Interviews

This is part of a series of Q&A’s about cooking on vacation. The complete list of posts in this series is available here.

Luisa Weiss is a New York writer currently based in Berlin, and the author of the wonderful blog The Wednesday Chef, which documents her cooking life with inimitable verve and style. She was kind enough to answer my questions just as she was nearing the deadline for the manuscript of her much-anticipated first book, tentatively titled My Berlin Kitchen.

Here she tells us about the Earl Grey in her luggage, mother-daughter grilling, and cooking one’s own catch.

Are you taking a vacation this summer? Will you have a chance to cook while there?

My husband and I are going on our honeymoon in September. We’re staying at a cousin’s house on an island in Greece for a week before heading on to a few other stops including Athens. While we’re on the island, we’ll definitely be cooking at least once a day. I’m excited to see what the produce markets are like there and I can’t wait to try some of Greece’s bitter greens. It’s tough finding really good vegetables in Berlin, where I live, and I have a weakness for bitter greens. Also fish! And wild oregano! I’m hungry.

Are there utensils or ingredients you always take with you when you go on vacation? If so, what are they? If not, what do you unfailingly regret not taking?

I bring loose Earl Grey tea, because I love it for breakfast in the morning and I usually bring one sharp knife, just in case the place I’m staying at doesn’t have one. Otherwise, for me, vacation is about relaxing and letting go, and that means relaxing about the cooking environment, too.

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This is part of a series of Q&A’s about cooking on vacation. The complete list of posts in this series is available here.

Molly Wizenberg is the author of the blog Orangette, which glows with her unique writing voice. She has published a best-selling memoir called A Homemade Life, and she and her husband Brandon Pettit have created a well-loved pizza place in Seattle called Delancey, where I hope to dine some day. Molly co-hosts a weekly podcast called Spilled Milk with partner-in-crime Matthew Amster-Burton, and as if all of this wasn’t keeping her busy enough, she is now working on her second book.

Here she tells us about mish-mash lunches, cooking in Saint-Emilion, and a special kind of meatball.

Did you take a vacation this summer, and did you have a chance to cook while there?

I took a trip to Italy with my mom in late June. Brandon and I had been invited to a friend’s wedding near Urbino, in the Marche, but he needed to stay home to look after our restaurant, and I didn’t want to go by myself, so I brought my mom into the plan. We wound up flying into Rome, driving to Urbino, spending four nights there and doing day trips all around the area, and then driving down the Adriatic coast to Puglia, where we spent four nights near Ostuni. We didn’t do any cooking – we were in a hotel in Urbino and then a masseria in Puglia – but we did a LOT of eating: fava puree with wild chicories, fried zucchini blossoms, loads of olive oil, capocollo, fresh green figs as big as my fist. Incredible.

In what way do you feel your vacation cooking style differs from your everyday cooking style?

My Italy trip was an exception to the norm, because what I really love is to rent an apartment, cook a lot, and save most of our money for a couple of nice nights out. I love the feeling of cooking on vacation. I’ll find some ingredient that I can’t get in Seattle, and that always gets my juices going. In general, it’s an issue of time: when we’re on vacation, there’s just more of it. There’s more time to daydream about what we might make or eat. Even if we’re not really cooking per se – just collecting items for a picnic or a lazy mish-mash lunch – I feel particularly engaged by food on vacation. I feel more awake to flavors and smells and new ideas. I feel like I even taste things differently.

Are there utensils or ingredients you always take with you when you go on vacation? If so, what are they? If not, what do you unfailingly regret not taking?

If we’re traveling by car, a couple of good knives are a must. It’s a real buzzkill to get to a picnic site or a friend’s cabin and have only dull knives to work with! But if we’re traveling by plane, we just cross our fingers and wing it.

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I’ve asked a few of my favorite bloggers and friends to tell me about their vacation cooking style, whether they’re visiting friends or family, renting a place, camping, etc. I wasn’t necessarily looking for anything fancy, and was just as interested in the lazy stuff one cooks under those circumstances.

What do they like to bring with them? What are their best and worst vacation memories, and what tip or saving grace can they share?

Thanks to my wonderful guests, these Q&As read like so many escapist vignettes. I hope you’ll be as inspired and delighted as I am by my guests’ answers. If you’re anything like me, you’ll feel transported by the stories they shared from their nomadic kitchens — and I hope you’ll chime in with your own.

• Cooking on vacation with Sarah McColl, the Brooklyn-based writer and lifestyle blogger behind Pink of Perfection.

• Cooking on vacation with Tara Austen Weaver, who is the Seattle-based author of the book The Butcher and the Vegetarian.

• Cooking on vacation with Chika Yoshizaki, who is the Japanese writer, photographer, and translator behind the blog She who eats.

• Cooking on vacation with Gena Hamshaw, who is the author of The Full Helping, a blog that showcases high-raw, vegan foods, as well as the Food52 Vegan Cookbook.

• Cooking on vacation with Lucy Vanel, who is an American writer and photographer who lives in Lyon, and writes beautifully about food on her blog Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook.

• Cooking on vacation with Heidi Swanson, who is the talented writer and photographer behind the blog 101 Cookbooks.

• Cooking on vacation with Derrick Schneider, who is an Oakland-based writer who created one of the first food blogs ever, An Obsession With Food (which I credit for giving me the blogging bug back in the day!).

• Cooking on vacation with Luisa Weiss, who is a New York writer currently based in Berlin, and the author of the wonderful book My Berlin Kitchen: A Love Story.

• Cooking on vacation with Molly Wizenberg is the author of the best-selling memoir called A Homemade Life, and she and her husband Brandon Pettit have created a well-loved pizza place in Seattle called Delancey.

A companion series is running on the French version of Chocolate & Zucchini, so if you read French, you’re in for a double treat: head over to read La Cuisine des vacances!

A few months ago, I received an unusual email from an American reader of Chocolate & Zucchini, David E. Price, a former geologist and now computer programmer who goes to graduate school in Salt Lake City, and is an enthusiastic cook.

David explained that he had purchased copies of my books but that — and here comes the unusual part — because he was blind, he was wondering if there was a computer-readable version he could have access to: he was otherwise going to scan the pages and run them through a character recognition program, but he worried that the mix of French and English terms, as well as the fractions in the measurements, might make the resulting recipes inaccurate.

An arrangement was found with my publisher, and once that was taken care of, David and I continued our email conversation. In particular, I asked him about the accessibility of C&Z, and whether there was anything I could change to make it easier for the blind to read; there was, and I altered the code accordingly*.

And then, although I was a little hesitant to raise the topic, I had to admit I was curious to learn about the practicalities of cooking without vision. I had never really stopped to wonder if and how it was possible, and I was admirative, to say the least: it certainly took skill, perseverance, and a great love of food to cook and bake without relying on your eyes.

It was a thought-provoking exchange and I was sure other cooks would feel the same way, so I asked David if he would submit himself to a Q&A about the challenges he faces in the kitchen every day. His answers are below; thank you, David, for inviting us into your kitchen.

* If you’d like to learn more about this, read the page David put together about web accessibility.

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