From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Eric Kim, a staff writer at The New York Times food section and author of the just released cookbook Korean American. I've admired Eric from afar via social media, as well as his beautiful essays. And it was a thrill to finally get the chance to talk to him and find out that he comes from a literature background, which explains the beautiful writing. We discussed how he came to food, the way his cookbook took shape during the pandemic, going viral with gochujang glaze, and his relationship with meat. 

Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thank you so much for being here.

Eric: Hi, thanks for having me. It's so great to finally meet you.

Alicia: I know. It's so great. I'm meeting so many people that I've wanted to meet for a long time. [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah.

It's kind of funny. I won't say the person's name, but we have a mutual friend. And anytime I want to say something to you, I say it to this person instead of just—I should just DM you and be like, ‘Man, that latest newsletter was great.’ But instead, I just tell your friend and hope that they tell you.

Alicia: Yeah. I mean, we can be friends. We can be friends. That's ok. [Laughs.]

Eric: So great to meet you, though, seriously.

Alicia: For sure!

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Eric: Yeah, sure. 

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in the suburbs. My parents moved there in 1983. And they've been there since. And I was there till I was 18. 

And I ate mostly my mom's food. She was a cook. She cooked a lot of Korean food, Korean American hodgepodge dishes. And I think when I got old enough to drive especially, but even before then, when I kind of was tall enough to stand at the stove, my brother and I were latchkey kids. We ate a lot of convenience foods. And I think that's a big part of my life and my nostalgia. It's become a theme in my work, because I just love these memories of these frozen meals actually span so much farther than myself. And I think about this all the time, actually, my—the way my micro life has macro resonances. And so you just say one thing, like ‘Remember this?’ And then thousands of people are like, ‘Yeah, me too.’ And almost always they are children of immigrants and I think that is something I have discovered recently. And I feel it's a real power. It's a power to harness, I think. It's really nice. 

Oh, and just like in terms of dishe. I vaguely specifically remember this one after school snack that I ate a lot, which was the broccoli cheddar chicken hot pocket, which is the best one and kind of very substantial. It's got some vegetables in it, but what I would do is I would take the first bite and then squeeze it out onto a bowl of rice and ust mix that up. And then later in our, later—our Thanksgivings had this broccoli cheese rice casserole dish. It was like I was manifesting that or something as a kid. And now, it's a regular staple in our—on my Thanksgiving table. 

Alicia: Yeah. The combination of broccoli and cheese, I have to admit, is just unbeatable.

Eric: Sublime, for sure. Delicious. 

Alicia: I used to get the Stouffer's with broccoli. When I had my first job, I would put that in the microwave because I made no money. So I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm gonna go to the supermarket, get a Stouffer's mac and cheese with broccoli. And because it has broccoli in it, it's fine. It's healthy.’ [Laughs.]

Eric: It was a classic. I mean, what a genius move, because that—once you eat the macaroni, there's still sauce. There's so much sauce. And so, kind of having that broccoli moment is really lovely. That's funny. Yeah.

Alicia: Well, you're one of those food writers who is a really good writer too. Not to say that there aren’t many. [Laughter.] But what came first for you, writing or food?

Eric: Oh, man. I've actually never been asked that. That's funny. Well, food. Yeah, for sure. But I didn't have consciousness of it until after writing. 

So I think about this all the time. Maybe this is a good story. But I was doing a PhD in comparative literature, and I had just taken an oral exam. It was kind of the big moment before you go off and write the dissertation. It's after your third year. And so what happens is all your friends show up outside the door of your exam room. And it's almost a formality, at least at the program that I went to. And you get flowers and you get a laurel, a thing around your head. And kind of that's your badge of honor, a rite of passage. 

And then I didn't pass mine, though. I was one of the few people who didn’t because I was horrible at speaking. And yeah, it was this huge wake up call for me because I'd wanted to be an English professor since 10th grade of high school or something like that. And there I was, kind of like halfway through a program that would let me do that. And I got a low pass. They called it a low pass. When I walked out of that room, my friend had this huge bouquet of flowers, and then slowly lowered it. 

My advisors were like, ‘You can either leave. You can leave the program with a master's degree, or you can take the exam again and then continue on to the dissertation.’ And I think at that moment, it was the first time in my life I really just realized that wasn't for me, the academia. And that writing was for me, though. And that was the part of the program that I excelled at, I think. And there was even a writing portion that was good that I did well on, apparently. 

And I remember looking at the room. And it was these four white men. I was like, ‘What happened? How did I fail this? Why didn't you prepare me?’ And I didn't ask it like that. I'm sure I barely spoke. I was like, ‘You said that the written portion was good, right?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, the written portion was good. But the oral part is really important.’ I think it was in that moment, I was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna want to pursue the thing I'm good at.’

So I didn't know what that meant yet. But what happened was, I called my brother after I was in my suit, or whatever the—it was probably the first suit I'd ever bought or owned. And my brother was kind of like, ‘Hey, Eric, you were never happy there. You love food. You're talking about food all the time.’ And at the time, I was Instagramming. That was my food blog mostly. Those Instagram captions, I would just write as long as I could until I hit the word limit. And that was sort of how I got started with the food writing, I think. 

And then, so my brother made me realize that food was always there. It was the one constant. And I happened to have an old boss at Food Network who was able to give me a job. And that's how it all started. So it's kind of a bit of both. It was writing first, but the consciousness—It was food first, but the consciousness was later. Yeah.

Alicia: What made you want to be an English professor? Who did you like to read?

Eric: Hmm. Oh, yeah. I mean, you can see it on my bookshelf here. But it's sort of my love for Michelle Branch. [Laughs.] Which I don't hide. But I think about this all the time, when you're so young and you have no frame of reference for anything. And then something comes at you. And it just really sucks you in. A certain song is super catchy. And then that person’s second song is super catchy, and that third song. And then you just realize, ‘Wow, I just really like this person's music.’

And then, for me, that was 20th century American literature. Throughout high school, just kind of breezing through my English classes and not really paying attention to it ’cause math was so hard. And all these other things were harder. And so, I just kind of didn't take it seriously. 

And then there was a moment in the 10th grade when I looked back on my favorite books, and they were all from John Steinbeck. Or they were all from a very specific time period in American and American literary canon. And I was like, ‘Okay, I guess this is it. This is my Michelle Branch of books.’ So yeah, I pursued that in college.

And I just loved college so much, which is such a lame thing to say. But I had a great time in college. And I had really lovely professors. The English department at the college I went to was just so supportive. And they were great. I just figured why not keep doing this, you know? And so, yeah, I kept doing it. And enjoyed the part of being a student, but I think I didn't enjoy being a PhD candidate. That was a very political thing, very performative. And I sucked at talking. So I was really bad at it. I was really bad at acting. 

Alicia: Yeah, I can relate. 

But you came to food media. You were at Food Network? How did you get into the recipe writing aspect, which you've had such success in?

Eric: Thank you. It happened randomly, I think. Oh, yeah. Like most things, it seems random. But then when you really narrate yourself, you can narrativize the trajectory. 

But so for me, it was Food52, the job after Food Network. I was mostly an editor at Food Network. And then, I became a senior editor at 52. And was sort of a really just—It's a messy startup place. It's a very disorganized kind of place, which meant that you could do whatever the hell you wanted. And so, I really felt that there were a lot of opportunities if I wanted them, and so there was no one—It's a really self-starting kind of place. So if you're a self-starter, I think that helped me when I went. When I was there. I was like, ‘I'd like to develop recipes and write about them.’ And so, I did that once in a while. 

It was a column pretty quickly, actually. I had this theme that I was really interested in, which was cooking for one. And ‘cause I was so depressed and lonely, I think that's where I kind of practiced. And I practiced on real readers, I guess. The recipes are pretty popular. And they did well. 

And I think what, the one thing I believed in always was that my food tasted good. I knew that I had something, I think in Korean, you would call it son-mat. It's called hand taste. But it's this magical quality of—it's called nafas in Arabic. I knew that I had something where my food just had a taste. I knew that when I put it in front of people, I loved seeing their faces light up with that first bite. That's how I knew that maybe I had something. 

And so, that was a good playground for it. And every week, I was able to see people's reactions and kind of watch them incorporate these dishes into their everyday lives. And so these readers became sort of my—they were my lab rats. 

And I think people don't realize maybe that wasn't that long ago. So I got to the Times and it became my permanent, my daily job of—So I cook every day now. And I'm flexing that muscle, or trying to hone in. I'm definitely learning so much, because I have so many people above me who are way more experienced. And they're teaching me every day. And it's just, if I forget about my past-

It seems random that I'm doing this now. But the other day, actually, I was looking—I went to archive.org. And I looked up my old website, which had this one section. It was mostly an academic website, a CV kinda. But it had one section that said ‘cookbook,’ and it was just where I put recipes, things that I cooked. And a lot of them were just Nigella Lawson recipes that I really liked and that I wanted to have down somewhere, cause I would have dinner parties and friends would be like, ‘Whoa, what was this?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, it's this thing. You can just go to my website and cook it or learn how to cook it if you want.’

But I went back because I'm developing this loaf cake. And I had a cake that I would make all the time. And I sort of started from there. It was awful, by the way. Years later, I baked it in my own kitchen. And it wasn't very good. And I worked on it. But so, I was always writing recipes, I guess for years. And even after high school, I started a blog called Air cooks. It was a Blogspot. I just had been bouncing around just these food blogs. And so, it's always sort of been there. 

And it wasn't until the Food Network job though, actually, where I really learned how to write a recipe. Because my job was—I was called Digital Asset Coordinator, Recipes. So my job was to data entry from the Excel sheets that we got to the website. And so, I sort of saw this one style of recipe writing, which is pretty—they're very neat over there at the Food Network. So that's how I learned how to write recipes from that job. I would say, yeah. And then, I got to practice at length later in life. 

Alicia: Well, I promise that we're going to talk about your book, but because you mentioned her I wanted to ask about Nigella. How did Nigella become someone you look up to, an icon for you? How did that happen?

Eric: Oh, my God. Now I'm actually nervous, because I know she actually was—she listens to your podcast. She's a fan of yours as well. And so Nigella, turn, maybe turn off your, turn off the podcast at this moment, if you will. 

She's someone I watched for the first time on the Food Network, like many people. I think it was either a syndicated version of Nigella Bites, or it was Nigella Feasts, which was the Food Network program that they developed for that book, which actually is my favorite book of hers. And then from there, I made one of her recipes, I think, and then that made me a fan for life. It's like the Michelle Branch songs. I made the next one, and then the next one. They were all perfect. And they all tasted good. And I think it's because she's a good writer that she's able to translate those flavors to the home cook. 

And so, I think I just started following her. I bought her books, and then they were making me cry on the train to my Food Network job and then to my other jobs, and I kind of had this realization that I think this is something I'd like to do. I'd love to make people feel something. So I just, I'm a huge fan. 

And I think when I first met her, I was so shocked. It was at a 92Y conversation. I met her. I was so shocked that I barely said anything. She was really kind to me, and she wanted to sign my book. I had three of her books in my hands and I was embarrassed. She signed the first one, and I started walking away. She was like, ‘No, I'll sign the other ones.’ I was like, ‘No, it's ok. It's fine.’ She's so generous. 

And then, the second time I met her was actually for her book release for—Hmm, which book was it? I think it may have been either Simply Nigella or At My Table, maybe. But she was at the Food52 offices. And that was her launch. That was one of her parties in New York. And I had just accepted the job there. So I was meeting my colleagues for the first time and seeing my office for the first time and meeting Nigella and talking to her. And I just started bawling. [Laughs.] Sorry, this is so embarrassing. I couldn't hold it in. I remember exactly because it's—I just started crying. And she was like, ‘I don't know whether to feel good or bad that I've made you cry.’ And on top of that, my ex-boyfriend was with me. And he's a good friend. But it was just—It was also awkward. And I felt so lame. And then, she was really kind and generous, of course. But so, I was embarrassed. 

So after that, the very second piece I wrote for Food52 was about cookbooks that make me cry. I told the anecdote through my writing, and I made myself look better in the writing. That event was really embarrassing. And anyway, since then, she's sort of been checked—I think she reads my columns once in a while. And that always surprises me. I try to keep my distance, ‘cause I'm still—I haven't changed. She's still my hero. So it's a lot of pinch-me moments, I think. 

And anyway, she's a big reason why I'm here. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

No, I feel like crying just listening to your story, because thinking about—No! Just how generous she is, and to young—I mean, I'm not young anymore, but to anyone who's coming up, she just really is so generous. And that she responds to everyone on Twitter who makes her food or asks her a question. So, it's not something you get used to. She brought up a piece I wrote that came out the middle of last year, last week. And I was like, ‘She remembers my piece!’ [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. 

It's hard though, for me, because she is someone who—And again, Nigella, hope you're not listening. She's a big culinary influence of mine. I learned a lot about just regular cooking from her. How to Eat was monumental for me and for the world. But I would say that, because of that, it's really hard not to write her into my pieces, because that is my education. But I don't, because I know that she reads them sometimes. I just don’t want her to think I'm obsessed, and—which we all are. 

Alicia: We all are, yeah. [Laughter.]

Eric: She is very kind. That's the most important thing, I think. And that's the difference, I think, yeah. Her emotional intelligence really just jumps off the page.

Alicia: Absolutely. 

Well, and to finally get to your cookbook, Korean American, it is beautiful. It's about homecoming. It's a love letter to your mother. [Laughs.] I can't wait to see a physical copy, because I have a digital one. 

But how did you decide to approach your first book? How did this all come about?

Eric: It started off completely different. I was looking at the Publishers Marketplace announcement recently, just being all nostalgic. And it said, The Essentials of Korean American Cooking. And I was just like, ‘Oh my god. Can you imagine if that was the title?’ I don't know what I was thinking. 

But the original proposal was sort of this really deep reported culinary cultural history of Korean American, Korean food in America, the history of it. And I was gonna really travel and do the thing. 

But what ended up happening was we had a pandemic. We were in lockdown, and the book changed course completely. And it also was really appropriate, though, that it changed course. And I had to turn inward, and I had to make it about my family. Because not just logistically, but I kind of realized that in order to tell the right story I had to be really specific. And to be really specific, I had to go into memoir. And that was a relief when that happened, honestly, because that is my—the thing that I'm most comfortable with, I would say. And so, that's how that happened. 

And it was really fun too, because I was still able to kind of do the journalistic thing. But my sources were my parents. And it was fun to get to really dig in and see what they remembered, because it was really that, just mining their memories. Because my memories aren't that deep. They go back a few years, but not that—as far back as their food does.

Alicia: You write, ‘It's an American impulse to follow written down recipes to a T,’ which I loved, because I—for me, it's really difficult to follow written recipes. I've gotten better at it actually. But there is that fear of instinctual cooking. So how do you approach writing precise recipes for such a big audience? ’Cause not just for the Times, but for this book? It's going to be a big audience of people cooking. How do you do that? [Laughs.] 

Eric: Right. Yeah. 

That was the irony, right? The way my mother cooks is not with measurements, and then—as with the rest of us. So, having to measure something that I've always felt was immeasurable, even that quality of my mother's hands, the way her food tastes.

Melissa Clark actually, she was making my kimchi jjigae after—I published a version of the kimchi jjigae last year in the Times. And she wanted to make it, and I was just trying to give her tips. ‘Do this and this and this, and taste and do this.’ And the recipe tries to—What you do in those moments as you give precise measurements, but the rest of it's up to the person's palate. And so there are tasting notes, like ‘Add more if you want more of this.’ And so, you need to leave room for that kind of movement. 

But I remember in that moment, I just really wanted to kind of 3D print my tongue or something or have it be this USB drive that I can just give to her and be like, ‘It's supposed to taste like that.’ You have to resort to prose. That was a challenge with the cookbook. 

But in my day-to-day development, I owe a lot of that to Genevieve Ko. She's my editor. And she just kind of helms the NYT cooking recipes. And she just really knows how to translate it so that it's equal for everyone. 

Oh, I have a good story, actually. My very first recipe that I developed with her when I got on staff, it was the creamy asparagus pasta. And that one was just very loosey goosey. It was my style of just taste as you go. There's a moment where you boil the pasta in a kombu broth, like a dasima broth. And so it just looks like a very seaweedy dish. And at first it was like, ‘Fill the pot to a certain amount.’ 

But she said, ‘I think it should be a very specific number, should be a specific cup amount,’ because—I don’t know about you. But when you make pasta, you probably don't measure the boiling water, right? She was like, ‘I want it to taste the same for everyone.’ So that's why it says very specifically to boil this number of cups so that the broth has the right amount of concentration of the dashima, the kelp. And then because that broth is also used to finish the pasta, so it’s this transfer of flavor. It just had to make it as approximate as possible, while still leaving room for people's taste buds, because everyone tastes differently and everyone's ingredients are different too. 

Alicia: Right. 

Well, the gochujang glaze for the eggplant became this huge staple in my house. Well, I first made it because I wanted to interview you. And I was like, ‘Well, I have to make a recipe of his, and so I'm going to start with this one because it's already vegan. So I don't have to do anything.’ 

But my husband who is really—I mean, he'll be upset if he hears this where I'm like, ‘He's very difficult, He can be very difficult to cook for sometimes.’ It's good, though, because lately he's cooking a little bit more. And so, it's becoming more of a thing we do together, which is good, because I think I was actually losing my mind a little bit. The pandemic was making everyone lose their mind with cooking, where it's like, ‘I'm done.’ I thought this was the thing I like to do most. And now I'm just totally at the end of my rope.

But your recipe really reinvigorated my cooking and reinvigorated my kitchen. And we're very happy and we use it on so many things. And I know it was your first recipe to go viral, right? What was that like?

Eric: Yeah, I guess so. 

Trying to remember. That was during peak COVID, I guess. It was the peak of it. And I was at my mom's house. And I remember when it was assigned, it was just ‘eggplant banchan’ on it. It wasn't a thing yet. It was the one that I wanted to kind of play around with. I kind of asked her. I was like, ‘Hey, what are some eggplant banchan, umma? I have to write this story.’ And she was like, ‘Well, your grandma likes this one. It's called gaji bokkeum.’ There's also a gaji muchim,  but it's basically—she steams the eggplant, and then she tosses it, dresses it in a sauce. And it's usually like this sesame oil thing. But she liked to do gochujang. And she told me that that's something my grandmother really liked. So she would make it for my grandmother all the time. And I thought that was really interesting. 

So I kind of did my own take on it by frying it. And there's this thing called pa gileum, which is scallion oil in Korean cooking that's really prominent now. It's maybe popularized by this guy Baek Jong-won, I think that's the thing. Yeah, it's kind of the Emeril Lagasse—oh, we don't like doing that anymore, right? The Julia Childs?

Anyway, yeah, I think I made that dish. And I brought it up to my mom's room. That was sort of the process. She'd be like, ‘I'll help.’ And then, she doesn't help. And then she goes to her room. I would bring it to her room and be like, ‘Ok, it's time to taste this.’ And I remember that first bite, she was like, ‘Whoa, this is something. You should open a restaurant.’ That's like it. When she says that, it means it's good. And Koreans always want you to, Korean parents always want you to open a restaurant for some reason. I'm like, ‘That’s not who I am.’ [Laughs.]

I didn't know that it would resonate with people, because—I don't know. I think that that was the biggest surprise to see it on Instagram. That was when I kind of felt the power of Instagram. Yeah, that share function. And then I saw all these people buying gochujang for the first time, and it was so great. 

And I tried to do the same thing the second time, because I thought, ‘Oh, that's great. I got a bunch of people to buy gochujang. That's kind of my point, or my hope.’ So I did gochugaru salmon, hoping that people would buy gochugaru. And I think a lot of people did, but a lot of people ended up making gochugaru salmon from the gochujang they bought from the eggplants. [Laughter.] It worked out and it's all fine. 

There's always a reason for these recipes. And I'm glad that it's the eggplant that did well, yeah.

Alicia: Of course. 

Well, you describe your mom's garden in detail in the book, and you refer to yourself as a carnivore. And so, I wanted to ask about this. What is your relationship to meat as a food writer, as a person? [Laughs.]

Eric: Great question. 

Something I think about every single day, recipe developing, you're just sort of—There are so few reasons for meat to be in something, unless it's a roast or something like that. But yeah, so I’m always thinking about that, how to take out that fish sauce or take out that little bit of bacon that maybe I made it for myself the first time. 

Hmm. To answer this, I think I would go back to the way my mother cooked. And I think the Korean dishes that we liked as Korean Americans, Korean American children, a lot of meat, it's—All the meat dishes are the things that you kind of liked. And you'd go to potlucks, and it's kind of that marinated bulgogi that you leave in the freezer, and you bring that to a potluck and—or you fry it outside on the grill at a church picnic. And it's always this paper plate with the rice, and then that sticks to that plate like crazy. And then, the bulgogi on the side. That was a big component of my food growing up. 

But I would say that I sort of started eating less meat as I got older and pickier. And when I was younger, I actually didn't eat that much meat. I was always too skinny. And my mom was always worried. And she was like, ‘Eric doesn't like meat.’ So when we’d go to Korean barbecue, I would eat the egg—the gyeran-jjim, which is that steamed egg. I would eat all the vegetables. And I loved rice and the tongdak chicken. 

My palate’s changed so much. And I would say that it—it's recently that I forgot I even wrote that I was a carnivore. But I think it was professionally. Once I started cooking professionally for recipe development and work, I kind of realized that you're always thinking about food, and all the other angles around food and the politics of food. And so, I'm much more conscious of it now. I think I'm eating more meat than I would be if I weren't doing this for work, because I'm kind of the one who develops the meat recipes usually. It always ends up being that way. 

Sometimes when I'm pitching something, Iwant to give someone a really easy chicken recipe. And that service is something that really matters to me. But I mean, the dark side of this is that after developing that chicken recipe, I'm so sick of chicken, I'm so sick of meat. RIP. It's really hard to eat that much meat and you have all that leftover food and it doesn't go to waste. So it goes in my stomach. And so my relationship to meat has changed in the sense that I think it's a matter of just pitching fewer meat recipes, but that's not always-

Alicia: It's not always possible. 

Eric: It's not always possible. But I don't have to pitch a short rib dish or anything. It depends on the story. And I follow the story, but I am very grateful when it's a vegetable kind of dish because I know I can at least just eat a lot of that and feel a lot better.

So yeah, my relationship to being meat is really weird and probably a little disordered. But we'll tackle that in another interview. Or you can ask questions if you want. 

Alicia: I mean, I ask about it because—Well, one because you said carnivore, so I had to. And then two, because people do have a complicated relationship with meat. The first iteration of my podcast used to be called Meatless. And it was literally really focused on how people feel about meat. But it gets really complicated, like talking about it with people. But at the same time, it's interesting because people do bring up this—it just gets so heavy for people. And I'm like—Yeah. [Laughs.]

Eric: You're the one person I would love to talk about that with, because I just think—I love the way you write about vegetarianism and veganism. You recognize the nuances, and there's class involved. And there's privilege. And I just think that's all part of the story. 

And another way to talk about this, which is what's the point of that line, I think, if I’m looking back, thinking back on it, which is that chapter unveiled itself to me. Not to sound annoying, but it—there was a Korean barbecue chapter, and I replaced it with Garden of Jean. I replaced it with a vegetable chapter because I kind of just realized that there were so many more interesting things I wanted to write about and explore and develop. Not to mention, we were really—we were all so full all the time. 

I wanted a moment to celebrate those really special vegetable dishes, kind of like the discovery of that eggplant, you know? That I made in my kitchen. On the one hand, it's the chicken breasts I’m really sick of eating. But it's also, on the other hand, it's I have a newfound appreciation for vegetables now. Because as I'm developing them, I'm discovering new things about them. And that's really, really exciting. And that chapter was the most fun to write. So it's the one where I got to really, really kind of go off. 

One interesting story actually is, so this whole thing about appetite and being a recipe developer who constantly has to taste your own food. I was doing this crispy tofu dish for my column at the Times. It’s a great tofu dish. It has a sweet and sour sauce that tastes like McDonald's. And it's great, but after eating that much tofu. I don't know if you can tell, but my apartment’s tiny. So my apartment was so disgustingly flooded with just oil fumes. And I needed to feel better. So I made a vegetable soup with some of the leftover tofu that wasn't fried, and it was broccoli and vegetables. And then, it was chicken broth. I have Better Than Bouillon Chicken. I love that. 

And it was such a good soup. So I pitched it. I was like, ‘This is such a great creamy, broccoli soup that doesn't have cream in it.’ Yeah. I was like, ‘Oh crap, but it has chicken broth in it.’ It was greenlit. I developed it. And I was like, ‘This is easy. I'll just replace it with vegetable broth.’ Nope. No, it didn't taste good. I made 10 pots of that stupid soup. I was so sick of it. And yeah, each time it was vegetarian, vegan, but it just eluded me. I think that stubbornness of that soup, it really empowered me to just—I had to take a break, though, ’cause I was so sick of it. 

And then I discovered this.. And I think the recipe will be out by the time this airs. But I remembered a column that my former writer, and friend and—Kristen Miglorious at Food52—I was her editor at, on Genius recipes, there's a column at Food52. And she wrote about another writer of mine, actually. Yi Jun Loh, he's a Malaysian writer, wonderful. He had this coconut water ABC soup. So ABC soup is a Malaysian chicken soup, usually. He discovered that coconut water, tomato, carrot, and onion produced a really delicious broth full of umami. And it makes sense, hits all the right notes. There's that bone broth quality from the coconut milk, the cloudiness. Whatever they call it, a lot of qualities are in that coconut water, like just literally the thing you buy at the bodega. 

And so, it was this magic elixir that was much simpler than all of the rest of the versions of the recipe, the broccoli soup that I was trying. So I kind of went that route. And then, it was just like magic. I made the soup one last time. And it was so flavorful, so full of umami savoriness and all the qualities, all the glutamate crazy. It was so flavorful. I had to dilute it with water. And so I love the story of the soup, because I think it tells a story of my relationship to cooking with vegetables, which has been one of discovery and joy because it's so new to me, as a ‘self described carnivore,’ whatever. 

It's so funny that whenever someone points out something I've written, I just completely don't remember writing it. And yeah, I don't know if you feel this way. But I feel there's this thing where you blacked out after you write anything. 

Alicia: Yeah, I never want to be reminded, ever. No. It goes, and then it's not mine anymore. And then it's something else. I mean, I don't understand how writers—I respect it, because I respect all hustles. But anyone who can make a Canva graphic of their own words? I can't do it. But people do it. I can't see my own words that way. I can't see. I could figure out what might be a good pull quote, I guess, if I had to. I can't do my own pull quotes. It just feels vulgar. [Laughs.]

Eric: No, I totally agree. That's such a thing. I don't think everyone's like us, actually. But I think, I would love a psychologist to sort of examine but, why? Why certain writers black out like that? And I think it's probably self preservation or something like that. 

Alicia: Well, I think if you're writing personally—yeah, and if you're writing personally, and you're really trying to get at something or you're excavating your own emotions or whatever, the only way to get yourself to still put it out there is to detach from it, I think, in some way. I mean, you're gonna have a book come out, literally, in a few weeks. That's very personal. And you're not going to be able to be attached to how people respond to it. Because, no. [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah.

I'm really grateful to my editor and my publisher. They were very kind to me and generous with time, because I think I had trouble. This book was so hard to write. It's so personal, of course, but I think that's why—Each pass, I would read it. And I'm someone who, as a writer, I will use up as much time as you give me. That's the amount of time. That's why I had no idea this staff writing job would be excellent for me, someone who needs deadlines, who needs to be pulled away from the writing, before I overwrite. And there's so many moments when my editor will, after the second pass, second edit, she'll just actually take out everything I've added because she’s like, ‘It was good the first—It was better the first time. Stop.’ And I think that's a real lesson. I need to learn how to kind of let go sometimes. 

Yeah, this book went through it. I asked for an extra pass, because I just needed more time with my words. I wasn’t ready to let go, and it was so hard. And then, they were very kind and did that. And now, the book’s coming out a little later. But that's fine. 

Alicia: My book is coming out later. So the supply chain push has delayed everything. 

Eric: And the one thing it's that my book isn't is on the bottom of the ocean. So I'm quite grateful for that. I feel so bad for my colleagues, yeah. [Laughter.]

Alicia: It's horrible. [Laughs.]

Well, the photography of the book is really beautiful and bright and vibrant. How did that aesthetic emerge?

Eric: I think this is maybe the first time I get to answer this question. But Jenny Huang shot it, I think many know her in the industry. But she and I met at Food52. She was shooting a couple of my columns and kind of hit it off. And I think from there, we just maybe got dinner and kind of became friends. And she was also kind of just starting out, really. She had changed careers. And I won't tell her story. She should tell her story. Her photos were different. I loved even at Food52 that I could look at it, a photo, and be like, ‘Oh, that's Jenny. I can tell there's a crispiness. There's a Vermeer glamor.’ Vermeer's my favorite painter. 

Really, her photography really spoke to me. And I just love that you could look at it and be like, ‘That's Jenny Huang.’ And that's what I want, who I wanted on my team. Because I feel that way about recipe development; I feel that way about writing. I feel that way about talent. Yeah, I think people think talent means level of skill or something. But I actually think it means voice. 

And then not only that, she just really went into this with—The art direction was her, 100% her. It was barely me. I kind of was way too busy to worry about art. I was sort of like, ‘Yeah, Jenny, this is your book too.  I'll do whatever you say.’ And so, man, she asked for really specific tables. And I had to a specific traditional dress, and she asked for things. And I was kind of annoyed. And then once we were on set and we shot them, I was like, ‘Oh, I see.’ So I think after the first day I was sort of like, ‘Ok, just don't ask questions.’ She always had a vision, showing every photo you see in here. Well, not all of them sometimes. There's a lot of serendipity in the book, but she's already thought about how she wants to angle.

But there's a photo—it’s the kimchi-jjigae—of my mom kind of having lunch. And I can't talk about my mom because, always makes me cry. But she knew that she wanted my mom in a hanbok and to be eating lunch, and it took—for it to be a certain angle and kind of from behind. And then, we saw the picture and we're just like, ‘Wow, that was in her head.’ I think that's why she's a good photographer. It's in her head first and then knows how to get it onto the page. 

And I just like that she also thinks about cultural context. So there were moments in the book where she scheduled the shoot. It wasn't dish-dish-dish-dish. It wasn't a food media shoot. It was more of setting scenes, so that she could like a documentary style, kind of go around. And that's how Korean food is. 

She's the one who described it like this. So I'm sort of paraphrasing her, but she described it to me, Korean food has edges. When you're setting a table, there's a banchan, there's a rice, there's a stew, there's a meat, there's a lettuce plate. And in a cookbook, in my cookbook, all of those recipes are on different chapters. So she wanted to show the edges of—If you were to cut and paste, you could find the same patterns and see, you can create a whole. But I think in order to show some semblance of connectivity, she was, she did that on purpose, kind of showing the edges of dishes. And I thought that was just so brilliant, and really different. Because I, having white photographers shoot your food your whole career. And sometimes, getting it wrong, on accident, but just because I'd be like, ‘That's not how Korean people eat it,’ or that's not—’No one would do that.’ She was incorporated into her art direction. And so yeah, forever grateful to her no one else could have shot this.

The whole team, I really need a credit. Oh my god, Tyna Huong was the food stylist. And she and I met at a party with Jenny, actually. And so the second I met her, I was like, ‘Ok, she's the one.’ And I just knew I wanted her to style the book. And then Beatrice Chastka is a wonderful prop stylist who works with them. They're kind of this trio. And I couldn't break up the trio. So that's how it happened.

Alicia: That's amazing. 

I mean, it does look so different from so many cookbooks that are out, coming out. It's vibrant. [Laughs.] Whereas I feel there's so much whitespace on covers now. And it's like, ‘Stop. I can't take it anymore.’ [Laughs.]

Eric: Yeah. I did not want any whitespace on that cover. I was super adamant about that. 

Alicia: Well, how did you maintain this creative energy while writing the book and working? Like, this is my question for everyone lately, because it almost drove me insane, personally.

Eric: This was your last newsletter, right? That was like such a great—

Alicia: Yeah, a little bit, yeah, about productivity, yeah.

Eric: Productivity. This is something I've been working on. Because during the pandemic is when my workload kind of quadrupled. I was a freelancer for a year before I started at the Times, but even at the Times, I was sort of dealing with book stuff after hours. And so, it was really hard to find moments of rest. There was no time.

And what was really influential for me was my friend, Rick Martinez. I'm not going to pretend—His name does have a last name. He and I started this process together. Our books are coming out at the same time with the same editor. It was a lot of stars aligning, and we kind of quickly became phone call friends. We would call each other during the book writing process, because it's so lonely. And one thing that he said that was really influential for me was to take moments of rest and moments of joy. No matter how short that is, even if it's five minutes, because that's, that is restful. 

And I really have started to see this kind of be true in other parts of my life. My partner and I, he lives in Philly now. So we're still technically long distance. And so, whenever we kind of realized that we only get two or three days together, where before I would have been sad about that, I realized now that time is a circle and that it's the quality of the time that matters, not the quantity. And so for me, it's the quality of the rest and the joy that matters, not the quantity.

So yeah, I take power naps all the time. I had a bulgogi video come out where I was super busy during the shooting of that whole thing. I look tired. I look really messy, and my hair is not gelled because—and then a reader attacked me. They're like, ‘Eric always looks like he just woke up from a nap.’ And actually, it's true. I always am waking up from naps because I get through. So I get through on five, six hours of sleep every night. That's pretty good. 

