A story about how chocolate cake—a festive treat if there ever was one—brought about unlikely healing through grief. Lisa Ruland is a food writer, professional baker, and the curator of The Food + Grief Project. She talks about her relationship to food after the tragic loss of her husband, how she found connection while mourning, and how a chocolate birthday cake catalyzed what is now an honored family tradition. Her step-daughter Margot joins the conversation to share memories and talk about mothers lost and found.
A story about how chocolate cake - a festive treat if there ever was one - brought about unlikely healing through grief. Lisa Ruland is a food writer, professional baker, and the curator of The Food + Grief Project. She talks about her relationship to food after the tragic loss of her husband, how she found connection while mourning, and how a chocolate birthday cake catalyzed what is now an honored family tradition. Her step-daughter Margot joins the conversation to share memories and talk about mothers lost and found.
Read Lisa’s original My Family Recipe essay.
My Family Recipe is created by the Food52 Podcast Network and Heritage Radio Network, inspired by the eponymous Food52 column.
My Family Recipe: Motherhood & Chocolate Cake with Lisa Ruland
LISA RULAND: In the kitchen, I set up my cake decorating area: cake, offset spatulas, heavy cream, sugar owls. I hefted the KitchenAid mixer onto the countertop and attached the whisk. I felt certain that I was the first person to use the mixer since Brodie's late wife. I process this over a sad, shaky breath and set to work whipping the cream with renewed determination to make sure this woman's daughter had the cake she could no longer make. I spooned in small amounts of vanilla and confectioners sugar until it was just right. Margot watched with big hazel eyes as I smoothed thick dollops of whipped cream over the chocolate cake layers and grinned as I nestled the sugar owls, and snowflakes, and "Happy 10th Birthday Margot!" lettering atop the cake. The first guests arrived. The girls ran into the kitchen to see the cake and let out a chorus of happy squeals.
ARATI MENON, HOST: Welcome to My Family Recipe, I'm Arati Menon, and I'm thrilled to introduce you to this brand new podcast from Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. We all know that good food is worth a thousand words, sometimes more. So in each episode, we'll delight in a much loved heirloom recipe and hear the story behind it. Today I'm welcoming Lisa Ruland, a food writer, a professional baker, and someone I'm now thrilled to call a friend. Lisa published her column of My Family Recipe back in December 2020. Six years earlier in 2014, her husband Eric passed away in a tragic accident. Lisa writes about how chocolate cake, a festive treat if there ever was one, brought about unlikely healing through grief. It's an essay that, as a reader said, “traverses a spectrum of emotional experiences, ranging from unspeakable tragedy and life altering grief to remarkable resilience, recovery and hope.” As readers - and I'm counting myself as one - we cried, then smiled, then wanted to make the cake. Welcome Lisa.
RULAND: Thank you. I'm happy to be here.
MENON: The loss of your husband turned your life upside down, and for a time it also really changed your relationship with food and cooking. Can you tell us what your relationship to food was before this trauma and how it changed in the aftermath?
RULAND: Yeah, I had never really experienced grief prior to my husband's sudden death. And at the time he and I were both great eaters and shared meals together, enjoyed going out to eat. And I, in addition to just enjoying cooking and eating generally, I was also a full time food editor in New York. So my entire professional life and, I think many food lovers might be able to relate to this, a fair amount of my personal life revolved around food or eating or thinking about what I was going to eat next or what was inspiring at the farmer's market. When he died all of that just stopped. And I actually was surprised at just how much. And I think that that experience for me of grief affecting my relationship with food happened on multiple levels. There was the professional level, because suddenly a recipe, it didn't matter anymore. Food didn't matter anymore. I remember I was working on some articles about how to properly store fresh herbs, and I just remember thinking, 'who cares?', you know, he's dead. But also food is really tied into the grieving process because of how physical grief is. And that is something I also did not know. But it - you really can be physically sick with grief, whether it's feeling just really muddle-headed or tired or, you know, a lot of people, certainly I, just felt very weak. Your immune system doesn't work as well. There's all kinds of physical changes that happen in the grieving process, actually. And I really lost my appetite. I lost weight. And it was really kind of remarkable. And it took months before I was able to work back into my love of food and eating.
MENON: One way that you found support was by connecting with Brodie, a friend of a friend who was going through a very similar experience. You write about swapping notes on insomnia, but also having a friend to talk to about ordinary things like books and movies. What did it mean to you in your grieving process to connect with someone who could share the experience of the loss of a partner?
