that many times the person will order a full meal, they won't just order a hamburger, or a burger and fries, something like that. They'll have an entrée, they'll have several side dishes, some kind of a vegetable or a salad, they have a drink, a dessert, it will be a full meal, and you almost think "Oh, they are imagining their childhood meals, sitting at the table in the kitchen the way it might be."

Suzy Chase:                  The women on death row seem to stick with lighter fare, like Carla Faye Tucker, executed on 2/3/98 Texas by lethal injection, had a salad with Ranch dressing, a banana, and a peach. All she ate were crackers, and she drank soda. Why order all that when you're not gonna eat it?

Ty Treadwell:                  I think a lot of times people who have been in prison for a long time are really anxious to get some real food, some better food than what they have had for all of these years, but then when it's served to them, and they realize that they only have a few hours left to live, their appetite suddenly disappears. That's, I think, why a lot of times people order what they don't eat. In her case, it wasn't an incredibly extravagant meal, but like you said, she didn't touch the salad or the fruit, just nibbled on some crackers and soda instead. Probably because she just realized, "Hey, I've only got a few hours left. All of the sudden I've got no appetite."

Suzy Chase:                  Margie Velma Barfield, executed 11/2/84 North Carolina by lethal injection had cheese doodles, a Kit Kat bar, and a Coke.

Ty Treadwell:                  Well, it's a nice little snack if you're not about to go to a lethal injection. It sounds kind of tasty to me, and once again, just a snack as opposed to a meal, and that's pretty fitting with the women who have been executed, and there haven't been very many of them, not nearly as many as the men. I can't even remember of a case where a woman ordered a meal nearly as sizeable as any of these that we're talking about for the male inmates.

Suzy Chase:                  Throughout this book you have recipes from various penitentiaries. Did you go there and try the food?

Ty Treadwell:                  I had the opportunity to try a little bit of prison food in Georgia, and a little was more than enough.

Suzy Chase:                  What did you try?

Ty Treadwell:                  I believe it was a sandwich.

Suzy Chase:                  You believe?

Ty Treadwell:                  I cannot say with 100% certainty what it was. The item between the two slices of, quote/unquote, "bread" could have been peanut butter, could have been some type of meat, could have been some type of jam. I really, I can't say. It was nearly unidentifiable. From what I understand, that is, like I mentioned before, a common complaint about prison food. The prisoners are served very low grade food. Often it's food that is close to spoiling, close to its expiration date, very poor cuts of meat, the type that it might actually go to be made into pet food or something else. Yeah, and like I said, these people are in prison for a reason, they don't necessarily deserve gourmet food, but it sounds like what their getting is at the opposite end of that.

Suzy Chase:                  Over the weekend I made the recipe for your jail house chili from the Texas prison system, and I had to tweak the measurements just a bit, because it called for 25 pounds of ground beef, which is hilarious. How come this didn't call for any beans? Only ground beef?

Ty Treadwell:                  That's a good question. Chili recipes vary widely, there are some people who put no beans in their chili, and some people who put almost many different types of beans in their chili. I don't know. How did the recipe turn out for you?

Suzy Chase:                  It was a little bland, but really, 'cause I would think beans would be cheaper than ground beef if you're looking at a prison budget.

Ty Treadwell:                  The unusual thing is that inmates are served a hell of a lot of beans on a daily basis. In Texas, normally you'll see more than one type of beans on the daily lunch trays, daily prison trays, so I'm not sure why. I know that this particular recipe came from the person who is the prison director at the time, so maybe that was just his personal preference. That could be it.

Suzy Chase:                  Okay. I need a drum roll for this. What would you have for your last supper?

Ty Treadwell:                  Oh, that's so tough, because I love food. I love all types of food. I would probably order one of those, just like the guy in Texas that it takes a dozen men to bring in on trays-

Suzy Chase:                  Me too.

