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Nava Atlas · Dishing with Stephanie's Dish

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hello,
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: everybody,
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish,
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: the podcast where we talk to people obsessed with food.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: And we do talk to a lot of cookbook authors.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel pretty honored today.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm with I feel like a living legend,
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: not only in the vegetarian category,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: but vegan category and also a fellow soup lover,
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: which is so exciting.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Good morning, Nava.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the show, Nava Atlas.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited to be here and I'll tell you why in a moment.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So let us talk because you have Vegetariana was one of your first books, which is my first.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it is a hoot.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: It has like these hand-drawn illustrations, little bits of wisdom throughout.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is really a well-done book and it was reissued in the last couple of years and
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: And made all completely vegan.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Did you go vegan later in life?
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: Or tell me about that transition.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: It was exactly, I would say 20.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I go by my son's age because he was 10 when he went vegan and now he's 32.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's always easy for me to.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: keep track.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, 22 years vegan, I was vegetarian since high school.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I was kind of an early adopter, not necessarily a veganism side of it.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, I remember even in being a weirdo as a vegetarian back then.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And also,
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say that,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I've really seen this whole progression from analog to digital.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: wanting to familiarize myself with you,
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: your work,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: your podcast,
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I went straight to,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: and of course,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to forget.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, John Kung.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he was talking about Detroit.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so thrilled because I grew up right outside Detroit.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: My radio partner grew up outside Detroit too.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I really, I love Detroit.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: I visited and had like four very memorable days in my life.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is an amazing city and it's an amazing transformation.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: The last time I was there was not that long ago.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was maybe a year ago, a year ago, June.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And my friend was showing me around central downtown.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then I saw an article.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure if it was the New York times or elsewhere that this city is the new Paris.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, and it was Detroit.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then I read another statistic that says that downtown Detroit is actually safer than San Francisco.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I believe that.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely believe that.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: It is a really cool place to visit.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: The farmer's market alone was just mind blowing to me.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So many just sheds upon sheds of makers.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I've always loved maker culture and people that make products.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I have podcasts about that,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: too,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: and really just enjoy the craft of people making food and how hard they have to
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: work and how delicious it is.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so many vegan restaurants, you know, for me, that's really my interest.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And one that started when I was in college in Ann Arbor,
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I am a University of Michigan graduate,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: was Seva.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And now they have that beautiful place in downtown Detroit that is delicious.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is, you know, expensive on a par with New York, still very much worth it.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I, you know, I'm really glad to see the city thriving because the city has been through so much and
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have to admit,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: I did not get to Eastern Market on my last visit because I also really wanted to
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: save some time to go to Ann Arbor,
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  SPEAKER_00: my alma mater,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: and see how I hadn't been to Ann Arbor for a longer time and how that has transformed.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like a little city now.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then Royal Oak looks like Ann Arbor did when I went to school there.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: So veganism, I will say, so I do eat meat and I knew people that were vegans and I knew it was a thing.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously being in the food world,
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: you're paying attention to trends and obviously eating plant-based is super
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: beneficial health wise.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then I started working on my TV show and my executive producer is vegan and
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I just really felt like I had my eyes opened to what it really means to like live a vegan lifestyle.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And for her, she's been doing it like you for so long.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like, oh, I just don't eat meat.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's really no big deal at all.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we are so fortunate now in that we have so many choices and so many options in our food world.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Writing a cookbook that's vegan specific to soup,
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: I thought was probably not as hard as people think,
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: because a lot of soups are vegan if you're using a vegetable broth.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're vegan.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: So many soups are vegan already.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And soup is a very plant forward type of food, maybe second only to salad.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how I think about soup because I make a lot of soup,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: but I also make a lot because I cook a lot.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I have all of the vegetable scraps and the broths and the little dribs and drabs
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: of things that I'm always throwing into a soup.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: When you put your cookbook together,
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: was it hard for you to think about like,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: what recipes am I going to put in?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: What am I not?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: so this book like vegetariana has a long history what you're holding in your hands
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: now is the fifth edition i've heard yeah so i think i published it i i had an agent
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: back then not the same one i have now and she said oh you know publishers are
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: saying this is just too niche it's too specific couldn't find a publisher so i
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: thought you know what i'll publish it myself and at the time it was it was actually
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: so many more people are self-publishing now
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: But it was easier back then, like a lot of things.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was a very small, really diminutive, hand-drawn book, and it did very well.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So once I had proved myself, it was picked up by Little Brown.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Then it went out of print at Little Brown.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I went back to self-publishing it.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: That same editor went to Random House, so she picked it up again, and then it went out of print.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: None of the editions before this one had as many photographs,
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: and they weren't designed as beautifully as I would have liked.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: So it was really nice to get the whole process back into my hands.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: The book is really beautiful.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: So did you publish this version yourself?
