From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

I got dressed up to talk to Mariana Velásquez for this interview. From experiencing the elegance of her cookbook, Colombiana: A Rediscovery of Recipes and Rituals from the Soul of Colombia alone, I knew I had to wear a nice dress. Then I browsed her apron collection, Limonarium, and saw ever more style expressed. But there’s also substance, in the exploration of the regional foods of her native Colombia, the recipes for foods she grew up with and adapted to her life in New York City, and the styling, which is drowning in light and dripping in color. Listen above, or read below.

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

Mariana: Hi, Alicia. It's a pleasure being here today. 

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

Mariana: I grew up in Bogotá, which is the capital of Colombia. And it's a city perched up 9,000 feet up in the Andes. And it was a pretty urban life growing up. 

However, I had the gift of going out to the country on the weekends and over holidays to my grandparent’s little farm in the flatlands near Venezuela. And we grew up eating arepas, which are these great delicious corn cakes. Pan de yucas, which are also baked—you got flour and cheese biscuits. And lots of fruit, lots of tropical fruit. I feel like my childhood was all about smoothies and juices and desserts, and kind of going outside and picking mangoes for the—from the trees.

Alicia: And you write that you never wanted—your mother never wanted you to be a cook. But at 18 you were working at Sierra Mar in Big Sur. So what was it in your upbringing that led you to that at such a young age, too?

Mariana: Yeah, I mean, I realized pretty early on at about 12 or 14, 13, 14, that food had so much power. And in my family, the table has always been the center of it all. And so, I wanted to do something that really had a beginning, a middle and an end. That satisfaction that you get from cooking that it's pretty instant. You prepare a beautiful meal, and you see it. And the satisfaction from people enjoying it happens, and it's right there. 

And so I wanted to do something that I was good at. And I started to feel a lot of pleasure from the process of cooking. So I sort of ventured into the world and against my parent’s opinion back then, and started cooking in restaurants and exploring that life in the kitchen.

Alicia: And what did you enjoy about it? What kept you there?

Mariana: I love the process, the meticulousness, the—that exercise of finding ingredients and turning them into something. Making that scene, the beautiful plating, the ritual of the wine service. I love the dynamics, especially in the kitchen. And in restaurants. I really enjoyed seeing how people would come to these fine dining restaurants to really have an experience. And we would orchestrate all of that from the kitchen and the floor. And I loved it. I loved the rhythm. I love the discipline. 

Yeah, and kind of it was also in line.

Alicia: And in that kitchen that you write about working in when you were 18, you had a moment where you're cooking potatoes and eggs in the same pot like your grandmother did. And you were nervous that it wouldn't be okay, that the chef would see it and be like, ‘This isn't how you do this.’ But the chef was accepting of it. 

That anecdote that you tell brings up that difference that we think about between chefs and cooks, whether that's really real. And so how, from your experience, both working in home cooking and focusing on dinner parties and that sort of thing versus working in a restaurant kitchen, how do you see the difference, if there is one, between the chef and the cook?

Mariana: I mean, the chef has a lot of structure, and lots of rules. And there's thermometers and timers going off. And things have to be this way, because you need to have the repetition and the consistency.

And I feel that it also comes from a sense of pride in doing your craft in a very precise way. Of course, I cannot speak for all chefs, but in most professional kitchens, it's really about that structure. And a cook, which I consider myself much more a cook than a chef, especially because I don't run a kitchen. There's instinct that goes into play. 

And the other day, on my last trip to Colombia, I went on a road trip going from Cartagena to Barranca, a city that’s on the coast. And we stopped for breakfast to have these deep-fried arepa with egg. And this woman on a side, on the side of the road in her little stand, was frying oil in this big vat over hot coals. The oil was at the exact temperatures you needed for the arepa to be perfectly crispy. There's no temperature gauge; there's no thermometer. It's just she knows, as soon as she drops that tiny piece of dough to test the oil, that the bubbles are right. And so, I feel that that's the difference. 

Alicia: Well, what made you make that leap from working in professional kitchens toward food styling?

Mariana: After working at Prune in New York, and beginning to explore the magazine world, I worked at the recipe testing kitchen of Saveur Magazine. Later, I worked at Eating Well. And I found it really good, just a position of cooking research, culinary history, photography, art, that really fascinated me, was all the things I loved into one profession that I didn't even know existed. I sort of found out about food styling being a full-time job from someone who mentioned it. And it was a perfect combination of all the things I love.

Alicia: And how did you develop your style as a food stylist?

Mariana: So how did I develop myself as a food stylist there? It was a little broken there.

Alicia: How did you develop your style and your approach, and where do your influences in that realm come from?

Mariana: So I mean, I first assisted for at least three and a half years. I assisted different stylists in New York who taught me so much. And I learned the craft, and I learned how to find the great ingredients. I learned the—that set etiquette that you need to understand to be able to perform on set and know who's who and what's what, and what things are appropriate. And that research of amazing ingredients and make a photo, what do you want it to be.

And so over the years, I started to develop my personal style that I think sort of grew organically. I really have an obsession with botanicals, with things that are very organic and imperfect but have this beauty, this innate beauty to them. And it's all about the details. So I mean, all of the textures of fruits and vegetables, the veins, the colors, and really taking that and potentializing it for the images.

Alicia: And you've worked on so many other cookbooks. What was the process like for creating your own versus working on other people's books?

Mariana: I mean, usually, when I've done work as a stylist for other people's books, the process where I take it from is really the recipes are ready, they're developed, they're tested, and they give me the manuscript and then we do the photoshoot. I come into the process when it's pretty far along, right? 

And so, for me, that part is about really communicating with the author and understanding where those recipes come from, and what they mean to them and how to really present them faithfully to what they envision. And then for my own book, I had to sit down and start to develop it from the start. What are the chapters going to be? What is this book going to tell? What's going to be the story, and how am I going to choose those recipes? And so it was a pretty personal exploration of going back in time and looking at those recipes that I grew up with, or foods that through my years of culinary research have left a mark.

Alicia: And it's a very organic and social approach in which you kind of feel that there are people at the table in all of the images. There's not this sense of, it's happening divorced from the actual act of eating. The act of eating is present in the book. And, even the way you describe making breakfast, it's kind of an event to put on your kimono, I remember reading.

And so, what inspired you to make the book so social, to bring in the playlists and the menus and that sort of thing? Just focus on the actual experience of being at a table?

Mariana: Well, because for me, it's all about the ritual. If it was just for nourishment, we could eat granola bars and call it a day, right? We don't really, really need to serve a table and gather. So, our needs are really all about that. 

And for the book and in Colombia, food, it happens with many people. And recipes usually make large batches and there's family lunches and people get together to eat for lunch, for dinner. There's all these events where we come together as a community. So I wanted the book to feel that way, and to really represent that ritual, that ceremony. 

Alicia: And where did you actually test the book, because you're using so many ingredients that are so specific to Latin America? Were you testing it in Brooklyn? 

Mariana: Yeah, so I was developing all the recipes in Brooklyn, tested all the recipes here, had different collaborators help me with the testing to make sure that in different cities in the U.S., you were able to find these ingredients. I had to make some substitutions. There were recipes that I was like, ‘Instead of a substitution, I'm just going to replace the recipe because it just won't be the real thing.’ 

But I want this book to be approachable and the recipes to be familiar. And Colombian cooking is pretty humble. Nothing is out of the ordinary. It's fresh cheeses, it’s plantains, it's mangoes, it's lots of onions and garlic and scallions and hot chilies. And so, I also selected the recipes that I felt could be prepared, far from the tropics, essentially.

Alicia: Right. [Laughs.] 

And in such a diverse cuisine as Colombia, you really showed regionality. What was the inspiration behind doing that? And also, how did you choose the—which regions, which recipes, that sort of thing.

Mariana: So I chose recipes that really have a story for me, either recipes from growing up and foods I ate at my grandparent’s homes, or recipes that I discovered on my trips of research and that have a little anecdote behind them. I want every recipe to have a meaning and to have a backstory. 

And so the way I organized it, I sort of thought about the book through times of days. So in the morning, the midday feast, which is when most of Colombian traditional recipes happen, like the big lunches are usually red bean soup, they are ajiaco, which are served midday. 

And then the different moments like the bits and bites of el algo, that afternoon little thing that you eat, and then kind of weeknight meals, which I use as a chapter called Columbian-ish, which I—Colombian ingredients with my own interpretation and that kind of New York influence, which I've been here for 23 years and some of my cooking definitely reflects the food and the style that I've learned here. 

Alicia: Right, right. 

[Laughs.] I had a noise.

Mariana: I'm sorry.

Alicia: No, it's ok. 

Colombia is very close to where I'm living in Puerto Rico. But people think about very specific ingredients from this region and not—don't really understand the diversity that's available in all these very different climates. I think in Puerto Rico, there are like seven microclimates where different things are—can grow. And I know Colombia has a similar environment.

Was it important for you to represent the diversity of what Colombian cuisine is versus what someone from the States might have in their head, which might be just arepa, which might—that might be the only idea? What was your approach to the diversity of Colombian cuisine and making it translatable to a book for everybody?

Mariana: So the way I did that was through the menus of the chapter called “A La Mesa,” in which I took five different regions of Colombia and described everything about them. So for instance, there's this one menu called “Medellín’s Only Season,” which really celebrates that coffee region, the Andes, the beautiful anthuriums, the way people set the table, the furniture, the music. 

And so with these menus, my intent was to transport the reader to the scene so that they could re-create those Colombian moments. And in each one of those moments, I highlight the regions by—I left some regions out, only because I didn't have a personal experience in those places. So I included the ones that really felt like home to me. And hopefully in a future book, I can explore other moments and other regions, but these were the ones that were closest to my heart.

Alicia: Women are present in such a significant way. You decided to give the book an explicitly feminine title. And so I wanted to ask about the role of women and the role of the feminine in your experience of food, and why you decided to express it so—in such an explicit way, with your first book.

Mariana: So I wanted to really celebrate Colombian women who are the backbone of our cuisine. They're the carriers of our traditions. In a country that has been through so much conflict, the fact that we're still making sancocho and we're still maintaining some of those essential recipes, I feel that it's thanks to these women who run the households and maintain those flavors alive. 

And then here in the U.S., as a Colombian immigrant, seeing other women who in New York work in food and carry those flavors even away from home was really—it was essential to me. My mentors growing up, in Colombia and here in the U.S., were mostly women. And so, yeah, I wanted to pay tribute to them.

Alicia: Of course.

Well, for you is cooking a political act? 

Mariana: Absolutely. I feel that with cooking, you make community. You bring people together to share each other's values, to share the table. It’s also the way you choose ingredients and where you buy them and who you support in that app. It depends on when you're—wherever your ingredients come from really, for sustainment. 

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

Mariana: Of course. Thank you for having me, 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

Amber Mayfield really knows how to work: She has started her own event hosting company, called To-Be-Hosted, as well as an annual magazine about Black food and drink called While Entertaining. The self-published magazine is printed on thick, beautiful paper and packed with essays, recipes, playlists, and ideas for hosting that come from some of the coolest folks working in food and drink right now—some that are huge, and others that Mayfield wants to see get more attention.

Because I love independent publishers, I wanted to talk to her about how she got into this business, what her vision is for a vaccinated world, and her vision for the next issue of the magazine. Listen above, or read below

Alicia: Hi, Amber. Thank you so much for coming on today. 

Amber: Yes, thank you for having me.

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

Amber: Yes. 

So I grew up in Rockland County, New York, in a small town called Nanuet. And I come from a very athletic family. So I was always an athlete growing up, so I ate pretty clean and balanced meals. I mean, most of my more exciting and vivid food memories come from holidays and gatherings and just country ham and mac and cheese and candied yams and cookouts with ribs and grilled sausages. So those are the things that stick out. They’re a little bit more exciting, that occasion type of eating.

Alicia: And now you live in New York?

Amber: Yes. 

Now I am in New York City. Which was always my goal growing up, was to be in the city and have that more what I thought was glamorous and exciting, and what I now know is just hustle and bustle and regular.

Alicia: Well, what made you interested in food and begin publishing While Entertaining magazine and launching To-Be-Hosted?

Amber: I mean, so many things. 

Growing up, I always loved parties and holidays and gatherings because I think I was always excited to see family and friends and even more excited about—that's when the more interesting food and flavorful food was going to come out, was through these events. I loved eating and dancing and laughing. And as I got older, I was like, ‘Ok, well, what does that mean as a career? I don't really know.’

Did you ever watch 30 Rock back in the day? 

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

Amber: Ok, so you recall Kenneth the page? 

Alicia: Uh-huh. 

Amber: So I was a page. That was my post-college job, ’cause I was like, ‘This is perfect. I can literally bounce around the company and figure out what it is that I want to do.’ And it was an exciting industry. And while I was there, I was always mesmerized by the parties and productions. But what would irritate me as much as I loved that environment was there were the same caterers and the same vendors that were getting all of this big business. So that's when I decided I was going to start my own event company. 

Yeah, it was a natural affinity for liking events, and then wanting to kind of problem solve and having an event company that was food focus, and would actually hire Black vendors and hospitality businesses. 

So I started To-Be-Hosted in 2017. It was kind of a side hustle of throwing dinner parties. And before long, I had all of these interesting clients to work with Nestle and Equinox and Netflix. And I started planning their dinners and hiring Black chefs and Black sommeliers and Black-owned businesses to produce them and really saw that vision come to life. 

And then I started the magazine in 2019, because I was like, ‘Ok, how can I take this energy and scale it a little bit bigger?’ Because dinner parties are small, I was only reaching 20 or so people at a time. So I came up with this concept for a magazine that would help other people throw their own dinner parties, but also tell these stories on a bigger scale than what I could add in-person events. 

So that's the shortest version of the story.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you have training in food or in publishing that lead, that also kind of—or are you self-trained in all this?

Amber: Yeah. 

So I mean, in college, I studied communications and PR. So that's what kind of led me into NBC Universal, and that page program was kind of—I don't know, TV, grad school and content grad school, if you will. 

But no, other than that, I kind of just always worked in these industries in the media industry. I worked in hospitality. I was an executive assistant for a celebrity chef, for lack of a better term. So just kind of being around and loving these things, I've just been figuring it out as I go. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, and you do have a very specific knack and niche, especially in food publishing, because you're not really focusing on restaurants to go to. You're specifically focused on the home and on hosting. Why did you want to focus on that, and how do you continue to find inspiration and creativity in the home and the format of the dinner party?

Amber: Right. When I was looking at the media landscape, I was like, ‘Wow. Everything really is about restaurant chefs, television chefs.’ And often that kind of created an environment of exclusion for Black chefs and Black beverage producers because we aren't always necessarily only in those roles. So I was like, ‘If I actually want to tell Black stories and cover the breadth and depth of Black food experiences and food ways, I can't be a magazine that champions the restaurant story.’ I think there's a place for that. But for me, I was like, ‘Ok, I've got to go a little bit broader if I want to be able to tell the stories that I want to tell.’

And everybody eats at home every day. We kind of have the random Tuesday night dinner, the dinner experience, and we all want to cook and we all want to host people. So I was like, ‘This is a way that I can tell more personal stories and meet people where they are.’ And I mean, when I started the magazine in 2019, I didn't know how much at home we would be doing in 2020. But I knew that enough people, their first affinity for food and their connection to food and people was at home. So, it just felt like a natural direction for me.

Alicia: And how have you been eating in the pandemic, and how has—how have things maybe changed for you?

Amber: I definitely eat and cook at home more. I think, pre-pandemic, in working in events and doing productions, I was always out and about doing meetings. So I was always stopping at the bodega or the deli or doing work. I was always such a solo diner with my computer in the corner that I had made friends with the restaurant staff, so they were cool with me being in the back working and eating for several hours. 

So, that of course had to change. [Laughs.] I had to do so much more cooking and meetings and virtual coffees than ever before. I really love food, and I find my creativity in trying new recipes and was briefly baking bread with everybody. [Laughs.]

But yeah, I think I'm still kind of trying to find those places where I can either grab takeout or be inspired by one of these chefs and make their recipe at home. So not too much different. Perhaps a little better on the wallet. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, yeah.

And in this second edition of While Entertaining, you—which was published during the pandemic—you focus specifically on what you call reflections and recipes. And it kind of just acts as a cookbook and kind of a capsule of how inwardly focused we were at a certain point in time. What inspired you to gather these specific folks together to make this collection, and how did you decide on that approach?

Amber: Yes.

I mean, this approach is the approach that I'll probably keep for all issues of While Entertaining magazine, giving people stories and putting them next to recipes and pairing tips and playlists and all of that, because I really want to start making food stories an experience that lives with us in real life. So I think that format will be the same. 

But in tackling this topic, at first I was kind of like, ‘Well, this is awkward, because I'm starting a magazine that's about entertaining and inviting people over to eat with you. And the CDC said we could not invite people over to eat.’ [Laughs.] So that was my first moment of like, ‘Ooh, this is about to get interesting.’

But then second, as I just was living in the pandemic and canceling all of my events and eating Thai, I was kind of really curious about how everybody else was experiencing this and how they were slipping into new routines and what they were thinking about or writing about or coping. So that kind of inspired the whole reflections part of the theme, was ‘I want to eavesdrop on what other people are thinking about and doing and how they're getting through this, because I know that I've got this new routine. And I've been reflecting on work styles and what it means to rest.’

So I just started asking people in food and drink like, ‘What are you eating right now? What are you thinking about? What are you writing about? What do you want to talk about?’ And that's kind of how I guess the issue. And it was so interesting to see the, just the vastness of that, right? We've got some chefs like Kalisa Marie Martin, [who] was writing about figuring out what her identity was when she wasn't a chef. 

And I thought that was something that everybody could kind of relate to. How often do we explain ourselves by our work, but when you strip that back, what is it that I like to do and who am I? What is my identity? It became this really normal and almost not food related, but kind of food-related conversations that were so interesting. So I just kind of kept leaning into that with everybody else that I talked to, and that's how we got here.

Alicia: And there are big names in here like Chris Scott and Mavis J. Sanders, Lani Halliday. Who else? Hawa Hassan. How have you made all these connections, and how did you decide to include these folks specifically?

Amber: Yes. 

So that's a really good question because we're a new magazine and a small magazine and a self-funded magazine. So approaching people at first sight was like, ‘Oooh, this is scary. They're not going to take me seriously.’

But then I kind of just leaned into the fact that I'm a human, and I'm passionate about something. And I want to share this, these stories in particular. So I just told people the vision for the project, and why I thought it was important to see if they would be willing to do it. And I was always looking for people who had a strong point of view about something and who would be open, or who would be really ready to rally behind this sort of publication existing and taking up space. 

So that's how I found people. 

And then, yeah, it was all about being friendly with people. I would just email them and ask them, like, ‘Do you want to talk? Here's what I'm doing.’ I would slide in their DMs if they posted something that I also related to or wanted to talk about. I would set up virtual coffees to learn what they like and what they might be interested in saying that they don't necessarily get to say in other publications or are approached about being in other publications, ’cause I think we've got the heavy-hitters, but then we also have people that have never been mentioned in the media but still do great work and still have an opinion. 

So it's just been a lot of talking to the people. There's nothing really else to do in quarantine but talk to people. So that's kind of how I've approached it.

Alicia: Right.

And you bring in the playlist with the QR codes. You have all these cocktail recipes. You have a lot of quotes in here. I love the illustrations that you have of everyone who's included.

How are you coming into this? I know you're working with Vonnie Williams. How are you making all these creative decisions for the magazine, and what does it mean to be self-funded to you? [Laughter.]

Amber: This is a great question. 

So making creative decisions for the magazine is—it's interesting, because I've always kind of started—I started To-Be-Hosted and While Entertaining as a solo-preneur, as the world would call it. But I've always had these incredible friends and these incredible industry friends, for lack of a better word and community that was around me that if I was like, ‘Here's my idea. I put it on a post-it on my wall, and I want to tell you about it,’ they will be awfully honest with me about what's gonna fly and what's not gonna fly. 

So leaning into the people around me, both who share the same vision as me and also other people who are like, ‘I really don't get it. I don't think this is smart.’ Or ‘What do you mean, you're only doing dinner parties? And what do you mean, you're only covering Black people?’ Having that balance of voices that contradict yours to kind of weigh in has been really helpful to me, just in terms of coming up with this creative vision and also not really looking to the left or the right. 

I'm aware of other magazines and other food media coverage and their approaches to it. But following my own vision and breaking my own rules, I kind of stick to that, right? We're a yearly magazine. The whole magazine has one theme or question or pros. We're kind of, again, including the pairing tips and the playlist and all the things that maybe not everybody is doing all the time. And I'm like, ‘This is just what we're going to do and who we're going to be.’ And if people think that we're a magazine, and people think that we're food media or not food media, or smart or not smart, this is where we're kind of sitting. [Laughs.]

And again, just leaning into all the voices. I remember chatting with Vonnie, and I'm being like, ‘Ok, so this is how I want to organize it. Do you hate this?’ And her feeling comfortable to tell me whether or not she hated it. I've been really lucky to have people that want to be honest with me and want to work with me and just see me figure this thing out.

Alicia: Right.

And in the landscape of food media, it is interesting and wonderful to see the success of Whetstone Magazine owned by Stephen Satterfield and the launch of for the culture by Klancy Miller. And where do you see While Entertaining and also-

Well, you know what? I’m gonna ask you that question, then I'll ask you what I have in my head next. But where do you see While Entertaining in the indie publishing landscape? Or do you? Do you feel a part of a wave of new magazines?

Amber: Yes. 

I certainly feel a part of it. And I love chatting with Stephen Satterfield for Whetstone. He was somebody from the beginning that has always taken my calls. And he answered my emails on how to do this thing from a business perspective, how to do this thing. And even Kerry Diamond from Cherry Bomb also has welcomed me into this indie magazine landscape. It's been exciting and new. 

And I definitely feel While Entertaining fits in, I think about our perspective is food and entertaining specifically, and then also looking at home and personal stories. So I think we've kind of created a lane that's very specific to us, but also fits in this larger indie magazine landscape and Black-owned publishing landscape. Again, we're only a yearly magazine. And we print on very heavy paper. Everything is independently shot and really leans into the beauty of it all. 

My vision is to be in the collector's category. This is something that's super functional. And you can cook from it, and you can read and relate and can spark conversation. But also, this is something that you want to have each one, because it kind of commemorates where Black food and drink people were in this moment of time for each year and kind of holding on to that. 

Alicia: And that's what I love about the magazine too, because it's going deeper and getting broader because of its specificity. You're bringing in so many people who might be not necessarily ignored by mainstream food media, but not get this kind of space and this kind of depth of spread.

And so, how do you see mainstream food media? Do you read it? Do you see it as good? Do you see it changing for the better? What is your perspective?

Amber: I definitely read it, because I love—I do love talking about food. So I do read other publications. 

And when I think about some of the mainstream media and the bigger food media, I wish we could challenge them even more than we have in the past year in terms of the different voices and the different stories that they tell. From a business perspective, I also respect your decision to not do so or not change your perspective or fields of voice. So in that case, I'd love to see them create more championing of the indie magazines and the more niche perspective media that is arising because of their lack of coverage for the stories that we want to cover. 

I think there's a need for all of this, right? We're always going to want to read a couple articles before we go try a new restaurant or understand why this person's concept for this location is different than that location. I think there's a place for all of it. But I think what I think about While Entertaining and what I want to do as an indie magazine, I think about making food-related art more so than just pumping out a lot of different stories or pumping out a lot of different recipes. We have the luxury of being able to slow down and not answer to any advertisers or any clicks and really do things that we're passionate about.

Alicia: And now that the world is opening up a bit, we're being told vaccinated people can gather at home. What are you envisioning for the next issue with this new new world and new ways? [Laughter.]

Amber: I envision so many things. 

I mean, first of all, I'm super excited for post-vax parties and dinner parties and to have that come back and have more people feel comfortable about doing shared plates. [Laughs.] So I'm really excited about that. 

