Mary McCartney

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Hi, this is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show Toyotathon is on So stop by your local Toyota dealer for incredible year-end deals on the cars, trucks, and SUVs known for their legendary reliability Like the stylish and efficient Camry The ready-for-anything RAV4 Or check out a rough-and-rugged Tacoma or Tundra all with great financing and lease options available to qualified customers. Visit BuyAToyota.com to find out more. Toyota, let's go places. Welcome to Ruthie's Table 4, a production of iHeartRadio and Atomize Studios.

0:47I can honestly say that I've had breakfast, I've had lunch, and I've had dinner with Mary McCartney. The last time was breakfast. Mary brought her own porridge. Ruthie, you're going to love it. It has vanilla, it has almonds, it has pecans, and it has poached maple syrup plums. How could I possibly disagree? She also brought her camera to take a picture of us for her newest book, Feeding Creativity.

1:20My friend Mary is a filmmaker. She's a photographer, she's a writer, and she's a chef. She comes from a family of creatives who are passionate eaters, and she has continued the beautiful legacy of her mother Linda, who taught her the importance, meaning, and beauty of food and cooking for people you love. I can't think of anything nicer than being with this incredible woman on a sunny Friday afternoon in June, talking together. wow i'm just never leaving i love you i'm gonna stay for breakfast lunch or dinner we've done lunch but now we're gonna have dinner but that was the only time i fed you is when i brought you breakfast okay well the tables are turned now i'm coming over for dinner lunch and breakfast i'll bring what would i bring you for breakfast i have to think but everyone needs to know whenever we have any big celebration i always phone you and i'm like ruthie can you send me some of your tomato sauce.

2:18Tomato sauce and I do. So Mary you know the drill so what we're going to do is we're going to start with the recipe that you chose and you had for lunch and it is risotto with zucchini flowers and may I say it was absolutely delicious. Good. Risotto with zucchini flowers. 18 male zucchini flowers, 6 small zucchini, 4 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 medium red onion finely chopped, 300 grams of risotto rice, 75 milliliters of pinot bianco and a handful of fresh basil leaves. Remove the stamens of spiky sepals and tear each flower vertically into four strands. Slice the zucchini into very fine discs as thin as the flower strands.

3:17Heat the olive oil in a large pan and fry the onion until soft. Add the rice and stir until the grains are coated with the oil. Add the white wine and stir Add two ladles of vegetable stock and simmer Stirring until the rice has absorbed nearly all of the liquid Continue to add more liquid in the same way After about 20 minutes of cooking, add the zucchini and then the flour strands When the risotto is ready, the zucchini should still have a little bite The flowers will have disappeared and the rice will have a creamy coating. Add the basil leaves. Serve immediately. My name's Sharm Winoin and I'm the executive chef at the River Cafe.

4:07And I think she's brilliant. Thank you. Shall we talk about risotto? So I just had, on this beautiful summer's day at the River Cafe, sitting outside I just um had the most beautiful courgette zucchini risotto yeah which was actually a plant-based one yes and for lunch it was uh super fresh yeah really what I loved is here you're not shy of extra virgin olive oil and I literally it was so like the olive oil in it We've made it really glossy and really delicious and more-ish. What we're doing now more is finding that some of the risottos that we would have made for previously in the last 20 years of my career, or 23 years, we always made risotto with only chicken stock or fish stock.

5:03We never, ever made vegetable stock. But now it's like there's, you know, vegans, vegetarians want to eat risotto. It was just no. No, you can't have it. It seems strange, doesn't it? We used the whole zucchini flour, even the stamen, just to give you more, try and get a bit more depth of flavour. Well, each bite had a little bit of a different flavour, which was good and surprising. Part of it was a little bit more bitter in a really interesting way. Yeah, it was probably a bit sweeter. Yeah, interesting. So I fully approve. And also, this time of year now, some people not everyone might have the odd zucchini flower growing in their garden because we're coming into courgette season now aren't we it's really you know july august september that's exactly peak peak season but as i say i didn't realize it had white wine that elevates it as well and also um that olive oil yeah the oil's good the oil makes everything tastes good secret ingredient and it's really good for you if i had to pick one ingredient it would be extra virgin olive oil yeah i mean the average chef in the river cafe kitchen is probably about a bottle a week

