From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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

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

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

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

Carla: Absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carla: Totally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

to talk about all these things.

Carla: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right, right, right.

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

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

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

Carla: Yeah, yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Absolutely.

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Carla: Yeah, for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vallery: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me.

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

Vallery: [Laughs.] Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

Vallery: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

Vallery: Yeah.

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

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

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

Alicia: Right. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Got it. Right. 

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

Vallery: It’s the Great American-

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

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

Alicia: Ok. [Laughter.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vallery: Probably not. 

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

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

Alicia: Yes, absolutely. 

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

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

Vallery: Yeah, thanks, Alicia!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

Alicia: Yeah, of course.

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

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

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

Molly: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Molly: Oh, alright. 

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Molly: Mm-hmm. 

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

Alicia: I haven't. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right. 

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, for you, is cooking a political act?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yeah. 

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

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

Alicia: Well, thank you. Thank you again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesse: It's hard to remember. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: When that came out?

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

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

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

Jesse: Sure. Yes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Well, I mean, same. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yes. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: No, for real, yeah. 

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

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

Jesse: [Laughs.] So weird.

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

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

Alicia: Yeah, then you move to — yeah.

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

Alicia: Yeah. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: And now it’s at Applebee's.

Jesse: Yeah, exactly. 

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right. 

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yes. [Laughs.] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: [Laughs.] 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yes, I love that joke.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Exactly, no. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Well, thank you again.

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

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

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

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

Alejandra: Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Oh, gosh. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah. [Laughs.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right.

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

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

Alejandra: Exactly. Yeah.

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Eww. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah. I know. Which could go-

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

Alejandra: Yeah, easily.

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

Alicia: That sounds so good. Yeah.

Alejandra: Yeah, really delicious.

Alicia: Yeah.

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

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

Alicia: Oh, wow!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Oooh.

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

Alicia: Oh, my gosh. [Laughs.]

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

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

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

Alejandra: Yes, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Me too, yeah.

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

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

Alicia: Oh my God, my favorite.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So yeah, that was kind of how it started.

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

Alejandra: Those are my two competing forces in me.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alejandra: Do I want a show?

Alicia: Yeah.

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

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

Alicia: Oh.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Yeah.

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

Alejandra: Yeah.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alejandra: Exactly. No, absolutely.

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

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

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

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

Alicia: Right, for sure.

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

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

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

Alejandra: Mm-hmm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That's how I am about all my clothing. I imagine the sort of romantic feel that I want, or the — or sometimes it's a completely different — sometimes I want something that's got a little bit more edge to it, or that's sexy, or is it — something has a harder edge.

Or even just nerdy and things. I remember as a kid, we — for school picture day, I totally used to do this, too. So, we could pick our backgrounds, or they had those weird laser backgrounds, and all the backgrounds. And so there was a background that was a library. It was just books around—

Alicia: I picked this one, too. [Laughter.]

Alejandra: I was like, ‘Yes. The library background is mine.’ And then I had to find the perfect outfit to wear. And it was very much this plaid skirt, and a little ruffled collared shirt. I was going for full librarian nerd, with my librarian background.

And that was the thing. So, I would kind of orchestrate this perfect kind of image in my head and then live it. And that's something that I still do. I think that's why I buy so many dresses, because it's not just — everything is a moment, right? I have a whole backstory for every dress, and I have this whole idea of what I want.

And it's been a little bit rough, because now most of my — not flowing through gardens — except for my own gardens, I’m not flowing through gardens anymore. It's pretty much in my living room and my couch. But dressing has still kind of helped keep me feeling like myself, and like I’m together.

Especially since a lot of this time has been unemployment, especially — now I'm starting to get back into working a little bit. But I spent almost five months doing absolutely nothing. So, getting dressed was the thing that — I'd spent two hours getting dressed, and doing my makeup, and putting on — and making me feel like myself. So, I felt at least that part of me was still together. while the rest — everything else kind of felt at loose ends.

Alicia: Yeah, in terms of your eating and your drinking, which it seems like you've been doing a good job of that, too. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: I've been eating and drinking a lot. And that's kind of ebbed and flowed.

So, for eating, for — I went through these — basically, I wanted to fill that feeling. I was home all the time. And so I wanted to find things that would be exciting to me. And that would be creative to me, and they would sort of, kind of, spark that — inspire me in a way.

Because a lot of my inspiration, in terms of food and stuff, comes from things that I eat. I like eating what other people make, and I love going to restaurants, and seeing how people are using ingredients together and combinations together, and just — I'm seeing something like, ‘They're cooking the cucumber in this. I've never thought to cut cucumber,’ and then taking that idea home and playing around with it.

Or combining herbs and fruits, and things that I'd never expected before, and then taking those flavor patterns and coming home. And not necessarily recreating the exact same dish I eat, gonna eat, although I have done that. But a lot of times, it's just kind of taking little, those kernels of ideas, and then playing around with them.

And I wasn't getting that because the only food that I was eating was food I was making myself. My husband doesn't really cook. He makes my coffee in the morning, which I appreciate. But other than that, it's pretty much all of the food that I was eating was food that I was creating with my own hands. Everything was just recirculating. It's all recirculated air. There's nothing fresh coming in. So, I needed something that was kind of exciting.

So, I just started buying weird ingredients. [Laughter.] Getting Fresh Direct, and I was getting my groceries delivered. And I would basically go and see, and they would have the categories. There's the specialty category or — so I would click on those, and seeing what sort of unique — because I started buying octopus in this very blank — squid, and all sorts of clams, and razor clams.

I had a lot of seafood. I was basically playing around with the seafood, ‘cause the seafood especially is — it would always — that changes a lot. And that's something that's very kind of seasonal, and local and stuff, that would be what's good now, what's happening now, what that isn't just chicken. [Laughter.]

And playing around with condiments, and spices, and whatever kind of new fun things, buying different breads, flowers, and just stuff like that, and kind of pushing myself to cook with it.

Another thing about buying seafood is that there's a very limited lifespan of when — basically, you get it and you need to kind of cook it within the next day or two. And that was good for me, just in terms of if I would get kind of depressed and I wouldn't — it would be my motivator, ‘cause I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta cut the razor clams.’ I want to curl up and cry, but I got to get those razor clams. [Laughter.] So, it would be kind of another thing to give me at least some urgency to get some stuff done.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

No, that's so important to actually, yeah, feel like things need to be cooked, and so you actually can't say no, that's one of just — ugh, yeah. I'll make way too many beans. And that's been my way of, my vegetarian way, of needing to do something with them, because I can't let them just languish. It's ‘what new things can I do with this giant pot of black beans that I made’ that's been keeping me going in the cooking? Yeah, it's hard after so many months.

Alejandra: And it's hard.

One of the things that I’ve been — so nothing's because we're talking about pleasure. I love to seek out pleasure and stuff, but it was — it's harder. It's much harder now. I definitely feel like my life was much more pleasurable beforehand.

And it was easier, when you're traveling, when you're doing — at the end of last year, when I started working with Food Network, and I started — I was getting booked regularly on Food Network and on Amazon, and I was doing regular stuff with Today Show. And I had lots of other events, another — did some commercials, and I did some other on-camera projects and stuff. And so I was, as — people would say, booked and blessed. [Laughter.]

And so, that's how I was: booked and blessed. And I was making way more money than I’d ever made before, and finally feeling like, ‘Yeah, this is it. I've got the momentum of doing this.’ And then, it just came to this screeching halt. And all that went away. I was like, ‘God.’ I'd finally hit this point where I had the momentum, I was doing it. Now, all of it went away. Obviously, I got super depressed. I got sad.

The things that gave me pleasure, the — my job, which genuinely gave me pleasure, not in terms of the — it was fulfilling work. It was exciting work.

I loved the people that I worked with, and having those moments of connection with people who do this really weird thing is so rare and so important. I missed the hour in the makeup room beforehand, where we all used to share our joys and woes and life, and learn from each other and talk about things. Not having that is frustrating. And I can talk to my husband, but there's only so much that he really understands about this industry. And it's not the exact — it's not the same thing. And you can text, and it's still not the same kind of organic conversations that you can have when you're in the same space with other humans.

What was I saying? Wait, well — Oh, yeah. I was getting a lot of joy from that. And I was getting joy from traveling, and from getting to go to events, and from seeing speakers, and all these, going to — yeah, you're just moving about the world. A lot of my joy comes from that.

And I'm also a person who needs solo time. A lot of solo time that we got in divided space, which I've not had very much of in six-plus months. And that's been really hard, too, because it's — I don't have that moment of — my husband would leave for work in the mornings, and it was — I'd have my quiet, empty space mornings where it's just my own energy filling the space. And I missed that. And it’s not that I don't love my husband, and I don't want him around. But, I want those breaks.

One of my friends, Shauna, you know Shauna Sever. She’s amazing. She's like, ‘I don't think humans are meant to be — no matter how much you love someone, you're not to be together, 24/7, constantly.’ That's not healthy. [Laughs.]

So yes, I felt like a lot of those things that were giving me pleasure just sort of disappeared. My philosophy is essentially pleasure, is finding the joys in moments in life. And now, how do I do that in this environment, or this life that basically is devoid of so many of the things that we think of as pleasure?

So, that's been kind of my obsession lately. I’ve become obsessed with the concept of anhedonia. You know the concept of anhedonia? [Laughs.]

Alicia: I think I know the word, but I — yeah. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: Yeah.

So the word, it essentially means loss of pleasure, or inability to feel pleasure. And there's versions of it. I mean, there's physical versions of it, where you physically can't feel pleasure. But then there's also psychological ones. I almost feel this is a time of that, where it's much harder to feel joy, even in the things that genuinely — the small joys. Because everything else is so much bigger, and everything else is so much — so overwhelming, and things are burning down.

Shauna is probably the person I talk to the most, ‘cause she also does TV, and she does food and stuff. So, she understands that same thing. And we texted a lot. And it's like, ‘How can I be excited about this new biscuit recipe when the world is burning, right?’ It's hard to find, to say, like, ‘Oh, these things are so great. But, it's not important! None of it is important, right? There's so many bigger things.’

And while I do feel that we still need those little things, it's harder. I'm struggling with it. I have ordered 50 books about pleasure. And I've been reading my way through them. And part of me was like, ‘Maybe I'll start a newsletter about pleasure.’ [Laughter.]

But, there's things I want to figure out. I remember in 2016, after the election, that it was harder. It was hard, but I feel like this is harder. Because, even then, I still felt that — even then I remember being like, ‘Well, the recipes are important. And the cooking’s important. And these things are still important, because people need these joys and need these moments of connection and stuff.’

But now, I feel like it's even harder. Because I'm like, ‘Well, people can't necessarily get together with their families. And then, people are literally dying.’ And it's — you're stuck in places. My brother lives in DC. I haven't seen him since January. And we used to see each other all the time. So it's things like that, where I'm — it's — these things are important, but it's also — it is harder. I think it kind of maybe is a time where, maybe we just don't get as much pleasure anymore. For a time. Not permanently.

Alicia: Yeah, I hope so anyway.

Yeah, it's been super fascinating. I always work at home, and I always work alone. And I'm not a collaborative person, necessarily. I like to do things alone. But then, the thing that makes that worthwhile, and the thing that gets me out of that space is that when the day is done, it's being with people.

Even if I'm going to have a drink alone at a bar, I'm either eavesdropping on people, or I'm engaged in conversations with strangers and things like that, and missing that — those sparks that can happen, though — that's really been, for me, such a huge mental struggle. Especially with writing, because so much of your inspiration comes from being around other people and just the things that they bring up in you.

And yeah, no. And for me, too, the solitude thing is super important. And so having that —

Yeah, just my boyfriend had been at home for three months. Now, he's back in the office a little bit, but at the same time it's so hard to get into a writing groove when someone's always around and I can't — I used to just go to this local beer — my whole life is drinking, I guess. [Laughs.] But I used to go to a beer bar, and I’d just order a whiskey soda, and I'd really pound through things because it just — I needed to change my atmosphere. Or, I'd go to the coffee shop if I needed air conditioning. I don't have that anymore.

And in New York, I used to go to the public library. And I’d work in the huge — in the Rose Reading Room, and just that entity that's there, it would be, just — it's so hard not to focus, and not to work and get things done. Just being home all the time when I'm already have been a person who is working at home and enjoys that focus. Like, oof. Be careful what you wish for. [Laughs.]

Alejandra: It's true. It's the same thing, ’cause I — yeah, I always loved my solitude. I loved being able to work from home, but I loved having those moments.

And the thing with on-camera work is that you go — if I have a Today Show segment, I might leave the house like 6 a.m., and I go and I do stuff. But I'm usually home by 11 a.m. — or no, by then or 10 — I'd be home by noon at the latest, right? That was my day. And I’d come home, and my — but the adrenaline would wear off slowly. And I’d usually take a nap, and then eat lunch. And it would just be this kind of shift into this sort of quiet space after this rush of what I was doing beforehand.

But yeah, now it's just this one constant space and the same energy. And I was thinking a lot when you were talking — during your — in your piece about travel. It's that idea of the, you take yourself when you're traveling. And my thing about traveling was always, it was less about the place and more about experiencing myself in a new place. And also what aspects of myself that would bring out.

Especially because my husband is not Latino. He's white. [Laughter.] Well, you can be white Latino. He's Jewish, and was born in the Soviet Union. He was born in Kiev, and came over as a kid. But yeah, so it's a totally different culture. I went from having a sort of regular Latino influence, from my Latina friend, girlfriends, or being with my family, to not really having much of that in my life.

So, I’ve actually gone through a period of reading books in Spanish, and watching movies and TV shows in Spanish. And I didn't even realize that I was doing it. I just saw that the only things I ever wanted to read or watch were all in Spanish. And I realized that it's because that's — that aspect is something that I'm not getting to experience. I used to go to a lot of Latinx events, right? Or I used to go to conferences, and I'd always have these pockets of time where I was surrounded by people who I didn't have that learning curve of explaining stuff to. Kind of understood a lot of the same issues, and had a lot of that same cultural language. And I don't really get much of that right now, except for the few times I've been able to see my parents.

And yeah, so I missed that. I love Miami, and I love going to Puerto Rico, obviously. And the thing about those two places, and even LA to a certain extent, is that they sort of bring out that Latina side of me. It's a home, right? I love when I get to Miami, and suddenly I realize I haven't spoken English in a day and a half. ‘Cause the flight attendants, and the Uber driver, and the reception at the hotel, and everybody that I've talked to, it's all in Spanish. You feel you're at home.

It's this nice thing that sort of wakes up that side of me. And I always feel like my most beautiful, sexiest, truest self in that air — environment. I need a few, a dose of that, right, every so often. Whether it's there, or going to LA and being with a lot of — I’ve gone to lot, Latina conferences in LA. And being around other women, and just talking and sharing in a lot of things, in terms of music and fashion and beauty. And just talking about these little stories that you have in common, that sort of feeds that aspect. And then I can kind of come back to the other side of my world, where other things are fed but then it creates balance.

So, travel creates that balance for me. When I go to places, like I go to New Orleans and that kind of feeds that love of food, and slight hedonism, and music, and a little bit of recipes — my spiritual, believes in ghosts, magical side. There's a little bit of that. I like a haunted city.

And so, I’m missing all of that. Because right now, all I have is like my own space. And I try to create variety and things here, and I — but it doesn't — yeah, doesn't fill it the same way.

(1:04:57) Alicia: Yeah.

Well, I wanted to talk to you about translation, because — and I know you're reading Hopscotch in Spanish and English, which is crazy. [Laughter.] But, as someone who is bilingual and has this experience in kind of international publishing, do you think that there should be more of this kind of — not even necessarily just translation, but of course translation, but also collision of languages because — and people have been talking a lot about not italicizing words that aren’t English in food writing, especially because food is so global.

And we all use different words for the same thing sometimes. Okra, I'll — sometimes I'll call it in its Hindi name, because I'll be cooking that kind of recipe or something. And obviously, porsche, passion — all these things are — I don't know. We kind of just know. Or you can easily find out now, too, what it is.

What do you think? How do you feel, by being bilingual, being Latina, affects both your understanding of food and of food media? But also what do you think could happen if there were more of this convergence between languages?

Alejandra: Yeah, so there's a few things there.

On one hand, I love the idea of — and I know, this puts much more of an onus on the viewer or the reader — but I love the idea of making people look stuff up and educate themselves on things they may not necessarily know automatically.

And it's a delicate balance, because on one hand, part of what we do is teach, right, and share knowledge. And I do want to be a guide. But I also think that sometimes, there's a few things that people should be able to look up themselves and figure out themselves.

It's an opportunity, right? When you look something up, there may be something that sparks your imagination, or that feeds you, in a way that may not necessarily speak to me when I'm talking about something, right? There may be something about an ingredient that is exciting to you, that may not be the thing that is exciting to me about it.

And so when I'm telling you something, I'm just telling you my point of view. But letting people sort of do a little bit of their own work, and a little bit of their own research, kind of opens things up further.

