Love Bites

Food is sexy. Books are sexy. So a fair about food and books? Super sexy.

On this week's show, Jacqueline and Ben go old-school Love Bites, reconnecting on their past month of insanity with Jacqueline's dating conundrums (break-offs and flirting and abstinence, oh my!) and Ben's having gone off to Paris to perform in a surrealist play in Yiddish...which he doesn't really speak.

Then they're joined by Amanda Dell and Kimberly Chou, the directors of the Food Book Fair coming up May 1st and 2nd in New York City. They dish on the challenges and triumphs of pulling off such a gigantic feat, how it affects their single-and-dating lives, and maybe a few rounds of never-have-I-ever will be introduced to the show.

Plus! The team gets giddy on the 2013 "Alemannia" Trosseau Gris from Lush Wine and Spirits owner and winemaker Mitch Einhornn. Never heard of a Trosseau Gris before? Neither had we. But it's from a small California vineyard and promises a sleek mouthfeel with notes of melon and dried straw flavors. So, yum.

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Dating is hard enough, and we all bring baggage into new relationships. For some, baggage comes in the form of an illness that leaves you with little power over how your body moves in the world.

On today's show, Jacqueline and Ben are joined by Allie Cashel and Erica Lupinacci, the co-founders of Suffering the Silence, an online community supporting the struggles of millions of Americans who live with chronic illnesses like Lyme disease, Lupus, Crohn's disease and others. They discuss the basics of their experiences, how their struggles and triumphs have affected their relationships of all sorts, and what they wish healthy people knew about how to communicate with those who have long-term illnesses.

Then, the team is joined via phone by Chef Ariane Resnick. Chef Ariane healed her late-stage Lyme disease and chemical poisoning primarily through holistic methods, and now uses her healthful, healing recipes to help her clients live their fullest, most robust lives possible. How did her experience with Lyme affect her physically-demanding career? What insight does she have now that has made her better at her job? And what has she learned about healing foods that all of us can use to our benefit?

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Pondering why you’re single? Well, you could peruse the Self Help section of Barnes and Noble (if you can find one still standing), spending your hard-earned dough on stacks of weepy books about how you’ve gotta Get Out There, Girl! or why life is really better without a mate. Or….. you could laugh it off. Which is what Angela Spera and Laura Lane want you to do by seeing their sketch show, reading their book, or listening to their podcast. So this week, we’ve got the THIS IS WHY YOU’RE SINGLE team on to chat about how neither of them is single, what they’ve learned from their quickly-growing empire, and how they use humor to get where others dare not tread.

But before we even get into that, Jacqueline mourns Ben’s absence with a single guest co-host, Daniel Holzman, the chef/owner of the Meatball Shops in NYC. What have they learned about why they’re single from reading Laura and Angela’s book? Is it because they date within the food industry–or don’t?! Is it because they have sex too soon, are too picky, or are just too awesome for the current mid-thirty-something dating pool?

Have a listen and find out.

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On today’s show, Jacqueline grills Ben and their guests, Jonathan Wiener and Joel Ruben Ganz, about the challenges of being a professional actor in your thirties, and the strain it puts on all sorts of relationships. How do you commit when you’ll cross the country for months for a good gig? How do the fluctuations of artistic fulfillment (and their often pathetic paychecks) affect confidence in dating? What sacrifices to personal relationships are made for the sake of art? And how does all this affect their jobs as waiters and bartenders over the years?

Then, after the break, she picks their brains about all things manly, like how their body parts work and how they define true sexual intimacy.

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What is relationship baggage, and how responsible are we for losing it before we start something new? On today’s show, hosts Jacqueline and Ben explore the experiences that stay with us from one dating relationship to another, and how we can move on from it. Should we wait until we’re fully ready to immerse ourselves in someone new? How open should we be with a potential mate about negative experiences we may still be holding onto? And what does it take to really, truly get over someone? Then, the team is joined by pastry chef Thiago Silva – the creator of the Cinnamon Roll Donut – who, fortunately for him, hasn’t had to worry much about past relationship baggage; he met his wife when they were teenagers. How has his relationship grown alongside his pastry career? What road bumps did they hit, and what sacrifices have they made? And what does he see for his professional future, when he’s in between restaurants and has baby #2 on the way? Tune in to find out, and stay on board through the end of the show, where they each share their best bite or drink of the week, and where you can snag it.

