From Lawyer to Culinary Star: Chef Ouita Michael, James Beard Nominee Food Journey

Hey Sylvia, it's great to see you or hear you again.

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And we're off to another interesting show, but this one is all in your backyard.

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I get to be a visitor, I guess you could say from.

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and welcome to you from Florida.

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Weida Michael.

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Gosh, it's my pleasure to introduce.

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She is just a rising and current star for Kentucky and beyond.

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She's been nominated numerous times for James Beard awards and that is a huge big deal, by

the way, to be nominated several times.

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She has at least eight food establishments, different kinds, all kinds of really wonderful

things steeped in tradition, I might say.

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And she's involved there, including Holly Hill Inn.

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You'll have to visit that.

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It's iconic.

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And she practically invented the tradition of buying local, I must say.

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And I loved your bio where you said, buying local is a tradition that our culture seemed

to abandon for a few decades and that I love cooking right out of the garden.

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That is so you.

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And again, Nancy, you've got to go to Holly Hill Inn.

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I got to pull her up here.

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She's got to, she's got to enjoy the Kentucky scene.

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But, Weeda, I'll start out.

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Your first food foray was buying the Holly Hill Inn in 2000.

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You described that as a scary experience.

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From there, you've just added on.

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You've laid the groundwork for celebrating tradition.

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And that's what Family Tree Food and Stories is all about, is combining tradition, food

stories, and storytelling, and reviving that art.

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And I know there's a lot of that that you do.

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begin by just telling us a little bit about how you see food and tradition in your own

backyard.

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Well, I guess now I've been a chef for 37 years.

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So I've developed a lot of my own food traditions.

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I never thought I'd reach this point in my life and my career.

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But thank you so much, Sylvia and Nancy, for having me on the podcast and giving me the

opportunity to tell a little bit more about my story.

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The garden tradition is one that I

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I have bought local, it was in our business plan.

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So part of the development of our whole company, but especially the Holly Hill Inn,

because it was our first restaurant, when we wrote the business plan for that in 2000, we

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really put, we put buying local ingredients from local farmers into that business plan

because I've long loved MFK Fisher and sort of Madeleine Cammon, lot of Julia Child, a lot

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of French.

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storytellers and chefs and cooks and Italian chefs and cooks like Lydia Bastianich and

beyond, and they all cook really fresh ingredients that are locally grown.

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And in the United States, we abandoned that for a little while in the name of convenience.

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And I feel a little bit like the restaurant industries have

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hasn't really gone back to it, but it is part of our cornerstone and all of our

restaurants.

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And the garden, I'm very lucky to say the Holly Hillen sits on a 10 acre lot.

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so we cultivate, honestly, as a response to COVID, we really got into gardening and we've

doubled the size of our garden every year for the past five years.

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And now we cultivate during our growing season, most of what the Holly Hillen serves in

terms of its vegetables and herbs.

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and that kind of thing.

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it's a real joy and it's one of balance for me for sure.

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Can I ask you question as far as gardening and the restaurant today and the work that you

do?

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Where did that stem from?

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I mean, as a child and a young girl, did you have interest in gardening with your parents

or with a community or neighbors or grandparents?

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is that what spurred you or sparked you to get involved in cooking or even be interested

in it?

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Because most kids, some kids love it and others are like,

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Mom, just give me the SpaghettiOs, right?

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Yeah, when I was a girl, my parents, grew up on a street called State Street, which is

sort of a legendary street here, Nancy, because now it's occupied by college students and

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they typically burn couches when UK went to big basketball game.

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But back in the day, my father was a young professor at the University of Kentucky Medical

School.

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And every faculty and staff was eligible to have a garden plot where the current

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football stadium is at the University of Kentucky.

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In those days, it was the agricultural research farm.

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And so, and then when they built the stadium, they decided they would give over a large

section, several acres to their faculty and staff for garden plots.

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And so many, we could walk over there, was just a little walk and often drove off

obviously when we were picking vegetables, but we had a garden at home and we had this big

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garden plot.

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along with hundreds of other families at the University of Kentucky.

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And I can remember the gardens would close at a certain time, like in the year.

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So it would be, last day for garden plots, we're plowing up next week kind of thing.

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And you would go over there and there would just be hundreds of kids and families and they

would all, it was free for all.

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You could glean anything from the entire garden plot that you wanted on this.

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One day all the barriers were down and everybody was sharing vegetables trying to get

everything possible out of all the gardens.

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And I just that lives in my mind's eye.

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I really loved that experience and we did that for many years.

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Yes, it was.

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hunt in the garden, right?

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Like, my God, I found a squash.

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no, I found more tomatoes.

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Well, this one's green.

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We can do something with that one, right?

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and the formation of community.

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right.

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was a scavenger hunt, the treasure hunt, and it was a wonderful experience.

