Our Entertainment Editor spoke to journalist Michele Norris to learn more about Audible's Ms. Michelle Obama's “Your Mama’s Kitchen.” We discuss working with Michelle Obama, the history of food and culture, our commonalities despite our differences, and more.
Hosted by acclaimed journalist Michele Norris. This interview show explores the lives of interesting people and the ways that food and the people who prepare it help our identities and trajectories. Many have the memory of your Mama’s kitchen as a place where you were nourished physically and spiritually. The heart of the home. The place that housed your earliest formative experiences.
Not Your Mama's Kitchen Guests:
Michelle Obama
Gayle King
DJ D Nice
Glennon Doyle & Abby Wambach
Jose Andrés
W Kamau Bell
Lil Wayne
Keegan Michael Key & Elle Key
Samin Nosrat
Dolly Parton
Hosted by acclaimed journalist Michele Norris. This interview show explores the lives of interesting people and the ways that food and the people who prepare it help our identities and trajectories. Many have the memory of your Mama’s kitchen as a place where you were nourished physically and spiritually. The heart of the home. The place that housed your earliest formative experiences.
Not Your Mama's Kitchen Guests:
Michelle Obama
Gayle King
DJ D Nice
Glennon Doyle & Abby Wambach
Jose Andrés
W Kamau Bell
Lil Wayne
Keegan Michael Key & Elle Key
Samin Nosrat
Dolly Parton
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00 - Thank you so much for speaking to me.
00:04 You know, this is a superb show.
00:07 Well, not show, but it's a podcast.
00:10 I like to feel it as a show
00:11 'cause it's just so much personality is bubbling through.
00:14 - I call it a show, it's fine with me.
00:16 - What I really love about this is you ask questions
00:21 that I never even thought of.
00:22 I never even thought about in terms of, you know,
00:26 who you are as a person,
00:27 your personality is the kitchen.
00:31 So can you talk about when that idea first sparked
00:35 and of all the places in the house, the kitchen, why?
00:39 - Well, the kitchen is where we become ourselves.
00:44 There's a lot more that cooks in the kitchen
00:49 besides the food.
00:50 It's where we become who we are.
00:52 When I talked to Conan O'Brien, he said,
00:56 "If he is clay, the kitchen is the kiln where he was formed."
01:01 And I love that because I think it's true for many of us.
01:04 I used to host a show called
01:06 "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio.
01:08 And Dana, you understand this,
01:09 that when you talk to someone, if you're in studio,
01:12 you have to get them to talk a little bit.
01:13 It's called a mic check to make sure the levels match.
01:17 And people often ask really simple questions.
01:19 And it's usually, at NPR, the standard question was,
01:21 "What did you have for breakfast?"
01:24 And when you ask someone that question,
01:25 the answer was always too short.
01:28 They would say, "Coffee or toast or oatmeal or nothing."
01:32 Rarely would you hear someone say,
01:35 "Oh, girl, I had bacon and eggs with French toast."
01:39 People just, I guess they don't have time
01:41 to do that during the week.
01:42 So the answers were really short.
01:44 And I have such a low voice that they often had to listen
01:47 to people talk for a while so they could match.
01:49 So I came up with a series of questions
01:51 that got people to talk a little bit longer.
01:55 "What was your first summer job?"
01:57 "What did you all do for fun on a Saturday night?"
01:59 "Tell me about your mama's kitchen."
02:01 "Did you use paper or plastic
02:02 when you go to the grocery store?"
02:04 And the "tell me about your mama's kitchen" question
02:09 just opened people up.
02:11 They would go down memory lane.
02:12 They would start talking about things
02:14 that were very personal.
02:15 And so in the back of my head for a while,
02:17 I've been thinking that that would be a great podcast
02:20 because it's a starting point.
02:22 And then it goes in so many different directions,
02:25 depending on whether someone lived in the city
02:27 or the country,
02:28 depending on whether they had a happy childhood or not,
02:30 depending on whether their family lived in America forever
02:34 or came to America and was trying to figure this place out.
02:37 And so that simple question asked
02:39 at the beginning of every episode
02:41 is like a starting point for a journey
02:43 that I don't understand until we get in the car,
02:46 until we get in the studio,
02:47 until we get on that ride and figure out where we're going.
02:51 But the theory of the case holds true
02:53 that we become who we are often
02:55 because of what we sopped up in the kitchen
02:58 and not just food.
02:59 - What's the goal?
03:02 We have different episodes, different experiences.
03:05 What's the goal to capture as much diversity
03:09 in terms of the background and the history of the kitchen
03:12 as opposed to how that kitchen
03:16 created the person they are today?
