Ruth Reichl

it was Jimmy Stewart. There was some great movie star who was like, the thing about l A is that you go out and you go for a swim when you're twenty five, and you lay down on the sun lounger when you go back in the house you're eighty four. It's so true. It's so true. It's like times past at all, and it's like, no, you're a hundred who are not? You really are? Hello, I'm Mini driver. Welcome

to Many Questions, Season two. I've always loved Pruce's question that it was originally a nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing the other player's true nature. It's just the scientific method, really. In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appeared to be universal.

I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across all these different disciplines. So I adapted prus questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think a pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least

about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of really remarkable people, ones that I am honored and humble to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to

all seven of these questions. We've whittled it down to which questions felt closest to their experience or the most surprising, or created the most fertile ground to connect my guest today on many questions, is food writer and revolutionary Ruth Miracle. There are very few people who can articulate their passion and point of view with as much clarity and humor. In two thousand and fifteen, she wrote a cookbook called My Kitchen Year, A hundred and thirty six recipes that

saved my life. Any insights she shared about life and it's attending pain along with the recipes were a constant companion to me in my kitchen and to millions of others. She was editor of the famed gourmet magazine in its heyday until its very end. Just do yourself a favor and googled David Foster Wallace's piece for that magazine entitled Consider the Lobster. She has repeatedly asked us to look at food differently, to consider her food is made and

the provenance of our ingredients. She began doing this at a time when ease and plasticity had become cornerstones of home cooking. My other favorite thing about Ruth there are many characters and disguise as she employed to avoid detection while working as a restaurant critic for The New York Times and for The l A Times. I Smell a TV show and I'm off to option this idea as soon as I have finished this. Where and when were you happiest? I am one of those people who, once

I got past my childhood, have been pretty happy. I mean, I think it's one of my great gifts in life is that I am a generally happy person. I mean, I usually like where I am and who I'm with, and I'm one of those people who never wants to leave a party or you know, wherever I am, and it's a great gift to have that. But probably I loved being at Gourmet. I loved my staff. I love the people I work with. I love the feeling that we were doing something consequential, that we were making a difference.

And it was also, you know, my son was ten and my husband had a job he really liked. We had money for the first time in our lives, and we weren't worried about, you know, can we pay the rent? And I was just happy in that job. And I learned, I mean, I've never really been a manager before, and I learned that there's something wonderful about having the ability to pull a staff together and to figure out what made other people happy and how to do that. So you know, when I look back at my life, it

was a great ten years. God. It's such a funny thing, isn't it. Like when you find yourself doing something you love and then you also find that you're good at something else he didn't know before that something's revealed in

that happiness, another attribute is revealed. But I always think there's like when something's going well in life, like everything's wonderful with my son and everything's great with my partner, I'm like, God, damn it, something's going to funk up on the workfront because my three legged stool is just never going to be balanced. And those moments where it is, where everything just seems to kind of level out, they

are pockets of such wonder they are. And the other thing about that moment in life was I was doing something that I really didn't know how to do, and I think that that is what sort of keeps you alive and young. I mean that sort of learning process. And that was wonderful too. I Mean there I was in a completely new world for me and sort of navigating my way through it was that being an editor, was that the plot that you didn't know how to

do well? I didn't know anything really about how to run a magazine, how to be an editor, how to be a boss, I mean all of that. I mean I've been a writer alone pretty much all my life. I've never been in charge of anything. And you know, the magazine world, you know, I mean, it's a newspaper person. You know, newspaper person. There's people are kind of like grubby. It's a grubby world and something I'm in this world of glamour. Everything about that job was completely new for me.