I hope that people who have the magazine and who have gone through and read the stories are now starting to envision how this recipe lives on their table and who they want to cook it for and who they want to invite over to talk about different things. So I'm excited for people to start having that experience. 

I mean, I've already started thinking about the 2022 issue. We start working on it in the next month or two. I bounce between themes. I mentioned that I come from a very athletic family. And one thing that I recall hearing my dad say is this is a rebuilding year, in a reference to a basketball team that just lost a really big player. 

I'm like, ‘What is there about a rebuilding year? How are we rebuilding our businesses and rebuilding our families because a lot of people lost loved ones and, and just rebuilding our world and rebuilding our social calendar?’ Something like that feels really interesting to me. I also feel I'm on the fence. I could run away from the pandemic and pretend it didn't happen and do editorial and filing entirely based on something else. 

So I think that's the nice thing about the magazine is, I can just keep a running list of themes and find the right moment for that theme and then find the right people that want to talk about that theme.

Alicia: And what are your plans for To-Be-Hosted? Is it coming back in full force? Are you already making plans for new events?

Amber: Yes, we are already making plans for new events. We have a few books for this summer and the fall. And I'm really just trying to expand that brand. We’ll still focus on dinner parties. But I'd love to focus on more like video content, and storytelling in the experience world. 

I mean, this is a whole separate tangent. But I'd also like To-Be-Hosted to have a venue where we can be hosting our dinners and also recording content, because I think there's something to the necessity of safe spaces for Black creators and Black culinary talents have a space where they can go where the venue coordinator isn't going to change rules and change energy when they see that the whole staff is Black, right? I really want to build safe spaces around To-Be-Hosted. So I think venue is next on my mind.

Alicia: That's amazing. And I love that plan. I just think it's a brilliant idea. And it's a brilliant expansion of that concept. 

And I am a little jealous because I do love planning events. [Laughs.] I know how hard it is, like deeply, deeply difficult and exhausting. But also so fun. 

Amber: So fun and rewarding.

Alicia: Yeah, it’s really rewarding. And I mean, I get to plan my wedding, but that’s about it. [Laughs.] 

Well, for you, is cooking a political act? 

Amber: Yes.

I hesitate, because I am not a chef. I understand why a lot of chefs and food people have, feel that cooking is very politically charged. And historically, there's many reasons why it should be. But I'm hesitant to answer that question, because I don't feel I'm a chef or a professional cook that I can really do that question justice. 

Where my mind also kind of went when you said that into my specific niche of hosting and entertaining. For me, that is very political, because we exist in this kind of space where if Black people are talking about entertaining and hosting and cooking and doing kind things to people when they're in their home, you kind of lean toward these mammy vibes, right? And if you're thinking about for lack of a better term, the ‘domestic goddess’ of it all, those are all white women, or Martha Stewart–adjacent women. And I don't really fit that. 

So when I'm talking about entertaining and doing a magazine about entertaining and having a company about entertaining and having Black people lead those things? And those Black people not subscribing to either the stereotypes that America has put upon us, or the stereotypes that social media gives their energy too. But just being Black, being Black or brown, being a person of color, and being really empowered about cooking and entertaining and not feeling you're subscribing to anything problematic. But I work, I cook, I clean and I do these things because I want to and I want to make people feel good. 

And I want people to come over and have fun, not just to be the person that's serving them something. That, for me, is very political. And I take that part of my work very seriously about not subscribing to these really problematic views of perfection that comes with a domestic goddess, or problematic views of servitude that comes with being American. That's where the politics kind of hit for me.

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

Amber: Yes, thank you for having me. I loved this chat. And I love what you're doing with your platform. So I'm excited to be part of it.

Alicia: Thank you.

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I’ve been following the chef and writer Taffy Elrod on Twitter for years, and right now she’s having a moment. From teaching virtual classes while the restaurant she owns in the Hudson Valley with her husband has been closed to working with Rancho Gordo on a bean recipe booklet, she’s been making the most of a weird moment for a chef accustomed to working with the public.

We discussed her mostly vegetarian upbringing, studying at the Natural Gourmet Institute, and the thin line between hospitality and hostility. Listen above, read below.

Alicia: Hi, Taffy. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Taffy: Hi, Alicia. Thank you for having me.

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

Taffy: Yeah, sure. 

I grew up in southeastern Michigan, in Ann Arbor. My folks were from the Detroit area. And what I ate is [laughs]—mainly, the main story of what I ate is that I grew up in that healthy, whole food hippie home. [Laughs.] Whole food, meaning the foods, not the store, because that didn't exist in our area yet. 

So I grew up eating a lot of brown food. Brown rice and millet. And gosh, lots and lots of beans and tofu. And then sort of these re-engineered foods that—my grandmother was the head of the household and the vegetarian. So, she would make things like stuffed cabbage without the meat, and all kinds of things like that. And then, that was our mainstay. 

And then there were a few other things. My dad, his family's from down South. My dad's African American, his family's from down South. So sometimes with him, then my brother and I would eat completely different foods, because we would suddenly be having, gosh, be at McDonald's or having pizza or something. But for the most part, it was that sort of healthy hippie dippie, earthy, Earth mama food.

Alicia: What made your grandmother be vegetarian?

Taffy: I mean, she was way ahead of her time. She would probably be an amazing influencer if she were here right now.

She did it for two reasons. One, being ethical. She loved animals and didn't—she grew up on a farm and didn't like hurting animals. 

And two, she just had health problems in her mid-30s. She was a typical, sort of—not typical, but she was living, I should say, a typical sort of suburban working class life and—in Detroit. And she had health problems. And that through her research, she came up with this solution to her health problems of changing her diet, changing her lifestyle. She cut out all alcohol. She stopped smoking cigarettes. She cut out white sugar, she cut out white flour. She became vegetarian. 

And I mean, of course, there was a movement at that time that she was a part of. She worked in this—a food co-op in Detroit. Things like that. But that was her journey. It was about health and about—she loved everyone and everything, and couldn't stand to hurt anything. She didn't like to bring cut flowers in the house, a habit that I have continued. She didn't like to cut a tree for Christmas. She had like a little potted fir tree. 

Alicia: Wow. [Laughs.] 

Taffy: [Laughs.] Yeah.

Alicia: You write in your bio that you grew up in a family of artists and cooks. But I wanted to ask, what drew you into working in food yourself?

Taffy: It was kind of a long, slow road, I always was just deeply intrigued by food and cooking. And obviously, it was a big part of my family. But I didn't necessarily see it as my career goal. I think because it was so deeply ingrained in our family, that it just was there as this sort of backdrop. 

But as I got older, and I was doing—I was working retail and just couldn't figure out what to do with myself. And by older, I mean like my early 20s. I realized that what I spent all my free time on was food—and my love of food and collecting cookbooks and trying new recipes and trying to learn things. And that it really was my one great love, my one true love.

Alicia: Right.

And how have you expressed it in your life? What have been the ways in which you've worked in food and expressed this love?

Taffy: Well, first of all, when I was in school, I wouldn't—I was paying my way through community college, when—back in Michigan when I was young. And like everything I did in school, if we had a paper to write or project, I would always—it would be about food. 

So, I had to give a presentation in my French class. And I came up with a pie that I could make in like 10 minutes in class. And that was the beginning of my food demonstration career. I was like, ‘My French is terrible, but if I make a pie they won't care. Nobody will care.’ 

And I found this French cooking magazine and just pieced it, figured out how to give this presentation even though I couldn't speak French. My professor was like, ‘How did you do this?’ I basically just stole it out of this magazine. But the pie was this other pie, so I mashed it together and I made a pie. So that the end of my 10 minute presentation, there was a pie for the class to eat: this no-bake pie. 

So I was always doing things like that. No matter what I had to do, I would just figure out—food would be the way that I would do it. So at some point, it just sort of became—I would be taking a writing class, and everything I was writing was about food. 

My professor was like, ‘Maybe, I don't know. I'm gonna throw this out here: Maybe you're interested in food or something.’ I just kind of eventually realized like, ‘Oh, right. This is what I should just be doing.’ Then I made the decision to get into culinary school and pursue it that way, because I thought I needed to get out of my little pond and do—go somewhere bigger to pursue my career dreams.

Alicia: Where do you go to culinary school?

Taffy: I went to the Natural Gourmet Institute for Food and Health in New York City in Chelsea. Yeah. [Laughs.] At the time, I was still very much ensconced in that lifestyle of the vegetarian, veganism, whole foods. And I was wondering like, ‘Well, where in the world am I going to go to cooking school? What am I going to do about this?’ And then I found out about them. And they have since been absorbed by ICE, by the Institute of Culinary Education. That ICE. Not any other ICE. 

But at the time, I mean, it was really interesting to be there. It was a great experience. I made great friends. And I loved it. And I moved to New York City to do that. It was a big deal. It wasn't easy for me to do. But it made my life, my career, a little bit maybe more difficult to get a good foot into the culinary scene in New York. Because, of course, to most people it was like, ‘I'm sorry, where did you go to school?’ [Laughs.] But for me, it was the right thing for me to do at the time. And it was a great experience.

Alicia: Well, where did you end up getting your feet into the culinary scene then? 

Taffy: So of course, I had already done some work back home. My mom had a cake decorating business. My dad worked in restaurants, and my grandmother worked in a bakery. And I had done some work already with them growing up. When I realized I wanted to start cooking, I had started segueing into food. So I had done some food work growing up in Ann Arbor.

And then when I left school in New York, I had two part-time jobs. I worked in a little—another grad had opened up this little sort of lunch café place in Chelsea. And then I got a job working on a nutrition study at Teachers College at Columbia University. It involved macrobiotics, so that was how I ended up there. 

So I was doing those two things. And then I’ve done so many different, so much different work. A little bit of restaurant work. But again, it didn't always click between my background. And at the time, 20 years ago, being a woman of color in the restaurant industry, it didn't, wasn't amazing for me. It didn't really click great in the back of the house. 

So I kind of just kept on this funny path of different—doing these different things. So a lot of health and nutrition, private cooking, and so on and so forth, and demos and things like that. A lot of teaching. Gosh, have cooked in so many different places. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, I mean, it's funny, because I was going to ask you wha—how you have such a varied kind of portfolio in terms of different diets and different dietary restrictions, which I now very much understand. [Laughs.] Which is that you went to the Natural Gourmet Institute, you grew up with a vegetarian kind of background. It's interesting that that is something that has both held you back seemingly, but also been a way forward for you.

Taffy: Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. 

At one point in time, it was so unknown, so fringe in American culture. Now, it's become so much more accepted or popular, whatever you want to call it. And I always appreciated that I had that knowledge and that I had the understanding of it, because you can always—the other information and, is always there. And knowing how to make something taste delicious with butter was not really that hard to do. [Laughs.] It tastes good. We make stuff taste good.

When you know  how to approach food from a different angle, whatever it may be, and you know how to work with a minimum of ingredients or you know how to work with ingredients that might be outside of the ‘standard,’ that always, in my opinion, improves your cooking within the standard, because you have more tools to work with or this wider knowledge. And so, I was never undone by walking into a kitchen and finding out that there was nothing in there. [Laughs.] There was no equipment, or there was no—there's nothing good in here to cook. 

So, I worked in a place where I made gluten-free vegan soups five days a week, and—from pretty basic ingredients. So you can give me a couple turnips or a bag of lentils or whatever like, ‘I'm gonna make you some soup.’ You know what I mean? And that is obviously a skill that most of our ancestors have possessed until very recently. But it's also a skill that, as a professional cook, will really stand you in good stead. It's really great to be able to cook without needing to have the best of the best.

Alicia: Right.

Well, you live in the Hudson Valley now, right? And what are you doing now? What's your life like now?

Taffy: Hmm, yeah, that's a pretty big question. 

My husband and I are in Hudson Valley. We came up about six years ago to open our pizzeria restaurant that unfortunately is closed right now. And I mean, honestly, it was such a big change. It was such a culture shock for me—not just from New York City, obviously. But from my past life, even very different. We're in, I don't know, just a very different environment. 

And our lives changed completely almost overnight, because we found a place and just sort of took it on spec and just went from our—the lives we had in the city. I was working full-time as a cooking teacher. He was trying to sort of figure out what to do with himself next. And all of a sudden, we were just in this business. His brother was supposed to work with us, and he didn't. 

So all of a sudden, I went from having this, my job, to—we opened the pizzeria. And then suddenly, I was in the pizzeria all the time, too. Our other source of income was gone. And it was just the two of us in this pizzeria. And it was do or die. And suddenly, we were just together 48 hours a day and—just doing one of the most stressful jobs or businesses you can imagine. So I just really, there's not really words for it. 

And then of course the last year and a half, just everything ended up changing all over again. So I'm kind of starting over again. So it's just been one really wild ride, honestly.

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

Obviously, you've worked with your husband. You do recipes. You've also been a professional cook. How doyou approach cooking in a home way versus a professional way, or is there a difference?

Taffy: [Laughs.] 

That's a great question. A balance? I've never heard of it. 

I don't know. I don't think I do. When it comes to cooking, I'm like this amorphous blob. It's just all food all the time. And so, I obviously cook differently at home than I did in the restaurant. But at the same time, when we were in the restaurant 12 or 14 hours a day I cooked all our meals in the restaurant. Or he did. So home cooking didn't even exist. 

And then suddenly when we were shuttered, and I was home and I was by myself because he was stuck in Montenegro, where he's from and couldn't get home. I was just home by myself. So it was unbelievable going from cooking all day every day for our customers to just suddenly being home alone. 

But I've always had kind of this porous—I don't really see it as distinctly different. I cook at home similar to how I cook professionally. I mean, obviously, I wasn't at home making pizzas all the time. [Laughs.] But a lot of the things that I cooked in the restaurant, I’d cook them at home. I mean, the only difference for me is just the level of prep and the level of service and how I'm plating it. But I'm notorious for cooking enough for 100 people when it's two of us. Never mastered small portions. 

And the answer is, I don't. It's just me. That's what I do.

Alicia: Well, you've also been teaching online cooking classes. And why did you decide to go that route? They're very affordable, too affordable I noticed. And I noticed you're doing one called The Art of Salad. How are you deciding what to teach, and why are you teaching online?

Taffy: Yeah.

I just decided to keep that one like extra affordable, because I'm going off the cuff. I'm not giving recipes or anything, so I was like, ‘Whatever.’ 

Well, it came about because I had a couple companies that I was working with as a recipe developer doing some online work. And so at the beginning of lockdown, they had asked me to do some Instagram Lives when everybody was just doing whatever, just doing anything to pass the time. That was how I kind of got started doing virtual cooking. 

And then a couple opportunities came up in the last few months. And I had already done some filmed cooking demonstrations for a company I work with, so it was kind of natural. We didn't even think we were going to live in this apartment for more than a few months. I had never even cooked in this kitchen before we got out of the restaurant or got pulled out of the restaurant, whatever. 

So, it's been weird. It's been awkward. And that's part of why I've kind of just kept the bar low, because my kitchen is not up to a lot of demands here. But I realized that it was a good way for me—I miss people. I miss cooking for people. I miss my students. 

So, it's different. It's virtual. It's not the same, but at least it gives me an outlet to be able to share. Because I'm one of those people like, ‘Yeah, I'd love to cook,’ but if somebody isn't gonna be there to share it with—it's just half of s experience. It's not the whole experience. I'm definitely a nurturer, I guess.

Alicia: Right. 

No, I hate cooking for just myself. It's depressing. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I just make something weird. And then, it's not even satisfying. I eat it standing up. I think it is almost why I'm—I will often plate things nicely and take pictures and post them on Insta. It gives me content to make myself something, but at the same time I'm not that interested all the time in eating it because I just don't like eating—I like eating alone out at a restaurant or a bar. I don't like eating alone in my house. [Laughter.] It's simply not for me. 

Taffy: Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't mind the eating alone. But I just don't care then about the cooking. Just keep it simple. 

Once in a while, but rarely.

Alicia: Yeah, no, Maybe it's my Libra moon. I like to nest. [Laughs.]

But I wrote about hospitality for my newsletter this week. And when you quote tweeted, “Nothing’s ever made more sense to me than the connection between hostility and hospitality.” And I wanted to ask why you said that, and why that connection is so clear to you. 

Taffy: Wel. [Laughs.] 

So first of all, we had a restaurant. Or I don't know, sort of, maybe we still have a restaurant someday. We'll see. 

I worked in food service and in our restaurant for a long time with contact with our customers. In our restaurant, we had constant contact with our customers as opposed to having a lot of front of the house staff. 

And the truth of matter is, there's a lot of hostility involved. People are hostile. They feel very, I don't know, kind of—and around here, they tended to be really kind of aggressive and gruff. [Laughs.] And the first impression was always like, ‘Well, I don’t know you. Why do you hate me?’ So I mean, there's just kind of that—obviously, or of it-

But after having worked in this world for a long time, the reality is that—and I always think about this for myself. And I think I had posted something on Twitter about this. I used to work in people's homes and call myself a private chef, and I always in the back of my head used to sort of laugh at myself and think, ‘Private chef. Yes, right. But you do know that 50 years ago, you would have been the cook, right? [Laughs.] You know, this, don't you?’

There is this strange interaction, and sort of bristly space between people who are being served and people who are serving. My husband would always, always says, ‘I'm your server, not your servant.’ But the truth of the matter is that comes from—they come from the same place. It's a small difference. And there is, I think, from the people who are being served, a lot of times they actually feel very defensive about their needs or how they be treated, whether they think that if they don't tell you what to do, you're not going to do it. 

Or just that there's that uncomfortability. I mean, I remember that working in someone's home and in their kitchen and being all day with, around their kids and whatever. It was a strange feeling. You had to keep this sort of veneer of professionalism. And yet you're in someone's most intimate space, and you're doing something so incredibly intimate: preparing the food that they're going to eat, especially when it's right in their own home. 

And there is this sort of always this undercurrent of discomfort or almost—I don't know, you kind of have to be on the offensive. Or they're on the offensive. I thought, ‘How can I put this into words?’ I couldn't really, but it just seemed so clear to me. It's so obvious. I was like, ‘Yeah, totally.’ 

I mean, in our last place, it was our place. We had to be so defensive, so protective of ourselves. People would walk in and see a brown-skinned woman, an immigrant. I would get emails complaining about how the staff treated people when they were talking about me and my husband. 

There was so much constant, kind of this undercurrent of hostility and having to kind of be on the offensive to keep people in their place, because they just kind of wanted to come in and take over if they could. So yeah, it just really resonated.

Alicia: Well, I'm glad for that. But it is so interesting. As you said, your husband says the connection’s also between server and servant. These are very, very thin boundaries between these things: hostility, hospitality. Server, servant. And I think, yeah, people just aren't aware of it. They're hostile and they want a servant, and I don't know how that changes, really, on a broader scale. It's interesting. 

It's funny. When I worked at a bar, I ended up being the only employee that ever—someone ever emailed about for being rude. [Laughter.] As I remember it, I had a packed bar, and someone needed more time to decide what they wanted. And so I said, ‘Ok,’ and put my hand up in a way of kind of gesturing to say, ‘Ok, I've got what you said.’ And they were offended by that. Because I put my hand in the air and pointed to kind of make a mental note while I'm trying to remember what everyone wants?

It's just such a strange interaction all the time. If I ever go out with someone who ends up being weird or impatient with the staff, I'm like, ‘I'm never going out with you again.’ [Laughter.] I can't live like that. I can't be associated with that. Our friendship is never going to exist in these spaces.

Taffy: Yeah. 

It's weird. It's interesting. And obviously, I mean, if you've never worked in the food industry or in service, then I almost understand that you don't understand. If you have, then I really am confused by where you're coming from. ‘Well, I served people. Now I'm gonna take it out on somebody else’ attitude. [Laughs.] Just ignore the reality of the situation, I don't know. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I don’t know.

Well, for you is cooking a political act?

Taffy: Yeah.

I mean, absolutely. I mean hopefully sometimes it isn't. Hopefully, sometimes at home, it isn't. But food is. And food is so political. And everything about the act of growing, selling, consuming food. Even the connections between the food and our perceptions of our bodies is so politicized. 

It would be impossible for it not to be, because we all have to eat. So therefore, food is a point of really powerful control. So whatever your choices are, you think you're making neutral choices about your food. Believe me, the ramifications are political. And if you have choices to make, if you have the privilege of making choices, that's political. If you don't have the privilege of making choices around what you eat, that's political. 

So to me, it's just—it just simply is. There isn’t, I don't think, in this modern day and age, a place where anybody can just choose to live off the land, be free and make their own food. So I think we're all very much caught up in the web of the politics of food. And cooking and eating are so—oh, boy. Especially in the modern American culture, is layer on layer upon layer of social ramifications and guilt. 

Alicia: Yeah.

No, I mean—because these industries aren't regulated at all. The state is not taking care of us or workers or the planet. And thus, it's all on our shoulders.

Taffy: Yeah. 

But I think that's what they—I don't know, whoever they are. It's obviously all about consumption and consumerism, literal consumption, obviously. But I mean about capitalism, consumerism, and money: the almighty dollar. And so I think that just throwing it back on the consumer and saying, ‘It's on you. You figure it out. You do it. You do something and it'll fix it.’ is really—I think it's really a scam. It's manipulative, and it's toxic. The average person didn't create the system, isn't benefiting from it. 

And then obviously, when you talk about less served populations and under, ‘underdeveloped’ nations, which—I don't know. I was thinking about it the other day. I was like, ‘Why don't they call some place like America an overdeveloped nation?’ Because we are. We're not nicely developed, we’re overdeveloped. As long as it's just finger-pointing things, like ‘You're responsible!’ Like me personally is gonna change what they're doing, so they don't have to take any responsibility for it. And it's always just another ploy to create another industrial mass produced food that will be this, ‘That'll fix the problem.’ Oh, that's weird. 

My husband always jokes about fasting kits being sold, like fasting came into vogue and now you can buy a fasting kit. I don’t know what's in it. I think that just sums it all up. You have to sell something to somebody for them to not eat or drink. So I mean, that's the world we're living in. I mean, I would like to feel like it were, it was a little different. 

I mean, I can make personal choices. And I can do my best. But you know what? Somebody else is eventually going to have to answer for themselves and do something different. If it’s gonna change, actions are actually gonna have to change. 

Alicia: Yeah, yeah. 

Well, thank you so much for your time today.

Taffy: [Laughs.] Thank you.

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I knew I wanted to talk to writer Hannah Selinger when she was openly angry that her Eater essay “Life Was Not a Peach,” about her experience working for David Chang, wasn’t included in Best American Food Writing 2021. The rule is that we writers aren’t supposed to comment on whether we’ve been snubbed for an anthology or an award, even when it’s a clearly egregious way to keep a highly critical essay out of the canon, in an anthology edited by a fellow chef.

So we talked, not just about the anthology, but about her culinary and wine studies, her generalist approach, and being a year-round Hamptons resident. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Hannah. Thank you so much for taking the time out to talk today.

Hannah: Thank you for having me, Alicia.

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

Hannah: Yeah, I had sort of a weird upbringing. 

I was born in New York City. And when I was seven, my mom moved to Massachusetts. So I actually came back and forth every other weekend between New York and Mass until I was 17. So, I grew up—

Alicia: Wow.

Hannah: Yeah. 

I grew up in a small town called Newburyport. It used to be Massachusetts’ smallest actual city. It's right on the New Hampshire border. 

What did I eat? My mother was a very, I would say, not inventive cook. So we had this cookbook called365 Ways to Cook Chicken. That was something she was really dedicated to. Bottled salad dressing and a lot of steamed vegetables, because that was very in vogue in the ’80s. 

My father, who lived in New York, was a little bit more adventurous. And he was more into cooking different kinds of meat and vegetables. But I would say that we were a pretty prototypical ’80s family. Nothing very interesting going on.

Alicia: Right.

Well, growing up between Massachusetts and New York is interesting in terms of the rivalry there. Do you have more of an affinity for one over the other?

