Sacred meals, absinthe, undercover dining at the CIA

Good Food

KCRW

Society & Culture

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Explore the spiritual side of food and modern Ghanaian recipes.

Jody Eddy spent two years visiting sacred spaces and meeting the people who cook in them
Inspired by childhood visits to Ghana, Eric Adjepong debuts his first collection of recipes
Andrea Nguyen questions the accuracy of those Prop 65 warning labels on many foods
Evan Rail plays detective, looking back on an absinthe enthusiast who became a con artist
Restaurant critic Tom Sietsema blows his cover in the CIA dining room

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman and this is good food.
0:06.5	I've gone through periods of my life when I sought brief respites from my daily life on monastery
0:13.8	retreats. I found the simple routines punctuated by a deep quiet that's elusive in urban life to be a balm.
0:23.8	Often, I found my way into the food preparation spaces out of curiosity and a desire to learn.
0:30.8	As I read Jodi Eddy's book, Elysian Kitchens, I found myself envying her travels to sacred spaces from India and Ireland to Japan and
0:41.2	Morocco. But mostly, I admire her courage, and I'm grateful for the sensitive gauge she brings to
0:48.4	these unique ways of life. Hi, Jody. Hi, Evan. Thank you so much for those generous words. I appreciate it. It's great to talk with you.
0:58.5	It's an extraordinary book. And I suppose I should ask you right away about the photography, because the photography is what brings the book to life. Who was your photographer?
1:10.3	The photographer is Kristen Teg, one of my closest
1:13.2	friends and the most incredible travel companion you could have. It was the two of us on the road
1:20.2	together for about two years to document the places that we visited. And she's actually based
1:25.7	in L.A. as well as in Boston.
1:29.5	So you opened the book in Lebanon at the Maronite Catholic Monastery of St. Anthony of
1:36.4	Kozhajia in the Kedisha Valley. And you had a conversation with Father Hunana Kawand, who had been a hermit living on his own for 20 years.
1:49.3	You asked him if he had any advice on living a contented solitary life.
1:56.0	What was his answer?
1:58.2	So I love that you are starting our conversation with this experience because it was
2:04.2	one of the most profound that I had while researching this book. So he, after decades of living in
2:12.1	isolation, when I asked him why he decided to rejoin the community, he just said, I realized that having community and being in the company of friends and experiencing daily meals together and rituals together is more important than anything, including my deep spiritual practice.
2:36.1	And it really left an impression on me.
2:38.4	And I think it's a lesson, you know, that we can all kind of think about and incorporate
2:43.9	into our lives as we talk about these epidemics of loneliness, et cetera.
	...

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