03:18 - You know, sort of both.
03:20 I mean, everything I do in my life as a storyteller
03:23 and a story collector is built around the idea
03:27 of making sure that lots of different people
03:29 see and hear themselves in the content that I create,
03:33 while at the same time,
03:34 making sure that I introduce people to new worlds
03:39 and new visions and new realms
03:41 and new ways of being in the world.
03:43 So I was really trying to do both things.
03:45 It's a show about food.
03:48 And yes, we're trying to introduce a diversity
03:50 of culinary experiences.
03:52 So, you know, we've got Andy Garcia
03:55 talking about his pollo fricassee
03:57 and Uza Aduba talking about her Nigerian red rice,
04:01 or red stew, excuse me,
04:02 and Michelle Obama talking about her mama's red rice.
04:05 You know, we just run the gamut.
04:07 We have a show coming up where George Takai
04:10 talks about Japanese food
04:13 and the food that he loved as a youth.
04:16 And I road test all the recipes,
04:18 so I can't wait to get into that one too.
04:21 But it was also an opportunity
04:22 to look at American households
04:26 and see different ways that people lived
04:28 and different ways that they communicated
04:31 and different ways that they dealt with
04:32 all the things that life throws at us,
04:35 whether you were a small town or a big city,
04:37 whether you were in a suburban household.
04:40 And so we just present lots of different voices
04:42 and lots of different experiences
04:44 in a way that doesn't feel like it's finger wagging.
04:47 You know, it doesn't feel,
04:48 and now we're going to have a conversation
04:49 about diversity.
04:50 It's just sort of baked in
04:52 because you're peeking inside someone's window
04:55 and not necessarily eavesdropping,
04:56 you're invited to do that.
04:58 - Right.
04:59 What I found to be most interesting was,
05:01 even though I can't relate to everyone,
05:03 there were pockets of little information
05:06 and then it started to trigger my own memory.
05:09 It was like, oh no, I don't have, what kitchen?
05:10 We wasn't in the kitchen
05:11 and Michelle Obama, the hot comb.
05:13 Yes, I remember.
05:14 So was it, I was really interested
05:17 with how these stories kind of impact you
05:20 and how you reflect upon your childhood experiences
05:24 in the kitchen.
05:25 - You know, every time I talk to someone,
05:27 every single time there's an aha moment for me
05:30 where either I find something new,
05:32 like we never did that,
05:33 or that's a new way of thinking about things.
05:35 Or there's something that strikes me deep down
05:38 because it resonates because I remember that.
05:41 So whether it's Michael Pollan talking
05:43 about having that little friolator,
05:44 that thing that looked like a little teeny version
05:47 of a French fry grease pan that you see at McDonald's,
05:50 you know, frying, his mom was making chicken a la Kiev.
05:53 You know, we were just making fried fish.
05:55 Or whereas you say Michelle Obama talks
05:57 about getting her hair done.
05:58 I mean, a triggering memory for many of us, right?
06:01 Fighting with your mom on Saturday night,
06:04 going through two bottles of no more tangles
06:06 and how everybody else would get out of the kitchen.
06:08 Oh, I don't need to be here for this.
06:10 Like everybody who wasn't getting their hair done
06:11 would go as far away from the kitchen as they could.
06:14 And I love that particular conversation
06:17 with our former forever first lady
06:19 because she's written two books.
06:22 She's done how many interviews on stage
06:24 supporting those books?
06:25 How many interviews in her role as first lady?
06:28 Yet she's never really talked about that.
06:30 That really private aspect of her life.
06:34 She's never talked about watching her cousin
06:37 during the early years of feminism,
06:39 come home with kind of emancipated ideas and agency
06:43 about how she saw herself and her way forward
06:46 and how that challenged
06:48 some of the more traditional views in her family
06:52 and the tensions around that.
06:53 We'd never heard her talk about that.
06:55 And so by entering this conversation
06:58 in a slightly different way,
07:00 you're able to have, I mean, over and over,
07:02 if you listen to the podcast, Dani,
07:04 you've probably heard people say,
07:05 "I never talked about this before."
07:07 Or, "I'd never thought about this before."
07:09 And as an interviewer,
07:10 you know that you're in a special space for it
07:12 because you're talking to people
07:14 who generally are very well-known,
07:16 but we're introducing a different aspect of their life
07:20 to people who know and love them.
07:22 - Was that goal really to connect everyone
07:27 with that kind of experience
07:29 of no matter what your kitchen looked like,
07:31 there was a kitchen?
