Latest / Cookbook Love Podcast / Episode 420: Honoring Debbie Berne: Cookbook Designer & Author of Cookbooking: A Fan's Guide

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Episode 420: Honoring Debbie Berne: Cookbook Designer & Author of Cookbooking: A Fan's Guide · Cookbook Love Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: You are listening to the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: cookbook Love Podcast with
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Maggie Greene, episode number
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: four twenty.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Welcome to the Cookbook Love
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Podcast, a podcast that
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: celebrates cookbook readers,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: buyers, collectors, writers, and
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: clubs.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: And now your host, cookbook
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  Speaker 2: author, culinary dietitian, and
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: cookbook writing coach, Maggie
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Greene.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to another episode of the cookbook Love Podcast.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: How's everybody doing today?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I hope you are all doing well.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: And today on the show, I am honored to welcome David Murray
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: and Leslie Jonath.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: David and Leslie are here to
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: honor the life and work of
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Debbie Byrne, a cookbook and
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: book designer who passed away in
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: December.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: They're here to talk about Debbie's life, her legacy and
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: her recently published book called Cook Booking a Fan's
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Guide, which all listeners of this show are going to love.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Cook booking is a visually stunning pop history that traces
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: cookbooks from their earliest days to their most iconic and,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: quite frankly, some downright wacky moments told through
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: photographs, listicles, graphics and Debbie's beautiful writing.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: At its heart, Cook Booking is a celebration of the genre of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: cookbooks, an exploration of what makes this genre so
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: engaging, and what makes the case for cookbooks as cultural
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: documents and design artefacts, not just recipe collections.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Debbie was a previous guest on the Cook Book Love podcast in
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: May of twenty twenty four, talking all about her book, The
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: Design of Books and explainer for authors, editors, Agents and
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: other curious readers.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Today, David and Leslie talk about how Debbie wanted to be a
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: writer to becoming one of the most sought after cookbook
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: designers in the industry.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: The moment that everything
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: changed when Debbie sold her
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  Speaker 1: book proposal for cook booking
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  Speaker 1: the same week she was diagnosed
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: with cancer.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And why Debbie chose to go ahead
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: and write, design and photograph
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  Speaker 1: the book all at once while going
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: through chemotherapy and
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: radiation therapy.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: This conversation is going to be something that I believe you are
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: going to enjoy as we honor the life and work of Debbie.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: And of course, this is always a reminder that the work that
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Debbie did with passion and love for her topic sends a message to
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: us all to not wait for the perfect moment to share what we
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: love with the world.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: So without further delay, let's dive into this interview with
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: David Murray and Leslie Jones.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Hi, David and Leslie, welcome to the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Hello.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having us.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: Nice to be here.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great to have you both.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I'm very honored that you are
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: here to talk about Debbie Byrne,
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: her life, her beautiful new
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: book.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: But before we get started, why don't you, um, each of you tell
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: everybody a little bit about who you are and what you do.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: David, do you want to go first?
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, yeah.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: My name is David Murray, and I'm Debbie's husband.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: Um, I'm also a graphic designer.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Uh, I work primarily in what they call motion graphics.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: So that's like animated graphic design, basically film,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: television, stuff like that.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Um, and so yeah, Debbie and I were married for about twenty
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: two years and, uh, we would kind of collaborate, not really
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: collaborate, but, um, you know, use each other as a sounding
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: board for our projects.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: She would look at my stuff and tell me my typography was
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: terrible, you know, and I would give her ideas for covers or say
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: like, oh, those colors don't work, you know?
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: So we were always bouncing ideas off of each other.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And so that was a great, um, relationship.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: We had different strong points
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: in our design skills and, uh,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: they complemented each other
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: really nicely.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Great.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Well, welcome to the show and Leslie.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: Hi, I'm Leslie Jonathan.
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  Speaker 4: I'm a book packager and producer and agent.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: Uh, I was actually at Chronicle
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: Books for many years before
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: becoming independent.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: And now I work with many
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: publishers and also creators
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: helping bring their books to
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: life.
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: And I think for the past ten years, Debbie and I talked to
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: each other multiple times a day about projects we were working
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: on and we loved.
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: We shared a love for craft and for cookbooks and for the
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: history of cookbooks.
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: And that was really a great bonding opportunity for us.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I would.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll talk about the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: design of cookbooks, but I think
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: that people that enjoy the
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: actual genre have a love for the
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: genre.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And you, um, collaborating with them on a project like that.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: It just makes it easier when they like the type of book that
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: they're, they're working on.
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: So I think what we'll do just to
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: get started, I would love to
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: start with you, Dave, and tell
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: us a little bit about Debbie,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: um, her work as a book designer
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and what it meant to her to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: design cookbooks.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: Sure. Yeah. She, um, I think
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: originally she wanted to be a
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: writer.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: She dabbled in fiction for a
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: long time when she was in her
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: twenties.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: And I think she just kind of felt like she maybe didn't have
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: what it took.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: She wasn't quite confident enough.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: And, um, she had been working in the art gallery world and was
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: wanting to move on.
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: And her friend hooked her up with this woman named Carolyn
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Herter, who was a well-known book agent who had been at
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Chronicle and some other places.
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: And so Debbie started working
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: for her as an editorial
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  Speaker 3: assistant.
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: I guess she was probably around
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: twenty nine or thirty at the
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: time, and as the job progressed,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: Carolyn would ask her to design
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: samples, you know, and, um, so
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: she started getting her feet wet
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: in designing.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: And then they came up with a book idea that was just a small
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: little visual book.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: And she said, Debbie, you know, I want you to design it.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: So that was her first book.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: It was called What Every Woman Wants.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: And, um, she just loved designing and just taught
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: herself how to do it.
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: And she was, um, had a knack for it.
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: She was, um, very organized and,
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: uh, just had a great sense of
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: layout, was able to keep a lot
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: of complex, um, uh, parts in her
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: mind, you know, whereas other
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: people, uh, you know, like
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: myself included, you know, I'm
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: not good at like a big complex
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: project.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: I'm more of a creative thinker.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: But she could really keep all this stuff organized.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: So that was one of her, her strong points.
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Um, she worked for Carolyn for a number of years.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: And then, um, we decided to move from San Francisco, San
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: Francisco over to Oakland.
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: Um, and she decided to leave
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Carolyn and just start
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: freelancing.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: And, um, that's how she got started.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And her first book, the design of Books.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: I remember when I was talking to her, she said that she really
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: did write it not for book designers, but for people to
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: understand book design.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: She had the subtitle for
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: authors, editors, agents, and
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: curious readers.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: That's how much Debbie I took away from our conversation.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: About that book is that she wanted other people to really We
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: embrace and understand book design and to see what goes into
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: it, to understand that it's not necessarily a simple thing to
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: do, but how much it really influences the way a book not
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: only looks but feels to someone when they're actually using it.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: And, um, I did thoroughly enjoy
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: looking through the design of
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: books, and I'm sure that it did
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: help a lot of people who weren't
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: book designers understand, um,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: what it meant, you know, to be a
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: designer and what, what went
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: into it.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: So how did she bridge this then to cook the cookbook world?
