Mike Keren, an author and clinical psychologist based in the Poconos, loves cooking shows that teach you something and haven't turned cooking into sport. We talk about Julia Child, the Galloping Gourmet and the Canadian show Wall of Chefs. Mike's first memoir will be published on October 5th and we also talk about caretaking, the AIDS epidemic, COVID and family recipes.
Keep up with Mike online on MikeKeren.com, @MikeKeren4 on Twitter
In “Four Funerals, No Marriage: A Memoir”, author Mike Keren is plunged into a caregiving journey when his loving but difficult parents come to visit and both end up hospitalized over the course of one weekend. Keren had only recently left a career as a psychologist to pursue the world of high finance driven by his perceptions of how difficult it was becoming to deliver quality service in the current profit-driven health care environment. He, along with his life-partner, Tom, had been caregiving Tom’s mom who was undergoing chemotherapy for ovarian cancer.
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Show Notes
- Graphic Medicine
- Taking Turns
- The Galloping Gourmet
- The French Chef (Julia Child)
- Jacques Pépin
- Top Chef Masters
- Wall of Chefs
- The Big Family Cooking Showdown with Nadiya Hussain
- Mock Chestnut Torte (passover flourless chocolate cake)
- Banana Jam
- Homecooking Podcast
Transcript Follows
Mike Keren 0:00
Hi, my name is Mike Keren, and my favorite thing is cooking shows.
Announcer 0:04
Welcome to the Finding Favorites podcast, where we explore your favorite things without using an algorithm. Here's your host, Leah Jones.
Leah Jones 0:16
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. It's Sunday, September 26th, pretty late in the day, because I just have been busy and not busy. This afternoon, I had brunch with friends and a Sukkot, it's the middle of the holiday Sukkot, which is a Jewish -- one of our many fall holidays, which involves a lot of nice picnics and Sukkahs, which is a type of outdoor temporary dwelling. Mostly, I've just been getting ready for tomorrow, which is the big day -- tomorrow is my lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy. So, the breast cancer will be scooped out tomorrow. I have a lot of unknowns, about how much they'll need to take. But, I trust my surgeon, I trust the team at Northwestern. I was diagnosed three months ago on June 24th, so, I am very relieved to have arrived here.
Leah Jones 1:25
This week on the podcast, I have author Mike Keren. We're talking about cooking shows and his new memoir that comes out next weekend. You can catch him at The Book Cellar. The book "Four Funerals, No Marriage: A Memoir," comes out on next weekend, October 5th, and he's having an event in Summit, New Jersey. It's a closed event, as you'll hear us talk about, for COVID safety. But on October 7th, 7:00 pm Central Time on Zoom, he is participating in a caregiving panel with the Book Cellar, that is really exciting. Ben Tanzer, who's a publicist and podcaster, is going to be moderating the panel. I will link to the information on his website.
Leah Jones 2:16
Today, I did have to cancel an interview that was supposed to happen today. So hopefully, I will have one for you next weekend. We've had a lot of -- our power has been going in and out -- I don't know if it's in Ravenswood, or if it's in my apartment. But I didn't trust that I would have power for a full hour to be able to record an interview this morning, because last night, the power went out like five times -- it's a little spooky. But, it's not the highest thing on my list of things to deal with. So, I hope that you will enjoy this conversation with Mike. I will report back next week about how the old lumpectomy went. I'll get pathology results at the end of the week. They'll re-stage if they need to. I'm just really grateful for friends and family who have been checking in on me, helping me get ready for all this. Keep enjoying your favorite things, wear your mask, and wash your hands.
Leah Jones 3:35
Hello, and welcome to Finding Favorites. I'm your host, Leah Jones. And this is the podcast where we learn about people's favorite things and get recommendations without using an algorithm. Our fall of author favorites continues. Today, I'm with Mike Keren. He is a clinical psychologist on the East Coast, and his new memoir called, "Four Funerals, No Marriage: A Memoir," will be released on October 5th. Mike, how are you doing this afternoon?
Mike Keren 4:05
I'm doing really well, Leah, thanks for asking.
Leah Jones 4:07
We were talking before I hit record, that you split your time between New Jersey and in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. What are the some of the things you like to do in the Poconos?
Mike Keren 4:20
I love to sit, turn on my fireplace, and watch TV. Walk with my dogs, cook, have friends in, entertain. Not too often, but just enough to keep up the mandatory social connection and stuff.
Leah Jones 4:39
I've been to the Poconos, once. I officiated a wedding at a resort in the Poconos.
Mike Keren 4:46
Which one do you remember?
Leah Jones 4:48
No idea. I think I flew into --
Mike Keren 4:57
-- probably Allentown.
Leah Jones 4:59
Allentown, yeah, and then drove north. It was a stunning venue. My friends had both gone to grad school in Syracuse, New York, and then both Religious Studies majors getting their PhDs, and decided the Poconos was a good middle ground for their wedding. And it was just beautiful. -- it was just stunning.
Mike Keren 5:30
We do have our moments and our places -- it's quite picturesque.
Leah Jones 5:36
So, you've got your new book coming out in just a little over two weeks. Is this your first novel -- it's a memoir. Sorry, is this your first memoir?
Mike Keren 5:45
Yes, it is. It's absolutely my first public creative publication. I write professionally, occasionally, haven't in a long time. Nobody really reads those. Hopefully, more people will read my memoir.
Leah Jones 6:01
How did you come to write it?
Mike Keren 6:04
Bit of a tale. I am always looking to do something. And after my mom died, I felt really freed up to do something outrageous. So, I started doing stand-up comedy. Cause, I live right outside New York. So, I was doing the open mic scene in New York and such and about a year and a half into it, I developed prostate cancer. It kind of curtailed the work I was doing, and challenged me about doing it, but I came through it and I kept doing that. But I was already pushing 50 at the time, and I was doing open mics with 18, 19 and 20-year-olds. Homophobic, racist, sexist, couldn't tolerate anymore. I got tired of having to pay the dues. So, I stopped doing it and sought a new outlet. I started taking writing classes, memoir writing classes. And, I intended to write a book about my experience with prostate cancer, but what poured out was this book about caregiving to my parents and my in-laws. And I'm not sure exactly why that's what came out, rather than the one I was intending. I have started the other one, and hopefully that will be my second memoir. So, that's how "Four Funerals" came about.
