Urvashi has also contributed recipes and articles to Great British Chefs, BBC Food, Olive Magazine, and the BBC Good Food Magazine. She volunteers with Forty Hall Farm and the Enfield Feasts supper club.

In this fascinating and insightful conversation, we talk about being a food and travel writer, family history, being a contestant on The Great British Bake Off, her future aspirations, the stories she wants to tell and how important it was to discuss the cover of her book ‘Biting Biting’ with her family before publishing.

Quick Links mentioned in the show

• Urvashi’s Instagram

• Bite #10 - Great British Bake Off memories and musings on spontaneity - this goes into more detail about Urvashi’s Great British Bake Off journey.

• Bite #5 - The day I face planted into a pile of Converse - Urvashi alluded to this post as this ‘event’ was the transition for me out of the corporate world and back into the world of food writing.

• Bite #3 - by Urvashi Roe - Biting Biting - a little about Urvashi’s volunteering journey.

• Olive Magazine podcast with guest Urvashi Row - Gujarati Snacking

By ‘Biting Biting’ on Amazon and at Kitchen Press - Independent food publisher

Transcript

When viewing the transcript, please note it is generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please review the audio recording before quoting from this transcript.

• 00:04:24 Applying for the Great British Bake Off

• 00:13:19 “Because that could give me a bit of a heart attack” Discussing the cook book cover with family before being published.

• 00:20:16 Hardest section of Biting Biting to write

• 00:42:59 Future Aspirations

• 00:44:55 Spending time in India and Sri Lanka

• 00:46:43 Gujarati Food, returning to her homeland, meeting people ranging from Maharajas to Goat Herders.

Additional links

• Who Writes What podcast

• List of Podcasts

• List of Food Writers

• List of Cookbooks

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Main Topic

Cooking and Recipes | Food Writing and Publishing | Restaurants and Chefs | Food History and Culture | Other

Join the group Chat for Hosts and Guests

Cooking and Recipes

Betty Eatz Podcast: Host - Betty Williams

• Learn how to identify good recipes and get a behind-the-scenes look into the life of food bloggers, cookbook authors, and recipe developers. They share their favorite tried-and-true recipe with listeners!

• Published - Monthly

Food History and Culture

History of Fresh Produce: Hosts - John Paap and Patrick Kelly (The History of Fresh Produce)

• The podcast where John and Patrick explore the wild, under appreciated history of our fruits & veg 🍊🥦 Fresh produce history + bad pronunciations.

• Published - Weekly

Outlaw’s Digest: Host - Dr. KC Hysmith

• Outlaw’s Digest is a podcast serving up a feast of malfeasance and felony from the pages of history, telling stories of wild true crimes from the history of food in sizzling style. Each episode, host and food scholar KC Hysmith tells a thrilling story pulled from the archives of history’s illicit appetites, vicious poisonings, cunning frauds, and daring heists.

• Published - Weekly

Food Writing and Publishing

Who Writes What: Host - Lynn Hill

• Conversations with food writers about who they are, their voice and how they became writers.

• Published - Fortnightly

Restaurants and Chefs

Other

From freelance marketing consultant to becoming a recipe developer, food photographer and the writer behind multiple publications such as ‘Of Batter and Dough’, ‘A Little and A Lot’, ‘Let’s Get Lost ’, ‘Mastermind for Food Writers’, and ‘The Food Writers Business Lab’, how does Rebecca plan, develop and photograph recipes and manage her multiple websites and publications while travelling on the road with her husband in an RV and more recently, a sailboat, which they travel on Lake Michigan in the summer.

In this chat, we discuss how Rebecca transitioned over to Substack, how she organises, plans, and develops recipes for her multiple websites. How and why her writing style has changed since moving to Substack. And the ‘Scandalous Story’ behind the title ‘Let’s Get Lost’.

See her kitchen inside her RV and sailboat in this Other People’s Kitchens Q&A with Rebecca.

Watch on YouTube HERE

Transcript

When viewing the transcript, please note it is generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors. Please review the audio recording before quoting from this transcript.

00:09:29 Moving into an RV

00:11.59 Transitioning over to Substack

00:15:56 How and why Rebecca’s writing style has changed

00:19:46 How Rebecca manages multiple websites and tasks.

00:37:19 Having a good time with Coffee chats.

00:42.02 Back burner ideas.

00:45:17 Hear the ‘Scandalous Story’ behind the title ‘Let’s Get Lost’ and the ‘drive to explore'.

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Cookbooks mentioned

Let's Get Lost

Recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure. Served up by a full time nomad with a generous helping of humor and honesty, and a pinch of snark.

By Rebecca Blackwell

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A. Hello! My name is Jessie-Sierra Ross and I am a former professional ballerina turned cookbook author, TV food segment creator on CBS and NBC affiliates, and food & lifestyle blogger at Straight to the Hips, Baby. My new cooking and home entertaining book, Seasons Around the Table, will be released next month, and I’m probably best known for my step-by-step recipes and light & bright food photography style. I like to say the artistic and aesthetic skills that I honed in the ballet studio have translated to my passion for recipe development, floral food styling, and flair for the dramatic in tablescape design. The theatre and the dining room are alike in a lot of ways - it’s a sort of production to throw an outstanding dinner party!

I’m a native Bostonian, but now live out in the Western part of Massachusetts. After leaving my professional ballet career and moving to a more “farm to table” life with my growing family, my interest in cooking really took off. I started my blog as a hobby at first. Straight to the Hips, Baby served as a connection to the outside world and a respite from the baby-babble that surrounded me at the time! After several successful years and a switch to full-time food content creation, I am still enthusiastically teaching the home cook to create their own incredible meals and special events at home.

My newsletter, Jessie-Sierra; The Last Bite, is an extension of my online, TV, and publishing work. I wanted to give a more informal look into my own food content creation and provide behind the scenes commentary about everything from TV cooking segments, sharing my latest favorite recipe, or a look at the nitty-gritty of being a first-time cookbook author. Where my blog is truly focused on sharing my recipes and home entertaining advice, my Substack is closer to my “speaking voice”; I am funny, a bit sarcastic, ever curious, and always ready for a cocktail!

Q. Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, and when writing for your Substack publication Jessie-Sierra; The Last Bite.

A. I am fortunate to have a large kitchen that is definitely the opposite of the cramped galley kitchens I started with! My kitchen has a modern French Country feel with ivory tile backsplashes, dark granite counters, and lots of cherry wood cabinetry. The working area where I make and create all of my recipes opens up to a sunny eat-in area with windows on three sides, and long views of Mount Tom, (which local legend says was the inspiration for the “Grinch’s” mountain in the Dr. Seuss book). We use this room not only to enjoy breakfast around the table, but it’s also our main “photography studio” for our food and beverage photoshoots!

I love that we have an open concept kitchen layout with a large central island for prep work. The architect who designed our house was more of a home entertainer than a cook, so the “kitchen triangle” is not really present. It can sometimes feel like I’m running a marathon during big holiday meal preparations because I am constantly racing around the island to my sink, the stove, and the ovens!

My kitchen feels very much like a family kitchen. My kids are always ransacking the pantry for snacks and there is child-art taped to the cabinetry. We keep overflowing baskets of fruit on the kitchen counters, a loaf of banana bread or a batch of muffins under a tea towel, and an espresso machine on in the corner. We’ve decorated this space a bit eclectically, with a raw-edge table anchoring the eat-in space, lots of plants, fine art, as well as vintage pieces from our families. I think my kitchen really reflects who we are as a family; warm, inviting, creative, and just a bit chaotic! My kitchen is the real beating heart of my home.

Q. What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A. We’ve upgraded the appliances through the years (ask me about my oven that chose to literally catch on fire behind the convection fan during one eventful Thanksgiving!). My favorite gadget though is my Samsung ovens. With amazing temperature controls and special settings for steam and bread baking, I think my oven acts as the true workhorse of my kitchen. Other smaller items I love are my KitchenAid Professional Grade Stand Mixer, my Shun Santokus, and my Spinn coffee maker. I would be a seriously cranky cook without all of these tools.

Q. You have made several appearances on TV. Could you share more about this experience and how you initially got involved in television? What advice would you offer to others interested in pursuing similar opportunities?

A. Truthfully, I fell into television work by chance. I had been writing recipes for my blog and working with brands on food photography projects for several years when I was introduced to a local morning show co-host at a charity function. We got to talking, and she invited me to appear on her program for a cooking demo. Now, keep in mind, I had ZERO background in television and public speaking. None. For all of my on-stage experience, ballet is a silent art, so the thought of speaking and cooking on camera sort of terrified me! But I am not one to back down from a challenge! I went on camera not knowing what to expect, and it was an amazing experience. I found TV to be very similar to my work on the ballet stage from a ‘performer’s mindset’! I loved it!

I’ve built on those first couple of cooking segments, and I’ve filmed over 150 live and pre-taped studio segments over the last five years. I appear monthly on several regional NBC and CBS affiliates and have filmed with PBS in Denver, and other streaming channels. I focus primarily on cooking and home entertaining content. My goal is to have my own television series focusing on from-scratch cooking, home entertaining, and modern hosting concepts (pssst… anyone know a good TV/media agent or someone who is casting? I’m looking!).

Local and national television appearances are a wonderful way to build your brand, connect with new audiences, and meet interesting people in your area. I think creators should definitely look into television work as an additional creative platform and a way to diversify their paid client offerings. Keep in mind though that you should already have some specialist credibility (are you an expert in your topic?) and be relatively comfortable speaking on your topic for at least 4 minutes. The average segment length is anywhere from 3-8 minutes long, sometimes with a partner, but sometimes you’re on your own. Honestly, if you’re excited and knowledgeable about your type of content, then chances are there are more people out in the viewing audience that would like to learn more about it too!

I would be happy to connect with other readers on how to break into television cooking segments and refine your on-camera presentation. In fact, I have a Substack Newsletter dedicated to some of these tips already, with another installment coming soon!

Q. Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A. Ha! Where should I start?! I mentioned how my oven decided to burn out during one Thanksgiving, with a half-roasted turkey inside. I’ve also had our house sewer line break during a huge dinner party (No bathrooms! No washing your hands! Ack!). Still, I think the first ever Thanksgiving that I hosted after moving out of my parents’ house was the most chock-full of funny and unforced errors! I left the bag of giblets inside the turkey, and surprise! It was still there at carving time. I had never made dough for apple pies before, and… you could tell. My guests were too polite to say anything directly, but there were plenty of pie crusts left on their plates. Fortunately, cooking is an evolution - a combination of learned skills, fond memories, and taking chances.

Q. How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live? Are there fresh food markets or farmer’s markets available? Do you grow your own produce?

A. Boston (and New England as a whole) has a really diverse variety of regional cuisines, thanks in part to our history as a port city and from generations of immigrants bringing their own unique flavors to the New World. Whether it’s amazing Italian breads and pasta dishes found in the North End, Polish pierogis from those that settled west of Boston, or the multiculturally influenced dishes from Cape Verdean immigrants, New England is filled with delicious food!

I was lucky enough to grow up in front of some of the last open acreage in the city of Boston, and my parents had a full summer garden each year. Plots of cherry tomatoes, green beans, and tall sunflowers were normal to me. However, it wasn’t until I left the city for the wide-open spaces of Western Massachusetts that I realized just how diverse our locally sourced produce could be. We have loads of small farm stands and farmer’s markets, dairies, and orchards in my area. Although this may not be the most competitive of vegetables, the town right next to mine is internationally known for its high-quality asparagus (Hadley, Massachusetts!). Farming is a real movement out here, and I’m thankful to be able to take advantage of it!

Although I came from a family of green-thumbs, I tend to only grow edible flowers and herbs each season. I do have several lovely flower garden beds as well. You’ll see a lot of my home-grown blossoms featured in my cookbook and blog. I have a dream of setting up some real garden beds in the not-so-distant future, to grow all of the tomatoes and cucumbers I can eat!

Q. Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A. I would love to replace my electric stove for an induction range. Working with electric can make higher heat cooking more difficult to achieve and the consistency of heat can be a problem. I also won’t rule out a kitchen renovation in the future, but I really do love my kitchen as is!

Q. What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A. Oh boy! I have loads of advice for the home cook and budding home entertainer!

• Emphasize quality over quantity; Whether I’m buying a specialty ingredient or a new kitchen tool, I like to keep in mind the quality of the item for the value. If I’m hosting a dinner party, I’ll splurge on a high-quality cut of beef for my guests, but look for more cost-effective starches and vegetables to round out the meal. The same mentality goes for high end spirits too. It’s better to have a little of something amazing, than a lot of inferior tasting product for less cost.

• Streamline your menus; I like to create dining experiences for my family and friends, without being tied to the hot stove all night! The point of entertaining is not only to host your guests, but to also enjoy their company! When I menu plan, I will often pick out one or two “star recipes”; recipes that require a bit more work, but will carry the dinner. Usually these are main dish recipes and desserts. I try to make the rest of the menu delicious, but easy. A fresh harvest salad or garlic and feta roasted potatoes, are simple to make and don’t need any babysitting while the “star” whole roasted chicken cooks in the oven.

Similarly, look to cooking techniques that can also streamline the cooking process. A sous vide machine (cooking via heated water bath) is fantastic for cooking large cuts of meats. Simply season and vacuum seal your protein in a plastic bag and then set the sous vide machine to your desired temperature. It’s a “one and done” type of cooking technique and once your protein is at temperature, it maintains it without overcooking.

That means it’s ready and waiting for you when it’s time to serve, instead of the other way around – a planner’s dream!

• Cocktails can create magic. As cooks, we put a lot of time and energy into the menu and meal prep. Knowing how to whip up one or two bespoke cocktail recipes is a game changer! It doesn’t have to be super complicated, either. A fresh grapefruit Aperol spritz is a refreshing summertime drink that takes two minutes to make. Just pour pink grapefruit juice, Aperol, prosecco, a little bit of simple syrup, and a dash of soda water over ice and stir. No shaker required! If you wanted to bring your mixology skills up a notch, try your hand at herb or spice infused simple syrups that you can make yourself. Remember, simple syrup is just a 1:1 ratio of sugar and water boiled together. You can add cinnamon sticks for a holiday syrup, or fresh rosemary to perk up your next gin sour.

Q. How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

A. I have written a cookbook! Just this year! Seasons Around the Table (follow this link) is my tribute to florally inspired cooking and home entertaining. With over 100 original recipes, seasonal menus, modern home entertaining advice, and floral-infused table designs, this cookbook is your all-in-one party planner! My book is filled to the brim with bright & colorful food photographs (all created in-house) to inspire you to throw your own amazing events with just a little help from me!

Do I have any favorite cookbooks? Ha! This is a dangerous question! To give you a hint at the size of my cookbook collection; I’ve replaced all of the traditional volumes of Dickens and Bronte on the shelves with cooking and mixology books! I love cookbooks. They’re like small windows into different cultures.

The very first cookbook I ever bought myself was Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child (an idol of mine), Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck. I spent my childhood falling in love with cooking and hosting from watching Julia Child’s original black and white cooking episodes on my local WGBH station.

I also love cookbooks that feed the soul; Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris is a favorite, Yotam Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem is a fascinating look into classic Middle Eastern cuisine, and Olia Hercules’ Mamushka takes me back to some of the flavors of my childhood. Special mention also has to go to Tartine Bread for all-things sourdough, and Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking too.

Q. Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A. Absolutely! I have two that really stand out in my mind. Both are flavorful and nourishing, but they can be made with little fuss.

On Jessie-Sierra: The Last Bite.

Summer Peach Buckle - This is such a simple fruit filled cake recipe, but it’s one that will have your family raving for more! Loads of juicy fresh peaches are coated with a vanilla-butter cake batter, and then baked until golden. Serve warm with some vanilla ice cream, and you have a cake that’s works just as well for a fancy dinner party as it does a coffee date!

