Stephanie's Dish - Stephanie Hansen

Today I'm talking with Stephanie Hansen at StephaniesDish. You can follow on Facebook as well.

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00:00

You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. I'm your host, Mary Lewis. Today I'm talking with Stephanie Hansen at Stephanie's Dish in Minnesota. She's local, yay. I love it when people are local.  And good morning, Stephanie. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. And I would normally ask about the weather, but I'm guessing you're in Minneapolis area?  I am in Ely, Minnesota today. Oh, you're way up there.

00:29

of the true North cabin cookbook. It's where I wrote it. Um, we have a summer home here that's on an island in a middle of a lake. And so I kind of do the reverse commute and go back and forth. My husband stays up here most of the summer with our 92 year old mother-in-law. Oh, okay. So you're way up there. So how's the weather up North? It's nice. It's nice today. A little rain's coming in, but it's been a weird summer though. Uh,

00:57

lots of smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I'm a gardener  and the garden has started out real slow. I'm finally starting to get beans and cucumbers and tomatoes and those kinds of things, but just kind of a weird summer. Second one in a row. Yay.  I'm so sick of it. I'm praying.  Like I spent the winter praying that this year would be moderate and it's been better than last year, but  it hasn't been the three summers ago summer that was so beautiful. So

01:27

I don't know. We're all just going to do what we do.  it's funny how  it seems like September is like the old August  where it's super hot and dry. That's also,  summer is extended in some ways, but maybe starts later. Yeah. don't  know. Climate change, global warming,  weather patterns of

01:51

Billions of years, who knows? Either way, we're just all going to still keep trying to grow things because that's what we do.  I'm in Lassour  and it is sunny and cool. Thank goodness because  our compressor on our air conditioner died yesterday.  Oh, I did that last week. Got a new air conditioner and furnace and a home equity loan.  Yeah, that's what we're looking at too. You're in Lassour, the home of the green giant.

02:21

Yes. And Sprout. Yes.  Yes. We have the new billboard up that has the green giant and Sprout on it.  I was driving back and forth to Jordan when they took the old sign down and put the new sign up. And  every day there'd just be a little bit more of each character building on each other. That's great.  It's fun. And it's so silly because every small town has something like that.

02:46

I didn't know that the Jolly Green Giant started out in LaSore. I had no idea and we were driving down here for the move.  I was like,  oh,  oh, okay. And I had no idea that the guy that started the Mayo Clinic lived in a small house in town in LaSore too. Yup. So there's a lot of history here. And  I grew up, I grew up on the East coast. So when I moved to Minnesota, like 30 something years ago,

03:14

I was like, ah, there's no history here. My history back home beats the history in Minnesota. And then when I started learning about Minnesota, I was like,  um,  I'm going to have to amend my opinion. Yeah,  no offense, but it's very,  uh, common to get sort of the East coast, West coast vibes of the Midwest. And then people come here and they're like, Oh, this isn't just flyover country. And particularly when you think about like the food scene.

03:43

We are the bread basket. know, much of the grain is grown in the Midwest. Much of the animal husbandry happens in the Midwest  and a cheese making culture happens in the Midwest. So  while we laud the fancy restaurants  from both coasts,  when it comes to like actual food production, we're doing pretty good.  absolutely. And  I'm not dissing on Minnesota. I've lived here a long time. It is beautiful.

04:11

And I had the choice five years ago when we were looking for a new home  to decide whether I wanted to move back to Maine. And I was like,  I don't want to. It's expensive. I'm already settled in this state. I know how to behave myself now.  I'm just going to stay here. So it all worked out fine, but very disappointed to find out that we're going to have to drop probably five  to $6,000 on a new air conditioner here in the next week or two.  That is not a welcome Monday morning surprise.  No, but

04:41

The good news, well, you're kind of,  I mean, we're probably gonna get, cause state fair always gets super hot.  For me, like getting the furnace done now, I was like, well, at least it won't be 30 below when I realized my furnace doesn't work.  Yeah, we've done that before too. That is not a fun surprise either.  Okay, so now that I've bitched about my  AC problem, cause I knew I was going to,  tell me a little bit about yourself, Stephanie, because you are a woman of  many talents. Yeah, so I started,

05:10

out, I guess my career, I started out in advertising  long ago, working in the newspaper business. And then I got into the radio business.  I owned a direct mail and a printing company  and all the way along the through line was sort of  media.  And I really loved food.  And I can remember when the Food Network first started and people were all excited about these shows where people were cooking.

