284: Clare de Boer

0:28This episode is brought to you by Resi and American Express. It was wonderful because nobody was watching us. We had no reputations to sully. We took a really long time to sort of come into our own. We knew what we wanted to do. You know, we didn't necessarily always execute that. But because no one was looking and no one really cared, we had time to sort of make mistakes in private, which was a real gift. This is Taste. I'm your host, Matt Rodbart.

0:59Claire DeBoer is the chef owner of Stissing House, a restaurant that I hold very close to my heart located in New York's Hudson Valley. Man, it's one of my favorites. Claire is also the chef owner of two New York City restaurants, King and Jupiter. On this great episode, Claire and I talk about her time cooking at River Cafe in London and her journey to America to eventually open some of the country's best restaurants. We also talk about her writing career and how she makes it all work with three children under five years old. I so enjoyed catching up with Claire and hope you enjoy this conversation.

1:42Claire DeBoer, this is Tace. Hi. Hi, Matt. So nice to have you in. Yeah, likewise. I'm a big listener. You've hit me up on Instagram about that. I really appreciate you saying that. I know you said you'd caught a number of episodes, and now you're here in the studio doing our own. Yeah, Hannah Goldfield's my gateway. I listen to everything that she does, and that's how I was introduced to you. Bless Hannah for that one. I think Hannah is a real, and I can't wait to see what she's up to at The New Yorker. I know there's some changes happening there, and there's going to be some cool things happening.

2:13But okay, you blessed us with some apartment 4F croissants and bread. Thank you so much for waiting in line for us. Yeah, well worth it. Now, like, this conversation is going to be split into a couple parts because Stissinghouse, and I've been on record on the show, is one of my favorite restaurants in the past several years. It's up in the Hudson Valley. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about your career in New York at Jupiter and at King, where you are a co-owner and co-chef at both. But we'll also talk about your substack because you like to write. And, you know, you probably fill up your time with a few other things.

2:47I'm joking. uh mainly mainly like picking up after scooter crashes uh yeah and uh and everything that comes with having a three under four yeah three under four as well that's a little bit like like that's a little footnote but not really if you see a lot of young kids running around all right but i like to start by asking you know we've a lot of listeners coming into new york this fall what's good right now outside of your restaurants what do you what are you enjoying i i feel like i'm the most terrible person to ask i really haven't i'm a cave woman i haven't sort of left i've been up stayed all summer on maternity leave with a newborn.

3:20And we just got back to the city for back to school. These croissants from 4F are fantastic. The first place that we stop on our way back in is always New World Mall. There's a chonking noodle soup in the food court that sort of brings us back. And we're always hankering for really spicy food after sort of being holed up in Dutchess County. So that's the first stop. and then I love, we love going to Servos. We get to go out like maybe once every six weeks we go for dinner. That's the first. Just the two of you and your husband? Yeah, and the newborn. Oh yeah. But a two top. A two top. A two top.

3:57A really, we're restaurants favorite. We're a 5 p.m. really quick turn. Well tell me, how do you split your time between Stissinghouse and your other restaurants? Are you up at Stissinghouse for chunks and then you come back down? So our life is very much led by the kids. So they're in school. Last year we were Monday through Thursday in the city and then Friday through Sunday upstate. Now we're going to be here for the four week. But, you know, opening Jupiter, I was there very intensely. Opening Dissing House, I was there very intensely. You know, King is a very mature, well-run restaurant. And I really haven't been back on the line there or even sort of managing actively since I had Abe, my first, who's nearly four.

4:39Um, and, uh, so the, the, the exec chef there now is Angeles. Uh, we call her, we call her Tina. She's fantastic. We've worked with her for many years. Um, and, um, Jupiter, the exec chef there is Lucy Gibson. Um, and she was a senior sewer at King and we worked with her, uh, for several years as well. So there's really fantastic teams at both. Um, and likewise at Stissinghouse, it's taken quite a while to find, uh, find the people that can really, really make it work. But we've got an awesome couple that I mentioned, Roel and his wife, Jessie. CDC and pastry chef. Exactly. Exactly. And they've got a fantastic son who's been living in the restaurant all summer as well.

