(upbeat music) - Here's what's next on "You Oughta Know".

The simple taste of joy in a jar.

Meet the creators behind Poppa's Custard Company.

Plus it's not just the food at this Montgomery County Cafe that makes customers feel like family.

And we'll tell you about a program that's providing sanctuary for mothers in their fourth trimester.

(upbeat music) Welcome to "You Oughta Know" I'm Shirley Min.

So glad to have you here.

I am a mother of two and recently learned about something called matrescence.

It refers to all of the changes that come with motherhood, physical, emotional, hormonal.

It's like adolescence, but for moms.

Well, going through matrescence alone can be an emotional rollercoaster.

So this is where Josie's Grace comes in.

It's a postpartum stress program in Newark, Delaware that cares for new moms by focusing on their mental health and also creating community.

(warm music) - [Speaker] I am a mama and I am enough.

Motherhood is hard and I'm a good mother.

- [Narrator] Josie's Grace is a four week postpartum stress program for new moms.

- [Speaker] The first three months postpartum hormones and body changes are still happening.

- [Narrator] Founder Anne DeCaire designed the program to address the stress and isolation all moms experience in the first few months after birth, a time when moms are vulnerable to postpartum depression.

The program is a resource and wished was available when she had her first child, Josie.

- When I got home I felt a lot of anxiety, way beyond baseline anxiety, almost like my brain was running at like 100 miles per hour.

(dramatic music) I also had panic attacks.

I had insomnia and breastfeeding was not going well, so it just felt like I was failing and that I was out of control.

- [Narrator] Anne struggled with postpartum depression.

- When new motherhood happens in isolation, mental illness can present for the first time ever or maybe it's a relapse of something that was there before.

And if you're doing that alone, it sets us up for failure and illness.

- [Narrator] Named after Anne's two daughters.

Josie's Grace provides that community and self care for moms and as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner, Anne can also connect moms to care right away if they need it.

(dramatic music) - What they experience is small group support, four women to five women at a time.

And so week one is just that grounding and relaxing and reconnecting with your body.

We have community cuddlers that hold the babies while the moms are in treatment.

And then we also explore something called the Emotional Freedom Technique, EFT.

- We're gonna start by tapping on our hand the soft point of our hand.

- [Anne] Which is a way of using acupressure and processing emotions out loud and that's also been shown effective for perinatal anxiety and depression.

All in all, they've formed community and they felt loved and they've all said that it was the thing that they needed.

- [Narrator] Bonded through this shared experience, a lot of the women stay in touch and reconnect regularly.

On this day, it's a baby clothing swap at Josie's Grace.

(upbeat music) - One of the things she taught us, I did at home and I was like, wow.

It was very helpful, it's like a coping mechanism where you meditate and you're doing this and you're speaking into existence, you're saying I love myself and you're just like speaking positivity and you're going like this and touching your nose.

So it was helpful.

It's centering you to make sure like you're focused on one particular thing and not stressed.

- [Narrator] Jackie Ogando is a graduate and now works as one of the nurses on site.

She reached out to Anne after her daughter was born - Through the program here it's a lot of more natural ways to do it through either meditation or something they call tapping and it just kind of makes you take a breath and realize like you are human and that you're allowed to be angry, but maybe the way you're presenting it isn't the way it should be.

- Having another mom who is a couple months postpartum as well and is experiencing the same things as you, it definitely does help because you don't feel alone at all.

- [Narrator] Anne started seeing moms in October 2022 and has treated over 50 women so far.

- [Speaker] Every woman deserves this care postpartum.

- Anne says, if you're a new mom and feel like something's just not right to reach out, here's how you can learn more about Josie's Grace.

For parents of special needs children, there is a concern about what happens when their child becomes an adult and ages out of school.

So Much to Give inclusive cafe in Montgomery County is giving special needs adults a place to work and make friends.

(bright music) - My name is Kathy Opperman.

I'm the founder of Pillars of Light and Love.

Two years ago, we wanted to expand our mission to enhance the lives of those with disabilities and I had a Facebook friend, Maureen Stanko, who reached out to me.

She has a son with autism.

- I was laying in bed at three in the morning one night, worrying about what's going to happen when he ages out of the school system.

And that very next day, this whole idea came into my head called So Much to Give and then that expanded to opening a restaurant to employ those with disabilities.

We made that happen through the donations from the community.

(upbeat music) - You have so many people come in, show patience, show excitement to be here, and then you see regular people come in two, three times a week and now they're learning the servers' names.

The reception has been everything we could have expected and so much more.

(warm music) - When you come into the cafe, you feel the love, the workers are happy to be here.

It's the most rewarding project I've ever done.

- I like working with my friends, greeting people.

