37 min

Fanny Singer reflects on a life defined by food in culinary memoir, Always Home Salt & Spine

    • Food

Hi there,
Memorial Day is this weekend and if, like me, you’re just getting around to thinking about food, we can help. We dug into our Salt + Spine archives for some grill-tastic options:
* How about some Smoked Chicken or Pork T-Bones (two prime mains from pitmaster Rodney Scott)?
* Stacey Adimando’s got a side dish covered with her Blackened Summer Squash with Buttermilk Cream Sauce, Rosemary, and Chives.
* And wash it down with Grilled Margaritas from Maggie Hoffman!
And to ring in summer, we’re offering a special Memorial Day promotion! Become a paid subscriber before the end of the month and you’ll get 20% off your first year! Remember, paid subscribers get access to our full archive of 200+ recipes from featured cookbooks, as well as other exclusive content.
Happy grilling! And now, onto this week’s show:
Episode 130: Fanny Singer
We’ve got a fun episode for you today: Fanny Singer, the author of Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories, is here to #TalkCookbooks with us.
Fanny, of course, is the daughter of legendary restauranteur Alice Waters (who opened Berkeley’s Chez Panisse 50 years ago). Fanny is a writer, editor, art critic, and the founder of Permanent Collection, a clothing and household goods line.
As Fanny set out to write Always Home—part memoir, part cookbook, and partially neither of those things—she began negotiating an inheritance that her mother passed down: her relationship to and appreciation for food.
Unsurprisingly, food was a central theme in Fanny’s childhood home, though she tells us she mostly learned from her mother via “sort of a process of osmosis.” Always Home is, of course, filled with stories and memories from Fanny’s life, and it’s loaded with vivid descriptions of sensory experiences related to food: meals she’s enjoyed at home and around the world.
She writes about her mother’s practice of burning sage or rosemary when they returned home from a trip, and how as a child she once tried fish cooked in a fig leaf—despite first being opposed to the idea—because her mother was able to describe the flavor and scent of the coconut-y leaf.
Get Reading Today: Order via Bookshop or Omnivore Books (signed!)
This Week’s Recipe
Paid subscribers this week will get access to an excerpted recipe from Fanny’s Always Home for Coming Home Pasta. Subscribe today to get full access!
Salt + Spine is a reader-supported publication. To get full access, including featured recipes, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

We’ve got a great chat with Fanny — plus our signature culinary game and a featured recipe later this week.
Thanks for joining us to #TalkCookbooks!
—Brian & the Salt + Spine Team



This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saltandspine.substack.com/subscribe

Hi there,
Memorial Day is this weekend and if, like me, you’re just getting around to thinking about food, we can help. We dug into our Salt + Spine archives for some grill-tastic options:
* How about some Smoked Chicken or Pork T-Bones (two prime mains from pitmaster Rodney Scott)?
* Stacey Adimando’s got a side dish covered with her Blackened Summer Squash with Buttermilk Cream Sauce, Rosemary, and Chives.
* And wash it down with Grilled Margaritas from Maggie Hoffman!
And to ring in summer, we’re offering a special Memorial Day promotion! Become a paid subscriber before the end of the month and you’ll get 20% off your first year! Remember, paid subscribers get access to our full archive of 200+ recipes from featured cookbooks, as well as other exclusive content.
Happy grilling! And now, onto this week’s show:
Episode 130: Fanny Singer
We’ve got a fun episode for you today: Fanny Singer, the author of Always Home: A Daughter’s Recipes & Stories, is here to #TalkCookbooks with us.
Fanny, of course, is the daughter of legendary restauranteur Alice Waters (who opened Berkeley’s Chez Panisse 50 years ago). Fanny is a writer, editor, art critic, and the founder of Permanent Collection, a clothing and household goods line.
As Fanny set out to write Always Home—part memoir, part cookbook, and partially neither of those things—she began negotiating an inheritance that her mother passed down: her relationship to and appreciation for food.
Unsurprisingly, food was a central theme in Fanny’s childhood home, though she tells us she mostly learned from her mother via “sort of a process of osmosis.” Always Home is, of course, filled with stories and memories from Fanny’s life, and it’s loaded with vivid descriptions of sensory experiences related to food: meals she’s enjoyed at home and around the world.
She writes about her mother’s practice of burning sage or rosemary when they returned home from a trip, and how as a child she once tried fish cooked in a fig leaf—despite first being opposed to the idea—because her mother was able to describe the flavor and scent of the coconut-y leaf.
Get Reading Today: Order via Bookshop or Omnivore Books (signed!)
This Week’s Recipe
Paid subscribers this week will get access to an excerpted recipe from Fanny’s Always Home for Coming Home Pasta. Subscribe today to get full access!
Salt + Spine is a reader-supported publication. To get full access, including featured recipes, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

We’ve got a great chat with Fanny — plus our signature culinary game and a featured recipe later this week.
Thanks for joining us to #TalkCookbooks!
—Brian & the Salt + Spine Team



This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit saltandspine.substack.com/subscribe

37 min