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: Well, what happened is she, you
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: know, she designed hundreds of
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: books over like a twenty year
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: career.
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: And she was starting to wonder, you know, if maybe she wanted to
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: step into a different role.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: Um, she started looking around at jobs as an art director for
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: different publishers and decided that maybe that wasn't for her.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: And then she came up with this idea of doing some writing.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: Coming back around to her early
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: passion for writing, but in a
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: non-fiction way.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: And she had spent so many conversations explaining to
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: somebody what, what it means to design a book.
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: Like people just can't wrap their head around the fact that
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: every word on the page was put there by a designer, and the
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: margins and the everything.
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: So she decided to try to put
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: that into words once and for
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: all.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: And so that's where it came from is this idea of an explainer.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: So she was really was explaining it to people.
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: Not it wasn't a how to, it was just a, what is book design?
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: What are the parts?
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: What's the process?
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: And, um, so she did that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: She really loved doing it.
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: And that really was the thing.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: She was looking for something
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: new to bring into her career
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: path.
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: And, um, so she finished that book and that was published by
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: University of Chicago Press.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: And she immediately thought, you know, I want to work on a new
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: book and I want to do something that's less informational.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Like that book was really dense with technical information, you
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: know, about pixels and just margins and just all this stuff
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: that she needed to get across.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: She wanted to do something that could develop her voice as an
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: author more because she really, um, she just really loved that
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: part of the writing is bringing her own personality into it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: And so she decided to combine
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: that with this, you know, idea
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: about cookbooks.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: That would be a kind of a
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: lighter approach and allow her
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: to, you know, expand her, um,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: her own voice and bring humor
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: into it and just passion and all
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: these things that she had for
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: cookbooks.
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure how many cookbooks she actually designed.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: I mean, maybe a hundred.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was curious about that.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: I was curious, like what
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: percentage of her book design
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: career was cookbooks and then
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: other books.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: But that was kind of her specialty because like I said,
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: you know, she was so organized and just had such a ability to
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: have this comprehensive vision.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: And of course, everyone in the
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: publishing world knows cookbooks
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: are like among the most complex
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: books, right?
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, they just have so many parts to them.
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: And some of them can be really long.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: And so she just really thrived in that environment.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: And I think people recognized that and they're like, oh,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: there's somebody we can go to who really can handle the
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: complexity of this project.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: And they are complex.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Everything from, you know, the way recipes are laid out to the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: photos for the food to, um, all the stuff that goes around that.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And, um, she obviously had a real knack for it.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to Leslie and
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: your work with Debbie, um, in
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: cookbook production and
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: packaging.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: So why don't you tell everybody
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a little bit about what book
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: packaging means?
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: What a packaging team is.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: And then the, the, um, kind of
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: work that Debbie did with, uh,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the book packager that you work
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: for.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because Debbie worked.
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: Carolyn Herder, her mentor, was
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: a book packager, which is what I
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: do.
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: And a book packager sits outside
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: of a publishing house and
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: functions almost like a mini
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: creative studio.
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: So typically, um, in the sort of
• 12:22
  Speaker 4: normal chain of events, you
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: would get a cookbook or any kind
• 12:25
  Speaker 4: of book, you'd give it to an
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: agent, or you submit it to a
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: publisher, and then the
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: publisher does the design and
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: the author rights and the
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: designer designs, and they're
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: separate.
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: But a book packaging studio,
• 12:38
  Speaker 4: which is what I do, we come as a
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: team.
• 12:40
  Speaker 4: So that whole process goes together.
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: And that's where Debbie and I were a great fit.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: And that's when I think about
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: the design of books and why I
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: love that books what so much is
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: because she really understood
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: that creating a cookbook wasn't
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: it wasn't this bifurcated
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: process.
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: You didn't have the writing and
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: the design happened separately,
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: that the best possible way to
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: work like that was to have them
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: all integrated.
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: And sometimes I would have an idea for a project, but I
• 13:10
  Speaker 4: couldn't visualize it.
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: Like I didn't know how long it should be.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: I didn't know what it should.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: And that's something that if you
• 13:15
  Speaker 4: have a designer, like the way I
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: love to work with Debbie, I
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: would give her the text and the
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: sample recipe.
• 13:21
  Speaker 4: And from there we could figure out like, does the font fit the
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: tone of the author's voice?
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: Like it?
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: It's not just that cookbooks are complex.
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: They're just incredibly nuanced.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: They really have an infinite number of possibilities, and you
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: see them change over time, like the cookbooks of the thirties,
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: the fifties, to seventies, and now they're all just completely
• 13:44
  Speaker 4: different based on time and culture and style.
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: And so every time you make a cookbook, you have infinite
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: number of decisions to make.
• 13:51
  Speaker 4: So I think what I loved about
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: Debbie is she didn't we didn't
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: make a distinction between those
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: processes.
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: We, we really, she was an
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: interpreter and really a problem
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: solver.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: So, um, and it never happened
• 14:03
  Speaker 4: where I would hand her something
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: and then she would come back
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: with something.
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: She would always have many conversations.
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: She'd ask me a million questions, who is this author?
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: What are they trying to say?
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: What's important?
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: Who's the audience?
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: So collaborating with her was
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: really about having this thought
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: partnership.
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: It was, it was.
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: And I would have a lot of feelings about design too, but
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: it was a lot of conversations and a lot of nuance.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: You know, and it's true that
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: some people are just, I'm kind
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: of feel like about design like
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: you do.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I love it and I love to look at it.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: And it really adds something to my experience of a book, but I
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: am not good at it.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: There's other parts of book writing that I am so much better
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: at than just that.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: And Debbie obviously had a gift.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: Tell us who else is on a team of people that packages books.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: So you often have a photographer.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: It's not.
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: So there are just many different
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: layers depending on what you're
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: doing.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: So for example, if you have a book that has contributors, you
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: might have someone who will go out and get permissions.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Maybe you have a photographer, maybe you have an illustrator,
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: maybe you have a graphic designer who creates tables or
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: charts or cool graphic elements, which Debbie was the master of.
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: So on the cookbook team, it's
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: essentially a mini a mini
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: creative team.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: Sometimes I have a publicist on
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: my team who talks to me about
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: the audience.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: So it's a very flexible group, but it's very bespoke to the
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: kind of book you're working on.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So I depend on the needs of the publisher then.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah. It depends.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: It depends on what the publisher, the services they
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: want to provide.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: But I really like it because
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: it's a very intimate
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: relationship where we're talking
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: to the authors, talking to the
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: designers, talking to the
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: photographer.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Often the photographer and the
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: author are working directly
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: together, is a really intimate
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: feeling about the way you create
• 15:50
  Speaker 4: a book.
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: So there's a lot of different pieces, as we've been saying,
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: and different people that are in a book and they, they, they, and
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: they're just people who are really good at baking books.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: There are people who really, you know, are great at certain kind
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: of cultural book.
