Chala June Transcript
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Future Of Food Is You, a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Abena Anim-Somuah, and each week I talk to emerging talents in the food world and they share what they're up to, as well as their dreams and predictions for what's ahead. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guest is Chala June. Chala is a freelance writer, storyteller, and cultural artists based in Brooklyn. We talk about how their work is rooted in sharing the stories of black and queer communities, their interest in cannabis culinary culture, and how food writing was a big part of their transition process. Stay tuned for our chat.
Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting The Future Of Food Is You. Kerrygold is the iconic Irish brand famous for its beautiful cheese made with milk from Irish grass fed cows. It's winter here in New York and lots of other places, as you know, and I love to brighten the season with my favorite Kerry Gold Cheeses, Kerrygold's Cashel Blue farmhouse cheese has become a staple in my salads. The creamy, delicious texture has that distinct blue cheese bite, and is the star of my kale and walnut salads. Soup season is also in full swing. Kerrygold has some great recipes on their site and one I have in frequent rotation, is roasted broccoli soup with Kerrygold Dubliner or with Irish stout cheese. The sweet and nutty flavor and caramel notes take it to the next level. Then the sandwich of the season, of course, is grilled cheese. Upgrade yours with a Kerrygold Reserve cheddar, which is sharp, strong, rich, and smooth. For us snackers out there, a personal cheese plate always hits the spot. Kerrygold Skellig, a rich and tangy sweet cheese, pairs perfectly with tart apple slices, your favorite crackers, or a pickle or two. Look for Kerrygold cheese at your favorite supermarket, specialty grocery store or cheese shop. Visit kerrygoldusa.com for recipes, product information, and a store locator.
If you're an aspiring magazine collector, you need to check out Cherry Bombe magazine. Each issue is thick and lush and celebrates women and culinary creatives via gorgeous photography and great stories and recipes. Whether you collect magazines, read them and pass them along to your friends, or cut them up for your vision boards or collages, you'll love Cherry Bombe. Find the latest issue with Molly Baz wherever indie magazines are sold. Places like Book Larder in Seattle and Coquus Books in Centerport, New York.
Now, let's check in with today's guest. Chala, thank you so much for joining us on The Future Of Food Is You podcast.
Chala June:
Thank you for having me. Oh, I'm so excited to be here.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Can you tell us where you grew up and how did food show up in your life?
Chala June:
So I grew up in Silver Spring, Maryland, right outside DC. Food showed up in my life in a really big way. So my mom is American, black American. Her parents are from Texas and Arkansas, so those country, southern grits and ham hawks and collard greens type culinary culture. Then my dad is from Congo, so a lot of Fufu, a lot of smoked fish, a lot of cassava. Those two cultures were so distinct but so linked in this spiritual way for me that it was always fun to explore these seemingly incompatible food combinations. Also, growing up outside DC it was a crazy international community, so I had friends from all over the world and getting to experience food from all of these different cultures always made me feel like I was taking in the world.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It seems like food was always a big part of your life in a certain way. You ended up going to Emerson College to get your degree in journalism. Was food journalism starting to be a thing, a seed that was planted at that time?
Chala June:
I ended up going, I actually got my degree in publishing, not journalism.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh, very cool.
Chala June:
They were separate programs. So the program that I did was writing literature and publishing, because for so long I told myself I actually didn't want to be a journalist, which is so funny. I studied publishing because I loved magazines and I loved the curation of putting together a published product. I was studying that because I was actually running away from my love of food for a little while because I wanted to do food, I wanted to cook for so long as a kid. Then I was told, classic immigrant parent.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Dr. Lawyer, engineer.
Chala June:
Dr. Lawyer, engineer. I was like, I'm going to get this publishing degree and work in communication. So it was an easy way in for me to go get a liberal arts degree, but I was getting this degree, I was studying it, I was studying writing, and I had this epiphany moment where I was like, writing is what I'm good at, but food is what I'm passionate about and if I keep trying to run away from this food path, I feel like I'm running away from myself and what really gives me this joy in this world.
