“Dorie Greenspan & Joy The Baker In Conversation” Transcript

Sophia Roe: Hi. I'm Sophia Roe, chef and wellness enthusiast. Did you know that nearly 340,000 or one in five New York City children rely on soup kitchens and food pantries to eat, especially during the summer months when school is out?

Sophia Roe: The folks over at Food Bank for New York City want you to know that unlike school, hunger doesn't take a break. Help them end child hunger by providing meals to families and children in need during those challenging summer months. Visit foodbanknyc.org to learn how you can volunteer, spread the word and more.

Kerry Diamond: Hi Bombesquad. You're listening to Radio Cherry Bombe, the number one female focused food podcast in the universe. I'm your host Kerry Diamond. Let's thank today's sponsors, Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Schools and Traeger Wood Fired Grills. You folks are the bombe.

Kerry Diamond: Thank you so much to everyone who came to our Food For Thought event in Asheville, North Carolina this past weekend. You can probably hear from my voice that I lost my voice a little. At least, long time listeners you probably can. Too much excitement. It was wonderful meeting so many of you and hearing from amazing guests like chef's Katie Button, Cheetie Kumar, and Ashleigh Shanti. We'll be airing that episode very soon, so stay tuned.

Kerry Diamond: And thank you to the folks at Kerrygold, the maker of beautiful Irish cheese and butter, for supporting our tour.

Kerry Diamond: And Asheville, by the way, is a very fun place to visit. Great restaurants, so many cool makers, and you're surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and scenery. You should plan a visit.

Kerry Diamond: Our next big event is Jubilee Seattle. We've got a great lineup planned for you, include chef's Rene Erickson, Makini Howell, and Rachel Yang. Talk about a super group. Alison Roman is flying in all the way from New York City, and we'll have lots of local luminaries there including Linda Derschang and Aran Goyoaga. We'll have lots of food and drink, and great panels and talks. We cannot wait to celebrate the Pacific Northwest Bombesquad. Tickets are on sale now at cherrybombe.com and the event will be taking place Saturday, November 2nd at Block 41.

Kerry Diamond: Speaking of Jubilee, for today's show we're airing a conversation from Jubilee 2019 in New York City. It's a chat between Dorie Greenspan and Joy Wilson, who many of you know and love as Joy the Baker. These powerhouse home bakers have so much wisdom to share when it comes to baked goods, careers, cookbooks, and more. Introducing them is Christina Ha, the co-owner and co-founder of Macaron Parlour and Meow Parlour right here in New York City. Dorie just happens to be Christina's mentor.

Kerry Diamond: Christina shares her story of how baking changed her life, and we couldn't be happier to share it with you. Before we hear from Christina, here's a word from Le Cordon Bleu.

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Kerry Diamond: And now, Christina Ha.

Christina Ha: I'm so excited everyone came up to hear me talk. So, my name's Christina. I have two main interests, cookies and cats, and I do both for a living. I have two bakeries called Macaron Parlour, then there's Meow Parlour, New York's first cat café, and I throw the cat equivalent of this jubilee every year called Jackson Galaxy's Cat Camp.

Christina Ha: I'm a lucky person. I have a wonderful family, I have amazing friends, I have great employees, and I've helped over 500 cats find homes. However, things weren't always this way. The loneliest period of my life was about 10 years ago. I'm not sure what I was looking for when I moved to New York, but I knew I was afraid to stay in the suburbs and afraid that I would just settle.

Christina Ha: As a teenager, I didn't know what settling was. I didn't know if meant fulfilling the dreams of my immigrant parents by becoming a lawyer, or if it was choosing a path because it seemed easy. I don't know what or why, but I felt uneasy for a very long time so I just kept busy.

Christina Ha: I graduated college in three and a half years, then went back to school to get an Associates, and then back to school to learn how to sew. Instead of pursuing higher education, I was just signing up for school for the sake of filling my time. I took internships, and eventually jobs at my dream companies only to look around one day and wonder why I didn't fit in. I'm an introvert who felt so uncomfortable in a city of eight million people that I was sinking into myself.

