April 8, 2026 • 60 mins
The practice of preserving foods can come from necessity, but it can also be a creative release, a community resource, and even a revolutionary act. In this interview, we chat with Dr. Julia Skinner about the making of her new book, ‘Essential Food Preserving: The Comprehensive Guide’.
You can find the book here: https://bookshop.org/a/103396/9781635868029
Julia's newsletter on assessing food preserving resources: https://root-kitchens.com/not-all-food-preserving-resources/
And her reading lists, including one with her other books: https://bookshop.org/shop/bookishjulia
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to save her prediction of iHeartRadio. I'm
any Resa and I'm Lauren vogel Bum And today we
have an episode for you featuring our dear friend Julius
Skinner on to talk about another new book that she's
got coming out.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yes, which means I suppose I don't have to ask
my regular question about why this is.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
On your mind.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, she reached out to us and was like, hey,
I've got this rad book. I don't think she put
it exactly like that, but it is. And yeah, and
so we got to take a look at it. You've
got an actual physical copy and yeah, and yeah I
got to got to have a really fun conversation with her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I always love checking in with her. She's somebody who
every time like time will pass.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And then when she.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Reaches out, I'm like, oh, I'm so glad you did.
And also you've done all this amazing stuff since right
and talk to you.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, y'all might remember Julia from previous episodes we did.
We did one about the history of tea time and
she and she spoke with us one on how to
prevent food waste and one on a previous book of
hers called Our Fermented Lives, which is about like the
history and science and culture behind fermentation practices. She also
(01:35):
helped us make a historically influenced apple pie on video
one time, Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
She did, which you can still find, I believe, as
we've discussed. I think it's under how stuff works food stuff.
But if you just google on YouTube it'll show up.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Great, I believe, Thank you. Yeah, and it was a
great time.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh, it was always yeah, yeah, but yeah. So she's
got this new book coming out in May of this year,
twenty twenty six, for anyone who's losing track like me.
It's called Essential Food Preserving The Comprehensive Guide, and it
covers the canning, freezing, drying, and fermenting of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, beans, meat,
(02:26):
dairy and eggs. It's coming out from Story Publishing, and yeah,
yeah it is. It is a gorgeous book, and I
learned a lot from it. There's a lot of stuff,
you know, like, especially doing this podcast, there's a lot
of stuff I kind of run across about a lot
of these topics, but I've never gotten into like canning
(02:51):
or drying or like a lot of these preservation methods
and so yeah, so I just learned a lot and
I've got a lot of bookmarks to follow up on
her recipes for the future. Same same, because it does
have recipes, a lot, a lot, a lot of really
interesting sounding ones. I'm just like, oh man.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yes, yes, And we always had a lovely conversation with Julia.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, yes, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsors, and let's get into the interview. Hi Julia, Hi, Hi,
(03:44):
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, well, of.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Course anytime anytime. We last had you on in twenty
twenty two, and I don't know what time means anymore,
so that could have been any time to talk about
one of your other books, Our Fermented Lives, a history
of how fermented foods have shaped cultures and communities. And
that book is a book with a lot of recipes
(04:09):
in it, but it's more like a historical and multicultural
journey through what right fermentation has meant to humanity, as
you say in the very long title, and it's got
recipes as like windows or illustrations into your points, but
that's not really the purpose of the book. So I
(04:30):
guess my first, very long question is what made you
want to make a more recipe and instruction focused guidebook.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
When I looked at food preserving books that were out there,
they tend to focus on one type of food preserving
or tended to be shorter a lot of them. Also,
I found the organization kind of confusing. Like if I
were not the person who wrote this book, and they
were looking for this book, I would I would be like, Okay,
(05:01):
I have like I don't know a bunch of apples,
and like I need to know what to do with apples.
I don't want to have to flip through like five
different sections to figure that out. So part of the
impetus of writing this was being able to say, Okay,
I can look at each technique and then when I
find a thing that I want to make, I can
just look at how all the techniques apply to that
(05:22):
specific thing.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, and I do love that you've built this guide
that really tries to meet people where they are. Could
you talk a little bit about like more about that.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, So food preserving, I think a lot of people
find it intimidating because we assume that it's very equipment heavy,
that it's super super specialized, and there are aspects of
it that are right. You know, for pressure canning, you
obviously need a pressure canner, but there are parts of
preserving that don't have to be that way. You know,
(05:55):
there's a variety of different ways you can dry food.
For example, there's a firm and is very low tech,
or it can be. And so my purpose with this
was to make it very accessible and to focus on
the techniques that were not super equipment heavy, that aren't
super specialized, so that it takes some of the fear
(06:18):
out for folks.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and I do love that you also, as somebody
who lives in the small apartment, you do go into
like if this is where you're at, if this is
your space, if this is what you have, here's how
you can do it. And I like that you examine
a lot of different places people might be and give
(06:44):
them no, you.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Can still do this. There are ways to still do this.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah. When I started preserving food, I lived in
a teeny tiny, little like efficiency studio apartment thing. It's like,
I don't know, four six hundred square feet, which like
you is fine for more.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Sure, but it does look like an ikea model room
at a certain point.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
That's that's what you've got. Yeah and yeah, so like
trying to you know, can food and suddenly there's all
these pickles and no, no, I have all this stuff
I have to find room for. Like, yeah, I became
hyper aware of space limitations in a way that I
think still informs how I teach.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
This this whole thing. So like the scope of this
book is huge, and I feel like you're pulling from
a bunch of different right, like like concepts of different limitations,
and so like, I guess, I how did how did
you learn all of this? Is this just a lifetime
(07:55):
of collected knowledge?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Kind of? I mean I started out serving food because
I was food insecure, so I was in my early twenties.
I got most of my food from the food bank,
and so it was kind of you know, whatever surprise
bag of stuff I got that week. I had one
week where they the only things they gave me were
(08:17):
a loaf of wonderbread, a can of Sloppy Joe mix,
and five pound roll of ground venison. That was it.
The only thing I ate for a week was venison
Sloppy Joe's. It was awful.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I mean that sounds delightful for like half a day,
and then after that it's kind of like, I'm done
with that, thank you.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, I got over it real quickly. And so to
supplement such delights, my tiny apartment happened to have like
a little yard garden space, and the landlord let me
use that, and so I started growing vegetables. And that
was good because then it meant I got you know,
nutrients that weren't sloppy Joe mix, which is good. That
(09:00):
is an important food group. Sure, sure, And I kind
of ran into the problem everybody runs into when they
grow garden, which is, you know, kind of feast or famine,
like everything comes ready at once, and then what do
I do with all this stuff? And it's like, oh no,
I'm like twenty one, I barely know how to cook.
I have no idea what's going on with my life?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, and suddenly you have like seventy eight zucchinis and
you're like right, yeah, You're like what do I Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, So it kind of came out of necessity of
that exact problem, and then yeah, here we are twenty
years later I cannot. I can afford groceries, and I
can preserve food. So it's a very nice place to be.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's a really lovely place. Yes, was was there any
particular aspect of all of all of this twenty years
of kind of stored knowledge that you were really excite,
like extra excited to dig into.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
I was excited to dig into pressure canning because it
was something that until writing this book, I didn't really
do because I still found it terrifying, even though I
had been hot water bath canning for years and years
and years. But I was like, well, I'm writing the
comprehensive book on preserving. That means I need to figure
out how to can and so, like you know, much
(10:30):
research and much canning later, here we are now I
feel comfortable with it. But yeah, that was one that
I was excited about, but I was trepidacious about also
a little nervous.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That's kind of comforting to hear, honestly, that that you
are still nervous about some of these aspects because it's
as someone who's only dipped their their their their their
little tips of their fingers into preservation. A lot of
it sounds right, very intimidating. Yeah, like like the concept
of like, oh, this takes time, this takes effort, this
(11:07):
might result in something that is not edible after all,
and then I've wasted that time and that food, you know,
all of those kind of concepts. But uh, yeah, I
feel like there's such good advice sprinkled throughout about how
to like start from a good place, course correct if
you need to, and be like, no, well this wasn't
(11:28):
cheese today, but it made kurds and it made whey
and I can eat both of those, so are very
sure it was fine?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, I you know, with canning it's a little different.
But with a lot of other things, like you know, fermentation.
You know, you you get to everything you do is
a lesson, right, Like I mean, and was canning too,
but with fermentation just takes her a little lower. Yeah, yeah,
(11:57):
but everything is a lesson.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
If I make sour crow and I put I don't know,
some kind of spice in it, and then I'm like, oh,
it turns out I absolutely hate all spice and tower
crowd despice it. Don't want it, now I know, right,
And now I'm also offered the opportunity to say okay,
knowing that, how can I repurpose this thing? Like where
what could be done with this?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, it's a it's a creative process, which is a
thing that you've touched on a little bit in some
of your other work too.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of viewing it as
a practice. Yeah, And it's like a source of creativity
rather than just you know, following you know, the exact
way I spice things, or you know, fermenting sauer kraut
for only this number of days. It's like, no, we'll
try fermenting it, you know, a little shorter, a little longer,
like make it yours.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, that's the fun experimentation part of it, right, And
I think bringing that joy back to some of these
things that feel so have felt so inaccessible for some
people for so long is nice. Is it's It's it's
like when everybody get into sourdough when the pandemic was happening, Like,
(13:08):
it is nice to experiment with these things and find
what you like and instead of it being a failure,
being like, oh I can use the brine in this
and something else, all right, I can There are still
ways I can learn from this and repurpose this, and
I love that you have that throughout the book.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, I think it makes it so that preserving, like
you said, is less intimidating and more joyful. But like, yeah,
just makes it. It makes it so it's something that
feels less like we're like, oh, I'm doing this because
I have to, Like I'm scared I'm gonna i don't know,
run out of carrots or something, and so I've got
to put up all my carrots or I don't want
(13:48):
to waste my carrots. I just can't a bunch of carrots.