And this is something that we talked about in the Black Book panel that I did a few weeks ago. ’Cause when you're on camera, especially because time is so short—I’ve done segments that are two minutes long. I think the most I've ever had is maybe 10 minutes. If you want to talk about things that—you have to explain everything.

If I want to do a French fry recipe, I say, you peel the potato, and you chop the potato, and you fry the potato. But if I want to talk about tostones, I need to explain what kind of plantain to get. How you peel it; it's not easy to peel. Explaining those little things is an aspect of it.

It's a higher learning curve. There's so much that you need to get through before you even get to that basic thing, that you're always kind of starting at the bottom. So, you're constantly pushing this boulder up the hill, and then you need to start all over again. And so you never really get into the juicy parts. Because you're so limited in terms of time, or in terms of—whether it's just inches in a printed page, or word count, or minutes on television.

I would love to. It's impossible to ask, right? We can't even get people to wear masks, right? [Laughter.] We want to expect so much from people, and yet, it's—that's not really the case all the time.

But it would be so great if some people could do that, just because then it would let us kind of skip the basics and jump into stuff that's much more exciting and more interesting and cover stuff that we don't get to do. Like I was saying earlier, I can say picadillo and arroz con pollo, and things like that. And I don't need to translate it, and I don't need to explain it to you.

And that's part of that thing, the other thing I was saying, about when you're amongst people where you don't have that learning curve. Because then you can just go so much further than when you have to constantly explain. And that's important in personal relations, and I think it's important in terms of the writing, and the work that we're doing, and just letting people learn new things. I would love to not have to translate everything, or not even italicize things.

I've been reading a lot of things in Spanish, and also even in English but with Latino character — I've been reading a lot of Latinx romance novels. They're so hard to find, trying to find more and more of them. But something that frustrates me is the way that everything, even when they have Spanish language in it, then it'll say something — so, it'll immediately translate it in the other word. I can't even think of an example. Basically, she might say, in Spanish that she's always late, and then the other person in English would be like, ‘Yeah, she is always late.’

So, for me reading it, it's annoying. This is written for the person who doesn't speak Spanish, or who doesn't know these phrases and things. It's not written for me, because I, now, from you, I'm getting double of every single thing that's in there. So, it would be nice to just say, just have it and not have it — I mean, it's not easy, right? I don't know what the perfect way to do it would be. But you do lose so much. You lose so much.

Alicia: For sure.

Yeah, for you, is cooking a political act?

Alejandra: Ah, I've been thinking about this, ever since you started talking about this. Yes and no, yes and no. I'm gonna go with yes and no.

But what's interesting to me is that in terms of cooking, I started cooking to get away from politics. ’Cause I went to college at George Washington University. And my major was political communication, which was a special program that combined political science, journalism, with like a little bit of marketing and communications. So, it was essentially designed for people who wanted to go into campaign management and in to — the spin sort of world of politics, which is what I was fascinated in, at that time. And that's what I thought I wanted to do.

And then I was in these classes, and I would look around me and be like, ‘Oh, my God, I hate all these people.’ You're in D.C., and you're in your class. These boys would show up in khaki pants and blazers, and everyone was always running off to their internship. And everyone was just terrible. I mean, not everyone, there were great people too. But I just did not feel comfortable. And I didn't feel happy. I liked the content, but I didn't like the people. And I was like, ‘These are the people that I would be working with, and I do not want to work around these people.’

And so for me, I started skipping classes and not really going, and I would stay in my dorm and I would cook. And I would cook these elaborate meals, and GW has — each dorm had its own kitchen, each room had — it's just basically better apartments than I've lived in ever since.

And so I would just stay and cook, or my roommate would come home, and I'm like, ‘I made moules frites.’ Or like, ‘I baked madeleines.’ And she's like, ‘Didn’t you have a class today?’ I'm like, ‘Ah, I didn’t go.’

I remember, at one point, my mom was like, ‘Why don't you just go to culinary school?’ And I was like, ‘I'm already in school.’ And she's like, ‘Yeah, but you don't seem to want to do the school stuff. You just want to cook.’ That's when I ended up taking off, and doing — and going to culinary school for eight months.

It was my escape from that world that I just didn't like. It felt icky. It had a lot to do with the specific major I was in, because these were people that wanted to be spin doctors, basically. But I wanted to get away from that, and the food just felt more pure. And it felt more tangible and real, and solid. Something that I could start to finish and enjoy, and something I could share. And that brought people together instead of the fighting aspect of it, the political stuff in that.

It's been years since then. It is absolutely political still. There's that aspect of it, of, again, of bringing people together. But, I think that that's not necessarily always the case.

You're bringing people together when it's — generally, people talk about food bringing people together, but I think it's more about food is what you do when you're already together. You're already at that table together. And then the food is the thing you're doing.

It might bring your family together, but — from the different rooms in your house, or it might be something — or, if you're at — if you're at college with people, and then, yeah, you're all eating in the dining hall together. But here's already things in common there. You’re already going to that same school, you're already in the same family, you're already in the same city. There's already something that has brought you together, that's not necessarily the food. The food is an action. It's a thing you're doing.

But if food brought people together, we wouldn't have the jokes about Thanksgiving, and the racist aunts, and stuff like that. It's not a Hallmark card. It's not as poetic as I think people think it is. I think it is tricky.

Everything that we do is a decision. And in Vermont, when I'm cooking and trying to figure out all these dietary restrictions and stuff, my goal is making sure that everybody gets to eat, and everybody gets to enjoy, to feel safe, regardless of what it is that they can or can't eat.

But then also, to try to make the best choices possible within what's available. And I have restrictions, I have budgets, and I have access to some stuff and not access to other things. God, I love a container of peeled garlic, especially when I have to cook food for 35 people, right? I know that the peeled garlic is not necessarily the best choice.

Ok, so I'm weighing. I'm constantly weighing things. And I'm like, ‘Alright, so what is the priority at this point? And then versus this point.’ So, it's things that are constantly always changing.

And I think that with anything else, that varies throughout the day. I might feel about something someday, and my priorities might be different today, or even at breakfast then they are at the end of the day, right? They’re constantly shuffling.

It is obviously impossible for us to be 100% ‘good.’ [Laughter.] I think we all have our compromises that we have to make, the compromises that we're forced to make lot of times. It's not even an option for us.

You've talked about your limitations on the island. And even in my neighborhood, or what's available, especially during this pandemic, I was getting a lot of food delivered, ‘cause I didn't want to go into the grocery stores, because I want to stay healthy so that I can interact with my parents, right. My priority is being able to stay healthy so that I can be with my family. So, that means that maybe I'm ordering stuff on Amazon, or I'm getting stuff delivered from Target, or whatever I know that isn't the best choice, but right now I'm prioritizing this. And that makes sense. So, there's things like that.

So, yeah. Did I answer the question?

Alicia: You did. [Laughter.]

Well, thank you so much for taking all this time to chat.

Alejandra: Oh, my God. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk about some of these things that are usually just kind of rolling around in my head. Yeah, and having a place to share. And obviously happy to chat anytime. I'll send you those ’90s vegetarian recipes that my mom — [Laughter.] I'm telling ya, the oatmeal fritters are pretty awesome.

Alicia: I can't wait. I can't wait to see. [Laughter.]

Well, thank you again.

Alejandra: Thank you.

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

I talked to Ivy Mix for today’s conversation before there was a controversy around her being used to kick of National Latinx Heritage Month on Liquor.com’s Instagram. As the author of a book called The Spirits of Latin America and owner of pan-Latin bar Leyenda, they invited her to promote the book and the spirits, bartenders, and recipes contained therein. Of course, no one thought this through enough: Mix isn’t Latinx. A bad apology was issued by the company, but I didn’t have a real understanding of what happened, as Liquor had removed her original posts, leaving no context for what had ensued. I called her up to understand exactly what went down.

“Hindsight is 20/20,” she says. As she explained how she came to kick off this month for the website without being Latina, she doesn’t want to edit her actions. When they asked, she said yes, and didn’t think about asking who else they were going to feature, why she was going to be the first person to do a takeover, and all the other questions she now realizes she should have asked. But she posted a picture of herself with the book, highlighted bartenders and spirits that are featured within it, and signed off by saying she isn’t Latina.

“It was just stupid and selfish and haphazard,” she says. “I don't want any f*****g pity from anyone, because I really think I'm in the wrong here.”In discussing her career and what she’s wanted to be an advocate for, she now realizes that in doing so, she was also promoting herself, and that complicates her efforts. ”At first, it was like, ‘okay promote and support women in Speed Rack.’ That's what I really wanted to create a platform for supporting and promoting women in Speed Rack, and through that effort, I made my career, so I was also supporting and promoting myself as a woman,” she says. “Then I was like, ‘okay, well I wanna support and promote all these amazing Latin American distillates from these amazing cultures that I have lived and experienced, but I am not Latina, and I've received opportunities that maybe other people should have should have had.’” She has received messages telling her that she takes up a lot of space in a crowded arena as someone who’s not Latina, and that’s what she’ll be reckoning with now. This is a moment when we’re collectively working to better understand appreciation versus appropriation, as well as how we can seek transformative accountability rather than shunning when someone makes mistakes. What do we do with the work of someone who’s profited from her take on a culture to which she doesn’t belong? Is that work useless? I don’t think so, but I do think we need to have these discussions and allow for nuance.I wanted to talk to her originally because I too am a nerd about Latin American spirits, and I wanted to understand her perspective on them, as someone who works with them, has traveled a lot, and works to make the agricultural side of spirits production visible. We had a pretty bad connection, but above is our brief conversation, which got cut off right at the end. Read below.

Alicia: Hi, Ivy, thank you so much for agreeing to do this.

Ivy: Yeah, thanks for having me.

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

Ivy: Yeah, so I grew up in a tiny town called Tunbridge in central Vermont. Less than 1,000 people, kind of like 750 people. Both my parents moved to New York—to Vermont from different places. My dad with his parents when he was like a teenager, and my mom in her thirties when she was kind of a hippie moving around. 

So, I was lucky to kind of grow up in an era of and in a place where TV dinners and Hot Pockets were not in my family. My mom was kind of on the farm-to-table movement long before it was a thing. We weren't allowed to have sugary cereal. We had fruit leather rather than Fruit by the Foot. 

And my mom is an excellent cook and has always really cared about the culinary arts. So, I grew up eating food from my garden, and stuff from the farmers’ market, and fresh maple syrup. And I knew the places that the meat that I ate was raised, and I knew who made my butter. [Laughs.] I mean, not all the time, but you know, but it was really like that. 

So, I grew up eating lots of really kind of classic dishes from my mom. She's the oldest of five, born in 1945, kind of in the suburbs of Chicago. So, she's kind of the classic roast type of lady, but party—really delicious meals that were made from really delicious ingredients.

Alicia: Awesome. And what was it that drew you to bartending, and what keeps it exciting as you're in the industry longer?

Ivy: I just started bartending when I moved to Guatemala. As I said, I grew up in Vermont, Vermont. Everyone's kind of a different variation of myself, six degrees of WASP, basically. And I was like, ‘Ok, I kind of want to get out of here. I kind of want to go see something new.’ I really want to learn a foreign language. I really want to learn Spanish, but I was kind of—I was like, ‘I'll take anything. I just want go somewhere else.’ 

End up going to Guatemala, ended up hanging out in Guatemala, ended up hanging out in bars in Guatemala, then ended up working in bars in Guatemala. 

And what drew me to it originally was this—what drew it to me originally was this opportunity to do this job anywhere. It was more of a utilitarian thing. And I was very interested in traveling and seeing new cultures, new places. And originally, I was like, ‘Well, I can do this job anywhere.’ And I really liked that aspect of it. Like, ‘Ok, if everything goes to hell tomorrow, and I would need to move to Japan, I can probably get a job bartending, ‘cause people need our bartenders.’

And that was when I worked in kind of beer-and-shots type of places, and my cocktail knowledge didn't really expand past mojito. And then I discovered cocktails, and I realized I could be creative and make these really beautiful things with—and bartend, and be this in the social environment that I could do kind of anywhere. 

And that's really what draw me—drew me to it, and kept on drawing me to it. 

Alicia: Yeah, how do you keep it interesting?

Ivy: Well, it's funny. Now, I've been bartending for more of my life. In two years, I will be—I will have bartended for half my life. Which is insane, right? ’Cause I started when I was 19.

And what keeps it interesting to me now-it's kind of always what did keep it interesting, but now in a different way, I still have this wanderlust. I still have this desire to explore other places, and different cultures and different things. Cocktails, in particular-let’s just talk about making cocktails-are really a way that I can dive into different places and different cultures and different things, because the way we eat and we drink is so intertwined with the cultures that we come from, or that we go and visit. So, that's really what's kept it interesting to me throughout the years. 

And I'm a geek. I'm a total nerd. Yeah, I was a philosophy major in college, and there's just an infinite amount to know about spirits. And then about flavors. I can just dig, and dig, and dig, and get nerded out into one topic. And that can last a year.

So, that's how I keep it spicy. [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.] Yeah, I know.

I mean, I ask because it's—I mean, obviously, you've been doing so many different things. Running Speed Rack, and running a bar, Leyenda, and also writing a book. Obviously, you haven't just been behind the bar, but at the same time, the kind of nitty-gritty of what you do is still—

Ivy: Yeah.

Alicia: Yeah, it's still behind the bar, and still doing that sort of work. And—

Ivy: Well, I'm definitely a project-oriented person. I'm the type of person that my whole life has been like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna do this thing for two or three years. And now I need another thing.’ [Laughter.] 

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. 

But how has the experience of running Leyenda right now been, during the pandemic? Have you guys been doing outdoor seating? What was your reaction when the shutdown first went into place, and how have you kind of endured through this time?

Ivy: Totally. 

Usually, I travel a lot. I travel because Speed Rack, and I consult in a lot of stuff. And I fly a lot. 

So, when COVID first started to rear its head, I was actually on vacation. And I remember being like, ‘Oh, there’s this thing going on in China. Weird.’ Got back, was home for a week, and I start traveling in the States. I had to do Speed Rack competitions, and I had to go judge at the San Francisco Spirits Challenge. 

And I was in denial, I think, about the realities of what was happening. I mean, for sure, I was in denial. I was traveling up until the 17th of March. So, I was really traveling quite a bit, after most people I know, for work traveling. And I went from San Francisco, and the day I left San Francisco they shut down. And then from there, I went to New Orleans, and then they shut down. And I remember, I was in TK, and we shut down. [Laughter.] 

And I was in San Francisco, and I got a call from my business partners being like, ‘We are going to close. It's really weird here. It's like the apocalypse. For the safety of everyone, our staff is concerned. We're gonna shut down.’ I was like, ‘Ok.’ And then the next day Cuomo was like, ‘It's just gonna be shut down.’ 

I served cocktails to go that weekend, and then decided to stop doing that. It wasn't safe. And then I decided that I was going to go home to Vermont, where I'm from, for two weeks. I packed a bag for two weeks. Like, ‘Then I'll be back. I'll open everything back up.’ I stayed there for two months, almost two and a half months. 

And then we slowly started to open up again. Life still happens, right? Bills have to be paid, rent has to get paid, our water bill, which only comes every quarter, but we had to pay that. And we had to really start working. So, we did. And we brought back our kitchen staff, and we started doing cocktails to go and delivery, and then we got to do outside when Cuomo allowed for that. 

And, you know, it's just—it's weird. We've been okay. I keep on saying like, ‘Winter is coming, everybody. Winter is coming.’ I live in New York City, no one—New Yorkers have a funny fear of eating and drinking outside. I feel like anywhere else in the world, people sit outside well into winter. In New York, everyone's like, ‘Ugh, no!’

So, I don't know what's going to happen. Cuomo just said that we can open up to 25 percent inside, and I really feel like that's the equivalent of being thrown a deflated life jacket. It's just the appearance of helping is there, the appearance of aid is there, but the reality is that for Leyenda, 25 percent operational, we won’t be able to break even at that if we don't have outdoor too. So, we're playing it by ear.

The only answer, I think, is a vaccine. Do I want 100 percent indoor dining? No, no, no. I don't want to work that way. I don't want my staff to work that way. I don't want customers to come in like that, ’cause it's just uncomfortable. But it's really difficult, for sure.

Alicia: I mean, everyone is kind of talking about, what should the government be doing to help independent restaurants and bars, especially in New York City, and then the other layer of New York State. Is there anything in particular you wish to see that would actually be helpful?

Ivy: Yeah. Because of Gia actually, I ended up on the Independent Restaurant Coalition, so—which is called the IRC. And we're basically a newly formed group that formed during COVID, to try to get bars and restaurants together with the government to create a relief package, specifically for independent bars and restaurants. Meaning not Shake Shack, not McDonald's, not franchises, not publicly traded. 

So, we've been working on something called the Restaurants Act, which is now a bill that's in Congress and in the Senate, which is $120 billion bill that will be a relief package to bars and restaurants. We just need money, right? Fact of the matter is, we're all running—I think you're lucky if you're breaking even right now. I know a few people who are doing better than ever, which is good for them. But they're so rare, right? 

