Hetty McKinnon Transcript

 Hetty McKinnon Transcript

Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe. I'm host Kerry Diamond. Today, we've got a bonus episode for you. It's my conversation with Hetty McKinnon, from the Cherry Bombe Cooks & Books Festival. Held last month at the new Ace Hotel Brooklyn. Hetty is a cookbook author, recipe developer, lover of vegetables, a podcaster, and an indie magazine publisher. She and I talked about at her latest cookbook titled To Asia, With Love, the topic of representation and more. I always love talking to Hetty and I'm happy to share our conversation with you in just a few minutes. Today's show is presented by Käserei Cambozola cheese and Modern Sprout. Modern Sprout's mission is to uncomplicate indoor gardening. I love my house plants, but I was not born with a green thumb. And I'm glad Modern Sprout is around to help folks like me. When we last talked about Modern Sprout, I had ordered two of their hydroponic grow kits, and just yesterday I set up my cilantro kit on my window sill. You could see the pictures on my Instagram story, it could not have been easier.

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All right. Some housekeeping. Don't forget our very Cherry Bombe Friendsgiving is underway. I interviewed Drew Barrymore yesterday to kick things off. And today marks the return of our All-Star Pie Panel, moderated by Jessie Sheehan of the Vintage Baker. We've got special events happening through next Friday. So visit cherrybombe.com to learn more about all the events we have planned. Our Friendsgiving festivities are free and open to all. Thanks to our sponsors, Kerrygold, Sanpellegrino, Sir Kensington's, California Prunes, Sequoia Grove Winery and Cakebread Cellars. Now here's my conversation with Hetty McKinnon from Cherry Bombe Cooks & Books at Ace Hotel Brooklyn.

I want to start with this beautiful cover and the name of this book. It came out at a time when I feel like the world really needed a book titled To Asia, With Love. And I would love to know how you came up with the title.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah, I mean, that was really unexpected. I knew I wanted to do an Asian book and the name of a book comes very quickly to me. With the other three books, I actually had a name before I had a book. So that's usually how I start with a book. It's a name, it's a feeling, it's like the vibe of the story I want to tell. With this one, I kind of felt like with this book, there was more at stake, and I did want to really differentiate this book to the others, which are all one word titles. This one, actually I got it from all my works are kind of interrelated. They all weave together and To Asia, With Love was actually the name of my Asian chapter in Neighbourhood, my second book Neighbourhood.

So to me, it just really captured everything about what I wanted to say about not only the flavors of my childhood, but I felt this huge gratitude to growing up. Not only with Chinese parents, but this culture, this Asian culture that perhaps I didn't always appreciate growing up, if I'm going to be quite honest and just dive right in to why writing this book was so important to me, but I really wanted it to be a love letter. So hence there's a comma after Asia, which I always say to people when you're writing it, don't forget the comma because it is like a love letter to me to all the influence of Asian culture.

Kerry Diamond:
Before we jump into a few other things, I want to hear more about your mom and your dad because you write so evocatively about them in the book and the family's food culture. Which like you said, didn't even realize was a food culture necessarily. When you were young, tell us about your mom.

Hetty McKinnon:
I definitely didn't appreciate it. I mean, my parents are from Guangdong Province in Southern China. They came to Australia my dad in the '50s, my mom in the early '60s and they got married. It was un-arrangement, it was very unfathomable to us now, but they settled in the suburbs of Sydney had three children. I lived in the same house, my entire life. And my mother was really is a remarkable person because she's had to live many lives and kind of getting emotional, but her life I don't really understand it in many ways, because she was only educated till she was about 14. And then her life became about getting out of China, getting to a better place. And so there was a long passage for her to get to Australia.

My dad's passage was very different. He actually came to Australia as a student when he was a teenager with his dad. But immigrant history is really interesting when it's your parents because my dad actually passed away when I was a teenager. And his story is like a big hole in my family history that I probably never really understand. But my mom doesn't like to talk about her passage much because there's a lot of pain there, I think. And immigrants like to look forward. So to dwell in the past it's almost like bringing bad luck or something. She just wants to think about the fear. So she gives me snippets every now and then of the things that she endured before getting to Australia. And my mom never had the opportunity to work in Australia.

