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August 15, 2025 16 mins

The author of the Eat Like a Gilmore: The Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of Gilmore Girls, Kristi Carlson, takes a seat at Luke’s Diner this week. 

As a super fan, and a nutritionist, Kristi tells Scott how Emily does a big foodie favor every Friday night for Rory and Lorelai. 

 Plus, you’ll never guess most talked about, controversial dish from the series.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am all in again. Let's just.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Luke's Diner with Scott Patterson an iHeartRadio podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Hey everybody, Scott Patterson, I am all in podcast one
Aline Productions, iHeartRadio, iHeartMedia, iHeart podcast. This is Luke's Diner
with the one and only Christy Carlson, who.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
We are welcoming back.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Christy is with us today, who, if you don't know,
is the author of Eat Like a Gilmour and the
unofficial cookbook for fans of Gilmore Girls. She also happens
to be a certified nutrition coach, so I'm especially excited
to hear her take on Laura I and Rory's eating habits, because, man,
I tell you, a nutrition coach is dream. I would
say those two are also. We just recapped season two

(01:03):
episode fifteen, Lost and Found. We'll we see pancakes with
the side of pancakes, ice cream and ready whip, and
lots of variations of chicken. Without further ado, let's go
into it. Caesar's pancakes are critiqued in this episode, and
I just wanted to highlight that, and a different actor

(01:23):
begins playing Caesar Arvis Alvarado. I guess came in and
replaced the original Caesar So Christy, you're the author of
Eat Like Gilmore, the unofficial cookbook for fans and Gilmore Girls.
What sparked your decision to create this cookbook?

Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well, Hi, Scott, thanks for having me back by.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hi, I watched the show starting in two thousand and
I guess I always thought Warner Brothers would come out
with a cookbook. They had, they hinted, they had hit
little hints here and there, like on the website and stuff.
And then in twenty fifteen, I was I was working

(02:00):
on creative projects. I'd left sort of corporate life temporarily,
and I just my husband gave me the idea, why
don't you just write the cookbook that you've been wanting?
And I was like, yeah, I guess I could do that.
I wonder if anybody else would want it, So I
talked about it online and I thought maybe twenty people
would want it, and more people were excited than I thought.

(02:22):
So I started a Kickstarter and like fourteen hundred people
ended up supporting my Kickstarter, So so that kind of
I guess, I guess it gave me the springboard to
have the confidence to move forward with it, like full boat,
and then in the midst of all of that, I
got a publishing deal and the book ended up just

(02:45):
skyrocketing when it came out. So I nothing I could
have predicted, nothing I was planning for. It was all
kind of I felt like I was on a like
sacred conveyor belt or something. It was really amazing.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well, that's great. Great. What's your favorite recipe from the book?

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Oh, my gosh, this is the hardest question, you know.
I like, I created like ninety percent of the recipes
in the book, so they're all special to me. Some
of them took a lot of I don't know, reworking,
I guess, but I personally, from a nutrition standpoint, I

(03:24):
really like the Bferoni.

Speaker 1 (03:27):
A Ferroni boom for the wind.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
That is my favorite recipe. It's Bferoni. I grew up
eating Chef Boyardi products, but when you make it from scratch,
everything is fresh, everything is like, that's got real tomatoes
in it. It just it gives you so much more nutrition.
But it tastes very much like Beeferoni, So I love
it from that aspect.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
What Gilmore Girls treat would you recommend everyone try at home?

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Probably the muffin bottom pie. It's really a unique thing
that you're not going to find anywhere else in the world.
And it's fun to make. It's not that difficult, and
it feels very Gilmourny.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
Is there a dish from the show that the fans
are always asking you about?

