Podcast appearances and mentions of nancy leson

It's been said, usually by people from there, that bagels are better on the East Coast than they are in the Northwest. But KNKX food commentator Nancy Leson – who grew up in Philadelphia – isn't sure that's still true.

In the latest installment of FOOD, KNKX's Ed Ronco shares an old family recipe with food commentator Nancy Leson. Meet "Irish Spaghetti."

In this month's episode, KNKX's Ed Ronco and food commentator Nancy Leson head to Yakima County to visit a farm that grows more than 200 varieties of peppers, sold at farmers markets across western Washington.

The chef, columnist, cookbook author and social media sensation just moved to Seattle. Why? Nancy Leson asks that and other questions in this conversation about food, representation and more.

This episode we virtually host prolific cookbook author Deborah Madison to discuss her new memoir, An Onion in My Pocket. She talks with Nancy Leson about her incredible life as a chef and "recovering Buddhist", her stance on vegetarianism and how her parents helped shape her food worldview. Enjoy this talk and purchase your copy of An Onion in My Pocket (https://www.booklarder.com/books/info/an-onion-in-my-pocket-my-life-with-vegetables) here. Book Larder YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCmJqnd5jmsAa2O26TTRBng) An Onion in My Pocket https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/1/199050da-a97f-4b71-bd06-c02fc80ac185/5JhvxsZ3.jpeg Special Guests: Deborah Madison and Nancy Leson.

This story originally aired Jan. 30, 2019. I recently made Daniel Gritzer's Swanson's Hungry Man style Salisbury steak recipe from his Serious Eats blog for the second time, and it came out every bit as satisfyingly savory as the first. When I told Nancy Leson, she told husband Mac, who exclaimed "My all-time favorite TV dinner!" So, Goodwife Leson made it, too, and we compared notes.

This story originally aired Nov. 29, 2017. I like lentils and I love the spicy red lentil soup recipe Nancy Leson recently sent me. Adapted from Lynne Rossetto Kasper's The Splendid Table's How to Eat Weekends , this recipe is fast and easy to make, and perfect for rainy weeknight dinners, too. For a more time-consuming, weekend lentil dish, do try the lamb shanks and lentils recipe from another Kaspar – Kaspar Donier. You'll find both recipes below. As of publication we still have not received recipes from Kaspar Hauser or Casper the Friendly Ghost but remain hopeful.

Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur recently published a story about a growing number of bread bakers contributing homemade loaves to area food banks. It was news to me, but Nancy Leson was already a participant.

“Stein,” Nancy Leson said. “You need a toaster oven.” I continue to maintain that I don't need no stinkin' toaster oven, but I must admit she makes a pretty good case.

“I don't know if it's because we've all been feeling extra emotional lately or what,” Nancy Leson told me. “But I've been thinking about the emotional attachments I have to certain kitchen tools.” She went on to describe the giant cleaver taking up real estate on their knife rack even though they never use it. Get rid of it? Never. It was Mac's grandmother's and they love to see it there. My wife, the lovely and talented Cheryl DeGroot has always loved the kitchen treasure she hauled from the Alder Lake mud, while I have a curious attachment to my rubber auto body mallet. Also covered in this week's Food for Thought: The fabulous Montana corkscrew and Nancy's feel-good tale of how an heirloom found its way back to her.

Nancy Leson and I didn't bother with any introductory chitchat to begin this week's show. I hit the music and we were off to the food races. While our favorite foods may not be yours (yet), I hope this list will prove a resource for those times when you just can't decide between cold Velveeta on toasted English muffin or fried noodles dipped in fermented tofu. We kick this week's off with our seventh-grade lunch favs and continue (downhill, in my case) from there. Please feel free to channel your inner Julie Andrews and sing along.

This just in! Nancy Leson's report on responses to a recent Twitter thread asking “Are you really !#&! tired of cooking?” I was shocked — simply shocked — to learn that after all these months of home isolation many people really are !#&! tired of cooking. Not me, though.

It's always sounded like fun to have an ice cream machine. But years back I also thought it would be fun to have a fondue pot. See where that's going? After all, how often would I really make my own ice cream? So I asked Nancy Leson if she had a machine and how often she used it.

Nancy Leson thinks there's more sharing going on these days, especially of food, and I agree. Just down the block from us in East Tacoma a neighbor is cultivating two raised beds of produce, free for the taking. Nancy's friends have been dropping off everything from home made masks to strawberries to fresh seafoood. I need to get to know these people.

