It's healthy to eat your feelings. Here's why.

- We talk about eating your feelings all the time. You know what I mean? And we actually say, don't eat your feelings, right? So I was like, what if we did eat our feelings? Like, could we do that? And could we be okay with eating our feelings? Because they're delicious, you know? (laughing) Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Loose and you're listening to it's been a minute from NPR. A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. When life gives you lemons, what should you do? For Carla Lolli, the answer is make sour patch lemonade. After the end of her decades-long marriage, Lolli, a chef known for her cooking videos and cookbooks, knew she had to do one thing, right about it. In today's episode of It's Been a Minute, she's discussing her new cookbook, which is part memoir and part recipe experimentation. It's a little different from what she's done in the past, but the results are just as delicious. Carla, welcome to It's Been a Minute. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure, a long time reader. I guess with a reader, watch her. Great consumer, recipient. Yes, yes, yes. I'm so excited to talk about your new book, Who Does A Feeling. I actually have your first cookbook where cooking begins, which is like really great for mastering like foundational elements of home cooking. And I've relied on some of your bonnet of a tea recipes for years. Amazing. Your recipe writing then had much more like a teaching spirit to it. Yes. And you say as much in Food Is A Feeling. But you also say that you wanted to get away from that posture with this book. For sure. Putting power back in the hands of your readers. You wrote in the introduction, I believe in your unique skill more than ever. What prompted this shift in how you see your role and voice as a food writer, a recipe developer, and cookbook author? Yeah, it's a few things that kind of came together and coalesced with this project. I think one of them is that it had been five years since my last book came out. That sounds so good. And in the intervening five years, I've made a couple hundred more videos, cooking videos on my YouTube channel for Carlos Cooking Show. I had published hundreds of recipes to go along with those. I had kept my newsletter going. And when I wrote Food Is A Feeling, the impetus for it was really coming out of a very personal shift in my life and in my transformation as a human, which is that my very long marriage had broken up. And my relationship to food and cooking in that experience of going through the separation and everything came up, my relationship to food and cooking really shifted to where the beauty and the reward of that relationship with food was much more about being in the moment of the creativity of it and listening to my own bodies, cravings, and needs, and in feeling that the most important part of the food and the cooking was not, did I get the perfect sear on the scallop? But is this sustaining me? Is this fulfilling me? Is this feeding me? There's kind of like a, choose your adventure vibe with the book that I really like. Like a lot of the recipes serve one or two people, which I feel like it's very standard in a lot of cookbooks for recipes to serve, or even just like any publication. Recipes to serve four to six people with the assumption that you're feeding a family, that you're feeding a spouse, you're feeding children. There are a couple of recipes where you admit that are kind of odd, or in one particular case, like just not even very good. You're talking about the tuna. The tuna, the open-faced tuna mouth that you were like, structurally you saw, and then structurally in real life is in come together, but you put it in the cookbook anyway. It's not really about the recipe, it kind of feels like. So you bring up a lot of very important things about recipe writing, which is that I had been trained in all my years in magazines, and then in my work following to follow recipe style, right, or house style. So you have rules of how you call for certain ingredients, whether you say a chopped carrot is different than a carrot comma chopped. And following those rules is very important when you're in that editorial world. And we look at recipes as really technical documents, their instructions, you know. And that is so different from the way that I talk about cooking when I'm demonstrating cooking. And what I wanted was for my readers to feel connected to the act of cooking, whether it's like getting something done quickly for weeknight dinner or settling into a Sunday where you just want to like cook all day. To pay attention to really what's-- don't pay attention to me. Pay attention to what's happening in your kitchen, what's happening in that pan. What does it smell like? How is it different than the last time you made it? How is it the same? Does it smell good? And to react to that in like a more instinctual way, I mean, you're up front, as you mentioned, in the early parts of the book that you wrote it in the wake of your separation and eventual divorce from your ex-husband of over two decades. Like one of the central threads of the book is that even in moments where you think your life is falling apart, you still got to feed yourself. It's one of those things I feel like