Seven Questions + Class Tomorrow!
Hope everyone’s Saturday is off to an okay start. Thank you ALL so much for your generous responses to my newsletter earlier this week about Blender Muffins + my thoughts on why calling them ‘healthy’ is complicated. So many of you shared this with so many people and it just means a whole lot that it resonated and that you spread the word. THANK YOU!
Before I jump into the Seven Questions, a quick reminder about my Sunday afternoon cooking classes. I teach them every Sunday afternoon at 2p EST live on Zoom. All of the information about them (including my class schedule, FAQs, etc.) is right here: juliaturshen.com/classes.
Tomorrow’s class will be a colorful + FUN spring meal. We’ll start with bright pink pomegranate + rosé spritzers and make the easiest, most delicious pea soup that can be served hot or cold. Next up, homemade lamb merguez sausage patties with a creamy yogurt sauce. And for dessert, the simplest ever carrot cake (just one layer) with cream cheese + maple frosting. This class will feature tons of spices and we’ll talk all about other things to do with them, substitutions + more. As always, there will be tips, tricks, make-ahead thoughts, and ideas on how to repurpose leftovers. You can sign up right here!!
Seven Questions
Now onto to ‘Seven Questions,’ a regular Q&A I’m incorporating into this newsletter using the ‘Seven Meaningful Conversation Prompts’ from the back of Simply Julia. illyanna Maisonet helped me kick it off and last week my mom answered the questions!
Since I am going to be using so many spices in tomorrow’s cooking class, I thought it would be so fun to ask Ori Zohar, the co-founder and co-CEO of Burlap & Barrel, the Seven Questions. Burlap & Barrel is a social enterprise that works directly with smallholder farmers to source the most incredible spices you’ve ever tasted and helps improve the livelihoods of their partner farmers. Burlap & Barrel's mission is to end inequality and exploitation in food systems by establishing direct, long-term, mutually-beneficial partnerships that empower farmers and gives farmers a larger slice of the pie.
Ori's background is in business and marketing and he has more than two decades of experience as a scrappy entrepreneur. Prior to Burlap & Barrel, Ori co-founded Sindeo, a venture-backed mortgage company that raised $32 million before being acquired. He leads Burlap & Barrel's domestic operations, eCommerce, marketing, and finance. Ori was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and immigrated to Baltimore, Maryland, a port city where most of America's spices first landed in the country, when he was 5. Today, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.
1. What was your favorite food growing up? Did you request something special for your birthday?
My grandmother would make all her grandchildren the same special birthday cake growing up. It was a train cake, where each of the train compartments was made of a block of chocolate cake and decorated with snacks - pretzels for wheels, M&Ms for windows, and strategically placed cookies and other small candies throughout. Sometimes the train was over tracks made of licorice. Each train was unique, and we all waited for our birthdays to see how the train cake would come out.
When firmly into my mid-20s (and my grandmother into her mid-80s), my grandmother agreed to revisit the tradition if the family helped out. We did and it was marvelous. It wasn't a particularly remarkable cake, but that cake tasted like my childhood, like first food memories. It filled my stomach and my heart.
2. When was the last time someone surprised you with a random act of kindness? And/or when was the last time you surprised someone with one?
So many people have helped Burlap & Barrel grow, so we developed a tradition to make time to talk with any food founders that reach out. I think people think a lot of their business is their "secret sauce", but really the best thing we can do to create better food systems is to prop up other food entrepreneurs that are also working to create change. Most of us are navigating similar waters to grow our companies and take a bite out of the shelf space that the big corporations occupy.
Ethan and I named our "entrepreneur helpline" after our first social enterprise together: our activist ice cream cart Guerrilla Ice Cream. We each have a handful of conversations each week with people starting food businesses. So much of running a food business feels impenetrable from the outside, and there are so many things I wish people would have told me in the first few years of Burlap & Barrel. Now we have the chance to do that for other entrepreneurs.
3. What’s the most meaningful gift you’ve ever received?
The mark of a good gift is how often you use it; you're reminded of the gifter each time.
A few years ago, a group of my closest friends including my co-founder Ethan, his wife Shahla, and the incredible Max Falkowitz sent me a package of monogrammed silk pajamas. I didn't know you could sleep this luxuriously. I wore them literally every night for years - I even took them on international spice sourcing trips - until the pajamas were threadbare. What a spectacular gift.
4. What do you see when you close your eyes and picture your “happy place”?
I always think of being back in Tel Aviv with my family. I was born in Israel but moved to Baltimore, Maryland for my dad's work when I was 5 years old. I go back every year to visit and sharing the warm weather, beaches and food with family fills up my cup. There's nothing better than dredging a pita through a plate of Abu Hassan's hummus with people I care about.
Last time I visited, my brother made a list that had all the cousins, uncles, our grandma and the rest of the family that we wanted to spend time with, and all of the restaurants we wanted to eat at on the other. We mapped it all out, and not a single meal was wasted.
5. What’s the most recent finish line you crossed?
I recently ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon! I've been running for the past 10 years. I'm not breaking any land speed records, it's more of a mental health ritual for me. Running creates space for me to digest my thoughts, it gives me a break from my computer, puts me outside in fresh air, and gets me going. It melts away stress and energizes me.
Cooking also feels therapeutic in a similar way - the rhythmic, repetitive motions of chopping veggies or stirring a bubbling pot are like my feet hitting the pavement over and over again.
6. If you were in charge of a large sum of money for your community, how would you distribute it?
Food insecurity is a major problem in America and has only been exacerbated during the pandemic. Community fridges have been popping up across my neighborhood recently, mostly maintained by local businesses. They're regularly stocked with donations from grocery stores, restaurants, and residents. I love seeing local, community-based support for the food insecure - but it takes resources to set up and maintain those fridges and it needs more support.
There are also excellent non-profits working to serve the community like God's Love We Deliver, which provides nutritious, medically tailored meals for people too sick to shop or cook without charge. At Burlap & Barrel, we're working with God's Love We Deliver to develop a set of spice blends that will support their work and mission. We'll share more about that soon!
7. Who is someone you’d like to write a thank-you note to? What would you say?
This reminds me that I should be writing a lot more thank you notes to our customers. It can feel insignificant, but each of your purchasing decisions really matters. Many of us have worked in the food industry, and remember how electrifying it feels to get a good tip. When you're a small food business, it's a big deal each and every time someone decides to spend their money with you.
We have customers that believed in our business and supported us from when our spices were being packed by hand by my co-founder in his apartment. Savvy entrepreneurs can use the wind in their sails to build momentum, but those early customers were the difference between us giving the "I guess it's not working" shoulder shrug and doubling down on our small business.
My notes say something along the lines of "Thank you for trusting us and for believing in us. It means the world." And asking a few questions about how they found us and what we could be doing better. We'll take their feedback and trust and use it to build a better food system.
Thanks so much to Ori for answering the Seven Questions and hope to see some of you in my cooking class tomorrow!
Have a great weekend everyone and take good care.
xoxoox Julia