Your Mama's Kitchen Episode 4: Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach
TRANSCRIPT
Audible Originals presents Your Mama's Kitchen, hosted by Michele Norris.
Michele Norris: It’s Michele Norris and I’d like to let listeners know that today’s episode includes discussion about eating disorders and addiction. Please take care when listening. Thanks so much.
Glennon Doyle: The kitchen has been the holy place, the boxing ring, the place where we have worked out and struggled with our shit the most. Because food symbolizes everything. It’s nourishment, it’s punishment, it’s whether you trust your body in the world and each other enough. It all gets played out right at the counter in the sink.
Michele Norris: Welcome to Your Mama’s Kitchen, the podcast that explores how we’re shaped as adults by the kitchens we grew up in as kids. I’m Michele Norris. The kitchen is the emotional heartbeat of our homes. So many important things happen there: meals, memories, laughter, and sometimes tough stuff. All of it simmers inside us forever and shapes who we become in interesting and sometimes surprising ways.
Michele Norris: Today’s episode is about finding common ground in that sacred space called the kitchen. When people come together under one roof. They have to learn how to share space in the bedroom, in the bathroom, in the closet, and yes, in the kitchen, where we learn quite a lot about our partners in life: their habits, their power dynamics, even their attitudes around food that were carried over from childhood. Building a shared kitchen is difficult, especially if partners grew up with very different ideas and experiences around food. Today we hear from a happily married couple who figured out how to make all that work: Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. Abby is a retired professional star, soccer player, and icon, six-time winner of the US Soccer Athlete of the Year. Two-time Olympic gold medalist and a standout player on the U.S. women’s National Soccer team.
Michele Norris: Glennon is an outspoken blogger, author, and activist with multiple books on the New York Times bestseller list, including Untamed and Love Warrior.
Michele Norris: And the couple married in 2017, and both have been very public about past addictions and struggles with food. They now coparent Glennon’s three children from her previous marriage in their sunny Southern California home. You can hear how symbiotic Abby and Glennon are. There’s this playful intimacy in the way they finish each other’s sentences and operate almost like a cohesive unit. But you might be surprised to hear about how different their lives were growing up in very different households. Their mamas’ respective kitchens could not have been more different.
Michele Norris: What did you absorb from them?
Abby Wambach: Eat everything.
Michele Norris: That’s Abby’s voice.
Glennon Doyle: Eat nothing.
Michele Norris: And that’s Glennon.
Michele Norris: Oh, my goodness. Literally. Totally opposite messages.
Michele Norris: Abby and Glennon, I am so glad that you’re with us. I have been eagerly waiting for this conversation.
Glennon Doyle: Oh, us too. You’re just one of our favorite people. I’m delighted to be talking to you this morning.
Michele Norris: Not as delighted as I am. I am looking forward to this. So this is a podcast where we often begin with that simple question: Tell me about your mama’s kitchen. So I want both of you to, in your mind, go back, close your eyes if you need to to go back there, and tell us about the kitchen of your youth and how it influences the person you are today.
Glennon Doyle: You start.
Abby Wambach: So I’m the youngest of seven kids and my parents, from the time I was alive till even now, live in the same house. In the same kitchen. And I can see from the eighties. I was born in 1980. I know the specific like wallpaper. Right now it’s different. They’ve remodeled one time since then. You know the wood walls?
Glennon Doyle: Yes, the paneling.
Abby Wambach: Yeah, there is paneling. It was in the room right next to the kitchen. And you know, my mom, she had to feed nine mouths throughout the whole of my life. And so she was just always there, always in the kitchen. There’s like a little TV, a little small TV that’s like, tucked up under the cabinets where she’ll just lean against the countertops and just be watching her TV. We have a side door and a front door to the house and a door that everybody walks into, walks straight into the kitchen. And so it’s the gathering place. It’s where people congregate. And when there was food on the stove or she was in the middle of some sort of kitchen, it was get out of the kitchen. Go make yourself scarce. Get out of here. I got to do my work. And then when it’s ready, you guys can come back. Just lots of love. My mother definitely showed and expressed her love for us through acts of service and cooking was by far and away like the number one act of service.
Michele Norris: And did you eat in shifts?
Abby Wambach: No. We ate as a family every single night. It was like clockwork. 6:00, everybody’s in the house at the dinner table. You got to get yourself a drink. I mean, and back when I was growing up, it was a tall glass of whole milk.
