Latest / Cookbook Love Podcast / Episode 408: Bobby Hicks and the Stories That Live Inside Vintage Cookbooks

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Episode 408: Bobby Hicks and the Stories That Live Inside Vintage Cookbooks · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker: You are listening to the cookbook Love Podcast with
• 0:04
  Speaker: Maggie Greene, episode number four hundred and eight.
• 0:11
  Speaker: Welcome to the Cookbook Love
• 0:12
  Speaker: Podcast, a podcast that
• 0:14
  Speaker: celebrates cookbook readers,
• 0:16
  Speaker: buyers, collectors, writers, and
• 0:18
  Speaker: clubs.
• 0:19
  Speaker: And now your host, cookbook
• 0:21
  Speaker: author, culinary dietitian, and
• 0:23
  Speaker: cookbook writing coach, Maggie
• 0:25
  Speaker: Greene.
• 0:31
  Speaker: Hi, everybody.
• 0:32
  Speaker: Welcome back to another episode of the cookbook Love Podcast.
• 0:35
  Speaker: How's everybody doing today?
• 0:37
  Speaker: Hope you are all doing well.
• 0:39
  Speaker: I am having a quiet Monday here in my cookbook bunker, enjoying
• 0:44
  Speaker: catching up on some work after a lovely three day weekend in
• 0:49
  Speaker: Louisville, Kentucky with my whole family celebrating the
• 0:52
  Speaker: wedding of one of my nieces, uh, my my brother's daughter.
• 0:58
  Speaker: And we had such a good time together.
• 1:01
  Speaker: I don't know about you, but I just love family weddings and
• 1:04
  Speaker: everybody being together.
• 1:06
  Speaker: And a wedding is just the perfect blend of food, music,
• 1:12
  Speaker: fun and celebration.
• 1:14
  Speaker: And we had a terrific time.
• 1:17
  Speaker: So here I am today with a brand
• 1:20
  Speaker: new episode with a cookbook
• 1:22
  Speaker: author.
• 1:23
  Speaker: Very excited to bring to you Bobby Hicks.
• 1:25
  Speaker: Bobby is a self-taught cook, videographer, and creator of the
• 1:29
  Speaker: viral Retro Recipes Kitchen series, where he revisits
• 1:34
  Speaker: vintage recipes and food trends from the early nineteen hundreds
• 1:38
  Speaker: through the nineteen seventies.
• 1:40
  Speaker: Bobby's a former bartender turned culinary historian, and
• 1:45
  Speaker: he his work bridges nostalgia and creativity as he transforms
• 1:50
  Speaker: forgotten dishes into culinary storytelling that millions have
• 1:55
  Speaker: come to love online.
• 1:58
  Speaker: Today on the show, we talk all about Bobby's brand new book,
• 2:01
  Speaker: Retro Recipes Vintage Dishes, with a modern twist that he says
• 2:07
  Speaker: is a book about joy.
• 2:09
  Speaker: In this book, Hicks invites readers to appreciate what
• 2:12
  Speaker: American cooking has been and how far it has come, all while
• 2:17
  Speaker: rediscovering the comfort and charm of dishes that connected
• 2:20
  Speaker: families and communities.
• 2:22
  Speaker: Today on the show, we talk all about Bobby's journey through
• 2:27
  Speaker: Retro Recipes Kitchen to his brand new book, as well as the
• 2:33
  Speaker: role that cookbooks played in his research for the work that
• 2:38
  Speaker: he did in this cookbook.
• 2:40
  Speaker: So without further delay, let's
• 2:42
  Speaker: dive into this interview with
• 2:43
  Speaker: Bobby Hicks.
• 2:45
  Speaker: Hi, Bobby.
• 2:46
  Speaker: Welcome to the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 2:48
  Speaker: Hi there.
• 2:48
  Speaker: Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:50
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 2:50
  Speaker: So excited that you're here.
• 2:51
  Speaker: Can't wait to dive in and talk
• 2:53
  Speaker: all about your beautiful new
• 2:54
  Speaker: book.
• 2:54
  Speaker: But before we do, why don't you
• 2:56
  Speaker: tell everybody a little bit
• 2:57
  Speaker: about who you are and what you
• 2:58
  Speaker: do?
• 3:00
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 3:00
  Speaker: So, um, I am Bobby Hicks and I am basically a social media
• 3:06
  Speaker: content creator based out of South Florida who, uh, you know,
• 3:11
  Speaker: just has kind of done every single thing you could possibly
• 3:13
  Speaker: think of in food and beverage.
• 3:15
  Speaker: Um, and around the twenty twenty period of time.
• 3:18
  Speaker: Um, you know, my, my partner and I, we were locked in our
• 3:21
  Speaker: apartment in Brooklyn and I was just kind of going through this,
• 3:25
  Speaker: this, uh, identity crisis of sorts because I'm a very
• 3:28
  Speaker: extroverted, uh, person who couldn't be an extrovert.
• 3:33
  Speaker: And so I really kind of took this time to kind of like figure
• 3:38
  Speaker: out something that would just make me happy.
• 3:40
  Speaker: Something would spark joy.
• 3:42
  Speaker: And, and it required a little bit of creative thought.
• 3:45
  Speaker: And the concept originally for Retro Recipes Kitchen, which is
• 3:49
  Speaker: the brand that I created, just started off with just like a one
• 3:52
  Speaker: off idea of, hey, I like to do video production stuff.
• 3:55
  Speaker: You know, why don't we try to do something, you know?
• 3:58
  Speaker: Uh, that's kind of based around the idea of like, recreating
• 4:00
  Speaker: this old silly vintage recipes and making it just, you know,
• 4:04
  Speaker: feel and look, uh, kind of like it came from that era, but we're
• 4:08
  Speaker: just doing it ourselves and just run with it.
• 4:11
  Speaker: And it was just something that I had so much fun doing, and it
• 4:13
  Speaker: turned into something that other people really enjoyed.
• 4:16
  Speaker: And so I just ran with it.
• 4:17
  Speaker: And it's been going on now for almost six years.
• 4:21
  Speaker: And, uh, you know, along that way I've cooked, I mean, nearly
• 4:24
  Speaker: a nearly a thousand different dishes from, you know, every
• 4:28
  Speaker: decade that you could imagine ranging from the eighteen
• 4:31
  Speaker: hundreds up to the nineteen seventies or 80s.
• 4:33
  Speaker: And now I have a cookbook.
• 4:36
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 4:36
  Speaker: Yes.
• 4:37
  Speaker: And the cookbook is an amazing
• 4:39
  Speaker: look, a lot of visual in there
• 4:41
  Speaker: also.
• 4:42
  Speaker: Um, I think the thing that's
• 4:43
  Speaker: interesting about this, when you
• 4:44
  Speaker: started diving into the
• 4:46
  Speaker: different periods of time, where
• 4:48
  Speaker: were you getting your recipes
• 4:49
  Speaker: from to actually talk about and
• 4:51
  Speaker: things that you were doing for
• 4:52
  Speaker: your, uh, your social media
• 4:54
  Speaker: channel.
• 4:55
  Speaker: Well, um, you know, I always tried to refer from an actual,
• 4:58
  Speaker: tangible book rather than just grabbing an internet recipe or
• 5:01
  Speaker: something like this.
• 5:02
  Speaker: I, I, I just one of those people that just really love a tactile
• 5:07
  Speaker: feeling of like paper and smelling it and everything else.
• 5:10
  Speaker: And more importantly, I think
• 5:11
  Speaker: like the history that you find
• 5:13
  Speaker: in these old retro cookbooks are
• 5:15
  Speaker: just my favorite because they
• 5:16
  Speaker: all have little handwritten
• 5:18
  Speaker: notes, or you see the stains
• 5:20
  Speaker: that kind of indicate, oh yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker: that was the good one, you know,
• 5:22
  Speaker: and, and just through that
• 5:24
  Speaker: process, I would always find
• 5:25
  Speaker: these recipes.
• 5:26
  Speaker: I would read the books, I would
• 5:27
  Speaker: find the recipes that sounded
• 5:29
  Speaker: very unusual or strange or
• 5:31
  Speaker: interesting.
• 5:32
  Speaker: And then I would recreate them as they were written, just to
• 5:35
  Speaker: kind of see what it was about, you know, maybe, maybe what the
• 5:39
  Speaker: experience might have been.
• 5:40
  Speaker: And then over the years of doing that, I just understood how to
• 5:44
  Speaker: kind of tweak them to make them a little more appropriate for
• 5:46
  Speaker: our modern palate.
• 5:47
  Speaker: Because a lot of these recipes
• 5:48
  Speaker: back then, uh, didn't have
• 5:50
  Speaker: nearly enough salts, you know,
• 5:51
  Speaker: or they didn't have a lot of
• 5:52
  Speaker: seasoning.
• 5:53
  Speaker: Or maybe some of the techniques
• 5:54
  Speaker: might have been lacking in
• 5:55
  Speaker: certain areas.
• 5:56
  Speaker: But yeah, it's basically I have to ask, what were some of the
• 6:01
  Speaker: first few cookbooks that you were diving into in twenty
• 6:04
  Speaker: twenty as you started this?
• 6:06
  Speaker: Well, um, you know, I, I've been collecting cookbooks for, for a
• 6:10
  Speaker: long time, but before that, it was more of just kind of like an
• 6:13
  Speaker: occasional hobby or something I would like to read.
• 6:15
  Speaker: And some of them were more modern books.
• 6:17
  Speaker: But when I started getting into
• 6:18
  Speaker: the retro recipe aspect of
• 6:20
  Speaker: things, I, I started off with,
• 6:22
  Speaker: uh, the Betty Crocker Boys and
• 6:24
  Speaker: Girls Cookbook, the New Boys and
• 6:26
  Speaker: Girls cookbook, and I think it
• 6:27
  Speaker: was published in fifty six or
• 6:29
  Speaker: so.
• 6:30
  Speaker: And that book was just so fun.
• 6:32
  Speaker: We started off with the bunny biscuits recipe, and it was just
• 6:36
  Speaker: like this wonderful little video that we did with, uh, my niece
• 6:39
  Speaker: and nephew, along with Keiko.
• 6:41
  Speaker: And just it turned into this
• 6:42
  Speaker: like really, really fun, special
• 6:44
  Speaker: thing that made it made it more
• 6:46
  Speaker: enjoyable for us to want to do
• 6:47
  Speaker: later on.
• 6:48
  Speaker: But yeah, the Betty Crocker books easily.
• 6:51
  Speaker: They've always been just like really, really fun to run with.
• 6:55
  Speaker: But I've, I've run from
• 6:56
  Speaker: everything from, you know, the
• 6:58
  Speaker: big name books to, you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker: church books, uh, to junior
• 7:02
  Speaker: league cookbooks.
• 7:03
  Speaker: Um, and, you know, honestly, the ones that are usually kind of
• 7:07
  Speaker: like church books, like in a little spiral bound or, you
• 7:09
  Speaker: know, handwritten, you know, recipes in there are just always
• 7:13
  Speaker: my favorites because they have so much character.
• 7:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 7:16
  Speaker: There's no shortage of retro
• 7:18
  Speaker: recipes from, from a cookbook
• 7:20
  Speaker: perspective.
• 7:21
  Speaker: I mean, you literally probably
• 7:23
  Speaker: have an endless amount of
• 7:24
  Speaker: material to look at, but you
• 7:26
  Speaker: ultimately, for your book that
• 7:27
  Speaker: you wrote, retro recipes, you
• 7:29
  Speaker: honed in on a particular period
• 7:32
  Speaker: of time.
• 7:32
  Speaker: Tell us about your decision to do that and why you chose the
• 7:36
  Speaker: period that you did.
• 7:38
  Speaker: Yeah, it was it was kind of a
• 7:40
  Speaker: difficult decision because
• 7:42
  Speaker: initially, you know, this is my
• 7:43
  Speaker: first book.
• 7:44
  Speaker: So when people came to me and they're like, hi, do you want to
• 7:46
  Speaker: write a book?
• 7:46
  Speaker: I said, sure.
• 7:47
  Speaker: Let's do three hundred recipes.
• 7:49
  Speaker: And they said, are you crazy?
• 7:51
  Speaker: You know, well, why don't you try one hundred?
