Dear Julia...

I love answering your questions!

Hi all!

I was thinking it’d be fun to start answering some of your reader questions/advices needs in this newsletter, so I opened up questions to paid subscribers yesterday and got so many varied, thoughtful questions. THANK YOU!!! to all of those who responded. I plan to get to all of the questions over time.

I picked three to respond to today. Got a question for me? Leave it in the comments (open to paid subscribers only). Your questions/things you’re seeking advice about don’t have to be about food!

QUESTION ONE is from Kathy K: Do you create your own recipes? Where do you get your ideas such as putting chia seeds into the crust of the tamale pie (delicious btw)?

My short answer to the first part of this two-part question is yes, I do create my own recipes.

What does that look like? Most recipe development looks like cooking, taking notes while you cook, writing the recipe based on those notes, and then testing it to make sure it works. My development process is a little different because I usually write my recipes first — I imagine everything I will need to make whatever the dish is and guess at amounts and write instructions. Then I try it out and troubleshoot as I go. I do this as many times as needed until it’s solid. When I publish my recipes in cookbooks, I always make sure someone else cross-tests the recipes, too. Recipe work involves a ton of trial and error and, if done well, all of that labor is rendered invisible in the final product.

My longer answer to your question is that there’s a caveat: I firmly believe that there’s no such thing as a new recipe. There are a handful of ways to prepare food — you can eat it raw, pickle it, steam it, fry it, roast it, grill it, etc. And the rest is just mixing and matching. In fact, you cannot copyright a recipe, at least not the bare bones of a recipe (the list of ingredients and the brief instructions). They’re just facts. Just like many historians can each write about the same events, recipe writers and cookbook authors don’t own, for example, the combination of olive oil, garlic, and tomatoes for a sauce. What you can copyright is the writing, the “literary expression” around a recipe.

As someone who creates recipes for a living, really understanding this, that there’s nothing new under the sun, is actually quite liberating. It means that I can hone in on what makes a recipe distinct to me: the story behind it, the way I use language to describe the ingredients and what to do with them, and the particular amounts of this or that that I think give you a reliable result. One way I approach my recipe writing is imagining that my dad has emailed me asking me how to make something and my recipe is my response to him. I want everyone who follows my recipes to feel like I’m in your kitchen with you, hopefully not micromanaging, but just reminding you that you’ve got it.

If you want to know more about my entire cookbook process, check out my HOW TO MAKE A COOKBOOK course!

The second part of your question (“where do you get your ideas?”) is a little harder to answer because I get my ideas…everywhere. Mostly I mine my memories since my recipes are informed mostly by the stories I like to share with them. For exact ingredient ideas for each recipe, like the chia seeds in the batter of the topping for the tamale pie that you mentioned (a vegan dish from Simply Julia), it started with the thought that it would be nice to do a plant-based cornbread-ish batter for the top of the pie. So I first referenced my own cornbread recipe (from Now & Again!) and then started to think about what I could swap for the eggs and buttermilk. I landed on water and chia seeds for the eggs and non-dairy milk mixed with apple cider vinegar for the buttermilk. These are not the most original ideas — lots of plant-based bakers do just this! Some of the ones whose recipes I’ve gained a lot of knowledge from are Erin McKenna, Alicia Kennedy, Jeneé Claiborne, and Lagusta Yearwood.

QUESTION TWO is from Nina LaCour: Do you have a system for keeping track of what you cook? I find myself forgetting dishes that I frequently cooked in the past, or made up and loved, or used a recipe for and knew I wanted to make again…before forgetting all about it. Then I’ll be in a rut and not know what to cook, or I’ll cook the same things over and over and wish I could remember what I used to make and enjoy! Any tips for this?

I have an obnoxious answer to this question which is…I write it all down in my cookbooks! This is obviously not a useful answer. I hope it’s helpful to hear, though, that even though I have quite literally published so much of what I have cooked, I still forget about a lot of it and find myself in ruts. So, you’re not alone.

When it comes to keeping track of dishes I want to write down into recipes, I send myself emails all of the time. In fact, when I used to work as a private chef before I started writing my own cookbooks, I had a rule for myself that unless a client asked me to repeat something, I wouldn’t ever make the same thing twice. This helped me keep things very creative. And while I didn’t write every single thing down, I did keep an email going to myself for YEARS with notes about all of this cooking and that email was the basis of my first solo cookbook Small Victories.

These days I also use my digital library of recorded classes (see here!) as an archive that I can look back on. Same goes for the menus that my pal Emmet and I come up with Full Fridge Club, the prepared meal service we offer in the Kingston, NY area every Monday. Our shared google doc has become one of my most prized possessions. It’s a record of our collaboration.

This is all to say that I am an odd person in that I do this work for a living. If I weren’t coming up with menus and writing recipes for my job, I think I would probably rely mostly on my photo library on my phone. When you eat something you love — whether you’ve made it or someone else did — snap a photo. If you’re the organized type, you can keep them in a folder called something like “Food I’ve Loved.” And then when you’re in a rut, you can look back at things you’ve loved to eat. (I might start doing this?!) I think it’s easier than writing stuff down, but if you’re not the visual type, you can also keep a list going on your Notes app or in an email draft to yourself. When you’re low on ideas, check out your list.

To add a layer to your question, I think it’s worth saying that I think we all owe ourselves plenty of grace when it comes to the social media-fueled pressure to have AMAZING FOOD ALL OF THE TIME! As I’ve written about here before, not everything we eat has to be the best thing we’ve ever had. Sometimes a cooking rut just means other things in our lives are busy and exciting (or busy and stressful). And that’s okay.

QUESTION THREE is from Elizabeth Grennille: Hi Julia, I love your newsletter. It always feels like a warm hug from a good friend. How did you get started with weightlifting and lifting heavy things? What have you found helpful on this journey?

Well, thanks so much! That is so nice to hear. Re: weightlifting, I actually got to answer these very questions recently in a conversation with Kate Schatz in her newsletter “I Love What You’re Doing.” Here is that conversation! 

"When I'm tired, I rest. When I'm hungry, I eat. When I am ready, I lift."

And here are some photos from my first ever powerlifting competition I did in February — it was SO MUCH FUN!!!!

all photos by Kevin Drury!

I teach online cooking classes most Sunday afternoons at 2pm EST. All info about my classes, including FAQs, can be found right here!

This weekend I’m throwing in an additional class on Saturday — a FUNdraiser for God’s Love We Deliver!!!

SATURDAY APRIL 15 at 2p EST: GLWD Birthday Cake Party! (LET’S MAKE CAKE + RAISE SOME $!) »»» ALL INFO + SIGNUP HERE! «««

SUNDAY APRIL 16 at 2p EST: An Air Fryer (or not) Tapas Party: Rosé Sangria / Crispy Pimentón Chickpeas / Patatas Bravas / Bacon-Wrapped Blue Cheese Dates »»» ALL INFO + SIGNUP HERE! «««

Okay! That’s it for today. Take care everyone. xo, Julia