Leah Jones 7:24
I also did stand-up comedy in my 20s, when I first moved Chicago, so like 2002, to 2004. And then, when I was 40, I'd had a hysterectomy, I had been laid off from my job. I'd worked in public relations for 15 years, and brand, consumer product marketing. Which really meant if I went on stage, I couldn't -- I quit doing stand-up comedy the first time around, because of all the same things you just said. I stood in an alley for six hours, waiting to audition for Last Comic Standing -- it was the first season of Last Comic Standing. And it was sort of this like, "In the light of day, are these really the people I want to call my colleagues? I've heard the same rape joke 200 times -- you keep perfecting it."
Leah Jones 8:22
People perfecting their homophobic jokes, people perfecting their, like child rape and molestation jokes. And I really was like, "I don't have it in me for *these* to be my people." Then when I was 40, after I'd been laid off, and I felt like I could -- I wasn't muzzled professionally anymore. Because I came up in public relations and marketing at a time where you couldn't say anything negative about a client, about a client's parent company, about a potential client. So there were just loads of things that I couldn't have public opinions on.
Leah Jones 9:03
Then I went back, and I was like, "Maybe as a woman in my 40s, I actually have more to say now," and it was after the #MeToo movement had kicked off, and I was like, "Maybe it's better." I tried it for a summer, and it was fun to be back on stage. I love the crowd interaction of stand-up comedy. But I just looked around, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, now I am the old person in the room. That's weird." And I felt like I no longer had the goal of becoming super-famous; I just wanted to stretch that muscle. And somehow being in the room of 20-somethings hustling for their Hollywood breakthrough, I was again, "This isn't this isn't the room I want to be in." So I hear you on -- it's fun, but it is a hustle to do open mics.
Mike Keren 10:04
I miss it, I love being on stage, the audience -- my home club was one off of Times Square. They used to push tickets in Times Square, and they didn't care who they who they pushed them on. A lot of times we had audiences that spoke no English, whatsoever. But somehow, they knew when to laugh. They were some of the best audiences. And the other one I loved, was they call "hen parties" or bachelorette parties, because these women would be very drunk, and they would love to interact with the comic, and I like to do a lot of crowd work.
Leah Jones 10:43
That's a blast. So, you move from stand-up comedy to memoir writing. Geri Lynn Baumblatt, in Chicago -- she does a lot of work around caregiving, with the Participatory Medicine Association (*Society of Participatory Medicine), and as an audience for you to market to. I don't know what sort of writing she's doing these days, but she is someone that Ben needs to get your book in the hands of. We'll make that connection.
Mike Keren 11:20
Just a side note -- it's a humorous memoir. I channeled all my humor, some stuff that's much more raw than what I would do on stage, actually. It was a good outlet. I really enjoyed it.
Leah Jones 11:40
Good. What was the timeline from start to finish?
Mike Keren 11:48
I walked into my first class in 2011, probably this week, like the second-to-last week of September, and now, it's coming out the first week of October of 2021, so 10 years.
Leah Jones 12:06
That's so exciting. Is COVID at a level where you're at that you can have an in-person launch of some sort?
Mike Keren 12:21
I am having it whether it's okay or not. I made it very clear to my guests that if they were anxious about COVID, maybe they didn't want to come for that. We also cut back on the number. I had a list of about 175 people to invite; I had to cut that down. In some ways, when I get a, "Thank you, but no, thank you," I'm a little bit relieved, because it means there'll be a little bit more social distancing room. But it's been a challenge because a lot of bookstores are not doing live events. I figured I would do a synagogue circuit, they're not meeting. You can do some virtual stuff, but podcasts have really become the number one way to get the word out.
Leah Jones 13:04
Well, that's exciting. It'll come out in October. Do you feel like -- have you started your prostate cancer -- I guess you *thought* that's what the first book would be about, so you probably have some essays.
Mike Keren 13:20
I have probably about a third of the first draft written. I found COVID *not* very adaptive to writing. So I haven't done much of anything in terms of that. Six months ago, I started working the PR angle, building up to the launch and things. I intended to sit down and write. The other thing, being a psychologist, the pandemic has sadly been really good for business. My caseload has more than doubled over the last six, eight months. I don't have a lot of mental space for it, but I have a writing retreat week, planned out shortly after the book comes out. And I'm going to go up to my heaven on earth in Vermont, and hopefully peel out a good part of the rest of that book.
Leah Jones 14:16
Nice. Depending on up to where you've listened to my podcast, was diagnosed with breast cancer this summer.
Mike Keren 14:27
I am aware.
Leah Jones 14:26
So I've been, sometimes I'll do a Zoom call with myself while I'm driving, and hit record and just record whatever it is I'm thinking about that week. And that's my version of taking notes. I think I want to do a comic book memoir. I have an essay, I guess it's an essay, when it's a comic. There's this whole side of comic book making called "graphic medicine." That's the comic books about -- healthcare memoirs and sharing healthcare information.
Leah Jones 15:04
I was in an anthology called "Menopause: A Comic Treatment." And did one about going to Mikvah before my hysterectomy -- mark the transition of having my final, what would be my final, period. So, I've got a great relationship with a woman who, who did the art for it. We've been talking about whatever happens in this breast cancer journey I'm on, about turning that into a bigger graphic memoir.
Leah Jones 15:38
So, I do Zoom calls. Just occasionally, I'll do a Zoom call as I drive to the hospital to record my reaction, because -- also COVID has been, I mean, I started a podcast because I can't write anymore; I just don't have it in me. But I love talking to people, and COVID has been great for talking to people all around the country.
Mike Keren 16:03
That's great. I wasn't aware of that -- the healthcare-specific graphic memoirs.
Leah Jones 16:10
#GraphicMedicine is the hashtag on Twitter. There's the woman who edited our book, her Twitter handle is @comicnurse. She did a book about being a nurse in one of the first or *the* first AIDS ward in Chicago. It's probably behind me somewhere. People do memoirs -- it's a great way to educate people through comics. Graphic medicine is very cool.
