We should really stop pretending like we don’t do holiday episodes because whoops we actually love them. We’re back with a holiday x new cookbook x baking for a cause episode with Hetal Vasavada, author of Milk and Cardamom and Desi Bakes, founder of baking pop up Milk and Cardamom, and former Master Chef contestant. What started with a pitch for butter (not that we have a problem with that! It’s butter!!) turned into a super fun conversation about growing up Indian American in New Jersey, how baking saved organic chemistry lab, and the ways in which Hetal is becoming her mother, which we’re here for!

Plus munching cheese, unintended food traditions, and accidentally creating entirely too expensive kid palettes. 

And of course, butter. We talk about Hetal’s partnership with Challenge Butter which has partnered with Cookies For Kids to raise funds for pediatric cancer research, a cause that’s close to Hetal and just so deeply important. Bake your family favorite holiday cookie or any other holiday cookie recipe from their site and tag @challengebutter and @Cookies4kids along with #ChallengeForACure with your cookie photo. And if the idea of baking with your littles is too much, Hetal gives us some stellar tips on how to bake together without making huge messes or being overly stressed about it. 

No single recipe for this one but MANY recipes in Hetal’s gorgeous cookbooks and a recipe for some beautiful stained-glass sugar cookies on the side of special holiday edition Challenge butter. Go check them out and have your own lil bake sale, after all, it’s cookie season!

On this episode we’re talking to author Ellie Yang Camp about her new book Louder Than The Lies: Asian American Identity, Solidarity, and Self-Love, and just as importantly, we talk about soups!! Yes, not one, but two family soups: beef noodle soup made by her dad, and chicken broth made by her mom. 

We talk about growing up Taiwanese American in not-so-Asian California suburbs, chasing taste memories, and passing on culture through food (our fave!)

Of course we dive into Louder Than The Lies, which we can’t recommend enough. We love how it succinctly articulates so much of what we’ve been feeling about being Asian in America. Ellie reminds us that the fight for equity requires practice and stamina, and offers us a way forward, which we’ll probably need now more than ever.

Plus the scurry-and-hide method of cooking, lightly dunking on Dr. Oz, and dismantling systems of oppression while being a full-time introvert parent!

In true Asian parent form, we have no exact recipe, but we have it on good authority that Clarissa Wei’s recipe for beef noodle soup hits exactly right for many Taiwanese families, which you can find in her book Made in Taiwan.

On this post-election one we present our first ever disliked dish, because apparently there are no rules anymore. This was meant to be a revenge episode with Eli Beutel, but instead of raging against this German Christmas dish, stollen, they were the consummate food and alcohol historian—and still funny! 

We talk about the history of this dish, why they hate it, and why it’s still important to share family recipes, even not so great ones.

Plus flavor profiles as identity, accidentally becoming an expert in Hittite bee law, and a dip into tiki culture.

On this episode we’re talking to fellow podcaster Curtis Chinn, host of the InfatuAsian podcast. His podcast is dedicated to Asian American creators and the culture we all know and love, so naturally we had a lot to talk about. Curtis brings a non-recipe recipe in the form of potstickers, which for him were less family recipe and more college party trick. 

We talk about being a multi-generation Chinese American and San Franciscan, and what that means for identity and the road away from and back to Chinese and Asian culture. Plus we take a quick detour into parenting around ethnicity and culture (fellow parents, listen and weigh in please!!)

We also go on a mini food history journey and it’s very possible that we’ve started a new podcast (eek!).

There’s no recipe on this episode, instead we talk about a whole dang cookbook! We could not be more thrilled to have guest Kristina Cho, James Beard Award winner, creator of EatChoFood, author of a New York Times Top 10 Best Cookbooks of 2022 Mooncakes and Milk Bread and forthcoming cookbook Chinese Enough! 

We talk with Kristina about how Chinese Enough came to be, some of her favorite recipes (in the moment) from the book, and what it means to be Chinese enough. She also talks about growing up in a restaurant family, the best non-dinner party dinner parties, and how her Midwestern upbringing manifests now in her California life.

Plus we talk about the enduring importance of fresh fruit for dessert, weirdly specific (and false!) book reviews, and of course, Costco. Freesia gushes the whole time. 

Chinese Enough is available for pre-order wherever you get your books. Freesia insists you go order it now so you can hug it later.

We’re back! (Whoops, life!) On this episode we get a little San Francisco-y with native San Franciscan Alisa Wong and her dad’s tomato beef over rice. We talk about the impalpable specificity of being an ABC San Franciscan and try as we might, we never land on what exactly makes us feel that way. (We’re open to your thoughts on that, friends!)

Given the saucy nature of tomato beef, we of course talk about being Sauce On Rice Kids, and ponder the generational nature of the sauce rice preference. Will we age out of this some day??? 

Plus Alisa shares her all-time fave Disney wink to the culture and that one time she got in an altercation that started with cutting a line and ended with not being Chinese enough. Yeah, stuff goes down in these Disneylands apparently.

On this episode it’s another blast from high school past with our first Thai guest Nina Meechoonuk, talking about her childhood fave, tod mun pla, aka Thai fishcake. For Nina, this one has had staying power into adulthood and even into her kid’s Thai food rotation.

While Freesia and Nina have been friends since high school, they never really talked about Nina’s experience of being Thai–until now! Hear what it was like for Nina to grow up Thai but without a large Thai community to learn from, and what that means for feeling Thai enough, even as an adult.

Plus we talk about high school lunches, Thai spicy vs other types of spicy (lookin at you wasabi and Indian food) and we dream up the grandparent cooking show.

On this episode we’re chatting with Sam Lugtu, sister of past guest Nicole Lugtu, about her favorite childhood dish, nilaga. We talk about nilaga as a weekly meal vs a special occasion meal, never ordering the things that mean the most to you in restaurants, and the must-order restaurant dishes that are the barometer for everything else. 

Plus cooking this Filipino stew for a very French family, when your oldest daughter syndrome plays out in your takeout, and we start a support group for people whose childhood restaurants have closed.

We know it’s hot basically everywhere so save this one for those chilly fall nights. Unless you live in the southern hemisphere, then this one’s for you right now! Check our website for the recipe.

Leave us a review and rating! We’ve still got a couple of gift boxes for some people who leave us a review and one could be yours! DM or email us a screenshot of the review just so we know. 

And if you’ve had nilaga, let us know what yours was like. And was it a special occasion meal or an anytime meal?

Whoops! We were away too long. But we’re back and we love this one! We’re joined by return guest Jin Yoo-Kim talking about miyeokguk aka seaweed soup aka birthday soup. Since miyeokguk is a postpartum dish as well as an everyday dish, in this episode we dive deep into its role before and after baby arrives. We talk about nourishing mom and the ripple effects to the rest of the family, postpartum as a first-time parent vs already having other kids, and the hidden time-costs of self-care and exercise (spoiler, it’s showering!)

Plus we talk about grandmothers competing to be best grandmother, we have a first-for-this-show-soft launch, and we dream up a couple of postpartum meal services along the way.

There’s still time to leave us a review on your platform of choice for a chance to win a box of some our fave Asian food brands and cute things. Think fancy instant noodles, sweet keychains, and super cute stickers, among other things.

Happy AANHPI Heritage Month and Happy Anniversary to us! We can’t believe it’s been a whole year of doing this show. In this guestless episode, we sit down for our annual performance review and talk about what it’s been like this year and what we hope for in the future. Turns out we want to hear more from you! Plus we soft launch our Buy Me A Coffee and some probable forthcoming WQC stickers.