6:24it was delicious yeah i want to eat it all over again and vegan yeah you know not only vegetarian but vegan. Are you thinking more vegan? I am. I'm not fully vegan but the book that I'm doing is for instance there's a burr-less blanc sauce in the recipe book. How is that? Tell me about that. Well exactly I was watching Rick Stein's Cornwall series and he made this amazing burr blanc sauce and I thought I wonder if I use olive oil instead of butter and I used plant-based cream instead of cream and I used a little bit of cornstarch to just make it glossy and then the mustard and the white wine and it was incredible was it so it's sort of this thing of experimenting and the more and more i'm doing it uh the more surprised i am with how simple and delicious it can be so that's why i'm exploring more and more plant-based it's interesting also and we will come back to this because i want to really talk about growing up but what you're talking about is replacement isn't it it's saying can i do this instead of that can i add this instead of that can i think about where did this come from and can I find another place and I think it's a way of cooking with a kind of rigor which just says you know I'm going to really think about what I'm doing.

7:39But my big challenge and also excitement of what I've grown into doing is this thing of I'm not doing it for other vegetarians or vegans I'm doing it for people that are wanting to eat more you know reduce their intake of meat. So it's more like trying to win people over. What I like to devise recipe-wise is that you would almost eat it if you're a meat eater. If I get it right, you would eat it and then be like, wow, I had no idea. We had such a great time with your dad when we did the podcast with him. And it was one of the earlier ones. And he told us a story about making a turkey out of macaroni and cheese.

8:20And I just thought that was hilarious and so touching. And tell me what it was like growing up in a house that cared so much about where food came from, about the ethics, about the lambs that they saw on the hill. Was it always vegetarian? Mom and Dad came. I remember them saying, let's sit down. We want to talk to you. And they said, look, we've decided we don't want to eat meat anymore. so they were like we're not gonna we're not gonna cook it anymore but they were always like it's your choice but at home this isn't gonna happen and we were so young how old were you we were like you know I don't know like young like five or six but I remember it and it wasn't a problem because it was more of a problem eating out but at home my mum was a great cook and you talking about the the macaroni turkey she did the big thing is we always would talk about it so we'd sit down and we would talk about food so my dad was very clever he was like well look if we're not going to eat a turkey what are we going to eat because we want to slice something and we want something at the center of the plate so mom and dad would debate they'd be like what are we going to have and mom was like well I could do this this macaroni thing and then we could slice it and then we could still so it all sounds a bit crazy but that was the beginning of how it carries on even to this day like I'll do it with my husband or my family I'm like well I still want to eat that I don't want to ever feel like I'm missing out yeah um missing out on what on like I don't want to be apologetic for you know I don't want to go to a restaurant and be like oh someone will look at me and go oh I'm sorry you have to eat that I want it to be like if we get it right if we get it right somebody sits down and says oh I wish I'd ordered that and I have to eat this steak and I'm like but also I'm not very judgy about it I understand I have tasted meat and I understand the like of I would like the taste of it yeah I just think because I've grown up this certain way I've never considered it a food yeah I've I don't consider it a food but I know that's unusual although I didn't realize it was unusual till we kind of started promoting Meat Free Monday and that's the only reason I got into to sharing recipes and then doing the cookbooks and the cooking show.

10:42Tell me about Meat Free Monday. Meat Free Monday is a movement and it's great because all it is is word of mouth it's like do you want to for any reason you want reduce you you know, we often think we can't do anything for the planet and it's like quite overwhelming. And so what I love about the idea for Meat Meat Free Monday is like, you can have one day where you don't eat meat or fish and then you're not giving into that industry. So you can be like, I'm reducing, you know, the amount of water it takes to grow beef and all of those kinds of things. So it's sort of like a really easy way of reducing your carbon footprint or, you know, being kinder to animals if you want to and I think when people start doing it what I found is people suddenly it sort of grows into your into your lifestyle and also it makes us consider what we're eating a bit more because sometimes we just eat without thinking about it so basically that's what happened we launched meat free monday and I kind of was like la la la we've just done this and you know if people want to do it or not and then I did at work I'd people come up to me if I've on a photo shoot and be like I love meat free Monday and we're trying to do it with our family but they're like I really don't know what to cook and that really surprised me because I've grown up talking about food and like what are we going to have on that gap on the plate if you're not having meat and fish so then I was like oh okay I can share these recipes and that's what mum did that's why she did the cookbooks because when people would come to our house they'd be like I would eat this way and she was like here's a book yeah of course I think first of all the influence that you've had and that your family has had on not eating meat has been enormous.

