343: Ella Risbridger on food and writing.

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1:02hello and welcome to the scummy mummies podcast i'm sorry i forgot how it goes it's me oh my god 330 episodes it's too hot we're broken this you're younger than us what this is the perimenopause this is what it looks like this is what it looks like

1:22hello scumbags this is the scummy mummies podcast with your hosts, Ellie Gibson and Helen Thorne.

1:35Hello and welcome to the Scummy Mummies podcast. I'm Ellie Gibson. Are you? And I'm Helen Thorne. And for the love of God, who are you? I'm Ella Risperger. I'm very hot. And you're not even perimenopausal, Ella. Ella, I can't even say your name. Oh my God. I'm all being very brave. we're doing our best and we will get through this oh god thank you can you just come and live in my house and stand in the corner and say that every 20 minutes oh i'll just make a little recording please on loop through your speakers i'm gonna have that as my ringtone ella thank you so much um welcome welcome welcome to the to the podcast and to my house ella thank you for coming all the way here on what is literally one of the hottest day i was gonna say the year i think of all time yes i think so i think so we're literally i mean we're not on fire but it feels like we're on fire I feel like I'm gently melting.

2:22I feel like fire would be more active, but what I am doing is just sort of gently disintegrating into this sofa. As an internationally acclaimed food writer, how far into the cooking process are we? What would you say? Is it a light grill? Are we seared? For me, it's certainly, there's a dampness, which suggests a kind of low boil. I'm talking a simmer rather than a sort of, again, anything with a grill, anything where I'm getting toasted, I don't feel toasted. If I was, for example, lying on a beach, imagine that. I've been lying on the beach too long. Now I'm grilled. Whereas I think what's actually happening, I'm kind of poaching in my own fluids.

2:58Yes, yes, yes. I'm so sorry. What a horrible image. No, no, no. I feel like, you know, when you buy, maybe you don't, the really crap cheap bacon from Lidl because you're just too tired or too poor to think about it properly. And you put it in the pan and all this sort of white sort of spaffy liquid comes out. And it sort of sweats. It's like, that's what I feel like. I feel like. And slowly getting smaller and smaller. Yes, yes. So you've done a disgusting image, but we can always go lower, Ella. That's what we've learned. I'm glad to hear it. I wonder how low we're going to go. Oh, you'd be amazed.

3:32We're going to get hotter and hotter. It's going to get worse than less. It's just an amuse-bouche. Yes. Now, as Helen said there, spoilers, you are an internationally renowned, renowned? I never know. You're a famous cookbook author. congratulations thanks man that doesn't really feel correct but I think it I guess it's been the Sunday Times and the New York yeah right I'll take it Times all the things your books have been sold around the world all sorts of things you've done very well Ella thanks congratulations I try really hard all the time and I'm always exhausted and it all began or at least it all began for me and I do like to make this podcast about me as much as possible Ella it all began for me with your book Midnight Chicken which came out how many years ago and it was before the lockdown 2019 January 2019 yes it came out yeah so I'd had a food blog for a little bit but not massively successfully I just was kind of I've always had a blog I've had I've been on much too online since I was about 12 so I've been writing about myself on the internet for much longer than half of my life and And then I said, oh, food's quite an interesting thing to get into.

4:49It's quite an interesting angle. You know, I'm a writer, really. I'm not a trained chef. I'm not. Now I'm looking to get some pastry lessons because I feel like you can't teach yourself like patisserie. Can you? I can't. It looks too hard, if I'm honest. It's a lot of rolling. And don't you need cold hands? Have you got cold hands? No, I've got very, very, very hot hands. My grandma, I think, used to say cold hands, warm hearts. so I assume I'm an ice queen on the inside. Warm hand, frozen heart. So, yeah, I think I was just writing up food and then I thought, oh, this would be quite fun to do more of this.

5:25And I found that I quite liked cooking because I was so young. I was 19 and I'd just moved to London and my parents were living abroad at the time. So I was like, well, I guess I've got to learn to cook. You've got to do this every day. Might as well write about it. Yeah. So how old were you when you wrote Midnight Chicken? between 19 and 22 oh my god signed the deal when i was 21 and then it took a few years to come out kind of tedious reasons uh yeah so it's 21 when i signed the deal to write midnight chicken which is crazy now like i went to a meeting at bloomsbury who published midnight chicken yesterday i was and someone offered to it's like a thing someone's like oh it's quite a warrant do you need me to show you the way out?

6:09And I realised, I've been coming to this building since you were in middle school. I was like, I know the labyrinth. Oh, this is a humbling moment for me. Yeah. Because there was someone else there who was about 22 and she's like, oh, I'm just writing my debut now. Now I've just signed. And I was like, wow, look at this baby. And I was like, oh no. That was me. Now no longer. Yeah. But I mean, what were we doing at 21, Helen's Smoking Facts? What were we doing? Who were we doing? I know, exactly. so it is very but yes so I can't to be honest remember where I heard about your book but I bought your book and I loved it so much as you can see I've got my copy here and it's all battered it's literally falling to bits it's been sellotaped back which I think is surely flattering to see glowing sign right um when I met Nigella I took her my copy of how to eat and I apologized to her and she was like no you must never apologize for a battered cookbook because it really is so awful.