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And my great grandfather, his name was Aaron Rufus Zimmerman, and he lived in Thermopolis,

Wyoming.

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My family was, I was born in Thermopolis, and my parents were both from Thermopolis.

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And he was originally from Missouri, but he had a huge garden.

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and he used to take bets from all of his friends and he would grow things like peanuts and

cotton and all the stuff in Wyoming.

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And he lived down the street from my grandmother and I spent every summer with my

grandmother there for more than 10 years.

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And so just going to his garden was a daily experience as a child and then having this

garden at home in Kentucky, yeah, it deeply impacted me for sure.

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Wow.

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And you formed a community too of people in the garden.

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I'd say kids ran the, this ran all over the place I would envision as I'm listening to

you.

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there was a lot of married student housing at UK that was very near that garden plot.

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And a lot of those families were international.

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So my friend, had a friend named Ruru Runciman, Ruru Runciman and Ruru's parents lived in

married student housing.

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were graduate students and they were from Indonesia.

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And so they had a garden plot.

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They were growing really different stuff.

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Yeah.

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bitter melon and I don't know, I can sort of see, I can't remember exactly what it was,

but it was the sense that yes, there was a big community, lots of friends, all running

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around this garden.

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it was, it I wish the university could find a way to do it again, because it was really

amazing.

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Wonderful.

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Did you go to culinary school?

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that something that, where did you go to culinary school?

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the University of Kentucky and I was on the debate team there.

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And I won the national debate tournament actually in 1986 and I had planned on going to

law school.

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And I had two friends who had grown up in New York City who needed a third roommate.

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And so I decided to move to Manhattan in 1987, right after school.

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And I started working in restaurants just to see if I might like it.

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And I loved it.

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And then shortly thereafter, in those days, you had to work two years to apply before you

could apply to the Culinary Institute of America.

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So you had to have two years of working experience in a restaurant.

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So I did that in Manhattan for two years, and I applied to the Culinary Institute in Hyde

Park.

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Okay.

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Okay.

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So that's kind of an interesting switch.

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So you went to New York originally to go to law school.

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And I don't think of lawyers as culinary curiosities, should say, right?

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Now you've really got like, so it's, it's, it's, the law of the zucchini.

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I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to throw the squash at you.

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Yeah, well, we're weird, know, we lawyers.

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better than throw the book at you

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Ha ha ha.

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So, but it's an interesting switch from law and then working at a restaurant.

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I guess you were curious to figure out working at a restaurant.

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I have to laugh because I one year in between college, like summertime, said that, well,

all my friends over the years have worked at like a McDonald's or a fast food franchise.

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So I want the experience of working at one and the Wendy's was opening up.

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I never want to work at a fast food restaurant or restaurant ever again.

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my God.

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The only thing I'm really good at is working the cash register.

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But picking up after people and like Frank, I'll do it for friends and family at home.

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I love doing that, but doing it for public.

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my gosh.

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And you learn so much about, I hate to say this, you probably have this experience at your

restaurants too.

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You learn so much about the people who are sitting at a table, their manners, how they

eat, how they behave, how, you know, the fact that they, this is me, I'd like, my God,

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you're disgusting.

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You just threw your napkin on the floor and didn't pick it up.

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Didn't your mother teach you anything?

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You know?

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So I have to, I have to, you know, hats off to you or chef's hat off to you or the ladle

off to you to even.

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consider opening a restaurant.

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That's amazing as well, but that's me.

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about that.

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You opened Holly Hill Inn in 2000.

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You bought it in 2000, opened it in 2001, and you said it was a terrifying experience to

leap into the business.

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And it was an ongoing old tradition in central Kentucky, right?

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was the Holly Killeen, excuse me, had actually opened its doors in 1979.

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And it was opened by Rex and Rose Lyons, and they rented the home.

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It's 150 year old home, Nancy, and it sits on a 10 acre lot in the middle of the bluegrass

in a little town called Midway, Kentucky.

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Was it a restaurant to begin with?

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It was.

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to begin with, and they also had two bedrooms upstairs.

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at the time, Sylvia, you remember this restaurant, at the time, Chris and I had opened as

managing partners, a restaurant called Emmett's Restaurant on Tate's Creek Road, for Joe

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Elizabeth Coons, yes.

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And I was the chef and Christopher was the general manager.

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And we met through happenstance, a man named Bob Brouse, who is a writer and was writing a

story about Emmett's.

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And he said, well, this is a lovely restaurant.

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You'll never leave here.

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And I said, I don't know why I said this, but I said, I would only leave it for the Holly

Hillen and Midway.

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I had been kind of stalking this location because it, it was one of the few locations that

was already a restaurant.

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didn't have to convert an old home into a restaurant, which could be daunting financially.

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And it had substantial grounds.

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don't own all 10 acres, but we do own two of them.

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And it's.

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And it looked a lot like the Innit Little Washington or the Herb Farm.