On Straight to the Hips, Baby

Quick Chicken Paprikash – This is a weeknight chicken recipe that tastes like it’s been braising all day! Savory chicken thighs are quickly sauteed and then added to a sauce of shallots, bell peppers, garlic, smoked paprika, chicken stock, and sour cream. Rich, silky, and slightly spicy, I like to serve this Hungarian-inspired paprikash over smooth, buttery mashed potatoes.

Thank you so much for sharing your kitchen with us, Jessie-Sierra. Visit and subscribe to The Last Bite. Follow on Instagram and Facebook.

Read more in the Q&A Series. Discover more Food Writers on Substack

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A: My name is Juneisy and I’m a food historian, food writer, and baker. When I’m not cooking, baking, or eating, I’m thinking about food or writing about food in some way. I live in New York City; Brooklyn, more specifically. I moved here eleven years ago to go to graduate school and haven’t left. Maybe never will.

I have a PhD in history from New York University, where I wrote a dissertation about trans-imperial food trade in the North American Southeast during the first half, give or take, of the 18^th century. That work did not involve recipes, but I have been working with historical recipes since about 2011. That is how I started Historical Foodways when it was still a blog, writing about recipes in historical context.

Although now in the Substack form I don’t always have a recipe. Part of the reason I moved Historical Foodways from a website to Substack was because I felt a little bit stuck, as the audience I had had come to expect recipes in every post. I wanted to expand the scope of my historical food writing and a new platform felt like a bit of blank slate.

I like to think of Historical Foodways, and myself, as being at the intersection of food, history, and culture. I am Cuban and some of the work I’ve done on Historical Foodways reflects that. I now have a section for “Cuban Recipes.” In the last few years I’ve tiptoed into culinary tourism writing, which has been a wonderful way of bringing food and travel, two of my passions, together.

Q - Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, and when writing for your publication?

A: My kitchen is a relatively narrow galley kitchen with a wall of shallow shelves at one end that I use as pantry storage. On one side of the refrigerator, there is a deep floor-to-ceiling cabinet. The center shelf has an electrical outlet, which I think might be for something like a microwave. I use this as my appliance storage shelf.

Instead of cabinets, all of the lower storage, that is, under the counters, are deep, tall, wide drawers. I was unsure about this setup when I moved in, but in the few years I’ve lived here, I’ve come to like it. I think it works better than cabinets in terms of being able to stack and access things like pots and pans.

A neat detail is that there is a narrow but deep and very tall cabinet meant for cutting boards. I’d like to have this in every kitchen from now on! There is an OK amount of counter space, especially for New York City, but, unfortunately, the sink is right in the middle of it, cutting the space off into smaller and less useful spaces.

Like most modern kitchens, it is open to the living spaces, which I don’t love. Give me doors! I spend a lot of time there, whether I’m baking treats, making dinner, or recipe-testing for Historical Foodways or other clients. It’s a hard-working kitchen!

Absent from my kitchen is a microwave oven. We haven’t had one in ten years for no reason other than the benefits of having one do not outweigh the drawbacks of losing that much counter space. Neither of the apartments we’ve lived in here in NYC has had a microwave, and we just never bought one.

Q - What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A: I love gadgets as much as I love food so I have a lot of them. If I had to pick the one I cannot live without, I’d say it’s my stand mixer. I have an 8-quart commercial KitchenAid mixer with bowl lift. I use this pretty often for everything from the obvious cakes, cookies, breads etc. to tasks like shredding chicken and whipping potatoes. That is just with the accessories that come with the mixer; I have several optional accessories like a meat grinder, sausage maker, and pasta roller. There is very little in terms of food prep that a bowl lift KitchenAid mixer can’t do!

For all of my adult life I had made rice – which I do often – on the stove, but a couple of years ago my husband gave me a Zojirushi rice maker for my birthday and that thing is a marvel. It does take a long time to make rice, about an hour, but it makes it perfectly every time and will hold it warm as long as you need. This frees me up to do other tasks without having to monitor a pot of rice on the stove.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my tiny AccuWeight Digital Gram Scale. Most kitchen scales can’t measure small amounts, and they certainly can’t measure parts of grams. But this scale, which maxes out at 300 grams, can accurately measure as little as 0.05 grams. In home kitchens, this is useful for weighing ingredients like yeast, baking soda, baking powder, etc. I use it every time I bake.

Q - You recently went to culinary school. Can you please tell us about that and your reasons for taking this career path?

A: Culinary school was definitely an adventure, especially after having taught “kids” this age when I was doing my PhD and adjunct-teaching. It was at a community college, which was a very different experience from places like the Culinary Institute of America or the Institute of Culinary Education, which I also went to for their bread baking program. The instruction was topnotch though, and the kitchens are gorgeous; I’m not disparaging it by any means!

Culinary school is something that I’ve thought about on and off my whole adult life so it wasn’t an entirely out of the blue decision. When I quit my secondary education teaching job in 2022, I decided that I was going to focus on food and (culinary) travel writing. A lot of that work is on a freelance basis, so I also looked for full-time jobs like writer and editor at food media companies, as well as recipe developer and recipe editor at meal kit companies and the like. It turned out that many of those jobs asked not just for writing and editing experience, which I have (at least the writing part), but also formal culinary training. Although I had extensive cooking and baking experience, as well as some recipe development experience as part of my historical food work, I did not have formal culinary education. After nearly two years of being unable to find the kind of full-time work I wanted, I decided to go ahead and get that formal culinary training. That’s how I landed in culinary school.

Within culinary school, I was in the baking and pastry track officially, but also took as many of the savory kitchen classes as I could. I did it for professional development, but also personal enjoyment. Although I was initially paying for culinary school out of pocket, I was awarded the Les Dames d’Escoffier New York’s Stirring the Pot Scholarship, which paid for my last semester. It was great to be recognized as the scholarship is granted to “an exceptional” female culinary student with an interest in food writing, cookbook writing, and recipe development, which were the interests that took me to culinary school in the first place.

Then, after finishing culinary/pastry school earlier this year, I went to the Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan for their 8-week long Techniques of Artisan Bread Baking course with a bread legend as the instructor. Halfway through all of this, I returned to college teaching, albeit remotely with a limited term appointment, so I was a student and professor simultaneously, and that was interesting to say the least.

Q - How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live? Are there fresh food markets, or farmer’ markets available?

A: New York City is truly a food lover’s paradise.

Between the amazing restaurants and bakeries, the extensive choice of ethnic and specialty grocers, the farmers markets, CSAs (community supported agriculture), and the many pick-your-own type of farms within easy driving distance, I can’t imagine being in a better place. There are still some gaps in terms of available cuisines, but something new pops up in what seems like a weekly basis. But that is not to say that you can often find it all in your neighborhood. You have to travel across the city to find variety. My neighborhood, for example, has mostly Mexican restaurants, while the next neighborhood is full of Italian places. Still, I’d rather it be that way than a sea of chain restaurants, which, by the way, are not very common in most of NYC.

As for the types of foods people associate NYC with, bagels and pizza, that requires more time and space than what we have! For years, I lived across the street from one of NYC’s best bagel places, The Bagel Hole, and they are fantastic. Pre-pandemic, they had the best egg bagels in the city, in my opinion. Sadly, they stopped making them sometime in 2020 and never brought them back.

With some exceptions, I’m not a pizza person, so I really can’t comment much on that.

I would be remiss if I didn’t toot my own horn for a moment and share that I’m also doing what I can to promote local fresh food and agriculture. I’m currently a vendor at one of NYC’s farmers’ markets selling bread and other baked goods. Last year I started Línea Bakery, a microbakery in my apartment, which New York allows with registration and approval under the 20-C home processor exemption, colloquially known as cottage law. I had been doing pre-orders and pop-ups, then this year I got into the Battery Park City farmers market run by Down to Earth Markets. So, once a week, between my teaching job and just trying to have a life with my family, I turn my apartment kitchen into a production bakery and make more bread than I ever thought I could. Then I take it to market and marvel at the fact that people actually come back week after week for my bread and other treats.

While my base flour is not local, I buy King Arthur flour, my specialty grains like rye, spelt, emmer, cornmeal, etc. are sourced from regional (Northeast and Mid-Atlantic) regenerative farms and stone-milled to order less than a mile from my home in Brooklyn. My goal as my bakery grows is to move entirely to regional flour.

So if you find yourself in New York City on a Sunday morning during market season, stop by and get some bread! And while you’re at it, get some produce, fish, dairy, and more from my fellow vendors.

Q - Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A: I rent so there really is nothing I can change. But if I could, I would move the sink to one end of the counter where it is now, making a larger workspace. I would also change the backsplash and the cabinets. They are made of the same material and no matter how much I clean, scrub, and degrease, they always look streaky and it drives me crazy. Also, the hood over the gas stove does not vent to the outside, which I think is pretty shortsighted and I would change it.

Q - What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A: Start cooking with a clean kitchen and clean as you go as much as possible. If you have a dishwasher, start with an empty dishwasher so you can load as you go. This makes the cleaning afterwards so much less daunting. I find a messy kitchen overwhelming and difficult to work in, so learning to clean as I go has been a game changer. It’s not always possible to clean absolutely everything, of course, but anything you can do is better than being faced with a mountain of dirty pots, pans, and utensils after dinner when all you want to do is sit down and relax.

I have a gas stove, which is notorious for being difficult to clean. I’ve learned that the best way to get rid of stubborn burnt-on food and fat is using a small pressure steamer to loosen up the gunk. You still need some elbow grease and a rough sponge to scrub, but nowhere near as much as without the steam.

Q - Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A: Yes! This recipe, called Ropa Vieja (literally “old clothes”) is a translation and adaptation from a very popular Cuban cookbook called ‘Cocina Criolla’. I’ve changed some things because I think they work better, and others for better work flow. I make this often because it’s one of my favorite things to eat. Too bad that the price of skirt steak has skyrocketed the way that it has. You can serve it over rice.

Ropa Vieja

2 lbs beef skirt steak [you may use flank]
1 whole onion
2 whole carrots
a few parsley sprigs
1 tsp peppercorns

For the sauce:

¹/₃ cup of olive oil
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1 red bell pepper
1 8oz-can of tomato sauce
1 tsp of salt
1 bay leaf
¹/₂ cup of dry cooking wine (Cubans use something called vino seco, which is seasoned)

Method

• Remove as much of the fat and gristle from the beef as you can and place it in a large pot with the onion, carrots, parsley, and peppercorns. Cover with plenty of water, enough so that the beef is submerged for the cooking process.

• Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, for an hour and a half to two hours, until the beef is fork-tender. Some foam may float to the top during simmering, skim it off as best you can.

• When the beef is cooked, remove it from the liquid and place it on a cutting board. Discard the vegetables and peppercorns, strain the broth and save it for another time.

• Shred the beef into thin strands.

• Slice the onion and the bell pepper. Crush the garlic cloves and cook them in hot oil with the onion, then add the bell pepper and cook them a bit longer, until they start to soften.

• Add the rest of the ingredients [including the beef] and cook, covered, on low heat for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally so it doesn’t stick

Q - Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A: Thankfully, I haven’t had many. There is one that comes to mind because it has been the most egregious one.

I was working on a recipe from the ‘Book of Sent Soví,’ a 14^th-century Catalan culinary text, that required me to blend almonds with the liquid from poaching squid. I poured the squid broth and almonds into the blender, plugged the blender in, and was immediately showered with the seafood concoction. I had not put the lid on and the blender button was set to ON, so when I plugged it in, it immediately started blending, sending squid-flavored sludge into every inch of my kitchen and of me. The spectacle was aggravated by the fact that I was stunned for a few seconds, frozen in disbelief, as the blender kept spinning and broth kept raining down. By the time I pulled the plug, the damage was done. It was a nightmare to clean and you better believe I haven’t made the same mistake again!

Thank you so much for inviting us into your kitchen, Juneisy. Visit and subscribe to Historical Foodways.

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A. I was born in Essen, Germany - a city that is far from a culinary hotspot - but have spent the past 25 years dividing my time between a small village in Austria, London, Rome and Brussels, Belgium, which is home for now. I have my parents to thank for not only being exceptional home cooks but also for exposing my siblings and I to an incredibly broad variety of different ingredients, flavours and culinary traditions from a young age. In part because I was born just after my parents returned from living in Morocco.

It was no doubt my childhood, nourished by a world of different flavours, that planted the seed for my passion for all things food and the wish to share my own recipes. At first through a food blog, followed by freelance recipe development and food writing assignments, a series of supper clubs and pop-up events, and now my newsletter Real Simple Food on Substack.

My newsletter focuses on recipes for delicious baked goods and desserts that make the most of all the flavours seemingly hidden in our pantries. For example, Chamomile Financiers, French Toast with Miso Sugar and Umeboshi Plum Compote or a Preserved Lemon Drizzle Cake. I hope that reading my newsletter will encourage my readers to start looking at their pantries with a fresh pair of eyes and start seeing a whole new world of possibilities for delicious cakes and sweet treats with intriguing new flavours and flavour combinations.

Q. Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role it plays with your family, when writing for your ‘Real Simple Food publication?

A. My kitchen is a typical galley kitchen, although somewhat lighter in terms of the number of hanging cupboards on one side of the kitchen in a vain attempt to try and get more light into the kitchen.

When I first bought the apartment, I made do with the 20 year old somewhat ramshackle kitchen the previous owners (and no doubt those before them) had left behind - which included a temperamental gas oven which basically forced me to relearn how to bake!

After a year or two, I finally bit the bullet and had the kitchen redone with an interior designer. We shifted the appliances around a bit to allow for better flow and maximise counter space in close proximity to the stove and also added quite a few more outlets and a more powerful extractor fan. At the same time we also tried to make the most of the fact that while my kitchen’s square footage is small, the high ceilings do allow for tall storage cupboards. Although the joke is on me - to reach the two top shelves in my cupboards I need a stepstool!

Between initially running a supper club out of my apartment, feeding my husband and toddler and developing all the recipes for my newsletter, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. Although I typically retreat to the dining room to take photos for my newsletter because there is simply not enough light in the kitchen most days.

Q. What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A. This is such a good question - I actually wrote a whole post about this a while back. There are a lot of kitchen gadgets I use day in day out, but I would have to say my favourite gadgets include my microplane (excellent not just for grating nutmeg, ginger or garlic but also small portions of spices like Tonka Bean or Long Pepper and when I don’t want to bust out my electric spice grinder or use my mortar and pestle), a heat-resistant spatula (there is nothing as sad as a ruined batch of caramel because your spatula has melted into it!), my electric spice grinder (which does short work of grinding whole spices but also turns my beloved hojicha, hibiscus calyces and fig leaves into a fine powder to incorporate into desserts), bench scrapers (not just an extension of my hands when it comes to manipulating sticky dough but also helpful for scraping up the remnants of my toddler’s dinner off the floor!), kitchen scales with rechargeable batteries (I used to go through an alarming amount of batteries until my husband bought a pack of rechargeable batteries - no idea why I did not think of that!).

Q. You have a ‘growing stack of Moleskine notebooks’, what do you use them for and what were the influences behind this collection?

A. I’m a big stationery nerd and love using notebooks for all kinds of things. The stack of black Moleskine notebooks is where I keep all my often hastily written notes (some admittedly more legible than others) with recipe drafts, menu ideas (initially for dinners with friends and family, later for the supper club), notes of tasty things I tried on my many trips abroad and numerous visits to restaurants. For example, the umeboshi plum ice cream I tried when visiting my friend Laura in Washington D.C. a while back.

These notebooks are also where I brainstorm different ways of using ingredients and flavour combinations to try. Because whenever I discover new-to-me ingredients or flavours I immediately wonder how else I could use them. Given my sweet tooth, that also means trying to figure out whether I can turn said ingredient or flavour into a delicious dessert or cake. For example, if preserved lemons lend pungency and a bright lemony flavour to all kinds of stews, marinades, garlicky yoghurt etc. then maybe we can also use preserved lemons to add a more complex lemon flavour to cakes, cookies or buttercream. In turn, all these notes fuel my recipe development and writing - first for my now defunct blog and today my newsletter.

