Original Episode Transcript Follows:

Stephanie Hansen:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space, a lot of cookbook authors, manufacturers, and people who are doing cool things with food. And Ashley Russell came across my desk, and she has a cookbook that’s called “What’s Cooking Good Looking”. And I was first of all, captured by the illustrations in the book you are working on or have. They were very. How do I describe them? They were like tattoos. They were adorable, and they are original art by @sadpuppytattoo.

When Ashley describes the banana bread of her grandmas, she was generous enough to share the recipe here.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Tell me about the book and how you decided to illustrate it the way you did. And then I wanted to talk to you specifically about self publishing a book, because I think a lot of people think about it, but they’re not sure how to do it. So I just wanted to get your feedback.

Ashley Russell:

Totally. So I started this book inspired by my grandma. She passed away in 2024, summer of 2024. And it was almost immediate, was like, we have to have all the family has to have our recipes. And so she had a really cute little vintage recipe card box, and the whole process just sort of unfolded over the past year and a half. It is definitely a lot of Southern cooking. She’s from Texas, but lived the past 30 years up in northern Washington. And her and my mom and her siblings lived all over the country.

So there’s just a little bit of everything in there from, like, recipes she got from neighbors or things that she learned from different parts of the country. So it’s a really fun, like, eclectic mix of American cooking. And it’s just so much her. Like, there’s sugar and everything, and it’s just. I’m so happy to have all of the family favorites in one place. Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Did you work with members of the family, or was it primarily. Did it fall on you to compile everything?

Ashley Russell:

I definitely compiled everything, but my family was there every step of the way. Like, my grandma wrote in cursive, and I couldn’t always read it.

Stephanie Hansen:

A lot of our grandmas wrote in cursive, and it is hard to read.

Ashley Russell:

It’s so hard to read. And so we started this text group, and I would be like, does anyone know what this says? And then also things like vegetable oil or sweet milk or, you know, polio olio. Exactly. What is that?

Stephanie Hansen:

It’s shortening. But, I mean, nobody knew.

Ashley Russell:

Nobody knew. And so it was a lot of just, like, you know, there were puzzles to it, and it was funny, and it brought us together and it kept us talking about her. And then, in addition to the community that I reached out to here in Portland, all My family members helped recipe test because it’s like they remembered how it was supposed to taste. So it was almost like, you know, I think that this is missing this because she didn’t write everything down. Like, a lot of things lived in her head.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Did you ever done this before or anything like this? Do you. What’s your background?

Ashley Russell:

No. So I worked for a decade in costume design. I worked on a lot of small budget indie film and tv. And so I think I’m used to like, okay, we have this big hurdle of a project ahead. But I’ve never, I’ve never written a book. I’ve never written a cookbook. And the whole process was such a journey, but it, it was all so much fun, I think, because I was like learning and uncovering things about my family along the way. Yeah.

Ashley Russell:

So.

Stephanie Hansen:

Well, the creative process too, I think, is. Know you talk about being a costume designer. I didn’t really think about writing a cookbook or recipes or being a recipe developer as a creative endeavor until I kind of started doing it more. And then I was like, oh, yeah, this does require creativity. And this is where that, where I scratch that itch.

Ashley Russell:

Yes, totally. I agree with that. It is super creative. And I never realized that either. I have a few cookbooks, but in this process, it made me realize, like, what little magical creative books they are and how much, you know, there’s people’s dreams and they nourish us and they’re little windows into different parts of history and people’s lives and they’re just pretty cool. Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

And people talk about like, I’m, I’m in the process of. I just released a book in September, so I’m out at bookstores and grocery stores and selling the book everywhere. And a lot of people are like, oh, you know, nobody really needs cookbooks anymore. And I was like, well, actually, you can always look up a recipe on the Internet that’s there, but the narrative, the piece of how that fits into their life, the memory that that recipe brings or that combination of spices that transports you to a place that is what is unique about a cookbook. It’s. It’s so much more than just the recipe. And if you’re not jazzed by any of that, then, yeah, it’s probably not for you.

Ashley Russell:

Totally. Yes. Like, you have to be inspired by it. Right. And like, I don’t know, I get pretty annoyed with recipes online. There’s a ton of pop ups and your phone, you know, has the auto timer and it has to face ID every two minutes. I. It’s just when you have it in a cookbook, it’s almost like the record version of like a Spotify song.

I don’t know, like, you sure? Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Like, and you can get a song but you don’t have it in the context of all the songs in the record and that the artist had. Yeah, it’s very similar, actually.

Ashley Russell:

Totally. And like, people love listening to records and collecting records and I really just think it’s, it’s, it’s a similar. Comes from a similar place.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Okay. So your book, what’s Cooking Good Looking? It is a spiral bound, which I thought was an interesting choice that I want to ask you about. And it’s also got these illustrations. Did you illustrate it or did someone else? They’re real cute. They’re like tattooed inspired and they’re kind of jazzy and it kind of. It had like a hipster core vibe to it.

Ashley Russell:

Yes. So my boyfriend’s brother’s sister, so more or less my sister in law. I’ve known her for six years now. She’s a tattoo artist and she does a lot of florals and she did like a food flash at one point. And I’ve always loved her art. And when I was first starting the book, I was in Canva and I was like, oh, clip art’s cute. And I was like, you know, I don’t know if I would ever release a book with clip art in it, you know, And I wasn’t sold on doing photography. I knew how specific and it had to be.

Ashley Russell:

Like, people have nailed food photography. If I was going to do it, I wanted to make sure it rocked. And so I asked her one day, I was like, would you want to illustrate this book? And she was like, oh my God, yes. And her tattoos are in black and white already. So it kind of, it transferred pretty easily into print form. And so I was able to use all of her tattoo library, like things she had already drawn. And then she drew things specifically for the book as well. And I just think it looks awesome.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, it really does. It’s real sweet. And what about the choice of spiral bound? And can you talk, can you make that be the introduction of talking about like how you decided to self publish and did you go out and try to find agents or did you go right to self publishing?

Ashley Russell:

Sure. So I in the past couple years have been really inspired by Rizzo prints and graphic novels and a lot of small press publishing and super inspired by vintage cookbooks. And a lot of them are spiral bound or they’re notebook bound. And it’s. It’s kind of like, it gives it this retro feel, and it’s kind of an homage to all of, like, the women’s groups and church groups that did cookbooks over the decades. But I also think it’s super functional in the kitchen. And I had a graphic design friend mention to me that she loves when a spiral bound is a color that totally offsets the book. So my book is, like, very black and white and yellow, and then it has this bright red spiral binding.

And I just think it makes it pop. Like, it’s. It’s fun and practical. So as far as self publishing. So when I started this, it was really just a project for my family. It was really just, you know, I wanted them to have all the recipes. I. I wasn’t even sure if I was going to print it.

And as the process unfolded more, I realized more and more that I wanted to make this a book. And I wanted to put my heart in this book. And I wanted to share who Wanda and our family is with the world. And it really was just like a flower slowly blooming. Like, every week would be like, oh, I have to put the ingredients in the order of the method. Oh, you have to do this. Oh, people like, you know, like, you want everything in a recipe on one page. You don’t want to have to, like, go back and forth.

And it became this really fun project puzzle for me to be like, maybe I can create a cookbook. And so I didn’t reach out to agents or anything, because I think the main important part was for this book to be about my grandma and come from me. And I was worried that having an agent or a publisher might dilute that a little bit.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, they’d have feedback or input or change things. Sure.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah. So I was able to work with a lot of friends, family, and get a lot of feedback throughout the entire process. I hired an editor, and so there was that constructive criticism, but I didn’t feel like the voice or the vision was changing for profit, per se. And so self publishing is what I stuck with. And I think that in order for me to print this book the way I wanted to and for it to look the way it does, I don’t know if I could have convinced a publisher to get on board with that.

Stephanie Hansen:

So then you make that decision and you’ve got your book assembled or your PDF pages, essentially. Did you tell me about, like, did you go out and just Google, like, how to self publish? Did you figure out, like, how to print on Demand was there color considerations. Kind of walk me through that process a little bit.

Ashley Russell:

Sure. So I did start looking up print on demand and I started Googling, you know, how to write a cookbook. I listened to Maggie Green’s podcast Cookbook Love, like, religiously. I got books on the subject, and I really just created, like, it was my own research project. And I was learning as I went. What turned me away from doing, like, on demand printing or online publishing was that I really wanted it to be spiral bound. I knew that from the beginning almost. And I really wanted to do a mixture of Rizzo printing.

Ashley Russell:

And I wanted the paper. I just wanted everything to be really high quality and feel like her note cards, feel like her recipe cards. And I didn’t think I would get that with online printing. So I went and talked with a few print shops here in Portland, Oregon, and Brown Printing, like, got the project right away. And I’ve been working with them for the past several months to get it printed.

Stephanie Hansen:

Have you. Have you printed, like, X amount and you’re kind of selling stock as you go?

Ashley Russell:

Yeah, So I, you know, budget has been a concern throughout this whole process. Like, anyone who’s made a cookbook knows it gets very expensive between recipe testing. And I did end up doing photography. I did it myself. All of those things really add up. And so I did an initial print run of 300, which is almost gone at this point. I just picked it up in the beginning of the month. And Brown’s doing another run of.

Ashley Russell:

Of, 300 for the 1st of December so I can have more for the holidays.

Stephanie Hansen:

And then do you package them up and ship them when people make an order? Can you talk a little bit about that? Because people don’t think about that. But you have to buy, like, special envelopes. You have to go to the post office. There is a category for media mail that makes it a little cheaper, but it’s still. It’s a process.

Ashley Russell:

It is a process. Like, every bit of this has been such a process. And so, yeah, my. My limit, I had about 180 orders to ship out when I got all the books from recipe testers. Order, pre-orders, family, you know, you name it. And our whole. Our whole living room and kitchen was just, like, stacked with boxes and you.

Stephanie Hansen:

And they’re bigger than you think.

Ashley Russell:

Like, they’re bigger than you think and they’re heavy.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes. And a box of like, 15 books is, like, a big box. And they’re everywhere.

Ashley Russell:

They’re everywhere. Yeah. So, you know, it’s kind of like if you’re an Etsy shop owner, you know, kind of our pain, I guess. But, you know, you’re doing. You’re the manual labor and you’re the author and you’re the publisher, you know, so you’re doing everything. And I lugged them all down to the UPS and USPS and shipped them off. Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Where do you go from here with it? Like, you gotta sell through your next 300, obviously. Did this, like, create a pathway for you, or is this where you’ll end this journey and just one and done. And it was great.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah. So when I first started, I had over 300 recipes from the family. And I reached out to my first editor contact and they were like, whoa, that’s a lot of recipes. They’re like, books are usually like 75 to 150. And I was like, oh. And like now seeing this printed and it’s 260 pages, like, I get it. But at the time, I was like, I just wanted to have everything. And so I have at least one other book of Wanda’s on the horizon.

But for now, I’m really just trying to put myself in. What if I had a publisher? What if I had an agent? What would they be doing? So it’s a lot. Yeah, it’s a lot of reaching out to retail stores, seeing if I can get an interview on a podcast, trying to put my book out there in ways that I know of and seeing where it lands. I have. There’s about seven stores in Portland that are carrying the book right now, and they’re all stores I really love. And that’s super exciting.

Stephanie Hansen:

They carry it on consignment or do you sell them to them outright?

Ashley Russell:

It depends. So a couple are wholesale and a couple are consignment. Wholesale obviously works better for us, but I’m just happy to have the book out there. I think it’s a good time of year. You know, she made all these dishes for Thanksgiving and. And Christmas, so it’s the. It’s the time to have it in your kitchen.

Stephanie Hansen:

Do you. Can you talk about, like, how much you make per book?

Ashley Russell:

Sure. So if I’m talking just printing costs to do the 300 with the brown printing and the riso printing I did by hand at outlet PDX, we’re looking at about $20 a book. And I have the book priced at 38. So because I’m not splitting this with any publisher or agent, that means technically $20 profit goes back into my pocket. But at this point, we’re still paying off all the production costs, and it also doesn’t include that dollar amount. Doesn’t include, like, my labor. So when you really figure it out, it’s probably. Or food.

When you really figure out the numbers. This first round probably cost me about $50 a book to make, you know, and then the hope is, over the years, if continuing to sell copies here and there, you break even, or maybe you make a few dollars.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, it’s. It is kind of like that. As you get, like, past Wanda’s story, do you see this being a journey you’ll stay on, or is it really just. I’m curious if it ignited something in you because you seem like a creative person.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah. Like, I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and it’s been pretty daunting. My grandma always encouraged me to be a writer. This feels like that first step. I also like the idea. I’ve heard a cookbook is, like, the best business card, you know, And I think that’s, like, a great way to look at it, too. It’s something that I’ve made that I can say, you know, I wrote this, I’ve made this. I’d like to do this project.

Stephanie Hansen:

And fascinating, because that is for. For me personally, I wanted to have agency in the cooking space, and I wasn’t. And I wasn’t a writer, so I was like, how am I going to get that? I wanted to have a television show. I wanted to do more podcasting, specifically about food. I had a radio show about food, but I needed to have more autonomy, and that's how I started.

Ashley Russell:

Totally. That makes sense. Did you. Do you feel like that helped achieve some of the dreams you had?

Stephanie Hansen:

Oh, for sure. I have a TV show now, and I wouldn’t have had the TV show if I hadn’t have written the cookbook, I don’t think.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Because even though I’m a home chef or a home cook and not a chef at all, actually having the book gives you some credibility of why this person’s gonna invest in you and put you on television station. 88 markets. I don’t think they would have done that if I wouldn’t have had the book.

Ashley Russell:

Totally. And honestly, like, I think being a home chef, you almost write a better cookbook because you can anticipate what other home chefs are going to be confused by or what they need written down.

Stephanie Hansen:

Well. And a lot of the best chefs, who I have much admiration and respect for, their books are really challenging or technical and. And that’s great. Like, maybe that’s who they’re writing them for. But some of my favorite chefs, I get their books and I keep them because I love the photography and I just admire so much of the skills and what they bring to the party. But very few of them I actually ever cooked out of.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah, they’re like these beautiful aspirations.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, they’re aspirational books, for sure.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

Can you talk a little bit about Wanda? Just your grandma? Like, you just have a real spirit about you that must come from her. And I’m just curious why she was so meaningful to you outside of just being your grandma.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah, totally. So I was raised by my mom. It was just me and my mom and I would spend a lot of time with my grandparents. I think when you’re set up in that sort of one parent system, I was either going with my mom everywhere or I was spending summers at my grandparents, and those summers at my grandparents. I, I feel like as an adult, I’m sort of chasing that feeling, you know, of, of being, you know.

Stephanie Hansen:

Really? Yeah. Oh, that’s so touching.

Ashley Russell:

Yeah. I mean, it’s true. Whether it’s cooking in the kitchen or laughing with my grandpa. You know, my grandma taught me how to sew, and later on in life, I worked in costumes and I used to bake with her, and now I’m making this cookbook. She meant a lot to me. And I know, I know both of them meant so much to our whole family that I don’t want, I don’t want us to lose that, and I don’t want anyone that comes next in our family to not know about it.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Yeah. What a beautiful sentiment. I, I just the I, the what you said, just, I’ve been chasing that feeling is really. I wrote my book for very similar reasons. You know, my mom had died early of breast cancer, and I wanted to document family recipes. Yeah, just the way you said that was really beautiful, so. Oh, that’s so nice.

Ashley Russell:

I, I, whether or not we’re aware of it, that we’re, we’re kind of doing that right. You know, where’s your happy place? What makes you, what brings you happiness? And those memories really do as, as I’m sure other memories for other people do for them.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. All right. Well, I have loved hearing your story. I knew right away when the book came across my desk and you reached out to me directly, I was like, oh, yeah, I do want to talk to her. I want to figure out, like, what inspired her to take this on. Because it is a labor of love, you. Even if, I mean, I don’t I’ve not read a statistic, but like most cookbooks and most cookbook authors are not getting rich by writing cookbooks. They’re using it to parlayed into other things.

So it’s usually not actually a money making endeavor. It’s more a creative process and something that you do as a labor of love. And I think a lot of people that love cookbooks may be listening, you know, have wanted to do this. So I wanted to like, really document, like, how did you do it and what did you think about and how did you decide to put it together? When you put your list of recipes together, was it obvious what was going to make it?

Ashley Russell:

Yeah, you know, it started with what are the family favorites? What, what do we have to have? And then it was with, you know, what turned out really well in recipe testing. And from there, like, you know, the, the, the baking section’s over half the book. Yeah. And then it was sort of trying to round out the other sections of the book. Yeah. And they were recipes that could stand the test of time and that people would still want to make and also that my, my grandma would enjoy another favorites. Oh, yeah. So I mean, her banana bread is like, I knew I wanted to start the book with her banana bread and end it with sweet tea.

That’s my grandma to the core. And then in between, you know, there’s so many great home cooked meals, home cooked desserts. She had a famous chocolate pie, famous pecan pie. Her Italian cream cake is to die for. It’s like a coconut cake. Um, my aunt Angie, her oldest daughter, said that people used to request that she make that. So that was fun to learn and to put in the book.

Stephanie Hansen:

And now you know how to make all the things too, or a lot of the things.

Ashley Russell:

Yes. My family’s like, well, I guess you’re cooking for Thanksgiving now because you know all of her recipes.

Stephanie Hansen:

Oh, that’s so great. I really enjoyed talking to you. It is Ashley Russell. The book is I wrote the what’s Cooking Good Looking? Sorry. It is a really beautiful, fun, different way to approach this topic of cookbooks. And I was really. I’m impressed by what you did and I know your grandma would be, she would love it. She’d be real proud of you.

And it’s really nice to talk with you and share your story. I’ll put a link to the book in the podcast notes and put that all together and hopefully we’ll help you sell through your next 300. Ashley.

Ashley Russell:

Thank you, Stephanie. I really appreciate it.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, it was great. To hear your story and to just spend time with you. Good luck.

Ashley Russell:

Thanks. Have a good day.

Stephanie Hansen:

All right. Bye.

Ashley Russell:

Bye.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Original Episode Transcript Follows

Stephanie:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish, the podcast where we talk about food. A lot of times we talk to cookbook authors and kind of understand their process and what they’re doing. Well, I’m just noticing my hair is real bedhead, but it is what it is. Friends, in this particular episode, I want to talk to my friend Michael Kenney. He is from Defined Destinations. He owns his own business, and it’s a travel company. And. And Michael and I met about three years ago now, and we have done a number of trips together, and we are planning our April trip, which is going to be to Turkey, and we have a lot of different cities that we’re going to visit.

And one of the things that I’ve heard from a lot of people is they all know we’re going to Turkey and they want to hear about it, and they’re excited to know about the destination, but they’re nervous about signing up for the trip. So said to Michael, let’s just talk. Let’s do a podcast where we give people an idea of what to expect, where we’re going, what kind of things we’re going to see. My friend Todd Walker, coincidentally has. He’s in Turkey right now. And he said. And he’s been. He travels all over.

He works for the Viking Cruise Lines, doing trips for them and helping to write about them and help people experience them. He sent me a text, and he said, turkey is in his top three places he’s ever been. He’s just super hot on it. He’s like, you are totally going at the exact right time. Because he’s like, people are just starting to learn about it, but there’s so many cool things. He said it’s a trip like nothing has ever experienced before. So, Michael, I’m excited to talk to you about it. And people ask me like, well, why did you pick turkey? And I was like, why not? I have always.

I met a guy 20 years ago and in Paris that was from Turkey, and first of all, he was gorgeous, so let’s just go there. But second of all, he really, like, he just was telling me about where he lived and what Turkey was like and what the food was like. And he talked to me about the spice Trail and kind of how people came in through Istanbul and then crossed over into Italy and into Spain. And it made me feel like, wow, okay. Turkey is this very Mediterranean feeling place with tons of culture, and I’ve always wanted to go there, so I picked it. Michael, why did you allow me to pick Turkey? Knowing that it would be a destination that would be harder to sell for people.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, I think that’s what’s great. And thanks for having me on, Stephanie. It’s always a blast, you know, to travel with you and with your, your listeners. It just, we’ve built some really great bonds with the people, which has been a fun. So even our latest trip to Sicily. What, what a blast. And great people.

Stephanie:

Yes.

Michael Kenney:

But you going back to why we choose this and with Turkey, and that’s what’s great about you. It’s like you’re willing to try some new areas. And a lot of people are like, well, I’ve heard of Turkey. I don’t know much about it. And I think that’s where we both kind of glammed on. Like, let’s go and let’s have this experience. And we’ve been putting group trips together for 27 years and we have some great partners and some Turkish partners, too, that can really open up the, the eyes. I know several people that have been to, to Istanbul and everyone’s heard of Istanbul, like, oh, it’s a top five city on earth for a lot of people.

And you’re probably wondering, well, why? So I encourage you to kind of jump in, look at our website, do a little research on that. But Turkey is so, so much more than that. I. They have absolutely stunning beaches, their food culture, their spices, the seaside communities, the, the Roman ruins. They have so much in different little pockets. So Turkey offers. And I think that’s what maybe gravitated you and I both to it. Just the diversity and still a little of that wonder, like what’s, what’s really, what’s in Turkey.

And I think, you know, we, we talked about a little earlier before the podcast about some of the places, you know, that are kind of overrun with tourists. And definitely Turkey is not there. It will be at some point. So it’s kind of fun to get on maybe the ground level to, to some of these places and not just Istanbul, because it, it is busy, but some of the other places that we’re going to go from Ephesus to Kabukia or Pamuk. There’s so many different places that are on this trip that you’ve never even heard of. So it’s kind of like, well, I haven’t really heard of that. Go, go look at our website. Go do a little research on the Internet and see what.