Christina Ha: It was my mom who encouraged me to sign up for my first baking class. At that point, she knew I would never be a doctor or a lawyer, and she knew what unhappiness looked like. She told me that when I was in pre-school we had a weekly baking class and it was my favorite thing in the world. She knew I was lonely then, too. Partly because I didn't speak a lot, partly because I didn't understand what people were saying, and partly because I constantly felt like an other. But food has no language barriers, and it was my favorite part of the school week.

Christina Ha: So as an adult, I started to take baking classes. Over time, late nights of anxiously waiting for the night to end and the next work day to begin turned into hours spent on the floor with my feet propped up against the oven watching breads rise, cookies caramelize, and magic happen. Finally, something felt right. I'd spent so long chasing a shadow that I never stopped to look at what was in front of me, that in a city with thousands of restaurants, fast casual joints and cafes, that the thing that made me happiest could be a career.

Christina Ha: I went all in. I used the recession as an excuse to shrug and say that the desk job wasn't going anywhere anyway. Within a year I was in pastry school, met my now husband who's over there, and we started Macaron Parlour. But anyone who has opened a business knows that the first few years are still lonely. You don't have time to socialize because you're under-staffed. You're afraid to step out because your place might burn down in the 15 minutes you're gone, and you go to sleep that you wake up tired. But that kind of loneliness didn't hurt. I had a purpose and it was tangible, and things felt right.

Christina Ha: During this period I didn't have many friends, but I had the internet. I used to write about my life, about owning a business, and the things I was learning. I didn't write for an audience, I wrote because for the first time in a long time I had a lot to say, and so I wrote into the abyss of the internet.

Christina Ha: Much to my surprise, it spoke back. If you love that New York has a cat café, it only exists because my business partner sent me a fan letter five years ago and I was so touched that I hired her to work in my kitchen. Someone who works for me now read my blog when she was in pastry school. Last month someone from Australia messaged me to say that she thought of me recently because she's starting her own business.

Christina Ha: I haven't written for many years now because I'm not lonely, but there are still people out here looking. It made me realize that we're all looking for some connection. It's what makes us alive.

Christina Ha: Dorie understood this years ago, before we had Twitter and Instagram, that while food is a necessity it's so much more than that. It's about people. It's about connecting with others, about memories and experiences. Her cookbooks were the first I had ever read that included stories about a recipe. Thirteen cookbooks in, Dorie has invited people all over the world into some of the greatest kitchens, and more recently into her own kitchen.

Christina Ha: I first found her through her World Peace Cookies, named because they are good enough to bring world peace. Then there was Tuesday's with Dorie, where people connected with each other from their own homes by blogging about her recipes. Entire communities sprung out of Dorie's writing, and everyone who participated had their own story to tell. She helped people create memories.

Christina Ha: Today we have so many more tools at our grasp to allow us to stay in touch, to meet new people, to double tap, or swipe right. We can invite people to peek into our kitchens with photo's taken on a phone, or quite literally like Joy, invite people to cook beside us in our actual kitchen. Joy is one of those people who figured out a way to combine storytelling, food, and the desire to connect, both on and off-screen using these new tools. She gets it. I wouldn't be surprised if that's helping out someone who is lonely today.

Christina Ha: Food had stories to tell, people to feed, and I look forward to listening to these women talk about their careers, the human element of food, and how social media has impacted the landscape from their first cookbook to now.

Christina Ha: Dorie was one of the first people I met in the food industry. I was her first mentee in a mentorship program, and for years she sent me words of encouragement. Every few months I would get an email from her about something she saw that she wanted to share, or to see if I was practicing self-care, or just to send some love. Dorie was one of my first friends as an adult, and she claimed she had nothing to teach me. That's (beep). She may not know this, but much of what I've learned from her has shaped the entirety of my career.