Hannah: I have some pretty good stories. My father passed away, but he was a diehard Yankees fan. And my mother is from Massachusetts, and has always been a Red Sox fan. And I used to wear a Yankees Starter jacket to school in Massachusetts and was teased, I mean, just beyond all get out. 

Alicia: Right? Of course. 

I remember that moment when Etarter jackets were so popular, and my mom wouldn't let me get one. 

Hannah: They were very cool. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughter.] 

But you write about such a wide range of topics. Not just food and wine and travel, which kind of go together, but also parenting, real estate. How did you come to writing and built this career as a generalist?

Hannah: I definitely started in food and wine, which was where I was most comfortable. I had come out of working as a sommelier for some time, so that was kind of a natural segue for me. 

And more recently, as I've expanded my repertoire, I kind of follow things that are interesting to me. My husband is chief of staff for what we call out here a high net-worth individual. And so, he has a lot of experience in homes. We kind of GC’d our own renovation, and I got familiar with the real estate market, which granted me kind of some intellectual access, I would say. 

But I think I now view it as if something is interesting to me, and I feel like I have a base knowledge that's—if I'm, if I have enough understanding of the topic to be able to report it out, then it's something that I'll write.

Alicia: Right, right, right. 

And you are best known as a food writer, and were a sommelier and graduated from the International Culinary Center. And you have these huge credentials in this kind of field. So how have your experiences in restaurants and training for those careers influenced your work when  most writers about food and wine don't have that experience or background expertise?

Hannah: Well, first of all, it's granted me a lot of access, because I think that even at the very beginning when I was green in writing, I could always say, ‘Look, I'm clearly an expert in this field, because I've worked the floor. And I can tell you about X, Y, and Z,’ especially with wine writing where there are very few women in particular who write about wine just compared to the overall field. 

I would say that I have more empathy for what goes on in a restaurant and more understanding, and I would never—I think I would never find myself in the position of being a dining critic for that purpose, because I have too much kind of relationship to what's going on in the—both front and back of the house. 

Alicia: Right.

And what drew you to getting into that work?

Hannah: [Laughs.] It was born of necessity, I think.

I got a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing when I was like, 24. And I thought ‘Oh, I'm just gonna go to New York and write the great American novel, and I'll be cool.’ So I got a job waiting tables.

Alicia: But what got you deep into it into making it more of your career?

Hannah: It was sort of a series of accidental situations. I was working in restaurants. Bobby Flay was the first major restaurant I worked at in the city, and then was working for Laurent Tourondel at BLT Prime on 22nd Street in the city. And I felt when I would go up to a table, I could talk to them about food, which was something with which I was pretty familiar because everybody eats. But wine felt kind of intellectually inaccessible to me. 

And so, I started meeting with a sommelier after work and coming in and doing inventory, which just sort of set me up for this career as a sommelier. When I was working as a sommelier, there were kind of a couple of things about it that felt compelling to me. One, the mood of a restaurant, the frenetic energy, and the fact that you're kind of always doing something. It wasn't an office job. I was in my 20s. 

There's sort of like a vigor to it. I mean, there's a lot to know about wine. And it does cross into kind of the literary study that I had been accustomed to and that I based my academic career on. And that part of it felt like it wasn't just serving people things. There was an element of knowledge and understanding that went with it. And that, to me, was intriguing.

Alicia: Well, how does your MFA in fiction do you think influence your work now, if it does still?

Hannah: If I could go back in time, I think I would have done that differently. I think I knew that I wanted to write, but I didn't know what kind of writer I was. And so I picked fiction, but I think I was always a nonfiction writer. I'm not sure if that set me up and then I exercised the muscle of writing more regularly. And I saw it as something that you kind of had to produce within a set period of time, which is useful if you're a career writer. But beyond that, I'm not sure that I got too much strategy out of it. It took me a while to kind of get to this place.

Alicia: Right, right. 

Well, you did write a book review last year that made a big splash, I think in some circles. For Eater, you reviewed David Chang's memoir, Eat a Peach, which was also your memoir of working for him. And it was one of the best I and many have read on the reality of working for one of—a big chef whose behavior is lauded and excused. And it was really just such an eye opening kind of look into that world. And I just the other day opened the Goldbelly website, and the first main page is David Chang's face. And I was like, ‘Are we still doing this? Really?’ 

And I wanted to know why you wanted to open up in that piece in the way you did, and how the reception was to it. Because I talk a lot with friends about the cost of exposing our trauma and whether we gain anything from it, really. Why did you decide to do that piece in the way you did it, and how have you felt in the aftermath?

Hannah: So when I decided to write the piece at first, I was—I felt like I had to write it. It was sort of—I didn't have a choice. The whole process began when Peter Meehan stepped down from the L.A. Times last summer, it was like right around the Fourth of July. At that moment, I kind of had this feeling in the pit of my stomach. All of these people are suffering—accountability, if you want to call it that—in some small way, but Chang never really did. And why doesn't anyone talk about it?

So I actually just sat down and wrote a draft of what was, at that point, a completely personal essay. It had nothing to do with the book. And after kind of speaking with a bunch of different editors who were interested in it, and then ultimately landing with Matt and Aaron over at Eater, we decided that the best way to frame it was through the lens of his book because his book had just dropped at the point that I was still shopping the piece.

So when you're a public writer and you write about yourself, which I do sometimes, there's always an element of vulnerability and there's an element of blowback that can accompany that. I think that's sort of just par for the course with my job. And I talk to other relatively high-profile writers about this, is people feel like they know you and they feel like they have access to you. They feel like they have, they're entitled to tell you how they feel about your work and your life because your life is suddenly public. And that's always challenging no matter what the piece is.

I actually was surprised by the reaction that I got from this piece, because I was expecting blowback. Whenever something goes viral, you do. But most of what I got privately was actually deep empathy. And a lot of people who had worked for Dave during different periods and at different restaurants reached out to kind of sus through their own trauma, which was an unexpected consequence. I think I didn't necessarily know what people who were in it were going to feel. And they felt largely the same way that I did. And that was a very surprising, surprisingly rewarding part of all this. 

I've been disappointed that it kind of disappeared in the national narrative, and people just kind of let it go away. And they let his behavior kind of just continue to be what it is.

Alicia: Right? It's really shocking to me. 

And I don't know, I've always been curious how you feel in the last few months when I've seen his name just kind of pop up in a really neutral manner. What has been your response to that?

Hannah: That's hard. And of course, I got that PR email that was advertising a project that he was working on. And I was like, ‘I actually can't believe that someone wouldn't even put my name into Google before sending this PR thing out to me.’ What?

It's not that I think that he's all one thing. It's not that I think he's a terrible person, or even bad at what he does; I think he created something that was really cool. I was certainly driven to work there and eat there. Even after I left, I wanted to eat at the restaurant, or the restaurants. 

But I do think that I had sort of this moment at the end of my piece where I called for him to say something and step down, or pass the reins of his business on to somebody else. And that has really been met with silence. People like to say that we've come so far in this industry, and I don't know how far we've come at the end of the day. Powerful men are still the ones who run things in the restaurant industry.

Alicia: Right.

I've been thinking a lot about this. I think that writers are punished for it—for speaking out about chef behavior and for writing about it, even though we think that that's our job. But we are really expected to maintain the status quo when it comes to these chefs. We are expected to be nice, be accepting that it is hard to work in a kitchen, hard to run a kitchen. And so even though these people, usually men, are getting rich off the backs of other people's labor that perhaps they've been toxic to, we are supposed to not necessarily criticize that. 

And that came up for me this year because the person who was chosen to be the series editor, the editor for Best American Food Writing 2020 or 2021, was Gabrielle Hamilton, who—I saw my job, when I was writing for The Village Voice, to—as a food writer to be someone who kind of held powerful people to account for their decisions. 

But I wrote a piece about how when she was thinking of going into business with Ken Friedman to—yeah, to restore The Spotted Pig, and somehow related it to a natural disaster and that sort of thing. It was just really horrifying to watch in the midst of this big movement for accountability to see a female chef thinking that she could kind of fix a rapist and a restaurant with a rape room that anyone in the industry had heard the whispers about. I was told people knew not to work there if you were a woman. It was just really bizarre. 

And so I wrote about that—when it happened in 2018. And then when she was the—named the editor this year, I was like, ‘Oh, I guess I'm certainly not going to be in it.’ And that has consequences for us financially, of course. And that's why I was like, ‘How is it ok to put a chef in charge of deciding the best food writing when this is, of course, someone who's going to protect other chefs as well?’ 

And when your essay on Eat a Peach wasn't included in the anthology, you were very vocal on social media about your feelings about it. And I was really impressed by that because I feel most of us are—We're going to be Charlie Brown going home or whatever sad, being like, ‘Ok, whatever. I guess I'm just not good enough.’ But when we know that's not the case. We know that these things are not judged on a real meritocracy—meritocratic level. 

And so I wanted to ask you why it was important for—to speak out about that. I don't think we can really have hope that awards or anthologies are going to reward work that's critical of chefs, because they are bound to protect each other. And I mean, there was something included about  just being the girlfriend of a Michelin-starred chef. 

Hannah: I saw it. 

Alicia: And it's like, ‘Wow, this is just really collected work this year, when we had—we're talking so much about restaurants and the role of restaurants. But we're gonna have an anthology that just pretends that none of that actually happened.’

But yeah, so for you, why was it so important to speak out? And how did you feel about this person being the editor?

Hannah: I mean, I'm pissed about the whole thing. 

And actually that essay that you're talking about, that was in Grub Street. I very much like Alan, but the winner of that award tweeted out how honored she was to be working with one of her idols, Gabrielle Hamilton. And I wanted to scream into the void. 

Look, anyone who has read my essay who is, who’s tangential to the food world knows that that essay belonged in the anthology if for no other reason than it memorialized a certain period of time that we were living in. And that is what is supposed to be the point of an anthology that comes out annually.

And I'm not afraid to say that it was an excellent piece of writing. It's probably the best piece of writing I have ever executed, with great gratitude and debt to my editors who reigned me in. And this is my bad. I really just thought it was a sure thing. I was like, ‘I'm 100% going to be in the anthology. Why wouldn't I?’ And even Pete Wells was like, ‘You're definitely going to be in the anthology or whatever.’ When I didn't receive word from them, I was like, ‘This is shocking.’ And then I was like, ‘I guess it's not shocking. It's not shocking for Gabrielle Hamilton to be exactly who I thought she was going to be.’

And in addition to the Ken Friedman thing, there was the 10,000-word essay that she had in the New York Times Magazine last year, which people blindly praised when it had a lot of really questionable things in it, like, ‘Oh hey, I'm not going to take a GoFundMe for my staff because it bruises my ego.’ And then a recipe a few pages later for using $60 crab and an appetizer. 

I don't have a personal grievance. I just think that how—who made the decision to put her—it's mystifying. The whole thing is mystifying. I think it's widely understood in the food community that changes need to be made. And yet, here we are, after all of this, repeating the same narrative over and over again. Let's take the people who were abusive and put them in positions where they get to choose what is good and what is not good. Let's ignore the fact that this was the biggest year in terms of racial injustice that we've had to actually face head on as Americans in my lifetime, and put a white female writer, restaurateur of all things in the position of editing the collection. 

The food world continues to be tone deaf. Of course. I mean, we can talk about James Beard a different time. But this is just sort of another example. And I don't know if there's a correction on that. I tried to call it out so that more people would amplify the understanding of it. And privately, a lot of high-profile people reached out to me. Probably not so much.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And that's disappointing, because we really do. And I said this, I think I wrote about the James Beard awards and how basically I think writers, if they bring back the media awards, writers, especially freelance writers, should boycott putting their work in. Because something has to give in terms of the way these things work, in terms of how much energy we put out, and then are expected to also spend money to be—have our work considered for these awards, I mean, while we get paid garbage and are taxed to the hilt for that work. 

The expectations really need to change, and I think—the reason it was so disappointing that Gabrielle Hamilton was chosen this year is that this was the year that we were hoping to see changes. And I think that her decision, the decision to put her as editor this year, showed we're not actually going to change anything. We want to consolidate power at where it is, and keep it where it is. 

Hannah: 100%.

Alicia: Yeah.

And I think it is important for people to talk publicly about that kind of thing. But the thing is, it looks like sour grapes to some people. It looks like you're being rude to your colleagues whose work was chosen. But it's not that. It has to give that we reject the status quo and this concentration of power with chefs. And it's just high time. [Laughs.] 

Hannah: Right. 

And I think also the public may not know, for instance, that when it comes to these compilations and awards—I mean, Best American you don't have to pay, but you have to be the one to actively send her your material and be like, ‘Please consider me.’ It's not like it's just a bunch of people sitting in a room going through every piece of food writing from the year. 

And with ICP and James Beard, you have to send them money, and then you have to send them your links, and you pay for every single submission. Obviously, there's an access issue based on the financial part of it. But in addition to that, you have to have the wherewithal to even know when to do this stuff and who to send it to. The system is completely messed up, even apart from the person making the choices about what gets included.

Alicia: Right.

No, it's just really upsetting. And I think I'm glad that you were vocal about this, because it's such a conversation, it's a conversation that's wildly overdue to just really point out that what is called Best American Food Writing is simply one person's kind of idea of what that means, and not a real expression of what that year meant in food writing. I mean, if it was, we would have seen a lot more independent outlets, I think, included there. It was really a year of independent media. But yeah, no. [Laughs.] 

And yeah, it's really sad that more people aren't willing to kind of reject these things that we know are harmful. But that's the world we live in. That's capitalism, I guess, right? [Laughs.]

Hannah: Yeah. 

I mean, I think my feeling is also—a, I mean, you mentioned sort of the collateral damage that writers can suffer by vocalizing this kind of stuff. I mean, I continue to be unafraid of anything except cockroaches. So, don't put me in a room with roaches. If I want to write a piece about David Chang, I'm gonna write about a piece about David Chang. If I want to post about Gabrielle Hamilton, I’ll suffer the consequences. 

I don't believe for myself, because of where I'm positioned, that these people are going to come for me. I recognize that they are very much capable of coming for people who are less established. And in some ways I see it as an obligation, because I have a platform and because I have enough of a reputation of being kind of an iconoclast and just saying whatever I want, that I'm not sure it's harmful to me. And so I feel like it's my obligation to use that lack of harm to everyone's advantage. 

Alicia: Right. 

And I would hope it changes things, but I think people are a bit too comfortable with the way things work, even if it is to their detriment. Yeah. 

Well, to shift a bit, I wanted to ask about living in the Hamptons because I know you're living in East Hampton. I grew up in Patchogue on the south shore. So I know the Hamptons. Well, because I used to work at Hildreth’s Department Store in Southampton. I designed the website for a couple of years when I was in college. 

And I wanted to know, how is it out there? Where do you eat? How has it influenced your work? It really is, I think, more interesting a place than people give it credit for because of that kind of merging of the townies and the working class and the wildly rich. And I think it is more interesting than people give it credit for, though I do think it's weird how much the summer, places from the city kind of open summer residency is out there now. I think that's weird. 

But for you, how is it? How is the experience?

Hannah: Well, what's changed in the last year because of the pandemic really—there's this sort of beautiful off-season that we enjoy as members of a resort community and it's like until late March, early April. And there's nobody here from September on, and it's our own private Idaho or whatever. These past two years, everyone's been out here. So we haven't really gotten a respite in that sense. 

It has its pluses and minuses. Where I grew up in Massachusetts was a seasonal beach community also, although certainly not to this degree. And wealth was not part of the equation. So I'm used to the pop in the summer, and I always gravitate toward the beach. That's something that's very important to me. 

But actually, the townie element of it for me is maybe the most interesting thing. I really did not know moving up to the Hamptons six years ago that it's very conservative out here. There's a lot of conservative politics, which are a tough pill for me to swallow as a former Brooklyn resident. 

In terms of restaurants, more and more, we're seeing things that are opening year round, which is exciting. I love the Nick & Toni's group. Rowdy Hall is actually one of my favorite just sort of go-to places. 

It's actually exciting for all of us, even those of us who live here year-round, when the stuff starts opening for the season because it's something new is happening. And I get to go to a different place to eat. So that's starting now. I like to go to Montauk a lot, because I'm close by and I lived there for a few years. 

But I would say that the experience is—it's hard to explain to people who don't spend a lot of time here. The blend between the high and low and the absolute—the wealth is so unimaginable. But then there are just ordinary people who live here, too, and there's a huge undocumented community who lives here, which is something I really value about the community.

Alicia: Yeah. 

No, it's interesting. I used to work out there. And then also my dad used to drive Martha Stewart around. [Laughter.] So I have this very weird understanding of the Hamptons. ’Cause yeah, when I worked at Hildreth’s, it was all people who lived out there. And you have a different sense of what it's like from that versus—when I've been home in the pandemic and I went out to Carissa’s, which is so beautiful. But it's such a different vibe. And they had the Forthave Amaro, and I was like, ‘Oh my god.’ It's just a taste of city stuff, which is good. And I can't wait to go back, honestly. 

Hannah: I mean, I can't wait to get to the beach. Everyone's predicting kind of a banner year out here, which is not necessarily what you want when you have to drive on one lane of traffic.

Alicia: Yeah, that moment when Sunrise Highway becomes one lane is killer. [Laughs.]

But for you, is cooking a political act?

Hannah: Yes. 

I mean, I think I make choices in terms of what I purchase, and who I do business with, both cooking and dining. And that is sort of informed by my politics of what I choose to eat, what I choose to feed my kids. 

I've had a farm share out here for the entire time that I've been living out here, because I really feel like I need to be part of the local farm system. And I feel it's important for people to buy into their community in that way. There are places that I absolutely stay away from. I'm not saying Blue Duck, but maybe Blue Duck. [Laughter.] Very big Trump supporters. 

Alicia: Oh! I didn’t know that.

Hannah: Yeah. [Laughs.] Although it's tough to navigate that out here, because if you were really to go by that you would never buy fish. 

But yeah, I think there's political—everything is political. People like to say, ‘Oh, don't get politics involved.’ But politics absolutely governs everything you do, especially in a small community.

Alicia: Right. 

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

Hannah: Thank you for having me. This is really exciting.

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Listen now | Talking with the interdisciplinary artist and 'Palate Palette' editor about hyper-specificity and locality in her work on Black foodways in Baltimore.

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Dianne Jacob has been writing since the 1970s, and she brings the perspective of someone well-versed in the industry to her book Will Write for Food, the fourth edition of which just came out this week. In the text and her online writing, she demystifies what is often thought of as the romantic world of food writing for anyone who might want to break into it. That’s required paying attention to how the industry has evolved in the last twenty years, especially, as people have moved away from restaurant reviewing and toward online work.

We discussed what drew her to food writing, how she’s adapted to a digital world as a self-described “print snob,” and how she defines diversity. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Dianne. Thank you so much for coming on today and taking the time out.

Dianne: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

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

Dianne: Sure. 

I grew up in Vancouver, Canada. And my parents were refugees. They came there in 1949 to escape Mao. They were from China, born and raised. So we grew up there, because my mother was British, and she could get into Canada, it being part of the Commonwealth. 

I think, in the beginning, my parents did not know anything about cooking because they had servants in China. But eventually, they missed their food and they had to figure out how to make it. There were a lot of phone calls with family. And I grew up eating three, maybe four or five kinds of food. Iraqi Jewish food, Bombay, Baghdadi Jewish dishes. Chinese dishes. My mother loved to make Japanese food as well. And every once in a while, she would attempt Western food, which she put her own spin on. Sometimes that went well, and sometimes it didn't. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: And what got you interested in food as something to spend your life focused on?

Dianne: It took a while to figure out why. But I think what it came down to is that, is because of my parents. They had a very weird background, and they didn't fit in anywhere. They didn't fit in with the Jewish community. And they didn't fit in with the Chinese community, because they weren't Chinese. They still wanted to express their identity, and they expressed it through food. 

And it was really, really important to them. My mother cooked every day. My father was in charge of pickling things and making leben, which is the Arab yogurt. So, they had a garden. And it was a major focus of their life. So I think I just took that for granted for a long time. And I didn't really understand that it was also a major focus of mine.

Alicia: How did you learn that it was?

Dianne: It was when I became self-employed. Before, I had a lot of different kinds of jobs as an editor and reporter and feature writer, and I just worked at different kinds of magazines and newspapers. And even a book publishing house, on whatever topic there was, ’cause I was an editor. 

And then when I became self-employed, I realized that I had to become an individual contributor. And before, I had always been a manager. And so I had to figure out what I wanted to write about. And what I wanted to write about was food.

Alicia: What has made you focus on food for so long? I mean, I'm sure we'll discuss this, but food media is not a really easy or welcoming place. And so, what has kept you writing about food all this time?

Dianne: Actually, I haven't been writing about food that much. Early in my career, I wrote restaurant reviews. I wrote a lot of service pieces. I wrote a column, a recipe column. 

But then, because I had such a long career as an editor and I missed working with writers, I got more interested in working with writers. So most of what I write about is how to be a food writer in all its glorious guidance, and how there are so many parts to it. There are endless subjects to keep me interested: food and politics, food and identity, ethics, how to write a good recipe, how to get a book deal, how to make a living, how to grow your blog. It's endless. And so, I've never been bored. [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah.

And you've just come out with the fourth edition of your book, Will Write for Food. What has kind of changed in your motivation and your approach to this book since the first edition in 2005?

Dianne: Well, I started teaching food writing at Book Passage, which is a big bookstore here in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I couldn't find a book on food writing. So I thought, ‘Well, maybe I should write one.’ I figured if I was going to teach on the subject, it would be useful to have this book. 

So the first edition came out in 2005. And at that time, restaurant reviewing was really big. So there was a huge chapter on restaurant reviewing, and it was all focused on fine dining. And there's a chapter on fiction writing, which are—Mostly, the most popular genre in food fiction writing is murder mysteries with recipes, with great titles like, ‘The butter did it!’ 

And food blogs were just starting out. But I was still a print snob, then. And I thought, ‘Well, I don't really know what this is,’ and ‘Where are the gatekeepers?’ So I just ignored it. [Laughter.] And that turns out to be a big mistake. 

So in the second edition, I had to write a huge chapter on food blogging, which was in full swing. That was in 2010. And the Pioneer Woman was a big celebrity blogger then. And she wrote a blurb for my book. 

And then the third edition came out in 2015. And by then, people were more interested in how to make a living as a food writer—and mostly, especially online. They wanted to know how to make money online with recipes, or as content creators. I had to write about transitioning from a hobby to a business, more about photography, social media. A lot less on restaurant reviewing, because with the advance of Yelp, it just—restaurant reviewing has become a job that ten people have. [Laughs.]

And then for the fourth edition, which comes out on May 25, I got rid of the Eurocentric focus on food and writers. And I brought in more diverse voices, younger voices. There's a much smaller chapter on restaurant writing, more on making money. 

And I wrote a new chapter on voice, because the field has become very crowded these days, and a lot of people are writing the same kind of content. And so, how do you stand out in a crowded field if you're writing the same kind of content as other people? For me, it comes down to voice. 

Alicia: Right.

No, that's so important. And you also have your blog. You also send out a newsletter. Why have you gone sort of an independent route with your work?

Dianne: Well, I started the blog in 2009 because I knew I was going to have to write about food blogging. And I felt if I didn't jump in, I was never going to understand it. 

So I mean, I did jump in. But I didn't start a food blog. I started a blog about writing, particularly food writing. And at first I did twice a week, short posts about whether blogging is journalism, how adapting a recipe doesn't make it yours. It was really fun because in those days, people weren't on social media as much. I would regularly have like 50 or 80 responses. And I would get in theoretical arguments with people. 

I remember having a big argument with Shauna Ahern about whether blogging was journalism, all in the comments, going back and forth. And Paula Wolfert was one of my first commenters. It was a really heavy time. 

And then for the newsletter, I started that probably ten years ago. But then, it was just for anyone who had been a student of mine or a client. But now it has a bigger audience than my blog. And both of them together have me—they kept me on a regular writing schedule, and—which is really important. Because I don't want to just be an editor and coach for people. I want to keep my writing practice. 

