Broaden your experiences without getting caught up in outcomes. In this episode we touch on how new experiences provide value through the process, not just from the result, as we navigate a culinary experiment together.
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Episode Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Feed Your Fire. I'm Kim Baker, founder of Kim Baker Foods. And in today's episode, we're getting curious, diving into the cold waters of what we don't know. Does that make you uncomfortable? Yeah, me too. But to grow we need to expand the pool of what's familiar, and it certainly helps to do that together. Consider this a riff that will ultimately end with a salad. I'm kind of hungry, so come with me. Let's dive in and have a bit of fun as we experiment in the kitchen,
There are endless quotes from writers, philosophers, intellectuals about curiosity and the value of wonder, and yet our bodies are naturally hardwired for survival to stay with what's familiar. And so there's a tension there that requires a little practice. So we're dedicating this episode to the idea of experimentation, to creating a safe space to try new things— to fail, to succeed, to see what happens when…, and to do it without shame, without fear and without any expectation.
I remember when I first founded Kim Baker Foods, I left my corporate job and had been kind of at a transition time in my life and was ready for something new, and I was terrified. I remember thinking, okay, this is either going to succeed or it's going to fail, and either way, I'll be okay. I had enough money saved that I could survive for a little while. If it didn't work out, I would just get another job and we'd move on.
But then I realized that I was looking at the whole experience through such a limited lens and that this was not a binary equation. This wasn't about succeeding or failing. Yes, of course, there was a chance either one of those things would happen, but I was guaranteed to learn something—something that I could carry forward with me. And then there was no such thing as failing. There was only upside.
I think so often our egos get entwined with outcomes, and that creates this sense of pressure and we feel shame, then if things don't work out the way we thought they should, or we thought they could, because we're attaching to that outcome. So this is a safe space where we're going to release ourselves of that attachment and just have a good time.
You know, when you have guests coming over for dinner and you're not sure what to make— should I make the steady standby that I make every time I have a large group of people over that I know everybody likes, or should I try something different? There's inherent risk in trying something new, because what if it doesn't work out? If you're anything like me, you might make something that you feel really confident about and then take a chance on something else, or at the very least have some sort of plan B in place that isn't ordering in pizzas.
So for today's episode, we're gonna make this delicious salad that I've actually made many times before. It's a recipe that was shared with me by my dear friend Olia, and it's actually a recipe that was in my first cookbook. The salad is these chopped fresh garden vegetables and herbs, and you mix it with sour cream and let it sit just for a little while until the sour cream kind of almost becomes like a thinned out sauce from the juices of the vegetables. But today we're going to make it with homemade sour cream. And I've never made homemade sour cream before. It's very easy to make, so I feel like the risk here is very low. But it's a fun thing to do together because I don't know the outcome. It may end up being horrible or it may end up being fantastic. It's for us to try and find out.
Now, sour cream is quite literally cream that's been soured and then ferments for a day or two. And so to make it requires just a bit of time and planning. So I'm starting it now and then we'll finish the salad tomorrow. You don't need any fancy equipment to do this, and you don't even need heat. I'm simply taking a metal container and filling it up with about a cup of cold cream, and then we're going to acidify it. I'm going to use a combination of white vinegar and lemon juice, you can use either/or. And I'm stirring it up, and then I'm going to cover it with some cheese cloth so that as it sits out, nothing could fall into it.
I want air to circulate and for it to be able to breathe. So that's why I'm using cheesecloth rather than like a plastic wrap. And then I'm just going to let it sit on the counter for a day, and we're going to see what happens tomorrow.
For you, this should feel like a seamless experience, kind of like when you're watching a cooking show and they're making something, and then voila, they have the finished product kind of coming out of the oven. I am actually shutting down, and I'm going to come back tomorrow and we're going to see what really happens live together.
Okay, I'm back. I have never done that before, where I've recorded half of this on one day and the other half on another day, with unknown happening in between.
I'm checking on our sour cream right now, and it definitely worked. This cream is thickened. It is of the consistency of sour cream. I don't even think that I need to really strain it, which in some cases you might have to do with that cheese cloth to get out any of like the residual water. This has really solidified and is a nice, thick cream. It definitely has a stronger fragrance than what you find in the grocery store. I'm gonna go in and give it a taste. It's definitely got a tartness to it. The sour word rings true. My son just passed by and said he thought I was creating the next version of monkey pox in this container so it doesn't seem to be a fan favorite.
And so we're at a crossroads. Before I make any decisions, I'm going to make the actual salad. So come with me. We're going to take a beautiful tomato that I just got at the farmer's market and some cucumber. We're going to roughly chop that tomato, and we're also going to slice the cucumber in half and then slice that so that they're kind of like half-moon shapes. I'm going to add some thinly sliced red onion as well as some chopped green onions. Then we're going to add in a ton of fresh parsley that's been chopped up now this salad is perfect for this time of year.
As we hold on to those last few weeks of summer, we're going to put all of this in a bowl and season it really generously with salt. The last step is to add in a generous dose of sour cream and some lemon juice.
Now I'm going to go with the plan B, and I'm going to use some store-bought sour cream, and we're going to leave it up to Breakstones to season the salad. We're going to toss all of that together, and the juices will start blending naturally, and the best part is taking a nice piece of crunchy bread and dipping it in that sauce.
But make no mistake, this was a success. We tried something and we learned, and while we're not using our homemade sour cream today in this recipe, I could see it making my banana bread amazing. And so it simply becomes a transference, not a loss.
And if we could think of our experiences in life as being these puzzle pieces, we might not see how they come together at any given moment, but eventually we might find ourselves with the perfect placement, and that very experience may be what brings it all together. And regardless of the outcome, there is value in the process. Trying something new takes courage, and that emboldenment is also an outcome. It's not something we can see or taste, but it's real, and so is this fabulous salad, which I'm about to dig into. Until our next episode, I say, so long.
Feed Your Fire, where food nourishes growth.