7:03If she hadn't signed it, it would need to go in the bin just for sheer badness. It's on her spine. It's all like, you know, it's sort of, you know, how to eat in a hardback? It's a white book. I've got it, yeah. Well, now it's yellow, just from life. Yellow and grimy. And I took it to her like, please sign my disgusting book. She was like, no, it's a sign. It's a sign that it's gone well. Yeah. It's a sign that the book is being loved, which. It's the crunch. I've got books that are just sort of like encrusted with like, you know, oil and, you know, smeary bits. Well, that's just your erotic fiction.

7:35Yes, exactly. That's just for Jilly Coopers. But no, I love that. It feels like an evolving specimen, you know. It's sort of like a Petri dish of your life. Yeah, whenever I think about this, I think about once when I was a kid and my mum lost her engagement ring and it was like we turned the house upside down and then we had to go around houses. You know, it's just like, oh God. And it was gone for, it was months. I think they've replaced it. Complete nightmare. And anyway, then she opened up the cookbook and it was stuck inside a blob of pizza dough on the page for the pizza recipe. Oh, wow.

8:16Oh, I love that story. To find some diamonds inside a blob of like five-month-old pizza dough. Like we used to make in the 80s. What was it called? Salt dough. Oh, yeah, yeah. the salt dough baskets and the salt dough dollies and you'd varnish them. Do they not make salt dough anymore? So were you not that interested in food and cooking growing up? No, really. I mean, my mum was very keen when we were little on kind of, we grew a lot of our own vegetables. We had sheep and chickens for meat and eggs. So I guess I had this sense. My mum is not fantastically kind of interested in eating, but she is very interested in kind of the provenance of food.

8:58As you can tell, we left London, moved to the countryside, got some sheep and some chickens, and my mum started spending a lot of days growing vegetables. My mum made a lot of her own bread, still does. So I guess there was that sense of food, but it was never really... I've got three sisters, so I guess with four of us, the idea of any of us being in the kitchen probably would have been so much worse for my mum. we were that house you know where all other kids ended up so it's always like 11 kids for dinner and my mom's been like there's four what's what's four more what's five what's six more i guess i was kind of medium interested i i'm the oldest and i used to spend a lot of time making sandwiches for a variety of like neighborhood kids honestly now i look at it i'm like you just let this I was just 10 being followed around by nine three-year-olds being like is it lunchtime?

9:54we'd be like yes every photo of me as a child I've got like a baby on my hip I'm holding two toddlers I'm like hunched over like a little old lady in a you know like a picture book where the where they're like the woman is very world weary I'm often wearing an apron I'm often doing this it's sort of Shirley Hughes you know those yes there's just like it was very tumbling tumbling children and all a bit raggedy and kind of, you know, not quite done up the right way. And yeah, it was very Shirley Hughes. My childhood was very, you know, Blyton, very Shirley Hughes. So in terms of food, I was interested in buying snacks and sweets from the post office.

10:30I spent a long time buying sweets from an incredibly nice couple called Martin and Christine. Shout out to Martin and Christine, who ran the post office and just like turned a blind eye to the fact that every child in the village was just robbing them blind. We used to sit on the floor and eat sweets those don't count because we haven't stolen them we're not taking them out of the shop, we're eating them in the shop incredibly bad behaviour but they were lovely people I do remember I was really interested in I liked Nigella and there was an amazing duck with pomegranates in one of her cookbooks and there was a picture and it looked so glamorous and I was like yeah that'll be me that'll be me cooking this incredibly glamorous dish living in London, being a writer serving people duck and pomegranates.

11:17It didn't really translate into anything practical until I left home. Getting the scenes out of pomegranate as well, can we just say, is a pain in the bloody arse. All this about tap it on the back. No, no, no, no, no. Because you get the sort of splatter, the sort of true crime podcast, blood splatter across the wall. What is good, actually, is if you get like a very sharp knife and just kind of cut it into segments, then peel them away, and then you get like little... Oh, that looks like a cluster of rubies. It's beautiful. I was going to go for a brain, so Cluster of Readies is much nicer. Take either.

11:48Both are great. Yes. So did you study writing? So where did the love of writing come from? I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always been a writer, really. I never had a backup plan. Right, because, you know, my parents would be like, okay, but really, what are you going to do? And I was like, well, I'll be a writer. And they were like, right, but what if that doesn't pan out in the right way? And I'd be like, right, but there's a disconnect here. mother i'm i'm a writer and i am and i think i think a lot about that in terms of when people i teach creative writing sometimes i teach food writing and people be like okay but what do i need to make it and it's like right you need talent and you need luck and you need to be incredibly determined and you also need the secret fourth thing which is just bonkers self-confidence that has nothing to do with any of the others and if you've got that a bonkers sense of like and it will be me and I will write books.

12:44I really felt it. So I'd always been a writer. I studied comparative literature, which, yeah. I had a wonderful, I loved the reading lists. At the time, everybody used to joke that I tweeted going to university as my boring day job that I could do so that I could live in London and have dinner parties, which was true.

13:07I, you know, I went to university, mostly. I turned up on time. I did the reading. I sort of did the essays as and when. But really what I was trying to do was write a book. I was trying to write a book. I was trying to make it as a journalist. I was trying to make some money. And it was then I was just hosting these really mad elaborate dinner parties. I'd be like, I'm going to make pigeon, individual pigeon pies. Why? It's 20. Get a look. But I also think that I was very, very anxious at the time and very worried about leaving the house. and so I was very lucky to fall on my feet with friends who were like sure everyone knows Ella doesn't go out we go to Ella.

