Alison Cayne, THE HAVEN'S KITCHEN COOKING SCHOOL
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[0:47]I'm here today with Allison Cain, who's the founder of Haven's Kitchen, a cooking school
[0:51]cafe and event space in New York.
[0:53]She's the author of the Haven's Kitchen Cooking School, recipes and inspiration to build
[0:57]a lifetime of confidence in the kitchen.
[0:59]She's also the creator of podcast In the Sauce on the Heritage Radio Network, and recently
[1:03]launched a line of fresh made sauces.
[1:05]She has a master's in food studies from NYU, a mother of five Allison currently lives
[1:09]in New York.
[1:10]So welcome Allison.
[1:11]Thanks for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.
[1:13]Thank you for having me.
[1:15]I am particularly excited because you have five kids and I have four kids.
[1:18]So now I feel like I'm like a slacker.
[1:20]Yes, I was just thinking that, yeah.
[1:25]And not only that, so you started Haven's Kitchen, and I want to know about how you
[1:28]started.
[1:29]I know you went to school for nutrition, you have this whole amazing background, but you stumbled
[1:34]on a carriage house.
[1:35]Tell me how you found it Haven's Kitchen and turned it into a cooking school and an
[1:38]event space and now a cookbook and all the rest.
[1:41]Yeah.
[1:42]Well, I'll just sit back now.
[1:43]Okay, you can talk for the next 40 minutes.
[1:46]Basically, I was a stay-at-home mom and when I was 38, I decided to go back to school.
[1:51]I did not get a degree in nutrition.
[1:53]I got a degree in food systems and food studies and sustainability.
[1:59]Nutrition, I'm like a, I really love food.
[2:03]Yeah, sorry.
[2:04]Sorry.
[2:05]I didn't tell you correctly.
[2:06]People usually say like I either went to culinary school or I'm a nutritionist and I'm
[2:10]neither a chef nor a nutritionist.
[2:13]I'm a really good home cook, but I did get a degree in sustainability and food systems.
[2:20]And basically all that means, you know, from sort of production through post-consumer
[2:28]usage, what are the things that affect what we eat and how we eat and how it's grown
[2:35]and everything.
[2:36]And what I learned sort of in that program over and over again was the importance of home
[2:41]cooking, that people who cook from scratch tend to be more engaged with the environment,
[2:47]tend to care more about the way that farm labor, you know, is treated.
[2:52]They're definitely more careful about their personal health.
[2:55]They're sort of impacting the larger system from a lot of different places positively.
[3:01]And in 2010, you know, I was teaching people how to cook in my kitchen just because I liked
[3:08]it so much and friends of mine didn't really feel comfortable in the kitchen or they were
[3:12]having kids and they didn't know how to make food for themselves and their partners or
[3:16]they didn't, you know, there was a lot of confusion, like sort of fear and loathing around
[3:20]the kitchen.
[3:21]So I thought I would just, you know, start an actual school where I could take people
[3:27]to the farmer's market and then teach them how to cook and I could find a little space near
[3:32]the market and bring them and lock up after I was done and, you know, it wasn't a novel
[3:37]concept.
[3:38]People have these little schools all over the world, just not in New York.
[3:42]And then I fell in love with this carriage house on 17th Street and it was way too big for
[3:47]what I wanted to do and it had ground level retail, which was ridiculous and everyone said,
[3:52]don't do that.
[3:53]It's a nightmare.
[3:54]And of course they did it.
[3:56]And then I didn't really know that it was going to be an event space, but month one,
[4:01]a couple came to us and wanted to have their rehearsal dinner there and we figured it out.
[4:06]And now we do about 300 events a year.
[4:08]Oh my gosh.
[4:09]Yeah, we do like 40 weddings and we do ton of like corporate dinners and brand activations.
[4:16]And, you know, we have an in-house catering team and design team and everything.