And so I've been writing mostly service, what's called service writing, how-to pieces. Opinion pieces. And I bring in a lot of guest posters when they have wisdom to share.

Alicia: Right.

And how do you find it now? It's been over a decade that you've been kind of writing for yourself, writing directly to readers. What have you gleaned in that time from that kind of writing versus writing for publications?

Dianne: Well, the joy of not having a gatekeeper, and writing whatever you want, just can't be underestimated. But you still have to be relevant for people. 

This is something I learned as a writer early on, I think, when I was doing restaurant reviewing. What I learned was that people may never go to the restaurant, but they still want to read my review. And they wanted to be entertained. And I think I'm still learning about entertaining people. I tend to be very serious. [Laughter.] You are too, right? 

But entertainment is a huge part of writing for people. And so, it always has to be an element. I'm still figuring that out. I'm still figuring out how to be personal, and not just talk about what's going on in the industry. How much of myself to reveal. And of course, social media only amplifies that issue.

Alicia: Yeah. 

I don't know. I hope I'm not serious. I hope I don't come off serious. 

Dianne: Really?

Alicia: Yeah, the funny thing is that I'm not a serious person as a human being. So it's interesting that my writing that is popular is very serious. 

And it's a little bit frustrating to me, because I think I am trying to balance within one audience a few different ideas of what people want for me. And so some people like the personal writing and some people like the polemical, political writing. And some people like some more specific food writing about specific ingredients, or that sort of thing. 

And it's really hard to make all of those people happy all of the time. Which I guess the answer is—it's impossible.

Dianne: Yeah, it is.

Alicia: I find having direct contact with an audience that wants things from me pretty challenging most of the time. I don't know if I have the ability or the stamina to go on with it for over a decade, like you have. [Laughs.]

Dianne: A lot of what I write is not personal. I think that’s how I've been able to handle it, it's—just a while ago, I wrote a blog on how I noticed that I had a half-tablespoon measure in my drawer, but I never see half-tablespoon measuring recipes. And when I do, I usually edit it out and put one and a half teaspoons. Sometimes, you just never know if people are gonna respond to that or not. 

And people were all over it. And they were telling me, oh no, they've had this tablespoon for years. And they always use it in recipes. And it was the most minor subject.

Alicia: Right. It got people going.

Dianne: Yeah, it got people going. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, I think it's interesting to talk to you today, because while this is coming out in late May, we're talking in late April. And the people who are in the essays that are being included in Best American Food Writing 2021 have been announced in some form.

Dianne: Oh. I haven’t seen that yet. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

And I wanted to ask you, because you wrote about—you wrote a gorgeous and award-winning essay about mangoes for Lucky Peach in 2016. And then you wrote a blog post that just broke down the process. And I feel that was such a na—genius, kind of ahead of its time move to do that because I think it's only in recent times that we've really been having this conversation about what makes things successful in food media, and what makes a piece end up in an anthology or winning awards and that sort of thing. 

And so, I wanted to ask you why you wanted to matter-of-factly break that down for people.

Dianne: Well, thank you for calling it gorgeous. I appreciate that. And also, thank you for finding that post, because I've got thousands of posts now going back to 2009. So, I didn't even remember that one. So, I went back and read it. 

But I think what I wanted to get across is that people tend to think that writing is some kind of magic that people can just pour things forth, and it will be beautiful and fully formed. And that was not my experience writing that piece. That piece took a long time. And it appeared in various guises. And I just want people to know that it's work. It's work to get there. 

And also that if you do want to be recognized for your work a lot of the time, you have to—most, almost all the time, you have to apply. And I was so freaked out by the James Beard awards that I didn't even apply. I didn't even for that piece. I just couldn't get up the nerve. It was just ridiculous. The things you tell yourself are insane sometimes. [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, it's true. 

Has how you perceive awards changed since that time?

Dianne: Not really. You have to believe in your work enough to submit awards. And I'm always telling people on social media and in my newsletter, ‘Ok, the award deadline is coming up. You can’t wait anymore unless you apply. You've got to pay some money. You've got to believe in your work.’ And that hasn't changed. 

I think there are very few awards where you don't apply. Maybe the Art of Eating award, you don't apply for that. Even Best Food Writing, you can submit your work to it.

Alicia: No. Yeah. 

And I mean, it's interesting. The James Beard awards are, I think, the most expensive award to submit yourself for. And I don't know if you've ever judged the writing awards for them. But—

Dianne: I have judged them, but not journalism. I've judged books for the Beard Award. 

Alicia: Oh, ok. Right. 

Well, it's interesting to me that it's—people pay so much money to be considered, and then the people doing the reading aren't paid for that time, either. So, it's interesting. I mean, I've written before about how much I loathe the James Beard awards. [Laughs.] 

Yeah, it's a difficult thing. And that's why I appreciated that blog post, because I think that people often do think, like you said, that it's this magical process toward writing the great essay that will get attention. And it's not. It just is plodding to get there. 

Dianne: Yes, with a lot of self-doubt and putting it away and bring it back out. And yeah, just how it is. I’ve been a published writer since 1974, and I still go through that.

Alicia: And I didn't give you this question, ’cause I'm only really—I'm considering this right now this week, that the idea of being creative and working in a creative field is, I think, something that we're supposed to always talk about in a very lofty manner. And your whole work that you're doing now is about, and have been doing, is about breaking that down for people and making it about success and not shying away from the business end of it. 

And I wanted to ask how you kind of balance or decided to balance those things, and how creativity and business—how in your mind do they kind of fit together?

Dianne: That's a really good question. 

What I've decided is that there are some people who are entrepreneurs, and they’re business people first. And they apply their creativity to their business. Whereas food writing, I think, for so long has been a hobby and not taken seriously and things that people do on the side or they just do it for fun, or they do it because they're privileged enough to not worry about whether they're going to get paid for it or how much. That's a whole other kind of thinking. 

And so you can produce the same work. I mean, you can write a recipe and have either point of view. But the people who are making a business from it are focused on that. They're focused on financial success, however they define that. I've had people as clients who have made six, high six figure incomes. I've interviewed people who have made high, mid-six figure incomes. And they're just as good as writing a recipe as the people who get paid nothing. But they’re entrepreneurial about it. 

Alicia: Right, right.

That's an interesting way of looking at it, I think. ’Cause I think I have a lot of guilt about money in being a creative person. Guilt about thinking of my work as labor and guilt about thinking of my work in business terms, in a way that I never did if I was selling people cakes or cookies. I would never feel this way, but because I'm just writing—And as I say it, I say, ‘just writing.’ 

Dianne: Just writing, yup.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.]

I'm like, ‘Is this real work? Am I supposed to be caring about money? Is it gauche of me to need money to live?’ [Laughs.] 

Dianne: Exactly.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And so trying to kind of be honest about these things, and how it all really works, which is a lot—it's very complicated.

Dianne: It is, because money is fraught, especially in American society. Fraught with so many issues. 

I have the privilege sometimes of writing a piece for my own pleasure and getting paid very little for it. And I think, ‘Is something wrong with me that I do this, because at the end of the day, it's not—my labor isn't being paid for. So, is that wrong? Or do I just decide that I'm a privileged person?’ and then I have guilt about that. [Laughter.] You can make yourself crazy with this stuff.

Alicia: Right, right. 

No, and in this new edition, in the introduction, you talk about the diversity of voices that have emerged in food writing in the last decade and the major writers of color, or Black writers who've emerged in this time. And you yourself could be said to have a ‘diverse’ background. So, I wanted to ask you how you define diversity.

Dianne: Thank you. 

So first, I'll define it for the book. So my editor and I spent a lot of time on how we were going to define it. And she was very helpful. So of course, there's BIPOC, which means Black, Indigenous and people of color. But that's not everybody. 

I just looked up the new abbreviation LGBTQQIAP. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, pansexual. Got all that? [Laughs.]

Alicia: Yes. [Laughter.]

Dianne: We're leaving out people who are disabled. I know, it's not everyone. But at least we're enlarging who can write about food and how they write about it. 

And so I tried to describe the intersection of food writing and more diversity in the first chapter. And I don't fit into one category. I mean, I present as a white person, and I have the privilege of a white person. But my parents were Chinese refugees from—who were Iraqi. So it's kind of complicated. Identity for me is a huge topic, and I'm endlessly fascinated by it.

Alicia: And I wanted to ask if you've faced—I mean, you just said you, you're a white person with the privileges of a white person. How do you view the kind of gatekeeping that occurs in food media and the fact that we have taken so long to start seeing food media more accurately reflect the world at large? 

Dianne: Oh, yeah, it's taken a long time. I mean, I graduated from journalism school in 1974. And it was almost entirely white. And every job I had, the whole staff was almost entirely white and the writers I hired were almost entirely white. 

I never questioned it in the beginning. We weren't having those kinds of conversations. And it's taken a long time to start—for the publishing industry—to start having the conversation, and to own it that publishing is, what, 85, 86 percent white. Depending on which publishing you're talking about, but I think, for us, it is. It's just taken a really long time because the gatekeepers were not really aware of how, of choosing their own and how their own were always available. 

I mean, white writers came to me and want to be published. And I didn't think about seeking out other kinds of people for the longest time.

Alicia: Right, right. [Laughs.]

And how did that moment of clarity kind of emerge?

Dianne: Well, just in the last few years, it's become a lot more obvious that this system has to change. And I've had my own understanding about it also, and questioning what I could do about it. 

Last year, in honor of Black Lives Matter, I had—I said I would take on five new clients who were interested in food writing, who are all Black, for $100 instead of $800, because I know there's this disparity in the income of white people versus Black people. And so that was something new, for me to do that. And it went really well. I had really terrific people to work with, who were—or I could just suggest to them, they work very hard. And it was good. It was a good experience. And now I'm trying to figure out what else I can do. 

Alicia: Right.

How far in advance do you start planning your next edition of the book?

Dianne: Well, they've come out every five years. I guess, technically, it was supposed to come out last year, but because of the pandemic they pushed it. So this one is out every—on the sixth year. So I can keep a file of all the stuff I’ve forgotten to write about, and how to rethink what I wrote about.

When I first got into food writing, I was absolutely bewildered by the Eurocentric nature of it. And it was so foreign to me, because I didn't know about European food. I didn't have the income to go to fine-dining restaurants and eat continental food, as it was called at the time. And I just didn't understand why everyone was so excited about it. [Laughter.] So we've come a long way from that point.

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Dianne: Certainly. 

Yeah. Because you make decisions, you make decisions. Are you going to buy organic, and is that just for your own health or is it for the health of the people who work in the fields and for the health of the planet? Can you look beyond yourself and see why that would be a good idea? Are you eating a plant based diet to—for environmental reasons or for your own health? 

Are you claiming your food as being from one country or another? I just had a guest post about—that Nandita Godbole, I don't know if I'm pronouncing her name right, wrote about cultural appropriation. And I realized that I had written a recipe for some—a Chinese dish that my mother made. And I was very wrapped up in the memory of how she made it and how delicious it was and what my memories were as a child eating it. 

And then I realized after reading her posts that I hadn't thought about, ‘Was this a dish that existed in Shanghai? And did my mother eat it? And is that how she found out about it? And what do I know about the Chinese version of this dish?’ I hadn't thought about it at all. So, it just enlarged my thinking about how to write about food in a way that's more inclusive. 

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

Dianne: It's my pleasure. 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

Karla Vasquez is a writer and keeper of culture documenting the women who are keeping Salvadoran food tradition alive in the United States. Her project SalviSoul is putting oral tradition down on paper so that it can’t be lost, and it also points to the significance of specificity when discussing Latin American traditions: The U.S. considers the Latinx community a monolith, when it is actually wildly diverse.

I wanted to discuss with her the inspiration behind this, her experience so far working on a cookbook proposal, and how she expresses her voice authentically on social media. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Karla. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today.

Karla: Of course! I'm so happy to chat with you today.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Karla: Yes. 

So I grew up in L.A. It's where I am right now. And I grew up in a very Salvadoran home. So, that meant a lot of—yeah, a lot of the Salvadoran staples. A lot of polea, a lot of rice, a lot of tortillas. The occasional carne asada over the weekend. Because we were new immigrants in this country, the food was really what told me we were from El Salvador because we didn't have things that I saw other Latino families had around in L.A. There wasn't tacos at the party. It was pupusas. It was tamal de pollo. Yeah, it was a very Salvi-saturated food upbringing.

Alicia: And so, what led you to working in food and founding SalviSoul?

Karla: [Laughs.] There were a few things that led me to this work that I'm doing now. And I guess I can summarize them by pointing to three reasons.

I mean, the fact that my family are just storytellers, and this was—we carried our histories through storytime. So I think wanting to do good storytelling just became a part of just legacy that my family has. When we would sit at the table, when we would have dinner time, it was automatic—we were going to know, we were going to find out more about where we came from and our histories. 

So apart from that, a huge reason that led me to SalviSoul and to starting this work was because I had a very personal experience with my health. I became a person who had to deal with a chronic illness. I am a Type 1 diabetic. And in my early 20s, when I was diagnosed, there were a lot of doctors who had good intentions. And a lot of what they said to me were, ‘Diabetes has everything to do with food. And you're Latina, and Latinos eat very poorly. So we would advise you not to eat XYZ.’

And as I mentioned, my upbringing, food was what told me we were from somewhere else. So when I got to experience my culture, it was at the table. And so hearing this kind of recommendation from several doctors and nurses, and it just broke my heart. And I felt like I had to make a decision of, ‘Do I cater my diet to my health, or do I try to figure out if they're—if they maybe don't know the whole truth?’

And that's really what got me into food justice advocacy. And before I did food writing, I was managing farmer’s markets. I was working in low—income areas here in L.A, doing cooking classes, free cooking classes, where we would talk about all the things you can do with all the harvest from the farmers. And so that definitely informed my work. 

And as I started to research different cookbooks and really just getting obsessed with the food world and becoming familiar with all the work farmers do to give us options at the farmer’s market, I started to look for Salvadoran cookbooks. And by this point I had been going to cooking school doing a cooking program here in L.A. 

And the results that I found when I started researching Salvi cookbooks, I found two. I found two books, and I just thought, like, ‘There's millions of us here, internationally.’ We have had to adapt a transnational identity because so many of us have had to leave El Salvador. And it just felt completely absurd that there wasn't a library, or that the library we had of cookbooks were so limited. 

And also that the two books available were not—they weren't things like books from 50 years ago or anything. They were recent, within 10 years—yeah, I think when I found the first English cookbook, it was 2015. And that book had been published in 2013. So, it was relatively new. And I longed to know more. I longed just to understand where—what foods did my family have for fest—for the days of festivals? What foods they have for lazy Sundays? Food was really a way for me to understand where I came from. 

And it was a way for me to know, in that passports were not there—I, for a moment in my life here in the U.S., I was undocumented. So when documentation can’t tell you where you're from, when the language on both ends is a struggle, food was the thing that didn't ask me to be any way. I just knew we were from El Salvador because we eat plátanos, polea, queso duro, pan francés. 

Those were the, yeah, I guess the veins of the work that eventually led me to say, ‘What if I started a project, and I interviewed my grandmother and ask her for my favorite dish?’ And there was a really incredible moment in working with my grandmother. And she's definitely the co-creator of SalviSoul, because without me saying too much about it, I didn't have a name. I didn't have much, but just a question of curiosity. And I pitched it to her. And she said, ‘Oh, sí, Karla. Esto se trata del legado de la mujer salvadoreña.’ Like, ‘Karla, this is about the legacy of El Salvadoran women. You're going to interview women, they're going to tell you stories. And we're going to get these recipes documented that no one has really bothered to look there.’ 

And that was it. That was the moment that really—yeah, it was the beginning of so many things.

Alicia: And when Patricia Escárcega wrote about you for the L.A. Times last year, she wrote about your desire to write a Salvadoran cookbook. And she specifically mentioned that what you were just saying, that the cuisine of El Salvador is kept alive by women. Can you tell me more about the significance of women in Salvadoran cooking?

Karla: Absolutely. My goodness.

So much of what we know, as a diaspora is because of women in the kitchen, and women feeding their families. There’s that entrepreneurial spirit in, with immigrants, where I can't be hired. I don't have documentation. I don't know anyone here. But I know how to make some bomb tamales. I can make 150 of them and sell them on a corner, and people who are hungry will come and try it. 

When I started this project, there was a lot of wanting to give credit where credit has been past due. We have so many enclaves of Salvadorans in this country, and a lot of these enclaves really surround little mercaditos, little restaurants who have been serving these foods. And it's because of their diligence. And I think cooking, especially within a Latino, Latinx context, for women, I think it's a very complex issue because of course, we have been forced in the kitchen. I definitely had a lot of that push and pull feeling of like, ‘I don't want to work in the kitchen, because that's what has been-’ A good girl will want to work in the kitchen. And I didn't want that.

This work taught me a lot of nuance that we haven't been able to really sit with as a community. And I speak for Salvadoran community that I've interacted with. I definitely don't speak for the whole of our community. But with the experiences I've had, so many folks will say to me, ‘Karla, I don't know where else I can feel I belong to El Salvador or that I belong to this culture if it weren't for the home-cooked meals that my mom makes me or that my grandmother makes me.’

And the tension I have with that is that it then becomes this granny practice, right? And I've had moments where people say, ‘I don't need to bother to learn a recipe because I can just go home and eat it there.’ And I always have to stop myself from reacting honestly, because I want to say, ‘It's up to us. It's up to us to practice. Any culture that’s alive is practiced. It’s participated in. And you can’t lament not being able to have access to it, or for it to be a part of your life when you’re kind of assigning it to a generation that’s the older generation. It's an unfair ask to then put the whole weight of preserving culture on a generation that's done the work.’

So absolutely, there's huge significance. And especially because a lot of the history in El Salvador, there's been a lot of violence towards women. And my project is a place to highlight Salvadoran women. And yes, to highlight their sazón, to highlight the vibrancy they have for life. But also to say, ‘This is their place. This is a place that's dedicated to them. They are amazing individuals. They have incredible stories, I will introduce you to them and give you a snippet of who they are.’

SalviSoul is very much Salvi woman-obsessed. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. [Laughter.] 

And you mentioned before knowing you were Salvadoran by virtue of what you were eating, and that you weren't eating tacos the way everyone else was. And I feel I haven't been to L.A. in a—I was there once, I think, maybe in 2008. 

But I know that L.A. is such an amazing food city. And reading Jonathan Gold and all that stuff, it really—it gives you a sense of what L.A. is about and how significant food is for L.A. How do you think your city influences your kind of culinary vision, or your kind of culinary understanding?

Karla: Hmm.

Alicia: If at all? [Laughs.]

Karla: No, it absolutely does. I feel like there's a few ways in which it will influence. 

And I mean, I can speak on it from my point of view as a writer. Being able to meet so many different food writers here. I mean, just last week, I was talking to someone who is a food writer. And she's working on a Hungarian cookbook. And her cookbook is very similar where highlighting a lot of the women in her life, who are these cultural hubs for a lot—for the community here in L.A. 

And I think when you see a place like this city like Los Angeles, and you see people who come from the same place as you or similar places, and you see them not having to make compromises of who they are, it's a very—I remember the first time kind of seeing El Salvadorania and kind of being it. There weren't many out there. 

But I was just like, ‘Holy s**t. This is really f*****g bad. I didn't know this was possible.’ Because I think being an immigrant and growing up here, you really are trying to check all the boxes so you can stay here, so you're not separated from your family. So you can flourish the way you believe you can. And sometimes in that thought process, you realize that there will be compromises or that you will have to stop being a certain way or that your Spanish will have to disappear or any of those kinds of things. 

But living in a place like L.A., you start to see beautiful food concepts for restaurants that are led by the people that they are representing. And they are beautiful. They're a breath of fresh air. There's a huge spirit of pushing back and punk attitude. And I definitely feed off of that, because the publishing worlds, when I pitched this to them, were very much like, ‘People won't know what this is. People won't know what to do with it.’ I had an agent who I was pitching to say to me, ‘The American public won’t know what this is.’ And because I am in a place where there's—thankfully, I have a lot of examples of pushback where I can say, ‘I am the American public. And I want this, and plenty of other people want this.’ 

So yeah, I'm so grateful. It would be interesting to know what SalviSoul would look like in a place that wasn't this kind of presence of thriving and not compromising.

Alicia: Right.

And I mean, to speak to that, too, you post your Instagram captions in a mix of English and Spanish. And so I wanted to ask how you came to your voice as a writer, and if anyone was an influence on the way you approach your voice?

Karla: Well, the one piece of—I have one quote that I always lean on, by James Baldwin. And it's, ‘The responsibility of a writer is to excavate the experience of the people who produced him.’ Of course, I always say her, ‘who produced her.’ 

That's kind of been a piece of advice that's been a North Star for me. This whole question of figuring out what your voice is, it's so vague. And it's scary. And you want to make sure, or at least I want to make sure, that I'm speaking to the people who are looking for me. And so I do think about who are the people who produced me and produced these kinds of questions inside of me. 

I think about my grandmother, and—she was a phenomenal storyteller. And I think about how she never, ever had writer's block. And she didn’t necessarily type out stories or anything, but she did share lots of stories. 

And I think sometimes, the fact that we're writing kind of gives us this, makes us neurotic people. Because we’re not just sharing it, where there's so much that comes with the actual action of writing. And she never had writer's block. She never doubted herself when she would share a story. She would walk into the kitchen, and she'd be like, ‘[Snaps fingers.] Karla, ¿Qué esto pasó?’ And she had the feeling in her body. And she knew how to capture her audience. 

And so, I think of her whenever I start to get too much in my head. And I think a lot of what I've learned is—it's not about my feelings of me as a writer. It's just the story, this emotion. Something I've been realizing a lot recently is that writing is really catching feelings. You're trying to catch as many as you can.

I mean, I've read a lot of people who have shaken something inside me, and yeah, those are there. I don't know that any of those folks I've read, like Jonathan Gold, any food people you read have helped me become the writer that I want to be as much as the quote from James Baldwin and the attitude of my grandmother and how she was a storyteller. But, yeah, I think there's been so many little pieces of guidance and wisdom that have found me 

I'm not sure if I’m answering the question, but-

Alicia: You are. [Laughter.]

Since that L.A. Times profile of you last year by Escárcega, have you found an agent for the project of your cookbook?

Karla: I have, and honestly I can’t believe it. I shouldn't say that. I really didn't think I was gonna find one. I was pitching and sending out my proposal. And people would say, ‘This project sounds wonderful, Karla, but we've learned that compilation books really don't do well.’ Or, ‘Karla, this sounds great. But there's too many voices here.’ I'm sharing stories of 25 different women, plus myself. And then, of course, getting comments about ‘Well, what is Salvadoran food? People are not really interested in it.’

So yeah, I finally found my agent. After having all these different experiences with these folks, I did have a few kind of rules. Like I said, ‘I'm not going to work with anyone if they're making me feel like they're doing me a favor.’ No, I am doing them a favor. There has not been a Salvadoran cookbook published in this country by a traditional publisher. They should be happy that I am giving them an audience, because this will only help them in the trajectory of their business. 

I have had to kind of have this attitude, because—yeah, it's just unbelievable the way some folks have treated me. And it's ridiculous that it's taken this long. But my agent gets so many things. From the beginning, just said, ‘Put me in. I'm ready to work. I'm ready for this to be on bookshelves. Let's get to work.’

So yeah, I am so close to finishing my proposal right now. We had to kind of fine tune a lot of it. And I'm sure you know all about the proposal business here. It's been hard. 

Alicia: It's hard. It's so much work. Before you even get to the book, it's so much work. And then when you get to the book, it's so much more work. [Laughs.]

Karla: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah.

Karla: The publishing industry is cruel. 

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughs.] But that's so exciting. 

You’ve been working with traditional kind of food media. Have you found a lot of pushback there? Have you found yourself feeling good working in food media?