13:47Ella and I have talked about it so many times that you know the biggest um you know when we're writing books is that um that confidence thing is that can be the biggest barrier when you don't have that self-belief you go oh it's all shit and then you don't write for the day you know not having that kind of drive can be um uh yeah it can be really difficult and can be your biggest sort of you know war i think the thing is you just have to accept that everybody is looking at their work thinking this is shit shim this is shit this is shit and i think it's vital when you're when you're trying to make anything to remember that every single person who makes anything is there being like it's probably rubbish uh don't look don't look at it is rubbish I made it I imagined it it's rubbish and then someone who isn't you will look at it and be like no that's perfect that's brilliant that's so good you made this magnificent piece of art yeah I not to be giving unsolicited advice to any people trying to make things listening but you've just got to remember that everyone is thinking it's shit it's shit it's shit don't look at me it's shit that's because art is asking someone to look at you and that's awful so embarrassing you know I've written these books and I can see them on the table I'm still a bit They're like, well, I don't want to talk too much about my books.

15:00What if they think I'm being boastful? Oh, well, you should be boastful. I mean, it's not the first time your name has been mentioned on the podcast. I know Ellie's made food for me, in fact. When you ran a marathon that time, I made you Ella's triple carb soup. Yes, yes. Which I'm sure powered you to a good time. And did it? Yes. Did it help? Yes, it did. I think I ran my fastest marathon ever. And see, that's the power of three to four carbs in one soup. Yes, because it was the broken up lasagna. It's really good, isn't it? Yes. I mean, how dare you mention soup on a day like this? I know. I just had like a mini sweat saying the word soup.

15:36Hearing the words broken up lasagna really did me in. I'm just collapsing. I am the lasagna. I am my own lasagna. Yes, I'm self-wilting. It is not all day. Yes. But yes, genuinely. My favourite, like you were saying, when I look at my kitchen, I've got loads of cookbooks. and the ones that have the broken and the spines, the battered spines, are yours and Nigella's and Nigel Slater's. Now, you might think that's just a massively egotistical thing. I only like cuckoo writers who've got the first two letters of my name. Yes, yes. But also like Ella, Nigella, Nigel. It's like, you know, yeah. It's very neat, but it's a bit odd.

16:12Yes. Nigel, Nigel, Nigella. Yeah. Ellen and Ellen. You obviously all write brilliant recipes that make lovely food, but I think I've thought about why do I like you as writers particularly and it's because there's personal stories in those books it's not Jamie Jamie's Oliver's great I've made plenty of Jamie Oliver's stuff but it's all bish bash bosh put some things in a pan and that's fine if that's what you're after but I love that your books are full of stories about you and your friends and your life and difficult stuff about mental health and grief and loss and just the the effort it sometimes takes to be in the world was that a conscious decision to put so much of yourself and your experiences into your writing was it just you're compelled to do that no i have a disease in the diseases memoir diseases that i cannot i think have you ever seen that tweet that's like i want to be mysterious so bad but i simply cannot shut the fuck up that sounds very familiar and unfortunately i feel like i would have written that i want to be mysterious so bad but i simply cannot shut the fuck up i i don't know what to tell you i'm always like and there'll be a veil of secrecy between me and the audience now i'll say nothing of myself and then it's all my feeling on the page again um i think ultimately i'm trying to develop but i'm not very far into developing a filter um i write what i think and then i edit it down um certainly with midnight chicken in the Year of Miracles, there was a real sense of having opened a vein by mistake.

17:45Would I write either of those books now? I would not because it's so awful to just be like, and do you want all of these unvarnished feelings? My consolation is I think that people find it very helpful. I have a book in which someone's just been like, well, here you go. Here's what it's like to want to kill yourself. And here's what it's like to want to keep living. And here's what it's like when someone dies. And here's what it's like to, you know, be widowed really young. And here's what it's like. I think it is helpful to people to have that kind of unvarnished, pure experience, but they're not that fun to write, which I guess is why with this book, I wanted to write a book that was more fun, had more jokes and was more about having a nice time.

18:27I felt that with the first two books, I've really been like, let us kind of grab joy from the jaws of terror. And with this book, I want to be like, OK, but it is possible just to have a nice life. Did I intend it to be so personal? So kind of yes. In that, as I say, I have been blogging about my life online since I was 12 years old. Translating that to Twitter and then Instagram and then Substack and then a book did not feel alien to me at all. I think that memoir may be a young woman's game and a very old woman's game I think that you've really got to be sort of mad in 21 or fuck it 85 to be like and here's my life as I see it this middle bit I'm a bit more like how to not say everything I'm thinking and feeling how to not have a feeling and immediately want to share it I'm trying to get a little better about keeping stuff.

19:24But why? Because what's the downside of doing that? The downside is it's awful. The downside is completely awful. You mean painful to do it? Painful to do it. You feel mad the whole time. Really bonkers. Bonkers the whole time you're doing it. Bonkers the whole time you're talking about it. It washes you out completely. It's like opening a vein. It's like you have to write the whole book in blood and then everyone's like, great, you ready to give some more blood? Like, I don't think so. I think I'd probably like to keep some of that for, you know, living. And very painful to write. Good to have written them, but very painful to write.