[4:21]So it's still a cooking school very much at the heart of it and we have an all day cafe,
[4:26]but the events are really what drives the business and pays the rent.
[4:31]And which part of it is most exciting to you still?
[4:33]You know, what's exciting to me is that it works again.
[4:37]I'm going to keep using the word system probably because that's just how I think of things.
[4:42]Like what's exciting to me is that it all works together.
[4:46]I wouldn't want to just own an event venue, but I couldn't in Manhattan with rent and
[4:51]labor the way it is just own a recreational cooking school or a cafe.
[4:57]So, you know, the way that they all work together and the way that they kind of create
[5:03]an atmosphere for people that's about food, but it's also about education and community
[5:09]and confidence and, you know, now we've expanded into a line of sauces and grocery stores.
[5:15]So, and you can order them and, yeah, you can roll over a restaurant by them at Whole Foods.
[5:20]We just moved into the new wagmans and, yeah, it's really fun.
[5:25]So learning, you know, I'm excited about the way it all works together and the way each
[5:31]piece of it, you can learn from and it influences another piece of it.
[5:36]And, you know, that there's really, you can come to Haven's kitchen and actually sit
[5:40]and use our Wi-Fi and drink water and actually cost us money or you can come and have
[5:45]a $50,000 wedding.
[5:48]And there's a place for every single person in that line, you know, to engage with what
[5:54]we've built.
[5:55]So, that makes me feel very happy.
[5:58]And tell me about the cookbook.
[5:59]The cookbook, you know, basically, this is funny.
[6:02]I was just actually talking to my friend who made me write the cookbook.
[6:06]So probably week one when I opened, for I've been a cookbook collector for a long time
[6:12]and moved about half of my collection to Haven's kitchen just to have in the cafe for
[6:17]people to read if they want to read.
[6:18]What do you mean by collection?
[6:19]A company cookbooks do you have?
[6:21]I mean, I probably have three to 500 cookbooks.
[6:26]My gosh.
[6:27]I read them like novels.
[6:29]They are, to me, history books and anthropology books and comedies and they're everything.
[6:37]Like if you find really good food writers, there's to me nothing more fun to read.
[6:43]So once I fall in love with one, I can't really let it go.
[6:48]It's kind of a hoarder thing of cookbooks.
[6:51]That's awesome.
[6:52]I love that.
[6:53]And, you know, I mean, I just start sending mine to you.
[6:56]Yeah.
[6:57]I know.
[6:58]It's good.
[6:59]You got to clean some out every once in a while.
[7:00]But, you know, there's, I mean, I have a book on like Southern Indian cooking that
[7:06]because I wrote a paper one semester in school about Kerala and sort of the cuisine of
[7:13]Kerala and it has to do with trade routes and different religions and all sorts.
[7:17]It's really this like completely cross-disciplinary anyway.
[7:22]So I had all these cookbooks at Haven's kitchen.
[7:26]This woman comes into the shop and she's like, who's cookbooks are all of these?
[7:29]And I said mine.
[7:30]And she said, well, I, you know, it's kind of weird because I was the art designer on like
[7:37]the majority of these, even though they were from different publishers.
[7:41]So this one woman had moved from, you know, fade into Abrams to, you know, whatever.
[7:49]And she was then, I think, at Abrams or at Artisan and she had been the art designer
[7:54]designer on all of these books that were like my favorite books.
[7:57]So we became really close friends very quickly because I just thought she was a creative
[8:01]genius.
[8:02]And she kept saying, you should write a cookbook.
[8:05]This is perfect.
[8:06]You need to have a cookbook.
[8:07]And I kept saying, I really don't want to add another, the world doesn't need another
[8:11]like just kind of vanity cookbook, like another shop or thing that's like making a cookbook.
[8:17]Like if I can think of something that's really going to help people and teach people
[8:21]things they need to know and contribute something, I'm happy to write a book.
[8:25]And so it took me, we opened in 2012.
[8:28]It really took me like three or four years to kind of come to the what I wanted to teach.
