Books by the River

(Holly) A book in our reach is like a handshake to the connection we all need, because through them, we gain friends, family and those characters we never even knew we needed in our lives until we start turning those pages.

Hi there, I'm Holly Jackson, your host for Books by the River Thanks for joining us on this journey where we sit beside the writers who tell these stories that sometimes feel like our own, or they give us a glimpse of the experiences of someone we need to know.

(Announcer) Major funding for Books by the River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.

(Holly) Here to talk to us today is Ivy Odom, author of My Southern Kitchen.

Ivy, welcome to the set.

(Ivy) Thank you so much for having me.

(Molly) We are so glad to have you here.

Here we are in Beaufort, South Carolina, and you made this a little "Mom and me" trip, I understand.

(Ivy) We did.

We've had such a fun girls trip.

A very short one, but it's been great.

(Holly) Awesome.

Let's get right into this book.

So exciting for you.

You've just had so much going on the past little while.

(Ivy) We have been on the road, it's been so fun.

(Holly) That's great.

Alright, so this is My Southern Kitchen.

Tell me what readers can find inside.

(Ivy) Gosh, this book was inspired by the recipes that I grew up with, inspired by my mom's recipes, even my dad's and my grandmother's.

I grew up in so many different kitchens all over the South, and it's just kind of like my homage to the kitchens that I grew up in and the recipes that inspired how I cook today.

They are some classic recipes, exactly the way that I grew up eating them, and some of them are my twist on southern classics.

(Holly) Okay, so just, you know, going through them, I love seeing some of the pictures because, like, you've got The Masters, you've got tailgating, and this is often what people go to a cookbook for, like, what do I bring to so-and-so in order to stand out?

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) So let's talk about some of those events and kind of what you bring out for those events.

What would be like a standout dish?

(Ivy) So the book is arranged by occasions, and "occasions" are a loose term.

It doesn't have to be a party.

But yes we we pull out the parties and they're all, of course, very southern.

The Masters is one of my absolute favorites.

Tailgating.

You've got your Derby party, but then we have other occasions like what to bring to a new mom, which I am very much well aware of that now.

And what to, if you have a neighbor moving down the street, something to bring to them, or even if you've had like, a frien had a death in the family.

So one of the chapters that I love the most is Joys and Sorrows, which people, I think when they hear that chapter, if they're not from the South, they may be like taken aback, "Oh, that's a little bit somber.

But really, when you think about it, joys and sorrows are the things and the times in the South when people come together and it's all centered around food.

And so that chapter for me is like one of my absolute standout favorites.

You've got like a coffee cake that would be perfect to wrap up and bring to a new neighbor.

You have some chicken enchiladas that you could bring to a new mom, all kinds of different scenarios like that.

So it's very fun.

(Holly) All right.

So you are just entering some of these life stages yourself.

We were talking about the, upcoming preg- the pregnancy now, that's so exciting.

So tell me, how do you know these things?

You've been referred to as an "old soul."

So how did you get that title and earn it?

(Ivy) Oh, my goodness.

I grew up, honestly, in the kitchen from a very, very young age.

You can look at pictures from me growing up, and I'll be two years old, like probably not even talking, but I will be with my mom stirring and mixing something up.

Also, I grew up as an only child and I was around adults all the time.

My parents were very adamant that I, even though I was very, very shy in public which people would never guess these days.

At home, I was like the life of the party, and they included me in every single conversation.

A lot of the family decisions, which I think made me grow up, not in a bad way, but grow up quickly and just learn about how the world operates at a very young age, which I'm forever thankful for.

And I just think that is like the foundation to why I am the way I am now.

I had a like, worldly perspective, I think from a very young age.

I grew up reading a lot of cookbooks, and I think you learn about people and the world in a different way, through food and through cookbooks, than you do through other types of books or even TV or movies.

And that was my kind of, like window to the world: cookbooks and lots of traveling through food.

