Kaitlin and Sarah Leung 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. 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. As for me, I'm the founder of The Eden Place, a community that's all about gathering people intentionally around food. I love this new generation of chefs, bakers, and creatives making their way in the world of food, drink, media, and tech.
Today's guests are Kaitlin and Sarah Leung, the sisters behind “The Woks of Life"." They started their family blog in 2013 as a means to connect with their Chinese heritage. And ever since, the Leung family has been sharing incredible recipes to and tricks to make Chinese cooking at home more accessible. The sisters have been featured on The Food Network, "Good Morning America," and in The New York Times, just to name a few. Sarah and Kaitlin, along with their parents, Bill and Judy, published a cookbook last year called "The Woks of Life"." Their book was a big hit, and was nominated for a James Beard Award. Huge congratulations, and be sure to check it out. In this episode, we chat about the historical arc of Chinese cooking in America, the importance of distinguishing regional cuisines, what it's like working with your family, and advice on starting a blog.
Thank you to Kerrygold and Walmart for supporting today's show. Kerrygold is delicious, all-natural butter and cheese, made with milk from Irish grass-fed cows, based on small family-run Irish dairy farms. Kerrygold farming families pass their craft and knowledge from generation to generation. This traditional approach is the reason for the rich taste of Kerrygold. You can enjoy delicious sliced or shredded Kerrygold cheddar cheese available in mild or savory flavors. The shredded cheddar is perfect for those who love making mac and cheese. And now the grilling season is here, the cheddar slices will take any burger, or veggie burger, up a notch. There's also Kerrygold's classic salted butter in the gold foil. It's perfect for slathering on corn on the cob, always a summer fave. And the unsalted butter in the silver foil is an absolute must if you're turning sweet summer strawberries into strawberry shortcake. Visit kerrygoldusa.com to find the Kerrygold retailer nearest you, and lots of great recipes.
I can't wait to see some of you next week in Atlanta for our very first live podcast event. It's taking place Wednesday, June 28th, from 5:00 to 7:30 p.m., at Star Provisions. We'll have lots of snacks and drinks, a panel conversation, networking, and more. Tickets are $30, and include the latest copy of Cherry Bombe Magazine, plus all bites and sips. Come meet other members of the Atlanta Bombesquad, and learn how they are shaping the future in the world of food, drink, tech, and media. Head to cherrybombe.com to get your ticket.
Now, let's check in with today's guests. Kaitlin and Sarah, thank you so much for coming on The Future Of Food Is You Podcast.
Kaitlin Leung:
Thanks for having us, Abena.
Sarah Leung:
Yeah, thanks for having us, this is great.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Oh my gosh, amazing. So I always like to start off by asking our guests, can you tell us where you grew up and how did food show up in your life?
Sarah Leung:
Yes. So we grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey and honestly, I think that our early food experiences were all shaped by our parents, what they were cooking. My grandparents ran a restaurant, so they had a Chinese takeout restaurant in New Jersey. So we always grew up around food and cooking, but I think at a young age, we were very laser focused on non-Chinese food, because we were eating Chinese food all the time. So we were very just like, "Chicken fingers, fettuccine alfredo, pizza."
Kaitlin Leung:
Yes, there was a lot of excitement over what we called white kid food.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Leung:
So that's what we learned to cook when we were younger, and that's the kind of food that we were exploring on our own. We started the blog because we realized that there was that gap in knowledge of how to make the food that our parents had prepared for us growing up, so that's how "The Woks of Life" came to be.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. And how did you decide on the name "The Woks of Life"?
Kaitlin Leung:
How did you decide?
Sarah Leung:
I don't know.
Kaitlin Leung:
Did it just come to you in a dream?
Sarah Leung:
It literally came to me.
Kaitlin Leung:
Did a hand reach down and give it to you?
Sarah Leung:
I remember waking up in the morning, because actually thinking of the name is a huge blocker to just starting.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Of course.
Sarah Leung:
Because you have to register the domain in that name. So I was like, "Oh, what is it going to be?" And one morning I just thought, "Oh, woks, ‘The Woks of Life’", and I was like, "Good enough, let's start," because I was just ready to-
Kaitlin Leung:
There was no fan-
Sarah Leung:
... start it. Yeah, so...
Kaitlin Leung:
But we did unanimously agree that it was a great name and it kind of had the perfect sentiment of different generations and different backgrounds and had that sort of inclusive family vibe. So, it served as well.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And most people, when they start a blog, they normally start as an individual project, but you decide to bring the whole gang aboard. So, not only your sister Kaitlin here, but both your parents, Bill and Judy, this four person team running the blog and sharing your amazing stories. Why did you think it was important to do it as a family?
Sarah Leung:
It was important simply because we literally could not have done it without them, because the blog started really as this passing down of information. Our parents are passing on these recipes to us, so we needed them to provide that information. And our role in those early years was really just to hold them accountable to measurements and clear instructions and stuff like that. And then over the years as Kaitlin and I got more proficient in cooking ourselves, we started, cooking Chinese. We started to develop our own recipes. So from the beginning it just had to be...
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, we always wanted it to have kind of a dialogue aspect to it of talking across generations and between generations and within generations. And my parents and Sarah at the time that the blog started were living in Beijing, so it was also a way for us to all stay connected. The worst case scenario was that it wasn't like a commercial success, quote, unquote, but at least it would be our family project and our family recipe box, if you will. So we knew that we wanted them to be involved from the get go.
And it was kind of funny because there was recipes that we would try to make that we would eat out at different restaurants and stuff. And the blog was kind of... My mom would try to make mapo tofu and stuff like that. She's a Shanghai girl. And the blog was kind of a funny forcing mechanism of, "Okay, we really want to get this exactly right of tasting as it would if you were in Sichuan Province or something like that." So, that was a fun kind of challenge to embark on together and definitely something that we wouldn't have been able to do any one of us alone.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
No, you really said it. It's a group project and I really like that you still thought it would be beautiful regardless of its success. So even if you know weren't getting tens of thousands of members as you guys have over the last decade, you would still have this relic that you could pass on to the next generation or share with other people. And I feel like we're currently in this beautiful dance of immigrant cultures and non recipe based cultures getting recipes as a way to pass things down. So, kudos to you both for continuing to do that. But before we dive into all the incredible work that you've done, I want to talk a lot about the history of Chinese foods. Kaitlin, can you talk about, first of all, the history of Chinese food as it's shown up in America?