This story originally aired July 24, 2019. Nancy Leson 's apricot tree, a Puget Gold she's had for 21 years, only puts out fruit about every five years. This was one of those years, and a bumper crop it was. With all those apricots the only thing to do was make apricot jam. There was just one problem. "Over the years," she says, “the one thing I have failed at is jam-making.” Not anymore.

Nancy Leson 's been reading Washington Post columnist Megan McArdle's column about why the Betty Crocker cookbooks of the '50s and the shopping practices they encouraged are newly relevant today in the time of the Coronavirus. Among McArdle's favorite Betty recipes was "Bohemian Braided Bread," recipe pictured in the slide show above. All very well as retro recipes go but I found one that out-retros it by almost 2,000 years.

Food for Thought listener David sent me a recipe for something he calls "Splayed Potatoes," which not only looked good to eat but fun to make. Though I have no doubt that he arrived at his method independently, he was beaten to the spud by Hasselback potatoes , basically the same thing, invented at Sweden's Hasselbacken restaurant. I sent David's recipe off to Nancy Leson for kitchen testing, results pictured above. From there we were off to the potato races.

This week Nancy Leson and I look at some long accepted cooking rules that just don't hold up. My first entry was the prohibition against putting a certain kind of utensil into the dishwasher.

These days when we're all staying home so much, Nancy Leson loves cookbooks that take her away. “I like the ones that make me feel like I'm traveling, even though the farthest I go these days is Bartell's. For me the recipes are secondary almost to everything else, the history, the culture.” Me, I just want the recipes. But here are some of Nancy's favorite armchair traveling cookbooks.

Nancy Leson thought I might be using all this stay-at-home time to reorder my kitchen. “Are you alphabetizing your spices?”she snarked. I explained that everything in my kitchen is always in place, including the dust bunnies I noticed crouching like gargoyles at the top of my hanging pot rack. This week we talk about deep cleaning, reorganizing, finally doing those long put-off chores, and how I will use the Earth's revolution to improve the appearance of my cabinet doors.

Sure, y ou fridged up those leftovers with the best of intentions but days later they still languish. Then it's weeks and now they're so deteriorated that you can finally toss them with a clear(ish) conscience. The progression parallels certain aspects of personal relationships but this is not the forum for that. This week, Nancy Leson and I discuss, with only a little self-congratulation, how much better we've become at using up leftovers now that our supermarket visits are so infrequent.

With all the newly motivated home cooking going on these days, it's safe to say there’s more home cooking fails than ever before. If some of your kitchen trials have turned out to be errors, take heart. Even experienced cooks have plenty of stories on recipes gone wrrrrrrrong. This week Nancy Leson and I play a perversely prideful game of "Can You Top This?" with our own tales of stovetop nosedives.