So it's carrots are very much on my mind. But
it makes it so it's like, oh, like this is
actually a process A turned into rather than like a
thing that's just like on my to do list.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, and it could be very meditative.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think actually it can be something that gives you
kind of turns your brain off. And you talked a
lot about the history of it and how we can
connect to the history of people doing this and kind
of I would say, connect back to food ways that
(14:26):
a lot of us may have felt disconnected from for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, And I mean you've also got a background in
food history, like on an academic level, So that's true, Like, yeah,
I do. That was Yeah, that was a long, expensive process.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yes, I actually got my PhD in something completely different,
but that was expensive too.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But that absolutely doesn't form your writing. It does, And
I loved I loved stumbling on those kind of little
nuggets of you know, like, oh, this is what the
word cereal comes from, stuff like that within this book
and kind of going like, oh, yeah, that's right, Yeah
that's part of this.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah. Yeah, I think your point you made about those
like connecting back to histories. One of the things I
like about doing this work is that so many people
who've done food preserving over the years are not, like
are not acknowledged, Like it's like women's work or the
work of you know, domestic laborers, enslaved people like people
(15:36):
who are pushed to the margins. And it feels like
when we preserve food now we're able to reconnect with
processes that were so long considered unimportant but are critical
to our survival. That's my little soapbox.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
We love a soapbox, please.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, oh it's true.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I know we're going to come back and talk
about this, but I feel like now with kind of
like apocalyptic vibes. Everybody's suddenly everybody's interested.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
The book feels timely. Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And I mean, you know we can we can talk
about it now since it came up. You know, Like
I A thing that comes up over and over again
in this book is how community healthy the practice of
preservation is. And you know, like, I feel like a
lot of people are rightly horrified about a lot of
(16:39):
what's going on in the world around us. So could
you talk a little bit about preservation as a form
of like right re engagement or even defiance.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I mean, I think, especially in the US, we're very
much individualist for better or worse. You know, we're very
much isolated from each other, and you know, got to
look out for me and my stuff, and like, yes,
we want to look out for ourselves. We don't want
to spread ourselves too thin and like all the things. Yes,
but also we still need each other and there's a
(17:17):
balance to be struck there.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Oh, humans need people, as it turns out.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, it's true. Yeah, we're actually social animals, weirdly enough talking. Yeah,
so I think this preserving, you know, we're I talk
about it in terms of like when we come together
to preserve food because it can be pretty labor intensive
depending what you're doing and like how much you're making.
(17:43):
Coming together to preserve food makes it more accessible to do,
but also makes it so that we're building bonds because
we're actually spending time with each other towards a common goal.
And it's not like a common goal of like make
more revenue for the large corporation you work for. It's
like a common goal like we all like tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Like it's a little more digestible, no pun intended.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, something people like actually can feel maybe more relaxed
around each other doing. Yeah. But then it also like
literally feeds our communities too, like it actually makes it
so people have food, And so I think there's you know,
there's several layers of value it brings, and there's also
(18:33):
the knowledge sharing, right, Like I'm I'm very lucky that
I have made a point of learning these traditions and
I'm always learning more things, like I'll spend my entire
life doing that. But I'm very lucky that I know
what I do, because so many people don't. You know,
if like if they had to preserve food tomorrow or
(18:54):
like figure out what greens in their yard were edible,
they'd be like, well, yes, you.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Gotta have a rough time.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, And I'm just like I you know, I don't
ever want to encourage anybody to be like prepper level
kind of because like that goes back to that individualist
sort of thing. But like knowing some of the basics,
like knowing how to like ferment some vegetables safely, knowing
how to like dry things like basic stuff that doesn't
(19:28):
require a lot of equipment is like really profoundly helpful
and like really easy too.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, it's pretty empowering as well, Like just having that
basic knowledge, even things in the kitchen. When I learn, oh,
this is why it works this way, I feel so
much better about just making things and knowing how it
will work.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
So I think having that knowledge is so important. And
you know how.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Much you use it in your day to day life
up to you maybe, but I think having it is
really empowering.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I feel I feel much more uh
ready to face whatever, whatever chaos because I know how
to preserve food.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Hey, I want you on my team.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I'm honest. Writing number of people's like when people are
like yeah, like my like apocalypse groups. They're like, you're
like one of the number one people. I'm like, wow,
I'm like really in demand in a way I never envision.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
This does not come as a surprise to me. I've
seen your pantry, so that's true.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
You've seen that that particular chaos.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Oh but but speaking of community, I want to talk
a little bit about the community of this book. Because
you include all of these stories from creators from around
the world. How did you how did that part of
the book kind of cement itself? Like how did you
decide to incorporate these stories?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I you know, I think being English speaking people in
the US, our view of food preserving is often rather
white and eurocentric, and you know, as our views of
many things. But also that and I think especially right now,
(21:27):
when we're seeing you know, shall we say, kind of
problematic trends in like the influencer and food preserving tradwifey space,
and there's you know, there's a lot of there's a
need for us to center the fact that food preserving
is a global activity and isn't just you know, for
(21:49):
one specific group of people.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And so.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Basically I just I was like, who do I know
that would be good to talk to, and then kind
of infilled with a few other people that I didn't
know yet, but I was like, I bet they'd beat nice.
And yeah, I came up with this list, and I
tried to get, you know, people from as many different
places as I could to talk about what food preserving
(22:13):
was like in their countries and how they preserve food themselves,
the kinds of ingredients they're working with, just to give
people a picture of this as like a complete global practice.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Okay, we've got more of this interview, but first we've
got another quick break for a word from our sponsors,
and we're back.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Thank you sponsor. Let's get back into it.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Another feature of this book that required more than just
what I imagine is countless hours of you and your kitchen
testing and retesting recipes and if you have account on that,
I am curious. But but are the photos? What the
lovely and illustrative photos so like And this is a
(23:11):
little bit outside the scope of a food show, but like,
we're so curious about like the process of explaining kitchen processes,
So could you tell us a little bit about how
those illustrations came together?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, So, I I am very happy with the photos
also Oh yeah, which.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Is yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely, that's yeah, that's
that's I mean also, you know, like you're in them
and like we all have like a little bit of
a of a anxiety about our image and like how
how we come off, and you know, especially right when
that's not a basic part of our professional life.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Right. Yeah. This was my first time doing a photo
shoot for a book, and so it was a lot
of it was interesting because having being in front of
camera for that many hours every day like was very
I don't know, I'm not sure I would call it meditative,
but I was like very in my body. Like I
was like very aware of how I was holding myself
(24:09):
and moving and in ways that normally I'm kind of
just like whatever, but like I'm like, oh, like every
moment of like the way I'm holding my hands like this,
in the way I'm doing this, and like okay, am
I like blocking the food. Like I became aware in
a way that I think was interesting because it was
(24:30):
like the showcase was the food, but I also had
to be like fully in my body and present to
do that work properly. But the photos themselves were Ian Bagwell,
who is here in Atlanta also, who takes wonderful photos obviously,
and him and like everybody who worked on it was
(24:53):
just incredible. We had a good team of folks that
did props and food styling and like all the things,
which was great because then we were able to really
get yeah, some really good quality pictures. I'm trying to
think like what specifically to say about the process, because
it was it was very fun, but it was also
(25:15):
like kind of a whirlwind because we had so many
things to photograph. Like I have a photo somewhere in
the depths of my phone that shows like the second
to last day of shooting, and there's like we're in
I studio and there's I don't know, I basically brought
like every jar of food I had in my house,
and so there's like this poor man, his entire studio
(25:38):
is just like covered in like hundreds of jars of things,
and like there's like jars that are like open and
have fork sticking out of them, and there's like stuff
spilled on counters and I'm like, oh my god, Ian,
I'm so sorry. But yeah, it was a beautiful experience
and it was Yeah, I like that we kind of
(26:01):
focused on on kind of like a vibrant color scheme
for it. Like it's like the pictures are very vibrant,
and I think that is also counter to what you
see in a lot of food preserving stuff, but like,
like preserves really are beautiful and can be vibrant. So
I'm glad this book captured that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh yeah yeah, and again, you know, as someone who's
kind of starting out, just like some of the very
basic like and in step one it looks like this,
and in step two it looks and like, this is
what you can use to weight down to wait down
a ferment. If you don't have a weight, if you
don't have like a weight that you have purchased for
that specific purpose, like you can use a jar. And
(26:41):
this is what it looks like, just in case you
can't imagine it with your weird brain. And I'm thank you,
I thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah yeah, no, again, that's the kind of thing like
when are like when the editors at story suggested that
for the layout, I was like, oh, like that that
makes a lot of sense, Like I you know, had
like tried to write the steps out as clearly as possible,
but when they were like, yeah, there's a lot of
these things that the actual process shots are helpful and
(27:11):
like oh yeah, like absolutely.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's as an audio only format, we we
struggle with that sometimes.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I'm also really glad that you found the process kind
of meditative instead of horrifying and anxiety inducing, which is
what I would usually describe my time on camera. Although
I guess, yeah, no, it totally makes sense, right because
because it does, like you have to remember, oh, I'm
a human person in this flesh suit, and I guess
I have to do a specific thing with it.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Right, Yeah, it has to move in certain ways. The
only thing that was stressful about it for me was
like because I had to be like camera ready, which
means I couldn't just like you know, show up no makeup. Yeah,
Like I had to.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Like actually, fingernails they were painted that they looked good.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, yeah, I went to the nail shack in East
Atlanta Village. Yeah, I was like, I'm not qualified.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Actually know what I'm doing here, especially not for something
that's gonna have to hold up over like I don't
know how many days of working with liquid of various phs.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, I was pleased with those nails. They did a
great job. But yeah, it was. I mean, the thing
that was the most challenging was honestly going through the
Atlanta traffic in the mornings to get to the studio
in time. And I was like every day, like I
kept leaving progressively earlier because I was like, I was like,
I keep being late, but I keep leaving earlier, and
(28:45):
yet I was still late for a single day Atlanta.
Oh yeah, it was like three miles away minute, Like
I was like, you know, pennisaur or something like, it
was like not far from my house.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, that's It's almost as though we should have built
a more robust metro transit system at some point.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So, yeah, maybe you shouldn't have ripped out our street cars.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I don't know. Yeah, here we are.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I legitimately got a text message from some government department
in Atlanta that said to me get on those scooters
to avoid the traffic, and I was like, you want.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Me to get on a scooter in the city.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It had a picture of the highway, and I can
only imagine what they meant was to avoid the traffic
on the highway. But I was like, this is kind
of implying you think I should get on the Highway
on the stooter.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Yeah, that is a horrible idea. That's the worst idea.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I don't like being in Atlanta street traffic in a
six sided, you know, full metal vehicle the aforementioned soft
squishy meat suit.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Out in any yeah, anywhere in contact range of anybody's car.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Oh goodness. Uh so you're you're actually splitting your time
now between Atlanta and Ireland.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I am.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Are there any like ingredients or practices that you've started
incorporating into your work that you learned through through traveling
and living there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I mean a lot of the practices there are very
similar to things I was already doing. So it's nice
because it's more of a continuation. There are things that
are much easier to get here because it is warmer.