Kaitlin Leung:
Big question.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
I mean, I'll try to sum it up in a nutshell, I guess, as much as one can, I think I've learned a lot about it more since we've started the blog because we've unwittingly become representatives for Chinese food and Chinese culture. But it really started in, I guess, the 1800s with gold prospecting in California and the California Gold Rush and also the building of railroads. And as many people know, most of those workers and people coming for those opportunities were Chinese folks, largely from the southern provinces of China. So Guangdong, and that's why there's a very rich Cantonese history in America, and a lot of the immigrant communities are shaped by that. And accordingly, a lot of the foods that the average American is familiar with, including Chinese Americans, as you get down to the generations are mostly familiar with Cantonese food.
As those immigrant communities settled in, obviously they didn't have access to all the things they would've had back home. So, you started to get this new genre of Chinese American food that was in a way for the immigrant community that was there, but also so that they could make a living for opening restaurants and feeding people beyond the Chinese community. So then there became this offshoot of Chinese American tastes and preferences and ketchup's illustrious roll and different ingredients and classic vegetable combinations like water chestnuts and bamboo shoots and broccoli. Broccoli is the mainstay pillar of Chinese American food.
But yeah, I think what kind of stands out to me is that that is today maligned or has been maligned because it's all watered down or you sort of hybridized is a nicer way to say it, version of what Chinese cooking is. And it's also a tiny sliver of what it is because it's largely Chinese food through a Cantonese lens, through a American lens with immigrant constraints put on it. I think today where we're, well, I guess, maybe in the past a hundred years, I guess, where things have been heading is as in more ingredients are available, people have become more familiar with a wider range of where did those dishes kind of originate from? What was kung po chicken originally like?
Sarah Leung:
I think it's the past 15 years.
Kaitlin Leung:
Well-
Sarah Leung:
That kind of conversation has started.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, the conversation has started, but I think that the actual changes in the food have been happening slowly but surely. You know as Chinese grocery stores open up across the country. I mean, yes and no, depends on where you go. I think so much has been built on those original mom and pop Chinese takeout restaurants that did have that sort of core Chinese American menu. Now you're seeing more traditional or-
Sarah Leung:
Regional.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yes, specific regional restaurants popping up. And along with that is coming more familiarity. And I think what we've seen, like Sarah said in the past 15 years is the love of the food comes first via the restaurants and eating out. And what we've been excited by and kind of trying to lead the way a little bit on is when are we going to make the jump to the home kitchen? We really are excited by the prospect of bringing those flavors and those techniques and cuisines into the home domain, similar to how Italian food has made that big jump. It's like people are so familiar, intimately familiar with different regions and areas of Italian cuisine and all the different techniques, and making cacio e pepe on a weeknight has become so common. And I think it's exciting to see that similar dishes from the world of Chinese food are making that jump too.
I feel like it started with, anybody could whip up a pan of beef and broccoli, but now we're seeing people are making mapo tofu on a weeknight or making Dan Dan noodles or.. I don't know, it's a good one... Sarah's siu mai from the cookbook. Who would've thought that anybody would be making dim sum at home?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
That's been our mission is to make it easier for folks to do that and bring Chinese food more into a mainstream American conversation. Ever since we started the blog 10 years ago, sort of been dogged by this delineation of American food versus Chinese food, it's like, "Well, come on now." It's like there's some reading between the lines there of Chinese food is part of the fabric of American food. And I think other cuisines do go through that, like Italian food, Mexican food is another big one. I think everybody has welcomed... It's weird. It's like you want to acknowledge the uniqueness, but you also want to be inclusive and say, "Yeah, this is part of the fabric of what American food can be and is. It's not just burgers and all that."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You did mention the mission of the blog is to bring that sense of ease of cooking the other cultures like I've had, particularly Italian cooking. Sarah, I want to ask you, going back again a little bit to the history. How has Chinese cooking at home look like in America from your research, from stories and even in your family experiences growing up?
Sarah Leung:
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think, well, from my dad's day in the book, he talks about how his family would make this monthly pilgrimage from the Catskills and drive two and a half hours down to Manhattan Chinatown to stock up on ingredients because they just weren't available where they lived. And how my grandmother would have her own little kitchen garden to try and grow the vegetables that they couldn't buy locally. So I think that in those early... When my dad was growing up the sixties and seventies, I think that Chinese home cooking was very much reserved for, or part of the Chinese American community and hadn't really exited that community yet.
And honestly, I don't think that it did until maybe the late eighties, early nineties when you start to have these more Chinese cookbooks. Chinese food is becoming a more common, like a restaurant experience, so more and more people are exposed to it even outside of large cities. And then you start having the shows that we grew up with, Martin Yan's “Yan Can Cook” and people like that are popularizing or making Chinese food seem achievable at home. So I think that kind of started opening up this idea that, "Oh, I can make these things at home." Maybe soy sauce is starting to show up in grocery stores across the country and most people know what soy sauce is.
There's still this kind of gap where there are ingredients that are a little bit less known, like oyster sauce or sesame oil or things like that. And I think that you also have this sort of, in addition to non-Chinese communities having to learn this food, you also have a new generation of Chinese Americans who are also like our generation who are like, "Hey, I actually really didn't pay attention to what my parents were doing in the kitchen, and I don't really know how to make these things for myself."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
But you miss the flavors at home?
Sarah Leung:
Exactly.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
Well, I think there's also something to be said about the suburbs of it all. It's like when you're living, like you said, there are just certain things that you can't get access to if you're not in a Chinese enclave in New York or San Francisco or what have you. And I think also that lack of familiarity comes from being in some of those areas where you are a minority.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Totally.
