Babes in Bookland
A podcast celebrating women's memoirs, one story at a time!
Babes in Bookland
AUTHOR CHAT: Ashley Russell's "What's Cooking Good Looking"
How do you honor the ones you love?
Our guest, author and maker Ashley Russell, brings her grandmother, Wanda’s, kitchen back to life with a cozy, retro-modern cookbook that feels like a hug and reads like a memoir. We dig into how a granddaughter turned a private archive into a public heirloom, complete with tattoo-style illustrations, candid photos, and DIY food shots that celebrate mess and memory over perfection.
Ashley walks us through gathering 300 recipes and shaping a tight, test-driven collection that honors regional roots and lived history. We get the stories behind “top secret” favorites, the delightfully divisive WTF chapter, and why dishes like liver and onions or milk toast still matter. You’ll hear how the book’s cardstock pages invite cocoa smudges and notes in the margins, how a decade-by-decade photo collage reveals a family in motion, and how a Spotify playlist ties together the songs Wanda loved—from mid-century standards to a modern country croon she played late in life.
This conversation is also a master class in creative resilience: funding through community, trusting pivots, and defining a clear North Star (your point of view!). Ashley shares how a tattoo flash became food Kewpies, why she shot the food herself, and how staying vulnerable and afraid might be the key to the best art. We explore cooking as care, a feminist choice, and a small act of rebellion against disposable culture. Our hands are busy, phones are down, hearts are open. If you’ve ever wanted to preserve your family’s flavors or make art that feels true, you’ll find practical tips and a lot of courage here.
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Link to this episode’s book:
What’s Cooking Good Looking
Other links:
Sad Puppy Tattoos
Transcripts are available through apple’s podcast app—they may not be perfect, but relying on them allows me to dedicate more time to the show! If you’re interested in being a transcript angel, let me know.
This episode is produced, recorded, and its content edited by me.
Theme song by Devin Kennedy
Special thanks to my new friend, Ashley!
Xx, Alex
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Welcome back to Babes in Bookland, your women's memoir podcast, and today, your women's food war podcast. Because author Ashley Russell joins us to discuss her cozy cookbook, What's Cooking Good Looking? If you'd like to further support the show, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts for extended episodes and bonus content, or sign up on Patreon. Okay, let's get cooking. Hello, Ashley. Hey! Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm so looking forward to chatting about your just delightful cookbook, Food War. I'm so excited to be here. So this cookbook is darling. The buttery yellow color, the checkered pattern, the illustrations, which I cannot wait to hear more about how that came to fruition. The look of it is such a great marriage between retro and modern. It looks like it should belong in everyone's kitchen, and maybe it should. The recipes are simple and easy to follow, and I should know because I baked your pecan pie for Thanksgiving last week and it was a huge hit. But what I loved most, and there is a lot to love, including the really fun drink recipes and the section of WTF recipes, which gets real interesting real fast. But what I loved the most was learning about your family, especially your grandma Wanda. I think this is a beautiful tribute to her, Ashley. And I know it took a lot of time and a lot of effort. And I hope that you really feel proud of what you've created and what you're sharing with the world. You've given all of us a piece of your heart and you've invited us into your family.
SPEAKER_00:Oh well, thanks, Alex. That's really sweet. Yeah, it's been a really fun journey getting this cookbook together. And I'm glad it's being so well received. Okay, well, let's start out at the beginning. My grandma did pass away in June of 2024, and I knew she had a box of recipe cards. Um, and I wanted to make sure that didn't get lost in the shuffle of trying to figure out what to do with her estate. And I didn't want it to get just like lost to history. You know, everybody has a lot going on. So I volunteered immediately. Like I was like, where's the box? Let me I'll take it home. I would like the whole family to have these recipes. Let me be the one to like steer that ship. So it just sort of started as a project for my family, and then um it blossomed from there. And so when did you think, wow, this could be something that I would like to share more with the world? Right. I knew I wasn't gonna be able to complete any sort of book by the fall of 2024, and I didn't want my family to go another year without having the recipes or go another holiday season without having the recipes. So I knew my deadline that I made for myself was gonna be fall 2025. And I have always toyed in my head since I was a kid about being a writer. It's very daunting, it's never really fell into place. And this sort of felt like, well, maybe this is your, maybe this is your first step. Let's try to make this a real cookbook. And once I got my sister-in-law to sign on to do the illustrations, that sort of felt like the last big step, what the book was missing. And then I was like, okay, we're doing this for real. We're gonna make this like a real cookbook that looks like it should be um on the bookshelves of stores.
SPEAKER_03:And it definitely does. So it seems like it was a family effort, but did you have any pushback from your family about releasing this to us, to me?
SPEAKER_00:Totally like that. Was a concern of mine that I don't know, like that's just something you think about, right? Like, is everyone gonna be okay with like this being out there? People can say that they support you until they realize like it's gonna be public. And I didn't deal with any of that. Like, they were all so supportive, they were there every step of the way. I had family members like recipe testing, and I started a group chat, which was actually really great because it kept us all talking after we lost Wanda. And my grandparents were kind of the glue of all of us. So to be able to have something to talk about and focus on and help each other with and help me with was a great way to like keep everyone connected.
SPEAKER_03:That's so beautiful. And so no one said, Okay, Ashley, you can't put this recipe into the book because this is top secret. Okay, because you do have top secret fudge cake.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. So it has a couple in there, like the top secret fudge, which I thought was so funny. It's written in like bold letters on the recipe card, like top secret. And then her chocolate pie were two recipes that she never gave out, like until you like married into the family. She wouldn't give you that recipe, which is so funny, but they're both in there and they're both family famous.