But it's hard. It's hard to find time to slow down when there's just not enough hours in the day. And with this job, this new job, I just—It's so fun. It's a really fun job. And I want to be doing it all the time. But I just kind of had this realization that I need to take moments of rest to sort of make sure that I can come back and be and do good work. And yeah, once I realized it was—it had to be part of my routine. I tried to incorporate it more, but it's not always possible, you know?

Alicia: Well, how do you define abundance?

Eric: Yeah. 

So I know you asked this to other people, too. And I like to listen to a lot of podcasts to see those answers. And I'm not sure if anyone's done this. But this stumped me a little bit. So I looked it up. I found out that the Latin root is abundantia. Sorry, I don't speak—I never took Latin—but which means overflowing. And I thought it was really interesting that the last definition, it wasn't about overflowing. It's the quantity or amount of something present in a particular area. And this usually refers to natural resources, carbon and nitrogen and bees or whatever. And I realized that this is—

I like that definition. Because it describes abundance as a finite number. And I think, yeah, there's a colonial or environmental reading of this, which is abundance is something to be cherished and not exploited. And I think it's important that with anything in life, whether it's a cultural document or whether it's the environment, the climate, I think. Treating it something that should be preserved and sustained rather than something that's overflowing. I think that attitude about the overflowing fountain, it's really dangerous and very colonial. And I think that's what abundance means to me. 

Alicia: Well, that's always what I think I'm trying to get at, is that a little bit—Well, because I do think there is an idea of abundance, as just having a lot of choices in the supermarket, if we're talking about food context. And then I think that that is a colonial concept, is that ‘Oh, we have to have—’ I mean, look at the Defense Production Act, calling meat processing workers, essential workers, that is a colonial idea of what it means to have enough, because it means that other people are living in danger. And yeah, I think what I'm always trying to get at is the idea that abundance is the ability to share, basically. [Laughs.]

Eric: I love that. And the way to share that is to not overmine, so to speak. 

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Eric: Yes. 

So, I think this is also something—I was gonna be honest, I also looked this up because I was thinking about how I wanted to answer. I'm really bad at on the fly, I guess. But I appreciate that you ask everyone this, so I knew it was coming. 

But I think cooking is a political act, because politics are about power. That's the one question that I'm always answering. I'm always answering questions about cultural appropriation specifically, but when it comes to other kinds of politics of gender, or labor, I think food and specifically cooking can be—It's an opportunity to influence change. I'm not gonna say I think of my recipes as things that change or that are political, inherently. 

But I think editorially, as someone who's been on plenty of it, on plenty of editorial teams, I know how political it is to decide to make space for a specific type of cooking, a specific type of food, specific look. I've been told in the past that my food was too brown, I've been told that my contributor’s foods were too brown and that they needed a little green or parsley. And that centering of a very specific type of cuisine angers me, and this is—there's nothing more political to me. 

And it's been my life's mission after that experience in our really messed-up industry to try to kind of move the needle. And I just freaking love my team. I love my editors. And I'll have a brown dish, and no one will be like, ‘This needs parsley. This needs a sprig of scalings.’ No one's telling me that, because they're just like, ‘This is the way it looks. This is the way millions of people eat this. And this is now our new center.’ And I think that's super important.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for being here. 

Eric: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at www.aliciakennedy.news. Or follow me on Instagram, @aliciadkennedy, or on Twitter at @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

This week, I'm talking to Sandor Katz, whom you likely know from his books Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Art of Fermentation, Fermentation As Metaphor, and now Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, which maps fermentation practices around the world, to show how traditions that preserve abundance have been maintained. It's perhaps my favorite of his books, because it tells so many stories through fermentation and introduces you to so many people around the world. 

Katz has become a legend for his work, but he maintains humility as a conduit of knowledge rather than a keeper. His approach is a real inspiration to me. It was wonderful to get to talk to him about how he organized this book by substrate rather than nation, that why he names the ills of neocolonialism, and a lot more. 

Alicia: Hey, Sandor. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Sandor: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Sandor: Well, I grew up in New York City, on the Upper West Side. And we ate all kinds of things. I feel very lucky that my parents liked different kinds of foods. They liked vegetables. We ate lots of different kinds of fresh vegetables. 

But I mean, I would say that my mom did most of the day to day cooking. She had her repertoire. I remember she liked to make pot roast. Sometimes she made great lasagna, but also lots of kind of simple things that she would leave me a note as I got older, just to reheat something. ‘Set the oven to this temperature, put this in the oven.’ My father also liked to cook. He was more of the classic weekend chef. But that also meant that he could be—He was very creative in his cooking. And he's 87 years old now. And he still loves to cook. 

And we were in New York City, and we ate Chinese food a lot. China-Latina food, the Cuban Chinese restaurants, we ate them a lot. My mother's parents, who I was close with growing up, were immigrants from what's now Belarus. And my grandmother was a great cook. And she would come over from time to time and make blintzes for us, I mean, she would make dozens of them. And we’d eat some fresh, and then she’d wrap them up and put them in the freezer. And we would defrost them and fry them to eat them. She made a chopped liver. She made matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, all these kind of classic Eastern European Jewish foods. We ate really beautiful versions of them at home.

Alicia: And you've written mostly about fermentation now, to kind of fast forward in life. But I also love your book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which came out in 2006. And I wanted to ask, because I recently reread it, how do you feel about the food movement it described in 2006 now in 2022?

Sandor: Well, I guess one thing I would say is that it doesn't describe a food movement. It describes a lot of different, grassroots movements. And I mean, I guess, some of them have been more successful over time than others have been. I mean, I think very much, it's not a centralized movement with a singular aim. I think people who get involved in grassroots movements or organized around food have a lot of different ideas and a lot of different objectives. 

I mean, certainly the local food movements have been very successful. And there's a lot in most parts of the U.S. at any rate, there's a lot more variety of locally grown foods available. In some places, I think that there have been more successful efforts to make that accessible. I've visited some farmers’ markets where they take EBT card, and they have some sort of a grant so they're able to double the value of the EBT purchases. So at least in some places, people have been making strides towards making that higher quality locally produced foods accessible to people.

In the seed-saving movements, I mean, I think that there's sort of been amazing strides. And a lot of different people doing seed saving at different scales with different emphases. But I’m really inspired by this project called Truelove Seeds. I buy a lot of seeds from them. And they're working primarily with immigrant and refugee gardeners and with African American farmers and trying to save and spread seeds of different kinds of culturally important crops. 

If we look at the big picture of centralization of production and retailing, that's only getting worse. If we look at issues of wasteful packaging, that's only gotten worse. So I mean, I think, as much as in 2006, more so than in 2006, we need grassroots activism around food.

Alicia: To get to your latest books, Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, it begins with drinking palm wine in Africa and talking about how traditional techniques are so different from the sterile, literally and figuratively, approach in the West. And this inevitably related to how people respond to fermentation, as well as alcohol. 

And so, how in your work have you adapted the traditional, more organic approaches to talk to an audience that might be skittish about fermentation? You talk about this in the book, when you go see the Chinese Chef Guan, who stirs in mold that forms on the top of his pickles, when many people new to fermentation would throw the whole crock out.

Sandor: Well, I mean, honestly, this is really what drew me into fermentation education. And the first time I was invited to teach a fermentation workshop was—which was in 1998, just because I had gotten interested in fermentation and not particularly had any fear about it. It really struck me at that first workshop, when one of the students picked up a jar of the vegetables that we just shredded and stuffed into the jars. And she said, ‘How can I be sure I have good bacteria growing in here, and not some dangerous bacteria that might make me sick, or even kill somebody?’

And I started to realize how easy it is, for people who've grown up with the idea that bacteria are so dangerous, it's easy to project this generalized anxiety about bacteria onto the process of fermentation, which actually is and always has been a strategy for safety in food. So I feel that's part of what drew me into fermentation education was the idea of demystifying this process for people.

So I'm always trying to tell people that like, ‘Oh, you can just skim off the top layer if it gets funky.’ But I also like to let people know that they have options. There do exist very effective technologies for, let's say, protecting the surface of your fermenting vegetables from oxygen. I tell them why I don't use them. Because if you like to smell it, and taste it as it develops, every time you open it up, you're letting the air and the oxygen in and kind of defeating the purpose of your specially engineered vessel or system. But there are options. And people who are really squeamish about that, they can ferment anyway. And there are ways that you can avoid that. But I also try to emphasize that, really, it's harmless, and just skim off the top layer. Don't throw the whole thing away.

Alicia: Right. 

Have people gotten a little bit more, as fermented products have become kind of more commonplace, especially in the US. Everyone's eating kimchi all the time. Everyone's drinking kombucha. Have people gotten a little more easygoing about fermentation, or a bit more interested in it?

(9) Sandor: Well, sure, sure. 

I would say since roughly 2011, maybe every year I've seen lists of the hot new trends in food that include fermentation. That always makes me chuckle a little bit, because fermentation is ancient. The products of fermentation have had enduring appeal. And if you think about ferments like bread, cheese, beer, wine, vinegar, they were just as prominent in our great-grandparents’ time as they are now. It's just that more people are aware of the process by which they are created. They're aware of fermentation. And I think that has everything to do with the microbiome and growing awareness that bacteria are not just our dangerous enemies, but they actually are our symbiotic partners, and we need them in order to function well. But people don't always know when to welcome them and when to fear them.

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

Well, I'm so struck. And this, I think, is related to the fact that fermentation is this ancient practice that no one can really own. But your writing and practice has such an openness that reminded me of Samantha Saville's concept of humble geographies, which asked geographers to pursue knowledge without assumptions of mastery. 

And so I think that in this book, you really approach a humble geography of fermentation globally, without pretense, without expectation. And I love that humility is reflected in calling yourself a fermentation revivalist rather than an expert. And so, why has that manner of working been important to you? And how did you develop your approach to being a revivalist of fermentation? 

Sandor: Well, I've never heard of this phrase humble geographies before. But I feel humbled.

I was 30 years old when I first learned how to make sauerkraut. I'd been eating sauerkraut and pickles since I was a kid. But my interest in fermentation really came in the middle of my life. And there are sort of so many people living in different cultural contexts where it just was part—Fermentation practices were just part of the landscape the whole time. And they're watching their grandmothers ferment something and their mothers ferment something, and they learned as a kid how to do it. 

So, I mean, I do feel humbled. I mean, I have developed this sort of wide ranging, sort of broad knowledge of fermentation. But in any particular format, I mean, there are just so many people with more experience than me. And that sort of forces me to be humble. 

Now, in terms of calling myself a fermentation revivalist, I mean, I guess that really came about because I have such a strong feeling that fermentation has been such an integral part of how people everywhere make effective use of whatever food resources they have available to them. But in recent times, as more and more people have moved away from direct involvement in the production of food, fermentation has largely disappeared from most people's households and from easy community views, so it sort of becomes mystified by disappearing into centralized production facilities. 

And then people sort of project all of this, I guess, technical mystery. ‘Oh, it must take a laboratory. It must take a microscope. It must take the ability to absolutely control conditions’ and imagine that they can't do it. So what I'm trying to revive is people's intimacy with this process. And people feeling it's something that they can bring into their culinary practice.

Alicia: Well, you bring up abundance often in the text as the origin point for so many global ferments. And do you think it's possible to reclaim that concept of abundance in the West to be less about having ‘choices,’ and more about using every bit of things, sharing. There's a clear focus on gift economies and friendship as a means of knowledge building in the book that celebrates a different kind of abundance than what we're sold in the U.S.? 

Sandor: Well, yeah. I mean, I hope so. 

I mean, I really perceive what I'm doing, I—Fermentation, for me, is not the ultimate point. It's a means of reclaiming our food. And reclaiming our food means me coming closer to the source of its production. And I mean, for me, that means having a garden and trying to really primarily eat out of my garden. And share when I have too much of, and ferment what I have too much of to use at a given moment so that I can enjoy it down the road. 

I mean, I think of it in terms of just reclaiming a relationship to food, that food is not sort of simply a commodity that you can get according to how fat your wallet is. Food is something more than that. Food is our connection to the biological world that enables us to physically sustain ourselves. 

Food is a relationship to cultural lineages. I mean, sure, in that context. I mean, I would love to see people think of abundance in this sort of different way. What are the food resources that are around me that are abundant? ‘Ok, there are all these oak trees dropping chestnuts. How can I sort of learn how to turn that into food?’ I mean, I just think that that's so important because that's what food is. And all of our elaborate systems that we've set up, turning food into a commodity turn out to be extremely vulnerable. And we're seeing sort of more and more disruptions to that.

Alicia: Colonization, cultural continuity, documentation. These are cited as significant concerns of yours in your fermentation work. And they seem, are so fundamental to food as a whole. And so I wanted to ask—And then, you've been publishing for nearly 20 years. Have you seen the dominant food narratives change to reflect the significance of how colonization and cultural continuity are necessary parts of talking about food?

Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm not sure that I could say that I've seen the dominant narratives change, but certainly I'm seeing a broadening of the voices that are talking about food. And I'm seeing more people who are kind of bringing up the ways in which food is related to these  sort of larger historical processes that form us and form our society. 

I mean, I think that there's a lot of people, whether it's in the form of articles and books, whether it's in the form of videos that people are posting on YouTube. But I definitely think that there are much more varied voices that I'm finding, and I don't believe that they are sort of the dominant voices at all. But they certainly are present. 

Alicia: Sure.

And your introduction mentions the ills of what you call our neo-colonial period. Poverty. Social and economic marginalization. Mass incarceration. Why was it important to you to name these explicitly in the book?

Sandor: Well, I mean, I'm writing about all of these cultural traditions, but I think it's important to acknowledge that not every cultural tradition has been able to have as much continuity as certain other cultural traditions, because we're part of these sort of larger historical processes. If you were in a native culture, where there was an active government policy to sort of destroy the culture by taking children away from their families and forcing them into schools to assimilate them, well, it's a lot harder for those cultural traditions to be able to continue because there's been such an active agenda of destroying them.

Alicia: And I think that's related to how the ferments in the book are grouped by substrate rather than national approach, which kind of demonstrates differences and commonalities between how these various cultures approach fermentation. I wanted to ask if you could elaborate on your choice to group the fermentations that way, and how you basically organized such a breadth of information? 

Sandor: Well, I mean, I certainly started the project with a geographic outline and imagining that I was going to organize it geographically. But as it went on, as the project developed, I guess I realized that my strength is connecting the dots. And the fact that I've had this broad exposure has enabled me to compare and contrast how people in different cultures that are fermenting vegetables are fermenting the vegetables. And honestly, there's more similarity than there is difference. But there's a lot of very particular distinctions. 

And it just evolved that way, so that rather than being, ‘This is my trip to China, and this is what I learned there. This is my trip to Colombia. And this is what I learned there.’ It just felt it worked a lot and certainly illuminated the fermentation processes a lot more to weave them together in a more thematic way. 

Alicia: Well, yeah. 

And another thing I was struck by is that you had acknowledged the incompleteness of your cumulative impressions from your travels. And so, I wanted to ask if you have advice for other writers, documentarians, people who are working in cultures that aren't necessarily their own, on how to approach being honest, I guess, about how you are documenting the work and the people you've met? 

Sandor: Well, I think you just said it. I mean, you just have to be honest. [Laughter.] I mean, when you're going into a situation where you're brand new and other people have been doing this all along, they're the experts and you're just the witness. So I mean, I just think that that's the reality. 

I see writers who are just trying to always assume the stance of the expert. But I mean, I just think that's ridiculous. I mean, it makes me bristle when I, I've been introduced as ‘the world's fermentation expert.’ And that, that's just utterly ridiculous. 

As I said at the beginning, I mean, I started exploring fermentation when I was 30 years old. I've been doing it for about half of my life. But the world is full of people who have been making idlis or dosas, or in Puerto Rico making maví, or lots of different formats, just as a, as an every day thing in their lives. And all of them know more about the particular ferments they're engaged with than I know about any of them.

Alicia: I think that's such an important lesson, too.

Sandor: Yeah. 

I mean, if I have an expertise, I mean, it's just that I have this sort of broad general exposure. And it's always incomplete. I do not believe that it would be possible for a human being to possess encyclopedic knowledge of fermentation practices, because they're so disparate. And it's not a unified set of practices. It's these very disparate practices that really only in the 20th century did we realize that they were unified by the fact that they all involve the activity of microorganisms that we didn't know about.

Alicia: For you, is cooking a political act? 

Sandor: Well, I mean, not intrinsically, certainly. I think it can be, but I—As I was saying earlier, in the context of reclaiming food, that's what can make cooking or other forms of food preparation of a political act. It's the spirit that we bring to it, not the act itself.

Alicia: Well, thank you so, so much for talking today. 

Sandor: Ok. 

Well, thank you for your excellent questions. And also thank you, just thank you for your appreciation of a lot of the nuance in my work. I really appreciate that.

Alicia: Oh. Thank you. Thank you. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Sarah Lohman, a food historian, and the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. We discussed how she went from art school to historic cooking, making a career as a blogger, and how she defines American for the purposes of her work. 

Alicia: Hi, Sarah. Thank you so much for being here. 

Sarah: Well, hello, Alicia. Good morning. [Laughter.] I feel we’re both still a little just rolled out of bed. Yeah, I did put a face on for you.

Alicia: Thank you, I put a face on as well. I was completely ready to have this conversation and was sitting at my laptop at like 10:50. Like, ‘All right.’ And then at 11:01, I looked up and was like, ‘No!’ [Laughter.]

Sarah: It's fine. I'm just here with my tea. Just getting a start on the day. We're just gonna have a lovely chat, as per usual.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Sarah: Sure. 

So I grew up in Hinckley, Ohio, which is a rural town about, oh, like 30 miles south of Cleveland. So Northeast Ohio. So I actually grew up in the house that my dad lived in from a teenager onwards. My grandmother gave it to my mom and dad the year that I was born. And so, that was how my family was able to have a little bit of property. And when I was growing up there, it was really pretty rural. I didn't have any really close neighbors, and we had a couple acres of our own. 

As far as what I ate, some of it was regional and some of it was at—the crap that we got fed in the ’80s and 90s that I look back on, and it's just totally remarkable. Do you remember things like Squeeze-its and Gushers? And I'm like, ‘I guess we just didn't know better back then.’ But those were real foods that we ate. 

And my mom was an exceptional cook. But it was very Midwestern. We did do some lasagna. We did do some chili, nothing particularly spicy. And then, kind of the regional cuisine in Northeast Ohio is very Eastern European. So there was also a lot of pierogi action. There would be some chicken paprikash, some beef stroganoff, those kinds of things. 

I think the most sort of resonant experience I had with food growing up is that my mom was an award-winning baker. So basically, as soon as I could stand, I was baking with her. Iit's funny, I didn't realize that baking was hard until food reality TV started coming out. All the chefs were like, ‘Oh, no, I don't bake, I don't bake.’ So it was really valuable to me to get that experience first and do the ‘harder side of cooking things.’

And then as I got a little bit older, my parents both went to work when my brother went to college. And so, it was sort of my job to come home from school and start dinner. And so, that was the moment that I started to learn how to cook.

Alicia: Wow. 

And so yeah, that's a really interesting mix of things. Because people associate, I think, the Gushers side of ’90s youths with other new processed foods, I guess. But it seems you had a real mix of home cooking and eating the—

Sarah: Oh, definitely.

I also feel many—at least in my world growing up, many families households are—I think a lot of families’ households are a blend. I think that we do a lot of culture and class shaming by saying, ‘Oh, you only go to McDonald's, blah, blah, blah.’ I mean, we can go into all of that, too. Yeah, of course, my family went to McDonald's, because how else you get a 6-year-old to shut up? McDonald's. And they wanted you there. And we’d go play on the playground afterwards, too. 

But yeah, my mom also cooked meals from scratch for me, because this was still the era where some people had the luxury of having a parent at home full time, which I feel is really hard for someone who would even, who would choose to want that and choose to want to spend time with that child. I feel economically, that's becoming less and less available. So my mom got to raise us up until I was in eighth grade, when she went back to work. And so, that allowed her the access and the ability and the time to be able to make meals from scratch as well. 

And kind of interestingly, her mom didn't really cook very much. Her mom did a lot with sort of processed food. But then, I don't know, my mom moved out to the country and just started baking pies and making stew from scratch. Something came alive inside her. And to this day, she's still an incredible cook and incredible baker. There's no stopping her from doing an all-out Thanksgiving or Christmas meal, even if it's just going to be the three of us eating it. And she’ll the table too. I think that’s her favorite part.

Alicia: Aww. That's really great. 

And I talk so much, I think, about—in writing and in interviews and stuff—it's like, how do people eat differently? And it's always that answer is, you give them the time and you give them the access. And that's such an important thing to talk about, I think, in terms of our food upbringings.

Sarah: Absolutely. 

And I feel that the time issue is one that I especially get very irritated with. I remember seeing a video a couple years ago with two very famous male food writers that are making a roast chicken with roasted vegetables. And they're like, ‘This only cost $14.’ And ‘Oh, isn't this so hard to do? People think this is so hard.’ And I'm like, ‘A*****e, you have no idea. You have no idea what it's like to be raising two jobs. You have no idea what it's like to be a single parent, and you have no idea the real choices that people are making. And you're just like, ‘Oh, just people hate making chicken. They're so stupid.’ It just pisses me off.

And then of course, the caloric content when you're like, ‘Man, I'm hungry. I've got all these kids to feed.’ Of course, you’re going to pick fast food as opposed to making a roast chicken with roast vegetables, which I had for lunch. I'm starving two hours later. It's just such a lack of connection to everyday people. 

But also, I think in my case, it was just the ’90s and you bought your kids Gushers and Fruit by the Foot. And that's just kind of what you did.

Alicia: Right? 

You fell in love with historical food while working at a living history museum as a teenager and went to art school. I wanted to ask, why did you go to art school?

Sarah: Well, I didn't really think history was my career. I ended up at that job because my mom worked there. And so when I turned 16, she was like, ‘You're too old to stay at home all summer. You’ve got to get a job.’ And I was like, ‘Ok, well, I'll apply at Hardee's and work with my friends.’ And she was like, ‘No, you're coming to work for me.’ She was a manager there. So I got the job. And I was, didn't want to. I wanted to go be with my friends and not do this super-nerdy thing of working in a museum in costume. 

And it ended up obviously changing my life. Mom was right. Because the people that I worked with were such just exceptional, passionate individuals. And for me, I just wasn't in history in high school because you're not really learning about the lives of people. You're memorizing dates, and it's always very war-focused as opposed to any of the life that people led in between, right? You're learning about sort of governments and dates that this happened, duh-duh-duh. There's nothing there that makes you think that history is populated with human beings. 

Yeah, but museums, like the one I worked at, or probably more famously people know Plymouth Plantation or Colonial Williamsburg, they are focusing on social history. So day-to-day life. And then in the house there that I worked in with my ‘family,’ there was a wood-burning cast-iron stove. And so, that's when I just loved working with the fire and with the stove, with this really kind of simple piece of equipment. And we were also working from historical books, too. I started to get the sense of what that era in history tasted like, and being able to read old recipes like that. 

But I went to art school because I liked art. And that's what I sort of excelled out when I was in high school. And I was lucky that there was a really, really excellent art school near, far enough away from home that I could move but close enough that I wasn't too scary. 

So the Cleveland Institute of Art. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. But that was my plan. And then interestingly, it sort of led me back to food history. I majored in a digital arts major with a fine arts minor in food and—not food, in photo and video, which obviously I do a lot of food photography now. 

And it was a five year program. So I had to do a thesis project. And so I ended up doing an installation of what today would call a pop up restaurant that served colonial-era food for a contemporary audience. So although after that I sort of dropped it for a couple years ‘cause I was sick of it, it clearly was this combination that I had. I realized I had this sort of unique perspective, because of my—already for a couple years, had worked in this very strange work environment. And that I'd had this background in food and cooking at home, and it just kind of came together as part of this really great program that I was in.

Alicia: How has that art education influenced your career and food?

Sarah: Hugely.

It's funny because when people ask me ‘what I did in college,’ and I say that, ‘I went to art school,’ go like, ‘Oh, you’re really using the degree,’ which is just what people love to say to people who went to art students anyway, which I think is b******t. 

But I mean, in a very practical way, it has helped me immensely in that as part of my degree I received training in terms of working with freelancers. Working with clients, I should say. So being able to run my own business in a certain—just learning things, invoicing. That was all part of what I was learning. 

So when I wanted to quit my full-time job and start working for myself, that was much less intimidating. And I designed and launched my own website, because I knew both graphic design and some basic HTML when I first started blogging. Obviously, photography is a huge part of being in the foodie world. Whether you're blogging, or now, of course, a lot more on Instagram, or writing for a commission, you're often required to provide your own photographs. So my photography skills have been hugely helpful. 

And when I'm sort of working with people who want to get into food writing more, that is often one of the hard, most difficult hurdles, that food writing and food photography are often sort of intertjoined. You're building that Instagram audience. So I'm feel very, very, very lucky to have that background too. 

But I think in a bigger way, that sort of community and my professors that I work with, it, they encouraged you to think big. To think conceptually, to think of projects. And so, even formulating this idea of back when I got started: what if I did start a food blog and I looked at food history, and used to connect to the present, instead of doing all even the concept of doing this thing that I didn't really have any other—I didn't have a mentor at that point. I didn't have a concept of what my career could look like. Even just thinking about it and getting started on it, I think came from the education that I got in college, too.

Alicia: Right.

And you moved to New York, where that was—where you kind of got started doing this sort of work. Why was New York the place for that, at that time?

Sarah: I mean, I think a couple things came together. 

I mean, I mentioned to you earlier, too, that really professor—I was in my fifth year, and I'm doing this restaurant. And it’s all very crazy. And he was the one that was kind of like, ‘You need to go to New York. There just isn't space for what you're doing here right now.’

I went to school in Cleveland as well. And especially in 2005, when I was graduating, Cleveland wasn't doing great. People were already talking a lot about brain drain and college graduates leaving the Midwest and going to the coasts. It sounds harsh to say there wasn't the opportunity there. Because in a way, I did move back to Cleveland for a couple years, from 2018 to 2021. And it was because there were really exciting things happening here. And actually, because a lot of people had moved, went to the coast, got new ideas, and then brought them back to the Midwest. There's hugely positive things happening in Cleveland now. 

But I think to me, the tipping point was I'd never lived anywhere else in my life. I’d been on one trip out of the country at that point, which I felt very fortunate for. But my family just didn’t have the money to do a semester abroad or anything. I was working. I was paying for a lot of things myself. And I just thought it was really important to live somewhere else and get a different perspective on the world. 

And sort of a soft landing, I'd had a couple friends that moved out there the year before. And then really fortunately, I had a professor that said, ‘I'm from New York. I keep an apartment out there. If you ever need a place to stay for a month, just let me know,’ I was like, ‘Actually, thinking of moving there.’ So I had a place to stay when I first moved out there. And then I also then had roommates, and it just sort of happened. And then I ended up spending 13 years there. 

Alicia: Wow.

And now that you've left after being in New York for so long. How has that influenced your work?

Sarah: Yeah.

Yeah, I was thinking about this the other day, because I really became an adult in New York City. And I do feel kind of douchey now being like, ‘Oh, but I live—I've lived here for a long time.’ [Laughter.] I moved when I was 23. And I left when I was 36. So that to me. I mean, obviously that's a time, a lot of growth. And a really incredible place to do that, as you know, being from New York yourself. 

But honestly, I decided to leave at the moment when I was really happy. I felt I had done it. I was a success in the city and my life was happy there. And it was the moment that I was happy as opposed to some great disappointment of disaster that I was like, ‘Ok, I'm ready. I'm ready to go. I've done this. I'm ready to go.’

So the first move, I decided to come back to Cleveland. My parents were still here. And it was in a way a test to see if my business could exist outside of New York. This was pre-pandemic, moved in 2018. But I moved somewhere that was both close enough that I was still planning on coming back to work every week or two months and seeing if—

I mean, God, when I moved to New York City, if you had an out of state or out of city telephone number, you couldn't get a job. There was so much of this very insular—you have to be in New York, have to be a New Yorker. That was the most intimidating part. You'd have seen like, ‘Can I still do events in New York? Will people have any respect for me?’ Obviously, a lot of that has changed since the pandemic. And if there's any positives to come out of it, the fact that you don't have to be located in a certain place, whether you want to be or not to do your job. 

So it was my first kind of experiment with it. And it did end up being a lot more traveling back and forth to New York, which could be really exhausting. But also part of the reason I moved at that moment to is I knew I was about to start a new book project. And I wanted to try living somewhere with a lower cost of living, and just a different pace of life. And I just knew that I didn't want to live in New York anymore. So I knew there wasn't going to be any sort of big regrets. Just wasn't quite sure what the next step was. 

So I was in Cleveland for three years. Well, a little more than. I’d said two to three years when I moved out there. But then there was this pandemic thing. I don't know if you heard. And I was really relieved to be there, too, because I could be there and support my parents, which would have been so scary. And I'm sure has been so scary for a lot of people. 

And like I mentioned to you, I just moved to Las Vegas at the end of August. A great new opportunity came up. I really love the city. I love its natural wonder. And so now, it's a little bit more of seeing like, ‘Ok, a lot of my money comes from doing live events,’ which obviously weren't happening during the pandemic. But it's also become sort of a weird time for doing online classes. People are sick of being online. But I did just come back from New York to try to do first in-person talks and events since the pandemic started. And people are also still a little hesitant to show up in person. All of it's understandable. I'm sick of the loss of connectivity that we get through Zoom too. But it makes total sense. If someone feels under the weather, they're not going to show up for class. 

Things have sort of hit a weird moment, but I'm just trying to ride it out. Hopefully, one day be able to expand the branded events a little bit more to the West Coast, too. And I don’t know, Alicia. I'm all about learning and experiences. And part of that is just I want to live in a different part of the country so I can understand that better, and maybe sort of understand our country as a whole better, too.

Alicia: For sure. 

And so, I know you started out writing about food as a blogger, you—Four Pounds Flour. How has your relationship to being a food person online changed since you started in the industry? Because it is, like you said now, probably a lot more visually focused than it was. When people were bloggers. You could take a real shitty picture and use it. [Laughter.] 

Sarah: You're not gonna get those Instagram likes!

And that's the coming from art school, too. I wasn't just like, ‘My content has to be good.’ So I didn't really think of myself as a writer. I still don't, in a way. The writing, to me, is a means to an end, a way to have a conversation about food and to express ideas. So coming from art school, it was like, ‘No, my photos are absolutely not going to look shitty.’ 

I'll tell you this. And bless him. My friend Jay, who I haven't talked to many years—Part of the article process is going through the critique process, which, I think, is honestly one of the most valuable skills I learned there. And so in my fifth year, and I'm in my major, and we're this really tight group of people. And I'm working on opening up this pop up restaurant, I’m and doing a website. And so, I did food photography for the first time. And so I had this critique of my food photographs, and my friend Jay went, ‘That's looking like some Chinese food. China, frankly—’ How do you say it? Some, he said, ‘That's looking like some Chinese fast food menu photographs.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, nooooo.’

So it was this real kick in the pants. I mean, I think maybe the closer equivalent is it looks—it looked a little bit more like the collages that you see on the sides of bodegas. That kind of photography I was doing. Because it is a really specific skill to be able to get in there and understand. Just portrait photography, or landscape photography, or animal photography, are all very separate skill sets. Food photography, there are certain tricks that you had to learn. 

And so I really had to push myself to get better very, very quickly so that I didn't have Chinese takeout slash side of the bodega. Which, by the way, I'm obsessed with bodega collages. And also noticed the aesthetic is changing recently, the last time I was in New York. Maybe that's a different definition. So to me, the visual elements were extremely important. And I knew the food had to look delicious, or at least interesting. Is every photo on that blog that I wrote from—what 2008 to 2018? Is every photo a banger? Absolutely not. But I do feel proud of that. 

It is super visual. But interestingly, a lot of my work has now shifted away from individual dishes to more broader storytime about food as culture. So my photography has become much more documentarian of the travels I’ll do and the people that I'm meeting, and then the foods that we're eating together.

So the transition to Instagram was super natural for me. See, this is the thing. I'm not in Writer Twitter. You're so in Writer Twitter and Food Twitter; I just kind of lurk and retweet. So in some ways, again, even though I have a book out. I’m working on my second book that started as a blogger. I'd never think of myself as a writer. That’s what I try to say when I’m—when somebody asks me what I do for a living. And I don't really want to have a conversation, but it still doesn't work. And they're like, ‘What do you want to write about?’ It's fine. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Can you tell me what your next book is about?

Sarah: Yeah, I can. 

So I'm looking at foods that are on the verge of extinction in America. And I traveled all over the country to talk to different people who were the shepherds and the harvesters and the farmers of these different foods. 

And the reason the foods are becoming endangered are for a variety of reasons. But I think most importantly, that all these foods are tied very deeply to, often, a people and a place. And the peoples that they belong to are peoples that within America have been historically and systematically oppressed. And so, that's one of the ways that America colonizes, is by taking away culture, which means taking away food. 

And it's looking at what happened, and honestly a lot about the history of American colonialism. But also, the stories of survival. Survival and thriving, too, and how these different peoples throughout America had been able to hold on to these foods, too. And then a little bit of call to action. My hope for this book is that the people and the products that I'm featuring will get the attention, the money, the support that they need and want. Maybe even the legislature. I'm hoping that this book serves these people and serves as a platform for their voices, too. 

