Speaker 1: J. J.
Speaker 2: Martin and I, though years apart, have had parallel lives
Speaker 2: where women New Yorkers who left there to live abroad
Speaker 2: for a short time for love and stayed forever for love.
Speaker 2: Mine was for Richard Rogers. Hers was for Andrea Chicoli
Speaker 2: and the magic of everything Italian. A friend once told
Speaker 2: me that living in a foreign city makes you creative,
Speaker 2: even if you do nothing all day. But creativity defines J. J. Martin,
Speaker 2: and she definitely does not do nothing all day, though
Speaker 2: she claims since moving to Milan, she is surrendered into
Speaker 2: the beautiful chaos that is Italy and through a rigor
Speaker 2: and discipline, created a brilliant business La Double Jay, the
Speaker 2: fashion design and lifestyle brand. We have much in common,
Speaker 2: strong values in our workspace, respect for the people we
Speaker 2: deal with every day, and a passion for color. A
Speaker 2: passion for beauty. May be a few different things too.
Speaker 2: JJ is a maximalist, while I'm probably more of a mineralist.
Speaker 2: She loves vintage clothing. I've never worn anything anyone else
Speaker 2: is worn. But today we'll share our parallel lives, our
Speaker 2: love for Italy, our love for food, our love for fashion, beauty.
Speaker 2: And I am confident that by the end of our
Speaker 2: time together, we will add our love for a new
Speaker 2: friendship and a love for each other.
Speaker 3: How beautiful. I love that introduction. I'm honored.
Speaker 2: It's so nice because we both know of each other
Speaker 2: through friends, which is always the great connection. I always
Speaker 2: think life is about connections. Maybe we could start by
Speaker 2: your reading a recipe that you chose and it comes
Speaker 2: from I think our River Cafe easy book. But it
Speaker 2: is a really great that you chose this recipe now
Speaker 2: because it is very seasonal with a ridicio. It's creamy
Speaker 2: and warm and what we kind of need right now.
Speaker 2: So would you like to read the rest of love?
Speaker 3: To read? Proshutto and ridicio taliate l three hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty grams of taliatel, six slices of perscutto one head
Speaker 3: of ridicio, one garlic clove, peeled and finally chopped, two
Speaker 3: tea zions of rosemary leaves finely chopped, fifty grams of
Speaker 3: parmesan rigiano grated, one hundred and ten grams of unsalted butter.
Speaker 3: So what you do is you cut the perscutto and
Speaker 3: ridicio into ribbons that are the same with as the telatele.
Speaker 3: You melt half the butter in a thick bottomed pan.
Speaker 3: You add the garlic and rosemary and you cook for
Speaker 3: a minute. Then add half the chopped redicio and proscutto
Speaker 3: and you cook it just to wilt. Then you cook
Speaker 3: the taliately and boiled salted water until al dente. Drain
Speaker 3: and add the rest of the butter and half the parmesan.
Speaker 3: Combine with the cooked ridicio, then stir in the remaining
Speaker 3: ridicuo and procutto, toss thoroughly and serve with parmigiano.
Speaker 2: Hmm, thank you. So you've said that cooking in Italy
Speaker 2: is an art, not a science, and you can pat
Speaker 2: to get laughed out of town? Will to use a cookbook?
Speaker 2: Can you talk to me about that?
Speaker 3: So I moved to Italy in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3: I had no friends, no family, no job, no smartphone,
Speaker 3: no wireless. I was lost and I had no cooking skills.
Speaker 3: And back at that time, there was really no takeout
Speaker 3: food whatsoever. If you wanted to get anything taken out,
Speaker 3: you would get a pizza. Otherwise everyone was either in
Speaker 3: a restaurant or at their home cooking. And I went
Speaker 3: into a panic. I went into my overachieving American mode
Speaker 3: of needing to like conquer this like I did everything
Speaker 3: else in my life. So I ordered the Dean and
Speaker 3: DeLuca Cookbook online, which was sort of my only reference
Speaker 3: point of like, how you know how to make some
Speaker 3: Italian food? And I was reading this cookbook like a
Speaker 3: novel every night. I was taking notes, and I was
Speaker 3: practicing recipes from this book, not knowing that it was
Speaker 3: the least Italian kind of book I could have ever
Speaker 3: been working from, because each recipe had forty five ingredients
Speaker 3: and would take two and a half hours, and I
Speaker 3: didn't It wasn't until I really started watching the Italians
Speaker 3: and being part of their environment that I realized that,
Speaker 3: first of all, no one cooks from a recipe. Everyone
Speaker 3: has learned from their mother or grandmother, and even if
Speaker 3: they do kind of have like a you know, a
Speaker 3: basis of a recipe, the whole idea is to really
Speaker 3: let your intuition take over and let the magic and
Speaker 3: real creativity come over. And it was so funny because
Speaker 3: you know, in these ear it took a long time
Speaker 3: for me to learn this. I've been in Italy twenty
Speaker 3: two years now, but I would say like my first
Speaker 3: ten years I was still in this place of like
Speaker 3: really trying to understand food. I did take one cooking
Speaker 3: class at a Tellian restaurant down on then a video
Speaker 3: called Tano pasa milolo, and I was at this you know,
Speaker 3: table with like fourteen housewives, not understanding that this was
Speaker 3: not a beginner's cooking thing, like the these women knew
Speaker 3: how to cook and and and so he would always
Speaker 3: say the beginning of the recipe was like found a krema,
Speaker 3: find a crema, And I was like, what's a crema?
Speaker 3: How do you fire it on akrema?
Speaker 2: Like I didn't want to do anything.
Speaker 3: And he would give us these sheets where the recipe
Speaker 3: the ingredients were written down and there was no quantity,
Speaker 3: no method, method, No, there was no well maybe a
Speaker 3: little bit of method, but very approximate and literally no quantities.
Speaker 3: So the funny thing about this recipe of reading this
Speaker 3: pursuit from Ridikio, it is a very Italian recipe except
Speaker 3: for the fact that you've included quantities.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but you know, I think that it's really
Speaker 2: endearing that you got Dinan DeLuca cookbook because I think
Speaker 2: that if you don't know how to cook and really
Speaker 2: want to follow a recipe. Then it gives you the
Speaker 2: confidence too to go away. It's like fashion, it's like drawing,
Speaker 2: it's like poetry. You can't write free poetry unless you
Speaker 2: know the rigor of a Shakespeare's sauna. Then you can depart.
