Speaker 1: I Am all in Again.
Speaker 2: Lets you, I Am all in Again with Scott Patterson
Speaker 2: an iHeartRadio podcast.
Speaker 3: Hey Everybody, Scott Pounderson, I Am all In Podcast one
Speaker 3: eleven productions, Iheartrated Media, iHeart Podcast Special edition of Luke
Speaker 3: Steiner with the one and only Tamaron Haul joining us today.
Speaker 3: A two time Emmy Award winning television hosts, veteran journalist,
Speaker 3: and best selling author, Tameron is also the executive producer
Speaker 3: of her ACCLAIM talk show, Tamaron Hall Beyond the Newsroom.
Speaker 1: She has a passion for the kitchen.
Speaker 3: Which led to the release of her cookbook last year,
Speaker 3: and just a few days ago, she launched her latest
Speaker 3: children's book, Harlem Honey, The Adventures of a Curious Kid,
Speaker 3: So be sure to check it out. Without further ado,
Speaker 3: please welcome Tamaron Hall. Hello, Tamaran, Hi Scott, how are
Speaker 3: you good.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. You've got a book out that's exciting.
Speaker 1: Look at that great cover. Everybody go out and get this.
Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit about this book.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you. You know what it is? Called a
Speaker 4: heart Harlem Honey, The Adventure of a Curious Kid. It's
Speaker 4: a book inspired by my curious kid who is now
Speaker 4: five years old, and I am about thirty minutes from
Speaker 4: seeing him participate in his first school musical. And how
Speaker 4: that ties into the show, Scott, is that early on,
Speaker 4: my son, like so many kids, are what we refer
Speaker 4: to those pandemic kids, and that means not that necessarily
Speaker 4: were born at that time, is that you were a
Speaker 4: kid under the age of eighteen whose life was upended
Speaker 4: by this once in a lifetime event. And Moses was
Speaker 4: almost a year old, and suddenly we found ourselves smaller.
Speaker 4: You know, we're not visiting cousins and grandparents and friends
Speaker 4: and play dates and birthday parties. And by the time
Speaker 4: life changed and reopened for us, I realized my son
Speaker 4: was too and hadn't gone to a birthday party. We
Speaker 4: go to the birthday party, the kid that I see
Speaker 4: at home, who is outgoing and running around, is frozen
Speaker 4: in place in the corner, and I think, Okay, that's
Speaker 4: not a big deal. I was that way, you know,
Speaker 4: first birthdays, it's noisy, it's a lot of things. And
Speaker 4: then we see it more and more, and then we'd
Speaker 4: see it at the grocery store, and I noticed that
Speaker 4: this fear or this idea that the only safe place
Speaker 4: was in our home with us was getting a little
Speaker 4: too it was interrupting his joy, interrupting this and I
Speaker 4: noticed that early on. So this book was really about
Speaker 4: how to face those fears and how to help have
Speaker 4: that conversation that fear is normal, fear is healthy. But
Speaker 4: what's on the other side off of is this fun thing.
Speaker 4: So Harlem Honey, is this adventure of discovering the first
Speaker 4: place I think we all learned that the world is
Speaker 4: bigger than our home. It's your neighborhood. So Harlem is
Speaker 4: this neighborhood, but it can be any neighborhood in the world. Loulli, Texas,
Speaker 4: which is where I'm from my first neighborhood. So it's
Speaker 4: just a chance to have this loving and fun conversation
Speaker 4: about facing fears as we do it tears.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: We used to say big boys don't cry or big
Speaker 4: girls don't cry. We don't say that anymore. And this
Speaker 4: is an evolution of how to talk about fear.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Well, go out and get it, everybody, Harlem Honey The
Speaker 3: Adventures of a Curious Kid Tammeron Hall. Instead of complaining,
Speaker 3: she sat down and wrote a book to help us all.
Speaker 4: I still complain sometimes I'm you know, my mother, I
Speaker 4: was talking to my mom and it is outgoing, go
Speaker 4: as I am, you know, on the show, and how
Speaker 4: I may appear. You know, I still suffer from that.
Speaker 4: My friends call me a social loaner because I am
Speaker 4: a person who I think I can turn it on
Speaker 4: and I love being around people and I'm a people person.