• 7:54
  Speaker: And I'm glad that they said that in a way.
• 7:56
  Speaker: But at the same time, it was very, very difficult to actually
• 7:59
  Speaker: cull everything down.
• 8:00
  Speaker: Just a one hundred recipes for a century, you know, a spanning.
• 8:05
  Speaker: So I tried to focus basically, even though my favorite kind of
• 8:09
  Speaker: period of time is that mid-century kind of fifties to
• 8:12
  Speaker: seventies era and stuff, because the food's strange and the
• 8:15
  Speaker: fashion is fun.
• 8:16
  Speaker: And, you know, there was a
• 8:17
  Speaker: really unique period of history,
• 8:18
  Speaker: but I tried to make it a point
• 8:21
  Speaker: to encapsulate recipes that I
• 8:23
  Speaker: thought spanned the entire
• 8:24
  Speaker: twentieth century.
• 8:25
  Speaker: So, you know, from even before the nineteen hundreds, there
• 8:28
  Speaker: were some dishes that I thought were incredibly relevant that
• 8:31
  Speaker: were popularized maybe more in the mid-century period, but I
• 8:35
  Speaker: wanted to give them their flowers because they may have
• 8:37
  Speaker: been created in the seventeen hundreds, eighteen hundreds or,
• 8:39
  Speaker: you know, and so that's kind of where it all started.
• 8:42
  Speaker: It's just just playing with these mid-century American retro
• 8:45
  Speaker: recipes, kind of looking at a bird's eye perspective of like
• 8:49
  Speaker: the entire century and trying to understand as well, like, you
• 8:52
  Speaker: know, why we had certain dishes, you know, like maybe explaining
• 8:56
  Speaker: a little bit is why like we had aspects, you know, that really
• 8:59
  Speaker: popularized in the mid-century, you know, or what it looked like
• 9:03
  Speaker: in these cookbooks when people, you know, were writing books
• 9:06
  Speaker: during the Great Depression or during wartime, you know?
• 9:09
  Speaker: So it's a fascinating study for
• 9:11
  Speaker: anybody that actually is a
• 9:13
  Speaker: little bit nerdy in a lot of bit
• 9:16
  Speaker: curious.
• 9:17
  Speaker: Yeah, it's really hard to
• 9:18
  Speaker: believe the cookbooks that were
• 9:20
  Speaker: generated and the discussions
• 9:22
  Speaker: that happened in cookbooks about
• 9:23
  Speaker: rationing food during World War
• 9:25
  Speaker: two.
• 9:26
  Speaker: And I guess a lot of people,
• 9:27
  Speaker: though, that if they were
• 9:28
  Speaker: cooking, they looked to books to
• 9:30
  Speaker: help them make, uh, decisions
• 9:33
  Speaker: about baking, particularly since
• 9:35
  Speaker: sugar was rationed, things that
• 9:37
  Speaker: they needed to do in their own
• 9:39
  Speaker: kitchen books were really one of
• 9:41
  Speaker: the ways that they could get
• 9:42
  Speaker: that information.
• 9:43
  Speaker: They didn't have access to the internet, didn't have access to
• 9:45
  Speaker: people teaching us online.
• 9:47
  Speaker: Um, so books were really one of
• 9:50
  Speaker: the main ways that information
• 9:51
  Speaker: was disseminated.
• 9:52
  Speaker: And, um, there are quite a few books, including the, one of
• 9:56
  Speaker: the, one of the editions of Joy from the forties written before
• 9:59
  Speaker: the war and another one written after the war.
• 10:03
  Speaker: Uh, joy of cooking kind of took
• 10:04
  Speaker: the step from both sides of the
• 10:06
  Speaker: war.
• 10:06
  Speaker: And rationing is certainly
• 10:08
  Speaker: something that they talked
• 10:09
  Speaker: about.
• 10:09
  Speaker: Did you include any recipes in retro recipes related to that
• 10:13
  Speaker: time of the century?
• 10:16
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 10:17
  Speaker: I mean, there are actually quite a few dishes in the book.
• 10:20
  Speaker: Uh, especially kind of in the
• 10:21
  Speaker: dessert section because that's
• 10:23
  Speaker: where you find like the most
• 10:24
  Speaker: creativity and like some of
• 10:25
  Speaker: those really interesting, unique
• 10:27
  Speaker: recipes that came out from
• 10:28
  Speaker: scarcity.
• 10:29
  Speaker: But I mean, you know, even, um,
• 10:31
  Speaker: you know, there's some bread
• 10:33
  Speaker: dishes, there's, uh, you know,
• 10:34
  Speaker: some savory dishes as well, like
• 10:37
  Speaker: that all just kind of
• 10:38
  Speaker: encapsulate the idea of like
• 10:39
  Speaker: utilizing literally everything
• 10:41
  Speaker: you've got, you know, and, and
• 10:43
  Speaker: just at the same time, the
• 10:45
  Speaker: ingenuity and the creativity
• 10:46
  Speaker: that people had back then of
• 10:48
  Speaker: being able to kind of anticipate
• 10:50
  Speaker: like, hey, we don't have this
• 10:51
  Speaker: particular ingredient.
• 10:52
  Speaker: How can we, you know, I don't know, like replicate this in a
• 10:56
  Speaker: similar way while at the same time, just most importantly,
• 10:59
  Speaker: just feeding our community or our families or our friends.
• 11:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:03
  Speaker: And so it was really just one of
• 11:05
  Speaker: those fascinating periods of
• 11:06
  Speaker: periods of time because instead
• 11:09
  Speaker: of just rolling over, giving up
• 11:12
  Speaker: or throwing her hands in the air
• 11:13
  Speaker: or something like that, we had
• 11:15
  Speaker: some of the most tenacious
• 11:16
  Speaker: people that were, that were
• 11:17
  Speaker: going out of their way and doing
• 11:19
  Speaker: this selfless act of just trying
• 11:20
  Speaker: to feed others and at the same
• 11:23
  Speaker: time document it and share that
• 11:24
  Speaker: information.
• 11:25
  Speaker: Because like you said, we didn't have the same news.
• 11:28
  Speaker: We didn't have the same, you know, information accessibility.
• 11:31
  Speaker: Most information was actually passed verbally.
• 11:33
  Speaker: If you couldn't even have access to the books or you didn't have,
• 11:37
  Speaker: you know, the finances at the time, you know.
• 11:41
  Speaker: I mean, during the Great Depression, you'd be lucky if
• 11:43
  Speaker: you could actually afford the groceries, let alone the books
• 11:45
  Speaker: to, you know, get it so right.
• 11:47
  Speaker: Right.
• 11:47
  Speaker: And I also think people didn't have any choices for food that
• 11:50
  Speaker: much outside of their own home.
• 11:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 11:53
  Speaker: I often say now, I mean, we
• 11:54
  Speaker: could, we could sit here right
• 11:56
  Speaker: now and order lunch for both of
• 11:57
  Speaker: us without ever moving from this
• 12:00
  Speaker: particular microphone.
• 12:01
  Speaker: If we gave them access to our code to our door, they could
• 12:04
  Speaker: bring food to us right now with DoorDash or something like that.
• 12:07
  Speaker: That just was unheard of.
• 12:09
  Speaker: And so the ingenuity, I think
• 12:10
  Speaker: sometimes too many choices
• 12:12
  Speaker: really, um, or a more limited
• 12:15
  Speaker: choices makes people more
• 12:18
  Speaker: creative.
• 12:20
  Speaker: I don't know if I absolutely agree.
• 12:21
  Speaker: No, no, I absolutely agree because I'm also a private chef,
• 12:24
  Speaker: you know, by trade.
• 12:25
  Speaker: And it's one of those things where I've said this for so long
• 12:29
  Speaker: that I actually really hate working in restaurants, even
• 12:32
  Speaker: though I love the community and like the, the teamwork, but
• 12:35
  Speaker: working with private clients, especially for me, where I live
• 12:37
  Speaker: near Palm Beach.
• 12:39
  Speaker: You know, I'm cooking for people on the island.
• 12:41
  Speaker: A lot of them have incredibly specific dietary restrictions.
• 12:44
  Speaker: And so it's my job to basically
• 12:47
  Speaker: make them feel like they're not
• 12:48
  Speaker: on a diet, while at the same
• 12:50
  Speaker: time respecting their, their
• 12:51
  Speaker: wishes.
• 12:51
  Speaker: So I had one client that was a type one diabetic and also
• 12:55
  Speaker: kosher, and I was able to make sure that she always had a very
• 12:59
  Speaker: unique meal every single day, every single meal, you know, and
• 13:04
  Speaker: she was so excited because it was the first time in, in
• 13:07
  Speaker: decades that she'd actually had somebody that was trying to work
• 13:12
  Speaker: with something they didn't have and make it work into a world
• 13:15
  Speaker: where that nostalgia, that connection to the food that we
• 13:18
  Speaker: love came back.
• 13:19
  Speaker: So I think, I think that it honestly makes things easier for
• 13:22
  Speaker: me, at least when I have less.
• 13:24
  Speaker: Yeah, I was thinking about that even this morning.
• 13:26
  Speaker: Um, this summer I want to find a
• 13:29
  Speaker: novel to read that I can, like,
• 13:31
  Speaker: really dig into reading a good
• 13:34
  Speaker: novel Rather than jumping around
• 13:37
  Speaker: and reading bits and bytes of
• 13:39
  Speaker: this and that, like, you know,
• 13:40
  Speaker: really going deep instead of
• 13:42
  Speaker: wide.
• 13:43
  Speaker: And, um, I think that when
• 13:44
  Speaker: people didn't have the choice of
• 13:46
  Speaker: the breadth of places they could
• 13:48
  Speaker: get their food, they, they did
• 13:50
  Speaker: have to become, um, ingenious
• 13:52
  Speaker: and they did have to use what
• 13:53
  Speaker: they had.
• 13:54
  Speaker: And um, it's sure a very hard thing to do, but a lot of, a lot
• 13:58
  Speaker: of really interesting things came out of that.
• 14:01
  Speaker: So your study then of retro recipes are vintage dishes.
• 14:04
  Speaker: You did add a modern twist to them, but something that you
• 14:07
  Speaker: said earlier is that you really found that you loved doing this.
• 14:12
  Speaker: You sort of had a passion for not only the food part of it,
• 14:16
  Speaker: but the video part of it.
• 14:17
  Speaker: I wonder if you'd speak to the audience a little bit about the
• 14:20
  Speaker: importance of loving what we do, and then helping our audience
• 14:25
  Speaker: have a better experience, as sometimes the fruit of that.
• 14:29
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Speaker: I mean, that's actually a really great question.
• 14:31
  Speaker: Um, you know, I think, I think that it's one of those things
• 14:36
  Speaker: where we are in a very unique period of time.
• 14:39
  Speaker: You know, like since we're talking about food history and
• 14:42
  Speaker: everything else, you know, we're talking about nearly a century
• 14:45
  Speaker: ago, a period of time in particular where people didn't
• 14:49
  Speaker: have the same ability to just do what they loved.
• 14:52
  Speaker: You know, it was, it was you woke up, you did a job to pay
• 14:55
  Speaker: your bills and everything else.
• 14:57
  Speaker: We live in a very unique period
• 14:59
  Speaker: of time right now, where you
• 15:00
  Speaker: actually have the option to
• 15:03
  Speaker: pursue something that you
• 15:04
  Speaker: genuinely love.
• 15:05
  Speaker: You know, I, I make, you know,
• 15:07
  Speaker: social media videos and work
• 15:09
  Speaker: with incredible brands and
• 15:11
  Speaker: partners.
• 15:12
  Speaker: You're able to actually
• 15:13
  Speaker: interview people and talk about
• 15:15
  Speaker: a subject that you are
• 15:16
  Speaker: passionate about.
• 15:17
  Speaker: And, you know, it goes on and on.
• 15:19
  Speaker: And I think that the most important thing that I've kind
• 15:22
  Speaker: of found is that there are a lot of things that we love, and you
• 15:26
  Speaker: have to be able to find a way to make sure that it's something
• 15:29
  Speaker: that you still love, even when you're pushed beyond the point
• 15:32
  Speaker: of it being fun because at the end of the day, I love cooking
• 15:36
  Speaker: more than I love.
