Cookery by the Book

Real Life Dinners
Fun, Fresh, Fast Dinners From the Creator Of The Chic Site

By Rachel Hollis

Suzy Chase:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with me, Suzy Chase.

Rachel Hollis:                  Hi. I'm Rachel Hollis, and my latest cookbook is called Real Life Dinners.

Suzy Chase:                  I just have to say that you're my very special 100th episode guest, and I can't thank you enough for coming on my podcast again to talk about cookbook number two. You're the co-CEO of The Hollis Company, an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker, social media influencer, mom of four, wife to Dave, and a New York Times and Amazon best-seller. Now, you show us how to handle dinner in your new cookbook Real Life Dinners. It's one of those cookbooks for real life. Now, how has dinner played a pivotal role in your life?

Rachel Hollis:                  Well, dinner is one of my favorite, no, it is the favorite meal, and so many of the best memories in my life happened around a dinner table. Sometimes that dinner table was my own. Sometimes it was my grandmother's sometimes it was a little table somewhere in Italy when we were on vacation, but as I started to dream of what the next cookbook would be, I really wanted to celebrate the meal that I loved the most, and I also, as a mom of four, dinner is what I'm constantly trying to figure out. It's the only meal that I really cook. I mean, sometimes we do breakfast on the weekends, but I'll be super honest and tell you that more often than not, it's Cheerios or toast or waffles, but dinner is where I really, my heart is there. I really put a ton of effort into making sure that we're eating good dinners.

                                                      I thought, I can't be the only woman who's trying to figure this out. When I buy cookbooks, that's the only kind of cookbook I buy is things that are going to help me get dinner on the table, and I just wanted to show my own.

Suzy Chase:                  You wrote in the introduction, "Sometimes I'm so busy working on ways to help other women live a better life than I run out of time and my kids eat turkey sandwiches, or worse, just straight up turkey rolled around a piece of string cheese for dinner." What is your planning strategy so this doesn't happen?

Rachel Hollis:                  My favorite practice that I've adopted in the last couple of years is prepping for my week on Saturday or Sunday. It's a really fantastic way to meal prep. I take the time, I figure out what are the lunches and snacks that I want to be able to take to work with me during the week or that my husband wants for breakfast. I prep those, as well as figuring out what we're going to have for dinner on that Sunday.

                                                      I'll do all my grocery shopping, and I'll get the stuff that I'm going to prep as well as the things that I want to make for dinner later in the week. That way, if I'm going to, let's say, marinate some steak or do something that requires a little prep work, I'll get it all done then so that when Tuesday rolls around and I'm going to grill up that meat for Dave, it's ready to go, and I've done it in advance.

                                                      I'm trying to take as much work out of the process as I possibly can to ensure that we're, frankly, eating healthy because I can get dinner on the table for you all day long, but when I'm in a hurry or I'm in doubt, I'm going to reach for things that aren't as great a choice for what we're eating. I'm going to reach for stuff that's probably really carb-based and taste delicious, but doesn't help us stay in a healthy way of life. I found that by prepping, I remove a lot of the stress from my life, as well as I feel better about what I'm feeling my family.

Suzy Chase:                  It's funny because one of your mottos is "we're not going to have a dream, we're going to have a plan." I guess that translates to cooking too.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yeah. I think if you are waiting until you're hungry to try and figure out what you're going to eat, you're in trouble. In fact, I can tell you that earlier in my life, years ago when I had my first baby, and I really, really struggled with my weight, it was because, like a lot of moms, I wasn't taking care of myself. I would get to 4:00 and realize I hadn't really eaten anything, and then all of a sudden, I'd eat everything in the kitchen. What I was choosing were really bad things, like, "Oh, I'll eat a box of Ritz crackers," so-

Suzy Chase:                  I was just going to say Ritz-

Rachel Hollis:                  Yeah right?

Suzy Chase:                  ... and with some cheese.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yes, exactly, but I'm way more likely to succeed with a plan that I've set for myself if I'm intentional about planning for it.

Suzy Chase:                  Describe the progressive photos that come with each recipe in the cookbook.

Rachel Hollis:                  The idea of showing step-by-step photos has been a part of any recipe I've created since the very beginning. I actually got my start in this space as a food blogger, which is very surprising to a lot of people because that isn't as much what I do now. I'm much more known for motivational speaking or writing books about hopefully making choices to change your life for the better, but I got my start as a food blogger, and when I first started, most of my audience were not people who felt super comfortable in the kitchen.

                                                      The step-by-step photos were just my way of trying to ensure that you knew exactly how it was supposed to look at each stage. I try not to take for granted that you know what it's supposed to look like when it's mixed up or that you know the texture of that piece of meat when it's medium versus well-done. The photos are my way of trying to help you along. I think as a blogger, I was always so mindful of the idea that if you failed when you try something new, if you try a recipe or a craft, and you fail at it, it's probably my fault as the writer or the blogger for not explaining it to you in enough detail, but the problem is you don't blame me, you blame yourself.

Suzy Chase:                  Yes.

Rachel Hollis:                  When you blame yourself for failing at something new, you're not likely to try it again. I've been really intention with wanting to be very explanatory when we do anything to make sure that you understand. From a cookbook perspective, you'll see this a lot, there are plenty of cookbooks where only a certain amount of the recipes even have a hero shot, and very few have hero and, a hero is the big, beautiful shot at the end, in case listeners don't know, but very few have the hero shot as well as the step shots. Even though it's much more expensive, that was a must-have for me because if you've learned to follow along my recipes, that way, I want to make sure you have what you need to succeed.

Suzy Chase:                  It's funny that you just mention it, because I just realized how often I have to Google what it looks like that I'm making out of a cookbook because there's not a picture with it.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yes. You need to know, especially even if you are a cook, if you've not done that recipe before, you're like, "I don't know ... Is this supposed to have grill marks? Is this supposed to have a char?" I think it really helps you, even if you are familiar, you feel comfortable in the kitchen, it really helps you to get to that end-result that's most ideal if you have a visual of where you're headed.

Suzy Chase:                  One busy mom move is to throw together brinner, breakfast-dinner, and you have a whole chapter devoted to it. Talk about how having something for dinner that's not really dinner makes it feel special.

Rachel Hollis:                  I think ... This is something that felt always special to me as a little girl was getting to eat something when you weren't supposed to be allowed to eat it, if that makes sense.

                                                      The story I tell in the book is being a little girl and going to dinner. We're on a family road trip, and my mom let me order a milkshake for dinner. Frankly, I think she's just so tired of four kids in a car and a long trip that she's like, "Man, get whatever you want. Just please stop screaming," but I got to have a milkshake for dinner. I still remember that 30 years later how special it felt. For me, having breakfast for dinner, like if we do waffles or pancakes or we have eggs and bacon, it always feels like a treat for our family.

                                                      Truthfully, a lot of breakfast dishes are much easier for me to whip up quickly than meat or a casserole or something like that. I had to do an entire chapter on breakfast for dinner because it was such a part of my life. I think the story-telling reminds me of something that I saw. I'll tell you, Suzy, I don't read reviews of my books ever. I've made a pretty big deal. I've talked about that a lot on social. I do not read reviews. I learned not to do that years ago because good reviews make you feel awesome and bad reviews make you cry, so I just don't-

Suzy Chase:                  Aw.

Rachel Hollis:                  Because I feel like, "Hey, I'm not for everybody, and that's fine," but the other day, I happened to be on Amazon. I was looking at something for the cookbook. I was trying to get the link for it to post on social, and I just happened to see something that was like two stars. I was like, "No," and then thought, "Well, I have to read. I have to see what she said. I'm not ... I'm human. I want to know what she didn't like." The thing she didn't like about this cookbook, which I think is important to tell your listeners, is there's a lot of storytelling.

                                                      For me, because I write fiction and because I write nonfiction, my fan's favorite part of the book is the story behind it. Why did you cook this? Why do you care about this thing? When did this show up in your life? This woman was like, "There aren't ... I don't want storytelling. I want the straight recipe. This feels like a waste of my time." I thought, food, and especially dinner, it isn't just the food. It's the experience.

