257: Where Do We Go From Here – Pinch of Yum Post Recap

Alexa Peduzzi: You are listening to the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. I’m Alexa from the team here at Food Blogger Pro and we are so happy, honored, and excited that you’re tuning into the podcast today. After a two week hiatus from the podcast, we’re back with an incredibly important episode from our fearless leaders, Bjork and Lindsay Ostrom. These past few weeks have been complicated, sad, frustrating, difficult, and unjust. But also in these past few weeks, we’ve listened to powerful conversations, participated in important discussions with our team and are holding ourselves accountable to being actively anti-racist, challenging injustice and using our platform to amplify messages of hope and change. In this episode, Bjork and Lindsay share some resources for supporting black owned businesses and learning more about being actively anti-racist. So without any further ado, Bjork, Lindsay, take it away.

Bjork Ostrom: Hey Lindsay.

Lindsay Ostrom: Hi.

Bjork Ostrom: Welcome to the podcast.

Lindsay Ostrom: Thanks.

Bjork Ostrom: Is nice to be sitting in the same room with somebody.

Lindsay Ostrom: It is.

Bjork Ostrom: Also nice to be putting on my podcast personality. Do you feel like I have a different personality? Like I do a little countdown. I go three, two, one. Do you feel like I change when I go into podcast mode?

Lindsay Ostrom: No, not really. Maybe once you get going, but no. It’s not like the immediate switch. It’s not like a different voice, like a broadcasting voice or something. Your voice is pretty consistent.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay. Great. Well, here’s the plan for today’s podcast, is going to be a shorter podcast. We’re in the middle of a really unique season of content where we have a content calendar, we have podcasts that we’ve recorded and we kind of press pause on those in order to give space and time to talk through some of these really important things that are happening. As I talked about on the last podcast, as people know globally, nationally, and then especially here in the Twin Cities, we are as a community reeling from the death, the murder of George Floyd and the ripple effects of what that means and a movement around anti-racism and talking about race in a way that we haven’t before in the best way possible. So what we’re doing on the podcast is also pausing our normal content calendar, the episodes that we had planned to publish right now, to do what we can to be a part of a movement that is really important.

Bjork Ostrom: And so for today’s episode, kind of as a stand in, as we build out the queue to have other conversations and interviews, we’re going to talk through a post that you published on Pinch of Yum called, Where Do We Go From Here and talking about some really concrete action items. And I think that’s really important. Conversation is important, but action is also really important. And one of the things that I love about this post is the Pinch of Yum team worked to break it out into different categories, what can I do today? What can I do this month? And then what can I do for the longterm? So I think that’s a question that a lot of people have. They’re wondering what can I do, and for this episode, we’re going to talk through a few of those things that as a team personally, that we’re doing, does that sound okay?

Lindsay Ostrom: Sounds great.

Bjork Ostrom: Okay.

Lindsay Ostrom: And I mean, I would just add… I mean, we haven’t pre scripted what these questions will be, but I feel like it’s important to just lay out right at the beginning that having two white people on a podcast to talk about race, I feel neither of us is here to share expertise as much as to share the places that we’re learning and point people to the resources that are helping us personally as a company, that are helping others on our team. That’s what I just want to establish as like the ground, like foundation for this podcast is that’s my hope it. At the outset is that what we’re doing is we’re pointing you to the people that we learn from.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. There’s a movement, I was talking about this before, and you had talked about on Instagram, there’s these different movements. Maybe I’m just now a part of the podcast community in a way that I need to be, but I don’t know of podcasts movements that happen at the same time. And one of the… Well, some of the movements you’d know better than I would, I’m not on Instagram.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, like on Instagram I think it was last week, there was like a movement. The hashtag was amplified melanated voices. So the idea with that being that something that we can do is share the mic and pass… Like lift up black influencers, black teachers, and yeah. Point people in the direction that they can learn, as opposed to saying like, “Here, I’m the expert. Let me teach you.” That’s that’s not, I don’t think fitting for this moment. And I’m not just talking about this podcast, I’m talking about this moment in time. So yeah, I don’t know if that exists… I’m sure that exists in some way on podcasts, but with Instagram-

Bjork Ostrom: I feel like hashtags allow you to do that in a way that-

Lindsay Ostrom: … hashtags and tagging people. So like a lot of people I saw last week and I think from the outside to me, it was really helpful and valuable to see white or non-black influencers, basically using their platform to say, “Hey, these are the black creators, the black teachers that we follow, that we learn from.” And because of how Instagram is set up with tags and with easy click arounds and follows, like you can one, two, three, boom, boom, boom and you can be finding whole new worlds of information. That’s maybe not, doesn’t work quite the same way in a podcast, but hopefully we can replicate the spirit of that in this podcast.