Q. Your recipes and photos have appeared online and in print, ranging from The Guardian to Food52. How did this come about and do you have any tips for other food writers to be able to do the same?

A. I think a few years ago,it was probably much easier for someone relatively unknown like myself to get their recipes and photos into online publications, but luck no doubt also plays a role! In terms of how I did it, I followed the pitching guidance in ’s wonderful book ‘Will Write for Food’ (shoutout to her wonderful Substack as well!) and then just kept on pitching to publications like Food52 until something was accepted. I also always send a follow-up email after a couple of weeks or so - you never know when a pitch might have simply gotten lost in someone’s overflowing inbox! The moment I receive a rejection, I then think about how I could repurpose that same pitch or idea for another publication.

I also participated in any recipe contests I saw, and for which I had existing recipes I could submit or develop a new recipe in time. That is how I got a number of my recipes into the Guardian and the Telegraph. And with Food52 I think having already participated in a number of their recipe contests might have also been what made them consider commissioning me for a few recipes.

To start it probably also helps pitching smaller publications that might be hungry for content and not quite so inundated with pitches as larger publications. And getting a few bylines in turn will likely also help win more pitches. It is also worth remembering that many publications plan their content 6-12 months in advance. So now might already be too late to pitch Christmas content but it is probably a good time to pitch Easter content, for example. Other than that, I think it helps to be persistent (while remembering that acceptance rates for pitches are probably in the low single digits) and making sure that your pitches are as tailored to a publication as possible.

Q. How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in Brussels, Belgium? Are there fresh food markets, or farmers’ markets available?

A. Allegedly, Belgium has a higher density of Michelin-starred restaurants per capita than France. In short, Belgians care about good food, so it should be no surprise that similar to France, there is a range of excellent markets, and farmer’s markets moving from one neighbourhood to the next as the week progresses. In fact, there are at least 3 within walking distance from my apartment.

Typical Belgian food, while delicious, is quite meat and carb heavy. That being said, Brussels, my current home, is a truly international city so the dining scene is very diverse. I also feel like the Brussels food scene has come a long way in the 10 years I have lived here, and you can now easily find excellent sourdough bread and pastries as well as superb Ramen, Neapolitan pizza, Korean, Peruvian or Ethiopian food, both traditional and modern Vietnamese etc..

Q. Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A. That is a good question. I worked with an interior designer to come up with the kitchen. Back then I was keen to maximise the light in what is a fairly narrow kitchen which does not get much direct sunlight. So I did not want to crowd the walls with lots of cupboards. A few years down the line with a toddler in the mix and another baby on the way, I think some more cupboards would have been great to tidy away some of our growing number of appliances that we don’t all use every day, be it the microwave, my stand mixer, the toaster etc.

Right when you enter the kitchen we also have a small area with two barstools - while I initially enjoyed sitting there in the mornings with a cup of coffee, those leisurely mornings are gone for now and I am thinking of converting that area into another cupboard because I think we need the storage space.

Equally, as much as I love the open shelf we have, it turns out I am not the kind of person with a talent for curating open shelves and keeping them tidy and dust free so I don’t think I will be going for open shelves in any future kitchen.

Q. What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A. My biggest tips for keeping the kitchen tidy are (i) always having a rubbish bowl next to you while you cook or bake (to save you from multiple trips to the bin), (ii) tidying up and washing up as you go along and (iii) washing up anything that is left right after a meal or at least putting any pots and pans that need soaking to soak. Also, the luxury of having a weekly cleaner should not be underestimated!

Another organisation trick I find super helpful is that the moment my husband or I finish one of our staples, we immediately put it on our shared running grocery list.

Otherwise I like to keep a few staples in our pantry and freezer that allow us to assemble quick meals even when we are otherwise low on groceries - that includes things like rice, pasta, passata plus a few tinned foods like tuna, sardines, chickpeas etc., some frozen vegetables and frozen gyoza. It is nice to know that even when our fridge is bare we can have a tasty and nutritious meal on the table in under 30 minutes.

Q. How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

A. I am too embarrassed to count how many cookbooks I currently own, but suffice to say I have a large bookshelf in the dining room dedicated solely to my cookbook collection, and I fear we may soon run out of space for additional cookbooks.

Narrowing down my cookbook collection to my favourites is hard but the ones I turn to again and again are the two Flavour Thesaurus editions from Niki Segnit and the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen books Extra Good Things and Shelf Love. There is also a series of Italian cookbooks covering different regions of Italy by Maria Teresa Di Marco, which I first came across when I lived in Rome and which I adore - whenever I am in Italy and I see a new-to-me one, I have to pick them up. They are beautifully photographed and the recipes are all delicious and work great.

I have not yet written any cookbooks myself but it is a big dream of mine to write a cookbook and I hope to be able to realise that dream in the coming years.

Q. Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A. It’s hard to pick but my Prune Sticky Toffee Pudding is definitely a favourite of mine. The prunes give the sponge such a beautifully velvety crumb with a slight fruity note. And then there is a tiny bit of heat from the Chinese Five Spice Powder which is added to the sponge. And to top it all off, you pour lots of Miso Butterscotch Sauce over everything. It is the perfect thing to have for dessert on a cold autumn or winter day and in some ways I cannot wait for temperatures to drop so I can enjoy this again!

Q. Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A. Oh god - where to begin? I think kitchen disasters are unavoidable when you cook and bake a lot. The most memorable was probably trying to bake a Bagatelle aux Fraises for my sister Helena’s birthday a few years ago. It’s her favourite cake in the whole wide world and consists of a genoise sponge filled with strawberries that is sandwiched with a French buttercream (and often topped with a decorative layer of marzipan).

While I had made it several times before, getting the French buttercream right isn’t easy and requires you to get the sugar cooked to just the right temperature. Otherwise, the buttercream won’t set properly, and you will end up with butter soup instead, which is exactly what happened to me on that occasion.

Undeterred, I still tried to assemble the Bagatelle. And when the buttercream, as expected, started running down the sides of the cake, I tried to scoop it back into the cake - first with a palette knife and then using my bare hands - it wasn’t pretty.

I was close to tears from having ruined my sister’s birthday cake before it was even finished - and my sister had tears in her eyes from laughing so hard watching me try (and fail) to scoop runny buttercream from my countertop back onto the cake.

Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us, Sophia.

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Q - Hello. Can you please tell us a little about yourself, where you live and your Substack publication?

A. My name is Peter Barrett. I live a couple of hours north of New York City, in the Hudson Valley, where I grow, forage, ferment, preserve, and cook as much of my own food as possible—and where I’ve been teaching others to do the same for 20 years. Writing and photography were my main focus for a long time, but in the last few years I’ve been doing more cooking, collaborating, and consulting.

I’m currently in the process of creating a comprehensive fermentation program for Dominique Crenn, one of the most influential chefs in the world and the first woman in America to win three Michelin Stars. I’m traveling to San Francisco regularly to get that set up and train the Atelier Crenn crew in all the methods and recipes they need. She’s absolutely brilliant, and a powerhouse, and I’m thrilled to be collaborating with her. I also developed and wrote the recipes for Dan Buettner’s Blue Zones Kitchen: One-Pot Meals, which was a bestseller after it came out last fall.

I have two newsletters on this platform: Things on Bread and Flavor Freaks. Things on Bread focuses on teaching people how to cook without relying so heavily on recipes. I break down methods and techniques, helping people understand the role that each ingredient plays in a recipe so that they can make substitutions and begin to improvise based on what they might have on hand. Home cooks have some real advantages over professionals when it comes to experimenting and reusing leftovers in creative ways.

Flavor Freaks is dedicated to fermentation in all of its forms. It’s a collaboration with my friend Rich Shih, who co-wrote the definitive book Koji Alchemy and co-founded Kojicon, an online fermentation festival that recently wrapped its fifth annual occurrence. He’s a wizard, and a wonderful human being. We’re building a community of fermentation enthusiasts—of all skill levels—and a resource for information and inspiration. Fermentation is ancient, but it’s also the future of food in many ways since it boosts flavor and nutrition while also preserving food for long periods. It also allows us to dramatically reduce or eliminate food waste, which is vitally important. Modern society wastes far too much food.

Q - Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, and when writing for your publications?

A. I renovated my kitchen about a year after moving into this house. The previous kitchen looked like a Home Depot threw it up in 1989. Everything was ugly and/or broken, and I was thrilled to get rid of it—though I did develop and test 110 recipes for the Blue Zones book in that kitchen, so if yours isn’t to your liking, don’t blame your tools! A good cook can make almost anything work.

The new one is clean, elegant, and functional, aesthetically kind of between farmhouse and minimalist vibes. I chose handmade Moroccan zellige tiles for the backsplash with a beautiful grey glaze that somehow manages to be warm and cool at the same time, so they pick up the warmth of the maple island and bamboo floor as well as the cool grey of the cabinets.

The island is 3 x 6 feet, with a butcher block top, which for me is absolutely essential. I need a big work surface and I hate dealing with small cutting boards unless I’m working with animal proteins or something very messy. The window over the sink looks out at the stream behind my house, and I have a bird feeder out there, and it’s a lovely view that makes washing dishes a lot more pleasant.

Q - What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A. I treasure my mom’s old KA stand mixer, which is nearly as old as I am. She used to make bread regularly when I was young (and had a big garden), so I love being able to make bread using the same machine. I also have her food processor, which sees regular use as well. Good knives are important, but far more important is keeping whatever knives you have as sharp as you can. Learn to sharpen your knives! And do it regularly.

Q - Can you please tell us about the fermenting and preserving that you do in your kitchen? Is this something anyone can do?

A. I ferment everything. It’s a particular passion of mine, and I’ve spent almost 20 years investigating traditions and techniques from around the world. I make by-the-book ferments like sauerkraut and gochujang, but I also experiment a lot with unusual combinations based on what my garden produces, or ideas that inspire me.

Besides all manner of pickled vegetables, I make a lot of vinegar and drinks like tepache, a favorite that I try to never be without. I really like making miso-type umami pastes, as well as liquids like garum and shoyu that I use in place of store-bought soy or fish sauces. For these koji ferments I like to grow my own koji (a mold called aspergillus oryzae that’s used to make miso, sake, and soy sauce), which is geeky but the resulting flavors are much better than with store-bought versions. I used to make a lot of yogurt and some very good camembert and other cheeses, but don’t do as much with dairy as I used to. I also make mead and some other alcoholic ferments, but I haven’t ever distilled alcohol.

All of these various ferments play a big role in my cooking. I feel strongly that home cooks should also learn to ferment, and that there should be no barrier between cooking and fermenting since the two processes overlap and inform each other so much. That’s why Rich & I created Flavor Freaks.

Q - How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live? Are there fresh food markets, or farmer’ markets available?

A. There are lots of good farmers’ markets in my region, since it’s agriculturally very productive and close to New York City, which is a voracious market for high-quality produce and products. There’s not much of what I’d call a regional cuisine, but there are plenty of options for varied eating given the diversity of the population. I will say that while now there are some excellent restaurants run by gifted chefs, when I first moved up here there wasn’t much to choose from in terms of high-quality dining. That absolutely contributed to my development as a home cook.

Q Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A. I could use a pantry for sure, but I’m lucky to have a basement where I built some shelves so I do have extra space for storing all the jars of pickles, salsas, tomatoes, and other products that I make. I would like to get a moro at some point—it’s a specialized wooden cabinet for growing koji in.

Q - What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A. Clean as you go! And focus on using fewer tools. The more appliances you involve, the more cleaning you’ll have to do and the less fun you’ll have. Also, if you ferment, get in the habit of processing your byproducts (fruit & vegetable peels and scraps, for example) as part of your cooking flow. That way you’re making dinner and a jar of pickles (or miso, or vinegar, or something else) at the same time.

Q - Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A. This recent cornbread recipe is delicious, but it also shows my approach to cooking: learn what’s happening in a given recipe so you can improvise or make substitutions without diminishing the result.

Q - Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A. A couple of years ago, the day before I hosted a big dinner party for some seriously famous A-list talent (a couple of top chefs, a renowned dancer/actor, a legendary food writer), my oven died. So I had to bake all the bread and make the dessert (a couple of apple tarts) in the toaster oven. It did work, so disaster was averted, but the last-minute scrambling was not relaxing at all.

And I’ve burned or ruined tons of things. It happens, especially if you’re trying new dishes or techniques. My grandfather used to say “If you’re not falling, you’re not skiing.” I think that’s definitely true for cooking. Each failure teaches us something and makes us better cooks if we pay attention. The most important thing is to relax, and enjoy the process. It’s just dinner!

Thank you so much , for inviting us into your kitchen, Peter.

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Hi! I’m Mindy Crosato, owner/founder of a restaurant group in Portland, Oregon that includes: Decadent Creations Bakery, Collective Market, Collective Kitchen (the cooking classroom inside the market), and Notorious B.A.G.E.L. My Substack is about my new project, Oregon Trail Table: you have died of deliciousness. Where I travel around Oregon cooking and baking delicious food on site in beautiful places. I love to showcase the bounty of the Pacific Northwest.

Q: What kind of fridge do you have? Fridge Freezer/Upright/ Double doors?

My fridge is a Black Bosch, it’s very Euro style. It’s a relatively small footprint in my kitchen. My husband is French and this type of fridge was very important to him. We max out on space quickly so we have a backup fridge and freezer in our garage.

Q: How often do you food shop? Do you buy in bulk - if so, what do you buy?

Since we own restaurants where we cook and bake fresh daily, we do have a steady stream of unsold food coming our way. We have a massive garden that has been quite fruitful ( thanks global warming 😬). I sell bagels and pastry at 6 different Portland area farmers markets. One of my favorite things of all time is to throw capitalism out the window to barter or trade my unsold goods for other vendors’ unsold goods. At the end of each market day, I haul home a milk crate of fabulous crusty bread, homemade chimichurri or jam, ripe tomatoes or peaches, you name it! We are very into dehydration, canning, fermentation, and preserving in my house. Not everything can be made homemade, alas. My husband does a Costco run about once every 3 months for bouillon, Kerrygold Butter, Parmesan, paper towels, and a few other things. We have teenage daughters that adore some of the premade foods from Trader Joes for their school lunches, like spicy lentil wraps, chicken tikka masala, and Caesar salad. For the children, we do a Trader Joe’s run once every 2 to 3 weeks. Last but not least, I personally go to my local New Seasons Market about once a month to fill in the holes of anything and I couldn’t find at the market. I love their house sausages, Dr. Brew Kombucha, and avocados to mash on my day-old Cheesy Garlic Bagels.

Q: What is the most used ingredient that you always have a good supply of?

I always have a good supply of Parmesan. We have four daughters and they love pasta! We also go through so much Better Than Bouillon. Soup is one of my favorite ways to utilize whatever random vegetables are popping in my garden. When I bring home a milk crate full of celery root from the farmers market, I love to roast, smoke, and purée the vegetables. To make it no-brainer, I make a quick stock out of veggie or chicken bouillon. Bisque is also a great way to use that random and then bits of cheeses or lunchmeat, diced up.

Q: What is the oldest item/ingredient in your fridge, and what did you originally buy it for?

I generally have a good fridge through-put, rotating stock pretty regularly. I have some plum vinegar that a friend made that’s been lingering a couple years. That has been slow going for me to use up. It’s quite sweet, but also pungent, so I couldn’t throw it in too many of my soups. A few times I used it like a drinking vinegar with some seltzer water and some gin. Since she made it, I can’t bear to toss it.

Q: Do you meal plan? If so, would you please share your secrets with us?

I did not meal plan! I am not one of those people that are so organized. I am a fly by the seat of my pants type of girl. The closest I get to meal plan is at the beginning of the week when I ask my daughters what they want in their school lunches, Which is usually simple things like ham and cheese sandwiches, or previously mentioned Trader Joe’s packaged things.