It’s so amazing. The Europeans, they know of Turkey really, really well because it’s a, it’s a quick flight and they Absolutely love it. I’m in Europe nine times a year and the folks that I talk with over there, they absolutely love it. So it’s kind of like a discovery trip for Americans. And what’s great about our trip that will, it’s fully guided. We have 31 meals included. We have the inner flight inside, Turkey included. So there’s really no out of pocket expense for that.

So you can really sit back and relax and take in the best of Turkey with our local guides. And there’s just so much and I think that’s what’s going to be kind of fun to go discover. This place in our group is going to be no more than 15 people. It’s a small group experience so you can really relax and enjoy that. And I know folks that maybe, well, what’s a group tour? You know, I think you even mentioned that too for some people. Like, well, what do you do? It’s again, we’ve kind of handled everything. We’ve taken care of the hotels, the buses, the cooking class that we’re going to do. I mean, you might want to touch on that later.

But we’ve taken all of that, these best of experiences and put it in one itinerary so you can sit back and relax and know that you’re going to see the best of Turkey.

Stephanie:

I think explaining my husband Kurt’s sort of transformation is good here. My husband is an independent person. He’s owned his own business, he’s a sailor. He would, he, he has no interest really in group travel. Like when I brought it up to him and that I was going to start leading trips, he was like, why would you want to do that? Why would you want to be with people you don’t even know? Like, he is just anti group travel as a rule. And he came on our first trip, he wanted to come with us when we went to Cambodia and we went to Vietnam. He knew that he would never plan a trip to Asia on his own. So he thought, well, I’ll go along on this group travel and I’ll just suck up the group travel part because I get to go to this cool destination.

Well, what happened is he loved it. He liked group travel. He liked meeting new people. He liked not being the person that had to be in charge of making sure that we got our luggage to the room and that we made it to the right flights and that he had to carry all the stuff and all the itinerary. He kind of liked that he wasn’t responsible for all that. And he liked the food, he liked Meeting the people he liked, not having to be in a city he’d never been in and figure out exactly where we were going to eat every single meal. We had flexibility. Obviously, on these trips, we want it to be your trip.

In our Sicily experience, you mentioned a couple times, like, if this doesn’t feel like something you want to do, then don’t do it. Do something else for the day. We can help you orchestrate other things. He really loved the idea that he didn’t have to do everything. And in fact, when we did our cooking class in Sicily, which was amazing, by the way, we learned to make arancini, which they call arancino. We made a thing called a pinella, which was a chickpea pancake that they eat in a sandwich, which was kind of different. But Kurt didn’t want to do the cooking class. He was like, you know what? I think I’m just gonna go walk around the city.

So him and another friend peeled off and, like, that’s the joy of these trips. We plan everything, but if you’re tired or if you just want a day of rest, you can do that too. We really try to make it so that we know it’s your experience. We’re not as interested in you just being forced to come along on things that you’re not interested in. We’re interested in your experience. We want you to have a good time. So if Kurt Johnson can get turned on to group travel, I feel like, seriously, anyone can.

Michael Kenney:

No, that’s. That’s well said. I would have never guessed that about Kurt initially. You know, and I wouldn’t call him an introvert by any means, but I think we get, you know, a lot of people like that with. With. Kurt. You know, maybe their. Their.

Their husband or their wife drags them on a trip, and they’re like, you know what? This is actually pretty cool, especially for the person that maybe is doing typically all the planning. And it’s stressful. You know, we do all that for you, but you can really, again, sit back and enjoy. You spend a lot of money to go on these trips, and that’s what we want. So we want you to feel like you. You have that. That freedom, too. When we set up our hotels in nice, central locations and safe areas, too, that you can go out and explore, so we encourage you to do that.

But honestly, we feel pretty good that the pace of these trips are designed really well, that you have that flexibility, because we want you. Yes, you’re in a group, even a small group, but we want to make it feel like you’re having these experience with, with a friend or a family member that’s with you too, that you, you feel like you’re, you’re having these little exploring trips, but it’s all kind of put together already for you. But again, we, we have time for you to go exploring, to have these other experiences, which is really, really important. Balance is so important. Over 27 years, I think we’ve really, we focus on that so we know that, that people are comfortable having that free time to explore. But again, having the, the framework of an itinerary with, with experiences. Typically, we might do a city tour in the, in the morning and then have the rest of your day free to have your own exploring. Then maybe for, especially for this trip with the 31 meals that will meet up and have dinner in a place.

And again, they’re all being curated with our local team too, in the area that you’re going to have foods local from the area in great mom PA type of restaurants. So sometimes it’s stressful when you’re trying to figure out where am I going to go eat, what should I do? I want to make sure the dinner is going to be great. We’ve got that taken care of so you can sit back and relax. And again, we know most of you probably have not heard of a lot of these places. Please, we implore you to go and take a look at the itinerary, do a little research, because I guarantee in a few years from now, these are going to be mainstream and you’ll be able to go explore and see these places before they’re overly busy. So take a look at this itinerary.

Stephanie:

I was impressed because when I first was thinking about Turkey, I went on a map and I didn’t realize, like, when I started going to Croatia, I didn’t realize how close Croatia is to Italy. That literally they share a sea and that a lot of Italians use Croatia as their summer vacation spot.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah.

Stephanie:

And I didn’t also realize that Turkey and Italy are very close and that a lot of Europeans, because they’ve got EasyJet there, that’s an Italian airline, they’re going to Turkey like we would be going to Palm Springs. I mean, a lot of Europeans are experiencing Turkey and it’s just not a destination that a lot of Americans are familiar with. But a lot of people are going there and having fun, doing fun things. This. It’s been so fun for me to watch my friend Todd Walker, because he went to Cappadocia, which is a city that we’re going to go to and they have all these fairy houses that are like these stone. They look like dunce caps sort of. They’re these weird structures. And he, like, actually spent the night in one of them.

He did a hot air balloon r there, which is part of our itinerary. If someone wants to add that on, I know Kurt’s going to do that. It’s like he went and he had all this video of it where there’s 140 hot air balloons going up kind of all at once out of this city. It just looks so completely cool. And then the. The huge market. There’s like, the world’s largest market. So all of these trips, I always end up with a group of great women shoppers.

And I’m like, okay, bring an extra bag, ladies, because you’re going to come home with a rug and you’re going to come home with all of these spices. There’s 4,000 stalls in the Grand Market in Istanbul. Do you know that?

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, the Grand Bazaar. I didn’t know exactly how many, but, yeah, it’s massive.

Stephanie:

So just that, like, I love getting into a market and just, like, seeing all the different things, feeling all the different spices. In Sicily, we had an opportunity to go to the market, and afterwards we had our. Our local guide that kind of takes you around and shows you where everything is and gives you a sense of maybe what to look for at the market. And then we split up and Kurt and I, he just wanted to drink beer in the market and kind of experience feeling in the market. So we went and got sandwiches. But a bunch of other people, like, shop till they dropped. Like, they had huge shopping bags full of stuff. So if your jam is shopping, great.

If your jam is just sitting and taking in the culture, great. Like, you can also learn more about a city by spending time with the city guides that are with us. They’re always having lunch with us, and we have a bus driver that we get to know in certain trips. It really just. We just got back from Sicily and we had such a great experience. We had such a great trip. It was probably one of my favorite groups because a lot of the folks had traveled with us before, so we really knew each other, too. It’s group travel is really fun.

I’m just. I don’t know, I’m really jazzed about it, and I’m jazzed about Turkey, and I want people to come. If you could describe Ephesus, because that’s a place that I haven’t been before and you have what is that like?

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, Ephesus, it was, you know, built by the Romans in the time of Christ, so 2,000 years ago. And it’s. You’re walking through. It’s. It’s unbelievable. It’s not like when you’re at the Roman Coliseum or that area around there that’s actually, it feels like it’s in. More in ruins, if you will. But you’re like in this village, this Roman village that you can think of, the Apostles walk, maybe if you’re, you know, religious.

Mary, Jesus’s mother, has walked. And the. Still, the stone streets are there. You know, a lot of the buildings are in ruins, but the library, the, the whole front facade is still there. It’s, it’s unreal. It feels like you’re just being brought back in time. And there’s truly nothing like Ephesus, which is just right outside of the, the village of Kusadasi, or city in Turkey. But it’s, it’s like the.

If, again, if I could have an analogy, like you’re in Rome, but to another level that it’s, it’s much more, I would say intact. Still in ruins, but intact. But this, this, this village that it’s in hibernation. So walking these streets. And we have these local guides as you touched on too, that kind of can bring everything to, to, to life. So, you know, you’re not looking through your, your book and trying to like, well, what is this? You listen to an audio guide or our, our local guide speaking about that. So you’re learning about the history. But Ephesus is, is.

Is unbelievable. And we’re not going to see. There’s other ruins and more Roman sites and throughout this trip, so you’ll really get, you know, a history. I wouldn’t say a deep dive. They touch on it. So you’re not like, oh, this is so boring. But you even said it’s, it’s a trip like this is great for, for shoppers, if you want to shop. I’m not a shopper.

I like to do what Kurt does. Sit down, maybe have a beer and take it all in and do nothing. Just take in the people walking around, the smells. There’s. There’s nothing like it. And again, I think this trip to Turkey really offers a potpourri of different experiences. So if you’re a foodie, if you’re into photography, to culture, to history, this trip really ticks all the boxes. And I guarantee it, you’ll love it.

You’ll love the trip. But then even at the end you. There’s a great chance you’re going to make lifelong friends on, on a trip like this too. So it’s, it really ticks a box of. Of of experiences. So hopefully April is a great time to go to. The temperatures you can expect, you know, low 70s, you know, 50s, 60s at night. So it’s really comfortable.

Not like in the summer when it’s really busy and it’s busier with the Europeans and the temperatures hotter. This April time is a great time to visit for sure.

Stephanie:

Can you talk a little bit about what the food is like? Like, I have an idea, but I don’t really know. Like, is it Mediterranean? Is it like meat and pomegranates and couscous?

Michael Kenney:

Yep, you’re nailing it right now. No, it. It is like that. So I think I encourage again people to. To look online too, to see what some of these are. But you maybe have heard of, you know, baklava or, you know, kebabs, the lamb, the beef, the chicken. They have, you know, the different kebabs, lots of different spices, ganache, as many, you know, like fried dishes too, but then a lot of cooked on open fires. But I would say, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s comfort food, like German, you know, in having, you know, some of the staples that you might know, but still something that’s not too odd.

It’s probably more closer to home than maybe some of the French food you would see. But you’ll see a lot of lamb, the beef, I said some of the fried foods, lots of, you know, from your Turkish delights and different things like that. So I think even when we’re walking around in the market, you’ll get that. And then we’ll at our dinners have different meals as well that will infuse some of these different experiences. So it won’t be something completely foreign, but it’ll be. It’ll be comfortable enough that I think you’ll enjoy it, but it definitely be a nice array of different experiences with the food.

Stephanie:

I haven’t told you this, but one of the places, and I don’t know where I’m going to do this, but I am going to find. Have you ever been to a hammam or done the spa experience where like, you lay on like hot marble and it’s sort of like a sauna and you get sweaty and then you like, go into a room and they like brush you with salt and scrubby things and like completely clean you. It’s a Muslim tradition and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I did this in Athens and I loved it so much. We went three times while we were in Athens.

Michael Kenney:

Wow.

Stephanie:

Find a spa that does this there. I don’t know in what city or where we are, but I know a local guide can help me when we get there.

Michael Kenney:

Yep.

Stephanie:

Both Kurt and I, it was just the most amazing, relaxing experience. Just someone scrubbing you with all these different herbs and salts. And they have weird little brushes that your eyes are closed and. And you can’t even. Like. One of them was this big, puffy, like, pillow feeling that was running across the top of your body. It was so weird, but so great.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, I haven’t done it. I’ve seen them. I’ve done, like, the part that we’re just going in, like, in the. In the sauna or the steam bath. That’s it. I haven’t had the full rub down yet. Maybe on this Turkish.

Stephanie:

We’re going to do it. Yeah, it’s great. I’ll do it.

Michael Kenney:

No, it’ll be fun, but no, it’s very popular over there. The Turkish amans. To do that. So there definitely will be that opportunity. I will. I’ll give it a shot. You know, it’ll be interesting to have someone scrub me down with salts. But, hey, life’s about to have any experiences and.

And I’m. And I’m. I’m for it, but I’m glad you enjoyed that. But, yes, they definitely have that. And you’ll have that opportunity if you want again. It’s. Yeah, it’s always. It’s.

Stephanie:

I’m not gonna make anyone go get naked and do this, but if you want to get naked and do this, I’m telling you, it’s amazing. And they probably actually. They wear bathing suits because they’re pretty modest. Or they’ll have, like, a separate women’s area and a separate men’s area. When we did it in Athens, it was men and women together, and we wore bathing suits. And then when you got into the private room, you could take your bathing suit off. And they were very modest and helpful, but.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah. So being comfortable. Yeah, no, that’s. That’s great. Well, that’ll be. Maybe we’ll just get a whole group and do that to get so great.

Stephanie:

Yeah, it’s just like. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done. And I. I like spas and massage, and I’ve done a lot of weird things like that. This was, like, just amazing. Well, I’m excited. I hope that people will join us. The way it works is you can find all the itinerary on defined destinations website.

We’ll link that in the show notes here you can see each particular day and what city you’ll be in and what you’ll be doing and what’s included. I would imagine in most of these breakfast is included because that’s typically a sort of European thing to do. And then as he’s. As Michael said, a lot of the meals are included. I do think when you’re breaking open a new destination, it’s important to kind of give people a sense of what they’re going to be experiencing. And food is obviously a big part of that. And food is a big part of my journey on this trip. Turkish delights, if you’ve never had them, they’re like this beautiful little jelly.

Turkish coffee is very different. It’s a much more intense coffee experience. So if you’re a coffee drinker, you’ll learn a lot. Also, olive oil is very much present in Turkey. Like again, I keep comparing it to Italy, but it is right across the water. So there’s a lot of different olive oils that are used in Turkey, a lot of different spices. We’re going to have fun. So the way this works is you can go online, you can put your deposit down and full payment is due I think in January for this trip.

You can book your own travel if you want to, meaning get your airfare to get to where we’re going to meet for the trip. Or you can use Michael’s got a service that can help you book all your airfare. I personally like to control my airfare because I like to have the miles and I like to know exactly how I’m going to set things up on my itinerary. Kurt and I also like to get there like a day or two in advance just to get acclimated a little bit before the rest of you guys come. So that I’m not super jet lagged. I’m on fire by the time you arrive. And yeah, we do. There’s going to be a lot of beautiful wine, I’m assuming too, because that’s something that there’s a great grape destination there.

You don’t know about Turkish wines yet, but you will. They, they exist. There’s actually quite a lot of them. Yeah. And that’s how it works. Michael, you’ve got a special offer just to get people that may be on the fence a little bit. Yeah.

Michael Kenney:

Well, we’re excited. The trip again is April 9th through the 20th. And again, go online, take it just take a look at the website, look at some of the pictures. You’ll absolutely love it. And then even all the things that we’ve talked about that aren’t even mentioned in the itinerary, there’s so many fun things. But if you’re listening to this and you’re new to register, you’ll get $200 off per person if you register for the trip. Final payment is January 1st, so just think about that. So this would be a great.

A great gift for a loved one. Hey, let’s. We’re going to go to Turkey. And I hear more and more people are. They want to have a travel experience rather than having tangible things about having experiences, especially with ones you love. So hopefully this trip to Turkey, if you want to try something new and have just an amazing experience about a place you maybe haven’t heard too much about, I think you’ll absolutely love it. So just go to defined destinations.com, like Stephanie said. She’ll have the link there, too.

Against April 9th through the 20th. You can register right there. If you need help with airfare, we’re happy to do that. So we make it pretty easy for you on that end. So we’re gonna. We’re gonna have a blast with a great group of people and hopefully, you know, you’ll want to join this small group of no more than 15 people.

Stephanie:

Is this the time that we tell people that are listening to maybe stay tuned. I mean, we do have a pretty epic October trip planned.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, no, I mean, go for it. We don’t have the. All the dates totally confirmed, but we’re. Yeah, go ahead.

Stephanie:

Well, we’re working on one of the trips. So I have taken people to Spain, I’ve taken people to Croatia, I’ve taken people to Cambodia, Thailand, and now Turkey. And the Croatia trip was really magical and people loved it. And I have a huge fondness for Croatia. Obviously, I’ve been there a lot, and there were a lot of people that wanted to go on that trip that didn’t get the opportunity because it’s a luxury experience. It’s a luxury yacht. It’s small rooms or not small rooms. It’s a small ship with actually, the rooms were quite big for a boat.

And so we had so many people that wanted to do that itinerary again. Michael said, hey, how about we do it again? But I’ll add a couple of new things so that it’s a new experience for you too, Stephanie, because there is. I’ve never been to Zagreb, which seems probably surprising since I’ve been to Croatia so many times and there’s a bunch of these finger lakes. What do they call those? Is it the plastic lakes?

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, the Plaviche Lakes National Park. Yep.

Stephanie:

The national parks in Croatia are legendary. If you. I mean Mijet has one of the most beautiful national parks on it with a monastery in the middle of this lake. So we are going to be taking another small group. It’ll be smallish. I think we had 28 on our last.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah, enough to fill the boat. And the boat only can sleep like 34. So it’s a small experience on that. But yeah, I’m excited to go back to that again. That’s been one of our hot sellers, our Croatia trip. So with the Zagreb and the Blevice lakes and then our seven night cruise, the Croatia trip will be great. So maybe you want to do two trips. Our beautiful Turkey trip in the spring and then come October we’ll have this amazing trip to, to Croatia.

So go out and have experiences and hopefully you want to join us. I think you’ll find great value, great meals just. And great people that to travel with.

Stephanie:

And if you’re listening and you want to explore Michael’s other trips because he takes trips with other people, not just me. And also he just guides trips himself. Just tell him that you’re a friend of Stephanie’s dish so that he knows that you came from my referral. But just like, yeah, if you want to sign up for a Christmas market or you’re interested in heading to the Amalfi coast, traveling with defined destinations is a really great opportunity. They do it extremely well. I have traveled a lot and so I’ve had some good experiences and some not so good experiences. So I know that when you travel with Michael, you’re in good hands. I’m still just missing our guide Peter, who was with us on our last Sicilian trip, who turns out has been your friend for like 25 years.

I just miss him. He’s such a character. I loved him so much.

Michael Kenney:

Yeah. And that’s great. Yeah. Peter’s a good friend of mine for. He’s our Austrian guy, but he’s. He’s got family in, in Italy and does some of our, our Central European trips. But again, like you said it too, it’s, it’s. Again, it’s more than just the sights.

You’re building relationships even if you’re not even looking for that. But it’s fun to recall and all the good people you’ve met and the fun experiences you’ve had along the way. I love what I do, and hopefully it shows in our trips. It’s all about having a great experience with great people, so encourage you. And you’ve been such a great part of the defined destinations family. Thank you, Stephanie.

Stephanie:

I love it.

Michael Kenney:

Looking forward to more.

Stephanie:

If I didn’t, people know I would have kicked you to the curb long ago. And you even have got. You’ve even converted Kurt.

Michael Kenney:

So, I mean, yeah, that’s great. So, yeah, it’s about. About having fun and that’s what we do. And we’d love to have you on, on any of our trips.

Stephanie:

Yeah. All right, you guys. So I’ll put all that information that you need in the links below. We are going to Turkey and I hope you come. That’s all I can say because I’m gonna probably be talking about it non stop because I’m so excited.

Michael Kenney:

That’s great.

Stephanie:

I’m.

Michael Kenney:

I’m looking forward to it. Thanks again, Steph.

Stephanie:

Thanks, Michael. Okay, bye. Bye.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video on Tuesday night! I had a good time making some of my favorite recipes from the “True North Cabin Cookbook Vol 2” If you missed it you can watch the video above!

I’ll be signing books at these locations if you want to pick up a signed copy

Here are the recipes we made!

Pomegranate Old Fashioned from the “True North Cabin Cookbook Vol 2”

Pomegranate Old Fashioned

Ingredients

* 1 Tbsp Pomegranate seeds

* 2 oz Pomegranate juice

* ¼ teaspoon maple syrup

* 2 ox Bourbon

* 4 dashes orange butters

* Orange slice for garnish

Instructions

* Muddle the pomegranate seeds with the pomegranate juice, maple syrup and orange bitters

* Add bourbon and shake in a cocktail shaker to combine

* Pour over rocks glass with ice and garnish with an orange slice

Roasted Brussels Sprouts:

Ingredients

* 3-4 Cups Brussels Sprouts, cut in half or quarters

* Tbsp olive oil

* Teaspoon kosher salt

* 1/4 cup Fig Jam, or you can substitute Apricot Jam, Orange Marmalade, or other jam

* 1 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar or Pomegranate Molasses

Instructions

* Toss Brussels Sprouts in olive oil and salt and roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes

* Toss with the jam and the vinegar and roast for another 10 minutes

Instant Pot 5 Minute Risotto

Get the recipe here!