Christina Ha: So with that off my chest, I'm so happy for everyone here to listen to the magic to come, because I know it's going to be so beautiful. Thank you.

Joy Wilson: I'm going to start off my conversation with Dorie today by telling her a story. So I was saying in 2006 I was working as a baker in two bakeries. I wasn't Joy the Baker, so it was funny that I was a baker in two bakeries because I was an enthusiastic home baker and I had finagled my way into two baking jobs, because I realized that if you liked to bake and you will get to work at 3:30 in the morning you're hired. You know?

Joy Wilson: So, I would get to work at 2:30 in the morning and start baking, because a lot of times I would mess things up and have to throw them away. So then at 3:30 when real bakers came in, I'd be like, "Hey guys, just starting fresh. Just here, ready." That happened a lot. I ruined so much chocolate mousse. Okay, I'll get to.

Dorie Greenspan: I'm imagining you in this bakery coming prepared with extra black bags to throw away, right?

Joy Wilson: Yes, and after I would get off of work I would go home. On the way home there was a bookstore, and in the bookstore was your Baking: From My Home to Yours book. I couldn't afford to buy it, but I would sit in the aisle and copy down a few recipes word for word, it's no problem, and then I would take the notebook to the bakery at 2:30 in the morning and try some of your recipes. What was so-

Dorie Greenspan: Wait, wait, that wasn't the one that didn't work was it? The mousse that you-

Joy Wilson: No, they always worked. And what was so wonderful to me about that book is that your technique was so helpful, but it was written from the perspective and from the heart of a home baker and so I could take it to this new job in a place where I was making friends with my fear, and I got so much comfort and skill from it. And I bought the book. I eventually could afford it. I had to save up, but-

Dorie Greenspan: But the mother in me is thinking, "If only I had known this I would have sent you the book."

Joy Wilson: Dorie, don't do that. People need to buy books.

Joy Wilson: So yeah, so I wanted to tell you that story, and then ask you-

Dorie Greenspan: Thank you.

Joy Wilson: Ask you how your kitchen journey started, and what were the books that maybe you held close to your chest as you were embarking on your journey from home baker to professional person?

Dorie Greenspan: From home baker to home baker.

Joy Wilson: Yeah, really.

Dorie Greenspan: No, I am a home baker. I'm not answering your question, but I will.

Joy Wilson: Cool.

Dorie Greenspan: Okay. So, I had the amazing, amazing good fortune to work with Julia Child in the '90s. I wrote Baking With Julia, which was a book that accompanied her TV series, and we would shoot every day. And one day Julia said, "I want to play hooky. Will you play hooky with me?" So I had, I still have it, a little Miata, which is like a car the size of a jelly bean-

Joy Wilson: Hold on. You have a Miata?

Dorie Greenspan: A red one.

Joy Wilson: A red one?

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah. Yeah, and it's a convertible, but Julia, oh you couldn't take the top down because her hair, right? And Julia had size 12 or 13 feet, and so I kind of had to plead her to get her into the car, but this isn't the story I want to tell you. So, Julia said, "Let's play hooky." I origami her into the car.

Dorie Greenspan: Her idea of hooky is going to the supermarket, so we're shopping around and she's helping people choose a good melon, and at some point she turned to me and she put her arm around me, she was six feet tall, and she said, "You know, we make such a good team," and I was really touched. She said, "We make a good team because we're just a couple of home bakers." And even after all that Julia had done, and all that she had taught all of us, she really thought of herself as a home baker and I have never stopped thinking of myself that way.

Joy Wilson: Yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: And so I burnt my parents kitchen down when I was 12. I'm going to do this very quickly. I wasn't allowed to bake. I got married when I was 19. I'm still married to Michael Greenspan, and I learned to cook and bake because ... I learned to cook because I had to, and I learned to bake because I really wanted to. My book, the book that is tattered and has spots ... I thought they were chocolate. I have no idea what they are, they're all over the place ... is Maida Heatter. She was my ... Does anybody know Maida Heatter?