Sarah Leung:
I think that you start to see... Well, when we started the blog, we didn't really see a ton of cookbooks or especially not blogs or resources on the internet that had recipes that looked familiar to us from our childhood, which is why we started the blog 10 years ago. And I think that has evolved, right? When we talk to our fans and our readers, you see non-Chinese people who are really interested in Chinese food, love the food. And then you also see a lot of people our age, millennials who are starting their families, and like, "I want to share this food with my kids, but I didn't know how to make it and you've taught me how to make it." And surprisingly, older Chinese Americans also whose families have been here for a very long time.
So, I think that that's been interesting just to see the sort of evolution from cooking dishes that were considered familiar. So things like what you might find in a Chinese American kind of a takeout restaurant or Cantonese food, and then you see things like soup dumplings or Sichuan food or Hunan food start to enter the wider consciousness and people becoming interested in knowing how to make those regional specialties. I think that's amazing. And I think that for ourselves, we never envisioned ourselves making some of these things at home.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, yeah. It's worth saying, it's like, we never thought other people would do it. We also never thought we would do it.
Sarah Leung:
Yeah, because back in 2013 when we first started the blog, if you had asked me like, "Oh, can you make fried sesame balls? Can you make salt and pepper pork chop?" I'd be like, "I have no idea how to make either of those things."
Kaitlin Leung:
LOL, hahaha.
Sarah Leung:
But now it's like we've kind of, as the blog has continued and we have to kind of up the ante with each and every recipe that we post, it's like, "Okay, now we're challenging ourselves to kind of unlock those recipes and unlock them for other people and make them achievable at home for other people."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Today's show is presented by Walmart, the world's largest retailer. So many people in this country depend on Walmart for its groceries and trust Walmart to have high quality food at affordable prices. That sounds like the future to me and the present. Walmart is always listening to its customers and values the feedback received about new products and flavors. To help meet and exceed customer expectations, Walmart employs a range of experts like classically trained chefs and vital roles within the company. I love knowing that. Another thing I love about Walmart is how many interesting new food brands can be found there, female and Black owned brands in particular, such as Partake foods, vegan and gluten-free cookies, baking mixes and snack packs founded by Denise Woodard and Iya Foods, which has gluten-free baking mixes, spice mixes and whole food powders, and was started by Toyin Kolawole.
If you're founder of a CPG brand and would like to work with Walmart, you need to know about Walmart's Open Call. 2023 will be the 10th anniversary of Walmart's Open Call event. It's an exciting and unique opportunity for entrepreneurs to meet face-to-face with Walmart merchants at the largest sourcing event in the United States. This year's open call will be in Bentonville, Arkansas on October 24th and 25th. Registration starts this July. If you are a future retail star, stay tuned for more details.
Well, I want to talk a little bit about the blog. So, you've had this blog for 10 years.
Sarah Leung:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. Through many moves, many challenges, many family dynamics, I'm sure. When it comes to developing recipes, what does that look like between the four of you and how do you kind of decide who gets to do what?
Kaitlin Leung:
I feel like everybody has their own expertise and also what they're interested in. My dad is definitely, he had experience working in restaurant kitchens with his stepfather, cooking... His stepfather, kind of working summer jobs in upstate New York in the Catskills, and then also at the family restaurant. So he is a little bit better at those kind of restaurant inspired, Chinese American dishes that people really have a lot of attachment to and also Cantonese home cooking.
And then my mom is, she's from Shanghai and she was born there and grew up there until she was 16. So she's much more in that vein of cooking. She's very interested in less popular or less known dishes from China and finding those little pockets of things that haven't been talked about yet. And then me and Sarah are, I don't know.
Sarah Leung:
We're all over the place.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, we're a little all over the place. There's certain recipes that we take on that are trickier or whatever. I think sometimes we bring a little bit more of that sensibility of like, "Okay, we are starting from the bottom, so we're willing to struggle more for some of those harder recipes."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You have a really beautiful quote in the book that I wrote down. I don't know who said it, I think it might have been you, Sarah, but you said something really interesting that, "My sister and I came with a desire to learn, a penchant for creating shortcuts and quick recipes and the ability to draw clarity from our parents generation's informal cook by fuel approach." I think that is one of the most beautiful lines I've ever read in a cookbook, and I read a lot of cookbooks. But I think that is just a true testament to the... I don't want to say it's grief, but it's almost like this lamenting slash craving for nostalgia that a lot of immigrant children feel, but that desire to really be in the kitchen with your parents and be like, "How do I methodize all this so that I can cook by feel?"
It's like my mom, I don't even think she owns measuring cups, but yet she makes some of the best food. So I think it's super beautiful that you want to learn, but you were just wanting to be really critical about creating shortcuts. And because again, you know that the international grocery store is not going to be same as that full fledge Chinese market that you'd find in Chinatown. So yeah, I think that's just a beautiful way to put it.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, we kind of are more hodgepodge, I guess, than our parents because yeah, like you said, it's a good point. We're kind of willing to go by any avenue to take up the mantle of becoming experts.
Sarah Leung:
And I think it really is about nostalgia. It's about capturing that taste that you had when you were a kid. And often, I mean, those tastes range, sometimes it was from a restaurant, sometimes it was something that your parents cooked and that you only ever saw at home. Yeah. I think that those recipes can sometimes feel like this lightning in a bottle like, "Oh, we're never going to taste that again."
Kaitlin Leung:
I know.
Sarah Leung:
But that's what you're constantly striving to recreate. And we talk a lot about authenticity, this idea of authenticity and how elusive it is, and also how subjective it is because you don't... I mean, what is authentic? When do you pin a recipe down and say, "This is the authentic version?" So rather than chasing this subjective authenticity, we're actually more so chasing this memory, like a taste memory.
Kaitlin Leung:
A shared taste memory, and hoping that other people have-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Definitely.