Speaker 2: So maybe, unless you have a mother or father maybe
Speaker 2: who taught you to cook every day in your house,
Speaker 2: as you say you're Italian friends, following a recipe and
Speaker 2: then leaving it maybe is okay.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it gives you the muscles and the
Speaker 3: training wheels, and just the comfort around being in a kitchen,
Speaker 3: around preparing ingredients, around seeing how you know, oil at
Speaker 3: different temperatures changes, you know, even cooking vegetables. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's the other thing I find really interesting. I was
Speaker 3: reminded as I was reading your recipe here. Italian recipes
Speaker 3: are known for their simplicity, but at the same time,
Speaker 3: there's two things that I've learned that are essential. Number
Speaker 3: one is the quality of the ingredients. Because there's so few,
Speaker 3: you can't masquerade anything. So if you don't have incredible quality,
Speaker 3: ridicu And by the way, I highly recommend Treviso. It's
Speaker 3: the best less bitter, but you know, you need to
Speaker 3: have the best better, the best parmigano, the best rosemary.
Speaker 3: Otherwise nothing's happening. And the other thing is technique. So
Speaker 3: the fact that you are, you know, adding half, you're
Speaker 3: adding the vegetables at different times, you're cooking them a
Speaker 3: different it's not as sort of there's a there's an
Speaker 3: art really to the way they prepare it that is
Speaker 3: really important.
Speaker 2: I totally agree with you about Italian food that I
Speaker 2: lived in Paris for five years, six years when my
Speaker 2: husband is doing a project there and then, and I
Speaker 2: love French food. I love a sauce. I love finding that,
Speaker 2: you know, a piece of turbot under a bar of black.
Speaker 2: But then you go to Italy and the first meal
Speaker 2: I had was a piece of toast bisquetta with a
Speaker 2: little bit of garlic and then the olive oil. And
Speaker 2: that was three ingredients. But had any one of them
Speaker 2: been any less interesting or of the quality, it wouldn't
Speaker 2: have worked totally.
Speaker 3: And it's so funny you bring up France because one
Speaker 3: thing that I was so surprised about when I moved
Speaker 3: to Italy was how proud Italians are of their cuisine.
Speaker 3: And they're quite close minded to other cuisines, so you
Speaker 3: never want to travel with an Italian outside of the
Speaker 3: Italian borders because they're complaining about the food the entire time.
Speaker 3: And the other thing, which I find so funny is
Speaker 3: no matter how good it is, French food sucks. They
Speaker 3: hate French food and they are and they and one
Speaker 3: of the reasons why they tell me, because I really
Speaker 3: got curious about this. They don't like a sauce unless
Speaker 3: it's on a pasta, and then it can't be too sauce.
Speaker 3: It has to be the right amount of sauce. Like
Speaker 3: so most Americans tend to oversauce and overcook their pasta,
Speaker 3: you know. So these are just all these like small subtleties.
Speaker 3: But like for example, an Italian would never put a
Speaker 3: sauce on a meat. That's a big no no. So
Speaker 3: it's just funny. Or even a fish. They don't use
Speaker 3: sauces generally.
Speaker 2: When you have misto, you have the sauce of Verde.
Speaker 2: But they're very they're very specific yea in general. But
Speaker 2: if you have a great piece of fish, they have
Speaker 2: SESSI here it is one of the chefs in the
Speaker 2: River Cafe, and you know, if it's as you said,
Speaker 2: it's a great piece of grilled sea beast. Why would
Speaker 2: you do anything more?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's the I mean, this is what's so
Speaker 3: amazing about Italy is they distill everything down to raw
Speaker 3: its purest state, So you know, you just want the
Speaker 3: crispness of the lemon and the juicy fragrance of the
Speaker 3: olive oil. I mean, the other thing that I got
Speaker 3: there was an education in olive oil. Who knew, you know,
Speaker 3: the guy who I was referring to before about where
Speaker 3: I was taking the cooking classes. His restaurant was called
Speaker 3: Tano Paseloyo and you walked in and he had probably
Speaker 3: four hundred olive oils lining every wall of the restaurant
Speaker 3: and he was an expert at pairing. People would go
Speaker 3: to his restaurant because there would be a different olive
Speaker 3: oil paired with every plate daily and it was this
Speaker 3: wonderful symphony that is such a subtletya that you develop.
Speaker 3: But once you get rid of I mean, I think
Speaker 3: it's a really good metaphor for life, Like once you
Speaker 3: get rid of all the noise, then suddenly your senses
Speaker 3: are so much more tuned, and then you're really seeing
Speaker 3: the beauty of something so simple as an oil.
Speaker 2: Just to go back from your incredible palette and your
Speaker 2: interest in food and Italy and ingredients and the way
Speaker 2: to cook. Growing up. We grew up in Los Angeles, Yes,
Speaker 2: I grew up in Tell me about early life and
Speaker 2: the Martin household.
Speaker 3: Okay, well I do remember the spaghetti sauce my mom
Speaker 3: put ketchup in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. We had a.
Speaker 3: Very food centric household because we were all athletes and
Speaker 3: there was copious amounts of food being made and consumed.
Speaker 3: So my mom actually did make a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: My dad was a hunter and a fisherman, so our
Speaker 3: freezers were stocked with dove, quail, dove, dear, yeah, bore.
Speaker 3: I mean. The thing is he would go out hunting
Speaker 3: and bring it all back and we would eat this
Speaker 3: stuff for a long time. It was never really my fake.
Speaker 2: Did you ever go hunting with him?
Speaker 3: I did? I did, and then I just didn't want
Speaker 3: to kill animals. Just wasn't my thing, so I would
Speaker 3: hang out. I have two older brothers. They were really
Speaker 3: into this. So I went on a lot of camping, fishing,
Speaker 3: hunting trips as a as a young girl and wasn't
Speaker 3: into it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and being athletes, do they want protein or carbs
Speaker 2: or this was.
Speaker 3: This was before knowing that like they needed to have
Speaker 3: the right balance between protein and carbs. They were just starving.
Speaker 3: I remember so well that, you know, we would all
Speaker 3: come back from whatever I was in gymnastics, they were
Speaker 3: in volleyball. We would all come back at like ten pm,
Speaker 3: and we've already had like four meals by that point.
Speaker 3: Because my mom used to pack our dinners. We would
Speaker 3: have Stouffers frozen food that would be put in a
Speaker 3: thermos and that we would eat before practice and you know,
Speaker 3: like at four o'clock or five o'clock, and then we'd
Speaker 3: have another meal when we came home. We were eating
Speaker 3: like four times a day.
Speaker 2: As a gymnast as well as a.
Speaker 3: Gymnast, I was eating just fun of food.
Speaker 2: Did you have to keep you away at a certain
Speaker 2: level or that.
Speaker 3: Well, the thing was I was twice as large as
Speaker 3: every other gymnast because I was so tall, and I
Speaker 3: mean I was literally eight inches taller than most people,
Speaker 3: and you know, you're working. I was working out three
Speaker 3: hours every day, six days a week, and that that's
Speaker 3: wasn't seasonal, it was all year round. So I did
Speaker 3: that for about nine years. So it's just an incredible
Speaker 3: amount of calories that you're burning.