Was gool Conde nast. Yes. I think that was what was brilliant about that publishing house as well, was they were sort of I d perfectly unlikely people with the continuance of that brand like that. I think was what made them so brilliant was that they would go, no, Root Ricle should be editing gourmet, and but she's never done it before. It doesn't matter, She'll figure it out. And I kept saying, you know, you're crazy. You don't

want me for this. I don't know how to do it, and so I knew how has just kept saying, I want you to do this, and I know you can do it. And the thing about PSI and the thing that is truly gone forever is I think he was the last publisher who truly thought that if you give the public something of value, they will pay for it. He was absolutely not cynical about who the audience was and what you gave them. And he said, you know, what do you think is a great magazine? And I said,

it's a publication. It doesn't give people what they want. It gives them what they didn't know they want. And he said, yes, you're right about that. And I don't think. I mean today everybody does these focus groups trying to figure out, you know, how do we give the audience what they want so they will pay for it. And so I had a bigger vision. He was a very strange man, but he had a bigger vision of what

the media should provide to people. It's weird because it is it is a service, but it is a creative service. It's the idea that you should only be led by sort of. I don't think it should be the consumer that curates like That's the whole point is that lots of different things in I guess one would hope would be curated and then you get to choose, as opposed

to the job being what trendy or what like. You said a focus group that on that day of the week, eight people out of the ten said this thing, But if you ask them the following week, it might well be different. And the problem with that is, I mean, one of the reasons I really fear for our democracy is that increase. Certainly, we're just hearing what we want to hear. I mean, if you let the audience choose what they want to hear, they don't learn anything, you know,

they get no new ideas. And that's where we are now, right, you know, So you know the people who don't hear the other side, and you know the people on the other side only hear what they want to hear. And it's a very scary time. I think it's a crazy schism that again media is feeding into because they're not even trying to, I think, bridge the differences. It is such a chasm now that they're like, Okay, well we're on this side, We're going to curate for our side,

and the other side will curate for their side. I feel like that must have happened at some of the time in history, and that everything it's always some sort of path that winds its way and balances out. You're very optimistic. I mean, I'm not saying that there isn't the collateral damage of like lost generations, because I think they probably will be. I mean, it's it's pretty dark right now, I've got to say, but I don't know.

I hope for the sake of my kid that it works out, but a journey continues as opposed to it being this dead end that it feels like right now. I hope you're right, but I just keep thinking about my father used to talk about his father who read eight newspapers every day and he read right across the political spectrum. I try and do that, and it makes my blood boil and makes me feel sick. And that's maybe you know where this whole notion of being a

bit of a snowflake comes from. I think we have to have a stronger stomach and really start metabolizing what all these different thoughts are about how we should live. I totally agree with you, but I'm with you. I mean, my husband's very good about it, and he reads everything and listens to everything, and then I just go, how can you listen to that? I know, I know my boyfriend is the same, He reads all of it and then that is then synthesized through you know, the prisms

of him. But it requires balanced intellectual acuity that I do not have. You know, I don't read so Gari. It is astonishing the amount of different things that you've done in your life. It really is like I was just looking at of your career and it's amazing how

many different things you've done. This is off, sort of slightly off topic, but do you find that when you would finish one thing that even if it was hard, even if there was a fallow period, did you always have a sense that something else would be coming and that you just had to hold your course and just mine whatever this empty moment was and it would lead you into the next thing I did. And if it didn't, then I would you go out and actively try and

make it happen. But you know, I feel really fortunate because, you know, having grown up with a really crazy mother, I saw that how my father stayed saying was by always doing work that mattered to him. And so I grew up with this very strong sense of work will save you, and no matter what is going on in your life, if you do work that gives you a sense of purpose, then you'll be okay. So I've always gone to that place. I mean, even at the most despairing moments in my life, it's like, okay, go to

work and with that for you would be writing. You would just go and just apply the seat of your pants of the chair and just write. Not necessarily, I mean there's writing, but sometimes it's just you know, get a job, bussing tables, you know, anything, just do something. It is the only thing that will bring you back. So what a person, place, or experience most altered your life. Well, I come back to my mother. I mean I think, you know, my mother has really been the dominant influence

in my life, for both good and bad. My mother was bipolar, and she literally never know who she was going to be when she woke up in the morning. I mean, she she went through really wild mood changes. And I literally wake up every morning grateful that I'm not my mother, grateful for sanity. And I think it's the thing that has been the most defining thing of my life is that relationship with this woman who made

the life of everyone around her really difficult. But in the end, it just made me so grateful to be me, you know, I mean, she was incredibly intelligent, and you know, I mean Bertrand Russell asked her to marry him. And wow, I have fifty years of letters between my mother and Bertie Russell. If he published things, well, I mean they're mostly personal, you know, but every once in a while there's something. And she actually took me to meet him when I was twelve. Did you know who he was?