RULAND: I think it was as or more important than any kind of grief counseling or anything else I went through, because I think a lot of times in life, when we go through hard things, we just kind of want someone to get it with us, not necessarily to fix it for us or make it seem okay. You just want someone to be - see you and to be in it alongside you. And I think that the young widowed person community is a, is a special one. And there’s more of us, sadly, than you think. But I think there is something maybe that felt a little alien and lonely, especially lonely to me as a young widow. I don't think that's what people typically think of when they think of a widowed person. So meeting Brodie who was going, also through his own widowhood at the same time, it was just really nice to be able to just kind of, complain together and have bad days at the same time. And then eventually we just, you know, because that wasn't the sum total of us, we also just kind of started talking about normal things, too. And so that was also very nice. And in the course of that, I learned about his daughter, Margot.
MENON: Yes, I was just going to say, so eventually you met Brodie's little girl, Margot. And Brodie, I guess, who by now knew that you had previously been a pastry chef, asked you to bake her birthday cake. And you decided to use your mother's recipe for a chocolate cake and put a whole lot of love into the decorations for Margot. Tell us about why you picked this particular cake.
RULAND: Well, I think there are two reasons I picked this specific cake, well three actually. One is Margot wanted a chocolate cake for her birthday. But then the question became, well, which chocolate cake am I going to bake? And out of all the cakes in the world, the one that I immediately honed in on was my mom's chocolate cake for two reasons. One, I really was still very shaky with my cooking and baking. As someone who used to craft fairly elaborate wedding cakes, I had just kind of found that this grieving process, which was still very raw, just kind of made me feel very clumsy and stupid and very forgetful in ways. So I didn't necessarily trust myself to bake anything complicated yet. And the other reason is that I, the whole reason that I was baking this cake for Margot was because her mother was no longer there to bake it for her. And I was very conscious of how important that was. And I wanted to honor Margot and I also wanted to honor Margot's mother and in so doing, I decided to use my own mother's cake, and so it was this kind of like, bond of mothers that I think I was really drawing a line between.
MENON: I just wanted to ask you, so as a baker, how did it feel to physically be back at it? For listeners who don't know what grief brain is, tell us a little bit about why that can impact your ability to do something like bake something that came so naturally to you before.
RULAND: Yeah, so grief brain, I don't know if that's a term that's in an official science textbook, but I think it's kind of just commonly used to describe just the effect that grieving has on not just your emotions, of course there's the feeling of sadness, the feeling of loss, anger, all those things. But just kind of this fuzzy-headed fishbowl quality where you're just kind of not quite thinking all the way there. And there's actually a scientific reason for that. I read a very interesting article once talking about how the blood flow in your brain actually changes to go to different places that could support this deep emotional trauma that you're trying to heal from. And as a consequence, certain other areas kind of take a bit of a hit. So I, a lot of times, would just feel very fuzzy-headed or confused. I would lose my train of thought. I would be forgetful of a lot of things. And so that all leads - at least for me - led to a great loss of self-confidence in all respects, but especially baking. And so, I think the sense of purpose that I felt in this cake, instead of feeling stressful or like pressure, actually felt like an encouragement for me, and it kind of was like a little bit of like wind beneath my cake wings, so to speak. And it kind of, did kind of sharpen my focus at a time when I really needed it. So, so in that way I think Margot's cake helped me.
MENON: So Lisa some years ago, you created the Food and Grief Project, which is essentially a platform for people to share their experiences of food and grief. You yourself have written about it often. In fact, side note, I urge listeners to read a piece you wrote for the post back in 2018, I want to say, called "A Widow's Food Guide to Grief." Very, very poignant piece. How do you view that power of food to help us, sort of process our emotions, be a marker in our lives and help us better tell our stories.
RULAND: I think food can serve so many important functions, specifically in grief. It is a way to nourish us, physically nourish us, at a time when we just are feeling so weak and so sad and so, maybe incapable of nourishing ourselves well. Having food maybe brought to us or shared with us is incredibly valuable. I also think food serves a really important purpose of connecting us to one another. And it might be an act of love that a neighbor, family member, shares a meal with you as a gesture. But it also, there might be a certain recipe, or a certain dish, or a certain meal, or a certain food memory that can link you very, very tangibly in a very unique way, I think, to the person that you lost. And so for me, the Food and Grief Project is just kind of a platform where people can just have a full list of all of the articles about food and grief that I've ever come across in the hopes that maybe if someone saw that and it resonated with them it would help. But also just a way where people can talk about the food that connects them to someone that they've loved and lost.