Bjork Ostrom: Let’s actually start by doing that in the section of what can I do today. There’s a couple areas where you’ve highlighted black leaders on Instagram. These are actually… I’m not on Instagram so it ends up happening as you will send me three to 15 emails a day on articles or Instagram posts. And so I recognize a lot of these that you’ve outlined in the post, but can you share maybe one or two that you have found to be especially helpful in the season? One that I recognized right away is the Conscious Kid, but are there a couple of others that you want to talk to… And as a note, we will link to all of these in the show notes as well. And we’ll link to this blog post as well.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. So from this blog post, and we both have this pulled up in front of us. I have it on my phone from the chair I’m sitting in and you have it on your computer. So we’re both looking at the same thing here, but this post came together by way of team effort. So a lot of the things that are listed on this post aren’t even me, Lindsey personally. My resources or recommendations, but there are some of them on the list that are from me. And so I feel like that’s what makes sense is for me to highlight the ones that really have meant the most to me. At the top of the list is Osheta Moore. And we were introduced to Osheta Moore actually at our church. So she’s local to Minneapolis and she has spoken at our church.

Lindsay Ostrom: I mean, probably I’ve been following her for a couple years and listening to her podcast for a couple of years. I really appreciate her voice as a person of faith. Her initiative that she has a hashtag and kind of a series on Instagram, she calls it Dear White Peacemakers. And she kind of her life mission or her ethos and things is around peacemaking. Not peacekeeping necessarily, but peacemaking and I just have really appreciated her perspective and all this and learning from her, especially because we did have the chance to hear her speak a few times at our church and feel like we have a little bit… She has no idea who we are, but I feel we have a little bit of a personal connection to her. She does these… I think for people who have faith as a part of their life, or I guess consider themselves spiritual in some way, she does these daily breath prayer, Instagram Live… Wait, what is it called? IGTV?

Bjork Ostrom: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Lindsay Ostrom: IGTV videos. So she does them live and then she puts them on her feed. Anyways, I’ve just really appreciated her. I know a lot of my friends have appreciated her, and that’s probably more than… I can’t say that much about every-

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: … I mean, this is going to get too long if I say that much about every person. But anyway-

Bjork Ostrom: So Osheta you get the spotlight.

Lindsay Ostrom: Okay, Osheta. Austin Channing Brown would be another one I would pull out. I haven’t read her book, but I really would like to. It’s called I’m Still Here. And actually, I just saw that the Reese Witherspoon Book Club just picked her book as one of their reads for June. And last night, I just listened to a podcast that she did on Brené Brown’s podcast, it was so good. It was really good. I know we’re not talking about podcasts right now, but if you want to hear… If you want to really get to know her heart and learn from her, well, I just feel like the whole time… Like I’m going to go back and listen to it again, for sure. And that’s the hard thing about podcasts is I feel like you want to highlight something and how to do that on podcasts. Like I need to… Maybe there’s a transcription of it somewhere that I should go find. But it is a really powerful podcast. So the podcast itself is called Unlocking Us. And it would be the most recent episode where Brené interviews Austin Channing Brown.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Speaking of podcasts, there’s a few that we list here and because people are listening to a podcast, I feel like it makes it easier for people then to pull up another podcast. And I was actually just talking to one of our team members yesterday, and she’s talking about a episode that she listened to on Terrible, Thanks for Asking recently. I don’t remember what it was, but it was like Twin Cities leaders, black Twin Cities leaders, thought leaders, business leaders, reflecting on what it’s been like for them to grow up in Minnesota, and the contrast between what it looks to be white growing up in Minnesota versus what it looks like to be black growing up in Minnesota. And just how different that experience is. So that’s the most recent episode of Terrible, Thanks for Asking. I’ll highlight that as one that I’ve added to my queue, I haven’t listened to it yet, but are there any that from this section that you want to highlight, podcasts?

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah. Of the three that we have mentioned on Pinch of Yum, 74 Seconds is the only one that I’ve listened to. And that, 74 Seconds was about Philando Castile and… Gosh, was it… I don’t remember how long ago, three years ago, Philando Castile was a black man that was killed actually in our neighborhood where we lived at the time. So that felt like an important one for us to listen to at the time.

Lindsay Ostrom: And yeah, it’s powerful. It’s hard. It’s really hard to listen to. But that would be the one that I would recommend just because personally that’s the one that I’ve listened to of the three. I’m not a huge podcast listener right now, but that one I can definitely vouch for. And then obviously what I just mentioned about Brené Brown’s podcast, where she interviews Austin Channing Brown. I also recently listened to her podcast where she interviewed, I think you pronounce this Ibram X. Kendi. This is, he’s the author of How To Be An Antiracist, and also Stamped From The Beginning and several other anti-racist and educational books around racial justice. And he’s amazing, super smart. And that was also a really great interview. So two of her most recent interviews have also been impactful.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. And then the last section here that is important to point out is making donations is something that you can do right away. And we wanted to highlight that. As I talked about on the last episode, two weeks ago, the team here in Food Blogger Pro made a donation to NAACP and We Love Lake Street. Lake Street being one of the areas that was hardest hit from some of the riotings, so supporting those businesses and the cleanup effort there. And then NAACP as well.

Bjork Ostrom: And then highlighting also a couple of these Minnesota organizations, Black Visions Collective, North Minneapolis business Community Relief as well. So we’ll link to those in the show notes. So that’s all things that we can do pretty quickly. We can follow Instagram accounts. We can listen to podcasts, we can make donations. That could be today. That could be this week. There’s also things that are kind of in that middle ground, things that we can do this month. And this would be courses. It would be books. It would be areas of education, whether that be movies, TV shows. So is there anything from this list, Lindsay, that you feel like would be worth highlighting that we want to shine a light on and make sure that people are aware of as they’re processing this stuff along with us?

Lindsay Ostrom: I think when I think of that first section of the list, things I can do today, it’s kind of like, how can I quickly take action? How can I quickly jumpstart my learning and my… Yeah, just my learning around almost like learning what I don’t know. I don’t know what I don’t know. And those are kind of the quick things and this part of the list of what can I do this month are the things that are a little bit longer work. It’s not something that you’re going to immediately sit down and then finish by the end of the day necessarily. But things that take a little more digging in and I feel like it’s helpful to differentiate the mindset for that. So for me, it would be things like reading books, like this is what you said Bjork, like reading books.

Lindsay Ostrom: And these are the two that stand out for me because this is just personally what’s happening in my life, reading books. I’m reading right now, How To Be An Anti-Racist. And we’re doing that as like a part of a… I’m doing that as a part of a book club with my friends. And that’s a longer learning because it’s a heavy book. It’s not like follow someone on social media and learn a quick thing from a post that they did. And that’s not at all to downplay the learning that can happen on social media or on those quicker consumption formats. But with a book it’s like, oh man, already have so many questions, have so many things, I’m on chapter two and it’s just digging a little bit deeper.

Lindsay Ostrom: So that’s the book that I’m reading right now. And that’s a good format for me is reading books. So on my list… We don’t have this linked, but on my list, I think I mentioned also, I’d like to read Austin Channing Brown’s book, I’m Still Here and there are so many booklets out there I would highly encourage anybody listening, who is a reader, who likes to read and who wants to dig a little bit deeper. One thing that’s interesting Austin shared on her Instagram that her book was on the, I feel like it was the New York Times Bestseller list for nonfiction. And almost the entire list are books about racism, books about white privilege, books to teach people about racial justice. And there were like 15 of them and I just thought like, wow, that’s really amazing.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. I think this is stepping into the… One of the things that I’ve been… A visual that I’ve been trying to apply in the spirit of time as I think about like, what am I doing about this? There’s conversations, but then there’s also action. I feel like it’s the pursuit of feeling in the picture. And I feel like a book… If an Instagram account and a concept helps to color a little bit of the picture, like if you imagine Solvi has her coloring books and you flip through them and they’re not filled in, like an Instagram maybe fills in a little piece of it. And I feel like a book helps to fill in even more. And my realization is that I’m never fully going to be able to complete that picture and have a perfect understanding, but to commit to the continual and forever pursuit of filling that in as much as possible. And I feel like some of these, what can I do this month in between pieces, our commitment to maybe slower, but more thorough job of filling that in reading a book being an example.

Lindsay Ostrom: Another example that I would mention, and we have a category called Explicitly Teaching Kids About Anti-racism. But I have found… So The Conscious Kid is they have an Instagram account which is probably how most people know them. But they also have a Patreon… I don’t know how you say that page account.

Bjork Ostrom: Sure.

Lindsay Ostrom: They’re on Patreon. And I signed up to be… Gosh, I don’t even know what it’s called. It’s called like the… It’s like where they have different levels of membership and you get different things depending on… Level one, you get book lists, level two, you get these more in depth emails and articles with researched ideas specifically around kids and around teaching kids and anti-racist parenting. And those have been so, so helpful for me. And that’s deeper learning because that’s like long form content.

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s more than what they’re packing into their Instagram posts. That’s like, this is going to take me five to 10 minutes when I sit down and read it. But I have found the information in that just totally invaluable. It’s so well put together. The researchers and the writers that they have putting the materials together are so smart and able to communicate a lot of really helpful information. So I would highly recommend that if you have kids or if you’re an educator in any capacity, I found that really helpful. That’s The Conscious Kid. And then it would be just finding them on Patreon and maybe we can link directly to their Patreon page so they can find them.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. So we talked about things that you can do right away, things that would maybe be that kind of middle ground, things you could be doing this month. And then we have the section of longterm. And the first thing that is highlighted there is this idea of supporting black owned businesses. And there are a few here that I recognize as Minneapolis St. Paul restaurants or businesses. Do you want to highlight some of those for people who are here in the Twin Cities, or if people ever come and do a trip here and want to make sure that they’re intentional about that?

Lindsay Ostrom: My favorite actually was probably The Fitz, which recently I think we heard recently closed. And so that’s Justin Sutherland, he’s the chef. And he also does Handsome Hog, which we have on our list. And I think they’re moving the Handsome Hog into The Fitz location. That’s what you told me. But yeah, that’s one of my favorites. And then the rest on the list, I actually haven’t been to, but those come highly, highly recommended by our team members. And I think several of them, at least one, I know that Trio Plant-Based, but I feel like there was another one that were like vegan friendly and if you’re coming to Minneapolis and you need a little list, our team can-

Bjork Ostrom: Pimento Jamaican Kitchen, Handsome Hog, Du Nord Craft Spirits, Afro Deli, we’ll link to all of those. One of the sections here that I think is important to highlight is kind of a commitment. And I’ve been thinking about these and reflecting on these different statements that we made. It’s commitment you can make to yourself and to your family. And are there any in this list that you want to highlight or talk through as they’re all very important, but?

Lindsay Ostrom: So let me see which one would best fit this. I guess maybe we will intervene… That last one says we will intervene when we see racism or the first one says we will not be silent about racism. These are just example commitments that I wrote out that I think I, or we in our family would try to live out. And one learning that I had this week was that we did the post on Pinch of Yum, and people have all kinds of different opinions about this. And had some emails come in from people who were in disagreement about certain things, or… There were some emails that came in that had the potential to fall in that category of things we wouldn’t want to stay silent on.

Lindsay Ostrom: And my initial reaction was, well, these are just… In some cases it was so extreme and so hateful that it was like, we’re not even going to respond to this. But someone on our team pointed out and this is helpful to get feedback and to learn and to do better. Someone on our team had pointed out, “Hey, if you or we are making commitments, we’re not going to be silent. We’re not going to… We’re going to intervene when we see things that aren’t right, when we hear things that aren’t right.” Then isn’t not responding to those emails kind of breaking on that commitment. Like you’re not actually following through on that. And that was like a learning moment for me, where I just wasn’t thinking about it in the right way. And I was like, “Yeah, that does make sense, and I do think we need to address those and respond to those.” And I think that’s where something like a commitment in my mind, that’s where that comes in. And I feel like it’s really important to note here that I needed help in order to really live that out. Like sometimes-

Bjork Ostrom: Accountability.

Lindsay Ostrom: … accountability. Sometimes we can’t even see our own… we can make those commitments and then not even realize the ways that we’re not upholding them. And so anyways, that was kind of… The thought with that is like, you see a lot of people saying like, “Oh, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this.” And these are things that don’t have one single tangible thing with them, but kind of an overarching, like a lifelong… And this is lifelong work as I’m learning. And this is a marathon. And so what are like some guiding principles, some guiding commitments that can be a filter for the decisions I’m making.

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah. And it’s interesting. I feel like people can relate to this who listen to the podcast I think potentially one of the muscles you build over time as you create more content online is ignoring people who are really outspokenly negative or have a super strong opinion, or come after you specifically-

Lindsay Ostrom: Or in this case, outwardly racist.

Bjork Ostrom: … talking about it in regards to like recipes or content. And it’s like, it’s easy to archive those and have kind of learned like maybe in a lot of ways is best to just not engage. But point being, making a commitment in this category you’re having to go undo that and say, “No.” Instead of ignoring, which if it was a super mean comment about a recipe, probably best to ignore, because it’s a difficult conversation that kicks off so many different interactions than… But in this case, it’s saying like, “No, this is something that we have committed to engage with. It’s the opposite. We’re going to lean into this. We are going to have this conversation.”

Bjork Ostrom: And to flip that, and instead of saying, not engage, we’re saying we are going to get engaged. We’re going to make a commitment to have those conversations and those interactions, which Enneagram nine, for me, quest, strengths finder, harmony those are two categories for me that I always seek. So not an easy thing, but it’s helpful to have that commitment to do that. Anything else that you want to highlight in this section of longterm considerations, what that looks like?

Lindsay Ostrom: No, I don’t think so. But the one thing that I was going to… This is kind of going off script from the post and more to back to this idea of amplify melanated voices, amplifying other people in the space and introducing our audience to people, we have on Pinch of Yum Instagram… We didn’t include this in the blog post, but because the blog post is specifically more focused on anti-racism resources, but on Pinch of Yum Instagram, we have a list of black Food Bloggers, men, and women, vegan, not vegan, baking all different kinds of content. And-

Bjork Ostrom: Love it. Can you highlight some of those?

Lindsay Ostrom: … yes, I would love to. So there’s a list I’m just looking here. It looks like there’s about 10 people listed on the list. And then we also had mentioned several in stories. So again, I would highly recommend you to view the complete list. But for sure, one of my favorites is… I’m just looking for her on the list, make sure she’s on here. There she, is Sweet Potato Soul. And I’ve mentioned her a lot on my personal account on Pinch of Yum. But Jenne is the creator behind the account. And I think, I feel like I’m always just inspired by vegan food. And she’s a vegan chef. She’s a YouTuber, she’s a cookbook author. But I also personally just really appreciate her. She has a daughter that’s about the same age as Solvi, so it’s fun to follow her and she’s just a super talented creator. So I really like and appreciate her. And then Confessions of a Clean Foodie is a fellow Minnesotan. And I think we’ve maybe… Or I don’t think I’ve mentioned her on the podcast before.

Lindsay Ostrom: I think I’ve mentioned her on the blog before. But she does a lot of, I would call it healthiest food, like well, healthy food. It just sometimes it’s specific to particular diets, so she’ll do some keto recipes or low carb, things like that. And then she also does clean makeup, so are like clean beauty. So she does these beauty tutorials and she’s just a super fun personality and also because she’s local, I feel a little extra pull to recommend her.

Lindsay Ostrom: And the last one that I would recommend is something that someone on our team actually introduced me to it is called Whetstone Magazine, W-H-E-T, Whetstone Magazine. And it is a multimedia company. So it’s a magazine and they do videos and they do online content, but they highlight the origins of food and the culture behind the food and it is… So not all of their stories are focused on the black community or anything like that. But the creators of the agency, I guess the magazine, the agency, the company are black and they are extremely talented. Like the videos are… Some of them are… If you look at their Vimeo, you could just get lost in the food videos that they have. So those are just three that stand out to me. But again, that list has a bunch of recommendations and as do our Pinch of Yum stories.

