Whether you’re just learning to cook for yourself or you’ve been staging elaborate dinner parties for years, you can always learn something from America’s Test Kitchen. The long-running PBS television show features recipes, equipment reviews and taste tests to help make cooking at home more efficient and enjoyable.

On Sept. 20, ATK co-hosts Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison will be in St. Petersburg for a live event at the Palladium Theater in downtown St. Petersburg.

Bridget and Julia recently chatted with me from their homes in the Boston area, where America’s Test Kitchen films. In this conversation, they share advice for aspiring TV chefs, their favorite hot weather meals and the common kitchen equipment they say is overrated. They also discuss the new ATK cookbook, The Complete Small Plates Cookbook.

Related episodes:

• 7 Tips for Eating More at Home: Advice from Dietician/Nutritionist Wendy Wesley

• How to Prepare Restaurant-Quality Meals at Home: Advice from Chef Dennis Littley

• How to Save Money on Groceries: Advice from UF/IFAS Expert Dr. Maria Portelos-Rometo

Harrison Holditch has heard the jokes: Florida Man, Redneck Riviera.

The Sunshine State, and the Panhandle in particular, are an easy target.

But Harrison and his brother-in-law, who own Distillery 98 in Santa Rosa Beach, wanted to make something their town could be proud of. (The distillery’s name is a nod to U.S. Highway 98, which hugs the Emerald Coast.)

So during the glass shortage of 2021, the guys got the idea for Half Shell Vodka. It’s a spirit made with Florida corn, filtered with Florida oysters and sold in a bottle made of recycled cardboard.

Harrison recently road-tripped from the Panhandle to Tampa Bay to spread the word about Half Shell Vodka. Dalia met up with him to discuss the inspiration for the spirit, Harrison’s commitment to repping the Panhandle and his favorite ways to enjoy the beverage. They chatted on the patio of the hotel where Harrison was staying, and as you’ll hear, it was an unusually windy afternoon.

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Every family needs someone to take charge. Whether it’s planning a vacation or organizing the holiday gift exchange, somebody’s gotta take the initiative. And that’s certainly true when it comes to creating a family cookbook.

Janet Keeler thinks a lot about cookbooks. In addition to being a journalism professor at Eckerd College in St. Pete, Janet spent decades as food editor for the Tampa Bay Times. And she’s a cookbook collector and author of the cookbook Cookielicious: 150 Fabulous Recipes to Bake & Share.

Dalia visited Janet on campus at Eckerd to get her ideas for tackling a family cookbook project. Whether you’re looking to put together a traditional book or something more modern, like a recipe website, you’ll be inspired to take the lead on rounding up your family’s favorite recipes.

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In this age of digital everything, sometimes it’s just nice to work with your hands—bake a loaf of bread, knit a sweater, curate your cottagecore aesthetic. In that vein, we at the pod have been curious about canning food.

And we’re not alone. We recently reached out on social media to learn what listeners wanted to know about canning.

For answers, we turned to John Barbie, owner of Tip Top Canning Co. Through his Tampa-based business, John sells pickles, mustards, jams and fruit butters. He also offers in-home canning and pickling classes.

Dalia met up with John at Pickford’s Sundries, a historic lunch counter/gift shop in West Tampa that sells Tip Top Canning Co. products. In this conversation, John explains the difference between canning and pickling, shares the health benefits of both, suggests foods to pickle and goes over the basic equipment you need to start canning food at home.

Big thanks to listener Kenya Woodard for suggesting John for the pod.

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Shayla Daniels knows all about the sweet life. The Tampa resident is pastry chef and owner of Shay Chez’s Sweets, and she nearly always has something in the oven, from specialty cakes to French-style macarons. She even showed off her baking skills on season 8 of the Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship.

But for Shayla, life hasn’t always been sugar and spice. In this conversation, she also recounts the health challenges that inspired her to move from Wisconsin to Florida, the personal tragedy that struck several years later and how her love for baking helped her through dark times.

