In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I head to the Hudson Valley to hang out with food writer, photographer, gardener, forager, and fermenter Peter Barrett. He shares his Five Rules for Nurturing a Real Cooking Practice. We talk about why growing even one herb on a windowsill can change the way you think about food, why practice matters more than perfection, how to stop hiding behind cookbooks, and why taking a food Sabbath can make the rest of your week easier. It’s a conversation about cooking with intention, but also about building a life that feels more connected, more grounded, and a little less performative.

The best cooking habits are the ones that fit your actual life, not the fantasy version of it. Not everyone is going to mill flour, tend a massive garden, or spend Sunday making twelve jars of pickles, and that’s fine. Sometimes the win is roasting one chicken, growing basil in a pot, or learning three meals you can make without thinking. The point is not to turn your kitchen into a stage set for Instagram, it’s to create a rhythm that supports you. Cooking should lower the temperature of your life, not raise it. It should make your week easier, your table fuller, and your relationship to food more personal. The goal is not perfection. It’s finding a way of feeding yourself that feels sustainable, satisfying, and yours.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

Today, I head up to the Hudson Valley to sit down with food writer, photographer, gardener, forager, and fermenter, Peter Barrett, who’s here to share his 5 Rules for Nurturing a Real Cooking Practice.

He talks about how growing just one thing can change your perspective on life, that there is no excuse for giving up on yourself in the kitchen without loads of practice, and that being gentle on yourself when it comes to cooking is a real recipe for success.

This is a great interview for anyone who’s looking to get started in the kitchen or for anyone who’s hit a lull and looking to find some new inspiration.

So let’s get into the rules.

Peter’s Journey

Peter, so good to see you.

I can’t believe it’s already been a few months. Thanks for making time for the show.

That’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

You’ve spent decades growing and foraging and preserving, cooking as much of your own food as possible. What drives you to do this?

I was in the artwork. I moved up to the Hudson Valley from Brooklyn 20 years ago now. I put in a garden. It was one of the first things I did.

My grandfather had taught me to make pickles when I was a little kid because he was from Poland. And when he grew up, that was a survival strategy. That had nothing to do with hipsters or yuppies or anything. It was staying alive through a long, hard winter.

I just got more and more into the growing and the cooking and the fermenting. And I started to learn about mushrooms and other wild edible things.

I started writing a blog just as a sort of journal to keep track of my kitchen exploits. And then over the course of the ensuing years, I just did more and more of that.

I got one magazine gig, then another magazine gig. I’m working on a book with Dominique Crenn right now. We’re supposed to go to France next month.

So it just sort of morphed. As the art tapered off, the food thing sort of rose to meet it.

Cooking Across Countries

You’ve cooked a lot in America, in the Hudson Valley, and you’ve been able to travel to Italy and go into France with Dominique Crenn.

Country to country, do you find a difference in this type of approach of growing and preserving and really understanding the food that you eat?

It’s simplistic, but I think places that have winter have different fermentation cultures than places that don’t.

You can’t f**k around with the absence of food when the ground is frozen, of course.

If you think about Korea and Northern Europe, Eastern Europe, the pickle game is strong, and the pickle game is strong because they had to.

There’s what they call sottoglio in Italian, which is where they preserve things under oil, or sottaccetto, which is in jars of vinegar.

You wander around in most parts of Italy, south of Alto Adige, and everyone has a garden that’s more or less year-round.

It’s a different approach to preservation. It’s less mandatory and baked into the cuisine, if that makes any sense.

Why Sharing Matters

One of the things I’ve loved about your writing and your storytelling is that you really want to share this knowledge with people across the world and people who want to get into this type of practice themselves.

Why is that so important to you to share this knowledge and to teach people that they can get started, even if it seems daunting at first?

Honestly, because I’m sitting here right now talking to you on the basis of my self-guided passion.

I am driven to learn about food because I love it, because it fascinates me, whether it’s wild food, domestic food, different processes, transforming it with microbes or other preservation methods.

My kitchen has now taken the place of my studio. It feels the way my studio used to when I was a painter. It’s just incredibly exciting to me. It’s fun.

Food intersects with every other area of human endeavor. What’s your specialty? What’s your aptitude? What’s your passion? Food intersects with it.

And so there’s always a way to reach people by relating via food.

And I, because I’m a self-taught home cook, I can meet people where they are because I don’t speak. I mean, I speak tweezer, but I do not use tweezer, if you know what I’m saying.

Rule One: Grow Something

That democratic approach, that self-starting nature of learning to cook, the fact that you didn’t go to culinary school is so common among so many people who love food today, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for nurturing a real cooking practice.

It’s easy to look at Instagram and see these gorgeous gardens and these well manicured plots, and it can be daunting to even get started.

And your first rule talks about the idea of just making something happen with your own hands. What’s your rule number one?

Rule number one is grow something.

I have a ridiculously big garden. But if you go to the very far other end of the spectrum, you have a sunny windowsill. Grow a pot of chives, grow one thing.

Parsley doesn’t need a whole lot of light. If you’ve got a little more space, grow a few pots, even just herbs.

If you have a fire escape, you could even upgrade to a little pot of hot peppers or cherry tomatoes, which do well in containers.

Nurturing another living thing, even if you don’t have kids, even if you don’t have pets, nurturing a living thing is good for you.

I use my lawn the same way. I don’t spray anything because it’s insanity to spray poison on your lawn.

Dandelions are one of my favorite examples of wild food that everybody understands, everybody recognizes it, and they’re really f*****g good to eat and good for you.

A lot of what I come to share about food is that all these win-win scenarios involving simplicity, frugality, ancient technologies for preservation that also add nutritional value, and they connect you to your food.

Connecting you to your food is a way to further your own human connection.

So if you can start from nothing to something, grow one more thing than you currently are growing.

Rule Two: Practice

Getting started is definitely a big first step. Growing the one thing, making bread once, trying out your pickle recipe once is a great way to get involved with your own kitchen and your own life and live with more intent.

The problem is that if you fail once or even twice or even five times, there is that desire to give up.

Your rule number two talks about the importance about keeping at it.

Practice.

There’s a reason why doctors and lawyers and yogis, it’s the word practice to describe what they do.

Definitionally, it means there’s no destination. It’s only journey.

It’s a really important perspective to have when you come to cooking.

You can learn a lot in your 70, 80 years as a home cook.

There’s a lot to be said for the kind of discipline that puts you in the kitchen every day that you can physically get in there.

And there are lots of ways you can make really good food for yourself.

Making a commitment to honor yourself and the people whose health and wellbeing you’re at least partially responsible for by showing up in your own kitchen and doing what it takes to supply your kitchen with the ingredients that you need to make healthy, wholesome food.

Rule Three: Ween Yourself off Cookbooks

The idea of creating this safe space in your kitchen is a really good practice.

And my kitchen’s full of cookbooks, which I love to go to and to read and gather for inspiration.

Same.

But at some point I go, all right, I got to get my nose out of this. I got to cook. I got to make these recipes work for me, which is a big part of your rule number three.

Wean yourself off of cookbooks.

I think of cookbooks as somewhere between training wheels and sheet music.

There’s a lot of knowledge that is assumed in your average cookbook.

I think that as a home cook, finding ways to give yourself that knowledge by first and foremost, giving yourself the permission to fail is really the only way to do it.

And that goes back to the practice thing, right?

If you show up every day, yeah, baking bread is not always easy.

When I teach baking, I tell people, if you can commit to baking 10 times in the next two months, you are then forgiven for giving up on it.

But you gotta do it 10 times in the next two months.

Try to get it into your muscles. Try to get it into your life.

Understand the rhythms, in my case, usually sourdough, and how you can factor that in given job and school and other stuff you have to do.

You can let it hang out in the fridge for long periods. So it’s very forgiving.

Then if you still don’t like it or you can’t make it work, you have my permission to give up.

But you can’t just do it once and f**k it up and say, I’m not a baker.

Recipes are great. Use a recipe the first time, then try and do it using the force the next time.

Or try to substitute something the next time.

Understanding that this is going to behave in a similar way because it’s related to that. It has similar properties.

Then you’re cooking the way these mythical grandmas that everyone likes to invoke are cooking.

Rule Four: Observe a Food Sabbath

I found that once I’ve gone on a long stretch of cooking, especially if I’m doing something big for the holidays, I need a break because I get tired or I’ll get lazy and I’ll make a mistake or I’ll do shortcuts.

And taking that break and giving yourself the permission to not have to cook everything is a fundamental value of rule number four.

You have to be gentle with yourself.

We all have to be gentle with ourselves and each other.

Take a break, order something. It’s totally fine.

My fourth rule, rather, is observe a food Sabbath.

That can mean taking a break from cooking, but in my case, honestly, I refer to it as a day where you turn off media and you spend a day or half a day in your kitchen front-loading the labor for a week’s worth of healthy home cooking.

Let’s say you roast a chicken. Let’s say you cook a pot of beans. Let’s say you bake a loaf or two of bread.

Maybe you make a jar of something pickled that’s local and fresh at the time.

And then fill in the blanks, a couple other things maybe. Just simple, make a jar of jam if it’s that season or whatever.

And by the end of even just a few hours, this sounds daunting, but these things don’t take a lot of work and a lot of them happen to you concurrently.

By the end of that period, you’ve connected with the ingredient.

And so you have all this beautiful custom control at a nuanced level.

Rule Five: No F*****g AI

I love this idea of putting down technology and just getting in the kitchen.

Your fifth and final rule talks about ignoring this other rising technological advancement. What’s your rule number five?

Rule number five is no f*****g AI.

Every day we learn more about how horrendous it is for every living thing.

I’m not disputing that maybe it helped you do your taxes this year. You know, fine. Sure. Zygazunt, I don’t give a s**t about that.

What I’m talking about is the fact that we know that this tool is using water and electricity that human beings need to live. And it is sucking it up at increasingly voracious and unsustainable rates.

We know that relying on it makes us dumber. It causes cognitive impairment.

Robots don’t understand food, understand anything about humanity, even though they’ve gotten really good at sounding like they’re conscious and they’re talking to you, they’re not.

They’re probability models. They only know what words are most likely to follow the word before it.

It’s not a brain. It’s not an entity, it’s an algorithm.

It doesn’t like you, it doesn’t care about you, it is not conscious, and it’s trying to kill us all.

So keep it the f**k out of your kitchen.

Closing

I’m gonna leave us on that passionate note.

Peter, it is so good to see you and to hear from you.

If people want to follow your writings, your adventures, get some intentional cooking tips from you, where can they go?

Things on Bread is one of the two newsletters. Flavor Freaks is the other one. And I am cookblog on Instagram.

Incredible.

Well, thank you, Peter. Appreciate you making the time.

Definitely going to be doing some front-loading cooking in the next few weeks so I can have a much easier and more relaxing time in the kitchen during the week.

I like it.

And Darin, thank you so much. I like your show and I’m thrilled to be part of it.

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Harry Posner and Natalie Dial of Tomat, a restaurant that doesn’t just talk about seasonality, it lives it. We get into what it actually takes to grow your own ingredients while running a restaurant, from the early mistakes to the unexpected wins. They break down their Five Rules for Having Your Own Restaurant Garden, including why experimentation matters more than perfection, how to think realistically about what you can grow, and what it means to truly close the loop on waste. It’s practical, a little obsessive, and exactly the kind of conversation that makes you rethink where your food comes from.

There’s something deeply grounding about growing even a small piece of what you eat. It shifts your understanding of time, effort, and value in a way no delivery app ever will. You don’t need a full backyard or a restaurant budget to start. A simple planter box with herbs on a windowsill or balcony is enough. Basil, thyme, parsley, things you actually use. You water it, you cut from it, you watch it come back. That loop, small as it is, changes how you cook and how you think about food. It makes dinner feel earned in the best way.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Harry Posner and Natalie Dial, the chef and CEO, respectively, of LA’s Tomat. Located in the Westchester part of the city, Tomat has the distinct pleasure of being here on the LA Times 101 Best Restaurant List and was named one of Esquire’s Best New Restaurants in America.

They share their five rules for having your own restaurant garden and talk about the importance of experimenting with the produce you plant, understanding the ratio to reality of what you can grow and consume in the restaurant, and give you the perfect timing to plan for each growing and eating season.

It’s a fantastic conversation for anyone who’s fantasized about having their own garden, either at a restaurant or at home, and the desire to grow what you eat. So let’s get into the rules.

Meeting the Guests

Harry, Natalie, it is so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time before your impending bundle of joy comes to join us in the world.

We’re so glad to be here. Thanks for having us. Thank you very much.

The Origin of Tomat

It’s easy to say that most chefs or restaurateurs, especially in California, are driven by farm fresh ingredients from the market. You literally named your restaurant with a nod to one of California’s most famous pieces of produce. Why go all in on this concept.

It wasn’t even really inspired by the piece of produce itself, other than Harry and I both have that nickname, had it growing up serendipitously, independently of each other, because we turned red in the sun and looked like tomats or tomatoes. However, the official, the initial line before we were like, actually, the fun reason is a way better explanation, was that we are going to grow our own stuff.

