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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

Alicia Kennedy

A weekly food and culture podcast from writer Alicia Kennedy, who talks to writers, chefs, and more about their lives, careers, and how food fits into it all.
www.aliciakennedy.news
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Top 10 From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Sandor Katz

A Conversation with Sandor Katz

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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03/16/22 • 22 min

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

This week, I'm talking to Sandor Katz, whom you likely know from his books Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, The Art of Fermentation, Fermentation As Metaphor, and now Sandor Katz's Fermentation Journeys, which maps fermentation practices around the world, to show how traditions that preserve abundance have been maintained. It's perhaps my favorite of his books, because it tells so many stories through fermentation and introduces you to so many people around the world.

Katz has become a legend for his work, but he maintains humility as a conduit of knowledge rather than a keeper. His approach is a real inspiration to me. It was wonderful to get to talk to him about how he organized this book by substrate rather than nation, that why he names the ills of neocolonialism, and a lot more.

Alicia: Hey, Sandor. Thank you so much for being here with me today.

Sandor: It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Sandor: Well, I grew up in New York City, on the Upper West Side. And we ate all kinds of things. I feel very lucky that my parents liked different kinds of foods. They liked vegetables. We ate lots of different kinds of fresh vegetables.

But I mean, I would say that my mom did most of the day to day cooking. She had her repertoire. I remember she liked to make pot roast. Sometimes she made great lasagna, but also lots of kind of simple things that she would leave me a note as I got older, just to reheat something. ‘Set the oven to this temperature, put this in the oven.’ My father also liked to cook. He was more of the classic weekend chef. But that also meant that he could be—He was very creative in his cooking. And he's 87 years old now. And he still loves to cook.

And we were in New York City, and we ate Chinese food a lot. China-Latina food, the Cuban Chinese restaurants, we ate them a lot. My mother's parents, who I was close with growing up, were immigrants from what's now Belarus. And my grandmother was a great cook. And she would come over from time to time and make blintzes for us, I mean, she would make dozens of them. And we’d eat some fresh, and then she’d wrap them up and put them in the freezer. And we would defrost them and fry them to eat them. She made a chopped liver. She made matzah ball soup, gefilte fish, all these kind of classic Eastern European Jewish foods. We ate really beautiful versions of them at home.

Alicia: And you've written mostly about fermentation now, to kind of fast forward in life. But I also love your book The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, which came out in 2006. And I wanted to ask, because I recently reread it, how do you feel about the food movement it described in 2006 now in 2022?

Sandor: Well, I guess one thing I would say is that it doesn't describe a food movement. It describes a lot of different, grassroots movements. And I mean, I guess, some of them have been more successful over time than others have been. I mean, I think very much, it's not a centralized movement with a singular aim. I think people who get involved in grassroots movements or organized around food have a lot of different ideas and a lot of different objectives.

I mean, certainly the local food movements have been very successful. And there's a lot in most parts of the U.S. at any rate, there's a lot more variety of locally grown foods available. In some places, I think that there have been more successful efforts to make that accessible. I've visited some farmers’ markets where they take EBT card,...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Tunde Wey

A Conversation with Tunde Wey

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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09/03/21 • 48 min