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Here in Florida, we enjoy year round warm weather. But we Floridians still tend to change up our meals in the summer. From barbecues to beaches to boat rides, summertime lends itself to a different way of eating—and drinking.

Dalia recently visited Rococo Steak in St. Petersburg to chat with the restaurant’s sommelier, Will Howard. In this conversation, Will shares advice for summer food-and-wine pairings, why you might want to try vintage or small-batch wines and the bottle of wine that’s on his summer bucket list.

Related episodes:

• Summer Reading and Wine Pairings from Book + Bottle’s Terra Dunham

• “Epicurious One” Stephanie Love Is Disrupting the Wine Industry, One Chicken Wing at a Time

• Journalist Judith Smelser on Zoom Wine Tastings, Disney Sommeliers and How to Find Your Next Great Bottle of Wine

Every August, while the rest of Florida retreats to air conditioning, breezy Key West is gearing up for one of its signature events: Key West Lobsterfest.

The four-day event includes a street fair, concerts, pool parties and of course lobster dishes galore. This year’s festival is Aug. 10-13, 2023, at venues across Key West.

Erik Adams is show manager for Lobsterfest. He chatted with Dalia about the festival’s origins, what to expect and what makes summer in Key West so special. He also explained the difference between Florida and New England lobster and offered suggestions for enjoying the delicacy.

Related episodes:

• Dive into Florida’s Spiny Lobster Season

• Behind the Scenes of the Tampa Bay Collard Green Festival

• How Plant City Became the Winter Strawberry Capital of the World

• Spice Up Your Life with “Saucy Queen” Michele Northrup of the I Like It Hot! Festival

Today, we’re exploring a brief yet important chapter of America’s culinary history. Between the 1940s and 1970s, most major American newspapers had a women’s page. Among the sections devoted to sports, business and so on, there was a section devoted to so-called women’s issues: family, fashions, furnishings and of course food.

University of Central Florida journalism professor Kimberly Voss, PhD, researched women’s pages for her book The Food Section: Newspaper Women and the Culinary Community. The book was published in 2014, but it remains as fascinating as ever.

In this conversation, Dr. Voss explains how newspaper women’s sections came to be—and why they went away. She also shares why these pages mattered, how their editors were viewed by the rest of the newsroom and how women’s sections editors paved the way for food writers of today.

Related episodes:

• Zora Neale Hurton’s Foodie Life

• Celebrating Grande Dame Chef Edna Lewis

• Peach Cobbler is in a League of its Own

• Two USF Professors Offer a Crash Course in American Food History

• Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ “Cross Creek Cookery” Turns 80: Reflections from Food Writer Jeff Houck

Kenny Gilbert is a busy guy. On top of being chef/owner of Silkie's Chicken & Champagne Bar in Jacksonville and vice president of culinary operations for Grove Bay Hospitality Group in Miami, he’s author of the new cookbook Southern Cooking, Global Flavors.

Between his book tour and overseeing multiple restaurants, the Top Chef alum is always on the go. Dalia caught up with Kenny via Zoom at—where else?—Jacksonville International Airport.

While he awaited his flight to Miami, the Cleveland native shared his culinary journey, advice for teaching kids to barbecue (he got his first grill at age 7!) and how his pal Oprah Winfrey inspired him to open Silkie’s.

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When you hear the term baseball foods, you likely conjure up visions of hotdogs and popcorn, peanuts and Cracker Jack.

But those stadium treats won’t exactly fuel the players on the field. That’s where Courtney Ellison comes in. As dietitian for the Tampa Bay Rays, Courtney is responsible for fueling the players on and off the field. That means offering plenty of options for pre-and post-game meals, as well as mid-game snacks in the dugout.

Dalia recently chatted with Courtney about what the guys eat, how meals and hydration change when the team is on the road and how the new rules of Major League Baseball affect her job.

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