The Storied Recipe

"The waves will keep coming, but you learn to play with them." Today's guests, Anna and Marco, learned adaptability through their mutual passion: surfing. This adaptability has allowed them to transition from a carefree surfing lifestyle, marked by ease and minimalism, to a bustling life of parenting two small children and running a thriving surf camp. Mellowmove Surf Camp is a haven where people...

Today’s guest, Geraldine DeRuitter won the James Beard Award for Journalism in 2019 for a post she typed out in about 45 minutes. Before that, her blog The Everywhereist, had already topped Time magazine’s choice of best blogs in America.  Geraldine’s latest book is titled, If You Can’t Take the Heat: Tales of Feminism, Food, and Fury and having read it in just a few sittings, I’ll add that t...

If you are reading these show notes in a podcast player, click here to visit The Storied Recipe website and see the photo gallery of my private tour of Auerbachs Keller . P.S. You might also be interested in this travel journal from when 6 of us spent 11 Days in Germany and this journal from Sebnitz, Gorlitz, and Leipzig . Introduction I have never had as much fun putting together an episode as I...

This is the story of a Holocaust survivor. It is a complicated story, with layers of historical and political realities I had no idea of before this interview, reminding us story is different than a simple narrative - and that we can never assume someone’s story without actually listening to them.  And Regina’s story is actually two stories of two families - both Greek, one Jewish and one not...

Did you know coffee blossoms smell sweet and heady, like a citrus or Jasmine blossom? I certainly did not know that - or dozens of facts shared by today’s guest, Accamma Nanjappa, owner of Bean Song Coffee , which ships internationally from India .  If you recognize this guests’s name - yes! She was last week’s guest , also. In that episode she shared more about Puthari, the harvest festival...

I think the best way to introduce to you today’s guest, Accamma Nanjappa, is to read an excerpt of her recipe submission.  She says, “It must be noted that the Kodavas or the people of Coorg are not just warriors, but are also children of nature. Hence all our major festivals are celebrations of nature. And what is a celebration without food?” Today Accamma takes us far, far away into the hig...

Today’s guest, Murielle Banackissa is a 3 time guest on The Storied Recipe - well, technically 2x guest, but her first interview was so rich we split it into 2 episodes - Ep. 024 From Sunny Africa to Snowy Canada and Ep. 025 Going Vegan!  Murielle has been working on her debut cookbook for 4 years and last month, it was finally released to immediate acclaim. For the last 4 years, I’ve known, for s...

The trick to fermentation, I learned this week, is to manage a busy, chaotic world of microorganisms, all doing what they must do, as primitive living things - in a way that creates something first, safe, and then utterly delicious.  Larry Nguyen, who is the Larder Chef at Oregon’s high-end ōkta restaurant, says, “I create environments, little nudges here and there to focus on which reaction...

Today I’m welcoming Ruth Newman to the podcast, a “cookier” who specializes in creating intricately decorated sugar cookies for showers, charities, and friends. However, she has never felt the urge to turn her beloved hobby into a career.  And that, in fact, is exactly the reason she is my guest today. In 2024, I wanted at least some of the episodes I release to be just easy, meandering conve...

Today I’m welcoming Alda Sigmundsdóttir to the podcast. Alda is the author of The Little Books series, including The Little Book of the Icelanders, Little Book of the Icelanders in the Old Days, The Little Book of the Icelanders at Christmas, and at least 6 more works of both non-fiction and fiction, all centered on Alda’s homeland of Iceland. She’s a master at her craft.  The book that caugh...

Welcome to a very special episode of The Storied Recipe, on location in one of Reykjavik’s most famous restaurants, þrír Frakkar . After enjoying a high end meal of Icelandic specialties, including whale sashimi, roast whale, cold smoked puffin, smoked salmon, delicate halibut smothered in lobster sauce, horse tenderloin, and THE iconic dish of Iceland, traditional Plokkfiskur, or fish stew , I in...

Author of On Rising How’s your New Year going? If you’re already feeling suffocated by the treadmill that is our chaotic days, I offer this book titled On Rising: Recipes and Rituals for Joyful Mornings by today’s guest, Deborah Johnson.  Reading Deborah’s book was like unwrapping a series of small, beautifully wrapped, delightful gifts. As I turned each page, I didn’t know if I would be gree...