                                                      I never wanted to give you just the recipe. I wanted to tell you why this was meaningful and powerful in my life.

Suzy Chase:                  You have one brinner ... It's so funny to say that, brinner.

Rachel Hollis:                  That's-

Suzy Chase:                  Brinner-

Rachel Hollis:                  Yeah, that's what we called it.

Suzy Chase:                  You can make your breakfast strata on page 34, let's say, on Sunday, and then you can serve it on Monday night for dinner, so that goes along with your meal prep philosophy too.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yeah, and there's a whole section in the book of ... I don't know if you've ever seen Steel Magnolias, but it's always what I think of something that freezes beautifully. There's a whole section on food that you can prep in advance or you can marinate and throw in the freezer and then thaw it later because, again, this is real life. None of these recipes require a ton. You don't have to prep things in advance, but if you're busy like I am and that's helpful to your life, we want to make that as easy as possible to achieve.

Suzy Chase:                  Do you have a favorite go-to summer recipe in this cookbook?

Rachel Hollis:                  There's an entire chapter on grilling. That was really intentional because during the summer, we are just grill fanatics. We were grill fanatics in California, but I will tell you that we moved to Texas about a month ago, and it is just hotter than heck here. I mean, people told me it was going to be hot. I didn't really understand, and now, I'm like, "Okay, I got you," so we've been grilling almost every night.

                                                      The one that I keep coming back to over and over because I eat fish, I don't eat meat, is there's a cedar plank salmon recipe in the book that I love. I use a spice blend in the beginning of the book. It's four of my spice blends that you can create in your own kitchen. It is a Moroccan Spice Blend that I put all over that salmon and then put it on a cedar plank. It cooks so easy. I feel like it seems like a scary recipe because you're like, "What is this wood that I'm incorporating into my grill," but honestly it is kind of the most foolproof fish that I think you can do anywhere, on the grill or even sauteing or baking or whatever. That's a favorite. I've been making it over and over and over.

                                                      But I also think the whole grill chapter, I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I'm really proud of the grilling recipes in it because there's everything. There's fish, and there's meat, and there's vegetarian options. If you're having a cookout this summer, I feel like it's a winner.

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of spice blends, you are obsessed with spices and have, as you said, four spice blend recipes in this cookbook. Describe the Fiesta Blend, and what can we use that on?

Rachel Hollis:                  I really ... When I was younger and didn't know as much about cooking, let's say I was newly married, spice blends gave me courage and gave me confidence because I didn't feel confident enough in the kitchen to think, "Oh, I could put a little cumin on this and maybe some garlic and some salt." I didn't know enough about flavors to make my own thing. I would go to the store, and I'd say, "Well, I'm going to make fajitas, and so I'm going to get Fajita Mix or I'm going to get a Fiesta Mix, and that's going to have the flavors that I need."

                                                      The thing with spice blends is that they can be really expensive, and so I thought, well, could I give people a recipe for how you could use spices and herbs that are already in your cabinet and mix them together to make a blend.

                                                      The Fiesta Blend is something you can use on anything that has a little bit of, needs a little bit of Latin flair, and that can be anything from your meat, your fajitas, your tacos to eggs. I think they all work really well. I wanted to give something that was a different flavor palette for no matter, no matter what you were cooking, you had something that you could use.

Suzy Chase:                  I think I remember last winter, you went to Kansas City, which is the reason I remember this is because I'm from Kansas City, to meet about developing your own spice blend.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yes. You're so right. Originally, the spice blend were blends that I was using. I thought, "I'm going to create these things, and then I'm going to sell them." To be totally honest with you, I just came off an appearance on QVC with my first cookbook. I've done so much TV over the years, and QVC just felt like this magical pairing of my skill set, like, oh, I know how to be on camera, and I also know how to have a product that I think other women will like, I should develop my own.

                                                      I started to work on the spice blends, and to be honest with you, it was such a long process. It was start and stop and start and stop, and what really ended up taking me out of the process was not the length of time, was that I was really struggling to create something that would last on shelves but that wouldn't include chemicals that I didn't want to put in my food.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh.

Rachel Hollis:                  I personally stay away from things ... If there's something in your ingredients that you can't pronounce, it's probably not good for you. A lot of what are in spice blends are things that they put in there so that they don't cake. If you've ever had spices where it gets clumpy, it probably doesn't have these agents in it to keep them from caking.

                                                      The more we worked on it, there really wasn't a way to make what I wanted to make and have the flavor I wanted to make without putting chemicals in it that would preserve the food. Interestingly enough, I found out so much about spices and how there's a chemical that's in almost every single spice that exist that, I don't know how else to explain it except to say that it sort of, like if you put it in your mouth, the thing that's hottest in your spice blend will hit your taste buds first, and it kind of wipes out all the other flavors that are there, but if you add this chemical, which I can't think of the name of it right now, there's something in it that makes it so that when you taste the blend, you're able to taste everything, and that-

Suzy Chase:                  That's weird.

Rachel Hollis:                  There was a massive difference between one and the other, one with and one without. I just thought, I just can't do it because I've talked so much to people about how much I try and make sure my kids aren't taking in things that they don't need, and I was like, "Oh, you're going to be a hypocrite," so I decided to just make the spice blends available to you in the cookbook. If you notice, the blends are done in small batches. That's so you could use up what you got there without it having to sit for a really long time on your shelf, which means it's not going to cake, and it's still going to give you those flavors that you want, but it's in your own kitchen in a little mason jar. You can keep it on the cabinet, and you're ready to go.

Suzy Chase:                  Well, frankly, I think that's smarter too because we have those spices already in our kitchen, so we can make a little batch. I think that long process, going through trying to make your own spice blend brought you to that.

Rachel Hollis:                  Absolutely.

Suzy Chase:                  Last week, I made your recipe for tuna stuffed avocados on page 154.

Rachel Hollis:                  Yes.

Suzy Chase:                  It was so fast to make, and filling, and I loved the basil. Tuna is one of those foods that you can have more than once a week, and it's so versatile.

Rachel Hollis:                  Absolutely. In fact, when I meal prep on Sundays, I almost always make tuna salad because it can sit in the fridge for several days, and I can have it for lunch, or in a pinch, I can throw it in an avocado like in the cookbook, and I've got something to fill me up.

                                                      Again, my protein of choice is fish, so it's a great option for me. My kids will eat it. My husband will eat it. I think I'm always trying to come you up with new and different ways to serve the same kind of things, and adding in something like basil just gives it a different flavor that you're used to, but I think it's so yummy.

Suzy Chase:                  What existed in lifestyle media when you started was only what was perfect, beautiful, and airbrushed. Right now, I would love for you to talk a little bit about what's going on, other than your cookbook, The Hollis Company, Made for More movie, Rise Couples Weekend, Rise podcast, and whatever else is new in your world. There've been so many announcements-

Rachel Hollis:                  So many things.

Suzy Chase:                  ... lately. So many.

Rachel Hollis:                  When I first started as a blogger, I mentioned earlier, I started as a food blogger, and honestly, my career as a blogger has really just followed me as a woman. Five or six years ago, I was trying to figure out how to feed toddlers. I was trying to figure out how to make dinners for my husband and myself that our kids would eat. I was doing food blogging because that's the stage I was at in my life.

                                                      Later in my career, I started to focus on DIY and how to decorate a home because we had a new home, and I wanted to decorate it. I really have just organically brought my audience along for the ride. In the last few years, I've done a ton of work on personal growth and how do I get past some of the things that I'm dealing with like anxiety. As I was walking through those seasons, the audience started to ask, like, "Hey, how did you get past that? How did you learn to do this? How did you set a goal and achieve it?" I started to share my process with them, and it really has just grown, again, organically into what the business is today.

                                                      We are The Hollis Company. My husband actually just left a really big job to come and help me run this thing that has just exploded, which I will tell you, Suzy, back in the day, my intention, we wrote it down on the wall, was to give women the tools to change their lives.

