Ep 63 Page ➡️ PLATE! A Feast of Thorns and Roses "ACOTAR Cookbook" Author Interview w/ Chelsea Cole!

"Ashley and Liz interview Chelsea Cole, food blogger and author of A Feast of Thorns and Roses: The Unofficial Cookbook of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Chelsea shares the inspiration behind her ACOTAR-themed cookbook, which creatively brings meals from the beloved fantasy series into real-life kitchens. She discusses her background in food blogging and her goal of making recipes accessible for all skill levels, noting that the book is designed not just for cooking but for fans to deepen their connection with the series. The cookbook features sections inspired by the different courts and characters, including desserts tied to each court and cocktails based on the inner circle. Chelsea also recounts the challenges of recipe development, especially while postpartum, and highlights the joy and community that came from sharing her fandom through food. The episode closes with heartfelt reflections on the power of nostalgia and how food can enrich the experience of revisiting favorite fantasy stories."

Did you guys know that there is an unofficial ACOTAR Cookbook that walks even the most novice cooks and bakers through the process of cooking and creating classic recipes from our most cherished  A Court of Thorns & Roses book series?! Yes, it’s real! And it’s amazing! Today we’re interviewing food blogger and cookbook author Chelsea Cole all about her brand new book A Feast of Thorns and Roses.

Chelsea says that the idea for AFOTAR was born after her love for reading was reignited by a series where "meals are more than simply sustenance; they are expressions of culture, emotion, and connection. This cookbook is [her] attempt to bring those moments to your table, to let you feel the warmth of a simple meal shared in the cozy confines of a dinner with the Inner Circle or taste the richness of the Winter Solstice feast." And boy did we feel that when cooking her recipes! 

Check out Chelsea!

Website: https://aducksoven.com/about/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chel.seacole?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

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Check out these author interviews? ⬇️

We interviewed Callie Hart all about her NYT Bestseller Quicksilver! Watch it here! | https://youtu.be/CED5s7qDBdQ?si=8xtIRO1IzX6Rsld4

Check the official Author Interview with Lindsay Straube best seller titled: Kiss of the Basilisk!  https://youtu.be/fknhocSNIKM

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Ashley is Wearing: an ACOTAR “To The Stars That Listen” from @thebeanworkshop | Use code: BOOKBESTIES10 to save!  | * https://thebeanworkshop.store/products/to-the-stars-who-listen-and-the-dreams-are-answered-tee-shirt?_pos=9&_sid=823f6afe6&_ss=rLiz is wearing: “Climb the Mountain” ACOSF Inspired Tee by @shop_secondbreakfast | * https://go.magik.ly/ml/2cpsa/

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Besties and the Books
• 2:11 About Chelsea Cole
• 3:34 A Feast of Thorns and Roses Q & A with author Chelsea Cole
• 48:00 Unhinged Smash or Pass

Transcript

0:00

she was like "What's a cereal?" Like"Okay I'm going to dress up as that." So I wanted all of the recipes to be extremely cookable extremely approachable story behind the story of the food it's like layers like onions have layers right thing I see when people learn about this cookbook is the That's what I had to think first[Music] hey everyone I'm Ashley and I'm Liz and welcome to the Besties in the Books podcast today we have a very unique and completely spoiler-free author interview episode today for you we're chatting with Chelsea Cole food blogger and author of A Feast of Thorns and Roses the unofficial cookbook of A Court of Thorns and Roses i've got it back here behind me in all of its beautiful glory such a beauty um which is now available to purchase in gorgeous hardcover pretty much everywhere including you know big stores like Amazon and Target um so today we'll get to know Chelsea and what inspired her Acatar themed recipes find out what you'll be getting into when you pick up this cookbook and talk a little about our own experiences that we had uh making a couple of our you know favorite things out of this cookbook so super excited for that and I'm vegan also if you guys didn't already know that and so I definitely veganized one of the recipes so I'm excited to talk about that um but before we get into the interview we just wanted to say thank you so much for being here seriously thank you guys so much for taking time out of your day and your book to pop us on into your ear and take a little listen to this very special interview make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like to listen to your favorite podcast including YouTube so we're over there we're all video eyes on the screen for you and you can come and hang out you can also follow us over on Tik Tok and Instagram at besties in the books podcast everywhere and make sure to give Chelsea a follow she always shares her beautiful delicious recipes and the videos are just like I just want to grab them through the phone so delicious so she's@chell.cool and we'll have that all in the description box make sure to follow her there so before we officially bring Chelsea on I just wanted to give a little brief introduction um Chelsea is the creator of her food blog A Duck's Oven which was originally started when she was in college to help other college students kind of branch out into more interesting types of cooking and foods um so since then she's branched out to a broader audience as the author of two additional cookbooks so if you guys you know end up picking this cookbook up and you want more um she has two additional cookbooks Everyday Sousie and Sousie Meal Prep which showcase her love of demystifying complex cooking techniques for home cooks so she lives in Portland with her son and husband where she spends her days camping making cheese and exploring Portland's culinary scene so I want to talk a little bit specifically too about a quote that I loved in the introduction to this book mhm so Chelsea in in this kind of like you know note to the reader says that she's now embracing her love of millennial culture by tying pop culture and food together so this Acatar cookbook is a perfect example of that chelsea says that the idea for Avatar was born after her love for reading was reignited by a series where quote "Meals are more than simply sustenance they are expressions of culture emotion and connection." This cookbook is her