00:01
Okay, maybe that's better.
00:05
Oh goodness. So I'm sitting here with a microphone in my face. A very well-underused microphone. It's got dust literally all over it and hair and nastiness. I tried to clean it off as best I could before I started this podcast, but you guys can't see it so it doesn't matter does it? So welcome to a brand new fun thing.
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I'm calling this my fun thing because I feel like I've been on such a self-discovery journey over the past couple of years and one thing I have found about me is that I don't do fun very well. I'll be the first to tell you I'm a very boring person. I love to read. I love to be by myself. I love...
01:04
I love research. I love learning new things. And I don't love...
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lots of fun things. So, but in this self-discovery I have learned that I need fun. I need to laugh. I need to be light-hearted. I need, I just need some opportunity for fun. And I was a business owner for
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many years, you know, six, seven years. And that was a new experience for me and I loved it and I felt like I was good at it. And now that I'm not a business owner anymore, I still have that tendency to want to do those things. I want to, you know, learn all the ends and outs of some new business. I want to promote, I want to market, I want to...
02:15
post when it's right for an algorithm. I want to have this in place and an email list and I want all those things because I know that and I'm comfortable with that. But I've been having to remind myself over and over that this is my fun thing, this podcast. This is my fun thing I get to do. I'm not worried about algorithms. I'm not worried about posting consistently on social media.
02:44
because it will be good for the business. It's not a business. This is my fun thing. So I wanna treat it like a fun thing. I wanna have fun with it. I wanna talk to you guys like you are sitting here with me and you are enjoying this conversation about these different Southern things. So let me just tell you a little bit about this podcast and what I envision this looking like. So I have titled this podcast, Biscuits and Gravy.
03:12
Southern Food and Travel podcast. And let me just give you a little bit of background about myself and then I'll bring you around to how I got this idea for this podcast. So I've always loved to travel. Like obsessively loved travel. A
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maybe a little bit of middle school but for sure in high school I used to write to the commerce departments I guess. I'm not really even sure how I got these lists but anyways I would I would find out who I needed to contact about some travel magazines and information from each state in our country like literally each state.
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I don't even know where they are anymore. My mom probably has them still at her house tucked away somewhere up in the attic or something, but I loved Just the thought of travel the planning Looking at all the different places to visit and all of the different you know parks and historic sites and beaches and mountain ranges and waterfalls and all the different things like I was so
04:41
completely obsessed over traveling the country. Now I have not done that. I have traveled some, but I did not get to travel to each one of those states, but that just kind of sets the tone for like the rest of my life just kind of being obsessed over traveling. And then in high school, I became very infatuated with this.
05:09
TV show on the travel channel called Samantha Brown. And I don't even know, it wasn't called Samantha Brown, she was the host, but she did several shows. She did like great vacation homes, she did great hotels. But Samantha Brown was the host, and I literally wanted to be Samantha Brown when I grew up. She traveled all around, she would walk up to the desk at a hotel and be like, I'm checking in, Samantha Brown.
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And I was like, man, that is so cool that, you know, she has this camera following her. She can show everybody what these beautiful hotels look like and these different vacation homes. And she gets to travel the world looking at all these places. And I was like, man, if I had a dream job, that would be it right there. I did travel with my family because my mom has always really loved traveling as well. And so I thank her for the blessing and the curse of...
06:08
this travel bug that I have in me. My dad also likes to travel. So I guess I got it honest from both of them. But so we went several places when I was growing up. We went to Belize, we went to Mexico, we drove all the way to Canada one time because I was my favorite book of all time is Anne of Green Gables. And so I read through the entire series. I read several other series by the same.
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author and then we went to Prince Edward Island Canada to see Where this was set and to see all of the cool touristy things and all of the not so You know touristy things the the more like hidden things and I just loved I loved every minute of that trip I read the books to my family while we were driving. I read them aloud and Then kind of switching just a little bit
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I always love to travel, but also, after I married a man who doesn't love to travel, my traveling kind of settled a little bit. I've always still had that longing to go and to experience new things, but he is very much a homebody, and we established very quickly our own farm.