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These were restaurants that were very inspiring to me at the time.

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It still are.

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So yes, exactly.

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The Stone Barns at Blue Hill, all of those kinds of concepts.

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And Bob said, well, I own that with my father, but we'll never sell it.

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We've owned it for 100 years and we have a couple who rents it from us.

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So I doubt we'll sell it.

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But six months later, Bob did call me and say,

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The current operators were ready to get out.

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They had divorced and the woman in the partnership wanted to remarry and didn't want to

run the restaurant.

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So they were ready to sell the business and he and his dad were ready to sell the

property.

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And so we came out and the rest is history.

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We bought it on December 28th in 2000.

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We closed for five months and reopened on May 9th of 2001.

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And we lived upstairs.

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We sold our home, we sold everything we had, and we lived upstairs for the first four

years.

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And then we were able to buy our house where I'm sitting right now is right next door to

the Holly Hill Inn.

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It's an old log cabin.

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You can kind of see the logs in the background.

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That was was re was taken down in Perry County and reassembled here in 1986.

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Yeah.

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What great tradition.

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There you go.

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Yeah.

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I think it's time for just a short little break on that note, hearing a little bit about

what's going on in Holly Hill Farm.

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And I love log cabins.

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So we'll be right back with the little log cabin in Kentucky.

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Hang tight.

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So Sylvie and I, we're back with Aweeta Michael, who is an amazing chef and a very

fascinating person who's doing some really interesting things and talking to us from her

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log cabin in Kentucky, hence the little connection.

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It's like a little, think of Abe Lincoln, but I don't think he was Kentucky, so.

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Oh, okay, so so much for my high school.

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High school history class.

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I guess I got a D minus on that one.

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I think of Illinois, right?

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So Nancy, you were going to say...

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so the brain cramp.

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Right.

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should have had breakfast this morning.

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I guess we're talking about food, right?

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So we, you know, we're talking about your restaurants, but I'm also interested in, hearing

a little bit more about some of the, things that you brought back.

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Cause I understand that you, learned a lot of your work and your, your experience in

Europe, right.

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In France and Italy.

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And so much as I understand.

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if I'm correct, that

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Well, I've taken a lot of inspiration from France and Italy, but I haven't, I didn't

travel to France and Italy.

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I have traveled there, but I didn't live there to learn to cook.

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I primarily learned my professional cooking experience was at, at least in terms of

education was in New York City.

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But I went to culinary school there, then cooked in New York City for several years, and

then came back to Kentucky and came back in 1993 and had a variety of

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experiences in the restaurant industry before we opened the Holly Hillen in 2000.

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So although I'm deeply inspired by it, I wish I could say I did cook in France, but I

really have not, but I've read an incredible amount and used it as a point of research

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because I think there's so much influence, French influence in our Southern foodways that,

and especially through

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gardening, which is kind of where all this started, especially through cooking out of the

garden.

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And so that's kind of where my French and Italian influences come from.

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are you more focused on the fruits and vegetables or do you also look at the meats and the

other products that come on our plate?

215

00:17:05,795 --> 00:17:17,479

I mean, quite frankly, my sister has cattle in Oklahoma and she'll say, well, we had to

slaughter a calf because it drowned or they didn't slaughter the calf.

216

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The calf was already dead.

217

00:17:18,660 --> 00:17:20,130

They found it dead in a pond once.

218

00:17:20,130 --> 00:17:23,742

like, my God, you like picking up roadkill in your pond, really?

219

00:17:23,994 --> 00:17:24,346

you

220

00:17:24,346 --> 00:17:26,766

was fresh enough that they could do that.

221

00:17:27,246 --> 00:17:35,846

me, you so I'm, we're living in the country, but I kind of think of, I don't, I don't want

to know the cute little eyes or the snotty little nose and the cow before I eat it.

222

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So, or, and the stories of hearing chickens running around with their heads cut off, oh my

God, to me, it just, it's, it's a nightmare on, on Elm street kind of thing that I

223

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wouldn't want to live with.

224

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How do you get used to that?

225

00:17:47,666 --> 00:17:52,614

Or do you actually go to the solar houses to see what's being done as as a chef?

226

00:17:52,770 --> 00:18:05,007

Well, I do use a lot of locally raised and processed meats, but just as a reminder for

everyone, the USDA oversees the processing of all meats that are sold in the United

227

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States.

228

00:18:05,427 --> 00:18:10,580

So I can't just go out in the backyard and kill a chicken and serve it to you in the

restaurant.

229

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That is not what I'm doing.

230

00:18:12,341 --> 00:18:16,913

And yes, I would not be able to cut, I wouldn't feel so bad cutting the head off a

chicken.

231

00:18:16,913 --> 00:18:18,384

I wouldn't be able to do it.