Karla: Yeah.

I mean I will say, I think everything that's been happening in food media for the last year since last summer with the whole BA episode, I think the environment is different than when I started in food media in—beginning in 2016, I believe that’s when I started. 

Yeah, I would send out pitches back then saying like, ‘Hey, I want to highlight this restaurant. They are innovating Salvi food, and no one's really talking about this.’ And people were not interested, or—if they did, if I did hear back from them, they would say, ‘Oh, well, so-and-so already wrote about this.’ And I would say well, ‘That so-and-so is a Chicano writer who has no nuance. Can we at least consider a different angle perhaps?’

And now, it's different. I mean, I've had a few food opportunities knock on my door and say, ‘We want to feature you. There's a few things coming down the pipeline.’ So I can't say all the details, but I would have never imagined them knocking on my door and saying, ‘Hey, we would love if you could write a recipe or, and write an article. And we want to feature you.’ So I think it's a different world now for food writers like myself. We can start to see some changes. 

I do think that I'm also at a place where I have maybe a little bit of— all of the rejection you get kind of get to you. I don't care if they knock on my door now. I care less. Some of the places who have featured me—L.A. Times did feature me. But there have been some other ones who, they say they're really prestigious and nothing happens. Nothing happens, except that they end up looking maybe a little bit more inclusive or diverse, highlighted someone from a small country? Sure. 

I can’t honestly take you seriously as a food media when you haven't bothered to cater to this expanse, food media cultures that you haven't really bothered to look into. So, I take myself seriously. So, I will work with folks have demonstrated that they have been invested. It's a very small group of people. It's interesting how that happens, right? When they finally start calling you, you're just like, ‘I'm not interested in you. I am shocked that I ever thought you were that important, that I had angst about whether or not I'd ever be on your radar, you know?’

Alicia: Yeah. No, it's interesting. 

And I mean, you mentioned having the lack of nuance when a Chicano writer writes about a Salvadoran restaurant. And the U.S. media really has an idea of Latinx culture that is very one note. And you can kind of interchange one Latino for another. 

And how have you seen that get better, maybe, in the last couple of years if you have? I feel it watching coverage of Puerto Rico. Obviously, there's a huge Puerto Rican diaspora in the U.S., but it's very interesting to see the diaspora prospective versus someone who lives here and that sort of thing. It's considered the same thing, though, from the U.S. perspective.

Karla: I mean, my gosh. 

I think that several things can be true at the same time. Things have gotten better; things have stayed the same. How do I say this? How do I express all the feelings? If there has been an opportunity for me to write something, I think that there are—because of Twitter, I'll be tagged in something that said, ‘They should have hired Karla to write this. She is one of the few Salvadoran food writers, but they decided to go with a Chicano.’ Those kinds of things are happening. Before, those things didn't happen. 

So it's not to say that they’re hiring me for the—that would be awesome. But they’re acknowledging—or the people are acknowledging, and that's how we accomplish anything. Enough people who have the platform's hopefully strong enough, big enough, that you start to see something change. That's what I'm seeing. Before if I wasn't really putting myself out there, pitching, kind of being in front of folks, it's not—it wasn't going to come my way, or it's not going to. 

But I mean, we'll see. I think this is why I want to do this cookbook, right? And why I decided not to self publish, but to pursue traditional publishing, because I do believe that having that kind of—it's almost like having that rite of passage for the community will create an environment where, ‘Hey, are we doing our due diligence if we aren't asking Salvadoran writers to write Salvadoran content?’ Or, as a bare minimum, asking Central American folks. 

So I think that there is a path that has been made. It's not a path that is very populated, but there—we're getting there. Yeah, I think that's the best I can say as far as—if I were to give a grade, I would add in the comments, ‘Shows huge improvements. Keep it there, but we’re not there yet, honey.’

So yeah, I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with food media because historically, they've taken too much from everyone. I don't know that they deserve my satisfaction. So, I do think what I want is for the people, the powers that be, just to get out of the effing way. If you can't support, if you can't give up the jobs, get out of the way. Stop sabotaging. 

But anyway, I digress.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

No, but it’s real. And I know in that L.A. Times piece, again, you were talking about how Instagram following is kind of considered super important for selling a cookbook. But I have seen lots of cookbooks be published by people with 2000 followers on Instagram and 2000 followers on Twitter. And I think it's something I've seen be told to a lot to women of color, who are trying to push a cuisine that has—that the publishing forces-that-be don't think has a big audience.

But meanwhile, I have a Romanian cookbook. And it's great. And, of course, but that's a similar kind of a small country as well. But it has a cookbook, and I don't want to say that that writer didn't put in a lot of work. But it's, how many people in the U.S. have eaten Romanian food versus a pupusa? 

So how do you see social media? To me, it's this kind of necessary kind of evil of promoting your work. But what is your kind of relationship with that? 

Karla: Let's see. Gosh, heavy hitters.

Alicia: I'm sorry. [Laughter.]

Karla: No, I love it. I love them. Absolutely here for it. 

My relationship with social media has had to evolve. At the very beginning, at the onset of SalviSoul, bringing it into the social media scape, it was just such a nurturing place. All the folks who have kind of been that person and had that experience like I had, where I was really excited to look for Salvi cookbooks and then came up on two, and then the two were sold out. We were all finding each other. And it was just so beautiful. I kept having these feelings, again, and again, of like, ‘Oh, you too! You have this thing? Oh my gosh.’ So, it was a really beautiful thing. 

And knowing that the numbers kept going up, and I had—I remember when I just had a few hundred followers. And I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh. I have 400 people who are with me on this, who think that this should be a thing. Oh my gosh, this is so f*****g cool.’ 

And then when I had made the decision to not self publish, but to pursue this journey of traditional publishing, I met a great agent. And she said, ‘This is an incredible project. There is an audience for this. We definitely can find you a publisher who will do right by you. However, you need more followers.’ And I think at this point in time, I maybe had like 4,000. She said, ‘I need you to have at least 10.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my gosh. That's a lot.’

And for me at the time, I think I also interpreted it as I can't connect to that many people. Because it was just like, ‘Connecting, connecting, connecting with—it was just I was finding family. And you do the catch of you go with friends. You go, ‘How you’ve been?’ And it was just organic, too. It wasn't a strategy of how to gain a bigger following. It was just like, ‘I want to know, where the rest of the diaspora is.’ Because people from Canada, from Abu Dhabi, from Tokyo, Savis all over the world, they're like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I've been waiting for something like this. And I'm so happy I found you.’

So then hearing, ‘We need 10,000,’ I was like, ‘There's no way I can get these by myself. I need to find people to promote my work. I need to get in front of more people.’ It's just this compounded stress of ‘I need to keep having these emotional connections people that I don't think I have capacity for.’ That had been the way that the community grew. 

And a lot of this too, I have to be very careful. Because I see this happen a lot, where you have projects or books that are about tough things that we've had to survive. It becomes the gimmick. You show all your pain and suffering, and then they say, ‘Oh, yeah, that's enough for us to humanize you. We feel something now, so we're gonna care now.’ 

I almost felt when this person said, ‘I need you to have 10,000,’ I felt like this person wanted me to do that, because that's the fastest way you can get attention or make a meaningful connection. And those were a lot of things to process. No one's in my family has ever been published. There's never been a freelancer in my family. I became one so that I could be available for this. I was Frankensteining income with whatever came my way. 

And now I just felt like I had this huge task of, ‘Go find another 5,000+ people that you need to connect with and that they need to find value in the work you do, when you have receipts to show that the general public has cared less about the Salvadoran community.’

So yeah, it was fucked up. I was like, ‘I don't know how to-’ I didn't know how to deal. But I just kept doing what I was doing. I kept posting, posting not really with a strategy in mind but just, ‘Hey, this is what I'm learning. I'm sharing it with you all, because this is what the page is.’ And then eventually, a few folks with—who are also Salvis and had larger, much larger followings, who were Salvis in fashion, Salvis in makeup sharing, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s a food account and she's doing cooking classes. You guys have to follow.’

And then, we eventually got to 10,000 especially after the L.A. Times piece. That helped a lot. And I went back to that agent and I said, ‘Hey, guess what! I have the 10,000. It was amazing.’ And then unfortunately, they ghosted me. So, I don't know. Was she really serious, or was she maybe just giving me a number that felt difficult and she maybe thought, ‘It'll take her a really long time.’ Or maybe she really was—It was last year that I got back to her, so 2020. Have to have a bit of patience with folks, because we're all still going through it. 

So yeah, I think social media—it's hard, ‘cause that was the same year that American Dirt came out. And we were all talking about how does someone with 3000 followers. Three books, I think. She'd already published three books, get a six figure book deal. And she only has less than 5,000 followers on any accounts. How did that happen? How? So, we know how. 

So yeah, I think that I, as far as my strategy now with social media, I'm wanting to still connect with people. I'm choosing to create from a place that is of service to Salvi folks. creating beautiful things, creating informative things. 

The end of last year was really hard, because I had family who was hospitalized due to COVID. And thankfully, they're fine now, thank and goodness. Everything was just really difficult. And I think I didn’t post for like three months, which I think is—yeah, exactly. It's criminal when you think about it and everything you have to do. I stopped doing my cooking classes that I was doing weekly. I stopped posting. I didn't have it in me. 

Yeah, I’ve have had time to rest. I have help now, too. I have someone who helps me with social media. So yeah, I think it's always a habit of resetting what social media is there to do for you. And publishers, I'm sure, will want me to have hundreds of thousands. But if that's not what I have, then that's not what I have. And I'm not gonna buy followers. I'm not going to do anything that doesn't feel honest. And that's just what they have to deal with, ‘cause I have to deal with a lot more than just worry, worrying about how many followers I have. 

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

Karla: I think so, yes. Yes. It doesn't always have to be. I think cooking, the intention behind it can be very much like eating. But sometimes we eat for health, sometimes we eat for enjoyment. Sometimes we eat because otherwise we're gonna die. 

Being a diabetic, my relationship to food almost feels like it's on this whole other level. Because there have been moments where—yeah, I'm not sure how familiar you are with diabetes, but you can—I have Type 1, so my pancreas, which produces the insulin that helps me break down all the carbohydrates that become sugar that become energy, my body doesn't make any. So I have to give myself between five to six injections a day of insulin. And everything I eat is a very conscious choice. 

And so naturally, anytime I cook is also very conscious. And when you add that layer of cooking Salvadoran food when there are so many policies that have meant to harm my community, cooking is definitely a very political act. To say that I'm going to learn and practice these ways in this country, and that I'm going to teach others to thrive at it as well, I think is the most radical thing I can do for my community and for us to feel strong. So absolutely. I think it's a political act.

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

Karla: Oh my gosh, thank you so much. This has been wonderful.

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Do I need to introduce Julia Turshen to a food crowd? Her cookbooks are best sellers and she’s written for everyone. Before I made my foray into food writing, I envied her quite a bit for seemingly having achieved all my dreams far before I was ready or able to do so, despite the fact that we’re the same age.

In this conversation, I wanted to understand her approach to creating “healthy” recipes and what inspired the one vegan chapter in her new book, Simply Julia, but I also wanted to discuss how privilege has manifested in her career and why she’s stepped away from the spotlight to work on a farm. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Julia. Thank you so much for coming on today.

Julia: Thank you so much for having me. This is very exciting, and I appreciate it so much. Yeah, thank you.

Alicia: Of course.

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

Julia: Sure. I've listened to, I think, all of the interviews you've done. And I love this question so much. I love hearing everyone's response, so this is just very surreal and exciting for me to answer. 

So I grew up in Manhattan until I was about eight. And then my family moved to the suburbs, about half an hour outside of New York City. And I was raised by my parents, my mom and my dad, who both worked full-time since way before I was born. So I was also very much raised by my babysitter, Jenny.

And I would say the food I ate growing up, I ate a lot of food outside of our house. We depended on Chinese takeout a lot. We ate a lot of pizza. We ate a lot of Jewish delicatessen food, Ashkenazi, all different, chicken soup and knish and that kind of stuff. My family loves a diner. [Laughter.] Lots of bagels, and occasionally McDonald's. I was a chicken nugget kid. 

And I would say the food in my family's home—I was thinking about this, and I feel like it was divided between three basic food groups. Or not food groups, but items or themes. So there was a lot of packaged diet food. There was a lot of SnackWell cookies, Boca Burgers, stuff like that. In our house, there was a lot of food purchased from prepared food stores, so containers of pesto pasta, stuff like that. 

And then there was also Jenny's cooking. And this was the food that I loved the most when I was a kid. Jenny's food that she would mostly prepare for herself and share with me is the food that I feel, I guess, one of the foods I feel most deeply connected to. 

And it feels, I don't know, especially important to talk about right now because Jenny is from St. Vincent, which I'm sure you're aware of because of where you live. But there was just, or there continues to be, this really crazy volcano erupting in St. Vincent, looks like devastating the country. So thinking about Jenny and her family and St. Vincent right now is kind of top of mind for me. And if it's ok, can I just shout out a website? 

Alicia: Of course! Yeah. [Laughs.]

Julia: Ok, so there's a website called https://www.feedstvincent.org/. So it's S-T-Vincent, https://www.feedstvincent.org/. And the chef from Food Sermon in Brooklyn, who is also a Vincentian, he's started this kind of meal response thing, ’cause a lot of people are in need there. So I'm really grateful that he set that up. And it’s just a very tangible, easy place for people to go to support just a country that is going through a very rough time right now. 

That was a long answer. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: I love the Food Sermon. Yeah, it's a great restaurant. 

Where outside of New York did you grow up?

Julia: I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you just said.

Alicia: Where outside of New York did you grow up?

Julia: Oh, in Westchester County. My family moved to Harrison.

Alicia: I'm from Long Island, and so I always want to know. [Laughs.]

Julia: Yeah, totally. The bridge and tunnel connection, I’m with you.

Alicia: [Laughs.]

And also, what you grew up eating was so very similar to what I grew up eating, which is pizza, Chinese takeout, that sort of thing. It's very, very similar. And it's also funny, because I didn't realize that we were born in the same year until I was googling you because for the entire time I've been writing about food, you've been the—a presence in the food world and in food media. And so, what made you work in food and how did you kind of become focused on home cooking?

Julia: I have been interested in food my whole life. I have been cooking since before I can remember, since I was a little, little kid. And I've always wanted to be in the kitchen, and I think some of that is because I didn't grow up in a family where my parents were cooking. I didn't learn to cook at my grandmother's knee or anything like that. I think I was seeking that kind of, I don't know, sort of domestic life maybe in some way without even realizing it. But these are thoughts I've had as an adult. As a kid, I just wanted to be in the kitchen. I thought it was just the greatest place. And I continue to think that.

But the thing that is, I think, most significant for me in terms of working in food media as opposed to just food in general—‘cause as you know, the food industry is one million industries under one big umbrella. But my parents worked in publishing. So my whole life, I have been exposed to print media, to books and magazines. 

And I've had that early exposure. I've also had access to the publishing world since before I can remember. After school, when I would go to my parent’s office, I was walking into office buildings that I continue to go into now. I mean, I guess virtually [laughter] if I'm meeting with someone. But that definitely has informed my career. It's paved the way a lot of, for a lot of my work and everything. 

So I think that's super important to mention, because I think when we talk about opportunity, especially within publishing, which is the most opaque industry and is allergic to transparency, I just feel it's super important to just talk about how we got into it, which I appreciate how much you do that. 

And the second part of your question about home cooking, I have always been a home cook and I proudly identify as one. If someone calls me a chef, I feel like I'm always looking over my shoulder, like, ‘Who are you talking to?’ [Laughter.] 

And for me, home cooks and chefs are just different things. And I'm really happy to be a home cook. I think they're both worthy. They're both valuable. They're just different. And I try not to confuse them, because I'm really proud of what I accomplish in my home kitchen and I'm proud of what other people accomplish on a daily basis in theirs. And I'm so happy to be a home cook who writes for other home cooks. I try to share all my recipes and stories from that sort of shared place, I would say. 

And I guess the only sort of professional cooking experience I've had, in addition to recipe writing, is I did work for many years as a private chef. But that was always me cooking in other people's home kitchens. I still think of that—even though it's not just sort of the daily relentless grind of home cooking within your own home, and it is paid. And yeah, I guess you could call me a chef for that. Whatever, I don't care what you call me. 

But that, to me, just continued to inform my life as a home cook. And I just had access to many home kitchens and access to many families who had the ability to hire someone to cook for them in their home, which is a really interesting, fascinating experience. And at the end of the day, I think everyone just wants to feel very taken care of. I think that was a big takeaway for me. I mean, I have other takeaways from that time, but I won’t bore you. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you mention kind of the relentless grind of home cooking. How are you feeling in the home, cooking, after working on cookbooks—we're in a pandemic. How have you been relating to food over the last year?

Julia: I mean, it's made me appreciate the fact that I love to cook so much. I'm so grateful for that. 

I don't know. I feel like I'm always kind of ruminating about home cooking and home cooks, and always thinking about the labor that is home cooking. The undervalued, unacknowledged, just—I think, really—not very well-understood labor. And I'm someone who gets acknowledged and credited for that labor. I get to put my work out there. I get to make a business, a career out of it. But I'm doing what many people are doing everyday without any credit or acknowledgement.

And when we cook at home—again, you know, this—but we're not just making dinner. We are planning for it. We're maybe keeping a budget. We are keeping endless mental inventory of what's in our kitchens. We're trying to use things up. We're probably taking other people's needs and desires into consideration. We're shopping. We're also cleaning up. We do so much cleaning up. 

That's part of why I don't put—this is a sidebar in a tangent. But I don't put times in my recipes, ‘active time’ or ‘prep time’ or whatever, because I just feel like it's endless. Are we including washing the dishes and cleaning the counter and the grocery shopping? That's all part of making the recipe. So I just don't put that, because then I feel like I'm measuring myself against it or something. I don't know, it just makes my head spin. And am I asking other people to measure themselves against it? I just don't like that kind of vibe. 

Anyway, so yes, home cooks are just incredibly valuable. We sustain households, communities, and this is really important work that often just doesn't get the credit that I think it so deserves. So, yeah, I definitely am so happy and proud to be a home cook, especially over the last year. And I'm also really happy and proud to have the opportunity to celebrate my fellow home cooks who don't often get that—I don't know—cheer or celebration.

Alicia: Yeah, no. 

It's funny, because I think over the last year, it's the first time I've really thought of all that labor that you just mentioned that goes into it. I think it's been so apparent to me in a way that it wasn't before, where before, when I would cook dinner, it would be part of, more of a—what felt like a full day. And now it feels more just the only point of my day. 

I just see it also clearly. That mental inventory, I have felt the weight of that mental inventory of what's in the kitchen over the last year in a way that I never have before, which is interesting. And actually, maybe I want to explore that deeper because it really is such a—it’s so much pressure, I feel.

Julia: Yeah, for sure. I'm nodding out loud. [Laughter.]

Alicia: No, but it's funny. And, it's a lot of different complications there of trying to keep life afloat and also make sure if there's food in the kitchen, etc, etc. 

And, it's been better to get inspiration from cookbooks like your new book, Simply Julia. And I wanted to—it's hard for me, and I don't really talk about it. The only time I've written about kind of ‘health’ in my newsletter, it was—I literally put it in quotes, so that I wouldn't be kind of making a judgement because I do feel it's so difficult to talk about. People are so connected. You don't want to tell anyone a food is bad or a food is good. And health necessarily kind of says, ‘This is good.’

And so I wanted to ask how you kind of decided to approach that idea, as well as the issues of fatphobia, which are so deeply connected to ideas of health and how we talk about them.

Julia: I so appreciate you asking this, and kind of giving the context for how you've gone about it in your work or, or not gone towards it, because it's super sticky. I'll just back up for a second, because something I just heard you say that I feel is tied to this is just that feeling of pressure within home cooking. 

Having nothing to do with health, but that's something I just think about a lot. I think in the age of social media and cookbooks and stuff, I think, in general, I see and feel and observe the sense of pressure that home cooks feel, that I think a lot of people feel. I think this measuring of ourselves against each other and ourselves. And that's something I try to push against as much as I can in my work.

I basically feel like the kitchen is the one place where I don't feel anxious in my life. [Laughter.] Everywhere else, I am so anxious. And that's why I take medication and see a therapist and have supportive friends and boundaries in my friendships and all these things. Anxiety is a big part of my life. And it's really interesting to me that it's not a part of my cooking life. And I feel that's a place that causes stress and pressure for most people. So I feel like that is this big knot I am constantly trying to untie and understand and just be aware of.

And I'm saying all this, because what you mentioned just really resonated, but also because everything I just described to me, for me personally—I can only speak from my own personal experience—but that's all rooted in diet culture. In the sense of perfectionism, this sense of trying to attain the unattainable. And I'm talking about thinness. [Laughs.] 

And the more I understand about diet culture and the role it's played in my life—I mentioned I grew up in a SnackWell’s Cookie home. The more I understand the roots of diet culture being the roots of everything that's problematic in our world, which is racism and white supremacy and these things that, I don't know, you do such a great job of tackling in your work. 

And I've been the beneficiary of reading work like yours, reading work like, I don't know, Sabrina Strings’ book Fearing the Black Body, really understanding this—The Body is Not An Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. 

Work like this has really changed my life, because, as I told you, I've loved to cook forever. It's where I have found so much joy, so much curiosity, so much connection to other people. So much confidence. I feel my most confident in the kitchen, not because I think everything I cook is great. I just think that I can figure it out. And that feels really good. But I have not felt the same competence, or joy, or positivity when it comes to eating. Cooking and eating have been kind of separate things for me. 

And my whole life, I felt so drawn to food in ways that have sometimes felt obsessive. Which I think is true for honestly a lot of people in food. I've talked to a lot of people about this. I think that issues around eating, whether it's living with an eating disorder, or disordered eating, or just any sort of obsessive feeling about food, I think it's incredibly common. It's part of what brings us to it. I don't know, what you're asking and this whole topic is such a huge topic. And I think I need to just slow myself down while I'm talking about it, because I think I'm trying to talk about so many things. 

But basically, yeah, the subtitle of my new book is ‘healthy comfort food.’ And I know that those words bring up a lot for a lot of people, including myself. And I guess the reason I wanted to go in that direction and go for it is because these issues have been a big part of my life. I have loved cooking, but I have had intense issues with body image and disordered eating and restrictive eating. 

These are things I've been working through personally, and my work is really personal. So I chose to share with us more publicly, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to write a healthy cookbook that is not about weight loss. This is a healthy cookbook that doesn't equate the word ‘healthy’ with skinny. 

And I guess in terms of thinking about your question about why I've chosen to address this publicly, I'm not the first person to do so by any means. Some of those books I just mentioned, there's many more like them. I just do think fatphobia is everywhere. It's everywhere. Diet culture is everywhere. And so, I think it needs to be confronted from everywhere. 

And for me, that definitely includes mainstream cookbooks, because mainstream cookbooks, ones I've been lucky to produce and be a part of, they go a long way to influencing how we understand terms like healthy. And they have definitely informed how I've thought about healthy, and I used to think it just meant skinny. And coming to understand that it doesn't—it's just something I feel really strongly about sharing. 

And I guess in some ways, I think I wrote this book to kind of change my own definition of it just for myself and therefore kind of hold myself accountable. And hold myself accountable in a really positive way for myself to just, continue to treat myself with compassion, and to try and do that for other people. I don't know, I feel like everything I'm saying is a little bit vague. [Laughs.] But it's a big, it's—no pun intended—a very weighty topic. 

And I just think health is a really—it reminds me of the word ‘natural’ on food packaging. It's overused, so much to the point where it both means nothing and it also means something that it doesn't mean. It's come to mean that. And I just think that's honestly really dangerous. And I don't know, I feel I just want cooking and eating and food to be as safe of a thing as possible. 

So, I think this is an attempt to be part of that kind of conversation. I don't know. Those are some rambly, separate thoughts, but I'm happy to talk about all of this or more. But yeah, it's definitely—ok, I’ll stop. 