• 15:37
  Speaker: Uh, even eating, but I love more importantly, it's not just I
• 15:41
  Speaker: like cooking, it's the fact that I love to provide.
• 15:44
  Speaker: I am, I am a person of service.
• 15:47
  Speaker: And so for me, it's not the act of cooking itself.
• 15:51
  Speaker: It's the act of preparing something and then serving it to
• 15:54
  Speaker: somebody and then making sure that they are happy.
• 15:56
  Speaker: And then once I know that they are happy and satiated and feel
• 16:02
  Speaker: like cared for, then all of a sudden my job is done.
• 16:05
  Speaker: I can have the best day in the
• 16:06
  Speaker: world and nothing will change
• 16:08
  Speaker: that.
• 16:08
  Speaker: So you have to be able to find a connection to something that is.
• 16:12
  Speaker: It transcends just the task itself.
• 16:15
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 16:15
  Speaker: Um, yeah.
• 16:16
  Speaker: For cooking then for you just
• 16:18
  Speaker: provides the means to what you
• 16:20
  Speaker: want to do for people, which is
• 16:21
  Speaker: to serve them, have them feel
• 16:23
  Speaker: cared for, feel loved because of
• 16:25
  Speaker: the food.
• 16:26
  Speaker: It's the same thing.
• 16:26
  Speaker: If you opened an Airbnb, you could say, well, this is my
• 16:29
  Speaker: means to help someone feel welcomed and cared for and have
• 16:34
  Speaker: a great experience.
• 16:35
  Speaker: But it's not cooking, it's running an Airbnb.
• 16:37
  Speaker: So it's fascinating when we
• 16:39
  Speaker: think about the end, but the
• 16:41
  Speaker: means that we get there should
• 16:42
  Speaker: be something.
• 16:43
  Speaker: There's nothing wrong with it being something we enjoy.
• 16:46
  Speaker: I always think that everybody should, you know, like the thing
• 16:49
  Speaker: that I am doing all the time.
• 16:50
  Speaker: I mean, I'm way too cerebral and I'm always trying to think one
• 16:54
  Speaker: step closer, one step, you know, like more elaborately.
• 16:57
  Speaker: And I think that it's always that point where it's like, I
• 17:01
  Speaker: like doing this.
• 17:02
  Speaker: And is that question of just
• 17:03
  Speaker: like, but why do I like doing
• 17:05
  Speaker: this?
• 17:06
  Speaker: And when do you, when you dig
• 17:07
  Speaker: just a little bit deeper every
• 17:08
  Speaker: day, just do a little bit of a
• 17:10
  Speaker: deeper dig.
• 17:10
  Speaker: All of a sudden you realize there are so many other doors
• 17:13
  Speaker: and that keeps it not only interesting, but it also keeps
• 17:17
  Speaker: it less limiting.
• 17:18
  Speaker: Because if for some reason I decided I didn't want to do this
• 17:21
  Speaker: tomorrow, I could still absolutely go into hospitality
• 17:24
  Speaker: in some other capacity because I have realized that that is my
• 17:27
  Speaker: core ethos is hospitality.
• 17:29
  Speaker: So that'd be my advice.
• 17:31
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
• 17:32
  Speaker: And you're right though, even if you choose one thing, the means
• 17:37
  Speaker: is not always a picture perfect.
• 17:39
  Speaker: Like, you know, skipping through the Daisy's journey to help
• 17:43
  Speaker: people feel cared for.
• 17:45
  Speaker: There are ups and downs in the journey.
• 17:47
  Speaker: Um, but, and as you know from writing a book, I'm sure you've
• 17:50
  Speaker: faced that also like from being approached, hey, would you like
• 17:54
  Speaker: to write a book?
• 17:55
  Speaker: Did you have to then decide what
• 17:56
  Speaker: you wanted to write the book
• 17:57
  Speaker: about how you were going to take
• 17:59
  Speaker: this topic that you were doing
• 18:00
  Speaker: in retro, your, your work online
• 18:03
  Speaker: and turning it into an idea for
• 18:05
  Speaker: a book.
• 18:06
  Speaker: I actually got really lucky.
• 18:08
  Speaker: So I was on a show called Next Level Chef.
• 18:10
  Speaker: Um, and with the, it was a Gordon Ramsay production and I
• 18:14
  Speaker: did okay on the show.
• 18:16
  Speaker: And when I was finally heading home.
• 18:24
  Speaker: Um, you know, I, I spoke to my partner Keiko, and she said to
• 18:29
  Speaker: me was, I think that you should do a book.
• 18:31
  Speaker: And we have friends that, you know, have worked with literary
• 18:34
  Speaker: agents before, so why don't we see if we can actually just ask
• 18:37
  Speaker: them questions and see if that's a viable option?
• 18:40
  Speaker: And so it was one of those
• 18:42
  Speaker: things where I connected with my
• 18:44
  Speaker: friends, and we got a contact to
• 18:46
  Speaker: a really wonderful literary
• 18:48
  Speaker: agency, and I wrote to them,
• 18:50
  Speaker: asked them, and they're like,
• 18:51
  Speaker: your ears must have been burning
• 18:52
  Speaker: because we've literally had
• 18:53
  Speaker: publishers for the last like six
• 18:55
  Speaker: to twelve months writing to us
• 18:57
  Speaker: saying like, we're looking for
• 18:58
  Speaker: something that's based around
• 18:59
  Speaker: food history.
• 19:00
  Speaker: Is there anybody out there that, you know, that might be willing
• 19:03
  Speaker: to do this?
• 19:04
  Speaker: And, uh, so it was a, it was a
• 19:06
  Speaker: really unexpected fast green
• 19:09
  Speaker: light.
• 19:09
  Speaker: I, I almost don't feel like I deserved it, but we ran with it.
• 19:13
  Speaker: And, you know, it's, it's a lot
• 19:15
  Speaker: harder than I think I ever would
• 19:17
  Speaker: have guessed.
• 19:18
  Speaker: It's a lot harder than I think most people would guess.
• 19:20
  Speaker: You know, you're told you have
• 19:21
  Speaker: two years to do something and
• 19:23
  Speaker: then six months later you have
• 19:24
  Speaker: to turn in a draft and you have
• 19:25
  Speaker: to have your photos ready
• 19:26
  Speaker: afterward.
• 19:27
  Speaker: And so it's, it's a lot.
• 19:28
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah, it is a lot.
• 19:30
  Speaker: Um, and then then you, they, you
• 19:33
  Speaker: work and partner with them to
• 19:34
  Speaker: create this, this book that you
• 19:36
  Speaker: created.
• 19:37
  Speaker: And, um, one of the things is
• 19:39
  Speaker: that you describe as you're,
• 19:40
  Speaker: you're recreating nostalgia for
• 19:43
  Speaker: people and you talk about the
• 19:46
  Speaker: difference between nostalgia and
• 19:48
  Speaker: novelty.
• 19:49
  Speaker: Can you describe that a little bit for our listeners?
• 19:52
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 19:53
  Speaker: You know, I mean, I think that like, there's a, there's a
• 19:56
  Speaker: thread between the two that I think is often misunderstood.
• 19:59
  Speaker: You know, you can have something that is novel, you know, and
• 20:02
  Speaker: it's just a flash in the pan.
• 20:04
  Speaker: And it might be something that
• 20:05
  Speaker: that is interesting or cool or,
• 20:07
  Speaker: you know, you, you might even
• 20:09
  Speaker: own and appreciate, but there
• 20:11
  Speaker: is, there is a real power to
• 20:13
  Speaker: nostalgia.
• 20:14
  Speaker: And, and kind of what I mean by
• 20:16
  Speaker: this is this entire experiment
• 20:19
  Speaker: that I did with retro recipes
• 20:20
  Speaker: kitchen.
• 20:21
  Speaker: You know, it started off and again, this came.
• 20:24
  Speaker: This all comes from like these
• 20:26
  Speaker: overly cerebral moments of just
• 20:27
  Speaker: reflection.
• 20:28
  Speaker: But it came during Covid when I was locked in an apartment and I
• 20:33
  Speaker: couldn't do anything.
• 20:34
  Speaker: And I was feeling incredibly helpless and hopeless and down
• 20:39
  Speaker: and just like feelings that I've never really felt before because
• 20:42
  Speaker: I've always had a community around me and the things that I
• 20:46
  Speaker: kept coming back to almost every day in some capacity, whether it
• 20:49
  Speaker: was a big day or a small moment, was finding something that tied
• 20:53
  Speaker: me back, made me feel comfortable and safe.
• 20:56
  Speaker: And oftentimes that could come down to food.
• 20:58
  Speaker: So you're thinking about, I grew
• 20:59
  Speaker: up having this, and so I want to
• 21:01
  Speaker: make these or like, oh, my mom
• 21:03
  Speaker: made these brownies, you know,
• 21:04
  Speaker: from this box mix, you know,
• 21:06
  Speaker: there's nothing wrong with box
• 21:08
  Speaker: mix.
• 21:08
  Speaker: There's nothing wrong with
• 21:09
  Speaker: whatever, you know, you're
• 21:11
  Speaker: looking at.
• 21:12
  Speaker: But when you actually think
• 21:13
  Speaker: about the fact that it's like
• 21:14
  Speaker: you're doing this because this
• 21:16
  Speaker: brings you a familiarity and
• 21:18
  Speaker: this brings you back to a time
• 21:19
  Speaker: when you were feeling safe and
• 21:21
  Speaker: comfortable.
• 21:22
  Speaker: That is the essence of nostalgia.
• 21:24
  Speaker: You know, it is this safety blanket that that we all
• 21:27
  Speaker: actually gravitate toward.
• 21:30
  Speaker: And at the same time, it's usually tied to something that
• 21:33
  Speaker: either we've experienced ourselves or we have a
• 21:37
  Speaker: connection to in some way.
• 21:39
  Speaker: And so I don't know, I just, I just always felt that like
• 21:41
  Speaker: nostalgia itself was like this, this tangible vessel that like,
• 21:45
  Speaker: you can almost feel.
• 21:47
  Speaker: And so when I say that, like I'm making a book about nostalgia,
• 21:52
  Speaker: it's one of those things that for me personally, I had a
• 21:56
  Speaker: direct kind of like connection to a lot of the recipes and the
• 21:59
  Speaker: way that they helped me.
• 22:01
  Speaker: But at the same time, what I found is it actually like, you
• 22:03
  Speaker: know, I'd make a really silly dish, you know, from a book that
• 22:06
  Speaker: I think nobody's ever going to know about or have had.
• 22:10
  Speaker: And then I make it and I put it out there, and I couldn't tell
• 22:12
  Speaker: you how many times I would have people write to me in the
• 22:15
  Speaker: comments and stuff being like, this is so crazy.
• 22:17
  Speaker: I haven't seen this dish in, you know, like years.
• 22:22
  Speaker: And my dad made this every single day when, you know, I was
• 22:25
  Speaker: a kid and he actually just passed away, you know, like last
• 22:29
  Speaker: year or, you know, my mom, you know, or my grandmother or
• 22:33
  Speaker: whatever it might be.
• 22:34
  Speaker: And like, they just passed away.
• 22:35
  Speaker: And it's this thing that when you realize like food is
• 22:39
  Speaker: nourishment, but it also is an anchor point, you know, to our
• 22:44
  Speaker: past and to our ancestors.
• 22:46
  Speaker: And that's, again, just one of the most incredible powerful
• 22:49
  Speaker: things about food in particular, and why I think, honestly,
• 22:51
  Speaker: American cuisine is so unique because we have influences from
• 22:56
  Speaker: the entire globe all coming over here and bringing their, their,
• 23:00
  Speaker: their foods that oftentimes we've taken for granted, you
• 23:05
  Speaker: know, and not even giving credit to where it's actually from.
• 23:09
  Speaker: But understanding that in some capacity, it's like it is
• 23:12
  Speaker: important to us.
• 23:13
  Speaker: And so I think that that's like
• 23:14
  Speaker: a really important thing behind
• 23:15
  Speaker: it.
• 23:16
  Speaker: Yeah, I think so too.