                                                      Five years later, that is still the line that's on our walls. Back in the day, I was hoping that the tools to change your life would be found in a casserole recipe because, to me, getting dinner on the table a lot of times felt like the greatest achievement I had in a day-

Suzy Chase:                  Totally.

Rachel Hollis:                  ... and now, giving you the tools to change your life looks more like how to be intentional and how to have a gratitude practice and how to be kinder with yourself. I had a book come out in February called Girl, Wash Your Face, and the response to that book has been the most incredible, sometimes overwhelming, but the most incredible experience of my professional career. It has just exploded, and as it exploded, it really opened up the fan base and gave us more women who wanted more content, and so that's what we do. We have personal growth conferences, both for women by themselves and in couples, and we made ... This sounds crazy, all the things that we've done, but when we were producing our conference this year, I had thousands and thousands of emails from women all over the world who were saying, "I want so badly to come to the conference, but I can't afford it. I can't afford the travel."

                                                      I really started to dream about how we might be able to bring them the experience of one of our live event weekends without the expense. The answer to that was we made a documentary about the weekend. It will be in movie theaters in August 2nd throughout North America, so it's in both the US and Canada, and you can go to letsrise.co, which has all the information about the movie and our live events if you're curious, but it's a way to check out what we do and see the magic and the power of going to a personal growth conference for the cost of a movie ticket, which is about 13 bucks.

                                                      We are really, really excited and proud of what we've built and are continuing to build. It'll be fun to see what happens next.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm excited for that too. I already have my ticket and-

Rachel Hollis:                  Aw, thank you.

Suzy Chase:                  ... I'm getting together a big group of girls here in New York City to go see it.

Rachel Hollis:                  How fun, and that's what we're hoping honestly. The most incredible thing about this online tribe that we have created is the community of women. It really is what makes our live event so special is we say from the stage, there is nobody here who doesn't have a friend. If you see a woman standing by herself, she just became your buddy. Nobody sits alone. We are all going to do life together. There is something that happens. There's an energy that happens in that space when women from every walk of life are really intentional about, "Hey, let's go grab a glass of wine," "Hey, let's go talk about this," "Hey, let's go have lunch," because you find commonality in people when you didn't think you had anything in common.

                                                      I'm super excited to hear that you guys are going to go in a group because I really think that is the best way to experience this particular event.

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

Rachel Hollis:                  I'm all over the place. I'm on every place you could possibly find me, but my favorite to hang out is definitely Instagram. I love Instagram. It's so pretty, but my handle is @msrachelhollis, M-S Rachel Hollis, and then I'm Rachel Hollis on every platform that there is. You can find me anywhere you go.

Suzy Chase:                  From a girl growing up on Weedpatch Highway to a super popular lifestyle expert and CEO, you are such an inspiration, and I'm so honored to have you on my hundredth cookbook podcast. Thank you so much, Rachel Hollis, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Rachel Hollis:                  Oh, I am honored. Thank you so much for having me

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 at CookerybytheBook. Twitter is @IamSuzyChase, and download Your Kitchen Mix Tapes: Music to Cook By on Spotify at Cookery by the Book. Thanks for listening.

Dosa Kitchen
Recipe's for India's Favorite Street Food

By Nash Patel and Leda Scheintaub

Suzy Chase:                  Welcome to the Cookery by the Book podcast with me, Suzy Chase.

Leda:                  Hi. I'm Leda Scheintaub and my cookbook with husband, Nash Patel, is "Dosa Kitchen."

Suzy Chase:                  Dosa is one of the Huffington Post's 10 foods to try before you die, and it is on the list of CNN Travel's world's 50 best foods. The dosa is a staple in south Indian households and street carts. Describe the dosa.

Leda:                  The dosa is a light, crisp crepe made of rice and lentils. It's fermented so it gives it a sour doughy flavor. It's gluten free. It's dairy free. And it's just absolutely delicious.

Suzy Chase:                  Dosa, kind of like a thin pancake or crepe or tortilla, but as you said it's fermented. Walk us through the dosa making process.

Leda:                  You start with rice and lentils. It's white rice and a lentil called urad dal. It's U-R-A-D D-A-L. We also use chana dal, which is made from chickpeas, C-H-A-N-A, and a small amount of that. You soak the white rice and you soak the urad dal in separate containers. You leave them for several hours, about six to eight hours. Then you drain them and you grind them. At home we use an electrical stone grinder, but in the book we give instructions for making it in blender since most people have blenders and not stone grinders. You grind the rice until it's a little bit gritty, and the dal you grind until it's smooth.

                                    Then you combine the two. You put it in a big container, and you leave it to ferment for about eight hours at 90 degrees is the optimal temperature. We put ours in the oven with the viewing light on. We find that keeps it at 90 degrees. We've also put in the dehydrator. You could put it on a heating pad that's protected against spills. If it's really warm in your kitchen, you can just leave it out. A lot of people just leave it out. In India, Nash's mother who says, "We don't ferment dosa batter. We just leave it out for a little while." Of course it's very hot there so it naturally ferments. Then you whisk the batter. It will rise, and it could look like a volcanic eruption. That's really good. So you want to have a container that has plenty of room so it will rise without bubbling over. Then you whisk it, and you're ready to make your dosa.

                                    It's interesting how you make it. At home we recommend a low-sided cast iron skillet. Put the batter into the pan. Then you spread it using the back of a flat ladle or the back of a dry measuring cup, like a metal dry measuring cup, and you swirl it to coat the whole pan. You let it sit there. When it starts bubbling, you drizzle oil into it, so you don't grease the pan before, sort of an inverse greasing. It crisps it up, and it gets it to not stick to the pan. Then you flip it. If it's a thin dosa, you might not even have to flip it because it'll just cook through. If it's a thicker dosa, you flip it.

                                    There's two different kind of dosas that you can be making. There's the classic thin crepe, which if you seen pictures of dosa, that's probably what you've seen, or if you've had a dosa at the one of the restaurants in New York or wherever. They're often a larger-than-life size falling off the plate. That's what people most associate with dosas. But there's also a smaller, thick dosa called uttapam, which is spelled U-T-T-A-P-A-M. The classic uttapam is a chili onion uttapam that they eat in south India. They're both delicious. Actually we have a food truck called Dosa Kitchen as well. At the truck we serve and also in the book we have wrap. It's in between the crisp crepe and the pancake, so the wrap is so you can eat delicious fillings inside the dosa.

Suzy Chase:                  Your food truck is in Brattleboro, Vermont, with your husband, Nash Patel. Talk a little bit about him.

Leda:                  He's from the city of Hyderabad in south India. It's a big city of several million people. It's a tech hub. They eat dosas there all the time. He grew up there eating dosas for breakfast as everybody does. He's from an Anglo-Indian family. That means that he eats broadly. He eats everything. If you notice in the book we have recipes including pork and beef which that often surprises people, but that's part of his heritage, eating those foods. He moved to the US about 12 years ago, and he was living in New York. He was waiting tables at an Indian restaurant. That's where we met, and that's where our story begins. I was a customer at that restaurant. It was a really good restaurant so I was there very often. He would tell me how to eat and what to eat. We connected and we started dating. Eventually we decided to move to Vermont because I had been going there every summer for a month or so. The last summer that we were there we decided to move here, which was 10 years ago.

Suzy Chase:                  What's the most popular dosa that you sell?

Leda:                  I would say the masala dosa. That is the dosa that is on the Huffington Post's list of the 10 foods to try before you die. Masala dosa comes with chutney. It's usually a coconut chutney. And it comes with sambhar. It's kind of like a dal. Nash calls it the king of dal. It's got a bunch of vegetables. It's a little thinner than a typical dal. You dunk your dosa into and eat it.

Suzy Chase:                  See, I thought sambhar was kind of like a vegetable soup.

Leda:                  You could call it that as well. It is soupy.

