Podcasts about dishing

If you enjoy this podcast and look forward to it in your inbox, consider supporting it by becoming a paid yearly subscriber for $60 or you can buy me a cup of coffee for $8Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish." Today, I interview acclaimed food writer, wild foods expert, and self-described hunter-gatherer Hank Shaw. Hank is the author of the brand new cookbook, "Borderlands: Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific," an exploration of the flavors, cultures, and stories that define the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. He also has a Substack that's wonderful, called Hank Shaw “To The Bone” and a website full of recipes.In this episode, Hank and I dive into everything from his early days as a restaurant cook and investigative journalist to his passion for foraging, preserving, and hunting wild foods. Hank discusses the vibrant mix of culinary traditions that thrive along the border, debunks myths about iconic ingredients (like acorns!), and shares the fascinating histories behind beloved dishes such as chimichangas and parisa.They also touch on practical advice—like the art of drying herbs, the joys and challenges of single-person food preservation, and the ins and outs of self-publishing cookbooks at a high level.Get ready for an episode filled with storytelling, culinary wisdom, and inspiration for your next adventure in the kitchen or the great outdoors. Whether you're a curious home cook, an aspiring cookbook author, or simply a lover of good food, there's something here for everyone. Let's get started!Original Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast, where we talk to fun people in the food space and sometimes they have cookbooks. And today's author is an author. He's an author of great magnitude, Hank Shaw. His new book is Borderlands Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. And Hank, you are such a prolific, beautiful writer. This book, I feel like, is just so you. Do you love it?Hank Shaw:It's been a long journey to make this book, and I'm pretty proud of it. And it's. It's been probably the biggest project of my adult life in terms of time, commitment, travel, really unlocking understanding of things that I thought I knew but didn't necessarily know until I got there. And it's just been this. This crazy, fantastic journey and a journey that you can eat.Stephanie:Can you talk a little bit about your history? Like, I think many people know you as the hunter, forager, gatherer, type, and Borderlands obviously has a lot of those elements to it. But can you just walk readers that are listeners that might be new to your journey kind of through how you got here?Hank Shaw:Sure. Many, many years ago, when I was still fairly young, I was a restaurant cook. So I worked first as a dishwasher and then as a line cook and then as a sous chef in a series of restaurants, mostly in Madison, Wisconsin. And I left that job to be a newspaper reporter. And I ended up being a newspaper reporter for 18 years. And I cooked all throughout that and traveled and learned more about food and did fishing and hunting and foraging and such. And then I left the News Business in 2010 to do my website, which is hunter, angler, gardener, cook. And I've been doing that full time since 2010.So, yeah, my entire kind of current incarnation is wild foods. But Borderlands is kind of an outgrowth of that for two reasons. The first is I've been basically written all of the fishing game books you can possibly write already. I've got one for every kind of quarry you can imagine. And then the other thing was, oh, well, you know, a lot of that travel for those other books was on the border on both sides, on the American side and on the Mexican side. And that kind of grew into this. Wow, you know, God, the food is so great and God, this area is just so neglected, I think, by most, you know, the. The food, or radio, for lack of a better term.Yeah, because all of the, like, everybody seems to love to hate Tex Mex without really fully knowing what Tex Mex actually is. And people say that the Southwestern cooking is so very 1987. And. And, you know, the people who know Mexico are like, oh, all the good foods in Oaxaca or Michoacan or Mexico City or Yucatan. And really that's not the case, as over and over and over again, I was discovering these amazing just finds. And a lot of them had to do with wild foods, but not all of them. And so that borderlands became my diary of that journey.Stephanie:And quite a diary it is. What's interesting to me is I didn't actually ever know that you were in the newspaper business.Hank Shaw:And that makes a Pioneer Press graduate.Stephanie:Oh, you work for them. How did I not know this?Hank Shaw:Yeah, I was a St. Paul Pioneer Press investigative reporter from 2002 to 2004. And if you're of a certain age and you remember there was a big story about some Republican operatives getting involved with a telecommunications boondoggle. And yeah, that was probably. That was us. That was our story.Stephanie:Well, and it makes sense because the book is so like. It's the storytelling that's so good. And, you know, cookbooks are cookbooks with beautiful recipes and different people's point of view on recipes. But what I love about your book, too, is it really goes into ingredients a little more in depth. It tells the story of the terroir, of where the recipe's from and why it's the way it is. And it makes sense now to me that you're a journalist because it's so beautifully written.Hank Shaw:I really appreciate that. I mean, I tried in this particular book. There are essays in all of my books, but in this particular one, I really, really wanted people from the rest of the country to get a flavor of what it's like to was really honest to God, like on the border. Everybody has thoughts and opinions about immigration and about the border and about blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, how much time have you actually spent on the border? Do you actually know what it feels like, what it smells like, what it tastes like? Chances are you probably don't. And I really wanted this book to shine a light on that in ways that go well beyond food.Stephanie:When we talk about the borderlands, can you talk about it without talking about immigration and the close connection between the United States and Mexico? I mean, we share this border. People have this idea that it's like this gated, fenced situation, and really there's tons of the border that's just. You'd only know it was a border if someone told you you were crossing it.Hank Shaw:It's very true. In Fact, one of my favorite moments to that was in south southwest Texas there's a beautiful national park called Big Bend. It's one of the biggest national parks in the country. It's fa. It's famous, it's amazing. But you're going to drive and hike and hike and drive and hike and drive a gigantic park. So one place that you can go to. And it's actually, if you open up a copy of Borderlands and you see this huge vista right at the beginning of the book, there's this huge vista and it's on a cliff. That is exactly it. That is. That is Big Bend National Park. And if you're looking right in the back end of that back center, a little to the left, you'll see a canyon in the background. In that canyon is St. Helena Canyon. And St.Helena Canyon is created by the Rio Grande. So you can go to that park and you can walk across the border literally to Mexico and not have the Rio Grande come up over your ankles. And there's Mexicans on their side, there's Americans on our side, and everybody's crossing back and forth until their families are there and having a fun time, blah, blah, blah. And it's just, it's one of these great moments where it shows you that, yeah, that border is really just sort of a fiction.Stephanie:Yeah. Yes, in many ways. Right. Figuratively. And also, I don't know, we seem to be in a global food economy whether we want to or not. When you look at the individual ingredients that you're using here in Borderlands, obviously there's very different things because of temperature in Mexico than you might have here in the Midwest. But is it really different from like say, Texas to Mexico in.Hank Shaw:Yes, there, there are definitely different. So the food you'll get in Nueva Leon or Coahuila or Tamaulipas, which are the three Mexican states, that border Texas is going to be different from what you would think about as Texas food. However, on the Borderlands, that. That change really is minimal. And I talk about in the book the idea of Fronteraisos, people who are neither fully Mexican nor full. They're. They're border people and they can slide between English and Spanish in mid clause. And it's really the, you know, the, the pocho or Spanglish or whatever you want to call it that you'll hear there is very different from what you'll hear from a bilingual person from, say, Mexico City, where typically those people will speak in full sentences or paragraphs in one language and then maybe switch to another language in the next sentence or paragraph.Hank Shaw:Well, on the border, it's a mishmash. So the structure, the words, the adjectives, like, it's everything. It's like no function. And so it's like. It's like this whole kind of amalgam of what's going on. And that kind of translates into the food where you've got some Texas, you know, some very Texas. Texas. Things that don't cross the border, like yellow cheese doesn't really cross the border.Stephanie:Right.Hank Shaw:The idea of, like, rotel queso. So it's. It's like Velveeta cheese melted with rotel. That's queso. That's the bad queso in North Texas. Like, you'll get that in, like, Amarillo. But the real queso is south of Interstate 10. And that is a white Mexican cheese.That it where you get, you know, roasted fire roasted green chilies folded into it and a little bit of Mexican oregano and salt and a little bit of crema to thin it out. And it's is to the rotel queso what a match is to the sun.Stephanie:Yeah.Hank Shaw:And, you know, I mean, that said, I'm not gonna poop all over the Velveeta one, because that while I don't think it tastes great, what I realized is that particular version of queso, which I personally don't like, is really heavy with cultural significance.Stephanie:Yeah.Hank Shaw:And. And so that's. There's a place for it. It's just not. That's not really as border food as you might think. That's a little bit more North Texas, and that's an example of where things don't cross. But a really great example of where things are damn near the same is Arizona and Sonora. So that there's almost no difference between Arizona Mexican food and Sonora Mexican food because they're one and the same.The burritos are pretty similar. The flour tortillas are similar. The carne asada is pretty similar. And so that. That's a case where the border's really. I mean, yes, it's a border, but I mean, it's like the. It's. There's no food border.Same thing with Southern California and Tijuana and Northern Baja. There's almost no. No functional difference between the two of them. Now, New Mexico and Chihuahua has a difference. And, like, north of Interstate 10 in Texas and the border in Texas are quite different.Stephanie:There's a recipe in here that I didn't even really know existed called Parisa.Hank Shaw:Oh, yeah.Stephanie:And, you know, you we will order steak tartare or make tartare. And I didn't realize that there was a. In many cultures, you sort of see similar foods or similar food groups, and they're just treated differently with herbs or spices. This looks delicious.Hank Shaw:It really is. It's the best way to describe it if you. If you're not familiar, because it's very. It's. It's super regional in Texas. Like, you can't even really get barista in Dallas or in. Or in El Paso. It's not a thing there.It's sort of a south central Texas thing. But the best way I can describe it is really accurately describe it. It is steak tartar meets aguachile. Because most people will say it's steak tartare meat ceviche. And yes, you absolutely can get it like that, but the. The acidity and the citrus will turn the. The raw beef gray, which I think looks gross. Yeah, I mean, it.It tastes fine, but it just kind of looks like, meh. So my recipe and what I do is I. I mix the steak tartare with the. Essentially, pico de gallo is really what it. What it's being mixed with, and a little bit of cheese, and I. I'll mix it and serve it right away so that when you eat it, the meat is still pink.Stephanie:Yeah, it looks really good. And then also in the book, so you're a hunter, obviously, we established that. But in many of these recipes, you have substitutions of different animal proteins that can be used. So whether it's elk or bison or sheep or duck, I think that's cool.Hank Shaw:Yeah, I mean, I think I. I started that process. It's done with icons. So if you look at a recipe for. Oh, there's a stew that's very popular. They're called puchero. And I'm just to that page, so I'll. So.Oh, that's a sour puerto. So always pork, but, like, no. Babies will die if you use something else from that. But that is traditionally a pork dish. Buchero is traditionally beef or venison, but really, you know, you're gonna be fine if you put damn near anything in it. It's a big, giant stew, a lot of vegetables, and it's fantastic. And to. To really make the book more versatile, because I.The two things that I always do in my books. Number one is I'm going to give you the recipe as faithfully as I can to what it actually is, wherever it's from, and then I'm going to give you all these substitutions so that if you live in, you know, Bismarck or Crookston or, you know, rural Iowa, you're going to be able to make it. And that's important to me because it's more important to me that you make some version of it than to be exactly proper and specific. I hate cookbooks where it's like, especially with cheese, where you'll see someone be like, it must be the, you know, Cowgirl Creamery point raised blue from 2012. Otherwise this recipe won't work. I'm like, come on guys, this is a stupid recipe. Like it's blue cheese. It'll be fine.Stephanie:I was surprised that you have a chimichanga in the book. Can we talk about chimichangas? Because people that grew up in the Midwest, Chichis was like the first Mexican restaurant besides El Burrito Mercado. And El Burrito Mercado was authentic and chichi's was like the Americanized what they thought Mexican food was. Which also I will say I have taste memories of chi cheese. I say this not dogging on them and they're actually coming back. And the chimichanga is something that like, if I actually go to the new restaurant, which I'm sure I will, I will order a chimichanga. It's like a taste memory for me. What is the origination of chimichanga?Hank Shaw:It's shrouded in mystery. So there's a couple different theories. And then I'll tell you what I think the general story is that a woman was making burritos in Arizona and either dropped, which I don't believe because that would create a splash that would, you know, send 350 degree oil everywhere, or placed a burrito in the deep fryer. And the, the legend, which I don't believe this is true at all, is she drops the burrito in the deep fryer and you know, says something like, you know, ah, chingo to madre or whatever, like just like swears something bad and. But then sort of does what you would do in a kind of a mom situation. And if you instead of saying the F word, you would say oh, fudge. And so she goes, oh Jimmy changa. And which is sort of vaguely reminiscent of some Mexican swear words.And so that thus the, the dish was born. But I think that's not true because there is a fantastic resource, actually. I mean, I found it in some of my older Mexican cookbooks that I own. But there's a fantastic research that the University of Texas at San Antonio of Mexican cookbooks. And some of these Mexican cookbooks are handwritten from the 1800s, and so they're all digitized and you can. You can study them. And so there's a thing in Sonora. Remember I just got done saying that, like, there's almost no difference between Sonora and Arizona.There's a thing from Sonora many, many, many, many years ago, you know, early early 1900s, for a chivy changa. C H I V I C H A N G A ch and it's the same thing. So I'm convinced that this is just a thing, because if you have a burrito and you fry things, there's zero. There's zero chance that at some point you be like, I want to. I wonder if frying the burrito will make it good? You know, like, the answer, yes, yes, all the time.Stephanie:And.Hank Shaw:And so, you know, I, like you, came into the chimichanga world just thinking with a definite eyebrow raised, like, what is this? And when it's done right, and if you see the picture in my book, it is dressed with a whole bunch of things on the outside of the burrito. So it's crema, it's a pico de gallo. It's shredded lettuce or cabbage, limes. The thing about a properly served chimichanga is that you have to eat it as a whole because the chimichanga itself is quite heavy. You know, it's a. It's a fried burrito with, like, rice and beans and meat inside it. Like, it's a gut bomb. But when you eat it with all these light things around it that are bright and fresh and acidic, it completely changes the eating experience. And I was sold.Stephanie:I can imagine. The one you have in the book looks really good. I'm going to. I keep asking about specific recipes, but there were, like, some that just jumped out at me, like, wow. Another one that jumped out at me was from that same chapter about the acorn cookies. I've always been under the impression that acorns, and maybe it's from just specific to the oaks, but that they're poisonous. I didn't think about making acorn flour.Hank Shaw:So, number one, no acorns are poisonous. Zero, period. End of story. It's a myth. You were lied to. Sorry.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, it helps me because my dog eats them.Hank Shaw:I mean, acorns have been a source of food for human beings forever, you know, all the way. I don't know how long ago, but way more than 10,000 years. Way more. Okay, so what the myth comes from is most acorn varieties, so most especially red oaks, are full of tannins. And tannins are not poisonous. Tannins are not toxic. Tannins will make you constipated if you eat too many of them. And I suppose it would be possible to poison yourself with tannins, but I mean, good luck.Yeah, good luck eating enough of that astringent stuff to be able to get yourself poisoned. But tannins are water soluble. So for millennia, the people who eat acorns, and especially in. In northern California, where, you know, acorn. Acorns were their main starch, the idea of leaching the tannins out in a stream or wherever is as old as time. And so you make the. You make a meal. It's really a meal is probably a better way to put it.I call it flour, but there's no. There's no real gluten in it. In fact, there's no gluten in it, but there is some starch in it that will help the flour stick to itself. So that's true everywhere. In fact, it's a very good acorn year here in Minnesota this year. And I found some bur oaks in a. In a place that I'm going to go back and harvest them to make some more acorn flour this year. And I'll have to leach them here.But this is a very long walk up to this cookie recipe, because in south Arizona and in Sonora, there's an oak called an emery oak. And the emery oak is in the white oak. It's in the white oak clan. And it is sweet in the sense that you can roast those acorns and eat them. And in fact, you can get roasted acorns as a snack on some of the reservations down there or really wherever. I mean, it's a thing like it's. It. It.They could just roast it. Roast the acorns? Yeah. It's just like a chestnut. Very good. That's exactly with the. Because it's the same kind of a texture as well. And so that particular oak is unique in. In North America.The cork oak in Europe is the other one that doesn't have any tannins to it. So you can just sit there and eat them. And that's why they make flour out of them. It's an indigenous thing. You don't really see it too much among the Hispanic Sonorans. You see it a lot more with, like, Yaqui or Pima or Tono O', Odham, those indigenous groups.Stephanie:It's so Cool. I also subscribe to your substack, which I would encourage people to subscribe and. And yes to the Bone, it's called. And you just had a post about herbs and how important herbs are in your cooking and in your yard. And I know that you have kind of a small St. Paul yard because we've talked about it. What are you doing with your herbs now that we're at the end of the season? Are you. Do you have anything that's special that you do with them? Do you dry them? Do you mix them with salt?Hank Shaw:I do all of the above. I am a preservation fanatic. I could talk for hours just about various ways to preserve things for our Minnesota winners. Maybe that's another podcast for sure. But the short version is, yes, all of the things. I mostly will do things like make pesto with basil, because I love pesto. But I do dry some and there are tricks to drying herbs. The trick is low heat for a long time, so the don't use your oven and try to get them dry within 40, 48 hours, but also try to do it at less than 110 degrees, otherwise they turn brown.Stephanie:Do you use it like a dehydrator, then?Hank Shaw:Yes, I use a dehydrator. And most herbs dry really well. In fact, many herbs are better dried because it concentrates their flavor. Basil's iffy. Parsley's kind of terrible. Dried parsley's one of those ones where eat it fresh, make pesto. I suppose you could freeze it. I mostly will.I will gather big scabs of it because I grow a lot and I will freeze it. And even though it's going to suffer in the freezer, it is one of the most vital things I use for making stocks and broths with the game I bring home. So freezing, drying, you can, you know, I just mixed a whole bunch of. Of lovage with salt. So you go 50, 50 the herb and. And coarse salt, like ice cream salt almost. And then you buzz that into a food processor or a blender, and then that creates a much finer kind of almost a wet salt that is an enormous amount of flavor. And if you freeze it, it'll stay bright green the whole winter.And sometimes I like to do that, but the other times I kind of like to. To see it and progress over the. Over the months. And it's kind of a beautiful thing to see that herb salt kind of brown out and army green out as we get to like, late February, because it really is. Is sort of also indicative of how of our Harsh winters and feels a little bit more of the time and place than pulling something out of a freezer.Stephanie:Yeah. So let's talk about that because you're a single man, you are a recipe writer and developer, so you're also cooking and testing recipes. You're preserving all these things. I mean, my freezer right now is kind of a hellscape. I just closed up my summer and I came home with so much food. I have, like, canned and pickled and preserved. And I just literally feel overwhelmed by all of the food in my home right now. And I realize this is a real first world problem.So, you know, my daughter's kind of in her young 20s and sort of poor, so I've loaded her up with stuff. But do you just feel overwhelmed sometimes by all of the abundance of food?Hank Shaw:Absolutely. It's one of the things that's been really remarkable about it, about sort of single life, is how less I need to hunt or fish. So I find myself. I mean, I still. I. Because. So, side note, background backstory. I don't buy meat or fish at all.I occasionally will buy a little bit of bacon because I love bacon. And I'll occasionally buy pork fat to make sausages with game, but that's it. So if I'm eating red meat, it's going to be venison. If I'm eating white meat, it's probably going to be grouse or. Or pheasants. If I'm eating fish, I've caught it. And so that's what I find is that I eat. Hey, I don't eat that much meat anymore.Like, I eat plenty. But I mean, it's not like I. I don't gorge myself on giant steaks anymore. And it's just me. So, you know, a limit of walleyes can last me a month. And before, it was definitely not like that. And so, yes, I can feel the overwhelm. But what's, you know, I have neighbors that I give things to.I have friends that I give things to. Like, I. I had two deer tags last year, and I shot the second deer because I had a whole bunch of friends who didn't get a deer and needed medicine. So it was really cool to be able to give to. You know, I butchered it all and gave them an all vacuum seal. It was like all ready to go. And. And that was really satisfying to be able to help people like that.And then, you know, I like, you know, have a dinner party here and there.Stephanie:Yeah, I want to come to a dinner party. Not to invite myself. But please, I'll. I'll reciprocate in the. I have a cabin in the summer, so I'm sort of like between here and there. But once sets in, I really like to entertain and have people over. I find that it's a really easy way to gather new people too. Like, I like collecting people because I just think people are so amazing and I love putting like, new people at the table that people don't know yet or making those connections.I think I'm actually kind of good at it. So I can't wait to have you over this fall.Hank Shaw:Yeah, likewise. We'll. We'll do a home and home.Stephanie:Yes, I would love that very much. Your book is available, Borderlands on. I found it because obviously I. You sent me a copy. But also it's on Amazon and you self publish. So there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are cookbook writers themselves or people that maybe are trying to get published or find publishing. Can you speak to that a little bit and why that's been your route. You've been doing this a long time.Hank Shaw:Yeah, this is my force. Fourth self published book. And self publish is really kind of a misnomer in a way because the books that I put out are of Random House quality. Like, they're for sure. There's no way you're gonna be able to tell this book is apart from a gigantic publishing house, because what I ended up doing is creating a publishing company. So the books are published in big, big runs at Versa Press in Illinois. I'm very happy to say that these books are entirely made in America. And that's kind of important to me because most cookbooks are made in China and not a fan.So the books are printed in Illinois and they are stored and shipped at a, at a, a warehouse in Michigan. So the best ways to get the books are to either buy them from my website or buy them from Amazon. Those are probably your two best avenues for it. The thing about self publishing, if you want to do it at the level that I'm doing it, which is to say, make a book that, you know, even a snooty Random House person will be like, damn, that's a good book. You have to go big and it's not cheap. So I do, I, I don't ever do runs less than 5,000. And a typical run for me is between 10 and 15,000. And because your unit costs go way, way down.Stephanie:Right.Hank Shaw:And we can get in the weeds of it, but I have some Advantages in the sense that my sister has designed books for a living for 30 some odd years and her husband has edited books for 30 some odd years.Stephanie:Oh, so you got like family business going.Hank Shaw:Yeah, and my ex, my ex does most of the photos like this. Borderlands is the first book where the majority of the photos are mine. They're nice, but the. But even she's cheap. She photo edited this book. And so like I have people with very good skills. And so what I would say is if you have a kitchen cabinet where you have people who have those skills. And I have to kind of stress that, for example, copy editing, copy editing or proofreading or indexing a book are entirely different from copy editing or proofreading something in businessIt's just not the same skill. And I found that out. So if you have that ability to put together a dream team, then you can make a really, really beautiful book that will, that will impress people and that you will actually love. The print on demand system is still not good enough for cookbooks. It's fantastic for like a memoir or something without a lot of pictures, but it is not good for, for cookbooks still.Stephanie:All right, I'm just making notes here because people ask me questions about this all the time. All right, well, I appreciate that you've done all this work, and the book is beautiful, and I love talking to you about food. So hopefully we can call you again and just wrap it down.Hank Shaw:Yeah, let's talk about preservation.Stephanie:Yeah, I. Because I've never met anyone that only was eating what they killed.Hank Shaw:Well, you could go up north. I bet you'd find more people who do.Stephanie:But yes, yes. And I just, I find that to be fascinating and also just the idea of preserving food and how you use. Use what you preserve. So yeah, that's a great topic to get into at a later date. The book is Borderlands. I'm talking with Hank Shaw. Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. You can find it at Amazon or at his website.I always say this one wrong. Hunt, Gather. CookHank Shaw:So. So the best way to get to my website is just go to huntgathercook.com okay.Stephanie:And you have lots of recipes there too. I want people to just explore thousands. Yeah, it's incredible the mon recipes that you have there. And you know, if you think about protein as being interchangeable in a lot of these instances, it's definitely a really well done website with tons of recipes.Stephanie:Thanks for your time today, Hank. I appreciate it.Hank Shaw:Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on.Stephanie:We'll talk soon.Hank Shaw:Bye.Stephanie:Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