Scallops With Oven-Baked Risotto

Ingredients

For the Risotto

* 1 1/2 cups Arborio Rice

* 4 cups chicken stock

* 1/2 cup diced onion

* 1 large garlic cloves minced

* 3 Tbsp butter diced into 6 chunks

* 1 teaspoon black pepper

* 1 teaspoon salt

* Zest of one lemon

* 3 Tbsp lemon juice

* 1/3 cup Parmesan Cheese

* 1 Tbsp chopped parsley

* 3 Tbsp chopped Dill

For the Scallops

* ½ cup flour

* 1 tsp paprika

* ½ tsp. Lawry’s seasoned salt

* ½ tsp. pepper

* pinch of sugar

* 1/4 cup butter

* 1/4 cup dry white wine

* 4 Tbsp lemon juice

* 16 large Day Boat Scallops patted dry

Instructions

For The Risotto

* Preheat oven to 350

* In a 10-inch oven safe skillet or pot with a lid, add the rice, stock, onion, garlic and butter

* Cover the pot with tin foil and the lid of the pot and bake for 45 minutes

* Remove the pot from the oven and start the broiler preheating for the Scallops

* Add pepper, salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and 1/3 cup parmesan cheese to the rice pot and vigorously stir for 3 minutes, combining all the ingredients and blending the risotto until creamy. If the mixture seems dry, you can add additional broth or cream a few Tbsp at a time until you get the consistency and creaminess you desire. Cover the pot and let rest until the scallops are done.

* Right before serving and plating, stir fresh herbs into the rice

For The Scallops

* Preheat the broiler

* Mix all dry ingredients in a plastic bag.

* Melt butter in a baking dish under the broiler. Add the wine and lemon juice.

* Toss scallops in dry ingredients – shake until coated.

* Put scallops in a buttered baking dish and spoon a teaspoon of butter over each scallop.

* Broil for 4-6 minutes until no longer opaque and cooked through

* Serve the scallops alongside the risotto with fresh lemon slices and the broiled butter spooned over both the scallops and drizzled over the risotto

Pecan Pie Bars

Get the recipe here

Thanks for cooking along! If you like these recipe please share and like by clicking the heart below.

November 18 5-8 pM Fitgers Duluth

Author Talk and Recipe Tasting collaborative event between The Bookstore at Fitger’s, Duluth Kitchen & The Boat Club.

The Boat Club, 600 E Superior Street, Duluth, MN 55802

Get your ticket

November 19, 6:30-8 PM Knife Sharpening and Book Signing Event Vivront

A fall gathering for home cooks, flavor seekers, and anyone who knows the joy of a sharp knife and a good story.

4948 France Ave S, Edina, MN 55410

Get Tickets

Thanks for reading Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

On the latest episode of “Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish”, I sit down with accomplished book cover designer, art director, and now, celebrated cookbook author, @LauraKlyn The episode is a deliciously detailed look into Laura’s new book, “100 Pie, Tart and Galette Recipes for Every Season” and a behind-the-scenes peek into her world of culinary creativity and design.

From the moment I flipped through the pages, it was clear Laura’s design expertise shines brightly. Laura’s background as a cover designer and art director, paired with hands-on experience working on dozens of cookbooks, comes to life in her visually stunning collection. Each photo in the book tells a story——and is surrounded by thoughtful prop styling, from vintage pie servers to antique dishes discovered at local shops.

A special treat is Laura’s focus on savory pies—think samosa pie or the show-stopping asparagus tart—beautiful options for every season and palate. The attention to technique continues with creative garnishes, like sugared cranberries and candied herbs, adding sparkle to your holiday spreads and beyond.

Laura’s cookbook recommendations are rock solid—even non-pie bakers will find plenty to love between these pages.

Ready to up your pie game? Listen to the full episode for stories, tips, and plenty of seasonal baking inspiration!

Enjoy these two recipes from Laura, one savory and one sweet, to get a taste of her book!

Lemon Meringue Tart

Makes 1 10-inch round tart

I love this twist on lemon meringue pie in tart form. For me, the proportion of crust to lemon is perfect, and it’s even better with Swiss meringue instead of French meringue, which is a traditional pairing with lemon. Swiss meringue is cooked on the stove and doesn’t need to go in the oven. It is softer and creamier, adding a beautiful airy sweetness to counter the tart lemon curd. This bright tart comes out looking lovely and tastes even better.

Press-In Shortbread Tart Dough

Makes 1 10-inch tart crust

I’ve tested a lot of tart crusts over the years, and many of them are so hard, it’s difficult to break off a bite with a fork. This buttery and delicious shortbread crust is delicate enough to easily break apart but strong enough to hold the tart together. Using cake flour is key to getting a nice, cookie-like crumb. This dough is not tough enough to roll out. Press the dough directly into the pan for an easy to pull together, delicious tart base.

Ingredients

¾ cup (169 g) unsalted butter, softened

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

⅔ cup (73 g) confectioners’ sugar

2 cups (230 g) cake flour

Instructions

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix butter, salt, vanilla extract, and confectioners’ sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add flour and mix just until combined. Press dough directly into a 10-inch tart pan, starting with the sides and finishing with the bottom. Bake the crust according to the tart recipe’s instructions.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients

8 egg yolks

zest of 2 lemons

⅔ cup fresh lemon juice

1 cup (200g) sugar

10 tablespoons (141 g) salted butter

Swiss Meringue

5 egg whites

1¼ cups (250 g) sugar

½ teaspoon cream of tartar

1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Instructions

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350ºF. Press tart dough into a 10-inch tart pan. Generously dock with a fork and bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until lightly browned. While still hot, use a tamper or back of a spoon to lightly press down the center of the crust, leaving a ¾-inch edge.

To make the lemon curd: Whisk together egg yolks, lemon zest, lemon juice, and sugar in a saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes thick and coats the back of the spoon, about 8 to 10 minutes. Use an instant read thermometer to check the temperature; it should reach 170ºF. Transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on low. Add butter 1 teaspoon at a time, mixing until fully combined before adding the next teaspoon of butter. Strain through a sieve into a medium bowl. Pour while still warm into the tart shell. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 2 to 3 hours.

To make the Swiss meringue: Whisk together egg whites and sugar in the top pan of a double boiler until completely incorporated (see note below). Cook, whisking continuously, for about 5 to 6 minutes or until mixture reaches 170ºF. Pour into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Add cream of tartar. Beat on high for about 2 minutes. Add vanilla extract and continue to beat on high until stiff peaks form. Scoop or pipe onto lemon curd. Toast meringue with a kitchen torch or under the oven broiler. Keep a close watch on meringue while toasting to avoid burning. Remove sides of tart pan and serve.

Episode Transcript Follows:

Stephanie Hansen:

Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space and a lot of cookbook authors. And this book came across my desk by Laura Klynstra And right away I was like, pie! Laura, your book, “100 Pie, Tart and Galette Recipes for Every Season” is extremely beautiful. And, and I, it kind of, when I read through the whole book and I read through your bio, I was like, oh, well, she's like in the design field because honestly, this is probably one of the most beautiful books on pie I've ever seen.

Laura Klynstra:

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

Stephanie Hansen:

It's so incredible, like just the way that the pies are decorated, the color choices that you used for the intros, everything is laid out so it feels easy, accessible. And even like the whole rolling out the pie dough section, there's tons of pictures, the decorating of the lattice work, It's a really well done book. Congratulations.

Laura Klynstra:

Oh, thank you so much.

Stephanie Hansen:

What's your background and how did you come to be the pie aficionado?

Laura Klynstra:

My background is actually cover design. I'm a book cover designer and art director. But I also, during all the time that I've been an art director, I've also worked on a lot of cookbooks. So I gotten to go on a lot of photo shoots, work with food stylists and photographers. And during that whole time I learned, I just kind of sat back and watched and learned all the bits and it took time. I'm a self taught photographer. It took me a long time to really figure out how to capture light correctly. And light is really the key to getting a good photo.

Laura Klynstra:

So yeah, it was a lot of trial and error, but eventually I figured out a system to get my camera mounted correctly. I shoot manually and get that light, but I also, I consider every photo similar to what the way I look at a cover design. It's not just here's your pie or whatever it is you're shooting. There's a lot of things going on around it. And so it's telling a story. The photograph is telling a story. It's giving you a sense of the time. Especially like the fall ones are a lot of fun to shoot.

Laura Klynstra:

So many great things to props that you can put in with the photos for the fall shots. And it's just, it's a lot of fun.

Stephanie Hansen:

Did you amass a large library of props and did you have things already or were you always on the lookout?

Laura Klynstra:

This is my third book, so I had a lot of props already. I have like all these Storage shelves downstairs have the weirdest things. You know, I go to antique stores and I'm always looking for old boxes and just everything. Pretty much everything that could possibly have anything to do with baking. If I go to an antique store, I'm always like, I need that. Especially pie servers. Old, old silverware.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes.

Laura Klynstra:

I hate, I hate photographing with a shiny silver, you know, piece of silver or a new one that it never, you know, for one thing, you can end up reflecting your camera in that. So these old patina silverware and things like that are just fabulous to have. Like, you just gotta have a ton of those in your.

Stephanie Hansen:

In your Agreed, agree. Thus my sort of background of stuff from my cookbook styling myself in. Can we talk about pie crust? Do you have, like, what you would say is your definitive pie crust that you mostly use.

Laura Klynstra:

For sweet pies? There's a recipe in there called a maple pie crust, and that's actually my favorite crust to use. It's very similar to a regular crust, except for a lot of the liquid is made with a pure maple syrup. And when you roll that crust out, that syrup gives it like a pliability that just. It doesn't crack the way sometimes you can get with the regular all butter pie crust. And it's just so easy. And so it's just supple. It's, it's. It's my favorite one.

Laura Klynstra:

But again, I'd only use it for sweets. Even though you don't really taste the maple, it's like, you know how when you add maple to something, it doesn't have a strong flavor, as strong as what you would expect it to be, but it' if you're beginning. That would be my press recommendation for somebody who's just beginning because it does make a really easy to roll out.

Stephanie Hansen:

I love this because I use vodka in my pie crust to kind of do the same thing. It gives you that moisture when you're putting the assembly together and the roll, but then it bakes out in the final product, so you get kind of a crispier situation. Maple. I've never thought of that. I wonder, have you ever tried honey? Would it do the same thing?

Laura Klynstra:

I haven't tried it. I would expect it would. And it would just add a little bit of sweetness. The other thing is buttermilk. You can add a little buttermilk that I don't know if you've ever made pie dough, and then put it in your refrigerator and left it in there for two days and it started to turn kind of like a gray Color, Yes. When you add some acid from the buttermilk keeps it from doing that. I'm not sure. I can't.

I don't know what the science is behind that, but a little. A little. I think the vodka might, too. I'm not sure. I.

Stephanie Hansen:

That's a great.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

I know what you're talking about, and I'm trying to think if I've noticed it with or without vodka. And I can't say. Truthfully, I have, but, like, a lot of times for Christmas or Thanksgiving or any of the. The special holidays, you're making your crust in advance because you've got so much to do, so. So that's a really great tip. I love it.

Laura Klynstra:

Yep. Yep. And you can also freeze pie dough. So you can make. If you're having Thanksgiving and you're. You're. You can do it a week ahead, just wrap each one individually and then put it inside a freezer as a black bag and then throw it in the freezer. And that way you're just.

You've got something that's totally done, even a week in advance.

Stephanie Hansen:

One thing that I really liked about this book, too, was you took pie into not just sweet places, but also savory. So there's a lot of galette and, like, savory forward dishes, like a potato bacon, gruyere galette. You've got quiche. Do you eat a lot of savory pies? Because that's actually kind of one of my favorite ways to do it. This samosa pie looks amazing.

Laura Klynstra:

The samosa pie is so popular at my house. So popular. We love that one. So, yeah, we do eat that one quite a bit. The quiches, we do a lot. Some of the other ones, not as often, but, like, the. The asparagus one is kind of just more of something that I would bring to a party.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Spring or Easter.

Yeah. You know, like, that first time when you. Asparagus is one of the first things that comes out. And in this. In the spring. And so you're just, like, dying to get something fresh. We talked. before I started the podcast that. She's in Michigan, I'm in Minnesota. And literally, like, when you see anything green at the store. And we always jump the gun. Right. Because.

Get produce from the coast before we get our own, but there's nothing better than, like, your own homemade asparagus.

Laura Klynstra:

Yes. And the rhubarb is the other thing that comes up the soonest. And again, I love rhubarb. It's.

Stephanie Hansen:

So do I think that's My next book, actually.

Laura Klynstra:

The whole rhubarb book.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes, because I just. I'm obsessed with it, and I have, like, 60 recipes, so I'm like, you know, I'm. I'm about way there.

Laura Klynstra:

What kinds of recipes are they? Like cakes and.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Yes. Like bars and cakes and pies and custards, but also chutneys and pork dishes and breads, cookies.

Laura Klynstra:

That's a fabulous idea. I'm on board with that one.

Stephanie Hansen:

I think I might have to, like, submit that as my next proposal. We'll see. Another thing that happened this year about pies, I guess it was maybe last year, but it created quite a kerfuffle, and you address it in this book, is the loss of the chocolate wafer cookie. The company that makes the chocolate wafer cookie, I believe it was Nabisco, stopped making that chocolate wafer cookie. And it was the base for a lot of people's, like, mud pies or chocolate pie crust or the press in crusts or the cookie crusts. And people were really freaked out, and people were, you know, we need a recipe to make this cookie. So in here, you have your own chocolate cookie recipe.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah. Yep. It's got the black cocoa in it. Like, it's actually like an Oreo, but without the. And if you do end up using Oreos, do take out that middle part. I always scrape out the. If you don't, you're gonna end up with kind of like a too much butter and it's not gonna work. But, yeah, you can make your own so that you're not adding all these preservatives and yucky things into your pies, but sometimes people don't have time.

I mean, I totally understand that you can't always.

Stephanie Hansen:

And I guess maybe depending on your audience too, like, if you're making something for a kid's birthday party, maybe that will be fine. Not that we feed our kids less delicious things than we feed ourselves, but come on, we kind of do times. I do love to. There's a lot of detail in this book about garnishes and sauces. And the white chocolate cranberry tart is just a beautiful photograph, but it also has these sugared cranberries. Tell me about those. And. And obviously, putting them on a tart is delightful, but what else could we do with those? Because those were just gorgeous.

Laura Klynstra:

I've used them on cakes. And just even, like, even if you're doing a spread, like a holiday spread, they look beautiful in a little bowl. And that same method, the method to make Those is you create a simple syrup and then you dunk the cranberries in the simple syrup and then you let it dry and they become really sticky. And then you roll them in sugar so they look really beautiful. But you can do that same process with mint leaves, rose petals, rosemary. And it's just a beautiful garnish, especially in the winter, because it has that sparkle to it. It just makes it look more special than if you were just going to, you know, lay a sprig of rosemary next to something.

Stephanie Hansen:

When you started making pies, do you remember how old you were? And what is it about pies that captured your imagination?

Laura Klynstra:

Well, I really like the handmade nature of it. The fact that, I mean, before I made pies, I was a cookie baker. Cookies were my. Because that's the easiest thing when you're a little. When you're a kid. And I baked since I was basically able to. My mom was a wedding cake baker, so we had all the supplies and all.

Stephanie Hansen:

Wow.

Laura Klynstra:

All the inspiration was there, but I didn't start making. And my mom, she always, she loved pie too, but she always used the pie crust from the box, which I kind of hate, but same, same. She just didn't like rolling out dough. So she just, she just used the, the rolled. The rolled up version. But you can buy better versions than the red box. There are.

Stephanie Hansen:

Joe's is surprisingly good.

Laura Klynstra:

I think that, yeah, Whole Foods has one too. That's butter instead of like the other weird oils that are in the. The other one. But I think maybe all of my love of like rolling out cookies and then you kind of turn that into rolling out dough. I learned it was a learning curve. I don't think that we just all naturally can know how to make a pie crust and how to roll it out. And you have to practice a little bit. But the lovely part of, of a pie versus a cake or a cookie is that there's just more of your hands involved.

Laura Klynstra:

And because I make so many things electronically and digitally, because I'm a book cover designer. So to have to be able to make something physically with your hands is both relaxing and satisfying. And I think it makes like a more special finished product. It makes a great gift or something to share with people, to bring to the office or a party or a potluck, and it just feels like it. A pie has a slightly more personal touch to it than maybe a cookie does or a bar. Even though I love cooking bars, don't get me wrong.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes. Tell me about your other books.

Laura Klynstra:

So this is The Homemade Pie Cookbook is the first book I've written by myself. My book just before this one was called “Gather & Graze” and I wrote with my former colleague who is also an art director. She, she does the, she works at HarperCollins. Sure. Mumtaz Mustafa @spiceandsugartable and I have it right here. This is “Gather & Graze”

Stephanie Hansen:

That's beautiful.

Laura Klynstra:

So this is more of like a party table spread book. So Mumtaz is brilliant with savory food and I'm more, more of a baker. She's from Pakistan, so she's got this really broad sense of spice and she's just brilliant with the savory. So we split this book up by anything that was baked in the oven I've made and then pretty much anything that was cooked on stove she made. And it's divided by country. So it's a really fun international style party book.

Stephanie Hansen:

I love that. I'm glad you brought it to my attention. I'll for sure put that in the notes.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's quite fat. It's, it's a, it's, it's, there's over like 170 recipes in it. It's not a, not a lightweight book. And then the book before that I wrote with my mother. Oh, look at that cute “Christmas Baking”. And this one is it, it does well every, every holiday season. And it's kind of, it's been out for I think five years. And so it's kind of a perennial, hopefully at this point.

Laura Klynstra:

And it's just, you know, all my favorite. But Christmas baked goods. There's a, there's a breakfast chapter in there for Christmas morning.

Stephanie Hansen:

Holiday high points. What's next?

Laura Klynstra:

I got my way. And who knows if I will. I would like to do a fall baking book.

Stephanie Hansen:

What would that look like? I'm thinking apple. You have quite a, like pumpkin chapter in here.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah. Yep. They would have all of those, those, those cozy. It would just be all the cozy, cozy recipes. And I just love the styling of fall too. Fall is one of my favorite seasons. So. Yeah, that would be, that would be super fun.

Laura Klynstra:

But I also have another idea for, called like, I want to call it Paradise Baking or Baking paradise, which would be all tropical recipes.

Stephanie Hansen:

That's a great idea. And that's not something we've seen before.

Laura Klynstra:

I don't, I haven't seen it. No. I have a second home in Guatemala so I could do a lot of the photography there, which would be fun. Yeah. The first few recipes in the Homemade Pie Cookbook were Shot in Guatemala. The line Mango and the hummingbird pie. So I got all of those props while I was down there.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. In the. And beautiful colors. You also dedicate, like a whole spread to apples for pie. And we just talked about this on our TV show that I'm on. And Honeycrisp is obviously an apple I use a lot because it's Minnesota. Granny Smith is an apple that I think works really well for pies. Do you mix your types of apples? Apples when you're making apple pie?

Laura Klynstra:

Sometimes I do. The Pink lady is actually one of my favorite ones now that I've been, you know, baking so many apple pies. It's got, like, a tartness to it. But yeah, there you can mix them for sure. Just don't ever use them. Macintosh.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Or like the Red Delicious, which is now. Oh, yeah, that's the worst selling apple.

Laura Klynstra:

They aren't very delicious.

Stephanie Hansen:

They're not. And it's kind of funny that, like, that was like our lunchbox apple for basically our whole lives. Like, why did we have to eat such terrible apples? I'm so glad they've gotten better.

Laura Klynstra:

Yes. There's some. I mean, pretty much every variety is better.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes, Pretty much. When you make a galette or a tart, let's just say savory, do you adjust that dough at all or do you use your same basic pie dough?

Laura Klynstra:

I use the same. Well, the. The tart is a totally different dough, but the galette is the same pie dough as the regular pies.

Stephanie Hansen:

And just.

Laura Klynstra:

You could use them. Yeah, you could use the maple pie. You could make the maple crust for a galette as well. If you. If it's a sweet, I wouldn't put it on a savory.

Stephanie Hansen:

When would you ever make, like. I love the idea of slab pies because I think they're kind of cool looking, but they seem like they're just not great. Like, I don't know who's gonna get the middle piece. And then it's just always, like, so messy and kind of falls apart. I love the idea of like, everyone getting a little bit of crust on the edge and then having their perfect little triangle. Do you serve slab pies a lot? And am I missing the boat here?

Laura Klynstra:

Oh, not a lot, but I would bring them to more of like a potluck or something. The same thing that I would bring bars to. Although you. You really can't pick it up and eat it.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah.

Laura Klynstra:

Because it's going to be kind of a more gooey center than A. Than a. And then a bar. But it's just. It's. You get a little bit more. It's going to go farther than a. Than a pie.

Laura Klynstra:

So if you just want to bring one thing and it needs to cover more people, I would bring a slab pie for that. Like a. Like a potluck summer potluck.

Stephanie Hansen:

People always ask me what my favorite recipe is in my book, and I always have the dumbest answers. So if I ask you what's your favorite recipe in your book, do you, like, have a answer that you're set on?

Laura Klynstra:

Well, the lemon meringue tart on the COVID is one of my favorite recipes in the book, and I've never been a big lemon meringue pie person, and I don't know why. It's. This is a. Has a Swiss meringue, and it's a little bit different than the lemon meringue pies that, you know, we all grew up eating. And I also feel like lemon meringue pie has too much lemon to, like, the crust is too little to the lemon. Like, the ratio.

Stephanie Hansen:

The big, like, meringue.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah. Yeah. So this, I feel like, is the perfect ratio of meringue to lemon to crust. It's got a thick shortbread crust on it. So it's. It's actually kind of reminiscent of those lemon bars. And you're from the Midwest, so you probably had those lemon bars that everybody likes to crust. Yep.

Laura Klynstra:

It's. It's kind of like an elevated version of one of those lemon bars.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay. I'm going to have to try it, because I always make something with lemon for Easter. It's sort of just something I do for the big Easter brunch. So maybe I'll use this as my recipe this year.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

How long does it take you to work on a book?