So like citrus, for example, I can get much fresher
citrus here. Yeah, I think they're closest. Citrus in Ireland
(30:58):
comes from like Spain and North Africa, and so yeah,
it's always a little under ripe or overripe. But that's okay.
I'm getting used to that.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
There are other nice things.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
There are other nice things. One of the thing they
do that obviously, like in Atlanta, we don't do as
much like there's you know, it's an island, so they
have seaweed, and so doing things like pickling seaweed. I've
been getting more into that, yeah, kind of just playing
with that as a topping and drying seaweed when I
(31:35):
was there, So I'm there most of the year now,
and I was there over Christmas and then through February,
and it was not the time to dry seaweed because
the houses are stone and they are damp and cold,
and it was raining outside for sixty days straight. So
(31:57):
we had like breaks for like a hand full of
hours here and there, but like every.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
But those are not enough hours for drying, for drying
a sea product, so no.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
And I don't. I don't have a wash or a
dryer over there. So yeah, it's like very strategic. When
I hung the washing out and brought it back in,
it was a very logistical winter.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
A very logistical winter is a book you should write.
That's your next book.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I bet, I bet that one will fly off the shelves.
It sounds like I.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Would read it in a part.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Like it depends on the party you bring it to, right.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I mean it does sound like you're living like
a cottage life.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And iron kind of I have like a coal fireplace,
and so what I would do is I would actually
put my seaweed on a little drying rack in front
of the coal fireplace. So yeah, it felt beautiful. Yeah,
I felt very cozy.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
As you've been traveling back and forth, you mentioned in
this book your adventure ferment. Could you talk a little
bit about that.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, So this is a ferment that I started in
twenty nineteen. I was coming back from actually from my
grandma's funeral down in central Florida, and I was like, Okay,
her house is on the market. I've gotten the last
stuff out of her house. I had like a mason
jar I pulled out of her cabinet, I pulled some
stuff out of her fridge, and I just like started
fermenting it. And then I brought it back with me,
(33:33):
and ever since then, everywhere I go, I either bring
a bit of the brine with me and stick stuff
in it as I travel, or I bring stuff back
and stick it into the brine when I'm home. What
I do now is I have two copies of it,
of one here and then one in Ireland, and each
(33:53):
of those I add stuff too, and I just bring
a little brine back and forth between the two.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, when dealing with the TSA, that's a lot more
convenient than a.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Whole Yeah, it's really helpful. I do this with yogurt
Starter too. It's really helpful to put them in cosmetics containers.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
That was what I was picturing already.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Like yeah, Like, I'm just like this, what do you
mean this is a face mask? It's not. It's like
one hundred and fifty year old yogurt starter, But.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean you could use it as a face mask
and it would probably be great.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, it's not it's primary purpose. Gosh. There's a few
like extremely specific things that I wanted to say or
kind of ask you about based from the books. So, okay,
(34:56):
I want to know about your green bean dreams. You
you say in the book that when you haven't had
a good pickled green bean in like a couple weeks,
you have green bean dreams. And if that's just a
nice thing that you wrote, that's fine. But if you
genuinely have green and we can cut this whole bit.
But if you genuinely have green bean dreams.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I can't generally have like green beans are one of them.
Sauer Kraut is another. But there's like a few things
that like I need to have in rotation regularly, or
I get like really strong intrusive cravings, like I imagine,
like I don't know, I don't know what other people
get in strong intrusive cravings about, like I recognize my
(35:41):
palette is like way in left field, and like people
are not like they're not like, oh my god, I
haven't had really good sauer Kraut in like a week,
and I'm losing my mind. Man, Like most people don't
do that, I don't think, but I do.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah. Yeah, I can neither confirm nor to deny for
all of humanity. I yeah, for sure, Like I will
get a craving for like a good pickle of whatever kind,
you know, some kind of brind vegetable. Usually my truly
intrusive food thoughts are more like cheesecake there or something
like that, but you know, or maybe just fresh berries.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, freshberries are good. Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting though, like
green beans and a few other things like show up.
Yeah in my dreamscape relatively often, like I do a
lot of eating pickles while I'm asleep, like not actually,
but in my dreams. I need to make it clear.
(36:41):
I'm not into the kitchen. I mean, but if I was, great, fine, But.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, there are worse things you could be eating, absolutely
in a sleepwalking situation.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Oh goodness, you do mention that, although you do not
recommend it, you have made and consumed and all let
us smoothie I have.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
What is Is there a descriptor beyond terrible that you
can give us, because I'm extremely curious about how terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
A word like damp comes to mind. Okay, yeah, yeah,
like I don't know, more viscous than you'd expect, like
it was it was just it was yeah, it's just
(37:43):
the texture was not bad but not great, and it
just it just tasted like lettuce. Like it wasn't like
I used like spinitch or something that's like rights getdn't
use something with a ton of flavor us like romane
I think. And it was just like this, like I
made terrible decisions.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Like that's a good descriptor.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you for humoring me on
that one. I did want to express joy that you
include a recipe for the for a version of the
apple pie aka Pippin' Pie from the English Housewife that
(38:32):
we made together on video way back in the day.
That's super delightful, and I love that you adapted it
to not have whole apples in it, because that was
not the best part of that recipe.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
No, no, it's a good plavor. Hard to eat that one, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah, glad you're still experimenting with some things like that. Uh,
I guess speaking of that or not that in particular,
but kind of in all how you know, like you've
you've you've been on our show a number of times
(39:06):
over the years. Can I ask how your personal preservation
practice has changed over that time?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's gotten more expansive, Like
I've learned how to do more things, but I've also
gotten more comfortable teaching other people. Like when we first
met in the sands of time. Yeah, I didn't mention.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I didn't mention a date because I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
We were doing video back then. That's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Back then because I was still primarily a librarian and
a professor and like doing other things. While I was
becoming more comfortable with teaching and with you know, kind
of moving through the world in that way. I hadn't
really taught much about food specifically, and in the almost
(40:05):
ten years since, I have become much more comfortable with that.
I mean, I like opened the culinary school on the Internet,
which is nice. I can articulate these processes in a
way that feels like the way I wish I would
have learned them, which feels significant, and yeah, yeah, it
(40:25):
makes me feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Hey, it's excellent.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
The way you lay out this book and what you
were talking about earlier, with how you wished you had
something that was organized like this, I think that that
is so important. And because you've been in this world
so long, you kind of I would assume you know
what you wish you had had. I'm curious, like, over
(40:56):
your time teaching, have you you've seen changes in the
students and what they're asking or what they want.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot more interest.
Like when I first started teaching fermentation classes regularly in
twenty eighteen, people were interested, but it was kind of
hit or miss how many people were going to show up,
and people didn't, you know, didn't want to pay more
(41:27):
than like twenty dollars for a class, and you know,
that was challenging because that was like how I was
paying my bills and so like was it was before
we had really sort of deepened into the moment we
are now where a lot of people want to know
this stuff. And so what's nice about this moment is
(41:49):
I feel like I get a much wider range of
people now. I get students who have never made any
of this stuff before and have no idea what, you know,
what it is. They're just curious or feel like they
should know or want to know. And then I have
people who are like, hey, I've been preserving food for
a long time, but I want different perspectives or I
want something, you know, something else, like I want more
(42:12):
depth or something. And so, yeah, the fun thing about
teaching now is that I can build classes that accommodate
all of those needs. And so that's yeah, that's fun.
And I also see a lot more age range and like,
I don't know, just like diversity in general of interests, ages,
like everything, Like there's just a lot more people that
(42:35):
are preserving food.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
And we have a little bit more to discuss with Julia,
but we have one more quick break.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
For a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Thank you sponsors. Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
So I'm curious also how you encompassed so much in
this book.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It is.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
So much ground covered. How did you choose what recipes
would be in there? How did you go about the
whole process? What was that like for you?
Speaker 3 (43:23):
I did so much cooking, I made so many things,
So I mean I started out by thinking about what
are the kinds of ingredients that people bring up the
most in my experience teaching and writing about food. I
tried to have a range of ingredients, but I tried
(43:44):
to really focus on fruits and vegetables. So there is meat, dairy, eggs,
fish like are also in there, but the lion's share
of what people ever asked me about is fruits and vegetables.
So that comprises, you know, a good chunk of the book.
And as far as what I chose to go in there,
I mean I tried within each type of food, I
(44:08):
tried to have a range of different ways to work
with it, to really give people as much variety as possible.
So if you had like to go back to apples
on that kicks that will keep going. You know, It's like, Okay,
I want to make apple pie filling or I want
to make like, you know, a canned apple kind of
thing like that, versus freezing, versus drawing, versus like. I
(44:32):
wanted to make sure that there were different processes that
were accounted for by a lot of different ingredients or
under a lot of different ingredients, in part because it
made it so that it's again more accessible for people,
so that if somebody has, you know, a dehydrator, but
they don't have a pressure canner or you know, or whatever,
(44:54):
like they're they're able to fit it into their actual practice.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Yes, and I do love.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
How you organized it by ingredients because during the pandemic,
I have to say I became someone because I'm a
single person. I live alone, and so I was being
very strategic about what I would buy. And like one
of my like pandemic gifts is that I can now
tell you cabbage will last this.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Long before it goes bad.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
I just know it. So useful skill though it is.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
People will text me about it. I'm like, you know,
you can look this up online and you just know
it tell me. So it's it's wonderful because that's usually
what happens, right, is you have an ingredient and you
don't want it to go bad.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
You don't want it to go to waste.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And so it's nice when you can look up, Okay,
here are these different ways depending on what I have
on how I cannot waste this food ingredient.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I I'm a big fan again
in part because of the aforementioned Foo food insecurity. I'm
a big fan of not wasting food. You know, there's
many reasons to not, but one of them is that,
you know, there's a lot of good things we can
do with bits food bits, and I wanted to reflect
(46:19):
that and also to help people think about this as
sort of a lifelong practice and process rather than like, Okay,
I'm going to learn how to can so I can like,
you know, can these pickles this summer? And then that's it.