MENON: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' five stages of grief are such a part of our understanding of loss. And David Kessler, who is an expert on grief and loss, had an additional stage of grief to add after working extensively in the field and that sixth stage, or step, is meaning. How have you through food and your new family found meaning through your immense loss.
RULAND: I think David Kessler's wonderful. I actually had the privilege of attending a grief seminar with him several years ago, and I just took so much from it. In terms of finding meaning in my loss, I do think that one of the good things that has happened through my grief is finding a way to help other people in theirs. And that is a skill, if you will, that I otherwise wouldn't have had. And so I do find meaning in the ability to kind of put my vulnerability and my experience out there, just because, like I said, I do think it's helpful sometimes just for any of us to feel seen or have someone kind of get it. And so I feel like if I can just kind of put out what I went through, maybe someone could, similarly, maybe read something and say like, 'Oh, yes, me too.' And one thing I really come to learn from this is that somehow life finds a way of being okay again, eventually. Maybe not in the way we ever expected or ever planned, but somehow life can regain a new equilibrium. And it takes time and - but your life will continue to always have meaning and your loss will have meaning. It'll never be okay, but it will have meaning.
MENON: I think it's wonderful that you say that, because I remember looking through reader comments and I think that the predominant thing I walked away with was - and if you remember, there's a lot of people commenting in there, people who have lost, lost loved ones of their own. And, and I remember thinking in all this, in this fog of sadness, and I still walked away feeling like the thing that readers left with was this sense of resilience and hope. We'll be back to continue our conversation with Lisa and one very special guest after a short break.
BREAK
MENON: Welcome back to My Family Recipe. Two years after that birthday party with the chocolate cake - the chocolate cake - Lisa married Brodie and Margot became her stepdaughter. We're very lucky today to have Margot join us.
MARGOT RULAND: Hi.
MENON: Margot, do you remember describing what cake you wanted to Lisa, as clearly as she remembers it?
MARGOT RULAND: I do. I remember, I think I was in the basement of our old house, and she kind of just asked, like, what sorts of things I liked. And I said, I don't know, I love owls, I love glitter, I love pink and blue. Those were some of my favorite things. And I didn't have a specific vision, but I knew I would love for the cake to involve something along those lines and it did.
MENON: What is that first chocolate cake with an owl on it - I love owls so I'm quite excited that as a 10 year old, that's what you wanted on your cake.
MENON: What is that first chocolate cake with an owl on it - I love owls, so I’m quite excited that as a ten year old that’s what you wanted on your cake. What does that first chocolate cake, with an owl on it, represent in your memory?
MARGOT RULAND: I don't know. I think when you have, like, a parent or someone pass away, I think a lot of the time the focus goes to sort of big things in your life that are disrupted and, I mean, rightfully so. But also I think some of the biggest impact can be in the little things, like who is going to make my birthday cake and who is going to decorate it? And so, I think just having such a wonderful cake and so nicely decorated was just really, I don't know, it was a nice kind of sense of stability. And I loved meeting Lisa and having her in my life and I loved the cake.
MENON: Lisa, I know you remember Margot's 10th birthday as a day that you felt genuinely happy, what felt like happiness after a very long time. What else do you both recall from that day?
RULAND: I remember feeling a little awkward in a way because I think, at the time Brodie and I were just friends, but I hadn't, I didn't have children of my own. And then I felt like I was kind of, in this kind of, in medias res of how parenting works, just kind of dropped in, in a way. So I felt like, oh, there's like real kids coming over to a real kid's pizza birthday party and I'm doing the cake. And it was a lot of fun. The girls were just like, so funny, her friends. And we just had a blast. And I just remember feeling like I was adulting in a whole new way than I had ever adulted before, just doing things, you know, involving helping take care of kids and that kind of thing. Oh, and I also remember going ice skating and being really bad at it, but Margot helped me out, held my hands.
MARGOT RULAND: It was very warm, I think. It was, like, I feel like there were people ice skating in short sleeves.
RULAND: Yeah. It was one of those weird winter days that I think you get sometimes.
MENON: What do you remember?