232

00:18:19,545 --> 00:18:21,686

But we do have several and,

233

00:18:21,966 --> 00:18:30,210

One of the things that happened in Kentucky, Nancy, is we had in the late 90s, the tobacco

settlement.

234

00:18:30,231 --> 00:18:32,872

And Bill Clinton was president.

235

00:18:32,912 --> 00:18:35,484

We always seem to have a war on all the things in Kentucky.

236

00:18:35,484 --> 00:18:37,835

War on coal, war on tobacco, blah, blah.

237

00:18:37,835 --> 00:18:50,382

But what happened out of that tobacco settlement was as a result of tobacco, Kentucky had

some of the more family farms than almost every other state in the country.

238

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small family farms because tobacco allowed people to make a living with a small sized

farm.

239

00:18:57,505 --> 00:19:08,710

After the settlement, a lot of those farmers stopped growing tobacco or they grew on a

contract and it allowed the diversification of these small family farms into a lot more

240

00:19:08,710 --> 00:19:14,272

livestock development, small livestock producers and small vegetable producers.

241

00:19:14,272 --> 00:19:19,034

And over the years, we've really developed a lot more processing in the state.

242

00:19:19,034 --> 00:19:24,687

So there are more USDA-inspected processors that process for certain farmers.

243

00:19:24,687 --> 00:19:25,738

And that's been great.

244

00:19:25,738 --> 00:19:27,218

I mean, the beef is fabulous.

245

00:19:27,218 --> 00:19:30,981

There's lots of beautiful lamb, pork, and chicken.

246

00:19:30,981 --> 00:19:35,893

There's primarily those four meats that I can get.

247

00:19:35,893 --> 00:19:47,290

then in terms of aquaculture, have a really, we have more, I think we have more coastline

than Florida and Kentucky, but it's all freshwater in terms of our lakes, rivers, and

248

00:19:47,290 --> 00:19:48,270

streams.

249

00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:59,848

So we have a huge amount of locally farmed striped bass, shrimp, some salt water, some

fresh water, things like that.

250

00:19:59,848 --> 00:20:04,251

There's just not a giant amount of that, but it is available, especially striped bass.

251

00:20:04,251 --> 00:20:06,202

Local striped bass is available.

252

00:20:06,783 --> 00:20:07,973

So it's catfish.

253

00:20:07,973 --> 00:20:11,666

All of our catfish is wild caught.

254

00:20:11,666 --> 00:20:16,499

And we have three or four of our most popular restaurants do a lot of fried catfish.

255

00:20:16,499 --> 00:20:18,296

So it all comes from the country.

256

00:20:18,296 --> 00:20:19,848

like a big bag.

257

00:20:20,102 --> 00:20:23,690

thank you.

258

00:20:23,690 --> 00:20:27,575

Yeah, I'm presuming they're not going catfish hunting with by hand.

259

00:20:27,575 --> 00:20:29,180

hear those stories too.

260

00:20:29,180 --> 00:20:29,926

Yeah.

261

00:20:29,926 --> 00:20:32,058

gosh, I've seen that online.

262

00:20:32,058 --> 00:20:33,028

crazy.

263

00:20:33,028 --> 00:20:40,924

Now, Kentucky is one of the few states that actually has and issues commercial fishing

licenses for their big lakes out in Western Kentucky.

264

00:20:40,924 --> 00:20:49,800

And that's where we get, we have a big, large caviar industry out there based on the

spoonbill and the American sturgeon and catfish.

265

00:20:49,800 --> 00:20:55,344

And a lot of times those processing places are in the same company.

266

00:20:55,364 --> 00:20:57,015

So yeah, I've visited a few.

267

00:20:57,015 --> 00:20:58,065

The guy that,

268

00:20:58,894 --> 00:21:09,343

we buy all of our catfish from has a craviar producer in his processing unit and it was

really a fascinating process to watch and it was amazing.

269

00:21:09,343 --> 00:21:09,906

I have this.

270

00:21:09,906 --> 00:21:21,986

to hear a little bit more though about some of the family history and traditions that you

have that you may have brought into your restaurant, whether it be with design, the foods,

271

00:21:21,986 --> 00:21:28,642

and some of the things that you remember as a child or even as a young woman or your

husband, because he's a chef with you as well.

272

00:21:28,642 --> 00:21:31,765

Yes, we met on the first day of Cheskill.

273

00:21:32,527 --> 00:21:37,683

Now, unfortunately for him, you can see his messy desk behind him.

274

00:21:37,683 --> 00:21:47,263

He does all our financials and our wine buying, but he's a great cook and he gives me lots

of advice.

275

00:21:47,592 --> 00:21:48,545

Yeah.

276

00:21:48,545 --> 00:21:55,901

Is there any childhood memory that stands out about other than the gardening gardens and

such maybe a meal.

277

00:21:55,915 --> 00:21:57,517

a fantastic cook.