Speaker 2: How old were you when you started?
Speaker 3: I started the like the hardcore club gymnastics at nine
Speaker 3: years old, and then I finished when I was eighteen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it was really intense. And I and I, you know,
Speaker 3: I went to an all girls' high school, also very regress,
Speaker 3: so I had this upbringing that was very tight. And
Speaker 3: that's also has been such a wonderful thing that I
Speaker 3: that I explore in this in this book. The mom
Speaker 3: I mean Lano about out the loosening, the softening, the relaxing,
Speaker 3: because I really didn't learn that from a from an
Speaker 3: early age. And you know, taking back to food, it
Speaker 3: was not relaxing while we ate because everyone was scared
Speaker 3: that it was all going to be gone, so we
Speaker 3: were all like fighting and grabbing for the food. So
Speaker 3: it wasn't this like long, luxurious, you know, relaxing moment.
Speaker 3: It was like, yeah, you was scarfing it down.
Speaker 2: Did your father cook?
Speaker 3: Was there an My dad barbecued?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the thing. Men barbecue, and yeah that's how
Speaker 2: I often.
Speaker 3: And my mom would make really nice stuffings for the meats.
Speaker 3: Like I didn't eat the meat so much I'm not
Speaker 3: into game, and actually, now it's so funny. I know
Speaker 3: I chose this don ride kio tellie I've I've since
Speaker 3: become a vegetarian, so I really don't eat meat or fish.
Speaker 3: But this recipe was my first and favorite from your cookbook,
Speaker 3: and it was one that I did so many times
Speaker 3: and it was so easy, and I was like, this
Speaker 3: is Italian cooking. That's I wanted to share it.
Speaker 2: You can actually have it without the pashuoter. You can
Speaker 2: make it now. We do it a lot the ridicio,
Speaker 2: but sometimes we do a sefrito with the ridico, so
Speaker 2: we put a bit of you know, I can really
Speaker 2: cook it down and then and then.
Speaker 3: You know what I would add maybe if I was
Speaker 3: doing vegetarian, I would add some toasted pine nuts and
Speaker 3: maybe just a tiny bit of for modrole, like even
Speaker 3: another for modrole, just to like it. I mean depends,
Speaker 3: but I think it's a great rest.
Speaker 2: Do you want to say something about do you never
Speaker 2: made this recipe in the river carefoe?
Speaker 1: I have?
Speaker 2: I love.
Speaker 1: Sounding very English. What I love is that the ridicule
Speaker 1: is the same shape as the pasta. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: you have like this mouthful and you can't quite differentiate
Speaker 1: which part is which, but it all sort of is
Speaker 1: the same shape and it's so delicious when it all
Speaker 1: comes together.
Speaker 3: And that is exactly one of the things that I
Speaker 3: was saying. It's like, you can have all the same ingredients,
Speaker 3: but it's about how you prep it. It's how you
Speaker 3: exactly these very simple subtleties that make all the difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as long as the ingredients are the freshest
Speaker 1: and the most beautiful, which we have hit the River Cafe,
Speaker 1: it just transforms the dish completely, makes it something really special.
Speaker 3: Is that the ment. I still can't believe Sassy is
Speaker 3: a telling me because our.
Speaker 2: English is so It was amazing when you left this
Speaker 2: home of family meals and your mother cooking and your
Speaker 2: dad barbecuing and hunting and fishing and you know, shooting,
Speaker 2: not fashion nothing. But then you went to university.
Speaker 3: I went to Berkeley.
Speaker 2: You went to Berkeley, and that was a big change
Speaker 2: in terms of food for you did it well.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, I didn't know who Alice Waters was at that time,
Speaker 3: and I didn't you know, I wasn't you know, probably
Speaker 3: in the position to go eat there. But the food
Speaker 3: was quite sophisticated, even just around Berkeley. I remember, you know,
Speaker 3: I lived in a sorority house, so we actually had
Speaker 3: these buffets of wonderful food and there was an incredible
Speaker 3: cook there. I've always been a baker, like that was
Speaker 3: something that I knew from a young age. My mom
Speaker 3: was baking a lot. She made a lot of really
Speaker 3: great desserts. So the cook at our slaty house would
Speaker 3: always be making these wonderful homemade American cookies that I
Speaker 3: now cannot find in Italy if my life depended on.
Speaker 2: It, Like what which one?
Speaker 3: Just like just any chocolate, chewy, yes, ginger, molasses, oatmeal, raisin,
Speaker 3: all of those like that, the chewiness and the sort
Speaker 3: of softness brown sugar is an ingredient that just doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to exist in Italy the way we use it
Speaker 3: in American in the UK, and they don't use as
Speaker 3: much butter. I noticed Italians in general, so I would
Speaker 3: say the only kind of food group that's missing for
Speaker 3: me in Italy are the desserts.
Speaker 2: Really Yeah, well, Italians I always you know, we always
Speaker 2: say Italians have their cakes for breakfast in there, ice
Speaker 2: cream on the streets and then an espress for a dessert.
Speaker 2: You know, you're so right. And I've been in homes
Speaker 2: where the food is so good and then they'll bring
Speaker 2: out one of those kind of custardy pies with the
Speaker 2: custard and then the food on the top, and you think,
Speaker 2: what relationship does this have to do with the most
Speaker 2: amazing pasta sauce. We just they don't. They do not.
Speaker 3: Actually, there's there's I have two small complaints with Italian cuisine.
Speaker 3: Is one is the desserts and one is the bread.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well you're not even in Tuscany. Wait, you
Speaker 2: get to Tuscany and there's no.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's like a cardboard. It's a piece of cardboard.
Speaker 3: It's susy.
Speaker 2: Jump in tell us.
Speaker 1: What's nice though, is it's kind of like a vessel,
Speaker 1: so it can carry whatever you put on it. So
Speaker 1: if it has no taste, So when you taste the
Speaker 1: new oils, yeah put them on that bridge. It's catches,
Speaker 1: the sort of more salty or colta.
Speaker 3: Is wonderful, but it's not bread. There's sometimes when I
Speaker 3: just miss bread and butter.
Speaker 2: Yeah butter.
Speaker 3: I love butter. And it's not a cult. We don't have.
Speaker 3: There's not a culture for that. And there are certain
Speaker 3: things that I learned. You know, one of the messages
Speaker 3: of this book that I wrote was surrendering to what
Speaker 3: is in Italy instead of always looking at what was
Speaker 3: not there. And at the beginning, I was like, where
Speaker 3: are the avocados, where's the cilantro, where's my non fat milk?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it's trying to find all these things.
Speaker 2: Where's my butter, where's my good bread?
Speaker 3: And what I realized, so much of the exercise of
Speaker 3: living and embracing Italy is just allowing yourself to melt
Speaker 3: into the wonder and the magic and the beauty that
Speaker 3: is there, because once you do that, you will be
Speaker 3: rocket shipped off the planet into ecstasy. It's amazing.
Speaker 2: I should probably say that with most travel you know
Speaker 2: that living in another country that you do is Mexico,
Speaker 2: or if you were in China or Japan that you
Speaker 2: you know, as you say surrender. I think it's really
Speaker 2: interesting the way I use the word surrender so often,
Speaker 2: and I really had to learn it, and it's and
Speaker 2: you use it in a very energetic and positive way
Speaker 2: rather than giving up. You know, it's not you know,
Speaker 2: in military terms, you're surrendered by it. You giving them
Speaker 2: your flag and we've surrendered. Whereas you're using surrender as embracing,
Speaker 2: I would say, much more embracing the culture that you're
Speaker 2: living in. Talk to me more about the book and
Speaker 2: talk to me what you would try. Because it's so
Speaker 2: it's so funny, you know.
Speaker 3: I when I first started my company, lit Double Ja
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, I was selling my collection of vintage clothing,
Speaker 3: and I was showing it on all of the creative
Speaker 3: women in Milan, the women that I you know, as
Speaker 3: a journalist for fifteen years. They didn't want me writing
Speaker 3: about those women. They wanted me interviewing George Romani and
Speaker 3: dul Jingobana and the advertisers. But I had found that
Speaker 3: there was this like incredible cluster of the most creative, cool,
Speaker 3: shockingly adept housemakers in Milan. Like I couldn't believe that
Speaker 3: they were these women that had these incredible creative careers
Speaker 3: and that could still turn out dinner beautifully or entertaining flawlessly.
Speaker 3: Their homes were decorated incredibly, everything, even their pantry clas
Speaker 3: it's were amazing, and there was so much to learn
Speaker 3: from them. And I launched the website. I had this
Speaker 3: whole section on you know how to live like an
Speaker 3: Italian and the school of shura. A shura is an
Speaker 3: Italian or a Milanaise housewife, which these women were not housewives,
Speaker 3: but they had all the like the tools, and they
Speaker 3: had all the techniques. And at the time, well, they're
Speaker 3: well staffed.
Speaker 2: That's I was going to wait for that. They're well
Speaker 2: staffed laws because I think to do that, to work
Speaker 2: all day and then do all that they know how to.
Speaker 2: It's a division of power.
Speaker 3: But like you know what I've also learned as having
Speaker 3: a company, so much of that is understanding, like what
Speaker 3: you can farm out to others, like what should be
Speaker 3: your own purview and what you can share with others.
Speaker 3: And the thing is they don't just farm it all out,
Speaker 3: you know, they know what can be done, and then
Speaker 3: they they know that they should be tasting the sauce
Speaker 3: here and making you know, they really know their own
Speaker 3: They have the mastery of each of these skills. Anyway,
Speaker 3: during COVID, a book agent came to me and said, JJ,
Speaker 3: you know everyone is miserable. They've been inside their homes.
Speaker 3: I think we need a book on all of this
Speaker 3: brilliance and exuberance that is Italy and all those images
Speaker 3: that you've produced over the years. I've done so many
Speaker 3: photos of tabletops and our homeware and food and the fashion,
Speaker 3: and I said, you know, it feels like kind of
Speaker 3: a cliche. I feel like, you know, we've seen a
Speaker 3: lot of books like this. I'm happy to give it
Speaker 3: to you, but if I do that, I also want
Speaker 3: to tell the real story, which was I was miserable
Speaker 3: in Italy for my first five years there, and I
Speaker 3: was fighting against the system. I was irritated at every turn.
Speaker 3: I was getting pissed off. I was fighting with people
Speaker 3: at cocktail parties because their movies were dubbed, and I
Speaker 3: was like against dubbing, I mean the most like absurd,
Speaker 3: superficial things. I found myself in bank lines for two
Speaker 3: hours for no reason, just to like depositive check, I mean,
Speaker 3: just you know, the inefficiency, et cetera. And it really
Speaker 3: took me. So, I mean, I could feel my whole
Speaker 3: body system in resistance and rejection of everything that was
Speaker 3: around me. And I was rejecting the food. I was
Speaker 3: rejecting the customs, the traditions, the timetables, the rhythms. Everything
Speaker 3: was wrong in my mind. And this was just my huberus.
Speaker 3: This was my American privilege, coming over and thinking that like,
Speaker 3: my way was better than like five thousand years of expertise.
Speaker 3: And so the book is a it's journey of surrender
Speaker 3: and of letting go of that judgment, that criticism, needing
Speaker 3: to have things my way, and slipping into what is
Speaker 3: actually a very feminine energetic of Italy. So that's why
Speaker 3: it's called Mama Milano because I after later in my life,
Speaker 3: I developed a spiritual practice. I started learning, you know,
Speaker 3: the difference between masculine and feminine energy, the yin and
Speaker 3: the yang, the divine mother. And I'm like, this is
Speaker 3: Italy and like America was so quite you know, patriarchal
Speaker 3: and go and move and and you know, it's it's
Speaker 3: all about checking off things and and it's very transactional.
Speaker 3: And I realized Italy is a feeling based culture. It's
Speaker 3: a relationship based culture. And I had a lot to learn.
Speaker 3: So the book is filled with all the lessons that
Speaker 3: I learned. That of course were how to you know,
Speaker 3: decorate my table and decorate the house, get myself dressed,
Speaker 3: but really how to become a better person.
Speaker 2: Did you ever think of leaving? Oh yeah, yeah, but you.
Speaker 3: Stayed as critical as I am, I'm also as stubborn.
Speaker 3: So I was like, you know, I had made this
Speaker 3: decision to move to Italy followed a guy, and I
Speaker 3: was like, I wasn't going to give up.
Speaker 2: You know. The thing but Italy is that with all
Speaker 2: the we look at Italy and there's a you know,
Speaker 2: one political party, then there's another, then there's another, then
Speaker 2: there's a Minister of Finance and then there's another, and
Speaker 2: then the way they on the transportation in Florence is
Speaker 2: different from Patava, and it just seems to be that chaotic.
Speaker 2: But no, but you know what they do it so well.
Speaker 2: You know, they look at Italy, you know, they produce
Speaker 2: beautiful clothes, the beautiful cars. I remember sitting in the
Speaker 2: cafe in Florence and every young woman would come and
Speaker 2: dress so beautifully, you know, and I think, how do
Speaker 2: they are they all kind of making a huge amount
Speaker 2: of money and are they how do they spend that
Speaker 2: much money on a dress by Prada or a pair
Speaker 2: of trousers by a doul Chicabata. And somebody pointed out
Speaker 2: that they're probably all living at home. Oh and they're
Speaker 2: not paying rent. They're so clever you know, we're all
Speaker 2: knocking ourselves to my kids to pay, you know, to
Speaker 2: live in a flat with sixteen other people do that,
Speaker 2: and you know, they can't go to the movies, or
Speaker 2: you can't go to the fit, or you can't buy
Speaker 2: whatever you want to buy. And then Italy kind of
Speaker 2: works in this way and.
Speaker 3: That reinforces this very important focus on and importance of
Speaker 3: the family. And I talk about the mother of the
Speaker 3: you know, because that's the center of the family, and
Speaker 3: the table is the center of the family. And I
Speaker 3: don't have the numbers. This is just is not a scientific.
Speaker 2: Steam and no data.
Speaker 3: There's no data to support this book. I will just say,
Speaker 3: of all the Italians I've met versus all of the Americans,
Speaker 3: the Italians are some of the most well adjusted, easygoing, happy,
Speaker 3: personally satisfied human beings, Whereas a lot of Americans that
Speaker 3: I know are really struggling. And I think a lot
Speaker 3: of it has It's not necessarily about food, but so
Speaker 3: much of it is like this sense of tolerance that
Speaker 3: the Italians have. And they are at a slower pace
Speaker 3: and that's okay, and.
Speaker 2: They get it done, and they get it done. I agree.
Speaker 2: What do you think about because you lived in.
Speaker 1: I lived in Florence when I was a baby, and
Speaker 1: then I also lived in Paris with it. I've spent
Speaker 1: most of my lifetime living in England. That's why I
Speaker 1: sound very English. I know what you mean. But the
Speaker 1: pace is much slower, but everything still gets done and
Speaker 1: to the highest standard.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because that family central unit. I know
Speaker 1: my father when he was growing up in Rome, when
Speaker 1: you go to university. If you go to university, you
Speaker 1: live at home with your family, which is such a
Speaker 1: foreign concept here in England.
Speaker 3: And it's not something uncool, No, it's completely normal. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's actually quite strange. If you don't under is going
Speaker 3: to get ironed by your mom.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's like amazing. It's interesting about that again,
Speaker 2: about women. I always say, if you go to when
Speaker 2: we go on the wine trips, you know, we can
Speaker 2: all go to Italy to taste the new oil and
Speaker 2: the wine, and you go, we go there and we
Speaker 2: look fine. But then you go into some little cafe
Speaker 2: or bar at a hilltown in Kianti and all the
Speaker 2: guys are wearing iron shirts and they're all looking so smart,
Speaker 2: and you do wonder about the mothers at home who
Speaker 2: are doing that and the women and I'm sure there's
Speaker 2: going to tell me. People are going to say, I'm
Speaker 2: not iron you sure, I'm just not doing it. You know,
Speaker 2: I have a book to read or a book to write,
Speaker 2: or some thing I'm going to travel. And it's you know,
Speaker 2: it's one of the concerns about as as simple as
Speaker 2: jarring tomatoes. You know, who's gonna do that? Yeah, maybe
Speaker 2: nobody should do it, maybe robots couldn't do it. Instead
Speaker 2: of this romantization of We're all going to stay home
Speaker 2: and put jar tomatoes and jars or maybe you know,
Speaker 2: because everybody else is going to be doing every other thing,
Speaker 2: that would be something that we want to do, you know,
Speaker 2: that will be In fact, I was just going to say,
Speaker 2: I'm actually.
Speaker 3: Seeing men get way more involved in things that I like,
Speaker 3: you know, jarring things. You know, there's and there's a
Speaker 3: there's a real return also I've seen in the last
Speaker 3: twenty years. I used to be a journalist covering fashion
Speaker 3: and design for many publications, and one publication, Wallpaper, was
Speaker 3: always really interested in like all the artisans. So I
Speaker 3: was always interviewing Italian artisans. And what was so cool
Speaker 3: was that you had these artisans that were like seventy plus,
Speaker 3: and then there was this whole new generation of like
Speaker 3: twenty five year olds that realized how cool it was
Speaker 3: to be a carpenter or to make something, to make
Speaker 3: something with the hands. But there was kind of like
Speaker 3: that fifty year gap. So I do think that there's
Speaker 3: I just Italy has wonderful values, and it takes longer
Speaker 3: to figure it out. It's more chaotic, it's less organized,
Speaker 3: it's less dependable. But once you understand the rhythms, once
Speaker 3: you start realizing that actually all you need is to
Speaker 3: make friends, you know, your life just, you know, it
Speaker 3: just unravels. It was such a gift to me.
Speaker 2: We just had JJ Martin here and I'm here with
Speaker 2: Sean now and I'm talking about shops because you know,
Speaker 2: she is in retail, she's in design, and she's into spirituality,
Speaker 2: and so there is a kind of parallel life although
Speaker 2: she's in Milan and we're in London. Of loving beautiful things,
Speaker 2: and she's going to open a store in New York
Speaker 2: that has a room downstairs where you can meditate, where
Speaker 2: you have a kind of spiritual experience as well as
Speaker 2: shopping upstairs. I don't know what our spiritual experience would be.
Speaker 2: In the River Cafe.
Speaker 4: We've got piano.
Speaker 2: We have a piano that's spiritual and so especially right
Speaker 2: now with Christmas, you know, it's so I think if
Speaker 2: joyousness is spiritual, which it is, I think there's such
Speaker 2: a joy in our shop. Of the colors, you know,
Speaker 2: especially the matches and the books and the bags that
Speaker 2: we've branded ourselves, that we've put our signature on. We
Speaker 2: thought we'd show you around.
Speaker 1: And we've got lots of things going on at the moment,
Speaker 1: so we've had lots of fun little things.
Speaker 2: I know, these Italian.
Speaker 3: Right of anxiety piry.
Speaker 5: Familiar with them.
Speaker 3: This is like legit Italian.
Speaker 2: This is this is totally legit Italian.
Speaker 3: This is not like so many times my friends bring
Speaker 3: me to Italian restaurants. They're never legitimate, you know, they
Speaker 3: don't really do it in the Italian way. But this
Speaker 3: is this is legit.
Speaker 1: You won't find.
Speaker 2: Hi. You know.
Speaker 3: What I love about your shop is that you have
Speaker 3: very authentic Italian things, but in the packaging that is
Speaker 3: like totally not.
Speaker 4: One is fine because did she see the hampers?
Speaker 2: Did Yeah? She loved them? Yeah? And how many years
Speaker 2: have you been doing this hampers six maybe six? I
Speaker 2: remember when you were Satistan and said, why don't we
Speaker 2: do the alternative to the kind of Fortnam and Mason
Speaker 2: hamper instead of putting little jars of things that you
Speaker 2: just kind of give away to make a River Cafe hamper.