What made it tricky to want to pursue food too is also, I grew up fat. I've always been fat, and when you're a fat person who wants to work in food, you get a lot of comments and a lot of looks and a lot of discouragement. I took a lot of that to heart, but then there was that point in my junior year of college where I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'm the only person who's going to live this life. I'm the only person who determines this path. I was like, okay, how can I bring food back into the work that it is I'm doing now? That's when I really dedicated myself to one, I got a job at a restaurant that summer because I was like, I'm going to learn everything that I can. I started just studying everything I could. I bought all the food publications that I could find at the bookstore, including Cherry Bombe, and was just pouring over them and just looking at all of the ways that food storytelling can happen. That was the point where I was like, oh, my love of food is so much more than just cooking or just wanting to eat, it is about wanting to use food as a vehicle for telling diverse stories.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What were some of the lessons that you learned working in food service and did any of that help enrich your writing experience or enrich how you approached food from a literary perspective?
Chala June:
Oh, absolutely. Working in restaurants was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I remember that summer I got hired as a prep cook and they were like, you've got a lot of gumption, you seem like you learn fast, we're going to train you to work the line. So I was freshly 21 and a line cook for the first time with no prior kitchen experience.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Were you a decent home cook at least?
Chala June:
I was a very skilled home cook at that point. I had-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, immigrant parents taught you.
Chala June:
Exactly. The ancestors were like, all right, we're going to make it work. I picked everything up really quickly and I was really proud of myself, but I wasn't necessarily prepared for the amount of stress management that was necessary working in food service. That also gave me such greater empathy for the people who are in, what I like to refer to as the trenches, every single day, because often, especially on the editorial side of food, we see the final product. We see the final show of how service has been pulled together. We get the dish at the table. We're not seeing everything that's going on behind the scenes.
While food media has become a lot more of that in recent years. Shows like The Bear have taken off because people are really seeing what goes on behind the scenes, having that lived experience helps me ask the question, okay, if I'm going to go to a restaurant to try to do a writeup about it, how are the people in the kitchen being treated? How are the porters being treated? How are the dishwashers being treated? How are all of the people who contributed to this larger product being made a part of the conversation instead of just focusing on the one forward facing person? Because a lot of times the person that comes out and shakes your hand is not necessarily the person who's putting in all the hard work. So that really, it allowed me to be more open-minded and more empathetic and just ask those deeper questions about, what is it that I'm not seeing on the surface? How is that contributing to this larger picture?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So obviously you go and work at a lot of publications, but I want to talk about your experience at Bon Appetite. That seemed to be a really big anchor for you in terms of, that's where I first discovered your work and also seems like you were able to do so much work there, especially after the whole fiasco that shook up the publication in the summer of 2020. I'm really curious to hear, what was the decision like to go work at the publication after all that? Also, how were you able to find support at that time going into that space?
Chala June:
Absolutely, yes. I started at Bon App in February of 2021 after what we internally affectionately referred to as “the troubles.”
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The truth.
Chala June:
I think it was actually Dawn who, she was like, we're here to move past the troubles. Shout out Dawn. Part of what inspired me and motivated me to actually take the position was the opportunity to work with someone like Dawn, who is this incredible powerhouse in the publishing world who had just so much experience and so much knowledge and to be able to work for a black woman in that kind of position. I mean publishing is notoriously very white, very male.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And she was the first black editor in chief.
Chala June:
She was the first black EIC at Bon App. As I was getting my degree, everything I was preparing myself for was the fact that I was going to be one of the only or one of the few black people in the space.
So to see her take on this position, I was like, okay, there are things that I can learn from this woman. There are things that I can learn at this publication. I told myself, I'll give it six months and if I hate it I'll leave, and I was there for two years.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Chala June:
Two really formative years that really shaped and launched a lot of what I've been able to do. A lot of what supported me through that time was one, my fellow coworkers, all the staff at Bon App, especially because at the time Conde Nast was also unionizing and that was such an incredible source of support, shout out to the Conde union. Being able to really know that my coworkers had my back and had my back in a way that they were not just saying, but we're willing to do something about, was really so crucial and so important. I think the troubles were such an important catalyst for that unionization work to be able to happen and for people to really be able to coalesce and be like, we need to do things differently, but I was so proud of us and just so proud of everything we were able to accomplish. Obviously nothing was fixed overnight.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I mean, I will say you're talking about the union, the union, I think they just reached some sort of negotiation a couple of days ago as of the time that we're recording this.