• 23:17
  Speaker: And I think it's fascinating that the publisher was talking
• 23:20
  Speaker: to the agent, already being interested in publishing a book
• 23:24
  Speaker: about food history.
• 23:26
  Speaker: I feel like this is really kind of having a little bit of a
• 23:30
  Speaker: moment right now where we are using, uh, food.
• 23:34
  Speaker: I think it's a way to look at
• 23:35
  Speaker: history that doesn't feel as
• 23:37
  Speaker: threatening as some other things
• 23:38
  Speaker: that we may think about when we
• 23:40
  Speaker: think about our history of our
• 23:41
  Speaker: country.
• 23:42
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 23:43
  Speaker: And, but I also think it's
• 23:44
  Speaker: really important as well to make
• 23:47
  Speaker: sure that we're also just not
• 23:48
  Speaker: like acknowledging the dish
• 23:50
  Speaker: without acknowledging the
• 23:51
  Speaker: history itself.
• 23:53
  Speaker: You know, I mean, like one of my one of my favorite dishes in the
• 23:55
  Speaker: cookbook is the country captain.
• 23:58
  Speaker: And, you know, this is a dish that, uh, was created as the
• 24:02
  Speaker: country was being formed.
• 24:04
  Speaker: You know, we had English, you know, colonizers that were
• 24:07
  Speaker: visiting India for the spice trade and then migrating over
• 24:11
  Speaker: toward West Africa and bringing, you know, people through slavery
• 24:16
  Speaker: and, and kind of like, uh, over to the Caribbean and, and, you
• 24:20
  Speaker: know, picking up, you know, more, more, um, ingredients and,
• 24:24
  Speaker: and, and kind of like cultural relevances around there.
• 24:27
  Speaker: And then coming over to the east
• 24:28
  Speaker: coast of the country around
• 24:29
  Speaker: Savannah and Charleston, and all
• 24:31
  Speaker: of a sudden all of these
• 24:32
  Speaker: influences are coming together,
• 24:34
  Speaker: you know, and you, you have
• 24:36
  Speaker: grains of rice that were grown
• 24:38
  Speaker: from West African, you know,
• 24:39
  Speaker: rice fields that they were like
• 24:41
  Speaker: storing rice in their in their
• 24:43
  Speaker: hair as they're being, you know,
• 24:45
  Speaker: shipped over to the United
• 24:46
  Speaker: States.
• 24:46
  Speaker: And you have the coconuts and, and like, uh, really wonderful
• 24:50
  Speaker: tropical flavors that are coming from the Caribbean.
• 24:53
  Speaker: You have the spices like Madras curry and stuff.
• 24:56
  Speaker: And it's this influence of everything, but you can't have
• 24:58
  Speaker: this dish without also acknowledging kind of some of
• 25:01
  Speaker: the pain that came through it.
• 25:02
  Speaker: And so I think the most important thing is to always
• 25:05
  Speaker: understand that it's like, you know, we can honor our history
• 25:09
  Speaker: by just keeping these memories alive and relevant and at the
• 25:12
  Speaker: same time, still discussing the fact of, you know, like what not
• 25:15
  Speaker: to do, you know?
• 25:17
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 25:17
  Speaker: But at the same time, honoring
• 25:18
  Speaker: the like what we have because
• 25:20
  Speaker: that's, that's how history
• 25:21
  Speaker: works.
• 25:21
  Speaker: That's right, that's right.
• 25:22
  Speaker: And you also brought to this book, uh, humor in addition to
• 25:26
  Speaker: the history humor, something that you, um, always enjoyed.
• 25:30
  Speaker: Um, because sometimes the history can be hard to stomach,
• 25:34
  Speaker: so to speak.
• 25:35
  Speaker: So tell us a little bit about your attraction to combining the
• 25:37
  Speaker: two humor and history.
• 25:40
  Speaker: Well, you know, I mean, I think that it's, it's one of these
• 25:43
  Speaker: things where I, I really tried to approach writing every recipe
• 25:47
  Speaker: with through the lens of just how I am as a person.
• 25:51
  Speaker: I'm a very just kind of like cheeky, you know, guy that likes
• 25:55
  Speaker: to make people smile, but at the same time understand that it's
• 25:59
  Speaker: like, I don't want to yuck on someone's yum, you know?
• 26:02
  Speaker: You know?
• 26:03
  Speaker: And so it's like, for me
• 26:04
  Speaker: personally, I think aspects are
• 26:06
  Speaker: awful.
• 26:07
  Speaker: They're atrocious.
• 26:08
  Speaker: And, and in general, it's a textural nightmare for me.
• 26:10
  Speaker: But, you know, it's also one of
• 26:13
  Speaker: those things where I think that
• 26:14
  Speaker: it's incredibly relevant for the
• 26:16
  Speaker: mid-century period in
• 26:17
  Speaker: particular.
• 26:18
  Speaker: You know, like, uh, you know, for me, I always found it really
• 26:21
  Speaker: interesting in my, in my studies to actually see how many
• 26:23
  Speaker: parallels there were with, let's say like a pineapple, you know,
• 26:26
  Speaker: from like the seventeen, eighteen hundreds where you
• 26:28
  Speaker: could rent a pineapple and put it on your dinner table and you
• 26:30
  Speaker: had guests come by.
• 26:31
  Speaker: And that would be a status symbol.
• 26:32
  Speaker: It would showcase that you
• 26:33
  Speaker: actually had enough wealth and
• 26:35
  Speaker: opulence that you could actually
• 26:36
  Speaker: rent.
• 26:36
  Speaker: This fruit takes three years to
• 26:38
  Speaker: grow, and you could have on your
• 26:40
  Speaker: dinner table just for people to
• 26:41
  Speaker: go, ooh and ah aspects were very
• 26:44
  Speaker: similar, kind of around like the
• 26:45
  Speaker: mid-century period, because as
• 26:47
  Speaker: we followed out of post-World
• 26:48
  Speaker: war two and into this industrial
• 26:50
  Speaker: boom, the invention of
• 26:52
  Speaker: technologies that didn't exist
• 26:54
  Speaker: yet, like the refrigerator, you
• 26:56
  Speaker: know, started to become a little
• 26:57
  Speaker: more ubiquitous.
• 26:58
  Speaker: And at the time it was like this really wonderful indicator, hey,
• 27:01
  Speaker: they have this, you know, like plug in icebox that actually is
• 27:07
  Speaker: powerful enough to, you know, um, keep this soup, you know,
• 27:12
  Speaker: and allow it to stand up on its own, you know, because they can
• 27:14
  Speaker: chill it enough.
• 27:15
  Speaker: And so it was a status symbol.
• 27:17
  Speaker: And so I find things like this like really fascinating and
• 27:19
  Speaker: interesting as well.
• 27:21
  Speaker: But yeah, I don't know.
• 27:23
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah, no, that's great.
• 27:24
  Speaker: I think it's, it, isn't it
• 27:25
  Speaker: amazing that they would rent a
• 27:26
  Speaker: pineapple.
• 27:27
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 27:28
  Speaker: And, but I mean it's all it's
• 27:30
  Speaker: the history behind these things
• 27:31
  Speaker: is like most people have no
• 27:33
  Speaker: clue.
• 27:33
  Speaker: Right, right.
• 27:34
  Speaker: Why why someone would ever do anything like that.
• 27:36
  Speaker: So you used and tried to um,
• 27:39
  Speaker: come recipes for this book one
• 27:41
  Speaker: hundred recipes from across, uh,
• 27:43
  Speaker: many decades.
• 27:45
  Speaker: You know, you have the nineteen
• 27:46
  Speaker: tens, very practical, the
• 27:48
  Speaker: nineteen thirties, as we
• 27:49
  Speaker: mentioned, a very resourceful
• 27:50
  Speaker: time.
• 27:51
  Speaker: The nineteen fifties was maybe a little flashier.
• 27:54
  Speaker: Uh, is there a era that you
• 27:56
  Speaker: think maybe in your own mind
• 27:58
  Speaker: deserves sort of a comeback in
• 28:00
  Speaker: our kitchens?
• 28:03
  Speaker: You know, I mean, I, I think
• 28:04
  Speaker: we're kind of actually seeing
• 28:06
  Speaker: it, you know, like in
• 28:07
  Speaker: particular, I, I do think that,
• 28:09
  Speaker: like I said, the mid-century
• 28:10
  Speaker: period is just super fun, you
• 28:12
  Speaker: know?
• 28:12
  Speaker: We also had that because it had layers.
• 28:14
  Speaker: We also had like the atomic era
• 28:16
  Speaker: in there, you know, where people
• 28:18
  Speaker: were making really silly dishes
• 28:19
  Speaker: like the burning bush, which is
• 28:21
  Speaker: in the book, you know, and it's,
• 28:23
  Speaker: it's essentially nothing more
• 28:24
  Speaker: than like using a giant
• 28:26
  Speaker: grapefruit with tiny toothpick
• 28:27
  Speaker: skewers that have, you know,
• 28:29
  Speaker: cream cheese balls that are
• 28:31
  Speaker: rolled around and chipped beef
• 28:32
  Speaker: on there.
• 28:33
  Speaker: But it looks almost like this strange atom, you know, and it's
• 28:37
  Speaker: like the kitsch and the, the, the detail that went into all of
• 28:41
  Speaker: the, the meals to make them look a certain way, even though they
• 28:45
  Speaker: might not have tasted great.
• 28:46
  Speaker: The, the, the effort that went into it was always put in there
• 28:50
  Speaker: just to make sure that your guests felt happy and
• 28:53
  Speaker: entertained and, you know, like that was that was an effort
• 28:56
  Speaker: where we put our work into we wanted to showcase this flash.
• 28:59
  Speaker: And I think that that's
• 29:00
  Speaker: something that I'm excited to
• 29:01
  Speaker: see start to kind of sneak back
• 29:03
  Speaker: in.
• 29:04
  Speaker: There are a lot of folks that have been reaching out to me for
• 29:06
  Speaker: years now, saying they want to throw a vintage themed parties,
• 29:08
  Speaker: and we see more and more of these coming up.
• 29:11
  Speaker: So I think that doing a like recreating some mid-century
• 29:14
  Speaker: American dishes just for the novelty of it is super fun
• 29:18
  Speaker: because even though Jell-O dishes aren't my favorite,
• 29:20
  Speaker: they're so fun to make.
• 29:22
  Speaker: Yeah, I think I'd have to go
• 29:23
  Speaker: with the nineteen tens
• 29:25
  Speaker: practicality, like when I was,
• 29:27
  Speaker: um, my children are all older
• 29:29
  Speaker: now, don't you know, they're on
• 29:31
  Speaker: their own?
• 29:31
  Speaker: But when I was feeding them
• 29:32
  Speaker: every day, the thought of
• 29:34
  Speaker: cooking food like to make a
• 29:36
  Speaker: casserole, I would cook it once
• 29:38
  Speaker: I'd put it together and I'd have
• 29:40
  Speaker: to cook it again to make a
• 29:41
  Speaker: casserole.
• 29:42
  Speaker: That never seemed very practical to me.
• 29:44
  Speaker: No. It's like, if I'm going to cook ground beef, why don't I
• 29:48
  Speaker: just cook the ground beef?
• 29:50
  Speaker: And if we're going to have tater tots, let's just have tater
• 29:52
  Speaker: tots, I would like.
• 29:53
  Speaker: And if we're going to put peas in it, let's just have peas.
• 29:56
  Speaker: And then you get dinner on the table a lot faster.
• 29:58
  Speaker: So I think based on reading what
• 30:00
  Speaker: you said here, I'd have to
• 30:01
  Speaker: probably say, I think we need,
• 30:04
  Speaker: you know, when we went through
• 30:05
  Speaker: the whole casserole thing or
• 30:06
  Speaker: like you said, the things with
• 30:07
  Speaker: the toothpicks.
• 30:08
  Speaker: Um, that might have been for entertaining, but I think
• 30:11
  Speaker: practicality needs to, um, we can practically cook.
• 30:15
  Speaker: It's not that hard to be a practical cook.
• 30:17
  Speaker: Like, you know, it's, it's funny because I didn't even think
• 30:21
  Speaker: about it like that because that's honestly just how I, I
• 30:23
  Speaker: already naturally cook.
• 30:24
  Speaker: You know, it's like we always try to keep things very simple.