Mike Keren 16:51
I'm gonna check it out when we're done.
Leah Jones 16:55
Well, that's exciting that you've got the book coming out. You've got your second book underway. When you go up to Vermont, do you pick a different place to stay every time, or do you have a favorite B&B or a cabin that you go to?
Mike Keren 17:12
There's a writer's retreat up there.
Leah Jones 17:13
Oh, *literally* a writer's retreat.
Mike Keren 17:15
Literally. It's actually how I know Ben. 2016, about five years ago, I got a message through Facebook inviting me to enter this drawing for a free week at a Vermont writer's retreat. What I didn't know at the time was that it's going to be like, a timeshare sell type of thing almost. They run a contest; the prize is a publication deal, including an agent, and a PR guy and all this kind of stuff.
Mike Keren 17:54
But I went up for the retreat, and just fell in love. It was very productive there. And really liked the idea of the contest. You do a lot of reading with within groups; at night, everybody around the fireplace. I had a sense that I would at least be competitive in that. So I signed up for this contest; it was quite the adventure. I learned a hell of a lot about publishing and book marketing, all that kind of stuff. And I came in second by like two points, which probably heartbreaking because --
Leah Jones 18:32
-- no publication, no publication.
Mike Keren 18:36
But I stayed connected with them and found my publisher through them, and through them also found my PR. So, I try to go up there on a on a regular basis. The guy who runs it, he's brethren also, he's had me up there for his Passover Seder. It's just idyllic. He's trying to sell the place, he has moved to another location. I'm a little bit upset about it. Because I'm one of the few people I didn't complain about how hard it was to get to, because I didn't find it all that hard. But the road it's on is not fully paved, so if it's a wet day, or if it's as they call it up there, "mud season," you could have issues and stuff. Because I had a car, I could always get out. But I love being cut off. I'm still I'd be so productive.
Leah Jones 19:28
So you're literally going to the Vermont writer's retreat.
Mike Keren 19:31
Literally going to a Vermont writer's retreat.
Leah Jones 19:34
Are you gonna road trip it up there?
Mike Keren 19:39
My husband's coming with me, and he -- when I'm writing, he entertain -- well, he's a late sleeper. So I'll get up really early, put three or four hours in before breakfast, and then he'll entertain himself for the afternoon. After lunch, we will generally go pick a town and explore the town or something like that.
Leah Jones 19:58
Gosh, that sounds perfect.
Leah Jones 20:00
Oh, it is. You should come out there with Ben sometime.
Leah Jones 20:04
I'll talk to him about it. Maybe when I get on the other side of this, and I'm ready to turn my Zoom recordings into something. All I know is the title of the book, which is called, "Don't Bring Lasagna." Now I feel bad, because I say this all the time, and eventually I'm going to say it to someone who brought me lasagna, and they're going to feel bad. And then I'm going to feel bad. I'm sure you experienced this as a caregiver -- people bring meals, they want to be helpful. Sometimes, they bring meals that are too big for the people you're actually caring for.
Leah Jones 20:40
So I was living alone, had had a hysterectomy, did not have much of an appetite. And three days in a row, people brought me lasagnas of increasing sizes. And then, I was re-hospitalized. And when I came back out, I had a fridge full of rotting lasagna. So, I'm very sensitive, and now there's this nonprofit started called, "Love Through Lasagna," that's all about helping people make lasagnas to take to people and I'm like, "You are my nemesis."
Mike Keren 21:20
It's a great title. Actually, people weren't feeding me during my caregiving days much. But when I was sitting Shiva, I got three fruit bouquets. My refrigerator -- I couldn't fit *one* of them in without taking it apart. Wverybody leaves at like 9:30, 10 o'clock, you're exhausted. And we spent that night pulling apart these bouquets because we had to put it all the fruit into bowls. So it was like,"No more bouquets."
Leah Jones 22:00
Right. One is fine, if it arrives early, and people actually eat it. But yeah, three is too many. That's why when I go to Shivas, I am the person who brings toilet paper. Because you've got extra people using your bathroom, and maybe you didn't have time to buy extra TP. I'll bring Ziploc bags, I'll bring aluminum foil, because it's so many people in and out of your house, and they're using your paper goods, and bringing more food, is not generally actually going to be helpful. Now everybody can't bring paper goods, because you need some food at a Shiva, right? But I try to bring those things that you all of a sudden find out whatever you had in the house has been used up on day one.
Mike Keren 22:50
And now, we all have closets full of toilet paper leftover from the pandemic, right?
Leah Jones 23:09
Mike, we're not here just to talk about Shiva and toilet paper. We're here to talk about one of your favorite things. And you said that was cooking shows.
Mike Keren 23:19
That's right, Leah. It does actually come up a bit in the book, because I learned to cook from my mom. It was one of the things that she left me. My mom was a pretty basic cook. She was a good cook, but a basic cook. And I spent a lot of time alone as a kid. I was fat, I was bullied, and these shows became my friends. So I grew up on Julia Child, Graham Kerr. The audience, hopefully, they know these names. Well, Julia Child, I think the whole world knows.
Mike Keren 23:51
Graham Kerr had a show called "The Galloping Gourmet." I didn't understand all of it at the time, because he had a lot of sexual innuendos and things like that. But it was part travelogue and part cooking show. Jeff Smith, who later lost his career in a sex scandal, and Jacque Pepin, who was one of Julia Child's students. I still love those shows, and I really learned -- even as a preteen and teenager -- to sort of play with things in the kitchen,vherbs and spices and things like that. It's funny, because I also told you, I had strong opinions about things, and I feel like today's cooking shows have become cooking a sport. Everyting's a competition. And it's not that I don't watch them; I've watched every season of "Top Chef." And nothing happens in my house when there's a new episode of "The Great British Bake Off."But the shows that taught you how to cook, they're so hard to find these days.
Leah Jones 24:58
They really are.
Mike Keren 24:59
Maybe Rachael Ray, but you have to be able to deal with her sweetness. I always feel like I'm developing diabetes when I watch her.