Ty Treadwell:                  But I would, yeah, I would try to keep it simple. I love Asian food more than anything else, so I would want to have a lot of sushi, I would want to have a few Chinese dishes, maybe some Kung Pao chicken, maybe some Mongolian Beef. I would want some Indian food, maybe some Tandoori chicken, some lamb vindaloo. I'm also passionate about donuts. I would probably want at least a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts. I would probably want to wash it all down with a huge jug of Gatorade. For dessert, maybe some tiramisu. I would probably stop there.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Ty Treadwell:                  I am on Facebook, I'm on Twitter. My website is just my name, TyTreadwell.com. You can find information there about last suppers, and also the follow up books which are Death Row's Oddest Inmates and Death Row's Wildest Women. Continuing the death row theme there.

Suzy Chase:                  This has been truly eye opening. Thanks so much, Ty, for coming on Cookery By the Book podcast.

Ty Treadwell:                  You're very welcome, thanks for having me.

Outro:                  Follow me on Instagram at Cookery by the Book. Twitter is @IamSuzyChase. Download your kitchen mix tapes, music to cook by, on Spotify at Cookery by the Book, and as always subscribe in Apple Podcasts.

A Woman’s Drink
By Natalka Burian

Suzy Chase:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book Podcast. With Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.

Natalka Burian:                  I'm Natalka Burian, I'm the author of A Woman's Drink: Bold Recipes for Bold Women.

Suzy Chase:                  What is your philosophy on mixing and sharing drinks, as opposed to the pre-Prohibition cocktail era?

Natalka Burian:                  Yes. That is a great question. So I am sort of immediately put off by that element of cocktail culture, and that resurgence during the early 2000's. I feel like there was this real emphasis on beautifully made drinks, which was great. You had access to so many higher quality products, and hospitality experiences, but the thing that bothered me that kind of prevented me personally from really fully enjoying myself in these moments was the very, almost nostalgia, for this period when it was really a dark time in our history, you know? It's really not ... to glamorize it seems really cruel to me. And to glamorize it by holding up this time when men who were the only ones allowed in these spaces, and sort of automatically paved the way to make it easier for more men to participate in this culture, and for me I just felt like, I think that cocktails and cocktail culture should be inclusive.

                                                      And I think that everyone should be able to walk into a place, or even at home. At home or out, people should get exactly what it is that they want, they like, and not feel any shame or uncertainty in asking for that. And I think that's what, at it's heart, that's what hospitality is about. It's about making everyone feel welcome. And what bothered me about this culture was that it didn't do that. It made people feel embarrassed or ashamed or unknowledgeable. And I think that's a failure, a hospitality failure.

Suzy Chase:                  You also wrote in the book that most of these watering holes shared much in common. Lengthy and intimidating drink menus, rules of conduct, and an old-fashioned sense of propriety. I feel like at the time, the Wall Street bros and hedge fund managers dictated the culture of bars. Do you?

Natalka Burian:                  Oh, for sure. Absolutely. And I think also these shows like Mad Men, that really sort of look at that era through rose-colored glasses to a degree. Like look how beautifully dressed, look at these hats, look at these Old Fashioneds. You know, I think that there was an additional sheen of glamor on that lifestyle and I think you're absolutely right. And again, I think the people who have the heftiest wallets are the ones also driving the conversation. And I just don't think that's right.

Suzy Chase:                  To get a little background on this book, can you first chat a bit about your Brooklyn bars, Elsa and Ramona?

Natalka Burian:                  I would love to. So Elsa began kind of, we opened up in 2008 as a reaction to what was happening, as you say, in this bro'd out cocktail culture. And I just was like, what if we did it differently? 'Cause the thing was, there was no denying the drinks you were getting in these places were incredible. The ingredients they used, the spirits they used, the recipes they breathed life into, and the ones they created, were really fantastic and creative and interesting and really high quality. But it was sort of like, how do we translate this and how do we move this into a space that feels more accessible. And that feels actually fun. Because at the end of the day, you're not in a library. No matter how much like a library it looks, you're at a bar, you're out, you're having fun. And it should feel fun. It shouldn't feel like you have to be restricted in any particular way, you know? So I think that that's sort of how Elsa began. And we had a great community response. And as a result, we opened Ramona. So our first Elsa was in Manhattan, we opened a second bar, Ramona, in Greenpoint, which was our first Brooklyn location, and sadly we lost our lease in Manhattan but we were able to put a second Elsa in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. So I feel like we've sort of continued to live on, despite New York City real estate constraints.