SPEAKER_03:So, darling. I imagine on people's wedding nights, they're like, Yes, I finally got Wanda's pie recipe. My life is complete. I know, isn't that funny? I think there should be a Hallmark movie where that's the whole plop device is that the woman just really wants the grandma's pie recipe. So she's like, fine, I'll marry him, but then she ends up falling in love because it's a Hallmark movie. There you go, Ashley. There's your next project. Yeah, screenplay. So tell me more about Wanda. What was your favorite memory with her? Can you even pick just one? She sounded incredible. And it is a recipe book, so it's mostly recipes, but the photos which we'll get into and the small snippets that you do include in your family. I feel like I got to know them and I got to love them as well.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's awesome. That's really what I wanted. I wanted to do with that introduction and including the photos and trying to include these little nuances or little chunks of my family that make me laugh and make me smile. And I've always loved. So it's great to hear that that's translating to outside my family. Yeah. Wanda, we called her Nana. I've been trying to think of, I get asked that a lot lately, like, what's your favorite memory? And I have like silly, funny stories. But when I really think about it, it's like these small snippets, like these little flashes of her, like her hugs, driving around with her, going to Cole's and Macy's. Like she wore these giant eyeglasses, and then she would put giant sunglasses over the eyeglasses. And that's like such a memory for me. Watching her put on lipstick, like the color of her nails. You know, it's like those little, those little sensory memories that you have. Yeah. That's what pops into my head when people ask me that.
SPEAKER_03:You see her in the details.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I do totally.
SPEAKER_03:And so tell me a little bit about her life story. And she was a part of your life consistently as you're growing up, or was it a thing where you would see her, you know, for holidays every few months?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so she's from Texas, big family, born in the 30s, such a different time. She moved to California for a new start, her first daughter, and that's where she met my grandpa. And the story goes that they were working at a like a resort hotel, and he would stay in the hotel rooms when he wasn't supposed to, and she would like let him into the rooms. Yeah, very cute. One day he just pushed her in some bushes and kissed her, and they started dating. Like the story's like very sweet. He was an artist, he's always drawn. Like, we have paintings and pencil drawings from him. And I learned that he worked for GTE, which was um a telephone directory company. It's kind of like a bygone thing now. But they make telephone books and they manage um telephone booths. So he was a traveling salesman that got picked up by GTE because a man saw him doodling and asked if he wanted to do their like ads in the phone book. It's just like these stories that I don't know if this stuff happens anymore. You know, like it feels very time and place. He was a traveling salesman, and him and my grandma and their kids moved around a lot. So the recipes span from Texas, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Washington, Hawaii, Florida. They lived a lot of places. And I think it kind of shows in the recipes. There's definitely this like southern core and jumping off point to all the recipes because of Wanda. But then it's it has a little bit of the whole country, I think, in there also. But I am from the Pacific Northwest. I'm from Seattle. And so when they retired the past 30 years, the last 30 years of their life, they lived in a place called Baconar, Washington, which is just north of Seattle, maybe like an hour. Okay. And I grew up as an only child to my mom. It was just me and her. So I would spend a lot of time with my grandparents over summers or, you know, on school breaks. They would always come down and see my plays or whatever I was doing. And she was a big part of my life. She was always, she was always there. She was always someone I could call. Just very supportive. Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_03:How do you think she's inspired you the most in how you live your life today?
SPEAKER_00:That's a great question. I, you know, it kind of goes, it kind of goes back to that support. My grandma was always down. And like looking back and reflecting on that, if I want, I was like, hey, I I'm I'm nine years old and I made up this pattern to make a bag. Can we sew it? And she has this like home sewing knowledge she's sown all of her life. And she'd be like, I don't know if that's gonna work. But she would do it anyway. I never remember her hesitating or acting exasperated or annoyed. She always was like, Yes, let's do this. That kind of like jumping in with both feet, I think made me someone who isn't afraid to try things. You know, like there was never this, like, uh, you know, you can't do that, or like this is gonna be hard. It was just sort of like, let's just like try it and see what happens. You take that spirit of yes with you. Totally. Yeah, yeah. And I don't think as a kid you realize you know that that's what it is. But looking back, that was such a huge thing, you know, not to be told, oh.
SPEAKER_03:As a mom now, I really try my best to lean into yes because obviously this is the result. Look at what you've accomplished with just even in this one instance of feeling empowered to just see what happens.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that that can be really contributed to her. And I think that is something that's unique about that grandparent grandkid connection. It's a different relationship than any other family relationship, and I think it almost allows for that kind of yes environment. How old was she when she passed away? She was 90. She lived a long life, she just had a lot of health problems towards the end.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You know, we knew she was sick, but it's always gonna be a shock, right?
SPEAKER_03:Like Of course. Anytime someone's been such an integral part of your life and all of a sudden they're not there anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:I opened it up to this one picture of her dancing. She just seemed, she just seemed so joyful. And I just thank you so much for sharing her with us. Okay, so let's get into the process of actually creating this recipe book. Let's talk about tracking down all these recipes. She kept most of them in, was it just one of those really old school, like 10 recipe boxes with oh, that is so neat to have the handwriting and the little notes and the flower marks and the grease stains, which you encourage us all to basically dirty the hell out of this recipe book with our own markings and stains, which I loved.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, so that went into a lot of the design of the book. I got a lot, everyone would be like, you should really do glossy pages because it's going to be in the kitchen. Like things should be laminated. And I was just like, I want it to feel like her recipe cards. It is just like a cardstock type of paper, and it's meant for you to spill your sugar and cocoa powder on. I think that that's one of the most special things about her recipe cards, is you can tell how many times she made each recipe.
SPEAKER_03:So you said that you found the the recipes, but then you had other family members say, Hey, can you include this? or hey, can you include that? And you can't, I mean, it says 125 recipes on the back. Did you have a lot more that you had to narrow it down?
SPEAKER_00:I had about 300 recipes. There, the majority of them were in this box. But then throughout my grandma's life, different family members, from her to my mom to one of my aunts that I know of and her niece, all at different points would try to type things up. You know, my aunts would start forwarding me emails, you know, this is when we wrote down these ones. Or my mom would be like, This is when I started this cookbook project, and here's five more. My cousin Kaylin had recipes on notepaper. I went to her house and I was like, I can't believe there's more recipes. You know, you're like, I'm drowning in the recipes, you guys. There's just so many. And then her niece Connie, who was really close in age to her, I found out that Connie's probably two years younger than my grandma. Okay. And I found out that a few years ago she had put together a family cookbook. And so it goes back to the same aunts, uncles, and my grandma's parents. So it's got to be a lot of the same crossover. So I was able to get a lot of those recipes, and I included ones that I was like, oh yeah, I remember my grandma making this or talking about this. So it was really just this research moment of trying to pick everyone's brains and have them go through their houses and be like, what do you have? What do you remember that I'm missing? I have probably a little bit over 300. Wow. And yeah, and at first I was like, great, that seems like a good number, you know, like I don't know anything at this point about making an actual cookbook. Yeah. And I started reading that you need recipe editors, you know, the whole what the process is actually like. So I reached out to my first recipe editor and told her about the project. And she was like, that's a lot of recipes. Usually books are 75 to 125 recipes. And I was like, oh, she helped me understand by breaking down the cost of not only editing, but if you want to include images, paper costs, you know, all the things. And I was like, okay, I totally get it now. I get why. 300 is like a lot. So then it became a process I included my family in. It was which ones are your were your favorites growing up? Which ones do you remember? What do we have to have? What am I missing? You know, and that was the core list. And then it started into like rounding out the sections. Do I need some more savory dishes? What what would make this like a complete book?