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: This one I did because,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: after the fourth edition,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: it's the likelihood of another publisher publishing something that's been in and
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: out of print so many times is probably close to nil.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it has sold lots of copies,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: people want to move on to the new thing,
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: to the fresh thing.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's understandable.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty impressed by that.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Not only that you're in your fifth edition,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: but as a cookbook writer myself who does publish the more traditional route,
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: you're probably financially,
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: it's a much better amount of money per book that you make probably publishing
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: yourself than going through a publishing house.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to say maybe per book for the copies that you're lucky to sell,
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: but you're really at a disadvantage from the perspective of distribution.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: That's a big thing.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: I have a good distributor.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But,
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: I feel I felt like,
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: I just want a beautiful edition of this book before I leave this mortal coil.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: But as far as making lots of money, no, I would say to your listeners, that's not the way to get rich.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: no,
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  SPEAKER_01: I just see,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think about it from the perspective of like,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: okay,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: a traditional book,
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: the author probably makes anywhere from three to $7 a copy.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, less than that.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then a published book that you publish yourself,
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: people say that you can make anywhere from $15 to $22 a copy.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, maybe connect me with those people.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to see where they got that information.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're not doing huge printing so your per unit cost is not great.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
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  SPEAKER_00: And also I didn't want to print overseas because,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: that's another thing in itself and the books have to be printed way ahead of time.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I did it domestically which I think they did a beautiful job.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is beautiful.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the per unit cost is going to be a little bit more.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: But,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: this was a labor of love,
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would say,
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: to get it into print in a fashion that I'm really happy with.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because I do, like you, I absolutely love soup.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that, I would say it's my very favorite category of food and eating.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It just, it's so digestible.
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  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, with the title, Soups and Stews for All Seasons,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: You make them every time of year.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: People think of it fall, winter, but I love a cold summer soup.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing more refreshing for dinner than,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
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  SPEAKER_00: when it's a warm evening,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: like the summer we've had this past summer to have a really delicious cold soup.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And like gazpacho can be revelatory, right?
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these soups also, I would say in my summer chapter, about half of them are no cook soup.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that's great for those times where you feel like you just don't want to turn on a single burner.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: Watermelon gazpacho is one of my newer favorites.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I did not see that in there.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'll have to look back.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds really interesting to me.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Chilled soup is always a little, I don't get there.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: I get there when it's really hot.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think about it unless it's super hot.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have a few that are good hot or cold, like one that I made not long ago.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's called tangy cold potato spinach soup.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I literally just opened to that.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's really good hot or cold.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: That could be, you know, had in the fall, nice and warm or hot.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then the next one also cold creamy leek and potato soup.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Cause you do think leeks is a little bit more of a fall or spring vegetable.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say sometimes I just, I don't even pay attention to the chapters.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: If I feel like having a winter soup in the summer, I'll do that or vice versa.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, well, I wouldn't have a summer, a cold summer soup in the winter, but reverse.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Same.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was just at my cabin.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It was 80 degrees and I made a chicken broccoli soup.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: Cause I just was hungry for it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about some of the stews and you,
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: it feels like there's some global influences kind of in here,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: some Thai influences,
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: perhaps some African influences.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: How do you get your ideas for recipes?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if it's a globally influence, I'm influenced by what I have when I go out to eat.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if I go out to eat, I like to have things that I haven't had at home or don't normally make at home.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: But then it's so much fun to try to recreate it in your own kitchen.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And now, you know, supermarkets are a veritable feast of international ingredients, which is great.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorites,
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: my absolute favorite,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: what I call my favorite food hacks,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm really lazy when it comes to Indian cuisine,
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: is simmer sauce.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever tried any of those?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: They are amazing.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: Anything you put them on tastes like it came from the best Indian restaurant
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: because I am just simply too lazy to do the grinding 20 spices.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to get those complex flavors.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about dumping some curry powder into something.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that has been really wonderful.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then in the last couple of years, I would say I've really fallen in love with kimchi.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, me too.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Just how good it is for us.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to get past the idea, like, it smells, right?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: When you open that first jar.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: When you first do, yeah.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: You're just sort of like, ugh.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's just got that really heavily fermented smell.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you use it, it doesn't taste like it smells at all.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It definitely mellows.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there are two types of kimchi.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is a kimchi made with fish sauce.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just guessing that might have more of the aroma.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I get the vegan kimchi.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I have a kimchi soup here.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the list might look a little longer.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a big fan of huge long ingredient lists,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: a bit longer than my usual,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: but it's still so easy.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it's one of those soups that's on the table in 30 minutes.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And which one is it?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: The kimchi soup on page 63.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just going to take a look at that while we're sitting here, too.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then stews.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: Was that purposeful to include stews or is that just because soups kind of are like stews, too?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have always called stews soups with a chunkier texture and a little more attitude.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: OK, that's a good way to describe it.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I like it.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I have here this Italian mixed vegetable stew with the gnocchi and the gnocchi