attempt to bring those moments to your table to let you feel the warmth of a simple meal shared in the cozy confines of a dinner with the inner circle or taste the richness of the winter solstice feast so welcome Chelsea Cole welcome welcome thank you so much for having me it's funny it's been so long since I wrote the introduction i like I that it was fun to hear that again it really resonated like when I read it I was like "What a beautiful just way to describe this." Like what a unique way to have us like connect with a book series we love so much in such a different way so I appreciate it a lot one of the things I love about Acatar is all of the food in it i It's funny when I first like uh told people I was writing a cookbook about Acatar they were like "But there's barely any food in it." And I'm like "Um I think that there's a lot of food in it and like a lot of dining scenes and stuff like that." So yeah it's it's it's a great way to do scene setting and just give you an idea of the vibe of of everything as you're reading yeah totally totally it's so cool to like see everything transform from like what we read about into like our mouths exactly yes and it's just like another way to spend some time in Python after you've read the books like three times and you're like "Okay maybe I need to not read it anymore but I can do something else." Perfect totally love that so over on our podcast we always like to kind of start off a little bit of an icebreaker with each episode being a fave and fail so we're going to put you on the spot here and ask you what was your favorite and maybe your least favorite part a bit of a fail maybe when creating this cookbook and the writing process if you have any yeah okay so I'll give you um like I'll give you kind of a double part answer like both a fave and fail in one of it was that I uh wrote this cookbook um when I was like newly postpartum with my first child which if you are a mom you understand uh how difficult that is but it also like made that time really special and like I it's fun to like think back like oh yeah I was developing that recipe with my son strapped to me or like um I remember a day when I was had a meltdown and told my husband I've been trying to develop this recipe for 3 days like I need you to just like maybe leave with him for a little bit or something like that um but it was also really beautiful and special and then in terms of like specific recipes Alice's molten chocolate was almost a fail that one was really hard to develop and to get right um but once I finally got it I was like "Okay I think I think we're good i can I we can do this now." Um and then uh one thing that ended up being a favorite that was such a surprise for me was the orange or I'm sorry the orange tiramisu for the Dawn Court um I was I thought that developing a recipe for the Dawn Court was going to be extremely difficult because we know so little about the Dawn Court but it ended up being one of my favorite recipes in the book oh I love I love that we're going to get to find the like insider info like the insight behind the foods like before we like move forward and make more of them you know what I mean it makes it so much more exciting i don't know it's like the story behind the story of the food it's like layers like onions have layers right totally totally yes like where it came from in the book and then how I decided to turn that scene into a recipe or whatever yeah totally so cool so when someone picks up Avatar like what should they expect like is this a cookbook that anyone can you know any skill level anyone with any type of cooking experience can like get into and like what makes it special yeah so I originally designed this knowing that the people who purchased it are this one thing that's different about this book versus the other cookbooks I've written or just like other cookbooks that are written is you're not really buying this cookbook because you want to cook like you're buying this cookbook because you love the series and it's a new way to experience the series and so I wanted all of the recipes to be extremely cookable extremely approachable um so you know in the book series they may use venison they may use rabbit um I am not asking you to go out and find venison and rabbit so you don't need to worry about that and I tried to make it all just like very cookable there are a couple of obscure ingredients here and there um like bone marrow and potentially for some people getting oysters might be like a little funky um but then once you actually have those ingredients in hand executing the recipes is very simple um there's some things that are more time consuming maybe um like they just take more time to do but they aren't hard um so I really just wanted it to be very very approachable cooking and very cookable and eatable food one thing I found with other fan cookbooks is that sometimes the recipes are just there for the gimmick um versus being something you'd actually like want to cook and I think um I had a little bit of an advantage having written other cookbooks in the past um and then coming at this from the perspective of somebody who writes recipes versus somebody who writes these types of books and I also included a whole party guide um so I really hope that people use this at their book clubs and like if they want to host an Axar theme themed party or something like that um just you know that's kind of the vision I had when I when I started creating this cookbook oh yeah that would be so fun so cool i love that yeah I feel like I really felt that you know when you know I chose to make a dessert and to veganize it and I really felt that i mean I've baked a lot over my life and but I felt like everything just kind of flowed and was really super straightforward and they turned out great on the first try which rarely honestly happens when I pick up a new cookbook so good yay that's what we want to hear yeah i mean I just made scones for the first time because of your cheese and chive scone recipe i didn't know it could be like that simple but incredibly delicious oh my gosh scones are like shockingly easy to make ia I feel like this is like an unknown thing um but yeah they're so good yeah like give me like a easy bread recipe and oh my gosh I'm sold i'm going to be making it like my husband's like every time every day let's go let's do it perfect there you go yeah so yes definitely very like all skill levels because I do like to cook a lot but that like I said I have never made that before and it was like oh my gosh so easy so definitely a good range mhm that's the goal and