SPEAKER_03:And you talked about testing them. Did you test them all?
SPEAKER_00:I did not test the liver and onions. Okay. You're like, I drew a line. Yeah. But but wait, wait, wait, wait. You made the white fish cheese bake? Yes. So that's so funny. That probably sounds so like my partner, that's like he'd be like, I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. Like that is a recipe my mom and I both love.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Wow, girl, Tom Calicchio on Top Chef is famous for saying fish and cheese do not go together, but you are proving him wrong in your cookbook.
SPEAKER_00:That's what my partner says. He's like, that doesn't sound right. It's really good. So yes, I had to include that one because that is like a core memory recipe.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:For those listening, it is a white fish of your choice.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and then there is um sour cream and cheddar cheese on top and seasonings. And you bake it, and I love it. And I found out my uncle called me and he was like, Let's go through this list together and I'll I'll just give you my opinions. And he and he's so funny. He's like, Do people even eat angel food cake anymore? Like his opinions on like what should stay and go uh made me laugh.
SPEAKER_03:Yes, uncle, they do.
SPEAKER_00:I know we have that quite a bit in our family. It's so good. And her her coffee angel food cake is one of my favorites now.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, okay. That might be the next one that I try then.
SPEAKER_00:It's super good. The frosting with the roasted almonds is amazing. But he was like, Oh, that is Teresa's mom's recipe. And so Teresa is my cousin's um mom, it's Bob's wife, and it was neat to learn that my grandma got that recipe from you know her daughter-in-law's mom. So there was a lot of like learning where things came from in this process and how connected our families are. And I just think that's really special.
SPEAKER_03:I think that is special, and I think it's a reminder of how food can connect us past a lot of things. Space, distance, but even maybe disagreements, differences in opinions, you know. Your WTF recipes, then, though they may seem weird, are tried and true and good in your opinion. You didn't include anything. Ashley, did you include anything that you don't like in this book?
SPEAKER_02:So, like, I'm not caught. You're caught.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. I'm not gonna eat raisin pie. I'm not gonna eat liver and onions. Like, there's things that like I have biases towards for sure. And I think that they mostly are in that in that for Pete's sake little chapter. But I had to include those because they were they were brought up so much by my family or in my research that it was like my grandparents loved these recipes. This is something that like they ate, and it's like funny now, but she wrote it down and she kept it. That made me feel like it had to be included.
SPEAKER_03:Well, it also tells a bit of their story. Like liver and onions is actually a really cheap way to get a lot of iron, and a lot of people had to eat that way for many years.
SPEAKER_00:There's historical context to a lot of the a lot of the WTF recipes. There's, you know, daled rice that you fry up and put like lemon pudding on top. And now there's all these like gourmets to make like a fried rice dessert, but that was what you did when you were poor in the south.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. You made things stretch, you made things work, you tried to keep things interesting for your family in the ways that you could, in the very cheap ways that you could.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. There's the milk toast, which is just toast and milk with sugar. My grandpa loved it.
SPEAKER_03:That was that sounds delicious to me, by the way.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. It doesn't sound terrible. I mean, if the bread didn't get too soggy, I guess. Yeah. Yes, and it's cute when people read through the recipes, like, and I'm I'm near them or they text me, they're like, Oh, my mom did that. My grandparents did that. I remember my great aunt eating this. That's so awesome. And that's what I those are the memories I want to conjure when people read the book.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. We're all connected in this way that we don't realize sometimes. But we do need to talk about the shrimp dip jello mold.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that crazy? Did you make that? No, okay, okay. That's I just had to like include it in the chapter intro because I I couldn't bring myself, I couldn't bring myself to put it in the book because it's so gross. It's like gelatin and a can of tomato soup and shrimp.
SPEAKER_03:They really they put everything in jello.
SPEAKER_00:What were they thinking? Everything went in jello. And like, so the ones that I did include that were the WTF, they were ones that like someone had a memory, a core memory of that being a part of them growing up, or you know, a memory of my grandparents. And the shrimp dip jello mold she had handwritten on a recipe card, but there were no memories tied to it.
SPEAKER_03:So and it was a very clean recipe card. So we're not even sure she made it. She too was like, This sounds Interesting for one day. Pack it away. You know what, Ashley? I feel like we're being a little sassy. And maybe we shouldn't knock it until we try it.
SPEAKER_00:I know there's gonna be people that are like, you guys, this is actually really good. I'll follow the lead on that one. You let me know.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. If I ever get up the courage to make it, I'll I'll I'll let you know. I'll let you know. So let's go back and talk about the photographs that I had mentioned. I'm sure you had so many to choose from. How did you narrow that down? And and was that something that, again, family members were just kind of coming out of the woodwork and saying, Oh, I've got this great picture of Wanda. I've got this great picture of Bob.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So um my grandma kept so many photos. And I want to say maybe 15 years ago, she started divvying them up into hot boxes for each of her kids and grandkids, which was really sweet. I started there with my box of photos. We had a shared album for her celebration of life on our phones that I was able to pull photos, start to pull photos from as well. I was able to go through one of my cousins and my mom's boxes of photos as well. So it was it was one of those, you know, I was just collecting every photo that I felt could be relevant and kind of narrowed it down from there. When we were going through my grandma's belongings, she had this old wooden little box that I had never seen before. And inside were two rolls of film negatives and um a bunch of letters from Bob, my grandpa. It had her marriage certificate in there, some very old rose petals, and she kept every little flower thank you card for her for her wedding that her friends gave her. So this was obviously a very special box to her. And I got those photos developed, and they were her honeymoon photos. Yeah, so super special, super sweet. Mom and aunts and uncles had seen some of them before. At some point, they were developed. I had just never seen them, and I think that they just got, you know, divvied up and lost in time. This was just sort of like new to me, and I thought that it was so special and it showed such a playful, happy time in their life that I think really spoke to their personalities. And I included a lot of photos from that role in the book.