We’re in California. We’re using as much local farmer’s market produce as possible. And our logo is a slice of tomato with a stem, the seeds. And we’re trying to show you we’re growing, we’re getting the best stuff. That’s why we’re Tamar.

Why Grow Your Own Ingredients

The dedication to the bit is something that we are very big on here at Five Rules. You guys are also very dedicated to growing your own produce, vegetables. Why is it so important to you to go that early and deep into the process of the ingredients you bring into the restaurant.

We work with some of the most amazing farmers, and there are some absolutely amazing people here that really work alongside us, especially when curating a menu.

My upbringing, being born in LA, then moving to England, my parents wanted to grow all of their own vegetables. I remember as a kid, we would go around and pick all the loquats and we had a loquat tree where we used to live. And it’s just so much fun. Now that we’ve got kids, you want to indoctrinate them in growing to show you what produce you have and how good it can be.

The Value of Growing Even One Thing

Restaurateurs these days are faced with so many challenges. Some might not even be able to make it to the farmer’s market while they’re spinning all these different plates in the air. The idea of starting and making your own garden can seem even more daunting than just running a regular restaurant. Why do you think it’s important to grow at least one thing so it can supply at least one thing to a restaurant.

It shows you how much effort goes into producing that one thing. I love that.

In the grand scheme of things, we have a tiny little plot. You think, okay, how can I get the most benefit. If I have a three feet by three feet plot, okay, I’ll just have things that grow upwards. I’m not going to plant one carrot, but maybe if I plant a bushel of parsley or thyme, that’ll be more than I’ll ever need.

So you just think how much effort goes into it and why the prices of certain things are so much at the farmer’s market, and why being in California, we have access to some of the best produce in the world.

Rule #1: Experimentation

I love how dedicated you are to this practice of growing your own ingredients, but then also encouraging others to do the same, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for having your own restaurant garden.

You touched on it a little bit earlier. Having access to LA’s farmer’s markets will give you access to some of the best strawberries, oranges, kale, apples that you may not feel you need to grow because at best you might just match their quality, which frees you up for your rule number one.

Our rule number one is experiment experimentation. We wanted to have a little plot that, yes, we’ll have some things that are maybe more staples, like the herbs that we can always continue to pick year round, but we have varieties of citrus, pomegranate, berries that even our favorite berry guy at the farmer’s market is like, oh, I’ve never had that and never grown that.

And now I’m being like, oh, well, we grew it here. You can grow it there. Do you want to grow it for us. And he’s like, yeah, let’s do it. And that is actually our Logan berries.

That’s incredible. When we moved from London, what blew my mind about the farmer’s markets there is that you could get way hotter chilies than you ever can here, which feels kind of ironic. And then they have this green called a spring green, which is this bizarre mix of a cabbage and a kale that I have never found anywhere near a green as good here. I’ve been obsessed with it since.

We have seeds. And one of our farmers is growing it for us. Incredible produce.

Rule #2: Grow in Feasible Quantities

Once you get a year or two of growing your own produce and actually having the doors open to your restaurant, you’ll have an idea of what people are eating, what they’re drawn to, but then also how much you need to grow so that you are balancing it out with the space you have and what you want to plant and what people are actually going to eat, which is a component of your rule number two.

Rule number two, grow in feasible quantities. The garden itself has been in the works, shall we say, for the last five years. Essentially, since we moved out here, there was one year the restaurant was stuck in plan check. We were testing a few different things. We put in a whole row of cucumbers.

Sure, we may have grown around 400 pounds of cucumbers that year. That’s a lot of pickles. A lot of pickles and a lot of bribery to neighbors, to friends. I don’t think there are enough people who eat cucumbers in our neighborhood.

We can grow a good amount of stuff like herbs. We can use a ton of herbs. Being able to just like, oh, we’re out of herbs. Let’s run to the garden. And pomegranate, we have one pomegranate tree. We get five pomegranates from it this year. It’s still in development.

You just need to be aware that certain things can go crazy. If I’m producing 1000 pounds of kale, am I going to eat 1000 pounds of kale. Maybe.

Rule #3: Close the Loop

That idea of not wanting to waste anything at a restaurant, especially when you’re growing, it does weigh heavily on a lot of conversations these days about creating a system that can support itself, which plays a role in your rule number three.

Rule number three is, if you have a garden, use it to try to close the loop on your own waste in whatever house or restaurant you’re in. That was an ethos that we had from the beginning, before we opened, before we even started the concept of the garden or of Tamat. We wanted everything to be as sustainable as possible.

And of course that starts with food practices within your kitchen. So of course, all of our food scraps are composted. We have coffee in the morning. All of our grounds go right into the garden. We even compost our menus.

We need all sorts of different types of composting materials. You have a lot of things that get wet as they start to break down, and then you need a bit of dry. Our menus, we print them every day because things change so much. It also helps us think about, can we reuse these vegetable or fruit scraps for something else.

And oftentimes they go right into our cocktail program for infusions. We’ve also noticed that our black trash bin doesn’t smell nearly as bad when we’re separating things out, so it feels like we’re doing it right.

Rule #4: Get Involved in Urban Planning

Doing it right and planning the design of your garden is a lot of times where people get really intimidated. Your fourth rule talks about why it is important to get involved with that process. What’s your rule number four.

Our rule number four is get involved in urban planning. And I get why that’s intimidating, and it feels like, how do you possibly get a foot in the door.

We started with this piece of land before we even ripped the concrete out. It was a disused car lot for the airport rental vehicles, and it just looked like an absolute trash yard. We sent soil out to labs to get tested. It all came back as if it were just sterile. Nothing had leeched through, thank God, but also there was just no sign of life.

For the past seven decades, it had been the other end of the spectrum. Exactly. The big thing with gardens is how do you water it. It’s a very expensive thing if you’re using potable water.

And on Westchester Parkway, which is a huge boulevard parallel to the runway at LAX, all of that is watered and irrigated with the purple pipeline that is recycled water from Hyperion. Exactly. So we’re one block away from where that stops. And we were like, we have to get that water.

It has nutrients in it, great for what we’re growing. It feels like a really important thing to do in terms of sustainability and our own economic costs of what’s going into this garden, but also advocating for other plots of land around Sepulveda and where we are to have access to that too.

So we, it took a long time, but we worked with the city, DWP, got our council people involved and got that pipe extended across Sepulveda. That’s incredible. It was really fun once we got it done. Once we got it done, it was amazing.

Rule #5: Plan Six Months Ahead

Being able to think about options and different ways of planning and approaching how to grow your own garden at a restaurant is also a giant part of the process. Your fifth and final rule talks about putting in that mental effort while looking further down the road. What’s your rule number five.

Rule number five is plan six months ahead. Add it to the list. Just think constantly about what you’re doing in the future. You have to. If you want to harvest something in September, you’ve got to plant it in January, February.

We’re very much telling all of our chefs, do you guys want to plant anything. What do you remember growing up with cooking with or something that we don’t know about that your parents used to make for you all the time. Give us some thoughts on what you want to add to the menu.

And we’ve had chefs be like, hey, I got these seeds from grandma or whoever. There was actually a guy who was hanging out really early morning by the garden. He sees me and he’s like, this is the most amazing thing I’ve seen. Here, I’ve got some chiltepin pepper seeds. I want to give them to you to try and grow. They’re the native of Chile to North America.

Incredible. We want to be planting and harvesting in six months time. It gives inspiration to our staff, to our bar program, to everyone in the restaurant and be like, okay, it’s a super seasonal restaurant, but we’re also growing our own stuff and I can have an effect on what we grow and have a little bit of ownership in this whole program when they’re like, oh, this is what you planted for me and now we’ve got it.

Closing

Really really fun. It’s such a beautiful idea, this intent to grow and to support your restaurant and the workers there and the creativity. Harry, Natalie, congratulations on everything.

If people want to come by the restaurant, see what you’re growing in the garden, just follow along with what you’re up to, where can they go.

You can go to our website, tomat.la, or follow us on Instagram at tamat.la, or you can just come right in.

Well, I will be crossing town very soon to come have a meal with you and to walk through your lovely garden. See you soon.

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with journalist, screenwriter, and author Ella Quittner, whose new book, Obsessed with the Best, digs into what it means to care deeply about what you make. We get into her Five Rules for Telling a Good Story, from finding your angle to chasing the emotional gut punch, and why approaching every subject with humanity is non-negotiable. Ella breaks down how she moves between journalism, fiction, and food writing without losing her voice, and shares the practical ways she builds stories from scratch, even when the idea isn’t fully there yet. It’s a conversation about process, discipline, and the reality of making something worth reading.

I love this episode because it cuts through the romantic version of writing and gets into the actual work. Ella is deep in it, doing the reps, figuring it out in real time, and she’s generous enough to explain how it actually happens. There’s no posturing here, just three rats in a trench coat sharing clear, usable insights for anyone who wants to write and not just talk about writing. If you’re trying to find your voice, or even understand what that means, this is the kind of conversation that gives you a way in and makes the whole thing feel possible.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with journalist, screenwriter, and author Ella Quittner, whose new book, Obsessed with the Best, is out now on HarperCollins wherever books are sold. She shares her five rules for telling a good story. She talks about the importance of approaching each story with humanity to narrow in on the gut punch of every narrative and that when you find your own voice in your own words, that’s when you’ll find real success in your writing. It is a great conversation for anyone looking to share stories they love, to elevate the words they write, and for anyone who’s thinking about writing something for the first time. So let’s get into the rules.

Meeting Ella Quittner

Ella, it is pretty crazy that this isn’t the first time we’re meeting because I feel like we have all of the same colleagues and friends in the food scene. I agree and I feel mad at them for not introducing us. I’ve been reading a lot of your work for years. What I’ve always found is that storytelling is such an essential part of what you do and what you write about.

Early Storytelling

Do you remember the first story outside of your own life that you wanted to tell? When I was a child, my sister and I used to make comic books, my older sister Zoe and I. She would illustrate Mm-hmm. really uproariously funny. Love it. That was the first story I wanted to tell, which is just being a young child, feeling humiliation, but also delight at my grandma ordering a knish at a deli.

The Emotional Duality of Writing

So much of personal writing can be humiliating and exalting. empowering and lonely. There really is this duality in that act of creativity, especially when it comes down to just you and either a computer or a pen and a piece of paper. How do you balance those juxtaposed emotions and stay motivated?

The emotions of wanting to quit and give up and feeling like a failure and self-doubt, but then also that egotistical, maybe I keep going or that thing where you have this inflated sense of the importance of what you’re doing. All those you mean? Your words, not mine, but yes.

the older i’ve gotten and the more i’ve written professionally across different fields and genres whether it’s journalism screenwriting fiction food writing cookbooks etc the more i’ve been able to learn to separate my expectations from the outcomes and not seek external validation but just try to create work that i’m proud of that goes a really long way toward letting you feel less tortured in the process because i remember being in my 20s being like oh my god i wish i was Helen Rosner i wish i was David today i’m sorry i wish i I wish I was all these people and I’m just some f*****g idiot in the East Village trying to write 400 words.

Once you embrace, why am I doing this? No one’s making me do it. It doesn’t pay well. I don’t have to be doing it. So there must be something that I think I’m uniquely bringing to it. and try and separate yourself from the outcome of anyone reading it. Is anyone going to care? I mean, you do want to add something to the conversation, but I think separating yourself from how it’s received and caring about what the reception is going to be goes a long way.

Finding that pride and ownership of what do I want to say helps because then of course you can only say it the way you know how. You can’t say it like George Saunders or Helen Ross or David Stairs. You could only say it like Darren. Or Ella. Or Ella.

Writing and the Creative Process

Being able to separate yourself from the process and the creativity and the creation is probably the most healthy attitude to have in going to releasing your debut cookbook, Obsessed with the Best. I loved it. I thought it was an excellent balance between recipes and essays and anecdotes. How did you land on the right mix to make it what you truly wanted to say?

That was a tricky balance because I’m a verbose person and there’s no limit to how deep I’ll go on a topic or how many tangents or reporting whims I’ll follow. And I will find a story in every single one of them. That’s just who I am. Of course.

Despite all best efforts. I have a very producorial brain. So knowing I have to do all this stuff. So how can I fit in the stuff I want to do, but still turn in the other stuff as well that is more time consuming or labor intensive, that’s less flashy work.

Being able to produce, being able to be your own boss and editor is such a key part to hitting any deadlines and to really getting the pieces you want out in the world and figuring out what you want to say, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for telling a good story.

Rule #1: Call Your Sister

Many of us who’ve written, especially in the food world, find themselves wanting to tell the same story that other journalists or people want to tell. Your first rule talks about the key importance of making any story your own. What’s your rule number one?

Rule number one is call your sister. Go on. This is sort of a cheeky, euphemistic way of saying it. What is your angle? You have to identify that.