12:25And I think now there's so many reasons why we don't and why people don't. It's to do with witness a hurricane in Florida or witness the climate, witness animals who are fed hormones. But there's so many witnesses. But I think what you did, what your family did was to say that actually it could be delicious it can be fun it can be ethical and it can be quite sexy you know yeah I like that yeah there's a starting at the very beginning so you grew up with a mother who was a passionate cook and there were four of you yeah four children yeah and what were meals like in the McCartney household when you were growing up well they were homemade mum would really do the cooking like growing up mum would do the cooking dad would help like he's a good sort of if you give him a job like can you chop this you know he'd do it meticulously um but mum was kind of very much she would describe herself as a peasant cook it's like go to the cupboard find what's in there and make something delicious with it did she grow up with food she grew up in america like east coast new york and scarsdale and she grew up watching people cooking they like had a cook in the house and she would gravitate towards the kitchen.

13:43But it was very much meatloafs and, you know, very 50s American cooking. So in a way that kind of went into her vegetarian cooking, she often would say it's like meat is often like how you flavor it. So it sort of stemmed from that. And so I would cook with mum a lot. Then it sort of grew into us kids sort of helping her. And then in a weird way, in the end, we sort of took over a lot of the cooking and would say, like, what do you want to request? And, you know, she'd love a fresh pesto or we had a lot of pasta and stuff. So then it's sort of like we carried on the cooking. Was it all of you or were you the kid that cooked?

14:22No, it felt like it was a group effort. And then when I left home, I kind of had this choice to sort of, you know, suddenly I'd grown up in this family where I had great food. We talked about vegetarian cooking all the time and this sort of joy, joy of celebration of cooking. and then I went to work in London I was like oh I wonder as a photographer and I was like I need to pick my own food so I sort of had like a tuna salad sandwich in my lunch hour and I loved the taste of it but then all I could think about was like I know how to cook differently I don't need to eat this and I was just thinking about that lovely tuna swimming in the ocean being plucked out so it's like unfortunately my brain doesn't work or fortunately what about your grandparents I love it.

15:08My grandparents, well, we had, I always considered myself half Liverpudli and half American growing up. So my accent was this sort of odd mixture. So in Liverpool, it was all like going to the chip shop and chip butties, real comfort food, very simple food. And then, you know, the more New York deli sandwiches, pizza. The minute we would get to New York to visit our grandparents, so it would be like straight to get pizza. Did they cook? Did your grandparents cook? My grandparents, like when we grew up, we didn't, my step-grandmother cooked a lot. So my mum's mum died in a plane crash in the early 60s, like the first big sort of Pan-American.

15:54So then my grandfather remarried. We thought of her as quite strict French-American woman, but what she did was my mum taught me all my more peasant instinctive cooking and then Monique growing up she was a little bit it felt like children should be seen and not heard but then when I became a teenager we kind of bonded a bit more over her teaching me how she taught me how to make pastry she taught me how to make a souffle she taught me how to make a patisserie apple tart and so all of those things in my cooking now I kind of use so like in the new cookbook I take Dame Judi Dench my apple tart but it's four ingredients so I'm not making the pastry it's a ready roll pastry thinly sliced apples brushed with olive oil and then glazed with apricot jam back to the growing up so your mother would cook would you have mom would cook no we didn't we Would you sit down at a table?

16:54You'd presumably go to school every day, come home, and then you would sit down all together, or would people eat at different times? We would kind of have the home-cooked meal. Maybe during school time we'd eat slightly different times, but generally holidays and, like, summer holidays. We would be in Scotland in this kind of beautiful but remote farm, or we'd go to Arizona where Mom sort of went to U of A and then became a photographer there. So we would go to these places where it was just us. So it was sort of all of us cooking. Yeah. And we would sit down and eat. We didn't have like housekeepers and chefs and chauffeurs and all that kind of stuff, which I really value now because I know how to cook.

17:37And I was sitting literally with my family around a table talking endlessly about food and flavors. Have you carried that on with your own children? Yeah. And what I like to do is, because kids can be a little bit unsatisfying to cook from, don't you think? They can be a bit like, how many bites do I have to have? And then when you cook for friends, the same, they're like, oh, this is so, thank you. But I found once I started getting the kids involved, then they're really much more excited to eat it because they'll chop things the size they like it or they'll kind of put in ingredients. so I think it's important because when I left home to become a photographer I remember making a stew thinking it was exactly how my mom had cooked it and it was really didn't have like the flavor and I phoned her and I was like mom this is just not working and she was like you need to have you put celery and cabbage two ingredients I would never buy and celery like is always the base of anything like a risotto a stew so just those tiny little bits she would make this amazing um quiche but it was like a souffle quiche and when I made it I was like mom this is not this showstopper that you pull out and she was like it's the oven temperature needs to be higher and I was like just these tiny little I think that bits of advice yeah people who I've talked to, so many of them have little books from either their grandmother or their mother and I think, you know, they could get some of the recipes in a cookbook, but having those handwritten recipe cards or being able, as you say, to phone up and get the hint, it's a connection.