hopefully like a lot of things that you just don't feel like you can mess up um you know there's some things that are slightly more technical like um the roast beef recipe you want it to be medium rare so don't overcook it but like there's a slow roasted chicken with the idea that if it sits in the oven for 10 minutes longer than my directions say it's going to be fine it's not going to be dry it's still going to be delicious so yeah oh that's so good what inspired you specifically to make the leap from page to plate we just love this idea it's so unique yes so it actually was I was like I don't know 6 months pregnant with my first and I was like sitting on a Friday night scrolling as one does and I saw my cousin post about her Sims cookbook and I was like why what is a Sims cookbook why does this exist like who needs a Sims cookbook um and so I like Googled it and if sure enough it's like the Sims computer game there's a cookbook for it who knew um and it took me down this rabbit hole of learning about all these fan cookbooks and I noticed a couple things one I noticed pretty quickly that there was no Actar cookbook and I was like "Huh that's interesting." And then two a lot of the cookbooks I wonder my background is in marketing and so I have a little bit of a marketing brain all the time um but I was like I feel like the audience for people who are huge Game of Thrones fans is not necessarily the audience who's super excited to pick up a cookbook um and so I was like "Huh that's interesting." I feel like the audience for Acatar would be really excited about a cookbook um in a way that a lot of these other fandoms might not be um and so I was like I think this could be a good idea i ended up cold emailing an agent which you are not supposed to do do not be like me um with just like a like when you email an agent it should be like I have this beautiful proposal uh that I am presenting to it to you like what do you think uh and instead I emailed her like two sentences about my idea and I was like do you think this has legs um and she was like yes I do think this is a good idea i know the publisher I know the editor um had a meeting with them within a couple weeks and it just like it was very serendipitous again this is not how any of this usually happens uh it just happened that way um because it was a a fairly like once you see the hole in the market it's like oh yeah no that's that's something that should exist um and you know other people saw it too the two cocktail books came out at about the same time as my cookbook um but so far mine is the only cookbook on the market so far so which it it's a lot of effort to do um an entire cookbook so I am not super surprised by that yeah that's so cool wow that just works out yeah it's one of those like Oh yeah which we talk about you know how much food is already in the series and how what a center placeholder it has just like with anybody any of us who loves to eat that it's like oh well of course we need to have that in our hands so thank you for creating it because it is beautiful it and there's like so much beautiful describe food described in the book um and so and even beyond the food SJM does such a good job with doing things like describing the smells of places and people and like it's really that is great fodder for rest recipe development and she's just such a descriptive scene writer and like she does such a great job with the play settings um that it makes it it it made it easy in a lot of ways yeah definitely so building off of that why don't you tell us about the different sections of the cookbook and why you chose to organize it that way so like for an example one of the ones that stood out to me was the seven courts eight sweets so like was each dessert specifically designed for a different court yeah so I originally it's like it's I've learned with these cookbooks with pop culture cookbooks i I originally had like sections mapped out in a certain way and then I got going and I was like that's not going to work like I I really wanted a summer court section because I felt like I could easily develop recipes inspired by the summer court and I was like the summer court's just not represented enough in the books for there to be an entire section devoted to it but the Supreme Court is um so it has like a whole section devoted to it and then um kind of the way I tend to work is I combed through the books like thoroughly for any mention of food or smell or something like that and it's like okay if there is a mention of a specific food it is in the cookbook um and then from there it's like okay I I also want recipes that represent each of the major characters the major places and the major moments from the series and so then I you start building from there and so to make sure that I had my bases covered for the people I did a whole all of the cocktails are each one is inspired by a different member of the inner circle um and then I did two dessert sections my editor was like "Do we really need two dessert sections?" I was like "Yes we do and let me sell you on it um and so one of the dessert sections is all food that's mentioned in the book series and those are like more bite-sized snacky things and then um the dessert section that you speak of the seven courts eight sweets which the reason it's titled that is because I did a dessert for the court of nightmares and the court of dreams um and so uh I wanted obviously each place to be represented really well and so that was a really hard section to write because again we don't know a lot about a lot of these courts but you I do know like there's just different flavors and foods that represent different seasons um and different times of day and things like that and so I just used that to build these recipes um and like evoke like for example for dayc court I wanted something that just like evoked sunshine um and then dawn court dawn court I was like oh my gosh what am I going to do here and so I was like okay orange juice let's start there orange juice is commonly something we have in the morning so let's let's see what we can come up with here and then like another fun one that I thought was cheeky is a riff on a devil's food cake for the court of nightmares and it's Kier's food cake um and so just you know like lots of like cutesy little things like that and uh yeah and so it's kind of working backwards in some way knowing that you're starting to build something that's going to be retrofitted a little bit once you have final recipes i usually I start with more recipe concepts than I know I'm going to actually include in the book