19:57Whereas this book was a joy to write. The Kitchen book was, I feel like I finally figured out how to write about my life in a way that doesn't require a total excavation of the self. Because, you know, like, if you imagine it like an excavation with the first two books, it was very much like, let's get everything out. Let's rip it all to shreds. Let's put it back together and put it in a museum. and this one I guess it's much more like oh here's how I can share this with you without giving it away completely I think the balance is right the balance must be right because this book came out less than a month ago and I feel fine whereas after the year of miracles came out I really could have been put into an asylum or special home for upset women I was very like and I'll never write another book and was that because you felt you'd revealed too much or was it the pressure?

20:47I felt like I'd received the right amount. Sales, they're kind of, I try really hard not to think about them. I don't read any reviews. I try not to engage too much with what anybody's saying about my work because otherwise I would go even crazier. But more to be honest, like it's just really hard. It's just really hard to write memoir all the time. And when you make your life public in that way, it gets quite hard to be like, and what's actually for me, And what's for anybody who wants to buy it? Not everything is for sale, I think, was my take home. But it sort of can be in your early 20s. You haven't really got anything to lose.

21:28You're just kind of like, fuck it, why not? You might like it. And again, I think a lot of people's 20s are messy, so they relate and it's... But you've done two memoirs, Helen. Yeah, yeah. So I did one in 2020 called Get Divorced, Be Happy, which was written while I was recovering. um i read it wrote it almost as live with my first year of divorce how do you feel about it now it's still really raw and that's how i feel about miracles is to be like i'm sure i think maybe in sort of 20 years i'll look back and be like wow that's a good book but i get people writing to as you i'm sure you do every week and that was written six years ago going you've you've written my story now i don't feel alone and so i feel like it was because i was in the greatest pain I'd ever experienced.

22:15I mean, and then my mum died four years later. So there was another new pain, but I just put everything out and I did define with what you were saying is I opened all my veins and put everything in and I made it as raw and brutal. But I didn't know how else to write. I think that's it. I didn't know what else to do. So I wrote it all down. I feel kind of ambivalent about it now because when you said you were listening to that book I was like oh god no but I thought it really comforting and I and also um because I was in I was listening to it as I walked around the cemetery where I would walk when I was grieving and and I was like oh I you know there was a familiarity and also also I think when people write like you do you you welcome people in and you you give them a chair at your table and say you know you're welcome here and it's okay just be yourself and I think that's that is a that is a gift and but I I do identify it's it's not easy and also it just it keeps those feelings that that if you hadn't written it down that that they fade a bit but it's still there it's ever present and it's really interesting yeah sense of by writing them down you kind of preserve them I think maybe that's another reason I'm I think more cautious the wrong word it's more like oh I finally found out how to do it in a way that's less like that because I'm very conscious that with stuff like for example in Midnight Chicken you get to the point where you're like is that is that what I remember or what I remember writing yeah yeah oh the line is a bit too blurry um but I hope with this book I hope I hope that it feels as welcoming and as inviting as the previous two while being less of a sort of bloodstained nightmare yeah but also but also I think sometimes you've got to you know it's a bit like you know that Michael Rosen book about you have to go through it and I think you know you can't go around it and you and you've gone through it and I think you know each book probably evolves and and and then you know as like myself I I know I want to talk about happy things now.

24:24And it's really interesting when I get interviewed for podcasts, people go, but tell me about how your husband betrayed you. And I was like, but that was six years ago. And now I'm a slightly different person. But people are fascinated by the dark, aren't they? Particularly when they're frightened of it. Yeah. Because what people are actually asking when they say, tell me about how your husband betrayed you, is that the quiet part in the square brackets is, so that I can find out so that my husband doesn't betray me. Yes, I think so. When my then partner was diagnosed with cancer, I vividly remember seeing a conversation on Twitter between some acquaintances about the fact that my partner was dying and someone said about her own husband, I've made him promise that he won't get cancer and leave me.

25:09And I was like, wow. Didn't know that was an option. That would be good to know. Hang on. Pete, I just made you. if I just made him promise, damn it. Wow. But I think, I always think about that when people are asking those kind of questions, like, tell me again, tell me again how it happened. Because I know she's the tendency in myself, right? Like, we all have it, that sense of being like, like wanting to see something terrible. It's like robbernecking at a car accident, you know, you're like, oh God. I bet they were doing something dangerous that we would never do because we'll always be safe.

25:40And I think often people are wanting to crack open things like a betrayal to be like, right, but you did, You did fuck up and I could have prevented it, right? Yeah. And I think people think that about divorce and they think that about death and they think that about like sickness or anything terrible. Well, I think murder because I love a murder podcast. I love a Netflix. Have you seen Maternal Instinct? Oh, it's terrible. Don't watch it. You'll hate it. But I won't sleep for a week, Sally. Don't watch it. It'll make you unwell. I'm very sensitive. It's not for you. It's not for you. um but i like i love true crime murdery stuff um uh especially about women or i'm quite into um teenagers who kill their own parents and um there's a lid for every pot but i'm not the only one right yes and if i go to a party i will always meet someone else always a woman at the party who is goes have you heard this one have you seen that one and i looked into why it is so popular but also why it is almost overwhelmingly women who like this stuff.