This applies not just to journalism, where if you’re pitching an editor, you do have to pitch a very, very specific story. It should be an idea that you’re especially well suited to it. explore it should be built into that angle but also applies to a book a novel a television show a feature script a proposal for a cookbook it’s not enough to say i just want to explore this topic it’s an interesting topic you need a lens.

So i think about it like i’m going to call my sister and tell them a story i wouldn’t call my sister to tell her a funny story that happened at work last week and just start that conversation going hey zoe hey clementine funny story or you know work work’s a topic we should talk about right.

I would drop them into a specific scene with my specific perspective and a specific mood. And I would tell that story so that every piece of it is calibrated to set up to the punchline. I don’t think this is advice that only applies to funny stories. If I was going to call someone and tell them an emotional story, I’m going to calibrate it similarly just using different levers.

So I call it call your sister because if I’m stuck on an idea and I don’t know what the angle on my topic is, I think, okay, I’m going to call my sister. How would I tell her? I think having that angle, especially when your sister or sibling is like, I got 30 seconds for you, for you to keep my attention. Literally. Is really important.

That being said, when you do hit a certain level of career or you have a good relationship with an editor, you can pitch a little bit more topic when there’s trust that you’re going to dig into a person or a theme to find out the story that you want to tell.

Rule #2: Collect a Giant Pile of Details

Which ties directly into your rule number two. That’s true. And I will go into two, but I also think it’s worth saying you don’t want to have a preconceived conclusion when you pitch an editor. You want to have a lens and a POV and some ideas about why this might be the case. Yes. But you do want to be really open to gathering, especially in the nonfiction space, gathering a bunch of information and exploring what conclusion that leads you to.

Which does lead to rule number two. If you simply can’t identify your angle, collect a giant pile of details. If I’m having trouble figuring out the in and out of a scene or what a pilot should look like or how to structure journalism piece or what that core thesis leading into it that I want to test and report out is I will make tons of notes for myself.

Like I will scribble in a journal or an iPhone note. I will interview 15 people. The whole purpose of this reporting and brainstorming and I’ll read another book. I’ll read another article. I’ll go on Wikipedia. I’ll watch a TV show. I’ll watch a movie. It’s just trying to figure out what is jumping out as interesting and important.

And then in a secondary sense, what is supporting what is interesting and what is important. It’s also pattern identification. If you don’t know exactly what the story is, is sometimes talking to a bunch of people and realizing, okay, they’re all consumers of these new meal replacement products that look like Soylent, but kind of yassified for millennials.

And they’re all telling me that the reason they’re buying them is because they’re really overstimulated by this overconsumption, max content, hellscape we live in. And they’re all telling me that these things are saving them time. That’s helpful, right? That’s like a pattern. That’s people saying this is one reason.

It might not be the only reason. And you know, it’s only five people saying that. So it might not be the end all be all of the story, but it’s information that will help you then think, okay, that’s a backbone of what I’m putting together.

Rule #3: Approach Your Story with Humanity

Connecting your story through the way that people actually live and how they feel about it is really important. It has been said that we live in a cynical world and it’s very easy to come in with some snark or preconceived judgments and really find the negative aspect of it.

Your third rule talks about having an open heart when you go into writing. What’s your rule number three? Rule number three is approach your story with humanity.

I agree. I think it’s very easy to be judgmental or in my case, overly cynical. I do think one of the best ways you can be of service to any story is really try to understand everyone’s perspectives and have empathy or sympathy for other points of view. Agreed.

Situations are so rarely black and white. So of course, this applies to nonfiction and journalism and the people you’re interviewing. But I think it especially applies to fiction and screenwriting. I think it’s a failure to not let every character be fully formed and nuanced. Otherwise, you end up with a story that’s so one dimensional and boring, no one can relate to it.

When there is no one who can relate to an actual story, you lose the people completely.

Rule #4: Find the Gut Punch

A lot of the times when I think about writing, I think about the opening and that very classic five paragraph essay, that universal line that brings everyone in. But there is a part that comes in every narrative that is the key moment that really shows off what you’re trying to tell differently and in a unique way that no one else could.

What’s your rule number four? Rule number four is close your eyes and just imagine the gut punch. All the time. It could be this deep emotional moment where you’re tearing up. It could be a punchline. It could be a shocking reveal.

What is your intended emotional effect? Because you need to know what that is so that you can fiddle with the dials that can amplify it, tamp it down, create twists and turns, build tension and pace it in a way that we’re leading up to it before the reader wants to put it down. And then when you get to that point, have that max impact that you’re intending.

Pacing is such a huge part of writing. Every book is going to tell you a different way to pace your story and you yourself are going to find what works best for you.

Rule #5: Don’t Be Bound by Rules

It took me until college till I found my voice, which is to say for your fifth and final rule that there are many ways to tell a story. Yeah. What’s your rule number five?

Rule number five is listen to everybody’s rules and try them out, but don’t feel bound by them. Yes. Especially mine, by the way. I’m aware of the hypocrisy of this being my rule. I’m just three rats in a trench coat. I don’t know anything all your life worth. try to give you advice on becoming a better writer.

And a lot of it is fantastic. And a lot of it is coming from a good place. People really do want to help you get your ideas out there in a legible way. Of course. But there is no one size fits all to tell a story, write a write a journalism feature call your sister and tell a good story you might bring something really particular to a story that someone’s pre-existing rules might not apply to so you should feel open to that.

When you’re trying to work your way up say you’re just out of college and you want to start getting some bylines and real publications you can build up your essay of Of course, you’re going to have to follow some rules in order to climb ladders. Of course.

But if it’s a story that you’re passionate about that you’re crafting just for you, you should give yourself the freedom to do it however you want, at least in the first brush.

Closing

Ella, if people want to buy the book, check out your writing, see what you’re up to out in the world, where can they go? They can buy the book by searching Obsessed with the Best, Ella Quittner, walking into any bookstore, and they can find me on Instagram at E-Q-U-I-T-T-N-E-R.

Next time we’re in the same city, we’re going to shame all the people that didn’t introduce us by having a cup of coffee together. Congratulations on everything. I can’t wait to get my hands on a physical coffee. Thank you. And I can’t wait to have that coffee. Our mutuals will rue the day. Rue it.

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Sabrina Rudin, the force behind Spring Cafe in Aspen and New York. She is also the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, which comes out on April 28th, and shares her Five Rules for Cooking Vegetarian Food. Not trends, not rules for the sake of rules, but food that makes you feel good and keeps you coming back for more. We talk about what it actually means to cook and eat well without overcomplicating it. Skip the fake meat. Cook with what’s in season. Look outside your usual rotation. Make it satisfying. And most importantly, let the food do the talking.

What I love about Sabrina is that she doesn’t hedge. She’s not trying to trick you into eating vegetables. She’s not disguising them or apologizing for them. She cooks them like they matter, because they do. There’s confidence in that. You feel it in the way she talks about a squash or a bowl of lentils the same way someone else might talk about a steak. It’s direct, it’s honest, and it works. You leave the conversation wanting to cook, not convert. You want to make something that tastes good, fills you up, and maybe shifts how you think about what a meal can be.

Thank you to Lesley Suter & Noah Galuten for having me on Food Parents last week. We swap recipes for our kids, talk about the last wins we had in the kitchen, and I share how I sneak Red Boat Fish Sauce into everything.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz Today, I’m joined by Sabrina Rudin, who is the owner of Spring Cafe in Aspen and the author of Healthy with a Side of Happy, 100 Plant-Based Recipes to Feed Your Family. She shares her five rules for cooking vegetarian food and preaches the importance of foregoing faux meat when cooking dinner, that by experimenting with different cuisines and flavors, you will open your palate to a world of deliciousness and that just because it doesn’t have meat doesn’t mean it isn’t hearty. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s already foregone any carnivorous eating habits and for those who want to eat less meat and add a lot more vegetables to their cooking. So let’s get into the rules.

Opening Conversation

Sabrina, so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time to sit down and chat with me. Excited to have you on the show. I’m so excited to be here. Thank you for having me. We are knee deep in the Winter Olympics, which I know is something close to your heart as a former snowboard instructor. Oh, gosh. What do you love the most about being out on the slopes? I love the peace and quiet of it. I love early morning tracks, either fresh powder or a groomed run, just getting out there and seeing all the snow and the trees and being in nature. I also love the adrenaline. There’s nothing like dropping into a run on your snowboard. Both of those two things combined just really does it for me. I love getting out on the slopes. I did as a kid and just got back into it recently. And what I found that hasn’t changed is that the food that I find at the lodges can be super heavy, not the energy I need. You can’t ski after it. You found the same thing. And instead of just complaining about it, you wound up opening up your own place, Spring Cafe Aspen. Why was it so important to you to offer a different culinary option for those hitting the slopes?

The Origin of Spring Cafe

Well, I was living out in Aspen after college teaching snowboarding. I spent a lot of time there growing up. I would wake up really early to get to line up to get our lesson assignments. And then I would finish a day of skiing. All I wanted was a cozy, comforting, big bowl of food that would leave me feeling really good. I wanted a vegetarian option. Mm hmm. It’s an activity driven lifestyle. I wanted something vibrant. I wanted bright colors, cabbage and broccoli and tofu and brown rice, juices and smoothies and all the foods that I know fuel you that don’t leave you feeling bloated and tired and heavy. And I couldn’t find it. So I did complain about it. for a long time. I also drew inspiration from a lot of places in LA. I wanted a place like Cafe Gratitude or Real Food Daily. I wanted an Earth Cafe, something with a counterculture vibe and a fun, vibrant juice bar that people could gather around after a day of skiing. Everyone told me I was crazy, but I have this terrible habit that when people tell me I’m crazy and something won’t succeed, I think I should test it out. So that’s what I did. A few years later, I opened Spring Cafe and that was almost 15 years ago.

The Cookbook Philosophy

It feels like all of your lifetime experiences of cooking healthy and vegetarian food has bubbled up into your first cookbook, Healthy with a Side of Happy, which is coming out April 28th on Union Square and Co. What did you want to say with these plant-based recipes in a vegetarian-focused cookbook? I wanted to say a few things. I wanted to say, one, nobody has to be vegetarian. I eat a little bit of meat. The healthiest way to eat, no matter what fad comes and goes, is plenty of fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, seeds, grains, loaded with fiber, loaded with nutrients. So I wanted people to know that you don’t have to only eat this way, but you should know how to cook this way. And I wanted to make it simple, accessible. I just wanted it to be full of joy, hence the title, Healthy with a Side of Happy. I wanted to say to people, this is the foundation for a healthy, happy, joyful life. And you don’t have to go crazy. These are the foods that I grew up eating. This is how we prepared them in a way that always felt nourishing and joyful to me. If I can do it, you can do it because I am not a trained chef. I am a home chef learned to cook by watching my mom and then experimenting from other people’s cookbooks. Love it. There’s so much out there. Wellness has become this crazy industry. Health has become this crazy industry. Plant-based food has become an industry. But if you just could have one Bible in your home to help you live a healthier, happier, cleaner life, this is what I would give you. I love that confidence and I love that conviction and I love that curation of, I know there’s a lot out there. I’ve lived that life both outside of nature and opening a business, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for cooking vegetarian food.

Rule #1: Make Vegetables the Star

Your very first rule is one that I agree with wholeheartedly because when I want something that is plant-based, it’s not because I’m missing meat. It’s because I want the best of what I can get out of the ground. What’s your rule number one? Forget the faux meat and make vegetables the star of the show. People who want vegetarian food, you’re not trying to make it meat. You’re not trying to serve the meat. It shouldn’t taste like meat. It should taste like vegetables. When I’m cooking for people and I want to make them this beautiful vegetarian dish or meal or dinner or lunch, I don’t try to make a sausage stuffed anything. No, thank you. I choose a vegetable, a beautiful squash, and I stuff it with wild rice, with veggies. I love to make a lentil or a tempeh bolognese. There’s a recipe for that in my book. It’s fun to take a twist on a classic meaty dish and make it with vegetables. Forget the fake meat. Make vegetables the star of the show because when we talk about eating a plant-based diet, let’s eat plants and show everyone what you can do with them. There is really no better way to convince someone to consider plant-based dishes than just relying on the flavor and the realness of the dish itself. Trying to tell someone, oh, I’ve made the best version of this, or oh, you don’t need that in your dish is a surefire way to turn them off, which ties directly into your rule number two.

Rule #2: Don’t Try to Convert Everyone

My rule number two is don’t try to convert everyone. Just focus on the joy of sharing a meal. The point of everything that I do in my work with the cafe, with my social media, and really my book is food is joy. Nourishment is joy. Coming together to share a meal I think is one of the most special things we can do together as humans. Forget trying to convert or convince anyone that your way is better or that they should be eating this way. And let the food speak for itself. Cooking a meal for your kids, your significant other, your friends, your community, and just coming together around a table is really a great act of love and service. Let the food that you put down really be infused with joy, with love, and let sharing that experience be the proof in the pudding.