05:39

Um, so the food network started and all the way along, you know, we watched the, the Julia child show and we would watch the frugal gourmet on PBS. And as the food scene kind of was building, I said to my, um, station that I worked at my radio station, said, Hey, can I have a radio show about food? And they thought it was kind of fun and said, sure. So I recruited my partner who happened to be the food editor of our city magazine at the time.

06:09

And we, 18 years ago started talking about food. The show started out as an hour and then it went to two hours. And we talk about restaurants. We talk about the home cook. We talk about our  cideries, our distilleries, our breweries, and just like food as community, food as culture.  And it really has just been a joy over the last 18 years. And as I leaned into that and sold some of my other businesses, I ended up.

06:37

Uh, just like, what am I going to do now? And food just kept coming to the forefront. So I decided to write a cookbook called the true North cabin cookbook during COVID. Um, our radio show was completely changed in that we were still recording it, but instead of talking about restaurants and all the community pieces of food, we ended up really talking about your pantry and cook things. And that was the space that I was most comfortable in anyway. So we really leaned into that.

07:08

I decided to write the cookbook.  I wanted to write a book that chronicled this place in Northern Minnesota because it's a pretty unique place. But also I wanted to document a lot of our family's recipes that people would request when they would come to the cabin. So I did that  and it sold really well and people liked it. And there was a kind of heavy narrative arc to it.  And the book went from May through September because

07:34

We pretty much opened the cabin from Memorial Day to Labor Day. So after working on the book and having it out for about a year, my publisher came back and said, well, what are you doing the rest of the year? What about October through April? And I really like soups and stews and braises. Me too. I a real Midwestern gal in that way. So I said, sure, you know,  I don't know that the through line of the cabin is there. And they said, yeah, it is, you know, that's kind of in you.

08:03

And we do come up here in the winter time. It's not as much as the summer. So that book comes out September 2nd. It is available for pre-order now  and it takes you from October through April. So I did sneak one rhubarb recipe into April, which obviously is a little bit early, but it's funny when I was working on the second book, it wasn't so much my grandma's this and my mother-in-law's that it was more of what I cook at home.

08:29

So in some ways, the second book is more of like my true cookbook and the first book is kind of more of a family heritage book. Nice.  Um, rhubarb is great coming out of the freezer in April, so it can be an April dish.  And one of the things I learned about rhubarb, my mom used to blanch rhubarb and then freeze it  and come to find out you don't have to blanch it.  The freezing breaks it down for you. Yes. And there are certain recipes.

08:58

I probably have a single subject rhubarb cookbook in my future just because I it so much. And there are recipes that work better for frozen rhubarb.  So like the April recipe that I have is a rhubarb almond bread, which works great with like the broken down  flesh of the rhubarb versus like my rhubarb custard bars. I really think that's best when you have the firm, fresh rhubarb.  Yes, absolutely. So what's the new book called? It is the True North Cabin Cookbook.

09:28

Seasonal recipes from a cozy kitchen. It's a volume two. Volume one  is true North cabin cookbook as well. They liked the idea from the publishing standpoint of having the full 12 months together. Maybe someday it'll be sold as a set or something. But I took all the pictures in both books, wrote the narratives, wrote the recipes,  and it's been super fun.  Awesome. I love that.

09:53

I used to giggle a little bit about the cabin thing too. I don't now because I have friends that have cabins. The cabins that I grew up being around or being in, they were actual little tiny cabins on lakes in Maine. And then people were like, oh, we're going up the cabin. I said, how many square feet is the cabin? They're like, oh, 3,000. I was like, excuse me, that's a...

