Julia Turshen is a New York Times bestselling cookbook author, food writer, cook, and food equity advocate who has published four hugely popular cookbooks and has contributed to many others in collaboration or as a writer. Julia’s work actively combats the racial and gender-based discrimination that’s long riddled the food industry. She’s the founder of Equity At The Table (EATT), a digital directory that “builds a longer table” for women, non-binary individuals, and people of color working in food.

Bloomist and Cookery by the Book have joined forces to bring you the work of amazing cooks the world over. As proud sponsors of the CBTB podcast we’ll introduce you to monthly articles and recipes as well as sell the featured books. In this episode Suzy interviews Julia Turshen, author of Simply Julia.

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Suze Chase: You kicked off the cookbook with the phrase. "I loved making this book." Now, I think it's because this is your most personal cookbook yet, but what was it about this particular cookbook that you loved?

Julia Turshen: And, you know, I started working on the book before the pandemic, but I finished working on the book during the pandemic so that feeling of connection feels more important than ever so that is part of why I loved making the book. I also just love every recipe in the book, which might sound like obvious, like duh, like who wouldn't like why would you put a recipe you don't love in your cookbook, but I really love these recipes. I loved working on them.

From left to right: Llubav's Green Spaghetti, More Vegetable-Than-Rice Fried Rice.

Julia Turshen: I mean, my wife Grace has always been very, very supportive of all my work, but she was extra supportive with this book because when I was testing the recipes for it or when it was the time and the process to do so, she had just closed her business of 15 years and had free time and so she volunteered to test every single recipe in the book, which meant I got to sit in my kitchen while my amazing smart, wonderful wife was cooking everything and it was such an incredible process and it made me feel just super, just not only supported by her, but super like close to her and I think the book is much better because of her involvement in that way.

Suzy Chase: In the cookbook you wrote, “Healthy food isn't just what I eat it's about connecting myself more closely with where my food comes from and honoring, compensating, and protecting the people who grow harvest, distribute, clean, stock and sell the food I eat." I just adore how you repositioned the idea of healthy food for those of us who hear the term healthy food, and you know, walk the other way.

Julia Turshen: Well I appreciate you bringing this up because this to me is like one of the most important parts of this book. You know, healthy is in the subtitle of the book. 110 Easy Recipes For Healthy Comfort Food and I feel like every page of this book is me just attempting to define what I mean by that term, healthy comfort and I think healthy is a word that has been so overused. It just is kind of like meaningless in certain ways and I think it's also used in ways that are, to me, the opposite of healthy, I think healthy is often used as a synonym for skinny.

Julia Turshen: And I think healthy and skinny are not the same things by any means. I think that's really, really important to clarify. I think healthy is a word that's often used in cookbooks or in other types of food packaging, like anywhere where there's like words on food, trying to sell you something. I think the word healthy is often used in a way to like restrict something. And I just really wanted to interrogate the meaning of this word healthy and really celebrate all of its various definitions. You know, I think healthy is something we can and should all define for ourselves.

Golden chicken broth with real egg noodles

Suzy Chase: You know, honestly I maybe have one healthy, in air quotes, cookbook on this podcast every few years, and I've always struggled to find the words to tell the publicist no thank you and you just kind of put it into words in like a very smart way, why this healthy thing is code for something else.