Hi, everybody, this is Carrie Diamond, and you're listening to Radio Cherry Bomb. This is the final show of the season, and we have an incredible guest to cap off what has been quite the year in good ways and bad. It is Deb Pearlman, and she is the founder of Smitten Kitchen, the blog, website, cookbooks that everybody loves. And we're so thrilled

to have her own Radio Cherry Bomb for the very first time. Deb, welcome to Radio Cherry Bomb. Thank you for

inviting me. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, I'm so happy too. I feel like you need no introduction.

But I was reading your About section on Smitten Kitchen. And it really is, it's so funny and it's so you.

And you call yourself the writer-cook photographer and occasional dishwasher.

You said in previous iterations of her so-called career, she's been a record store shift supervisor,

a scrawler of happy birthday on bakery cakes, an art therapist and a technology reporter. She likes her current gig, the one where she wakes up and cooks whatever she feels like that day, the best. When she's not prattling on about gallery or grub here, gallery or grub here, what does that mean? Probably means that I have a typo, which is very real.

I just try to keep it real. You do keep it real. Deb is an occasional freelance writer and

photographer. You also are the author of the brand new book Smitten Kitchen every day. And I imagine

it's another big bestseller, just like your previous book. I took a look at your tour schedule, and it is

crazy. I thought the Cherry Bomb tour schedule was crazy. Yours is really crazy. So where do we even

start? I, you know, it's funny, I said this to you when you were at Jubilee this past April,

that everybody knows Smitten Kitchen, but I feel like I don't know that much about

you and how you got started just in life. So let's take it way back. Where are you from originally?

I grew up in New Jersey. Which part? I grew up in Central New Jersey. I grew in Somerset. And it's

funny because I basically meet nobody from my hometown. I meet people from New Jersey all the time living in New York City, but like nobody from where I'm from where I'm from. So, well, I guess it's just not that interesting. So yeah, I grew up really not far from, really not far from Rutgers University. Sure. I grew up in Staten Island, what some people think is practically New Jersey.

I can only imagine, like the reactions, the things, you must have a nice collection of things that people say because they have no idea how beautiful it is. They're not nice what people say. If my son was paying attention right now, he would say, oh, by the way, I have a little guest visitor today, sorry. I think he's not, he might be, oh no, he's playing a video game. I thought he was

napping. Which would be perfect. Oh, by the way, I have a little guest visitor today, sorry. I think he's not, he might be, oh, no, he's playing a video game.

I thought he was napping.

Which would be perfect. We could just hang out forever. But Deb said, is it okay that my son's here? And I was like, you're a working mom. It is totally fine. Yeah, also, you know, we're so close to pizza. it just feels wrong not to take your eight-year-old with you when you can.

But anyway, he goes to summer camp in Staten Island,

and he would be the first to defend it, like, if people say anything bad about it. It's really cute. Oh, thanks, Jacob. So what was life like when you were growing up in terms of food? I feel like it was, like, fairly normal. I would say that my mom, we didn't really eat a lot of traditional Jewish food growing up.

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