Suzy Chase:                  I read that your East Village regulars followed you to Cobble Hill.

Natalka Burian:                  Yes, it was actually great. So when we opened in the East Village, we had a lot of sort of young, single, a lot of women came in. We had a very, I would say our guests skewed female. Not overwhelmingly, but definitely there was like, we had more female guests, I would say for a while. And when we opened Elsa in Cobble Hill in, what year was that? I guess two years ago almost, now. We had people coming in saying, "Oh, I went to old Elsa," or, "I used to go there on dates and now I live around the corner here." It's just great to see, we moved with most of our guests. So it was really interesting to see the neighborhood shift.

                                                      And so the people that had frequented our East Village location are now, if they stayed in New York, are now living in our neighborhood. And we've had people come back and visit from, you know, when they come back into town from elsewhere. If they used to live in East Village they'll come and we've had people come visit, "Hey, you know, I remember when you guys were in the East Village," and that's always, it just feels so good to be part of someone's story like that, you know, and there's so many people that come in and say, "I met my partner in your bar," or "I got hired, I had a meeting with an employer and they gave me the job." Like it's just really, that's the most exciting thing for me, to sort of be part of the community story like that.

Suzy Chase:                  Tell me about your Singer sewing machine beer tap.

Natalka Burian:                  Oh man, yeah. That's ... quite a tale. So we had, when we opened the first Elsa in the East Village, we had no budget. I mean, no. Like our budget was all of my credit cards combined. And it was not an impressive number. So we'd had a friend who was in design school at the time, and I said to them, I was like, "Hey, I want to do this. Would you help me? I can't pay you but, you know, you can, creative freedom, and we can do whatever you want, it'll be great," and he had this idea to, because we were so limited, our budget was so limited, we couldn't really do as much as we wanted to do. But we somehow found this sewing machine on eBay I think, and were just like, "What if we did something crazy like with the beer tap? Like what if we did something really surreal and interesting that was a conversation piece so that the room immediately would have this thing that you remember, that you're drawn to." And it ended up being this crazy craft project on steroids with welding and drills and sort of figuring it out and then ended up working out beautifully. And we took it with us when we moved, because there was no way we were gonna leave it behind. 'Cause it's kind of our thing.

Suzy Chase:                  Is there a certain way you personalize your bars so they aren't masculine and intimidating?

Natalka Burian:                  Yeah, I think for us it's all about who we hire, number one. We are very, it's important to us to hire an inclusive staff, it's important to us to hire people who care about our guests and who don't make ... like there's a term on the menu or a spirit no one's ever heard of, to relay that information in a way that feels like a friend is talking to you and not someone who's judging you, you know? So that's a huge part of our mission. I would say it's all about the people we hire. It's all about the spaces themselves, being very bright and open and inviting in a different way. And the music, the music is always really fun. And there's never any old-timey jazz, or any of this, so it always feels fresh. And that's the thing. We want people to come in and feel free to enjoy themselves and free to ask for what they need and never, like, the no judgment thing is a big part of that, too. We don't want anyone to come in and feel uncomfortable or judged for ordering a lemon drop or whatever. If it's something they want, we want them to get it. You know?

Suzy Chase:                  Totally. I was a resident DJ at Trophy Bar in Williamsburg for six years.

Natalka Burian:                  Oh, yes! Oh man.

Suzy Chase:                  And two of the three owners are women. And you could really tell the difference. In the cocktails, and the lighting, and the interior design. And even down to how clean the restrooms were.

Natalka Burian:                  Yeah. We definitely, at all of our locations, the restrooms are very inviting. I want them to be ... I just have a personal thing about bathrooms. I feel like so often they're like an afterthought. But it really is a place people pay attention to, because you're kind of up in there, you know? And it's really a place that, if you can go the extra mile it makes a big difference for your guests.

Suzy Chase:                  Where do you find inspiration for your cocktails?

Natalka Burian:                  I would say definitely through food. For me, now, as I've gotten older, I'm definitely going out less and less. But I think for me it's through food and travel, if I've gone somewhere and I've eaten an incredible salad and it had these ingredients that I never thought to put together, it would make me want to do that.

