Dishing with Stephanie's Dish

Stephanie [00:00:15]:

Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people that are cookbook writers obsessed with food or otherwise food at Sent. And I'm very excited to talk to someone today. Her name is Tamar Adler and she has written this book called The Everlasting Meal Cookbook leftovers a to Z. And I first read about it, I think, in maybe the New York Times. And then I got a copy of the book, and you guys, people that know me know I'm obsessed with my freezer. I'm obsessed with Mason jars. I'm constantly repurposing things. I'm like an old housewife from the 1920s. I can't throw a thing away. And this book is like the guide to how to make sense of all this chaos, of all these leftovers and these little dribs and drabs that you have. I just am so impressed with you. Thank you for coming on the show.

Tamar [00:01:13]:

Oh, my gosh, I'm so happy that I'm talking to a soul sister and saving.

Stephanie [00:01:18]:

So how did you have you been like this since you were a little kid and finally just wrote this? I mean, it's a tome.

Tamar [00:01:26]:

And I wanted it to be longer. My publisher cut me off at some point. I haven't been like this. I mean, I've always liked saving things, and I've always been sort of into things that had age to them or stories. But I think that this actually came from being a professional cook, because I think, contrary to what a lot of people think would be true, professional cooks are amazing at using all of everything and both what is done. In restaurants and certainly what's done for diners but also what's done to serve the staff of a restaurant is always a version of either thinking ahead, so cooking something partway and then finishing the cooking or making sure that you're cooking something in a way that lets you use it over the course of days or making sure to eke all of the flavor out of anything that you have. So it was being a professional cook that kind of helped me realize that I could if I could put down on paper what so many of us already knew but from years of professional cooking, then I could kind of hand some of it off to home cooks.

Stephanie [00:02:50]:

Yeah. During the pandemic, many people sort of rediscovered cooking and certainly their pantry and maybe things that their mom did or dad that they hadn't thought about, that now all of a sudden you're at home and you can't run to the grocery store every day unless you're going to have the survival gauntlet. Because it was kind of a grim time. So we went back to some of this. Like an example in here, you talk about moldy cheese. Well, my mom just cut the mold off the cheese, and we just kept going. She never missed a beat with it. But you take it further in zest and different. Any ingredient that you have, you can literally look up in this book, you guys, and she tells you what to do with it.

Tamar [00:03:42]:

I mean, my theory was, if you have it, why not use it? And I think remembering the pandemic is a really sort of smart point of orientation for how to use this book and also how I wrote it, because that was a time during which all of our outlooks was, if I have something, I'm going to use it, because the stakes of going out to get a new thing are just too high. And so the stakes feel different now, and they are different, but they're still stakes, right? It still takes a lot out of every person to go to the supermarket. I find it takes a lot of energy, and it takes, like, personal energy and planning and gas for the car and the standing and the line, like, the whole thing. Plus, it costs money. So it's like, if you have it, why not use it? And that is what I was trying to help people do in this book.

Stephanie [00:04:41]:

And I'll just like an example that I talked about on this podcast a while ago that I overcooked quinoa for a TV segment I was doing, and I had all of this quinoa, and I froze it in these little cubes right in the freezer. And I've been making bowls, and I've still got all these cubes left, and I looked it up in your book, and I can make a savory tart with the quinoa crust. I would have never thought of that.

Tamar [00:05:05]:

Oh, yeah, that's great.

Stephanie [00:05:07]:

Yeah. And then obviously a quinoa salad, but you talk about making it crunchy by adding all of these other elements to it, and it just like I looked up quinoa, and I was like, who would have thought to make a crust with that? That's how useful your book is. And it is called the Everlasting Meal Cookbook. I just want to make sure I repeat it. When you thought about organizing the book so that somebody like me who's got a cup of white beans left, and what do I do with that? Or right now, I'm awash in ham from Easter and trying to get creative ways to eat ham other than a ham sandwich and pea soup, because I've already done those. How did you think about how to organize things?

Tamar [00:05:50]:

Okay, before I answer the organization question, I just want to shout out to Emma McDowell, who is the person from whom I got the quinoa crust recipe, just because I just don't want to take credit. I thought so brilliant, and I definitely got the idea from her. And she, I think, has a book out, and she has recipes on the Internet all the time, and she's super great. But I at first wanted to organize the whole book alphabetically. I thought that would be easiest. So just A to Z and you would look up quinoa under Q and beans under B probably, although then it's like or do you look them up under cannellini and ham under H? But I did that for the first draft. Maybe two drafts of the book were just purely alphabetical with no other organizing principles. And I had a friend who always reads my draft who said that it made for some really inflicitous neighbors. He didn't like reading the word anchovy next to apple peel. He felt like it just made him want to close the book up and just not worry about either the anchovies or the peels. Yeah, nothing. He was like, at first I sort of booked, and I was like, but the whole point is that it's like a reference book. And then I calmed down a little bit, and I thought, that's true. And that maybe a new it's also not. You do kind of want there to be a category that you're searching in, because that is often how we use reference books, too. And so I decided to create larger leftovers categories, which it still can be, I think, confusing to somebody because we're so used to searching any culinary text by what we want to make, not by what we have. And I have had to remind people, if you look up a roast beef sandwich, I am not giving you a recipe for a roast beef sandwich. I'm telling you what to do with the soggy half of roast beef sandwich you have left.

Stephanie [00:08:06]:

Yes.