Did that? I mean at twelve, I can't imagine that. Oh, you know, I knew who he was because they talked about him all the time, and my father always talked about When Russell was in New York giving a series of lectures, he stayed with my family and he apparently had come. I was only a baby, but he thought I was older. He'd sort of got in his head that I was three, And he came with all these stories he had made up for a child, and my father said, and because you were too young, he told

them to me. Here I am with the greatest mind of Virginia Ration and he's telling me children's stories. Wow, so I did know who he was. So your mom was she an academic? But now she my mother got a PhD at this alt one when she was nineteen because of her bipolar and she started things and she never finished them. She had a million projects she started that never finished. And then as the disease sort of took hold more and more, she had these moments of

incredible grandiosity where she would blow everything up. But she also had a great capacity for fun when she was in the middle place or in a place where she was neither you lying in bed for months reading the same book over and over, or you know, out there having shopping spreece. Did you always know that it was a thing that was happening to her? Did you know that that wasn't the fundament of who your mother was, that that was this thing that was happening to her.

As I got older, I did. I don't think I knew it when I was very small. It must have been so confusing as a little child, you know, as I got old her, I mean, my mother was one of the first people to be taking lithium. I mean she took ten years before it was approved, and I mean, I will never forget she had basically a nervous breakdown, and I called her psychiatrist and said, look, she's been seeing you for five years and she's worse than she's

ever been. I was twelve, and he said, this new field called psychopharmacology, and I'm going to send your mother to see one of them. And I will never forget my mother coming home and saying, you can't imagine what relief it is to be told that it's not my fault.

You know, she set up in an analysis for all these years where people have said, you know, you're doing this because you hate your mother, You're doing this for this reason or that, and she said, even if they can't cure me, just the relief of being told that it's happening to me, that it isn't me is enormous. I'm sure, I'm sure that must have been a huge relief,

But that's a lot. At twelve, I remember reading he said that she just was like horrible cook, which I'm sure was to do with like the way that she was actually why but the fact that she was a horrible cook, which made you into this extraordinary cook. I was thinking this, did your love food come from a lack of its sort of preparation and provision or was

what did it happen? Later? I have always loved food, and I think part of it was that One of the ways I connected to my father was that he and I would walk New York on weekends and we would go to these food neighborhoods, you know. And he took me to Yorktown. He was German, and we go to Yorktown and it was like he found home in the food. And then we went to Spanish Harlem and

we went to the Lower East Side. And I always sort of understood food as I mean, I loved it, and I loved to eat, and I love to cook, you know. And I grew up in Greenwich Village, so the kids who went to PS forty one with me, it was like a real mix of you know, there were Japanese kids and Italian kids, and so I loved going to their homes and eating what they're there's made. But I always thought of food as much more than

just something to eat. I always thought of it as really emotional, and it was that it was about history and culture. And I discovered M. F. K. Fisher's writing when I was really young, and and she sort of soft food in a way that was bigger than just recipes. So I've always been comfortable in the kitchen. I've just always liked. You know, when I don't know what else to do, I go into the kitchen. My next question

is what question would you most like? Onset? I think the thing that I'm most curious about, I mean, is there a purpose to life? Or is it all just random? And I and I guess in some ways, I'm sort of is there a God? But it's bigger than that. It's like, do we just have to be good for our own sense of doing the right thing? Or is there is there some bigger reason? I mean, don't you wonder about oh God? Yes, all the time, and have written about it quite a lot recently as well, since

my mother died. I've been obsessed, it's not the right word, but really preoccupied with this notion of is meaning in life assigned? And is it assigned by us? Because I have a feeling that in this emotionless like the universe is so beautiful and so energetically driven, but it feels like there isn't intervention. There isn't an intervention when something

that we perceive as terrible is about to happen. I don't think there is anything interfering with our human experience, but it does feel like we decide what the meaning is, but most people want to believe that that's not the case. I think it's because it's frightening. I think because death

is utterly terrifying. I think it is at the back of our minds all the time, this notion of there is a finite amount of time that we are here, there is a clock ticking, and the idea of there being a parental force and figure, which I'm not saying I don't believe in on some level that there is a source energy that is bigger than us that we can choose to be a part of. I just think that this human thing, this physical reality, is purely experiential, and that us being good or being evil is up

to us. I don't know that there's like a greater meaning because it feels so much like it's just consciousness is kind of experiencing itself. It's like a flow that you can either be in or be out of, and the physical body bit is going to end. But perha tending your soul, tending your spirit, perhaps that's the that's as much meaning as I can find. But it could be that could also just still be an expression of

my grief. I don't know. It's really hard, and I feel like it gets harder all the time because we're making such a mess of the world as human beings.

