My Open Kitchen with special guests Luisa Brimble and Julia Turshen

Hello all and welcome to episode 3 of series 3! I am super excited about this one as it features two of my favourite creatives EVER; guest co-host Luisa Brimble and all the way from the US, food writer Julia Turshen! Luisa and I talk about creativity, art, collaboration and her five favourite books while I chat with Julia about her new book Feed the Resistance, Instagram, getting involved and what she’s cooking these days. Plus all the usual recommendations, links and such. Boom pow.

Big thank you to our series sponsor Country Style magazine, if you haven’t yet picked up a copy of the latest issue - please do, it’s, as always, just beautiful and full of inspiration.

Thank you also to the Good Lovelies, one of my favourite groups ever, for giving us permission to use snippets of your beautiful song the Old Highway throughout this episode. Please check out the full song and the rest of the album and grab a copy - excellent sunny Saturday morning in the kitchen music.

Here below are some of the things we mentioned in this episode

• Julia’s wonderful new book Feed the Resistance
• Julia’s favourite cookbook Taste of Country Cooking by Edna Lewis
• Wild cookbook, free shipping for Christmas
• Julia’s favourite IG follow these days; actress and singer Cynthia Erivo
• Hetty McKinnon’s books photographed by Luisa Brimble

Sophie’s Top 5

• #thetravellingfoodband; Some of my all time favourite photographers and foods stylists got together for a few days in Berlin to create content together. I love that idea and think we should all do more of it. Just grab a group of creative buddies, pool talents, spend an afternoon or weekend together creating lovely things/scenes/foods/images.
• Doterra oils ;I am a recent convert to the world of essential oils; I love burning peppermint and wild orange while I work, I rub lavender on my kids feet at bedtime and swear that puts them out like a light, or it could be the foot massage! I use the peppermint in an icing the other day and so on. Just love them.

• Contact Sheets; A bit of an odd thing to recommend here but I have just bitten the bullet and bought Creative Cloud so I can get organised for my new book - eek - and am LOVING how photoshop lets you create contact sheets of your images. I’ve printed out what I’ve done so far so I can easily track how it’s all coming together (or not).
• Co-schedule blog; An absolute mine of information - not cheap but the blog is full of updates on good times to post what on what platform. Great for bloggers.
• Spotify Playlists; Everything will be ok and a gift-wrapping playlist from Anthropologie

Luisa’s Top 5 (current favourite publications)

• Todd Henry, Die Empty
• John Berger, Ways of Seeing
• Hello Sandwich, Tokyo Guide
• Julie Pointer Adams, Wabi Sabi Welcome
• Henri Cartier-Bresson Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998