SPEAKER_03:This is the one where it's the bed and they've made the towels look like they have some of the sunglasses on. It's so funny. That was so lovely to see. It it surprised me. It's surprised playfulness, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. Like I know my grandpa's playful, I know they poke fun at each other. A lot of the photos I included, I wanted to have a candidness to them and kind of like an imperfectness. Just because I think that we see so many stoic or planned or perfected photos of ourselves and our families growing up that I wanted to kind of include the ones that someone's half out of the frame, or it's a little blurry because she's dancing, or you know, just ones that showed sides to her that she's a three-dimensional person and she's not just a grandma or a mom or whatever box you want to put her in. She had these sides to her that still inspire me to this day, like looking at those photos.
SPEAKER_03:There's a movement and a life to these photos.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:They're beautiful. And I just want to do a quick PSA for anyone out there, digitize these photos, please. Like there are so many services now, so that you can preserve those for generations to come. Oh, I also really loved the pages of the decades photos. That was wild to see the just transformation, even in a fashion sense, the fashion changes. It was very cool.
SPEAKER_00:What inspired you to do that? I loved making those. It's also cool to see just like the color tones change and like how film is developed. Like all of it. My grandma kept a lot of those really old photographs from the 30s that I hadn't seen until I started doing this project. Uh, but I wanted to do so. I have the collages of the recipe cards, um, but I wanted to do collages of the family. And it took a while for me to land on doing by decade. How do I organize this? And it felt the most, the best way to like honor these stories in Wanda and my family to do it by decade. I think it turned out pretty neat.
SPEAKER_03:I think it turned out really neat. It was very cool. You talked earlier about the cost of something like this. And I stumbled upon your GoFundMe page, I believe. So talk to me a little bit about you, don't have to say like how much it cost or anything like that, but at what point did you realize, okay, I need to turn to the greater community around me to help get this funded?
SPEAKER_00:Once it turned into not just like a Canva presentation for like my family members, once it turned into like a real book, and I started realizing how much recipe testing was gonna cost, how much printing the book was gonna cost, you know, you pay for a trademark, the ISBN number, yada yada yada. And it was like, oh, I would love to be able to fund this myself, but I'm I'm gonna need to have to ask like for my family, my community to help me with these costs. And while that felt like hard to do, it's hard to like ask for help in that way.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It also felt like I had this greater purpose of like this is gonna be something that everyone's gonna benefit from and going to want to have in their kitchens and their lives. And so if you can help be a part of making it happen, I think that makes the book even more special. So I had whether people helped recipe test or gave to the GoFundMe, like all of their names are in the book. And the reason the book is possible is because of them.
SPEAKER_03:What a testament to community and the way that we can love one another.
SPEAKER_00:Totally.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, and then you said that your sister-in-law is the illustrator. But also talk to me about the style of the drawings because I did Google it and it the baby is called something, and I should have written it down.
SPEAKER_00:Cupie. K-E-W-P-I-E. Cupie.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, okay. So was this her aesthetic originally, or did you guys come up with this together? Okay, and she's a tattoo artist.
SPEAKER_00:She's a tattoo artist, yeah. So um Abigail's my sister-in-law, she's a tattoo artist, super talented. She does black ink tattoos, she does a lot of florals, animals. You can see it in the book. Like I included her work, and I wanted it to look like her work. I had never seen a book illustrated by a tattoo artist, and that idea really was inspiring to me. I was like, that could be really cool. It also looks like old children's book illustrations to me. Like the old Wizard of Oz books, where you have the black and white illustrations with the text, and then you know, every few pages there's like a color photo. Yeah. I wanted it to have that kind of feel. It's nostalgic feeling. Yeah, totally. And I I was thinking back to books when you're a kid, and you always go and pick that book to read or be read to you, and there's something magical about that book. And what was it? And a lot of times for me, it it was those illustrations in the text, or the collages in the front and the back, or things that I feel like as a kid transported you to another world. And in this book, like you said, it's nostalgia. This transports you to um another time. So that was all like kind of worrying in my brain as inspiration for including um her illustrations. Her business is called Sad Puppy Tattoo, and I saw that she had she had done this really amazing pastry flash. A flash is a sheet of paper where it's like, these are all the tattoos you can choose from like a flash sheet. Okay. I was like, oh, I wonder if she would want to illustrate this book. Because she had mentioned that she's always wanted to illustrate a children's book. I asked her and she immediately was like, Yes, that set that emotion. And I went to her studio and she gave me full reign over everything she had ever drawn. So I brought my scanner and just started scanning um her whole library, which was how we were able to get so many illustrations in the book.
SPEAKER_03:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:And then she was commissioned to do drawings for the book specifically. And let me tell you, that list was very long. And so we kind of had to narrow it down. For Halloween, she had done these really cute coupie babies, like dressed in pumpkins or or whatever. And I've always loved those. And I was like, oh my god, Abigail, what if we did food cupies? Like, how cute would that be? That was a way to narrow down my wish list of drawings and kind of give it this like through line, this theme. And I think that they're just like so perfect in the book. And I think my grandma would have just thought they were so cute. Do you know the history of the Cewpie Baby? I will tell you, I made a lot of inspiration boards from old cookbooks and old cooking ads. And Cewie babies were back through the 40s in a lot of advertisements. I realized that after asking Abigail to do the Cupies, and so it just sort of felt serendipitous that like there's these retro ads that have coupie babies in them.