But restaurants need a relief package, particularly restaurants in the northeast. Winter is coming, and it's scary. Or just the north in general, forget the northeast. So, I think that the Restaurants Act is something that when I'm feeling even the most bleak, I’m like, ‘if we can just get that, and we can get a grant, not a loan, but a grant in our pockets of a couple hundred thousand dollars, then we'll be able to survive right now.’

When I’m feeling all is lost. I'm like, ‘Well, we're almost at 200 co-sponsors in the Senate and the Congress.’ [Laughs.] And that at least gives me a little bit of something to look to.

Alicia: Right, right, right.

I mean, did you ever expect that would be something you'd be doing, is—? No? [Laughs.]

Ivy: No. No, never in a million years. And what's funny is that I'm actually kind of good at it. People are like, ‘Wow, you got so many people to co-sponsor.’ I just call up and make an appointment.

It's a different type of feeling power. And I hope that something happens with it, because, me—I wrote a book. My bar has won lots of accolades. I'm one of the people that has at least the press coverage or whatever that, hopefully my place will get attention. 

But I really like the Indian place on my block, and they probably don't know anything about—they're not going to get the New York Times article or whatever the hell it is. And if they can get some of this grant money to alleviate the financial burden, then I think it's a win for everybody. Because, imagine a life, we don't get to eat and drink what we want to. It's just so dismal.

Alicia: Especially in New York. Yeah. 

Ivy: Right. Exactly. It’s why I live there. [Laughter.]

Alicia: So, about your book, yeah, which just came out in a pandemic, which is not fun for anybody. 

Why did you want to write this particular book, The Spirits of Latin America, and what was your process for researching and producing such-a book about such a diverse array of spirits?

Ivy: Yeah. 

When I first had the opportunity, I was approached about writing a book. And I was like, ‘Ok.’ And they're like, ‘What do you want to write a book about?’ And I was like, ‘Well, I can say what I don't want to write the book about. I don't want to write the book about what it's like to be a woman in the industry, which is what everyone always wanted me to write about.’ 

I've got a few facets of my career. One of them is certainly Speed Rack, and I definitely have a feminist tilt to what I do, but I was like, ‘I don't want to write about that.’ I opened this bar about these spirits that I really loved. I opened up Leyenda because I couldn't go to a bar and drink all the things I wanted to. I couldn't go to a bar and be—tequila and mezcal bars exist everywhere, and most of them suck. And most of them serve bad tequila and bad mezcal. But then when I go, I can't get like Pisco, you know? So, that's why I wanted to go eat, or go—eat and drink that food and drink. 

So, that's why I opened up Leyenda, and then when it came time to write a book, I was like, ‘Well, I'm interested in this—in spirits from around this area. Why? Why is it that I'm interested in spirits from the ‘New World,’ right?’ The Latin New World. I say that loosely. Dramatic air quotes. 

And, I ended up being like, ‘Ok, so, here is this category of spirits. And they have this really interesting history behind them.’ And everything is in its essence an agricultural product. And grapes came because—literally, because people want to make the blood of Christ and turn all the Indigenous people into goddamn Christians. Agaves were already here, but—and then depending on who you talk to you—but distillation is a, of—well, it depends. But most people believe it's from Spanish descent, that—well, from the Moors, [then] came the Spanish over to the Americas. 

And all that is kind of the embodiment of this real mestizo culture. Of endemic, and original, and conquistador, and European. So, I really wanted to explore that. 

If you look at music from that part of the world, it's—you've got reggae. You’ve got reggatón. You’ve got bachata, you've got salsa, you've got all these different—it's not like we're listening to bluegrass there. And then the spirits themselves also have this vibrance, and this viciousness. And if you look at the textiles in this part of the world, everything's a little bit brighter, a little bit more alive. And I was like, ‘Well, why is that?’ So, that's why I want to read the book.

And that's what the book is about. It's really about the cultural aspects of terroir.

Alicia: Right.

So, were you doing a lot of on the ground research for this? Traveling around Latin America?

Ivy: I was, yeah. 

I was traveling a lot before I even started writing the book, learning about spirits. I lived in my college years in Guatemala. I’ve lived in Peru, I’ve lived in Argentina. And I traveled all over the place when I was in college. Then, when I got into the booze biz, I started traveling a lot and learned about booze, in general. Not in America. 

And then, I took a four-month trip, off and on, to go and write the book, and take the photos, and do on-the-ground work. I mean, when I was doing it was really difficult and hard. And it's not great for running any of my other businesses or my relationship, that's for sure. 

But then, the result was the photographs that were taken by Shannon Sturgis were just beautiful. And a lot of really great interview opportunities for me. 

Alicia: Of course, yeah. 

So, I think in the spirits of Latin America broadly, it's even more important to talk about ideas about sustainability and exactly how alcohol is an agricultural product. So, how do you define sustainability in terms of spirits as well as in cocktails? And how do you pursue that standard?

Ivy: Yeah, so, I mean, it's so multi-tiered, multi-faceted. I mean, as you said, spirits are in their essence—they come from something, some sort of plant. And so that's an agricultural product. So, what we have to think about is how are things being grown? Are pesticides being used? Are we replanting in a way that's good? Are we paying our people who are making these products well?

Unfortunately, agricultural people who work in farming, for lack of a better term campesinos, are usually the bottom of the totem pole socio-economically, and there's not—that’s the same in spirits production. The people who are picking your grapes, or chopping down your sugarcane, or harvesting your agave, are generally not with the college degrees and probably without the options to go elsewhere and get a job in an office or something. So, it's important to pay those people well, and to ensure that they're in conditions that are environmentally sound for them in their health. 

In the history of some of the stuff that's happened with rum production and people having horrible kidney failure because of burning the fields, that's a problem for our environment and it’s a problem for the people who are making these spirits. 

So, that's one sustainability I am very concerned and wondering about—I mean, I can go on and on about it. 

There's so many problems with greed, and with—in agave production, people have decided not to let agaves reproduce naturally, i.e. sexually. And the problem with that is that now we just have a bunch of clones of agaves, and if a phylloxera of agave comes out, then we have no more agaves. Because we haven't been sustainably protecting them. That's what happened with grapes, with phylloxera, and then the same thing is happening in Pisco production, and then the sugarcane, the same. 

So, that's not the problem, just as far as the plant itself. As far as cocktails are concerned, there's been this fab about sustainability and cocktails, and I think that that's awesome. But I don't know if people reusing their lime shells is as important as what's happening from the spirits production of big national company. 

When I go to places, different distilleries, and I see that—I go to Mexico, where there's a lot of glass production, lots of people make glass bottles in Mexico. And I go to some fancy tequila production, and they have pallets and pallets of glasses of bottles from Germany and Austria. And I'm like, ‘So, you're going to ship these things all the way from there over to here?’ And that doesn't make any sense. 

The whole thing about shop local, shop local, buy local, etc., makes sense. It’s also antithetical, ’cause I like Latin spirits, and they have to be shipped from South America. It is complicated, and it is—I think that we need to demand more, and know more about how people are doing it from a corporate level. 

And then realize that sustainability in cocktails is good, but I am a little dubious about the fad of using avocado pits, and I don't really know if that's where we should be focusing when people are taking their highly lethal runoff from their distillates and dumping them in the river next to their house. That's the thing.

Alicia: Yeah, no. Food waste, of course, is an important issue, but at the same time it doesn't really matter if you're bringing all these things in from God knows where, and you're also not concerned with the ecological conditions of the source and labor conditions, of course. 

And so, I usually ask people for the last question if, for them, cooking is a political act. But I figured for you, the question should be, is bartending a political act?[Note: The audio cuts out before this, so I had Mix answer via email.]Ivy: I do believe that bartending is a political act. I have always thought that the every action has its political ramifications, whether you realize it or not, and drinking and eating are no different. Limes and avocados from Mexico are more likely than not tied to the cartel, thus, every margarita you drink with that guacamole is a political act, whether you like it or not. So? We can make more intentful decisions when drinking and as a bar owner, I can be more purposeful in my selection of the things I put on my menus that my clientele will consume. Consumerism is money which is politics and I am in the business (hopefully!) of having folks consume my cocktails so yeah: my job is political.

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

Charlotte Druckman is the writer of Skirt Steak: Women Chefs on Standing the Heat and Staying in the Kitchen, the editor of anthology Women on Food, and a cookbook author, whose work includes the recent Kitchen Remix: 75 Recipes for Making the Most of Your Ingredients. We’ve never met in person, despite both living in New York for seemingly forever, and this was the first time we ever chatted not via Twitter DM or email. While we have rather different backgrounds, there is clearly a certain level of comfort already assumed when writers from the New York metro area talk—and boy, did we talk. This one breaks the record for longest Friday conversation, because there was so much ground to cover about the James Beard Awards, what the meaning of food media is, why food needs real cultural criticism, and the response to her recent Washington Post piece on the whiteness of food memoir. Listen above, or read below.

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

Charlotte: I have to tell you — and in fact, you know this. I'm very excited to do this ‘cause I really love this newsletter. It's a newsletter that brought me to newsletters — seriously.

Alicia: Newsletters are difficult. I'm signed up to so many. 

I logged into Substack yesterday because I was getting all these emails about someone trying to — I think someone was trying to change my password and hack my newsletter yesterday, which was weird. I logged into my account and I'm subscribed to so many newsletters, and I don't know if I'm — I guess a lot of them aren't updated regularly, so that's not so hard to keep up with. But I was like, ‘What am I doing?’ Is everyone's inbox like this now? I guess so.

Charlotte: I'm trying to keep it to a point where I am subscribed to a number where I'm actually able to read all of them, ’cause I know me and I know if I over-subscribe at some point, I'll stop reading any of them. That's my — how my brain will function. 

So, I've so far been very limited, but I went from really, from not reading them to realizing that this is where, at least for me, especially with food writing, I'm getting most of the stuff I most want to read right now. Which is amazing.

Alicia: Yeah, that's the thing. I think a lot of people are saying that, which is nice, about food writing specifically. But, yeah.

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

Charlotte: Yes!

I grew up in New York City, specifically on the Upper East Side, which at some point, I started referring to as Stepford-land. And I'm 45. so where — this is like, we're talking 1980s, Upper East Side, which — it's always been pretty WASPy but it was probably even WASPier then than it is now. It's not really a complaint, it's more, that's more an observation because I — it was a very privileged, safe space to grow up. And I was really lucky to spend my childhood there. And I think just to have lived in New York City as a child with that kind of privilege was — I mean, that's not — that's a rare thing. That's a gift. 

That neighborhood, by the way, is also not known for its restaurants or food. And I come from a family that is one, obsessed with food, and two, completely in love with restaurants. And also, in the land of the WASPs, were Jewish. And I don't know if that — if the obsession with food, some people would argue, and the Jewish thing, is related, but maybe it is. Throwing it out there. 

But the funny thing is, I didn't actually grow up with a lot of traditional Jewish food. Unless you count nova, and smoked sturgeon, and bagels. Seriously, my mom cooked, and she still cooks. She cooks a lot, and she does it by choice. I think it's like an outlet for her. But she does not cook Jewish food resolutely, almost antagonistically. Resistant, deliberate. She didn't really grow up with it, and she — I mean, she hates it. She really doesn't like it. And I think my dad has nostalgic feelings about it, but since he's not the one cooking he kind of can't really do anything about that. So, that's just how that goes.

She cooked from Julia Child's books. But really I think more James Beard, Craig Claiborne, some of the — she had the TIME-LIFE cookbooks, and she cooked out of those. My mom is a huge recipe tearer, so — and she saves a lot of them. So, she had, has yellowed pages from the New York Times and Gourmet. And then I feel when the Silver Palate came out in the early ’80s, like I feel like that changed everything. 

And then also we went to restaurants all the time. My younger brother’s four years younger than I am. And I think once we were old enough to be taken to restaurants, they took us. So, I have these incredible memories of on a Sunday night, going downtown to The Odeon, and Tribeca, and being maybe 5 or something, and my brother being in a highchair. I don't know if they still do this, but they had paper over the tablecloth and they would put crayons down at every table so you could draw. I remember going — I remember drawing with crayons, and having a hamburger and French fries, and having no clue obviously at that age that it was this really cool place where Andy Warhol was hanging out with his friends. I obviously was oblivious to that. I just thought it was awesome. 

And so I have a lot of memories like that, and a lot of the restaurants that I remember don't exist anymore. But then, some do, like the Odeon still does. So, yeah, I had a pretty well-rounded, in terms of food, childhood, but not — definitely not in terms of the cultural embedding, not a lot from my own Eastern European Jewish heritage.

Alicia: Well, what are the Jewish foods your mom didn't like that your dad does have nostalgic feelings for?

Charlotte: Honestly, I attribute it — any traditional Jewish food. But whether or not my dad likes them, I'm not even sure. It was more the point — actually, he does. He's one of those people who likes gefilte fish. That's an example. She doesn't make chicken soup, not into matzah balls, not into chicken soup. Yeah, it has nothing to do with gefilte fish. 

I was with them this last weekend, and I made my dad start reminding me the difference between Jewish foods because I literally — I'm like, ‘Wait, what's the difference between—?’ I was like, ‘What’s kreplach again? What's varnish-?’ I still to this day get this stuff confused. I hadn't had kugel until I went to college and someone made a kugel, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is kugel.’ I didn't know. There were certain things where we would have Seder at my grandparent’s house, so I guess there I would have some stuff.

The food I hate most of all — this has nothing to do with my mom — but I hate herring. I hate it. It makes me cry when I eat it. I have a viscerally bad reaction to it. 

So yeah, those are some Jewish foods I — we never had. She always says she was a juvenile delinquent in Hebrew school, and she got in trouble for smearing hamantaschen on the toilet seats in the bath. So, I also didn't grow up with Jewish pastry in particular. I hadn't really had a babka until babka became trendy a few years ago. So it's interesting because it's not like I had none of it. But the version I had of iit was probably not traditional. And in some cases, it was a really long time until I had it.

My mom would make latkes, but she made them with prosciutto in them, so then I don't even know if they're latkes anymore at that point. Yeah, they were great, but it kind of defeats the purpose of the Jewishness of the whole endeavor at that point. 

It's interesting. And I was aware. My dad made me go to Hebrew school from age five to — feel like I was still going in tenth grade or something ridiculous, and then finally protested. So I had the education and I had a very strong awareness culturally, but food-wise: no.

Alicia: That's so interesting. 

Charlotte: Kind of a void.

Yeah, it really is. I think it's really interesting too.

Especially because I feel like Jewish food has become sort of — I mean, whether or not it's Jewish, and that's a whole sidebar conversation, right? Because I think this sort of fixation on in some ways Eastern European, Ashkenazi food, but also Sephardic and Israeli food, but the conflation of Israeli food with Middle Eastern food. And then the question of how original actually is Israeli food to Israel? That's a whole separate thing. 

But that sort of surge in interest in that food in the last few years, and then the amount of food writing that has been dedicated to it. As a food writer who's Jewish, that's been very interesting for me to see because I don't have that same connection to most of those foods.

Alicia: Right, right. 

I grew up on babka, which is funny that you didn't have it until it was trendy. I remember when it got trendy. I was like, ‘I've loved babka my whole life.’ 

Charlotte: Yeah, it was like, ‘What is this!’

Alicia: I never thought of it — I mean, obviously, I don't know. I was a kid. ‘This is delicious bread.’ And I grew up with challah french toast and stuff like that, too. That's just what happens when you live on Long Island, I guess.

Charlotte: Yeah. [Laughter.]

Alicia: All right, so I didn't plan to talk about this, but it's timely. And the James Beard Awards are trying to kind of deal with themselves, but they're not doing a very good job. I address this in Monday's newsletter, which we're talking about actually before it comes out. Yeah, what is the deal with the James Beard Awards? How are you viewing the current situation?

Charlotte: Well, I decided that the James Beard Awards were not for me. Let me just say it that way, before I go all out in my rage.

And when I wrote Skirt Steak—because first of all, I interviewed enough women chefs who talked about their frustrations with it, and you just realized how the criteria and the rules were set up in such a way that you are going to have a really homogenous pool of both nominees, but also winners. 

You just saw how it was preventing people from getting recognition in a lot of ways, and there is even stuff — I mean, for me, the thing that was the most kind of telling was finding out that — so you know how you have, in each category, how many — I forget how many restaurants are nominated. Which again, this is sort of a random thing, but I always think it's weird that the chef gets nominated in the category — but it's for a restaurant. It's sort of like, why don't the restaurants just get nominated, and then the entire team, the staff, they collectively get that award, you know what I mean? It's weird to me.

Anyway, in the category of the regional but also the national ones, where it's those — the restaurants, and then you're supposed to vote, what I learned and couldn't get over and I still can't get over this because I don't think it's changed. And this is before we even get to what went on this year and trying to redo the election and rig it so that it turns out looking more ‘politically correct’ because the, again, the criteria have set it up so that demographically people are already primed to win. 

