Hi, everyone, and welcome to Women Who Travel, a podcast from Connie Nass Traveler.

I'm Meredith Carey, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Dahlia Eric Koglu.

Hello.

In the most recent issue of traveler, chef, food writer, and author of Save Me the Plums, Ruth Reischel, wrote about a spontaneous seafood lunch in Italy she'll never forget.

It made me so hungry and had me yearning for far away yet undiscovered restaurants that I hope to stumble upon in the near future.

This week, we decided to call her up to chat all things, food, and travel.

Thank you so much for joining us, Ruth.

My pleasure.

I feel like we start every episode with It's a Weird Time, but it's a weird time and we're not traveling and we at this point have been staying in our homes for quite a few months. So I would

love to know when you cannot be having a seafood lunch in Italy,

how you are traveling through food at home.

Well, because I do travel a lot normally, and it's very strange to be just here,

I find myself really trying to cook a lot of the foods I would be eating if I were somewhere

else.

So I've been cooking a lot of Asian food.

And I have amassed a huge collection of Asian condiments.

You know, all kinds of Korean condiments and soy sauces from different countries

and oyster sauces and Sashuan chili crisps and on and on.

You know, then I will go through that phase and then suddenly I want to be in Mexico.

So I'm suddenly, you know, ordering really good masa and making my own tortillas and getting beans from Rancho Gordo and making, you know, as good as I can Mexican food myself.

And then, you know, the one thing, I live in the Hudson River Valley, just south of

Albany and landlocked.

...