So she was at home all the time. And so every memory I have with her is of her cooking really. I mean, when she was awake, she was doing something to do with food, whether that was... She'd wake up in the morning, she'd be already making these elaborate... There's a breakfast chapter in this book. It's all savory, mostly savory breakfasts. So she'd be making fried rice or noodles or this macaroni soup, which is this kind of Cantonese dish. And at the time I just kind of thought, oh, that's so annoying that she has to make all this food for breakfast, just wants cereal or toast, but she's like just forcing us all this food on us. And so I guess that sums up the way I saw her attitude to food.

It was just so excessive and always cooking, always shopping for food. My dad actually worked at the markets. And so there was just literally food all over the house, like fresh produce. And so yeah, I didn't understand it. And then it was only now really, it took a long time for me to understand it. And it was really, really moving to New York. Well, actually before that it was starting to cook, because I had this salad business in Sydney where I had rode salads around on my bike to my local neighborhood, which Community is about that business. And she would come over when I was cooking and she was meant to be babysitting, but she would actually wash vegetables or really tell me I wasn't washing vegetables properly. I wasn't chopping properly. And then at the time I thought it was kind of annoying, but it was really important because it really made me see her in a different way.

It's like, oh wow, she's talking to me like I'm one of her friends. And I saw just how much knowledge she had, how much lived experience she had. And she was recommending ingredients for me to use and it really brought us closer together and it was food that really brought us closer together and established for the first time a common language between the two of us because I do speak Cantonese, but not well enough to have really deep conversations. So yeah, food really brought us together and it really made me appreciate the things that she did, the lengths that she went to and it made me see that what she was doing by cooking for us, so ferocious, cooking so much, I think that was her way of staying connected to her homeland, keeping those traditions alive for us that we were growing up in a vastly different experience and world that she experienced. So the food was just really her way of bringing her world into ours. And so it took me a long time to understand that and to come around to that. And I guess it's all in the book.

Kerry Diamond:
I want to talk about your dad also, you mentioned that you lost your dad way too young. But there is a big part of him in this book and I'm going to pivot to talking about the design of the book for a second. Can you tell us how the special way your dad is represented in this book?

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah, My dad, as I mentioned, he worked at the markets, but he was an avid amateur photographer. He had cameras all over the house and actually inherited one of his, well, I didn't inherit it. I just took it. It's one of his film cameras. So my dad doesn't figure a lot in my work. He will actually, spoiler a alert, but up until now, he hasn't been a huge part of the story because so much of my journey in food happened after he died. Well, actually, so many of the things that I've done happened after he died.

So I really wanted a part of him in the book, so I took all the photos myself using his camera and a couple of other cameras too. And it's all on film. So it was quite an endeavor. I didn't think that my publishers would agree to it. And it's the first time in my life. I did this whole mood board for my publishers because I thought I would have to convince them to let me shoot this book on film myself because I'm actually not a photographer. But they agreed without even thinking about it because they just knew that, that photography would be part of the story. So, yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
It's such a beautiful book and the first time I looked through it, I looked through it before I read it. And then when I read that it was your dad's camera, it just takes on a whole other meaning. I mean the book is a love letter in so many layered ways to so many things. Let's talk about some of the recipes because people love you and your recipes, Hetty. I always ask what's the most sentimental recipe in a cookbook, but I'm guessing every single one of these is sentimental to you for different reasons.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. I do have the most sentimental one and it's the steamed water egg custard called shui dan, which translates to water egg. And it's the recipe with the least ingredients in the book water, salt, egg, but it was the hardest recipe. I've been trying to cook this recipe since I left Australia, which was six years ago and I've published the recipe before in Peddler and it was not where it is now. It's taken me a really long time to get this right. It's basically a savory steamed egg. It's very fashion more at the moment on Instagram because there's a microwave version. But I would never put mine in the microwave because it just means the texture of it is so silky and it's wobbly without, it's just like just on the cusp being cooked.

And my mom made this dish for me a lot growing up, I mean basically she would make it and just put it in front of me and I would just eat that with rice. So it just conjure so many memories and the texture of it, I just couldn't get it right. It was like the cursed recipe for me for many years. And I just didn't know what I was doing wrong. And then there's been so many phone calls about this recipe. And my mom takes a lot of delight when I can't cook something that is one of her recipes. So she would just be just saying, "Oh, it's so easy. I don't know why you can't do it."