Suzy Chase:                  But it's more of a dip type of thing instead of spooning it up.

Leda:                  Yeah, for dosas and idlis, which are steamed dosa batter dumplings. I like to have sambhar as a soup, too. I'll dilute it with some broth, and I love to drink it just as a soup.

Suzy Chase:                  Your sambhar recipe in the cookbook calls for one teaspoon of the jaggery. What is that?

Leda:                  Jaggery is India's version of a natural brown sugar made from coconut palm trees. It's got a molassesy flavor, and it adds a depth of flavor to dishes. It's delicious, too. In the sambhar, it's just a small amount of it because there's tamarind, which gives it a tangy flavor so that offsets the tamarind and brings all the flavors together.

Suzy Chase:                  India is a huge country with different variations on the cuisine. Describe south Indian food.

Leda:                  It's hard to really describe the cuisine of south India as a whole because each region has its own specialties, and then there are micro-specialties and family specialties. Then Nash is from an Anglo-Indian family, so they have their own way of eating. But to generalize, in the north, which is most of India, it tends to have more cream in it and to be milder than south Indian. They use a lot of delicious breads and wheat. Their chutneys tend to be sweet like the mango chutneys that people are really familiar with. People are always asking us, "Do you have mango chutney?" and we never do. So south Indian tends to be spicier, little to no cream, and wide use of rice including rice products like dosa and idlis, and the chutneys are more savory like the coconut chutney. Tomato chutneys is another very popular one and green chutney, which is the green coconut chutney, peanut chutney, which is Nash's favorite. I would say those to be the differences are the main differences.

Suzy Chase:                  In this cookbook you have dosa recipes that run the gamut from the traditional masala dosa to a cream cheese, lox, and caper dosa. Talk a little bit about the different types of recipes in this cookbook.

Leda:                  We had a lot of fun putting this cookbook together because we were able to combine our two culinary backgrounds. I'm a food writer by profession. I wrote another book on fermentation, so this was natural to write this dosa book. We have some straight, traditional recipes like the ginger chili beef fry, which is something that comes from Nash's family. His grand  used to make it, and his mom still makes it all the time. It's one of Nash's favorite and one of my favorites. It's a beef that is bathed in lots of onions and crisp pieces of ginger and lots of chilies. They do it in a pressure cooker, but in the book the recipe calls for doing it on the stove top. Then we have pork vindaloo.

                                    Then we like to be really playful. At the food truck we serve a falafel dosa, which is made with nuts and seeds, and it's baked rather than fried. That's really popular. People can't tell that it doesn't have chickpeas in it. Not that we're against chickpeas. It's just how we came up with the recipe. We have the dosa dog, which is a local hot dog that's wrapped in a thick dosa. We make our own mustard, which we ferment at home. We put that on it, and we have a masala sauerkraut, which is a sauerkraut that we make with lots of Indian spices. Sauerkraut is not traditional to India by any means, but we like how the spices go in it. So we wrap that all up. We add Grafton cheddar cheese, which is made right behind our truck.

Suzy Chase:                  I love that cheese.

Leda:                  Yeah, it's really good. The factory is right behind our truck. Then we even have sweet dosas. In India you could see a dosa with a little jaggery or regular sugar. But we took it a little further and we have the pineapple upside dosa, which a friend of mine, Patricia Austin, developed for us. She runs Wildflower Vermont Bakery here in Brattleboro. It's really fun. It's got pineapple rings cooked into caramelized jaggery, and it's flipped. It's really exciting and delicious. Then there's flambé dosa, which we add some alcohol to a dosa and we set it on fire. It's delicious. We had a lot of fun putting these together. It's by no means traditional south Indian, but there are traditional south Indian dishes in it. We wanted to demonstrate that how adaptable the dosa is.

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

Leda:                  Dosakitchen.com, D-O-S-A kitchen dot com. If you go there, you'll find the recipes for our master batter recipe and the masala dosa so you can take a peek there before committing to buying the book. We're also on Facebook and Instagram. Both are under Dosa Kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  Where can we find you in Brattleboro?

Leda:                  At 400 Linden Street, which is on the Retreat Farm, it's a petting farm with lots of animals, and next to the Grafton Village Cheese.

Suzy Chase:                  I do have to mention with all that is happening in the news in regard to migrants, I truly believe that our cuisine in America is more diverse and much more delicious thanks to the immigrants that brings the recipes from their home countries. I feel we're better as a society because of that, and food always brings people together. Thank you so much for teaching us all about dosas, and thanks for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Leda:                  Thank you so much for having me.

Suzy Chase:                  Subscribe in Apple Podcasts. While you're there, please take a moment to rate and review Cookery by the Book. You can also follow me on Instagram Cookery by the Book. Twitter is @IamSuzyChase and download your Kitchen Mixtapes, music to cook by on Spotify  at CookerybytheBook. Thanks for listening.

Sweet Potato Soul
100 Easy Vegan Recipes for the Southern Flavors of Smoke, Sugar, Spice and Soul

By Jenné Claiborne 

Suzy Chase:                  Welcome to Cookery by the Book podcast with me, Suzy Chase.

Jenné:                  I'm Jenné Claiborne, and my cookbook is Sweet Potato Soul.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm not even going to ask you the obvious first question, if it's difficult to be a vegan from the south, but I did want to kick things off by asking you about cooking on your own when you were in elementary school. I thought that was so interesting.

Jenné:                  Yeah, well, my mom didn't like to cook, so she got me some cookbooks. I found the recipes that I liked and got started, and it was great for me. I loved it, and my mom, it was good for her, too, because she got to eat well. We didn't have to eat out at restaurants all the time.

Suzy Chase:                  What was the favorite thing you made when you were little?

Jenné:                  It was Szechuan chicken, so long before being vegan, Szechuan chicken, and I loved it, because it had all these different ingredients that, to me, seemed so exotic. We had to go to the specialty grocery store. We went to the Asian grocery store to buy everything, so it was a lot of fun. All the measuring out, a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and using the wok and making the sauce, and it was just so fun. And really, that was the only recipe that I can even remember making. I don't remember making anything else. That might be the only thing I was into.

Suzy Chase:                  So, my mom passed away a few years ago, and one thing I long for is sitting at our kitchen table talking while she cooks. That, to me, is home. Talk about when your love of food and comfort in the kitchen began.

Jenné:                  Like I said, my mom, she's not a big cook. However, my grandmother is, and so is my dad. So, I have those memories and those moments with those two where they're cooking, and we're sitting having a conversation, prep, and cooking, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm just watching. So, when I was really little, my first exposure to being in the kitchen was when my grandmother moved down to Georgia and we all lived together. She was the main cook in the house, and just I was always in the kitchen with her, always helping her. Or she would give me little side projects to mix things, or even if it wasn't side projects, she would just let me do my own thing on the side, so I could say, "Oh, I'm gonna mix this flour with this baking powder, with this sugar, with this whatever."

Jenné:                  It would never be edible, ever, but she always let me be creative and let me get my hands dirty and be in the kitchen with her, and the same with my dad. It's funny. My dad actually was raised vegan, and he grew up eating vegan. He was in his 20s when he met my mom. He always blames it on my mom, the fall, he says.

Suzy Chase:                  The fall.

Jenné:                  He's back now, but it took a while. So, the type of cuisine that my dad was making is all plant based, so I learned how to cook that way from him, and I remember hearing stories about ... It was foreign to me eating so many vegetables and tofu and things like that, but he would tell me stories about what he was cooking and about the ingredients, like tumeric, and, "This is the tofu, and this is when I used to work at the vegan restaurant. We would make this ice cream using this."

Jenné:                  So, I've always been surrounded by food and by stories in the kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  What is your soul food philosophy?

