Waffles:
Hi, I'm Waffles, and this is Mochi.
Michelle Obama:
Hello, Waffles and Mochi. Are you ready for an amazing adventure?
Mochi:
(Singing).
Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombe squad. Welcome to a bonus episode of Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond. Today is the debut of Waffles and Mochi, the Netflix series that just happens to star Michelle Obama and two special creatures from The Land of Frozen Food. The Cherry Bombe team hasn't been this excited since Ina Garten made that giant cosmo during quarantine. Waffles and Mochi is a kid's show and it comes from the brilliant mind of its co-creator, Erika Thormahlen. Erika joins me shortly to talk about how an idea she had 16 years ago for a puppet show about kids in the kitchen called Waffles and Mouse Meat became a major Netflix series featuring the beloved first lady. It's also produced by the Obama's Production Company. Waffles and Mochi also features guest appearances from some of Cherry Bombe's favorite chefs like Samin Nosrat, Mashama Bailey, and Bricia Lopez. I plan to binge watch later, and I'm guessing some of you will too.
Kerry Diamond:
Today's bonus episode is brought to you by Cypress Grove, the makers of delicious American goat cheese. Mary Keene, the founder of Cypress Grove wanted fresh goat's milk for her children. So she wound up with some goats and more goat's milk than she knew what to do with. Mary taught herself how to make cheese and help kick off an artisanal cheese making revolution in the US. Fast forward, today Cypress Grove is an international award winning cheese maker that promotes humane goat dairying, that's still proudly based in California, and is known for its gorgeous cheeses, like one of my absolute favorites, Humboldt Fog, the distinctive soft-ripened goat cheese. And there is their brand new Little Giant, a fudgy little goat cheese that's kind of like a brie. Want to try Cyprus Grove for yourself? Ask at your favorite cheese counter and be sure to visit cypressgrovecheese.com. Now, for my chat with Erika Thormahlen of Waffles and Mochi. We have just been obsessed since the first second we heard about Waffles and Mochi, so it's such an honor to have you on the podcast.
Erika Thormahlen:
Oh gosh, that is so exciting to hear. It's really fun that people are finding out about it.
Kerry Diamond:
So I read that back in 2005 you had a puppet show called What's Cooking with waffles and moose meat. What was that show all about?
Erika Thormahlen:
So I'll have to correct you there. It's mouse meat.
Kerry Diamond:
[crosstalk 00:02:42] mouse meat.
Erika Thormahlen:
I like moose meat though.
Kerry Diamond:
It says mouse meat on my question. I can't read. Mouse meet. Moose meat.
Erika Thormahlen:
Moose meat would have been probably a more realistic cut of meat.
Kerry Diamond:
That was so funny. Mouse meat, okay. [crosstalk 00:02:59].
Erika Thormahlen:
Yeah. So “What's Cooking With Waffles and Mouse Meat” was the sort of prototype, I think, for what is now going to be known as Waffles and Mochi. Mouse meat was my childhood nickname. It's what my dad used to call me. And yeah, it was sort of the first footprint of this concept of getting puppets in a kitchen, went out in the world on what we called food trips, which is just being on field trips, talking to chefs and people in the food space for kids to just engage more in the kitchen and get to know what was on their plate.
Kerry Diamond:
What was the seed, the light bulb moment where you were like, I want to do this show about puppets and these characters and have it centered around food?
Erika Thormahlen:
I really love plush kind of creatures and that world of Henson and Sesame, obviously, and personally, it was sort of a personal dream because I was a really picky eater growing up. Dinner time was really stressful in our house. I was scared of a lot of things. I have been thinking back on this whole experience and I think one of the desires was there were a few foods that I did enjoy as a child and they were all meals that I was allowed to participate in. My dad was a fly fisherman because I grew up in Oregon. So I would go fishing with dad and I loved fried trout. That is the thing that I was on the top of the menu request or for instance, we would go pick tomatoes in the summer in Southern Oregon, and tomatoes can be a tricky food for a kid because they're a little slimy, a little gelatinous in the centers, and that was another fan favorite.