5:20Same age as my eldest. Oh, OK. So it's a family affair. Yeah. Four-year-old running around that beautiful place. We'll get to Stissing House and really talk about what you're doing up there because it is absolutely a special restaurant. Let's go back to your life growing up. What was food like growing up? Where were you growing up? My food was very, very good. I'm sure it was. I was in the UK in the countryside until I was four. And then I moved to New Delhi, India. I lived there for seven years and then moved to Dubai. Yeah. So lots of grandma's cooking in the early days. Lots of Thales, rotis, dal for the next decade.

5:57Yeah. And then on to some very good Middle Eastern food. My goodness. This is what a blend of upbringing. You know, your upbringing really showed you the world of food. Yeah, and I think the world of hospitality as well. I really can't think of sort of more welcoming cultures than sort of the South Asian and Middle Eastern as a way of welcoming. And, you know, you walk through any door and the first thing, they're like, what do you want to eat? Can I get you a cup of tea? So, yeah, a masterclass there. Yeah, and you find yourself at the River Cafe, and you're working the line there, and you're working through the stations.

6:32What's it like at River Cafe? What's your career like there? What's happening in your career? because you ultimately went on to run several restaurants in Schaaf, but was that like a really formative part of your life? Oh, totally. The place is singular. When I decided, I was thinking about cooking, and I went to work for Ottolenghi in London, and I did a little bit of time there and fell in love with sort of the intensity of working on the line. And I really wanted to work at the River Cafe, so I kept going there and saying, what does it take? And they were kind of like, get lost. but also you know you could go to cooking school as a starter and I said great tell me where they said Ballymaloo oh yeah so off I went um and I kind of you know I just I just kept showing up um and then they let me into the kitchen and after a while I was like do I work here yeah and they were like yes that's kind of how it was like you just like kind of like started picking up the knives in the kitchen yeah but it's an amazing place I mean they they sort of there's there's no compromises.

7:34The food is fantastic in terms of the produce and the variety of things you see as a cook because the menu changes every day. You really get a whole education from butchery to fish, veg. You learn everything. Pastry and pasta. When I was working there, they didn't have a pastry chef. So all of the line cooks cooked everything. That's amazing. What a cool thing to have like foisted upon you oh god amazing and i think um i think beyond the food it's a very special place um because it's a holistic dining experience yeah um that is not imitative of anything else it's got its dna um there's a tremendous amount of style uh and it's the kind of food that is special but you want to eat it every day which is exactly what i want to cook and um and eat very cool to say that i mean it's like sheep and niece in many ways yeah on america's West Coast.

8:29And what can you say about Ruth Rogers and learning from Ruth Rogers? I think the biggest thing, I mean, she's an icon. She's one of the many trail, you know, I think when we opened King, everyone was like, oh, wow, you know, this is so unique. But I never felt, I've never felt like a trailblazer in any sense, because we're, you know, 100 % riding on on the coattails you mentioned of Alice, of Ruthie, of Doreena Allen, of Bally Malou. There's no shortage of these absolutely incredible women that we've sort of had the privilege and the pleasure to cook alongside. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're being modest.

9:12I think each restaurant has its own individual identity. You know, the pedigree does matter, but it's not everything. And I'm sure that time at River Cafe made you really think about hospitality as much as cooking. Right. Because you're in the back of the house, but you also were understanding how the restaurant flows. Right. Yeah. You get to see everything there because of the open kitchen. Exactly. Are you really I think connecting the two all of my favorite restaurants connect the two and they're not really it's not really a separate front of house and back of house. I mean, as a cook, I remember the most my favorite part of being being on the cold line there.

9:45You got to you got to dress a salad and taste it three times in the process. and then you've got to put it up on the pass and then you could also watch the person whose salad you made take that first bite and that loop of pleasure of tasting it and knowing it's delicious and then watching someone's eyes sort of pop a little bit Is that what you look for? Is it eye contact? Yeah, I'm not looking to make eye contact with them I'm watching for the contact that they're making with their food and that kind of intense moment and the thing about having an open kitchen which we've replicated at King and at Stissinghouse and even Jupiter where it was really kind of, you know, a challenge to get that to happen.

10:26That's the joy of cooking for me is the joy of feeding people and sharing that. So I think the River Cafe was sort of the first time where I was in a professional kitchen, actually after Lenghi's as well, but getting to watch people enjoy the food. And that's really what it's all about. Just the simple pleasure of eating. And those eyes popping out of there. Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, not always. Sometimes it's like, who on earth made this? Send it back. I mean, the big salad at Stissinghouse, it's called the big salad. Yeah. And really, you've got a real thing for salads. I do. I'm a salad fiend.