that feels really obvious when you just say it offhand, like that. But like, it's a lot harder to live that in practice. When did you realize that this was what the book should be about? I was not planning to write this book. I had this like, you know, planning of other stuff was going on in my life. And it was several months into my life as a single person that I realized what was going on with me and cooking, the things that I both wanted to cook, what I was craving, how I was indulging those cravings. But also, I was thinking about the nourishment of the food and started to really think about what comfort food meant because I was putting this together that in my tough time, there were a lot of memories of being cooked for by other people, I had a lot of memories of taking care of other people with food. I had a lot of memories of really when I learned to become a cook and gain that confidence and started to use that as a way to really think about what comfort food means, which I think is something we all think we know what it means, but often it means over indulging in certain foods that fall into that category. Like people say comfort food and it's like, oh yeah, I know what you mean, like mac and cheese and brownie all the mode and like really letting it go. And to me, it was like, well that's a way of talking about comfort food that almost sets it up as like an overindulgence. Well, you're not something that you can just like give yourself on an average day. When you can't give it to-- It's a narrow idea of comfort, too. Absolutely. And I think link to-- I think it's like half a step away from the idea of a guilty pleasure. I think that somewhere in our minds, comfort food and your guilty pleasure are like kind of becoming the same thing. And there's a lot of negativity around that in like-- And there's like a creed space for denial, too. Like it puts you in a place of where you're like, I can't have the thing that's going to make me feel better. I can't have what I want. Exactly. And I think that's like tied into diet culture. I think that's tied into making you think you shouldn't have it. The image that always comes up for me and because I was a teenager in the '80s, which was a pretty demented time to be in diet culture, you know? I can imagine I can imagine. Yeah. But the image that would come up for me all the time was like that imaginary commercial of the woman sneaking down into the kitchen at 2 in the morning and taking out all the bond bonds from the freezer. This idea that that's your comfort. And I think it's just kind of a made up thing. I think comfort is about taking care of yourself in like a non-ironic non-courtney way. And I knew that I couldn't do it with just recipes, which is why the book is made up of 30 essays. I mean, go with the recipes. A lot of essays, a lot of essays. And they're personal, too. I mean, very. They're very personal. I mean, you're talking about everything from like your childhood girlfriend. up with your family, being a young woman and really high-end fine dining kitchens in New York City to your marriage, like being a parent, like all of this stuff is in there. It actually reminds me, reading it reminded me a lot of, there's a few books that I really, really, really love. 'Cause this is something of a memoir. It reminded me of two other books that I really love. One of them, Home Cooking by Laurie Colwyn. Yeah, great book. Which is like a classic, great, great book. And the other one is Vibration Cooking by Verde-Mate Grover. I have that book too. It's, there's a book. It makes a photo. Camille, I was gonna say, like in one of the collages within your book and I love both books. I have them. But like the recipes in them are like a joy to make and they're a joy to read. But the personal essays make them unforgettable. Like I remember reading Home Cooking and I was reading their recipes. And I was like, you know, for a woman that really says she loves to cook. It's no salt in these recipes. And they were like, this is a cultural thing. I don't know anything about where the recipes start without salt. And I'm new. And then you get to the point in the book where she talks about like, you know, her doctor telling her that she had to sort of change her eating habits. And it like feels like, even though you're reading essay, recipe, essay, recipe, it feels like you have turned a corner in your understanding of the author and also turned a corner in your understanding of every recipe that has come before. I mean, particularly there's like a section of your book where the one where you're talking about like working at different kitchens in Manhattan. Yeah. That like I think anyone who seen the bear, you're gonna get an idea of the sort of stuff you talk about in the book. But it was really interesting. It was like there there would be callbacks to that section sort of later. And you're sort of dealing with the complicated feelings of feeling like you were like grown up, right? In a certain way in these places, but also that you dealt with a lot of stuff that you probably shouldn't have had to deal with and probably should have taken with you. But yeah, but still there's like, I don't know, there's like flourishes and callbacks and all sorts of things were later in the book. I was just like, oh yeah, like it