(Holly) And there's so much emotion connected with food.

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) And memories.

And, you know, a lot of times, these, these cookbooks have these kinds of stories.

So when you're reading these cookbooks, you're not just reading recipes.

You're reading so much more.

Something that's so much more meaningful and deeper to somebody.

(Ivy) That's what I've told people throughout this entire experience.

I'm like, yes, I want you to make the recipes in my book.

But for me, it is ten times more important for you to read the stories that I wrote.

The "why" behind the recipes is just as important, if not more important, than the recipe itself.

(Holly) Definitely.

(Ivy) Yeah.

(Holly) Okay, so as people are watching, I bet there are some people like, "Where do I know her?

Like from my Facebook feed, my Instagram feed?"

So tell us who you are online, and let's talk about that story of how you got there.

(Ivy) So I kind of went about this entire career, maybe a little bit of the opposite way that I thought that I would.

This whole video thing, social media world that I live in now is not what I went into my job thinking that I was going to end up doing.

I started working in the Time Inc.

Food studios, which was the big test kitchen facility for Southern Living and a lot of other brands under our umbrella in 2016 as a fellow.

So in that job, I was doing a lot of recipe development and testing and assisting on food styling sets.

But mostly I was doing grunt work.

I was going to the grocery store for everybody else in the test kitchen, cleaning out our pantry and our walk-in refrigerator.

And one day I didn't have anything on my schedule and they were like, Ivy, if you just want to make any recipe, like, you just pick from all the recipes in the world, maybe one of the magazines will put it on their website.

And I was like, okay, sounds awesome.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Ivy) So I picked a little layer chocolate cake, which is a cake that I grew up eating in South Georgia.

This cake is ubiquitous.

It is at every baby shower, wedding shower, funeral church luncheon, you name - barbecue restaurant.

This cake is everywhere, and to me it is like the epitome of a southern cake.

It is, it looks like a stack of pancakes almost.

The layers are super thin, separated by chocolate icing.

You could also do caramel or lemon, but I made the chocolate version that was my favorite, and no one in the Southern Living test kitchen had ever heard or seen this cake They had seen, like, the seven layer cakes, but my version was 18 layers.

They had never heard of anything like this, and that was a shock to me, thinking that in my world, my southern world, that was the most southern cake of all time.

(Holly) This is the definition of "southern" for you.

How does Southern Living not know?

(Ivy) I know!

And so I was like, well, this is the recipe that I'm making.

Obviously, because of the looks of the cake, it drew a crowd and I took up four of the ovens within the test kitchen space, and the word spread.

The test kitchens are on the fifth floor.

They spread every floor in the entire building quickly that the intern in the test kitchen was causing a little bit of a scene.

And so people came from the woodworks, the editor in chief of Southern Living, Sid Evans, came up and was like, "What is going on up here?

I heard that there is a cake I need to hear about."

And so I told him the story about how this cake was known in South Georgia, very famous, and how my grand, great-grandmother made it for my mom every year for her birthday.

Always 12 layers, but 13 you got 13, 14, 15.

You got all the way up to 18 layers.

And just how, to me, it was the epitome of a southern cake and I couldn't believe, again, I said that.

And so he's like, "Would you mind telling this story for us on a video for social media?"

This is at the time, the very beginning of 2017.

So if you think back to that, social media did not exist the way that it does now.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Ivy) And the company, as a whole, had not done any kind of hosted, "mini cooking show" like you see everywhere online these days.

And so I was the guinea pig, and I was very apprehensive at first.

I did not want to do this.

I was specifically told in college not to go into the video world, and I was like, good, because I have no interest.

And here I am.

I reluctantly did the video.

(Holly) Totally in the video world!

(Ivy) And then thousands of videos later, I now have done a million of them, and it is my favorite part of my job.

So I went into the whole test kitchen world knowing a lot about cookbooks and loving recipes and like hoping one day I would get to develop a lot of recipes for Southern Living magazine and maybe write a cookbook, maybe teach cooking classes.