10:20

big house and they're like, no, that's a cabin. And I'm like, okay.  So there are all these cultural things that you have to learn when you switch from, you know,  one side of the country to the other, or move from either side of the country to the middle. Cause things are different. Yeah. Even like, so our cabin  is it's on a four acre Island, but the cabin itself  is two bedrooms  and it was built in the seventies and it has a porch all the way around the outside.

10:49

It is very rustic.  it has an outhouse rustic. Nice. When you're in Wisconsin, they call cabins, cottages. Okay. So even like it's been interesting to translate from the true North cabin cookbook culture to the cottage culture. And when I'm like doing Wisconsin public radio or any of those opportunities, I make sure to talk about cottages  because it is different in their brains too.  And you know, a lot of the big lakes in Minnesota.

11:18

You know, Lake Minnetonka that started as cabin culture has now kind of morphed into more exclusive homes.  Um, but up here in  the North on Burnside Lake where we are, it's still very, very cabinet. Okay. Awesome. So there are little bitty cabins too.  Good. I'm glad because there's such, I don't know, they're so  cozy and, and homey and kitschy. And I love that about the little cabins.  Um, so about.

11:48

20 years after I moved here, finally decided to learn how to make turkey wild rice soup. I had never heard of wild rice soup growing up because it's not a thing. And I was like, it doesn't look that hard and I know how to make a roux. I think I can do this. And I of course decided to make it when I was having friends who were born and bred Minnesotans over.  And one of them tasted it and they were like, have you made this before? And I said, no.

12:18

She said, this is some of the best turkey wild rice soup I've ever had. How many, this is the first time. I said, yes. She said,  no Maynard should be able to make wild rice soup this good. And I almost fell down. literally bowed and said, thank you. So what would you get to claim as a Maynard? Like blueberry season, maybe? Yup. And lobster rolls or lobster bisque. And I never made lobster bisque. Lobster is.

12:45

It's not as expensive in Maine as it is in the Midwest, but it's still expensive. So we didn't really do that.  Yeah. I love lobster. I miss lobster so much. I could cry. That's funny. I love lobster too. And I love lobster bisque,  um, wild rice,  you know, and there's a couple, like there's cultivated wild rice and then there's like wild wild rice.  It is interesting because  using them is a little bit different.

13:13

One of my probably most popular recipes at Stephanie's dish.com is my wild rice recipe that you make in the instant pot. Instant pot is really great at cooking wild rice. And then in my  second book,  the book that's coming out, there's a beer cheese wild rice soup. I really love beer and cheese  and rice.  So strangely all those things together make a very delightful soup.

13:39

Well, the thing that's lovely about wild rice, even if it's cultivated, is that  if you make it in a pan on the stove and you're letting it cook down so it pops open and gets all squishy,  it smells  nutty and warm. And  I  love cooking up a pound bag of wild rice in like November when it's the first really cold, sleety day outside,  because it warms up the house and it smells so good.

14:08

I had an opportunity to  record a television show. So  one of the things that's happened more recently in my career in the last three years is I've started a show called Taste Buds with Stephanie. And it was started by the Fox local affiliate here in Minneapolis.  And we were just going to do a 15 minute shows.

14:30

that we're gonna air as segments in a lifestyle show and that happened and then it went to YouTube and then they started making half hour episodes and in September of this year, it will syndicate into 82 markets. So all of a sudden this like little teeny food show that we were doing is now in 58 % of the United States, which has been super fun. And one of the shows that I did was with Sean Sherman who is the sous chef. He's a native American chef.

14:59

cooks only with Native American ingredients. And we did a Thanksgiving episode where he really taught me about some of their native foods that would be in a traditional Thanksgiving. And we cooked only Thanksgiving recipes that were native. So, you know, we weren't able to use any processed sugar and we made a really delicious wild rice stuffing that went in a squash that was super great that had, you know, cranberries in it and hazel nuts and things that would be indigenous to our region.

