This is a village sound cast network original production. My yard was a huge like American West fan on our drive to visit my grandparents who was always some compilation of country music but like really old country music, but then also he loved gospel. They were bring these love big metal containers with milk and she would put it in these large kettles and she would heat it up and she was just humming are always humming always singing to herself. This is the food podcast ivillage sound cast network production. We're Small stories are shared through the lens of food. And so I would listen to my tapes because you know, this is 1995 and it was always kind of an isolation like I would close the door listen to music and I would cook and it was really me and shredding everything out. I'm Lindsay Cameron Wilson. A long car rides. My dad used to play a favorite song then press reverse on the tape deck and listen to it again. I think Katrina and the waves Walking on Sunshine always played three times in a row this song repeat. Gene is in my blood. I played Jen Grant song favorite daughter over and over that day as I wandered the streets of Glasgow. Last June it felt right in the rain in Glasgow a city. That means green place summer sky. And when Jen was pregnant a psychic told her she would give birth to a baby girl. So this song favorite daughter is an imagined golden hour for her baby one filled with Lake swims and healthy forests where we're taking care of nature where lady slippers grow those precious tiny wild orchids that thrive in Massey Woodlands of Nova Scotia and then And give birth to a baby boy, but she says this world she paints is for him to his for everyone. My world that day was a rainy City filled with Victorian architecture made of sandstone. It was a marbled tahini brownie from a cafe that was part Art Gallery part vegetarian restaurant and park community meeting space. It was a thin swirl of white that tasted like halva a flavor for my years spent in Montreal. It was a day of Solace all alone a blank slate before I traveled south to the countryside where I was attending a gathering of creative women from all over the world. It was a day of thoughts of Music and a long walk in the rain. A few days later. We were gathered around the dining room table at Auckland glucose. Just south of Glasgow. It was golden hour. The sun was sparkling in the mirror Above The Mantel and light was dancing off wine glasses and silverware. The table was decorated with treasures from the forest an old stump stretched down the center of the table covered with emerald green moss. It was a green place and just in front of me growing from Mossy log were tiny lady slippers the lady slid. I'm still with her. Today in the food podcast. We talked to Aaron go yoga, the Seattle cookbook author stylist and photographer. Erin has a new book out Canal even L. The book is beautiful. It captures the flavors and tones of her life in Seattle with the Basque country where she was born running throughout. This is the second time Aaron's been on this podcast. Cast the first time was all about navigating a life and food when you can no longer eat gluten, but this time around I wanted to step into Aarons kitchen and hear what it sounds like she has a kitchen playlist full of songs that have chronicled her life alongside her recipes. So this time in omage to my favorite podcast, the BBC's desert island discs were doing something different. Aaron is sharing her stories through the lens of Recipes from her new book and the five or so songs that accompany these recipes today on the food podcast the smell of a meal an ingredient or even a scent in the air can immediately transport us to another place in time. Food helps us mine our memories and brings them alive, but music music amplifies memory. Suddenly. There's a new shape dark and Melancholy bright and joyful bringing laughter or tears asking someone to share these memories to take us along as they step into the flavor sound and feel of their life is a big ask, but Aaron was up for it. So here we go. Aaron's playlist today begins in 1995 and The Basque country in Northern Spain. She was studying business at University an academic and a family that revolved around her grandparents pastry shop in the introduction to Kennelly vanille, Aaron writes cooking defined my family between the pastry shop and the hours spent in our home kitchen food provided a through line that extended between Generations, but she Searching for a different path. I was 21 and I was living with my parents while going to school. It's when I started to really realize that I was looking for something else, but I wasn't sure I was in business school and sort of flailing I wasn't super into it, but I felt an obligation to be there and finish it and it was right before I started going down the eating disorder path. So is when I started Really Cooking All the time, I would cook for my family all the time. And so on Sundays we would go visit my grandparents. We'd come home and then I shut the kitchen door and I would kick everybody out and I would make Sunday lunch and oftentimes it was Pi young. My parents still eat. Paella on Sundays very often. I would say probably three Sunday's a month. It's probably by and so I would listen to my tapes because you know, this is 1995 CDs and tapes and it was always kind of an isolation like I would close the door listen. Music and I would cook and it was really me and shutting everything out of breath. So. It was Red House Painters. Yeah, it's such a beautiful that album the whole album called