26:43Although there are a lot of men and apparently a lot of it is to do something to do with your lizard brain that some of us have the kind of brain that thinks if I just have all the information, if I know how this woman died or why this child killed their parents, then I can, exactly as you're saying, I can prevent that happening to me. You can make sure your teenager never murders you. Yeah, that's the dream. I hope that doesn't happen. I hope that doesn't happen because if so, they would use this clip. He's too lazy. He's too lazy, Ella. Yeah. You'd have to get out of fucking bed. Congratulations to you on your lazy, non-murderous son.

27:14Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed. But I do think there is a thing of being like, let's find out all the details of the terrible incident. It's like when you just can't stop yourself clicking on the Wikipedia for something terrible. Yeah. Oh, that's my favourite thing, is to watch the murder documentary, then listen to a podcast and research the facts on the Wikipedia. What is wrong with me? Because part of your lizard brain wants you to be like, and I, unlike these losers, are smart. That's right. This will never happen to me because I, unlike these suckers, didn't like blithely go around thinking things were fine.

27:47Yes. I mean, it's the same, I guess it's the same rationale as like, you know, an anxiety disorder where you're just like, at least I know that things are really bleak. It's like, it doesn't really bring you any happiness if you go around being like, actually, the world's a terrible place. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that. Some people are just trying really hard to pretend. That's not true. they're faking it until they make it absolutely so what I really very much enjoyed about your book is that even though there were periods of absolute sadness and and you know as you say open vein I what I really identified with was was the pure joy of things like sunlight and the weight of lentils in a soup and the weight of lentils the afternoon play on radio four but I I that that hit me I was like yes I know that weight of lentils it was something the pure what I get I would say overly excited about the smallest things by having gone through darkness and I was like yes Ella I feel that elation and I was like I and I it made me feel less mental yeah I'm really glad about that because I do I have described before my general attitude to life is like a kind of monkey swimming through the jungle to be like treats treats treats treats i'm like constantly reaching for the next treat yes every sort of 10 minutes i must have something nice happen to me or i'll die and i think that is because it's like i believe fundamentally the world's a very bleak and terrifying place full of you know teenagers who kill their parents and people who die and people who betray the people who love them and god so awful and politics and heat waves and it's Oh, and Trump, he's just a bad man.

29:33It's bad. It's also bad. Rest in power, Keith Starbucks. Never forgotten. Always in our hearts. But like, it's all so bad and also like intractable. Yeah. Like, you know, what are you going to do about... Even to say the words of the Labour Party fill me with such like sick dread. There's nothing. There's nothing. I think having been very online for a lot of my life, I started off with a big sense of like, I will change the world with my computer and me and together we will both and it's like no no no no everything's in fact much worse i mean maybe i did it i'm sorry i was trying really hard to do the other thing but i think there is a sense of world's very bleak treats treats treats yeah and that's how we're going to move through the day and it's like i think i have to notice the very small nicenesses in order to have a reason to be like actually it's quite nice yes i i think i think that's it because I know I'm massively sensitive.

30:29And I remember my mum saying to me, she said, look, Helen, if we only concentrated on all the bad things that happened to us, we'd never get out of bed. And so I have this thing about, similar to you, I go, I just love this song or I love the sunshine or, you know, those sort of things just kind of keep me going. And I have that bit about my stuff in my house stuff. Look, I've come out in recent years because obviously we're called Scummy Mummies. And you have a very nice house, which is surprising. and it's really thank you you should come to my house i was really braced i was really braced for the scum no no i've got the scummy house i've got the i've got the um but ellie's house is sensational and calm and i've realized that that is what what makes me happy is is making my i mean if you'd come here 10 years ago you'd be like oh yeah on brand i got it but uh you know i've spent a lot of time trying to make my house a nice calm and for me calm often means tidy place to live because i've realized as you talk about in your in your book in the kitchen book and it's about 10 % happier right it's about the world is bleak but if you can do 10 % of things like having a nice spice straw or putting a cheese slice in the bowl before you put your noodles on top or whatever it is or have a fizzy water tap then that is the fizzy water tap I think is a real you're really in the innovation space with that one 30 or 40 % I'm gonna say it's fantastic oh my god so beautiful fantastic because I was gonna get a soda stream but maybe I'm not maybe what I'm gonna do instead is when we do the kitchen, get the fizzy water towel.

31:56Get it. Just treat yourself. I'm a big believer in things that improve your life every single day. So what would be great is if everyone could buy like 10 to 15 copies of this book and then I will use the money towards a fizzy water towel. Yes, absolutely. Come on. Let's change the world, everyone. Starting with Ella's kitchen. It's going to be a dishwasher first. Then I'm going to fix the fact that we've got big holes in the ceiling and then I'll get a fizzy water towel. Excellent. I love that. If we could all just buy more copies, that'll be... Well, let's sell it. Let's sell it now, Ella. Let's talk about the kitchen book, which I do absolutely love.

32:30And it is, I would say, is it a much jollier book, let's be honest. And previous to it. You know, no one dies. No one dies in it. No one's even dying. Spoiler alert. I'm not reading it. First book for me in which nobody dies. And I think that's well. No one even, you know, no one's dying. No one's trying to be dead. It's great. Everyone remains alive. It's great. But it turns out, great news. You can write a book without someone dying and it's still absolutely brilliant. You know, it's surprising to me as well, yeah. Because it has still got your voice in it and it's still got your knowledge in it.