I don't want to get into too much detail because I'm still writing it. Once it’s in the publication process, you can talk and talk and talk about it. But yeah, at this point, someone could probably write it faster than me. I don't think I'm a slow writer. It just takes time, Alicia. You know the work. 

Alicia: I know. It sucks. It's the worst thing I've ever done. And I am a writer and I hate writing a book. I mean, I hate writing a book because for myriad reasons that I probably shouldn't talk about publicly, but—

Sarah: It’s exhausting. I mean, I'll talk about them for you. It's mentally exhausting. It's physically exhausting. I mean, it gives me anxiety. I'm thinking about it all the time for multiple years of one's life. The financial support isn't there. You said something on Twitter that I was like, ‘Same’ so hard that you—Paraphrase. You said, ‘Writing a book takes a lot of thinking. But how do you have time for thinking when you need to pay the bills?’ 

And that actually, with both of these books, is the hardest part. The money runs out. People are gonna get in advance. Yeah, well, lasts me about eight months of living and doing the research. It all got invested back into the book. I'm not living the high life here. And then you have to work, because you still have bills to pay. So where do you find the time to get the space, not just to write but to think about these ideas of making a great piece of work when you're also doing whatever you need to do to get those bills paid? You're working two full-time jobs when you're writing a book. It’s absolutely exhausting. It’s exhausting.

Alicia: Yeah. 

The third of my advance that I've gotten so far, it wouldn't have paid my rent for two months. Yeah, it sucks. I don't know. I shouldn't have agreed to it.

Sarah: It absolutely sucks. And then yeah, I kind of did a second one. ’Cause I was like, ‘Wow, I don't know how to make money.’ And after this, I really have to give it a think. 

In some ways, I feel guilty, because obviously, this is—What we're talking about is aspirational for probably a lot of people who are listening to this podcast. I mean, I've spent 10 years of my life on two books. And yeah, I'm really proud of my first book. And I think that the second book is going to be something that I'm proud of, too. I've gotten to work with great editors, and we've made something great together. And I think that the book has done something—

I think that the big benefit of it, and probably the way you're motivated to do it, is that we can put something good and thoughtful into the world that will—I hope with my first book, too, bettered somebody's life in an indirect way. Just created more understanding around food and culture in America. 

But man, am I poor. I'm single. I should say to everybody. And happily so. This is where I want to be. Now I live with a housemate, but I was living by myself for a while. And I just read some big article about how society isn't designed for people to stay single who want to stay single. 

And so, it's really hard. It does feel like, really, an accomplishment every month that I do it where I'm like, ‘Yeah, rent, paid you.’ And it's hard to sort of juggle that between people's perceptions of me. And you probably feel the same way, too, where it's like, ‘I'm successful. I've got a book out. I've got some name recognition.’ I'm not a major food celeb. That's totally fine. But I think people need to look at what I'm doing. They're like, ‘Yes, that's what I want to be doing.’ But everybody—Phew. It's tough some days. It's a real haul. 

And I don't want to say that love makes up for money. To get through those times of real stressful uncertainty, you really have to be—love and be invested in what you're doing. So definitely after this book, I have to really think about what I want the next step of my career to be because it's just incredibly exhausting. This will be another five-year process from proposal to publication. The financial stress is real. The artistic physicality of writing a book is really draining and uncertain and difficult on your sort of mental health. 

But I got to meet amazing people and do amazing things that I wouldn't have had the excuse to do otherwise. And I think that that's the addiction and the appeal that keeps bringing me back. If I pitch this book, that means I get to go to this place and meet these people and meet them on their level and in their space and in their life. And to me, that is really—it's the access that being a writer gives you, both that people might be open to speak to you but also the allowance it gives myself to be like—

I went to the Navajo Nation and volunteered at a festival that celebrates the Navajo-Churro sheep, and assisted this cook and butcher in butchering a whole animal. I'm sorry. Course you're vegan. [Laughter.] I forgot about that. I’m so sorry.

Alicia: I’m a vegetarian, it's ok. [Laughs.]

Sarah: Oh, I actually am too. But for me, learning about, meeting people where they're at is also about learning about their food in every single aspect. I had never butchered an animal before. And especially someone who has eaten meat and does still occasionally eat meat, I feel—I've always felt that experience is really important to be with that animal. 

But I never, I'm not just gonna pick up and volunteer fly to Arizona and then drive for hours to volunteer at a sheep festival. And I do want to do that. If someone asked me if you want to do that, it’d be like, ‘Absolutely.’ But writing it in this book allowed me to do that. And now, I've met people that I feel so connected to. 

And I'm just rambling now. But, yeah.

This book is really special. I feel connected to the people that I interviewed and spent time with in a way that I didn't get to do in the first book. And in this really meaningful way. So that's amazing. That's a moving life, right?

Alicia: [Laughs.] It is great. I am too bitter about the book process. 

But I also like to talk about it because I do feel as writers, we feel a little bit like we owe it to the fact that we make a living being writers to be nice about it. And I think that that's not fair necessarily to people who are coming up and get a, an idea of it as something—I grew up looking at magazines and looking at the contributor page and being like, ‘These people are living the great life.’ And now, I know that that's not true. [Laughs.]

Sarah: It’s f*****g hard.

And you really have to fight to get paid. I mean, especially now, both the amount of money paid for both articles and books has just dropped in the past 10 to 20 years. And a lot of it comes from online. For some reason, when your words live online as opposed to on the page their value’s less. Which doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna write just as good, no matter where that's appearing. 

And I don't think that the publishing industry as a whole actually supports great art right now. I mean I appreciate that every publisher has got a couple authors that's making bank, and that they're essentially taking the gamble. It's literally gambling on us, where they're investing money. And they're gonna see if they get their investment back. But I have been with two publishers now. I have never felt financially supported. My third publisher, I feel supported in many other ways. But money is one of the most important ways to be supported. 

And I also don't like this culture of you’re an artist, you can't talk about money. I got bills to pay. I got food to buy. How do you have space to create good work when you don't feel secure in those things?

I teach a nonfiction book proposal and publishing process class with a friend of mine who published an amazing book about bedbugs. She's a science writer. And one of the things we talk about is we're also very brutally honest about what this process is like, what your financial situation is going to be like, especially as a new author. Unless you were already a super famous name, you're not going to be pulling in the big bucks on your first book. The fact that you might never see royalties. My first book, Eight Flavors, has done really, really, really well. I have not seen a dollar. 

That being said—and this will, I think, happen for you Alicia—is the best part about it, maybe even more so than the getting to go out and connect with people, not writing the book, is that then for at least a year after the book comes out, you get to talk about it. You get to engage in this conversation that you don't have to give any introduction to, because people have read the book. And you can engage with people about these concepts. After the first book, I got to travel for almost two years. There's no official book tour. People are surprised about that nowadays too. But now, they'll do a media tour. 

But for certain authors, public speaking becomes a part of your job. And I got to speak in a huge diversity of places. And that was really amazing, getting to talk to people about this work that I had done and have these conversations that I've wanted the book to prompt feels so good. And then that, for that one year, you're also just in the money. There's just money coming everywhere. And then you’re like, ‘You know what? I could do this again. I could do this again.’ And the cycle just repeats. And now, I'm 40. So this is why we have to figure things out going forward. 

But when your book comes out. It's going to be amazing. You're going to have great conversations and—about something that I know you're really passionate about, too. And then that will make you start to think you can do it again. And then you might.

Alicia: Ha! [Laughs.] The next one will be very, very different. 

But in your book that actually is out there that people could buy and read, and hopefully get you royalties, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine—

Sarah: But in the end, I don't care enough. Now that the work is out there, it's like, ‘Get it from your library. Buy it secondhand. Borrow it from your friend.’ To me, in the end, now that the work exists, the money part, in my mind, should not be on the reader. It should be the publisher, right? And the full system that doesn't support artists. Now the book exists. Don't steal it. Don't steal this book. Buy it from a small, independent bookstore, if you want to. Yeah, get it from your friend’s shelf. I don't care if you enjoy it.

Alicia: I actually did buy yours second hand at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn. Or was it Book Revue in, on Long Island? I don't know. But it has the price in pencil, so I know I bought it second hand. [Laughs.]

Sarah: I'm totally fine with that. I think that’s lovely.

Alicia: [Laughs.] But I wanted to ask how you came up with parameters for your definition of American cuisine.

Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the idea that I wanted to play within this book, because I think American cuisine is famously difficult to define, right? And if people do define it, it's in this really negative way. ‘Oh, it's all McDonald's, all hot dogs and hamburgers, or whatever.’ 

And I think that internationally, that's often what people think of American food. And I think that Americans often do that to themselves. When, in my experience, I find quite the opposite, that there's a lot of worry about American food becoming homogenized. But it's so often that I'm doing an event and people will come up and be like, ‘Oh, have you tried this local dish? And do you know about this thing? And if you go to this restaurant–’ People are so immensely proud of their local culture and cuisine. So I think a lot of American food is based on physically, graphically, where you grew up. 

And then of course, I think that saying American food is hot dogs and hamburgers presents a very narrow and, dare I say, racist view of who an American is. Because I'm an American. You're an American. Someone whose family immigrated from China in the 1840s is now fourth, fifth, sixth generation American. Someone who came from India in the 1960s is American if they want to define themselves that way. So it's both a, you mentioned the word sort of erasure when we were talking about this. Using that narrow definition of American is erasure of all of the facets and complications of who Americans are, right? 

That being said, the fact that—acknowledging the fact that we were a really diverse country, I then got curious about how individual ingredients. What cook doesn't have black pepper and  vanilla in their kitchen? So how can someone come from this huge variety of backgrounds—And I mean, when you travel around this country, it often felt like I wasn't going to different states. It feels like I'm going to different countries that both have their own idea of like, ‘This is what America is,’ but one state over, it's completely different. And they’re speaking a different language one state over, too. 

So why, then, are there these handful of ingredients that both define us and that Americans consume in massive levels compared to the rest of the world? Why do we have a particular love for these? I think American cuisine can be delightfully undefinable. I think that the idea of cuisine, of a certain way of eating and doing things has a more specific definition. And I think then there can be lots of arguments about what is or isn't American food. And I think that that's all a fun, interesting conversation to have. But so, then I got curious about what does unite us? And apparently it's a few pantry items. And why.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Which is so interesting. And I loved when you wrote about Food Network. Again, as a person who, born in the mid ’80s, watching Food Network, reading Food & Wine, reading Travel + Leisure as a kid was how I understood food other than what my mom was cooking. And you point to how they kind of led to this increase in sales for whole black peppercorns versus powdered. 

And I think that that's such an interesting thing, because we don't think in the U.S.—Or even I, as a food writer, it's difficult to talk about what ingredient people use that is actually, I don't know how to sit—But people don't use things in their whole forms necessarily in an American kitchen. It is a rare thing to grind your own coffee or grind your own peppers. But for whatever reason, whole black peppercorns really became a thing. It was a joke on SNL that, the huge waiter with, the waiter with the huge pepper mill. ‘Tell me when.’ [Laughs.]

But people take for granted the whole peppercorns now. But I wanted to ask, I don't think it's Food Network anymore that's influencing how people eat. What do you think is influencing how people eat now?

Sarah: That's a great question. 

I mean, the Food Network stepped in to fill such a gap that wasn't, that was there. A lot of food magazines, at that point, even in mid ’80s were super high end, let's say. Or very, very low end, Budget recipes. And the Food Network just sort of normalized cooking, and normalized olive oil. And just these whole and fresh ingredients that weren’t out of reach in any way, that you could get at your grocery store, that it didn't cost that much more money that we weren't using. It sort of leveled up home cooking in a lot of ways too. Even for people who mostly were just watching it, as opposed to try and replicate every recipe. 

I mean, I think that the major food influence right now is Instagram. And I think that there is some negative aspects to that, in that ugly food is delicious. And Instagram really only elevates beautiful food and incredible colors. I try not to be a crabby, elder millennial. Just hates things ’cause they're new. But something really bothers me about venues that are clearly just setups for Instagram pictures. You know what? I just like honesty and logic in any viewing. And so, I don't want food to be set up so that it looks good on Instagram. 

And I see that in retail and restaurants. They're like, ‘Well, this is going to be our Instagrammable dish.’ But then on the flip side,then I’ll get that. I'm like, ‘Oh, it's gonna be such a tight Instagram photo. I’m sure I’m gonna love it.’ So in some ways, it can be a really negative influence, I think, ‘cause if we're just thinking about—Obviously, we do eat with our eyes. But if we're just thinking about the visuals, we're missing the whole ugly, delicious panoply of amazing foods out there. 

That being said, it has sort of a positive things, too, because a lot of those really vibrant colors are coming from East Asian ingredients. And so, now things like ube and matcha—Matcha, I did predict being an up-and-comer in Eight Flavors, but I never would have called ube being a thing now, which is not only beautiful, but really delicious. And so, even though I think there can be some negative aspects to just judging food visually, I think that it has allowed us to not ‘ew’ when something is an unexpected color, which I think is a very Midwest, white Midwest, to do, to be like, ‘Eww, why is it that color?’ I think that embracing the beautiful, the beauty in food that often comes from around the world. And I would say particularly East Asian countries do these incredible exclamations of color with their ingredients and flavor and appearance and trompe l’oeil, and all these amazing presentation things that I love seeing embraced in American food, because that also means that those people are being embraced as Americans.

Alicia: Right.

Well, that leads me to my question of so many of the ingredients in the book are so many ingredients that we have come to kind of consume in the U.S., aren't indigenous to the U.S. And so, you write that in the conclusion that it's our lack of tradition that is allowed for this diversity. And of course, diversity is good in every aspect, but at the same time, I'm always wondering now, what is the difference between assimilation and erasure of origins of food. And what is lost when something becomes American versus retaining its identity at origin? 

One thing I've been talking about with my husband because he's applying for PhD programs right now in history, and he's going to focus his research on rum and Puerto Rico. And we were talking about people calling coquito ‘Puerto Rican eggnog.’ And then talking about how is that erasing the idea that it probably has roots that are deeper than U.S. colonization and industrial canned products coming. But it's so hard to find that. But then the story ends up just being like, ‘It's eggnog with coconut.’

And especially now that you're writing about Indigenous foods, but what is that difference between assimilation and honoring origin? 

Sarah: Yeah, couple things to comment on. And I'll see if I can start on a larger thought here. 

I do think that assimilation and erasure are the same thing. I think that when, we are for a large part, especially the last 100 years being an immigrant nation. And so when someone comes here and you say, ‘You have to speak English, you have to cook this way, you have to dress that way.’ That is both assimilation and erasure. And I think that's a horrid concept. And I think that it's a way that, luckily, immigrants have been able to resist in different ways, too. 

But I spent many years working at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum teaching immigration history about the Lower East Side, but in this broader way. And we did these tours in a way that we could also learn from the people's experiences on the tour. And maybe one of the most heartbreaking things that got sent to me said to me pretty frequently is that someone whose parents were, for example, whose grandparents are from Italy would talk about how they were so sad that they didn't know how to speak Italian because their grandparents would not speak it in the house. They’d refuse to and they're really upset they didn’t get that cultural connection, but then will turn around and talk about how immigrants from Central America don't want to be American and don't want to speak English. 

And luckily, I had a job where I could call people out. That was part of the process of like, ‘Oh, didn't you tell me earlier that you duh-duh this?’ So I hate that turning around and shitting on the next person, because it just means that we all sort of lose. And luckily, because of the stubbornness of Italian immigrants, we have this really incredible Italian American food way here to go get, to experience and enjoy. 

But one of the downsides, though, of having a culture that is made up of people all, from all over the world coming to this country, is that we also have erased Indigenous foods and Indigenous ingredients. And that was done purposefully, again, because the American colonial government wanted to come in and take that land, and just push Indigenous peoples into the least desirable sections, or in some case, people—It's an incredible story where people were able to stand their ground and stay, remain on their sacred land. In the face of the deception, manipulation and violence of the American government, that was a very, very difficult thing to do. 

So we have an incredible number of native ingredients and spices, plants. And in some ways, it has spread all over the world, like tomatoes, and peppers. But I'm seeing a resurgence of American spicebush, which is a native spice from the Midwest and the East that has notes of clove and nutmeg and allspice in it, that's just a plant I could probably go into the woods and find right now. But we’re totally unaware of it, because it wasn't cinnamon. It wasn't these spices that were revered in Europe.

That being said, too, Indigenous people have also adapted and brought in new ingredients and new animals and new ways of living. Indigenous people in the Americas are incredibly adaptive. And so, they took the best parts of the colonist’s culture and the parts that suited them, and then made that a part of their culture too. So of course, all of modern Mexican cuisine, a lot of that has to do—

I guess the biggest thing I can say is that the Americans didn't have many domesticated animals. And so, that was one of the biggest ways that Indigenous people's lives changed. And Indigenous food changed here, too. But of course, also, there's no way we can also say, ‘Well, that's not real Indigenous food.’ For example, coming back to the Navajo. They've been shepherding the Navajo-Churro sheep for 400 years. So we also tend to have different ideas of tradition. If a white person does something for 100 years, it’s traditional, but if a native person does something for 400 years, it's like, ‘Oh, we just took that from the colonists.’

So all that aside. I think that there's also a really positive ways to think about it. Because we are such a jumble of people, both in our country and our cities, we get to look in each other's cooking pots and go to someone's house to experience a new recipe, or Google a restaurant in our neighborhood. So there is also this mutual sharing of food, and I think in particular flavor. It's always like, ‘What is that spice? What is that ingredient?’ 

And I think that's why I was drawn to looking at individual flavors, individual ingredients, because often it's not necessarily the whole dish that comes into our broader culture at once. It's the sriracha sauce or it's the cardamom. It's this introduction of something that's new that we begin to play with. And when I say American, too, its broad American culture. You see that same kind of playing with a new ingredient for someone who is white Midwestern, or Mexican descent in the southwest. It is this broader idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is delicious, probably no matter where you're from, so that everyone gets to play as opposed to the dominant culture, I think. And maybe think about it as more mainstream than dominant. 

Alicia: No, no, that's super fascinating. And I think that that's a really great way of thinking about it. Because I do think that the conversation has been really skewed, especially online and food conversations around, what is cultural appropriation? And a lot of people will say, ‘Oh, does this mean I can't cook tacos in my house if I'm not Mexican?’ And it's like, ‘No, of course. That's great. Everyone should eat tacos.’

Sarah: Just don’t claim you invented the taco!

It seems very simple in some ways, right? I mean, one class I taught, I wish I'd gotten this woman's name. But we were talking about the importance of attribution. And we're talking about it specifically in just recipe writing. I was like, ‘Even if you were just inspired by somebody else, why wouldn't you attribute that person and create a community? Why is there this pressure that we have to—No item of food is new. It's all inspired. No item of art right is new. It's all inspiring to be something else.’

And this writer in my class turned to me and said, ‘When in doubt, shout it out.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, when in doubt, shout it out.’ If you're worried that you’re appropriating someone's culture, shout it out. Credit somebody. 

But also, if you're worried that you're appropriating someone's culture, maybe don't do whatever it is that you're about to do. Is this appropriation? It probably is. I think that cooking within someone's culture is an incredible way to learn about someone else's life and mode of living, especially at a time when we can't travel very much right now, right? Because it's not just the food and the flavor. It's the process of making it that teaches you about how other people live. And that's an incredible bond. 

And interestingly, speaking of American erasure and assimilation, food is often the thing that people are the most prejudiced against. 100 years ago, we stopped eating garlic, because Italian and Jewish immigrants smelled like garlic. And that was seen as a negative. The ’80s or the ’90s, kids coming from India or South Korea, or opening up their lunchboxes and getting the ‘ew’ and all they want is Lunchable. So there's definitely that side of it. 

But at the same time, those same kids grow—Italian food exists because of stubbornness. We have an incredible amount of Korean food, Korean American food now. There's also a stubbornness in giving up our food culture that then ultimately benefits everyone. It's one of the things that almost a dominant culture allows people to maintain. But also, thankfully, it's one of the ways that we can make incredible connections with people, even if we don't speak their language or believe in the same faith. Sitting around the dinner table, experiencing those foods, we all taste, we all eat, we can all talk about food. And it's really an amazing thing. 

Alicia: Right.

And I wanted to ask, because working on my book, a lot of narratives around vegan and vegetarian food for the last 50 years, has—it's been historicized as a white thing, which is just so wildly inaccurate. Even within the United States, this is—there is diversity in people who eat ‘alternative natural foods’ or eat a vegetarian diet. 

And I wanted to ask, how do you—what are your techniques? What are your methods for helping you see beyond the narratives of the dominant culture, or the dominant historical narrative? Because also, a thing that is perpetuated because we're creating so much content online. I've perpetuated this myself, is that we're just writing stories. And we're grabbing a random source, and we're just repeating it. So as someone who's actually digging into history, what is, what are some good resources? What are some good techniques for not just perpetuating stories that are incorrect?

Sarah: Yeah.

I think that the biggest way I want to frame this is just because they're the easiest source to find, doesn't mean that they're the best source. Going into the book that I'm currently writing, someone is going to perceive this as racist. But here I go. I wanted to make an effort to include as few white men as possible, because when you do a Google search for anything, the first hits that people with the most media attention, that people with maybe the most sort of money and power and businesses, are going to be white men in this country, because they are the dominant people and have been for a very long time. Does that mean that that white man is the best resource for you? It absolutely doesn't. So the easiest, the most powerful, even the most written about person may not—and in fact, probably is not the best person to talk. Does that mean never talk to any white guy ever? No. Absolutely not. There are white guys in this book. 

But just making that promise to myself made me keep pushing and not be satisfied with the first answers that I got. Because even in maybe that first phone call with that white guy, they start talking about other people who have inspired them or who they support or who they're linked to. If I just stop at that one phone call, I wouldn't get to all those other people that actually that guy thinks is really important to talk about. 

There was an Amazon review for my first book, which you should never read. But of course I did. And someone said, ‘It seems like she went out of her way to be inclusive in this book.’ And the answer is, yeah. [Laughter.] Yeah, I did. 

But also, I also wanted to tell the real history, which is an inclusive history. That's why I study food history, because looking at what we eat finally allows us to access the stories of women and people of color in a way that traditional histories do not. And traditional histories are several generations of both saying that white male history is the only important history, and also because only white men were allowed to do things for so f*****g long in this country means that we never get to acknowledge that everybody else was there too. That we were all there at the same time. 

So my advice is to keep pushing. Don't go with the first Google search. Don't go with the first phone call. Keep pushing till you find the person you're like, ‘Whoa, this is it. This is where the story is. This is how I can understand this deeper.’

That being said, I think part of the issue is that the money doesn't support that kind of writing, whether things get repeated again and again online because maybe you're getting 100 bucks or $150 to write your 250, 500 or 800 word. Or maybe you’re not not getting any money, because you're trying to break into the industry. So when you are making negative dollars per hour to write an article, of course, you're going to take that first Google search. And of course, you're on deadline. And of course, your editor just pressure you to copy something else if they're not a very good editor. So that's how those stories get supported. So it also takes a certain denial of like, ‘Oh, man, if I didn't do this much work, I would be more financially stable.’ But that's also just not the right thing to do. 

So it really is a battle and it's not easy, and the system is not supporting good journalism right now. That I think is the biggest issue.

Alicia: No, absolutely. 

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Sarah: I've been thinking about this a lot as I know this is your question. 

I think for me, it is a cultural act, which is a political act in its own way. When we cook, when we cook from home, when we cook within our own cultures, it is an act of preservation. It can be an act of defiance. I mean, sort of speaking about veganism, a friend of mine who is a devoted vegan, which I really do respect, said, though, that he thought that everyone was gonna eat this way in the future and this is definitely the way that we should be going. 

And at that point, I had just come back from the Navajo Nation. And I'm like, ‘You're gonna go to these Indigenous people and tell them that they can't eat meat anymore, because it's bad for the planet, despite the fact that this particular animal has been a part of their culture and their religion for 400 years? So that's not like a colonizer attitude at all.’ So I realized at that moment that food is religion in a lot of ways. It can be directly tied to religion, but it is such a big part of culture to march in and tell someone you can't eat that way, is—it's really destructive. That can be erasure, too.

So just, I think sometimes living your life and eating the foods you want to is this political act, but I think that most people would see it as a cultural act. An act of preservation. And especially around the holidays, that is the time when even people who are maybe many generations removed from an immigrant or enslaved or colonist ancestor, that's when they're cooking the foods to reconnect to that story and to their own history.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Sarah.

Sarah: My pleasure! Yeah, I got really riled up about some things. [Laughter.] I may have offended some people. It's probably fine.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Kristina Cho, author of the cookbook Mooncakes and Milk Bread. We discussed how studying architecture has influenced her recipe work, moving from the Midwest to California, and why it was so important for her to pay homage to the Chinatowns of the United States. 

Alicia: Hi, Kristina. Thanks so much for being here.

Kristina: Hi, so excited for this podcast.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Kristina: I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, technically, the suburbs, but my grandparents—And it's also where my mom and all her siblings grew up, but they grew up in Chinatown of Cleveland. And so, I ate a lot of Chinese food growing up, which makes sense. My family is a Cantonese Chinese family from Hong Kong. So I ate a lot of Chinese food. 

But I also ate a lot of, I don't know, I would say the classic Midwestern staples, ’cause my mom was always interested in learning how to make, I don't know, I guess American food and figuring out a way to make it palatable for my family that loves Asian flavors.

Alicia: Well, how would she do that?

Kristina: So there's two recipes in my mind that always stick out to me that are kind of this really interesting fusion. 

She makes this really great meatloaf, which I haven't had in a long time. But we had meatloaf a lot growing up. And her glaze on it, rather than just ketchup or whatever else you put in it, she would do ketchup in oyster sauce mixture. And she would put bread crumbs and green onions inside of the meatloaf. So it had a lot of that sweetness and also the umami flavors from oyster sauce. 

And also her—I call it Mom's spaghetti. Or Chinese spaghetti. Again, it's ketchup again. I think my mom probably growing up was like, ‘What's ketchup? I need to figure out how to use this in everything.’ She loves it. But her version of spaghetti, spaghetti bolognese was ground beef, ketchup, oyster sauce again. And later on in life when I described it to other people, there's a Filipino version of spaghetti that's very similar to it. So I just find that recipe very interesting to compare with other people's kind of immigrant history, Americanized version of classic American recipes.

Alicia: And you grew up cook—around cooking and food. And it's always been a significant part of you, your life as you write in your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread. But writing recipes down is kind of an entirely different set of skills from just eating or cooking. 

And you credit your training as an architect with your ability to test recipes to perfection. But when it came to writing instructions for home cooks, how did you get your voice together to communicate your style of cooking?

Kristina: It was quite a journey. I don't think I initially had my recipe writing voice at the beginning of my cookbook writing process. And it kind of just took me a few months throughout that whole writing process as I develop recipes to kind of figure that style out. 

’Cause you're right. Growing up in my family, no recipes were written down ever. It was just kind of ‘go by feel.’ Recipes were passed down orally. And I think working in architecture, a lot of it is just kind of creative, developing different concepts and ideas. But then there's the more kind of a practical side, when a building goes into construction; you document it in a very meticulous way so that someone else knows how to build it. And so, I think I took that mind-set into recipe writing, kind of noting what details are important for someone that I don't know what their kitchen is like and giving them everything that they need to be able to execute this recipe successfully. 

So I focus a lot on indicators. A lot of times recipes have times, but I'll say ‘until golden brown.’ And just talking to other people, it was just really important for me to emphasize cooking towards indicators. Everyone's oven’s different. Yeah, that was important to me.

And also kind of writing recipes in a very warm way. And it's only way that I know how to write, is to write in my own—how I would speak. So I wanted the recipes to sound like I am there in the kitchen with you to assure you that everything's going fine. So if anything, while I was making it—the Chinese sausage and cilantro pancakes are a good one. I like to say in there that while you're rolling it, if a bit of cilantro bursts out of your dough, don't panic. That is supposed to happen. So I tried to note where like, ‘Oh, someone might freak out here. I need to add a note to make sure that they’re ok.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. 

It's so hard to do, too—And that's such an amazing skill to have, is to know where to account for someone else's state of mind or someone's oven. It's really difficult. I mean, I'm kind of new to writing recipes down for people. And it's really nerve racking and it's really interesting, the questions you'll get that you never thought of, but from—

Kristina: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah.

Has that helped you as well, is knowing where people kind of falter and ask for advice?

Kristina: Yeah, absolutely. 

The book is out into the world. I can't really change anything that's on the pages. But my DMs on Instagram, I kind of treat it as an open hotline for people. And I probably shouldn't. I should probably separate that a little bit and not be on it so much answering people's questions. But I honestly live for it. I love hearing other people's experience making it. 

There's just one kind of maybe a little bit of a finicky cake in the book. It's a Malay cake. And she was baking it at a high altitude. And I was like, ‘Oh God, I don't know. I have zero experience with baking anything at a high altitude.’ So she's kind of picking her brain with figuring out what would happen. 

I love that stuff. I love troubleshooting, figuring out the little details. And I think post–book release, learning about all these things out in the real life of how these recipes were truly executed in the real world, I think, will just make me a better recipe developer too. And if I write a second book or another baking book in the future, all of the stuff—that is very, very valuable.

Alicia: Well, and you were kind of talking about this in discussing your mom's twist on different classic Midwestern American recipes. But I always think of the Midwest, ’cause I'm from New York, as having its own distinct food culture, too, which it does, obviously. How does it influence your cooking style, if at all?

Kristina: I think the biggest thing that growing up in the Midwest has affected the way that I cook is that I find it very difficult to cook for one to two people. But I do it all the time, because I just live with my fiancé and my dog. So it's just, I guess the two and a half of us. I don't make scratch food for my dog. 

But I naturally just love to cook for a lot of people. That's where I feel most comfortable. I like making family-style meals, or multiple desserts to share. Everything's family-style. You need options. And I think growing in the Midwest, even if you didn't grow up in an Asian American family, that's just how the Midwest is. Potlucks. school functions are bringing a bunch of casseroles and tray bake things, a ton of cookies. I think there's a very kind of warm and hospitable food culture in the Midwest. I think there's a deep appreciation of kind of fluffy doughy breads, and a lot of cheese and cream cheese that I love and have carried that on to adulthood. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Yeah, and now you live in San Francisco, which you also credit with influencing your cooking style. So how has California kind of built upon that style you developed around your family and also among friends, in growing up in Ohio? 

Kristna: Yeah, it's such an interesting hybrid of all these different influences based on where I live. So I actually moved out of San Francisco last year, but I live in the East Bay now just adjacent to Berkeley. So I'm still in the Bay Area. And I think even doing that move has kind of changed my food a little bit.

But just solely California, I think it—I think in a way it has almost spoiled me in the way that I cook, because we just have such incredible produce. Any fruit and vegetable I could ever imagine is here, and it's so incredibly fresh. And there's a lot of amazing Asian-owned farms here. So I have access to just, I don't know, heritage variations of bok choy and stuff. It feels there's an abundance of all this thing, all these things I can work with. 

But I try to maintain a really realistic approach with the way that I recipe-write. I know not everyone's gonna have this access to this very specific variety of bok choy or cabbage. But I think just being in California, just—it's a really wide palette of stuff that I could kind of experiment with. And I used to be kind of a picky eater when I was a kid, but now I have just this love of vegetables and like fresh produce and fruit throughout the seasons. And I think that's how California has changed me. 

And also just being in California, where there's so many different cultural backgrounds and so many restaurants that represent that, my own knowledge of food has just expanded so much just by living here.

Alicia: Well, and your book Mooncakes + Milk Bread is a love letter to Chinese bakeries and Chinatowns everywhere, including the Cleveland Chinatown where your family had its restaurant when you were growing up. Why was it important to you to give these places and their recipes their due in a cookbook?

Kristina: I think because these restaurants have been somewhat overlooked for a super long time. So my grandpa had a bunch of restaurants throughout the years, some in Chinatown, but the one that I actually grew up in, it was his last restaurant before he retired. He actually picked it, picked the location based on where my parents bought a house to raise my brother and I, which is in West Ohio. And so that was his last restaurant.

But our tie to Chinatown and also our love of just Chinese food and restaurants, I think that was just something that needed to be celebrated. And it's kind of shocking to me that even the year 2021, there's been more opportunities to highlight it. But I think that it deserves so much more celebration. Chinese American restaurants have been such an important part of, I think, general culture. Even entertainment, Hollywood culture, a background of different movies and things like that. But to be celebrated in a very real way is special. And I think that's why a lot of people really relate to this book, because they finally feel like it's seen.

Alicia: And it's such an illustrative book about, with techniques. Your hands are in it pulling on dough, or ways of illustrating the movements that you would make to make a certain type of bread. So what inspired your level of visual explanation?

Kristina: So it's actually interesting, ’cause a lot of people have brought that up. They're like, ‘I haven't seen a cookbook with so much step by step, visual guides before.’ And for me, it wasn’t even a question about whether or not I would include these things in there. I just naturally when I was—I shot all the photos myself. And so it was really great, that as I was recipe testing, I could kind of be like, ‘Oh, I should probably shoot this process too.’