they always like a rounded number so like 60 65 70 recipes um and so I'll start with 68 knowing I'm going to scrap three or something like that um and just kind of seeing where things take me because they have all and what um tester and just like general people's feedback is i I talk to a lot of people as I'm developing this and fans um are such an important part of this and I'll say "Do you think that this like evokes this character well enough?" And then on top of it like I'm working on another project right now and I was writing this recipe and I'm like "I don't know if people would actually cook this like it's it's a little unusual." And so I surveyed this group and they were like"Yeah we wouldn't cook it." And I'm like"Okay I'm not going to make it then." Um and so just being open to killing your darlings as they say it's like a whole different like alpha beta beta reader like process you know what I mean yes yeah which is pretty interesting especially I have them recipe test too so yeah it's a it's a whole different experience that's so important that's something that we don't like hear about like that behind the scenes i mean I don't at least you know of building out those recipe cookbooks and I have to say the way you laid out the your cookbook and talking about the different sections and everything it's such a beautiful extension of the Acatar fandom that you create your own storytelling throughout these recipes i've never like sat down and read a cookbook like before guys you know like and you know Liz talks about the introduction and I'm just like "Oh my god millennial like nostalgia." Like that's what all I feel like we're all trying to kind of regain you know in our adulthood and those things that we loved before and yeah the way you sto I just I was reading everything i was like this is beautiful i'm back in that world and now I get to make the things that I was picturing in my head so beautifully done i love that thank you so much that's so sweet it's I tried very hard so it's very nice to hear that well yeah it's like I think about the fact that it's like you know I wasn't really a rreader of books in general until we started reading books for the podcast and there were some popular series we wanted to cover that obviously I needed to reread like Acatar and so now I think to myself like okay like maybe every Christmas I'm going to re reread you know C of frost and Starlight cuz it's just a cute little nolla well now what's going to make that even like an even better experience i could literally like make foods from your cookbook and like reread A Court of Frost and Starlight and enjoy like Christmas time all at the same time it's like amazing it's like blowing my mind yeah totally i know we had Easter shortly after the book was released and uh a ton of people were like making recipes from the book for their Easter spread and I was like "Oh my gosh this is so fun." Like cuz I have a devild egg recipe in there that has like bacon roses and and things like that and there's a few things that are just like perfect for something like Easter and I'm like hm can I make a riff on a Thanksgiving meal that's acar inspired we'll see definitely we love it what Acatar scenes inspired some of your favorite recipes okay so obviously I feel like the big one because the most common thing I see when people learn about this cookbook is in soup that's what I had to make first right yes and so that one like had to be there um one because it's it's like it's a double whammy because it's one of the most pivotal scenes in the series and two it centers around food like it centers around a literal food but it was tricky because if you remember that scene um the soup is not specified and and she's just heating up soup she's not even like cooking it from scratch um and so this was honestly kind of terrifying to develop cuz I was like uh okay i just have to put my interpretation on it and hope that other fans are happy with it um and so I pulled a bunch of people that I knew who had read the books and I was like "What did you picture when you read this scene?" And the most common response was Campbell's chicken noodle um and then from there some people said tomato soup and then some people said beef and vegetable like those were the most common responses and so I was like"Okay uh chicken noodle i'm not going to just like do a chicken noodle soup there needs to be something special about it so I went with chicken and stars um which is a canned soup it's just less popular and stars felt so appropriate for the night court um so yeah and then um the stars the star pasta is uh like a little trick you can order it on Amazon or whatever um and then you can find it in some grocery stores but it just makes it all the more special I think uh for that seed but yeah that one was like a really really big one and then um even stuff like this isn't a specific scene but there's so many scenes with the inner circle having dinner together and so I wanted that to kind of be captured so I have a whole party menu that's like based on what I think that they would just have at one of their they're always described as like casual but elegant um so what would they be having at one of their dinners and um another scene that I was like really drawn to is which I I I don't think is necessarily memorable for other people is when um they visit the Hune city honestly I don't remember the specific instance i don't know if it was Pharaoh's it might have been Phah's first time in the Hune city and uh it's like all this like lavish food is described and they're just letting it sit there and go to waste to show how wealthy they are like they they can they can let this go to waste but the food that's described is these like beautiful pork roasts and there's ale and cider and like all this really rich and decadent food um so I did a cider brazed pork shoulder um for that kind of moment and it was just it was fun to just like take little bits and pieces of things and then create a recipe inspired by it I love that so much so kind of building off of that but also going back to something that you briefly mentioned a little while ago so why don't you kind of elaborate on what the Pythian party guide is and like why you included it because that was one of my favorite parts in the book I think yeah great um so it's uh if if I remember off the top seven different party venues and so they're all inspired by like different parties that you could host and they range from more formal things um like a full-blown like winter solstice dinner um or winter solstice feast to dinner with the inner