Four Questions with Erin Gleeson

I’ve been seeing Erin Gleeson’s magical woodland dinner parties and candlelit Shabbat vignettes float by on Instagram for quite some time now, but I only recently had a chance to connect with with her personally—and I’m so glad I did. Beyond just being a friendly, warm, wonderful person, Erin also has an incredibly cool story. Listening to her reminisce on how she got to where she is today reminded me that new creative ventures can flourish anywhere and at any time. And usually when you least expect it.

Now a New York Times best-selling author and the well-known blogger behind The Forest Feast, Erin originally worked as a food photographer in New York City before moving to a cabin in the woods near San Francisco in 2011 with her husband, a rabbi, who had accepted a job at a synagogue in the area. It was there in the woods that she was inspired to take up blogging and (eventually!) to write the first of those cookbooks; now, she’s hard at work on the fifth.

Erin’s work is breathtaking. Just scroll through this post to get a feel for it. Every single photo of hers is brimming with color and life and coziness, and each draws you in with this very distinct, homey, familial feel that you just have to see (and feel) to understand. And her cookbooks, by the way, aren’t actually so much cookbooks as they are “art books,” featuring a mix of minimal, vegetable-based recipes, colorful photography, and her own watercolor illustrations and superimposed hand-lettering.

I’m so happy I got a chance to ask Erin a few questions and learn more about the story behind her work, and I’m excited to share her answers with you here. Really, I can’t imagine a lovelier way to welcome in a new year of “Four Questions” than with her images, words, and ideas (particularly her thoughts about life after conversion).

Thanks so much for the conversation, Erin! And enjoy, everyone else!!

Q

WHERE DID ALL OF THIS—YOUR BLOG AND BESTSELLING BOOKS AND MAGICAL LIFE IN THE WOODS—BEGIN?

I started out in New York, actually. I lived there for nine years, and I went to graduate school for photography while also teaching photography and photoshop at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, my husband—I should mention that he’s a rabbi!—was in rabbinical school there. When he got his first job at a synagogue in Silicon Valley, we ended up moving out to California, and the rest is history. Gosh, I guess that was, like, eight or nine years ago now.

By chance, we found this cabin in the woods out here that’s technically just outside of Silicon Valley. It’s funny, because it does look and feel like it’s in the middle of nowhere, but all these big venture capital firms are just around the bend, and Palo Alto is my closest grocery store.

Anyway, we just decided, you know what, let’s try this out for a year. Let’s go from Brooklyn to the woods. Let’s do this 180 shift. It’ll be different and fun for a year.

And of course we’ve been here ever since.

That first year, when my husband would go off to his job every day, I’d just be sitting there by myself, just sitting in this cabin in the woods, trying to reinvent my photography career. At first, when we moved to the West Coast, I was worried that my biggest accomplishments as a photographer might be in the past. I mean, I’d moved to New York specifically to pursue that line of work, and now here I was back in California.

Anyway, we were getting this weekly farm box full of fresh food at the time, and I started playing around with my camera and with the various ingredients that were being delivered. It was really just something to do. I’d carry the plates of food outside into the woods that surround the house, place them on top of mossy logs covered in leaves, and start shooting. I didn’t have much else to do, and I was so bored of traditional styling—of putting things on tablecloths with nice silverware. I wanted to see what something different might look like.

So I started collecting these images, and eventually, I decided to try posting these online. And I just fell in love with blogging from there. Now, this was early blogging days—you know, 2011 and 2012. Blogs could blow up in a different way back then. But I do think that different aesthetic helped me stand out and get noticed.

I also love watercolor painting, so I started painting these little doodles and layering them on top of the photos—again, all for fun. I mean, I was stressed back then, don’t get me wrong. I wanted so badly to reinvent my career. But this, for me, was just plain fun, and so different from the hustle back in New York. Back there, I always had a client telling me what to do. But here in the woods, there were no rules about how I could or should create. It was up to me.

Of course, as the story goes, The Forest Feast Blog eventually turned into my first cookbook in 2014, which turned into a few more cookbooks, and now, here we are, still living in the woods and with many more cookbooks on the list. And while the scope of things has changed a little, it’s still just as enjoyable and creative as it was back then. Especially because my publisher really lets me have creative control. I still get to do all the styling, the shooting, and the lettering for the book—all of it. I’m currently working on my fifth book, and each one is such an awesome, exciting undertaking.

Q

I LOVE THAT NATURE AND SEASONALITY PLAYS SUCH AN EXCITING ROLE IN YOUR RECIPES.
CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THAT?

A

Generally, nature’s had a big impact on my artwork. I paint little items that I see around me, and the colors and textures give me new ideas in the kitchen, too. But it’s also about seasonality. I always look around at what’s growing and what nature is specifically serving up at any given time, and I let that inspire my new recipes, too.