Rule #3: Experiment with Cuisines and Flavors

Being able to create those new experiences and opening someone’s eyes to the possibility of this type of cooking does come with exploring different cultures and cuisines and flavors. If all you’ve ever had is broccoli with Braggs again and again over brown rice, which we’ve all enjoyed... A lot of that. I’ve eaten a lot of that. It can get really stale. It can really turn someone off. Your third rule talks about opening your pantry and your ingredients to a much larger world. What’s your rule number three? My rule number three is experiment with different cuisines and flavors. My kids eat the most every meal when we do Greek night, Indian night, Thai night. Mm-hmm. Do I get it all perfectly? No. Do I really try to honor the culture that I’ve chosen to represent in the food? Yes. Do I put Bragg’s in Indian food sometimes? Yes. I’m not going to lie. It’s popular for a reason. There’s this myth. You have to make the adult the spicy version and the kid the flavorless bland version. I’ve actually found that to be incredibly untrue. My children eat garlic, turmeric, ginger, spices from the time they start solids. And to me, that’s what gets them excited about it. The beauty of experimenting with another cuisine is most people really do think American food or meat and potatoes or fish and veggies or, oh, we’re going over. She’s going to make vegetarian food. What could she possibly make? Pasta. And when I put down a meal that’s really rooted in another tradition with flavors that people aren’t used to, that’s where the excitement comes from. And I think you can show people a lot, showcase veggies in a way, stepping a little bit outside of your comfort zone. There’s a vegetarian Indian meal that I had from a Tiffin woman who cooked out of her house from the South Bay 15 years ago that I still say, if I could eat like that all the time, I’d never have another piece of meat. Exactly.

Rule #4: Shop Seasonally and Locally

Part of what made her food so incredible was the freshness, was driven by what was in season, which I know is something that’s said a million times, but it’s hard to ignore it when things taste so good. That approach to shopping and what you put in these dishes is a fundamental rule number four. My rule number four, I have to give credit, is inspired by the wonderful chef and food writer, Melissa Clark. Legend. I read her cook this now. Nearly 20 years ago when I was living in the city, I’m starting to cook on my own. She talks about going to the farmer’s market every day of the year in New York. Mm. trudging there in the dead of winter, in the snow, buying what’s in season and making a meal from it. And that really stuck with me ever since I have visited the Union Square Farmers Market in New York every week. Wednesdays and Saturdays are my days. I go rain, sleet, snow, anything. I really try to find what’s in season. I love talking to the farmers that are growing my food. I find things that you wouldn’t normally or ever find in the traditional aisles of a grocery store. Really encouraging people to shop. locally and seasonally from their local market does so much for our food ecosystem. You get kohlrabi, you get baby bok choy, you get yum choy some, and suddenly it’s not only just broccoli with Braggs. Zilling bok choy, which is a recipe I have in my book, a variety of squash that you have never tried before that’s so tender and sweet and delicious, melts in your mouth while roasted. I just like to encourage people to be excited by something different and something new. Some people get really excited about going shoe shopping. I get really excited about going veggie shopping.

Rule #5: Make It Hearty

Having that passion that started with you wanting to open Spring Cafe in Aspen all these years later has really come together to help you shape the types of recipes that you’re sharing in your book and that you want to put out in the world and ties directly into your rule number five. My rule number five is make it hearty. Stews and soups are such a great way to highlight how satiating plant-based food can be because when I first started talking about an idea for Spring Cafe in Aspen, my coworkers, my friends, everyone was like, oh, No one wants to eat salad in Aspen. Everyone wants an elk chili or a burger. And I said, well, first of all, who said anything about just salad? I don’t want a salad right now. I want a coconut curry with veggies and chickpeas. I want enchiladas. I want a lasagna. I want a sweet potato white bean burger. I want a huge breakfast burrito. I just want to feel really good after I eat it. When I first opened spring in New York, what always... filled my cup the most was when we would get tables of a few guys who were on their lunch break from work and they would order the sweet potato white bean burger or the chickpea tuna pita in the early days when we opened it I would walk around and introduce myself to everyone and thank everyone for coming in and I always loved seeing a big group of guys lick their plates clean and I would start talking them and say, do you feel satisfied or is this your first time? And they’d say, we are obsessed with it. We love it. We come every day from work. We feel so good. Our partners are so excited. We’re eating healthy. We can go to the gym and we feel really great at the end of the day after work. It might be a more typical choice to choose Chipotle or another option, all of which are great options. But if you can really show people just how satisfying, satiating it can be, that’s really how you show people that you are what you eat. healthy with a side of happy. That’s the correlation between eating good and feeling good for me.

Closing

If people want to come to the cafe, if they want to see book events you’re doing, follow along with what you’re cooking and if the content you make, where can they go? They can find me and follow along on my Instagram at Spring by Sabrina. They can come visit one of the cafes in Aspen or New York City. The best way is my website, sabrinarudin.com or my Instagram, Spring by Sabrina. Congratulations. Excited for your first book to come out into the world. Thank you. It’s such a great podcast. Thank you for having me. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for stopping by. Love to be here.

Garrett Oliver travels the way most people want to, with purpose, curiosity, and a very good palate. In this episode, the Brooklyn Brewery brewmaster and global bon vivant breaks down his Five Rules for Great Traveling. It starts before you even take off. Dress well, take care of yourself, and bring your own sense of hospitality onto the plane. From there, it is about where you land and how you move. Stay close to what matters. Use something as simple as the best baguette in Paris to guide your neighborhood. Spend time in markets, both old and new, to understand how a place actually lives. And when you find somewhere that feels right, go back. Again and again.

What I love about this conversation is how intentional it is. Garrett does not just travel often, he travels well. Every choice has a reason behind it, from what cocktail he packs on a flight to how he chooses a neighborhood to stay in. Talking to someone with that level of experience sharpens your own instincts. It reminds you that great travel is not about checking boxes, it is about paying attention. About building rituals. About knowing what matters to you and using that as your compass. This episode is a reminder that the difference between a good trip and a great one usually comes down to how much thought you put into it before you even leave.

For my latest profile for Fine Dining Lovers, Miles Thompson, the chef and co-owner of Baby Bistro in LA, took me through his three-hundred-and-twenty-six cookbook collection. He talked about the books that inspired him and how they shaped the food he serves today.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. It’s always a pleasure when I get to sit down with my friend and world-traveling bon vivant, Garrett Oliver, who is the brewmaster of the Brooklyn Brewery, author of The Brewmaster’s Table, and editor-in-chief of the Oxford Companion to Beer.

He’s here today to share his five rules for great traveling and talks about how knowing where Paris’ best baguette can be your go-to guide for where to stay, how by taking care of yourself on a flight will be the best kickoff to any trip, and that to truly understand any city, you should understand its markets.

As a first-class traveler and a lover of adventure, Garrett’s rules are the best insider insights for anyone who wants to get the most out of going abroad. So let’s get into the rules.

Catching Up

Garrett, it is so good to see you. We’ve had meals together. We’ve had adventures together. And it’s nice to sit down and chat together once again.

It has been too long, my friend. It has been too long. And the last time we saw each other was under circumstances that were a little heavy. So it’s nice to have a little sunshine and chat today.

Indeed. We think of our boy every day. Every day.

Why Travel Matters

For as long as I’ve known you, you have been gallivanting across the globe. What do you love about getting out into the world?

There’s always a new horizon, a new experience. People say to me, how do you get to have this super cool life? And it really is because I know people like yourself. I was watching recently the Star Wars series Endor, and there’s the character, and there’s a code that he’s supposed to give to somebody he’s meeting for a rendezvous. I have friends everywhere.

The booze, food, music mafia that runs worldwide. You can just basically whisper to somebody, I have friends everywhere. And you do. I saw someone asking for Neil’s list in Mexico City yesterday. And the next slide a minute later was, I got it. Don’t worry about it. I’m good. And it keeps getting updated. I think it’s 70 pages now or something. It’s very dense.

Given all your travels and your years at it, was there a moment when you felt like you had gotten mastery of how you like to see the world?

I still have a lot of places that I want to see, but last time I re-upped my global entry, they asked you to name all the countries that you have been in in the last five years. And it turned out that it was 28 or 29, depending upon whether or not you considered the Vatican to be a country.

At a certain point, you’re like, yeah, I know exactly how this is going. I’m James Bond in this situation and I have a way that I do this.

On the other side of that coin, some people might see pro travelers and be intimidated. What do you say to the people who might be afraid to hit the road because they’re not doing it, quote, the right way?

First of all, you will never be sorry about hitting the road to any place cool, especially if there’s people there that you know. I’ve seen so many people who were intimidated, like, oh my God, I’m going to India. And when they got back, they were like, that was the coolest thing I ever did in my entire life.

I left my house. Nothing new is going to happen here. People are like, oh, how can you live in New York? Well, I live in New York because I love living here, partially because I can leave it. That is a luxury for sure, but it’s a luxury that I get to enjoy. So I feel like I’ve earned it.

You’ve definitely earned it, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for great traveling.

Rule #1: Get Dressed

Now, your first two rules talk about the importance of preparing for your trip, starting with the travel itself. What’s your rule number one?

My rule number one is get dressed. I did a thing for New York Magazine for secret strategists on how I’m dressing for an airplane. I personally am never going to feel good if I look like a slob.

You don’t have to get dressed up. It’s not like the 40s, but you should look good. And looking good is actually part of how you bond with the folks who are actually operating the airplane. And they’re going to be a lot nicer to you.

If you’re going to wear sweatpants, go get really good ones. Make sure that they move easily, that whatever you’re wearing is breathable. Bring a pair of slippers. Don’t have your feet messed up in shoes for an eight hour flight. Thermal socks are good for being on the plane with the slippers.

Get dressed, look good, make yourself comfortable.

Rule #2: Uncattle Yourself

Your next rule deals with setting yourself up with some hospitality on your flight. What’s your rule number two?

If you learn only one thing from this podcast, when you’re heading for an airplane, uncattle yourself. Unless you’re in business class or you’re in first class, you will be treated as cattle. They are not making any money on you. They don’t care about you. You must care for yourself.

Rule number one of uncattling yourself is bring your own napkins. Cloth napkins. There’s a reason why in business class and first class, the first thing they do to let you know that you’re being taken care of is they put that big white cloth napkin in front of you. You can do that for yourself, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Bring your own food. You could have a spectacular sandwich. If I’m coming back from France, I go to the charcuterie shop and I’ve got a pâté, small packets of mayonnaise. Very important. I’m going to be good.

Personally, I carry my own cocktails. 100 milliliter spray bottle. Looks like hair tonic. Keep it in the quart baggie. Never been caught. When they go by, I’m like, could I just have a glass of ice? And they’re like, here you go, sir. And as soon as they’re past me, I’m like, dook, dook, dook, dook, dook. And everybody looks up and I’m like, yeah, that’s a cask strength old fashioned. Nothing like a personal tipple at 30,000 feet.

Rule #3: Reside in Proximity

Once you’ve had a great adventure on a plane, knowing where you’re going and where you’re staying is really important. What’s your rule number three?

Rule number three, reside in proximity. Sometimes residing in proximity means you want to be close to the beach. People are like, oh, where do you stay in Paris?

The way I decide has to do with the things that I have to do, where are the metro lines coming in. But the number one way, I look at the last three years of the best baguette in Paris competition. And wherever I get my Airbnb or whatever is going to be within a five minute walk or less of one of the top three winners.

That is the thing that matters to me. You can walk out your front door, you can have a fresh, great baguette, and now you’re golden.

Rule #4: Understand the Markets

Understanding the neighborhood is really important, especially if you want to travel like a local, which includes shopping.

If I want to understand a new country, most parts of the world, there’s some kind of old food market. I want to know what the old food market looks like. I want to know what the flea markets are like. And I also want to go to the supermarket.

When you go to the old market and then you look at the supermarket, you will understand so much of how people in this country spend their time, how they spend their money and what they value.

A good example is France. Some of the best markets in the world, but the supermarkets, they’ve got a lot of frozen food. You have a better understanding of what’s being projected to you, but then what’s actually going on.

When you go to a flea market, you understand things about the past and present of the country. Who’s out there selling things? Are they all from another country? If you go to Belgium, for example, most of the people selling at the flea market will be from Africa. This will speak to a colonial past.

If you go to a flea market in Norway, what you will see is the fact that Norway is now rich but used to be poor. Before they found oil in the 50s or 60s, they were a poor country. So Norwegian antiques, they’re like Soviet antiques.

When you see that stuff, it gives you a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the country. It doesn’t matter where you go. You see what people value.

I go to Japan and I buy really crazy cool old indigo fabric for almost nothing because these things, which are seriously handmade and beautiful, are not really being valued by modern Japanese people.

A lot of these flea markets are at temples. People are not getting up early to go out there. And I’m that guy. I’m going to Japan, I’m like, what are the flea markets that are going to be happening within the time that I’m going to be here? The biggest one at the Oi race course, they have 700 dealers. It’s incredible.