• 30:27
  Speaker: Yes.
• 30:27
  Speaker: So it's, it's like, that's already what I'm kind of doing.
• 30:30
  Speaker: And so, you know, yeah, people like, well, now how are you
• 30:33
  Speaker: cooking that your kids are.
• 30:34
  Speaker: So what's kind of the same?
• 30:35
  Speaker: I just don't cook as many portions.
• 30:37
  Speaker: If we're having salmon, I just cook two instead of six.
• 30:41
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:42
  Speaker: So it's just it's the same thing.
• 30:44
  Speaker: But I, I, I think some of the
• 30:46
  Speaker: periods were just seem so fussy
• 30:47
  Speaker: to me.
• 30:48
  Speaker: But, you know, I have a question
• 30:49
  Speaker: about that was a lot of that
• 30:51
  Speaker: driven by brands like food
• 30:53
  Speaker: brands started to come onto the
• 30:55
  Speaker: scene and you know, people were
• 30:57
  Speaker: maybe trying, they were starting
• 30:58
  Speaker: to buy like, let's just say
• 31:00
  Speaker: Vienna sausage.
• 31:01
  Speaker: They were starting to buy spam.
• 31:03
  Speaker: They were starting to buy brand
• 31:04
  Speaker: unnamed packaged foods in those
• 31:07
  Speaker: companies provided recipes,
• 31:09
  Speaker: right?
• 31:10
  Speaker: My aunts, my aunts used, uh,
• 31:13
  Speaker: dream whip, which was a little
• 31:15
  Speaker: envelope of, uh, made like a
• 31:18
  Speaker: whipped topping.
• 31:19
  Speaker: You added milk, I think, or water, but it wasn't.
• 31:21
  Speaker: So you weren't buying Cool Whip
• 31:23
  Speaker: and you weren't buying whipped
• 31:24
  Speaker: cream.
• 31:24
  Speaker: It was called Dream Whip.
• 31:25
  Speaker: But so the recipes from those
• 31:27
  Speaker: products started to be
• 31:28
  Speaker: incorporated into what people
• 31:30
  Speaker: did.
• 31:30
  Speaker: And, um, I think a lot of recipes and in particular,
• 31:33
  Speaker: probably gelatin, once it became instant and something people
• 31:36
  Speaker: could do in their own kitchen.
• 31:39
  Speaker: Um, I'm sure the recipes just went through the roof.
• 31:42
  Speaker: And then when Jell-O came out
• 31:43
  Speaker: with different flavors,
• 31:44
  Speaker: different colors, different
• 31:45
  Speaker: combinations, um, you know, we
• 31:48
  Speaker: start to see this appearing in
• 31:50
  Speaker: people's kitchens and in
• 31:51
  Speaker: cookbooks during that period of
• 31:53
  Speaker: time.
• 31:54
  Speaker: It's also really interesting because, you know, if you also
• 31:57
  Speaker: kind of think of another variable in there, you know, we,
• 32:00
  Speaker: we required this element of convenience, like with these
• 32:04
  Speaker: prepackaged ingredients that were being pushed.
• 32:06
  Speaker: Obviously at the time, because there was never a stronger
• 32:09
  Speaker: market for it.
• 32:10
  Speaker: Because, you know, one of the
• 32:12
  Speaker: things that happens because of
• 32:13
  Speaker: World War two was the majority
• 32:16
  Speaker: of the men were shipped off to
• 32:18
  Speaker: other countries.
• 32:19
  Speaker: And what happened?
• 32:20
  Speaker: Women got into the workforce.
• 32:22
  Speaker: We had Rosie the Riveters.
• 32:23
  Speaker: And so because of this, you
• 32:25
  Speaker: know, women were incredibly
• 32:27
  Speaker: important.
• 32:28
  Speaker: With the advent of this kind of technological advancement,
• 32:30
  Speaker: because on top of the fact that they were working in these
• 32:32
  Speaker: factories to kind of provide everything for the country and
• 32:35
  Speaker: for our soldiers, then they also still had to come back home
• 32:38
  Speaker: later on and still make a dish.
• 32:40
  Speaker: And so what's fascinating about
• 32:41
  Speaker: it is that like, we had this
• 32:43
  Speaker: boom of, of convenience culture,
• 32:46
  Speaker: whether it was kind of the
• 32:47
  Speaker: advent of TV dinners later on
• 32:49
  Speaker: and stuff, and frozen
• 32:50
  Speaker: ingredients like frozen dinners,
• 32:52
  Speaker: but also things like canned
• 32:54
  Speaker: meats, which had been around for
• 32:55
  Speaker: a minute, but it's like they
• 32:56
  Speaker: were becoming a lot more
• 32:57
  Speaker: ubiquitous in recipes around
• 32:58
  Speaker: that time.
• 32:59
  Speaker: These things were based because of that necessity post war, it's
• 33:04
  Speaker: still carried on.
• 33:04
  Speaker: You know, women were in the workforce and they realized,
• 33:06
  Speaker: hey, we have autonomy.
• 33:07
  Speaker: We like this.
• 33:08
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:09
  Speaker: And so it's so cool when you
• 33:10
  Speaker: kind of see it's almost like
• 33:12
  Speaker: algebra.
• 33:12
  Speaker: It's like when you have the
• 33:13
  Speaker: variables and all of a sudden it
• 33:14
  Speaker: just paints this picture and
• 33:15
  Speaker: you're like, oh my God, that's
• 33:17
  Speaker: so cool.
• 33:17
  Speaker: It's that missing puzzle piece that was on the floor.
• 33:20
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:20
  Speaker: Did you see the transition or shifts from being more agrarian
• 33:24
  Speaker: or having your own garden to times when you didn't have to do
• 33:26
  Speaker: that, or recipes that kind of reflected fresh produce versus
• 33:30
  Speaker: buying things canned or frozen?
• 33:32
  Speaker: Absolutely.
• 33:33
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 33:33
  Speaker: And it all kind of happened around that same period of time.
• 33:36
  Speaker: Like post like mid to post World War two.
• 33:39
  Speaker: Because still at the time, it was still incredibly common
• 33:42
  Speaker: during World War two.
• 33:43
  Speaker: And before, you know, especially before it was incredibly common
• 33:47
  Speaker: and encouraged to have a garden.
• 33:48
  Speaker: I mean, most of the book that I have that are pre nineteen forty
• 33:53
  Speaker: five or so, they also have some of the sections in there that
• 33:56
  Speaker: will give you gardening tips.
• 33:58
  Speaker: Most of them had really fun
• 33:59
  Speaker: recipes in there, they're like
• 34:00
  Speaker: chapters in like their thirties
• 34:02
  Speaker: and before for like invalid
• 34:03
  Speaker: cookery that would actually also
• 34:05
  Speaker: like teach you how to use garden
• 34:07
  Speaker: ingredients and localize things
• 34:08
  Speaker: in your area just to be able to
• 34:10
  Speaker: like, treat people that might
• 34:11
  Speaker: have been convalescent or ill in
• 34:12
  Speaker: your household.
• 34:14
  Speaker: But it's yeah, it's fascinating.
• 34:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker: And people, you know, how, how
• 34:18
  Speaker: to care for them, what you might
• 34:19
  Speaker: feed them.
• 34:20
  Speaker: Um, because before antibiotics,
• 34:22
  Speaker: which happened around that same
• 34:24
  Speaker: time too, I mean, you, if you
• 34:25
  Speaker: got a bacterial infection, you
• 34:27
  Speaker: really just had to treat the
• 34:28
  Speaker: symptoms.
• 34:29
  Speaker: You couldn't really take care of the bacterial infection with the
• 34:32
  Speaker: antibiotics, which really totally changed healthcare, I
• 34:35
  Speaker: think at that time also.
• 34:37
  Speaker: Um, yeah, incredible for people to be able to do that.
• 34:41
  Speaker: So it's like late forties, early fifties, you know, it's like I
• 34:44
  Speaker: was around the time that we were starting to even see like
• 34:46
  Speaker: penicillin and things like this.
• 34:48
  Speaker: Um, so forgive me for not
• 34:49
  Speaker: remembering the exact year that
• 34:50
  Speaker: penicillin was.
• 34:51
  Speaker: Yeah, I think it was.
• 34:52
  Speaker: I have two older aunts that were
• 34:54
  Speaker: my mom's older sisters that were
• 34:55
  Speaker: nurses, and they said they're
• 34:57
  Speaker: nursing.
• 34:58
  Speaker: It's just completely changed.
• 34:59
  Speaker: When penicillin came on the it
• 35:01
  Speaker: was like, wow, this is like
• 35:03
  Speaker: people actually are getting
• 35:05
  Speaker: better.
• 35:05
  Speaker: And this is from this pill that is treating these bacterial
• 35:09
  Speaker: infections because people were just getting so sick from them.
• 35:11
  Speaker: And, you know, of course, more at a risk of dying because they
• 35:14
  Speaker: didn't have penicillin.
• 35:15
  Speaker: So yeah, I think it's and I also think these books were, um, like
• 35:20
  Speaker: household manuals, so to speak.
• 35:22
  Speaker: It wasn't just about getting feeding people.
• 35:25
  Speaker: It was really, truly about taking care of people, taking
• 35:27
  Speaker: care of the kitchen, taking care of the equipment, taking care of
• 35:31
  Speaker: the linens, you know, all the things that went into the, uh,
• 35:35
  Speaker: that part of the house and that part of the home.
• 35:38
  Speaker: A lot of these books were called
• 35:40
  Speaker: like, seemed like they were like
• 35:42
  Speaker: little management, um, household
• 35:44
  Speaker: management manuals.
• 35:47
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 35:47
  Speaker: And it's also really kind of
• 35:48
  Speaker: cool if you, if you look back
• 35:49
  Speaker: also just like the, the
• 35:50
  Speaker: penicillin aspect, it's like we
• 35:52
  Speaker: just had so many happy accidents
• 35:53
  Speaker: that happened.
• 35:54
  Speaker: Penicillin was not intended to happen.
• 35:56
  Speaker: It just happened accidentally when Jonas Salk was leaving at
• 35:59
  Speaker: leaving town, I think, and he came back to find bacteria.
• 36:02
  Speaker: And it's similar with Ruth
• 36:03
  Speaker: Wakefield when she made the toll
• 36:04
  Speaker: house cookies.
• 36:05
  Speaker: Yeah, in thirty nine.
• 36:07
  Speaker: Yeah, she just ran out of cocoa
• 36:08
  Speaker: powder and just thought, I'll
• 36:09
  Speaker: just throw these in here and see
• 36:10
  Speaker: what happens.
• 36:12
  Speaker: Amazing.
• 36:12
  Speaker: I mean, what would the world be without chocolate chip cookies?
• 36:16
  Speaker: So you actually organized the book by starters and then by
• 36:20
  Speaker: breads and sandwiches, meats, poultry, seafood, beverages.
• 36:24
  Speaker: Then you have a whole chapter on
• 36:25
  Speaker: sweets and desserts, and then
• 36:27
  Speaker: you have essentials and everyday
• 36:29
  Speaker: skills.
• 36:30
  Speaker: Um, so that looks at the, the recipes from the way they're
• 36:35
  Speaker: organized in the book.
• 36:36
  Speaker: And then in each chapter, I'm
• 36:38
  Speaker: assuming you mix the decades
• 36:39
  Speaker: together.
• 36:40
  Speaker: Is that correct?
• 36:41
  Speaker: So the original concept for the book was going to be it would be
• 36:45
  Speaker: chronological, sorry, chronologically driven, you
• 36:49
  Speaker: know, so you'd start with the tens going up.
• 36:51
  Speaker: But then as I was kind of going through writing the recipes.
• 36:55
  Speaker: uh, and essentially calling it
• 36:57
  Speaker: down to like the one hundred
• 36:58
  Speaker: recipes.
• 36:59
  Speaker: I realized some, some of them
• 37:01
  Speaker: actually like, you know, like,
• 37:03
  Speaker: again, the country captain, for
• 37:04
  Speaker: example, like that has been
• 37:05
  Speaker: around since the mid seventeen
• 37:07
  Speaker: hundreds.