07:32 - And I mean, I remember when I was writing up
07:36 the proposal for this,
07:38 you know, I know whether you were cooking
07:40 in a tricked out kitchen with a hood and a big island
07:44 and double dishwashers and a double refrigerator,
07:48 or the kitchen, you know, which for some people
07:50 was a pot over some bricks and some wood.
07:54 It's still a kitchen.
07:55 The kitchen is not just a room, right?
07:57 A kitchen is the place where you gather for sustenance,
08:02 where you are nourished.
08:03 And some of us get to do that
08:05 in spaces that are fairly opulent,
08:06 but all over the world,
08:08 most people are not in spaces that are opulent.
08:11 You know, it's just a pot and some fire
08:14 and not even a pot.
08:14 That pot might be terracotta.
08:16 That might be just food on a stick over the fire.
08:19 But wherever that is, you are getting nourished.
08:21 And I guarantee you, if that is happening,
08:23 you're not just getting nourished through food.
08:25 You're getting nourished through advice and admonishments
08:28 through all the things you see.
08:30 This is where you figure out
08:31 if a relationship is working in a family.
08:33 This is where you have your loudest arguments
08:38 and your loudest laughter too.
08:41 This is where you play games.
08:42 This is where you learn about justice and fidelity
08:45 and grace and generosity.
08:48 Those big life lessons that help form who we are
08:52 and how we see the world so often happen
08:54 at the kitchen table or either adjacent
08:56 to the kitchen table in the dining room.
08:58 - I'm fascinated by the selection process.
09:02 You have everyone who's completely diverse
09:04 and there's different experiences.
09:06 Well, how did you go about deciding
09:08 who is great for the show?
09:11 - We have a big long list.
09:12 I mean, it's a really long list.
09:13 I'm God willing, several seasons
09:16 and we can just tick through everybody.
09:17 But we wanted to hit lots of different notes.
09:21 So we were looking for people who are good storytellers,
09:24 who have an interesting story to tell,
09:27 who would help us understand lots of different cuisines
09:31 and different regions of the country.
09:34 And it was a little bit of a gamble.
09:36 The most recent episode that dropped last week on Audible,
09:39 you can listen to ad free on Audible,
09:40 is with Jeff Tweedy,
09:42 who's the front man for a band called Wilco.
09:44 Based in Chicago, he grew up in a small town in Illinois
09:48 that's down South by the St. Louis border.
09:52 If you've never heard of Wilco,
09:54 you will listen to that podcast
09:56 and still relate to the story that he tells.
09:59 Still relates to, if you never heard of this indie band,
10:01 never heard of Wilco,
10:02 never heard of his first band, Uncle Tupelo,
10:05 you can still listen to that
10:06 and relate to when he talks about how his dad
10:09 did a lot of the cooking in the backyard on the barbecue.
10:12 But cooking was kind of beside the point
10:14 'cause really for him,
10:15 cooking was about being with his friends
10:17 and drinking lots of beer on the barbecue
10:18 and talking a lot of smack outside.
10:21 And the pork steaks tend to get a little overdone,
10:24 and you could relate to that.
10:26 You could relate to him talking about his mom,
10:29 who went to work later in life and was a kitchen designer
10:34 and never got the recognition she deserved,
10:37 was really good at what she did at work,
10:39 but was paid less than everybody else.
10:41 A lot of us remember our moms nursing quiet resentments,
10:46 a little bit of quiet pain
10:50 because the world sometimes looked past them
10:52 despite all that they had to offer
10:54 and all the contributions that they make.
10:57 So the curation that you hear in the series is intentional,
11:02 that we want to really create lots of different experiences.
11:09 And we hope that along the way, people trust us.
11:11 So you know, Gayle King, you know, Michelle Obama,
11:13 you don't know Jeff Tweedy,
11:14 but you're gonna listen anyway, right?
11:16 And vice versa, you know, Jeff Tweedy,
11:20 you know, Conan O'Brien, you know, Matthew Broderick,
11:23 but you're not familiar with D-Nice
11:25 because you aren't on Instagram
11:26 and you weren't dancing to "Club Quarantine"
11:28 in the middle of the pandemic.
11:29 You know, you may not know him,
11:31 but you're gonna listen to his episode
11:33 and you're gonna hear something in that episode
11:35 that resonates with you also.
11:37 And so, and maybe you go and you follow D-Nice
11:40 and you figure out who he is
11:41 and you see all the wisdom that he has to offer
11:43 in the way that he lives his life.
11:45 - Wonderful.
11:47 Also with that, you know,
11:48 there is some topics of food that is in there.
11:51 And so I know it seems to take a backseat,
11:54 but at the same time,
11:55 that is kind of what grabs the audience right away.