And I'm getting to do all of those things now.

I just had to do the video part first, which I think in the grand scheme, everything works out the way it's supposed to.

So I'm so thankful that I've gotten this video presence because for me, it's like they got to know, people have gotten to know me on the video world.

(Holly) Right.

(Ivy) But this is a glimpse into my personal life and like, the kind of the "why" behind I do all of the videos that I do.

(Holly) And so talking about emotional connections to actual food, I mean, boy, do you have one with a little layer cake now?

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) I mean, you already have one, but now, I mean, that was just like what really started your career.

(Ivy) It really did.

We wanted to name this book "It All Started with a Cake."

There are lots of versions of titles coming up with the title for a cookbook, or any book, I think is probably one of the hardest decisions you can make.

And I'm glad we came up with the title that we did.

(Holly) Yes, I mean you summed it up.

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) My Southern Kitchen, certainly.

(Ivy) But it's been so fun.

It really did all start because of that cake that has been such a huge part of my life.

(Holly) Wow, alright, tell me about the challenges of book writing and the video world.

But let's start with the book.

(Ivy) Because this is partly a Southern Living cookbook, every single recipe has been tested by our Southern Living test kitchen.

So I developed all of the recipes at home, and then we put them through the full testing gamut at Southern Living, and they all passed, mostly with flying colors.

We made a few tweaks here and there.

We then had to send it through food styling and layout and design.

And I think because we worked with so many different people, me, Southern Living and our publisher, trying to come up with something that everybody agreed on that made like a solid book that we were all proud of was probably one of the hardest parts.

Not because we disagree, but because there were so many people that really wanted a lot of things.

And it's like, okay, how do we bridge this gap and how do we do it?

And everybody kind of got their one thing that they fought for that was very important to them, and so, that was I guess probably the biggest challenge, but it's been - - and it's just a long process.

(Holly) I bet.

(Ivy) Like, I think start to finish from proposal to publication it was two and a half years.

(Holly) Oh my gosh.

Right.

(Ivy) And just that waiting of constantly working on it and planning.

And then you finally open it and you're like, oh my gosh, I can breathe.

(Holly) What a relief.

Yes, yes.

But so exciting.

And I'm sure there's been quite a tour and meeting all the fans and everything.

So that that's been a lot of fun.

(Ivy) That honestly has made the entire book worth it for me.

Like, I think in the beginning, I knew I was going to be going on a quote unquote "book tour," but I have been overwhelmed by the response this book has gotten from people.

People have been lining up for hours just to come and meet me and tell me how much the book means to them, or how much my work at Southern Living means to them, or just the brand in general.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Ivy) Which is such an honor.

And I just, I think hearing from people how I'm able to bring the brand to life for them or for them to see a little bit of themselves in whatever story I'm telling, has made the entire thing worth it.

(Holly) Okay, I'm so glad you went there, because that's exactly where I was going.

Talk about the balance of like, holding on to, the "old fashioned" ways of our mothers and grandmothers, but also, you know, gadgets are different now.

Things are different.

We've got all these different mediums now.

How do you keep that balance while hanging on but also going forward?

(Ivy) It is, it's a tough line to toe.

I would say you would be silly to not embrace the present and embrace the technology that we have.

And things have come a long way since, you know, the 50s and 60s when a lot of our grandmothers were growing up and learning how to cook and praise the Lord for that.

We try to embrace new technology and gadgets when we can, but sometimes the tried and true method is you can't go wrong.

But I think now it's more about trying to get mostly what our grandmothers served or how our grandmothers entertained or hosted, but in a way that's approachable for the modern day cook or host.

And a lot of times that's cutting corners ways that our grandmothers didn't.

But they cut a lot of corners, too.

If you think about it, they had a lot of convenience products, and I think I've seen a little bit of a shift to trying to make a little bit more homemade, which is fun, but still some store bought ingredients.