33:01And I do think your confidence absolutely is one of your strengths and you're kind of, you must try this and you should do this. And, you know, that's what I want, Helen. I want people to tell me what to eat. It's great. But also, I love the confidence. But also, if you don't have this, you've got this. If you don't have that, that'll do. You know, I just genuinely believe. Yeah. I just genuinely believe that people can do it. I believe it's not that hard. I believe it's not that complicated to make something that tastes amazing. I believe that a lot of people have this sense that there's a right way to do stuff or a wrong way to do stuff.

33:35And they're probably doing it the wrong way. And I genuinely believe that most people can figure it out. Like if you give people a helping hand, if you promise to people that they're going to be fine, mostly they're way better than fine. Mostly they're brilliant. You know, when I'm writing a recipe, one of the things I really try and do is figure out where the pain points will be, where the pinch point will be. Try and figure out where people are going to try and skip a step and then figure out, like, well, actually, could they skip that step? Obviously, people have been tagging me in recipes they've cooked, which has been so gorgeous.

34:06But one of my favourite things has been people tagging me in other things they've made that are not in the book and just being like, it's not from your book, but it's the vibes. It's like, I made this. I made this for dinner tonight and it was pretty good. you gave the wings yeah you gave the wings you walked so they could run straight into a chicken stuffed with aubergines listen i just feel like the best thing i can give people is a sense that you can probably do it it'll probably be all right yeah well you do that brilliantly and i love the fact that there's sort of section titles none of this starters mains meat veg bollocks it's like um for tv dinners or it's like for when you are on the floor i think isn't there a section called on the floor when you can't like but you want to eat well and you want it and for me cooking is a sort of therapy it really helps me process stuff a lot of the time and i think that comes with that's it feels like it's a thing for you from your books um so i love all that and i've met and and yeah so i've made loads of stuff out of it already i've made um i blew my mum's mind the other day i have to say she was skeptical i said mum no knife curry because there's this recipe in your book here there.

35:14It's the first one in there actually. Yeah and she was like you don't even have to chop an onion. I was like mum there's no onion in it. There's no onion in it. She was like well I don't know. Well I don't know and I was like I'm telling you I made it for me and my son because my husband's allergic to shellfish so we quite like it when he goes out. So frozen prawns, little potatoes. You don't even have to chop potatoes. You get the tiny ones in the doors. They're very good at the moment. They're the new ones. Yeah it's a great time actually to no knife potato potato and prawn curry and I made it because my friend Ben at the time had two kids under four and we were talking about what makes a recipe.

35:51And he was like, what's made a good recipe for me is something that I can make in between finishing work and picking up the kids from nursery. I was like, yes, okay, so you've got 15 minutes. He was like, ideally, I don't want to wash anything I don't have to. He was like, if it's knife, if there's knifelessness, so much better. I was like, okay, knifelessness. So he'd just been feeding his children apples. That's what they've been eating for 10 years. because actually you can like pesto a castle with peas a classic that's the situation oh fucking love that but knifelessness is the goal and I love that curry because it's like oh yeah what if you just put it all in one thing also the recipe is is for a fuck ton of spices to the point where I was a bit like this is a lot man like this is a lot of garam masala and I was like you've been cooking this woman's recipes for seven years trust her trust her Gibbo trust her so I did it I tanked them all in and it was absolutely spectacular and my son loved it as well so thank you Well, I'm really pleased to hear that.

36:44But I do think this is like one of those things where a lot of people kind of tone down their recipes. So a lot of like restaurants particularly, like if you get a restaurant cookbook and you're like, why doesn't this work? The answer is probably because they've toned down the salt, the butter and the spices to make it read more like a trad recipe. And I think that's such a trick. Such a con. I wonder if that's what they did with the Dishoom black lentil dial. because as you know, I became obsessed during lockdown and recreating the Dishun Black Lentil Dahl and never quite could crack it. And now there's a recipe in your book.

37:19There is. Mine is a bit of a cheap because it uses a can of fine tomato soup as the base. Oh, that was genius. A lady came up to me, I think at an event. I'd been talking about the Dishun Black Dahl and she just came up to me and she was like, would you like to know what my auntie says is the secret? And it's not how they do it at Dishun. I think what they do at Dishun is simply make a huge vat and cook it for 24 hours. Right. But this lady came up to me and she was like, my auntie says that the secret to the most amazing black doll is high tomato soup. And she's right. When you said that, I was like, yes, yes, yes, yes.

37:53I can absolutely. The black doll in my book, I love that Dishim doll, but it is£9 proportion, which is insane for a doll. The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org. That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. Thumbtack presents Tile Trouble.

38:37Every single time I use my sink, I make eye contact with the uneven grout on my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one cracked tile or should I replace them all? What? What if I just use Thumbtack? I can hire top-rated pros, read reviews, and compare prices with a tap. All on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions pulling details about you from public records and the internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent.