Speaker 4: But if you say to me, here is a ticket
Speaker 4: to the hottest part in Hollywood and you're gonna I'm like,
Speaker 4: I'll take dinner with four friends, you know, it's like, Hello,
Speaker 4: I am that person who I enjoy that intimacy. I
Speaker 4: enjoy the opportunity to laugh as loud as possible and
Speaker 4: just be myself. And sometimes when you are in a
Speaker 4: new place or in a new situation, it's hard to
Speaker 4: find yourself, even as an adult. And so this book
Speaker 4: was a chance to have that conversation but also really
Speaker 4: maybe share a bit more about me that people don't realize.
Speaker 1: M hm, excellent, excellent, excellent. All right.
Speaker 3: So in uh to Shift gears a little bit the food.
Speaker 3: In season one, episode eighteen, the third, Laurele we go
Speaker 3: to high Tea with Emily Tricks and Laurel I do
Speaker 3: you have any special memories or traditions around high tea.
Speaker 4: I absolutely do you do one d There's a place,
Speaker 4: Lady Mindel here in New York City. I absolutely love
Speaker 4: high tea. I am a snob about it, and I
Speaker 4: know that that might surprise you. Country girl from Lulin, Texas.
Speaker 4: One stop light in town. No, my first big, big
Speaker 4: tea moment outside of the tea parties, and I threw
Speaker 4: magnificent ones at age five in my room with the
Speaker 4: best tea that you could ever have in sandwiches. It
Speaker 4: was with NBC Today Show at the time, and I
Speaker 4: had the pleasure of having the assignment of having high
Speaker 4: tea at Fortnham and Mason. They shut down the place
Speaker 4: and they were teaching me, the country girl, how to
Speaker 4: have a proper high tea, and I was off to
Speaker 4: the races. So we probably honestly have high tea at
Speaker 4: least once a month. There's one fancy one on the
Speaker 4: upper Upper East Side of New York. It's a hotel
Speaker 4: that's doing it in whatever. They need to fix their
Speaker 4: website because I keep trying to book a reservation. But
Speaker 4: this is like a high height. But we go to
Speaker 4: Lady Mendel and it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: That's great. That's great.
Speaker 3: So you've had this incredible career in journalism and television.
Speaker 3: When did your love for cooking begin.
Speaker 4: My love of food began the day I came out
Speaker 4: of the womb. My love of cooking was about forty
Speaker 4: eight years in the making. My father, who was in
Speaker 4: the military for almost thirty years, love, love, love cooking.
Speaker 4: It was his love languages that kids liked to say,
Speaker 4: or the books like to say, it was everything that
Speaker 4: he is. And my dad passed away. When I moved
Speaker 4: here to New York to join NBC, I was a
Speaker 4: kid who even in college, I was home for Thanksgiving.
Speaker 4: I was home for Christmas, Thanksgivings, my favorite holiday. It
Speaker 4: was my dad's favorite holiday. And my dad became ill
Speaker 4: on Thanksgiving, and he passed away soon after his favorite holiday.
Speaker 4: And the next year that came around, went to visit
Speaker 4: my mom, and my mom's out of cook My mom
Speaker 4: would admit that she probably married my dad because he
Speaker 4: could cook and she did never have to go in
Speaker 4: the kitchen other than to get ready for dinner. And
Speaker 4: I wanted to send and I Love you to my
Speaker 4: father who had passed away. So I went on this
Speaker 4: journey with a friend Lisch Styling. She happens to be
Speaker 4: a James Beard Award winning culinary producer and a phenomenal
Speaker 4: recipe tester. We became friends and we sat out on
Speaker 4: this journey that led to my cookbook. But the cookbook
Speaker 4: was ten years in the making of me really finding
Speaker 4: this love of cooking.
Speaker 1: That's wonderful, what a story. It's called a confident.
Speaker 4: Cook, A confident cook because we wanted joys fun in
Speaker 4: the kitchen. It's like seventy three recipes that I think
Speaker 4: are absolutely phenomenal, but it's also our story. She's from Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: I'm from Texas. We are two kids who were underdogs.
Speaker 4: Maybe on paper, you would never think that we'd be
Speaker 4: friends because people tell you that, you know, she's white,
Speaker 4: I'm black, she's gay, I'm straight. You know, all these opposites.
Speaker 4: We have the same haircut, though, which is phenomenal. But
Speaker 4: we tell the story of these two kids who grew
Speaker 4: up in different parts of the country but found friendship
Speaker 4: in New York through food and food a common thread,
Speaker 4: and we like the same. We are meat lovers. I
Speaker 4: mean even our book we have like this triple B Burger.
