Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.

Bell Hooks was a feminist theorist renowned for her ability to write about philosophical concepts in everyday language.

I'm delighted to be exploring Bell Hooks is provocative collection of essays, all about Love, with Marchelle Pettit, community doula and co-founder of Community Perinatal Pathways.

Welcome, Marchelle .

Thanks for saying yes to this.

Thank you for having me, April.

And why this book and why now?

Why this book is because I'm on a journey of rediscovery.

And so it's the perfect time to dive into this book all about love.

Yeah, ever an evergreen book.

So.

And we're making a, a menu inspired by our shared idea that food is our lovely.

So what are you going to be fixing today?

So today I will be making vegan lettuce wraps.

I will be making a harvest bowl and then we will finish it off with a mocktail.

Moscow mule, which I have tasted delicious.

So.

And I'm going to be starting with a really simple lemon yogurt cake with a quick glaze.

And then, later a roasted, butternut squash soup.

So tell me what you're getting started with here.

It looks delicious.

I'm going to start with, walnuts and mushroom meat.

I prepared it, I pre-prepared it, and so we're just going to pan fry it in the skillet, so.

Okay.

And that's finely chopped mushrooms is finely chopped mushrooms.

It is, soaked walnuts.

So I soak them okay.

Overnight.

And then I use sun dried tomatoes and garlic and the soaking the walnuts just makes them soft.

Yeah.

Makes them softer.

Okay.

You don't want to really use, hard walnuts for walnut meat.

You want it to kind of resemble the taste of regular.

It looks like ground beef.

So it's like, wonderful.

That looks completely delicious here.

And I'm getting started with, this cake.

That is something that French children learn to make in kindergarten.

Just a really simple one layer yogurt cake, that has, yogurt and oil.

So it stays.

It stays very, very moist.

And, I'm flavoring this with some lemon because I love lemon.

And I know you do, too.

I love women, so we'll be I'll be putting this together.

Now, here.

So this book is a collection of essays.

It was actually put together in 2001, but on a reread, I was just amazed by how evergreen these ideas are.

And for you, what really spoke to you about reading it, like, right now in your life?

Well, you know, like I said earlier, I'm on a journey of rediscovery, rediscovery and love.

So, as you know, I took a sabbatical the first part of the year.

And during my sabbatical, those, 2 to 3 months, I began to understand that love is not really just solely about how society has defined it as romantic love.

Yeah.

There's so much more to it.

And so, when I was beginning this new rediscovery, I just dove into, like, rediscover what life is like when you incorporate all the facets of love.

Okay.

Yeah.

Nice overview and no hooks.

If you're new to her work, that's, a pseudonym.

So her name is Gloria Jean Watkins.

She draws that name Bell and Hooks from ancestors.

And I do sort of love, the homonym that it means beautiful, beautiful hooks.

She's tough, she's tender.

She's a feminist theorist who I use in almost all of my work.

She writes really, movingly about the classroom as a revolutionary space and just believes that people have the ability to change and learn their whole lives, which I think is kind of the, the beating heart of, of this book.

Yeah.

So what are you getting started here?

This is for your I'm actually sorting the veggies, for the, lettuce wraps, along with the taco meat.

And so we want to make, like I said before, we want to make sure that, the walnut meat is it resembles regular meat.

You know, I can, you can use in taco.

So it really is just it would look exactly like it.

You could trick somebody if you if you wanted to trick them into eating something healthier.

Here.

And I'm putting the dry ingredients together here for the cake.

This is, two cups and a quarter of flour, a little bit of baking powder, some salt.

And, just make sure it's sifted here, and then it goes together with the wet ingredients along with some, some two eggs and a little bit of lemon juice and, lemon rind here.

So, so you already mentioned, I think, something that is kind of key to this book, and that is she's interested in redefining love, moving beyond the idea of love as Cupid.

She's a language person.

And so she actually talks about the problem of the ways we talk about even romantic love as falling in love, as though it's an accident that happens to us.

Right?

And, you know, in my early 20s, early 30s, I, I actually thought that because that's what we're taught in society.

That's what we're taught her upbringing, what we see in fall.

Yeah.

In love.

But falling is an accident.

And so instead of falling in love, I think we need to embrace the fact that we are we choose to love nice.

And so that's when I talk about rediscovery.

That's where I am in life right now, where I'm choosing to love, love community, love myself, and just love others family, friends in a different way that I was taught.

That was just so, you know, one sided.

There's just so much more to love than just a single definition.

Absolutely.

And how does cooking fit into all of that for you?

Yeah.

So when you cook and you invite people, you get your gathering, you're, you're feeding people, you're nourishing people.

That is all part of love.

Love is nourishment.

And so we know food is part of celebrations and gatherings.

