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3 Good Things ft. Carla Lalli!
On her yogurt hack, "Night Cereal," and a recipe from her latest cookbook.
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Hi hi! I’m excited to have a special guest in today’s letter. You probably know her from her incredible recipes and YouTube stardom: it’s Brooklyn-based James Beard Award-winning chef Carla Lalli.
“Everything in my life was about to change, and food and cooking was going to be the constant that kept me together,” Carla writes in the introduction of her new book, Food Is A Feeling: Recipes & Stories, with Love. Her latest book isn’t just a cookbook. It’s a chronicle of how she used cooking as a channel for comfort and creativity after her twenty-four-year marriage ended, a mix of recipes and essays about this transitional time in her life.
“I made a lot of popcorn,” she says of the days after her separation. Then, learning to cook for herself and taking “note of the cravings” she was having, “opened me up to the idea of self-care in a non-cynical way.” Food as self-care: we’re into it.
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The recipes in Food Is A Feeling are non-precious and inventive, like “Night Cereal,” a zhuzhed-up evening snack (Carla uses ice-cold rice milk and a drizzle of maple syrup, garnished with flaky sea salt, duh). There’s also craveable, riffable stuff like Tofu and Kimchi Noodle Soup and staples like Chicken Cutlets. “To cutlet midweek is a treat: cutlets are the best,” Carla writes. HARD AGREE!
The writing in Food is a Feeling is honest and relatable. Even if you haven’t gone through a separation, most of us know what it’s like to grieve a past version of ourselves. I planned to skim my copy but stayed up past 9pm, pulled in by her stories. Like the one about how Carla felt moving out of her Brooklyn home into a sublet carriage house to live by herself. Or how she learned to cook for just herself and her son. Or how her son, as a kid, invented the best PB&J ever. The book is a beautiful testament to how intertwined food is with our memories and life story.
Below, Carla shares her downtime-y recs, a recipe for banana bread with cocoa and salted peanuts (YUM), and we’re giving away a copy of the book to one lucky reader. Enjoy!
xo,
Alisha
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Carla Lalli’s 3 Good Things
One great read…
I “discovered” audiobooks this year (ikr), and The Empire of AI by Karen Hao absolutely rocked my world. It’s gigantic and long and would have been very intimidating to read, but the listen was incredible (and the author narrates, which I always like). [Ed note: I too loved this audiobook and learned so much about AI from it. I think Patrick Radden Keefe fans will enjoy it.]
What she loves to watch in her downtime…
Captain Sandy is back for this season of Below Deck Mediterranean, and I am on record as going below all the decks, so I look forward to the new episodes every week.
The Lonesome is great, as is Widow’s Bay, and I cannot wait for Real Housewives: Salt Lake City to come back. I watch/listen to Hasan Piker’s YouTube channel when I’m cooking or doing my makeup, and to Trixie’s channel when I need a giggle before bed.
Her go-to beauty thing…
The Westman Atelier HydroBalm Tinted Lipstick in Onyx is my everyday all day lippy.
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