• 37:08
  Speaker: You know, like, it would be
• 37:09
  Speaker: weird to have a chapter that's
• 37:11
  Speaker: like seventeen hundreds, you
• 37:12
  Speaker: know, but it was more
• 37:13
  Speaker: popularized in kind of the
• 37:15
  Speaker: mid-century period, you know,
• 37:16
  Speaker: like forties, fifties, sixties,
• 37:18
  Speaker: you know.
• 37:19
  Speaker: Um, and so like, I made the conscious decision to also try
• 37:23
  Speaker: to do it categorically by chapter instead of
• 37:26
  Speaker: chronologically, because I was also thinking to myself like,
• 37:30
  Speaker: hey, if you just wanted to grab the book and just really quickly
• 37:33
  Speaker: thumb through and try to find chocolate chip cookies, what if
• 37:36
  Speaker: you didn't know that they were from the thirties, like most
• 37:38
  Speaker: people don't, you know, then you're going to sit there and
• 37:41
  Speaker: thumb through this book unnecessarily, you know?
• 37:43
  Speaker: And so even though there was kind of like the fun idea of
• 37:46
  Speaker: kind of making it almost a chronological history book, I
• 37:49
  Speaker: just thought it was more pragmatic in every way just to
• 37:52
  Speaker: kind of keep it very traditionally written, but still
• 37:55
  Speaker: at the same time.
• 37:55
  Speaker: At the top of each recipe, you
• 37:57
  Speaker: have a little decade marker that
• 37:58
  Speaker: shows where it might have been
• 38:01
  Speaker: either invented or most
• 38:03
  Speaker: popularized during that
• 38:04
  Speaker: particular decade and period of
• 38:06
  Speaker: time.
• 38:06
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 38:07
  Speaker: Fascinating.
• 38:07
  Speaker: So like the Boston Brown bread,
• 38:08
  Speaker: for example, says it's from the
• 38:10
  Speaker: nineteen twenties.
• 38:11
  Speaker: And then you have a nice head
• 38:12
  Speaker: note about that particular
• 38:13
  Speaker: recipe, you know, where it's
• 38:15
  Speaker: from.
• 38:15
  Speaker: And then a little bit about the making of Boston Brown bread if
• 38:18
  Speaker: nobody has ever done it.
• 38:20
  Speaker: So I see some classics in here.
• 38:22
  Speaker: Oysters Rockefeller chicken a la King.
• 38:25
  Speaker: Uh, the milk toast, like things
• 38:27
  Speaker: that I'm certainly familiar
• 38:28
  Speaker: with.
• 38:29
  Speaker: But what's a recipe that maybe not very few people are familiar
• 38:33
  Speaker: with that you think we really ought to try?
• 38:37
  Speaker: Oh, there are a bunch.
• 38:38
  Speaker: Um, in particular, there are two that I can think of right off
• 38:41
  Speaker: the top of my head.
• 38:42
  Speaker: So one of them would be the, um, the Hoboken special.
• 38:46
  Speaker: You know, this is actually under the beverages section and, you
• 38:49
  Speaker: know, around kind of prohibition time, you know.
• 38:52
  Speaker: We were no longer making alcoholic beverages.
• 38:57
  Speaker: And so there was a huge push at
• 38:59
  Speaker: the time for vendors to kind of
• 39:01
  Speaker: create equally delicious and
• 39:02
  Speaker: interesting things that they
• 39:03
  Speaker: could do to make, you know, pay
• 39:05
  Speaker: their bills.
• 39:06
  Speaker: And so the egg cream was born in New York City.
• 39:10
  Speaker: And through that, I mean, that became like a wildfire thing.
• 39:13
  Speaker: Now, it's not the egg cream that I'm talking about.
• 39:15
  Speaker: It's the Hoboken special.
• 39:16
  Speaker: But because of the egg cream and the popularity that that
• 39:19
  Speaker: actually had regionally, every neighborhood and every city
• 39:24
  Speaker: surrounding the tri state area was doing their best effort to
• 39:28
  Speaker: try to make their own original take on a beverage like that.
• 39:31
  Speaker: And the Hoboken special is kind of one of my favorites because
• 39:34
  Speaker: it's this super unique blend of like chocolate ice cream with
• 39:38
  Speaker: like a pineapple syrup that I like to make.
• 39:40
  Speaker: Um, the original recipe was
• 39:41
  Speaker: probably something as simple as
• 39:42
  Speaker: just like pineapple juice, which
• 39:44
  Speaker: would have been really, really
• 39:45
  Speaker: impressive.
• 39:46
  Speaker: Also because it still wasn't quite as ubiquitous, even though
• 39:48
  Speaker: Dole was really pushing hard for, you know, um, them to
• 39:52
  Speaker: introduce these, but um, and then just topping a little bit
• 39:57
  Speaker: of soda water and it's, it's just a really, really fun recipe
• 40:00
  Speaker: that I like the adaptation that I made for it where it's a
• 40:03
  Speaker: little more appropriate for the modern palate, a little, a
• 40:06
  Speaker: little richer, but at the same time, like just still keeps the
• 40:08
  Speaker: integrity of what it all was.
• 40:11
  Speaker: And then, uh, another dessert that I really love that has
• 40:14
  Speaker: almost no real history is called the Delmonico pie.
• 40:18
  Speaker: And this one is just an exercise in simplicity, in the finest.
• 40:22
  Speaker: I mean, it is the most minimal ingredients.
• 40:24
  Speaker: It's a graham cracker crust, you know, like a like a key lime pie
• 40:27
  Speaker: kind of style.
• 40:28
  Speaker: And then you just take strawberries and bananas.
• 40:31
  Speaker: You slice them up, you macerate them in some sugar so that they
• 40:34
  Speaker: weep out their juices and then kind of pull.
• 40:36
  Speaker: And so it makes this like sweetened blend of yum.
• 40:39
  Speaker: And then you put that just on the graham cracker pipe on top,
• 40:44
  Speaker: a little bit of a salted Chantilly, which is a fancy word
• 40:47
  Speaker: for basically whipped cream with vanilla in it.
• 40:50
  Speaker: So vanilla whipped cream with a touch of salt in there.
• 40:53
  Speaker: And what the salt does is that it balances out the sweetness.
• 40:56
  Speaker: It gives you this sweet, savory element, along with a little bit
• 40:59
  Speaker: of the acid that you're kind of getting from the strawberries
• 41:00
  Speaker: and things like this.
• 41:02
  Speaker: It is such a mouthful of just
• 41:05
  Speaker: like textural flavor and just
• 41:08
  Speaker: delicious combinations that are
• 41:10
  Speaker: just so simple, though it's not
• 41:11
  Speaker: pretentious.
• 41:13
  Speaker: You could do this in, you know, no time at all.
• 41:16
  Speaker: And it's something that like, I couldn't find any real other
• 41:18
  Speaker: history about, but I have one book and I made it and I was
• 41:21
  Speaker: like, I this has to be seen.
• 41:24
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:24
  Speaker: And I think that it's neat for people to be able to uncover,
• 41:28
  Speaker: obviously, some of these recipes that really do get buried and
• 41:31
  Speaker: hidden inside books.
• 41:33
  Speaker: If people aren't taking a journey through them and you are
• 41:35
  Speaker: helping people to do that.
• 41:37
  Speaker: An example of the branding
• 41:38
  Speaker: recipes that is in nineteen
• 41:40
  Speaker: sixty.
• 41:40
  Speaker: There's a recipe called doctor Pepper Bean Dip.
• 41:43
  Speaker: It's a bean dip with cannellini beans, chopped green chillies,
• 41:46
  Speaker: and then it has a half a cup of doctor Pepper in it.
• 41:50
  Speaker: And it's really good.
• 41:52
  Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure it is.
• 41:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 41:54
  Speaker: Nice to see.
• 41:54
  Speaker: And then that that would be
• 41:56
  Speaker: something that um the book was
• 41:58
  Speaker: called cooking with doctor
• 42:00
  Speaker: Pepper published in the mid
• 42:01
  Speaker: nineteen sixties.
• 42:03
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker: All right.
• 42:04
  Speaker: What else?
• 42:04
  Speaker: What other.
• 42:05
  Speaker: Give us another maybe an entree
• 42:07
  Speaker: if we're thinking about, um,
• 42:09
  Speaker: cooking maybe for sometime in,
• 42:12
  Speaker: you know, this this summer,
• 42:13
  Speaker: something we could prepare for
• 42:15
  Speaker: our family.
• 42:15
  Speaker: Something that you think might be, uh, a surprise to everybody
• 42:20
  Speaker: when they put it on the table.
• 42:22
  Speaker: Okay, why don't we do these two?
• 42:24
  Speaker: I think this one's kind of fun.
• 42:25
  Speaker: So, um, I'm going to talk about first pigs in blankets.
• 42:29
  Speaker: Now, this is not a pig in a
• 42:32
  Speaker: blanket that you would initially
• 42:34
  Speaker: think of.
• 42:34
  Speaker: It's not a tiny sausage or hot
• 42:36
  Speaker: dog that's wrapped up in puff
• 42:37
  Speaker: pastry and then baked off in a
• 42:38
  Speaker: cute little finger, you know,
• 42:39
  Speaker: finger bite.
• 42:40
  Speaker: This is actually the most absurd but delicious thing.
• 42:44
  Speaker: And, and I. When I made this the
• 42:45
  Speaker: first time, I did it like five
• 42:47
  Speaker: days in a row because it's so
• 42:48
  Speaker: addictive.
• 42:49
  Speaker: You basically get like a giant thick sausage, right?
• 42:52
  Speaker: And then you get a whole russet
• 42:55
  Speaker: baked potato and you core out
• 42:58
  Speaker: the center of that potato, and
• 43:00
  Speaker: you stuff that whole with the
• 43:02
  Speaker: sausage.
• 43:03
  Speaker: And then you wrap the entire thing in thick cut bacon, and
• 43:06
  Speaker: then basically just bake it off at a nice high temperature until
• 43:11
  Speaker: the bacon is crispy.
• 43:12
  Speaker: The potatoes cooked through the sausage is cooked.
• 43:15
  Speaker: And when you get it and you cut
• 43:17
  Speaker: it and you just eat it, it is so
• 43:20
  Speaker: good.
• 43:20
  Speaker: It is just this perfect flavor because the fats of the bacon
• 43:24
  Speaker: and the sausage kind of like infuse flavor into the potato
• 43:28
  Speaker: itself, which kind of like we've all had potatoes.
• 43:31
  Speaker: You have to put a lot of flavor into a potato.
• 43:33
  Speaker: Oh yeah.
• 43:33
  Speaker: Totally.
• 43:34
  Speaker: One hundred percent.
• 43:35
  Speaker: And this is one of those things where I'm like, oh my God,
• 43:37
  Speaker: you've never had a potato until you've tried this.
• 43:40
  Speaker: And it's interesting.
• 43:41
  Speaker: It says that that's from a book,
• 43:42
  Speaker: the nineteen fifty three edition
• 43:43
  Speaker: of two hundred and fifty Ways of
• 43:45
  Speaker: Serving Potatoes.
• 43:47
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 43:48
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 43:48
  Speaker: That was actually, uh, from, from a, the GE, I think, uh, the
• 43:53
  Speaker: cookbook company and stuff.
• 43:54
  Speaker: But it was, it's super, super good recipe.
• 43:58
  Speaker: Wow.
• 43:58
  Speaker: That's a good one.
• 43:59
  Speaker: And then the other one that I would probably put out there,
• 44:01
  Speaker: that's just really cool and fun.
• 44:03
  Speaker: It's very simple, but it was old, old people fancy, you know,
• 44:07
  Speaker: was the chicken a la Maryland.
• 44:09
  Speaker: Um, this particular dish is so,
• 44:11
  Speaker: so interesting because it was
• 44:13
  Speaker: actually one something that
• 44:15
  Speaker: Auguste Escoffier, um, you know,
• 44:18
  Speaker: famously kind of like loved and
• 44:20
  Speaker: included in his book, but
• 44:23
  Speaker: Escoffier is basically the, the,
• 44:25
  Speaker: the father of French cooking,
• 44:27
  Speaker: you know, essentially he is the
• 44:28
  Speaker: reason why we have béchamel and,
• 44:30
  Speaker: and other sources and also the
• 44:32
  Speaker: brigade system in kitchens
• 44:34
  Speaker: today.