Chala June:
Yeah, they've been negotiating about because there were layoffs that were proposed. One of my dear friends who's still there who is organizing, shout out to Alma Avalle, she has really been such a champion for the union and been in bargaining, so wanted to shout her out. Also, she was the other trans person on staff at BA, so the two of us were thick as thieves from the jump.
It was also incredible just to also be on a staff that had a lot of people on it and something that interestingly enough we don't necessarily see in food media is just how queer it is. There are bits and pieces that jump up, but behind the scenes and especially in food service in general, there are a lot of queer people who are really driving the bus and really doing incredible work. That queerness isn't just a rainbow flag or an afterthought, it is the ethos through which people-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, it's a philosophy.
Chala June:
It's a philosophy and the ethos through which people are creating their work and their art. So that always really inspired me too.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's a perfect segue to talk about one of the big projects you worked on while you were at Bon Appetit. So in the summer of 2022, you worked on the Food is Queer package, and there's such beautiful stories in there. You've got people like Julia Turshen or there's this funny story about coming out at Panera, which obviously is a pretty great place to come out. If you've tried those bread bowls, they'll do something to you.
Chala June:
The bread bowl will inspire you to really live your truth.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, or you just brought up Alma, who also wrote a story about drag brunches and how that opened up or helped her with her relationship to being trans and her queerness. What was your decision in putting this package together and where were you drawing inspiration from in collaboration to make it happen?
Chala June:
Absolutely. The inspiration actually came from Andy Baraghani, when he was still at BA.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Another gay icon.
Chala June:
Another gay icon, another gay icon. My first summer at BA, he had the idea to do something related to pride that never really fully panned out because there was a lot of other stuff going on at the time, as mentioned. A few months after that, I was still really thinking about the opportunity that we had to create this platform and this pedestal even, for queer people in food media, in the food community, whose stories are often shoved to the sidelines or ignored or actively spoken over. So it was that September that I was like, actually, I would really love for us to do a full pride package.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
This is September, 2021?
Chala June:
September, 2021.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Chala June:
So it was a nine-month planning process. I had a full deck, I had so many ideas. I was so enthusiastic, almost a little scary enthusiastic, but I was really just moved by the opportunity that we had to create dedicated content written by queer people, illustrated by queer people, photographed by queer people, where we have the opportunities to tell our own stories and to not feel like we had to tailor ourselves to a particular lens or to what people understand queer food to be or what people understand queerness to be.
Through that whole nine month process, there were definitely some ideas that did not fully stick. I wanted us to also do a print companion to the piece, that did not happen, but what it was able to be was just so impactful. There are I think 18 pieces of original content in the package. There were recipes from Devon Francis, some of the stories that-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Goes by Tuna Turner on-
Chala June:
@TunaTurner on Instagram.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, Instagram.
Chala June:
Who I love. One of my favorite pieces in the package was one that I had wanted us to do something about months ago, which was about Ceyenne Doroshow, who's the founder of GLITS, a huge leader and activist for trans rights in New York City. What a lot of people don't know about her is she wrote a cookbook while she was in prison called, “Cooking in Heels.”
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Chala June:
The cookbook was about her history and her experiences and how as a trans woman, cooking was really just such a healing process for her and especially through her incarceration. We had actress and writer, Eva Reign write the piece, which was so important to me because I rarely see pieces especially in food media about black trans women written by black trans women. That felt so important and to have the resources and the means to do that, I was like, I'm not going to squander this opportunity. Everything I do is so motivated by love for the communities that I'm a part of, and especially the trans community, and especially at a time like now when trans people, when black trans people and black trans women are constantly under attack just for being themselves and just for living in their truth and just for trying to live a life that every person deserves. That package was really such a passion project because it was an opportunity to bring into food media a space that can often be very white, very cisgender, very heteronormative, and say, not only are we here and queer, we are so proud and so unashamed to be ourselves.