Laura Klynstra:

Well, I mean, it's hard to give a full, like, because there's a lot of time thinking about it and planning. Like, my first step to doing a book is to. Is writing the table of contents.

Laura Klynstra:

Is that what you do, too?

Stephanie Hansen:

Yes.

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah, I do it.

Stephanie Hansen:

So spreadsheet of all the recipes I think I want, then I sort of, like, try to organize them in some way, and then I start, like, thinking about the narrative and where I'm going to.

Laura Klynstra:

Right.

Stephanie Hansen:

I'm going to start.

Laura Klynstra:

Right. And so there's, like, this long, like, thinking period that you're not. It's just. I don't know. So it's. It's hard to put a time on how long it takes, but Once the. Once everything is set and I've gotten a few shots done and a few recipes tested, I can. I can do a book in a year and a half or a year if I'm really focused on it.

Laura Klynstra:

But I'm also doing all the photography and the design. So it's. It's a pretty intense process.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Because I just submit my photographs and my word docs and, you know, the designer makes it look pretty, and, gosh, you have to do the whole thing. That is harder.

Laura Klynstra:

And I don't have to, but, you know, you've done this much, and I am a designer. It's kind of hard to hand the design off somebody else when you're. That's like what I do. So.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, of course, when you think about other books that. Cookbooks that you love, whether from a design feature or from just like that, you go back to them and use them a lot. Give me, like, a couple of your favorites.

Laura Klynstra:

The Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. I don't know if you have that. It's got an orange spine. It's kind of like a go to, like, oh, I want to make banana bread. It's just so reliable. So that one is always in my kitchen. I also really like the Bake From Scratch series. Have you seen those? Big.

Laura Klynstra:

They're really huge. I think they're. They're not written all by the same person. I think there's an editor that collects recipes. It's based on the magazine, I believe. But the thing I love about those is there's so many recipes in those books. They're just loaded with recipes, and then you can just kind of page through and get all kinds of inspiration and ideas. So I love those.

Laura Klynstra:

I'm a big fan of Erin Jean McDowell, who is also a pie person. I like watching her on, like, her videos and stuff.

Stephanie Hansen:

Do you watch a lot of people, like, on YouTube?

Laura Klynstra:

Not a lot, no. I mean, mostly on Instagram. I'm. I'm watching, you know, the quicker reels that come through. And, yeah, one of the. One of the things that made me so inspired to want to do the fall thing is, is when you. When the fall baking stuff starts coming out on Instagram and all these beautiful baked goods and this. This wonderful mood of cozy comes through, it's like, people are.

Laura Klynstra:

Creators are just amazing at how they. They put this mood out there, and I just. I love it.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, it's pretty. Pretty delightful. I was just gonna think of another question I had for you, but it totally just fell out of my brain right As I thought about it, do you, have you ever had the chance to meet like any other bakers in any of your cookbook travels?

Laura Klynstra:

Specifically bakers. It seems like most of the books I've worked on have been more chef related. Like cooks like Melissa Clark. I worked on some of her cookbooks. I did the photography for Bri McCoy. She. I don't know if you've seen her book. It's called the Cook's Book.

Laura Klynstra:

Yep, I did her photography for that book, so I've that kind of stuff, but I haven't done any specifically for bakers.

Stephanie Hansen:

So if in your, in your work life, do you like, like when someone gives you a recipe and you're like the person that photographs it and does the final like, is that an appealing piece of work for you?

Laura Klynstra:

Oh yeah. I love to do that too. Yeah. Yeah. Actually got a couple of them in the works right now that are coming down the pipeline.

Stephanie Hansen:

There's a lot of creators that do that and I didn't realize that, but that they, they maybe have a favorite recipe or they have recipes but they don't have the time or they don't want to be the one who puts it together for the book. So they hire all that out. Do you get any jobs like that that are one offs or do you mostly just do like a whole project?

Laura Klynstra:

Mostly a whole project.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. It's, it's interesting. There's a lot of people out there that will cook your stuff if you find the right person. And I didn't realize that that was such a robust business, but apparently it is. Do you keep like a food blog yourself or is it mostly just the book?

Laura Klynstra:

Mostly I'm mostly in the book. But we have, I have. My friend who wrote Gathering Grace with me have a. We. We have an Instagram that's called Spice and Sugar. Oh, she's the spice and sugar table. Because spicy sugar was taken and she's the spice and I'm the sugar. Of course that's sweet.

Stephanie Hansen:

And you guys share it. So you just post when you're inspired?

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah, yeah. And we don't. We, we haven't posted.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Sometimes like what sounds good and feels good just falls away, right? It's no reason or rhyme. Just all of a sudden you're like not as interested in that anymore.

Laura Klynstra:

Well, I think we're, and we're so, both of us are so focused in the book world and our career. Careers are very busy. So it's like I feel, I feel like to really maintain one of those robust social media sites you have to be pretty much focused on it.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah. Some people post, like, on Facebook, like, 12 times a day. I don't know. They manage it all. But do you watch any baking shows? Like, are you a great British Bake off aficionado or.

Laura Klynstra:

I don't. I watch almost no tv.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay, So I love that. And you have chickens too, right?

Laura Klynstra:

And I have chickens and duck.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay. And do you eat the duck eggs and the chicken eggs?

Laura Klynstra:

Obviously, yeah. Usually the duck eggs I use in baking. I don't. You know, it has a slightly different flavor, and if you're not used to it, it's kind of like. It feels a little weird. But they're. They're actually have a higher fat content in a duck egg, and they're really great for baking, especially for cakes and.

Stephanie Hansen:

Oh, I love that. I don't think I ever thought about duck eggs in context of baking. That's so neat.

Laura Klynstra:

They're a little larger, so you might. Sometimes you have to be a little, like, careful because.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah.

Laura Klynstra:

You know, they might end up being too much egg in here, depending on how many eggs are in the. Like, if there's four eggs, you would probably only put three.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, you can kind of see it, too, when you have the egg, like, the size. All right. The book is the Homemade pie Cookbook. It's 100 pie, tart, and galette recipes for every season. Like I said, it's beautiful. But even if you're, like, not thinking you're a pie person, I really think people would like this book because there's ice cream pies, there is icebox pies. Again, there's a lot of savory. There's tarts, there's little.

Stephanie Hansen:

There's some cookies in here, some sauces. There's just a lot of different things. When I started to go through the book, I was pleasantly surprised that there's a lot to offer here. There's whoopie pies. Your whoopie pie recipe looked great. Yeah. Everybody loves a good whoopee pie, don't they?

Laura Klynstra:

Yeah. I thought I might be stretching it a little bit with that one, but I'm like, it's called pie, so it's a pie.

Stephanie Hansen:

That's right. It's Laura Kleinstra, The Homemade Pie Cookbook. Thanks for being with me today, Laura.

Laura Klynstra:

Thank you so much for having me.

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, for sure. And when you get your. When you get your next book ready, give me a call anytime. I love talking to you.

Laura Klynstra:

Okay, great.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay. All right. Bye. Bye.

Laura Klynstra:

Bye.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to "Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish." In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Emily Maxson—two time cookbook author, chef, and the creative mind behind @EmilysFreshKitchen. Emily shares her personal health journey, navigating Crohn’s disease through diet and lifestyle changes, and how that experience fueled her passion for approachable, healthy, and delicious recipes for everyone. Her New Book, “Real Food Every Day” (ships October 21) is a follow up to “Emilys Fresh Kitchen.”

With real talk about creating cookbooks, food photography, adapting to dietary needs, and the ups and downs of life as a food creator, this episode is for home cooks, entertainers, and anyone curious about the connections between food, health, and community.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Emily mentioned two influential books in the Podcast from her food journey:

"Breaking the Vicious Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall

"Against All Grain" by Danielle Walker

Emily shared her recipe for Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup from the “Real Food Every Day” cookbook that is available now for pre-order.

Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup

Gluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)

PREP 10 minutes COOK 60 minutes TOTAL 70 minutes SERVES 6

Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup is one of my favorite soups to make in the winter. It warms you up and is very satisfying. The recipe calls for simple ingredients that produce layers of flavor. The Miso butter adds another depth of flavor and is worth the extra step, but the soup is still delicious without it.

To adapt for dairy-free and vegan, use miso butter made with vegan butter.

INGREDIENTS:

* 2 pounds carrots

* 4 Tablespoons olive oil, divided

* 2 cups diced yellow onion

* 2 Tablespoons minced garlic

* 2 Tablespoons grated ginger

* 2 teaspoons sea salt

* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

* 7-8 cups vegetable broth

* 2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice

* 2 Tablespoons Miso Butter

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Scrub the carrots and cut them into large chunks, removing the tops.

3. Place the carrots on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

4. Coat the carrot pieces in 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.

5. Roast the carrots for 45-60 minutes or until tender.

6. Meanwhile, heat 3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.

7. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent, about 10 minutes.

8. Add the garlic, ginger, salt and cayenne pepper and sauté for an additional 3 minutes.

9. Add the roasted carrots and 7 cups of broth.

10. Cook for an additional 2 minutes.

11. Remove from heat and ladle into a blender.

12. Blend the soup until smooth.

13. Wipe out the pot and pour in the blended soup.

14. Return the soup to the stove over medium heat, adding additional stock to achieve desired consistency.

15. Whisk in the lime juice and miso butter.

16. Adjust seasoning if needed and serve.

17. Top with additional miso butter if desired.

Miso Butter

Gluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)

PREP 5 minutes COOK 0 minutes TOTAL 5 minutes MAKES about 1/2 cup

Miso Butter is made with only two ingredients:butter and miso paste. This compound butter is so versatile. You can add it to fish, chicken, steak, vegetables and potatoes. I add it to my roasted carrot soup on page_ and it adds another depth of flavor. Miso Butter is one of my favorite condiments to keep on hand.

To adapt for dairy-free or vegan, use vegan butter.

INGREDIENTS:

* 8 Tablespoons butter, softened

* 3 Tablespoons white miso paste

Instructions:

Place the softened butter and miso paste in a small bowl.

Using a hand blender or fork, cream the butter and miso paste together until smooth.

Store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

Transcript Episode Follows:

Stephanie [00:00:00]:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. And today I'm talking with another Minnesota favorite, Emily Maxson. She is the author of Emily's Fresh Kitchen. And you have a second book coming out that is Emily's real food every day, similar to Emily's Fresh Kitchen, but more goodness, more healthy for you recipes. Emily Maxson, welcome to the show.

Emily Maxson [00:00:31]:

Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me.

Stephanie [00:00:34]:

So when we first started talking, you had your first book, and you and I were on a similar publishing schedule. And that book, your book did super well, I think, of self published cookbooks because you worked with publisher, my friend Chris Olsen. I think that you sold, like, way more than a lot of cookbook authors do.

Emily Maxson [00:00:57]:

I did sell quite a few, and I'm very grateful for that. I had built a pretty good online community, and I think a lot of people resonated with my health story of healing through diet from Crohn's. So I think that helped with sales.

Stephanie [00:01:13]:

I think too, the thing about your book that I loved so much was you get a lot of diet books or health books that come across the way in the business that I'm in. But yours felt very much like a real cookbook, like real food, real approachable, a way that you could heal your gut and the way that you could eat healthier, but also with, like, regular foods, not with, like weird supplements. And also the recipes were just delicious. Like you could feed them to your whole family, not just be making separate things for yourself. Does that make sense?

Emily Maxson [00:01:53]:

Yeah. Well, yes. Thank you. That is a huge compliment because that is my goal with both books. Just to make healthier food that's very approachable, very easy, and just to taste good and that you don't know you're eating something that is gluten free or dairy free, and it tastes the same as a traditional version of that recipe.

Stephanie [00:02:13]:

So can you talk a little bit about your health, about your health journey, how book one started, and then obviously you had more to say with book two.

Emily Maxson [00:02:23]:

Yeah. So my health journey, I was in my late 20s and I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease through severe abdominal pain. Had thought they thought I had appendicitis. Was rushed into the hospital for surgery. They found out I had diseased intestines and removed part of my small and large intestine. Diagnosed with Crohn's disease. So I spent about 10 years in and out of the hospital on lots of different medications. And then I approached it differently through diet and lifestyle changes.

Emily Maxson [00:02:57]:

And learned about a diet called the specific carbohydrate diet. And that is a diet where you eliminate you, you eliminate disaccharides and polysaccharides. It gets to the chemical structure of food. So basically you can only have monosaccharid because they're the easiest to absorb in your intestines. So meat, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit. No starches, no grains, no lactose. The only sugar I could have was honey or fruit. So I followed that.

Emily Maxson [00:03:32]:

The theory is if you follow that for one to two years, you can reset your gut. And that's what I did. And fortunately for me, I was able to totally reset it after 18 months of following really strict program. And then now I can eat things that weren't allowed then. Like I can go out and have pizza. And it's not, it doesn't upset me and, but I mostly try to cook the similarly to the way I was on that diet at home so that I can enjoy things in restaurants and have treats and things like that.

Stephanie [00:04:07]:

And so that someone could use your book to follow to try and heal their own guts, as it were.

Emily Maxson [00:04:13]:

Absolutely. I have a lot of recipes that follow that diet and they're all labeled if it's specific carbohydrate, if it's vegan, if it's grain free or paleo. And I also recommend the book if somebody wants to try to do that. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet by Elaine Gottschel. That is the book that got me started and she outlines everything.

Stephanie [00:04:36]:

Okay, I'll make sure to include that link in the show notes. One other way I think that your book has been helpful for me is when I'm entertaining and I have someone that's coming with a certain dietary restriction. It just, I don't know when more dietary restrictions became on my radar or in the zeitgeist. But you know, I've been entertaining a long time and now it's customary to ask people like do you have any dietary restrictions? And when you ask, people always do. And if I'm stumped or I don't know, like, oh, what can I do here? Like one time I had a cocktail party that I was having and we had a gluten free, a dairy free, a vegan, someone that was allergic to nuts. Like it was really a long exhausted list where I was like, oh my gosh, what's left to cook?

Emily Maxson [00:05:32]:

Yes, I can relate to that. It is it all. It seems like in every family or every friend group there's one or two people with dietary restrictions. And I don't know if it's just that we know more today or our food has changed or what. What it is, but that's definitely very common. So it is helpful to have something at your fingertips to look through and find something that would hopefully fit all those.

Stephanie [00:05:59]:

I think it's a combination almost of both. Like, we do know more about our food, and that's great. But also, you know, since the 70s, they've been putting a lot more processed food chemicals into our food. There's no, you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, I don't think, to like, correlate the rise of obesity and the rise of the packaged food industry and what people have been putting in our foods. And now you can see with Ozempic, you know, that 7 to 10% of the population are on GLP1 medications. And we're seeing that the packaged food industry is having to change again. And. And obviously recessionary thoughts, tariff pricing.

Stephanie [00:06:42]:

We're seeing product sizes shrink, too. It's interesting that I'm just. I've. I do a lot of work and hear a lot about restaurant culture because of the radio show that I do. And there's now like a whole subset of restaurants that are making like, mini versions of things so that people that are on medications and not eating as much can still enjoy coming to their restaurant and have something for them. It's so crazy how food becomes so fashionable and trendy.

Emily Maxson [00:07:11]:

I know that. I agree with you and I agree with the processed food and that impacting our health. And that's part of my second book, Real Food Every Day, where I talk about the difference between processed and unprocessed food. And, you know, it's great the. The things that we can do today, the. But we also are hurting a lot of our food, stripping it of nutrients and adding chemicals that are causing damage to our health, our microbiome and things.

Stephanie [00:07:43]:

I think too, one thing about your book that I really enjoyed and I'm a huge fan. Can you tell it also isn't hard, like, if you're not. I think sometimes if you're not a cook or you don't cook a lot, you feel like certain books are intimidating. Your book is very approachable, and that is something that was important to me with mine. Like, I'm not a fussy cook. I'm not a fancy cook. Your book feels really like I can make all the recipes in it. And it's not like weekend project cooking, which has its place you know, sometimes it's fun to do a recipe that takes two or three days and you're gonna have a special event, but for the most part when you're eating, you just like want something.

Stephanie [00:08:25]:

And the reason I think that people eat poorly is a lot of times due to convenience and just speed of our lives.

Emily Maxson [00:08:32]:

I agree. And that's why the majority of the recipes are very simple. Simple ingredients, easy to prepare. I joke that because I did go to culinary school, I am a chef, but I say I'm a chef turned home cook. I keep it nice and simple, focus on whole foods, real ingredients, and doesn't have to be complicated to make good.

Stephanie [00:08:54]:

Your food in the book is so beautiful. And you have a really close relationship with the person who photographs your books. And I'm assuming she's doing a lot of your edit, editing, video work too. Do you want to talk about Baylin a little bit?

Emily Maxson [00:09:08]:

Yes. Balin Fleming B Photography. She is phenomenal. I've worked with her for seven plus years now. She's just one of the most talented creatives I know. She takes all the beautiful photographs in both of the books. And when we've worked together, we have so much fun. She's great to collaborate with.

Emily Maxson [00:09:32]:

She has lots of great ideas and how to style the food. She always loves to hear the story behind the food and that just helps set the stage. Stage. We. I'm very grateful. It's been such a blessing in my life to have that relationship with her because as you know, Stephanie, writing your books, when you write a book, it's a very, it's a very lonely solo mission, other than maybe your husband's, your taste tester or your kids, but otherwise, you know, you're not working with a lot of other people on it. So to have a photographer who I have a close relationship with, who's really talented is great because I can bounce my ideas off of her and it doesn't feel so like such an isolating project.

Stephanie [00:10:14]:

You. I think that's a really good point. And I think that a lot of my extroverted activities, like I always look super busy and I always look like I'm doing a million things. And of course I am, but so is everybody else. Right? The, the actual process of making food and creating recipes and writing a substack and posting beautiful pictures, like, it's all very solitary and it is kind of lonely. And when you kind of do the entertaining piece, it feels like, oh, it's so nice to share that because a lot of times you're Just running from house to house trying to give them food to get it out of your kitchen.

Emily Maxson [00:10:55]:

Yes, yes, definitely. I agree.

Stephanie [00:10:58]:

When you think about this career, because it's a later in life career for you. Later in life career for me. Are you glad you landed on it? Has it been joyful?

Emily Maxson [00:11:09]:

Yes, definitely, it has been joyful. I, yes, I have really enjoyed it. There have been hard times, writer's block, lack of creativity, but it always comes again and I'm really enjoying it. It's so fun to have this new thing later in life because I think when you're younger, you think, these are the years I've got to get it all in and think of, you know, for me, I'm 55. That's old. Well, you know, it isn't. I don't feel old. And there's still so much more to do.

Stephanie [00:11:41]:

Yeah. What has been the thing you hate the most about this journey?

Emily Maxson [00:11:46]:

Oh, that's a great question. I think sometimes I have a hard time with the writing of the non recipe content or like, how to put. Put my thoughts into words. I have this information that I really want to share with and it's finding the right words to say it.

Stephanie [00:12:08]:

And it is like, if you think about a cookbook, the way that I think the best cookbooks work is there's a narrative, there's a through line. So if your through line is this health journey and starts with health, then, you know, how do you make that not boring? How do you turn that into a story? How do you make that feel personal to you but yet relatable to someone else? And then like, sometimes, let's just be honest, I'm staring at a recipe, I've made the recipe, I like the recipe, I like the pictures. It's all coming together. And then I have to write like a head note. Like, how many times can you say, you know, grandma's sugar cookies are the best sugar cookies in the world, made with real butter. And like, I just don't even have the words to get you excited about this thing. And then you have to still come up with it and then a story to go with it. And it can be just challenging to find the words.

Emily Maxson [00:13:04]:

I, I agree. That is my biggest struggle too. And like, how many times can I say simple to make, so delicious family and yeah, how, how can you reword that and how can you. Yeah, I know, I agree. I struggle with that as well.

Stephanie [00:13:23]:

When you think about the actual making of the recipes, like, how many times do you test each one and is it always the Same because for me it's not. Sometimes I'll make something once and be like, this is great, I love it. I know it's going to work. I make something like it all the time. Let's just be done.

Emily Maxson [00:13:41]:

Yeah, I have a handful of those. But then I get concerned like, oh no, this is, this is how I do it. I want to make sure that I've got it written out clearly for somebody else to do it because I'll have, I've had in the past, people say, when I'll make something, just somebody be over, well, tell me what you did with that and I'll send them the recipe. They'll be like, it didn't turn out like yours. So I want to make sure. So I would say I on average make a recipe three or four times. And it depends. There are a handful where I just do one like, oh my gosh, this is, this is spot on.

Emily Maxson [00:14:20]:

And it's simple enough. That you know, But a lot of them are things I make regularly at home anyway. So I am just cooking. Well just for my husband now or when my kids are home.

Stephanie [00:14:32]:

Right. When you, when you go back, like, have you had any recipes where there's been an error or like the way you wrote it isn't the way that someone else experience it and it's in the book and you're stuck and you're like, oh, oh, shoot.

Emily Maxson [00:14:48]:

I, I taught a cooking class at the Fox and Pantry, a holiday cooking class. And it was one of my newer recipes. And I did these molasses grain free molasses cookies for dessert. And I had baked them ahead of time to serve as dessert. I was demonstrating other recipes and then I gave the, the, the people in the class the recipes and I had a woman email me and say, I made your molasses cookies. And they didn't turn out at all like that. And I just panicked. And so I went to make them again.