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: tend to absorb a little bit more of the broth.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it becomes more stew like.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think in one of the later chapters, I have a Thai vegetable stew with a peanut base.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're just so adaptable.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: You can,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: if you don't like stew-like textures,
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: you just put a little bit more liquid or water and it becomes,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: you're back to a soup.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: When I was looking at this easy laksa soup, the Southeast Asian influence there, I'm going to be going to
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Southeast Asia in January.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I was, there's so many delicious soups in their culture.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, my nieces and nephews were just telling me a story that they were in, I believe it was Thailand.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they said by the end of their visit, they didn't want to see another noodle again.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of noodles in Thailand for sure.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it would, I would ever tire of that though.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: How did you get started in cookbook writing?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: That is a very interesting story.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: In high school, like I said, I was kind of the oddball vegetarian, both at school and in my family.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Don't really remember what gave me that notion other than, you know, I just never liked meat.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: My mom did this kind of bland Eastern European cooking.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I think I was a little bit early for the hippie era, but I was kind of a wannabe.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided to go vegetarian.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: And my mom said, well, I'm not going to cook two meals.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be a vegetarian,
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to have to cook for yourself,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: thinking that that would put an end to it.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I really took to it.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed it.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: And back then, we didn't have these beautiful supermarkets or Whole Foods.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: We had these dusty health food stores.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I remember.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: where it was probably 70% vitamins and potions and maybe a little bit,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: and then brown things that you'd buy by the,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: by the pound.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just loved it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought the brown lentils and the brown oat groats and whatnot that we had.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I had so much fun with it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Then when I got married rather early on in life, my husband was,
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: really wanted to be a vegetarian but he was absolutely no cook still isn't to make
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: a good salad but that's about that's his limit so we would go out once in a while
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: we lived in new york city at the time and i'd like to recreate things at home or
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: just concoct and he said you really need to write this one down you need to write
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: this one down and i would write this one down and after a while i found myself with
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of recipes i was oh i was a trained never trained as a chef
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes people introduce me as a chef and I say,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: that's very nice of you,
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: but it's an insult to chefs.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I feel similarly.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just a home cook.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right, exactly.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: I was a trained graphic designer and illustrator.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the book you're holding, one of them, Vegetariana,
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I designed and illustrated and the design and the illustrations are very similar,
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: identical,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: really almost identical to the original edition.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: But with some additional new illustrations that I did, this was what I called my COVID project.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: When we were inside for two years, I did a lot of new illustrations for it.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I veganized it.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's really, it's a super lovely book.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's different than any other cookbook because it has just so much personality,
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: but yet the recipes look super delicious too.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's like every page, I feel like I turn it and it's a new discovery.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I also call it the kind of cookbook that you can read in bed because there's a
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: lot of stories and folklore and food lore and food history,
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: which also kind of fascinates me.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: How I started writing was I did accumulate a lot of recipes.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: We were a starving artist couple in New York City back then.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I remember going to a lecture by some well-known graphic designer whose name,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I no longer remember.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: But he said,
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: if you're a freelancer,
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: unless you do something for yourself that's completely your own,
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: you're going to be just going from job to job to job.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, hmm, that really resonated.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought, why don't I try to put this together as a book?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: And back then, everything was analog.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: There was just phones.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was only landlines.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I was so shy.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was really a miracle that I was able to be a freelance illustrator and graphic designer,
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: because back then,
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: the way to do it was to cold call
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: and make an appointment with the art director and schlep the literal huge portfolio.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to make a,
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: what I thought was a proposal and make,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: make a copy of it and send it off to,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I sent it to one publisher and they kept it for six months before saying no.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, again, I read about how the publishing process worked.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was completely naive and it said, you've got to find an agent.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, well,
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: How am I, one of the shyest people on earth, going to find an agent?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So my husband actually took my really rough proposal to a copy shop across from
