Navigating your 20s told through learning family recipes. Each episode features a new recipe where we explore bigger topics like learning to trust your intuition, moving somewhere new, and how opportunities we label as “chance” aren’t really about luck.
I recorded and produced in my NYC bedroom, the show is part cooking, interview, advice, and personal journal. Earlier this March, I wrapped up the first six episodes which features recipes and life lessons from my parents! I am now interviewing, researching, and gathering tape for season 2—I am expanding beyond family to interview friends about the recipes meaningful to them, the stories they hold, and advice for people navigating their 20s! (If you have a recipe and story you’d want to share, I would love to hear about it :) )
Recorded and produced in my NYC bedroom, the show is part cooking, interview, advice, and personal journal.
The first podcast episode I’d ever made was in iMovie, of all things. Through the SoundUp program, I learned to use Soundtrap, and now produce most of “recipes for life” in Pro Tools. I’ve found that Audacity (which is free!) is actually super powerful and I use it specifically to edit out background noise (woes of living in a city).
I’ve found that Audacity (which is free!) is actually super powerful and I use it specifically to edit out background noise (woes of living in a city).
Favorites are so hard to pick! I am most proud of episode 1 because it marks the start of a journey I was, for so long, scared to start; episode 3 features my favorite celebration, a dumpling dinner to ring in the Lunar New Year; episode 4 is where I found myself getting more comfortable exploring music and sound design.
That said, episode 6 is my overall favorite episode because I allowed myself to detour from the narrative structure I’d been using for previous episodes. I had been following a “formula” (which makes production a lot easier and I highly recommend developing one for your show) to give episodes consistency and flow. For example, my foundational episode structure is as follows: 1) an introduction from me of what recipe and topic the episode would explore today, 2) where this recipe came from and the story attached to it, 3) a larger life lesson thematically tied to the recipe and story, and 4) closing thoughts followed by bloopers from the interview.
In episode 6, I allowed myself to open up and diverge from just the recipe and core story. I still used the basic structure—the episode is about a radish pancake recipe and how it opened up a conversation between me and mom and how her childhood was as well as how she was like as a child—but decided to hone in on this topic of what constructs our sense of self. I tied in other articles and videos I’d been watching on this topic and shared the thoughts that they’d been sparking in me. I was worried it’d be a little “out there” and concerned I was trying to explore too many topics in one show, but was pleasantly surprised to hear how much listeners enjoyed it!
Balancing my full-time job alongside the podcast has been my biggest hurdle. So my productivity advice comes from a friend who works in film—they often balance their job alongside creative projects and her advice is to commit to your creative work for 20 minutes a day. I’ve found that if I make the agreement with myself to dedicate 15-20 minutes, once the timer goes off, I’m in a groove and not ready to stop! It has helped establish consistency and discipline which are often hard to do.