Speaker 4: That's been a big learning curve for us, isn't it,
Speaker 4: Because when the brief is that nothing in the hamper
Speaker 4: gets put in the back of a cupboard. That was
Speaker 4: at one of our defining things that we had given
Speaker 4: away to somebody who came to know everything in it
Speaker 4: has to be You couldn't go round any shop in
Speaker 4: Britain and put all those things in a box and
Speaker 4: get that for the you know, the price, which so
Speaker 4: it felt like an honest product. But also if I
Speaker 4: had to feel like something that we would all like
Speaker 4: to receive and Ruthie would like to receive, so that.
Speaker 2: That was our We put books and it was so
Speaker 2: nice when we can put one of our books in
Speaker 2: one year we put a book of Richardson. We wanted
Speaker 2: always to put music in but we've never achieved that playlist,
Speaker 2: a playlist and the glasses, as you said, and I
Speaker 2: think the joy of the box itself. People really love
Speaker 2: the box, so they talk about opening up a brown
Speaker 2: package and seeing this pink and yellow box and opening
Speaker 2: that up and finding a beautifully packed Yeah.
Speaker 4: And this year we were in Venice and we found
Speaker 4: this really great linen shop and they've done these snapkins
Speaker 4: for us this year, which a really nice cocktail naps.
Speaker 4: And we often go round to shop ourselves and covert
Speaker 4: things that we want to buy because it's just so
Speaker 4: would buy. I love the fruit jellies. I think they
Speaker 4: are bring back a fruit jelly. I say that's quite
Speaker 4: an old fashioned thing. They're really beautiful. I love the
Speaker 4: cocktail stirs sensing a trend by anything shout out.
Speaker 2: Else? Is that the kids coloring really cool? I like
Speaker 2: the playing cards. Yeah, and also hello the crackers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we have great crackers.
Speaker 4: Well that's a bit of fun. Trying to design a
Speaker 4: cracker where you've got something in it that doesn't get
Speaker 4: just thrown away. We felt that was the hardest challenge.
Speaker 4: But this year we've done these really cute badges. They're
Speaker 4: like a kind of enamel pin. My favorite is a
Speaker 4: spaghetti bonglai badge.
Speaker 2: The River Cafe is excited to announce the return of
Speaker 2: our Italian Christmas gift box is our alternative to the
Speaker 2: traditional hamper. They bring you all of our favorites from
Speaker 2: the River Cafe, kitchen, the vineyards and the designers from
Speaker 2: all over Italy. They're available to pre order now on
Speaker 2: shop at the River Cafe dot co dot UK. You
Speaker 2: worked for Calvin Klein before you went to Italy, and
Speaker 2: I remember a very good friend of mine worked with
Speaker 2: Calvin Klein and she was in quite a senior position.
Speaker 2: But they had a rule that if anybody sent you flowers,
Speaker 2: they had to be white. So I mean, talk about control.
Speaker 2: I mean I kind of respect it because sometimes you
Speaker 2: go into this array of kind of flowers in every
Speaker 2: single color. But it's interesting that you went from a
Speaker 2: company like that that was so controlled to what you
Speaker 2: know and then your joy of what you've done and
Speaker 2: you know, and I want to talk more about your life.
Speaker 3: I felt so stifled at Calvin Kline. I have to
Speaker 3: say it was. It was kind of a scary place
Speaker 3: to be. Even the yellow sticky pads were white, so
Speaker 3: the I mean, everything was sterilized. That was the moment
Speaker 3: in my life that I discovered vintage because I didn't
Speaker 3: have a lot of money, and the Chelsea Flea Market
Speaker 3: in Manhattan every weekend had this incredible vintage fair. And
Speaker 3: that was back in you know, nineteen ninety nine, when
Speaker 3: prices were still incredible, and so you could just get
Speaker 3: these incredible you know, coats and gowns and and and
Speaker 3: so I was really developing that like eccentric, colorful pattern
Speaker 3: loving thing that was always in me. You know, the
Speaker 3: Calvin aesthetic was never really my thing.
Speaker 2: But they did do beautiful clothes as well, amazing quote
Speaker 2: yeah in Italy, and underwear and it made in Italy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the other thing about Italy, the respect I have
Speaker 2: for the Italian, as you say, either craftsmanship or workmanship.
Speaker 2: I remember the first time Rose and I went to
Speaker 2: look at where they made parmesan. We went down this
Speaker 2: really dirty, dusty road and it was kind of you
Speaker 2: know everything. You saw these barns in the background. We thought,
Speaker 2: where are we going? What are we doing? And then
Speaker 2: you walked into this kitchen where they were making the
Speaker 2: parmesan cheese. And they could have been making rockets to
Speaker 2: go into outer space, or they could have been doing
Speaker 2: a kind of vaccine to cure a disease. They all
Speaker 2: had masks, they had white coats, they had their hair
Speaker 2: tied up, you know, And it's a kind of in
Speaker 2: built pride which I sew sewing respect. You know.
Speaker 3: Did you ever go see any of the reculta being made?
Speaker 3: And yes, I did, Yes, warm for breakfast.
Speaker 2: I know that's another parallel that maybe we don't have
Speaker 2: because I remember taking that ricotta out of the thing
Speaker 2: and it was warm, and it was hot, and I
Speaker 2: thought I might be sick. But let's talk about your eating.
Speaker 2: So we eat more ricotta for breakfast.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when I can.
Speaker 2: Okay, So how do you how do you do that?
Speaker 4: What?
Speaker 2: And what way do you have it? On a bad
Speaker 2: piece of bread? You take a piece of piece of bread?
Speaker 2: But okay, so you take a piece of that. We
Speaker 2: do in the River Cafe, and we love that baked,
Speaker 2: don't we say? Say what do we do with ricotta?
Speaker 1: Absolutely? We also bake it in our wood oven with
Speaker 1: a little bit of oregono, and so it's all slightly
Speaker 1: crispy at the edges and then really soft and warm
Speaker 1: in the middle of frost.
Speaker 3: That's another thing. Oregonal for me was a game. There
Speaker 3: were certain ingredients. Once you come to Italy like olive
Speaker 3: oil that I was like, whoa, what is that like?
Speaker 3: It's like a whole new thing. Same with oregano from
Speaker 3: Sicily or from the south of Italy wherever, especially Pendeluri.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever met to the island
Speaker 3: of Pendealeria, but the capers and the oregano from that
Speaker 3: part of Italy. I like to buy food when I'm
Speaker 3: traveling to get the local you know, the frieze from
Speaker 3: Pulia or the especially the the capers and the oregano,
Speaker 3: or just sensationally, I buy a lot of it and
Speaker 3: is dried and then I just fill up my jars.
Speaker 3: You know, you're not whatever. I'm not going to get
Speaker 3: cilantro in Italy.
Speaker 2: I have not surrendered taking go back to California, but
Speaker 2: I'm not getting cilantro. Do you feel do you feel
Speaker 2: as you speak Italian beautifully and you've lived there and
Speaker 2: you have a company, do you feel linked to the
Speaker 2: country of your birth in political or social?