[8:34]I wanted to do on a teach.
[8:35]I didn't want to teach recipes because I feel like the number one reason why people don't
[8:42]cook is intimidation.
[8:44]You know, they say that it's that my kitchen's too small or I don't have time or I don't
[8:48]know what to make.
[8:49]The reality is that behind that is a discomfort and an intimidation factor.
[8:56]And these gorgeous, beautiful books with these complicated recipes that have all these
[9:01]ingredients that you have to go sort of on a hunt for and spend a half a day trying
[9:05]to find, that's not going to make you feel more confident.
[9:09]That's going to make you feel more intimidated.
[9:11]So I wanted to write something that kind of broke it down and kind of went a little bit
[9:16]behind the scenes of like what is in a dish and how do you make it your own and how
[9:22]do you get to the point where you understand what's happening enough, either in the process
[9:28]of making it or when the ingredients come together, that you then feel like you get it.
[9:34]You know, like you grew up in Manhattan, right?
[9:37]Okay.
[9:38]So I did too.
[9:39]I don't know if you, I did not learn how to write a bike.
[9:41]I learned how to write a bike, but in the summers, okay.
[9:43]So I never, my parents never taught me they weren't, they were city kids themselves.
[9:49]And everyone says, you know, this is easiest riding a bike and for someone like me,
[9:53]I'm like, that's not a nice thing to say because, you know, people kind of assume that cooking
[9:58]cooking should be intuitive.
[10:00]I'm how as a human, especially I think is a female human,
[10:03]somehow it's supposed to be in your bones
[10:05]that you know how to make this stuff.
[10:07]But it's just like riding a bike.
[10:09]If you aren't taught, at least the fundamentals,
[10:13]you're going to figure it out and you're
[10:15]going to hack it together and you might be able to stay up.
[10:17]But you're never going to be good at it.
[10:21]And you're never going to feel confident doing it.
[10:23]And you're never going to be like, look, I have no hands.
[10:26]So my goal is to kind of create something
[10:28]that gets people to that feeling.
[10:30]And so I feel like we did when we wrote it.
[10:34]It took two years.
[10:36]It was a very much a group effort.
[10:37]I sat at the kitchen table in the middle of Haven's Kitchen
[10:41]and just kind of shot out questions at everyone.
[10:44]I kind of organized it the way that I wish other cookbooks
[10:48]had been organized for me.
[10:50]And I tried to make a kind of cross-referencing
[10:52]so you can take one, something from the meat chapter
[10:56]and put it with something from the sauce chapter
[10:58]and something from the grains chapter
[11:00]and have, even though there are, I guess,
[11:01]300 recipes have it be like 1,000 recipes or, you know?
[11:05]And I like that the recipes aren't so obscure.
[11:08]They're like things I would actually want to eat.
[11:10]Some of my favorite foods.
[11:11]You have like chicken, pired, and rusted to eat
[11:13]and like, yeah, like a great chocolate cake.
[11:15]And I'm like, well, that's a whole meal.
[11:17]Like if I could just like, you know, deep dive into this,
[11:20]get in my kitchen and take the time and just do it,
[11:23]then there's things like some of the other cook
[11:25]and not to say I don't love looking at beautiful pictures
[11:28]if amazing food that I'll never cook myself.
[11:30]Right. Or like, you know, sculpted desserts
[11:32]that are like impossible for a home cook.
[11:34]But I enjoy that.
[11:35]But this is like, okay, and it's the same way,
[11:37]like the barefoot can test the cookbooks
[11:39]or like, they're like things I'd want to actually,
[11:41]yeah. And she's amazing.
[11:42]Yeah, and I mean, I don't make dessert.
[11:45]I am not, I don't like baking.
[11:47]I don't like measurements.
[11:49]I'm really not, I forget about dessert most of the time.
[11:53]Like I'll just put a chocolate bar on the table
[11:55]and call it a day.