Chapter 1: Meet the writer who’s not fond of writing  Nancy Leson loves books, she loves libraries, she loves to talk and she loves food.  That makes the Edmonds resident an ideal guest for Sno-Isle Libraries Check It Out! podcast.  Libraries figured large in Leson’s childhood in Philadelphia. Her family had little disposable income, so off to the library they went to borrow books and glean information from encyclopedias. These days, Leson says, the Friends of the Edmonds Library book sale is her favorite book event every year.  Books and learning followed Leson into adulthood.   She’d always wanted to own a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, so she filled out a postcard to get more information.  It was a particularly cold winter night in Anchorage, Alaska, when Leson heard a fateful knock on her apartment door.    She opened the door and exclaimed, “Are you the encyclopedia salesman?”  The man was flustered. “The guy looks and me and asks, ‘How did you know that?’”  In his many years of sales calls, no one had ever asked if he was the encyclopedia salesman, he explained.  “Damned if that night did I not buy, a poor nursing student in my 20s in Anchorage, Alaska, a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica, a gorgeous leather set, that this man came into my house and did nothing more than sell me a set of encyclopedias. I was a very brave young woman.”  Leson still has those encyclopedias, and she mourned the day when Encyclopedia Brittanica announced it would stop printing them.  “Now ask me when the last time I opened them was,” she said.  Funny thing about Leson. Much as she loves words, she hates writing.   She wanted to be a children’s librarian, then a writer, then tried nursing school, but ended up waiting tables. She finally got into writing courtesy of the University of Washington’s journalism program. But to earn her degree, she had to create “clips” by writing stories for local newspapers, and had to write about state government in Olympia. She resisted.  “I had no interest in that at all,” she said. “I knew I wanted to be a features writer.”  Leson finished her journalism degree, but was broke. She went back to waiting tables at an Italian restaurant (now called Nell’s) on Green Lake.   “I knew every single one of the editors and publishers in town because they all used to eat in there, even Frank Blethen, my eventual boss,” Leson said. “I said, ‘One day, I’m gonna work for you.’ And I wasn’t lying.”  Leson was still waiting tables a year later when she saw an ad in the back of the Seattle Weekly. They sought an unpaid intern in the food department. She applied.  “I lied a little,” she said. “I said, ‘My mother always wanted me to be a doctor. Maybe now at least I can tell her I’m an intern. Hire me, I’m your girl!’ And they did. That was the first and last (writing) job I looked for.”  She wrote a “gossip column-ish" called “As the Tables Turn” about her views of the Seattle restaurant scene, much of it based on her own waitressing experience. She earned $5 an hour.  Sno-Isle Libraries podcast co-host Paul Pitkin wanted to know how Leson managed to write so much when she hates writing.  “Writing is painful. I mean, I loved reporting. I loved going out. I loved interviewing people and finding out things. But I was the person who would sit down and write and could not do what they call – and you’ll excuse me – the ‘vomit draft,’ where you just throw it on out there and then you fix it later,” she said.   “Until I got the lead on any story, I was writing, I couldn’t go on. And I fussed with it and fussed with it until I got it right. So it took me a long time to write. And as a result of that, I like to think that much of my work did not need much editing. And I was told that all along. It was good for my editors, but not so good for me.”  Leson went on to edit the “Best Places” series for Sasquatch Books and was restaurant critic for the Seattle Weekly. That led to an offer from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as a freelance restaurant reviewer for a few months before the Seattle Times gave her a call: “Hey, could you come talk to us?”   It was her dream job, but daily deadlines got in the way of a good time.  “It’s real fun to write something if you have all the time in the world,” Leson said. “I always liken journalism and deadline writing to when you’re in high school or college and you have a paper due and you’re writing the paper, or you have a final and you're studying and studying. And then you write the paper and you get done, or you finish the final, and you're like, ‘Oh, oh, yay, thank god that’s over.’ And then you wake up the next day and – augh! – I’ve gotta do it again.”  Leson made a connection at KPLU-FM, the National Public Radio affiliate that’s now known as KNKX. The station wanted her to write and produce a weekly, 3-minute essay about fun, cool things.   She was at the “worst time” of her mother-work life, so she offered a compromise.  “I could do it once a month for six months,” Leson said. “And they agreed.”  Then the station paired Leson up with one of their on-air hosts, Dick Stein.   “It was initially a show about him interviewing me,” Leson said. “But it became the show it is today, which is the two of us having an absolutely fabulous time talking about the thing we love to do most, which is cooking.”  They call it Food for Thought. Leson and Stein have been chewing the fat since 2006 about food, cooking utensils, cookbooks, secret ingredients, restaurants, likes and dislikes, you name it.  Now Food for Thought generally sticks to cooking and food themes. To get a sense of how Leson and Stein work together, listen to them recollect their earliest food memories from childhood.  You’ll learn why Leson felt compelled to eat a stick of butter. Her revelation inspired Check It Out! podcast co-hosts Paul Pitkin, Justine Easley, Kurt Batdorf and Julie Thompson to share some of their childhood food memories. Some are more horrifying than others, but you’ll have to listen to find out.  Chapter 2: Get acquainted with Sarri Gilman’s Self-Help Shelf  We live in trying times and licensed mental health therapist Sarri Gilman wants to help.  That’s even more important now that coronavirus precautions make face-to-face interactions with family and friends difficult at best.  In this episode of the Check It Out! podcast, Gilman debuts her Self-Help Shelf segment. She is also posting self-help book recommendations on the Sno-Isle Libraries blog, BiblioFiles.  “I want to call out the books that are literally as good as therapy,” Gilman said. “Books that really help. Books that really make a difference. And some of these (titles) you aren’t even going to find in the library in the self-help section, because some of these are for children and they’re going to be in the children’s section.”  All of the titles Gilman recommends are available in digital formats at sno-isle.org.   Gilman recommends titles that she believes will help children navigate through emotions, help adults navigate through feelings and difficult challenges, help couples, and help families and caregivers.  “I think there’s a wide range of books to pick from, but I’d like to call out the best, the things that help the most.”  Adult self-help books are all about learning, Gilman said. For children, she looks for writing that encourages emotional literacy.  “There are books out there that can help us through every stage of life, through every age, through every feeling, every experience. They’re all out there,” Gilman said. “I’ll call out books that make a difference. Which of these books can help you now.”  Gilman's recommended title for adults this week is “Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind“ by Kristin Neff. It will help you soothe yourself when you’re hurting, and bolster your morale when you’re feeling down.  For children ages 9-11, Gilman recommends “The Nest” by Kenneth Oppel. The 12-year-old main character, Steve, worries about his young brother’s health problems. Through Steve, Oppel shows it’s possible to be both brave, afraid and faithful. It’s a great book for parents to read with their children, Gilman said. 