Alicia: No, it's so loaded. It's so loaded.

And I feel it, because I write about, not about veganism or vegetarianism. And people tie these things to restrictive eating. There's a big strain of vegans who are recovering from an eating disorder and veganism is a safe way to still be mindful, I guess, of what one is eating. 

But I've become really, really intense, like you were saying, about talking about the way that fatphobia is an expression of anti-Blackness. And the ways in which we have to talk about it as a European beauty ideal is the same as blonde hair and that sort of thing. We have to make it as though it's as neutral as that. Its meaning is as neutral as that, and we have to talk about the reason that we are kind of obsessed with it. [Laughs.] 

And so I really think it's important to address in the way that you have, because people are very weird about food. And because our culture has made us weird about food. And I don't mean weird about food in a negative way. We don't, especially as women, etc., etc., we don't feel very free to eat in a way that maybe our bodies are telling us to. We just don't. 

Julia: Yeah. I, again, am just nodding my head really vigorously over here. You can't see me, but just please know that that's happening. 

I could not agree more. And something that I write a little bit about in the introduction to the book, when I'm sort of talking about the word healthy and something I think about all the time, is the fact that I think it's a word and a feeling that I think is up for all of us to define for ourselves. And I think having the agency to define it individually is incredibly important, because we live in different bodies. [Laughs.] That is obvious, but I think that maybe isn't always obvious by the way these things are written about. 

And, for me, I definitely define healthy using that word you just used, which is free. It's feeling freedom. It's feeling freedom from these imposed sort of pressures and restrictions and everything you said, beauty ideals, and all these things. And it's feeling free from judgment, and it's feeling free to make choices. 

Freedom to me is an incredibly important part of what it means to feel healthy. And I also know that the word freedom is incredibly loaded as well. And I don't know, I just appreciate the opportunity to just talk about these things with people like yourself, and many other people. Because I think that's how these things can change is through these types of conversations, right?

Alicia: And to also talk about vegan stuff, you have a chapter on vegan meals in the book. Which I think is great, because I do think people think of eating a vegan meal as something daunting. I mean, it's funny to me, of course, because I'm like, ‘I don't even know where I would put cheese in a meal. I don't know where you put the meat. I don't know.’ [Laughter.] 

But I'm always kind of talking about people in food media having sort of a responsibility to talk about the ways in which meat is a destructive force in our planet, in the way that it is industrialized, etc., etc. And so, how do you approach that idea that the food system is a huge part of global greenhouse gas emissions? Meat is also the biggest culprit in that. How do you approach that personally, and also in your work in a way that isn't alienating?

Julia: Yeah, great question. 

I don't know that I have the answer here. But I can just tell you some thoughts I have on this. And I guess my disclaimer is that my thoughts on this are constantly evolving based on information that I am finding. Information that's new to me, that's not new information. 

And, yeah, not to keep saying this, but a lot of that information for me on this topic comes from you and your newsletter. It comes from other people I read and talk to who either identify as vegan or work in farming or work in policy work, or cook for their community or feed their community in other ways. People who are attached to the food system in very conscious ways. I would say people I've learned a lot from who I know you've talked about a lot in your work are people like Karen Washington, people like Leah Penniman. I don't know. The more I learn, the more I learn, which is true for all of us. [Laughter.] 

So I don't know. In thinking about this, I was thinking about ‘How do I decide what I put in my books, or what I put on my table?’ Which are very similar things. And most of these decisions come from the people I am feeding, the people I am cooking for. The person who I do that for the most—if that's a sentence, I'm not sure—is my wife, Grace. 

My home kitchen is me and my wife and our two dogs. I would say our dogs are the ones who consume the most meat in our household. So I don't know, that's maybe a sidebar thing, but would be interesting to talk to you about ‘cause you have a dog, right? 

Alicia: Yeah. 

Julia: Yeah. ’Cause veganism and dog ownership, I think, is a very interesting topic. Yeah, I could talk to you about so many things. But I'm going to try and answer your question. 

I think a lot about who I'm cooking for and what their needs are. And so in our household, I mean, I basically, I'll eat anything. I'm very lucky to not have any allergies or anything like celiac disease, like my body can handle most foods. I'm grateful for that. I try to be selective about what I eat based on what I like and what supports my local farmers and all that kind of stuff. 

But in terms of meat consumption in our household separate from our dogs, we—my wife, Grace, doesn't like red meat. She used to eat a lot of pork. She's Southern. But she just no longer really likes it. So we eat a lot of vegan and vegetarian meals, and we also eat chicken and fish. We have the privilege to be very selective about where we buy, those items or all these items. 

And something that's been on my mind, which was interesting to hear you talk about a lot of people who are recovering from eating disorders or disordered eating turning to veganism, the way I have continued to, I guess, just heal my disordered eating has been through the framework of intuitive eating. And this is something I would say I'm probably, I don't know, I don't think I'm at the very beginning stages of but I'm not out of the dark space altogether. This is something I'm just continuing to figure out for myself. 

And within the framework of intuitive eating, it's really important to me to not impose restrictions on myself and to just listen to my body and to get to know my body more. And the minute I imposed any restriction, I'm going to cut out whatever it is: sugar or dairy or vegetables. I mean, I'm not cutting out vegetables. But whatever the restriction is, it doesn't matter. But the minute I hear, ‘I'm cutting this out,’ that brings up a lot of not great stuff for me. So I try to not do that.What I tried to do, which causes no triggering things for me, is to just be really conscious of where I'm getting my ingredients. Which is a privilege to have that just time to think about, to have the money to choose where I spend it and all that kind of stuff. 

So these are things I think about. But in terms of the book itself, yeah, there's a chapter of—it's vegan one pot meals for the reason you kind of suggested. I think a lot of people think of a meal without meat in it as something like, ‘Well, what's it going to be? What's the centerpiece of this or something?’ I talk to home cooks all the time. I talk to home cooks on social media all the time, like, I am in this ongoing conversation with people who are cooking at home. And I know this comes up for a lot of people. So that's why I wanted to make it one pot meals. Make this feel really simple, because it can be simple, but also make it feel cozy and familiar. And I don't want to other it. 

But yeah, that chapter is in a book that also has a chapter of chicken recipes. And I don't know, in terms of being conscious of the food system and climate change or climate crisis and how it infects all this, I don't know. If I were to write this book today versus when I started working on it, that's something I've thought about. Would it still have the chicken chapter? I'm not sure. I don't know I'm continuing to learn and I'm just grateful to learn. 

I feel like I would like to share this with you if it's ok. And maybe we'll get into this with some of the questions that are coming up. I've taken a big pivot, and I, a couple weeks ago, started working and I'll continue to be in this job for the rest of the year. I have a new full-time job. And I'm actually working at my favorite local vegetable farm. And I have taken a step back from cookbook world and food media and stuff. Everyone I work with is vegan. We're talking about this stuff all day every day while we're farming. And I feel my mind and body just absorbing a lot of new information. 

So I don't know, maybe we can talk in a few minutes and see—I don't know. It's super interesting. 

Alicia: And I love that you're working in a local farm with people who are vegan, because a lot of the narrative around veganism that we get online, I'm gonna say. [Laughs.] And it's terrible, because in the pandemic, I've just been online. Twitter is the only way I know what people are doing or thinking about. It's affecting my book that I'm writing, obviously, because I'm writing it in a pandemic. I'm not out in the world talking to people. 

And so, I'm just hearing what these people online have to say. And I identify as vegetarian now, because I do eat local eggs and local goat cheese. And sometimes I'll eat pizza with—just out of just a sense of communal joy, I would say. [Laughs.] 

Julia: Yeah, pizza has a lot of communal joy. I agree. [Laughs.]

Alicia: People are really upset with me about this. Even though I am, all I promote is the idea of centralizing vegetables in your diet and stepping away from meat as the centerpiece of your eating. But the vegans are very angry with me all the time. 

And I think it's because they're not really understanding how ecological systems work. And I'm probably gonna upset any vegan who's listening to this, but sometimes there's just a real disconnect in terms of actual farming and how an actual agro-ecological system would function. And how localized food systems would work. I mean, obviously, you would eat very little animal product. That's just it.

Julia: Yeah.

I live in New York State. I live a couple hours north of New York City. And if I were 1,000% vegan who ate no animal products and was also very aware of all the things you just said, I would also never eat a banana, or a lime, or an avocado, or these things that I think are very prevalent in a lot of vegan recipes and stuff. And I don't know. It’s all fascinating. 

And it's just interesting about the sort of the conversations happening on Twitter, too, because this idea of upsetting the vegan stuff, which I'm sure we're both doing in many ways. But it's also like, yeah, upsetting the vegans who are active on Twitter, which I think is one group. Again, I just keep using the word interesting. 

And I don't know. I think, again, there isn't a one-size fits all for everyone. I think that's why we have to define healthy for ourselves. I care about you as a person in the world, but I don't care what you eat. That doesn't matter to me. But I am interested in it. I'm curious about how you make these decisions, but what you eat has zero impact on my life. 

I mean, maybe the decisions about who you're supporting and stuff, maybe it does have an impact. I don't know. This is complicated. But I think the judgment and the measuring against each other, which I think, again, rooted in white supremacy and racism and diet culture. Everything we're talking about is connected, even if it doesn't maybe seem that way. I don't know, I think that's something I'm very passionate about, is just trying to remove judgment.

Alicia: Yeah, no. 

And I mean, it's hard because there is—the collective impact of what we eat is real. And I mean, that's why we need systemic change, to make it easier for everyone to make choices that are healthy for the earth, healthy for us as human beings, because we do feel—and I mean, this is a bit woo-woo. But we do feel the impact energetically of how healthy and how good other people feel. That has an impact on all our lives. 

Julia: I mean, I am a gay woman who's working at a vegetable farm in the Hudson Valley. I'm all for the woo-woo. That's fine. I'm with you. You don't have to explain that to me. [Laughter.] 

Alicia: But it's real. And I think it's important to talk about. Yeah.

It's hard, because I want to talk to vegans about my own choices and my own kind of—but then I'm kind of considered an ex-vegan. And that's a really bad thing. [Laughs.]

Julia: It's really interesting, ’cause it almost—there's a parallel here to me about conversations I have with people in the queer community, where what does it mean if you, I don't know, have always been a lesbian and then you date a cisgendered man or something? 

I think these communities and cultures where labels take on a lot of, I don't know, weight and import and stuff, I think the world isn't black and white. [Laughs.] And there's a lot of nuance. And it's hard to figure out where you sit in the community that relies on labels to define yourself. And I think that gets really amplified when you enter spaces like Twitter, where there's very little room for nuance, which is why I don't spend much time-

Alicia: I need to stop. [Laughs.] And it's hard to get off when you're a writer, and when my work really depends on—I can look at the hits to my newsletter, and they're mostly coming from Twitter. I have to engage somewhat, but I am trying to engage in a more healthy way. Which, obviously, this is not what we're talking about, but I am engaged in a more healthy way. I don't see any one's responses to me unless I follow them, and so that's changed my whole life. 

Julia: That's cool. That’s smart. Good for you. That's great. 

I mean, I know, this isn't what we're talking about. But it's also-

Alicia: Social media is such a big part of our lives. I love to ask about people's relationships with social media, because I think it's useful also for the readers or the listeners to know what it's like for people who are kind of, I hate this phrase, but creating content and having to be on social media on this professional level. But it is work. It is labor.

Julia: Yeah, no. 

And it definitely feeds into our income. If you're getting hits on your newsletter that you're getting—there's paid subscribers, including myself. Highly recommend it. Very good investment. I get it.

I'm trying to get people to buy my book. Because, yes, I believe in my book, but I also have a mortgage I'm paying. These are actual things. And I think we don't talk about a lot of stuff like money and all that. I mean, you talk about it, but that's rare. And I don't know, the way social media plays into this, I think it's tied to everything we're talking about. This kind of sense of pressure, or exceptionalism. 

For me, when I used to check things like likes, or comments, or my ranking on something like Amazon or something, which is just not something I recommend anyone do. When we're checking these numbers, to me, it always just felt like how I used to feel when I would step on a scale and check my weight, which I haven't done in a long time. I threw out my scale a while ago, because it didn't make me feel good. 

And this kind of constant measuring. I feel like you kind of spoke to this earlier. I just feel it's worth mentioning now because I think there's a connection between these things. And something that's been really helpful for me is like, ‘Who provided these numbers? What are they getting out of it, because they're probably the person getting, or the institution getting, something out of it?’

This constant checking, we're doing it because someone provided these things. These rankings, these numbers. It's a big part of why I joined the farm crew, because it means I'm spending at least eight hours a day not on my phone or computer. And that feels revolutionary for me personally. And even in just a few weeks, I've noticed the difference in just how I feel. And honestly, to go back to this word, I feel healthier. I feel more free. I feel less judged, I'm judging myself less. I just don't care about these things, these numbers. And that feels honestly a relief.

Alicia: No, it's real.

Julia: Sorry, we can continue.

Alicia: Yeah, I mean I love the—any tangent is good. [Laughter.]

And I wanted to talk about your past cookbook Feed the Resistance. The website Equity at the Table, which is a database of food professionals who ID as queer, Black, Indigenous, person of color, women, non-binary. As a white food writer with a big platform, why have you taken on these political projects in food?

Julia: Excellent question. 

I have taken on these projects because I feel like I have the time, the money, and the access to do so. And it feels like a responsibility to do so. I don't consider myself a leader in these projects. And when I say that I'm not trying to abdicate responsibility, I just want to be very clear, again, about how I see myself. Sort of the home cook versus the chef thing. I think that leaders in the space know a lot more than I do. I am someone who's trying to actively learn more all the time, and trying actively, to connect with more people all the time. Because that makes my life more interesting and richer. There's a lot of really wonderful things that come with that. 

And I don't know, I've been thinking about this in anticipation of talking to you because you were kind to share some of these questions ahead of time. And because of these relationships, I have had the tremendous opportunity to have people be generous with me and call me in. That is incredibly valuable. I try to surround myself with people who hold me accountable. And I try to hold myself accountable, as a white woman with a lot of privilege in the community. And the space I work in.

I mentioned to you, I grew up in publishing with white parents. It wasn't like I had to figure out how to get in the door. I was on the other side of it. And so I just think, I don't know, I think my thoughts on this position and these projects and stuff are again constantly evolving. 

And that evolution is, it happens in conversations like this one and ones I've had with many people. I try to talk to people who have had different experiences than I do, different perspectives, who have different levels of access than I do—both less and more. And I know what it's like to have the kind of access and agency I have. So I just basically feel I just try to do whatever I can to create more of that for more people. I feel really grateful for the moments and people who have talked to me along the way. 

You mentioned Feed the Resistance, which came out in 2017. I was thinking about, because you have interviewed Tunde Wey. 

Alicia: No, I haven’t, actually. I love Tunde Wey. I've never actually spoken to him. Which is funny, because I think we're fans of each other's work. But I haven't invited him for an interview yet, because I feel like I'm not ready. [Laughs.]

Julia: Yeah, no, I get that. I mean, I think you are, but I mean whatever. You’re a person, he’s a person. That's so funny. I really am totally a very regular reader and listener. Maybe I've just heard the two of you talking about such similar things, I imagined I've heard a conversation. Whatever. Anyway, you can cut this out. 

But Tunde was someone who—he wrote an essay for Feed the Resistance. He was part of it. I had reached out to him. And I was thinking about a conversation I had with him where he called me, basically—I don't know, I haven't talked to him about sharing the story, but I hope it's ok. 

He was like, ‘Are you the right person to be doing this book?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I don't know if there's a right person. I don't know that I am the right person. Here I am, the person doing it.’ And I don't know, it's just a really interesting conversation that I just really appreciate. But he took the time to have this conversation with me and not just about me. 

That's something I try to do in my life, personal and professional. I try to talk to people rather than about them as much as I can, ‘cause I have definitely benefited from that. I'd rather throw a lot of darts against the board and see what sticks and learn from the mistakes I make along the way, and just try and create safe spaces within my own life personally and professionally for the people I care about to have the same kind of space to get it right. And also get it wrong, ’cause we're not always going to get it right. So yeah, those are some thoughts.

Alicia: No, for sure. 

And I wanted to ask you about kind of—and I ask a lot of people about it. Do we think that the big moment of Adam Rapoport stepping down from Bon Appétit, has it—is it really going to change anything. And I've always said, I'm a mixed race white woman. And I've always been kind of conscious about how much easier it is for editors to give me an assignment or put me in a position than it would be for a Black or visibly Latinx writer. And what has kind of been going through your head during these moments, and how have you kind of decided to respond to it using your work?

Julia: Sure. Again, really appreciate this question, and all you do to ask other people the same question. And yourself.

I guess what's been going through my head right now, is what's been going through my head for a while. I know it's been going through yours as well based on things you've written about, and the Food Writers’ Workshop. I remember the first one, I went. And it was right after Equity at the Table started, within days, I think. It just felt really great to be there.

It was awesome to see what you and your fellow—I don't know what you would call them, colleagues, organizers, or whatever—put together just a conference that cost exactly what it costs to put on. Wow. That felt novel.And just with this tangible information, and I think all of that is very true to Equity at the Table, which was free to use, always will be. Free to join. This is not something that's scaling. And, anyway. 

So yes, I think that this ‘reckoning’—I put it in air quotes, because I'm not sure it is actually a reckoning. I'm not sure. But I feel like it's—I know it's overdue. 

And in terms of what I'm thinking about now, I'm actually working on something that I'm really, really excited about that has not been a very—it's not been a public thing at all, because I don't think it needs to be. But I think it's worth just kind of talking about here, because I think it answers your question. 

So I have been working with a really wonderful literary agent, which is not a unicorn. That is a thing that exists. There are few and far between. But this wonderful literary agent, Cindy Uh, who is an agent at CAA, which is a huge agency. I know Cindy, because she's a member of Equity at the Table. 

And she reached out to me, it was a few months ago, about working on a book with a client of hers, working as a co-author, which is something I've done a lot of. And I just didn't think I was the right person for the job, and I also wasn't looking for that job. I was approaching the burnout that has led me to work on the farm, which is maybe funny. I don’t know. [Laughter.] 

But I got to talking to Cindy about how did my name become one of the very small number of names on the post—it that someone like her or a cookbook editor reaches out to when an author is looking for a collaborator? ‘Cause it's not a very long list of names. And we got to talking about this. 

So we have, over the past few months, been working on this—I don't know what to call it. Workshop, I guess, that we started. We’re in the middle of it now. And basically, we are working with five writers who are all either women of color, or queer, and or queer. Basically all the same people who are part of Equity at the Table. 

But five people. And we are doing this workshop where we're meeting every Sunday afternoon on Zoom, and we're basically giving all the information of what it is to make a cookbook, what it is to be a collaborator. And we've broken it down. We've made this whole syllabus. Cindy has really taken charge on that. That's awesome. 

And what I think sets us apart from other things is it's not just the information. We're also trying to create a lot of connection and access. So, we are not the ones giving this information. We have brought on agents and editors,  high powered cookbook agents and editors who are sharing the information and getting to know these writers. 

And I think the combination of those two things, the information but also the access and the relationships and the connection, that feels incredibly important. Because, as you know, because you've done this, you can provide information. Someone can Google how to write a book proposal. I can give you ones I've done before. I can tell you exactly how I make them. I'm happy to do that. I do that all the time. But that's not the same as helping create a connection between the gatekeepers who get to make the decisions about who gets to be hired. And working on this is something that has just fueled me, and it's honestly left me feeling much more positive about the industry that I am taking a pause from because I have not felt so positive about it for a long time. 

And I guess what's going through my mind right now, to answer your question, is the difference between working on a large scale, working on something like Equity at the Table, which has a lot of members, that reaches a lot of people. That's very big, right? Working on something like Feed the Resistance, which, again, had a lot of contributors, got a lot of press, tried to reach a lot of people. These large scale things. 

What I am really interested in now is something on a slightly smaller scale but that has a lot of impact. These five writers, that will make a very big impact, ‘cause that is literally doubling the number of go-to collaborators. And that feels important. 

And it's not that the other stuff doesn't feel important. I guess in general, I've tried to reach a lot of people with my work, whether it's in cookbooks or in other work I do. And I think I'm just at a point in my life right now when I'm just much more interested in much more personal connections, including stepping away from cookbooks to work on the farm and work with a small group of people in person every day, and not try and reach thousands of people online. 

I want to know the people who are buying the vegetables we're growing, and I want to know the people that I'm working with. And that feels just really—it's nice to have both these things in my life. And I guess that's what's on my mind, right now. I don't know, this is incredibly cheesy what I'm about to say. 

But something that has helped me just—it's given me a really helpful framework for everything we're talking about as to just try and think about food media, making it and consuming it, in the same way I think about making and consuming food. And I just try to think about, ‘Where does it come from? Who is making it? How are those people treated? What is the level of access and agency?’

I don't know, I think all these things apply for both. And that just helps me organize the stuff in my head because otherwise, it feels really overwhelming.

Alicia: No, it is overwhelming. And we do need our own little methodologies for dealing with. Because it's overwhelming. The world is overwhelming. It's so hard to do any right thing ever.

I was having this conversation with friends yesterday about whether it's okay for us to go to Costco in Puerto Rico, because—and it's like, I cook all the time. I bake all the time. I make recipes for other people to make, to influence other people to do vegan baking. And I need a lot of stuff, unfortunately, to do that. And the way to do that is in an affordable manner is to go to Costco. 

And I don't know, we don't have a car. You take kind of the climate impact of being people who don't drive every day, who don't put a car on the road. so what is it to kind of have some imported food in that— Anyway. 

So the whole thing is this whole kind of arithmetic around what choices can you make that are good for the planet and your local economy? And what choices are good for you as a human being who has to also work? [Laughs.]

Julia: Totally.

Yeah, I mean, I'm so with you. And these are things I think about often as both, to use this dreaded phrase that I think we both don't like, but as a creator of content. But also just as a person who feeds myself and my loved ones, and exist in this world. 

And I just think, I don't know, hearing what you just said, trying to figure out the right thing? I'm trying to understand that. I think with the options that exist and the systems that exist, I don't know that the right thing is available to us. So I think we are just, all, just, I don't know, doing the best we can with what we have. And we have different things. I just feel calmer about it when I'm like, ‘Oh, there isn't a right answer, because these things aren't built to support the right answer.’

So I think we're figuring, I think we're building the plane while we're flying it, whatever other analogies work here. And I don't know, I feel like I get things wrong all the time. But I'm trying to understand that that just is what it is. And part of why I get things wrong is because we're not set up to get things right. And that is the issue. Not so much my personal choices, though those are important.

Alicia: No, they are important. And I mean, to get now to this question, why for you is cooking a political act?

Julia: Again, hear you ask everyone this. I'm always like, ‘How would I answer this?’ And now? Oh, my gosh, we have reached the moment. 

Is cooking a political act? Absolutely. It's a political act. 100%. I don't think it's always a conscious political act. I don't think every single time I, I don't know, make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich am I like, ‘This is political.’ 

But I think that every time we spend money on anything, including food, we make decisions that have a political impact and make decisions that give feedback to systems that we are very attached to, whether we want to be or not. 

I think also another sort of part of this is that I think every time I share something I cook, whether it's a cookbook or an Instagram post, I think that sharing, that amplification, that attempt to communicate something, I think that is inherently political. So that's something I think about a lot. 

I love that you ask this question, because I think it reminds us that, or at least it reminds me, that I think we often think about political as something like capital P, right? ‘This moment, I'm voting. I'm advocating for this politician or something.’ These things that are incredibly important. But I think our lives are political. We exist in political systems. So everything we do is attached to that. And I think that it's kind of designed to make us not realize that. 

So yeah, I think my everyday cooking at home is totally political, as are so many other parts of my life. And the fact that I don't realize that often is, I think, part of both the problem and maybe the solution, or a solution. 