And so you can just pour so much love onto others when you're cooking a good meal for the I love that.

Yeah.

Absolutely love.

Love is nourishment and should be nourishing.

And I've just so enjoyed, watching what it is that you've been making all of these really colorful, heart healthy.

So really bringing together the concept of love and also this, this, feeds into your health work, right?

Yeah, it really, really does.

And so, I'm a birth doula, a community doula.

And so I really embrace communities who have low income and who have been historically marginalized.

And oftentimes, those families, including myself, live in food deserts.

And so how do you make healthy meals, with minimal resources.

And so that's one of the things that I really, really enjoy doing is teaching my families on how to create healthy meals.

You know, I was raised on soul food, you know, and soul food is very good.

But we have to we have to understand that soul food can be, unhealthy.

So, you know, in order to, reduce my risk of having gestational diabetes, hypertension, you know, I decided that I wanted to love myself in a different way.

So part of that rediscovery of love and and love others and.

Yes, yes, I have been the beneficiary of some of that peace talks.

I have to say thank you.

So, so Bell Hooks, talks about all different stages of life and in this book as well as others, she's really concerned about children.

I mean, she's connected to her family.

Actually, part of the reason she writes the way she does is, like, for example, she never uses footnotes even though she's an academic because she asked her family, do you ever read footnotes in books?

And they said, no.

And so she said, all right, I'm not I'm not going to, write that way.

And I want to make sure that my family sees themselves as theorists.

Which is one of the reasons she, does not spell her name.

Her, bell hooks with a capital B or capital H, she doesn't want people to look at her name and see her.

They want her.

They want she wants people to, view her concepts and things that she is teaching her theories and, you know, deconstructing the, you know, the basis of what love is and her other, you know, theories when it comes to, you know, patriarchy and those systems that have oppressed us.

And so I found that really fascinating, that she does.

She has her name bell hooks, but it's lowercase b and lowercase h. Yes.

It drives your computer crazy.

Yes.

Writing about it.

So I'm just folding in the the dry ingredients here.

I'm going to be putting this in a springform pan and oh, your peppers are looking fantastic.

Thank you.

So you've, brought up some of her big concepts that are things that academics talk about.

But again, she always brings it to the everyday.

So when she talks about patriarchy, she talks about, you know, the challenge of little boys, for example, being taught if you like a girl, you should hit her.

Yeah.

And, again, she believes that we can all relearn how to be, you know, kinder, better, more loving selves here.

And that starts with how you raise children.

So I'm going to put this in a springform pan, little eight inch pan that I've lined with, a little bit of parchment paper.

You could put this in a bunch pan.

You could make cupcakes with it.

But I love this little one layer.

It gets just tall enough to look festive.

But it's not too it's not too complicated.

So, All right, so I'm going to go ahead and put this in a 350 oven bakes, try and see what it's like in about three minutes or so.

So she also talks a lot about, chosen families and families, the challenge of raising children on your own, and also how important it is to be part of a community where children know that they're valued.

Oh, look at this.

So you found, romaine lettuce leaves that are exactly the right, right size.

So for a single family, 2 to 4.

But I think they're just right.

All right.

Yeah, it looks fantastic.

And I'm going to be grading just a little bit more rind for the for the top that I'm going to put in here.

So so yes, the idea of chosen families, the idea of finding love with friends is absolutely a major key.

Keeping, or a major note in her book, making sure that we don't abandon our friends and our community when we fall in romantic love, which probably all of us have either done.

Yeah.

Or experienced that that happening.

So it's easy to do to do that, you know, because love is also intentional love is so much.

Love is intentional.

Love is joy.

Love is hope.

Love is grief.

Love is all of that.

So when you dive into a romantic love, we're so consumed.

Yeah.

And enamored by the romantics that were part of it that we sometimes forget that we do have friendships also.

And community.

Yeah, there's that other love.

So we'll talk more about that after a break.

You're going to get a chance to see some, images of bell hooks in action, and we will be right back.

So, Marchele Pettit and I have been cooking up a storm here.

Inspired by bell hooks is all about love.

We're making a feast based on, food as I love language.

And you're going to be finishing up your beautiful, lettuce wraps here.

So tell us what you're doing.

So I'm just going to top the walnut meat in the lettuce with, veggies that I prepared.

And I'm going to put a couple tomatoes on just a couple of them, because I've learned that when I serve this for guests, sometimes people don't enjoy tomatoes.

So I want you let them.

Come on.

Yes.

All right.

It's so beautiful.

You have such a lovely eye.

And I think that is part of, You know, we eat with our eyes as we do see.

And I'm going to be starting a roasted butternut squash soup.

So this is truly the soup that I make most often for people I love.