There was also some, I'm not going to say backlash, there were some negative social media comments as there tend to be, Instagram be an interesting place.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's a tough playground.
Chala June:
It's a tough playground, and a lot of people who were detracting were taking issue with the title of the package, Food is Queer, because they're like, food can't be a sexuality. I'm like, food is what people are. Food will always be what people are. Food is black, food is femme, food is women, food is who we are, so why not just say food is queer?
I remember it was me, Hilary Cadigan and Elazar Sontag, two other exceptional food writers extraordinaire. We struggled with the name for so long. We kept trying to think of something cute and something fun, something that had pride in it, and after two hours we were like, Food is Queer. We're like, that's it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Pride Palette did not make it, make the cut?
Chala June:
It did not make the cut. We were like, Food is Queer. We want to do something simple and bold that lets people know that we are not here to sugarcoat things and we're not here to pander and we're not here to placate ourselves. We're here to just be bold and live in our truths and that's what queerness is about. So the fact that the package was able to really encapsulate that ethos is something I'll really always be proud of. I still have people come up to me and say how much that package really meant to them. It was really for me, a career defining moment so far.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. If one of your 2024 goals is to build your network in the food world or get better at networking, consider becoming an official member of Cherry Bombe. membership gets you access to all virtual meetings and networking, first access to ticketed live events, and discounted things to things like the Jubilee conference. You can also have your brand, book, or business included in the membership section of cherrybombe.com. I'm a Bombesquad member, which is how I became the host of the show. Learn more and join today at cherrybombe.com and maybe I'll see you at the next member meeting.
How do you hope that publications like Bon Appetit or Food and Wine or other publications in general, not just in food but in media at large, are creating safe spaces for queer and black people who want to make impact, especially in food?
Chala June:
That is a very good question. I think the main thing is about supporting and retaining the talent you have. That is, I think, an issue across media, especially with diverse talent, is they'll bring people into the space but then not provide the resources, not provide the feedback, not provide the encouragement needed for those people to want to stay in these positions. It can be really tricky when you are the only person of color, the only woman, the only queer person in a space, and you feel like you have to perform to a standard that maybe doesn't feel genuine to you or doesn't feel aligned with your own personal values.
We've seen so many DEI initiatives and so many statements over the years about brands and companies commitments to do better, but often it's a lot of talk and often the resources are not funneled into making those promises happen, or they're funneled in for a year or two, but then they're not really moneymaking initiatives so they get cut. It's ultimately such a disservice to these brands because as we move into the future, as we think about the future of food, it is so important to be able to not only make space for diverse voices, to not only champion diverse voices, but to give those voices the resources to champion themselves because ultimately, a black person can go into a publication and have all of these great ideas, but if they're are not decision makers who are seeing the value of those ideas, who are actively wanting to invest in those ideas, they're never going to happen. Not only are they never going to happen, that person whose ideas they were is also going to question themselves. Are they good enough? Are they skilled enough? Have they done enough? It is ultimately such a disservice to everyone involved.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. I want to step back a little bit and just talk about your relationship to food writing. You mentioned you were pouring over magazines and all the publications. If you could think of three people that embody your food writing, who would you consider yourself a love child of when it comes to authors?
Chala June:
My biggest inspirations, I'm going to say Jessica B. Harris.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Of course.
Chala June:
Of course, of course.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
She's mother.
Chala June:
She is mother.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
To use a ballroom term.
Chala June:
Truly, genuinely, mother. I'm going to say Michael Twitty, another career icon, also from Silver Spring, Maryland.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Hell yeah.
Chala June:
Shout out.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
There you go.
Chala June:
Third, I'm going to say Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, who wrote “Vibration Cooking: Travel Notes of a Gullah Geechee Girl.” That book was foundational for me as I was doing this self-study of food writing. The way that her personality and her story shines through, it was one of the first books that I read that was about food, but was really just about life and how food flows into it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's interesting that you picked three people who have just such defined perspectives on food from a historical and a cultural perspective as well.