Joy Wilson: Yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah. So, she was my hero. Everything I made from her books worked. Her directions were so precise. When I started writing about food, I had made it in my head. She taught me to bake.

Joy Wilson: What is your favorite thing of hers to bake? Do you have a favorite?

Dorie Greenspan: She had a lemon cake in her first book that I made every year for our son's teacher's for their Christmas gift, I made it for potlucks, I made it for everything. When the paperback version came out, that recipe wasn't there, and one book later she wrote and she said, "Here's my revised version." She said, "I can't figure out why it didn't work." But people started writing to her. This was writing, not ... And it didn't work. She retested it and she claimed that it didn't work because there were demons in her kitchen.

Joy Wilson: Well, I live in New Orleans and-

Dorie Greenspan: Oh, there are demons everywhere.

Joy Wilson: Demons and ghosts are everywhere.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah, so I learned to bake from Maida Heatter, from Gaston Lenôtre when his first ... He's a ... Well, he's now dead, but I think of him as the father of modern pastry, and when his book was first translated into English that was my book.

Dorie Greenspan: Do you write in your cookbooks?

Joy Wilson: Do I write my own cookbooks?

Dorie Greenspan: No, I know you do.

Joy Wilson: Yes. Yeah, I do write in my cookbooks. Yeah. I make notes. My first cookbook I got when I was 12 years old, it was like one of those paperback church cookbooks. And in it, every time I made a certain recipe I would write the date and write my thoughts about it, like open journaling in my cookbook. I still have that book. It has lots of notes.

Dorie Greenspan: My mother didn't bake. When my parents moved to Florida, my mother called me. She was so excited she had two ovens, and I said, "But you don't cook or bake." She said, "More storage." So, I didn't have a cookbook until I got married, and it was the New York Times Cookbook was my first book.

Joy Wilson: That's a good one. What was food like for your family when you were growing up?

Dorie Greenspan: My father owned a supermarket, so there was plenty of food. Nobody ever wanted to cook it. We had a housekeeper and the housekeeper cooked. I don't remember my mother cooking. I have no memories of my mother cooking or my father. I have no favorite dishes from childhood. I think that now as I look back, it seemed perfectly normal to me, I didn't know anything else, but I realize as I think back on how important it was for me to make a home when we got married. And that for me, home meant being at the table, having friends at the table. I think it came from a kind of deprivation in a way. But I was happy. I didn't know.

Joy Wilson: I hear you. It's like a way of nurturing. You were building a way of nurturing your relationships, romantic and friendship and everything.

Dorie Greenspan: I'm sure I didn't know what I was doing, but boy, I'm glad I did. I mean, because it is, it is about having ... I think it's through food that we make relationships and that we make memories that last. In case you didn't hear me singing happy birthday from the rooftops yesterday, our son turned 40 yesterday, and it was birthday cake and it was looking at pictures of him blowing out two candles, three candles, twenty candles. Making the same cake that I've made for him for years and years and years.

Joy Wilson: What is that cake?

Dorie Greenspan: So, it's a chocolate cake. I've tweaked it a little bit to make it a little less sweet. It's a dark chocolate cake. It's a buttermilk cake and it's got chocolate frosting, and it can hold lots more than 40 candles, so I'll be making it.

Joy Wilson: You're ready. Okay, I have a lot of questions I want to ask you, but since we're talking about birthday cakes, do you make your own birthday cake?

Dorie Greenspan: No. Do you?

Joy Wilson: Yes.

Dorie Greenspan: Is that because you don't trust anybody else to do a good job?

Joy Wilson: Correct. So who makes your birthday cake, and what is it?

Dorie Greenspan: So, it's interesting. I was so set on ... It's not interesting, it's just it is. I was so set on having traditions because I didn't grow up with them, but I have no particular birthday cake.

Joy Wilson: No?

Dorie Greenspan: No.

Joy Wilson: Okay.

Dorie Greenspan: I mean, Joshua has his chocolate cake, but no.