And I think it was important for the success of a lot of these recipes. Because since this is the first comprehensive book that covers a lot of these Chinese bakery recipes, there's not a lot of frame of reference for a lot of people. Every recipe in this book has at least a photo to demonstrate what the final thing should look like. 

But in a different type of baking book, if someone just had a version of chocolate chip cookies and maybe there was no photo with it, I think people could still visualize what that would look like. But then with some of the breads, or how to laminate the pancakes in here, if you're like ‘I don't totally understand what that means?’ As hard as I tried to make the written recipe as clear as possible. I'm a visual learner. Just having the photos in there to show how many turns and what a coil looks like? Again, it encourages people to make the recipes more when there's something like that to help you.

Alicia: And I mean, people do tend to be really stressed about baking. But you have such a down to earth voice. And through that illustration and that kind of level of detail, you really do make each recipe approachable even if it has a lot of components. 

And has baking always come naturally to you. Has that always been something that you were good at?

Kristina: I think it's a complicated answer, because I love to also cook the savory. I almost would say that that comes even more naturally for me. 

But I love the process of baking, because—and I think you've already alluded to it. You can probably tell by just reading the book, I’m very process driven. I love figuring out the success of individual components and figuring out how they work together. Again, it's that architectural mind-set in a way. 

What really got me to love baking was that when I was in middle school, I kind of just got really obsessed with figuring out how to make the best cheesecake or really fudgy chocolate cake ’cause those are things that my family didn't know how to make. 

And when I set out to make those things in my kitchen, it was the one time in the kitchen that I would be alone because my grandma wasn't there and my mom wasn’t there trying to tell me like ‘Oh, you should do this and this and this.’ ‘Cause if I was trying to make dumplings, I would have 50 opinions about how I should mix my filling or my dough. So I think baking for me has always been therapeutic in that sense, that allowed me that kind of quietness to kind of really figure out my own style and methodically think about each step of a recipe. 

And I think that part of baking comes really natural for me. I feel I'm haunted by the process of making French macarons because, I have like a 30 percent success rate with them now. So I wouldn't say that all parts of baking come super natural to me. I still have my fair share of fails and struggles of different recipes.

Alicia: Well, they're very difficult. And I feel the weather is always going to be either on your side or not with them.

Kristina: Oh, totally. I feel when I made them in my apartment in San Francisco, I was like if the Muni bus barreled too hard by my apartment while I was making them it would mess them up. [Laughter.]

Alicia: But what also helped you to focus on bread and yeasted dough? That's also an aspect of baking that people get very stressed out or aren't, don't find approachable.

Kristina: Yeah, there's something about the word ‘dough’ that just strikes fear in the hearts of a lot of people for some reason. 

When people have asked me about advice on starting to work with dough, I actually tell them to work with a non-leavened dough first just to kind of get the feel of what a hydrated dough should feel like. And obviously, of course, it's if you have a good recipe. And so in the book, if you tried making the dumpling dough or the pancake dough in here, they're very similar. And that's a really good way and low stress avenue to kind of get used to kneading dough and knowing what it should feel like and handling it. 

And then if you feel a little bit more comfortable, you can start going into the milk bread or the other kind of yeasted doughs in there. Some people like to just add instant yeast into their dough and just call it a day. And it is really easy if you feel comfortable and know for a fact that your yeast is alive. But for some reason I've been burned. Different yeasts say that it was alive or it didn't expire yet. 

And even though I add in there, I didn't activate. And so, I think just getting used to using active dry yeast and blooming it in warm milk or water and seeing that it's literally alive and bubbling? I think that's a first step in kind of just feeling comfortable like, ‘Ok, this thing that is the deal breaker for my bread is alive? I'm good now that it’s really bubbly and stuff.’

So it's definitely a process, but I have a pretty extensive  intro to the milk bread recipe that kind of, ‘Here are all the different parts.’ And things that you should look for. Again, just making sure people feel comfortable.

Alicia: For sure. 

You mentioned social media earlier about how your DMs on Instagram have become sort of a recipe hotline. But I was noticing that you kept your blog up, that you have a huge following on social media and on Instagram. How are you balancing that? And what is your day to day life now, now that the cookbook is out?

Kristina: My life is sort of all over the place, but in a good way. 

So yes, I still have my blog,

https://eatchofood.com/

. And I feel there's this strange shift that people don't really have blogs anymore. They have newsletters and things like that. And I think it's all the same. It's just on sort of a different platform. And I think I'm going to have the blog forever, just ’cause it's been a part of my life for so many years now. And in a sense, diary entries in a way because I have to keep them very personal. 

But for a really long time actually, I was really consistent about sharing a recipe or even two recipes a week. And I think that since the book has come out, I've been just a little busy. I still have recipes that come out maybe every other week or so. But I think it's just a really great stable place to kind of house all these recipes that I produce for free for people. 

But I don't know. I try to be really good about balancing my social media and my cookbook writing, work balance and all that stuff. And I think right now because it's the holidays, it's a little crazy. I feel at the end of the year, for any profession, it's always really busy ‘cause you're trying to wrap up loose ends. But I think especially in the recipe development world, everyone wants a million recipes for their holiday baking, whatever and all that stuff. And so right now, I'm kind of in a rush to develop a bunch of recipes before I go home for the holidays. 

But I try to divide up my days. I'll have full recipe development day,  so that I'm in that mind-set. I block out full days where I am editing photos, editing videos, for Reels or TikToks. And then I do that. And then full days where I'm writing. That's just kind of how my mind is wired. I can't bounce around. It's really hard for me to—especially when we're writing. When I was writing my book, I had to lock myself in my bedroom. That was the only place I could actually write. I locked myself in my bedroom all day to write a bunch of headnotes until I couldn't anymore. 

So that's normally what I like to do. I wish I could say that I'm normally that organized. [Laughs.]

Alicia: No, I have the same struggle. It's trying to do newsletter days. I have a book deadline next month. So I'm—Yeah, it's the—Yeah. [Laughter.]

Kristina: You'll get there. It'll be done.

Alicia: I agree. I'll get there. It will be done. But at the same time, it's like, ‘How?’ How? So I'm always asking everyone like, ‘How are you keeping it all together? How did you do it?’ To try and understand how we're all supposed to balance these tens of thousands of things all the time.

Kristina: Everyone's just spinning in circles just trying to get it done. 

Alicia: Exactly.

Well, this is a question I ask everyone lately, but how, for you, would you define abundance? 

Kristina: That's such a good question. [Laughs.] It’s probably very insightful for whoever you ask for.

I almost see abundance as being content in what you have, if that makes sense. I think having too much is not exactly abundance in a sense, because having too much, for me, overwhelms me. And so I think abundance to me is one, feeling comfortable in what I have, feeling comfortable and content with what I have in terms of my life, my people, and maybe the groceries in my refrigerator. Just having the perfect, perfect amount that there's no waste and not too little.

Alicia: Right, right. 

It's interesting, because people either define it that way, which is how I think of it, or people are like, ‘No abundance is the gluttony of the American superwealthy.’ [Laughs.]

Kristina: That overwhelms me. That makes me feel uncomfortable. I actually hate when I—Well, I sort of love a big grocery store. Because it's not something I'm used to in the Bay Area. I love seeing like, ‘Oh, you have 20 different varieties of oats here. That's amazing.’ But in my own house, when I feel I have too much stuff in my kitchen, I feel trapped. And that's not necessarily what I feel abundance should make you feel. You should feel freedom, if that makes sense.

Alicia: Exactly. [Laughs.]

Yeah. For you, is cooking a political act?

Kristina: I think in a way it is. I will have to admit that I don't think I'm as vocal as I should be with different kind of my political beliefs. But in my food, I think it's my own way of kind of subtly expressing the way that I feel in terms of the cultural politics of things. Especially in the last year when there was so much Asian hate, especially in the Bay Area and stuff, my food, for me, is a way for me to share my pride in my own culture with other people and for other people to also share in that pride. I did a dumpling fundraiser, just to raise money for Bay Area Chinatowns and stuff like that. And so that's how I like to use my food as a political stance.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Kristina: Yeah, thank you so much. This has been such a great conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in. 

Today, I'm talking to Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and executive director of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit think tank that works on changing inequitable systems in food and beyond. We discussed how she went from business school to kitchens, cultural appropriation in fast casual restaurants, and launching a newsletter as a way to find her voice in writing. 

Alicia: Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for being here.

Jenny: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jenny: Yeah, of course. 

So I was born in Shanghai, but I grew up in New York. Both my parents were getting their PhDs at Albert Einstein University up in the Bronx. So I feel when I was little, I ate a lot of just food at home. My family was definitely the ‘Why would you ever eat outside? You're wasting money’ sort of vibe. So everything was at home. 

There was a lot of eggs and a lot of breads. And of course, every meal has to have a veg. So I kind of grew up with a lots of vegetables and never really understood that idea of like, ‘Vegetables are gross. Kids don't like vegetables.’ I think pea sprouts are my favorite vegetable in the world. Ate a lot of tomato and egg growing up; I think that's a classic Chinese staple. So things that were easy for young 20-something-year-old parents that had no cooking experience and worked all the time to make.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you grow up in the Bronx, or did you grow up in a different borough?

Jenny: Yeah, we grew up essentially in the student's compound within the Bronx. So there was some other, yes, children of fellow students that I hung out with. I felt we occasionally were actually able to go out and be with the rest of the Bronx. But a lot of times we were kind of confined in this little area, and so didn't really honestly get as much interfacing with the world outside as I think would have been beneficial to growing up, unfortunately.

Alicia: Yeah, no, I remember Albert Einstein College from driving past. I went to Fordham. So I remember just being like, ‘Ah, the signs.’ That's all I know of it. I'm like, ‘Oh, the signs for Albert Einstein on the Pelham Parkway.’ [Laughs.]

But that's so interesting, to grow up in that kind of environment with—and that's interesting, because I think when we think of the Bronx, we think of Arthur Avenue and we think of so much food diversity and that sort of thing. Do you go back now?

Jenny: Sometimes.

I mean, I try. But I feel I don't even know. Yeah, I didn't know to know. I feel sad about that all the time. I feel elementary school, at least I was able to go to public elementary and kind of learn about the fact that there are such a diverse group of folks up in the Bronx. But so many times when we were just in the student compounds, we’re so sheltered from everyone else. You don't interact with anyone. 

And I think this is now, in retrospect, when I have kind of conversations around race and class and social status and immigration with my parents, they were so busy being students, heads down, that they had no concept of what was kind of happening, which is unfortunate. But I think that is—that's kind of a manifestation of how so many things happen here in the U.S., is that you have your own little silo and you don't realize you're in a silo until you're out of it. And that can take years. That could take your entire life.

Alicia: Right.

Well, what was your route to getting into food and becoming a chef?

Jenny: So, I had always been a food person growing up. I loved eating. I planned all of our vacations around eating. So when I was little, my parents really liked going to Vegas. This is after we had moved to Seattle. We weren't going from New York to Vegas. Because of the buffets, and there's a lot of food. And it was fairly inexpensive to go and have a good time. And so, I remember—I think I was like 10. We were going to Vegas, and we never gambled or anything. We would just go and eat at buffets. And I'd be like, ‘This one has this and this one has that. And it was all about the food.’ 

And so, my mother and father had always been like, ‘Yeah, you kind of like food. But that's not a real career.’ It was never really encouraged or allowed, I think. So I never really thought about food in that way. Just saw it as a hobby or a thing that I want—I liked and wanted to do, but not as a thing that I should pursue, so to speak. 

It wasn't until after I had started my first job out of college. I was in management consulting, and realized, first of all, how miserable I was, but specifically because I was within fashion and luxury goods. I had this kind of sad moment where I realized so many of the people higher up on the food chain than me, they were filling their hearts, their metaphorical hearts, so to speak, with just stuff. And I could see it. And you never want to be in a position as a really junior person where you look at someone who's supposed to have their s**t together, and seems to have it all, and you just feel really sad for them. And that's how I felt all the time. 

And I don't want to editorialize on their behalf. Maybe they're super happy. But what I interpreted was a lot of sadness. And then I realized, ‘I don't like this job. I've never liked this job. I don't know why I wanted to be in this industry. I think it was for the glitz and the glamour. But inside, I'm really unhappy. So what can I do about it? What is the thing that makes me happy?’ And naturally, it was like, ‘Ok, I'm going to go cook. I'm going to go take this advanced cooking techniques class at the Institute of Culinary Education.’ At first, it was just recreational. But soon enough, I was like, ‘I want something formal. I don't want the sheltered student experience again. I really want to be fabricating my lamb. I want to be breaking down the chickens. I want to be making the stock, not just have stock delivered to me from stewarding.’

So I ended up going to a full diploma program at school and wanted to give myself a chance in the industry. Ended up leaving—I was going to Columbia Business School right afterwards. Ended up leaving that and was like, ‘I just need to figure out—I need to at least give it a chance to try and see where I end up.’

Alicia: Well, and then do you think that your training and your experience, even if it wasn't what you ultimately wanted to do, and then some studies at Columbia Business School, do you think that they influence your work in food now that you are working in food media? You're also working in activism. You've founded Studio ATAO? Do those things still crop up? Do they still kind of aid your thinking? 

 Jenny: Yeah, I think a lot of what I saw at culinary school really shaped how the work that I do now just seeing—first of all, poor representation of how things are taught. 

And just the lack of, I think, empowerment that culinary students and, in general, a lot of more junior-level workers within food, restaurant, hospitality, beverage are often imbued with, because you're constantly being told that your opinions don't matter. You don't have the right to stand up for yourself, and that the system is just like this. We were constantly indoctrinated in culinary school that you just got to go to these stages, and you're never going to get paid. And you're gonna to work a gazillion hours and make $10 an hour to start. And that's normalized. And that is a huge problem if we're normalizing literally hundreds of thousands of students to that sort of mentality every year. So I don't think I had the vocabulary for it then. But a lot of the micro- and macroaggressions that I faced in culinary school really informed the desire to even try to do this work.

And in a, I guess, a positive way, by interactions at business school—which I don't want to hate on too much because I did marry someone from the business school—but business school was such a jarring and terrible experience in that I was like, ‘Wow, are we really just out here to compete and make money?’ This kind of idea of constant scarcity, constant competition, it's so toxic. And what is the real value that we're trying to add to society at large?

But I think it's hard to get into that kind of mode when you're surrounded by people who are just telling you about their Goldman Sachs résumé, or telling you how great they have it because they made so much money last year. It's so easy to get into this keeping up with the Joneses sort of mentality. 

And I think shifting from graduating from culinary school, and then three days later going to Columbia Business School, that juxtaposition made me realize these were two different worlds. We're not talking to each other. Because we're so siloed in both respects, there is so much—there's so much that we should be doing. We could be improving both industries or industries under Columbia, and then food hospitality in general. But right now, we don't even understand the problems each other are facing. And we don't have any empathy for them. So how, what do we do about that? How do we bridge that gap?

Alicia: Right.

And so, when did you start to move toward food media?

Jenny: It's kind of a strange, roundabout way, I guess.

I first went into work at restaurants, kind of had to do that as part of my culinary school externship, started working in corporate food R&D. And I think from all the just toxicity that I've absorbed over those years, wanted to find some sort of outlet to write, write about it, talk about it. 

And as you're aware, it's really hard to land some of those more difficult reported pieces off the bat. So I had this, to start with the rigmarole of doing basic recipes, and then maybe a little bit more covered recipes with headnotes. And then slowly was able to move into ‘Oh, I really want to tackle really complex or uncomfortable topics within food media. Who's going to give me an opportunity to do that?’

And I think that journey also uncovered a lot of these problems that we have with the media of like, Who gets exposed? Who gets airtime? What kind of writing and language do we pay credence to, and which ones do we not? Ran into that constant issue of, ‘Can you really cover issues that aren't Asian American?’ So I think that journey continued to inform like, ‘Oh, ok, food media is a place that we can talk about it. But it's also not the end all, be all of how we're going to bring about justice or change.’

Alicia: Right. 

And do you think things have gotten better since you started to work in food media?

Jenny: Heh. I don't know. 

I would love to hear what you think, because I feel like I get this question. And I'm always like, ‘I want to say yes, I think so.’ But a lot of times, I am not sure. Because I feel optically we are saying and doing a lot of the right things. But I think systemically have we really made those big changes? I don't know.

Alicia: Right.

Well, my perspective right now is very skewed because I'm very focused on my newsletter. I think I've stopped really paying attention to food magazines, for the most part. 

I get Bon Appétit in the mail. And I read it, and I—it's very thin these days.And I don't say that to insult them. They have a huge reach and everything. And they've really hired a lot of writers that I really enjoy. And so, that's really great. But we're not seeing that much. 

Maybe this is the thing, and I would like to ask you about it, because this brings up a lot of your work with Studio ATAO, I think, which is how much does representation count if the stories and the narratives remain sort of the same? So what is your perspective on when you can have the representation, but maybe things don't really change at a deeper level?

Like you were mentioning, there's this pervasive idea in the media that people who, non-white people can't write about anything but their own background. And that is very pervasive. That continues. That I haven't seen really change in a real way. And so, in your mind, how much does representation count for in food media?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, I think representation is always going to be important. Of course, it's important that if you're a new reader to Bon App or Food & Wine, and you're flipping through the pages, and you see a face that looks like yours, of course, that's always going to be good. But I think what, when I say optically, we are doing that. 

However, the power dynamics of who picks those people, who gets to greenlight the pitches, who gets to shape the pitches, who gets to censor some of the words, that sort of chain of command is the multiple steps behind representation that I would like to see more change in. And there's a lot of obstacles to all sorts of those things. 

One of the things that we had been tackling through these two white papers with Well+Good and The Kitchn for the last year, so over the—over 2021 is how do we hire more BIPOC in these diverse leadership roles? And a lot of the problem’s that HR is saying over and over again is the pipeline is empty. There's no BIPOC in the pipeline. And yet, it's like yes, and no, right? I'm sure there is. But there probably isn't as many because BIPOC are regularly not promoted at the same cadence. They don't get the same titles, etc. So the pipeline probably does look a little bit empty. 

And so then it becomes ‘Well, is that one institution trying to hire additional diverse leadership going to be the person that trains that leadership? Are they going to start working with BIPOC students so that they can move them up the promotion ladder, so that in ten years, you're going to have an exe editor that naturally is BIPOC?’ 

That's a level of commitment that far exceeds just finding a BIPOC woman and promoting them. It takes a lot more planning, it takes a lot more investment, time, money, energy. And I think that's kind of the, where a lot of organizations are doing the ‘Well, that's not on us. That's an industry problem. That's not for us to solve.’ And that's what makes me nervous in terms of long-term change.

Alicia: Right, right. 

There's similar problems in terms of class or education level where the same—you have a whole team of people who have the same economic background, the same type of education background. And I think that also really comes through in terms of the content, which—and that comes through in terms of who you're speaking to, as your audience is like—

And that's a really interesting thing when you're writing about food, because the people you're writing about in restaurants, etc., are going to be probably super different from the types of people in the magazine office. And that's such a disconnect. That's a big loss, too. That's a loss for who your audience can be, like, if you're not even necessarily speaking to the people who work in, to the concerns of people who work in restaurants. That's a real loss. 

And it's a big problem to deal with. And like you were saying, it's a problem of a lack of commitment from folks in these higher-up positions to put in that effort to find those people and to really be a mentor to people, even if they look different, come from a different kind of place, come from a different kind of education. And that reluctance, it shows in how much people are really engaging with the work and it shows in what the work is. Because I think that it's been a really big loss of opportunity to talk about restaurant workers in a real way in the media, especially since the pandemic. I feel like it's been a bit—that distance has been very apparent lately. 

As someone who has worked in restaurants, how has this time been for you as someone who does work in the media, but also has that experience?

Jenny: Yeah.

I think it's tough because you have folks who are on the ground very concerned with day-to-day, like, ‘Is my restaurant going to stay open or not? I don't know if I'm going to get this paycheck or not? I don't know what's going on with unemployment.’ 

And then to ask them to also know kind of the fancy language terms that often are used when writers write for other writers, there's a huge disconnect, when you're supposedly supposed to be helping them understand, navigate this landscape. Because what we're getting in terms of directors from the government was confusing enough when we're talking about PPP, or we're talking about if some PPPs can be forgiven, or whatnot. There's already this barrier of people being able to access some of those funds, even if they were meant for everyone. Before we even start talking about how undocumented folks were not even able to access that, but yeah.

And then when you're covering it as a food media publication, who are you really interviewing? Are you taking the time to really interview people on the ground, versus talking to a PR company that represents a restaurant group that can easily pull you a couple sous chefs to interview versus getting into the kitchens and really asking the garde manger who's been there for 10 years, or the porter on this—and asking them like, ‘Hey, how are you dealing with this problem?’

I think that's a level of disconnect food media's always faced. I don't know how to fix that, because folks are not getting paid enough to cover their stories. They don't have enough lead time to write the stories that they want to write. There's not enough fact-checking that's happening. I don't know. It's a domino effect of all the problems from the top down.

Alicia: Exactly, yeah.

Well, with Studio ATAO, it’s a nonprofit think tank where you’re executive director, there's been a very broad approach to changing inequitable systems. And so, I was wondering if you can explain its founding and the work the nonprofit does.

Jenny: Yeah. 

So Studio ATAO is a community-based think tank. And what we mean by that is, how do we conduct research? How do we create spaces where we can really listen to the needs and recommendations of community members that are most affected by various different inequitable problems, and actually champion and put energy and money and time to support their recommendations from the ground up instead of trying to implement solutions to fix these problems from the top down?

And I think, because of the very complicated convoluted nature of the nonprofit industrial complex, which we can get into if people want, as well as think tanks, which kind of get wrapped up in all of that, and academia as well, a lot of times you have philanthropists and big level donors who see a problem. And they have their own take on what the solution is. 

The example I often use is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot of great work in the world. But there's a lot of critique on how they handle child classroom access. And they're focused on getting small class sizes, which arguably, small class sizes probably is great. But was that the number one thing that communities with not great educational outcomes wanted to see in terms of structural change? Maybe not. Did they bother to ask anyone and figure that out before kind of putting all of that energy into it? 

And so what we've really tried to do is, first if we see a problem like equitable representation of the media, talk to the people who are getting affected by that and say, like, ‘What are the changes you want to see? Is it more leadership at the top? Is it changing pitch guidelines? Is it more transparency? What is the thing that you think would most make the biggest impact to make your life better, to make you feel your work is more equitable, that you have a space to have your voice be heard in some of these sort of companies?’

So, that's kind of our approach in general. And our main thing for this year and next year is looking at gentrification and hospitality, which is a whole can of worms. 

Alicia: That is really exciting though, because that is such a complicated topic. I am so excited to see what you come up with. 

Yeah, no, I'm reading a lot about gentrification because of where I live—well, so I'm from New York. So there's gentrification there in New York City. But here in Old San Juan, it's just so rapid and virulent, and it's having such a huge impact on the culture. And it's just a really, really, really intense situation to live among. Yeah. It's happening so rapidly that I don't think anyone is thinking—Well, locals are thinking enough about what it means. But in terms of the politicians and everything, there's just really no concern or no regulation, and just selling everything. 

And in terms of the food, it actually has—people always think of the impact of gentrification on the food, and that it becomes more bourgeois and inaccessible, and the impact here has interestingly been that the food is worse. And so, because locals can't open places, because it's too expensive, it's harder to get the capital to do so. And in general, the stat is 85% of food is imported to Puerto Rico. And so usually, we have really poor quality onions in the supermarket, the garlic is from Spain, etc., etc. So there's one or two good local restaurants in Old San Juan, and then other than that it's food for tourists. It's fast food. There's one local fast, a couple of local fast food places.

It's a very interesting thing, because you always hear that, like, ‘People bring the money, and then they bring gentrification.’ The way you tell that is through the food, but—or it's through the coffee, maybe. [Laughs.] But I mean, coffee is already part of the culture, so they can't really do anything with the coffee. 

And so, it's just an interesting dynamic, because it's just—it's the opposite of how I was told, or had always read that gentrification works with food and with hospitality. And so, I'm super interested in this topic right now because there's so much to understand that hasn't, that isn't as simplified as people make it out to be. And so, I'm really excited to see that work that you guys are putting out. 

And you do such interesting work around how cultural and political realities impact food and the way people get it. You wrote about cultural appropriation in fast-casual restaurants for Eater. I wanted to ask, how did that story idea come about? Why did you see fast-casual as worthy of serious critique? Because I was like, ‘Oh,’ reading it. And I read it when it came out, and I was reading it again to interview you. And I'm like, ‘Does anyone really talk about fast-casual in a rigorous way?’ And people should, because it is the way a lot of people are interacting with these cuisines.

Jenny: Yeah.

I think a lot of what I wanted to—well, maybe not just for that piece, but that that piece had a whole just fallout. Let's just put it like that, just an insane amount of hate mail. But I think what I wanted to do is point out these systems that we interact with in our lives, where we're normalizing things.

And fast-casual, I think, is often not scrutinized because we kind of dismiss it. We see it as a quick bite to eat. What harm is Chipotle doing if I'm just giving a burrito there? And whereas that we put a lot of worthy and important attention on things like Lucky Lee’s, or Lucky Cricket. And those absolutely should be critiqued. But why not the thing that you're quickly grabbing to go? Why not the thing that you are probably interacting with way more than this random restaurant in Minnesota that you might not ever visit? I think because of Internet outrage culture, it's easier to be angry at these kind of discrete things, versus acknowledging how these small little occurrences in your everyday life actually end up shaping your worldview. 

I think back to as a culinary student, as I mentioned earlier, it's not that anyone comes out and tells you, ‘You're garbage and you're not worth more than $10 an hour.’ It's just something that you implicitly learn over the course of your time there. And I think that's a lot more insidious and toxic. And we really do need to be not only pointing that out for ourselves, but getting, I think, surfacing that for people who are still going through it, the next generation of students. So that they can identify it when their mentor tells them that, when there's—when their instructor tells them that, when their career counselor says something like that.

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

Because we're talking about a lot of serious things, and now I'm sort of—I think we've sort of enacted maybe the thought process of where you launched a newsletter to do more personal writing, loose writing. Because you are known for the very rigorous looks at diversity and discrimination in the food industry. How has your experience been doing a newsletter so far?

Jenny: Yeah.

I mean, newsletter’s been so strange. But I think the big thing I've learned is just how differently I'm writing for the newsletter versus for any publication, and just how much of my voice I'm really tailoring. I think I just didn't notice because I never wrote for myself. So I know the kind of tone I need to strike for Serious Eats or for Washington Post or whatever. You read enough of their work, you get it. 

And I'm not discounting that kind of writing. And I very much enjoy it. And I'm going to continue reading the New York Times. But now I kind of see it—I'm like, ‘I'm not gonna structure my sentences like that.’ I love to have long things that are in parentheses that probably shouldn’t be in parentheses. Instead of feeling that is a problem or that is, there's something inherently wrong with that, it's like, ‘Oh, that's actually a quirk that I like to write in.’

I remember years ago, I wrote this piece that was very personal. And my editor shat all over it, and was like, ‘Stop anthropomorphizing your food.’ It was this whole thing. And that piece is fine. I'm fine with how it turned out. But I look back. And I feel like, ‘Again, see, this is those small things that get normalized.’ Editors say that all the time. And I was like, ‘There's something wrong with my writing style,’ versus ‘Oh, I'm just not writing in the tone that they want.’

So the newsletter has given me a little bit of that perhaps needed confidence to say, ‘These are my personalities.’ As a writer, I am allowed to find value in them, even if it's not well suited for a bigger publication. And also explore things that maybe some people don't want to talk about. I wrote a thing about fanfiction, and fandom. And that was really fun. I just had a good time writing about it. And so, I put my energy and time into that. And I hope that people care. And I think people, the response was like, ‘Oh, I never even thought about this before.’

And this is that problem with food media, or media in general, if you can't prove that people will care about it to start. You can't ever land the pitch. But once you actually get it out in the world, people did care. I don't know. Yeah.

Alicia: [Laughter.] No, that's so interesting! 

And I've found the same thing. And in my newsletter is like, ‘Oh, there is an audience for cultural critique, it—of all these food issues, but also for personal essays about why I eat oatmeal every day.’ It's such a shocking thing, I think, because we have been trained to think that we have no story unless people are already talking about it. And it's like, well, by the time people are already talking about it, it's like the story's boring. They've taken the story and they've gone with it, and then it—you have to find a new angle on it, and that sort of thing. 

And I think there's so much value in—and this is, I guess, what we sort of lost over the last—in the 2010s, the blogs kind of died out. And then we lost this really more informal and raw and voicey way of writing on the internet. And we had social media, but at the same time, it's very different. And so, I think newsletters are giving a little bit of a more informality and space and structure to the fact that people really do want that kind of work and want that kind of thinking and miss that kind of like, ‘Let me just hear what someone's thinking about something, even if they've never thought about it before.’ 

Because that's true. If the writing is good, and the writing is punchy and interesting, people are gonna read about anything. And that's, I think, something people have lost in this obsession with SEO and views, etc., etc. I published something on Monday that was just my thought process over a couple of weeks. And it's gotten 30,000 views in two days. And so it's like, that's not bad. [Laughs.] For just a person thinking out loud, I think that there is more space for that. People want that, then—I don't know. It is interesting. 

And my advice always to younger writers—and I've sent it twice today to two different people [laughs]—I was like, ‘You do have to write for editors,’ because now people think that they can just start a newsletter and then boom! Career takes off. And it's like, ‘It's probably not gonna happen.’ Even though it hurts a lot of the time being edited, especially when you're just starting out and you have to learn and you have—

But at the same time, you have to figure out that balance for yourself of where you're comfortable with an editor taking away from your voice, and sometimes where you can push back and that sort of thing, or when and where you can do a long parenthetical that maybe someone else would take out. You have to have that understanding of the rules in order to break out of the rules. It's interesting to hear you say that the newsletter now has given you a whole new lease on writing, because I think that that's true. And I mean, I don't want this to sound like gatekeeping or whatever. But I do think you have to learn the basics first.

Jenny: Yeah, I think it's important to understand where every—but where everybody's boundaries are. It's very difficult as a person who's starting any career, writing or otherwise, to set those boundaries for yourself. So the best way we usually go about them is by emulating other people's boundaries. So I think it's really valuable to have an experience at a corporate entity or a small organization or nonprofit, whatever, because you start seeing how different people approach the world. 

And similarly, with writing, if you don't ever get edited, you're never going to see other people's criteria of what they think good writing is or what they think good editing is or what they think something voici or newsy is. And then, you don't—you kind of can't set those parameters for yourself. And you also can't really discover what you—I know what a voice EP sounds like. Maybe I just don't want it to sound like that, because that's not what I'm feeling right now. But you can't really have that kind of self-reflection without having the experience first. 

Alicia: Oh, that's such a good way of putting it. [Laughs.] I'm gonna steal your work. [Laughs.] The next time, I'm gonna send a copy of the transcript. 

But I wanted to ask, because you do so much. You're writing for other outlets, you're writing your newsletter, you do—you still are doing recipes. You still are working with Studio ATAO. What are you hoping for this year, 2022?

Jenny: Yeah, I think the big theme for myself personally this year is to create more and to create things that bring me joy. Because what I think is very hard for any sort of creative type, whether a writer or a chef or whatnot, is at some point because of money, because of the world, you start creating things for other people so much so that you kind of forget like, ‘What actually brings me joy? I have no idea sometimes.’ I'm sitting around in my kitchen like, ‘What do I want to make today?’

And sometimes I do have the envy of people who are pure content creators, and they go in and they're like, ‘I'm going to create content. What do I want to make?’ Because I feel so much of that has been taken from me, because I have to think about what other people want. And not saying that content creators don't have that outside pressure as well. 

So that's number one for me for the newsletter, is how do I explore things that I care about? If 100 people read it, so be it. It wasn't for them anyway. Ithink it's really hard to have that mentality. And I'm already struggling with it three weeks into the year. So we'll see how that goes.

But for the studio, the big thing is sustainability. We have been actively trying to resist being part of the nonprofit industrial complex, to not have all our funds come from big donors or corporations or grants and big philanthropists. But it's very difficult to not only make sure that we can employ people, but give them the employment length and the benefits and whatnot. And we're really struggling with that. And it's kind of a what do we have to sacrifice in order to have some of the runway that we want without compromising our values? 

And I, we’re struggling through that, to be totally candid. It's just an ongoing struggle. I don't know how to fix it, because the whole system is broken. Everyone's heard this before. So I won't belabor the point. But I don't know how to make it better. I think we're just trying to do less, and figure out if the—we have four initiatives for this year. How do we do them the best we can with what we have?

Alicia: Right.

And is it on Patreon? 

Jenny: Yes. 

Alicia: Ok. 

Jenny: Yeah, you can support on Patreon. You can also give one-time gifts. We really would prefer most of our comes, coming from the community, because obviously we don't want kind of this big overlord telling us we can't say this, or you can say that.

Alicia: Right, right. That's very important. 

So how do you define abundance?

Jenny: I think it's feeling you don't have to worry. Abundance means kind of that absence of scarcity. So you don't have to worry about—the thought of being hungry never crosses your mind, right? It's the absence of that worry at all. 

I grew up in a very privileged environment where I wasn't worried about hunger, and I wasn't worried about shelter. And I don't know what it feels like to truly be actively worried about that. And I think that is a feeling of abundance in its own way. I don't think it's necessarily about having more. It's about like this—yeah. A lack of worry.