11:58 You think, "Oh, it's about food."
12:00 And then you learn that it's so much more.
12:02 I wanted to know,
12:03 will there be any kind of companion piece
12:06 in terms of here's the recipes
12:08 for what was mentioned in the dish,
12:11 or even the conversation?
12:13 - Absolutely, absolutely.
12:14 Right now you can find the recipes on my Instagram page.
12:17 We are building a website,
12:18 which we'll be rolling out in just a matter of days.
12:22 We're just kind of beta testing it right now
12:23 to make sure that when it rolls out,
12:25 it rolls out smoothly.
12:26 So we will have all the recipes on site there.
12:29 So you can find that.
12:31 And we also wanna create an interactive experience
12:35 that is somewhat, that has a level of engagement.
12:37 So when you try Uzo Aduba's,
12:41 her mama's red Nigerian stew,
12:42 we wanna hear how it went.
12:44 You know, she gives us the warning,
12:45 "These peppers are hot."
12:47 So if you're gonna, you know,
12:48 don't touch your eyes, wash your hands.
12:50 You might even wanna think about gloves, glasses, goggles,
12:53 because on, you know, she said on a scale,
12:54 if you wanna do it the right way,
12:55 ask her is one to 10, she said,
12:56 "It's actually 1000, that's how hot the peppers are."
12:59 So we wanna hear about your experience with that.
13:01 If you make, when we talked to Glennon Doyle
13:05 and Abby Wambach, Abby's mother has something called
13:08 "Pasta for Thousands," which I made,
13:10 and it was a bell ringer, my family loved it.
13:11 When you make that recipe,
13:12 we wanna know how it went for you.
13:14 Did you make any modifications?
13:16 In some cases, people came to us with a memory,
13:19 but they didn't have the recipe,
13:21 because an experience of your mama or your grandmama
13:26 didn't write down the recipe.
13:28 And so, or that you didn't keep those little recipe cards,
13:31 you didn't, you know, understand what a treasure they were.
13:33 So we've done a little bit of culinary anthropology
13:36 for some of our guests.
13:38 W. Kamau Bell loved fried pies.
13:42 When he said the taste of home for him
13:44 was his grandmama's fried pies.
13:48 And he got wisty, misty, wistful and misty
13:51 when he was talking about it.
13:53 Made up a new word there, wisty.
13:55 But he said that he was sad,
13:59 because when she died, the recipe died along with her.
14:01 So I went on social media and I said,
14:03 "Let's help this brother find a taste of home."
14:06 And people were so generous in serving up their recipes,
14:10 in giving us pointers.
14:12 Well, if she was in, she was from Kentucky,
14:15 so she probably would use this kind of fruit
14:18 instead of this kind of fruit.
14:20 People in certain parts of the world,
14:21 it turns out there's a whole etymology of fried pies
14:25 that are called crab lanterns in some places,
14:27 'cause they look like a crab claw.
14:28 They're called tasties.
14:30 They have different names for them.
14:33 And people cook them different ways,
14:35 sometimes in oil, sometimes in butter, often with lard.
14:38 The crusts are different.
14:39 It was a working class lunch staple,
14:42 because you could make it
14:43 and you could take it with you in a lunchbox
14:45 and it kept the rest of your food warm.
14:48 So we have learned so much about fried pies,
14:50 but the most important thing
14:51 is that we're able to help him find that taste of home.
14:55 And so in cases where people remember something,
14:58 but they don't have the recipe,
14:59 we try to use the community that we're building.
15:03 'Cause I think through a podcast like this,
15:05 you really are building community
15:07 to help people learn from each other
15:09 and experiment with each other when they try these recipes.
15:12 So we're really looking forward to rolling out the website
15:15 so we can serve something up to people by way of recipe,
15:17 but we can also hear from them
15:19 and hear about their experiences
15:21 and maybe a word or two about their mama's kitchens.
15:24 - I love it 'cause you're helping put people's memories,
15:27 you're putting them back together.
15:28 So I love that about that.
15:30 What is really, I love the question
15:32 of what's in your refrigerator,
15:34 because that's when you kind of learn about people's success
15:38 and struggles all through the refrigerator
15:41 and both the nourishing
15:43 and how other people nourish you as well.
15:45 So with that said, while working on the series,
15:49 did it start to make you reflect on your own experiences
15:52 and how it impacted you as the person that you are today?
15:56 - Absolutely.
15:57 I think about when you asked the refrigerator question,
15:59 I think of my son, my youngest son, Norris.