But even in a sense before you get to that, you have this category. It used to be that you didn't have to go to any of the restaurants to vote for them in a category. So you could be from any part of the country. You could have heard of a restaurant in a category in a different region. And you could just be like, ‘Well, I'm gonna vote for that because all my friends say it's really good.’ I mean, that's already ludicrous. 

Next phase of this, where they improve things, and they're really proud of themselves when they changed this. And I think it happened a few years before I wrote Skirt Steak. The new rule was that ‘Oh no, wait. Ok, no. You have to have eaten at the restaurant to vote for it.’ Ok, fine. If you think about it, if you're voting in a category where you're saying this is the best of this category, and you haven't been to all the restaurants in that category, how does your vote count in any way? If you've only been to the one you voted for, how do you know that’s the best one in a group? I mean, it's truly just that — so, let's look at that. That's something that's really small in a sense, but based in logic. And to me, the logic in that was already so warped that I was like, ‘Oh my God, what is this? What is this system?’ 

And then you could start to see, if you were more cynical, how that would start to play out if you're talking about a region in the country that is, is sort of less dense with traveling voters. And so let's look at the Midwest ,and let's think about how many in that category, how many of those restaurants — maybe, probably they're going to be dominated by Chicago. And then you're going to have a few outliers. The number of people who even get to the non-Chicago restaurants, and then the number of people who go to Chicago, and which of those restaurants do they go to? Probably the ones they heard of, probably the ones that they have — they know publicists at, right?

It becomes rigged, and it really is a pop— people say that it's a popularity contest, and you're like, ‘Ok, but what exactly does that mean?’ This is a clear case where it's very easy for it to be a popularity contest. 

And by the way, it really operates on an honor system. So, no one's checking to make sure that you went to the restaurant you voted for anyway. I don't think you have to show your receipt. And frankly, since I think a lot of those meals get comped, there probably wouldn't be receipts anyway. 

So, learning that was the case and learning that then, I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I mean, this thing is a sham, right? And so then we have everything that's happened in the past few years, like this sort of — from the moments of them patting themselves on the back for their seeming progressiveness, which was barely a sign of even just catching up to the times. 

And now we have what's happening now. And I'm just like, ‘Guys, just get — honestly, just cancel the whole thing.’ Cancel the whole thing because the foundation is already rotten. Again, I'm not an awards person. So I'm not sure I believe in this giving out awards to restaurants in this way in the first place. It's just clearly this system. 

The restaurant committee releasing a statement — to me, that committee’s been operating for years and years in this country in this clearly busted system. And it's only now they finally decided to release a statement about their outrage. I don't know, to me that almost looked more like a damage control press release than anything else. Which again, maybe that's cynical. 

I'm just like there have been too many problems with this system, and actually, I think there have been enough problems with the foundation that at this point I'm just like, ‘People, let's close it down. Let's walk away. I have lots of ideas if you're all hell-bent on having restaurant awards for how you might reconsider going forward running them.’ I have similar ideas for the media awards. Happy to give them away for free. Or yes, maybe just no awards. 

I wanna know what you think. I mean, you're probably — you’re — 

Alicia: I don't want awards at all. 

[Laughs.] It's been such an obnoxious thing to deal with as a writer, as a food writer. As a freelancer especially, it's like, ‘Ok, I have to pay $150 to submit a piece. And I'm only going to be able to pick one piece.’ And then I have to maybe strategically consider which category I can submit to, to have the most chance of being nominated. 

And I've submitted twice. In personal essay a few years ago, when I wrote about oysters for Hazlitt, and I submitted last year, I guess, yeah, for this, what would have been this year, a big three-part piece on Puerto Rican foodways. And neither time was I nominated. And so it just feels really bad. And I think everyone just feels really bad when it's like, ‘I paid money to just — for nothing, to this organization.’ 

You're hanging all these hopes of stability on the idea of winning the award. It's like, ‘If I had a James Beard award, would I have gotten a bigger advance for my book? From probably a bigger publisher? Yeah, sure, probably.’ And that's why we care about this. And that's the only reason is because — and I think Tunde Wey talked about this in his interview with Helen Rosner, for The New Yorker. But we care about these sorts of things because we have to. Because the continued attention means we have continued stability in our work. And the only way we can do work is with the support to do it. 

And so the false, weird system — and I was a judge, too, for journalism this year, in a subcategory. And it was a really dumb experience, frankly. It was like you’re reading all these pieces — have you judged the journalism awards before?

Charlotte: No, I actually have — I have a good — when you're — when you’re — I have a good story about this. Yeah. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Even though I think these things are stupid, at the same time I was like, ‘I'm honored, I guess, to be included in this.’ And so I'm like, ‘All right, sure, I'll do it. I want to be included.’

Yeah, like rating people's work at one to 10. In the category I was a judge for, nothing I rated highly was a finalist. I think there's an NDA involved, so I'm not going to talk about any more of it. 

I, in 2018, held — I produced, kind of, with a friend, a dinner at the James Beard House, where we brought four chefs from Puerto Rico to cook a Christmas dinner or whatever. And it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I mean it was fun and I liked it. And it was — we were doing this sort of as a — because, to — kind of to demand attention for these chefs who weren't getting attention, because people — because of the way people perceive Puerto Rican food and who's a Puerto Rican chef. 

And so we did this dinner. We had this really exhausting experience of basically just doing a fund-raiser for this organization. And in the end, I guess it paid off because the next year one of the chefs was a semi-finalist. The year after, two chefs who participated were semi-finalists for Best Chef: South. And then one of the chefs who participated was a Best New Chef for Food and Wine. But then you just see so clearly how this system works, which is — and it's so gross, because it's like, ‘Why wouldn't these chefs have gotten attention without this fund-raiser for this organization?’

And I always say this: The James Beard Foundation extorts the industries it purports to be an advocate for. It extorts restaurants, it extorts — and chefs. And it extorts writers for money, in the hopes that they will get an accolade that will ensure them continued— 

Charlotte: And fear. And also the fear. 

What I really saw in Skirt Steak was that there is this fear that if you don't participate, that then somehow you are making yourself ineligible for any kind of acknowledgment. And so you feel like you have to say yes. And that was really hard to see. It was like, ‘This is awful.’ They're just saying yes because they're terrified, that this may be their only chance to ever be considered. And that was really hard. That is really hard to see. 

When I did Skirt Steak, when I wrote the chapter on awards, I kind of sat myself down and I was like, ‘You realize if you write this chapter, that's probably going to be it for you with the Beards.’ I think that I didn't hold out much hope after everything that I learned that it was an organization that if you kind of laid any of the reality bare, that you would then be rewarded in some way. I just remember thinking, ‘Well, do you not want to have the chapter in the book? Or do you want to have this chapter in the book?’ And thinking I'd rather have the chapter and know that I did that than be worrying about this. And also now that I see how this works, at least on the restaurant side. it doesn't make me feel that good about the media side anyway. So, I don't care if I never get an award from this foundation. 

And that was how I proceeded. And there was something really freeing in it, because it was almost like I exempted myself from being allowed to care, you know what I mean? I saw what it did for writers who won. I saw all of that stuff. 

This is my funny story about that, which is that — well, two, I guess, funny stories. But the first was, right before Skirt Steak came out — so the galleys had gone out. Like those advance reader copies had gone out. I got an email from a friend of mine, who was on the restaurant committee, asking me if I would like to join. And I was like, ‘I don't think this person has read my book at all.’ And I replied, saying, ‘Well, I have a lot of negative feelings about it. And I think the only way I would want to join would be if I felt like I could actually make some kind of real difference, because otherwise why would I do it?’ And I said, ‘But have you read the galley of my book? I feel probably you should read it before you ask me this.’ It sort of was a full-disclosure thing that probably, this person, or someone on the committee, maybe they all should have read the book. And so, their response was, ‘Oh, ok, yeah, let us get back to you.’ And a few weeks went by. 

And then I got this email saying, ‘Oh, you know what, Charlotte? We're thinking that because you have a book coming out, and you're going to be on book tour and everything, it's probably not the right time for you to join the restaurant committee.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, that's funny, because the one time that someone can actually get to all those restaurants across the country would be on a book tour, so I see what's happening here. I see now that you've seen the book, and you’ve realized I cannot be on the committee. And that's cool. And we’ll leave it here.’ And that is my favorite personal James Beard story. 

I, after this, made a point of never submitting my work, like I refused. I have editors who I think did submit my work. So, I'm not gonna pretend that my work wasn't out there to be nominated. 

Women on Food was the first time that I submitted, because I wanted to make sure that the contributors to that book got whatever full possible credit and attention and visibility they could from working on that project. So, Abrams was the publisher. I think they submitted the book as a whole, and then they would — they said they would submit three essays. And I was like, ‘I will personally then make sure that if anyone else, in addition to three — if you have more than three people who want their essays submitted, I will get that done. So, I ended up submitting, I think three, in addition to the three that they submitted.

The interesting thing was it was the first — because it was the first time I was submitting, it was also the first time I really had to start thinking about the categories. And I realized how limiting they were. There's such a kind of homogenization that happens with these awards. Not just in the sense that I think, writers see what wins. And then I think they try and write things that look similar to that, whether it's in tone or structure. 

But it's also that the categories — anything that's a hybrid almost doesn't fit. It's like, ‘Well, where are you going to put this?’ There were essays in Women on Food — and it was very deliberate, and it's what I loved so much about them — that you would look at it, and you would have to say, ‘Well, it's both. It's a travel essay. It's also about restaurants. Or, it's personal writing, but it's also a profile.’ So, it became this whole thing of I don't even know what category to submit this to. And I found that really limiting, and also really interesting. ’Cause to me as a reader, the most interesting stuff that I'm reading now doesn't fit categories. Again, it's like, ‘what do those awards—?’

Something I realized, and I realized it again ’cause Women on Food was nominated, which — I was so happy for the book and I was so happy for everyone in it, but I was actually really not happy for myself. I had a very strange reaction. I started crying. And it wasn't happy tears. I cried out of frustration, and I had a really hard time articulating why I was crying. And I realized, yeah, I was frustrated. I felt angry. I felt sort of like, first of all, I think that those awards are more about the person who wrote the work than the work. And I think honestly that the awards, if you're going to give them out, should be about the work. And I think it's always collaborative. 

And I really thought about that for this book. But I also realized that I was getting congratulated by people I hadn't heard from in I don't know how long. I had texts on my phone where I didn't know who the people were being like, ‘Congratulations, this is great.’ And I was like, ‘What is this?’ I felt like suddenly other people thought I was validated because I'd been nominated for this thing. And meanwhile, I'd been working for so many years doing my thing, doing stuff that I was proud of, just because I was proud of it. And it was suddenly not until I got this nomination that it seemed people paid attention. It really annoyed me. I don't know. That's a very weird reaction to have. And again, I was really proud on behalf of the book, but just as a personal thing, something about it really upset me. I know that's really weird.

Alicia: You recently mentioned to me that you would write Skirt Steak differently now, that you would have given race more primacy of place in your analysis of women in kitchens. How would you go about doing so if you were starting to write that book today?

Charlotte: Yeah.

When I wrote Skirt Steak, I was clueless — in, honestly, in so many ways. I mean, I'd never written a book before. I think it was a combination of immaturity and lack of confidence, but also that kind of ignorance when you're aware of your ignorance, and you decide to work around it instead of tackling it head on. 

Also honestly, there was just this — my fundamental lack of understanding of the history of feminism in this country, in the United States and how white it's been. So, I was really idealistic and naive in a few ways. At that point, I thought any form of feminism benefited all women. That's not how it works. And over the past few years, I've learned that if it's not inclusive, it isn't feminism.

It's not so much that it was naive, but it's a very kind of linear academic kind of thinking, I think. I kind of thought that I could provide a template, like a methodology with the book, that you could then apply to other professions, to other disenfranchised groups in those industries. And that was what I noted in the introduction, that as a heterosexual, cisgender, white woman, I felt — personally, I felt like I wasn't equipped to do the level of analytical work I wanted to in the areas of race and sexuality, or gender identification

But now I look back on it, and I’m like, ‘That's bogus.’ Because all I needed to have done was what I was doing anyway, which was just start with the women themselves, right? I mean, the book is grounded in the experiences, and then — and the voices of the chefs who were included. And I interviewed 73 of them. So, if I had just taken the time to include more women of color and Black chefs, especially, and to ask the necessary questions of everyone, there's no reason it couldn't have included race. And that's, of course, that's how I would do it now. 

And I'd also negotiate more time in which to do it, so that I had the time to interview more people and sit with it and parse everything. 

For me, it's a huge regret. I do actually still think that the methodology thing holds up. I think it's something you can apply. But I wish I'd done it myself, and in a more holistic and inclusive way. Definitely.

Alicia: Well, how long did you take to write that book?

Charlotte: I mean, I think it was really fast, because my — I don't even remember — by the time I signed the contract, it was after I'd started. But I knew that it was going to be due at the end of August in 2011. So, I started working on it — I think I agreed to the deal at the very end of December in 2010. So, I just started immediately in January of 2011. So basically, I did it between January and August of 2011. 

I traveled for it. So, to interview that number of people, to travel, and then to process all of it and synthesize it into a book within that period of time. When I look back on it, I'm like, ‘How did I do that?’ Yeah, it was basically seven months. I did it in seven months, and I can't imagine doing it that way now and feeling good about it. 

Alicia: Yeah, no, I'm in that right now.

My book is due July 1, 2021. I expected to be able to travel for it, and I think that that's kind of having a detrimental effect on — I mean, that, and time and money generally. I thought when I was writing the proposal for this book that I would go to places and have all this rich imagery, and atmosphere, and personality to draw on to write this. And now I'm like, ‘Wait, how do I do it without that because it's a pandemic?’ 

Charlotte: Yeah, it's also — it's expensive. I mean, I was not paid very much to do Skirt Steak, and I definitely invested. The fact that I traveled and did all that stuff, I don't think that — that might not have been the most cost-efficient thing. 

I think because it was my first book, I felt it was important to try to interview as many of the women in person as possible, just to have that sort of closeness you could — in my mind, I was like, ‘I can have conversations that are more — that go deeper, that are more real.’ When I was doing cities where there was a multiple number of women, I would try and travel to them. 

I have to say in hindsight, I'm — I think — now that I've — that we do so many interviews remotely, even before the pandemic, like we — I realize that it's not essential. But I do think, in terms of — I, so I just finished reading Isabel Wilkerson's Caste and it's changed — it's had such a profound effect on me. I feel like I'm one of the Oprah's Book of the Month converts. One thing I was thinking about when I read it was just the amount of time that she had. And also, I mean, the research that she did was — it's astounding. And the traveling she did was astounding. I wish all writers could be given that amount of time, and could have the resources to do that because you read it and you're like, ‘Oh my god,’ but then you also realize it took years. 

And I feel like most book deals now, they want you to turn your book out in these really short time spans. And we do it but then we look back and you're like, ‘How did I do that?’ And you wonder what it would have been like if you'd had more time. 

And sometimes I think it's better to have less time, again, almost for cost efficiency. ’Cause it means you kind of crank it out, and then you have more time to go back to doing other work that you get paid for. But on the other hand, then I look at a book like Caste. I mean, obviously, it's a special — it's an extremely special book, and she's an extremely, just unique talent. But you look at that and you do think, ‘Wow, to have that much time and support, to be able to go do that level of research and travel is just — it's amazing.’

Alicia: Right, right. 

No, absolutely. The time thing, for me, it's better to have a short amount of time. Because I don't want to get lost in the woods, and so — and I want to focus on it and get it done. 

But at the same time, I just wish I had the resources and the global ability to do some sort of research that I had really intended to do. And it's funny, because I've basically been doing research for this book already for a few years I guess, kind of with other stuff I've been doing. 

But there's still so much I wanted to do, and I tried to convince — the last time I had a publication offer me to cover expenses and to pay me a proper amount of money for a project. I was like, ‘Can I please go to The Farm in Tennessee, which is a commune where they still produce tempeh spores that make like most of the tempeh, I think, in the United States?’ And then also to San Francisco to go to Hodo Foods, where they make tofu and yuba and other soy stuff. And then there was some other thing I was gonna stay in New York for.

But I was like, ‘I want to do a whole audio project on tofu, tempeh, and seitan and go to these places.’ And I was like, ‘This will be really good as a project, but it also it'll be really good research for my book, and I'll have it actually funded.’ But then they didn't want me to do that. [Laughs.]

Charlotte: Why, of course. Because that's the thing, they’re always like, ‘We could get you to do a story for less money.’ 

I'm an optimist about that stuff. And I'm like, ‘But Alicia, that's an amazing, that would still be an amazing series.’ And the thing is that you can do the book you're doing now and then maybe that will be your next book, or maybe having done this book, you'll get the opportunity to go do that. So I just look at it that way, ‘cause that — you have to. And because the amount of information out there is unlimited, and the way your brain processes it is always going to be that unique thing. So, if you can't get it into this book, that doesn't mean that's it.