Jenné:                  My soul food philosophy is that any type of food can be soul food. However, being a black person from the south and just from the United States, it's definitely the traditional foods as well, the candied yams and mac and cheese and all those things, collard greens. So, that's the base point. Those are the celebratory foods, the things that when I think of my family, those are the foods I really want to eat the most. However, my grandmother, when I was a kid and still now, she always said that you put soul into everything you're cooking, and I started noticing that even though we weren't eating the stereotypical celebratory soul foods every single day, we were eating homemade foods. We were eating lots of fruits and vegetables and grains and beans, and she was preparing it all in that same style with the same essence. So, soul food to me isn't just the cannon. It's everything that you make with soul and love and all those things.

Suzy Chase:                  In Sweet Potato Soul, the cookbook, you explore the history of southern food. Now, what's the difference between soul food and southern food?

Jenné:                  Well, southern food is a regional blanket statement. So, I would think of southern food as encompassing soul food, and encompassing creole and Asian food, but soul food, specifically, is the foods that black people invented from our circumstances living in the south as enslaved individuals, a lot of us. That food was very much influenced by European cuisines, African cuisines, Native American cuisines. Yeah, I mean it all has come from that, but the difference is really that it was created by black people in the south, and so you'll see if you're in the south, everybody eats collared greens. Everybody eats mac and cheese. Everybody eats a lot of these foods, but there's a certain way that it's made when it's soul food or when a black person makes it.

Jenné:                  I don't know if there's an actual thing, like a big difference that you could pinpoint if you did a blind taste test, but certainly the person who's making it would tell you otherwise.

Suzy Chase:                  I didn't realize the term soul food became popular in the 60s.

Jenné:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Me, too, until I started researching, which is another thing that I think is interesting, and I like, because now, 21st century, 2018, I look back at how this term is fairly new, but this cuisine has been around for hundreds of year, but the cuisine has been changing over and over throughout all these years, and now it continues to change. I think part of the fact that the term is so new, it makes me feel like there's even more freedom for change and metamorphosis. This is a very ... It's not the type of cuisine that has to be set in stone and the same all the time.

Jenné:                  Even for me, when I'm thinking about soul food, I don't think of being vegan and making vegan soul food as something totally new and different and exotic. I think of it as going back to the roots, right? So, our ancestors ate far more plant based diet than we do today, and even my grandmother, who is still around today, ate a more plant based diet when she was my age or really younger than me, actually and so did her grandparents and her parents and such.

Jenné:                  So, I think of soul food now as just going back to its plant based roots and reclaiming that the 60s and the 50s were a time when soul food was starting to become more fried and more heavy and more industrialized, relying more on packaged foods to prepare the soul food. Before it was just all homemade everything, and then, of course, the industrialization of the food system in the 50s had changed all American food, including soul food. So, now, we're just taking it back to pre-term soul food.

Suzy Chase:                  So, describe how many things, other than food choices, shifted in your life after you became vegan.

Jenné:                  I see. Okay, so after I became vegan, the food was obviously the main first thing that shifted, and I've always loved food, so it was really east for me to shift that, because I was in the kitchen. I was experimenting more. It was like a new adventure for me, and all I wanted to do was cook. All I wanted to do was grocery shop. We'd be at the farmer's market and buying new recipe books and things like that. But, a couple, I wouldn't say it really happened right away, but eventually, within the next year or so of being vegan, it started shifting my other consumer choices.

Jenné:                  So, the clothing I was buying, I no longer bought clothing made with animal products, leather and wool and things like that. I have since started buying ... Actually, I've since buying all fast fashion, so I'm a lot more mindful of making sure to buy thrifted clothes, and I'm just a bit more eco-friendly. And of course, a lot of the reason people go vegan is for health reason, and for me, within a couple of weeks of being vegan, I noticed the health differences.

Jenné:                  And before I was vegan, I was vegetarian. I thought I was very healthy. I realized I wasn't very healthy, because I think I just got used to my face line being whatever. And once I became vegan, I felt so much better. I didn't even realize that I wasn't feeling that great before. So, that happened almost immediately. That wasn't my main reason for becoming vegan, but it certainly, once I started feeling that shift so early on, I realized, "Okay, this is worth changing my lifestyle for."

Suzy Chase:                  So, what kind of shift did you feel? Did you have more energy? Did you sleep better?

Jenné:                  Those things for sure, but the thing was I have always, not any more, but I had always had digestive issues. From as early as I can remember, I was in the doctor on different medications, gastroenterologists. My parents were always trying to figure out what is going on with my gut. We knew that I was very sensitive to dairy, so I didn't eat things like pizza. I did eat some pizza, but very little cheese. I didn't eat ice cream. Dairy sneaks in everything.

Jenné:                  So, basically, without knowing it until I became 100% vegan, I had just been suffering from dairy my whole life. Like I said, in and out of the doctor, all sorts of digestive issues, and everything, and that was influencing all areas of my life. I was more moody when my stomach was not feeling well. I had less energy. I couldn't sleep as well. I didn't feel my optimal self, but I got to a point where I thought, "Well, this is just my stomach. I'm just faulty. I can't do anything about this. Oh well."

Jenné:                  And I got to that point a few years even before becoming vegan. It wasn't until I became vegan that I realized that it was really the dairy, because by the time I became vegan, all that I had left to cut out of my diet was I was eating yogurt, and occasionally, I'd have a slice of pizza, but I was hardly eating any at all. My skin cleared up after that. Of course, I had more energy after that. My whole outlook on life changed, because I wasn't uncomfortable all the time any more.

Suzy Chase:                  One food that's listed in your southern pantry staples section is peanuts, the overlooked peanut, which I happen to love. Talk a little bit about George Washington Carver's vegan recipes in the 1900s made out of peanuts.

Jenné:                  So, I've always been fascinated by George Washington Carver. In black history month in school, you learn about him and all his inventions of the peanut, the peanut butter, and revolutionized growing peanuts to fix soil, and all this amazing stuff. So, when I was writing my book, and I was doing research for the book, I started learning more about him, not just what I had learned in school during black history month. He made so many "inventions," recipes with the peanut, everything from making peanut butter to peanut meats, mock meats using peanuts. He used it for all different things, and he taught homemakers, in fact, back in the day we'd call them, how to use peanuts in their homes. Basically, they were very nutritious, obviously, high in protein and fiber and just great for the whole family.

Jenné:                  The funny thing, though, is as much as I think it is very fascinating, as much as I love George Washington Carver, I'm allergic to peanuts, so I don't really eat peanuts.

Suzy Chase:                  I know. I read that, and I read that for the longest you were repulsed by the sight and smell of peanuts, and it's almost like your body was protecting you.

Jenné:                  But the thing is, I do not have an allergy to peanuts when they're not from the United States. It might be mental. I admit it might be totally psychosomatic, but I have multiple times eaten peanuts in different countries and not realize that I was eating it until three bites in or whatever and had no reaction whatsoever. I was at a talk recently, and the presenter was passing around peanuts that she had brought back recently from Ghana, and I'm like, "I'm gonna taste this and see what happens." I'm not gonna die. I'm not anaphylactic allergic. No problem, no issue, so I don't know if it's psychosomatic with me, or if there's something about the American-grown peanuts. I don't know, but I would like to get over this allergy, because I feel like it keeps me from my roots, my culture.

Suzy Chase:                  Right.

Jenné:                  But you know, another thing ago about him, George Washington Carver, that I didn't realize until working on this book was his also fascination with the sweet potato. He really researched peanuts, because peanuts are used to repair soil, farmland that's been overused and damaged. You can plant peanuts. They're nitrogen fixing, so they will fertilize and make that soil fertile again.

Jenné:                  He also focused on sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes are similar. They are very easy to grow. They are high in nutrients like peanuts are, and you can do a million and one things with them. So, in addition to making all these different inventions with peanuts, he was doing the same thing with sweet potatoes. He was also teaching homemakers how to use sweet potatoes. He has sweet potato milk. By the way, he has peanut milk, too, sweet potato butter. It's funny, because he says sweet potato lamb chops or sweet potatoes whatever, but it's 100% vegan. All this stuff is vegan. So, I just thought that was so interesting way back when it took him doing all this stuff.

Suzy Chase:                  He was so ahead of his time.