• 44:34
  Speaker: So, you know, this was one of
• 44:37
  Speaker: those recipes that when I found
• 44:38
  Speaker: it, I was like, I must know
• 44:39
  Speaker: more.
• 44:40
  Speaker: It was also a first class, uh, meal on the Titanic, uh, as it
• 44:45
  Speaker: was going down.
• 44:45
  Speaker: So food history, but it's basically like fried chicken
• 44:49
  Speaker: with a really lovely bechamel sauce of sorts.
• 44:54
  Speaker: And then you're serving that
• 44:55
  Speaker: with some fried bananas and
• 44:59
  Speaker: bacon.
• 44:59
  Speaker: Now, the combination of these things might sound very strange
• 45:02
  Speaker: to people because I think, especially in the United States,
• 45:05
  Speaker: we struggle to actually look at bananas as a savory ingredient
• 45:09
  Speaker: when, you know, in reality, it's actually like almost anywhere
• 45:12
  Speaker: else in the world.
• 45:13
  Speaker: They use it almost exclusively as like a sweet to savory kind
• 45:16
  Speaker: of like partner.
• 45:18
  Speaker: And this dish is just one of
• 45:19
  Speaker: those things that like, it's
• 45:21
  Speaker: super craveable.
• 45:22
  Speaker: It's very unique and interesting, but it's, but it's
• 45:24
  Speaker: also really easy to make.
• 45:26
  Speaker: And it just has a huge historical relevance.
• 45:29
  Speaker: Um, because it's been around for so long.
• 45:30
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:31
  Speaker: And I think it's neat because the thought of brining some
• 45:34
  Speaker: chicken and cooking it with a crispy coating doesn't stretch
• 45:38
  Speaker: our imagination that much.
• 45:39
  Speaker: It's about the bacon and the bananas on top that takes it to
• 45:42
  Speaker: a whole different.
• 45:44
  Speaker: And the bechamel, it's like like for some reason, I think the
• 45:46
  Speaker: bechamel with the banana, it throws people off.
• 45:48
  Speaker: But if you if you stop kind of
• 45:50
  Speaker: like isolating particular
• 45:52
  Speaker: ingredients, you know, and you
• 45:53
  Speaker: actually just try to go in with
• 45:55
  Speaker: combinations, you'll be
• 45:56
  Speaker: surprised because for example,
• 45:57
  Speaker: there's another one, the stuffed
• 45:58
  Speaker: dogs, you know, that one's a
• 46:00
  Speaker: really easy one where it's three
• 46:01
  Speaker: options.
• 46:02
  Speaker: You know, it's, it's hot dogs that you split in the middle and
• 46:06
  Speaker: you either fill it with cheese, pickles, or peanut butter, and
• 46:10
  Speaker: you wrap it in bacon and then grill it off.
• 46:12
  Speaker: And I was so surprised because I was like, okay, cheese, we know
• 46:15
  Speaker: it's going to be delicious.
• 46:17
  Speaker: Bacon, cheese dog pickles, you
• 46:18
  Speaker: know, pickle cheese or pickle
• 46:20
  Speaker: bacon dog, delicious peanut
• 46:22
  Speaker: butter.
• 46:24
  Speaker: Wait a minute.
• 46:24
  Speaker: And then I got into it.
• 46:26
  Speaker: It was my favorite one by a mile.
• 46:27
  Speaker: I almost, I almost can't imagine having a hot dog without peanut
• 46:31
  Speaker: butter and bacon on it.
• 46:32
  Speaker: It's that unique and delicious.
• 46:34
  Speaker: And so because we don't think about peanut butter and other
• 46:36
  Speaker: ways in the States, We think of it as peanut butter and jelly or
• 46:39
  Speaker: as a dessert.
• 46:40
  Speaker: But really in Africa, for
• 46:42
  Speaker: example, you know, I mean like
• 46:43
  Speaker: peanut peanuts and peanut butter
• 46:45
  Speaker: peanut paste.
• 46:46
  Speaker: It's used in so many different things.
• 46:49
  Speaker: And I even have in the book, you know, peanuts, peanut soup,
• 46:52
  Speaker: which is modeled after mafei, which is like a West African,
• 46:55
  Speaker: you know, peanut stew.
• 46:56
  Speaker: I mean, like the dish itself is really, I think, I think the
• 47:00
  Speaker: book itself, I'm sorry, is actually, it's fun when you see
• 47:04
  Speaker: how many things kind of all connect together in unique ways
• 47:07
  Speaker: and you understand the relevance of just like when everything
• 47:10
  Speaker: kind of comes together.
• 47:11
  Speaker: And also just like where these
• 47:13
  Speaker: historical relevancies come
• 47:15
  Speaker: from.
• 47:15
  Speaker: And so I don't know, I, I have fun still, still thinking about
• 47:18
  Speaker: it and piecing it together.
• 47:19
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 47:20
  Speaker: Do you think that we here in twenty twenty six are creating
• 47:25
  Speaker: recipes now that will seem vintage to somebody, you know,
• 47:28
  Speaker: fifty years from now?
• 47:30
  Speaker: I've actually been making a joke for a little while now that I
• 47:32
  Speaker: think in another twenty to thirty years, we're going to
• 47:35
  Speaker: have somebody else come out and write a retro recipes book about
• 47:38
  Speaker: the TikTok era, because people are making so many absurd
• 47:43
  Speaker: looking things on paper.
• 47:44
  Speaker: But, you know, at the end of the
• 47:45
  Speaker: day, it's like it's not very
• 47:47
  Speaker: different from the mid-century
• 47:49
  Speaker: period of the nineteen hundreds,
• 47:50
  Speaker: when all of a sudden you're
• 47:52
  Speaker: seeing these silly, weird things
• 47:53
  Speaker: coming out.
• 47:53
  Speaker: I think we're all experimenting and we're trying things out.
• 47:56
  Speaker: And I think especially now, it's maybe more exciting because
• 48:00
  Speaker: we're actually like, it took Julia Child essentially writing
• 48:04
  Speaker: mastering the Art of French Cooking to really inspire people
• 48:06
  Speaker: to want to return to the fundamentals of learning how to
• 48:09
  Speaker: cook properly and getting outside of that kind of like
• 48:12
  Speaker: convenience culture, even though we still lived with it.
• 48:15
  Speaker: Yeah, that was like, she was important for that in nineteen
• 48:17
  Speaker: sixty one and onward.
• 48:19
  Speaker: And I think honestly, because we have more of, of like things
• 48:22
  Speaker: like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok with cooking videos, we are now
• 48:27
  Speaker: kind of in like seeing our own facsimile of that particular
• 48:30
  Speaker: period of time where people are all of a sudden getting
• 48:32
  Speaker: re-inspired to want to learn how to cook again.
• 48:35
  Speaker: And now there there being a lot more creative.
• 48:37
  Speaker: But at the same time, with the technique that we just were
• 48:40
  Speaker: lacking for so long.
• 48:41
  Speaker: So I think it's going to be kind of cool because even though
• 48:43
  Speaker: there are a lot of duds that I've seen on internet and social
• 48:47
  Speaker: media, I think that there are going to be some things that
• 48:49
  Speaker: really stick and actually last because of content creation.
• 48:52
  Speaker: So it's interesting.
• 48:53
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 48:54
  Speaker: So what about the as we're wrapping up here, the, the
• 48:57
  Speaker: concept of someone then like you curating recipes and putting
• 49:01
  Speaker: them in a print book that people can bring into their kitchen and
• 49:04
  Speaker: use or they can read.
• 49:06
  Speaker: Uh, what's your opinion about the future of this particular
• 49:10
  Speaker: genre of book?
• 49:13
  Speaker: I mean, you know, I'd love to think that that my book is going
• 49:17
  Speaker: to sit on the shelves of, you know, folks like you that have
• 49:21
  Speaker: incredible collections of cookbooks and, and, you know,
• 49:24
  Speaker: honoring it and stuff.
• 49:25
  Speaker: But at the end of the day, it's not really about that for me.
• 49:28
  Speaker: Like I, I just wanted to put out
• 49:30
  Speaker: something that I was passionate
• 49:31
  Speaker: about.
• 49:32
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 49:32
  Speaker: And I think that there will always be a place, um, on
• 49:37
  Speaker: someone's shelf with a book like mine, because even though it is
• 49:41
  Speaker: written by somebody who, you know, like, by and large makes,
• 49:45
  Speaker: you know, his living on social media, working with brands and
• 49:48
  Speaker: making silly videos.
• 49:49
  Speaker: This book was written as an actual passion project that's
• 49:53
  Speaker: not meant to be kitschy.
• 49:55
  Speaker: It's meant to genuinely help people.
• 49:57
  Speaker: The recipes in there are real recipes that I've recipe tested
• 50:01
  Speaker: dozens of times, had people, you know, confirm it and test it.
• 50:04
  Speaker: And it's one of those things where at the end of the day,
• 50:06
  Speaker: like, if you follow the books and you actually read through it
• 50:10
  Speaker: and you just give it a shot and try these dishes, not only will
• 50:12
  Speaker: you walk away with very unique recipes that you won't find
• 50:16
  Speaker: somewhere else that are good.
• 50:18
  Speaker: Most of them.
• 50:20
  Speaker: But on top of it, you will learn new skills like how to make
• 50:24
  Speaker: salsa or what a cartouche is, or, you know, like a little bit
• 50:28
  Speaker: about fermentation, making, you know, the old sour.
• 50:31
  Speaker: You know, I mean, like, there
• 50:33
  Speaker: are a lot of things in this book
• 50:34
  Speaker: that I think people will benefit
• 50:35
  Speaker: from.
• 50:36
  Speaker: And, you know, at the end of the
• 50:38
  Speaker: day, all it's doing is just
• 50:39
  Speaker: teaching you how to do something
• 50:40
  Speaker: that you want to learn, but
• 50:42
  Speaker: doing it with a little bit of a
• 50:43
  Speaker: smile and laugh and just taking
• 50:44
  Speaker: a little, taking away a little
• 50:46
  Speaker: bit of the severity of cooking
• 50:47
  Speaker: and just having fun with it
• 50:48
  Speaker: again.
• 50:49
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 50:49
  Speaker: And not to mention, I think at the time when people were making
• 50:52
  Speaker: these on their own, their kitchens were completely
• 50:54
  Speaker: different than ours are now.
• 50:56
  Speaker: And so I often try to think if
• 50:57
  Speaker: I'm going to cook something from
• 50:59
  Speaker: the nineteen tens, I really
• 51:00
  Speaker: wonder, like the kitchen was so
• 51:02
  Speaker: just different.
• 51:03
  Speaker: And, um, maybe that's why
• 51:05
  Speaker: practicality was a big thing
• 51:06
  Speaker: then, you know, they had to, it
• 51:08
  Speaker: was like they're forced to be
• 51:09
  Speaker: practical because they didn't
• 51:11
  Speaker: have a lot of the conveniences
• 51:13
  Speaker: that we might have from an
• 51:14
  Speaker: equipment perspective, you know,
• 51:16
  Speaker: water right there, gas,
• 51:18
  Speaker: electricity, you know, all the
• 51:19
  Speaker: things that we kind of take for
• 51:20
  Speaker: granted.
• 51:21
  Speaker: So I'd also love to imagine my
• 51:22
  Speaker: grandmother with an immersion
• 51:23
  Speaker: circulator.
• 51:24
  Speaker: I know she'd be like, what in the world is going on?
• 51:27
  Speaker: Right?
• 51:28
  Speaker: So, um, this has been a really
• 51:31
  Speaker: fun, uh, journey through your
• 51:34
  Speaker: journey to the book and through
• 51:36
  Speaker: the book.
• 51:37
  Speaker: One thing I always like to ask my guests as we're wrapping up
• 51:40
  Speaker: is, uh, since we talk about cookbook love here, if there was
• 51:44
  Speaker: a cookbook even, maybe even before you started your journey
• 51:47
  Speaker: in twenty twenty that you inspired you in your life, uh,
• 51:52
  Speaker: was always something that was, you know, at an arm's reach away
• 51:56
  Speaker: or in your kitchen or your family's kitchen, uh, that you'd
• 51:59
  Speaker: like to share.