Kaitlin Leung:
... the same one. And that's a journey we've gone on over the 10 years of having the blog because to be, I guess, self-critical for a second, the word authenticity is what the early days of the blog were built on. Because a lot of that conversation over time has changed a ton. When we started in 2013, that was the name of the game. That was the golden horse-
Sarah Leung:
Or differentiator.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, that was the golden horse you rode in on is, "Hey, we have the key to..."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, because most of those blogs are written by white women who-
Kaitlin Leung:
Right.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... again, we're taking what you mentioned, that restaurant experience, which if we know is 15 different... It's like a bad game. I don't want to say a bad game of telephone. It's like a game-
Kaitlin Leung:
It kind of is. Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Exactly.
Sarah Leung:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. I think that that conversation has evolved from this, "We are authentic." To try to differentiate our recipes as being, I'll say the word traditional. I think the word traditional can help in this scenario, kind of demarcate things a little bit more clearly. The sort of difference between traditional and then now it's more just about, we don't exclude any particular branch of Chinese cuisine, whether it's a regional cuisine or a Chinese American one, one that was built and grew up here. We just kind of are like, "Oh, this is nostalgia for all." However, you experienced Chinese food growing up, whether it was just Chinese takeout or it was your mom's cooking. We have it all. We try to cover all of it.
Kaitlin Leung:
The fact of the matter is that even though we are Chinese, our mom was an immigrant, she still loved beef lo mein. If you're in the middle of nowhere, not nowhere, that's a terrible thing to say.
Sarah Leung:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
If you're in the middle of a Chinese food desert, as we call it, and you're really having a craving for vegetables and noodles or whatever, any Chinese food you can find, and you find that little mom and pop in the middle of a strip mall and they've got the best beef lo mein, you're just like-
Sarah Leung:
So good.
Kaitlin Leung:
So, we grew up loving it in a way I think that a lot of people relate to. And then we also had our kind of crazy odyssey in China where we were reconnecting with what food is there. So, we bring that acceptance. Maybe that's too big of a word.
Sarah Leung:
I think it's just like different aspects of the Chinese American experience, just all kind of coming together and sitting side by side.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You have a blog that is, I would say, considered one of the most important blogs who just in terms of people coming to understand authentic Chinese cooking, also the range of diversity within Chinese cooking. There's Sichuan, there's Hunan, there's Cantonese, there's the Hong Kong dim sums of the world. When you think about the current state of access to grocery stores and markets where people can find Chinese food, how do you incorporate that into your recipe developing? And have you heard stories from readers or fans in terms of where they are and how they're able to get access to really make sure that they can create dishes similar or exactly like what you're sharing on the blog?
Sarah Leung:
Absolutely. Well, what's been really interesting is to hear from readers all over the place about what they're able to get and what they're having challenges-
Kaitlin Leung:
Creative substitutions.
Sarah Leung:
And creative substitutions that they make. In general, I would say the Chinese diaspora is very wide reaching. So you see in the middle of, I don't even know where, people in Ireland, for example, who are like, "Oh, we have a very small Chinese grocery store that has a few select items." And I'm like, "Wow, okay. In Ireland or in Scotland or in the Caribbean." So, you definitely hear from people that these ingredients can be found in a lot of cases. However, in cases when they can't, a lot of times, I guess this surprises people, but we're more open than maybe you might expect to brainstorming substitutions with people. Because we know that depending on where you live, you may not be able to get that exact ingredient.
And I think that a lot of what we do on the blog around the ingredients glossary has helped people with that. We have these individual ingredient articles where we talk about that ingredient. We show pictures of the brands and the bottles, and we talk about what's in it, we talk about... And then at the bottom, it's substitutions. Like, "If you can't find this, here are some things that you can use to substitute."
Kaitlin Leung:
There have been some specific instances too where we have to step in of like, "Okay, if you're really, really needing to start from scratch, here's how you can make homemade wonton wrappers from scratch or noodles from scratch and things like... "
Sarah Leung:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
The other day, some guy was saying he has a hard time finding lo mein, and he's like, "Oh, do you have a egg noodle recipe?" And I was like, "Yes, we do." But yeah, there was one funny guy in Scotland who... There's a lot of pickled vegetables in Chinese cooking and as condiment or mix in, kind of final stage mix in and-
Sarah Leung:
A lot of them are region specific.
Kaitlin Leung:
Region specific, hard to find sometimes even under the best of conditions when you're walking into a Chinese grocery store depending on stock and things like that. And he was like, "Oh, I just used minced cornichons." I was like, "You're brilliant."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I mean, it's got that same flavor.
Kaitlin Leung:
A great idea.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's got that tanginess to it. Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
He was like, "Oh, it was great. It was for Dan Dan noodles." And he was like, "Loved it." That's like amazing. Brilliant.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You know what? In my head, if someone posted that on Instagram, I'll be like, "What?" But the more I think about it, I'm like, "Yeah, be a full surprise."
Kaitlin Leung:
Just a little pickly bite.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Sarah Leung:
And I think also that during the pandemic, we've seen a lot more of these online Chinese specific groceries-
Kaitlin Leung:
Yes, yes, yes.
Sarah Leung:
... stores or e-commerce stores.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I think Yum Deco is one of them.
Sarah Leung:
Mm-hmm.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, yeah.
Sarah Leung:
And Sayweee.com, Yamibuy.com, Umamicart.com. There's a ton of them. And then you have mom and pop stores, Po Wing Hong in Manhattan Chinatown will ship to the continental U.S. They'll ship any shelf stable, dry good. So, you can actually... If you live in the U.S. in particular, we have more experience with the US, but if you live here, you can order a lot of shelf stable products to have them delivered to you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's awesome. Obviously, we've talked a little bit about the name of the blog, but something that I remember you chatted about the importance of the wok.
Sarah Leung:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
In terms of really understanding and appreciating how Chinese cooking can be made. Why do you think that's important?
Sarah Leung:
I think the wok is... I mean, I think that people don't realize how versatile woks are. They think, "Oh, it's for stir frying." But the wok can steam, it can smoke, it can fry, stir fry, boil. You can do everything in this one pot. I mean, you could also do a lot of our recipe, if you don't want to make the investment or you don't have enough storage space for a wok, you don't have to have one. You can do it in a frying pan, like a cast iron pan or a carbon steel pan. But I think that the wok is just such an integral part of just all Chinese cooking.