People assume I’ve interviewed Tunde Wey—the artist, writer, and cook whose work has been the subject of other people’s award-winning profiles—before because I’m a big public fan of his work, but I hadn’t felt myself properly prepared. His work touches on everything from racism to immigration to colonialism to capitalist extraction, and I didn’t really know my way into a focused interview. I was nervous, basically. But I think we had a good conversation, one that gets at a lot of issues with food as a lens toward bigger systems and problems.
In many cases—most cases, if I’m honest—I’m doing an interview in order to work out a problem I’ve been thinking about, and this one was no different. We waded into whether food can really be an agent of change in a capitalist world, because I’ve been wavering on that idea myself, and Wey has the economic knowledge to discuss why it isn’t so in depth. Listen above, or read below.
Alicia: Hi, Tunde. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Tunde: Thank you.
(:07) Alicia: And I know you are in Lagos, now. Can you tell us about how that's going, what you're doing there?
Tunde: Oh, I'm actually not in Lagos. [Laughs.] I was supposed to fly two weeks ago, and my COVID result didn’t come in time. So I just pushed for my flight till a couple of months from now. Next month or something.
Alicia: Ok, cool.
Well, can you tell us about where you grew up and what you ate?
Tunde: Yeah.
I grew up in Lagos. I ate regional Western Nigerian food, I guess. So I'm Yoruba, so I ate Yoruba food. My mom is Edo, so I ate that food as well. My dad is also part Efik, so I ate that as well. So I'd Yoruba, Efik, and sort of the Delta region food, so Edo, Itsekiri food. And then we ate, I guess, white food too.
Alicia: Which white food?
Tunde: When we were growing up, we used to call it breakfast things. But when I came here, then it was lunch meats and s**t like that. So sausages and hams and stuff like that. So, we ate that. So it was a mix.
We usually would eat that on Sundays. My dad would cook, and we'd go out to this store. My data would buy a whole bunch of things, and then he'll cook. Pasta. My mom would mix s**t like beef stroganoff, just random s**t. She went to school in England, so she came back with certain notions around food. So, we have those kinds of things.
And growing up in Nigeria, I came from a middle-class background. It wasn't out of the norm for folks to eat that kind of stuff. So cereals and pancakes, stuff like that. Plus, we also watched a lot of American television with that kind of stuff on the TV.
Alicia: Right, right. Yeah.
And you self-identify as an artist, a cook and a writer. And I wanted to ask, which were you first and how did the rest come? [Laughter.]
Tunde: Which was up first? [Laughs.]
Alicia: Yeah, yeah. Which identity? Or which came to you first, in terms of your work?
Tunde: Right.
I don't know how to answer that question. I feel like it just depends on who I'm, who I am talking to. I think I say I'm an artist because it's just easier to convey what I'm trying to do. I remember, I was trying to raise money for a restaurant. And I was telling people that this restaurant is not going to make any money. And they couldn't understand that. They were like, ‘Huh, what does this mean?’ But then if I was talking to, say, a curator, and I'm like, ‘Well, this project is this and I need this amount of money,’ then they get it. So it just depends on who I'm talking to.
So I guess in the chronology of what is on public records? Artist came last, and it's probably still not on record. So, maybe that’s the first time.
Alicia: Well, it is difficult, I think, for multi-disciplinary people to use that word, to make themselves legible, I suppose, in a world where you have to make everything legible to obtain what you need to do your work at all. You have to be very, very strict about what you are. That is really funny that saying artist allowed you to get the capital for the projects that you needed, that you wanted to do. [Laughs.]
Tunde: Yeah, I have a friend who's a curator. She's a friend, but she's also a colleague. She's based in Pittsburgh, Chenoa, and she was the first person—I did a dinner in New Orleans, and she happened to be there ’cause she was there for the opening of some hotel or something. And she had read about it. She just came through. And then, that's how we became friends. But she saw it as art. And then she gave me sort of the words to be able to describe myself to myself and to other people. And then she sponsored the project as art. So I'm like, ‘All right, I f**k with this.’
Alicia: Right.
And your work focuses on power, colonialism, capitalism, racism. You've written for food sections and food outlets...
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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Millicent Souris

A Conversation with Millicent Souris

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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05/25/22 • 62 min

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

This week, I'm talking to Millicent Souris, someone I have long wanted to make my friend. Millicent is to me just wildly cool. She talks about food equity and drinking bourbon, and there was no one I would rather talk to you about the dichotomy of being politically engaged with food justice, and also stocking your pantry with very nice olive oil. She's also one of my favorite food writers period; her pieces in Brooklyn Based, Bon Appetit, Diner Journal—they kind of redefined the genre. As a longtime line cook who now runs a soup kitchen and food pantry in New York City, she's someone who simply knows food—its highs and lows and is cool as hell. Did I say that already?

Alicia Kennedy: Hi, Millicent. How are you, Millicent?

Millicent Souris: I'm doing all right. How are you, Alicia?

Alicia: Did I say your name right?

Millicent: Yep!

Alicia: Actually, we should have done that before. [Laughs.]

Millicent: I know. Yeah, my name is Millicent. And is Alicia correct for you?

Alicia: Yes. Alicia is correct.

Millicent: Great.

Alicia: Yeah, I'm Alicia sometimes, but only if you're a Spaniard. [Laughs.]

Millicent: Fair, I'm not going to pretend...

Alicia: Yeah, yeah...well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Millicent: Yeah, I grew up in Baltimore County, north of Baltimore City, and in Towson, Maryland, and Lutherville, Maryland—which is of course home to John Waters and Divine, and also in North Baltimore County.

So my dad's parents had immigrated from Greece, so I grew up eating Greek food. And then my mom's family had a dairy farm, so I grew up drinking—when I was up there—unpasteurized milk, which I would say about 10 years ago, I made the connection was raw milk. And country food, you know—my grandfather would grow his own corn and tomatoes and zucchini, and that would be summertime. We ate a lot of crabs in the summer, because it's Maryland, and then also, like, oysters were definitely a part of my mom's family. Like we'd have oysters stuffing and raw oysters at Thanksgiving, because her dad would bring them and shuck them.