15:29

It was a really fun episode. loved making that episode with him. That sounds delicious. And I actually made stuffing with wild rice thrown in and some  smashed up walnuts or pecans. I can't remember a couple of years ago. And I just wanted to try it and see what would happen. Cause I'm one of those cooks who  learned to cook later. think I was in my late twenties when I learned to cook. And once I got the basics down, was like,

15:55

You know, I think this is like art. I think you can experiment. think if you like certain things, you can maybe try them in other dishes. And when I did that wild rice nut stuffing, it was amazing. And we took it to in-laws for Christmas, I think it was. It wasn't Thanksgiving. And a couple of the girls came over and said, what did you put in there that's different? And I told them, and they were like, that's so easy. I said, guys, it's an art.

16:24

And if you have like gluten free people, a wild rice stuffing is a great option  to add to the table because a lot of people will eat it. It's very delicious, but then you don't have to deal with the bread and the stuffing piece. Yeah. And the other thing that I did that year is I used asparagus instead of green beans for the green bean casserole. Oh, yum. And  I didn't tell anybody. I didn't even think about it. And  one of the brothers-in-law came over to me after and he said, he said, what?

16:55

I have never liked green bean casserole. What did you do?" And I said, used asparagus instead of green beans.  He was like, I thought that's what that was. And I said, yeah, he said, I love that. So you can surprise people with food. And it's really fun  to see the joy on their face when they hear what it was. It's funny because I have  literally like  so many green beans right now, because they just came in in the garden and I have just bags and bags of them. So I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with them.

17:25

And I was thinking, I should just freeze some and use them in a green bean casserole at Thanksgiving time. Yep.  Absolutely. It's always so much better if you make your own green beans instead of the canned.  I kind of love canned green beans because I know some people feel like it's super nostalgic. Well, my mom used to can green beans from our garden and she would use those. So they're not the  metal canned ones. They're the jar canned  ones. And she actually sent me home.

17:54

And when we visited, sent me home with like 15 pints of her canned green beans.  And my oldest son ate like eight of them. He had a pint of green beans a day for a week and a half.  That's funny. I said, you're going to be a green bean. He was like, no, not, not how it works. was like, okay. Well, and  the dilly green beans are always so good too.  So  I love this time of year because things are really, really coming in.

18:22

I've said a billion times in the last six episodes that we have tomatoes coming in and we are almost the tipping point of being swimming in them. My husband planted 250 tomato plants this spring. Holy cow. That's awesome. And he's already been asked at the farmer's market if we're going to have enough for people to buy for canning. And  I'm pretty sure we're going to have enough for canning. Yeah. I'm finding that the tomato season this year is a little slow.

18:52

Yeah. Yeah, I,  I,  okay, so in the spring, I plant all my seeds, and I have to be really careful because I only have 60 day growing season here.  So I plant all the seeds  and they got waterlogged, there was a storm, and I wasn't home to bring the trays in because I was hardening them off and they had an inch of rain on them. So I lost a bunch of seeds there. So then I went to the garden center and bought a bunch of things.

19:19

And I've planted everything and with the smoke, it's just been slow. And now I barely even know what varieties I have because I have such a mishmash. So,  you know, every summer I usually can a ton of tomatoes. do a roasted tomato sauce. I sun dry a bunch. I don't know what I'm going to do this year. I think I might just make like a giant vat of sauce and mix them all together and just call it a tomato sauce here. You're going to drive to LaSore and get some tomatoes from me. That's what you're to do.

19:48

Or it's my favorite farmers market, right?

19:53

Well, you're always welcome to come visit here. Always.  So  you,  you have the podcast, you have the radio show,  you have your TV show and don't you guest  on, um,  on Jason's show now and then. it's kind of a funny story. Um, so  one of the reasons why I guest on his show is we're friends.  Um, but we weren't friends in the beginning.

20:23

We literally so when I was starting out in radio, I started out having my own radio show with another woman and it was an afternoon show and it was talk show.  And after about a year and a half, she got fired and they called me in and said, well, we don't really want to fire you, but we don't know what to do with you. So  I was like, well, what are my choices? And they said, well, we don't know yet. So just keep coming to work until we tell you what's happening.