just felt like it was fused into a whole journey. The essay about like being able to eat tomatoes again because your ex did like them for you in that specific moment, like being able to, like you talked about your Italian heritage and like growing up with loving tomatoes, like skin to pulp. And then being married to this person who didn't like them. And then kind of became like this ingredient to avoid. Yeah, felt way more tapped into pleasure, I feel like. Because it is a memoir because it is tied to like this kind of specific moment and time period of my life. The tomato thing was, you know, that first summer of being separated and realizing like I haven't really, you know, put raw tomatoes on the table because I want to make food that my family enjoys. And if there's a food that someone doesn't, like I'm not going to lean in super hard to that. But then it was like, I can do whatever I want. So being able to eat a tomato is like also a metaphor for I get to make decisions now. You know, like I, yeah, I can eat what I want. I can be in the mood for what I want. I can like, you know, having having things that are, I was just answering to myself. So that was like a feeling of freedom that is like a weird thing to get from a pint of cherry tomatoes. But it's, it's there. Don't go anywhere. I think there's an amount of, you know, fantasy life that all food creators are projecting. We've got more coming up after the break. You know, that makes me think about another big sort of thread through the book, which is pleasure. Like yes. And like also the way that you write about it. I mean, there's might be described avocados like how avocados as being like jade or when you're eating some like salted peaches at the beach. Yeah. Like talking about looking some of the salt water and sweat from like your upper lip, which everyone knows what that tastes and feels like little gritty because they're sanded and everyone knows that tastes and feels like, right? I feel I felt like you were so tapped into what is pleasing. What is pleasurable about eating? I wonder how did this period of your life, this sort of post divorce period while writing this book? How did that change your relationship to pleasure and also pleasure as it as it specifically pertains to food and eating? Yeah. I mean, food has always been very pleasurable for me. I grew up in a family. Mom was an amazing cook. We, you know, food were Italian. Food is the anchor of like all of our time together. So it's very associated with like love and family and, you know, showing, expressing love to other people. But in this time, and I think this is I hope what makes a book relatable outside of, you know, whether it's a breakup or something else is like when you're having a hard time, you still need to eat and we have this, that is like this gift where you can still be having a hard time. You can be having a bad day. You could be in the middle of going through a tough decision. But if you can, you know, find a way to feed yourself three times a day where maybe you can quiet those that other stuff that's going on lean into that act of cooking and eating, which is pleasurable. It's necessary. It keeps us alive. It is we are wired to crave food. We are wired to need calories because without them we die. So literally, quite literally. Being like aware of that and also very grateful for this life giving, but also this creative outlet where you can transform an ingredient from this and to that. And maybe while you're doing it, you need to focus on what you're doing because there's fire and knives and, you know, you want to cook it right. And maybe in that time, the other stuff could be quiet, you know, and then you get to eat, which also feels good. And everything could, it might not change the problem that you were having. But in the mix of like what's good and what's bad at least now, there's like a little bit of balance on the scale. Like, yeah, it was a, it was a crap day, but like I did have that amazing bowl of popcorn in the afternoon. And like that, if I had to sit down at the end of the day and just write down the things that were the highlights of the day, which is I hate, I hate saying gratitude journal. I have a very tiny notebook. I could show it to you in and the days of the week are really these thin strips, maybe an inch and a half wide. And at the end of the day, I like to just write down like the highlights, you know, and like just try to remember like the good things that happened in the day. It doesn't mean that other crappy things didn't happen. Yeah. But it does sort of give you this like perspective and balance. And sometimes the best thing in the day is like, I went to Jionne famous foods and I had my favorite cold noodle. And it was awesome. And I was so happy when I was happy. It could definitely be the best thing in the day. I don't exactly mean. And it's like, yeah, we get to eat. But it's like taking it and turning it into an opportunity to like give yourself something like you have to eat anyway. So it's like if there's an opportunity, why not take it to actually give yourself something sustaining that can like also just I don't know make you feel better, make you feel more like a person. Like you said, sort of quiet the rest of the noise. It makes me think about something else I wanted