The Art of Eating: Cooking as a Sustainability Practice
Julie Saha, sometimes known as Julie Made You Dinner, and other times as @foodbebo, is a primarily plant-based chef and artist living in Brooklyn. I first found Julie’s work when we were both living in Philadelphia. She was working at a delicious vegan cheese company, Bandit (formerly Conscious Cultures), and whipping up incredible, elaborate, and drop dead gorgeous vegan food on her Instagram. Plant-based-food-obsessed as I am, I knew she was someone I’d want to know. Throughout my time with Julie on Wednesday morning, our conversation flowed through topics of food, culture, sustainability, the media, and going back to one’s roots. The discussion made me reflect on cooking, not only as a sustainability practice, but also as an art form and as a practice of coming together.
Julie and I began our conversation talking about her various culinary and personal identities. She told me that her journey largely began in her freshman year of high school, when she started practicing veganism. In her sophomore year of high school, about a year into being vegan, she started her Instagram page, @foodbebo. Julie was on the foodsta train when Instagram filters were still a thing and posting four times a day was the norm. Her presence has grown over time, but as she entered into culinary arts and food-based work, Julie Made You Dinner was born. She told me that the moniker is
“[a] name born out of what made me love food so much, and what made me realize that a pinnacle in this world is a meeting over dinner.”
Julie’s strongest relationships were built over this practice of sharing a meal, whether it was a dinner party she hosted herself, or a more community-oriented meal like a potluck. These experiences in dining made Julie realize how “truly special it is to meet over food. To [her] friends it became [her] shtick, ‘oh come over I’ll make you dinner.’ or ‘come over, Julie made you dinner.’”
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
As our conversation flowed, we both related to entering the world of veganism through a very mainstream and whitewashed lens - a lens that promoted a way of eating where there was a “wrong and a right, and a bad and a good way of eating.” Julie told me that recently, she is enjoying being more explorative with food, cooking primarily plant-based at home, but trying different cheeses and even enjoying fish for the first time in seven years this summer while traveling in India. She explained that her relationship to being plant-based has changed. Being a non-white chef, Julie said that she thinks a lot about cooking in the tradition that she was raised in, which emphasized to not shop for a recipe, and to just use what is in the pantry or left in the fridge. She told me
“Everything about my cooking is resourceful… my cooking style has always been ‘let's throw these ten little bits together and make something amazing out of it.’”
By taking a more critical lens to veganism, she's had revelations about certain plant-based foods, or ways of eating, being just as unsustainable or unethical as the non-plant-based ways. Recently, Julie has realized that eating is “more nuanced, and everybody is existing in very elaborate, [and] different, intersections. And food and eating aren't something that should be so homogenized and policed.” We agreed that veganism in the mainstream can feel completely disconnected from the intention of positive social change. Sometimes, getting back to the idea of food as a necessity can be a reminder of its ethical and sustainable roots.
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
With social media being one of the main platforms on which Julie shares her work with the world, I was curious about her relationship to the medium. When dining is such an in-person affair, how does social media play a role in the experience? Julie explained, “[in the] past year my mindset has been shifting a lot… posting can be so fun, but I really want to build tangible and real-life experiences.” With social media, sometimes the act of cooking or eating can lose focus, and end up lost “in what it feels like to be posting all your meals.” As food becomes a career,
“the best way to stay grounded... is to go back to what I love most, which is meeting people and getting dinner together and cooking together. Instagram can isolate you just as quickly as it connects you to people.”
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
In her recent move from Philadelphia to Brooklyn, she has had more motivation to scale back from “putting importance on Instagram, and to try to make sure that I am using it as the tool that it can be to have more real life experiences and relationships.” Hearing Julie talk about her relationship to social media felt very relatable, as many of us are transitioning to new spaces and trying to find connection through shared passions and values.
We then proceeded to discuss the relationship between food and creativity. I asked her, “How are art and food related?” She explained that “what art-making is for a lot of people, it being a method of self-expression, and for a lot of people a way of maintaining mental and physical wellness…are a lot of the same principles that I feel when I cook.” She has not “found another medium that feels this gratifying and dynamic.” She reflected on the idea that both art and food have always been a valuable meeting ground for people. Food and art reflect culture, identity, individuality, and community; for Julie, “food feels at the center of everything.”
In her work, Julie celebrates the inclusion of more diverse ingredients and ways of cooking. She told me she is “noticing that, because of home cooking and Instagram, you get to see so much diversity in cooking… and in the ingredient realm. The commonly known ingredients are shifting and people are more open to that shift.” But Julie also expressed a concern that over time these diverse foods will no longer be trendy. She told me,
“In food media, there are ingredients that are popping up and are really hot right now” For Julie, it's important that people see food as “[this] precious and tender thing that we don't treat as disposable when it's not fitting trends.”
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
Media’s ability to produce these food trends is powerful, in that it can introduce new ingredients and diverse ways of eating outside of a white normative framework, and it can inspire more sustainability in food as well…
“I hope there is a shift of people realizing that the realm of what we all eat is so enormous, and everything has its place and its importance.”
Julie and I further discussed how when we think of food trends, such as seasonal trends, we are encouraged to incorporate certain ingredients during their harvesting season, and it becomes a way to reduce the environmental impact of our food.
While discussing seasonal foods and the sustainability of food systems, we began talking about the importance of place and environment. She moved to Brooklyn just in the last month. Before that, she was living in Philadelphia, where she moved for college from New Jersey. For Julie, Philadelphia “has been the most formative place.” In Philly, Julie began exploring more art and creativity, and found herself immersed in the city. She was drawn to the art scene in Philly and found herself immersed in a community of people who were generally just “dedicated to their craft of creating and making.” The energy of her Philly community motivated her to lean into her own craft of cooking as an art form. Being surrounded by people who were pursuing their art form as their career, Julie told me, “By the time I graduated, I felt really good about working around food, and like there was a lot to be done.” Julie then began teaching cooking through a food access non-profit. In the role, she would demonstrate recipes that centered seasonal fruits and vegetables. From there, she moved to working at a restaurant, and then pursued pop-ups, food events, and other creative forms of cooking.
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
In addition to Philly, moving to Brooklyn has provided her with a closeness to home that is also bringing her closer to her food. Being from New Jersey, living in New York has made returning home to visit her parents and her brother more accessible to her than before. She told me that spending time at home has reminded her of her parents' predisposition to live sustainably.
“They truly are the original inspo for having sustainable practices that are less like adding things into your life to then become sustainable, it's like they have always existed in this way, where they are so much more aware of waste.”
Her parents have always had a version of practicing sustainability that is just a part of how they exist, instead of just a trend filtering its way through social media. When she returns home, she raids their abundant garden, coming away with green beans, peaches, and more. Returning to help her parents in the garden is a way that she can reconnect with sustainability because it feels like “a step in the direction [of] becoming closer to the source of your food, and eating, and cooking.”
Photo Credit: Julie Saha
As Julie transitions into her life here in Brooklyn, she is working on nesting, scaling back, and learning how to have less. She is finding comfort and joy in her solo time, and exploring ways to exist in her new environment. After a summer of busy-ness in Philly, cooking for her co-workers, and celebrating and connecting with her community, she is finding so much value in cooking for one. Although Julie is still easing into life in Brooklyn, she is beginning to find her culinary and artistic spaces. You can find her at Cherry on Top in Bushwick on September 28th for Chaotic Cakes, a cake pop-up in collaboration with other cake creators like Aimee France, Amy Yip, and LuLu Prat.