[11:56]And so even with the dessert chapter,
[11:58]I was like, they have to be things that are not fussy.
[12:03]I can't stand fussy.
[12:04]That's a good word.
[12:05]So poaching a pair candidly is one of the easiest things
[12:08]you can do.
[12:09]It makes you feel like a goddess
[12:12]because your house smells like pear and vanilla
[12:15]and, you know, you feel in cinnamon.
[12:17]And you're like, you know, patting around in a moo-mo
[12:20]and bare feet.
[12:21]And you know, then you serve these beautiful pairs.
[12:24]And all you need to do is like put a little glob of ice cream
[12:27]and everyone's like, oh my gosh, you know,
[12:29]like those are the things that I really want.
[12:31]I want people ultimately to feel confident.
[12:34]That's really, that's what it all comes down.
[12:36]And do you think everybody can be confident?
[12:38]There's no such thing as that.
[12:39]I'm just not a good cook or a thousand percent.
[12:42]I believe that soul wholeheartedly.
[12:44]You know, again, there's like anything else.
[12:47]Some people might have a little bit
[12:49]of a natural sort of proclivity to it.
[12:53]But there's nobody that can't make a good meal.
[12:56]And there's no reason why they shouldn't be able to,
[13:01]you know.
[13:02]I see like, to your point about intimidation,
[13:05]recipes give me a sense of comfort in a way.
[13:08]Yeah.
[13:09]Like I can't, I used to love to cook when I had more time
[13:13]and I can make these like beautiful dinner parties
[13:15]and whatever.
[13:16]And I love to bake.
[13:16]I feel really good about baking unlike you.
[13:18]But that's why you like recipes.
[13:20]Yeah.
[13:21]So I like, I'll just feel it, but my husband
[13:24]he'll just oh, I think whatever and he'll just throw stuff.
[13:26]And it's amazing.
[13:27]Yeah.
[13:28]But that makes me nervous.
[13:29]Yeah.
[13:30]I mean, the world is kind of divided into two.
[13:32]You know, there are people that like the comfort
[13:36]and security of the list and the recipe next to them
[13:40]versus the people like me that that just makes,
[13:43]I feel kind of rage when I have like a shade of paper
[13:46]with measurements next to me.
[13:47]And I'm always second guessing like, oh wait,
[13:50]did it say two tablespoons or two teaspoons?
[13:52]And did I do this out of order?
[13:53]And it just gives me Agita.
[13:55]What I'm hoping is that they're in there,
[13:58]there's like kind of a mix of both.
[14:00]Yes, you can take this and wing it.
[14:02]Or you can follow these simple steps and just,
[14:06]and it will try to lay it out for you
[14:08]so that it's comfortable and you don't have to be craning
[14:10]your neck every three seconds back and forth
[14:12]to make sure that you're on track.
[14:14]But I don't think that you're, you know,
[14:16]someone like your husband is necessarily like a better cook.
[14:20]Oh, he is, you know, he's just a more intuitive cook.
[14:25]And he's probably gotten confident
[14:27]because he doesn't more often, right?
[14:29]Like anything else.
[14:30]The more often you do something, the more confident you are.
[14:34]The more fun you have doing something,
[14:36]the more often you do it and the more loves it.
[14:38]The more loves it.
[14:39]So it's, it only follows, right?
[14:41]If he, you know, if he loves it,
[14:42]he's gonna be better and better and better at it.
[14:45]And he's not gonna have that sort of like emotional block
[14:48]between him and just, he's gonna take risks.
[14:52]He's gonna wing it, you know,
[14:54]he's probably gonna just enjoy the process more,
[14:57]which I think comes out in the food a little more.
[14:59]That's funny, when I was, before I was even dating him,
[15:02]we were, you know, chit chatting, whatever,
[15:04]and he was saying how much he loved to cook.
[15:06]And I was thinking, oh, I don't really love to cook,
[15:08]but I love to bake.