Alicia: Right, no, for sure. And that's a good way of looking at it too. Yeah, I'm trying to not be in despair about not being able to go do the reporting I wanted to do. Because even when I was on the call to sell the book with the editor I eventually went with, I was like — she's like, ‘This is gonna take reporting.’ And I was like, ‘I love reporting. I'm excited to do it.’ And it's like, I am excited to do it. But I'm not excited to do it kind of virtually. 

Anyway. There are bigger problems. [Laughs.]

Charlotte: There are. [Laughs.] That is true.

Alicia: But for Women on Food, the anthology that was nominated for best book at the James Beard Awards. [Laughs.] You also kind of had a wide array of voices, and what was your vision for that book? And how did you decide who to include there?

Charlotte: Well, for that book, most of all, I wanted — I really wanted to make a case, or a declaration, that if women were given the space and the freedom to write what we wanted to write, how we wanted to write about it, and to talk about things that we don't get to openly, that we could produce something that was as good as or possibly better than what you see in so-called mainstream food media. Which is why that part of me was proud when the book got nominated. ’Cause it was like, ‘Oh, I guess on some level, you could say that the point was made.’

But really, I wanted to show that analytical critical thinking, that — yes, things that mix genres together. And just honestly, creativity. That it makes for better reading, and that women are more than capable of that, and that we should be encouraged to do it. And I wanted to do it in a way that was inclusive, and somehow both no b******t but then warm, that felt it kind of had a kind of a warmth to it. And I really wanted to make sure that it felt like a safe space for the women who are involved. So, that was sort of my overall thinking just going in.

I also really did not want it to be a traditional anthology. The way my brain works is that if you're going to challenge a type of writing, if I was going to go in and challenge what food writing was, then I felt like the container it was in, like the format, then that should also be messed with. I was a little bit meta. If you're going to do that, then if the box you put it in feels just as sort of confined and generic and — what have you actually accomplished? 

The same way I'm not really into awards, I'm not into that typical anthology scenario where it's like, ‘This is the best of this genre.’ ’Cause most of the time, it's like, ‘What does that mean?’ And then you look at what the criteria for it is. It's a lot of sociological and cultural bias. And again, as I complained about before, just you — again, you see a homogeneity in the work. So, I really liked this idea that you weren't choosing the work, you were choosing the writers and saying, ‘No really, let's try and do something that you haven't been allowed to do before. Just, what do you really want to write about?’ So that we could mess with that. 

And then I wanted it to be a mix of essays, but also not essays. My vision for it was, ‘Could there be an anthology you would want to take to the beach? What would that look like? What would it be?’ 

So, I anchored it with the essays. Getting the essayists on board for me, even just psychologically for knowing that things were moving along and under control, that was where I felt like I just needed to start. It was very organic in that I was like, ‘Well, before I start doing the mathematics of who should be in here, what the demographic breakdown is.’ Haha, Beards, sorry. I just was like, ‘Well, who do you like reading right now?’ 

And I had a list of — first of all, I've noticed that the — well, two things I noticed while making my list. Number one, I really seem to gravitate toward women's food writing right now. I don't know if this was always true, but definitely right now, most of the food writing that I like — and of course there are exceptions — happen to be written by women. 

But I also realized that most of the stuff I really wanted to read, and the writers I was gravitating to, happen to be Black women and women of color. That made it, in a funny way, just the whole thing very organic for me. ’Cause coming from Skirt Steak and being very aware of the lack of inclusivity there, Women on Food for me, it had to be inclusive, or else I did not want to do it. I was nice to be like, ‘I just have this list of writers I love. And I don't have to start thinking about some kind of quota thing or something. It's literally just, this is — these are the writers I really would like to have.’ 

You also had the issue of how many essays can I have? How many essays does the book need? How many are too much? Also, how much can I afford? How much can I afford in terms of how much money I have and what I'm paying everyone? So, I just kind of was like, ‘Ok, I think I can afford like 13 essays.’ And so I just started with the 13 writers that I most wanted to read. My list was longer than I had essays for.

But I just kind of started with 13, and then I was really lucky because they all said yes off the bat, but then we had two drop out early. Everyone was very responsible and gracious with their dropping out. So, don't want to make it sound like people were delinquents. They were not. And then again, it was really easy for me to fill the slots because I had more people I wanted then room so it was — and I just got lucky. 

I still think I was so lucky that people said yes, and that they said yes so readily. I still kind of can't get over that. I remember every time someone saying yes, being actually slightly floored just because it was like, ‘This is an experiment. It doesn't exist already out there, and I can't tell you what it's gonna be. But I know what I want it to be. But I also know that what I want it to be is going to be shaped so much by the people who contribute to it.’ That's a hard thing to qualify, or even when you're trying to explain what a project is going to be. 

I was just really lucky. It was literally like, ‘These are the people I love to read. Ok, let's see if they want to do an essay.; And it was like, ‘Wow.’ It's like everyone's at a party in one place. 

And then the questionnaire was very much like, ‘Ok, you need to send this questionnaire out to way more people than you know are going to respond.’ And the questionnaire was how you get all those outtakes in the book, right? The question that's thrown out, and then you get this — all of these different responses to it. That came from all of these women filling out questionnaires that I sent that were huge, as you know. 

So, I knew that not everyone would respond. What I wanted was people to only respond to the questions that they felt compelled to answer. If a question leapt out at you, that was what I wanted you to answer. And so that meant sending it to a lot of people, and then knowing that you're probably going to get maybe half of those back. And then that would sort of dictate — that everyone's responses would dictate what that content would be. 

And that was interesting, ’cause again, it was organic. And it started with me being like, ‘Who would I like to have fill out a questionnaire?’ It was the part of the book where — one of the parts of the book where — it was, I wanted food writers, but it also meant I could ask people from other areas of the food world. I could ask chefs, I could ask food entrepreneurs, I could even ask publicists. And so sort of kind of figuring out that balance. 

And then this was interesting, too. I am part of, some — this Facebook group that's — it's food, women food writers that someone started a very long time ago, I think. I do not like this group. People up there are always posting, basically trying to get other food writers to do their homework like basically being like, ‘Hey all, for a story on the best hot dogs in Arkansas, what are your picks?’ and I'm like, ‘Wait, are you being paid to do that? Hi, what do you think our job is? And we're just supposed to start feeding you our favorite hot dogs in Arkansas?’

I thought, ‘I'm part of this group. I should reach out to these women. This is perfect.’ So, I put up a post of how I was working on this book and who — was anyone interested in being part of it, and filling out a questionnaire. And I got all of these women responding, which was great, ’cause it was a lot of women actually I didn't know, and I ended up getting to know them because of the book and that — I actually loved that. But what I realized was like, ‘All of these people are white.’ And I realize in this moment that this Facebook group, I don't really know why — I don't think it was, it definitely wasn't deliberate. There was just a lack of consciousness about it. It was just all white women. They themselves basically just realized this, by the way, a few months ago. Now it seems like it's expanding. 

So, after that, I was like, ‘Oh, ok, wait, now you've got to balance this out. ’Cause you now have all of these white women who just agreed to do the questionnaire, and anyone who does it is going to be included. I'm not going to be like, ‘Oh, you can't do it, now that you said yes.’ 

So then, I already — I had had in my mind what felt like a pretty diverse group of women. But at this point, it was — now we're oversaturated with white women, truly. And so then I will like, ‘Ok, you know what, I'm gonna start from the really obvious but such a useful resource, Equity at the Table. And I'm going to branch out from there.’ And I did that ’cause again, I was like, ‘I don't want a book that is just about the perspective of white women. I've already done that, and it's just not what I want. That's not what this is meant to be.’

So, that was interesting. That was interesting, because the essay thing had gone so — just, really was so organic and fluid that it wasn't something I had to consciously think about in the same way. But for the questionnaire, I found myself having to be more focused on it just because I realized that: yeah, there are so many white women in food media and in the food world. There really are. It's not to say that there aren't women of color and Black women. It's just there are so many white women, right? 

Alicia: I've been in a food writers’ group, like the food binders or whatever. But I think that's a different group. 

But that one has had so many freaking, I don't know, drama aspects. And so many splinter groups that have had to form as a result of the drama, and it's — I just don't, I just don't mess with it anymore.

When I was an editor at Edible [Brooklyn, Manhattan], it was useful to be — put out a call for pitches or whatever. But again, there was so much — there were circumstances where it was — I was trying to suggest that I wanted a writer from Crown Heights for some specific story, and that I didn't want it to be a white person. But you would still get people who would — a white woman who would be like, ‘Well, I've lived in Crown Heights for three years. Is that not enough?’ I’d be like, ‘No, it's not enough. You're not bringing the context that I want for this story.’ It's just endless, that sort of reaction.

Charlotte: It makes you feel self-conscious, too. Because you're like, ‘I feel like I'm doing some sort of really strange form of central casting, and that’s not how this should be working.’ You just want it to be organic. I mean, I wish I had the kind of mental rolodex where it's like, ‘I already knew that person in Crown Heights.’ That's the thing. But we work in a field and a society where it's gonna take a while for that person to be someone that everyone just knows.

Alicia: Right.

Charlotte: Exactly. That's why we — you want to assign the piece to them too. It's very frustrating.

Alicia: I mean, navigating all of these people's crap all the time is very exhausting.

Charlotte: Yeah.

And also, you know that thing where you, when the white person who's like, ‘I lived in Crown Heights, why — for three years. Why doesn't that count?’ it's — you don't want to be rude to that person, and you also don't want to start giving them a sermon. You know what I mean? There's also that too, which can become exhausting, where it's like, ‘I shouldn't have to explain this to you.’ And then, ‘Should I take the time to explain it to that person? Is that a good thing to do? Should I let it go?’

Alicia: It's always that. It's always like, ‘Is it worth it to explain to this person why they're wrong?’ when they're coming at me kind of aggressively, about — And it's like, ‘I'm just trying to do a job. I'm not getting paid enough for this.’ 

Charlotte: I know. I’ve used that phrase like, ‘This is above my paygrade.’ Yeah, it's that. 

Alicia: And people talk about the emotional labor that men demand, but if you're in these groups, the emotional labor and the literal labor, the literal, intellectual labor that is demanded sometimes is just excruciating. 

But yeah, so many people don't do the work themselves, which is — Yeah. Yeah. [Laughs.]

Charlotte: That really frustrates me.

Alicia: Right.

It's like, ‘What rock do you live under that you don't understand all of — what's going on in the world?’

Charlotte: But then you know what happens? What I realize is that someone puts out the call for the best hot dogs in Arkansas, and people do respond. And those are the same people that will then go on and ask everyone for a recommendation for the best falafel in Wyoming. So I see that there's a certain thing where it's almost they're all on the same wavelength, right? But that's just not something I really want to be part of. 

Alicia: No, I don't want to be on that wavelength anymore, either. Luckily, I feel like I've gotten off that particular hamster wheel. 

But you've been writing about food for so long now, and often discussions on social media lack real nuance, or not big on looking backwards. For me, it's been really interesting to do — I don't know, to just do deeper research before you just announce something, or I don't — I mean, maybe you can talk more to this, too, but the way that everything has become so shallow. So many people who are just dependent on $200 garbage that that becomes what people think of as food writing now. 

But you know, are there books, or magazines, or writing, or resources that you wish people talking about food right now would go back to? How would you tell people who want to have a more well-rounded picture of the genre, what would you tell them to look at? I know this is like a random— [Laughs.]

Charlotte: I'm gonna preface this answer by saying it's sort of not a good answer. And it's kind of gonna make me feel like a hater, or possibly a self-hating food writer. 

But if I could send people a reading list with some older stuff on it, it would actually probably not include food writing or food publications. 

Alicia: Ah. Ok.

Charlotte: Yeah, but there's a reason for it. And I actually think the reason is — it’s interesting, and it kind of gets to why we're at the place we're at. This is my theory. Food, as a cultural genre, or really a pop-cultural genre, in the same vein as you look at art, music, film, television. It's really young, it's really amateur. We're barely out of the lionizing profile with a PR news hook phase. So the critical work, like capital C-critical work in our field specifically, is lacking because it hasn't had the time to develop. 

So I think mostly, if you look at the so-called ‘critical pieces,’ they've been limited to restaurant reviews. And I'm not even sure how much of what we would actually label criticism in the disciplinary sense, or just there being any real critical thinking, or even contextual I think applied, even applies to those restaurant reviews, by the way. 

And I was thinking about Jonathan Gold, and how we celebrate him as a food critic. But you can love his way with words. You can love his use of language in his writing so much. And you can love the Los Angeles he wrote about. But I don't think you can say that was criticism. And if you think that it was somehow countercultural, because he was writing about ‘other restaurants,’ forget the fact of his being a white guy, ’cause it’s honestly — that's not my point here. But it's this line of thinking that suggests that if something is not part of white or Eurocentric culture, it's outside of culture in general, which I'm not cool with. 

So yeah, I look at that, and I'm like, ‘Where's our legacy of cultural criticism in food?’ I think the good news is it's actually just starting to be written now, and I'm psyched for that. This is why I like the newsletter so much, because I — that's where I see it happening. 

But personally, my love of critical theory came from studying film and, more than anything else, modern art history. So, it's very nerdy, and that's what I get off on, but that's what I would be sending people to read. Just so that you see it in a field where there's been a rich history of critical thinking and critical work, so that it's actually — and you can see these generations of critics or philosophers talking to each other. You can see how one builds on the other or rejects the other. You really get a sense of that. We don't have that. 

For me, too, I think some of the most beautiful food writing actually exists in fiction. So, I would make people read Monique Truong’s novels, just because she gives you historical context, she gives you cultural context, and then she gives you tension. And she gives you a — this pure love of food written in just the most poetic prose. I think I would send people off in those directions, just because I don't think we have enough of an archive in our own backyard for people to necessarily even understand sometimes what criticism or critical thinking looks like. And I think that's the kind of depth that we're missing. 

And I feel bad, because it's not so much that I want to trash food writing. It's just that I don't think it's existed long enough in that same sense.

Alicia: No, I feel this way so much. You’re articulating a thing that I didn't fully comprehend for the first few years that I was a freelance food writer where I was like, ‘Oh, I'm gonna — because my idea about being a food writer, which started in 2015, or whatever, where I was like, ‘Oh, I know all this stuff about vegan food and all this cool stuff that no one writes about and I have this understanding of what it's like to own a small artisanal food business, and I have this understanding of how power sort of functions in these — ’cause I studied English literature.’ My background is also similar, though not to any sort of incredible level. I read all this theory in college ’cause that's what I was supposed to do. And then I was like, ‘I'm gonna bring this new perspective to it,’ and I was like, ‘Oh, no one actually wants this.’ 

Charlotte: Really, it's heartbreaking.

Alicia: And similar I guess to the James Beard Awards, in trying to get nominated but not getting nominated. But I've done all of my best food writing outside of food publications, and mostly even for publications outside the United States, like for a Canadian literary website and for a British-based website and stuff like that. 

And that's been a really interesting perspective to have, too. It's like, ‘Oh, the people who are letting me do the writing I want to do are not food publications.’ So this year, I've kind of made my peace with that in a real way. I've just stopped even pitching. I don't want to do it. 

And the newsletter I started because I was like ‘Oh, I want to be able to do, I don't know, mostly like personal essay, or just random writing that I didn't have a place for.’ And it just kind of morphed into what it is. But yeah, it's been really interesting to see that so many people want more critical food writing and just — yeah, the only people that anyone ever cites as [food critics] are people that I'm like, ‘I don't think they were doing anything that new or interesting.’

Like you said, with Jonathan Gold, where it's like, ‘Yeah, he was writing about restaurants that the major critics weren't writing about, and he was doing it in a way that was beautiful. But what real criticism of—’

Charlotte: Yeah, what criticism was there? 

It wasn't even like he would necessarily compare one restaurant's version of a dish to another. It was just really a love letter to a restaurant every week. And that's a great, beautiful thing. That's not criticism. We're talking about something different. 

And I also just want to say, ‘See, this is what happens. This is how you end up writing books.’ Because you get so frustrated with these babies that you're given, literally and figuratively, in magazines and newspapers. And you're like, ‘The only way I can really say these things, or go deep in the way that I want. I guess I'm just gonna have to make my own thing.’ So yeah, it's a newsletter, or if you want to do something really deep and researched then it's a book.

I don't know, I never thought I was gonna write a book. It wasn't something I thought I would one day do. It was more just, ‘But I want to say all this stuff, and I want to learn about all this stuff, and I want to hear from all these people. And I don't see how I can do that and make it analytical in any of the given outlets that I'm supposed to be technically writing for.’ I don’t see that.

Alicia: Yeah, it's just really frustrating.

When I used to write for The Village Voice, that was the closest I guess I got to being able to do something interesting while still being under the rubric of the food section. But that space doesn't exist anymore, either. And I think every time I get interviewed about the newsletter genre, I'm like, ‘Well, it's kind of trying to replace the alt weekly, I guess.’ Yeah, create this thing of actual criticism, where you engage with food and all the things that touch food, and also bring in other aspects of culture.

