HOW TO MAKE YOUR passion a writing career? If you could, I know you would. So let’s get you those skills, shall we? I have just the inspiration for you. Please meet Amy Halloran, who lives and writes her food politics, and does so joyfully. Read along while you listen to our conversation on this new episode of the QWERTY podcast. This conversation has been slightly edited for this format.
Marion: My guest today is Amy Halloran. She’s a writer, author, teacher, and cook. Her Instagram handle is Flour Ambassador, which gives you some insight into her point of view. Amy has turned some well-earned personal politics into a business, producing a multi-platform life in the advocacy of grain. This is someone who knows how to make your passion a writing career. Hi, Amy.
Amy: Hi, Marion. Thanks for having me.
Marion: I’m so glad you’re here. How are you today?
Amy: I’m pretty good. It’s sunny. Despite the pandemic, I feel okay.
Marion: Good. Well, good. You’re the person I really want to talk to about this. So many people want to take something they feel strongly about and turn it into a writing career. Maybe it’s something that they do. Maybe it’s something that they love. Maybe it’s something they believe in. And for you, the politics of food seems to be your thing, and it’s one of the more compelling topics we have before us right now. And yet I think most of us miss it amid the wild, gorgeous sort of food porn that’s available online. We kind of think of food writing as that mouthwatering, high styled, gorgeous Instagram stream, those websites, those online videos of how to in that sort of upscale eating, but that’s not what you do, despite the fact that what you make…
All of what you make. And we’ll talk later about maybe those squash English muffins, but what you make is delicious, but you really trade in food justice. And in doing so, you illustrate and have educated us what it takes for us to eat. So every morsel really does have a story behind it. Doesn’t it?
Amy: It has a story, and it has a lot of people. And I think that that is the biggest thing that we’re missing, and I feel really compelled to tell the stories of the people who are in our food system.
Marion: Yeah. And I think it’s a worthwhile. And I look at you now having really read widely in your work, and I realized you’re really an agent for change. And I think in that a lot of writers can relate. So the question I think for a lot of people is how do I put my politics to work for me on the page? And so to explore that, I’m just going to do a quick little 360 around you so people get the context. You used to run a farmer’s market in the city in which we both live, Troy, New York. You run a community meals program and food pantry at a human services agency where you collect and redistribute groceries, and you teach classes in cooking, baking, and food justice, and you volunteer at a youth powered farm.
You make and share meals in your dining room. And so while your writing and cooking may seem very different if somebody is thinking that way, it’s more the point that they share the same problem, that we don’t value food and feeding and the farming and the environment. So how in the name of goodness did you figure out to become this agent of change and put it to work in this wonderful writing? What was the beginning of the aha for you?
Amy: I think the aha happened 20 years ago when I got a side job running the Troy Waterfront Farmers Market. I was its first paid manager, and I always had food jobs as a fiction writer. That was my first impulse was to write fiction and plays and poetry, and I did that exclusively in my twenties. But then I had a child at 31 and I couldn’t any longer separate my money work from my writing work. And I started floundering around trying to earn a living as a writer, but that doesn’t… Writing is a crime that doesn’t pay very well, so I always had extra food jobs, right? I worked in restaurants. I ran food co-ops. Just always in food because you got to eat and I always loved food and I was always baking.
And so I got a job running the farmers’ market. That was the side job. But I remember as I got to know the farmers observed my interactions with them, I felt so vulnerable and silly because I knew nothing about their work. And I had grown up in the country. So I had farm kids in my classroom in all of my classes, but I didn’t understand it all what it was to get food from the ground. And I felt a tremendous responsibility to these people that I was managing their business lives running the farmers’ market. And I also saw that I wanted to be a kind of Studs Terkel. I was never going to be fancy food. Knee-jerk. I was raised Irish, so we’re knee-jerking, anti-fancy, right? We’re not allowed to even I consider the…
Amy: Oh my god. It’s so ingrained in me. So I wasn’t going to go for restaurants and that kind of stuff. There’s plenty of people doing that and I’m not articulate in that, but like how did the cheese get to us from R&G Cheesemaker? I was so embarrassed, I didn’t even know how a cherry tomato grew, and I live with gardeners. My family gardens, and they were also introducing me to nature and food as being this collaboration, but it really turned me. I just remember looking at the farmers and thinking, don’t see how stupid I am. Please don’t see how stupid I am.
Marion: So you’re writing kind of closes the gap between where our food comes from and the table on which we eat it. Is that what the writing does? It sort of stitches together those quandaries?
Amy: Yes. Yes.
Marion: Lovely.
Amy: I try to catch us up. I’m really enamored with some historical writings that I can’t quite figure out how to bring in. But the 1900 census was the first time that more people lived in cities in America than in the country. And so for 120 years in America, the work of farming has gotten further and further and further from sight. And I really want to talk about everything along the way that we can’t imagine, that we don’t know.
Marion: Well, having Studs Terkel as a role model is a pretty good thing to do. For those people who don’t know Studs Terkel’s work, he was based in Chicago. He wrote a classic called Working in which he really explored the lives of people whose working jobs support us all. And he worked every day of his life until the very last, lived a good long life and published widely. And I think you couldn’t do better than that. And I love the fact that that’s whose sort of percolating underneath your consciousness here. It’s tremendously informing. So you’re also giving the great advice to people that they need to have that kind of a role model. Think about the things you’ve read.
I’ve read that you believe that… You have a quote in one of the interviews I’ve read with you that you say that we live removed from the realities of farming. I want to illustrate the work that it takes to eat. And I love that, the idea that the work that it takes to eat is something we should be pausing for a moment before we consume it in honor. And so what are we talking about when we connect with that work? Are we talking about really think… I mean, do you sit before you eat? Do you pause and think back to the person who picked and who planted? Are you at your table actively practicing that kind of consciousness, or is most of that energy going into the writing? Or is it both?
Amy: I think it’s mostly… I think that way more in the kitchen. That was my first interface with food was as pancake maker and family baker. I really always connected there, and that’s where… When I’m handling stuff, I notice and try to reflect upon all the work that I can’t see, because I certainly don’t fill my house with exclusively local foods. It’s rather impossible to do that. But I think the more that we can visualize and know or guess what’s going on in the pound of beans that you can or can’t get at the supermarket and what do you know about the flower supply chain that has been interrupted.
I think this moment of our entire world’s changing has really given an opportunity for people to slow down and take a deeper look at what’s going on. And that’s how I get at it.
Marion: I love that, and I think it’s true. I mean, I think all of this… We’re still in the middle of COVID-19. We may not even be in the middle of COVID. We’re in the time of COVID, I think, and it’s a better way to look at it. And we have the ability to slow down. I’m noticing the birds more. I’m cooking more elaborately. I’m thinking more about the food. We just have the time to do it. And I think that’s a great encouragement. Hot to make your passion a writing career? You were able to build a writing career from that is so good in terms of messaging to people who want to do that. What do you love? What do you do? What consideration do you bring to it? So that’s a great message and it’s pretty lofty stuff.
And I’m glad we got that out of the way because now we have to talk about pancakes. Because damn girl, you love your pancakes. I mean, it’s lovely to have this agent of change conversation, but I’ve read so many times and listened to you on the radio say that a single pancake is actually what led you to this advocacy. So you do need to just get us a little bit on board about how a pancake can lead to a multi-platform life.
Amy: Well, I think it’s about your curiosity. You really have to notice yourself. So notice the moments where you feel vulnerable and say, “Uh-oh, I think I better understand why I don’t know this stuff.” And that’s what led to thinking about the whole food system, but then also notice the things that you love. You know? I really, really have always loved pancakes. And when I was in Seattle… I lived in Seattle during the ’90s. It was the farthest I could get from Upstate New York without a passport, so I moved out to Seattle. And I remember the day I met somebody who said, “Oh yeah, I make pancakes at my restaurant for lunch.” I was like, pancakes for lunch. Oh my goodness. Any excuse to have cake every single meal of the day.
I mean, I actually had somebody… I don’t know. There’s something cosmic about the pancakes. A million years ago when I lived in Boston, somebody walked up to me and said, “You look like someone who knows where to get a good pancake. Get a good plate of pancakes.” So I just had the pancake compass and really kept my nose in my own interest, and eventually it comes around. I did keep the paid work separate for a long time so that I can subsidize my curiosities, but I think it’s so, so important to find interest and engagement in what you’re doing. And that could be anything. I mean, along the way I wrote for Food Safety News, and I don’t have any training in Food Safety Law, but it allowed me to explore a lot of different things.
That did influence me in the wrong way though. I got so nervous when I was writing for Food Safety News. So there’s another memo to think about what you get involved in. When I got to exploring the grains, that was August 10th, 2010, so 10 years ago, my husband brought me a cookie and that cookie is the thing that really set me on this green path because it had flavors that were so tasty. And I couldn’t understand why in 40 years of obsessive baking, I hadn’t been told to get more than King Arthur Flour. I knew that King Arthur was what I preferred that had a certain quality, but I didn’t know to do more.
And so I started to investigate that and I began asking everybody I knew about what was going on with flour, and I began getting whatever jobs I could to write about regional grains. I got a job to… The Northeast Organic Farming Association had a day focused on grains. So to go to their conference for free, I got a job writing about something else, which was the good agricultural practices session that they were also leading. And I kind of piggybacked my way toward writing exclusively about grains.
Marion: So the evolution here, what you’re giving… The advice here to the young writer is that you stick with your knitting, or in this case, you stick with your pancake and it gets heightened by a cookie if you’re very, very lucky. And this leads us not so eventually, but in terms of number of years on the planet, in a fairly quick way to this beautiful book that you’ve written called The New Bread Basket, which is published by Chelsea Green Publishing. And I love that even your publisher was unbranded. It’s an employee-owned company. It’s a gorgeous publisher, but this is a real love story about grain. And you make the point as you just…
In the book, you make the point that you just did, which is pretty much we know about like vegetables and fruits and where even the least of us is beginning to understand that there is a variety of things and we can recognize them a little bit, variety of apples, variety of lettuce, variety of tomato. But that grain has sort of came literally late to the table in terms of this food Renaissance that a lot of us are very happily living in, and yet grain has been around for 10,000 years. It’s been one of the staples of Western civilization. So you bite into this cookie and this taste kind of sets off this whole area of exploration for you that leads to this book. Wow. Wow.
And how exciting for all of us, but talk about, if you would please, that personal journey. I mean, that’s a long journey because you interview and talk to and get on the page, growing, milling, malting marketing. You talk about grain, about what it is. So along the way from your curiosity after biting into this cookie to publishing a beautiful and very well-received book, did you get daunted by the sheer size of the assignment you had taken on? Because this really does take on grain in the largest sense, this book.
Amy: I don’t think I was ever afraid of how big it was. I was so charmed. And the people who were doing work in regional grains and in trying to figure this out are so engaged. And as soon as I began to meet them, I had infinite energy because they were so in love with what they were doing and so willing to share with me. I met so many generous people who excitedly brought me in to work. Bakers who had me on the phone for an hour and a quarter when they had a bakery to run, but I needed to understand something about flour and they were perfectly happy to give me that. Farmer Ground Flour over in Ithaca, New York, they brought me through field to table and wide awake bakery. I would go to their baking class lessons.
The people in my book are really mentors in a sense because they just invited me into their work lives in a beautiful way, and there was no reason to ever think that this couldn’t be handled. It was like getting an intellectual hug.
Marion: It’s gorgeous.
Amy: It really was. It was the luckiest thing in my life to land in this work.
Marion: I’ve never had anybody say no to me when I’ve called them up and asked them if they would let me come and see what they do for a living. And that’s taken me in a very different orbit than yours. And yet mine was always driven by passion too. And if you call someone and you say, “I want to understand how it is you mapped the gene for that, I want to understand how it is you discovered that way of doing that kind of bridge construction, or I want to understand how you go from field to table with this grain,” I think it’s an honor. I believe you’re honoring the person.
So I always encourage young writers, when they need to do research for a memoir, for instance, if they need to do research for a nonfiction book, if they’re writing fiction and you’ve got a person who runs a flower shop, call a person who runs a flower shop and say, “May I please come in and watch you work for the day?” I’ve always found it to be the most generous response. Everyone has always said yes. So I love hearing that they did the same for you, and I think it’s very encouraging for young writers. This is where accuracy occurs, is going to see the thing for real. So you’ve turned this into a multi-platform life, as I said, which means that you teach, you cook, you write you broadcast And some of that has to be uncomfortable.
Not everybody likes to be seen on video. We’re all learning in Zoom meetings what we look like in Zoom meetings, and it’s not that pleasant sometimes to get that eye full of “Holy Toledo, is that what I look like when shot from above with bright light in my face?” If the reporting wasn’t uncomfortable, has any of this sort of multi-platform experience, and obviously you started, as you said, as a fiction writer, and you… So you started as a writer, but as you moved out and you’re really branching out, I love to see what you’re doing, has any of it been uncomfortable? And if so, which part and what did you do to sort of get over that fear of podcasting or broadcasting or whatever?
Amy: Oh, sure. It’s always moments, and they’re often surprising moments. You catch yourself off guard. I was in a Zoom baking class today where I didn’t think we were going to have to introduce ourselves. I wanted just watch. And I had an opportunity to introduce myself and I could hear my voice trembling. And I knew I didn’t do it in the confidence that I should, but that’s okay. You know? That stuff happens. And when I first started doing baking demonstrations, I would watch my hand shake as I flipped the pancakes, but nerves are always going to happen. You eventually get comfortable. I’m a very, very conversational writer.
And I’m finding with the Instagram Lives that I decided to do when the shutdowns started to happen, I said, “Oh, I think I would just want to grab a microphone and do this.” Oh, actually I think this is an important point. The reason I decided to do this is that I pay attention to the people that I admire and see what they do. So there’s an incredible organization out in Oregon called Culinary Breeding Network, and I try to copy everything Lane Selman does. She is trying to link farmers to chefs through food breeding. And so Lane was doing these farmer interviews and I said, “Oh, time for me to do that.” And there wasn’t any fear with that.
I’ve gotten so cozy with just chatting with people, and most of the people that I’m talking to on these Instagram Lives are my friends or colleagues. I know their work, so there’s already a rapport and I’m diving into that rapport. And so maybe that’s the advice is think of where you feel comfortable and try to draw that comfort into something. If you have a good relationship with someone, start there and try to get into the platform with an ease. So the first Instagram Live I did was with a woman who runs a malt house and a mill over in Massachusetts. And since we have a very reasonable easy back and forth, our conversation did too.
Marion: Yeah, I noticed. I love those. So you do a series of Instagram Lives based on someone you admire who does these other interviews. We all know the quote, imitation is the greatest form of flattery, but it is. So for me, I also find that wanting to know something is a great generator. I’m curious about how people make a multi-platform life, for instance. So I’m just going to ask you and you’re going to tell me, and in the meantime you’re telling all everyone who’s listening. So I think you can go with curiosity. I think you can go with the love of a pancake. I think you can go with biting into a cookie.
I think that if your head’s in the right place, you can get this kind of inspiration to write and form a life around that from literally biting into a cookie. You’re my very favorite example of that. But then when you meet that discomfort, I think you’re right. You just kind of have to tuck into it and say, “That was my hand shaking while I’m baking,” and that’s just the deal with it. That’s that’s for real. It’s not a reason not to do it is what I’m saying.
Amy: Oh, not at all.
Marion: And so when you’re cooking, you cook for a lot of people, community meals, managing a soup kitchen. Are you always writing in real time? I mean, are you literally… Do you have a notebook next to you as you’re whipping up a meal so that if there’s one of those great moments of humanity in that community dinner, you’re jotting it down, or you’re making notes when you go home? I mean, a lot of people worry about the real time experience and how to report on it. What’s your best tip there?
Amy: Well, my best tip goes back to a writer who I loved, James Purdy. He’s a fiction writer who he said of work, “Do something that’s not going to tire you out too much.” And unfortunately cooking did tire me out too much, so I had to stop doing that recently. But I always kept a notebook at your side. You know? Either mentally, that can be your phone. I would talk notes into my phone all the time.
Marion: Good. Good tip.