Speaker 3: Absolutely? I mean I do. I both of my parents
Speaker 3: are deceased. I have two brothers that live around Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: But there's something really powerful, you know. My mom's family
Speaker 3: was from Los Angeles. So her grandfather moved there in
Speaker 3: the early nineteen hundreds, and so there is this kind
Speaker 3: of like ancestral thing whenever I go back, and I
Speaker 3: feel it energetically too. I do, and I think the
Speaker 3: earth of our birth is so powerful and you've got it,
Speaker 3: you know. I had to do a lot of clearing there.
Speaker 3: I had to do a lot of letting go, a
Speaker 3: lot of forgiveness. And now I go back to Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and I just I'm like, there's a reason it's
Speaker 3: called the City of Angels. I feel it. It's so potent.
Speaker 3: That being said, I don't really want to live there
Speaker 3: all the time. I love having the kind of best
Speaker 3: best of both worlds, and I don't really feel like, I,
Speaker 3: you know, like either one is really my home. I don't.
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm just a home on planet Earth. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you find being a woman in Italy we talk
Speaker 2: about the role of the woman as a mother, as
Speaker 2: a connector, as the person who creates the people who
Speaker 2: can then create. But do you feel as a woman
Speaker 2: that you're treated differently in business as you might be
Speaker 2: in the United States. Do you have the respect for
Speaker 2: your work that you would have.
Speaker 3: I think they're surprised every time I show up and
Speaker 3: like I'm the boss, and I think they're like, you know,
Speaker 3: they're sort of like, oh wow. But this is the
Speaker 3: thing about it time. They're very open minded. Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I think that it's like it doesn't occur to them,
Speaker 3: it would happen, but when it happens, they're very open.
Speaker 3: And the thing about an Italian if you can just
Speaker 3: connect to their heart and get them excited and motivated
Speaker 3: about something, they will do anything for you. You know,
Speaker 3: when I started the website, all those women they were
Speaker 3: gallery owners, they were furniture designers, architects. You know, they
Speaker 3: weren't bankers. They were all creative people. There aren't quite
Speaker 3: a few powerful women.
Speaker 2: Are your prime Minister?
Speaker 3: Is that the I mean even you know, you see
Speaker 3: that like the Massoni family with Angela and Resita. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of female like the Wanda Ferragamo taking over
Speaker 3: ver Salvatore. You know, Max Maara is led creatively by
Speaker 3: a woman who's been there for like fifty years. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of like Donna Tulliversace. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: Musica Prada.
Speaker 2: Yeah they're bossy, yeah, oh wait, they're they're strong articly.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm actually better ambitious and then women a
Speaker 2: bossy But that's all right. I think we can be there,
Speaker 2: but we can be bossy too. BOSSI is okay. How
Speaker 2: many people work for you? Seventy seventy, one of whom
Speaker 2: is sorry, it was better about this, says, So you
Speaker 2: told me the story about the kitchen I did.
Speaker 1: I did read somewhere that when you were searching for
Speaker 1: a new kitchen for your house in Milan, you had
Speaker 1: a friend of yours who suggested that that was a
Speaker 1: sort of nineties poloform kitchen. Would you mind telling us
Speaker 1: the story?
Speaker 3: There was so I was newly divorced. I had to
Speaker 3: start home from scratch. And you know, when you move
Speaker 3: into apartments in Italy, there's generally no lights, no kitchens,
Speaker 3: no closets. It doesn't matter if you're buying or renting
Speaker 3: like that, it's just their empty boxes. So you basically
Speaker 3: have to start from scratch, so it's quite like an expense.
Speaker 3: I was like, I guess I'm getting any kea kitchen, Like,
Speaker 3: I guess That's what I'm doing. And I had a
Speaker 3: friend who he's a wonderful antique dealer, Rymondo Garral Look
Speaker 3: him up when you're in Milan. He has just the
Speaker 3: most fabulous eye. Finds pieces so special and I always
Speaker 3: kind of refer to him anytime that I'm doing something new,
Speaker 3: and I just we this is so Italian. Come over,
Speaker 3: let's have a cup of coffee and talk about my
Speaker 3: new creative project. This happens all the time. So he
Speaker 3: came over and he was like, you know what, I
Speaker 3: think there's a Signora. I'm buying some other stuff from her.
Speaker 3: She might have a kitchen. Let me just see. He
Speaker 3: calls me up and a few days later he's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, she's got this nineties polyform kitchen. It's Bordeaux red,
Speaker 3: and but you know it's about what did he say,
Speaker 3: what's this like twenty centimeter or something like He's like
Speaker 3: his twenty centimeters too short for your wall. I was like, Raymondo,
Speaker 3: I can handle like an twenty centimeter hole. I mean,
Speaker 3: that was so Italian that he had, like it had
Speaker 3: to go all the way to that. I'm I'll use
Speaker 3: it as a broom closet. So the next thing I know,
Speaker 3: this marble topped polyform kitchen that cost me in order
Speaker 3: to buy it, ship it and install it. Ship it.
Speaker 3: It was in Milan, but bring it over cost me
Speaker 3: less than going to get a new, tricked out Eka kitchen.
Speaker 3: And it brings me so much satisfaction. This kitchen is
Speaker 3: so gorgeous and I'd love cooking on it. I mean
Speaker 3: the only problem is that they don't have gas. It's
Speaker 3: it's annoying.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I have a kitchen story, which is that my husband,
Speaker 2: Richard Rogers built, was building the Lloyd's building. I've all
Speaker 2: we moved into our house. We need to have an
Speaker 2: island unit. You'll have to come and seated and stay
Speaker 2: inless deal. And it has five five burners, so it's
Speaker 2: in the living space. It's very very minimalist. And this
Speaker 2: is before I was cooking in a restaurant. And we've
Speaker 2: had it for forty years and for the last I'd
Speaker 2: say twenty years. You can't light all five burners at
Speaker 2: the same time, no, so you can light one and
Speaker 2: then maybe you can light the other. And so every
Speaker 2: engineer in London would come over and try and fix
Speaker 2: the gas, and try and do this, and try and
Speaker 2: do that. And I went into Boffy. You know, Buffy
Speaker 2: was just really fancy Italian fancy. I went over there
Speaker 2: and I was joined to the guy and I said,
Speaker 2: you know, I told I told him. He said, Richard
Speaker 2: Rogers house, amazing. I'd love to I'll solve this problem
Speaker 2: for you. And I would come in and he'd be
Speaker 2: lying on the floor underneath the island unit, drawing, you know,
Speaker 2: all the gas and the places and where the where
Speaker 2: the gas flowed, and how's it going? Is going fine?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm really doing well. He left, and then
Speaker 2: three days later we got a letter from him. He said,
Speaker 2: dear Ruth Rogers and Richard Rogers, I have spent five
Speaker 2: days in your kitchen, and what I really think is
Speaker 2: that it's the most beautiful kitchen I've ever seen, and
Speaker 2: that you should donate it to the Museum of Modern
Speaker 2: Art in New York and buy a baffy kitchen, which
Speaker 2: we didn't do. I still have. You know, thirty years
Speaker 2: later you have to light it ten times. But to
Speaker 2: know a kitchen is important. It's important how you work
Speaker 2: in it, how you live in it, how you and
Speaker 2: you don't make it work.
