Day 328: Rebecca Lang
“… in any profession, I feel like you cannot get stuck in a place that you feel like you know everything, because there’s always a whole other world that you don’t know. And the more that you explore what you don’t know, the more you know about your own potential.”
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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Rebecca, for agreeing to be part of this Project today, and before we begin, can you please introduce yourself?
Rebecca Lang: Oh sure, and thank you, Toni, so much for having me. I am Rebecca Lang. I am a cookbook author. I have actually just turned in my manuscript for my third book, which will be out in spring, and it’s called Quick Fix Southern published by Andrews McMeel. I also do television work for Southern Living Magazine, which is on the nationally syndicated show Daytime, and I’m on once a week. Other than that, I am at home being a mother to my two children every day.
Toni: Well thank you so much, Rebecca, for agreeing to be part of the Project. When you think of inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?
Rebecca: I really like to think every time that I’m in the kitchen that I’m giving inspiration to somebody because I often teach cooking classes, and I travel a good bit to do that and I just … my main purpose when I get in the kitchen is for anybody that’s in there to understand how easy it is to get in there and cook.
I always say that, you know, if you can read, you can cook. I think so many people don’t really understand that, that they think it’s so much easier to run through the drive through or run and pick up something that’s already ready when it’s so easy – you can have supper on the table in less than 30 minutes.
That’s one reason why I wanted to write this new book that I was writing that everything’s under 30 minutes. But it’s such an important time for your family, and especially as a mother, that I really want people to understand that, to get into the kitchen with their kids, with their family, and spend some time in there and get supper on the table.
Toni: Do you see a turning of the tide, so to speak, of people that are getting back in the kitchen?
Rebecca: I do. I think that especially now with The Food Network and other channels that are running so much food coverage, I think we do have a turnaround in a couple of decades ago. That’s when everybody was trying to do things in the microwave and things were, you know, just almost completely opposite what they are now. And I think people are seeing that it’s time to be in the kitchen.
Everybody’s more concerned about what they’re eating, where their food comes from, which is a wonderful movement, because we’re all … you know, a lot of people are getting to know their farmers and really thinking about “What chemicals are in my food, who grew this, what’s happened to it since it got to my kitchen?” So I think that there is. There’s a lot of difference.
Even ten years ago, I feel like people my age, which I’m 33, are now coming back into the kitchen, which a lot of people with little kids in the past have not. You know, “It’s easier not to cook” is what everybody thought, and now they’re seeing that that’s an important role to have as a parent or as an adult in any household — to show everybody, you know, that dinner is easy and can be a family activity.
Toni: How do you think that by inspiring people to get back in the kitchen and to learn how to cook, how does it help people to explore their potential?
Rebecca: Well, I think that any time that they can get in the kitchen and read a recipe, you know, you always think “Oh” … and you might be a little scared and you think, “I can’t do this.” But the first time that you do it, you know that you can, and it’s kind of like a … recipes are like building blocks. The first time you try one that is extremely simple, next time you’re going to try something that’s a little bit more difficult, and then you’ll be more and more comfortable.
So I like to have the potential for people to understand that they are capable of making anything in the kitchen that they want to make. It’s not necessarily just easy recipes and to not be scared to attempt something, because even if … you know, I still fail miserably in the kitchen sometimes. Even if somebody does, you’ve tried your best and you learned from it, and you move on.
So everything is a learning experience when you get in the kitchen, and I think that potential is there as soon as you’re in the kitchen. You have a world of opportunity to make that food whatever you want it to be and make it your own.
Toni: So it’s really to just put your stamp on it and be creative as well, isn’t it?
Rebecca: Absolutely. I mean, you can read a recipe for anything you want and then a couple of changes and you’ve made it something that your family might like the most, and you’ve added something that’s part of your personality and part of your household. So I think that it’s a really easy way to be creative, even though sometimes in other ways of life it’s a little bit difficult to. As soon as you open that refrigerator and get to the kitchen counter, it’s like a blank slate. You can start from scratch and make whatever you want to.
Toni: I heard somebody say recently that you can … with a recipe you can make one dish, but if you learn the technique of cooking, you can make several dishes. You can make the same dish several different ways.
Rebecca: That is absolutely true. I think once you learn the basics, once you learn the basic concepts of cooking, you can get in the kitchen and make whatever you want. It’s such a blessing for your family to say, “Oh, can we have fried chicken tonight?” and you don’t need a recipe. You go in the kitchen and you make the fried chicken that you know how to make. I think once people understand that it’s super easy to understand the few basics that cooking involves, and then you’re just … you’re open to all kinds of opportunities.
Toni: Rebecca, what inspires you?
Rebecca: Recipes the most inspire me, because I really love to hear the stories behind recipes. And especially with Southern food and the food that goes back so many generations, there’s a story behind every recipe. I say the same thing about furniture in my house. I like to have furniture with a story. I like to have old furniture.
So I love to hear when somebody’s grandmother tells a story about how she made pimento cheese 50 years ago and why they grew up eating what they did, and especially to talk to people who are much older than I am that have lived to see things that I can only imagine. It’s incredibly inspiring.
And I think about my grandmothers on the farm and what they ate and why they ate it. My grandmother used to tell me stories about taking biscuits that her mother, my great-grandmother, would make and sometimes they were filled with ham, sometimes they just had sorghum syrup, but that was the lunch they took out to the fields, and it was wrapped in a napkin. You know, we don’t think about things like that anymore, but it’s … we don’t know what a blessing that was to have a biscuit with some ham in it on the farm.
So I love to hear the history of the recipes, and I also love when somebody has made a recipe of mine that may be in a book or it may be online or wherever they found a recipe that I created. I love hearing how that recipe is now part of their weekly meals that they make, and that their family loves it. There’s nothing to inspire you like that to get back in the kitchen and do something else when you know people love your food and you’ve made something that they can then attempt at home, and it works out perfect, and they’ve made it a part of their cooking schedule. It’s a really big inspiration to me to hear about how they use that recipe.
Toni: You know, it’s really kind of a cool way that things come back, isn’t it, because I’m listening to you and I’m thinking, the biggest memories around the dining room table. I mean, that’s where I’m listening to and I’m relating to the dining room table. But you bring a different approach to it as well to say it’s not just around the table, but it’s how the food got to the table, and …
Rebecca: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Toni: … yeah, that’s really cool to think of it that way. What else inspires you? What do you do when you find yourself with a day going “You know, I could use a little inspiration here.” Do you find yourself reaching for different tools or resources?
Rebecca: I am a big, big fan of books, and I was just in this conversation earlier this week. And I own a lot of cookbooks, as you can imagine, and I love to be surrounded by books, and even if it’s not cookbooks, I just love a book. I like to hold a book, I like to turn its pages. So if I feel that I’m in a blank space and I need, you know, I need some encouragement, it’s a great time to go sit in my office and just even to look at some of the people who I admire so much and what they’ve written and what they have to say that’s been put into a book.
That’s incredibly inspirational, and it’s almost just like my little well of inspiration right downstairs that I can always go tap into, because there’s so many people that have accomplished worlds above what I have accomplished, and I love to go sit and read their words.
And you know, cookbooks are not just for people who are untrained. I’m a trained professional, and I love to go sit and curl up in a chair with a cookbook and read it. And so, you know, whenever all of us need refilling at other times … and so that’s my way to sit down and even, you know, sit down with a glass of wine and a cookbook, and I am good to go. That is an easy way for me to get inspired in a hurry.
Toni: That’s fantastic. What a great way to describe that as well. So how do you explore your own potential?
Rebecca: Well I think as cooks, it’s very easy to get in a rut, and I think anybody who cooks can tell you that. So it’s very important to cook outside of your box. You know, a lot of times … you know, several times a month I try to make something that I have never made before, and a lot of times that means making different ethnic recipes, cooking food that I don’t know a lot about. I don’t know a lot about, let’s say, Thai cooking. I’m not an expert in Thai cooking, so when I attempt Thai recipes, I’ve stepped out of that box that I’m very comfortable in, and I feel like I learned from that.
So you just can’t get … in any profession, I feel like you cannot get stuck in a place that you feel like you know everything, because there’s always a whole other world that you don’t know. And the more that you explore what you don’t know, the more you know about your own potential. So I like to just kind of, you know, step out of that Southern food range that I feel like I’m … you know, know a lot about, and I step into a place that I may not be that comfortable in, but I get in the kitchen and I’m great.
I think life is a learning experience, and certainly cooking is a lot like that, and one reason I chose and love this career so much is because it’s a constant learning. You’re never, ever going to be at the point that you know everything, which to me is fabulous. You know, I can wake up tomorrow and choose one of my books and pick it up and open a page, and I’m going to learn something. So that’s a huge blessing and I think an inspiration that we all as culinary professionals know that tomorrow is a new day, and it’s a new day to learn something.
Toni: So what’s next for you?
Rebecca: That’s a good question. I’m always in the kitchen, I’m always working on recipes — and since I just turned in my manuscript, I have been taking it a little bit easy right now — but I’m always thinking about the next book. You know, a lot of us who write, I will wake up in the middle of the night with the inspiration to write something. And I guess because I have two little children and I tend to be tired, I will forget that by the next day. So I get up in the middle of the night and write down this thought that I have, and then I’ll go back to bed.
So I’m always thinking about the next book. I’m thinking about the next thing to write. But you know, first and foremost, I am a mother to the little people that live in the house, and my job comes second to them so, you know, whenever I can have the chance to publish another book, I will jump on that. It’s just … it’s a blessing to be able to do what I do and be at home with them. And speaking of inspiration, that’s enough right there just to fill you up every day.
Toni: Oh, absolutely. You can certainly hear the passion in your voice when you talk about what you do for a living, and that has been an unintended outcome of the Get Inspired! Project that, you know, people just speak so passionately about what they do, and you just … you can hear it. It’s so refreshing to hear that. So I cannot thank you enough, Rebecca, for being part of this Project, and we will look forward to your new book coming out in the spring. And we will have a link to your website so that people can check out the other books that you have and the recipes that you’ve shared. So thank you very, very much for being part of this Project.
Rebecca: Oh thank you so much, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Toni: Oh, you’re welcome. Take care, Rebecca.
Rebecca: You too, thank you.
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For more information about Rebecca Lang: www.rebeccalangcooks.com
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