to get your thoughts on. I feel like we cannot talk about the state of food media today without talking about the film Maddie's secret. Yes, I love John Erlie so much so much so much. For those of you who haven't seen it, Maddie Secret is a film. It's not streaming now actually. Yeah, it just came out just came out on streaming. It's written, directed, and starring John Erlie who's a fantastic comedian. And he plays this character named Maddie and she's a food influencer who makes these cooking videos that blow up like they blow up making her like a bit of a celebrity. But unfortunately, she gets body shamed. That shamed specifically in the comments of the videos, which ended up triggering an eating disorder that she had done when she was younger. And the film I loved it, I thought it was great. It skewers so much of food media today from like the seductive way that it's framed, which I think is meant to sort of evoke pleasure, to the expectation that chefs look a certain way, i.e. very small, which also I think there's a relationship to sort of pleasure or the visible evidence of someone having had a good time there. Yeah. To the key to the way that it sometimes treats ingredients. Yeah. I loved it, but I want to hear your thoughts, especially now that I know that you've seen it three times. What do you think about Maddie's secret and sort of like, I don't know. It just feels like it's kind of pulling together all the percent. Yeah, I think John did an amazing job of, first of all, being in drag the entire time and playing in a very like a very nuanced way, a woman who does have a complicated relationship. - Yeah. - To food because of eating disorder when she's young. And then, but loves food, right? And is sort of like working through having a healthy relationship to it. And this is something I thought about when I was writing too, because I do have, you know, I do have a very healthy relationship to food, generally speaking, and feel grateful for that, that my being able to say like, yeah, lean into it, give yourself what you want, is a little bit uncomplicated of a perspective for people who do have EDs, and I have many readers who have shared that with me, and I'm sensitive to it. And so the way that John handles that is incredible, but it's this thing where he becomes, she, Maddie, becomes famous for kind of cooking comfort foods. She's making like the rotel dip, and the, you know, like seeing things the fried, you know, it's like fried cheese curds, but she uses halloumi, and it's all sort of like jujged. - Yes. - And then when it's reflected back to her, there is that feeling of shame. And that really resonated because of the, I had thought about that so much around that same idea of like comfort food, and we should want to eat, and eating is good, and then this idea of guilty pleasure that is so tied into like body control and diaculture. And it is a very tricky thing to navigate, I think especially for women, and can be terrible and sad and bad. And I was really trying to step out of that, and like just interrogate it a little bit, and what we lose when we make food tied to guilt or something that you should abstain from. And we lose, you know, something so key, like I'm saying, this is a, this is a need that is hardwired to crave something. And when you watch children eat, they have not been conditioned about, should I finish this, what is my portion size? Am I getting enough? Is this too fatty? What did I eat earlier? And children eat with like the pure, you know, immersion into the pleasure of it. And like holding, being able to hold onto that as much as possible, I think is really important. And it is a very weird time to be a recipe developer, cookbook author, someone who is working food media for, as long as I have, when what's going on with GLPs is also happening. Yeah, because GLPs like take away the desire, both the desire and the enjoyment of food. And so I know they're, I know they're really important for people and they are medically necessary, but they are also used cosmetically. Like we know this and what do we lose when we take out one of the like fundamental parts of our life that gives us health, energy, helps us grow and literally keeps us alive. Like what is lost when that is no longer enjoyable? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, the makes me think about something else I wanted to ask you about, like, I don't know, I've been following your work for at least a decade and probably longer if I really think about it. And so much about food media has changed then, so much about food media has changed then. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, it used to be like, what is it, hands and pans? Where people are just making stuff? 