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: So for my job is often to find
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: like, who's the best fit for
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: this team?
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, you put the
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: team, you actually put the team
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: together then.
• 16:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: And then I, so I recently did a book with Elvira and I was like,
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: I don't know if I can do this because I'm not a goth.
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: And of course, my head writer was obsessed.
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: And so, you know, and that's Debbie was like that too.
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: She would find a project and she'd just get obsessed with it.
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: And that's kind of the quality you need to do these projects in
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: a way, because they're when they're done correctly, or at
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: least they can be very joyful.
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: And I think that's where Debbie
• 16:40
  Speaker 4: and I found a lot of joy with
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: working on projects, even at
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: their hardest.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: because you're taking I mean,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: obviously taking somebody's
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: words and but in cookbooks,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: you're really bringing them to
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: life more than just in a, a
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: novel or even some other
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: nonfiction books.
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: There is so much to it that
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: especially with the advent of,
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: you know, adding a lot of
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: photography now illustrations in
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: photography, it really does help
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: to bring the subject matter to
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: life.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: And I think that it takes a special team of people in order
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: to do that.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And she obviously had a great love for this and something that
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: she was not only very good at from a design perspective, but
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: her organizational skills, I'm sure were an asset as well.
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: Oh my goodness.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: She had a brain in terms of her thought process, in terms of
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: organizational skills, which was really a counterpoint to my kind
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: of creative skills.
• 17:33
  Speaker 4: But she was also equally creative.
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: Like we could do that whole thing.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: And we once the book that really
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: brought us together was a book
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: called Feed Your People Big
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: Batch Gatherings and Foods to
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: Gather Around.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: And it was a book with sixty five contributors, chefs.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: It had, uh, it was I raised
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: money through a Kickstarter and
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: you had sixty five different
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: voices.
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: We had a photographer who traveled around and took photos
• 17:57
  Speaker 4: of these people.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: We did recipe testing dinners for twenty people.
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: And when I brought the project to Debbie, we said we had to sit
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: side by side to figure out how to create a grid that would work
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: for all these different recipes by these different people.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: And I remember sitting in Dave
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: and Debbie's kitchen, and the
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: light was streaming in, and I
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: was probably crying at that
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: point because I couldn't figure
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: it out.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: And we just, we took tried
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: different iteration after
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: different iteration.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: And at one point we just had it
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: and it was like high fives and,
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: and she was worked on that book
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: with me.
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: I think it was like two years.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: it was kind of crazy.
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: But after you do a project like that, there's no going back.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: Like that was it, you know?
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So do people who want to self-publish or traditionally
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: traditional publishers or people maybe that are even paying to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: get published hybrid publishing, they all come to book packaging
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: teams like you.
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: Oh, it really varies.
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: I mean, I, I think it's great
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: because sometimes it depends on
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: the publisher and how much
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: they're involved.
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: But one thing I've noticed is if you, you know, the publisher
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: will give the, the author some an advance and then and then
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: you're on your own.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Maybe your editor, your author, sorry, your agent will help you.
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: Maybe.
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: So there's just a lot to manage.
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: If, you know, if you're an
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: author and a first time author,
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: it's just, it's an unknown
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: world.
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: So I think, you know, working with a packager, which means
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: that there's one person you can go to, it's just a producer who
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: can just help you through that, help you through it.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. A producer is a great way to, to describe it.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: It's much more a TV show or a movie.
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: It's the same.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Thing.
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: Much less glamorous, but still very satisfying.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: I think one thing that, uh, kind
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: of set Debbie apart as a
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: designer is that she loved
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: getting involved with the
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: author.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: A lot of times the designers
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: just like, look, editors are
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: going to deal with the author
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: and I'm going to deal with the
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: editor.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't want to go directly, but Debbie loved to
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: get on the phone and talk through ideas with them and, um,
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: just become part of that process because she really wanted it to
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: be the best book it could be.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: And so she was willing to do that.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: And, uh, she just, she loved to do that.
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: And just people, these authors
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: she's worked with, you know,
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: they're like, oh my God, what a
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: great experience.
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: It was like having a partner on the project.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: Um, I just talked to someone else who said, you know, oh, uh,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: yeah, I already know about Debbie because she designed my
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: best friend's, um, cookbook.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: And she just wouldn't stop
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: talking about how great it was
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: to have this, this designer who
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: could listen.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think, Dave, you're
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: hitting on something that's
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: super important.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: And I'm wondering, Maggie, what your experience is.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: But writing a book is hard and it is exhausting.
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: It doesn't matter what book you're writing, it is.
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: It is a huge.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: And it can be very lonely.
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: And having that that kind of team around you, you know,
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: having a designer who's listening to you, it makes it's,
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: it's about like your experience of the process.
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: And I think when you have that
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: great experience, it can be
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: really magical and really
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: transformational.
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: And I think Debbie was really committed to that, you know, is
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: that the author's experience really mattered to her.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because most authors have a vision for what they want, and
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: they close their eyes like they can imagine what they might want
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: their book to look like.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: They might have a basic idea.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But then, uh, in Debbie's willingness to talk to them, she
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: can help them bring that to life, but probably make it one
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: hundred percent better than what they even envisioned.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: But at least it goes in the, you know, a certain direction and
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: the author being involved because let's face it, their
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: response, their all the words on the page, everything, everything
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: that's written, the recipes that are done, even with the
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: collaboration, you know, the people that contributed to feed
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: your people, you know, wrote things down for you.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: You all organize them into a book and Debbie's able to bring
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: it to life through the design.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Uh, I think that it's hugely important.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: And I do think that publishers that have authors that are able
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to collaborate, especially on cookbooks, um, it's a, it's
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: better experience for everybody.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no doubt about it.
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, that's when you
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: think about what your life is
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: about.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: Like, that's a great thing to be
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: able to feel like not only that
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: you accomplished it, but that
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: you, that you actually brought
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: joy into your own life through
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: the manifestation of what your
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: passion is.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: I think that's.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: A ton of cookbook authors would
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: keep writing cookbooks if they
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: had to design their own
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: cookbooks.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I don't think they would.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: No, I know I wouldn't I would
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: have like said, okay, I, I
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: probably would never even
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: written the first one because
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: it's like, I can't, I can't
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: bring it to life like other
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: people can.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: It's almost like if you think
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: about like designing a room in
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: your house, it's like, I can do
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: things.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: But there's sometimes people, they just have a way of seeing
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the space that is just, you know, just like I, I never even
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: really thought about that.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: So, and I think one of the reasons she wrote the design of
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: books was all this experience she had with authors.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: And it was always kind of partly the conversation she would have
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: with authors were educational.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: She'd have to explain to them what the design process entails,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: and then she'd have to spend a lot of time talking them out of
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: their ideas, which, you know, if you're not a designer, you
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: probably have good ideas.