Alicia: Right. I love that. I love that definition of it. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Jenny: Yes. I think cooking is always a political act. And it doesn't have to be—And I think how people define political, of course, varies. To me, it's like it's always an expression of all the systems that be.

For example, last Thanksgiving, it was the first time that we had a Thanksgiving after my father-in-law had passed. And my family had come down. My husband's family comes down. Cousins were there. And I made an active effort to make sure to make food that people have probably had never had before, so that what—

Did they totally fit into the classic American Thanksgiving table? Probably not. But there were things that I knew that they probably would not be able or not have interest in going to those restaurants they experienced themselves and could give a little bit of texture and nuance to the conversations, which already there's kind of a cultural gap, right? Because we have different cultures. We have different backgrounds. People live in different places. 

So I think food served as both a connector in that way, but also as a way to kind of challenge people. And I think that is very political, where it wasn't like, ‘Hey, let's talk about Biden in this dish or whatnot.’ [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] It was more just like, ‘Let's talk about all of these interesting systems that brought this dish to be here.’

Alicia: I love that. 

Well, thank you so much, Jenny. 

Jenny: Yeah, of course. Thank you so much for having me.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

Today, I’m talking to Preeti Mistry, a chef, host of the podcast Loading Dock Talks, and an activist for equity in hospitality. 

We discussed how they ended up a chef and closing their really well-received Oakland restaurant Juhu Beach Club, being on Top Chef, launching their podcast as an antidote to the whiteness of food media, and more. 

Alicia: Hi, thanks so much for being here.

Preeti: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: I think it's wild that this is the first time I'm interviewing you, because I feel like we've been following each other on Twitter for a long time. [Laughter.]

Preeti: I know! I was thinking that. I was like, ‘I don't think we've actually had a conversation that wasn't in 140 characters or DMs.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.]

Well, I'm excited to finally have that conversation. So can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Preeti: Well, I was born in London, and then we moved to the U.S. when I was five. I mean, I pretty much just ate Gujarati vegetarian food, traditional Gujarati vegetarian food, which is like dar, bhat, rotli, shaak, which basically means dar is dal. Bhat is rice. Rotli is whole-wheat flatbread, and shaak is just whatever vegetables are in season or that my mom cooks in various different ways, from things that are super saucy and spicy to things that are more of like a dry stir-fry. Could be okra and potatoes, which I was not a fan of as a kid. I liked the potatoes, not the okra. Or spinach, or eggplant, or cauliflower. You name it. 

And then, I really craved everything that wasn't that. I was super curious about what my family calls ‘outside food.’ And I always wanted outside food. I was just curious. I just wanted to know what other things, you know? You watch TV, and you're like, ‘What is Ponderosa? What happens at a steakhouse? I need to know. Red Lobster.’ 

I mean, especially the meats and seafood and stuff that I never experienced at home, or at anybody else's home. And my parents were not about to take me there. At least I mean, you don't know. But my parents were not going to take me to those places. I mean, mainly because we didn't have enough money to go to Red Lobster and my mom would just never even step foot inside. She’d just freak out. She's a very staunch vegetarian. My dad eats chicken and lamb and some other random things. I helped him try a scallop once. He was pretty excited about it. He enjoyed it. 

But yeah, I mean, so then it was like McDonald's, Taco Bell, that kind of stuff when it wasn't traditional Gujarati Indian food. And we would go out to Indian restaurants, which was the first time I tried all these things that people think that somehow Indian people eat at home, like chicken tikka masala and naan. Newsflash, my mom doesn't have a tandoor. 

And just yeah, Mexican, Italian. I don't know if you've heard that before. But generally speaking, most Gujarati Indians that moved to the U.S., the two foods that they generally gravitate towards when not eating Indian food are Mexican and Italian, mainly because they can be made vegetarian relatively easy. And also because they tend to use spices. Obviously, Mexican more so with the heat. And then, my mom is just like, ‘Make me a pasta, put vegetables in it, add chili flakes. I'm happy.’ [Laughter.]

And then for us, it was like, ‘Oh, we could order other stuff.’ So it was, ‘I want to try the chicken fajitas or shrimp cocktail,’ or just all kinds of things that we had never tried before. So, pretty  classic Midwestern fast food with a mix of everything from scratch vegetarian Gujarati Indian  cuisine most nights.

Alicia: Well, how did you go about getting a culinary education beyond the staples of what you grew up with?

Preeti: I didn't learn. I didn't really have an interest in cooking. I just saw it as another chore and women's work, and I didn't necessarily see myself in my mother. I didn't look at her and think, like, ‘I'm going to be like that one day.’ And so, I wasn't really interested in cooking as much as curious about food. 

So it wasn't until I left home. And Ann and I, my wife, we moved to San Francisco. And then I just started getting really bored of outside food. [Laughter.] And so, I started cooking. And that's all how it all started. I just started cooking. I would go to the now famous Bi—Rite grocery store in the Mission and look at what the vegetables were and what was in season, and they had really great fresh pasta, so I'd buy some of that. And I was starting meat, because I was vegetarian for a period of time in my late teens and early 20s. So it was the gateways. It was ahi tuna, salmon. 

So I would get out of things and experiment with cooking them. A lot of Williams Sonoma, Deborah Madison, Mollie Katzen kind of cookbooks. And all my friends were just like, ‘Holy s**t. You're good at this.’ And it wasn't cool then in the late ’90s. Twentysomethings were not having dinner parties and cooking. Just not at all what people were doing. So we were kind of an anomaly that we would have fancy dinner parties and tell people what wine to bring, and that they needed to dress nice and do the decor and everything. 

And so I mean, eventually, enough people were like, ‘You should pursue this.’ I wanted to be a filmmaker. Since I was a teenager, I wanted to make films. And I was working in film at a film arts nonprofit. So I really was like, ‘I don't know what the hell I'm doing.’ And then it just was like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna try this.’ I don't think I ever thought growing up that cooking for a living was a career, that was an option, or something that people did at all. Again, it was the late ’90s. Food Network was just starting out. There wasn't the level of celebrity chef culture that we have today. And so, I just was kind of like, ‘Ok, well, I like this. It seems to come naturally to me, makes people happy. I guess I'll give it a try.’ 

So it was just, coincided. I made a five-minute film, and it was in film festivals. And then my wife got this opportunity to work in London. And it was just a perfect break for me to try something new. And I talked to people at the British Film Institute and stuff like that. And they were like, ‘We'll take you as an intern, but you're not gonna get a job.’ I'd graduated from college. I had a couple years of experience of working. I was an assistant. Yeah, it was the perfect moment to be like, ‘Ok, I'm going to do this different thing and see how that goes in London.’ And then, whatever. I can always come back to working in film in San Francisco if I want. 

So yeah, I went to Cordon Bleu. It was weird. Mostly a lot of Americans and Japanese. I met the most wealthy people in my life. And yeah, it was just a total 180 from the world I'd been living in. I'd been living in this gay bubble of college-educated critique people, people were into activism and queer politics. And all of a sudden, I was in the basement of a five-star hotel peeling ten cases of artichokes with these kids who are five years younger than me, but have been cooking for four years.

Yeah. Changed it all.

Alicia: And so from there, did you start—you started working in kitchens? 

Preeti: Yeah.

I worked in kitchens in London. It was really hard. I had a really hard time finding a place. And I mean, it's really not until the last four years I feel, since #MeToo, that I've actually connected with the fact that some of the failures that I had weren't necessarily my fault. 

But yeah, I had a tough time finding a place that I would fit in. Here's a funny story. I don't know if I've ever shared this on a podcast. It'll be an Alicia Kennedy exclusive. I really wanted to work at the River Cafe in London, because I thought of it as the Chez Panisse of London. And so I, as you do in the year—this was like 2002, I think, 2002 or ’03, before the internet and things like Poached. You take your cover letter and résumé and you go to the restaurant between lunch and dinner service, and you ask for the chef. And they come out if they want to talk to you, and they might put you to work right away, etc. 

And so, I went and did that. And April Bloomfield was the sous chef at the time. And so April came out and talked to me and was rather impressed with my letter, with all this flowery stuff about wild rosemary and Meyer lemons growing in California and how I was so excited about working on all this stuff. And she was like, ‘Right on.’ And like, ‘Cool. Someone will call you in a couple days.’

Nobody ever called me. [Laughs.] And I just think it was just one of those things. I called whoever Chef Ruth’s—I called her assistant once a week for two months. And then I was like, ‘This isn't happening.’ [Laughs.] And then, I found out later they just don't hire anyone right out of culinary school. Every single person, station is somebody who's has a level of experience and ability. So, for what it's worth, they don't hire very unskilled labor, which is what I was. I was educated but unskilled. [Laughs.]

Yeah. But eventually I found my place. I found a place called the Sugar Club. I was the only woman in the kitchen. They called me hermana. There were no British guys. It was Kiwis, Japanese, Venezuelan, and all the prep guys and dish porters were Ecuadorian. Yeah, but the main sous chef, who’s still my friend, Julio Flames. He lives in Spain, he’s Venezuelan, and his buddy—I call them the fabulous Venezuelan twins—Raoul is still in London. And he's actually a famous graffiti artist now. So, we are all doing ok, the three of us. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [Laughs.]

Well, how did you end up on Top Chef, then, in 2009?

Preeti: So we moved back to San Francisco in 2004. And I again struggled to find a place. My chef wrote me this glowing letter and was like, ‘Shoot for the top.’ And so, I went to all the fancy places. Again, at that time, it was like you—I looked at Zagat, and what were the top ten restaurants. [Laughs.] 

And I ended up at Aqua, which was horrible. It was just awful. It was just mean, scary chefs screaming expletives at you 24/7 for absolutely no reason. I mean, I just felt unsafe. And I have the words to say that now. I didn't have the words then. I just failed. 

Anyway, I ended up at Bon Appétit Management Company, which is a great company that does food service for a lot of corporates. But I was at the museum. So I was the executive chef of the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, which was super fun. I loved it, again, to prove the theory of when you're fully seen and supported, you could actually do really well. I did really well there. I was the catering chef. Within seven months, I took over as the executive chef of the whole operation and quickly became the CEO’s favorite. I catered a couple weddings for him. 

Then we lost the account, because—it was all contractual stuff between the museum and Bon Appétit. And so, they were trying to find places for us to be. And they didn't have an executive chef job for me at the time. This is a very long way to tell you how I ended up on Top Chef, but I swear it's relevant. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I think it's great. [Laughs.]

Preeti: I mean, essentially, I was super busy. And I was running two museums and a catering business for two museums. I had no time at all. I never would have been able to leave. 

And so, they put me as Executive Sous Chef at the ballpark, the steakhouse at the ballpark, which was also under Bon Appétit Management. The consulting chef who—she showed up for management meetings every couple of weeks—was Traci Des Jardins. And then the executive chef was Thom Fox, and he needed help. And baseball season was starting. And so in the words of the CEO, Fedele, said, ‘So I'm going to park ya here. [Laughter.] And then, we'll see what we can do.’ And I was like, ‘Ok.’ 

And they were amazing. I mean, it was great. And so basically, it was like I was the number two. And so, there was a way for me to be able to leave for five weeks, and not be a huge hindrance to the business or just an impossibility. 

So I went. And it was horrible. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Well, I mean, yeah. So how did that change? I mean, it seems it was a life-changing thing. But was it, really? ’Cause I mean, everyone knows how things look from the outside is never how they actually are. 

Preeti: I mean, I think that the thing that was life changing about it is that a lot of people all of a sudden knew who I was. And after I got through the embarrassment and agony of doing really shitty, and having a lot of media outlets say really shitty things about you when they don't even know you. Let's remember, Eater was super f*****g snarky back then. They were not the lovable, amazing, ‘we get the industry,’ supportive people that they are right now. They were just mean. [Laughs.] They were just super mean.

Yeah. I mean, once I got over all that, I was just like, ‘Ok, well, the one thing I have is that everybody knows who I am.’ And so, even though in my opinion, there's—chefs around the city could cook circles around me. Regular people don't know who the f**k they are. The industry does. But the average American has no idea. But now they all know who I am. Yeah. And so I thought, ‘Ok, well, I'll just—’ 

And honestly, it was really hard to find a job. I left Google because I hated it. And they were just making my life hell, and they weren't supportive. They were just embarrassed and like, ‘Oh, you made us look bad.’ So I was like, ‘This sucks.’ Yeah, it was really hard. I was kind of blackballed for the first time. And that's when I started the pop up in the liquor store across the street from my house. I was just like, ‘I'm just gonna do something. And hopefully, people come. And hopefully, they like it. And we'll see what happens.’

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, when did you have the vision for what you wanted to do to express your own self as a chef?

Preeti: I think it was, it started when I was still at Google. I mean, I always knew I wanted to cook Indian food eventually. I wanted to learn professionally how to cook and work in restaurants and all that stuff. And I mean, obviously, Bon Appétit was great in terms of the management side, of P&Ls and all that. 

But I think at that point when I was like, ‘What am I going to do with my life?’ I think I kind of felt I had cooked for enough people and other people's food that I was ready to start expressing my own point of view. And I think it was a constant work in progress. 

I had no idea. I feel chefs today, that are so much younger than me, they sort of come out of the gate and it's like they know exactly what they're doing. And it seems they have this exact vision of what their cuisine is going to be. I opened the pop-up in a liquor store with three sandwiches, samosas, and a mango lassi. And I was like, ‘Let's see what happens.’ And then when there was some leftover something, I was like, ‘Oh, let's turn it into this,’ and just had the idea in the moment. And sometimes, it became a flop. And sometimes, it became something that became a signature dish that stayed with me for years. 

I don't know. I started getting the feedback from my friends outside of the industry that were like, ‘You're cooking your food now. I can see it. I can see what you're doing. And I can see that this is its own authentic expression.’ 

And fast forward a little. I would say the hardest part was probably 2014, ’cause we opened the restaurant in 2013. So we were open the whole year. We opened in March. I wasn't ready to leave the restaurant to other people. And so, we closed it for two weeks and went to India. My wife and I just co-owned our restaurants. 

I mean, I think we both kind of agreed that what people really loved about the restaurant was not what I thought it was going to be at all. As I said, I started with sandwiches and a samosa. And the whole thing was Indian street food. So in my head, I thought, I'm gonna just do this kind of replicable fast-casual model of all these sliders and fries, and just this fun kind of Indian play on Indian street food. 

But what we found in the first nine months of running the restaurant is that the community that we were in, in Oakland, they were really stoked that there was an Indian restaurant where there was actually a chef that they could talk to that was connected to the local seasonal ingredients that was inventing new things. And that was the thing that really struck people and our regulars. 

And so, what became the pressure point for me, it was kind of basically this moment of like, ‘Yeah, we have to push this more. We have to, for lack of a better word, continue elevating what we're doing.’ I don't love that word. But the concept to me is like, ‘What is there beyond sliders and masala fries?’ And it was daunting, because I hadn't really thought about it. 

And then we were in London on our way back from India. And I was looking at the year-end stuff, because it was December, January. And Eater does that thing where they ask people like, ‘Oh, what are your sort of thoughts about next year, and who's up and coming, and what's hot?’ And this and that. And Kerry Diamond said something like, I'm really looking forward to seeing what chef Preeti Mistry does at Juhu. I was simultaneously super stoked and terrified. 

You put one foot in front of the other and you start seeing what happens. And then, I think probably by the summer, I looked back in 2014, and was like, ‘Look at what we've created. [Laughs.] This is really something. And we did it. Now we can keep doing it.’ And I think that there's a way in which once you get past that initial holy s**t, ‘People are expecting so much more of me than I thought I was prepared to do.’ And once you break past that initial anxiety, it's really like, ‘Wait a minute. This is fun.’ I get to kind of decide and do, and everyone's following along and is like, ‘Ok, yes, we're with you. Go for it.’

So I mean, I think that eventually worked out. But yeah, it was scary for a minute.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I think that that's so interesting, and that that is always a compelling way for something to evolve, is that kind of organic creativity, that spontaneous creativity. I think that that's always a lot more compelling and has a lot more longevity, maybe, than someone who does come out of the gate saying, ‘I know exactly who I am and what I'm doing and exactly what I'm supposed to be.’ And I think that that, I think there's always a bit more excitement in that in the spontaneous and organic way of going about creativity. 

But that might be because I don't plan anything. So, [laughter] I have to see virtue in it.

Preeti: I just think there's more beauty in parameters and confines. And I mean, if there's anything that we've learned over decades and decades of—the best art comes out of some amount of struggle. And to me, I feel I do my best work when I'm being chased by a thousand-pound gorilla. All of a sudden, inspiration strikes. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yeah.

No, my book has only come together in the last couple of weeks, I think. And it's due next month. So, exactly, yeah. [Laughs.]

Preeti: There you go. 

Alicia: Well, I know you closed the restaurant in 2017. And you’ve been interning at a farm. You've launched a podcast, Loading Dock Talks. I wanted to ask if you think that there is maybe more potential for you now to change the way that this industry works, and how accepting it is of people who have historically been marginalized in the industry? Is your role as a facilitator and more of a cultural figure than restaurant chef, is that your future? Do you think you've kind of taken those roles on?

Preeti: I mean, a lot of it has just been really happenstance, you know? I mean, we closed Juhu—it was actually 2018, very beginning of 2018. So we rounded the year and closed in January. Part of that was—we were like, ‘Yeah, we're gonna open another one. We're just gonna open a bigger snazzier one.’ And then, pandemic. 

But I think that for me, the biggest thing that's changed is between those two things, so the beginning of 2018 and beginning of 2020, I would say the biggest thing that changed for me is like I really was on this mental thing of like, ‘I need one more run. But look, I want to have one more restaurant or concept or something that I put out into the world where I feel I can really—’ 

I don't know. I felt I still needed to prove myself or something. And through the pandemic, I just feel I reached this point where I'm like, ‘I don't f*****g have to prove. I don't care.’ And then I think, from there, starts to open up your brain in this way where it's like, ‘Well, what is the point? You can't make money at running restaurants. You run yourself ragged.’ 

I mean, we were trying to finish the deal to sell the place. I remember my wife saying this to the broker, like, ‘This is a life or death situation.’ And the broker kind of laughing, and then my wife was just like, ‘She doesn't f*****g get it, does she? I'm worried you're gonna end up in the emergency room.’ And I was just like, ‘Yeah.’ 

I mean, it was rough. I was working nonstop. And that thing that you're really transparent, and you're like, ‘Hey, everybody, we're going to sell the restaurant, but not right now. But please, stay with us. [Laughs.] Don’t leave me.’ It's a tough tightrope there where it's sort of like, ‘What are you gonna do? Fire me.’ So yeah, I was working more and more and more. 

But now I just look back. And I'm like, ‘So you don't make any money. You work your ass off. Why?’ I don't need to make food solely for being like, ‘Hey, look at me. Look at what I can do.’ And having people be like, ‘Oh, wow. Ohh ahh.’ I need it, whatever I do, to have more meaning than that. Whether that's the creative meaning, which I feel also in that realm, and we can talk a little bit about this more if you want. 

But I'm sort of definitely departing in a lot of ways from what I, the food I've been cooking for the last decade. And a lot of that is just again evolution. And I look back and I'm like, ‘Yeah, in 2011, when I started the pop up, people were like, ‘The f**k is this? [Laughs.] It was just like, ‘What?’ And when I opened the restaurant in 2013, I'd say myself and maybe Mirawa and Chai Pani. There were very few people that were doing anything different, outside of the-

I’d just search the Internet to see what other people are doing, not out of a competitive way, of just, ‘Who else is doing something interesting?’ And it would be like, oh, you see some cool inventive thing. And then it'd be like, ‘It's pretty much just chicken tikka masala inside paneer. They just gave it some different bells and whistles. It's just still the same thing. They're not really doing something different.’

But now I feel there's a lot of people all over the country and the world that sort of have a different understanding of what is possible with Indian food. And it can be in a lot of different lanes. And you can have a butter chicken calzone and Indian tomato achar on avocado toast or whatever. And those kinds of things were just really bizarre a decade ago. And so, now I also just feel like, ‘Well, why should I just keep making that same stuff? I'm ready to do something different.’

Alicia: Yeah.

What are you ready to do?

Preeti: I'm kind of getting really into just traditional Gujarati food. It's coming from a few different places. 

One is something I think you probably might remember, I've been very—and probably—know I've been very critical as a view of Daniel Humm, Eleven Madison Park and what's going on with a lot of the fine dining and plant-based food. And I said something on Twitter a while back where I was like, ‘10 courses. Daniel Humm against my mom. She would destroy him.’ And then I was telling my wife later that night over happy hour. And then I was like, ‘Wait a minute! I could do that.’ I mean, I'm not gonna have some fancy restaurant in New York with an abused beet on the menu. But, I mean, that's one of the inspirations. 

Another one is the farming and just getting—I'm not volunteering anymore at the farm. But I've just gotten a lot more involved with farms in general, because we've stayed here in Sonoma County. We're actually moving. We're moving in a week and a half, because we're staying. So we're moving to a slightly bigger house and yard and also just a little more convenient, because right now we're in the woods, so everything's 30 minutes away. So we're just moving a little bit closer to civilization. But staying in Sonoma County in a very—it's a country house. It's cute. It's very exciting. I feel so grown up. 

So yeah, I mean, I think that's part of it, too. Seasonal Gujarati cuisine is something that, again, which is something else I've been about for a while, is sort of people don't think about Indian food when they think farm to table. I remember having this experience with guests. Oakland's, all these cute hippies would come in and be these cute old white people. And they loved everything we were doing and would be like, ‘Oh, well, you don't do anything with rhubarb, do you? I mean, that's not really an Indian vegetable.’ And I'd be like, ‘Actually, I made a strawberry rhubarb chutney. You want to try it?’ Because I like rhubarb. And I live in California. And it's what's at the farmers’ market. 

So I think that, for me, probably focusing more on slightly more serious Gujarati vegetarian food. Maybe some meat, but I've done a lot of meat cooking with Indian cuisine. 

And then the last desire is really getting to this point of realizing that, without sounding too morbid, at some point, the people who have the keys to the kingdom have all these recipes in my family won't be with us anymore. And who is going to make sure that we keep those recipes? I sort of look around all my cousins and siblings, and I'm like, ‘I'm pretty sure it's me.’ [Laughter.]

Yeah. So, yeah. I've been working with a lot of wineries, doing wine pairing, but also really just focusing more on—

At Juhu at one point, I was like—when I say getting a bigger snazzier space, it's, I wanted to do more. And we had so many limitations. We just had such a small space. The kitchen was tiny. We had no walk-ins; it was all reach-ins. And we were doing like 120 covers a night. So it was really like, ‘Crank it out!’ It was like, ‘Yeah, more manchurian cauliflower,  manchurian cauliflower for days. We can't make enough. We will sell out every night.’ 

But it was like, ‘’Crank it out! Get that cauliflower in the deep fryer and toss it with the sweet and sour sauce.’ I mean, and all the food is delicious, but I just—I longed to have the opportunity to do things that take a little bit more time and care and nuance in their plating, in their technique of how they're prepared, etc. And that was just not really possible with the type of staff I, that I had, who were all, aside for maybe one or two people, pretty green to the kitchen, etc. It was just not possible. I've been wanting to do something more focused. 

And I'm not against fine dining as a whole concept. There's just so much b******t I see and read and experience. I have ideas for dishes that are more complicated than deep-fried cauliflower all the time. I just don't necessarily realize them in the current environment that I'm in. And so I think, figuring out and finding-

There's one project. I can't tell you who—I am working with a rather large winery on a guest chef series that will be me and two other chefs. And we're basically doing a five-course wine pairing menu. And it's basically the—everything that I've been talking about in terms of one, people thinking of both wine pairing and farm to table as the Super European thing. Doing five courses that are all Indian, or and then the other two chefs will also be from non-European cuisines.

And some different projects like that, where it's really just getting to, I don't know, getting to create something beautiful without breaking your back. I hate to say it. I was joking with a friend who's in fine dining the other day, ’cause I do have some friends in fine dining. Not everyone in fine dining hates me. And I was like, ‘I might do something that's a little more fine dining.’ And they were like, ‘It’s not that bad.’ 

And I was like, ‘I just want to get paid well and make nice things.’ And if I can figure out how to keep that somewhat accessible, so that it's not totally something that's only accessible to the one percent. And also, again, just the original passion, motivation for me behind Juhu was, There's all this food that people have no idea about. All they know is naan and curry. And that was a whole thing, was wanting to bring different, cool, interesting, fun things to people. And I feel this is the same thing. 

I mean, my mother harassed the hell out of me last Thanksgiving like 20 times with questions about a carrot ginger soup, where I'm like, ‘I don't understand this. You have like a cookbook’s worth of recipes just in your brain. You can literally make like 7 to 10 different types of breads. And you can cook all these vegetables and make all these dals and all these different snacks and steamed fermented cakes and fries and stuff. But you're confounded by this, because it's all just in your brain.’

It's second nature to her. She doesn't even have to think about it. And the moment she actually has to think about something because it's outside of her wheelhouse, it's like, ‘Oh, I don't know what to do.’ But when I think about that wheelhouse, I'm just like, ‘It's just such a vast, you know, sort of chasm of knowledge. There's so much there.’ I mean, knowing me, as my mother would say, ‘You and your creative ideas.’ Of course, they probably will not be exactly her food. But there's just so much more—

I know some of the chefs on the East Coast in New York and stuff have been really understanding Indian cuisine beyond tikka masala, through Dhamaka, and Surbhi just opened Tagmo. And those guys also opened a South Indian place, which looks amazing. And I feel like people are starting to understand different Indian cuisines. 

My theory always has been one of the reasons that Indian cuisine never gets the glow-up is because hierarchically in terms of class, the higher class you go, or caste, the more vegetarian people are. And the West doesn't understand how to value food that's vegetarian. The goat brains and stuff that are on some of those menus at Adda and those places in India, that's considered some low class, low caste food. It's looked down upon. 

So, yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of a weird mindfuck of how people understand Indian cuisine. And I don't really care. I mean, I like goat brains. And I like vegetarian food. I'll eat it all. So for me, I'm just—I want to see the food of my culture specifically—which is very vegetarian, almost vegan, aside from yogurt and ghee—be appreciated and seen for what it is, because it's beautiful. It's delicious. 

I mean, there's so many chefs, Indian chefs I know from other parts of the country. Like Asha Gomez. She's from Kerala. She grew up eating beef and fish and all this seafood and, but she's like, ‘Oh my god. I love Gujarati food. It's so, you know?’ And I'm like, ‘Yeah, I know. It's great.’ I didn't even realize when I was a kid. I was like, ‘I hate this.’ And now I look back, and I'm like, ‘Holy s**t, there's so much interesting, good stuff that people just don't—the Western world doesn't really, totally connect with.’

Alicia: Right, right. 

No, it's interesting because I’m looking so much at the way foods are assimilated and erased in ‘American cuisine’ and the ways in which things are valued if they are adapted into that kind of middle-class white pantry. And that's the only way that they obtain value in the United States in the cuisine. And so it's interesting to hear about the idea that Gujarati food can't be, it hasn't had its due because of the vegetarianess of it, because Americans, basically, and most of the West can't absorb the significance of vegetables anyway. So if you make something that translates into the American palate, it has to be very, very specific. That becomes some sort of marker of its worth and greatness, is such a—is everything I think a lot of people are working against at this point. [Laughs.]

Peeti: Yeah.

I mean, I'm working on it. I got some ideas. I'm excited about January, ’cause I'm also getting—through this move, I get a bigger kitchen. So I'm excited to start playing around with all these ideas that right now are just in an Excel spreadsheet.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Well, I wanted to ask, too, because you talked to KQED out there in the Bay Area about starting your podcast specifically to create space in the very white world of food podcasting. So there's also been all this conversation in the last year and a half: is food media becoming more inclusive? Is it not? 

And so, in general, though, power and capital are still concentrated in the same hands. Gatekeepers are basically the same at the end of the day. What would a more kind of inclusive food media look like to you? What would it be, basically?

Preeti: Yeah. It's hard. 

I think one of the big things that I have experienced is just this annoying, trendy, popularity contest. And I've been on both sides. And I think I'm somewhere in the middle. I don't know. I'd like to think that maybe I've transcended it, that ‘hot or not’ thing. I just hover above it all. I mean, mainly, because I'm just not going to do anything just for popularity or whatever. 

Yeah, I mean, when you have the same gatekeepers in place, I think what the problem is that this sort of like, ‘Oh, this person's the person. Now, this person is the person.’ And one of the things that I see—and this is not just true for food media. I think this is true for all media. And it's also true for just any type of business or organization that's trying to keep the same gatekeepers in place, but still trying to be more inclusive. 

And that is that they'll oftentimes pick the young, trendy, hippest hottest person to put on a pedestal and give all of this power to when that person, first of all, just got here. Two, has no historical context. And therefore, it does a disservice to a lot of different things. First of all, the disservice it does to that person is it kind of sets them up to fail, and it sets them up as a shooting star that's gonna burn out. Yeah.

It also sets them up in a way where because they don't have the larger historical context of food media, or whatever it is, they're apt to say yes to things and be manipulated in a way that somebody who has been doing this for a while, that also would be of that identity, wouldn't. And I feel like that part is intentional. I think it's very intentional. I mean, this thing that has become a mantra of mine, because it comes up so often, of ‘difficult to work with’ means ‘difficult to manipulate’ is that it's really easy to take that 26-year-old that's the hip cool thing. 

And they might be awesome people. They might be totally rad people who have great politics and are super talented, but they probably haven't had enough experience to make the right decisions all the time. And when you're getting that type of attention, and all of this sort of thrown at you, it's also really easy to say yes. Because it's really hard to not accept when people are trying to give you opportunities or feature you, or what have you. And you might not realize that what you're doing is not necessarily the right decision. 

And then on the other hand, of course, there's the thing of—yeah, whether it's folks—I'm just a bitter old person—folks like me, and many of my colleagues who've been at it for a long time, or who actually are about it, as opposed to the big thing. I think that's frustrating is also within food media is like, ‘Oh, we need to—someone who fits this identity.’ So they find somebody who fits that identity who that's it. They're not about anything else. They just happen to be brown and queer, and from some cool country that is trending. They might not actually have any real politics, necessarily. And so giving them the mic gives you this really milquetoast version that then just makes all of the gatekeepers pat themselves on the back and feel really great. And like, ‘Ok, check. We've done it.’

I mean, first and foremost, I think what needs to change is there needs to be change in gatekeeping. Period. I mean, I just told you this opportunity that I have, and the first thing I'm doing is bringing on two more BIPOC women colleagues. I mean, that was the whole point of my podcast. Yeah, let's talk to a whole bunch of people that—some people that I interviewed are people that millions of people know, like Your Korean Dad. And then there's other people that not as many folks know, or they haven't had an opportunity to really share their story and their point of view. So for me, that's the first thing. 

And then secondly, I think it's really important that publications really look at who's been doing this for a long time. Who has a real point of view beyond just like, ‘Yep, I check the boxes.’ Because I think you're gonna get a lot more out of whatever you do if you actually give people the power. 

I mean, jeez, the two times I've been in really large national publications would be because Ava DuVernay really likes me. And we became friends. Both Time magazine, I got to write something. And last year, I was in Harper's Bazaar. It's because those magazines gave someone like her the gatekeeping that a different group of people were allowed to be honored and featured. 

I mean, that's really what it comes down to, is you have the white male gatekeepers. And they're like, ‘Ok, maybe you guys shouldn't be picking the ten people of color. Maybe hire somebody as that guest editor or if you're not ready to give up your job and let them do it full time, at least do a guest editor thing. Do an editor residence, and give them the opportunity.’

And then the other side of that is—because I've been doing a lot of consulting up here in trying to help folks be more inclusive. And the other thing that you run into is media needs to take a chance. they're so afraid of taking chances and going beyond the sort of prescribed lane that they're given that—

One of the things I've run into is I've been recruiting chefs for some events up here. And then these people hire me. They're all like, ‘Yeah, we don't want it to be a bunch of old white guys. We're so excited to have you on board.’ And I'm like, ‘Ok, here's this list.’ And then they're like, ‘Mmm, that person is not really a big enough star.’ And I'm like, ‘How are they ever gonna be a big enough star if you never give them the opportunity?’ It's gonna be the same. 

I find myself in this thing. And I'm like, ‘Oh, all the people of color are men and all the women are white. And that's safe.’ Yeah, or those people have got the—they got the, broke through. It's this mediagenic thing, too. It's like, ‘Oh, that person's model gorgeous.’ And some of these people are my friends. And I think that they're fantastic. And I'm glad that they're getting all these opportunities. And I also can see why.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

No, it's really interesting to me, because I've always wanted to be a writer and work in magazines. And then when I got to magazines, I was like, ‘Oh, wait, we don't care about building up new people. We just care about giving attention to people who've already gotten attention.’ And if you're a new person who gets attention, it has to be fitting in a very specific box in order to get—

It was always really shocking to me, when I would pitch stories about people who were not famous yet, and it would just be like, ‘Well, they're not famous.’ Well, how do I get the opportunity to talk about their work then ever? And you have to just wait. You have to wait it out. And then it's like, ‘Well, what are we doing here all the time?’

There's so many hurdles to get and in your—in front of anyone's face, or get your food in anyone's mouth when, despite the the constant chatter about like, ‘Oh, I want to know what the next big thing is. I want to know.’ And it's like, ‘No, you actually don't, though, because you don't want to put in the work of challenging yourself in any sort of way. You don't want to put in the effort that's going to be needed to find the new people to support them to get—’ It's really maddening. 

