S2 E4: SPAM will survive the apocalypse with Joanne Rondilla
Virgie and Joanne talk SPAM, Filipino food, and trying to get their moms to share their most-prized recipes.
Journal with us! Write about a time you prepared food or shared a recipe with someone important to you.
Joanne Rondilla: [00:00:00] If anything is going to survive the end of the world, it's gonna be SPAM, right?
Virgie Tovar: [00:00:07] Yes girl! I love that. I love that.
This is my friend, Joanne Rondilla. Let's see... some important facts you need to know about Joanne. She's a professor of Asian-American studies at San Jose State University in California. She never comes to an occasion without a gift in hand. Oh. And she loves that little blue tin of salty meat deliciousness known as SPAM.
She grew up in a Filipino family on Guam, a US island territory about 1500 miles from the Philippines. Guam is regularly hit with typhoons that knock out electricity on the whole island. So Joanne knows the importance of a food that knows how to survive.
JR: [00:01:00] The few remaining survivors are gonna live and repopulate the world on cans of SPAM and corn beef and Vienna sausage, because that is what the gods intended.
VT: [00:01:14] Oh my God. That's the lesson we're supposed to learn, right? My spirit chose this moment for a reason.
JR: [00:01:21] Yeah no, I think so, man, like, cause this year, you know, like with the fires, with all the rolling blackouts and people like, oh my God, I lost power. And I'm like, welcome to Guam every year, bitch!
VT: [00:01:36] My friendship with Joanne started about six years ago with an angry Facebook message. Now, she wasn't angry at me. She was angry because I was the only fat person who had entered to be a model for this body positive fashion show. And I didn't get chosen. The whole search had been very publicized online and Joanne was following the whole process.
She took my rejection really personally. Her Facebook message detailed all the ways that she felt I had been robbed. I knew we were going to be friends when she said she would have picked me hands down, no question. As a Taurus, I really appreciate when someone expresses unconditional loyalty before I've even met them.
One of the beautiful things about being Joanne's friend is that she's always cooking delicious Filipino food, and sharing it. Before we talked, we each ordered one of her favorite snacks, and mine too: a small, rectangular pillow made up of a chubby layer of SPAM on top of white rice and delicately wrapped in seaweed. It's called SPAM musubi.
Do you have your SPAM musubi?
JR: Of course, I came ready.
VT: Um, I went and picked up some, some SPAM musubi. I have a spot down the street from where I live, where they serve SPAM musubi from like 7:00 AM to 1:30 PM, and you can just get a latte. It's like a slightly quote, unquote, what one might call, like, an elevated item or something like that? But they capture the spirit, but there's another point to be made, that the spirit of SPAM can not be contained, right?
It cannot be domesticated. So like, whatever you're going to be doing, like, it's going to shine and it's going to be its true, authentic self.
JR: Yes. Yes.
VT: I'm excited. So I put mine on a pink plate. Um, and it's just so cute. Cause it's like in conversation with the SPAM. I just love a color story, you know?
Um, okay, cute. All right. So I'm going to, I also have a little dipping sauce that they included. So I'm excited about my spicy dipping sauce.
JR: [00:03:49] I have a dipping sauce too, so I cheated and had some last night and I think it's like, you cannot put a plate of SPAM in front of me and not, like, and have me not eat it, like fresh, right? C’mon now.
VT: [00:04:02] Yeah. Are you ready? Okay. Three, two, one. Okay bite.
Wow. Mine, they put like a fried egg in it, which is so good. So there's like that kind of gummy sort of, like, yolk, like that kind of creamy yolk, and it's just working altogether.
JR: [00:04:33] You may not always love SPAM, but you know, SPAM doesn't care. Cause it's always going to love you back.
VT: [00:04:41] Tell me about, like, SPAM within the story of, like, growing up on Guam.
JR: [00:04:48] I feel like everybody eats SPAM on Guam and so, you know, people buy it by, you know, the case. Musubi, I think, is fairly new. Because growing up, I did not actually eat Musubi. I ate a lot of, like, SPAM and rice, and SPAM and eggs. Um, so yeah, like it's just, I think that SPAM on Guam has this– it's survival food, but I think that it's also associated, you know, with like American colonialism and American militarism.
And I think a lot of, like, um, like a lot of Filipinos, a lot of Pacific Islanders, we get demonized for our love for SPAM. You know, we took this food that for Americans was this rejected food and we turned it into something that, you know, is palatable and, you know, like enjoyable to eat.
