Hi.
\nMy name is Molly Wizenberg, and I write this blog.<\/p>\n
I live in Seattle, but I grew up in Oklahoma City. I have also lived in the Bay Area and briefly in Paris, France. I’m into peanut butter, scrambled eggs, seven-minute\u00a0eggs, meatballs, meat\u00a0that falls off the bone, cabbage, pancakes, black coffee, buttered toast, milkshakes, nectarines, raspberries, soup dumplings, tuna salad, chocolate, cold apples, warm blackberries, escarole, cheese\u00a0described as “fudgy,” beverages involving rye and\/or Campari and\/or going by the name “shandy,” and anything malted, though not necessarily in that order. I am known in some circles for my karaoke<\/a> (in)abilities.<\/p>\n I started Orangette in July of 2004. I had just decided to quit a Ph.D. program in cultural anthropology, and I didn\u2019t know what to do with myself. The only thing I knew was that, whatever I did, it had to involve food and writing. I thought it might be kind of great to write for a food magazine someday, but I had no idea how. In the meantime, I decided I would just get a job doing whatever, and then write after hours. I told a journalist friend about my decision, and he suggested that I start a blog. It would help hold me accountable, he said: having a blog would force me to sit down and write regularly, even when it felt difficult. So I started Orangette. Roughly 15 years later, here I am, with this blog, a book<\/a>, and a second book<\/a>, and a third book<\/a> on the way. In 2005, I met a guy named Brandon Pettit, a reader of this blog, and he and I were married from 2007 to 2017. Though we’re not married anymore, we are still co-conspirators and family to one another. Back in August of 2009, he and I opened a restaurant called Delancey<\/a>, and in August of 2012, we opened Essex<\/a>, a bar and restaurant next door to Delancey. On September 9 of that same year, our daughter June was born. She is a thoroughly delightful creature, and I feel lucky to get to parent her, along with Brandon and my partner Ash.<\/p>\n Last but not least,\u00a0I also co-host the food-and-comedy podcast Spilled Milk<\/a> (10 years and counting) with my good friend Matthew Amster-Burton<\/a>.<\/p>\n Thanks for stopping by.<\/p>\n When I sat down to start this blog, I had a bag of orangettes – the French name for chocolate-dipped candied orange peels – sitting on my desk, just a few inches from the computer. I initially had a different blog title in mind, but it was already taken, and then my eye landed on the orangettes, and it seemed right. Plus, I like orangettes.<\/p>\n I was afraid you would ask that. I don\u2019t. It\u2019s just that I\u2019ve never felt a real need to make them, and I don\u2019t have the patience to temper chocolate. In general, I have preferred to simply eat them, and to leave their making to the pros. (I feel the same way, incidentally, about baguettes, croissants, and cheese.) But if I were to make orangettes, this<\/a> is probably the first method I would try.<\/p>\n I shoplifted some calligraphy pens and keychains when I was eight, but I\u2019m not a bad person. I love to hear from you, possibly even more than you can imagine. But! I have a hard time keeping up. I do my best to reply to every comment and e-mail I receive, but I am not always successful, and for that, I apologize.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t accept ads. \u00a0But thanks for asking! (For the sake of disclosure, I do participate in the Amazon Associates program<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The Internet can feel like a good place to anonymously air one\u2019s discontents, or to give voice to one’s politics or religious beliefs, but such\u00a0commentary is no more welcome here than it would be if we were sitting together in my living room. This site may be open to the public, but it is also an extension of me and of my home. It exists because I have made it, because I pay for its hosting and maintenance. I ask that you post only words that you would say aloud\u00a0to me in person, and I reserve the right to delete any comment that is hurtful or nasty,\u00a0that openly proselytizes, or that uses hate speech.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t do product reviews. But when appropriate, I do like to mention great books that cross my path.<\/p>\n Except where noted, I do.<\/p>\n Prior to April of 2008, most of the photographs on this site were taken with a Nikon D70s. But then I fell in love with film photography, and from mid-2008 to late 2013, nearly all the photos on this site were taken with film cameras. I have a number of them, and I have a hard time choosing a favorite: Nikon FE (35 mm), Pentax K1000 (35 mm), Minolta Instant Pro (a Polaroid-type camera), Fuji Instax (a Fuji-brand instant camera), Polaroid SX-70, Polaroid 600 (the big, hulking one from Polaroid\u2019s professional line), Holga (medium format), and Hasselblad 500c\/m (medium format). Film is magic. But of course, the turnaround time with film can be very<\/i> slow, so in late 2013, after I realized that using only film was keeping me from posting here as often as I wanted to, I bought a new digital camera, a Canon 5D Mark III. \u00a0Now I shoot a little of everything.