Ocean Beach back. Then you didn't really have a lot of background on the art as you would by so you probably heard about it and some fancying or some obscure indie rock music magazine and then I didn't really know anything about Mark kozilek who was behind Red House Painters or Ocean Beach. I didn't even know what I was sayin Beach was and then when I was in San Francisco, I want to Ocean Beach and I sat there and I was like wow. Is where he wrote that song they listen to while I was making paella and super sad. Yeah, but it's such a beautiful album. Aaron's paella recipe emphasizes the importance of flavor from the shells and heads of prawns the smoke of the flame beneath the pan and the pan itself, which should be shallow and wide so the rice can cook evenly in one layer creating socarrat the crispy layer on the bottom of the rice for everyone and I wanted to cook for my family and I wanted to show them that I cared but it was really more about not knowing how to navigate. Wait what I wanted and what I felt in the environment, I was in so the music was probably a lot more melancholic and sad and emo then what I listen to now when I make by yeah, which is totally different. It feels sunny and celebratory and the more the merrier. So I feel like I love that contrast of that Journey that I've lived with cooking and my own personal Discovery and how I feel about myself or how much space I take in the World taking up space Aaron and I are both 45 years old. We realize this as we talked about food and music and where we are now and where we were then for both of us 45 is a time where our days are more deliberate less chaotic less unsure. We're standing on our feet solid confident in the space we occupy but this takes time and practice. It wasn't always like this. I asked Aaron about having an eating disorder and the concept of taking up space in the world. It's less about food than one might think it starts with food because it's usually something that you have an attraction to or you love it so much even though it seems like why would you use that as such a Negative tool if you love it so much, but it's really about creating order and sense and control when you feel inside is sort of spinning and Out of control you kind of need to put all your things in your surroundings in order to feel like you know what you're doing. And so it's almost like rationing what you're eating just gives you this feeling of control and I think sometimes it's also about not wanting to take space. You just kind of want to disappear don't want to be noticed don't want to be seen being thin. It's not a vanity thing. It's really about not taking up a lot of space I catch myself. Myself definitely not going into put control issues. But the whole idea of taking space is still difficult for me. I'm very aware of how much space people take and so sometimes when I'm around big people and not physical but just their personalities or their energies then I kind of do this like sliding thing that I just want to go to the side and then I catch myself doing that and then I have to remind myself that I'm here and I can take not too much space, but I have to take my space I actually To do this visualizing exercise where I kind of ground my feet to the floor where I am. This is where I am and this is the space I'm taking because I'm always like oh, I'm sorry. You're busy always like apologizing for being there, but I'm here because they asked me to come or or you know, now that I say it I think it's probably a very common but it's a practice that visualizing exercise and music can pull you back into the place. You're trying to move away from not every song needs to be listened to three. As in a row - I can't listen to that album anymore. Now. It just brings me back to that. It's like a vacuum isn't music like a vacuum of memories and feelings. I have this long-running playlist that I listen to if that comes on I probably have to skip it if I'm not feeling super super strong God day. Next up we have puff pastry. It was 2002 2003 and Aaron had moved to the state's gone to culinary school and was now working as a pastry chef at the Ritz. I think I abandoned music when I moved to the US music had been such an important part of my life. But also I had a group of friends whom I share this interest with and we were kind of the music group of friends and then when I moved away and I was struggling and Music Bob too, many feelings, I think and so I stopped listening and if I listen to something was probably things that weren't causing a lot of emotional reactions. Then I started working at The Ritz Carlton and that's when arcade Fire's funeral came out and I don't even know how I heard about it. I think somebody gave me a CD or something and I remember I put it in and tunnels came on the first song and the album and that song is like a film If you listen to the lyrics, you're totally imagining Montreal under the snow this sort of magical way and I listened to that Non-Stop. It's a puff pastry. It's kind of like the quintessential I think pastry chef days that recipe for those days of my life and I think for many Pastry chefs, you make a lot of puff pastry and it's such a technical thing and you know, you kind of have to pay attention so that song with all this film like images and then rolling, you know, like through the sheeter puff pastry. It just goes together for me. So well I lived in Montreal way back when during that tough time between education and career. I was flailing a bit. But all that snow so much snow and the crisp blue sky and reading Margaret Atwood