100% yeah. And like where you could just see like the old Buzzfeed videos and then like a lot of sort of like direct camera, sort of like whatever teeth was big and pioneering that. But also then you see a lot of like, I think about someone like Benjing with Babish who started off doing a sort of very specific, like interesting, but gimmick thing and how that sort of like idea of like a repeatable sort of gimmick has sort of, do you see it all over food media now? Yeah. And now of course TikTok, which like, I mean, I'm always getting recipes from TikTok. But there's just, there's so many things have changed. I think there's definitely a lot going on there. I would say, you know, one of the things that I think has happened in food media, which is I think a very positive thing is kind of the, you know, the implosion of a lot of the traditional food media outlets, like Bon Appetit, obviously, has meant that there was a lot more room, you know, for people to be their own creators, to be their own brands. And overall, I think that is like a really good thing. I'm over here just doing my thing with my people and have no, literally no idea what somebody else is doing. It's always a weird feeling if I get introduced to, you know, a new creator on Instagram, just it by the way, it's fed to me or one of my friends follows them and I'll be like, oh my God, they have like 18 million followers. - And we're never heard of them. - And I've never heard of them. - I think it's nothing, yeah, yeah. - And so that could be either could make you feel good 'cause I'm like, all right, well, number, you know, I could have 18 million followers and then like, it still doesn't matter. There's gonna be people who have never heard of you. - Yeah. - Could be, you know, sort of a reassuring thing of like, you know, I'll just keep doing, I'll just be over here doing my thing. Yeah. And even hearing you say like, I'm a person who's written a lot about loving to cook and loving to feed my family and, you know, making family dinner, that's true. It's also true that sometimes I don't wanna do it at all and we have stand up dinner and my kids like, we'll come in and look at me and be like, are we having dinner? Like, what is the vibe tonight? And sometimes you just like, throw something weird together and sometimes you make chicken cutlets. Like, it's not all, it's not all the time. You know, that we're trial-aligning around and that I do perfect dinner every night. Like, I definitely don't, but that's not what, you know, people want to be portrayed or sold. Don't go anywhere. Like, I know that people turn to food when they need emotional comfort. Everybody knows this and we all do it and kind of being okay with like, good times and bad times, you know? (upbeat music) It's a really interesting point that you make about sort of like the fantasy sort of being inherent. I don't know, to your point, it just seems like, I guess that's also kind of what I want. It's like someone to kind of be like, yeah, like maybe you only have lentils and like half of a jar of olives, but we can do something with that. We can make that happen. And your life will be richer and more beautiful for it. I mean, you know. I don't know if that's true, but it feels good. It feels good to hear. When I make a weird dinner that I'm like, this is weird, but it tastes really good to me. It's not a recipe that I would develop and publish, but it is like my dinner and I enjoyed it. And like that is good enough. Like that's what I'm thinking about. When I'm thinking about my readers sort of feeling like, I could, I do, I did that, you know what I mean? I didn't go to the store, I didn't freak out. I didn't feel like I didn't do enough. I had a perfectly nice dinner that was flavorful. I am not hungry still. And like we are moving forward, you know? And that's also great. - You're also tapping into what that is sort of like the psychology, I guess, of how we think about feeding ourselves. Like the hope that like a, it's a never-ending task. I mean, every single day. - Every day. - Every day, I mean, it's like, I don't have kids. I just have me in my husband and we both cook. And it's still at the end of every day. It's like, we act like we've been hit by a Mac truck. - It's totally. - My god. - A dinner again? - Again. - And it feels like you do want like some sort of lifeline to help you feel like they've got to figure it out. And so I can have it figured out. Which I think, I mean, this kind of like, I think what people want from meal prep. What you described in your book, right? And also I think what a lot of us experience, I think like even one of the first things that made me feel like an adult right, is the opportunity to cook for myself three times a day, right? There's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of, I mean, that's kind of what you're negotiating at the beginning of your book, which is sort of like, I'm giving you back the power. I'm empowering myself to like find myself again after a divorce. I'm empowering myself to make this book what I think it should be. Even though I did read that your publisher offered you $100,000 less. - Then my previous book, yeah. - Right, because they weren't feeling all of the-- that we're feeling food is a feeling. They were the divorce part of the book, the breakup, the fact that I wanted to talk about like harder stuff and I wanted to talk about getting through a hard period in my life was a very big sticking point and it was very hard for them to get behind it enthusiastically because I wasn't selling the like everything's groovy. - But like for a lot of the people who would be buying the book, are people who are also divorced or separated? - Or the children break up? - Or the children of people, you know? But like again, I know there's something powerful about saying that it is a divorce memoir, a cookbook memoir, and