SPEAKER_03:Wow. I definitely recognized them, but I didn't know from what or where, but they felt familiar in that way that I think you were obviously going for. Yes, totally. And what I'm really hearing, Ashley, which I'm finding so incredible, is you said you had a food editor. It's someone who helps you really make sure that your recipes are translating in a way that are easy to understand. But I find it quite remarkable that you edited this yourself. You came up with these ideas. Yes, you had people come in with their own input and their their own ideas, but this is a remarkable feat. I mean, you've never edited this, it is not what you do in in real life. You're not a book editor.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_03:You were able to clarify your vision in kind of an I'm I'm really like in awe that you had nobody holding your hand through this. You did this all on your own.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. You know, it's, I feel like there's certain projects we have in life that work out this way, and projects that definitely don't. This one really blossomed every day to opening another door and helping clarify. And it all just came together. And I wonder if that's because my mission was that this book be about Wanda and my family and be told by me. And that's what I kept like replaying in my head every time I would make have to make a decision. You know, whether it was like editing the introduction or including a photo or the order of the recipes, every decision I made was like, is this being truthful to myself and my grandma? And that can be a hard balance, right? Like my grandma didn't have tattoos, like, you know, because I'm not a fan of them, but she reflected that I had them. And so to include those, you know, that's definitely one of those. It's a little bit of me, and it's a little bit of her with the content of the illustrations. I think that having that little like North Star always checking in about am I being honest to two different things? Where's the middle ground is what helped make it possible to make all these decisions.
SPEAKER_03:It's just so cohesive. And it feels like you just, like you said, we're so clear on your point of view, which I think is really important in art. And I think as an artist myself, I'm writing a screenplay. It can be hard to navigate that line of what is the story that I want to tell in the way that I want to tell it, and what is the story I think is going to be best received, right? Because there's a piece of, I don't think most people do art solely for individual purposes. You know, maybe some people do, but like you want people to like it. You want people to buy it, you want other people to see this recipe book and want to take it home with them. But what this has really shown me is that the more you stick to what you want to do, the more that it becomes this individual, beautiful thing that feels like no one else can capture. And therefore it becomes a thing that no one else can do. And so it's a thing that everyone needs or wants because nobody else can provide it, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. I think that that is like nail on the head. I was really scared for a long time putting this throughout the process, putting this out there because it felt really personal. And like the introduction is like very personal, and it's very much how I talk, it's how I feel. And that was nerve-wracking to have my family read that. It's nerve-wracking to put that out like on a bookshelf. But towards the end of while the book was at the printers, like there was no going back at that point. I stumbled upon this interview with David Bowie, and he was talking about how like if you're not scared, like you're doing something wrong. Like if you're not vulnerable, like you are creating for the wrong reasons. Like you shouldn't be creating to please your audience. That's when you make your most dull work, you know, and it's too broad. It's too broad. Yeah. So that really made me go, okay, cool. Cause I'm like really scared. So I must be on the right track.
SPEAKER_03:Like yes, yes. You definitely were on the right track with this one. Okay, let's finish up our section on the process before we get into the cookbook a little bit more. Who did the photographs of the food? Because they were great. I did. Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. Yeah. So I um Abigail, the tattoo artist, and um Grace, my boyfriend's sister, and I all went to a bookstore and started looking through cookbooks for inspiration very early on. Like, what colors do we like? Why do we gravitate towards this one? And just sort of like very nonchalantly, like being like, oh, this looks cool. And Grace was like, Well, you can do pictures and illustrations. And I was like, oh my God, you're right. I can. Because like for a long time, I was just gonna do the illustrations. And I hired a local amazing photographer for like months down the road to take photos. And as the the reality of the cost of the book became more and more real, I realized I wasn't gonna be able to afford a photographer. And I at that point had been doing a lot of recipe testing and taking pictures of the tested recipes. And so I kind of had a good handle on what already photographed pretty well. And I have a production background, and I was like telling myself, you know, if you took it really slow and you did one or two recipes a week, and you didn't put a time limit on yourself, and it just was sort of like this, you know, you're your own painter in your studio kind of vibe. Maybe you could take some okay photos. And I had a lot of dishware from my grandma and a lot of dishware I had thrifted, and it and the pictures just sort of started coming together and having this like vibe and life of their own. And a lot of them were composed around my grandma's favorite flowers. So it just sort of all came together.
SPEAKER_03:Came together. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing a lot. I really, I really am impressed because you said you come from a design background.
SPEAKER_00:I was a costume designer, yeah. Okay. And so I mean, I grew up in that from 16 to the age of 30, um, on movie sets and and and photography sets.
SPEAKER_03:You have an eye of how colors work together. Yeah. I think so. I think it helped. But good for you for trusting yourself with having to pivot. It's more personal. This is you taking these photographs. And I don't know. I think it's just all worked out really, really well. Like, no, no shade to food photographers, because I think there's a major art to that. As someone who tried really hard to take a picture of this pecan pie after I baked it, Ashley, I wanted to send it to you. And I was like, I can't. It's just brown on brown. I picked a brown pie plate. Like, I don't know what I was thinking. It's okay next time. There is an art to it, and it is really hard to do. And so, again, I'm just very impressed.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you. I researched a lot, I listened to a lot of food uh photography podcasts, and I I tried to glean what was working in like a food photo that I liked. I'm very happy that it all came together the way it did.
SPEAKER_03:Actually, in my episode on Aina Garden's memoir, she she talks about the pictures that she wanted included in her cookbooks and how it was very anti-Martha and more real, and and it felt like you could just pick it right there off the plate.
SPEAKER_00:Yes. I want to speak to that because I totally agree. And that was something I was keeping in mind, also. Like, I'm not a food stylist, like I don't know how to use like hairspray and glycerin to make a burger look awesome. I made the food and I wanted the food to look like what it would look like if you made it. That was a big, big motivator in whether or not the picture was a success. And also speaking to pivot, like having to pivot from hiring a photographer to then doing it myself, there were multiple, so many times during this process where it was like, oh, that's not gonna work. What is gonna work? Because this was such like a project of love for my grandma and my family. I embraced every pivot. It was like, okay, something's better, something better is gonna come from this pivot. And that went down to even like, I'm taking a photo of pecan pie ingredients and the pecan pie bowl spilled over. That actually looks cooler. Yeah, you know, and really trying to embrace happy mistakes, happy pivots.
SPEAKER_03:It sounds like that was something that you got from Wanda. It goes hand in hand with that leaning into yes. All right, that bag pattern's not gonna work, Ashley, but let's see what we can do. You know? Yeah, yeah. So her spirit was right there with you as you were putting this together. It really was.