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: You know, unfortunately, it's the way it is.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: And so, you know, she would have
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: to explain why that's not good
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: to have like twenty different
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: dishes on the, you know, cover
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: of your cookbook and stuff like
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: that.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: So then she could say, well, okay, now I've written this
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: book, read this.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Before we dive into this project, I'm going to give you a
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: design, a book, right?
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a great about what
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: we're getting ready to head
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: into.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 23:50
  Speaker 4: And I think what Dave said, and
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: it's so true, is that the
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: authors with whom she worked, at
• 23:56
  Speaker 4: least in my authors, they loved
• 23:58
  Speaker 4: her because of that, like she
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: was beloved because if she'd get
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: into it.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: And that's just that was pretty exciting for people.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it is, I think, writing it.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You think, is anybody else really going to care like I do?
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: And I think when you find someone that is.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: But, you know, I really think
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: that if if a publisher is
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: invested in the book, um, it's
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: just great to find the team
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: that's just as invested in its
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: success.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And of course, the way it looks is, um, very, very important.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: And she really gave every book
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: kind of the same level of
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: attention.
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: Um, sometimes I would be surprised she would get these
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: incredibly low budget books, you know, that just maybe didn't
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: seem interesting and didn't have a vision behind them.
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: But she would just come at it the same way.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: She would like something like
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: the Downton Abbey cookbook,
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: which was a huge budget,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: elaborate, you know, complex
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: thing.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: She would just bring, you know,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: a sincere desire to make it the
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: best book she could to basically
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: every project.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: And it probably helped it with its success even more because
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: she was willing to do that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So she had a journey
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: then after the design of books
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: with, um, heading into her cook
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: booking project.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Um, Dave, why don't you tell us
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: a little bit about what happened
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: then?
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Sure. Um, yeah.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: So she finished, uh, the design of books and sometime in twenty
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: twenty three and was immediately like, you know, um, that was
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: going to be published, uh, in the spring of twenty four.
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: So she immediately got on to this idea of, of the cook
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: booking, um, project and started thinking about it.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: And I think at the end of twenty
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: three, she started working on a
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: proposal to shop around to
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: publishers.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Um, she had an agent and uh,
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: September around the end of the
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: year, she started complaining of
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: having some like brain fog and
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: forgetting words.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: And at first she blamed it on menopause and then she, you
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: know, thought it might be from Covid and all this stuff.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: And, um, then, uh, one day we sat down to practice some music.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: She played the banjo and I played the fiddle, and we had a
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: square dance coming up that we were going to play at.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: And so I said, well, we better do a little practicing just
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: because it's been a while.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: And, uh, she just sounded terrible.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: She couldn't play.
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: And I said, well, it's been a while.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: It's just keep on it.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: And she said, no, no, it's it's not that I'm forgetting.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: It's like my hands just aren't working.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: MM.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: So, uh, the next day we went to the emergency room as I got that
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: really kind of freaked me out.
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: I was like, that's not Covid and that's not menopause.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: So, um, we just went to the
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: emergency room and got an MRI
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: and they said, oh, you have a
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: tumor.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: And, uh, so that was February second of twenty twenty four.
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: And, um, so of course we were devastated.
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: And she went into surgery the
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: next week and had a successful
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: surgery.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: They took out the tumor as much as they could.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Um, but the problem with this
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: form of brain cancer called
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: glioblastoma is that it's, uh,
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: just has these kind of invisible
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: threads that start working their
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: way through different parts of
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: your brain so they can't find
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: all those.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: And so it took a while for her to recover.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: She was in pretty rough shape.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: And we thought, well, I guess
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: we're gonna have to tell the
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: publisher that, um, I should
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: back up for a second that she
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: had done this whole proposal for
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: the cookbook project and sold it
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: to Hardie Grant, uh, just the
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: very week before she was
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: diagnosed.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: So we went from celebrating to a
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: week later just being completely
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: devastated.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: So a couple weeks after the surgery, we decided to tell
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: Hardie Grant that, um, we, you know, wasn't going to happen.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: And luckily, uh, Jenny Wapner,
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: the publisher for Hardie Grant
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: USA, was, uh, wisely just said,
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: you know, let's just don't worry
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: Let's just see what happens.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: And we don't need to cancel anything.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: We'll just, you know, see how things go.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: And, um, sure enough, a couple
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: of weeks later, I guess it was
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: about maybe a month after the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: surgery.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: She had healed up pretty well, and, um, the removal of the
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: tumor had alleviated a lot of the swelling that was being
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: caused to causing these symptoms, like forgetting words
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: So once the swelling went down, suddenly she was able to think
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: more clearly and the words started coming back.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: And she said, oh, I think I'm going to start messing around
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: with the book, you know?
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: And I said, great, let's go for it.
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: And I don't maybe took a couple days before she was just like
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: completely diving into it.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: And she's like, I'm writing this book.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: So, uh, she did, you know, she just every day she would just
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: get up and, um, you know, work, work on the book.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: She'd go to the library, she'd
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: go to the, you know, University
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: of California at Berkeley
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: Library, go to the rare book
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: room.
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: Um, she'd come home with a backpack full of twelve
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: cookbooks and then like three more would arrive from eBay
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: later that day.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: You know, I mean, she was just really diving into it.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: But then at the same time, she was getting going in for
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: radiation every single day and, um, taking chemotherapy and, um,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: just kind of trying to, you know, struggle with these, um,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: various medical treatments.
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: And, but when she wasn't doing
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: those, she was just working on
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: the book and working, working,
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: taking photographs.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: She ended up doing all the photographs herself.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: And, um, you know, it was just pretty amazing to see.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: Uh, she just became so passionate for this project.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: And I think it was because it was just to her, it was how she
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: was staying alive.
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: You know, as I would always tell people during that period, like
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: if it was me, I would have just curled up in my bed and said,
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: you know, start giving me the morphine right now.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: I just can't.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: I can't go on.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: And she just did not have that attitude at all.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: She didn't get depressed.
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: She just buckled down and, uh,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: just committed herself to doing
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: this project.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. How long did she work on the manuscript?
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: I think it was about eighteen months.
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: Um, she worked on it.
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: Maybe sixteen.
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't know exactly, but, um.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she worked on it.
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: She designed it all
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: simultaneously with writing it,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: knowing that she probably
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: wouldn't have the luxury of, um,
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: coming back and doing the design
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: separately.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: And so she, um, just was designing and writing and
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: photographing everything all in one kind of creative maelstrom.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: And I think that was actually a
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: really great strategy for her,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: you know, because she was just
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: developing everything,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: developing everything as she
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: went.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: And just, um, it was just a very fluid creative approach.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: And, you know, one that was
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: forced on her by her limited
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: time.