I have made this mistake more than once, not going with the extra empty suitcase. And I’ve had to buy an extra empty suitcase, which thankfully you can also buy at the flea market.

Rule #5: Go Back

Your fifth and final rule deals with something I struggle with all the time when choosing where to travel. How do you justify going back to the places you love again and again?

There is a reason why, in my case, Japan, France, Spain, Italy. I’ve gone to the same town in Italy for at least a week every summer for 25 years.

The way I justify it is that I can go up a mountain, 20 minutes out of Portofino, walk into a restaurant, and everyone comes out of the kitchen to kiss me. You might as well be home. What else could you possibly want?

It’s a matter of balance. You know where I haven’t been, and I hate to admit this, I have never been to Mexico City. People tell me that I’m out of my mind, like it’s going to be my favorite place in the world. I will go to Mexico City this year. I have Niels’ List, but I have not experienced Niels’ List.

I go to Mexico every year, but I go to the beach. I’m not regretting the beach. The beach was really, really nice. There were palm trees over my head for two weeks. I read four books. I regret nothing.

Closing

Garrett, thank you so much for sharing all of your tips about world travel. I’m going to be using the baguette method moving forward.

If people want to follow along with your adventures or see what you’re working on at Brooklyn Brewery, how can they see what you’re up to?

So I’m at iGarrettOliver. One of these days I will discover who, like a million years ago, got Garrett Oliver because there aren’t that many of us in the world.

Garrett, thank you so much. Looking forward to sharing a drink and a bite with you sometime soon. Let’s make it happen.

Chris Valdes cooks with a point of view, and it starts with where he comes from. In this episode, the Miami chef and TV host breaks down his Five Rules for Using Food as Identity. He talks about cooking with your story at the center, why success only matters if you share it, and how taking care of your body is non-negotiable if you want to stay in the game. There is a through line to everything he says. The small moments matter. The daily rituals count. The goal is not the highlight reel, it is building a life that feels good to live, one meal at a time.

What I love about Chris is how grounded it all feels. There is ambition there, real drive, but it is anchored in generosity and perspective. He is not chasing the next big thing at the expense of everything else. He is paying attention. He is taking care of himself. He is making space for other people. It is a reminder that you can build something meaningful without burning out or losing the plot. That kind of clarity is rare, and it sticks with you.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

Today, I chat with Miami chef and TV host, Chris Valdes, who’s here to share his five rules for using food as identity. He talks about how the best males are never eaten alone, how taking care of your body is an essential ingredient for a healthy career, and that the good life isn’t just red carpets and big moments, it’s elevating it every day. It’s a great conversation for those looking to stay in the game for the long haul. and how having an open mind to what comes your way is a great way to live your best life.

So let’s get into the rules.

Welcome & Opening Question

Chris, so nice to meet you. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy week in Miami to sit down for a chat. Welcome to the show.

Hey, thank you for having me. I’m so excited.

Food has always been at the center of your family and your life. How has it shaped who you are?

Growing up in a family restaurant and always being of service to others, of always being in the industry of sharing food as a way of a language of love, seeing that right since the moment I could remember, it just adapted me to giving that back to the community, giving that back to our clients, giving that back to just anyone I come across, using food as a love language, which is part of who I am.

On Latin Cuisine & Cultural Influence

It’s been so amazing to see Latin culture and cuisine take center stage, especially in America over the last few years. Why do you think that is happening right now?

I think because in Latin American culture, we’re just taught to share. We don’t mind not only sharing our dishes, but mixing it with everyone else’s dishes. So for example, here in Miami, you could go to a restaurant. It’s a fusion between Peruvian food and Asian food, Mexican and Japanese. We’ve just learned that not only can we share our food and our recipes and our culture and our history, but we can mix it with yours and we could tell two stories at once. And it’s like this big party of celebration of everyone’s culture.

The Cookbook & Storytelling Through Food

You shared a lot of these stories in your cookbook, One with the Kitchen, which is celebrating its fifth birthday with so many recipes and so many stories in your life and career. How did you select the ones you wanted to put on the pages?

It was a bit hard because first of all, I’m always hungry since it was food nonstop. Most importantly, I was just tapping into memories, memories that I had from childhood, memories I had from family celebrations, special moments. In our culture, every important moment is attached to food. I just went back there and like, okay, and how could I add a twist to this? Memory, twist, add to the book. Memory, twist, add to the book. And I just put some of my favorite recipes.

Aside from them having a story, I think I also wanted to include unity in there. The dish that I use in the cover of the book is a pavlova. It shows the story of what food is supposed to do. Pavlova is very popular in Peruvian culture. Many don’t know that it originated in Australia. And now everyone here, at least in Miami, enjoys pavlova. And I think I can speak for many parts of the USA or even outside, because when I recently went to Paris and London, every other restaurant had a pavlova on their menu. It’s just done beautifully. That’s what food is supposed to do. It’s supposed to just be shared and let people put their little spin on it.

The Five Rules

Being able to connect with cultures and people and countries through food is one of the reasons why I love this world so much, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for using food as identity. A lot of the times people aren’t going to be able to travel to someone’s country of origin. They’re going to meet them at the restaurant. They’re going to meet them at a home. They’re going to find their food where they are.

But being able to cook dishes that are intrinsically linked to who you are is a big part of your rule number one.

Rule #1: Cook Where You Come From

Rule number one is cook where you come from. Your story and your dish is supposed to say a little bit about where you come from, your culture, your technique, what drives you as a chef or as a cook. Many people, sometimes they get very fancy and they forget to put the most important part to the dish, which is you, which is what makes you unique and being in this world.

Whenever I have the chance to incorporate myself into a recipe, I always make sure that there is extra, especially when I’m serving at home. It doesn’t mean 10 ribeyes or eight lobsters. It just sometimes can mean a bigger salad, more pizza, and it’s a fundamental part of your rule number two.

Rule #2: Success Tastes Better When It’s Shared

Rule number two is success stays better when it’s shared. As a chef, if you have a talent or as a cook, share it with others. Share it with your family. Use this moment to bring people together. Share it with your staff. I go to the local culinary school every now and then, and I’ll teach them a class or two just because we’ve invested so much into our time, into our story, into our history. Might as well share that.

Mm-hmm. There’s a special feeling when you share your knowledge, when you share what drives you with others. Not only are you placing seeds of inspiration towards others, you’re doing the most fundamental thing you could do as a human being. When you share so much of yourself.

Rule #3: Take Care of Your Body Like It’s Part of the Recipe

Catering, being on TV, cooking for the community, it is easy to get burnt out and run down. Then you can’t provide for anyone. Your third rule talks about adding this to the recipe to make sure that you can keep going forward.

The third rule is something I learned the hard way when I was already burnt out. So it says, take care of your body like it’s part of the recipe. It’s the most important ingredient of the recipe. I feel that as a man and as a chef, we’re so trained to go, go, go. You’re not tired. Of course.

Little by little, I learned the importance of boundaries within yourself. What is my day off? What am I going to do on my day off? Am I going to be doing scheduling when I’m sitting in a sofa? No, you’re going to mentally just not do anything. You’re going to give this time to yourself. You’re going to use this time to rest and rest mentally, rest physically, because if not, eventually it adds up and it takes a toll on you.

Once you get into that little dark pothole, it’s very difficult to get out of it. And it’s also a long process. Take care of yourself. And I know it sounds cliche and repetitive. It wasn’t until it recently happened to me, it just taught me, you’re like a car. If you don’t take care of your car, you don’t put the water, the oil, and you don’t put gas, and eventually you’re gonna break. I could tell you that because I’ve burned three cars in my life, so.

Rule #4: Elevate Your Everyday Life

A big part of burnout can be chasing big moments, red carpets, celebrity, huge fancy dinners, looking forward to the moments that are coming up and not enjoying what’s right in front of you. By practicing your fourth rule, you can elevate your life every single day. What’s your rule number four?

My rule number four is elevate your everyday life. Find beauty in those random moments. For example, I like going on long walks and sometimes it’s on a gray day. Put your favorite music, light up a candle. When you go to a restaurant, say yes to the wine pairing. It’s just these little tokens of love and appreciation that you may give to yourself or to whoever’s around you to just remind yourself that it’s not always about the big moments. It’s also about what you do in the small moments that add to your big moments later on.

Rule #5: Trust the Process

Those big moments and those small moments do stack up over a lifetime in a career. It’s so hard to predict where you’re going to go when you start. Your fifth and final rule talks about how to navigate that long and winding road to when you finally found yourself at the end of it. What’s your rule number five?

My rule number five is trust the process. Immediately, my mind takes me back to someone in my team that’s been working with me for eight years. I always would go up to her and I’d be like, do you think that all of these things that I’ve been doing will one day add up? And she’s like, of course, they’re going to add up.

So now that I can look back at to my TV career, nine years, I just celebrated 100,000 subscribers on YouTube. Congratulations. The first platform where I started was on YouTube because I said, if there’s no platform for me, I’m going to create my own. Last week when I was celebrating that, I had a little moment to myself and I’m like, wow, all these little moments do add up. I started with a set of seven videos. I now have 207 videos.

The key... And this was my hard part is patience and timing. Patience. You have to be patient with the process. Patient doesn’t mean I’m going to sit my ass here and just wait for things to come. No, that means I’m trusting the process. I’m putting in the work. I’m getting the classes. I’m getting the lessons. I’m showing up to the big interviews, to the small interviews, to the big moments, to the small moments. I’m putting in my extra cooking techniques and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of these things add up.

Where to Follow Chris

Chris, I think it’s definitely added up for you. If people want to follow along with what you’re doing, reach out for you to cook for them, just see what you’re up to in your day-to-day community and culinary life. How can they follow? Where can they get involved?

Google, Instagram, everywhere, Chef Chris Valdes, and you’ll see everything I’ve done there. And I invite everyone, especially for just foodies. I speak the universal love language of just wanting to share food for the sake of sharing food because it just makes me happy and hungry. And those are two things that everyone should be, happy and hungry. And going to the gym.

Closing

Chris, thank you so much. And next time in Miami, I’m going to swing by and grab a bite of food from you.

Let’s do it. And I’ll take you to some of my favorite restaurants and we can grab a mojito while we’re at it.

Kat Kinsman knows a thing or two about restaurants. As the executive features editor at Food & Wine and host of the podcast Tinfoil Swans, which is coming back at the end of March, she has spent years telling the stories behind the people who cook, serve, and gather around the table. In this episode, she shares her Five Rules for Staying Present (and Delighted) at Dinner. They are simple in theory and surprisingly powerful in practice. Believe there is no better table than the one you’re sitting at. Say the nice thing out loud. Take a mental snapshot instead of reaching for your phone. Don’t feel obligated to post. And when the night ends, send the text that says you had a great time. It is a blueprint for getting more joy out of a meal and the people you share it with.

I will admit this is something I struggle with. When you spend your life around restaurants and hospitality, it is easy to slip into work mode or get distracted by the next thing. Kat’s rules are a great reminder of why we sit down to eat in the first place. When I plan a dinner, it is almost always with the people I love the most. Friends, family, the people who make life feel a little bigger. Her approach pushes me to slow down, put the phone away, and actually live inside those moments. Because if you are lucky enough to be at a table with people you care about, there really is no better place to be.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

Today, I chat with executive feature editor at Food & Wine, the host of Tinfoil Swans, Kat Kinsman, who shares her five rules for staying present and delighted at dinner.

She talks about how looking at your phone can leave you wanting more from a night out, to be open and honest about what you love, and that if you embrace this approach, the next meal out might be the best one you’ve ever had.

So let’s get into the rules.

Catching Up

Kat, it’s so good to see you. I believe the last time I was with you in the room, I was drinking a mint julep watching horses run the derby.

Thanks for taking time to sit down and chat about the fire rules.

Truly my pleasure. And I think I could use a julep, some burgoo, or a slush right now.

That sounds very delicious.

Being the executive features editor of Food & Wine and host of the Tinfoil Swans, when going out to dinner, do you bring a professional criteria with you at all times?

Oh, hell no. It can become that busman’s holiday kind of thing. So much of what I edit and write about and care about is not about the food. Sure. It’s extremely people-centric. Unless I am on a particular mission, I’m there to be happy in a restaurant. Moreover, I’m happy about who I’m with. I’m not the person they deploy to go out to restaurants. I am lucky enough that I get to go out and just—

The idea of just being at dinner, especially when it’s your profession, doesn’t always happen.

No.

How do you deal with that weight of having to eat out, especially when you’re scouting for best new restaurants when all you want to do is be eating tuna fish and crackers at home?

I don’t go out very often. I’m such an ambivert that it takes a lot to get me out. Recently, I had almost a year after my husband had a heart attack, we really couldn’t go out to restaurants that much. It really reset why and how I go out to restaurants because we have to live within a certain amount of constraints.

When I go, I go with tremendous intent for joy.

I love that.

Because I don’t often have to do it on the job, I can get things for my own pleasure. I just want to be open. I want to have a great time. Leaving the house is really difficult for me, sometimes slightly gore phobic. But once I bust out the door, I’m just thrilled I’m out there and I want to make the most of it that I possibly can.