SPEAKER_00:It really was.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. Okay, talk to me about this dictionary of family phrases. I had never heard of bless her pee, pick, and heart.
SPEAKER_00:Isn't that funny?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I was able to get in touch with some distant family throughout this, which was really special. And this came from my grandpa's sister's daughter. So my grandpa's niece got in touch with me because she saw this. I was doing this on Facebook. She recipe tested and she recipe tested the coffee angel food cake. Okay. And it's involved, you know, you have to sift the flour like several times to create the aeration in the cake. It's it's not that it's like crazy ingredients, but there's steps. And when one of her emails, she goes, I can hear my mom saying, bless her pee pick and heart for trying. And I thought that was like so cute. And I could also hear Wanda saying it, and I was like, that's gotta go in there.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And each of my chapters are like little sayings like that. And I was like, that's perfect for like the vegetarian section.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:My family didn't always know it, but they would say these little things throughout this process. And I'd be like, that's going in the book. That's going in the book. Like it was it was fun to be able to in real time add those things.
SPEAKER_03:And it's very fun and it's very unique. Gives gives it its own flavor. Okay. And then the last really cool thing that you do, you have this QR code to a Spotify playlist, which I thought was very clever and very fun. And I recognize most of the songs, but I had never heard the song I Still Talk to Jesus. What does this song mean to you? It's the last song on the list, right? If I'm remembering correctly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So my mom lived with my grandma the last few years of her life. And it really allowed my grandma to stay in her home, which was really important to her. And my mom became very taken by Colin Style. And she I would be over there visiting, and she had her iPad, and she'd be walking through the house playing Colin Style's music really loud. And we're in my grandma's house, and I was like, this has to be reminiscent of some sort of like teenage moment. Yeah. Like that's so funny. And she loves this music so much that I mean, you really have to love a song to be walking, you know what I mean? Like that.
SPEAKER_03:And that song is not really about Jesus, it's about like a lost love.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And so my grandma then, by proxy, listened to a lot of Call and Style in the last few days of her life. She just had to. Because your mom was like, This is what I'm playing. And my grandma loved his voice. And he does. He has a very like retro country deep voice. And I wanted the playlist not to only be the pop hits of the 50s. Like, yes, there's all their favorite songs from when they were younger. And that's what I feel like as a culture we focus on a lot. But I wanted it to be what they listened to throughout their whole life. What did they listen to in the 90s? What did they listen to in the 2000s? And that song is what she listened to. And it felt like a great book into the playlist. It's a good song. My mom is a musician, and I grew up with her being a singer-songwriter. So music's always been, I've been raised around it. And music like smell and taste has such a core memory generator for us, as just as humans. Yeah. And my grandparents love to dance, and their songs I remember them singing or dancing too. So it just felt very appropriate to have a playlist of their favorite songs in the book. And it's just some some good jams. It is. Just like objectively.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, Ashley, what is your favorite recipe?
SPEAKER_00:So there's the classics, like her banana breads, classic to me. The peanut butter, chocolate balls, peanut clusters, lemon squares. Like those are all things she always made for holidays for the grandkids. Her pound cake, her carrot cake, tried and true. Awesome. While making the book, like I found new favorites, which was super awesome. Oh, cool. My aunt mentioned that she had a coconut cake that she would be asked to make while my aunt was growing up for like potlucks. And I couldn't find that recipe anywhere. There was nothing called coconut cake. Like I was looking through her old like joy of cooking coffee, trying to figure out like where this came from. And it turns out it's called Italian cream cake, which I never would have guessed. Huh. So that's in the book. It's delicious. It has coconut in it. Okay. Okay. There's the fudge cookies recipe from my grandpa's side of the family. That's amazing. It tastes like a like a ding-dong. You know, her biscuits, her jam, like rediscovering these recipes that I would make with her that I just sort of forgot about. They're kind of all my favorite, I guess.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, you can't pick just one, it sounds like. Okay. Speaking of having to narrow down, it seems like your grandmother was this very big presence and a light in your family for many decades, 90 years.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:How did you decide what to share with us? How did you? I mean, not narrow her down, because that sounds reductive, but in a sense, you did have to narrow it down, put her on the pages here.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's a great question. My first thought is I tried to include everything. Like I tried to include every little thing I remembered, and I tried to paint a full picture. And I think that goes back to including a lot of those candid photographs. I just wanted it to be the whole view as much as possible. And so when I would be writing or choosing photos, I didn't want there to be this like bias of her just being this one thing, if that makes sense. I would constantly go back through the book and and and make sure I was including as much as I could remember. It feels like the one chance to to create this memoir of her. So we got we got to put everything in there.
SPEAKER_03:It's a celebration of her, but she is human, but it's also your perspective. And like you said, she was a very special person to you. And there's no need to apologize for that.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good point to remember that I wanted to be very clear that it is from my perspective because other family members or people that have known her will find similarities, but I'm sure also differences. So that's another another point to making it come from my voice. This isn't the end-all be-all story from everyone's point of view. Like it's it's coming from her granddaughter.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, this is your love letter to her. Yeah. You talk about her various nicknames and you can sense a story behind a few. Yeah. Who called her Omnie and who called her the gum lady?
SPEAKER_00:So Ami is really cute, and it's something that I learned about making the book. She was the youngest of her siblings by 10 years at least. And so she was closer in age to her nieces. And so her niece, Connie, when they were little kids growing up, would call her Ami and she would call her Tudor. And that was, those are just nicknames that stuck through life, which is just so sweet. And my grandparents found a church they really liked when they moved up to the LaConor area. And my grandma continued to go to that church after my grandpa passed. Our family has what I would consider a close relationship with the pastor there. He's been through a lot of big life events with Wanda and Bob. I think that's part of why she felt a connection there, which is important. So she started bringing gum. She started bringing gum for all the kids. And it's like still to the church services. Yes, to the church services. On Sunday morning, she she would bring gum and she would pass it out. And then, you know, word spreads fast. And so the kids would start lining up to get gum from the gum lady. I that's I just love that. Like that's such a sweet story to hear that she still is creating these like fun little communities in all aspects of her life, no matter her age. And then one day they had to announce that there couldn't, no more gum was allowed at services because they were finding it like under the pews. Yeah, I was about to say, yeah. So it's all just very sweet.