But then also because it's the ’70s and ’80s, straight-up shitty American processed food, was a gift, you know, for our household because my mom worked and my dad worked, and there's three of us. And, you know, even on the farm, my uncle and his wife, they would buy Steak-umms, even though they had ground beef from the steers that they sent to slaughter. You know, we would drink Tang, and we ate Stouffer’s lasagna, so it was a real hodgepodge, I think, of all that stuff.

And then there was, when my mom left my dad and there was the episode called “divorce food,” which was Lean Cuisines and Hamburger Helper and La Choy and a lot of Mandarin oranges in tins.

Alicia: Wow. Yeah. Was that on behalf of your mom’s side?

Millicent: That was on my mom's side. And then my dad would just take us to his friends’ restaurants or bars and we’d eat there.

Alicia: [Laughs.] My parents, when they got divorced, I always say, when I knew something was going wrong was when my mom started to make instant mashed potatoes.

Millicent: Yeah...

Alicia: I was already like, 20. So it wasn't like I was a kid. But you know it was always seared in my mind that the instant mashed potatoes were the beginning of the end.

Millicent: It's the tell...it’s the tell... except I, when I did eat instant mashed potatoes and I think I was 21 I first had them, I was like, What is this magical stuff that just turns into mashed potatoes?

Alicia: No, it's super cool.

Millicent: It's...I mean, science. It's science.

Alicia: Yeah, well, you know, as you were just talking about the dairy and also your family had a bar as well, you know, how did you end up in food, personally?

Millicent: I ended up in food...uh, I mean, my Yaya would cook—Souris’s started as a restaurant in 1934. And so it was a classic Greek restaurant, which is American food and then Greek specials. And then when my dad made it a bar, there was a grill, but there was a flattop behind the bar, and so my Yaya would make totally frozen hamburgers...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Angela Garbes

A Conversation with Angela Garbes

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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05/04/22 • 50 min

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Angela Garbes, the author of Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy, and the new Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change. We discussed how her past as a food writer continues to inform her work, what mothers who are creative workers need to thrive—spoiler, it's basically what all workers need to thrive—informal knowledge building, and the significance of having an unapologetic appetite as a woman. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or adjust your settings to receive an email when podcasts are published.

Alicia: Hi, Angela. Thank you so much for being here.

Angela: Thank you so much for having me, Alicia.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Angela: Sure. I grew up in rural Central Pennsylvania. So—people can't see this—but this is roughly the shape of Pennsylvania, my hand. And I grew up here in what I call the ass crack of Pennsylvania. And it was a very small town, about 4,000 people. And I was one of very few people of color. And my parents are immigrants from the Philippines. You know, I would say that from a very young age, I was, like, born different. But, you know, we have a fairly typical...like, my parents are both medical professionals. So we had a pretty typical, I would say, fairly typical as you could get, middle class upbringing.

And as far as what we ate, I look back on it now and I think of it as like a perfect combination of like 50 percent American, quote unquote, American convenience food, like a lot of Hamburger Helper, a lot of Old El Paso soft shell tacos, a lot of Little Caesars Pizza, a lot of Philly cheesesteaks.

And then the other half we ate Filipino food: sinigang, adobo, arroz caldo, tinola... and, you know, I remember my dad, like, hacking up pig's feet, you know, I would come downstairs and he'd be cooking up things like that. And so when I look back on it now, I think it was—I mean, I love Filipino food so much. But I also, I mean, I love all kinds of food. And I kind of eat anything. And it's partly, I think, because I was just exposed to a lot of things.

But my parents, you know, we lived in this really small town, and they couldn't get all of the ingredients that they wanted to make traditional dishes. But they kind of improvised with what they had. And because they were so committed to cooking Filipino food, sort of against the odds, I would say, you know, we did a lot of...there were not vegetables that [were] available, like you couldn't get okra or green papaya. So we would use zucchini, and, you know, frozen okra to make sinigang. But it was such a way for them to stay connected to their cultures and I feel so grateful to them because what they did was really pass that down to me, from an early age. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is—this is my food, like, this is who I am. And I've never lost that. And I've always loved [it] and, yeah, so it was sort of this wonderful, healthy mix, I think.

Alicia: For sure, and, you know, it was so interesting to realize, because I don't think I'd realized it before, that you were a food writer. [Laughs] Until I got into your books, I was like, Wait...

And Like a Mother, your first book, starts out like, so...like, such a rich piece of food writing. And I'm like, Wow, now I understand. And then I realized, I'm like, Oh, she is a food writer. So you know, you've come to write your two books about motherhood, but you know, you're also a food writer, and you're writing about food in these books as well. How did you become a food writer?

