sohla el-waylly helps you conquer cooking and shares the down and dirty about becoming a mom

So Into That

Caro Chambers

Society & Culture, Food, Arts

5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 17 January 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I first discovered Sohla El-Waylly in the early days of the pandemic, when Bon Appétit Test Kitchen videos were all the rage. She was by far my favorite contributor to that series, and now that she’s promoting her own cookbook and recently became a mom, this was the perfect time to catch up with her.

So today, we talk a bit about “Start Here,” the A to Z guide that took Sohla 3 years to write. She also shares her go-to meal when she doesn’t feel like cooking – a surprisingly common feeling for a recipe developer.

But we actually spend more time talking about the ups and downs of new mom life: balancing work and parenthood, sharing childcare with a partner, and the unpleasant realities of post-birth recovery that both of us felt woefully unprepared for. (Why don’t they tell you about this stuff?)

We also get into:

* What it’s been like to bring a baby and a 500-page book into the world almost simultaneously

* How she prepared for postpartum mental health challenges

* Lies we were told about breastfeeding and postpartum weight loss

* The toy her 5-month-old is obsessed with, that Cash was also obsessed with

* Family members buying impractical baby clothes (buttons… in the back?)

* Discovering free stuff to do with kids in New York

* Her forthcoming podcast

* Her egg, steamed rice, and greens recipe

Links:

* Get the chicken soup + masa dumplings reeipe from Sohla's new book here: https://whattocook.substack.com/p/sohla-el-waylly-helps-you-conquer

* Fisher-Price Kick & Play mat

* John Legend performing the Kick & Play “purple monkey” song (IYKYK)

* GAP vintage soft classic jogger pant

* Magnetic Me onesies

* Sohla’s History Channel TV show, Ancient Recipes

* Sohla’s New York Times bylines

* Her newsletter, Hot Dish

* Sohla’s book: Start Here: Instructions for Becoming a Better Cook

* Her book tour dates

Get full access to What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking at whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of So Into That, the
0:05.2	podcast where I get to chat with really cool people about the things that we are so
0:09.6	into right now. Wednesdays no longer have the like oh I'm halfway there
0:14.4	halfway through the hard work week a lore that they did before I had kids. Before you
0:20.6	have kids at the end of the day on Wednesday you're like all right baby only two days left till the weekend
0:25.6	till I get to sleep and till I get to do whatever I want all day long
0:29.6	once you have kids weekends are different and I'm not saying I don't enjoy our
0:34.8	adventures the fun that we have with our children I do but they are not
0:42.4	relaxing and that is the truth.
0:45.7	George and I, I've talked about this on Instagram before,
0:48.0	but George and I do this thing called Alone Days.
0:51.6	Since we had three kids, they become much less regular but when we only
0:54.5	had two kids we did them every single weekend and we would trade off and on like
0:59.2	either Saturday or Sunday one of us would have an alone day so we'd like
1:02.3	wake up all have breakfast
1:03.5	together hang out for a little while and then one of us would dip out and like go to
1:09.2	the gym maybe go play tennis go for a hike with friends, go out to lunch, I mean, the sky's the
1:15.0	little, George would always go hunting a couple hours away.
1:18.0	Sky is the limit, you can do whatever you want on an alone day.
1:22.0	It's your day, and the other partner would like happily, not
1:28.0	begrudgingly, very happily, hang out the kids and be the parent all day.
1:34.8	Since we had cashy, they've become much less frequent because three kids is very much
	...

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