Speaker 4: We have a couple of steaks because I sit listen.
Speaker 4: I know the trend is vegan, but you cannot get
Speaker 4: a Wisconsin I and a Texan in a room and
Speaker 4: let and make us pretend that we don't leave with meat.
Speaker 4: So we have like this beautiful steak, this ribbi that
Speaker 4: my nephew. He lives in Buffalo. He's from Texas but
Speaker 4: like me, and Heath lives in New York. He comes
Speaker 4: to see me so often and he brought is now
Speaker 4: fiance over and I was like, Okay, what do I make?
Speaker 4: And I made this beautiful steak that's in our book
Speaker 4: and he's like, I think, God Tamer, this might be
Speaker 4: the best thing I heard in my life. But we
Speaker 4: are meat lovers. We grill. We have a grasshopper because
Speaker 4: we love both ice cream and that minty. It's just in.
Speaker 4: It's breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks. But it's a story of friendship,
Speaker 4: a friendship that was formed through food. M H.
Speaker 1: So what are your favorite go to meals?
Speaker 3: If you were to pick just one, Yeah.
Speaker 4: It's steak. I'm a steak girl. I'm a good steak girl.
Speaker 4: We have this beautiful ribbi and it's such a crunchy
Speaker 4: sear to it. It's super thick. When I go to
Speaker 4: the butcher and order it. Thank god, my butcher loves me,
Speaker 4: because the last time I was there, everyone behind me
Speaker 4: is like, that's a thick steak. It's like two and
Speaker 4: a half inch rare by, but you know, we get
Speaker 4: that heat really really high and you get that crunch
Speaker 4: on the end, and then we have a compound butter
Speaker 4: that you can say for other things that we finish
Speaker 4: it off and list jokes. If your smoke detector doesn't
Speaker 4: go off in your house, you're not doing it right.
Speaker 1: That's how you see.
Speaker 4: That's how you're there.
Speaker 1: Listen. I used to when I was on location last time.
Speaker 3: Uh you know, that's how I would cook those steaks
Speaker 3: and they weren't that fat, but the smoke I always had.
Speaker 3: It was winter up there, so I had opened up
Speaker 3: up the doors a cold, so shut up the smoke detector.
Speaker 1: But I was doing it right because it tasty.
Speaker 4: You're doing it right. Here's the deal. This is a
Speaker 4: funny story. So my home smoke detector is linked to
Speaker 4: our alarm, and the alarm insolantly calls the fire department.
Speaker 4: And I told my husband was like, I don't this
Speaker 4: good idea, and he's like, no, it's better, it's back up.
Speaker 4: It's back up. I'm like, okay, I cook. The steak.
Speaker 4: Alarm goes off. I forgot that it's hook to the
Speaker 4: fire department. The fire comes to my house and I'm like,
Speaker 4: oh no, everything's okay, and they're like, what are you
Speaker 4: doing there? I start giving them cookbooks. I'm like, can
Speaker 4: I started for something? I still got five five hundred
Speaker 4: bus but I gave it the cookbook guests that we
Speaker 4: believe in that seer, and then you got this beautiful
Speaker 4: butter with it. We have a horistic carrot side dish
Speaker 4: I pair with sometimes with this beautiful crispy finel zucchini.
Speaker 4: But I'm a steak I am a I am truly
Speaker 4: a steak girl.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's that's that's kind of my go to too.
Speaker 3: That's that's a nice seared on both sides for just
Speaker 3: like like two minutes or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, what's your temperature?
Speaker 1: You know, it depends on the unit that I'm using.
Speaker 3: I mean, I really just I messed up a couple
Speaker 3: of steaks on this one because I undercooked them because
Speaker 3: this unit I was using when I was you know,
Speaker 3: in this condo complex up and but.
Speaker 1: It was you know, I finally figured it out. What's setting?
Speaker 3: You know, it was like between six and seven isn't
Speaker 3: super high, but that you know, six and seven provided
Speaker 3: a lot of heat.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah yeah. Do you like medium, medium, rare?
Speaker 1: How do you know? I like it?
Speaker 3: I like it crunchy on the outside and rare. I
Speaker 3: like it red in the metal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, medium rare for me. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't taste
Speaker 4: right best.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, you got to have that red man,
Speaker 3: you gotta have yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's those meals were I love those meals. So
Speaker 3: you've interviewed a ton of fascinating people. Has anybody ever
Speaker 3: shared a food story or recipe that really stuck with you?