11:01Well, you're a pro. I'm an absolute salad fiend. They're never big enough. I mean, there's a couple of places in the city that does do, you know, obviously King does an incredible salad, but I always order all of them, Romans and Fort Greene. Yeah, that's good one. They often have, they've got one that's always very large and they've got sort of a smaller one. and you have to get both. You have to get both. I haven't been to Romans in a minute. Yeah, I like a sort of a salad with a side of main course. Absolutely. And I think the big salad, you're like, it's definitely, you got to like, you know, cut the radicchio or the large greens in there.

11:35And I just like sometimes just eating with my hands. I'm eating a salad with your hands. Well, you're a pro, Matt. I'm trying. You've got to get the Jake's Gouda and the ham And then you've got to sort of form a radicchio sandwich with it. Let's go to 2016 to King. It's a collaboration with two partners, Andy Shee and Jess Shadbolt. And, you know, I've followed the journey through media. I've heard you on some podcasts talk about it. But it sounds like you really, really bootstrapped that thing to existence. Tell me about opening King. I'm trying to go back and actually remember it because I have this thing we've been asked so many times about those early days that I feel like I'm remembering what I've said about it rather than the reality.

12:15It's still reality. You framed the question differently. So, I mean, what do I remember? I remember my mom scooting around on her hands and knees using a cutting board on her knees, scrubbing the tiles in the kitchen before we opened. I remember our gas being turned on the same day. I remember not being able to get credit with any of the distributors. Because of your newness? Yeah, yeah, no track record, no sort of social security numbers. And I remember also not having the money in the bank to necessarily buy stuff. So we got a Goodwill credit line from the deli on the corner. Wow. Just to get some essentials?

13:03A little bit of sugar. It was really, yeah, but it was really, it was wonderful because nobody was watching us. We had no reputations to sully. Like it was, we were young and very free. And we took a really long time to sort of come into our own. We knew what we wanted to do, but we couldn't, you know, we didn't necessarily always execute that. But because no one was looking and no one really cared, we had time to sort of make mistakes in private, which was a real gift. And then I think, you know, it really took around six to nine months for people to start paying attention. And by that time, we had some, you know, excellent pork chops and we had a freezer that worked.

13:50Okay, the freezer. So your mom's in the kitchen scrubbing the floor because she's being a mom? Yeah, she was being a mom. It was a real project. It was a really family project. Annie's parents, Annie's mother was washing the windows. I've still got a photo of her standing on the dumpsters out the back with a squeegee doing her part. And Annie's dad built out our entire trash room. It was pretty gross. And he was like, this is not good enough for Annie. And I think he spent the entire Christmas three weeks doing us a favor because we didn't have the funding at that point. So he just like built the room where you keep the trash.

14:28He built it out. He built it out. It was a real, yeah, it was. Restaurants are gnarly. Restaurants are like 10x gnarly New York. It's just a really tough place. Wells would eventually shower praise on King. It would rise to fame. And it's still busy today. It's Fashion Week now. Is it pretty popping this week? Yeah, there's been a couple of Fashion Week events. And yeah, I think Pete Wells named it in a roundup that he did recently. And yeah, so it's hopping. So you're doing a cookbook. When's that out with King? That's a great question. Your guess is as good as mine. Sometime. So definitely I'd like to have your partners back to talk about that book when it's out.

15:08Yeah, we've got to. It's been great working on it. It's really cool to hear about King. And, you know, that was 2016. And since then you've opened Jupiter at Rock Center. But I do want this to be the Sissing House portion of the conversation. So let's go there. It's one of my favorite restaurants right now. and I've been five times in maybe 14, 16 months. I live like an hour and 10 minutes away. That is a bit of a commute. It is, but, you know, I say this not to, like, flex. Like, I like to drive to restaurants. It's more when I find a restaurant I like, I go there a lot. And you've done this.

15:40So I'm really just for my own selfish ways, but I think our listeners should make the trip up to Pine Plains. Tell us, how did you find this very unique space? I love that. That's one of the big charms of the space is the space. Yeah, I mean, it's an incredible, it's an incredible building. During COVID, I got a call from a friend of a friend who lives in Pine Plains and they said, listen, I'm buying the building. I'm looking for a chef. Will you come and take a look? And I had just, we had just signed the Rockefeller Center deal. I had found out I was pregnant with my second son the same day.

16:16So timing wasn't great. Timing was utterly horrific. Yeah. Utterly horrific. Utterly horrific. And I just, yeah, my husband was like, just go take the meeting, whatever. So we went together and I walked in and I honestly hadn't felt that way in so long. Totally moved. You know, the building's from 1782. Wow. And if those walls could talk. It's been a motorcycle bar. It's been, you know, the Marquis de Lafayette slept there. That's really amazing. It's been all sorts. It's got the oldest ballroom in America. if you have a fact checker you should run all this by no we'll have a fact checker but the upstairs is a private dining space in a ballroom yeah yeah yeah and we have amazing parties up there yeah um i i could i couldn't not do it um it was completely it was completely unreasonable and irrational and uh would turn out to be one of the you know like all the best things in life incredibly uh sort of challenging um things to get off the ground what was the state of the place when you got there you mentioned it was a biker bar I've heard from service there.

17:18Yeah, no, it had most recently been a wonderful French restaurant run by Michelle and Patricia, who now have a restaurant down the road. They had been in operation for, I think, a decade or more. And they had decided to close down during COVID and the building was purchased. So the restaurant was really in working order. It had sort of 20 layers of wallpaper and lots of rugs. And the kitchen was closed, was mostly closed off. And so we redid the goal really with with our sort of renovation of the restaurant was just to sort of restore it to our fantasy of of in of. Yeah. Of its glory days. You know, we stripped everything off, put fresh lime wash on the on the plaster walls.

18:01We did everything as much as we could in keeping with the time. You can't like fake the patina of the beams and the walls and you've got a great parlor with a hearth and you get some cool, comfy furniture in there. Yeah. Yeah. It does all the hard work for us. Yeah. The food. We'll get to the food. The food's OK as well. But let's when you're when you're in that space and you're thinking about opening a restaurant built around an open flame, open earth. How are you thinking about that? Because I think it's it should be stated more that this is really hard to do to run service, a busy restaurant, big restaurant with open fire.

18:36Yeah. There's no gas. There's no gas in the front kitchen. Wow. So everything on service is coming out of the wood oven or the wood-fired hearth. I thought you maybe had some sneaky gas lines. We have gas lines in the back. For baking and all that. We've got an electric oven. We had practically no working oven when we opened, but we were gradually, as we prove ourselves, buying a new piece of equipment sort of every few months. And we're almost there. It's always a work in progress. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, I didn't go into it with much wood-fired cooking experience. We cooked, you know, we had a wood oven at the River Cafe.

19:16And so I had sort of blissed the lemon tarts and that and roasted potatoes and chevilles. But it has been, I've learned so much from the cooks we've had who've got a lot more wood-fire experience than I do. You know, Roel, who is the CDC there at the moment, has spent decades and decades cooking over coals. so it's really fun to get to work with him my absolute favourite thing to do on the hearth is put oysters with just a large knob of butter directly on the coals and the shell sort of acts as a frying pan and they sizzle and steam in the butter and then you take them off with the tongs and blow it a little bit just so it's not going to scorch you and tip it back and that's perfection it's great And let's talk about cooking over coals.

20:10Like New York City is essentially banned from New York City. So you're finding talent. And my question is about you're up behind planes about an hour and 45 from the city. How are you staffing? It seems like that's a big challenge anywhere in America. But you're kind of like not in the most hotbed of people in the restaurant world. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I mean, what I've learned, don't hire people that are looking to date. we've had uh or find them a partner quick um yeah no we uh we've had very bad luck with anybody that is um you know on on looking to looking to tinder in in pine plains um and very good luck with anyone that's sort of uh nesting yeah settled nesting happy to have nowhere to go other than their own backyard um so it it took a while to sort of form our form our what i hope is our sort of forever crew.