But it works. It's in both places. It's in media. It's in restaurants. It's everywhere. Yeah, it is a struggle. [Laughs.]

Well, I was on a panel with Reem Assil recently, and she was saying that the media attention also doesn't translate necessarily to material change. And that's a real problem. And I think that that comes with a lack of self-interrogation in the industry, too, of media, where it's like, we're not looking at what the effects of what we do are. We're just kind of doing it and checking boxes. And wherever the chips fall, that's where they fall. And it doesn't matter whether we really affect a restaurant space in a good way with our attention, or a bad way. We never ask those questions. And it's a lot.

But I did want to ask you how you, what you're hoping for in 2022. I think you kind of told us a little bit, but maybe there's more.

Preeti: I'm hopeful for, I mean, for myself personally, which has been challenging for the last couple years, because the pandemic really slowed it down. Which is, I'm so tired. I'm a person who talks a lot. I always have since I was a child, but—my mantra lately is like, ‘I'm so f*****g sick of talking about s**t. And I'm so ready to just be doing something.’ And I think that that part has been frustrating for me, which just goes back to the whole thing of having a business and access to capital and who gets those opportunities, and who investors line up for etc, etc. 

So I think that, first and foremost, I think, yeah, I'm looking forward to doing more cooking. And I will be doing some more farming, both personally, because I now have a yard with fruit trees. And also, professionally, activating a lot of different spaces with different folks I’m working with to be growing stuff, to be creating new dishes, to be also adding to the conversation. 

I think that's the biggest thing is like, ‘I want to be able to add to the conversation with a thing, instead of just the constant criticism.’ I get frustrated where I'm like, ‘Do I seem like one of those people that just talks a bunch of s**t about other people, but never does a goddamn thing? But that's not true. You know, I did this podcast thing. I got some spices. [Laughs.]’ 

But yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to just doing. I'm looking forward to cooking and moving the conversation through action and not just words. Which in addition to all the things I just talked about in terms of access and networks, it's also just the pandemic. So we've just been in this place where it's—Ok, it hasn't necessarily been safe unless you're already in that space, and how safe—whatever. Everybody's different in what feels safe for them. So that part has been also challenging, is just feeling like, ‘Oh, I just want to like, do things.’

So I feel, definitely, doing more collaborations. I see a lot of that sort of work with other chefs, hopefully more events and dinners and things on farms. I mean, there's just a lot of cool stuff happening up here in Sonoma County in terms of BIPOC folks starting to kind of take up a very small amount of space. So and the only thing that's really fun about that is that when there’s so few of us, we’re all like, ‘Hey, hey, hey, we need to do this together. Let's hang out. yay, you're here. Yay.’ So there's that kind of thing that's kind of interesting up here.

I mean, I hope that people continue to have this vision that I feel started last year that has continued of a certain amount of folks have become disillusioned with the Michelin star, kind of BS attitude and just smoke and mirrors, pomp and circumstance BS. So I hope that that continues. 

I hope that more people get leadership roles that actually know what they're doing. But I'm not super hopeful. Honestly, I feel if anything, the doing is also I just need to focus on doing my own thing and not even worry about the bigger picture, because it’s just probably going to continue to suck. [Laughter.] But then, it’s just carve out your world, whether that's physical or virtual. Carve out that piece of the world that works for you, and that you can be creative and make some sort of positive impact. We can't all change the world, but we can do our little part and just really put energy into that.

I also want to do products. It's one of my many—what's the word—sort of epiphanies or discoveries through the pandemic has been. So working on farming, growing vegetables and trying to sell them makes less money than running a restaurant and is even harder work. And so, then I started thinking about, ‘Well, who actually makes money at this?’ And obviously, the most obvious example would be wine. But a value-add product, which is a term that I learned in the last year and a half. 

And so, that's kind of my big interest right now, is really focusing on, I don't need to grow my own kale and potatoes. We get a CSA box. The farm is great. I love them, all those kinds of staples. So when I think about growing stuff, whether it's professionally with some of the projects I'm working on, or personally, which might turn into something professional, I really want to grow things that are specific in order to create added products, whether that's a beverage or a preserve, or a pickle, or what have you. A spice, a sauce. Because I feel that's really the one area where one can be mildly successful and not kill themselves doing it if they do it. 

I did have a line—we had the line of curry sauces in 2005. And it was horrible. My wife was a business person, she has an MBA, and she very—I was like, ‘We just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘We lose three cents a jar.’ And I was like, ‘So we just need to sell more.’ And she was like, ‘That means the more we sell, the more we lose.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhh. [Laughter.] That’s why you're the business person.’

Alicia: Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Preeti: Yes. Yeah, I have said that. 

Cooking food of my personal cultural heritage is f*****g political. Yeah. 100 percent. I mean, I think that from the lunchbox stories to just our conversation earlier about vegetarian cuisine and how it’s seen in the US, and thinking about my mother and all the stuff that she cooks. 

And, yeah, it's a political act because it is in danger. It is literally endangered. Even a lot of Gujaratis that I know that are my age—and this isn't a diss. It's just everybody's different. But their moms didn't cook everything from scratch the way my mom did, like this, where I'm like, ‘Yeah, I made this.’ And they're like, ‘My mom never made that. And we always got it frozen.’ And I'm like, ‘Really? I've never seen it frozen.’ The only thing frozen in my mom's are peas and blocks of tamarind. [Laughter.] Which, why are there brown ice cubes? My mom's like, ‘Leave it alone. It’s not important.’

I mean, honestly, just f*****g existing and opening my mouth. I feel it's a political act at this point in this world, because we can sit here and feel very safe and a certain set of people. And yet, we know what's going on in our larger world. So it's totally political. Food is political. Whether it's about access or what and who is valued, all of that. [Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.] Or who has access to food, which is other stuff that I'm working on here in terms of food insecurity.

Alicia: Amazing. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. 

Preeti: Thank you. 

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

Today, I’m talking Karon Liu, a food writer at the Toronto Star. I’ve long been a fan of his work and perspective, which is accessible but has an eye toward sustainability; has humor and deep understanding, but is authoritative in his perspective.

We discussed how he got into food despite never cooking growing up, shifting definitions of authenticity, and being a writer who can convey the totality of Toronto to an international audience.

Alicia: Hi, Karon. Thank you so much for being here and chatting with me today.

Karon: Thank you very much, Alicia. I'm a longtime listener, first-time caller.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Karon: Oh, my God, my origin story. I think my origin story is quite different from a lot of your previous guests. I feel when you ask a food writer what their relationship with food was early on, they'll say like, ‘Oh, I used to gather around the dinner table with my grandma for Sunday night dinners. And it was such an important part of the week. And I would be in the garden. I would watch my mom cook. And it was so important in my formative years.’ And mine is the complete 180.

I think a lot of kids who grew up in the early ’90s were, who were raised on television and were latchkey kids, we just completely absorbed all the junk-food commercials that were blasted at us. So what I think about what I ate growing up, it was all the golden brown, deep-fried junk. So it was a lot of pizza pops, which I think is—the American equivalent would be Hot Pockets. Mini-microwave pizza, Kraft mac and cheese. Sorry to be a Canadian stereotype, but I did eat Kraft mac and cheese growing up. Instant ramen. A lot of that. 

But I lived with my grandmother, as well, in our house, and she was an amazing cook. She cooked a lot of really fantastic Cantonese dishes, but I didn't really appreciate it back then. I think a lot of immigrant children growing up in Canada, or in the U.S., they were—they wanted to assimilate into ‘American, Canadian culture’ so much that they kind of looked down or didn't appreciate the cooking of their heritage as much. 

And I remember my grandma making fantastic stews, and all these really big beautiful steamed fish and these fermented things and pickles and stuff like that. And I didn't appreciate it because I wanted McDonald's and burgers. That’s what I ate growing up. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, I'm the same way when people ask me about this. There is a lot of beautiful, great food that I ate. But I also, all summer, was responsible for me and my brother and would just boil cheese tortellini. I would be horrified—I ate meat then, but when my mom accidentally bought the meat tortellini, I would want to die. And a lot of Ellio's pizza and everything, so. And a lot of putting a hot dog in the microwave. I don't know why I did that. [Laughter.]

Karon: I mean, at least you used the microwave. I didn’t use the microwave, but I didn't know how to use a microwave. I'm trying to, try to remember back then. Because I think my parents wanted me to focus on studying and be great at academics, to—sorry to be a cliché. [Laughter.] Ayy, Chinese immigrant fam with Chinese parents. 

I wasn't encouraged to cook. They were like, ‘Study. Study, study. Don't go to the kitchen.’ So I didn't know how to cook. I don't even think I knew how to turn on the stove growing up. I didn't think I touched the stove until I was in my twenties. It was awful.

Alicia: Yeah. I didn't know how to make an egg until I went to college. And I had to learn how to scramble an egg, and I was on the phone with my mother. I was Googling how to do laundry. I didn't know how to do anything. So I'm right there with you. It's okay to grow up not knowing how to do anything.

Karon: But I think it helped us in the larger part. I think our experiences are quite similar,  or quite similar to a lot of people right around the world. I think there's more people like us who grew up on junk food and convenience foods, and were taught to not stay in the kitchen and to focus on our studies than who grew up on a beautiful farm and there’s the garden. Whenever I read a cookbook jacket, and it starts off with that, I'm like, ‘I'm out.’ I don’t know how to relate to it.

Alicia: I always come from that perspective in my work, which is just like we do have nostalgia for crap sometimes. But it is funny because the other day I posted on Instagram stories that I love Wendy's barbecue sauce. And so, when barbecue sauce tastes like Wendy's, I love it. And someone was like, ‘That's sad.’ Ok, sorry. I didn't grow up in the south eating—I don't know what kind of barbecue sauce they eat. I don't know. [Laughs.]

Karon: Did Wendy's give you that spon-con deal yet? Or are you still figuring it out?

Alicia: I will not take a spon con deal from Wendy’s. I just mean, I just like that the smokiness and sweetness I think are really well balanced in their barbecue sauce. I don't know. 

But you studied journalism. And I was looking at your résumé and you seemingly went right into writing about food. When did you decide you wanted to be a food writer? And how did you make that happen?

Karon: So I went to journalism school. And at that point, food writing wasn't really talked about outside of being a restaurant critic. And those jobs, they open up when the critic retires or dies. That's pretty much it. So I went into journalism school thinking I was going to be a general assignment reporter, which is basically covering anything and everything that happens in the city. 

So I graduated, and then I did a few internships, and I realized that general assignment—so covering courts, crimes, everyday city stuff, I was horrible at covering. Breaking news, hard news, I hated it. I hated covering courts, because I was so scared that I would accidently cover, write something wrong or publish something that was under a publication ban. Or going to a crime scene, I was so nervous. It was so stressful. It took so much out of me emotionally, and I just couldn't do it. 

I just applied for an internship at this magazine called Toronto Life, which I guess is the—I have to give American equivalents every time I talk about, make Canadian references. New York Magazine would be the equivalent of it. And it's a city magazine. And the week that I started, they started a food and restaurant blog covering what's hot, what's new. Because this was the early—the late 2000s, early 2010s, when the rock-star chef persona, that whole food culture starts to come up. The third wave of independent restaurants, the 30-seat chef-owned restaurants where they played, like, rock music. I sound like such a dweeb.

That genre of the post-2008 recession restaurants came about. So it was a really exciting time for food. And they started that restaurant blog, and I didn't know anything about food but I needed clippings for my portfolio, so I just kind of wedged myself in there. And that's how I got started writing about food. 

I don't think I still turned on the stove at that point. I might have graduated to learning how to use a microwave. Still didn’t know anything. But when you're out in the field, and you're talking to cooks and learning about cooking in restaurants, it starts to seep in. So it starts to encourage you to cook and to try different ingredients, and to really just get your, force yourself into the kitchen.

Alicia: In what direction did you go to force yourself into the kitchen? Were there books, were there TV shows, were there ingredients or flavors that inspired you to actually cook?

Karon: I actually didn't watch food TV that much, ’cause I think it just reminded me of work. I think around that time Top Chef Canada came out, and I think I watched one or two seasons when it first came out. And then I just stopped, because it was like, ‘Oh, I recognize that person. Oh crap. This reminds me of work.’ Or like, ‘Oh, I have to call that person back for an interview.’ I was like, ‘No, this is eating into Karon time at night.’ I didn’t like it.

And I think around that time, food internet didn't really take off yet. I think maybe Deb Perelman might have been around at that time, but I didn't know of her work. I think a lot of it was just being in the kitchens and seeing how chefs work and asking them about, ‘Oh, why is this dish like that? Or why do you do this?’ And then when they explained it to me—very patiently, because I'm pretty sure they knew I didn't know anything and they were explaining things to me three or four times, so I didn't get it wrong. 

So I think because they reiterated cooking techniques and flavor pairings so much, that it just seeped in subconsciously. When I'm passing by the St. Lawrence Market, which is Toronto's large farmers’ market, I would be like, ‘Oh, yeah, that's in season. I remember the chef telling me about it.’ And like, ‘Oh, right, that's how they would do it. Maybe I should just pick up some of this stuff and take it home and try it myself.’ So it kind of worked very organically that way. 

I also didn't have a lot of money, so I couldn't buy any cookbooks.

Alicia: [Laughs.] They are so expensive.

Karon: It didn't hurt me that a library was right there, so. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I know you've had some big changes lately at the Toronto Star food section. What has been going on there?

Karon: Yes. Well, thank you very much for letting me plug the new food section. 

We're in our first month. We just have a new food section coming out. And it's me and my good friend Suresh, who has been through writing for much longer than I have, at least 15 years. And the two of us, we love eating around the city. And we just love the city so much. There's just so much that I think people don't know about that needs to be celebrated. 

The higher-ups at the Star, the big mucky mucks, were like, ‘Hey, you guys like writing about food. Here's a new food section. What do you want to do?’ And we were more or less given carte blanche, and it's just so much fun. 

And the places that we always eat are the places in the strip malls, the plazas outside of the Toronto downtown core. In the suburbs, and places like Scarborough, Markham, North York. I'm sure this is the first American podcast where they're, like, the word North York and Richmond Hill were mentioned. Vaughan, Woodbridge, Etobicoke. All these little suburbs outside of the downtown area that most people know about, where all the big expensive splashy restaurants are. Those are the places that I love to eat at and Suresh loves to eat at, but it hasn't really been covered before in a lot of food media here for reasons that—We know. We know. We know why.

Look, we've been given that opportunity to do that. It’s really, really exciting to be able to go to these places, and let more people know about them so that they can go out and eat and explore the city that they think they know but there's still so much to learn.

Alicia: In this job where you're at, The Star, you've done so much. You're editing, you’re feature writing, you're writing restaurant reviews. You were doing recipe development as well. And so, how have you juggled all of that? And what are you looking forward to focusing on now?

Karon: Yeah, it's so much, because unlike the newspapers, in, say, the New York Times and San Fran Chronicle or L.A. Times, where they have a fairly sizable food team, in Canada, it's a lot more bare-bones. Everyone has to wear multiple hats. So I'm just really happy that I get to have a more focused mandate again, just kind of just exploring and eating out and being able to tell the stories of a lot of these cooks and people who work in the restaurant industry that don't really have a voice and be able to talk about different cuisines and what it's like to work in the restaurant industry. 

Yeah, it's a lot more focused and a lot more fun. ’Cause before it was a lot, doing a lot of different things and hoping that I didn't screw up.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, I think of you and Suresh as well as being more focused on your cities than other food writers. Well, Jonathan Nunn in London, he calls himself more of a city writer. I think the other person that's pointed to as more of a city writer was Jonathan Gold at the L.A. Times. You are really conveying the entirety of a city in your work. You're doing service and lifestyle for people who live there. But you're also sort of defining and expanding the idea of what Toronto is to people who read your work outside of that city. 

How does that city inspire your work? You were just talking about going into the suburbs and everything. How do you see the food media outside of Toronto kind of influencing your work, if it does?

Karon: Yeah, I mean, that’s a good question. I think that's part of the reason why I don't really do recipes anymore. Because even people in Toronto, when they want a food recipe from a food publication, they'll hit up Food & Wine or Bon Appetit, places that have such a, not monopoly, but they're like juggernauts when it comes to recipes. New York Times Cooking. So it didn't really feel it was necessary for me to go into that, because I don't think people come to me for recipes. 

But what I think I can do and Suresh can do is to just really put the Greater Toronto Area, which encompasses North York, Scarborough, all those surrounding suburbs, into an international spotlight, because there's just so much good stuff there. And I think there's very few people doing it right now on such being—or doing it on, or being able to do it on a large platform. The Toronto Star, that's one—I think that's one area where we think that we can really excel at and shine. So we're like, ‘Ok, let's just do that.’

I think Toronto always bills itself as a very multicultural city. And it's been repeated so much that we kind of just like, ‘Yeah, of course, whatever.’ It's a given. But it's not until you go, you're traveling and you're outside Toronto. You're like, ‘Oh, wow, Toronto really is a very multicultural city.’ I think our last census report, more than half of the people who live in Toronto, I think, English is their second language or something like that. 

It is wild how many different types of cuisines are are in the city, and how many different types of new cuisines that form when the second, the first and second generation kids take the cuisines of their heritage and combine it with the cuisines that they ate at a friend's house, or the different restaurants that they go to. There's always these new mash-ups that come up and eventually become a very uniquely Toronto tradition. There's always stuff happening, and it's always inspiring me and my food writing.

Alicia: You recently wrote a piece on the concept of authenticity and how Chinese chefs in Toronto are challenging it by doing what you just explained, being authentic to their own lives and experience rather than kind of a historical or nostalgic ideal. How did that story come about, and how does it relate to your own life in cooking? 

Karon: Yeah, I think that being a millennial and having a lot more people in my cohort, becoming chefs and opening the restaurants now and being more authoritative in their jobs, that's kind of really helped shift the definition of what authenticity means in cuisines. 

So going back to my example of what I ate growing up. It was a lot of junk food. It was a lot of stuff from the food court, where it’s a lot of the Canadian Chinese food, like the chicken balls, the fried rice, the spring rolls and the chop suey stuff. And then if you were to ask my parents if that was real Chinese food, they’d be like, ‘I didn't eat any of this stuff in Hong Kong.’ 

But for me, it was authentic, because it was what I grew up eating. It's my authentic childhood, my life experiences. Who's to say that all those years of eating, I was not doing it authentically? What does that even mean? So I think that now there's a lot more cooks and chefs in their 30s who grew up eating like I did, and are taking inspirations from that childhood and merging it with the food that their parents ate or something like that, and creating this whole new cuisine and saying, ‘That's what I ate growing up. That's my authentic experience. Who are you to say no?’

And I think that now the definition of authenticity has really changed. It’s no longer referencing a fixed point in time in a specific region. But it's very fluid. And it really depends on who's cooking it and how that authenticity that they're trying to push references their upbringing and where they ate and where they're going and what they cooked with. Because yeah, it's so weird to think that authenticity in cooking points to one region, one specific time. That's not how food works. It’s constantly evolving.

Alicia: No, I did a piece last year on translation. That was something that people brought up, was that when you're not translating the food writing or you're not investing in finding food writers who are on the ground in different countries in different cultures, you are perpetuating these kinds of historic ideas of a cuisine. You're kind of putting them in a box in a museum and saying they can't change, when on the—if you're letting a diaspora define, and also not get out of a box of what their ancestral cooking is, then you're—it's not doing anyone any service. It's putting a cuisine in a museum and saying, ‘Certain cuisines need to go in a museum and other cuisines are allowed to change.’

Karon: Yeah, especially when you're a cook now. And you have so many different influences. I think a lot more people are traveling now. They're living in different cities. There's the internet. The whole idea of globalization, it just really affects so many cuisines. And that's just how it's evolving now. And to ignore all of that, and try to cook the way that things were at maybe one point in your life in an area that you don't even live in anymore. Is that authentic to you? Is it authentic to ignore where you live, where you've worked? Your neighborhood, the restaurants that you grew up eating at, the places where you shop? Is it worth it to ignore all of that, in order to fit some sort of arbitrary standard that a Yelp review wants you to.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Right. 

And I mean, in a related way, you've always on Twitter—I've always loved your commentary on the fact that you grew up thinking of soy milk and cow's milk as separate products, and not one being an alternative for the other. Because so often, there's this really ahistorical narrative around these ‘alternatives.’ It drives me mad, which I think everyone knows.

But I wanted to ask how, if you've seen, kind of food media at large, understand what the nuances are of growing up eating a non-Western cuisine. Because I think, like, we're just talking about, I think that even when food media wants to escape its Western gaze, it continues to be a bit less inclusive than it thinks it's being, if that makes sense.

Karon: Yeah, for sure. 

I think it's starting to get a little bit better, as more food writers who didn't grow up in a Western household are coming up and saying, like, ‘Oh, no. This isn't weird or new. This is  how I've been doing it.’ And it's starting to get there. 

But I think in order for more sweeping or permanent changes, I think it's—you have to look at the people at the top. The people at, who are the editors, the publishers, the people who are making those ultimate editorial decisions and choosing who to hire, what to commission, how things are edited, how things are displayed, how things are shot and styled. 

[Laughs.] And I say styled, because one thing that always irks me is that more often than not, when I see a bowl of noodles with chopsticks, the chopsticks are always crossed. Or they're stabbing into the bowl of noodles, which is a big no-no in Chinese culture. It's rude or a bad luck thing. That always gets me. Or when you see a pair of model hands, and they're not holding the chopsticks correctly. I'm like, ‘Oh, you're never going to get the noodles holding them like that.’ 

I think that really has to change. And I hope it's getting there. There's more writers who have more voices. At the end of the day, they're the ones who are at the bottom of the corporate hierarchy. They're not the ones that have the voices who are able to make these calls at the end of the day to stop perpetuating stereotypes and misinformation about cuisines.

Alicia: Yeah, no.

And that's, I think, why I always come back to the idea of translation, too, where it's like, ‘Ok, if you're not going to change who's at the top. You claim, still, to want to actually change how things are perceived. Then maybe be more open to like a global—Especially in American food media. Because American food media claims to be the arbiter of taste, and yet it's so siloed and so provincial. It's so provincial. They would send someone to Toronto rather than interview you about Toronto, you know?

Karon: That has happened. That has happened just to me the past summer.  You will see it in the New Year. If you're wondering why I'm not in there, just let you know. I was reached out to; I responded; I gave my list of suggestions. I said, ‘Get out of the proper Toronto, come to the ’burbs.’ And I never heard from them again.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Wow. 

Well, [laughs] I also wanted to ask, because we've talked about before—I did a piece at the New Republic about how food people who do food as lifestyle should also be concerned about sourcing and sustainability. 

And then we talked about shrimp for a different piece about how difficult it is to source well. So when you were doing recipe development, you weren't including shrimp, because you just didn't want to be suggesting people buy this cheap shrimp that has such terrible labor conditions and terrible environmental impacts. 

But I wanted to ask now that you're not doing recipes, but you are still kind of an arbiter of taste online for food people, how do you bring balance to what you share online? Because people will see you as an authority.

Karon: Yeah, it's such a difficult thing to do. 

I remember once I posted something where I used avocados, I just sliced some avocados on my toast.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Karon: [Laughs.] Yeah, I'm a real arbiter. I made avocado toast. Revolutionary. 

And I think I had someone in my comments like, ‘Oh, that looks really good, but I don't use avocados because it's X, Y and Z.’ I’m like, ‘Ok, yeah.’ So you kind of start going down a spiral, because you're like, ‘This is this. Is this that.’ It's so hard to think about without driving yourself nuts or bumming you out. 

And I think you've written about this before, in terms of be as educated and make as informed decisions as you can. So I think being a food writer and knowing more about the environmental and labor consequences of purchasing decisions has really shifted the way how I cook at home, and where I eat as well. 

So our house has—I can't remember the last time we bought beef, my gosh. I really can't remember the last time I even cooked with beef. So we stopped. We stopped buying beef. Maybe not so much environmental, it just got really expensive here. Pork, as well. We don't really cook with pork anymore. We go with chicken, which, I mean, I'm sure, Alicia, you can also argue that's also not good. We go through a lot of eggs as well. 

People can’t see this. She's tilting her head a little bit, going like, ‘Mm-hmm. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Eggs are great. Yeah, eat more chicken. I'm not judging you at all.’ But I've eaten more seasonally now. Right now, I think the only fruit that I'm eating is apples. That’s what’s in season here in Ontario. And I'm just trying to be as mindful of my eating as possible. But at the same time, I'm not positioning myself as perfect. 

What should I do. Alicia? What should I do? Help me.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I think you're doing great. I think you're doing great.

I mean, the funny thing is, and the reason I was making that face, is because everyone—people cut out beef completely. Basically, people are really good at cutting out beef completely from their diets, which is fantastic. But then yeah, of course people eat pork, especially when they go out. Pork is a big thing for when you go out to eat, I think, more than people are cooking it at home necessarily other than different occasions.

But chicken is the thing that people just, once they make a decision to try to eat meat sustainably, they just eat so much. I understand it's part of this—it's part of that transition to thinking about these things, is to just eat a lot more chicken. And I don't think that that's actually bad. I think it's part of that process of understanding the role of meat in your life. 

I posted about my Montreal trip on Instagram today and in my newsletter. And I was like, ‘Oh, people are gonna tear me to shreds about all this Parmesan cheese.’ So, I'm at a level where it's like, I can't even have some Parmesan on a kale salad publicly without feeling like people are going to lose their minds at me.

Karon: It's a balance, because I think living in a city like Toronto that is so multicultural, there are cuisines where beef is so integral to so much of the history and the cuisines of it. And for me to be like, ‘No, that's wrong.’ That’s such a douchebag move, right? And who am I to say like, ‘No,’ all across the board?

Alicia: And there are places where beef is sustainable. I know that in Ethiopia, they traditionally eat a lot more beef than chicken. But it's beef that has been reared in a fashion that is actually good for the soil and good for the environment. And it doesn't have that impact the way we rear meat in the United States.

I did want to ask you, you're always eating such good food out and posting about it. And I'm always so jealous. But do you have a methodology for eating out?

Karon: So a lot of it is just Suresh and I, my co-collaborator, I guess, on our food section at the Star, we just text each other. ‘Hey, have you tried this?’ Or like, ‘Oh, I passed by this. Have you tried it before?’ 

And on weekends, it's—when I go on my exploring trips, and I'll just randomly pick a place, somewhere. And I'll just head there. And I'll do some preliminary research. Very scientific, I just go on Google Maps and type in restaurants. And I just see what's there. 

The thing is, a lot of these places that I'm interested in don't have websites or social media presence, so I just have to go there and see. There is some use in Yelp reviews, because it does—I don't treat it as the Bible. But it kind of gives you an idea of what the selection is, what kind of cuisines that they serve and stuff like that. 

So I just go there. And I get asked this question a lot, like, ‘How do you find these places? Or how do you determine where to go?’ And I just say. ‘You just go.’ It doesn't mean that it's always good. I don't post everything that I eat. I'm not wasting time posting something that I don't like, right? It messes up the vibe of my grid. 

So, you just have to go out and eat. If you see a place that piques your interest, if it's this little storefront, if you see some activity going on or you see a really interesting bakery shelf, or you're seeing people come out with a bunch of takeout boxes, go in and just just ask. Because you never know. Just go in and be like, ‘Hey, this is my first time here. Is there anything you would recommend?’ And I've done that so many times before. And I'm always pleasantly surprised, because a lot of places don't have menus, because they don't need to, because they just spread by word of mouth. People already know what they need. 

So you just have to almost kind of think like a reporter and just be very curious about your city, and just go anywhere and everywhere. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Karon: Oh, yeah. For sure. 

I mean, I think we've talked about considering the environmental and labor consequences of the ingredients that we work with, and sometimes how it sends us into a spiral of sorts. Whenever I talk to people who want to get into food writing, I always say, ‘Food, it's never just a recipe. It's never just 800 words about whether or not this restaurant is good.’ Food is just tied to everything. It can be a labor story. It can be an environmental story. It can be about culture and history, because so many cuisines are formed as a result of colonialism and people making these cuisines out of desperation because they couldn't find jobs elsewhere. 

That's kind of how Chinese American cuisine turned out. It was out of desperation, because they needed jobs, or ingredients were sourced because they couldn't find it anywhere else, whether some ingredient was very scarce due to global warming so they had to find something else. 

It’s also issues of power, of being, having—being able to have food, unfortunately, is a luxury for a lot of people around the world. And so, you're talking about issues of inequality. I'm going down another spiral right now. This is my writing process. You have to go down this giant path about—it's never just a recipe. It's never just about the food. There's so many different things, issues that overlap each other when it comes to food. 

You look at a tomato. It's like, ‘Well, how has it grown? How are the people growing it and harvesting it being treated?’ Here in Canada, we have a lot of migrant workers who have been here for decades. It's very hard for them to get Canadian citizenship or to make enough money or to have worker rights, especially during a pandemic. Oh my god, the pandemic just added a whole other layer of mess to everything in our food system in issues of equality and its supply chains and how the global economy works. Oh, my goodness. It’s a lot. 

But yes, to answer your question. It is political.

Alicia: Well, I want to always end on a more positive note. So now I'm asking: how do you define abundance?

Karon: Oh, I'm gonna bum you out again. Sorry. 

My definition of abundance has really changed in the last two years because of the pandemic. And by that, I mean, whenever I go to the supermarket, it's always so nice to see endless aisles. And in the produce section, just oranges stacked into like a beautiful pyramid, even though—even if I'm not buying it. I'm just like, ‘Oh, it's so nice to see.’ Or if I go to a farmers’ market, and you see a stall that has maybe four or five cabbages as opposed to this big mountain. I'm like, ‘Oh, that's a little sad looking.’

But because of the pandemic, and the shortages that we had in March 2020. I think it really made me redefine what abundance is and that it's nice to have. I think that you have to walk that fine line between abundance—and that means being able to have options and not have to make concessions—and walking that fine line between that and excess. 

I don't know when this is coming out, but it's Cyber Monday today. I’m getting bombarded with all these deals, and it's like, ‘Yeah, it's abundance. I get free shipping, and I have all these options. But do I really need it?’

And during the pandemic, I've—I went to a lot more smaller stores, because the supermarket is a nightmare sometimes. And the selection is smaller, but it's also making me appreciate the different items that I'm getting, because I'm not lost in this endless aisle in this endless sea of options. I'm more mindful of what I'm buying, ’cause I'm also buying less. 

And a lot of these stores, they have a lot of products by local Torontonians that would never be able to scale up to sell at a big department store or a big supermarket. So it really makes me pause and look at these products more. And of course, they cost more. It's a treat, I don't consider it as a grocery item. But it really makes me rethink my shopping habits and my relationship around the word abundance. And now I'm kind of like, ‘Ok, maybe I don't need abundance. Maybe enough is a good enough baseline for me to be at.’

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. 

Karon: Does that bum you out? I’m sorry.

Alicia: No, it doesn't bum me out. I think that that's perfect. I think that we have to reframe abundance to mean enough, and to mean sharing and to mean—not just abundance for ourselves personally, but thinking of abundance as everyone has enough. 

[Outro music kicks in. Drums with a chill vibe.]

Karon: Thank you. Just summed it all up in one sentence.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time today. This has been super fun.

Karon: All right. Thank you, Alicia.

Alicia: Thanks so much to everyone for listening to this week's edition of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy. Read more at aliciakennedy.news/. Or follow me on Instagram, Alicia D. Kennedy, on Twitter @aliciakennedy.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

Frances Moore Lappé, with the 1971 publication of the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet, eventually changed mainstream conversation on food by popularizing the reality that hunger was a human-created problem—not an issue of food scarcity, but of distribution. Now, in the new edition for its 50th anniversary, there is updated information on hunger as well as urgent writing on the climate crisis. (I have a recipe in it, and we partnered to make this conversation public.)Here, we discuss what has influenced Lappé’s work over the last 50 years, how her thinking has shifted, and how we still need to reframe the significance of protein if we’re going to save the planet. Listen above, or read below.

Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé was released in 1971, making the statistic that 80 percent of farmland provides only 18 percent of calories through livestock a rallying cry for better, more equitable agriculture systems. This book gradually grew to sell over 3 million copies and irrevocably changed the way we talk about food, hunger, and culture. Fifty years later, there is a brand-new updated edition, out now, to meet the urgency of our current environmental moment. Visit dietforasmallplanet.org to learn more and get your copy.

Alicia: Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for being here today.

Frances: Thank you so much. I love it.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How are you? Where are you? You're in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

Frances: I'm in Belmont, which is just very close to Cambridge, where our office is. But I'm working at a cottage in my home now because of the COVID isolation.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Frances: [Laughs.] I grew up in Cowtown, literally called Cowtown as a nickname, Fort Worth, Texas. And the stockyards were never far from my smell distance. 

That was the ’40s and ’50s. And we ate meat at the center of every meal. ‘What's for dinner, Mom.’ ‘Oh, pork chops, or meatloaf,’ it was, that was the center of the meal. And, I mean, we ate healthfully in the sense that my mom never got on to the processed foods. White bread was a really big deal when I was growing up. We had a big, white bread factory on the way to town. You could smell the smell. But my mom always served us whole wheat bread. When she made after school cookies, she always put in a lot of nuts and things that were good for us. 