that's true. But it's really about being, first of all, there's an arc in the book. So like the beginning parts of the book are a little bit closer to the actual separation. The end of the book is sort of, you do see like brighter days coming through, right? And sort of navigating all of that. But I think that the truth is like it is 100% relatable whether you're going through a divorce or a friend break up or like you're lost your job or you lost a pet or, you know, you hit the fender of the car behind you when you were getting out of your spot. Like we are constantly navigating this, yeah. And because food is like such an integral part of our day to day life, like bringing those together, it didn't seem that weird to me. Like we talk about eating your feelings like all the time. Like could we do that? (laughing) And when I was, when I was sad, I made like some of the best pots of beans I ever made in my life. Because I was there. - Is that the first one pot of beans in green? - Personal pot of beans in green. - I call my name from Beaches. I call it, I mean for me beans in greens is like, it's December 31st, you know what I'm saying? - Right, for your hot pot John. - Right, so it's like okay, I need to get my, I'm getting my, my, you know, collard greens together, I'm getting my black eyes together. Like throughout the winter, I'm like, but then it's like, okay, that's all we're eating. (laughing) We're eating it's like it. - Yes. - I don't know how to make a small amount of that. - I know. - Beans, beans are life, they're, you know, but that was an interesting like experiment for me to be like, okay, I know that I love this food. I know that I like making it. I know it's something I can take care of on the stove for a few hours and like, that's a perfectly good way to spend like a gloomy winter day, but scaling it so to just for me and making that also feel like good and not sad was like, like a worthy, like a worthy use of your time. - Exactly. - There's a question book where you're talking about how you grew up eating post-efficial. - Yes. - And then it felt like not the right thing to make anymore when it was primarily you and your son. - Yeah, and kind of like, okay, there's not four of us in the house anymore, like he's busy, he's doing stuff. And so I love that instead of being like, and so I decided to make Star Fry. And so we're doing a salad instead. You replace that tradition with a bolognese, like a beautiful hours long process. And I liked that, I don't know, at least to me when I was reading that, I was like, oh, like, yes, there is power in feeding yourself in a situation where you, especially where you feel like you've lost some power or especially with like a food system that makes you feel like, oh my god, you feel powerless to even know what to get at the store. - Right. - But like, it's like time. It's like, oh, just because, you know, I may not have the same, my family might not look the same on a day-to-day basis as it did before. But that doesn't mean that we don't deserve something that is big and luxurious and time-consuming. Like, you know, I think that that's like a, it's such an abundant way of thinking about, I don't know, like regarding yourself. - Yeah. - Yeah, and I think that that's something that would resonate with anybody. - Yeah, yeah. Other, those types of things that we have turned into negatives, like eating or feelings is always set, don't eat your feelings, like, oh, like, it's gonna be, and like, what are the feelings that you have had around the table with like your closest friends and family? Like, those feelings are very, it's very emotive. Very important and if it's associated with passing platters around like, that's strong and community and important, that is important time and that is a great way to feel. So, you know, wanting that, wanting that in the mix and not pretending that like, that's the only thing ever going on in any of our lives. You know, and not the way that people use food. I know that we all know, we, everybody knows this right. I'm not, and we all do it and kind of being okay with like, good times and bad times, you know? But thank you for saying that because I have been very validated by the response to the book, which I really had to fight for that people would think of it in a, in a, that people would be attracted to the theme of the book, find it relatable and be able to not think that, oh, it's going to be just like a sad book, you know? Yeah. Because all of us like have happiness and sadness in our life and have ways to cope and like, you gotta eat on all those days. You gotta eat and like, we're all surviving, you know? Yeah, so. I think it's beautiful. It's like, I don't know. I mean, obviously the title of your book is Food Is A Feeling. But I think that the assertion that we eat our, that it's okay, it's even good to eat our feelings. Yes. Is a beautiful idea and I think it's something that a lot of people will relate to right now. Thank you. I hope that's true. Carla, I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you so, so much. It's been great. That was Carla Lali, chef, presenter, and author of Food Is A Feeling. And all of you watching, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Make sure to come back to this feed every Tuesday for a fresh video episode.