Conversations From The Kitchen Table

The storytelling website Eat, Darling, Eat presents conversations with some of Heritage Radio Network's (the world's pioneer food radio station) favorite hosts, this time talking personally about their own mother/daughter relationships and the ways that food helps to explore and define the family dynamics, history, and personalities. Whether Mom dedicated passion and energy to feeding her family, or made Sara Lee and Szechuan take-out her best friends, listen in on stories of families, cultures, and kitchens from South Africa to Japan to the United States. 

Host: Co-Founder Eat, Darling, Eat

Aimee Lee Ball is an author and journalist writing about health, business, politics, food, travel, and the arts. She has contributed cooking columns to The New York Times Sunday Magazine and has appeared on TV's Food Network. Her books include No Time to Die, a New York Times Notable Book, and Changing the Rules, a Best Business Book. She has written for many national publications including New York Magazine, The New York Times, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, and Harper’s Bazaar.

Producer: Co-Founder Eat, Darling, Eat

Steve Baum is a New York-based filmmaker and cinematographer. His company produced Salvadorian Salvation, a documentary about protecting El Salvador’s children from gang violence. Dr. Vicky Guzman, founder and director of Asaprosar, an organization that helps the neediest families of that country, worked with her daughter Lucy Guzman and a team of social workers, psychologists, and educators, providing a refuge for children, including a balanced meal every day. Steve is the creator of Not For Kids Only (UnderwaterSuite), the award winning first DVD in a musical video series.

Felicia Cocotzin Ruiz is known as a “kitchen curandera." Curanderas are traditional healers who have practiced throughout the Americas for more than 500 years. Following in the steps of her maternal great-grandmother, Ruiz brings to her practice a knowledge of indigenous foods and “earth medicines” (the title of her recent book). She lives with her husband and near her daughter in Phoenix, Arizona, where she offers workshops and one-on-one healing sessions. With her sister, a midwife in Oakland, California, she created Nourished Mama, a program with recipes for postpartum recovery—always with Mother Earth in mind. Here, she shares her vision about the role of food in health, integration of traditional healing with Western medicine, and giving voice to a rich cultural heritage that was unknown or dismissed by others for a long time.

“Let Daddy move the chopsticks first” and “Do not leave one piece of rice on your plate."

These maxims were part of the Chinese culture and tradition that Tina Yao imparted to her daughter, a first-generation Chinese-American. With a Yale degree (and wearing her mother’s suit), Nancy Yao Maasbach got a job at the Council on Foreign Relations, using her heritage and perspective to work on U.S. policy with China, as that country of her ancestors became an increasingly powerful player on the world stage. After six years at Goldman Sachs, ending as a senior vice-president, she applied her understanding of U.S.-China relations as executive director of the Yale-China Association. Then she found her true calling: as president of the Museum of Chinese in America. (In one of life’s wonderfully wild full circles, the original home of the museum, then known as the Chinatown History Project, was the building where her mother learned to speak English.) Our delightful interview reveals why the mother-daughter relationship is so central to the development of this unique influencer, and how the loving foundation of her own family helps in her mission to interpret and present the many variations of the Chinese-American immigration experience.