Well...this one was a fun romp. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

I started my real cooking journey in the 1980s while I was in graduate school for clinical psychology. Maybe it was just the inquisitive, scientist part of me coming out but I was all over reading about exotic foods, techniques and how different they are from what I grew up on. Now, most of the food I grew up on was delicious but let's face it, basic, country fare. I made my first risotto, bought my first real wok (that I still have and man, is it well-seasoned) and started having "perfect" dinner parties.

It is the time when I just started to understand recipes and the science of food and boy, was it fun!

Natalia was barely born in the 80s so her experience was somewhat (?!) different from mine but we get to hear about her family's Serbian traditions and how she learned that dinner parties had to be perfect.

The 1980s also gave rise to the many gourmet food trends that we don't even consider gourmet anymore, in fact, most of them are mainstream and we have the ubiquitous sun-dried tomato to thank for that. Hard to believe, right?

Our final suggestion? When traveling, do your souvenir shopping at the local grocer. It's a lot more interesting and cheaper!

Thanks for listening!

You can find us wherever you listen to podcasts and the unedited version video-style is on YouTube @thegirlcancook.