Chala June:
Yeah, that's what really inspires me is food, not just as this commodity or as this art form, but food genuinely as a form of cultural storytelling, and of cultural preservation, especially because you can know nothing about a culture, you don't have to speak the language, you don't have to know anyone from it. The second you eat a dish from a certain culture.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You're locked.
Chala June:
You're locked, and you feel really what I define as a spiritual connection to that history, to that people, to that lineage. So to have these incredible writers who are taking that feeling and specifically looking at black cooking and black cooking from the continent and across the diaspora and how it's come here is so inspiring to me because as a black American, so much has been lost. I feel a lot of heartbreak around that loss very often. So to be able to not only read about the history, but to then have recipes and foods that actively tie you back to that history, that dishes you can make now to feel that nourishment and that soul that's been passed down, is something that is so healing for me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The heartbreak thing is so prominent because I feel like food has been one of the few ways to preserve culture for the diaspora. I feel like you hear stories of recipes that were passed down through oral culture, or crops that made it from Africa over here and that are still a big part of the culture. So it seems like to understand the strife and the suffering in this very complicated and joyous way is something that I think is so interesting and I feel like every time I read more about the black diaspora in America, I feel like I'm always learning more, but then I'm also like, oh, I wish this is not how I wanted to learn.
Chala June:
Absolutely, I'm glad you brought up the joy too, because it really is that alchemy of taking struggle and pain and hardship and transforming it into joy and nourishment and sustenance. I think that's at the heart of black food and black cooking.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Of course.
Chala June:
That magic of taking just the scraps that they were given, the literal scraps, and turning them into these recipes that we still honor and cherish to this day. I mean, I made my New Year's Hoppin' John and I made sure that I found cow peas instead of black eye peas because I saw a post that Amethyst Ganaway had made about how cow peas, especially in Gullah Geechee culture were the original beans used for Hoppin' John. I was like, okay, I got to make sure I really respect the roots of this dish and this culture, not only as something that I'm wanting to recreate, but also as something that has been used to bring in prosperity and abundance, as this spiritual element too.
Also, looking at the bits and pieces of black and African spirituality that have been baked into our food ways is something that I'm really hoping to do more work and more reading, examining, because our spiritual heritage is so rich and so diverse, and so much of that is baked right into the food.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, pun intended.
Chala June:
Right, pun fully intended.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, speaking of baked, I want to try to turn into another topic that you're really passionate about, cannabis. I will preface this, that this is an adult consumption, so please consume with discretion, but I'm really curious to hear why you decided to start writing about cannabis, especially as it intersects with food.
Chala June:
Absolutely. What inspired me to start examining cannabis and cannabis culture as a part of my food work was actually a conference that was held here in New York in Chelsea called The Luxury Meets Cannabis Conference. I had gotten an email asking if I wanted a press pass to check it out. I was like, sure, I enjoy cannabis, let's see what this is about. There were so many really incredible panels about just how wide and how diverse, diverse in the sense of touching on different industries, the cannabis world is. What I really learned is that there is this very beautiful overlap. It's like a Venn Diagram, between the food world and the cannabis world, where food culture touches on social justice, agriculture, labor, environmentalism, and cannabis touches on all of those same points. Thinking about it not only as a storyteller but as someone who's interested in uplifting marginalized stories, at the intersection of food and cannabis. I was just talking about food as this really healing thing that is culturally passed down. Cannabis is also literally this plant that has been discovered to have all of these healing properties. So I wanted to look at the magic that happens when you incorporate the two.
Part of what inspired me so much too were just all of the people in the industry who were so passionate about what this plant not only can do, but has done for them in their lives. I've spoken to chefs from home cooks to people who used to work in Michelin starred restaurants, to “Chopped” champions who have incorporated cannabis into their cooking. It's been about more than just getting a little stoned or being a little silly. It's really been about one, a way for them to break the rules and break convention and really push their food to the limits of what it can be, and also a way for them to be intentional about what it is they're putting in their bodies, and how the medicine of food and the medicine of cannabis can really come together for this kind of wholistic experience.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Definitely, and I think it's interesting too, especially you talked about the heartbreak with food and the black diaspora, but also cannabis has had a very difficult reputation. I'm curious to see, how have you seen this renaissance if anything, in black communities and their approach to cannabis, especially through food? Has that been a through line in any of the work that you've done?