                                                      For example, this summer I went to Maine, which I had only been to one other time, strangely. And I had this ice cream that was like a banana ice cream, with Red Hots mixed into it. And I was like, this should be so gross. But it was so delicious, we're still trying to figure out how to replicate that and make it a drink. Because it's like this crazy, it's just this bonanza of this spicy sweet very unexpected flavors, that I'm trying to get it together for our menu for the summer coming up.

Suzy Chase:                  Did the Red Hots freeze in the ice cream? Were they crunchy?

Natalka Burian:                  No. Let me tell you. They were sort of semi-dissolved, so they would have these ribbons of that hot cinnamon but then you'd also have this sort of gooey occasional crunch of the candy shell. It was, I mean, I don't know what these people did but it was, I have to call them. I don't know. I'm not having any luck cracking it.

Suzy Chase:                  That's so funny.

Natalka Burian:                  It was really good. Yeah. No. I think about it constantly.

Suzy Chase:                  That's what's brilliant about this book is I really feel like more and more people are having dinner parties. In lieu of going out. So you can use this book to host your dinner party at home. Or, you can just make one drink for yourself.

Natalka Burian:                  Absolutely. And the idea for the book was kind of the same spirit behind the bars, that there's something for everyone there. Like everyone has an entry point to the book. If you've never made a drink in your life, or if you're an experienced cocktail maker at home, there's something for you. And if you're hosting a bachelorette party for 30 people, there's a perfect recipe for you. If you're hosting a friend who's had a rough day, there's a recipe there for you. Or even if you just want to make yourself a nice drink and you don't have all the ingredients for an Old Fashioned, there's a recipe for you.

Suzy Chase:                  Chapter Four is Drinking to Get Over So Many Things. Describe the dragon fruit rum, red pepper and peach daiquiri, and why that was chosen to drink when you find out somebody you like voted for Trump.

Natalka Burian:                  Yeah. You can tell we wrote this book in the wake of that 2016 presidential election, I think.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes!

Natalka Burian:                  I think, definitely, I'm still shell-shocked, as I'm sure everyone is, but for me the thing I love about this drink is that it's not an easy one. It's not one that you can sort of like, throw together. There is a process here, there are a bunch of elements going on in the drink. So I like that it gives you time to sort of gather.

                                                      There's almost an intention when you set out to make this drink, and there's almost, any time you make a cocktail there's a ritualistic component where you're making a space for a feeling or a person or for yourself. And for me it was like, I liked this one because not only does it require a lot of interesting preparation and you have to create that space and be intentional about those feelings, but you also get the result, which is this vibrant red vivid ... it's just, the drink looks how I was feeling at the time. You know what I mean? It looks like that feeling. And I think when you drink it, it just kind of has that ... yes, there's anger, but there's a determination or something. I just feel like it captures this energy really well.

Suzy Chase:                  Like working through something.

Natalka Burian:                  Totally. Totally. And being constructive. Not just being reactive. Doing something like, I think that the act of building the drink sort of ... there's something. I don't know. I don't want to get too, make this anything that it isn't, but I think that there is something about responding to something as opposed to reacting to it, and I think that was the intent. That's sort of the message behind the drink and how I hope it would galvanize someone to move forward in a difficult moment like that.

Suzy Chase:                  I love the combination of illustrations and photos in this book.

Natalka Burian:                  Yes!

Suzy Chase:                  Was that your idea?

Natalka Burian:                  No, that was our editor. I wish I could take credit for that. Camaren Subhiyah, who was the amazing editor at Chronicle, suggested. Because part of the, one of the other features of the bars is our wonderful illustrations that were made by a old college friend of ours who is a very talented illustrator. And she was just like, "Well why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you? If you have access to these great ... like how else? What a great way to capture the vibe of your spaces." And it really was such a genius suggestion. And the photographer, Alice Gao, was, I feel like even still she's still out of league. I feel so lucky that we got to work with her. Just so fantastic, so talented, the photos exceeded my wildest dreams. Like really, just, I could not have imagined a more, like I really could not have been more thrilled with the way all of those images turned out.

Suzy Chase:                  What is the glassware mitt?