<\/p>\n I sometimes also post iPhone shots.<\/p>\n When I post Polaroid shots, I do so with the help of an Epson Perfection V500 scanner. When I post shots from any of my other film cameras, they have been developed and scanned by Panda Lab<\/a>, in Seattle.<\/p>\n My pals Sam Schick and Eli Van Zoeren, who you can find at\u00a0Neversink<\/a>, did.<\/p>\n The entire contents of this site\u00a0are protected by copyright. Please do not use anything without my permission. Please ask first.<\/p>\n Yes, there is. It\u2019s right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n The short answer is this: I got to write books and magazine articles because of my blog. My agent and my editors, at Simon & Schuster and at Bon App\u00e9tit<\/a> and elsewhere, found me directly through Orangette.<\/p>\n My best advice is to write. It sounds simplistic, but it\u2019s the best advice I\u2019ve ever been given, so now I\u2019m passing it on to you. Write honestly and thoughtfully about what moves you. Start a blog, keep a journal – whatever works for you. Just keep writing, and try to have fun with it. And work hard. Set high standards for yourself – that\u2019s very important – and get comfortable with not always meeting them. Work hard to learn how to meet them. Read this Ira Glass quote<\/a>. Try to always write better, smarter, tighter. Read good writing and figure out what makes it work. Read up on book proposals and literary agencies, research other books and writers in your field, work hard, and stick your neck out. And when you get stuck, read books like Bird by Bird<\/a><\/i>, by Anne Lamott. Or On Writing<\/a><\/i>, by Stephen King. Above all,\u00a0work hard. Keep going. Did I mention that it’s hard work?<\/p>\n No, I am not professionally trained in cooking. My only “training,” as it were, comes from growing up in a family of avid eaters and home cooks. My brother David went to the Culinary Institute of America and owns a bunch<\/a> of restaurants<\/a> in the<\/a> DC area<\/a>, but the rest of us are purely home cooks.<\/p>\n Likewise, I do not have a degree in writing. I\u2019ve always loved to write, though, and as a teenager, I had the honor of studying poetry for two summers at a remarkable program called the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute<\/a>\u00a0at Quartz Mountain. I have also worked as a teaching assistant at OSAI, assisting poets George Bilgere<\/a> and Ruth L. Schwartz<\/a>. And in the fall of 2014, I was invited to teach at Quartz Mountain myself(!), a Fall Arts Institute<\/a> workshop on personal narrative and memoir. I have a B.A. in human biology and a minor in French from Stanford University, and I have an M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Washington.<\/p>\n 1. Yes. And, 2. Please do! I love to teach writing, particularly to adults, and I have taught one- to five-day workshops on narrative food writing, personal narrative, and memoir. Please drop me a line if you’d like more information, or if you’d like me to teach in your school or your town.<\/p>\n Right. I co-own a\u00a0restaurant called Delancey<\/a>, in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. We opened the place in August of 2009, and the menu is focused on Brooklyn-style wood-fired pizza. (Brandon, my business partner, is originally from New Jersey, just a few minutes outside of New York City, and he\u2019s been obsessed with pizza since he was a kid.) I cooked at Delancey in the beginning, and I still help to run it, but really, it\u2019s Brandon\u2019s thing. Come eat pizza! Or have a drink and a wood-fired burger at Essex<\/a>, the bar we own next door. \u00a0Or take a class at the Pantry<\/a>. The Pantry is located directly behind Delancey, and it\u2019s owned by our friend Brandi Henderson. Or, hey, hit up Brandon’s newest place, Dino’s Tomato Pie<\/a>, if its website doesn’t blind you (in a nice way) first.<\/p>\n My first book was called A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table<\/a>, and it was published in 2009 by Simon & Schuster. It was – and I can\u2019t believe I get to say this – a New York Timesbestseller. WHAT. It\u2019s a food memoir (with 50 recipes) about losing my dad and growing up, and it was illustrated by one of my favorite artists, Camilla Engman<\/a>. My second book,\u00a0Delancey<\/a>, was also published by Simon & Schuster, this time in 2014, and it too was a New York Times<\/i> bestseller. AAAAHHH! It\u2019s about the experience of opening our restaurant Delancey, which we did on a harrowingly tiny budget and with lots of help from friends and strangers, elbow grease, mistakes that seem funny now but weren’t at all funny then, and Cool Ranch Doritos.