If you enjoy this podcast and look forward to it in your inbox, consider supporting it by becoming a paid yearly subscriber for $60 or you can buy me a cup of coffee for $8Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish." Today, I interview acclaimed food writer, wild foods expert, and self-described hunter-gatherer Hank Shaw. Hank is the author of the brand new cookbook, "Borderlands: Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific," an exploration of the flavors, cultures, and stories that define the borderlands between the United States and Mexico. He also has a Substack that's wonderful, called Hank Shaw “To The Bone” and a website full of recipes.In this episode, Hank and I dive into everything from his early days as a restaurant cook and investigative journalist to his passion for foraging, preserving, and hunting wild foods. Hank discusses the vibrant mix of culinary traditions that thrive along the border, debunks myths about iconic ingredients (like acorns!), and shares the fascinating histories behind beloved dishes such as chimichangas and parisa.They also touch on practical advice—like the art of drying herbs, the joys and challenges of single-person food preservation, and the ins and outs of self-publishing cookbooks at a high level.Get ready for an episode filled with storytelling, culinary wisdom, and inspiration for your next adventure in the kitchen or the great outdoors. Whether you're a curious home cook, an aspiring cookbook author, or simply a lover of good food, there's something here for everyone. Let's get started!Original Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast, where we talk to fun people in the food space and sometimes they have cookbooks. And today's author is an author. He's an author of great magnitude, Hank Shaw. His new book is Borderlands Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. And Hank, you are such a prolific, beautiful writer. This book, I feel like, is just so you. Do you love it?Hank Shaw:It's been a long journey to make this book, and I'm pretty proud of it. And it's. It's been probably the biggest project of my adult life in terms of time, commitment, travel, really unlocking understanding of things that I thought I knew but didn't necessarily know until I got there. And it's just been this. This crazy, fantastic journey and a journey that you can eat.Stephanie:Can you talk a little bit about your history? Like, I think many people know you as the hunter, forager, gatherer, type, and Borderlands obviously has a lot of those elements to it. But can you just walk readers that are listeners that might be new to your journey kind of through how you got here?Hank Shaw:Sure. Many, many years ago, when I was still fairly young, I was a restaurant cook. So I worked first as a dishwasher and then as a line cook and then as a sous chef in a series of restaurants, mostly in Madison, Wisconsin. And I left that job to be a newspaper reporter. And I ended up being a newspaper reporter for 18 years. And I cooked all throughout that and traveled and learned more about food and did fishing and hunting and foraging and such. And then I left the News Business in 2010 to do my website, which is hunter, angler, gardener, cook. And I've been doing that full time since 2010.So, yeah, my entire kind of current incarnation is wild foods. But Borderlands is kind of an outgrowth of that for two reasons. The first is I've been basically written all of the fishing game books you can possibly write already. I've got one for every kind of quarry you can imagine. And then the other thing was, oh, well, you know, a lot of that travel for those other books was on the border on both sides, on the American side and on the Mexican side. And that kind of grew into this. Wow, you know, God, the food is so great and God, this area is just so neglected, I think, by most, you know, the. The food, or radio, for lack of a better term.Yeah, because all of the, like, everybody seems to love to hate Tex Mex without really fully knowing what Tex Mex actually is. And people say that the Southwestern cooking is so very 1987. And. And, you know, the people who know Mexico are like, oh, all the good foods in Oaxaca or Michoacan or Mexico City or Yucatan. And really that's not the case, as over and over and over again, I was discovering these amazing just finds. And a lot of them had to do with wild foods, but not all of them. And so that borderlands became my diary of that journey.Stephanie:And quite a diary it is. What's interesting to me is I didn't actually ever know that you were in the newspaper business.Hank Shaw:And that makes a Pioneer Press graduate.Stephanie:Oh, you work for them. How did I not know this?Hank Shaw:Yeah, I was a St. Paul Pioneer Press investigative reporter from 2002 to 2004. And if you're of a certain age and you remember there was a big story about some Republican operatives getting involved with a telecommunications boondoggle. And yeah, that was probably. That was us. That was our story.Stephanie:Well, and it makes sense because the book is so like. It's the storytelling that's so good. And, you know, cookbooks are cookbooks with beautiful recipes and different people's point of view on recipes. But what I love about your book, too, is it really goes into ingredients a little more in depth. It tells the story of the terroir, of where the recipe's from and why it's the way it is. And it makes sense now to me that you're a journalist because it's so beautifully written.Hank Shaw:I really appreciate that. I mean, I tried in this particular book. There are essays in all of my books, but in this particular one, I really, really wanted people from the rest of the country to get a flavor of what it's like to was really honest to God, like on the border. Everybody has thoughts and opinions about immigration and about the border and about blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well, how much time have you actually spent on the border? Do you actually know what it feels like, what it smells like, what it tastes like? Chances are you probably don't. And I really wanted this book to shine a light on that in ways that go well beyond food.Stephanie:When we talk about the borderlands, can you talk about it without talking about immigration and the close connection between the United States and Mexico? I mean, we share this border. People have this idea that it's like this gated, fenced situation, and really there's tons of the border that's just. You'd only know it was a border if someone told you you were crossing it.Hank Shaw:It's very true. In Fact, one of my favorite moments to that was in south southwest Texas there's a beautiful national park called Big Bend. It's one of the biggest national parks in the country. It's fa. It's famous, it's amazing. But you're going to drive and hike and hike and drive and hike and drive a gigantic park. So one place that you can go to. And it's actually, if you open up a copy of Borderlands and you see this huge vista right at the beginning of the book, there's this huge vista and it's on a cliff. That is exactly it. That is. That is Big Bend National Park. And if you're looking right in the back end of that back center, a little to the left, you'll see a canyon in the background. In that canyon is St. Helena Canyon. And St.Helena Canyon is created by the Rio Grande. So you can go to that park and you can walk across the border literally to Mexico and not have the Rio Grande come up over your ankles. And there's Mexicans on their side, there's Americans on our side, and everybody's crossing back and forth until their families are there and having a fun time, blah, blah, blah. And it's just, it's one of these great moments where it shows you that, yeah, that border is really just sort of a fiction.Stephanie:Yeah. Yes, in many ways. Right. Figuratively. And also, I don't know, we seem to be in a global food economy whether we want to or not. When you look at the individual ingredients that you're using here in Borderlands, obviously there's very different things because of temperature in Mexico than you might have here in the Midwest. But is it really different from like say, Texas to Mexico in.Hank Shaw:Yes, there, there are definitely different. So the food you'll get in Nueva Leon or Coahuila or Tamaulipas, which are the three Mexican states, that border Texas is going to be different from what you would think about as Texas food. However, on the Borderlands, that. That change really is minimal. And I talk about in the book the idea of Fronteraisos, people who are neither fully Mexican nor full. They're. They're border people and they can slide between English and Spanish in mid clause. And it's really the, you know, the, the pocho or Spanglish or whatever you want to call it that you'll hear there is very different from what you'll hear from a bilingual person from, say, Mexico City, where typically those people will speak in full sentences or paragraphs in one language and then maybe switch to another language in the next sentence or paragraph.Hank Shaw:Well, on the border, it's a mishmash. So the structure, the words, the adjectives, like, it's everything. It's like no function. And so it's like. It's like this whole kind of amalgam of what's going on. And that kind of translates into the food where you've got some Texas, you know, some very Texas. Texas. Things that don't cross the border, like yellow cheese doesn't really cross the border.Stephanie:Right.Hank Shaw:The idea of, like, rotel queso. So it's. It's like Velveeta cheese melted with rotel. That's queso. That's the bad queso in North Texas. Like, you'll get that in, like, Amarillo. But the real queso is south of Interstate 10. And that is a white Mexican cheese.That it where you get, you know, roasted fire roasted green chilies folded into it and a little bit of Mexican oregano and salt and a little bit of crema to thin it out. And it's is to the rotel queso what a match is to the sun.Stephanie:Yeah.Hank Shaw:And, you know, I mean, that said, I'm not gonna poop all over the Velveeta one, because that while I don't think it tastes great, what I realized is that particular version of queso, which I personally don't like, is really heavy with cultural significance.Stephanie:Yeah.Hank Shaw:And. And so that's. There's a place for it. It's just not. That's not really as border food as you might think. That's a little bit more North Texas, and that's an example of where things don't cross. But a really great example of where things are damn near the same is Arizona and Sonora. So that there's almost no difference between Arizona Mexican food and Sonora Mexican food because they're one and the same.The burritos are pretty similar. The flour tortillas are similar. The carne asada is pretty similar. And so that. That's a case where the border's really. I mean, yes, it's a border, but I mean, it's like the. It's. There's no food border.Same thing with Southern California and Tijuana and Northern Baja. There's almost no. No functional difference between the two of them. Now, New Mexico and Chihuahua has a difference. And, like, north of Interstate 10 in Texas and the border in Texas are quite different.Stephanie:There's a recipe in here that I didn't even really know existed called Parisa.Hank Shaw:Oh, yeah.Stephanie:And, you know, you we will order steak tartare or make tartare. And I didn't realize that there was a. In many cultures, you sort of see similar foods or similar food groups, and they're just treated differently with herbs or spices. This looks delicious.Hank Shaw:It really is. It's the best way to describe it if you. If you're not familiar, because it's very. It's. It's super regional in Texas. Like, you can't even really get barista in Dallas or in. Or in El Paso. It's not a thing there.It's sort of a south central Texas thing. But the best way I can describe it is really accurately describe it. It is steak tartar meets aguachile. Because most people will say it's steak tartare meat ceviche. And yes, you absolutely can get it like that, but the. The acidity and the citrus will turn the. The raw beef gray, which I think looks gross. Yeah, I mean, it.It tastes fine, but it just kind of looks like, meh. So my recipe and what I do is I. I mix the steak tartare with the. Essentially, pico de gallo is really what it. What it's being mixed with, and a little bit of cheese, and I. I'll mix it and serve it right away so that when you eat it, the meat is still pink.Stephanie:Yeah, it looks really good. And then also in the book, so you're a hunter, obviously, we established that. But in many of these recipes, you have substitutions of different animal proteins that can be used. So whether it's elk or bison or sheep or duck, I think that's cool.Hank Shaw:Yeah, I mean, I think I. I started that process. It's done with icons. So if you look at a recipe for. Oh, there's a stew that's very popular. They're called puchero. And I'm just to that page, so I'll. So.Oh, that's a sour puerto. So always pork, but, like, no. Babies will die if you use something else from that. But that is traditionally a pork dish. Buchero is traditionally beef or venison, but really, you know, you're gonna be fine if you put damn near anything in it. It's a big, giant stew, a lot of vegetables, and it's fantastic. And to. To really make the book more versatile, because I.The two things that I always do in my books. Number one is I'm going to give you the recipe as faithfully as I can to what it actually is, wherever it's from, and then I'm going to give you all these substitutions so that if you live in, you know, Bismarck or Crookston or, you know, rural Iowa, you're going to be able to make it. And that's important to me because it's more important to me that you make some version of it than to be exactly proper and specific. I hate cookbooks where it's like, especially with cheese, where you'll see someone be like, it must be the, you know, Cowgirl Creamery point raised blue from 2012. Otherwise this recipe won't work. I'm like, come on guys, this is a stupid recipe. Like it's blue cheese. It'll be fine.Stephanie:I was surprised that you have a chimichanga in the book. Can we talk about chimichangas? Because people that grew up in the Midwest, Chichis was like the first Mexican restaurant besides El Burrito Mercado. And El Burrito Mercado was authentic and chichi's was like the Americanized what they thought Mexican food was. Which also I will say I have taste memories of chi cheese. I say this not dogging on them and they're actually coming back. And the chimichanga is something that like, if I actually go to the new restaurant, which I'm sure I will, I will order a chimichanga. It's like a taste memory for me. What is the origination of chimichanga?Hank Shaw:It's shrouded in mystery. So there's a couple different theories. And then I'll tell you what I think the general story is that a woman was making burritos in Arizona and either dropped, which I don't believe because that would create a splash that would, you know, send 350 degree oil everywhere, or placed a burrito in the deep fryer. And the, the legend, which I don't believe this is true at all, is she drops the burrito in the deep fryer and you know, says something like, you know, ah, chingo to madre or whatever, like just like swears something bad and. But then sort of does what you would do in a kind of a mom situation. And if you instead of saying the F word, you would say oh, fudge. And so she goes, oh Jimmy changa. And which is sort of vaguely reminiscent of some Mexican swear words.And so that thus the, the dish was born. But I think that's not true because there is a fantastic resource, actually. I mean, I found it in some of my older Mexican cookbooks that I own. But there's a fantastic research that the University of Texas at San Antonio of Mexican cookbooks. And some of these Mexican cookbooks are handwritten from the 1800s, and so they're all digitized and you can. You can study them. And so there's a thing in Sonora. Remember I just got done saying that, like, there's almost no difference between Sonora and Arizona.There's a thing from Sonora many, many, many, many years ago, you know, early early 1900s, for a chivy changa. C H I V I C H A N G A ch and it's the same thing. So I'm convinced that this is just a thing, because if you have a burrito and you fry things, there's zero. There's zero chance that at some point you be like, I want to. I wonder if frying the burrito will make it good? You know, like, the answer, yes, yes, all the time.Stephanie:And.Hank Shaw:And so, you know, I, like you, came into the chimichanga world just thinking with a definite eyebrow raised, like, what is this? And when it's done right, and if you see the picture in my book, it is dressed with a whole bunch of things on the outside of the burrito. So it's crema, it's a pico de gallo. It's shredded lettuce or cabbage, limes. The thing about a properly served chimichanga is that you have to eat it as a whole because the chimichanga itself is quite heavy. You know, it's a. It's a fried burrito with, like, rice and beans and meat inside it. Like, it's a gut bomb. But when you eat it with all these light things around it that are bright and fresh and acidic, it completely changes the eating experience. And I was sold.Stephanie:I can imagine. The one you have in the book looks really good. I'm going to. I keep asking about specific recipes, but there were, like, some that just jumped out at me, like, wow. Another one that jumped out at me was from that same chapter about the acorn cookies. I've always been under the impression that acorns, and maybe it's from just specific to the oaks, but that they're poisonous. I didn't think about making acorn flour.Hank Shaw:So, number one, no acorns are poisonous. Zero, period. End of story. It's a myth. You were lied to. Sorry.Stephanie:Yeah. I mean, it helps me because my dog eats them.Hank Shaw:I mean, acorns have been a source of food for human beings forever, you know, all the way. I don't know how long ago, but way more than 10,000 years. Way more. Okay, so what the myth comes from is most acorn varieties, so most especially red oaks, are full of tannins. And tannins are not poisonous. Tannins are not toxic. Tannins will make you constipated if you eat too many of them. And I suppose it would be possible to poison yourself with tannins, but I mean, good luck.Yeah, good luck eating enough of that astringent stuff to be able to get yourself poisoned. But tannins are water soluble. So for millennia, the people who eat acorns, and especially in. In northern California, where, you know, acorn. Acorns were their main starch, the idea of leaching the tannins out in a stream or wherever is as old as time. And so you make the. You make a meal. It's really a meal is probably a better way to put it.I call it flour, but there's no. There's no real gluten in it. In fact, there's no gluten in it, but there is some starch in it that will help the flour stick to itself. So that's true everywhere. In fact, it's a very good acorn year here in Minnesota this year. And I found some bur oaks in a. In a place that I'm going to go back and harvest them to make some more acorn flour this year. And I'll have to leach them here.But this is a very long walk up to this cookie recipe, because in south Arizona and in Sonora, there's an oak called an emery oak. And the emery oak is in the white oak. It's in the white oak clan. And it is sweet in the sense that you can roast those acorns and eat them. And in fact, you can get roasted acorns as a snack on some of the reservations down there or really wherever. I mean, it's a thing like it's. It. It.They could just roast it. Roast the acorns? Yeah. It's just like a chestnut. Very good. That's exactly with the. Because it's the same kind of a texture as well. And so that particular oak is unique in. In North America.The cork oak in Europe is the other one that doesn't have any tannins to it. So you can just sit there and eat them. And that's why they make flour out of them. It's an indigenous thing. You don't really see it too much among the Hispanic Sonorans. You see it a lot more with, like, Yaqui or Pima or Tono O', Odham, those indigenous groups.Stephanie:It's so Cool. I also subscribe to your substack, which I would encourage people to subscribe and. And yes to the Bone, it's called. And you just had a post about herbs and how important herbs are in your cooking and in your yard. And I know that you have kind of a small St. Paul yard because we've talked about it. What are you doing with your herbs now that we're at the end of the season? Are you. Do you have anything that's special that you do with them? Do you dry them? Do you mix them with salt?Hank Shaw:I do all of the above. I am a preservation fanatic. I could talk for hours just about various ways to preserve things for our Minnesota winners. Maybe that's another podcast for sure. But the short version is, yes, all of the things. I mostly will do things like make pesto with basil, because I love pesto. But I do dry some and there are tricks to drying herbs. The trick is low heat for a long time, so the don't use your oven and try to get them dry within 40, 48 hours, but also try to do it at less than 110 degrees, otherwise they turn brown.Stephanie:Do you use it like a dehydrator, then?Hank Shaw:Yes, I use a dehydrator. And most herbs dry really well. In fact, many herbs are better dried because it concentrates their flavor. Basil's iffy. Parsley's kind of terrible. Dried parsley's one of those ones where eat it fresh, make pesto. I suppose you could freeze it. I mostly will.I will gather big scabs of it because I grow a lot and I will freeze it. And even though it's going to suffer in the freezer, it is one of the most vital things I use for making stocks and broths with the game I bring home. So freezing, drying, you can, you know, I just mixed a whole bunch of. Of lovage with salt. So you go 50, 50 the herb and. And coarse salt, like ice cream salt almost. And then you buzz that into a food processor or a blender, and then that creates a much finer kind of almost a wet salt that is an enormous amount of flavor. And if you freeze it, it'll stay bright green the whole winter.And sometimes I like to do that, but the other times I kind of like to. To see it and progress over the. Over the months. And it's kind of a beautiful thing to see that herb salt kind of brown out and army green out as we get to like, late February, because it really is. Is sort of also indicative of how of our Harsh winters and feels a little bit more of the time and place than pulling something out of a freezer.Stephanie:Yeah. So let's talk about that because you're a single man, you are a recipe writer and developer, so you're also cooking and testing recipes. You're preserving all these things. I mean, my freezer right now is kind of a hellscape. I just closed up my summer and I came home with so much food. I have, like, canned and pickled and preserved. And I just literally feel overwhelmed by all of the food in my home right now. And I realize this is a real first world problem.So, you know, my daughter's kind of in her young 20s and sort of poor, so I've loaded her up with stuff. But do you just feel overwhelmed sometimes by all of the abundance of food?Hank Shaw:Absolutely. It's one of the things that's been really remarkable about it, about sort of single life, is how less I need to hunt or fish. So I find myself. I mean, I still. I. Because. So, side note, background backstory. I don't buy meat or fish at all.I occasionally will buy a little bit of bacon because I love bacon. And I'll occasionally buy pork fat to make sausages with game, but that's it. So if I'm eating red meat, it's going to be venison. If I'm eating white meat, it's probably going to be grouse or. Or pheasants. If I'm eating fish, I've caught it. And so that's what I find is that I eat. Hey, I don't eat that much meat anymore.Like, I eat plenty. But I mean, it's not like I. I don't gorge myself on giant steaks anymore. And it's just me. So, you know, a limit of walleyes can last me a month. And before, it was definitely not like that. And so, yes, I can feel the overwhelm. But what's, you know, I have neighbors that I give things to.I have friends that I give things to. Like, I. I had two deer tags last year, and I shot the second deer because I had a whole bunch of friends who didn't get a deer and needed medicine. So it was really cool to be able to give to. You know, I butchered it all and gave them an all vacuum seal. It was like all ready to go. And. And that was really satisfying to be able to help people like that.And then, you know, I like, you know, have a dinner party here and there.Stephanie:Yeah, I want to come to a dinner party. Not to invite myself. But please, I'll. I'll reciprocate in the. I have a cabin in the summer, so I'm sort of like between here and there. But once sets in, I really like to entertain and have people over. I find that it's a really easy way to gather new people too. Like, I like collecting people because I just think people are so amazing and I love putting like, new people at the table that people don't know yet or making those connections.I think I'm actually kind of good at it. So I can't wait to have you over this fall.Hank Shaw:Yeah, likewise. We'll. We'll do a home and home.Stephanie:Yes, I would love that very much. Your book is available, Borderlands on. I found it because obviously I. You sent me a copy. But also it's on Amazon and you self publish. So there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that are cookbook writers themselves or people that maybe are trying to get published or find publishing. Can you speak to that a little bit and why that's been your route. You've been doing this a long time.Hank Shaw:Yeah, this is my force. Fourth self published book. And self publish is really kind of a misnomer in a way because the books that I put out are of Random House quality. Like, they're for sure. There's no way you're gonna be able to tell this book is apart from a gigantic publishing house, because what I ended up doing is creating a publishing company. So the books are published in big, big runs at Versa Press in Illinois. I'm very happy to say that these books are entirely made in America. And that's kind of important to me because most cookbooks are made in China and not a fan.So the books are printed in Illinois and they are stored and shipped at a, at a, a warehouse in Michigan. So the best ways to get the books are to either buy them from my website or buy them from Amazon. Those are probably your two best avenues for it. The thing about self publishing, if you want to do it at the level that I'm doing it, which is to say, make a book that, you know, even a snooty Random House person will be like, damn, that's a good book. You have to go big and it's not cheap. So I do, I, I don't ever do runs less than 5,000. And a typical run for me is between 10 and 15,000. And because your unit costs go way, way down.Stephanie:Right.Hank Shaw:And we can get in the weeds of it, but I have some Advantages in the sense that my sister has designed books for a living for 30 some odd years and her husband has edited books for 30 some odd years.Stephanie:Oh, so you got like family business going.Hank Shaw:Yeah, and my ex, my ex does most of the photos like this. Borderlands is the first book where the majority of the photos are mine. They're nice, but the. But even she's cheap. She photo edited this book. And so like I have people with very good skills. And so what I would say is if you have a kitchen cabinet where you have people who have those skills. And I have to kind of stress that, for example, copy editing, copy editing or proofreading or indexing a book are entirely different from copy editing or proofreading something in businessIt's just not the same skill. And I found that out. So if you have that ability to put together a dream team, then you can make a really, really beautiful book that will, that will impress people and that you will actually love. The print on demand system is still not good enough for cookbooks. It's fantastic for like a memoir or something without a lot of pictures, but it is not good for, for cookbooks still.Stephanie:All right, I'm just making notes here because people ask me questions about this all the time. All right, well, I appreciate that you've done all this work, and the book is beautiful, and I love talking to you about food. So hopefully we can call you again and just wrap it down.Hank Shaw:Yeah, let's talk about preservation.Stephanie:Yeah, I. Because I've never met anyone that only was eating what they killed.Hank Shaw:Well, you could go up north. I bet you'd find more people who do.Stephanie:But yes, yes. And I just, I find that to be fascinating and also just the idea of preserving food and how you use. Use what you preserve. So yeah, that's a great topic to get into at a later date. The book is Borderlands. I'm talking with Hank Shaw. Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific. You can find it at Amazon or at his website.I always say this one wrong. Hunt, Gather. CookHank Shaw:So. So the best way to get to my website is just go to huntgathercook.com okay.Stephanie:And you have lots of recipes there too. I want people to just explore thousands. Yeah, it's incredible the mon recipes that you have there. And you know, if you think about protein as being interchangeable in a lot of these instances, it's definitely a really well done website with tons of recipes.Stephanie:Thanks for your time today, Hank. I appreciate it.Hank Shaw:Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me on.Stephanie:We'll talk soon.Hank Shaw:Bye.Stephanie:Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Join your favorite DUFF Couplers  -  Carolyn Clineand Ross Hill -  as they dive into week three of 'Dancing withthe Stars.' It's TikTok Night. In this special episode of the Dancing Housewife Podcast Carolyn and Ross discuss the night's highlights, including favorite performances, wardrobe critiques, and some shocking scores. Highlights include Julianne's and Alfonso's improved outfits, Jen and Jan'scringe-worthy ChaCha, standout performances from Danielle and Pasha's fox trot, and more. Don't miss their thoughts on the drama involving Lauren and Brandon. Plus, find out their predictions for next week's performances!If you enjoy The Dancing Housewife Podcast and want to support it at no extra cost to you, you can shop through the Amazon Affiliate links in our Marketplace – every purchasehelps keep the podcast going! Marketplace:Ross' WardrobePowder blue suit: https://amzn.to/3VOE25sAlphonso's Pink/Salmon Suit: https://amzn.to/42PvtewMark's Black Polka Dot Shirt: https://amzn.to/46J2ydi 00:00 Welcome Back to the Dancing Housewife Podcast00:53 Recap of TikTok Night on Dancing with the Stars01:20 Dishing on Julian and Alfonso's Outfits02:18 Jen and Jan's Cha-Cha Performance03:32 Lauren and Brandon's Cha-Cha Review05:39 Danielle and Pasha's Fox Trot07:51 Jordan and Ezra's Tango09:54 Dylan and Daniella's Fox Trot11:23 Elaine and Allen's Tango13:08 Whitney Lovett and Mark's Samba14:37 Scott's Jazz Performance Review16:44 El and Gleb's Samba Critique18:05 Andy and Emma's Foxtrot Feedback20:21 Robert and Whitney's Salsa Analysis22:09 Alex and Val's Quickstep Evaluation23:04 Shocking Elimination Reaction24:57 Wardrobe Highlights and Predictions26:50 Final Thoughts and Viewer Engagement If you're enjoying The Dancing Housewife let us know!Leave a comment or review and subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or your favorite platform and follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join ⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Fan Club onFacebook ⁠⁠so you never miss an episode! And don't forget to visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Blog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more content. 