Jenné:                  Mm-hmm (affirmative)- Seriously.

Suzy Chase:                  Speaking of sweet potatoes, they've always been your favorite food, and it's also the name of your hugely popular blog, Sweet Potato Soul. Talk a little bit about that.

Jenné:                  I've always loved the sweet potato, and I can remember my grandmother preparing them for me when I got home after school. She always keeps baked sweet potatoes in our refrigerator. Quick snack, healthy, energizing, it's just perfect, and I've always loved them, and everything from canned yams to sweet potato pie, my two favorite foods. So, when I wanted to start my food blog, it made perfect sense that I would have my very favorite food in the title. Then, of course, soul, because soul food means so much to me, and I want to expand what that means, what soul food means. So, yeah.

Suzy Chase:                  I never knew there were so many kinds of sweet potatoes. You have nine listed I your cookbook, to be exact. Can we find all of these varieties in the grocery store?

Jenné:                  Yes, we can. There are more that I didn't feature, because they're too hard for us to find here in America, but you can find those. If you go to the grocery store, you might see a fake garnet and jewel yams. Those are sweet potatoes. They're not yams. Yams are something totally different. Or sometimes nowadays, you'll see the purple ones. I forgot the name of those right now, but the purple on the outside, purple on inside, I see those a lot at the grocery store these days. Also, the white on the inside, white on the outside, but if you want to go for the Asian varieties like the Okinawan sweet potato, which is gray on the outside and bright neon purple on the inside or the Japanese yams with the green ones, then you'll need to go to, usually you'll have to go to, an Asian grocery store. Why would you not want to go to that, anyway? That's my heaven.

Jenné:                  So, I'll typically explore town, especially if you live in a big city, or if you live in Atlanta where I'm originally from, they're really easy to find. You might have to go to the ethnic or the international or Asian grocery store.

Suzy Chase:                  I recently learned on another cookbook podcast that I did that monks in China wanted to invite non-Buddhists into their monastery, and they would eat vegetarian, but the guests wouldn't. So, they made dishes that looked and tasted similarly to meat and seafood dishes. This was the beginning of culinary replications. I'm dying to know what your thoughts are about vegan replications that look like, let's say, chicken.

Jenné:                  Yeah, I am all for it. To be honest, I don't eat a lot of that. At home, I'm in love with vegetables and grains. That is all I need. I don't need mock meat or any of that. However, I love it for what it does for people. So many people use mock meats and these replications as a way to help in transition. Firstly, because a lot of people, they're so [inaudible 00:18:58] tastes of chicken, so they need something when they become vegan to hold them over for a while until they can figure out how to cook beans and figure out how to like broccoli and whole grains. A lot of people just don't like that, and they're not used to that. So, these foods act as a little bridge between the two. They're still totally vegan, so that's great, but they really help usher people a little closer into the real whole food, plant based lifestyle that I try to have people join.

Suzy Chase:                  I'm surprised. I thought you were gonna be totally against it. I'm shocked.

Jenné:                  No, I really don't have any ... The closest I have to that is I have two different sausage recipes, which are handmade sausages, so not store bought, vegan sausage. You do it by hand. It's very easy. And then I have the cauliflower chicken, but it's cauliflower. It's not Beyond Chicken that you get at Whole Foods and you bread and you fry. So, yeah, I'm not trying to like, "Everybody go eat this stuff," but I do think that those are good, like I said, a bridge.

Suzy Chase:                  Just yesterday, I read an article that cited a recent study on consumer trends that found the term vegan to be the least appealing food and beverage marketing term among U.S. adults. What do you think about that?

Jenné:                  Wow. Well, I'm surprised and I'm not surprised. I think vegan people, like myself, we tend to have an intuition about that. For me, though, with what I do, the marketing I'm doing and my mission is I want to be real trend, and this is vegan. I'm speaking to people who thought to themselves, they saw a movie, or they had a conversation, or whatever, they think, "I want to become vegan. I need to find vegan, specially vegan resources."

Jenné:                  So, they might Google vegan recipes, and they'll find me. I want to be specific. I want those people. I don't want to proselytize to people. I'm not out there converting people. I'm more of a resources. However, I have thought about how if I want to reach a more mainstream audience, reach people who are not already looking for vegan resources, then using the term vegan is probably not the best way for me to do that, because it is a turn-off for a lot of people. Frankly, I think the biggest issue is that people have an image of what a vegan is and what a vegan lifestyle is, and they say, "That's not me, and that is not for me. I'm not interested."

Jenné:                  So, until we can change the image and people's perception of what it means, I think it's a little bit more wise to influence people, get people on board without using ... I shouldn't say people. I should say more the mainstream on board without, I don't know. I don't want to say without using that term, but just maybe be a little bit more undercover with the term.

Suzy Chase:                  So, yesterday, I made your recipe for sweet Jesus mac and cheese on page 113, and it's interesting, because for a different cookbook podcast I did, I made the original James Hemings recipe. First off, talk a little bit about James Hemings and who he was.

Jenné:                  So, he was the enslaved chef of Thomas Jefferson, and he went with Thomas Jefferson when he went to Europe and spent time in France, and he studied food or cooking in Europe, and he brought it back to America. And he wrote down his recipes at Monticello, his estate, and that's probably that recipe that you made. I know Monticello, they have a lot of their recipes on their website. I have one of their books that's a cookbook, and it's all old recipes from James Hemings.

Jenné:                  How was it?

Suzy Chase:                  It was so bland, because they didn't use any salt.

Jenné:                  Yeah, right, back then, can you imagine? So, the food back then was so much more bland, I think it's not until you really needed to combine. Mac and cheese, as soul food as it is, it is a European invention. He made it what it is, what that recipe is that you tasted, but it's definitely using all that cheese and the noodles, that's a European thing. But it wasn't until he brought it here and then folks started playing around with it and adding more flavor that it became what it is today, tasty, gooey mac and cheese.

Jenné:                  But I think it was really necessary for this blending of culture. I mean, it is unfortunate the way that the cultures had to blend, but for these foods, these European foods to become tasty, they needed the African influence and the Native American influence.

Suzy Chase:                  They sure did. So, your recipe for mac and "cheese" calls for sweet potatoes, lemon juice, and Dijon mustard, three flavors that never come up when I'm thinking about mac cheese. How did you create this recipe?

Jenné:                  So, I played around with different mac and cheese recipes that I found on the internet and other cookbooks. My dad used to work at a famous vegan restaurant called A Soul Veg in Atlanta, and at Soul Veg, they make a mac and cheese. Everything they make is tofu, soy based. I love soy, but you don't have to use it for everything, very oily, very down-home vegan mac and cheese.

Jenné:                  But I didn't want to do that. I wanted to make it a little healthier. I wanted to use whole foods, but you still need a lot of flavor. So, the mustard, the Dijon that I use and the lemon, it's to add tang. And then you also use nutritional yeast, which has a naturally cheesy flavor, but you can't just use it by itself. You need to add that tang that real cheese has. It's a different take on mac and cheese, really. Obviously, it has sweet potato in it, too, which is totally unexpected.

Suzy Chase:                  Totally. It was light, though. It looks really heavy. I posted a picture on Instagram, but it is light.

Jenné:                  Yeah, it is. Good.

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

Jenné:                  You can find me at sweetpotatosoul.com. That's my blog. There are hundreds of recipes, and on social media, you can find me at sweetpotatosoul, including YouTube. I have a big YouTube channel as well. So, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, sweetpotatosoul.

Suzy Chase:                  Thank you for writing this beautiful cookbook, and thank you for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Jenné:                  Thank you.

Suzy Chase:                  Follow me on Instagram at CookerybytheBook. Twitter is IamSuzyChase, and download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by on Spotify at Cookery by the Book and always, subscribe in Apple podcasts.

Everyday Monet
A Giverny-Inspired Gardening and Lifestyle Guide to Living Your Best Impressionist Life

By Aileen Bordman

Suzy Chase:                  Welcome to Cookery by the Book podcast, with me, Suzy Chase.