Leah Jones 25:09
Yeah, they are so often an impossible task and an artificially short timeline. That's what cooking shows are today.
Mike Keren 25:18
I have to say, I think "Top Chef" answered one of my big complaints when they had "Top Chef Masters," because they said, "Well, no professional chef is going to try to make this meal in that amount of time or set up a restaurant in two days," or whatever it is. But then when they brought out the Masters, and they made them do it, too, I was like, "Well, I *guess* they might, but it's still unrealistic."
Leah Jones 25:44
Do you have some favorite go-to recipes that you specifically learned from a TV show?
Mike Keren 25:55
Oh. I don't know. cause I don't cook so much from recipes.
Leah Jones 26:06
What about kitchen habits? What are things that you learned maybe from Julia Child or Jacques Pepin.
Mike Keren 26:16
I figured out that they had prep chefs -- all the ingredients were always there. You never really saw them cutting up vegetables and things. But I learned that it really helps to have everything prepped. So I've become much more about prepping so that you're not burning one thing, while you're preparing the other. I try to mimic their presentation; I can make food taste good, but I can't get it on a plate to look like creation and stuff like that. In fact, I was out for Ethiopian food last night, and I was looking at the tray. I was like, "I wish all food could be presented this way. Then I want to worry about what it looks like."
Leah Jones 27:01
I haven't been to Ethiopian in years, but it's just like, four piles of tasty proteins? And then, the bread.
Mike Keren 27:10
I learned my knife skills by watching and paying attention. I think that would be the things I most picked up. It's more the idea, the things you get introduced to. I have a bookshelf full of cookbooks that I can always look in, but you know, learn how to substitute ingredients here, ingredients there. I have a *new* obsession is called "Wall of Chefs." It's a Canadian show that's on Hulu. It's on their food network channel, Canada. All the big Canadian chefs, some of whom you'd recognize from American TV, as well. They sit up -- it looks like the $10,000 pyramid, almost -- they sit in this pyramid. And each round, four them are the judges, and there's four home chefs.
Mike Keren 28:11
They're not crazy. The first round, you just make what you call your "Showcase Dish." The one that everybody wants when they come to your house for dinner. The second one is the "Chef's Refrigerator." They pick one chef -- the three ingredients they always have -- it's the most challenging because you have to incorporate those ingredients. It's a lot like "Chopped," that round. The final round is -- a chef will present one of their key dishes, but you have to be inspired by that dish to make another dish.
Mike Keren 28:40
They're kind of doable tasks; there is the timeline. The longest round is 40 minutes. And I think it's hard to develop flavor in 40 minutes, but I think the judges are pretty -- I discovered this maybe the very end of the summer. I was off for a week, flipping around channels, and I've just finished the first season, I'm heading into the second season. I don't even know if it's in production anymore.
Leah Jones 29:10
The "Wall of Chefs." I like that idea. There was one with, was it Nadia? That won an early season of Great [British Bake Off]
Mike Keren 29:23
And she has her own show now.
Leah Jones 29:26
She's had *two* shows since then, I think, and one was a family cooking competition. Maybe the first round might be like a budget dinner? It was people, it was two or three people from the same family coming into cook together. So, there's a budget dinner, and there's maybe a breakfast. There's two challenges in the studio, then there's the home meal, where they cook in their own kitchen and have Nadia over to eat dinner. And then there's a return to studio.
Mike Keren 30:03
I'll have to look for that. I mean, the idea of cooking with my family in the kitchen is horrifying to me. I have two kitchens in two houses. One is big, but it has no counter space. Everybody wants to help, but they make more of a mess and I really have to have to try to keep things together. Then the other one, it's a galley kitchen. And if I have someone else in there with me --
Leah Jones 30:31
-- you can't move!
Mike Keren 30:32
Most definitely. So, I'm pretty much okay if people don't help me cook.
Leah Jones 30:42
Then her second show was much more educated, focused on teaching you the skills of making different meals.
Mike Keren 30:54
That's the other thing I discovered from cooking shows was weighing ingredients, as opposed to cups and teaspoons. I can't tell if it's made a difference, but I have more fun with it. For some reason, spilling it out onto the scale, that's fun.
Leah Jones 31:12
I know that that's the way to go. There's no reason I haven't switched to weighing ingredients other than I'm going to go -- sheer laziness. If I'm going to cook something other than -- I've got one cake that I make for Passover, that's a flourless chocolate cake. It's a faux chestnut torte, and it uses pumpkin as the starch instead of flour. That one I have to really measure, because in baking measurements really matter in a way that they don't matter as much with cooking and roasting. I'm someone who will read a few recipes and try and understand the gist and then go cook. And then when I realize I've made a mistake, ask Twitter what I'm supposed to do next.
Mike Keren 32:16
Is Twitter answering?
Leah Jones 32:19
Yeah, I've been on Twitter for 14 years. So, I've got people there that take pity on my mishaps and will gladly, people will always gladly try and tell you how to fix something on Twitter. When you were watching cooking shows as a kid, did your mom watch with you? Or was that a --
Mike Keren 32:43
Occasionally. My mom went off to work when I was about 10. I'd be home watching my baby brother. I plopped him down with his toys, and I would just sit and watch the cooking shows. Until it's time to cook dinner for the family, and then I'd get on the phone with my mom, and she'd walk me step-by-step through what she wanted me to cook. I always wonder what the people in her office wondered about when they're like, "Okay, now add a cup of breadcrumbs." Her job had nothing to do with food.
Leah Jones 33:17
I suspect she was sitting near other moms having the same phone call.
Mike Keren 33:22
Probably.
Leah Jones 33:27
I did a lot of -- once Sam's Club came to town, and we kind of got into the world of like the frozen, whether it was a frozen meal that you toss in a wok, or toss it in the oven. I did cook a lot of dinners, but they were not recipes. They were frozen to skillet, frozen into a pot of boiling water, frozen into oven. That was my teenage cooking. I think my mom will fact check me on Twitter.
Mike Keren 34:05
She listens to your show?
Leah Jones 34:06
She does, es.
Mike Keren 34:07
Oh, hi, Mom!