But generally, we ate the typical diet, but we—without the soda pop in the fridge, we never had that. But it was pretty standard.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, as the author of such a historically significant book on diet and the environment, I would think people are curious about how you eat and shop for food on a regular basis. So I wanted to ask what your weekly kind of eating and food shopping and acquiring look like.

Frances: Well, for years now during the summer—and we still are getting them—we are part of a community-supported agriculture. So we get this huge bag of veggies every week, too much for me and my partner to eat, so we share them with a neighbor. So that's a lot of our veggie, fresh veggie intake. We're very big on eating organic, and the only access is primarily Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as we're trying to get Trader Joe's to carry more organic. But when we don't have our community-supported agriculture, we rely on those sources for fresh veggies. 

My kitchen—if you could see it, it has this huge shelf of jars with all the various, the quinoa, the brown rice, the black beans, the chickpeas, all dried. And so, I have a lot of stuff. We could probably live for a few months on what we have on those shelves. 

I'm a cook, but I kind of wing it. I really encourage people not to be intimidated by recipes, but just to be inspired and motivated by recipes and think of recipes as just a source of ideas. But not, you don't have to be a slave to them and to feel free to add more or less of your family's favorite herbs and substitute veggies. 

It's funny that somebody with so many recipes in her book [Laughter] is not—I’m advocating, ‘Don't be a slave to them.’ I guess I've always hoped that our recipes would be inspiration and motivations, that ‘Oh, I didn't know you could do that with that.’

And I was just talking to somebody yesterday about one of our recipes from the very, very first edition called Roman Rice and Beans. And the concept was to take the basic Latin combo, but just try throwing Italian herbs in there instead of the more traditional cumin and that sort of thing that you associate with a beans and a rice.

So yeah, and just try new stuff. This is not the best thing I've ever made, but just instant—dinner the other night, I had a frozen roasted corn so it's corn, shelled corn but roasted so it has that smoky flavor. And I threw that in the blender with corn—I mean, excuse me—with carrots that we'd gotten from the CSA. And I didn't prepare either. I just washed them, washed the carrots and threw them in the blender with a—and then I added some veggie, veggie, what’s the word? 

Person 3: Bouillon. 

Frances: Bouillon. Thank you.

I added some veggie bouillon and some liquid, and it made it into delicious soup. I was really pleased ’cause it was—I was using what I had on hand, and it was so fast and it was so healthy.

So that's the spirit of Diet for a Small Planet, really, to free us and to—because when I first moved into the plant-centered eating world, people thought, ‘Oh, you're sacrificing? Oh, how do you make that big sacrifice?’ And I said, ‘Oh, no.’ It was discovery. 

Because I was the classic female—maybe it's not true anymore. But in the ’50s, there was just this weight fixation. And I was always counting calories, even though I was never overweight statistically, but I felt I needed to always lose ten pounds. And I think a lot of women feel that way. And so, I was always counting calories in my head. I was a slave to obsession about counting calories. And I'd finish one meal, and ‘Oh, how many do I have left for the next meal?’ It was terrible. 

But I just thought that's the way one lives until I started eating in the plant world more. And all of that just evaporated. And my body just wanted what was healthy for me. And I did lose those ten pounds over time, but I never counted calories from that time on. And I've never changed my weight in 50 years, pretty much. 

I felt my body was just so much more in tune. And I didn't have any more cravings. I’d look forward to eating but it wasn't that, ‘Oh, I've got to have that’ kind of feeling. And so, it was freedom. It was just freedom for me. Maybe my metabolism is different from others. But all I can really share is my own experience, of course. And that was my experience, that it was a win, win, win, win, win. I felt so empowered, that I was aligning with the Earth, best for my body, best for the world in terms of abundance for everyone. And so, it never felt like a sacrifice.

Alicia: And do you use that phrase to describe your diet, ‘plant-centered’?

Frances: I do now. Because I think that's the most all-inclusive. 

Well, I use that. And I use plant- and planet-centered. Because now, we know so much more about the implications of our very, very wasteful use of the land and destruction of rainforest to support the grain-fed, meat-centered diet. So, I wanted to emphasize plant-centered but planet. We're taking the whole planet into our consciousness. And I like that better than vegetarian, because it doesn't send a message. 

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

Well, there have been regularly released editions of Diet for a Small Planet in the last 50 years. So readers have been able to understand the changes in your perspective, changes in information that you've been sharing. But what are the most significant ways you, do you think that your thinking has changed from 1971 to 2021?

Frances: I mean, I think all of us have learned, or all of us who are attending to this piece of the puzzle, we have learned that how we use our land so greatly affects climate. 

And we think about smokestacks, when we—typically, we have thought about smokestacks, about car emissions, when we think about the human creation of this climate catastrophe. But very, very important, very central is the role of food and farming. And it's estimated that our food system could contribute as much as 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock alone 14.5. And some say even higher. And they point out that if cows were a cow country, it would be contributing about a six, six greatest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. So it's right up there with the problem. 

And therefore, the more we align with our bodies, which thrive so much better with a plant-centered diet, we then align with our goal of stopping this climate catastrophe. And we also prevent all sorts of harm to other species. 

And I think the two things that I emphasize in the new edition, so much that I've learned is that one, is the climate factor. And the other is that natural historians tell us that we are at the brink of the sixth great extinction. Something like a million species now are threatened with extinction. And that we've lost something like 40% of insect species. So that's huge. 

And it's something that I didn't appreciate, when I've—in earlier editions. And so, that's why I call it now this broader—it's not just a climate crisis. It’s an assault on nature that our food is implicated in. And is the real crisis. Because, of course, biodiversity, as I'm sure, is the basis of all life. 

In the new edition of Diet for Small Planet, I use the phrase of my hero, Jane Goodall. And she talks about the tapestry of life, and how we have to both stop tearing it and mend it. And so, I use that metaphor and talk about the tears and the tapestry of life. And one of them certainly is this species decimation. And that is through so much of the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture.

Alicia: And also in the last 50 years, what are the books that have come out that have influenced your thinking more than anything? Or what are the most significant texts on environmentalism and the global food system? I see Eating Tomorrow on your shelf.

Frances: Ok, I had jotted down some titles, but maybe I can remember them. 

Yeah, Eating Tomorrow by my ally and colleague, Tim Wise. And of course, my daughter's book. Diet for a Hot Planet; I think she was one of the early people to focus on the contribution of our food system to climate change. And Raj Patel's books, Stuffed and Starved. And course, Bill McKibben’s book back in the ’80s, The End of Nature. I can still remember where I was, the time when I first read that book. 

So, those are some of the books that have really made a huge impact. I've been influenced also by the work of David Korten. Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning. He's also a very integrated thinker. So those are some of the people who have been in, close to me a great deal. 

Alicia: And one of the things, the common refrains that people say about changing personal—they don't want to change their personal behavior because they're, that's not as meaningful as regulating emissions by corporations and that sort of thing. And I have the 10th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet. And I was on a podcast about cars, the War on Cars, talking about food stuff. But I quoted from your book about how—I should have written down exactly [Laughs]. But you wrote, oh, a change in diet is a way of saying simply, ‘I have a choice.’

And so, I always think of that. And that's what I talked about on the podcast, too, is that I like to get up every day and do and feel I have agency in the world. And that the foundation of my work in the world is my own personal actions. But it's becoming more and more of a common refrain to say that your personal choices don't mean anything, even as the climate crisis worsens. And so, I wanted to ask what your response is to that, to people who say that their personal changes and consumption changes are too small?

Frances: Well, it's just the false frame for me in a way, and I think for so many human beings, that the more that we don't feel like a victim. You said agency. That's it. The more that we feel that we do have power, the more likely it is that we're going to take the next step and the next step. And we'll be attuned, and we'll read what we need to know. And we'll talk to people about it and get people awake. 

To me, it's an absolutely false, a false dichotomy. It's ‘Oh, yeah. I'm not a victim. I can make a difference. And every time that I align my life with the world I want, I am stronger. I'm more convincing to myself.’ And I think that makes us automatically more convincing to other people. 

I mean, if we preach about climate change, and then they said, ‘Wait a minute, you're running your—’ Oh, you know what? I just heard about leaf blowers. They’re the worst thing ever. They almost were too noisy for this interview, but they turned them off across the street. 

But the more that we can align with the world we want, absolutely, the more credible we become. And I think people sense that and they say, ‘Yeah, it's possible.’ I guess that's the thing. If we don't think that change is possible for ourselves and demonstrate that by changing our behavior, then how can we think the world can change? 

Yeah, I just really hate that. So I'm all for all of the above. Our institute is very much a player in the democracy movement. And I encourage people that wish to say about President Gerald Ford, ‘You can chew gum and walk at the same time.’ You can be part of the food movement, and you can't be part of the democracy movement. It's not a trade-off, one can alert you to the other.

And ’cause I do believe that, yes, we have to change the laws and the—I like to call them enforceable standards rather than regulations. But regulation will do too. But we have to, as a society, set the rules so that we're encouraging more plant-based eating and we're getting rid of this very, very harmful diet. 

Because I'm sure you know, it's not just for the sake of some distant children who have to grow up in a climate chaotic world. But I think everyone should know that processed meat, that is a fifth of all of our meat consumption, is a carcinogen as defined by the World Health Organization. And red meat in general is a probable carcinogen. So it's on every level of responsibility and health and alignment that I think our diet choices are so important.

Alicia: And in the popular imagination—I'm a little bit obsessed with this right now, because I just did a lot of research into lab meat and other types of meat, which—anyway. So ‘the future of food,’ this phrase, people only use it to refer really to technology-based kind of solutions to climate change. And so I wanted to ask, if you were to define or to reframe how people think of the future of food, how would you want people to think of it instead of being something about technology? What is your future of food?

Frances: My future of food is that we are much more integrated. I think of this curious foray into agriculture as a symbol of that or an example of it, that where our food comes from is much more local and personal in that way. And farmers’ markets are everywhere. We have one in our town. And in our office, we have one across the street on Fridays that I love. So one, that we're closer to it. And we're closer to our farmers, and they are honored in a way that they are not today. 

And that we have the rules that insist that we're not using chemicals that can make farmworkers sick. I think the statistic is that half the world's farmers and farm workers are poisoned each year. I mean, no. That means that we're poisoned, too, as consumers. We do not need that. And that we are using our resources very efficiently so that we are—I'm not saying that no one should ever eat meat, of course. I mean, that's not the point. I honor vegans and others who take that stand. 

But my vision is that, yes, that growing is much more integrated into our lives. Every school has a school garden, so little kids can actually grow food and then eat the food they've grown. So that, and then that we just obviously set the rules to protect our health because we have democracy that's really answering to us and not to the Monsantos of the world, not to the large corporation. 

So I just see us much healthier than we are today, and much more just feeling good about ourselves because we—our bodies are more aligned. I mean, just on that point. 60 percent of the calories we now eat have no nutritional value. I mean, and just tragic, if you add all of those who are pre-diabetic to the actual diabetes, it comes to about 45 percent. Almost half of us are either pre-diabetic or diabetic. And that's so debilitating and so life threatening. 

So I just see us much healthier, more integrated into our environments of food and food production, and much less obsessed about our bodies because they're working for us. And we become the shape, sort of, that our metabolism and our genes meant us to be. And there are a variety of shapes that are fine. There's no body shaming anymore. 

So all of that is what I hope, which is reduced so much depression and ill health. And our medical bill would go way down because something enormous—I don't have an exact number, but billions and billions of dollars of our health expenditures are related to our diet. 

Alicia: I wanted to ask also about the idea of lab meat as a solution to meat consumption issues and livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions. I wanted to ask what your perspective is on lab-grown meat, which has a ton of money behind it right now, both private venture capital and also now from the USDA.

Frances: It's such a diversion. Well, I don’t know what I can say about it. It’s such a diversion, because we're still—it's still highly processed, so we're not getting the kind of fiber we need. It's still filled with additives, all of which—we don't understand all of the implications of those. 

And it keeps us fixated on one piece of the meal, when it keeps us from this attitude of, ‘I can be a creator in the kitchen, and I—it can be fun. And I can be experimental.’ It keeps us locked into a certain definition of what a meal is, still has to have meat at the center. 

And it keeps us obsessed about protein, which we now know that Americans eat about twice the protein their bodies can even use. And I just want to underscore here that, I'm sure you know, we don't store protein, so that if we eat more than we need, it just becomes more calories that we use as if it were carbs or a fat. 

So it doesn't really help. And it leaves power in the hands of the corporate sector, so it helps to concentrate control in our food system. Yeah, I guess, fiber additives. All of these questions come into play, and—but most importantly, it kind of keeps us obsessed with meat and protein.

Alicia: No, I agree. That is the—a huge aspect. And I think that's why people, the media has been latching on to it is because people are obsessed with protein. It is still people's first comment when they talk about, ‘Oh, maybe I'll stop eating meat. But I just worry so much about protein.’ And I personally never worried about having—I haven't eaten meat in ten years. There was a point where I was exercising a lot, and I did have to think about it. But for the most part, it's really not that, it's not that difficult.Your body tells you what you need when you're eating what you should be eating. 

Yeah, it's such an obsession.

Frances: I hope we make clear in Diet for Small Planet, is virtually every food has some protein in it. Some has more than others. And we know in the plant world, where we really get the protein hit is in the legume world of peas, beans, lentils, and nuts. By the way, peanuts are a legume, I learned years ago. And they're packed with protein, but all nuts and seeds. I love seeds. So they have a lot of protein.

But yeah, those are the main sort of protein, high-powered protein in the plant world. But all veggies have some protein. You don't have to sweat it. And that's what the scientists are telling us: if we eat a healthy diet with a variety of foods, we're covered.

Alicia: And so, even though plant-based eating has kind of gotten more traction lately, it's still considered niche. And I wanted to ask what you think food media's role is in educating the public on issues around food and sustainability and basically all the things you've written about in Diet for a Small Planet, which remain kind of under covered, I would say, in food media, where you're giving res—you're talking to the people who are cooking and shopping for food, but you're not really giving them the tools to understand the implications of what they're eating and what they're cooking. 

And so, I wanted to ask, do you think food media has done any sort of job, good or bad, on communicating about climate change and sustainability?

Frances: I don't think I’m an expert on it. Just so much of my focus of my life has been, is certainly in recent years, on the democracy movement. 

But I think, certainly, food media can—with every recipe we put out, I think about the New York Times that I read, whenever it's putting forward anything about food to remind people, if that would be easy to do, remind people that getting enough protein is not a problem in the plant world. And this dish that, this recipe, ‘by the way, without any major protein-focused addition to it, it's offering plenty of protein.’

So I think there could be more awareness for sure in debunking the myths that do make people hesitant and just underscoring always the benefits to our health. I mean, I think that's so important, the evidence that plant-based eating actually contributes to longevity. When I started out 50 years ago, the only control group we had, so to speak, was Seventh Day Adventists who were vegetarians. And they had longer lives typically. But now, we have much more evidence of how plant-based diets can contribute both to disease reduction and to longer lives. 

Alicia: You said before that whereas earlier editions of Diet for a Small Planet were focused on hunger, now, it's—you're focused on climate change more. What do you think is the next pressing issue that we can talk about in the food system?

Frances: I would say it's not a shift, it's a both. It’s adding the climate focus, the climate, to all of our thinking about food. Tragically, hunger is still very, very much with us. One in three people in the world still does not have access to an adequate diet. The most heartbreaking statistic on hunger is that one out of every four young children suffer stunting, which is a devastating condition that has—it's not just being short. It has lifelong impact on functioning. 

But then, making clear that has nothing to do with the actual food supply, because we have about a quarter more food per capita than we did back when I wrote Diet for Small Planet. So, hunger is still very much a human-made tragedy. And in addition to that, the climate crisis is very much worsened by this grain-fed, meat-centered diet, which is a product of economic and political systems that don't reflect the majority view. So, it's all connected. 

And that's what's so beautiful about an ecological worldview, is that we can see those connections. In the new book, I quote my dear friend, now deceased, but German physicist Hans—Peter Dürr said to me, ‘Frankie, in biological systems, there are no parts. Only participants.’ And that's throughout all of our social and biological. We're all participants, and everything we do and don't do is shaping the larger tapestry of life. 

Alicia: Absolutely.

Well, I wanted to ask to finish, how do you define abundance for yourself, for the world? [Laughs.]

Frances: Well, I think—I never have been asked that question. I can feel my body, and by my body, it's just my shoulders, relax. 

Abundance just means that I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about feeding myself, my partner. If I had kids, I’d just not have to worry that I will have what I need to live a fulfilling life and to be a good parent. I mean, that to me is abundant. It's not about having two or three homes, or a million dollars in savings. It is about knowing that I'm okay. I can really get up in the morning and do something purposeful and be responsible and know that there's, there is enough for me to live healthy and take care of my loved ones. That is abundance. 

And there's more than enough in this beautiful, beautiful earth of ours to allow everyone of us to live that way. More than. And that is so tragic, that anxiety and fear is so ingrained. And I think very much that it's that anxiety and fear produced by this concentrated wealth that infects the political system. That's what leads to the finger pointing and the blaming, because we're told to blame ourselves for our struggle, rather than the rules that are created by our broken and corrupted democracy. 

It's a spiral, then. If we blame ourselves and feel shame, then we want to find somebody else to blame, and—rather than looking at the underlying rules and norms that have been created that so limit us. So I think the shift of understanding to an ecological worldview is totally key, and letting go of the finger pointing. 

Alicia: Absolutely. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Frances: Oh, my great pleasure. What fun. Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit pendingdeletiond27a89986e6248e.substack.com

Frances Moore Lappé, with the 1971 publication of the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet, eventually changed mainstream conversation on food by popularizing the reality that hunger was a human-created problem—not an issue of food scarcity, but of distribution. Now, in the new edition for its 50th anniversary, there is updated information on hunger as well as urgent writing on the climate crisis. (I have a recipe in it, and we partnered to make this conversation public.)Here, we discuss what has influenced Lappé’s work over the last 50 years, how her thinking has shifted, and how we still need to reframe the significance of protein if we’re going to save the planet. Listen above, or read below.

Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé was released in 1971, making the statistic that 80 percent of farmland provides only 18 percent of calories through livestock a rallying cry for better, more equitable agriculture systems. This book gradually grew to sell over 3 million copies and irrevocably changed the way we talk about food, hunger, and culture. Fifty years later, there is a brand-new updated edition, out now, to meet the urgency of our current environmental moment. Visit dietforasmallplanet.org to learn more and get your copy.

Alicia: Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for being here today.

Frances: Thank you so much. I love it.

Alicia: [Laughs.] How are you? Where are you? You're in Cambridge, Massachusetts?

Frances: I'm in Belmont, which is just very close to Cambridge, where our office is. But I'm working at a cottage in my home now because of the COVID isolation.

Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Frances: [Laughs.] I grew up in Cowtown, literally called Cowtown as a nickname, Fort Worth, Texas. And the stockyards were never far from my smell distance. 

That was the ’40s and ’50s. And we ate meat at the center of every meal. ‘What's for dinner, Mom.’ ‘Oh, pork chops, or meatloaf,’ it was, that was the center of the meal. And, I mean, we ate healthfully in the sense that my mom never got on to the processed foods. White bread was a really big deal when I was growing up. We had a big, white bread factory on the way to town. You could smell the smell. But my mom always served us whole wheat bread. When she made after school cookies, she always put in a lot of nuts and things that were good for us. 

But generally, we ate the typical diet, but we—without the soda pop in the fridge, we never had that. But it was pretty standard.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, as the author of such a historically significant book on diet and the environment, I would think people are curious about how you eat and shop for food on a regular basis. So I wanted to ask what your weekly kind of eating and food shopping and acquiring look like.

Frances: Well, for years now during the summer—and we still are getting them—we are part of a community-supported agriculture. So we get this huge bag of veggies every week, too much for me and my partner to eat, so we share them with a neighbor. So that's a lot of our veggie, fresh veggie intake. We're very big on eating organic, and the only access is primarily Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as we're trying to get Trader Joe's to carry more organic. But when we don't have our community-supported agriculture, we rely on those sources for fresh veggies. 

My kitchen—if you could see it, it has this huge shelf of jars with all the various, the quinoa, the brown rice, the black beans, the chickpeas, all dried. And so, I have a lot of stuff. We could probably live for a few months on what we have on those shelves. 

I'm a cook, but I kind of wing it. I really encourage people not to be intimidated by recipes, but just to be inspired and motivated by recipes and think of recipes as just a source of ideas. But not, you don't have to be a slave to them and to feel free to add more or less of your family's favorite herbs and substitute veggies. 

It's funny that somebody with so many recipes in her book [Laughter] is not—I’m advocating, ‘Don't be a slave to them.’ I guess I've always hoped that our recipes would be inspiration and motivations, that ‘Oh, I didn't know you could do that with that.’

And I was just talking to somebody yesterday about one of our recipes from the very, very first edition called Roman Rice and Beans. And the concept was to take the basic Latin combo, but just try throwing Italian herbs in there instead of the more traditional cumin and that sort of thing that you associate with a beans and a rice.

So yeah, and just try new stuff. This is not the best thing I've ever made, but just instant—dinner the other night, I had a frozen roasted corn so it's corn, shelled corn but roasted so it has that smoky flavor. And I threw that in the blender with corn—I mean, excuse me—with carrots that we'd gotten from the CSA. And I didn't prepare either. I just washed them, washed the carrots and threw them in the blender with a—and then I added some veggie, veggie, what’s the word? 

Person 3: Bouillon. 

Frances: Bouillon. Thank you.

I added some veggie bouillon and some liquid, and it made it into delicious soup. I was really pleased ’cause it was—I was using what I had on hand, and it was so fast and it was so healthy.

So that's the spirit of Diet for a Small Planet, really, to free us and to—because when I first moved into the plant-centered eating world, people thought, ‘Oh, you're sacrificing? Oh, how do you make that big sacrifice?’ And I said, ‘Oh, no.’ It was discovery. 

Because I was the classic female—maybe it's not true anymore. But in the ’50s, there was just this weight fixation. And I was always counting calories, even though I was never overweight statistically, but I felt I needed to always lose ten pounds. And I think a lot of women feel that way. And so, I was always counting calories in my head. I was a slave to obsession about counting calories. And I'd finish one meal, and ‘Oh, how many do I have left for the next meal?’ It was terrible. 

But I just thought that's the way one lives until I started eating in the plant world more. And all of that just evaporated. And my body just wanted what was healthy for me. And I did lose those ten pounds over time, but I never counted calories from that time on. And I've never changed my weight in 50 years, pretty much. 

I felt my body was just so much more in tune. And I didn't have any more cravings. I’d look forward to eating but it wasn't that, ‘Oh, I've got to have that’ kind of feeling. And so, it was freedom. It was just freedom for me. Maybe my metabolism is different from others. But all I can really share is my own experience, of course. And that was my experience, that it was a win, win, win, win, win. I felt so empowered, that I was aligning with the Earth, best for my body, best for the world in terms of abundance for everyone. And so, it never felt like a sacrifice.

Alicia: And do you use that phrase to describe your diet, ‘plant-centered’?

Frances: I do now. Because I think that's the most all-inclusive. 

Well, I use that. And I use plant- and planet-centered. Because now, we know so much more about the implications of our very, very wasteful use of the land and destruction of rainforest to support the grain-fed, meat-centered diet. So, I wanted to emphasize plant-centered but planet. We're taking the whole planet into our consciousness. And I like that better than vegetarian, because it doesn't send a message. 

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

Well, there have been regularly released editions of Diet for a Small Planet in the last 50 years. So readers have been able to understand the changes in your perspective, changes in information that you've been sharing. But what are the most significant ways you, do you think that your thinking has changed from 1971 to 2021?

Frances: I mean, I think all of us have learned, or all of us who are attending to this piece of the puzzle, we have learned that how we use our land so greatly affects climate. 

And we think about smokestacks, when we—typically, we have thought about smokestacks, about car emissions, when we think about the human creation of this climate catastrophe. But very, very important, very central is the role of food and farming. And it's estimated that our food system could contribute as much as 37% of greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock alone 14.5. And some say even higher. And they point out that if cows were a cow country, it would be contributing about a six, six greatest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. So it's right up there with the problem. 

And therefore, the more we align with our bodies, which thrive so much better with a plant-centered diet, we then align with our goal of stopping this climate catastrophe. And we also prevent all sorts of harm to other species. 

And I think the two things that I emphasize in the new edition, so much that I've learned is that one, is the climate factor. And the other is that natural historians tell us that we are at the brink of the sixth great extinction. Something like a million species now are threatened with extinction. And that we've lost something like 40% of insect species. So that's huge. 

And it's something that I didn't appreciate, when I've—in earlier editions. And so, that's why I call it now this broader—it's not just a climate crisis. It’s an assault on nature that our food is implicated in. And is the real crisis. Because, of course, biodiversity, as I'm sure, is the basis of all life. 

In the new edition of Diet for Small Planet, I use the phrase of my hero, Jane Goodall. And she talks about the tapestry of life, and how we have to both stop tearing it and mend it. And so, I use that metaphor and talk about the tears and the tapestry of life. And one of them certainly is this species decimation. And that is through so much of the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture.

Alicia: And also in the last 50 years, what are the books that have come out that have influenced your thinking more than anything? Or what are the most significant texts on environmentalism and the global food system? I see Eating Tomorrow on your shelf.

Frances: Ok, I had jotted down some titles, but maybe I can remember them. 

Yeah, Eating Tomorrow by my ally and colleague, Tim Wise. And of course, my daughter's book. Diet for a Hot Planet; I think she was one of the early people to focus on the contribution of our food system to climate change. And Raj Patel's books, Stuffed and Starved. And course, Bill McKibben’s book back in the ’80s, The End of Nature. I can still remember where I was, the time when I first read that book. 

So, those are some of the books that have really made a huge impact. I've been influenced also by the work of David Korten. Corporations Rule the World, The Great Turning. He's also a very integrated thinker. So those are some of the people who have been in, close to me a great deal. 

Alicia: And one of the things, the common refrains that people say about changing personal—they don't want to change their personal behavior because they're, that's not as meaningful as regulating emissions by corporations and that sort of thing. And I have the 10th anniversary edition of Diet for a Small Planet. And I was on a podcast about cars, the War on Cars, talking about food stuff. But I quoted from your book about how—I should have written down exactly [Laughs]. But you wrote, oh, a change in diet is a way of saying simply, ‘I have a choice.’

And so, I always think of that. And that's what I talked about on the podcast, too, is that I like to get up every day and do and feel I have agency in the world. And that the foundation of my work in the world is my own personal actions. But it's becoming more and more of a common refrain to say that your personal choices don't mean anything, even as the climate crisis worsens. And so, I wanted to ask what your response is to that, to people who say that their personal changes and consumption changes are too small?

Frances: Well, it's just the false frame for me in a way, and I think for so many human beings, that the more that we don't feel like a victim. You said agency. That's it. The more that we feel that we do have power, the more likely it is that we're going to take the next step and the next step. And we'll be attuned, and we'll read what we need to know. And we'll talk to people about it and get people awake. 

To me, it's an absolutely false, a false dichotomy. It's ‘Oh, yeah. I'm not a victim. I can make a difference. And every time that I align my life with the world I want, I am stronger. I'm more convincing to myself.’ And I think that makes us automatically more convincing to other people. 

I mean, if we preach about climate change, and then they said, ‘Wait a minute, you're running your—’ Oh, you know what? I just heard about leaf blowers. They’re the worst thing ever. They almost were too noisy for this interview, but they turned them off across the street. 

But the more that we can align with the world we want, absolutely, the more credible we become. And I think people sense that and they say, ‘Yeah, it's possible.’ I guess that's the thing. If we don't think that change is possible for ourselves and demonstrate that by changing our behavior, then how can we think the world can change? 

Yeah, I just really hate that. So I'm all for all of the above. Our institute is very much a player in the democracy movement. And I encourage people that wish to say about President Gerald Ford, ‘You can chew gum and walk at the same time.’ You can be part of the food movement, and you can't be part of the democracy movement. It's not a trade-off, one can alert you to the other.

And ’cause I do believe that, yes, we have to change the laws and the—I like to call them enforceable standards rather than regulations. But regulation will do too. But we have to, as a society, set the rules so that we're encouraging more plant-based eating and we're getting rid of this very, very harmful diet. 

Because I'm sure you know, it's not just for the sake of some distant children who have to grow up in a climate chaotic world. But I think everyone should know that processed meat, that is a fifth of all of our meat consumption, is a carcinogen as defined by the World Health Organization. And red meat in general is a probable carcinogen. So it's on every level of responsibility and health and alignment that I think our diet choices are so important.

Alicia: And in the popular imagination—I'm a little bit obsessed with this right now, because I just did a lot of research into lab meat and other types of meat, which—anyway. So ‘the future of food,’ this phrase, people only use it to refer really to technology-based kind of solutions to climate change. And so I wanted to ask, if you were to define or to reframe how people think of the future of food, how would you want people to think of it instead of being something about technology? What is your future of food?

Frances: My future of food is that we are much more integrated. I think of this curious foray into agriculture as a symbol of that or an example of it, that where our food comes from is much more local and personal in that way. And farmers’ markets are everywhere. We have one in our town. And in our office, we have one across the street on Fridays that I love. So one, that we're closer to it. And we're closer to our farmers, and they are honored in a way that they are not today. 

And that we have the rules that insist that we're not using chemicals that can make farmworkers sick. I think the statistic is that half the world's farmers and farm workers are poisoned each year. I mean, no. That means that we're poisoned, too, as consumers. We do not need that. And that we are using our resources very efficiently so that we are—I'm not saying that no one should ever eat meat, of course. I mean, that's not the point. I honor vegans and others who take that stand. 

But my vision is that, yes, that growing is much more integrated into our lives. Every school has a school garden, so little kids can actually grow food and then eat the food they've grown. So that, and then that we just obviously set the rules to protect our health because we have democracy that's really answering to us and not to the Monsantos of the world, not to the large corporation. 

So I just see us much healthier than we are today, and much more just feeling good about ourselves because we—our bodies are more aligned. I mean, just on that point. 60 percent of the calories we now eat have no nutritional value. I mean, and just tragic, if you add all of those who are pre-diabetic to the actual diabetes, it comes to about 45 percent. Almost half of us are either pre-diabetic or diabetic. And that's so debilitating and so life threatening. 

So I just see us much healthier, more integrated into our environments of food and food production, and much less obsessed about our bodies because they're working for us. And we become the shape, sort of, that our metabolism and our genes meant us to be. And there are a variety of shapes that are fine. There's no body shaming anymore. 

So all of that is what I hope, which is reduced so much depression and ill health. And our medical bill would go way down because something enormous—I don't have an exact number, but billions and billions of dollars of our health expenditures are related to our diet. 

Alicia: I wanted to ask also about the idea of lab meat as a solution to meat consumption issues and livestock-related greenhouse gas emissions. I wanted to ask what your perspective is on lab-grown meat, which has a ton of money behind it right now, both private venture capital and also now from the USDA.

Frances: It's such a diversion. Well, I don’t know what I can say about it. It’s such a diversion, because we're still—it's still highly processed, so we're not getting the kind of fiber we need. It's still filled with additives, all of which—we don't understand all of the implications of those. 

And it keeps us fixated on one piece of the meal, when it keeps us from this attitude of, ‘I can be a creator in the kitchen, and I—it can be fun. And I can be experimental.’ It keeps us locked into a certain definition of what a meal is, still has to have meat at the center. 

And it keeps us obsessed about protein, which we now know that Americans eat about twice the protein their bodies can even use. And I just want to underscore here that, I'm sure you know, we don't store protein, so that if we eat more than we need, it just becomes more calories that we use as if it were carbs or a fat. 

So it doesn't really help. And it leaves power in the hands of the corporate sector, so it helps to concentrate control in our food system. Yeah, I guess, fiber additives. All of these questions come into play, and—but most importantly, it kind of keeps us obsessed with meat and protein.

Alicia: No, I agree. That is the—a huge aspect. And I think that's why people, the media has been latching on to it is because people are obsessed with protein. It is still people's first comment when they talk about, ‘Oh, maybe I'll stop eating meat. But I just worry so much about protein.’ And I personally never worried about having—I haven't eaten meat in ten years. There was a point where I was exercising a lot, and I did have to think about it. But for the most part, it's really not that, it's not that difficult.Your body tells you what you need when you're eating what you should be eating. 

Yeah, it's such an obsession.

Frances: I hope we make clear in Diet for Small Planet, is virtually every food has some protein in it. Some has more than others. And we know in the plant world, where we really get the protein hit is in the legume world of peas, beans, lentils, and nuts. By the way, peanuts are a legume, I learned years ago. And they're packed with protein, but all nuts and seeds. I love seeds. So they have a lot of protein.

But yeah, those are the main sort of protein, high-powered protein in the plant world. But all veggies have some protein. You don't have to sweat it. And that's what the scientists are telling us: if we eat a healthy diet with a variety of foods, we're covered.

Alicia: And so, even though plant-based eating has kind of gotten more traction lately, it's still considered niche. And I wanted to ask what you think food media's role is in educating the public on issues around food and sustainability and basically all the things you've written about in Diet for a Small Planet, which remain kind of under covered, I would say, in food media, where you're giving res—you're talking to the people who are cooking and shopping for food, but you're not really giving them the tools to understand the implications of what they're eating and what they're cooking. 