07:34
Uh, just some things that tied us down and, and didn't allow us to travel as much. Then we started a family and such. Um, you know, all great things, but that travel bug kind of was still there, but it, it kind of had to die for a little while. Um, so in, I don't even know how many years ago it was, but several years ago, uh, we were introduced to the show on PBS called a chef's life. And, uh, it's just about.
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a chef named Vivian Howard. And it was, it's a beautiful show. Like I love the way that it is documented. And it's just about her life as a mom and a wife and a restaurant owner, a chef. And, and so, and it's set in North Carolina. So that's one thing that really intrigued me about it. And as we kept watching the show and we're just really infatuated with
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you know, with that and her restaurant in North Carolina, we decided one of my best friends is from where this restaurant is, and she had never visited before. So we actually took a good group of friends and went down there for the weekend, and we went to the restaurant, and it was so much fun. We had fun. I loved visiting New Bern.
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It's a great little town. I'd love to go back. I've got that still on my list of places. I'd love to go back In kinstin is where this restaurant is it's called chef and the farmer and so I have um, You know pictures from when we were there and I remember some of the things we ate and it was so good Um, and then we started the youtube channel not too long after that Uh for our business, but really I wanted our youtube channel to mimic uh a little bit of what
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we got from a chef's life. And it really, I don't think I really know that much about videography, so I did not, I was not able to really capture what I thought I would. And that's fine, that's just, I'm just not a video person. I think I'm very much a podcast person. I do enjoy this. Okay, so we don't have a TV. And anything that we see,
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that's on regular like TV stations we see on vacation when we are somewhere that has cable TV and local stations. So when we were at the beach this past New Year's, so just a few months ago, I saw on PBS once again, I guess PBS just has all my favorite shows on there. They had a new show, I guess it's new, I don't know.
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called Callie's Little Hot Biscuit. I think that's what the show's called. It's probably not, but anyways, it's about Callie's Little Hot Biscuit, which is in Charleston, South Carolina. And I fell in love with this now. And so, I mean, it was just the restaurant owner and how she was, you know, being asked to speak all over and go and do things and move forward in her business. And these are all like the things that I just love.
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I love to be in a business owner. And so it just really spoke to me. And so anyways, I just got super excited about it. And I tried to literally since New Year's, I've been kind of brainstorming. What is my fun thing? I've been asking the Lord like, what is my fun thing? I've been brainstorming with a friend of mine. I've been brainstorming with my husband. And I'm like,
11:24
I even made lists. You know how you're supposed to make like a pros and cons list? Well, I made a list of like all the things that I'm good at, all of the things that I love, all the things that I never get tired of and just tried to figure out what it was that I was supposed to be doing with my time. And y'all, I have four kids. I homeschool. I run a business from our farm.
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And so it's not like I have a bunch of time on my hands, but at the same time, I need something that's just fun for me, that's around my interests. And yeah, I just need to infuse some fun into my life more than just the to-do list. Now I'm a good to-do lister. I get up every morning and I make my to-do list for the day. And most of the days, my to-do list is a lot longer than
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I'll ever get to. And I know that and it already feels kind of defeating when you wake up and you are like okay everything that I've got to get done today will actually not get done today. I already know that. So you know even with this podcast I mean it's just a miracle that I'm sitting down to record this right now because I have doubted a dozen times that I should actually do this because
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it's not priority. It's not priority on my to-do list. But then I have to remind myself, you need fun. You need something that's yours. You need something that you enjoy. That's just fun. It's not a to-do. It's for fun. And so that is why I'm sitting down to do this today. So biscuits and gravy.
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I wanted something Southern sounding and cute. And I think biscuits and gravy is pretty Southern and pretty cute. So another thing I love to fix biscuits and gravy for my family and gravy is actually my youngest son's nickname. We don't call him gravy a whole lot anymore. But my third child, my older son, he named.
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his brother Gravy before we even knew it was a brother. So when I was pregnant with my youngest, he was already named Gravy. And so I think that's kind of funny that that's part of the name of this podcast. So I love new places. If you haven't gotten that from me already, I love new places, I love experiences. I'm kind of a junkie.
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on experiences. It doesn't necessarily have to be the best restaurant, but if the atmosphere, if it's beautiful, if it's got a nice ambience, if it's low lit, if it's got good music playing, if... All of these things that I take into consideration when I go to a place, I just love the experience of it. And the same is true.
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in the opposite. Like it could be not the most well decorated place in the world, but if it's got amazing food that's locally sourced or whatnot, then that's awesome too. So I just love to experience new things. Another example of this is my friend Tina. She grew up Amish and when
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Her cousin was getting married a couple of years ago. She asked me if I wanted to go up to Ohio and go to the Amish wedding. And I was like, absolutely, you know? Like, this is my dream, you know, to just experience things like that that I normally wouldn't get to experience. But because she knew that about me, she stepped out and asked me and I was so thankful. We had a fun time. We drove up there.
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I mean, I got to eat meals in Amish homes with no electricity. I got to experience all the things that you think of when you are thinking Amish country. I got to go to this elaborate wedding. It was beautiful. It was like no wedding that I had been to. It was truly a celebration. And I loved that because I'm like, this is what weddings are supposed to look like.
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like you're supposed to go over the top. You know? And I got to shop in Amish stores and it was just, it was amazing. It was a great experience. I'm so glad I had that experience. So in doing this podcast, I hope that it will satisfy my travel bug because you remember my husband is not the most enthusiastic traveler, but I love him so much.
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He grounds me. And he does want me to be able to experience things that he knows that I love to travel. He knows I love new experiences and he does that for me. And he encourages me to do that. So I'm thankful that I have someone that's supportive like that. So most of the places that I plan to go and talk about on the podcast are going, I'm gonna go by myself most of the time.
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Maybe I will go with Adam some or with the whole family or I might grab a friend to go with me. But it will give me something fun to plan and look forward to. I don't want this to be a travel guide. It's not a to-do list but a podcast of stories of people of southern food. What I'm trying. I would love to do some research on different southern dishes and then try to cook them and then tell you guys about them and see.
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what you think and I want to discover secret places, places that are not well known. You're not going to read about them in our state magazine or one of those publications, but places that are quintessential southern places and southern restaurants and southern food and southern experiences. Those are the things that I'm trying to capture.
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So I need your help. I need to know where to go. I would love to hear from you. I have an email address that you can write to me. It's biscuitsandgravyfm at gmail.com. We also have an Instagram account, Biscuitsandgravypodcast. So you can find us on Instagram and send me a message.
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And I am so excited. I think this is gonna be my fun thing. I'm just excited to have something that I can look forward to and work on and not feel the pressure of, you've got to do it a certain way. I've been there and I've done that and I'm kind of tired of that. So I'm excited for this new project of mine. So basically this will be a crowd sourced
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Podcast I want you to direct me where I should go I've got a few ideas of some places that I would like to travel and I would like to visit And restaurants I would like to eat at but I really want to hear from you I want you to tell me and I don't want this to be like a you know a travel guide kind of thing I just want some suggestions of like
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What are those quintessential southern places? Don't give me a long list of 20 different places you think I ought to visit because that will take me years. And I don't want to, I don't want, this doesn't sound ugly, I don't want to waste my time, I don't want to waste my money, I don't want to waste time away from my family to go places that just aren't, I don't want to go places that are just touristy or they're.
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well-known and you know, everyone says you ought to go, but you've never really experienced them yourself. I would love to hear your experiences. So if you could let me know of some places that you've been that you just got this feeling of like, hey, everyone should know about this place. Then I would love to hear about those places. So if you will shoot me an email or find me on Instagram and send me a DM, I would love to hear from you.
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On Instagram, I plan on sharing some of the pictures from some of the places that I visit. I already have our first episode specific to a place planned, and I'm getting ready to record that after this one. And I've got pictures from that experience that I'm gonna be sharing on Instagram. But I can't wait to hear from you guys. Thank you for joining me.
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Thank you for listening and I hope that you will enjoy listening to this podcast as much as I'm going to enjoy recording the episodes for you. Alright, I will talk to you guys next time. Bye!