21:06But we've got a fantastic general manager, a fantastic director of feasts, and, you know, the chef and pastry chef that I mentioned. And they all, they all were, were, you know, lived in the city and had long careers sort of all over the world and came to the Hudson Valley post COVID to sort of for their next, for their next step. And we've been very lucky to. Do you move them up? Do you find them spots to live? I mean, would be challenging i would imagine um the uh they've all found they've all either had housing or or found their own um but yeah it's definitely not as affordable as it as it once was exactly it's hard i mean there's a real renting scarcity up in the area um but it's remarkable that you have such great service and it's it's kind of in the middle of nowhere though i love it i live up there myself let's talk about the hudson valley um owning a restaurant in the hudson valley um um what's it like for you to think about uh you know seasonality but also just like all the products around you you name farmers on your menu um what's it like cooking there it's such a it's it's such a privilege we we um we started living there part-time and had our house there sort of I think five or six years before I opened um Stissing House um and you know I think in the city people talk about sort of farm to table and um it it it almost feels like marketing speak i think those those words have lost a lot of value yeah and stissing house is surrounded by farms on all sides if you drive there from any direction you end up going passing you know um everywhere from sort of fat apple farm to uh sugar hill and you you just so those are the guys that we work with i think the the the the goal with the food at stissing house is is is to have very low ego low ambition and just really have a sense of place um reflect show show off all the work that everyone um in duchess county and beyond is doing um raising their animals and growing veg and then just cooking it simply over the wood fire uh it's nothing new it's nothing flashy it's just you know a good roast chicken and a beer yeah and a big salad of course and a big green salad I feel the the way you've just articulated that is is super honest and you know a lot of farm to table is is put on like a pedestal and kind of like use this marketing jargon but to cook it simply is not easy it's actually the opposite to cook simply over wood is like the hardest thing yeah because you're not just dealing with the food you're dealing with the fire you've got two ingredients and you're constantly trying to sort of make them work together.

23:45And, you know, at King we have gas and you become very, it's, you're controlling it. You're writing recipes to temperature. Yeah, you're controlling it. And, you know, I think what do line cooks do predominantly working on gas? It's all about like, you know, turning your flame up and down, deciding which pan you pull, whether one that's preheated or one that's cold, depending whether you're trying going to get a dish out in 12 or 10 minutes there's all these things that you're playing with um and you know what all the factors are and you're controlling them and then when you're cooking with when you're cooking with fire doing the exact same thing but instead of twiddling a knob you're doing 10 things to get that equivalent adjustment in temperature you're you know you're it's how dry your wood is how thick you've chopped it what variety of wood you're working with we work with almost exclusively with ash um we work with a lot of fallen trees that are of different variety yeah the borer is like yeah yeah totally so loads of ash trees are dying because of um the emerald ash borer um so we we work with a lot of ash but it's yeah so all those variable factors in the wood itself how long it's cured for how long it's been in our basement versus oh did we did we get a dump on our lawn and it did it get due overnight and then there's of course how long it's been burning for it's remarkable how many factors and then you have like you know all the other the shit hits the fan in the restaurants and it feels like you have to deal with all those other issues too not just um you know you have to you're not just like yeah the knob of an oven but as with all things the the more challenging the more rewarding as well so it's a really uh it's a very um it's a focusing it's a focusing thing to cook with fire is this a reason you keep the menu pretty static i feel like you don't rotate the menu in a way and that's actually i you know i think i well to be to be frank i think that's a matter of um staffing and training there's so many so many reasons there's a real there's a real sort of format to the menu um you know we've always got oysters um the ham that we uh brine cure and smoke uh glaze in the wood oven um we've always got jake's gouda and we've always got whatever seasonal pickles and then we've got a couple of salads um scallops cooked in their shells and um yeah so that there is a format and And more and more this season, I think, as we sort of established ourselves, we're a little over a year old.

26:05I think word has kind of spread amongst the farmers and the foragers. We get a lot more people showing up to our back door saying, I've got this. Do you want it? And we're going with that. But there are absolutely some things that don't change, couldn't change, will never go anywhere. I love that. Yeah. Let's talk about who is Jake, because I feel the good is always ordered. you're like serving hunks of cheese and obviously i'm going to eat that he's an incredible cheesemaker actually him and jake and his wife sylvia yeah she deserves sort of equal credit even though name is not on the cheese give her like your two call sylvia's gouda sylvia's gouda um so they're they're they're a couple of cheesemakers up in um deansborough and uh they're making they're making gouda in the truly in the dutch style um it's almost parmesan-y in terms of the sort of salt crystals but they use a cream it's raw milk and they uh they wash with cream um and rather than sealing it with wax which sort of allows the juice to breathe a lot more uh when it's aging um and it's remarkable it's absolutely remarkable like opening up a new uh you know we get these giant wheels and every time we open up a new one there's sort of uh an instant carnival in the space everyone starts getting in there you know the servers start you know circling and everyone everyone wants a taste and i think that there's something that's just so spoiling this is the kind of this is the kind of thing that you can get in restaurants that you can't get at home or that i want to get in restaurants that i can't get at home you know you can buy jake's guda almost anywhere and it comes in you know an inch thick slice vacuum packed and it's been cut and in that in that plastic for, you know, you just don't know how long.