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: But, um, I think it really the book really benefited from that.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, and that is amazing to think she was writing
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: it and photographing it and designing it like almost page
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: by, you know, as she went along.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Kind of and also just conceiving it too.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Um, when, when she first started
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: working on it, she and I would
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: talk about a lot of ideas for
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: it.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: And one of her main inspirations was the old colors magazine.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: that it was put out by Benetton
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: and it became its own kind of
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: had its own life as a magazine,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: and it had a lot of, uh,
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: variation within each issue
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: design wise.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: There'd be interviews, there'd
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: be infographics, there'd
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: photography, all kinds of stuff,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: And so that I think really inspired her to have this, um,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: diverse approach to the book.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: It sounds like, you know, her,
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: her organizational skills prior
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: to her diagnosis, but her diving
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: into the project, even in the
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: midst of going through
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: chemotherapy and radiation, um,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: her routines and habits kind of
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: probably.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think she obviously was able to retain and work
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: through all of that.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: And her, it probably ended up being a strength even in the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: midst of this.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: Oh, yeah.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: This project.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah. When she was first
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: diagnosed, we just immediately
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: canceled all her professional
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: projects and said she's retired
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: now.
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: And so that gave her the time to focus on this.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: And, um, but, you know, yeah, she brought all those qualities
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: to the book and that's, you know, that's what made it work.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. Terrific.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: And Leslie, you then, um, have,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: we have cookbooks now as, uh,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: something a book about this
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: space.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Um, why don't you tell us a little bit more in the audience,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit more about the book Specifically, um, who it's for
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and what's special about it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: And what do you think Debbie really wanted to share about
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: cookbooks in this book?
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: Well, first of all, cookbooks is
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: not a cookbook, just to be
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: absolutely clear.
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: And as Dave has said a few times, like Debbie was, maybe
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: you should say this, but Debbie was excited about all the things
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: in cookbooks that sort of nobody else paid attention to.
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: Like, she loved the geekiness of it.
• 33:42
  Speaker 4: She loved the way the book came together.
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: I think the thing that's exciting about this book is that
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: it really it's called A Fan's Guide, and she writes it as a
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: fan, like she's an expert, but it's written to all of us who
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: love this kind of book.
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: And she sees cookbooks as, um, a
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: lens into cultural history and
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: the intersection of culture and
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: design.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: Because when you look at a timeline of cookbooks, when you
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: look at the narrative of cookbooks from, you know, the
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: recipes on the tablets to, uh, you know, to TikTokers and
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: everything in between.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: You'll discover like there's a
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: cookbook for everything, you
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: know?
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, uh, from the Joy of
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: cooking, which was a self
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: published book in the nineteen
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: thirties and then was published
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: and then has been reprinted or
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: republished, sorry, and edited
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: nine times.
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: Like everything is like a cultural document.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: And in the book, which is beautifully designed, of course,
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: then you get really meta and think, wow, she's a designer
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: designing a book on design.
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: But, you know, you see the evolution of our lives, you
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: know, whether it was the cookbook, the vegetarian
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: cookbooks, the vegan cookbooks, you know, the French books, the
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: time live series.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: She just she puts all the books in context.
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: And, you know, if you're a cookbook user, you really see
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: your life pass.
• 35:06
  Speaker 4: You know, you pass my I actually
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: gave the book to my mom who's
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: eighty seven and I had my mom
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: take me through her cookbook,
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: you know, with all her used
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: cookbooks.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: And it was just amazing.
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: There's so many beautiful memories that people share.
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: Oh, yes.
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: I used the vegetarian epicure.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Oh, do you have the Moosewood Cafe?
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: And I think Moosewood cookbook by the cafe.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: And I think there's something
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: for every fan and I, what I love
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: about the book, um, is there is
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: this she, she writes up again, I
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: mentioned she has this
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: incredible skill of making
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: graphic, uh, graphics and she
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: did a taxonomy of cookbooks
• 35:41
  Speaker 4: from, you know, technique
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: cookbooks and appliance
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: cookbooks and children's
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: cookbooks.
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: And then she also has this
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: beautiful table of some notable
• 35:49
  Speaker 4: cookbooks.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: And in her introduction to that, she said, these are some of the
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: cookbooks that engaged me, but your list will be different.
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: And I love that it's a real invitation to people.
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: What is on your list?
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: What are you you're a fan.
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: Let's all talk about this.
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: So it's it's a beautiful book.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: It's very meaningful.
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: There's a lot of history in the book that people will be
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: surprised and delighted by.
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: And I think it's for anyone who loves cooking, loves graphic
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: design, loves pop culture.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: And it's a very personal book.
• 36:21
  Speaker 4: She it's very moving, so I just
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: can't recommend it highly
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: enough.
• 36:25
  Speaker 4: It's beautiful.
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When I was looking through it and the French chef.
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: And then we get to the hippies and then the eighties.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: And then I started laughing.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: When the community cookbooks is one thing, but all the diet
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: cookbooks in the nineties, there was just a ton of them.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: And isn't it interesting that
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: that really took off, you know,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: at that time and the way that
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: she, um, you know, then went on
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: to talk about appliance
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: cookbooks and then, um, you
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: know, cookbooks of about
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: different regions in, in the
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: United States, soul food, corn
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: pone.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, it just goes on and on,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: but I did, I did, I found the
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: part about the diet cookbooks
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: very amusing and just the
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: pictures on the front of the
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: cookbooks.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: And you know, what they were talking about.
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: It made me think of like how I had like a Richard Simmons
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: moment, like, you know, thinking about that time and that era.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: And, uh, it is, uh, a terrific journey through.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: And I do think you're right.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: I think that people that look at
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: this will have a different
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: experience of the book based on
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: their own particular experience
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: of cookbooks.
• 37:27
  Speaker 3: Well, one thing that, uh, Leslie
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: and I have talked about is how,
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: like, Debbie wasn't really a
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: cook.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I did all the cooking in our family.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: And, um, she wasn't really
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: interested in the recipes
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: themselves.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: Like she had all these cookbooks.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, there must have been a thousand cookbooks in our house,
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: and she wasn't looking at them as like, a final dish you would
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: have for dinner.
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: I mean, she was interested in how the recipe was laid out.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: She was interested in how the head note was designed or the
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: content of the head.
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: Note what it said about the time
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: and place in which it was
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: written.
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: And so it's just interesting to
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: come at it from that point of
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: view.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: Like Leslie said, it's, it's
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: about, um, all the things except
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: the recipes, you know, and she
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: does talk about recipes in there
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: and what it means to when, you
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: know, recipes are the same from
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: one book to the other and
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: ownership of recipes and things
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: like that.
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: But it's not so much about the food as a result, you know,
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: which is really what you think cookbooks are for.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: Can I get recipe?
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: You make it and you got some food at the end.
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: But for her, it was just really
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: about everything else aside from
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: that.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I think that people that, you know, they hardly even
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: think about a cookbook, find it hard to believe that people
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: would buy them for any other experience other than just
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: getting recipes and putting food on the table.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: They're like, why in the world this whole genre?
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: And don't we have enough cookbooks?
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And isn't there too many cookbooks?
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: And who needs another recipe?
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: But you're exactly right.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: Debbie saw the thing about the book that a lot of people that,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: you know, we can understand, people who listen to this show
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: can understand that it's it's not just about the recipes.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: They're emotional objects.