I think it's just being smart in the ways that you do that.

But really, at the end of the day, I think the main difference that the old generation and the new generation I think would disagree on is entertaining used to be putting on a show and you didn't get to have fun with your own party, and now people want to have fun.

And so it's very important to take some of that pressure off of yourself and do whatever you can do just to be present and have fun in your own party.

Because if you're not doing it, then what's the point?

(Holly) That's right.

Okay, so I loved hearing you say something about getting the ideas from the comments because as, as you know, a normal old commenter, I wonder, "Is anybody reading this Do they even care?"

But they do.

They are reading it.

(Ivy) We do.

(Holly) And they're taking notes and maybe even getting ideas from it.

Tell me about have you had some clashes of maybe the older generation?

Like, <gasps> "I can't believe she's using a potato masher," or, you know, whatever.

And, I'm sure it's all fun, but do you have any of those things that really stand out where, maybe a commentor is like, you know, wants it to be the way it used to be?

(Ivy) Yes.

We, one of my absolute favorite comments, is always so funny to me, and it could be it doesn't matter how old you are, you could be commenting this.

"I have lived in the South my entire life and this is not southern."

And I'm like, well, you know, it, it might not be southern to you, and honestly, some topics, that's not how I grew up.

I'm just shedding a light on maybe somebody else's experience and - how cool is that?

That we we're all southern and we're all defined by that.

But my version of the South is not the same version as yours.

(Holly) Right.

(Ivy) And neither is Sally Sue who's commenting that this is not southern.

And so yes, I will always get somebody that disagrees or thinks that what I'm saying is very much not southern, or I should get my "southern card" taken away from me.

(Holly) Oh my gosh.

(Ivy) But it's all fun and games (Holly) That's when you need to bring mom on and be like, "Listen."

(Ivy) Yes, listen.

(Holly) "I promise she's true."

(Ivy) She is very, very southern.

<laughs> (Holly) Oh my gosh, that is so funny.

Alright, so back to the book.

I hate asking somebody like, what's your favorite?

So I'm sure it's so hard to say a favorite, but like, what are some real standouts?

We do have some drinks in here too.

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) So what are some standouts that maybe our viewers are gonna be like, oh, I've got to try that.

(Ivy) Okay, I'll try to do it chapter by chapter if I can.

(Holly) Okay.

(Ivy) So the first chapter is called My Southern Kitchen Essentials.

In that chapter I have a couple favorites.

I would say though, one of the biggest ones is house seasoning.

Everybody needs a signature seasoning blend that they can put, keep in their pantry and put on everything to make their food taste like their food.

And just like, that's very comforting.

Mine is super simple.

It just uses spices that I already have in my pantry.

I keep a big tub of it, and I put it on so many recipes that are included in the book, so it's just an easy go to mix ahead.

And what I love about it is people can customize it to their taste.

They don't have to follow my exact recipe, just figure out one that tastes good to you.

The next chapter, the cocktail chapter, it's called Cheers Y'all.

The one that means the most to me is the Bourbon Basil Smash.

That's the cocktail that we served at our wedding.

(Holly) Okay.

(Ivy) So it is a bourbon based drink.

My husband and I both are huge bourbon fans, and you make a basil simple syrup and mix that with lemon juice and it is like so refreshing and delicious.

The next chapter is What's for Supper?

Probably my stand out in there, I have two, the cold skillet crispy chicken thighs.

Those are, it's the simplest recipe in the book.

The ingredient list is chicken and salt.

You can't mess that up.

(Holly) Alright, we can all do that.

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) Boys and girls.

(Ivy) And the method is you start the chicken skin side down in a cold skillet.

(Holly) Okay.

(Ivy) Which renders the fat and makes it super crispy.

It's almost like fried chicken without the mess.

I also love the cast iron skillet ribeyes those are a special date night meal for us.

