Food is like a carrier molecule for so many things, right? I mean, we need to eat like several

times a day and all that stuff, but food expresses love, it expresses care. You know, your kids

sit down at dinner. It doesn't even really matter what you're eating. It's the sitting

down, but you're sitting down around the food, like food is identity. You know, it's like family

recipes recipes and food is nostalgia. You know, it's like the thing you ate as a child. Food

tells you about where you came from and who you are and who you came from. So, you know, all

that's not really about actually eating it. Yeah, and I guess food is a story in its own way.

It's a it's never quite the same, you know, you can make the same recipe twice, but the same

recipe is never quite the same, you know. So, I don't know, I think there's like sort of an

intersection between telling stories and making food. That was author and journalist Julia O'Malley.

Journalism has been part of Julia's life since elementary school, where she remembers

caring around a notebook to keep track of what her classmates were doing. Then in high school,

she wrote for her school newspaper, but her love for cooking goes back even further. In fact,

one of her first memories is of being two or three years old and mixing blueberries and milk

in her toy kitchen. The dinner table was a sacred place in Julia's household, sitting down and

sharing a meal was important and everyone had a role. Be it cooking the meal, setting the table,

or clearing the table. That affection for food also extended outside of home cook meals.

Growing up in Anchorage in the 1980s, there wasn't a big variety of restaurants and what was

cooked in homes. Ingredients were scarce then, so when they were available, new meals were an

experience that Julia cherished. When she thinks about food today, she says that it's more than just

sustenance. It expresses love, culture, care, identity, and nostalgia. So here she is, Julia O'Malley.

Welcome to Chatter Marks. A podcast of the Anchorage Museum dedicated to exploring Alaska's

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