27:47But when I go to a restaurant, I want to have cheese that is cut from the wheel. But please don't do anything to it. I want the simplest thing that is just slightly inaccessible to me at home, sort of unless I was serving 136 portions of Jake's Gouda a night. Yeah, those crystals are unique. You're not going to get the vacuum seal. and we can go on and on about the menu. I love it so much and I really want to ask you about moving forward the next few months into the next few years. You know, you talk about the large formats and you have a lot of private dining up there. What do you want to do with Stissing?

28:26Where do you want to take it? I mean, I have to confess that it's sort of a playground for me. I get that sense. You're so creative and it feels like you can do a lot of things up there. There's a lot of options. Yeah, I mean, the space is big. The kitchen's got fire. I mean, there's so many sort of ideas at play. I'm imminently excited for a couple of things. We've got this incredible, incredible pizza maker, Anthony Mangieri of Una, Pizza Napolitana. He is coming up and he is going to be, we're cooking together Pine Plains inspired pizza pies. I mean, it's just ridiculous. He's going to be making, you know, his number one pizza in the world, except with sort of Jake's Guder and ham.

29:07And so that's going to be fun to get to learn from him. When's that happening? I think it's the second or third Monday in October. And then I love craft and basket weaving and broom making. And so I've got together with Deborah Needleman and we're going to be throwing a craft feast on December 10th. And at the moment, we're just in the process of sort of inviting. It's basically we're throwing a fantasy shopping event with like tons of food and a celebration of craft. Yeah, that probably will be in the pages of tea, obviously. It seems like. I mean, I haven't got there yet. Yes, sure. But it's going to be, it's just, yeah, there's so much room and there's, we can, you know, last Easter I threw an egg hunt for kids.

29:54It all sort of starts quite selfishly with what would my, you know, what would I like? What would my kids like? And we had a massive Easter egg hunt and hundreds, you know, a hundred kids turned out and we threw a feast for children in the ballroom. And, I mean, it was wild sugar high. and then there's Pine Plains there's the Festival of Lights where all the children in the town show up and get given decorations and decorate the entire town and there are floats with lights on there's so much community and there's so many talented people, one of our diners is a fantastic flutist, flautist? flautist I think is the right one but I'll say flutist too and he's going to do a dinner upstairs where he just sort of walks around playing the flute.

30:41But it's kind of, yeah, there's just loads of room and space. Community-oriented. Yeah, and we've got such a strong team. We can really be playful. I love it. Do you make it out to the Hudson Valley for restaurants? No, no. I'm actually, I'm rarely in any restaurant after 5 p.m. You know, with the three kids, I cook at home. That's sort of the only place I cook is at home. and it's very important for me that I attempt to, you know, make the attempt at getting my children to sit at the dinner table. Well, let's segue to that because when you're at home, you're cooking for your kids and you're just cooking for yourself and you've launched a sub-stack, The Best Bit.

31:17It's cool. I like it a lot and it's remarkable that you find time to do it, but you're doing it and you've put out more than one, which so congrats. I think I'm on number four or five. I've probably got one I've got to do soon. Yeah, just you got to get, you know, you need. someone to like, you know, like an editorial calendar, like keep going, keep going. Yeah, it's not quite that professionalized. I write them with a baby in the carrier on my walks. It's something to, you know. So what's the plan with this? What do you want to do with a subset? I'll link to the show notes. Definitely subscribe to it.

31:51Check out Claire's work. Well, I started it this summer just to keep myself company. I think my days normally revolve around talking about food, tasting food. You know, I'm ordering my plants on my doorstep and I'm talking to my neighbor about, you know, what what she made for dinner last night and why it was good or, you know, it's just it's constant until the day, until the time I until the time I get to bed at night. And having a new baby and being in the country are two sort of extremely isolating things. So I just I started it. I started it this summer so that I could just share all the things that are on my brain.