[15:09]Right.
[15:10]It's so funny because then I realized like when I was younger,
[15:12]I was always looking for a partner
[15:14]who liked the same things I like.
[15:16]Yeah.
[15:17]He likes to, oh, I love to cook too.
[15:18]Right.
[15:19]But then I realized he likes to cook,
[15:21]and I like to bake, so now we have a whole meal.
[15:23]Yeah.
[15:24]And that's so much better than like the two cooks
[15:25]in the kitchen.
[15:26]It's also very much, you know,
[15:28]I think people who love to bake tend to be,
[15:33]they just tend to have, you know,
[15:34]there's actually a lot of research done
[15:36]on why cooking classes are the best things
[15:39]for like corporate team building activities.
[15:41]And bridal showers where like Aunt Marge
[15:44]doesn't know the best friend from college.
[15:47]You know, and instead of putting them all in a luncheon
[15:49]together, you do some sort of like cooking class,
[15:52]because it's parallel play to some extent.
[15:55]But cooking brings out introverts, you know,
[15:58]in a way that extroverts might be sort of more dominant
[16:01]at a party.
[16:02]Like they're all these different skills, right?
[16:04]And my guess is that personality types tend to follow
[16:07]a little bit along who likes to bake with recipes
[16:11]who likes to measure and weigh.
[16:13]I have five kids, two of them are measure way people,
[16:17]three of them are like throw in some things
[16:20]and toss it around kind of people.
[16:22]Your kids are so lucky because they must have,
[16:24]I mean, just to grow up with someone who's cooking
[16:26]all the time, they must like, I know you know.
[16:30]Yeah. Well, in a way, yes, and in a way, no,
[16:32]I think like I'm lucky that my mother hated the kitchen
[16:37]because I had complete full rain.
[16:39]You know, it was my domain.
[16:41]I started playing in there when I was eight.
[16:44]I started making them dinner, you know,
[16:46]right around that time.
[16:48]I had my mother been sort of the owner of that room.
[16:53]I don't know that I would have developed my love
[16:55]and confidence in there.
[16:58]So it can work both ways.
[17:00]I do think my kids have been exposed to great food
[17:05]and to simple great food for their whole lives.
[17:09]And I think they're happy about that.
[17:10]I think they eat very well, which they're happy about.
[17:14]I definitely think my daughter,
[17:15]I can think my 16 year old in particular
[17:18]might sort of if she were on the podcast right now.
[17:21]She'd be like, yeah, but then I don't get to make,
[17:23]you know, I don't get to be as creative
[17:25]because mom's kind of in charge, yeah.
[17:29]The 16 year old could find something negative.
[17:30]And it does.
[17:31]Yeah.
[17:32]Yeah.
[17:33]Basically, I have heard, you know,
[17:36]it used to be my mother's voice.
[17:37]It was like that criticism in my head.
[17:39]Now it's my daughter.
[17:41]It's not nice how that works, yes.
[17:42]You can never be free.
[17:43]Never, yeah.
[17:45]So with five kids, and I hate these questions,
[17:47]like how do you do it all?
[17:48]It's like, I don't know.
[17:49]You just, every day is different.
[17:50]Yeah.
[17:51]But how do you balance for you at least
[17:54]and not just when are you dealing with the kids?
[17:56]When they're at school, are you like full on business?
[18:00]Do you do emails at night?
[18:01]Like, how are you dealing with your time at least?
[18:04]Well, so the kid question, I think,
[18:06]about sort of in like technical sort of time management.
[18:10]And then I think of it as like emotional,
[18:13]like brain space management.
[18:16]I'll go to the first one first,
[18:17]which is that my kids are all in high school and college.
[18:21]A few are in boarding school.
[18:23]And so I have one living at home right now.
[18:26]So I, you know, she's in college, living at home.
[18:30]So my time is very much my own.
[18:33]Okay.
[18:33]I started the business when they were all at home.