on the bus to my job as a nanny and listening to the tapes. I found in my employers car Kate Bush the mcgarrigle sisters and tasting halva for the Time from the Greek shop around the corner from my apartment and the Wood-Fired Bagels that we ate every day slathered and cream cheese. Those were my tunnels. I think they called a funeral because multiple family members passed away while they were making it. So I don't know if this songs came from that place of funeral, but I think it's just kind of and being over arch with death, but that the same time the songs are so big and Anthem like and the sort of humanity the comes through and beautiful colorful, you know with all these horns. And is this so beautiful to me and then so communal I think that album is so much about who you're with and this is like we're going to go conquer something and I love that when you're in the water and just the waves kind of carry you that's the feeling I get with that album. Waves carrying you this resonates with me the ocean surrounds us here in Nova Scotia and I'm happiest in the waves salt on my skin and I think that much of being in the ocean has to do with Solitude when you dive under the surface, it's just you. Creativity needs solitude. It's when we're quiet walking weeding cooking. That's when we get to know ourselves. I've learned there's a difference between Solitude and loneliness one fills you the other takes away. I remember feeling lonely for a time when I lived in London in a city filled with people. That's when I listened to the Biga Tanya's in my kitchen all the time. They took me back to Canada, but they also fed and need for melancholy at times. They met me where I was they're part of my story and have stuck with me through that shift from loneliness to Solitude. I'm not afraid of being lonely or alone. I mean, I don't like to be like that for extended periods of time, but I think that it's such a moment to discover who you want to be or the things that you want to do that whoever goes a long and that Journey whether it's films. Are you watching a book that you're reading or music? They will always be there. It's just like this spot that will belong to that person that you don't even know right like you don't know the author or Who was behind it really? But what they created into their, you know touche it's forever. I thought of the songs the movies the books and the cookbooks in my life that have been on my journey and this book of errands that is touching me and so many people already if I ever got to create that feeling someone through my work. Oh my gosh, it would be like the best feeling ever that's what I want for my book that it touches somebody like that. Aaron's recipes are gluten-free. She is Hashimoto's and Meniere's disease. Both are exacerbated by inflammatory foods like gluten, but I don't get the feeling. This is a specialty diet book. This is her food. The recipe is she is developed in the quiet of her kitchen as she got to know herself testing photographing listening and wearing her apron Aaron's latest book is dedicated to her son, John and Modern Marin with the words. I hope you will always think of me in the kitchen with an apron on and that comes from my grandmother for sure. And also my mom my mom always wears an apron in the kitchen, but my grandmother was just like she'd go outside on the street and she just always had an apron on and I don't know that having an apron on and just always gave me a symbol of just a welcoming people into your house and I think sometimes maybe for some women are men having an apron on my main something more domestic just being a traditional perspective of a woman at home and taking care of domestic duties. And that's not at all what I envisioned. It's more of a here. I am I'm cooking grab a bowl take a seat and just welcome people and I forgot to ask Erin if she sings with her apron on but she told me that her grandmother did all the time, especially while preparing milk for desserts like flan she Love to sing traditional Basque songs and love to sing church songs and bask. So she was always singing when she was in the kitchen and she's you know, when you're in the kitchen you're even if you're surrounded with people everybody has it to ask and it's very focused and she was always kind of singing to herself. Like I say in the book she was in charge of pasteurizing the milk that came from just maybe a kilometer to up the road. They were bring these big metal containers with milk and she would put it in these large kettles and She would heat it up and she was just humming are always humming always singing towards the L And so there's Basque song. I was thinking about that. Should I pick this because nobody will really understand the lyrics but it's a poet his name is Savvy atleti and he sings his poems, but he doesn't have you know, the most beautiful voice is very kind of dark and somber but the words are so beautiful and this song she asked a contact means the song of the Cradle or like It lullaby song and he talks about Mother Love and mother milk and breastfeeding and it sounds so weird saying it in English, but it's really about even while your mother's breast or hug means to someone. Oh Marty. It's a mother love song but it's a grandmother love song to my mom was the oldest of eight and so she was always home in her home. I grew up across the street from where my grandmother lives. So my mom was always with her mom and I was always with my mom. Therefore. I was always with my grandma and my grandparents always came on vacation with us because she was the