Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

Latest Episodes:

Ken Jennings: BBQ Oct 14, 2021

Show notes

To celebrate Ken Jennings' return to the Jeopardy stage, we're re-airing his episode, which happens to be one of our favorites!

In 2004, Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings won 74 games in a row, making him the record holder for longest winning streak. In 2020 he slayed Jeopardy's Greatest of All Time tournament and he will be sharing Jeopardy hosting duties through the end of the year, alternating with past YLM guest Mayim Bialik.

In this episode, Ken shares how he became obsessed with trivia, Alex Trebek's shockingly sugary breakfast choice and, a huge barbecue lover, tells us why he doesn't want to be known as a "Barbecue guy."

He also clues us in to the regional food of Utah: Jell-O! We learn the history of Jell-O with Lynne Belluscio, executive director of the Jell-O Gallery in LeRoy, New York.

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Phoebe Robinson: Tacos from Hija de Sanchez Sep 30, 2021

Show notes

Phoebe Robinson is all grown up. The standup comedian, New York Times best-selling author, and co-host of the 2 Dope Queens podcast and HBO show recently started her own imprint with Penguin Random House to focus on publishing women, POC and queer authors; including her own new book, Please Don't Sit On My Bed In Your Outside Clothes. And even MORE adult: she says she finally has matching dishes and an Instant Pot!

Phoebe's favorite tacos in the whole wide world are from a taqueria in...Copenhagen! Hija de Sanchez's Mexican American chef/owner, Rosio Sanchez, joins host Rachel Belle to share the challenges of cooking fantastic, traditional Mexican food Denmark, where many people still attempt to eat tacos with a knife and fork.

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Martina McBride: Mom's Pot Roast & Fluff Salad Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

Country music star, Martina McBride, has won 15 major music awards, sold more than 23 million albums, written two cookbooks and has a brand new exhibit in Nashville's Country Music Hall of Fame Museum. But her roots are in a small, Kansas farm town where she grew up eating plenty of canned vegetables and ground beef with her musical family.

You know what other musically gifted gal grew up on a farm in Kansas? Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz! We take a trip down the Yellow Brick Road with William Stillman, author of The Road To Oz, who shares both the fun and unfortunate food facts behind the most watched film of all time.

After Martina tells host Rachel Belle about Fluff Salad, where Cool Whip is a salad dressing, we needed to know: what defines a salad?? Meggan Hill, creator and executive chef of Culinary Hill, a midwestern recipe website, explains how popcorn salad, Snickers salad and cookie salad are all...salads.

A couple of years ago we did an episode all about the tomato sandwich, but have you ever had a banana sandwich? North Carolina food writer Sheri Castle says in some parts of the south, it's more common than peanut butter and jelly.

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Antoni Porowski: Eggs, Salad, Fish, Steak, Potatoes, Vegetable, Pasta, Crepes Sep 02, 2021

Show notes

You know Antoni Porowski as the charming, gentle, earnest food and wine expert on Netflix's Queer Eye, but before he got his big break, he was an out of work actor who spent years working front-of-the-house restaurant jobs. Antoni shares his biggest home kitchen splurge, after landing the coveted job as one of the Fab Five, and Your Last Meal listeners call in to confess their most extravagant food related flings.

Antoni and host Rachel Belle were both intrigued by TV dinners as kids, something neither were allowed to have, so we'll learn the origin story of those little compartmentalized trays filled with frozen Salisbury steak and mashed potatoes. And the co-author of the new Gastro Obscura book joins the show to share the stories behind some of the world's most remarkable, strange and fascinating foods of past and present. Who invented Hawaiian pizza? Why were single Austrian women putting apples under their armpits? Listen in!

Pre-order Antoni's new cookbook, Antoni: Let's Do Dinner!

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Joshua Henry: Mom's Jamaican Food & Trader Joe's Vanilla Cake Aug 19, 2021

Show notes

Tony and Grammy nominated performer Joshua Henry has been in nine Broadway shows, including In the Heights and the role of Aaron Burr in the first run of Hamilton, and he's about to release his first solo album.

Joshua grew up in Miami, on his mom's Jamaican food, so host Rachel Belle welcomes Jamaican culinary historian and cookbook author Victoria Burke to the show to lay out the long, fascinating history of Jamaican cuisine. Burke was a dear friend of Bob Marley, and she shares the incredibly healthy, culinary rituals of Rastafarians, including why they don't use silverware or metal pots and pans. And Rachel and Joshua bond over a shared history of Shake N Bake (and I helped!).

Stars, They're Just Like Us: they shop at Trader Joe's! Joshua shares his Top 5 favorite foods from Trader Joe's and we learn what shoppers voted as their very favorite TJ's products of the year.