[18:36]And they were under 14, I guess.
[18:38]So that was a little more challenging.
[18:42]But, you know, I don't need to say like,
[18:45]how privileged I am to A, be able to own my own business,
[18:48]make my hours, have the help that I needed.
[18:51]So, you know, there were times when I got called out
[18:56]of a meeting to go to fill in the blank,
[18:58]doctor, library, school conference, whatever,
[19:01]that I was very acutely aware
[19:03]that I was in a great position that I was able to do,
[19:05]which many women aren't.
[19:07]But for me, the emotional management
[19:10]is what took the big adjustment.
[19:12]You know, especially with five teenagers,
[19:15]there's just always something going on.
[19:17]And I think the texting, you know,
[19:20]they can text you in a way that they didn't used
[19:22]to be able to.
[19:23]So, you know, I'm having the worst day of my life.
[19:26]I'm gonna fail everything.
[19:28]I, you know, I hate everyone.
[19:30]And then I'm left with a text message,
[19:33]like what am I supposed to do?
[19:34]You know, like she's, I want to do something.
[19:37]I want to help, she's in class.
[19:39]I don't even know where she is.
[19:40]And then I'm thinking about it all day.
[19:43]You know, it's just there, like kind of weighing.
[19:46]And then that night, I'll check in
[19:47]and I'll be like, are you okay?
[19:48]Is there, and she'll be like, yeah, totally.
[19:50]What do you mean?
[19:51]Oh my God.
[19:52]You just like threw a bag of duty at me.
[19:55]And I'm like holding it.
[19:56]And you just went off and you're fine.
[19:58]And then some level that is
[20:00]kind of my job.
[20:01]Like I feel like I am the holder of the bags of duty.
[20:05]For some, you know, to some extent,
[20:07]that's my job as a mother, you know.
[20:10]But I think the thing that I learned kind of early on
[20:13]and I applied it from children to work
[20:16]is if you're measuring every day
[20:21]or even every week,
[20:23]your graph, if you picture a graph,
[20:26]is gonna look very jagged.
[20:28]The downs are gonna be like,
[20:29]ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know,
[20:31]good news, bad news, scary news,
[20:33]especially with a lot of kids.
[20:35]No one's ever okay at the same time.
[20:37]You know, usually,
[20:39]one of them is having some sort of situation.
[20:43]But if you go to sort of like the monthly,
[20:46]or you take yourself like 10,000, 30,000 feet up
[20:49]and you look at that graph,
[20:51]it starts to smooth out.
[20:53]You know, what looks like a little jaggedy climb
[20:57]starts to look like a pretty straight,
[20:58]nice line going up in the right direction.
[21:02]And as long as that line is going in the right direction,
[21:05]they're growing, they're learning,
[21:06]they're healthy, you know, they're making good choices.
[21:10]You're doing most of the time,
[21:11]pretty good parenting, most of the time.
[21:15]Then you can kind of not be as attached
[21:17]to like the little ups and downs.
[21:20]And it's the same thing with work, you know,
[21:22]especially in the sauces like with the, you know,
[21:25]there's so many, there's distributors,
[21:27]there's salespeople, they're buyers, they're consumers,
[21:29]there's trucks, there's warehouses,
[21:31]there's all these things that can go wrong all the time
[21:34]and they do.
[21:35]And yet, is the business moving in the right direction
[21:38]generally from month to month?
[21:40]Do I see growth?
[21:42]Do I see my team developing and I learning?
[21:44]And if all of that is generally yes,
[21:48]then I've kind of learned not to sweat the small stuff
[21:50]as much.
[21:51]Wow, I want that, I want that attitude.
[21:54]I have to like steal that and like cultivate.
[21:56]I have to like drop it into my head
[21:58]because I am not as good at it.
[22:01]I mean, it's a simple question.
[22:02]Like, I'm in this moment, this feels awful.
[22:06]My kid is feeling the blank, you know,
[22:09]whether it's suffering or making other suffer,
[22:11]or whatever it is, is this a permanent situation
[22:15]or is this something that will pass?
[22:18]If it will pass, then I'm in a position
[22:22]to extract good out of it.
[22:24]You know, how can I use this to either teach them
[22:28]or learn something or test myself or help them grow?
[22:34]If it's a permanent, then that's a different story.
[22:36]You know, but most of the stuff that gets us crazy
[22:40]is you won't even remember in three months.
[22:43]So how did you cultivate this?
[22:45]Did you do like, is this like a yoga meditation thing?
[22:47]Is this like a therapy thing or is it just this?
[22:49]It's everything.
[22:50]I mean, I'm a New Yorker, right?
[22:52]I've been a therapy for 20 years now.
[22:55]And I think that's part of it.
[22:57]I think also when I got divorced,
[22:59]someone I don't know who dropped a book by Pemma Chudron
[23:03]on my desk and left it there for me.
[23:06]It's called One Things Fall Apart.
[23:08]And she's a Buddhist nun teacher.
[23:11]And it's very much about not the difference
[23:15]between like human pain and human suffering.
[23:19]You know, I fall down the stairs and it hurts
[23:22]versus I fall down the stairs.
[23:23]Why does this always happen to me?
[23:25]Why am I always falling down the stairs?
[23:26]I'm probably gonna keep falling down the stairs.
[23:29]No one understands that I fall down the stairs.
[23:31]Like that's suffering.
[23:33]And trying to get yourself off of that
[23:35]and into just like this is what it is
[23:38]and not turning it into something,
[23:41]not fighting it, not trying to distract yourself from it,
[23:45]not creating more of a problem by adding to the problem.
[23:49]You know?
[23:50]I mean, we're all in pain a lot at the time
[23:53]and it's just a function of, do we medicate ourselves?
[23:56]Do we take it out on other people?
[23:58]Do we numb ourselves?
[24:00]Or we just like, okay, I'm gonna feel my feelings
[24:03]and learn from it.
[24:05]I mean, now you have to write a book about this.
[24:07]I think this book has been written.
[24:10]I don't know that I would be, I don't know.
[24:12]Yeah, well, but thanks.
[24:13]I mean, everybody has their own take on it.
[24:14]Yes, that's true.
[24:15]You don't have to be a Buddhist nun.
[24:17]I mean, I would rather take advice
[24:19]just if I may understand.
[24:20]What it's like, I mean, you know, well, anyway.
[24:23]Well, what is coming next,
[24:25]what you're doing is zillion things.
[24:26]The sauces are really a big, exciting thing for us.
[24:30]I mean, we-
[24:31]And the sauces are branded haven's kitchen.
[24:33]Yes, they are having people want to order them.
[24:35]Haven's kitchen.
[24:36]Yes, go on restaurant.
[24:37]Go on restaurant food, kick.
[24:38]Any whole foods, we're gonna be in all 500 whole foods
[24:41]nationally in April, we're in about 300 stores.
[24:46]They are really, you know, about 2017, I guess.
[24:51]I really took a look at this business.
[24:52]I didn't intend to build sort of a scalable business.
[24:57]I really just wanted a place that made people happy
[25:00]and that taught people how to cook.
[25:02]And then, you know, being in New York,
[25:04]having a business like that, it's nice,
[25:08]but at the end of the day, it's more expensive every year.
[25:12]And you want to grow your team
[25:13]and you want to keep learning yourself.
[25:15]And so I decided I wanted to grow.
[25:18]But I wanted to grow with the mission.
[25:21]And the mission is, you know,
[25:22]really creating confident home cooks
[25:25]and supporting them however we can.
[25:28]And the event's business as good as it has been
[25:31]and as much as it pays the rent and drives the business,
[25:35]it's not exactly aligned with the mission.
[25:38]So I wanted to do something that grew the company
[25:40]but also expanded the mission.
[25:42]And at the end of the day, it was very easy
[25:45]because every night in class we say to our students,
[25:49]do you like cooking if not why not?
[25:51]What do you like?
[25:52]What would help you cook more?
[25:53]What gets in the way?
[25:54]All those sort of like questions.
[25:56]And most of the time people were saying,
[25:59]I just need a good sauce.
[26:01]I don't know how to get.
[26:03]I don't want to make lemongrass sauce in my Cuisinart
[26:06]or I don't know how to mince garlic
[26:08]so that it's like not chunky and gross.
[26:10]Or, you know, this sauce really makes the meal.
[26:13]And yet all the options out there are shelf stable
[26:16]and they're filled with preservatives and sodium
[26:18]and extra sugar.
[26:19]And, you know, you have to kind of commit to like
[26:22]curry night, you know, if you want to do something
[26:24]like a little bit global.
[26:26]So it was a very easy segue for us to create a product
[26:30]that worked for our students,
[26:31]learning how to make that, you know,
[26:34]make a million pouches a year that took some learning.
[26:37]But it's been just so much fun
[26:39]because now I'm learning an entirely new business.
[26:41]So it's been a blast challenging, but a blast.
[26:45]Do you have any advice?
[26:47]Either for people writing a cookbook, take your pick
[26:49]or cooking.
[26:52]Yeah, I mean, I think my advice in general
[26:54]is if there's something that in your brain,
[26:57]you think you want to do or you want to understand,
[27:01]but there's something blocking you from it.
[27:05]It's worth sitting down with yourself
[27:07]and trying to figure out what is causing the block.
[27:10]Because procrastination is just another word
[27:14]for like, I'm trying to avoid something
[27:17]because it's triggering something in me
[27:18]that I don't want to feel, right?
[27:20]So if you can get to the heart of why you're not doing
[27:24]something, then I think it's better
[27:27]than just continuing to sort of chastise yourself
[27:30]for not doing it.
[27:31]So I think you can apply that to anything.
[27:33]Not everyone has to cook.
[27:35]You know, I will say that there's a lot of joy
[27:38]that comes from creating a meal for yourself
[27:40]and for your family or your friends.
[27:42]You will be taking care of your personal health
[27:44]and you will be actually doing something positive
[27:47]for the environment, but not everyone has to do that.
[27:50]But if you feel like you want to do it
[27:52]and there's something that's getting
[27:54]in the way of you doing it,
[27:56]it's worth just sitting yourself down
[27:58]and figuring out what that is.
[27:59]And I would say that's the same
[28:01]with starting a business writing a cookbook,
[28:03]making a meal, writing a bike, whatever it is, you know?
[28:07]I think people don't spend enough time
[28:09]just locking themselves in a room
[28:12]and asking themselves like,
[28:13]what do they really want?
[28:15]And who do they want to be?
[28:17]And what is it that they want to do
[28:18]that they're not doing and maybe get to the why?
[28:21]Wow.
[28:22]That's my sort of overwhelming umbrella of advice.
[28:25]Again, into your book.
[28:26]It's your next one.
[28:28]Thanks, you can write it.
[28:29]Okay, and then I'll just sit here and talk.
[28:32]Okay, I can do this all day.
[28:33]That's great.
[28:34]All right, well, thanks for coming on Mom's Sometime Treatments.
[28:37]Yes, thanks for having me.
[28:39]Thanks for listening to Mom's Sometime to read books,
[28:41]the award-winning podcast.
[28:43]This episode has been sponsored by Book of the Month Club.
[28:46]Book of the Month Club.com,
[28:48]and your code zibby to get your first book for just $5.
[28:51]You can follow me on Instagram at mom's don't have time
[28:54]to read books.
[28:55]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound
[28:57]for the Sound Editing.
[28:59]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[29:00]for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.
[29:03]Thanks for listening.
[29:04]You could always email me at zibbyadzibbyoins.com.