From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy

Kevin Vaughn started his bilingual weekly newsletter and monthly zine Matambre early on in the onslaught of the pandemic. For me, it has become indispensable reading on the ways in which various small restaurants in Buenos Aires and food workers in the country are coping with crisis, as well as reimagining the future. While I’ve only been to Buenos Aires once and quite briefly, I loved the city on the surface but felt that I wasn’t able to quite dig in—Vaughn’s writing proves that feeling was correct. There is much more to Argentina than steak and the rather racist notion that it is more European than Latin American, and I appreciate the glimpse his writing gives.

Vaughn isn’t Argentine. He grew up in California. We talked about how he ended up in Buenos Aires, what the food scene is like, and how it feels to publish independently. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Kevin. Thanks so much for coming on.

Kevin: Hi, [exaggerated Spanish accent] Alicia, thank you for having me.

Alicia: Thank you for calling me that. So many people call me Alice. 

Kevin: [Laughs.] Alicia. 

Alicia: I know, and it makes me so upset. 

And it’s just like, ‘Well, you're from the United States, so obviously your name's just Alice.’ It's like, ‘Well,’ ’cause I say my name Alicia, so that's a more difficult — I guess. But I'll take Alicia any day.

Kevin: No one can say — pronounce my name either. I'm always like, ‘Kebin. K.’  No one can pronounce my last name, either. 

Alicia: Yeah, for sure. Absolutely not. [Laughs.] The trials and tribulations of—

Kevin: ‘Why do you have a g in your name?’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.]  —of being a gringo in Latin America. 

Kevin: Yeah. Totally.

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

Kevin: This is my favorite question that you ask. I love hearing people's responses to this. 

I'm from California. I grew up in the Central Valley, in the San Joaquin Valley, which is actually where I think a lot of the United States gets their food from. 

So, I grew up in a really small town. Everyone kind of makes fun of me because I pronounce it the okie way even though I speak fluent Spanish, so it's Los Banos, which is a really rural, small farm town. The identity of the town is really wrapped into farming. I actually did 4-H and FFA.

And the town historically was sort of built by Basque people and Portuguese people, a lot of people from the Azores. Lot of people from Lisbon, and those are kind of the old families. And as I grew up, there was a lot of immigration from Mexico and from Central America. And so when we ate out, those were — which we ate out of the house quite a bit. Those are sort of the foods that we were surrounded with. 

A lot of fast food. My mom worked and was in charge of feeding us. And so I remember eating a lot of McDonald’s, and Taco Bell, and pizza on Fridays and Chinese food on Sunday. I think those are kind of my strongest memories, are eating out and a lot of fast food. 

My mom, she was a cook, or she liked to cook. She kind of modeled herself, I think, around a lot of recipes by Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, so very typical white people food was what we ate at home. I remember eating lots of spaghetti and a lot of roast meats, a lot of turkey and chicken. 

I was always a little bit picky. Mexican food was around, and at school actually a lot of kids in my class I remember in elementary school were — came from Mexico. Those are the foods that they brought to school, and I remember eating a lot of hot Cheetos and drinking horchata — Do you know what Lucas is? 

Alicia: No.

Kevin: It's kind of a really spicy tajín, so it's — I just remember people bringing these bags that were just spicy chili and dried lemon and salt. I mean, they're like pillars of Mexican cuisine, right? And you just lick your finger and dip it in and suck on this hot chili.

At home it was very, very white people food, but sort of once I left the home there was this curiosity. And I was always really attracted to Mexican flavors. My grandfather was also a really good cook, and he was the person that that sort of taught me a love for food. He was from California, but all of his family was from Texas. So, that was a lot of sort of very southern hospitality type foods. I remember a lot of fried chicken, and dumplings, and pies and cookies, and things like that. So, a bunch of different things. 

Yeah, like I said, a lot of white people food at home, but I was always really curious about what everyone else in town was eating.

Alicia: Right. 

So, how did you end up in Buenos Aires, first? And then also, how did you start writing about food? Which came first for you?

Kevin: I came here to study abroad, initially, my junior year of college. And I studied a major that was an interdisciplinary between political science and economics, but there was a really big language emphasis. And so I chose Spanish. And you had to study abroad basically to graduate on time. Buenos Aires was just chosen on a whim, because the program offered either Barcelona or Buenos Aires and everyone was going to Barcelona, so that made Buenos Aires really attractive by default. And so I came here.

I didn't know anything about Argentina before I came. I think the semester before I came, I took a Latin American Studies class, but it was mostly about Central America. I don't really remember talking very much about the Southern Cone. And so I came here to study, and that was like a year-long program. I went home for my senior year of school. There was something that the city in Argentina — and I traveled around Argentina for like six weeks — there was just like this thing that was — but I still can't quite describe what it was, that was pulling me back.

Sometimes, I think if I would have studied abroad in, I don't know, Moscow or Tokyo, or any other place, maybe just sort of the time in my life, I would have developed a connection with any of those places. 

But after school, I went home and worked for a year, and then came back here. And my intention actually was I thought I was going to be a human rights lawyer. That was my plan. And at the University of Buenos Aires, there's a really great human rights program that I was going to sort of do like pre-law. And then study to get into law school, and there's just a lot of red tape around that. And so, I had to get a job. 

And I started working for a bilingual culture website. And that's when I started kind of seeing the food scene. The way that I was making friends at this time was I was just — it was the very first time I'd ever lived alone — completely by myself. And so, the way I was making friends was I would just cook and invite people over to eat. And my house kind of became the space where all of our friends with — all my friends come over to socialize. And in the wintertime, I remember making lots of soups. In the summertime, we would barbecue a lot. I had a barbecue built into my balcony. 

And that turned into MASA, which was a closed-door restaurant that I ran, which is the Cuban commodores — are they called commodores — where they're these restaurants that are run out of private homes. So, cooking started first. 

And in one of those very first meals, this woman came by herself. And it was a meal that was where you’re always going to share a table. She was alone. It was mostly couples that would come. And she just kept on popping her head into the kitchen, and asking me questions about where I was from and what I was making. And we hit it off, and she had this — at the time this personal blog that she was trying to turn into a website about Buenos Aires. And so she invited me to contribute recipes. And that turned into writing about restaurants. 

I mean, it started very much as a hobby. As I kind of got more into cooking and being actually like in restaurants, in services with this pop-up, became more curious about going back to my roots with what I studied, which was very social justice, and political science, and economics, and trying to insert that into writing. So, maybe that's been six years. I kind of hit the ground running and was pitching a lot. It's really hard to be a freelancer and it's really hard to be a freelancer from a foreign country if you don't have a lot of bylines. I've written locally a lot with sort of being able to place a store every once in a while that went a little bit deeper than the narrative that's typically told here.

Alicia: Right.

And, well, I mean, you're talking about what your — what you studied, and then you're doing a kind of a supper club in your house. How did you decide to major in that and study that?

Kevin: At school, I actually entered as a film major. And, I think my sophomore year, I had to take a media theory class. And that just totally changed, I think, the course of my life, that class, because it was really — I always looked at media and film as a purely recreational thing. And this was the first class, the first experience where I was reading theory, and philosophy, and kind of seeing media as a reflection of society, and vice versa. And that just is fascinating to me, to kind of see the intersectionality of things and to kind of begin to not take things at face value. 

That was very natural for me, because very quickly in studying film, I realized I wasn't super interested in production. I was really interested in film history and film theory. So, kind of shifting to analyzing anthropology, and economics, and politics, that was a very, very natural shift. And media was always something that was really fascinating by it, especially because I've always been a writer. And I've always been a reader, and watched film, and listened to music. Yeah, that was pretty organic.

Alicia: Right.

Did you learn how to cook by cooking, or—?

Kevin: So, I was always really curious about all these foods that I was surrounded by. But I was a little bit picky, very picky. 

That in-between year between graduating from school and moving here, my grandfather was sort of reaching the end of his life. He was getting sicker. And so, I decided that I didn't know for how long I was going to be here. But I knew that if I was here for more than a year, it was likely the — that he had passed away. 

And so, I moved in with my grandmother and my grandfather, and my grandmother — this was his third wife, she was a bit younger, so she still worked. She wasn't retired yet. And so, she was out of the home. And she commuted into the Bay Area and would stay there.

I would work during the day. I had like three jobs at that time. And when I didn't have a night shift, I would come home from my job — my day job. And my grandfather, his very first job was in a military kitchen during World War II. His introduction into cooking, besides his kind of formation in the southern cooking of his family, was making food for two, three, four hundred really hungry soldiers. And so the way that he cooked was always very generous in size, and whether he was eating alone, he was always making — there was like seven things on the table. 

I was still kind of just beginning to become really curious about food, and kind of breaking down my picky barriers and just eating whatever was in front of me. And he didn't have any patience for that. It was like, ‘The food that I made is what's on the table, and you better eat it.’ 

And I would come home from work, and he would — he always decided what he wanted to eat the day of. And so I would get home, and there'd be a recipe on the table and a very, very specific grocery list. I remember one of the meals that we cooked a lot that was like fried pork chops with fried apples. And so, he was very specific about what kind of graham crackers had to be purchased to bread the pork chops. And he knew the name of the butcher, and I’d have to ask John to cut this specific — an inch exactly on the pork chops. And if we were getting apples it had to be a Granny Smith and it had to be this color and I needed to smell — he was very, very specific.

That was how I learned to cook, was we would sit in his kitchen. And he'd have a beer, and I'd make a Rob Roy. And he would instruct from the dining room table, how to cook and chop and the proper way to heat the pan and when to know when to throw it in, when to know to take it out, when to know when to flip it. So, that was my cooking school.

And that was also, I think, the moment where I really began to value the way people come together inside of a kitchen when a meal is being made. And the intimacy that's shared around a dining room table, and kind of that immediate gratification of cooking something and people enjoying it. Like I said, when I came to Buenos Aires, and that's how I made friends. I'd really kind of become addicted to that setting that happened every single day.

Alicia: I'm really fascinated by Argentina, and I always have been. And the reason I was super excited to go to Buenos Aires was just to see what it was like, because I just read so many novels and stories by writers from there. 

And then living in Puerto Rico, it's funny because it's — people will be like, ‘Oh, that's an Argentinian’ and they'll — by the way they speak Spanish, of course — but also by just the vibe, and just this nervousness about — it might be offensive to assume someone is Argentinian. Because of the connotations of what it is to be an Argentinian. 

In your piece that you wrote about the Netflix Street Food episode about the city, you took it to task for this colonial perspective. But I also think that colonial perspective, it also kind of influences how the rest of Latin America views Argentina in terms of the — and I think it was evident in — there was the person who is a talking head who was like, ‘This is the Paris of Latin America, we're more European than we are Latin American, etc.’ It's this weird mix, I think, of perspectives on Argentina. 

You live there. And so, how have you come to understand the city in the way that you do, which is so far removed from that ‘We're European. We're not Latin American’ refrain. And how is your understanding of the city changed over the time you've lived there?

Kevin: So, I've been here for 10 years.

I've been thinking about that term ‘Paris of South America’ a lot lately. Partly because of that article that I wrote. And I remember when I was deciding to study abroad here in the brochures, that was definitely sort of what was sold to us. 

And I remember coming here for the program and the program directors were like, ‘Only stay in this neighborhood. Don't go into this neighborhood because it's dangerous, or because there's nothing there worthwhile to see.’ And I was studying, and I was living in a homestay that was in Belgrano, which is on the far northwest side of the city, very upper-class and very much old money, very white looking. 

And maybe two or three days out of the week, I would volunteer on the polar opposite of the city, in the southeastern neighborhood called La Boca. And the way that Buenos Aires is set up, is that as you go from north to south, pretty much in all cases goes from these very wealthy upper class, into sort of this kind of white collar upper middle class, into this very, very middle class neighborhoods, until you reach these very blue collar, kind of marginalized spaces. If you're on the bus, and you're going from one end to the city to the other, it's really, really obvious to see that distribution of economic capital, and social and cultural capital. 

And so, from the very beginning of my time here, I never really bought into that idea of ‘this is a European space. This is the Paris of South America.’

And I remember a really formative moment in understanding the why, why that exists, why that idea is sold, is at the end of that study abroad we went to the Iguazu Falls for a long weekend. On the last day, they took us to this reserve, like this Native community. And they were showing us around where they lived. It felt like such a zoo exhibit. It felt this really ingenuine show. And I felt super uncomfortable, through this whole tour. 

And at the very end of the tour, we were greeted by all of the children of that community who were in what I assume is festive dress, and they sang and they danced. And at the end the guide is like, ‘Ok, guys, you can take pictures.’ I've always really been into photography. I really like portraiture. I was feeling a little bit uncomfortable. Should I take a picture? Should I not? But all these other people from my group just got up, and they started taking pictures in front of the kids with peace signs, or throwing their arms around the kids. Again, an exhibit of some sort. 

And that was this big moment for me to really see that negation of what it means to be Brown or what that means — what it means to be Latin, and it was so — that example is so in your face, because Buenos Aires and Argentina, the country, is — we're told there's no native people here when, of course, there were native communities here and there are various kind of military

strikes to kill off these people. There were Black slaves that were tossed into the War of the Triple Alliance on to the front lines, and were mostly killed off. 

And all of that story is totally erased. And well, what we are told is kind of the story of — we're talking — we talk a lot about kind of colonized narratives, and taking over and co-opting narratives. 

And I think the really unique thing about Argentina is not only is it a colonized narrative, but it's the narrative of the colonizer. Because if you really start to study the history of Argentina, that phrase, the ‘Paris of South America,’ what it's rooted in is the pillage of land in Argentina, Argentina's economy has always been centered around agro-exportation. When that land was taken from the Native people who lived here, and monetized, and created at the time, at the turn of the 20th century, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that was all on the backs of these native people who were killed. 

And so all of that wealth was used to build Buenos Aires. And it was a total mark of colonization because it was this aspiration of being European. And so, there's a lot of buildings in that historic part of the city that don't just mimic French architecture. Actually, there are buildings, full-on blueprints, that were stolen from buildings in Paris. I mean, it was very consciously built to create this culture and the society that in every single way demonstrated this separation of Europeanness, and whiteness, and sophistication, and all of these things that are part of the white supremacist fantasy to dominate what it means to be Latinx. 

Once I started really understanding the nuance of that and the history behind that, and when I came back to — as I've lived through the city, I've — on a personal level, as a resident of the city — very consciously sought out other spaces, and other communities, and tried to get to know the real diversity of this city. 

And part of that is also working in kitchens in an industry that globally is very precarious. And the people who are working behind closed doors in these kitchens are generally not white. A lot of them are like Brown-bodied people from — with ancestry from other parts of Latin America. I was always surrounded by the people who are actually in the street, on the ground, who are — who make up Argentina. So, I feel like I've been a part of those communities in a way. This idea of whiteness and European, it’s just — it doesn't compute to me, ’cause it's not the city I live in and the people I surround myself with.

Alicia: And so, I mean, as you're explaining, you have this very different vision of your city than you — is sold to outsiders. And that sort of seems to be what you're bringing to Matambre. And so, what is your methodology for producing it, and also what is it that you hope to achieve?

Kevin: When I started taking writing more seriously, and moving — trying to move away from restaurant review, and trying to move more into reported stories. I think I spent the better half of 2016 and 2017, really, really chasing stories, and trying to add nuance, and humanity, and diversity to the story. 

And as I was pitching, I had some really great experiences with a handful of editors, mostly from Munchies, Remezcla kind of people at the time that were on very kind of alternative tips in terms of their food and writing coverage. 

But the bulk of the stories that I was pitching, I just — I wasn't getting any responses, at all. And there was one story in particular, where I went back to Misiones, back to Iguazu Falls. And I spent about two weeks traveling around the entire region, because there was, at the time, this — a lot of, kind of conversations in the Buenos Aires food world about what is Argentine cuisine — how, what is this — how to reconcile between immigrant culture and what was already here. And so, there was a lot of this kind of talk about rescuing native plants and incorporating food that came from other Latin communities and indigenous communities. 

So, I went to Misiones, because that is the region that is the most biodiverse and it's a region where there still are Guarani and Indigenous communities. And I was pitching this story, and it was about biodiversity, it was about sustainability, it was about classism, it was about this wealth gap disparity about these mostly European farmers who had just totally taken the land away from the people who lived there before and yerba mate, which is what's mostly grown there. It only grows in the Misiones. All the biodiversity has been taken over by yerba mate plantations.

And it was just this really rich, beautiful story. And I pitched and pitched and no one responded. I finally got this response from this editor saying, ‘This a really interesting story, but it doesn't fit into the Argentine narrative. I don't think that our readership would get it.’ And that was this moment — I was like, ‘Ok, I'm not getting responses, not because the stories are bad, but because there's this idea of a simple story and what our narrative is allowed to be, what is allowed to be considered Argentine, what isn't.’

And so I kind of retreated and was writing a lot locally. When the pandemic happened, it was — all these ideas were still floating around in my head, obviously. And Matambre, for me, is kind of — I was never — I wasn't being given the space to tell these stories and to raise up these voices. And so, Matambre for me is that. If editors aren't going to give me the space, I'm just going to take it up myself. 

That's the idea behind Matambre, is take up space. It’s become this project that I think that what I'm doing, what it's evolving into is asking questions around power structures, and how power structures are built around privilege, and talking about them as a means of deconstructing and rebuilding. 

Part of that is being really self reflective and recognizing one, the power and the privilege that we as writers have, because we have — at the end of the day, our articles are our written word, and so it's the way we decide to frame and edit, and the parts of the story we decide to tell and the parts of the stories we don't, and sort of recognizing the mechanisms of that. And also understanding who I am, which is a white, cis-gendered male from the United States who lives a very upper class quality of life in a country where that's not the reality for most people. 

And so, I want to have these conversations but a lot of times — obviously, sustainability, kind of more environmental questions are things that I can relate to in real ways. But as I'm having conversations about labor rights, about gender equity, about trans culturalism, about the trans community — all these things that don't touch me personally, that I can empathize with them, I can understand them theoretically, but I can never live those experiences. 

As I'm seeking people out, I'm — I ask myself two questions. One, by telling this story, am I having a positive impact? Or am I folding into these structures of power that I want to break down? And in order to do that, I'm asking myself, ‘When I contact this person, am I being invited into the — into their space, or am I demanding to take it up? Am I demanding them to tell me something that-’ in some cases, it's a lot of emotional labor.

I'm very conscientious, and have been really surprised by where a lot of the interviews go because — when I talked to Gloria del Fogón, and it was a really great example of this. I went to talk to her about some art project that she was working on. And we sat down and she started talking to me about what it was like to be in — a Brown immigrant woman trying to exist in this society, in the restaurant world. 

And that was her choice. I was just there. I was just listening. And I was trying to act more as a microphone than anything else. And that’s also why doing interviews was really important to me, that the format take on an interview format, so that I'm not editing these people's realities. 

It's about giving a voice and trying to decenter myself as a writer, and just kind of act as this platform for people. Every time I sit down for an interview, the conversation goes to a place that I did not expect it to go at all, which has been just so beautiful.

Alicia: And it shows, in the final product, too, that it's very organic and very reciprocal in terms of how the conversations evolve while you're doing that.

I didn't give you this question, but since you were talking about kind of how living in Buenos Aires, you're still beholden if you want to write for bigger English language outlets, to how Argentina is perceived from the outside. I guess because I wrote about awards, and in particular the James Beard awards, which are for writing that's broadly available to a U.S. audience, I guess is how they define it. 

And both of us, I guess, are self publishing or independent media creators. So, this idea of how do you define success for yourself, and how do define, I don't know, your place in the world when you're not kind of going after the same accolades or same bylines as people — as we were kind of brought up to understand as being markers of significance for ourselves. Have you thought about this? How are you defining what you want, if you're not going to necessarily be going after all of these ready — made markers?

Kevin: I've definitely shifted my goals in terms of what spaces I want to be printed in. And so, I still want to write for U.S. or foreign publications, because I think it is important that those audiences start allowing these spaces. 

Not just Argentina, it's the entire world. Whatever is considered other. I don't think that Argentina and the Argentina narrative is sold as unique in that respect. So, I am going to continue fighting for that, but I think the — that has to happen in other spaces.

And there's a lot of really great people that I hope to be writing for at some point. I'm reading Whetstone, and Vittles, and I just finished a piece for Life and Thyme that's coming out on Thursday. And really kind of seeking out those spaces. 

Because the other part of this is as I'm speaking with a lot of people, I'm kind of realizing that'll — not realizing things that are new, but really confirming to me this idea that these changes — nothing's going to trickle down from the top. The top is always going to be motivated by capitalism, and economy, and algorithms, and all of those things. It's just following the current, and this kind of different type of storytelling is really going to come from the base, and maybe then the top will understand.

But to answer your question more specifically, in terms of what — what would be successful for me, I'm already starting to see this little community begin to form from Matambre. There's cooks that have appeared in the magazine that are — that didn't know one another, that are starting to connect with one another because Americano and Shade — that are, they're both trying to work towards composting. And they're both doing that same thing. So, they linked up with one another, and they're helping each other and I'm seeing a lot of little things like that. 

And then with Gloria, she was working on this project where her and her partner, Damien, were going out onto the streets, and finding people who are living in the streets. And there's a lot of soup kitchens and things like that here. But those are soups and very impersonal foods, and there's not a lot of contact between who's cooking your food and who's eating it. And you don't get to sit down anywhere, they just hand you a tuper and you kind of go off and eat wherever. And so they started going out and speaking with people who are living in the street and forming relationships, getting to know their names, what their circumstances were, and asking, ‘If you could choose a meal, what would you want to be — what would you want to eat?’

So, they started doing this project where they were cooking food that they were told, like, ‘This is what I want. I want a milanesa sandwich. I want a pastel de papa,’ or whatever it is. And so I kind of piggybacked on that idea, and joined them with another baker. 

And part of the money that I make every month through Matambre, 10% of that goes to this project that we're building together, where — we linked up with this organization called AMMAR. And that is a syndicate that works with sex workers, particularly from the trans community and particularly from a trans immigrant community, a lot of women from Peru. And they have different centers located all over the city. And we're working with one in Constitución, which is a really stigmatized area of the city, really kind of a forgotten area of the city. 

When we form this relationship with them — like I said, we were very — the way I do with my interviews, we're very cognizant of being like, ‘We're not going to force anything here. We're here. We want to cook for you, we're-’ and we are available to be more involved than that in whatever way they want to receive us. 

And so together with the money that I donated, which was, not that much, we were able to collect a ton of other donations. And we cooked for 150 people on Thursday, last Thursday. And with our second event, we've already been able to generate enough talk in our immediate communities, where all of the meat for the next event is covered by a butcher shop. They're going to donate everything. This organic vegetable producer is providing all of our vegetables for us. We're doing these raffles where different people that I've been talking to donated stuff to the — to raise money. 

And so that, to me, trying to figure out how journalism and storytelling and the sort of, kind of, social justice storytelling can actually translate into something real. And not that I think journalism is not real, but something that's — you can grab, that you can hold on to. 

And so, that to me, that is my goal in trying to look at this from a really interdisciplinary, really holistic way. And just with one event, we're already seeing this — all these connections are being formed, which has been really, really cool.

Alicia: That's amazing. That's awesome. Are you gonna write about it — not to make it all a big, circular thing. But like, are you gonna write about that?

Kevin: So, one of the women that came, we — this bar gave us their kitchen for the afternoon. And it was our first event, so we were running behind. None of us are used to cooking in that kind of a volume. And so the coordinator, Monica, she is the one that we've been speaking directly with. And she came to get the food. 

And this woman, Mia, who was at the very first meeting with us when we left — ’cause we were kind of like ‘Ok, what kind of food would you like to eat?’ And they were a little shy. They didn't really want to tell ud. And then I was like, ‘Well, you guys are all from Peru. Would you like some sort of Peruvian food?’ And then the conversation just went crazy after that. 

And this woman, Mia, just started telling us all about all these foods that she knew how to cook because she's from the Amazon part of Peru, and her parents were food vendors. And so she knows how to make cecina, and all these different soups, and braised meats, and things like that. And so when we left that meeting, I was like, ‘She's a cook. She knows what she's doing. This girl, she's got — she's on top of her stuff.’

And she just showed up to come pick up the food, and we were running behind and she was like, ‘Ok, let me help. I want to learn. I wanna know what you're doing.’ And so, we developed this exchange. And I told her that I would really like to pay her to give me some sort of class, or do some sort of food exchange, or I can teach her how to make Mexican food and she can teach me how to make her food. And I would like to eventually do a story with her. 

But, like I said before, it's — I want to make sure that it's genuine, and I want to make sure that it's sincere, and that she feels comfortable and safe to share that story with me, and share that part of herself with someone who is completely different from her in every single aspect. 

But yeah, I mean, I'm totally fanboying over the idea of being able to write a story ‘bout that.

Alicia: That's so cool. So, for you, is cooking a political act?

Kevin: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, has anyone ever said no in these interviews?

I'm gonna keep talking. Yeah, I mean, everything about cooking, but food in general is a political act to me. I mean, every single part of it. Gloria said something really that stuck with me, which was that food has the power to dignify or humiliate. And she was sort of referencing the people who were eating, the diner, but I think that goes to everyone. That the person in the field that's picking vegetables, the person in the kitchen that's preparing it, the person who's eating it, food is everything. It represents everything: politics, economics, social issues. I don't think that there's any way to separate food and cooking from politics at all.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for coming on.

Kevin: Thank you for having me.

I want to say, you have been so generous and so supportive of this project, and I don't think the — especially the Netflix piece when you shared it, was shared by a lot of people, but it really kind of took off. And I'm really appreciative of your support, your generosity, even though we have never met each other in real life. I mean, you've just been so, so cool, and it's really sort of — it's been very helpful, and I appreciate it a lot.

Alicia: Aww, thank you. 

I think it's funny because — well, of course I love your work. So, obviously, I've been sharing it, etc., etc., and it's been so useful and interesting to me to read about all these stories that are — things that are happening in Buenos Aires that you're not hearing about. So, it's been absolutely enriching and wonderful. 

But also, I think it's funny. This is the first time I'm hearing your voice, and I definitely expected you to be gruffer, I think. And obviously people hear my voice if they care to hear my voice, ’cause I'm — I host this every week. But I also feel people might be surprised that I'm not, I don't know, mean, or more wacky, or something. I don’t know.

Kevin: I don't want to bite people's heads off, but it's — have you ever seen the movie Network?

Alicia: I saw the play, with Bryan Cranston. 

Kevin: So, that is just how I've felt for like the last two years of — when he's just screaming out the window like, ‘I'm mad as hell. I'm not gonna take it anymore.’ That's what I feel like when I read all this b******t. And I can't take it anymore, Alicia. I can’t.

Alicia: Well, thank you again. And I'm so glad that we're — yeah, in touch, doing our thing.

Kevin: I hope to see you when all of this is over.

Alicia: Yeah, me too. 

Kevin: We can travel. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah.

Kevin: All right.

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

I’ve been a fan of William Mullan for ages. He helped facilitate a piece I wrote ages ago for Vice about whether raw chocolate is real (it’s not), and from them on was always game when I needed chocolate information or some bars to raise money in an auction. Then I started to see how brilliant an artist he was becoming in his own right, through his stunning photography of apples, showcasing their diversity and uniqueness, and—for me—completely reframing my understanding of this ubiquitous fruit. (You can purchase a 2021 calendar featuring his photos.) We talked about how he got into chocolate and apples, his current interest in free wild fruit, and why commodity everything is the enemy of just food system. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, William, thank you so much for coming on. William: Hi. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited. I love your writing and newsletter, have loved your writing for some time. And I'm really honored to be here today. Alicia: Oh, thank you so much. And so can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate? William: Yeah, so I was born outside of Chicago. I moved around a lot as a kid because my dad worked for Amoco, which was then bought by BP in 1998. I was like nine years old. And by the time I was 13, I had lived in like Chicago suburbs. I've lived in Michigan, Colorado, and Maryland. And like, in this era, I pretty much ate what I would describe as, like this standard white American diet. I don't know if that's offensive.

My mom, I love her, and this is no disrespect, because I do think she is a good cook. But I think her style at the time, I would describe as very, like Cooking Light magazine. So at home, we ate a lot of like, lean chicken breasts and pastas. And like, you know, things that were very much of the trend of that time where people feared fat and stuff like that. And we were on the road a lot. So we actually ended up probably eating more Wendy's and Chick-Fil-A than my mom would like to admit.

And kind of then later, at places, I’ve described as fancy hospital food, places like Panera. And later, like, you know, chains like Carabas, and stuff like that. In Maryland, my mom ran the concession stand for my swim team, and we had all this bulk candy around from like Sam's Club a lot, my brother and I would sneak in the closets and get some. 

I think I would sum it up as like, I think we ate a very commodity diet, like we ate a diet that was very much indicative of the way American life is set up if you don't live in a city. And I think I was a bit of a picky eater.

But after BP bought Amoco, they moved us to England in 2002. And overnight, the way we ate completely changed.

We moved to this town called Easter, which is just a little bit outside of London and Surrey. And we lived off this high street. And suddenly we had access to all these, like small family owned restaurants, Lebanese, Nepalese, Greek, Thai, Chinese, which is very different than the Chinese that we'd had in America, Indian. You know, when I think about it was pretty seismic. Suddenly, I was eating things like hummus, you know, which now is I think more common, but you know, I think at the time was not in America. I think this is like pre-Sabra. And I was eating Nepalese dishes like Palungo saag and Gurkha Aloo, and just like things that I, you know, just had never even fathomed prior to moving over there. We ate a lot of Nepalese and Lebanese, we ate a lot of Middle Eastern food, and a lot of Asian food.

And then being in the UK allowed us to travel a lot. So we would go to like Morocco and Egypt and Spain and Jordan, I think because it was so fast, it kind of really opened me up and made me intensely curious about food in a way that I just had not considered before. Suddenly, there were all these new ingredients, there were new spices, there were vegetables I hadn't even heard of or seen in my life. There were cooking methods I hadn't heard of. We started knowing the people that would be making the food, because these were smaller restaurants. And you know, you would see the same people every time. It became such a different, more expansive experience in terms of the types of food we're eating, but then also more intimate experience in that we started knowing that people who were making our food.

As I got older and moved back to the States, I realized that so much of this is really about access. We could just walk up to the street there, and there were grocery stores, dozens of restaurants, maybe only one of them was a chain. We lived in this town where there was this cluster of access and diversity of cuisines and food and outside of major cities, America really isn't set up that way. You know, everything is so commodity based. It's all about size, scale and efficiency, which ultimately, you know, kind of sucks the diversity out of places that aren't major metros, and you have to drive everywhere. And it becomes really difficult, I think, for a lot of people to break out of this, like, big box, bland food. I don't know if that's harsh, but...

So that kind of completely changed, I think, the direction of my life—moving over there. And,

honestly, majorly through food. You know, I think, if we hadn’t moved over there, I don't know who I would be, where I would be and what I would be eating, but certainly not, I think, what I eat now.

Alicia: Was it a culture shock for you to move from the US to the UK.

William: You know, it's hard for me to say. I really didn't seem fazed by it. And I don't know if that's me having a selective memory, but I don't ever recall being upset. I honestly felt like—we lived in Maryland before that, and I really felt like an outsider. Like, I knew I was gay at the time; I was in the closet. Maryland boys were very like Eminem, and like, you know, using the F word a lot, and I just sort of knew, instinctively, that that was just not the place for my family. And certainly myself, like, I don't know if I ever articulated that I needed to get out of there. But I think there was the sense of like, you know, this can’t be forever. Uh, and I think moving to England and being in the city felt like, really instinctually right in a way that I hadn't articulated yet at that age.

Yeah, so it wasn't difficult. We've moved around so much, too; I think I was just so used to it.

Alicia: Well, you know, how did food become kind of the focus of your work? You’re working for Raaka chocolate now, you know, was that interest there before? Or was it something that has kind of evolved with you? 

William: So there was a point in high school when I was living in the UK where I wanted to eat better. And I was convinced that I could get off my ADHD meds if I ate better. I actually cannot trace the seed of this.

And I remember, like, wanting to eat salmon. Like, I think I had read that omega-3s would, you know, be good for my brain. I've always been on ADD meds; I currently don't take them, because I just find that they, like, you know, neuter me. I feel like a zombie on them. I feel like a capitalist cog. You know, they certainly make me more productive, but I sort of, I miss, like, the more sort of spastic side of me, I feel like it's part of me and helps me, at least creatively. So I was always trying to look for ways to, you know, not take the medication. So I wanted to cook salmon and my mom was like, No, I'm not cooking salmon. I don't want to cook fish in the house. And I was like, Well, I'm doing this. and I had part-time jobs. I was a lifeguard. I was a hairdresser’s assistant, barista, movie theater, custodian. So I had money. So

I just started going up to this grocery store in the UK called Waitrose, which maybe I would like, it's like Union Market for New Yorkers. I started buying salmon. And then I started buying vegetables. I started buying fruits, just the fact that I could go to the grocery store by myself, and make my own food decisions at like, you know, 15 was like crazy for me and I started almost completely eating independently of my family, like with my family, but eating my own way, and it was kind of liberating and exciting, like I could decide for myself what I wanted to eat every day. It felt very independent. 

And I also started, you know, I had to learn a lot about food. And so I would just pick up you know, anything—any vegetable I wanted. I remember the first time I tried parsnip and my mind was blown. And I was like, What is this? This is so good. And I would cook lentils and I would get all sorts of different fruits. I remember the first time I had a persimmon and in England they call it kaki fruit. Oat milk, and even back then they had oat milk. So I was just really curious about everything. I thought I could try anything. And I wanted to try everything.

At the time, Green and Blacks was such a big presence. You know, they were a big deal, like this first certified organic fair trade chocolate, andI was more like a candy kid, but I just felt this pull to try dark chocolate. I think it was like me just, you know, just feeling really adult, like cooking for myself. And eating dark chocolate. I think felt more adult. And I was like, this sounds fun. And I was really intrigued by it. There was also Divine at the time, I think Divine is still around.

And so I started eating a little bit of dark chocolate every day. And I didn't question it that much other than, like, you know, I felt like a lot of people probably feel now or felt before, you know, maybe they got into, like single origin or craft chocolate, which is that like, oh, fair trade. You know, this is good. My work was done. I've been here. I did this right.

But when I moved to California for college and found Taza you know, I saw these like direct trade labels. And, you know, they had a single origin bar from Bolivia. And it was stone ground and it was gritty and had this amazing texture. And my mind was just completely blown. I was like, What is this, this is wild.This has been kind of a cycle for me forever. I’d just try something and be like, this is wild, I'm obsessed.

But chocolate was particularly interesting to me. Once I had that Taza bar, I started learning about how it was made. And I really saw it as this really fascinating way to look at the world. It's such a uniquely human food. It's a flowering fruit tree. These tiny blossoms grow these massive, huge alien-egg-like fruits. And then we take the seeds of those fruits and we ferment them, we dry them, we ship them across the world we roast or we don't roast them, we grind, mill, temper, to the point where we have the shiny confection with far more flavor than the raw material had. And you know, very little has been added. We've just coaxed it out. It's really amazing and wonderful in the real sense of that word.

But once I started reading about direct trade through Taza and started understanding more about the chocolate supply chain, I also realized that it's really an unjust food, which I think anyone sees once you just kind of peel back the wrapper, you know, no pun intended. It has this incredibly inequitable supply chain. It's a poster child for colonialist food. I mean, you can really look at cacao and chocolate, and you will see colonialism at work back then. 

I got pretty into trying to find like new chocolate bars and understand the market a little more; I guess it was pretty instinctual. You know, I just once I have the top artist was like, wow, talk is really cool. And I want to understand more about the supply chain, and what people are doing to make it better. And when I moved to L.A. after college, I got in the habit of going to stores that I couldn't afford, like farmshop and spending like my meager paychecks on like Askinosie, Dandelion and Raaka bars. This was like 2013. 

So I think, you know, it's, you know, I'm always like, why are we still being this cruel to one another. We've built these systems so large, and so powerful that people are either oblivious to their roles in them or feel powerless to try and stop them or rely too heavily on markets to fix them. And I don't think markets can fix them easily. They have had a lot of opportunities to. I guess I feel like this is kind of like a lifelong challenge. I'm not sure how long I'll be in chocolate but I really love it. I do see it as part of my independence and artwork as well, in essence, for trying to get people to see this commodity item very differently and for what it is, which is really kind of, in one way a very magical food that we've made as humans with our imagination and technology, but also,we've done it really wrong in a major, major way. And it's going to take a really long time to make it right. And a lot of collaboration and imagination, and I feel pretty stuck in it.

Alicia: Stuck in chocolate or stuck in the, you know, the supply chain? 

William: Well, I guess both. And in the end stuck, I feel like, implies I'm a prisoner. I'm doing it, you know, like I'm enjoying the challenge of trying to get people to think about this differently and really think about the way that they're consuming it and have an appreciation for it. That's genuine.

And understand that but you know, try to not feel suffocated by not being able to feel good about even a craft chocolate purchase. You know, it's still like the bare minimum, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. And, you know, join it.

Alicia: Was your background in photography—you mentioned your artwork, how did you start kind of working in photography, and specifically, you know, using your artistic skill around, you know, chocolate, but also now apples?

William: So I majored in film production. I thought I wanted to do film my whole life. And that's why I went to college in Orange County. While, you know, I enjoyed film school, I love all the friends I made, unfortunately, for me, I had a boyfriend for most of it. And that was my first boyfriend. And I pretty much stopped paying attention to the things I wanted. When I graduated, and I ended that relationship. I was like, Wait, who am I? I don't know if I really want to do film professionally. I love it. And I love, you know, thinking this way, like narratively, and images, but I just don't know if I want to spend my entire life trying to be a director. I just didn't feel right.

And so I was pretty confused. I hadn't acquired any real technical skills in the time.  I felt pretty aimless. So I mean, that was part of my reason of moving to New York was just like, man, I gotta figure this out. And another expensive city sounds like the place to do it. [Laughs.]

I needed to be like, shut up, but also have access to things which, you know, New York, can offer that. And I didn't, I hadn't practiced photography before. It hadn't even occurred to me that I might like it. You know, like, I just didn't know myself that well. And I picked it up like out of basic necessity. I took this job at Raaka and I really didn't have any real sets of responsibilities. And I would just kind of, you know, do whatever people told me to do. And also was trying to look for ways to become essential to this small company that didn't have a lot of capital. And I felt super expendable. A lot of this was my own insecurity. So I was constantly looking for things to learn to become essential, or, you know, just needed in some way. And I remember we had, one of my responsibilities is building these wholesale catalog sheets for the sales team in Adobe Illustrator. And we had this photographer that we were working with did these white seamless photos for us, and I'd gone on the shoot with him just to assist, and it looked cool to me. I was like, wow, this is fun. And it seemed—this is very arrogant of me—but it seemed easy. I was like, I feel like I could learn how to do this.

It took like—this is a long story—but just took forever to get the photos from him. I forget why, like he had a thing and I was annoyed. And then the sales team was like, Bill, we need this wholesale sheet. And I was like, Well, I don't have the photos yet, so I can't finish it. And I just felt all this pressure and like it was such a stressful experience for me. So I was like so new to the company and internalized it so much that I was like, I have to figure this out. I can't rely on anyone. I have to be able to do everything all by myself. This is such a terrible, terrible, stubborn attitude. 

But it forced me—I remember I texted a friend who I knew was a photographer. I was like, hey, I want to learn this, can you help me? Or like pay you and oh, I'm gonna rent a camera. Let's figure this out. And so he taught me how to take white seamless photos. And from there, I was like, my imagination is kind of exploding. It's like, Oh, well, I guess I could like, save some money and get a camera. And I could just do this for Raaka. And I could be good at my job.

And that's how it started. And, you know, basically, a year later, I had bought a light and was, you know, doing this kind of product photography for Raaka. And it was really working well for us. And I started getting a sense for style. And I just started devouring other photography,

which I had liked before. But again, I just hadn't, I hadn't looked at it that way, it was just more something that I enjoyed. And still enjoy. But I hadn't really like studied it.

And about a year into that, I was like, I really like this, this is scary for me. I like this so much. 

Maybe I should do something for myself. And I would just start to see things in images and in the styles of photos that I was taking. And I remember one day I had gone to the farmers’ market and I bought a pink pearl, having known about it before, and was sitting there and eating it, like in the park and I just kept seeing, like, a lot of pop cultural images and colors and like hearing music and it just, I just kind of vibed. And I felt really compelled to take this photo of a pink pearl in the style that I felt like I hadn't seen before. And so I just did it super instinctually and it was very fun. And I just kept doing it. I had no real plan. I just was like, wow, this is I could do this for like so many apples. I have all these ideas now. And I just started doing it really instinctually and  it just became a thing. And I started to kind of articulate later what it was that I was trying to do.

But yeah, that's kind of like the long-slash-short story. 

Alicia: Well, how do you go about finding so many apples like basically I'd like sort of the photography thing has the apple thing kind of led to you becoming kind of an expert in apple biodiversity. And what's your process for finding all these new apples?

William: Yeah, so, you know, I got introduced to apples in the UK. There was this British Apple called Egremont Russet. That's still my favorite, to this day, that I came across when I must have been like 15 or 16 and I started doing my own grocery shopping.

And I saw this gold potato-y-looking apple sitting in a box at a store that, you know, everything there was very considered and purposeful, like it was a high-end grocery store. So to see this apple that did not look like all the other perfectly polished, apples and even fruits in this store—I was just like, what is this and it's like it had this name. Egremont Russet, aounds like a lord or something like that, like British royalty. So I just was so curious about this thing. And I just kind of took it on a whim and bought like six of them. I was like, it's got to be good, right?

With a name like that and looking, you know—so against looking you know, not like a supermarket apple, not perfectly polished and shiny but rusty, I was like, it has to be tasty. So I bought a bunch, ate it on the way home—not all of it, one.

And it really blew my mind. I just was tasting this intensely nutty and dense aApple that reminded me of chestnuts and warm apple cider from when I was a kid in Michigan. It was just such an intense experience. And I was like, wow, what on earth is this? This is so cool. And I immediately went home and googled it because I was like I have to know more about this and I through that just went down this rabbit hole of learning about apples and their heterozygous nature and how they don't grow true from seed. And so if you plant an apple seed from, you know, a Granny Smith, you're not going to get a Granny Smith, you'll get something that has some similar traits, but new traits, and I just found that so mind-blowing.

And so I mean, it kind of stopped there, like I would read about some apples, but like, it's still like, I lacked accessibility to them. That got much worse in California, although I did

get into pink pearl there, since that is a Californian apple. It was developed by this botanist called Albert Etter, in Humboldt County, in the ’40s. And that blew my mind, again. It's pink inside, it has this translucent, yellow-white flesh, and this, you know, often, like, really, neon pink pulp. And it was kind of like, you know, in the back of my mind during apple season, you know, I just would go out and just look for cool apples, and then learn about them and read about them. And I would just kind of buy any ones that I hadn't heard of and try them and then read about them. And it became really fun to learn about the stories behind each apple.

Comparing the differences between American apples, British apples and British apples having these really like prestigious-sounding names, and American apples having, you know, more the two syllable names like pink pearl And when I moved to New York, that also really exploded because of the Greenmarkets, you know, you can get like 30 apples from Samascott Orchards on Fridays at the New York Greenmarket and more from other orchards on Saturdays.

And I think this whole process of wonder and discovery just constantly gives me energy. And I'm so fascinated by it. And, you know, apples are from Central Asia, and they were brought up through the Silk Road, and then were cultivated, again, in Europe, and then in North America. And I think I'm really fascinated by this relationship that we have with them, you know, it's, there's been this kind of cooperative coexistence that we've had with, you know, Malus domestica, which is the botanical name for the eating apple, and it seems to come with us everywhere we go. And we create these narratives around it, both in the stories of the people that, you know, maybe came across a wild seedling, or, you know, purposefully cultivated an apple to, you know, and then the narratives that come from the names that we give them. And then to sort of the experience of eating that Apple maybe not knowing those narratives yet, but your, like, personal experience of that apple and the way it makes you feel. I find it fascinating.

I just feel like I've been eating my way through the malus genus, becoming fascinated with its endless diversity and the process.

Alicia: Yeah, it seems like such a great project for, you know, showcasing that diversity in the apple that I think people take for granted. Everyone is like, you know, I don't like a Red Delicious but like, that's kind of the only opinion people have about apple species, you know? 

How was the response? Like, it seems really great. But you know, are people asking questions about apples? Like, has what has like been the response for this project? 

William: I think most people, as you just pointed out—most people don't really have an opinion of apples. Because of the commodity market. They're everywhere. You're never too far from an apple, but you're never too far from, like, five types of apples. And so you think that's all there is because it is this weirdly abundant crop. And we have this sort of set amount of them, it sort of feels like that's all there is to now.

And so when you kind of discover that there's actually like, thousands more, and you know, they're not just red, green, and yellow, but they're like, I mean, insane shapes, like some that look like candles, some that look like Toad stools, some that are thinking, some that are redder than a beet inside, some with this purple black skin, some that are, you know, metallic looking.

It's really fascinating. I don't know if there's like another word for this in another language. But it's this weird feeling where you realize that you don't know everything about something you thought you knew everything there was to know about, something that is so common. And all of a sudden you learn one thing and you're like, wow, actually, I know nothing about this thing. And there's so much more to know. And it's really exciting watching people have that experience.

Maybe when they find my account, or read an article that I've been mentioned in or something like that, it feels really good. I feel like I'm kind of watching the same feeling that I still have now, but really had when I first read about the heterozygous nature of apples and had that Egremont Russet apple, ate that pink pearl apple. It's exciting watching people feel a sense of wonder for something that can feel so everyday. That feels good. It reminds me that nature and plants we eat remain beautiful; even when we sort of try and control them through our systems, people can still be fascinated by them, and we can still celebrate them and kind of reclaim back their diversity. This is something that people are actually interested in doing.

It feels really good. I love when people will tag me when they buy like an Ashmead's Kernel apple, and it feels really good.

I do want people to get into apples, go to the farmers; market and buy apples from a local orchard, you know, and take a chance on an apple that they hadn't tried before, and see what they like and what they don't like and you know, specifically take a chance on these like, uglier, quote unquote russeted apples that just don't get carried at the supermarket because for some reason, we'll accept russeting in pears but we will not accept an apples which is very bizarre to me. Who made that decision? I don't know. Because russetting often indicates a more complex flavor, a sweeter flavor and deeper flavor.

The response has been overwhelming. I could have never imagined it as someone who is just—I just felt like I was living in my own world taking photos of apples. 

Alicia: I wanted to ask you about the slug that you've been taking care of. Can you tell me the story of the slug? 

William: It's actually hilarious, Alicia, because yesterday—so this is like, so embarrassing to admit. I actually brought the slug—my parents have a beach place in Delaware and

they really wanted to see me because I don't think I'm flying for Christmas, and that’s like the safest way to see each other in these times. So I met them there and I was, like, terrified that Alex G, my slug, would die while I was gone. So I brought him there in this little like travel

amphibian tank and I left him there when I got back on Friday. I left him and my parents left too and where their place is—I mean, there's no way to get there without a car. It's just hours and hours away from any sort of public transport. And I had like a meltdown. Anyway, I convinced a friend to drive me down to Delaware yesterday to retrieve Alex G and what was an eight-hour excursion, all told, driving through—very interesting to do pre-election day, like driving through all sorts of America's going from New York City to Delaware and so he's back now. He's alive and well and eating expensive Union Market mushrooms.

But yeah, I was honestly losing my mind. I was like there's no way. Like I felt so horrible. You know, I was like the irony of me being protective over him and then maybe him dying a slow death in Delaware because I forgot him. I just was like, No way is this happening. I will move mountains. And thanks to the generosity of a couple people, because another friend of mine, Lucy, helped me by lending her car. So it was a wonderful moment of generosity, but also a classic, I think, insanity from a particular brand of crazy.

But I kind of got really into bugs this year. I've always loved bumblebees, I've always just found it to be like the teddy bears of the insects. And I was reading a lot about pollination and blossoms, mostly fruit blossoms this spring, and I was just trying to spend as much time as I could around blossoms, because I found it peaceful and hopeful, watching bees, and I bought books on bees. And even before that last apple season, when I was at these kind of research orchards, I would, ou know, there'd be apples rotting on the ground, and there'd be just like slugs eating them. And I just found it so adorable, like, and also like, you know, beautiful, like the cycle of life is very much in front of you, at any moment in front of an apple tree. And I think I just kind of developed—I always had a respect for bugs, like I don't like killing them, I will try to free them.

But I think I just, you know, for the first time really looked at their role in a very specific way and what they do for the environment.

And I was coming back from looking at this apple tree in Prospect Park, I think,in  early September, and I saw Alex G, this slug just kind of moving across the sidewalk. And I was like, someone's gonna step on this thing, even though it was late at night. So I kind of like my goal was to get down, get it on an apple and then move, you know, move it somewhere safe so it didn't get squashed. And honestly, it was just so cute. I just was like, I kind of wanted to take it home for a little bit. My intention was to take it home after that, and then maybe release it back. But then I start being about slugs, and they live much longer in captivity than they do in the wild. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that people probably step on them sometimes or I don't know if they survive winters very well. But, yeah, I just, I just brought him home and I just became really attached to it. Because they are hermaphrodites and, unfortunately, I am of the habit of gendering pets that don't have genders. I had all male pets as a kid, I think it's a bad habit. I love the musician, Alex G, so that's what his name comes from. But I think knowing that slugs are— you'll never be too far from a slug at an apple orchard, especially if you will come upon a rotten apple. And it just felt kind of natural. I had wanted to, like, recreate some things that I saw orchards in the studio with kind of a maybe this more fantastical memory of it that I have. And in a weird way, it felt like fate. Like, Alex G comes to the studio sometimes when I shoot and I never like it on anything. Yeah, it loves to just go on apples and then eat them and just sit on them. So that's very helpful for me. I don’t eat a lot of decaying apples.

I just find like, you know, bugs do work for us. You know, I forget this. This piece but it was on bee labor and capitalism. Well, and someone had pointed out to me after I had taken some some still-lifes with bees, and camomile flowers this summer, and I was thinking about bees and capitalism, thinking about the labor that bees do to pollinate, you know, the trees that then make fruits that we eat and how important that is. And like, you know, in this there's so, you know, technically nothing's supposed to be unaccounted for in capitalism, but many things are unaccounted for in capitalism, as far as labor is concerned. And I just found that really interesting, which is like, wow, this is, you know, not only are we not counting the labor of many actual humans in the system, that are, you know, I wouldn't say I don't know, willingly participating in it so much as this is what we did, this is what we got. But then we've

forced, not forced, but these other creatures that it, you know, live on the earth are also part of it. Because we have, you know, taken over so much of the environment that they just, you know, unknowingly are part of it. And that became really fascinating to me.

And it just kind of opened up this world of bugs and fruit that I liked before was just something that was cute to me. And I liked the images of and now, those images have just more meaning to me and what they represent. And sort of like the process of flowering fruiting, and then, you know, natural rotting and decay of fruit.

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

William: Yeah, you know, I think if you'd asked me this question, a couple years ago, I would have—I don't know if I would have said no, but I wouldn't think so. But it has become for me.

I'm quite an inept cook, I will say, I do try. And I love to try, but I think it is political in the ingredient choices that I make. I really, especially in the last year, felt it very important to, like, go to the farmers’ market and buy produce from there, and support a non-supermarket kind of system. I'm basically trying to eat outside of the commodity market as much as possible. And I think part of that comes as a natural extension from my interest in apples and fruit, and their diversity and wanting to enjoy that and take part in that rather than just select from, you know, the choices I have at a supermarket that had been selected for me.

As we learn, collectively, as a culture, more and more about our food supply chain, I feel like one can't help but hopefully try and cook politically in the sense that no matter where you are on the economic spectrum, there are choices. Obviously, they're much, much harder if you're not wealthy; it can be really difficult to make ethical choices if you're not wealthy. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. And your plate might even look meager. And sometimes that feels really unfair, like personally—I mean, it is unfair.

But it's become really important to me to support small businesses, that I want to see small farms that I want to see and to play a role in a system that is, unfortunately, still shaped by the commodity market, which is so large and all encompassing that, you know, it will shape things outside of it, but trying to participate in those things outside of it.

I have this friend, Benford, who introduced me to a lot of native fruits like wild persimmon. I got into pawpaw and he makes cider and has made ciders from our wild apples that he's, you know, found on the sides of highways and foraged and kind of really got me into this idea of like anti-cap foods, anti-capitalist foods, anti-commodity foods and using them and celebrating them and introducing people to them.

Like, I mean just wild persimmon, for example, is so delicious. It's native to North America; it's been consumed by indigenous peoples well before us and, you know, mastodon; and it can't really be commodified because the way you know it's really not ready until it falls off the tree when it's overripe. It's kind of gross before that; it's really intensely tannic and kind of punishing. But when it's really ready, it's amazing. It feels like this delicious custard, pumpkiny treat.

And it's free. Like there's trees in Greenwood Cemetery. Once you start to know how to look for wild fruit trees, you kind of start seeing them everywhere. And it's really incredible. And I know a lot of people are kind of scared to eat like wild fruit, which feels like, you know, maybe a good survival skill.

But for the most part, a lot of this stuff, I think, aside from berries, which one needs to be cautious of, but you know, wild apples are not poisonous. And it feels really cool and good to pick from what's there. And what's free. Benford and I have talked about, like this idea of public fruit, like how cool it would be if parks had fruit trees. Some of them do but they’re secret, you know, like there's persimmons in Prospect Park. I haven't found them. I'm still looking for them in Central Park as well.

But this idea that this can be for anyone, because it should be for anyone. But it's not right now. The fact that we can't feed everyone—well, at this point in our advancement is just shocking.

And I just, yeah, I feel like cooking is political for me in that I'm constantly looking for ways to embrace what is public, and also support people who are trying to make the very broken food supply chain that we have here better, you know, trying their hardest, and it's really difficult to do that.

That feels increasingly important as I get older, and as our very interesting political situation progresses.

Alicia: I love it. Well, thank you so much for taking the time. 

William: 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

Listen now | He's the Raaka Chocolate brand manager and a nature photographer.

This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.aliciakennedy.news/subscribe

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

When it comes to wine, I admittedly try to keep myself a little bit ignorant. This is because I love wine so much: I don’t want to over-intellectualize it; I want to keep it special. One of the magazines that feels organic (no pun intended) in its approach to writing about the subject is The Wine Zine, published independently by writer Katherine Clary, whose book, Wine, Unfiltered, is similarly approachable in its voice. Both come from a perspective where enjoyment is centered, and it’s understood that enjoyment happens most when the wine has been made well, without much interference, by people who give a s**t. We discussed her upbringing, how she got into wine, and her editorial approach.

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

Katherine: Thanks, Alicia. How are you? Thanks for having me.

Alicia: I'm good. 

How are you? How's life? Are you up in Hudson Valley?

Katherine: I am. Yeah, I've been out of the city now pretty much since March. I'm up in Kingston, New York, which — it's beautiful up here. It's an amazing time to be up here too, because the leaves are all changing. And yeah, it's been really nice.

Alicia: That is probably the best place to be in quarantine, I think. 

Katherine: Yeah, I think so. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, actually, I wanted to talk to you about — Diane di Prima passed away this week, the poet. And you posted about her food writing on Instagram. How did you encounter her food writing? And why do you think it's significant?

Katherine: Yeah. So, gosh, rest in peace, Diane. We've lost so many people this year, obviously. And for some reason, this — her death just really, really hit me yesterday. 

I have read her work, probably since, I guess, my late teens or so. I came across her for the first time actually through City Lights Books in San Francisco, where I was living when I was 18. And it's a great, kind of iconic bookstore. And it's owned by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who's one of the kind of pioneer Beat poets. 

And I had never really read much Beat poetry or Beat writing from female writers. And so when I came across her book, Dinners and Nightmares, I mean, one, the title just kind of stuck out to me. Like, ‘Oh, gosh, is this — what is this going to be about?’ 

And I started reading it. It chronicles her early days as a Beat poet in New York, the places she lived, the people she lived with, and what she ate. And it was just such a cool, kind of effortless feeling, chronicle of — almost like a daily food diary. But she really weaves a lot of her poetry in and out of it. 

And it's just — yeah, one of my favorite books ever. And like I said, in that post, I really just wish that she had written about food more. [Laughs.] But as it stands, I'll just cherish this book Dinners And Nightmares.

Alicia: It's interesting, because I didn't realize she did any focused food writing. But I know in her poetry, food does come up so much. And even in a memoir — I quoted her memoir, where she was talking about being taught to cook at a young age, and the scars from the hot oil being part of the pain of being a woman. And so, it was so interesting to see your piece, ’cause I was like, I knew that there had to be some more, just food writing from her.

But yeah, we haven't heard enough about her. And I hope that now that she has passed — and unfortunately, we'll probably hear so much more, and see the books reissued, etc, etc. 

Katherine: For sure. I hope so.

I mean, I've already — I immediately got on eBay and was like, ‘Ok, what of her anthology am I missing?’ And there was actually so much that — I maybe own Dinners And Nightmares, Memoirs of a Beatnik,’ and then she has a book of poetry, really beautiful, called This Kind of Bird Flies Backward. But beyond that, she put out so many small, self-published books. And, yeah, as soon as you check on eBay, those prices are going up. [Laughter.]

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

Katherine: Yeah. 

So, I grew up between Phoenix, Arizona, and San Francisco, mostly. Bounced back and forth quite a bit when I was a kid, but those are kind of the two main homes. 

And yeah, in Phoenix, our — my eating style, and how things were in the home, were definitely much more suburban. My mom loved to cook things like chicken and dumplings. And we had some family recipes passed down, for things like yorkshire pudding. And it was just kind of — I mean, don't get me wrong, totally delicious. But, it felt like a pretty kind of standard suburban diet for the time, the late ’80s, early ’90s. 

And I should give my mom more credit, though. Actually, one of her favorite books was — Sunset magazine issued this Southwestern cookbook. I think it came out in the late ’70s. And so we did on occasion have enchiladas and her — she loved making chimichangas, which was a fried burrito essentially. So, there was some variation in there. But it was — yeah, it was delicious, kind of comfort food. 

My mom and I moved to San Francisco. And the culinary landscape, I guess, so to speak, and also just cooking style at home completely changed. Because she was then a single mother raising me. And she was working full-time. And so, I really kind of was put on my own in terms of like, ‘Let's figure out how to get dinner on the table’ and all that. 

And lucky for us, we lived in Chinatown. And I went to school in Chinatown. So, by age 9, 10, I was exposed to so many, so much incredible food. Suddenly, I was eating egg custard tarts, and cha siu bao, and rice noodle rolls, and all — just all this great dim sum. So, I think, San Francisco really kind of expanded my mind, certainly, but also hers. Her culinary style kind of shifted, then. 

And yeah, I think, the way that I was eating in San Francisco kind of carries over to a lot of my curiosity about food now.

Alicia: Right. 

And how did you get into wine and natural wine specifically?

Katherine: Yeah.

So, I won't say that I was ever really into wine until I discovered natural wine. I moved to New York when I was 18. And I think like a lot of people that age, and then going into your early 20s, I was just kind of — I was going out to restaurants with friends, and going to bars, and would kind of just drink whatever was put in front of me. [Laughs.] 

I didn't really distinguish between ordering a vodka soda, or a beer, or whatever when we were out at bars on the weekend. And wine was kind of always this thing that was for quieter nights, maybe if we're sitting in a Italian restaurant. Or I'm having a nice night at home with friends and we would just get some generic bottle of red wine, usually not spending more than like $10 on the bottle. 

I just never really thought about wine. I enjoyed it. But I really, I never connected it to anything bigger than just this alcoholic beverage. And it wasn't until I started to learn about natural wine that this whole world kind of opened up and I understood like, ‘Oh, this is an agricultural product and wine is basically like food.’ And that happened mostly because of two things. 

So, like I said, I'm up in Kingston. And I've had the privilege of spending a lot of time up here the past ten years. My partner's from the area. And a really great wine shop opened about — think, about nine years ago. And it's called Kingston Wine Co. 

And it was the first wine shop that I had ever gone into that actually felt like my people were running it. And they were young people that were really excited about what they were selling. And suddenly I was seeing these bottles that had really creative labels, and the staff there just wanted to chat about things and wanted to know what I was looking for. And it just felt like this really warm, kind of welcoming vibe. It didn't feel like it was purely transactional anymore. 

And then, at about the same time, I was up in the Finger Lakes in western New York, where I have a bit of family. And, as you might know, the Finger Lakes is New York's kind of wine country, so to speak. 

And I came across this small winery called Bloomer Creek. And it turned out that Kim and Debra, the winemakers, were actually basically New York's pioneering natural winemakers. And so I had the privilege of kind of learning from them and understanding the whole history behind natural agriculture in New York. It changed everything in that kind of one to two year time. I really kind of couldn't look back at that point and keep drinking those generic bottles that I had been for the previous ten years.

Alicia: Then you launched The Wine Zine. There have been four issues so far. What inspired the creation of that? And how do you approach the creation and curation of each issue? Does each issue kind of have a theme? 

Or basically, how did The Wine Zine get started? And how do you keep going?

Katherine: Yeah, so they are unthemed. That was a pretty early decision for us, to keep them unthemed. Mostly because the content in each magazine, in each issue, really kind of just comes from, I think, what we are really curious about in that given time. Each issue takes about five to six months to put together. And so, I think I always felt that doing a themed issue would kind of stifle us in terms of what we were able to work with. 

And also, of course, in a six month span of time, so much can happen in — just culturally with wine, but also agriculturally or politically, with tariffs constantly changing and things like that. We kind of needed to be a little bit more on the edge of our seats with how we were coming up with content. And so, yeah, that's kind of why I stay away from themed issues. 

But, in terms of how we come up with content, I've mostly been on my own for these four issues in terms of our editorial direction. So, the magazine has always really been just sort of a fanzine by me, about what it is that I'm really curious about in wine. 

For the next issue — for issue five, I've actually brought on two wonderful editors. Nadia Pugh, who's going to be my associate editor. And she's based in California, and is going to be working kind of more generally on the magazine. And then Farrah Berrou, who's based in Beirut, and she’s going to be focused on that region. 

So, this is the first time that I'm kind of bringing in two outside minds to really start to curate the content and think about stories in a way outside of my own brain, which I'm really, really excited about. ’Cause I was nervous that it was maybe starting to look a little bit too inward. 

I really have my ear to the ground in terms of new producers and new wine shops and new wine bars and what people are talking about, but no matter how much I'm paying attention, things are always going to be outside of my vision. There are always going to be things happening elsewhere that I'm just not capable of knowing. So, I'm super excited to kind of expand my team.

Alicia: And how do you figure out who you want to write for each issue? Are you getting pitches, or are you mostly assigning?

Katherine: Yeah, I'm mostly assigning. For the next issue, I am opening it up to pitches. I've mostly only ever commissioned stories just because, one, I always felt like I had an idea of what I wanted to get into the magazine. But also, I was really terrified about the moment that I opened pitches — gosh, and this probably sounds so crazy, but — that I wasn't going to be able to handle the volume of pitches. Which is, of course, we're a tiny magazine. Come on. I'm not like Wine Enthusiast or something. 

I've always been very slow and steady about the growth of the magazine. And I've always just kind of taken things at my own speed in order to not get too overwhelmed. This has always been a side project for me pretty much until last year, when it kind of became a little bit more full-time, especially with the book. 

But yeah, I've always just kind of wanted to take things slow. And for that reason, I wasn't accepting pitches, but now I think we're in a good position to, with the next issue. So, I'm excited to bring on some new writers.

Alicia: That's super exciting, yeah.

And your book, which you just mentioned, Wine, Unfiltered, is such a wonderful user's guide to the world of natural wine, which doesn't have an official definition. And so much of the coverage of natural wine and mainstream outlets has been dismissive to my — in my perspective. 

And I've always found it a little bit annoying. There was a New Yorker piece about natural wine, and it made it seem as though everyone in the world lived in Brooklyn and was having orange wine poured down their throat by force. 

But you were writing your book, kind of amid this mainstream awareness and gaze upon natural wine. So, how did you come to your way of writing about it and thinking about it? And what kind of guided you along as you were writing your book, and how you want it to approach the topic?

Katherine: Yeah, that's a great question. I was reading those articles as they were coming out, as I was writing my book. And I have to admit, I was totally freaked out. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, mainstream media is already making fun of this thing and dismissing it and writing it off as some trendy, hype-filled whatever and here I am about to put a book out on it. Is this just going to be, by the time this comes out, is — are people just going to be super dismissive of what we're doing?’ 

But the one super-grounding thing about that is, I knew that I had my community within the wine scene. And I knew I had writers there and readers, and people who really did care about the who and the what and the why. And they weren't just paying attention to what bars were pouring orange wine, or whatever. 

And in that way, I think it always felt really good to be writing a primer on natural wine, and kind of an introductory guide. Not that I could have written anything more advanced than that, because let's be honest, I'm very new to natural wine. So, an introductory guide was my speed. It was perfect for me. 

But I always felt confident in that approach, because I know that there will always be new people to this community who maybe need to have the basics explained to them. I was one of those people at one point, and I didn't really have a book like that. 

And, to your question, just regarding, I think, how I approached the book and how I — what my kind of style was with it. It was really the same way that I approach the editorial direction of the magazine. I always want to speak to people kind of at their level, and at a very kind of understanding, ‘learn with me, not from me’ approach. Kind of create a bit of a conversation, and ask questions together. 

I never wanted to be that kind of preachy wine person that's, like, ‘Drink this, not that. Or be drinking this, because it's X, Y, or Z.’ It's more like, ‘Let's kind of create this ongoing dialogue about maybe why we should be changing the ways that we drink, or what [do] these winemakers think about the way that they're farming?’ And just kind of keeping things a little bit more transparent, you know?

Alicia: Absolutely. 

And how do you define natural wine, if someone asks you?

Katherine: Yeah, so. [Laughs.] Oh, the question. [Laughter.]

So yeah, when I'm talking about natural wine, what I'm referring to is wine made with grapes that were not sprayed with synthetic pesticides or herbicides for the most part. It's minimally fined or filtered. 

So, fining is basically a process that allows a winemaker to strip sediment from the wine using a binding agent. And then a filter, the filtering process is just basically a physical filter that will remove sediment from a wine. And it has the benefit of clarifying the wine a bit, among other things. But so, no fining or filtering, no synthetic grapes. 

And what else? I should have my book in front of me. Little to no additives, let’s say. So, we're talking about no chaptalization, which is adding sugar to a wine in order to spike the alcohol content. 

Also, pretty crucial is the use of native or indigenous yeast. So, this is just using the yeast that is present on the grapes in the vineyard and in the cellar, and not using commercial or inoculated yeast to kick off the fermentation process. 

And then I think there are some sort of — there's a little bit of give and take elsewhere. But these are sort of the core things, I think, that most of the community would agree makes a natural wine. Or more simply said: nothing given, nothing taken away. Gosh, I just got that wrong. [Laughter.]

Alicia: For you, is drinking wine a political act?

Katherine: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think with anything that I think we consume, we can think of that as being a political act. With wine in particular, it touches so many aspects. How was the labor treated that was involved in the production of the wine? What were the agricultural processes? How does it look for the environment, or how does it impact the environment? I think there are so many ways that we can think of wine being a political thing. 

And also just for me, it's about where and how do I want to spend my money? Do I want to have it go to a small family farm in western New York as opposed to a giant, anonymous corporation in Napa? Absolutely. Or even spending my money at a small, locally owned shop versus a big chain. I think all of those things add up, you know.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Katherine, for coming on.

Katherine: Thank you, Alicia.

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

Before the world disappeared from under our feet, I had the pleasure of meeting Carla Martin while she was doing field research into cacao in Puerto Rico. Her work as founder and executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute brought her to cacao farms around the world, and this complements her role as a social anthropologist and lecturer in the African and African American Studies department at Harvard University. I asked her about food media’s role in food studies, how to tell a good chocolate bar from one that’s not, and more.

Alicia: Hi, Carla. Thanks so much for coming on to chat with me.

Carla: Thank you for having me, Alicia. I really enjoy your newsletter and these weekly recordings, and I'm honored to be here.

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

Carla: Absolutely.

I grew up in Weymouth, Massachusetts, which is a town, a suburban town on the coast of Massachusetts, about 20 miles south of Boston. It is sort of tongue in cheek referred to as the Irish Riviera.

And the people that I grew up with, were primarily of Irish and Italian descent, working class, with parents who were members of local unions, etc. And as I grew, it also became a much more diverse town and absorbed many of the other immigrant communities that are in Massachusetts today. These are communities of Cape Verdean descent, Southeast Asian, Cambodian, Thai, Vietnamese, Haitian, Brazilian, and more. And so I grew up exposed to all of these different kinds of foods.

But I also had the really unique experience of generational food knowledge that was passed down. Both of my sets of grandparents were people who grew up during the Depression. And I grew up hearing stories about my grandfather being unable to stomach turnips any longer, after needing to eat almost exclusively turnips for years during the Depression.

I also grew up with a grandmother who, as soon as she was legally allowed to work, became a baker in her small town in Vermont, and learned to really deeply appreciate the local foods of Vermont, which in many ways is a place that championed local foods before local foods became like a buzzword of the moment.

And she then went on after marrying and having children to being the lunch — the exclusive provider of lunch to a New Hampshire elementary school, where she needed to cook from scratch over 200 meals every day.

And so, through her, through my other grandparents, I learned a lot about what local food meant in New England, what class or food scarcity had as an impact on food.

And then my own parents are big hippies. And so I grew up always with this kind of this thoughtfulness that they put around everything. They were always reading about something, trying to expose us to different things in our lives, trying to get us to think about what was — what were the stories behind what we might be consuming. Trying to get us to think ethically as moral actors in the world.

And so, most of my diet as a kid was, I would say, relatively vegetarian. I've gone on to become mostly vegetarian, vegan in my adulthood. And, there was all of that.

All of this was also colored at the same time by what we had access to on the South Shore. So, a lot of the food that I ate was from Shaw's Supermarkets, like it's what was there. And I can remember Shaw's Cakes as even still are nostalgically some of my favorite cakes to enjoy. They come with a 80 percent shortening frosting.

Once I was kind of old enough to operate in the kitchen safely, I would make mac and cheese and broccoli on the side for me and my brother. Stuff like that.

So, there's a long, I think, complex food history that I was lucky to be introduced to by people who were really thoughtful about it.

Once I became a bit older, and spent more time with friends, I also, through them, got introduced to the foods of these many different immigrant groups in New England. Things like linguica, sweet Portuguese bread, pão de queijo from Brazil, all kinds of different Cape Verdean or Haitian dishes, and really got to have adventures through food.

So for someone who spent well into her twenties, all of my life within about a 20-mile radius, food was in, a lot of ways, how I would explore and get to know other people.

Alicia: And how did your interest in chocolate come about? And how did that lead to your founding of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute?

Carla: It actually came out of my interest in food to begin with.

When I graduated from college, I had the unique opportunity to travel to Cabo Verde, which is a small archipelago off the west coast of Africa. If you can kind of locate Senegal on the map, just look to the west of that. And that's where you'll find, with many Cape Verdean peers.

And what I was doing in Cabo Verde was teaching English. I was also, for a time, working with the singer Cesária Évora, who is one of the biggest kind of cultural exports of Cabo Verde. And as I came to learn more and more about the place, I also came to know a number of people who had spent time as conscripted laborers.

Basically, under Portuguese rule — Cape Verde’s a former Portuguese colony in Africa — people had been found to be indigent or delinquent under Portuguese law if they were unemployed. And they could be more or less forcefully sent to go and work in commodity production and other Portuguese colonies. One of the primarily — primary places that people were sent was to São Tomé and Príncipe, two small islands, also off the coast of West Africa, closer to Angola. So further south, than Cape Verde.

And what people were put to work doing was growing sugar, or growing cocoa. And I became really entranced by the story. It was the kind of thing that shocked me. I hadn't been aware that things like this happened a lot in these contexts.

And I also became really confused about how it was that people were making their way back and forth between Cape Verde and São Tomé to me, and even realized that many of the people coming back from São Tomé were disabled by the work that they had done, were left impoverished, existed in a type of indentured servitude, or a debt slavery in São Tomé.

And many of them, of course, remained in São Tomé and began to receive pensions from the Cape Verdean government, which was something that really just blew my mind that one government would be sending pensions to its diaspora in another country to support

them.

And of course, I was thinking to myself all along, this was for sugar and for cocoa, these two things that we don't necessarily even need. How could it be that these things that I had always loved as luxuries or sweet things were underpinning, were held up by such problematic labor conditions?

I then returned to the United States and entered graduate school. And I was in a program for African and African American Studies, and was one day at a local Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I picked up a chocolate bar from Lake Champlain Chocolates that advertised itself as a São Tomé origin. And I had it, I liked it. And I thought, ‘Well, that's kind of interesting.’

I then went to Formaggio Kitchen, which is the place that — it's the kind of elite specialty grocer in the Cambridge area, and found another bar that was actually made in São Tomé by a chocolate maker known as Claudio Corallo.

And I just became fascinated by this idea that here were these products being advertised to American consumers, as — of São Tomé's cacao, as something that was supposed to be interesting and flavorful and fabulous. But there was nothing being said about that complex production that went on behind the cacao and the labor.

So, that really drove me to try to learn more, to better understand what was going on in the supply chain, and try to really dig into it. Fortunately, in African and African American Studies, this is a discipline that provides us with all of the tools that we need to really analyze something like this.

So, I began digging in, I was writing my dissertation about something else. But I started focusing more on cocoa and chocolate, exploring all of these things. And once I graduated, I had the opportunity in a postdoctoral position to create a class at Harvard called ‘Chocolate, Culture, and the Politics of Food,’ which turned out to be one of the university's most popular classes.

And it became clear to me that one of the ways that I as an educator might draw people in to look at things like the history of slavery, of colonization, of inequality in contemporary commodity production, might be to basically bait them with chocolate and then switch upon arrival to talking about these tougher issues.

As I did all of that, I also found that I was repeatedly being approached by people in the chocolate industry, who were saying, ‘We see that you're teaching about this. How can we learn about this?’ I was tweeting at the time I was blogging, I was putting out a lot of information about what I was learning. And industry members were saying, ‘How can we basically get on this learning train?’

And that's when I was inspired to start the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute. I was actually advised by my mentors at Harvard, if you want to do these things and make them more publicly accessible, one way you could do that is through starting a nonprofit organization.

And so that was in 2015. I founded FCCI as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. And I knew from the very start that I didn't want to do this kind of public facing work as a lone ranger. I wanted to do it in community. And FCCI has become a way of basically building a team of like-minded academics and industry members who want to do education and research on the cacao and chocolate industries, and who want to communicate about them differently.

We do this work now in a variety of different ways. We do it through educational programming for professionals and for consumers. We do it through research, and we do it through a lot of community building and communications activities. Historically, this has been through in-person, lectures, classes, events, and more, publications. But of course, in this COVID-19 moment, we've also been able to really prioritize a lot of multimedia communication. And that's become a bigger focus over the past year.

Alicia: Right.

So, you founded this institute, kind of in the — I would — from my perspective, like the peak of the craft chocolate boom in the US. How has the chocolate industry changed, from your perspective, if it has at all, since you founded the Institute and now?

Carla: Yeah, it's — in some ways, it hasn't changed at all. In other ways, it has changed a lot.

If we look at the industry as a whole, in the past 10 to even 20 years, it has gone through a reckoning in being forced to really deal with some of its biggest challenges. It's been forced to address things like forced labor, or the worst forms of child labor, to address things like deforestation. The variety of different kinds of sustainability buzzwords that the industry is not really allowed to ignore in its work.

At the same time, exactly as you said, the craft chocolate movement has gone through a large expansion. When it really started in the 2000s, it was — a very, a handful of Lone Ranger-type chocolate operations. Since the 2010s, this number has grown exponentially. There are now more than — thousands of companies that fit within this kind of small-scale chocolate making category globally, and that are really pushing the envelope on what it looks like to source cacao, and also to produce chocolate in an artisan fashion.

That, I think, has shown that — more than just a kind of experiment, this is, in many ways, a viable option for business. There are increasing numbers of businesses that are growing and expanding. They're not growing at the same rate as, say, craft beer, or cheese, or other specialty categories, but they are growing. They are learning a lot about how to interrupt the status quo operation of the chocolate industry or venture.

Alicia: And the words that are used in chocolate, “fine,” “craft,” “specialty,” “artisan,” can be challenging for a lot of people to understand when they're trying to buy a bar of chocolate. How do you define those? And what do you look for in a chocolate label?

Carla: Totally.

Well, they always say when people are hiring somebody, an HR committee will only look at a resume for however many of seconds? And I feel like that's what getting a chocolate bar is for so many people, and that's also very justified. For very few people in this world can grocery shopping be a leisure activity or a hobby, or like for me, an academic practice. So, it's completely justified. The system is set up such that people find it difficult to understand these different categories. So for anyone who's confused, I just feel like it's important to say that you're justified in your confusion. That the system is designed this way.

And so often, what I find helpful to do is to think about two separate industries in our mind. So one is cocoa or cacao, we use these terms more or less interchangeably. The other is chocolate. There is one kind of supply chain or value chain that links these two different things. But the way that sourcing and production happens is really quite different between the raw material, cacao, and the finished product, chocolate.

So, let's just focus on chocolates, as consumers are often focused primarily on that. It's helpful then to think of two different categories of businesses. One is chocolate makers, or manufacturers. These are the people that take the raw material, cacao, and they do things to process it to turn it into chocolate. So, there's quite literally starting with a bean and taking it to a finished product.

Then there's another category of people called chocolatier. Chocolatiers take pre-existing chocolate, so somebody already took it from the bean to chocolate, and those chocolatiers turn it into other things, Bonbons, truffles, bark, etc.

They're sometimes derisively referred to as melters in the industry, if that helps people think about it. There's nothing actually wrong with working in this way. In fact, it's a very profitable and helpful business. It uses up lots of chocolate, which uses up lots of cacao. There are many bonuses to this.

Now, within that, there are different categories. So, 99% of the chocolate that is out there today, it's within what is loosely construed as sort of a chocolate broadly construed, industrial construed, etc. category.

And much of that chocolate would actually properly be referred to as candy. We're speaking now in October. We're coming up on Halloween. And 99.9% of the Halloween candy in the world is produced by three branded retail manufacturers. So, when we talk about candy, when we talk about industrial chocolate, this is an enormously concentrated value chain where power and wealth are captured by a very few.

There's also another category of chocolate that is premium chocolate, and premium chocolate gets called it because it gets a price premium. That price premium is really coming about based on a perceived value that's somehow different than chocolate candy.

But the way that I think of as helpful to understand this is premium chocolate is, in many cases, just candy wearing a fancy costume. It might be, for example, a Hershey's product that has royal purple and gold, and that goes on the shelves before the holidays. It might be Lindt chocolate bar, that also looks as though it's in a more expensive packaging. But it's still probably made in just the same way as most industrial chocolate is.

Then, within premium chocolate, there are categories known as craft chocolate. That's a category that's drawing its inspiration from craft beer and other artisanal foods. Fine chocolate, also a category that is focusing on artisanry and more. And then a much lesser used term, but probably the most academically accurate term, which is specialty chocolate.

Now, within all of this, we also then need to go back to that first category that we talked about, which is cacao, or cocoa. Within this, there are ideas about the quality of the raw materials beyond just the quality of the finished product. So, we also have categories like fine-flavor cacao, and specialty cacao.

Fine-flavor cacao is defined in many ways as sort of genetically superior to other types of cacao. Specialty cacao is defined as cacao that receives a price premium based on its perceived quality. And so, there are certain chocolate companies that are making chocolate with these so-called better primary raw materials. They're also trying to produce an artisanal finished product. And all of that is leading them to this idea of being fine craft, or specialty chocolate.

Now, I know that that's a huge mouthful, and far more than the average consumer should have to parse. It's a huge burden and it's unfair. The industry itself is still struggling to even agree on these definitions.

Just take for example, craft chocolate. Craft chocolate is a divisive term even today. It is primarily used in the Americas. There are many companies in Europe, these old-world, we could call chocolate companies, that are making products that look really similar to what these bean-to-bar small batch craft chocolate companies are doing, say here in the United States.

But these European companies are loath to be lumped in with craft chocolate. They see themselves as doing the Grand Cru vintage style wine version of chocolate. And they see craft chocolate companies in the United States as doing this kind of cowboy, bold, messy flavor operation.

So it's dicey, even within the industry. But, some of what you're hoping to better understand?

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, it's just so interesting, because I do think that chocolate is an entry point for a lot of people to think about supply chain issues, trade issues, the role of slavery in the past and in the present in food production. And so, I think it's just so rich, I mean, obviously, you know this. [Laughter.]

So yeah, I always think it's a good entry point for people. It was certainly my entry point to trying to think about these issues. And so I'm always so curious about how it's evolving, because it is such an expansive and — just, the world of chocolate is so vast that it is often difficult to get a grasp on.

Of course, it's a thing that through your — the institute, it — that is a necessary, such a necessary thing to exist because of how confusing and this whole world is. And that people don't know what to look for, even if they want to make better choices. And what you're talking about in terms of confusion, and how the — basically, the entire food system is set up that way to confuse the consumer.

I talk about this all the time with people where it shouldn't be the responsibility of people going to the grocery store to really dig in on the labeling and figure out where their food is coming from. The food should just be well produced and there shouldn't be all these ethical landmines everywhere in the grocery store for people. I talked about this with people who study the cattle, cattle’s effect on soil, because that's, of course, a huge issue.

And yeah, it's just, it just shouldn't be the responsibility of the consumer. And it's just so hard

to talk about all these things.

Carla: Yeah.

So, what I often try to tell people is basically you’re set up to more or less fail. What would be the ideal is, and I'm so in agreement, Alicia, is that this — basically, if you go into a store and you buy food, you should be able to be assured, just in buying it, that it was somehow good for people, the environment, the economy, etc. That is not guaranteed in any way.

And so, for people who need just a basic guide, there's kind of two categories of where you can find chocolate. One is, I would say, grocery writ large. So, this is grocery stores. This is a pharmacy. This is the site of public transportation, like airports, train stations, etc. The vast majority of chocolate that you're going to find in those places falls into this kind of industrial chocolate, or even candy category.

And so the way that I approach those is I flip the package over, I look to see the ingredients. I often hope that the first ingredient might be cocoa, or chocolate liquid, or something like that. If it's sugar, that's ok. Just be aware that what you're then getting is sugar that is flavored, like maybe milk and chocolate, not necessarily a focus product. So, evaluate those ingredients and see if they fit with you.

And then, it is better, in my opinion, to have some kind of sustainability certification at this point in time then not to have one in that type of grocery chocolate. Customers need to be skeptical of these certifications. They don't, for example, solve all social problems that exist in value chains. But they do provide a greater degree of traceability or information about the conditions of the production of those raw materials than anything else.

Then the other area where people can go and find chocolate that's been really growing, and that I hope will grow even further in — basically, in people's understanding, is the specialty category. And that means at specialty markets, or even at individual retail outlets of these different chocolate makers or chocolatiers that are working in this space.

And that tends to attract the customer that is looking more for a flavor-centric product. So, that requires an interest in things like origin, like flavor, like the conditions of its production or the artisanry that went into its production. It's like buying wine at Trader Joe's versus buying at a fancy wine shop. It's different categories of what people are looking for, and what kind of information is necessary to explore those categories.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

For this conversation series, I guess I can call it, I've talked to a lot of people who work in independent food media, traditional food media, but not a lot of food studies people. And so I'm curious how food media is perceived by someone who's working in academia and critical food studies, like how — what is the role that food media plays for people doing this work?

Yeah, I was on an NYU food studies panel last week, and it was me and just food writers. It was funny to just be watched by people who are really digging in and studying food and we're — but we're the people who communicate about these things to the public. And we're maybe not necessarily as well versed. We're always looking for academics to talk to about issues.

And so, yeah, just how is food media perceived by — in your work? And how do you use food media?

Carla: Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's so interesting, because I see food media as part of the bigger microcosm of just media. And academia in its most kind of elite and insular gut uses a lot of media.

But I am much more kind of an applied, or public focused academic. And there are, is a large number of us. There's a new generation of the way that people think about this, that see media as essential.

At the same time, both academia and media have gone through the very heavy process of privatization, the casualization of labor, and more, that has profoundly impacted what people are able to do, what they're able to say, how they're able to make money and survive, while also trying to do the important work that they aspire to. And so I see that as a big interruption on both sides of this fence, if it is a fence.

So, for me, food media is a regular part of my reading, or listening, or viewing diet. It's essential for just picking up what people are thinking about. It's an essential way, also, if you hope to communicate some of the much more, I would say complex, lengthy, wordy, different types of work that's done in academia.

And so I would never, I guess, presume to say that I know the different challenges that people in food media are facing. That said, there are a number of things that I think would make academic’s lives easier, who study cacao, chocolate, if food media — people involved in food media were to keep them in mind.

For example, approaching the study of cacao and chocolate, or the writing about it, the making of multimedia materials about it with the same seriousness as one approaches anything else would be really helpful. Chocolate is this area where we — that the biggest kind of pop culture character that we have is Willy Wonka. It’s silly in our culture, it is seductive, everyone is — it happens to me all the time.

People really think, ‘It's great, it's an escape, etc.’ However, it is just as much a part of the real world as anything else. And so approaching chocolate, while also celebrating the things that we love about it, but approaching it with that kind of seriousness would be really helpful.

Beyond that, chocolate is this kind of, I would say, poster character, as you described earlier for understanding value chains, or getting one pub right about the ethics of value chains. But a lot of what is said today is still profoundly racist. It is still profoundly anti-African. It is still profoundly ignorant about the history of slavery, contemporary labor practices. It's also often couched in very — Western understandings.

So, a lot of what people say about chocolate comes out of what they understand about wine. But wine is often being grown by white people in white places. It's a very different kind of product than a supply chain or value chain like cacao or chocolate looks like. So, there are very different factors that play into that.

So, these are the kinds of things that going into a deeper understanding of these would make academic’s lives easier, because there's a lot of noise out there in the world, about, ‘Avoid chocolate from these places, or avoid — don't eat this chocolate. It's made with slavery.’ These very kind of profound generalizations that don't serve anyone.

And it's also often coupled with a problematic assumption, that if you can just find the right chocolate, you'll be — you'll meet your salvation. You'll have checked off your moral and ethical box, without recognizing the fact that this is a profoundly unequal value chain. It was designed to be this way. It continues to be this way in the present day. And there's nothing kind of exciting and glamorous and fabulous about that side of the story of chocolate, no matter how much we might enjoy the flavor.

I see too often. And I've seen critiques of this in your own writing that I so appreciate this idea that if something tastes good, we can therefore extrapolate from that to assume that is good for people for the environment, and more. When in fact, those two things don't necessarily overlap in any significant way.

We often ask at FCCI, ‘What is the flavor of good intentions?’ No matter what the intentions might be of consumers, of chocolate makers, etc, if the effect is not such that the lives of cacao farmers are somehow benefiting or improving, it doesn't actually meet a standard that I think is a valuable one to uphold.

Alicia: Absolutely.

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Carla: Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, but I mean, so I feel like for a lot of people, this is such a personal question. It is, but so is pretty much everything that I do, feels very political. It's a thing, especially at this particular moment in the world. Everything feels highly political.

But it's also because the way that we operate in the world is — I think, we have to do things in community. We have to do things in groups. Cooking, and food are things that require doing these things, as groups of people, and that is therefore profoundly political and influenced by policy and politics.

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

Carla: Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

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

The first time I met Vallery Lomas was at the Food Writers’ Workshop in 2018. She had DMed me on Instagram asking if it was ok for her to show up, even though she hadn’t been able to secure a ticket. Venue occupancy limits be damned, I told her to come by, because she was—as I said to her then—“famous.” And she was, because she’d won The Great American Baking Show but it had never aired. One of the hosts had been outed as a sexual harasser before it debuted.

Regardless of that start to her career in the public eye, Lomas has emerged as a baking star, publishing her recipes with The New York Times, appearing on the Today, show, and working on a cookbook for Clarkson Potter. While she had already been famous in the food world, she’s destined to reach far beyond. Listen to our conversation above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi ,Vallery—thanks so much for coming on.

Vallery: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me.

Alicia: I was gonna ask my normal first question, but since you said you've had such a crazy week, can you tell me about why you've had a crazy week?

Vallery: [Laughs.] Yeah.

So, I am in the process of preparing for the photoshoot for my book, which will be out in September of next year. The photo shoot — we're starting beginning of next week. 

And I'm also working on manuscript edits and working on a project that's going to be really cool. It's going to have something to do with holiday baking. Just getting ready for that, since we are making some videos and you kind of have to do some — a lot a — just, a lot of work gearing up for that.

Alicia: Oh, wow. Well, that's super exciting, then.

Vallery: Yeah, it is very exciting. [Laughs.]

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

Vallery: Yeah. 

So, I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, born and raised. And I ate just a lot of different things. Obviously, I ate a lot of Louisiana food, like crawfish boils. That's what you do in springtime. like April, May. 

I always loved fresh fruit. And my grandmother, she always had like fig trees, and a grapefruit tree. And we had blackberries growing wild in our backyard. So, I was always just tickled to be able to go and pluck fruit off of the tree and enjoy that. 

And my mom, she's actually from Indiana. So, we also ate rice for breakfast, which is apparently a very Midwestern thing, just rice with butter and sugar.

Alicia: That’s awesome. I mean, it sounds like oatmeal, basically, just with rice.

Vallery: Ok, that's a very interesting way of looking at it. I never thought about it — I just thought, my first cousin, and I was like, ‘This is so weird.’ But we'd go spend summers there. And I'd be like, ‘This is delicious’

Alicia: Well, you didn't start your career in food. So, what inspired you to get into food? What role has food played in your whole life, and what made you make that leap to kind of making it your whole life?

Vallery: So, for me, creating food, and not just creating it but sharing it with other people through media — and for many years, that was through a blog — it was really just an outlet. Because I enjoy doing it, and I had just something inside of me that had this impulse to create things, and take pictures of them, and write about them, and share it with other people. 

And I never really saw, or even really thought about, I guess, how it could potentially be a career. Because I was always very focused on my academics. And it was always you do well in school to go to a good college, and do well in college to go to grad school, and you do well in grad school to pass the bar exam and get a good job. And I had always thought along those lines. I had never really kind of branched out into this concept of the world of being more of an entrepreneurial creative. 

I'm trying to think about when it was that I saw this as an actual career path that I really, I thought I could make something of. And I think I actually had the idea of sharing food in a book before I had the idea of knowing this could be a potential career. I just thought it would be something that I could potentially do while still working as a lawyer full-time. 

But I competed on the Great American Baking Show in winter, or in fall and winter of 2017. And when I got back home from competing on that, I was just sitting at work, feeling like the walls were closing in on me. And I knew that I couldn't devote the best hours of my day to work

that I just was — I really wasn't passionate about it. And that isn't to say that there wasn't a place for me in the legal field where I could have felt that, but I wasn't feeling it. 

I took this leap and was like, ‘Well, I don't know how we're going to make this work.’ And I didn't have anything lined up. And I just said, ‘You know, I want to take that chance to see if I can make an actual career out of this.’

Alicia: Right.

Has that training as a lawyer helped you in your career now, focusing on being a food writer and a kind of a food content creator?

Vallery: Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting, because I think a lot of lawyers, they're self selected for a number of reasons. But, I do enjoy reading, I enjoy writing, I enjoy analyzing, and those are all skills that I really honed in on as a law student, ’cause you don't really have a choice. And also just understanding the concept of sources and primary sources, and knowing — just kind of knowing how to research, and not taking everything at face value, and understanding terms of art. 

And also just knowing how to work hard, because, for the vast most part, being an attorney is — extremely, it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of expectations that people have, just the nature of the job, for some reason is not a good work-life balance, as they say. It's just an expectation of a lot of hours and an expectation of really being committed.

And I think anyone who has written a book, and definitely a cookbook, really understands how much it takes to kind of do it start to finish. So, I think just that work ethic of knowing how to really push myself has probably been the most practical thing.

Alicia: Right. 

It's funny, ’cause as you say that I'm like, ‘All the people I know who are lawyers, and all the people I know who are bakers, are the hardest-working people I know,’ because they're the ones who are like working these long hours. Bakers have to get up at like three in the morning to bake the bread, etc, etc. There is that connection between this very, very focused and intense work ethic, which I hadn't thought about before.

Vallery: It's unavoidable. Any lawyer has studied for the bar exam, which is a crazy thing. And just to kind of put yourself in that zone, and be in that zone for months and months, or people who have worked in the field years, it's a lot of pressure. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] And so, we talked a bit about the pro — where you are in your cookbook process right now? What was the difference between doing a cookbook versus doing your blog or your Instagram? How have those processes differed, or maybe, how have they been the same?

Vallery: Yeah, I mean, I feel like with a book I'm always thinking about this much bigger picture, whereas — and the bigger picture I'm thinking about with a book is, one, it's sharing just my absolute favorite recipes and recipes that are meaningful, but also telling this broader story. 

Whereas with Instagram, I mean, I use social media for a number of different ways these days. But ideally, when I'm thinking about the bigger picture of Instagram, I'm thinking more aesthetically, like, ‘Ok, what photo will look good next to the eight photos I've just posted on my grid? What's the color scheme? What is it so that it fits, so that I don't have a bunch of round pies, one after the next?’ Yeah, I think I think about it a little bit more aesthetically. 

But, I also use social media as a way to — it's a lot of the bread and butter of this whole career in food media. It's how I pay these bills. So, a lot of social content is kind of — I'm not gonna say dictated — but that's a huge part of social content, including blogging content is what different brand partnerships that I have.

Alicia: Does that, I don't know, change your creativity in any way? I don't know, I think people talk about Instagram, and usually they're talking about it in these, laborious ways like, ‘Ugh,’ about these aesthetics, and the grid, and performance, or something like that. For me, and I think for other people, maybe for you, too, it doesn't always feel inauthentic. 

And so, how does Instagram kind of being the bread and butter of your work in food media, change maybe what you want to do? Or does it influence things in a way that you don't like? Or are you still doing kind of what is authentic to you?

Vallery: Yeah, I mean, I think that's an interesting question. Because I feel from when I first got on Instagram to where I am now, it's been a total evolution. 

And when I got on it in 2016, it was really with the idea of one, people are sick of me posting food photos on my personal account. And two, I think the — one of the earlier pictures I posted got reposted by a big account. And I then saw like, ‘Oh, hey, this is a way I can actually build a community of people who are interested in the content I'm creating.’ 

Whereas now, I feel like it — Instagram is a full-time job. When I’m really excelling at Instagram, I am putting in so much thought and time and energy into it. Earlier this year, I got to a point where I was like, ‘This is enjoyable again. I like this. This is fun.’

Just how my account evolved, I think, it has been a struggle to balance it with other creative endeavors that I have. If I'm trying to build connections, where I'm sharing recipes with other media outlets, that's a recipe that I'm not going to share on my blog. And the reach I can get from other media outlets, it — and the credibility is, I think, important for me to kind of take the next step that I want to take in my career in this industry.

So, it's kind of this tough thing to balance of recipes that we've saved for the book, recipes that we're pitching to other media outlets, and then it's like, ‘Ok, so what's left for my blog? What's left for social media?’ 

And that's where those brand partnerships definitely come into play. And some of them are indeed — or I'll say, most of them — are very authentic and genuine. And I actually really enjoy developing recipes for brands, and it also gives me mandatory blog and social media content. 

So, it's a balancing act that I am working on.

Alicia: Right.

No, and I think every freelancer is working on similar balancing acts. I have the newsletter now, and I'm writing a book. And I'm supposed to write, still, for other people. It's like, ‘Where's this well of inspiration that I'm supposed to be drawing from?’ 

Especially now in the pandemic, which — where inspiration used to be pretty easy to come by, because you’d just live in the world. And someone would say something offhand, and you'd be like, ‘Oh, that's a great story idea, actually.’ Or you could observe what is trending, or something like that. But now, it's — everything is coming from the inside, which is an interesting thing. 

And for you, has the pandemic affected your cooking or your work? Where have you been drawing inspiration?

Vallery: Yeah, I mean, I think those are all just really great points. 

And I think I told myself several years ago, when I really kind of went down the rabbit hole of food media and wanting to exist in it. One of my mantras was like, ‘You are an unlimited well of creativity.’ [Laughter.] Whether it's true or not doesn't matter, but you have to at least tell yourself that.

But yeah, I mean, I think with the pandemic — I don't know. I had a really rough start to the whole pandemic, and recovery has been slower than I'd like. And that, just coupled with manuscript edits — that's a really great question. I'm like, ‘Where am I getting inspiration from?’

Oh, actually, my parents. So, my dad — he is, he just has all the great stories about every family member and every ancestor. So, I actually published a recipe for New York Times Cooking a few weeks ago, on succotash with sausage and shrimp, and my dad was 100 percent everything behind that recipe. He was telling me how his dad made it growing up and then how his mom made it, and how his grandmother would make it, and how he makes it now and how his brother makes it now and how his friend makes it now. And I just kind of used all of that to put a recipe together. So, definitely my parents.

Alicia: That's a great place to find inspiration. 

And you talked about how your cookbook is telling a story. What can people expect from that cookbook? And what is the story you're telling?

Vallery: The story is really just about resilience. So, it's about not letting adversity kind of stop you from whatever it is that you want to accomplish. 

Alicia: Got it. Right. 

You are famous for having won a show that didn't air. Do you have a different kind of relationship to that, now that you — you've been seeing such success? How does that feel nowadays, the whole controversy around the — America's Next — what is — America's — [Laughter.]

Vallery: It’s the Great American-

Alicia:  — Great American Bake Show, because I get confused. Because there was America's Next Great Baker, and then it's the Great British Bake Off, and then yes, so. [Laughter.]

Vallery: Exactly! So, a little known fact, and I actually learned this in law school — ’Bake Off’ is a trademarked term by — I believe it's Pillsbury. So, that doesn't extend to Europe. So, that's why they can use the term ‘Bake Off,’ but we can't use the term ‘Bake Off.’

Alicia: Ok. [Laughter.]

Vallery: It still doesn't feel good. And it's not something I think about, because I don't want to give power to it essentially. It's not something I think about often, yeah.

Alicia: There's been so much controversy, since that moment in food media, that there's been so many moments where it seems that things might change in food media, in terms of who is held up and who gets positions of power, and that sort of thing. And your whole career in food media has been in this — these moments. 

And, do you have some hope for changes in the future in terms of who's given power and what kinds of stories we're allowed to tell?

Vallery: Ooh, that's a very — that's a really good question. And I'm just so used to kind of censoring a lot of my actual opinions about these things. 

Do I have hope? I would say optimistically, I have hope. Realistically, I just feel like — the question is just — it's a bigger question than about food, or food media. It's just a question about where we are as a society. And I think we're all kind of seeing exactly that play out, exactly who we really are as a society. And I don't think anything, and our industry in particular, is going to be all that different from everything else that we see in our society. 

So, I would say optimistically, yeah, I have a little bit of hope that there can be some fundamental, foundational changes when it comes to equity, when it comes to equality, when it comes to representation. Real representation. But I think we know what that would actually look like, and that would be across the board representation from every facet. And, we just, we have to ask ourselves if that's where our society actually is right now.

Alicia: Right. No, it's so important. 

Vallery: Probably not. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

Vallery: I think existing as a Black woman in this country is a radical act in and of itself. 

Alicia: Yes, absolutely. 

Vallery: I can't quite separate any particular thing that I do from just existing, let alone having some level of success. Just the fact that I'm here is almost a political statement in and of itself.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much for chatting, Vallery.

Vallery: Yeah, thanks, Alicia!

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

Molly Wizenberg gained food-world fame through her blog, Orangette, as well as two memoir: Delancey: A Man, A Woman, A Restaurant, A Marriage and A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes From My Kitchen Table. Her latest, The Fixed Stars, has no subtitle and no food hook—in fact, it’s a memoir of shedding food, which she noted in her final blog post in 2018. “I am having to learn how to write it as I go along, without the handy crutch that food and recipes had become for me,” she wrote. It’s a book about identity and family, about shedding old skin and finding new comfort. Yet, upon its release, it’s gotten most of its attention from food media. We discussed the genre of memoir, what it’s like to be kept in a box while promoting a book about getting out of them, and the tension in The Fixed Stars around restaurant versus home cooking.

Alicia: Hi, Molly, thank you so much for coming on.

Molly: Oh my gosh, I'm thrilled to be here. Thanks for having me.

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

Molly: Yeah, so I live in Seattle, now. But I grew up in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 

And my parents were both from the east coast. My dad was actually Canadian, from Toronto, and my mom was from Baltimore. And they met there, and moved to Oklahoma in the mid ’70s, and very much, I think, did not expect to stay. I think they thought of themselves as coastal people. 

And so, I grew up in this place where my family kind of never planned to be. And in many ways — well, so my father was a doctor. And so I grew up with a lot of privilege, getting to travel and all kinds of things, and see other places, and understand that Oklahoma was just one place. 

But really, we were very much about home cooking. My dad was a very, very avid home cook, and would unwind at the end of the day, after seeing cancer patients all day, would unwind by opening up the fridge and sort of doing off-the-cuff cooking. And he was very much an equal appreciator of Bush's baked beans, but also things that seemed very exotic at the time where we were, like endive. 

And he was very much a — he was a real gourmand. He took such real pleasure in cooking and in sharing food. As a kid, it was actually really embarrassing to me, the pleasure that he took in cooking well for our family. He would always say — or he would frequently lean back from the table and say, ‘We eat better at home than most people do in restaurants.’ 

And it was so insufferable and so braggy, and yet at the same time it was so him and so much about the pride that he took in cooking, and finding food that he had had in other — finding ingredients he had had only in other places and introducing them to me. So, it was very much a very ’80s, food loving scene. 

My mom also did a lot of cooking, and was very much — I think of her as like the baker in the household. But I mean, we had a pretty idyllic, sit-down-to-dinner-together-every-night situation when I was growing up, and I'm really grateful for that. I had no idea how lucky I was to have two parents who put such care and attention into food, whether we were eating hamburgers or roasted chicken my dad had fussed over for a couple hours. 

Alicia: Right.

And your latest book, ‘The Fixed Stars,’ is not a food memoir, but in it there is a lot of tension between restaurant cooking and home cooking, like being at the restaurant versus being at home for dinner. How has this tension changed for you since you stopped working for the restaurants you co-founded? Has the role of food in your life changed since you exited those?

Molly: Yeah. For me, there's tremendous relief. 

Actually, I would love reading your writing about all the chefs that you bring into your interviews, whether you're writing about politics or love or whatever, because you are — you have so much more fluency in your talking about the restaurant world than I feel I ever did. Despite having been very much steeped in it, I was never a restaurant creature. 

And I came to co-found and co-own two, three sort of restaurants because the man I was married to had worked in restaurants off and on since he was a teenager all over the place. Pizza Hut, Balthazar, all over the place. And he was trying to find a way for us to be able to keep living in Seattle, where there were few jobs in the profession that he was trained, is trained in, which is music composition. 

And so he thought, ‘I love cooking.’ He and I both loved cooking, and what is a way that we could take this thing that we love, and that he could use it to sort of build a way for us to make money and live in the city we wanted to live in? And so, he is — Brandon is endlessly energetic, and basically taught himself, with the help of a couple of really generous mentors, how to open a restaurant on a shoestring. 

And we did that in 2009, we opened a restaurant called Delancey. And he was never a chef in the sense of — well, in any sense of being classically trained. Or even having the discipline — I know he wouldn't mind my saying that — that chefs, I think, are so famous for in their approach to work. Brandon has always been a musician, who just happened to be able to make things happen in whatever he did. 

And so we sort of together stumbled into owning, or creating and then owning, a restaurant that really truly was serving food that sort of bordered on what we liked to eat at home. And certainly at the center of it was woodfired pizza, that was the big thing that Brandon wanted to do. He wanted to make really good pizza.

But then everything else when we opened was my territory. And I very much cooked as we had at home. So, really simple, seasonal, but really interesting vegetable dishes and pretty simple desserts. I mean, we opened with a chocolate chip cookie and some homemade popsicles. And, by and large, it has stayed that way.

I only worked in the kitchen there for the first four months, and then spent the next nine years basically doing sort of general admin and ownership tasks. But it was — I think that, to work in a restaurant in any capacity, you have to have a really friendly relationship to adrenaline, and you have to be on friendly terms with chaos. And I am absolutely not that person, and never was. And so, being out of the restaurant is a tremendous relief.

I think that — for me, what was always most meaningful about it is — so, my background is in cultural anthropology. And I have always been most interested in people when I'm thinking about food, like food as a way of understanding how people live, what they care about, what gets them out of bed in the morning. And home cooking has always felt adjacent to that, a way of being with people, being for people, being a person myself. And I feel so — I just, I can't say it enough — relieved to get to scale back my relationship with food to only being that again, and not being beyond what I wanted. 

Alicia: Right.

And, yet, despite the book not being a food memoir, it has been regarded as such in the press, because your two prior memoirs are food memoirs, pretty explicitly. So, being as it is a book about defining yourself on your own terms and breaking out of boxes that the culture provides for you, has that bothered you? How are you defining yourself as a writer now?

Molly: Thank you so much for noticing that and asking about it. The book has been featured in a few articles as a food memoir, and it's really perplexed me because there is nothing about it that is a food memoir. And I haven't known how to engage with that press for that reason. It's sort of more than perplexed me, it pissed me off.

I feel like it's — I was thinking about how I see it — is it ok for me to veer off for just a second?

Alicia: Yeah, of course.

Molly: I was thinking about how — when I see people mention your writing, or recommend subscribing to your newsletter, people often refer to you as a food writer. Do you use that term for yourself?

Alicia: I used to more than I do now. I think of myself more as a culture writer now. I would rather be seen as like a nonfiction writer, a person who writes reported and personal and hopefully kind of immersive nonfiction — and not as a food writer. 

And then I wrestle with myself, because I'm wondering, ‘Do I not like that because I just don't like the way food writing manifests in the world in its most popular forms, because I don't see it as politically and socially engaged?’ But, I do like to write so much about other things. So, it is a difficult box to be put in, which you know, for sure.

Molly: Yeah. 

I mean, the whole time that I did think of myself as a food writer, if I would be in conversation with someone I would just — I had just met. And they were like, ‘What do you do?’ And I said, ‘I'm a writer.’ And then they would ask what I wrote about, I would be like, ‘Oh, I'm a food writer.’ And they would all — I mean 9.9 times out of 10, think it meant that I was a restaurant critic. And so then right away, I would be engaged in trying to define what food writing was and wasn't. 

The word food writing, I think, is — I think that it has always been complicated for me, and has never felt that it quite fit.

I mean, when I was in my — when I started the — my blog, which is how I got started writing as a, an adult, as opposed to just a teenager writing angsty poetry. I mean, when I started it, what I wanted most was to be a food writer in the vein of all the food magazines I saw in my parent’s house. But I look back on that, that wish, and what I was thinking of were like narrative pieces in Gourmet magazine in the ‘90s. I was never going to be a restaurant critic, and I was never going to be a recipe developer. 

And food writing as a term is not nuanced enough to make space for all the different ways that we can engage with food. And in fact, as you were saying, or as you hinted at,  food writing I think is — often, the category of food writing tends to be enforced as a category that is apolitical, that is easy, that is readily digestible, that is approachable. 

And so, I've been really — sorry, I need to clear my throat.

Once I started writing, right away, it was very clear to me that what I had thought I was going to do when this is — on the blog, 14 years ago, was a — I thought that I was going to do food writing. And so often what I was actually doing was writing about everything that orbited food in my own world. So, whether that was like the people, books I was reading, film photography I was interested in. And that food was a way of anchoring a narrative, but only sometimes the actual narrative.

I think that actually one thing that I do want to say: yeah, in the process of trying to — once I had written the proposal for ‘The Fixed Stars,’ and was trying to place it with a publisher, my being known as a food writer was a liability for me in huge ways. For one thing, for literary editors, food writing is a — it is not respected. 

And then the other thing is, of course, people want you to keep doing what they know you can do and what they know will sell. So, I received a lot of feedback from people who wanted to know if there were going to be recipes in this book. And when I said that there weren't going to be, they asked me if I would put recipes in it, if they told me to.

The shoehorning was so overt. But what I think it's really sad is that in talking about this kind of thing, what I think is really some of the most wonderful potential of food writing, I think — I want to be sure to mention that I actually feel writing about food taught me how to write the way that I write today. Which is that food writing is inherently concrete and very specific writing. It insists on the specific over the general. 

Nobody wants to read a general piece about hanger steaks unless we're going to talk about the ways that cows are bred for it, or the right mixture of cream for them, or whether they should be grass fed, or how you should cut a hanger steak, but that's not the food writing that I have ever wanted to do, or to read. 

Food writing, I think, taught me how to drop down into a scene through concrete information and imagery in a way that you have to be able to do to produce most types of creative narratives.

I'm not trained as a novelist. I'm also not trained as a food writer. But food writing really taught me how to do what we think of as writing that feels immersive and that feels real, because food writing is so specific, because food is inherently so concrete and specific. So, I think that, when I — so, go ahead. 

Alicia: No, no, go — you go. [Laughter.]

Molly: Oh, alright. 

I was just going to say that I teach memoir a lot. And even when I'm teaching general craft of memoir, I find it really helpful to use prompts and examples of really good, narrative food writing, because it's so clear the way that food can work as a device to anchor a story or to drop a reader down into a seat. 

Alicia: Right.

No, I was gonna say that food writing really taught me how to write, too, and I think the only reason I can write about things that aren't food now is because I spent so much time deeply, deeply embedded in just writing specifically about food. And just, I think, yeah, once you dive into food and you realize how much it touches everything, you realize that it also provides you the tools to discuss pretty much anything.

Which is why it's bad — I think it's bad — to say that food writing is shallow and etc., etc., just because it so often is in terms of what we most see with food writing. But I do think that if you — when you get deeper into it, you realize that it doesn't have to be as shallow as we think it is. 

I mean, I wish that I felt like, ‘Oh, yes, I'm a food writer,’ really explained what I am because I’m — same thing, I tell that to strangers all the time. It's like, ‘No, I'm a food writer,’ just to explain myself. But I — all that it connotes is so unpleasant to be attached to.

Molly: Yeah, I feel like it has been really — all this writing is shaped by market forces. But I feel like food writing in particular has been — I don't know, I'm probably talking about things I don't really know about. But I just feel like when I think about, ok, the fact that we all consume food, right? Every single one of us human beings. Not all of us read novels, right? I mean, all of us eat food. Not all of us read novels. 

I feel like food has been — sort of, food writing has been more — what am I trying to say? My god, I'm really feeling the fact that I have not finished my first cup of coffee here. 

Food writing, I feel like it has somehow been more sort of buffeted by the winds of the market and has bent to it more than some other types of writing. But maybe that's because food writing also has a useful and prescriptive role to play for so many people. It brushes up against everyone in a way that we don't ask literary fiction to do, or literary nonfiction.

Do you know what I mean? I don't know if I’m making any sense. 

Alicia: No, that does make sense. It does make sense that there's a push to make it general and approachable that we don't demand of other things. We demand nothing of the novel, because a novel can be anything and the way it is written can be anything, but we demand food writing be clear eyed and straightforward. 

I've talked a lot about this to other people, that because there hasn't been — now there is, and you see so much butting up against it, this — that there is cultural criticism in food now. There is criticism of the state of food writing. And so, people are really having strong reactions to that because it's sort of raining on their parade, I guess. 

But, in other art forms and other aspects of culture, there is that long-standing measure of criticism amongst people. And I think that not having that in food has made it be this very kind of boring, or interpreted as boring, genre of writing.

Molly: Mm-hmm. 

Yeah, that's a really good point. I think about it, like I just finished reading ‘Girl, Woman, Other’ by Bernardine Evaristo. Have you read it? 

Alicia: I haven't. 

Molly: It's an amazing novel. It won the Booker Prize early in 2019, I think. 

Anyway, but what I was thinking about is that in her bio, on the back of it, it says like, ‘She has written in tons of different genres.’ I'm paraphrasing here. 

But I think about the people I know who started out as novelists, let's say, and have branched into other things, or occasionally published personal essay, or someone like Kate Christian — sorry, Kate Christensen, who is primarily known as a novelist, but has done a lot of food writing in the last, what, 5 to 10 years. 

There's no question that if you have established yourself in fiction, you can make whatever crossovers you want. And of course, I mean, all of this has to do with, I think, the way that we hold up the novel as the highest form of writing. 

But I would like some day to have had a kind of career where it would say on the back of my book, ‘Molly Wizenberg has written in eight gazillion genres.’ 

Because I've never — I've always wanted to write about what I am trying to understand, like what I am engaged in grappling with. And that's never just one thing.

Alicia: Right. 

No, it's very interesting. I think it's a very U.S. idea, too, that writers have to kind of stay in one lane for their whole careers and never veer out of that. And I don't have any real evidence for that, other than so many European writers that I read, it's like, ‘Oh, this person writes novels, and writes literary criticism, and does a radio show.’ There's just so much more cross-pollination between cultural fields. And I think that we do ourselves a disservice. 

But, I think, it does feel very U.S. to me at this point. The more I try and read up — yeah, it’s — where it's like, ‘You do one thing, and you do it, and you never stray from that. And if you stray from that, we're going to be trying to put you back in a box.’

Which is, I think, what happened with you with ‘Fixed Stars,’ which is that you completely broke out of writing food memoir, but everyone was like, ‘No, food memoir, it's a food memoir.’ And it's really interesting to watch that happen.

Molly: Yeah, and I think it is totally because of our feeling that something cannot succeed unless it makes money. So, yeah, if that is our only — if that's our only measure, yeah, we all have to keep doing whatever we've done that has had any measure of success. 

God, it was really demoralizing for me. Once I had finished writing the proposal, and then shopping it around, and talking to a number of editors before sort of settling on one and moving forward with them, it took a long time for me to un-hear all the things that these editors had said to me, or asked of me when I had phone calls with them. Because, they were — some of them were really openly averse to publishing anything else that I did. No matter what it was or how much they liked the proposal, they wanted me to keep doing what they knew would be a safe bet for them. And of course, they didn't want to lose money on it. 

But, it's so sad. It was so clear to me when I wound up with my current publisher, who — so Abrams is only recently branching into narrative nonfiction. They've done a lot of incredible books that are art books, and books that are heavily illustrated and beautifully designed. But I think that they were actually willing to see the book for what it could be, and to be really interested in it not only as a narrative, but also as an object that they wanted to allow to be beautiful. Whereas other publishers, I got to have no say in what the actual object looked like, or felt like. And it felt quite radical at times.

Alicia: Right. 

And, I mean, I know you want to do other kinds of writing, but memoir has basically been your genre and very fruitful for you. Why do you think that is and do you think you'll step away from it?

Molly: When I started writing this most recent book, I felt really embarrassed by the fact that here I was, about to start writing a third memoir. And I still sort of struggle with that feeling. It feels very different to say, ‘I'm a memoirist,’ like that seems to have sort of a finite end date, as opposed to saying like, ‘I'm a novelist, or I write cultural criticism.’ I feel like at some point, I should probably get over it and move on. 

So, I don't know. Because the truth is, I have always used writing as a mechanism for trying to make sense of my life, and to figure out what I'm gonna do about this life. And I think that people do that in many different genres. And I happen to do it by writing pretty directly about myself. I would like to think that maybe I will find some other ways of doing that. But I don't really have — I’ve never had an impulse toward fiction. I just haven't. 

So I don't know, I think that I am a nonfiction writer. And for as much as I would like there to be a different word for what I'm doing, yeah, I think that I am sort of a serial writer about my own experience and where it kind of rubbed up against the world.

Alicia: Right.

Well, in this book, there's — I was actually like, ‘Oh, wow, it's odd to read a memoir that has so many endnotes.’ And so I do think that this memoir is super-engaged with the world and with other writing in a way that most memoirs are not. I don't know if that was like a thing you had in mind going in, or—

Molly: So, when I was, when I thought that I was going to wind up being in an academic [position], and being in anthropology, I always felt very torn about how to feel that I could be of use somehow. 

Because, in truth, the part that I loved the most about being a graduate student in anthropology was being presented with all of these different writer’s ways of understanding the world, and their theories, and their framework, and their — I just sort of wanted to spend my whole life having someone say, to me, ‘Here are some books that you should read that will make you see the world differently, and let's talk about them.’ And, of course, that is not what it means to be an anthropologist in academia. 

And so, it has taken me a while to figure out how to make that same — how to make that part of me, how to give that part of me a home in my writing. Because yeah, food writing, I didn't feel like — it didn't have space for me to talk about Foucault’s ideas on the history of sexuality, which had been so mind-blowing to me in grad school, and things like that. 

But, I missed getting to steep myself in the world of ideas and theory, however unmarketable they were. I missed getting to steep myself in the world of ideas and thought for the sake of understanding, not for the sake of selling something or changing necessarily policy. 

And so, when I started thinking that I might write the book that became ‘The Fixed Stars,’ I started thinking about it because I was doing so much reading at that point, about queerness, and about historical movements in queerness, and ways of understanding sexuality. And I was trying to understand my own life, kind of doing a personal anthropology on myself. 

And so then to take that and actively make it talk on the page with my own writing. I mean, that was what I wanted to do with this book. And I just, I'm so grateful that I landed with a publisher who let me do that, because, wow, there were a lot who didn't want to let me do that.

Alicia: That's so disappointing, but not surprising at all. Yeah, they don't want anyone outside their boxes.

Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

Molly: Oh, yes. Yes, I mean, at the most basic level, you can't source food, access food in any way without entering into these relationships of power and privilege. 

And for me, beyond that, I mean, beyond my — beyond the thought that I think it's so important to put in where we put our dollars in terms of sourcing food, supporting local restaurants, and local businesses, and things like that. For me, because I am so much of a homebody and a home cook, I, more and more, feel cooking is a way for me of asserting the value of the domestic sphere and care work in a way that is not supported in our broader political climate. I mean, I think about — especially since the pandemic started.

And I have a spouse who does not feel as proficient at cooking as I do. And so, I do pretty much all the cooking. And the number of meals that I have prepared and the amount of care that I — because I have a more flexible job as a writer then my spouse does as a psychotherapist, the time that I put into cooking and doing care work for our child and caring for our home, can you even imagine if those things were compensated?

So, yeah, it feels hugely political to me, the fact that I spent so many — that I care about caring for my family this way, and spending our money on groceries in an thoughtful way, and then that I'm still worrying about where money's gonna come from. It feels so messed up to me that the domestic work that actually fuels the world doesn't, isn't valued in this world. 

So yeah, that's kind of a roundabout way of saying this. But yeah, I feel like when I cook, I am within my family creating a moment and creating a life that I'm choosing to put real care and time into, despite the fact that if the world had its way, no one would care about it. But I care about it. I don't know if that makes any sense.

Alicia: Oh, it makes complete sense. It makes complete sense. 

And I love that, because so many — so few people have given me an answer that recognizes the domestic labor that is uncompensated. And, so I think that that's such a good addition to this conversation around the politics of food. We have to have conversations about how it manifests in the home, for sure.

Molly: Yeah, I mean, I think especially in this period when we're all sort of in and out of lockdown, and I have a child who's in second grade and who is, whose school is online right now. Yeah, I am one of those people you read about in articles, like, ‘Where is my career going to go?’ Because right now my entire world is consumed with shepherding my child through school and cooking 21 meals a week. But there's never been any sort of conversation, at least in U.S. policy, about how we are actively going to value that, the work that underlies keeping us all alive.

Alicia: Yeah. 

Well, thank you so much, Molly, for coming on.

Molly: Oh, my gosh, it was such a pleasure talking with you. I love reading your newsletter every week, and I'm so happy to become a paying subscriber.

Alicia: Well, thank you. Thank you again.

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

Jesse and I used to work together at New York Magazine, where he’s still senior editor at Vulture and the host of “Good One,” a podcast about jokes. He’s one of my favorite thinkers on cultural topics because he’s not just into one thing. While comedy is his professional focus, he’s also deeply into food and fine art, and he brings the knowledge of these forms to his work on an art form that most people don’t take seriously. Because I think food is also an aspect of culture that people take for granted, I wanted to discuss the connections with him. How does taste work when the response is utterly subjective? How can we critique something that people respond to physically?We talked about this and much more, including how the video for Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” was formative for both of us, why we didn’t know any Protestants while growing up on Long Island, and that the key to a good neighborhood restaurant is an agreement upon the “normal amount of salt.” Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Thanks, Jesse, for coming on to talk to me.

Jesse: Of course. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I feel like I both talk to you every day and also have not talked to you in six years.

Alicia: I know, that's a really interesting thing about social media, isn't it? Yeah. 

This is my second interview that I'm doing today, and both times I'm going to start with a question that isn't actually my first question. Which is, you responded to one of my Instagram stories about the video for ‘You Can Call Me Al,’ saying that it was also formative for you. Can you tell me about that? How was ‘You Can Call Me Al’ formative for you? 

Jesse: It's hard to remember. 

So, I should have remembered when exactly the song came out. I watched TV early and often. As early as I was, one is hypothetically able to watch TV, I was watching TV. And MTV, I feel like, was the thing I was constantly watching. And I just remem — such a specific memory of watching that video with my dad and learning what funniness was. [Laughter.] 

I don't know what my brain was like before it, and there's so many seminal memories that sort of came immediately afterward. But, I do — just, the idea of seeing grown-ups acting silly, and being like, This is what comedy is. This is what funniness is, which is these beings that I've only understood as being protectors, or these foreign beings. They make funny faces, too? And specially ’cause it's — they're wearing those — they're dressed up. There’s just something that's so clearly made sense. 

And I still think my sense of humor is not so far away from that, which is grown-ups doing stupid things. But, still well done. It's still professional, it's not completely thrown together. And just sort of the deadpan quality of like, ‘This is gonna be completely unaddressed, this world.’ We don't know why they're doing this. Over and over again, it's the thing that I find funniest.

Alicia: Yeah. I started listening to Graceland very obsessively last year, even though I've loved that song forever. The video, again, for me too, taught me what funny is. Because, just, Paul Simon, his face in the whole video, I mean, I guess it just teaches you the idea of the straight man. Especially moments when he carries the drum past the door, and he's looking back at Chevy Chase. There's just something about it. 

Obviously, I don't think about comedy as much as you do, so I can't explain it as well. I just know that it was just — yeah.

Jesse: I think you explained it. It is a classic comedy routine, but not played, how it is — right?

So, it's also, he's short. And Chevy's tall. And it's just heightened and played a little bit more grounded than is, was of the style before that. But if that video was made now, it would be even more extreme.

There is also something about it being music that appeals to a kid in a way that if it wasn't music, it wouldn't work. The comedy’s completely nonverbal. You don't have to understand any words they're saying, because the song is being played, and ultimately the song is not about what the video is about. And also, the song is like Raffi adjacent in terms of its musicality. 

So, I think it’s sorta like, ‘Oh, this appeals to you.’ It's hard to remember this, be — but I remember this only because of when I interviewed John Mulaney. He was talking about — and he's a little bit older than us — but a lot of kids programming that was around when we were a kid was just adults doing things. It was for kids explicitly, but it was still just like you saw two adults. It was not a bunch of kids hanging out. 

So, I do think it was written as a sketch, and it plays very much like what would work. But it wasn't violent. I do think a lot of two-man comedy that you would see, or even — I feel like I would see some Three Stooges stuff as a kid for whatever reason, and it was more aggressive than I guess was my sensibility at four, and my sensibility still. And so, it just sort of was everything. It's still, I guess if talisman is the right word, but it is a touchstone that it's nice to see it carry through. 

But you're like, ‘Oh, that is the same comedy as Detroiters,’ or whatever, things that I think of are the things that are for me. It's sweet, and they're playful, and — but not done in a way that's so obvious. Where it's just sort of like, ‘They'd never do a thing.’ Which is like, ‘Isn't it weird that Paul Simon’ — I don't even know if I knew Paul Simon. That's a thing of like I don't know when I learned Paul Simon was the little guy.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah, I don't know. It is funny that one, that we saw that video so much, and that it was so memorable. I mean, you're not the only person who's like our age where I've talked about the ‘You Can Call Me Al’ video and being like, ‘What was up with that? Why did we like that so much?’ But it was very, very appealing to people who were like three or five years old.

Jesse: I remember that and the George Harrison, ‘I’ve Got My Mind Set On You’ video.

Alicia: Oh, yes! That video was so funny. [Laughs.]

But also, for me, I really liked the Grateful Dead video, ‘Touch of Grey,’ where they turned into skeletons.

Jesse: That probably would have been too spooky for me. I remember, The Grateful Dead-

Alicia: When that came out?

Jesse: Yeah, it's just so funny. I mean, the ‘Call Me Al’ video, I think, was like, ‘86, ‘87. So, that means I was hypothetically like two. Eight, I remember from that — who knows? But, it is so clear. Maybe I'll say that's my earliest memory if anyone ever asks.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I think I think that's a good one. I think that makes sense. Yeah. 

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

Jesse: Sure. Yes. 

I grew up in, broadly, Long Island, New York. Since you'll know where these things are. I'll say more specifically. I grew up in Valley Stream, which, for those who don't know, is really, really, really west, and mostly entirely south. Where I grew up, specifically, was on the border of Queens and Long Island. As you know, it's places where suburbs were invented. [Laughter.] Valley Stream’s a pretty big one. It has two SNL cast members. In my head, there was a third, but I can't remember who it is. Both Jim Breuer and Fred Armisen are from Valley Stream. 

And I grew up in a town that was inside Valley Stream that, when I — was called Green Acres for a really long time. But then there was a shooting at the Green Acres Mall. And so we voted — ‘we.’ I was not part of it. We voted to change our name to Millbrook. Is a nice little town. 

So, eating was a big part of, I think, growing up. My dad, in my head, was a proto-foodie, I think before — because all I know from how popular restaurants were in the ’80s is from that scene in When Harry Met Sally, where Carrie Fisher was like, ‘Restaurants in the ’80s were what theater was for people in the ’60s.’ And they don't totally know what that means. 

But my dad wasn't a yuppie. He didn't have enough money to go to the restaurants. He was a psychologist, but in the ’80s he was primarily doing residencies or whatever. So, he wouldn't go to restaurants. He lived in the East Village because he wanted to try the different foods that were in New York, that were in the city. He was going to school on Long Island. He's getting his PhD on Long Island, but he lived in the city because he wanted to eat different things. 

So, he raised us on that ethos. So, that meant a few things. He had an office in Queens that he would go to multiple days a week. But on Saturdays, sometimes he would take me there, and we'd get lunch in Flushing. Going to Flushing, Queens, and eating Chinese food — and mostly it was Cantonese, especially then — and knowing what that meant, and understanding the differences and learning it.

Broccoli was my favorite food for a large part of my life. Broccoli and roast chickens were the only things I wanted. As long as I've lived, I've known broccoli as American broccoli. That is how I understood what broccoli is, and I preferred it because it's less bitter than what we would call I guess Chinese broccoli. But I understood. I think that's a huge difference, which is, oh, understanding that your idea of what food is is not universal, is already a pretty eye-opening thing. But I remember, when sushi restaurants opened up. I remember when a Thai restaurant opened up, and my dad telling me what Thai food is, and telling me that he would eat Thai food all the time. 

And my dad cooked a lot. On the weekends, he would do things that took more effort — again, things that now feel so commonplace, which is, people, ‘Oh, I'm gonna learn how to make gazpacho or whatever. Or, I'm gonna learn how to make Cajun food.’ No one else's parents I knew were doing stuff like that. 

And I would always help him whenever I could. Gazpacho was such a specific memory for me, even though I didn't like eating tomatoes for most of my life. But it demanded the most chopping, so I could help him the most. I was like, ‘I could do the job.’ [Laughs.] It's interesting. It's like he let me do the knife-related cooking, but not the fire-related cooking.

So many of my memories that I have are eating related. We got takeout Chinese food Friday nights. Often, we would get — there was a specific sort of American Italian place, Italian-American place, we got food from on Sunday nights. There was the kosher deli. 

And eventually, I worked at that kosher deli; I worked at an Italian deli. That is sort of how I organized what Long Island was, and I think before I learned to not like it as a place, I think that is what I liked about the place.

Alicia: Well, I mean, same. 

Yeah, it's funny. Because people ask me — I did an interview recently where someone was like, ‘Oh, tell me about where you grew up.’ And I'm like, ‘Uhh.’ [Laughs.] I don't know how to explain it other than by the food that I ate, ’cause that's the only good thing about it. That and the beach, I guess. 

Just constantly organizing it by — and I think it sounds kind of insane to anyone maybe who grew up somewhere where that's not the only good thing? I'm a food writer, so I guess people expect me to talk about food. But if I wasn't a food writer, it'd be like, ‘Why are you only thinking about things in terms of the pizza, and the bagels, and the Chinese food?’ Well, it's because I come from like a Hellmouth, so-

Jesse: But yeah, ’cause it's like I have friends who, now as adults, maybe are into food less than I am, but they still — where people will be like, ‘Oh, I like this pizza.’ 

Long Island, I think, trains you to develop opinions about the things that are plentiful, which are bagel places, and pizza places, and takeout Chinese. Those especially, I think, then as — by high school, also, you had the opinion of what were your sushi places.

And I think that has always been a part of — I can't speak to WASP Long Island and WASP New York City. See, I sort of didn't — I didn't know any of those people. I didn't know there were Protestants until high school. 

I understood that Jewish people weren't the most. I grew up next to the most Jewish part of Long Island. But I understood the Jewish people were not the majority of white people in the country. But I thought Catholics were — ‘It's not Jews, but it's definitely all these Italian people, and all these German people, and all these Irish people.’ 

But, that stew of that generation of immigrants, which all those sort of people are, which is sort of early 20th century, where food and the amount of food is just so important, and the opinions about food is ingrained, I think so much of what we think of is the New York identity. 

So, my mom grew up on Long Island in the same town. So, yes, she didn't have necessarily opinions about what sushi place, but they did have opinions about what bagel place, or even the place where we got pizza. Most of my life was her parent’s place that they determined was the best. And I imagine if you talked to whoever else that had that same sort of lineage, they would be like, ‘That place sucks. This is the place.’ 

And it's partly because it is so, what I find so fascinating, which is if you've grown up where X is the tomato sauce, or whatever, right? So then, if you eat any other tomato sauce, it's not gonna taste as good because you have a certain value system of whatever it is. It's so minor, and it's the type of thing that fascinates me, but like, ‘Oh, for me tomato sauce should be this, and have this much acid.’ Where if you had a person who liked, I don't know, this Italian place, they’d be like, ‘Oh, I like sweeter tomato sauce and anything that is not — what is acidic is gross to me.’

And that is what I like. ’Cause otherwise Long Island, it's like my parents — once me and my older brothers graduated from high school and were in college, they moved upstate. It's just so cramped, and so much traffic, and parking lots were — every parking lot was a nightmare. And it's like, ‘You don't have to live that way.’ That’s, especially where I grew up, it's, there's — certain food of that level and access to the city is the reason you do it.

Alicia: Yes. 

No. And I mean, for me, there was also a lot of Greek food. I don't know if there was a lot of Greek food where you grew up.

Jesse: Because I didn't like tomatoes, everything that was, to me was tomato-related, I was like, ‘That's not my thing.’ And so, I couldn't understand others, these Greek salads, and they have tomatoes in it. So, I don't want that. And gyros or whatever had tomatoes in it. I couldn't be like, ‘I want to just take out the tomato.’ I saw one; It had a tomato in it. I was like, ‘No, thank you.’ 

I don't think I started really eating Greek or general Mediterranean-related food until much later, when I realized you could just ask for not tomatoes. Or, if it’s is a sauce. It's just sort of chunky tomatoes. It's an early taste distation or whatever. So I was like, ‘Well, tomatoes is the thing I don't like, and bananas is the thing I don't like,’ and then that was just sort of the rules. And I didn't like eggplant, right? Once you don't do that... 

So, my parents were eating Greek food, especially because they were vegetarian. They still are. But, as we're talking about my childhood, they were. So, Greek food, I think, was really appealing to them. And I think maybe it's even possible they're like, ‘Oh, this is a thing that we can just eat,’ right? I ate meat and my brothers ate meat, and also we were all in — growing boys in high school. And my dad realized, ‘Just — make slabs of meat,’ and we won't say anything about it.’

Alicia: It's funny to hear someone say that they didn't know what a WA — never, didn't know what a Protestant was. ’Cause I don't think I did either. I don't know if they're there now. They must be, on Long Island.

Jesse: I mean, I don't know. I mean, if you broadly define Protestant to mean anything that's not Catholic or Greek Orthodox.

I have to imagine — so, this is incredibly — this is — I don't want to talk too much about this, ’cause it's coming from an incredible place of ignorance. So, Valley Stream, where I grew up, has become like in vogue, because as all these people are leaving the city with families, Valley Stream is a place people are listing to move, which is crazy. Because, it wasn't a bad place. It just was not the place on lists people said to move, because there are really nice suburbs all around. And why would you move to a medium nice suburb when there's these sort of really, really nice ones?

But, so, my little brother, who is 11 or 12 years younger than I am, he went to the same elementary school but then moved when he went to — my parents moved. So, when I grew up, it was let's say 80% Jews, Italians, Irish. Let's say, that's my 8%, the entire thing. And then I had some friends who moved, who by the end of elementary school, I had some Jamaican friends, and Haitian friends, and Filipino, and Taiwanese. That was that wave that was happening. 

But then in the 12 years, by the time my brother was graduating, I would say, the — he was one of two Jewish kids in his elementary sixth grade class, and there's maybe like three Catholics, and then — So, that's part of what is the pitch when people are like, ‘Oh, you should move to Valley Stream. Valley Stream is the most diverse town in Long Island.’

It's crazy, other than it makes sense because Valley Stream was never defined by one ethnic group. It wasn't an Italian town, and it wasn't a Jewish town, it wasn’t — which happens in Long Island, as you know. So, I think that little amount of openness, the fact that it didn't have to be just one, allowed like a slow creep. 

So, now, as there are more first and second generation Africans, or Asians, or — there's also a sort of a lot of seemingly affluent African-Americans who are — I think, I don't know what their religions are, is what I’m trying to say. [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, for real, yeah. 

No, but it is such an interesting place to have grown up, because of all of that was going on. But it is also like the most segregated place. 

And also that did — wait, speaking of weird places people are moving, did you know that Anna Wintour's beach house is in Mastic.

Jesse: [Laughs.] So weird.

Alicia: Which is so weird. I was like, ‘What the hell?’ I was like, ‘That's so far from the Hamptons.’ And when I was a kid, Mastic was the most dirt-baggy place.

Jesse: Yeah, but I guess if you want a lot of space, you don't want to see anyone. I think you are like, ‘Oh, I just want a beach that's mine.’

Alicia: Yeah, then you move to — yeah.

Jesse: People know she's rich, right? She's rich. But compared to other types of rich people. I don't know how rich she is. She's not as rich as Howard Stern, or Jerry Seinfeld, or Billy Joel. So — 

Alicia: Who are all great Long Islanders. [Laughter.]

Jesse: They all have places on Long Island, but they also have hundreds of millions of dollars, so they can both move to the Hamptons and buy a giant place. Right? 

Alicia: Right.

Jesse: But Anna Wintour probably doesn't have enough money where she can do both. Like, she can. She probably has enough money where she’ll buy a giant place on Long Island that's a beach place, or move to the Hamptons and have it a nice place. But she doesn't have ‘I could buy top market, over the insane, I'm-buying-this-to-prove-how-much-money-I-have places.’

Alicia: Yeah. 

Well, since we're on this kind of sort of topic, but — so I don't know if this is actually that related. 

I feel there are similarities between food and comedy in the cultural world. And food is a pretty obvious topic for comedy. And I was going through your podcast ‘Good One,’ which we haven't mentioned yet. 

And so many of the jokes are about food, which might just speak to your interests, I guess. But you talked to Marc Maron about tumeric. And even like Sebastian Maniscalco, his doorbell joke is about cake really at the end. But are these things similar, in terms of the taste that you bring to them and all that? Are there actual connections in your perspective?

Jesse: Yeah, I mean, it's hard, because I — I mean, the answer is, from my perspective, yes, because I'm the only perspective I have. Because comedy does not sort of have a history of criticism, like almost every other art in the world, no matter what every sort of critic, broadly defined, I try — I'm getting into maybe accepting calling myself a critic. But that comes from a different point of view, right? Because there's not a history of it. 

So, there are the arts that I'm interested in that are my frame of reference, and food is one of them. And fine art is one of them. And I think on the surface level, a lot of comedians talk about food, because it's a universal experience. And if you're trying to be the type of comedian that is famous and popular to a lot of people, it is a very good subject to appeal to a lot of people. Especially if you're not cursing, right? Like, if we want to talk about family, food is so associated with family.

And it's also just sort of a thing you're doing three times a day, right? So, if Jerry Seinfeld, instead of three times a day — instead of eating three times a day, three times a day, did — I’m trying to think of another thing that is universal — like, worked out. 

Let's say you worked out three times a day. And everyone did. Instead, let's say everyone worked out three times a day and ate once a day. Jerry Seinfeld would have hours and hours of working-out material. Because that's how his brain works. 

Some comedians have these broken brains, where they can't not just be looking for material and be like, ‘Oh, that's different.’ So, for a person like a Jerry Seinfeld, who to me is not — who cares about food so much for a person who seemingly doesn't care that much about food. Every episode of that — his show, he's getting coffee, and he cares about that. But, most of the time they're eating.

One time, I was at Carbone. I think the only time I ever ate at Carbone. In the back room was his birthday party. But I didn't realize it was his birthday party, because one famous person came in after another and you're like, How does Andy Cohen know Ila Fisher know Jake Gyllenhaal know-’ And I was like, ‘Oh, these are people that are apparently Jerry Seinfeld's friends.’ So anyway, he was eating at Carbone. I think it's just sort of a — it is a, it's a thing that he's observing. So, you see that with a person like him. 

Jim Gaffigan has so much material about food. It's a way in. And Jim Gaffigan’s recent — he put out two specials that he did, entirely of material of the country he was in. So, he did an hour of Canadian jokes, and he did an hour of Spanish jokes. And he was going to do an hour of jokes, either about Latin America or about Mexico. He hadn't decided because then Covid hit, so he couldn't do those shows. 

And all the jokes were about food. Every single one. He had an hour of jokes about Canadian food. And it's because if you've been to Canada enough, as he has, you're just — it's an easy way, and a surface-level way, where you can interact with a culture. It also can be a more deep way you interact with the culture, but it is a way where you can have an immediate interaction. 

But I also think, for me, where they connect is — and where I think about it the most — is they are incredibly subjective art forms, that are so subjective that they feel objective, which is your relationship to what you think tastes good. And similarly, what you laugh at is so built into who you are as a person that you can't imagine someone else thinking differently. 

And it becomes really hard for me to sort of then be like, ‘Hey, this is not good, or that is — that's good.’ So much so that I've given up on it. I've given up on the idea that there is good — good and bad is not what I think about. It's not how I try to talk about the art of comedy, where because there is a history of food criticism, food writing, I think people trust sources, even if they — even though they shouldn't, hypothetically.

I think that, hypothetically, if a person likes a restaurant, you go there and you like it. And then they go to another restaurant, and they say they like it and you — whatever. Then you can be like, ‘Oh, me and this person have a similar enough point of view.’ 

But any assumption that one person is more correct is like — and that you should then live that way, doesn't make sense. Because you've lived a very specific life where three times a day you've eaten food, and that has shaped what you find interesting or not, and it's so connected to background and where you lived and when you lived, and in class, and every single thing that makes a person a person, it interacts with. 

And comedy is the same way, which is you laugh however many times a day, if you live a good life, hypothetically, you laugh more than you eat. But if you do, each laugh is the same as a bite, maybe? But all those laughs are such specific associations of cultural history, but also your friend’s cultural histories, and also the media of what you — the time you grew up in. 

I think comedy especially is incredibly time sensitive. And it's something I think about a lot where people — comedies about timing, and they assume that means the speed in which you say — I think of Wayne's World or whatever, where he says something and then he says, ‘Not,’ and you’re — the time between he says not, that's what timing is in comedy. But it's also just sort of, in 1991 or whatever, when he first said that joke was at a time where sarcasm was ready for its spotlight. 

So, timing is so important in comedy in terms of how culture builds to a certain — what people find funny, and what is interesting, and what's surprising. ‘Cause surprise, I think, is a little bit more important to comedy than it is for food, though it can be important to food. 

So, it all sort of stirs together, and I think what we both find — me, based on reading you, and me, based on being myself — what we find int — why we find things interesting, our stuff interesting, is because all that goes into a person can go into this form. It gives you an opportunity to bring all of yourself to it, where you can write about it from a psychological point of view. You can write about it from a sociological point of view, or political, or anything. That is because it is all a person is. 

And in ways that other art forms, I think, are a little bit harder. And that's the part that's harder — it's hard for me to imagine what is — what — why music is different, but it just sort of is different.

Alicia: It is. [Laughs.] No, it absolutely is. 

And I, I've been thinking about this a lot because my boyfriend — comedy, the way comedy manifests for someone if their native language, is different is — and it's so difficult to communicate why something's funny and why something's not. 

And so, I've been trying to really understand his brain on this, because he likes Curb Your Enthusiasm but is a bit indifferent to Seinfeld or he really loves certain Adam Sandler movies, And I'm like, ‘Alright, I'm trying to understand what's going on here,’ And then really didn't like Kids in the Hall. And then I tried to show him a Marc Maron — I think his last special. And he was like, ‘I don't like this.’ 

And I was like, ‘But-’ And I'm trying to understand — kind of explain how it works. That's the worst. You can't explain to someone why something's funny. And just like you can't intellectualize how something tastes — if something tastes good to you, you can't just explain to someone who doesn't like it enough how to like it.

But I think that other art forms, there is that sort of — it's less visceral, because you're not having an actu — well, sometimes you're having a physical response — but you're really — it's not a physical thing. Laughing is physical. Eating is physical. And so, you really know in your body how you're responding to it. Whereas, when you look at a piece of art, and someone — and you're like, ‘I don't really like it,’ but someone can explain to you why it's good. And you're like, ‘I understand from that perspective.’ You can put yourself in other perspectives when it comes to other things. But for these two things, it's just, it either is or it isn't for you.

Jesse: Yeah, I think Adam Sandler is a huge international comedy star. Which is not a thing that usually exists, because comedy does not trans — it barely translates between people that speak the same language. When people say, ‘Oh, it's because of the language,’ it's not necessarily like that. 

There's British comedy that I’m like, ‘I do not get it.’ Contemporary British stand-up comedians who are very successful. And you're like, ‘This is an iteration on some other iteration on some other iteration of a history that I am not a part of.’ 

And sometimes there are British comedians, who clearly watch American comedians. That’s their frame of reference. And so, as a result, you can get it. There's this comedian, Daniel Sloss, who I had on, who's essential — essentially an American comedian, but he's Scottish. But I’ll watch — so much of that I've avoided British comedy, because I don't want to have to learn a whole, complete other world. 

I think it's this thing, where, often it's, how do I put it — tastes evolve. And tastes don't necessarily evolve for the same people at the same time. Sometimes, often, people add class distinction — sometimes it's financial class, but it's also just sort of the class of smarter people, or people who have more access to certain types of media are exposed to the avant garde, or whatever the new is. The people that are like, ‘My job is I'm gonna create comedy that is new, and you get the raw version of it.’ 

And I've seen a lot of those things. It's going to have to essentially be sort of watered-down and influence filtered through, before the general public catches up to this style of comedy, right? Let's say sarcasm, or whatever, Gen-X-style sarcasm, or reverence of the early ’90s that was critically acclaimed by the aughts. You would see that style of comedy in CBS shitty sitcoms, right? 

And now critics would be like, ‘That's bad.’ But, that was really popular, because it took 10 years for essentially people to get it. And I think sometimes you do see that with food, which is like — it's hard to think of examples. 

But, I don't know — let's say pork belly was really it like 15 years ago, or, let's say 15 years ago, whatever. Pork belly, it was really — and David Chang did those things. And- 

Alicia: And now it’s at Applebee's.

Jesse: Yeah, exactly. 

And if you’d put pork belly in front of me. I'd be like, ‘In 2020. What is going on?’ And even though as a person who still eats meat, the idea of pigging out — pun intended, since I did that on purpose — is insane. It's so boring, and a thing that I've experienced so many times that it's not interesting to me. 

And how that happens is a matter of time and how things filter through society, and you could argue that — and rightfully. So, it's like eating pork belly designed — that was in vogue when I ate in 2005, 2006, or whatever. I was eating it as it filtered through a Korean population who has been eating it for thousands of years, or whatever it was. 

But, how — and that is what's interesting about food is that — it doesn't work the same way in as comedy, but there are, hypothetically, really interesting com — comedians are pulling from different sort of avant garde experiences, and they are filtering through. I don't know where — what I'm saying. 

The point is, you can look in a similar way, and I don't think certain things that have histories of art criticism can interact the same way. Because the people making it are aware that they are feeding into a history. So it's like, I don't know, an abstract painter knows the history of representational painting that they are working against. And their audience also knows that. That is very different than an art form where most people's experiences with it are every day from their families, from their friends.

Alicia: Right. 

No. And it's funny, I don't know why, I’ve really feel like [laughs]— So, in my family, among like my cousins, me and my one cousin have very more, I guess you would call funky taste, in things, in terms of art and stuff. And in terms of like our sense of humor, we're very — we all have a similar sense of humor in my family. But both of us have the weirder sense of humor. 

And so, one of our other cousins got into doing stand-up when he was at college. And I can't watch the video because I'm too afraid of watching it, but he hates Sebastian Maniscalco. We have this argument every time we get together about whether Sebastian Maniscalco is good. I think about him all the time in terms of like, ‘What is taste?’ Because I think he is funny. And it doesn't make any sense, I guess, in terms of what else I like and what else I think is funny. 

But I don't know what it is about him, because I also only found out about him when my dad showed me a viral video of the doorbell joke. I was immediately like, ‘I don't care about this,’ ’cause my dad's showing me something stupid on Facebook. But then I was like, ‘Actually, this is funny.’ 

So, I don't know why I want you to explain. Please explain Sebastian Maniscalco. How did that happen? And I think that this is sort of relevant in terms of taste.

Jesse: Yes. He's a great example. And I'm really happy to, to explain — I have been given an invitation to mansplain, and so I feel like it’s a-

Alicia: Yes. [Laughs.] 

Jesse: And I will say to your cousin, who I think Sebastian is a type of comedian that snobs in — a type of snob that barely exists anymore — look down upon. But, I will say this, many of who I think of as like the comedian-comedians, very artful, respected comedians are obsessed with Sebastian Maniscalco. John Mulaney is amazed by Sebastian Maniscalco. 

And it's a couple of reasons. Doing physical comedy is really risky. And I think people assume it's really stupid. And broad, because it is broad and it's not very verbal. But, you have to imagine, most people are going up to — on a show — they take a mic out of the stand, and they stand there. And maybe they walk around. To do insane gestures is incredibly risky, and not rooted in anything specific. It's completely self-inspired. 

His images, and his visuals, are deliberate and thought out. When I interviewed him, and he affirmed my suspicion that he knows why he does certain things, I was like, ‘This rules.’ It's like one of my favorite things that’s ever happened — well, to learn that- 

But so, the thing that I have accepted, and the thing that I've worked on, and I — I did this big list of where I ranked every Adam Sandler movie. The list partly came out of the fact that I like Adam Sandler. But so it wasn't like I took on this objective being like, ‘I hate Adam Sandler, I'm gonna try to figure out why it works.’ I liked a lot of these movies. And I would keep on seeing reviews about how they're bad. And when you watch all of his movies in order, as I did — so, this is 40 movies, or something like that. You realize, if you assume they're not bad, they're all good, right? 

And you're like, ‘Well, that's, intentional. That is a person, who, with control, deliberately being able to successfully control his output for consistency. It's-’

And what I have accepted, and what I've been trying to really work on, is having essentially like a post-taste appreciation of comedy for myself. I don't demand — I actually don't think it's a good way to live. I think you should enjoy the things you do enjoy and just enjoy them, and don't be mad if someone else doesn't like the things you like, and try different things ’cause you might like it. But don't get mad at yourself for not liking something. 

As a person whose job it is to think about comedy, I found focusing on what I respond to is not interesting. I don't have the ability to describe how I feel in a way that I think food critics hypothetically can. I think there's that type of food critics who really can describe sensations, and it's poetic or whatever. And one, I think you could do that more with food than comedy. 

That was never what was interesting to me. So, as a result, I was like, ‘I'm going to try to appreciate comedy no matter what, regardless of taste,’ If I like something, I almost hold it against it. I'm just trying to be like, ‘If I don't like it, and people do like it, why? How's it happening? What are they responding to?’

Jerry Seinfeld is the most famous of saying this, but lots of people say it, but because he's so famous he gets to say it the most, which is the idea that funny is funny. And it's really interesting, because it was a thing that was used by previous generations to explain why women should be allowed to do comedy too, which is if you're funny, that means you're funny. And that means you should do comedy. 

The problem is when people were saying it, what they were really saying is, ‘If I think you're funny, then you're funny.’ That means you're allowed to pass, because you have proven to Jerry Seinfeld that you are funny. But what a person like Jerry Seinfeld has never done, or why would he, is be like, ‘Oh, what I find comedy, what I find funny, is completely biased towards my sensibility, whatever that is. And I'm not going to investigate that.’ 

Because why would he? When you are an artist, you're not necessarily tasked to investigate your taste. Your job is to assert taste. Your job is to be like, ‘This is what I think is good.’ 

It is actually why I struggle when I've tried to write with a non — when I try to write fiction things or whatever, creative things or written comedic things. I struggle, because I can't just be like, ‘This is my taste. And I think it's good.’ It's a bit of a problem. Anything I've done, I needed partners to be like, ‘This is done. This is funny.’ 

So, I have tried to take the idea of ‘funny is funny’ to be like, ‘If you are funny to anybody, you are funny.’ And that means things that to you, or to me, like a person who's consumed so much comedy, who's seen everything, who's — it's easy for me to be cynical, or easy for me to be over it, to be like, ‘If someone's laughing, that means it's funny.’ Now, let me see what is interesting about it. Let me see what makes this compelling art.

And what I've tried to do, as the — with my podcast as I interview people, or as I'm trying to do when I write, which is have people approach comedy as they do, let's say, fine art, which is like you go to a museum. And let's say the only way you consume art history is through museums. So, museums actually do a deliberate job of telling you what important art is, and the context in which that art exists. Even if you don't read the little squares, most art is in a room in relationship to other art and you're supposed to understand it as such, and you get whatever you get from it. And as a result, because these institutions are creating these rooms, there's insane amounts of bias that's built into it. But that's a different conversation. 

But, you could see a painting and be like, ‘Well, my eyeballs don't go, ‘This is beauty.’ But you can be like, ‘Oh, I am learning something. I'm getting an experience from this,’ right? I like going to museums. I like looking at paintings I don't like and being like, ‘Ok, I understand this in the context of history. And as a result, this is fascinating to me.’ But I do prefer to look at art I do like, and that's allowed.

I like photography a lot. Photography is my favorite art form, because it's similar to comedy. It's like a snapshot of how a person sees the world. And it doesn't all appeal to me. But it is interesting to see everyone's point of view. 

So, I think there is a way for people to watch all comedy, and be like, ‘Oh, it's interesting that this is how part of the country, or part of society, or part of whatever processes information and does it comedically. And I'm having a nice time.’ Maybe I'm not laughing, but I'm having a nice time. Which is actually a thing that happens all the time when we watch comedy, especially at home. Which is like, it's hard to laugh when you're by yourself. But you're still feeling pleasant. You're like, ‘Oh, this is a nice time watching a character and not be so caught up with ‘how much am I laughing? If I'm laughing a lot, that means it's good.’

So, with Sebastian, to bring it back in, it's like, ‘what a kooky guy.’ And he's doing this, and I think it's like, ‘Oh, and no one else is doing it.’ And he deliberately picks obvious subjects, right? He's just taking family, let's say family dinners, a thing that everyone has. It's not an unexplored topic. But he’s like — it allows him to really express his comedy, which is the crazy gestures and flinging his hands in specific ways. And that either works or it doesn't.

And why it works, who knows? That's what's magical about it. I can talk for an hour about Sebastian Maniscalco, about why — whatever. But what is also great about comedy is there are unexplained reasons. To me, it is both a mystical art and a thing I can demystify, but that is what, is why I'm able to still be excited about it.

I will say why I ended up not ever writing about food was, I was like, ‘I want to have a thing that I could not have to intellectualize.’

Alicia: Yes.

And that makes so much sense. Because it really does take a lot of joy out of it. When I was writing restaurant reviews, I was like, ‘I hate this.’ It just ruined the whole process. So, I admire people who can write restaurant reviews, and not start to hate food. Because-

Jesse: Adam Platt was the New York Magazine restaurant critic. I've been with him as he's on — eating to write reviews about it. And it is interesting. He jokes about being cynical about certain things. But when a thing is new or exciting, or just sort of really well done, it is interesting to him. But I'm not there when he's going to the, I don't know, 50th New American restaurant of the yea- 

Because a lot of restaurants are just, are — that are being reviewed are not trying to be — That's the thing that's so hard about food, is there are people who deliberately are being like, ‘This is not art. I'm trying to create a thing that is not art,’ for what, whatever that means, even though they're failing, because it is art. Because whatever. 

But as a result, it's so weird to review a thing where people are like, ‘I'm trying to create a neighborhood restaurant.’ So, my value system is not — my value system is like, ‘Is it convenient? Does it scratch an itch of people who live walking distance from this restaurant?’ Not what a thing a person who's writing about it for a magazine would want. And that is, I don't know why you do? 

My favorite restaurants, or my — the places — I used to be really into restaurants, I think, as an idea. And I would know what was new. And then you go to enough of them, and you're like — No restaurant is doing a thing that I haven't necessarily been exposed to. 

If you're doing a type of cuisine that I've not eaten, whatever extreme regionality or just sort of doing it differently or whatever, if you're just doing whatever you define modern food is, I, I'm just not going to get excited about it. Because it's like — it's not — I've had so many versions of it, right? I'm old now and I’d rather have — I live, I know the places that are walking distance that sort of do it.

I'm like, it's not going to be better for this because these people, for whatever reason, as we’ve talked about, have, I don't think grew up in the same place as I did. But, what — ‘the amount of salt they think is normal is the amount of salt I think is normal.’

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

What keeps — ’cause you're saying you don't want to think about restaurants or food that way. What makes you like thinking about jokes in a way where you're kind of breaking it down and really opening it up and kind of not talking necessarily about the visceral reaction, but about the intellect behind creating that?

Jesse: I will say that I didn't get into journalism to write about comedy, necessarily. I kind of backed into it. 

I started — I was writing music reviews, because I wanted to work in the music business. And when I eventually was working in the music business, I was like, ‘This is not for me.’ And I started a blog and I was recapping Top Chef or I was writing — I sort of came to writing about comedy much later. 

And something happened. For whatever reason, it worked. How my brain works, and how comedians' brains work. I was able to sort of see the Matrix and enjoy the Matrix at the same time. And like, it just is such a window into these people. The thing that I sometimes say, which is like — I have a podcast about art, it's just I talk about comedians, because I have more expertise in comedy. And because comedians are good at talking.

And I don't know if that's true. I do think that is partly true, which is I'm interested in the creative process and how one goes from having an experience, or having a feeling, and how that then gets filtered through people. But I don't know what would happen if I interviewed non-comedians, and if — I could probably get a person who's good at talking who was not a comedian, or a comedy creator.

And I do think partly, what is interesting to me, is it's such an unexplored area. There just isn't any discourse, really, whatsoever. I know. I've researched it. I am working on a book proposal, and I look to see what else there is, and there just sort of isn't anything there. 

You know, a handful of philosophy — every once in a while philosophers have gotten really into the idea of what we find humor humorous. And Freud looked into it. But it really is, they were — none of them were looking at comedy as an art form. They were just looking at it as the fact that we laugh, and why do we laugh. 

But until the last 10 years, there hasn't been a history of people really talking about it. It's crazy. And so because of that, there is something exciting about every idea I have, it's the first time anyone's had that idea. 

And I do think how — there's sort of — how comedy both reflects society, and how it also is able to shape society, let's say broadly define the word society, makes it just a really interesting entry point to sort of have bigger ideas. 

So, on the reflection side, comedians work on jokes by — they have an idea and they test it out. So, testing out means they try it in front of an audience, and the audience responds in a certain way. And as a result, they change the joke to adapt to the audience they had. Then, they do it to another audience. And they change it again, based on that. And then they do that 1000 times, let's say. It's probably less, let's say it's 1000 times. 

But that means thousands, a thousand different groups, groups of 300 people, communicated something to this person about where society is on a certain topic. And most comedians are doing these jokes. They're doing a lot of it. Often, it's New York crowds, but a lot of them are tourists. But they're going around the country and not just tier one, tier two, tier three, tier four markets. They're playing cities that you can’t imagine have comedy clubs, but do. And that is shaping how they tell this joke. 

So, by the time we see it in a special, it is the reflection of how, I don't know, let's say 20,000 people see a certain issue. It's essentially like they're polling the country. Now, regardless, that is interesting, right? So, let's say they polled 20,000 people, and they realized those 20,000 people are really transphobic. So, that's bad. I don't think it's a societal good that that's the case. But it's a very useful way to know that a lot of this country is specifically transphobic in this exact way, right, or racist in this exact way, or whatever in this way. 

I think the one you see probably most often is sexist, right? Because so many comedians are talking about dating. So, what they're — how they communicate reflects the sort of gender norms of whoever their audience is. So, you have that part of it, which is no matter what. If you can completely detach yourself from the influence these comedians have, by watching comedy, you're just like, ‘Oh, this is where the country is at, or a portion of this country is at.’ 

And you can't deny it, because even if you don't think it's funny, clearly thousands of people did. And that means something. Right or wrong, it means something. And it can tell you in many ways to be like, ‘Oh, the problem is here.’ I think it's useful to be — just literally it's like, ‘Oh, this is where the views are. We now know what the views of the opposing side are. We hypothetically can help address it.’

Now, the other part is comedians have the ability to shape how we see certain things. For whatever reason, they're just sort of really good at it. And there's a bit of comedy helping the medicine go down, of like, ‘Let's talk about complicated issues, but I'm going to talk about in a way that's funny, so it gets to you.’ They're also just sort of really good at putting things succinctly in a way that just like — it's almost like they create earworms of ideas.

And the example I like to use because it's like the least touchy is — this comedian Shane Torres has had this joke about Guy Fieri. Do you know this joke?

Alicia: Yes, I love that joke.

Jesse: So, here's this guy, Shane Torres. He's a fantastic comedian. And I saw him opening for Kyle Kinane, who's one of my five favorite comedians. And I had seen it before, but — and, so he's just opening and he does this joke about Guy Fieri. 

And I'm like, ‘Oh my God.’ To explain for those who don't know, it's a defensive hit. And it's easy to be like, ‘Of course,’ we all like him now. You have to remember, seven years ago, everyone hated him. Hated him. He was number one enemy for, as this joke argues, for no reason. Just because he is not like what snobs think cool is. 

So, Shane has this joke that about — essentially, it's a joke that's to art what this conversation is. It's a joke about taste. And it's a joke about what we determine is cool. It’s a joke partly about why is Anthony Bourdain cool. Just because he wears a leather jacket and is cynical.

So, it's this full-throated defense of Guy Fieri both an idea and also as a person. You learn that Guy Fieri is a really like pro-gay marriage guy. He does so much work for charity. And the entire idea of what that show is, which is he's mostly helping mom and pop restaurants make a living. Which is true. Being on that show is a real game-changer for a lot of places. People in a lot of cities that don't get featured a lot. 

So, I saw this joke maybe two years before it was on TV or in anything. And I remember being like, ‘Whenever he's about to film something, I need Vulture to get some sort of exclusive in premiering it, because this thing is going to explode.’ This so succinctly captures a thing, and will rewire your brain. If you don't like Guy Fieri, you listen to the joke, your brain is rewired. And you like him.

And so this joke came, comes out. And it went viral. And then as people would, and you could see the world change. Night and day. And that is the power comedy can have, especially when it's a thing that's completely not talked about. So, it's smarter when it's a thing people are constantly talking about. 

But, for some reason, its ability to sort of get past your first line of defense, because it's comedy — you’re a little bit more vulnerable. Its ability to sort of condense speech and be convincing. And it can do something like that. 

Obviously, there's more serious examples, right? It's no one — Bill Cosby is, was this somewhat known, somewhat talked about villain for however long a time. But Hannibal Buress told one small joke, it goes viral, and then everything else happens for whatever reason. 

And, that is the thing that satire can do. I say it in a silly voice. And that is also the other part, which is like, ‘Oh, it's both a reflection of this thing, and it can move things forward.’ It is a volatile art form, especially now where people care about it so much. 

Especially as we are of the generation that sort of like came — we are the first generation where being a comedy nerd existed. There were discrete comedy fans, and they all wanted to become a comedian. But we were a generation because Comedy Central existed, because Seinfeld was so popular, because of Jon Stewart, where we're like, ‘Comedians are a big deal.’

So, all of it, it just sort of keeps on being fascinating. I've done 100-whatever interviews, and every time after I do one I'm like, ‘I don't know if I can keep on doing it.’ And then I start researching a person. And like 30 minutes in, I'm like, ‘Oh, I can't wait to talk to this person.’ It happens every single time. It's not fun, and I think I should get over it, those sort of boomerang of emotions that I experience. But, I don’t know.

I interviewed this guy. Meeting Ali Siddiq recently, who I had kind of heard the name of, but for whatever reason missed his special. And I was exposed to the fact that he's — he had this one joke that went viral that I completely missed about his time in prison. 

And I'm like, ‘Oh, I've learned more about prison from his joke then any documentary I've seen, any TV show that I watch.’ And it's a joke. It's a 12-minute joke. If you watch a couple of jokes, let's say you watch 30 minutes of material, I think you could really get a sense of what it's like in a way that you cannot in any other art form. 

I don't think there's any other art form that would capture a thing like that, than comedy, because how it condenses the human experience. And how jokes, good jokes, not bad jokes — maybe not — but good jokes are like icebergs. Obviously, it's a cliché, but it really is the tip of what is a universal experience. 

And the podcast, pretty much is like — oh, the joke is the iceberg. Part of — oh, not the iceberg. Is it an iceberg? Yeah, the iceberg. But then, the rest of the pod — the interview is like the rest of this ice. And, so when you find out the rest about that ice, you're just like, ‘Oh, man, that iceberg is now so much more interesting.’

Alicia: Well, I think we answered all of my questions without me really asking them.

Jesse: And I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have. 

And maybe, the problem is when you give me the questions ahead of — and this is a thing that I forgot. When you give people questions ahead of time, they then internalize- 

Alicia: Exactly, no. 

No, and I’ve noticed that lately, and it's it — but it's a certain kind of person who internalizes the questions. And other people don't pay attention to them at all, which is fasc — it's fascinating.

Jesse: I think it's — certain people have different speeds of connection. And I noticed that because I talk to comedians who have insanely fast speeds of connection. But, as a person who doesn’t, like his is kind of like what I'm like in therapy. I'm just always looking to Tarzan to the next-

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, I'm glad we got to swing through the jungle on these topics. And yeah, I really appreciate the time. I think this is fun.

Jesse: I feel like I wanted you to talk more.

Alicia: I have so much to say about all of this stuff, but I'm not a — I don't feel like a cohesive enough thinker on the topics to do it well for a recording. I'd have a great conversation about comedy over a drink or something. But I'm not going to do it on record, because- [Laughs.]

Jesse: I’m the opposite. If we were just hanging out, I would be so much more in my head about it and be like — on a microphone where it's an interview, and that's context. I'm like, ‘Oh, cool. I'm allowed to talk, and it's okay. Everyone—’

Alicia: Well, thank you again.

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

Alejandra Ramos inspires me on a daily basis. From dressing up even during a pandemic to making herself elaborate dishes to reading a seemingly endless array of books, she’s committed to living well, all the time. Her work life has taken her from the international magazine division at Hearst to her own food blog to now working as an on-camera food expert, often on the Today show. Everything about her life seems super-duper dreamy, so I wanted to understand what’s going on the behind the scenes—and of course, it’s far more complicated and deep than what you see on social media. We talked about her upbringing in New Jersey, leaving college for a year to go to culinary school, and how being visibly successful doesn’t always translate into actual money. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Alejandra. Thanks so much for joining me.

Alejandra: Thank you for having me. Excited to chat.

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

Alejandra: Yes.

Ok, so I grew up in New Jersey, in Bergen County, in a town called Hasbrouck Heights. It's about 15 to 20 minutes outside the city. I was born in New York City. I lived in Forest Hills until I was about four. And then my family moved to New Jersey, ‘cause my dad worked in Jersey, and he was doing a weird reverse commute. So, we moved to Jersey.

But, New York was very much always a part of — New York, meaning the city — was very much a seamless part of our life. So, even though we were in Jersey and kind of 15, 20 minutes away, we'd pop in and back and forth all the time, ‘cause we had family and relatives. We’d go to restaurants. We’d go to events.

And I say that because a lot of the people that I grew up with, like my neighbors even, would never go to New York, right? Like New York City was this like, ‘It's the city, and you’d go on your anniversary, and you go to the Broadway show, or the ballet at Lincoln Center, once or twice a year maybe.’ But for us, it was just an extension of where we lived. You’d go to restaurants.

Both my parents lived in the city when they came. They both were born in Puerto Rico, and came to Puerto Rico separately. They didn't know each other. They met here in their 20s. So, they had lived in Puerto Rico in their late 20 — I mean, in New York City in their late 20s and early 30s.

Especially for my dad, who lived in Greenwich Village, it was very much like, ‘Let's go to the village and walk around.’ And he showed us where he live. And he was all about Mamoun's Falafel shop, ‘cause he's like, ‘This is where I used to eat.’ And we would go there.

His apartment was on Sullivan Street. And up until I was about 14 years old, we would go by it and his name was still in the doorbell list. I'm sure the rent, he paid, I don't know, like $200 rent. I looked it up once and it was like $5000 or something for this — Yeah. I was like, ‘Of course.’ He lived the life.

We loved to come in for the festivals, and then to San Gennaro. And we'd go to little Italian restaurants in Little Italy, and we'd — my dad was a big Carmine’s fan. He loved the big family style, ordering from the wall, a giant platter of chicken parm or whatever. So, we did a lot of those. The New York food was pretty much also part of what we grew up eating.

But in terms of what we ate at home, it was — I want to say everything because it was very varied. So, there's a lot of influences in terms of our food. So obviously, Puerto Rican family, there was Puerto Rican food. But my mom cooked sort of the staples. So, we'd have picadillo, which is a ground beef thing.

And it's nice talking to you, ’cause I'm like, ‘I know you know what I'm talking about.’ [Laughs.]

Usually when I talk about things, I have to translate everything. I'm like, ‘Tostones: smashed fried plantain.’

Alicia: Oh, gosh. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah. [Laughs.]

So, it's nice to be able to just say the things, and whatever. You can Google it if you don't know. [Laughs.]

So, we ate picadillo. There was always rice, there was always a pot of beans, kind of those staples. There was always a lot of either sweet plantains, or tostones. Avocados, there was always like a ripe avocado. And my dad, for everything, would be like, ‘aguacate.’ My mom would be like, ‘Yeah, but it's not ready yet. It needs another day.’

So, those are kind of things. But then also, my mom's super health conscious and has always been. And so there was a lot of that kind of ‘80s and ‘90s style health food. So, sometimes even the Puerto Rican food was sort of healthified in that ‘80s and ‘90s style. So, lots of steamed vegetables and brown rice, which I still hate to this day. Alfalfa sprouts showed up a lot. We only had whole wheat bread in my house.

I was in Girl Scouts. And any kind of school activities and stuff, my mom would be like, ‘Don't eat what they serve you.’ And she would send me with my own little weird snacks that were healthy. But I'm an Aquarius, so I enjoy being a weirdo. So, I was always like, ‘Yes, I have my exclusive personal snacks. I can't eat what you're serving.’

Yeah, I feel like a lot of kids, the ‘ethnic kids’ talk about your sort of the stinky, stinky, stinky lunch. You're bringing the weird things into school, and the kids make fun of you and you feel weird about it. But, I loved having the weird food. Any excuse to have something strange, and different, and that nobody knew what it was, and that I had to explain it. It was probably just an opportunity for me to show off.

And, in addition to that, it was New Jersey, North Jersey. So, a lot of Italian food. A lot of those red sauce restaurants. Every restaurant in my hometown is Bella Napoli, Bella Romania, Italia Bella. Lot of that. Yeah.

So, all over the place. It was a nice, varied diet, I think.

Alicia: Right.

Yeah, similar for me, except my mom never had a health moment. But I always had to have a different lunch from everyone because I was so picky. I usually say I wasn't picky, I was snobby. Because I refused to eat white bread, and I refused to eat like what they sold in the cafeteria. I was just terrible. And then, when I got to high school, I would just eat French fries. That was the only thing I would eat that they served. Yeah, I was terrible.

But I also reveled in the fact that I wouldn't eat the things that other people ate. I guess that is a born food person. I don't know, born food writer type thing, I guess, where I have to be different in this from everyone else. And I think that's a good thing.

Alejandra: Exactly. Yeah.

There's that music thing where it's like, ‘I heard the band first,’ or ‘I saw them before they were big.’ I was that way with food where it's like, ‘Oh, I've been eating kale since before you people heard about it.’ I would always make a point of mentioning the weird things that we had.

So, there was this health food restaurant in Hackensack, which is the next town over, next town over being such a North Jersey thing to say. So, this health food restaurant that we would go to all the time, and they had probably weird random thing, the typical — again ‘80s, ‘90s health food stuff.

But strangely enough, they also sold rum cake. That was not at all health food. I don’t know why they sold it. Well, the health food place was owned by Latinos. So I wonder if it was — they were just like, ‘Oh, and then also we have our rum cake.’

So, we would go there all the time. And then my parents knew the owners, and we'd go there, and I was obsessed with that rum cake. And I would eat it all the time. We'd get it for Christmas. There were all these weird little things. There was also these sort of peanut butter cup type candy, basically healthy version of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. But they were made with carob. And then the filling had honey.

Alicia: Eww. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah. I know. Which could go-

Alicia: -Either way, yeah. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah, easily.

But I loved those. So, I used to love bringing those: my weird carob and honey cups to school. [Laughter.]

Alicia: That sounds so good. Yeah.

Alejandra: Yeah, really delicious.

Alicia: Yeah.

I think sometimes I'm doing these interviews just to get to people's health food sagas. To hear about people doing all the vegetarian restaurants that existed, or health food stores that existed outside of urban centers. That is like my favorite thing. I always want to know what the places were like.

Alejandra: Actually, I don't even know why I've completely forgot to mention this. But we were vegetarian for a while, for —

Alicia: Oh, wow!

Alejandra: Yeah, totally. So, for a few years as kids and — actually, I totally meant to ask my mom for more details about this beforehand, that I forgot.

So, I forgot what years it was, but it was when we were young. We were vegetarians for a while. And my parents have always been very sort of — ’specially my mom's — always been very searchy in terms of faith and spirituality. And we were always trying different things and basically bringing the rest of the family along on our journeys.

And so for a while, we were going to this place where it was all about yoga and meditation. And every week, we'd have to go to this place and do yoga and meditation. And I remember my brother and I hated it, ‘cause it smelled like feet. It was that yoga studio smell, but as kids we’re just like, ‘Ugh.’

But the only thing we liked about it was that after the yoga meditation session, there was this big vegetarian feast. So, I loved that. ‘Cause then it was this awesome meal, and they used to do these oatmeal fritters. Yeah, and they would make muffins that they would — it was fruit sugar muffins. They would use fructose, because they thought it was better for you at the time even though it's very much not. They would use that. It was all these different dishes that they would make, that I was obsessed with. And we had the cookbook from that center. And it had all the different recipes. So, as kids, those were like the recipes that we ate.

And I remember, in our school would do those cookbooks where it's — they have every mom send in five recipes. And so my mom sent the recipes that were from that cookbook, and she wrote each one out that was like, ‘Alejandra’s favorite. Gabriel's delight.’ Gabriel is my brother. And she illustrated them. And they were so cute. I still have this cookbook. I'll take a picture of it and send that to you.

But it's so cute, because hers was the nicest ones. I'm like, ‘This is so my mom.’ It was typed when most of the other ones are handwritten, and hers was like illustrated. Hold. I was like, ‘Oh my God, of course my mom's is like the overachiever one.’ But it's got a lot of those vegetarian recipes on there. And it's got the oatmeal fritters and stuff.

So, we did that for a few years. And then I think we sort of slowly started easing out of it. I'm 100% sure my dad was first. I do remember there was an incident of him bringing home a bucket of chicken, where he was just like, ‘I'm over it.’ Then I think my brother kind of was next in line, and then I was kind of one of the holdouts with my mom.

I think I started eating seafood. I distinctly remember a lot of McDonald's Filet-O-Fish’s entering into my life at one point, the square fish and the inexplicable slice of cheese. And then I sort of ended up leaving it. And then my mom, eventually, I don’t know, she held out for a bit longer, and then sort of kind of went into, I don't know, just normal health food stuff, not just strictly vegetarian.

But I do remember, there was one vegetarian Thanksgiving that's kind of famous in our house because it was the first vegetarian Thanksgiving. And my brother just didn't understand that there wasn't going to be turkey. My mom made all the stuff, and then my brother's like, ‘Well, where's the turkey?’ And my mom's like, ‘Well, we're vegetarians. We don't eat turkey.’ And he burst out crying.

Alicia: Oooh.

Alejandra: [Laughs.] I know. The centerpiece was — I mean, and you're gonna love this — it was a lentil loaf with a Béchamel sauce.

Alicia: Oh, my gosh. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: I know. My poor little brother. The tears streaming down his face. And basically, we're all kind of — yeah, I think even my dad was like, ‘Wait, there really isn't gonna be a turkey?’ Is this a joke?’

So that's, my mom — every Thanksgiving we're like, ‘Remember the Béchamel lentils?’ [Laughter.] Oh, my God.

Alicia: That's funny, because I remember — you've cooked a lot of vegetarian or vegan, kind of, as a private cook, right?

Alejandra: Yes, absolutely.

So, one of the 50,000 jobs that I do is essentially — [laughs] you know it as well — my friend, Tesha. A few years ago, I ended up going on a culinary retreat in Vermont, at this place called Good Commons, and then hitting it off with the owner. Her name is Tesha Buss. She's amazing. She's a former Broadway dancer. She was in Cats. She had a dream about starting a retreat center in Vermont, and she went and did it. She's a star. You'd love her.

So yeah, so she opened up this place. And then I went there, and I hit it off with her. And so I started working with her, and going up a few times a year to be the retreat chef for these retreats. Some of them are small, some of them are like eight people, some of them are like 35 people. Occasionally, there were other events too.

It's a house, and you're basically — everybody's in the house. And you cook three meals a day, plus snacks. It's just this kind of fun way — we use local produce, we have connections with all the local farmers. They'll kind of email me their list of their like, ‘Yeah, I think I'm gonna have some carrots. I may have some squash. I'm not really sure the celery’s gonna be ready.’ So, it'll be things like that and I'll be like, ‘Alright, well give me 10 pounds of this and this and this.’ And so I make my list and then I order my groceries.

And then the one thing that Tesha never realized about me is that I don't plan my menus. So, I just order things I like, and then I figure it out as I go. I think it was the second retreat I did where she was suddenly like, ‘You don't have a plan.’ I was like, ‘No, I never have a plan. ‘Cause plans stress me out.’ I work much better organically and intuitively. And I like to improvise. So, people will always be like, ‘What's for dinner?’ I’m like, ‘Don't ask me. [Laughter.] I know when it arrives.’

One of the things that Tesha specializes in, because when she started as a dancer, a lot of her first guests were dancers and actors and people who work with their bodies and yoga people,

Yogis I guess [laughs], they — a lot of dietary restrictions, and a lot of — so, whether it's just diets, if they're keeping low carb or keto, or things — there were a lot more gluten restrictions, and a lot of, especially a lot of the yoga groups, are vegetarian or vegan.

So, her whole thing is that she specialized in basically catering to dietary restrictions. So, you get before each retreat, in addition to the ingredients that are available, I get a list of the allergies, and the dietary restrictions, and preferences, and stuff. And I pretty much try to accommodate everything. I think I once had a raw vegan, and I was like, ‘I'm gonna to need a little help.’ [laughter.] I was like, ‘I’m a little — that's a little bit much, with everything else I’m doing here.’

But we've dealt with all sorts of things. And it's always a challenge. And it's always exciting, especially because of my improv way of doing it. I basically make a list of my restrictions and kind of figure out the lowest common denominators about what everybody can eat, and then I build off extras from there.

But I've done a ton of vegan food, a lot of figuring — because a lot of times the vegan recipes are best, because those are the lowest common denominator, ‘cause that's what everything can — everybody can eat. And then I can add stuff like that. So, I might make something and then have a little bowl of the crumbled local fetta that people can put on top, or make a dairy sauce. And then I'll do a coconut based sauce, and then people can choose which one they want. So, it'll be things like that.

And it's exciting, because I find the limitations are, sort of, expand my creativity. They kind of force me to figure out problems and to experiment. I made pandebono once, and I made regular ones with cheese and the yuca flour for the people who could eat dairy. And then I was like, ‘Well, I want to do something for the vegans too.’ So, I ended up using mashed cauliflower. And I made a cauliflower pandebono with nutritional yeast. It worked out. I had no plan. I put in the oven. I was like, ‘Well, we’ll see.’ But it worked out.

So, it's been fun to come up with some dishes. And then there have been people that have come back year after year. And they're like, ‘Oh, can you do this?’ They have their favorite dishes that they remember that they want to eat that have become kind of staples over the years.

Alicia: But now you're basically on TV. Is that your primary work right now, is TV?

Alejandra: I was doing the retreats, year after year after year, and then I started doing more and more television. And then suddenly, people were like, ‘You're still gonna keep doing this?’ And I'm like, ‘This is actually a really nice break.’ There’ve been times where I would make breakfast, and then hop on a bus and basically go straight to 30 Rock for a rehearsal for a Today Show segment.

It is my primary — I mean, I have no idea what my primary income is this year, or my — It’s unemployment checks! [Laughter.] But no, as of two years ago, yeah, most of my income has been television and on camera work. And I love it. And it's been the thing that is most exciting to me.

And I kind of started out doing it, because — so, I worked in magazines. I was an editor at Cosmopolitan international for about four years. And it was a much more business-y, brand management aspect of the business. There's a lot of contracts and syndication. It wasn’t freelancers and translation. So, I was the New York editor for sixteen of the international editions of Cosmo.