• 39:09
  Speaker 4: There's something we attach to,
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: whether it's the peanuts
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: Cookbook.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: She has a whole thing on fandom, which is the Dolly cookbook,
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: Snoop Dogg cookbook.
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: Why these books continue to sell.
• 39:17
  Speaker 4: I think it's because it is a
• 39:19
  Speaker 4: place where pop culture,
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: personality, it all intersects
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: and it's it's both funny and
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: great storytelling.
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: I think that, you know, for every, every day someone was
• 39:30
  Speaker 4: saying the other day that no matter what, when Debbie would
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: take a walk with you, all conversations would lead back to
• 39:37
  Speaker 4: cookbooks because you could there was a cookbook about
• 39:39
  Speaker 4: everything, you know?
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's why I hope that
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: they continue to be written and
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: published because of the, the
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: cultural timeline that they
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: provided.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: And it's exactly what appears in cookbook.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: Thing is, if we don't have that,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: what else is going to do it in
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: such a way about food, which is
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: something that we all have to
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: have.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: We all have to eat.
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: And the intersection between
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: what people cook, how they cook,
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: why they cook, what they cook
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: with, and, um, the whole design
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: element that she brought into
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: it.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with the mention, Dave, that you mentioned of the,
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: the Benetton magazine.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Benetton was a clothing brand, correct?
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: Okay. And they had a magazine.
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. The magazine didn't really
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: have anything to do with the
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: clothing.
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: It was, it was called colors.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: And it was really about just global issues.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: It was political, but it was
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: also kind of hip and, um, just
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: kind of a cool, I guess it was,
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: it was a nineties thing, you
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: know, why.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: Did I wonder why?
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: It's kind of fascinating why they decided to do it.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: I guess they.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know the whole story, but if you think I don't
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: know if you can remember, the old Benetton ads always had like
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: kind of very multicultural models and things like that.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: And I think they're kind of like we are the world of fashion, you
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: know, and um, I think the guy.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: I might be wrong about this, but
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: whoever started the clothing
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: company, he just had a lot of
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: money.
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: This was kind of like his pet project was this magazine.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: So it was just kind of a world culture magazine.
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: But the design was very innovative at the time.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So. Debbie.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I know Debbie Leslie, you've been going out and talking to
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: people about cook booking.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Um, what message are you sharing with everyone that you think
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Debbie would want people to know, um, about?
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think Debbie
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: would, I think she would want
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: people to be able to see
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: cookbooks with the context that
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: they elicit.
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: I think that she would be
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: excited to see people, um, just
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: enjoy them and, and find meaning
• 41:54
  Speaker 4: in them and also to take a look
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: at their own cookbook
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: collections.
• 41:57
  Speaker 4: He has a section in the book that's about marginalia.
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: You know, how we write in
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: cookbooks And I think there's
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: that funny thing about, like
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: with the design of cookbooks,
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: it's like, how do you actually
• 42:07
  Speaker 4: use them?
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: And as you mentioned, some people just read them, you know?
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: So I think I think the book itself is a great read.
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've been dragging it around to cafes while I've been
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: thinking about figuring out how to help promote it.
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: And people in the cafes are always asking me about it.
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: And they, I've sold like three copies in a, in a cafe, just
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: because I think the book itself is so engaging.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And people that like
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: cookbooks and they like, even if
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: it's just reading cookbooks,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: collecting them, not even using
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: them.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Um, when they see a book like that, they're probably just
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: instantly attracted to it.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And it's funny.
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: She is a funny writer.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: I think David said she originally wanted to be a
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: writer, and having worked with her as a designer, when I read
• 42:53
  Speaker 4: both the design of books and cookbooks, I was stunned.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: It's.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: They're so funny and the voice
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: is so clear and opinionated and
• 43:03
  Speaker 4: just wonderful.
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: I really think people will find it highly enjoyable as a book.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: So when she originally pitched
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: this book, I'm assuming she
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: pitched herself as the author
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: and the designer and the
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: photographer that didn't just
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: come on because of her cancer
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: diagnosis.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: Well, originally she was just going to write and design, of
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: course, design it.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: But, um, as, uh, as she was going through that process, um,
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: you know, she was just taking the photos as temporary photos.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: And the idea was to have a professional photographer come
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: on board at some point.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: But when you see the book,
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: you'll see it's a very kind of
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: idiosyncratic, um, photo
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: approach.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: You just have them in these kind of haphazard piles and leaning
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: against each other.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: And, um, uh, Jenny Wapner from Hardie Grant said, you know, I
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: think this looks really great.
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: Why do why not just use what you've done?
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: And so that was about halfway through the process.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: And so Debbie was like, yeah, okay, I could do that.
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: And so yeah, that was how that came about.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: She never really intended to be the photographer and she just
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: used, you know, very simple, um, equipment to do the photography,
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: natural light for the most part.
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: And her, her camera phone was high enough resolution for that.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: And, uh, but I think it came out really great and it really gives
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: the book a unique look.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: I think if it would have been
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: done more professionally, it
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: might have made it seem a little
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: more sterile and, um, not as
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: casual, which is the feeling she
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: wanted.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: And I don't think she could have done the page by page going
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: through writing, designing at the same time.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Had she brought a photographer on, I don't think the book would
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: have gone together the same way.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they would have had to just basically recreate
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: everything she did, which just seemed kind of ridiculous.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: I also like how the books are used, though.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: There are books that you can tell have been in a kitchen or
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: on a bookshelf.
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: They're not like pristine.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Uh, they look like they've
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: literally been on the shelf of
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: someone who loves to read or
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: collect cookbooks.
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, she she loved that part of it.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: She really wanted them to, uh, you know, show their history.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: Go ahead.
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: Leslie.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: I was also going to say that it's printed on uncoated stock.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: So the visual is very soft.
• 45:17
  Speaker 4: It looks it has a really nice intimate feel.
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Warm.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: It's very warm book.
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: I gotta share, when I was looking through the section on
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Ingredient World and these are books about ingredients.
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: There's a peanut butter
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: cookbook, a sausage book,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: yogurt, uh, red and green
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: chilies, the noble spud and
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: rhubarb.
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: I had a memory pop up in my mind of coming from a big family.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: And, you know, we'd all sit
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: around opening Christmas
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: presents.
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: And one year my father, much to his dismay, he.
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: After this happened, he probably
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: wished he'd never done it, but
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: he decided to give my mother for
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Christmas.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: He was going to give her a cookbook about how to cook pork.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: He was a first generation German.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: He loved German food.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: You know, we're a big Catholic family.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: We ate pork all the time.
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: We're from Kentucky, and my mom
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: had been cooking for ten people
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: for years.
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: Like she didn't even really need a cookbook.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: She had the most delicious good dinners on the table, wide
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: variety of foods.
