Your Last Meal with Rachel Belle

What do Super Bowl champions do after they retire from football? If you’re Seahawks legends Richard Sherman and Kam Chancellor, you open a restaurant!

Host Rachel Belle interviewed Kam and Richard back in October, at the grand opening of Legion Sports Bar, their “elevated soul food” restaurant named after the Legion of Boom, the nickname for the Seahawks’ legendary defense backfield.

The guys talk about how they eat now compared to when they played football, and Sherman’s mom, Beverly, tells Rachel there is one food her son won’t eat unless she makes it.

Then we check in with the Seahawks Performance Kitchen, where head chef Stuart McNabb and dietitian Andrea Vanderwoude are responsible for strategically feeding the team three meals a day, five days a week.

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Seattle’s Amanda Knox spent four years in an Italian prison for a murder she didn’t commit, while studying abroad in Perugia. Amanda joined host Rachel Belle on stage in Seattle for a live podcast recording where she was invited to share her experience, in her own words, after years of being misrepresented and mocked by the international press.  

Amanda talks about what prison food was like; why she chose Italian food for her last meal despite her traumatic experience in the country; and how foraging for mushrooms in the Pacific Northwest helped with her recovery. And so much more!  

Amanda is incredibly thoughtful, smart and funny – it’s truly a fantastic conversation! 

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As a kid, Moshe Kasher (Subculture Vulture, The Endless Honeymoon Podcast, Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy From Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16) led a double life. Most of the year he lived with his deaf single mother in Oakland, Calif., eating carob chips and other classic hippie foods, and in the summers he stayed with his deaf father, a born-again Hasidic Jew in Brooklyn who ate a strict kosher diet.  

Moshe loves to rank things. In this episode, he ranks the world’s worst desserts and the best way to drink a Diet Coke. So host Rachel Belle and producer Isaac Kaplan Woolner do a side-by-side taste test, sampling Coke in a glass bottle, a can, a plastic bottle, a fountain soda and from a bar gun before compiling their own rankings.  

Are Tofutti Cuties Jewish? Do you even know what a Tofutti Cutie is?? Tablet Magazine’s Esther Werdiger pops by to share the history of the little non-dairy ice cream sandwiches that both Moshe and Rachel grew up eating.  

Not only is Moshe extremely funny, but he’s super-warm, a generous conversationalist and extremely quick witted – I think you’re gonna like this episode! 

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Welcome to Your Last Meal’s most romantic episode! Audie Cornish (CNN reporter and host of CNN’s The Assignment podcast) says her last meal is less about what she’s eating and everything about who she’s eating it with. Audie's last meal is a love letter to her husband, who has been wooeing her with his cooking since their first date, and for the first time ever she talks about him in an interview!  

Audie remembers all the meals her now-husband, Theo Emory, cooked for her when they started dating 20 years ago. Eager to recreate The Newlywed Game, host Rachel Belle calls Theo to see what he remembers making, what he thinks Audie would choose for her last meal, and so much more. 

And Rachel chats with NPR senior producer, and Audie’s former All Things Considered colleague, Melissa Gray about her cookbook All Cakes Considered. 

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Comedian and actor David Cross is best known for his roles as Tobias Fünke on Arrested Development and Mr Show, and he has a new podcast and comedy special out now!

David says he grew up poor, hating a lot of the penny-pinching meals his family ate. But he still loves some of the foods he ate as a poor adult, when he was trying to make it as a stand-up comedian.

We’ll learn the history of poutine with the owner of the Quebec restaurant that claims to have invented it. And a lifelong Québécois shares his very opinionated poutine hot takes with host Rachel Belle.

Get tickets to see David at SFSketchfest January 19 & 20th 2024!

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Across the pond, in a country far, far away (um, England), Your Last Meal has a podcast cousin! On each episode of Desert Island Dishes, chef and host Margie Nomura asks her guests about the dishes that have shaped their lives, including the last dish they’d eat before being cast off to the desert island.  

Host Rachel Belle was a guest on the show and this week we are bringing you that episode! After interviewing thousands of people in her career as a broadcast journalist, food and culture writer and podcast host, Rachel takes a break from asking questions and gets to answer some! 

Rachel tells Margie about the food her family invented and sold in the 1980s, the most memorable dish from her childhood, how she got her start as a journalist and why “anticipation” will always be the most delicious ingredient.  

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Reggie Watts is the best kind of weirdo: a comedian, musician and beat-boxer who spent eight years as the house bandleader for The Late Late Show with James Corden. His new book, Great Falls, Montana, is a coming-of-age memoir that proves Reggie’s been cultivating his own brand of oddball humor since he was a teenager.   

Reggie grew up with a French mom, eating escargot on special occasions, so we go deep into the fascinating world of heliciculture: snail farming! Only two people in the entire United States raise snails for food, and host Rachel Belle chats with them both. The farmers at Peconic Escargot on Long Island and Little Gray Farms escargots in Washington insist their fresh, thoughtfully raised snails are miles better than the canned stuff served in most restaurants.   

Plus, Reggie explains what a “lefthanded latte” is and waxes poetic about monkfruit sweetener.   

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Welcome to the very first Your Last Meal Thanksgiving! We’re having a big Friendsgiving audio potluck, inviting past guests to contribute a dish to the holiday meal. Country music star Martina McBride is bringing the salad, actor Zosia Mamet defends marshmallow sweet potato casserole and opines on cranberry sauce, director Greta Gerwig shares her dad’s unusual stuffing recipe and Christopher Kimball is on pie duty.  

There are also some new friends at the table. Food historian Ken Albala stops by to explain why we eat turkey on Thanksgiving, and comedian and musician Reggie Watts shares what his childhood Thanksgiving table looked like with a French mother.   

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Lessons in Chemistry, an Apple TV+ show based on the bestselling book of the same name, is set in the early 1950s and centers around a young woman named Elizabeth Zott, played by Brie Larson. Elizabeth is a chemist and her entire life is consumed by her scientific curiosities. The only thing Elizabeth loves as much as chemistry is cooking because, well, cooking is chemistry! 

The show features quite a bit of food, conceptualized, cooked and styled by the show’s food consultant, Courtney McBroom — chef, cookbook author and former culinary director at Milk Bar in New York City. 

Host Rachel Belle sat down with Courtney to talk about a day–in–the life of her super-cool job on set; how many lasagnas she had to make for the show; and, of course, her last meal. 

Get the recipes for dishes featured in the show!

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Get tickets to my Nov 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show featuring special guest Amanda Knox! Paid newsletter subscribers & KCTS 9 members get a discount and are invited to a pre-show hang with complimentary food and cocktails!

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Andrew Rea is best known for his super-popular YouTube channel, Babish Culinary Universe, where 10 million subscribers tune in to watch him host cooking shows like Binging with Babish, where he recreates dishes from TV shows and movies. 

The focus of his new (third!) cookbook, Basics with Babish, is cooking mistakes. He cheekily reveals every single mistake he’s made while attempting to cook each recipe, and gives readers advice on how to avoid them. 

Lots of iconic food and drink, from potato chips to champagne, were allegedly created by mistake. In this episode we focus on the chimichanga, accidentally created in the 1950s at El Charro in Tucson, Arizona. 

Is there a food you love so much you’d get it tattooed on your body? Andrew has a tattoo of one of the only foods he hates! He’ll tell his story, and then YLM listeners call in to share their tasty tattoo tales with host Rachel Belle. 

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Comedian and writer Sarah Cooper rose to fame in the most modern of ways: through TikTok! Her viral videos, lip-syncing Donald Trump’s speeches during the pandemic, eventually landed her a Netflix show (Sarah Cooper: Everything Is Fine), and she just released a memoir called Foolish. 

Before Sarah could pay the bills with comedy, she worked at Google, where employees are fed three incredibly delicious (free!) meals a day. Host Rachel Belle scored a rare, coveted interview with the director of Google’s food program, and we’ll take you behind the scenes of their 400 worldwide cafes. 

Sarah is a Jamaican ... who doesn’t like Jamaican food! But what she does love is Girl Dinner, a viral TikTok trend that assigned a name to something we’ve all done: creating a casual meal-for-one out of the tastiest bits and bobs you can find in your fridge. Meet the creator of Girl Dinner and the writer who wrote about it in The New York Times.

Get tickets to the YLM November 14, 2023 Seattle LIVE show, with special guest Amanda Knox!

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Check out Didn’t I Just Feed You, a top-charting weekly podcast about feeding our families, hosted by Stacie Billis and Meghan Splawn, who, between them, have over 20 years experience as food editors, recipe developers, and cookbooks authors/producers — but who, above all, know what it’s like to feed a family as busy, working moms. 

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Zarna Garg immigrated to the United States from India alone, at 16, without a penny to her name. Fast-forward to 2018: She’s a stay-at-home mom with three kids and bored out of her mind. At her children’s insistence, Zarna got on stage at an open-mic night. Five years later? She has her own comedy special on Amazon, “Zarna Garg: One in a Billion!”

Zarna loves to top many of her meals with a big ol' pile of raw onions, but laments that Americans are sensitive to onion breath. I chat with a cognitive scientist who researched whether smell preference is cultural, personal taste or universally disliked among humans because of its chemical compounds.

And we’ll learn the fairly modern history of masala chai with Indian-American food writer Leena Trivedi-Granier (click for her recipe)– just don’t call it chai tea! We’ll tell you why.

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Ron Upshaw and Don O’Neill are longtime radio partners who spent decades moving around the country together, hosting all kinds of big-market radio shows. And YLM host Rachel Belle was a part of The Ron & Don Show on KIRO Radio for a decade!

Ron and Don have worked together since they were teenagers, in all sorts of professions. What keeps two people working together for 40 years? We will discuss!

Don adores cherry pie, so I chat with a 25-year-old entrepreneur from Traverse City, Michigan, who is trying to reclaim his hometown’s lost Guinness World Record by making the world’s largest cherry pie.

And could you make it through a 50-course dinner? We’ll talk about the pros and cons of fancy tasting menus with food writer Charmaine Mok

Listen to my other cherry pie episode featuring actor/comedian Jenny Slate & Warrant guitarist Joey Allen (who played on Cherry Pie!)

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If you've ever had a tomato sandwich, then you know this is the best time of the year! In honor of *tomato season* (and host Rachel Belle being on vacation) we are re-airing this episode from 2019.

Iron & Wine sounds like a band but in fact there is just one man behind the music: a soft spoken, North Carolina singer-songwriter named Sam Beam, who unintentionally stumbled into a music career later in life.

A true Southern boy, Sam wants a stack of tomato sandwiches for his last meal. Just ripe summer heirlooms, squishy white bread and mayonnaise. A simple summer snack so sacred in North Carolina, locals get riled up at the mere mention of adding bacon or lettuce. We called upon a couple North Carolina culinary queens to talk about the do's and dont's of the tomato sandwich: veteran food journalist Kathleen Purvis and chef, restaurateur and cookbook author, Vivian Howard. And sticking with the Southern theme, food historian Robert Moss joins the show to tell the true history of the boiled peanut.

Lucky for us, tomatoes are still hanging heavy on the vines, because you'll be hankering for a tomato sandwich by the end of this episode.

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After years of living in New York City and Los Angeles, the pandemic brought
comedian Heather McMahan back to her hometown of Atlanta, where she’s living
in her childhood home with her husband and ... her mother! If it sounds like a
sitcom, well, she’s working on that script right now.

Atlanta is home to Buford Highway, an off-the-beaten-path culinary wonderland
featuring 100 immigrant-owned restaurants, representing more than 20
countries.

Atlanta-based Food & Wine senior writer Jennifer Zyman joins the show to share
the history and highlights of Buford Highway, like Plaza Fiesta, a huge Mexican
marketplace where you can taste the latest Mexican TikTok trends.

And Heather and I chat about her huge, elaborate, Italian wedding cake  and the
tradition of assembling it in front of guests at the reception.

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Mexico City native Pati Jinich made an unusual career change: from a political analyst at a Washington, D.C. think tank to a cooking teacher and, eventually, award-winning PBS host. For over a decade, she’s been sharing her love of Mexico and Mexican cooking with the masses through her shows Pati's Mexican Table and La Frontera.

Pati is Mexican-Jewish, and grew up eating Mexican takes on classic Ashkenazi Jewish dishes. So after speaking with Jinich, host Rachel Belle also interviews the authors of the new book Kugels and Collards about another lesser-known mashup: Jewish South Carolina cooking!

And in taco news: After 35 years, the phrase Taco Tuesday is finally free from a federal trademark! Rachel digs into the whole story.

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I interviewed Greta Gerwig back in 2017, when her film Lady Bird came out, and in honor of Barbie-mania, I am re-airing an edited version of my interview with the writer and director of the new 'Barbie' movie!

Greta is a huge fan of Funfetti cake and insists the box of Pillsbury cake mix is best. So I invite Food Network host Molly Yeh (Girl Meets Farm) to talk about her homemade Funfetti, a cake that took a lot of trial and error, including testing with nine different types of sprinkles!

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Peppermint was the first out, trans contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, the first trans woman to originate a principal role on Broadway and she stars in the new Netflix series “Survival of the Thickest!”

And Peppermint … loves peppermint! Tea! Candy! All of it! So host Rachel Belle digs into the history of the ancient, zesty herb that has been mentioned everywhere from the bible, in Greek mythology and, far more recently, on your toothpaste tube.

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Bear Grylls is a survivalist, adventurist & host of soooo mannny TV shows, including the wildly popular Man VS Wild, Born Survivor and the new season of Running Wild With Bear Grylls: The Challenge, where celebs like Russell Brand and Bradley Cooper tag along on his extremely wild adventures.

Bear tells host Rachel Belle about the nastiest foods he's eaten in the wild, why he no longer eats vegetables & what happened when he offered the president of Ukraine a bite of his chocolate bar.

And we venture into territory we never imagined venturing into: drinking your own pee!

Plus, if if you watch all the survivalist shows and dream of being dropped in the middle of no where with nothing but the clothes on your back – you can pay to have that experience! I chat with Cat Bigney, hunter gatherer instructor and ancestral skills specialist at the Boulder Outdoor Survival School. 

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Canadian twin sisters and band mates, Tegan and Sara, have been touring the world, playing music together, since they graduated from high school in 1998.

In honor of their new book, a semi-autobiographical graphic novel called Junior High, host Rachel Belle asks them, and the listeners, about their most memorable middle school foods and HOLY GUACAMOLE we were human garbage cans when we were 12!

Plus, the history of the chicken nugget and why raccoons wash their food!

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