Joy Wilson: Okay. I want to ask you about food writing, because I think you are such a beautiful food writer. How did you transition from your work in the kitchen to writing about food?

Dorie Greenspan: I started as a writer. So, I went to graduate school. I'm all but dissertation for a Doctorate in Gerontology, the study of aging, about which I can tell you more now than I could have when I was in graduate school. I worked in a research center for many years writing, and I was very lucky. I worked for someone who really encouraged me to write and who was a good editor, and I never saw the separation between developing recipes and writing. To me, writing the recipe instructions was a form of creative writing. It was a way of imagining somebody in the kitchen, imagining talking to them. It was a conversation for me, so it always felt like writing. It always felt like I was talking to the person who would be following my recipes.

Dorie Greenspan: I had an odd experience. A friend of mine, a colleague friend was going to an awards nomination, and a book of mine ... Well, it was the Baking With Julia book, had just been published. She said to me, "I hope you don't get nominated," and when I could catch my breath I said, "What are you saying?" And she said, "Well, all you did was write the book."

Joy Wilson: Oh.

Dorie Greenspan: And I've thought about that, that's 20 some odd years ago, and I always think about that because I think about what is it, about is a cookbook just the recipes? A cookbook is something you write. Do we think about the importance of writing when it's instructional? I think of it as a whole piece, and it never occurred to me that being just the writer was anything less than being ... So, I think about this a lot. I think that I would love to see cookbooks thought about as books as well as cookbooks.

Joy Wilson: Yeah, as pieces of writing. There is so much personality that goes into even just the instructional part of a cookbook. It's unique to its writer.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah. I mean, you have a very particular way of writing your recipes. It's our voice, right?

Joy Wilson: Yeah. It's instruction and pep talk and walking people back from the cliff, you know?

Dorie Greenspan: Particularly with baking, I think, yeah.

Joy Wilson: Yeah, very much.

Kerry Diamond: We'll be right back with Dorie Greenspan and Joy the Baker after this quick break.

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Kerry Diamond: Before I learned about Traeger, I was never that intrigued by grilling. I'd only ever been around charcoal grills and gas grills with those annoying propane tanks you have to return. I just wasn't that into it. But with a Traeger, you get signature wood fired flavor and more heat control so you can do some high quality cooking. And if the aesthetics of your back yard are important to you, these are some seriously beautiful pieces of equipment. So when it comes to your next grilling adventure, try it on a Traeger. Visit traegergrills.com to learn more.

Kerry Diamond: And now, back to Dorie and Joy at Jubilee.

Joy Wilson: So in working, I would love to hear more about your time working with Julia, and what it was like to work on that book.

Dorie Greenspan: So, I had met Julia in 1991 when my first book came out. It was my first time ever in front of people. I was the kid in the back of the room because I didn't want to raise my hand. But when my book was published I had to actually get out into the world and make sure somebody other than my mother who I knew would never use it would buy it. So I was invited to give a demo at B.U., and on that program was Julia and Jacques Pepin and me. And Julia befriended me at that ... I mean, she saw a lonely, scared young woman, and she kind of took me around. We kept in touch, and when she was working on this book she asked if I would write it, but I had just started working for the Food Network and I was in show business and I said, "No."

Joy Wilson: You did not.

Dorie Greenspan: I said, "I'm not writing anymore, I'm a producer. This is my new life." And after about six months I realized how much I missed writing, and I called and said, "Who's writing your book?" And she said, "We haven't found anybody."

Joy Wilson: It's you.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah, I mean I almost missed that opportunity. The Julia that you see on television is the Julia that you see all the time. She was so smart, so funny, so curious about everything. Her computer broke and my husband was up while we were shooting, and she said, "Michael, go upstairs. See what you can do with it." He was petrified that he was going to ruin Julia's computer, but he went upstairs and he turns around and Julia's there. He said, "Julia, I'm working on it. I'll call ..." She said, "No, no, no, I want to see what you're doing. You're not always going to be here. I want to learn how to do this."

