Carla Lalli Says Food Is A Feeling, from Expense Account

The Recipe with Kenji and Deb

The episode celebrates the return of the Expense Account podcast, hosted by J Lee, featuring discussions on food as a cultural and emotional

Key takeaways

Carla Lalli's new book, 'Food is a Feeling', uses recipes as a medium to process her divorce and emotional shifts.
The Expense Account podcast has entered a new era through a partnership with Higher Ground, Barack Obama's production company.

Main topics

Podcast relaunch and new partnerships
Food as emotional nourishment

Notable quotes

I'm marrying pork.

Conclusion

A nostalgic yet forward-looking look at how food serves as a vital con

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hi, this is Yuri Lasordo, the managing producer of The Recipe with Kenji and Deb. We all know eating out in New York has become an extreme sport. If you treat dining out like a full-time obsession and care about the scene just as much as what's on the menu, you need to listen to Expense Account. Expense Account uses food as an entry point into bigger conversations about restaurants, culture, taste. and how it all relates to life and the world at large. Hosted by Jay Lee, food critic at Emily Sundberg's Feed Me Media Empire, Jay has one million opinions about food. But since he wants to hear everyone else's take, Jay will talk to chefs, writers, musicians, actors, and more. Like writer Molly Baz, chef Carla Lally, and PBS host Patti Hinnich. You'll hear about their best meals and worst meals. Favorite spots around the world. And you might even get a peek inside their fridges to find out how they're really eating. The conversations will start with food, but will always wind up somewhere else because food is culture and everybody eats. I'm going to play the first episode for you now. In it, Jaylee talks with chef and author Carla Lally about her journey from Shake Shack to Bon Appetit, her new cookbook, and why we should eat our feelings. I'm down with that. You can listen to Expense Account wherever you get podcasts. Speaker 5 (1:30) I heard rumors that Expense Account was done. I heard that Expense Account was canceled. That Expense Account was never coming back. I got a request for comment from a food media reporter asking me if expense account was over. And guess what? I'm here to say that the answer is no. I'm here to say that those rumors are categorically false. In fact, it's an outright lie. Expense account is back, baby. And we're better than ever. We're working with Higher Ground, which for those of you who don't know, is Obama's production company. I've not yet met Barack himself, but when I do, I promise, I promise, I promise that you guys will be the first to know. We're making some changes around here. I'll start at the top of each episode, just me telling you about my likes, my dislikes, what I've been up to. Maybe I'll talk about some food I ate, some drinks I drank, maybe some news, maybe a hot take or two. And then there's always an interview. And we've got some really great guests this season. I cannot wait for you guys to meet them. They'll be fun and full of surprises. We'll take a peek inside of some of their fridges. We'll dissect some of their dinner receipts. We'll play marry, fuck, kill with them. Guess what? I'm marrying pork. So welcome back. This is Expense Account. Cue the music. Speaker 5 (3:03) So as this is the first episode back, I've got a treat for you guys. We're talking all things fall with my friend, my boss, the queen of Substack, Emily Sundberg. Emily, welcome to Expense Account. How's it going? Speaker 3 (3:16) Great. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm so excited for this season to kick off. The Speaker 5 (3:21) first time of the season, but not the last time. How was your summer? Speaker 3 (3:26) It was great. I traveled a bit at the beginning of the summer. I was in Europe, I did a little road trip from France to Italy, which was super cool. It was like three hours to get over the border, and you're sort of in two different worlds. And then for most of the summer, I was between the city and Long Island, which was also really nice. I was in a bit of a bubble on the beach, which Speaker 5 (3:50) was Speaker 3 (3:50) great. Speaker 5 (3:51) Are you like a big swimmer? Speaker 3 (3:53) I'm a big swimmer. I like to swim. I love going in the ocean. Speaker 3 (3:59) I walked to the ocean almost every day. I jumped in maybe half of those times. It was great. Speaker 5 (4:05) I'm so jealous. But now it's fall. I saw you're making an apple crumble this weekend and it gave me anxiety. I'm like, it's officially fall. She's cooking an apple crumble. Speaker 3 (4:17) Here's