<\/p>\n In February of 2008, I began writing a monthly column for Bon App\u00e9tit magazine, and the column ran until April of 2011. It was called “Cooking Life<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Hooo boy. You really don\u2019t want me to help you. You\u2019d probably, or definitely, be better off Googling.<\/p>\n Those are tricky questions, and I don\u2019t have a quick answer. Luckily, though, there are other people out there who do. You might try starting with my friend David Lebovitz, who put together a post on those very topics right here<\/a>. Or my friend Adam Roberts: here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n As for my advice, this is going to seem sort of touchy-feely, but I have a question for you: are you having fun with your blog? Because if you\u2019re not, it\u2019s probably not worth doing – or reading. Above all, write about what you want to write about. Write what you want to read<\/i>. \u00a0If you\u2019re passionate about something, and if you write about it honestly<\/i> and clearly<\/i> and thoughtfully<\/i>, chances are, someone else will be interested too. Also, look closely at your favorite blogs. Look closely at your favorite writers, period. Study them. What do you like about them? What do they do well? And how can you bring elements of that into your work, while still making it your own? I\u2019ve been blogging for a while, but I still think about these kinds of things all the time.<\/p>\n Oh – and I love to teach classes on this stuff. If that interests you, please drop me a line.<\/p>\n My general policy is that I link only to sites that I read regularly. I do not accept requests to exchange links. However, if you\u2019d like to leave me a comment and tell me about your blog, please do. I would love to know about it, and if I find myself stopping by often, I will certainly put up a link.<\/p>\n Of course you may! I\u2019m honored that you\u2019d like to.<\/p>\n For oysters: The Walrus and the Carpenter (Ballard, $$$!)
\nFrequently Asked Questions<\/h2>\n
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About this site<\/h3>\n
Why do you call it Orangette?<\/h4>\n
Do you have a recipe for orangettes posted somewhere around here?<\/h4>\n
Why haven\u2019t you answered my e-mail \/ comment? Are you a bad person?<\/h4>\n
I\u2019d like to advertise on your blog. What are your rates?<\/h4>\n
I left a comment, but you didn’t publish it. Why?<\/h4>\n
Can I send you a free product to review?<\/h4>\n
Who takes the photographs on Orangette?<\/h4>\n
What kind of camera do you use?<\/h4>\n
Who designed your site?<\/h4>\n
Can I use one of your photos on my site or in my magazine?<\/h4>\n
Is there a list or an index of recipes around here somewhere?<\/h4>\n
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About me<\/h3>\n
How did you get book deals and freelance writing gigs? Do you have a literary agent? Do you have any\u00a0advice along those lines?<\/h4>\n
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Are you professionally trained in cooking? Do you have a degree in writing?<\/h4>\n
So you teach workshops on writing? Can I take one?<\/h4>\n
Wait: don\u2019t you own a restaurant, too? But you said you were a home cook…<\/h4>\n
What\u2019s this about a book?<\/h4>\n
What\u2019s this about Bon App\u00e9tit?<\/h4>\n
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About blogging<\/h3>\n
I am new to blogging, and I can\u2019t figure out how to make my blog look \/ work the way I want it to. Can you help me?<\/h4>\n
How can I make my blog better? How can I make my blog successful?<\/h4>\n
I have a blog \/ website. Will you link to it? Want to exchange links?<\/h4>\n
Can I link to your blog?<\/h4>\n
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About Seattle<\/h3>\n
I\u2019m coming to visit Seattle! Where should I go?<\/h4>\n
\nFor pizza: Delancey (Ballard) and Dino’s (Capitol Hill), of course
\nFor breakfast or lunch: Vif (Fremont)
\nFor elegant Italian: Spinasse (Capitol Hill, $$$!)
\nFor soup dumplings: Din Tai Fung (multiple locations)
\nFor fast-food burgers and really good fries: Dick’s (multiple locations)
\nFor outstanding bread and a curated selection of pastries: Sea Wolf (Fremont)
\nFor great coffee and a verrrrry Seattle vibe: Analog Coffee (Capitol Hill)
\nFor a drink and a bite to eat: JarrBar (downtown), Left Bank (South Park \/ Georgetown), Le Caviste (downtown), Vif
\nFor just great everything: Homer (Beacon Hill)
\nFor karaoke: Bush Garden (ID)
\nFor reasonably priced Japanese bowls: Fremont Bowl (Fremont)
\nFor a dark, sexy, classic cocktail situation: Vito’s (First Hill)
\nFor a divey drink, a photobooth, and then great Malaysian food: put your name on the list at Kedai Makan (Capitol Hill), then go around the corner to have a drink and kill time at Montana, then back to Kedai Makan to eat
\nFor a cocktail with a friend, or a date: Queen City (Belltown)<\/p>\n
\nCan I e-mail you?<\/h4>\n