Dorie Greenspan: She wanted to learn everything. She called me one morning and she said, "Do you have a bread machine?" I said, "No." She said, "Aren't you interested?" I said, "Not really." She said, "You should be. I'm getting one today and you should, too."

Dorie Greenspan: She was really an intellectual. She really studied everything. She knew the history of things. She wanted to know everything. She wanted to teach people. If you're interested in Julia, if you've never read a book called As Always, Julia, it's the letters that she wrote to Avis DeVoto, who helped her get Mastering the Art of French Cooking published. You get to see the way she worked. How important every detail was to her. How she wouldn't let anything go. It had to be right. She kept polishing. She kept working. Her work habits were extraordinary, her commitment. I took away from working with her that kind of focus and how much you have to demand of yourself to do good work.

Joy Wilson: Another through-line with that feels like a constant curiosity.

Dorie Greenspan: Always, yeah.

Joy Wilson: Which is required to push yourself forward and better. What are you curious about outside of food?

Dorie Greenspan: I'm sorry, what am I curious-

Joy Wilson: What are you curious about? What do you-

Dorie Greenspan: Oh, I'm curious about all of you. I want to know everything about where you got started, what you want to do, how you make things work. I'm curious about people. I'm in love with Paris. I've been lucky enough to live there as a part-timer for 20 years, but every time I go I want to learn something new. I want to eventually know how to cut a pyramid shaped cheese properly.

Joy Wilson: Yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah, it's mostly people though.

Joy Wilson: People.

Dorie Greenspan: It's people. You?

Joy Wilson: What am I curious about?

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah.

Joy Wilson: Oh my gosh, so much. Every year I try to take on a new curiosity because I don't know how long I'll get to be in the world. So I'm like every year let's try a new thing. Last year was yoga. This year I'm learning how to sew. Oh, two years ago was paper flowers.

Dorie Greenspan: I love it.

Joy Wilson: So, just like dip into ... I think that working outside of food also helps feed my creative work in food.

Dorie Greenspan: I think that breathing helps fuel creativity. No, there's something about just being out in the world, being aware of what's around you. You find inspiration absolutely everywhere.

Dorie Greenspan: A quick, almost non-related story. I did a book signing years and years ago with Pierre Hermes, the Paris pastry chef. We had written a book together, and a woman came up and she had a little baby. Pierre smiled and kind of chucked the baby under the chin and said, "What's the baby's name?" And the mother said, "Celeste." And he said, "That's a beautiful name," and then he took his notebook out and he wrote it down. And I said, "What are you going to do with it?" He said, "I don't know, it's just a very beautiful name." And about five years later he created an entire pastry collection and called it Celeste.

Joy Wilson: Oh my God.

Dorie Greenspan: So you never know where something is going to come from, where an idea will come from. Sometimes I see a color and it makes me think I can make a dessert from it.

Joy Wilson: That's really beautiful. Can I ask you about Paris? I know you live in Paris, also Connecticut, also New York?

Dorie Greenspan: Yup.

Joy Wilson: Okay. Casual, casual. What parts of Paris do you find you bring back to American kitchens, and what parts of cooking in the States do you take back to Paris?

Dorie Greenspan: So, I probably do more cooking in Paris than I do anyplace else, and I think it's because it's so easy to have people over. I don't know why, nobody seems busy in Paris. You say, "Hi, I'm going to the market tomorrow. Do you want to come for dinner?", and people say yes. In New York, it's like, "Could you go to the market in six weeks and invite me?" I mean, it just takes too long.

Dorie Greenspan: It's really ingredients that inspire me, that make me think. I kind of never know what I'm going to cook until I'm out there looking around. I love to cook some American food in France for my French friends, so I like to do burgers for a whole dinner and put out different things that people can mix and max. They never do. My French friends would like me to either give them the food exactly as I want them to, or they will just line it up very beautifully. So I'll often do some American things in Paris and have fun with that.