Speaker 2 (04:19):
You know, the thing that people talk about I feel
like the most is Johnny Machetti. It is a dish
that it's very controversial because I guess back in Ohio
or somewhere in Indiana, somewhere in the Midwest one hundred
years ago, someone created an Italian dish with a red
sauce called Johnny Marzetti, and so everyone assumes that Johnny

(04:43):
Machetti is a riff off of Johnny Marsetti. But when
you look at Johnny Macchetti in the show, when Richard's
like scooping it out of the pan, it's not a
red sauce. It's like a cream sauce. And Emily even
talks about how he put cream a mushroom suit, which
you would never put in a red sauce. So I
guess that's the most controversial recipe in the book. Is

(05:07):
what is what exactly is Johnny Maschetti gotcha.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
Do you have a favorite Friday night dinner from the show.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Oh my gosh, the uh the pot roast and the
Parker rolls Parker House rolls. Delicious always sounds so good
to me. It's comfort food, right.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
Yeah, pot roast, boy, I tell you you like pot roast.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
I haven't had it. So what my mom used to
make it all the time, did she? Oh? God, yeah,
she made a great potrests everybody. We were always fought
over the end. Who got the end?

Speaker 4 (05:37):
You know?

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Oh yeah, the crusty end.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
Crusty, so good.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Do you prefer making classic diner food or more elevated
dishes you like? You like, you'd like cooking fancy?

Speaker 3 (05:51):
Huh?

Speaker 2 (05:52):
I like both. I really like both. I'm very much
a one minute I want a very elegant you know,
like scallops, a little garnish and some fanciness to it,
and then the next day I want like a cheeseburger.
So I'm I'm definitely I span the spectrum of Gilmour

(06:12):
eating for sure.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
All right.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
So, out of all the recipes in the books, there's
over a hundred, which is your favorite to make?

Speaker 2 (06:21):
That's a hard question, Scott.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
So what I'm known for. It's what I do.

Speaker 2 (06:27):
I really like making all the muffins. They're so quick
and easy, and you know, if I get inspired in
the morning, I can just take fifteen minutes, put them together,
pop them in the oven, and then there's nothing like
a warm, fresh, homemade muffin with your coffee in the morning.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
I love that absolutely. So you're a certified nutrition coach.
How do you get certification? Is that college courses?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
What is that?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
There are specialized companies. So I went through Precision Nutrition
and it's an online, self paced course like so many
even college degrees are now, and it's a combination of
video books. You have to take tests after every module.
It's just like taking a course, but it's all at

(07:15):
your own pace. Sure, And you know, honestly, I've been
studying nutrition for a long time. As I age, I'm
especially interested in nutrition and the course that did answer
several of my questions, but I feel like there's so
much more to be uncovered. I feel like nutrition is

(07:36):
such a deep, nuanced topic and we get so many
contradictory things that are flying at us all the time.
It's hard to know what's real. I think everybody sort
of has questions about their nutrition.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Right, you constantly see these things online now about you
know they're lying to you and everything that they said
is horrible for you.

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Butter, steak, these kinds of things, you know you should
eat them.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
How do you feel about that? Because I when I
do a lot of cooking and I use a lot
of butter, and I eat a lot of steak. Yeah, yeah,
talk about that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
I am not a fan of villainizing any food. I
think that anything that's like a whole ingredient, like a
steak or like butter, has some nutritional value to it
that is critical to our well being. It's just a
matter of how much do you introduce what do you
layer it with in your day. So I eat red meat.

(08:38):
I eat primarily grass fed red meat because of the
omega threes that are not found in.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Non grass fed and it's so cheap now it's only
like fifty bucks a pound.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
It's really easy to find. I mean even Trader Joe's
has grass fed ground beef. So it's it's way more
accessible than it ever used to be. And so I'm
I don't villainize anything. And that's I definitely talked about
that in my cookbooks, like to me, butter is butter,
milk is milk, sugar is sugar, Like, none of those
things are are wrong, inherently wrong. They all have something

(09:12):
to add.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
To our diet, right right.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
I mean, just don't you know we're not recommending everybody
drink a glass of hot fat. You know that's that's
not going to be good. No, but yeah, I mean
we we eat a very basic diet of of a
lot of foods that you know, people for the last
I mean a couple of decades have said you got

(09:38):
to watch out for this stuff. And it's like, no, no,
it's all good for you. It's all great for you.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
It's for you.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
So let me ask you this, This is this is
a big question. You know, you're a nutrition coach. What
words of advice would you give Rory and Laurel life
after eating apps? Because it's kind of like whoa, I mean,
what they pull out of their fridge. I mean this
is I mean, at the end of the day, this
is a mother feeding her daughter and it's like, you know,

(10:15):
I know the care I take feeding feeding my child,
and she's just throwing out like, you know, have some
candy for dinner?

Speaker 4 (10:23):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
What's happening here.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Uh so give them some advice, Give give Laurel some advice.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
To me, the best thing that they do for themselves
is is walk. They walk so often. I think that's
really important. And you know, probably the biggest concern is
the amount of coffee they drink. It is incredibly dehydrating,
and I never see them drink water or anything else.

(10:53):
So that's like red flag number one. And then yes,
candy for dinner. I mean, grant, I don't think they
do that every night, but even once a week, like
that's kind of a red line too. I think that
Emily actually does them a great service by bringing them
in once a week and giving them like a really nice, balanced,

(11:16):
elegantly made meal, right and and Laura Lei has the
benefit of being at the end and having Suki's food,
which is also elegantly made and balanced with whole ingredients.
But it's all the stuff they and Luke's too, Like
Luke is not playing around with bad ingredients. So it's

(11:37):
it's everything they do at home that is the problem.
It's it's the it's the movie nights and the spray
cheese and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
So if you could share a meal with any of
the characters on the show. Who would it be and why?

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Oh my gosh. Probably that's a very tough question because
I don't want to I don't want to eat with
Souper because she'll be asking me constantly how I feel
about the meal. So probably I would say Luke. I mean,
I would say Luke can win, all right. I'd be
interested to see, like what Luke really eats. He's got
so many opinions on what everybody else eats. I would

(12:15):
like to see what he actually eat.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
I think he's taking bites here and there during the day, right,
He's like hiding his face behind the counter and just
like taking a bite off a burger, and then you
know he's eating a burger.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
That's what he's doing, all right.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
So tell us a little bit about where you are
with the book and are you writing another one? Like
what's going on? You're planning another another version, you know.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
I in twenty sixteen, Eat like a Gilmour came out
and then there was a lot of feedback that I
was missing, some critical I see you drinking water.

Speaker 3 (13:00):
Scott, you guilt. You guilted me right into it.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here with coffee.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
So I'm just right right, huh, practice what you preach, lady,
come out.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
I came out with a second book in twenty eighteen,
Daily Cravings, and then in like during COVID, I wasn't
really doing anything. I was at home the whole time,
and so I created a third cookbook that's completely based
on their revival, and it's called Seasons. And to me,
that kind of closed it out. It went from beginning

(13:38):
to the end, it was the whole spectrum. So I'm
not I don't have another book in the hopper right now.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Who do you feel if anybody on the show has
any issues with food?

Speaker 3 (13:52):
Who would you.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Single out and say? And as a coach, let's coach
some of these characters like Kirk, what do you think
Kirk needs to eat more of?

Speaker 2 (14:05):
Well, the sugar packets, he definitely needs to cut down.
Didn't he put like seven sugar packets in his coffee? Yeah,
that's probably not good. And his full scene where he
just eats a lot of sugar, it's like all sugar.
He's constantly eating like your mud pie with the gummy
worms in it. He's eating the banana, fudgy banana shake

(14:29):
like he's eating a ton of sugar. So I would
just to say, let's cut down on the sugar.

Speaker 3 (14:35):
Maybe that's your next book.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Maybe it's like like from a nutrition coach point of view,
helping out the Gilmore Girls characters to improve them the
their diets.

Speaker 2 (14:47):
Or maybe not a book, maybe just like a TikTok
page or something.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
That's kind of how I think in terms of TikTok pages.
It's not a book. You're right. Well, look, this has
been a lot of fun catching up. I hope to
see you again, uh in your next book and all
the best. Thanks for sharing this time with us, and
remember everybody, where you lead.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
We will follow. Take care of everybody.

Speaker 4 (15:43):
Everybody to again, follow us on Instagram at I Am
all In podcast and email us at Gilmore at iHeartRadio
dot com.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Eh
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Hosts And Creators

Amy Sugarman

Amy Sugarman

Danielle Romo

Danielle Romo

Scott Patterson

Scott Patterson

Tara Soudbaksh

Tara Soudbaksh

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