Joys and Sorrows, the pound cake is probably, you can't pick a favorite child, but that is the favorite recipe.

That is the recipe that really solidified me as a 12 year old.

Knowing that I wanted to make food my career.

I didn't know what that meant at the time.

I thought I wanted to be a home economics teacher, and I just knew that food was going to be a part of my life from here on out.

And that cake really made the difference for me.

Next up, Lawn Parties.

There are, this is like everyone's favorite chapter in the book.

It's one of mine.

It's the longest chapter.

It's like all of your appetizer recipes for parties that go for whatever occasion.

It's so hard to pick.

I love the loaded mac and cheese, if you ask me tomorrow I would maybe pick a different recipe out of that book, but right now, loaded mac and cheese is very good.

And then last but not least, Lazy Sundays.

I have to say the little layer chocolate cake.

(Holly) Of course.

(Ivy) Although I wouldn't, people have been messaging me all throughout this entire process and they're like, I made this at Thanksgiving, I made this at Christmas.

And I'm like, y'all, I know that I tell you that that's what I do, but I have made this cake a hundred times in my life.

This is not a cake that I would recommend for you for the first time on Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas.

(Holly) Okay, you got to try it a few times.

(Ivy) Right, try it a few times because you're trying to do too much with all your other side dishes and your ham or your turkey or whatever.

And this is like a Saturday project.

Bake it a couple times before you try it on a holiday, because you're gonna mess up (Holly) Labor intensive?

(Ivy) Very labor intensive, but very well worth it.

(Holly) Yes, alright.

And people are going to be talking about about your cake and all that.

And everybody wants to have that title at the family dinner.

So, alright, let's go back to the career path of what you thought you were going to be.

Even along in college where it was the idea, the Home Ec teacher.

(Ivy) Yes.

(Holly) Okay.

(Ivy) So I started out very young.

I took my very first home economics class in the sixth grade.

You can't really take them before that because you're in elementary school.

And that was my identity in middle school and high school.

Home economics, which is now referred to as family and consumer sciences.

So I did that in middle school, high school I was the president for two years of my like, family and consumer sciences club in high school.

I then went on to major in family and consumer sciences education all the way through my junior year.

I was just so impacted by my home economics teachers.

They really kind of brought me out of my shell.

As I said, I was super, super shy.

And when I left high school, I gave the graduation speech like it was, I think night and day from like sixth grade Ivy to 12th grade Ivy.

And it was really because of these women that just like poured their heart and soul into me.

And I was like, I want to be that person for someone.

And it was going swimmingly.

And I still have the most utmost respect for these women.

And I meet so many of them in my career path, but I got to the end of my junior year where I did my practicum after, that's like the step before student teaching, where you go into a classroom for a few days a week, but not all day.

And my whole mom's side of the family were all educators, and I just called her and I was like, "Listen, I love teaching, but I do not love this classroom setting.

Like, I cannot do this from 730 to 330 every day.

I don't know how you do it."

(Holly) Right.

(Ivy) And she was like, "Well, I'm almost retired, Ivy."

And I was just like, I want to continue doing something with teaching.

But maybe it doesn't have to be for high school students in a classroom.

Like, how do I keep doing that?

So I googled food in Athens, minus restaurants because I knew I wanted to do something in food, but I didn't want the restaurant to show up in my Google search.

And I one of the first things that came up was this woman named Rebecca Lang, who is a cookbook author and cooking instructor and TV personality, and she lives in Athens, and she was a former recipe editor at Oxmoor House, one of the brands that was under the Southern Living umbrella.

And I just emailed her.

I was like, "Hey, your job sounds really cool.

Would you mind if I came and shadowed you for a day just to kind of see what this is all about?"

And she was like, "Sure."

(Holly) And you're in college at this point?

(Ivy) I'm in college.

Yes, I am my junior year.

And we sat down and I, you know, talk to her about her job.

And an hour turned into two hours.

And I left that with an internship with her.