19:20It's a connection you have when you're eating it, it's a connection you have when you're cooking it, and talking to somebody about how they made it is so revealing.

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21:09Equal housing opportunity. I am always trying to myth bust this, that plant based or vegetarian cooking is more ingredients takes longer. so all of the recipes I develop I try to sort of use the fewest ingredients and make it the quickest and the most easy but also pleasurable so it's not too many you know it's quite simple and enjoyable to make sometimes I question some of the recipes are too simple but I love a shortcut and I love make ahead like prep ahead yeah yeah yeah because you want to enjoy the people that you're with especially if you're having a dinner party you can sort of make all of it have it ready or even make it the night before and then put it in to cook.

21:52Is your kitchen connected to your dining room? Is there a dining room in your house? I have a dining table, which I also work at, and a kitchen. It's quite important to me because growing up at home, my mom was clever. We would always gravitate towards the kitchen because if you're cooking nice things and you smell them, that's where you're going to go. and we would have, we had a nice, like I have a table in the kitchen that people can sit around so they can be doing homework or chatting or friends come over. If friends come over, we don't often move to another room. We always just stay in the kitchen.

22:28Yeah, it's nice to be in the kitchen, isn't it? Also, when you're cooking by yourself, it's quite isolating. Exactly. It becomes much more of a performance, you know. I was saying to one of our kids that one of my sons made it, It really took a long time to make a zucchini pasta. And his brothers were there with their wives, and he brought it out. And they just ate it. You know, they were eating it. He said, wait a minute, guys, you know, what did you think of my pasta? And one of the girls said, what is it with you, Rogers and Praise? But the thing is that, you know, it is a response. Whatever we do, it's a performance.

23:08It's something we care about. and we do want to know how people feel you know i actually think it's more i think you're doing yourself a disservice it's not wanting a response it's like when you cook for someone it's a real you're really putting yourself on the line like doing it's very exposing it's very i feel every day when we cook in the river cafe you know i used to say to richard you do a building and it's there for like hundreds of years and people drive past it and like it and i put a piece of fish on the table and i said because we have an open kitchen i can see the way people are looking and they go no or they go yes or they take a photograph or they don't and you can see the response and you're as good as your last meal i photographed my risotto today oh and i had um like a beautiful what i like to do here as well is get all of those beautiful like i had the roasted red pepper and the blotti beans yeah the vegetables which is nice because my husband always jokes I'm the vegetarian who doesn't really love vegetables because I will never be found eating like a piece of steamed broccoli it's like I like a dressing I like it in a soup I'm like it's all about little flavors you know to put I say if you're thinking about a dinner because the way that I do most of the meals in our house now I'm done with sort of second courses so we have a pasta or risotto or a pop of pomodoro and then I just bring out the vegetables you know we have polade beans, we have spinach, we have peppers, we do have mozzarella, and sometimes I put a plate of prosciutto.

24:43But it's a lot of work, vegetables. I do think if you take a piece of fish and you take a piece of meat and you put it on the grill or you put it in the oven, you're kind of done with maybe some vegetables. If you decide to have a meal with vegetables, it is time-consuming. I love the time, but it is much more time-consuming. I understand what you're saying, but I would actually, it's interesting, this book that I've done, the recipes, I've been really enjoying making the recipes because they're really quite simple. and and I really think I'm always surprised like I've done this Caesar salad dressing and I've these these torn sourdough croutons and when I put them the crouton into the Caesar salad dressing I was like oh my god I can't believe I've made such delicious dressing and my mouth started watering and I was like this took me like 30 seconds to make it can be that's what I think about all the time I'm like how can I make something really easy like I'll pick an ingredient I often start with the name of a recipe and then I'm like now how would I make that yeah anyway you can tell that I'm obsessed with food now we are when you left home so you left your mom cooking for you sitting around the table and then you left home what was it like did you have your own apartment and your own kitchen did you eat out in restaurants did you tell me about leaving the comfort of home?