• 52:01
  Speaker: You know, I mean, um, when I was
• 52:03
  Speaker: growing up, we didn't have a lot
• 52:05
  Speaker: of cookbooks.
• 52:05
  Speaker: My, my, my parents weren't
• 52:07
  Speaker: really known for being the best
• 52:08
  Speaker: cooks.
• 52:08
  Speaker: And, uh, they definitely didn't refer to a recipe.
• 52:12
  Speaker: But, you know, when I, uh, moved to New York City and I met my
• 52:16
  Speaker: mentor, chef Paul, you know, he, uh, was one of those people that
• 52:23
  Speaker: just, like, really fanned the flame to encourage me to
• 52:27
  Speaker: continue this, this journey of learning to cook.
• 52:30
  Speaker: And he did something that I still to this day, like it kind
• 52:32
  Speaker: of shivers thinking about because it's like it was so
• 52:34
  Speaker: important to him.
• 52:35
  Speaker: He gave me his copy of Thomas
• 52:38
  Speaker: Keller's French Laundry
• 52:40
  Speaker: Cookbook.
• 52:40
  Speaker: Oh, wow.
• 52:41
  Speaker: You know, so this is from like the nineties and it had all of
• 52:44
  Speaker: the stains and the finger marks and everything else in there.
• 52:47
  Speaker: And I've read that cover to
• 52:48
  Speaker: cover so many times in that
• 52:51
  Speaker: book, along with Heritage by
• 52:53
  Speaker: Sean Brock.
• 52:54
  Speaker: Those two books in particular
• 52:56
  Speaker: are two, even though they're not
• 52:57
  Speaker: retro.
• 52:58
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 52:58
  Speaker: Well, actually, French Laundry might be pretty retro at this
• 53:00
  Speaker: point from the nineties.
• 53:01
  Speaker: Now people think it's retro, right?
• 53:02
  Speaker: But heritage was probably maybe in the tens.
• 53:04
  Speaker: Maybe.
• 53:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 53:05
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 53:06
  Speaker: And, and those two books, though
• 53:07
  Speaker: in particular are the two that I
• 53:09
  Speaker: always come back to as saying
• 53:10
  Speaker: they're the most influential to
• 53:12
  Speaker: me personally, because these
• 53:14
  Speaker: were books that weren't just
• 53:15
  Speaker: about recipes.
• 53:16
  Speaker: These were books about an ethos.
• 53:18
  Speaker: And so Sean Brock's book was
• 53:20
  Speaker: entirely about the idea of
• 53:22
  Speaker: embracing heritage and the idea
• 53:24
  Speaker: of kind of like, you know,
• 53:26
  Speaker: working with people to
• 53:28
  Speaker: revitalize like lost southern,
• 53:30
  Speaker: you know, cuisine and, and, and
• 53:33
  Speaker: just showing it at, at a very
• 53:34
  Speaker: high level.
• 53:35
  Speaker: And, and just the writing is beautiful in it.
• 53:37
  Speaker: And it's kind of the same thing,
• 53:38
  Speaker: you know, I mean, with French
• 53:40
  Speaker: Laundry Cookbook there, the
• 53:42
  Speaker: chapter on a story about
• 53:44
  Speaker: rabbits, I believe it was
• 53:45
  Speaker: called, you know, A Lesson on
• 53:47
  Speaker: Rabbits, that single handedly
• 53:50
  Speaker: was one of the most incredible
• 53:52
  Speaker: chapters of almost any book that
• 53:53
  Speaker: I've read, because it was
• 53:55
  Speaker: entirely based around the idea
• 53:56
  Speaker: of just like this animal gave
• 53:59
  Speaker: its life.
• 54:00
  Speaker: And it was one of those first books that really showed a
• 54:04
  Speaker: prioritization to me about like, the importance of the
• 54:07
  Speaker: ingredients you're using, but also honoring everything that
• 54:09
  Speaker: you're using and not wasting it.
• 54:11
  Speaker: Right.
• 54:11
  Speaker: And I think that those two books
• 54:13
  Speaker: really change fundamentally the
• 54:14
  Speaker: way that I actually view
• 54:15
  Speaker: cooking.
• 54:16
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 54:16
  Speaker: Gave its life that we might have nourishment and life ourselves.
• 54:20
  Speaker: It's a kind of like a, the whole cycle of the way that food, um,
• 54:25
  Speaker: is seen and used.
• 54:27
  Speaker: And so that's wonderful.
• 54:28
  Speaker: French Laundry Cookbook by Thomas Keller and then heritage
• 54:31
  Speaker: by Sean Brock.
• 54:33
  Speaker: Um, I'll link to those also in the show notes.
• 54:36
  Speaker: That's wonderful.
• 54:37
  Speaker: So July is upon us.
• 54:39
  Speaker: You have more things that plan for your book release.
• 54:42
  Speaker: And also, um, if people are
• 54:43
  Speaker: interested in catching up with
• 54:44
  Speaker: you, how they can connect with
• 54:46
  Speaker: you online.
• 54:47
  Speaker: Well, you guys can actually find me on any platform, um, at Retro
• 54:51
  Speaker: recipes kitchen that's recipes with an s, uh, and you can find
• 54:56
  Speaker: me on there.
• 54:56
  Speaker: I am one of those folks that really loves to actually write
• 54:59
  Speaker: back and get back to you.
• 55:00
  Speaker: So if you write to me, I will get back.
• 55:02
  Speaker: And as of right now, you know, July is, fortunately for me,
• 55:06
  Speaker: going to be a little quieter.
• 55:08
  Speaker: Um, I am June has been a really busy tour and so July is going
• 55:12
  Speaker: to be a little bit of a breath of air for me, but I'm getting
• 55:14
  Speaker: ready to go back into private Cheffing and working with Palm
• 55:17
  Speaker: Beach Chefs, the company I'm going to be working with.
• 55:19
  Speaker: So, you know, it's not much of a break, but it's one of those
• 55:22
  Speaker: things that I'm so excited for the change, you know, of going
• 55:27
  Speaker: from touring back into working.
• 55:29
  Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:30
  Speaker: So it's great.
• 55:31
  Speaker: It's fun to get out and meet
• 55:32
  Speaker: people face to face and, uh, see
• 55:35
  Speaker: them buy your book and share
• 55:37
  Speaker: stories.
• 55:37
  Speaker: I'm sure people tell stories about food and recipes with you
• 55:40
  Speaker: all the time.
• 55:42
  Speaker: It's been amazing.
• 55:43
  Speaker: And people have even brought me an entire book.
• 55:45
  Speaker: I mean, one guy actually in in Coral Springs gave me his
• 55:48
  Speaker: mother, sorry, his grandmother's collection of cookbooks.
• 55:52
  Speaker: And she died fifty years ago.
• 55:55
  Speaker: And I have in there a first
• 55:58
  Speaker: edition that he just gave me a
• 56:00
  Speaker: first edition.
• 56:01
  Speaker: Actually, I have it with me.
• 56:02
  Speaker: I'll show it to you afterward.
• 56:03
  Speaker: A first edition of, I believe, The Good Housekeeping Cookbook.
• 56:07
  Speaker: Oh, wow.
• 56:08
  Speaker: Unreal.
• 56:09
  Speaker: Yeah, it is tatters.
• 56:10
  Speaker: But I think that when people
• 56:12
  Speaker: have cookbooks, he probably
• 56:13
  Speaker: wanted to give them to somebody
• 56:15
  Speaker: that he knew it would matter to
• 56:17
  Speaker: them.
• 56:18
  Speaker: Mhm.
• 56:18
  Speaker: Um, he knew it mattered to his
• 56:20
  Speaker: aunt or his mother, his mother
• 56:22
  Speaker: or grandmother.
• 56:22
  Speaker: Right.
• 56:22
  Speaker: And that, you know, he wanted someone to have them so that
• 56:25
  Speaker: they could be enjoyed otherwise.
• 56:27
  Speaker: They just now use bookstores are great for finding cookbooks.
• 56:31
  Speaker: You know, that's kind of the thrill of the hunt.
• 56:32
  Speaker: We talked a little bit about
• 56:33
  Speaker: that before we started the
• 56:35
  Speaker: recording, but otherwise you
• 56:36
  Speaker: don't want them to just get
• 56:37
  Speaker: thrown away and end up in a
• 56:39
  Speaker: landfill somewhere.
• 56:40
  Speaker: And so I've been very fortunate because people have been
• 56:42
  Speaker: bringing me magazines or things like this, this ephemera that,
• 56:46
  Speaker: that I already love and I've openly put out.
• 56:48
  Speaker: If you guys are ever looking to
• 56:49
  Speaker: get rid of your books, visit my
• 56:51
  Speaker: page.
• 56:51
  Speaker: Uh, in my link tree, there's a link for my P.O.
• 56:55
  Speaker: Box and you can send me your vintage books.
• 56:57
  Speaker: And I collect them, I preserve
• 56:58
  Speaker: them, I will give them life and
• 57:00
  Speaker: love.
• 57:01
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 57:01
  Speaker: Because I think the you give people the opportunity also, um,
• 57:05
  Speaker: we can view your content through video, but to have people that
• 57:09
  Speaker: want to read about this and that love to be able to read it.
• 57:13
  Speaker: A lot of people that listen to this show, that's exactly why
• 57:16
  Speaker: they like cookbooks because of the reading aspect of it.
• 57:18
  Speaker: So I thank you for bringing it
• 57:20
  Speaker: into this, in resurrecting some
• 57:22
  Speaker: of these recipes and bringing
• 57:23
  Speaker: them together in the way that
• 57:25
  Speaker: you have.
• 57:25
  Speaker: I think it's a very fun book.
• 57:27
  Speaker: Obviously, something that we can cook out of for, um, learning
• 57:32
  Speaker: through history, a little bit of humor also that you've added to
• 57:35
  Speaker: it and just the, the joy of serving people and preparing
• 57:39
  Speaker: food in our own kitchens, which is an amazing thing that we're
• 57:42
  Speaker: able to do.
• 57:43
  Speaker: So, um, a link to your, um, place where people can find you.
• 57:48
  Speaker: And again, if they go to the
• 57:49
  Speaker: link tree, they can see where
• 57:50
  Speaker: the ephemera can be sent if
• 57:52
  Speaker: they're looking for a nice home
• 57:53
  Speaker: for it.
• 57:53
  Speaker: Correct.
• 57:54
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 57:55
  Speaker: And thank you so much again, just for having me and letting
• 57:57
  Speaker: me, you know, kind of rant.
• 57:59
  Speaker: Wonderful.
• 58:00
  Speaker: No, it's great and it's been great to have you on the show.
• 58:02
  Speaker: And I wish you nothing but the
• 58:04
  Speaker: best with your new book, Retro
• 58:06
  Speaker: Recipes Vintage Dishes with a
• 58:08
  Speaker: Modern Twist.
• 58:10
  Speaker: Thanks, Maggie.
• 58:11
  Speaker: Yeah.
• 58:11
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 58:12
  Speaker: Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the
• 58:15
  Speaker: Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 58:17
  Speaker: again.
• 58:17
  Speaker: All the links can be found in the show notes at w w w dot
• 58:20
  Speaker: cookbook dot co.
• 58:22
  Speaker: And if you are interested in
• 58:24
  Speaker: writing a cookbook of your own,
• 58:26
  Speaker: please check out the free
• 58:28
  Speaker: Cookbook Writing Masterclass
• 58:29
  Speaker: called How to Get Paid to Write
• 58:31
  Speaker: a Cookbook.
• 58:32
  Speaker: It is designed specifically for
• 58:34
  Speaker: food or nutrition experts, and
• 58:36
  Speaker: you can check that out at w w w
• 58:39
  Speaker: dot cookbook writers academy dot
• 58:41
  Speaker: com slash.
• 58:44
  Speaker: So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 58:47
  Speaker: This is your host, Maggie Green.
• 58:49
  Speaker: And until next time, have a
• 58:50
  Speaker: great day and keep loving your
• 58:52
  Speaker: cookbooks.
• 58:57
  Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 59:00
  Speaker: You can find out more information at w w w dot
• 59:03
  Speaker: cookbook dot co.