oldest kid and she took care of Most my grandmother on my mom's side was ever present. Her name was Meet in and she was wearing an apron and she was warm like a really warm woman. She would go outside on the street with her apron when she was in the picture shop and she'd go outside and she talked to everybody. I never heard my grandmother talked badly about anyone. She never gossip. She was just like this motherly figure for me and for other people and she had a bit of a belly and I remember just resting my head on her belly often times when we were in the car. Are so even though she was my grandmother. I Loved Her Like My Mother and with that milk the milk that was heated to the tune of a basque. Lullaby. Aaron makes her grandmother's flan. I'm cheese. I got it. Have you ever read the book tear water tea by Arnold Lobel? It's about an owl who lives in a cozy cottage with a tiny kitchen and a comfortable chair by the fire one night owl decides to make tear water tea and to do so he has to think of things that make him cry so that he can have tears for the tea tears just broken leg said owl his eyes began to fill with tears songs that cannot be sunk that aisle. Because the words have been forgotten a lot. She rolled down and dropped into the kettle spoons that have fallen behind the stove that I'll More Tears dropped into the kettle books that cannot be read because some of the pages have been torn off clocks and have stopped it out with no one near to one them up. I'll drop many large. Gears into the eventually owl fills the kettle with tears and he puts it on the stove to boil our felt happy as he filled his cup. It tastes a little salty. He said but tear water tea is always good. When I was little and wanted to sink into a good Melancholy mood, my mother would suggest I make tear water tea. It was the perfect solution. She wasn't trying to cheer me up. She knew I needed a good cry because sometimes it feels good to feed your sadness. When my dad had a heart attack last December my sister listen to The Avett Brothers, no hard feelings over and over and over when my body won't hold me anymore. And it finally lets me free. Will I be ready? When my feet won't walk another Mile and my lips give their last kiss. Goodbye. Oh my hands Be steady when I lay down my fears my hopes and my doubts the rings on my fingers and the keys to my house. With no hard feelings, but then it's good to turn it off and to drink the tea or water tea because as I will said is always good and in the end he was happy. Sometimes one dish can be the Catalyst for a spectrum of emotions for Aaron. It's tortilla onions and diced potatoes poached and lots of olive oil whisked eggs and salt these simple ingredients that come together in a hot nonstick fry pan to create a dish served at Basque birthday parties school fundraisers or picnics at a beach a simple cultural icons is Aaron yet. Also a blank space. Ready for a spectrum of music. It's really simple. And I don't think that there is a right or wrong way of making it but thing is like you can really see the differences in who made it. So like when my grandma made it she always made it one way and my mom makes it it's a little bit different when I make it as a little bit different and it's just like the person's touch how you tuck in your edges or how dark you let it go or even the pan that you have will affected. So if you're making the same tortilla in a different path And it will change and so it's just like the Simplicity that lets the soul of a person come through to you know. And that Personal Touch can change depending on the song Aaron's happy dancing song while making tortilla is crazy Rhythm by the feelings. It's so fun. I feel like I just want to dance to that song. So I'd probably neglect the potatoes in the oil a little bit longer than if I was listening to Elliott Smith, but if she's feeling introspective its Elliott Smith, no name number three. But Elliott Smith is like Red House Painters that I have to take in with a dropper because it just fills me with so much emotion that I have to be careful. I mean Elliott Smith was brought up in Portland. And you know, I live in Seattle. So these places in the Northwest have this like slippery slope, which I love right the mood that it can say un especially in the winter. The music is like full of feeling and I love it and I just like Revel in it but I have to be very careful. On the BBC's desert island discs the guests choose eight songs to take with them on a desert island. They're not allowed to add extra songs to their list. The rules are strict but not here. I want to add one more. I didn't say this to you before but I love the B-52s Rock Lobster is one of my all-time if I ever feel crappy and I want to feel good and happy and just careless. I listen to The B-52s their music their looks the I'm penis. It's just so good. And on that note with that powerful cowbell. Let's go back to the Basque country for a bit two eggs tomatoes and peppers and music in the car on Sundays. When Aaron would go visit her paternal grandparents and eat be better a basque shizuka of sorts. I always remember my dad's mother as Old she had two kids when she was older which was unusual then and she had arthritis and she was always hunched over from working in the garden and just really small woman in always hunched over and she had a cane always and they had this wood burning stove and these old iron pans and I just remember she would put a ton of olive oil in the pan and throw some tomatoes and peppers and garlic and onions and she would just fry them up and