278

00:21:57,517 --> 00:22:10,068

And one of the things that happened to me as a child was when I was about 15, my mom went

to work outside the home for the first time, or for the first time in many years.

279

00:22:10,068 --> 00:22:14,241

so moving into that part, we cooked together all the time, every night.

280

00:22:14,241 --> 00:22:16,523

In those days, people didn't really eat out much.

281

00:22:16,523 --> 00:22:22,376

I think there was one McDonald's in our town, and we only went there like maybe once a

month as a special treat.

282

00:22:22,376 --> 00:22:23,958

Yeah, me too.

283

00:22:23,958 --> 00:22:25,178

as a specialty.

284

00:22:25,458 --> 00:22:26,618

Same, yes.

285

00:22:26,618 --> 00:22:32,698

So we cooked all the time and we had exchange students because my parents, my dad was a

professor at the university.

286

00:22:32,698 --> 00:22:37,598

So we got involved in the exchange student program and we used to have Japanese exchange

students.

287

00:22:37,598 --> 00:22:39,818

We did this for maybe three or four summers.

288

00:22:39,818 --> 00:22:48,318

And so we learned how to make tempura and we cooked all those, we fried so much tempura

out of our garden.

289

00:22:48,318 --> 00:22:51,218

And it was really interesting.

290

00:22:52,978 --> 00:22:56,632

The community was very international in our neighborhood.

291

00:22:56,632 --> 00:23:02,487

There were, like I said, a lot of married student housing, a lot of graduate students at

the university were from other countries.

292

00:23:02,487 --> 00:23:12,097

so, you know, going to Ruru's house for Indonesian food, one of my best friends, this was

an international, but was from Louisiana.

293

00:23:12,097 --> 00:23:17,901

So his mom always made jambalaya and these kinds of things.

294

00:23:18,898 --> 00:23:27,722

I moved into my teenage years, I just became fascinated with cooking and I really cooked a

lot of our family meals once my mom started working outside the home.

295

00:23:27,722 --> 00:23:30,153

And we used to love to make a lot of stir fries.

296

00:23:30,153 --> 00:23:37,346

So we, I have her wok now and I've really loved, always loved that process.

297

00:23:37,346 --> 00:23:42,548

That was big in the seventies, those little wok cookbooks that I have, I have a lot of

those.

298

00:23:42,548 --> 00:23:47,410

The International Women's Club at the University of Kentucky was a formative cookbook for

me.

299

00:23:47,558 --> 00:23:51,978

And I made a lot of different things out of that cookbook.

300

00:23:52,858 --> 00:23:57,158

I'm trying to remember a lot of curry, for example, the first time we had curry, I

remember that.

301

00:23:57,158 --> 00:23:59,558

And I used to love the gourmet magazine.

302

00:23:59,558 --> 00:24:02,458

I'm sure you can think about that.

303

00:24:02,458 --> 00:24:06,718

I, when I became interested in food, I tell people this all the time.

304

00:24:06,718 --> 00:24:13,246

And most of the young cooks that we have can't believe it, but there was no internet,

there was no cable, there was just.

305

00:24:13,482 --> 00:24:18,044

the beginning of cable television, there was no food network or anything like that.

306

00:24:18,044 --> 00:24:20,785

And the main food magazine was Gourmet Magazine.

307

00:24:20,785 --> 00:24:25,557

There wasn't a lot of photography, but there were these long columns about restaurants.

308

00:24:25,557 --> 00:24:28,909

There'd be a column about that there are these restaurants in New York City.

309

00:24:28,909 --> 00:24:35,572

So when I moved to New York City, I had notebooks filled with the restaurants I'd like to

eat, I'd like to work at in New York.

310

00:24:35,572 --> 00:24:38,513

And so I just went those.

311

00:24:39,554 --> 00:24:40,504

Yeah.

312

00:24:41,490 --> 00:24:49,235

It was just announced that New Orleans was the number one food, I don't know who they

surveyed to find this out, number one food.

313

00:24:49,436 --> 00:24:52,398

And so that kind of brought me to this question of the South.

314

00:24:52,398 --> 00:24:55,930

I know you're very into the Southern foodways.

315

00:24:55,930 --> 00:24:58,132

There's a huge movement.

316

00:24:58,132 --> 00:25:02,065

Nancy and I have been talking about that with Appalachia being so huge.

317

00:25:02,065 --> 00:25:04,286

I don't even know if Louisiana's in there, but.

318

00:25:04,286 --> 00:25:08,653

They were talking about all the fusion of different tastes and such in New Orleans.

319

00:25:08,653 --> 00:25:12,518

Is that kind of your thinking as you look upon the landscape of food?

320

00:25:12,518 --> 00:25:18,010

What is the whole story with New Orleans or even Appalachia and what's happening there?