Like no, it's like it's you know, it's a process
you can work into your life, and you know, to
varying extents, you know, whether you have five.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Minutes or like a full day, yeah yeah, And you
chart out for every given type of ingredient. You know,
what's easy, what has a butt ton of flavor? You know,
like what yeah, like like what requires special equipment and
write and you can kind of go based on that
of like and you know, me being me, I was
just like, oh, the ones that don't require much time, Okay,
(47:03):
I'll go straight to that. Spe cool like that, you know,
like I don't. I have limited personal resources to invest
in anything, So yeah, quite right again, meeting people where
they are it's so cool. I know, I know that
this book hasn't even debuted yet. What day does it
come out?
Speaker 3 (47:22):
May nineteenth in the US and in the UK, and
I think the rest of Europe it's June fourth.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Cool, So as we're recording this, it is not that
time yet. But I also know that you're always working
on something. Now, is there a project that you're working
on that you're looking forward to?
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I So I handed this book in and I was
approached by story about writing a book about lemon's And
it's like a cute little book with like lemon recipe
and like how to clean things with lemons, and like
it was a nice like actual and metaphorical like palette
(48:07):
cleansing because it's like it's a little tiny short book.
Like it was like really easy to write in comparison,
Like it was a nice sort of like reset.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It was like fun.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
I was like, oh, lemons, like my entire house like
lemons for like three months. It was great, rightful.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
So in addition to launching this book this spring, I'm
also turning around the edits on that and that will
be out next year. So oh wow, and then yeah,
we'll see you from there. I'm sure there will be
many more things to come. Oh yeah, always, always yes, So.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Congrats on the book, if we haven't said that already.
Do you ever, since this is your work, since you
do like fermentation, and you do you trying all this
food all this time, do you have like something you
do to step away from it? Is this sort of
self care or is this like you love it and
it doesn't matter, it doesn't become like a work stressor
(49:13):
for you.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
That is a very good question, because I think I've
had to be intentional about structuring a life where I
can still enjoy the thing without being like everything I
make has to be like a measurable output. And so
what I do is I have at least several mornings
(49:35):
a week where I just like make whatever, and it
doesn't you know, it's not like I'm recipe testing. I'm
not measuring stuff. I'm just like I want to, i
don't know, prep a bunch of potato salad this week,
and so I'm gonna do it, or like I'm gonna
make spower crown. So if I did it, and I
(49:56):
keep that separate from the time that I'm doing the
more structured recipe testing me kind of parts of things.
I actually have kind of different blocks in my days
dedicated to different aspects of my work, and I sort
of like, I don't know, energetically move between them, kind
(50:16):
of like I'm like, okay, like you know, we're done
with this block now, like we're done with the writing block.
We're you know, we did that and now we're moving
to this other thing. Like I always write and do
kind of more brainstormy stuff earlier in the day and
then do others. I just kind of like my brain
shuts off at about two PM, so I just kind
(50:38):
of like roll downhill after that. I'm just like, whatever
this is. This is when we'll like organize papers or something.
And then in the evening, I'm like, you know, I'm
like I can kind of unplug and make some more food.
But it's like fun, so yeah, it sort of bookends
the day.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I feel like a lot of time when I ask
people that question, they don't have a good answer. But
I feel like you have a good answer, just just
because a lot of people are not good at doing it. Yeah,
they're not good at separating out their work, yeah, from
your life.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
I was terrible at it for a really long time,
which is why I'm really good at it.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Now you've learned.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I've learned. I was like, wait a minute, I don't
want to die of work related to stress by the
time I'm fishing, Like I'm doing work that I actually
love and I find meaningful, Like there's no reason I
need to like drive myself into the ground about it,
like yeah it's okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Oh yeah, And just learning to work with yourself, right,
figuring out what times of day you can concentrate on
different things and yeah, allowing yourself to move in between
them when you have the luxury of doing so, right.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, Yeah, there's there's a benefit to like working from
home for myself and like not having children like I have,
Like I have the sort of structureless life structure that
like lets me like, lets me do cat Yeah, just good.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
I like it, Oh hard, same, Yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Even even Annie has an apartment cat. Now so's apartment
building cat. Yep, nice, yep.
Speaker 4 (52:24):
His name is blue super cute.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
That's a good cat name.
Speaker 4 (52:28):
Yeah, it's a Siamese cat with blue eyes.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Oh oh oh pretty baby.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
But I guess, I guess, Julia. Is there anything that
we haven't asked you about that you would.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
Like to speak to I would just remind people that,
like this really is a practice that they can fit
in their lives, like whatever their lives look like. Like
you can do this if you live like off grid
in the woods and have no money. You can do
this if you have like a gigantic kitchen with like stoves,
Like there's a place for you in this in this world.
(53:05):
So I hope, I hope everybody listening tries it. I
also want to point out another thing which is in
the book. I have a thing that I have not
seen in another preserving book and I think is really important,
which is how to evaluate resources.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
So yes, yes, I saw that, and I got so
excited about it. Oh man, because we live in a
disinformation age.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
We sure do. And kind of a former librarian it
makes me angry.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
So it's like and especially with like you know a
lot of these like fake AI books and with like
I don't know, like anybody can put whatever they want
on the internet now, and as a result, you have
some like canning recipes and stuff that I'm like, you
are going to hole like just you're going to kill people, Like.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, yeah, like you are going to give someone batchelism.
I like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah? So my purpose in doing that was to give
people sort of some basic ways to look at this
kind of information critically like this book, other books like
mostly online resources, but like whatever you know, using tested recipes,
(54:24):
using trusted sources, like trusting your gut. Like if you
see something that says like can pumpkin butter, do not
do that, Like, don't try to can pumpkin butter. You
will give yourself botulism.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Which I didn't know, but you explained thoroughly in and
it is great. It's apparently too dense to can you
cannot make it reach the appropriate temperature and therefore yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah that felt important to say, like twenty times.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
No, thank you. Yeah, you're less botulism.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Less potulism into into that. Yeah, but I wanted people
to be able to, like to not just use this
book as they're only preserving resource, but to feel confident
looking at other resources too and being able to see,
you know, if they were any good or not.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So I have there's there's like a truncated version in
the book, and then I have also a link too,
like I made like a huge long version that's in
my newsletter. So if people like really want to you know,
go nuts about it, they can look at that.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
No love that. I think that we are a podcast
and a lovely listening audience who loves Yeah. Yeah, just
just go and going weird, going weird and deep.
Speaker 4 (55:50):
So absolutely.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Speaking of where people can find you, hey, where can
people find you?
Speaker 3 (55:59):
So many? Yeah, all over the internet. So in my books,
like my new book Essential Food Preserving, which comes out
May nineteenth. But also I have a online culinary school.
I mentioned that's Culinary Curiosity School dot com. I have
(56:23):
a newsletter which is root Dash Kitchens dot com slash newsletter.
On social media, I'm Bookish Julia, and there's links to
all my other socials for all my ten thousand other
things I do want there. Yeah, I'm around I'm easy
to find.
Speaker 1 (56:42):
Yeah, yeah, so so get in touch. Also open call
if you want to give back to Julia. If you
happen to have a hookup for bog.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
Butter, Yes, give me bog butter. It is like my
life's dream to eat bog butter, Like I just want
I want to eat bog butter. There's actually a bog
butter at the Butter Museum, which is like a ten
(57:11):
minute walk from my house in Ireland, and it's like
taunting me. There's a bog butter right there, but it's
behind glass.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Right right, so we eat it. So we're not saying
that if there's ever a heist, so that is definitely
you right, but but but if anyone has a hookup
for legitimate, non heisted bog butter, get in touch.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
Please you know I'm here. I'm here for it.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
Oh, thank you, thank you so much, Thank you so
much for being here. It's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (57:50):
It's so good to talk to you too. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 5 (57:53):
Yeah, of course, always can't wait till next time. Yeah,
And that brings us to the end of our delightful
conversation with Julia.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
There was so much we could have talked about. There
was so much more we could have discussed.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, yeah, you can tell. I kind of just like
lost the thread towards the end of like composing my
interview questions where I was just like, just like, tell
me about this one thing, like I want and like
and I could have done that for basically everything in
the entire books.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
So she's such a good resource. Everything she's talking about.
You're like, I know you could get into depth about this.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Oh yeah yeah, and like I don't know, like the
more I've been thinking about it, the more the more
I just really appreciate her point of view of mindfulness,
you know, like like regarding the photo shoot, but also
regarding all of this just you know, like really like
trying to be present and look at the beautiful things
(58:54):
we have and figuring out how to make them even
nicer or last longer or you know.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
Yeah, yeah, and so much of what not so much,
I would say, but a lot of the recipe she
includes are kind of like I didn't want to waste this,
Let's see what I can do with it.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah yeah, oh and it works ways great?
Speaker 2 (59:14):
Yeah, yes, absolutely, absolutely well. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed
this interview you can definitely check out Julia's books. You should,
but also if you're doing fermentation experiments.
Speaker 4 (59:30):
Oh yeah, oh we love hearing about that.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yes, it's been a minute since we've heard from any
of y'all about your like sourdoughs or whatever.
Speaker 4 (59:38):
So yeah, yes, please catch us up to date.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
You can email us at Hello at savourpod dot com.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at Savior Pod, and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the iHeartRadio app podcasts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(01:00:08):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to save her prediction of iHeartRadio. I'm
any Resa and I'm Lauren vogel Bum And today we
have an episode for you featuring our dear friend Julius
Skinner on to talk about another new book that she's
got coming out.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yes, which means I suppose I don't have to ask
my regular question about why this is.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
On your mind.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Yeah, she reached out to us and was like, hey,
I've got this rad book. I don't think she put
it exactly like that, but it is. And yeah, and
so we got to take a look at it. You've
got an actual physical copy and yeah, and yeah I
got to got to have a really fun conversation with her. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I always love checking in with her. She's somebody who
every time like time will pass.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
And then when she.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Reaches out, I'm like, oh, I'm so glad you did.
And also you've done all this amazing stuff since right
and talk to you.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Yeah, y'all might remember Julia from previous episodes we did.