Emily Maxson [00:15:17]:

I said, let me get into it, I will get back to you. And I made them. And I think I, I forget what it was off the top of my head, but I had one of the measurements incorrect. Like a third of a cup instead of two thirds or a quarter instead of three quarters. And so I was able to correct it and email her back like, so sorry, this is what the mistake was. I haven't found one in my book yet. There's always mistakes, but that was good. I'm glad that I got that corrected because that is in my new book.

Emily Maxson [00:15:47]:

So I'm glad that she tested it out.

Stephanie [00:15:50]:

It's funny, too, because I just cooked something from my first book that's now, I guess, three years old. And I'm at my cabin, and I had a bunch of tomatoes, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna make the tomato pie here. And I have a really bad oven at the cabin. It's a new stove, but it's just. It's beyond terrible. So I'm, like, looking at the instructions, and it says to cook it for 30 minutes. I ended up cooking something for 50 minutes. And I don't know, like, I think it's my terrible oven that's 75 degrees off.

Stephanie [00:16:22]:

But I was just like, oh, gosh, you know, I hope it isn't the recipe itself, because when I've made it at home, like, it worked fine. But also, like, that's weird, too, when you're calibrating different ovens or you're cooking different places or in stoves you're not familiar with, it's just like. That's why when you see, like, 20 to 25 minutes on a baking time, it used to bug me, but now I'm like, oh, I get why there's that range.

Emily Maxson [00:16:47]:

Yeah. I mean, it's bound to happen. You test the recipe multiple times. You have a. You have a copy editor. You proofread it multiple, multiple times. There's always. I've heard this from writers.

Emily Maxson [00:16:58]:

There's always going to be an error.

Stephanie [00:17:00]:

And there's like, my husband's a fiction writer, so there's always pages that there's a spelling error or a pronoun that's used incorrectly. So I guess that's just part of the. Part of the journey. So you have the cookbooks, have you, like, let's talk about the whole creator, Emily Maxson. Like, are you doing, like, substacks? Are you doing cooking clubs? Are you really leaning into all these other ways of monetizing your brand now that you are on your second book?

Emily Maxson [00:17:31]:

Current? I mean, I am not. I have my website and I post recipes there and tips and things there and social media, but I have not tapped into the substack or other things yet to generate revenue. I also help with our. We have a fireplace manufacturing company, and I do some work with my husband there, so I haven't had put as much time into that. But I. There are. There are products I'd like to recreate and do more with it, but I'm not yet. I have a few ideas, but.

Stephanie [00:18:09]:

Yeah, because I imagine with this health angle, like, there's ways to really get more into that and to help people on that journey, do nutritional or health coaching or, you know, meal plans if you're on specific type of restrictions or. I would imagine that there's a lot of gold to mine there, should you decide to. But do you feel pressured by that? Like, because, I mean, for a lot of us, this starts as a side hustle, and then it, like, becomes your thing. And, you know, groceries are expensive. It's not producing a lot of revenue. Usually people make money from books, but it's usually the second, third, and fourth books, not the first.

Emily Maxson [00:18:53]:

Fingers crossed on the second.

Stephanie [00:18:56]:

Yes.

Emily Maxson [00:18:56]:

But I know there is a little pressure because, honestly, I love creating recipes. I mean, I like that part of it, and I think the meal planning with dietary restrictions would be a good avenue for me. But, yeah, there is a little pressure for that. And with the other things going on in my life, sometimes I think, I don't know if I can do it, but if. Hopefully there'll be a window that will open up.

Stephanie [00:19:23]:

Are you a. Like, type A, where you're only going to do it if you can do it to the maximum degree of wanting to do it, or are you, like, more like me, where you'll do everything and it all might be just a little sloppy, but you'll just put as much work out there as you can.

Emily Maxson [00:19:40]:

I would say more type A. Yeah.

Stephanie [00:19:42]:

I. I wish I was more like that because I think I would be more refined in all the offerings that I have. But I get so excited about so many different things. I'm just like, oh, yeah, let's do this. Oh, yeah, let's do that.

Emily Maxson [00:19:55]:

But I love that about you. I love your approach. I love seeing you everywhere and all the things that you do and you're so casual about it, and just you. You produce good products, and people are like, yeah, I can do that. I think that's awesome, the way you approach it.

Stephanie [00:20:10]:

Thanks. Because I would say casual is how I showed up for the podcast today, because I'm at my cabin. I don't. My husband basically lives up here in the summertime, and I'm doing reverse commuting because of filming of the show. And I literally have, like, there's one day off a week that I have, and it's Sundays. And so, like, when I'm up here, like, okay, I have to do this podcast. I used to do audio only, and then everybody wanted video, so I'm like, okay, fine, I'm gonna video it, but I'm gonna have dirty hair, and I'm not Gonna put lipstick stick on. And it kind of just is what it is because I also want to live the quality of life that I want to live.

Stephanie [00:20:49]:

That feels good to me, and it's honest and it's authentic to a fault, probably because, you know, sometimes the dog will bark in the background, even when we're doing the TV show. Like, I don't know, and never say never. But that TV show that we do came sort of by accident, and it happens in my kitchen. It's my real life. My dog barks. My husband runs to the bathroom in the background. I don't know if I know how to do things any other way. I'm just not that good at being that polished, I guess.

Emily Maxson [00:21:24]:

I think people love real life. That's why, I mean, keeping it real. It's very approachable, and that's why reality TV is so popular. People want to see. Yeah. How people are really living and how people are doing and hear the dog bark in the background, because that's what's happening in their homes.

Stephanie [00:21:42]:

We can be real. The real cookbook writers of the Twin Cities. Wouldn't that be funny?

Emily Maxson [00:21:47]:

Yes. I love it.

Stephanie [00:21:48]:

Okay. Another weird thing that I discovered, and I'm curious if this for you. Like, I cook a lot. I just. I do. I cook a lot. I cook a lot for my family. I'm cooking for the shows.

Stephanie [00:21:59]:

I'm cooking for tv. I'm doing all this cooking, but I really have anxiety about cooking in front of people. And you would think that, like, TV would be people, but it's not. It's two camera people who are my friends now, and there's no anxiety about cooking in front of them. But, like, when I'm going, like, people want me to do cooking classes, and they want me to do all this cooking in front of them, and I'm realizing it really causes me a lot of stress, and I don't love it, and it doesn't give me joy. I have so much anxiety. I wake up in the middle of the night before the class, wondering. I don't.

Stephanie [00:22:36]:

I'm not a professionally trained cook. I'm not a chef. I didn't go to cooking school. So I feel like people are going to be looking to me for answers to things that I have no business giving. I have so much impostor syndrome around the actual cooking, and yet I have this whole life that's building up around this being a cook. Do you have any of that?

Emily Maxson [00:22:58]:

Definitely. I have the same thing. I don't. I get nervous. I get anxious about Cooking in front of people. Even when I'm on TV shows where it is just a couple cameras, I still am. I still get nervous, and I think it is that pressure. You want to give people the right information.

Emily Maxson [00:23:16]:

And I did go to culinary school. It was a long, long time ago, and I still have imposter syndrome. Like, what do I know? Yeah, but. But this is how I do it. And you share it with people and. But I do. I get that as well.

Stephanie [00:23:30]:

Yeah. And then people will be like, well, I know I have terrible knife skills. Do you have good knife skills?

Emily Maxson [00:23:35]:

I don't think so. I mean, I know what to do. I mean, sometimes I look at the pictures of my chopped up cilantro, and I'm like, ooh, a chef would look at that and say, that's not so good.

Stephanie [00:23:45]:

Yeah. And, like, you know when you're making, like, a mirepoix, and it's all like, my carrots are 16 different sizes instead of just, like, unifor and batons. Right. So I took. I actually took a class, and I did learn a lot, but I'm finding now that I'm not good at staying with it or practicing it because it requires, like, practice. Right. And if you were in a classroom setting or being judged on it, you would keep going. And now I'm just like, oh, I know I'm supposed to hold my hand this way, but I really got to get these carrots chopped.

Emily Maxson [00:24:17]:

Exactly. Yeah.

Stephanie [00:24:19]:

So it's kind of funny. Are there people that inspire you that are in the cookbook or the cooking space?

Emily Maxson [00:24:27]:

Oh, that's a great question. I mean, there's a lot of great cookbook authors out there.

Stephanie [00:24:33]:

You.

Emily Maxson [00:24:33]:

You're an excellent author. I love your book. I ordered your second one. I'm excited to get that. I mean, I remember early on, early in my culinary career, I just had so much respect for Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, because he was just so different than everybody else. And I still have a lot of respect for him. And he's put out a ton of.

Stephanie [00:25:03]:

And he's changing too, which I also love. Like, you know, he went from. He's just. He's evolved, I think, as a chef, and he's really gotten more to the space where I think he's feeling the most comfortable in his skin, too, in his own kitchen, cooking for his own family. He's a very rustic cook, actually, versus, like, when you see him doing more of the chefy things that he started with. I just. I really like him too, and I like how much he simplifies. Things.

Emily Maxson [00:25:33]:

Yeah, he's insanely talented, but he brings it down to our level and I appreciate that. It's, it's. He. He's very approachable and just real. So, yeah, I really like him a lot. He's good. And Danielle Walker, who wrote Against All Grain, she has, I don't know, maybe five books out now. She was.

Emily Maxson [00:25:54]:

Her first book, I remember getting that. And I had done the specific carbohydrate diet and was writing my own recipes and doing some blogging, and that was the first book that I was like, you know what? I could do this. And so I think she's been inspiring to me because a similar health journey and did it. And I was the one person who I was like, okay, I think I can do this.

Stephanie [00:26:16]:

So you know what would be cool? Not that you need more ideas, but I'm going to give you one because that's how I think it would. Like there. There's a woman, her name's Carolyn Chambers, and she's a cookbook writer and she's a family cook. We'll say, like, lots of variety. And the thing that she does that really resonates with people is she has all the substitutions in a recipe. So, like, she'll make a rice salad, but she'll give you all the different grains you could substitute for the rice. And if you can't have rice vinegar, there's the five other vinegars you could use. One thing that would be cool, that I would love to see is if you, like, took a recipe that you liked and you made it so that it could be healthier or in a way that more people could enjoy it.

Stephanie [00:27:00]:

So, like, my recipe book, for instance, is not at all diet, not at all. It's. It's whole, it's regular ingredients, it's not weird stuff. But, like, I think that could be a real interesting thing to follow for you.

Emily Maxson [00:27:16]:

I have done that with some recipes. Like in my Real food, every day, I have my strawberry shortcake recipe, which is grain free, which I loved growing up. My mom would make the Bisquick. Yes, Strawberry shortcakes, and I loved. It was the perfect balance of sweet and savory. It's a little salty. And so I wanted to re. I mean, that was a recipe I did multiple times to try to recreate that, so things like that.

Emily Maxson [00:27:41]:

But I love your idea. I could just cook through a book and try to do a version that would fit the different dietary guidelines.

Stephanie [00:27:49]:

Yeah. Or even just picking different recipes from different books and like filming that, like here's because when you have a cookbook that you like or when you're looking for inspiration, you probably pull out this recipe and you look at it and you think, oh, I have these six things. I don't have these three. You know, and especially I think about this because I'm at the cabin a lot, and I. It's 20 minutes to get to a store and a boat ride and a car ride, and it's complicated. So I will want to make something, but I'll have to really improvise a lot of times on the exact ingredients and figure out how I'm going to get it all to go. So I think that could be really interesting and also educational for people that are on a dietary journey, that maybe it's new for them and they do know some cooking, but they haven't cooked in the way that is maybe more helpful for them. Yeah, this is a weird thought, too, but I've been spending a lot of time at the cabin, and there's all these people that come and go and they bring all their groceries and then they leave.

Stephanie [00:28:49]:

And I keep looking at this refrigerator full of food, and I, I, I feel like, oh, I'm gonna have to make dinner here now for the rest of us that are left, but there's not, like, food you can eat. Like, it's so much like processed food and cheese spreads and salsas and condiments and breads that, like, there's just so much food that I actually wouldn't probably eat. And it's fascinating to me how people grocery shop.

Emily Maxson [00:29:19]:

Yeah. And I suppose too, if they're coming to your cabin as a guest, they're on vacation, so they're eating maybe more treats or processed foods that they eat on a regular basis. So it's their snacks and things like that.

Stephanie [00:29:34]:

Yes, that's like, what I'm left with. And I'm like, oh, okay, now I have to make a meal. It's a Sunday night. Which is why we make a lot of pizza, because we're using up all those dribs and drabs. And I hate to waste things. So, like, sometimes I have this horrible salsa that tastes like just a sugary mess. I'm like, what am I going to do with this? And I've got tons of vegetables in the garden. I was like, well, I could probably use a cup of it to make a soup.

Stephanie [00:29:59]:

And if I fortified it enough with vegetables and broth and it wouldn't be so terrible to have this sort of super sweet base. But yeah, that's my life.

Emily Maxson [00:30:16]:

I like your soup idea. That's a great way to use up the salsa.

Stephanie [00:30:20]:

All right, so where can people follow you? And how can they get the book?

Emily Maxson [00:30:24]:

Okay, my website, emily'sfreshkitchen.com the book is on Amazon. It will be in local stores. Five Swans, Gray and Excelsior. The Fox and Pantry, Golden Fig. Yes. So I love it.

Stephanie [00:30:42]:

Well, thanks for spending time with me. Emily and I will see you around. And maybe we'll do a taste bud episode together. You never know.

Emily Maxson [00:30:49]:

I'd love it. Thank you. Always good to see you.

Stephanie [00:30:51]:

Yeah, same. We'll talk soon. Thanks.

Emily Maxson [00:30:54]:

Bye. Bye.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

If you enjoy this podcast and look forward to it in your inbox, consider supporting it by becoming a paid yearly subscriber for $60 or you can buy me a cup of coffee for $8

Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish." Today, I interview acclaimed food writer, wild foods expert, and self-described hunter-gatherer Hank Shaw. Hank is the author of the brand new cookbook, "Borderlands: Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific," an exploration of the flavors, cultures, and stories that define the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. He also has a Substack that’s wonderful, called Hank Shaw “To The Bone” and a website full of recipes.

In this episode, Hank and I dive into everything from his early days as a restaurant cook and investigative journalist to his passion for foraging, preserving, and hunting wild foods. Hank discusses the vibrant mix of culinary traditions that thrive along the border, debunks myths about iconic ingredients (like acorns!), and shares the fascinating histories behind beloved dishes such as chimichangas and parisa.

They also touch on practical advice—like the art of drying herbs, the joys and challenges of single-person food preservation, and the ins and outs of self-publishing cookbooks at a high level.

Get ready for an episode filled with storytelling, culinary wisdom, and inspiration for your next adventure in the kitchen or the great outdoors. Whether you're a curious home cook, an aspiring cookbook author, or simply a lover of good food, there’s something here for everyone. Let’s get started!

Original Episode Transcript Follows:

Stephanie:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast, where we talk to fun people in the food space and sometimes they have cookbooks. And today's author is an author. He's an author of great magnitude, Hank Shaw. His new book is Borderlands Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. And Hank, you are such a prolific, beautiful writer. This book, I feel like, is just so you. Do you love it?

Hank Shaw:

It's been a long journey to make this book, and I'm pretty proud of it. And it's. It's been probably the biggest project of my adult life in terms of time, commitment, travel, really unlocking understanding of things that I thought I knew but didn't necessarily know until I got there. And it's just been this. This crazy, fantastic journey and a journey that you can eat.

Stephanie:

Can you talk a little bit about your history? Like, I think many people know you as the hunter, forager, gatherer, type, and Borderlands obviously has a lot of those elements to it. But can you just walk readers that are listeners that might be new to your journey kind of through how you got here?

Hank Shaw:

Sure. Many, many years ago, when I was still fairly young, I was a restaurant cook. So I worked first as a dishwasher and then as a line cook and then as a sous chef in a series of restaurants, mostly in Madison, Wisconsin. And I left that job to be a newspaper reporter. And I ended up being a newspaper reporter for 18 years. And I cooked all throughout that and traveled and learned more about food and did fishing and hunting and foraging and such. And then I left the News Business in 2010 to do my website, which is hunter, angler, gardener, cook. And I've been doing that full time since 2010.

So, yeah, my entire kind of current incarnation is wild foods. But Borderlands is kind of an outgrowth of that for two reasons. The first is I've been basically written all of the fishing game books you can possibly write already. I've got one for every kind of quarry you can imagine. And then the other thing was, oh, well, you know, a lot of that travel for those other books was on the border on both sides, on the American side and on the Mexican side. And that kind of grew into this. Wow, you know, God, the food is so great and God, this area is just so neglected, I think, by most, you know, the. The food, or radio, for lack of a better term.

Yeah, because all of the, like, everybody seems to love to hate Tex Mex without really fully knowing what Tex Mex actually is. And people say that the Southwestern cooking is so very 1987. And. And, you know, the people who know Mexico are like, oh, all the good foods in Oaxaca or Michoacan or Mexico City or Yucatan. And really that's not the case, as over and over and over again, I was discovering these amazing just finds. And a lot of them had to do with wild foods, but not all of them. And so that borderlands became my diary of that journey.

Stephanie:

And quite a diary it is. What's interesting to me is I didn't actually ever know that you were in the newspaper business.

Hank Shaw:

And that makes a Pioneer Press graduate.

Stephanie:

Oh, you work for them. How did I not know this?

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, I was a St. Paul Pioneer Press investigative reporter from 2002 to 2004. And if you're of a certain age and you remember there was a big story about some Republican operatives getting involved with a telecommunications boondoggle. And yeah, that was probably. That was us. That was our story.

Stephanie:

Well, and it makes sense because the book is so like. It's the storytelling that's so good. And, you know, cookbooks are cookbooks with beautiful recipes and different people's point of view on recipes. But what I love about your book, too, is it really goes into ingredients a little more in depth. It tells the story of the terroir, of where the recipe's from and why it's the way it is. And it makes sense now to me that you're a journalist because it's so beautifully written.

Hank Shaw:

I really appreciate that. I mean, I tried in this particular book. There are essays in all of my books, but in this particular one, I really, really wanted people from the rest of the country to get a flavor of what it's like to was really honest to God, like on the border. Everybody has thoughts and opinions about immigration and about the border and about blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, how much time have you actually spent on the border? Do you actually know what it feels like, what it smells like, what it tastes like? Chances are you probably don't. And I really wanted this book to shine a light on that in ways that go well beyond food.

Stephanie:

When we talk about the borderlands, can you talk about it without talking about immigration and the close connection between the United States and Mexico? I mean, we share this border. People have this idea that it's like this gated, fenced situation, and really there's tons of the border that's just. You'd only know it was a border if someone told you you were crossing it.

Hank Shaw:

It's very true. In Fact, one of my favorite moments to that was in south southwest Texas there's a beautiful national park called Big Bend. It's one of the biggest national parks in the country. It's fa. It's famous, it's amazing. But you're going to drive and hike and hike and drive and hike and drive a gigantic park. So one place that you can go to. And it's actually, if you open up a copy of Borderlands and you see this huge vista right at the beginning of the book, there's this huge vista and it's on a cliff. That is exactly it. That is. That is Big Bend National Park. And if you're looking right in the back end of that back center, a little to the left, you'll see a canyon in the background. In that canyon is St. Helena Canyon. And St.

Helena Canyon is created by the Rio Grande. So you can go to that park and you can walk across the border literally to Mexico and not have the Rio Grande come up over your ankles. And there's Mexicans on their side, there's Americans on our side, and everybody's crossing back and forth until their families are there and having a fun time, blah, blah, blah. And it's just, it's one of these great moments where it shows you that, yeah, that border is really just sort of a fiction.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Yes, in many ways. Right. Figuratively. And also, I don't know, we seem to be in a global food economy whether we want to or not. When you look at the individual ingredients that you're using here in Borderlands, obviously there's very different things because of temperature in Mexico than you might have here in the Midwest. But is it really different from like say, Texas to Mexico in.

Hank Shaw:

Yes, there, there are definitely different. So the food you'll get in Nueva Leon or Coahuila or Tamaulipas, which are the three Mexican states, that border Texas is going to be different from what you would think about as Texas food. However, on the Borderlands, that. That change really is minimal. And I talk about in the book the idea of Fronteraisos, people who are neither fully Mexican nor full. They're. They're border people and they can slide between English and Spanish in mid clause. And it's really the, you know, the, the pocho or Spanglish or whatever you want to call it that you'll hear there is very different from what you'll hear from a bilingual person from, say, Mexico City, where typically those people will speak in full sentences or paragraphs in one language and then maybe switch to another language in the next sentence or paragraph.

Hank Shaw:

Well, on the border, it's a mishmash. So the structure, the words, the adjectives, like, it's everything. It's like no function. And so it's like. It's like this whole kind of amalgam of what's going on. And that kind of translates into the food where you've got some Texas, you know, some very Texas. Texas. Things that don't cross the border, like yellow cheese doesn't really cross the border.

Stephanie:

Right.

Hank Shaw:

The idea of, like, rotel queso. So it's. It's like Velveeta cheese melted with rotel. That's queso. That's the bad queso in North Texas. Like, you'll get that in, like, Amarillo. But the real queso is south of Interstate 10. And that is a white Mexican cheese.

That it where you get, you know, roasted fire roasted green chilies folded into it and a little bit of Mexican oregano and salt and a little bit of crema to thin it out. And it's is to the rotel queso what a match is to the sun.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Hank Shaw:

And, you know, I mean, that said, I'm not gonna poop all over the Velveeta one, because that while I don't think it tastes great, what I realized is that particular version of queso, which I personally don't like, is really heavy with cultural significance.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Hank Shaw:

And. And so that's. There's a place for it. It's just not. That's not really as border food as you might think. That's a little bit more North Texas, and that's an example of where things don't cross. But a really great example of where things are damn near the same is Arizona and Sonora. So that there's almost no difference between Arizona Mexican food and Sonora Mexican food because they're one and the same.