I know. I mean it must be strange as well because you've also really been like revolutionary in an area, like you know, you say that you were part of this generation who was raised to kind of believe that they were going to get married and be taken care of by a man, and you just expressly went out and did something radical and different, not just in your own life, but then sort of affecting a whole movement

around this particular thing. So it's amazing because you see what it's like to actually affect change but not enough change. So man, I sort of have this feeling that we have lived through this moment and I see the world food first, so I can describe it in food terms, but it doesn't matter how you describe it. I mean, there was kind of a moment after World War Two when we as human beings had the opportunity to make

life on earth pretty wonderful. We've conquered so many of the things that had made life miserable for most human beings for most of human history. We've become comfortable for the first time. I mean, we weren't constantly being eaten up by insects, and we weren't you always cold or always hot. The middle class was ascendant for the first time. Ordinary people were living decent lives, and it looked like everybody's children were going to have better lives than they did.

And you know, we had antibiotics, and we were just we were conquering disease. And you know, in food, we actually had the ability to feed most people. We could conquer hunger. And there was this moment when it really looked like the human possibility was extraordinary. And then we let it all go to hell. And what did we do. We've destroyed the climate, We've waged more war, We've made

income inequality bigger than it's ever been before. You know, we've got this world where half the people were starving in the other half of our beasts. You know, this moment of promise, we just let it slip through our fingers. And you know, in terms of food, we let our food become increasingly industrialized. We've let you know, in this country,

six out of ten people have food related chronic diseases. So, you know, I feel like living in Berkeley in the seventies when we sort of saw what was happening to the food supply and we saw, you know, that climate change was on the horizon, and we didn't fix it when we had the opportunity. So um, I find that incredibly frustrating that we should have we should have created more change, we should have stopped the future that we

now have in our hands, and we didn't. And you know, there are million reasons for it, mostly political, but you know, we we let you know, all our resources get exploited in a terrible way. And I'm ashamed of it. I mean, I'm ashamed of my generation that we didn't do better. Sorry, that's really depressing, but it's not. You know, it's interesting, like that's the fatal flaw of I would say, of being human. But I mean, I've got to say it's

really men. I mean, it is like if we had shared power equally through all this time, I would take responsibility or have women take responsibility. Posh, really, but it's not. It's been man driven by agreed in a resistance to evolve. But you know, Darwin was right, it's like evolved or die, that's how it goes. I think you did a lot

I think you did an enormous amount. I don't think that any of that is lost, And if anything, it creates a blueprint that if it's not too late, we have plenty of examples of how people can affect change in this world. Look how quickly we came up with a vaccine for COVID. Wasn't it amazing? Just look at that? And I know, you know, I know that we had been working on coronavirus vaccines like that predated the COVID strain. But still, when all these people came together, look what

we did in a year. And that's what's so frustrating. I mean, we have that ability, We have these giant brains that we have been using in the wrong way, and it is it is really frustrating that we have this capability, and look at the world we've allowed to happen. We're trying to fix it. We're trying to fix it. So what's the quality you like least about yourself. I'm fear full, and I'm squeamish. I'm horribly embarrassingly squeamish about

what kinds of things like blood, you know. I mean I used to be afraid that I couldn't be a mother, because what if my kid cut himself and I fainted? Did you have a big giant sheet up when you were giving birth so that you couldn't see any of what was happening down by your apron pocket? No? I mean the amasically back. Giving birth is what I didn't know. I'd always been afraid of it. And then you get all these hormones that make it's all easy and a

good old oxytocin. Really, so you're squeamish and you're fearful. How is that when you're cooking? Like, how do you handle sort of butchery? Well, butchery is fine, but you know, I if I cut myself and it bleeds really badly, it's not pretty. So it's connected to your own mortality or the mortality of your No, I can faint taking the cats to the vet. Wow, I've always been that way,