then she would throw eggs in there and it was kind of sloppy because she wasn't very much. Vile but even like that she always made us that and I just remember taking home some bread and just dipping and they're just full of olive oil. It was so sweet. I remember the tomatoes were so sweet and they had all these oil and it was really just tasty and and I would take a plate and I would go outside and I would walk around while I was eating sometimes she would make me a sandwich or something, you know, but get with like Spanish ham and then I going outside and walking around the garden with this food while I was eating and just enjoying being in their Garden. That's Only my grandmother's the peppers and the eggs and tomatoes. Is it definitely mm my grandmother. Her name was doe Lotus. That was her recipe. Well, not really she didn't really even have a recipe. She just threw things together. If you've watched Aaron's video series a Cook's remedy where she takes us to The Basque country to her parents home and up into her father's art studio and we see his collection of CDs that he plays while he paints you'll already know his love of American music. My dad was a huge like American West fan and it's funny because I don't know where he got that from nobody around him knew anything about the west but my father was obsessed with Lewis and Clark and kind of the discovery of the West and so he would About it and who listen to all this American music on our drive to visit my grandparents. It was always some compilation of country music but like really old country music, but then also he loved gospel and heal of Mahalia Jackson. And so sometimes today even when me and my brothers when I go visit them we go to the beach and we play Mahalia Jackson it just kind of catches them, you know, because it's such a memory of our father Sunday mornings to me sometimes our for my Leah just her voice is so big, you know her presence and that song Down by the Riverside. I never could understand what she was saying. And then recently I Googled the lyrics and I realized it was really about no war no more and I was like, Mahalia. Wow, so amazing so political and and yet it was really about church and God and all these things but I love that when I found out that's what that song went all the way down. Down by the Riverside Down by the Riverside the world Aeron chairs with us through her photography is a close-up view that's raw and real the shadows of Grace yodel and the softness of Magnolias daily has and roses and the pink of poached strawberries and rhubarb and the purple tips of artichokes. But if you pull back you'll see a family living in a house in the Pacific Northwest her nod to Lewis and Clark perhaps with a Stubble garden and climbing roses and Friends gathering around a table and music always music The Basque country is the vein running through it all but there are new flavors sounds ingredients and wisdom layered over top and here I am in my kitchen making Aaron's blistered corn nectarine and Watercress salad again, because it's so good. And I'm listening to Jen Grant and thinking about the blending of Worlds the imprint we make on each other and the importance of solitude and feeling confident in the space. We occupy and Standing Tall in our space on the softest ground the lady slipper. I'm still with her if I ever got to create that feeling someone through my work. Oh my gosh, it would be like the best feeling ever. That's what I want for my book that it touches somebody like that. Thank you, Aaron. Taking us on this musical food Journey. You can find her new book Canal a vanille at your favorite book shop or visit Canal vanille.com. See a NN e LL e VA en I ll e.com all the links to songs and other things mentioned in this episode are in the show notes. You can find them at Lindsay Cameron Wilson dot c a forward slash the food podcast and if you want to go a little deeper into Aarons story you can listen to episode Add 15 of the food podcast. It's called life after gluten. I'm on Instagram at Lindsay Cameron Wilson, or at the food podcast. And as always thanks to Luke Batio our producer and sound engineer and to Jen grant for our theme song One More Night. Thanks for listening. I'm Lindsay Camera Nelson. This was a village sound cast network original production. This was a village sound cast network original production.
Aran Goyoaga, a cookbook author, photographer and stylist, has a playlist on Spotify that’s 113 hours long. She calls the playlist Rain. Rain is fitting. Aran lives in Seattle, a city that’s grey, melancholy. But great photographers, and Bob Marley, know that in the darkness there must come out to light. This theme resonates throughout Aran’s work, from her photography, to her food, to her music. In this episode, we wanted to capture the sound of Aran’s kitchen, the flavour and the feel. So we go inside her playlist and through her music, Aran shares her food story. Cannelle et Vanille is Aran’s second book. Mentioned in this episode: Aran Goyoaga of Cannelle et Vanille  Jenn Grant Music Jenn Grant’s Favourite Daughter, from Love, Inevitable Red House Painters with their song Moments Arcade Fire’s Tunnels Xabier Lete “Seaska Kanta” Tear Water Tea by Arnold Lobel The Avett Brother’s No Hard Feelings  The Feelies Crazy Rhythm Elliot Smith’s No Name #3 BBC’s Desert island Discs B52’s Rock Lobster Mahalia Jackson’s Down by the Riverside Aran Goyaga’s video series, A Cook’s Remedy  Aran’s earlier episode on The Food Podcast - #15 Life After Gluten Thank you Aran, thank you Village Sound, that you Owl, thank you Rex. 