MARGOT RULAND: I remember most of my memories of that party are just having a lot of fun and being able to hang out with my friends, and I loved having this wonderful cake. I don't know. It felt, it was nice to feel - like it felt normal. It felt like a normal birthday party, which I think is kind of what I wanted and what I needed. And it was really nice. So I just, I mostly have happy memories from that day. And I remember not being allowed to see the cake until it was brought out with the candles and everything. And I was mad about that because everyone else got a sneak peek and I was very excited to see it.
MENON: Did you have any inkling whatsoever that Lisa and your dad would fall in love and we'd be here several years later talking about it?
MARGOT RULAND: No, and I don't know, I think it felt very natural when it did happen, but that wasn't something that I had, I don't think I had like, a big inkling of, or really thought about in the moment. I was just like, I'm gonna go with the flow. I'm enjoying myself.
MENON: Yeah. So I'm curious, how many cakes have there been since then and what sorts of decorations have ended up on those?
MARGOT RULAND: I think there have been seven, counting that one. Always chocolate, always chocolate. I've sort of, sometimes I think I like the chocolate and the whipped cream. Sometimes I think whipped cream is not always the most practical form of icing. So we've done some Swiss buttercreams in the past, which is kind of close to whipped cream because I'm not a huge, like, frosting frosting person. But they've definitely run the gamut. I remember, I think we used then for my 11th birthday, I had this huge, wonderful music note cake. It was pink and sparkly, shaped like a, like a quarter note. There's been a movie themed cake, sprinkle cakes. Yeah, I've had a big variety.
RULAND: We usually have a bit of a, like a cake decorating meeting, before when her birthday's coming up and we talk about if she has any specific inspiration this year or, or what she's feeling. So, yeah. The film cake was a lot of fun to do. I did like an old Hollywood spool of film and just kind of the ribbon of film coming off the cake. That was a fun one. I liked when you did that and then you guys all went down to see Star Wars, right?
MARGOT RULAND: Yeah, we saw Rogue One.
MENON: Has there ever been a request that's been particularly daunting?
RULAND: Luckily, she's kept it, she's kept it blessedly realistic for my abilities. So she hasn't had me have to, like, carve a life size statue of her or anything like that out of cake. Yet.
MARGOT RULAND: Get ready. [laughs].
RULAND: But every year it's a lot of fun to make and a lot of fun to talk through with her. Although now Margot has a job at a French patisserie, so I don't know if that means I have competition or I'll keep making the birthday cake. Hopefully I'll get to keep making the cake.
MENON: So Lisa, this, as we've discussed before, was actually your mum's cake recipe and one that she brought out regularly for your birthdays and other special events. I always say that birthday food can often be some of our most prominent food memories. So I love that you made this cake for Margot on her birthday. But I'd love to ask you actually, Lisa, what some of your own birthday food memories are.
RULAND: Well, I am going to admit something important, which is actually - Margot knows where I'm going with this - I, I actually do not have cake on my birthday. I am a -
MENON: Oh!
RULAND: I know. I am a true believer in the birthday pie. So, since I was very little, I would always have apple pie on my birthday and my mom would make for me a homemade apple pie. So that is what I have on my birthday. But if I had to pick a cake, it would probably be carrot cake. And so, but food memories I have of my birthday growing up, you know, it always comes back to family meals for me, always. And I grew up in - my mother's Italian American - and so we had this great tradition of like the big Sunday meal and, we called it gravy, other people called it sauce, but we'd always have the big Sunday gravy meal with meatballs and sausage and braciole and rigatoni and all the fixings. And then she would fry up like eight pounds of chicken cutlets, too, just in case that wasn't enough food. And then we'd have my pie. And so, so it always comes back to that. But also all the people sitting around eating it, too, and just kind of talking over one another in this really convivial, fun way. And that's, to me, that like Sunday gravy dinner / birthday gravy dinner is just inextricably linked to the people around the table eating it with me and just that feeling of family that comes along with it.
MENON: I absolutely agree, I think with, with family recipes, it's never just about the dish. These dishes really are made up of memories, and memories of love and longing and feeling protected and connected and, you know, memories of hope. And they can sort of help us feel connected, help us celebrate certain people in our lives and our shared history. So it's, I agree, family food memories are often more sensory than any other because they're so symbolic of other meanings and emotions and events and people. Do you bake regularly now, Lisa? I have, I have an inclination you do. I do remember seeing an end of summer peach pound cake on your Instagram fairly recently. But, but tell us, are you baking a lot?