In this moving episode of Dishing with Buff Faye, Buff opens the studio doors to a powerful conversation with Riss, a brave trans teen, and his loving mom, Julie Hester Hill. Together, they share their journey of growing up—and parenting—trans in the South, offering listeners an intimate look at the power of visibility, affirmation, and unconditional love.  Before the interview, Buff gets a surprise visit from her sidekick Funsize, who brings her funny wit and joy back to the mic. The two dish on Charlotte Pride, Halloween drag looks, Funny Bus tours, and Funsize's exciting new home shopping with her wife Julia. After a few laughs (and some tea about Bitesize, the puppet stand-in that didn't quite make the cut), Buff transitions into the heart of the episode. Riss opens up about knowing who he was from a young age and the moment he found the courage to tell his mom, describing it as “God pushing the wrong button.” Julie shares what it was like hearing those words and how her unconditional love helped Riss grow into the confident young man he is today. The episode highlights the importance of safe spaces for trans youth, the joy of chosen community, and the incredible strength it takes to live authentically in a world that is harsh to trans people and doesn't make it easy. It's a reminder that parents have the power to change lives by simply choosing love.  They close out with a fun round of “YASSS QUEEN or GIRL BYE,” bringing laughter and light to a deeply heartfelt episode supporting our trans families out there. Let's Dish, y'all. #DishingWithBuffFaye #TransYouth #QueerJoy #BuffFayePodcast #LGBTQFamily #CharlotteDrag #AllBuffTV #YasssQueen

If you've ever thought “I missed the boat” when it comes to content creation… this episode will flip that belief on its head.Today, I'm joined by one of my incredible students—Janice, a 60+ UGC creator who's redefining what's possible at any age.We're talking about what it really looks like to start creating content later in life, how Janice landed her first brand deals, and the mindset shifts that helped her finally show up online with confidence.Whether you're a new creator or you've been putting it off because you think it's “too late”—this episode is your permission slip to start where you are, with what you have.

Ryan and Ben talk about D&D Beyond's Maps VTT, the Heroes of the Borderlands release, and revisions to some of the new and updated Unearthed Arcana Arcane subclasses. Then they delve into the world of deities. Community Pages: D&D Beyond Maps VTT; Heroes of the Borderlands; Designer Insights from the Unearthed Arcana Arcane subclasses; No … Continue reading "Episode 143 – Maps for All, Arcane Revisions, and Dishing with Deities"

Pelvic health is often overlooked, yet issues like incontinence, pelvic pain, and postpartum recovery affect so many lives.In this episode, Dina dishes with Dr. Stefanie Long, PT, DPT, owner of Concept Pelvic Health in Keller, TX, about her personal journey from patient to pelvic health therapist. With over 16 years of experience, Stefanie shares how pelvic floor therapy can support women and even children facing challenges such as postpartum recovery, chronic pain, incontinence, and more. If you've ever wondered what pelvic health really means and how treatment can help, this conversation offers practical insight and hope.----Dr. Stefanie Long received her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Hardin Simmons University and trained in her post-doctorate studies in pelvic health through the American Physical Therapy Association.Connect with Stefanie at: https://www.conceptpelvichealth.com/https://www.instagram.com/concept.therapyhttps://www.facebook.com/concept.pelvic.health----Mentioned in this episode:Krisler Bailey's episode (S04E051) - https://open.spotify.com/episode/4MXydkp9Y7ll7O0lJEMOvw?si=0fsL5f76R4GOPN9vcnJV5w----Check out our podcast in video format on DishWithDinaTV:https://www.youtube.com/user/DishWithDina?sub_confirmation=1⁠Join our mailing list to stay connected, stay informed, receive exclusive offers, and be a part of the DishWithDina community:https://forms.gle/MzV7gVAPEsqEyEFH6If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others! You can also submit listener feedback or request to be a guest on a future episode by completing this form:https://forms.gle/EFYX7Gshbjx9cCKfA----DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to entertain, educate, and inform, but it is not to be taken as medical advice. Please seek prompt, qualified medical care for any specific health issues and consult your physician or health practitioner before starting a new fitness regimen, herbal therapy, or other self-directed treatment.

It's week two of Dancing with the Stars! Carolyn Cline and Hannah Chiou are back to dish on One Hit Wonders Nightand with Ross still in Europe, it's all about girl talk as they discuss the performances, the judges' feedback, and the memorable moments – good and bad. Join them as they give their takes on performance, the choreography, costumes, judges' scoring, surprises of the night, and wrap up with predictions for the upcoming TikTok-themed week three.  00:00 Welcome Back to the Dancing Housewife Podcast00:32 Recap of Week Two: Night of One Hit Wonders01:01 Alex, Earl, and Val's Jive Mambo Number Five02:24 Danielle Official and Pasha's Chacha04:11 Andy and Emma's Tango05:16 Lauren and Brandon's Foxtrot06:54 Jordan and Ezra's Revenge Jive09:03 Corey and Jenna's Chacha10:42 Jen and Jan's Quickstep13:28 Robert and Whitney's Amazing Tango15:39 Elaine Hendricks and Allen's Jive17:16 Baron and Britt's Samba18:07 Whitney and Mark's Funky Chacha19:58 HiIlaria and Gleb's's Tango21:36 Dylan and Daniella's Samba23:13 Scott and Riley's Chacha24:47 Elimination and Final Thoughts25:07 One Hit Wonder Song Choices26:01 Predictions for Next Week26:56 Closing Remarks If you're enjoying The Dancing Housewife let us know! Leave a comment or review and subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ApplePodcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or your favorite platform and follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join ⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Fan Club on Facebook ⁠⁠so you never miss an episode! And don't forget to visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Blog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more content. 

Daryl Tearne—fresh out of design school—landed the oddest dream gig of all: redesigning the Crocker motorcycle for the modern age. Crocker, with less than 50 ever made, make brands like Vincent seem mainstream. But Tearne did the near impossible and made a prototype that was at once futuristic and traditional. When that project hit a wall, he moved on to Buell, for yet another project that hit an ever bigger wall. Working with Erik Buell in the dying days of the company was a lesson in keeping his head above water. And moving on. Now Tearne heads the design department of a major toy company. Dishing on the inner workings of Buell, Tearne has a few opinions and a bundle of life lessons as a young man making his way through two legendary—if doomed—American motorcycle institutions.

Teri Knight and Mark Taylor are back " DISHING" BOLD & BEAUTIFUL.---SEPT. 24, 20251) Opening2) Ridge breaks the news to Taylor that he loves Brooke and can't marry her (Taylor).3) Thomas returns home and is not happy about the developments with his mom (Taylor) and Ridge and Brooke. He sees Brookes wedding ring on her finger. 3B) After his initial eruption, Thomas forgives Ridge and Brooke and appears to accept their marriage. 4) Will is feeling guilty about Sleeping with Luna (Tic). Will ends up telling Electra today what happened with Luna.5) Luna appears to be pregnant.???6) Bill and Katie are really pissed at Luna. Bill threatens to kill her, and Katie calms him down.7) Other stories? Thoughts? Predictions?8) What Will writers do with the current storyline? What would Teri do?9) Other thoughts?10) Closing

TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING: weight, weight lossDina dishes with Ben about the realities of life as a traveling artist, and how he maintains balance, eats well, and keeps up healthy habits while touring.Ben Basile is a bassist, educator, and composer from New York's Hudson Valley Area. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Jazz Studies from The State University of New York at New Paltz and a Music Performance Certificate from The State University of New York at Dutchess Community College.Ben has performed, composed, recorded, and toured across six continents with a variety of groups. Most notably, Ben has been a member of Big D and The Kids Table (https://www.bigdandthekidstable.com/) since 2013 and is a founding member of The Poughkeepsie Jazz Project, a group which has hosted a weekly jazz jam session in Poughkeepsie, NY since 2012.Ben's debut solo album "Benergy" was released in May 2025. You can learn more about him and check out upcoming tour dates at:https://benbasile.com/https://www.instagram.com/benbasile/https://www.facebook.com/ben.basile.94/Mentioned in this episode:Anthony Basile | Episode 129 (https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wwJ1kaCKhsSqfdzAh5iRY?si=8mLdLfyuQUCIMVdC8SUH3w)3rd Decade financial program (https://3rddecade.org/)---- Check out our podcast in video format on DishWithDinaTV:https://www.youtube.com/user/DishWithDina?sub_confirmation=1Join our mailing list to stay connected, stay informed, receive exclusive offers, and be a part of the DishWithDina community:https://forms.gle/MzV7gVAPEsqEyEFH6⁠If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others! You can also submit listener feedback or request to be a guest on a future episode by completing this form:https://forms.gle/EFYX7Gshbjx9cCKfA----DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to entertain, educate, and inform, but it is not to be taken as medical advice. Please seek prompt, qualified medical care for any specific health issues and consult your physician or health practitioner before starting a new fitness regimen, herbal therapy, or other self-directed treatment.

The Dancing Housewife is on the road but Carolyn Cline has her back! Join the party as she hosts this special feature - Dishing with the DUFF Couple - recapping the premiere of Dancing with the Stars Season 34 with guest co-hosts and dance aficionados Hannah and Justin, they dive into the performances, critiquing everything from the opening number to each couple's dance. From Jordan Chiles and Ezra's salsa to Robert Irwin and Whitney's jive, the trio discusses technique, potential, and entertainment value. They also speculate on the scoring system, share personal highlights, and predict who might be facing elimination next week. Tune in for an engaging breakdown of DWTS's latest season kickoff! If you're enjoying The Dancing Housewife let usknow! Leave a comment or review and subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or your favorite platform. Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and join ⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Fan Club on Facebook ⁠⁠so you never miss an episode! And don't forgetto visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Dancing Housewife Blog⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for more content

This week on Dishing with Buff Faye, Buff gets personal and powerful in honor of National Recovery & Addiction Month—a time to celebrate those in recovery and lift up the stories that matter. Buff opens with a heartfelt reflection on friendship and forgiveness: “A real friend is someone who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” She shares what it means to have people who stick by you—not just for the rainbows, but through the storms too. Then, Buff welcomes longtime sister and special guest Valarie Rockwell, a Charlotte drag queen with a story of fierce transformation. Together they reminisce about their 15+ year friendship—North Carolina drag pageants, the first Buff Faye Drag Brunch in 2009, and their reign as Miss Charlotte Pride queens and North Carolina Entertainer of the Year.  But this episode goes deeper. Valarie opens up about her battle with addiction, her moment of clarity, and what it means to be over a year sober. She talks openly about the pain, the healing, and the beauty of rebuilding her life—and even rebuilding her friendship with Buff Faye—through the 12-step journey. It's a raw and real conversation about recovery, community, and drag family—with plenty of laughs, love, and joy along the way.  Let's Dish, y'all.  #DishingWithBuffFaye #Let'sDish #RecoveryMonth #ValarieRockwell #DragQueenRecovery #BuffFayePodcast #ChosenFamily #SoberIsFierce