This story originally published May 1, 2019. I told Nancy Leson that I'm not interested in eating anything that "tastes like chicken" unless it is chicken. That bird has got to be the most versatile eating there is. In this week's episode Nancy and I do a brief rundown, in no particular order, of some of our favorite chicken recipes. Ready? Saddle up, here we go.

When toddler vegetables misbehave, their mothers threaten them with Nancy Leson . She admits "I do a very good job of killing things." So no one was more surprised than her when something she'd planted actually made it through the winter. That weird, telescoping thing pictured above that Jack's about to climb is what grew out of the root end of our last leek. DeGroot re-planted it about a month ago and we're watchfully waiting to see what he brings back from the top. A self-playing golden harp would be nice, but we'll settle for some leek soup

Now that we can't just run out to the store every time we need something for the recipe, it's good to know about some common substitutions. In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I share a few.

Given today's rampant hoarding of hot dog buns, I thought it only prudent to try making my own. King Arthur Flour's Chicago-style bun recipe, pictured above and linked below, yielded Best of Show results. While our flour supplies hold out, Nancy Leson and I are using our shelter in place time to bake. We've aired lots of baking shows over the years. Here are some of our favorite recipes from those shows.

Though sit-down service is banned for now, many area eateries are doing what they can to keep staff employed. In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy Leson tells what they're doing to cope with the times.

Nancy Leson and I are beating the 6-foot social distancing rule by many miles for the CoviDuration by recording via broadcast-quality phone line. I'm alone in our Tacoma studios and she's in her bedroom closet in Edmonds. “The quietest space in the house," she says. "So we won't be interrupted by sirens, doorbells and dog barks." In this week's Food for Thought, Nancy names the stuff she's trying to keep on hand to stave off culinary boredom and shares a good suggestion from one of our favorite cookbook authors on how to support local farmers and freeze produce at home.

This story originally aired March 7, 2018. In this week’s Food for Thought, Nancy Leson and I dredged up our earliest memories of food. Nancy recalls wolfing an entire stick of butter. I tell how years later I learned what my grandmother’s “special” soup was really made of. All that plus shopping for live chickens, Nancy’s lima bean phobia, wax flakes in the milk and collapsing straws in this week’s Early Food Memories show.

Nancy Leson’s raving about Fuschia Dunlop’s update to her classic cookbook “Land of Plenty.” “I’ve been cooking a lot out of 'Food of Sichuan.'"

Some people get the cold shoulder. Nancy Leson got the whole shoulder. A complete right shoulder replacement. Now she has to convalesce. Bad enough she’s not allowed her customary daily half-hour on the speed bag. The real bummer is that, for the next month, she’s forbidden to cook! I checked in with Ms. Leson to see how she’s holding up during her month in the No Cook Zone.

Nancy Leson asked me how the horseradish got its name. It's not because of its resemblance to a certain part of a horse. And it's not because horses like to eat it – the stuff's actually poisonous to them. The "horse" in horseradish is just an antique adjective describing anything large or strong. For my taste, the stronger the better.

Nancy Leson and I both love sausages of all kinds. We keep them on hand for quickie weeknight meals and for some recipes better suited to a weekend cooking project. We agree that it's better to buy sausage in links than loose. If you need the sausage loose, you can always have the fun of squeezing it out of the casing like meat toothpaste.

This episode we welcome Molly Stevens into our kitchen to chat with Nancy Leson about her new cookbook, All About Dinner. Molly answers some Thanksgiving Rapid Fire Questions, then shares insights into her career's beginning and her everyday life . Enjoy this talk and purchase your copy of All About Dinner (https://www.booklarder.com/books/info/all-about-dinner-expert-advice-for-everyday-meals) here. All About Dinner https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/1/199050da-a97f-4b71-bd06-c02fc80ac185/pPYFeuss.jpg Special Guests: Molly Stevens and Nancy Leson.

It's Sticknic time again. The Archie McPhee cooking contest that happens once a year. This year we had a Bibo theme! We're joined by Mark Pahlow and Nancy Leson.