So like, I think it's important to, like, um, you know, like, to be open-minded about food, and the way we open our minds about food is to really, you know, understand, like, the significance of this food.
VT: [00:05:49] Spam was born in 1937 in a little town called Austin, Minnesota. The home of Hormel Foods Corporation, the people who brought us Dinty Moore beef stew and Skippy peanut butter.
It was the Great Depression, and people wanted cheap, easy access to protein. Back then, pork shoulder, the main ingredient in SPAM, was an unpopular and cheap cut of meat. Spam got its name during a New Year's Eve party, when Hormel’s CEO had a naming contest and an employee entered SPAM. Maybe a combo of the word spiced and ham? He won the contest and $100.
The canned meat wasn't particularly popular, though, until World War Two. And this leads us to how SPAM ended up on Guam. Short answer: about 400 years of military occupation. I told you everything ties back to colonialism!
Guam went from Spanish occupation in the 1600s to US occupation and the 1800s, to Japanese occupation, and then back to US occupation in the 1940s. During World War Two, the US military sent 100 million pounds of SPAM to Guam, to feed soldiers. Think about it. They were small, cheap, non-perishable protein bombs that could stand tropical heat without spoiling. Pretty much the perfect food.
Some of the cans made their way from the soldiers to locals. And Guamanians, known as Chamorros, elevated SPAM from something that the soldiers had written thousands of complaint letters about, to something fried, flavored and delicious.
JR: [00:07:48] Yeah. So, you know, growing up Filipino, especially like growing up this Island style Filipino, right? Food is the language of love.
It's how we show love and care. It's how we show connection, you know, but being Filipino, especially, like, my mom's side of the family in particular, like they're all beauty queens, they all like, you know, like, take pride in being beautiful. And so when you're, like, the fat, dark skinned, ugly daughter of, like, this lineage, you know, it becomes really, you know, like you learn your value very quickly.
You know, I remember being a kid and being a fairly, you know, like happy go lucky kid. But then when we went to the Philippines, I think I was about seven years old, and like, I was always picked on in my family and I assumed it was because I was the youngest. And so I was so excited to go to the Philippines because I had a cousin there who was younger than me.
Well, we go, and no one picks on her. And you know, like a lot of the, you know, like the name calling, the teasing, it continues and I feel like a lot of it was because I was the dark kid because I, you know, like I was the fat kid, right? So, like, I learned very quickly that, oh, okay. There was something else wrong with me.Cause it wasn't my age anymore, right?
So I remember that trip being the trip where I understood my lack of value in the family. And like, it's funny because recently my mom was, you know, like she was sharing this memory with me from that trip. Um, she was saying that like one day I was playing with that cousin and like my mom and her brother, which is, uh, my cousin's dad, um, were watching us and my uncle just flat out told my mom, he goes, your daughter is so ugly. Like, look at her, like look at her next to my daughter. Like, you know, and my mom was telling me the story and my mom was saying that, um, you know, she was so, like, taken aback. She didn't know what to say. So she didn't say anything.
And I get it. Like, she's just sort of shocked, but like, what the seven year old me needed was for her to defend me, right? Like for me, I'm sure I took her silence as agreement. Like you agree, you know, it's like you, my mother, the person who's supposed to love me unconditionally. You agree with my uncle who just called me, like, disgustingly ugly.
VT: [00:10:27] Yeah. I'm just thinking about, like, relating to that so deeply. And how, um, I mean, cause I had the, I remember the first time that I went to Mexico with my grandmother, and this was a big deal, right? I mean, I went a bunch as an infant and then I didn't go at all until, again, until I was 16 years old and it was a big deal.
And I was going with my grandma for a month and she was going to kind of, it was like the pilgrimage to, like, where I come from, you know, and to show me that place. And, um, and you know, at home, uh, and you know, in California, she was always so sweet and kind, she constantly gave me compliments. She always told me how beautiful and special I was.
And then in Mexico, um, she started to go, she started to, she code switched into the femininity that is expected in her family, which is to insult your child. It felt, like, this extraordinary moment of betrayal that was, like, out of nowhere was she calling me ugly.
JR: [00:11:29] We had an aunt that would visit us. This aunt is from, like, the beautiful side of the family. And, um, you know, like she, during one of her visits, you know me, my auntie and my mom, like we're all chatting. And my auntie goes, you know, that my nickname is Joy. She goes, you know, Joy, you have the same smile as your cousin Chacha, which is, you know, part of the beautiful cousins.
And I was like, oh, you know, that's an interesting observation. And my mom immediately cuts my auntie off. And like, I don't understand Tagalog, but when shit is being talked about me, I'm hella fluent. And immediately my mom, like, cuts in and she goes, don't do that. Don't tell my daughter that she's beautiful. Don't tell my daughter that she looks like her cousin. She goes, you and I both know that Cha is a much more beautiful woman. Don't say that to my daughter. And my aunt is just sort of like, I can't be– like, she doesn't say anything to my mom. Cause again, it's that, that shock, right? That silence, right?
But she, I can see in her face, she's just like, I don't even know what to say, right? Like this is, you don't see it but you know, like, she's just like, I don't know what to say. And like, and she's looking at me and I'm just like, you know, I motioned to her. I'm like, there's nothing to say, like, this is just, you know, like, this is what happens, right?
VT: [00:13:00] Every generation of women is taught what we've got to do to be considered a good woman. Some ever-present lessons in femininity might be: remember to sit with your legs closed, or: the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, or: always order the salad. Women learn these lessons in childhood and pass them onto their own children.
Teaching your child how to perform gender correctly is part of what turns a so-called good woman into a quote unquote, good mother. Though some of these gender lessons have been around for decades, many rules of femininity change from one generation to the next, especially in immigrant families. That change can create major tension with our mothers and our grandmothers.
Take my grandmother, for example. She was born around the same time SPAM was, in the 30s. In Mexico where she grew up, women wouldn't have the right to vote for another 20 years. Because she was raised during a time when women didn't have the right to be financially independent, she sees marriage as part of a woman's survival.
She saw me as a beautiful person, but she knew as a fat woman, like her, I would have fewer romantic choices. And in her mind, that meant my survival was at risk. So in part, that experience we had in Mexico was her attempt to show me that this is how women, and fat women like us especially, act, in order to get the things we want the most.
In some cultures, part of being a good mother is teaching your child that they’re gifted, gorgeous, and special. In other cultures, part of being a good mother is teaching your child to be humble, not stand out, and preparing her to walk into a sometimes harsh world and not have her ass handed to her by a complete stranger.
I'm not seeing it's as simple as that, our mothers are all just passing on their idea of how to succeed in the world. I think Joanne's mom and my grandmother incorrectly thought of us as extensions of themselves. A lot of lessons in femininity actually have to do with food, both eating and cooking.
In a patriarchal culture like ours, preparing food is seen as care work. So cooking sits squarely on the shoulders of women. For my grandmother, the kitchen was her domain. She is the queen of tamales. If enchiladas were an Olympic category, she would win a gold medal, and no one can touch her menudo. She's fluent in the language of flavor, and she kills it on deliciousness 100% of the time.
The kitchen is a place where a woman, like my grandmother, can safely be truly excellent. Be a genius, be a master, be the best, all while being non-threatening in a patriarchal culture that is hell bent on making her feel like a second class citizen. Because cooking is so gendered, this means that some women are going to have a lot of ownership feelings about it.
In a culture like ours, not a lot of things offer my grandmother that same overwhelming sense of gratification, return on investment, and power. She guards it fiercely, even from her favorite grandchild, me. And Joanne has a similar dynamic with her mom who's a powerhouse in the kitchen. Joanne told me she's been asking her mom for some of her recipes for years.
And for years, her mom has been dodging her. Until one day, Joanne and her sister were helping her mom clear out the attic
JR: [00:17:09] and I found, it said, I found this thing and said, 1989 appointment book. And I'm like, why does my mom have her calendar from 1989? I opened it. Boom, the treasure trove! Her recipe for puto, her recipe for empanada.
VT: Yes. Yes.
JR: Yes. And I know it's legit because the appointment book says 1989.
I brought her, I was like, mom. Look what I have and she's like, Oh yeah, just, you know, she goes, I don't know if the recipes are right. I'm like mm-mm.
VT: [00:17:48] Yes, insisting on deflection. I love it.
JR: [00:17:51] I didn't know if it's right. Yeah. I was like, mm-mm, I was like, you're in trouble, mom, because you know how I am in the kitchen.
You're afraid I'm going to cook better than you. But I just, I told her, I go. When I make this puto, and it's better than yours, I just don't feel bad. Just be proud that I could pick up the skill.
VT: [00:18:11] Right. As you were talking, I was thinking about my, uh, sort of similar levels of sabotage, um, like my grandmother, uh, you know, like raised me. She was the, she was like the mother of the household.
Um, and, uh, you know, she was very territorial about cooking. Um, and she still is because that's like her thing. Like she excels at that thing, and it's definitely connected to like the womanly art of cooking.
My desire to learn how to cook the food that she made, I think she interpreted it as me trying to take her crown. And I think she took so much pride, like, for example, um, when she married my grandfather, before that my grandfather had been– he grew up, he grew up fat, and a way of dealing with fatphobia for him was becoming like a bodybuilder. Um, and so he was like a competitive bodybuilder in his late teens, early twenties.
Um, before he got married to my grandmother and my grandmother speaks with pride about making him fat again. Um, Like, you know, and enticing him with her irresistible food. And I dunno, but like, it's just interesting cause like I really, I really wanted to be able to make what she made. And I remember moments in the kitchen where I, you know, I'd be like, okay, can you show me how to make that?
And it was kind of like trying to get, it was like trying to get secrets out of a spy. I felt like she would actively like, do weird things and like turn away or ask me to go get something and then she'd do something secretly while I was looking the other way. I just felt like she did not want me to have this thing. I'm just relating to the story of like this, this hidden 1989 archive. Um, it's just so it's like so strange and also so beautiful. I don't know.
JR: [00:20:05] Yeah, no, I think so. I think it's a little bit about that. Like, she doesn't want her crown being taken away, but I think also too late, she grew up, like, with maids and like cooks, you know, cause like you can be middle-class and have that in the Philippines.
And so like, you know, immigrating and like having to work, and, you know, like developing, um, the sense of independence, part of that was learning to cook. And so I think part of it is like she earned her recipes, you know, like she earned her, her way of cooking. Cause it wasn't something that came naturally.
And so I think part of the reason she's having me, like, earn the recipes is cause she had to earn them. So I can definitely see some of that, um, happening. Cause yeah, like, the first recipe I conquered, I tried to, like, replicate, was empanada. And my mom was known for, she was known for this empanada and just the meticulous way that she would wrap each individual empanada in this wax paper, and she put it on like the cardboard tray that used to hold like soda. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. It's like, it was just like this really beautiful thing and like, this is a few years ago. She finally gave me the recipe. She holds up this piece of paper to my face and she goes like this, exact, exact, exact like this.
I look at it and I'm like these. It doesn't I can tell, I was like, this does not look right. Like, this is way too dry. And she's like, no, exact, exact like this. And I'm like, okay. So like, and you know, it was making it for new year's day. And my sister and I are tinkering with it. Like, we do the exact measurements and yeah, it's like super dry. It's crumbly. It doesn't hold together.
And I was like, mom's holding out. So like, we tinker with it and we get it to like the consistency and we make it and like my mom, you know, was feeling ill. So she couldn't go to my auntie's party, which is where we always have New Year's day. But like, I saved some pieces for her. And after we left my aunts, I went to my mom's and like, you know, so I give her the empanada and she's like, Oh, how was it? She goes, did they eat it? Did they like it?
Like she's waiting for the disaster. And I was like, Yeah, they ate it. Like there was no empanada left. I go, but here's, you know, we saved you some and then, um, she's like shocked. Right. And I'm pretty sure she knew she didn't give the right recipe. So she takes her bite into it and she's like, hmph. And then she just, you know, like, tosses it to the side of the table.
And I'm like, and I looked at her. And I was like, mom, you know this is good. I'm like, you know this is delicious. Like, don't take this away from me.
VT: [00:23:03] Yes. Oh my God, that reminds me. So that's like, literally, like, I feel like step for step, some version I may have this. Like I remember what was a big thing in my relationship to my family is like the ritual of, I would make a dish, or I would bring a dish from a restaurant that I liked, to in order to kind of share this food experience with my family. And my grandmother is like the royal taster, right? She has to have the first taste, you know, she has to be the gatekeeper of it.
Right. And, and I've literally seen, um, my grandmother. Like spit out food that I've I've, she, she is a pretty reserved, like she's a woman who like, sort of was raised as a little bit of like a Northern Mexican debutante. Um, so like the idea of spitting out food is, like, unthinkable, right? But like, she, I mean, literally I remember one time I made these like, Rose truffles.
And she fully, like, dramatically and enthusiastically spit it out. And I just, I just knew that it was, like, about just being like, you think you're hot shit, but you can't touch my enchiladas with fancy ass, little Rose truffle. So don't try.
So this truffle, it's actually a story about something much, much bigger. We'll talk about that after the break.
[midroll]
VT: We've been taught that power is a zero sum game. You only get power because someone else loses power. For women, we're often competing against other women. Sometimes women we love deeply. We become competitors rather than collaborators, because we haven't imagined a world where there's more than enough to go around.
In the absence of that beautiful world, we create the fantasy of one perfect woman, the one who wins in every category. In fact, all of us are actually already her. And none of us will ever be her. Patriarchy pits women against one another for the title of queen. A crown which can theoretically only be worn by one person.
I think it's easy to say that my grandma was being mean because she saw my innocent attempt at cooking as a threat to her kitchen kingdom. But it's harder to admit that I was equally coming for her. That day, we were both vying for the ridiculous, toxic crown. What's more, my grandmother's spit take was also about checking my snobbery.
Here's my grandmother, the matriarch of the family, a woman with a third grade education who speaks two languages, who married a loyal man who worked his ass off his whole life to bring home the bacon. A God-fearing woman who raised kids and grandkids and still had the time to put her hair up in pin curls every damn night.
And here I am, fresh from college, high on my ability to reference Karl Marx. A know it all feminist. But also a heartbroken girl who couldn't understand why my grandmother hadn't stood up to my grandfather's verbal abuse or protected me from my mother's emotional volatility. I was ready to take my revenge by attempting to beat her at a game I didn't think she could play in her most prized domain. The kitchen.
I didn't grow up eating dark chocolate or rose-flavored anything. She didn't prepare those things because neither I nor any other member of the Tovar family would've eaten them. I developed a taste for them after I'd moved away from home. In Berkeley’s slow food movement and gourmet culture, these flavors are considered complex and sophisticated. Let's be real. One might taste a really oaky wine or a super bright coffee or a very dark chocolate for the first time and honestly, think this is kinda gross!
Gourmet culture takes the foods that invoke that reaction, and then uses one's ability to appreciate them, as a sign of superior taste. That's classism, but it's also got roots in racism, and my grandmother wasn't having it. She was saying, no matter how fancy you become, I will always be the woman who raised you. Don't try to come in this house and show me up.
Hell yeah to her setting that boundary with me, and also hell yeah, it hurt my feelings. As rebel eaters, I think we have to recognize the ways that systems like patriarchy use food to separate us. Whether it's through diet culture or gourmet culture. As rebel eaters, we can recognize these games we play with food, and that gives us a shot at smashing that crown, that my grandmother and I were struggling over. And in its place, we can grow something new.
You are married to a foodie, a lover of food. I mean, one of the things I love is, um, I've always loved watching the two of you interact. Um, around food because you guys are so cute.
It's like, like a love, like a very clear love language. I'm kind of like, you know, what, what's it like being married to a foodie?
JR: [00:29:18] So the funny, the funny thing is when we first dated, Jose was not a foodie at all.
VT: Really? I would never have guessed.
JR: Oh my gosh. Oh, this was, I could tell you Jose's daily– what he would eat daily. He would have a morning shake. And then he’d go to work, and have Mexican food, like a burrito or something. And that’s like his meal, his one big meal a day. And then he’d go home and for dinner, he’d have a protein shake.
So when we first started dating and I would like sleep over– Virgie, there was like water in the fridge and milk in the fridge and nothing else.
And I can't, I'm not a smoothing person. Like I need food and real food. So yes. The one thing that I, that I regret, so Jose's mom passed in 2012, just before I left for Arizona. I was a lecturer at Arizona State. And, like, the one thing I never got to do was, like, cook with her and like, you know, figure out like recipes, you know, that, that he really liked.
And when I came back for one of the breaks, we were watching a movie and, you know, like, of course, like before the movie ends, I take out my Yelp app and I look at okay, what are, what are we going to eat after eight? And there happened to be a Guatemalan restaurant. So the walking distance, um, you know, from the theater and he's one them all
VT: And he's Guatemalan.
JR: Yeah. Yeah. And, um, they served pepian, and I know that pepian is his favorite dish. It's the one thing like on his birthday, he would always ask his mom or his aunt to make. And it's like, it's like pumpkin seed and chile and like, you know, slow cooked pork. I remember we were in this restaurant and he started getting emotional because you know, it sparks this memory.
And I don't think he had processed the passing of his mother until that moment. And I thought, oh my God, like it hit me how, how much it sucked that I didn't get to learn this recipe. And so when I went back to, um, Arizona, I started scouring the internet, and so I found this recipe, I made it for him and like, you know, it's, it's never going to be like his mother's, but I think he was just really touched that it was close.
And like I did that, you know, like I tried to replicate something that meant so much. Cause yeah, like that's how food is the love language. When I was single, my ultimate litmus test was like, if I can't bring you to a family party to enjoy our food, I can't bring you into the family. Like I just, I can't, because this is our love language. And like, it's so hard to genuinely be a part of like our family. If you don't eat the food, right?
VT: [00:32:13] What you said about him getting emotional with this dish and sort of like that being maybe an entry point of really processing his feelings about the loss of his mother. Um, and it makes complete sense that if all you're eating is like a protein shake and food that you didn't grow up eating, that that wouldn't, that, you know, you could have these unexamined feelings, um, because like food is that, is that like it's, I don't know, it's like that evocative immediate, um, that like emotion, uh, is connected to it.
JR: [00:32:48] I hear this a lot in like these diet sort of like, you know, circles where it's like, food is fuel, food is fuel. And it's like food isn't just fuel, like it's history. It's the story of your, of your family and your people.
It's like, it's not fuel. It's like heart and soul spiritual, like, nourishment. And when you lack that, you lack the nourishment that you need to continue going, right? I used to teach a class on food and culture in Arizona State, and I would talk about hands and I would tell my students like, look at your hands.
And I go, you know, I– Filipinos, we eat with our hands. Because there's something intimate about, like, eating with your hands, your relationship to your food isn't muddled by, like, a utensil. It's that like, you know, you have to, you know, like, when you eat with your hands, you feel the food, you touch the food, you, it sparks this intimate relationship with your food, you know?
And I tell my students, like you really have to understand the importance of hands, because I want you to reflect on the hands that created the food, who made the food. Think about the hands that picked the food, right? You know, so like, food isn't just fuel, it's about like how we connect to each other, you know, food is politics, right?
Like, especially, like, in the pandemic, I've been thinking a lot about like essential workers, farm workers. And of course, like, nurses, a large percentage of nurses here in the Bay area are Filipino, right? So like, I've loved the way in which Filipino, um, restaurant owners have, like, gotten together and like, you know, they, they make food and like they send it to the hospitals.
I feel like they do that because they're reminded of the fact that so many of the nurses and, like, hospital workers are Filipino themselves, and in order to function and, and to help other people breathe, this is a community that needs to eat food that is familiar and comfortable to them, right? So it's like, I feel like how we understand nourishment also how we understand the way in which we feed people is connected to how we like, you know, fundamentally take care of people.
VT: [00:34:57] Yeah. Joanne, thank you so much for being on Rebel Eaters Club. Thank you.
JR: [00:35:03] I so loved being here and of course, you know, Virgie, I love hanging out with you. And when we are able to, we should have an incredible meal at Provecho. Um, yeah, and also we have a dining table at our new apartment, so like you will come over and I will cook lovely, lovely Islander Filipino food. And we shall feast over the different ways in which I can handle a can of SPAM.
VT: [00:35:41] Don't forget to head to rebeleatersclub.com for this week's journal prompt. We also have brand new badges for this season and advice on starting your own rebel eaters club, courtesy of the babes of the Wesleyan University Rebel Eaters Club.
Rebel Eaters Club is produced by Transmitter Media. Our lead producer is Jordan Bailey. Lacy Roberts is our managing producer. Sara Nics edits the show and our executive producer is Gretta Cohn. And I'm your host, Virgie Tovar. Ben Chenault is our mix engineer. Special kudos to James T. Green, Jessica Glazer, and Mitchell Johnson for the production assist. And Taka Yasuzawa who wrote some of the music we use in the show.
If you love Rebel Eaters Club, tell your friends and share the love by writing a review on your favorite podcast app. See you next week.