Q: What is the most expensive item in your fridge, and what do you use it for?

The most price per volume item in my fridge is Caviar, which I eat with crème fraiche on Ruffles potato chips. It’s the best. Oh, and with champagne! There’s always a bottle of champagne at the ready in my fridge.

Q: Which items would you advise people not to keep in their fridge and why?

If you can avoid refrigerating fruits and vegetables, do so. There’s something magic about a cucumber salad made with cucumbers that have never been refrigerated. I totally understand the timing of life can’t always be perfect like that. But when it is, It’s so good. Check out my goodie drawer of veggies below ( veggie shelf life timing wasn’t on my side today)

Q: How do you organise your fridge? Is it chaos, or a place for everything and everything in its place?

As far as tidy police, my husband is more particular than me. He has elected himself to be the Fridge organizer. He does it about once a month. I have to be very explicit if there’s something that I don’t want him to throw away because he can get garbage happy in a fridge feng shui attack.

Q: What are your top tips for storing items in your fridge and keeping it tidy? Do you use storage containers?

We do a lot of vacuum sealed bags, The air deprivation really helps things like egg salad last twice as long! It’s so you can stack things super tightly with less wasted space.

Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us,

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A: I am a former journalist who long ago turned my reporting skills to food writing. I am the author of nine books on Italian cooking and baking. My latest book, ITALIAN COOKIES: Authentic Recipes and Sweet Stories from Every Region, was published this past April. I split my time between suburban D.C. and Abruzzo, Italy, though I travel throughout Italy for work and inspiration.

My Substack is Buona Domenica, a weekly recipe-focused newsletter published every Sunday. In it, I share stories, recipes, and Italian cooking and baking inspiration. I currently have nearly 200 recipes in my growing archive—it’s like having an ever-expanding Italian cookbook at your fingertips. Each newsletter is beautifully illustrated by Daniela Bracco, an Italian graphic artist who is from Sicily and lives in Rome.

Q: Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, when writing for your substack publication ‘Buona Domenica’?

A: My kitchen in Virginia gives the impression of being large because it’s an open space, but it’s actually not that large. It’s the perfect size for me. It’s a U-shaped layout, with an island in the middle, and countertops and appliances (fridge, range, cabinets & drawers, sink) forming the U around the island. We had it redone about a dozen years ago, and though there are some things I would probably change now, I still love it. My great loves are the green tile backsplash and the Lacanche range, which was a splurge but which I use literally every single day.

My kitchen in Abruzzo also feels larger than it is. It has very limited counter space and is one of those modular kitchens that are standard in Italy. Nothing is fabulous but everything works, and I love cooking in it. Its best feature is that it opens onto a postage stamp-sized terrace where I hang laundry to dry and can gaze over the hills all the way down to the Adriatic Sea.

Q: What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A: I have several medium and large Le Creuset and Staub Dutch ovens that I use all the time—for soup, sauces, stews and braises, etc. I use a bench scraper for scooping up everything from diced vegetables and doughs to cleaning up spilled wet coffee grounds off the floor (I actually had to do this and it worked perfectly).

I’m a big fan of “unplugged” tools and gadgets. I love my hand-crank pasta machine, which is more than 30 years old; and all my other pasta tools: wooden dowels and brass rods, ravioli stamps, my mother’s chitarra, to cut noodles, and my mortars and pestles, which I use not only for pesto, but also for other sauces, and pounding nuts, spices, and other ingredients.

Q: You teach cooking classes, online and IRL. Can you tell us how this all came about and how people can get involved?

A: I started teaching classes when I was promoting my first cookbook, The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy, and really took to it. I started teaching online classes during the pandemic. At first, I wasn’t sure the format would work. How, for example, would I be able to tell people whether their pasta dough was the right consistency if I couldn’t touch it for myself? Especially with pasta classes, newcomers can be quite timid when it comes to making fresh pasta.

But what I found was that people really rose to the challenge. For one thing, everyone was in their own kitchen, so there is a level of familiarity there. And since everyone was on their own, even as we were all together on Zoom, people had no alternative but to roll up their sleeves and just do it.

I’ve taught a variety of pasta classes, from simple semolina and water cavatelli to complicated stuffed pastas and showstoppers like lasagne di crespelle. I’ve also taught homemade cannoli, gnocchi, menu classes, and aperitivi classes. At the moment, classes are on hiatus while I am working on my book, but I hope to resume them in the spring, and will announce details in my newsletter, Buona Domenica.

Q: You occasionally host culinary tours and workshops in Italy. Can you tell us about these and some of the places they are held?

A: I host tours just once or twice a year, and food writing workshops also once or twice a year. For several years I co-hosted tours in Abruzzo, which is where my family is from and where I spend much of my time in Italy. However, my collaborators (who handled logistics) no longer run tours, so for the time being the Abruzzo tour is on hiatus. I do, however, still host tours in northern Italy, specifically Liguria, Piemonte, and Emilia-Romagna, in collaboration with a small, woman-owned tour company. We share the same philosophy in that we like to keep our tours small and sustainable (no big buses!) and we do our best to steer clear of places that are overrun with tourists, like Cinque Terre.

Meeting food artisans and exploring lesser-known places is really the focus of the tours. The workshops focus on various aspects of food writing, everything from voice to interviewing skills to recipe writing, and how those skills can be applied, whether you’re writing a newsletter, a book, articles, or a private journal.

Q: How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in Italy? Are there fresh food markets, or farmers’ markets available? What are they like?

A: Nearly everywhere I go in Italy, whenever I say I’m from Abruzzo, I invariably hear: “Ah, in Abruzzo si mangia bene!” The region is known for its rather rustic and still-genuine cuisine. Many restaurants, especially in the smaller towns and countryside, are still family-owned and run, some for many generations. Because of Abruzzo’s topography—it extends from the Apennine mountains out to the Adriatic coast—the food is quite diverse, as there are many microclimates.

There’s the mountain cuisine—grilled meats, sausages and succulent lamb skewers called arrosticini. There are the legumes and grains of the high plains: lentils, chickpeas, and farro. There are hearty pasta dishes, the most well-known being spaghetti (or maccheroni) alla chitarra, a sturdy, square-cut noodle that is formed on a rectangular wooden instrument strung with wires. The pasta is typically served with a robust ragù made with various cuts of meat—pork, lamb, beef—as well as sausages and, on special occasions, tiny veal meatballs. Big ravioli filled with fresh sheep’s milk ricotta and potato gnocchi are two other signature pasta dishes.

As you move towards the coast, there are olive groves and vineyards, the cultivation of vegetables and fruits. And then, of course, there is the wonderful fish and seafood of the Adriatic.

On farmers’ markets: Yes, there are plenty of local farmers’ markets that set up in the piazzas and covered areas in cities and towns. And there are also lots of porchetta trucks around. Abruzzo makes fantastic porchetta!

Q: Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A: I would love a second oven!

Q: What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A: We all know that Nature and humans abhor a vacuum. I would recommend trying not to fill up all your counter space with appliances and gadgets and bottles of oil and vinegar, even though you can plainly see from the photo of my kitchen that I myself am guilty of this.

Invest in a few good pots and pans. I mentioned Dutch ovens. I also have three stainless steel skillets of varying sizes that I use all the time. And three cast iron skillets that were my husband’s grandmother’s. I have a slow cooker but never use it. I never gave in to the Instant Pot or Air Fryer mania, and now I’m glad because I’m pretty sure they would be sitting in my basement gathering dust, even as I realize that for other cooks they are essential pieces of equipment.

Cooking tips: Salt your pasta water GENEROUSLY, and of course, save some of it when you drain the pasta for tossing with the sauce. It almost always makes for a creamier, tastier sauce.

Speaking of sauce, do not over-sauce your pasta. In Italy, sauce is often referred to as a “condimento,” (condiment), meaning that is used judiciously, not slopped on by the ladleful.

Also: Whenever I chop parsley, I always chop a bunch extra. I put it in a shallow bowl and leave it on the counter. It dries pretty quickly, and the next time I need parsley (usually within a day or two) it’s ready and waiting.

Buy the best ingredients you can afford, and let the seasons be your guide in the kitchen.

Q: How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? You have written eight cookbooks. Can you tell us about them and the type of recipes they contain?

A: I started collecting cookbooks when I was in college, mainly because I started getting them as Christmas presents. To this day, my favorite thing to do on Christmas Day is to sit in a comfy chair and page through any new cookbooks that I’ve received as gifts. I’ve never actually counted how many I have, but I would estimate somewhere in the 500 range. I have too many favorites to list, but a few sentimental favorites are The Victory Garden Cookbook, by Marian Morash, which my mom gave me many years ago; the Union Square Café Cookbook, by Danny Meyer and Michael Romano, which my dad gave me for Christmas one year; and The Italian Baker, by Carol Field. Other favorites include Casual Cooking, by the late Michael Chiarello; Alpine Cooking, by Meredith Erickson; Adriatico, by Paola Bacchia; and the Via Carota cookbook, by Jody Williams and Rita Sodi.

There are more!

Q: Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A: I have to say I love every recipe I’ve shared in my newsletter—nearly 200 and counting. It’s like an ever-expanding cookbook! I’ll pick two: one is my apple crostata, which I love for its simplicity and buttery richness. The other is Spaghetti alla Claudia Cardinale, a handwritten recipe from one of my aunts that I found in my mom’s recipe files. It’s named for the actress, obviously, though I have no idea if it was her recipe. It’s so simple—just pasta tossed with butter, prosciutto cotto, and cheese—but truly delicious.

Q: Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A: Many years ago, I tried making vitello tonnato for my husband’s boss, who was a real gourmand. This was years before my own career in food writing and recipe development. I had never made vitello tonnato before and had no idea what I was doing, even though I was following a recipe by a trusted Italian cookbook author. It was a disaster; the veal fell apart and had no flavor. I don’t remember what we had for dessert, but I do remember it was good, so it somewhat salvaged the meal.

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A- “Hello Lynn and thank you for the opportunity to share a bit about my life and work with the Foodstack community.

I’m a home baker and cook and supported my family as a professional musician. In the early 2000s when I was living off and on in Seattle, I began working in food PR. I got known for the pies I make and share (I’ve never sold a pie and never will but I will give you one!) A few chefs and food writers asked if I might teach them how I make apple pie so I invited them to come over and I would show them how I do it. This started an unexpected career as a teacher of pie-making.

Since 2008, I’ve taught over 8000 people in virtual and in-person sessions and written three books including the bestselling Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings and Life which received a James Beard Nomination.

I’ve lived in a variety of places including a tiny one-room cabin when my children were small, a ten-acre blueberry farm, a tree house on the side of a mountain, and Pie Cottage, the sweet one hundred year old home where I live, teach, garden, and write. I started my Substack, Kate McDermott’s Newsletter in 2021 and write about my walks and bike rides, travels, and recipes, and life in a small town in the upper left-hand corner of Washington State, USA.

Q: Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, and when writing for your Substack Publication ‘Kate McDermott’s Newsletter’?

A - I think the kitchen is the most important room in the house and visitors to Pie Cottage are surprised when they see how small mine is. It’s not fancy or updated but I’ve made it work for me and lots of creativity comes from it. When I needed more baking ovens for Pie Camps and recipe development, my son boarded over a door that was not needed and installed two wall ovens for me.

Kitchen countertop real estate is something I jealousy guard but never have enough so I added two stainless steel prep tables. They “hold court” between the kitchen and living room essentially giving me a “kitchen-broadcasting-teaching-living-dining-everything” room and I love that I can move them around into different configurations as needed.

Q: What are your most used kitchen gadgets and kitchen gear that you cannot live without?

A -There’s not really anything that I can’t live without but there are things that I do like and use on a regular basis. I love my rolling pins and use my mini-size dishwasher on a daily basis. There is one item I cherish more than any other—a set of tongs in the shape of hands that my mom received as a shower gift before she was to be married in 1943. In my family, they’re known as “The Happy Hands.” They are my kitchen talisman and I think of my mom every time I use them. A chapter on The Happy Hands is included in ’s book, The Heart Shaped Tin, which was released in 2025!

Q: Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

A - A few years back I considered gutting and completely remodeling the kitchen but then I realized that even if it is small, with a roof over my head, a wood-stove and plenty of wood, clean water, and a full larder, there is nothing I really lack. I’m grateful for what I have.

Q: What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

A - I’m a clean and tidy as you go type. There are days when there are lots of projects converging at the same time, deadlines to be met and plates in the air, but when I spend the extra minute hand-washing what doesn’t fit in the dishwasher and wiping counters as I go makes my work seems much easier. Even if I’m tired at night, those few minutes spent tidying up before bed bring and feeling of peace and contentment the next morning.

One tip for bakers is to plan your landing place and never lift or hold anything hot with a wet towel or potholder. A potholder or heat-proof glove is not meant to hold a pipping hot vessel for two, three, or more minutes. No matter what the marketing materials say, heat will transfer to your hands if you hold it too long. So, please take this advice from one who has been there, plan your landing place and never lift or hold with wet towel or potholder. Wet transfers heat very quickly to your hands and you probably will get burned and that is NOT going to feel good.

Q: You have a garden and an Apple Orchard. Can you tell us about this and what else you grow in your Garden?

A - I’ve gardened for over fifty years in plots large, small and everything in-between. My current middle-sized plot provides garlic, greens, strawberries, rhubarb, potatoes, herbs and flowers. Some of the apple trees in my small orchard were here when I moved to the cottage twenty-five years ago. I planted some heirloom varieties that I started as scions about six years ago. There is also an espaliered pear tree with three different varieties and a quince tree, too. The apples and pears go into pies, crisps, crumbles, pandowdies and anything extra is contributed to the cider we press every year in the fall. The quince is mainly used to make membrillo which I give as gifts.

Q: You have a flock of chickens. How long have you had them and what is the inspiration behind getting them?

A - I’ve had chickens for approximately seven years. As they are considered livestock, I don’t name them. Each flock of twelve has about a three-year rotation and supply two households with eggs, meat and stock.

Q: How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live? Are there fresh food markets, or farmers markets available?

A - The North Olympic Peninsula of Washington State is known for salmon, halibut, shellfish, Dungeness crab, and berries. The climate here is such that it is possible to overwinter some crops for a year-round harvest. We have year-round farmers markets although they are most abundant in the summer and fall.

Q: How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

A - Approximately half of my 300+ cookbooks are on the subject of baking and half of those zero in on pie both savory and sweet. Favorites on my shelves are Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown, Horn of the Moon Cookbook by Ginny Callan, and The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash.

I am the author of three best selling cookbooks—Art of the Pie: A Practical Guide to Homemade Crusts, Fillings, and Life (2016), Home Cooking with Kate McDermott (2018), and Pie Camp: The Skills You Need to Make Any Pie You Want (2020). They were all written after the age of sixty-three. I consider this my third or fourth act and I’m not done yet!

Q: Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

A - I’m most known for pie recipes but I regularly make Pie Cottage Scones to share. A very unexpected and happy moment was when I brought some freshly baked ones to share with my friends at The Washington Post Food Section while on a book tour for Home Cooking.

Yotam Ottolenghi happened to be there that day, too. He saw my basket full of scones and jam and asked if he might have one along with a cup of Earl Gray. He liked them so much he asked for another! Here’s the recipe.

Q: Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

A - Oh yes! I was baking for the memorial service of a dear friend and had scaled up a recipe x 4. I hadn’t written down the exact amounts thinking I’d keep it all straight in my head. A good friend was helping, we got to chatting and I lost track of the amounts of butter and flour I had added. Apparently I added way too much butter which had leaked out all over the oven floor. When I opened the oven door, smoke poured out along with flames as the rush of air had ignited the melted butter!

My son, who lives in the cottage just next door with his wife, saw smoke coming out of my doors and windows and showed up to see if the house was on fire. It wasn’t thank goodness. He set up a big fan to help get the smoke out and I continued baking. I was relieved to have no lasting damage to the flaming oven. Lesson learned: When sizing up or down a recipe, be sure to write down and double check the measurements even if you think you don’t need to!

Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us, Kate. Visit and subscribe to Kate McDermott’s Newsletter.

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I’ve been busy behind the scenes, and I’ve already booked two conversations with food writers. And we’re going to be recording later this month. I’m aiming to publish monthly, possibly fortnightly. And the first episode should be published at the end of September, early October.

So in the meantime, bye.

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Hello! My name is (Chore-Dash) and I create gluten free baking and cooking recipes and workshops and share them on Next Level Gluten Free Newsletter.

I’ve been a chef and cooking instructor for 15 years and have had many thousands of students. I’ve taught cooking classes in cooking schools, hospitals, offices, grocery stores, small boutiques, health food co+ops and even in homes. I’m based in Kansas City, basically in the middle of the middle of the U.S.

I LOVE to travel and visit as many countries and exciting places as I possibly can. As a family we travel in Europe quite a bit because my Husband is Romanian and we go to visit family and explore other countries on the way there or back. I bring back so many ideas, techniques, and flavors and incorporate them in my recipes!

How would you describe the layout of your kitchen, its history and how it was designed? And how much of a role does it play with your family and when writing and testing recipes for your ‘Next Level Gluten Free’ newsletter?

We live in a 1960’s split level home, and the kitchen is the heart of it all.

It’s towards the back of the house and overlooks my vegetable garden, herb gardens and fruit trees with two large windows. The kitchen was originally designed to have a breakfast table in the large bay window, but I’ve put a prep table and large rolling rack that I use for recipe testing and classes there so I can enjoy the view while I work.

I work there developing and testing recipes, photographing in the bay window, and live streaming classes. We cook there for our family meals, and bake many gluten free breads and pies. My husband works from home and my two school aged children are often popping in and out of the kitchen, cooking with me briefly, asking questions, and packing lunches or zooming through far too quickly to run down the stairs.

We spend many hours at the dining room table just past the giant butcher block – one of my favorite features of the kitchen. The butcher block is just a huge section of tree trunk was here when we moved in, but originally came from a BBQ joint. It’s very obviously been industrially used, and the much-chopped portion is installed towards the wall. I love to think of the stories that have occurred around that through the years.

In the summertime, it is very humid and hot where we live, so to avoid heating up the house, we head outside to cook on the grill and the outdoor oven. We eat at the long table that my father built outside quite a bit during all of the seasons! It’s wonderful and relaxing to be outdoors in the garden and there is a little roof covering the patio so if it rains, it makes a wonderful pattering sound.

What are your favourite and most used kitchen gadgets?

My kitchen isn’t big, so I feel like any gadgets have to be useful or they don’t deserve to be there! My Kitchenaid mixer is a workhorse. I love to use it to make gluten free bread, pasta, ice cream, and even sausage. I LOVE my superfast Thermapen thermometer, I use it to make sure my gluten free breads, cakes, rolls, etc are really done! I absolutely adore my seasoned steel French pans, they are well seasoned so nothing sticks to them, light, and have lasted so long, they are the best!

How did your passion and need for cooking Gluten Free come about?

Well, I was already a cooking teacher and owned a bakery business when my son was diagnosed with celiac disease 8 years ago. I could not imagine a world where he would never know what a really good cinnamon roll, a flaky pastry or piece of bread was like. So I started by trying to recreate my bakery products gluten free, and boy was there a learning curve! I tested and tested and pieced together information over time. For my readers and students, I streamline that process and just give them the simple methods that WORK so they can skip everything else and get right to the good stuff!

How have your travels to visit family and the years of teaching cooking classes, influenced the way you cook?

I learn so much everywhere that I travel. There are flavors and techniques that I take away from every trip to bring fresh perspectives to my food. In the world of gluten free, there are some countries like Italy and Spain with much more access to gluten free ingredients and embedded knowledge about gluten free techniques. I love to pull what I learn traveling into my recipes so that EVERYONE can have access to wonderful gluten free food!

I think my years of teaching cooking classes have helped me to dive deep into the subject. I’ve learned over time all of the variations and pitfalls that people encounter in their kitchens when following a recipe. I try to be very clear in my explanations and communicate what can be a frustrating subject in an approachable way. I like to be a friend who can help in the gluten free kitchen so that readers can be successful and find joy in their kitchens.

How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in the USA? Are there fresh food markets or farmers’ markets available? Do you have a vegetable garden?

I live in a wonderful part of the USA for food. We are well known for BBQ here. So if you love long smoked meats, this is the place to be.

Our little secret is we have a lot of really great food beyond BBQ. Seasonal restaurants, beautiful ingredients. There are also incredible farmers markets nearby – that’s actually how I started teaching cooking classes, as a stand in a farmers market.

Personally, we have many fruit and nut trees, herbs and a small vegetable garden. Some years in the garden are better than others, as we also have many deer, rabbits, birds, and squirrels around our neighborhood!

What is the one thing your kitchen is missing that you would love to have?

I would love to have a kitchen island with lots of cupboard space, and a counter to gather around. I use a table for this purpose and I love that I can move it around, but a kitchen island would be lovely!

What tips can you give a Gluten Free cook that will help keep their kitchen neat and tidy.

Gluten free bakers and cooks often have many specialty ingredients and flours. Invest in some mason jars or similar canisters to be able to easily see what ingredients you have and access them easily.

Also, in kitchens that are shared gluten and gluten free it is important to have separate storage of the gluten free dedicated equipment that you own, whether it is separate cupboards or bins inside the cupboard it is easy to get confused and nobody wants that!

When I bring my dedicated gluten free cooking utensils (rolling pins, nonstick pans etc) to other kitchens for cooking classes I mark them with a certain color of painters tape, which helps me and others know which items are dedicated gluten free easily and really helps prevent mixing things up!

How many cookbooks do you have? Do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

I own hundreds of cookbooks. I read them like novels and adore a printed cookbook. I make the recipes, absorb the techniques and learn SO much. As for favorites, how could I pick a favorite child? I like a book that stands on its own. The Cooks Illustrated series of books has taught me more than you can imagine. Julia Child’s The Art of French Cooking sparked my imagination as a 12 year old. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat gave me words to easily explain many cooking concepts. Ottolenghi pushed me from my flavor comfort zone and made me experiment.

I have not written a cookbook… yet! I’d love to write a cookbook.

Do you have a recipe suitable for someone on a Gluten Free diet?

All of my recipes are suitable for someone on a gluten free diet, and I have options from dinner to pie, cake to crusty bread. But here is a favorite simple recipe that your readers can use for their next grill or weeknight dinner or even keep in the freezer for when the need strikes! Gluten Free Sesame Seed Hamburger Buns

(There is also a little video of my very favorite tools for gluten free baking!)

Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us,

Visit and subscribe to Rachel’s publication Next Level Gluten Free Newsletter

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Hi, I’m Mary, a professional cook and baker, and an amateur gardener, living in New Jersey, USA. Years spent in professional kitchens taught me the importance of having the freshest ingredients available, and growing my own food allows me to bring those flavors home. My Substack, The Cozy Vegetarian, came out of a desire to share my recipes for plant-based seasonal comfort food. Substack has been a perfect creative outlet for me, as it combines my love of cooking, baking, gardening, and community.

How long have you been growing your own food and what does your garden look like today?

While I’ve always grown basics like tomato plants and herbs, I started gardening in earnest in 2016. I was living in Missouri at the time, in a rental property that would not allow me to plant anything in the ground. I learned everything I could about container gardening, and was able to grow a wide variety of vegetables in pots on my patio. Although I now own my home and can plant in-ground, my yard has many areas where the sunlight changes from full sun to shade depending on how leafed out the trees are. So while many of my plants are grown in-ground, I still do quite a bit of container gardening. I use grow bags now, however, as opposed to large pots. Grow bags are much bigger and allow roots to grow deeper than they would in pots. I love it because I can move the bags around depending on how much sunlight a certain area of my yard gets. It also makes it a lot easier to keep weeds out of the veggies!

Many people will say that certain vegetables should not be planted together, or that plants need a certain amount of space between them. But as a true chaos gardener, I tend to take that advice with a grain of salt. I don’t have the luxury of a large, flat spot in full sun to install a dozen raised beds. My home is very suburban, and I have neighbors close by on all sides. The shade from the neighbors’ trees limits where I can grow, and the lawn slopes and is quite uneven. Since my growing space is limited, and I grow a large variety of vegetables, things get planted wherever there is a spot. It doesn’t make for the most aesthetic garden beds, I will admit! But I’m growing food for a purpose, not an aesthetic. I save the decorative form for my flower beds.

I have always grown culinary herbs, but in the last few years I started branching out into medicinal herbs as well. I am certainly not an herbalist, but I know how to make some teas and salves. Herbs grow so well, and they require very little care. I can grow them in one of my part-shade garden beds, since they’re not as particular about their sunlight needs.

I am a big believer in interplanting flowers with vegetables to improve yields. Many plants, such as squash, cucumbers, and melons, need pollinators in order to grow fruit. Berries too, as bees help the fruit become large and plump. I have several native pollinator beds around my property, and I use them as highways to guide pollinators to the vegetable beds and berry patch. My raspberry and blackberry bushes are always swarming with bees, and I get a huge yield from such a small space. I also plant flowers like nasturtiums and marigolds, not for the pollinators, but because they act as pest deterrents by attracting beneficial insects that keep pests in check. I have found that gardening works best and is most rewarding when I work with nature rather than against it.

What varieties of vegetables and/or fruit do you grow?

Often it depends on my needs that year. I home-can and preserve quite a bit of food every year, so much of what I grow depends on what I need. If I need to replenish my tomato sauce supply, I will grow some Amish Paste tomatoes, which are larger and produce a better yield than the more popular Roma tomatoes. Similarly with cucumbers. If I am running low on pickles, I will grow pickling cucumbers in addition to standard slicing cucumbers. But there are some must-haves. I always grow garlic, tomatoes, and greens. I love greens, and eat them daily if I have them. I grow Swiss chard, spinach, kale, lettuce of all varieties, mustard greens, and turnips for both the roots and the greens. I also grow celery every year. I am not much of a fan of celery, but I have found that homegrown is less bitter than store-bought.

As for varieties, I look for those that will grow in my sandy, acidic soil. While New Jersey is known as the Garden State due to its vast expanse of farmlands, the area I live in is called the Pine Barrens. Barrens, because the sandy, acidic soil is not hospitable to much outside of pine trees, mountain laurel, and blueberries. My soil has been amended with compost for years so it is much improved, but it can still be difficult to grow in. As such, I tend to lean more towards hybrids than heirloom varieties. Hybrids are specially bred to have certain disease resistance or grow well in poor soil. One day, I hope to have my soil amended enough to grow heirlooms and collect seeds for growing in future years, but for now, I need the extra insurance of hybrid varieties. I start most of my vegetables from seed, so I look to see what varieties different seed companies are carrying each winter when I place my seed order. If a variety ticks all the boxes of what I am looking for, I give it a try! But I have found that Tango celery and Music garlic are top performers, so I grow those varieties every year.

What food do you grow that you are unable to find in the shops?

Garlic scapes and early green garlic are two treats I look forward to each year. They are an added bonus of growing garlic. Green garlic is garlic that is harvested in the spring, before the bulbs start to form. They look similar to leeks, but have a mild garlic flavor. Garlic scapes are the flower stalks that grow out of hardneck garlic. They get cut off before they flower, so the plant will put its energy into producing a larger bulb instead of going to seed. Garlic scapes are wonderfully fresh and crunchy, with a nice garlic punch. They are especially good in vegetable risotto.

This year I’m growing Jersey Yellow sweet potatoes, a variety grown here in New Jersey since the 1700s. It’s like a cross between a russet and a sweet potato; it has a dry, white flesh but a nutty, mildly sweet flavor similar to that of a sweet potato. Another favorite is Autumn Frost winter squash, a lovely variety named for its unique appearance. It has a deep orange skin that develops a translucent white overlay, so it looks as if it is covered in frost. It tastes sweet and creamy like butternut squash, and stores for months. I grow pattypan summer squash and harvest tomatoes while still green, and both of those get sliced and fried. If you’ve never had fried green tomatoes, you are truly missing out! I fry my pattypan squash the same way I fry my tomatoes. You can find my recipe here. Specialty herbs are probably the hardest to find in shops or at local farmstands. Culinary herbs like pineapple sage, lemon balm, and orange thyme, and medicinal herbs such as arnica and feverfew. I grow a wide variety each year, and I love the unique flavors they add to a dish or the healing balms they make.

What has been your biggest growing success and/or disaster?

My biggest success has been growing luffa squash. If you’ve ever wondered where the loofah sponges you use in the bath come from, they come from squash! Luffa is a tropical gourd that requires a very long growing season and takes about a month to germinate. I live in New Jersey, in zone 6B/7A, so definitely not tropical. (If you live in the US and are unsure of your hardiness zone, you can find yours here.) My last frost is usually mid to late April, and my first frost is usually late October to early November. While I technically have a 6-month growing window, it is not warm enough here to plant out warm-weather crops like squash, tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant until mid-May. By mid-October, though it might not frost, it is quite cold and the days are very short, so nothing really grows past the end of September. Luffa takes 5-6 months to grow to maturity, so I barely have enough time in my growing zone. When I grew Luffa, I started it indoors so it could germinate before planting out. The time to maturity listed on seed packets is after germination or transplanting. Since I transplanted seedlings, they needed 5-6 months to reach maturity. If I had planted seeds outside in the spring and waited for them to germinate, they would need closer to 7 months, because they take about a month to germinate. So by starting indoors, I extended my growing window. I was able to harvest just before the first frost came, and I ended up with a bunch of luffa sponges that can be used in the bath, kitchen, or wherever they are needed!

My biggest disaster is somewhat of an ongoing thing, centered around garden pests. On my rental property in Missouri there was no fence, and the deer would come and eat everything I grew. Just last week, I had seedlings out on my porch for fall planting, and a groundhog came along and ate them all. I’ll have to start some seeds again and see if they’ll be ready before our first frost, but I doubt I’ll get much this year. Every year I have a great crop of summer and winter squash growing, and squash vine borers destroy them. Last summer, I successfully cut them out of my pumpkin vines, but they took down all the summer squash. This year they took everything, save for one zucchini plant. I’ve tried all the tricks, but they are incessant here, and it is so hard to find and kill them all. I don’t use pesticides in my garden, so anything I use to kill bugs has to be chemical-free. But there is one saving grace: I am lucky to be surrounded by dozens of local farms, so anything that I am unable to grow, I can easily pick up at a nearby farmstand.

Which crop do you grow every year, and what is your favourite dish to make with it?

Tomatoes. Several varieties of tomatoes. I always have at least one cherry tomato plant that I can snack on while I’m outside, or add to salads. I also grow slicing tomatoes, and that variety will vary depending on how I’m feeling that year. Sometimes I’ll grow a deep purple variety like Black Beauty or Cherokee Purple, and sometimes I’ll grow a standard slicer like Beefsteak or Better Boy. But I always have several Amish Paste tomato plants. There is nothing cozier to me than a pot of tomato sauce simmering on the stove on a cold winter day, so I grow plenty of Amish Paste tomatoes to preserve for year-round use. I use my home-canned tomatoes to make tomato sauce. It’s a recipe handed down to me from my grandmother, who was a phenomenal cook. My grandfather, her husband, was Italian, so she learned to make tomato sauce just the way he liked it. It’s great as-is on spaghetti, but even better in eggplant parmigiana.

How do you plan your meals around the produce you grow?

I don’t meal plan around fresh produce as much as I grow with preservation in mind. Every winter, after the start of the New Year, I sit down and plan out that year’s garden. I inventory my food stores and determine how much of each item I will need to preserve that year. Not everything gets preserved however, and I certainly cook with my produce throughout the growing season. I don’t necessarily plan around it; I tend to just see what’s ripe, and if I don’t have a preservation project in mind for it, I eat it. Often, I make salads. I love to make warm salads, where I roast or grill some of the vegetables, and serve them over tender greens with a fresh herb vinaigrette. I also love to make veggie hummus wraps; they are great on a hot day, and surprisingly filling.