321

00:25:18,010 --> 00:25:29,875

Well, Appalachia is a very diverse food culture, although it's harder for it to showcase

its diversity because people have a stereotypical view of what Appalachia is.

322

00:25:30,655 --> 00:25:41,159

In Louisiana, you have the combination of French, Spanish, African-American, and Canadian.

323

00:25:41,199 --> 00:25:47,992

You know, they came down after the French Indian War from Canada and populated a lot of

Louisiana.

324

00:25:48,406 --> 00:25:56,510

So you have all these really amazing influences that constitute Creole cooking and Cajun

cooking.

325

00:25:56,510 --> 00:26:06,094

And I think also Louisiana has just done a phenomenal job at making their food culture

part of their overall culture.

326

00:26:06,095 --> 00:26:10,456

You think of their food culture and you think of their musical culture together.

327

00:26:10,466 --> 00:26:13,966

So jazz, blues, and Louisiana cooking.

328

00:26:13,966 --> 00:26:20,412

And in a lot of other parts of the country, I don't think we've done as good a job saying,

this is our food culture.

329

00:26:20,412 --> 00:26:21,793

Let's embrace it.

330

00:26:21,793 --> 00:26:22,864

This is who we are.

331

00:26:22,864 --> 00:26:25,997

And I do think we have that opportunity in Kentucky.

332

00:26:25,997 --> 00:26:33,164

that's a big part of what I do, is to try to explain to people how Kentucky's food culture

is unique from other places.

333

00:26:33,164 --> 00:26:39,869

What I see as the big ingredients in our food culture, that really our food culture is not

the hot brown sandwich.

334

00:26:40,526 --> 00:26:44,868

And it's more than bourbon, although bourbon is very important to the Kentucky food

culture.

335

00:26:45,368 --> 00:26:48,366

But yes, I love Louisiana for that reason.

336

00:26:48,366 --> 00:26:51,751

And they have a very old restaurant culture.

337

00:26:51,751 --> 00:26:59,256

People have to remember that, that Louisiana, the New Orleans restaurant culture, dates

back to the 1850s.

338

00:26:59,256 --> 00:27:03,235

So they have some of the oldest restaurants in America in New Orleans, more than one.

339

00:27:03,235 --> 00:27:09,830

So Antoine's would be the oldest in New Orleans, but there are others that have been

340

00:27:09,830 --> 00:27:13,849

operated for close to 100 years or maybe even 100 years plus.

341

00:27:13,849 --> 00:27:17,370

That's really difficult to find in a food culture.

342

00:27:18,170 --> 00:27:20,710

So it's been wonderful to see that celebration.

343

00:27:20,710 --> 00:27:27,370

When you think about Mardi Gras, which we just finished, they started celebrating Mardi

Gras originally in Mobile.

344

00:27:29,570 --> 00:27:33,670

And that was in 1780s.

345

00:27:33,758 --> 00:27:34,082

Yeah.

346

00:27:34,082 --> 00:27:35,223

about Kentucky?

347

00:27:35,223 --> 00:27:35,563

Right.

348

00:27:35,563 --> 00:27:40,827

So, so what is sort of the food that Kentucky is known for?

349

00:27:40,827 --> 00:27:44,709

Cause we talked a little bit about Appalachia and we only have a little bit more to go.

350

00:27:44,709 --> 00:27:47,571

So I want to tighten this up a little bit for us.

351

00:27:47,571 --> 00:27:51,274

And, know, I looked at Appalachia the other day, just to figure out how big it was.

352

00:27:51,274 --> 00:27:58,079

Cause I don't think people even understand it goes 13 states, 423 counties.

353

00:27:58,079 --> 00:27:59,189

I mean, it's huge.

354

00:27:59,189 --> 00:28:03,372

It's not just, you know, Kentucky and West Virginia and the,

355

00:28:03,372 --> 00:28:07,050

backwards people.

356

00:28:07,160 --> 00:28:11,844

let me refine that question because I think we're known for bourbon and hot browns.

357

00:28:11,844 --> 00:28:14,785

But is there something deeper than that, Weida?

358

00:28:16,347 --> 00:28:17,298

you're going to learn.

359

00:28:17,298 --> 00:28:19,509

You're going to learn in our Derby show.

360

00:28:20,318 --> 00:28:24,280

I think that Kentucky really has a cuisine of corn.

361

00:28:24,282 --> 00:28:34,691

And I know America does to some degree, but in Kentucky, if you think about our past, we

were the largest corn producing state in the 1850s.

362

00:28:34,691 --> 00:28:43,086

And that's largely when our distilling industry started to bloom and to really become an

industry.

363

00:28:43,086 --> 00:28:49,250

A lot of that excess corn was distilled into corn liquor and then gradually started

chipping it down to Louisiana.

364

00:28:49,250 --> 00:28:52,052

So corn is a big part of who we are.