Amy: Keep paper around the house. Write things down. And also, I don’t worry that I’m going to lose stuff anymore. I have no discipline. No self-discipline. No other discipline. I just have no discipline. So I try sometimes to write every morning, but the only thing that really makes anything happen is demand.
Marion: Deadline.
Amy: Yeah.
Marion: Demand and deadline.
Amy: It’s totally the way to do it, and it’s always absolute last minute with me. I can’t. I have two boys and I wish they didn’t follow my habit, but they do. You just try for that. And I think if you can make those emotional notes, that feeling that I was talking about where I noticed that I didn’t know anything about the farmer’s work. So that kind of just self-awareness like, oh, there’s something to write about. I’ve got this conflict that I need to explore. And just paying attention to that and keeping those on your lists like oh.
Marion: Right. It’s a great place to write from. I remember watching… I was addicted to crime shows, and I would watch them, but I watch it with my hands over my eyes. Now, what does that even mean? So I’d be watching these murder mysteries, but I have my hands over my face. So one day I thought, what is this about this murder mystery thing? And why do I have that response to it, and yet I can’t stop watching him? And that led me to write a book on forensic science. Go behind the scenes in the world for two years and spend all this time in autopsies and crime scenes and everything because I wanted to understand what that duality was, what that terror addiction place was. And I got right into it, I got to tell you.
As we sort of close this thing out, well, let’s get into something that I absolutely have to know about. One of the things that I love about what you do and who you are is this is not that French chef in a toque kind of cooking conversation. You are passion and humor and fun. You are the epitome of how to make your passion a writing career. And as I said before, you’ve got this recipe for squash English muffins that just completely… I mean, if there’s ever like a personality badge for you, it’s that. Can I put squash in that? Sure, I can. Watch me. And then you just wrote about it. And I just howled when I read it. So, as we get out of this conversation, which I’m deeply glad that we’ve been able to have, let us please go back to pancakes for a minute.
Just walk me through the perfect pancake breakfast at your house. Like which pancake is it that you make when you sit down with your boys and your husband?
Amy: So it’s got to be… So wheat has white bran or red bran, and most bran… I mean, most of the wheat that we have has this red brand. I mention that because it’s got tannins in it and that makes it slightly bitter. The white wheat, however, they don’t have any of those tannins and so many different flavors, floral, nutty. Each type of white wheat has its own characteristic just jumping out. So that is the perfect kind of wheat for pancakes. And right now the only one that I have, it would have to be ground up in this tabletop mill that we have, and it was white wheat that was grown by my neighbor, my pancake farmer friend, I call him, Howard. He’s in Troy also.
And those pancakes would be made with baking powder, baking soda, a little bit of salt, eggs, a little bit of yogurt, and milk. And then you mix up the dry ingredients. Add in the wet ingredients. Let everything sit because the important thing with whole grain baking is to let things absorb for about 10 minutes, and then goes on to the griddle. The griddle is very important. It’s very nice if you have a round griddle, because I think there is something visually, spiritually satisfying by looking at round things. So I have this round griddle that I’ve had forever, and I would make the pancakes.
Amy: And I have yogurt and butter on my pancakes. One of my son’s has maple syrup only and likes to eat them one at a time, and then the other one wants fruit and yogurt and maple syrup. And my husband just goes for butter and maple syrup, and he can eat them two at a time.
Marion: Okay. Well, it’s a great picture. And it’s a wonderful life the way you live it. Thank you for showing us how to make your passion a writing career. I’m so enamored of the idea of living your politics and fighting for food justice and bringing our attention to the people that supply our tables with such bounty. So thank you, Amy. It’s been a joy to talk to you, and I look forward to talking with you again.
Amy: Thank you, Marion. This was fun.
Marion: You’re welcome. That’s Amy. Her book, The New Bread Basket, is found wherever books are sold. Follow her on Instagram as the Flour Ambassador, and on Twitter as Farm Brain, and see her online under her own name. I’m Marion, and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. QWERTY is produced by Overit Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at Overit Studios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more on the art and work of writing? Visit Marion Roach dot com and take a class with me. And thanks for listening. Don’t forget to subscribe to QWERTY and listen to it wherever you go.