Erika Thormahlen:
And then another example, I went to school on a farm, kind of like hippy-dippy Oregon style, and we milked goats and goat milk was a thing I love. So there were these little weird blips of stranger foods, so to speak, that were my favorites. And I think looking back, it was because I was allowed to participate and have ownership over maybe where the food came from or how the food was prepared. And in other cases, my mother was very much locked in the kitchen and didn't want really anyone helping her fussing. And that world was very mysterious to me. So I think at the heart of our show, just for me, I know if I had had a show growing up as a child that talked to me about food and showed me food up close and where it came from, and who's growing it and how you cook it, and how you can adjust flavors for instance, with something as simple as salt, maybe dinner times would have been more joyful, less stressful.
Kerry Diamond:
So as I mentioned, Waffles and Mouse Meat had its debut in 2005. So obviously there is 16 years in between Waffles and Mochi and Waffles and Mouse Meat. What happened in those 16 years?
Erika Thormahlen:
It's fun to run through those 16 years just at light speed because that is what happened. Waffles and Mouse Meat didn't go anywhere. Jeremy and I joke, because Jeremy was involved in that as well. Jeremy Connor, my co-creator, because you used the word debut, I don't know that that was actually really any kind of project that debuted to the world, unless you mean a YouTube link was created, but truly, I don't think the world was ready to see kids in a kitchen. I briefly interned and worked for Sesame Street for a bit at their corporate offices, and I brought the show to my boss and she very kindly sat me down as a young wide-eyed intern and said, "Yeah, I don't know that kids in a kitchen is going to work out. There all of these issues with liability. And I'm going to walk you through some of the things that on Sesame Street we deal with on a daily basis in terms of our production."
Erika Thormahlen:
And so truly I went off, I put this dream in a drawer and thought, "Well, this isn't going to happen," and that really made me sad, and I thought I would pursue children's media through another angle, like going back to school, getting my master's in education and trying to mine that territory through other people's ideas and projects. And that just took me spinning, right? I was in a classroom teaching a preschool, and then I got a hold of the school newsletter and discovered I really liked writing copy and ended up falling into branding and copywriting for a fashion and beauty company. So there was a lot that occupied my time in those 16 years, but Waffles and Mouse Meat was laid to rest. It was RIP Mouse Meat.
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. Okay, I didn't realize that. And you had been an actor previously. Why did you walk away from that?
Erika Thormahlen:
Acting is a funny thing. I love the set life. I love working with film and TV people, but when you're an actor, especially in the early arts, when I was an actress, I didn't have a lot of control over my career. Also, I wanted to go back and get my degree and I had pressed pause on that. So I went back to school and life took me to New York and a whole different world.
Kerry Diamond:
Now, how did you connect with Jeremy?
Erika Thormahlen:
So Jeremy is a longtime friend. When I was going to school at UCLA I had this pod of friends and everyone was very creative, doing different things. A lot of musicians, I wanted desperately to learn how to play the drums, but I don't have any rhythms. A lot of musician friends that went on to be successful filmmakers. Obviously Jeremy went on to co-create and direct history and another period. We kept in touch. We would see each other at weddings and various friend group hangs. And it was a serendipitous run-in at Little Dom's. I was visiting from New York and getting lunch with a pal and Jeremy was in the booth behind us. And so we just said a little high. And then as he was leaving literally through the doors, he said, "Oh, I've got a three-year-old now that won't eat a tomato. I wish that show was on television. I can't get her to eat a tomato."
Kerry Diamond:
Wow. So that was the last part?
Erika Thormahlen:
I'm such a dog with a bone. I went home and I emailed him and I'm like, "Let's do this. Let's do it now." And so we got together and had dinner and sort of hashed out a new vision for the show.
Kerry Diamond:
And that was “Listen To Your Vegetables And Eat Your Parents?”
Erika Thormahlen:
Kids encounter foods in two ways, at least in my experience. From a fear-based place where they're being pulled to try new things, or from the strictly nutritional place where you have a pyramid at school and you've got to eat X, Y, and Z. And there's not a lot of room to just be wild and crazy and wacky and listen to your vegetables and eat your parents was like... That was just our directive throughout creating the show and developing it. It was like, what is fun? What is unexpected? What is surprising? What makes parents laugh, as well as kids? So yeah, that was the original title on the show.
Kerry Diamond:
And how did you get in front of Michelle Obama's production company?