Glennon Doyle: Whole milk. Oh.
Abby Wambach: Gross. Gross.
Michele Norris: Well, at least it wasn’t buttermilk.
Abby Wambach: Yeah, that’s true. There’s always a worse option. I guess you’re right. And honestly, all of us were going in so many different directions throughout our days that the dinner table everybody came to every night. It was like my safe place. It was the place where I felt like because I was the youngest and I just wanted to be around everybody and everybody felt like they had more important things to do. So this moment where we got together, it was real safety for me for sure.
Michele Norris: Glennon, did you feel that in your kitchen also?
Glennon Doyle: Yes. So it could not be more different for me because my parents both worked. So Abby’s mom stayed home with her flock. My parents were both educators. Yes, teachers. And then they became guidance counselors and then principals. So I remember visually the same thing. Lots of brown, lots of peeling wallpaper, brown plastic tile on the floor. I vividly remember a little quote that was framed on the wall and it just said, “No woman ever shot a man while he was doing the dishes.” And I always thought, that’s rough, I guess it’s my mom’s way of making sure my dad did the dishes. But the kitchen was not safe, [that] would not be the word that I would pick because I had an eating disorder that started at age 10. So everything around kitchens and food, “safe” would not have been the right word for.
Abby Wambach: Which causes no problems at all in our marriage. Zero.
Michele Norris: We’re going to get to that in a minute, because that’s a bridge that you guys have figured out how to cross.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Michele Norris: You know, the kitchen is a place where a lot of stuff happens, not just food. How has that space influenced you in interesting or surprising ways?
Glennon Doyle: For me, there was a lot of love in my family when it came to kitchens and food. The feeling was scarcity.
Michele Norris: Hmm.
Glennon Doyle: So there was a lot of like control and scarcity. Like my parents are both teachers, so it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough money, but there wasn’t like ever a lot of extra. So I remember there would be some cereal in the pantry, but it wasn’t that good cereal like the good cereal. If anyone brought home a good cereal, then somebody would hide it.
Michele Norris: So a good cereal would be like Cap’n Crunch or...
Glennon Doyle: Not even, no. The good cereal in my family was Cracklin’ Oat Bran. I know. It’s not even that good, but it had, like, a little sugar in it.
Michele Norris: I wish we had a picture because, Abby, you just made a face, like, really, Cracklin’ Oat Bran? That was the good cereal, though, okay? They were healthy.
Abby Wambach: Fruity Pebbles was my good cereal.
Glennon Doyle: Well, I would have been best friends with you because I picked my friends based on their pantry. I did. For real. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s not like I would pick my friends based on whether their parents had Twinkies and Frosted Flakes and, you know, sugary cereals. And then when we went to their house after school, I would just live in their pantry.
Abby Wambach: We would have been besties for sure.
Glennon Doyle: Besties, yeah.
Abby Wambach: So you said that there’s scarcity. How does that, like, inform the way that you think about kitchens now?
Glennon Doyle: Well. In opposite ways. Like your family had a lot of indulgence around food. And my family had a lot of control and scarcity about food. And so I think we picked each other because we wanted that in our lives. You wanted more control, and I wanted more indulgence.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: But you know how, like, a couple of years into marriage, the thing you picked the other person for, that’s the thing that’s, like, so annoying. So that’s like a lot of people. Our challenge, I think, is remembering that we needed that part of each other.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Because the kitchen and food has been the holy place, the boxing ring, the place where we have worked out and struggled with our shit the most because food symbolizes everything. It’s nourishment, it’s punishment, it’s whether you trust your body in the world and each other enough. It all gets played out right at the counter in the sink.
Abby Wambach: And I think like, you know, my family has had a tendency to overindulge in ways that now I see has made some of them a little unhealthy.
Michele Norris: Hmm.
Abby Wambach: Right. And then when you compound that with me being a professional athlete, food and eating was part of my job. Right, like, I had to consume some days, sometimes 6,000 calories so that I wouldn’t lose actual muscle mass or weight. To maintain a weight, I would have to eat what I expended that day. Right. And so when Glennon and I met, it was like soon after I retired and I wanted to, like, figure out a normal way of being. So that’s why it was very enticing that there was a—
Glennon Doyle: I was like, oh, I’ve got this girl, you just don’t eat.