Oh, my gosh. I have so many other thoughts based on everything you ask, and that is just, I think, a testament to the work you show. So thank you.

Alicia: Thank you. 

No, you're too kind to me through this. I keep saying I need to get some people on who are going to be contentious. [Laughs.] I don’t have to do that. ‘Oh, are people bored? Are these too kind? Am I not challenging myself enough by not sparring in any way?’

Julia: I think that's the Long Island in you. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, again, I appreciate so much you taking the time out today to talk about all this. I'm so excited to hear and see more about your work on the farm and to continue to get inspiration from your cookbooks.

Julia: Well, thank you so much. And I really appreciate your time. I appreciate the time you make for all the amazing people you have on this. I'm really grateful to be one of them. And I just continue to look forward to learning from your work too. So I guess this is some mutual appreciation. And I think that is A-ok. I don't think you have to get the haters. That’s fine.

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

Aja Barber and I have been following each other online for years, while we were both working various jobs and trying to get anyone to pay attention to our work. Contrary to how most people are taught these things work, we only got anyone to pay attention when we started our own independent ventures: for me, this newsletter; for Aja, her incredible Patreon. She also has a book coming out, called Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism & the Need for Collective Change.

Her work on the subject of mindless fashion consumption and waste has many parallels to mine on food, which is why I was so excited to discuss it with her: In both discussions, classism is used to defend cheap goods that rely on extraction from the Global South. In both discussions, personal feeling is made to be more significant than political and economic reality. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Aja. Thank you so much for taking the time out today.

Aja: Thank you for having me. It's nice to finally chat. We've been Twitter friends for close to a decade. But this is the first time we're talking.

Alicia: It's amazing, and I love it. 

How are things over there in the UK right now?

Aja: Well, you know what, everything's better when spring comes. That's the reality, is that the—there's more sunshine. It gets really dark here during the winter, and when you're already in a pandemic and you can't see friends and you don't really feel like going out, it just—it was a hard winter. 

So, things are feeling way more positive just because there's more sunshine. And  things tend to be sort of loosening up here. Of course, still being precautious. But it feels more hopeful. So you've caught me on one of my better days.

Alicia: [Laughs.] I'm so glad.

This week, I think we're switching from—to summer, basically. If you came to Puerto Rico from a temperate climate, you wouldn't notice the seasons. But since living here, I noticed the changes. And I think we got two weeks of winter, where I could sit and work and not be sweating all day. But we're back to that. From 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., it is definitely hot all day. [Laughs.]

Aja: My family's in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. So, I totally get-

Both: Yes. [Laughter.]

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

Aja: So I'm from Northern Virginia, right outside of D.C. I’d say it's like zone 6 on the tube, basically. So Northern Virginia, DC Metropolitan. And I grew up eating a lot of plants and fish, because my parents are actually pretty healthy and pretty progressive as far as food goes. And I was definitely the kid that got made fun of for having whole-wheat sandwiches, stuff like that. 

And we see all of these ideas that are popping up, and everybody's sort of talking about it like it's new, but my parents belonged to a food co-op when I was a kid. And it made them weird. [Laughter.] We would get really great, fresh vegetables. And my dad would buy things from the local farmers’ market. So the way I hear people talking about how we should be eating now, it's actually how I grew up, which in some ways is really privileged. And I totally recognize that, but as a kid, it made you a weirdo.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, and you have a book coming out called Consumed: On Colonialism, Climate Change, Consumerism and the need for Collective Change. I love the alliteration here. 

Aja: That was my editor. [Laughter.]

Alicia: And we're gonna get a little deeper into this, but hearing about that kind of upbringing in terms of food, what was your journey to understanding sustainable fashion?

Aja: So that's the entirety of the book basically, was talking about fashion and consumption, but also the fashion industry as a whole and how it really uplifts white and privileged voices and doesn't leave a lot of space for anyone else. But then when you look at the cycle of how things are produced, it makes sense because from start to finish, marginalized people are pretty heavily crapped upon by the system.

When we think about where the resources that go into our fashion comes from, it’s countries in the Global South. So we have these countries in the Global South that are resource rich, labor rich, but for some reason not incredibly economically wealthy. And the fact that we're not questioning that: We should be. You can look around my living room, and you probably can find a few things that are actually made in England. I live in London, even though I'm American. And I don't think that that's a—I don't think that that is an outrageous reality. I think that's the reality of the system, but nobody's really actually questioning that like we should. 

And so, with the fashion industry, your clothing is produced in the Global South. The cotton is grown in the Global South; the fabrics are made in the Global South. And it’s shipped to the Global North where it's consumed really rapidly, because we know that the multinational brands have really sped up the seasons and made us think that it's normal to buy 20 pieces every season, when in actuality, that's not normal at all. 

And then we go through our clothing so quickly that the resale market is booming, but charity shops are chock-a-block of fast fashion. And then, because we can't just recycle our way out of this, it gets dumped on the Global South, where, in our heads, we think that we're doing something charitable, but in actuality, we've created an ecological problem. And it's being left on countries like Kenya, Ghana, Rwanda to basically mitigate. 

And we've had this idea in our head because of colonialism, white saviorism, that sort of stuff that like, ‘Oh, if you donate it to a charity, somebody in a poor country will really want it.’ When in actuality, No, nobody wants crap clothing. If you bought something that didn't last five wears, there's a very good chance that that person in Ghana doesn't want it either. 

And it ends up being this disaster system where the government of Ghana, the municipal branch, has to really deal with all of these imports. And I, as an American, there's one thing that Americans hate the most, it's having to pay their tax dollars to sort out someone else's mess. But that's essentially what the clothing problem is doing to countries in the Global South. 

So I talk about my personal experience, as someone who's always sort of been on the outside of the fashion industry looking in. I use the analogy, like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with all the little rich kids are singing and dancing with the Candy Man? That was me with the fashion industry. But sometimes not being invited in means that you take a really critical and shrewd eye to these systems. And as someone who felt I was always trying to be in the room, but never really let in the room, what I realized was that I don't actually want to be in that room because this is a problem and it needs to be sorted out.

Alicia: I mean, what did you like about fashion? What really attracted you to the fashion world, to begin with? 

Aja: So, the thing that attracted me most to the fashion world from the beginning was the need to fit in through material items. So I said my parents were sort of hippie-dippie for their time, but my mom has always been someone who did not understand the need to fit in through material items. She's always been a secondhand shopper, which I grew up in the ’80s, ’90s, that was not that cool. It was cool in the late ’90s. Kurt Cobain, God bless him, really sort of made the whole thrifting thing, grunge, that sort of thing. 

And even then, people still didn't get it. I remember in the eighth grade telling this guy that I had been friends with that I had bought something from a charity shop. And he said, ‘Oh, gross. You're wearing dead people's clothing.’ That was the response. So after that, I was like, ‘Ok, keep that s**t to yourself, Aja.’

And so in general, thrifting, secondhand shopping, wearing hand-me-downs has always been something where I didn't want people to look too closely at me because there were plenty of other reasons why I was socially ostracized. I didn't need it to be my clothes. But because I didn't have the right clothes, which when I was growing up, that was the Gap and the Limited, before the Limited Too started looking like a rainbow barfed inside of it. But at one point in time, the Limited Too was the s**t. 

And I didn't have that stuff. And so I became really obsessed with labels and wanting to have the right clothing. But then from that obsession for being socially ostracized came a genuine interest in the fashion industry. It became, ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is actually really cool. And I want to learn as much as possible about this.’ 

But I knew that I couldn't tell my parents, ‘I’m gonna go to fashion school!’ because they're Black. And they're going to be like, ‘No, you're going to get a degree where you can get a job.’ Because we know that there are certain industries that just were not welcoming to marginalized people. 

I mean, I feel like the time period where you and I met on Twitter, that was when I started to see a lot of my other Twitter friends who happen to be Black and brown women finally get booked deals and their books sold. I believe you and I met through a tweet that had mentioned Roxane Gay as someone you should pay attention to. Do you remember that? 

Alicia: I do. [Laughs.]

Aja: It was a friend who had said, ‘These are the people that I follow. These are the people you should pay attention to.’ This was before Roxane Gay’s groundbreaking success. She was also a person where people just really weren't paying attention, and that it just seemed like at some point the doors opened. And Ijeoma Oluo was publishing a book that would become a New York Times best-seller. My friend, Sam Irby was publishing her essays. And they're hilarious, they become best-sellers. So it just seemed like there was a moment where the world was like, ‘Oh, wait, maybe we should actually listen to Black and brown women.’

And, for me, I sort of had to take a roundabout path to getting to where I am. Because one, my parents were not going to encourage me to go to school to study fashion or to study writing. And two, I didn't feel like there was space for me in these worlds at all. So I threw stuff at the wall until it stuck. 

And eventually, I began to realize the fashion industry in its current iteration is actually a disaster, and all the things that we talk about whether it's racism, intersectional feminism—I was writing about these issues really separate from the fashion industry, ’cause they were important issues. For a lot of people, people saw, people like me saw the rise of Donald Trump. And I began to actually talk about race really honestly in a way I never had before, because I could tell what was happening. But I was talking about these issues very separate, in a silo. And what I began to realize was that actually all these issues apply to the fashion industry. So then, I began to talk about them together. And that's where my platform sort of came about from.

Alicia: And so much of what you say about fashion relates to food. And so it's sometimes, just this really mind-melding kind of thing to read. ‘Wait, this is also food.’ 

And we need to talk about these connections, too, because, I don't know, I feel these are both issues where people—it's feminized. People don't want to think about them very much. These are just things people have to do. They have to get up and dress themselves. They have to get up and eat something. And we're kind of taught not to make a big fuss necessarily about these things, because we're taught that they're frivolous.

Aja: Yeah. Frivolous, silly, you know? 

Alicia: Yes, exactly. 

And so it's such an uphill battle to get people to care about these things, and to talk about them in a serious manner. And one of the things that kind of really drives me nuts, and that you also talk about, is how people defend cheap prices out of class concerns without thinking about the exploitation of the worker at the beginning of the chain, as you discussed. We're exploiting the Global South for fashion. We're exploiting the Global South for food, too. 

And people defend cheap clothes and cheap food, and dismiss the relevance of individual choice. And I wanted to get your take on how do you see individual action as meaningful even as we seek systemic change?

Aja: So I think that there's a few myths that people love to peddle about fashion. And that's one of the things that I debunk, because it actually really annoys me. 

There's this idea that only poor people buy fast fashion. That is not true. Everybody buys fast fashion. One of the things that I did within my book was I talked about class. And the Resource Generation really helped me out big time with this, because they have some really great breakdowns of what class and wealth looks like. 

So one thing I learned in my book was in America, poor and working poor people account for —1% of America's wealth. And then the next class group is working class. And that group accounts for 3% of America's wealth. And then you start getting into middle class, managerial class, and then ruling class. 

We’ve just come out of this pandemic, and there were people lined around the block to buy from Primark, which is not an ethical or sustainable store. But when you critique it, people accuse you of classism. Here's the thing: The vast majority of people in that line probably are not the people that are within that 4% of net wealth. So if you look at the fact that all these major multinational companies that people claim are where poor people shop are actually billion-dollar companies, then it is not just poor people shopping from those places. It's literally everyone. 

And I find in our society, nobody wants to be poor and everybody wants to be poor when it comes to the system that they want to participate in. Does anyone actually want to be poor? No. Being poor f*****g blows, and it's systemic, and it's hard to climb out of. And we love a rags to riches story in America, where we talk about, ‘Oh, well, this person was poor and now they're not.’ Where the actual reality is, a person that comes from generations of poverty is really unlikely to be able to find their way out of it, because you—being poor is actually very expensive and very hard. 

And so, we have this system of fast fashion where literally everyone participates because our entire mind-set is that of a consumerist identity. And that is beat into our heads, that you're gonna become a consumer. And it's subtle. It's pernicious. It's in films. You name a film that we love that's a cult classic, that doesn't have a really great makeover scene, right? Where the main character gets this amazing makeover that involves buying loads of clothing, and all of a sudden they're a new person. Everyone treats them differently. That's a pernicious message that's really pushed pretty hard in media. 

And so we have a real consumer mind-set as a culture. And I want to unpick that basically, and get people to think about that mind-set. Because once you do, you begin to see the ways in which all of this consumption is sort of pushed on you whether or not you need to consume.

Alicia: I think that's where fashion and food diverge, because food is absolutely 100%, you need to consume it. So there's different levels of complication there. 

And I wanted to know how you feel about the way the fashion media covers sustainability and inclusivity? [Laughter.] I think I know the answer to this question. But how are these issues being addressed, if at all?

Aja: You're never going to get the honest truth about the scale and scope of the fashion industry's problem from magazines and publications that depend on those same multinational polluters in order to fill their pages with advertisements. If you say something bad about a brand, and you're a fashion editor, you'll get barred from things. 

And so, everybody's very much afraid of these brands. So why would someone who's dependent on a paycheck from that group of people who's polluting and harming the earth actually tell the honest truth about the reality? Why would they do that? There's no incentive there. And so, I think if people are looking for traditional media to be the one who stands up to the ills of the fashion industry, they're going to be looking for a very long amount of time. That's never going to happen.

I mean, one of the things I cover in my book, one of my favorite stylists, Lucinda Chambers did this interview after she was ousted from Vogue where she basically just lets it all out. And Vogue apparently tried to get the interview removed from the internet, British Vogue. But she talks about things. She remembers having to do a cover where she put Alexa Chung in this cheesy Michael Kors T-shirt. And she was like, ‘I didn't want to do it. It was a cheesy cover. But Michael Kors was a major advertiser.’

So, so much of what you see in the magazine is very much manipulated by the magazine's relationship to the brands. And so, you're never actually going to get accuracy with the scale and scope of the problem from traditional media. If there's any skin in the game, if there's any connection to the money. 

And I also say even for people that claim to be ethical rating scales, right? There's a few ethical rating scales that people keep trying to tag on my page saying, ‘Oh, yeah, I use this.’ Ok, so they rate brands, but they also email spam you every day with affiliate links from ethical and sustainable brands. So if consumption and scale is the problem, which it is, if someone is making their money and it's reliant off of you buying things, how trustworthy of a source can they be in the accuracy in which they’re reporting?

Alicia: And both of us are independent people, culture workers. And you use Patreon. Why did you decide to go that independent route?

Aja: Because my Instagram was growing really quickly, and I knew that the vast majority of funding that's available for people on Instagram is through selling people s**t they don't need. 

There's other things out there. But in general, I don't want to be an Instagram that's pushing you to buy stuff. I've done one advertisement on my Instagram, and it's literally with a sustana—with a resale platform, Vestiaire Collective, because we have so much clothing that I feel you can't go wrong by buying secondhand. The enormity of the clothing that's circulating our planet right now, we're all gonna have to start shopping secondhand. There's no way around it. If there's anything that I can push and not feel like I’m really, really cheapening out, it's definitely secondhand. 

But in general, you really can't be the person who's telling everyone why the industry’s s**t stinks, and then turn around and go, ‘Oh, by the way, buy this thing.’ It doesn't work. 

And also, I also know that brands love to hop on a social justice movement when it's the moment, but they do not like people talking about things like race before it's of the moment. And so five years ago, if you used the phrase white supremacy, the hysterics and the fragility you’d have to endure. When in actuality, today, people are kind of like, ‘Ok, I get what white supremacy means.’ But if the majority of white people are not comfortable with the things that you're saying, a brand's not going to want to sponsor your page.

Now that I have a six-figure following, now, everybody wants to throw stuff at me. But before that happened, nobody wanted to throw anything at me. And I had to do Patreon, because it wasn't one of those things where I could really monetize my Instagram in any way that felt good to me. And I wanted to create a space where you weren't having things pushed on you constantly, because so much of Instagram, now, it's advertisement. 

So I want it to be that account where you're scrolling and you see a dress on another account that you probably don't need. And then the next thing that you see is my post, which tells you that 60% of materials on this planet are petrochemicals, so polyester, which is essentially oil. And then I talk about the fashion industry’s links to oil. We all talk about how fossil fuels are ruining everything. Well, that's another way they're ruining things for people. People don't make that connection. 

And so, I basically want to be a counter argument to all the consuming that goes on through Instagram.

Alicia: I mean, that's amazing to me. 

I think this is maybe a selfish question. I don't use Instagram the way you use Instagram. How do you balance what you post on Patreon and what you post on Instagram?

Aja: The thing is the sustainable fashion conversation and basically the fashion industry getting its s**t together is moving so quickly that people can't keep up with it all. 

So I sort of run my Patreon as a sustainable and ethical fashion newswire. So one of the things I noticed is that I do get a lot of people who are journalists, are people within the industry, who follow me because they know first thing in the morning, I will have gone through the news stories that I see and pick something that's interesting and relevant to discuss on my Patreon. 

So I managed to basically become a newswire for this topic that I'm really interested in, but a topic that a lot of people don't know how to mitigate because once again, the fashion industry is also very closed off from people that might not know. It's one of those things where the fashion industry has always had an air of mystery. And I break things down in layman’s terms for people so that they can have a conversation about these topics with their friends.

Alicia: And as you use Instagram so much, you use your face, your body, yourself to promote your work. And I think I'm struggling with that a little bit. 

But how is your personal visibility a significant aspect of your work?

Aja: I feel really exposed now, to be honest. I didn't used to feel that way, but now it's when I'm out and about in London, I will bump into people that follow my work. And that's a really weird feeling. But everyone's really cool, but I do—I feel more exposed now than I felt before. 

And it's not bumping into people, I don't mind that. It's when you just tweet something benign and then it ends up in a major newspaper. That happens to me a lot now, and that's a bit like, ‘Mmaww.’ [Laughs.] You know what I mean?

So there's a part of me that sometimes just wants to just pull back from that space, because I don't think that there should be any one face of the movement. And I also feel this space still isn't diverse enough. I don't want to be the face of like, ‘We need a Black person to talk about the fashion industry and sustainability. Someone call Aja Barber.’ No, there's a lot of people you can call. It's not about there just being one of us, which sometimes I do worry that is the direction that sometimes things go in. I think there's room for many voices. 

But yeah, I think I worry about being overexposed. And sometimes, I'm sick of looking at my own face. And I think about boundaries as well. If I have a kid, for instance, I am never going to be the person that talks about my pregnancy on Instagram, because, one, I don't want to. It doesn't interest me. Two, social media can trigger people. You don't know who's experiencing infertility or having issues with that sort of stuff. And three, I don't want my Instagram to become parenting, ’cause there's plenty of good parenting Instagrams and I don't need to be one of them. So, I do think sometimes about just pulling back and doing more infographics and less style and less-

But at the same time, I also think my visibility as a Black plus-size body is also really important, because that has been so crucially missing from the conversation for so many years. So I go back and forth. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, it's very difficult, because to balance that and the ways in which people respond when you have a platform is just—it's horrible. I really struggle now with posting anything saying anything, because it is—

Aja: You get targeted.

I have an account that's like, ‘I am so sick of your b******t.’ And it's all about how the person hates me. And I'm just like, ‘Wow? What did I do?’ 

And they're mad because I called in a brand that they really liked who had been very disingenuous in the plus-size conversation, and then were trying to sort of present themselves like they were gonna lead the moment. When in actuality, myself and other plus-size people have been asking them for years to be inclusive with sizing.

’Cause this is a brand that makes one particular item. So it's not even that they roll out a new 16-piece collection every year. No, it's pretty much the same thing. And if you're only making one item, then you should be the first person to scale that item up in different sizes. But they just flat-out refused. And I'm just kind of like, ‘Just say you don't like fat people and go, but don't pretend it's rocket scientists or rocket science sacred geometry to scale up a pattern. It's hard, but it can be done because small brands do it every single day.’

So this brand had been very avoidant, ignorant, and negligent in the conversation. Particularly in private conversations they'd had with me, to the point where I stopped wearing their product on my grid, took down all of their photos. I still wear the clothing, ’cause you should wear the clothing that you buy regardless of whether it's fast fashion or a brand that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Give it a good life. But I don't wear it on the grid and I don't promote it. 

So when they came out with, ‘We're going to do a podcast about plus-size inclusivity,’ I was just like, ‘Oh, go f**k yourself.’ So I said publicly, I talked about everything that happened and how for two years plus-size people had been asking them to be inclusive. And we'd have more respect for them if they just said, ‘Yeah, we really weren't doing a good job with this. And now we really want to do it, and we're really committed. And thank you everyone who pretty much tried to open our eyes and ears, and we didn't listen.’

Yeah, but instead they tried to present it like, ‘Oh, we're gonna do a podcast and we're so great.’ And I was just like, ‘No, we need an accountability moment here.’ And what I found was that that brand had some cult-like fans who raged against me for weeks. One of them is still holding a grudge. Why? Because I asked a brand to do better. Which, by the way, you are defending a corporation, not a person. Get your f*****g life. That's weird. I’d rather kick my own ass before I’d defend a corporation the way some of the fans of this brand have defended them. It's bizarre. 

Alicia: That's really ridiculous behavior. 

And it happens in food media as well, being someone who has been writing about vegan stuff, plant-based stuff, whatever you want to call it, for years. And then all of a sudden, everyone jumps on the bandwagon. And it's I get called to do an interview with someone who doesn't know anything about anything, but got assigned to write about it. This is really frustrating.

Aja: Yeah, yeah.

It's annoying when people really try and commodify stuff in really disingenuous ways. But one of the things that I just think is so bizarre about our society, and I think social media is a real impactful part of this, is the ways in which people try to humanize corporations. 

One of the assignments that I always give my readership is to watch the film, The Corporation. I watched that in the early 2000s when it came out, and it was life-changing for me because social media is one of these things where corporations are—they try to be in on the Twitter jokes. They try to use the lingo. And when they f**k up, they try to make it seem like they're an individual instead of a multinational company. 

And that's really dangerous, because what we know is that a corporation can only act in its own best interest. That's the only thing that can do, because it's not a human with emotions. And if a corporation were a person, it would be a psychopath. So when people get really overly invested in defending companies, I'm just like, ‘Nah, get your life.’

Alicia: Yeah, no, for sure. 

And how do your perspectives on fashion, if they do, influence how you consume in other kinds of arenas? Food, media, etc. 

I think I gave a quote recently. Someone was asking me for recommendations for a newsletter. And I was like, ‘Well, the thing I'm obsessed with now is making sure my—what I wear expresses my ethics that I talk about in terms of what I eat.’ I mean, obviously, I like clothes. [Laughs.] But also at the same time, it's really important for me that if I am visible in this space, talking about these things, that I'm not also promoting similarly exploitative chains in other industries.

And so, how does it—Yeah. [Laughs.]

Aja: Yeah, for me, totally. I think about it in everything. I don't have a Spotify account, because artists that I really like who happened to be musicians talk about how they don't make any money from Spotify. So even though everybody has Spotify, I'm just the person who’s buying all the music on Bandcamp because most of my music is locked away on several different computers. Thank you very much for that, Apple. That's so cool of you. And so I'm just basically rebuying music. 

And, yeah, I think about it a lot. I think about the food. Now, I also know that as a person who lives in London, I am so lucky we have access to so many different types of food. We have different markets nearby. We can buy from all sorts of different cultures. And so I know that I have a lot of access and privilege in that way. And that's part of why I can only stick to really fashion, because food is more complicated in that way. 

But yeah, I think about it in all areas of my life. But in general, I truly believe that most of us with significant privilege just need to do less. Do less. The excess that comes when you have a significant amount of privilege in our culture isn't normal to the rest of humans on this planet. 

One of the things that was crucial to everything was moving to London. When I moved over here, my partner and I had been dating long distance for three years. I had to get rid of so much stuff. I was in my 30s. So I had 30 years of a life in the States, and I'm still mitigating that stuff. Because as someone who does the work that I do, I know that just dumping it on a charity shop’s doorstep is actually really bad. That actually doesn't help anyone. 