Dorie Greenspan: I used to bring literally bring back ingredients. I don't any longer because everything is available, but I sometimes feel, the first week that I'm in Paris I feel like my head is exploding. I feel like there's something in the air that makes you have a trillion ideas.

Joy Wilson: It's that spot for you, yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: That's exactly right, it's that spot. There was a connection, the first time I put my foot down on the sidewalk in Paris I thought, "My mother had me in Brooklyn when she could have had me here."

Joy Wilson: So rude.

Dorie Greenspan: Yeah, and Brooklyn was not hip and groovy then.

Joy Wilson: I feel that way about New Orleans. And also in New Orleans people will come to dinner. They aren't as busy. They make time.

Joy Wilson: What did I want to ask you next? Oh, I want to talk about ...

Dorie Greenspan: I'll help you.

Joy Wilson: Thank you.

Dorie Greenspan: Tell me about your cooking school. You do this at home, right?

Joy Wilson: Yeah, I do. I have a cooking school in New Orleans, it's called The Bakehouse, and it's a double shotgun so half of the house is my studio, and it's a giant, open kitchen where 12 people come three or four times a month to learn how to cook with me.

Dorie Greenspan: Children? Ever children?

Joy Wilson: No children. I don't know about them, you know? I just don't. It's true.

Dorie Greenspan: I knew about one.

Joy Wilson: Yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: I knew about one.

Joy Wilson: I don't know what they can do, what they can't do. You know, I just ... So, no. Adults. Yeah, but it's a really wonderful way to bring my creative work on the internet into real life, which is what I feel like we need.

Dorie Greenspan: You know, real life is not ... Wait, I was going to say real life is not underrated, but it's real life is not overrated, right?

Joy Wilson: It depends on what you're trying to say.

Dorie Greenspan: Real life is great, that's the-

Joy Wilson: It's so good.

Dorie Greenspan: It's lonely out there in cyberspace sometimes.

Joy Wilson: Yeah, I think we have kind of reached the peak of what we can do only on the internet.

Dorie Greenspan: Okay, you know what? I said that, but I really ... Because I'm not a millennial, because I'm not a native digital person, because I started working ... My husband just found my proposal from my dissertation, and it's on ... I miss that paper, that kind of speckley onion skinny paper that I used to type my proposal on.

Dorie Greenspan: But because I'm essentially old, I'm excited by the internet. When it arrived, I couldn't believe that there were all of these people out there that I could learn about. The first time I saw somebody post a picture of something that they made from one of my books, I started to cry. I called my husband. Because as a writer, before the internet you sat at home and you wrote, and you didn't know who was out there. You just sent your work out and every once in a while you would meet someone maybe who knew something about what you were doing. There was no way that the work came back to you and that you could see the reaction, and I have never stopped being excited about the internet because I feel it does bring us together in a way where we can share what we know, we can learn from one another, and I got to see someone make that chocolate cake.

Joy Wilson: In 2008 my blog had just started, and I was part of Tuesdays with Dorie.

Dorie Greenspan: You were?

Joy Wilson: Oh girl, yes. Yeah, and so every Tuesday there were maybe 50 of us on the internet. We would bake one of your recipes from your baking book and post it every Tuesday, and it was such a beautiful way to have community on the internet.

Dorie Greenspan: I'm still in touch with a bunch of the Tuesday's. This was a group that was started by a woman whom I've never met in Pittsburgh. She wrote to me and said, "I just got your cookbook. I'd like to bake my way through it with two of my friends, and we're going to blog, just the three of us. Is that okay?" This was 2007, and I didn't know what okay meant, because I didn't know what the internet meant. And I thought, "Yeah, this is great."

Dorie Greenspan: And I remember going to a conference a year later and having people saying to me, "Aren't you afraid it will hurt your book sales? Do you want your recipes all over the internet?" And I thought, "Yeah, I do. I do. I want these people to be baking and sharing what they know." And I think I was right.

Joy Wilson: You were right.

Dorie Greenspan: I think I was right, yeah.