SPEAKER_03:That is so sweet. And it's such a reminder of the ways that we touch one another's lives, even just being the gum lady for someone. And that made those kids mournings, you know, like they probably wanted to go to church to get gum from the gum lady.
SPEAKER_00:Right. And I just find that my grandparents continue to inspire in that way. Like they're not here anymore, and they're still doing that. And they did that throughout their whole lives. And I just think it's really special and it's something to strive for. That positive ripple effect.
SPEAKER_03:That is such a cool story.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:You write that Wanda sang to you at night a lot. Did you two have a particular song?
SPEAKER_00:So she would sing like a very like a nighttime lullaby, and she would sing a lot of songs. And I particularly remember the lyrics, There's a bluebird on my shoulder, my oh my, it's a wonderful day, plenty of sunshine heading my way. And like that is also those lyrics sort of define my grandma to me. Yeah. I can hear her singing that, and it's just like a very special memory. Oh, you're getting emotional right now.
SPEAKER_03:No, please never apologize for emotion. I love it. I welcome it.
SPEAKER_00:It's cute. Those lyrics like mean a lot. They're very hopeful and sweet. And then I have these memories in my grandparents' living room where my grandpa would get up and start to dance. And my grandma would be sitting on the couch and she would do the cutest shoulder dance at him. And she'd like just like move like one shoulder. Yes. They would be making eye contact. And it was like it was just like so funny and so sweet. And something that when you watched them, it's like, oh, you guys have been doing this for decades. Like this is this is like this is your thing. She loved birds. And so, you know, bluebirds just remind me of her now because of this song. And you know, it kind of encapsulates a lot.
SPEAKER_03:So it seems like you learned a lot about how to love a partner, a romantic partner, pretty well from watching your grandparents and their playfulness.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, they had their faults. You know, humans aren't perfect. Their story is is long, but they they made it to 53 years, I want to say. And when I think about what I learned from them, it's that finding those moments to laugh and poke fun at each other and know each other so well that like you can make these jokes that just you start cry laughing about, and learning to like cohabit a space together. You know, like my grandparents' house will always be their house to me. And it's because they both occupied it together, and then it's like loving space. And I I think that that that taught me a lot. There's there's no relationship without laughing every day. I feel like, you know.
SPEAKER_03:I completely agree. I think that is such a huge part of life because sometimes you have to laugh or else you'll cry.
SPEAKER_00:So it's better to laugh. Totally.
SPEAKER_03:What do you think your grandparents taught you about resilience?
SPEAKER_00:They built their life, their individual life, and their life together from the ground up. They both came, came from kind of, I don't want to say nothing, but they didn't come from some sort of like jumping off point that, you know, opened doors for them. Like they opened all their own doors and they built this really, they found each other and they built this really beautiful life. And they achieved their dreams, they raised a family. To me, that is resilience. You know, I'm sure there were days, moments, months, years where it felt like they weren't being resilient or things weren't working out. But from where I'm I'm sitting, looking back on their life, their life was nothing but resilience. There's a cute story where they were they were pretty poor when um they first got married, and Bob came home with his first paycheck, cashed paycheck, and my grandma was in the tub, and he came he comes into the bathroom and and throws the money in the air. You know, like they have all these very cinematic um stories and memories of of these stepping stones of making it, quote unquote. And I I think that that's just uh really special. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:From reading the cookbook, what you've shared about them in it, it feels like they just really leaned into joy. They leaned into that and shared that with you. I mean, that's what I that's what I'm getting from this.
SPEAKER_00:Totally. My my grandpa um was such a presence and he loved talking to people and he engaged you, and he thought he was so funny, and he'd make you laugh. He loved other people making him laugh, and it really just created this inviting energy. That's the key. Like, no matter what's going on in life, like having that inviting energy and that spirit, that's huge. And I think, you know, how does my grandma not fall in love with that? Yeah. And I I see these love letters that he wrote to her that shows a side of him that I never knew. When I came into the picture, they'd already been married and raised four kids, and you know, you've been together that long. Your relationship looks different than what it did when he first met. He was so in love with her, and that's just so sweet to know that there was like that courtship there. I've been trying to find the best way to describe my grandma. And there's that Beach Boy song that's like, you don't leave your best girl home on a Saturday night. My grandma's personality, she was the best girl. You want to treat her so well, and she's the one that, you know, you take, you take with you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Because she was special, it seems.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, she was really special.
SPEAKER_03:You know, and you attract the type of love that you think you deserve. And it feels like Wanda, from whatever happened with her first marriage, when she came to start fresh, she knew who she was, she knew who she who she deserved, she knew what love was supposed to look like. Okay, you write about learning a great deal while writing this book. You write, I learned how to be vulnerable and ask for help and support. The process of making this book brought our family closer together, which we talked about already. And there's some there's some practical knowledge that you share with us. Like I have been baking for many years. That was something that I did with my mother. I never knew that dark-colored pans absorb and distribute heat faster than light-colored pans. Yeah. That's very cool to know. What was the most surprising thing that you learned about Wanda?
SPEAKER_00:I think that someone could look at her life and call her a housewife, you know, like kind of try to sum her up in a simple term. I've never thought that that was true. She graduated high school at a time and place where a lot of people didn't finish high school. And she had her first child really young. And she got out of a marriage that wasn't right for her at a very young age and started a new life. She moved to a brand new city. She worked numerous jobs throughout their life together to help make ends meet. She raised four kids, ran a whole house. She had to host numerous events for like my grandpa's work. Like it was, it was one of those jobs where, you know, it's not just nine to five. Like you are a part of that culture. And so, in a way, I think my grandma was kind of an employee of my grandpa's job in hospitality. She has skills and hobbies that are kind of getting lost, you know, cooking, sewing, crocheting, all these things we tried to get out of as women throughout the decades. And now part of me feels like it's really coming back because there's a new way to own it now. She inspired her grandkids, she kept her humor, she kept her charm. She just everything I everything I learned was just that she is this three-dimensional person that um is still inspiring to this day.