Leah Jones 34:09
My whole family listens; they're all very supportive. Have you thought about what -- if you got to produce -- now, you can star in it, host it, you can decide your role. But if you were going to produce a cooking show, what elements do you think go into a good cooking show? Either things that are missing from the classic shows -- you can pick "I like the this from here and this from here and this from here." But what would a Mike Keren produced cooking show be?
Mike Keren 34:52
That's a good question. Well, it would definitely be on the educative side. I think at least for a season, I'd like a step-by-step covering the basis. If you look at cooking school, you have the eight week basics of cooking. How to boil water, how to cut a potato, that kind of thing, that kind of stuff. Maybe build from there; have guest chefs come in to teach people how to make good food that they can make at home. But, have a theme each year -- entertaining or family dinner or just this, that, the other thing. Would be nice if it was in front of a live audience. It'd be nice if you could sit down with some of the audience members to eat it. It was something the "Galloping Gourmet" used to do where they'd bring somebody down from the audience to try the food. I never saw it, but I always wondered what would happen if the person didn't like it.
Leah Jones 35:57
I'm sure there's a reason you didn't see those reactions. [laughter]
Mike Keren 36:06
So, that's a good question, cause I'd not really thought about it before, but I think I'd like to go back to the educating cooking show.
Leah Jones 36:17
Have you listened to the podcast "Home Cooking" with Hrishikesh Hirway and Samin Nosrat?
Mike Keren 36:24
No.
Leah Jones 36:25
She is the chef behind "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat," the documentary on Netflix. Rishi, his podcast is "Song Exploder," which became a Netflix show, and "West Wing Weekly" with Josh Molina. So, when quarantine started in 2020, they did a limited -- it was supposed to be a limited four episode podcast, because that's when we thought lockdown was gonna be a month -- where they were answering people's home cooking questions.
Leah Jones 37:01
Everybody went out and bought beans. But then, a lot of people didn't know how to cook with beans. So, they did one whole episode about beans. They would take caller questions about like, "I've overbought on this staple, and I don't know what to do." Then they would also do kind of recipe investigation -- family, people who had a memory of a recipe they used to make in their family -- and they remember *parts* of it, or they got the ingredient list from their grandma, and it didn't have the instructions. She would do the research and help people recreate these family recipes.
Mike Keren 37:46
So, that's a great idea.
Leah Jones 37:47
Yeah, and it went on to become at least 20 episodes, if not more -- they kept coming back and doing more episodes -- she could do "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" was such a beautiful documentary. I certainly learned about concepts, and it's a beautiful cookbook, that you're kind of meant to read from start to finish as almost a textbook. I would love to see her have a cooking show that goes through the basics. And like what you were talking about -- knife skills, roasting skills. I did a, I had a CSA last summer I got from one of the local farms. And I found it to be kind of a relentless onslaught of vegetables that I didn't know how to cook. Eventually, I was like, "Roast everything," which is pretty effective, but I wish I could have been more thoughtful in my approach to that onslaught of vegetables.
Mike Keren 38:55
Right before we got on, I was at the farmer's market, and there was a woman who had these spice mixes and things like that, and every single one of them, she gave out a recipe, here's how you might use it. I signed up for her mailing list because she sends out a recipe a week. To use her products and things like that. I have so many stacks of recipes. I don't know if I'll ever get to -- one of the things -- I'm a cookie addict. It doesn't go well with my gastric sleeve because unfortunately, it's like the one food I can eat that doesn't get caught up in there. It doesn't signal me to stop eating.
Mike Keren 39:38
And, my partner's not Jewish, so we do both Hanukkah and Christmas and stuff. So, it's the Christmas cookies. Yeah. And I will start in October buying like the "Good Housekeeping" Christmas cookie issue and "Home and Garden" Christmas cookie edition. By the time I'm ready to start baking, I've got like 50-70 recipes, and I can only bake four or five varieties, right? So it's like, okay, which -- and I buy the ingredients for *all* of them. That's the bad part, right? Cause I'm only gonna pay four or five of them. Right? So, I've got more different flavorings and types of chips In my pantry. Probably all -- a lot of them -- are out of date at this point. I wanted to think -- there was no way I could ever bake ...
Leah Jones 40:25
Right. What are some of your favorite from years past, of cookies that you've made for Christmas?
Mike Keren 40:32
There's this little log that's got fall spices like nutmeg and cinnamon, and then, it has -- and I'm not a frosted cookie fan -- but this is incredible, it's a brown butter rum frosting. It's a two bite cookie, very easy, because you're basically rolling the snake and, chop chop, chop.
Mike Keren 40:58
But they're delicious. I'll make a double or triple batch because I just love to have those for the holidays. The other -- and I don't make them a lot, because it's really time intensive -- I love rainbow cookies. I'll make my own, but I'll experiment with the jam in them. Most people will use raspberry or apricot, or whatever flavor I can find. People go, "You used the wrong jam!" I'm like, "No, I didn't. I wanted to use something different. Sorry if you're offended, but how often do you get one with banana jam?" Because how often do you see banana jam? I saw it once, and bought a jar, and I've never seen it again. Trying to remember where I found it.
Leah Jones 41:42
I've never heard of banana jam.
Mike Keren 41:42
It's actually good. I made a chocolate thumbprint with that, and then topped with a fudge topping.
Leah Jones 41:51
Oh, that sounds delicious.
Mike Keren 41:52
It was a non-dieter's treat.
Leah Jones 41:58
My sister does the the thumbprint cookie that's essentially peanut butter with a Hershey's Kiss in the middle. It might just be peanut butter and brown sugar, essentially.
Mike Keren 42:10
I'm not allergic to peanuts, but they give me gastric distress. When I was a kid, I vomited after doing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. So I stay away from --
Leah Jones 42:22
-- not on your list.
Mike Keren 42:23
And it kills my husband, because those are his favorite cookies. I'm, "You can bake them yourself and keep them sealed and another room."
Leah Jones 42:33
It's not part of our agreement.
Mike Keren 42:34
I'ts not part of my repertoire. Any of them that I'll deal with, but peanuts.
Leah Jones 42:50
You said you've gone up to Vermont for Passover. Are you ever in charge of the Passover menu? Oh,
Mike Keren 42:57
Well, we don't go to Vermont, it's usually at my house. I grew up in a family that the Seder consisted of blessing the wine, blessing the matzos, and being forced to say the four questions, and then we ate dinner. Nothing else. So when I took over the Seder a-- as my mom aged and stuff -- I had the biggest house and could fit more people. The nieces and nephews were growing and could participate. So I found a youth-oriented Seder to do with them. You'd wait about an hour before you eat dinner, and then, you have the after part. My mom would set at the table going, "Can't we skip this page? Can't we skip this page?" But I would make all her recipes, and Iwould make a brisket, chicken soup. Actually, I made my own chopped liver and my older brother, the genius, not. He's like, "Wow, this is really good chopped liver, where'd you get it?" I said, "I made it," and he goes, "People can make chopped liver at home?"
Leah Jones 44:02
Yeah, what?
Mike Keren 44:04
Exactly. Then my husband would always go, "You know, your brisket's so much better than your mom's; your soup was better." Yeah, but don't say that. Right? Even if it's true, just don't ever say it. Now when I make my mom's soup recipe, even though I probably don't follow the recipe anymore, I still experience her looking over my shoulder, directing me and stuff like that. It's one of the things I really appreciat.
Leah Jones 44:35
Yeah. That's so lovely.
Mike Keren 44:41
I also have a friend who's a pastry chef, ahe gave me this macaroon recipe and it makes about 1,000. I mean, literally. I had to go out and buy a bigger bowl just to mix it up, and I guess you could cut down ingredients. She always made like fake chocolate chip macaroons. And I'm like, "This is a basic recipe, I can add Nutella to it, I can add chips, I can add this, I could add that. I could dip them in chocolate." So I'll make a variety of them, and they're always a big hit.
Leah Jones 45:19
So, you'll start with her recipe as the base and then -- do you pull out a smaller bowl and do a mix-in and then make a few different varieties from her master?
Mike Keren 45:30
Like with my mom's chicken soup. She'd have all kinds of vegetables in, but she would only use the carrots; the other stuff got thrown away. I started using the other vegetables. Actually, used to use carrots as a thickener; she would push them through a sieve, and use that. I like that, but I started splitting it -- half through the sieve, and the second half would still be carrot chunks. Because I like a chunkier soup.
Mike Keren 46:02
Her brisket, I've tried different ways. In the slow cooker I've done it. She usually did it on top of the stove. I've done it in the oven. In fact, there are a number of people when I go to visit my niece, now she'll make it, she has the recipe. But she'll go, "Uncle Mike, can you bring your brisket with you?" And I'm like, "Okay." Now I'm flying down to North Carolina and doing it, I know they'd love it. Or I'll tell her what to get and I'll make it for --
Leah Jones 46:32
Right -- when you arrive.
Mike Keren 46:36
But it's always grandma's brisket, soup and I try to do that for them. Things like that.
Leah Jones 46:41
That's so nice. We did, because my neighbor upstairs and I do holidays together. So, for Passover this year, we actually wound up doing a pot roast. Just because it was a little bit more manage -- it was just the two of us in person. And pot roast seemed --well, by the time we went shopping, there weren't a lot of briskets left in the two person budget. We went to -- one of the Jewels, one of the grocery stores in Chicago is nicknamed the "Kosher Jewel." Jewel is the brand of grocery store, and it's the one with the kosher butcher in it. Then I go like on Shabbat or on Rosh Hashanah; I go on the day to do my shopping with a little more elbow room. But when you go on like Rosh Hashanah, or the Shabbat before Rosh Hashanah to buy your brisket, there's like only massive kosher ones left. So, we wound up doing a pot roast, and that was one where I pulled out "Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat" to try and get some -- I was like, "What are the key things I need to know about roasting this meat?" I think the most important thing I learned from that cookbook, and from from her, is to bring meat up to room temperature first? Not to put it cold into the oven, but like to let it sit out for a little bit. And that that doesn't have to be scary.
Mike Keren 48:15
My house the scary part of that, is that the dogs might get it. I have a pretty big dog who's a counter surfer. So when I leave it out, I have to put it on top of the refrigerator, or up high enough so he's not gonna get it at it. Because he would smell it, he'd devour it. And he doesn't tolerate meat well, very sensitive stomach. Doesn't stop him from eating anything, but
Leah Jones 48:41
Yeah, my cat Spidey, he's 20, so he's finally -- not finally -- he can't get on the counters anymore. So it's only in the last year that I can even leave a meat on the counter and safely and leave the room, so I understand that challenge for sure. So
Mike Keren 49:00
I used to have a cat and when -- my first, my best kitchen I think ever -- so I equipped it. I'd started using olive oil. It was an ingredient I did not grow up with. I learned to use it and I bought an olive oil pan to keep next to the stove, so I didn't have to keep opening the bottle. And the cat knocked it over. And I had half an inch of olive oil in my kitchen.
Leah Jones 49:25
No --
Mike Keren 49:25
-- and cleaning that up was --
Leah Jones 49:27
-- what a nightmare! --
Mike Keren 49:28
-- was such a project.
Leah Jones 49:32
I once after -- I think it must have been a Seder -- because in my social group, we do holidays together when it's not COVID, I will often have a 25 - 30 person holiday meal, which I love. I think the house takes a deep breath, it expands, it makes room for whoever's coming over. You'll fit, and then the apartment will get smaller when everybody leaves. And I had cooked a big tray, probably of drumsticks, because everybody loves a drumstick, everybody loves a chicken thigh, right?
Leah Jones 50:09
And I was just trying -- and I did like lemon and rosemary and olive oil on a big tray of chicken -- so, what was leftover was olive oil, chicken fat, right in the pan. And all I was trying to do was turn from the stove to the garbage can. And I didn't make it, and I got all that chicken fat and olive oil all over the floor. I was wearing an all-white outfit, and I just went -- like a cartoon-- up in the air, flat on my back, soaked up all the olive oil in my clothes. Then my friend is trying to help me up, but the floor is covered, again, in chicken fat and olive oil. So it was very hilarious getting me off the floor. And I got in the shower with my clothes on. I just went straight to the shower because I was covered in oil. And I was like, "I'll be back, but there's nothing I can do right now, because I am a sponge."