And through that process, I got to help her write two different cookbooks, one all about fried chicken and the other one all about vegetables.

So it was, you know, highs and lows.

And she kind of took me under her wing and taught me literally everything I know about food media and cookbooks and television and cooking classes.

And really, I credit my entire career to Rebecca.

Yes, I learned how to cook for my mom, and then she encouraged me to go to culinary school after I graduated, and I switched my major from home ec education to basically food media.

It was called "consumer journalism."

And, but really, at the end of the day, everything that I know about my job now, I learned from Rebecca.

(Holly) That is incredible because I love that.

It started with a Google search, and it went on with a being bold and sending an email.

And then one thing led to another, and here you are.

And just really quickly, we do have as you've met, we've had college students here who are working behind the scenes.

They're running the cameras, the prompter and all that.

They're at that stage right now.

It's, "What do I do?"

What kind of advice would you give them?

(Ivy) Oh my gosh, say yes to every opportunity.

I mean, you can run yourself ragged if you do that.

But in college you have the time to run yourself ragged.

(Holly) Yeah.

(Ivy) And I mean that like, don't overdo it.

But saying yes, you never know what saying yes is going to bring to you.

I think in standing up for yourself, being your biggest advocate and knowing what you want, which I know seems like an impossible feat at that age.

Like I don't even know what I want for dinner today.

Like trying to decide, like how I should spend the rest of my life was such an intimidating place to be.

(Holly) Oh yeah.

(Ivy) But it doesn't, you don't have to know what your life plan is going to be.

I surely didn't, I mean, I thought when I graduated, I was going to be doing one thing, and here I am doing almost the total opposite.

It is just in every stage, whatever problem you're presented, advocate for yourself.

Stand up for what you believe, say yes, and never feel like you are above any task because you are going to learn so much.

Whether that task is, you know, this grand project or just this menial thing, and that teaches you way more than like a classroom, I think.

(Holly) Totally you've certainly taken advantage of every opportunity.

(Ivy) Yes.

Especially being the runner to the grocery store and suddenly you're making the cake.

And here we are.

Alright, well, this has been just such a great interview.

Thank you so much, Ivy, for stopping by.

And thank you all for joining us.

I'm Holly Jackson, the host for Books by the River.

Until the next book.

(Ivy) When people first find out that I cook for a living, most immediately respond, "What's your favorite thing to make?"

The honest answer is, well, pretty much everything.

I prefer savory cooking over baking, but when prompted with this question, my mind is flooded with the memory of a cake from my childhood.

I was over at my friend Hannah's house to play when her mama asked if I wanted to help gather eggs at the neighbor's house, and I jumped at the chance.

We got six eggs, "Just enough for a pound cake," she said.

To my picky 12 year old pallete, pound cake didn't sound too exciting, but the prospect of being in the kitchen was impossible to refuse.

Miss Heather pulled out her big Kitchen Aid mixer and started creaming together the butter, cream cheese, and sugar while I cracked the eggs.

She let me add them in one at a time, and I couldn't hide my excitement as I watched the swirls of yellow yolk blend into the smooth, pale batter.

We put the tube pan into a cold oven, a phenomenon that flabbergasted this novice baker.

The smell of the rising, caramelized crust filled the house, making those two hours of anticipation the longest wait of my wife.

I barely got to have a slice before it was time for me to go home, but one bite of the warm, buttery cake was enough to change my life forever.

(Announcer) Major funding for Books By The River is brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina, the proud partner of South Carolina ETV and Public Radio.

With the generosity of individuals, corporations and foundations, the ETV Endowment is committed to sharing southern storytelling and compelling conversations with viewers across the nation.

This program is supported by Coastal Community Foundation of South Carolina.

This program is made possible by the support of Peter Zamuka and Lynn Baker.

Additional funding for Books by the River is provided by Visit Beaufort, Port Royal, and Sea Islands and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at USC Beaufort.