the thing. At the end of August, a friend invited me to apple pick at her house on Long Island. Speaker 3 (4:26) I guess you can't really fight what the harvest says. Like the trees say the apples are ready. You can't say like, wait, wait, wait, it's not October yet. Like they're ready. Maybe it's more of like a Long Island thing. They're ready a little bit earlier. So I got into the apple spirit early. And then I went to a barbecue over the weekend, which was. a barbecue slash Rosh Hashanah party. So I was like, what can I bring? And I got super ambitious and made this sour cream crumb cake with a layer of sliced apples that I got at the Grand Army Farmer's Market on Saturday. Speaker 5 (5:02) How do you feel about pumpkin spice? Speaker 3 (5:05) I like pumpkin spice. I have so far participated in two pumpkin spice treats. I had a pumpkin spice latte from a coffee shop in my neighborhood the other day. And I also was at my bodega the other day and they had a pumpkin spice Siggy's yogurt and I picked it up off the shelf and it was pretty good. I Speaker 5 (5:28) love cozy season. What is it that you're looking forward to most this fall? Speaker 3 (5:33) Well, this is my favorite produce season. I love the shoulder season of tomatoes, but also there's this brief period where you see all the figs and the Concord grapes. And then I don't know if you've been reading about the fig crop this year, but it's apparently a bit weak. And I went to two restaurants in the last week and they both had... fig leaf desserts. And I wonder if that's a workaround from the fig crop or it's delicious. It's, it tastes really good. It's almost like a little anise or minty. So I'm happy to see like the menus this time of year and see the pastries coming out of different kitchens. What else? I have a wedding this weekend in Boston and Boston is like a fall town to me. Like it's always kind of, you know, it's college town. Speaker 5 (6:22) That's true. Goodwill hunting is very. Autumn. Speaker 3 (6:26) Totally. What else? I mean, I'm so excited for the show launch. That's going to be so exciting. Yeah, it's such a gift to be able to live in New York City this time of year. I feel like everyone's back in the streets. You see all the students. You see all the 22-year-old bankers figuring out how to get dressed. It's great. Yeah. It Speaker 5 (6:49) really is the most wonderful time of the year. Well, thank you so much for joining me, Emily. You'll be back on soon. I'll be back Speaker 3 (6:58) on soon. I am so happy that we're back and recording. And I can't wait to hear how all of our listeners respond to the show this week. Speaker 5 (7:10) My guest today is Carla Lawley. She is a legend. She was the first ever manager of the first ever Shake Shack. She's a bonafide, bon appetit, test kitchen, all-star, and OG. She's got James Beard Awards. She writes recipes. She writes a newsletter. It's called Food Processing. And she writes cookbooks. She's got a new book out. It's called Food is a Feeling. It's half memoir. Half Cookbook. It's a book about her divorce and cooking her way through it. It's a funny book. It's a sad book. It's a book full of amazing recipes, and you guys should go buy it. Carla herself is an open book, and I had so much fun talking to her about her love for pepper jack cheese, the single life, dating on the apps, and of course we talked about her new book. Without further ado, Carla Lawley. Speaker 5 (8:06) Hey, Carla, welcome to Expense Account. Speaker 1 (8:09) Thanks for having me. So Speaker 5 (8:10) you wrote a book. Speaker 1 (8:11) I did. Speaker 5 (8:11) It's called Food is Feeling. It's so good. Thank Speaker 1 (8:14) you. There's Speaker 5 (8:15) so many recipes in the world, so many cookbooks, but this is doing something that I feel like is new and fresh and it's something that I actually want to read. Speaker 1 (8:24) Thank you. Speaker 5 (8:24) Could you tell us about your book? Speaker 1 (8:27) Yeah. I'm so glad that you said that about wanting to read it because like part of the inspiration for me came from. you know, being a young cook and I used to go to bed with cookbooks all the time. Speaker 3 (8:38) And Speaker 1 (8:39) I feel like older cookbooks had a lot more like storytelling in them. And I just used to like love that experience. But Food is a Feeling is my third book and very different from the other two in that it combines personal essays and recipes. And it was inspired by the breakup of my two dozen. year-long marriage and the experiences afterwards where I really like reconnected to food and cooking and in a different way that validated everything I already felt but deepened also um and so I wasn't planning this book I was sort of