Surviving breast cancer gave Rujel Buggs the motivation to eat right and exercise. It also gave her a new appreciation for comfort food—in moderation.

Moderation is the name of the game for Rujel, who shares healthy recipes and fitness inspiration on social media. But for holidays and Sunday dinners with family, she goes all out preparing Southern favorites like mac and cheese and peach cobbler pound cake. Rujel shares many of those recipes in her cookbook, A Taste from My Mother’s Kitchen: Southern Inspired Soul Food Recipes.

Dalia visited Rujel at home in Valrico and pulled up a stool at the kitchen counter. As they chatted, Rujel prepared lunch—a veggie-filled pasta salad. And for dessert? Peach cobbler. After all, everything in moderation.

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This week, we’re dishing up excerpts from conversations related to Thanksgiving and the holiday season. First up, historian Andrew Batten discusses some of the food that might’ve been on the table at that first Thanksgiving meal in St. Augustine, and he explains why Florida is the birthplace of fusion cuisine. Then, Jacksonville media personality Yanira “Yaya” Cardona shares Puerto Rican holiday traditions that some Floridians practice. Finally, Chef Richard Anderson shares tips for lightning up traditional Thanksgiving foods.

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Whether you’re eating rack of lamb or chicken wings, make it beautiful. So says Debbie Wilson-Berment, better known as Chef Sagajo. (The nickname is a mashup of her kids’ names.)

Based in Delray Beach, the private chef is the author of the cookbook The Sagajo Experience: Recipes for Lifestyle & Entertaining, which came out earlier this year.

Dalia chatted with Chef Sagajo. In this conversation, she shares how roots in Trinidad & Tobago influence her cooking, and she recalls how family dinners got fancier when she moved to Canada and then the U.S. And just in time for the holiday season, Chef Sagajo offers advice for elegant entertaining that won’t break the bank.

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It seems like there’s a coffee shop on every block, and they all offer more or less the same stuff. But one coffee company in Tampa is serving up much more than lattes and muffins.

Coffee Uniting People, or CUP, is a nonprofit coffeehouse that employs mostly people with disabilities. With three locations in Tampa, CUP teaches valuable life skills to folks who are too often overlooked for employment.

Dalia chatted with CUP barista Katie Huettel, along with CUP co-founders Greg and Laura Jones. In this conversation, the Joneses share why they started CUP and advice for business owners looking to hire and support employees with disabilities. Katie also explains how the skills she’s learning at CUP translate to the rest of her life. And the three of them share their favorite beverages and foods from the CUP menu.

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Fabricio Zambrano is one of the most dapper men you’ll ever meet. Perpetually dressed in fitted clothes and a panama hat, Fab looks, well, fabulous.

But he didn’t always dress like this. Because he didn’t always feel like this. For most of his life, Fabricio wore oversize T-shirts to hide his 5-8, 300-pound frame. He subsisted mostly on fast food and did not exercise.

But after Fab hit a life-threatening rock bottom, the Clearwater resident revamped his habits. He adopted a plant-based lifestyle, started exercising and eventually lost half his body weight. Today, the 61-year-old grandfather is known around Tampa Bay as Fab the Vegan. Through Facebook, Instagram and countless media appearances, he shares his journey and offers inspiration for anyone looking to make changes.

Dalia first met Fab when they both appeared on an episode of Bloom about plant-based eating. They recently reconnected for a conversation about Fab’s health journey, advice for changing one’s eating habits and how to deal with friends and family who oppose your new lifestyle.

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By Dalia Colón

Whether you’re a coffee fiend or you’ve sworn off caffeine, you’re likely to find a beverage you’ll love at Kahwa Coffee. Headquartered in St. Petersburg, the boutique coffee company specializes in—what else?—java.

But since starting Kahwa, owners Raphael and Sarah Perrier have expanded Kawha’s offerings—and its footprint. Today there are 18 locations; that’s one for every year Kahwa has been in business.

Dalia visited the Perriers at Kahwa’s headquarters in St. Petersburg. (Even the parking lot smells like coffee!) In this conversation, Raphael and Sarah share how they went from meeting in a cafe to leading their family and a coffee empire together. They also discuss how they keep customers engaged while drinking the same beverage day after day, trends in the coffee industry that have staying power and what they really think of Starbucks.