Aileen:                  Hi. This is Aileen Bordman, and I'm the author of the new book Everyday Monet.

Suzy Chase:                  Describe the beginning of your journey at 23 when your mother sent you an envelope.

Aileen:                  Ah. Well, you know, I had entered graduate school, and I was sitting in my apartment and received this envelope, which is your typical kind of envelope that comes, at the time, that was sent for email, not email, but for airmail from England and France and the like. I opened it up just as if it was any other correspondence of the time. I actually had been dating a man from England and was receiving many of the same similar configuration, and then realized this one was from my mother.

Aileen:                  I opened up this envelope quickly, and then quickly stopped opening it quickly because I realized that she had placed a beautiful sprig of, at the time of course, fresh lavender in the envelope. I immediately could smell the gorgeous scent, and thought, "Oh, this is just so lovely."

Aileen:                  It took me a few moments to realize, or to take it in, that this wasn't just any sprig of lavender. That this was a sprig of lavender that came from Monet's garden at Giverny, a place where my mother was now residing. A place where she and a number of other Americans were busy trying to restore what had fallen into ruin for many, many, many, many decades.

Aileen:                  I was so overwhelmed by the significance of it at the moment. I'm not the most sentimental person in the world, and I am proud of myself, because I maintained this envelope and this sprig of lavender to this day, and happily I got to take a little photograph of it and place it into Everyday Monet as a sort of representation of history, and a spanning of the decades, and the beauty of Giverny and also stewardship of preserving. That's really what I'm trying to do is help ... I'm one of the people. I'm just one of the people who's out there trying to preserve the legacy and the beauty that Monet created for all of us.

Suzy Chase:                  And your mother is one of the Americans responsible for the renaissance of Monet's home and garden, too.

Aileen:                  Well, she is the most significant in the duo, that's for sure. My mother has been the American representative at Monet's garden at Giverny since 1980. She has resided there every spring since then. She's at Giverny right now, in her 38th year. The garden will celebrate its 40th year obviously in two years, but this is the 30th year that Giverny has been opened to the public since it was restored.

Aileen:                  In the early days, she actually slept in Monet's home before she had her own accommodations. I'm happy and very proud to say, and this is the first time I've said it in an interview, that we received very special news. Meryl Streep had nominated my mother to receive the highest cultural award from the French government. It's the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. It's the subset of the French Legion of Honor in terms of cultural aspects, and we just got notification that my mother has been awarded this tremendous honor, that's special.

Aileen:                  It's just, she's been very quiet about what she's done all these years. I'm the one who's out there now singing her praises. She's done this under the radar, and done it simply as a journey of love and devotion also to the beauty that Monet created at his home and gardens in Giverny. I'm happy to see that she's getting some of the recognition I think she didn't want, but she so deserves.

Suzy Chase:                  So, Claude Monet, a founding father of the French Impressionist movement, but a little known fact is that his family wanted him to be a greengrocer in the family business. Isn't that interesting?

Aileen:                  It's very interesting. And it says a lot about one always following one's own heart and one's own inclinations. Another little known fact is that Monet started out as a caricature artist. He did caricatures of, whether it was people on the street, or the local baker, or the president, prime minister of France Clemenceau, he would do these little caricatures. That started the process of art for Claude Monet.

Aileen:                  His family obviously over the years became more supportive of his endeavor, because after all there are very few artists that in their own lifetime have success. The word "starving artist" is the norm. Unlike many of his cohort, Monet was successful. I'm sure, of course, this led to a lot of pride with respect to his family, and I'm sure they forgot quickly that they wanted him to be in the grocery business.

Suzy Chase:                  He had a lifelong obsession with color. Talk a little bit about Monet's palette.

Aileen:                  I will, and again, wow, what a great question, because Monet's palette was a departure from the other palettes, P-A-L-E-T-T-E, in the world. One of the things that happened at the time of Monet was a development in the field of artwork, and that was that they, you used to always have to mix your pigments and create your paints, and all the sudden there were tubes of paints. All of the colors were now being sold whereby you could purchase them, and Monet did also purchase these in tubes.

Aileen:                  It allowed for two things. One, it allowed for the real burgeoning of the Impressionist movement. Being able to get out en plein air, which means in the outside air, under the sun, in the sunlight, with your palette and your paintbrush and your canvas, and get out there and do a landscape. Paint a water lily. All of the wonderful things that Monet did. But it also allowed for the mixing of colors to be much more accessible and easily done in the moment.

Aileen:                  Monet took considerable advantage of this. One thing in particular about Monet's palette, painter's palette, is that he never, ever used black. He always created the feeling and the shadows, because of course Impressionist painting is all about the light and the beauty of the light, and how color resonates based on how the light is hitting it. So, Monet never had black on his palette. I don't think a lot of people know that. And that he created the sense of the shadow, the sense of lack of color, lack of color of the palette, with the use of the shadows and the light on the canvas.

Suzy Chase:                  And then it's been said that late in life he had cataracts, and he painted colors by memory. Is that correct?

Aileen:                  He had horrible cataracts. Obviously he was spending a lot of time outdoors and there weren't sunglasses at that time. He had two significant surgeries to help restore his light, his eyesight. In fact, a lot of his later paintings that may look a little bit more Impressionistic may not be due so much to Impressionism, but Monet's eyesight deteriorating as much as it did.

Aileen:                  At the end of the day he was able to find, friends brought him eyeglasses that actually contained these lenses by the very prestigious and amazing lens maker Zeiss, Z-E-I-S-S, out of Germany, and that in his later years helped restore Monet's ability, at least for the last two years of his life, to see.

Aileen:                  What you mentioned about memory is not something that I'm particularly familiar with. I've not ... I would not say that's correct, but I have heard it, and there are many urban legends about Monet.

Suzy Chase:                  I bet.

Aileen:                  There's a wonderful urban legend about him winning the lottery. That he won the lottery and that this afforded him the ability to purchase the property at Giverny, but just like his cataracts, another urban legend.

Suzy Chase:                  One of my favorite Monet's is his first wife Camille in a traditional Japanese kimono. It demonstrates his passion for Japanese style. The Water Lilies series is the most iconic series of works, which he cultivated and was very influenced by Japanese art. Did he also have a passion for Japanese cuisine?

Aileen:                  It's interesting. Cuisine in particular I would say he wasn't familiar with. He never did get to visit Japan, although there were many Japanese visitors that came to Giverny and still do because of Monet's passion for Japaneseism, which was not unique only to Monet. There were many of the Impressionist artists, and at the time they were collecting the wonderful Japanese woodcut prints, but in particular he didn't get to enjoy Japanese cuisine.

Aileen:                  Having said that, and knowing a little bit about Monet's palate, the P-A-L-A-T-E part of palate, he would have loved Japanese cuisine, the freshness and the preparation, and of course how it is displayed on, plated, for lack of the better word of saying it. How they artistically plate their dishes. It would have been something that would have appealed to his sensibilities very much. And of course he loved fresh fish, without question, and was interested in spicy foods.

Aileen:                  I have no doubt, in fact, I include in my book Everyday Monet, a little take on a steak sandwich, and I created a dressing, and I used wasabi in the dressing, because Monet loved spicy foods, and this is my way of introducing, or bridging, his love of Japanese culture and art and integrating it with his own tastes and sensibilities with food.

Suzy Chase:                  All throughout the book you have neat little Everyday Monet ideas, like line your kitchen walls with copper pots, bowls and pans. Monet had quite an affinity for copper. Talk a little bit about that.

Aileen:                  They're not just utilitarian, they're gorgeous. They're stunning. And the way he had them displayed in the kitchen, and the way ... even if you cannot afford a full range of 20 copper pans, perhaps, as Monet had in his home, even a very small little copper dish or a small little copper pan in your kitchen or anywhere in your home can connect you to Monet's love of copper.