Michele Norris: So she had the control that you were looking for. We’re just going to put up guardrails around the kitchen and I’ll help you figure this out.
Abby Wambach: I guess I just didn’t trust myself. I didn’t have, like, an off switch. And so that’s been really interesting to navigate. But I think that Glennon and I are both moving towards the middle.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: In a way of operating, in a way of thinking about consumption, food, and stuff.
Michele Norris: But when I listen to you talk, it sounds like to people who are holding on to a rope, it’s not necessarily Tug-o-rope because that sounds like you’re pulling in opposite directions. You’re trying to climb that rope, you know, and figure out, where’s the middle here? Where’s the comfortable place?
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. And I think maybe the comfortable place is joy, like having joy around the kitchen and food. Our oldest is 20 now, but when he was four, I had him in a storytime at the library, and the librarian was going through rooms in the house to talk about the book they were reading. And she said, you know, what’s the bedroom for? And all the kids said, Sleeping. And then she said, What’s the kitchen for? And all the kids said, Eating, but Chase yelled "dancing!" And I thought, that’s so sweet, because we do have dance parties in the kitchen. But he also doesn’t know that people eat in the kitchen.
Michele Norris: That sounds like a family I want to be a part of, though. We know if they’re dancing in the kitchen, that’s a good space.
Abby Wambach: I also love your analogy with the rope, but I want to take it one step further because I think what Glenn and I have learned is that in order for us to do well, not just in our marriage, but like in our pursuit of joy and love with food and kitchens and all of that, Glennon is climbing her own rope and I am climbing my own rope. So it’s not that we are in any opposition. It’s just like we’re both on the wall, like—
Glennon Doyle: Hey. Hi there.
Abby Wambach: Hey, you doing okay? Like because there’s an individuality, it’s a very personal thing. And yes, it does affect when you’re in a marriage the way that you operate around food and in a kitchen and all of that stuff matters. But we both have to get to a place of deep understanding for our own selves.
Michele Norris: It feels like both women are on the way to figuring this out. They understand the key to building a strong bond is trust. But trust is earned. And when two strong personalities come together, two women who are used to running things on their own, conflicts around control are unavoidable.
Glennon Doyle: Abby was probably resting in the middle of the day, which just to me is just an aggression. It’s an act of just…
Michele Norris: What, you have something against naps?
Glennon Doyle: Well, not anymore.
Abby Wambach: I was taking a siesta. I was taking a 30-minute lay down in the middle of the day. Rest.
Glennon Doyle: Not any more. Now I’m learning, but...
Michele Norris: Wait. Not anymore. She doesn’t take naps anymore. Are you? Are you don’t react to the naps in the way that you used to.
Abby Wambach: I’m committed to naps.
Glennon Doyle: I join her in the naps. But I was raised by a football coach. I remember being in my living room right outside the kitchen. And if I heard the gravel rocks, that would mean my dad was coming home. I would stand up and try to look busy. So, like, my brain might know resting is important to be a human, but my body thinks if I sit down, this whole shit’s going to fall apart. So when my partner would rest in the middle of the day, my mind might say, That’s okay, people can rest. But my body was throwing dishes around like.
Michele Norris: Oh, trying to wake her up?
Glennon Doyle: Yes. I would be, like, pushing dishes around the kitchen, like making as much noise as possible. She would turn to me and say, Are you having a fight with me without me? And I would say, Yes, that’s what I’m doing in my mind. I’m having a fight with you without you. And I am winning. I said something to her one day like, Don’t you have things to do? We have, like, a whole list to do. How are you going to get it done? And she said something like, You know, when you don’t trust me, when you try to control me, it tells me that you don’t trust me. And that really hurts me because I trust you deeply. And I think that conversation was the first time I started. Yeah, I started thinking about.
Michele Norris: Mind blown, right?
Glennon Doyle: I don’t trust you. I mean, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t trust myself either, which is why I’m constantly controlling myself. But we only do control things we don’t trust. So that really completely relates to food with me. When I’m making rules for myself about food or staying out of the kitchen because I can’t trust myself around food, that means I don’t trust my body to want what it wants, eat what it needs. Stop when it’s ready. I don’t trust my body to become whatever it’s supposed to be as opposed to controlling it and trying to keep it small. Because that’s the messages that I heard forever. I think it all. Feeling comfortable in the kitchen. All has to do with trusting yourself, right?