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Host Rachel Belle: Vintage Party Snacks Aug 05, 2021

Show notes

It's Your Last Meal's 5th Anniversary, but instead of the traditional 5th anniversary gift of wood, we're giving you the gift of...this podcast episode! The show's very first guest, back in August 2016, was Seattle chef and restaurateur Tom Douglas. So we flipped the script and rallied Tom to interview host Rachel Belle about her last meal!

This episode is all about party foods, so Rachel welcomes back some of her favorite celebrity guests to talk about the tiny, toothpicked party snacks they can't resist. And because there's nothing better than a surprise party, you'll have to listen in to find out who the mystery guests are!

So BYOB, grab a bag of ice on your way over & please take your shoes off before you come in because it's podcast party time!

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Lake Street Dive: Ritz Crackers, Cream Cheese and Pickles & Chocolate Covered Pretzels Jul 01, 2021

Show notes

Lake Street Dive's singer, Rachael Price, and drummer, Mike Calabrese, have been buddies since college, when they formed their first band together at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music. Years and years of touring, and eating every meal together on the road, means they know each other's eating habits inside out. But there was one thing they didn't know about each other: their last meals!

Through Rachael's last meal we'll learn the history of America's favorite snack food and then, inspired by Mike's last meal, we'll hop down a babysitting rabbit hole. Sittercity.com founder, Genevieve Thiers, answers every babysitter's question: can you really help yourself to anything you want in your charge's fridge and pantry?! And we discuss the role of food in The Baby-Sitters Club books with Marisa Crawford, co-editor of a new book of essays and art, We Are the Baby-Sitters Club, and writer Jennifer Epperson who wrote a critical essay about Claudia Kishi, the series' beloved junk food junky.

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Mark Bittman: Whatever Looks Good At The Market Jun 17, 2021

Show notes

Mark Bittman is a veteran food writer and prolific cookbook author known for his unfussy recipes and "How To Cook Everything," a 2,000-recipe tome that's sold more than a million copies. So when it comes to his last meal, Mark stays on brand and keeps it simple. So simple, in fact, he won't actually name a specific dish!

Mark is also a dad. So as a Father's Day treat, host Rachel Belle invited Mark's daughter, Kate Bittman, to join the conversation, to talk about what it was like growing up with a food obsessed dad. The verdict: it was embarrassing.

Former Bon Appetit magazine food director, and current cookbook author, Carla Lalli Music teaches us how to improvise a delicious meal, without a recipe, based on what looks fresh at the market.

And listeners share the delicious, disgusting and darling dishes their dads cooked when they were growing up!
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Live Show! Mark & Brian Canlis: Caprese Salad & Din Tai Fung Xiao Long Bao May 27, 2021

Show notes

Rachel Belle hosted the very first Your Last Meal *LIVE* at Crosscut Festival! She was joined by brothers Mark and Brian Canlis, third generation owners of Seattle's 70-year-old fine dining institution, Canlis. The Canlis brothers just hired a new executive chef, only the 7th in the restaurant's history, and they share the quirky and unconventional application process they used to help weed out a leader without ego, who isn't afraid to be vulnerable.

Canlis' doors have been closed over the past 15 months, but they've gained international attention for their ingenuity, launching 18 different pandemic culinary concepts that sold out one after the next: everything from a parking lot crab shack to the virtual learning platform, Canlis Community College. And Brian reveals his Secret Shame Food, a concoction that made his wife think twice about marrying him.

Then Chinese Soul Food cookbook author, and maker of a million dumplings, Hsiao-Ching Chou joins us to talk xiao long bao, otherwise known as Chinese soup dumplings.

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(Photo by Chona Kasinger)

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Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast), Her Mom's BBQ Kalbi & Dongchimi May 13, 2021

Show notes

Michelle Zauner is famous for playing music under the name Japanese Breakfast, but it turns out she's one of those obnoxiously talented people who creatively thrives in multiple genres. Michelle just released a wildly popular memoir called Crying in H Mart, about her complicated relationship with her Korean mother who died of cancer when Michelle was 25.

Korean food plays a huge role in the book and in her conversation with host Rachel Belle. Michelle takes us to Korea, where she and her mother insatiably ate their way through Seoul every other year of her childhood. She talks about who taught her to cook Korean food, since her mother never got a chance to teach her, and how the Korean grocery chain H Mart now brings her comfort.

Immigrant parents and grandparents are infamous for not writing down recipes or measuring out ingredients, making it virtually impossible to perfectly recreate their food after they're gone. Melissa Miranda, the Filipina-American chef/owner of Seattle's Musang, opened her restaurant in an effort to preserve Filipino home cooking in the community her dad immigrated to in the 1970s. She joins the show to tell her story.

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Support Cascade PBS: https://secure.cascadepublicmedia.org/page/133995/donate/1/

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