What are food taboos? How are they created? And how do we break the power they hold over us?

Matt Hershberger is back to explore the world of food taboos. We talk about the lobster's rise from taboo to luxury in colonial American history, we dish about bug eating and unpack how a lot of these food taboos are really just learned forms of disgust that we picked up from our society.

Matt Hershberger is a writer, librarian, author of two books in the works, and a stay-at-home dad. If you’re interested in seeing more of Matt Hershberger’s work, go check out Better Strangers on Substack. You can also follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @MattHershberger and you can follow him on TikTok at @BetterStrangersBooks.

I’m not sure what the future of this here podcast is, but Amuse-Bouche continues to be a monthly Muse-Letter on Substack examining life through the lens of food.

This show has always been a one woman band - produced, hosted, edited, and researched by your’s truly, Kae Lani Palmisano. If you like what you’re hearing please go support my personal work. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at @KaeLaniSays.

Dr. Geo Banks-Weston was an early adopter of social media. Back in the day, when filters flooded people's Instagram feeds, he learned just how powerful of a tool it could be in building communities and how digital media as a whole could be leveraged to become a powerful platform for voices of color.

Since starting his blog, Geo's Table, in 2014, Dr. Geo has focused on promoting Black owned restaurants, sharing recipes from the African diaspora, and giving his readers resources on how to support under represented communities in the food industry. He channeled this passion into his Doctorate of Education in Educational Technology where he further researches how technology can be used to drive diversity and representation in science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics (AKA the STEAM careers).

In this episode, Dr. Geo shares with host Kae Lani Palmisano how social media and other virtual collaboration tools can be used to build community, offer mentorship, and provide access to other career growth opportunities for underrepresented professionals. If you're a beginner blogger or an expert whose been in the field for years, this is an episode for you!

If you’re interested in learning more, check out Dr. Geo’s blog, Geostablephl.com and listen to his podcast Table 86 wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also follow him on Instagram at @GeosTable.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.

There's eating cheese and then there's tasting cheese. Like... REALLY tasting cheese. We're talking about engaging every sense and being present in the moment while indulging in the ultimate dairy bliss.

That's just a brief description of how a proper cheese tasting is done, according to dairy expert Alexandra Jones, author of Stuff Every Cheese Lover Should Know. In this episode of Amuse-Bouche, host Kae Lani Palmisano chats all things cheese with Alexandra Jones touching on everything from a brief history of cheesemaking in the United States to how to maximize your cheese experience. There's a lot of delicious dairy talk in this episode, so if you're hungry, pause the episode and build the most Instagrammable cheese plate you can imagine!

If you’re interested in learning more, get Alexandra’s book, Stuff Every Cheese Lover Should Know available everywhere books are sold! You can find more of Alexandra’s work on her website AlexandraJones.net. And be sure to give her a follow on social media — she’s @arockjonestown on both Twitter and Instagram.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.

For a long time, food media portrayed the suburbs as a dining wasteland full of chain restaurants and unimaginative menus. But suburbia is changing. According to Bettina Makalintal, staff writer at Vice Munchies, we should be paying more attention to the evolving suburban foodscape. In a recent series Bettina helped develop called "State of the Suburbs" Bettina and other Vice writers make the case for how the burbs are burgeoning with culinary artisans, local farmers markets and clever restauranteurs taking some pretty ambitious leaps of faith, even in the midst of a global pandemic.

You can find more of Bettina’s work on Vice Munchies. You can also follow her on Twitter and TikTok @bettinamak and on Instagram @buttina — she also has an inspiring food styling Instagram called @Crispyegg420.

Follow Amuse-Bouche on at @amusebouchepod on Twitter and Instagram and be sure to subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter on Substack. Every week you’ll find even more food stories, recipes, and gardening updates. It’s a free newsletter at the moment, but I do accept tips. So consider helping a sister out by throwing her a few bucks a month. You can also support me by engaging with the show and following Kae Lani at @KaeLaniSays on Instagram and Twitter.