circle um to like a tea party with the cereal um there's brunch after training kind of vibe um and so I just wanted like a few different options one of my favorite ones that I feel like it you know could get slept on is the many faces of Phah and it's kind of inspired by the Tik Tok trend when people like each show up bringing a different interpretation of something um and so that one has like Phah the painter Phah the human uh Farah the high lady blah blah blah and each person is responsible for bringing a dish that's like representative of that version of her um and then I tried to to make them just like very even beyond like the menu like okay these are the recipes you should cook include things like games and different gimmicks um so for example dinner with the inner circle the drinks the drink suggestion is everybody brings a bottle of wine because that just kind of feels like the vibe of the inner circle um and then I have like little games uh for each of them so like tea with the cereal um that game is like each person writes down a piece of gossip and puts it in a bowl and then everybody pulls one out and reads it and they have to guess who that piece of gossip is like who wrote down that piece of gossip and it could be something totally innocuous like that has to do with like your workplace or whatever but just you're bringing that little bit of tea um and just like lots of cutesy little things like that so people have the concept for the whole party in front of them like I even include decor notes um instead of just like just the food which is an integral part of it but you know there's a little more to it so and then I actually hosted two of those um like parties for friends back in March it was so fun um I did tea with the cereal and dinner with the inner circle and one of my friends actually who's never read the books um showed up as the cereal which was hilarious she's like she was like what's a cereal like why is Chelsea doing this and Googled sural and saw like a fan drawing and was like"Okay I'm going to dress up as that." I love it perfect how long did it take you from planning to writing to publishing this cookbook yeah so the creation of the cookbook like getting the manuscript done was about 6 months um and which like I don't know to some people that sounds fast to some people it sounds long it was about the right amount of time except that I was like newly postpartum um so I signed the book deal a couple weeks before I had my baby and then took a few months off so I really like worked on it in earnest for like 2 to 3 months um but you know during contact naps and all that I'm also working on my phone um and trying to kind of get the bones of it ready to go and then um from there you know it kind of gets passed off and there's an editing process that I'm somewhat involved in um but it's it's kind of out of my hands for a little bit and then the marketing is where it really picks up from there um so the marketing work I take the marketing of anything very very seriously and so that started like back last November um and then the book came out April 1st so I really wanted to do some special events i was fortunate enough to host a trivia night at the Rift Bodice in LA which was so fun yeah it was amazing they're so great and I was very exciting for me because it's sold out which was like so cool um and then there's a really famous cookbook shop in Seattle called um it's called Book Laer that I was able to do an event at as well and I threw like a very big launch party here in Portland um that I did that I did ticketed that people could attend and that was so fun um so I just wanted a bunch of like inerson events for fun um and then uh lots of you know online marketing and stuff like that so yeah we want to know a little bit about your history so like have you always been a chef like how did you get into this career and maybe talk about your other cookbooks a little bit too yeah so I am not a trained chef i started as a food blogger back in college and then um I think you know I went to college for elementary ed like I thought I wanted to be an elementary school teacher so many of us I'm like how are 18-year-olds supposed to just like know what they want to do with their life i don't know um it's insane my husband's a high school teacher so we talk about that a lot but um and I fell in love with cooking in college i loved my food blog and I'm like oh well if I love cooking then that must mean I want to open a restaurant um so after college uh my husband got a job that had us move and I and uh so we moved and I was like okay I'm going to find a restaurant job and quickly learned I will never open a restaurant my god uh wow that's not for me um but I worked in restaurants for quite some time which was good experience i mean I can say that now that it's behind me but at the time it was not so fun i was I managed restaurants um and then uh my husband uh decided he wanted to get a master's degree in South Africa so we moved to South Africa for a year and I took that time to mostly focus on my blog and then kind of tiptoe into freelance like marketing um and I was like ah this this feels good this feels like a good fit um came back but I maintained my blog throughout this entire time so it's been up and running for almost 15 years which is crazy we got back and I knew I wanted to kind of pivot into marketing ended up doing that and I worked for a sustainable seafood startup um a restaurant group and a sousvid company doing their marketing um and during that time fell in love with suvid niched down hard so all of my content became suvid focused and I self-published two cookbooks about suvid cooking for home cooks um for those that aren't familiar it's like a technical sciency geeky uh type of cooking where you cook food at like a very specific temperature in a water bath um but you perfect results every time and uh I wanted to bring that to home cooks it's always been kind of uh regarded as like a guy gadget for like food nerds and I was like "No women can benefit from this too." Like somebody who's meal prepping can benefit from this too um so yeah self-published those books and then out of nowhere was like now I'm going to write Macar cookbook so and I've been uh but I've been self-employed working for myself since 2021 which has been great so it allows me to uh multitask to my greatest abilities by being a full-time mom and uh working full-time so yeah for sure yeah I definitely think that's one of my favorite things about doing author interviews is just finding out like what kind of path you guys went on to get to where