26:12Yeah I moved to London I got a job around photography and it was about I had an apartment and it I would cook so I would cook but it was all much more like pasta and you know just sort of not very simple kind of early 20s it's more about going out and having fun than having people over for dinner parties and then I think when I really really got into food and cooking as I said was around meat free Monday because then I was like wow I need to share recipes with people and before I did it in my mum style I would just have my like things in my cupboard and I would make it into something whereas this was like I'm actually going to write down this recipe and consider it and that's when and going back to what we're saying about this it's sort of you really put your heart on the line because you're sort of cooking for somebody and you kind of want to please them.

27:08So when, you know, you want something, as you say, you want to like, you can see when somebody takes that first bite, if they light up, it's just like an electric shock of joy. But that's why the Great British Bake Off is one of my favorite all-time shows. Because it's the drama. It's like if you, the cake can look beautiful, but if you bake it, overbake it for like two minutes, it can be dry and like a chore to eat. And it's just like the pleasure of feeding people, I think, is my main motivation. Are you a pastry chef? Do you cook cakes? I do, yeah. Do you like it? I can. I do. Well, as I say, it was my step-grandmother that sort of got me into that.

27:47And I like it because it's something I didn't grow up with at all. We would have, like, my mum would make brownies, which was very exotic growing up in London eating brownies because that was before brownies were everywhere. But other than that, there wasn't a lot of baking. So one of the best ever bits of advice I was given was to get an oven thermometer and then baking became a joy. Yeah. Because otherwise before that things would be like not cooking at the right temperature and it's like the oven tells you the truth, the oven thermometer tells you the truth. I think that those, you know, that recipes are both poetry and science and the uncertainty of when something's done, the uncertainty of how long to cook it for.

28:30Or as you say, if you have a thermometer, you learn sometimes. You see, especially in these restaurant kitchens with the chefs that we touch it, we can tell. But Rose had this great thing of taking a skewer and putting it into the middle of the fish and then seeing how hot it was. And we all work out our times. I have a skewer, a special one for cakes that I love, but I have to keep it hidden away because I have four boys. So I can't let them play with those things. I'm like somebody's gonna stab somebody. Do they cook? They do cook and they love me baking like they love it I don't bake a lot because I feel like I'm always cooking for people like you need to cook a dinner or a lunch or a breakfast but baking is like an extra treat and also I love it I've got these little glass sort of jars where it's like I put cookies in or I'll make a loaf cake but then I find that I'm the one going constantly like I'm a real picker I love snacking I break a little bit of this cookie off and suddenly I've eaten the whole thing.

29:33So baking is more a special treat. What do you have for breakfast apart from your porridge? I love peanut butter jelly. That's my American side. I like making pancakes. But usually it's toast. Toast, porridge. I love porridge and I love the consistency. I've got this new chai pudding, chai seeds with coconut milk. and then a bit of vanilla and a bit of maple syrup. And then I chuck some pumpkin seeds in because it's sort of extra texture. So it's super healthy, but you put it into a little container and then in the morning it's turned into a beautiful coconut pudding. And then you can put all chopped mango or berries and nuts.

30:16So it's sort of, my thing is I like to eat. Back when I left home, I'm surprised by how I used to eat. It wasn't that nutritious. but now I'm about trying to eat everything I do is I want it to be whether it's vegetarian or plant-based I want somebody else to eat it and go oh my god I can't believe how healthy that is and it's really satisfying.

30:50Hi this is Shirley Strawberry from the Steve Harvey Morning Show. Toyota-thon is on and right now your local Toyota dealer is celebrating with can't miss year-end deals on the vehicles that built Toyota's reputation for legendary reliability. Discover the stylish and efficient Camry and Corolla, both available with all-wheel drive. Or go with a RAV4 or Grand Highlander. Versatile, adventurous, and ready to take you and your family wherever the road leads. Need muscle? Take it up a notch with a Tacoma or Tundra. Built tough and always ready for the long haul. And no matter which Toyota you choose, you'll find smart financing and lease options available to qualified customers.

31:35Making it easier than ever to get behind the wheel of the Toyota you've been waiting for. But don't wait. These year-end savings won't last. Shop the entire Toyota lineup and find a great deal today on buyatoyota.com. Toyota, let's go places.