We did one about the history of tea time and
she and she spoke with us one on how to
prevent food waste and one on a previous book of
hers called Our Fermented Lives, which is about like the
history and science and culture behind fermentation practices. She also
(01:35):
helped us make a historically influenced apple pie on video
one time, Yes.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
She did, which you can still find, I believe, as
we've discussed. I think it's under how stuff works food stuff.
But if you just google on YouTube it'll show up.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Great, I believe, Thank you. Yeah, and it was a
great time.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Oh, it was always yeah, yeah, but yeah. So she's
got this new book coming out in May of this year,
twenty twenty six, for anyone who's losing track like me.
It's called Essential Food Preserving The Comprehensive Guide, and it
covers the canning, freezing, drying, and fermenting of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, beans, meat,
(02:26):
dairy and eggs. It's coming out from Story Publishing, and yeah,
yeah it is. It is a gorgeous book, and I
learned a lot from it. There's a lot of stuff,
you know, like, especially doing this podcast, there's a lot
of stuff I kind of run across about a lot
of these topics, but I've never gotten into like canning
(02:51):
or drying or like a lot of these preservation methods
and so yeah, so I just learned a lot and
I've got a lot of bookmarks to follow up on
her recipes for the future. Same same, because it does
have recipes, a lot, a lot, a lot of really
interesting sounding ones. I'm just like, oh man.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yes, yes, And we always had a lovely conversation with Julia.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yes, yes, and we are going to get into that
as soon as we get back from a quick break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Thank
you sponsors, and let's get into the interview. Hi Julia, Hi, Hi,
(03:44):
welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, well, of.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Course anytime anytime. We last had you on in twenty
twenty two, and I don't know what time means anymore,
so that could have been any time to talk about
one of your other books, Our Fermented Lives, a history
of how fermented foods have shaped cultures and communities. And
that book is a book with a lot of recipes
(04:09):
in it, but it's more like a historical and multicultural
journey through what right fermentation has meant to humanity, as
you say in the very long title, and it's got
recipes as like windows or illustrations into your points, but
that's not really the purpose of the book. So I
(04:30):
guess my first, very long question is what made you
want to make a more recipe and instruction focused guidebook.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
When I looked at food preserving books that were out there,
they tend to focus on one type of food preserving
or tended to be shorter a lot of them. Also,
I found the organization kind of confusing. Like if I
were not the person who wrote this book, and they
were looking for this book, I would I would be like, Okay,
(05:01):
I have like I don't know a bunch of apples,
and like I need to know what to do with apples.
I don't want to have to flip through like five
different sections to figure that out. So part of the
impetus of writing this was being able to say, Okay,
I can look at each technique and then when I
find a thing that I want to make, I can
just look at how all the techniques apply to that
(05:22):
specific thing.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, and I do love that you've built this guide
that really tries to meet people where they are. Could
you talk a little bit about like more about that.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Yeah, So food preserving, I think a lot of people
find it intimidating because we assume that it's very equipment heavy,
that it's super super specialized, and there are aspects of
it that are right. You know, for pressure canning, you
obviously need a pressure canner, but there are parts of
preserving that don't have to be that way. You know,
(05:55):
there's a variety of different ways you can dry food.
For example, there's a firm and is very low tech,
or it can be. And so my purpose with this
was to make it very accessible and to focus on
the techniques that were not super equipment heavy, that aren't
super specialized, so that it takes some of the fear
(06:18):
out for folks.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah, and I do love that you also, as somebody
who lives in the small apartment, you do go into
like if this is where you're at, if this is
your space, if this is what you have, here's how
you can do it. And I like that you examine
a lot of different places people might be and give
(06:44):
them no, you.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Can still do this. There are ways to still do this.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
Yeah. Yeah. When I started preserving food, I lived in
a teeny tiny, little like efficiency studio apartment thing. It's like,
I don't know, four six hundred square feet, which like
you is fine for more.
Speaker 1 (07:05):
Sure, but it does look like an ikea model room
at a certain point.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
That's that's what you've got. Yeah and yeah, so like
trying to you know, can food and suddenly there's all
these pickles and no, no, I have all this stuff
I have to find room for. Like, yeah, I became
hyper aware of space limitations in a way that I
think still informs how I teach.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
This this whole thing. So like the scope of this
book is huge, and I feel like you're pulling from
a bunch of different right, like like concepts of different limitations,
and so like, I guess, I how did how did
you learn all of this? Is this just a lifetime
(07:55):
of collected knowledge?
Speaker 3 (07:57):
Kind of? I mean I started out serving food because
I was food insecure, so I was in my early twenties.
I got most of my food from the food bank,
and so it was kind of you know, whatever surprise
bag of stuff I got that week. I had one
week where they the only things they gave me were
(08:17):
a loaf of wonderbread, a can of Sloppy Joe mix,
and five pound roll of ground venison. That was it.
The only thing I ate for a week was venison
Sloppy Joe's. It was awful.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I mean that sounds delightful for like half a day,
and then after that it's kind of like, I'm done
with that, thank you.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
Yeah, I got over it real quickly. And so to
supplement such delights, my tiny apartment happened to have like
a little yard garden space, and the landlord let me
use that, and so I started growing vegetables. And that
was good because then it meant I got you know,
nutrients that weren't sloppy Joe mix, which is good. That
(09:00):
is an important food group. Sure, sure, And I kind
of ran into the problem everybody runs into when they
grow garden, which is, you know, kind of feast or famine,
like everything comes ready at once, and then what do
I do with all this stuff? And it's like, oh no,
I'm like twenty one, I barely know how to cook.
I have no idea what's going on with my life?
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Yeah, and suddenly you have like seventy eight zucchinis and
you're like right, yeah, You're like what do I Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Yeah, So it kind of came out of necessity of
that exact problem, and then yeah, here we are twenty
years later I cannot. I can afford groceries, and I
can preserve food. So it's a very nice place to be.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's a really lovely place. Yes, was was there any
particular aspect of all of all of this twenty years
of kind of stored knowledge that you were really excite,
like extra excited to dig into.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
I was excited to dig into pressure canning because it
was something that until writing this book, I didn't really
do because I still found it terrifying, even though I
had been hot water bath canning for years and years
and years. But I was like, well, I'm writing the
comprehensive book on preserving. That means I need to figure
out how to can and so, like you know, much
(10:30):
research and much canning later, here we are now I
feel comfortable with it. But yeah, that was one that
I was excited about, but I was trepidacious about also
a little nervous.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That's kind of comforting to hear, honestly, that that you
are still nervous about some of these aspects because it's
as someone who's only dipped their their their their their
little tips of their fingers into preservation. A lot of
it sounds right, very intimidating. Yeah, like like the concept
of like, oh, this takes time, this takes effort, this
(11:07):
might result in something that is not edible after all,
and then I've wasted that time and that food, you know,
all of those kind of concepts. But uh, yeah, I
feel like there's such good advice sprinkled throughout about how
to like start from a good place, course correct if
you need to, and be like, no, well this wasn't
(11:28):
cheese today, but it made kurds and it made whey
and I can eat both of those, so are very
sure it was fine?
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, I you know, with canning it's a little different.
But with a lot of other things, like you know, fermentation.
You know, you you get to everything you do is
a lesson, right, Like I mean, and was canning too,
but with fermentation just takes her a little lower. Yeah, yeah,
(11:57):
but everything is a lesson.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
If I make sour crow and I put I don't know,
some kind of spice in it, and then I'm like, oh,
it turns out I absolutely hate all spice and tower
crowd despice it. Don't want it, now I know, right,
And now I'm also offered the opportunity to say okay,
knowing that, how can I repurpose this thing? Like where
what could be done with this?
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, it's a it's a creative process, which is a
thing that you've touched on a little bit in some
of your other work too.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of viewing it as
a practice. Yeah, And it's like a source of creativity
rather than just you know, following you know, the exact
way I spice things, or you know, fermenting sauer kraut
for only this number of days. It's like, no, we'll
try fermenting it, you know, a little shorter, a little longer,
like make it yours.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, that's the fun experimentation part of it, right, And
I think bringing that joy back to some of these
things that feel so have felt so inaccessible for some
people for so long is nice. Is it's It's it's
like when everybody get into sourdough when the pandemic was happening, Like,
(13:08):
it is nice to experiment with these things and find
what you like and instead of it being a failure,
being like, oh I can use the brine in this
and something else, all right, I can There are still
ways I can learn from this and repurpose this, and
I love that you have that throughout the book.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Yeah, I think it makes it so that preserving, like
you said, is less intimidating and more joyful. But like, yeah,
just makes it. It makes it so it's something that
feels less like we're like, oh, I'm doing this because
I have to, Like I'm scared I'm gonna i don't know,
run out of carrots or something, and so I've got
to put up all my carrots or I don't want
(13:48):
to waste my carrots. I just can't a bunch of carrots.
So it's carrots are very much on my mind. But
it makes it so it's like, oh, like this is
actually a process A turned into rather than like a
thing that's just like on my to do list.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
Yeah, and it could be very meditative.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
I think actually it can be something that gives you
kind of turns your brain off. And you talked a
lot about the history of it and how we can
connect to the history of people doing this and kind
of I would say, connect back to food ways that
(14:26):
a lot of us may have felt disconnected from for
a long time.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, And I mean you've also got a background in
food history, like on an academic level, So that's true, Like, yeah,
I do. That was Yeah, that was a long, expensive process.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Yes, I actually got my PhD in something completely different,
but that was expensive too.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
But that absolutely doesn't form your writing. It does, And
I loved I loved stumbling on those kind of little
nuggets of you know, like, oh, this is what the
word cereal comes from, stuff like that within this book
and kind of going like, oh, yeah, that's right, Yeah
that's part of this.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
Yeah. Yeah, I think your point you made about those
like connecting back to histories. One of the things I
like about doing this work is that so many people
who've done food preserving over the years are not, like
are not acknowledged, Like it's like women's work or the
work of you know, domestic laborers, enslaved people like people
(15:36):
who are pushed to the margins. And it feels like
when we preserve food now we're able to reconnect with
processes that were so long considered unimportant but are critical
to our survival. That's my little soapbox.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
We love a soapbox, please.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Yeah, oh it's true.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
And I know we're going to come back and talk
about this, but I feel like now with kind of
like apocalyptic vibes. Everybody's suddenly everybody's interested.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
The book feels timely. Yeah, yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And I mean, you know we can we can talk
about it now since it came up. You know, Like
I A thing that comes up over and over again
in this book is how community healthy the practice of
preservation is. And you know, like, I feel like a
lot of people are rightly horrified about a lot of
(16:39):
what's going on in the world around us. So could
you talk a little bit about preservation as a form
of like right re engagement or even defiance.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
I mean, I think, especially in the US, we're very
much individualist for better or worse. You know, we're very
much isolated from each other, and you know, got to
look out for me and my stuff, and like, yes,
we want to look out for ourselves. We don't want
to spread ourselves too thin and like all the things. Yes,
but also we still need each other and there's a
(17:17):
balance to be struck there.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Oh, humans need people, as it turns out.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Yeah, it's true. Yeah, we're actually social animals, weirdly enough talking. Yeah,
so I think this preserving, you know, we're I talk
about it in terms of like when we come together
to preserve food because it can be pretty labor intensive
depending what you're doing and like how much you're making.