The burritos are pretty similar. The flour tortillas are similar. The carne asada is pretty similar. And so that. That's a case where the border's really. I mean, yes, it's a border, but I mean, it's like the. It's. There's no food border.

Same thing with Southern California and Tijuana and Northern Baja. There's almost no. No functional difference between the two of them. Now, New Mexico and Chihuahua has a difference. And, like, north of Interstate 10 in Texas and the border in Texas are quite different.

Stephanie:

There's a recipe in here that I didn't even really know existed called Parisa.

Hank Shaw:

Oh, yeah.

Stephanie:

And, you know, you we will order steak tartare or make tartare. And I didn't realize that there was a. In many cultures, you sort of see similar foods or similar food groups, and they're just treated differently with herbs or spices. This looks delicious.

Hank Shaw:

It really is. It's the best way to describe it if you. If you're not familiar, because it's very. It's. It's super regional in Texas. Like, you can't even really get barista in Dallas or in. Or in El Paso. It's not a thing there.

It's sort of a south central Texas thing. But the best way I can describe it is really accurately describe it. It is steak tartar meets aguachile. Because most people will say it's steak tartare meat ceviche. And yes, you absolutely can get it like that, but the. The acidity and the citrus will turn the. The raw beef gray, which I think looks gross. Yeah, I mean, it.

It tastes fine, but it just kind of looks like, meh. So my recipe and what I do is I. I mix the steak tartare with the. Essentially, pico de gallo is really what it. What it's being mixed with, and a little bit of cheese, and I. I'll mix it and serve it right away so that when you eat it, the meat is still pink.

Stephanie:

Yeah, it looks really good. And then also in the book, so you're a hunter, obviously, we established that. But in many of these recipes, you have substitutions of different animal proteins that can be used. So whether it's elk or bison or sheep or duck, I think that's cool.

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, I mean, I think I. I started that process. It's done with icons. So if you look at a recipe for. Oh, there's a stew that's very popular. They're called puchero. And I'm just to that page, so I'll. So.

Oh, that's a sour puerto. So always pork, but, like, no. Babies will die if you use something else from that. But that is traditionally a pork dish. Buchero is traditionally beef or venison, but really, you know, you're gonna be fine if you put damn near anything in it. It's a big, giant stew, a lot of vegetables, and it's fantastic. And to. To really make the book more versatile, because I.

The two things that I always do in my books. Number one is I'm going to give you the recipe as faithfully as I can to what it actually is, wherever it's from, and then I'm going to give you all these substitutions so that if you live in, you know, Bismarck or Crookston or, you know, rural Iowa, you're going to be able to make it. And that's important to me because it's more important to me that you make some version of it than to be exactly proper and specific. I hate cookbooks where it's like, especially with cheese, where you'll see someone be like, it must be the, you know, Cowgirl Creamery point raised blue from 2012. Otherwise this recipe won't work. I'm like, come on guys, this is a stupid recipe. Like it's blue cheese. It'll be fine.

Stephanie:

I was surprised that you have a chimichanga in the book. Can we talk about chimichangas? Because people that grew up in the Midwest, Chichis was like the first Mexican restaurant besides El Burrito Mercado. And El Burrito Mercado was authentic and chichi's was like the Americanized what they thought Mexican food was. Which also I will say I have taste memories of chi cheese. I say this not dogging on them and they're actually coming back. And the chimichanga is something that like, if I actually go to the new restaurant, which I'm sure I will, I will order a chimichanga. It's like a taste memory for me. What is the origination of chimichanga?

Hank Shaw:

It's shrouded in mystery. So there's a couple different theories. And then I'll tell you what I think the general story is that a woman was making burritos in Arizona and either dropped, which I don't believe because that would create a splash that would, you know, send 350 degree oil everywhere, or placed a burrito in the deep fryer. And the, the legend, which I don't believe this is true at all, is she drops the burrito in the deep fryer and you know, says something like, you know, ah, chingo to madre or whatever, like just like swears something bad and. But then sort of does what you would do in a kind of a mom situation. And if you instead of saying the F word, you would say oh, fudge. And so she goes, oh Jimmy changa. And which is sort of vaguely reminiscent of some Mexican swear words.

And so that thus the, the dish was born. But I think that's not true because there is a fantastic resource, actually. I mean, I found it in some of my older Mexican cookbooks that I own. But there's a fantastic research that the University of Texas at San Antonio of Mexican cookbooks. And some of these Mexican cookbooks are handwritten from the 1800s, and so they're all digitized and you can. You can study them. And so there's a thing in Sonora. Remember I just got done saying that, like, there's almost no difference between Sonora and Arizona.

There's a thing from Sonora many, many, many, many years ago, you know, early early 1900s, for a chivy changa. C H I V I C H A N G A ch and it's the same thing. So I'm convinced that this is just a thing, because if you have a burrito and you fry things, there's zero. There's zero chance that at some point you be like, I want to. I wonder if frying the burrito will make it good? You know, like, the answer, yes, yes, all the time.

Stephanie:

And.

Hank Shaw:

And so, you know, I, like you, came into the chimichanga world just thinking with a definite eyebrow raised, like, what is this? And when it's done right, and if you see the picture in my book, it is dressed with a whole bunch of things on the outside of the burrito. So it's crema, it's a pico de gallo. It's shredded lettuce or cabbage, limes. The thing about a properly served chimichanga is that you have to eat it as a whole because the chimichanga itself is quite heavy. You know, it's a. It's a fried burrito with, like, rice and beans and meat inside it. Like, it's a gut bomb. But when you eat it with all these light things around it that are bright and fresh and acidic, it completely changes the eating experience. And I was sold.

Stephanie:

I can imagine. The one you have in the book looks really good. I'm going to. I keep asking about specific recipes, but there were, like, some that just jumped out at me, like, wow. Another one that jumped out at me was from that same chapter about the acorn cookies. I've always been under the impression that acorns, and maybe it's from just specific to the oaks, but that they're poisonous. I didn't think about making acorn flour.

Hank Shaw:

So, number one, no acorns are poisonous. Zero, period. End of story. It's a myth. You were lied to. Sorry.

Stephanie:

Yeah. I mean, it helps me because my dog eats them.

Hank Shaw:

I mean, acorns have been a source of food for human beings forever, you know, all the way. I don't know how long ago, but way more than 10,000 years. Way more. Okay, so what the myth comes from is most acorn varieties, so most especially red oaks, are full of tannins. And tannins are not poisonous. Tannins are not toxic. Tannins will make you constipated if you eat too many of them. And I suppose it would be possible to poison yourself with tannins, but I mean, good luck.

Yeah, good luck eating enough of that astringent stuff to be able to get yourself poisoned. But tannins are water soluble. So for millennia, the people who eat acorns, and especially in. In northern California, where, you know, acorn. Acorns were their main starch, the idea of leaching the tannins out in a stream or wherever is as old as time. And so you make the. You make a meal. It's really a meal is probably a better way to put it.

I call it flour, but there's no. There's no real gluten in it. In fact, there's no gluten in it, but there is some starch in it that will help the flour stick to itself. So that's true everywhere. In fact, it's a very good acorn year here in Minnesota this year. And I found some bur oaks in a. In a place that I'm going to go back and harvest them to make some more acorn flour this year. And I'll have to leach them here.

But this is a very long walk up to this cookie recipe, because in south Arizona and in Sonora, there's an oak called an emery oak. And the emery oak is in the white oak. It's in the white oak clan. And it is sweet in the sense that you can roast those acorns and eat them. And in fact, you can get roasted acorns as a snack on some of the reservations down there or really wherever. I mean, it's a thing like it's. It. It.

They could just roast it. Roast the acorns? Yeah. It's just like a chestnut. Very good. That's exactly with the. Because it's the same kind of a texture as well. And so that particular oak is unique in. In North America.

The cork oak in Europe is the other one that doesn't have any tannins to it. So you can just sit there and eat them. And that's why they make flour out of them. It's an indigenous thing. You don't really see it too much among the Hispanic Sonorans. You see it a lot more with, like, Yaqui or Pima or Tono O', Odham, those indigenous groups.

Stephanie:

It's so Cool. I also subscribe to your substack, which I would encourage people to subscribe and. And yes to the Bone, it's called. And you just had a post about herbs and how important herbs are in your cooking and in your yard. And I know that you have kind of a small St. Paul yard because we've talked about it. What are you doing with your herbs now that we're at the end of the season? Are you. Do you have anything that's special that you do with them? Do you dry them? Do you mix them with salt?

Hank Shaw:

I do all of the above. I am a preservation fanatic. I could talk for hours just about various ways to preserve things for our Minnesota winners. Maybe that's another podcast for sure. But the short version is, yes, all of the things. I mostly will do things like make pesto with basil, because I love pesto. But I do dry some and there are tricks to drying herbs. The trick is low heat for a long time, so the don't use your oven and try to get them dry within 40, 48 hours, but also try to do it at less than 110 degrees, otherwise they turn brown.

Stephanie:

Do you use it like a dehydrator, then?

Hank Shaw:

Yes, I use a dehydrator. And most herbs dry really well. In fact, many herbs are better dried because it concentrates their flavor. Basil's iffy. Parsley's kind of terrible. Dried parsley's one of those ones where eat it fresh, make pesto. I suppose you could freeze it. I mostly will.

I will gather big scabs of it because I grow a lot and I will freeze it. And even though it's going to suffer in the freezer, it is one of the most vital things I use for making stocks and broths with the game I bring home. So freezing, drying, you can, you know, I just mixed a whole bunch of. Of lovage with salt. So you go 50, 50 the herb and. And coarse salt, like ice cream salt almost. And then you buzz that into a food processor or a blender, and then that creates a much finer kind of almost a wet salt that is an enormous amount of flavor. And if you freeze it, it'll stay bright green the whole winter.

And sometimes I like to do that, but the other times I kind of like to. To see it and progress over the. Over the months. And it's kind of a beautiful thing to see that herb salt kind of brown out and army green out as we get to like, late February, because it really is. Is sort of also indicative of how of our Harsh winters and feels a little bit more of the time and place than pulling something out of a freezer.

Stephanie:

Yeah. So let's talk about that because you're a single man, you are a recipe writer and developer, so you're also cooking and testing recipes. You're preserving all these things. I mean, my freezer right now is kind of a hellscape. I just closed up my summer and I came home with so much food. I have, like, canned and pickled and preserved. And I just literally feel overwhelmed by all of the food in my home right now. And I realize this is a real first world problem.

So, you know, my daughter's kind of in her young 20s and sort of poor, so I've loaded her up with stuff. But do you just feel overwhelmed sometimes by all of the abundance of food?

Hank Shaw:

Absolutely. It's one of the things that's been really remarkable about it, about sort of single life, is how less I need to hunt or fish. So I find myself. I mean, I still. I. Because. So, side note, background backstory. I don't buy meat or fish at all.

I occasionally will buy a little bit of bacon because I love bacon. And I'll occasionally buy pork fat to make sausages with game, but that's it. So if I'm eating red meat, it's going to be venison. If I'm eating white meat, it's probably going to be grouse or. Or pheasants. If I'm eating fish, I've caught it. And so that's what I find is that I eat. Hey, I don't eat that much meat anymore.

Like, I eat plenty. But I mean, it's not like I. I don't gorge myself on giant steaks anymore. And it's just me. So, you know, a limit of walleyes can last me a month. And before, it was definitely not like that. And so, yes, I can feel the overwhelm. But what's, you know, I have neighbors that I give things to.

I have friends that I give things to. Like, I. I had two deer tags last year, and I shot the second deer because I had a whole bunch of friends who didn't get a deer and needed medicine. So it was really cool to be able to give to. You know, I butchered it all and gave them an all vacuum seal. It was like all ready to go. And. And that was really satisfying to be able to help people like that.

And then, you know, I like, you know, have a dinner party here and there.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I want to come to a dinner party. Not to invite myself. But please, I'll. I'll reciprocate in the. I have a cabin in the summer, so I'm sort of like between here and there. But once sets in, I really like to entertain and have people over. I find that it's a really easy way to gather new people too. Like, I like collecting people because I just think people are so amazing and I love putting like, new people at the table that people don't know yet or making those connections.

I think I'm actually kind of good at it. So I can't wait to have you over this fall.

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, likewise. We'll. We'll do a home and home.

Stephanie:

Yes, I would love that very much. Your book is available, Borderlands on. I found it because obviously I. You sent me a copy. But also it's on Amazon and you self publish. So there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are cookbook writers themselves or people that maybe are trying to get published or find publishing. Can you speak to that a little bit and why that's been your route. You've been doing this a long time.

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, this is my force. Fourth self published book. And self publish is really kind of a misnomer in a way because the books that I put out are of Random House quality. Like, they're for sure. There's no way you're gonna be able to tell this book is apart from a gigantic publishing house, because what I ended up doing is creating a publishing company. So the books are published in big, big runs at Versa Press in Illinois. I'm very happy to say that these books are entirely made in America. And that's kind of important to me because most cookbooks are made in China and not a fan.

So the books are printed in Illinois and they are stored and shipped at a, at a, a warehouse in Michigan. So the best ways to get the books are to either buy them from my website or buy them from Amazon. Those are probably your two best avenues for it. The thing about self publishing, if you want to do it at the level that I'm doing it, which is to say, make a book that, you know, even a snooty Random House person will be like, damn, that's a good book. You have to go big and it's not cheap. So I do, I, I don't ever do runs less than 5,000. And a typical run for me is between 10 and 15,000. And because your unit costs go way, way down.

Stephanie:

Right.

Hank Shaw:

And we can get in the weeds of it, but I have some Advantages in the sense that my sister has designed books for a living for 30 some odd years and her husband has edited books for 30 some odd years.

Stephanie:

Oh, so you got like family business going.

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, and my ex, my ex does most of the photos like this. Borderlands is the first book where the majority of the photos are mine. They're nice, but the. But even she's cheap. She photo edited this book. And so like I have people with very good skills. And so what I would say is if you have a kitchen cabinet where you have people who have those skills. And I have to kind of stress that, for example, copy editing, copy editing or proofreading or indexing a book are entirely different from copy editing or proofreading something in business

It's just not the same skill. And I found that out. So if you have that ability to put together a dream team, then you can make a really, really beautiful book that will, that will impress people and that you will actually love. The print on demand system is still not good enough for cookbooks. It's fantastic for like a memoir or something without a lot of pictures, but it is not good for, for cookbooks still.

Stephanie:

All right, I'm just making notes here because people ask me questions about this all the time. All right, well, I appreciate that you've done all this work, and the book is beautiful, and I love talking to you about food. So hopefully we can call you again and just wrap it down.

Hank Shaw:

Yeah, let's talk about preservation.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I. Because I've never met anyone that only was eating what they killed.

Hank Shaw:

Well, you could go up north. I bet you'd find more people who do.

Stephanie:

But yes, yes. And I just, I find that to be fascinating and also just the idea of preserving food and how you use. Use what you preserve. So yeah, that's a great topic to get into at a later date. The book is Borderlands. I'm talking with Hank Shaw. Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. You can find it at Amazon or at his website.

I always say this one wrong. Hunt, Gather. Cook

Hank Shaw:

So. So the best way to get to my website is just go to huntgathercook.com okay.

Stephanie:

And you have lots of recipes there too. I want people to just explore thousands. Yeah, it's incredible the mon recipes that you have there. And you know, if you think about protein as being interchangeable in a lot of these instances, it's definitely a really well done website with tons of recipes.

Stephanie:

Thanks for your time today, Hank. I appreciate it.

Hank Shaw:

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on.

Stephanie:

We'll talk soon.

Hank Shaw:

Bye.

Stephanie:

Bye.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

What a blast to have done a live video with my new friend and Substack Super Star Rebecca Blackwell and to help her experience her first Hot Dish from the Midwest! We made the Juicy Lucy Tator Tot Hot Dish from the “True North Cabin Cookbook Vol 2”

To get the recipe, watch the video or grab the book. To find other tasty Midwest comfort food favorites, go to Stephaniesdish.com

Here is a local newspaper article about the book with a few more recipes to try.

Thank you Lori Olson White, Miss Shannan Paul, Jenn Sharp, Sue McElligott, and many others for tuning into my live video. Join me for my next live video in the app.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

The "Happy Hostess Cookbook Party" is an online community focused on cookbooks and hosting, led by Kristie LaLonde. It's part of the larger "Happy Hostess" brand, which includes the “Happy Hostess Podcast” and other resources for aspiring and experienced hosts. The club focuses on exploring recipes from various cookbooks, often accompanied by themed events and discussions.

Kristie has so graciously planned to feature the “True North Cabin Cookbook” for her October club. The club meets via Zoom for all members. It’s a monthly subscription for an orchestrated “cook along”thats fun and approachable for all levels of cooks interested in joining a community.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Episode Transcript Follows:

Stephanie:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Many times cookbook authors, other times makers. And this particular episode, we are talking to Kristie LaLonde. She is the Happy Hostess Collective. And Kristie and I found each other through a listener of my radio show. My friend Jilly in Minnesota is. She's. We call them Dishers weekly.

Stephanie:

Dishers, that's the name of the radio show. And Jilly's been a Disher for over 18 years. We've had the show and I think she's listened as long as we've had it. And she reached out to me because in my sub stack, I have a Sunday newsletter and I did a whole thing about entertaining and how I love when people just entertain and people make entertaining so complicated and it doesn't need to be. And I offered to give around a cookbooks to people that have cookbook clubs because I think they're so fun. And Jilly replied and said, I have this great cookbook club. We would love it if we could win your books. And she is part of the Happy Hostess Cookbook Club.

Stephanie:

So they won. Jilly got the books. I sent books to all the people in the cookbook group that Jilly's in. And Kristie is the leader of the Happy Hostess Collective, Kristie, welcome to the program. I'm delighted to have you.

Kristie LaLonde:

Thank you. I am so excited to be here.

Stephanie:

So explain to the audience what the Happy Hostess Collective is and all the different avenues that you have for fostering your love of cookbooks and clubbing.

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, I am on Instagram as Happy Hostess Collective, but for our cookbook club, it's actually called Happy Cookbook Party because I couldn't really think of a good name. It's not a great name because it doesn't really let you know it's a cookbook club. But we. There's a lot of emphasis on party in it. So basically it's a cookbook club, but instead of meeting in person, most of the time, we are meeting twice a month on Zoom and we are cooking together from one cookbook, which we usually choose a cookbook and stick with that cookbook for like three to four months, depending upon how robust the cookbook is.

Stephanie:

And people come from all over the country and tell me, like, how do you logistically do it? Do you have like, you know, 30 people on a Zoom or how does it work?

Kristie LaLonde:

Actually, we do have. We are on Zoom and basically what happens when we pick a book? I will go through and kind of we have a Facebook Group. And so I ask everyone either which recipes really look good to you that you're wanting to try.

And then I look through all of those and make sure that they can fit within the hour to hour and a half timeframe of our Zoom Cook along. And then I make a schedule for the next three months and it's printable. I send it to them so they can print it out. And then every. We meet twice a month, so every two weeks, basically we meet on Zoom and I send them grocery list ahead of time for those two recipes that we choose. Sometimes it's three when we throw in a cocktail in there. Yes, especially we usually meet at noon or 4, so the 4 o' clock ones a lot of times have the cocktail. But so we all just meet in one Zoom meeting and we all cook and I'm kind of leading it, but everyone else is talking just as much as I do because we've gotten to know each other so well and it's so fun because we really learn from each other because we have some like expert bakers and we have some people like me that not expert at all in baking.

Kristie LaLonde:

And so. And like we have some really strong florists and there's. We just learn a lot from each other. And every once in a while we also do like a tutorial on a different thing that would have to do with being a hostess. For example, we've done flower arrangements that mimic the ones we saw in one of our cookbooks. We've done hostess gifts, like kind of homemade, cute little hostess gifts at Christmas time. So it's a wide variety of things. It's been strange.

Like a lot of things have come our way. We had, we were offered to have a Vector cocktails. It's like a cocktail mixer. They offered to do a, a cook. I mean, like a cocktail class for us. It was super fun. They sent us all their mixers and it was great. So we've got a chance to do a lot of stuff.

Stephanie:

So what is your background and how did you land here?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, I have always loved cooking and entertaining, even when I was little. Like, I remember I had one of my cookbooks was like the MAD Magazine cookbooks. I don't know if you remember MAD magazine, but they had like a holiday thing and I just loved it. I remember pouring through that and it's crazy because I do that now, obviously with grownup cookbooks, but. And so that just kind of. Well, and then when I was very young, I was the maid of honor in Three Weddings in one year. So I had a crash course and had a host parties for grownups, and that was very fun. But.

Kristie LaLonde:

And I'd always really enjoyed the ideas of parties as well. Growing up, my parents were my mom. My father was in an industry where there were lots of fancy, fancy famous parties.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Kristie LaLonde:

Because we live in Kentucky, so the derby parties. And.

Stephanie:

Yes.

Kristie LaLonde:

So I would, like, hear them, like, sometimes they would be on the farm that we lived on, like in the party barn. And so, like, I would hear the parties, and I just was kind of fascinated with all of that, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Stephanie:

But you on the Happy Hostess Collective on your Instagram, you chronicle a lot of these parties and you have, like, beautiful flower arrangements. And I mean, honestly, the south is just like, I don't know why, but you guys are known for just these over the top, beautiful flower arrangements, beautiful parties, beautiful outfits. In the north, everything feels a little more, like, rustic and just a little more outdoorsy. But, like, the south just feels like China and silver and so beautiful.