The "Happy Hostess Cookbook Party" is an online community focused on cookbooks and hosting, led by Kristie LaLonde. It's part of the larger "Happy Hostess" brand, which includes the “Happy Hostess Podcast” and other resources for aspiring and experienced hosts. The club focuses on exploring recipes from various cookbooks, often accompanied by themed events and discussions.Kristie has so graciously planned to feature the “True North Cabin Cookbook” for her October club. The club meets via Zoom for all members. It's a monthly subscription for an orchestrated “cook along”thats fun and approachable for all levels of cooks interested in joining a community.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Many times cookbook authors, other times makers. And this particular episode, we are talking to Kristie LaLonde. She is the Happy Hostess Collective. And Kristie and I found each other through a listener of my radio show. My friend Jilly in Minnesota is. She's. We call them Dishers weekly.Stephanie:Dishers, that's the name of the radio show. And Jilly's been a Disher for over 18 years. We've had the show and I think she's listened as long as we've had it. And she reached out to me because in my sub stack, I have a Sunday newsletter and I did a whole thing about entertaining and how I love when people just entertain and people make entertaining so complicated and it doesn't need to be. And I offered to give around a cookbooks to people that have cookbook clubs because I think they're so fun. And Jilly replied and said, I have this great cookbook club. We would love it if we could win your books. And she is part of the Happy Hostess Cookbook Club.Stephanie:So they won. Jilly got the books. I sent books to all the people in the cookbook group that Jilly's in. And Kristie is the leader of the Happy Hostess Collective, Kristie, welcome to the program. I'm delighted to have you.Kristie LaLonde:Thank you. I am so excited to be here.Stephanie:So explain to the audience what the Happy Hostess Collective is and all the different avenues that you have for fostering your love of cookbooks and clubbing.Kristie LaLonde:Well, I am on Instagram as Happy Hostess Collective, but for our cookbook club, it's actually called Happy Cookbook Party because I couldn't really think of a good name. It's not a great name because it doesn't really let you know it's a cookbook club. But we. There's a lot of emphasis on party in it. So basically it's a cookbook club, but instead of meeting in person, most of the time, we are meeting twice a month on Zoom and we are cooking together from one cookbook, which we usually choose a cookbook and stick with that cookbook for like three to four months, depending upon how robust the cookbook is.Stephanie:And people come from all over the country and tell me, like, how do you logistically do it? Do you have like, you know, 30 people on a Zoom or how does it work?Kristie LaLonde:Actually, we do have. We are on Zoom and basically what happens when we pick a book? I will go through and kind of we have a Facebook Group. And so I ask everyone either which recipes really look good to you that you're wanting to try.And then I look through all of those and make sure that they can fit within the hour to hour and a half timeframe of our Zoom Cook along. And then I make a schedule for the next three months and it's printable. I send it to them so they can print it out. And then every. We meet twice a month, so every two weeks, basically we meet on Zoom and I send them grocery list ahead of time for those two recipes that we choose. Sometimes it's three when we throw in a cocktail in there. Yes, especially we usually meet at noon or 4, so the 4 o' clock ones a lot of times have the cocktail. But so we all just meet in one Zoom meeting and we all cook and I'm kind of leading it, but everyone else is talking just as much as I do because we've gotten to know each other so well and it's so fun because we really learn from each other because we have some like expert bakers and we have some people like me that not expert at all in baking.Kristie LaLonde:And so. And like we have some really strong florists and there's. We just learn a lot from each other. And every once in a while we also do like a tutorial on a different thing that would have to do with being a hostess. For example, we've done flower arrangements that mimic the ones we saw in one of our cookbooks. We've done hostess gifts, like kind of homemade, cute little hostess gifts at Christmas time. So it's a wide variety of things. It's been strange.Like a lot of things have come our way. We had, we were offered to have a Vector cocktails. It's like a cocktail mixer. They offered to do a, a cook. I mean, like a cocktail class for us. It was super fun. They sent us all their mixers and it was great. So we've got a chance to do a lot of stuff.Stephanie:So what is your background and how did you land here?Kristie LaLonde:Well, I have always loved cooking and entertaining, even when I was little. Like, I remember I had one of my cookbooks was like the MAD Magazine cookbooks. I don't know if you remember MAD magazine, but they had like a holiday thing and I just loved it. I remember pouring through that and it's crazy because I do that now, obviously with grownup cookbooks, but. And so that just kind of. Well, and then when I was very young, I was the maid of honor in Three Weddings in one year. So I had a crash course and had a host parties for grownups, and that was very fun. But.Kristie LaLonde:And I'd always really enjoyed the ideas of parties as well. Growing up, my parents were my mom. My father was in an industry where there were lots of fancy, fancy famous parties.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Because we live in Kentucky, so the derby parties. And.Stephanie:Yes.Kristie LaLonde:So I would, like, hear them, like, sometimes they would be on the farm that we lived on, like in the party barn. And so, like, I would hear the parties, and I just was kind of fascinated with all of that, and it just kind of snowballed from there.Stephanie:But you on the Happy Hostess Collective on your Instagram, you chronicle a lot of these parties and you have, like, beautiful flower arrangements. And I mean, honestly, the south is just like, I don't know why, but you guys are known for just these over the top, beautiful flower arrangements, beautiful parties, beautiful outfits. In the north, everything feels a little more, like, rustic and just a little more outdoorsy. But, like, the south just feels like China and silver and so beautiful.Kristie LaLonde:Yeah, you know, there's a little bit of everything for sure in the south, but we do tend to go over the top. That is. That is definitely the case. Which makes it fun, though. But. And I love a big theme. It can. It's a lot of fun.And whether it's rustic theme, but it's just like kind of go all in on it. It makes it a lot of fun.Stephanie:How did you figure out, like, I think it's pretty cool that you have this whole cookbook club happening via Zoom. So there's technology there. Right. And then you also have, like a Facebook group. You really use social media to drive a lot of this engagement. It is a paid subscription, which I also think is cool because sometimes if you have to pay for something, you value it a little bit more or you make time for it in your schedule. How did I learn all the technological pieces and have you just learned by trial and error?Kristie LaLonde:Well, fortunately, Zoom is fairly easy to use. And especially after Covid, everybody knows how to use Zoom, thankfully. But actually, I started an E commerce store, like, before people heard of the word E commerce.And I am not techno, very technologically advanced, but I am willing to figure out whatever it is if it makes it possible for me to do what I want. And I really wanted a. A China and dish store, which. Big surprise. So that I had it. No, I don't. I had it for almost 14 years. I think that's, like, my dream.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, it was so fun. And it stopped me from buying all the dishes. Because I had all these gorgeous dishes. Like in a warehouse. Yes. But it's a really heavy, breakable object and not so fun to ship after a while. So I transitioned out of that and wanted to do something that didn't require shipping.Stephanie:And this is brilliant because you've got new friends from all over the country. It could be all over the world.Kristie LaLonde:I suppose it definitely could be. There happens to be just the country right now. We are a small group, but it is a really fun group and it's been a great community. And I really wanted something to tie in my podcast to make it and make it smaller. Well, obviously with the podcast, it's only me or myself and a guest, so I really wanted to be able to, like, get to know my listeners better, and this was the perfect thing.Stephanie:How did you get into podcasting? Because you've have had over a hundred episodes all about this topic of hostessing.Kristie LaLonde:Basically it was the sick of being shipping things. So I thought, okay, well, we could start the podcast. I wasn't really sure what direction it was going to take, but I thought that it would be a good avenue for me to get started. And it kind of led to this.Stephanie:One of the topics that was on your recent podcast that I was kind of interested in, because I think the. It has changed so much since COVID is the whole idea of having a party and the RSVP list. People in my experience tend to be very late at responding to things. And even like, we're finding that restaurant reservations people will make four reservations and cancel three with really no thought about it. Like, it's just we're in a very quick societal change. And you talked a lot about how to get people to RSVP, how important RSVPs are. What were some of your tips there?Kristie LaLonde:Well, it's. It sounds a little old school, but one of them was to actually have a physical invitation delivered to them.Stephanie:Amen. This whole, like, you're gonna send me a digital something, it's fine. It's great as, like, a reminder, but I just. I don't think it's the same as, like, getting an actual invitation to something.Kristie LaLonde:I agree. And for one thing, it's. It's less likely to be forgotten because a lot of times they put it on the refrigerator or somewhere they can see it. And then also, like, it's shocking when you get something in the mail that you. That isn't a bill today, you know, so it's. It seems more special.Stephanie:This is kind of a weird aside, but I used to run a direct mail company. So I love direct mail. And the number one growing category for direct mail is 18 to 34, because they love getting offers in the mail. Because getting mail feels so special now and so unique.Kristie LaLonde:You're kidding.Stephanie:No, it's like it's coming back.Kristie LaLonde:That is so interesting.Stephanie:And the catalog companies have always had a robust business using the mail. They've maybe pared down their catalogs a little bit, or they might have specialty offerings, but people are still sending a lot of catalogs.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, goodness. Well, I'm so glad because I just thought I was like, old school because I really like to have books in my hands. I like. I like getting catalogs if it's from a business that I like. I thought I was the only one that.Stephanie:No, you are not. What other kinds of trends are you noticing in just entertaining in general, good or bad?Kristie LaLonde:Well, catching on. One that I did recently, I did a small series on baby showers. And. Wow. Things have changed since I was having babies, for sure. Like, drastically. Some. Some things I think are good.Kristie LaLonde:Like, for example, a lot of times they're co ed now, which was just a trend that had just barely started when I was having children. And I think that's fun and interesting, for sure. Um, but I do also think that they have gotten, like, kind of out of hand a little bit. And I love going over the top, like I said earlier with a party, so I'm. I'm never gonna, like, shame anybody for that. But it seems like with social media coming in, that everyone is seeing these highlight reels from very sophisticated baby showers.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:And so I kind of camped out in baby shower groups for, like, a good month, like, trying to prepare for this series. And. And it was kind of sad, really, because people were so. A lot of people, not everyone, of course, but were so sad because they didn't have enough people to invite to have an almost wedding, like, baby shower. Like, it was. It was. And they felt defeated. It was just.Kristie LaLonde:It was kind of disheartening. And I mean, you could tell that they really thought that it was normal that people had to rent out a venue hall in order to have a baby shower.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Which is not the case at all.Stephanie:And like, just making diaper cake is still pretty fun, isn't it?Kristie LaLonde:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, yeah, it's. It's really different. It's. It's almost. And it's a whole different vibe from a lot of people. And the thing is, I've not seen this in person, so I don't want to say that everyone's like this. Maybe it's just the vocal people on Facebook, you know, but it seemed a lot more like, this is my party.Kristie LaLonde:This is my. My thing, as opposed to, you know, someone hosting it for you.Stephanie:Yeah. Yeah. Well, you haven't. Have you watched the Mormon Housewives?Kristie LaLonde:I haven't.Stephanie:Okay, good. I don't. It's like, so bad. It's good. So wrong. Right. So I don't really want to, like, encourage anyone to do it because that sort of guilty pleasure. But they have these big over the top and they have a lot of kids and they're all women under 30.Stephanie:So they do have these big, like, over the top baby showers and the baby hills and the baby moons. And honestly, it's just. So if we get to the idea of just like, entertaining, I think people get so hung up on that they have to have like this special meal or that they have to spend all day in the kitchen. What would be like, some of your tips for getting you to entertain? More like, barriers to overcome, I guess.Kristie LaLonde:Well, I think first and foremost is to really focus on your mindset and think about why that you want to entertain. And usually it's because you want to make memories and have connections with your friends and family. Do you want to make memories and those are awesome reasons, or you want to celebrate someone, you know? And a lot of times when we start thinking about entertaining, sometimes we can get a little nervous that maybe I'm not good enough cook or I'm. My house isn't big enough or I don't have enough people to invite, for example, the baby shower. And I really just recommend very first thing to do is to flip your mind and be focused on your guests. Like, what do you want to do for them, how do you want them to feel? You know, obviously you want them to be. Feel welcomed in your home and that sort of thing. So if you could just focus on the.Kristie LaLonde:The guest, you usually can stop all the negative chatter in your mind because you're not focusing on yourself. And then also, most importantly, don't do everything yourself. You don't have to cook everything. You don't have to cook at all if you don't want to. You know, that's why caterers exist. Even if you only cooked one thing that was like a signature dish, then you might. It's. It's like you did cook.And so I really think that trying not to do everything and focusing on your making your guests feel welcome are very important.Stephanie:I figured out late in Life how easy it is to cook fish for a crowd. And that seems like a weird thing, but, like, if you get, like, a whole side of salmon or poach a whole fish or you even have slabs that you're just putting under the broiler, you can have, like, any salads prepared in advance. You know, you can have vegetables prepared in advance, you can have a cheese platter prepared in advance. And then really, like, the only thing you're cooking is this side of salmon or you've got a sauce that you've already made. I was always so afraid to cook fish, and once I kind of got over that hump, I was like, wow, this is actually pretty easy. I can cook a whole side of fish. I can feed 12 people off of it, typically, if I get a big enough one. And with all the sides and everything, everything's already made before they even get here.Kristie LaLonde:That is perfect. And that's like the perfect example of what we're trying to do in the cookbook party is to get people to increase their repertoire of things that are very easy to entertain. Because there are some delicious recipes that we make that would be a nightmare if, you know, for entertaining, you know, they take too long, they need to be done at the last minute, that sort of thing. But if you like, for example, the fish, you know that all. It kind of meets all the requirements. You don't have to do it at the last minute. It's easy preparation, and we want to gain. It's like our entertaining arsenal.Kristie LaLonde:Kind of find those recipes, find ways of doing things that make it simple, where, you know, if, like, for example, things that can be cooked the day before and just reheated, like carnitas, like the meat and that type of thing. Yep. There's just lots of them. And. And we can all have our own little personal style when it comes to that. You know, that's what makes it fun is, is everyone seems like they have their own signature dishes.Stephanie:What's a go to Kristie LaLonde signature entertaining dish?Kristie LaLonde:Well, I just mentioned one of them, carnitas. I love them. They are not. They are kind of time consuming, but it is completely make. You can make it whenever you want, and it tastes great the next day reheated. It's one of those things that, you know, can taste better, even better the same day, and people love them. Everyone seems to like them. So that's one of my go tos.Kristie LaLonde:And then also like, oh, gosh, I can't even remember what I call them now, but they're like the white cream chicken, Chicken enchiladas.Stephanie:Oh, yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Because they can totally be made ahead of time, and all you have to do is put them in the oven, and then, you know, you can make sides easily. A lot of times, actually, with both of those things, I used to. I don't need to now, but I didn't have a good refried beans recipe that I liked, and rice is one of the few things that I really, really struggle with. I need to buy a rice cooker is what I've been told, but so I would just order from the restaurant that's around the corner, baked beans and rice, and then serve that with them. So it was, like, liked. It was homemade. It's in my dish. It looks homemade.Yeah.Stephanie:Time saving. An instant pot is also really helpful in the rice department. If you. Oh, I mean, I make rice in my instant pot. It is a rice cooker. It's a pressure cooker. Rice cooker. It cooks everything.And then also I make risotto in there too.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, wow. I did not know that. Actually, the carnitas is one of the few things I use my instant pot for. So now I got something else.Stephanie:Oh, yes. I'm a big instant potter. In fact, one of the Facebook groups that we run for our radio show is called the Weekly Dish Instant Potters. Oh, some really great recipes there that people have shared or linked to. It's an open group, but I. It's. If you're an instant potter, and I still am. I still love my instant pot.Stephanie:I do my slow cooker, too. You can slow cook in an instant pot, but I also have two other slow cookers because I'm somewhat obsessed with that, but really helpful and easy. Is there a cookbook that you've used on the cookbook Club journey that you really were like, wow, this is a great, entertaining cookbook?Kristie LaLonde:Yes, for sure. And most of the ones that we choose have an entertaining bent to them, typically just because of our interest in what we're trying to accomplish in the group. But Love Welcome Serve by Amy Hannon. Like, really blew my socks off. Every single recipe that we tried just seemed to be over the top, delicious. It was really phenomenal. Like, we've enjoyed all of our books, for sure, but this one, it just really. I was blown away, and I had been told and that it really was such a good cookbook, and I finally caved and put it in there, and I'm so glad that I did.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm looking at it. It looks delightful. It's got kind of an Ina Garten feeling to it.Kristie LaLonde:And she is just a very genuine, kind, hospitable person. She really. She definitely has the mindset. Like, even when she's talking about making little notes, you can just see just. She has such a hospitable nature.Stephanie:And then the recent cookbook that you guys are doing is the. Is it Brunch with Babs?Kristie LaLonde:Brunch with Babs is her account, but the book is called Celebrate with Babs.Stephanie:Okay. And Babs is like everybody's favorite grandma. Her daughter, I think, worked in lifestyle television and has helped her create this really unbelievable social media presence and following. What is it about her books that attracted you?Kristie LaLonde:I. Well, she organizes her cookbooks in the way that I always enjoy, and that is by party or event. I love cookbooks that are organized that in that fashion. And I'd heard good things about it, and so we thought we would try it.Stephanie:Yeah, she's really. I think her recipes are really great. She's not too fussy. She has some that are more complicated than others, but she does a lot of, like, semi homemade kind of things too. Don't you wish that Sandra Lee from Semi Homemade would come back?Kristie LaLonde:Oh, I know. I. Oh, I loved, loved, loved her show because of the party aspect. I absolutely loved it. And we have enjoyed Celebrate with Babs for sure. And you're right, there are a lot of, like, one recipe will be, you know, kind of complicated like you said, and one will be semi homemade. Today at 4. Today we have our.Kristie LaLonde:What's our second to last cook along in Celebrate with Babs. And the theme today is looking forward to fall. So we're doing her new pond chili and then we're doing Mrs. Williams peanut butter bars. So.Stephanie:Yeah, delicious.Kristie LaLonde:Yes, that will be good for dinner.Stephanie:Yes, it will be. It makes me think of my pumpkin spice espresso martini that I'd like to have with that.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, that sounds good. Oh, that sounds so good.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm obsessed with pumpkin spice. And my. My second book is kind of geared from October through April, so more fall time. And I really, I. When you go to get like a pumpkin spice something, it's usually full of such gross ingredients. And I was like, okay, we could make pumpkin spice flavor with pumpkin, right? And spice, like, it wouldn't be that hard. So I made a pumpkin spice cream and then used it in different recipes. And the espresso martini with pumpkin spice was delightful.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, that sounds amazing. Espresso martinis are one of my absolute favorites.Stephanie:Me too. Me too. Well, it's been super great to chat with you about entertaining, Christy. How can people follow you and what's the best way to join if they want to join the cookbook club?Kristie LaLonde:Well, our website is happy cookbookparty.com and I'm on Instagram at Happy Hostess Collective, if you have a question about anything. And I am excited to announce that we are doing one of your cookbooks starting in October.Stephanie:Excellent. That's right on time.Kristie LaLonde:Yes. I'm so excited about it. I can't wait, because this is totally different. I love that we, you know, we've done a lot of Southern cookbooks. Like we did Pizzazzerie and the Southern Living Party Cookbook and a couple others. And then we kind of moved over to the Midwest of it was celebrate with Babs. And so yours will be a perfect fit.Stephanie:Thank you. I'm excited to have you guys do it. And I hope I can find pop in and say hi while everyone's cooking, because that sounds kind of fun.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, I would love it. I would love it. And I would like to offer your listeners, if they want to join us, they can use the code SD50, and they'll get 50% off their first month's membership.Stephanie:That's fun. And how much is a membership generally? Is it 22?Kristie LaLonde:It's $22 a month. Yes.Stephanie:Okay. I love it. That's great. That's fun. It's a good little, like, date night for yourself to do something fun and unusual that you maybe haven't done before, right?Kristie LaLonde:Yes, it is. And it's, you know, I know you not for you, probably because you're immersed in the food industry, and I know you're so big on local, which I love about your cookbooks. I love reading the little stories about the local people. But, you know, a lot of us don't have, like, I love to entertain, and I do have friends that entertain, but I don't have people necessarily close to me that just love it as much as I do and really want to learn. And so it's awesome that I get to hang out with these people all over the country that really do love it as much as I do.Stephanie:Yes. Well, we'll put all this information in the show notes, and you and I will connect on when we want to have the podcast distributed so that people can join. And it was really great to spend time with you. Thanks to Jilly in mn, my favorite Instagram friend and weekly disher who hooked us up. Kristie. I'll connect with you after this podcast by email, and we'll get all the details set up, but thanks for watching, for helping launch my book. It's awesome.Kristie LaLonde:Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.Stephanie:Yes. And we'll talk soon. Thanks for being a guest today. Oh, and I want to shout out your podcast real quick because we'll put a link to that, too.Kristie LaLonde:Thank you. It's called Happy Hostess.Stephanie:Okay. It's really great. You have a lot of episodes on hostessing and fun, entertaining ideas, so. All right, Kristie we'll connect in email.Kristie LaLonde:Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie.Stephanie:Okay, bye. Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

The "Happy Hostess Cookbook Party" is an online community focused on cookbooks and hosting, led by Kristie LaLonde. It's part of the larger "Happy Hostess" brand, which includes the “Happy Hostess Podcast” and other resources for aspiring and experienced hosts. The club focuses on exploring recipes from various cookbooks, often accompanied by themed events and discussions.Kristie has so graciously planned to feature the “True North Cabin Cookbook” for her October club. The club meets via Zoom for all members. It's a monthly subscription for an orchestrated “cook along”thats fun and approachable for all levels of cooks interested in joining a community.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Many times cookbook authors, other times makers. And this particular episode, we are talking to Kristie LaLonde. She is the Happy Hostess Collective. And Kristie and I found each other through a listener of my radio show. My friend Jilly in Minnesota is. She's. We call them Dishers weekly.Stephanie:Dishers, that's the name of the radio show. And Jilly's been a Disher for over 18 years. We've had the show and I think she's listened as long as we've had it. And she reached out to me because in my sub stack, I have a Sunday newsletter and I did a whole thing about entertaining and how I love when people just entertain and people make entertaining so complicated and it doesn't need to be. And I offered to give around a cookbooks to people that have cookbook clubs because I think they're so fun. And Jilly replied and said, I have this great cookbook club. We would love it if we could win your books. And she is part of the Happy Hostess Cookbook Club.Stephanie:So they won. Jilly got the books. I sent books to all the people in the cookbook group that Jilly's in. And Kristie is the leader of the Happy Hostess Collective, Kristie, welcome to the program. I'm delighted to have you.Kristie LaLonde:Thank you. I am so excited to be here.Stephanie:So explain to the audience what the Happy Hostess Collective is and all the different avenues that you have for fostering your love of cookbooks and clubbing.Kristie LaLonde:Well, I am on Instagram as Happy Hostess Collective, but for our cookbook club, it's actually called Happy Cookbook Party because I couldn't really think of a good name. It's not a great name because it doesn't really let you know it's a cookbook club. But we. There's a lot of emphasis on party in it. So basically it's a cookbook club, but instead of meeting in person, most of the time, we are meeting twice a month on Zoom and we are cooking together from one cookbook, which we usually choose a cookbook and stick with that cookbook for like three to four months, depending upon how robust the cookbook is.Stephanie:And people come from all over the country and tell me, like, how do you logistically do it? Do you have like, you know, 30 people on a Zoom or how does it work?Kristie LaLonde:Actually, we do have. We are on Zoom and basically what happens when we pick a book? I will go through and kind of we have a Facebook Group. And so I ask everyone either which recipes really look good to you that you're wanting to try.And then I look through all of those and make sure that they can fit within the hour to hour and a half timeframe of our Zoom Cook along. And then I make a schedule for the next three months and it's printable. I send it to them so they can print it out. And then every. We meet twice a month, so every two weeks, basically we meet on Zoom and I send them grocery list ahead of time for those two recipes that we choose. Sometimes it's three when we throw in a cocktail in there. Yes, especially we usually meet at noon or 4, so the 4 o' clock ones a lot of times have the cocktail. But so we all just meet in one Zoom meeting and we all cook and I'm kind of leading it, but everyone else is talking just as much as I do because we've gotten to know each other so well and it's so fun because we really learn from each other because we have some like expert bakers and we have some people like me that not expert at all in baking.Kristie LaLonde:And so. And like we have some really strong florists and there's. We just learn a lot from each other. And every once in a while we also do like a tutorial on a different thing that would have to do with being a hostess. For example, we've done flower arrangements that mimic the ones we saw in one of our cookbooks. We've done hostess gifts, like kind of homemade, cute little hostess gifts at Christmas time. So it's a wide variety of things. It's been strange.Like a lot of things have come our way. We had, we were offered to have a Vector cocktails. It's like a cocktail mixer. They offered to do a, a cook. I mean, like a cocktail class for us. It was super fun. They sent us all their mixers and it was great. So we've got a chance to do a lot of stuff.Stephanie:So what is your background and how did you land here?Kristie LaLonde:Well, I have always loved cooking and entertaining, even when I was little. Like, I remember I had one of my cookbooks was like the MAD Magazine cookbooks. I don't know if you remember MAD magazine, but they had like a holiday thing and I just loved it. I remember pouring through that and it's crazy because I do that now, obviously with grownup cookbooks, but. And so that just kind of. Well, and then when I was very young, I was the maid of honor in Three Weddings in one year. So I had a crash course and had a host parties for grownups, and that was very fun. But.Kristie LaLonde:And I'd always really enjoyed the ideas of parties as well. Growing up, my parents were my mom. My father was in an industry where there were lots of fancy, fancy famous parties.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Because we live in Kentucky, so the derby parties. And.Stephanie:Yes.Kristie LaLonde:So I would, like, hear them, like, sometimes they would be on the farm that we lived on, like in the party barn. And so, like, I would hear the parties, and I just was kind of fascinated with all of that, and it just kind of snowballed from there.Stephanie:But you on the Happy Hostess Collective on your Instagram, you chronicle a lot of these parties and you have, like, beautiful flower arrangements. And I mean, honestly, the south is just like, I don't know why, but you guys are known for just these over the top, beautiful flower arrangements, beautiful parties, beautiful outfits. In the north, everything feels a little more, like, rustic and just a little more outdoorsy. But, like, the south just feels like China and silver and so beautiful.Kristie LaLonde:Yeah, you know, there's a little bit of everything for sure in the south, but we do tend to go over the top. That is. That is definitely the case. Which makes it fun, though. But. And I love a big theme. It can. It's a lot of fun.And whether it's rustic theme, but it's just like kind of go all in on it. It makes it a lot of fun.Stephanie:How did you figure out, like, I think it's pretty cool that you have this whole cookbook club happening via Zoom. So there's technology there. Right. And then you also have, like a Facebook group. You really use social media to drive a lot of this engagement. It is a paid subscription, which I also think is cool because sometimes if you have to pay for something, you value it a little bit more or you make time for it in your schedule. How did I learn all the technological pieces and have you just learned by trial and error?Kristie LaLonde:Well, fortunately, Zoom is fairly easy to use. And especially after Covid, everybody knows how to use Zoom, thankfully. But actually, I started an E commerce store, like, before people heard of the word E commerce.And I am not techno, very technologically advanced, but I am willing to figure out whatever it is if it makes it possible for me to do what I want. And I really wanted a. A China and dish store, which. Big surprise. So that I had it. No, I don't. I had it for almost 14 years. I think that's, like, my dream.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, it was so fun. And it stopped me from buying all the dishes. Because I had all these gorgeous dishes. Like in a warehouse. Yes. But it's a really heavy, breakable object and not so fun to ship after a while. So I transitioned out of that and wanted to do something that didn't require shipping.Stephanie:And this is brilliant because you've got new friends from all over the country. It could be all over the world.Kristie LaLonde:I suppose it definitely could be. There happens to be just the country right now. We are a small group, but it is a really fun group and it's been a great community. And I really wanted something to tie in my podcast to make it and make it smaller. Well, obviously with the podcast, it's only me or myself and a guest, so I really wanted to be able to, like, get to know my listeners better, and this was the perfect thing.Stephanie:How did you get into podcasting? Because you've have had over a hundred episodes all about this topic of hostessing.Kristie LaLonde:Basically it was the sick of being shipping things. So I thought, okay, well, we could start the podcast. I wasn't really sure what direction it was going to take, but I thought that it would be a good avenue for me to get started. And it kind of led to this.Stephanie:One of the topics that was on your recent podcast that I was kind of interested in, because I think the. It has changed so much since COVID is the whole idea of having a party and the RSVP list. People in my experience tend to be very late at responding to things. And even like, we're finding that restaurant reservations people will make four reservations and cancel three with really no thought about it. Like, it's just we're in a very quick societal change. And you talked a lot about how to get people to RSVP, how important RSVPs are. What were some of your tips there?Kristie LaLonde:Well, it's. It sounds a little old school, but one of them was to actually have a physical invitation delivered to them.Stephanie:Amen. This whole, like, you're gonna send me a digital something, it's fine. It's great as, like, a reminder, but I just. I don't think it's the same as, like, getting an actual invitation to something.Kristie LaLonde:I agree. And for one thing, it's. It's less likely to be forgotten because a lot of times they put it on the refrigerator or somewhere they can see it. And then also, like, it's shocking when you get something in the mail that you. That isn't a bill today, you know, so it's. It seems more special.Stephanie:This is kind of a weird aside, but I used to run a direct mail company. So I love direct mail. And the number one growing category for direct mail is 18 to 34, because they love getting offers in the mail. Because getting mail feels so special now and so unique.Kristie LaLonde:You're kidding.Stephanie:No, it's like it's coming back.Kristie LaLonde:That is so interesting.Stephanie:And the catalog companies have always had a robust business using the mail. They've maybe pared down their catalogs a little bit, or they might have specialty offerings, but people are still sending a lot of catalogs.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, goodness. Well, I'm so glad because I just thought I was like, old school because I really like to have books in my hands. I like. I like getting catalogs if it's from a business that I like. I thought I was the only one that.Stephanie:No, you are not. What other kinds of trends are you noticing in just entertaining in general, good or bad?Kristie LaLonde:Well, catching on. One that I did recently, I did a small series on baby showers. And. Wow. Things have changed since I was having babies, for sure. Like, drastically. Some. Some things I think are good.Kristie LaLonde:Like, for example, a lot of times they're co ed now, which was just a trend that had just barely started when I was having children. And I think that's fun and interesting, for sure. Um, but I do also think that they have gotten, like, kind of out of hand a little bit. And I love going over the top, like I said earlier with a party, so I'm. I'm never gonna, like, shame anybody for that. But it seems like with social media coming in, that everyone is seeing these highlight reels from very sophisticated baby showers.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:And so I kind of camped out in baby shower groups for, like, a good month, like, trying to prepare for this series. And. And it was kind of sad, really, because people were so. A lot of people, not everyone, of course, but were so sad because they didn't have enough people to invite to have an almost wedding, like, baby shower. Like, it was. It was. And they felt defeated. It was just.Kristie LaLonde:It was kind of disheartening. And I mean, you could tell that they really thought that it was normal that people had to rent out a venue hall in order to have a baby shower.Stephanie:Yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Which is not the case at all.Stephanie:And like, just making diaper cake is still pretty fun, isn't it?Kristie LaLonde:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so, I mean, yeah, it's. It's really different. It's. It's almost. And it's a whole different vibe from a lot of people. And the thing is, I've not seen this in person, so I don't want to say that everyone's like this. Maybe it's just the vocal people on Facebook, you know, but it seemed a lot more like, this is my party.Kristie LaLonde:This is my. My thing, as opposed to, you know, someone hosting it for you.Stephanie:Yeah. Yeah. Well, you haven't. Have you watched the Mormon Housewives?Kristie LaLonde:I haven't.Stephanie:Okay, good. I don't. It's like, so bad. It's good. So wrong. Right. So I don't really want to, like, encourage anyone to do it because that sort of guilty pleasure. But they have these big over the top and they have a lot of kids and they're all women under 30.Stephanie:So they do have these big, like, over the top baby showers and the baby hills and the baby moons. And honestly, it's just. So if we get to the idea of just like, entertaining, I think people get so hung up on that they have to have like this special meal or that they have to spend all day in the kitchen. What would be like, some of your tips for getting you to entertain? More like, barriers to overcome, I guess.Kristie LaLonde:Well, I think first and foremost is to really focus on your mindset and think about why that you want to entertain. And usually it's because you want to make memories and have connections with your friends and family. Do you want to make memories and those are awesome reasons, or you want to celebrate someone, you know? And a lot of times when we start thinking about entertaining, sometimes we can get a little nervous that maybe I'm not good enough cook or I'm. My house isn't big enough or I don't have enough people to invite, for example, the baby shower. And I really just recommend very first thing to do is to flip your mind and be focused on your guests. Like, what do you want to do for them, how do you want them to feel? You know, obviously you want them to be. Feel welcomed in your home and that sort of thing. So if you could just focus on the.Kristie LaLonde:The guest, you usually can stop all the negative chatter in your mind because you're not focusing on yourself. And then also, most importantly, don't do everything yourself. You don't have to cook everything. You don't have to cook at all if you don't want to. You know, that's why caterers exist. Even if you only cooked one thing that was like a signature dish, then you might. It's. It's like you did cook.And so I really think that trying not to do everything and focusing on your making your guests feel welcome are very important.Stephanie:I figured out late in Life how easy it is to cook fish for a crowd. And that seems like a weird thing, but, like, if you get, like, a whole side of salmon or poach a whole fish or you even have slabs that you're just putting under the broiler, you can have, like, any salads prepared in advance. You know, you can have vegetables prepared in advance, you can have a cheese platter prepared in advance. And then really, like, the only thing you're cooking is this side of salmon or you've got a sauce that you've already made. I was always so afraid to cook fish, and once I kind of got over that hump, I was like, wow, this is actually pretty easy. I can cook a whole side of fish. I can feed 12 people off of it, typically, if I get a big enough one. And with all the sides and everything, everything's already made before they even get here.Kristie LaLonde:That is perfect. And that's like the perfect example of what we're trying to do in the cookbook party is to get people to increase their repertoire of things that are very easy to entertain. Because there are some delicious recipes that we make that would be a nightmare if, you know, for entertaining, you know, they take too long, they need to be done at the last minute, that sort of thing. But if you like, for example, the fish, you know that all. It kind of meets all the requirements. You don't have to do it at the last minute. It's easy preparation, and we want to gain. It's like our entertaining arsenal.Kristie LaLonde:Kind of find those recipes, find ways of doing things that make it simple, where, you know, if, like, for example, things that can be cooked the day before and just reheated, like carnitas, like the meat and that type of thing. Yep. There's just lots of them. And. And we can all have our own little personal style when it comes to that. You know, that's what makes it fun is, is everyone seems like they have their own signature dishes.Stephanie:What's a go to Kristie LaLonde signature entertaining dish?Kristie LaLonde:Well, I just mentioned one of them, carnitas. I love them. They are not. They are kind of time consuming, but it is completely make. You can make it whenever you want, and it tastes great the next day reheated. It's one of those things that, you know, can taste better, even better the same day, and people love them. Everyone seems to like them. So that's one of my go tos.Kristie LaLonde:And then also like, oh, gosh, I can't even remember what I call them now, but they're like the white cream chicken, Chicken enchiladas.Stephanie:Oh, yeah.Kristie LaLonde:Because they can totally be made ahead of time, and all you have to do is put them in the oven, and then, you know, you can make sides easily. A lot of times, actually, with both of those things, I used to. I don't need to now, but I didn't have a good refried beans recipe that I liked, and rice is one of the few things that I really, really struggle with. I need to buy a rice cooker is what I've been told, but so I would just order from the restaurant that's around the corner, baked beans and rice, and then serve that with them. So it was, like, liked. It was homemade. It's in my dish. It looks homemade.Yeah.Stephanie:Time saving. An instant pot is also really helpful in the rice department. If you. Oh, I mean, I make rice in my instant pot. It is a rice cooker. It's a pressure cooker. Rice cooker. It cooks everything.And then also I make risotto in there too.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, wow. I did not know that. Actually, the carnitas is one of the few things I use my instant pot for. So now I got something else.Stephanie:Oh, yes. I'm a big instant potter. In fact, one of the Facebook groups that we run for our radio show is called the Weekly Dish Instant Potters. Oh, some really great recipes there that people have shared or linked to. It's an open group, but I. It's. If you're an instant potter, and I still am. I still love my instant pot.Stephanie:I do my slow cooker, too. You can slow cook in an instant pot, but I also have two other slow cookers because I'm somewhat obsessed with that, but really helpful and easy. Is there a cookbook that you've used on the cookbook Club journey that you really were like, wow, this is a great, entertaining cookbook?Kristie LaLonde:Yes, for sure. And most of the ones that we choose have an entertaining bent to them, typically just because of our interest in what we're trying to accomplish in the group. But Love Welcome Serve by Amy Hannon. Like, really blew my socks off. Every single recipe that we tried just seemed to be over the top, delicious. It was really phenomenal. Like, we've enjoyed all of our books, for sure, but this one, it just really. I was blown away, and I had been told and that it really was such a good cookbook, and I finally caved and put it in there, and I'm so glad that I did.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm looking at it. It looks delightful. It's got kind of an Ina Garten feeling to it.Kristie LaLonde:And she is just a very genuine, kind, hospitable person. She really. She definitely has the mindset. Like, even when she's talking about making little notes, you can just see just. She has such a hospitable nature.Stephanie:And then the recent cookbook that you guys are doing is the. Is it Brunch with Babs?Kristie LaLonde:Brunch with Babs is her account, but the book is called Celebrate with Babs.Stephanie:Okay. And Babs is like everybody's favorite grandma. Her daughter, I think, worked in lifestyle television and has helped her create this really unbelievable social media presence and following. What is it about her books that attracted you?Kristie LaLonde:I. Well, she organizes her cookbooks in the way that I always enjoy, and that is by party or event. I love cookbooks that are organized that in that fashion. And I'd heard good things about it, and so we thought we would try it.Stephanie:Yeah, she's really. I think her recipes are really great. She's not too fussy. She has some that are more complicated than others, but she does a lot of, like, semi homemade kind of things too. Don't you wish that Sandra Lee from Semi Homemade would come back?Kristie LaLonde:Oh, I know. I. Oh, I loved, loved, loved her show because of the party aspect. I absolutely loved it. And we have enjoyed Celebrate with Babs for sure. And you're right, there are a lot of, like, one recipe will be, you know, kind of complicated like you said, and one will be semi homemade. Today at 4. Today we have our.Kristie LaLonde:What's our second to last cook along in Celebrate with Babs. And the theme today is looking forward to fall. So we're doing her new pond chili and then we're doing Mrs. Williams peanut butter bars. So.Stephanie:Yeah, delicious.Kristie LaLonde:Yes, that will be good for dinner.Stephanie:Yes, it will be. It makes me think of my pumpkin spice espresso martini that I'd like to have with that.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, that sounds good. Oh, that sounds so good.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm obsessed with pumpkin spice. And my. My second book is kind of geared from October through April, so more fall time. And I really, I. When you go to get like a pumpkin spice something, it's usually full of such gross ingredients. And I was like, okay, we could make pumpkin spice flavor with pumpkin, right? And spice, like, it wouldn't be that hard. So I made a pumpkin spice cream and then used it in different recipes. And the espresso martini with pumpkin spice was delightful.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, that sounds amazing. Espresso martinis are one of my absolute favorites.Stephanie:Me too. Me too. Well, it's been super great to chat with you about entertaining, Christy. How can people follow you and what's the best way to join if they want to join the cookbook club?Kristie LaLonde:Well, our website is happy cookbookparty.com and I'm on Instagram at Happy Hostess Collective, if you have a question about anything. And I am excited to announce that we are doing one of your cookbooks starting in October.Stephanie:Excellent. That's right on time.Kristie LaLonde:Yes. I'm so excited about it. I can't wait, because this is totally different. I love that we, you know, we've done a lot of Southern cookbooks. Like we did Pizzazzerie and the Southern Living Party Cookbook and a couple others. And then we kind of moved over to the Midwest of it was celebrate with Babs. And so yours will be a perfect fit.Stephanie:Thank you. I'm excited to have you guys do it. And I hope I can find pop in and say hi while everyone's cooking, because that sounds kind of fun.Kristie LaLonde:Oh, I would love it. I would love it. And I would like to offer your listeners, if they want to join us, they can use the code SD50, and they'll get 50% off their first month's membership.Stephanie:That's fun. And how much is a membership generally? Is it 22?Kristie LaLonde:It's $22 a month. Yes.Stephanie:Okay. I love it. That's great. That's fun. It's a good little, like, date night for yourself to do something fun and unusual that you maybe haven't done before, right?Kristie LaLonde:Yes, it is. And it's, you know, I know you not for you, probably because you're immersed in the food industry, and I know you're so big on local, which I love about your cookbooks. I love reading the little stories about the local people. But, you know, a lot of us don't have, like, I love to entertain, and I do have friends that entertain, but I don't have people necessarily close to me that just love it as much as I do and really want to learn. And so it's awesome that I get to hang out with these people all over the country that really do love it as much as I do.Stephanie:Yes. Well, we'll put all this information in the show notes, and you and I will connect on when we want to have the podcast distributed so that people can join. And it was really great to spend time with you. Thanks to Jilly in mn, my favorite Instagram friend and weekly disher who hooked us up. Kristie. I'll connect with you after this podcast by email, and we'll get all the details set up, but thanks for watching, for helping launch my book. It's awesome.Kristie LaLonde:Well, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.Stephanie:Yes. And we'll talk soon. Thanks for being a guest today. Oh, and I want to shout out your podcast real quick because we'll put a link to that, too.Kristie LaLonde:Thank you. It's called Happy Hostess.Stephanie:Okay. It's really great. You have a lot of episodes on hostessing and fun, entertaining ideas, so. All right, Kristie we'll connect in email.Kristie LaLonde:Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie.Stephanie:Okay, bye. Bye. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