Chala June:
So that's been a really important part of why I've wanted to approach this work as well because as you said, so many black people, so many black men have been incarcerated disproportionately because of cannabis possession and use, and lives and families and communities have been ruined, have been traumatized, have been broken apart. As we're in this new wave, the end of prohibition, as a lot of people in the industry are calling it, we're still not seeing a proportional amount of black people in the industry. That's a huge disservice, but part of what feeds into that is the trauma that a lot of black people still hold around cannabis. I know so many people who won't go anywhere near it-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Out of fear.
Chala June:
... Because they are so afraid of being stigmatized of what that might mean for them because of all of the reefer madness and the fear that was entrenched to them through the war on drugs, through all of this negative stigmatization through the years.
So I took a moment to really look at my position in the world of journalism, in the world of storytelling, and say, okay, sure, all of the laws changing are going to make it easier for people to access cannabis and safer for people to access cannabis, which is really important.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yes.
Chala June:
However, the stigmatization isn't just going to change overnight because now the law says that you can have cannabis. A lot of the stigma and the trauma that has been passed down has been anecdotal and has come through media and through propaganda. So, how can I as a media maker continue to generate positive, encouraging educational, uplifting, wholistic media that is going to help dispel the myths, that is going to help encourage people to give it a try if they want to, that's going to help empower people to allow themselves to think past the stigmas? So that they can genuinely feel encouraged and safe to try something that may help them, and that may be something that they're able to use throughout the rest of their lives.
I know personally, my grandpa a few years ago got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was very ill, he's no longer with us.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
So sorry.
Chala June:
But towards the end, the chemo was making his appetite really poor, his mood was really suffering, his sleep was suffering. I have a cousin who lives in Detroit, my grandparents were from Detroit at the time, and she makes infused food. She's also an infused chef, it runs in the family a little bit. She would bring him by some canna butter and he would just put a little bit maybe on a pancake or in some grits, and it improved so many things for him towards the end of his life. His mood, his appetite, his sleep. To know that that was able to just give him a little bit of comfort.
He was one of those people, he was a deacon in his Baptist church, he did not go near cannabis. To know that this was able to bring him some ease towards the end of his life was just such a gift, and if the work that I do can help inspire someone to maybe help their grandparent out or help their loved one out and say, hey, I know these other things aren't necessarily working, maybe we try this, and it's able to give them that same kind of comfort, then I've done everything I've set out to do.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
How have you used cannabis in your personal cooking? Are there any companies or people that we should know about, if this is something that we're potentially interested in?
Chala June:
Absolutely. I love to play around in the kitchen and do a lot of fun stuff. There's this one company called Ardent. They make what they call the Easy Bake Oven of edibles and Shanel Lindsay, the founder, is one of the people who I interviewed for my Women in Cannabis piece for Cherry Bombe. She is a lawyer and an inventor, and she has, I think five patents for this machine.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Chala June:
So she's also a super cool black woman inventor. She created this machine that you're able to process the cannabis in, so heat it up to the point where it is active and then also infuse your oil and butter in the machine and you can bake treats within it, so it's like a three-in-one, fully encapsulated device.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Chala June:
So for anyone who wants to use their own flour and try things out, that is an incredible company to look into. For people who are in the fabulous state of New York, there is a brand called Chef For Hire that just released a line of infused olive oil, coconut oil, and honey. That is most of what I use at home because I don't usually bother to do the infusion myself. There's a lot of upstart costs to acquiring enough flour to infuse.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's like buying sourdough starter.
Chala June:
Exactly, it's an investment that I can't always make, but these products are lab tested, they are very consistent. I love to just drizzle that olive oil when I'm sauteing a shrimp, put some of that honey in my tea in the morning for just a little microdose. Those products I really swear by because they're very consistent and really are great kitchen staples to use.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, and it seems like they're all woman owned. There's a fun intersection between woman owned and cannabis production as well.