Speaker 3: It be so funny because I also found that when
Speaker 3: I was a journalist, I found the cook the process
Speaker 3: of cooking so helpful because whenever I had a creative
Speaker 3: block and I couldn't write, I could cook and then
Speaker 3: I would get back into the flow because so much
Speaker 3: of creativity is just allowing yourself to get into that frequency.
Speaker 3: And it was so healthy and satisfying for me. The
Speaker 3: bigger my company gets and the more responsibility to have
Speaker 3: and the more travel I have, I find it very
Speaker 3: challenging to spend as much time cooking. I usually do
Speaker 3: it on the weekends. But it's really nice. I'm in
Speaker 3: a new relationship now and it's so fun to have
Speaker 3: a boyfriend that cooks for me. I'm like, this is
Speaker 3: the sex thing that could ever happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we said that to Michael Kay in the first
Speaker 2: interview we did, because there's a scene in this movie,
Speaker 2: The Ipcress File where he seduces a woman by cooking
Speaker 2: for her, and you get it.
Speaker 3: You know it is so because not only is it,
Speaker 3: I mean it's just it's so nurturing and they're like
Speaker 3: so self relying in it. It's such a gift. It's
Speaker 3: really amazing.
Speaker 2: And so what do you what would you like to
Speaker 2: do next? What is your plan? So I have a
Speaker 2: kind of yeah, where you'd like to be in a
Speaker 2: year's time, five years time, next month.
Speaker 3: Okay, so next year, I'd like to have a store
Speaker 3: open in New York, and I'd like it to kind
Speaker 3: of be weird. Like my Ma Lonstra. We have a
Speaker 3: Divine Mother Goddess cave downstairs. You have to come and visit.
Speaker 4: What is it?
Speaker 2: Divine Mother Goddess cave way, I say, I'm coming to visit.
Speaker 2: I'm not committing to anything. I don't know what it.
Speaker 3: Is, so it's it's underground. I commissioned this artist from
Speaker 3: Romania to kind of create this whole descent into the feminine,
Speaker 3: into the darkness, and so she's got all of these symbols,
Speaker 3: mystical symbols that she's painted. And then I asked her
Speaker 3: to paint me five manifestations of the Mother. So you
Speaker 3: have Collie, you have Kwan Yin, you have Mother Mary,
Speaker 3: Isis and Green Tara, and they're all mother frequencies from
Speaker 3: different wisdom traditions, et cetera. But they're all really talking
Speaker 3: about the same thing, which is this feminine energetic I
Speaker 3: really started getting like obsessed with this, you know. It
Speaker 3: was like Italy was teaching me this. I was learning
Speaker 3: about it in my spiritual practice, and we use this
Speaker 3: space downstairs. We hold meditations there, yoga, spiritual channelings, all
Speaker 3: sorts of different things. So you know, this is on
Speaker 3: the most traditional road in Milan. You've got a very
Speaker 3: untraditional thing happening. So when I go to New York,
Speaker 3: I'd like to do another thing as well where we
Speaker 3: Maybe it would be nice also in New York to
Speaker 3: have some of our homewhere that we create alongside the
Speaker 3: fashion has been popping up in little cafes here there,
Speaker 3: and I think like it would be really nice to
Speaker 3: have a showcase for that. So maybe partnering with someone
Speaker 3: in New York that would be a great deal. Real
Speaker 3: goal is ultimately to buy a piece of property in
Speaker 3: Sicily and open up a retreat center.
Speaker 2: Okay, can you do that? Why not?
Speaker 3: I think so?
Speaker 2: I think you can. I think I can do anything.
Speaker 2: I think I can. You know, I think you have.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'd love to see this. Yeah, it sounds to
Speaker 2: be like you can. You have done so much, and
Speaker 2: so I think before we we end this really fabulous conversation,
Speaker 2: I would ask you. We've talked about food as adapting
Speaker 2: of surrendering. We've talked about food is connecting. We've talked
Speaker 2: about food is creating, but it also is comfort. And
Speaker 2: so my last question to you, JJ is to ask
Speaker 2: you if you need comfort, and I hope you don't
Speaker 2: very often, but if you need comfort, and do you
Speaker 2: want to find it in food, what would be the
Speaker 2: food you would reach for?
Speaker 3: Okay, So I'm just going to be really honest and
Speaker 3: tell you, for many years, sugar was my comfort food
Speaker 3: and I was using it and abusing it was such
Speaker 3: a gift, it was such a friend, and then it
Speaker 3: was such an enemy. So for many many years my
Speaker 3: comfort food was those chewy American cookies. So I would
Speaker 3: even like when I first I was really using it
Speaker 3: as like you know, as someone would alcohol or drugs.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was really my drug. And I would
Speaker 3: in Italy because I couldn't find the desserts, I would
Speaker 3: make cookie dough, especially oat milk. How good is oatmeal? Cookie?
Speaker 4: Do?
Speaker 3: It's the best? So you know, it's a really honest question.
Speaker 3: I mean, like people do use many people use food
Speaker 3: as true comfort, and I was using that for a
Speaker 3: long time. I try not to eat as much sugar
Speaker 3: like that because it's it's not good for my system.
Speaker 3: So now just a homemade plate of a spaghetti that
Speaker 3: I learned, a taliate that I learned in Pantalaria that
Speaker 3: has capers, alives, tomatoes, super simple, a pasta dish gives
Speaker 3: me that comfort food.
Speaker 2: That the.
Speaker 4: I use.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well also because most of the time I'm trying to
Speaker 3: go like gluten free, so I'm eating my quenewie and
Speaker 3: I'm my white brown rice and then but if I
Speaker 3: really want to, I might bring it on.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, let's go have some faster. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming today. I'll see you in Milan.
Speaker 5: Ruthie's Table four is produced by Atami Studios for iHeartRadio.
Speaker 5: It is hosted by Ruthie Rodgers. It's produced by William Lensky.
Speaker 5: Our executive producers are Zad Rogers and Fay Stewart. Our
Speaker 5: production manager is Caitlin Paramore. Our production coordinator is Bella Selini.
Speaker 5: This episode had additional contributions by Ceci Jusipetti. Sean special
Speaker 5: thanks to everyone at the River Cafe
Speaker 4: To