It wasn't the creative thing that I wanted. So, on the side, I'd always been blogging. I've been blogging since I was in college, sort of the personal — it was mostly about boys, and heartbreaks, and my single girl life. But I had a lot of — food was always a big part of my life. I went to culinary school my junior year of college. I took a semester off and I went to this program in Italy, and I can get — I'll loop back around to that. [Laughter.]

But yeah, so food has always been part of — I started this blog on the side, and then the blog kind of started grow — I started alwaysorderdessert.com. Why did I just say ‘dot com’? [Laughter.] So, I started the blog. And then it started growing to the point where I was getting opportunities, and I was basically taking days off from my full-time job to go to blog stuff.

And I was cooking all the time. I briefly started a mostly illegal bakery. Which I know you had early in your career. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Me too, yeah.

Alejandra: You know all about being an illegal baker in New York City. [Laughter.]

So, I was doing that, and I was making — my specialty was rainbow cake and rainbow cookies.

Alicia: Oh my God, my favorite.

Alejandra: Yeah. Oh. It’s like, ‘Yeah, obsessed.’

So, I used to do that. And I would ship them all over the country. And so, I would basically come home from work and do that all night long. And then in the mornings, I would just use the Hearst shipping. I would just put it in the shipping box, and let — I’d let Hearst pay for it. Hopefully, I won’t get in trouble for saying that. [Laughter.] I’d just put them in and be like ‘Yeah, you guys take care of it.’ And then I would ship ‘em. And then I always had food coloring in my hands. And I'd bring my leftovers. And I'd be like, ‘There's leftover rainbow cookies by the Cosmo desk,’ so everybody would come over and eat stuff.

So, it started growing and growing and becoming this beast, until finally I was like, ‘I’ — I mean, there were a few other reasons, too. I didn't want to be working there anymore. I was not happy in that space. I’d hit that point where I was like, ‘You know what, I just gotta do it.’ And by that point, I'd gotten married. And so. I had health insurance. And so, that in itself was the thing that was like, ‘You know what, that's — let's do it.’ So, I quit.

And then, started doing 50,000 things in order to figure out what the thing to do was. And one of them was freelancing for the new Cosmo for Latinas magazine that my previous bosses had just launched. And so, I became their sort of food, contributing food writer, food editor. And I would do all their food pages, but I would also do — so, I would do the recipes, and the photos, and the copy.

It was the last minute every month. They'd be like, ‘Wait, can you do this?’ And it was always like a whole thing. And then I do the sidebars, and I would just — I was always offering sidebars just to get more money. So I was like, ‘How about we do this?’ I was always trying to expand it, because they're always trying to make it — me do as much as possible for as little money as possible. So, I was always trying to figure out ways to get more money out of them.

I feel they paid me like $125 per recipe. I get like maybe $1,000 to do all the recipes, and the photos, and the sidebars. But it was my first time really doing this regularly. And so it was exciting to have, in print, this regular thing that I would do.

Oh, and then I started suggesting cocktails, too. I was like, ‘Can we do cocktails, too?’ It was just me trying to get an extra $125. [Laughter.] So, I was like, ‘Let's do smoothies, also.’ So, I would do that.

And then they were like, ‘Oh, we need you to promote the magazine.’ So, then they started booking me for TV segments. And now I would be charging extra for that. But at the time, I was just happy to be there. [Laughs.] So I started doing segments for NBC on Telemundo, local, in Spanish. And I would do all the props, and I would drag a suitcase at five o'clock in the morning to get there. And the one thing I did get them to pay for was my cars, which was nice because otherwise it would have been impossible.

And then I would go in and do these segments. And then the first couple segments that I did, I think the first one was a Cinco de Mayo segment, of course. And I was like, ‘I love this.’ It was this feeling of joy just being on camera, feeling this adrenaline rush. Feeling I was coming alive.

And I was like, ‘Oh, I want to do this.’

And it was also this kind of thing, because — and we can talk more about this, but my dad worked in television my whole life. And he was always like, ‘You should be on television.’ And I was like, ‘No, no, no, I want to write.’ And then suddenly, I was like, ‘Damn it. He was right.’ [Laughter.]

So yeah, that was kind of how it started.

Alicia: Well, I've wanted to know how you were — how your style of cooking is improvisational, but you do TV segments that are hyper planned. How does that work?

Alejandra: Those are my two competing forces in me.

I think that's actually the thing that causes me the most stress about TV. My favorite things are at TV are when things go wrong, when things are unpredictable, when something breaks down. Because then I get the chance to improvise, and to just run with it.

And that's one of the things a lot of times producers will say is my strength. They’re like, ‘You don't even get flustered at all when stuff happens. You just go with it. You laugh it off. You own the moment and keep going.’ I'm like, ‘Yeah, that's me. That's my strength.’

My weakness is the planning part. So, getting the recipes all planned out, figuring out all of the props, and the orders, and stuff. So, I have ADHD, and one of my coping mechanisms for ADHD, which obviously explains also just not liking the planning. But one of my coping mechanisms is memory, I have a really great memory. And I have a really great ability to kind of sort of just — I would never study, but then I would just look at stuff and figure out a way to remember it. So, that works really well in television. ’Cause I know my recipes. I know my mounts. I know the places where I need to be.

Writing out the recipe — I hate writing recipes. I like coming up with recipes,I hate writing recipes. I'm like, ‘Oh, why don't I tell you my teaspoons?’ I'd rather just throw it in there. Yeah, that's one thing that has been a struggle for me in terms of figuring out how — what the best way is to convey what it is is in my brain. [Laughter.] How to get it out of here on to the page. And yeah, so that's the one thing that can be a little bit frustrating in terms of that aspect of it.

But another big thing is in television, or at least, not in present day but before all of this, is very collaborative, right? You're working with a team. So, you're working with food stylists, and you're working with producers, and set-manage — all these people who help you kind of figure out those details. So, a lot of times I have my recipe, and I can send in my recipe, and there — or my tips, or whatever it is I do. And then they would break stuff down, and they break it up into the steps and they're like, ‘Ok, you're gonna do this first, and this first, and this first.’

And that sort of solved that problem for me, because they would handle that part of it. And then I could just perform. But it's been harder now. It's so much harder now. Because now, I went from basically being the talent to now doing 27 jobs. So, I'm the one that's figuring out my own rundowns, and my own — where my props are gonna go, and the lineup, and what am I going to say and stuff. So that's definitely been a struggle. I’m no longer getting to just shine in the thing that I’m the best at. [Laughs.] Now I'm muddling through 50 different things.

Alicia: Do you want to have a TV show of your own? Is that what you hope for?

Alejandra: I'm sorry, I didn't — I didn't catch — a show?

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Is that — yeah. [Laughter.]

Alejandra: Do I want a show?

Alicia: Yeah.

Alejandra: Yes. Well, here's what I want.

I want a regular — I always say, and it's — it brings it down, so — to so basic, but I want a regular paid gig, where I’m part of — I like being part of a show. The dream thing would be if I could be on a show like Today Show, or specifically on Today Show, as their regular food person, at — where I get to do the segments and the stuff that I do on a regular basis, and get paid for it. Because I don't get paid for Today Show segments.

Alicia: Oh.

Alejandra: Yeah, we could talk about that. [Laughter.]

Yeah, I'd love to be a regular paid contributor on a show like Today, or another show like that that has that sort of ensemble. Because I love the daily interaction, I love coming up with the ideas. I love coming up with things that are sort of related to what's going on, you know. Every so often, there are things that pop up, or I'm like, ‘Oh, this would be a fun thing to do, a last minute segment on or idea about.’ But it's not necessarily something that I would do, because I get booked a couple weeks in advance or more.

So, something like that would be fun, where I'd have that space. I want to be part of a cast, I guess, or a community. I do also love the idea of my own cooking show, the sort of — but I don't know. I feel it's less exciting to me, the kind of dump and stir thing isn't as exciting to me. I love when there's fun interaction.

Sometimes I say, for cooking show, the part that excites me isn't so much the cooking. It's the show. And I mean, I would still want it to be something that's substantial stuff. I wouldn't want to just have some cheesy competition or something. But it's part of — yeah, getting to be — that interaction, getting to work with other people.

I love being able to riff with other hosts, and there's some hosts that I vibe with so well. I love doing stuff with Al Roker. He's always so much fun. I love doing stuff with Carson Daly. Anyone that gets excited about food, that loves to taste and eat and try, and is genuinely curious about it. They are so much fun. I think those are the segments that are the most exciting stuff.

Generally, it's always really exciting ‘cause they're really into it. There's other shows that I've done where the host doesn't really care about food, or doesn't really want to touch anything. And that makes it a little bit harder. But when you have someone you have great chemistry with, it makes really fun television that is still so informative, and people learn cool things. And there's nothing more exciting than having people try your tips, or try out your recipe, or having it become part of their life and their moments.

Alicia: Yeah.

Well, I mean, that is interesting that you don't, you're not compensated for the Today Show things. And that's so interesting, too, I think, in terms of how people perceive success in this kind of space in the media space, where people would probably assume you're getting paid and you're living the life of Riley, by being on the Today Show, because it's a big — it's huge. It's a national show. And it's so popular. And, I don't know, does that — I mean, how does that work?

Alejandra: Yeah.

So, shows like Today, or Good Morning America, or pretty much, most news shows, whether it's local or national, it’s a news program. Even though there is a huge entertainment element to it, it's a news program. The guests that are on it, we're guests — we're being — it's essentially an interview.

So, maybe you're a Drew Barrymore promoting your new talk show or whatever. You're getting interviewed, and it's a news story, and you're talking about your thing. Or you're a politician getting interviewed, and you're talking about your thing. So, they're not getting paid.

So, it's the same thing, even with the guests who are doing more lifestyle type segments. So whether it's someone doing design, or doing a fashion segment, or doing a food segment, unless you're actually a contri — they have a few actual paid contributors on the show, that are part of it. But most people are, essentially, it's publicity, right? You're promoting your product, or your book, or whatever it is you're doing.

But then, there are some of us that mostly just do it. The goal is having people see you and essentially, and hopefully, someone sees you, and it leads to other opportunities that leads to expanding your own brand. It leads to books, it leads to product lines, that leads to hopefully your own show, or whatever each person's individual goal is.

But yeah, it's a little tricky space. And it's something that we talk amongst ourselves, me and other experts. It's different if you're there talking to promote a book, or if you're there being interviewed for something as a news story. We're developing recipes, we're testing them, we're spending money on ingredients, where — if you're doing a lot of the design stuff, or anything that's crafty DIY, you're pretty much making those props and stuff at home, and you're bringing them in.

Sometimes, they order products and stuff for you. A lot of times, we have relationships with PR companies and brands that will give you products that will then get displayed. But then, they can't pay you. ‘Cause if you get paid by it, then you need to disclose it, and then it can't be on there. ‘Cause it's standard. So, it's a whole thing.

Talk show, then it's a little bit — works a little bit differently on. So, shows like Dr. Oz, or Tamron Hall, or any of those kinds of — Ellen or something like that, talk shows work differently, because those are union shows.

So, if you're in the union — and I'm not a union person, and there's pluses and minuses to that. But if you're in the union, then they're required to pay you. And there's the right that they have to pay you. If you're not in the union, they should be paying you. Mostly, they don't. [Laughs.] So, you can kind of go back and forth. And I've negotiated, and I've gotten some people to pay me. Sometimes, they won't. Basically, if they book you more than three times in a year, then the union stuff kicks in, and they have to pay you even if you're not in the union. So, a lot of shows just won't book you more than three times, even if you’re union. And that's a Dr. Oz show, or whatever. That's how it works.

And I've had friends who have done shows that are union shows, and they've gotten booked multiple times and didn't get paid. And I have a friend who — she actually just called the union and reported the show, and then the show had to pay up, but she never got booked again. So, it's one of those kinds of things where it's-

I once had a producer, and they will not say who it was and what show. It was not Today Show. It was not a show that I’m actively on. But we were doing a shoot. And it was a hack segment. So, it was multiple — it was doing multiple tips and stuff. They had brought some of the props, I had brought some of the props, and we were in the rental space.

And it was supposed to be a one-hour shoot. And honestly, we were going on the fourth hour. It was just taking too long. Everything was really slow. There'd been some construction outside, so we kept having to pause the shooting.

So, it was a camera guy and the audio guy, and they were both like, ‘Hey, we're on overtime. So, we're doing great.’ And the producer’s like ‘Well, I don't get overtime.’ And she's like, ‘I'm salaried.’ And then I was like, ‘Well, both of you guys are getting paid. I'm not getting paid.’ The camera guy and the audio guy were both like, ‘Wait, you don't get paid?’ ‘Cause they're coming from union. ‘We're on overtime.’

And they're like, ‘You don't?’ I was like, ‘No.’ And then the producer was like, ‘Yeah, no, this is just promotion for her. She's getting publicity out of this.’ And I was just like, ‘Well, yeah, to a certain degree. But it is still also a lot of work.’ And she goes — she's like, ‘Well, you can ask to get paid. And we might pay you once, but then we just won't book you again, ‘cause plenty of people do this for free.’ And I just remember this slap in the face feeling.

But it's true. What she said was true. It's not necessarily the best, or ethical, or right — I think in an ideal world, the shows would have the people that they know they can rely on, that they love, that they know they don't have to babysit during the production side of it, that they know they are going to get great television from, yeah, and pay us something.

So, I don't get paid from — for the shows like that. I don't get paid for Today or whatever. Although I will say, Today is genuine exposure. That is genuine publicity. I have gotten amazing opportunities from it. And it's prestige that people really do respect that does lead to other opportunities. There are a couple of those shows that, yeah, they absolutely — it's worth it to do, and I love doing it.

I love the producers that I work with, I love — I miss being in a studio. It's the best feeling in the world. Growing up watching something, and getting to be on there to the point where I can — I go in and the security guards know me, everybody knows me. I can just walk around the studio by myself, because I know where I'm going, I know what I'm doing. I mean, it's something I genuinely love, and I hope to be able continue doing it for my whole life. [Laughter.]

So then what I do get paid for doing is some of the other shows. So, everything that I do with Food Network, right now with their Food Network kitchen app, where I do live broadcasts, and I do some taped cooking classes and video shows and stuff that's sort of shot in advance. So, that's all paid work. And everything that I do with Food Network, in terms of social media or whatever, that's all paid and compensated properly.

And what I do with Amazon is also, that's all paid work as a host. And that's actually been a really cool experience. And, I mean, there are things that are not perfect, that I don't love about it. But that's also been one of the times where I've gotten to be that sort of thing when I said, right, part of a cast that I get to be a host on a show, and have regular people that I work with. Especially when we were in real life back in the studio, that was always really exciting to me.

It's the first time I got to regularly work with a teleprompter, and have the iFi in my ear, and all these things that I basically kind of grew up around and what — meant TV, and meant that stuff to me. Now, I actually get to do it in real life and expand my skills and stuff. So, I really appreciate that.

There are things that aren't great, that I don't love, and it's not like my goal is to sell air fryers. [Laughter.] But the action of it is satisfying. Or it was, before it was just on my laptop.

Alicia: Yeah, I don't think people realize how much of being, I don't know — because I — as a writer, I don't feel I'm a personality, but at the same time, I'm just — I'm realizing how much more I need to play that up, sort of, or playing that kind of a role for people. Especially on social media and everything.

And all the unpaid promotion that you do. I basically say yes to everything. Because I feel like I have to. And I don't know. Yeah, people don't understand really that just because you're doing something, and you're out there, and you're visible, that you're being compensated fairly, or at all. But it does play into how people perceive the work that we do. And they’ll make judgments like, ‘Oh, I don't know if that's worth what she seems to be getting paid,’ or something like that.

It's a very odd position to be in, where people kind of seem to assume that you have a level of wealth or comfort, and you're really just hustling constantly. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Exactly. No, absolutely.

I mean, I think that's across the board for television. That people genuinely think if you're on television, you must be rich. I mean, I grew up with that.

So, my dad is a news anchor — or, he's a retired news anchor. He was a news anchor for 40 years for Telemundo in New York, and he's very successful. We were ‘comfortable’ growing up, so to speak. But yeah, I mean, we weren't super millionaires or anything like that. And I think that's what people always just assume about him, and assumed about us, because he was on television. But I was like, ‘Yeah, he's on television, but it’s still — it's the Spanish-language news. And it's local news. [Laughs.] It's not minimum wage, but it's not the same — it's not even the same as what the English-language and NBC anchors are getting.’

It's that kind of thing that I don't think people necessarily realize about TV. And that's how it is with a lot of stuff. There are a lot of working actors that work regularly, and yeah, you get paid really well for one job, but then you may go three months without another job. So, it's kind of like with teachers, where it's — that salaries are meant to go across the summer months, too.

So, it's that kind of thing where you're — it's doesn't — there's a lot of perks to it, absolutely. There's a lot of glamour to it. There's a lot of things that definitely do live up to the things that you imagine. But yeah, it's not necessarily always the same thing in terms of money. I mean, there are people who are obviously making a lot, but yeah, it takes a while to get there. And there are very few people who are at that specific level.

Alicia: Right, for sure.

And then, talking about social media, like I have said to you before, you do seem to live very well. But not in the way of being a billionaire or whatever, but as a person who sort of takes pleasure in life, whether it's because of what you're eating or drinking, or you have a garden. You're always reading, you're always — even in a pandemic, you're dressing up. I just admire that.

And I take a lot of inspiration for — I don't find a lot of people inspiring on that level. I’ve bought clothes because you've worn them. I can't say that about anybody else. You absolutely should have a show, because I'm a person who doesn't care about — being like, ‘Oh, gosh, I want to do what she's doing.’ But I feel that way about what you're — what you wear, and your — Yeah, you just seem to take a lot of pleasure in life, even when things are really bad.

Of course, this is, again, this is an issue of perception versus reality from social media. What is the thing that motivates you to live in this way? Or at least, put that out there?

Alejandra: Mm-hmm.

I love that. First of all, thank you for recognizing this aspect of my life. Not everybody does. I think sometimes — ok, so when I started my blog, and I called it Always Order Dessert, from the beginning, I would say that it's a philosophy, not — it's not meant to be literal. People would be like, ‘Did you order dessert?’ I'm like, ‘No, I didn’t want it. I got another glass of wine, or I got a glass of port, or something.’

But for me, it was never specifically about that. It was more about — dessert, especially growing up and stuff, or even when I went on dates in those aforementioned single days, it was about extending the moment. It's a way about not ending the meal. The thing that was always sad to me was when the meal ended.

And my dad is very much the kind of person who, like me, loves food and loves abundance and loves to say yes. And so, when we would go out to dinner, we'd see three appetizers on the menu. It was like, ‘Oh, I can't decide between-’ My dad would be, ‘Let's get them all!’ It was that kind of thing. The same with dessert, be like, ‘Let's-’ My dad literally does always order dessert, even if he just brings it home. But it was that thing of extending the meal.

And then I remember, as I was in college, and I was going out with friends and going on dates, and things like that, where it just, the meal just wrapped up at the end, or the dinner just wrapped up. And I was just like, ‘Oh, that's — ’ It's like ending it. I hated that moment. I'd love to extend the pleasure of the moment. So, that's what Always Order Dessert always meant to me.

And people are like, ‘She's a desert blogger.’ And I'm like, ‘I'm not.’ [Laughter.] Especially when people say that now. I haven't even updated my blog in a year. It's basically stagnant.

So, it was never about that. It was really just about that moment, of kind of finding ways to extend pleasure, and to appreciate these kind of good moments. For me, it's getting another bottle of wine, because then that's an extra half an hour that you get to sit with your friends or your date or your family or whatever, and talk and enjoy and laugh at the table. That's the kind of thing that I really love.

I hate when parties end. I'm like, ‘You can stay at my house until three o'clock in the morning happily.’ One of my really good friends, he's so great, ‘cause — one of my favorite things about him is that every time that we go out and we do stuff, he's like, ‘Let's go get another drink, or let's go do this. Let's go somewhere.’ He always wants to extend the night, extend the moment. He wants to go to that second party, or the third party. And I love that, because I think it just makes it — I love it. I don't want the night to end. I don't want the meal to end. I don't want the good moments to end.

So, there's a lot about that in life, in terms of finding those ways to kind of extend things. And it does read into — when I dress up, I dress up because, first of all, I love it. I love beautiful dresses, and I love doing my hair, and putting on makeup, and playing around with makeup and looks, and kind of creating — kind of, yeah — sort of decorating myself.

And I think a lot of it is also tied into kind of the idea of what it is, right? Like when I shop — and that's something that's actually been really hard during this time. ‘Cause when I shop, it's kind of I'm imagining, like, ‘Where do I want to wear this? What is the moment I want to create? What's the feeling I want to create?’

I remember, we were in Miami last year, and we went to the — oh God, it's like these botanical gardens, it's this old house. Can't remember the name. I knew that I wanted to wear a long flowing floral dress, so that I could walk through these beautiful gardens in this dress. [Laughter.] So, I went to Anthropologie in Miami and bought the perfect dress that I wanted to flow through the gardens in.

That's how I am about all my clothing. I imagine the sort of romantic feel that I want, or the — or sometimes it's a completely different — sometimes I want something that's got a little bit more edge to it, or that's sexy, or is it — something has a harder edge.

Or even just nerdy and things. I remember as a kid, we — for school picture day, I totally used to do this, too. So, we could pick our backgrounds, or they had those weird laser backgrounds, and all the backgrounds. And so there was a background that was a library. It was just books around—

Alicia: I picked this one, too. [Laughter.]

Alejandra: I was like, ‘Yes. The library background is mine.’ And then I had to find the perfect outfit to wear. And it was very much this plaid skirt, and a little ruffled collared shirt. I was going for full librarian nerd, with my librarian background.

And that was the thing. So, I would kind of orchestrate this perfect kind of image in my head and then live it. And that's something that I still do. I think that's why I buy so many dresses, because it's not just — everything is a moment, right? I have a whole backstory for every dress, and I have this whole idea of what I want.

And it's been a little bit rough, because now most of my — not flowing through gardens — except for my own gardens, I’m not flowing through gardens anymore. It's pretty much in my living room and my couch. But dressing has still kind of helped keep me feeling like myself, and like I’m together.

Especially since a lot of this time has been unemployment, especially — now I'm starting to get back into working a little bit. But I spent almost five months doing absolutely nothing. So, getting dressed was the thing that — I'd spent two hours getting dressed, and doing my makeup, and putting on — and making me feel like myself. So, I felt at least that part of me was still together. while the rest — everything else kind of felt at loose ends.

Alicia: Yeah, in terms of your eating and your drinking, which it seems like you've been doing a good job of that, too. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: I've been eating and drinking a lot. And that's kind of ebbed and flowed.

So, for eating, for — I went through these — basically, I wanted to fill that feeling. I was home all the time. And so I wanted to find things that would be exciting to me. And that would be creative to me, and they would sort of, kind of, spark that — inspire me in a way.

Because a lot of my inspiration, in terms of food and stuff, comes from things that I eat. I like eating what other people make, and I love going to restaurants, and seeing how people are using ingredients together and combinations together, and just — I'm seeing something like, ‘They're cooking the cucumber in this. I've never thought to cut cucumber,’ and then taking that idea home and playing around with it.

Or combining herbs and fruits, and things that I'd never expected before, and then taking those flavor patterns and coming home. And not necessarily recreating the exact same dish I eat, gonna eat, although I have done that. But a lot of times, it's just kind of taking little, those kernels of ideas, and then playing around with them.

And I wasn't getting that because the only food that I was eating was food I was making myself. My husband doesn't really cook. He makes my coffee in the morning, which I appreciate. But other than that, it's pretty much all of the food that I was eating was food that I was creating with my own hands. Everything was just recirculating. It's all recirculated air. There's nothing fresh coming in. So, I needed something that was kind of exciting.

So, I just started buying weird ingredients. [Laughter.] Getting Fresh Direct, and I was getting my groceries delivered. And I would basically go and see, and they would have the categories. There's the specialty category or — so I would click on those, and seeing what sort of unique — because I started buying octopus in this very blank — squid, and all sorts of clams, and razor clams.

I had a lot of seafood. I was basically playing around with the seafood, ‘cause the seafood especially is — it would always — that changes a lot. And that's something that's very kind of seasonal, and local and stuff, that would be what's good now, what's happening now, what that isn't just chicken. [Laughter.]

And playing around with condiments, and spices, and whatever kind of new fun things, buying different breads, flowers, and just stuff like that, and kind of pushing myself to cook with it.

Another thing about buying seafood is that there's a very limited lifespan of when — basically, you get it and you need to kind of cook it within the next day or two. And that was good for me, just in terms of if I would get kind of depressed and I wouldn't — it would be my motivator, ‘cause I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta cut the razor clams.’ I want to curl up and cry, but I got to get those razor clams. [Laughter.] So, it would be kind of another thing to give me at least some urgency to get some stuff done.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

No, that's so important to actually, yeah, feel like things need to be cooked, and so you actually can't say no, that's one of just — ugh, yeah. I'll make way too many beans. And that's been my way of, my vegetarian way, of needing to do something with them, because I can't let them just languish. It's ‘what new things can I do with this giant pot of black beans that I made’ that's been keeping me going in the cooking? Yeah, it's hard after so many months.

Alejandra: And it's hard.

One of the things that I’ve been — so nothing's because we're talking about pleasure. I love to seek out pleasure and stuff, but it was — it's harder. It's much harder now. I definitely feel like my life was much more pleasurable beforehand.

And it was easier, when you're traveling, when you're doing — at the end of last year, when I started working with Food Network, and I started — I was getting booked regularly on Food Network and on Amazon, and I was doing regular stuff with Today Show. And I had lots of other events, another — did some commercials, and I did some other on-camera projects and stuff. And so I was, as — people would say, booked and blessed. [Laughter.]

And so, that's how I was: booked and blessed. And I was making way more money than I’d ever made before, and finally feeling like, ‘Yeah, this is it. I've got the momentum of doing this.’ And then, it just came to this screeching halt. And all that went away. I was like, ‘God.’ I'd finally hit this point where I had the momentum, I was doing it. Now, all of it went away. Obviously, I got super depressed. I got sad.

The things that gave me pleasure, the — my job, which genuinely gave me pleasure, not in terms of the — it was fulfilling work. It was exciting work.

I loved the people that I worked with, and having those moments of connection with people who do this really weird thing is so rare and so important. I missed the hour in the makeup room beforehand, where we all used to share our joys and woes and life, and learn from each other and talk about things. Not having that is frustrating. And I can talk to my husband, but there's only so much that he really understands about this industry. And it's not the exact — it's not the same thing. And you can text, and it's still not the same kind of organic conversations that you can have when you're in the same space with other humans.

What was I saying? Wait, well — Oh, yeah. I was getting a lot of joy from that. And I was getting joy from traveling, and from getting to go to events, and from seeing speakers, and all these, going to — yeah, you're just moving about the world. A lot of my joy comes from that.

And I'm also a person who needs solo time. A lot of solo time that we got in divided space, which I've not had very much of in six-plus months. And that's been really hard, too, because it's — I don't have that moment of — my husband would leave for work in the mornings, and it was — I'd have my quiet, empty space mornings where it's just my own energy filling the space. And I missed that. And it’s not that I don't love my husband, and I don't want him around. But, I want those breaks.

One of my friends, Shauna, you know Shauna Sever. She’s amazing. She's like, ‘I don't think humans are meant to be — no matter how much you love someone, you're not to be together, 24/7, constantly.’ That's not healthy. [Laughs.]

So yes, I felt like a lot of those things that were giving me pleasure just sort of disappeared. My philosophy is essentially pleasure, is finding the joys in moments in life. And now, how do I do that in this environment, or this life that basically is devoid of so many of the things that we think of as pleasure?

So, that's been kind of my obsession lately. I’ve become obsessed with the concept of anhedonia. You know the concept of anhedonia? [Laughs.]

Alicia: I think I know the word, but I — yeah. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah.

So the word, it essentially means loss of pleasure, or inability to feel pleasure. And there's versions of it. I mean, there's physical versions of it, where you physically can't feel pleasure. But then there's also psychological ones. I almost feel this is a time of that, where it's much harder to feel joy, even in the things that genuinely — the small joys. Because everything else is so much bigger, and everything else is so much — so overwhelming, and things are burning down.

Shauna is probably the person I talk to the most, ‘cause she also does TV, and she does food and stuff. So, she understands that same thing. And we texted a lot. And it's like, ‘How can I be excited about this new biscuit recipe when the world is burning, right?’ It's hard to find, to say, like, ‘Oh, these things are so great. But, it's not important! None of it is important, right? There's so many bigger things.’

And while I do feel that we still need those little things, it's harder. I'm struggling with it. I have ordered 50 books about pleasure. And I've been reading my way through them. And part of me was like, ‘Maybe I'll start a newsletter about pleasure.’ [Laughter.]

But, there's things I want to figure out. I remember in 2016, after the election, that it was harder. It was hard, but I feel like this is harder. Because, even then, I still felt that — even then I remember being like, ‘Well, the recipes are important. And the cooking’s important. And these things are still important, because people need these joys and need these moments of connection and stuff.’

But now, I feel like it's even harder. Because I'm like, ‘Well, people can't necessarily get together with their families. And then, people are literally dying.’ And it's — you're stuck in places. My brother lives in DC. I haven't seen him since January. And we used to see each other all the time. So it's things like that, where I'm — it's — these things are important, but it's also — it is harder. I think it kind of maybe is a time where, maybe we just don't get as much pleasure anymore. For a time. Not permanently.

Alicia: Yeah, I hope so anyway.

Yeah, it's been super fascinating. I always work at home, and I always work alone. And I'm not a collaborative person, necessarily. I like to do things alone. But then, the thing that makes that worthwhile, and the thing that gets me out of that space is that when the day is done, it's being with people.

Even if I'm going to have a drink alone at a bar, I'm either eavesdropping on people, or I'm engaged in conversations with strangers and things like that, and missing that — those sparks that can happen, though — that's really been, for me, such a huge mental struggle. Especially with writing, because so much of your inspiration comes from being around other people and just the things that they bring up in you.