365

00:28:52,332 --> 00:29:01,369

It's also a native, know, corn is the Native American food crop that the Native Americans

actually taught us how as white taught white people how to grow.

366

00:29:01,369 --> 00:29:04,100

So we didn't starve to death when we first arrived here.

367

00:29:04,100 --> 00:29:09,534

And it's got this deep indigenous, you know, foundation and roots to it.

368

00:29:09,534 --> 00:29:12,582

And a lot of those, hoe cakes, cornbread,

369

00:29:12,582 --> 00:29:18,742

corn dodgers, hush puppies, grits, all of them stem from a Native American tradition.

370

00:29:18,742 --> 00:29:23,622

And in Kentucky, we had the Choctaw, the Chickasaw, and the Cherokee Indian tribes.

371

00:29:24,062 --> 00:29:30,882

a lot of, and that was all the way through Appalachia, which goes from Georgia through

Pennsylvania into New York.

372

00:29:30,882 --> 00:29:33,802

And I think the Appalachian Trail ends in Maine.

373

00:29:33,842 --> 00:29:37,822

So it's all the way up the Eastern seaboard.

374

00:29:38,062 --> 00:29:42,254

And it's, you know, there are lots of Italian communities throughout.

375

00:29:42,254 --> 00:29:53,659

So there are deep immigrant influences throughout Appalachia, along with sort of the

cuisine of necessity at times, I think is what we call it.

376

00:29:53,659 --> 00:29:55,850

But, you know, lots of foraging.

377

00:29:55,850 --> 00:30:06,664

So you're talking about morel mushrooms, blackberries, lots of farm-based crops, which we

still produce in Kentucky today, like sorghum, which is a particular kind of molasses,

378

00:30:08,445 --> 00:30:10,025

sassafras,

379

00:30:10,790 --> 00:30:16,930

all different kinds of dandelion greens, but we have wild mustard, lamb's ear.

380

00:30:16,930 --> 00:30:21,250

We grow all of these things, poke berries, poke salad.

381

00:30:21,250 --> 00:30:23,870

We grow all these things in the gardens at Holly Hill.

382

00:30:23,870 --> 00:30:29,704

And it's really, really fun to incorporate them into dishes.

383

00:30:29,704 --> 00:30:31,926

Yeah, foraging is really important in Kentucky.

384

00:30:31,926 --> 00:30:34,169

Nancy and I have talked about that up the hillside.

385

00:30:34,169 --> 00:30:43,789

My grandmother would go to pick up what might be weeds to us, but it was edible foods, and

we still hear about that today.

386

00:30:43,848 --> 00:30:45,610

yeah, very much so, for sure.

387

00:30:45,610 --> 00:30:49,412

It's it's a part of life that I think we have gotten.

388

00:30:49,793 --> 00:30:54,907

We've forgotten over the years, and I'm a I'm a child of the the 70s.

389

00:30:54,907 --> 00:30:57,738

You know, well, the 60s, 70s.

390

00:30:57,839 --> 00:31:04,554

And, you know, quite frankly, it was Campbell's cream of mushroom soup was our cuisine.

391

00:31:04,554 --> 00:31:05,265

Right.

392

00:31:05,265 --> 00:31:08,207

Or going to McDonald's or Burger King was the special treat.

393

00:31:08,207 --> 00:31:11,989

So it really wasn't a time of growing up with Gourmet.

394

00:31:11,989 --> 00:31:13,058

And I think the.

395

00:31:13,058 --> 00:31:21,520

the current generation of kids or now young adults grew up on chicken fingers and whatnot

because we were all busy, busy moms.

396

00:31:21,520 --> 00:31:28,522

Although dads are getting more involved and really understanding and having fun in the

kitchen, which I love hearing about as well.

397

00:31:28,522 --> 00:31:42,946

But before we sort of sign off here, Aweeda, what is like one or two memories that you

think or that really reaches into your heart that says, I want people to understand this.

398

00:31:42,996 --> 00:31:56,827

about the foods or even something that you loved and you love now today that brings back,

I guess, a sense of home and comfort that's important to you and that you wanted the

399

00:31:56,827 --> 00:31:58,398

people to know about as well.

400

00:31:58,628 --> 00:31:59,299

sure.

401

00:31:59,299 --> 00:32:02,740

Well, I lost my mom 10 years ago.

402

00:32:03,161 --> 00:32:07,524

She was young because now I'm almost the age that she was when she passed.

403

00:32:07,524 --> 00:32:11,777

so every year, we cooked Thanksgiving dinner together.

404

00:32:11,777 --> 00:32:22,704

And every year since her passing, I have made Thanksgiving dinner in exactly the same menu

with my daughter and my nephews and my nieces so that they can have the taste of their

405

00:32:22,704 --> 00:32:23,600

grandmother.

406

00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:26,073

So we keep every recipe exactly the same.