Kristie LaLonde:

Yeah, you know, there's a little bit of everything for sure in the south, but we do tend to go over the top. That is. That is definitely the case. Which makes it fun, though. But. And I love a big theme. It can. It's a lot of fun.

And whether it's rustic theme, but it's just like kind of go all in on it. It makes it a lot of fun.

Stephanie:

How did you figure out, like, I think it's pretty cool that you have this whole cookbook club happening via Zoom. So there's technology there. Right. And then you also have, like a Facebook group. You really use social media to drive a lot of this engagement. It is a paid subscription, which I also think is cool because sometimes if you have to pay for something, you value it a little bit more or you make time for it in your schedule. How did I learn all the technological pieces and have you just learned by trial and error?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, fortunately, Zoom is fairly easy to use. And especially after Covid, everybody knows how to use Zoom, thankfully. But actually, I started an E commerce store, like, before people heard of the word E commerce.

And I am not techno, very technologically advanced, but I am willing to figure out whatever it is if it makes it possible for me to do what I want. And I really wanted a. A China and dish store, which. Big surprise. So that I had it. No, I don't. I had it for almost 14 years. I think that's, like, my dream.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, it was so fun. And it stopped me from buying all the dishes. Because I had all these gorgeous dishes. Like in a warehouse. Yes. But it's a really heavy, breakable object and not so fun to ship after a while. So I transitioned out of that and wanted to do something that didn't require shipping.

Stephanie:

And this is brilliant because you've got new friends from all over the country. It could be all over the world.

Kristie LaLonde:

I suppose it definitely could be. There happens to be just the country right now. We are a small group, but it is a really fun group and it's been a great community. And I really wanted something to tie in my podcast to make it and make it smaller. Well, obviously with the podcast, it's only me or myself and a guest, so I really wanted to be able to, like, get to know my listeners better, and this was the perfect thing.

Stephanie:

How did you get into podcasting? Because you've have had over a hundred episodes all about this topic of hostessing.

Kristie LaLonde:

Basically it was the sick of being shipping things. So I thought, okay, well, we could start the podcast. I wasn't really sure what direction it was going to take, but I thought that it would be a good avenue for me to get started. And it kind of led to this.

Stephanie:

One of the topics that was on your recent podcast that I was kind of interested in, because I think the. It has changed so much since COVID is the whole idea of having a party and the RSVP list. People in my experience tend to be very late at responding to things. And even like, we're finding that restaurant reservations people will make four reservations and cancel three with really no thought about it. Like, it's just we're in a very quick societal change. And you talked a lot about how to get people to RSVP, how important RSVPs are. What were some of your tips there?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, it's. It sounds a little old school, but one of them was to actually have a physical invitation delivered to them.

Stephanie:

Amen. This whole, like, you're gonna send me a digital something, it's fine. It's great as, like, a reminder, but I just. I don't think it's the same as, like, getting an actual invitation to something.

Kristie LaLonde:

I agree. And for one thing, it's. It's less likely to be forgotten because a lot of times they put it on the refrigerator or somewhere they can see it. And then also, like, it's shocking when you get something in the mail that you. That isn't a bill today, you know, so it's. It seems more special.

Stephanie:

This is kind of a weird aside, but I used to run a direct mail company. So I love direct mail. And the number one growing category for direct mail is 18 to 34, because they love getting offers in the mail. Because getting mail feels so special now and so unique.

Kristie LaLonde:

You're kidding.

Stephanie:

No, it's like it's coming back.

Kristie LaLonde:

That is so interesting.

Stephanie:

And the catalog companies have always had a robust business using the mail. They've maybe pared down their catalogs a little bit, or they might have specialty offerings, but people are still sending a lot of catalogs.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, goodness. Well, I'm so glad because I just thought I was like, old school because I really like to have books in my hands. I like. I like getting catalogs if it's from a business that I like. I thought I was the only one that.

Stephanie:

No, you are not. What other kinds of trends are you noticing in just entertaining in general, good or bad?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, catching on. One that I did recently, I did a small series on baby showers. And. Wow. Things have changed since I was having babies, for sure. Like, drastically. Some. Some things I think are good.

Kristie LaLonde:

Like, for example, a lot of times they're co ed now, which was just a trend that had just barely started when I was having children. And I think that's fun and interesting, for sure. Um, but I do also think that they have gotten, like, kind of out of hand a little bit. And I love going over the top, like I said earlier with a party, so I'm. I'm never gonna, like, shame anybody for that. But it seems like with social media coming in, that everyone is seeing these highlight reels from very sophisticated baby showers.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Kristie LaLonde:

And so I kind of camped out in baby shower groups for, like, a good month, like, trying to prepare for this series. And. And it was kind of sad, really, because people were so. A lot of people, not everyone, of course, but were so sad because they didn't have enough people to invite to have an almost wedding, like, baby shower. Like, it was. It was. And they felt defeated. It was just.

Kristie LaLonde:

It was kind of disheartening. And I mean, you could tell that they really thought that it was normal that people had to rent out a venue hall in order to have a baby shower.

Stephanie:

Yeah.

Kristie LaLonde:

Which is not the case at all.

Stephanie:

And like, just making diaper cake is still pretty fun, isn't it?

Kristie LaLonde:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, yeah, it's. It's really different. It's. It's almost. And it's a whole different vibe from a lot of people. And the thing is, I've not seen this in person, so I don't want to say that everyone's like this. Maybe it's just the vocal people on Facebook, you know, but it seemed a lot more like, this is my party.

Kristie LaLonde:

This is my. My thing, as opposed to, you know, someone hosting it for you.

Stephanie:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you haven't. Have you watched the Mormon Housewives?

Kristie LaLonde:

I haven't.

Stephanie:

Okay, good. I don't. It's like, so bad. It's good. So wrong. Right. So I don't really want to, like, encourage anyone to do it because that sort of guilty pleasure. But they have these big over the top and they have a lot of kids and they're all women under 30.

Stephanie:

So they do have these big, like, over the top baby showers and the baby hills and the baby moons. And honestly, it's just. So if we get to the idea of just like, entertaining, I think people get so hung up on that they have to have like this special meal or that they have to spend all day in the kitchen. What would be like, some of your tips for getting you to entertain? More like, barriers to overcome, I guess.

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, I think first and foremost is to really focus on your mindset and think about why that you want to entertain. And usually it's because you want to make memories and have connections with your friends and family. Do you want to make memories and those are awesome reasons, or you want to celebrate someone, you know? And a lot of times when we start thinking about entertaining, sometimes we can get a little nervous that maybe I'm not good enough cook or I'm. My house isn't big enough or I don't have enough people to invite, for example, the baby shower. And I really just recommend very first thing to do is to flip your mind and be focused on your guests. Like, what do you want to do for them, how do you want them to feel? You know, obviously you want them to be. Feel welcomed in your home and that sort of thing. So if you could just focus on the.

Kristie LaLonde:

The guest, you usually can stop all the negative chatter in your mind because you're not focusing on yourself. And then also, most importantly, don't do everything yourself. You don't have to cook everything. You don't have to cook at all if you don't want to. You know, that's why caterers exist. Even if you only cooked one thing that was like a signature dish, then you might. It's. It's like you did cook.

And so I really think that trying not to do everything and focusing on your making your guests feel welcome are very important.

Stephanie:

I figured out late in Life how easy it is to cook fish for a crowd. And that seems like a weird thing, but, like, if you get, like, a whole side of salmon or poach a whole fish or you even have slabs that you're just putting under the broiler, you can have, like, any salads prepared in advance. You know, you can have vegetables prepared in advance, you can have a cheese platter prepared in advance. And then really, like, the only thing you're cooking is this side of salmon or you've got a sauce that you've already made. I was always so afraid to cook fish, and once I kind of got over that hump, I was like, wow, this is actually pretty easy. I can cook a whole side of fish. I can feed 12 people off of it, typically, if I get a big enough one. And with all the sides and everything, everything's already made before they even get here.

Kristie LaLonde:

That is perfect. And that's like the perfect example of what we're trying to do in the cookbook party is to get people to increase their repertoire of things that are very easy to entertain. Because there are some delicious recipes that we make that would be a nightmare if, you know, for entertaining, you know, they take too long, they need to be done at the last minute, that sort of thing. But if you like, for example, the fish, you know that all. It kind of meets all the requirements. You don't have to do it at the last minute. It's easy preparation, and we want to gain. It's like our entertaining arsenal.

Kristie LaLonde:

Kind of find those recipes, find ways of doing things that make it simple, where, you know, if, like, for example, things that can be cooked the day before and just reheated, like carnitas, like the meat and that type of thing. Yep. There's just lots of them. And. And we can all have our own little personal style when it comes to that. You know, that's what makes it fun is, is everyone seems like they have their own signature dishes.

Stephanie:

What's a go to Kristie LaLonde signature entertaining dish?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, I just mentioned one of them, carnitas. I love them. They are not. They are kind of time consuming, but it is completely make. You can make it whenever you want, and it tastes great the next day reheated. It's one of those things that, you know, can taste better, even better the same day, and people love them. Everyone seems to like them. So that's one of my go tos.

Kristie LaLonde:

And then also like, oh, gosh, I can't even remember what I call them now, but they're like the white cream chicken, Chicken enchiladas.

Stephanie:

Oh, yeah.

Kristie LaLonde:

Because they can totally be made ahead of time, and all you have to do is put them in the oven, and then, you know, you can make sides easily. A lot of times, actually, with both of those things, I used to. I don't need to now, but I didn't have a good refried beans recipe that I liked, and rice is one of the few things that I really, really struggle with. I need to buy a rice cooker is what I've been told, but so I would just order from the restaurant that's around the corner, baked beans and rice, and then serve that with them. So it was, like, liked. It was homemade. It's in my dish. It looks homemade.

Yeah.

Stephanie:

Time saving. An instant pot is also really helpful in the rice department. If you. Oh, I mean, I make rice in my instant pot. It is a rice cooker. It's a pressure cooker. Rice cooker. It cooks everything.

And then also I make risotto in there too.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, wow. I did not know that. Actually, the carnitas is one of the few things I use my instant pot for. So now I got something else.

Stephanie:

Oh, yes. I'm a big instant potter. In fact, one of the Facebook groups that we run for our radio show is called the Weekly Dish Instant Potters. Oh, some really great recipes there that people have shared or linked to. It's an open group, but I. It's. If you're an instant potter, and I still am. I still love my instant pot.

Stephanie:

I do my slow cooker, too. You can slow cook in an instant pot, but I also have two other slow cookers because I'm somewhat obsessed with that, but really helpful and easy. Is there a cookbook that you've used on the cookbook Club journey that you really were like, wow, this is a great, entertaining cookbook?

Kristie LaLonde:

Yes, for sure. And most of the ones that we choose have an entertaining bent to them, typically just because of our interest in what we're trying to accomplish in the group. But Love Welcome Serve by Amy Hannon. Like, really blew my socks off. Every single recipe that we tried just seemed to be over the top, delicious. It was really phenomenal. Like, we've enjoyed all of our books, for sure, but this one, it just really. I was blown away, and I had been told and that it really was such a good cookbook, and I finally caved and put it in there, and I'm so glad that I did.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I'm looking at it. It looks delightful. It's got kind of an Ina Garten feeling to it.

Kristie LaLonde:

And she is just a very genuine, kind, hospitable person. She really. She definitely has the mindset. Like, even when she's talking about making little notes, you can just see just. She has such a hospitable nature.

Stephanie:

And then the recent cookbook that you guys are doing is the. Is it Brunch with Babs?

Kristie LaLonde:

Brunch with Babs is her account, but the book is called Celebrate with Babs.

Stephanie:

Okay. And Babs is like everybody's favorite grandma. Her daughter, I think, worked in lifestyle television and has helped her create this really unbelievable social media presence and following. What is it about her books that attracted you?

Kristie LaLonde:

I. Well, she organizes her cookbooks in the way that I always enjoy, and that is by party or event. I love cookbooks that are organized that in that fashion. And I'd heard good things about it, and so we thought we would try it.

Stephanie:

Yeah, she's really. I think her recipes are really great. She's not too fussy. She has some that are more complicated than others, but she does a lot of, like, semi homemade kind of things too. Don't you wish that Sandra Lee from Semi Homemade would come back?

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, I know. I. Oh, I loved, loved, loved her show because of the party aspect. I absolutely loved it. And we have enjoyed Celebrate with Babs for sure. And you're right, there are a lot of, like, one recipe will be, you know, kind of complicated like you said, and one will be semi homemade. Today at 4. Today we have our.

Kristie LaLonde:

What's our second to last cook along in Celebrate with Babs. And the theme today is looking forward to fall. So we're doing her new pond chili and then we're doing Mrs. Williams peanut butter bars. So.

Stephanie:

Yeah, delicious.

Kristie LaLonde:

Yes, that will be good for dinner.

Stephanie:

Yes, it will be. It makes me think of my pumpkin spice espresso martini that I'd like to have with that.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, that sounds good. Oh, that sounds so good.

Stephanie:

Yeah, I'm obsessed with pumpkin spice. And my. My second book is kind of geared from October through April, so more fall time. And I really, I. When you go to get like a pumpkin spice something, it's usually full of such gross ingredients. And I was like, okay, we could make pumpkin spice flavor with pumpkin, right? And spice, like, it wouldn't be that hard. So I made a pumpkin spice cream and then used it in different recipes. And the espresso martini with pumpkin spice was delightful.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, that sounds amazing. Espresso martinis are one of my absolute favorites.

Stephanie:

Me too. Me too. Well, it's been super great to chat with you about entertaining, Christy. How can people follow you and what's the best way to join if they want to join the cookbook club?

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, our website is happy cookbookparty.com and I'm on Instagram at Happy Hostess Collective, if you have a question about anything. And I am excited to announce that we are doing one of your cookbooks starting in October.

Stephanie:

Excellent. That's right on time.

Kristie LaLonde:

Yes. I'm so excited about it. I can't wait, because this is totally different. I love that we, you know, we've done a lot of Southern cookbooks. Like we did Pizzazzerie and the Southern Living Party Cookbook and a couple others. And then we kind of moved over to the Midwest of it was celebrate with Babs. And so yours will be a perfect fit.

Stephanie:

Thank you. I'm excited to have you guys do it. And I hope I can find pop in and say hi while everyone's cooking, because that sounds kind of fun.

Kristie LaLonde:

Oh, I would love it. I would love it. And I would like to offer your listeners, if they want to join us, they can use the code SD50, and they'll get 50% off their first month's membership.

Stephanie:

That's fun. And how much is a membership generally? Is it 22?

Kristie LaLonde:

It's $22 a month. Yes.

Stephanie:

Okay. I love it. That's great. That's fun. It's a good little, like, date night for yourself to do something fun and unusual that you maybe haven't done before, right?

Kristie LaLonde:

Yes, it is. And it's, you know, I know you not for you, probably because you're immersed in the food industry, and I know you're so big on local, which I love about your cookbooks. I love reading the little stories about the local people. But, you know, a lot of us don't have, like, I love to entertain, and I do have friends that entertain, but I don't have people necessarily close to me that just love it as much as I do and really want to learn. And so it's awesome that I get to hang out with these people all over the country that really do love it as much as I do.

Stephanie:

Yes. Well, we'll put all this information in the show notes, and you and I will connect on when we want to have the podcast distributed so that people can join. And it was really great to spend time with you. Thanks to Jilly in mn, my favorite Instagram friend and weekly disher who hooked us up. Kristie. I'll connect with you after this podcast by email, and we'll get all the details set up, but thanks for watching, for helping launch my book. It's awesome.

Kristie LaLonde:

Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.

Stephanie:

Yes. And we'll talk soon. Thanks for being a guest today. Oh, and I want to shout out your podcast real quick because we'll put a link to that, too.

Kristie LaLonde:

Thank you. It's called Happy Hostess.

Stephanie:

Okay. It's really great. You have a lot of episodes on hostessing and fun, entertaining ideas, so. All right, Kristie we'll connect in email.

Kristie LaLonde:

Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie.

Stephanie:

Okay, bye. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

She provided a formula for all the nutrient-dense foods your body needs, at a calorie count that seemed doable while still creating Satiety.

Here’s the basic, per-meal formula (adjust according to your weight and health goals and your calorie needs). Are you ready? Write this down:

30 grams protein + 40 grams carbs (5 or more grams of fiber) + 2 colors of non-starchy plants + 15 grams of healthy fat

Do that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo.

You can (and should) read the whole post here and subscribe to her newsletter…

It was like a lightbulb went off, and I knew I needed to talk with her for the podcast.

Get Stephanie’s Recipes

Original Episode Transcript Follows:

Stephanie Hansen:

Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Sometimes it's cookbook authors, sometimes it's people that make things, Sometimes it's chefs. And today I am talking to my friend Stephanie Meyer, who you all may know of as Fresh, Tart Steph and as now, Stephanie Meyer, a. I always get it wrong. Stephanie.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Stephanie A. Dot Meyer. But yes, got it.

Stephanie Hansen:

And Stephanie has been in our friend group for a very long time and a friend with me for a long time. And Stephanie is always. I feel like a trendsetter. Do you know that you're a trendsetter?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

No. That's amazing. I don't think anyone's ever called me that before, but. Well, that's really.

Stephanie Hansen:

Here's what I think. Like, you're not in the trends, like people would think of trends, but you are thinking about things before other people are thinking about them. Because I think you're super well read. You're very bright. You spend a lot of time thinking about science things. So you were the first person that I came across in the food space that was really thinking about blogging in a robust way.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Sure. Wow. That was a long time ago.

Stephanie Hansen:

It was. But that was what you were doing, and you were bringing bloggers together and creating community, which was amazing. Then you were writing a cookbook about Twin City chefs, which also seems probably like a long time ago, but I just picked it up the other day, and the stories and the heartfelt feelings about the Twin Cities chef community was still there.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Love it. Thank you.

Stephanie Hansen:

Then you sort of started thinking about healthy eating and healthy food, and your green broth kind of blew up before anybody else was really talking about that. And you've really gone full circle here into this food journey, as many of my peers start to enter the midlife, menopausal middle, trying to think about not only foods in terms of health, but also some of us have been packing the pounds on over the years and just really like, you wrote something the other day, and I follow you on substack and I follow all your stuff, but you wrote something the other day that just, like, leapt off the page at me. And I sent it to a friend and I thought, I have to podcast with her, and I'm going to see if I can find it here, because I'm going to read it, because I think it will really resonate with food people, but also people that might be in the menopause space, which. So you are on trend, because when Oprah starts talking about Something that you've been talking about for a long time.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Right? It's, I mean that. It's very true. And honestly, in this sense, a lot of it is just sort of following what people ask me for. So maybe my, maybe my clients are the trendsetters and I'm just answering their questions.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay, so here is what you wrote as we'll say, a nutritional coach. You said, write down this solution and implement it today. Here's the basic per meal formula and adjust according to your weight and health goals and calorie needs. Are you ready? She said, write this down. 30 grams of protein plus 40 grams of carbs, 5 or more grams of fiber, plus 2 colors of non starchy plants and 15 grams of healthy fat. Do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo. And I was like blown away that nobody had ever just like spelled that out in a way that felt so clear to me.

So can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you got there and how you got to this specific metric and why it's working for people?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Oh, I love it. Well, I call that particular formula, I call it the satiety formula. That's how you pronounce that word, by the way. Like, often people will just write back and say, oh my God, huge relief because I was saying satiety. Satiety. I wasn't really sure how to say it. Whatever. So anyway, it's satiety.

Right, satiety. And so it is satiety. So that could be your little word nerd, you know, for the day and the week. And it's a very powerful word. And, and I just am kind of hooked on it. And I keep repeating it and I keep hoping that people get on board with me, but I call that the satiety formula. Because when I work with clients, I have been able to see that the thing that gets in people's way is that they're hungry. And, you know, perimenopause, menopause makes you hungrier.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

And a lot of women notice it. They think it's. Oh, it's because of, you know, hormones. That's it. That, you know, estrogen and progesterone directly affect your appetite. That's not really exactly. It's not that direct. However, it is true because as, as you know, perimenopause sets in.

We know what happens. Sleep disruption. Nothing, nothing affects your appetite more than sleep. And you have a bad night of sleep. We know that the average person eats like 3 to extra, 3 to 500 extra calories the next day without trying or knowing it. And so a lot of women come to me and say, I'm doing exactly what I did before. This is like this mysterious 10 pound weight packed on and, and, and I think it's because of estrogen. And then we dive in.

I have them take a look at what they're eating, we talk about their appetite. And what I just saw over and over and over again is, oh, women are just hungrier. So we need to get more knowledgeable about what makes you full and a little bit more purposeful about it. And then along came Ozempic and made it all kind of make sense, because ozempic works, or GLP1 medications work because they decrease your appetite. And all of a sudden people realized, oh, I was eating much bigger portions than I realized. Oh, I have a naturally bigger appetite than my sister. I didn't realize this is how she felt. I didn't realize what it feels like to not think about food all day.

I didn't realize what it feels like to not, like, be hungry after dinner. And I, and Oprah even said it, she's like, wait a minute, is this what normal people feel? And I have been beaten up my whole life for like, you know, being overweight and having a bigger appetite. And it's just my biology. And so knowing that biology is happening, appetite is bigger. What can you do about it? Maybe a GLP1 medication is an answer. Lots of people don't want to go that route right away. They would rather experiment with creating satiety, which is what GLP1 medicine medications do. Creating satiety with food.

Because we naturally have GLP1, we naturally have other satiety hormones. We can eat very specific foods in combination to, like, elicit as much of that, that release of satiety hormone as possible. It's not as powerful as meds, but it's a good experiment. And a lot of people are like, okay, I have a lot of clients. I just met with one this morning who said, I'm too full. And so let's adjust. I love it when I get people there. It's like, oh, now I'm too full.