20:50

So for about six weeks, I came to work every day and I would fill in with whatever producer was there. It was very hard actually, because it's hard to do a radio show with people just random every day.  And  finally, after about six weeks, they called me in and they said, well, we  hired a afternoon show and we hired Jason Matheson, but he doesn't want you as his radio partner.  And I was like, oh shoot. So like, does that mean I'm fired?

21:18

And they said, no, we just don't know what we're going to do. And that was how I asked for the food show. Yes. So my food life in terms of broadcasting sort of culminated with Jason's becoming, um,  on our television or excuse me, on our radio show. And I was a little salty about it because I felt like, gosh, you know, I got fired for him to get the job and.

21:43

So like in the beginning we were sort of like ships passing in the night at events and we were civil and cordial but then I actually like heard him and I started to listen to his show.  And he was so much better at it than I was and it made so much sense why he got the show so I kinda gave up some of that and then I got to know him as a person and he's so generous and so lovely and he really like during.

22:11

Right before COVID, we had started doing TV segments together and it turned out we ended up having a lot of chemistry, which neither one of us would have thought we would have had.  And  he and I have done a lot on his show. He's certainly helped me at Fox with my own show. He's been super generous. He's the kind of person that really has the ability to shine the light.  And he does. And both of us kind of do that in our own ways, but

22:38

Yeah, he's become like a really, really good friend and been so helpful to me from kind of weirdly auspicious beginnings, right? Yeah. And that happens. It's so weird how,  how you get pitted against each other through no fault of your own. And then you're like, no, I like that person. Yeah. And he's just so generous and, uh, he's been so kind and so great. So  I used to tell the story a lot. I try not to tell the story as much anymore, just because I don't want him to feel like, you know,

23:08

there's this essential eternal payback because not he's paid me back 1000 times and more. Oh, yeah. I just I love that.  He is really someone that if he sees something in you, he will help you develop that and I like to be that person too. I've helped a lot of makers along the way and I really get just jazzed. So I like podcasting. I love talking to small business people. I love talking to people that are building and making things. It's just so fun and so interesting to see how people get started.

23:39

You and I are going to be best friends because that's why I started mine too. Yeah. I wanted people to have a stage for half an hour at least to talk about what they do because it is so hard when you're a small business to market yourself in a public way, a big public way. And that, that was originally like my first podcast makers in Minnesota. We would have these people on for 10 minutes on a radio segment that, know, maybe they make hot sauce. Let's just say, so you talk to them about like.

24:08

why their hot sauce is unique, why it's different, how they packaged it. But it felt like we were only just scratching the surface of their stories  by the time we had to wrap up with them. So I started that podcast so that I could spend more time with people in the food space and makers in general, because it expanded after that. But just to figure out like, how do they do their business? What's important to them? How does it all work? And that show was great. I had it for five years. I had over 300 and some episodes.

24:36

And then I just felt like I'd kind of been there and done that. And the stories were feeling same.  So I was getting bored with it. I was like, what am I going to do now? And I was working on the cookbook. So I thought, well, I'll just change it to dishing with Stephanie's dish, which is a little more generic. And then I can talk to cookbook writers and still people in the food space if I want to just  on their journey and what that feels like. So that's kind of how things have evolved.

25:01

Yeah. And the best thing about a podcast is it's yours. You can do whatever you want to do.  Okay. So I try to keep these to half an hour, but I have more questions. much more time do you have? Oh, I'm good. Okay. Cool.  Um, so  cooking is like something that people are diametrically opposed about. They either don't want to do it  or they're obsessed with it and they love it. So

25:29

How do we get people to come into the middle on this? Because I feel like cooking is such an essential skill.  once you get the basics down, you can like expand exponentially forever if you want. So how do we get people into the middle?

25:47

It's a couple of things. I think one is probably talking about what's in food. Um,  I have a sister who is a terrible cook and  she  really, and I, I use her as an example when I write my books and I write for her  because  she really knows nothing about food. She doesn't know about ingredients. She doesn't know about what's healthy, what's not healthy. And so she goes into a store.