Angela: First of all, thank you for saying this now because I miss food writing. And I think at heart, I am a food writer. And I think it informs, you know, the way I portray sensory detail and physical experience...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Andrea Hernandez

A Conversation with Andrea Hernandez

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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05/11/22 • 46 min

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture, about their lives, careers, and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Andrea Hernandez, the oracle behind the newsletter Snaxshot, which explores food and beverage trends with humor, broad insight, and gorgeous graphics.

Nothing about the conversation went according to plan. I had to reschedule because of Puerto Rico's archipelago-wide blackout, my usual recording software wasn't loading, my laptop and Andrea's AirPods were dying, and we went totally off the prepared script to discuss the limits of tech that doesn't cross borders, having to be self-motivated as independent workers, adaptogens, commodification of culture, and much more.

Alicia: Hi, Andrea. How are you?

Andrea: I'm good. I'm actually doing good. [Laughter.] Thanks for asking me, how about you?

Alicia: I'm good. I'm good. I know, you've had some power problems lately.

Andrea: I was honestly, yesterday, I was like, Oh, God, because yesterday, I woke up with no electricity. And then at night, the power went out too. And I'm like, I don't know if we're gonna be able to do this. I was gonna have to— I don't know if tomorrow will be okay. But thank God, there's been no issues. I don’t wanna jinx myself. [Laughs.]

Alicia: Right. Well, yeah, we rescheduled this because there was a blackout in Puerto Rico and then there have also been problems in a lot of other places as well. It's interesting, because someone messaged me in the Pacific Northwest, in Oregon, and was like, “We're having bad weather, I don't know if the power is going to hold.”

And I feel like this is something that's underestimated and that's not as discussed, I think, because people in New York and LA don't have these problems right now, you know, and so I did want to talk to you about that, about how do you get your work done, and how do you keep your kind of resolve because also, as independent writers—as I know, of course—we are self-motivated completely with kind of, these unpredictable issues that happen.

Andrea: Yeah, it really sucks at times when, at night, because it's like, well, I don't really have anywhere else to go. My phone has been sort of like what I default to, which is, like, so funny that you put yourselves in these positions, like I've literally, like, learned to do like, writing on Substack on my phone, which is like the most tedious thing—I wish they would like improve upon that experience. But I'm also, you know, before my laptop battery died, I will literally use my phone as a hotspot, for whatever, [how long] it can last.

But yeah, I think—it's just so funny, because I talk to a lot of people from literally all over the world, people from Sydney and London and all these places. [And] they are always surprised. They're like, Wait, like, you're in Honduras? And I'm like, yeah, and they're just like, so shocked. They can't believe that someone from an unknown hub could be putting out work that's recognized in their places.

So I think, to me, it's like, you mentioned something, like the self-motivation. It's so true. I talk to people, constantly, that there's no hack. You need to get the work done. Nobody else is doing it for us; we don't have a team so that we can default to—it's on you. So you have to figure it out, and I think growing up, my parents taught me that sort of resiliency of, you have to figure it out. Like, there's no backup. So, you have to...there's a saying, it's called the “the law of the wittiest,” “la ley del mas vivo” in Spanish, which is like you just have to be streetwise and figure out, Okay, this isn't working, let's try to figure out which angle to work at, whatever. And so I think that's my approach to everything. And I again, we’ve got no power—okay, cool, my phone. Like, there's no, Oh, you know what, let me just, I'll nap and see if something happens. [Laughter.]

Especially growing up in countries where you don't have infrastructures to depend on. Like, you can’t depend on your government; you can’t depend on the infrastructures. Even growing up in a politically unstable country has taught me I can't even rely on there being peace. There's gonna be unsettling things that happen and you kind of just have to figure out how to work it out. And also the emotional toll that these things take on you. I think I addressed this last week. I feel like I've internalized these things, but the reality is, it f***s with you. It’s like s**t, you know, I am not really competing,...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Jenny Dorsey

A Conversation with Jenny Dorsey

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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02/16/22 • 36 min

You're listening to From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy, a food and culture podcast. I'm Alicia Kennedy, a food writer based in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Every week on Wednesdays, I'll be talking to different people in food and culture about their lives, careers and how it all fits together and where food comes in.

Today, I'm talking to Jenny Dorsey, a chef, food writer and executive director of Studio ATAO, a nonprofit think tank that works on changing inequitable systems in food and beyond. We discussed how she went from business school to kitchens, cultural appropriation in fast casual restaurants, and launching a newsletter as a way to find her voice in writing.

Alicia: Hi, Jenny. Thank you so much for being here.

Jenny: Thanks for having me.

Alicia: Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jenny: Yeah, of course.