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: where our studio was,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: our art studio.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And the guy behind the counter said, oh, what is this?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: It looks really interesting.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And my husband told him, he said, oh, my girlfriend is an agent.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So he gave me her number.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, I had to call them on a landline with my hand and my voice shaking.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, well, you can mail it or you can drop it off.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not looking right now.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And it could take several weeks or several months.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to my husband, I can't do this.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Can you take it up?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were also in New York City.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Can you take it up there for me?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he did.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: And he came back and he said, oh, they weren't very nice and they had a dog and he was barking at me.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, well, this doesn't sound good.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the very next morning, my landline was ringing.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, oh, we love this and we want to represent it.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think within a few weeks, they'd sold it to one of the top cookbook editors in New York City.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But honestly,
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was just too young and too dumb to really appreciate what,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: synchronicity,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: luck,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: maybe some talent,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: of course.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: We have to own that about ourselves.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't believe it at the time.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it was, you know, the rest, as they say, is history.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: It really, what a great story.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I love hearing that because anybody in the publishing world,
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: finding an agent is just like finding a needle in a haystack and then getting the
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: book bought by the publisher is another needle.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And even, you know, if you have good publishers, some people have bad experiences.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: The
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there has always been, I would say, no, we always think everything back then was better.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: You see in Vegetariana, the drawings are very delicate.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And white.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when I first saw my book in print, I cried, but not from happiness.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: they had inked the drawing so heavily and that some of the pages were actually sticking together.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it was an epic nightmare,
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: but they did,
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: they corrected everything for the second printing and the book was actually very successful.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it led me to my second.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then I thought, well, this is a great way for starving artists to make money.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I was very dedicated at the time to vegetarianism.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: As much as right now, I'm even more dedicated to veganism for many, many reasons.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But, you know, what you say is right.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like and I can't give the name on the air, but I've been so blessed with my agent.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it is, again, sometimes it's a matter of luck or timing and persistence.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Persistence is a very important ingredient.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I love this story about you putting yourself out there because we're in this kind of weird age.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I like where we're at,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: but it's different in that now so many people that are getting,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: six-figure advanced cookbook deals are influencers or have a huge following on
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: social media.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what I find more often than not, many of them are great.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: But also what the skill sets that you need to be a good social media influencer are
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: not necessarily the same skill sets that you need to be a good cookbook author.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you can do great hands videos and five ingredients or less or things that are super trendy.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: But can you put that into a whole narrative?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: into a cookbook and does that translate?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think the publishers now just look like how many social media followers do they have?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are they on TikTok?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: Are they doing these videos?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how you get the deal.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: I hope that we still can have some of the other types of books that are more labor
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: of loves and are single themed or are unique and different in that way.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm worried we might lose some of that and it's all going to be going to come about a personality.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, all of what you say is 100% correct.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: when I was listening to your podcast with John Kong,
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: and he was saying he has 2 million followers on TikTok.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I have zero followers on TikTok because I'm not on TikTok.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I have nothing against it.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think it's great.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think when people can kind of build their own platform, it's just wonderful.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: But aside from doing cookbooks, I'm also a writer, a nonfiction writer.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I run two websites and I feel like there's just so many hours in a day and just so
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: many skill sets and hats that one person can wear.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And some of the I mean,
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: some of the fast,
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: quick hand photography or videography or even just like doing videos on YouTube.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God for me, because as a home cook, you know, I don't know.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: I don't have good knife skills.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_01: I am really just like your next door neighbor that's cooking you food and has a
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: reasonably funny personality.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: But that's about all I got.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's fun to be able to make a career with those skills.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I also I do understand that,
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: there are people like the Ina Gartons of the world who we need to make room for them,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: too,
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: because even though maybe.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she does.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: She has a lot of people on TikTok and all that now.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: But in the day she didn't.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: And her books are really well researched and really well put together.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of an exciting time,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: but it's also a time where there's a lot for a lot of different types of people and
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: young people,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: too.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like what makes I mean, my daughter's 25 and she's really into cooking.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: But she cooks things I would never cook.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like she will make her own bagels.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: I would no more near make my own bagel and boil it.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, you know, that's not really what I do, but I'm so impressed that she does it.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: She'll do the four day project cooking,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: the making the steamed bao buns and just doing all kinds of fun stuff.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful, though.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: My daughter has become a really good seitan maker.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Are you?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's my recipe.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I've really refined it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I thought, sometimes it just feels like such a project to me.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that she likes to do it.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's very useful.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: So is your whole family vegan and vegetarian?