Mike Keren 51:08
I hope the guests waited for you to come back.
Leah Jones 51:10
They did. This was cleaning up after dinner, so at that point, it was just the other people who didn't have kids who had like hung stayed, you know, stuck around.
Mike Keren 51:24
My house in New Jersey? Well, it's now about 115 years old -- when we got it, it was like 85. And we still had a fuse box, and I blew a fuse in the middle of Seder. Gone out; we didn't have any fuses in the house. I was like, "Hold tight. I'm going to run to the store." I had to go to two stores to find fuses, and when I came back, everyone had left.
Leah Jones 51:52
Noooo!
Mike Keren 51:52
It was sort of like at the point where you get into the second part of the Haggadah, the songs and things like that. So they all took their dessert to-go, and when I came back, they were gone. I was like, "I can't believe they did this to me." Ah, one more memorable event. That one and then the one that my husband I had a down and out, drag 'em fight over something. He went upstairs and sulked and didn't join us for the rest of the Seder. Everybody else was like, "Can we eat really fast?"
Leah Jones 52:26
We're feeling the tension of the 10 plagues! We would like to leave now.
Mike Keren 52:30
EXACTLY. I'm surprised that wasn't one of the plagues -- , you know, couple's arguments.
Leah Jones 52:39
I suspect there were some couple arguments in the Exodus.
Mike Keren 52:44
Oh, I bet.
Leah Jones 52:44
Our biggest Christmas mishap -- because I converted to Judaism in my 20s -- so, I've got a lot of good Christmas stories. My grandparents retired to Texas. And my grandfather was a wonderful cook, he made an outstanding gumbo, he was a great cook, and had been a chemist. One winter -- and this is on Texas coast, near Corpus Christi, near Galveston. Humid, hot, humid Texas winter. And, he decided to age the beef on his own that year. And so he left it in the garage, "aging" on top of the freezer. And every time my parents would walk by, they would put the green-tinged beef back in the refrigerator. And every time my grandpa would go outside, he'd put it back on the top of the freezer in the garage. Just letting, it he called it aging, but it was just rotting beef in the garage.
Leah Jones 53:58
And he cooked it and he served it, and we kind of all whispered to each other, "Don't eat the beef; Grandpa has been aging it in the garage. You'll get sick." Maybe you put on your plate, but you didn't eat it. And word got to everyone, but one guest, and it did not go well for her. That was a legendary Christmas in our family, was my parents battle -- like every adult battling my grandpa to try and put the beef back in the refrigerator because you can't age, you don't dry-age beef in a garage in Texas. Too hot.
Mike Keren 54:41
The story reminds me of the old Little Rascals -- the milk went bad, "Don't drink the milk. Why? It's soured." lie. Who needs a - when Grandpa aged it?
Leah Jones 54:50
[laughter] It's fall, are you getting fall weather yet? It looks pretty green behind you still.
Mike Keren 55:10
We still have the leaves on the trees, it's been a little bit cooler. We're still cleaning up a little bit from the hurricane, well, the tropical storm that came here. But we haven't seen 80 in like a week and a half or two weeks. So afternoons are in the 70s, a little bit cooler in the evening. I love this time of year in terms of weather and temperature.
Mike Keren 55:11
What are your what are some of your fall recipes or dishes that are go-tos?
Mike Keren 55:29
I like to use butternut squash, butternut squash lasgna. I won't bring it to your house when you're recuperating. Although, at least it'll be a *different* lasagna rotting. I'll make soups out of it, carrot soups; I don't cook meat as much anymore, maybe on holidays. I like always to have a quiche around for months. So I'll change what goes in it in the fall. Whatever I can find -- if I go to a farmer's market or something like that. I'm one of those chefs -- I could do one of those farm-to-table restaurants where I'd have the chance to go to a market that has good produce. I'll decide dinner when I'm in the market based on what's available.
Leah Jones 56:48
That's nice.
Mike Keren 56:50
Unfortunately, I don't get to go to the farmer's market as often as I'd like, because by the time I walk the dogs and -- especially in Pennsylvania, where everything's a 45 minute drive to everywhere else -- by the time I get there, it's so picked over. It's not enough for me to want to get up early, sometimes I do. And the other thing I love to mull cider on my stovetop. Get the mulling spices, pre-packaged, usually. Just keep up there for hot cider -- very warming.
Leah Jones 57:30
I usually do have a hot cider option at Rosh Hashanah that people can spike, if they're interested in spiking it. But this year wasn't -- we're still not having people for indoor dinners, yet.
Mike Keren 57:46
I'm from Pennsylvania, we have a screened-in porch. So, until it gets too cool, we serve out there. And that was --
Leah Jones 57:55
-- a lifesaver, I bet.
Mike Keren 57:58
So, once we all got comfortable, had established our pod, we could have dinner on the screened-in porch, or each other's screened-in porches. Although someone in the pod did stuff they didn't tell us about, and gave us all COVID for Christmas, it was the nicest gift I got last year [sarcasm]. Luckily, not a bad case of it, but still scary and incovenient. You were talking about this show where they researched grandma's recipes. I had a friend tell a story about how at his grandmother's funeral, everybody was like, "Oh my god, the recipes," and they were comparing who had which recipe. And he's like, talking to his aunt, and he goes, "Now *you* have the coleslaw recipe, right?" She goes, "No, I thought you had the recipe." And it's turned out nobody had the coleslaw receipe. And they've never been able to reproduce this. If I was still talking to him, I would tell him about that. So because I don't talk to him anymore, it's a different story.
Leah Jones 59:03
You'll never get his coleslaw recipe. Well, Mike, this has been really such a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
Mike Keren 59:10
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.
Leah Jones 59:14
So, your book; just a couple weeks away. October 5th, it'll be next weekend when this podcast comes out. "Four Funerals, No Marriage: A Memoir" comes into the world -- will it be paperback and digital? What's the publication plan?