How do we fix that?

Stephanie Hansen:

It's funny because my first thought after reading your formula was thinking about, I see the plates of food you eat a lot on Instagram. So I was thinking about, like, okay, thinking about what Stephanie's plates look like and then thinking about, like, if I actually ate that amount of food three times a day. Yeah, I haven't eaten that much food since like the fifth grade.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Right.

Stephanie Hansen:

It felt like, wow, would this be what that felt like? And I'm not sure. I'm always on the search and you know, people probably think I have an eating disorder and maybe I do and I don't even know it, but I feel like a lot of women, we are conditioned and we think about food a lot. When it's your business too. I'm always thinking about creating and food is like my art. So it's hard for me to separate the creation of food and wanting to express that way through. They're actually making recipes or thinking about recipes or gardening or creating a beautiful table. Like I'm always thinking about that and then the actual eating piece of it and it gets kind of all mixed up. But some ways in a beautiful way, some ways in a way that feels onerous.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yes, very well said.

Stephanie Hansen:

And I just think about it all the time and I eat way less than I think about because if I ate all the time, like, But I know, like I have a friend right now who she has an eating disorder and has her whole life. And for the first time as a 55 year old woman, she feels like she's really got a handle on it because she's back to, I hate to say it, but calorie counting. And she was afraid of calorie counting her whole life. Exactly. Like you said, she's like, I wasn't eating enough. I was eating one meal a day. I was eating all the wrong things. And now that I'm like more managing that, eating throughout the day and eating more fruits and vegetables and just like not being so hung up on it, she's like, I feel so much better.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you said a lot of great things there. I don't think you have an eating disorder. I mean, welcome to being a woman in the United States. It is just relentless. And then social media has probably made it worse. Although frankly, it wasn't all that great, you know, pre social media.

So I don't know. There's, there's a lot of good info. I see a lot of better info. Maybe it's because of the way I curate, curate my social media feed, but I feel like the messages are shifting and changing and I think that's good. But you're right, I mean, it's just, it's insanity and it's really difficult. Calories, you know, matter, like buried in that formula is, you know, carb or macros, the macronutrients of protein, carbs and Fat, they each have calories associated with them. So carbs have 4 calories per gram, protein has 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per. And so when you build a meal around the satiety formula, there is, there's calorie control kind of built into it.

And so that meal, if you put together that exact formula of a meal, is going to come out to around 400 calories. 400 calories per meal is a pretty good place for women to start. I mean, it's probably not enough. And I say that in that, in that particular essay. 400 calories per meal, if you only ate three meals a day, would obviously be 1200 calories. A lot of women historically have been aiming for 1200 calories a day and it's not enough, right? It backfires because you end up so hungry that you do overeat in the evening and invisible ways. It's not enough nutrients to, you know, build muscle. And muscle is really how you keep your metabolism ticking along, especially as we age.

Uh, so 1200 calories, isn't it? That, that's the calorie count for like my three year old niece, that's how many calories a day she should be eating. So not a grown woman. Unless of course, you're, I don't know, Sue Ellison, you're like 4 foot 10 and you're, you know, an older age. Like she doesn't need a ton of calories and I'm quite sure she probably doesn't eat a ton of food because she's just like an adorable tiny little thing. Um, I'm six feet tall and I'm super active and 1200 calories a day would be insane. Lots of bad things start to happen if you do that. Your hair falls out, you start to lose muscle, you start to lose bone, you start to have low energy. It's depressing.

You compromise your gut health. Like, we're not going there. Nuance is very hard to portray on social media. And you know, anywhere the nuance is that yes, 1200 is too low, but most Americans are actually over consuming calories and our food environment is high calorie, low satiety. You just, we know that that's what restaurants tend to sell. It's what snack foods are. It's what, you know, most of our food environment, kind of the ultra processed food stuff. And so once you know that, you can start to push up against it.

And most women, I find this, really feel like they are going to gain weight if they're full, which is a Little bit getting at what you said. Like, you look at that plate of food that I put on Instagram, most of those plates of food are, like, between 300 and 400 calories. Like, they're not even that many calories. But I'm really good at getting a lot of food packed into 400 calories so that you can experience satiety, but also the nutrient density part of it. It's a lot of color, a lot of veggies, a lot of fiber, you know, the right amount of protein, that kind of thing. And I think that's a really. It. It's a worth thinking about.

Wow. I have been programmed to feel healthy when I'm hungry and to feel like I'm doing things right if I'm hungry and that if I'm satisfied and full, then I'm going to gain weight. That's a very real fear. And it's not just for people who have an eating disorder. It's. I would say it's pretty typical for all American women. So you hit on it.

Stephanie Hansen:

We're always trying to balance not only for our. Our health, for ourselves, but also our partners, our children. You know, a lot of women are the caregivers, and we're putting this food out there.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yeah.

Stephanie Hansen:

And wanting to also, like, I don't want. Just speaking for myself, I don't want food to be, like, depressing, not fun. Like, also creating an environment where food can be celebration and all those things. How, like, okay, so I know you're coaching all these women and they're having all this success because they're feeling more full, they're eating more well balanced, they're following your formula. But then it feels like real life enters in sometimes and we have that third glass of wine, or we're going out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night. My challenge, like, I could never calorie count because if I go to dinner at a good place on a Friday night, the calories in that food, I know I can't even keep track of because they put so much butter in it. Or it's just you. You don't know how restaurant food is made and why it tastes so good.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

And all those things you fear are true.

Yes. It's so true. I have that conversation actually with my clients because we strategize around. Okay. There's a couple of ways you can approach it. One, if you are going out for dinner too often, obviously it's a little bit of a job hazard for someone like you and our friend group. But if you're eating out too often then then you're going to have to make some decisions about the food that you order in restaurants that are probably more restrictive than what I would tell someone if they were going out for dinner every other week. Right.

Like if you're going out for dinner, you know, once every couple of weeks and you really are hungry and you want to go to Bar La Grassa and get pasta, then go do that, enjoy it, it's fine. If you, if you are made this other decision, like you're going to eat out a lot and you have health goals that you want to meet, then you're going to have to strategize a little bit more thoroughly about how you approach eating in restaurants. Because everything you said is just true. Like their job is to coax as much fat and sodium into a dish so that you crave it and you want to come back for it. Like they're in the midst of selling food, which is fine. But when you know that, then you can kind of plan around it. So one way that we strategize and again, it comes down to very individual, you know, response. Which is why I don't really do a lot of group coaching.

I really do one on one coaching because everybody's so different. Like the group stuff. Teaching a course has been amazing and gives a good overview, but this is where we kind of get into this nitty gritty and make a decision. Okay, I am going out for dinner. The old way is to try to save up the calories and not eat much during the day and then try to be moderate at dinner. Well, good luck with that because those meals, you know, if you had a per bite calorie count, it would be really high, let's say. And even if you did, you know, a pretty good job of ordering like, you know, some protein, some veggies, you know, had only two glasses of wine, let's say, kind of a thing, you're still going to end up blowing past where you would want to be, especially if you didn't eat anything earlier in the day. So what I like to have people do is take a look at the satiety formula, eat the real breakfast.

Because what you eat for breakfast has a huge influence of how hungry you are at 4 in the afternoon. So eat the breakfast, eat the lunch, have a snack that is, you know, that same balance of things where it's protein, it's some carbs and it's some colorful veggies because then you're turning up the volume on your own satiety and that gives you natural discipline, like when you're full and you arrive at the restaurant, and let's say I'll just use the parallel example of someone taking a GLP1 medication, which is much more powerful, as we've said. But if you're taking a GLP1 and you're not hungry, you're not going to overeat at the restaurant. So let's back it up to the person who's just using food to create satiety. If you show up at a restaurant and you're not starving, you are going to have discipline that you wouldn't have otherwise. You're going to be able to make better decisions and then you're going to have the knowledge, okay, well, I'm going to have a pretty high fat meal, right? I'm going to do steak, I'm going to do roasted veggies. Then in that case, I tell women, you can probably back off on the carbs in that meal. I'm not saying be keto and low carb and, you know, go eat like a stick of butter for dinner.

But when you're doing a good job, most of the meals, most of the days, when you get to a restaurant, if you still enjoy it, maybe skip the carbs because a lot of them aren't that great. It's like you can have rice at home. Is that that special thing about this restaurant? Fries? Sometimes they're amazing. They're like my favorite food. But if they're marginal, I am not going to eat crappy fries. Like, that's not going to be my thing. I'm going to focus on having, you know, a great burger. And I'm gluten free.

Gluten free buns are bad. And so if I get a burger, I just get a really great burger. I probably get cheese on it, I get an amazing salad. I eat those two things together, skip the fries or just have a couple. And I love that meal. It's special. It's much richer and kind of more fun than anything I would make for myself at home. And it's going to work.

And so that's the way you can kind of strategize. And that means nuance. That means that calories matter, but we don't have to completely obsess over them and count points and, you know, try to estimate, you know, the calories in, you know, whatever, a plate of pasta, bar la grassa, which would be impossible and also might really freak you out. And so you just have to write, have, have knowledge. And so when I do have people track, but I have them track in order to, to create and plan. So I have their track ahead of times. Like you're about to eat breakfast, use an app to create a meal that's going to fit the formula. And the app can help you do that because it's just a database full of, you know, tons of food and tons of info about food.

So what, does that make sense?

Stephanie Hansen:

Yeah, it does. It's exactly the opposite of what I do because I starve.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

I noticed it like when, when I was writing more about restaurants in the Twin Cities and I learned pretty fast. If I show up at a restaurant starving, it is like, you know, game on, and it's not going to work. It works a lot better if I show up and I'm like normal hungry for dinner and I make the effort to eat some salad first, eat some veggies first, start with protein way, play down the carbs and you know, and if I'm going to have something to drink, I'm probably going to go for a glass of wine versus a cocktail because the cocktail is just going to have so many more calories in it. So. Yeah, because calories matter. So it's like that's the nuance. If you think that calories don't matter, then you're completely losing the script. But if you're completely obsessed with them and you try to restrict yourself, down, down, down, down, down, that's going to backfire and fail too.

So we're aiming in that middle place.

Stephanie Hansen:

I, I love this about you, that you're very moderate in your approach and there's room for error and there's room for Oops. Fell off the wagon last night. Like, let me get back started this next morning. What apps do you like for people?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yeah, I really. Whatever one people enjoy using. So I have a lot of clients that used to do Weight Watchers. The Weight Watchers app used to be completely worthless because you couldn't see the macronutrients on it. You couldn't see protein, carbs and fiber and fat. Now you can. Like they've updated the app. So I have.

If you are a person who's really comfortable in the Weight Watchers app, then there's no need to switch, you know, to something else. Some people pay for MyFitnessPal, that's fine and great. The free My Fitness Pal isn't so helpful. It's really hard to see what you're doing. I have clients use Carb Manager if they've never used an app before because it's free. And it's like so easy to use. The database is fantastic. The caveat with that is you can tell by the name that it's meant for people who are really obsessed with carbs.

Maybe they have diabetes, they're doing keto, we don't use it that way. So we have to go in and change the settings to custom and then plug our formula that we map out for people in it. And then they know, they're like, okay, this is how many grams of protein I need to be aiming for in a meal. And the way you figure that out is by putting, you know, okay, I'm thinking about having two eggs and a couple of chicken sausages and you know, some of this Dave's killer bread toast and, and some strawberries. Where does that get me? And then, you know, okay, well that's not quite there. How can I change it? And then we work on changing it so that you really get that satiety with little tweaks.

Stephanie Hansen:

What is a typical client of yours look like?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yeah, there kind of isn't one, which I think is so fun. I mean, I've had women, I've had moms who've bought coaching for their 20 year old daughters. How fun is that to have a mom who wants their daughter to ignore diet culture and understand. And I love coaching those young women because they are, they catch on so fast and, and, and then all of their friends want to know what they're doing and all of a sudden they're telling their friends how to do things differently. And they're, you know, they're just a health conscious group of people. They're drinking a lot less, they're already kind of working out, they're great about water, you know, and they have their little Stanley cups and they take them everywhere. It's very fun. I have clients who are in their 80s who are, you know, definitely not perimenopausal, but who are really wanting to not be frail and who do not want to lose their independence and their mobility.

And that is really fun because talk about a generational shift in how to eat, just very, very different. And then the majority are probably somewhere between the age of 40 and 65. Mostly women who are experiencing perimenopausal symptoms or menopause and starting to gain weight, feel like they don't know why and really want to like, stop. So that's, that's the majority. And then, and then I've got, you know, women who are, I've probably got, I don't know, six clients Right now who are taking Ozempic, and they want to make sure that they're really covering their basis with nutrition, because Ozempic is a pretty miraculous medication. But you can also screw it up. I mean, if you just don't eat, then you're going to create a mess. And so all of the ways that I talk about eating like that satiety formula, absolutely applies to Ozempic.

You have to make sure you're eating enough protein, you have to make sure you're eating fiber. You have to get that. You have to work to get the nutrition in when you're not that hungry.

Stephanie Hansen:

So, yeah, and, and when you look at what, what do you think gets someone to the point where they hire a coach about nutrition?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

I love this question. I just, I asked ChatGPT this question the other day, like, I was having a conversation with our friend Tracy Morgan, because we were talking about women who are, you know, even if they're getting laid off from a job, they will still go get their hair done. They will still get Botox. They will still, you know, those are essential. What makes. I'd love your feedback on this, frankly. What makes. Because you're an amazing marketer, what makes your health and nutrition feel as essential as, like, getting your nails done, getting your hair done in skin care, where you will absolutely, you know, budget however much that is for you and, and keep it vital.

And, and I think the answer in terms of people that hire me is that they, they, they just realize that their same groove repeated is not working. You know, they've like, given it their all. They have decided to join a gym, they have decided to eat more protein, and it isn't getting them where they wanted to. And the promise of doing those things is not showing up. And they realize, okay, I do need a little bit more information than just work out and eat protein.

Stephanie Hansen:

And I feel like we're for sure in recessionary times, but no one has called it that yet.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Oh, God. For sure. Yes.

Stephanie Hansen:

The way that people are spending money is shifting the way that people are. I mean, food is costing 30% more, so that's part of it and also what we value. So I guess the answer to that is to see yourself as worth it because you prioritize your kids, you'll prioritize your dog, you'll prioritize basically everything in your life before yourself. If you're like most women that I know.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Yep, I think that's absolutely it. And I think there is fear. There's fear of the food being depressing or feeling Restrictive. There's fear of, you know, being told to go do super hardcore workouts. There's fear of the loss of, you know, a whole time in your life where you didn't have to care about this stuff and now you have to start. And grief and shame around all of it. And all I can say is that it's. It's none of those things like it is.

And then there's also guilt. There is the guilt of focusing on yourself. That one we are going to do. We are going to create a focus on you and your health. Sometimes it brings up some, you know, conflict with a partner. You know, if you've got a partner who likes to eat a certain way and all of a sudden you're wanting to make some shifts that can be in the mix. There's. We have very deep conversations about the fact, you know, I've got some women who have had a terrible relationship, not a terrible relationship with their mom, but a terrible conversation, a lifetime conversation with their mom about their weight, a mom critical of their weight and critical what they're eating.

And they just don't even want to open Pandora's box. They don't want to look inside and see the grief there. And so I understand all of those reasons, but that's why I try to make it really fun and very doable. I mean, the formula piece really kind of came out of me just constantly challenging myself. What can I offer that can tell you exactly what to do? Yeah, and I love do it is up to you.

Stephanie Hansen

I feel like a book is coming for you too. I don't know if you're thinking about it, but I'd love to see, like, the plates and the size of portions and like, really taking this formula to the next level. Of course I'm always thinking about books because that's what I do.:

Stephanie A. Meyer:

But, yeah, I'm not. I'm not super dying to write a book. I gotta say, so hard.

Stephanie Hansen:

Stephanie, if people want to hire you as a nutritional coach, how do they do that? Because I know a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast and want more information.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Oh, I love it. Thank you for having me. I miss you. This is really same laughing, awesome. So I would say, I mean, a couple different ways. One, I am stephanie.ameyer on Instagram, and that's a great way to reach out to me. And I post these meals that we're talking about almost every day to help people. My substack is the Project Vibrancy newsletter.

You can definitely reach me there. And then my Blog Fresh Tarts. You can reach me there. So I'm pretty easy to find, actually. I'm kind of all over the place. But yeah, send me a note through Instagram or reach out through substack, I would say are the two best ways. Plus you can see a lot of how I think and talk about food and share recipes and all of that is happening in both of those places.

Stephanie Hansen:

And one last question, because we talked about budgeting and that people don't prioritize themselves. Is there, if someone was going to budget for you in their life to make some substantial changes, like is there a weekly or a monthly just sort of cost that people can plan for so they can put the emphasis back on themselves?

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Right. So in a few different ways, I mean, I. If someone is really wanting to make a shift and they've been failing, I really just recommend coaching with me because everything is included with that. I include my course, which is where we learn about menopause and perimenopause and what that means for nutrition. I include the project, pregnancy, meal plans, all sorts of other recipes, everything else. And then we meet and talk about where you are, your age, your activity level, whatever. And it's very affordable. It's like 100 bucks an hour.

But I include all the other things and I do four sessions. If someone think about that because like.

Stephanie Hansen:

My Gym membership is $225 a month, so I can play pickleball eight times a month.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

I mean that is exactly it. It's like. And I have several clients who continue on with me. You don't have to, but because we develop this relationship and I hold people accountable and then that can go on. I do meal plans. If people just want meal plans, that can happen. And that's a monthly fee of like $25. And it's just an entrepreneur so cheap and, and save so much money.

That's the really fun thing about meal planning, especially with grocery costs, is that, you know, we. I forget what percentage of American food ends up in the trash. It's a third. And it's probably true for a lot of people's refrigerators too. And so when you meal plan, that is a great thing. You really do. Less takeout, any throwaway, a lot less food.

Stephanie Hansen:

I love it.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

So those things are those, those things are possible. So yeah, I've got different ways. And then of course I suggest for a lot of people two other things. One, a lot of health plans cover nutrition coaching. And so I generate a receipt for people. You get reimbursed and that is free, then free. Obviously not free, but you know what I mean. And then if you use PayPal, Shop Pay, I've got a lot of people who pay in installments, and then you just spread the fee out over.

So anyway, it's all of those things. And I love the question about where do you prioritize the cost of your health? Not just on the healthcare side, where things are going wrong, but on the prevention side, where it's going.

Stephanie Hansen:

Right, Right.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

And that's just a question we can leave people with to ponder.

Stephanie Hansen:

Okay. I love it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm gonna put this podcast up. I'm gonna present it on Friday. I'm gonna release it. I'm gonna put the show notes in.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Beautiful.

Stephanie Hansen:

Just keep on keeping on. I just was moved by what you wrote, and it was so clear, and it just really struck home with me. And I thought people need to hear this message. So thanks for joining me today.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Thank you so much. I love it.

Stephanie Hansen:

We'll talk soon. Okay, bye.

Stephanie A. Meyer:

Bye.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

I popped on today to plan, prep, and cook for my gal pal's dinner party. Of course, I wasn't prepared, and my mini chopper would not work, but…

We prepped some great dishes for my ladies’ dinner party.

The Menu

* Bootleggers - the Minnesota Cocktail

* Miso Glazed Salmon (exclusive Substack recipe here)

* Roasted Potatoes with a garlic scape, basil pesto drizzle on a bed of yogurt cream (1/3 cup cottage cheese - 1/3 cup whole fat Greek yogurt- 1/4 cup chopped pickles - 1/4 cup feta cheese, 3 Tbsp Feta brine, one teaspoon kosher salt, blended until smooth)

* Roasted Pepper and white bean salad with basil and balsamic (exclusive Substack recipe here)

* Green salad with hard-boiled eggs and lemon vinaigrette

* Zukes and Squash gratin (Recipe from True North Cabin Cookbook Vol. 1)

* Plum Fruit Buckle

Miso Glazed Salmon

Ingredients:

* 8 (4-6-ounce) skin-on salmon fillets, about 1-inch thick

* 2 teaspoons Kosher salt

* Freshly ground black pepper

* 3 Tbsp honey

* 1/4 cup Hikari minute miso

* 3 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

* 3 teaspoons soy sauce

* 1 garlic clove, grated on a microplane

* 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions:

Preheat oven to Broil

In a small bowl, whisk together the salt, pepper, honey, miso, vinegar, soy, garlic, and ginger.

Arrange the salmon skin side down on a sheet pan.

Brush the mixture over the salmon. Let marinate for 20 minutes while the oven comes to temperature.

Broil until the salmon is opaque and cooked through and the glaze is toasted, about 6 minutes. Internal temperature should be about 135-140

Roasted Pepper and White Bean Salad with Basil and Balsamic

Ingredients:

4 peppers

2 cans of cannellini beans, drained

1/3 cup Basil leaves torn into pieces

1/3 cup olive oil

3 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Instructions:

Roast 4 peppers -Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Place 4 whole bell peppers (any color) on a sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil, and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the peppers are blackened and collapsed. Remove the peppers from the oven and let them cool.

Carefully peel away the skins and discard the core and seeds. Pull into 1/4 inch strips

Drain beans and add to peppers in a large bowl

Tear Basil and add to bowl

Mix the vinaigrette and add to the beans

Let sit for 30 minutes at room temperature, marinating before serving

Variations to consider:

* Adding feta or small mozzarella balls

* Subbing oregano for Basil leaves

Here is how the dishes came out

These were the flowers I added from my Home Garden.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my live video! I will plan for more live videos if you enjoyed it.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe