Tarajia Morrell on Desire, Food, and the Life We Didn't Plan
[0:00]Welcome to Totally Booked.
[0:02]I'm Zibi Owens.
[0:04]I've interviewed more than 2,000 authors on this show and learned endless amounts about
[0:09]storytelling, reinvention, and life itself because when you talk about books, you're
[0:13]really talking about life.
[0:15]So get ready to hear from today's best authors, the best-selling and the not yet discovered.
[0:20]Come find your next great read and the story behind it.
[0:24]Enjoy!
[0:27]When I read this mission for Zibi Publishing for the book called, well, it wasn't called
[0:31]then, but what is now called Desire Feeds the Feast, a memoir by Taraja Morel.
[0:37]I was so hooked.
[0:38]I was like, we have to publish this.
[0:40]I absolutely love it.
[0:42]And I am so glad we did.
[0:44]Zibi Publishing is proud to be publishing this book, which is just amazing.
[0:49]It's a coming-of-age story in the food world about one woman's journey from being a kid
[0:56]who felt out of place on the upper east side and found her way, got over a lot of hurdles
[1:02]in her way.
[1:04]And then as she grew up, we learned all about the setbacks in her romantic life, the loss
[1:08]of a friend.
[1:09]Oh my gosh, so much else in how food became the throughline for her.
[1:14]It's written in such exquisite detail that I can still feel the domestic covered walls as
[1:19]she walked down the stairs at the country house of a friend when she was young.
[1:23]I mean, it is gripping and beautiful and the writing is just sensational.
[1:28]You have to read this.
[1:29]Anyway, I'm thrilled to be interviewing Taraja today about Desire Feeds the Feast, a memoir.
[1:36]Taraja Morel is a native New Yorker who grew up at the table.
[1:39]Her food and wine reporting and essays have appeared in W.S. J. Magazine, T. Magazine,
[1:45]Food and Wine, Departures and Cherry Bomb, among other publications.
[1:49]She is the co-author of James Beard Award winner, Savor, a chef's hunger for more with
[1:54]Fatima Ali, an author of Soul of New York, a guide to 30 exceptional experiences.
[1:59]She lives in Manhattan with her daughter.
[2:01]Enjoy.
[2:02]Welcome to Raja.
[2:03]Thank you so much for coming on totally bugged it to talk about Desire Feeds the Feast
[2:07]and memoir.
[2:08]Congratulations.
[2:09]Thank you.
[2:10]So honored to be publishing this book.
[2:13]This is like why I love publishing is when I read a book like yours.
[2:17]And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so good.
[2:19]We have to do this.
[2:20]That's how I felt and I still feel in your such a beautiful writer.
[2:23]So I'm just super excited.
[2:25]Thank you so much.
[2:26]Why don't you tell everybody a little bit about Desire Feeds the Feast and when you decided
[2:31]to write a memoir and what it's really who it's for, what it's about, all the good stuff.
[2:36]Yeah.
[2:37]So I mean, really this book is the product of me trying to make sense of my own circumstances.
[2:42]So in a way I wrote it for myself initially just trying to come to terms with the unexpected
[2:50]twists and turns of life that in my case have deposited me right where I began in the
[2:55]apartment of my youth and a place that I absolutely, unequivocally never planned or expected
[3:04]to return to.
[3:05]If frankly never occurred to me, I had friends along the way say, well, would you ever
[3:10]move back there?
[3:11]I said, God, no.
[3:13]Wanted new new adventures and new, you know, pastures or whatever.
[3:19]And I did have many adventures, but in the end I wound up back here and I also wound
[3:24]up back here with a small child on my own and sort of cognitive dissonance of those things
[3:31]in terms of expectation and then reality.
[3:35]There was so much so that I felt compelled to write things down as I always have for myself
[3:41]to try to comprehend my circumstances and the more I wrote, the more I felt like there
[3:48]was actually an arc to it all and that if there's anything to take away from it, it's
[3:54]that, you know, even if life doesn't look as one hopes or plans, it can still be absolutely
[4:00]wonderful.
[4:01]And so there you have it.
[4:06]I feel like that's such a universal sentiment, what you're saying.
[4:09]Like writing is this sort of self exploration, but when we do it, certainly when you do it
[4:15]and the reader takes it all in, it helps us sort of make sense with everything in our
[4:19]own lives too, even though it's your specific life.
[4:22]Right?
[4:23]Do you feel like that when you read other books?
[4:24]Oh, of course.
[4:26]There's so much universality to all of our experiences and I think I can only speak for myself,
[4:32]but it's easy to feel isolated in one's own life and experience and to feel as though
[4:38]the grass is always greener somewhere else and we're all struggling to find our way, I
[4:44]think, I certainly am.
[4:46]So yes, I take a tremendous amount out of everything I read and not just memoir, I find that
[4:53]happens to me in novels of course as well.
[4:55]Yes.
[4:56]Well, your story is so interesting because you started off, as you said.
[5:00]in your family's apartment, which you render in such striking detail that you feel as
[5:05]the reader you're there so much so when I saw a picture I'm like, oh right, yeah, okay,
[5:09]that looks really rare for my imagination. And you describe even, you know, the sizzling of
[5:15]what's on the stove top, like all the senses, you're an incredibly sensory writer. So
[5:21]at times we're swimming with you in an ocean and in times we're walking down a
[5:25]in a postered staircase or we're eating a delicious meal or an artichoke or whatever. But anyway, you
[5:31]start in New York and you start out by showing us how, even though you were part of this
[5:36]sort of rare fight-up reside type of world, private girl school, blah, blah, blah, that you never
[5:41]felt like you 100% fit in there and actually turn to horseback riding in a way to like find your
[5:46]thing and all that and then that got turned on its head after your accident. Talk a little bit about
[5:52]that piece of the book and that feeling of like sort of not quite fitting it.
[5:59]Yes, the perpetual sense that one is the other. I think that's probably fairly universal as well.
[6:06]In my case, because I grew up at the table and my family was in the wine business in the food
[6:12]business, there was a sophistication to the way we lived because every single meal felt like an
[6:18]occasion or a celebration or a chance to have pleasure between the gathering and just the
[6:24]enjoyment of the food and wine itself. So that language is generally associated with privilege and I
[6:33]certainly feel extremely privileged to have had that as the backbone of my entire existence.
[6:39]And you know, as we know, we're both new to New Yorkers, New York has changed a tremendous amount
[6:45]since we were kids and really all of the kind of bluster of our existence is because we had
[6:56]this apartment, this rent stabilized apartment and it was so special, it is so special and it sort
[7:01]of allowed us to be fancy in another way, which is in a beautiful way of living. But you know,
[7:07]I was able to go to some amazing schools and at that time that was very possible in New York,
[7:15]with two incomes and you know, the city has changed, everything's gotten so much more expensive,
[7:20]there aren't places like this anymore for artists or retailers with one shop and it's really,
[7:27]the apartment has the backdrop is kind of, you know, it's almost like our ticket to having had
[7:33]the lives that we've had. And then in terms of, you know, the privilege is like we could never
[7:37]afford to buy an apartment here, but we could afford a very modest place outside of the city.
[7:42]And so that was sort of like we should try to own something, the American dream is like try to
[7:47]own house, you know? And so my parents very much followed that and they bought an extremely modest
[7:53]house in upstate New York and there was a wonderful, somewhat ramshackle farm, very close by,
[8:00]we're out, you know, group of sort of young bandits on both of us hung out and we just were filthy
[8:07]constantly, we did everything ourselves, we were mucking out stalls and getting horses from the
[8:15]ring that bit us and kicked us and you know, in 20 degree weather and 110 degree weather,
[8:22]we were just loving it and loving the freedom and for me the sense of peacefulness that I had
[8:28]that I'd never experienced before and other, any other realm and it really was a panacea for me in
[8:33]burgeoning anxiety, which was like gotten more extreme as I've gotten older, but it quieted all of
[8:39]that and it was just really in service of this kind of meditative conversation, physical connection
[8:44]to another much larger, much stronger being that was willing to be in conversation with me. And
[8:49]yeah, then, you know, like many childhood dreams, it didn't work out as a resident and it really
[8:57]could tell, you know, my extremely naive dreams of pursuing that because really, you know,
[9:04]there's a ceiling on how far one can go in that realm as well without a ton of money. So,
[9:09]yeah, then I just, you know, turned to being a teenager in New York City and nightclubs and
[9:16]kind of distraction and on we went. Well, you do a great job of portraying life at that time and
[9:28]going out and what that was like, I remember all of that. I mean, I didn't go out as much
[9:32]as you, I don't think, but anyway, maybe I did. I don't know. Maybe our fats crossed who knows.
[9:37]But you then quickly pivot to some of the deeper relationships you have and the loss of someone
[9:43]incredibly close to you, which you wrote about in such a beautiful way. I mean, when you talk about
[9:49]your whole friend group kind of piling, piling on, I'm not going to replicate it perfectly, but you
[9:55]the way that people feel the need to, to.
[10:00]literally interconnect and glom onto each other as they try to hold the weight of the loss of
[10:05]someone who's so central to the that constellation. It's heartbreaking and you wrote about it
[10:12]beautifully and I'm still so sorry for your loss. Thank you. I should say I did not anticipate
[10:20]the loss of my dear friend being one of the gravitational centers of the book or even of my story
[10:27]as just my own story, you know, and trying to think about and make sense of my circumstances.
[10:32]But as I tried to sort through the experiences that led me back here in a way I saw how
[10:40]essential that was that loss and three precautions of it. And also how I have looked toward
[10:49]that person in moments of peril in my own life and moments of feeling extremely lost and you know
[10:56]in that way that person is remained ever present and always well. But yeah, it changed me. I mean,
[11:03]it's just, yeah, there's no going backwards, something like that. You see everything differently.
[11:08]Yes. Despite what you are going through throughout the book, you always weave in food and not just
[11:16]food like I'm going out for a snack or I'm trying to eat a chocolate chip cookie out of a paper bag on
[11:21]the sidewalk. Food is in like a beautiful, trying to plate and a cloth napkin, you know, maybe a
[11:28]thrift shop salt and pepper sheet. I don't know something. Like everything is decorated and beautiful
[11:35]and the food itself is savory and just like leaps off the page. I know you're a food writer first.
[11:42]You've been doing this for a long time. But that is an art form. Like how did you learn how to describe
[11:48]food so well to describe the art of eating, the pleasures of the meal? Like tell me about that.
[11:53]I know it was part of your growing up. But to write about it is another thing altogether.
[11:58]Well, being a food writer was certainly not my first career. I've had a few. But when I turned back
[12:06]toward food after the loss of my dear friend after years as a struggling actor, I found that it was
[12:12]my mother-time. I discovered that it was sort of just within me always. And that's because of
[12:20]a couple of things. One, my father's outrageous ability to recall almost every wine he's ever tasted.
[12:28]And in encyclopedic way to recall and describe a wine he drank in 1968 in Germany or something.
[12:39]I mean, it's unbelievable. And he can probably also mention what he had with it. So there's that.
[12:45]And then of course there was, you know, sometimes as a teenager, I would make some extra cash
[12:50]by writing his wine notes out, you know, typing them out. He would scroll the money yellow,
[12:55]pad with a felt-to-pen, and then I would copy them. I would type them up for him. So I started to learn
[13:00]about the vernacular that went with wine from such a young age. And then of course my mother,
[13:06]who is extremely, I mean, she would put, I think, even you, she would, you know, be a good
[13:14]challenger for how much you read. I mean, she would be constantly the list, the pages, and she
[13:20]writes every title down. And so she has extraordinary elocution. And she has always recited meals to me
[13:28]as if they were sort of poetry. And she did it when I was at boarding school and she did it.
[13:33]She does it now. And, you know, in addition to talking to whatever dog she has near her as if it's
[13:40]a human, she's also just telling the story of the meal. And she's always done that. And she always
[13:45]recited those poems to me, you know, even when I was a really little girl. So it's just, it's just,
[13:51]it's just there. That's amazing. Well, I feel like I got to know her very well in your book and
[13:58]you do a wonderful job of really creating all of the characters and your parents, the wine
[14:04]shop, which is well known to so many New Yorkers and how that affected your life. And, you know,
[14:11]even some of the not so favorable moments with your parents and your dad in the car. And of course,
[14:17]many people have had somebody with emotions reaching high in the car, New York traffic, and all of
[14:23]that. Yeah, it's amazing. I think my father is quite funny actually. And I think, you know, I don't
[14:30]think it was particularly fun for me to be sort of around his road rage, etc. But I think if this were,
[14:40]I hope on the page, but certainly if I was watching some of these scenes like on a screen, I would
[14:45]I would probably laugh at that character. There's, you know, it's such a necessary strong
[14:51]and dream about something that is out of one's control. So you have some scenes where you are
[15:00]travel writer and you're taking us to all these destinations and food in a whole new context
[15:06]and different locations and beautiful buildings in the hotels and just how you see the world
[15:14]even when the world shifts around you and what you keep constant and what changes when you
[15:19]travel and learn and all of that.
[15:21]Ultimately, as you said to end up back at home, when you think about all of your travels
[15:25]all over the world, is there a place that you would go back to?
[15:29]right now.
[15:30]I know you have a lot of emotions about the different places that you write about, but
[15:34]after all of that, do you miss anywhere that you went or?
[15:37]I almost travel just acutely and in general because I feel somewhat grounded by being
[15:44]this solo parent to eat a small child and so I just miss traveling so much.
[15:51]But there are lots of places to talk about, always to friends, always to get a Portugal
[15:56]Spain, Italy and then there are so many places I'm just longing to for the first time,
[16:03]you know, Egypt, Japan, Vietnam.
[16:06]But I think the thing is is that I've also, since I kind of, I was very fearful for so
[16:11]long after my friend's death, after just kind of getting a little bit beat up by things
[16:18]that happened and then when I kind of found this other gear of embracing the tumult
[16:26]and the unknown, I was just, I was sort of addicted to it.
[16:30]I just felt in such a state of heightened kind of existence to be able to go experiences.
[16:39]These other places often on my own often, you know, making new friends or meeting up with
[16:45]a friend, but like there was such a shift in how I experienced moving around in the world.
[16:51]So I think I have managed to retain that even though I feel somewhat grounded, right?
[16:56]But yes, there are many places I'd love to go back to and many places I'd like to go
[17:02]for the first time.
[17:03]So what's your secret to getting over disappointment?
[17:08]Because I feel like in the book there were a number of times in ways bigger and smaller
[17:14]that you found yourself in situations that didn't meet your expectations or all of that.
[17:20]How do you get over disappointment?
[17:22]Like what do you say to yourself, how have you learned to do it?
[17:24]But it's such a hard question.
[17:26]I don't think I learned it for so long.
[17:28]I think I just, I just became more and more beat up by the disappointments for so long.
[17:35]And then maybe turned to a new goal, even if it was a pie in the sky, I feel now like,
[17:43]I don't even know how I could measure disappointment because I have the thing that is the
[17:48]most precious to me, which is this extraordinary child that is my constant sort of light and
[17:57]joy and the pleasure of caring for her.
[18:01]And so the rest is kind of gravy or, you know, it is what it is.
[18:07]I mean, I just feel like there's nothing more essential than our connection to those that we love.
[18:15]And so for me, I've found that piece, I think, to some extent before she appeared in my life.
[18:23]But now I just feel like everything I do is for her in some way, shape, or form.
[18:29]So I just don't know what the future holds.
[18:32]I'm just trying to do the best I can, you know, for her and for us.
[18:36]I don't know if that's really an answer, but yeah, I didn't know once we're just,
[18:41]they were so hard that I was also not fully formed.
[18:43]I couldn't grapple with them in many ways.
[18:46]And I almost made other terrible decisions out of the disappointments.
[18:51]I mean, towards something like being an actor, I mean, I was ill suited for it in so many ways.
[18:57]I didn't have the thick skin.
[18:59]And yet I kind of, I did it anyway and I suffered.
[19:04]I was very, very unhappy.
[19:05]So I think it's also like making good decisions,
[19:09]doing things that feel good and not horrific is probably a sign that you're on a better path.
[19:15]But I don't have a real answer for that.
[19:19]Do you feel like you're happy now?
[19:21]I'm extremely happy.
[19:23]I feel, I feel, you know, I've never felt more lucky.
[19:28]And that's really what the book came out of is just a kind of perpetual sense of pinching myself.
[19:32]Like, how can this be?
[19:34]How did I wind up here, even though it's not at all that I imagined my life would look like?
[19:39]I am, you know, raising a child in my own.
[19:41]Of course, I thought I was going to meet someone and have a family together.
[19:45]And that's just not how it worked out.
[19:47]But I'm happy.
[19:49]I'm very nervous about the book.
[19:51]Oh, the book is so good.
[19:54]Oh, personally, you know, it's me on the page.
[19:57]So yeah, I'm,
[20:00]definitely that anxiety that we talked about being
[20:02]bided by, you know, riding as a child is that I don't
[20:07]ride anymore. So the anxiety is just out of control.
[20:14]Oh my gosh. Yeah, it is it's not easy to put yourself out there and
[20:18]do it so creative and it's to create a personal way. But
[20:23]but the gift is really in the story and then the people who
[20:26]find the story and it changes their life and they feel
[20:28]seem and they're going to be so helped by it. Life
[20:31]isn't, I mean, that sounds so cliche to say that life is not a
[20:34]straight line. But I feel like your story really shows that.
[20:38]Like you can weave in and out and end up here there in the
[20:42]other place and have all of these amazing experiences that
[20:45]maybe don't even feel amazing at the time and maybe their heart
[20:47]breaking and maybe the sky didn't work out or that job didn't
[20:50]pan out. But like what a story you have, like what a life
[20:54]you've led. And it's a different lens through it to see it.
[20:58]Yeah, I think, you know, I think also there's so much about
[21:02]how I have lived that I would like to guard my child against
[21:06]my most precious being. I don't want her to struggle the way that
[21:12]I have for, you know, a very belated kind of sense of
[21:17]self or feeling of autonomy that took me a long time to
[21:22]to find. But yeah, I think, you know, I think I've flown a little too
[21:27]close to this on at times and I think I've put myself in
[21:30]really in situations that I would never want her to be
[21:33]in. But I felt I feel it's necessary to confront that
[21:39]in myself. And it's part of, you know, for me, it's part of doing the
[21:43]work, not just the work of the book, but just like the work
[21:46]I have. What was the final thing that pushed you over the
[21:50]the edge to turn your writing into a book that you wanted to
[21:53]like get out in the world of publish? Like what was it? Very
[21:57]simple. This is the only book I could write under the circumstances
[22:00]of being a single parent in this apartment that I was
[22:04]raised in working a full-time job. If I had had the capacity,
[22:09]the time, the mental space to write an novel, I
[22:15]like to believe I would have. But I wanted to write, I've always
[22:18]written. And this was what I could do right now under these
[22:21]circumstances. And I hope that, you know, that's not
[22:26]misguided. But I just wrote it and and then it seemed like
[22:31]it could be something. And what would be the point of, you know,
[22:35]not sharing it other than fear. Well, I'm so glad you shared it.
[22:44]I'm just glad you shared it with us. I'm glad we have a small role to
[22:47]play. And in the story, you're going to get to tell. And the
[22:50]people you're going to reach. And I have so much respect for your
[22:53]talent as a writer. And I have no doubt that you will end up
[22:57]writing that novel at some point. And it will be beautiful. But in
[23:00]the meantime, so is this. And very excited for it to come out.
[23:03]Congratulations. The hard copy is, I have very imminent, I
[23:07]think. Congratulations, Tureja. So excited.
[23:11]Thank you. Okay. Thank you for listening to totally booked
[23:15]with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read books.
[23:18]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on
[23:22]Instagram at zibi Owens and spread the word. Thanks so much.
[23:27]Oh, and bye the books.