26:15

And she'll buy something that  is  natural, right? And she'll think like she's buying a good product for her or her family. And she doesn't know like when she reads the label, all the yucky stuff that's in the food.  I,  we can directly trace obesity to the  1970s when we started having a revolution in packaged goods. Oh, yes. And some packaged goods are great.

26:43

And it's obviously convenient and I don't want to make people feel bad about cooking. But I think in the  opportunities that you have to make something yourself, you're just going to A, save money,  B, have a better product, C, it's going to be better for your health and your family. And for all the amount of time and energy we spend talking about people's unhealthy lifestyles and obesity and what's in everybody's food. If we just cooked, you can't put.

27:11

Even if you cook with like conventional ingredients, you can't put more bad things into something than if you bought it on the store shelf. So just think talking about how do you want your family to eat? How do you want you to eat? You might be eating super simply. That's OK. You might like only have 10 things you can really cook. But if you can learn how to roast a chicken, you know, you've got three meals out of that chicken. At least, yes.

27:39

Yes, you can make soup, can make chicken salad,  you can make a chicken salad wrap. Just the roast chicken on the first day you have it.  like when you go to like the store and you buy the,  you know, like if you go to Costco, they have the roast chickens for like eight bucks or whatever.  know, I like a roast chicken from Costco. I'm not opposed to it. I eat those on occasion.

28:03

But if you can make your own, you can just taste the difference. The salt is so much less because it's not injected with chemicals  and the skin is different, which I love chicken skin. That's probably like my weakness.  It's different and it's better for you  and you can feel better about eating it.  Yes.  And the same thing with beef. If you like beef, if you get a decent roast and I mean, you can make a crappy roast taste good. It's just hard to do.

28:32

It takes time and patience and knowing what you're doing. But if you can get a really good roast, put it in a crock pot for, I don't know, six, eight hours on low and throw in some veggies and a little bit of water and some seasonings. Let that thing hang out all day. Your house is going to smell good when you get home or if you're home, you're to want to eat it in two hours. That doesn't work. And you have some of that for dinner with the veggies and some potatoes or bread or whatever you want to do. That's one meal. And then you can make, um,

29:01

beef stew out of it. And beef stew is one of my favorite things. You can't make good beef stew without making a good pot roast is my theory. I do think like the advent of, I mean, our moms had the pressure cooker, but it was so dangerous because they didn't smoke good, right? I think the advent of like the instant pot, the crock pot, the air fryer, the ninja blenders, like we do have all these great

29:29

gadgets at our disposal that really make cooking a lot easier. Even like one of my favorite gadgets is my Cuisinart, because you can just whip up a pizza dough,  or you can make a pesto like super easy, or any kind of sauce.  I think we just make cooking super complicated, and it doesn't need to be. And just trying to like simplify ingredients to my refrigerator is literally just full of like condiments.

29:59

because I cook all the time, but I do use a lot of condiments. So that's primarily what's in my refrigerator is condiments and produce. What's in my refrigerator is food from yesterday and the day before because my husband really likes something different every day. Oh, is he a mad leftover person? He is, but not the next day. Yeah. And so I'm always making something different every night. So he will nosh on something from the day before.

30:28

like later in the evening, which I wish he'd stop doing, but I can't get him to stop. then whatever's left on the third day, we freeze. So we have it for the winter time. Yeah, I am a freezer hoarder. I'm not going to lie. the good news is we actually use it. So I have to force myself because there's just two of us and I still cook. I've always cooked for like six people. It's just the way I do it. I don't know why I try to make less and it always ends up making more. And I end up

30:58

freezing a ton. And also like when you're developing a cookbook, you're testing recipes. When I'm doing stuff on the Jason show, I'm bringing food home because we generally don't have enough to like feed the audience. So I just bring that home. I wander around the neighborhood with food, you know, show up with zucchini, I show up with like, whatever I made on the show that day. And if we're making show for the taste buds with Stephanie show or making food, a lot of times we have one already made.

31:25

just to speed up time.  When the crew is there, we're maximizing our time. Cause we really filmed that show in my real literal kitchen. So  we're, just always, I have so much food and always  just hoisting food on people.  I love that your neighbors must love you.  They do. have a single, she's not a single mom, but her husband travels and she's got two small kids that lives next door. I feed them a lot.  And then I started feeding kind of another family.

31:55

My husband and I are just single people together, so  how much food can we eat? I do have a daughter that's 25 that will come over and raid my house for food, particularly proteins and meat products.  That's fabulous. I love that.  Okay, so  I ask people who cook this all the time, and I'm going to ask you too.

32:20

What is the simplest way to get started to learn to cook? Like the basics.

32:28

Ah!

32:31

I think  doing it. Well, sure. Yes. Like the idea of just actually getting started. I think it starts at,  you know, some people are good about meal planning. So if you're not a cook, I think it feels sort of daunting. So maybe just pick like one recipe or two recipes you want to make a week. Most recipes have enough leftovers where you can get another meal out of it.

32:56

So if you cooked two things a week or you batch cooked on a Sunday and made, let's say a soup, a protein and a grain, you'd have like grain bowls. You'd have burritos. You'd have soup. If you just pick two things a week that you want to cook and pick your favorite cookbook or pick a cookbook or go online, whatever works for you. I have tons of recipes at Stephanie's dish.com. can try. I think that will get you started. Just two things a week. Okay. Um,

33:26

I always say when people ask me, I'm like, number one, if you're not comfortable trying something to cook something by yourself, find a friend who knows how to cook and ask them if they would let you come be in their kitchen while they're cooking. Because that way the pressure isn't on you. You get to see how it's done. You get to help if you want to. And people who love things love to teach the things that they love. Yeah. And maybe like

33:54

Also, I think sometimes  when I go on Jason's show, those recipes are mostly assembly because we don't have a professional kitchen there. So  maybe you add another recipe to your repertoire each week. That's just an assembly recipe, meaning you buy all the separate ingredients and throw that together and that makes something. So whether it's like a grain bowl, a burrito, salad,  um,  finding ways to extend the life of the things that you have.

34:25

Also, I think it's funny, but a lot of people that don't like cooking do like baking. They just for whatever reason that's their jam. So I tell people sometimes maybe start with like baking, like start with cookies, start with cakes, start with something that you think you would really want to eat. And that will maybe spark a love or a joy of it. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um,

34:52

The other thing that I've told people is if they're serious, if they really want to learn to cook, the first thing you want to do is get a saucepan, put some water in it and make it boil on the stove because that is one of the most important parts of cooking to me is knowing the difference between a a rolling boil,  a simmer and just warm water in a pan because you're going to use that a lot.  And I also, I also say learn to scramble eggs.

35:20

Once you scramble an egg, that's cooking. You have accomplished the objective. You have learned to cook something. And then if you really like that, you can move forward. Yeah. I think for me, a roast chicken is a skill that I think everybody needs to master. When my daughter was in high school and getting ready to go to college, I was like, okay, do you know how to roast a chicken? Do you know how to  make rice? Do you know how to make an omelet?

35:49

You know, just  can we, can we show you how to make a simple fettuccine, like a pasta dish as it were. Yeah.  And with those skillsets, you can really build on them. The funny thing about my daughter  is when I asked her, like, what are her favorite dishes that I make? She will say like, well, mom, never made the same thing twice. So  she doesn't have like those memories, but she has memories of me cooking all the time, but not like her favorite thing. And the way that she cooks now.

36:19

I don't love project cooking. Like I don't love something that takes a couple days or that you have to have a like a skill like  filling dumplings for instance is like, man, that might be a little putsy and probably something I wouldn't do. But she does all of that. Like she'll make bagels from scratch. She does all those project based cooking. That's really interesting. What does she do for a job?  She does Rover. So she takes care of dogs.

36:49

She does events  and she is on my show on taste buds on occasion.  We have her in the last episode we did, we took a knife skills class together. And I always assumed she had really good knife skills because she likes knives. She's liked knives since she was little, which I know sounds weird, but she did. And I have just terrible knife skills. And it turned out we both learned a lot just by taking a basic knife skills class.  Yeah, my knife skills have a lot.