Why are salads considered feminine? Why is steak seen as a manly meal? Gender and the roles they have come represent is one of the many factors that shape the way our culture perceives food, thus dictating our relationship with eating. Emily Contois has spent her career as an interdisciplinary researcher and teacher exploring the ways in which gender, power dynamics, marketing and media contort our views on food. Her recent book, Diners, Dudes and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture is an analysis on the rise of the “Dude" and how Diet culture and marketing companies changed their messaging to target the dude demographic.

In this episode of Amuse-Bouche Emily Contois joins host Kae Lani Palmisano to discuss food and gender, how the Great Recession changed the way marketers position diet programs, how Guy Fieri fuels the dude machine, and ways we can challenge the patriarchy through the media we consume and produce.

You can find more of Emily’s work on her website EmilyContois.com and at @EmilyContois on Instagram and Twitter. And you can buy Diners Dudes and Diets wherever books are sold!

Follow Amuse-Bouche on at @amusebouchepod on Twitter and Instagram and be sure to subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter on Substack. Every week you’ll find even more food stories, recipes, and gardening updates. It’s a free newsletter at the moment, but I do accept tips. So consider helping a sister out by throwing her a few bucks a month. You can also support me by engaging with the show and following Kae Lani at @KaeLaniSays on Instagram and Twitter.

Annemarie Dooling is constantly in motion. When she's not performing her duties as the Engagement Experiences Product Lead with the Wall Street Journal, she's a writer, burlesque dancer, magician, a fan of antiques, and a home cook. Between her job and her cultural pursuits, it's rare for Annemarie to slow down. But in her recent Wall Street Journal article, "How Being More Productive Starts with Doing Nothing," she's embracing the Italian concept of dolce far niente, the sweetness of doing nothing.

In this episode, Annemarie shares how activities like brewing a pot of old fashioned coffee and constantly whisking the cream and cheese for Cacio e Pepe are opportunities to embrace the nothingness.

You can follow Annemarie Dooling at @TravelingAnna on Twitter and Instagram.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.

When Matt Hershberger moved from Cincinnati to New Jersey, he felt a little out of place. Withdrawn from the local community in his new home he started experiencing depression with a whole cavalcade of symptoms that were only exasperated by growing anxieties around climate change and the uncertainty of our planet’s future.

Over time, Matt found that making simple things whether it was perfecting his tomato sauce, making bread, or whipping up some fresh pesto with his children, helped to alleviate his depression. But food became this point of connection to a lot of areas of Matt's life. Exploring New Jersey's local foodways gave him a meaningful way to interact with his new home state, focusing on local foods gave him actionable ways to help lower his own carbon footprint, cooking has been an enjoyable activity he shares with his family, and starting up a seed library at his local library is helping him spread the word of climate change and food sovereignty.

In this episode, Matt and Kae Lani discuss the many ways that food connects us to the land and each other. Plus, they dig into awesome topics like how Guerilla Gardening can help rebuild local habitats, what small things we can do in our everyday lives to live more sustainably, and how Jersey Fresh blueberries deserve to be a Protected Geographical Indication.

You can follow Matt Hershberger at @MattHershberger on Twitter and Instagram. You can read more of his work on www.matthershberger.com.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.

What do the '90s taste like? If this is something you’ve been pondering, you’re in luck! Food and drink writer, Sam Slaughter, has captured the spirit of the decade in his cocktail book "Are You Afraid of the Dark Rum?: and Other Cocktails for '90s Kids" with delightful concoctions like "I'm too sexy for this grog" and "Pickelodeon." But successfully pulling off nostalgia takes more work than just clever puns and repeating old catch phrases. Sam talks with Kae Lani Palmisano about how much he had to study the decade and what he had to consider when making original cocktails that bring us back to the '90s.

You can follow Sam at @SlaughterWrites on Twitter and Instagram. His cocktail book "Are You Afraid of the Dark Rum?: and Other Cocktails for '90s Kids" on Amazon.

Follow Amuse-Bouche at @AmuseBouchePod on Twitter and Instagram. For more food stories and recipes, subscribe to the Amuse-Bouche newsletter at amusebouche.substack.com. And to see what our host Kae Lani Palmisano is doing check her out on Twitter and Instagram at @KaeLaniSays.