And yeah, no. And for me, too, the solitude thing is super important. And so having that —

Yeah, just my boyfriend had been at home for three months. Now, he's back in the office a little bit, but at the same time it's so hard to get into a writing groove when someone's always around and I can't — I used to just go to this local beer — my whole life is drinking, I guess. [Laughs.] But I used to go to a beer bar, and I’d just order a whiskey soda, and I'd really pound through things because it just — I needed to change my atmosphere. Or, I'd go to the coffee shop if I needed air conditioning. I don't have that anymore.

And in New York, I used to go to the public library. And I’d work in the huge — in the Rose Reading Room, and just that entity that's there, it would be, just — it's so hard not to focus, and not to work and get things done. Just being home all the time when I'm already have been a person who is working at home and enjoys that focus. Like, oof. Be careful what you wish for. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: It's true. It's the same thing, ’cause I — yeah, I always loved my solitude. I loved being able to work from home, but I loved having those moments.

And the thing with on-camera work is that you go — if I have a Today Show segment, I might leave the house like 6 a.m., and I go and I do stuff. But I'm usually home by 11 a.m. — or no, by then or 10 — I'd be home by noon at the latest, right? That was my day. And I’d come home, and my — but the adrenaline would wear off slowly. And I’d usually take a nap, and then eat lunch. And it would just be this kind of shift into this sort of quiet space after this rush of what I was doing beforehand.

But yeah, now it's just this one constant space and the same energy. And I was thinking a lot when you were talking — during your — in your piece about travel. It's that idea of the, you take yourself when you're traveling. And my thing about traveling was always, it was less about the place and more about experiencing myself in a new place. And also what aspects of myself that would bring out.

Especially because my husband is not Latino. He's white. [Laughter.] Well, you can be white Latino. He's Jewish, and was born in the Soviet Union. He was born in Kiev, and came over as a kid. But yeah, so it's a totally different culture. I went from having a sort of regular Latino influence, from my Latina friend, girlfriends, or being with my family, to not really having much of that in my life.

So, I’ve actually gone through a period of reading books in Spanish, and watching movies and TV shows in Spanish. And I didn't even realize that I was doing it. I just saw that the only things I ever wanted to read or watch were all in Spanish. And I realized that it's because that's — that aspect is something that I'm not getting to experience. I used to go to a lot of Latinx events, right? Or I used to go to conferences, and I'd always have these pockets of time where I was surrounded by people who I didn't have that learning curve of explaining stuff to. Kind of understood a lot of the same issues, and had a lot of that same cultural language. And I don't really get much of that right now, except for the few times I've been able to see my parents.

And yeah, so I missed that. I love Miami, and I love going to Puerto Rico, obviously. And the thing about those two places, and even LA to a certain extent, is that they sort of bring out that Latina side of me. It's a home, right? I love when I get to Miami, and suddenly I realize I haven't spoken English in a day and a half. ‘Cause the flight attendants, and the Uber driver, and the reception at the hotel, and everybody that I've talked to, it's all in Spanish. You feel you're at home.

It's this nice thing that sort of wakes up that side of me. And I always feel like my most beautiful, sexiest, truest self in that air — environment. I need a few, a dose of that, right, every so often. Whether it's there, or going to LA and being with a lot of — I’ve gone to lot, Latina conferences in LA. And being around other women, and just talking and sharing in a lot of things, in terms of music and fashion and beauty. And just talking about these little stories that you have in common, that sort of feeds that aspect. And then I can kind of come back to the other side of my world, where other things are fed but then it creates balance.

So, travel creates that balance for me. When I go to places, like I go to New Orleans and that kind of feeds that love of food, and slight hedonism, and music, and a little bit of recipes — my spiritual, believes in ghosts, magical side. There's a little bit of that. I like a haunted city.

And so, I’m missing all of that. Because right now, all I have is like my own space. And I try to create variety and things here, and I — but it doesn't — yeah, doesn't fill it the same way.

(1:04:57) Alicia: Yeah.

Well, I wanted to talk to you about translation, because — and I know you're reading Hopscotch in Spanish and English, which is crazy. [Laughter.] But, as someone who is bilingual and has this experience in kind of international publishing, do you think that there should be more of this kind of — not even necessarily just translation, but of course translation, but also collision of languages because — and people have been talking a lot about not italicizing words that aren’t English in food writing, especially because food is so global.

And we all use different words for the same thing sometimes. Okra, I'll — sometimes I'll call it in its Hindi name, because I'll be cooking that kind of recipe or something. And obviously, porsche, passion — all these things are — I don't know. We kind of just know. Or you can easily find out now, too, what it is.

What do you think? How do you feel, by being bilingual, being Latina, affects both your understanding of food and of food media? But also what do you think could happen if there were more of this convergence between languages?

Alejandra: Yeah, so there's a few things there.

On one hand, I love the idea of — and I know, this puts much more of an onus on the viewer or the reader — but I love the idea of making people look stuff up and educate themselves on things they may not necessarily know automatically.

And it's a delicate balance, because on one hand, part of what we do is teach, right, and share knowledge. And I do want to be a guide. But I also think that sometimes, there's a few things that people should be able to look up themselves and figure out themselves.

It's an opportunity, right? When you look something up, there may be something that sparks your imagination, or that feeds you, in a way that may not necessarily speak to me when I'm talking about something, right? There may be something about an ingredient that is exciting to you, that may not be the thing that is exciting to me about it.

And so when I'm telling you something, I'm just telling you my point of view. But letting people sort of do a little bit of their own work, and a little bit of their own research, kind of opens things up further.

And this is something that we talked about in the Black Book panel that I did a few weeks ago. ’Cause when you're on camera, especially because time is so short—I’ve done segments that are two minutes long. I think the most I've ever had is maybe 10 minutes. If you want to talk about things that—you have to explain everything.

If I want to do a French fry recipe, I say, you peel the potato, and you chop the potato, and you fry the potato. But if I want to talk about tostones, I need to explain what kind of plantain to get. How you peel it; it's not easy to peel. Explaining those little things is an aspect of it.

It's a higher learning curve. There's so much that you need to get through before you even get to that basic thing, that you're always kind of starting at the bottom. So, you're constantly pushing this boulder up the hill, and then you need to start all over again. And so you never really get into the juicy parts. Because you're so limited in terms of time, or in terms of—whether it's just inches in a printed page, or word count, or minutes on television.

I would love to. It's impossible to ask, right? We can't even get people to wear masks, right? [Laughter.] We want to expect so much from people, and yet, it's—that's not really the case all the time.

But it would be so great if some people could do that, just because then it would let us kind of skip the basics and jump into stuff that's much more exciting and more interesting and cover stuff that we don't get to do. Like I was saying earlier, I can say picadillo and arroz con pollo, and things like that. And I don't need to translate it, and I don't need to explain it to you.

And that's part of that thing, the other thing I was saying, about when you're amongst people where you don't have that learning curve. Because then you can just go so much further than when you have to constantly explain. And that's important in personal relations, and I think it's important in terms of the writing, and the work that we're doing, and just letting people learn new things. I would love to not have to translate everything, or not even italicize things.

I've been reading a lot of things in Spanish, and also even in English but with Latino character — I've been reading a lot of Latinx romance novels. They're so hard to find, trying to find more and more of them. But something that frustrates me is the way that everything, even when they have Spanish language in it, then it'll say something — so, it'll immediately translate it in the other word. I can't even think of an example. Basically, she might say, in Spanish that she's always late, and then the other person in English would be like, ‘Yeah, she is always late.’

So, for me reading it, it's annoying. This is written for the person who doesn't speak Spanish, or who doesn't know these phrases and things. It's not written for me, because I, now, from you, I'm getting double of every single thing that's in there. So, it would be nice to just say, just have it and not have it — I mean, it's not easy, right? I don't know what the perfect way to do it would be. But you do lose so much. You lose so much.

Alicia: For sure.

Yeah, for you, is cooking a political act?

Alejandra: Ah, I've been thinking about this, ever since you started talking about this. Yes and no, yes and no. I'm gonna go with yes and no.

But what's interesting to me is that in terms of cooking, I started cooking to get away from politics. ’Cause I went to college at George Washington University. And my major was political communication, which was a special program that combined political science, journalism, with like a little bit of marketing and communications. So, it was essentially designed for people who wanted to go into campaign management and in to — the spin sort of world of politics, which is what I was fascinated in, at that time. And that's what I thought I wanted to do.

And then I was in these classes, and I would look around me and be like, ‘Oh, my God, I hate all these people.’ You're in D.C., and you're in your class. These boys would show up in khaki pants and blazers, and everyone was always running off to their internship. And everyone was just terrible. I mean, not everyone, there were great people too. But I just did not feel comfortable. And I didn't feel happy. I liked the content, but I didn't like the people. And I was like, ‘These are the people that I would be working with, and I do not want to work around these people.’

And so for me, I started skipping classes and not really going, and I would stay in my dorm and I would cook. And I would cook these elaborate meals, and GW has — each dorm had its own kitchen, each room had — it's just basically better apartments than I've lived in ever since.

And so I would just stay and cook, or my roommate would come home, and I'm like, ‘I made moules frites.’ Or like, ‘I baked madeleines.’ And she's like, ‘Didn’t you have a class today?’ I'm like, ‘Ah, I didn’t go.’

I remember, at one point, my mom was like, ‘Why don't you just go to culinary school?’ And I was like, ‘I'm already in school.’ And she's like, ‘Yeah, but you don't seem to want to do the school stuff. You just want to cook.’ That's when I ended up taking off, and doing — and going to culinary school for eight months.

It was my escape from that world that I just didn't like. It felt icky. It had a lot to do with the specific major I was in, because these were people that wanted to be spin doctors, basically. But I wanted to get away from that, and the food just felt more pure. And it felt more tangible and real, and solid. Something that I could start to finish and enjoy, and something I could share. And that brought people together instead of the fighting aspect of it, the political stuff in that.

It's been years since then. It is absolutely political still. There's that aspect of it, of, again, of bringing people together. But, I think that that's not necessarily always the case.

You're bringing people together when it's — generally, people talk about food bringing people together, but I think it's more about food is what you do when you're already together. You're already at that table together. And then the food is the thing you're doing.

It might bring your family together, but — from the different rooms in your house, or it might be something — or, if you're at — if you're at college with people, and then, yeah, you're all eating in the dining hall together. But here's already things in common there. You’re already going to that same school, you're already in the same family, you're already in the same city. There's already something that has brought you together, that's not necessarily the food. The food is an action. It's a thing you're doing.

But if food brought people together, we wouldn't have the jokes about Thanksgiving, and the racist aunts, and stuff like that. It's not a Hallmark card. It's not as poetic as I think people think it is. I think it is tricky.

Everything that we do is a decision. And in Vermont, when I'm cooking and trying to figure out all these dietary restrictions and stuff, my goal is making sure that everybody gets to eat, and everybody gets to enjoy, to feel safe, regardless of what it is that they can or can't eat.

But then also, to try to make the best choices possible within what's available. And I have restrictions, I have budgets, and I have access to some stuff and not access to other things. God, I love a container of peeled garlic, especially when I have to cook food for 35 people, right? I know that the peeled garlic is not necessarily the best choice.

Ok, so I'm weighing. I'm constantly weighing things. And I'm like, ‘Alright, so what is the priority at this point? And then versus this point.’ So, it's things that are constantly always changing.

And I think that with anything else, that varies throughout the day. I might feel about something someday, and my priorities might be different today, or even at breakfast then they are at the end of the day, right? They’re constantly shuffling.

It is obviously impossible for us to be 100% ‘good.’ [Laughter.] I think we all have our compromises that we have to make, the compromises that we're forced to make lot of times. It's not even an option for us.

You've talked about your limitations on the island. And even in my neighborhood, or what's available, especially during this pandemic, I was getting a lot of food delivered, ‘cause I didn't want to go into the grocery stores, because I want to stay healthy so that I can interact with my parents, right. My priority is being able to stay healthy so that I can be with my family. So, that means that maybe I'm ordering stuff on Amazon, or I'm getting stuff delivered from Target, or whatever I know that isn't the best choice, but right now I'm prioritizing this. And that makes sense. So, there's things like that.

So, yeah. Did I answer the question?

Alicia: You did. [Laughter.]

Well, thank you so much for taking all this time to chat.

Alejandra: Oh, my God. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about some of these things that are usually just kind of rolling around in my head. Yeah, and having a place to share. And obviously happy to chat anytime. I'll send you those ’90s vegetarian recipes that my mom — [Laughter.] I'm telling ya, the oatmeal fritters are pretty awesome.

Alicia: I can't wait. I can't wait to see. [Laughter.]

Well, thank you again.

Alejandra: 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

I talked to Ivy Mix for today’s conversation before there was a controversy around her being used to kick of National Latinx Heritage Month on Liquor.com’s Instagram. As the author of a book called The Spirits of Latin America and owner of pan-Latin bar Leyenda, they invited her to promote the book and the spirits, bartenders, and recipes contained therein. Of course, no one thought this through enough: Mix isn’t Latinx. A bad apology was issued by the company, but I didn’t have a real understanding of what happened, as Liquor had removed her original posts, leaving no context for what had ensued. I called her up to understand exactly what went down.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” she says. As she explained how she came to kick off this month for the website without being Latina, she doesn’t want to edit her actions. When they asked, she said yes, and didn’t think about asking who else they were going to feature, why she was going to be the first person to do a takeover, and all the other questions she now realizes she should have asked. But she posted a picture of herself with the book, highlighted bartenders and spirits that are featured within it, and signed off by saying she isn’t Latina.

“It was just stupid and selfish and haphazard,” she says. “I don't want any f*****g pity from anyone, because I really think I'm in the wrong here.”In discussing her career and what she’s wanted to be an advocate for, she now realizes that in doing so, she was also promoting herself, and that complicates her efforts. ”At first, it was like, ‘okay promote and support women in Speed Rack.’ That's what I really wanted to create a platform for supporting and promoting women in Speed Rack, and through that effort, I made my career, so I was also supporting and promoting myself as a woman,” she says. “Then I was like, ‘okay, well I wanna support and promote all these amazing Latin American distillates from these amazing cultures that I have lived and experienced, but I am not Latina, and I've received opportunities that maybe other people should have should have had.’” She has received messages telling her that she takes up a lot of space in a crowded arena as someone who’s not Latina, and that’s what she’ll be reckoning with now. This is a moment when we’re collectively working to better understand appreciation versus appropriation, as well as how we can seek transformative accountability rather than shunning when someone makes mistakes. What do we do with the work of someone who’s profited from her take on a culture to which she doesn’t belong? Is that work useless? I don’t think so, but I do think we need to have these discussions and allow for nuance.I wanted to talk to her originally because I too am a nerd about Latin American spirits, and I wanted to understand her perspective on them, as someone who works with them, has traveled a lot, and works to make the agricultural side of spirits production visible. We had a pretty bad connection, but above is our brief conversation, which got cut off right at the end. Read below.

Alicia: Hi, Ivy, thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

Ivy: Yeah, thanks for having me.

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

Ivy: Yeah, so I grew up in a tiny town called Tunbridge in central Vermont. Less than 1,000 people, kind of like 750 people. Both my parents moved to New York—to Vermont from different places. My dad with his parents when he was like a teenager, and my mom in her thirties when she was kind of a hippie moving around. 

So, I was lucky to kind of grow up in an era of and in a place where TV dinners and Hot Pockets were not in my family. My mom was kind of on the farm-to-table movement long before it was a thing. We weren't allowed to have sugary cereal. We had fruit leather rather than Fruit by the Foot. 

And my mom is an excellent cook and has always really cared about the culinary arts. So, I grew up eating food from my garden, and stuff from the farmers’ market, and fresh maple syrup. And I knew the places that the meat that I ate was raised, and I knew who made my butter. [Laughs.] I mean, not all the time, but you know, but it was really like that. 

So, I grew up eating lots of really kind of classic dishes from my mom. She's the oldest of five, born in 1945, kind of in the suburbs of Chicago. So, she's kind of the classic roast type of lady, but party—really delicious meals that were made from really delicious ingredients.

Alicia: Awesome. And what was it that drew you to bartending, and what keeps it exciting as you're in the industry longer?

Ivy: I just started bartending when I moved to Guatemala. As I said, I grew up in Vermont, Vermont. Everyone's kind of a different variation of myself, six degrees of WASP, basically. And I was like, ‘Ok, I kind of want to get out of here. I kind of want to go see something new.’ I really want to learn a foreign language. I really want to learn Spanish, but I was kind of—I was like, ‘I'll take anything. I just want go somewhere else.’ 

End up going to Guatemala, ended up hanging out in Guatemala, ended up hanging out in bars in Guatemala, then ended up working in bars in Guatemala. 

And what drew me to it originally was this—what drew it to me originally was this opportunity to do this job anywhere. It was more of a utilitarian thing. And I was very interested in traveling and seeing new cultures, new places. And originally, I was like, ‘Well, I can do this job anywhere.’ And I really liked that aspect of it. Like, ‘Ok, if everything goes to hell tomorrow, and I would need to move to Japan, I can probably get a job bartending, ‘cause people need our bartenders.’

And that was when I worked in kind of beer-and-shots type of places, and my cocktail knowledge didn't really expand past mojito. And then I discovered cocktails, and I realized I could be creative and make these really beautiful things with—and bartend, and be this in the social environment that I could do kind of anywhere. 

And that's really what draw me—drew me to it, and kept on drawing me to it. 

Alicia: Yeah, how do you keep it interesting?

Ivy: Well, it's funny. Now, I've been bartending for more of my life. In two years, I will be—I will have bartended for half my life. Which is insane, right? ’Cause I started when I was 19.

And what keeps it interesting to me now-it's kind of always what did keep it interesting, but now in a different way, I still have this wanderlust. I still have this desire to explore other places, and different cultures and different things. Cocktails, in particular-let’s just talk about making cocktails-are really a way that I can dive into different places and different cultures and different things, because the way we eat and we drink is so intertwined with the cultures that we come from, or that we go and visit. So, that's really what's kept it interesting to me throughout the years. 

And I'm a geek. I'm a total nerd. Yeah, I was a philosophy major in college, and there's just an infinite amount to know about spirits. And then about flavors. I can just dig, and dig, and dig, and get nerded out into one topic. And that can last a year.

So, that's how I keep it spicy. [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah, I know.

I mean, I ask because it's—I mean, obviously, you've been doing so many different things. Running Speed Rack, and running a bar, Leyenda, and also writing a book. Obviously, you haven't just been behind the bar, but at the same time, the kind of nitty-gritty of what you do is still—

Ivy: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah, it's still behind the bar, and still doing that sort of work. And—

Ivy: Well, I'm definitely a project-oriented person. I'm the type of person that my whole life has been like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna do this thing for two or three years. And now I need another thing.’ [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. 

But how has the experience of running Leyenda right now been, during the pandemic? Have you guys been doing outdoor seating? What was your reaction when the shutdown first went into place, and how have you kind of endured through this time?

Ivy: Totally. 

Usually, I travel a lot. I travel because Speed Rack, and I consult in a lot of stuff. And I fly a lot. 

So, when COVID first started to rear its head, I was actually on vacation. And I remember being like, ‘Oh, there’s this thing going on in China. Weird.’ Got back, was home for a week, and I start traveling in the States. I had to do Speed Rack competitions, and I had to go judge at the San Francisco Spirits Challenge. 

And I was in denial, I think, about the realities of what was happening. I mean, for sure, I was in denial. I was traveling up until the 17th of March. So, I was really traveling quite a bit, after most people I know, for work traveling. And I went from San Francisco, and the day I left San Francisco they shut down. And then from there, I went to New Orleans, and then they shut down. And I remember, I was in TK, and we shut down. [Laughter.] 

And I was in San Francisco, and I got a call from my business partners being like, ‘We are going to close. It's really weird here. It's like the apocalypse. For the safety of everyone, our staff is concerned. We're gonna shut down.’ I was like, ‘Ok.’ And then the next day Cuomo was like, ‘It's just gonna be shut down.’ 

I served cocktails to go that weekend, and then decided to stop doing that. It wasn't safe. And then I decided that I was going to go home to Vermont, where I'm from, for two weeks. I packed a bag for two weeks. Like, ‘Then I'll be back. I'll open everything back up.’ I stayed there for two months, almost two and a half months. 

And then we slowly started to open up again. Life still happens, right? Bills have to be paid, rent has to get paid, our water bill, which only comes every quarter, but we had to pay that. And we had to really start working. So, we did. And we brought back our kitchen staff, and we started doing cocktails to go and delivery, and then we got to do outside when Cuomo allowed for that. 

And, you know, it's just—it's weird. We've been okay. I keep on saying like, ‘Winter is coming, everybody. Winter is coming.’ I live in New York City, no one—New Yorkers have a funny fear of eating and drinking outside. I feel like anywhere else in the world, people sit outside well into winter. In New York, everyone's like, ‘Ugh, no!’

So, I don't know what's going to happen. Cuomo just said that we can open up to 25 percent inside, and I really feel like that's the equivalent of being thrown a deflated life jacket. It's just the appearance of helping is there, the appearance of aid is there, but the reality is that for Leyenda, 25 percent operational, we won’t be able to break even at that if we don't have outdoor too. So, we're playing it by ear.

The only answer, I think, is a vaccine. Do I want 100 percent indoor dining? No, no, no. I don't want to work that way. I don't want my staff to work that way. I don't want customers to come in like that, ’cause it's just uncomfortable. But it's really difficult, for sure.

Alicia: I mean, everyone is kind of talking about, what should the government be doing to help independent restaurants and bars, especially in New York City, and then the other layer of New York State. Is there anything in particular you wish to see that would actually be helpful?

Ivy: Yeah. Because of Gia actually, I ended up on the Independent Restaurant Coalition, so—which is called the IRC. And we're basically a newly formed group that formed during COVID, to try to get bars and restaurants together with the government to create a relief package, specifically for independent bars and restaurants. Meaning not Shake Shack, not McDonald's, not franchises, not publicly traded. 

So, we've been working on something called the Restaurants Act, which is now a bill that's in Congress and in the Senate, which is $120 billion bill that will be a relief package to bars and restaurants. We just need money, right? Fact of the matter is, we're all running—I think you're lucky if you're breaking even right now. I know a few people who are doing better than ever, which is good for them. But they're so rare, right? 

But restaurants need a relief package, particularly restaurants in the northeast. Winter is coming, and it's scary. Or just the north in general, forget the northeast. So, I think that the Restaurants Act is something that when I'm feeling even the most bleak, I’m like, ‘if we can just get that, and we can get a grant, not a loan, but a grant in our pockets of a couple hundred thousand dollars, then we'll be able to survive right now.’

When I’m feeling all is lost. I'm like, ‘Well, we're almost at 200 co-sponsors in the Senate and the Congress.’ [Laughs.] And that at least gives me a little bit of something to look to.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

I mean, did you ever expect that would be something you'd be doing, is—? No? [Laughs.]

Ivy: No. No, never in a million years. And what's funny is that I'm actually kind of good at it. People are like, ‘Wow, you got so many people to co-sponsor.’ I just call up and make an appointment.

It's a different type of feeling power. And I hope that something happens with it, because, me—I wrote a book. My bar has won lots of accolades. I'm one of the people that has at least the press coverage or whatever that, hopefully my place will get attention. 

But I really like the Indian place on my block, and they probably don't know anything about—they're not going to get the New York Times article or whatever the hell it is. And if they can get some of this grant money to alleviate the financial burden, then I think it's a win for everybody. Because, imagine a life, we don't get to eat and drink what we want to. It's just so dismal.

Alicia: Especially in New York. Yeah. 

Ivy: Right. Exactly. It’s why I live there. [Laughter.]

Alicia: So, about your book, yeah, which just came out in a pandemic, which is not fun for anybody. 

Why did you want to write this particular book, The Spirits of Latin America, and what was your process for researching and producing such-a book about such a diverse array of spirits?

Ivy: Yeah. 

When I first had the opportunity, I was approached about writing a book. And I was like, ‘Ok.’ And they're like, ‘What do you want to write a book about?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I can say what I don't want to write the book about. I don't want to write the book about what it's like to be a woman in the industry, which is what everyone always wanted me to write about.’ 

I've got a few facets of my career. One of them is certainly Speed Rack, and I definitely have a feminist tilt to what I do, but I was like, ‘I don't want to write about that.’ I opened this bar about these spirits that I really loved. I opened up Leyenda because I couldn't go to a bar and drink all the things I wanted to. I couldn't go to a bar and be—tequila and mezcal bars exist everywhere, and most of them suck. And most of them serve bad tequila and bad mezcal. But then when I go, I can't get like Pisco, you know? So, that's why I wanted to go eat, or go—eat and drink that food and drink. 

So, that's why I opened up Leyenda, and then when it came time to write a book, I was like, ‘Well, I'm interested in this—in spirits from around this area. Why? Why is it that I'm interested in spirits from the ‘New World,’ right?’ The Latin New World. I say that loosely. Dramatic air quotes. 

And, I ended up being like, ‘Ok, so, here is this category of spirits. And they have this really interesting history behind them.’ And everything is in its essence an agricultural product. And grapes came because—literally, because people want to make the blood of Christ and turn all the Indigenous people into goddamn Christians. Agaves were already here, but—and then depending on who you talk to you—but distillation is a, of—well, it depends. But most people believe it's from Spanish descent, that—well, from the Moors, [then] came the Spanish over to the Americas. 

And all that is kind of the embodiment of this real mestizo culture. Of endemic, and original, and conquistador, and European. So, I really wanted to explore that. 

If you look at music from that part of the world, it's—you've got reggae. You’ve got reggatón. You’ve got bachata, you've got salsa, you've got all these different—it's not like we're listening to bluegrass there. And then the spirits themselves also have this vibrance, and this viciousness. And if you look at the textiles in this part of the world, everything's a little bit brighter, a little bit more alive. And I was like, ‘Well, why is that?’ So, that's why I want to read the book.

And that's what the book is about. It's really about the cultural aspects of terroir.

Alicia: Right.

So, were you doing a lot of on the ground research for this? Traveling around Latin America?

Ivy: I was, yeah. 

I was traveling a lot before I even started writing the book, learning about spirits. I lived in my college years in Guatemala. I’ve lived in Peru, I’ve lived in Argentina. And I traveled all over the place when I was in college. Then, when I got into the booze biz, I started traveling a lot and learned about booze, in general. Not in America. 

And then, I took a four-month trip, off and on, to go and write the book, and take the photos, and do on-the-ground work. I mean, when I was doing it was really difficult and hard. And it's not great for running any of my other businesses or my relationship, that's for sure. 

But then, the result was the photographs that were taken by Shannon Sturgis were just beautiful. And a lot of really great interview opportunities for me. 

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

So, I think in the spirits of Latin America broadly, it's even more important to talk about ideas about sustainability and exactly how alcohol is an agricultural product. So, how do you define sustainability in terms of spirits as well as in cocktails? And how do you pursue that standard?

Ivy: Yeah, so, I mean, it's so multi-tiered, multi-faceted. I mean, as you said, spirits are in their essence—they come from something, some sort of plant. And so that's an agricultural product. So, what we have to think about is how are things being grown? Are pesticides being used? Are we replanting in a way that's good? Are we paying our people who are making these products well?

Unfortunately, agricultural people who work in farming, for lack of a better term campesinos, are usually the bottom of the totem pole socio-economically, and there's not—that’s the same in spirits production. The people who are picking your grapes, or chopping down your sugarcane, or harvesting your agave, are generally not with the college degrees and probably without the options to go elsewhere and get a job in an office or something. So, it's important to pay those people well, and to ensure that they're in conditions that are environmentally sound for them in their health. 

In the history of some of the stuff that's happened with rum production and people having horrible kidney failure because of burning the fields, that's a problem for our environment and it’s a problem for the people who are making these spirits. 

So, that's one sustainability I am very concerned and wondering about—I mean, I can go on and on about it. 

There's so many problems with greed, and with—in agave production, people have decided not to let agaves reproduce naturally, i.e. sexually. And the problem with that is that now we just have a bunch of clones of agaves, and if a phylloxera of agave comes out, then we have no more agaves. Because we haven't been sustainably protecting them. That's what happened with grapes, with phylloxera, and then the same thing is happening in Pisco production, and then the sugarcane, the same. 

So, that's not the problem, just as far as the plant itself. As far as cocktails are concerned, there's been this fab about sustainability and cocktails, and I think that that's awesome. But I don't know if people reusing their lime shells is as important as what's happening from the spirits production of big national company. 

When I go to places, different distilleries, and I see that—I go to Mexico, where there's a lot of glass production, lots of people make glass bottles in Mexico. And I go to some fancy tequila production, and they have pallets and pallets of glasses of bottles from Germany and Austria. And I'm like, ‘So, you're going to ship these things all the way from there over to here?’ And that doesn't make any sense. 

The whole thing about shop local, shop local, buy local, etc., makes sense. It’s also antithetical, ’cause I like Latin spirits, and they have to be shipped from South America. It is complicated, and it is—I think that we need to demand more, and know more about how people are doing it from a corporate level. 

And then realize that sustainability in cocktails is good, but I am a little dubious about the fad of using avocado pits, and I don't really know if that's where we should be focusing when people are taking their highly lethal runoff from their distillates and dumping them in the river next to their house. That's the thing.

Alicia: Yeah, no. Food waste, of course, is an important issue, but at the same time it doesn't really matter if you're bringing all these things in from God knows where, and you're also not concerned with the ecological conditions of the source and labor conditions, of course. 

And so, I usually ask people for the last question if, for them, cooking is a political act. But I figured for you, the question should be, is bartending a political act?[Note: The audio cuts out before this, so I had Mix answer via email.]Ivy: I do believe that bartending is a political act. I have always thought that the every action has its political ramifications, whether you realize it or not, and drinking and eating are no different. Limes and avocados from Mexico are more likely than not tied to the cartel, thus, every margarita you drink with that guacamole is a political act, whether you like it or not. So? We can make more intentful decisions when drinking and as a bar owner, I can be more purposeful in my selection of the things I put on my menus that my clientele will consume. Consumerism is money which is politics and I am in the business (hopefully!) of having folks consume my cocktails so yeah: my job is political.

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