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: And my mom opened up this cookbook, How to Cook Pork.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: I thought, oh no, this is just
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: about as bad as giving her a
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: vacuum cleaner.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Like it was.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I felt so sorry for my father, but I don't I think at the time,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: my mom probably kind of tempered her response a little bit.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: But now, in retrospect, in thinking back about that, the
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: era of time that that was and my mom's responsibility in the
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: family and the things that she did for us and us watching my
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: father, like give her this cookbook about pork, it's just
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: one of those things.
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: And when she passed away, and of
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: course, you know, this happens
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: to people.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: We have their collections of cookbooks.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: We ought to decide what we're going to do with them.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I can still remember that it was about the size of a Time-Life
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: cookbook sitting on the shelf.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: I don't think my mother ever, really ever opened it and used
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: it maybe once.
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: But that's the kind of thing that I'm sure is happening for
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: every single person that is looking at cookbooks and seeing
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: these photos and memories of these books that maybe they
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: never even owned.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: And just like these memories coming up about how cookbooks,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: you know, came into their life, even through other people.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: My aunt loved, um, the I Hate to Cook cookbook.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: She always said she was a better housekeeper than she was a cook.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: So she loved that Peg Bracken book.
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: Yeah. That's, that's in there.
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: You've seen it.
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: And that's a really fun.
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: I love that Debbie ends that
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: particular discussion of the
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: housewife phenomenon.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Yes, exactly.
• 47:44
  Speaker 4: In the twenties and the thirties with all these like canned foods
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: and then ends with that book.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: So great.
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. My mom's two older sisters.
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. My mom's two older sisters were nurses and they.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: They didn't marry one of them married later in life.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: So they had a career in.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: You know, of course, that fit the.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: You know, she hated to cook.
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: And my mom, you know, she was a
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: she had she she cooked for this
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: family.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: But, um, I, so I had that personal experience and I think
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: that I wanted you all to know that because if that was somehow
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: what Debbie hoped might happen as people looked through this,
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: it happened to even me, um, in memories of books in my life
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: that I don't even necessarily have on my shelf.
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think she understood the power of cookbooks and how
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: evocative they are.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of what she was trying to tap into.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: So, um, what about the, let's
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: tell a little bit of the rest of
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: the story, Dave, if you're
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: willing to.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And then I'd love to see if we can think a little bit like
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Debbie thinks if anybody's listening to this show that
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: maybe has an aspiration to write a book, to do something creative
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: in the design space, um, a little way for you to share and
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: Leslie, you to some of her wisdom with our audience.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 49:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll just start by, um, saying that she, you know, got
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: to the end of the book and that was about a year ago.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: Um, and finished it up, sent it
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: off to the publisher for
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: proofreading.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: And it was almost like a mirror image of how it started.
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: It's like the week after she sold the proposal, she was
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: diagnosed, and the week after she finished the book, we found
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: out her tumor had come back again for the third time.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: She'd already had two surgeries
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: by this time, and a couple
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: rounds of radiation and a bunch
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: of different kinds of
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: chemotherapy and some other
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: treatments.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: And so anyway, she finished the
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: book, sent it off, and a week
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: later, it was almost like, you
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: know, the tumor knew she was
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: done writing and said, all
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: right, well, now's my turn to
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: come back.
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: And she, uh, you know, had a
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: couple of months to live after
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: that.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: And, um, she couldn't even, by the time the proofreading came
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: back with like three hundred comments, you know, she tried to
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: look at it.
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: She just said, just tell them to do what they think is right.
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: She said, I can't do it anymore.
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: So, you know, the book is really a bittersweet, um, project.
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: I mean, for for all of us that knew her.
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: Uh, she did it.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: It was incredible that she was able to pull this off with the
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: amount of passion and the way the passion, just.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: I think it just kept her alive as long as it did.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: I mean, having this thing to
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: live for and care about to such
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: a degree.
• 50:51
  Speaker 3: You know, really, um, gave her a reason to fight.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: And she did.
• 50:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: So, um.
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but, you know, it's a beautiful legacy, you know?
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And the book was
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: officially released, um, just
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: recently, and now you're doing
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: things like this, talking to
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: people about Debbie and cook
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: booking and her design
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: expertise.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: Um, but I can't help but think that there's things that she
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: would say that we maybe haven't been able to say if there's.
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: So I always like to imagine that, you know, there's someone
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: listening to this show that perhaps as a, a dream of doing
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: something or a desire to do something that maybe is a little
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: bit out of the ordinary.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: Maybe they don't feel like they're cut out for it.
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: They have something they've always wanted to do.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: Like Debbie wanted to be a
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: writer, but she ended up being a
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: designer.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if either of you or I wouldn't invite both of you
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: to, you know, maybe, um, a little bit of a window into her
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: telling us somehow some way to continue what we're all doing.
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I'll start with a short anecdote.
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: I was, um, a couple of months ago, I was at a, um, just a
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: little backyard barbecue and was talking to a guy I hadn't seen
• 52:08
  Speaker 3: for quite a while.
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: And, uh, I didn't know that he had had cancer.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: And so we were just talking and I was telling him about Debbie
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: and her passion for the project and what she went through.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: And, um, he just started crying.
• 52:22
  Speaker 3: He was like, that's what I need in my life.
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: You know, that's, I need
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: something like that to keep me
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: going.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: And so that really made me think that, uh, the story was worth
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: sharing with people.
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: Originally, Debbie didn't want it to be part of the book story.
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: The book should stand on its own.
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: Like you mentioned at the beginning.
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I think that you didn't even know she had been diagnosed when
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: you were talking to her.
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: And you know, most of her professional people, she didn't
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: she didn't tell them.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: She didn't want it to be a part of.
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: But, you know, when I heard this guy say that, I just thought,
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: this is the kind of story that resonates with people and gives
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: people hope and maybe can help them in their own journey.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So a project for him, something like this, he found
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: that that might have been helpful for him then.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I don't know if he was talking about writing a book or,
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: you know, he's a musician.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: Maybe he was talking about that, but he just said, I need
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: something that gives me passion and gives me a reason to fight.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Because I can't imagine the days probably passed so much
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: differently if you don't have something like that.
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know how it would have how she could have
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: withstood it, you know.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: But Leslie could probably speak more to, um, how it would
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: directly impact someone who wants to be an author, I think.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, I just want to say, I do think that, um, having a
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: creative purpose in life is something that is meaningful,
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: and it does.
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: It does help us sort of have a lens on the world.
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: I think looking at the world, I used to collect postage stamps,
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: um, when I was a kid and lived in France and um, I wrote a
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: little book called Postmark Paris, and it was a year in my
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: life living in France and through the postage stamps.
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: So there's a correlation between
• 54:11
  Speaker 4: this cook booking and sort of
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: the medium of writing a story
• 54:14
  Speaker 4: that has, you know, starts
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: small, literally.
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: And I think that for people who
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: are interested in a creative
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: endeavor, thinking about how to
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: take one little step a day, like
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: what does that actually look
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: like?
• 54:25
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: Starting with, if it's a book, you know, what is your passion?
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: What excites you?
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: What are you interested in?
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: How do you write towards that every day?