Bjork Ostrom: Awesome. Linds, thanks so much for jumping in on this. We were, as a team… Like you talked about before, we’re kind of in a holding pattern for the podcast, figuring out what does it look to essentially rebuild our queue, so we can be a part of the momentum that’s happening around conversations, around anti-racism and amplifying black voices and creators.

Bjork Ostrom: And as you said, we are two white people sitting here in Minnesota having grown up in rural Minnesota and want to point that out. And so acknowledging that, and also thanks for coming on to talk through that as we rebuild that queue in this kind of holding pattern that we’re in for the podcast. Anything else that you want to say or talk through in regards to how you as a creator are trying to be intentional to… Even though Pinch of Yum is a food site, how you are trying to be intentional to use the platform or the audience or the following that you have to whatever the analogy is that you want to use amplify, shine a light, give exposure to, have the conversation, kind of last thoughts as we wrap up the podcast?

Lindsay Ostrom: I have so many things swirling in my head. Like things that have been impactful for me. But there was this meme floating… Or it’s not a meme. It’s like a non funny meme. It’s like a text only little graphic. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Bjork Ostrom: Yeah.

Lindsay Ostrom: That’s like floats around, makes the rounds on social media. And I hope somebody, maybe there’s an original source for this and we can find it after and link it because I don’t know what the original source was or who it was. But the idea with it was that everybody has different work to do in this greater puzzle of like, how do we work towards racial justice and equity and how do we do the work? We hear that phrase a lot. And this little graphic just talks about how everyone has a different place in that.

Lindsay Ostrom: And I think that idea has been impactful for me in like, I can do a variety of different things and I should be challenging myself to do those things. And also we each have areas where we’re more connected and more resourced and more… For some of us it’s like, “Oh, we have a ton of time. So how can we use that time?” For some of us it’s like, “We’re able to financially support.” For some of us it might be industry specific. And so I think I’m just… That’s a thought that I’m having as I’m… I think all of us are feeling so grateful. I should say all of us, like white people or people who are interested in working towards justice for the black community, we are absorbing a ton of information, taking in a ton of ideas and being challenged to a lot of new things.

Lindsay Ostrom: And for myself, I’m just asking myself like, where is my most effective place in this? Whereas my… I hesitate to say lane, because I don’t… You and I were talking about this yesterday like I don’t want to have it… I don’t want to present the idea of like, then you are in your lane and you’re locked in there and then you never go outside of it. But finding the place that we are most-

Bjork Ostrom: Area of greatest impact potentially

Lindsay Ostrom: … yes. Like where can I put in the effort that’s going to be the most impactful. And so that’s just something I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know that I have an answer for it at this point, but I think is something that we can all be thinking about and those of us in food, those of us in the internet world, yeah, just thinking about that corner of the picture specifically and how do we do our part especially well in that space.

Bjork Ostrom: That’s awesome. We are coming up to a hard stop on your calendar. I need to be respectful of your schedule.

Lindsay Ostrom: We have one minute.

Bjork Ostrom: And thanks for talking through this. And for those of you who are listening, appreciate you being a part of this conversation. We obviously wouldn’t do the podcast if there wasn’t anybody who listened. And we are so grateful for this community that has been a part of this journey along the way. So we are excited to continue this conversation and feel honored to be a part of it and honored to you who are following along and listening, and stay tuned because we’re going to continue to publish content here in the weeks and months to come. So I’m signing off. Thanks Lindsay.

Lindsay Ostrom: Yeah, thank you.

Alexa Peduzzi: And that’s a wrap for this episode of the Food Blogger Pro Podcast. Bjork, and Lindsay mentioned a lot of great resources, organizations and links in this episode. So be sure to hop on over to our show notes for this episode, foodbloggerpro.com/257 to find the full list. We appreciate you being here and listening and for being part of this community. And we hope that this episode, it gave you some ideas of some ways that you can learn, grow, and help make change. Make it a great week.