Memorable Meals

It being wintertime and heading into a cozy restaurant in New York City, there are few greater pleasures in life. And I know that you have lived a life of memorable meals and dinners. Looking back on them, which ones stand out the most?

Fun thing, I just had the greatest restaurant meal of my life.

Oh, well, then this should be easy.

Causa in Washington DC. Have you been?

Not yet, but a boy can dream from across the country.

Carlos Delgado is just making absolute magic there. I got to town early. I decided to take myself out to dinner. Incredible. A lot of my friends are chefs. It’s not like they can go out on a Friday night super easily. So I was like, you know what, I’ve been hearing about this place, I’m gonna go.

Sat down at the counter. From bite one, it’s a Peruvian tasting menu. Let’s go. It’s a tour of Peru and all the different regions of it. And I’m sitting there and I’m having this reconstructed oyster with Leche de Tigre. And I’m listening to Gangster’s Paradise. I’m drinking this absolute banger of a non-out cocktail that was based in the ferments that they’re making with kombucha.

I’m just zenning out because I don’t have to think about anybody else’s pleasure but my own because I’m just by myself. Rare. The whole thing is being driven by somebody’s vision. The hospitality is absolutely incredible. Everybody’s on those headsets so it feels like pluribus I am carol and they are there for my pleasure.

There could be worse things on a Friday night in DC.

When I experience really good food or art or music or anything like that, I get this full body sensation.

I understand that.

Tasting menus, controversial or whatever. I think about the shock and awe that has gone into some of them that have been my favorite restaurant meals ever.

Yeah.

I feel really incredibly lucky. They’re so concentrated. They’re so thoughtful. With Carlos, he’s got such a point of view. He’s a nerd about this stuff. I love it.

Being able to be so intentional and so excited about going out to dinner after all these years is very inspiring, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for staying present and delighted at dinner.

The Five Rules

Rule 1 — There Is No Better Table Than the One You’re At

We live in a world where new restaurants open up all the time in a way that when you’re keeping score or track of it, it could be overwhelming. Your rule number one talks about shifting that mindset and waiting for the right moment to go to a place. What’s your first rule?

I am lucky enough that when I do have that intentionality and go out to dinner with people, I end up absolutely convinced there is no better place, no better table in the entire world than the one I’m at right then.

I love that.

It happens a lot of times at friends’ houses. It happens at restaurants. And I think about everything that crosses my feed all the time. This highly curated, all these restaurants, all these experiences, all these fancy kinds of things we can do.

And I was like, no, this is exactly where I want to be. There’s nowhere better in the universe right now.

And that’s not just me hyping myself up, even though things I love, I love very, very intensely. It’s important that I get to that state and that just keeps me at the table. Why not be happy with what I have right there?

I share that same passion. When I love something, I love it so much and I want to tell people all about it. Or if I enjoy dining at someone’s house, I’m always asking when can we get together again, when can we do it again.

Yes.

And I know you’re supposed to play it cool, but that’s never been part of my personality, which ties directly into your rule number two.

Rule 2 — Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve

Wear your heart on your sleeve.

Is there any other way to do it?

I dated people who use that as currency. They wouldn’t say I love you. They wouldn’t say the nice thing. No, thanks. No, you don’t do that.

I am given to quite often if I’m feeling that thing about no more FOMO and thinking this is the best place I could be in the world. I say it out loud.

Yeah.

Because why the hell not? Why not say to the people at the table, I’m so glad you’re here with me and that we get to experience this together.

I say it to the wait staff.

I was at EMP some years back. I was having a ball. Our server was like, you’ve gone out of your way to say what a great time you’re having. Are you worried that I think you’re not?

It’s like, hey, I love that we’ve established this dialogue here. I want you to know you’re doing a great job here.

Say you love the thing. Say it’s delicious.

I’d rather be warm than cool any day of the week.

Rule 3 — Take a Mental Snapshot

Once you’ve gotten to the place that you want to be and you’ve realized that there’s no better seat in the room, the second part of that equation of really enjoying yourself is staying present.

There’s no better way to get out of the moment than reaching to your pocket and pulling out that phone.

No. No.

And it’s tough because a lot of times content is currency. If I don’t have the evidence, did I really go?

Your rule number three talks about how to avoid reaching for your phone when a plate hits the table.

Take a mental snapshot.

Because of professional hazard, I do have to whip out my phone sometimes and take a quick picture, but it’s more documentation.

Of course.

This actually goes back to there was a book that I read as I was getting married called The Conscious Bride. This would have been 20 years ago.

It’s about stopping for a second and taking a snapshot with all of your senses about everything that’s going on around you.

You don’t even have to let anybody know you’re doing this.

Take that same thing you do with your phone and capture all of that and deliberately tell yourself, I’m going to remember this. How I feel. What are the sensations I’m having right now? What do things taste like? Who am I with?

Consciously do that and lock it in. Put that on your reel in your head.

You have to do it with intent so you can just come back to those because I definitely have those moments then when I’m really depleted, depressed, lonely, whatever it happens to be. And I go back into that, getting to experience it all over again.

It’s just a really fun way to be.

Rule 4 — Don’t Feel Obligated to Post

That idea of having these personal moments for yourself is really important because it does keep you wanting to go back out into the world to have dinners and try new things.

That being said, sometimes you do take those photos, but that doesn’t mean you have to share them right away, which ties directly into your rule number four.

Don’t post.

I should maybe amend that. Don’t feel obligated to post right then.

Yes.

You’re still you. You still had the experience. You still did the thing. It’s not pics or it didn’t happen.

Who are you trying to prove anything to?

If you want to share it because you’re hyped on it and you want other people to have that joy as much, that’s beautiful. If you want to give a bump to the restaurant after you have left, of course.

For so long, there’s been that feeling of obligation.

The really great meals that I have and the best times where I’m connecting with people over this are times when I’m not pulling my phone out at all.

I forget to.

And it gets to the end of the meal and maybe I’m with somebody. Before we recorded, we were talking about Yassi Salik. Realize we had gotten to the end of the meal, had not taken a picture together.

And that was because I was just so caught up in the joy of her presence, of the food, of the experience that we were having, where I just plain old forgot.

And it was so freeing.

The second I pull out my phone, it’s this Pandora’s box. I get too caught up in it. I doom scroll.

But, you know, some things can just be for you.

And that’s totally fine.

Rule 5 — Text When You Get Home

This idea of doing things for yourself and not having to prove you’re out in the world really is a lost art.

Yeah.

You mentioned the idea of really understanding that the people you’re with, the company you’re keeping at the table is exactly who you want to be with is a major part of your fifth and final rule.

You should text on the way home and say you had a great time.

Maybe it’s because I’m older. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had to date for a long time. I don’t care. Double text. I don’t care.

Wear your heart on your sleeve because you never know when you’re going to get the chance to say that thing again.

Be a sloppy, messy heart of a person.

Let people know you had a great time with them and that you want to do it again.

If I don’t text in, I’ll feel silly for having waited too long. And then it’ll be like a month or a year that I don’t respond because I’m embarrassed that I’ve waited so long.

But just send the text.

I’ve texted on the group thread while waiting in ballet.

Oh, hell yeah.

I’m sorry if my crime is that I told you I loved you too often.

Oh, screw me.

And that we had a great time at dinner again. And let’s find another date.

Sorry. My bad.

Where to Find Kat

Kat, appreciate you wearing your heart on your sleeve and sharing it with everyone.

If they want to read what you’re writing, if they want to listen to the podcast, or just see when you do go out to eat and you do post, which I’m sure has to hit a very high threshold, how can they follow you and see what you’re up to?

On Instagram, it’s Kat Kinsman. Same on threads. On foodandwine.com. I’m pretty easy to find on there.

The podcast, which is coming back at the end of March, is Tinfoil Swans, available anywhere you get your podcasts.

Perfect timing. Look at us.

Kat, so great to see you. And hopefully we can have a meal on or off the grid sometime soon.

I’m going to text you in five minutes and tell you what a great time I had right here.

Thank you so much.

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, Darin Bresnitz sits down with Al Doyle, one of the musicians behind the sounds of Hot Chip & LCD Soundsystem, and the co-founder / co-designer of Relax and Enjoy Studio in Shoreditch, London. Al shares his Five Rules for Making Music You Like. The conversation moves from childhood piano experiments to the very different recording philosophies behind his two bands, and the thinking that goes into producing music that lasts. Along the way, he talks about the discipline of listening, the power of simplicity, and the confidence it takes to trust your own instincts in the studio.

What makes Al’s rules interesting is that they apply to so much more than making music. They are about creating anything. Writing, painting, cooking, filmmaking, building a business, hosting a dinner. The mechanics are different, but the mindset is the same. Start with something you actually like. Keep the structure simple enough so the idea can breathe. Spend more time paying attention than constantly tinkering. Learn enough about your craft that you can rely on yourself when things get complicated. And when the crowd pushes you toward something safe or expected, sometimes the best move is to lean the other direction and see what happens. Creativity is rarely about doing more. Most of the time it is about knowing when to stop and trust the thing you already made.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript

Introduction

Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

It is always a pleasure when I get to sit down with today’s guest, Al Doyle, who is a member of both Hot Chip and LCD Sound System and a designer and owner of Relax and Enjoy Studio in Shoreditch, London.

He’s here today to share his five rules for making music you like. He talks about the importance of listening and not changing too much, the fundamentals of being both ambitious and self-sufficient, and that sometimes doing nothing is the best way to make something happen.

He shares some amazing insider stories about making music, the different approach to recording from his two bands, and we share a few laughs about what really goes into making music that you like.

So let’s get into the rules.

Getting Started

Al, it is always a pleasure when we have the chance to make time and chat with each other. Thanks for coming to me live from the studio.

You’re very, very welcome. Yeah, I’m sitting in front of my upright piano. Really bringing class to the show. It’s all I can do to not start playing some jazzy chords in front of you, so you have to appreciate my restraint.

I also appreciate that you’ve been making music almost your entire life. Do you remember the moment when you first made something that you actually liked?

Yeah, I was playing piano from when I was four or five years old, and I definitely remember hammering out some stuff on the piano that I enjoyed going back to, really raucous, hammering, childlike piano music.

I love it. In terms of actual songs that I can remember... I fall out of love with things that I’ve made very, very quickly, I think. When you’re actually making something, the moment of creation is so emphatically all-encompassing and scintillating, and then leave it 20 minutes like, oh my god, now I’ve got to do some actual work to put this together. It just sucks all the joy out of it again. It’s something that I’m battling with every day.

You’ve been lucky enough to also record and create music and go through that process all over the world. Is there something you’re looking for in a space or an environment to be creative? Or is it different vibe for different project?

Making my own studio was an answer to that very question. There was lots of places that I’ve been to that were very close to what my ideal recording space would be.

Obviously, DFA was a huge thing for me when I first came to New York City. Philippe Zadar’s studio in Paris, which is called Motorbass, was a very, very inspiring space. There’s another amazing studio that belongs to the keyboard player in Jamiroquai called Angelic, which is a country retreat studio on a farm. Those kind of places have been on my mind.

Being able to see all these different studios and knowing what worked and didn’t work, I have to imagine fed into what went into building Relax and Enjoy, which is the studio that you built with James. Why was it so important for you to create a space for other musicians to make music?

There is an indulgent thing that we do in Hot Chip and in LCD, which is basically write music in a studio. A lot of bands, they will have to do some kind of writing elsewhere in their bedrooms or like the way that Hot Chip used to do.

The space can be very inspiring for making music if you have the time to allow the instruments to show you where to go. We’ll just go to a synthesizer that we’ve just bought or we’re in another studio that has something that we’ve never seen before and just by the act of trying out that instrument learning how it works you will inevitably write a song through that process because it’s just this voyage of discovery with the instrument brings up stuff that you end up recording and can be the kind of seed of an idea.

When people come in to this place that’s one of the things that we want for them especially younger kids that maybe only have ever seen some of this stuff as plugins and software versions or whatever they’re like oh my god you’ve got a real csa team it’s like oh yeah here it is i

I love that.

So immediately they get their hands on it and start using it in a way that we would never have imagined. And that’s actually inspiring to us. And then the whole thing feeds into itself. Everything’s turned on. Everything’s able to be recorded at any time. It’s supposed to be a little playground.

Creating that playground, having all the toys and tools and the actual approach of making music that you enjoy and have a good track record of making is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for making music you like.

Rule One: Make What You Like

The very first rule...

It’s so simple, but people, myself included, always seem to ignore it when they’re getting into the creative process. What’s your rule number one?

This rule was something that I actually came up with talking to Nick Millhiser from LCD because he’s also a producer and we were just talking about working with other bands. I can tell that they’re trying to get somewhere to something and there’s a level of frustration and

The rule is anyway, make what you like. Try to remember what is it that you’re making that is in any way similar to something that you actually like.

People come in here, they always want to add stuff. And I was like, OK, tell me anything that you like that sounds like this.