Tamar [00:08:09]:

But creating those larger categories is how I ended up organizing it. So the first chapter is vegetables, and it's leftover vegetables. The second is fruits and nuts, and it's overripe underripe, et cetera. And leftovers of all, there's leftover bread, leftover rice and grain. I mean, rice and beans. Leftover stuffed dough's was kind of a hard category to come up with, but it kind of made sense to me. There's leftover drinks, leftover sweets. Oh, leftover snacks. So stuff like the dust at the bottom of a pretzel bag or cheetos.

Stephanie [00:08:48]:

Which that dust is amazing. If you're like going to bread something or put a little sprinkle on a little pile of soup that you're eating.

Tamar [00:08:59]:

It'S like extra good salt.

Stephanie [00:09:00]:

Yes, extra good spicy salt. And even like, I make Caesar salads all the time, and I like to use real anchovies in the dressing. How did I not think about using the anchovy oil? And I've just been throwing that away.

Tamar [00:09:16]:

I'm glad that you now have ideas for it.

Stephanie [00:09:19]:

Yeah, it's such an obvious one, like, oh, yeah, this is that delicious flavored oil. Why aren't you doing something with it? And also something I discovered during the pandemic is brine from pickle juice.

Tamar [00:09:33]:

Oh, yeah.

Stephanie [00:09:34]:

I was just not salvaging my brine, and now I'm hoarding it.

Tamar [00:09:39]:

Yeah, because if you're going to do a whole chicken or a bunch of pork chops, you actually need kind of a good amount right. You need to be saving the pickle juice from two jars because you need a lot.

Stephanie [00:09:54]:

And frying chicken and brightening the chicken before you fry it in. That pickle juice is a secret of many chefs. Was there something that you did not know what to do with it like pistachio shells. Let's use that as an example.

Tamar [00:10:16]:

Well, we have always used those for fire starters. Those are pretty good for starting, like a wood stove or a fireplace. No, that was okay. But there were a bunch I didn't I mean, cherry stems, a lot of them I had to look up and then do some experimenting with, and I hadn't known that one could use.

Stephanie [00:10:40]:

What do you do with a cherry stem?

Tamar [00:10:43]:

You make tea. And it's supposed to be really good for you. Yeah.

Stephanie [00:10:47]:

See, this is, like, the joy of the discovery of this book I've been reading. It like a Bible in bed at night, like, hoarding, ten pages at a time. I've never been so excited about a book before. I'm in love with it now. Where do you go from here? You mentioned that your publisher cut you off. Could you do a whole other?

Tamar [00:11:14]:

I don't know if I have enough for a whole other, but I'm still collecting the ones that aren't in there. So I wonder if they would ever let me do, like, a five if I could break up the letters so that each one could be a little bit shorter, like A throug

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Like many others, our team got into plants during the pandemic because we were stuck inside and felt our mental health declining. We've always believed that your environment affects your mood, but it wasn't until we bought half a dozen plants that we realized the power of having living things in your environment. Almost immediately, we were much happier! Thus the birth of Perky Plant.

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We’ve donated 2,500+ plants to college students as part of two different Buy A Bottle, Donate A Plant campaigns during Mental Health Awareness month and Suicide Awareness month. On our social channels, we’ve built a community of plant people who care about their own mental health and the mental health of the community around them.

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With over thirty-five years of combined experience, homesteaders Stephanie Thurow (@minnesotafromscratch) and Michelle Bruhn (@Forksinthedirt) have taught thousands of people across the globe how to garden, preserve food, tend backyard chickens, cook from scratch, and care for their families with natural homemade alternatives. Their homesteading knowledge and instruction can be found in one place with Small-Scale Homesteading.

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Kaitlyn Luhm, of Luhm Studios, is a Minneapolis-based artist, who has been working on her sculpting skills since elementary school, but more seriously in high school. Her love for art has varied throughout the years but has continued to circle back around to sculpting and creating work at a smaller scale. Kaitlyn sculpts miniature realistic food with 10% of her profits going towards @communitykitchenmpls.

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Chocolatier Robyn Dochterman left a career in journalism to study fine chocolate techniques and eventually start St Croix Chocolate Co. Using a balance of science and art. She creates award-winning confections that speak to the senses. Her creations are visually stunning with deliciously dreamy flavors and are well-reviewed and well-awarded. Her Easter Collection is amazing. Here is her story on the Makers of Mn Podcast.

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See a typical Easter collection from Robyn in a Reel I made.

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Ryan McEnaney is the Marketing and Communications manager for Baileys Nurseries and its consumer brands: Endless Summer® Hydrangeas, First Editions® Plants, and the Easy Elegance® Rose Collection. Ryan just published his first book called, "Field Guide to Outside Style: Design and Plant Your Perfect Outdoor Space." We catch up with Ryan and discuss how to plan your outdoor living space.

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14 Spice was created as a steak and burger seasoning, but it has since shown its versatility and has become the ultimate everything seasoning. A few fan favorites include using it on pumpkin seeds, roasted veggies, pasta, steak, or roast chicken and pork. The hot honey collaboration between 14 Spice and The Salsa Collaborative is popular among foodies.

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For over 10 years, CEO Donn Kelly Flackers’ Co-founder and CEO has been dedicated to the heart of the Flackers mission: to create and innovate the future of clean snacking using ingredients that are good for us and kind to our planet.

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Panache Beverage infusions are rooted in the south Asian ayurvedic traditions, the food science behind yoga, tested by generations. From their juice infusions to their cidre every bottle is crafted with the best that nature offers. Panache celebrates the diversity of the apple with every product. They are uniquely crafted to improve the body’s functions naturally and are tested by generations of family recipes.

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