(17:43):
Coming together to preserve food makes it more accessible to do,
but also makes it so that we're building bonds because
we're actually spending time with each other towards a common goal.
And it's not like a common goal of like make
more revenue for the large corporation you work for. It's
like a common goal like we all like tomato sauce.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Like it's a little more digestible, no pun intended.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, something people like actually can feel maybe more relaxed
around each other doing. Yeah. But then it also like
literally feeds our communities too, like it actually makes it
so people have food, And so I think there's you know,
there's several layers of value it brings, and there's also
(18:33):
the knowledge sharing, right, Like I'm I'm very lucky that
I have made a point of learning these traditions and
I'm always learning more things, like I'll spend my entire
life doing that. But I'm very lucky that I know
what I do, because so many people don't. You know,
if like if they had to preserve food tomorrow or
(18:54):
like figure out what greens in their yard were edible,
they'd be like, well, yes, you.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Gotta have a rough time.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, And I'm just like I you know, I don't
ever want to encourage anybody to be like prepper level
kind of because like that goes back to that individualist
sort of thing. But like knowing some of the basics,
like knowing how to like ferment some vegetables safely, knowing
how to like dry things like basic stuff that doesn't
(19:28):
require a lot of equipment is like really profoundly helpful
and like really easy too.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well, it's pretty empowering as well, Like just having that
basic knowledge, even things in the kitchen. When I learn, oh,
this is why it works this way, I feel so
much better about just making things and knowing how it
will work.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
So I think having that knowledge is so important. And
you know how.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Much you use it in your day to day life
up to you maybe, but I think having it is
really empowering.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I feel I feel much more uh
ready to face whatever, whatever chaos because I know how
to preserve food.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Hey, I want you on my team.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
I'm honest. Writing number of people's like when people are
like yeah, like my like apocalypse groups. They're like, you're
like one of the number one people. I'm like, wow,
I'm like really in demand in a way I never envision.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
This does not come as a surprise to me. I've
seen your pantry, so that's true.
Speaker 3 (20:42):
You've seen that that particular chaos.
Speaker 4 (20:44):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Oh but but speaking of community, I want to talk
a little bit about the community of this book. Because
you include all of these stories from creators from around
the world. How did you how did that part of
the book kind of cement itself? Like how did you
decide to incorporate these stories?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
I you know, I think being English speaking people in
the US, our view of food preserving is often rather
white and eurocentric, and you know, as our views of
many things. But also that and I think especially right now,
(21:27):
when we're seeing you know, shall we say, kind of
problematic trends in like the influencer and food preserving tradwifey space,
and there's you know, there's a lot of there's a
need for us to center the fact that food preserving
is a global activity and isn't just you know, for
(21:49):
one specific group of people.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
And so.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Basically I just I was like, who do I know
that would be good to talk to, and then kind
of infilled with a few other people that I didn't
know yet, but I was like, I bet they'd beat nice.
And yeah, I came up with this list, and I
tried to get, you know, people from as many different
places as I could to talk about what food preserving
(22:13):
was like in their countries and how they preserve food themselves,
the kinds of ingredients they're working with, just to give
people a picture of this as like a complete global practice.
Speaker 1 (22:26):
Okay, we've got more of this interview, but first we've
got another quick break for a word from our sponsors,
and we're back.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Thank you sponsor. Let's get back into it.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Another feature of this book that required more than just
what I imagine is countless hours of you and your kitchen
testing and retesting recipes and if you have account on that,
I am curious. But but are the photos? What the
lovely and illustrative photos so like And this is a
(23:11):
little bit outside the scope of a food show, but like,
we're so curious about like the process of explaining kitchen processes,
So could you tell us a little bit about how
those illustrations came together?
Speaker 3 (23:24):
Yeah, So, I I am very happy with the photos
also Oh yeah, which.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Is yeah, no, no, no, no, absolutely, that's yeah, that's
that's I mean also, you know, like you're in them
and like we all have like a little bit of
a of a anxiety about our image and like how
how we come off, and you know, especially right when
that's not a basic part of our professional life.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Right. Yeah. This was my first time doing a photo
shoot for a book, and so it was a lot
of it was interesting because having being in front of
camera for that many hours every day like was very
I don't know, I'm not sure I would call it meditative,
but I was like very in my body. Like I
was like very aware of how I was holding myself
(24:09):
and moving and in ways that normally I'm kind of
just like whatever, but like I'm like, oh, like every
moment of like the way I'm holding my hands like this,
in the way I'm doing this, and like okay, am
I like blocking the food. Like I became aware in
a way that I think was interesting because it was
(24:30):
like the showcase was the food, but I also had
to be like fully in my body and present to
do that work properly. But the photos themselves were Ian Bagwell,
who is here in Atlanta also, who takes wonderful photos obviously,
and him and like everybody who worked on it was
(24:53):
just incredible. We had a good team of folks that
did props and food styling and like all the things,
which was great because then we were able to really
get yeah, some really good quality pictures. I'm trying to
think like what specifically to say about the process, because
it was it was very fun, but it was also
(25:15):
like kind of a whirlwind because we had so many
things to photograph. Like I have a photo somewhere in
the depths of my phone that shows like the second
to last day of shooting, and there's like we're in
I studio and there's I don't know, I basically brought
like every jar of food I had in my house,
and so there's like this poor man, his entire studio
(25:38):
is just like covered in like hundreds of jars of things,
and like there's like jars that are like open and
have fork sticking out of them, and there's like stuff
spilled on counters and I'm like, oh my god, Ian,
I'm so sorry. But yeah, it was a beautiful experience
and it was Yeah, I like that we kind of
(26:01):
focused on on kind of like a vibrant color scheme
for it. Like it's like the pictures are very vibrant,
and I think that is also counter to what you
see in a lot of food preserving stuff, but like,
like preserves really are beautiful and can be vibrant. So
I'm glad this book captured that.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Oh yeah yeah, and again, you know, as someone who's
kind of starting out, just like some of the very
basic like and in step one it looks like this,
and in step two it looks and like, this is
what you can use to weight down to wait down
a ferment. If you don't have a weight, if you
don't have like a weight that you have purchased for
that specific purpose, like you can use a jar. And
(26:41):
this is what it looks like, just in case you
can't imagine it with your weird brain. And I'm thank you,
I thank you.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
Yeah yeah, no, again, that's the kind of thing like
when are like when the editors at story suggested that
for the layout, I was like, oh, like that that
makes a lot of sense, Like I you know, had
like tried to write the steps out as clearly as possible,
but when they were like, yeah, there's a lot of
these things that the actual process shots are helpful and
(27:11):
like oh yeah, like absolutely.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, yeah, that's as an audio only format, we we
struggle with that sometimes.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
For sure.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
I'm also really glad that you found the process kind
of meditative instead of horrifying and anxiety inducing, which is
what I would usually describe my time on camera. Although
I guess, yeah, no, it totally makes sense, right because
because it does, like you have to remember, oh, I'm
a human person in this flesh suit, and I guess
I have to do a specific thing with it.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Right, Yeah, it has to move in certain ways. The
only thing that was stressful about it for me was
like because I had to be like camera ready, which
means I couldn't just like you know, show up no makeup. Yeah,
Like I had to.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Like actually, fingernails they were painted that they looked good.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, yeah, I went to the nail shack in East
Atlanta Village. Yeah, I was like, I'm not qualified.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Actually know what I'm doing here, especially not for something
that's gonna have to hold up over like I don't
know how many days of working with liquid of various phs.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, I was pleased with those nails. They did a
great job. But yeah, it was. I mean, the thing
that was the most challenging was honestly going through the
Atlanta traffic in the mornings to get to the studio
in time. And I was like every day, like I
kept leaving progressively earlier because I was like, I was like,
I keep being late, but I keep leaving earlier, and
(28:45):
yet I was still late for a single day Atlanta.
Oh yeah, it was like three miles away minute, Like
I was like, you know, pennisaur or something like, it
was like not far from my house.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, that's It's almost as though we should have built
a more robust metro transit system at some point.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
So, yeah, maybe you shouldn't have ripped out our street cars.
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
I don't know. Yeah, here we are.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
I legitimately got a text message from some government department
in Atlanta that said to me get on those scooters
to avoid the traffic, and I was like, you want.
Speaker 4 (29:33):
Me to get on a scooter in the city.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It had a picture of the highway, and I can
only imagine what they meant was to avoid the traffic
on the highway. But I was like, this is kind
of implying you think I should get on the Highway
on the stooter.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
Yeah, that is a horrible idea. That's the worst idea.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
I don't like being in Atlanta street traffic in a
six sided, you know, full metal vehicle the aforementioned soft
squishy meat suit.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
Out in any yeah, anywhere in contact range of anybody's car.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Oh goodness. Uh so you're you're actually splitting your time
now between Atlanta and Ireland.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
I am.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Are there any like ingredients or practices that you've started
incorporating into your work that you learned through through traveling
and living there.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
I mean a lot of the practices there are very
similar to things I was already doing. So it's nice
because it's more of a continuation. There are things that
are much easier to get here because it is warmer.
So like citrus, for example, I can get much fresher
citrus here. Yeah, I think they're closest. Citrus in Ireland
(30:58):
comes from like Spain and North Africa, and so yeah,
it's always a little under ripe or overripe. But that's okay.