And so, I wanted to ask, do you think food media has done any sort of job, good or bad, on communicating about climate change and sustainability?

Frances: I don't think I’m an expert on it. Just so much of my focus of my life has been, is certainly in recent years, on the democracy movement. 

But I think, certainly, food media can—with every recipe we put out, I think about the New York Times that I read, whenever it's putting forward anything about food to remind people, if that would be easy to do, remind people that getting enough protein is not a problem in the plant world. And this dish that, this recipe, ‘by the way, without any major protein-focused addition to it, it's offering plenty of protein.’

So I think there could be more awareness for sure in debunking the myths that do make people hesitant and just underscoring always the benefits to our health. I mean, I think that's so important, the evidence that plant-based eating actually contributes to longevity. When I started out 50 years ago, the only control group we had, so to speak, was Seventh Day Adventists who were vegetarians. And they had longer lives typically. But now, we have much more evidence of how plant-based diets can contribute both to disease reduction and to longer lives. 

Alicia: You said before that whereas earlier editions of Diet for a Small Planet were focused on hunger, now, it's—you're focused on climate change more. What do you think is the next pressing issue that we can talk about in the food system?

Frances: I would say it's not a shift, it's a both. It’s adding the climate focus, the climate, to all of our thinking about food. Tragically, hunger is still very, very much with us. One in three people in the world still does not have access to an adequate diet. The most heartbreaking statistic on hunger is that one out of every four young children suffer stunting, which is a devastating condition that has—it's not just being short. It has lifelong impact on functioning. 

But then, making clear that has nothing to do with the actual food supply, because we have about a quarter more food per capita than we did back when I wrote Diet for Small Planet. So, hunger is still very much a human-made tragedy. And in addition to that, the climate crisis is very much worsened by this grain-fed, meat-centered diet, which is a product of economic and political systems that don't reflect the majority view. So, it's all connected. 

And that's what's so beautiful about an ecological worldview, is that we can see those connections. In the new book, I quote my dear friend, now deceased, but German physicist Hans—Peter Dürr said to me, ‘Frankie, in biological systems, there are no parts. Only participants.’ And that's throughout all of our social and biological. We're all participants, and everything we do and don't do is shaping the larger tapestry of life. 

Alicia: Absolutely.

Well, I wanted to ask to finish, how do you define abundance for yourself, for the world? [Laughs.]

Frances: Well, I think—I never have been asked that question. I can feel my body, and by my body, it's just my shoulders, relax. 

Abundance just means that I don't have to worry. I don't have to worry about feeding myself, my partner. If I had kids, I’d just not have to worry that I will have what I need to live a fulfilling life and to be a good parent. I mean, that to me is abundant. It's not about having two or three homes, or a million dollars in savings. It is about knowing that I'm okay. I can really get up in the morning and do something purposeful and be responsible and know that there's, there is enough for me to live healthy and take care of my loved ones. That is abundance. 

And there's more than enough in this beautiful, beautiful earth of ours to allow everyone of us to live that way. More than. And that is so tragic, that anxiety and fear is so ingrained. And I think very much that it's that anxiety and fear produced by this concentrated wealth that infects the political system. That's what leads to the finger pointing and the blaming, because we're told to blame ourselves for our struggle, rather than the rules that are created by our broken and corrupted democracy. 

It's a spiral, then. If we blame ourselves and feel shame, then we want to find somebody else to blame, and—rather than looking at the underlying rules and norms that have been created that so limit us. So I think the shift of understanding to an ecological worldview is totally key, and letting go of the finger pointing. 

Alicia: Absolutely. 

Well, thank you so much for taking the time today.

Frances: Oh, my great pleasure. What fun. Thank you.

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From his blog Artisan Bryan to his first book New World Sourdough to his current project on the many breads of Latin American, Bryan Ford has worked to make baking accessible and expand the narratives of sourdough.

Since he’s had such success, he has moved into not just cookbook but TV and podcast projects—so how does he keep the creativity flowing, and how is he managing his next huge book project? We discussed it all, plus pizza. Listen above, or read below.

This episode of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy is brought to you by Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras from Workman Publishing. Tour each continent through the book’s encyclopedic entries on some of the world’s most interesting foods and places. Did you know that Zambia is home to the biggest edible mushrooms, called Termitomyces Titanicus, and that often its cap can grow to three feet wide? Learn about this and more in Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide, on sale now.

Bryan: Let's do it.

Alicia: Hi, Bryan. Thank you so much for being here.

Bryan: Yeah, yo, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I've been following your work and it's great. And I’m honored to talk to you, yeah.

Alicia: Cool. Cool. 

I'm excited to talk to you about this book, because obv—since it came out, I've been really—Well before it even came out, I was excited about it. And then it came out, and I've still been excited about it.

So, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Bryan: Yeah. 

I grew up in New Orleans, and I ate a lot of food. [Laughter.] I grew up in a Honduran household. My parents are from Honduras, so I definitely got the best of both worlds going to school and eating some fried chicken, some red beans and rice, some cornbread. Coming home having a baleada, you know what I’m saying? Arroz con pollo, you know what I’m saying? I was blessed with the experience of being able to eat so many delicious meals, so many classic meals. 

In my opinion, New Orleans is one of the culinary capitals in the world. I mean, New Orleans cuisine is just so distinct and different than what you find in other areas of the country. You know what I'm saying? I mean, just, people can't cook beans like they cook beans in the South. There was just so much good food there, is so much good food there, that it's even hard to list my favorite. It was great. Yeah.

Alicia: Was the fried chicken given to you in the school cafeteria?

Bryan: I mean listen, let me not go crazy. The school cafeteria chicken wasn't Michelin-star. It was school cafeteria fried chicken. 

They would serve us the classics, like Mondays, red beans and rice day, always, with smoked sausage, cornbread, you know what I'm saying? Friday is fried catfish day, always. And then in between, you get jambalaya, you get a little gumbo or—

Let's be real. It came from Sysco or Sodexo or whatever. When you're 8, 9 years old, you don't know what's between packaged beans and home-cooked. And then, you start to learn as you get older.

Alicia: No, but that's still so interesting, though, because I grew up—where I grew up on Long Island, there was no sense of local culture that you were getting in the cafeteria food. It was just disgusting. And so, that sounds very French, I guess, to me, that idea that in your school cafeteria you should still be experiencing what the cuisine of the place where you come from is. I think that's so cool. I had no idea that that happened there.

Bryan: 100%. 100%. That's how we get down.

Alicia: Well, in New World Sourdough, your book, it's clear that you grew up cooking, food was a natural part of your upbringing. You write about your mom making tortillas. But when and how did you know you wanted to turn that kind of that knowledge, that passion into a profession?

Bryan: Yeah. I mean, I'm still trying to figure that out. [Laughter.]

Obviously I started baking and cooking when I was younger but it was just kind of a hobby. And when I got to college in New Orleans, I, to pay for—to pay for college, and to pay for my books and all that kind of thing, I started working in kitchens as a line cook, prep cook, dishwasher, whatever. Server, waiter, everything.

And at that point, I realized how much I love just cooking. Food. Being around—not necessarily being around the culture of kitchens, ’cause the culture of kitchen sucks. But there's been so many unpleasant experiences just kind of in that late night cooking grind. And not necessarily anything that someone did something to me, but mostly just—it's just such a grueling existence changing the deep-frying oil or just dealing with roaches and rats and dealing with just stuff that people don't even realize is going on in kitchens, right? 

And so, then it dawned on me. I was like, ‘Well, I can kind of do this. But I don't have to be a cook. I can be a baker. I can do something that's a little bit different, because I'm still serving people.’ But as I came to that realization, because I was doing some pop-up bakery, pop-up bakes for Mardi Gras selling king cake and doing all kinds of stuff. 

But then I graduated and I became an accountant. And I started working a corporate life. And was like, ‘I'm not gonna be a cook forever. I'm gonna get a good job and a good salary and benefits and all that kind of thing.’ And all the while I continued to kind of hone the craft of baking on the side. I would get in trouble for leaving work too early just to go home and bake. 

And I realized after I became a CPA five, six years into this game. I think in the sixth year, I was a federal tax manager for an oil company or something. I don't even know what I was doing. Seriously, I was just in the cubicle, and they're talking about moving money from Luxembourg to this I was just like, ‘What is happening? Foreign tax provisions?’ 

While I was doing tax, I was like, ‘Ok, I want to do international tax, because it's—because then I get to deal with culture. Then I get to deal with other countries.’ And I got to do a Japanese tax return once. I got to do some French tax returns, or—I've even called the IRS in Canada, the Quebec division, because they speak French and I got-

So I knew I wanted to kind of be around that. I didn't want to just be around a stagnant situation, but I was applying it to the wrong craft. Yeah, the craft of accounting. [Laughter.] I decided to just peace out from that and start from scratch. And I started to pursue two of my passions. One, which is coaching soccer. I am a licensed soccer coach. And at the same time, I started selling bread. I would sell bread to the parents of the kids I coach, and I started making more sourdough and using sourdough and really kind of just got lost in that baking world. 

Just similar to what happened to a lot of people during the pandemic, that happened to me five, six years ago. Six, six, seven years ago. I just got lost baking. I mean, I had an injury on my leg, I was—tore my Achilles tendon, so I couldn't do much. I was always home. And I was baking like crazy. And then, I started baking. My mom came over one day, and I baked her some pan de coco with the sourdough. And then, I posted it to Instagram. And then I made a blog, and then that all kind of spiraled into this whole thing that I'm doing. That one loaf of pan de coco, you know what I’m saying? It's so wild to think about if I didn't do that.

Because I was stuck. I was making baguettes and croissants and all that kind of thing over and over again, posting crumb shots and looking at crumb shots. I was doing that. And then when I stopped that, I was like, ‘Oh, this is so much better.’ Yeah. 

And then it sort of just opened my eyes into what baking really is and what Latin America offers in the baking world. And I was like, ‘Yo, this is the way because people don't know about it. And I would like to share what little I know with them.’ 

Alicia: And do you think that having been an accountant, does that help you as a baker?

Bryan: I wasn't a good accountant. [Laughter.] No, I’m just playing.

Being a CPA definitely helps me as a self-employed person. I know how to do my taxes and keep all my things as organized as possible. But in terms of being a baker, I mean, I'm assuming you mean because of the math or something like that.

Alicia: Math, yeah. [Laughs.]

Bryan: When I was an accountant, I used Excel spreadsheets. And as a baker, I use Excel spreadsheets. I don't do mental math. If you asked me a mental math problem right now, I would be like, ‘Ahhhhh,’ and then go into Excel and do it. 

But, no. I mean, I can't even front. I have to be good with numbers somehow to have got to do what I’ve got to do in that career. But with so much going on, though, it's hard to think about it, I guess. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Being a sel- employed person in regards to taxes sucks so freaking much that that must be wildly useful. [Laughs.]

Bryan: Yeah, that extra 15%, that 15.3% that we got to pay is absolutely bonkers. But hey, it is what it is. You can deduct half of it, so-

Alicia: Exactly, yeah. [Laughs.] I do.

Bryan: And actually, this is actually a tax one-on-one conversation, you guys, whoever’s listening. Look me up. It’s unofficial. I'm an inactive CPA. Don't sue me when you do your return, come back talking about ‘I heard Bryan Ford talkin’ ‘bout, so I did it.’ Hey, guys, inactive. In the state of Louisiana, not the state of New York. Don’t come after me when you mess up your tax returns, ’cause of some—[Laughter.]

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.

I mean, you were just talking about crumb pictures in the introduction to your book. You remind people that for centuries, people were feeding themselves bread without being obsessed with the crumb shots or hydration levels. They just made bread. It was part of their life, part of—yeah, survival.

And so, I wanted to ask how you turned kind of a more innate understanding and organic approach to baking into something accessible to an audience that is so obsessed with a very specific kind of perfect, especially when it comes to bread. Especially when it comes to baking. I was talking to—Well, I talk to bakers a lot, but talking about this idea that people are afraid of baking. How do you talk to an audience about that?

Bryan: I don't blame people for being afraid of baking, because it's—you can open up the most simple yeasted bread recipe, and the total time is still gonna be like three hours. And so, they're like, ‘What? Three hours? It’s just a loaf of bread. What? I don't understand.’ And then when you get into more complex levels of fermentation and different varieties of baking, you come into two- to three-day processes. Even though the actual physical working time is only a few minutes at a time, I think that off the bat will get anybody like, ‘Three days?’

You know what I’m saying? Because if I open up a cookbook for some risotto, that's gonna be done in like an hour, you know what I'm saying? 45 minutes. I opened up a cookbook to make a grilled chicken, this—Whatever.

But I think once people kind of get past—It's like ‘Yeah, it's gonna take an overnight situation. We're gonna let our dough ferment for four hours today, and we're gonna shape it. And then tomorrow, blah blah blah.’ And then I think once they kind of realize how little work it really is and how little ingredients you need. And you need three ingredients, which you can always have stocked in your kitchen. So once people realize that, I think that part of the fear factor goes away.

And then you enter into another part of the fear factor, which is kneading dough, handling dough, sticking to my hand, I don't—sticking to the countertop. And I'm trying to shape it and it's falling apart. I'm trying to do this and it's falling apart. I’m trying to bake it and it comes out flat. Why? ’Cause your oven’s not hot enough, the cast iron wasn't hot enough. Or it’s burning? Well, ’cause you didn't turn the temperature down after you loaded it, you know what I’m saying? Why is it so sticky? Probably added all the water at once. You should add it in slower increments. When do you add the salt, at the end of the mix or before the mix? You autolyse with the leaven or not. 

Yo, the stuff gets technical because it is definitely a craft. But it's also very simple. And I think when I wrote, when I write recipes, I try to keep it as straightforward as possible. ’Cause in reality, what it is is you're going to put something in a bowl, you're gonna mix it until there's no dry flour left, and then you're gonna let it sit there. I mean, I don't see what the problem is with articulating it that way. 

Some people get deep in the—Boy, they get deep in the game. And that's fine, because at the same time for people to truly learn, for those that really want to push forward in the craft of baking, they do need—Water temperature’s important. Flour temperature’s important. pH levels can be important. Everyone's got a different strategy. And I just want to appeal to people that are sitting at home, like, ‘Yo I want to make some dope bread today, and that’s it.’ Well, you just do this and this and that, and then you should have some dope bread. You got some issues, send me an email and we'll figure it out.

Alicia: Well, how do you keep inspired to create new recipes? Where does the creativity come from? How do you regenerate your creativity?

Bryan: I don't know. No, I'm not even joking. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, no, I know.

Bryan: To be, just be completely real with you right now, I'm having—I'm struggling with that. All I had was a blog at a certain point, so it was kind of easy to kind of pick and choose. Also at the beginning, I'm gonna put rustic low, country low, seeded low—a baguette, whatever, a brioche, a focaccia, some pizza dough. Again, falling into that traditional path. And then have the pan de coco, I’ve got the pan cubano on the blog. I have a rustic loaf with sorghum and quinoa, Indigenous strains of Latin America. 

When it was just a blog, it was kind of easy for me to shape shift. Then the book came, the first one. So, that's 35 recipes. So I kind of in, while writing that, I mean, I couldn’t—I didn't have the bandwidth to continue to create something that's free on the blog, and also—So I was kind of saving everything for the book.

Then this book comes out, and everything's cool. And then, literary agent’s like, ‘Yo, yo, yo.’ They want the second book already. We need to do the deal for the second book. So this is like three months after my first book publishes that all these publishers do a whole bidding war, blah blah blah. And then I end up with a very amazing publishing company, and now I'm working on a second book that's 150 recipes of only Latin American baking.

And then all the while of that, I have had my Patreon going since last—for over a year now, a year and a half. So, that right there takes recipes. Then I did my TV show with Magnolia Network. That right there takes creative juice. There's 10 episodes there, and had to brainstorm like 20 concepts to pitch to them. Ten of them made it. And of course, I'm doing—Well, I can't say.

And then, I started doing the podcast stuff with David Chang and them, which is really cool. Recipe Club. And that right there takes some time even though it's finding recipes to use in Recipe Club, or making my own recipes in Recipe Club. 

And so, what happens is I—a lot of days, I spend just getting overwhelmed and not knowing exactly how to tackle everything. I've also been doing work with Saveur Magazine doing, every other month, shooting them some recipes and stuff like that. And here's the thing. Cash is king, and when people are bringing—

All the while, it’s Bon Appétit Basically, Delish, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They've all hit me up and gotten recipes, boom, boom, boom, here and there. When I sit down and I'm faced with this task, ‘Ok, there's a bunch of paperwork that's not necessarily going to my audience for free. It's going into someone else's publication.’ I'm going to do that first. 

Then obviously, getting paid to make a cookbook, that's the biggest priority. And this one's not coming out for another couple years. I might be posting about medialunas, but ain’t nobody gonna see that recipe for a while. Gone are the days of old Artisan Bryan, when Artisan Bryan was pumping out, every week was pumping out a recipe. I would post something, and the recipe would be on the blog. You would be biting on it, feeling it, and my stuff would be moving forward. 

Now it's: I post about stuff, but there's no recipe. And then I'm like, maybe people are like, ‘Yo, this dude's tripping. He’s not eating the recipes he posts here.’ 

But anyway, that's long-winded. The short answer is it's just difficult to—The standards are high. The pressure is high. The stakes are high. I mean, the book is going to represent, is going to be something very special. Whether or not it's been done before is irrelevant. I just want to make the best possible representation for Latin American baking as possible. Breads, pastries, cookies, desserts, sourdough, not sourdough, yeasted. I mean, traditional. And the research that has to go behind—honestly, when I talk about it, I get stressed out. I'm like, ‘Am I good enough to do this? Have I done enough research to do this? Do I know what I'm talking about? Will these recipes work?’ 

To find the motivation, to have the creativity, it's evolved for me. It used to be simple. Now, it's very complex. My business is growing. I have a production company now with my partner, and we do TV stuff. We're doing podcast pitches. We're doing TV pitches. So I'm managing a couple of businesses, managing personal life, managing this and that. 

Gone are the days where I just wake up with nothing really stressing me out, just go in the kitchen and be like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna make some—I'm gonna make a chocolate coconut bread today. And I'm gonna type the whole recipe up and post it for free. And it's like, ‘Ah.’ That's just the real answer. I'm not gonna make up some stuff like, ‘Oh, I go in the backyard. And it’s like three, and a recipe comes to my mind and I type it out and it's perfect.’ Nope. It does not go down like that.

Alicia: No. 

Well, are you planning to travel for the next cookbook? And to research, or?

Bryan: Yeah, obviously that's been difficult. 

I did spend a month in Oaxaca. Valuable, a very look into Mexican bakery, baking. I had some ideas of going to Peru for a while. And then, they had a variant of COVID that seemed like it was weird. And they had their political stuff happening at the same time, and had a lot of people hit me up like, ‘Yo, don't go to Peru right now.’ 

And Peru’s very rich in baking. Peru's got really, really ridiculous baking culture. ’Cause I was living in New Orleans temporarily for six months. And my partner, I, we didn't know what to do. We were like, ‘Should we just say, ‘Screw it’ and just embark on some kind of travel and just see what happens? Or should we get back to New York on a more permanent basis and just kind of, settle down to start working more?’

And I think, right now, what's more important is the research behind what's happening, my ability to just have a consistent kitchen, consistent equipment, and try my best as possible to bang out as many recipes as I can. 

And the other thing is doing—I’m starting doing pop-ups here, kind of, in the same vein of the book. And I think that's been very helpful, because now it's not just me testing a recipe and then just eating it for breakfast. It's like, ‘I'm going to serve this to people. I'm going to service people in New York City. I'm going to collaborate with people who are running bakeries and restaurants here, so I need to make sure that what I'm making is delicious and that it works and that it's great.’ And that's definitely been helping me kind of move forward creatively.

But in terms of travel at some point, I mean, maybe next year. I mean, next month I'm going to Scotland to do some, to do something pretty dope unrelated to my book. But I think hopefully by February, March, April, some windows open up to get another good chunk. 

In the past before this book, I've been to several Latin American countries and kind of—I’m drawing from memory and my senses during those particular times for now. Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Colombia, just wherever I've been. Yeah, I went to Colombia and worked with this bakery ’cause I was doing bakery consulting. So I learned a lot about their baking culture already. I’ve kind of been there and I'm going to use that to my advantage. 

But obviously the dream is to hit every single country at some point and learn everything. But I've had to accept the fact that I'm never going to know everything, and if that's my standard, I'm going to drive myself crazy. So I'm coming up with ways to mitigate that expectation and say, ‘Hey, you know what, this is gonna be a cookbook—or baking book, whatever it's called. It's just gonna be a reflection on how you are perceiving Latin American baking.’ If I think it's going to be the end all be all encyclopedia of all time, that would take 50 years and I still wouldn't get it right.

Alicia: I mean, I'm going through that too with writing a book where I'm—Well, it's my first book, so I'm very much losing the forest for the trees and convincing myself that I'll never have an—that I'll never get it right. And it's really daunting. It's really a daunting process.

Bryan: I think that's step one. Step one is realizing that it's a daunting process. Once you realize the stress of what it could be, that's the danger zone. For me, I've stopped drinking coffee. I can't even drink coffee anymore. It has to be decaf. If I drink a real cup of coffee, I'll lose my mind.

So I kind of started to reach that danger zone where I was like, ‘Oh my God, this book is gonna be—it has to be the best of all time. It has to be the best baking book. It has to accurately represent every single Latin American culture and country, duh-duh-duh-duh.’ 

And then, as I'm testing some stuff and posting to Instagram, some fun videos of people—Venezuelans, you know what I'm saying. I made some amazing golfeados. And I didn't put enough cojita down. I didn’t do duh-duh-duh-duh. I messed around and put some walnuts in it, and they didn't like that. They were like, ‘Bro, you cannot not put walnuts in them joints.’ And I'm like, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ 

I made some pão de queijo, some Brazilian cheese bread. Man, Brazilians was all about it. But then, cats was coming in from different cities Iike, ‘Oh, in this city you make it like this’ and ‘In this city, you make it like this. We put potatoes in and we put parmesan in it, and we duh-duh-duh.’

And the same with the paozinho, which is like a little French bread. Some people call it a pan francés. Some people call it paozinho, and some people call it this. That's just one country. You got 50 cities that doing 50 different breads. That's when I was like, ‘You know what, B? I'm gonna pick one of them. I'm gonna pick one of them. And I'm gonna get it right, or two of them.’

Just like Mexico. In Oaxaca, you got 20 different types of baked goods that's different from Guadalajara, that’s different from this or from that. So I'm going to say, ‘Ok, Mexico, I'm going to pick what I know from Oaxaca, what I got what I know, from Jalisco, and pan de muerto and rosca de reyes. Get a core amount of things right and beautiful, and have the stories to back it up. ’Cause if I go chasing every single baked good in Mexico, that's 10 books.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, Puerto Rico is such a tiny archipelago, but the way people make things, the arguments will go on forever about literally everything. I mean, there's a point in trying to get things right but there's no point in trying to make everybody happy all the time, because it's just not gonna happen. 

Bryan: You're the author of the book, right? You are the author of the book. So once you realize what you want the book to be, that's gonna be the golden moment where you're like, ‘Ok, now I'm going to kick this into gear.’ 

With the first book, even though it only took me six months to write it, because it is a small publisher and they just—they were like, ‘This is the only window we got.’ And I was opening a bakery at the same time in Miami, and so there's a lot of stress. 

And yeah, at the beginning I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, ‘Am I gonna go more in New Orleans with this?’ I had some other ideas. And then I kind of was like, ‘I want to lean more into my Hispanic roots.’ Then I decided to just mash that stuff together. I was just like, ‘You know what? I'm just gonna do both. I'm just gonna put whatever I want into this book. Sometimes it’ll be some New Orleans flavor. Most of the time, it'll be Latin American.’

But of course, the publisher kind of pushed back. I still had to get pita bread, challah, focaccia. So I had to put some of those traditional European components in there. Which is fine, they're delicious. But now this go-around, I'm—I've evolved. None of that stuff. I mean, obviously, I'm going to talk about the roots of baking. There's obviously European influence in a lot of the world. But that's the extent that it will be.

Alicia: And I mean, you mentioned making a bread of sorghum and quinoa. How much are you working with alternative flours? I mean, not necessarily alternative. More ancient grains, stuff that's indigenous to the Americas? How is that? Why is that important for you?

Bryan: Look, it's a tricky question for me, because most bakeries in Latin America are just using some poor quality roller mill, probably white flour. Or just very generic forms of flour. And obviously, there's a lot of grains like amaranth and corn, quinoa, rice, sorghum, that are indigenous. In the Andes, there's a ton of grains out there, right? 

But if I make a baking book that's supposed to be accessible, then if I go crazy and just only use these indigenous grains, and this and that, and heirloom grains—I want people to bake from this book for a long time. I want regular moms and dads and families to be able to open this book up and be like, ‘Yeah, we're gonna make mallorcas today for dinner.’ They make mallorcas, and they make pan de queso. 

I'm still working on it. I don't really have an answer. ’Cause I get torn between just going full out. Bringing back the grains and da, da, da, and making it a recipe for pan de coco that’s just full of amaranth and this and that. But I'm going back and forth and what on how exactly I want to incorporate them into a recipe for themselves. 

I definitely think for the pop-ups that I'm doing here, just depending on who I'm working with, what bakery I'm working with, what flours we can access. I'm going to be using as much of that stuff as possible. I'm going to be doing a pan de coco that's baked in a banana leaf that has, that—I'm going in, but I'm not going to write a recipe that's like, ‘Alright, now go to a supermarket and get a banana leaf. In Illinois, they're going to be like, ‘Where do I get a banana leaf? I can’t make this recipe. I’m not gonna make this recipe. I can’t find a banana leaf. I'm not gonna bake this bread.’ It's hard enough for them to find real coconut. You got to find the canned stuff in the store. 

So it's a balance, and I'm just working on that.

Alicia: Right.

Well, I saw that you went on a pizza crawl in New York. Yeah, you're doing a lot of pizza stuff. What is it about pizza that you're, that's interesting. And the book has pizza recipes too. [Laughs.]

Bryan: Yeah, it does. Masa pizza or something like that.

First of all, the pizza crawl was the best. I linked up with this amazing artist, Kr3wcial in New Orleans. And we made a song and a music video. It’s called Homeslice. Make sure you send your people that way, ’cause it's so fun. This guy had a song about eating pizza. I found out about. I was like, ‘Yo, I'm a baker. Blah, blah, blah.’ Pull up on his crew, made them some woodfired pizza. They loved it. And I was like, ‘Let’s do a remix to the song. Let's make a music video.’ So my production company, Flaky Biscuit, we made the music video and it was just a blast. 

So I moved out to New York. And then Kr3w comes, he flies into New York to to release the song. And I was like, ‘Yeah, it would be fun if we just went around the city and ate pizza and just get on our Instagram and just, to kind of help promote the music.’ And so, we just had a blast doing that. 

And the answer is simple. Pizza is delicious. Pizza is amazing. It is delicious. It is a very American thing. It's just spectacular. I don't know what else to say.

Here's the thing that's funny too, because like my work is all about pushing Latin America forward and our baking and our cooking. But I love pizza. I ain't giving that one up. I'm giving up croissants, baguettes, and all that crap. Y’all can have that. Y'all can keep that. Y’all can keep all that. But I will not relinquish pizza from my arsenal. 

Here's the thing. You could pull up on anyone and make them pizza and you would become friends, change their lives. ‘Yo, I'm having, throwing a pizza party. I'm making pizza.’ Yeah, I’m there. Bet. If it’s like, ‘Hey, I’m making arroz con pollo,’ ‘Oh, I think I have something to do. I don't know if I can make it.’ ‘Hey, I'm making pizza.’ ‘Yo, I’m there, bro. I’m there.’ [Laughter.] That’s more of a joke, but it's true though. I'll never give it up, man. I just think pizza’s so fun. It's just such a great way to build community and enjoy food.

Alicia: I'm looking to get one of those ovens for our patio so that I, that we can get a little more into making pizza ‘cause the oven, it doesn't get hot enough. But no, it's funny. I eat pizza because I'm from New York, so I eat pizza in every city I go to just to see what it's like. Even if it sucks, I just—[Laughs.]

Bryan: Well, and that's the other thing, that I found that you can find good pizza pretty much anywhere Yeah, there are cities that don't have much pizza if any, but you can find—I'm very not controversial. Bagels, pizza, I get New York has a thing but dog, there is great bagels and great pizza everywhere. It's not that serious. It's a piece of bread. It’s literally a piece of bread. It's bread. Every country, every culture has bread and you can replicate that bread anywhere in some form.

And there's this thing in Guadalajara, they make birote. And some people only believe birote can be made there and if it's not made in that specific city, then it's not birote so they import it to L.A. I'm like, ‘Guys, you can definitely remake it. It is a piece of bread.’ It’s not that critical. But that’s just how I feel.

I've had pizza in so many places. Yo, I was in Italy. I was in Italy in this coastal town. They gave me a pizza with boiled eggs, french fries and mayonnaise and they said that was their town specialty. And it was delicious. But I'll tell you what. If somebody in Tennessee was making that same pizza, people would be like, ‘That’s not pizza, that's gross.’ How is that not pizza? An Italian cat made it for me. It’s definitely pizza. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Yeah, I have a friend in San Juan who’s a baker, a great baker. And he says that Santo Domingo has great pizza. So I'm desperate to go eat it. Yeah. [Laughs.] 

Well, for you—Yeah.

 Bryan: I will say—Oh no. Nevermind.

Alicia: You go, you go. No, say it. Say it.

Bryan: No, I was gonna say something that—it's not even right. Just if you're in Oaxaca, don't get pizza. That's all I’ll say.

Alicia: Ohhh. Ok. 

Well, for you, is baking a political act?

Bryan: Yeah.

I mean, everything is these days. You walk outside and look at a tree and it's a political act. Can’t escape. It's hard to escape it, especially when someone like me who relies on using social media and using a platform and all this kind of thing to reach several 100,000-whatever people. I think it goes beyond just-

That's the other thing. Just having a blog and posting recipes is fun. But what I'm doing now has kind of gone, transcended that. It's morphed into more than just those recipes. That's why it becomes more difficult. And everything's about kind of having that voice and using it for the right reasons. 

And some people use their platforms very, very rigorously to tackle every single issue that's current. Every day that there's a new issue. Some people just, they're all about it. And hey. Hat’s off, man, you know what I’m saying? If you have the energy to put yourself through that, to deal with the DMs you get, to deal with the comments you get that are going to be hateful, that are going to be mean, that are going to be nasty. Do your thing. 

I don't particularly do well with getting too crazy about how I interact on social media. I obviously have made very bold statements before. I've obviously kind of talked about certain things. I mostly try to stay in my lane. I'll repost things that I believe people should see regardless of anything. I'll repost some of my great friends who are women who have an issue with this Texas situation. I got an issue with that stuff too. You know what I'm saying? But is that my story to come out and really talk about? I don't know, but I'm gonna repost their stories because I believe what they're saying is correct. And if my followers don't like that, then well.

But I'm not going to do this every day. ‘Cause every day there's a new issue political or religious, or some new laws coming in that I don't agree with every single day. I could post that stuff, but then on top of already just trying to keep my business afloat I'm going to be dealing with people messaging me, people unfollowing me, people talking junk. And I'm like, ‘I don't need that energy specifically in my work.’ Social media is my workplace. And I'm trying my best to just keep it that way. 

But when the time comes, I—last summer, all the activism for Black lives. Of course I'm in the center of that, because every publication’s reaching out to me to get a story out of me. And so I'm like, ‘I have no choice but to talk.’

Maybe I should do better. Because I think with regards to that Texas issue, for example, I got a couple comments from friends that were like, ‘Hey, Bryan, thanks for reposting that. We need more men to speak up about this.’ And I was like, ‘Mmm, interesting.’ I didn't realize. And then it's like, ‘Well then, maybe I should be speaking out more.’ So it becomes a game to play—not a game. I didn’t mean to say a game. But it becomes a thing where it's like, ‘How do I balance being able to do this for every thing that I believe in?.’ hoping that I can kind of-

And I guess, maybe I shouldn't care about who follows me. And that’s another issue. It's like, ‘Why do I even care about the whole follower’s stuff?’ It's a lot. And I wasn't even really talking about—but your question was making social media, and-

But let me just try to quickly say yeah, obviously, baking, the economics behind it, decolonizing food systems and trying to figure out a way to use baking as a vessel to push us forward. Obviously, it's political in nature. I’m gonna try to just keep doing me, having fun with it and attacking issues as I can when I feel I'm saying something relevant or doing something correct. It’s—I don't want to just spout off stuff every day without really thinking about it. Really think about what I say and just, and then if I want to say something I'll say it. But sometimes cats just, every day like, ‘Duh-duh-duh-duh.’ I’m like, ‘Whoah-whoah-whoah-whoah.’ Overload.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.] 

No, I struggle with that too. And I think people don't realize what you're in, what you could be inviting into your mind by constantly, and then you're always leaving something out, and it's safer to try and figure out what the hell is going on before—

Yeah, I try to make everything part of my work. Social media for me is not the space for a political statement necessarily. But it's hard, because some people think it is. And for some people, it is. But for me, my work is where I say what I want to say.

Bryan: 1,000% 

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for taking the time out today.

Bryan: Of course. This is great. I appreciate it. And I'll talk to you soon. Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Later.

Bryan: Cool. Bye.

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