My name is Shannon, I'm a server at the So Much to Give Inclusive Cafe.

(upbeat music) The best part is asking questions and communicating with the customers.

(upbeat music) - Everything we do at the cafe is about building confidence and cheering them on, and that's something that is very important.

There are basically three jobs.

There's a food runner, a dishwasher, and then there is a host.

This is giving them an opportunity for employment and to socialize.

- Each person who works in each area kind of specializes more in that area because it's based around their strong suit, less about the job, the actual like encompassing of going to work and what to expect from it and kind of those things of just naturally developing what it takes to work a job and just maintain that throughout the course of a year and hopefully more.

While we do really wanna put out great food, our mission is the top priority and that mission is just supporting each other and watching people grow.

Seeing the happiness and joy the place brings to the staff, the customers, really everybody that comes in.

It's cool to see everybody smiling and that just kind of makes it really easy to come in every day.

(upbeat music) I think most people really feel comfortable here, which is really something we tried hard to create, just like a safe environment for everybody and within two weeks everybody's kind of coming out of a shell or just becoming themselves.

(upbeat music) - Everyone is so friendly, they're all wonderful people.

You can go anywhere to go to a restaurant, but this feels like home.

- The customers smile and tell me how I am the best server ever.

It feels great inside and it just brings joy.

- The most positive experience is easily just seeing the happiness and joy the place brings to the staff, the customers, I'm so proud of everybody.

It's cool to see everybody smiling and it kind of makes it really easy to come in every day.

- Everything we're doing is changing lives.

- We're really excited and we hope that we can not just like maintain where we're at.

We wanna keep elevating and finding new ways to make this place special for more people.

(hands clapping) - Check out So Much to Give's website to learn about various programs to help raise funds for the cafe's nonprofit venture that supports the creative outlets of their workers.

from serving up good eats to sweet treats, Poppa's Custard Company is the result of whisking a difficult situation into a prosperous business opportunity.

(bright music) - Good food is good love and so custard, the recipe that has evolved into Poppa's custard is just, it feels like a hug on a spoon.

It feels like all the comfort and the love, the comradery that you associate with just spending time with people that you care about.

- [Josh] My name's Josh Johnson.

- [Kristen] I'm Kristen Johnson - And my sister Jewel, our other co-founder is a chef and custard was just a really, really comforting homey dish that she shared with us.

(bright music) We decided to start Poppa's Custard Company back in 2020 at the top of the pandemic in the first wave of closures and sicknesses, we had a loss in our family.

We had one who needed some way as a kind of mourning and personal outlet.

Second we all three of us had been speaking for a long time about doing something together or building something together or having more of a connection with each other outside of like our three successful, but like very separate lanes.

- So this is the freezer, as you can see, it's absolutely massive in here and that's really exciting for us because we have aspirations of being like a multimillion dollar.

- [Speaker] We're at a commercial bakery, we're here doing our configuration tests to transition our production from much more of a commercial kitchen, smaller space that you would see in like a restaurant where we traditionally made our custards to this space where they can run a lot more capacity and product than we would be able to do if we stayed at where we're at.

I mean, we're here quite frankly because we have the demand and the need for the volume.

- We chose to be makers.

We chose custard because of how simple and homey and comforting it is and like at that time it was a real desire of ours to just have something that was simple.

It's custard, it's delicious, it's really well made, but there's no frills with it, there's no inclusions.

It's just a very delicious thing and it gave us an opportunity to spend that time together.

(dramatic music) But today we were testing one of our plant-based SKUs, our chocolate coconut custard and effectively we were going through the steps of making the custard, making sure that everything was weighed properly and and cooked properly, that the final product itself came out at the appropriate consistency and flavor.

So this is a test run, which is why I can grab this in the jar and taste it, but we wanna make sure that the cook itself was done properly.

The journey was measured but deliberate.

That's perfect.

We were very deliberate about picking custard, very deliberate about naming the business itself.

We were really deliberate about finding places where like the quality of the ingredients is really important because none of our products have any artificial thickeners, colors, or flavors in them.

All of them are free from gluten, soy, peanuts, tree nuts.

It was also really important to us to make sure that, it's a premium product.

It's gonna be priced as such on the shelf, but that it was still someplace where it was accessible to the largest amount of people as possible.

(upbeat music) This is still a passion of ours.

It is still very much an outpouring of love from our family, a reflection of the kind of the people we are, the things that we value, and when you taste a jar of Poppa's Custards, you're tasting like the cumulative thought and effort of our family to bring a bit of joy into yours.

- Have you noticed that the sun is staying out a little longer?

It won't be long before residents are enjoying Mr. Airy pocket parks.

That story is coming up, but if you're looking to get a jump on spring, check out what's blooming from these area florists.