How do you manage a glut of produce? What do you make?

Since I do a lot of canning and preserving, I often plan for a glut of produce. If I grow 50 pounds of tomatoes, I can make enough tomato sauce to last the year. I get about 40 heads of garlic a year, and I will mince that up in the food processor with a little olive oil, scoop it out with a small cookie scoop onto a sheet tray lined with freezer paper, and freeze it into little balls that I can then throw in every recipe that calls for garlic. But if I have a wide array of veggies, I will make a nice vegetable chowder. I keep winter squash like butternut and Autumn Frost in storage in my basement to cook with throughout the winter, but I use my pumpkins to make homemade pumpkin puree. I store it in the freezer in 1-cup portions, and thaw it out when I’m ready to bake. It makes a wonderful pumpkin pie, like this old-fashioned one I like to make for Thanksgiving. Herbs get processed as well, since I use so many in my cooking. I harvest and dry herbs in the spring and summer, so my pantry is well-stocked for the winter. Harvesting and drying herbs is one of the easiest and most rewarding garden tasks. I’ve written a post about it here.

Do you have a compost? If so, what is the best way of getting the most out of composting and do you have any tips?

Unfortunately, I do not have a compost. In my county, compost piles must be at least 20 feet from a shared property line, and since I have neighbors on all sides, the only place I could put a compost pile would be directly outside my door. I have a local hardware store that sells fantastic bagged compost at a very good price, so that’s what I use. I amend my soil with compost twice a year. Once in the fall after all the plants are spent and the beds have been cleaned out, and once in the spring a few weeks before I start planting. However, in the fall, I do a little bit of “composting in place”. First, I clean out my garden beds. Then I take any compostable food scraps and spent plants, cut them up, and place them on the beds. Then I put some compost over them. After the leaves have fallen off the trees, I cover my garden beds with leaf mulch and add a little more compost on top to hold them in place. It’s sort of like lasagna layers. All that organic matter will break down all winter, and in the spring the soil will be well fed and teeming with worms and beneficial life. In the spring, I add more compost a few weeks before planting, and by the time I plant out my seedlings, I have wonderfully rich soil.

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to start growing their own food?

Grow a garden that suits YOU. If you try to grow someone else’s garden, you will be disappointed. There is a lot of aspirational content online about what a garden “should” look like, and what “must” be grown. Throw all that out the window and create the garden you want. If you don’t like tomatoes, don’t grow them! If you don’t really even like vegetables, and instead prefer fruits and herbs, then grow some berry bushes, fruit trees, or an herb garden. If you don’t have any sunny spots in your yard, then grow things like lettuce and herbs that require less sun. If you don’t have a yard at all, grow some of your favorite things in pots out on a balcony or in a sunny window. If you don’t have a sunny window, grow your favorites in pots under some grow lights. Embrace your needs and your space, and create something that suits them, not something that tries to be someone else’s social media masterpiece. You will find true joy in gardening if you create something that is authentically you!

Many thanks to for sharing her Vegetable Garden with us. If you found this article interesting, subscribe and read more at The Cozy Vegearian.

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A: I live in a small town in the Hudson Valley of New York. Our house is nestled up in the woods, which I love, but we’re also about an hour and a half train ride from New York City. I’ve been in the food industry for over twenty years, starting when I went to culinary school in my early twenties. I’ve worked in many different capacities (recipe developer, culinary instructor, food stylist, video producer, blogger) and have written several cookbooks, but I feel like I found my soul’s calling with Mind, Body, Spirit, Food, which I launched in 2023.

In my newsletter, podcast, and in my Mind, Body, Spirit, Food cookbook, which came out in January 2026, I explore how we can nourish all of ourselves—mind, body, and spirit. I offer tips for finding more presence, ease, and freedom as cooks and eaters, and I also share weekly new recipes (all of which are naturally gluten-free, as I can’t eat gluten). My mission is to help us (re-)discover the inherent pleasure in feeding ourselves, in all ways.

Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role it plays with your family, and when writing for your publication ‘Mind, Body, Spirit, Food?

A: When we decided to move to the Hudson Valley in 2011, I looked at close to forty-five (!) houses, but when I stepped into the kitchen of our current house, I knew I finally found our home. The kitchen is truly the heart of the house—it opens to the living room and dining room and is where we spend the majority of our time as a family. We lived in the house for nine years before we finally decided to renovate the space (while it looked okay from the outside, the kitchen had a ton of issues—you can actually watch the renovation process and see the before and after in this video).

Since we had lived in the space for so long, when it came time to renovate, I knew exactly what I wanted, down to which drawers would hold what, which made the process so much easier.

I do my writing and host my podcast in a little office in our attic, but the rest of my work happens in the kitchen. It’s where you can find me experimenting and testing new recipes, and it’s where I shoot all my recipe photos and videos, including my cookbooks. It’s also the official “homework zone” for the kids, and it’s where our guests gather when they come over, inevitably nibbling on this marinated feta around the kitchen island.

What are your most used kitchen gadgets that you cannot live without?

A: My chef’s knife is hands-down my favorite kitchen tool. While I used to be a die-hard Wusthof girl, I was gifted a Misen knife about five years ago and surprisingly it quickly became my favorite everyday knife. It’s just the right weight for my wrist and holds a fabulous edge (it also has a great price point). Another tool I couldn’t live without is my inexpensive kitchen scale, which not only makes baking so much easier (no messing with measuring cups!), but it’s also far more accurate, which is especially important for gluten-free flours. I also have a strange adoration for my mini liquid tablespoon measuring cup, which I use almost daily to measure things like olive oil, vinegar, citrus juices, honey, etc (again, no messing with measuring spoons!). Finally, I have to give a shout-out to my slow cooker and my food processor since I wrote entire books about them!

You had a successful blog for many years and like some other food writers, you moved over to Substack. Can you tell us what made you do this and what it was like to leave a website behind at a time when it was making its highest revenue from ads?

I have a blog called FromScratchFast which was my primary business for close to five years. While the recipes were “free” (and still are—the blog continues to live on, although with minimal attention), they were flooded with ads to fund the content. In relying upon ad dollars, however, I had to make sure that viewership was high (you only make money off of ads that people see), which in turn meant that search engines such as Google had to like my content.

But search engines have become increasingly specific about what kind of content they rank, and each blog post took an immense amount of research into SEO (search engine optimization) strategy and keyword placement. Eventually, it got to the point where my posts were written using a specific structure with specific words, and I started to feel like a robot. It wasn’t until I had a full-body shutdown, getting inexplicably sick for several months, that I realized how truly unhappy I was. I took some time off to heal, during which I realized that I needed a change.

Ironically, I had saved the term “Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD” in a doc on my computer the year before, not knowing what I would ever do with it. During that healing stage I had a conversation with my husband, and that title came up again—it felt like a lightbulb going off. I instantly knew it was meant to be the seed for my next venture. Instead of going the blog route, however, I decided to move to a subscriber-based newsletter on Substack, which took a lot of courage, as I had never asked my readers for direct support before! I officially launched the newsletter in January 2023 and am so grateful I took the risk. Substack has become an incredible ecosystem to create meaningful, authentic content, as well as to connect much more deeply with my readers and with other writers.

You have a podcast series which you started in early 2023, can you please tell us about that and what prompted you set this up? How do you find such interesting guests?

When I decided to launch my newsletter I also decided to launch a podcast, almost on a whim, as I was craving human connection and engaging conversations (blogging often felt like a one-sided exchange). A friend recommended an audio engineer, my husband (who’s a musician) helped me set up a microphone, and I pretty much just got started without much thought. My first guests were people I knew, then I slowly started to expand to writers, thinkers, recipe developers, and chefs that I admire (I find my guests right here on Substack or through direct inquiry via email or social media).

In the show, we explore cultural influences around food, and how food connects us (and sometimes disconnects us) to our minds, bodies, spirits, food, and our communities. We also talk about recipes, cooking, entertaining, and more. I’ve been blown away by the generosity of my guests and the conversations we’ve had. The podcast has helped me to grow in ways I couldn’t have imagined, and it’s now one of the most fulfilling aspects of my work.

How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live? Are there fresh food markets or farmers’ markets available?

The Hudson Valley is bountiful with family-owned farms, and I feel incredibly lucky to have ample access to local produce, meats and fish. There’s a fabulous farmer’s market every Saturday in Cold Spring (where I live), and we’re also part of a local farm share (Laughing Fork Farm). We have our own garden as well, so in the summer we’re veritably over-run with fresh vegetables (it’s a challenge I actually love, as it forces me to get creative in order to reduce waste—tonight my mission is to use up a head of broccoli, Napa cabbage and a honeynut squash… let the cooking games begin).

Our friends own a butcher shop down the road called Marbled Meat Shop, which sells locally raised meats (and makes killer sandwiches), and we’re near Glynwood Farm, which has a beautiful farm store. We’re also within a few miles of a great fish store (Cold Spring Fish) and an ice cream shop (Sweet E’s), so I’m totally spoiled.

Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

When we renovated the kitchen we kept the general layout the same in order to save on costs, but since we opted for a larger stove, it meant that we had to go for a smaller refrigerator. While the fridge looks big from the outside, the shelving space inside is actually super tight. We therefore had to buy a second cheap fridge for the basement storage room in order to have enough space, and I’m constantly running up and down the stairs for ingredients or beverages. I try to look on the bright side (it keeps me active!) but there are times when I wish I had a dumbwaiter (or, perhaps a butler?) to ferry me up ingredients.

What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

One of my favorite things about my kitchen is my “appliance garage.” It’s basically a cubby on the counter that holds my Vitamix, food processor, and stand mixer, the three appliances that I use most. Each appliance is plugged in, and I just need to open the door and slide it out. When I’m done, I can slide the appliances back into the “garage” and shut the door, giving the counter a clean, uncluttered feel (you can see it in the video).

Note from Lynn: Nicki’s, must watch, video is an interesting before and after viewing of her kitchen renovation. The “appliance garage” is a wonderful storage idea. So too is the idea of using glass jars and storage containers.

From a cooking standpoint, my biggest tip is to clean as you go. I’ve found that if my cutting board is tidy, then my head feels twice as calm—cooking then feels less chaotic and more pleasurable. I try to wash dishes as I cook (or at least pile them in the sink) and keep my cutting board clean of scraps. I have a ton of little mise-en-place glass bowls, where I’ll arrange prepped ingredients so that once it’s time to get cooking, everything is ready to go.

Also, when we renovated our kitchen, I finally invested in some large glass jars and storage containers for my dry goods and flours (as a gluten-free cook, I use several different GF and nut flours). They used to be piled in their bags in the pantry, where they would occasionally rain down on everything, making a mess. The jars make it far easier to access what I need and help keep the pantry clean (and they look lovely).

Finally—and this is an important one—if you live with other people, put them to work!! My husband is the master dish washer in my house since I do most of the cooking, and the kids are responsible for cleaning the dinner plates and helping to tidy up after we eat.

How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Can you tell us something about the cookbooks you have written?

I have written four cookbooks. Each one reflects a particular time in my life. My latest book, Mind, Body, Spirit, Food: Adaptable Recipes and Grounding Meditations for Preparing Meals with Joy and Intention (2026), is my most personal. I share simple practices for bringing more intention and ease into the kitchen, along with how those practices shifted my own relationship to cooking—from stress to self-care. The recipes—spanning breakfasts, starters, main dishes, and desserts—feature variations, allowing you to tap into your intuition and use up what you have on hand.

Build-a-Bowl (2018), my second book, was written when my youngest was a toddler and we found ourselves eating down to her palate and preferences. I was craving more dynamic flavors, so starting serving build-your-own-bowl dinners, featuring a whole grain, vegetable, protein, and a flavor-packed sauce. Everybody could build their own bowls (or, in the case of my toddler, get little piles on a plate), and my husband and I were able to enjoy vibrant, beautiful dinners again.

My next book, Fresh Flavors for the Slow Cooker (2019) was written when the kids were a bit older and started to get involved in a lot of different activities. Suddenly, the dinner hour was tight, and I turned to my dusty old slow cooker in the basement for help. I was initially skeptical of the slow cooker, having grown up on mushy crockpot meals that were mostly made with canned ingredients, so I challenged myself to create recipes using fresh foods and vibrant flavors. I fell in love, and the book was born! With school starting I’ve actually been cooking from the book a ton recently (this week I made the Thai style Massaman curry and the slow cooker applesauce).

My first book was The Food Processor Family Cookbook, which features recipes that rely on the food processor for ease and efficiency. I wrote this book when I had a new baby and five-year-old, and was constantly using the food processor (including for making baby food). While I love the recipes in the book, I have to be honest in that the publisher was a disaster to work with (they were recently bought out), so the layout is not what I would have chosen (although, thankfully the book has still sold well).

Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

We still make build-your-own bowl dinners several times a week, and these Spicy Salmon Rice Bowls are probably the family favorite. They feature tender tamari roasted salmon, sushi rice, avocado, cucumber, and not one but two killer sauces.

Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

When I was just out of culinary school my husband and I had some musician colleagues of his over for dinner at our Brooklyn apartment, and I cooked up a feast. As I was finishing up the meal prep I nicked my finger and put on a band-aid. When dinnertime rolled around, the last things I had to do was toss together the watermelon and arugula salad and carve the steaks. Once we sat to eat, I realized with HORROR that my band-aid was missing. I fled into the kitchen to try to find it, but it wasn’t anywhere. I was way too embarrassed to say anything, so just kept eyeing people’s plates throughout dinner to see if it ended up in the food. I still have no idea if somebody found it in their salad and was just too nice to say anything… (oh, the mortification!). My husband and I have had many good laughs about this over the years (although, we’ve never invited those colleagues back…).

Thank you so much for sharing your kitchen with us, Nicki.

Visit and subscribe to her publication. Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD

Read more in the Q&A series, and if you would like to share your kitchen with us, get in touch Thefoodstak@gmail.com

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Julia: I was a Foreign Correspondent for a British national newspaper in Moscow when it was the USSR, then Washington DC, then Brussels. Now I live in London, which has become probably the best food capital in the world. In Moscow, any kind of food was hard to come by. So I launched ‘Capital Gains’, a weekly newsletter which was probably one of the first anywhere on what produce I was finding on street corners driving between interviews and press conferences and how to cook unfamiliar ingredients. The US Embassy distributed it to the foreign community. They called me one day to say the Kremlin wives had asked to be put on the mailing list. If they didn’t know where to get stuff then finding food was an even bigger challenge than I thought!

Landing in DC straight from Russia, I realised how much easier it is as an ex-pat anywhere to settle in if you can locate familiar foods from back home, particularly if you have family. So I created eatWashington.com, a web site that along with chef interviews, their recipes and food news, told readers where to get ingredients from global cuisines locally and what and how to cook with them.

The ‘Julia’ on the framed kitchen cloth is the other one…

Tabled is a continuation of that. It’s published weekly with a recipe and includes the history of the recipe’s main ingredient, or an anecdote around discovering a dish it contains. Ant egg soup in Laos? Eat it before the ants climb out of the bowl. Tabled also aims - I hope without beating the reader over the head - to shine a light on what goes on in what I’ve dubbed Big Food Biz and how our health, animal health, and the health of the globe is affected, often adversely, by its profit-focused strategies.

Q - Can you please describe the layout of your kitchen, how much of a role does it play with your family, and when writing for your publication ‘Tabled’?

Julia: In DC, I had a huge kitchen where everyone hung out. Now I live in a small Victorian worker’s house in London where floor space is really limited. So I converted the 4 feet by 12 feet basement that originally stored coal into a galley kitchen, and bashed a big hole in the walls of the dining room above so friends can lean down and talk as I cook. I actually find my galley kitchen much easier to work in. I never move more than a couple of feet and I love the fact that though the space is too small for anyone but me, they’re cheering me on from above.