And she'd always say, "Low heat, low and slow, low and slow." And that was one detail just wasn't paying attention to, for some reason when you write recipes, it's all about formulas and it's about amounts. And so a lot of the time she... So for this particular recipe, she based it on a dish. So it's the fish dish. You use the fish dish, you do your eggs and then you add the water up to when it's like the first ridge on your finger, the water gets up to there and that's how much water you use. And I'm like, okay, I don't even know what to do with this. So luckily I had the fish dish with me. I brought it with me from Australia.

Kerry Diamond:
When you say fish dish, I'm envisioning a dish shaped like a fish-

Hetty McKinnon:
Oh, fish dish. It's a dish. It's just a round dish, but it has a fish painted in it. It's a Chinese dish. I think when I Instagramed it, actually a lot of people say, "Oh, I have that dish." So it's not unique to my family. But that's how she refers to dishes. There's another one called the old and dish, which has an old man painted on it. So yeah, that's how she does her recipes or she did a recipe. She told me a recipe recently and she said, "It's a rice bowl full of flour." And I'm like what rice bowl? Because all my rice bowls are different sizes. So yeah, she's not very or recipe developer. But yeah, I mean this dish, so I actually measured everything out and then it's details like cold boiled water.

And when I put that in a book, I actually put it in the book and people are like, "Why does it have to be boiled and then cold?" And she's convinced that this is the secret because actually what it is, it is scientific, it's basically like a particular temperature of water that allows the egg to emulsify with the water. So in her description, it's cold board water and you know what? To be honest, I embrace all of that now. It's kind of crazy, but I think there is so much knowledge from our elders that it's based on things that they've learnt through from their elders and through touch and through sight. And there are things that we don't use enough in the kitchen. So I embrace all of that in my cooking now. And if she says, "Use cold board water," that's what I'm going to use.

And I still measure water when I cook my rice, using the ridge on my finger because that's how she does it. Lots of Asian moms have different ways of measuring water for rice. But yeah. Anyway then this dish, there's steamed water egg custard, they've got to the point where I was like, I've tried everything and the only thing I haven't tried is the low and slow. And it actually happened by accident. I think I had the temperature on wrong and one day it came out perfect just like hers. And it shows you, I always have to listen to, mum's always right.

So that is probably the most sentimental dish for me. Just because it just has so many memories and it was so hard to get right. It's really weird, taking another generations recipes and trying translate them to a modern cookbook. And I always try and do that in, I don't often do recipes exactly the way my mom does them. I mean, I don't do it consciously, but I do think it is conscious in a way because they're her recipes and that was her expression. And so I want to bring my expression to it too.

Kerry Diamond:
I've never asked you, what did your mom think of the book?

Hetty McKinnon:
Oh, my mom was like, she's so unique. I wouldn't even know.

Kerry Diamond:
Like when people people say it was interesting.

Hetty McKinnon:
Basically yes. She does not give praise at all really. And I mean, she gives my children praise, but not me. And so yeah, it hasn't really said that much about it actually. She's kind of unimpressed by all of this, which is fine because if she was impressed, I would be surprised. I remember for one of the... Because I self-published Community originally and then it came out nationally with a publisher and when we got the revised edition, she was with me when the currier arrived with the very first copy and she said something like, "Oh the papers nice." Or something like that. She didn't think anything of anything else really. But it's fine. I mean, I like it because it keeps it real. Right?

Kerry Diamond:
That's so funny. I need to ask about your love of vegetables.

Hetty McKinnon:
Oh yeah.

Kerry Diamond:
Where I consider Hetty like the salad queen in my life. Where does this love of vegetables come from?

Hetty McKinnon:
Honestly I think it comes from my dad and it's been something I've been exploring Kerry.

Kerry Diamond:
I didn't know this. So, I didn't plan that question.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. I mean I've always loved vegetables. I think about these things a lot guys. It sounds weird. I do think about vegetables a lot and I think of why things happen? I've been a vegetarian since I was a teenager. I wasn't before that. So I have eaten many different types of dishes and meats. But making that decision to switch to kind of a vegetable based diet was really easy for me. I do think it's because I've just always grown up with vegetables. My sister's also vegetarian and it just makes me feel so excited to cook. And I think vegetables are inherently, I mean you got to think about vegetables in a really different way to like a piece of meat. It does require you to be more creative in a way.

And I'm not saying that you have to labor over every dish, but it's about thinking about it. I think so many, in a lot of cuisine, the vegetable is like the side dish and it's the thing that people are giving all the attention to the meat and then the vegetables are forgotten. And I firmly believe whatever you do with piece of meat you can do with vegetables, and in terms of cooking method, and high heat, vegetables love high heat and I find the world of vegetables so exciting and I'm always learning new things about it. And particularly with the newer work that I'm doing, it's like bringing it more into the Asian food that I grew up eating and how I bring even more vegetables into that. So I just think it just makes me so happy and it's so thrilling to be able to make like a broccoli really exciting.

Kerry Diamond:
Where do you shop for your vegetables in the city?

Hetty McKinnon:
I think New York is so amazing. I remember when I first go out here, I could not believe you have these green markets all around the city and from the produce that's been grown locally. I mean, we have markets in Sydney, but not like this where during the week and they're pretty well priced. So I do go to green markets. I have two near me on the weekends, I go to Union Square when I can, I love Union Square Market. It's brilliant.

Kerry Diamond:
What are you obsessed with right now? The season's fully changing right now. So we've got a lot of beautiful new things at the farmers markets.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. I mean, on Wednesday I went to Union Market and it was so amazing. It was probably the most amazing day I'd ever seen there because it's summer right now in October. So there was tomatoes and peaches next to squash or pumpkin. And it was incredible. It was like all four seasons were available at the markets. But I'm really in love with the honey nut squash, the little baby ones that fit in the palm of your hand. And they're so sweet and I'm obsessed with those right now.

Kerry Diamond:
Tell us what you're doing with them.

Hetty McKinnon:
Well, the other day, I just peeled them and then just roasted them whole. And I put some sort of like Baharat or something like spice on it. And I just have it with tahini, I think and chickpeas of course, but that was my meal.

Kerry Diamond:
I want to switch topics again. I mentioned that there's a great story in the new issue that Audrey wrote. And it's an interview with Hetty and with Betty Liu who wrote My Shanghai, some of you might have that book and it's really wonderful. And a lot of it was about representation in cookbooks and what's going on in the world of cookbooks right now. And it was interesting. I don't know how many of you caught Zoe, [Johny's 00:24:02] talk earlier about cookbooks and it's an interesting moment for the cookbook world. And it was a topic you really want to talk about.

Hetty McKinnon:
We did. And I'd like to thank Kerry for giving us the space to tell it, because I'm just going to say to you now, it wasn't easy to have that piece published. A lot of people said no to it and Betty Liu and I, we thought that everybody would want this story. I mean, we got turned down by a lot of big media. And to me that says a lot about the industry and about how much people are really going to change, how much media is really going to. The problem is decision makers. This is a topic that it's going to make people uncomfortable but it takes people to feel uncomfortable for real change. And so I thank Kerry for allowing us the free reign to just talk. That was how that article came together.

But the genesis of this story was we noticed in the spring of 2021, there was, I wouldn't say a lot, but there was suddenly two or three cookbooks. And some that had come actually in later parts of 2020, but books that were actually written about the Chinese diaspora or the Asian diaspora, but Chinese diaspora actually about really personal stories written by Chinese people. And I'm sorry, but that was actually really unusual and rare to see that. There's a lot of Asian books out there. There's a lot of Chinese books out there, but there are not a lot written by Asian Chinese people. And so we wanted to tell this story about not really even a negative story, but it was actually a celebration story about how there are so many Betty and I specifically she's from Shanghai.

My family is from Guangdong, north and south her book to me taught me so much about my own culture. And that's pretty amazing to me. And we wanted to celebrate that and talk about how there are so many different stories within one culture. And we also want to talk about Brandon Jews, Mr. Jew's Chinatown, the San Francisco book and we just really wanted to celebrate that. And it was really hard for us to get this story out there. Even during a time when there was all about stopping Asian hate and amplifying the voices of not only Asian, Chinese people, but all people of color. And it was really an interesting experience to try and tell that story. But we did want to really raise that about when you tell a story that you've lived, it's very different to an outsider telling that story.

And I can think of many awarded and louder Chinese cookbooks that are very well researched. I'm not saying they're not great books, but they're written from an outsider's perspective. And so what we bring to these books is how art and history and a real personal narrative like this book to me, I'm not trying to sum up or represent Asian food. I'm just representing what Asian food means to me. And I think that is really an important step in cookbooks in general is embracing, not having one book represent a whole people, a whole nation, a whole culture. It is individual stories that will come together to make one story, but it's lots and meal of individual stories.

Kerry Diamond:
But at the same time, I think it was Betty who said this, when she was pitching her book, I think she got turned down several times and was told more than once, "We already-"

Hetty McKinnon:
An Asian book.

Kerry Diamond:
"... have an Asian"

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. I mean, I heard that in March of 2020 I don't remember exactly the context, but it was something to do with Asian, releasing this book in the U.S. The words said to me were there's a perception that Asian books don't sell. And meanwhile, I'm seeing there are Chinese books from winning James Beard Awards. And so I'm like, this does not make sense to me. And this was a year ago, really a year and a half ago. So this attitude is very real. And I think that we shouldn't think that it's not there just because people say, "Oh, we are representing now." And it's like, what does that actually mean you're representing? Because I'm just going to say, cookbook publishers often have a list and they see, "Oh, we have one African book already. We have one Chinese book already, that's it."

And that book's meant to represent an entire culture. So I think that there was that attitude there probably still is that attitude. And it's going to be a long way until we get to the spot where we actually understand what sort of stories we're trying to tell and how we can tell them. And I think the only way to do that is really to have decision makers who understand what these stories are and how rich these stories are. So it's a really interesting time in cookbooks. I think right now I have seen some changes, but I want to know the motivations behind those changes too, and how that looks moving to the future.

There are so many stories out there and I guess Peddler was my way of just... Really Peddler, this little journal that I do, this printed magazine was a result of frustration, of not really seeing the types of stories that I wanted to read about, which is just stories about small memories, rituals, traditions that are not really represented in media in any way. And I think the industry is moving towards that. Honestly, you would agree, there's so many more zines now that covering issues like that.

Kerry Diamond:
Because you use the term decision makers in terms of people who let stories be told and you could easily have used the term gatekeeper in terms of who let story be told. And I wanted to use you as an example of someone who didn't necessarily wait for the decision makers or the gatekeepers, because you mentioned you did self-publish which book did you originally self-publish and why?

Hetty McKinnon:
Community. I love self-publishing, this was my, I wouldn't say dream, but God, what a joy to bring a book together, exactly the way you want to do it. I mean, honestly I had no aspirations to be a cookbook author and I had this business and people were asking me for recipes and I'd never written recipes until then. So I wrote these recipes down and they were photographed and I really wanted to just create a beautiful book for my customers. And so that was really the end point for me as I had to print a 1,000 copies because that was the minimum print run. And I really thought I would have these books forever because I made space in my lounge room, I lived in this small house in Sydney, so I really didn't think that it would be anything beyond just a book for my customers.

And it was just this crazy weird thing that happened that I was getting all these orders on line and I was shipping them out all over Australia. I think even one to... I think Violet Bakery, Claire Ptak bought a copy of one of the original ones. And so I don't know how people even heard about it because I wasn't really even on social media back then. But anyway. Yeah, so I loved it. I mean, that was my first experience of publishing and you can make money from it. I'm just going to say you can make money from it and I love that what you said that self-publishers are going to change the industry because when you publish with a publisher and I've been really lucky, I will say this, my publisher in Australia, who I originate with it's very collaborative.

And the design is so important to me of books. So we talk about every single thing. The fonts, the paper, where the letter goes, every single thing. So I'm really lucky, but I know lots of people don't have that particularly with some U.S. publishers. So self-publishing can be really rewarding as long as... And with everything it's like the things that you don't think about that really get you down, like distribution. I still send out my own copies of Peddler, sometimes I do have a distribution house now, but I still do some of my own. Some people call me sometimes email and say, "Oh, I really need this." So I'll do it because it's faster. And most of it's not glamorous, but it can be really rewarding in terms of giving you the book that you want.

And it's nothing stopping you from taking that book to a publisher and say, "Hey, look what I can do." Because I think I would really recommend that to people because sometimes it's really frustrating for anyone who wants to write a cookbook of getting the book that you want, telling your story exactly the way you want to tell it with the recipes you want. Sometimes some editors micromanaged down to which recipes you're allowed to keep in, what the book is called, what the chapters are called what your recipe index looks like, every single thing. So self-publishing really gives you that freedom. And it has so much more of the personality of the author in there because you've been able to make all these decisions yourself. I'm not going to say it's easy, but it is, it can be really rewarding.

And I would self-publish any day if people would let me, but not really allowed to anymore. Well I have an agent now. And so she's always telling me, "You'll ruin things if you'd self-publish," but I was just saying to someone to yesterday, I would still do it tomorrow if I had the time. And like now I would do so many other things. So it is easier.

Kerry Diamond:
Peddler is your version of that.

Hetty McKinnon:
Exactly. And that's really why people say to me when I launch Peddler in 2017, people said, "Why don't you just take this to a publisher and do it?" And I was like, "But I want to do it. I want to look at paper and I want to decide on design and I want to be just spearheading," Peddler is so freeing because there are no commercial pressures. We can put any recipe in there and we don't care if you can get the ingredients or not. And they're written purely as the author wants to write it. And-

Kerry Diamond:
That's very freeing.

Hetty McKinnon:
It is.

Kerry Diamond:
I think we ran a recipe once in Cherry Bombe from Chef Dominique Crenn that had an aquarium pump as one of the ingredients. And I was like, you know what? We're probably the only magazine that would run that. So we're just going to go for it.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. And I think it's a real respect to whoever's writing the recipe and their family recipes. And it's a real chance to just show a different side. I mean, I know when I write a book with a big publisher that it's always authentic, because I'm allowed to do that. But I do realize that it needs to sell in many parts of the world with people who have varying access to food and ingredients. And so those things are front of mind. So you got to be like thinking about, it's like a balancing act all the time of writing something that you still feels really true to the recipe you want to write, but is accessible because I don't write books to be collect as items. I want the able to cook and I think that's why I'm always sharing. I mean, you see a lot of people cook from my books and they are there to be cooked from, they're not there to be coffee table books, even though they're pretty, but you know...

Kerry Diamond:
So you mentioned your dinners can be a little bit of a mishmash.

Hetty McKinnon:
Yes.

Kerry Diamond:
Based on what your recipe testing that day, have your children gotten used to this way of life and dinner?

Hetty McKinnon:
Yeah. They don't have any choice, but yeah. I mean, I was thinking about this recently because I have so many iconic dishes from childhood that are really ingrained in my brain and in my soul. And then I think we do have some that they are regulars, but they're always eating so many, I wouldn't say strange, but just mish mash things, particularly when I'm recipe testing, for a book there's a lot of that. So I often wonder what their memories are going to be and whether they'll have even a favorite dish. Because I think if you ask them, they couldn't tell you what their favorite dish is other than pasta, but which kid doesn't love pasta?

Kerry Diamond:
They'll be sitting here in 20 years talking about the book that they wrote based on you, Hetty. Right?

Hetty McKinnon:
Exactly.

Kerry Diamond:
What would the title of that book be?

Hetty McKinnon:
Oh, man. Yeah. I don't want to know.

Kerry Diamond:
This is so beautifully written. I mean, I like to read cookbooks probably more than I like to cook from them. You're not going to want to hear that, but this is beautifully written and the parts about your childhood, I just really found so moving and so incredible.

Hetty McKinnon:
I mean, I think that you can look at a cookbook success in many ways. Like some people say, "Oh, if it sells lots, it's successful." But I think that for me personally, I want people to cook from it and to nurture their families with it. That's what's important to me. And as long as people do that, I'm happy to me sales figures and all that. Yeah. People always talk about this, but to me it's not important to me. It's like, have I affected someone's lives? Have I given them a moment in which they've shared a meal with their family and they've enjoyed that moment? These are the things that are important to me. Other people will go, how much press did you get? The lists they're. So like everyone gets very stressed about the lists.

Was I on BA's list? Was I on the New York Times' list? All these things are really important to some people and they makes sense because those things are important. So I think that all authors and all publishers will have their different ideas on what makes a successful cookbook. But for me, really, honestly, I just want people to cook meals that they enjoy for their family. That's my main thing. I could be smarter with some of my titles. I could put vegetarian all over the top and that would be really attractive to a lot of people, but that's just not my style. I mean, I want to tell a story with my books and I will sacrifice sales for that. I don't know if I do sacrifice sales, but sometimes I think I could be smarter marketing wise, but for me, story comes first.

Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Hetty McKinnon for joining me. Check out Hetty's latest book, To Asia, With Love at your favorite local bookstore. Thank you to Kaserei Cambozola and Modern Sprout for supporting today's episode. And don't forget a very Cherry Bombe Friendsgiving is underway. Head on over to cherrybombe.com to learn more. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.