It's really interesting to me, and I talk about this all the time, I think how food is siloed as its own thing with no connection to art, or film, or literature, or anything like that. And it's really frustrating.

Charlotte: I mean, I think a lot of it comes back to money and what can be monetized. And this idea that food can only be monetized when it's seen as Lifestyle content. What that means is that it has to somehow be in — again, I feel like I put everything in quotes, but ‘service-y.’ Or what people would call fluff. 

And so, if you want to try and go deeper, and that's why — even — I look at the New York Times, and I'm like, ‘Why is it that I'll read what I think is a really fascinating food piece, but it'll be in the science section, or the business section?’ I was like, ‘Why could this not have been in the food section? Would have been — why?’ And I get so frustrated, and then I'm like, You got to stop.’ But you know the answer. And it's not changing, and you need to move on and get over it. But yes, it's that.

Alicia: You studied art history, right?

Charlotte: I was an English major and an art history minor. And within my English major, also did a weird film studies thing. It was very creative.

But, I decided — this is like a whole side story. But I had this very kind of reactionary response to my first job, which was technically in corporate America, and was like, ‘I don't want to be here. I want to be an art history professor.’ And felt it very, very strongly, and decided that that's what I was going to do. 

I went and worked in an art gallery, and then I went to graduate school, got my masters, got accepted as a PhD student at that point knowing that I missed the real world too much. I was part of this very old-fashioned, kind of absurd program where once you get accepted to the PhD track, they have to take you back at any — I could be senile and knocking on the door and be like, ‘I'm here.’ And as long as I could pay tuition, ’cause — I don't think at that point, like probably not gonna be getting any funding, but I could still come back. I liked knowing that. In my mind, if I'd had some other life, where I was making a lot of money at my job and could dream about retiring and getting my PhD just for the love of learning when I was older, that would have been a great dream. 

So, I did that. And then I went, technically went back to what was always my sort of first professional love, which was publishing, and magazines, and journalism, and writing. So, I had that. I'm actually very grateful for it because it did help train how I think, and how I look at things. And it also really helped me hone my appreciation for visual culture. And all of these things, I think, have ended up having a huge influence on my food writing. They're so related that it doesn't feel completely like it was useless.

Alicia: I don't think education could ever be useless necessarily, but—

Charlotte: I agree, I agree. You're not learning like a trade or — in that sense, you didn’t. I’d love to teach, honestly.

Alicia: It's funny, ‘cause I have this vague memory of when I was in high school and wanting to go to the Culinary Institute to study pastry. This was just based on watching the Food Network and being like, ‘I want to make humongous sugar sculptures.’ And then not doing that, and then always, kind of until I actually accidentally became a baker, then realizing like, ‘Oh, it was a better idea that I didn't do that.’

Charlotte: Don't you love your baking now, so much more than that? The idea even of a sugar sculpture?

Alicia: And I think I still probably would have ended up writing about food, but I'm also so happy that I have this education in something completely different from food. 

And like now all I read are art magazines, basically. And I feel like that's helped me write about food in a better way. I don't know.

Charlotte: It's so helpful. 

It's really funny, a small thing that I noticed — not just sort of the theory, and the way of looking at sort of material culture, which I found it really helpful for that. I always used to think that it was kind of silly. I remember I think I even said this to a professor, and it was — you were not supposed to say that. 

But you were supposed to spend all of this time describing the work of art. And I'm talking about like, you would be writing an essay for a seminar. And the thing is, you would always be including the images in the work. So I was like, ‘Why am I describing it if you can see it?’ It really would get — and then I realized, ‘Oh, this is actually a kind of a discipline, because it means that you're really looking at it, and then that you're forced to find the language.’ 

And I realized that it actually comes in very handy when you have to describe food. ‘Cause mostly you're actually kind of describing what it looks like, because it's so hard to describe flavor in a way that's going to be helpful to anyone. But you can always describe what it looks like. And so even that, I look back and I'm like, ‘Ohhhh, oh, okay.’ [Laughs.]

Alicia: Well, to get back to kind of the food media question, what have all these recent kind of kerfuffles looked like to you in terms of Bon Appétit, where we're having — here's going to be the new editor, Dawn Davis. And Peter Meehan leaving his job at the L.A. Times. Was this all very, I don't know, predictable to you?

Charlotte: It wasn't predictable in the sense that I felt — after we went through the kind of #MeToo wave, back in — what was it? I feel like it was at the end of 2017, right? That the Mario Batali, Ken Friedman, thing happened. I was kind of like, ‘Well, what about food media? Hello?’ And then it didn't happen. And so, I think I kind of was — kind of resigned myself. 

So, in that sense, I was not expecting it. And I also think it's interesting, again, to go back to this idea of the inherent whiteness of feminism, as we've known it for so long. That #MeToo was very much co-opted by white feminists. And look, in our field, we were not able to get anything done. And then I look at what happened in terms of Black Lives Matter, which I think had a huge impact on what we saw with Bon Appétit and Adam Rapoport and a lot of conversations. 

And I'm like, ‘Yeah, look who made this happen. It was Black women and women of color mostly who spoke up.’ That made me feel both a kind of awe and gratitude for all of those women, but also very disappointed in — I mean, even in myself. I was like, ‘Well, so much for the white women who dominate food media. Let’s see what we accomplished.’ 

That was a one sort of tangential thing that was going off in my head. But I was pleasantly surprised. There's another part of me, if I'm just looking at the big picture of it. I think my problem with these dust-ups is that they tend to focus too much on the personal, or this singular person, or the actors involved, and then not enough on the systems that created them, or got us to these situations as they are. That is the thing that I wished we could somehow change, that dynamic. 

I'm so glad for the people, and I really — I think that we need it. I realize that I'm very much of the Tunde Wey, let-it-die mind-set. Which I used to not be. I used to be very much that sort of Trojan horse advocate. I used to think if you could infiltrate and change from within, you could really do something. 

And now seriously, I'm like, ‘F- that. We need new models. We need a lot of them. And they need to be decentralized.’ And so yeah, my thing is more — can we start having these upheavals in a way that feels like we're having a systemic conversation?

I have been sitting on that and trying to figure this out, and it even started — I think before the pandemic, just coming off of having done Women on Food, and being like, ‘What am I supposed to do now?’ And then everything that's happened in the past few months has really made me question that even more, and in different ways. 

I think if you look at, just in terms of my work, right? If you look at Skirt Steak, or Women on Food, or even like the Piglet Tournament of Cookbooks, right? You can see a cry for help. It's the wrong way to say it, but you can see someone who really is interested in the why of things, and the underpinnings. And I sometimes like to look at that in mischievous ways. And I'm always like, ‘How can we find other approaches to talk about stuff?’

And I think the nice thing about what's happening now — just personally, this is selfish — but for the first time, I feel less alone in that. I don't want to take up too much space, and I don't want to take up the wrong space. So, it's like, ‘How do I keep doing that kind of work, but in a way where I'm giving the attention and agency to other people, not taking it for myself?’ And I think that that's the thing that's like the negotiation right now. That's the hard thing to figure out. 

Alicia: No, I think it's hard for everyone right now to be like, ‘How do I fit into this dying industry?’ Yeah, it's complicated.

Charlotte: And how do I make a difference? I mean, which is a corny thing to say, but it's — if I'm going to do it, I want it to have some impact, or be of use in some way. I don't want to keep contributing to the — to what we were talking about before, the sort of lifestyle stuff.

But on the other hand, we have to get paid, right? I need to get paid. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, we were all talking about — I wish we could find ways to talk about it together more, literally just — how do we? For freelancers, I think, especially.

Alicia: Yes, for sure. 

No, and I mean, that's why I guess we had the Food Writers’ Workshop for two years. But this year, we had to cancel.

Charlotte: That was so, so good. You'll do it again. 

Alicia: [Laughs.] But yeah, just to create that space for these conversations that can be difficult to have. Yeah, because I think it's necessary. And I mean, this year, it would have been — yeah, if next time I guess we do it, it'll be quite interesting because of all of this. And because we'll be in the midst of the sort of recovery, I guess, from what's happened. But yeah, so we'll be able to see it, I guess, with better — with clearer vision. So, I hope that that happens, and that it’s interesting for people still, but we'll see.

Charlotte: I think it will be. We can imagine.

Alicia: Food media — I talked to Lisa Donovan a couple of weeks ago, and she was included in a piece you wrote for The Washington Post about kind of the whiteness of food memoir, which, I thought was a really necessary piece, especially as someone I had — it's funny that you even wrote it, because I had bought a million food memoirs and was like, ‘I'm gonna figure out what the hell's up with this genre.’ I was like, I'm gonna read all of these books and then I'm gonna figure out why food memoirs are really — I don't know, just something — just all the same. You were talking about before with the homogeneity of the way the Beards do things and the way the media, — how do we break out of this mold? 

I do think Lisa’s memoir, Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, is a really fresh addition to the genre. It did create a lot of talk on Twitter, that piece, a lot of which I think was completely misguided and totally incorrect and total misreadings of what you were trying to do. But Lisa's critique was that there was short on class analysis. So, what would your response be to that? 

Charlotte: Yeah.

It was concerning to me. And not because I don't think there's a glaring issue with the socio-economic disparity or class dominance in book publishing and in food media. There clearly is. I would never argue that. There is.

But it was concerning, because that was a piece that was primarily about white privilege and about race. And as soon as you start saying, ‘Well, wait, wait, what about socioeconomic privilege?’, as a white person saying that, whether you're doing it as a way to justify your own work or to devalue someone else's, or even if you're looking at it systemically, what you're doing is decentering the conversation, right? You're taking the focus away from race and you're shifting the conversation so that, in this particular case, it no longer calls attention to the idea that Black women and women of color are not being given the opportunity to tell their stories, and are not getting memoir deals. 

One of my friends actually said to me, which was a very strong statement, ‘When the discussion is about race, you have to be absolutely destitute for poverty to erase white privilege,’ which — that really struck me. And again, as I said, I just finished reading Caste. So, it's very fresh in my mind. And, by the way, that would go on my reading list even though it's contemporary. But it really underscored that point for me, which is in the United States, race is the defining marker of caste. And class is fluid, but caste — race is fixed. So, I don't see this as like a chicken-egg dilemma, I think it's always going to be race first. And I think it definitely needs to be right now in these conversations. 

And when you see a white person push back against that, even when they have the best of intentions, and an otherwise, I think, seemingly clear-eyed understanding of how things work, for me, I think you're basically witnessing a form of white fragility. So, that's disappointing, obviously. But on that, it also makes me think about where my own white fragility is coming into play, now, or how it might in the future because truly, we're all trying to self-correct and be better, and it's an ongoing process. So, that is something I also understand.

But yeah, for me, that was upsetting. And then also, ok, this idea that somehow my being privileged needed to be addressed or made me ineligible to write about white privilege and memoir publishing. I get how it could be confusing for people who think that food writing is personal by default, or who are taking it personally as readers. I am extremely aware of my privilege, and in real life I'm actually — I'm very, very open about it. And I'm also pretty open about how my career has benefited from it, and how also — how I've been able to sustain my career because of it. 

But if you look at my work as a writer, I don't do personal writing. I don't think I'm that interesting. I don't think my life's that interesting. Or, alternatively, that I'm a gifted enough writer to make it seem like it's that interesting. In related news, I haven't written a memoir, and I’m probably — not probably going to write a memoir ever. It's not what drew me to writing or journalism. So, I don't write about my privilege in my work, because there's no place for it in non-personal writing, 

This whole thing made me think about it, and I was like, ‘Oh, where would I have included this information?’ And then should there have been a disclaimer at the bottom of the piece that read, ‘Charlotte Druckman is the daughter of privilege from Manhattan’? To me, in the context of that piece, it just really didn't seem relevant, right? Because it was about white privilege. And also because it was about memoirs.

So, that's the kind of thing where you find yourself feeling like, ‘I shouldn't even have to defend this or explain it.’ For you realize that we live in a world where, at some point, you have to, because that's what people seem to want to focus on instead of focusing on the actual piece and what it was trying to say.

Alicia: Right.

No, I thought it was really interesting, especially — this Friday's interview with Klancy Miller. The timeline of this interview now is all over the place. Before she proposed Cooking Solo, she proposed a food memoir about her time in Paris that was rejected by 30 publishers. And I was like, ‘Well, I think Klancy Miller's food memoir about Paris would be really, a really interesting infusion into a genre that is so white, that loves France, but doesn't like the — loves the story of an American in Paris, but apparently not a Black woman American in Paris.’

And so many people who argued in response to that piece were just all over the place, for one. But also, were citing memoirs being like, ‘I think lots of people of color have had memoirs out.’ And it's chef memoirs and that sort of thing. Being like, ‘These have all come out recently.’ 

Charlotte: Some of them weren’t even memoirs! Something I observed, which is that I've noticed that when women of color and Black women, instead of seeming to get memoir deals, they get cookbooks where — that are personal. And I wonder if that's a publishing tick, where that's being thrust upon them. I don't know. 

But I found out people were holding up things where I was like, ‘But that's a cookbook, that's not a memoir.’ You're proving my point. You don't even realize that you're proving my point. But you are. It's the pigeon-holing. It's the sort of place where erasure and pigeon-holing overlap,

It makes me think of Kristina Gill and Tasting Rome. And how it was kind of like, ‘Well, we're not, as your publishers who bought your book, which was your idea, we're not comfortable with a Black woman being the face of Italian cooking. But we're very comfortable with your white co-author doing that.’ Which was unsaid, but I think very much what happened. And to me that's very similar to all of those publishers being like, ‘Well, we like the Paris food memoir thing, but we're not feeling the Black woman writing it.’ It's that same kind of thinking. 

This was also crazy to me, because I think if it hadn't been for the pandemic, the books actually would have come out within five months of each other. I don't think I have seen seven food memoirs come out in one year before this ever anyway. Maybe I'm wrong, that's already seemed like a lot. That we had seven, and they were all written by women, seems like a big deal because that also. And then it's the fact that they were all white, it was like, ‘Oh god. Oh no.’ 

And it was funny, ’cause at first when I first started paying attention, I was more sort of just like, ‘Why are there all these memoirs?’ And then I started looking at all the authors, and I was like, ‘Oh my, what is happening?’ And it ends up being indicative of how book publishing works, or at least food and book publishing works. 

I wasn't expecting that pushback, because again, I have a certain — I realized this, that I'm not even, certain ways, where I don't think of myself as a controversial person or a controversial writer. I don't know what I thought would happen, but I wasn't — I just didn't expect that. I thought I was almost writing about something that to me seemed obvious. And I thought it was important for a white person to say it because again, I think it's been made really clear that it's like, ‘Why does it always have to be BIPOC who are having to carry the weight of pointing all this stuff out, and then ultimately being ignored?’ But I thought it was pretty obvious. 

The interesting thing was that all that Twitter stuff, if you look at it, it was mostly coming from white women. Which I found really interesting and sad on a certain level. And I almost felt like it was like white women policing other white women about how to be white women. I almost felt like I had broken rank or something. And that was before I read Caste and now that I’ve read Caste I really am like, ‘Wow. It's really like I broke rank. I didn't stay in some place I was supposed to stay in being accepting of a certain status quo.’ I was not expecting that response at all.

Alicia: Yeah. 

And I do think class analysis is required, especially in publishing and media because it is a — Yeah, it's complicated for me to talk about because it's — I don't feel like I came from a super-privileged background and so it's — I feel like I had to kind of bust my way into this, but even the fact that I was able to bust my way into it is a fact of great privilege. Even though the only time I was able to take a magazine job was ’cause I — finally someone offered more than like $28,000. It needs to be part of the conversation, but I think that it is true that when you're writing explicitly about race that it — that should be able to be the focus. But it is so complicated and everyone brings so much.

Charlotte: I think it should be addressed. I just — I think you have to do it separately. And I understand, because you — it's like, ‘That's my memoir. I wrote that memoir. I put all of this into it. I worked so hard to get to a place where I could write that memoir.’ I understand that. But when you start being like, ‘But wait, but wait, because this is what happened to me in my story, and it's not fair that you didn't talk about socio-economics,’ it does — it doesn't — that's not right for this scenario, where this is about whiteness. 

The bottom line is that you did get your book deal, and that we're talking about your whiteness in this context. And like that's this conversation. I mean, I look at how lucky I was, just like, it's even — For me, everything started with privilege. Everything. Let's just forget my education, and you look at my resume of where I went to school and all of that stuff. 

But even my first job in publishing was — I had just graduated high school, and my favorite relative who — she was my dad's mother's first cousin, so I think of her as a great aunt. But technically, she's a cousin with some removings. I'm not good with the once-, twice-removed stuff. But she was this special assistant. She ran the office of New York magazine for the then-editor-in-chief, who was Ed Kosner. And so I got to be an intern at New York magazine at age 18. That's ridiculous. 