Mike Keren 59:32
Paperback and digital. It's actually currently available for pre-sale on Amazon, and all the other platforms where you might buy a book. Because it's out in the catalogs and everything, you could just order it at your local bookstore, if you still have a local bookstore. I'm putting it out there -- if anybody knows a place that somebody can come and read, I'd be happy to do that. I really hope people like it. The publisher's Woodhall Press. If you're, if anybody is interested in that.
Leah Jones 1:00:13
As you've been working up on your PR and your marketing, who is your target audience?
Mike Keren 1:00:21
Everybody -- that's what you're hoping for. Yeah. I think there's a couple of target audiences, the one that a lot of my marketing is targeted -- being a gay man who did caregiving, and that's a really big theme in our community -- that is the gay and lesbian community. But as a PR guy I once talked to, and who would read the book said, "This is the book that you're going to sell to gay people, and then they're going to buy copies of it for the rest of their family." Anybody who is facing caregiving, I think will get a kick out of it, will maybe learn some things about advocating for the patient. And then, other mental health professionals who deal with people who are caregiving. So those are the three targets,
Leah Jones 1:01:20
I imagine that there will be some overlap with -- so, Laurie Kilmartin, is a stand up comic -- she did a book called "Dead People Suck," that was about taking care of her dad at the end of his life. I bought it, she came through town, and I saw her and I bought a copy. And I think my mom still has it. She read it and gave it good reviews. But I think it's really important, especially as -- I'm Gen X, and I think that so many people, especially 40s and 50s are caregiving for their parents while they're raising kids. And caregiving and taking care of our chosen family as people get ill, COVID has really brought home how important it is to have some sort of local network and being able to take care of each other. It's something we're all going to face, which sounds cliche, but I think one of the things that COVID has probably illuminated, is how immediate the need for all of us has to have our network and our plan.
Mike Keren 1:02:48
Being a gay man who actually came out in 1980, learning about that pandemic. I was in college. I do not have any gay friends left from college, they all died. While not good, I stayed safe. I had done the caregiving. Then there's this aspect of when we came out to our families and the reactions that we got, and then when the parents turn to us to take care of them, those feelings get brought up again, in some ways. When I was there with my parents, marriage wasn't legal yet. Thus, the title of the book, "For Funerals, No Marriage." Even though, my partner and I, at that time, my husband now, had been together almost 20 years already, One of the things that I really hope to be able to talk about when I market to mental health professionals, is having those conversations that are really difficult. Your desire for how you want to die, what you want done with your remains, all that sort of stuff. Because I think people remain totally uncomfortable with it. And you know, COVID brought that home to a lot of people. COVID had its own share of caregiving stuff, because caregivers couldn't get in to see their loved ones.
Mike Keren 1:04:18
I was working in a nursing home-based rehab center when the pandemic struck. And spent a year working with post-hospital COVID patients, they've actually taken all the other rehab patients out from the whole facility. Yeah. I was seeing 30-year-olds who had strokes and lost all kinds of functioning. It was really sad and I get really crazy with a lot of the politics around this pandemic. Not sure we can get into that today.
Leah Jones 1:04:50
But do you think we kept it too hidden -- what happened to people? The media talked about the statistics of people who died, but do you think we kept too hidden the stories of people who survived?
Mike Keren 1:05:11
If you go back through my Twitter and my Facebook wall, that's all you'll see. It's not the number of people who died, it's the number of people who are still dealing with it months after having gotten rid of the virus. You have all this, because I think there's gonna be a lot of long-term care issues that come out of this, that we are not prepared for, that we've not done any anticipatory planning for. don't know, you know, in some ways -- sometimes I would leave my job and think, "You know, maybe the ones who died were lucky. Because they don't have to deal with this stuff." Now, that's kind of a worst way to say it. But being a psychologist, I fear brain injury more than anything in the world, so when I would have these patients, I would be, "Please don't let that happen to me."
Mike Keren 1:05:25
I think you're right -- I think if there had been a lot more emphasis on what it was like to be sick, and what the after-results can be, as opposed to how many people would die. Which was a tragedy,not to belittle. But I think people might have gotten more frightened, and been more responsive.
Leah Jones 1:06:32
Because it's part of how the Vietnam War ended was if they put it on TV, and people had to see what was really happening. When it when you're able to keep it at arm's length -- I'm a white privileged person who lives in a city with a high vaccination rate. You know, I had an uncle in his 80s, who died of COVID, but also who had esophageal cancer and prostate cancer and was a widower. And for him, the isolation was killing him. So we went to a diner, and he caught COVID, and a couple weeks later was gone. When they released that one in 500 number, that's such a gross -- in some communities, it was, one in 300, and some communities were so devastated by it, and some through privilege. I'm a knowledge worker, I just stayed home, I just stayed home, stayed alone for a year and a half, and wasn't out in the world. I wasn't a frontline worker, I didn't have to put myself at risk. There's a lot to unpack there for years to come. And a lot of lessons that we didn't internalize or learn from the AIDS epidemic.
Mike Keren 1:08:04
It will be interesting what the literature of COVID is gonna look like. What stories people will choose to record.
Leah Jones 1:08:13
Well, Mike, I'm excited for your book to come out, for people to get their hands on it. And for you to be able to travel, or virtually meet with with groups across the country. What an exciting time
Mike Keren 1:08:17
Thank you. I appreciate it you having me, I appreciate your wish for my success. It really has been fun to sit and chat this afternoon.
Leah Jones 1:08:37
And I'm going to look up "Wall of Chefs." I think that sounds super fun.
Mike Keren 1:08:42
Let me know what you think. And, I'm hoping to come to Chicago. Great. And I made them promise me that we can have dinner at Stephanie Izard's place. Maybe you can join us.
Leah Jones 1:08:54
I would love to.
Mike Keren 1:08:56
And you know, that would be fun.
Leah Jones 1:08:58
Great. Where can people find you online?
Mike Keren 1:09:03
The best place to start is my website. www.mikekeren.com. I'm on Facebook at Mike Keren, author; Twitter @mikekeren4; and Instagram is @mikekeren2021.
Leah Jones 1:09:22
All right. I will link to all of those in the show notes, so that people can can add you in all the places.
Mike Keren 1:09:28
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Announcer 1:09:30
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Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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