Chala June:
Oh, absolutely. We're seeing more of it here in New York, but out in California, there is a really strong community of women in the culinary cannabis-sphere, and every time I talk to any of them, they really say there's a sisterhood and there's a community there, where they're really able to uplift each other and support each other. It's incredible because it feels like the early wild west days of just women in food really having this platform and this celebration. Cannabis is another white male dominated space, so to see all of these really incredible women come together and support each other and have that sisterhood instead of the competition that we often see, is so inspiring to me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. I guess I want to talk a little bit more about how you think of your community, especially in New York. I know you wrote this really lovely piece about your chosen family and how you have crossed a lot of your transition through food, through writing. How has community helped you shape who you are today and build your relationship to food?
Chala June:
Absolutely. Community is really everything to me because of so much of what I'm healing from comes from a community that I was raised in. So I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness and I was a young, black, burgeoning, queer person, that was not an emotionally safe environment for me to be in. It's one that not only forced me to put myself in a very, very small box, but that made me afraid to even explore what life could be like or who I could be outside of that box, because it wasn't just that I was self-doubting, it's that I was self demonizing, which is part of why I love talking about the spiritual nature of food and food as healing because that's a big catalyst for my healing.
The community that I have built, especially here in New York, has really shown me that I can show up as my full self. I can show up as boldly as I want to. I can take up space as a gender queer person whose presentation and pronouns are constantly shifting. As someone who embodies a very distinct masculine and feminine and doesn't shy away from either of them. That's something that I never thought I would have space for, that other people would make space for. So I kept those things hidden away for so long and I kept myself distanced from myself for so long.
So being able to be in community with other queer people, other trans people, other people of color who are just being themselves as unabashedly and unapologetically as possible, is not only an inspiration for me, but it really is so healing, so motivating, and so life affirming, because everyone deserves to just live life in a way that feels aligned with who they are and what brings them joy and what makes them want to get up in the morning. So to be in community with people that understand that, and people who are open-minded enough to make space for all of the facets, because I have a Pisces moon, I'm very multifaceted. It was really something that has completely changed my life.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, that's really beautiful. It's powerful seeing how beautiful chosen family and how affirming chosen family can be, especially with food being such a big connector and a big catalyst to community and to change, so that's really-
Chala June:
Not only life changing, but genuinely lifesaving.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
When you think about the future of journalism, how do you hope that journalism could be used as a vessel to educate people on cannabis culture and in queer perspectives as well?
Chala June:
I think journalism can be a catalyst as insofar as we continue to focus on real human stories. I'm not going to get into my diatribe about AI journalism right now, but.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's the next podcast.
Chala June:
Exactly, that's its own series, but what made me want to be a storyteller was how powerful it was when I didn't have the language from my own experiences to read or listen or hear from people who had either gone through similar things or had just overcome any obstacle and made space to live in their truth. So journalism really does have this power to not only inspire us but to remind us of our humanity, if we continue to keep journalism rooted in humanity and rooted in this person-first perspective. What a lot of it I feel has become has been driven by what's going to get the clicks, what's SEO optimized, what's trending? That doesn't always speak to where the hearts of the public are. It might speak to where our minds are drifting, but our hearts might be in a different place.
I feel like with journalism, with queer stories, with black stories, with stories in cannabis, with stories in food, what always draws me back to this nexus is the need for space for us to see each other in our humanity. So much of these issues come back to just not being able to see each other, not only as people, but people with something to contribute to life, and with something to contribute to the world. Everyone has something that they contribute, everyone has a story. That's why intentional journalism and intentional storytelling is not only important, but really powerful.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Especially those stories being told by the people in those particular demographics, by the people that have experienced those stories themselves. I just saw this Denzel Washington clip and when he was saying, you know the feeling of when a hot comb touches your head on a Sunday, or you know the feeling of sitting at the table. It's not about color or demographic, it's about the culture. So, who better to tell the stories of those of the culture?
Chala June:
Exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And necessary.