Q - What are your most used kitchen gadgets and kitchen gear, that you cannot live without?

Julia: I’m not a huge gadgets fan. They need fiddly disassembling to wash them and take up space I just don’t have. When I travel, I never see gadgets in village kitchens or hawker stalls. In South East Asia I learned how a heavy meat cleaver can easily mince up meat and finely chop hard-skinned vegetables like gourds. When, much younger, I ran away to Greece, I only took a chef’s knife and a mouli legume - a metal hand-operated food mill. I used its largest disc to grate cheese, its medium disc to turn it into a sieve, it’s smallest to grate garlic.

My favourite spatula is a clean finger. One of my most used knives is a small serrated one with a plastic handle I bought for under a dollar in Greece. After 20 years, it is still so sharp I have to be really careful using it.

Q - How and why did you become interested in the food industry and why did you want to write about it?

Julia: When I arrived in the US, I filed for a UK national newspaper and wrote on food for the Washington Post, Gourmet Magazine and a local newspaper group. Then UPI (United Press International) made me their Food Writer and I became interested in the politics of food. Our curiosity about food is voracious, and the internet provides unlimited access to recipes. But we’ve only recently become aware of the influence of the industrial food complex and the nutritional and environmental problems associated with much of what we eat. I had been shocked to discover that High Fructose Corn Syrup whose use in Europe is negligible, is present in pretty much all American packaged and processed foods. It’s sweeter and cheaper than other sweeteners and corn farmers are heavily subsidised. Also, the labelling of ingredients in the US is far less stringent than European regulations. Consumers have a powerful voice. Change what we choose to buy and we could change what manufacturers try to sell us.

Q - You have won several awards for your writing. Can you please tell us about them?

Julia: I’ve written three cookbooks, each of them containing the recipes that I write to appear in the Bruno, Chief of Police crime series by Martin Walker. It’s set in the Dordogne, South West France, home to duck, truffles, walnuts and goat’s cheeses. What I became tired of in the cookbooks I was sent as a food writer was the perfection of how the dishes all looked. I’m not a professional chef, just a home cook. So when it came to photographing my recipes I insisted there should be no food stylists. I sent each dish to the photographer straight from my stove. Edges charred in the oven? Edges were charred in the picture. Readers say they’ve found this a relief.

The Bruno Cookbook and Bruno’s Garden Cookbook, published by Diogenes, both won Gourmand International’s World’s Best French Cookbook. It’s the only competition for food and drink content from publishers across the globe. Bruno’s Cookbook was published last year by Penguin Random House in the US and Quercus in the UK. I’ve also written a cookbook, not quite ready for publication, on the food of Sri Lanka.

Q - How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live ? Are there fresh food markets, or farmers markets available?

Julia: I live in an area of London with a traditional Cockney street market selling fresh fruit and vegetables every day but Sunday. It’s bordered by Middle Eastern stores, a great butcher, and two well-stocked fishmongers. There’s also a huge supermarket by our best chain. I have two small farmers’ markets within walking distance and Borough Market, London’s largest farmers’ market, is an easy Tube ride away. If you don’t go at the weekend it’s a paradise for food enthusiasts.

Q - Is there anything about your kitchen that you would like to change or improve on?

Julia: I wouldn’t mind a large American refrigerator. I only have space for a tiny under-the-counter fridge. But I really enjoy shopping a couple of times a week at my local street market whose ‘barrow-boys’ make you feel you’re their favourite customer. In my DC kitchen, the generous storage space I had made me stuff it to the brim, so the ingredients that got pushed to the back of the cupboards seldom saw the light of day before they rotted and had to be thrown out. 30 to 60 percent of household food in the US is binned, 25 to 30 percent in the UK. Now with very little storage, everything is in reach and eaten.

Q - What tips can you give us that will help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

Julia: Whether you have the space or have to depend on storage boxes, keep your ingredients and spices together by cuisine so accessing them is quick and easy. Decanting standard ingredients like flour, pasta, dried beans and rice into storage jars makes cooking so much easier than opening folded paper packages. You’ve heard this before, but wash up as you go! A stack of dirty dishes quickly puts you in the weeds. I got a catering company to build me a very deep steel sink for both my DC and London kitchens. Dirty pans stacked in it don’t get in the way and can’t be seen. I also have long-handled hospital faucets which I turn on and off with my elbows when my hands are sticky with pastry.

Q - How many cookbooks do you have and do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

Julia: Being a Food Writer was like Christmas! My local mailman would regularly stagger to the door with sacks of cookbooks. I’ve now weeded the hundreds down to around 60, of which I probably refer to ten on a regular basis. But I suspect for any cook it’s a rare cookbook that contains more than one or two recipes you go back to again and again. I have an exception, though. It’s my mother’s cut-and-paste book of recipes she clipped from newspapers and magazines.

For a cookbook to read in bed, I love Home Cooking and More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, the novelist who wrote on food for Gourmet Magazine. I’ve written three cookbooks related to the Bruno, Chief of Police crime series, and a Sri Lankan cookbook still due for publication.

Q - Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

Julia: Narrowing down a favourite recipe to one is a challenge! But this cookie recipe covers so many bases - good to give as presents, good to go with ice cream, good to have with a cup of tea or coffee. I was brought up on it. I think my mother probably found it on the back of a bag of sugar or flour.

Q - Have you had any kitchen disasters that you can share with us?

Julia: One hot DC summer, I made gazpacho for a big alfresco lunch from the traditional Spanish recipe that includes bread, which turns the soup a pale pinky-beige. I poured it to chill into some empty glass bottles. I also made some Vietnamese iced coffee for the end of the meal and poured that into other glass bottles. When everyone was seated outside, I decanted the bottles into a large china bowl and carried it out to serve at the table. It was only when the guests began to sip the soup and choke, I realised I had blended the gazpacho with the sweet iced milky coffee.

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Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us . Visit and subscribe to Julia’s Newsletter. Tabled

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If you are a food writer and would like to be part of this Q&A Kitchen series, please email Lynn. Thefoodstak@gmail.com with the subject header Q&A Kitchen series.

What do Recipe developers, food photographers, cookbook literary agents, food travel writers and restaurant reviewers have in common? A passion for writing about food.

Many things connect people, but nothing more than food. We write about it in different voices, some with romantic prose about taste, texture, and aroma. Others centre their writing around food location, variety and origins. Others stay closer to home and write about locally grown produce, and publish recipes they have developed.

Who Writes What

In this new section of FoodStak - ‘Who Writes What’, I will be having conversations with food writers of all kinds. We will discuss what drives them forward, and the impact and influence they have on others. Where did their passion for writing come from? Who and what were their earliest influences?

Food Writers on Substack

Below are just a few amazing writers on Substack. Each one has their own writing style and connection with food.

(Let’s Get Lost) - ‘a recipe developer, food photographer, passionate people watcher, and chaser of new experiences.’ I write recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure.

( Smashed ) - ‘a freelance writer and author specialising in food, drink and travel. I've been writing about restaurants and chefs for the national press for over two decades.

( Abundance ) - ‘a writer, cook, gardener, walker and photographer.’ I write about life, mostly through food and everything connected with it. I’ve written over a dozen books, winning 14 writing and 4 photography awards, including Food Book of the Year twice, and Garden Book of the Year twice.

( Not So Secret Agent )- A senior literary agent ‘I share my opinions on the publishing industry, with a specific focus on the nuances of cookbook publishing.’

With a wealth of food writers on Substack, it’s not hard to find a favourite writer. But what goes on beneath the surface of recipe testing, restaurant reviews, publishing cookbooks and articles?

I intend to find out and share these conversations with you.

Leave a comment

Hit reply or leave a comment with the name of a food writer who has influenced the way you cook or write about food. Did their passion for food writing encourage you to create your own publication and even publish a cookbook?

Until the next time.

Lynn H.

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My name is Lisa and I am an avid baker with a passion for sharing recipes for baked goods that use natural sweeteners. My husband and I started our homestead in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2021. When we moved to our new home, the land was just grass but we have been hard at work planting fruit trees, berries, vegetables, and herbs; and raising chickens, sheep, and bees.

How long have you been growing your own food and what does your garden look like today?

I started growing my own food in 2021 when we moved to our current property. We started with just a few raised beds and have expanded from there. We also planted a little orchard with various fruit trees and we have turned the front of our house into an edible garden with blueberry, strawberry, and raspberry plants.

What varieties of vegetables and/or fruit do you grow?

We grow quite a variety and we usually change up the rotation a little bit each year, but some of the mainstays are potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, broccoli, cabbage, and peas.

What food do you grow that you are unable to find in the shops?

We just started growing sunchokes this year, which isn’t something I can find in any grocery store around us.

What has been your biggest growing success and/or disaster?

We have had quite a lot of success and each year our harvest grows bigger and bigger. Potatoes and onions are a couple of our favorite crops to grow because you are almost guaranteed success with those and then you can store them and keep eating them for months after harvest. We haven’t had a disaster really but weather, weeds, and pests are always challenging to deal with - this year has been especially humid so we have had to deal with some fungal diseases that have never shown up before in our garden (like corn smut).

Which crop do you grow every year, and what is your favourite dish to make with it?

We grow berries every year - it’s hard to pick one favorite dish but I love to use the berries in my baked goods so you’ll find a lot of berry-related recipes on my substack/website like mixed berry coffee cake, strawberry cookies, and strawberry muffins. We also grow zucchini every year and I love to come up with creative ways to bake with zucchini so you’ll also find quite a few zucchini-related recipes on my substack/website like zucchini chocolate chip cookies and zucchini brownies.

How do you plan your meals around the produce you grow?

We don’t really plan our meals too much in the summer since we tend to just cook what we have on hand (and what is closest to going bad). So we tend to make dishes that are easy to incorporate a lot of vegetables into like stir fries and hashes.

How do you manage a glut of produce, what do you make?

One of my favorite recipes to make with a glut of produce is okonomiyaki - a Japanese veggie pancake dish. You can switch up the vegetables you include and my favorite combination is zucchini, cabbage, and carrots. I don’t follow a specific recipe (but you can search online to find one) - it’s just generally the vegetables combined with flour and eggs though.

Do you have a compost? If so, what is the best way of getting the most out of composting and do you have any tips?

Yes, we have a compost system we made using wooden pallets and it’s divided into 3 sections so we can let one of them rest and still be adding to the other 2. My top two tips are to make sure you are turning your compost pretty regularly and to also make sure you are watering it every now and then.

What is one piece of advice you would give to someone who wants to start growing their own food?

Only grow what you want to eat! A lot of people say this but it’s very true - it’s not worth the time to grow something that you don’t absolutely love eating, so don’t aim for a large variety of produce but really just the produce that you actually want to be eating all season long.

Thank you for sharing your vegetable garden with us . Visit and subscribe to Lisa’s publication The Naturally Sweet Life.

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As you have mentioned, my name is Martin, and my Substack publication is called Great Bakes.

I’ve loved baking ever since I set the microwave on fire, making a “biscuit” as a wee youngster.

Luckily, I’ve learned a lot since then. I am a home baker and cook, taught by dozens of blogs, a vast cookbook collection, my local public library, the people around me, and what grows around the Great Lakes. I used to be afraid of baker’s math, measuring, kitchen thermometers, and latticing pie crusts. But now I’ve figured out how to do it…and I’m still learning.

Originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana—a nice, very average, mid-sized city—I grew up in a loving family surrounded by cornfields, Amish farms, and a distant relative’s apple orchard. As Hoosier now based in Chicago, my baking combines my Great Lakes roots, my multicultural urban home, and my goofy, think-outside-the-box attitude.

I was a huge fan of the Great British Baking Show, so I decided to audition for the American spinoff and got the wild opportunity to be on the show’s sixth season, which aired on The Roku Channel in May 2023. They flew us to England, where we baked in the iconic white tent for judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith. To my surprise I managed to come out on top! That win propelled me to keep on baking and follow my dreams.

I’ve always relished writing and talking about food, especially baking, so I took this opportunity to share my recipes with the world. I started here on Substack just over a year ago, and I’ve also written for the Chicago Tribune, Food & Wine, and other fantastic publications.

Can you please describe your kitchen lay out and how much of a role it plays with your family and when writing and testing recipes for your ‘Great Bakes’ newsletter?

I live in a 100-year-old Chicago Bungalow, but I have a decently sized kitchen for a small older home like ours. It’s a simple U-shaped counter with a sink, a slide-in range, and a full-sized and decent storage. Of course, I need more storage.

There are two cupboards where I keep some ingredients and a spice-rack cupboard next to my oven, but no actual pantry. The basement has one closet that serves as my pantry, stores many of my baking supplies, and another with more baking-related stuff (my grain mill and dehydrator have to live somewhere).

My kitchen is somewhere between very organized and mildly chaotic. Yes, I have some drawers stuffed to the gills, but I always completely tidy my workspace and get out all of my ingredients before testing recipes (or cooking dinner).

This utilitarian kitchen got me through the preparation for my turn on the Great American Baking Show. I would block off part of the countertop so that I only had as much space as I thought we would have while on set. But during practice, I dirtied so many dishes that I would pile them on the floor in another room.

Nowadays, my kitchen is calmer and more organized, but still busy. It’s my office. Because of my wretched handwriting, I always type up recipes. I’ll print them out (yes, on paper), and take them to the kitchen to test them and edit them. During Chicago’s too-brief summer and fall, I buy way too much local produce, so there’s always some sitting on the counter, plus probably some jars of homemade jam cooling and maybe a loaf of bread rising.

What are your favourite and most used kitchen gadgets?

1. My kitchen scale: No contest. It lives on my counter and is used to measure everything. I gave up using volume measurements for anything less than a Tablespoon. You want volume metrics from me? Sorry.

2. My stand mixer: Although I love a one-bowl, stir together recipe, I use my stand mixer for anything that it works for. Whipping cream, kneading bread, making cakes. It gets so much use that it just lives on the counter.

3. My (new!) oven and stove. It’s the most important appliance in my kitchen. My old oven just kicked the bucket, so I got a new stove. I switched from a gas oven and stove to an electric oven with an induction range and couldn’t be happier.

How did your passion for baking come about? Did anyone or anything in particular, play a role in this?

I was raised to enjoy good food and I was a curious and adventurous eater. My folks aren’t pretentious eaters, but they raised their kids to know good food and try new things. We always bought our sweet corn from the roadside stand and got the best apples from a distant relative’s orchard. When on vacation, we tried to find the best local fare and rarely went to big chain restaurants.

My mom says that I always “played with my food,” whether that meant sprinkling a sliced pear with ground nutmeg or adding garlic and parsley to her chicken soup without permission.

I was always a decent cook but not a great baker. I didn’t like to follow directions or measure things precisely. Then, about ten years ago, I thought: I bet if I actually followed the recipe and measured things, I could be a good baker. That strategy worked, and I got hooked. I started by making simple no-knead bread, then branched out to practically every baking discipline. Name a type of baked good, and I’ve probably made it before. Yes, I have made phyllo pastry. (And I won’t be doing that again any time soon.)

How has winning The Great American Bake Baking Show influenced the way you cook and bake now?

It mostly gave me confidence, both in my abilities and in my flavors. It honed my baking voice and told me that I’m good at this thing that I love to do. I knew that I was a better-than-average baker and an adventurous one, but I didn’t think that anyone might want to bake one of my recipes or that I had much to teach home bakers. But I do! I love to write recipes and nerd out about things like grains, fruit varieties, and techniques.

It also taught me that I prefer simple, flavorful bakes. Yes, I can make an opera cake, a croissant, and a croquembouche. But I’d rather make a seasonal fruit galette, a hearty loaf of rye bread, a no-bake cheesecake, or a glazed lemon loaf cake. It was fun to be pushed to bake wild, extravagant creations, but I want something that won’t take all day or require me to pile up dirty dishes in another room.