and it's it's very embarrassing. I hate it. I just hate it from it makes you very empathetic to people who if you see someone who is feeling fearful in that way, it probably makes you very understanding of that. It does, And of course, the the other thing I have conquered this I wrote about it a lot was I'm phobic, and I was very phobic about driving over bridges and driving on you know, the eight lane highways

of California make me crazy. Do you get into the root of like what you think that comes from of the phobic nature? I think it's a way of tripping yourself up. I mean I've never been quite sure. I mean the only way I conquered it was by just facing it and just refusing to let it stop me. And I've written about it a lot, and I'm stunned at how many people are phobic. You know, maybe it's a way of not facing other fears, you know, wheel fears,

or maybe it's a way of metabolizing them. And actually, you know, it's a very literal thing to look at a freeway with six or eight lanes, and that can then become the physical embodiment of deep affears that you're right, can't be named. And there is certainly something really scary about it, terrifying. I mean, I try driving in London, where the roads were built for one small horse and carriage, and now you've got two range Rover drivers with battling entitlement.

It's a nice What did you write about the phobic thing in I want to read that. I wrote about it in my first book, Tender at the Bone, And what surprised me was just how many people that you would never expect to be phobic will come up to me and say, oh, that thing about the bridges, I so understand it. Wow. Tunnels terrifying, I mean, And the thing about tunnels is you can't get out, you know,

once you once you've committed to that tunnel, you're in it. Yes, And then you think, like, what if I did something really terrible? What if I turned the wheel? You know? I mean, I'm glad. I'm glad that you resist turning the wheel and that you write about it. I do think it's it's so interesting how our fears play out, you know, the ones that we don't name, and we're not trained to examine and to give a name to

these things that really frighten us. Like people love to go and see horror films, and I'm convinced it's just because it's like it's a way for them to actually scream at the fear and the terror of what it is to be alive. Sometimes. But I will tell you, you couldn't pay me to see a horror film. I think the last horror film myself was Psycho when I was eight, and I still won't get in a shower if I'm home a home. No that it's hideous. I

hate them, I absolutely hate them. Life is frightening enough, Like there are enough tunnels and bridges though we actually have to go through. And what would be your last meal? Well, you know, being a food person, it's a question I get asked a lot, you know, every time I answer it, I answer it different. But I think that's okay because the ending is maybe always changing, but today it being this sort of weird in between season. It would make

me happiest right this minute. If if I were going to die an hour from now, what I would want right now is one perfectly ripe peach, ah stone fruit. It is hard to get a perfect peach, you know, but I mean really juicy, the kind of peach that you have to go into the bathtub with all your clothes off to eat. You know, it just drips down. You know, the idea that they're so rare and you know they're fragrant, they're beautiful, and it's such an elusive flavor.

I mean, you know, I've had maybe in my whole life ten perfectly ripe peaches, but I would really love one right now. I like that that's the holy grail of food. It is like the perfect peach. I would put money on it being in Italy or Georgia. Actually, you can get a really good peach in a good year in California. Frog Hollow Farm grows really good peaches

up in northern California. But the thing is that you know, really perfect peaches don't travel, so no commercial people grow them because you know they're they're perfect when they're pipped, and then the next day they're not perfect anymore, so they're not a commercial product. I like that, though, it's like you have to go and find it. It requires your desire and lack of it being kind of immediately accessible.

I think that's probably also part of that. So maybe you'd have to go on a walk to find your peach. In this hour, you'd spend four or five minutes walking to find the peach, pick it, eat it, and then pop off, and I'm happy, happy to the tree. Can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I've always been afraid that I wouldn't be a good mother. I'm not a person who particularly loves babies. I like children, and their babies I find

kind of boring. I was really scared that it would be hard. And then we adopted a baby. Oh you did, Yes, that's right, and then the birth mother changed her mind. I can't I just can't imagine that pain. It was. I didn't recognize the person that I had become because I loved that little girl so much that even as I was walking her at night when she couldn't fall asleep, and I was like, somebody take this child for me. And I was like, I will kill anyone who tries

to take this child from me. And I wanted to leave the country with her and give up my life and leave the country. Then I miraculously became pregnant, and I am convinced that the two are connected. And you had trouble conceiving in your life, yes, And we had done everything. I had never been pregnant, wow, I had.