I make a mild version for people I know who are recovering from illness or chemotherapy.

You can make it very mild.

You can make it, spicy, curry flavored.

This has some, cinnamon and cayenne in it.

I'm going to, put a little oil in the pan.

And then I roasted these vegetables last night.

So this is just, you know, with soups, you can make the most of your ugliest vegetables.

So some carrots and, garlic and onion, and of course, butternut squash.

You roasted until it's got nice.

Calmly.

Flavor to it.

And then that adds a nice base to your soup that starts already with a with a lot of flavor here.

And what are you putting on top of that?

I'm just topping my lettuce wraps with vegan sour cream.

It's dairy free.

And that's one of the things that I've when I'm rediscovering myself and rediscovering love.

That's one of the things I've decided to do is to give up dairy.

So that's part of loving my body.

And so, I like to introduce this to others when I serve this for others as well.

I just tasted it.

It's very good.

You goosed it a little bit, didn't you?

With a little bit of I did, I did, and you can add, you know, whatever, whatever you want to add to it.

So I do seasonings, anything that dill to it you could like put a little dab of apple cider vinegar in it.

Oh nice.

So it's got a little team to it, but you can pretty much do.

You know, the wonderful thing about cooking is you can just add whatever you want and you can try things.

So absolutely.

And certainly the spirit of the soup as well.

I'm putting in also some freshly grated nutmeg here.

This version, has some vegetable broth and coconut milk in it, but you could also make it more with dairy or completely, I sometimes make it with no, milk of any kind in it as well.

But I'm going to just cook this down until the vegetables are soft, and then we'll blend it into a, into a bisque here.

So and you're getting started here next to my harvest bowl.

So what I love about the harvest Bowl is it really connects with love and how I feel about love.

I feel like if you so good seeds, then you will reap a good harvest.

And so, that's why I love, celebrating with harvest bowls.

I make these a lot for my, family and friends.

And so I really enjoy making them.

And you can diversify them.

You know, I think we talked earlier about me diversifying my palette.

Yes.

So that's one of the things I do is I add different grains, different vegetables to the, harvest bowls.

And right now, I've made some quinoa.

And so I'm just going to add some quinoa to the harvest bowl.

All right.

Yeah.

You can really, gives people a chance to try a bunch of different things.

You can make every forkful your own, so, so bell hooks talks a lot about, the lack of love in our nation.

And she actually talks, as we said earlier, about every stage of life, including end of life.

And she notices something.

I think this is actually one of her gifts she puts into language things that many of us kind of intuit but maybe haven't articulated.

So she talks about what she calls our death focused culture, and she gives examples from media crime shows, murder shows, slasher movies, so much death.

And yet we're not very good at talking about end of life matters.

We're not very good at talking about it, but it's one of the core components of life is death.

And so you really don't know love until you know, grief.

Oh, well.

Yeah.

And, you know, one of the things that really got me change in the trajectory of my, my journey and my rediscovery is, you know, when my parents passed away, one of the things I talked a little bit about it with you before is when my mom died.

No one really talked about her anymore.

And so she was a big, She birthed me.

She created me.

So when you understand that grief is such a crucial part of growing, such a crucial part of love, you learn to recognize that we don't embrace it enough.

And, during our journeys, we don't do enough of that.

And my guess is that's a lot of what you, deal with in your own work.

Yes.

You know, when you're with me, I do the work.

Yeah, I do a lot of that with my work.

You know, we we know one of the things that brought me to do the work is the high disparities with black, black and brown women were 3 to 4 times more likely to die, from childbirth complications and pregnancy complications.

And so, that's one of the things to do is wrap myself around them, you know, and try to embrace them and try to educate and prepare them.

So, yeah.

Just beautiful.

And I'm now while the soup is cooking here, I'm making a, super simple glaze for the cake.

That's just powdered sugar.

Grated lemon rind and, lemon juice.

And that will be just a nice thin glaze over the top of this not too sweet yogurt cake.

And then give this a little more gas here.

I just added some chickpeas to my a look at all this, sweet potatoes.

I baked some sweet potatoes, and I just dressed up with some oregano and some avocado oil.

Makes it some pepitas is also known as pumpkin seeds, which I love those.

And then I'm just going to add a couple of my peppers over here that I have left from the wraps.

You just blackened these perfectly.

Oh, this is gorgeous.

You're painting a picture there.

So, so hooks talks a lot about community and what holds us together and also nation.

Again, this just capacious book she talks about everything from childhood to death, from friendship, love, relationship, love.

And love of nation.

And she says, we're, we're a nation that needs more love.

We do.

We need more.

And actually, do you want to read that wall of passage there?

Just a few lines.

And that's from, the chapter about.