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: And then thinking through a
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: little bit of like, who's your
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: audience?
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: Who do you want to talk to?
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: So there's a very specific way to write a book proposal.
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: But I think the thinking is generally to think through the
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: connection between what you want to say and who you want to say
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: it to and in what medium.
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: And so whether that's a book
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: where you're thinking about like
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: the mission statement, the table
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: of contents.
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: Um, you know, a sample chapter
• 54:57
  Speaker 4: and thinking about like, can you
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: just take one of those little
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: pieces and put it together and
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: think through what that might
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: look like?
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: Or maybe it's, you start with, you know, something small where
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: it's like, I hate to say an Instagram post, but maybe you
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: try something that's not big.
• 55:12
  Speaker 4: But I think, I think for Debbie and, and myself too, it's like
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: thinking through like, what is, what is something that really
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: grabs your attention that you can be that sustains you.
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: I mean, they're a friend of
• 55:23
  Speaker 4: Debbie's once said, the book is
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: called The Fans Guide, but the
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: word fan didn't actually really
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: describe Debbie.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: It's more like obsessed.
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: And you don't have to be obsessed.
• 55:33
  Speaker 4: But I think, is there something that you could write towards
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: that you'd like to.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: And I think that is a great tip is to sort of be able to
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: identify what are those things that you want to say, where is
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: their missing whole?
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: Is there something that's not on the marketplace?
• 55:47
  Speaker 4: That's a great thing about cook
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: booking is there's no other book
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: like it.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: And it's sort of stunning that it hasn't been done in this way.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: That's what was so amazing when I read it for my very first
• 55:58
  Speaker 4: time, I thought, wow, this is this really is something that is
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: of great service to those of us who love this.
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: So I think starting with that,
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: when you talk about some piece
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: of hope is a really nice place
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: to begin.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, one hundred percent.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: And I think that, um, that little voice, that desire to do
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: something, I think we all need to pay attention to it.
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: Um, Debbie did.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: And even in the midst of a very challenging time in her life,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: um, it really provided something that was of great value for her.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: Um, for your family, I'm sure David at that time.
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: And then also now for us, which is her beautiful book, cook
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: booking a fan's guide.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it's funny.
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: In both of the subtitles, she actually talks about the
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: audience for the book, like the authors and the editors and the
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: readers for her design book.
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: And for this one.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: So it really makes me think that she had the people in mind who
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: she, her audience and who she wanted to use these books and
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: what she wanted them to get out of both of them was very
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: important to her.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: She yeah.
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: I wonder about her necessarily.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: It was really her experience of her reader.
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: I think that those subtitles really kind of clarified in her
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: own mind what she was doing and who she was speaking to.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: And there's a lot of there are
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: other histories of cookbooks out
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: there, but they tend to be very
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: dense and almost, you know, more
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: academic.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes academic.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I love the word of fan.
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: Fan to me was brilliant because it's true.
• 57:35
  Speaker 4: It's like she's an expert, but she's not claiming to be an
• 57:38
  Speaker 4: expert, which allows a lot of freedom in how she writes, which
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: was very exciting.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: And then again, it's a nod to the audience.
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: A fan, you're a fan.
• 57:47
  Speaker 4: It makes it very accessible.
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: But of all people who probably was one of the top experts of
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: cookbook interiors, it was her.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah.
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: For sure.
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: I can't help but think there's a
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: hole now in this design space
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: for cookbooks.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: I feel it.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: I mean, and, you know, I was
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: reading some of the books that
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: she designed and we talked about
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: it.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: Of course, the cookbooks that she designed.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: would be very familiar with
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: those if they, uh, if we had a
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: list of all the cookbooks that
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: Debbie actually had her hand in,
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: and I think you'd see some
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: beautiful books, that's for
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: sure.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: So as we're wrapping up, one
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: thing I like to ask and talk a
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: little bit about is, um,
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: cookbooks.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: Um, David, in your life and Debbie's life, if there was one
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that or two.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: Something that was in the kitchen that you all used for
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: any cooking or recipes if there was a favorite.
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: Um, I'd love to share that with our listeners.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, um, like I said, I did most of the cooking and she
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: didn't so much, but um, you'll see on the cover of cookbooks,
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: uh, a stained page from, um, a martyr Joffrey Indian vegetarian
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: cooking book that we got when we were first married.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: We were vegetarians for about eight years.
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: And, uh, that was one of the first cookbooks I really tried
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: to learn anything out of.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: And you can see from the picture, it got a lot of use.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: But, um, I think that maybe her favorite and probably my
• 59:22
  Speaker 3: favorite is that, um, when we first moved in together, she got
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: this little spiral notebook and drew a little line drawing of
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: our spice rack and glued it onto the front of the notebook.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: And she would write her recipes
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: in there that she found she had
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: a banana bread recipe that she
• 59:43
  Speaker 3: liked to make, and some
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: different cookies and stuff like
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: that.
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: She did do some baking and was good at baking, but, um, and I
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: would put in there, you know, my Korean barbecue sauce recipe
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: that I got from a friend.
• 59:56
  Speaker 3: And so there's just all these
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: handwritten things that really
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: actually meant something to our
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: lives.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: And it's totally dirty and
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: stained and, you know, and
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: wrinkled pages.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: But, um, to me, that's, uh, more meaningful than any of the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: actual cookbooks on our shelf.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's wonderful.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: I, um, I think that's a terrific way to think about it.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: She was writing recipes and she was writing books, a very
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: meaningful one, even when she thought she wasn't.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: And I think the kitchen is a great place to take some notes,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: write things down, the things that mean something to you, even
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: if you've never had the aspiration to even write a book.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: It's just a great place to kind of keep track of things.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: And I think my biggest fear
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: about the digital age is that
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: we're losing.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: Hopefully we haven't lost it, but I really think that we need
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: to be responsible people in our kitchens to continue these types
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: of things, to see that they're carried on, that books don't go
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: away, that we we buy books, we engage with books.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: We talk about books because this
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: cultural intersection between
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: food and who people are, um,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: really is documented through
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: cookbooks.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: And Debbie certainly had a big hand in that.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: And I can't, you know, thank you both enough, David, for your
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: willingness to come on.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: And Leslie, you two and talk about this book, cook booking
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: and Debbie, who I know we're all going to miss.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, thank you very much for, for having us.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: Thank you so much.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: Cookbook Love Podcast again.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: All the links can be found in the show notes at w w w dot
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: cookbook dot co.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: And if you are interested in
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: writing a cookbook of your own,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: please check out the free
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: Cookbook Writing Masterclass
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: called How to Get Paid to Write
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: a Cookbook.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: It is designed specifically for
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: food or nutrition experts, and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: you can check that out at w w w
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: dot cookbook writers academy dot
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: com.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: So that's it for today's episode of the Cookbook Love Podcast.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: This is your host, Maggie Greene.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: And until next time, have a
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: great day and keep loving your
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: cookbooks.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Cookbook Love podcast.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: You can find out more information at w w w dot
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: cookbook dot co.