like five months into my separation kind of eating a lot of you know olive oil fried bread and Speaker 5 (9:25) personal Speaker 1 (9:26) pots of beans and greens and realized like I want to write about this um And it's different because essays, I talk about food and recipes or the foods that I was eating in the essays and that sets up the recipes. So they kind of live together in the book back to back. Speaker 5 (9:43) I mean, I feel like so many cookbooks, especially so many recipes and so much of food media is so like oriented toward like celebration and like this is how you host a dinner party. And it's so cool to be reminded that like food can be healing. Food is like nurturing. Exactly. Food can be so many different things and it's important in so many different ways. Speaker 1 (10:06) Yeah, I think you bring up a really good point, which is, you know, we're accustomed to sort of having recipes marketed to us as like a problem solver, you know, so like a seasonal opportunity or like you said, like it's a holiday or it's a thing and this is what you should make for this. And that's, first of all, very service oriented where I wanted to like lean into like an emotional. lead with an emotional connection, but it also kind of presumes that every time we cook, it's like, yay. Whereas for me, and I think so many people, like we eat, eating when you're sad, out of sorts, annoyed, you know, good day, bad day. Like we eat through all of that time. Yeah, you have to eat. You have to eat. Yeah. And this is like a good, it should be a good thing. Speaker 5 (10:58) Yeah. I mean, once you can figure out how to feed yourself, that's, I mean, I'm not even good at like the self-help kind of thing, but that's how you can learn how to be nice to yourself and to treat yourself. And that's like, it's healing and knowing who you are as a person, really. Totally. Speaker 1 (11:14) Yeah. I hate, I was like, oh no, is this like self-care? Like just the phrase self-care is so loaded and like. you know, bath bombs and like, I Speaker 5 (11:24) love a bath bomb. Shout out Lush. We love Lush here. Speaker 1 (11:29) But it is, it's like feeding yourself in all of the ways is like, it's self-care, it's nourishment. And it's also essential to like staying alive. Yeah. You literally have to do it. Speaker 5 (11:42) You don't have a choice. Yeah. Speaker 1 (11:43) Yeah. Speaker 5 (11:45) You have this really. fun chapter that I love. It's called The Pleasure of Not Feeling Guilty. And you have a part about how you feel like whoever invented the phrase guilty pleasure is a total dipshit. Yeah. But what is your guilty pleasure? Do you think that no pleasure should be? Well, that's Speaker 1 (12:02) sort of, you know, that's sort of part of it. I feel like guilty pleasure is, you know, a sick twist. Like why? Like this idea. But Speaker 5 (12:10) it's also Speaker 1 (12:10) fun to Speaker 5 (12:11) feel guilty sometimes. Speaker 1 (12:13) What is the guilt of, I don't know, it's very tied in with, for me, with like clean eating and clean food as like food isn't dirty, you know? So once you like cast it that way, it sort of gives this idea that like other foods are dirty, which I think is like psychotic. I think that's so, I think it's so tied in. To diet culture. I mean, it's Speaker 5 (12:38) classist and weird. For sure, classist, yes. Not good for you. Speaker 1 (12:42) Exactly. Speaker 5 (12:44) Like, if I didn't have, like, any kind of guilt, I wouldn't. I'd be eating White Castle all the time. But also, if I didn't have the guilt, I probably wouldn't enjoy the White Castle as much like the one time a year that I get to eat White Castle. Speaker 1 (12:56) But what, so you eat White Castle and you feel regret? You feel like, you feel bad? Now I'm just like, oh, I'm so, I'm such a bad boy. Speaker 5 (13:06) It's like, it's more for show than it is for actual, like I'm like a hedonist. Yeah. I don't feel real guilt about pleasure, but I just, I like to pretend, I like to go through the motions of guilt, like for fun. Got Speaker 1 (13:20) it. Yeah. I think that for, where it was coming from for me was. Speaker 1 (13:31) if you are craving something, if your body is telling you to eat something, if there's something that you want, if there's a food that you think is going to satisfy, feel good, make you feel better, then can we just please disconnect guiltiness from all of this other stuff around it? Speaker 5 (13:54) And Speaker 1 (13:54) I think that the guilt and the... Speaker 1 (14:00) It's basically marketing language to create this like, ooh, it is. It's like, I'm so naughty. Like I'm sneaking down to the kitchen at midnight and like going in the freezer. Just like, Speaker