Yeah, from chapter nine, mutuality, the heart of love.

And this is one of the biggest takeaways for me in her book, All About Love, she says, love is an action, is a participatory emotion.

Nice.

We learn to communicate, to be still and to listen, to the needs of our hearts.

And we learn to listen to others.

And we learn compassion by being willing to hear the pain as well as the joy of those we love.

So as a birth worker, that's one of the things that we do.

One of the main components of what I do is listening to, my families, my birthing mothers, and holding space for them.

And so when we learn to love others, one of the things we want to do is we want to walk into a space and hold that for them so we can hear their stories.

Yeah.

And birth work has taught me so much of that and how to do that so diligently and authentically.

That is beautiful.

So it's also I'll just say, I'm gonna put the glaze on this cake here.

It's really a readers book.

So you can, kind of tell us.

And she assembled this book out of essays that she wrote over time.

Part of it is you kind of get a sense that you're getting a peek at her, at her bed, her bed stand.

You know what she's reading and so she quotes Parker Palmer.

She quotes, Buddhist Nantishna She quotes Cornell West, with whom she has a book called Breaking Bread.

So it's also a book you can delve into and get ideas for, for other books to read.

This is warmed up, so I'm gonna rev up the, That looks good.

Try not to squirt this all over the place.

I'm going to start my mocktail.

Okay?

I'm doing that.

So what are you putting in them?

I squeezed some lime, some fresh lime juice, and I put that at the bottom.

This is nonalcoholic again.

I don't do alcohol.

Again, one of the things that I am really, intentional about is loving my body, and I don't drink alcohol.

Personally, for me, it's not, beneficial for me.

So I've chosen not to indulge in that.

So I do a lot of mocktails at home, but I love that you can still, you know, you don't have to deprive yourself, you know, full cups, these wonderful flavors.

This has all of the Quincy and Tan of a Moscow mule.

This is the ginger and simple sirup.

I created my own simple sirup, so I learned how to make simple sirup.

It's really easy to make.

So it's one part, water to one part sugar.

And, it's easier to make at home instead of paying a lot for it at the grocery store.

It just takes pennies.

Yes.

So I'm going to let this cool down a little bit, and we are going to take another little break here.

Bell hooks is an incredibly prolific author.

She died way too early at age 69.

But you'll have a chance to see some of the many, many books that she's written and we hope you might check out.

We'll be right back.

Come on.

My show and I have played it up.

I gotta say, just a beautiful feast of love inspired by bell hooks, is all about love.

And tell us what you made here.

And then you can get started on your drink.

So.

Yeah.

So right here I made the lettuce wraps and I put, the vegan sour cream on it, but you can drizzle any dressing that you want on that.

And I made the harvest bowl.

Looks good.

And you can drizzle any dressing you want.

You can do a homemade dressing and store about dressing on the harvest bowl.

And now I'm going to finish up, my mocktail stuff.

And I'll just say this is the roasted butternut squash soup.

I'll show you how to make this little ring of hearts here and some very simple lemon yogurt cake.

So tell us what's going into your meal.

So I've already squeeze fresh lime inside.

So I put that in and then I use a tablespoon of simple sirup, homemade simple sirup.

And now I put the, the fresh mint in there from the garden.

It smells so.

And usually you can muddle it, but we're going to do it the simple way.

And then we're going to, go ahead and add our ice, and we're going to fill the cup up with halfway with ice.

Okay.

And I just did a little this is such a simple little finishing tool that you can do with some cream on the top of any soup.

And I think it's beautiful.

And then after we add the ice, we're going to go ahead and add the ginger beer.

So great.

Sounds great.

So who do you think would enjoy this book?

Bell hooks is all about love.

You know what?

I think it's suitable for anyone who is on a rediscovery of themselves of love.

And you can just go back and continue to read it because you find something new every time you read it.

I think that is just a beautiful way to describe it.

It's a collection of her essays.

You can dip in and out of it.

I've read it many times over the last 20 some years, and different things speak to me.

But the death chapter spoke to me at this stage of life and kind of wrapping some comfort around that experience.

And, you know, anybody who's been close to children will appreciate what her insights about about children.

So this is fizzing up.

It is missing.

Never.

You have to be careful because it will fizzle.

But a nice reminder that just because you are making a mocktail going alcohol free, you can enjoy a beautiful drink.

So, we hope that, you cook adventurously and read widely.

Marchelle thank you so much for joining me here.

Let's have a toast.

To bell hooks and to love.

Love.

Cheers, cheers.

And we will see you next time on dinner.

And a book.

This WNIT, local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.

Dinner and a book is supported by the Rex and Alice A. Martin Foundation of Elkhart, celebrating the spirit of Alice Martin and her love of good food and good friends.