Happy New Year!! Kicking of 2024 with my 4 favorite guests - my sons, Jack, Marcus, Joshua and Nicholas!  As I listened back to these brief interviews with each of them, I marveled once again at how deeply both our innate natures and our nurturing experiences integrate into our approach to food, cooking, eating, and time in the kitchen. Even within these brief conversations limited to topics...

Welcome, listeners, to a very special episode that is coming from a vulnerable and treasured place in my heart! There's nothing typical about this episode - First, I’m releasing this episode as both audio and video. Second, this is a solo episode, and while I have a couple more solo episodes planned for 2022, there won’t be too many. The heart of this podcast is - and will remain - my guests and *...

I said it last year and I’ll say it again - this episode deserves to be an annual tradition. This is the story about a family of immigrants making an old British classic - a steamed Christmas pudding. They made it year after year, with laughter (so much laughter), joy, plenty of booze, and they always made sure everyone got at least one turn with the spoon.  Not only is this a great story, th...

Welcome back to the Christmas Around the World Series on The Storied Recipe Podcast! This series began as a crowd-sourced post titled Christmas Desserts Around the World. As the Storied Recipe community shared their cherished Christmas recipes and the memories surrounding them, I really wanted to hear MORE. So I decided to expand on a few of these with a little mini series about Christmas traditio...

Welcome back to the Christmas Around the World Series on The Storied Recipe Podcast! This series began as a crowd-sourced post titled Christmas Desserts Around the World. As the Storied Recipe community shared their cherished Christmas recipes and the memories surrounding them, I really wanted to hear MORE. So I decided to expand on a few of these with a little mini series about Christmas traditio...

Welcome back to the Christmas Around the World Series on The Storied Recipe Podcast! This series began as a crowd-sourced post titled Christmas Desserts Around the World. As the Storied Recipe community shared their cherished Christmas recipes and the memories surrounding them, I really wanted to hear MORE. So I decided to expand on a few of these with a little mini series about Christmas traditio...

One of the questions people ask me all the time is: Where do you get your guests? The answer is - from a lot of places. I seek some out and many are nominated by themselves, friends, or publicists. But this is the first guest I’ve had nominated by her own son. Here’s what Scott said about her:   She makes a family traditional recipe for povitica that’s tremendous. She's also one of the l...

The very best way I can introduce B to you is by sharing what she wrote about her own Storied Recipe, a marbled Brazilian Carrot and Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glaze: It was hard for me to pick a recipe, to be honest, because I feel like my baking has grew to be a colorful mix of the places I've lived in - Brazil, the US, and Germany. So I felt like the right thing for me to do was to suggest a...

You could say that a can of corn changed the life of today’s guest, Agatha Achindu. And not just her life, but the lives of hundreds or even thousands.  When Agatha arrived in the United States 33 years ago - coincidentally, in the exact city in Maryland where I was born, raised, and lived at that time - she was shocked to discover corn in a can. Why not just cook the corn, she asked? That qu...

Gabriela Houston, an author of adult and children's fiction books. Her latest work, "The Bone Roots," is an adult fiction novel deeply influenced by Slavic mythologies and her childhood in the wild and enchanting Polish Lake District.  While folk and fairy tales from various cultures often feature simple storylines with good and evil characters, Gabriela's book takes a different path. "The Bo...

Honored to welcome two special guests to the podcast today: musician Sarah Aroeste and chef Susan Barocas. They share unique connections as Sephardic Jews with roots tracing back to a large, influential, and ancient Macedonian town. Sadly, during the Holocaust, nearly the entire population of that town was lost - a shocking 98%, in fact. Both Sarah and Susan are passionate about preserving Sephard...

Note: If you haven't listened to Mary's first episode, Paradise in Palestine , you may want to start with that one. Here's a little background to this episode with John's Auntie Mary, who is 86: The year that I began dating my husband, John, was a big year in his extended family. I was lucky enough to attend about 10 weddings, anniversary celebrations, or other milestone events. In addition to bei...

Introduction Good morning! Today I'm introducing you to a new summer series with John's Aunt Mary, one of the people I most enjoy, appreciate, and admire in this world. John's Auntie Mary is like a living embodiment of the famous serenity prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference". It seems...