- [Narrator] This is the Philadelphia Flower Show, the oldest and grandest celebration of floral design in the world.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society has orchestrated this internationally respected tribute to the floral arts for nearly 200 years, only pausing for world wars.

The 250,000 annual attendees of the Philly Flower Show come to admire surreal floral scapes and fairytales woven by the country's premier floral designers.

This show is evolving technologically as well as culturally, employing projection mapping and floral sculptures alongside an ever expanding roster of women, queer communities, and florists of color.

- We received a really warm welcome and they were really glad to have us, to our knowledge, we were the first all Black team that participated, did learn that there was another team that was an all Black team that participated and they had a beautiful installation as well, and we actually connected when we were designing our exhibits and supporting one another.

So it was just great to see just the racial diversity that is being included in the Philadelphia Flower Show.

- [Narrator] The introduction of the Mexican Poinsettia during the 1829 Flower Show imported and democratized the joy of choosing and gifting flowers into mainstream American culture.

Floristry became accessible for people who could access land, people like Briauna Taylor.

- This is my first time ever being at the flower show.

I've never even attended.

A lot of planning has been going on.

I've been really focused, making a lot of lists and just getting ready.

So very nervous, but excited for everything to start.

My love for gardening and flowers started at a super young age.

My family purchased about 12 acres of land in lower Delaware when they moved from Virginia to Delaware, and my grandmother allowed me to have a small garden on her piece of the land when I was little.

That is where like the root of it all started, and going in the woods and finding flowers and being outside tilling the land with my dad.

That was like one of my first favorite activities.

- Briauna was really adventurous and you had to find things for Briauna to do.

I decided to start growing flowers and just keep her busy outside, so that's when she started loving sunflowers and cut and come back zinnias.

She loved being outside.

- We often talk about the land and how significant it is and how important it is.

My grandmother and her siblings, when they moved, they just thought it was a great opportunity and knew that they could leave a legacy for us.

- [Narrator] Briauna's family is unique in America.

More often than not, the trend for Black American families has spent to lose land through discriminatory laws and legal loopholes leading to a loss of millions of acres of land over the 20th century.

Today, Black families like Briauna hold less than 2% of all the land in the US down from 14% in the 1920s.

- A lot of us fell into floral design in a very organic way.

That is one of the first relationships that we did have was with the land, tending to it and growing and I think it's just an extension of what we have done and worked with in the past.

- My maternal grandmother passed away on Valentine's Day, and so I always wanted to honor her by giving my mom flowers on that day.

I would just go to the grocery store, find my own bouquets, break them down, put them back together, get some ribbon and a new vase, and it literally looked like I went to the florist.

Other people started catching on to the fact that I was doing that and asking me to do it for their moms and their grandmothers and it kind of just spiraled out of control.

I had no intention of opening a brick and mortar store.

I had no intention of creating the Bloom Wagon at all.

I was literally just trying to make my mom smile.

- Based on the research research that I have done, Black florists make up about 2% of the floral industry, and that's not Black women florist, that's Black florists altogether.

And in our organization we engage daily with about 300 to 500 Black women florists.

- I'm the only person that I know that does like a waterproof floral handbag where you can build your arrangement on the inside of it.

Emily O'Malley, who works for the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, reached out to me and she was like, "I love these floral handbags and we would love to have the floral handbag on Artisan Row."

Outside of like being here, I've never met a Black florist.

A lot of people are not afforded the opportunity of having a garden outside, having land, having a yard to do those things and to like get your hands dirty.

But there are now gardening clubs and opportunities to do that.

I met a couple Black florists that are here.

Tash and Bloom, they're right across from me, Black Girl Florist, which did an exhibit over in the main hall.

- We started Black Girl Florists in the height of the racial turmoil in the summer of 2020.

I wanted to create a place where people can shop Black for flowers.

I want to meet and get to know florists who look like me.

And I knew we were out here doing great things, but I wanted us to be able to connect.

It grew and developed into building relationships with existing flower organizations where essentially they would reach out to us to participate in their events and their meetings.

- What do you think are some of the barriers for access to land for Black families?

- I think part of it is information.

I think the knowledge of the availability of land.

And then the second piece would just be education on tending the land.

What does that look like in our society?

This was our first time participating in the flower show and it was such an exciting, exciting event to be a part of.

- [Narrator] For many florists like Briauna, commitment to gardening is not just about temporary beauty.

Several generations of American families have tended the land, planting, and cross-breeding and encouraging sprouts to bloom.

- The flower show has been such a wild ride from like start to like now and I'm so happy to be here experiencing this and meeting other people and just really getting the Bloom Wagon's name out there.

I really want to purchase more land and open a wedding venue.