And so from the time I knew that we were going to get engaged and I was going to move over here, I basically tasked myself to thoughtfully get rid of all of my items that I wasn't planning on taking with me. Some of it was clothing that had grown too small, because we have this weird thing in our society where we pretend it's natural that every person should stay the same shape, no matter what. That is not natural. I mean, some people do, and it's natural to some people. But it's not natural to every person. 

And so a lot of the clothing from my early 20s was too small, basically. I'm someone who has uterine fibroids, so things around the waist, it just—some of that stuff was, I wasn't going to get into it again. And so I basically tasked myself with shedding myself of the stuff that wasn't going with me in a thoughtful way. Which meant for clothing, picking up the things that can be resold, reselling the stuff that can be resold, putting up stuff in Facebook galleries for all of my friends and saying, ‘If you want it, just get the shipping and I'll send it to you.’ But really, really trying to be very thoughtful about how I was going to pare down essentially. 

And that is still a work in progress. Every time I go home to my parents’ house, I task myself with going through stuff and trying to rehome it in a way that's thoughtful and helpful. And I feel that will be my life chore. 

And then also, moving over stuff slowly. So I've got a bunch of really great coffee table books that I love, and I just have to bring them over one at a time because they're all so heavy. 

[Laughter.] 

If you have to do a big move and you do it in a way where you really, really shed stuff in a way that's impactful and thoughtful, and keeping as much stuff out of the landfill, that what you'll find is now that I'm here, I think about everything I bring into this flat. One, London doesn't have closets like the U.S., so that's something you got to grapple with. 

But before it comes home, I genuinely think, ‘Where is it gonna go?’ We're very limited in space. And that really helps me in how I consume stuff. 

But then also when you talk about the fashion industry every single day and read about what's happening and how it's impacting the environment, if you have to do that for a living, you're just like, ‘I don't want anything.’

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, it's real. It's real. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Aja: Mm-hmm.

Sorry, I just took a sip of my tea. 

Alicia: No, it's ok. [Laughs.] 

Aja: Clothing will always be political. You cannot separate politics from clothing. You can't separate labor practices from clothing. You can't separate exploitation from clothing. You can't separate outsourcing and things like NAFTA from clothing. 

You can't separate what clothing means to certain people. How it can be religious, how it can be political, how it can be cultural. People know the uniform of the Black Panthers, right? There's certain clothing items that are evocative of social movement eras. But where you tend to shop and buy is political as well. Absolutely. 

And one thing that people need to really step, take it a step farther, pull back the curtain of your favorite brand and see what politicians and what policies they're supporting. Because one thing that people really—I think some people know about it, but they ignore it. But Richard Hayne of Urban Outfitters used to give a lot of money to the right-wing. Yeah, and he owns Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, and Free People. So free, so hippie. Yay.

So it's about all of these things. It's about our world. And when you think about how many jobs the fashion industry provides for on the planet, it's political. When you think about the fact that 80% of garment workers are women, hence, intersectional feminism, it's political. It's all very political.

Alicia: My question is, is cooking a political act? But I think you answered it anyway. [Laughter.]

Aja: I thought you said clothing. I totally thought you said clothing. Sorry.

Alicia: You answered in the same way, I think.

Aja: Cooking is absolutely political. Too. Who grows your food, where it comes from. Cooking is cultural. Cooking is—yes.

And when you also think about appropriation in cooking, that's a whole ’nother kettle of fish. Which you see it all the time, where a restaurant run by people from a certain ethnicity doesn't survive. And then all of a sudden another shiny and new restaurant opens up, which is run by white people who are selling a watered-down version of the dish. And they're doing great and they're getting write-ups and everyone's saying, ‘This is delicious and amazing’ when in actuality, that's somebody else's culture and somebody is profiting and not even doing it in the right way. 

So yeah, it's all political.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, thank you, Aja, again for taking the time. And it was so wonderful to finally talk to you.

Aja: Oh, my goodness, we're done already? That went really quickly.

Alicia: Yeah. [Laughter.]

Aja: 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

Irene Li is a hilarious writer on serious issues, which I discovered when she sent me her piece, “8 Totally Achievable Ways to Show Up for Racial Justice… When You’re White and Own an Asian Restaurant!” She’s also the chef of the former restaurant Mei Mei in Boston, which has become a packaged dumpling company, as well as a project manager at Commonwealth Kitchen, where she’s helping Black and Latinx restaurant owners make their businesses work better for them.

We discussed how her social justice work influences her cooking, and vice versa, as well as her new job. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Irene. Thank you so much for coming on to chat today.

Irene: Thanks so much for having me.

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

Irene: Yeah.

So I grew up here in the city of Boston. And my family is Chinese American. And so, we ate lots of Chinese food at home and also all the other things that a kid can find to eat in Boston. So tons of grilled cheese and pizza and mozzarella sticks. Cheese was a big theme. And we ate kind of more classic Chinese homestyle food for dinner every night, like white rice and stir fry. And it was a while before I figured out that not everybody ate that at home every night. So I definitely remember some sort of consciousness around that developing at some point for me.

Alicia: Well, what did that consciousness kind of mean for you?

Irene: Well, I think there were the points where I started going over to friends’ houses and realizing that there was not always a rice cooker on the counter but always a microwave. 

But having a lot of fun with trying different foods, and bringing friends over to try food at my house, I feel like I was really lucky in that the friends who I had were always really interested in eating what was going on in the Lee house. Rice porridge, like shee fun or zhou, is a big feature of my childhood. So if you need to make a big pot of something and you only have a little bit of rice, that's how you do it. 

And one of my favorite memories is taking the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving, and making a big pot of rice porridge out of that. And I have some great memories of my friends and I just lying on the floor of my house on this really plush rug, because we had just eaten so much rice porridge and we couldn't bear to move. So there was a lot of that. [Laughter.]

Alicia: Well, you are now a chef. And you work at your family's restaurant. But you did a lot of other things before you decided to do that. Can you tell us kind of what you did before that and what made you want to get into the family business? 

Irene: Yeah, so it's actually kind of funny. 

The family business for my grandparents was owning and operating restaurants. So my paternal grandparents had one restaurant in New York City, and then one in White Plains, New York. But as is the sort of tale of so many immigrant families, they ran a restaurant so that their kids could pursue higher education. And so both my parents are actually doctors. We kind of joke that it skips a generation. But I'm fortunate in that my—where I fall in the sort of generational path is that I had pretty much all the things that I needed when I was growing up, and so I could sort of choose based on my sense of self-actualization to go into restaurants. 

And so my brother initially had been working in fine dining, and he had this idea to open a food truck. He was watching way too much Food Network, and he's definitely an ideas guy. And so it was his idea for us to open the food truck in 2012, and then we opened the restaurant in 2013. So in a way, it's kind of a full circle around the kind of immigrant restaurant owner story. 

And prior to opening the food truck, I was really interested in different social justice and food justice issues. I was going to school in upstate New York and getting really interested in farming and the kind of economics of farming, and just going to the market every weekend and buying a vegetable that I had never seen or heard of and then take it home and try to figure out what to do with it. And so all of those things kind of collided when I got the call from my brother.

Alicia: And so, how does that prior experience that you had influence how you work in a restaurant? 

Irene: Well, I think that for a while I thought of food as kind of an escape from the very sort of complicated political and social issues that I was interested in. When I was at Cornell, I worked in a men's maximum security prison facility as a college level course instructor. I was really interested in a lot of issues around the living wage and the One Fair Wage, and cooking on the weekends was kind of how I got away from that. 

But of course, things came full circle. And the more I got interested in food and the restaurant industry, the more I saw that a lot of these issues that are deeply rooted in our history of slavery in the U.S., in so many of the struggles of different immigrant groups—those are very much present in the restaurant industry to this day. And so I kind of feel I came all the way around this corner. And now that's what's most interesting and exciting to me about the restaurant industry, is addressing those issues.

Alicia: And how do you do that? Is it something that manifests only in your writing? Or is it something that really manifests in the day-to-day work in the kitchen and in the restaurant?

Irene: So I would say prior to COVID, we were trying to build Mei Mei Restaurant as a model for a fairer form of employment, as a business that really invested in its team. And there were a few different ways that we did that. 

We had a very, I would say, sort of positive culture overall. No yelling, no throwing things, which is—in a way, it's kind of wild that you have to say that. But of course, we're talking about restaurant kitchens. 

So we had a staff that was typically majority women-identifying, majority person of color-identifying, and with a very big LGBTQI group as well. And so in a lot of ways, we were able to kind of cultivate this space that for the most part, I hope and believe was safe for many people who may not have felt safe in other parts of the restaurant industry. 

We also did a lot of work to try to educate our staff and also our guests on how the industry really works, what's sort of going on under the hood. And so in early March of 2020, we hosted this public event where we showed everyone our profit and loss statement for 2019. And we really wanted to just kind of start a conversation about when you buy a $20 plate of pasta, where does that money go? 

And I think consumers are very narrowly focused on what's on the plate, because it's the most immediate thing. And so that's why you read so many Yelp reviews, where people say, ‘I could have gone to the grocery store and paid $4 and made this myself.’ And yeah, that's the secret of restaurants, is they’re scamming you and food costs are only 20 percent of the menu. 

And so, that financial transparency is something that we had been practicing internally with the staff for several years. And so, we really wanted to take that conversation kind of on the road and see what people would think about what the kind of realities are in the industry, where the average, independent mom and pop restaurant only clears about 4 to 6 percent profit in an—in a pretty good year. And then of course, days later the pandemic hit, and we were all in even sort of deeper water than we were before.

Alicia: And what was the response like to that event from the public?

Irene: The event was awesome. We also broadcasted on this thing called Zoom that I had never heard of before. It was wild.

We got such a great response, especially from the people who were able to attend in person. They asked tons of questions. And as a speaker, I tend to be a little bit more honest than maybe my partners or team would want me to be. But people asked about my salary. They asked about the ways that I still felt we had to improve. 

We did a feature with Eater, and that generated a lot of conversation on Facebook. And some of it was not entirely positive, but even that felt great. Yeah, if you think I'm a moron because of what my books say, let's talk about it. You can show me your books, or we can just have a conversation. And all of that felt really generative.

Alicia: And so, how did the pandemic kind of change the way you ran the restaurant and the business model? I know that a lot of restaurants that didn't have a tipping model, that had a kind of hospitality-included model and were more transparent around the business side of the restaurant and those tiny profit margins kind of weathered this switch a little bit better simply by the nature of their-how they ran their businesses and by how they—how much money was in the bank, because they knew they had a big payroll anyway.

But how did the pandemic kind of come hit your restaurant, and how has it been in the over a year since?

Irene: So initially, I will say going back to having two parents who are doctors, we were very conservative about closing down and not asking anyone to come into work. We really did our best to keep people employed as long as we could. So there were some restaurants that laid everyone off in March, and we kept almost all of the team employed through June. And then, we laid off about two thirds of the team at that time. And that is probably one of the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. 

And at that point, we were kind of looking around and saying, ‘Oh, ok. The pandemic’s not getting better. It's been a couple months. And it's actually getting worse,’ because we're seeing what's happening in other parts of the country that maybe we thought no one would be as hard hit as New York City, for instance. But things looked really bad. And so at that point, we made the decision—I guess I made the decision with the help of my partners and my team—that we weren't going to reopen Mei Mei as a restaurant. 

And that had to do with a lot of different things, including the timing of our lease, which we felt didn't really allow us the time that we would need to rebuild. And so that, in addition to the fact that there was just so much uncertainty, we decided we were going to take things in a different direction. And so now, we are evolving Mei Mei into a packaged dumpling company. It is a really exciting project. And I have partners now who are going to sort of carry that forward, which has been amazing for me because it's opened up the opportunity for me to work more on supporting other restaurants. 

So I joined CommonWealth Kitchen, which is a food business incubator here in Boston, as a program manager for an initiative called the Restaurant Resiliency Program. And I work with eight Black and Latinx business owners to strengthen and improve their restaurant businesses. Honestly, it's just my dream job. So much of it is about not teaching them basics or mechanics, but really being there with them and making sure they have the confidence to do what they need to get done. So I just ordered eight kitchen scales. And I'm so excited to visit the restaurant and do some costing and really kind of get up to my elbows with them. 

And so for me, that really feels like trying to take what I learned from Mei Mei and the mistakes that I made, the mistakes that I could afford to make as someone from a privileged background coming into the restaurant industry, and really trying to pay that forward to support an industry that I hope will be made up of really diverse restaurants run by really interesting people with a lot of different stories. 

It's funny. At the event last March, I said, ‘If Mei Mei doesn't exist in ten years, that's too bad for me. But if there aren’t any cool independent restaurants to eat at in tneen years, then I'm going to be really pissed.’ And so for me, it's always been more about the industry at large and the restaurants that I want to be able to eat at than my business specifically.

Alicia: I mean, we've talked a lot about the government inaction during the pandemic in order to help independent restaurants. What do you think in the future, either from what you've learned, running Mei Mei or now in your new position, to-what could be useful to small business owners in the food industry, from a governmental-from a policy standpoint, really?

Irene: Man, where to start? [Laughter.] There's so many different things that could be done. 

I guess, for me, having access to federal aid and even state aid. Getting assistance to fill out the Payroll Protection Program application. I am college educated, and I could barely get myself through that. So I can't imagine not speaking English as a first language, for example, and trying to wade through all of that. So I think offering the technical support is really key. 

I think the government, the federal government, learned a big lesson with the Payroll Protection Program in that there are going to be large companies that take advantage of opportunities because they are qualified on paper. So, if you're really looking to help small businesses, then you have to be targeting companies that are posting revenue below a million annually, for example. 

I have been so moved to be involved in different mutual aid efforts, whether it is a community fridge or a grocery program or just neighbors helping each other navigate government paperwork. And so honestly, it's hard for me to imagine what better government support looks like because this funnel of people just saying, ‘F**k it. We have to figure this out ourselves.’ That has been really exciting to me. 

I will say, I am really optimistic about the American Rescue Plan. I like the opportunities that are built in there for restaurants. I am very hopeful, cautiously optimistic, that that money will go to the restaurants who really need it. And I think what is exciting about the way that bill is formed is that if you didn't get any PPP money, you can get more money from this plan. So hopefully, that will address some of the barriers that especially immigrant restaurant owners and Black and Latinx restaurant owners are facing.

Alicia: And as you're kind of getting into this mode of helping other small business owners not make mistakes, do you have—what are the top three mistakes that people make when they're getting into the restaurant business and making all these decisions?

Irene: I think all of it ultimately comes down to how often they're looking at the numbers, and how the numbers are organized. 

So I mean, I've observed over the years that a lot of small businesses early on, they're not paying attention to the bills necessarily, or they're paying the bills but they're not organizing them. And maybe, every invoice just goes into a shoe box and then at the end of the year you give the shoe box to your accountant and say, ‘Here you go!’

But having a profit and loss statement that is organized in a way that actually helps you make decisions, that is a luxury that not all businesses have invested in or have the resources for. Because there's a version of your financials that's just for taxes, and everybody has to have those every year. But there's also a version that provides a readout on how your business is doing that is so valuable. 

I think restaurant owners are incredibly smart. And their instincts are usually pretty dead-on. But there are a lot of little kind of details and finer points like, ‘Should we close an hour earlier? Should we open on Mondays? Should I take this dish off the menu?’ Those are questions that they can rely on their gut to some extent, but it's not going to get them necessarily to the point where they're really thinking about growing the business if they don't have the data to rely on. 

And so, I'm so lucky that I had a team that was really invested in getting the financials to the point where they would be useful. We also had a grant from the state of Massachusetts to work with a consulting firm that helped us implement open book management. And I am now at the point where I am so excited to see the profit and loss statement every month, because it's like, ‘Yeah, I want to know how I did.’ I hope that every restaurant owner can experience that excitement, and not just sort of the stress around putting financials together and then trying to read them.

Alicia: Yeah, I think that that's probably a problem for a lot of independent workers, speaking for myself as well, is that you don't like to look at the money because you're afraid of looking at it. I've learned so much better to just be aware and kind of go full-on and try and really understand what you're doing. But it's easier said than done. [Laughter.]

Irene: One of the other challenges in there that I'm sure applies to a lot of people in different lines of work is that as a business owner, for a long time, I didn't really know what accountants and bookkeepers did. Right? 

Alicia: Right. 

Irene: So I didn't really have a way of telling like, ‘Are you doing a good job or not?’ It's kind of when I take my car to the mechanic, right? And I don't know anything about cars, and so I kind of just shrug my shoulders and say like, ‘Ok, yeah, sounds good.’

And so, I think some of what we're doing through this program is kind of teaching the restaurant owners how to speak accountant or how to speak bookkeeper and to give them confidence in those relationships. And I think for some of these folks, they do not have the confidence working with professional services to really say like, ‘Hey, this is what I need. This is how I want you to do it.’ And so, they're going with the flow but it's maybe not as useful as it could be.

Alicia: Before I ask specifically about a couple of the pieces you've recently published, I wanted to ask what inspired you to start writing about certain issues in the restaurant industry? Do you like writing, or is it more about something that you just feel there are things that need to be said? 

Irene: Yeah.

I will say, I love writing. I am so in awe of anyone who can do it on a schedule, ‘cause I really have to be in the right place with the right idea to produce anything. I did write for the local public radio station WBUR for a few months, and that was great experience just in terms of working with an editor and on deadline and all of that. And I think I figured out that it wasn't for me. 

But in this case, I usually write when I feel moved to. And usually that is when I feel there's a story that's not being told or a perspective that's not getting shared. So often, it comes from a place of wanting to tip the scales of a conversation, or make sure that things don't get left unsaid. 

Alicia: And one of those pieces that you wrote is the-a bit of satire called ‘8 Totally Achievable Ways to Show Up for Racial Justice… When You’re White and Own an Asian Restaurant!’ And I wanted to know, how did you arrive and feel inspired to tackle that subject from a satirical angle? I mean, this is a subject that's been written on. This is a subject that is just shockingly persistent in the white dudes owning Asian restaurants. That's very persistent. And so, I mean, I guess the reason you maybe wanted to approach it that way is because it is at this point such a joke and a trope, a cliché.

But yeah, what inspired you to go about it that way?

Irene: Yeah.

Well, one of the things I've said as I've talked a little bit more about the piece is, I've been writing this piece in my head for years. So it didn't come out of nowhere. But I guess it came out of my desire to engage on this topic that typically is not really engaged on. It's more an unstoppable force hits an immovable object, and where he says, ‘Hey, you can't cook that!’ And then that person says, ‘Yes, I can! I can cook whatever I want.’ And then the conversation goes nowhere. And actually, everyone leaves that discussion feeling angry or resentful. And then, I don't think we get anywhere productive out of that. 

And so, especially in getting involved in the restaurant industry myself, I felt these chefs are—they're not bad people. It's not about whether they're good or bad. And there's actually maybe some really important conversation and exploration that we can do here. 

And so my goal in writing the piece was, in part, to share my views without alienating anyone. And I don't think that's always necessarily the purpose of writing, but it felt like something that I could do pretty effectively. I went to prep school. And so, I feel I have been educated all my life in how to talk to well-meaning white people about how to be better. [Laughs.] 

And so I think that, I wanted to write a piece where by the end of it you couldn't really disagree with me. I mean, of course, a lot of people did, which is fine. But I wanted to sort of take the reader by the hand and be like, ‘Ok, let's go look at this thing together.’ 

And so, I didn't use the phrase cultural appropriation, which I didn’t notice until after I had written it. But I think that I wanted to accept that there is both something very complicated and uncomfortable about this topic. And at the same time, there's a lot of stuff that most of us just agree on, like, ‘Racism is bad, and taking credit for other people's stuff is bad.’ And so, how do you kind of weave those very simple truths in with this very complicated, scary territory? And so my hope was to kind of lead the reader through that space, so that they could come out on the other side feeling not like, ‘Oh, I am now bereft of my purpose. And everything I've created is for not.’ But to make them feel like, ‘Oh, there are some next steps I can take. And I can keep showing up to this conversation and be part of it.’

All of that being said, I did get a lot of calls from people who were like, ‘I read your article. It made me think so much. And I'm just wondering, what do you think I should do?’ And, well, I did write a list. So let's start there. And I think that that kind of response is about what I expected, and I think it's totally appropriate for someone who has never really engaged with these ideas to come right to me and say, ‘Help.’ And so, I welcome that. And I am glad that they wanted to call me and talk to me. 

But it's just so new to some people that even after reading a list of eight things that you can do, the question is like, ‘Wait, what? Sorry, now?’ How? Where do I—’ It's fascinating to watch.

Alicia: And as you mentioned, you did not mention, use the phrase cultural appropriation, which I think actually did serve the piece to make it a bit more powerful because you didn't-It was so straightforward. 

And cultural appropriation, as a phrase and as a concept, I think, has been—it's screwed over as an idea because of the right and the way that the right has taken it and suggested that its meaning is something that it's not. 

Irene: For sure.

Alicia: And that's just ruined it, because no one can say it anymore without being called—I don't know how the right talks. I just know that they like to take phrases and just be like, ‘Look at what they're saying. They're saying you can't cook a—if you're white, you can't make a burrito in your house.’ And it's like, ‘Dude, how dare you? That's not it.’

And so, how does that phrase play into your life right now or thinking at all about food?

Irene: I guess to me, the phrase invites a lot of argument because it is—it invites opinion and asks for nuance. And sometimes, those two things don't go hand in hand. And so, while part of me wanted to write ‘8 ways for cultural appropriators,’ I felt like, ‘Ok, if I really want to get the attention of the people I'm talking to, let me use phrases and facts that they can't argue with. Are you white, yes or no? Do you own an Asian restaurant, yes or no?’

And so yeah, my hope was to kind of get my foot in the door with that, and to not, to try not to make kind of value or moral judgments about them. And to just say, like, ‘Hey, you meet these qualifications so maybe we should talk about this thing.’ And I've had some really great conversations with white folks who own Asian restaurants. And I am hopeful that this conversation goes somewhere. 

My incredible friend, Tracy Chang, who is a restaurant owner in Cambridge, she said to me, ‘Just make sure they know it's not Monopoly, where you land on Community Chest and the card says like, ‘Ooh, mass shooting! Pay an Asian American organization $500, and then go on your way.’ And so, I think the longer term accountability is another really interesting piece of this that I'm hoping to be able to sort of keep up with.

Alicia: You also wrote about Raise The Wage. What is your involvement in that, and why did you decide to get into that?

Irene: Yeah.

Well, I've been working with the Restaurant Opportunity Center and high-road restaurants, which is their sort of employer-side organization, on the campaign around One Fair Wage. So in both wanting to raise the minimum wage, and abolish the sub-minimum wage, which is what servers are paid if they receive tips. So federally, the sub-minimum wage is $2.13 an hour. And locally in Massachusetts, I believe it's $5.55 an hour. 

And the piece that we wrote on Medium was from a group of Asian American women, talking about how these laws disproportionately affect women and people of color. And so in a way, there's kind of a similar message, which is like, ‘Do you like racial equity? And do you think that the way people are paid should support racial equity?’ And then, ‘If you do, which I'm sure you do, the only logical conclusion is that we have to change tipping policy in this country.’

Of course, it's not that simple. But I think that to me, the motivation for changing the way we do things is so clear. And so, I'm hoping to get more involved in that conversation. Even though I'm not a restaurant employer anymore, I actually feel like maybe I can play a different role in that community and in highlighting this issue.

Alicia: Right. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Irene: Oh, yeah. 

I mean, I think cooking is partially political. What really feels political is when I feed other people. So to kind of wrap that in, then I would say definitely. I think that we so undervalue food and everything that goes into it. I think that is deeply tied to the history of slavery in this country, and you know, the way that, that capitalism works now. 

But I think that, for me, cooking is a way to imbue food with the value of my time of my love and energy. And that you can literally bring people to the table and make them, or ask them to listen, or to experience your perspective. I think that, that's what the magic of food is for me. And working with a lot of immigrant restaurant owners in particular, I think that the storytelling that happens through food is 100 percent political.

Alicia: Well, thank you so much.

Irene: Thank you.

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