When you think about how Chinese cooking has evolved in China, most Chinese households still even today, don't have ovens. You don't see a lot of roasting or baking or anything like that. Everything is just done on the stove usually in this one pan, this one cooking vessel that every family has. It's how you achieve so many of the techniques that we talk about, whether it's achieving wok hei, which is this really elusive, seared flavor that you get from the high heat cooking of cooking in that very thin, metaled wok that just heats up really quickly. Things like steaming, right? It's like you can steam in a metal steamer or something like that, but a bamboo steamer was designed to be used with a walk. So things like that just get you closer, I guess.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah.
Sarah Leung:
Closer to the cuisine. I think it's a fun learning experience for people.
Kaitlin Leung:
Well, I think for me, from a less technical and more philosophical perspective, the wok is ultimately, a commitment to effort and respect. Because as a person with a foot in both worlds, I reach for my non-stick skillet at times and it's easier. It is. It's easier. I'm not going to deny it. But like Sarah said, it's not quite the same taste wise. But I think there is something to be said of opting into being respectful of the intention of the cuisine and what the flavors are supposed to be and the techniques and all of that stuff, and kind of saying, "Okay, you know what? I'm going to value this cooking tool as much as any other cooking tool in my kitchen."
And I think that it goes along with some of the chatter about how much do you follow a recipe the way it was written? And kind of respecting the person who wrote the recipe. And there's so many thousands and thousands of years of heritage behind this one cooking device that to learn how to wash it and season it and all the other things ultimately is very simple and I think is a nice way to respect the whole genre.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
1000%. So, for if anyone were to go on the blog today and say, "I'm ready to begin that journey and really understanding authentic Chinese cooking," do you each have one recipe that you think is a great start? I know that's probably the most difficult question I've asked.
Kaitlin Leung:
You know we get asked a lot and every time I'm like, "Hmm, which one?" I should really have my ready to go.
Sarah Leung:
I know.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Sarah Leung:
Well, so I'll do one from the blog, one from the book. So from the blog, it's a chicken and asparagus stir fry. The simplest thing in the world.
Kaitlin Leung:
It's very easy.
Sarah Leung:
The two main ingredients you can find in any grocery store, so you don't have that holding you back. And what that recipe teaches you is several techniques. So you learn how to velvet meat, which is this process of marinating it and then pre-cooking it so that it maintains its juiciness, and that is a core Chinese technique. You learn this sort of dance of the wok and this process of-
Kaitlin Leung:
You know, lol.
Sarah Leung:
... preparing all of your ingredients, turning on the stove, only when you have those ingredients prepared, searing the meat, and then you're cooking your aromatics, you're cooking your sauce, you're cooking the vegetable, and then you add the meat back to it. And that in and of itself, it's an unusual sort of order of doing things if you are mostly familiar with cooking Western food, where you're cooking the meat first and then you're adding it back later. That is also just a core Chinese technique in which basically the goal is to make sure that nothing is overcooked, that everything at the end of the dish-
Kaitlin Leung:
Cooks at the same rate.
Sarah Leung:
... is perfectly cooked. So, I would say that one is a good one to start with if you want to dip your toe into stir frying. And then from the book, I would say, I always say this one-
Kaitlin Leung:
Don't do mine.
Sarah Leung:
I know. I always say this one.
Kaitlin Leung:
I was like...
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Are you thinking this?
Sarah Leung:
But siu mai is a great one, I think to start with.
Kaitlin Leung:
It's Sarah's recipe.
Sarah Leung:
It is my recipe. It's the first one-
Kaitlin Leung:
Shameless plug for her own recipe.
Sarah Leung:
It is the first one... They're both my own recipes, so I'm just plugging myself all around. This one is deceptive. It's just crazy easy for the reward that you get at the end. So you mix up the filling in a stand mixer or you can hand mix it if you don't have one, and you just stuff them into these thin, Hong Kong style dumpling wrappers, steam them.
Kaitlin Leung:
Our aunt, who is an incredibly big critic of literally anything food related, said that they were the best siu mai she's ever had.
Sarah Leung:
And it's-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Get out.
Sarah Leung:
No, she is. My aunt for any recipe she encounters will quote, unquote, fix it. She'll change something as she sees fit. And she's like, "Now it's perfect." The recipe was never quite right before she got to it, and she did not have a bad thing to say about the siu mai. And I think that it's a great confidence booster for anyone because if you love dim sum, you've had it out, you know what it should taste like. And if go through this recipe, make it, and then you're like, "Oh my gosh."
Kaitlin Leung:
It's thrilling.
Sarah Leung:
It's a thrilling experience.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that.
Sarah Leung:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's amazing. I know we have a lot of aspiring writers and bloggers and people who want to grow their audiences online. What advice or what has really helped you guys in just being creative and growing such a large community?
Kaitlin Leung:
I think it's a marriage of the business side and the creativity side. And that has been why we have been able to succeed so much as a family because at various points, different people have pushed in different ways, and I think that helped us get onto this upward trajectory. But I mean, it's a terrible answer. Nobody wants to hear, "Oh, you should really treat it as a business." But you treat it as a business in the sense of, you have to persevere.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Consistency.
Kaitlin Leung:
That was our number one thing when we started was like, "We're just going to keep going. Eventually, we're going to hit our stride and things are going to start taking off." And that's what happened. And it didn't happen... By no means happened overnight. For a long time, it was just like us and our grandma looking at the website. You know what I mean?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's all you need.
Kaitlin Leung:
Over time, as you start to nail different things and you do master that consistency in certain areas, then you start to get hungry of like, "Okay," pun intended. You start to get hungry of like, "Okay, what am I going to tackle next? How am I going to level up?" And it's step by step. My mom always says to me, because I admittedly get easily overwhelmed, she's like, "If every day you set out to do one thing really well, and you do that thing, the days add up and you're doing fine." So it's kind of just that, taking it day by day, putting in the most that you can into at least one task. And then I feel like there's a lot of hustle culture, and you feel like you have to be doing all the things, and it's really overwhelming to get caught up in that. Just this morning I opened Instagram and I was like, "Man, I was like, some people are machines. Every day, these beautiful reels and more and more recipes and all these other things." And I'm just like...