SPEAKER_03:Getting back into those, I guess, you know, female-centric hobbies. It's also something that AI cannot do or replicate. Like it is something you can do with your hands instead of doom scrolling on your phone. I think that there is a return to that. And there's a return to that and a desire to not make it feel like this simple anti-feminist thing because it's not, it's just creation. But, you know, we had to go through the phases, right? People did those things. They crocheted their own blankets because you couldn't just go to the store and buy a baby blanket. You had to make these things yourself. And I think now we're all things are so easily, readily available that there is this innate desire in us as humans to want to create again tangible products that feel special and thoughtful and love. And your recipe book helps us do that. Like, I don't mean to bring up Aina's memoir so many times, but that was such a big theme of her book was like food is love. Yeah. And your recipe book is love. And it's not just Ashley Russell's family love. It's love that you're sharing with us that we take into our own lives and can share with the people that we're baking and cooking and making white fish cheese bake for, too.
SPEAKER_00:You know? Absolutely. You can choose these, um, you can choose to cook in the kitchen, you can choose these um femme roles where my mom and her siblings rebelled against that in a way, completely understandable. But now, is it kind of feminist? Is it kind of punk to make your own food? Because it's so not ideal anymore to eat fast food and to eat frozen dinners and to constantly be inundated with advertisements for that kind of lifestyle. It just feels to me like now cooking for yourself, self-care in that way, cooking for your family, people that you love, there's a bit of an anti-capitalist vibe to it. It's a coming home in a new way. And that really inspires me. And I love that kind of dichotomy, and all of these things can exist at once mindset. That was also a little bit of what I wanted to come across in the book to here are some tried and true recipes, you know, go make something for yourself.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's recognizing that we have a choice in a way that maybe the generations before us didn't have or didn't feel that they had and truly didn't have. I mean, when I think about what your grandmother did, nobody divorced in that time. Women weren't even able to take credit cards out in their own names, even when they were married. I mean, it's crazy, but you and I know the history. And so therefore, when we make these informed decisions, we don't feel like we're being deduced to something or buying into this trad wife, you know, movement when we go into the kitchen. No, we're just creating food that we love and we're also gonna go, you know, march and stuff. Like we can do it all.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, we can do it all.
SPEAKER_03:I do feel like your recipe book does not promote the trad wife or is anti-feminist at all. Awesome. Cool. Oh, Ashley, this has been such a wonderful conversation. I've got three more questions for you, and then I will let you be on your way. How do you feel food brings us together?
SPEAKER_00:Food expresses a form of love and nourishment and common ground that is just innately there.
SPEAKER_03:I love when my friends come over and they are sharing. A piece of their culture or a piece of their family history with me. It's really neat. And it's also really cool to track the history of food across various parts of the world and then the way that you've done here in just even parts of America, like what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, what is popular, what people would never do. Next question. How has creating this food war changed your life?
SPEAKER_00:Because it feels like it has.
SPEAKER_01:Totally.
SPEAKER_00:It's helped me tap into my own voice and my own feelings, which can be hard. It can be hard to know what you want to say and how you're feeling. And I feel like creating this book has helped me listen to myself in a way I kind of couldn't before. It's re-grounded me. I think cooking is a way of using your hands and slowing down and creating that really puts you back in the moment, your feet on the ground. And I think it's really easy to not be grounded in today's world and get really in your head. There's a million things going on. And and making this book has really helped me focus and be in the moment. It's also given me a trajectory. I found a love in the kitchen and a love in writing and a love in self-publishing. So, I mean, what more can you really ask for than goals like that?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And then last question: how do you stay hopeful today? This is easier said than done, right? A big theme that I try to remind myself is movement in every sense. Um, that can be something that's really hard for me. This book, the journey of this book has kept me moving. It's one of those things that you want to wake up in the morning to work on. You think about it going to bed. There's so many moving parts and things to learn about my family that creates this like love and nostalgia. But then also there's so many moving parts to creating a book. I stay hopeful by continuing to move, whether that's walking or cooking or you know, riding.
SPEAKER_03:Pivoting, keeping keeping going forward. Yeah. Like Wanda would want. Absolutely. Ashley, thank you again so much for coming on the podcast today. I adored our conversation. I love that you sent me this recipe book, and I promise you I will email you every time I make something from it uh and let you know how it turned out and get your tips and tricks if it didn't turn out well.
SPEAKER_02:I would love that. Please do.
SPEAKER_03:That's a me thing. That's not a you thing. It's a very clear-cut, easy-to-follow recipe book, y'all. It really is. You know what I learned about myself is I need to slow down and take time. And cooking does require you to do that because I have a problem where I'll be in the middle of recipe and it's like, add the chopped onion. And I'm like, oh my God, I have not chopped the onion. And now we have to pause for 10 minutes, and that's not what you're supposed to be doing right now. That's why sometimes I feel intimidated in the kitchen, but really that's just me trying to move too fast and not slowing down. So something I can work on, obviously. I am not sure that it's in my life plan to put a recipe book together, but I know that I can always reach out to you. And uh maybe if someone out there has any questions, they want to do this for themselves on a smaller scale or even kind of follow suit. Would you feel comfortable with them sliding into your DMs and asking you some questions?
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Anytime I would love to share this process with anyone that feels inspired to make a recipe book.
SPEAKER_03:That's amazing. And so what are your Instagram handles? I know you have one for the recipe book as well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so it's at What's Cooking Good Looking Recipes. That's also the website, what's cooking goodlookingrecipes.com. There's an email link on there. I check Instagram pretty regularly. Perfect.
SPEAKER_03:And if anyone is looking for a thoughtful gift this holiday season that will keep on giving, please consider purchasing what's cooking good looking again on your website and on the Instagram. There are ways to purchase, and I will add the link in the show notes and thank you to all my listeners. If you enjoyed our conversation today, and how could you not, please do me a favor and rate and review the show on whatever platform you found us on and share this one with a friend. This seems like the perfect episode to listen to while you're baking for the holidays. Next week, author Danilyn Rutherford joins the show to discuss her moving memoir, Beautiful Mystery, where she writes about navigating grief and motherhood as she learns to understand her non-speaking daughter, discovering a profound new language of connection beyond words. We'll see you next week. Until then, take care and be well. Bye, Ashley. Bye, thank you so much. Thank you.