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40:14Ella, I feel so much better from being taught to you. And if you have also feel better and would like to feel more better by hearing Ella's words, do you see where i'm going with this yes or indeed reading them in book form perhaps you would definitely also enjoy ella's book the kitchen book which is out now it is out now and you can buy it everywhere you buy a book but i'm afraid we must ask one thing more of you before we go because it is time for the scummy mummy confessions as is tradition helen would you like to go first okay yes keeping in the sort of almost food theme uh i had a caro delivery the other day not sponsored uh just just you know I had my regular supermarket delivery and at the end of the um you know delivery they said do you have any bags and so you hand back your plastic bags you know good environmental policy there and I thought oh yes I do and I I grabbed a whole lot of bags and there was one extra just in the laundry in my utility room I grabbed it and I was handing them back to him and I realized the bag I had in my hand was full of something and then I remembered and I looked in it and it was a bag of my daughter's period pants oh that's lovely it's a nice tough self the tough day for the academy man i don't think you're going to recycle that i don't think so well i'm glad you you realized you saved time you did a great kindness actually to the academy man yes yes he doesn't know what a narrow escape he had no but i but i feel like i was being environmental on both policies really you know like you're doing very well yes yes no no sanitary products or and I was recycling a plastic bag.

41:46So that was very good. Yes. Pete! I think he's gone already. I just realised he hasn't gone to get Joey. Did I hear him go? Oh, sorry. No, no, it's fine. Let's just carry on. I've got a child at school that someone's supposed to go and come in. You have another door? No, just that one. You haven't seen anyone come down? I think anyone came down. No! Sorry.

42:11Did you see him? yeah he's forgotten to go now okay he's going to go now oh yeah so he happens it's fine he'll just be standing in the playground on the hottest day of the year with his hair hat yeah you've got all this to look forward to if you have children Ella I don't know if that's something you're interested in maybe not maybe not after today who knows I mean forgetting to pick up your child from school does feel very on brand yes for a podcast in fact that's my scummy mummy confession my husband has forgotten to pick up our child from school there we go okay good that was easy a live no I don't think we've ever had that before a live as it happens confession confession my other I cooked it was Father's Day yesterday and my father loves lamb so I cooked your six hour lamb Ella but how was the lamb Pete that I cooked yesterday from Ella's recipe sorry I can't talk about how good the lamb was I've got to be at the school room okay okay seriously that was lamb for the ages that was amazing you were talking about that yesterday when I was here you were like oh my god you've got to make this lamb stunning yeah absolutely I'm really glad you liked it And Sainsbury's had run out of lamb legs.

43:13So we had to go to Waitrose Beckenham. Guess how much they wanted for a leg of lamb? What? £57. Ah! On this note. I should have had some appearance. What happened to me yesterday was that I was doing a work event and I had to go and give my talk when I left my phone in the green room. And when I came back, the PR person was like, oh, your phone alarm's been going off. And I realised and I could see that she had seen what it said. and what it said was hate that waitrose man and it goes off at five plus five so when we're almost there uh every day because a waitrose man tried to overcharge me for some mistake by claiming that this is the little thing over in the other one and my partner said and i said on the car i was like i'm gonna hate that man for the rest of my life and he said i'm stupid you're never gonna remember this so i set an alarm and so every day if i cross by it i think i hate that man who's tried to rip me off he tried to patronize me by in saying that i had not correctly read the sign The commitment to the hate is brilliant.

44:11So it's actually like 1984. You have a five minute hate every day. That is the best thing I've ever heard. I might have gone it off because it was so familiar. It's like Ellie's... Don't watch, don't watch. No. It was a bit... To have someone else be like, yeah, I did see your alarm says, hate that man. Hate that man on 5 plus 5 every day. So, you know, if you're listening to this at 5 plus 5, you know what I'll be doing. I'll be thinking evil thoughts towards a man who tried to patronise me in the supermarket. Wow. I bloody love that. Well, I'm going to set an alarm as well because£57 for a leg of lamb is far too much.

44:41No, no, extraordinary. Extraordinary. So we did it with shoulder of lamb instead. And I nearly emailed you going, do you think it'll be all right with shoulder of lamb? And then I thought, be a grown-up, Ellie. Also, that's weird. Don't email the woman who's coming to your podcast tomorrow. You could have done, but I would have just said what I always say when people email me about things that are obviously fine and said, this is fine. It was... I actually think it might be shoulder of lamb in the picture. Well, see. It's fine. It's fine. If anyone's going to take anything from this podcast, I hope that what they're going to take is fine.

45:07is, yeah, don't spend£57 on a leg of lamb. Set an alarm if you hate someone. Anything else? I think, as usual, this podcast has been a wonderful, eclectic mix of joy, sadness, nuggets of wisdom and absolute bullshit. And that's how we like it. 13 more years. That's why we've outlasted seven prime ministers, Helen Thorne. Why has my husband come wandering in? Where's our son? Did you record the bit of the podcast where I forgot to do the school run? Yes. Is that going to mean it? Yes. It's going to make the edit, isn't it? Yeah, it could do. Do you think you could keep in the bit of the edit where he actually doesn't be picking up until 4.30, not 3.30?

45:47Oh, because it's Tuesday. As usual. And that's in my phone, and the alarm will go off in 40 minutes to say, go get Joe. And I reminded you, and I didn't even need to. I'm really sorry. Because I was in a meeting. You entered the meeting. I ended the meeting in a stress. And I'm probably going to get fired. uh it's the civil service i'm totally not going to get fired you know it's fine i'm just playing your wife i'm so sorry that's all right i'm only messing it really is absolutely no problem too i'm sorry so there you go that thus thus ends my second scummy mind me confession i made my husband end an important civil service meeting with the department of education uh so some children school children are going hungry tomorrow because i made my child made my husband stop a meeting to go and pick up a child who doesn't need picking up for another 53 minutes it's too hot it's too hot and this is why they shouldn't be making direct like important decisions about the direction of the labour party or about politics it's too hot we're all losing our minds it's 53 we've got we've got time we've got more time and again i hope you've enjoyed this window into your future ella of married life after 15 years having children being perimenopausal it's just an absolute fucking shit show isn't it so yeah look you make it look good though Well, we try.