Yeah.

And I will happily pursue this way of working because people come in with their influences like I want it to sound like Prince or I want it to sound like a can or whatever. What you’re making sounds nothing like that.

Take that little step back.

I was working with somebody the other day, the drums started to sound like breakbeat or something like some kind of trip hop thing. I was like, guys, I know that you don’t like this music. Why are we doing that? Why are we here?

It’s a question that really stops people and makes them reconsider in a slightly less confrontational way than maybe I’ve just described.

Rule Two: Stick to a Vision

Part of your guide as a producer and as someone who’s been through the creative process before is showing people how to keep their perspective and not get distracted by trends or things that they might want in the moment, but won’t last in a long time, which makes up a big part of rule number two.

Stick to a vision of popular art as a generosity of effects on a simple frame.

So that’s a quotation from Clive James. He was actually talking about Louis Armstrong, but that quotation is about Big Spiderbeck, who was very beloved of Louis Armstrong and him talking about his style of playing quite austere style as opposed to slightly more florid playing from louis armstrong.

It just really got me thinking about that in terms of music but also in terms of art in general specifically he describes it as being popular art so i’m not really necessarily talking about the deepest kind of art sure this idea that you have

And in elaborate frame, like the pop song, this contained little space in which to put your idea across.

Yes.

And then within that, you get to do all of your special effects.

That has really stood with me as a framework for what all of this stuff is. You’re not trying to get too complicated. You’re not trying to change things. this mechanism around your work you’re just trying to give something to someone again that word generosity within there I thought was really important because it’s this idea of no this is something to be enjoyed something where I’m trying to give something to the people that are listening to me I had that as a phrase that was always in the back of my head when I was making things

Like verse chorus verse as i’ve heard it sung before.

Yeah yeah yeah exactly.

Rule Three: Listen, Don’t Change

A lot of times when i listen to the art of making music you’ll hear with some of the most famous songs is that it wrote itself in 10 minutes it just came to me in a dream and it was done.

Yeah.

Being able to pull something from the ether and then sit back and just let it be yeah is a fundamental of your rule number three.

Rule three, listen, don’t change.

This is something that I learned for sure from James Murphy. Also, I believe that he himself learned from Marcus Lampkin, whose artist’s name is S**t Robot.

Basically, hardship. Everybody goes into a room. Everyone’s playing all the time. Just this absolute deluge of great ideas.

I go into the studio with James and we will sit around for the whole day and work on the sound of a woodblock.

Of course. I believe it.

Just these two different ways of working. But I really recently have been feeling as though the correct way to work is to work on that ratio, work on the ratio of listening to versus adding. And you should be doing 10 times more listening than you are making changes or adding stuff.

And when I was with Marcus Lampkin, he actually does this more than James. He’ll just sit there, he’ll listen and listen and listen and listen. And then he’ll be like, we need to do this thing to this song. And it’s like, oh my God, dude, you nailed it. Cracked it.

Yeah.

And sometimes something is just fine as it is. And you’ve got to have that strength to just leave it as it is.

The other very instructive story that I had with regard to this was Pete Shelley working with Martin Russian. He just left the Buzzcocks on his first solo thing that he did. And he had this song, Homosapien. You know this song?

Mm-hmm.

He basically had what he called the demo of that song and he brought it to Martin Russian. And Martin Russian took it to the studio and he played it. And he had Pete Shelley with him there and he’s like, I just need to listen to it again.

And he played it again. And then he played it 20 times in a row. And then he just said, yeah, that’s fine. You should just release it just like that.

I love that. That is just such a cool story because it’s this godlike producer and he’s like, no, I don’t want to touch this. This is great. And it was a massive hit, you know.

There’s so many times that little voice in his head is like, you’ve got to do something, but actually you don’t always.

Rule Four: Be Self-Sufficient

You can go to another level by being able to work on your own music, produce your own projects, and be able to have the confidence within yourself to know that when you go out on the road or play a show or build your own studio, you can really blow other people out of the water, which is a big part of your rule number four.

Be ambitious enough to be self-sufficient and be self-sufficient enough to make other people scared.

With LCD, we would try and turn up to places with everything. There was nothing that we relied upon other people for. Even when we didn’t have the level of crew that we had, there was enough knowledge within that group of people that we could do anything that needed to be done and fix any problem in audio, deal with keyboard. People deal with the promoters, do all that kind of stuff.

You’ve got to know that there’s going to be a time after that, and that comes down to your ambition, to know that it won’t last forever. But in the meantime, you’ve got to actually do it.

Yeah. No one’s going to do it for you.

And if you don’t do it, then you will not be afforded any respect.

If you actually can go above that and be so self-sufficient that everyone’s like, oh, whoa, you guys actually know more than us.

So...

And then that’s when people get, I mean, scared is kind of the wrong word, but it’s having that level of respect that borders on reverence.

I think that’s a lot to do with James’s own personal aura. And also just because he genuinely is the most savant level engineer that I’ve ever encountered.

Rule Five: Contrarianism Can Be Your Savior

Being self-sufficient. Having that ambition, sticking to a vision of making what you really want to make, really bubbles up to creating work that you actually believe in.

And your fifth and final rule talks about the importance of sticking to your guns, especially when you’re making something that the mainstream might not like.

What’s your rule number five?

If in doubt, turn on the herter. Contrarianism can be your savior.

Sometimes things just go wrong. Sometimes people are just not on your side and you’re playing to the wrong people.

In that situation, there will be a very strong instinct that you have to do whatever it is you think those people might like, but don’t do that.

The thing to do in that situation is find the thing that you enjoy doing that they won’t. Otherwise, you’re just on a hiding to nothing.

Don’t try and second guess your audience, I think is the deeper part of what that is.

If there’s something that you enjoy, even if that thing is busting out incredibly piercing knife-like white noise at people get after it then go for that you’re guaranteed to make at least yourself happy whatever else you do you’re not guaranteed to make them happy you know.

Alexis is amazing at that he’ll just happily just play the most intimate music against the people that are just so shouting over him and he just continued to do that has this just level of belief that I absolutely love and it’s not something that I have personally but it’s something that I in a weird way admire and want to have for myself a little bit more so that’s why I wanted to make it part of the rules.

Closing

Al, I appreciate your rules and all the music that you have shared with the world. I know that you’re hitting the road this year.

We are on the road with LCD. We’re going to be touring America. Have a look and see if we’re playing anywhere near you.

Looking forward to having you back in LA. It was great to see you last time and can’t wait to hear some of this music that you like so much once again.

No problem. It’s my pleasure talking to you, Darin. Thanks for talking to me.

In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with chef and restaurateur Fermín Núñez to, who shares his Five Rules for a Proper 48 Hour Trip. He talks about traveling with purpose, from taking the earliest flight to packing light to fully disconnecting once you land. We get into why having a clear reason for going, whether it’s a specific restaurant, a soccer game, or a neighborhood you want to understand, changes the entire experience. This is a conversation about using limited time well, finding inspiration through food and place, and returning home sharper than when you left.

What resonates most with me is the idea of traveling with intention and having an anchor. I’ve learned that if I don’t build a trip around one meaningful plan, a reservation, a game, or a person I want to see, the time slips away. But if I overfill the schedule, I miss the magic. The balance is having one strong reason to go and leaving the rest open. That structure creates freedom. It allows you to be present, to wander, to notice something unexpected. That’s when a quick trip stops feeling like an escape and starts feeling like a reset.

Chef Fermín Núñez of Austin’s Suerte and Este teams up with Jorge Gaviria, the founder of Masienda and bestselling author of MASA, to bring their combined time in professional kitchens and on the streets of Mexico to the page in Vitamina T. They understand that these dishes are not static. They evolve. They travel. They adapt. And here, they show you how to cook them with clarity and confidence at home.

Transcript

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

It is always a pleasure to see and sit down with today’s guest, chef and restaurateur Fermín Núñez, whose restaurant and bar in Austin are some of my favorite places to hit when I’m in town. He shares his five rules for a proper 48-hour trip.

We share the same love of getting up early and getting on the road, the key balance to having an anchor for your trip but not filling up all of your time, and how disconnecting on the road allows you to come back home recharged.

It’s a really great conversation for anyone looking for insights about how to travel with intention and how if you have a busy schedule to make getting away matter the most. So let’s get into the rules.

Sitting Down in Austin

Fermín, always so good to see you. Always a pleasure when we get some time to chat. Thank you for sitting down for the show.

Thanks for having me right back at you. Always a pleasure to get to chat a little bit with each other.

Whenever I’ve come to Austin, I’ve had such a great time traveling around, hanging out, eating with you, getting to see the city. And there really is this ideal of what it’s like to travel like a chef or be inside the restaurant world because you have all these access to the hidden gems. How much have you found that to be true in your travels?

It’s super true because that’s the number one reason why I travel. I travel to places that I want to eat. I’m also very lucky to be in a place where I get to do that. When I get a little bit of brain farts of ideas of what to do next, that is one of my favorite ways to do is get out of my own head, see what other people in other states are doing, and then come back and get right after it.

There is that idea of traveling for inspiration. You’ve gone out and you’ve had so many great meals. When do you realize when something’s gone from a really great bite to something that’s inspired you to create something in your own kitchen?

Man, I have a few of those. That’s what I really like to mimic at the restaurant. Recreate what I felt, not what I tasted. A lot of the food that you see in the restaurants, one of those dishes most well-known, este is Camarones El Ricas, which are named after a seafood restaurant in Monterrey. which is also a landlocked place, but they also enjoy Maniskas just like we do here in Austin. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to make my own version of it and not hide behind, oh, this is where I got it from. No, tell people, if you like this one, you’re going to like the ones in Monterey way better. Makes you want to go out there and be like, Like maybe I got to go to Monterey and check this place out, which is also exciting.

Making Time to Travel

Taking that time, giving yourself permission to go on these trips, you alone have three different businesses that you cook at and oversee. How do you give yourself permission to take time off to go travel? How would you apply that advice to someone who’s feeling they can’t find that space in their life to do the same?

The best way to look at those things is realize that you don’t need a lot to do much. I’m very lucky to have a team of people that allow me to take a step back from the restaurants and come back as long as I give them back that energy that they gave me by going away.

I love that. I’ve been doing this for a while. I used to also have this mentality. You’re going to have two days off. Most of the time they’re going to be back to back. How do you make the most out of that? I always love traveling. I don’t want to go to Philly and just do what all the touristy things do. I want to go to Philly and feel what is a normal Tuesday they’re like and pretend it’s just my day off in a different city.

That’s such a great approach and such a great way to look at traveling in a way that isn’t just hitting the well-known spots, but really going with intention, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for a proper 48-hour trip.

Rule #1: Take the Early Flight

As I have talked with people, I have learned that I travel differently than others. What I love about your first rule is that you and I share the same approach to getting up early and getting after it. What’s your rule number one?

Take the early flight. Yes. If you only have so many hours, you have to make the most of it. And the thing that’s going to be a little bit pity about that is you waking up a little bit early. I think we have bigger problems in life than that. And you should be very lucky to think that that is the only thing that you’re stressed about.

In Mexico, we have a saying, el sol sale para todos. The sun rises for everybody. It’s what you do with that day that makes you different than the rest. If you don’t know how to take a nap on a plane, I’m not saying that’s a personal problem, but get up, get to the airport, skip that coffee, get right in your seat, and go see the world.

A lot of times you can look at people’s posts on social media and it seems very effortless. We’re on the road. And I believe that it can be. Sometimes to get that easygoing, free-flowing mentality, when you hit the road, you need to go out with intention.

Rule #2: Have a Purpose

Rule number two, have a purpose. Everything you see in social media is not real. Agreed. They only show you the parts that are exciting for people to watch.

Having a purpose when you’re only going to be there for such a small amount of time, it’s key making it feel like you’re there for a reason rather than feeling a little naughty going for the spur of the moment, which is also fun.

I’m very driven by food, so I always have a purpose of, I want to go eat at this restaurant, or I want to check out this place out. But I’ve also started doing a little bit of those trips in regards to, I’m going to go to Vegas for 48 hours, watch a soccer game, and then make the other things work around that. It’s always important to have a purpose of why you’re going there, achieving it, and then the rest will just fall into place.

Having that other side of the coin with one side being the anchor and the other side being open is really important to let the unexpected happen and to find something that you may have not known was the purpose of your trip, but ultimately becomes the thing you remember the most.

Rule #3: Plan, But Don’t Over Plan Too Much

Plan, but don’t over plan too much. Leaving room for a little bit of flexibility is key. Remembering that you’re there for a certain amount of time and not for a week, it’s humbly impossible to do everything you would do in a week into two days.

have breakfast and that’s it don’t push it you don’t need to have three different breakfasts if anything that’s a good excuse for you to want to be able to come back to the place that you are just there for 48 hours

I think having those limitations knowing that you can’t hit everything is actually freeing in a lot of way. The same goes with being prepared for what you’re going to bring there. There are many times when I’ve gone for a short trip and I am embarrassed by having a full suitcase and a backpack. Paring down can actually free you up.