Erika Thormahlen:
Jeremy and I are constantly pinching ourselves because it really is the tiniest needle head that we threaded and it... On some ways by accident. So, we went back and forth once we ran into each other and hashed out this new vision for the show, new characters, and we sat on it. We got it all together, what they call a pitch in a pitch deck, and then Jeremy's management sent it out to some folks, and it was just... And we thought, "Well, yeah, it's a pretty wacky idea sending puppets around the world to eat food." And then Jeremy spotted that Priya Swaminathan, who he had sat with on a panel at South by Southwest had just been hired at higher ground. And he said, "Do you think we should send it to Priya?"
Erika Thormahlen:
And I was like, "Yeah, why not? It's just like shoot for the moon at this point. No one's calling us back." And then she called and we had lunch within a week and I can flash back to that lunch. We were so, so nervous. But she arrived at the table fully embracing the whole vision and was so excited about it. And Jeremy and I think about it like this, it's like, of course the Obama's, just the coolest people in the world could see the potential behind this crazy idea. I mean, that's really just it, it's testament to how cool they are.
Kerry Diamond:
That's amazing. So I don't know a lot about how TV shows are made, so you'll have to walk us through this, but once Netflix gave the show the green light, what happened next?
Erika Thormahlen:
So Jeremy and I moved into a broom closet, sort of. We were working out of this really great animation studio and creating the nuts and bolts and DNA of the show. We had had this vision of Waffles and Mochi, these characters from the land of frozen food, entering the world of our food. We came up with this idea that every episode would be a single ingredient that we would focus on like pickles. When we're telling a story about pickles, what are we actually telling a story about? We're talking about patience, about waiting, which is such a kid friendly idea, or assault episode is all about moderation, right? Waffles and Mochi oversalt their chocolate chip cookies and just destroy the first batch. When I was teaching in preschool, kids would go crazy with glitter and glue, and it was all about trying to moderate their use of their favorite things.
Waffles:
So tell me about waffles. How did waffles evolve or not evolve?
Erika Thormahlen:
I'll say Samin Nosrat was our kind of North star. At the time, Salt Fat Acid Heat and her cookbook had come out and just that attitude that shared the light, whenever you encounter food or a kitchen or new friends was really baked into who Waffles was. Mochi is her best friend that's a little more skeptical. He's the one that can't find the egg that's right for his taste buds in our egg episode, right? He's not as gung ho. He thinks before he leaps, whereas Waffles is just jumping into the mix without any hesitation.
Kerry Diamond:
You mentioned Samin. We love Samin, she was on our cover. We were thrilled to see she's on the show. What role does she play?
Erika Thormahlen:
I can't stress enough how much of a guiding light, a soundboard, a cheerleader she's been from start to finish. She appears in Waffles and Mochi's first field trip out of the supermarket, right on their first mission to figure out where tomato belongs. They end up in Samin's... Her front yard, the yard she shares with her neighbors. And it's in that garden that Waffles and Mochi take their first bite of fresh food of their lives. They taste just a sun ripen tomato. It has this sort of Eden-like feeling with Samin picking tomatoes and Waffles and Mochi being brought into our world of fresh food through her eyes. It's just such a fun jumping off point.
Kerry Diamond:
I wanted to ask you about your parents. You had mentioned them earlier. I read that beautiful essay you wrote for The Cut about remembering your mother through her favorite beauty products. And then I saw that post you had written on Instagram about not being able to share the news about Waffles and Mochi with your parents. And I just first wanted to say, I've gotten so much joy just from the trailer. And I'm sorry, although you did say that you know that they know how exciting and special this is.
Erika Thormahlen:
Oh you're pulling a Barbara Walters, Kerry. No, no, no. In the best way. I'm an easy crier. I'll cry at anything. It's both the best moment of my life and in some cases, a sad one. It's funny, I really do think my mother is up there pulling strings from whatever cosmic balcony seat she has because it was a few years ago, before this, before Jeremy came into my life again, when Waffles and Mochi was in that sort of figurative drawer of my life, she had gone to get her hair done at a hair salon and saw People Magazine about Mrs. Obama and her new white house garden and I still have the email. She emailed me from her phone, I guess, in the hair salon chair and said, "I think you should reach out to Mrs. Obama about Listen to Your Vegetables and Eat Your Parents.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh my gosh, I just got goosebumps. She did?
Erika Thormahlen:
Yes. And it's so crazy. From Southern Oregon, we have no connections to the White House, but that was how mom thought about life, just going for it and finding a way and dreaming big, and it happened. And I would love for her to know that it did.
Kerry Diamond:
I didn't ask why was your nickname moose... And I said moose meat again, why was your nickname mouse meat?