I'm getting used to that.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
There are other nice things.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
There are other nice things. One of the thing they
do that obviously, like in Atlanta, we don't do as
much like there's you know, it's an island, so they
have seaweed, and so doing things like pickling seaweed. I've
been getting more into that, yeah, kind of just playing
with that as a topping and drying seaweed when I
(31:35):
was there, So I'm there most of the year now,
and I was there over Christmas and then through February,
and it was not the time to dry seaweed because
the houses are stone and they are damp and cold,
and it was raining outside for sixty days straight. So
(31:57):
we had like breaks for like a hand full of
hours here and there, but like every.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
But those are not enough hours for drying, for drying
a sea product, so no.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
And I don't. I don't have a wash or a
dryer over there. So yeah, it's like very strategic. When
I hung the washing out and brought it back in,
it was a very logistical winter.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
A very logistical winter is a book you should write.
That's your next book.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
I bet, I bet that one will fly off the shelves.
It sounds like I.
Speaker 4 (32:32):
Would read it in a part.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Like it depends on the party you bring it to, right.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah, I mean it does sound like you're living like
a cottage life.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
And iron kind of I have like a coal fireplace,
and so what I would do is I would actually
put my seaweed on a little drying rack in front
of the coal fireplace. So yeah, it felt beautiful. Yeah,
I felt very cozy.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
As you've been traveling back and forth, you mentioned in
this book your adventure ferment. Could you talk a little
bit about that.
Speaker 3 (33:10):
Yeah, So this is a ferment that I started in
twenty nineteen. I was coming back from actually from my
grandma's funeral down in central Florida, and I was like, Okay,
her house is on the market. I've gotten the last
stuff out of her house. I had like a mason
jar I pulled out of her cabinet, I pulled some
stuff out of her fridge, and I just like started
fermenting it. And then I brought it back with me,
(33:33):
and ever since then, everywhere I go, I either bring
a bit of the brine with me and stick stuff
in it as I travel, or I bring stuff back
and stick it into the brine when I'm home. What
I do now is I have two copies of it,
of one here and then one in Ireland, and each
(33:53):
of those I add stuff too, and I just bring
a little brine back and forth between the two.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
Yeah, when dealing with the TSA, that's a lot more
convenient than a.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Whole Yeah, it's really helpful. I do this with yogurt
Starter too. It's really helpful to put them in cosmetics containers.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
That was what I was picturing already.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
Like yeah, Like, I'm just like this, what do you
mean this is a face mask? It's not. It's like
one hundred and fifty year old yogurt starter, But.
Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean you could use it as a face mask
and it would probably be great.
Speaker 3 (34:31):
It's great.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, it's not it's primary purpose. Gosh. There's a few
like extremely specific things that I wanted to say or
kind of ask you about based from the books. So, okay,
(34:56):
I want to know about your green bean dreams. You
you say in the book that when you haven't had
a good pickled green bean in like a couple weeks,
you have green bean dreams. And if that's just a
nice thing that you wrote, that's fine. But if you
genuinely have green and we can cut this whole bit.
But if you genuinely have green bean dreams.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
I can't generally have like green beans are one of them.
Sauer Kraut is another. But there's like a few things
that like I need to have in rotation regularly, or
I get like really strong intrusive cravings, like I imagine,
like I don't know, I don't know what other people
get in strong intrusive cravings about, like I recognize my
(35:41):
palette is like way in left field, and like people
are not like they're not like, oh my god, I
haven't had really good sauer Kraut in like a week,
and I'm losing my mind. Man, Like most people don't
do that, I don't think, but I do.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah. Yeah, I can neither confirm nor to deny for
all of humanity. I yeah, for sure, Like I will
get a craving for like a good pickle of whatever kind,
you know, some kind of brind vegetable. Usually my truly
intrusive food thoughts are more like cheesecake there or something
like that, but you know, or maybe just fresh berries.
Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, freshberries are good. Yeah, Yeah, it's interesting though, like
green beans and a few other things like show up.
Yeah in my dreamscape relatively often, like I do a
lot of eating pickles while I'm asleep, like not actually,
but in my dreams. I need to make it clear.
(36:41):
I'm not into the kitchen. I mean, but if I was, great, fine, But.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, there are worse things you could be eating, absolutely
in a sleepwalking situation.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
Oh goodness, you do mention that, although you do not
recommend it, you have made and consumed and all let
us smoothie I have.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
It's terrible.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
What is Is there a descriptor beyond terrible that you
can give us, because I'm extremely curious about how terrible.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
A word like damp comes to mind. Okay, yeah, yeah,
like I don't know, more viscous than you'd expect, like
it was it was just it was yeah, it's just
(37:43):
the texture was not bad but not great, and it
just it just tasted like lettuce. Like it wasn't like
I used like spinitch or something that's like rights getdn't
use something with a ton of flavor us like romane
I think. And it was just like this, like I
made terrible decisions.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
Like that's a good descriptor.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you for humoring me on
that one. I did want to express joy that you
include a recipe for the for a version of the
apple pie aka Pippin' Pie from the English Housewife that
(38:32):
we made together on video way back in the day.
That's super delightful, and I love that you adapted it
to not have whole apples in it, because that was
not the best part of that recipe.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
No, no, it's a good plavor. Hard to eat that one, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Yeah, yeah, glad you're still experimenting with some things like that. Uh,
I guess speaking of that or not that in particular,
but kind of in all how you know, like you've
you've you've been on our show a number of times
(39:06):
over the years. Can I ask how your personal preservation
practice has changed over that time?
Speaker 3 (39:16):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's gotten more expansive, Like
I've learned how to do more things, but I've also
gotten more comfortable teaching other people. Like when we first
met in the sands of time. Yeah, I didn't mention.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
I didn't mention a date because I have no idea.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
We were doing video back then. That's yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
Back then because I was still primarily a librarian and
a professor and like doing other things. While I was
becoming more comfortable with teaching and with you know, kind
of moving through the world in that way. I hadn't
really taught much about food specifically, and in the almost
(40:05):
ten years since, I have become much more comfortable with that.
I mean, I like opened the culinary school on the Internet,
which is nice. I can articulate these processes in a
way that feels like the way I wish I would
have learned them, which feels significant, and yeah, yeah, it
(40:25):
makes me feel good about myself.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Hey, it's excellent.
Speaker 4 (40:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
The way you lay out this book and what you
were talking about earlier, with how you wished you had
something that was organized like this, I think that that
is so important. And because you've been in this world
so long, you kind of I would assume you know
what you wish you had had. I'm curious, like, over
(40:56):
your time teaching, have you you've seen changes in the
students and what they're asking or what they want.
Speaker 3 (41:07):
Yeah, I mean I think there's a lot more interest.
Like when I first started teaching fermentation classes regularly in
twenty eighteen, people were interested, but it was kind of
hit or miss how many people were going to show up,
and people didn't, you know, didn't want to pay more
(41:27):
than like twenty dollars for a class, and you know,
that was challenging because that was like how I was
paying my bills and so like was it was before
we had really sort of deepened into the moment we
are now where a lot of people want to know
this stuff. And so what's nice about this moment is
(41:49):
I feel like I get a much wider range of
people now. I get students who have never made any
of this stuff before and have no idea what, you know,
what it is. They're just curious or feel like they
should know or want to know. And then I have
people who are like, hey, I've been preserving food for
a long time, but I want different perspectives or I
want something, you know, something else, like I want more
(42:12):
depth or something. And so, yeah, the fun thing about
teaching now is that I can build classes that accommodate
all of those needs. And so that's yeah, that's fun.
And I also see a lot more age range and like,
I don't know, just like diversity in general of interests, ages,
like everything, Like there's just a lot more people that
(42:35):
are preserving food.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
That's awesome.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
That's so cool.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
And we have a little bit more to discuss with Julia,
but we have one more quick break.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
For a word from our sponsor.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Thank you sponsors. Let's get back to the interview.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
So I'm curious also how you encompassed so much in
this book.
Speaker 3 (43:09):
It is.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
So much ground covered. How did you choose what recipes
would be in there? How did you go about the
whole process? What was that like for you?
Speaker 3 (43:23):
I did so much cooking, I made so many things,
So I mean I started out by thinking about what
are the kinds of ingredients that people bring up the
most in my experience teaching and writing about food. I
tried to have a range of ingredients, but I tried
(43:44):
to really focus on fruits and vegetables. So there is meat, dairy, eggs,
fish like are also in there, but the lion's share
of what people ever asked me about is fruits and vegetables.
So that comprises, you know, a good chunk of the book.
And as far as what I chose to go in there,
I mean I tried within each type of food, I
(44:08):
tried to have a range of different ways to work
with it, to really give people as much variety as possible.
So if you had like to go back to apples
on that kicks that will keep going. You know, It's like, Okay,
I want to make apple pie filling or I want
to make like, you know, a canned apple kind of
thing like that, versus freezing, versus drawing, versus like. I
(44:32):
wanted to make sure that there were different processes that
were accounted for by a lot of different ingredients or
under a lot of different ingredients, in part because it
made it so that it's again more accessible for people,
so that if somebody has, you know, a dehydrator, but
they don't have a pressure canner or you know, or whatever,
(44:54):
like they're they're able to fit it into their actual practice.
Speaker 4 (44:59):
Yes, and I do love.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
How you organized it by ingredients because during the pandemic,
I have to say I became someone because I'm a
single person. I live alone, and so I was being
very strategic about what I would buy. And like one
of my like pandemic gifts is that I can now
tell you cabbage will last this.
Speaker 4 (45:21):
Long before it goes bad.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
I just know it. So useful skill though it is.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
People will text me about it. I'm like, you know,
you can look this up online and you just know
it tell me. So it's it's wonderful because that's usually
what happens, right, is you have an ingredient and you
don't want it to go bad.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
You don't want it to go to waste.
Speaker 2 (45:44):
And so it's nice when you can look up, Okay,
here are these different ways depending on what I have
on how I cannot waste this food ingredient.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Yeah, yeah, I mean I I'm a big fan again
in part because of the aforementioned Foo food insecurity. I'm
a big fan of not wasting food. You know, there's
many reasons to not, but one of them is that,
you know, there's a lot of good things we can
do with bits food bits, and I wanted to reflect
(46:19):
that and also to help people think about this as
sort of a lifelong practice and process rather than like, Okay,
I'm going to learn how to can so I can like,
you know, can these pickles this summer? And then that's it.