So I was born in Shanghai, but I grew up in New York. Both my parents were getting their PhDs at Albert Einstein University up in the Bronx. So I feel when I was little, I ate a lot of just food at home. My family was definitely the ‘Why would you ever eat outside? You're wasting money’ sort of vibe. So everything was at home.

There was a lot of eggs and a lot of breads. And of course, every meal has to have a veg. So I kind of grew up with a lots of vegetables and never really understood that idea of like, ‘Vegetables are gross. Kids don't like vegetables.’ I think pea sprouts are my favorite vegetable in the world. Ate a lot of tomato and egg growing up; I think that's a classic Chinese staple. So things that were easy for young 20-something-year-old parents that had no cooking experience and worked all the time to make.

Alicia: [Laughs.] Did you grow up in the Bronx, or did you grow up in a different borough?

Jenny: Yeah, we grew up essentially in the student's compound within the Bronx. So there was some other, yes, children of fellow students that I hung out with. I felt we occasionally were actually able to go out and be with the rest of the Bronx. But a lot of times we were kind of confined in this little area, and so didn't really honestly get as much interfacing with the world outside as I think would have been beneficial to growing up, unfortunately.

Alicia: Yeah, no, I remember Albert Einstein College from driving past. I went to Fordham. So I remember just being like, ‘Ah, the signs.’ That's all I know of it. I'm like, ‘Oh, the signs for Albert Einstein on the Pelham Parkway.’ [Laughs.]

But that's so interesting, to grow up in that kind of environment with—and that's interesting, because I think when we think of the Bronx, we think of Arthur Avenue and we think of so much food diversity and that sort of thing. Do you go back now?

Jenny: Sometimes.

I mean, I try. But I feel I don't even know. Yeah, I didn't know to know. I feel sad about that all the time. I feel elementary school, at least I was able to go to public elementary and kind of learn about the fact that there are such a diverse group of folks up in the Bronx. But so many times when we were just in the student compounds, we’re so sheltered from everyone else. You don't interact with anyone.

And I think this is now, in retrospect, when I have kind of conversations around race and class and social status and immigration with my parents, they were so busy being students, heads down, that they had no concept of what was kind of happening, which is unfortunate. But I think that is—that's kind of a manifestation of how so many things happen here in the U.S., is that you have your own little silo and you don't realize you're in a silo until you're out of it. And that can take years. That could take your entire life.

Alicia: Right.

Well, what was your route to getting into food and becoming a chef?

Jenny: So, I had always been a food person growing up. I loved eating. I planned all of our vacations around eating. So when I was little, my parents really liked going to Vegas. This is after we had moved to Seattle. We weren't going from New York to Vegas. Because of the buffets, and there's a lot of food. And it was fairly inexpensive to go and have a good time. And so, I remember—I think I was like 10. We were going to Vegas, and we never gambled or anything. We would just go and eat at buffets. And I'd be like, ‘This one has this and this one has that. And it was all about the food.’

And so, my mother and father had always been like, ‘Yeah, you kind of like food. But that's not a real career.’ It was ...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Jackie Summers

A Conversation with Jackie Summers

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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04/16/21 • 39 min

My fiancé is making me a martini as I put together this interview with Jackie Summers, and I think he’d appreciate that. What we have in common is that we are writers and boozehounds. But Jackie is much more than that: He was the first Black distiller to be licensed in the United States since Prohibition, to make his delicious Sorel liqueur, and is a fabulous public speaker on matters of equity in hospitality. I first came across him when I was assigned to write about Sorel, and I’m thrilled that we’ve been in touch ever since. But I’m more thrilled that we got to have this conversation about his work. Listen above, or read below.

Alicia: Hi, Jackie. Thank you so much for taking the time out to chat today.

Jackie: Absolutely. It's a pleasure to talk to you.

How have you been?

Alicia: Oof.

Fine, good. A lot of work lately, which is a double-edged sword, as we all know. [Laughs.] Thankfully, people are getting vaccinated, so hopefully things will be different soon, but just kind of missing inspiration a lot.

How have you been doing?

Jackie: Like you, I have been busy doing the pandemic. As you said, it's a mixed blessing in that the way in which you're busy is not always the way in which you anticipated.

Alicia: Right. Yes.

Well, how did you anticipate being busy, and how are you actually busy?

Jackie: I had all of these plans for 2020, which did not happen. And things went entirely different directions, which I'm sure we'll get into in this conversation.

Alicia: Yes.

Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Jackie: So I was born in Queens, even though my company is called JackFromBrooklyn. The interesting part about the story is my father was Muslim, and my dad—my father was Muslim and my mom is Christian. So right off the bat, there was no pork in the house whatsoever. My mom and dad had a conversation early in their marriage that they were just going to worship their gods and not ever discuss it. But there was just no pork in the house.