Joy Wilson: You are also very generous.

Dorie Greenspan: No, because I think it's the opportunity for people ... Okay, do I have a second to preach?

Joy Wilson: Five minutes.

Dorie Greenspan: Okay, I just want to tell you how I feel about baking in case you don't know. I feel that baking is magic. I felt it from the start, that we're transforming ingredients with our hands, more so than in cooking. I mean, when you make a steak you look at the steak, you cook it, it looks like a steak. But with baking, everything you do is a transformation. It's magical, it changes. With the same ingredients you can make a thousand things, and you make it with your hands and you make it to share with someone, because even I don't bake for myself. It's always meant to be shared, and there's a sense of satisfaction of having made something from start to finish yourself.

Dorie Greenspan: And so when I saw people out in wherever internet people are, baking and writing about the fact that they had made these recipes, and talking about whether they served them to their family, or they took them to a potluck dinner, or it was part of a church reception, or a woman who sent me a picture that she had made all of the desserts for her brothers wedding. This was extraordinary to me, and I think it's-

Joy Wilson: Well, it's people who share in the magic with you.

Dorie Greenspan: But I think this is what food is about.

Joy Wilson: Absolutely. We only have a few minutes left, and I really must get this piece of information from you. It's a question I like to ask anyone I can. So the question is, it's two parts, what is the best piece of advice you've ever received, and what is the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Dorie Greenspan: I think the best piece of advice I ever got, and Sophia said it as well, is the same piece of advice that I give, and that's say yes even when you're terrified.

Joy Wilson: Always, yeah.

Dorie Greenspan: I mean, you worked as a baker and you said you had, right? I worked as a baker when I had ... Well, I got fired very quickly, but I briefly worked as a baker when I had no experience and all I had was the desire, this is what I wanted to do. Even going to that demo where I met Julia, I was so scared, but I knew I had to say yes. And so yeah, it's the same piece of advice given and taken.

Joy Wilson: It's making friend with the fear and pushing yourself, and just so you don't feel alone, I've also been fired from two baker jobs. Oops.

Dorie Greenspan: It took me years to realize how fabulous, the reason that I was ... Was it the cause? Whatever she said I was fired for was really a great thing. I was fired for creative insubordination.

Joy Wilson: Amazing.

Dorie Greenspan: It's pretty great. It took me years. It took me years. Yeah, I changed the recipe and didn't tell anyone.

Joy Wilson: You are perfect. Thank you, Dorie.

Dorie Greenspan: Thank you Joy.

Joy Wilson: It's such a pleasure and honor.

Dorie Greenspan: Thank you everyone.

Kerry Diamond: That's it for today's show. If you want to see what Jubilee is all about, tickets are on sale right for our Jubilee Seattle conference taking place Saturday, November 2nd at Block 41. We would love to see you there.

Kerry Diamond: Thank you to today's sponsors Traeger Wood Fired Grills and Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Schools. Don't forget, we would love if you could support the Hunger Doesn't Take A Break initiative from the Food Bank for New York City. Visit foodbanknyc.org for more.

Kerry Diamond: Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Media. Our show is edited, engineered and produced by the one and only Jess Zeidman. Cherry Bombe is powered by Lauren Goldstein, Audrey Payne, Kia Damon, Donna Yen, Maria Sanchez, and our publisher Kate Miller-Spencer. Our theme song is All Fired Up by the band Tralala. Thanks for listening everybody. You're the bombe.

When Harry Met Sally Clip: I'll have what she's having.

Mayumi Hattori: Hi. My name is Mayumi, and I'm the chef and partner at the Club Car Restaurant. Do you want to know who I think is the bombe? I think Jessica Koslow of Sqirl in Los Angeles is the bombe because she's a bad ass and truly authentic to herself. In cooking food that is so personal, craveable, and simply delicious in the comfortable setting of Sqirl, she's changed the dialog and elevated the standard on what we think of the American breakfast and lunch. I embrace her philosophy that the food you make should be what you want to eat every day.