Rule #4: Pack the Day Before, Pack Light

Pack the day before, but it’s also important to pack light. I think the only thing you can actually overpack is underwear. How many times do we overpack underwear and feel like we’re going to s**t ourselves three times in the script? And guess what? It actually never happens, but better safe than sorry.

Having three different kinds of shoes for the 48 hours because you think you’re going to go to the gym and work out. After you do this a few times, you realize that you’re not going to do

It’s always better to have room in your luggage and fill it with things that are exciting that will remind you of the trip than to bring things on a luggage just to carry them around and bring back and be like, oh, I guess I didn’t even need that.

Having that room also allows you to bring back specialty ingredients, Mentos, other things that will be a constant tchotchke on your shelf and a touchstone for the time that you went away.

Rule #5: Disconnect

Your fifth and final rule talks about the importance of when you go away, really be away. Home will be home when you get there. Being present when you’re away is the real key to a 48-hour trip. What’s your rule number five?

Number five is disconnect. I do this for inspiration, but I also do this to be able to come back a better chef than I left for those two days and be the person my team needs me. That is super important when traveling. You travel for yourself.

I’ve always wanted to eat at Sahave. You have all these places that you say you always want to go. If you plan in advance, little bit sneaky in the internet, you can find really cheap ways to go to places and make things happen.

I went to Philly and it was also so amazing to be able to be present with my partner at the time to a city that I’d never been to. She had been there once. We were just walking around making stuff happen in between dinner. It was the most present I’ve been in a while and I really enjoyed it.

I love that. You didn’t travel to make content. All the people that go to shows and film them, how often are you actually seeing that video? The most important part about being in a trip like this, being present is more valuable than being like on social media. Remembering why you chose to do this trip, it’s always a nice reminder of how to be at the time and place that you’re in. It’s amazing and it’s definitely a gift that you can bring back to your life at home and to your kitchen.

Where to Follow Along

For me, if people want to come visit you at any of your three spots in Austin or see where you’re going out on the road when you take these 48 hour trips, how can they follow along with your adventures?

For the restaurants, they can follow along at Suerte ATX, Este ATX, and Bartotti. For my personal stuff, you can get a little behind the scenes of what we do in the kitchen, what I do outside of the kitchen, and every time I travel at Chief Nunez.

If I’m posting that I’m traveling in a place, it most likely already happened because according to my fifth rule, I was disconnecting being present at the place that I was at that time. You don’t want to be stuck in your DMs with people trying to get you to go to all these places.

Can’t wait to get back to Austin. Can’t wait to have another meal with you real soon. Thank you. Hope that sooner rather than later.

Today’s guest is Maxine Scharf, the culinary creator and recipe developer behind Maxi’s Kitchen. She shares her Five Rules for Turning Your Passion Into Your Career, and what goes into making the leap, staying consistent, and creating work people genuinely want to bring into their homes. We talk about the moment her career pivoted, what it actually takes to build momentum online, and how a passion project turns into a real business. We also get into her first cookbook, Maxie’s Kitchen: Easy Go-To Recipes to Make Again and Again, out March 3rd, 2026.

There’s a point in every creative life where the idea stops feeling hypothetical and starts feeling like a dare. Betting on yourself sounds romantic until you’re the one doing the betting. It’s uncomfortable, uncertain, sometimes terrifying. But when the passion is real, the bigger risk is often standing still. Belief is the spark, dedication is the structure, consistency is the engine, hard work is the daily proof. That combination doesn’t guarantee success, but it gives you something better, a real shot.

Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Transcript

Five Rules for the Good Life

Introduction

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with culinary creator, recipe developer, and the creative force behind Maxie’s Kitchen, Maxine Scharf. She’s here to share her five rules for turning your passion into your career. She talks about the importance of just getting started, how consistency is key, and that the bigger your dream, the better you can get. It’s a great conversation for anyone who’s looking to kickstart their own creative project or grow their followers. She also shares some of the stories and inspiration behind her first cookbook, Maxie’s Kitchen, easy go-to recipes to make again and again, which comes out March 3rd, 2026. So let’s get into the rules.

Opening Conversation

Meeting Maxine

Maxine, it is so nice to meet you. Congratulations on your first book coming out early March, 2026.

Thank you so much, Darin. Excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me on.

Oh my God. My absolute pleasure.

Career Turning Point

The Layoff & The Leap

Three years ago, back in 2022, you were laid off, something that a lot of people are dealing with now, and started diving into culinary creation full-time. What gave you that confidence to get in the kitchen and then to also share what you were doing?

So I had actually been sharing content online for a couple of years when I had gotten laid off. I had built a modest following. I had always said that my goal eventually, like my dream was to be able to focus on maxi’s kitchen full-time but I was always too afraid to take the plunge and like quit my corporate job to do it. Of course when I got laid off obviously I was really upset that day it was like a gut punch crying completely shocked been there.

But then the afternoon of that day, I started to get this little internal pull or feeling of, hey, maybe this is my chance to chase my dream and focus on the cooking stuff full time. I told my husband, almost feeling embarrassed when I told him that that was what I was thinking. And he was really supportive.

The next day I woke up and I filmed three recipes and basically just started running as fast as I can chasing that dream. I’ve been doing it ever since.

From Passion to Profession

Realizing It Became a Career

From that day after, we’ll call that day one if you’d like.

Yeah.

Was there a moment when you realized that this passion of yours had become your profession?

It started when I was able to focus all of my time on cooking and creating content and sharing videos. My account started to gain momentum pretty quickly and I started seeing videos start to go viral and I felt like I had a lot of momentum that kept me going.

About two months into focusing on Maxi’s Kitchen full time, I started having managers reach out. If you’re not familiar with managers in the content creator space, they basically help you pitch you to brands, help with the monetization and some of the high level strategy of your business.

Of course.

It was a couple months in when I met a manager who I absolutely loved and had just this immediate feeling of, oh, I need to work with this person. And I feel like it was signing with her that made me realize, okay, wow, I think I’m actually doing this full time because now she’s going to help me build a business around the cooking stuff.

That’s so amazing to have that turning point work out for you. I don’t want to say relatively quickly because it’s years in the making overnight, as I’ve always found.

That’s such a good way to put it.

The Cookbook

Shaping the First Book

What’s so exciting is that you’ve been able to build this organically, you focus it on full time, and now you have your first cookbook coming out in March of 2026, Maxi’s Kitchen, easy go-to recipes to make again and again. With so much content, so many recipes to pull from, how did you whittle it down? What is the story you want to tell with your first book?

When thinking about the concept for my first cookbook, right, there’s so many different ways you could go with it or different areas you could focus.

Absolutely.

When thinking about the people who actually cook my recipes and the people who I’m serving, a lot of my audience, they’re busy, they really just need to get dinner on the table for their family. They’re not professional chefs.

The biggest problem is people don’t actually have their go to recipes.

Yes.

When you have your go-to recipes, and that’s the three to five recipes that you have in your arsenal that your family loves, that you feel really confident making, when you have those down, then cooking starts to become really fun and relaxing and enjoyable because you know what’s in your toolbox.

Really, the goal of this book is to help people find the recipes that are gonna be a part of their rotation that they can master and feel really comfortable with, just things to make again and again.

The Five Rules

Rule Number One — Just Start

It’s so incredible that you’ve been able to take it from a hobby into how you run your life, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for turning your passion into your career. And the first rule in many ways was kickstarted for you with you being laid off from your job, but is really something that people should keep in mind when they want to get rolling in their own project or passion. What’s your first rule?

My first rule is just start. It doesn’t need to be perfect. While the being laid off was such a catalyst towards working on Maxi’s Kitchen full time.

Yeah.

I actually had shared my first video three or four years before that.

Incredible.

It took me a year to actually muster up the courage to share that first video.

Sure. Sure.

I used to share on just my personal instagram story clips of my mom and i cooking together and i noticed that a lot of my friends just loved that content and they were always responding to my story and i started having a feeling oh people are interested in this but then for a year i sat on the idea of putting content out there and starting a blog. At first i was thinking oh i want it to be me and my mom i want it to be more youtube style where we’re talking to camera.

But the problem was I lived in New York at the time and she was still in California. So that wasn’t happening.

There was one low key weekend, wasn’t doing too much. I was just cooking for me and my husband. I was making meatballs in an Italian sauce. And I was like, you know, why don’t I just see if I could film something on my phone and just see if I could put a video together.

If you look back at the beginning of the road for me, the video that I put out was, I don’t want to say horrible compared to the way they look now, but it was just very raw.

Totally fine though.

Yeah, it wasn’t perfect at all. I didn’t have any tripods. I was just holding the phone with my hand. But you have to start somewhere in order to get better.

Rule Number Two — Consistency is Key

Once you get started, your second rule, it’s the piece of advice that I give to everyone who asks about starting a podcast or doing something creatively and putting it out into the world. To me, it’s my number one rule, but I can understand that getting started has to happen for this one to click into place. What is your rule number two?

My rule number two is consistency is key.

Yes. Yes.

This applies to so many things in life in general to be successful, especially when looking at building a career in social media. As a content creator, consistency is important.

I once saw Adam Mosseri, who is the head of Instagram. He said, the right number of posts is whatever you can stay consistent with.

Agree.

So if that’s one post a month, do one post a month. If that’s two per week, do two per week. He was basically saying it’s better to pick something that you can be consistent with versus posting five times in one week and then going silent for the rest of the month.

That always really stuck with me. And I do think finding a manageable cadence that you can stick to is really important.

Finding that cadence also gives a certain amount of reliability with the community that you’re engaging with because they know when to expect it, they know what to expect, it becomes part of their routine.

For sure.

Rule Number Three — Engage With Your Community

This allows you to enact your rule number three. The rule number three is engage with your community and connect with others in your field.

I would comment and like and just really engage with cooking creators or food accounts. I would actually even reach out to aggregator accounts that would post other people’s recipe videos.

Every time you like or comment on another person’s post, you’re making somewhat of a connection with them. And then you’re also leaving footprints back to your own account, which is really helpful.

In terms of connecting with others in your field, that was critical for me when I got laid off. I made a point to set up calls with every single person I knew who was doing something similar to what I was hoping to do.

Just getting all of those different perspectives was really helpful in helping me get my footing when I was first starting out doing it full time.

Rule Number Four — Follow the Inspiration

Once you get the ball rolling, you get content going. Sometimes you start going down a path that wasn’t the original intent. Sometimes that’s good and you discover new things. But as you build a community, they are going to expect a certain type of content from you. Staying focused is a big part of your rule number four.

My rule number four is to follow the inspiration. Sometimes your brain can become very wired to producing content or recipes that you know resonate and that you know perform well with your audience. Of course that is important and that still is something that i think about core to my business.

Something that I’ve learned to tap into more is actually just following my intuition, following the inspiration with the recipes that I create.

There was a book that my friend got me for my birthday called The Creative Act by Rick Rubin.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with it.

Of course.

That actually really helped shift my mindset. He talks a lot about how all creative ideas come from a source, kind of a spiritual approach. He says, when you get a pull by a creative idea, that means that it’s that idea’s time to come into the universe.

I love that so much.

So I really try to trust that as much as possible.

It was so fun working on the cookbook because every single recipe in the book came from a day of inspired thought. And there was never a point where I felt like I had to force creativity.

I was able to have fun with it and really just follow the inspiration.

Rule Number Five — Dream Big & Have a Long-Term Vision

Having that inspiration and the confidence to share your ideas with the world when they’re ready is so important. Your fifth and final rule takes all of your daily work, that long road of determination, and puts it together for a successful career. What’s your rule number five?

My fifth rule is dream big and have a long-term vision.

I’m a big believer in manifestation, the fact that you need to see and believe something in your own mind before it becomes a reality on the outside or in the real world.

Actually, a couple months after I got laid off and started working on Maxi’s Kitchen full time, I created a vision board.

Yes.

On that vision board, it had hitting a million followers on Instagram. It had writing a cookbook. It had hitting 100K on YouTube.

All of those have actually come true already. And then there’s a few other things on there that I hope will come true.

That was really helpful. I put it up in my closet. Every time when I was getting dressed, I would see it.

You’ve really got to believe it in order to achieve it.

Where to Find Maxie’s Kitchen

Maxine, it seems like you have achieved it. If anybody wants to order the book, check along with content created directly from the book, where can they go? How can they get involved?

My Instagram is at maxiskitchen, M-A-X-I-S kitchen. That’s the best place to follow for all the updates, but I’m also on TikTok and YouTube with the same username.

And then maxiskitchen.com is where you can find more of my recipes and newsletter.

For the cookbook specifically, check out mkcookbook.com.

Closing

Incredible. Well, I’m looking forward to holding my very own copy. Good luck on the tour. Good luck with everything. And congrats on achieving your vision.

Thank you so much, Darin. It was so fun to come on the pod. I appreciate it. Hoping to meet you in person at sometime soon.