407

00:32:26,073 --> 00:32:28,795

And a lot of that menu came from my great-grandmother.

408

00:32:29,857 --> 00:32:34,291

So it's roast turkey, of course, but jibbler gravy with boiled eggs.

409

00:32:34,291 --> 00:32:37,915

And we have to have four different kinds of cranberry sauce.

410

00:32:37,915 --> 00:32:40,068

So everybody's cranberries get...

411

00:32:40,068 --> 00:32:44,132

And a lot of times we don't talk about Thanksgiving except at Thanksgiving time.

412

00:32:44,132 --> 00:32:46,354

But for our family, that meal...

413

00:32:46,370 --> 00:32:57,271

is really a touchstone and it's been after now 10 years of doing it now the kids I go in

to make sure they don't burn the hell out of the turkey but pretty much they make all the

414

00:32:57,271 --> 00:33:01,956

pies and they make the dishes and it's it's wonderful.

415

00:33:02,674 --> 00:33:14,578

I say what you're saying, we interviewed Father Jim, and he adores you and you adore him,

and we now adore him too, but the spirituality of food.

416

00:33:14,578 --> 00:33:24,901

I knew your mother and I knew how wonderful she was, and she became a writer later in

life, and I know all of that, but that coming together and doing all of that at

417

00:33:24,901 --> 00:33:28,752

Thanksgiving has almost got a spiritual dimension to it, right?

418

00:33:28,856 --> 00:33:30,648

Yes, I think it does.

419

00:33:30,648 --> 00:33:34,871

mean, it is a big part of the way of how we remember her.

420

00:33:34,871 --> 00:33:40,185

And at first it was really sad the first few years, you you're so sad the person's not

with you.

421

00:33:40,185 --> 00:33:45,079

But now we just celebrate the whole time and the pain has passed.

422

00:33:45,079 --> 00:33:48,142

Father Jim's mom too had that bad sauce.

423

00:33:48,142 --> 00:33:54,066

And of course he gave me her lasagna recipe, which I swore I would take to the grave and

never divulge.

424

00:33:54,507 --> 00:33:56,948

It is a fantastic lasagna.

425

00:33:58,694 --> 00:34:05,054

Yeah, it's those dishes that give us the memory of the people that we've lost that are the

most precious to me.

426

00:34:05,454 --> 00:34:09,174

My mom always made me eggplant caviar on my birthday, and I love that dish.

427

00:34:09,174 --> 00:34:15,734

It's like a very simple eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, and she would serve it on the little

rye breads.

428

00:34:16,214 --> 00:34:17,934

Every single year for my birthday, she would make it.

429

00:34:17,934 --> 00:34:20,054

I make it all the time in the summer.

430

00:34:20,054 --> 00:34:26,554

And every time I make it, I think about probably the last time I had it with her, or the

few.

431

00:34:26,586 --> 00:34:29,134

few different occasions that we ate it together.

432

00:34:29,134 --> 00:34:35,510

And I cherish those memories and a lot of my memories are tied to recipes like that.

433

00:34:35,778 --> 00:34:46,994

We celebrate life so much through many different activities and things, but honestly,

Sylvia, I think you feel the same way, and Aweed, it sounds like you feel the same way

434

00:34:46,994 --> 00:34:51,927

too, that food really gives us a different sense of comfort and memory.

435

00:34:52,067 --> 00:35:03,734

And I would say peace and connection to not just the people sitting around the table, but

the memories of family, whether they be

436

00:35:04,563 --> 00:35:09,527

relatives married in or close friends who become family.

437

00:35:09,567 --> 00:35:20,277

And that's, I think, the most important thing to remember that food is a way to nourish

not just our bodies, but our souls and to bring good people together.

438

00:35:20,277 --> 00:35:24,702

And if you find out they're not so good, you're not inviting them back to the table again.

439

00:35:24,702 --> 00:35:25,538

So.

440

00:35:25,538 --> 00:35:27,382

That's the practical answer.

441

00:35:27,382 --> 00:35:27,843

Right.

442

00:35:27,843 --> 00:35:32,147

But on that note, we want to invite you back to our table again sometime in the future.

443

00:35:32,147 --> 00:35:33,688

thank you so much for being here.

444

00:35:33,688 --> 00:35:35,751

It has been a joy and a pleasure.

445

00:35:35,751 --> 00:35:45,840

And I look forward to coming to Kentucky one day to break bread with you, cornbread maybe

in Kentucky with you and Sylvia.

446

00:35:46,141 --> 00:35:46,942

Take care.

447

00:35:46,942 --> 00:35:47,775

Bye bye.

448

00:35:47,775 --> 00:35:48,550

Goodbye.

449

00:35:48,550 --> 00:35:49,387

Bye.

450

00:35:50,614 --> 00:35:54,510

Okay, I'm going to stop recording, but just hang on a second.