16:04 And I asked Michelle Obama that question
16:08 because I remembered a day where she's a dear friend
16:12 and we've known each other for years
16:13 and a day where he actually went in their house
16:16 and opened up the refrigerator.
16:18 And I was like, you can't do that, especially not here.
16:22 But that was something that he used to do all the time.
16:25 He would march in someone's house
16:28 and he would go in their kitchen
16:29 and open up the refrigerator and look inside,
16:31 what you got?
16:32 And it wasn't that he was planning to eat.
16:35 I think he as a young person understood
16:38 that you could learn something about someone
16:40 by what was in their refrigerator.
16:42 And so I think about, as I'm talking to other people,
16:45 my own story, not just in the refrigerator,
16:47 but in the cupboards.
16:49 And over time, what those cupboards have looked like.
16:52 And yes, there were times when I was younger
16:55 where there was struggle.
16:55 There were times when I would visit my people in Alabama
16:58 when I was young and didn't understand
17:00 how much struggle there was,
17:02 but realizing that the cupboards did tell a story
17:05 of having to make do, having to stretch stuff,
17:07 having to feed a whole lot of people,
17:09 especially at the end of the month
17:11 when money may have been tight.
17:13 It makes me think of the experience in our kitchen
17:17 that I hope will resonate with other people.
17:19 And I hope will be a message in this podcast
17:22 is the importance of coming together over meals.
17:26 We're all busy.
17:27 We all often have devices.
17:30 You see pictures of the cover of the New Yorker this week
17:32 has people together at Thanksgiving meal
17:34 and everybody's looking at their phone
17:35 instead of each other.
17:36 But the importance of coming together
17:39 and having a meal and putting the phones aside,
17:41 and no matter how busy you are,
17:43 having dinner together.
17:45 And that's something that my kitchen would tell that story.
17:49 I think if you talk to my children,
17:51 adult children now about their mama's kitchen,
17:53 I think that's one of the stories that they would tell
17:56 is that my husband and I tried very hard
17:58 no matter how busy we were,
17:59 no matter how much we traveled
18:00 to make sure that we had family meals
18:03 and they were in violet.
18:04 And you had to come, you had to couldn't eat in your room,
18:08 couldn't eat in the other room in front of it.
18:09 When we came together as a family.
18:11 And I think that that has helped hold us together
18:14 as a family.
18:15 And we still do that now that they're gone.
18:17 When we get together, it's usually over food
18:19 and it's big and it's loud and all of them cook now.
18:23 But I hope that there are a couple of things
18:25 that I hope the podcast does beyond just entertain people
18:28 is that I hope it makes them think of the importance
18:30 of food in our lives, the hands that prepare it,
18:33 the hands that pick it, the hands that process it,
18:37 all along the food chain that we are grateful to our mamas,
18:40 but also all the people who are involved
18:42 in the process of delivering food to our tables.
18:45 And that we also think about people for whom
18:49 the kitchen is not a space of bounty.
18:51 And I'm ever present 'cause we're talking about people
18:54 in their kitchens and good things that happen there.
18:56 But I also remember, and I want our audience to remember,
18:59 and I'm looking for stories that help us tell that story too
19:03 that where the kitchen was a place of drudgery.
19:05 Mom didn't like to cook, but she had to feed people.
19:07 Where the kitchen is a place of want
19:09 because the cupboards were bare.
19:10 Jose Andres tells us that he is the person he is,
19:13 not just the groundbreaking culinary maverick that he is,
19:18 but also the person who feeds people around the world,
19:21 who runs toward danger and disaster and feeds people
19:24 because of the lessons he learned from his mother
19:26 at the end of the month when the cupboards were bare.
19:29 And she had to figure out how to put
19:31 innovative meals together.
19:32 And that helped him become the chef that he is today.
19:35 So, I do want people to remember those two messages,
19:39 coming together and the importance of that,
19:41 but also remembering those for whom the kitchen
19:44 is not a place of plenty.
19:45 - Thank you so much for speaking to me.
19:48 And thank you for giving me my memories back
19:50 that I completely forgot about who changed my life.
19:54 - Can I ask a quick question?
19:55 Can you just give us a sentence about your mama's kitchen?
19:58 - Oh, love.
20:01 It was terrible food, but well loved.
20:03 She can't cook.
20:06 I love her.
20:06 She cannot cook.
20:07 But she meant well.
20:10 - Well, you know, love is the most important ingredient.
20:14 So as long as that was there, then you're good.
20:17 - No seasoning, but it's love.
20:19 - I've loved talking to you, Diana.
20:22 Thank you so much. - Thank you so much.
20:24 - My best to you.
20:25 Happy holidays.
20:26 - Thank you.
20:27 You too.
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