She provided a formula for all the nutrient-dense foods your body needs, at a calorie count that seemed doable while still creating Satiety.Here's the basic, per-meal formula (adjust according to your weight and health goals and your calorie needs). Are you ready? Write this down:30 grams protein + 40 grams carbs (5 or more grams of fiber) + 2 colors of non-starchy plants + 15 grams of healthy fatDo that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo.You can (and should) read the whole post here and subscribe to her newsletter…It was like a lightbulb went off, and I knew I needed to talk with her for the podcast.Get Stephanie's RecipesOriginal Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie Hansen:Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Sometimes it's cookbook authors, sometimes it's people that make things, Sometimes it's chefs. And today I am talking to my friend Stephanie Meyer, who you all may know of as Fresh, Tart Steph and as now, Stephanie Meyer, a. I always get it wrong. Stephanie.Stephanie A. Meyer:Stephanie A. Dot Meyer. But yes, got it.Stephanie Hansen:And Stephanie has been in our friend group for a very long time and a friend with me for a long time. And Stephanie is always. I feel like a trendsetter. Do you know that you're a trendsetter?Stephanie A. Meyer:No. That's amazing. I don't think anyone's ever called me that before, but. Well, that's really.Stephanie Hansen:Here's what I think. Like, you're not in the trends, like people would think of trends, but you are thinking about things before other people are thinking about them. Because I think you're super well read. You're very bright. You spend a lot of time thinking about science things. So you were the first person that I came across in the food space that was really thinking about blogging in a robust way.Stephanie A. Meyer:Sure. Wow. That was a long time ago.Stephanie Hansen:It was. But that was what you were doing, and you were bringing bloggers together and creating community, which was amazing. Then you were writing a cookbook about Twin City chefs, which also seems probably like a long time ago, but I just picked it up the other day, and the stories and the heartfelt feelings about the Twin Cities chef community was still there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Love it. Thank you.Stephanie Hansen:Then you sort of started thinking about healthy eating and healthy food, and your green broth kind of blew up before anybody else was really talking about that. And you've really gone full circle here into this food journey, as many of my peers start to enter the midlife, menopausal middle, trying to think about not only foods in terms of health, but also some of us have been packing the pounds on over the years and just really like, you wrote something the other day, and I follow you on substack and I follow all your stuff, but you wrote something the other day that just, like, leapt off the page at me. And I sent it to a friend and I thought, I have to podcast with her, and I'm going to see if I can find it here, because I'm going to read it, because I think it will really resonate with food people, but also people that might be in the menopause space, which. So you are on trend, because when Oprah starts talking about Something that you've been talking about for a long time.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right? It's, I mean that. It's very true. And honestly, in this sense, a lot of it is just sort of following what people ask me for. So maybe my, maybe my clients are the trendsetters and I'm just answering their questions.Stephanie Hansen:Okay, so here is what you wrote as we'll say, a nutritional coach. You said, write down this solution and implement it today. Here's the basic per meal formula and adjust according to your weight and health goals and calorie needs. Are you ready? She said, write this down. 30 grams of protein plus 40 grams of carbs, 5 or more grams of fiber, plus 2 colors of non starchy plants and 15 grams of healthy fat. Do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo. And I was like blown away that nobody had ever just like spelled that out in a way that felt so clear to me.So can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you got there and how you got to this specific metric and why it's working for people?Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, I love it. Well, I call that particular formula, I call it the satiety formula. That's how you pronounce that word, by the way. Like, often people will just write back and say, oh my God, huge relief because I was saying satiety. Satiety. I wasn't really sure how to say it. Whatever. So anyway, it's satiety.Right, satiety. And so it is satiety. So that could be your little word nerd, you know, for the day and the week. And it's a very powerful word. And, and I just am kind of hooked on it. And I keep repeating it and I keep hoping that people get on board with me, but I call that the satiety formula. Because when I work with clients, I have been able to see that the thing that gets in people's way is that they're hungry. And, you know, perimenopause, menopause makes you hungrier.Stephanie A. Meyer:And a lot of women notice it. They think it's. Oh, it's because of, you know, hormones. That's it. That, you know, estrogen and progesterone directly affect your appetite. That's not really exactly. It's not that direct. However, it is true because as, as you know, perimenopause sets in.We know what happens. Sleep disruption. Nothing, nothing affects your appetite more than sleep. And you have a bad night of sleep. We know that the average person eats like 3 to extra, 3 to 500 extra calories the next day without trying or knowing it. And so a lot of women come to me and say, I'm doing exactly what I did before. This is like this mysterious 10 pound weight packed on and, and, and I think it's because of estrogen. And then we dive in.I have them take a look at what they're eating, we talk about their appetite. And what I just saw over and over and over again is, oh, women are just hungrier. So we need to get more knowledgeable about what makes you full and a little bit more purposeful about it. And then along came Ozempic and made it all kind of make sense, because ozempic works, or GLP1 medications work because they decrease your appetite. And all of a sudden people realized, oh, I was eating much bigger portions than I realized. Oh, I have a naturally bigger appetite than my sister. I didn't realize this is how she felt. I didn't realize what it feels like to not think about food all day.I didn't realize what it feels like to not, like, be hungry after dinner. And I, and Oprah even said it, she's like, wait a minute, is this what normal people feel? And I have been beaten up my whole life for like, you know, being overweight and having a bigger appetite. And it's just my biology. And so knowing that biology is happening, appetite is bigger. What can you do about it? Maybe a GLP1 medication is an answer. Lots of people don't want to go that route right away. They would rather experiment with creating satiety, which is what GLP1 medicine medications do. Creating satiety with food.Because we naturally have GLP1, we naturally have other satiety hormones. We can eat very specific foods in combination to, like, elicit as much of that, that release of satiety hormone as possible. It's not as powerful as meds, but it's a good experiment. And a lot of people are like, okay, I have a lot of clients. I just met with one this morning who said, I'm too full. And so let's adjust. I love it when I get people there. It's like, oh, now I'm too full.How do we fix that?Stephanie Hansen:It's funny because my first thought after reading your formula was thinking about, I see the plates of food you eat a lot on Instagram. So I was thinking about, like, okay, thinking about what Stephanie's plates look like and then thinking about, like, if I actually ate that amount of food three times a day. Yeah, I haven't eaten that much food since like the fifth grade.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right.Stephanie Hansen:It felt like, wow, would this be what that felt like? And I'm not sure. I'm always on the search and you know, people probably think I have an eating disorder and maybe I do and I don't even know it, but I feel like a lot of women, we are conditioned and we think about food a lot. When it's your business too. I'm always thinking about creating and food is like my art. So it's hard for me to separate the creation of food and wanting to express that way through. They're actually making recipes or thinking about recipes or gardening or creating a beautiful table. Like I'm always thinking about that and then the actual eating piece of it and it gets kind of all mixed up. But some ways in a beautiful way, some ways in a way that feels onerous.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yes, very well said.Stephanie Hansen:And I just think about it all the time and I eat way less than I think about because if I ate all the time, like, But I know, like I have a friend right now who she has an eating disorder and has her whole life. And for the first time as a 55 year old woman, she feels like she's really got a handle on it because she's back to, I hate to say it, but calorie counting. And she was afraid of calorie counting her whole life. Exactly. Like you said, she's like, I wasn't eating enough. I was eating one meal a day. I was eating all the wrong things. And now that I'm like more managing that, eating throughout the day and eating more fruits and vegetables and just like not being so hung up on it, she's like, I feel so much better.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you said a lot of great things there. I don't think you have an eating disorder. I mean, welcome to being a woman in the United States. It is just relentless. And then social media has probably made it worse. Although frankly, it wasn't all that great, you know, pre social media.So I don't know. There's, there's a lot of good info. I see a lot of better info. Maybe it's because of the way I curate, curate my social media feed, but I feel like the messages are shifting and changing and I think that's good. But you're right, I mean, it's just, it's insanity and it's really difficult. Calories, you know, matter, like buried in that formula is, you know, carb or macros, the macronutrients of protein, carbs and Fat, they each have calories associated with them. So carbs have 4 calories per gram, protein has 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per. And so when you build a meal around the satiety formula, there is, there's calorie control kind of built into it.And so that meal, if you put together that exact formula of a meal, is going to come out to around 400 calories. 400 calories per meal is a pretty good place for women to start. I mean, it's probably not enough. And I say that in that, in that particular essay. 400 calories per meal, if you only ate three meals a day, would obviously be 1200 calories. A lot of women historically have been aiming for 1200 calories a day and it's not enough, right? It backfires because you end up so hungry that you do overeat in the evening and invisible ways. It's not enough nutrients to, you know, build muscle. And muscle is really how you keep your metabolism ticking along, especially as we age.Uh, so 1200 calories, isn't it? That, that's the calorie count for like my three year old niece, that's how many calories a day she should be eating. So not a grown woman. Unless of course, you're, I don't know, Sue Ellison, you're like 4 foot 10 and you're, you know, an older age. Like she doesn't need a ton of calories and I'm quite sure she probably doesn't eat a ton of food because she's just like an adorable tiny little thing. Um, I'm six feet tall and I'm super active and 1200 calories a day would be insane. Lots of bad things start to happen if you do that. Your hair falls out, you start to lose muscle, you start to lose bone, you start to have low energy. It's depressing.You compromise your gut health. Like, we're not going there. Nuance is very hard to portray on social media. And you know, anywhere the nuance is that yes, 1200 is too low, but most Americans are actually over consuming calories and our food environment is high calorie, low satiety. You just, we know that that's what restaurants tend to sell. It's what snack foods are. It's what, you know, most of our food environment, kind of the ultra processed food stuff. And so once you know that, you can start to push up against it.And most women, I find this, really feel like they are going to gain weight if they're full, which is a Little bit getting at what you said. Like, you look at that plate of food that I put on Instagram, most of those plates of food are, like, between 300 and 400 calories. Like, they're not even that many calories. But I'm really good at getting a lot of food packed into 400 calories so that you can experience satiety, but also the nutrient density part of it. It's a lot of color, a lot of veggies, a lot of fiber, you know, the right amount of protein, that kind of thing. And I think that's a really. It. It's a worth thinking about.Wow. I have been programmed to feel healthy when I'm hungry and to feel like I'm doing things right if I'm hungry and that if I'm satisfied and full, then I'm going to gain weight. That's a very real fear. And it's not just for people who have an eating disorder. It's. I would say it's pretty typical for all American women. So you hit on it.Stephanie Hansen:We're always trying to balance not only for our. Our health, for ourselves, but also our partners, our children. You know, a lot of women are the caregivers, and we're putting this food out there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen:And wanting to also, like, I don't want. Just speaking for myself, I don't want food to be, like, depressing, not fun. Like, also creating an environment where food can be celebration and all those things. How, like, okay, so I know you're coaching all these women and they're having all this success because they're feeling more full, they're eating more well balanced, they're following your formula. But then it feels like real life enters in sometimes and we have that third glass of wine, or we're going out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night. My challenge, like, I could never calorie count because if I go to dinner at a good place on a Friday night, the calories in that food, I know I can't even keep track of because they put so much butter in it. Or it's just you. You don't know how restaurant food is made and why it tastes so good.Stephanie A. Meyer:And all those things you fear are true.Yes. It's so true. I have that conversation actually with my clients because we strategize around. Okay. There's a couple of ways you can approach it. One, if you are going out for dinner too often, obviously it's a little bit of a job hazard for someone like you and our friend group. But if you're eating out too often then then you're going to have to make some decisions about the food that you order in restaurants that are probably more restrictive than what I would tell someone if they were going out for dinner every other week. Right.Like if you're going out for dinner, you know, once every couple of weeks and you really are hungry and you want to go to Bar La Grassa and get pasta, then go do that, enjoy it, it's fine. If you, if you are made this other decision, like you're going to eat out a lot and you have health goals that you want to meet, then you're going to have to strategize a little bit more thoroughly about how you approach eating in restaurants. Because everything you said is just true. Like their job is to coax as much fat and sodium into a dish so that you crave it and you want to come back for it. Like they're in the midst of selling food, which is fine. But when you know that, then you can kind of plan around it. So one way that we strategize and again, it comes down to very individual, you know, response. Which is why I don't really do a lot of group coaching.I really do one on one coaching because everybody's so different. Like the group stuff. Teaching a course has been amazing and gives a good overview, but this is where we kind of get into this nitty gritty and make a decision. Okay, I am going out for dinner. The old way is to try to save up the calories and not eat much during the day and then try to be moderate at dinner. Well, good luck with that because those meals, you know, if you had a per bite calorie count, it would be really high, let's say. And even if you did, you know, a pretty good job of ordering like, you know, some protein, some veggies, you know, had only two glasses of wine, let's say, kind of a thing, you're still going to end up blowing past where you would want to be, especially if you didn't eat anything earlier in the day. So what I like to have people do is take a look at the satiety formula, eat the real breakfast.Because what you eat for breakfast has a huge influence of how hungry you are at 4 in the afternoon. So eat the breakfast, eat the lunch, have a snack that is, you know, that same balance of things where it's protein, it's some carbs and it's some colorful veggies because then you're turning up the volume on your own satiety and that gives you natural discipline, like when you're full and you arrive at the restaurant, and let's say I'll just use the parallel example of someone taking a GLP1 medication, which is much more powerful, as we've said. But if you're taking a GLP1 and you're not hungry, you're not going to overeat at the restaurant. So let's back it up to the person who's just using food to create satiety. If you show up at a restaurant and you're not starving, you are going to have discipline that you wouldn't have otherwise. You're going to be able to make better decisions and then you're going to have the knowledge, okay, well, I'm going to have a pretty high fat meal, right? I'm going to do steak, I'm going to do roasted veggies. Then in that case, I tell women, you can probably back off on the carbs in that meal. I'm not saying be keto and low carb and, you know, go eat like a stick of butter for dinner.But when you're doing a good job, most of the meals, most of the days, when you get to a restaurant, if you still enjoy it, maybe skip the carbs because a lot of them aren't that great. It's like you can have rice at home. Is that that special thing about this restaurant? Fries? Sometimes they're amazing. They're like my favorite food. But if they're marginal, I am not going to eat crappy fries. Like, that's not going to be my thing. I'm going to focus on having, you know, a great burger. And I'm gluten free.Gluten free buns are bad. And so if I get a burger, I just get a really great burger. I probably get cheese on it, I get an amazing salad. I eat those two things together, skip the fries or just have a couple. And I love that meal. It's special. It's much richer and kind of more fun than anything I would make for myself at home. And it's going to work.And so that's the way you can kind of strategize. And that means nuance. That means that calories matter, but we don't have to completely obsess over them and count points and, you know, try to estimate, you know, the calories in, you know, whatever, a plate of pasta, bar la grassa, which would be impossible and also might really freak you out. And so you just have to write, have, have knowledge. And so when I do have people track, but I have them track in order to, to create and plan. So I have their track ahead of times. Like you're about to eat breakfast, use an app to create a meal that's going to fit the formula. And the app can help you do that because it's just a database full of, you know, tons of food and tons of info about food.So what, does that make sense?Stephanie Hansen:Yeah, it does. It's exactly the opposite of what I do because I starve.Stephanie A. Meyer:I noticed it like when, when I was writing more about restaurants in the Twin Cities and I learned pretty fast. If I show up at a restaurant starving, it is like, you know, game on, and it's not going to work. It works a lot better if I show up and I'm like normal hungry for dinner and I make the effort to eat some salad first, eat some veggies first, start with protein way, play down the carbs and you know, and if I'm going to have something to drink, I'm probably going to go for a glass of wine versus a cocktail because the cocktail is just going to have so many more calories in it. So. Yeah, because calories matter. So it's like that's the nuance. If you think that calories don't matter, then you're completely losing the script. But if you're completely obsessed with them and you try to restrict yourself, down, down, down, down, down, that's going to backfire and fail too.So we're aiming in that middle place.Stephanie Hansen:I, I love this about you, that you're very moderate in your approach and there's room for error and there's room for Oops. Fell off the wagon last night. Like, let me get back started this next morning. What apps do you like for people?Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah, I really. Whatever one people enjoy using. So I have a lot of clients that used to do Weight Watchers. The Weight Watchers app used to be completely worthless because you couldn't see the macronutrients on it. You couldn't see protein, carbs and fiber and fat. Now you can. Like they've updated the app. So I have.If you are a person who's really comfortable in the Weight Watchers app, then there's no need to switch, you know, to something else. Some people pay for MyFitnessPal, that's fine and great. The free My Fitness Pal isn't so helpful. It's really hard to see what you're doing. I have clients use Carb Manager if they've never used an app before because it's free. And it's like so easy to use. The database is fantastic. The caveat with that is you can tell by the name that it's meant for people who are really obsessed with carbs.Maybe they have diabetes, they're doing keto, we don't use it that way. So we have to go in and change the settings to custom and then plug our formula that we map out for people in it. And then they know, they're like, okay, this is how many grams of protein I need to be aiming for in a meal. And the way you figure that out is by putting, you know, okay, I'm thinking about having two eggs and a couple of chicken sausages and you know, some of this Dave's killer bread toast and, and some strawberries. Where does that get me? And then, you know, okay, well that's not quite there. How can I change it? And then we work on changing it so that you really get that satiety with little tweaks.Stephanie Hansen:What is a typical client of yours look like?Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah, there kind of isn't one, which I think is so fun. I mean, I've had women, I've had moms who've bought coaching for their 20 year old daughters. How fun is that to have a mom who wants their daughter to ignore diet culture and understand. And I love coaching those young women because they are, they catch on so fast and, and, and then all of their friends want to know what they're doing and all of a sudden they're telling their friends how to do things differently. And they're, you know, they're just a health conscious group of people. They're drinking a lot less, they're already kind of working out, they're great about water, you know, and they have their little Stanley cups and they take them everywhere. It's very fun. I have clients who are in their 80s who are, you know, definitely not perimenopausal, but who are really wanting to not be frail and who do not want to lose their independence and their mobility.And that is really fun because talk about a generational shift in how to eat, just very, very different. And then the majority are probably somewhere between the age of 40 and 65. Mostly women who are experiencing perimenopausal symptoms or menopause and starting to gain weight, feel like they don't know why and really want to like, stop. So that's, that's the majority. And then, and then I've got, you know, women who are, I've probably got, I don't know, six clients Right now who are taking Ozempic, and they want to make sure that they're really covering their basis with nutrition, because Ozempic is a pretty miraculous medication. But you can also screw it up. I mean, if you just don't eat, then you're going to create a mess. And so all of the ways that I talk about eating like that satiety formula, absolutely applies to Ozempic.You have to make sure you're eating enough protein, you have to make sure you're eating fiber. You have to get that. You have to work to get the nutrition in when you're not that hungry.Stephanie Hansen:So, yeah, and, and when you look at what, what do you think gets someone to the point where they hire a coach about nutrition?Stephanie A. Meyer:I love this question. I just, I asked ChatGPT this question the other day, like, I was having a conversation with our friend Tracy Morgan, because we were talking about women who are, you know, even if they're getting laid off from a job, they will still go get their hair done. They will still get Botox. They will still, you know, those are essential. What makes. I'd love your feedback on this, frankly. What makes. Because you're an amazing marketer, what makes your health and nutrition feel as essential as, like, getting your nails done, getting your hair done in skin care, where you will absolutely, you know, budget however much that is for you and, and keep it vital.And, and I think the answer in terms of people that hire me is that they, they, they just realize that their same groove repeated is not working. You know, they've like, given it their all. They have decided to join a gym, they have decided to eat more protein, and it isn't getting them where they wanted to. And the promise of doing those things is not showing up. And they realize, okay, I do need a little bit more information than just work out and eat protein.Stephanie Hansen:And I feel like we're for sure in recessionary times, but no one has called it that yet.Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, God. For sure. Yes.Stephanie Hansen:The way that people are spending money is shifting the way that people are. I mean, food is costing 30% more, so that's part of it and also what we value. So I guess the answer to that is to see yourself as worth it because you prioritize your kids, you'll prioritize your dog, you'll prioritize basically everything in your life before yourself. If you're like most women that I know.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yep, I think that's absolutely it. And I think there is fear. There's fear of the food being depressing or feeling Restrictive. There's fear of, you know, being told to go do super hardcore workouts. There's fear of the loss of, you know, a whole time in your life where you didn't have to care about this stuff and now you have to start. And grief and shame around all of it. And all I can say is that it's. It's none of those things like it is.And then there's also guilt. There is the guilt of focusing on yourself. That one we are going to do. We are going to create a focus on you and your health. Sometimes it brings up some, you know, conflict with a partner. You know, if you've got a partner who likes to eat a certain way and all of a sudden you're wanting to make some shifts that can be in the mix. There's. We have very deep conversations about the fact, you know, I've got some women who have had a terrible relationship, not a terrible relationship with their mom, but a terrible conversation, a lifetime conversation with their mom about their weight, a mom critical of their weight and critical what they're eating.And they just don't even want to open Pandora's box. They don't want to look inside and see the grief there. And so I understand all of those reasons, but that's why I try to make it really fun and very doable. I mean, the formula piece really kind of came out of me just constantly challenging myself. What can I offer that can tell you exactly what to do? Yeah, and I love do it is up to you.Stephanie HansenI feel like a book is coming for you too. I don't know if you're thinking about it, but I'd love to see, like, the plates and the size of portions and like, really taking this formula to the next level. Of course I'm always thinking about books because that's what I do.:Stephanie A. Meyer:But, yeah, I'm not. I'm not super dying to write a book. I gotta say, so hard.Stephanie Hansen:Stephanie, if people want to hire you as a nutritional coach, how do they do that? Because I know a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast and want more information.Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, I love it. Thank you for having me. I miss you. This is really same laughing, awesome. So I would say, I mean, a couple different ways. One, I am stephanie.ameyer on Instagram, and that's a great way to reach out to me. And I post these meals that we're talking about almost every day to help people. My substack is the Project Vibrancy newsletter.You can definitely reach me there. And then my Blog Fresh Tarts. You can reach me there. So I'm pretty easy to find, actually. I'm kind of all over the place. But yeah, send me a note through Instagram or reach out through substack, I would say are the two best ways. Plus you can see a lot of how I think and talk about food and share recipes and all of that is happening in both of those places.Stephanie Hansen:And one last question, because we talked about budgeting and that people don't prioritize themselves. Is there, if someone was going to budget for you in their life to make some substantial changes, like is there a weekly or a monthly just sort of cost that people can plan for so they can put the emphasis back on themselves?Stephanie A. Meyer:Right. So in a few different ways, I mean, I. If someone is really wanting to make a shift and they've been failing, I really just recommend coaching with me because everything is included with that. I include my course, which is where we learn about menopause and perimenopause and what that means for nutrition. I include the project, pregnancy, meal plans, all sorts of other recipes, everything else. And then we meet and talk about where you are, your age, your activity level, whatever. And it's very affordable. It's like 100 bucks an hour.But I include all the other things and I do four sessions. If someone think about that because like.Stephanie Hansen:My Gym membership is $225 a month, so I can play pickleball eight times a month.Stephanie A. Meyer:I mean that is exactly it. It's like. And I have several clients who continue on with me. You don't have to, but because we develop this relationship and I hold people accountable and then that can go on. I do meal plans. If people just want meal plans, that can happen. And that's a monthly fee of like $25. And it's just an entrepreneur so cheap and, and save so much money.That's the really fun thing about meal planning, especially with grocery costs, is that, you know, we. I forget what percentage of American food ends up in the trash. It's a third. And it's probably true for a lot of people's refrigerators too. And so when you meal plan, that is a great thing. You really do. Less takeout, any throwaway, a lot less food.Stephanie Hansen:I love it.Stephanie A. Meyer:So those things are those, those things are possible. So yeah, I've got different ways. And then of course I suggest for a lot of people two other things. One, a lot of health plans cover nutrition coaching. And so I generate a receipt for people. You get reimbursed and that is free, then free. Obviously not free, but you know what I mean. And then if you use PayPal, Shop Pay, I've got a lot of people who pay in installments, and then you just spread the fee out over.So anyway, it's all of those things. And I love the question about where do you prioritize the cost of your health? Not just on the healthcare side, where things are going wrong, but on the prevention side, where it's going.Stephanie Hansen:Right, Right.Stephanie A. Meyer:And that's just a question we can leave people with to ponder.Stephanie Hansen:Okay. I love it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm gonna put this podcast up. I'm gonna present it on Friday. I'm gonna release it. I'm gonna put the show notes in.Stephanie A. Meyer:Beautiful.Stephanie Hansen:Just keep on keeping on. I just was moved by what you wrote, and it was so clear, and it just really struck home with me. And I thought people need to hear this message. So thanks for joining me today.Stephanie A. Meyer:Thank you so much. I love it.Stephanie Hansen:We'll talk soon. Okay, bye.Stephanie A. Meyer:Bye.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