37:16

to be desired, but I don't realize it. when you watch yourself on TV or you see yourself and you know, you just are like, Oh, how I'm holding the knife isn't like how trained chefs are holding knives. And I used to be very intimidated about cooking in front of like TV because I was like, I'm just a home cook. Like I am not a chef. And when people call me a chef, I'm like, no, just a home cook Sally over here.

37:42

Because I think, you you go to school, you learn these skills,  and I don't want to take that away from anybody. That's hard work. I just I like home cooking and I like cooking just for food that tastes good for you and your family. And that's kind of my point of view.  I'm the same. I never wanted to go into restaurant tour stuff. I had no interest. I wanted to raise my kids and feed them good food. So I'm a home cook, too.

38:08

But taking a knife skills class probably would not hurt me because I'd probably be a lot safer with a knife in my hand and I'm not terrible at it. But you know, you know, you took the class  and it's hard. Yeah. Like, cause you have to kind of practice. So I now have some basic skills, but I still default to my not so good skills just because time energy, you know, but I,  I, it's interesting. I do know now when I'm using the knife, like, Oh,

38:37

this isn't the best and so I'm trying to practice to do it right more. Yeah and the one thing that I will add to this and then I'm gonna ask you how we can find you and I'm gonna cut you loose. Speaking of knives, you want to use a sharp knife. not, don't be fooled, a dull knife will hurt you worse than a sharp knife when you're trying to cook. the smooshing of the food. Yeah and the slipping of the knife.

39:05

If you try to cut into something that needs a sharp knife, that knife is going to slip if it's dull and you can poke the hell out of your hand and it hurts. sharp knives are great. And the problem is, that most knives that are affordable for home cooks don't hold an edge for long. And so I'm always asking my son and my husband, I'm like, can you please sharpen the knives this weekend? Cause they're getting dull and they're always like, yes ma'am.

39:32

That's part of the skills class to like how to use a hone, how to use,  um,  what's the other, the round one. I can't think of the name of it. Steel. Yeah, the steel.  And then there's also this company that I took the class from. He's an entrepreneur. Uh, he owns a store called Vivrant, V I B R O N T and he's created this thing that's he's got a mobile sharpening truck, but he's also got this envelope.

40:00

that you can go on his website and get called the sharp how  and you put your knives in this special envelope and you ship it to them and then they sharpen them and ship them back to you.  The number one reason people don't have sharp knives is just the barrier of having someone professional do it or not wanting to do it yourself apparently. Yeah, exactly. And I just I wanted to get that in there because I my mom.

40:26

I've had this conversation with her like 10 times in the last five years about the fact that her knives aren't sharp. And she's like, I don't need them sharp. They work. They're fine. And I'm like,  mm.  Yeah. think  before I had sharp knives, I didn't realize the amount  of  progress that a sharp knife makes, but also like just if you're doing repetitive tasks, like I was getting a sore arm.

40:53

And it was because I was having to work so hard away from my body with that knife versus if I had a sharper knife, I could use half the pressure. Yeah, exactly. It makes it so much easier. And again,  the right tool makes the job easier. It doesn't matter what you're doing. As long as you're the right tools, you're going to be more efficient at it.  Amen.  Okay, Stephanie, thank you so much for your time. Where can people find you online?

41:20

Yeah, so Stephanie's dish.com is probably your first stop there you can find all my recipes links to my books,  links to any events that we're doing because we're getting ready to go out on a book tour.  All the shows that taste buds with Stephanie episodes are linked there. And then on any of the socials. So I'm at Stephanie's dish is really where you can find me on tik tok on Instagram, I do have a YouTube channel  where I do cooking.

41:48

And the TV show has its own YouTube channel, Taste Buds with Stephanie, but Stephanie'sDish.com is probably your first stop.  Fantastic. Thanks for having me. was a blast. Again, Stephanie, thank you so much. As always, people can find me at AtinyHolmsteadPodcast.com.  And thank you for listening. I appreciate it so much that people listen to this show.  You have a great day, Stephanie. Thanks. Appreciate it. Bye.