And of course, I wasn't paid, which was fine ’cause I'm from New York City and I lived at home under my parents’ roof so I didn't have anything to pay for. Well, I didn't have to pay rent, you know? Do you know who the other intern was that summer? It was Ed Kosner’s stepdaughter. And there we were, in our internships and it was — I learned a ton. I worked hard. But, just that, look at that. That's how it started, and then look at everything that happened after that. 

So then, that's on your résumé. Look at everything, forget the fact that publishing in general tends to be about connections. And it can be about connections that you had even before you started as a professional. And then once you start it's always about who knows who,

right?

So, the whole thing is so — and, you're — it's operating on a very low paid salary for most people until then you get to the level of Adam Rapoport, and his golfing, and all that stuff. That's someone who also had already come from privilege. 

So, it's a disaster. It's a full-on disaster. So yeah, we do need to talk about it, but — that, when you're when you're having a conversation about white privilege, it's not the time to raise your hand and be like, ‘But can we talk about socio-economics and how hard it was for me to do this thing?’ It's just not the place for that, even though I understand it completely.

Alicia: I mean, just for everybody who is reading, when I was in college, I couldn't do any internships because they didn't pay. And I commuted to school in New York City from Long Island and I had to have a regular job to pay to commute. 

And then when I graduated college, because I'd never done an internship and I was, ‘Oh, but I'm just gonna apply for all these editorial assistant jobs, work in book publishing.’ And then I never even got an interview, but also when they put the rate there, it was $28,000 and it was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ 

I worked in the publications department of an offshore Caribbean medical school, because they had their offices—because in college, I had done work doing web design, and then doing web design, that's how I made, started to make more than minimum wage, was because I learned how to do web design. When I got fired from that job, which I got fired from when I was 22, ’cause I don't know, I just hated it. My parents got divorced, and I was just sad. And then I got brought into the office and they were like, ‘You don't seem to care about this job.’ And I was like, ‘I don't.’

I got hired at, actually funny enough, New York magazine as a freelance copy editor a month later. I got hired there. They paid me $20 an hour when I started, but I was working 10 hours a day. And then I got hired full-time at the end of 2009, and just stayed there ’til I started writing in 2015. 

I was still working 10 hours a day for the first two or three years I was there. So I was still in this position of like, ‘Well, I'm finally at a magazine, so I can't say anything.’ But I was getting paid like $45,000 and working 50 hours a week, sometimes more when it was Fashion Week. This is what this industry is.

Charlotte: Yeah. 

And I'm guessing, too, though, you were surrounded by people who were full-time. And who were coming from a place where they did not have to hustle that much, and didn't have to hustle as much at New York magazine either, right? 

Alicia: I was hired full-time, and then I was able to work from home. So, it was like, ‘All right, great. I love this.’ It was this feeling of like, ‘I'm not allowed to say anything.’ 

Right before I quit, I was starting to finally feel comfortable and was like, ‘I'm gonna go talk to HR about all this sorts of stuff, and how there's no movement for copy editors here, and that sort of thing.’ It was just stupid. I just left, and I went to be a copy editor at Food and Wine for a little while, which was also bad.

Charlotte: I worked at Food and Wine, but I worked at Food and Wine before you got there. I was there from 2003 to 2005.

Alicia: It was not a fun time. I had a six-month contract there, and I was like, ‘F- six months.’ I was like, ‘Good-bye.’ It's like, ‘I'm done.’

Yeah, well. For you, is—

Charlotte: Do you think maybe—

Alicia: No, no. Go on.

Charlotte: Don’t you think that the copyediting experience has made you though better at your job now? ‘Cause I feel like there's not enough — First of all, there aren't enough copy editors out there, and there's not enough emphasis placed on how important copyediting is. I just feel like it would probably make you a better writer and a better editor anyway. 

Alicia: I hope so. I mean, it's funny. Today I was like, ‘Oh, I should create — start a style guide for the newsletter.’ And I was like, ‘What a nerd.’ 

I love copyediting. I get to do it sometimes for print magazines, and it's always a fun experience to get back into those shoes. But then it's not a fun experience when I get back into the shoes of writers who think I'm an idiot. 

And talking about caste, someone wrote a great piece for the New Republic years ago about the caste system in publishing, and how copy editors are kind of the bottom. Even though copy editors are the ones who know how language works and how grammar works. 

Charlotte: Same with fact-checkers. Now that I think about it. I feel like they weren't even invited to our editorial meetings at magazines I worked at. [Laughs.] This is just Dickensian

Alcia: No, it's so interesting. 

For you, is cooking a political act?

Charlotte: It's funny, ‘cause I'm not sure how much I used to think about this. For me, once you start thinking about this question, I don't see how the answer's no, I'm just gonna say that.

I think yes, it's a political act, because even when you think it's not, where did you buy your groceries? Which ones did you buy? Do you only eat what you grow yourself? Maybe you're not going and buying anything, you know? How are you growing them? And then, how are you making those decisions? And if you weren't thinking about where your ingredients came from, or the labor involved in getting them here, you're part of the problem, but doesn't make it any less political. 

We are still contributing to an overall process of culture, or shopping, or producing in cooking. So, you're still part of that system and you're upholding it. When you're in your kitchen stirring your pot, I don't think that's necessarily political in the same way. Unless you're trying to make a statement with that food for whomever you're serving it to, or selling it to, or if you're supporting a cause with it. 

But I think if you're cooking commercially, where it's an exchange of money or goods and transactional, again, that — it can not be political. But me at home with my experimental baking, I don't see the part where I'm actually making my batter and putting it in the oven. To me, that's where it stops being political because it's no longer part of that exchange. But in the sense of the buying ingredients and choosing and all of that stuff: yes, it's political.

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

Charlotte: This was great. Who knows when I said, but I had a great time. I loved talking to you. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on, and doing this with me.

Alicia: Thanks.

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Klancy Miller is cool as hell. She studied pastry in Paris, wrote a cookbook called Cooking Solo: The Fun of Cooking for Yourself, and is now working on the launch of For the Culture, a food and beverage magazine about and by Black women. She’s also nice as hell, and it’s a joy and a privilege to converse with someone so smart and compelling, who’s doing serious and significant work.

We talked about cannoli, why she went to Paris for culinary school, the political power of pastry (an ongoing theme!), and how this year has expanded her vision for the soon-to-launch magazine. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Klancy, thanks so much for coming on.

Klancy: Thank you for having me. I'm honored.

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

Klancy: So, I grew up in a few places. My dad is a minister in the Episcopal Church, and we moved around kind of a lot.

I was born in New Haven, Connecticut. Some of my first food memories are pizza like Pepe's pizza. And there is a great bakery called Libby's that had amazing cannoli. And, to this day, those — cannoli are my favorite dessert. I love cannoli.

Alicia: Me too. [Laughs.]

Klancy: Right, like so important. 

Yeah, so we moved from New Haven to Atlanta when I was 4. So, my food memories of New Haven are literally Pepe's pizza, cannoli, and Mississippi mud pie. My parents used to like to go to Chart House restaurant, and I think that was a recurring dessert there. So those are my 4-year-old memories. [Laughs.]  And my mom is an amazing cook. I just don't, from those years, remember what she cooked? 

We moved from New Haven to Atlanta. And I feel like Atlanta is where I spent the bulk of my childhood. And there I remember I was older and grew up there to a certain extent. So, I remember my mom's cooking a lot. She was really into The Silver Palate Cookbook. She also had this cookbook by Eileen Ford that had a really good chicken salad in it. My mom used to like to make some stuff by Julia Child, who was — when my parents got married, she really wanted to become a gourmet cook, and started taking cooking really seriously. But she's also a little bit of a health nut. So I remember a lot of vegetarian things, vegetarian lasagna. Yeah. 

And some Southern foods, too, because both of my parents are from the south. But my mom, growing up, I don't remember her cooking a lot of Southern things. But I remember enjoying it at my grandparents’ house, having greens or fried fish sandwiches or really good barbecue. 

What else? After dance class, we would always go to either Varsity's in Atlanta for my post dance class snack or Wendy’s, where I would get french fries and a chocolate shake. Or, where else would we go? There was this place in Buckhead that made these awesome beignets. And so, yeah, those were all post dance class treats I would get depending upon our moods. [Laughs.]

Alicia: [Laughs.] I'm always interested in how people who grew up with even a touch of that kind of vegetarian cuisine from the health-focused times how you relate to vegetarian food now, or how it manifests in your life.

Klancy: Let's see. So, I feel like I'm heavily influenced by my mom in that, like I said, she's always been a little bit of a health nut and literally at different times in my life has called me to say, ‘Have you eaten a cup of blueberries today? Are you eating enough green vegetables?’ [Laughs.]

She's always had a subscription to Prevention Magazine, and has always been into reading about health. And we're both hypochondriacs, and so I've always kind of been cool with eating heavily vegetarian stuff. And I also, for better or for worse, do kind of, in my head, link it to health sometimes. 

I think because of my mom, I feel very open to eating lots of vegetarian food. And because I'm kind of sometimes lazy in the kitchen I sometimes don't feel like cooking meat, even though I'm not — I don't consider myself a vegetarian. I just kind of prefer eating more vegetarian than not. But yeah, I don't even know if I'm answering the question.

Alicia: No, you are. Yeah. [Laughs.]

How did you decide to go into food and eventually go to Paris to study pastry at Le Cordon Bleu?

Klancy: When I graduated from college, I had no idea what I wanted to do, work-wise. And I decided to kind of make it into a little “choose your own adventure,” or trial-by-error adventure. 

I studied history. I studied French. I studied Arabic. I studied political science. I studied film. I wanted to figure out how to apply aspects of what I learned in some kind of job. I majored in history, so I was thinking — and I really was, and kind of am, still into languages. I was thinking, ‘Oh, ok, maybe international development could pull on things I had learned.’ I ended up working for a non-governmental organization, American Friends Service Committee, in Philadelphia. 

And I started taking classes on anything that interested me on the side. So I was taking film editing classes, I was taking dancing classes and acting classes. And I thought maybe I would become a documentary filmmaker. I hated editing film. 

I also took cooking classes. And the cooking classes were the most fun, because I felt like I saw the fruits of my labor immediately. So, it was like that immediate gratification thing. And I think I realized how much I enjoyed working with my hands. 

I ended up getting an apprenticeship at this restaurant in Philadelphia called Fork. I was actually trying to get a proper job there on the weekends. But the chef was like, ‘You have no restaurant experience at all.’ But she was kind enough to let me come in and do prep work on the weekends. 

And I really loved it. It was the first time I ever showed up on time for work. I felt fully engaged and completely stimulated and very present. And I loved that I was making things, and I loved that I was working with people and I got to see — even though I wasn't the person cooking, I was just chopping up five bins of onions, I kind of got a kick out of the fact that what I was preparing would be put to use to make a beautiful meal. 

And at the time, I also really wanted to go — I thought I wanted to go to grad school. I was all over the place. I was looking at business school. I was really, very materialistic. I wanted to become a millionaire by the age of 25. So I was like, ‘I’m gonna get an MBA, and that's how I'm gonna make millions of dollars!’ Which makes no sense. But I wasn't very logical. 

But I did definitely want to go to some kind of school. So I asked the chef I was reporting to about her opinion on going to culinary school and she was like, ‘You don't actually have to go to culinary school if you want to be a chef, but I would consider it if you want to go into pastry.’ And so that kind of was a lightbulb moment because I do have a major sweet tooth. I had some thoughts maybe of like, Julia Child. I had studied in Paris before when I was in college

for a semester, and frankly, I had a terrible time. And I wanted to go back and have a do over. 

And so basically I was like, ‘Ok, I can go to culinary school for pastries.’ So, I did research on pastry programs in this country, and they were all super expensive. And I already had student loans. So I was like, ‘I'm not trying to go into debt for culinary school.’ I did research on Le Cordon Bleu, and took a quick little — I think I took like — I was living with my parents at the time, so I was able to save money. I took a little research weekend trip to Paris and I was just like, ‘Ok, I could do this.’ And I got a second job, saved up money. This is, meanwhile, still working at the NGO.

And yeah, I was like, ‘Ok, Le Cordon Bleu, weirdly the more budget-friendly school.’ And also because I am a Francophile, it kind of checked that box. And it gave me the opportunity to have a Paris do over. And it all kind of seemed perfect. I was like, ‘Ooh, I'm going to learn how to make croissant in Pair-ee, and that's going to be amazing.’ 

I was there for a total of four years, but the pastry program was nine months. And the first nine months were a genuine fairy tale. It was a good choice for me.

Alicia: That's awesome. 

Were you fluent in French before you went?

Klancy: I was. Which was, I think, the thing that made it even more kind of magical. ‘Cause I was really able to connect in a way that made it feel like an actual home for me.

Alicia: And how did studying pastry in particular shape your approach to savory cooking?

Klancy: I'm not sure it really has, but maybe — I have a visual thing. ’Cause, at least at Le Cordon Bleu and in the pastry kitchens I worked in, you always wanna make it look soigné, you always wanna make it look nice. Especially in the French approach to desserts, there's such a visual emphasis. I care about how food looks. Even before Instagram, I cared about how food looked. 

And I think, I don't know, with pastry, it's kind of laborious. It's really precise. It's a little tedious. So, that is something that I don't really run away from with cooking. But that being said, I actually think because sometimes more difficult pastry is a little tedious, it makes me want to cook like savory food in the simplest way possible.

Alicia: And the political potential of baking has been a big theme this year. Do you view pastry as a tool for political and societal change?

Klancy: Totally. 

I wrote about Georgia Gilmore for the New York Times “Overlooked” section, either last year or the year before last. Time doesn't exist anymore. And I really, really loved researching her story and her work. And the fact that she, from her home, was baking and cooking and selling the food she made to help fund the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which lasted I think 382 days or 381 days in Montgomery, Alabama. And the fact that she was not doing this by herself, she was organizing other women to do the same. And so she's the woman whose name we know best from that moment, and from that action of cooking and baking and organizing. But there were many women like her. And I think that is one of the most powerful examples of how food and baking and cooking can be used as tools for political organizing.

Alicia: To change gears from pastry, but your cookbook, Cooking Solo, is about making meals for one. And what was the inspiration for that? Because that really is a unique idea in cookbooks, which — where the portions are for four to six people all the time.

Klancy: Yeah, so for Cooking Solo, that book is definitely heavily influenced from my time living in Paris. 

So basically, when I got to Paris, it was my first time ever living on my own, having my own little studio apartment, and my first time cooking all of my meals for myself. And it was really a joy for me because I was basically getting to know my neighborhood. And one of the ways I got to know my neighborhood was by going to the little farmer’s markets, the marché, every — whatever days they were running. 

And so I would just buy random things and experiment with them. And I had this teeny-tiny refrigerator in my teeny-tiny apartment. And so I was never really making — it didn't make sense to have a lot of leftovers. It didn't even make sense to buy a lot of food. So, I was constantly making these small meals or kind of single-serving recipes. 

After that whole experience in Paris, I actually wanted to write a cookbook about my time there and to make it kind of a food memoir, with an emphasis on things I ate. And that got roundly rejected. Like, literally by 30 different publishers. But my mom was like, ‘You have recipes, you have a repertoire, you should — something's right under your nose that you could mine for another book project.’ I took that seriously. And it was also at a time when — I don't remember the year, it was either 2012 or 2013. But the census had come out saying that for the first time in U.S. history, there were more single people than married people. And that was another lightbulb moment ‘cause I thought, ‘Oh, I am also single. And I also cook a lot. And even when I'm in a relationship, I cook a lot for myself. Or a romantic relationship.’ 

I basically was like, ‘There is an audience. The census just told me there's an audience for cookbooks for one.’ Even though I use leftovers, I don't really like having them. So I really thought like, ‘Ok, maybe there are other people like me who like to go to dinner parties and restaurants, but also like to cook for themselves and don't want to be bogged down with leftover food, and just want to enjoy a meal for one.’ So, that was the inspiration.

Alicia: Well, when did you decide you wanted to write? Was that always something you wanted to do?

Klancy: I've always written. I haven't always tried to be published —

After working in bakeries and restaurants in Paris, I kind of — I actually wanted to get a restaurant job, but the chef I was working for was like, ‘You're great, but you're too slow.’ And I was a little distraught, but I also was always tired from that job. I loved it. This is like the last pastry kitchen I worked in. And I was kind of like, ‘All right, I'm not necessarily — I think I have talent and skill, but I don't really have the chops to be working in a kitchen full time.’ 

And so at the same time as I was having that realization, Le Cordon Bleu had a job opening in the recipe development department. And so I was like, ‘This is great, I can make actual money and also learn something else in the food world or under the food umbrella, learn how to write recipes and stuff.’ And so that was helpful. 

And then I started kind of writing, basically writing for free, for a blog about Paris food, or  a blog about Paris but I wrote about food. And then I thought, ‘Well, I should try to be paid, try to actually sell articles.’ So, I ended up taking this class on food writing from Alan Richman who either still writes for GQ or used to write for GQ about food. 