we have this lovely finished product from you guys and usually it's very like you guys took a lot of different paths before you got here and I love hearing about that it's so unique it's never a straight line nope can you tell us about some of your other favorite authors and books and maybe I don't know if there's any specific series or perhaps something even if you can't say things that have inspired you to maybe create more cookbook recipes yes yes okay so favorite authors and series i mean I think that's a hard one i I guess I'm what they call a mood reader like frankly the world of uh book talk and Bookstagram is relatively new to me until I started writing this cookbook and that now I'm I'm I'm learning all the things and and getting in the know um but uh let's see i'm trying to think obviously love Fourth Wing love Spark of the Everflame um I am reading so good i feel like Spark of the Everflame is underrated like more people need to get on board with it i don't know we'll see oh we're doing a whole series about it this summer so we're getting deep in it yeah yes like I'm like why aren't we talking about this more people come on um and then you know I also am just like a sucker for thrillers like I love like a good popcorn thriller that I can just like barrel through really quickly but the thing about those is I forget them almost instantly like the next week I'm like you cannot ask me about what what that book was about i cannot tell you um and then I am working on another book that's based a cookbook that's based on a very popular series and I can't tell you anything about it yet but I can soon and I can't wait for you all to see it i'm like deep deep in recipe testing right now i have an amazing group of recipe testers helping me with that and I'm so excited yeah oh that's so exciting nice that is so we have to know then who's your favorite acitar MMC and FMC and then who's your favorite couple like separate from that like who would be your favorite acar couple favorite is like a funny word i I I don't know if I can choose like a favorite i feel like the one one of the for MMC the one I'm perhaps most attached to is Lucian i'm like I really want him to have a happy ending like I really want to see res I I don't know that doesn't necessarily mean with like Elaine um but I just want there to be I want a bow tied on that um and so I just I want to see him happy and then for FMC that is a tough one for me i often again favorite like a tough is hard but um I love Alice i'm like weirdly attached to Alice even though she does not have like a big role in it i made her um Alice delivers all the tips and tricks in the books and so I wrote in her voice but I I think I'm a sucker for like the motherly caretaker type character in books like I their presence is so calming and I need them there um and she did such a great job at playing that one i I I hope we see her again uh at some point and then um for favorite couple I'm really boring it's Reese and Farah um I I I just love their story i think too um for like so many other people Acatar was the first book I'd read in a really really long time that just like got me sucked into reading again um where I got so attached to the characters and like binged the series and like loved the place and couldn't get my head out of it um and that wasn't something I'd experienced I feel like for like a decade um so it that was just like so fun and recent Vera are such an integral part of that like reignition for me um so I'm I'm a little burning that way no I mean I feel like a lot of people can relate to that story you know on some degree I can relate to that story ashley definitely can relate to that story so it's done a lot for us right yes something she puts that something in there and those stories and those that we just Wow what is it like to be carrying the weight of the world i know chomping at the bit for some kind of information hey but you know then enters this beautiful recipe book that we can continue on the fandom and it's so good yeah exactly we love it and make it a part of like our daily routine now it's great give me all the things well I'm have to ask you another favorite though sorry if you had to pick one favorite Acatar book out of the five cuz we count Frost Frost and Starlight over here we totally count it so if you had to pick one favorite what would it be and why aquamath that's an easy one for me yeah i feel like people are either Mist and Fury or Silver Flames people like you're you're oneame yeah yeah one or the other and I'm Mist and Fury um like I again just like love Reese and Farah's love story um I think that this was such a good I'm also like a sucker for a slowburn romance like I'm always a little bummed when they get together too quickly and this was like very good pacing for me um and so yeah I just I love their story i love that whole book and like the way it starts out the way it ends i mean the way it ends my god um but yeah no definitely it definitely my favorite out of all the Sarah J mass book series there are is Acatar your favorite yes i will say I I'm desperate to revisit Throne of Glass i've only I for me when I read a fantasy book I need to read it twice um because I feel like the first time you're so uh distracted not distract I don't know distracted by the world building kind of yeah that um you miss a lot of things and so when you are able to go back and read it again you're less like caught up in like trying to remember whatever it might be and can focus more on the story and so I need I actually started a reread and then this other book deal uh came along and so I've kind of pivoted my focus to that um but I need to go back and finish this i I'm actually pregnant again and so I'm like "Okay so maybe some like postpartum listening will be Thrown of Glass." Um so yeah I I want to revisit and then if I'm being totally honest Crescent City is just not a favorite for me um I struggle with urban fantasy the moment somebody says cell phone I'm like "Wait what no I can't I can't do it." Which is ironic because I have read most of Zodiac Academy um but yeah no so Crescent City is not a favorite for me i'm not a Crescent City gal yeah hey we get it we love it but we get it yeah it's not perfect for everyone and it's very cumbersome for sure yeah mhm also congratulations thank you thank you on so many things i know it's very busy i'm trying to finish this manuscript before my daughter is born in July so we'll see how it goes oh yeah soon yeah so were there any recipes that you put into the book that are extra meaningful for you and why oo interesting um