We had gone through every kind of you know, in vitro fertilization, years of trying to get pregnant, never been pregnant, and so we adopt Gav and I genuinely think that something happened with that, you know, the experience of having her and loving her so much, and then you know having her taken away, which was just devastating, and you know, I would wake up thinking that she was crying for

me and wondering why I never came. And then literally a month later, out of nowhere, I'm suddenly pregnant and I was forty one years old, and our whole story had been so public in Los Angeles. I mean, actually L A Law did all they somebody heard it and they wrote a whole episode of l A Law kind of based on this, and it was so public that I didn't even want to go to the drug store and get a pregnancy test. I mean I actually said.

I was with some friends the night before and everybody was drinking, and I said, I'm not going to drink tonight. And my friend Robin said why and I said, I think I'm pregnant. And she said, how late are you? I said one day? And she said I thought you had lost it completely. I thought, okay, just losing Gav put her over over the top, poor thing. And the next day I went and I went to the supermarket and I bought a pregnancy test and I went into

the bathroom at on my way to work. And so I'm at the l A times and I'm in there and those now it's pretty quick, but then you had to juggle all these things. I'm in one of those stalls, juggling all this and sure enough it comes up that I'm pregnant. And I call my gynecologist and say, you know, I just did a pregnancy test and I'm pregnant. You know those things, aren't it all accurate. Don't believe it. You're not pregnant. There's no way. Come down here and

I'll give you a real test. And I go down there. She said, oh my god, you are pregnant. But you can't tell anyone because the chances that you're going to actually carry this baby to term. She said, you're one day pregnant. I made It's like, you can't tell anyone till you're at least three months pregnant. And I immediately go to my husband's office. He was then the news director of the CBS station, and I'd never stopped to

see him before. I stopped in on my way home from the doctor, and I said, you know, Michael, you can't tell anyone. And Michael immediately turns added shouts to the newsroom. She's Oh, my goodness, what a joy, What a joy that must have been. And then I had the easiest pregnancy. I mean I was ever sick for a moment. I worked until the day it was born. I never had more energy. I thought, God, if i'd know him being pregnant was like this, I would have

been pregnant a hundred times. No, wonder if all Kennedy had all those kids. Wow, how amazing. I know. And please feel free to say, no, I don't want to talk about that. But did you ever have any contact with Gaby afterwards? No? And we were sure we would. I mean we're absolutely sure that. I mean we fought this incord. I mean it was it was a crazy story, but I feel like, I mean, this is I'm not a spiritual person, but I feel like we felt we had a purpose in her life had we given her

back immediately. I mean, she was going to be the child of an unwin mother who was not very motherly. And because we went to court, the mother called her longtime boyfriend, who she had not told she was pregnant. Because she had dreams of a better life, and so she'd come to this country to get an abortion, but by the time she got enough money, she didn't have

enough money to have an abortion. Anyway, they got married and he was like a lovely man, and so I feel like we our purpose in her life was we gave her a family. I think about her all the time, and I'm glad she got to grow up with her biological parents. I hope they stayed together, and I hope she's had a good life. But I feel like she was very loved for the first four months of her life.

And I think that matters to Oh my god, yes it does, and your basic architecture, it does, and you know, it's sort of right back to the beginning, that notion of purpose, you know, and self sacrifice. And sometimes it's sometimes it looks like you're getting a raw deal, but I don't know. Invariably there's something in that doesn't mean it's not incredibly sad, but you've got your nick. What a miracle. I mean, yes, it was a miracle. It worked out the end, and I hope it did for

her too. I hope so too. Oh Ruth, and thank you so much for talking to me. It's been such an immense pleasure. Likewise, I'm so inspired by your life and all the things that you've done, and it makes me just want to do more. So this was this was so easy. I mean, you know, I've never met you before, and I feel like I'm talking to an old friend. So thank you. Ruth has two more recent cookbooks entitled Garlic and Sapphires and Tender at the Bone. And from that particular book, I can only tell you

make the lemons who flay. Just finished listening to this, and then go and make the lemons who flay Many questions. Is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Round. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman.

Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Annicke Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support, Henry Driver