Natalka Burian:                  I think any time you pick up a cocktail book or you go to a fancy bar or, even go to someone's house, for example, I think there's this pressure to serve the right, like to match the drink to the right glass. You know? And I find that to be so frustrating. Because it's just a glass. Like it's literally just a glass. In my New York City apartment, I don't know about you, but I think to expect anyone to have that amount of glassware is insane. Like it's crazy.

Suzy Chase:                  Yeah. I have no room.

Natalka Burian:                  You can literally drink any drink. No. I mean, and who has that kind of budget? Like if you do, god bless, and enjoy it, like yes, go for it. I would never stop someone if they wanted to invest and give all that space to glassware of every variety. But it's just totally unnecessary and you can just literally serve any drink in any kind of glass. Even if people are like, "Oh, you need, you don't want a stemless because you don't want to heat up the." It's gonna be fine. It's gonna be fine. In any glass you have.

Suzy Chase:                  It's gonna be fine.

Natalka Burian:                  I promise. Yes. It's gonna be fine.

Suzy Chase:                  For my segment called My Last Meal, what would you choose for your last supper?

Natalka Burian:                  What would you choose? What's your last?

Suzy Chase:                  Probably a steak and potatoes.

Natalka Burian:                  Yeah. I like that classic.

Suzy Chase:                  Remind me of my mom.

Natalka Burian:                  Oh. I think I would have to go with a lobster roll and a champagne cocktail. I think that's a good note to go out on.

Suzy Chase:                  So keeping with the theme of this book, I was thrilled to get a copy of A Woman's Drink from your publicist Joyce Lin, who I love. To donate to the Wing!

Natalka Burian:                  Oh, yes.

Suzy Chase:                  And now, A Woman's Drink sits proudly on the library shelves at the SoHo location with other female authors. You can check out my photo on Instagram. And I saw on your Instagram that you did a cocktail class at the Wing. How was that?

Natalka Burian:                  I did. It was so fun. It was so much fun. And I'm hoping they'll let me do it again. I really had a blast doing it. And it was just a great, I've done a lot of events for the book but that was my first cocktail class I'd done. And it was so fun! And the women were really happy to be there and asked amazing questions and it was just a really great night. And I would absolutely do it again. Any time.

Suzy Chase:                  Are you a member?

Natalka Burian:                  Yes. Yeah. I love it. I don't know what I did without it for so long. It's just been so ... I joined, I guess it was last November? I don't remember. But it was like, it's been maybe over a year now. And I just, I also run a nonprofit called the Freya Project, which is a fundraising reading series where we have five women read a personal essay based on a theme around a nonprofit organization that we raise money for, for that night. So mostly we support these really small, usually reproductive justice, organizations in red states that don't have a lot of support in their communities.

                                                      So just the idea is to sort of build this bridge between women who are living in progressive cities and women who are doing the really hard work in the ground in places that are kind of hostile to the work that they do. I feel like I've moved all of my Freya Project meetings to the Wing and it's been so great to sort of designate a space for that. And I could not imagine a more beautiful place to work. It's just so beautiful in there, I can't even handle it.

Suzy Chase:                  That's amazing. For people who aren't familiar, it's a women's only club slash work space. Is that? I never know how to explain it to people.

Natalka Burian:                  Yeah. I think so. Yes. And their programming is fantastic. They have the most wonderful speakers, and the most wonderful events, and I just, it's been ... like I said, I can't believe I lived so long without having the Wing in my life.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you on the web and social media?

Natalka Burian:                  Thank you for asking. So I have a website which is natalkaburian.com. I'm on Twitter @NatalkaBurian, and on Instagram at ndburian.

Suzy Chase:                  Anyone can make a perfect drink with A Woman's Drink, even if that person knows nothing about artisanal bitters, has limited time, or is living on a budget. Thanks so much Natalka, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Natalka Burian:                  Oh, thank you so much! This was so, this was a lovely way to spend my Friday morning. Thank you.

Suzy Chase:                  Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, and while you're there please take a moment to rate and review Cookery by the Book. You can also follow me on Instagram @cookerybythebook, Twitter is IamSuzyChase, and download your kitchen mixtapes. Music to cook by, on Spotify. At Cookery by the Book. Thanks for listening!