That really is my dream to just buy a couple acres of land, get a building on it, make it nice and pretty, and I could just be the full service floral designer right there.

Bouquets, spread love no matter who you are, if you know each other, strangers are not where you come from, flowers literally just brighten everyone's day and spread love.

- This year's Philadelphia Flower Show is from March 2nd through the 10th, head over to their website to purchase tickets and you can pick up a Poppa's Custard while you're there.

I love this packaging, I'm gonna get a taste.

Mm, really good.

(dramatic music) - Germantown Avenue is our commercial corridor here in Mr. Airy, it cuts right through our community and is is our gathering spot.

It's our place where we go and eat.

It's our place where we shop and do business.

It's a place where Mr. Airy residents gather.

When we established the Mr. Airy bid 15 plus years ago, we had a strong commercial corridor, but we had a lot of blight, a lot of vacancies.

(bouncy music) - One of our board members had developed a rose garden at the corner of Carpenter Lane and Germantown Avenue.

Someone at the at the board meeting said you know we have that rose garden there, what about that park that's a lot bigger that's right next to the Septa turnaround.

Would somebody be willing to volunteer to do something with that park?

And I raised my hand and said I would volunteer if I could get some help with the digging.

- Septa allowed us to use their property to establish our first park.

It really set the tone for the remaining five parks to happen.

Yvonne was our first volunteer who adopted this trolley car park and made it happen.

She gathered local folks who wanted to get their hands dirty, literally and weed and plant, and they made this park wonderful.

(dramatic music) Each of our parks has a unique personality.

Starting on the southernmost part of Germantown Avenue, we have Freedom Park, which is located near Germantown and Washington Lane, next to the Johnson House, which was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

It's a wonderful round park where people like to visit and spend time.

(upbeat music) At Carpenter Lane, we have Carpenter Park.

(upbeat music) We have Sedgwick Park.

(upbeat music) Pelham Park sits next to Malelani Cafe and I know a lot of their customers will enjoy coffee or tea sitting on the wall of that park.

And finally we have what we call Friendship Park near the corner of Germantown and Mount Pleasant.

As we like to say, Mount Airy sits between freedom and friendship.

- To the movies we go with Patrick Stoner, who talks with Paul Giamatti from the Oscar nominated "The Holdovers" about his ability to play irritating characters with charm.

- Do you think I want to be babysitting you?

No, I was praying your mother would pick up the phone or your father would arrive in a helicopter or a flying saucer - To pick you up.

- My father's dead.

- You don't tell a boy that's been left behind at Christmas that nobody wants him.

What's wrong with you?

- [Narrator] Paul Giamatti stars in Alexander Payne's, "The Holdovers".

They've worked together before in "Sideways".

They seem to have a natural affinity for each other.

And Giamatti can play characters that would be extremely irritating except for his charm.

And I ask him about that trait.

- I credit it to the writing, not to me so that I don't have to pretend it's anything to do with me.

I can say it actually is in the writing somehow.

So it's the good writing to start with that lets me actually, if I actually do pull that off and make an irritating character not irritating, it's 'cause the writing actually does it, it's not really me.

- [Patrick] In other words, you can do it in an unconscious way because you're concentrating so totally on delivering what the writer wanted you to deliver.

- What I think the writer does and then what the director will help me figure out, I'll bring stuff to it, but it's all inspired by the writing.

- [Patrick] How much stuff do you bring to it?

Do you like to empathize?

Do you like to suggest things?

Are you one of these Hitchcock things, stay right, smacked down, it was all storyboarded, don't change a thing?

- Yeah, depends because sometimes the director will want that and I'm open to trying anything.

I don't love to improvise unless that's the idea.

If that's where we're starting from and I know that's what's going on, I'll do it happily.

So Alexander likes to be word perfect, but he's also very happy If you ad lib something suddenly out of the blue and something happens and then he can really enjoy that.

I'll kind of go with whatever it feels like is right to do.

- When do you feel as you're preparing something like you've got that character?

- Sometimes it will happen two weeks in to doing the thing and it will suddenly click like that.

And sometimes you've felt it before, but a lot of the time, I think because of the nature of film, it doesn't happen until a little of the way in because you, especially now you, don't get a ton of rehearsal.

I've hardly ever rehearsed much for something, but Alexander does.

So a lot of the time I feel like maybe I have a better grip in it going in, but it's scary if you never feel that click.

And I've definitely felt times when I've never felt the click.

- Well, I've always felt the click when I was watching you Paul.

It's always a pleasure.

- Likewise.

- Open and you're one of the, our critics side of it loves so much because you don't mind us asking you anything about it.

You were willing to go there, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Alright, that is our show.

Thank you so much for watching, have a good night everyone.

(upbeat music)