It's easy to get psyched out, but you have to just find the things that make you feel fulfilled and that you're good at. And that kind of speak to or shine a light on your unique voice, and those are the things that you're going to come back to again and again. And the other stuff doesn't stand out as much or is hard to achieve because it's like, that's really not what's true to you. And I think that's been something that we are constantly navigating as we maintain and also grow the blog for this next chapter. We're like, "Okay, in this world of video, what feels true to us?" It's tough, tough to figure out.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I mean, especially when you're a blog, you're so used to writing being this medium. But then it seems like everyone wants to see you on Instagram. So, it's the age old debate. But I think what you're doing is beautiful, and I think you've inspired so many people to share their stories. And which will segue me into talking about your IRL writing, which is your cookbook, "The Woks of Life: Recipes To Know And Love From A Chinese-American Family.” And congratulations on your James Beard nomination.
Kaitlin Leung:
Thank you.
Sarah Leung:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And the U.S. food ways category. That's amazing. Sarah, what made you want to take the blog and transform into a cookbook? Or what was the decision that your family came together for that?
Sarah Leung:
That was a decision that probably took something like three years to make, because we had many readers request it over the years, and it never quite felt like the right time. Actually, it was 2019 when we were kind of like, "Hey, maybe it's time to give the people what they want." Because I would literally receive a handful of emails every week just being like, "Cookbook, is there a cookbook coming? Are you guys going to write one? Can you please write one?"
I think that we realized, "Okay, we're in this place now where we feel like we have a large enough audience. We have enough interest in this book that we would write." And we feel ready as a family. I feel like we've really evolved our working style together over many years. And it wasn't always smooth sailing in the early days. We would not always be the most harmonious blogging family that you-
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, that's a very polite way to say it.
Sarah Leung:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
There's something to be said about the fact that in 2019, we were largely over the hump of growing into ourselves as adolescents, and me and Sarah had done the working world thing where we had our day jobs and yada yada. And for a long time, I was like, "Okay, when am I going to take some time off and put our story down on paper?" And like she said, 2019 things started to all fall into place, and then-
Sarah Leung:
And I started working on the blog full time.
Kaitlin Leung:
Sarah started working on the blog full time.
Sarah Leung:
So it felt like an achievable goal.
Kaitlin Leung:
Right, like things were cooking, moving. And then in 2020, things sort of fell apart, but it was actually great conditions for us to all to kind of hunker down and hole up and write this book.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Family dynamics are tough, even as close or as distant as you are with your family, working together with such strong personalities that can't go anywhere is very important.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yes.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And so it's nice to be able to hear that you guys are so aware of your differences, so aware of who's in charge, and so over what's together. You publish your book under Clarkson Potter, which is one of the most established and reputable cookbooks, like Ina [Garten] publishes her books for Clarkson Potter.
Kaitlin Leung:
We love Ina. And when we were shopping the book around, that definitely was part of the decision. We were like, "Oh my God, we'll be at the same publishing press as Ina."
Sarah Leung:
Yeah.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Kaitlin, can you tell us a little bit about the pitching process? What was it like putting the proposal together and shopping your... I know we have a lot of ambitious cookbook authors that are listening to the podcast, and I'm sure they'll benefit from this advice.
Kaitlin Leung:
For sure.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Definitely.
Kaitlin Leung:
So, we did get an agent and she reached out to us or we reached out.
Sarah Leung:
What happened was we had a publisher who was interested. The publisher reached out and we were kind of like, "Oh, we kind of don't want to walk into this process without an agent." And then-
Kaitlin Leung:
She connected us.
Sarah Leung:
...Then she connected us with our current agent, which was so nice of her, and we kind of went from there.
Kaitlin Leung:
So we got an agent. I think that... I do think that's important. There's kind of two paths of the self-publishing route and then the more traditional route that we went. And I think that after so many years of waiting to make the jump, we felt more comfortable with the more traditional sort of guided route of having an agent, someone to hold our hands, especially as first time authors. So we met with her and we are privileged enough that we kind of... It really was from the get go, just The "The Woks of Life" debut cookbook. But part of that proposal writing process was like, "Oh, is there going to be a theme to it? What do you want to share? What are you trying to say to people?" So, figuring that out, kind of the thesis of what the book would be.
It was up to me and Sarah. We went off to write the proposal. And I think that proposal process in today's world, putting my advice hat on for people, is very much driven by the kind of audience that you have who will eventually buy the book. So, like I said before, we definitely treated it in that way of, here is this story that we want to tell of our family, but also here are the numbers to back it up. And here's why we think that, for example, the Chinese American population in America is a really powerful buying segment. Things like that. We really put on our business... marketing hats from our former careers and went all out on it. And then part of that is sample recipes, things like that.
Sarah Leung:
Publishers love numbers.
Kaitlin Leung:
Publishers love numbers, publishers also simplicity. So Sarah put together a very beautiful document, and then we kind of had to pull back on the design a little bit just to make it a little bit easier to skim through. So that's also something to think about. But there was that process, sent the proposal out to different editors at different publishing houses and then took many, many meetings with different editors. And in those meetings, you kind of just talk about the vision for the book and why... Really, you pitch yourself essentially and pitch the book. And then usually in that room there's marketing team representatives as well, and they talk about how they would handle it. You touch on design, it's a little bit of both sides sharing what their hopes would be for the book. And then there's... I don't know what to...
Sarah Leung:
The auction.
Kaitlin Leung:
The auction part of it, which was facilitated by the agent. That's where the agent is most helpful because Judy brought the decades of knowhow and how to facilitate the process in a way that would be efficient and also to our benefit.