And yeah, so I started a blog, Klancy's Potluck. And I did a series of informational interviews with magazine editors and chefs and journalists, basically asking them about their paths and how to get a foot in the door. And, yeah, I just very slowly started building, getting clips and writing stories. I actually got an agent through one of my informational interviews, and she immediately put me on a ghost writing project. So, that helped.

I think I got into writing about food, because I realized I wasn't going to be working in a kitchen but I still loved food and wine and very much wanted to be part of the food world, so to speak, and was trying to figure out, ‘How can I do that without being a professional chef?’ 

I also work as a writer for Columbia [University]. I never talk about it, but that is another hat I wear. I wear a lot of hats. And that's another major hat I wear that allows me to live.

Alicia: Right, right. It's always important — because people are always wondering like, ‘How does anyone survive as a writer?’

Klancy: Yeah, you have to juggle.

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. 

Yeah, that's interesting, because I actually — I mean, I always wanted to be a writer and worked in magazines, but then I kind of accidentally became a baker, a vegan baker. And then that was how I decided to write about food, was because I was like, ‘Actually, this is too much and I'm never gonna make any real —’ I was selling stuff, but it's — the margins are so incredibly slim. I was like, ‘I don't think I have it in me to keep doing this.’ And that I was like, You know what, I can write about food.’

Klancy: Totally. Exactly.

Alicia: Yeah, it's a way to stay in the world without, yeah, without losing your marbles. 

Klancy: Yeah, totally.

This was in Paris, but I actually continued this in the States, I had a sweet potato pie little artisanal business. I would sell sweet potato pies to places. I worked as a translator. I don't know, I feel like you have to juggle but you also have to figure out, ‘How can I streamline and enjoy my life?’

Alicia: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

And, speaking of, last year you announced you were going to launch For the Culture, a magazine. And it seems people have been so excited for it from day one. But it was also a pretty prescient move as people are looking to independent media more and more, especially in food. So, how has your vision for the magazine changed over the year, of fund-raising and visibility, if it has at all?

Klancy: I think my vision is pretty much still the same. I've been really heartened and humbled and amazed by the very kind and generous support of For the Culture. Nobody could have made up this year. There's no way any of us could have imagined how 2020 would unfold. I am glad that it is a project that definitely, I think, resonates with the moment, or maybe reflects the moment a little bit — again, not that I predicted that. 

I feel like I definitely heard Devita [Davison] talking about like, ‘How is this moment radicalizing you?’ And I feel like for me, I really paid a lot of attention to and learned, I am still learning, about movements to support Black trans lives. And so I feel like, ‘Ok, if there has been any change, it's that I wanna figure out how to incorporate and highlight Black trans stories, specifically Black trans women in food, in the magazine.’ 

So, that's something that when I first started the project wasn't necessarily at the forefront of my mind. But over the course of the year, I've been like, ‘Oh, ok, this is something that I need to center. I need to have thought and reflection, and make sure that these stories are also included.’ 

So yeah, that's kind of a change, but it's not — I don't know. I feel like it makes sense.

Alicia: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Klancy: Yeah. I mean, I think of cooking as — I think cooking allows control. And I think it allows personal control. I think it allows for supporting a different food economy, or more directly supporting farmers. 

I also think of cooking in terms of its being a political act, I think of it in terms of imperialism. I also think of it in terms of hunger and ‘how does hunger exist?’ I don't know, just moments in history and moments in, I don't know, Ronald Reagan's war against food stamps. 

So, I feel like it's all connected in food — in cooking, cooking specifically is, I think, deeply political.

Alicia: Right.

Well, thank you so much for coming on again.

Klancy: I am so grateful you had me, and I'm — yeah, I’m totally honored. It's such a pleasure. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

Alicia: Thanks.

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Listen now | We discussed intersectionality, performative liberalism, Catholicism, and why baking is naturally suited to political causes, among much more.

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Aaron Hutcherson, a freelance writer and the recipe writer behind the long-running blog The Hungry Hutch, once made me care about brunch long after I thought I was done with this much-maligned weekend meal. He’ll even have me, a fiercely meatless eater, reading about neck bones, and I’m grateful for what he taught me about Lawry’s seasoning. His writing is conversational but rigorous—what you might expect from someone who left a finance career for culinary school: He knows how to get down to business and when to prioritize joy. We talked about how he made that transition, what he thinks might change (or not) in food media, and more. Listen above—Substack fixed my podcast problem!—or read below.

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

Aaron: Hi, Alicia. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat.

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

Aaron: Sure. 

So I grew up in Chicago. So, being in the Midwest, that means there's lots of meat and potatoes. And also, a decent amount of Italian foods. So spaghetti was a regular occurrence. Lasagna, we had every so often sort of when my mother decided to go through the production of making lasagna. But then there's also meatloaf and pot roasts and roast chicken and things like that. 

But also, I am from an African American family. So we grew up with lots of soul food, like fried chicken and smothered pork chops and collard greens and macaroni and cheese, candied sweet potatoes. So those are also very regular occurrences.

Alicia: And what inspired you to get into food? Because I know it wasn't your first career.

Aaron: Yeah, so my first career was working in finance. And sort of shortly into that, like literally only four or five months after I started working, I decided that I needed a hobby. And I had always had an interest in food, because I love sort of the creativity. I love the way cooking could bring joy to those that I was able to feed. 

So I just started a blog as a hobby and something to do in my free time. This was back in 2009, so blogs were just sort of getting started. I was like, ‘Oh, I can do this.’ Keep in mind I had no idea what I was doing. But then just the passion and the interest just sort of grew from there, to the point where I went to culinary school and then I graduated and quit my job in finance all in the same week. And I haven't looked back in the eight years since.

Aaron: Did you work in restaurants after culinary school?

Aaron: Yes. 

So after culinary school, I took an internship at Food Arts magazine, which was more of an industry-focused restaurant publication. And I did that Monday through Friday, nine to five. But it was unpaid. So partly because I wanted to make some money, but also partly because going into food media, people had said it would be good to get actual restaurant experience, I started working at a place called Northern Spy Food Company in the East Village in New York on the weekends. So I was working seven days a week for about four months. And then after unsuccessfully trying to get an editorial assistant job elsewhere that paid, I ended up just staying on at the restaurant full-time for about a year total.

Alicia: Wow. 

And do you think that working in a restaurant has given you a very different perspective as a restaurant—as a food writer then people who haven't worked in the service industry?

Aaron: Definitely. I think it's one of those cases of sure, anyone in theory can write about food and restaurants. But having that firsthand knowledge makes you that much more adept at asking questions and sort of getting to—some of the nuances for when you're interviewing chefs and managers and servers and things like that.

Alicia: Right. 

So you started your blog in 2009. You didn't really expect it to turn into your career, but it kind of has, right? And so how have you kind of grown and maintained it over the years?

Aaron: Yeah, I had no clue what I was doing, why I was doing it, where it would go. But it was just one of those things that I slowly and steadily just kept chugging along at. 

I feel like there are lots of sort of better, quote, unquote, bloggers out there in terms of—they're constantly putting out content constantly, growing page views and all that stuff, which is great for them. But all the way up until I guess the pandemic happened, I've always had a full-time job. And the blog was always just my hobby, which transformed to an actual part-time job that I spend lots of time on now. 

But yeah, it's been quite a journey over the past almost 11 years now. After a few years of seeing people turn it into their careers, they’ve sort of given me that drive and pushed me to just grow and learn more and do better with my own blog.

Alicia: Right. And I feel you have a very specific style. I think so many people focus on different types of cuisine, but yours is just very you. So, how do you approach deciding what you're going to create in terms of recipes, and then also what is your developing process for recipes?

Aaron: So, in terms of what I want to create, is—a lot of it's just what I want to eat, what I think will taste good. Sort of who I am was like, ‘I went to culinary school, so I have sort of classic French techniques. I grew up in the Midwest, eating soul food.’ So, comfort food is sort of the base of a lot of what I like to do and cook and eat.

But also, living in New York City. There's a global sort of array of cuisines at my fingertips that I like to explore and experiment with every once in a while, and sort of incorporate the occasional ingredient or flavor profile I haven't necessarily grown up with—but I've tried and I'm intrigued and I'm trying to find ways to sort of incorporate that with what I am used to doing. 

In terms of developing recipes, it's sort of like a variety of ways. It could be I come across an ingredient that I’m not familiar with, and I just have a natural curiosity. There's something I don't know, then I want to know about it and try to learn how to use it.

With one of my recent recipes, rye chocolate chip cookies, this was the beginning of the pandemic. I couldn't find regular flour. I saw some rye flour. So I was like, ‘Let's see what I can do with this.’ And that's how sort of that recipe was born. 

But also there are times when I think of other dishes, and I see people out there that have all this equipment, or all this space, or all these fancy ingredients. And I try to keep my recipes simple and the preparation—strip out things that aren’t necessary to the finished result, or don't have as huge of an impact. Just, simplify things. Make dishes full of flavor and hopefully not too difficult to prepare.

Alicia: You mention finding rye flour instead of all-purpose to do cookies. How has the pandemic changed your cooking, in—generally, if at all?

Aaron: I think one way that it's changed my cooking is that I used to go to the farmer’s market at least once or twice a week and sort of walk through and pick up things. Just whatever was abundant and looked beautiful that I wanted to take home and cook it. But since the pandemic started, I’m making just fewer trips to the grocery store. I hadn't gone to the Greenmarket since March until last week. So it's just what I am able to get has changed, and also just the fact of shopping for a week versus a couple of days that changes what I purchase.

Alicia: Right. What have been some changes that you've made to your own general cooking to accommodate that?

Aaron: I've tried to make better use of pantry ingredients, so beans and rice and pasta. And then I also try to force myself to just cook from what I already have on hand. ‘Cause there's always times when it's like, ‘Oh, it would be really nice to make X, Y, and Z. That's what I want. Wanna go out and make—buy those ingredients and make this.’ When in reality, I have tons of other things at home that I should eat that I may not have wanted to but of like, ‘Ok, I'm gonna try to make something with what I have here.’

Alicia: Right, I think everyone is still doing a version of Chopped at home. I've been doing that too. I make a big order of local produce, and then I'll be like, ‘I'm not making another order until we use all of this.’ And so it ends up being kind of unhealthy, because then I eat all the greens and then there's no greens left and then it's just like, ‘Well, whatever. We're surviving on eggplant and yucca for the next week as our only vegetables, and it doesn't matter.’ I don't know. It's very interesting, the accommodations that we've had to make for the situation. But the show must go on.

Aaron: Yeah, in the beginning I had bought some canned vegetables for the first time in years, because—I don't know, I sort of over-prepare. [Laughs.]

But, they were—ended up just sitting there for the longest time. And I didn't use one of those, them until a couple weeks ago when I was just sort of like, ‘Ok, I have these here. I need to sort of get through some of the stuff that I have just to—yeah, not waste anything.’

Alicia: No, for sure. I mean, I think people have been talking about canned vegetables again in a way that no one has in a while. 

I remember, I interviewed Joe Yonan about Cool Beans at the start of the year when it came out. And he was like, ‘We never talk about anything else in a can except beans, maybe tomatoes.’ And I think now everyone is just so—is open again to the idea of like, ‘Well, maybe canned corn isn't so bad.’ 

Maybe I should eat green beans from a can, which actually I had—my ex-boyfriend, when I was a teenager, his family was really into canned green beans, and they had this really interesting metallic taste that I'll never forget. [Laughs.] Yeah, I don't actually want to eat those again. But it's good to know they're there. 

So, there's also been all these changes in food media during the pandemic. You know, the Bon Appétit situation, the Peter Meehan situation—we'll just call them situations—in terms of people leaving their jobs which, those of us in the industry, we've kind of been twiddling our thumbs waiting for it to happen. And then, Tammie Teclemariam made it happen. 

But, what do these changes look like to you? And what's your perspective on how this actually might change food media? I know you had been working at the Michelin Guide kind of before the pandemic. And so, from your perspective, what is the actual possibility of this moment?

Aaron: I think the possibility is very great for the actual change that many people have wanted, and talked about wanting, and said they’ve wanted for a while. Just in terms of new leadership that's more diverse and inclusive and representative of a country that we live in, and people that occupied and work in the food spaces.

But I'm a little pessimistic in that I guess the people who are still making those decisions to hire these new leads for teams, and editors-in-chiefs, and senior editors and such, they—I don't know if they are willing to go as far as we should be going at this point. 

I'm sort of thinking right now about the Bon Appétit situation in terms of—they are bringing in Marcus Samuelsson to sort of guest at it for, I don’t know, a couple months. Which is like, ‘Ok, that's great, but what's gonna happen after that? Why not hire one of the numerous people of color, very senior and experienced food editors that were qualified for the job and have them actually implement real change?’

It just seems like smoke and mirrors.Like, ‘Ooo, look at this shiny thing, Marcus, that we brought in. Just don't think that we actually haven't brought anyone full-time to do this for the foreseeable future.’

Alicia: Right, no, it seems like Condé Nast specifically thinks that it can get away with some shiny guest editors for a little while and hopefully pay them a nice rate for doing the work, but it's not a long-term solution. I think they're waiting for everyone to stop paying attention. And hiring these guest editors to kind of be a stopgap while they wait for everyone to turn their gaze away from the poor work they've been doing, and the ways in which they have marginalized their labor force and continue to do so clearly. 

Yeah, it's really interesting to watch how predictable the actions are on behalf of Condé Nast. It's like, ‘Wow, you really had the whole world watching, and you just, that's what you did. You didn't pay anyone enough money and they all quit. And now, what are you going to do?’ It's really interesting.

Aaron: Yeah.

And I'm very curious to see—they keep talking about, ‘Oh, we have some new talent that we're bringing into the Test Kitchen.’ I'm extremely curious. Who exactly agreed to do that?

Alicia: Right. But at the same time it's like can we fault whoever they are because it's a paycheck, you know? And we're in an industry that's falling apart. I don't know.

Aaron: True. Good point. [Laughs.]

Alicia: I really respect everyone who's come out and said, ‘Bon Appétit asked me to come and do this, and I said no because of X, Y, and Z.’ But at the same time whatever young hungry people they probably got to do that are people who needed not just the exposure, but probably the money. And yeah, it's just—it's such a difficult, awful situation. And it's all created by these suits at Condé Nast. 

But it's interesting, and I hope we see some changes. I think people have been paying attention more to independent stuff. Has your blog been more popular of late, because you—people are looking for other sources for recipes?

Aaron: So my blog, I think traffic doubled at the start of the pandemic, just because people were looking for more recipe content. And then it continued to grow after that, once all the murders and movements and such sort of continued to happen and sort of resurfaced a lot of the discussion around supporting black creators and things like that. 

So, I've gotten a lot of attention and—all this within the past couple of months. Which is great on the one hand, but it's also like, ‘I've literally been doing this for over 10 years.’

Alicia: Yeah, no, I've had this conversation. Yeah, with Stephen Satterfield from Whetstone, of just—it's an, a double-edged sword in terms of the attention these days that people are getting. But-

Aaron: Yeah.

But overall I welcome the attention. It’s like, ‘Sure, give me more page views and followers and likes.’ ’Cause in the end, having my own platform, those metrics help me get more money and help me survive.

Alicia: Right.

Aaron: Bring on that.

Alicia: [Laughs.] No, and I think it's so important too. We're seeing how significant it is to have one's own platform, something that follows you no matter what you're doing. What your blog has been for so long for 11 years, where no matter where you were working or who you were writing for, you always had your own platform for yourself. And that's proven, at this difficult time in the industry, to be absolutely critical. Yeah. 

And for you, is cooking a political act?

Aaron: Oh, I've been thinking about this question since you asked me to be on the podcast.

So, my answer is—the short answer is yes, with an asterisk. And I say that because food, to me, is obviously political. And it always has been. It's evolved in spice trades, to sort of shaping whole economies and civilizations, to sort of its impact on enslaving people to sort of take their agricultural knowledge and use them to grow and harvest crops, to even today with government subsidies, which dictates the value of certain foods and things like that. So, food is political. So I think sort of, by way of food being what is needed for cooking, cooking is also political. 

But I believe there's times when it's overtly political, in terms of selling box lunches for—to fund the civil rights movement, or sort of the Black Panther’s free breakfast program for kids. Or even today, like the Bakers Against Racism sort of fundraiser, and like feeding resistance with feel the people and things like that. So, those are sort of the explicit choices that people have made to make cooking political.

But I think that there are tons of people who participate in the system, but don't have any sort of agency to have impact. So, they might be cooking—sort of like capitalism, you participate in it because you have no other choice to do it. So I think people cook, and it is political, but they don't have any power to make impact. Or, sometimes they're sort of unknowingly having an impact. Like, ‘Oh, I bought this X, Y, and Z. But I don't know necessarily where it was grown, or who grew it, or whether those people were paid equitably and things like that.’

So, it is political. But I think, for people, sometimes we can choose to make it political. And sometimes we participate in cooking without control over our impact on society. 

Alicia: Right. 

Well, thank you so much, Aaron, for being here.

Aaron: Thanks for having me.

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