Chala June:
Those who have an emotional stake in the culture. I think what happens so often when people from outside of a culture try to look in, is they'll be making up the significance or making up why certain things happen, and especially with black culture, there are so many things that have been passed down that we don't know but we feel. Like you don't know, but you know you know.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Where do you see the future for black journalists and for queer journalists in food media, the next few years?
Chala June:
I think that the sky's the limit for black journalists, for queer journalists, there's so much talent, there is absolutely not a lack of talent. I think what there is a lack of is paid opportunity. What is really so difficult is that the further you exist on these margins, the less likely it is that you can do work for free or do work that's underpaid, but the more likely it is that people are going to try to underpay you or exploit your work. The future really comes from there being more black decision makers, more queer decision makers who are willing to invest back into the communities and see their value as storytellers and not just as something that's checking a box, or something that's going to make the publication look hip and young and fresh.
I personally hope to see a resurgence in indie media. Indie media will always be near my heart.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Print is back.
Chala June:
Print, in my heart, never left, but I really think that print is going to be back in a very big way. I know that I get such screen fatigue. I look at a computer all day, I look at my phone all day. I want to just sit down with a beautiful magazine and forget that screens exist.
Also with independent media, I think the resurgence is going to be so important because there is a lot of distrust that we're seeing for corporate media. There are a lot of abuses that we are seeing behind the scenes in corporate media. What makes it tricky right now is that no one in media really has a lot of money. When you're in independent media, the cashflow is really, really tight.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Tight, shoestring budget.
Chala June:
Shoestring budget, but I am hoping that culturally we are able to get back to a place where we place more of that cultural value into those publications that we know are advancing the culture forward, and those publications that we know have real human beings behind them that want to tell human-centered stories.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future is quite bright, but I want to take some space for our manifestation moment, if we were to have this conversation again in five years. I know you have so many dreams and aspirations. Where do you hope to see yourself and how do you hope to see yourself shaping the food world?
Chala June:
I hope to see myself on television.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Very cool.
Chala June:
I would love to have my own food travel show. I hope to see myself doing a lot more personal writing. I feel like a lot of the writing that I have done has been championing other people's stories, but I want to put more of my own story out there. I want to see myself building community in a very real and very tangible way. Creating spaces for people to be able to break bread together, to share stories together, and to be able to feel like they can just put all the BS down and just be with other people and not necessarily feel like it has to be a performance. I think a lot of what we do in our day-to-day lives, especially in the western world and especially in New York City, can feel like performance. I just hope to continue to create opportunities and spaces where we can put all that armor down and not feel like we have to distance ourselves from our vulnerability and from our humanity in order to be deemed acceptable or worth being around.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Well, Chala, thank you so much for joining us on the show. If we want to continue to support you, where are the best places to find you?
Chala June:
The best place to find me is on Instagram @Chala.gram, G-R-A-M. I'm also on TikTok, though I don't use it that often. Chala.talk. Yeah, those are the best places to find me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing, and we can't wait to continue supporting whatever work you write.
Chala June:
Thank you for having me.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail just talking to themselves 10 years from now. You have reached The Future Of Food Is You mailbox. Please leave your message after the beep.
Chala June:
Hello, Chala, my love. How is that big, beautiful heart of yours doing? I'm sure the last few years have had their highs and their lows, but I just want you to know how proud I am and always will be of you.
You've already left an indelible mark on this world, and your legacy continues to be a blessing to those who have walked the earth before you and those who will come after you. I know the odds systematically stacked against you seem insurmountable at times, but you've always risen to each and every challenge you've faced, and with so much care and so much compassion for yourself and for others.
I hope that life over these last few years has blessed you with the abundant success and prosperity that your ancestors have wished over you since before you were born. You're made to be a light in this world, so don't ever try to dim your own brilliance. You are gifted, you are protected, and like your therapist Cookie once said, "History has shown that nothing can stop you." I love you to the moon, Chala June.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. I would love for you to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to our show. Thank you to Kerrygold for supporting our show. The Future Of Food Is You as a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, Executive Producers Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker. Associate Producer Jenna Sadhu and Editorial Assistant Londyn Crenshaw. Catch you on the future flip.