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, you know, yes.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we went vegan at the same time.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: My husband has kind of gone in and out of having eggs.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: So when he has eggs, he's a vegetarian.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: But both of my kids, my kids were raised vegetarian.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of them and they are not young anymore.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of them have ever tasted meat in their life.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's so funny.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even imagine that because we just eat so much beef in the Midwest.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: What I will say,
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: this producer that I was talking to you about that's vegan,
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: she started raising chickens and she had all these eggs and eventually she started
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: eating the eggs and then she ended up getting rid of the chicken.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So she's off the eggs again.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: But it was interesting to hear how she came to even incorporating eggs into her life.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: She was...
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just like I have all these eggs.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: I hate the waste.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when you have chickens, they're going to lay eggs.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: I have a friend who raises backyard chickens and,
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: she's giving them usually to a lot of times to my husband.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's nice to know that they're eggs that are raised humanely,
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: where they came from and everything.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: If you had to say a favorite recipe for you in the Vegan Soups and Stews book,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: you kind of already said the one.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_01: I just before we wrap up,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: is there a book or is there a recipe that feels really personal to you or something
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: that you feel like is a signature just of yours?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I just opened to one, the mock chicken noodle soup recipe.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: So chicken noodle soup with C-H-I-C-K apostrophe N. Yes.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the subtitle is kind of like my mom's, but without the bird.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: So how did you get that flavor without the bird?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I used vegetable or vegan chicken style bouillon cubes.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then the vegan chicken product also, they usually have their own flavor.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really, you know, it's really not that difficult.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like this is proof positive that pretty much anything can be veganized.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going back to the beginning of the program saying that I really didn't like
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: my mom's cooking very much,
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: but yet I loved my mom.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: So this soup reminds me not so much of my mom's cooking that I didn't particularly like, but of my mom.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even looking at it and the way it looks is just fascinating.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: just brings me back to my childhood.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's so much of what eating is about.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so much of what comfort food is about is that nostalgia and that comfort of,
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: our parents or our family and the safety.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like that is just such a universal human need.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: I always think that we're not necessarily alike as humans, but I think that we all want the same things.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: We want love, security,
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: our family, and food is just such a way to bring people together.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And boy, that's a great way to end it.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I love that you shared that story.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I was just, you know, that we're just coming off of the Republican National Convention.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been feeling a little bit like trying to be open minded,
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: but also feeling a little tribal in my belief system.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think about getting back to
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: What are people wanting?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: When you really get down to it, we do want a lot of the same things.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: We come at it from different points of view,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: but it helps me to have empathy and understanding when I'm having a hard time
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: feeling like,
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: who are these people?
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad you said it, not me, but I get it.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, and on both sides, really.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: I'm from Minneapolis and believe me,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: we have a lot of left,
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: real left,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: left,
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: left stuff happening right now.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: And on the one hand, some of it's really exciting.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other hand, I just feel like it's too much.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: And you feel like you're kind of pulled on all sides and not sure where the real understanding is.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just trying to find my own personal empathetic path.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: As we get walking up to this election, regardless of what happens.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: Find a way to meet in the middle and things that we all have as commonalities.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it is always food and soup, isn't it?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think food really brings us together, for sure.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: This has been such a delight.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for spending a little time with me today.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll get the podcast edited and posted.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: It is Vegetariana.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is the original book, A Rich Harvest of Whit Lauren Recipes.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the new book that's not new,
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: but in its fifth edition,
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: but new with pretty pictures,
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Vegan Soups and Stews for All Seasons,
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Nava Atlas.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate it.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: If I could just, one more thing is that people can visit me at theveganatlas.com.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think I went to your website once, so I'll put that in the show notes.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you so much.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: Great to meet you.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Bye-bye.