I don't know like the best way to describe that i think one that I found fun a controversial character who I can't even say like I like but I feel like is still important um is Phah's dad and like do we like him i don't know he has like a good little redemption arc um in the series but yeah he's he's a toughy and so I I knew I wanted a recipe for him and I did a merchant spiced chicken pie it's like a chicken pot pie but it's like really heavily spiced and it's like this like warm um I mean it's just like an even more comforting version of a chicken pot pie and that is one of my favorite tasting recipes in the book it's my husband's favorite recipe in the book um and it was just fun to create a recipe inspired by him too um but yeah I think I think that would probably be the closest i'm trying to think if there's anything I remember like developing with my son or something like that but honestly it's kind of a blur yeah so then just to kind of like build on that a little bit for me personally obviously as I said before you know for anyone who didn't know I'm vegan i'm sure that most of our listeners know that about me now so my challenge and I'm more of a baker i'm not really too much of a cook that's more of like my husband's area i'm more of a baker so for me it's always like okay how can I take this and then veganize the recipe and have it turn out good enough to where it is my non-vegan husband approved though you know totally um and so as I said before I made the Cassian's chocolate cupcakes they turned out perfect with all the vegan subs but I was just curious do you have any tips at all on how to veganize other recipes in the cookbook specifically yeah vegan is hard there's a lot that are vegetarian vegan is a little tougher but if you are a great vegan cook like yourself then you're going to know how to make those swaps there's a vegetable gratine in there that I love it's like um represented it's like all these different colors of vegetables that I just kind of wanted to be a nod to Farah's painting um and so that one could potentially be relatively easy to veganize and just making like dairy swaps in there um and then I'm trying to think for some of like the main dishes because which that actually is a main dish um and then there's actually Savand Stew is a great one that I is if it's not vegan it's very close to vegan it's got ghee in it i'm pretty sure that's the only thing that's not vegan um so easy to sub so easy yeah and that one is great it's just like this a really rich chickpea stew um that scene when they're at uh the restaurant in Valaris is so fun because they talk about all the spices and like the smells and how the food makes you feel and so that's another actually one of my favorite recipes it's just a bit more of a winter recipe because it's just this like really rich chickpea stew um and my very nonvearian husband loves that one too so and it was actually a big hit with my son even so good yeah cuz I know that like you know a lot of people that I've connected with you know over my Bookstagram journey and then here on the podcast our journey too are vegans or eat you know a lot of plant-based food so I just wanted to make sure that our listeners are aware that you can veganize a lot of the recipes in this book so don't let that prevent you from picking it up yeah and there's some in a lot of things it's like as simple as like omit bacon and it's going to be fine um and then yeah unfortunately with the main dishes it's kind of just based on her writing which is a lot of like roasts and chicken and fish and things like that so a little less friendly yeah but there's something for everyone i think that's what I want people to kind of come across is that there's something that everyone can find in here yeah totally well and luckily like in this year of 2025 I feel like vegan items are so much more accessible now and good you know like it's not just soy paste everything you know like Liz comes and visits me and we make vegan French toast because the egg substitute now is perfect like you wouldn't know the difference between a scrambled egg and a vegan you know whatever they make it out of flax seed something I don't know you know so you can easily I think substitute in a lot of these recipes and even some of the vegan you know faux meats now that you could substitute in in the chicken and soup recipe use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth yeah should be super ground walnut thing for ground beef like I've had that before so good yeah yeah use Beyond Beyond Meat you know to me is better than ground beef so easy totally yep it's all how you flavor it really so Yep mhm okay so why do you think food is such an important part of the Acatar series i think that it's just a really great author's tool that a lot of people don't take advantage of um because it does tell you what what is being eaten and how it's being eaten is such a great way to set a scene like if it's a casual buffet breakfast type thing you get a vibe for h what that what that room feels like if it's a big sit-down dinner that's a entirely different vibe um and then what's being eaten tells tells you so much because it tells you about the place it tells you about how rich the place is how rich the people are things like that what they prioritize do they prioritize like this um this look of elegance and opulence or are they more like we're just here to enjoy each other and eat something nice um and so I think it's such a great author's tool and SJM does such a great job of using it yeah agreed for sure how do you think bringing these foods to life can help us as readers enjoy some of our favorite books more yeah i think it's just another way to experience it and I think it's fun to think like okay so maybe like the cookies that Phah has when she is waiting for Tamlin to come back from Kalami like the first time or like when she's kind of new in Prththeon it's like you can kind of feel what it's like like okay I'm anxious and trying to pass the time and so I'm going to shove a bunch of chocolate cookies in my mouth and it's like okay yeah we've all been there um and it just like allows you to kind of think about that it's also just a fun way to play like of course I included a recipe for fairy wine in the book um and so it's like that's just like a fun random like little thing and even if you're hosting a backyard barbecue that has nothing to do with Acatar and you make a recipe like that it's like you know that it's this fun little nod and like while you're drinking it or whatever you can enjoy that and then if there's somebody else