Abby Wambach: Yeah. I mean, one of our little dances that we did for a long time was I would just eat whatever I wanted. And what I was doing was I was triggering her. Because the truth is, when you have little human beings around you that you’re raising, they’re 10, 13, 8. When I came into the family, they’re watching you.
Michele Norris: Mmhmm. They’re watching everything.
Abby Wambach: They’re like stalking you, basically.
Glennon Doyle: They’re little stalkers, yeah.
Abby Wambach: They’re just, like, looking at everything that you do. And that’s in some ways more important than anything you can say to a child. It’s like showing them how you live. And that was a conversation we had early on that was really important for me, that my behaviors matter.
Michele Norris: So you said something interesting. You said that you had young people who were watching you and you had to be careful about how you order your steps because, you know, they’re absorbing everything they see in here. You were once young people who were watching your mamas in the kitchen. What did you absorb from them?
Abby Wambach: Eat everything.
Glennon Doyle: Eat nothing.
Michele Norris: Oh, my goodness.
Abby Wambach: Literally.
Michele Norris: Totally opposite messages.
Abby Wambach: Completely opposite messages. Eat everything. And then when there’s dessert, eat that. We have dessert directly after dinner.
Michele Norris: And Glennon, what was that dinner table like for you? What were you seeing as a young kid, and what did you absorb?
Glennon Doyle: I think it was very important to my family to make sure that no one was overeating. And so we would not have a lot of food on the table. We would have like that Mrs. Budd’s chicken pot pie or something like a meatloaf or, you know, something that my mom put together. And then there would be a plate with four slices of sandwich bread and then like, a thing of microwave broccoli. And never did we have dessert.
Michele Norris: And was that because of scarcity, financial scarcity, or was it because your parents were into fitness or were trying to watch their waistlines?
Glennon Doyle: Not being indulgent with food was very important to both of my parents. It was called healthy in the eighties, but I think now it would be called eating disordered. The eighties were, you know, just Diet Coke and...
Michele Norris: Oh, Diet Coke or Tab. See, I’m older than you and my mom drinks Tab and Fresca.
Abby Wambach: Tab with the cigarette.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. So the money was always kind of right there to every Friday night we would go to pizza. There was one pizza and water. When we first got together and Abby ordered an appetizer at dinner, Michelle, I was like, Who does this woman think she is, Rockefeller? Like, we don’t order appetizers.
Michele Norris: And did you say something about it, or did you just silently seethe?
Glennon Doyle: No, I think at first I thought, Oh my God, this is so amazing. Oh, this is like what I need in my life. She would order more than one meal. She would order whatever she wanted supported cert. I think I knew in my gut this kind of joy and freedom around food meant more joy and freedom all over the place. And that is what Abby has brought to my life. So I think that I knew exactly what I needed to be a more full human being and experience life more beautifully than I was before. It just doesn’t come without challenges. You know, we always think like the way that most of us become freer is to break whatever rule our parents told us around, whatever it is. Like money, food? Yeah. I just got to a point in my recovery where I’ve actually gained a bunch of weight and that is so good and also so terrifying because my little self is breaking a rule.
Michele Norris: Mmhmm.
Glennon Doyle: From my kitchen. And nobody made that rule maliciously. It’s just like every generation hopefully gets a little bit freer.
Michele Norris: So tell me about the kitchen that you have created in your family now. What’s important in terms of what you do in the kitchen, what you serve in the kitchen? Now, when you moved from Florida to California, you had a clean slate. You had a chance to design the kitchen of your dreams. What did it look like and what happens there?
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. So we’re in a little beach town. And so when you walk upstairs, there’s windows all across the wall that you walk up and see the ocean. And then in the kitchen, it’s very open. There’s a big island, you know, first thing in the morning, there’s a couple of teenagers who are trying to avoid eye contact with us because we are very peppy in the morning and they are not. So they become more peppy as the day goes on. But they are usually rummaging through the fridge. They make bagels, they make smoothies, they get fruit, they get cereal.
Abby Wambach: It’s one of my favorite things to just sit there and get work done, just sitting there while Glennon or somebody else is in the kitchen making some food or vice versa. Glen and Will. Often because we have this open concept on the top floor, we’ve got the kitchen that separates the living room with the dining room table long table. People are watching TV friends, you know, the show Friends is always on in the background when we have our teenagers home.