© 2013 Brent Herrig Photography

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Nowadays, working in the food world does not equal a private life. Chefs are no longer chained to their stoves, critics have lost their anonymity, and writers can’t hide behind their computer screens. Instead, we all charge our Instagram posts and Twitter feeds with salacious words and images, paired with hashtags that will get us even more exposure. But how does this affect dating and finding love? On today’s show, Jacqueline and Ben discuss how exploring relationships on Love Bites is affecting their emotional hunt for something real, and how Jacqueline describes what she does to prospective dates without giving too much away, since she’s unavoidably oh-so-Google-able. Then the team is joined by Leiti Hsu, the host of Heritage’s Word of Mouth and a culinary connector who’s gone beyond food writing to connect big brands and startups with people in the hospitality field. How does she navigate dating when she travels so much, and spends a vast majority of her time with food royalty? Finally, the team shares something they read / ate / drank / saw and listened to this week in the dating and food fields,all the while sipping an American-made Brut f rom Gruet – a French family of winemakers in New Mexico – sent over by David and Michael Robinov of Farm to Table, an online specialty market bringing the best of local, small-batch and artisan products right to your door. Have a listen.

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What happens when you send out almost 40 online dating messages in one week? Oftentimes, nothing. On today’s show, Jacqueline and Ben share their insights, lessons learned, and greatest takeaways from critically looking at online dating correspondence. Then they’re joined be Andre Mack, owner of Mouton Noir Wines and former sommelier at Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry and Per Se. As the #1 African American winemaker in the country, they discuss minority representation in the hospitality world, finding love where you work, and how artistic collaboration never stops fueling us.

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It’s our VERY FIRST VALENTINE’S DAY SHOW! And in celebration, we’re getting cozy in the studio… just the two of us. First, we tackled some super serious questions that experts (pulled together by the New York Times) suggest every couple face before a potential walk down the aisle. What do they tell us about our compatability as friends, and how might they help those taking a very serious step. Then we hit up the stinky side of sex: the kinds that get into your sheets, saturate your mattress, and don’t wanna leave. How can we free our burdoires of those kinda memories, and what can we buy to make sure playtime in the bedroom is a bit neater from here on out?

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We’ve all experienced some sort of unrequited love; pining over someone who doesn’t quite realize the romantic possibilities we can so clearly see. But what happens when affection turns into obsession? When our desires have so much control over us that we can’t see the world clearly? On today’s show, we talk about our own experiences with unrequited love, and how periods of longing teach us how to love ourselves and others more securely. Then we’re joined by Lisa Phillips, whose book Unrequited: Women and Romantic Obsession was just re-released by Harper Collins in paperback. Lisa shares how her own experience with unrequited love turned into romantic obsession, what she’s learned by studying its history, how we can best identify if our passion has crossed a dangerous line, and how to assess our chances of it happening again in the future. Finally, we share a Valentine’s Day offering from our sponsor, Virgola Wine Bar, a few tasty thoughts on Mark West Wines‘ new Black Pinot Noir, our experience chowing on chocolate at the recent Top Ten Chocolatiers of 2015 awards by Dessert Professional Magazine, and why we love sipping Scotch at North End Grill.

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After subsequent shows on embracing our imperfections, facing our relationship patterns and moving boldly into the future with that knowledge at hand, it’s time for the team to apply what we’ve learned to our dating lives. So in our first segment, we catch up on our recent dating scenes, and discuss a shared hatred: boring first-date conversations (which, fittingly, was the subject of last week’s Modern Love column). How can we be bolder in sparking engaging conversations? How can we apply what we’ve learned from our live therapy sessions to maybe change our path a smidge? Then we’re joined by the boldest, brassiest pastry chef we know, Paulette Goto. She was the supportive force behind our Why We Didn’t Work series, and is the kind of friend everyone should have when they need a bit of (not too subtle) prompting for living without shame or apology. Paulette shares how she became so self assured, what vulnerabilities she deals with still, and how this all plays into pastry.

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