Like no, it's like it's you know, it's a process
you can work into your life, and you know, to
varying extents, you know, whether you have five.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Minutes or like a full day, yeah yeah, And you
chart out for every given type of ingredient. You know,
what's easy, what has a butt ton of flavor? You know,
like what yeah, like like what requires special equipment and
write and you can kind of go based on that
of like and you know, me being me, I was
just like, oh, the ones that don't require much time, Okay,
(47:03):
I'll go straight to that. Spe cool like that, you know,
like I don't. I have limited personal resources to invest
in anything, So yeah, quite right again, meeting people where
they are it's so cool. I know, I know that
this book hasn't even debuted yet. What day does it
come out?
Speaker 3 (47:22):
May nineteenth in the US and in the UK, and
I think the rest of Europe it's June fourth.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Cool, So as we're recording this, it is not that
time yet. But I also know that you're always working
on something. Now, is there a project that you're working
on that you're looking forward to?
Speaker 4 (47:46):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (47:47):
I So I handed this book in and I was
approached by story about writing a book about lemon's And
it's like a cute little book with like lemon recipe
and like how to clean things with lemons, and like
it was a nice like actual and metaphorical like palette
(48:07):
cleansing because it's like it's a little tiny short book.
Like it was like really easy to write in comparison,
Like it was a nice sort of like reset.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
It was like fun.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
I was like, oh, lemons, like my entire house like
lemons for like three months. It was great, rightful.
Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
So in addition to launching this book this spring, I'm
also turning around the edits on that and that will
be out next year. So oh wow, and then yeah,
we'll see you from there. I'm sure there will be
many more things to come. Oh yeah, always, always yes, So.
Speaker 2 (48:50):
Congrats on the book, if we haven't said that already.
Do you ever, since this is your work, since you
do like fermentation, and you do you trying all this
food all this time, do you have like something you
do to step away from it? Is this sort of
self care or is this like you love it and
it doesn't matter, it doesn't become like a work stressor
(49:13):
for you.
Speaker 3 (49:14):
That is a very good question, because I think I've
had to be intentional about structuring a life where I
can still enjoy the thing without being like everything I
make has to be like a measurable output. And so
what I do is I have at least several mornings
(49:35):
a week where I just like make whatever, and it
doesn't you know, it's not like I'm recipe testing. I'm
not measuring stuff. I'm just like I want to, i
don't know, prep a bunch of potato salad this week,
and so I'm gonna do it, or like I'm gonna
make spower crown. So if I did it, and I
(49:56):
keep that separate from the time that I'm doing the
more structured recipe testing me kind of parts of things.
I actually have kind of different blocks in my days
dedicated to different aspects of my work, and I sort
of like, I don't know, energetically move between them, kind
(50:16):
of like I'm like, okay, like you know, we're done
with this block now, like we're done with the writing block.
We're you know, we did that and now we're moving
to this other thing. Like I always write and do
kind of more brainstormy stuff earlier in the day and
then do others. I just kind of like my brain
shuts off at about two PM, so I just kind
(50:38):
of like roll downhill after that. I'm just like, whatever
this is. This is when we'll like organize papers or something.
And then in the evening, I'm like, you know, I'm
like I can kind of unplug and make some more food.
But it's like fun, so yeah, it sort of bookends
the day.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (50:57):
I feel like a lot of time when I ask
people that question, they don't have a good answer. But
I feel like you have a good answer, just just
because a lot of people are not good at doing it. Yeah,
they're not good at separating out their work, yeah, from
your life.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
I was terrible at it for a really long time,
which is why I'm really good at it.
Speaker 4 (51:17):
Now you've learned.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
I've learned. I was like, wait a minute, I don't
want to die of work related to stress by the
time I'm fishing, Like I'm doing work that I actually
love and I find meaningful, Like there's no reason I
need to like drive myself into the ground about it,
like yeah it's okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Oh yeah, And just learning to work with yourself, right,
figuring out what times of day you can concentrate on
different things and yeah, allowing yourself to move in between
them when you have the luxury of doing so, right.
Speaker 3 (51:49):
Yeah, Yeah, there's there's a benefit to like working from
home for myself and like not having children like I have,
Like I have the sort of structureless life structure that
like lets me like, lets me do cat Yeah, just good.
Speaker 1 (52:07):
I like it, Oh hard, same, Yeah, yep, yeah.
Speaker 3 (52:13):
Yep, yep.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Even even Annie has an apartment cat. Now so's apartment
building cat. Yep, nice, yep.
Speaker 4 (52:24):
His name is blue super cute.
Speaker 3 (52:26):
That's a good cat name.
Speaker 4 (52:28):
Yeah, it's a Siamese cat with blue eyes.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Oh oh oh pretty baby.
Speaker 4 (52:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
But I guess, I guess, Julia. Is there anything that
we haven't asked you about that you would.
Speaker 3 (52:43):
Like to speak to I would just remind people that,
like this really is a practice that they can fit
in their lives, like whatever their lives look like. Like
you can do this if you live like off grid
in the woods and have no money. You can do
this if you have like a gigantic kitchen with like stoves,
Like there's a place for you in this in this world.
(53:05):
So I hope, I hope everybody listening tries it. I
also want to point out another thing which is in
the book. I have a thing that I have not
seen in another preserving book and I think is really important,
which is how to evaluate resources.
Speaker 1 (53:23):
So yes, yes, I saw that, and I got so
excited about it. Oh man, because we live in a
disinformation age.
Speaker 3 (53:32):
We sure do. And kind of a former librarian it
makes me angry.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
So it's like and especially with like you know a
lot of these like fake AI books and with like
I don't know, like anybody can put whatever they want
on the internet now, and as a result, you have
some like canning recipes and stuff that I'm like, you
are going to hole like just you're going to kill people, Like.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, yeah, like you are going to give someone batchelism.
I like, why are you doing this?
Speaker 3 (54:02):
Yeah? So my purpose in doing that was to give
people sort of some basic ways to look at this
kind of information critically like this book, other books like
mostly online resources, but like whatever you know, using tested recipes,
(54:24):
using trusted sources, like trusting your gut. Like if you
see something that says like can pumpkin butter, do not
do that, Like, don't try to can pumpkin butter. You
will give yourself botulism.
Speaker 1 (54:37):
Which I didn't know, but you explained thoroughly in and
it is great. It's apparently too dense to can you
cannot make it reach the appropriate temperature and therefore yeah.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, yeah, yeah that felt important to say, like twenty times.
Speaker 1 (54:55):
No, thank you. Yeah, you're less botulism.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Less potulism into into that. Yeah, but I wanted people
to be able to, like to not just use this
book as they're only preserving resource, but to feel confident
looking at other resources too and being able to see,
you know, if they were any good or not.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (55:19):
So I have there's there's like a truncated version in
the book, and then I have also a link too,
like I made like a huge long version that's in
my newsletter. So if people like really want to you know,
go nuts about it, they can look at that.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
No love that. I think that we are a podcast
and a lovely listening audience who loves Yeah. Yeah, just
just go and going weird, going weird and deep.
Speaker 4 (55:50):
So absolutely.
Speaker 3 (55:53):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Speaking of where people can find you, hey, where can
people find you?
Speaker 3 (55:59):
So many? Yeah, all over the internet. So in my books,
like my new book Essential Food Preserving, which comes out
May nineteenth. But also I have a online culinary school.
I mentioned that's Culinary Curiosity School dot com. I have
(56:23):
a newsletter which is root Dash Kitchens dot com slash newsletter.
On social media, I'm Bookish Julia, and there's links to
all my other socials for all my ten thousand other
things I do want there. Yeah, I'm around I'm easy
to find.
Speaker 1 (56:42):
Yeah, yeah, so so get in touch. Also open call
if you want to give back to Julia. If you
happen to have a hookup for bog.
Speaker 3 (56:51):
Butter, Yes, give me bog butter. It is like my
life's dream to eat bog butter, Like I just want
I want to eat bog butter. There's actually a bog
butter at the Butter Museum, which is like a ten
(57:11):
minute walk from my house in Ireland, and it's like
taunting me. There's a bog butter right there, but it's
behind glass.
Speaker 1 (57:20):
Right right, so we eat it. So we're not saying
that if there's ever a heist, so that is definitely
you right, but but but if anyone has a hookup
for legitimate, non heisted bog butter, get in touch.
Speaker 3 (57:40):
Please you know I'm here. I'm here for it.
Speaker 1 (57:45):
Oh, thank you, thank you so much, Thank you so
much for being here. It's so good to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (57:50):
It's so good to talk to you too. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 5 (57:53):
Yeah, of course, always can't wait till next time. Yeah,
And that brings us to the end of our delightful
conversation with Julia.
Speaker 2 (58:06):
There was so much we could have talked about. There
was so much more we could have discussed.
Speaker 1 (58:10):
Yeah, yeah, you can tell. I kind of just like
lost the thread towards the end of like composing my
interview questions where I was just like, just like, tell
me about this one thing, like I want and like
and I could have done that for basically everything in
the entire books.
Speaker 2 (58:24):
So she's such a good resource. Everything she's talking about.
You're like, I know you could get into depth about this.
Speaker 1 (58:33):
Oh yeah yeah, and like I don't know, like the
more I've been thinking about it, the more the more
I just really appreciate her point of view of mindfulness,
you know, like like regarding the photo shoot, but also
regarding all of this just you know, like really like
trying to be present and look at the beautiful things
(58:54):
we have and figuring out how to make them even
nicer or last longer or you know.
Speaker 2 (58:59):
Yeah, yeah, and so much of what not so much,
I would say, but a lot of the recipe she
includes are kind of like I didn't want to waste this,
Let's see what I can do with it.
Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah yeah, oh and it works ways great?
Speaker 2 (59:14):
Yeah, yes, absolutely, absolutely well. Listeners, I hope you enjoyed
this interview you can definitely check out Julia's books. You should,
but also if you're doing fermentation experiments.
Speaker 4 (59:30):
Oh yeah, oh we love hearing about that.
Speaker 1 (59:33):
Yes, it's been a minute since we've heard from any
of y'all about your like sourdoughs or whatever.
Speaker 4 (59:38):
So yeah, yes, please catch us up to date.
Speaker 2 (59:43):
You can email us at Hello at savourpod dot com.
Speaker 1 (59:46):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at Savior Pod, and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the iHeartRadio app podcasts or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super
producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(01:00:08):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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