She provided a formula for all the nutrient-dense foods your body needs, at a calorie count that seemed doable while still creating Satiety.Here's the basic, per-meal formula (adjust according to your weight and health goals and your calorie needs). Are you ready? Write this down:30 grams protein + 40 grams carbs (5 or more grams of fiber) + 2 colors of non-starchy plants + 15 grams of healthy fatDo that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo.You can (and should) read the whole post here and subscribe to her newsletter…It was like a lightbulb went off, and I knew I needed to talk with her for the podcast.Get Stephanie's RecipesOriginal Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie Hansen:Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Sometimes it's cookbook authors, sometimes it's people that make things, Sometimes it's chefs. And today I am talking to my friend Stephanie Meyer, who you all may know of as Fresh, Tart Steph and as now, Stephanie Meyer, a. I always get it wrong. Stephanie.Stephanie A. Meyer:Stephanie A. Dot Meyer. But yes, got it.Stephanie Hansen:And Stephanie has been in our friend group for a very long time and a friend with me for a long time. And Stephanie is always. I feel like a trendsetter. Do you know that you're a trendsetter?Stephanie A. Meyer:No. That's amazing. I don't think anyone's ever called me that before, but. Well, that's really.Stephanie Hansen:Here's what I think. Like, you're not in the trends, like people would think of trends, but you are thinking about things before other people are thinking about them. Because I think you're super well read. You're very bright. You spend a lot of time thinking about science things. So you were the first person that I came across in the food space that was really thinking about blogging in a robust way.Stephanie A. Meyer:Sure. Wow. That was a long time ago.Stephanie Hansen:It was. But that was what you were doing, and you were bringing bloggers together and creating community, which was amazing. Then you were writing a cookbook about Twin City chefs, which also seems probably like a long time ago, but I just picked it up the other day, and the stories and the heartfelt feelings about the Twin Cities chef community was still there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Love it. Thank you.Stephanie Hansen:Then you sort of started thinking about healthy eating and healthy food, and your green broth kind of blew up before anybody else was really talking about that. And you've really gone full circle here into this food journey, as many of my peers start to enter the midlife, menopausal middle, trying to think about not only foods in terms of health, but also some of us have been packing the pounds on over the years and just really like, you wrote something the other day, and I follow you on substack and I follow all your stuff, but you wrote something the other day that just, like, leapt off the page at me. And I sent it to a friend and I thought, I have to podcast with her, and I'm going to see if I can find it here, because I'm going to read it, because I think it will really resonate with food people, but also people that might be in the menopause space, which. So you are on trend, because when Oprah starts talking about Something that you've been talking about for a long time.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right? It's, I mean that. It's very true. And honestly, in this sense, a lot of it is just sort of following what people ask me for. So maybe my, maybe my clients are the trendsetters and I'm just answering their questions.Stephanie Hansen:Okay, so here is what you wrote as we'll say, a nutritional coach. You said, write down this solution and implement it today. Here's the basic per meal formula and adjust according to your weight and health goals and calorie needs. Are you ready? She said, write this down. 30 grams of protein plus 40 grams of carbs, 5 or more grams of fiber, plus 2 colors of non starchy plants and 15 grams of healthy fat. Do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo. And I was like blown away that nobody had ever just like spelled that out in a way that felt so clear to me.So can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you got there and how you got to this specific metric and why it's working for people?Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, I love it. Well, I call that particular formula, I call it the satiety formula. That's how you pronounce that word, by the way. Like, often people will just write back and say, oh my God, huge relief because I was saying satiety. Satiety. I wasn't really sure how to say it. Whatever. So anyway, it's satiety.Right, satiety. And so it is satiety. So that could be your little word nerd, you know, for the day and the week. And it's a very powerful word. And, and I just am kind of hooked on it. And I keep repeating it and I keep hoping that people get on board with me, but I call that the satiety formula. Because when I work with clients, I have been able to see that the thing that gets in people's way is that they're hungry. And, you know, perimenopause, menopause makes you hungrier.Stephanie A. Meyer:And a lot of women notice it. They think it's. Oh, it's because of, you know, hormones. That's it. That, you know, estrogen and progesterone directly affect your appetite. That's not really exactly. It's not that direct. However, it is true because as, as you know, perimenopause sets in.We know what happens. Sleep disruption. Nothing, nothing affects your appetite more than sleep. And you have a bad night of sleep. We know that the average person eats like 3 to extra, 3 to 500 extra calories the next day without trying or knowing it. And so a lot of women come to me and say, I'm doing exactly what I did before. This is like this mysterious 10 pound weight packed on and, and, and I think it's because of estrogen. And then we dive in.I have them take a look at what they're eating, we talk about their appetite. And what I just saw over and over and over again is, oh, women are just hungrier. So we need to get more knowledgeable about what makes you full and a little bit more purposeful about it. And then along came Ozempic and made it all kind of make sense, because ozempic works, or GLP1 medications work because they decrease your appetite. And all of a sudden people realized, oh, I was eating much bigger portions than I realized. Oh, I have a naturally bigger appetite than my sister. I didn't realize this is how she felt. I didn't realize what it feels like to not think about food all day.I didn't realize what it feels like to not, like, be hungry after dinner. And I, and Oprah even said it, she's like, wait a minute, is this what normal people feel? And I have been beaten up my whole life for like, you know, being overweight and having a bigger appetite. And it's just my biology. And so knowing that biology is happening, appetite is bigger. What can you do about it? Maybe a GLP1 medication is an answer. Lots of people don't want to go that route right away. They would rather experiment with creating satiety, which is what GLP1 medicine medications do. Creating satiety with food.Because we naturally have GLP1, we naturally have other satiety hormones. We can eat very specific foods in combination to, like, elicit as much of that, that release of satiety hormone as possible. It's not as powerful as meds, but it's a good experiment. And a lot of people are like, okay, I have a lot of clients. I just met with one this morning who said, I'm too full. And so let's adjust. I love it when I get people there. It's like, oh, now I'm too full.How do we fix that?Stephanie Hansen:It's funny because my first thought after reading your formula was thinking about, I see the plates of food you eat a lot on Instagram. So I was thinking about, like, okay, thinking about what Stephanie's plates look like and then thinking about, like, if I actually ate that amount of food three times a day. Yeah, I haven't eaten that much food since like the fifth grade.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right.Stephanie Hansen:It felt like, wow, would this be what that felt like? And I'm not sure. I'm always on the search and you know, people probably think I have an eating disorder and maybe I do and I don't even know it, but I feel like a lot of women, we are conditioned and we think about food a lot. When it's your business too. I'm always thinking about creating and food is like my art. So it's hard for me to separate the creation of food and wanting to express that way through. They're actually making recipes or thinking about recipes or gardening or creating a beautiful table. Like I'm always thinking about that and then the actual eating piece of it and it gets kind of all mixed up. But some ways in a beautiful way, some ways in a way that feels onerous.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yes, very well said.Stephanie Hansen:And I just think about it all the time and I eat way less than I think about because if I ate all the time, like, But I know, like I have a friend right now who she has an eating disorder and has her whole life. And for the first time as a 55 year old woman, she feels like she's really got a handle on it because she's back to, I hate to say it, but calorie counting. And she was afraid of calorie counting her whole life. Exactly. Like you said, she's like, I wasn't eating enough. I was eating one meal a day. I was eating all the wrong things. And now that I'm like more managing that, eating throughout the day and eating more fruits and vegetables and just like not being so hung up on it, she's like, I feel so much better.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you said a lot of great things there. I don't think you have an eating disorder. I mean, welcome to being a woman in the United States. It is just relentless. And then social media has probably made it worse. Although frankly, it wasn't all that great, you know, pre social media.So I don't know. There's, there's a lot of good info. I see a lot of better info. Maybe it's because of the way I curate, curate my social media feed, but I feel like the messages are shifting and changing and I think that's good. But you're right, I mean, it's just, it's insanity and it's really difficult. Calories, you know, matter, like buried in that formula is, you know, carb or macros, the macronutrients of protein, carbs and Fat, they each have calories associated with them. So carbs have 4 calories per gram, protein has 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per. And so when you build a meal around the satiety formula, there is, there's calorie control kind of built into it.And so that meal, if you put together that exact formula of a meal, is going to come out to around 400 calories. 400 calories per meal is a pretty good place for women to start. I mean, it's probably not enough. And I say that in that, in that particular essay. 400 calories per meal, if you only ate three meals a day, would obviously be 1200 calories. A lot of women historically have been aiming for 1200 calories a day and it's not enough, right? It backfires because you end up so hungry that you do overeat in the evening and invisible ways. It's not enough nutrients to, you know, build muscle. And muscle is really how you keep your metabolism ticking along, especially as we age.Uh, so 1200 calories, isn't it? That, that's the calorie count for like my three year old niece, that's how many calories a day she should be eating. So not a grown woman. Unless of course, you're, I don't know, Sue Ellison, you're like 4 foot 10 and you're, you know, an older age. Like she doesn't need a ton of calories and I'm quite sure she probably doesn't eat a ton of food because she's just like an adorable tiny little thing. Um, I'm six feet tall and I'm super active and 1200 calories a day would be insane. Lots of bad things start to happen if you do that. Your hair falls out, you start to lose muscle, you start to lose bone, you start to have low energy. It's depressing.You compromise your gut health. Like, we're not going there. Nuance is very hard to portray on social media. And you know, anywhere the nuance is that yes, 1200 is too low, but most Americans are actually over consuming calories and our food environment is high calorie, low satiety. You just, we know that that's what restaurants tend to sell. It's what snack foods are. It's what, you know, most of our food environment, kind of the ultra processed food stuff. And so once you know that, you can start to push up against it.And most women, I find this, really feel like they are going to gain weight if they're full, which is a Little bit getting at what you said. Like, you look at that plate of food that I put on Instagram, most of those plates of food are, like, between 300 and 400 calories. Like, they're not even that many calories. But I'm really good at getting a lot of food packed into 400 calories so that you can experience satiety, but also the nutrient density part of it. It's a lot of color, a lot of veggies, a lot of fiber, you know, the right amount of protein, that kind of thing. And I think that's a really. It. It's a worth thinking about.Wow. I have been programmed to feel healthy when I'm hungry and to feel like I'm doing things right if I'm hungry and that if I'm satisfied and full, then I'm going to gain weight. That's a very real fear. And it's not just for people who have an eating disorder. It's. I would say it's pretty typical for all American women. So you hit on it.Stephanie Hansen:We're always trying to balance not only for our. Our health, for ourselves, but also our partners, our children. You know, a lot of women are the caregivers, and we're putting this food out there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen:And wanting to also, like, I don't want. Just speaking for myself, I don't want food to be, like, depressing, not fun. Like, also creating an environment where food can be celebration and all those things. How, like, okay, so I know you're coaching all these women and they're having all this success because they're feeling more full, they're eating more well balanced, they're following your formula. But then it feels like real life enters in sometimes and we have that third glass of wine, or we're going out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night. My challenge, like, I could never calorie count because if I go to dinner at a good place on a Friday night, the calories in that food, I know I can't even keep track of because they put so much butter in it. Or it's just you. You don't know how restaurant food is made and why it tastes so good.Stephanie A. Meyer:And all those things you fear are true.Yes. It's so true. I have that conversation actually with my clients because we strategize around. Okay. There's a couple of ways you can approach it. One, if you are going out for dinner too often, obviously it's a little bit of a job hazard for someone like you and our friend group. But if you're eating out too often then then you're going to have to make some decisions about the food that you order in restaurants that are probably more restrictive than what I would tell someone if they were going out for dinner every other week. Right.Like if you're going out for dinner, you know, once every couple of weeks and you really are hungry and you want to go to Bar La Grassa and get pasta, then go do that, enjoy it, it's fine. If you, if you are made this other decision, like you're going to eat out a lot and you have health goals that you want to meet, then you're going to have to strategize a little bit more thoroughly about how you approach eating in restaurants. Because everything you said is just true. Like their job is to coax as much fat and sodium into a dish so that you crave it and you want to come back for it. Like they're in the midst of selling food, which is fine. But when you know that, then you can kind of plan around it. So one way that we strategize and again, it comes down to very individual, you know, response. Which is why I don't really do a lot of group coaching.I really do one on one coaching because everybody's so different. Like the group stuff. Teaching a course has been amazing and gives a good overview, but this is where we kind of get into this nitty gritty and make a decision. Okay, I am going out for dinner. The old way is to try to save up the calories and not eat much during the day and then try to be moderate at dinner. Well, good luck with that because those meals, you know, if you had a per bite calorie count, it would be really high, let's say. And even if you did, you know, a pretty good job of ordering like, you know, some protein, some veggies, you know, had only two glasses of wine, let's say, kind of a thing, you're still going to end up blowing past where you would want to be, especially if you didn't eat anything earlier in the day. So what I like to have people do is take a look at the satiety formula, eat the real breakfast.Because what you eat for breakfast has a huge influence of how hungry you are at 4 in the afternoon. So eat the breakfast, eat the lunch, have a snack that is, you know, that same balance of things where it's protein, it's some carbs and it's some colorful veggies because then you're turning up the volume on your own satiety and that gives you natural discipline, like when you're full and you arrive at the restaurant, and let's say I'll just use the parallel example of someone taking a GLP1 medication, which is much more powerful, as we've said. But if you're taking a GLP1 and you're not hungry, you're not going to overeat at the restaurant. So let's back it up to the person who's just using food to create satiety. If you show up at a restaurant and you're not starving, you are going to have discipline that you wouldn't have otherwise. You're going to be able to make better decisions and then you're going to have the knowledge, okay, well, I'm going to have a pretty high fat meal, right? I'm going to do steak, I'm going to do roasted veggies. Then in that case, I tell women, you can probably back off on the carbs in that meal. I'm not saying be keto and low carb and, you know, go eat like a stick of butter for dinner.But when you're doing a good job, most of the meals, most of the days, when you get to a restaurant, if you still enjoy it, maybe skip the carbs because a lot of them aren't that great. It's like you can have rice at home. Is that that special thing about this restaurant? Fries? Sometimes they're amazing. They're like my favorite food. But if they're marginal, I am not going to eat crappy fries. Like, that's not going to be my thing. I'm going to focus on having, you know, a great burger. And I'm gluten free.Gluten free buns are bad. And so if I get a burger, I just get a really great burger. I probably get cheese on it, I get an amazing salad. I eat those two things together, skip the fries or just have a couple. And I love that meal. It's special. It's much richer and kind of more fun than anything I would make for myself at home. And it's going to work.And so that's the way you can kind of strategize. And that means nuance. That means that calories matter, but we don't have to completely obsess over them and count points and, you know, try to estimate, you know, the calories in, you know, whatever, a plate of pasta, bar la grassa, which would be impossible and also might really freak you out. And so you just have to write, have, have knowledge. And so when I do have people track, but I have them track in order to, to create and plan. So I have their track ahead of times. Like you're about to eat breakfast, use an app to create a meal that's going to fit the formula. And the app can help you do that because it's just a database full of, you know, tons of food and tons of info about food.So what, does that make sense?Stephanie Hansen:Yeah, it does. It's exactly the opposite of what I do because I starve.Stephanie A. Meyer:I noticed it like when, when I was writing more about restaurants in the Twin Cities and I learned pretty fast. If I show up at a restaurant starving, it is like, you know, game on, and it's not going to work. It works a lot better if I show up and I'm like normal hungry for dinner and I make the effort to eat some salad first, eat some veggies first, start with protein way, play down the carbs and you know, and if I'm going to have something to drink, I'm probably going to go for a glass of wine versus a cocktail because the cocktail is just going to have so many more calories in it. So. Yeah, because calories matter. So it's like that's the nuance. If you think that calories don't matter, then you're completely losing the script. But if you're completely obsessed with them and you try to restrict yourself, down, down, down, down, down, that's going to backfire and fail too.So we're aiming in that middle place.Stephanie Hansen:I, I love this about you, that you're very moderate in your approach and there's room for error and there's room for Oops. Fell off the wagon last night. Like, let me get back started this next morning. What apps do you like for people?Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah, I really. Whatever one people enjoy using. So I have a lot of clients that used to do Weight Watchers. The Weight Watchers app used to be completely worthless because you couldn't see the macronutrients on it. You couldn't see protein, carbs and fiber and fat. Now you can. Like they've updated the app. So I have.If you are a person who's really comfortable in the Weight Watchers app, then there's no need to switch, you know, to something else. Some people pay for MyFitnessPal, that's fine and great. The free My Fitness Pal isn't so helpful. It's really hard to see what you're doing. I have clients use Carb Manager if they've never used an app before because it's free. And it's like so easy to use. The database is fantastic. The caveat with that is you can tell by the name that it's meant for people who are really obsessed with carbs.Maybe they have diabetes, they're doing keto, we don't use it that way. So we have to go in and change the settings to custom and then plug our formula that we map out for people in it. And then they know, they're like, okay, this is how many grams of protein I need to be aiming for in a meal. And the way you figure that out is by putting, you know, okay, I'm thinking about having two eggs and a couple of chicken sausages and you know, some of this Dave's killer bread toast and, and some strawberries. Where does that get me? And then, you know, okay, well that's not quite there. How can I change it? And then we work on changing it so that you really get that satiety with little tweaks.Stephanie Hansen:What is a typical client of yours look like?Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah, there kind of isn't one, which I think is so fun. I mean, I've had women, I've had moms who've bought coaching for their 20 year old daughters. How fun is that to have a mom who wants their daughter to ignore diet culture and understand. And I love coaching those young women because they are, they catch on so fast and, and, and then all of their friends want to know what they're doing and all of a sudden they're telling their friends how to do things differently. And they're, you know, they're just a health conscious group of people. They're drinking a lot less, they're already kind of working out, they're great about water, you know, and they have their little Stanley cups and they take them everywhere. It's very fun. I have clients who are in their 80s who are, you know, definitely not perimenopausal, but who are really wanting to not be frail and who do not want to lose their independence and their mobility.And that is really fun because talk about a generational shift in how to eat, just very, very different. And then the majority are probably somewhere between the age of 40 and 65. Mostly women who are experiencing perimenopausal symptoms or menopause and starting to gain weight, feel like they don't know why and really want to like, stop. So that's, that's the majority. And then, and then I've got, you know, women who are, I've probably got, I don't know, six clients Right now who are taking Ozempic, and they want to make sure that they're really covering their basis with nutrition, because Ozempic is a pretty miraculous medication. But you can also screw it up. I mean, if you just don't eat, then you're going to create a mess. And so all of the ways that I talk about eating like that satiety formula, absolutely applies to Ozempic.You have to make sure you're eating enough protein, you have to make sure you're eating fiber. You have to get that. You have to work to get the nutrition in when you're not that hungry.Stephanie Hansen:So, yeah, and, and when you look at what, what do you think gets someone to the point where they hire a coach about nutrition?Stephanie A. Meyer:I love this question. I just, I asked ChatGPT this question the other day, like, I was having a conversation with our friend Tracy Morgan, because we were talking about women who are, you know, even if they're getting laid off from a job, they will still go get their hair done. They will still get Botox. They will still, you know, those are essential. What makes. I'd love your feedback on this, frankly. What makes. Because you're an amazing marketer, what makes your health and nutrition feel as essential as, like, getting your nails done, getting your hair done in skin care, where you will absolutely, you know, budget however much that is for you and, and keep it vital.And, and I think the answer in terms of people that hire me is that they, they, they just realize that their same groove repeated is not working. You know, they've like, given it their all. They have decided to join a gym, they have decided to eat more protein, and it isn't getting them where they wanted to. And the promise of doing those things is not showing up. And they realize, okay, I do need a little bit more information than just work out and eat protein.Stephanie Hansen:And I feel like we're for sure in recessionary times, but no one has called it that yet.Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, God. For sure. Yes.Stephanie Hansen:The way that people are spending money is shifting the way that people are. I mean, food is costing 30% more, so that's part of it and also what we value. So I guess the answer to that is to see yourself as worth it because you prioritize your kids, you'll prioritize your dog, you'll prioritize basically everything in your life before yourself. If you're like most women that I know.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yep, I think that's absolutely it. And I think there is fear. There's fear of the food being depressing or feeling Restrictive. There's fear of, you know, being told to go do super hardcore workouts. There's fear of the loss of, you know, a whole time in your life where you didn't have to care about this stuff and now you have to start. And grief and shame around all of it. And all I can say is that it's. It's none of those things like it is.And then there's also guilt. There is the guilt of focusing on yourself. That one we are going to do. We are going to create a focus on you and your health. Sometimes it brings up some, you know, conflict with a partner. You know, if you've got a partner who likes to eat a certain way and all of a sudden you're wanting to make some shifts that can be in the mix. There's. We have very deep conversations about the fact, you know, I've got some women who have had a terrible relationship, not a terrible relationship with their mom, but a terrible conversation, a lifetime conversation with their mom about their weight, a mom critical of their weight and critical what they're eating.And they just don't even want to open Pandora's box. They don't want to look inside and see the grief there. And so I understand all of those reasons, but that's why I try to make it really fun and very doable. I mean, the formula piece really kind of came out of me just constantly challenging myself. What can I offer that can tell you exactly what to do? Yeah, and I love do it is up to you.Stephanie HansenI feel like a book is coming for you too. I don't know if you're thinking about it, but I'd love to see, like, the plates and the size of portions and like, really taking this formula to the next level. Of course I'm always thinking about books because that's what I do.:Stephanie A. Meyer:But, yeah, I'm not. I'm not super dying to write a book. I gotta say, so hard.Stephanie Hansen:Stephanie, if people want to hire you as a nutritional coach, how do they do that? Because I know a lot of people are going to listen to this podcast and want more information.Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, I love it. Thank you for having me. I miss you. This is really same laughing, awesome. So I would say, I mean, a couple different ways. One, I am stephanie.ameyer on Instagram, and that's a great way to reach out to me. And I post these meals that we're talking about almost every day to help people. My substack is the Project Vibrancy newsletter.You can definitely reach me there. And then my Blog Fresh Tarts. You can reach me there. So I'm pretty easy to find, actually. I'm kind of all over the place. But yeah, send me a note through Instagram or reach out through substack, I would say are the two best ways. Plus you can see a lot of how I think and talk about food and share recipes and all of that is happening in both of those places.Stephanie Hansen:And one last question, because we talked about budgeting and that people don't prioritize themselves. Is there, if someone was going to budget for you in their life to make some substantial changes, like is there a weekly or a monthly just sort of cost that people can plan for so they can put the emphasis back on themselves?Stephanie A. Meyer:Right. So in a few different ways, I mean, I. If someone is really wanting to make a shift and they've been failing, I really just recommend coaching with me because everything is included with that. I include my course, which is where we learn about menopause and perimenopause and what that means for nutrition. I include the project, pregnancy, meal plans, all sorts of other recipes, everything else. And then we meet and talk about where you are, your age, your activity level, whatever. And it's very affordable. It's like 100 bucks an hour.But I include all the other things and I do four sessions. If someone think about that because like.Stephanie Hansen:My Gym membership is $225 a month, so I can play pickleball eight times a month.Stephanie A. Meyer:I mean that is exactly it. It's like. And I have several clients who continue on with me. You don't have to, but because we develop this relationship and I hold people accountable and then that can go on. I do meal plans. If people just want meal plans, that can happen. And that's a monthly fee of like $25. And it's just an entrepreneur so cheap and, and save so much money.That's the really fun thing about meal planning, especially with grocery costs, is that, you know, we. I forget what percentage of American food ends up in the trash. It's a third. And it's probably true for a lot of people's refrigerators too. And so when you meal plan, that is a great thing. You really do. Less takeout, any throwaway, a lot less food.Stephanie Hansen:I love it.Stephanie A. Meyer:So those things are those, those things are possible. So yeah, I've got different ways. And then of course I suggest for a lot of people two other things. One, a lot of health plans cover nutrition coaching. And so I generate a receipt for people. You get reimbursed and that is free, then free. Obviously not free, but you know what I mean. And then if you use PayPal, Shop Pay, I've got a lot of people who pay in installments, and then you just spread the fee out over.So anyway, it's all of those things. And I love the question about where do you prioritize the cost of your health? Not just on the healthcare side, where things are going wrong, but on the prevention side, where it's going.Stephanie Hansen:Right, Right.Stephanie A. Meyer:And that's just a question we can leave people with to ponder.Stephanie Hansen:Okay. I love it. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm gonna put this podcast up. I'm gonna present it on Friday. I'm gonna release it. I'm gonna put the show notes in.Stephanie A. Meyer:Beautiful.Stephanie Hansen:Just keep on keeping on. I just was moved by what you wrote, and it was so clear, and it just really struck home with me. And I thought people need to hear this message. So thanks for joining me today.Stephanie A. Meyer:Thank you so much. I love it.Stephanie Hansen:We'll talk soon. Okay, bye.Stephanie A. Meyer:Bye.Stephanie's Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Join The Dancing Housewife and the fabulous DUFF Couple—Carolyn Cline and Ross Hill—as they dish on this season's celebrity and pro lineup, share behind-the-scenes stories, and make their bold predictions for who will shine (and who might stumble) on the ballroom floor. From reality stars and Olympians to nostalgic TV icons, we break down every contestant, spill the tea on the drama, and debate who's got the moves to take home the Mirror Ball Trophy.Timestamps 00:00 – Intro & Welcome00:38 – Catching Up with the DUFF Couple01:48 – Season 34 Hosts: Alfonso & Julianne03:18 – Celebrity Cast Preview Begins03:41 – Jen Affleck & Yawn Nik04:41 – Hilaria Baldwin & Gleb06:20 – Jordan Chiles & Ezra08:05 – Baron Davis & Brit Stewart09:03 – Alex Earl & Val09:54 – Dylan Efron & Daniella10:55 – Corey Feldman & Jenna11:31 – Danielle Fishel & Pasha12:43 – Elaine Hendricks & Alan13:44 – Scott Hoying & Rylee14:29 – Robert Irwin & Witney15:24 – Lauren Jauregui & Brandon16:43 – Whitney Leavitt & Mark17:12 – Andy Richter & Emma18:13 – Jan Ravnik: The New Pro19:50 – DWTS Drama & Rumors22:09 – Predictions: Breakout Stars & First Boot23:25 – Finalists & Winner PicksWho are your picks for breakout star and first boot? Drop your predictions in the comments—bonus points if you're right, eternal shame if you're wrong!

