How Joanne Molinaro Found Herself Through Food | The Rich Roll Podcast

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I think that many of us are conditioned or taught to believe that creativity is not an asset and it is not valuable.

And as a result of that, we tamp it down until we forget that it ever existed.

Only certain people are gifted with it, but I don't think that's true.

I think to be human is to be able to create.

I don't think you can be a human being without the capacity to create something.

I mean, even just biologically, right?

I think that's something that is taught to us, that we're not creative.

And if we are given the opportunity and by opportunity I mean if we are given a safe enough environment whether it's being financially secure, emotionally stable, having a good environment at home that allows you to discover that you will find out that you're probably far more creative than you ever believed you could be.

I am officially at five months post-op, post-spinal fusion surgery.

And because there seems to be some appetite out there for a recovery update.

Thank you everyone for the messages, all the DMs.

I thought I'd begin with that as a side dish to today's entree which, I should mention, today's guest Joanne Molinaro, back from round two, is going to serve up like a five-course fine dining meal.

My recovery.

Well, I think it's going well.

It's kind of hard to say until I get my next doc appointment and x-ray, which isn't until the end of the month.

But the thing is, it's kind of hard to say.

I'm still pretty much just walking with some PT but because I've been traveling constantly for the last five weeks I haven't been in town to really tap into all of that with my PT person in person.

And I say it's hard to say because I still have pain and discomfort, definitely at the base of my spine, but also still some nerve pain, some sciatica in my left butt, which is slightly alarming because that nerve should be fully decompressed.

But also I'm told this is kind of fairly normal.

And because, even though five months seems like a long time in spinal fusion world, it's still super early.

So I'm just being patient.

That's really the focus doing less when I want to do more, being okay with everything being just the way that it is not freaking out or losing my mind because I'm so restricted in what I can do.

Knowing that What I want to do will likely only screw things up, meaning interfering with those two bones growing together, which takes about a year, which is about the amount of time other people who have undergone the same surgery tell me it takes before you really begin to feel normal again, which I don't right now, which is probably not helped by the fact that I've been on too many airplanes spread thin just doing too many things.

But I feel confident that I'm headed in the right direction, which is pretty much all there is to say at this point.

Aside from some mild discomfort, I'm pretty okay.

I'm more present than I am generally, albeit soft and punching above my preferred weight at the moment.

But I'm okay with that right now as well, especially now that my mom, as I elaborated on last week, is now safe and being taken care of in a home.

So the last time Joanne, aka the Korean vegan, was here was almost exactly four years ago.

And lots of things have changed in her life since then.

She is no longer a full-time partner in a law firm and now a full-time creator.

Author, public speaker.

But what hasn't changed is her passion for food.

Food as an art form.

Food as human connective tissue.

And as this medium for telling stories.

Stories about life and family, identity and justice, using the language of food as this transmission of love.

For those not in the know, Joanne has something like 5 million rabid fans across her social media platforms.

And her first book, The Korean Vegan, which hadn't come out quite yet when we recorded our first podcast, which was a very popular one, by the way.

That book went on to become a New York Times bestseller, and it also won the coveted James Beard Award.

Joanne has been featured in all the print and TV places, places like the Today Show, CNN and CBS Saturday Mornings.

She's been featured in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Yorker and tons of other big media outlets.

And today we're just going to pick up where we left off last time, going deeper into how she grapples with something I think we all grapple with, which is essentially just trying to make sense of who we are by trying to make sense of where we came from and who we came from, which is something that Joanne approaches really as this aspirational, creative act, one that involves self-awareness curiosity vulnerability, and also requires a medium which, in her case, is food.

It's also writing, it's storytelling, it's filmmaking, and so much more.

So yeah, we talk about all that.

We talk about how to be an advocate for the things you care about.

Talk about the current state of the plant-based food movement, her entrepreneurial foray into the Korean skincare space something I didn't know before this conversation is a very popular thing called K-beauty.

And we get into exactly what is happening in the very confusing world of quote unquote wellness which, let's just say, at least in my opinion, is a subculture that lately has gotten a little weird, a little more than weird, maybe.

And oh, of course, we also discuss her brand new cookbook, which is called Homemade.

And similar to the first one blends storytelling with recipes, but it's just next level in its gorgeous execution.

So pick that up, roll up your sleeves, and let's have a listen.

Well, it's great to see you.

It's been exactly almost four years since you came on the show the first time.

I know.

A lot has happened since then.

You were still living in Chicago.

I was.

You were still a full-time partner in a law firm.

Yes, cajoling you or encouraging you towards this idea of relinquishing the law and jumping into the abyss of what you're doing now.

That's exactly right.

Which is what you're doing, moving cross-country, but also down the street from the studio.

Which is not a coincidence.

So walk me through the evolution from 2021 to 2025.

Well, believe it or not, in 2021, when we first met, I still was not convinced that the path should be for me to leave the firm and to leave full-time practice.

I was still, no, maybe I could do both or I don't want to take too big of a risk.

And it's interesting because I think there are so many people who are stuck in a career that they just genuinely hate, loathe or are not really happy with.

And I was in any of those categories towards the end.

But still, I was like, yes, but I know this.

I know this anxiety.

I know this stress.

I know this structure.

I know how to operate inside of it.

And maybe that's less scary than jumping into something where I literally don't know the rules.

There is no structure other than the one that I create for it.

And it takes a tremendous amount of faith in your ability to create that framework for yourself, instead of having someone do it for you.

Perhaps even a little bit more difficult for you, given that you're not among, like I'm sort of projecting on you like this loathing of the law that I had.

But that's not you.

Like, you actually liked doing it.

It's easier when you're like, God, I can't stand doing this.

But you were really nourished in this.

You're one of the few who, like, really enjoyed it.

Well, no, I think that's a little overstatement.

More so than the average, maybe.

I recall saying something to you that I'm sure a lot of people did, which is that, no matter how how great you were in that role as a lawyer, there's plenty of people that can perform that job, but there's only one Korean vegan.

And you're betraying yourself if you don't make that leap and explore what the possibilities might be if you went all in.

Well, I just got chills.

I think that's the idea is exploring what could be.

I think sometimes we forget that we deserve that opportunity.

We absolutely have earned that opportunity.

However, it all pans out.

Even if you quote fail, you don't achieve what you dreamt.

That doesn't mean you should just not try.

Yeah.

And when you have that legal background, you can always go back.

Yeah, there's always something to fall back on, although I'm never.

The safety net is sort of built into the whole thing.

And of course, you know, meeting you was otherworldly, you know, without sounding too fangirly.

It was a big moment.

And then, after we recorded our conversation, you were so like duh, this is so obvious, like that you need to do this that you need to really pursue the Korean vegan full time.

And you can only do that if you pull back out of your legal career.

And I did give it a lot of thought.

And about two weeks later I picked up the phone, called the practice group leader at the chair and I told him I'm out.

I'm out in October.

So we got to make some plans.

You did maintain a relationship like an of counsel thing, right?

Are you still doing that?

No.

So I was planning on just walking away, but the firm was like, no, we don't want to lose you.

We love you.

You're like family.

We'll just keep you around.

You don't really have to do anything.

And I was like, okay, like who's going to say no to that?

I'd be a complete dummy.

And also emotionally.

I grew up with this firm and I did feel like they were my family in many ways, my career family, if you will.

And it was nice for three years.

I was part of the Foley fam.

And you know they paid me a small stipend to come back and record a few podcasts with the summer associates, do a few events and, you know, do a cooking demo every once in a while for some of their clients.

And it was a total pleasure to do that.

And then last year, they're like, all right, Joanne, it's time to leave the nest.

Well, it made that. transition a lot more, you know, facile and gentle.

I mean, there is that idea that If you're Tarzan swinging on the vines you got to let go of the vine to grab the next one.

And the harder you're holding on to the former, the harder it is to leap into the faith required to blossom in any new capacity.

100%.

And so I'm very grateful for the firm.

I don't think that was their intention to give me a soft space.

I think they genuinely just didn't want to see me go.

But it was exactly that.

And it wasn't until...

It was completely gone.

That safety net had completely been taken from me, that I realized how safe they had made me feel for those first three years, because it is freaking terrifying to leave your corporate job, leave your nine to five and essentially pursue what I view as a small business business, especially when your upbringing and your indoctrination is so much about high achievement, academic excellence and upward career mobility.

This is so baked into how you were brought up in many ways.

There's a lot of differences, particularly cultural, between your upbringing and mine, but I relate to that deeply.

And although you're possessed with all of this intelligence and all of these skills, that are obviously going to work out in the real world in different ways.

It's very scary and difficult to let go of this thing that you kind of have some certainty around that makes your life feel under control and safe and secure, and go into a world in which there really aren't any rules.

There's no exact blueprint or roadmap and everything feels out of your control and uncertain.

And I think that's applicable to anybody who's pondering a career change like it's.

It's scary, no matter what.

Absolutely.

I think it's kind of like the anxiety you know is better than the anxiety you don't.

I enjoy the law.

I still do, which is why I still do it in this sort of weird side hobby way, which is very ironic.

But I love looking through SCOTUS opinions not these days, but you know I still like to parse through them.

I love looking at statutes.

I like applying it.

I like the logic of it.

And I also like creating and crafting compelling persuasive arguments.

I think you do, too.

I mean, Yeah, I do.

There's the law or there's the way of thinking and the art and science of crafting an argument.

But then there's the practice of law in the context of a corporate law firm.

Those are different things.

Very different things.

And I was less enthralled with that aspect of my career as well.

And You know, over time I realized how much I loved the more artistic and creative things that I was doing on the side.

And like I said, that's exciting and exhilarating.

And the thought of shelving something that's so beautiful, box-like for something that's amorphous and a little bit nebulous but exciting.

But there's also a lot of anxiety around that because I, like you said, I was very conditioned to appreciate structure.

And I liked in some ways, being told what to do, because it took all the responsibility away from me to have to come up with the things I needed to do.

Who wants that?

Who wants to grow up and be an adult in that way?

Be my own person.

But you kind of burst on the scene sometime in 2020, around that range, in the midst of the pandemic, by creating these viral 60-second videos in which you're weaving in personal stories about growing up Korean with Korean parents and grandparents, while also preparing these vegan Korean dishes.

And They're very thoughtful vulnerable, heartfelt.

You know stories from your life that are always interlaced with some theme or principle that you're trying to convey to the audience and you know all beautifully rendered.

And many of them, like you're talking about scary stuff and what you're going through and issues you've had over the course of your life.

And this was like a right thing, right time perfect, you know, storm situation where you suddenly, like out of the blue because you just began this to kind of help yourself make sense of what was going on turned into this nationwide sensation where your stuff's getting shared all over the internet and celebrities are hitting you.

It was like, I would imagine that had to be fairly disorienting at times to have that occur.

And suddenly, out of the blue, you're getting opportunities to do things that just are not part and parcel of your lawyerly life.

Yeah, it was very much a bursting, if you will.

I mean, I've been blogging since 2016, which is when I started The Korean Vegan, which is when I adopted a plant-based diet, thanks to you, in part.

And so you kind of plug along and you do your side hobby and you're having fun.

And One day your agent says, hey, you've got a book coming out.

You should probably start social media.

And I'm like well, you know Charlie, I've been doing social media, but I suppose I could do this new thing called TikTok.

I don't know what it exactly is, but I'll give it a try.

And I go on there and.

I saw all these chaotic recipe videos of people throwing ingredients around and trying to wedge an entire recipe into 30-second videos.

And I was like, that's just not the vibe that I aspire to.

I want to do something a little bit calming and a little bit more introspective.

So I started just reading literally the captions that I was often sharing in my Instagram posts out loud, as a voiceover to me making food.

And it resonated with a lot of people, probably because they were all captive at that point, with quarantine and COVID.

We were all scared and we're all sort of desperate for connection as well as a vehicle to transport us away from reality.

And I think that's what I provided as well as comfort, you know, a lot of comfort.

Now you've had a couple of years to reflect on that phase of your life.

Like do you have a different perspective or a greater sense of why it worked and filled that need other than what you just shared?

There are a lot of reasons why I think at that time my content, the kind of content that I was creating it touched so many people.

Part of it was because I was the only one doing it.

There was nobody else who was doing short form food content while also telling stories as a voiceover.

As opposed to add three tablespoons of sugar, then add two tablespoons of soy sauce.

You know, I was doing something so different.

And so I was the first one to do it.

And I mean, history has repeated itself.

What is it like now?

Does it annoy you now when you see like 10,000 variations on kind of what you initiated?

No, I think it's beautiful.

I think it's beautiful.

I think it's what the world needs more of.

And you've talked about this with numerous guests on this show is You know, so much of the body is wired to react to negativity and to engage with rage bait and to engage with the things that frighten us or make us angry.

And I think what we need more of is conditioning of us to engage with things that make us happy, engage with things that make us hopeful or self-aware or happy, something that prompts growth, without sort of that charged negativity and the polarization that sort of ensues as a result of that.

So to the extent that I see some of that kind of overflowing now, I'm very happy and of course a little bit proud that I contributed to that in some way.

Since then, you've expanded how you show up publicly.

In addition to continuing with your storytelling in that vein And this second book that we're going to talk about Homemade, which is your follow-up to the original James Beard winning award.

Yes, that happened too.

That's crazy, right?

Yeah, like James, wow.

That's like the Oscar Emmy of cookbook writing in the food world, obviously.

You've become a bit of a pundit of sorts.

You mentioned that you enjoy reading SCOTUS opinions.

That's the nerdiest thing ever.

Right.

But then you take that and you'll make a video and you're like here's what the Supreme Court really said.

Here's what you need to understand.

And here's how it affects your life.

And you're able to like condense what the average person needs to extract from that.

Outside of whatever clickbaity headlines are trying to mischaracterize what's actually going on.

And then you go on and you talk about I mean, you were very vocal about the TikTok ban and free speech matters and AI and intellectual property rights.

You are also like the internet's lawyer in some way, right?

Well, I think it was a little bit by happenstance.

All of this stuff is sort of are you ready to capitalize on the opportunities that fall into your lap?

And I was very interested in the TikTok ban, obviously because it was going to directly affect my career and my business.

And so I was following it very carefully.

And, you know, the nice thing about it is I do have a background in these issues.

And so I can interpret SCOTUS opinions in a way that is perhaps easier for a lay person to understand.

So I was doing these TikToks, just keeping people abreast of, well, here's what's happening now.

Here's what you can expect.

And one day CNN contacts me and they're like, oh, we saw one of your TikToks.

We'd love to have you for a podcast.

Sure.

No problem.

I do a podcast on it and that turns into multiple appearances on CNN BBC, multiple other news networks, radio interviews about just TikTok.

And then that turns into more TikToks about a variety of legal issues unrelated to First Amendment and the TikTok ban.

And then ultimately, KTLA, which is the local news network here, reaches out to me.

And I have been going in pretty much once a month, twice a month.

I didn't know it was that regular.

Oh, yeah.

Anytime there is a celebrity law issue, they call me.

They want me in.

And I've gotten to know all the anchors and the producers.

And they love me.

And I love them.

This is the thing.

Who thought four years ago that I was going to quit my full time lawyer job at a big law firm and that four years later I would still be a lawyer, but on KTLA?

It's just crazy.

Nobody would have ever thought that.

Yeah, you can't know that.

And the wisdom nugget in that is that.

You don't get to know like that's why it's scary and why it's a leap of faith.

But unless you you take that leap and you put yourself in a position to grow and expand in ways that are uncomfortable, you don't end up in a position to take advantage of those things.

And so you don't get to know.

I think, especially with like lawyers, who are like the ultimate safety seekers, like they want to know exactly how it's going to play out.

And it's like no, you don't get, you don't get to know that, you know you don't get to.

You got to, you got to sort of buck up.

And prepare yourself to get the discomfort is in the unknowing, right?

I love that.

And it reminds me so much of this conversation I had with my husband when we were just dating.

And you know lawyers are super safety seekers.

But I was that in every aspect, not just in my career.

And I wanted to button that.

You got a button to that.

I know.

Like, I get that.

I wanted that relationship buttoned up.

And it is exactly the same fear.

You want it all buttoned up when you take that leap of faith.

But as in love, as in career, as in life, you have to believe in your ability to recover if things don't work out.

And that was something that I had cultivated, but it's also planning.

I mean, if i didn't continue to read scotus opinions in my spare time or, you know, just dabble in the law i had a google search for all the little legal topics i still like to follow.

If i didn't have that then when ktla came calling, i would not have been able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Well, there's a piece there that that revolves around um being uh, somewhat calculated, but really it's about you just following your curiosity, like if you're, you're doing that anyway, right.

So so it's like, when you invest in your curiosity uh, then that's when you the magic can happen, right.

And so how has this changed your life in the, you know, four years since you sat here?

Like that, that has a spillover effect and uh, how you kind of engage with everything in life.

I think that's very true.

I think There's a lot that I learned from the practice of law that continues to apply that I sort of borrow.

I think the last time we were chatting we talked about the jokey PTSD of being a law firm lawyer, because you have to bill your time.

I have not relinquished that habit.

So you're still writing down in six minute increments what you're doing every day?

I don't take it that far, but I do think it.

I do think it.

You know, I go through everything that I accomplished at the end of the day and my mind is still well.

How many hours did I quote Bill today?

So I'm still thinking of it that way.

And I used to think that that was a big problem, like it was a toxic after effect of working at the law firm.

But now I'm like, no, it helps me, again, structure the day.

Because I think one of the first problems I had, when I had fully given up the full-time practice of law and I was just focusing on the Korean vegan, is I'd wake up in the morning and I'd be well.

What am I gonna do today?

What am I supposed to do today?

How am I supposed to structure my day?

Am I just gonna wander around?

And I would fritter away all this time just trying to figure out what I was supposed to do.

And now I wake up and I know exactly what I need to get done that day.

I have a list and I go through it.

And I know also what each of those things is inuring to.

Where does it fit within the larger plan?

And I think that has been a big change, as I used to not think about what's ahead of me in three five, 10 years before I was like I just need to get through this billable year.

That's all I need to worry about.

But this time I'm thinking more broadly about all the different projects that I have.

Where are they going to be in three, five, 10 years?

Where am I going to be in a decade?

But you're not writing down, this is how many hours I build on my next cookbook.

No, I don't write it down.

I just have it in my head.

And how does that work with your artist husband?

I mean, you know, Anthony, who's right over there right now, artist, you know, concert pianist.

I mean, he's regimented.

You see that in his relationship with running, but not in the way that you are, not in the way that he's thinking about you know, billing his time.

I think that...

Anthony is probably... a little bit more left-brained than people realize.

He's incredibly right-brained, obviously, because of his enormous talent as a musician.

But as you noted, he can also be very disciplined and task-oriented.

And working with your husband or your life partner has brought with it a whole new set of challenges.

And I think we're continuing to master them.

We've gotten really really good at it, especially since we started the Korean Vegan Beauty line, And we've really figured out where each of us sort of fits in that.

But one of the things that he continues to teach me how to do is to believe in myself.

I think that is something that we don't think enough about as people, wherever we are in life, whether we are pursuing a creative career or business, or if we're in a nine to five or a corporate job a nine to nine in some cases.

We don't oftentimes think about what does it look like when you believe in yourself?

How does that manifest on a daily basis, minute to minute?

And that's something that Anthony continues to teach me.

And I like learning from him.

What is the inner monologue like when you didn't bill enough hours in the day?

Yeah.

You know, falling short of your, you know, your ambitions.

This is very Joanne.

If I don't bill at least eight hours, I feel very like OK, you're going to have to make up for that tomorrow.

But you can say that you have to bill hours towards your recovery or your downtime or your you know detached moments so that you can reboot.

And especially as a creative person like that is that's juice for the output.

So I have a couple of things that I do.

These are boundary Joanne times.

These are impermeable moments, or I should say longer than moments, segments of time in my day.

I run every single morning.

Not every single morning, that's not true.

I don't run on the weekends, but I run Monday through Friday, and that is holy time.

I do not allow that to ever be impinged at all, unless it's a health reason.

But barring that, that is my time when I do recharge and I don't take phone calls.

I don't even I put my phone in sleep mode and nobody can penetrate that.

Barring, again, safety issues.

That helps a lot.

I'm also very regimented about sleep.

I've listened to every single podcast of yours about sleep.

I take it very seriously.

I go to bed around 9 p.m.

And I try and get at least seven hours of sleep every single night.

So those two things do help a lot.

I hear you on building in and investing in recovery time.

I very much try to listen to my body when it comes to that.

When I start to feel unusually fatigued or drained, then I know it's time to scuttle all the meetings today.

It's time to cancel the video you were going to shoot and just watch K-dramas all day.

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When I think about your work, I watch your videos, both of the books that you've put out in the world.

To me, like on a top level, like 10,000 foot view on what you're doing and attempting to do is to really reconcile your past, make peace with the difficult emotions that you have around your upbringing and your heritage, because it's complicated, right?

Like you love these people, and yet perhaps some of your emotional needs weren't quite getting met right.

And so, you know, it's about the generational divide.

And perhaps maybe this is too strong a word, but the generational trauma.

Your parents, your grandparents endured a tremendous amount.

And it would be impossible for that to not get translated down to you, to this young person who's trying to make their way in the world, who's under a lot of pressure to achieve.

And perhaps within that there's some aspect of love being transactional and these people who raised you, who weren't exactly raised in an environment where the verbal aspect of love was very developed right.

And so you're trying to make sense of all of this.

Like you love them, you're also in pain.

How do you reconcile this and make sense of it?

Well, you do it by sharing your stories and being vulnerable.

And within that, perhaps there's some healing and you can arrive in a place where you're at peace with all of it.

I think healing requires illumination.

And I think sometimes, if you're so close up to your pain, it's hard to understand what is causing it and how to recover from it.

Sharing my stories requires me to step back.

Any good writer knows that they do need a little bit of detachment from the subject of the story in order to tell the story.

And a lot of times what has occurred is exactly what you described is I will unearth a nugget of wisdom or I'll discover sort of an aspect to the story that I had never realized before.

And those things all contribute to me not only feeling seen because that is also a very instrumental part of being healed but also understanding not just my own pain but sort of the struggle and the pain that fed into it.

And that allows forgiveness.

It allows for compassion and empathy.

And those things are absolutely crucial to building relationships that are going to last.

On some level, the premise is if I can understand these people, then I can find a way to love them.

Exactly.

These people who I love and yet you know are difficult for me at times to love, because they had their own difficulties loving me or, you know, meeting whatever emotional needs that I needed at that time.

At that time.

I mean, it's.

It's so different now.

My parents are, you know, my dad's like 82, my mom's 76.

So they're so mellowed.

It's hilarious.

I think if you actually met my parents, you'd be like how are these the people that terrified you in your youth?

That's the way it is, though.

It totally is.

You know, I was watching a K-drama the other day and they just had it was the best line and it was between a mother and a daughter and it was very much what you described.

The daughter had been traumatized by all sorts of you know maybe abuse is too harsh of a word but a lot of uncaring.

That had happened in her relationship with her mother.

But her mother was now much older and was in a nursing facility and was very old and very frail and was likely going to die soon And she's crying and crying, and crying.

And a friend of hers says, don't worry, your mom's going to be okay.

Don't worry, everything's okay.

And the woman says, I don't think you understand why I'm so upset.

It is so hard for me because I can no longer see the woman I've hated my whole life lying in that bed.

And now I don't know what to do with that hate anymore.

And I found that to be so powerful.

And I think it's something that many people can relate to, specifically with regard to their parents.

You want to let go of it, but you've crafted an entire story and an identity around it.

And if that's no longer the case or you see through it like this is what you've always wanted to heal it.

And yet there's a vacancy.

And you don't know how to fill it.

Yeah.

And it's terrifying.

It can be terrifying.

And it also can cause grief because now you have to let go of that person you were for so much of your life.

That's a very big thing to do.

And I think that I've been very fortunate in that my parents and I now have this wonderful relationship.

But there was a time where I had to sort of grapple with some of these things and figure out okay, why were they being like this to me?

And maybe if I can understand that better, then it will be so much easier for me to show them the compassion that they deserve.

And the second book is on.

Some it's stories that are allowing you to find that place, but there's also an arc, because by the time you're done reading it like you really kind of punctuate it with a.

You know the incredible story of the video and your dad and all of that which we can, we can get to.

But Before we do that, for the people who don't know the backstory here, maybe kind of recap your story as a first-generation immigrant, where your parents and your grandparents came from, because it's really quite a remarkable thing.

Yeah, I've been doing a lot of research on that right now because I have another project that I'm working on.

And it's been so interesting to follow my family's path.

The farthest back that I can go predates the division of Korea.

It was when Korea was one whole peninsula.

But my mother and father were both born in what is now known as North Korea, my father's family.

They my, my father and my grandmother, his mother.

They went to the southern region right after world war ii, so it was around like 1945, and they left there because she was essentially a single mom, because my grandfather, my father's father, fled that region and went to the south, leaving behind his wife and his newborn son.

So grandma and my dad followed about a year later And they settled in South Korea, what is now known as South Korea.

My mother's family.

They were actually from a small fishing province, Ongjin province, which is actually the site of the very first battle of the Korean War.

And they fled Ongjin when they started being attacked.

They got on a boat, a cargo ship, sometime in January, I think in 1951.

My mother was 18 months old.

And, you know, this is, again, my mom's favorite story.

And I know I shared it before, but I'll share it very briefly again.

It was during that time that my grandfather, in particular, determined that it would be better to throw my mother overboard into the Yellow Sea as opposed to continuing to watch her starve.

My grandmother was opposed to this idea.

Didn't like it.

But my grandfather was pretty adamant.

And you know the mores of that time, particularly in Korea, a wife very rarely disobeyed her husband.

And they were literally about to throw my mother, who was 18 months, overboard when a couple of American GIs arrived, saw them.

There was a bit of a commotion because my grandmother was really not into this idea.

And they approached my grandparents and they said, you know, what's going on?

What's going on?

And you know, obviously my grandparents didn't speak English, but they kind of figured out what was going on.

And it was the fact that my mother was starving.

And so the GI reaches in and pulls out one of those what I understand to be disgusting chocolate bars, but very nutritious chocolate bars, and hands it to my grandmother.

And ultimately that's what saved my mother's life.

That cargo ship ultimately took them to what I believe is Busan, which was a place where many North Korean evacuees ended up settling.

But pursuant to a number of different evacuation plans, my grandparents ultimately ended up in Jeollado, which is a very southern tip of that peninsula.

And then, you know, my mom came to Chicago, brought my dad, brought my grandpa, brought my grandma, gave birth to me.

And that's where I was born.

Yeah.

Do you ever think about what your life might have been like if you grew up in North Korea?

I have literally never thought about that.

Really?

How could you not have thought about that?

In some parallel universe, like they stayed in the North.

I think part of it is because we know so little about what North Korea is actually like.

I mean so much of what we know is filtered through propaganda and filtered through the regime there.

We only get little bits and pieces of what actual life is like.

I mean honestly.

So much of it is informed by Crash Landing, which is a very popular Korean drama about North Korea.

But even that, that's filtered through the lens of South Korea.

So it would have been so difficult for me to imagine that.

And I also don't want to do a disservice to North Korea and the North Korean people by sort of like trying to plant myself in a reality that's impossible for me to really understand.

South Korea.

I've definitely thought about oh, what would have been like if I had been born and raised in South Korea?

It would have been very, very hard.

My mom's talked about this.

The education system there is so, so difficult.

And I don't know that I would have had even a quarter of the opportunities that I had here in the United States.

I remember a couple of years ago there was that wave of like vloggers that got invited to go to North Korea for like these sort of propaganda-led tours to make videos.

That is very dangerous.

Did anyone ever reach out to you to do that?

No, and I would not have done it.

I think that it is very dangerous.

We've visited the DMZ and we've seen that.

That's the closest I've ever come.

I've gotten to see... the literal DMZ, you know, how beautiful it is.

It's just a wonderful wildlife area, essentially because there hasn't been a human there for so long.

So I've been there.

Given my family's history, I think it would be a little dangerous, quite frankly, for me to come too close to that.

What would you say are the biggest cultural differentiators between being a Korean living in South Korea and being an American in America?

There are so many differences.

I'll start with a very easy one.

So my sister-in-law, she's native Korean, born and raised there.

She came here when she was in her mid-20s when she married my brother.

And when she and my brother were staying with me, I made them some kimchi fried rice.

And I thought it was like a really good kimchi fried rice with plenty of vegetables.

Sure, I added some kale, but I mean, I was in Chicago and we had lots of kale at the time.

And she ate some and she goes, that's what she calls me, which means older sister in Korean.

She says, this is very good food.

It's very delicious, but it's not Korean kimchi fried rice.

And I think that was in many ways a really good reminder to me that, however Korean I think I am, it does not necessarily match up with the experience of national Koreans, Korean nationals.

And that's not just in food.

It's also how they understand politics.

It's how they understand race and racism.

It's how they understand national identity and nationalism.

There are so many different things that are disparate from that experience.

And I have to remind myself that my experience isn't necessarily better than theirs and their experience isn't necessarily more authentic than mine.

It's just different.

And there needs to be a space for that difference.

So in other words, there isn't a diversity of perspectives permitted like there is here.

And there's a very specific way that you do things and...

Well, I mean, I think some of that could have been Youngjung, my sister-in-law, trying to impart this idea that the way that you make it Joanne, this kimchi fried rice, is not necessarily the way it's traditionally prepared in Korea.

But as a metaphor, for we have a very, very diverse population, whereas there it's largely homogenous.

It's monoethnic, right?

999 of people who live in Korea are Korean, whereas here we're a small fraction of the different kinds of cultures that we see.

So what does that mean from a national identity perspective?

And what does that mean?

When you discuss racism or you discuss racial discrimination, ethnic discrimination?

So The conversations are in different places.

Another interesting thing that we're seeing, particularly in Korea right now, is what does misogyny look like?

What does feminism look like?

How do you show up as a female leader in Korea?

And how much of that have we perhaps taken for granted here in the United States?

There's this huge 4B movement that has continued to garner attraction there.

They have a population crisis in Korea.

They have a fertility crisis in Korea.

All of that sort of raises questions about what does it mean to be a woman there?

And these are questions that I think that we've grappled with already here in the United States, but in a very different way.

But with the globalization of information right by dint of the internet, they can't help but be exposed to traditionally Western ideas that are starting to shift cultural mores around those issues.

Is that what you're implying?

I think they are.

I think the internet certainly plays a huge role in lowering the barriers that used to exist.

There's still language barriers, right?

I mean, that's something that should not be underestimated, the impact of that.

And there's also history, right?

I think that many younger people in Korea, and perhaps some of the more progressive politicians in South Korea, I think they're more skeptical about of Western norms and ideals, particularly the US's continued presence in South Korea.

And there's also this renewed desire to perhaps reunite with the northern half of the peninsula.

How does that perhaps clash with this again idea of embracing the United States and all of the philosophies that the United States brings with it?

We've seen that now come literally into clash in terms of US politics versus Korean politics recently.

So I think that it's a constantly moving situation.

One that, you know, again, I'm a curious person.

I like to stay abreast of those things, but also it directly impacts who I am and my identity.

I continue to delve into the past and that past informs what I see today.

There is a core tension in your work that is sort of analogous to what you just shared, which is the tension between authenticity that you were talking about and, like innovation.

Because obviously, In the example of preparing food and all of these recipes that are in your cookbooks, they're traditionally Korean fundamentally, but there are plant-based versions of it.

And they're also, you know, you pushing the envelope a little bit, innovating them in ways that even goes beyond just the fact that there's no meat or dairy in them, right.

And so that puts you in this.

You know interesting liminal space between your heritage and you know something new that you can, that only you are creating.

I think that we have swung the pendulum a little bit too far when it comes to quote authentic cuisine.

And I say this as somebody who understands that instinct.

Especially because my parents are refugees.

My mother and my father were both refugees from North Korea when they were in South Korea.

They will never, ever be able to set foot in the country they were born in.

When my grandparents died, they died wanting to go back home and knowing they never could.

They never, ever could.

And so when you have that situation, of course the foods that you grew up loving are going to be so important to who you are as an identity.

So I understand why, as children of diaspora, of children of immigrants, that food is sometimes the only path we have back to the stories that we literally physically can never enjoy again.

Right.

So I understand that.

But at the same time, I go back to what my sister-in-law said.

This is very delicious kimchi fried rice, but it is not the way that you would make it in Korea.

And I can do two things with that.

I could just kill myself trying to make the perfect exactly the same traditional, typical Korean kimchi fried rice that my sister-in-law will then approve of.

Or I can say, well, yeah, I'm not in Korea.

And also I'm Korean American.

And I like kale.

I like broccoli.

And I like lots of green things in my fried rice.

And I also like kimchi because I'm Korean.

So I'm going to create my version.

I'm Korean.

I think that I'm American.

And, as a result of this, I don't really care whether you call this Korean food, American food, Korean American food, whatever you call it.

I want it to be delicious.

And I want it to be an honest reflection of who I am.

That's also personal growth because it's transcending that impulse or that history of like chasing approval.

Like if I just do it perfectly, you know, then everyone will love me, you know?

Versus like you know what?

Like I have a unique set of experiences and I'm going to bring those to bear to this in a new way.

And.

And lean into my creativity and do something no one's done before.

And that in and of itself is an act of beauty, right?

Regardless of how it's received by these people who I desperately want to love and approve me.

I think the desperate want of love and approval is important. is something I inherited.

Well, this is at the core of the whole thing.

It is.

It really is.

It's so hard and I still struggle with it.

When I first introduced Korean Vegan Homemade to the world on social media, within a couple days a Korean woman posted There's no such thing as a Korean vegan.

Don't buy this book.

It's just pandering.

And it was very hurtful to me.

Of course, it was hurtful to me.

And there was a part of me that was like, why don't you like me?

Just like me, you know, like I'm trying so hard.

So there was, of course, that natural instinct of being very wounded because a member of my own community decided that I had failed, that I was never going to be good enough if I continued to be plant based.

It just wasn't possible, according to her.

So there was that instinct.

But then at the other side of things, I was like, I mean, you're right.

This book, it's not just Korean food.

I have freaking kimchi, mac and cheese in here.

The whole section late in the book where you're like I'm just going to, you know Korean eyes like all of these more.

You know kind of more American, American dishes or Italian dishes.

My husband's Italian American.

So you're going to see a lot of pasta in here.

How dare you, Joanne?

You're never going to be loved now.

I'm appropriating all over the place, right?

I mean, that's basically what it is.

But I have learned, especially on TikTok, especially with younger people they have got a nose for inauthenticity.

And the more you try to be some version of what other people define as quote authentic people, the more dishonest you're actually being.

And they can sense that.

They call it cringe.

I don't know if they use that word anymore, but that's what they used to use a couple of years ago.

It is like a cringe factor.

Oh, I can tell this person is trying to be something to win my approval.

And that automatically makes them want to not give it.

And I think the better way is just be yourself, be honest, show your hand a little bit if you feel safe doing that.

And people generally respond better to that.

At the core of this deep-seated need for love and approval, though, are issues related to identity.

Like, am I a Korean?

If I'm a Korean as a Korean-American, what is my identity as a Korean?

What is my identity as a Korean and a Korean chef if I'm vegan?

What is my identity if I decide I'm going to leave the law?

What does that say about who I am, and is that a betrayal of my upbringing, you know?

What is my identity within my family structure if I get divorced and then I marry this Italian guy who plays the piano over here?

What does that say about me?

How is that going to be perceived?

All of these things are all issues that you kind of grapple with in the public square, in these very poetic monologues.

I think we've talked about this before.

We are a function of our choices.

Identity isn't some sort of projection where you say hey, I'm gonna draw a picture of the person that I think I am.

It's not the reflection that you see in the mirror to me.

I've always believed we are our Choices.

So what you do from day to day, what you do from hour to hour, that is what creates who you are.

The anxiety is is when you lose something, some aspect of yourself whether it's the person that you hated your whole life, or the career that you've invested in for 30 years, or the food that you've been eating for 35 years.

You start to freak out about how you fill that void again.

And I think the good news is you fill it just by making choices.

You choose what you eat.

You choose where to go for your run that morning.

You choose how to fill the time that you have between 8 to noon.

Those choices create who you are.

The key, though, is to try and fill those choices with intention.

That does require a little bit of meditation.

It requires some thought.

It requires taking some time away from doing, doing a little bit of thinking.

But, at the end of the day, there's immense comfort in knowing that the person you are is a composition of those minute decisions, in the same way that every dish that you prepare is a composition of all of these recipes, right?

And food being, you know, the ultimate connector that transcends language gaps and whatever other cultural barriers keep us separate.

So this is your language.

This is your means of trying to connect more deeply with your family members, but also with the public because, irrespective of people's unique set of life circumstances, this is something that we can all unify around.

We all need to eat.

That's what I always say.

We all need to eat.

And most of us like to eat things that taste good.

So I wanted to create a vehicle for disarming conversation.

And food is such a wonderful vehicle for that.

And plant-based food is particularly wonderful for that because it's very, very inclusive, right?

There's so many different kinds of food culturally nutritionally, that come into plant-based cuisine as opposed to the standard American diet hamburger cheeseburger chicken, nuggets and pizza.

And you know, a lot of people can't eat those things.

A lot more people can actually eat vegan food than eat non-vegan food.

Yeah.

I mean, sometimes they got to get out of their own head though, because they'll think that it is non-inclusive.

Well, because they don't realize, oh, banana is vegan, by the way.

Strawberries are vegan.

Even potato chips are vegan.

But in Korean culture you say this in the book like you don't have a deep conversation unless you're sharing like coffee or tea.

Like this is a prerequisite, right?

So, So it's like.

What that means is basically it's like food.

Is the the moderator for the difficult heavier, deeper conversations between people?

I think it's it's almost like a pretext.

Right.

I think that sharing emotions and.

From what I understand of Korean culture, certainly growing up in my household was a no-no.

You do not cry.

You do not share emotions.

You certainly never say things like, I love you.

This is not good.

This is viewed as either being weak or being indulgent.

So that is heavily ingrained in me.

And it's one of the reasons that, to this day, I'm still very ashamed of how prone to emotions I can be.

And so in a lot of times, what ends up happening is let's have a coffee is really code for we need to have a very important conversation, because actually saying we need to have an important conversation is pretty much impolite and taboo.

So the coffee or the tea or the plate of cookies or whatever it is, it's an invitation to someone to say we're safe.

We can now have this important and potentially uncomfortable conversation.

And don't worry, I have all the pretense of etiquette right here in this beautiful cup of coffee and this wonderful plate of cookies.

So when you emote or share your vulnerabilities or say I love you out loud, does that feel like a betrayal, contraposition to that programming?

It feels embarrassing.

I can't.

I mean, that is the closest thing that I can describe.

I still have trouble saying it to my husband.

You know, I have friends usually not Korean friends who like to sign off with every voice note with love you.

And I almost never say it back.

And sometimes they feel guilted into saying it back.

And it's very awkward and uncomfortable.

All of my friends know that I'm not a hugger and that when I am forced to hug somebody it turns awkward and uncomfortable.

And I feel embarrassed and I feel very self-conscious.

It's actually very interesting to me now to even think what do other people not feel that way?

Like, are there people out there who can comfortably say, I love you or hug people?

To me, that is very foreign.

The whole concept is very, very, very foreign.

Certainly crying in front of other people is mortifying.

Being overly emotional, other than angry.

We can be angry, but any other kind of emotion is sort of frowned upon.

And I find it very difficult.

And Probably a lot of people find it very hilarious.

That's so interesting.

But this is your opportunity to, you know, overcome that and create a new way.

Because you feel all those things and you know it's safe to express them.

And you know the people that love you want to feel that you love them in that way.

I think that what I've actually sort of landed upon is I am more my parents' daughter than I probably wanted to be growing up, which is I think that by now, the habit of not saying I love you and not being overly emotive, especially physically, is something that I don't necessarily need to break.

If I had children, I think it would be very different.

But I think that I've learned to lean into the other ways that I show love, much like my grandmas and much like my mother and my aunt and my dad, which is to prepare food for people.

I create very elaborate dinner parties for the people I love.

I love feeding people.

I love listening to people.

I love being there for people.

And I help people solve their problems.

I'm a problem solver.

I'm a lawyer.

That's what I do.

And I think these are the other ways that I've chosen to show up in a very aggressive way to perhaps compensate for the fact that I'm not always the most touchy-feely type of friend.

And I think that's OK.

Not every friend is going to look the same.

And I hope I bring value in that way.

I like that you just own it.

I mean, it's better than being the awkward weirdo.

I mean, I genuinely I think people are like, just just stop.

Just stop.

You don't need to hug me.

Yeah.

Well, this new book is an act of love, just as the first one was.

It's your love offering.

Yeah.

But why do a second book?

What was not said in the first one that compelled you to follow up with this?

There are two things that I think separate it from the first book.

The first thing is the food itself, which you note.

There are a lot of koreanizations, i guess, of typical american fare, like i have, you know, baked cheese fries in there and kimchi mac and cheese and, like i said, a lot of pastas as an homage to my husband's side of the family, and this is really the way that we eat at home.

You know, nowadays I'm not making traditional Korean food every single day of the week.

I do often make traditional Korean dishes, but I also eat a lot of you know kind of Koreanized American foods.

And I really wanted to share those recipes with people as well, because the first book was really meant to be an introduction to traditional Korean cuisine and traditional Korean flavors.

The other aspect of this book that's different from the first book, which dovetails with these kinds of recipes, is that there's more of me in it than the first book.

The first book.

Again, I wanted to introduce people to the people of Korea, which would be my grandparents and my parents right, and this is more of an introduction to the lee family in the united states.

What is it really like being me growing up as an immigrant here in in the united states?

And i think again, what i want to show people is there are so many things that we have in common, notwithstanding a very different history.

There's probably a lot more that we share than people realize.

And that's really what I wanted to convey is that, yes, it might look a little different.

It may come from a different place, but a lot of these feelings are probably ones that you'll recognize.

I feel like you also put more intention into decoding some of the mysteries because, like I love Korean food, it's delicious, but I, you know, I can't pronounce these words and you know, I'm not sure where I'm going to find all of these ingredients and all looks very complicated and I'll just let somebody else, you know, make this for me in a restaurant.

And so you're very conscious about like here are the, the pillars, and the here are the main things that you need.

And trying to simplify the whole thing and And even going so far as like here are the brands that I use and here's a way of like making sure that you can find it in your local area, et cetera, et cetera, to make that lift a little bit more welcoming.

That was one of the big lessons that I learned from the publication of book one was how intimidating it was for some of these readers to walk into a Korean grocery store.

I mean, of course I took that for granted.

I've been going to Korean grocery stores since I can remember, right?

And I speak Korean, so it's very easy for me to navigate and find my way.

Oh, this is the gochugaru I need, or this is the ganjang.

And if I can't find what I need, I can always ask the store clerk who speaks only Korean, because I speak Korean, right.

So it's very easy for me.

But I remember...

One day, a reader posted on, you know, the Korean Vegan Cookbook has a separate Facebook group.

And she posted on there.

She's like, I printed out the pantry section and I'm armed with my ingredients.

Wish me luck.

I'm headed for the Korean grocery store.

And everyone's like, good luck.

You got this.

And I realized, well, this is a thing.

This is an event for some people.

And I wanted to make All of that intimidation, as much of that, to disappear as possible, because I don't want people to be afraid to walk into a Korean grocery store.

I want them to see how joyous and wonderful and vibrant it is in there and how they can also get a really good deal on some of these things.

And so I created a pantry section that, like you said, literally tells you phonetically how to pronounce these ingredients.

It tells you which ones are gluten free.

It tells you which brands you want to go after if you want to follow my mom's guideline.

It tells you what the substitutes are.

It tells you what the allergen information is, because I don't want you to feel like oh, I can't do this.

I want you to feel like I'm right there with you.

I'm with you at the Korean grocery store.

I'm showing you where you need to go.

And if you need a translator, I'm there with you as well.

And for those that don't have a Korean grocery store where they live.

So I cover that as well.

There are now again with the Internet.

It's wonderful.

I mean, you can have so many things delivered to your door.

If you're in the United States, H Mart delivers pretty much nationwide.

And H Mart is the biggest purveyor of Korean groceries in, I think, possibly the world, certainly in the United States.

So there are so many ways that you can have these things delivered.

There are now apps that focus on Asian grocery stores, including Korean grocery stores, that will deliver directly to your home.

They'll shop for you and they'll deliver it for you.

There are all sorts of independent, family owned, small distributors of Korean ingredients that you can find online.

And of course, you know, you can go to these big box companies and get it there as well.

But You know, I live actually 45 minutes away from my nearest Korean grocery store, which can be a little bit-.

Where's the closest one to here?

It's in Northridge.

Yeah.

These things are always in the deep valley, right?

Yes, they are. way deep in the valley.

You do.

So it's not like I live conveniently close to one myself.

So every once in a while, I will have things delivered to me.

But there are so many ways now.

And again, I believe you're going to get the best results from this cookbook if you stick to the ingredients that I recommend.

But I also understand, especially for our overseas friends, that's not possible sometimes.

And so I offer a lot of substitution recommendations to help you navigate these recipes with the ingredients that are accessible to you.

Right.

Your mantra is that you veganize Korean food, but you Koreanize everything else, right?

And so you're...

You're sort of Koreanizing American recipes on some level while also veganizing them, I suppose.

But what does this actually mean to Koreanize something?

Even outside of food itself, what do you try to evoke with that idea?

I came up with that tagline.

Like over, like over five seconds.

You know I was creating my website and they're like you need a tagline.

I was like, OK, well, I veganize Korean food and then I need another part.

So I'll just say I'll Koreanize everything else.

And, at the time, all I could think about was my propensity to add gochujang into everything, which is very true.

I add it to my red sauce.

I add it to my soups.

I added I add doenjang to my kale and white bean stew.

I'm always adding Korean ingredients to everything you know traditionally American or Italian or European cuisine.

Right.

So that's really I didn't really give it much thought.

But over time I now realize again there's this wonderful concept in Korean cooking called sonmat, which I've talked about.

And sonmat literally translates into the taste of the hand, right?

And I think it's the equivalent, the Korean equivalent to cooking with love, right?

Oh, love is the magical ingredient that makes it taste so good.

Sonmat is... This word that we'll never say out loud.

Sonmat is basically.

It's the idea of not necessarily love, because again, Korean people don't use that word right.

Sonmat is more, I'm putting some of me into this stew.

I'm putting some of me into this food, because I'm literally using my hands to prepare this food right.

Sounds a little gross, but I like to think of it more metaphorically, which is...

Every piece of food that I prepare has a little bit of me inside of it.

And I'm Korean.

I'm Korean American, but I'm very Korean too.

And so...

When I touch anything, when I create anything, there is a little bit of Korean in that.

And that is in part because I cannot escape, nor do I want to escape, my history, who I am, the stories that preceded me, the lives and the loves that preceded me.

I want all of that to go into everything that I create.

And I think that's what creates something beautiful and unique.

That idea of authenticity gets inverted then, because this notion, like what you're doing, is not authentically Korean, is authentically you.

Which are you honoring?

You know what I mean?

Like this idea of like an objective authenticity versus the subjective authenticity of what you can bring to it.

That's a very important conversation, because I am not ignorant of the fact that the Korean American experience isn't monolithic.

It's not one dimensional, right?

I, for example, grew up hating Korean food.

I didn't particularly like my Korean-ness.

I wanted blonde hair.

I wanted blue eyes.

I was mad at my grandma for giving me black hair.

I literally was mad at her.

I remember I once yelled at her, why don't I have blonde hair?

You know, I wanted to be like all of the students at my elementary school.

I hated being othered.

I hated it when my grandmother packed Korean food for me at lunch.

I hated being that center of attention.

I didn't like that.

I didn't want to be different.

I wanted to be like everybody else.

And I can be compassionate to that story, while also recognizing that that wasn't a particularly healthy way to view myself.

And it was a very dishonorable way to view my family's history and their story.

And I think that there are a lot of people who are at a different point in that path of self-discovery.

There are probably many people who are still at my age, middle age, who still don't particularly like their Korean-ness, for whatever reason.

And I think that It would be very naive of me to also not acknowledge that there are some people who believe that the more white they are, the more power they will have in this country.

And so they eschew all of the artifacts of their Koreanness in favor of whiteness.

And I think that that, again, is not very healthy.

And I don't think it's helpful for a number of different reasons.

So I don't want to ignore that.

That is certainly part of this conversation on authenticity.

But at the end of the day again, when we talked about, we are a composition of our choices.

Let's inject some thought and intention into those choices and understand what the consequences of those will be.

Well said.

I mean, you're providing a portal, I suppose on some level, for those very people that you mentioned to engage in a way of reexamination or rethinking their own history, because you're sharing your version of that, which I'm sure is relatable for many who fall into that category.

And you're providing this like pathway towards reconciliation. reconciliation, but in a safe way.

I don't want anyone to think that I'm judging them for wherever they are on their path, even if it completely does not coincide with the way that I live my life today or live my life 20 years ago.

I think that's one of the reasons that I share so much of the uglier aspects of my story.

My very own story, my personal story, is because I want people to know hey, I'm showing you literally the ugly stuff.

So whatever you feel comfortable sharing with me, you should know I can't possibly judge you for it.

Because look at me, I am a mess.

I have been a hot mess.

I know exactly what that's like.

I somehow managed to get out on the other side of it, but I still don't always have my stuff together.

And I want you to feel comfortable sharing that with me if that's something that you think will help you.

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Let's talk about the vegan side of things here.

How long have you been vegan?

Like eight years or something like that?

I've been vegan since January 2016.

So almost 10 years.

Almost 10 years.

Wow.

It's an interesting moment that we're in right now for the vegan movement.

Things are very different than they were when we last spoke.

Yes.

Very different even in just the last couple of years.

The culture has shifted considerably.

I think we can agree.

How are you making sense of what's going on with the movement, where you sit within it and what you imagine it's evolving into?

I believe that my commitment to compassion and veganism is identical to the one I had the last time we talked, which goes back to, you know, Sunim.

Sunim was the monk that I met when I went to Korea in 2019.

She's a very famous monk.

She was on Chef's Table.

A beautiful New York Times piece written by Jeff Gordon.

Exactly.

I love that piece.

I've read it multiple times.

When I met with her.

She she made it so clear and also very accessible to me.

What does it mean to be vegan?

And I will never forget her saying vegan, not vegan.

What does that even mean to her?

It doesn't the words don't mean anything to her.

It's just about the way that she lives, which is always fundamentally to do the least amount of harm.

And for her part of that is because and this is very much in line with the Buddhist philosophy, which is everything reverberates right.

Whether it's karma or however you want to look at it, everything bounces back to you.

For every force is an equal and opposite reaction, right?

And so when you hurt something, when you cause pain, that pain reverberates and it incurs attacks, right.

You, whether it's your body, your spirit, your soul, whatever you want to think about it, And so it's a net win to operate in a way that causes the least amount of harm.

That has not changed for me and that has not changed for the Korean vegan.

It shows up in myriad ways, certainly in the food that I prepare, but that's like the most basic thing, right?

You know that's the most amount of harm that we do as humans when it comes to animals is just eat different food right.

But I think also the Korean vegan has always tried to provide an intersectional approach to compassion.

It is why I talk about racism.

It is why I talk about misogyny.

It is why I've talked about the gay community.

It is why I talk about a lot of different things on the Korean vegan, not just about food and not just about being Korean and not just about being vegan.

All of this goes into what I think is an important understanding of the power of compassion.

So today we see that veganism is no longer quite as popular as it was when we were last chatting, certainly not as popular as it was when I went vegan in 2016.

We're seeing a sort of demoralizing and rapid decline in investments and technology around creating non-animal foods and other products other than in the beauty space, which is, thank God.

We're seeing a sort of explosion in the let's eat meat again, as long as it's grass fed or part of generative farming, and all sorts of in my view, no offense to anyone pretexts that give them license to eat the things that they've always wanted to eat without feeling guilty anymore.

Fine, if that's what they want.

So we're seeing all of that.

What does that mean for me?

It means I'm not going to do anything different than I ever was, which is again to show people you can make choices that are more compassionate for everyone, for yourself included.

And you do not have to sacrifice flavor.

You do not have to sacrifice taste.

And you also don't need to sacrifice your identity.

You can have it all.

You literally can have it all.

The other aspect of that is I am an ambassador for veganism and it has taught me.

I mean, I think you've probably experienced this yourself.

You know, when you first go vegan, you're like, rah, rah, everything's vegan.

Everybody has to eat vegan, blah, blah, blah, you know, and I was very aggressive with my advocacy.

And I think over the years I've learned, you know, put my trial lawyer hat on.

I got to be a little bit more nuanced.

And I have to be a little bit more strategic about my messaging and about understanding where people are at, certainly right now with the economy.

People don't have disposable income for some of the more expensive vegan products.

And instead of saying well, too bad, you just have to do it.

It's going to come out of your insurance payment anyway, which is the line that I used to cart out when I was a newbie vegan.

Now it's more like, well, how do we creatively address that problem?

How do we create budget-friendly plant-based meals so that you can continue to have it all?

I share so much of what you just so beautifully shared.

For me, it's been almost 18 years or a little over 18 years at this point.

It's still the most nourishing lifestyle for me in terms of physical health.

Emotional health, spiritual health, all of that.

Like for me, it checks all the boxes.

And I've been doing it so long that I don't really think about it very much anymore.

But I have evolved in how I talk about it and advocate for it, which is to say that I don't advocate for it that much publicly anymore, because I've been doing it for a very long time.

And I began like you, you know, much more in the role of an evangelist.

I've just found over the years, like either I'm preaching to the choir or I'm talking to people who don't want to hear what I have to say.

And I'm not interested in trying to compel people to change their minds.

And so what I've decided that I'm best suited for is kind of inhabiting the ethos of the lighthouse, like just live your best life, and If people are interested or curious and I'm approached or asked about it, I'm happy to share it.

But I'm not interested in going out into the world and trying to get people to change their minds or change their behaviors.

And part of that, I think, also is due to just the shifting climate.

We are in a very different moment.

That peak experience, where plant-based eating was very much a mainstream thing, has fallen off a cliff, and You see it in the investment space, of course.

There's no more venture capital going into any of these foods.

And if you try to even find a single plant-based food company that's thriving, I don't know if they are.

Their stock prices are down.

The vegan restaurants have closed all across Los Angeles.

And part of that is because there's plant-based options at all the restaurants now, so you don't really have to go to a place like that.

And there is all of this kind of propagandized whitewashing around how we talk about it with the regenerative movement and and all of these things, and i just don't want to exert the energy to get in the trenches and have all of those arguments all of the time because in my experience they don't really go anywhere.

I think there are certain people who are well-suited to doing that.

And God bless them.

And I'm glad that they're doing it.

I just don't think I'm wired for that.

And I don't think it's the best use of what I have to offer.

No, I think advocacy, as you know, takes all shapes and sizes.

And I think it's also... incumbent on us to look at us.

Like, who are we?

What space do we occupy?

When people see my face, what do they expect from me?

I just posted a video yesterday talking about you know what's going on in our country from a political standpoint, how it has affected me personally, how it has affected my immigrant family personally.

And I'm making vegan soupli, which is an Italian dish that my late father-in-law really, really loved.

And I'm making it.

And I'm not talking about vegan food.

I'm not talking about veganism.

I'm talking specifically about what it looks like to be compassionate to the immigrant family in the United States today.

And so many people have commented, I am not vegan, but that looks delicious.

I am not vegan, but I want to buy your cookbook.

I am not vegan, but I am following your account because this story means something to me.

There are so many different ways to win people's hearts.

And by winning, I don't mean you turn them vegan.

I've done that too.

But that's not the only kind of victory there is out there for this movement of compassion.

It's about opening the door, getting your foot in that door, allowing people to blossom once you walk in.

Who knows where that will end up?

But just being invited is a victory.

And that is everything that the Korean vegan is about is let's make an invitation.

Let's have disarmament at this dinner table.

And let's have some sometimes fun, sometimes tough conversations about who we are as human beings.

The degree of difficulty being a little bit higher than it has been in a while.

Like not a great time to be vegan and certainly not a great time to be brown.

You know what I mean?

And that combination right there puts you in a unique situation in terms of how you think about, how you're messaging publicly and how carefully you're choosing your words and what it is exactly that you want to say and how to say it.

I think that I occupy a space of privilege.

You know, I'm Korean American, East Asian American which again, I'm not going to be ignorant of who I am, where I am.

And, like I said, I need to be aware of what people see when they see my face and what people see when they know oh, she's a big time lawyer.

Oh, she's 46 years old.

Oh, she lives in California.

I need to be aware of all of those things, because I'm Not everybody who's watching me or listening to me, or who might be compelled by my story, understands what that's like, right?

And so I approach as much of these stories with the utmost of humility, knowing that my experience may be far more pleasant and fortunate than those others of the people who are listening to me.

And I think that also helps with getting that foot in that door is telling them hey, I'm not saying I'm better than you.

In fact, you're probably better than me, but I'd love to cook for you.

That's really the heart of it.

What we're seeing with the public's perception of being plant-based or being vegan is really just a subset of Of a shift in the you know the kind of whatever you want to call wellness world, like the way you know sort of how the wellness world has gotten kind of weird lately.

It's not something I really want to be a part of.

And I think there's a lot of public confusion out there around it around this sort of red pilling of wellness.

And perhaps you know people will accuse me of having, like RFK Jr, derangement syndrome or something like that.

But it really is kind of Maha gone mad in my perspective.

And I'm wondering where you kind of land on all of this.

Well, two things I'll say.

In the same way that I'm very committed to the ethos of veganism, even if the monk refused to call it veganism, I am also committed to science and evidence-based nutrition.

I will always be committed to that.

That is one of the fundamental pillars of my health.

And I speak of health in a very 360-degree approach my spiritual health, my fitness health and my nutritional health right.

And so, whether it is fitness, or whether it is mental health, or whether it is nutritional health, I always go back to the science.

Science can evolve.

Don't get me wrong.

We're continuing to learn new things.

I mean with the advent of AI.

God knows what we're going to know about nutrition in the next 10 years, right?

So I'm ever mindful of that and I remain humble about that.

But it always has to be science and evidence-based.

When you think about it more globally and you think about where we are.

I was just talking about this with my mother-in-law last night the impact of COVID, the impact of that very weird bizarre, strange time on this planet that affected every single human being.

When you think about that time, I think we're now starting to see the after effects of that trauma.

I think you know we don't recognize it perhaps as trauma because we're busy leading our daily lives, taking care of the kids.

Going back to everyday things.

But the truth is, could there be anything more frightening than watching millions of people die?

Every single day we're seeing more and that number is climbing.

And it's because of this illness that we can't really understand.

And so it's a perfect petri dish.

For somebody who's a little bit strategic, who wants to make a lot of money, who wants to build a platform to come in, stir things around and get very, very wealthy off of it, to exploit that for either wealth or power or influence.

And I think that is in large part explanatory of what's happening.

There is a great deal of anxiety and understandable fear about what health actually means.

Not to mention the fact that the healthcare system in this country is so broken that many people are now desperate for healthcare without really understanding what it even means.

So if somebody comes in here and says, I am going to be your Jesus Christ when it comes to health.

I am going to provide you with salvation, and I'm going to make it super easy.

If you sign up for my three-day plan, if you sign up for my newsletter, if you believe all of these little bullet points that I'm putting on my social media posts.

Of course people are going to buy that because they are desperate for an answer.

And I think that is what we are seeing today.

I can have compassion for a lot of people who have been swept up in the Maha craze.

I have far less compassion for the people who are doing the sweeping around of it.

Yeah, I share that compassion.

I think that it was a an underestimated trauma on people and we're in the aftermath reckoning of that.

And what we're contending with is, you know, a decline in trust in not just healthcare but science itself.

And there's plenty of evidence to point to, to construct that argument.

Um, and we haven't done a very good job of repairing that trust.

And so, in that space in between, it makes room for all of these people to emerge to um.

Pray is too strong a word, but appeal to that sense of having been betrayed or having had our you know, our trust broken with narratives that you know are really appealing.

They are appealing.

That seems solution-based.

And unless you're You know, you rigorously investigate them.

It is easy, especially when you're desperate or you've had a bad experience with the health care system, to find these people more believable than these other people who have either let you down or you've perceived have let you down.

Well, it's also the ridiculously lowered barriers to entry.

Anybody can be an expert these days, right?

All you have to do is call your cell phone on social media.

Well, it's actually bad to be an expert.

If you're an expert, you can't be trusted.

Oh, because you're a scientist.

You've been co-opted.

You've been co-opted by science.

It's counting against you.

And we have to find a pathway back to expertise.

Like, we need experts.

But in order to rely upon them, we have to prepare public trust.

It is a big challenge.

Again, because I think there's so much noise out there, facilitated by social media and the internet and people who are incentivized to churn out whatever just to get content up on their screens, to get in front of these people, to create engagement, to line their own pockets, to line their egos, whatever it is that they're trying to elevate at the expense of public health and public trust.

I think the thing that agitates me the most, given that you know the animating spirit of being vegan or what you know like.

I hate putting these labels on these things, but being somebody for whom compassion is important, right.

That what I'm seeing is anathema to compassion, right?

Because public health is really a sort of act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of everyone.

And there's so much emphasis and focus on personal liberties, like I want to do what I want to do and I don't want to be told what I can't do.

And I think the flashpoint in all of this is the individual desire pitted against collective well-being.

And I feel like the collective well-being, which is where compassion comes in, isn't really being recognized or honored in the way that it should be.

This is what Jessica Nurick talks about, like, you know, individual wellness.

That's great.

Like make all of these decisions, some of which you know are outside of, like traditional health care.

Like this is all fine.

But when it comes to public health, like not when it comes at the cost of these programs that are, you know, going to create a domino effect that's going to impact health, you know, millions of people in deleterious ways.

I think there are two things.

I think a lot about Korea when you know I hear discussions about anti-mask mask vaccines, anti-vax and the sort of you know, domino effect that your individual decision can have on public health for the country right?

And when you go to Korea, for example, wearing masks It's so whatever.

It's built into your outfit.

The culture has been doing that for a long time.

They have been doing it forever.

So a person who has never been to Korea, an American person, will go to Korea and they'll see all these people wearing masks and they'll think that they're crazy that they've been co-opted by science, right?

The truth is, they have not been co-opted by science, but they have been co-opted by, if anything is, an appreciation for the greater good.

That is so embedded in Korean culture.

We cannot separate the individual from the larger group.

It is not possible.

The way our families are structured, the way businesses are structured, the way that we operate, in every single culture, aspect of our lives.

It is a function of knowing fundamentally yes, I am an individual, but I am an individual that's part of a much greater organization and I need to respect and honor that.

They're going to wear masks because they don't want to get other people sick.

They're sick, and they don't want to get other people sick.

The idea of getting vaccinated.

If it's something that will promote the reduction of illness across swaths of people, that is a no-brainer to them.

That is not even something that they think about.

Here, I think in the United States, understandably, we have put so much value in individual rights.

And I can understand that.

It's one of the things that I'm very proud of as an American as well.

But now we're seeing that it's coming at the expense of other people's individuals' rights, right?

So when those two things clash, when we see that they cannot coexist, At a certain point again compassion needs to be the rule, as opposed to, in my view, total and utter and destructive selfishness.

The other really interesting thing though that's part of this discussion when we're talking about the collective good compassion.

Lack of compassion in healthcare is, you know, the insurance companies.

And we saw the sort of disillusionment that people here in the united states have about wealth and greed and how that manifests in the healthcare system.

I was completely shocked at the way people were reacting to the death of the united healthcare ceo, but i think it's symptomatic of again a desperation to find something that actually works, that will confront this greed, confront rampant individualism which is just showing up in a different way.

The price for personal liberty is collective responsibility.

And I think we've got that equation in a dysfunctional way right now.

But of course it's understandable know, when we have all of these problems right now, that people are going to feel underserved and unseen.

And if you feel unseen, and if you're, you know you're, you're pleased or not being responded to responsibly, like you're gonna, you're gonna become resentful and that resentment's gonna build and ultimately, you know, it's gonna metastasize and spill out into something.

And so yes, like the United Healthcare guy, getting assassinated is like a very extreme example, on some level, of that.

And to me, it's like evidence of a societal ill that we need to solve.

Are we solving it?

I'm not so sure.

And if we don't, we're just gonna be in this recursive cycle of this problem until it gets so bad that either the entire system breaks down or someone stands up and we decide to find a way to rebuild it properly.

It's not like I have the solutions to this, But I'm pretty sure that the solutions are not in certain large corporations electing from time to time to replace a certain dye with something else or swap out their seed oils for beef tallow in the way that they're cooking their French fries.

These are distractions that end up quelling that resentment and distracting us from the real problems that need to get solved right now.

And so, while I think the notion in and of itself that we need to make America healthy again is certainly something we should celebrate, it's just the means by which we're approaching that are not meeting the problem in the way we need to in order to solve these problems.

I think it's ignoring the fact that we're falling for the same tricks that landed us in this problem to begin with, which is we're having these very, very large wealthy, institutionalized corporations make us believe that, like you said, switching how to dye or replacing seed oils with beef tallow.

Which they're not being forced to.

They're doing it because it's good marketing.

It's good marketing.

We're falling for a very, very good marketing scheme is what we're doing.

And it's just setting us up for future problems. do?

I don't know.

I know.

You should be president.

No, definitely not.

I have no interest.

I was just in Washington, actually.

And I was like, wow, I don't I don't really want to be part of the political process.

It is a big machine.

Yeah.

What is it that you you want people to get out of the new book?

Well, I want them to get really fun recipes, obviously.

I want them to know how fun it is to cook plant-based, but also I want them to know how fun it is to cook with Korean ingredients.

One of the things that I thought of while you were describing your disenchantment with the Maha movement, and perhaps even people that you know to be part of that movement, that you were once maybe not best friends with but at least knew well, is that one of the things that being Korean American has afforded me is that I never really fell into the health side of the plant-based world, the vegan world.

I believe, again, in evidence, science-backed.

I mean, I'm a big fan of Dr. Greger.

I don't know where he is on the Maha space, but I love his book, How Not to Die.

I've read it 17 times, and it continues to be the Bible of my nutrition, you know?

And I follow that pretty strictly in terms of how I eat.

But the thing is, I always wanted to make sure that the way that I cooked was infused with the way that I saw my mom cook, or I saw my grandmother's cook.

And I also wanted to do honor and justice to Korean cuisine.

So for me, I always found it, and you know, you can call me pedantic, whatever.

I do find it somewhat frustrating when I see non-Korean people making kimchi using any old spice that they want to or, you know, making japchae without actually using japchae.

You know, these things do bother me because it does dilute the power of the stories behind these beautiful, rich Korean dishes.

And I know it's interesting to hear somebody who's making veganized versions of these say that, but still I at least try to honor them with the stories behind these recipes.

And so for me, I was always kind of off doing my own thing anyway, where I was like well, I know what my health is and I know what my nutrition is and I value this.

But I also value rich storytelling in the foods that I prepare.

And so what I want people to get out of this is exactly that experience.

When you make a dish, and if it is a traditional Korean dish, like we have a gochujang jjigae in here, it's a very popular dish in Korea right now.

When you make that dish, you will know my aunt and I developed that recipe together.

My aunt helped me make that recipe together.

This is not some, sorry to say it, whitewashed version of gochujang jjigae, okay?

And I think there's something lovely about that.

I think that, oh, you know that this recipe is steeped in storytelling.

It's steeped in sonmat.

You know the feel of the hand, the taste of the hand, from two women, one of whom was born in Korea, one of whom is Korean-American.

And I think that's beautiful.

And it excites me to think of people who are not as familiar with Korean cuisine.

They're going to be making tteokbokki.

They're going to be making budaejjigae, which is the cover of the book.

There's a beautiful story behind that.

You know, gochujangjjigae, oeji.

I mean, there's so many wonderful Korean dishes that you're going to be able to try.

But if you want baked cheese fries or you want kale nachos, those are in there too.

You're staking your claim for your heritage and trying to keep it alive and not allow it to be diluted, while also recognizing that you're putting your own spin into it.

I think you can always put your own spin on something, but it should be done with respect.

I think that is the most important thing in this somewhat tired conversation about cultural appropriation, especially in food.

To me, it's like, are you doing it with respect?

If it's done with respect, then appropriation is fine.

It's when you do it without respect, when you dismiss.

When you do not take care with the tradition that underlies these recipes.

That's when I feel like there's a problem.

And especially if you're making money off of that disrespect, then I think there's a problem with it.

But you're exactly right.

I want these recipes to stand up and be among so many of these other popular quote Asian vegan recipes that are floating around the Internet that may have been done with less care and less respect.

Well, between the two of the books I mean this now has become like sort of the definitive Bible for you know Korean food in general, like setting aside, even like the vegan aspect of it.

I mean, I spent a lot of time on the pantry section.

In fact, it was 10 times longer, I think.

My editor cut it down a lot. because I wanted to be that Bible.

I wanted to give people tools to not just make the recipes in the book that's obviously important but to then experiment.

Oh, I really like this tinjang, this fermented soybean paste which I never would have even thought to buy before this book.

I think I could use it in this pasta that I'm going to make tonight.

I think I could use it in the salad dressing that I'm going to make tonight.

This is what I want people to feel confident about after reviewing and going through all the recipes is oh, I can make all the recipes in this book, but I also now have so many more tools in my toolkit to create delicious plant-based cuisine.

I assume you did all the photography like you did last time.

I did.

So beautiful, like dark plated dishes and all that's very, yeah, it's very trademark, but beautiful.

I mean, you did really a remarkable job and you definitely like leveled up on even you know the aesthetic aspect of it, like raising the bar on that as well.

So I think that's been one of the joys of being able to not be a lawyer.

Yeah.

I mean, now I have time to take pictures of food.

Yeah.

I mean before.

I mean I don't know if I said this the first time around because I was like well, I need this book to do good.

So I didn't tell people.

But so much of the book is literally photographed after work.

I would come home from work.

I'd make whatever I was making for dinner.

I would put that dish on top of Anthony's piano because it was nice and black.

And I just take a picture of it with my camera like right then and there.

There was so little thought and intention in the photography for the first book.

Because I just didn't have time and I didn't have the energy for it.

But this time I was a full-time cookbook author and a full-time cookbook photographer.

And so I did get to try and develop a stronger photographic voice.

I want these photos to share a story just as much as the headnotes and the essays that precede each chapter.

For people who are not cookbook impresarios, that's very unusual.

The idea that the person who is writing the book and creating the recipes is also doing the photography.

This is not how it works.

It is not.

The way it works is especially when you've had a really successful book.

Now you're in a position to hire a very fancy food photographer.

And that's normally what people do.

I did not want to do that.

I would assume, Avery, your publisher, they know you.

They're not even going to propose that to you.

But normally that would be almost enforced upon you.

I think a lot of people have had that experience, at least other cookbook authors I've spoken to.

I love my photography and I love doing it.

And it's so funny because growing up I always convinced myself I was not a very creative person.

By the time I was a lawyer, I was fully convinced I am not a creative person.

I am not an artist.

I am very, very left-brained.

I like spreadsheets.

I like right angles.

I like clean lines.

And I'm very you know, almost obsessively organized when it comes to how I handle my work and how I handle my flow.

And so I just kind of wrote myself, I'm not a creative person.

And it's been... very life-changing and rewarding to discover how wrong I was in that way.

Now, am I the artist that my concert pianist husband is?

No.

But I enjoy creating beautiful things.

I enjoy seeing the work product of a full day shooting one dish you know, over and over again, putting it in this light, putting it in this position and creating a story out of that.

Why would I rob myself of that with this second book?

I mean that was part of the experience of creating this book was growing as a photographer and as an artist.

So what has that taught you about the nature of creativity as a sort of part and parcel of the human experience?

That's such a great question.

I think that every human being has the capacity to be creative.

I think that many of us are conditioned or taught to believe that creativity is not an asset and it is not valuable.

And as a result of that, we tamp it down until we forget that it ever existed.

Or that we don't have it.

Like only certain people have that.

Only certain people are gifted with it.

But I don't think that's true.

I think to be human is to be able to create.

I don't think you can be a human being without the capacity to create something.

I mean, even just biologically, right?

I think that's something that is taught to us, that we're not creative.

And If we are given the opportunity and by opportunity I mean if we are given a safe enough environment whether it's being financially secure, emotionally stable, having a good environment at home that allows you to discover that you will find out that you're probably far more creative than you ever believed you could be.

I have deep admiration for the starving artist because I think that so many people it's more comfortable for them to believe that they're not creative because they don't want to invest in that.

But the people who invest in it, notwithstanding every bad thing that is happening in their lives.

They don't have money.

They don't have support.

They don't have friends.

They are alone.

And yet they continue to do it.

I think that's amazing, because I don't think it was something that I would have been brave enough to do.

No, there are certain people.

They can't not do it.

They're pursuing that because it's the only way that they can survive.

You know, be alive, honestly, like they have to.

There's just something that they have to express.

Not everybody is like that, but that doesn't mean that we're not all blessed with.

You know, a creative voice.

The thing is to not look at it like some kind of indulgence, but actually as an investment in, you know, pursuing something your most expressed, authentic self.

And that can mean it doesn't mean you're writing a cookbook or you're playing the piano.

It can mean it can mean, you know, what you bring to your spreadsheets.

You know, it's like as Rick Rubin says, it's like a way of being.

It's exactly what you said.

It's expression.

It's.

It's just Letting yourself be seen even within the four corners of an Excel spreadsheet cell.

You know whatever it is.

I think that's exactly right.

I think if we stifle our expression and if we mask it too much, we're dying.

We're damaging ourselves.

You're definitely diseasing your soul doing that.

But part of opening up that spigot for you has been like starting this beauty company.

Oh, yeah, I know.

No, so I want to hear a little bit about that before we end here.

I remember when you made the announcement, you know, it was not long ago.

I saw it on Instagram and I went home and I said to Julie, I was like, did you see Joanne?

Like she's starting this beauty company now.

And you know, without Julie had seen it, but like without knowing anything, she's like that's a really good idea.

Like people are obsessed with Korean beauty.

I have to get her some product.

I have to get both of you some product.

So, you know, it's funny.

The genesis of Korean vegan beauty is actually very similar to the genesis of the Korean vegan food right.

When I went plant-based in 2016, obviously the first thing I was like, well, what about the food?

Where am I going to get my kimchi?

Where am I going to get kimchi jjigae and all the things that I grew up eating?

I'm not going to give that up.

To me, that's like giving up my Korean-ness.

And so there was no restaurant that I could go to.

There was hardly any recipes online at that time.

Nobody was doing Korean vegan food.

So, okay, I guess I just have to do it myself.

Obviously, the food was far more exigent to me than beauty.

At the time, it wasn't called K-beauty.

It was just My Beauty Regimen.

I grew up using Sulwhasoo and the big Korean brands that I think everybody now knows.

I don't know.

What is this whole K-beauty thing?

This is news to me.

I don't know anything about this.

So K-beauty is now a big thing, but let me just put it in a very intimate way, explain it to you in a very intimate way.

If you go to a Korean grocery store, for example, if you go to H Mart, right?

Almost every Korean grocery store is going to have a section just for beauty products.

In many cases it will be its own separate tiny little store.

That's a pertinent to the larger grocery store.

And in there you will find all the beauty products that have been imported from Korea that you, literally at that time, could not find anywhere else.

These are things like creams, masks, serums. eyeliner, makeup.

These are beauty products that come from Korea and also are designed for the Korean complexion.

That is a big problem for Korean people.

Most Western beauty companies at that time did not create products with Asian skin or Asian features in mind.

For example, the eyelash curler.

My eyes are never going to be big enough to fit inside of a standard American eyelash curler.

You go to H Mart and you go to the little beauty store at H Mart and you can find an eyelash curler that's small enough for my eye and my eye shape.

Same thing with mascara.

Same thing with the creams, you know.

So my mother would often get her beauty products from there.

My aunts and my grandmas, all of them were getting their beauty products from there.

With the advent of TikTok and the Internet, and again, the globalization that has been afforded by the Internet, people are now seeing oh wow, look at all of these people.

Korean K-pop idols and K-pop stars, their skin looks amazing.

Asians don't rage.

Maybe it's because they're using these amazing skin products and beauty products.

Maybe if I use the same products that Korean Americans, Asian Americans, have been utilizing for you know, I don't know decades and decades and decades, maybe I won't raisin either, you know.

So I think that's really what it is.

There's all sorts of mythology and, you know, again, marketing around K-beauty.

But for me, it was so basic.

I want to continue to be able to use the same sort of products that I grew up using with my mom and my aunts and my grandma.

But unfortunately, they were not vegan and they were not cruelty-free, which meant I couldn't.

And so...

In that timeframe I was too worried about fixing my food situation to really give much thought to beauty.

But within a couple of years I was already thinking we have to come up with K-beauty products that are for the vegan community.

Because again, my whole philosophy is my choice to avoid utilizing animal products in my life should not require that much sacrifice.

If I want to use K-Beauty, well, then we'll figure out a way to veganize it.

And how's it going?

It's actually – So you have to like start your own business and like make these products and formulate them.

It's been really fun.

And then figure out how to package them.

Yeah.

And like I'm sure it's, you know, like so – I just know from Julie with her, you know, with Shreemu and her cheese company, like how – difficult it is, like you think you know what you're doing and then you realize like, oh my God, there's like so much stuff you have to learn.

I have been very grateful for my lawyer days in the last couple of months because you know one thing about being a trial lawyer is on a dime, you got to drop everything and you got to solve that emergency.

That is very similar to running a small business, I'm sure Julie can attest to.

There's a fire drill, like every day, i feel like oh like oh, you didn't, you know, file this so-and-so registration form, or wait, why is this happening on the website?

Or blah blah, blah.

I am not approaching korean vegan beauty, as i think you know some other content creators or influencers might where they essentially white label an existing product or they slap their name over it and pretty much somebody else handles everything.

I have my finger in every aspect of this business And I think that is the most fun way to do it.

I've always wanted to be a business owner.

I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I was always terrified.

And again, I had taught myself to believe you're not good enough to do that.

You're not smart enough.

You don't have that entrepreneurial spirit.

Only some people get it and you didn't get lucky enough to get it.

But I was able to do this in a small enough way where I felt comfortable with the risk that was required of my initial investment.

And at the end of the day, I always go back to the David Epstein podcast that essentially changed my life with you, which is okay.

If I fail, I feel forward.

I'll have learned so much from this wonderful experience.

I get to work with people that I really, really enjoy working with, including my husband.

And I'm creating a product that I think the world really, really needs.

And it's also really pretty and it smells wonderful.

Good for you.

This is a personal growth arc evolution also.

I'm just thinking of the experience of being a lawyer in a law firm and you're surrounded again like with all these safety seekers, which is There's an irony in that, because you're getting paid to give advice to businesses, but most lawyers would be too terrified to start.

They're lawyers in a law firm, because the prospect of like going out and starting a business and running it is, like you know, existentially terrifying.

It is.

Yeah.

I always said that that's why I never wanted to be a car salesman, you know, which I always kind of associate as like that's your job as a business owner.

You're trying to sell something.

Right.

I always wanted to just be somebody who just did something for the salesman.

Right.

I wanted to be the person who counseled the company.

But, you know, that's one of the things you step out from law firm world.

And you realize, oh, actually, I am a creative person.

Oh, actually, I can write a book.

All of these stupid kind of discriminatory prejudices I had against Joanne.

I'm kind of like vanquishing them one by one as I step out into this new bright world.

And so, all of a sudden, the idea that maybe I could be an entrepreneur like a real entrepreneur that's literally seeing her products being sold to people who are literally using them and now reviewing them and saying that they love them.

I never would have believed that that was something I was capable of until, like you said, I took a chance on me.

And I realized oh, I'm succeeding at a lot more of these things than I ever gave myself a chance to believe that I could.

And once those things sort of disappear, then all of these roadblocks that you've created for yourself, they also disappear.

And who knows?

Who knows?

I mean, who knows?

In five years, Korean Vegan Beauty might not be a thing anymore.

But for now, I'm having so much fun with it.

And I love seeing so many people enjoy our products.

So what is the advice that you give to the person out there, the young Joanns out there, who maybe are in careers that they enjoy, or maybe they're stuck in some kind of job that they don't feel like they ever even consciously chose for themselves?

They feel that yearning to express themselves differently or find a different life path?

What is the counsel?

What is the lawyerly counsel?

The lawyerly counsel and the non-lawyer inspiration that you can give to that person.

That's a very apt description of the advice I'm going to give, which is very lawyerly in some respects, but also with this newfound perspective.

I think the way that I did it was actually not bad, which is I cultivated a hobby.

I was in a job that in retrospect was sucking my soul.

The amount of anxiety that I had walking into work every day was so toxic and so unhealthy but I just kind of was like oh, that's just everyday life.

That's just normal, right?

That's being an adult.

But I stayed in that job for nearly 18 years.

But during that time I cultivated a hobby that gave me some respite, that allowed me to invest pennies, sometimes into my creativity, pennies into creative Joanne, artistic Joanne and perhaps even entrepreneurial Joanne.

I mean, sometimes I couldn't do it at all.

You know two, three weeks at a time where I was on trial, I couldn't do anything.

Right.

But I think let's do a hobby first.

Because sometimes people know that they're creative and know that they're artistic, but don't actually know how best to manifest that creativity.

Is it by being an artist?

Is it by being a photographer?

Is it by being a sculptor?

Is it by being a cookbook author?

They don't know.

They just know that they want to do something.

So hobby is such a non-committal, non-intimidating way to figure that out about.

How do you feel most fulfilled when it comes to self-expression?

And while you're doing that, you're also saving some money, putting some money aside, because that is an integral component to dream chasing.

We live in a capitalistic world, whether you like it or not.

It is very hard to chase dreams if they are not capitalized, if they are not funded.

I'm not saying you need a lot of money, some.

And that is the way that I did it, which was I had a hobby and I socked money away little by little by little, to make sure that, if ever the day came where I would be given the runway to really chase that dream, that that runway would be fully funded for as long as possible.

I think underscoring the hobby aspect of it is really important.

Like at the outset of this, and perhaps even in its early full-blown states, it still wasn't like oh, this is my path out of this career.

No way.

It was just something you enjoyed doing.

And I think, when you mentioned that people don't even know what their creativity looks like, I think- translates also into like not even knowing what their hobby would be.

So I think it begins with just indulging your curiosity, or first even paying attention to your curiosity.

Like where does it naturally gravitate towards?

Where do your eyes kind of like wander?

And just drawing some kind of present awareness to that and honoring, like noting it.

Oh, that's interesting.

Like You know, when I open up the newspaper, why do I always pull the style section out first?

You know, when I, when I should be reading the business section or whatever like, instead of saying well, I should read the like, oh well, there's something there.

Like, why do I you know, why why do I always kind of like do these things?

And.

Um, if you pull that thread, you know, maybe there's a hobby if you continue to pull.

But I think it's just making this conscious decision to honor your curiosity and say like this is valid.

And and if you continue to do that, there's always meaning on the other end of that.

Whether that looks like a full blown career change is a different question.

But I think to the extent that if you're in a certain situation in your life where, where things like meaning and fulfillment seem elusive, that might be a path towards a little bit more of it.

I think the other big thing is to just do it.

I mean, I think people sometimes are so enamored with the perfect manifestation of their hobby or their dream or their creative enterprise that it actually prevents them from taking that very first step of doing it.

You know, and it doesn't have to be pretty.

It is, it can be extremely ugly.

It's not going to be.

I mean, that's the thing.

Like, it's not like you can't, Get caught up in that.

Like the first thing you write that all these things are going to be terrible.

They are going to be so cringy.

You're going to look back and you're going to hate them and you're going to be you're going to hate the person who created it.

But if you don't do it, you'll never grow.

You'll never see what you could have become.

And the thing is, if you put the word I'm chasing my dream on this project, if you label it as- It's too pressurized.

Exactly.

If you label it as, this is my future.

This is my next big thing.

This is my next career.

This is the first step towards transitioning out of this job I hate.

If you do that, you will almost certainly never start, because there is so much anxiety that you have just injected into it.

Whereas if it's, you know what, this style thing is actually kind of interesting.

I wonder maybe the next time I go shopping I should try pulling out a couple of pieces that I wouldn't normally and see what happens.

Maybe I'll take a picture of it.

If you just do it that way and cultivate it as just a hobby, all the pressure sort of disappears from it.

And the more you enjoy it, the more you're naturally going to invest in it.

And the more you do that, the more stuff shows up to point you what the next thing is to do.

But again, you don't get to know any of those things in advance.

You don't, you don't.

You do have to take a leap of faith in yourself I think we did it.

How do you feel?

I feel good.

Did we do good?

Yeah, I think we did great.

We covered a lot of ground.

I think we did, too.

The book is fantastic.

Congratulations.

You really did a beautiful job.

And you and Anthony, you guys are doing good working together all the time.

That's that's tricky.

It is tricky.

We could do a whole other podcast.

Yeah.

OK, good.

We'll do that.

So congratulations to you as well, Anthony.

I know you're a critical, crucial person, partner in arms in all of this.

So homemade available everywhere the korean uh vegan beauty products.

Where do we find these?

On koreanveganbeautycom.

There you go.

Very simple as that right, all right.

Well, best of luck to you with the rollout and uh, I'll be looking for James Beard to give you another hug.

Oh, wow.

That would be amazing.

I'm not going to hold my breath.

First one was pretty amazing.

Well, it's great to talk to you again.

Thanks, Joanne.

It was wonderful to be here.

Thank you.

Peace.

That's it for today.

Thank you for listening.

I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation.

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[The Art of Reinvention: Joanne Molinaro on Identity, Creativity, and the Korean Vegan Journey]-[How Joanne Molinaro Found Herself Through Food]

📋 Summary

Embracing the Unknown: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Creative Courage

The Leap of Faith: Leaving the Safety Net

Creativity as a Human Capacity

Reconciliation and Generational Healing

The Ethos of 'Sonmat' and Cultural Authenticity

Compassion in a Polarized World

Advice for the Aspiring Creator

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[The Art of Reinvention: Joanne Molinaro on Identity, Creativity, and the Korean Vegan Journey]-[How Joanne Molinaro Found Herself Through Food]

📋 Summary

Embracing the Unknown: A Journey of Self-Discovery and Creative Courage

The Leap of Faith: Leaving the Safety Net

Creativity as a Human Capacity

Reconciliation and Generational Healing

The Ethos of 'Sonmat' and Cultural Authenticity

Compassion in a Polarized World

Advice for the Aspiring Creator

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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