To see a video tour of the Kahwa roastery, check out our Facebook or Instagram.

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What do the rapper Drake, basketball player Magic Johnson and countless Floridians have in common? They've all enjoyed a meal at Donatello in Tampa.

The Italian restaurant was started in 1984 by the late Guido Tiozzo, a native of Venice, Italy. Today, Guido’s son Gino Tiozzo is at the helm, balancing classic Italian dishes with customers’ ever-changing expectations.

This week, The Zest continues our celebration of Italian-American Heritage Month with a visit to Donatello. On a quiet morning, Dalia stopped by the dining room to chat with Gino. In this conversation, he reflects on the restaurant’s 40-year history, reveals the one dish he’ll never take off the menu and offers advice for cooking better Italian meals at home.

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This week, it’s our cheesiest episode yet. We’re heading to Cheeseology.

Located in a 125-year-old building in Tampa’s historic Ybor City neighborhood, the shop offers cheesemaking classes, tastings, take-home cheeses and other local products for sale.

Dalia and The Zest’s brand manager, Alexandria Ebron, visited Cheeseology for a conversation with co-owner Kelly Hays. In this conversation, Kelly shares how a vacation inspired her and her husband, Paul, to open the shop in early 2024. She also goes over the basics of cheesemaking and how to choose a cheese you’ll love, even if you’re cutting back on dairy.

After their chat, Dalia and Alex stuck around for Cheeseology’s pizza class, in which they made mozzarella, used the cheese to make a pizza and then enjoyed their creation in Cheeseology’s cafe area.

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Today’s episode was supposed to be a light-hearted conversation we recorded back in June with Dan Bavaro. He’s the owner of Bavaro’s Pizza, which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. The restaurant has five Tampa Bay locations, along with a successful line of sauces. Back in June, Dalia caught up with Dan at Bavaro’s downtown Tampa location during lunchtime. In that conversation, Dan shares lessons from his 15 years in the Italian food business.

Then in September, Hurricane Helene slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast before continuing its path of destruction across the Southeast. Bavaro’s Clearwater location got hit hard.

So on Oct. 4, Dalia called Dan for an update on how he, his staff and the building were doing. They spoke over Zoom.

If you’d like to support Bavaro’s employees during this difficult time, you can buy a gift card. For every card purchased, 40 percent goes back to the restaurant’s employee fund for team members displaced from Helene. You can also donate to the GoFundMe that’s specifically set up to help the restaurant’s Clearwater team members, who will be out of work for the foreseeable future.

This episode takes place in two parts: the first recorded back in June and the other recorded on Oct. 4, 2024.

Note: The episode was produced on Oct. 7, 2024, as Florida residents were still recovering from Hurricane Helene while also preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Milton.

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When Dalia arrived at Giuliano Hazan’s home in Sarasota, the first thing he did was offer her a cappuccino and a plate of biscotti. She had eaten breakfast on the drive down from Tampa, so she was not at all hungry.

But when Giuliano Hazan offers you an Italian breakfast, you take it.

Giuliano is the only child of Marcella Hazan, the Italian-born food writer and cooking teacher who is credited with popularizing Italian food in the United States. Marcella and her husband, Victor Hazan, raised Giuliano mostly in New York City. When Giuliano moved to Florida’s Gulf Coast as an adult, his parents later followed. Marcella died in 2013; Victor still lives on Longboat Key.

While Marcella’s legacy lives on in her cookbooks, a documentary film and a Smithsonian project that’s in the works, Giuliano has established himself as an Italian cooking authority in his own right. The author of several cookbooks, he teaches Italian cooking classes on his YouTube channel, at his home in Sarasota and at his cooking schools throughout Italy, where he leads culinary tours with his wife, writer Lael Hazan. Forbes.com named their culinary excursions among its 5 Top Cooking And Foodie Vacations In Italy For 2019.

Dalia recently sat down with Giuliano at his kitchen table in Sarasota. Between bites of biscotti and sips of cappuccino, they discussed how his mother got her big break in America, his own career in Italian cooking and advice for making better Italian food at home.

You can read more about Giuliano Hazan in the fall issue of Forum, the magazine of Florida Humanities.

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