there who's read the series and loved it you can be like this is fairy wine and then it's just this like fun little thing that you're you're able to do or if it if it gives you an opportunity to like do something with your book club that's a little bit different um that's really fun too like something where you can cook together or just bring the food together um it just it just is a different way to to to bring Prity into your life i love Okay going back to the barbecue you guys chelsea gave us another way to introduce A Court of Thorns and Roses to more people like hey have you read this book yet enter come in to the Phantom with us you get a Oh like you thought this was good yeah yeah guess what book it's from maniacal plans i love it right yes as if we need like another another reason to bring Acatar up in everyday conversation right totally you know I think for me it's like you know we know that you know the old factory system smells like obviously foods like that is all really tied to like memory very closely and so I think for me that's what kind of stands out is like one of my favorite things about reading books that really affect my life is remembering you know maybe where did I buy that book what was going on in my life at the time that I read it for the first time um you know maybe where was I was I on a vacation like you know all these kind of different things and I think that you tying food into that can make those memories even more like rich and I think that that's what I'm really looking forward to kind of like incorporating as I move forward through the year and maybe choose to cook these recipes on special occasions with other people and kind of like make these memories totally yeah I agree yeah I love that yeah I'm like even thinking about like next time I go down and visit Ashley like maybe we'll cook a couple things together you know like that'll be exciting and it just gives you like framework for something too like if you're like "Oh crap what am I going to do for this?" It's like "Oh yeah it could be Acatar things or whatever." There you go i love it mhm so you know you already told us that you're working on a new project um that's based on a popular book series right mhm okay so I did see that one of your goals is to bring the fantastical dishes from the pages of popular series TV shows and movies to the tables of fans everywhere so that really struck out to me because I was like "Okay can we also expect something from like maybe more of like the TV movie sector coming in the future." I would love it um I'm like it's like just like finding the right thing cuz it's kind of tricky because so many of these things are such flash in the pan moments and cookbooks take so long to write and so it's not you can't just like it's unlike social media where you know you could film a video and it's available the next day this is like you know a year minimum really to make and so it's like looking for those things that have staying p power that are keeping people interested and that you where you feel like the audience would be people who would be excited about a cookbook um so for example like The Last of Us i'm not sure that a cookbook as well a lot of mushroom recipes in that one exactly um yeah which or like White Lotus would be fun there's they have a cocktail book for it which is great um and so kind of like looking for those right opportunities is the is the tricky thing but I would love to i'm just like searching for the right thing yeah definitely looking forward to it can't wait to see what you come up with next and thank you for Yeah that's a lot of work cuz not only are you writing in and of itself is a huge task and then you have to like make and create these recipes and perfect them first amazing incredible thank you so fun but it is a lot of work it does it justice it goes to the fan like there's so many moving parts so good job thank you we can tell through the writing and how you made it that all that blood sweat and tears it's for not you did amazing it's not for not perfect yeah all right so we're going to kind of start wrapping this up here and we always like to do a bit of an unhinged smash or pass so it doesn't have to be literal but you know just as whatever you know we're going to do an F Mary kill this time for Chelsea between the Bat Boys okay so I was actually asked this recently it's like so hard mary H see there I feel like there's no right answer um but everybody knows that going in um [ __ ] Cassian Mary Reese kill Azreel i'm sorry Azreel y that's what I said too is that what you said too as I can't remember oh yeah hard yes yeah yeah i'm like I don't know you well enough as Yeah that's the problem you know so it's like he could our answers could change later but as it stands right now I think we're all in agreement here yeah he has that mystery thing going but it's not working for him in this round it's not enough no anymore not marish material yet so hey oh we love that i think that that pretty much wraps it up unless you have any last little things you want to mention about the cookbook or anything like that um I don't think so i'd say um one of the really exciting things I got to do with this book is Barnes & Noble opted for an exclusive edition um so it's got a gorgeous cloth and foil cover and five exclusive recipes that I got to develop for it um so that was really fun so if you want the pretty exclusive it's a limited run once they're gone they're gone and they're available at Barnes & Noble it has that great texture on there i saw it the other day when I was there i was like "Oo this is velvety." It's so pretty it's so pretty it's so cool well thank you so much Chelsea for joining us today we appreciate you taking time from your very busy life congratulations on all your spinning hats that you have finished and going amazing we are loving this cookbook so much you guys make sure you go and pick up your copy if you haven't yet pretty much anywhere like Liz said Target Amazon the Barnes & Noble exclusive and start cooking make sure to tag Chelsea when you do cook a recipe if you share it on social media her IG is at chell.co and I'll have all that information down in the description box give her a follow there and make sure to like follow and subscribe anywhere you like this is your favorite podcast we are at Besties in the Books Podcast everywhere including YouTube and also over on Instagram and Tik Tok you guys thank you again to Chelsea for coming thank you so much for having me thank you so much for listening you guys and we'll see you in the next one see you next time bye[Music]