32:20Rightviewseniorliving.com. Equal housing opportunity. Do you have feedback from the meat industry? No, I don't. They leave you alone? Well, they do. I'm not, you know, I think it's interesting. I hadn't realized, I realized it because I work on my mom's, the Linda McCartney food brand. And I was there, launched it with her. And I didn't realize that the meat industry has millions and millions and pounds promoting it and like the vet obviously vegetarian has zero so you know what I don't I really do honestly want to not judge things because I don't think honestly that from the research I've done into it I don't think people forcibly made the industry the food industry the mess that it is now and I really believe that it is a broken food system at the moment and so what I like to do and what I'm actually pleased about is it feels like growing up people like you're vegetarian do those choose leather did you do that like trying to beat me up I'm like I know I'm not perfect and I'm not saying that I am but now what's good is like we it seems like we can have more of a conversation it's like well I don't necessarily agree with you you don't necessarily agree with me but let's have a conversation and try and openly discuss how we can sort of maybe will help this broken food system.

33:45When you say broken food system, what is broken about it? Well, like the cattle industry in America is not even farming. It's sort of they have like a central unit somewhere in middle America that has cameras to all different places. The cows are up to their knees in waste and they're not fed what they normally would be fed and the meat's becoming contaminated. and when it's contaminated instead of going oh let's feed them grass or the and give them more space let's bleach the meat you know there's all these pretty horrifying but what I do is I don't delve too much into that I feel like my purpose is to be like you know what I want I'm going to make your mouth water I'm going to cook you something interesting I'm going to be like let's have something yeah because other people are doing that there's a really great documentary I love called Kiss the Ground, which I found really interesting because it's so positive.

34:45And I like things that give me a bit of a solution and don't make me too freaked out about the future. And it was just very much about soil health and what we grow actually on. You know, it's very sort of simple message. So I'm like, let's simplify. Try to create recipes with as guilt-free as possible. I don't like guilt. We don't like guilt. We don't like guilt. No, guilt is a useless emotion, I think. It doesn't get nowhere. And so in terms of restaurants, when you were growing up, would you go to restaurants? Would your parents take you to eat Indian food or Greek food? And would you go to cities where perhaps your father was performing and suddenly be in a place and think, where are we going to eat tonight?

35:31What did you discover from eating in restaurants? We would eat out because we were growing up. Mom and dad kept us all together as a family. So when they went on tour, we would go with them, which is why we all grew up so close together. We wouldn't sort of be left at home with other people. So we would explore. And what I love is this. I think it makes you more open minded, like, you know, trying Japanese food at quite a young age. I remember in Japan, in Japan. Well, actually, one of my earliest memories of Japanese was in England, in London. And we went for my sister Heather's birthday. And we were used to, we had a lot of sort of Chinese or Italian when we would go out usually.

36:13And this was like a Japanese restaurant. And we ordered the seaweed salad thinking it was going to be like the crispy Chinese, which isn't actually even seaweed, I find. And it was literally like seaweed. We were like, this is literally. But it was, you know, it's great. It really opens your mind. It wasn't the most delicious meal, but I was like, wow. Did you ever work in a restaurant? Did you ever work? I didn't. I would have loved to because we were always traveling or we were away on the holidays, so I wasn't around. But my friends would be like working in a pub or a restaurant, and I always kind of, yeah.

36:51Because I think you're someone who loves people. Yeah. And also you like feeding people. and so well maybe you'll have to come and have a job here for a bit well I had that beautiful morning where you I wrote you and I said can I come and watch the you know the prep before service and you invited me and I felt so um honored to be here and I got to see why I think that's why you and I connect because I could see that it makes sense because when I come here it's like it's a family atmosphere and when I sort of say to my kids when I have a special occasion like for my mom what would be my mom's birthday I'm like where do you want to go let's go celebrate her on her birthday they will always say River Cafe and they behave when is her birthday September 24th and they always behave impeccably when they're here which they don't do otherwise but it's this the way that you have everybody that works in the restaurant whether they're front of house in the kitchen yeah they all kind of help prep the ingredients talk about the menu so there's this real and actually as we talk about it reminds me of my childhood it's you talk about food you're around food and you do that with your children yeah do you remember it was I think during lockdown you said that your son was with your dad for his 21st and they were in Sussex and you said can we send them some tomato sauce and some some pasta and then they sent me a photograph it's one of my favorite pictures of the two of them so proud well you made his birthday because it was lockdown and he and dad were together and i was like ruthie literally yeah they need some some of your cooking well food as we talk about it we talk about food being as you've recollected you know memories of your beautiful mother and experiences with your father and experiences with your children and And, you know, cooking when you feel that you want to celebrate or you want to give or share, but it also is comfort.