Latest / Family Tree Food Stories / From Lawyer to Culinary Star: Chef Ouita Michael, James Beard Nominee Food Journey

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From Lawyer to Culinary Star: Chef Ouita Michael, James Beard Nominee Food Journey · Family Tree Food Stories

• 0:01
  Hey Sylvia, it's great to see you or hear you again.
• 0:05
  And we're off to another interesting show, but this one is all in your backyard.
• 0:10
  I get to be a visitor, I guess you could say from.
• 0:13
  and welcome to you from Florida.
• 0:16
  Weida Michael.
• 0:17
  Gosh, it's my pleasure to introduce.
• 0:19
  She is just a rising and current star for Kentucky and beyond.
• 0:25
  She's been nominated numerous times for James Beard awards and that is a huge big deal, by the way, to be nominated several times.
• 0:31
  She has at least eight food establishments, different kinds, all kinds of really wonderful things steeped in tradition, I might say.
• 0:39
  And she's involved there, including Holly Hill Inn.
• 0:42
  You'll have to visit that.
• 0:43
  It's iconic.
• 0:45
  And she practically invented the tradition of buying local, I must say.
• 0:50
  And I loved your bio where you said, buying local is a tradition that our culture seemed to abandon for a few decades and that I love cooking right out of the garden.
• 1:01
  That is so you.
• 1:02
  And again, Nancy, you've got to go to Holly Hill Inn.
• 1:04
  I got to pull her up here.
• 1:05
  She's got to, she's got to enjoy the Kentucky scene.
• 1:09
  But, Weeda, I'll start out.
• 1:11
  Your first food foray was buying the Holly Hill Inn in 2000.
• 1:16
  You described that as a scary experience.
• 1:19
  From there, you've just added on.
• 1:21
  You've laid the groundwork for celebrating tradition.
• 1:24
  And that's what Family Tree Food and Stories is all about, is combining tradition, food stories, and storytelling, and reviving that art.
• 1:35
  And I know there's a lot of that that you do.
• 1:38
  begin by just telling us a little bit about how you see food and tradition in your own backyard.
• 1:45
  Well, I guess now I've been a chef for 37 years.
• 1:50
  So I've developed a lot of my own food traditions.
• 1:53
  I never thought I'd reach this point in my life and my career.
• 1:58
  But thank you so much, Sylvia and Nancy, for having me on the podcast and giving me the opportunity to tell a little bit more about my story.
• 2:09
  The garden tradition is one that I
• 2:13
  I have bought local, it was in our business plan.
• 2:16
  So part of the development of our whole company, but especially the Holly Hill Inn, because it was our first restaurant, when we wrote the business plan for that in 2000, we
• 2:26
  really put, we put buying local ingredients from local farmers into that business plan because I've long loved MFK Fisher and sort of Madeleine Cammon, lot of Julia Child, a lot
• 2:41
  of French.
• 2:44
  storytellers and chefs and cooks and Italian chefs and cooks like Lydia Bastianich and beyond, and they all cook really fresh ingredients that are locally grown.
• 2:59
  And in the United States, we abandoned that for a little while in the name of convenience.
• 3:04
  And I feel a little bit like the restaurant industries have
• 3:09
  hasn't really gone back to it, but it is part of our cornerstone and all of our restaurants.
• 3:14
  And the garden, I'm very lucky to say the Holly Hillen sits on a 10 acre lot.
• 3:19
  so we cultivate, honestly, as a response to COVID, we really got into gardening and we've doubled the size of our garden every year for the past five years.
• 3:30
  And now we cultivate during our growing season, most of what the Holly Hillen serves in terms of its vegetables and herbs.
• 3:38
  and that kind of thing.
• 3:39
  it's a real joy and it's one of balance for me for sure.
• 3:43
  Can I ask you question as far as gardening and the restaurant today and the work that you do?
• 3:50
  Where did that stem from?
• 3:52
  I mean, as a child and a young girl, did you have interest in gardening with your parents or with a community or neighbors or grandparents?
• 4:03
  is that what spurred you or sparked you to get involved in cooking or even be interested in it?
• 4:09
  Because most kids, some kids love it and others are like,
• 4:13
  Mom, just give me the SpaghettiOs, right?