Erika Thormahlen:
I was a really shy child. I think I was small enough to be meat for a mouse. I don't know. I never asked him about that. Another moment
Kerry Diamond:
Another moment when I got goosebumps was when I read that you hope to do for eating what Sesame Street did for learning. I thought that was beautiful.
Erika Thormahlen:
I mean, that's going to make me cry as well because I think about how impactful Sesame was on my life and so many children, right? It was one of the first programs. I think that showed an urban setting with a diverse cast in a real way. I would be so honored if we could do that for food in the way that Sesame Street brought representation and literacy to the foreground for kids in television when they did.
Kerry Diamond:
I was the first Sesame Street generation. So my age, we were the first kids to have Sesame Street, which is so amazing. So I'm just so thrilled that there's going to be a whole generation that grows up on Waffles and Mochi. I just think that's amazing. I have to ask, what was your... What is, or was your favorite Sesame Street character?
Erika Thormahlen:
Oh, Cookie Monster. I love Cookie Monster still today at one of my favorites. There's a Siri Apple commercial with outtakes of Cookie Monster. I love when cookie monster appears on my television.
Kerry Diamond:
A girlfriend of mine is in Hawaii and was sending us all these pictures of rainbows. And I was trying to find Kermit singing the rainbow connection from the original Muppet movie. And I found it and I started just sobbing. It's such a beautiful song.
Erika Thormahlen:
Check out Kermit singing with Lena Horne when you get a chance if you really want to weep.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh gosh. Okay. I will. I'll save it for after this. Okay. We're going to do a speed round and then I will let you go because you have had a very busy and next week is going to be even busier. What is a treasured cookbook from your collection and why?
Erika Thormahlen:
That's easy. It's Salt Fat Acid Heat. I just find that to be the most accessible, easy, fun. I love the illustrations. You really just feel like it's from Samin's soul.
Kerry Diamond:
You know what? We didn't even ask you. Do you cook?
Erika Thormahlen:
I used to cook before I started this show, Kerry. If you were to look at my diet, I would be so ashamed to reveal how many diet red bulls I've drank in the last two years.
Kerry Diamond:
What is your most used kitchen tool?
Erika Thormahlen:
The toaster. I make a lot of toast.
Kerry Diamond:
Last pantry purchase.
Erika Thormahlen:
Peanut butter. Always peanut butter. Never enough of the Santa Cruz dark roasted peanut butter. Creamier, crunchy. It doesn't matter.
Kerry Diamond:
A song you love to cook to.
Erika Thormahlen:
”All Night Long,” Lionel Richie.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the oldest thing in your fridge?
Erika Thormahlen:
Gosh, there's some ancient stuff in there. Probably some moldy sweet peppers.
Kerry Diamond:
Who would be your dream kitchen partner?
Erika Thormahlen:
The Swedish Chef.
Kerry Diamond:
I love the Swedish Chef. Somebody told me that Swedish Chef was based on Julia Child. And Julia is in the opening of Waffles and Mochi, right?
Erika Thormahlen:
Yes. So Waffles and Mochi live in their little lighthouse in the Land of Frozen Food, but they do have a television set and they seem to get PBS. So yes, Julia Child is their idol.
Kerry Diamond:
I love that nod to PBS and the home of Sesame Street and all of that. Erika, thank you so much. This was such a privilege to talk to you. And I just think you put the most beautiful thing into the world. And thank you for... I know it's really busy time for you. I appreciate you taking the time.
Erika Thormahlen:
Thank you for bringing Cherry Bombe to the world because that was monumental.
Kerry Diamond:
Coming from you that means a lot. I wish you the best of luck, and thank you again, Erika.
Erika Thormahlen:
Thank you, Kerry.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Erika Thormahlen. I am such a fan. I don't know about you listeners, but I am off to watch some Netflix, Waffles and Mochi debuts today. Oh, and be sure to check out wafflesandmochi.org to learn how the partnership for healthier America is working with Michelle Obama and the show to distribute meal kits to 1 million households in communities across the country. Thank you to Cypress Grove for supporting our podcast. Radio Cherry Bombe is produced by Cherry Bombe media. And this show was edited and engineered by Jenna Sadhu. I don't know Jenna's favorite Sesame Street character, but I'm going to find out. Thank you for listening everybody. You are the bombe.
Harry from When Harry Met Sally:
I'll have what she's having.