47:07It looks very nice. We try. We had 10%. We had a nice lamp. There's a 10%. Oh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been a joy to have you. Thank you, Helen Vaughan. Thank you, Ellie Gibson. Thank you for listening. Do come and see our stage show. The stage makes it sound like it's theatre. It's in the theatre. Come and see our stupid comedy show. Where are we going? Oh, do you know what I'm really excited about? Is it our tour to Ireland, Ellie? Yes, I am excited about that. So excited. That's in November. and do you know what, it just makes me feel nice and cool. It's November, it's Ireland, we'll be having a lovely time.

47:41But in the meantime, we're doing some summer festivals. We go to, oh, in September, Sevenoaks, really. Yes. Harrogate on the 1st of October, 29th of September, Newcastle. Oh, I just can't wait. Colchester, over half the tickets are sold and the events in October. Wow. I know. North Allerton, Gloucester, Chipping Norton. Chipping Norton. That is selling very, very strongly. Back to Guildford. Love Guildford. Oh. Finchley. Yvonne, I know. It just never stops. It never stops. Oh, it really doesn't. As always, dates and tickets are available on scummymummys.com. Ella, is there anything else you'd like to plug your Instagram or your...

48:21Substack. Your brilliant Substack. Subscribe to my Substack. It's ella.substack.com. How much is it a month? It's currently£5 a month. She's a bargain. considering you get the archive which is now five years of recipes and a lot of feelings which you know I get it and it is again it is absolutely brilliant I'd love to plug the kitchen book I've already done and also say that probably in the October I will be coming to a town or city near you to sign and talk about some books and I think that's all I've got to plug right now marvellous buy my book buy my book buy the kitchen book you won't regret it that's my if you regret it I'll give you your money back let's say that now no one's gonna do that only with a formal letter no yeah but I want a formal letter in blood thanks again for listening until next time bye

49:15one of our favourite games let me give this gift to you is when things do go wrong travel plans or whatever the hotel trip we like to play can you imagine a worse person to be in this situation and then we name like really awful or high maintenance people that we know or have met and go, oh, God, imagine if it was with them. Yeah, that's wonderful. It's so comforting. It really takes the edge off. And there's so many people. There's so few people I'd like to be stuck in a travel nightmare with. I think being in a double act, we've sort of assumed roles and Ellie's like, I know that she can do that bit.

49:51But she's very, very good. and also Ellie's very good at finding us nice pubs between venues. So we might have a night like we're having a night tomorrow night in Manchester and then next up we're in Watford. So Ellie will magically find some sort of beautiful pub in a pastoral setting halfway between where we can have lunch and then go to the hotel, have a nap and then do our show. Well, sometimes it will be like a really, I'll fuck it up and it will be a really weird pub with what looks especially like Nazi memorabilia in the corner hanging on the wall that was not not your finest not my favourite but that's I would say that's one in ten what was the vibe like of the Nazi pub I mean it was a lot as you'd expect it was there was no actual sort of you know uniforms or rallying but a lot of metal hats yeah and the food wasn't great no listen well that's how you know when it's good it's good you need something to compare against you need to be a smile and also because then you can say much like imagine if we were here with someone else at least it's not the Nazi pub.

50:54Exactly. You'll never be in a situation again, I mean, I hope, where you're in a Nazi pub. So you can always be like, well, it could be worse. And tomorrow's Radio 4 afternoon play, The Nazi Pub, will be beginning at 2.45. The more you listen to your kids, the closer you'll be. So we asked kids, what do you want your parents to hear? I feel sometimes that I'm not listened to. I would just want you to listen to me more often and evaluate situations with me and lead me towards success. Listening is a form of love. Find resources to help you support your kids and their emotional well-being at SoundItOutTogether.org.

51:34That's SoundItOutTogether.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and Pivotal. Thumbtack presents Tile Trouble. Every single time I use my sink, I make eye contact with the uneven grout on my kitchen backsplash. The crooked corners eye me, and I'm haunted by more tiling questions than I thought possible. What kind of pro can fix a backsplash? Can I replace one cracked tile or should I replace them all? What? What if I just use Thumbtack? I can hire top-rated pros, read reviews, and compare prices with a tap. All on the app. Thumbtack knows homes. Download the app today. Most people don't realize how much of their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

52:15Data brokers are making billions pulling details about you from public records and the internet, then packaging and selling it, usually without your consent. That's how your information lands in the hands of scammers, spammers, even stalkers. It's why you get endless robocalls and why ads seem to follow you everywhere. That's where Aura comes in. Aura actively removes your data from broker sites and keeps it off. They also instantly alert you if your information shows up in a breach or on the dark web. But Aura goes beyond data protection. With one app, you get a VPN, antivirus, password manager, spam call protection, dark web monitoring, and even up to$5 million in identity theft insurance, all backed by 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support.

53:00Other companies might sell just credit monitoring or just a VPN. Aura gives you all of it together at the same price competitors charge for just one service. Start your free trial today at Aura.com slash safety. Protect yourself now at aura.com slash safety.