And I remember having this revelation. We were on a road trip; I was five or six years old. And the family stopped at a Bob's Big Boy diner for breakfast. And I smell bacon for the first time. And I said, ‘Mom, what is that?’ And my mom said, ‘Well, that's bacon, son.’ And I said, ‘Mom, can I have some bacon?’ And she kinda looked at my dad, and I could tell that the look—the look, in retrospect, said, ‘We're not at home. Technically, yes.’ And my mom let me have bacon for the first time. You remember that scene in Close Encounters, where he just makes a mountain of mashed potatoes? Six years old with a mountain of bacon. [Laughter.] Was looking at my dad thinking to myself, ‘Why did you keep this from me?’

But really, I'm Caribbean on both sides. On my mother's side, from Barbados. On my father's side, from Saint Kitts [and] Nevis. Well, I didn't know there was a word for this when I was a child. We were largely pescatarian. We ate a lot of seafood, fish, vegetables, fresh fruit, fresh greens, baked goods. My mom was a home mom, so there was always something fresh baked in the house. But the general rule was, you could pick it out of the—off of a tree, pluck it off—out of the ground, or cook from the ocean, because those were the options that my ancestors had.

Alicia: How did you end up getting into food? I know you've written a bit about becoming the cook in your family. How did that happen?

Jackie: So, I mentioned that my mom was a home mom. My relationship with her developed by hanging on her apron strings, literally. So, she would cook. She would bake. She would fix all this food for us. And my job was, I was the family taster. She would pick something and then give me a taste and go, ‘Tell me what this needs.’ And I was like, ‘Mom, I'm a kid. I don't know what things need.’ She’d walk me through spices and herbs and go, ‘Well, this is basil. Here's how it tastes. This is oregano. This is how it tastes. These are the different things that are our tools to cook with. And here's how you use them.’

But what I figured out in retrospect as an adult, was all of the recipes had stories with them. So learning how to bake, there were stories about my mom baking as a kid. Learning how to make hot sauce hearing stories about my grandmother's hot sauce. So what I realized was, as the person who inherited m...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Eric Rivera

A Conversation with Eric Rivera

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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12/04/20 • 33 min

The first time I interviewed Eric, I knew he was different from other chefs. He really says whatever is on his mind, which comes from deep experience: Rivera used to work in the insurance business, then the recession hit and he turned his interest in food into something bigger. He went to culinary school. He spent three years as the director of culinary research operations at the Alinea Group in Chicago. But when it comes to his Seattle restaurant, Addo—which started in his apartment—he doesn’t really follow tradition. That’s been useful in the pandemic, a time during which he’s pivoted to selling pantry goods and frying customers’ potatoes, acting as what he calls a “concierge service.” This is why he’s outspoken about how the most famous chefs in the U.S. have acted irresponsibly during this crisis. We talked about his upbringing, the pandemic, and how chefs with investors don’t know how to do anything themselves.

Alicia: Hi, Eric. Thanks so much for coming on.

Eric: Awesome.

Well, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Alicia: How are things in Seattle right now?

Eric: I would say kind of all over the place. They just shut down restaurants again, for indoor dining. Doesn't necessarily affect us too much, ’cause we’re — we weren't doing that anyway. [Laughs.]

But everybody's kind of in a little panic mode. Everybody's kind of in like a little panic mode here, people that were doing it. Numbers are rising, and things are going back to beyond levels we were before March when they shut everything down. So, it's a lot more serious now.

Alicia: Right.

And, I mean, we're gonna get into this, but also, can you tell me what inspired — how did you decide never to open dining during the pandemic?

Eric: It was pretty simple: It's a virus that feeds off of people moving together and hanging out on the most basic level. And it doesn't matter who you are, or what performative safety things you want to do, the $25 thermometer, UV lights, or any of that other stuff is just pretty much [performative] at that point.

So, this is something pretty serious, and I didn't want to have to open and close and open and close and open and close over and over again, ’cause I can't afford that. [Laughs.] So, I just basically said, ‘We're gonna have to be extreme. If this virus is as extreme as it is, then it's gonna take me being extreme as well.’

Alicia: Right. And so, to get back to the normal course of the interview — can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

Eric: Yeah, I mean, I grew up in Washington State. My dad was military. They're both from Puerto Rico, both my parents, and they moved over here ’cause he got stationed. And then I was born here in Fort Lewis, and then grew up in Olympia, which is about 45 minutes south of there. And it's like, very secluded, suburban-style life. There was no Puerto Rican anything other than my parents, so it was very different.