Speaker 4: You know, that's a fantasic question.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: You know, when I started this talk show, one of
Speaker 4: the things that I really was intentional about is that
Speaker 4: we were storytelling. Right. So we do segments on our show,
Speaker 4: we do full hours. Because when I was in morning TV,
Speaker 4: not just as the Today Show, when I was in
Speaker 4: local news, my pet peeve was like the poor chef
Speaker 4: is like through one sentence and you're like.
Speaker 2: Okay, bye bye.
Speaker 4: Get in our website it's like what So for the hour,
Speaker 4: we only book three chefs, and what we do is
Speaker 4: we give each chef two segments, two full segments of
Speaker 4: our shows to show it hours long, so that you
Speaker 4: can storytell. And it's important to me to have that
Speaker 4: component because our recipes mean something to us, what we
Speaker 4: eat mean something to us. Even in my kid's book,
Speaker 4: this kid, in exploring his neighborhood, ends up at Sylvia's,
Speaker 4: the famous restaurant in Harlem, because the corn bread draws
Speaker 4: him and got friends in. Because food means something. And
Speaker 4: so when I have chefs or cooks or whomever on
Speaker 4: our show, I want you to have that time to
Speaker 4: explain not just the recipe, but won't why it mean
Speaker 4: something to you. So I've been so many stories that resonate.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to name drop, but I will Patti LaBelle.
Speaker 4: You know, she's come on and made food and people
Speaker 4: often see like patty pies and this like kitschy thing
Speaker 4: or whatever. But you know, her food journey, especially her
Speaker 4: healthy food journey, came because of the loss of almost
Speaker 4: all of the women in her family due to not
Speaker 4: you know, through to diabetes, but also lifestyle. And so
Speaker 4: here's this beautiful woman, this effervescent woman who still loves
Speaker 4: her patty pies and all those great things, storytelling that
Speaker 4: you can still enjoy those recipes with also recognizing lifestyle.
Speaker 4: And I know that's not the direction people probably thought
Speaker 4: I was going to go with this, but it is
Speaker 4: a whenever you can bring me into your family and
Speaker 4: into your life, I'll tell you. Also, during the pandemic,
Speaker 4: we had to do my show for my home and
Speaker 4: we still did chefs and we did at the time
Speaker 4: and Israeli chef who had taken off and she was
Speaker 4: cooking from her kitchen in Tel Aviv and the sirens
Speaker 4: went off, said I have to go. I have to go.
Speaker 4: I have to go. The sirens are going off. And
Speaker 4: I was like, what it was just real life had
Speaker 4: come into full play. So it's it's these it's these
Speaker 4: opportunities to talk and share that I always look for
Speaker 4: and that always makes the food it's so weird, makes
Speaker 4: the food taste better. It's a fascinating thing for me.
Speaker 3: Right right right, Well, your book focuses on joy, no pressure,
Speaker 3: cooking pressure. Do you have a favorite the quote unquote
Speaker 3: lazy day meal?
Speaker 1: That's that's easy.
Speaker 3: It's still delicious tell us about that carbonara.
Speaker 4: I'm a carbonar. I'm not a big pasta person. My
Speaker 4: husband's from the Bronx. Our first date was at the
Speaker 4: Pizza place because we had an argument over who had
Speaker 4: better choice of pizza that he won. This played Emily's
Speaker 4: in Clinton Hill and Brooklyn. My son, I believe it
Speaker 4: or not, he is well, you know, like a lot
Speaker 4: of kids, he likes pasta, but he is If you
Speaker 4: ask him what his favorite meal is, he loves curry
Speaker 4: chicken and dumplings. That's his thing, curry. It's like he's
Speaker 4: five years old walking around like an old Caribbean man
Speaker 4: wanting curry chicken. But for me, it's a quick carbonara.