And then, yeah, I think the process of selecting the publisher was tough because there were a few strong candidates in the running. And ultimately, it's this kind of weird combination of who do you feel comfortable with, what resources do they bring in terms of their distribution and how much experience they have. And that's why we ultimately went with Clarkson Potter, because they're pretty unparalleled, I think, in their strength in cookbooks and the writers that they have and who we would be able to call peers. So yeah, there was that hilarious moment where I was like, "Do we want to go with Ina's group?" Because we grew up on the Food Network. So there's definitely an element of it where we were a little bit starstruck.
I think at the time, in 2020, we were also really keyed into diversity. And I think at the time, Clarkson Potter was making concerted effort to move into representing more diverse authors and voices and making sure that internally, the sort of way that they ran was reflective of that as well. So that all went into the decision and then signed the papers and off we went. And it's a two-year process, and I think we were astounded by how active of a process it was for those two years of writing the book, developing the recipe, writing the actual content, editing, revising, submitting the manuscript. And then once you've got the manuscript editing that and photographing the book, because we did all of our own photos. So normally, if you were to hire a professional photographer, they get that done in two weeks. We did a whole summers worth of shoots because-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Wow.
Kaitlin Leung:
...We were also maintaining the blog, so we had to delineate between when we were doing blog recipes and photos and then book recipes and photos. The design of the book was also its own little...
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah.
Kaitlin Leung:
...Its own little journey.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
For sure. I'm really curious, because you had such a large repository of recipes, how did you decide on what was incredible and amazing for the blog, but then also thinking about new recipes to develop for the cookbook?
Sarah Leung:
Yeah, that's a great question. That was hard.
Kaitlin Leung:
It was hard.
Sarah Leung:
Because by the time we had decided to write the book, we had over a thousand recipes on the blog, and we felt like we had covered a lot of the greatest hits on the blog already. Of course, we were required to have 80 brand new recipes, so 80% brand new, and we could only have 20 that were tried and true fan favorites from the blog. So that was a challenge to create a book that we felt encapsulated everything that we do on the blog in a book, while also putting a new spin on it was really challenging.
But I think we did it in the end. I think that we chose some really, I guess, strategic recipes from the blog that we knew had to be in the book, that are just really important sort of core family recipes, core to the American population that eats Chinese food, really. Those really important recipes that had to be in there. And then in a lot of cases, we would take something that maybe already had a little nod to it on the blog, but we would put a new spin on it. We would do a different version.
Kaitlin Leung:
Try to make it a new technique or... Well, the story with the mapo tofu is that for years... I love my mapo tofu recipe on the blog, but for years people are like, "No fermented black beans?" So for the cookbook, I was like, "You're getting it, fermented black beans." And also, I'm velveting the pork, which I also got questions about over the years. They're like, "No velveted pork?" I was like, "I guess you're right."
Sarah Leung:
Some of them are improved. Some of them are shortcut versions. Some of them are just a sort of adjacent version that is slightly different. Yeah, I think, that-
Kaitlin Leung:
And then we did a lot of vegetarianism, offering vegetarian substitutions.
Sarah Leung:
And then there were also recipes that I think were classics that we hadn't yet tackled, that we had kind of been putting off, to be quite honest, where we were like, "Okay, we have to buckle down."
Kaitlin Leung:
Cantonese roast duck.
Sarah Leung:
Get this one. So, my dad spent months on Cantonese roast duck. He spent months on dim sum tarot puffs, which is a really big challenge. So we used the cookbook as the reason to... It galvanized us to kind of-
Kaitlin Leung:
Yes, that's a good word.
Sarah Leung:
...To finally tackle some of those more difficult recipes as well, which aren't always that difficult in the end. It's just getting there, figuring out the method is the hard part, but once you have it, you can totally do it.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
We are huge manifesters on the podcast. Are there one or two people that you still would love to see the cookbook in their hands? Or has someone that you love received the cookbook?
Kaitlin Leung:
Oh, wait, okay. Yes. So you think of the one, I don't know who we would want, but Nigella Lawson is a fan of the blog.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing.
Kaitlin Leung:
And I almost died when I saw... I navigated over to her profile, and if they follow you, it says follow back. And I was like, "Oh my God," I was shocked.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
You were following Nigella? That's the question...
Kaitlin Leung:
Well, yeah, I was like, first of all, why not? I don't know why. But yeah, I saw that she followed us, and then we saw her in conversation with Ina Garten in Brooklyn last year, and then I reached out to her on Instagram and I was like, "You don't know me, but I saw you in Brooklyn. You were so great." And she was very gracious, and we sent her a cookbook and she was very happy and was very sweet. And she was like, "Oh, I'm such a fan." And I was like, "Oh my God."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
But who yet?
Sarah Leung:
I mean, I will say, before I jump into that, I will say that the book has really connected us to a lot of people that I think we've admired for years. I mean, Grace Young and-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
What a legend.
Kaitlin Leung:
Yeah, truly.
Sarah Leung:
J. Kenji López-Alt, we were able to contribute a blurb to his book, which was wild. He was like, "Oh, I actually used your stuff to develop," for his new-
Kaitlin Leung:
As a reference.
Sarah Leung:
And I was like, "What?" So that was cool.
Kaitlin Leung:
It was deeply flattering.
Sarah Leung:
And we got to do a book event together in Seattle, which was cool. So, I'll just drop those names as well. It was really exciting to get to meet them. But for somebody who we haven't, I would honestly say Martin Yan.
Kaitlin Leung:
That's a good one.
Sarah Leung:
I would love to meet Martin. Martin Yan, if you're listening, we want to meet you.
Kaitlin Leung:
That's a good one.
Sarah Leung:
Because literally, my dad, growing up, my sister... It was like me, my sister, and my dad, our activity would be to watch this show, “Yan Can Cook” on PBS.
Kaitlin Leung:
I guess. Yes, I think it was PBS.
Sarah Leung:
Think was PBS. We would watch the show together. To me, that was my first experience of seeing an Asian American, like Asian American representation of cooking, like a cooking show on TV.
Kaitlin Leung:
That felt more like home because there was Ming Tsai doing his fusion thing, love Ming Tsai. But then he would do the wine, and I was like, "We don't drink wine." But Martin Yan was kind of doing the Chinatown classics and stuff like that.
Sarah Leung:
And in the show, he would take you to Chinatown to a noodle factory. So to me, it opened my eyes a little bit as a kid just to see that representation on TV and to be like, "Wow, there are people who are interested in making our food." And he's just done so much in paving the way for us. And yeah, I'd love to get his thoughts on the book. And we have his cookbooks as well, so I'd be like, "Hey, can you sign?"
Abena Anim-Somuah:
It's just the book swap between you and your heroes. Amazing. How do you hope that your book and your blog inspire other people with other immigrant cultures to tell their stories?
Kaitlin Leung:
I think... Yeah. Okay. I have an answer.
Sarah Leung:
I have an answer.
Kaitlin Leung:
No, no, I have an answer.
Sarah Leung:
Okay.
Kaitlin Leung:
Well, you can say your-
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love the sister, the sister banter.
Sarah Leung:
I was just going to say-
Kaitlin Leung:
We're hitting our critical mess.
Sarah Leung:
Let me say my thing.
Kaitlin Leung:
...having an argument.
Sarah Leung:
Let me say my thing, and then you're going to...
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's the older sister thing.
Kaitlin Leung:
Exactly.
Sarah Leung:
Okay. So I would say that I just encourage everybody to go to your mom, your dad, your grandma, whoever is the keeper of those recipes in your family. And you don't have to make it as intense as making a food blog about it, but write them down. Just ask them to make it, sit in the kitchen with them while they're doing it and write down every single thing that they do. Because once that recipe is gone, it's gone. Just watch them make it, write it down, and put it somewhere safe and give it to everybody in the family so that multiple people have it. Because those recipes are so much part of your family's story. I think that they should be treasured as much as like a family photo album is treasured.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Yeah, definitely.
Kaitlin Leung:
Good answer. Good answer. And I think that's ultimately what we're trying to get down on paper is all those delicious things that you eat over the course of a lifetime. So yeah, I mean, like Sarah said, it's so important to record all that stuff because you don't want it to just live in your memory. It's like, wouldn't it be great if you had somewhere to recreate it again?
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Before we wrap up the pod, we like to do something here known as the Future Flash Five. Are you ready?
Sarah Leung:
Okay.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Okay. The future of cookbooks?
Kaitlin Leung:
Representation.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of food blogs?
Kaitlin Leung:
Video.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of recipes?
Sarah Leung:
Formulas.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of vegetables?
Sarah Leung:
Diversity.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
The future of Chinese American cooking?
Kaitlin Leung:
Home cooking.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
Amazing. Kaitlin, Sarah, thank you both so much for joining us. I have learned so much.
Kaitlin Leung:
It's been so fun.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
And can't wait to cook more through your cookbook. You can find "The Woks of Life" wherever books are sold. Where are the best places to find you if you want to continue to follow and support you?
Kaitlin Leung:
You can follow us on Instagram @thewoksoflife. Definitely hit up the blog, thewoksoflife.com. We're like Ohio State. The Ohio State is "The Woks of Life". That was the only domain that was available. And then, yeah, subscribe to our newsletter. I think that's a great way to get our recipes in your inbox. We try to keep it easy so we don't flood you with emails. And then you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel. I just did a new YouTube banner the other day and it says, "The Woks of Life", new recipes every week at thewoksoflife.com and new videos sometimes."
Abena Anim-Somuah:
I love that. She said consistency is sometimes. Amazing. You guys were great. I learned so much, and I just think you're both so sharp, so this is going to be a great-
Kaitlin Leung:
Thank you.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
... pod. Before we go, our guest is going to leave a voicemail at The Future Of Food mailbox, 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.
Sarah Leung:
Hey, future, Sarah. I hope we're still feeling sprightly in our early forties and that we figured out how to keep this whole food and gardening thing going. I hope that our future kids take after their parents and are becoming more adventurous eaters and that we did actually manage to continue traveling and eating in Asia and around the world with them in tow. Got to prepare them for that hiking trip to Patagonia. Are we teaching them how to make moon cakes and zongzi yet? Are they more excited to bring leftovers to school for lunch than we were when we were kids? I'm sure their grandparents are putting them to work in the garden and teaching them the important lessons that they taught you. And hopefully one day, they'll look at The "The Woks of Life" with the same sense of gratitude that we have for it now. I'll leave you with one quick reminder. As hard as it is, try to live in the present without worrying too much about the future. There's only so much we can control, and sometimes it's best to just be along for the ride.
Kaitlin Leung:
Hello, Kaitlin, it's me, you. I don't even know where to begin because I have no idea where you'll be in 10 years. 10 years ago from today, everything we've accomplished with the blog was just a little tiny voice that said, "Maybe we can do that." I hope you've written more recipes, made more accidental kitchen discoveries, written one or two more cookbooks and maybe even knocked out a screenplay or two, even if it's just for fun. Have you finally perfected that recipe for Liu Sha Bao with Ma? I hope so.
You're probably a crazy aunt now, but the idea of being the older person in the room who knows how to handle their wok and cook our family's favorites from memory is pretty thrilling. Turning 30 has been a tough pill to swallow, so I can only imagine what a doozy 40 will be. But being young isn't everything, and let's manifest that the ups and downs of the days pan out to one steady upward trajectory across the years. So if you haven't done any of that stuff yet, that's okay. There's still time and more chapters to come because you've always said, "The "The Woks of Life" is the train that won't stop running," and there's no reason to start thinking differently now.
Abena Anim-Somuah:
That's it for today's show. Do you know someone who you think is the future of food? Tell us about them. Nominate them at the link in our show notes, or leave us a rating and review and tell me about them in the review. I can't wait to read more about them. Thanks to Kerrygold and Walmart for supporting the show. The Future Of Food Is You is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thanks to the team at CityVox Studios, executive producers Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and associate producer Jenna Sadhu. Catch you on the future flip.