Aileen:                  Also copper, getting back to Monet's art and his love of and appreciation of how light plays off of different items and plays off of landscape, copper has such a beautiful way of reflecting light. In Monet's kitchen, in the early morning, the way the light dances off of the copper pans that are hanging across from the windows, Suzy, it's beautiful. What can I say?

Suzy Chase:                  Didn't he acquire Giverny because of the light?

Aileen:                  It is said, and it's true, that Monet and the other Impressionists first saw the light going to Normandy, taking the train from Paris. Clearly, at the time, Monet was successful and could have lived in Paris, could have lived anywhere. But there was something about Normandy, the mists, and the light that was so attractive to him. It wasn't just that it was where he was born, it was something that was really, really special to Monet.

Aileen:                  He found the property, and it was an old cider press that he, over time, developed and renovated and put additions on, and created the water garden, and really created this magnificent oasis that we get 8,000 people a day now during the months that the garden is open visiting, because it's a place of wonder. It's a place of magic, and it's really a place to make a pilgrimage. It's not just any other place in the world.

Suzy Chase:                  Monet was very interested in the layout, equipment and design of his kitchen, which happens to be your favorite place in the home.

Aileen:                  Yes.

Suzy Chase:                  Please describe the kitchen.

Aileen:                  The kitchen is not very large. It's a country farm layout. There are two very, very large windows which allow significant light to come in. There's a large iron stove. There's a lovely kitchen table. There are orchids in the kitchen, which Monet would always have and we, to this day, make sure that there are orchids. There are the copper pans, and there are tiles that lined the walls and often visitors mistake these tiles as being from Holland, and they're not.

Aileen:                  They're actually from Rouen. They're French tiles, blue and white tiles. They're so beautiful. Rouen is about 40 minutes north of Giverny, and it's where Monet did the wonderful series of the cathedral at different times of day and in different light. So, these beautiful tiles line the walls, and it's just, it's welcoming, it's beautiful.

Aileen:                  It's got just ... the color. There's a blue in areas where there's paint required. There's a blue that I have actually identified in the book if somebody wants to paint their kitchen blue, all they need to do is drop the color swatch, or bring the book to their local paint shop and they can match it up and have that same sort of dreamy, eggshell blue that Monet had in his kitchen.

Suzy Chase:                  Now in this gorgeous kitchen, Monet did not like to cook. Talk a little bit about Marguerite, his chef.

Aileen:                  Yes. Well, Marguerite was with Monet almost from the get-go, when he moved with the family to Giverny, and she was a dedicated ... she became part of the family. She was a dedicated chef for Monet, and the family, and helped with all of the entertaining. He had many quirks in terms of his eating habits which I discuss in Everyday Monet.

Aileen:                  Every day she would go to, because in Monet's time, as we're trying to do today, they wanted to eat what was fresh and what was seasonal. We're all trying to do that more and more, and thankfully that's the case, to eat locally and eat fresh. They would both, together, Monet and Marguerite, just go up the road to where Monet had planted a kitchen garden, a potager. This is where he had all of his vegetables and herbs.

Aileen:                  Some of them were seeds that Monet brought to Giverny, and had never been planted before in Normandy. I'll give you an example. Zucchini, which he had enjoyed in Provence while he was painting there, didn't exist in Normandy. Monet had never had them before, and he collected the seeds and he brought them back to Normandy.

Aileen:                  Giverny is Zone 8 for those that are interested in zones, when planting flowers and the like, and Zone 8 was conducive to having the zucchini grow as well. So Monet, besides being the father of Impressionism, can be credited for bringing many flowers and vegetables to Giverny, to Normandy, that had never grown there before.

Aileen:                  Getting back to Monet and Marguerite, every day that Monet was at Giverny, because of course he traveled a lot to paint, when he was at home, he would visit the kitchen garden with Marguerite, and they would plan the menu with her suggestions and with his suggestions based on what was fresh that day in the kitchen garden. Marguerite remained at the house after Monet passed, but she couldn't live there for much longer, she was just so sad. Eventually she left. But it was a wonderful relationship, friendship, and she really, really became part of the family.

Suzy Chase:                  What were a few of his food quirks?

Aileen:                  Monet's food quirks were many. And that's okay. Look, you know, he wanted what he wanted in terms of many things in life.

Suzy Chase:                  He was an artist.

Aileen:                  He's a good artist, yes. And you know, he was a Renaissance Man. His quirks were he had to have ... Something so silly, like how well his asparagus were cooked. They used to have to watch over the pot to make sure that they didn't go limp. He would send them back from the table if the asparagus weren't properly cooked. Of course, he loved pepper, and he actually had his own little dish of pepper. Instead of the pepper mill or the pepper and salt at the table, there would be that for everybody he was entertaining. But then, in addition to that, Monet would have to have his own little dish of pepper.

Aileen:                  It was not unusual, Suzy, for Monet to all the sudden be entertaining people at lunch, at a beautiful lunch with many courses, and the wine was flowing, and champagne, and there were going to be desserts, for him to all the sudden stand up and literally run out of the dining room. He did so because all the sudden he saw the light change upon the table, and he knew that the light had changed in the garden, and there was something he wanted to capture on a canvas that he had left. So, he would literally leave.

Suzy Chase:                  Oh, my goodness.

Aileen:                  Yeah. All these guests, that some of them had made a long voyage to be received by Monet, for him to go out and paint. But hey, you know, when you're Monet, and-

Suzy Chase:                  You can do it.

Aileen:                  ... you're the father of Impressionism, people got it. They understood.

Suzy Chase:                  It's funny that you brought up the pepper, because a cookbook author friend of mine, Judith Fertig, who knew I was going to talk to you said, "You have to ask about the ground pepper he put on his salad."

Suzy Chase:                  I was like, "Judith, what are you talking about?"

Suzy Chase:                  She said, "Just ask."

Suzy Chase:                  So, that's so interesting that you bring up the pepper.

Aileen:                  Absolutely. I mean, it was like coated with the black pepper. And he grew, in his kitchen garden peppers, many of the spicy, hot peppers, chili peppers that we are aware of. Again, that's not necessarily French Norman cooking.

Suzy Chase:                  No. I made your recipe for green garden potato salad on page 87.

Aileen:                  Oh, lovely.

Suzy Chase:                  Talk about Monet's love for hearty meals that included potatoes.

Aileen:                  Hearty meals were not unusual at Monet's time. That was really sort of how people ate. He loved the root vegetables, all kinds of potatoes were grown, and of course his love of the root vegetables and his love of potatoes inspired my wanting to do the potato salad.

Aileen:                  I wanted to do something that if you took it to a picnic, you wouldn't have to worry if it was laden with mayonnaise. On top of that, I utilized many of the fresh herbs that Monet grew in his kitchen garden. So, I think coupling these fresh herbs with these beautiful, hearty potatoes that Monet would have loved in a dish that's as friendly on your dining room table as it would be on your picnic blanket was very, very much the way to be everyday Monet.

Suzy Chase:                  Definitely. It was so fresh.

Aileen:                  Ah, yeah. That's the premise, and that's what I was going for, and I'm so glad that you enjoyed it.

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

Aileen:                  I would love for people to learn more about Everyday Monet, his lifestyle, and I always post additional pictures to what we're talking about on any given day at monetspalate.com, W-W-W-dot-M-O-N-E-T-S-P-A-L-A-T-E-dot com. I also have a very wonderful, engaging Facebook page that I think your listeners would love to visit. Every day we bring something new to the table, to the palate, to the canvas. As we say in Everyday Monet, we try to bring the aesthetic of Monet's beauty and the world at Giverny into your home.

Suzy Chase:                  Even if you can't live with a Monet painting in your home or travel to France, you can experience it through the pages in this beautiful, beautiful book. Thanks, Aileen, for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.

Aileen:                  Suzy, thank you so much, and as we say in the world of Everyday Monet, a toast to Giverny and a toast to Claude Monet.

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 at CookerybytheBook. Twitter is IamSuzyChase, and download your Kitchen Mix Tapes, music to cook by, on Spotify at CookerybytheBook. Thanks for listening.