On our first episode, we welcome Ruth Reichl (http://ruthreichl.com/) to celebrate her new memoir, Save Me the Plums. In conversation with Nancy Leson (http://www.nancyleson.com/), she discusses her time at Gourmet magazine, Twitter presence (https://twitter.com/ruthreichl?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor), previous work and much more. Enjoy this talk and click here (https://www.booklarder.com/books/info/save-me-the-plums-my-gourmet-memoir) to purchase a copy of Save Me the Plums. save me the plums cover https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/1/199050da-a97f-4b71-bd06-c02fc80ac185/T6Mv661G.jpg Ruch Reichl Gourmet book https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/1/199050da-a97f-4b71-bd06-c02fc80ac185/Ohxh253i.jpg Special Guests: Nancy Leson and Ruth Reichl.

A fabulous knitting retreat contrasts with a horrible injury, but the fun outweighs the pain in this episode. Full notes with photos and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com.  Join the community on Ravelry  or email us with your thoughts at twoewes@twoewesfiberadventures.com  or contact us on our website. Project Updates Kelly is plugging away at  Koru by Aroha Knits using the Dragonfly Fibers Dance Rustic Silk. It is in timeout due to a dropped stitch and will need to have about 4 to 5 rows ripped out and reknit. Meanwhile Kelly started some shortie socks with her Bee Yarn (Sunflower colorway from Duren Dyeworks). She will finish them before the episode goes live.  She also is knitting a The Double Trouble Reversible Beanie by Petite Knitter. Kelly is experimenting with color changes in her version. Marsha has made progress on the T-shirt called Lace Market by Marie Greene and she is using Schoppel El Linio (linen) in Indigo. She finished the body of the pullover Cobblestone by Jared Flood, finished the first sleeve and started the second sleeve. She is using the New Lanark Mill DK she bought in Scotland last year. Other ways to play with string...A Not Along (or is it Knot Along?) The Two Ewes will be starting a challenge for fiber projects that are NOT knitting, crochet, spinning, or weaving. The NOT (or KNOT) Along will start on May 31 and goes through August 31, so think about what you want to be working on this summer that is NOT knitting, crochet, or weaving. Retreat Fun We had a great time at the NoCKRs retreat. Lots of relaxing (at least when Marsha wasn’t fetching ice, etc. for Kelly!) lots of good food, lots of friends, and some learning.  Monica (Kirbymo) taught us how to make Beeswax Wraps that are an alternative to plastic wrap. There are lots of YouTube tutorials, but this was a good one and included links to purchasing supplies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_bsxrqAF-s There were some great designers in attendance at the . Do check out their patterns on Ravelry. Celia McAdam Cahill Brenda Castiel Heddi Craft gave a demonstration on sock machine knitting. Her book is CSM: The Cookbook Elizabeth Doherty gave a talk on short rows. Recommendations Kelly: Don’t carry a bunch of crap when you walk up the stairs in the dark! Marsha: Spicy Red Lentil Soup from The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Weekends adapted by Nancy Leson food writer at the Seattle Times.

It’s a dramatic week in Tipsy Treats Town: Andrea’s running out for whiskey at 8 a.m., Stefin’s blender is exploding in a shower of sparks, and Andrea’s dog gets a tipsy treat of his own after a kitchen mishap. It takes a special recipe to overcome all that craziness: Is A Cozy Kitchen’s Homemade Irish Cream worth it? And will next week’s Chilled Chocolate Whiskey Soufflé with Salted Butterscotch Sauce be less theatrical? Finally, the duo chat about the many ways to repurpose the fruit from your homemade liqueurs this month (hidden in a crumble, on a cheeseboard, warmed over ice cream, or simply popped into your mouth!) as well as several you may want to make for last-minute gifts: merry maraschino cherries inspired by Stefin's brother, and a classic rumpot from Nancy Leson. You can read the complete show notes here.Bake along with Stefin and Andrea in their baking Facebook group, Preheated. You can find links to recipes on their baking website www.preheatedpodcast.com, or follow the hosts on Twitter and Instagram, using handle preheatedpod. Join the fun!

In this episode, we're joined by fKNKX food commentator and former columnist and restaurant critic for the Seattle Times, Nancy Leson to discuss the Archie McPhee employee Sticknic contest. As usual, the conversation swerves between the topic at hand and others as diverse as monkey models, George Foreman, shredded money, and mexi-fries. Find out more about Nancy Leson here!