• 4:15
  Yeah, when I was a girl, my parents, grew up on a street called State Street, which is sort of a legendary street here, Nancy, because now it's occupied by college students and
• 4:27
  they typically burn couches when UK went to big basketball game.
• 4:31
  But back in the day, my father was a young professor at the University of Kentucky Medical School.
• 4:37
  And every faculty and staff was eligible to have a garden plot where the current
• 4:43
  football stadium is at the University of Kentucky.
• 4:45
  In those days, it was the agricultural research farm.
• 4:49
  And so, and then when they built the stadium, they decided they would give over a large section, several acres to their faculty and staff for garden plots.
• 4:59
  And so many, we could walk over there, was just a little walk and often drove off obviously when we were picking vegetables, but we had a garden at home and we had this big
• 5:10
  garden plot.
• 5:12
  along with hundreds of other families at the University of Kentucky.
• 5:15
  And I can remember the gardens would close at a certain time, like in the year.
• 5:20
  So it would be, last day for garden plots, we're plowing up next week kind of thing.
• 5:25
  And you would go over there and there would just be hundreds of kids and families and they would all, it was free for all.
• 5:31
  You could glean anything from the entire garden plot that you wanted on this.
• 5:36
  One day all the barriers were down and everybody was sharing vegetables trying to get everything possible out of all the gardens.
• 5:43
  And I just that lives in my mind's eye.
• 5:46
  I really loved that experience and we did that for many years.
• 5:51
  Yes, it was.
• 5:51
  hunt in the garden, right?
• 5:53
  Like, my God, I found a squash.
• 5:55
  no, I found more tomatoes.
• 5:57
  Well, this one's green.
• 5:57
  We can do something with that one, right?
• 6:00
  and the formation of community.
• 6:02
  right.
• 6:03
  was a scavenger hunt, the treasure hunt, and it was a wonderful experience.
• 6:10
  And my great grandfather, his name was Aaron Rufus Zimmerman, and he lived in Thermopolis, Wyoming.
• 6:16
  My family was, I was born in Thermopolis, and my parents were both from Thermopolis.
• 6:22
  And he was originally from Missouri, but he had a huge garden.
• 6:27
  and he used to take bets from all of his friends and he would grow things like peanuts and cotton and all the stuff in Wyoming.
• 6:35
  And he lived down the street from my grandmother and I spent every summer with my grandmother there for more than 10 years.
• 6:43
  And so just going to his garden was a daily experience as a child and then having this garden at home in Kentucky, yeah, it deeply impacted me for sure.
• 6:54
  Wow.
• 6:55
  And you formed a community too of people in the garden.
• 6:58
  I'd say kids ran the, this ran all over the place I would envision as I'm listening to you.
• 7:05
  there was a lot of married student housing at UK that was very near that garden plot.
• 7:10
  And a lot of those families were international.
• 7:12
  So my friend, had a friend named Ruru Runciman, Ruru Runciman and Ruru's parents lived in married student housing.
• 7:19
  were graduate students and they were from Indonesia.
• 7:23
  And so they had a garden plot.
• 7:25
  They were growing really different stuff.
• 7:28
  Yeah.
• 7:29
  bitter melon and I don't know, I can sort of see, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was the sense that yes, there was a big community, lots of friends, all running
• 7:40
  around this garden.
• 7:41
  it was, it I wish the university could find a way to do it again, because it was really amazing.
• 7:47
  Wonderful.
• 7:48
  Did you go to culinary school?
• 7:49
  that something that, where did you go to culinary school?
• 7:52
  the University of Kentucky and I was on the debate team there.
• 7:57
  And I won the national debate tournament actually in 1986 and I had planned on going to law school.
• 8:06
  And I had two friends who had grown up in New York City who needed a third roommate.
• 8:13
  And so I decided to move to Manhattan in 1987, right after school.
• 8:19
  And I started working in restaurants just to see if I might like it.
• 8:23
  And I loved it.
• 8:25
  And then shortly thereafter, in those days, you had to work two years to apply before you could apply to the Culinary Institute of America.
• 8:33
  So you had to have two years of working experience in a restaurant.
• 8:39
  So I did that in Manhattan for two years, and I applied to the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park.
• 8:46
  Okay.
• 8:46
  Okay.
• 8:47
  So that's kind of an interesting switch.
• 8:48
  So you went to New York originally to go to law school.
• 8:53
  And I don't think of lawyers as culinary curiosities, should say, right?
• 9:05
  Now you've really got like, so it's, it's, it's, the law of the zucchini.
• 9:10
  I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to throw the squash at you.
• 9:14
  Yeah, well, we're weird, know, we lawyers.
• 9:18
  better than throw the book at you
• 9:20
  Ha ha ha.
• 9:23
  So, but it's an interesting switch from law and then working at a restaurant.
• 9:28
  I guess you were curious to figure out working at a restaurant.
• 9:31
  I have to laugh because I one year in between college, like summertime, said that, well, all my friends over the years have worked at like a McDonald's or a fast food franchise.
• 9:42
  So I want the experience of working at one and the Wendy's was opening up.
• 9:47
  I never want to work at a fast food restaurant or restaurant ever again.
• 9:51
  my God.
• 9:52
  The only thing I'm really good at is working the cash register.
• 10:01
  But picking up after people and like Frank, I'll do it for friends and family at home.
• 10:05
  I love doing that, but doing it for public.
• 10:08
  my gosh.
• 10:08
  And you learn so much about, I hate to say this, you probably have this experience at your restaurants too.
• 10:14
  You learn so much about the people who are sitting at a table, their manners, how they eat, how they behave, how, you know, the fact that they, this is me, I'd like, my God,
• 10:26
  you're disgusting.
• 10:27
  You just threw your napkin on the floor and didn't pick it up.
• 10:30
  Didn't your mother teach you anything?
• 10:32
  You know?
• 10:33
  So I have to, I have to, you know, hats off to you or chef's hat off to you or the ladle off to you to even.
• 10:40
  consider opening a restaurant.
• 10:41
  That's amazing as well, but that's me.
• 10:44
  about that.
• 10:45
  You opened Holly Hill Inn in 2000.
• 10:47
  You bought it in 2000, opened it in 2001, and you said it was a terrifying experience to leap into the business.
• 10:56
  And it was an ongoing old tradition in central Kentucky, right?
• 11:01
  was the Holly Killeen, excuse me, had actually opened its doors in 1979.
• 11:09
  And it was opened by Rex and Rose Lyons, and they rented the home.
• 11:14
  It's 150 year old home, Nancy, and it sits on a 10 acre lot in the middle of the bluegrass in a little town called Midway, Kentucky.
• 11:22
  Was it a restaurant to begin with?
• 11:25
  It was.
• 11:25
  to begin with, and they also had two bedrooms upstairs.
• 11:31
  at the time, Sylvia, you remember this restaurant, at the time, Chris and I had opened as managing partners, a restaurant called Emmett's Restaurant on Tate's Creek Road, for Joe
• 11:40
  Elizabeth Coons, yes.
• 11:42
  And I was the chef and Christopher was the general manager.
• 11:46
  And we met through happenstance, a man named Bob Brouse, who is a writer and was writing a story about Emmett's.
• 11:55
  And he said, well, this is a lovely restaurant.
• 11:57
  You'll never leave here.
• 11:58
  And I said, I don't know why I said this, but I said, I would only leave it for the Holly Hillen and Midway.
• 12:03
  I had been kind of stalking this location because it, it was one of the few locations that was already a restaurant.
• 12:10
  didn't have to convert an old home into a restaurant, which could be daunting financially.
• 12:14
  And it had substantial grounds.
• 12:18
  don't own all 10 acres, but we do own two of them.
• 12:22
  And it's.
• 12:24
  And it looked a lot like the Innit Little Washington or the Herb Farm.
• 12:27
  These were restaurants that were very inspiring to me at the time.
• 12:29
  It still are.
• 12:31
  So yes, exactly.
• 12:35
  The Stone Barns at Blue Hill, all of those kinds of concepts.
• 12:40
  And Bob said, well, I own that with my father, but we'll never sell it.
• 12:45
  We've owned it for 100 years and we have a couple who rents it from us.
• 12:49
  So I doubt we'll sell it.
• 12:50
  But six months later, Bob did call me and say,
• 12:54
  The current operators were ready to get out.
• 12:57
  They had divorced and the woman in the partnership wanted to remarry and didn't want to run the restaurant.
• 13:03
  So they were ready to sell the business and he and his dad were ready to sell the property.
• 13:08
  And so we came out and the rest is history.
• 13:11
  We bought it on December 28th in 2000.
• 13:15
  We closed for five months and reopened on May 9th of 2001.
• 13:22
  And we lived upstairs.
• 13:23
  We sold our home, we sold everything we had, and we lived upstairs for the first four years.
• 13:31
  And then we were able to buy our house where I'm sitting right now is right next door to the Holly Hill Inn.
• 13:37
  It's an old log cabin.
• 13:38
  You can kind of see the logs in the background.
• 13:41
  That was was re was taken down in Perry County and reassembled here in 1986.
• 13:47
  Yeah.
• 13:48
  What great tradition.
• 13:50
  There you go.
• 13:52
  Yeah.
• 13:53
  I think it's time for just a short little break on that note, hearing a little bit about what's going on in Holly Hill Farm.
• 14:01
  And I love log cabins.
• 14:03
  So we'll be right back with the little log cabin in Kentucky.
• 14:08
  Hang tight.
• 14:38
  So Sylvie and I, we're back with Aweeta Michael, who is an amazing chef and a very fascinating person who's doing some really interesting things and talking to us from her
• 14:48
  log cabin in Kentucky, hence the little connection.
• 14:51
  It's like a little, think of Abe Lincoln, but I don't think he was Kentucky, so.
• 14:59
  Oh, okay, so so much for my high school.
• 15:03
  High school history class.
• 15:04
  I guess I got a D minus on that one.
• 15:06
  I think of Illinois, right?
• 15:12
  So Nancy, you were going to say...
• 15:16
  so the brain cramp.
• 15:20
  Right.
• 15:20
  should have had breakfast this morning.
• 15:22
  I guess we're talking about food, right?
• 15:24
  So we, you know, we're talking about your restaurants, but I'm also interested in, hearing a little bit more about some of the, things that you brought back.
• 15:35
  Cause I understand that you, learned a lot of your work and your, your experience in Europe, right.
• 15:42
  In France and Italy.
• 15:43
  And so much as I understand.
• 15:46
  if I'm correct, that
• 15:48
  Well, I've taken a lot of inspiration from France and Italy, but I haven't, I didn't travel to France and Italy.
• 15:55
  I have traveled there, but I didn't live there to learn to cook.
• 15:58
  I primarily learned my professional cooking experience was at, at least in terms of education was in New York City.
• 16:07
  But I went to culinary school there, then cooked in New York City for several years, and then came back to Kentucky and came back in 1993 and had a variety of
• 16:17
  experiences in the restaurant industry before we opened the Holly Hillen in 2000.
• 16:22
  So although I'm deeply inspired by it, I wish I could say I did cook in France, but I really have not, but I've read an incredible amount and used it as a point of research
• 16:33
  because I think there's so much influence, French influence in our Southern foodways that, and especially through
• 16:44
  gardening, which is kind of where all this started, especially through cooking out of the garden.
• 16:50
  And so that's kind of where my French and Italian influences come from.
• 16:55
  are you more focused on the fruits and vegetables or do you also look at the meats and the other products that come on our plate?
• 17:05
  I mean, quite frankly, my sister has cattle in Oklahoma and she'll say, well, we had to slaughter a calf because it drowned or they didn't slaughter the calf.
• 17:17
  The calf was already dead.
• 17:18
  They found it dead in a pond once.
• 17:20
  like, my God, you like picking up roadkill in your pond, really?
• 17:23
  you
• 17:24
  was fresh enough that they could do that.
• 17:27
  me, you so I'm, we're living in the country, but I kind of think of, I don't, I don't want to know the cute little eyes or the snotty little nose and the cow before I eat it.
• 17:35
  So, or, and the stories of hearing chickens running around with their heads cut off, oh my God, to me, it just, it's, it's a nightmare on, on Elm street kind of thing that I
• 17:44
  wouldn't want to live with.
• 17:46
  How do you get used to that?
• 17:47
  Or do you actually go to the solar houses to see what's being done as as a chef?
• 17:52
  Well, I do use a lot of locally raised and processed meats, but just as a reminder for everyone, the USDA oversees the processing of all meats that are sold in the United
• 18:05
  States.
• 18:05
  So I can't just go out in the backyard and kill a chicken and serve it to you in the restaurant.
• 18:10
  That is not what I'm doing.
• 18:12
  And yes, I would not be able to cut, I wouldn't feel so bad cutting the head off a chicken.
• 18:16
  I wouldn't be able to do it.
• 18:19
  But we do have several and,
• 18:21
  One of the things that happened in Kentucky, Nancy, is we had in the late 90s, the tobacco settlement.
• 18:30
  And Bill Clinton was president.
• 18:32
  We always seem to have a war on all the things in Kentucky.
• 18:35
  War on coal, war on tobacco, blah, blah.
• 18:37
  But what happened out of that tobacco settlement was as a result of tobacco, Kentucky had some of the more family farms than almost every other state in the country.
• 18:50
  small family farms because tobacco allowed people to make a living with a small sized farm.
• 18:57
  After the settlement, a lot of those farmers stopped growing tobacco or they grew on a contract and it allowed the diversification of these small family farms into a lot more
• 19:08
  livestock development, small livestock producers and small vegetable producers.
• 19:14
  And over the years, we've really developed a lot more processing in the state.
• 19:19
  So there are more USDA-inspected processors that process for certain farmers.
• 19:24
  And that's been great.
• 19:25
  I mean, the beef is fabulous.
• 19:27
  There's lots of beautiful lamb, pork, and chicken.
• 19:30
  There's primarily those four meats that I can get.
• 19:35
  then in terms of aquaculture, have a really, we have more, I think we have more coastline than Florida and Kentucky, but it's all freshwater in terms of our lakes, rivers, and
• 19:47
  streams.
• 19:48
  So we have a huge amount of locally farmed striped bass, shrimp, some salt water, some fresh water, things like that.
• 19:59
  There's just not a giant amount of that, but it is available, especially striped bass.
• 20:04
  Local striped bass is available.
• 20:06
  So it's catfish.
• 20:07
  All of our catfish is wild caught.
• 20:11
  And we have three or four of our most popular restaurants do a lot of fried catfish.
• 20:16
  So it all comes from the country.
• 20:18
  like a big bag.
• 20:20
  thank you.
• 20:23
  Yeah, I'm presuming they're not going catfish hunting with by hand.
• 20:27
  hear those stories too.
• 20:29
  Yeah.
• 20:29
  gosh, I've seen that online.
• 20:32
  crazy.
• 20:33
  Now, Kentucky is one of the few states that actually has and issues commercial fishing licenses for their big lakes out in Western Kentucky.
• 20:40
  And that's where we get, we have a big, large caviar industry out there based on the spoonbill and the American sturgeon and catfish.
• 20:49
  And a lot of times those processing places are in the same company.
• 20:55
  So yeah, I've visited a few.
• 20:57
  The guy that,
• 20:58
  we buy all of our catfish from has a craviar producer in his processing unit and it was really a fascinating process to watch and it was amazing.
• 21:09
  I have this.
• 21:09
  to hear a little bit more though about some of the family history and traditions that you have that you may have brought into your restaurant, whether it be with design, the foods,
• 21:21
  and some of the things that you remember as a child or even as a young woman or your husband, because he's a chef with you as well.
• 21:28
  Yes, we met on the first day of Cheskill.
• 21:32
  Now, unfortunately for him, you can see his messy desk behind him.
• 21:37
  He does all our financials and our wine buying, but he's a great cook and he gives me lots of advice.
• 21:47
  Yeah.
• 21:48
  Is there any childhood memory that stands out about other than the gardening gardens and such maybe a meal.
• 21:55
  a fantastic cook.
• 21:57
  And one of the things that happened to me as a child was when I was about 15, my mom went to work outside the home for the first time, or for the first time in many years.
• 22:10
  so moving into that part, we cooked together all the time, every night.
• 22:14
  In those days, people didn't really eat out much.
• 22:16
  I think there was one McDonald's in our town, and we only went there like maybe once a month as a special treat.
• 22:22
  Yeah, me too.
• 22:23
  as a specialty.
• 22:25
  Same, yes.
• 22:26
  So we cooked all the time and we had exchange students because my parents, my dad was a professor at the university.
• 22:32
  So we got involved in the exchange student program and we used to have Japanese exchange students.
• 22:37
  We did this for maybe three or four summers.
• 22:39
  And so we learned how to make tempura and we cooked all those, we fried so much tempura out of our garden.
• 22:48
  And it was really interesting.
• 22:52
  The community was very international in our neighborhood.
• 22:56
  There were, like I said, a lot of married student housing, a lot of graduate students at the university were from other countries.
• 23:02
  so, you know, going to Ruru's house for Indonesian food, one of my best friends, this was an international, but was from Louisiana.
• 23:12
  So his mom always made jambalaya and these kinds of things.
• 23:18
  I moved into my teenage years, I just became fascinated with cooking and I really cooked a lot of our family meals once my mom started working outside the home.
• 23:27
  And we used to love to make a lot of stir fries.
• 23:30
  So we, I have her wok now and I've really loved, always loved that process.
• 23:37
  That was big in the seventies, those little wok cookbooks that I have, I have a lot of those.
• 23:42
  The International Women's Club at the University of Kentucky was a formative cookbook for me.
• 23:47
  And I made a lot of different things out of that cookbook.
• 23:52
  I'm trying to remember a lot of curry, for example, the first time we had curry, I remember that.
• 23:57
  And I used to love the gourmet magazine.
• 23:59
  I'm sure you can think about that.
• 24:02
  I, when I became interested in food, I tell people this all the time.
• 24:06
  And most of the young cooks that we have can't believe it, but there was no internet, there was no cable, there was just.
• 24:13
  the beginning of cable television, there was no food network or anything like that.
• 24:18
  And the main food magazine was Gourmet Magazine.
• 24:20
  There wasn't a lot of photography, but there were these long columns about restaurants.
• 24:25
  There'd be a column about that there are these restaurants in New York City.
• 24:28
  So when I moved to New York City, I had notebooks filled with the restaurants I'd like to eat, I'd like to work at in New York.
• 24:35
  And so I just went those.
• 24:39
  Yeah.
• 24:41
  It was just announced that New Orleans was the number one food, I don't know who they surveyed to find this out, number one food.
• 24:49
  And so that kind of brought me to this question of the South.
• 24:52
  I know you're very into the Southern foodways.
• 24:55
  There's a huge movement.
• 24:58
  Nancy and I have been talking about that with Appalachia being so huge.
• 25:02
  I don't even know if Louisiana's in there, but.
• 25:04
  They were talking about all the fusion of different tastes and such in New Orleans.
• 25:08
  Is that kind of your thinking as you look upon the landscape of food?
• 25:12
  What is the whole story with New Orleans or even Appalachia and what's happening there?
• 25:18
  Well, Appalachia is a very diverse food culture, although it's harder for it to showcase its diversity because people have a stereotypical view of what Appalachia is.
• 25:30
  In Louisiana, you have the combination of French, Spanish, African-American, and Canadian.
• 25:41
  You know, they came down after the French Indian War from Canada and populated a lot of Louisiana.
• 25:48
  So you have all these really amazing influences that constitute Creole cooking and Cajun cooking.
• 25:56
  And I think also Louisiana has just done a phenomenal job at making their food culture part of their overall culture.
• 26:06
  You think of their food culture and you think of their musical culture together.
• 26:10
  So jazz, blues, and Louisiana cooking.
• 26:13
  And in a lot of other parts of the country, I don't think we've done as good a job saying, this is our food culture.
• 26:20
  Let's embrace it.
• 26:21
  This is who we are.
• 26:22
  And I do think we have that opportunity in Kentucky.
• 26:25
  that's a big part of what I do, is to try to explain to people how Kentucky's food culture is unique from other places.
• 26:33
  What I see as the big ingredients in our food culture, that really our food culture is not the hot brown sandwich.
• 26:40
  And it's more than bourbon, although bourbon is very important to the Kentucky food culture.
• 26:45
  But yes, I love Louisiana for that reason.
• 26:48
  And they have a very old restaurant culture.
• 26:51
  People have to remember that, that Louisiana, the New Orleans restaurant culture, dates back to the 1850s.
• 26:59
  So they have some of the oldest restaurants in America in New Orleans, more than one.
• 27:03
  So Antoine's would be the oldest in New Orleans, but there are others that have been
• 27:09
  operated for close to 100 years or maybe even 100 years plus.
• 27:13
  That's really difficult to find in a food culture.
• 27:18
  So it's been wonderful to see that celebration.
• 27:20
  When you think about Mardi Gras, which we just finished, they started celebrating Mardi Gras originally in Mobile.
• 27:29
  And that was in 1780s.
• 27:33
  Yeah.
• 27:34
  about Kentucky?
• 27:35
  Right.
• 27:35
  So, so what is sort of the food that Kentucky is known for?
• 27:40
  Cause we talked a little bit about Appalachia and we only have a little bit more to go.
• 27:44
  So I want to tighten this up a little bit for us.
• 27:47
  And, know, I looked at Appalachia the other day, just to figure out how big it was.
• 27:51
  Cause I don't think people even understand it goes 13 states, 423 counties.
• 27:58
  I mean, it's huge.
• 27:59
  It's not just, you know, Kentucky and West Virginia and the,
• 28:03
  backwards people.
• 28:07
  let me refine that question because I think we're known for bourbon and hot browns.
• 28:11
  But is there something deeper than that, Weida?
• 28:16
  you're going to learn.
• 28:17
  You're going to learn in our Derby show.
• 28:20
  I think that Kentucky really has a cuisine of corn.
• 28:24
  And I know America does to some degree, but in Kentucky, if you think about our past, we were the largest corn producing state in the 1850s.
• 28:34
  And that's largely when our distilling industry started to bloom and to really become an industry.
• 28:43
  A lot of that excess corn was distilled into corn liquor and then gradually started chipping it down to Louisiana.
• 28:49
  So corn is a big part of who we are.
• 28:52
  It's also a native, know, corn is the Native American food crop that the Native Americans actually taught us how as white taught white people how to grow.
• 29:01
  So we didn't starve to death when we first arrived here.
• 29:04
  And it's got this deep indigenous, you know, foundation and roots to it.
• 29:09
  And a lot of those, hoe cakes, cornbread,
• 29:12
  corn dodgers, hush puppies, grits, all of them stem from a Native American tradition.
• 29:18
  And in Kentucky, we had the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee Indian tribes.
• 29:24
  a lot of, and that was all the way through Appalachia, which goes from Georgia through Pennsylvania into New York.
• 29:30
  And I think the Appalachian Trail ends in Maine.
• 29:33
  So it's all the way up the Eastern seaboard.
• 29:38
  And it's, you know, there are lots of Italian communities throughout.
• 29:42
  So there are deep immigrant influences throughout Appalachia, along with sort of the cuisine of necessity at times, I think is what we call it.
• 29:53
  But, you know, lots of foraging.
• 29:55
  So you're talking about morel mushrooms, blackberries, lots of farm-based crops, which we still produce in Kentucky today, like sorghum, which is a particular kind of molasses,
• 30:08
  sassafras,
• 30:10
  all different kinds of dandelion greens, but we have wild mustard, lamb's ear.
• 30:16
  We grow all of these things, poke berries, poke salad.
• 30:21
  We grow all these things in the gardens at Holly Hill.
• 30:23
  And it's really, really fun to incorporate them into dishes.
• 30:29
  Yeah, foraging is really important in Kentucky.
• 30:31
  Nancy and I have talked about that up the hillside.
• 30:34
  My grandmother would go to pick up what might be weeds to us, but it was edible foods, and we still hear about that today.
• 30:43
  yeah, very much so, for sure.
• 30:45
  It's it's a part of life that I think we have gotten.
• 30:49
  We've forgotten over the years, and I'm a I'm a child of the the 70s.
• 30:54
  You know, well, the 60s, 70s.
• 30:57
  And, you know, quite frankly, it was Campbell's cream of mushroom soup was our cuisine.
• 31:04
  Right.
• 31:05
  Or going to McDonald's or Burger King was the special treat.
• 31:08
  So it really wasn't a time of growing up with Gourmet.
• 31:11
  And I think the.
• 31:13
  the current generation of kids or now young adults grew up on chicken fingers and whatnot because we were all busy, busy moms.
• 31:21
  Although dads are getting more involved and really understanding and having fun in the kitchen, which I love hearing about as well.
• 31:28
  But before we sort of sign off here, Aweeda, what is like one or two memories that you think or that really reaches into your heart that says, I want people to understand this.
• 31:42
  about the foods or even something that you loved and you love now today that brings back, I guess, a sense of home and comfort that's important to you and that you wanted the
• 31:56
  people to know about as well.
• 31:58
  sure.
• 31:59
  Well, I lost my mom 10 years ago.
• 32:03
  She was young because now I'm almost the age that she was when she passed.
• 32:07
  so every year, we cooked Thanksgiving dinner together.
• 32:11
  And every year since her passing, I have made Thanksgiving dinner in exactly the same menu with my daughter and my nephews and my nieces so that they can have the taste of their
• 32:22
  grandmother.
• 32:23
  So we keep every recipe exactly the same.
• 32:26
  And a lot of that menu came from my great-grandmother.
• 32:29
  So it's roast turkey, of course, but jibbler gravy with boiled eggs.
• 32:34
  And we have to have four different kinds of cranberry sauce.
• 32:37
  So everybody's cranberries get...
• 32:40
  And a lot of times we don't talk about Thanksgiving except at Thanksgiving time.
• 32:44
  But for our family, that meal...
• 32:46
  is really a touchstone and it's been after now 10 years of doing it now the kids I go in to make sure they don't burn the hell out of the turkey but pretty much they make all the
• 32:57
  pies and they make the dishes and it's it's wonderful.
• 33:02
  I say what you're saying, we interviewed Father Jim, and he adores you and you adore him, and we now adore him too, but the spirituality of food.
• 33:14
  I knew your mother and I knew how wonderful she was, and she became a writer later in life, and I know all of that, but that coming together and doing all of that at
• 33:24
  Thanksgiving has almost got a spiritual dimension to it, right?
• 33:28
  Yes, I think it does.
• 33:30
  mean, it is a big part of the way of how we remember her.
• 33:34
  And at first it was really sad the first few years, you you're so sad the person's not with you.
• 33:40
  But now we just celebrate the whole time and the pain has passed.
• 33:45
  Father Jim's mom too had that bad sauce.
• 33:48
  And of course he gave me her lasagna recipe, which I swore I would take to the grave and never divulge.
• 33:54
  It is a fantastic lasagna.
• 33:58
  Yeah, it's those dishes that give us the memory of the people that we've lost that are the most precious to me.
• 34:05
  My mom always made me eggplant caviar on my birthday, and I love that dish.
• 34:09
  It's like a very simple eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, and she would serve it on the little rye breads.
• 34:16
  Every single year for my birthday, she would make it.
• 34:17
  I make it all the time in the summer.
• 34:20
  And every time I make it, I think about probably the last time I had it with her, or the few.
• 34:26
  few different occasions that we ate it together.
• 34:29
  And I cherish those memories and a lot of my memories are tied to recipes like that.
• 34:35
  We celebrate life so much through many different activities and things, but honestly, Sylvia, I think you feel the same way, and Aweed, it sounds like you feel the same way
• 34:46
  too, that food really gives us a different sense of comfort and memory.
• 34:52
  And I would say peace and connection to not just the people sitting around the table, but the memories of family, whether they be
• 35:04
  relatives married in or close friends who become family.
• 35:09
  And that's, I think, the most important thing to remember that food is a way to nourish not just our bodies, but our souls and to bring good people together.
• 35:20
  And if you find out they're not so good, you're not inviting them back to the table again.
• 35:24
  So.
• 35:25
  That's the practical answer.
• 35:27
  Right.
• 35:27
  But on that note, we want to invite you back to our table again sometime in the future.
• 35:32
  thank you so much for being here.
• 35:33
  It has been a joy and a pleasure.
• 35:35
  And I look forward to coming to Kentucky one day to break bread with you, cornbread maybe in Kentucky with you and Sylvia.
• 35:46
  Take care.
• 35:46
  Bye bye.
• 35:47
  Goodbye.
• 35:48
  Bye.
• 35:50
  Okay, I'm going to stop recording, but just hang on a second.