I’m not a forager, though. People always ask that. They say, “Oh, so do you forage out there in the woods?” And I say, “No, I sit on my deck and drink cocktails in the woods.” Don’t get me wrong; I do love a good foraged bouquet for a centerpiece—especially for my Shabbat table. There are these wild plums growing around where we live, and we recently picked a few branches and put them in a gorgeous bouquet. That kind of foraging is more my thing.

I should add that I actually grew up in a rural apple orchard in Sebastopol, California with this beautiful, huge vegetable garden. I think that the fact that I lived in New York for a while and then came back to California—well, I think that contrast had a big impact on me. I was really excited to be in a more bucolic setting again—but honestly, I just find that contrast in general is creatively inspiring. Simply changing your environment or your habits or something else about your lifestyle can give you a slew of new creative ideas. For me, being in the city and then suddenly coming out here to all this nature…to trees and green and fresh air… It just was so creatively inspiring to me.

Q

YOU OFTEN SHARE BEAUTIFUL PHOTOS FROM YOUR SHABBAT DINNERS AND HOLIDAY GATHERINGS.
HOW ELSE DOES YOUR JEWISHNESS MANIFEST IN YOUR WORK?

A

Naturally, because of my husband’s occupation and lifestyle and just because of who we are as people, I do see so much of my work through that Jewish lens. A lot of what I do on the blog comes back to seasonality, and there’s an interesting parallel there with Judaism and all of the holidays. With Sukkot, for instance, you’ve got all the squash coming out, and you feel encouraged to whip up these warming, cozy fall dishes. So it’s easy to make recipes that fit beautifully with those gourds hanging in the sukkah, because that’s just naturally what you’re eating already. I mean, I always get pumpkins and squash with my farm box around that time of year. And around Rosh Hashanah, of course, we all want to be eating these delicious apples—well, that’s what’s in season, too. Judaism is really in tune with the natural world in that way, and I’ve always loved how the ingredients themselves are tied to the holidays and to my cooking. 

And yes, I have done several posts around Jewish holidays! In my first book, the very last recipe is for challah—it is, admittedly, one of the more complicated recipes in any of my books or in my blog. But I try really hard to keep it approachable and as simple as possible. My “thing” is that I always show each recipe in a diagram form, so you’ve got this image with my handwriting, a little bit of type, and some watercolor lettering. Then there are arrows pointing to ingredients and various elements of the recipe. I want it all to be really, really visual. For the challah, that’s especially important; I really try to break it down and make it as simple as possible. 

In fact, approachability is one of my top priorities. I want things to be so, so simple that people will actually make the recipes, you know? So, for me, challah is a nice way to do that. Having converted, baking that bread became the real way in which I stepped into my Judaism. It gave me something to really “practice,” and I really made it a part of my weekly ritual in an active, deliberate way.

I should mention that I grew up in a family that was loosely Catholic; we didn’t have a lot of real traditions. I love Judaism in part because there are so many traditions that can be easily built into the everyday. And, of course, it’s fun that so many are built around food. Even in these socially-distanced times, we’ve been making challah every Friday and then on Saturday morning my husband makes challah French toast. We were traveling this week and didn’t get to it, and my three-year-old woke up on Saturday and was like, “Where’s the French toast?” (laughs).

For us, Shabbat is a big deal every week—even if we have a lot going on. Every week, we light candles, we have our challah, and the kids get juice, which they don’t normally get to have. Even when we’re traveling, I bring along two little tea lights so we can make it happen. 

Q

WHAT WAS THE MOST CHALLENGING, SURPRISING, OR INTERESTING ASPECT OF CONVERTING TO JUDAISM?

A

I’ll be totally honest: One of the hardest parts of converting for me was letting go of Christmas.We don’t celebrate Christmas at our house now, of course, and we don’t do a tree or anything, although we do still celebrate Christmas at my parents’ house every year.

I think the reason I was sad to lose the holiday was simply because one of the few traditions my family had growing up involved the holiday. We had this box of Christmas ornaments, and every year, my parents would give us a new ornament with our name on it. The idea behind the whole thing was that these one-day heirloom ornaments would be hung on my future tree, the one I’d have when I grew up. 

When I married and converted, I remembered that box and thought, “What am I going to do with this?” And my husband actually came up with this really genius idea to use those ornaments to decorate our sukkah every year. I mean, we got rid of the baby Jesuses and Santas, of course, but most of them weren’t religious, so they worked beautifully. And it’s been so, so meaningful for me to be able to have that.

Now, each Sukkot, we give our kids an ornament with their name and the year on it, and together, we put it on the sukkah. Even my parents give the kids ornaments for our sukkah. It’s a new tradition, one that blends both of our separate traditions. And I think that’s so meaningful.