The show also pushed me to question my baking style in another way. I never thought I had much of a baking or food heritage, but then I fell in love with German baking which taps into a strong German family heritage. I think that Germany has the best bread in the world, and I recently took a two-week crash course in German bread at the Akademie Deutsches Bäckerhandwerk.

How would you describe the regional cuisine where you live in Chicago? Are there fresh food markets or farmers’ markets available? How much does it differ from where you grew up in Indiana?

I adore Chicago because it’s both Midwestern and global. Unlike what many people say, Chicago is more than meat-and-potatoes cuisine. I can walk to restaurants that serve Serbian, Vietnamese, Thai, German, Mexican, Kyrgyz, Korean, Ethiopian, and much more. I can hit fine-dining spots and innovative new eateries. Most of all, I have access to so many glorious bakeries. My hometown had some great food spots, but not the array of choices I have here. I also adore the various grocery store options in Chicago. I can find almost any ingredient I can think of within a 20-minute drive.

I can walk to a farmers’ market and buy the most gorgeous fruit from Michigan (tart cherries, beautiful peaches, perfect apples, and more), cheese from Wisconsin, and all sorts of fresh produce. We also have fantastic local grain farmers and millers, and I buy a lot of locally grown-and-milled organic flour. The produce here is similar in Indiana, except the Hoosier sweet corn is better and fresher. I still ask my folks to bring up corn from the roadside stand when they visit in the summer.

What is the one thing your kitchen is missing that you would love to have?

I’d love more storage space in my kitchen! I have to walk down a flight of stairs to the two closets I use for my pantry and baking-stuff storage, which are both overflowing. I took up a ceramic hobby a couple of years ago, so my collection of handmade ceramics (by me and others) has ballooned. For almost a decade, I only owned one cake plate. Now I have four, including one that I made!

What tips can you give us to help keep our kitchens neat and tidy and easy to manage?

1. Tidy up before you start. Before you embark on a recipe, clear away the clutter, put things away, empty the dishwasher, and calm your mind. I think about my time on the Baking Show. We always started with a clean bench (a huge thanks to the folks who cleaned up after us), and our ingredients set out for us. A tidy station helps avoid chaos and stress, which, for me, means fewer mistakes.

2. After baking, you can use the residual heat in the oven to dry some of your dishes. After you wash your dishes, instead of drying them off, put anything oven-proof, especially baking pans, into a turned-off oven that still has a bit of heat left. If the oven is still warm, they’ll dry out quickly.

3. Don’t buy a new gadget/pan/etc. unless you think you’ll use it at least three times. If I see a recipe that calls for an odd pan or gadget that I don’t have, like a mini-muffin pan, then I won’t make it right away. I’ll wait until I come across (or think of) two other recipes that use that item, and then I’ll make the purchase. That way you don’t have a kitchen full of single-use items.

You describe yourself as a ‘huge nerd about food and baking’, with a large cookbook collection. Do you have any favourites? Have you written any cookbooks?

Absolutely! I have a huge collection, and I’ve read even more. I read cookbooks and other food books cover-to-cover. I’ve read Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking thrice. Some of my most-reached-for baking tome books are Dan Lepard’s Short & Sweet, Stella Parks’s Bravetart, and Jeffrey Hammelman’s Bread. I’m in love with fellow Substack-writer ’s new book Sift. I usually have a handful of cookbooks from the library sitting on my side table.

I’m a big fan of German bread, and I have seven cookbooks on that subject that I brought home from Germany, in German. (And I don’t speak much German.) To keep my cookbook collection manageable, I’ve even started buying digital copies of cookbooks.

I’m excited to have published my first cookbook with a Chicago-area publisher, Agate Publishing. More details about the book and where to buy. I’ll be writing about writing that book in my newsletter, Great Bakes. I have ideas for at least two other books, too!

I also write regular columns for Food & Wine, where I nerd out about topics or ingredients that interest me.

Do you have a favourite recipe that you would like to share with us?

I just adore this simple, ultra-fluffy, one-layer Whipped Cream Berry Cake topped with a lemon verbena whipped cream and a mess of fresh berries.

Thank you for sharing your kitchen with us, . Visit and subscribe to Martin’s Substack publication Great Bakes

All images are copyright of Martin Sorge.

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Who Writes What looks beneath the surface of recipes, cookbooks, and restaurant reviews. It explores the obsession required to write about food.

Writing for a community is different from writing for search engines. It can be poetic and descriptive, but this can be stripped away when writing for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

AI has its place in the world, but it cannot taste a juicy ripe apple from the orchard, or tart Rhubarb plucked from underneath a terracotta forcing pot.

When I retired from cancer care at the Mass General Hospital here in Boston, I became aware my friends were either overwhelmed about what’s nourishing to eat or had gone down the path of restriction. They were omitting gluten or dairy or jumping onto the Whole 30 diet bandwagon. I became very attuned to how food mythologies had taken the joy and connection out of a good meal.

I, myself, have an insatiable appetite, and with my husband and two children in their 20’s, we’ve made lasting memories cooking together and exploring the world through food. I’m 64 now. As both a pediatric and adult cancer survivor myself, having faced serious illness, I wanted to share the balanced eating that both allows me to celebrate life and keeps me in good health.

When away from work and science, I was a weekend leisure cook fortunate to be able to take classes from early career restaurant chefs here in New England like Ken Oringer, Cara Chigazola Tobin, Michael Schlow, and Melissa Kelly. I’d spend Saturdays cooking 5-course meals for friends and family and plotting food pilgrimages. Food writing was a natural progression. I write ‘palatable’ magazine-style stories following my own curiosities about global foods, food zeitgeist, gem destinations, and emerging nutrition science, always weaving in something valuable, especially recipe strategies, readers can apply in their kitchens.

I believe truly that eating for prevention of dementia, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer (now rising sharply in our young people) can jive with eating creative and adventurous food. I felt I could use my research skills to help build the nutrition literacy folks wished their physicians had more time to support. I show how to focus one’s efforts when shopping, sourcing, and adapting restaurant-quality cooking at home, helping folks become more intuitive and intentional over when to moderate and when to indulge.

When I began oncology care in the 1990’s, a colon cancer diagnosis before age 50 was rare…that’s no longer the case. Type 2 diabetes and hypertension were diseases of adults… not ten year olds. I want readers to know it is possible to eat to reduce risks of chronic disease without sacrificing the pleasures of food.

Because these are primal ways we come to care for ourselves and our families, I called my Substack Eating and Feeding —- it rings of how we come to know each other’s cultures and how we foster the next generation.

What kind of fridge do you have?

I’m a side by side girl. I have two 7 foot columns, one fridge and one freezer side. I prefer this which keeps more at eye level over a top/ bottom arrangement. Much of what I buy is fresh and perishable. I make sauces from scratch, so I don’ t need a lot of real estate for open bottles of dressings and barbecue sauce. My fridge has got an irascible personality all its own; it’s been whining and purring in the heat of this summer. I called my repairman, Percy, and, of course, it went completely mum when he arrived. I’m hoping it won’t fail me. It’s full of produce that I pick up at the farmer’s markets or get in my CSA box. Here in New England, we limp through the Spring mud season awaiting the short growing months for stone fruit, pole beans, leafy greens, and my favorite Silver Queen corn. The rest of the year, the diversity of produce found in supermarkets is very uninspiring, so I’m like a kid in the candy dime store when all those heirloom tomatoes are peak.

How often do you food shop? Do you buy in bulk - if so, what do you buy?

The week the pandemic hit, as a doc, I was able to forecast the situation. I immediately bought a freezer for the basement which has been a game changer for turning out meals more easily. I batch cook dinners and portion baked goods (that’s my downfall,) I bake and freeze lower sugar muffins and freeze desserts guests bring as gifts when I‘m entertaining. Storing them out of sight to defrost a piece at a time keeps me out of trouble.

I’m not a fan of bulk buying, but I’ve become more disciplined about food shopping to keep down trips to the store. There’s a terrific New Yorker cartoon by Harry Bliss ——the police are investigating the scene of a lethal accident at Costco…

A gargantuan jar of ‘all natural’ mayonnaise has rolled off a pallet shelf flattening a sobbing wife’s middle-aged husband, the pastor already arrived to administer last rites. That snapshot says so much…

I find buying in bulk usually ends up fighting goals of balance and moderation. You feel compelled to use what you’ve purchased. Plus, bulk foods by nature tend to be made more shelf stable with additives. Supermarkets are highly structured to promote impulse buying. I’ve taken to click and pick up shopping. Loading my cart virtually allows me to spend more time comparing ingredient labels, sodium content, and price (and spares me coming home with the extra stuff I never intended to buy.)

Much of the Eating and Feeding messaging is about creative uses for produce, fish, and whole grains and a little less meat. My principles are grounded in the EAT-Lancet recommendations for health, an evidence-based pattern of eating to reduce chronic disease and to respect the sustainability of agriculture, husbandry, and fishing.

Weekly, I buy fresh produce including plenty of greens and herbs to stock my drawer. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, Brussels, and cauliflower and beets, turnips, and radishes can last to the end of the week kept uncut. I keep a supply of baba ganoush, almonds and walnuts, and marinated herring to snack on. The pantry is always stocked with various vinegars to brighten vegetables; fish sauce, low sodium soy, and shaoxing cooking wine; pomegranate molasses, and capsicum spices like Aleppo, Kashmiri, and chipotle to keep things interesting. I stock up on whole grains, dried spices, and dried fruits and always keep beefsteak or cherry tomatoes on the counter. That lets me turn out dishes like Fasolakia Ladera (Velvet Green Beans Simmered in Olive Oil with Tomatoes) or Bulgur Tabbouleh with Cucumbers, Mint, and Dried Cranberries, regulars in our rotation, and get creative like with Za’atar Chicken with Mushrooms, Farro, and Roasted Grapes (that was delicious!) with what I have on hand.

What is the most used ingredient that you always have a good supply of?

You can always find a container of Greek yogurt in my fridge—-that and lots of fruit- cherries, berries, clementines, grapes, plums, and kiwis- to snack on!

Yogurt really is a privileged food in terms of health which I’ve written about in Will eating yogurt make you live to 100? If not my breakfast with blueberries, it boggles me how many uses I find in dishes like Turkish Poached Green Eggs in Hot Garlicky Yogurt (Cilbir) or Chermoula-Roasted Cauliflower & Yogurt Sauce. I can rapidly assemble Pear, Blueberry, and Cardamom Yogurt Parfaits and it’s my preferred fat with plant oils when baking Golden Chai and Summer Squash or Zucchini Chocolate Chip Muffins for the kids. The acid adds great leavening and tenderizes the crumb. For easy entertaining, a dollop of labneh (made from straining 2% Greek yogurt) tops my Swiss Chard Torta di Bietole with Dark Cherries or Roasted Beets with Labne and Pistachios. My son loves a big, gloppy spoon of it over braised kale or eggs with fresh herbs. Yogurt is definitely the hardest working item in my fridge.

What is the oldest item/ingredient in your fridge, and what did you originally buy it for?

I have a tub of active dry yeast way in the back on the top shelf. My college-aged daughter bought it 2 years ago to teach my son how to bake when home on break. I have such sweet memories of them dancing around the kitchen together baking challahs and popovers. I feel I’ve done my parental duty teaching them how to enjoy cooking for themselves and to share the moment. Every empty nester will understand why I haven’t brought myself to throw it out. (Apparently, yeast is best stored in the freezer, but you can try blooming it even after six months.)

Do you meal plan? If so, would you please share your secrets with us?

There can be so much emotional inertia to meal plan, but once you get over the hurdle, like exercise, the rewards are great. I’ve written about how ‘think ahead’ strategies can de-stress your evenings and save your relationship. I make a general plan as I shop online targeting at least two meals each— fish, plant, and poultry—weekly. To get buy in from my crew, my ‘healthier’ cooking had to compete with their favorite take out foods, and I think we’ve had nearly ‘restaurant’ quality meals at home. When my younger went off to college, I had my glory when he conceded at Thanksgiving break, “I didn’t realize how good the food is here.”

For ease, I batch cook and freeze components of meals like chicken for stir fry, oven-baked eggplant slices, and sauces that can become building blocks for a variety of meals. I feel planning ahead can make best use of ingredients with less waste, especially when perishable produce is my mainstay. I’ve written menu plans for solo households and busy college kids that build each meal on last night’s prep. I’m very much an improvisational cook who will repurpose leftovers to stretch one meal into several.

What is the most expensive item in your fridge, and what do you use it for?

I read in Nancy Singleton Hachisu’s memoir/ cookbook, Japanese Farm Food, that her preferred shoyu is an unpasteurized, artisanal “live” brew and became obsessed.
Using certified organic and traditional fermentation practices, Yamaki Jozo ages soybeans and mountain spring water for two years in cedarwood kegs. Here in the US, the Yamaki Nama Shoyu is distributed under the Ohsawa label. I visited Harie, a mountain village of ‘living waters’ in Japan a few years back which left an indelible impression on me. The Japanese conception of satoyama (里山) respects the area between mountains and arable land as a shared resource for people, animals, and nature to equally thrive. You see this in the care taken to produce rice, vegetables, and source food in Japan which, ultimately affects flavor, so different and more complex than commercially-produced food. I’d much rather spend to support small family producers, regenerative farmers, and artisanal bakers who do food with care than on caviar and champagne.

Which items would you advise people not to keep in their fridge and why?

Perhaps a list:

Fresh herbs like basil and mint sit in a tall glass of water, stems down, on my kitchen counter to preserve the aroma (I refrigerate cilantro and parsley because of the high rate of foodborne illness like cyclospora); Winter squash gets sweeter over three weeks at room temperature as starches break down, potatoes in the refrigerator can result in increased acrylamide during cooking, these go like onions and garlic in a dry, dark spot to avoid sprouting; chocolate in the fridge loses moisture turning chalky; never avocados because these are never ripe from the market; and I’d never spoil a summer peak tomato’s umami by placing it in the cold.

How do you organise your fridge? Is it chaos, or a place for everything and everything in its place?

An organized fridge gives such a sense of peace and calm. But, I assure you, mine doesn’t always stay so orderly. If you were here, it would look like an infinite ‘loop’ video of me attempting to organize —-dairy top shelf (nearest expiration dates forward); eggs and leftovers second shelf, fruit (the heavy stuff) first shelf—-while the husband and kids wreak havoc (or leave empty containers) torpedoing my efforts. The bottom-most drawer is for raw poultry, beef, and fish. I am a bit immunocompromised, so we take extra care to avoid cross-contamination, and we keep eggs away from raw produce as shells can harbor salmonella. But, I’d advise anyone to take these precautions.

What are your top tips for storing items in your fridge and keeping it tidy? Do you use storage containers?

I generally remove food from packaging and deli wrap before storage in the fridge. I worked with The Silent Spring Institute, an environmental toxicology group focused on reducing breast cancer risk, so I often write about reducing endocrine disruptor and other exposures. Time in packaging increases opportunity for leaching of antistatic agents and grease-proofers that typically contain perchlorates and PFAS forever chemicals with potential to migrate. I’ve shifted to storage in glass, and I really like these silicone ‘bowls’ (photo above) for produce. Their wide mouths make it easy to grab fruit for snacking, and they do well in the dishwasher. The data on microplastics and human health is emerging. I’ve written about why I chose paper composite for my microplastic-free cutting board swap, and how to think about microplastic ‘health’ claims. I’ve been encouraging the kids to be aware that cans of seltzer are lined with plastic polymers and to drink from their stainless water bottles or buy seltzer in glass when they can. We live immersed in a plastic-world, so we can’t eliminate them but we can be smart about when they are worth the convenience.

Thank you for sharing your Fridge with us . All images are copyright of Ellen.

Read more interviews and Q&A series.

If you are a food writer and would like to be part of this Q&A Fridge series, please email Lynn. Thefoodstak@gmail.com with the subject header Q&A Fridge series.

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