And just pretty much over here for a while and then started moving around a little bit later in life again, ’cause my dad was military.

Alicia: And were you eating Puerto Rican food, mostly at home? How was your — outside of the house, it was totally different?

Eric: Yeah, that was the only option. It was just at my parents’ house. My grandparents had moved from Puerto Rico to kind of help raise us until we were about, until I was about seven. So, it was always Puerto Rican food from them. And then everything else on the outside was new discovery land for all of us.

So it was a matter of early on taking Puerto Rican food to lunch, to school, getting laughed at, getting made fun of, and then assimilating towards white culture, and taking Lunchables and stuff like that. And it was very, very different.

Alicia: And I know you've kind of given this story before, but how did you end up having your restaurant and being a chef?

Eric: Yeah.

I'd pursued other things before. So I was in mortgage insurance, financial services when I was younger. And then that whole thing blew up, and I got forced out with the recession. And so then I said, ‘Hey, I'm gonna pursue something. Even if worst comes to worse, at least I can make myself some food.’ [Laughs.] So I started tinkering around in kitchens and kind of doing that whole thing, was doing a food blog, and finally hit a point where I'm like, ‘This doesn't work for me. I need it to actually be something real.’

So, I proceeded as being a professional cook. Did that for a while, worked in some cool places. And then finally got to the point where I was like, ‘I'm tired of everybody t...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with James Hansen

A Conversation with James Hansen

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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05/22/20 • 35 min

I didn’t expect to spend this installment asking James Hansen, of Eater London and the In Digestion newsletter, to be a representative of his nation, but as a recovered Anglophile—who, in high school, had a Union Jack cover on her first Nokia cell phone—I got a bit in the weeds asking for the scoop on why UK food writing, as perceived from the other side of the Atlantic, is so stratified and filled with social media beefs. There are the newspaper critics, who, as he explains, have a combined 125 years of tenure at their jobs between them, and there are the new wave, like James himself, Jonathan Nunn, Anna Sulan Masing, and Ruby Tandoh, who have sought to broaden the landscape of what is considered food writing and worthy of coverage in their country. How does it all play out in reality?The only thing I can hope is that this sort of thing is interesting to anyone but me. Please read on, or listen, and excuse the moment where I leap in to find out just how he got into this food thing at all.

Alicia: Thanks so much for coming on, James. How is it over there today?

James: Thanks for having me. It's okay. The UK government's response to all this has certainly been suboptimal, but I think that people are increasingly acknowledging that this is going to be with us for quite some time and reacting accordingly. Despite the many concocted horror stories about parks being flooded with people not socially distancing and such. Yeah. How is it in Puerto Rico?

Alicia: Well, we have some tourists who are here not wearing face coverings. It's pretty cheap to get here right now and pretty cheap to stay, so people are taking that opportunity to visit for some reason, even though there's nowhere to go and nothing to do—just stand in the street. I guess sometimes it's fun to have a different setting for your isolation, but it would be nice if they wore their masks.

People are—I've been trying to figure out a way to say this and get an answer from a scientist—but the information that has been shared that it's okay to ride your bike or to run without a mask basically makes it so that no one wears one, because everyone acts as though they're out exercising and they're not, necessarily, and also if everyone is out exercising and not wearing a mask then it kind of defeats the whole purpose of trying to keep this under control.

But we've been in very, like, severe lockdown with a curfew for over two months now, without a lot of good information or tracing, which is the issue in the entirety of the United States, so... it's been a journey, as it has been for everyone. And luckily, you know, on the good side of it, I’m not sick; no one I know is sick. So for now, I'm, you know, one of the lucky ones in the situation. Can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?

James: Yeah. So I grew up in a small town in the UK called Cheltenham, which I'm certain no one listening to this podcast will have heard of before. It's famous for two main things, which are a horse-racing festival, which has been this year—not the Cheltenham one, but it was one of the main reasons that the UK has possibly suffered such a bad Coronavirus crisis, is that they didn't cancel a leading horse racing festival which had many tens of thousands of people attending just as things were starting to become clearly bad. Another thing is famous for is that it's a spa town, so in the sort of Edwardian Georgian 1800 times, people who were wealthy enough to do so would come to take the waters in the belief that it would cure them of all ailments and also make them virtuous and excellent, which is probably a very strange precursor to the wellness industry.

Neither of my parents are particularly invested in cooking. They both obviously cooked meals for me and my sister and I think did a very good job of that. But I wouldn't credit my like, interest in food to them, so to speak. I was always given the task of doing the “magic stir” at dinner, which was a single stir that would make whatever was being cooked perfect.

Alicia: How did you end up getting into food then?