Michele Norris: They’re watching Friends?
Abby Wambach: They are.
Michele Norris: How weird is that. That it’s like, we’ll never outrun that show.
Glennon Doyle: No, it’s her comfort show and then she’ll stop it and point out things that she’s like, I cannot believe you all are like, there’s things in that show. It’s wonderful. And there’s also some things that are so—
Abby Wambach: Problematic.
Glennon Doyle: Problematic. And she can’t believe it. And she’s like, You guys were laughing to this. Like, it’s hard to explain and there’s always music. One thing that Abby does whenever we’re like each other all day is that she will turn on music, you know, when it’s 5:00 or whatever, when the house is kind of starting to slow down and everybody’s coming upstairs from their homework and dinner’s starting and she’ll stop me and like, make me dance with her.
Michele Norris: To what kind of music? What are you playing?
Glennon Doyle: It’s usually like, I mean, we’re good lesbians, Michelle, so it’s usually like the Indigo Girls or Brandi Carlile or it’s everything you would expect. But yeah, that’s always a moment that I always get annoyed at first because I feel like she’s trying to get me out of my head and I feel annoyed for a second, and then I feel totally sunk in and she helps me to just let go of the day and be home now with her and the kids. And that’s always a kitchen moment.
Michele Norris: So you have this interesting style of parenting, and I love the way you described it, because with the kid’s father, he’s active in your life. And you say that it’s almost like you parent like a braid.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Michele Norris: And I love that because I can visualize that there’s sort of three strands coming together.
Glennon Doyle: And Craig lives a block from us, so he’s at our kitchen all the time.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: All the time.
Michele Norris: Oh, he lives just around the corner. Well, that’s convenient. That makes that braid easy to maintain.
Glennon Doyle: Really. Michelle, we have said that wherever the kids are, because we don’t really have, like, a custody, we just decide together where they’re going to be based on everyone’s schedule. But they really are wherever the snacks are better that week.
Abby Wambach: It’s true.
Michele Norris: The kids are where the snacks are better?
Glennon Doyle: Yeah, because we’re so close that they just run back and forth. So if we’ve just gone to Costco like they’re with us and if they’re not with us, you can bet that Craig just did a run.
Michele Norris: I really loved the image of parenting, like a braid with Glennon and Abby living around the corner from Glennon’s ex-husband, Craig. It hit home for me because my own parents lived down the street from each other after they divorced when I was young. There’s something efficient about that, and it was a real gift to have both parents remain active in my life after their divorce. It’s a real gift for any kid who goes through divorce. I wondered if Glennon, Abby, and Craig were also weaving different cultures together, since Craig’s mother is Japanese. I wanted to know if that, too, was part of that beautiful image of a three-stranded breed.
Glennon Doyle: Craig is half Japanese. He doesn’t present as Japanese looking. We grew up together. Craig and I went to high school together, so I know his life forever. And he is of a generation that really assimilation, complete assimilation, was the goal.
Michele Norris: The goal was to be American and to be American. That meant assimilating into majority culture, which meant majority white culture.
Glennon Doyle: Yes. And so his goal was to be like everybody else, which meant assimilate into white culture. So now we have these children. Our oldest is completely Japanese. Like, he’s half. He’s a quarter Japanese, but he looks completely Japanese. Knowing his Japanese culture is of utmost importance to him. So like many families, we are in this interesting generational situation where, I think, Craig kind of talks to our son like, Well, what do you mean? You want to know all of this and it’s important to you and you feel most at home with other Japanese kids or other kids of Asian heritage. And I think our son is kind of like, why don’t you care? It’s just really interesting. I was a white mom who spent a lot of his childhood out in the world, aligning myself with social justice issues and antiracism issues and never brought that home to him, never even thought to really work on connecting him with his Japanese heritage, because... The because would have to be its own episode, because the whiteness in me just saw him as a white kid. It’s stunning to me and it’s something that we are uncovering together. For instance, for his birthday, he took us to a Korean restaurant that none of us had ever been to. It is very, very important to him and he has had to do most of it on his own.
Michele Norris: Adults are supposed to be guides and role models for kids. But here’s the thing about parenthood. Sometimes the kids teach the parents important lessons, and that extends into adulthood as relationships evolve between grownups and their aging parents. Abby and Glenn and have been very honest about their addictions and their eating disorders. And yet both, through all that honesty, have managed to maintain very close relationships with their mothers, and they try to make that a part of their current California kitchen through visits, through phone calls and through shared recipes. Keep listening, because Abby has a treat for us.