Speaker 4: I love like some of a lot of the chefs
Speaker 4: that I've cooked with and had the honor of cooking
Speaker 4: with over the years. You know, they love those late
Speaker 4: night pastas with some shrimp and things like that, But
Speaker 4: carbonara every I went to Rome for the first time
Speaker 4: at about twenty six years old on a work trip
Speaker 4: and then I saw Tom Cruise make it on the
Speaker 4: Oprah Winfrey Show after that, and I was like, oh right,
Speaker 4: it's like one hundred years ago. It stuck in my
Speaker 4: mind and a good carbonar. I keep a nice piece
Speaker 4: of panchetta frozen, like a nice stick cut, because it's
Speaker 4: hard sometimes to find a New York You go to
Speaker 4: the deli and they give you a little thin But
Speaker 4: I like a good carvernar, a good eggy moist, not
Speaker 4: dry cavernar.
Speaker 3: If you could challenge any other celebrity to a bakeoff,
Speaker 3: who would it be?
Speaker 4: A bakeoff?
Speaker 1: A bake off?
Speaker 4: Oh god, I guess it would be Carla Hall because
Speaker 4: we're halls and only one hall wins. Two halls go
Speaker 4: in what comes out.
Speaker 1: I just I talked to her yesterday.
Speaker 4: I did too.
Speaker 3: Small world.
Speaker 4: It's a small hall, after all.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 4: She was great, she said, Oh my gosh, she's the best.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think so because it's just funny. It
Speaker 4: would be funny to promo the battle, you.
Speaker 1: Know, huh.
Speaker 4: And she actually baked my son's birthday cake for his
Speaker 4: fourth birthday.
Speaker 3: I think it was, and Sarah, okay, maybe we can
Speaker 3: arrange that.
Speaker 4: You know, well, I would lose, so there's no point
Speaker 4: in this. I mean, it's just it's only good for
Speaker 4: promotional purposes. We know how it goes down.
Speaker 3: What about any book tours or events to promote this.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, We're headed out on a book tour. We have
Speaker 4: Books of Wonder here in New York coming up. I'll
Speaker 4: be in Chicago and Downers Grove and Anderson Bookstore, Kindred
Speaker 4: Stories in Houston will be getting by there. So I'm
Speaker 4: just excited to get out here. Listen. I never imagine
Speaker 4: I'd be writing any of these books that I've had
Speaker 4: a great honor too, but this one really means something
Speaker 4: because I think, as I said, you know, I have
Speaker 4: a son. There are many things I never imagine. I
Speaker 4: do think I'm a product of great storytellers like Judy
Speaker 4: Bloom and great shows that made me an empowering woman.
Speaker 4: Now that I have this son, I noticed early on
Speaker 4: that talking to boys and uplifting them sometimes gets lost
Speaker 4: and empowering girls, empowering women like myself. There are new
Speaker 4: studies that show boys behind academically, fewer boys going to college,
Speaker 4: and all these things that I think sometimes when we
Speaker 4: or love into one thing, we leave something else empty.
Speaker 4: And I wanted to give any parent, I mean, boy
Speaker 4: or girl whatever to read this book. But it was
Speaker 4: important for me to have this little protagonist, this little
Speaker 4: boy who has some fears, but through fun and through friendship,
Speaker 4: through kindness, can start to explore. He's curious. I think
Speaker 4: the biggest thing to get over fear is curiosity. I'm
Speaker 4: curious about you, Scott. You were curious about my sake.
Speaker 4: Before you know it, we're slapping back, we laughing, like
Speaker 4: you know, we've known each other our whole lives. Food
Speaker 4: does that, food does that? And this kid in this book,
Speaker 4: I hope gives a folks an opportunity to talk to
Speaker 4: kids about There's so much fun on the other side
Speaker 4: of fear. There's fun in food, right, and sometimes we're
Speaker 4: afraid to try something. I didn't have a blueberry until
Speaker 4: I was thirty five, and now I probably went every day,
Speaker 4: So you know, there's fun in it. I appreciate your
Speaker 4: time and I appreciate you being interested in it too.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go, tamer And Hall, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 3: check out our book, Harlem Honey, The Adventure of a
Speaker 3: Curious Kid.
Speaker 1: It is out now.
Speaker 3: Continue to success on your show and all the best.
Speaker 3: And it was wonderful, wonderful meeting you, and I hope
Speaker 3: we can do this again in the not too distant future.
Speaker 3: Tamer And haul everybody, and remember thanks for your downloads everybody,
Speaker 3: best fans on the planet, and remember where you lead.
Speaker 1: We will follow.
Speaker 5: Stay safe everyone, everybody, and don't forget.
Speaker 3: Follow us on Instagram at i Am All In podcast
Speaker 3: and email us at Gilmour at iHeartRadio dot com.