James: I mean, I read a lot of cookbooks when I was quite young. And I think the first one I got given was a book by Nigel Slater who was a UK food writer who I admire a lot called Real Food, which was divided into chapters based on individual foodstuffs. So I think the main ones were garlic, cheese, chocolate, potatoes, sausages, and I think chicken—all of which are quite appealing categories to someone who's 10 and is interested in cooking. And then I think it mostly started when I finished university and I moved to L...

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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast - A Conversation with Frances Moore Lappé

A Conversation with Frances Moore Lappé

From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast

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11/12/21 • -1 min

Frances Moore Lappé, with the 1971 publication of the first edition of Diet for a Small Planet, eventually changed mainstream conversation on food by popularizing the reality that hunger was a human-created problem—not an issue of food scarcity, but of distribution. Now, in the new edition for its 50th anniversary, there is updated information on hunger as well as urgent writing on the climate crisis. (I have a recipe in it, and we partnered to make this conversation public.)Here, we discuss what has influenced Lappé’s work over the last 50 years, how her thinking has shifted, and how we still need to reframe the significance of protein if we’re going to save the planet. Listen above, or read below.
Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé was released in 1971, making the statistic that 80 percent of farmland provides only 18 percent of calories through livestock a rallying cry for better, more equitable agriculture systems. This book gradually grew to sell over 3 million copies and irrevocably changed the way we talk about food, hunger, and culture. Fifty years later, there is a brand-new updated edition, out now, to meet the urgency of our current environmental moment. Visit dietforasmallplanet.org to learn more and get your copy.
Alicia: Hi, Frances. Thank you so much for being here today.
Frances: Thank you so much. I love it.
Alicia: [Laughs.] How are you? Where are you? You're in Cambridge, Massachusetts?
Frances: I'm in Belmont, which is just very close to Cambridge, where our office is. But I'm working at a cottage in my home now because of the COVID isolation.
Alicia: Well, can you tell me about where you grew up and what you ate?
Frances: [Laughs.] I grew up in Cowtown, literally called Cowtown as a nickname, Fort Worth, Texas. And the stockyards were never far from my smell distance.
That was the ’40s and ’50s. And we ate meat at the center of every meal. ‘What's for dinner, Mom.’ ‘Oh, pork chops, or meatloaf,’ it was, that was the center of the meal. And, I mean, we ate healthfully in the sense that my mom never got on to the processed foods. White bread was a really big deal when I was growing up. We had a big, white bread factory on the way to town. You could smell the smell. But my mom always served us whole wheat bread. When she made after school cookies, she always put in a lot of nuts and things that were good for us.
But generally, we ate the typical diet, but we—without the soda pop in the fridge, we never had that. But it was pretty standard.
Alicia: [Laughs.] Well, as the author of such a historically significant book on diet and the environment, I would think people are curious about how you eat and shop for food on a regular basis. So I wanted to ask what your weekly kind of eating and food shopping and acquiring look like.
Frances: Well, for years now during the summer—and we still are getting them—we are part of a community-supported agriculture. So we get this huge bag of veggies every week, too much for me and my partner to eat, so we share them with a neighbor. So that's a lot of our veggie, fresh veggie intake. We're very big on eating organic, and the only access is primarily Whole Foods and Trader Joe's, as we're trying to get Trader Joe's to carry more organic. But when we don't have our community-supported agriculture, we rely on those sources for fresh veggies.
My kitchen—if you could see it, it has this huge shelf of jars with all the various, the quinoa, the brown rice, the black beans, the chickpeas, all dried. And so, I have a lot of stuff. We could probably live for a few months on what we have on those shelves.
I'm a cook, but I kind of wing it. I really encourage people not to be intimidated by recipes, but just to be inspired and motivated by recipes and think of recipes as just a source of ideas. But not, you don't have to be a slave to them and to feel free to add more or less of your family's favorite herbs and substitute veggies.
It's funny that somebody with so many recipes in her book [Laughter] is not—I’m advocating, ‘Don't be a slave to them.’ I guess I've always hoped that our recipes would be inspiration and motivations, that ‘Oh, I didn't know you could do that with that.’
And I was just talking to somebody yesterday about one of our recipes from the very, very first edition called Roman Rice and Beans. And the concept was to take the basi...
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From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast currently has 115 episodes available.

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The podcast is about Society & Culture, Podcasts, Arts and Food.

What is the most popular episode on From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast?

The episode title 'A Conversation with Sandor Katz' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast?

The average episode length on From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast is 37 minutes.

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Episodes of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast are typically released every 7 days.

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The first episode of From the Desk of Alicia Kennedy Podcast was released on May 31, 2018.

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