Abby Wambach: So about 15 years ago, give or take, for the holidays, my mom had all of her recipes printed out and then put into a binder inside the, what are those things called?
Glennon Doyle: The plastic sleeve.
Abby Wambach: The plastic sleeve. And then gave them, she had like 15 of these made up for friends and family.
Michele Norris: She made her own cookbook.
Abby Wambach: She made her own cookbook. And it says “Recipes from Home,” I think is what it says. You know, it was one of the most special things to me because I was at the time learning how to cook and figuring out my own recipes, but needing to call her for like the old-school family favorites. And so there’s this one dish that she has made my whole life. You can imagine when friends come over or family comes over, extended family comes over, you’ve got 20, sometimes 30 people there. And so there’s this one dish that she made and still makes today, and I make today, called pasta for
thousands. And it’s a very simple, easy thing to do. I wouldn’t say that it’s healthy by any means.
Glennon Doyle: But it’s good.
Abby Wambach: But it can feed the masses and it’s like easier lasagna, essentially.
Michele Norris: So can you tell me just a little bit about it? Is it layered or is it more like a ziti? Like you just kind of mix it all up and topped with cheese?
Abby Wambach: So it is layered. So let me just tell you. So you get two large jars of Ragu spaghetti or we just do our choice of pasta sauce, 2 pounds of medium shells. And the medium is important because you could get large but then it’s just too big, a half a pound of hot Italian sausage, a half a pound of ground beef. And if you want all sausage and you just do a full pound of sausage, it’s your choice. A cup of sour cream. This is also optional, but I always use it. A small package of sliced pepperoni, three cups of shredded mozzarella cheese, and one package of sliced Sargento provolone cheese, and then parmesan.
Glennon Doyle: Basically vegan.
Michele Norris: You would have to perhaps have a vegan option if you add some vegan guests at the table.
Abby Wambach: Essentially, you just cook the meat, you cook the shells, and then you put the sauce in a pan. You add the meat, you let it simmer for 10 minutes. You get the meat in the sauce, like all together, and then a huge, like a nine by 12 or like you go to the store, you can even double this recipe. Go to the store and get those.
Michele Norris: The big foil tins.
Abby Wambach: The big foil tins. And you just start layering it. So you put a cup of sauce on the bottom, then you put half of the shells in the pan, you cover that with the sauce and then you put the provolone cheese in. It’s important to get the Sargento because Sargento has thicker provolone slices at the store.
Glennon Doyle: That’s why.
Abby Wambach: Yeah, and you layer the provolone on top.
Michele Norris: Not shredded. Flat provolone.
Abby Wambach: Yes. Flat deli, the deli slices. Then you get the pepperoni on the top of the provolone. Then you sprinkle it with a bunch of parmesan cheese.
Michele Norris: Wait, where’d the sour cream come in?
Abby Wambach: Just you wait. Just you wait. And then you get the parmesan and then half of the mozzarella, and then you dot it with sour cream.
Michele Norris: Oh, okay. All right. I was waiting for the sour cream.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. You add the remaining shells, then you put some more parmesan cheese and mozzarella, and then you cover with the remaining sauce, and then you bake it. And then right at the end, you put more mozzarella. It’s amazing. I’ve sent you the recipe.
Glennon Doyle: It’s so good.
Abby Wambach: You can add it to your...
Michele Norris: OK. I’m going to, you know, I sometimes have to cook for 20, 30 people. I’m adding this to the repertoire.
Abby Wambach: I’m telling you. And by the way, it’s better the next day. So you serve it. People love it because it’s basically like a piece of pizza in your face, like without eating...
Michele Norris: Well, it’s pizza, it’s spaghetti, it’s lasagna. It’s all of it.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Michele Norris: Kind of all at once.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. And it’s so, it’s lovely.
Glennon Doyle: Kids love it, too.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. It’s easy to make, and then also it keeps really well. And so, like, on days and days on end, you can just be going back to that well for lunch and it’s tastes just as good.
Glennon Doyle: You know, it’s really sweet. Sometimes she’ll call her mom in the middle of making something and she acts like she doesn’t know something. It’s like she’s like I need to call my mom and ask her this but it’s right there in the recipe, and it’s so sweet because they, like, act this thing out. Nana pretends that Abby doesn’t know it. Abby pretends that she needs to know it. Nana tells her the thing to do. You know, they’ve had their struggles in their relationship, and it’s this beautiful, like, Oh, we can return to this mother tongue that we have with each other that is uncomplicated and is love to each other. And...
Abby Wambach: Is safe.
Glennon Doyle: It always warms my heart because I’m like, I know she knows how to do this.
Abby Wambach: Yeah, neutral ground. I’m also curious because these recipes are 15 years old and my mom evolves, right? And so she sometimes finds new, like the fettuccine Alfredo recipe that our kids ask for for every single one of their birthdays. She makes her own Alfredo sauce, which is a cup of butter, a cup of parmesan cheese, and whole whipped milk. And it is excellent. But sometimes, did you know that she sprinkles some garlic salt on there?
Glennon Doyle: I did not know that.
Abby Wambach: See, this is not in the recipe. So I’m always...
Michele Norris: You know that a good cook never puts everything that’s in the recipe down.
Glennon Doyle: That seems like something Nana would do. She would do.
Michele Norris: You never. You always leave something out. So yours is always better than everybody else’s. That’s just basic kitchen wisdom.
Abby Wambach: That’s good.
Glennon Doyle: Now that I can respect.
Abby Wambach: It is always better. And that pisses me off. It is better.
Glennon Doyle: It is. She’s good.
Michele Norris: Cause she’s got some little secret, you know, in my family we call it "something-something," you know, that they just throw in there, that they’re just never going to write it down. But then mine never tastes like hers cause she holds back that little something-something.
Abby Wambach: Cause of something-something!
Glennon Doyle: I like that.
Michele Norris: Well, I have loved talking to you.
Abby Wambach: Anytime. Thank you for having us.
Glennon Doyle: I loved this conversation.
Michele Norris: I had so much fun talking to Glennon and Abby and hearing about their beautiful life together. I learned so much about how they’ve perfected the art of meeting in the middle, how it should never feel like a tug of war, but actually two separate people climbing their own rope in their own way, at their own pace, on the same mountain. Now, don’t forget to check out Abby’s mom’s recipe for pasta for thousands on our website at yourmamaskitchen.com. Or you can find it on my Instagram page. That way you can cook up a comforting meal that can feed your entire house and maybe your entire neighborhood. I mean, the recipe does say pasta for thousands. So it’s food for a crowd. The way we see food as adults now is largely informed by the way our parents or our caretakers behaved in the kitchen. Abby and Glennon said their kids are like little stalkers. And that’s so true. That’s the word they use. Little stalkers. Little people watch how the adults in their lives eat, how they treat food, and by extension, how they treat their own bodies or how they treat other people who drift in and out of that space. At a certain point in our lives, we make the decision to feed into or break from the habits that we grew up with. That decision becomes even more evident or more complicated when we begin to share a kitchen with a partner, a partner who comes in with their own menu of experiences and habits and memories. And as we learned from Abby and Glennon, trust is key to a happy kitchen. So too is candor, good food, and good music. Maybe a little dancing. Okay. Maybe more than a little dancing. How about a whole lot of dancing? Here’s to finding a healthy and happy space in all of our kitchens. Special thanks this week to Melissa Bear with Say What Media, and Clean Cuts in Washington DC. Thanks so much for joining me today on Your Mama’s Kitchen. I’m Michele Norris. See you next week.
CREDITS
This has been a Higher Ground and Audible Original, produced by Higher Ground Studios. Producers for Your Mama's Kitchen are Natalie Rinn and Sonia Htoon. Sound design and engineering from Andrew Eapen and Ryo Baum. Production support from Angel Carreras and Julia Murray. Higher Ground Audio's editorial assistants are Jenna Levin and Camilla Ther de Koos. Executive producers for Higher Ground are Nick White, Mukta Mohan, Dan Fierman and Michele Norris. Executive producers for Audible are Zola Mashariki, Nick D'Angelo and Ann Hepperman. The show's closing song is 504 by the Soul Rebels. Special thanks to Joe Paulsen, Melissa Baer and Angela Peluso. Head of Audible Studios, Zola Mashariki. Chief Content Officer, Rachel Ghiazza. Copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio, LLC. Sound Recording copyright 2023 by Higher Ground Audio LLC.