RULAND: Oh yes. So now we have the one-two punch of all my baking with Margot bringing home tasty treats from the bakery where she works. But yeah, I am. I'm baking and it's, it's great. And so we actually have the remainder of an apple crisp currently downstairs in the kitchen and, yeah. So yeah, I'm always baking something and the cookie jar's looking lonely right now, but usually there's something in there. Margot just baked some pumpkin cookies actually, recently, so. And she's, you know, she's a good baker also.
RULAND: Poor Brodie. I feel like it's a blessing and a curse for him because we always have some baked goods around at all times now.
MENON: Ever tempting.
MARGOT RULAND: Yeah.
MENON: I mean, if you have them around, you've got to eat them. That's his, that's his job. Margot, do you ever join Lisa in the kitchen?
MARGOT RULAND: I do. I love, especially baking, I love baking with her. I think it's really fun. I don't know, it's like a fun bonding activity. But also, I don't know, I just love, I love dessert. I love making it too. I don't know, I think I like the instant gratification of cookies but - since they usually take less amount of time to bake - but I'd say cake is probably my favorite dessert.
MENON: And I just want to say, this is hard to even say, but you're now in your junior year of high school, which seems incredible because in my head you're frozen as the 10 year old wearing an oversize sweater with blue pompoms on it. What, what do you, what do birthdays look like for you these days, now that you're not that 10 year old and now that you're almost ready to leave home? Tell us what, what you'd love your birthday to be like this year. I know last year was probably a bit of a washout, just like it was for all of us. Yeah. Give us a sense of what you'd like your birthday to look like this year.
MARGOT RULAND: I mean, I feel like my birthdays haven't really changed. I still, I like to have, like, a nice family dinner. So whether I celebrate - I like to celebrate with friends - but whether it's on my, I used to always want to do it on my actual birthday, except now sometimes it's nice to kind of just do more of a low key family dinner on my actual birthday and then see friends sometime around then. And I usually have the cake on that day, on my, like, party day, so everyone, everyone can partake and then maybe do something else or not even have dessert or just have a little cupcake or something on my actual birthday. But, yeah, I'm excited for this year to be able to, you know, have a big - because I had my sweet sixteen last year, but it was in covid which we still had a really fun time, but sad.
MENON: I know. Maybe you can redo with double the intention, and double the enthusiasm, and double the cake.
MARGOT RULAND: Yes. Just extra, extra large. Four layers.
MENON: Extra, extra large. Maybe even a bake-off.
RULAND: Sweet seventeen. It's the new sweet sixteen.
MENON: Is there anything that either of you would like to add before we sign off?
RULAND: I take my role as a stepmom very seriously, and I love Margot so much. And I'm always very conscious of, her mother will always be her mother, and I think that sometimes there's a idea that, I've somehow replaced her mother or things are fixed now that she has a stepmother, and it's important for me to just put out there that I think when you lose a parent, you always lose that specific parent. And so my role as a stepmom is to be the best Lisa that I can be. And be her Lisa and be her stepmom. And her mother will always be her mother. And part of my way of honoring her mom and Margot as well is to just, you know, A, make her eat her vegetables, right Margot.
MARGOT RULAND: [laughs].
RULAND: But, you know, just love her all the way up that I can. And making your birthday cake every year is a true honor and a privilege for me and brings a lot of joy to my life.
MARGOT RULAND: I love your birthday cakes. You're the best ever.
RULAND: Well, thank you.
MENON: That was so sweet. Also love that you're still harping on about the vegetable eating on her birthday, Lisa. I know you mention it in the essay as well. And, you know, you're trying your hardest to sort of make her birthday feast as healthful as possible.
RULAND: I just, you know, I just want the balance, that's all. That's a running theme. But Margot's a great eater. She's good about her fruits and vegetables.
MARGOT RULAND: I like my vegetables.
RULAND: You do, you do. But it never hurts to make sure that you've eaten some that day.
MENON: That's what moms do.
MENON: Thank you so much for listening to My Family Recipe. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show. And remember to leave us a rating and review to let us know what you think of our delicious stories and the people behind them. Special thanks for this episode to Lisa Ruland and Margot Ruland. My Family Recipe is produced by Dylan Heuer and Hannah Fordin. Our Julia Child Foundation fellow is Kelly Spivey. An audio engineer is Matt Patterson, our theme song is Bittoral by Aeronaut. This show is a collaboration between Food52 and Heritage Radio Network. There's much more to read and listen to. Find even more stories at Food52.com and HeritageRadioNetwork.org. And don't forget to check out our show notes to read Lisa's column for My Family Recipe.
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