Conversations From The Kitchen Table

The storytelling website Eat, Darling, Eat presents conversations with some of Heritage Radio Network's (the world's pioneer food radio station) favorite hosts, this time talking personally about their own mother/daughter relationships and the ways that food helps to explore and define the family dynamics, history, and personalities. Whether Mom dedicated passion and energy to feeding her family, or made Sara Lee and Szechuan take-out her best friends, listen in on stories of families, cultures, and kitchens from South Africa to Japan to the United States. 

Host: Co-Founder Eat, Darling, Eat

Aimee Lee Ball is an author and journalist writing about health, business, politics, food, travel, and the arts. She has contributed cooking columns to The New York Times Sunday Magazine and has appeared on TV's Food Network. Her books include No Time to Die, a New York Times Notable Book, and Changing the Rules, a Best Business Book. She has written for many national publications including New York Magazine, The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Producer: Co-Founder Eat, Darling, Eat

Steve Baum is a New York-based filmmaker and cinematographer. His company produced Salvadorian Salvation, a documentary about protecting El Salvador’s children from gang violence. Dr. Vicky Guzman, founder and director of Asaprosar, an organization that helps the neediest families of that country, worked with her daughter Lucy Guzman and a team of social workers, psychologists, and educators, providing a refuge for children, including a balanced meal every day. Steve is the creator of Not For Kids Only (UnderwaterSuite), the award winning first DVD in a musical video series.

Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz is known as a “kitchen curandera." Curanderas are traditional healers who have practiced throughout the Americas for more than 500 years. Following in the steps of her maternal great-grandmother, Ruiz brings to her practice a knowledge of indigenous foods and “earth medicines” (the title of her recent book). She lives with her husband and near her daughter in Phoenix, Arizona, where she offers workshops and one-on-one healing sessions. With her sister, a midwife in Oakland, California, she created Nourished Mama, a program with recipes for postpartum recovery—always with Mother Earth in mind. Here, she shares her vision about the role of food in health, integration of traditional healing with Western medicine, and giving voice to a rich cultural heritage that was unknown or dismissed by others for a long time.

“Let Daddy move the chopsticks first” and “Do not leave one piece of rice on your plate."

These maxims were part of the Chinese culture and tradition that Tina Yao imparted to her daughter, a first-generation Chinese-American. With a Yale degree (and wearing her mother’s suit), Nancy Yao Maasbach got a job at the Council on Foreign Relations, using her heritage and perspective to work on U.S. policy with China, as that country of her ancestors became an increasingly powerful player on the world stage. After six years at Goldman Sachs, ending as a senior vice-president, she applied her understanding of U.S.-China relations as executive director of the Yale-China Association. Then she found her true calling: as president of the Museum of Chinese in America. (In one of life’s wonderfully wild full circles, the original home of the museum, then known as the Chinatown History Project, was the building where her mother learned to speak English.) Our delightful interview reveals why the mother-daughter relationship is so central to the development of this unique influencer, and how the loving foundation of her own family helps in her mission to interpret and present the many variations of the Chinese-American immigration experience. 

Internationally celebrated cake designer Sylvia Weinstock makes cakes that astonish the palate, dazzle the eye, and reward the spirit. She started baking at home while her husband and three daughters skied down Hunter Mountain. André Soltner, the renowned chef of Lutèce, recommended Sylvia as an apprentice to pastry chef George Kellner, who operated a guesthouse on the mountain. It wasn't long before her client list included Oprah Winfrey, Robert De Niro, Martha Stewart, Ralph Lauren, Michael Douglas, and Jennifer Lopez, as well as Kennedys, Rockefellers, and Clintons. Her cakes, with their signature handmade, sugar paste flowers, have been crafted for weddings and parties as far away as London, Paris, Milan, and Dubai.
In 1993, Sylvia’s daughter Janet Isa left her job to run the business part of her mother’s enterprise. Their unique personal and professional relationship reflects their pleasure in their work—and for each other.

If you'd like to explore more mother/daughter stories, or if you'd like to tell your own, visit our website: www.EatDarlingEat.net or email: info@EatDarlingEat.net.

Zarela Martinez is an acclaimed restaurateur and cookbook author in New York City. Her books include Food from My Heart, The  Food and Life of Oaxaca, and Zarela’s Veracruz, the companion to her PBS series "Zarela!! La Cocina Veracruzana." Her personal papers are resident in The Schlesinger Library, one of the leading centers for scholarship on the history of women in the United States. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Mexican Cultural Institute of New York and is in the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. She can be found at www.zarela.com and as co-host of the podcast Cooking in Mexican from A to Z on the Heritage Radio Network with her son, chef Aarón Sánchez. Her website A Taste for Life With Zarela is dedicated to her experience living with Parkinson's Disease.

"I was raised to triumph. When I was eight years old, my mother told me that she had named me Zarela because it would look good in lights, and I could achieve anything I set my mind to do. My father told me that the only sin in life was to waste one's talents and that I was blessed with many and it was my responsibility to develop them and use them wisely. I believed them both."

For more, you can read Zarela's personal story she wrote for Eat, Darling, Eat and find a recipe for Albondigas Estilo Mama (Meatballs Like Mama Makes), adapted from Food From My Heart.

https://www.eatdarlingeat.net/post/mexican-geisha