This week on Dishing with Buff Faye, Buff spills the tea on the Brandy Alexander drag queen mural that was “accidentally” erased in Plaza Midwood. During Charlotte Pride weekend, Brandy's face reappeared on the wall—this time squeezed between Anthony Hamilton and Romare Bearden. But as Buff points out, the new mural strips away the bold colors, symbolism, and queer protest that once made it powerful. What's left is a muted, “safe” version of Brandy—visibility without meaning. Read Buff's full article, Mural Replaced, But Not Restored: Brandy Alexander Deserved More, at BuffFaye.com. Then, Buff welcomes Jason McCraw and Zuni Johnson, founders of the Twirl to the World Foundation. Together they share how love, legacy, and philanthropy fuel their iconic events, raise thousands for LGBTQ+ causes, and bring joy to Charlotte—including this fall's cheeky Santa Speedo Run/Walk. It's an episode about queer resilience, chosen family, and living your best life - glam, giving back, and demanding dignity. Let's Dish, y'all.

SOAPDISH --September 2, 2025--Co-Hosts Teri Knight and Mark Taylor are back "DISHING" BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL!AGENDA-1) Opening2) Ridge has Brooke holding onto a wedding ring until he can talk to Taylor and let her down easy...3) Today Brooke starts t get more assertive with Ridge asking when he is going to talk to Taylor.4) To Complicate matters today Thomas shows up back home and surprises Taylor that he is home. Then Thomas visits Forrester Creations and stops at Ridge's Office. Thomas catches Brooke and Ridge embracing. Thomas is quite confrontational with Ridge about marrying his mother Taylor and not hurting her again.____________________________________________________5) Recently since Liam found out that he is not dying, he has been thinki9jg about and expressing his feelings for Hope. He recently talked to Hope and told her she was his one and only!Meanwhile Carter is pressing Hope for a wedding date following their earlier engagement. Hope seems to be stalling....____________________________________________________6) The other BIG Storyline is Luna getting Will drunk and then seducing him while wearing a costume party mask. Will being so drunk that he thought it was Electra. Will starts to put together that he did not make love to Electra, so whom did he with?............The next night Electra is now ready to give herself to Will. Will is in a real state of confusion but they do end up together romantically.Today Luna gets a package delivered to her secret apartment with Li.It turns out she ordered a pregnancy test....UH OH!!!_______________________________________________7) OTHER THOUGHTS/PREDICTIONS8) Closing

Gossip, Tittle Tattle, rumors, hearsay, dishing the dirt, idle talk, back stabbing…. It's not one of the seven deadly sins, but maybe it should be. How many friendships, how many marriages, and how many jobs have been lost through spiteful blather? In this episode of Double Trouble Howlin' Wolf and Gene Pitney testify to the adverse effects of pitiless small town talk. Mind your own business, “they” say; “discretion is the better part of valor,”, “People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones,” etc. I'm sure you've heard them all, but how's your ratio of disciplined restraint? That's a lesson I had to learn the hard way. Gossip may feel like a way of getting closer to someone by sharing intimacies. But, the next thing you know that person tells the other person, and YOU'RE the odd one out. Best to maintain a lock-jawed policy of trust. HOWLIN' WOLFWho's Been Talking, from 1960, swings it's savage message with a Calypso beat. Chester Burnett, the blues master trained by Charlie Patton and Sonny Boy Williamson; the discovery by a 19 year old Ike Turner for Sam Phillips and Sun Records; the neck and neck competition with Muddy Waters, and inductee into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame delivers his self-penned diatribe against the effect of cheap talk with his usual lupine swagger. “Who's been talking?” Wolf wants to know, and when he finds out, whoa, the owner of those loose lips better hide, or they might get their jaw broken. GENE PITNEYTown Without Pity was a 1961 Kirk Douglas film with an uncredited, re-written screenplay by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, featuring a score by Dimitri Tiomkin, who also composed the theme for High Noon, among others. Town Without Pity was crooned by Gene Pitney, the heartthrob with the 3 octave range - and became Pitney's first top 40 single. He garnered many accolades in a career which also boasted bull's eyes as a songwriter, composing hits for Ricky Nelson with Hello Marylou, and Bobby Vee's Rubber Ball. In this bluesy lament in a minor key, Pitney tugs at our heart strings as he bemoans the besmirching of his purest love by the wagging tongues of spite.

In this episode of Dishing with Buff Faye, Buff reflects on the power of queer joy—especially in today's world where joy is a revolutionary act. Coming off a fabulous Charlotte Pride celebration, Buff celebrates how far the city has come, from its first Pride picnic in 1981 to now hosting the largest parade in Charlotte, PERIOD! Joining Buff is her drag sister and special guest, Devida—a licensed counselor, addiction specialist, professor, and former Miss Gay North Carolina America. The two dive deep into what it really means to embrace joy as LGBTQ+ people. From Cheetos dresses and pageant memories to the importance of rest, authenticity, and connection, the conversation blends drag, mental health, and healing. Devida shares her journey in both drag and counseling, highlighting how acknowledging burnout, setting boundaries, and embracing your full self are key steps toward finding joy. For queer folks, it's not just about celebration—it's about survival, self-acceptance, and reclaiming our wholeness. They also get real about the darker sides of social media, cancel culture, and how online outrage affects our mental health and relationships. In a world where people often perform to be seen, finding joy is about being truly yourself—no filter needed. The episode wraps with a playful round of “Yuck or Yum: Pride Edition” that will leave you laughing and lifted. It's heartfelt, healing, and a reminder that queer joy is not just possible—it's powerful. Let's Dish, y'all.   #DishingWithBuffFaye #FindingQueerJoy #CharlottePride #MentalHealthMatters #DragWithPurpose #AllBuffTV #PodcastDrop #BuffFaye #YuckOrYum #QueerHealing

After a real spread of new music from across genres, Sam and Max unpack a huge Hottest 100 weekend, talk about more artists moving away from Spotify, and then wretch their way through the biggest live music icks.Follow along with the songs we discuss with this week's Spotify Playlist.Discover more new music and hear your favourite artists with 78 Amped on Instagram and TikTok.

Let's talk about the unspoken villain in your business story: your inner broke girl.The one who hoards money, second-guesses every investment, and whispers, “you can't afford that” every time you try to grow. In this episode, I'm unpacking the mindset that secretly runs the show for so many online entrepreneurs—and how to shift it.We'll cover:✨ What “broke girl energy” actually looks like in business✨ The difference between smart strategy and scarcity-driven decisions✨ How I shifted my relationship with money to grow a multi-6-figure brand✨ Tactical ways to move from fear-based to CEO-level financial decisionsThis one's spicy—and it might sting a little—but it's going to change the way you show up and scale. You ready?xxEllenWIN AN IPHONE 16

Whether you're a freelancer, creator, or coach, this is your roadmap to working less and earning more before 2026 hits. In this video, I'm breaking down the 3-part Freedom Framework - aka the three key steps to scaling your online business without working 24/7.To celebrate the re-launch of the Dishing up Digital podcast, I'm hosting an epic giveaway! Enter here: https://www.ellenmackenzie.com/podcastxxEllen⬇️ SIGN UP FOR MY FREE WEBINAR: how to become a social media manager ✨https://www.ellenmackenzie.com/freewebinar--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feeling overwhelmed by the demands of your career and struggling to take care of your health? This week, Dina dishes with Chloe Sachs, certified yoga instructor, integrative health coach, and founder of The Body Sync to talk about how ambitious women can find balance, reduce stress, and reclaim their wellness without stepping away from their professional goals.Chloe shares her personal journey from burnout to balance, the mind-body connection behind sustainable health habits, and actionable strategies you can start using today. Whether you're working long hours in a high-stakes job or just trying to keep your head above water, this episode offers practical tools to help you reset and realign with your body.----After managing the biggest accounts at one of the top ad agencies in NYC Chloe Sachs knows firsthand how debilitating stress can be on our bodies (on top of all the other things woman have to worry about). In the corporate world, you are taught that work comes first, health second, but I now find passion in reframing that mindset so that people can prioritize their health so that they can feel more confident and productive in their jobs.Connect with Chloe at:https://www.thebodysync.co/https://www.instagram.com/the_bodysync/https://www.instagram.com/chloegsachs/Mentioned in this episode:https://www.corepoweryoga.com/content/yoga-teacher-traininghttps://www.catalystcoachinginstitute.com/https://institute.mindbodygreen.com/health-coach-certification----Check out our podcast in video format on DishWithDinaTV:https://www.youtube.com/user/DishWithDina?sub_confirmation=1Join our mailing list to stay connected, stay informed, receive exclusive offers, and be a part of the DishWithDina community:https://forms.gle/MzV7gVAPEsqEyEFH6If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with others! You can also submit listener feedback or request to be a guest on a future episode by completing this form:https://forms.gle/EFYX7Gshbjx9cCKfA----DISCLAIMER: The purpose of this podcast is to entertain, educate, and inform, but it is not to be taken as medical advice. Please seek prompt, qualified medical care for any specific health issues and consult your physician or health practitioner before starting a new fitness regimen, herbal therapy, or other self-directed treatment.

Russillo is joined by Ron Chernow to dive deep into his new book, ‘Mark Twain'. Plus, they discuss why Twain's life made for an interesting story, his struggles throughout his life, and even touch on other historical figures like Alexander Hamilton. Check us out on YouTube for exclusive clips, livestreams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Ron Chernow Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, Mike Wargon, and Jonathan Frias This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Van Lathan Jr. to talk about Joseph Kosinski's ‘F1' film, starring Brad Pitt and Damson Idris (2:16), before discussing Pitt's acting career. Then, Charles Holmes joins the pod to try to convince Bill to watch James Gunn's ‘Superman' (59:01). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Van Lathan Jr. and Charles Holmes Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob and Wos are here with their immediate thoughts on Day 1 of free agency. They start with the Cam Johnson-for-Michael Porter Jr. trade and Denver's outlook moving forward. Then, they talk about the Rockets getting deeper (20:48), what the Lakers' plan is (31:10), the Hawks' interesting offseason (48:40), and much more. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz Social: Keith Fujimoto and Jomi Adeniran This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to discuss the upcoming NBA free agency, plus some big deals that already came from the Rockets and Timberwolves (2:07). Then, they talk about their favorite free agents, Yang Hansen, and the Collin Sexton trade (35:33). Finally, they talk about the possibility of a LeBron trade, the Pelicans' mess, and the most desperate teams (49:44). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yue almost walked out of the movie Materialists...it may be one of Julie's favorite movies of all times. Whether you've seen it or not, we're having a debate about the messaging and takeaways of the movie as it pertains to modern dating, financial disparities in relationships, height surgery, and the matchmaking industry. We're revealing our true feelings of matchmaking from our own experiences and hope you enjoy this heated debate! And if you saw the movie, let us know what you thought...we'll be putting up some Spotify & Instagram polls. Enjoy!Take the Dating Archetypes quiz now: https://howtobedateable.com/HOW TO BE DATEABLE IS OUT! Order now: https://howtobedateable.com/Follow us @dateablepodcast, @juliekrafchick and @nonplatonic. Check out our website for more content. Also listen to our other podcast Exit Interview available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.WE WROTE A BOOK! HOW TO BE DATEABLE (Simon & Schuster, Jan 2025) is available now: https://howtobedateable.com/Our Sponsors:* Blueland: Get 15% off your first order at https://blueland.com/dateable* Quince: Go to https://quince.com/dateable for free shipping and 365 day returns. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/dateable-your-insiders-look-into-modern-dating-and-relationships/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Joe House and J. Kyle Mann live after the first round of the 2025 NBA draft to break down the lottery picks and draft-night moves (3:05). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Joe House and J. Kyle Mann Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Get started today at HubSpot.com/AI The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos are here after night one of the draft to talk about some of the deals that happened. They start with the Blazers' surprising selection of Yang Hansen. Then, they discuss the Pelicans' trade to move up and draft Derik Queen, the Celtics' recent trades, the Hawks' moves and how good they can be now, and much more. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz Social: Keith Fujimoto and Jomi Adeniran This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Chris Mannix to discuss the Celtics trading away Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis early in the offseason (0:00). Then, they talk about the Atlanta Hawks' future, Achilles injuries, and the Kevin Durant trade (0:00). Finally, they discuss Sam Presti, Jake Paul vs. Julio César Chávez Jr., and more (0:00). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Chris Mannix Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. www.ubereats.com The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russillo starts the show by looking at the impact that the Anfernee Simons–Jrue Holiday trade will have on both teams (1:54). Then, Kevin Boyle comes on to share what it was like coaching Cooper Flagg, analyze Derik Queen's game, and explain why he's stayed at the high school level (18:52). Plus, Life Advice with Kyle (45:14)! Can I mow my lawn shirtless? Check us out on YouTube for exclusive clips, livestreams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Ryen Russillo Guest: Kevin Boyle Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, Mike Wargon, and Jonathan Frias This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Logan, Raja, and Howard are back, and they open the pod with a discussion about Oklahoma City and the Thunder's championship celebration. Would Raja have celebrated the same way OKC did? Plus, Jrue Holiday was traded to the Blazers for Anfernee Simons. What will the Celtics do with Simons, who's on an expiring contract? Kevin Durant was finally traded to the Houston Rockets for Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks. Is this the last stop for KD? What's next for the Suns and their logjammed roster? Plus, a loaded mailbag! (0:00): Welcome w/ Logan Murdock (0:57): Show Start (2:49): State Farm Ad Break (3:30): OKC Wins NBA Championship (19:11): Jrue Holiday Trade (27:10): Kevin Durant Trade (51:44): Mailbag Hosts: Logan Murdock, Raja Bell, and Howard Beck Producer: Clifford Augustin and Victoria Valencia Hit the mailbag! realonesmailbag@gmail.com The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming.  Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo and Zach Lowe to react to the Thunder winning the 2025 NBA championship, and Tyrese Haliburton's injury (2:35). Then, they talk about the Eastern Conference next season and possible trades around the league before discussing SGA's incredible season (28:33). Finally, Bill and Ryen break down the Kevin Durant trade, discuss the NBA draft, and much more (01:04:41). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Zach Lowe and Ryen Russillo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Play for an ULTRA today, available on Doordash! ENJOY RESPONSIBLY© 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA® LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos celebrate the Oklahoma City Thunder becoming the 2025 NBA champions. They discuss the Thunder's defense, Tyrese Haliburton's heartbreaking injury, and much more. Then, they briefly look ahead to what next season looks like for both teams. They wrap up with the massive news from earlier in the day of Kevin Durant being traded to the Houston Rockets. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz Social: Keith Fujimoto and Jomi Adeniran This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe and Rob Mahoney to react to the Pacers pushing OKC to a Game 7 in the NBA Finals (2:01). Then, they preview Game 7 and discuss what the Thunder needs to do to win the championship before looking back at previous Game 7 Finals (23:31). Finally, they catch up on the Buss family selling the majority of their stake in the Lakers, the Kevin Durant trade rumors, and much more (56:22). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Zach Lowe and Rob Mahoney Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Get started today at HubSpot.com/AI The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Russillo is joined by Bob Ryan to discuss Rick Carlisle's brilliance, the best NBA teams of all time, and the sale of the Lakers (1:53). Next, Keegan Bradley joins from the Travelers Championship to share his thoughts on his early career, winning a major championship, and the difficulties of the U.S. Open (33:54). Plus, Life Advice With Kyle (51:52)! Do I go to an NBA Finals game with my ex-girlfriend? Check us out on YouTube for exclusive clips, livestreams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Bob Ryan and Keegan Bradley Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, Mike Wargon, and Jonathan Frias This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Chris Vernon and Joe House to discuss the Grizzlies sending Desmond Bane to Orlando before talking about the U.S. Open and the NBA draft (2:24). Then, Bill chats with Kevin Hench about the Rafael Devers trade (01:09:10). Finally, NBA draft prospect Kon Knueppel joins the pod to talk about playing for Duke, Cooper Flagg, giving up his Bucks fandom, and much more (01:34:24). Host: Bill Simmons Guests: Chris Vernon, Joe House, Kevin Hench, and Kon Knueppel Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Doc Rivers to react to OKC taking a commanding 3-2 lead against the Pacers in the NBA Finals (2:18). Then, they discuss Tyrese Haliburton's injury and the Knicks firing Tom Thibodeau (22:08). Finally, they talk about SGA's development, Giannis trade rumors, and much more (42:50). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Doc Rivers Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos are reunited just in time to watch the Oklahoma City Thunder move one win away from an NBA championship. They discuss Jalen Williams's monster 40-point game that paired beautifully with SGA's 31-point performance, before getting into Tyrese Haliburton's injury-riddled night that left him without a field goal in Game 5.They close things out with their analysis of the Desmond Bane trade to Orlando, and what the move means in the short and long term for both the Magic and Grizzlies. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney and Wosny LambreProducers: Chris Sutton and Ben CruzSocial: Keith Fujimoto This episode is presented by State Farm. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to the Grizzlies trading away Desmond Bane to the Magic, potential Jaren Jackson Jr. and Ja Morant trades, and if this catapults Orlando as contenders in the East (03:04). Then, they delve into the best landing spots for Kevin Durant to be traded to (35:08). Finally, they recap Game 4 of the NBA Finals and if OKC has taken a hold of this series (78:50). Host: Bill SimmonsGuest: Ryen RussilloProducers: Jonathan Frias and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Play for an ULTRA today, available on Doordash!ENJOY RESPONSIBLY  2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Zach Lowe to react to the Pacers taking a 2-1 lead against OKC in the NBA Finals (1:55). Then, they talk about Indianapolis as a sports city, Bennedict Mathurin's impact, and SGA not playing good enough in Game 3 (24:28). Finally, they discuss what it would mean if OKC lost to the Pacers in the Finals, preview Game 4, and predict Kevin Durant trade destinations (51:05). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Zach Lowe Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Get anything delivered on Uber Eats. www.ubereats.com The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos return to react to the Pacers taking a 2-1 lead in the NBA Finals. They discuss another great Tyrese Haliburton performance, Bennedict Mathurin and TJ McConnell's vital contributions off the bench, and more. Then, they take a look at some hypothetical offseason headlines about the Knicks' coaching search, Kevin Durant trade destinations, and Giannis potentially staying put in Milwaukee. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Chuck Klosterman to talk about the NBA's popularity and foul baiting (2:58), before they discuss the biggest sport franchise moves and the possibility of a new international basketball league (30:41). Then, they talk about Cooper Flagg, and ‘The Rehearsal' (57:25). Finally, they dive into prison escapes and AI fears (1:24:15). Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Chuck Klosterman Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ www.rghelp.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Ryen Russillo to react to OKC taking Game 2 at home against the Pacers in the NBA Finals (2:25). Then, they discuss the bad ratings for these Finals and why the NHL Stanley Cup final may be more interesting this year (18:07). Finally, they play a game of “I wouldn't be surprised if …” for the NBA offseason, discuss trade targets around the league, and more (46:33)! Host: Bill Simmons Guest: Ryen Russillo Producers: Chia Hao Tat and Eduardo Ocampo #ULTRACourtside could get you closer to the game! michelobultra.com/courtside/champsbottles ENJOY RESPONSIBLY ©️ 2025 ANHEUSER-BUSCH, MICHELOB ULTRA®️ LIGHT BEER, ST. LOUIS, MO. This episode is presented by State Farm®. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm® with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos record together in L.A. immediately after Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers pull off another late comeback, and this time, they take a 1-0 lead in the Finals. They discuss how the Pacers continue to do this, what adjustments the Thunder can make, and much more. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakey, Victoria Valencia, John Richter and Ben Cruz Social: Keith Fujimoto The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit⁠ ⁠⁠www.rg-help.com⁠ to learn more about the resources and helplines available. This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Justin, Rob, and Wos are here, and the Verrierables are back, to preview the NBA Finals. They start with the news of the Knicks firing Tom Thibodeau (3:12). Then they dive into the Verrierables (17:40), getting into how each team matches up with the other, some legacy talk (1:01:42), predictions (1:15:05), and much more. Hosts: Justin Verrier, Rob Mahoney, and Wosny Lambre Producers: Isaiah Blakely and Ben Cruz Music Theme: John Robison Social: Keith Fujimoto This episode is presented by State Farm®️. Dishing the assists you need off the court. State Farm®️ with the Assist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices