Muse Room Podcast

Thank you for tuning into another episode of Muse Room Table! I am so happy that you are here, whether you’re returning, or just joining us. This is a community for cooking and food enthusiasts whether you’re a professional restaurant chef, home cook, or simply cooking curious. This place is for you!

In this episode of Muse Room Table, I am talking to Dena Fisher. I first met her at The Cleveland Flea when she catered lunch at a co-working event I attended. Since then I have followed her journey online and we have slowly become Instagram pals. She is a genuine and cheerful gal who loves good food, and is passionate about providing it to her family and friends.

For Dena, cooking isn’t just about mastering the perfect crispy chicken thigh and it’s not all about the Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt you may or may not have in your pantry. While we talk about both of those things during this episode in grave detail, cooking for Dena is about bringing people together, whether that’s at your family table, or over Zoom. For her, food is about creating community.

In this episode, I hope you get a taste for that community that Dena refers to. We talk about so much:

• Her inspiration from seasonal foods
  
• Her obsession with a good “matchstick” cut (knife cuts really can change the texture of your food which will in turn change your eating experience!)
  
• Her first memory in the kitchen
  
• How cooking with her grandparents and parents has influenced her cooking today
  
• How food brings people together
  
• Fridge and pantry staples that Dena always has on hand
  
• How people can become more comfortable in the kitchen
  
• Her tried and true process for a perfect crispy chicken thigh
  
• Why Dena started Dinner In and how Covid-19 has impacted it in recent months
  

And much more!

I also ask her some fun quick-fire questions and she shares all about this episode’s recipe!

Welcome back to Muse Room! I know it’s been quite a long time but I am so excited to be back talking to people that inspire me. This podcast is going to be a bit different going forward. If you follow me on Instagram you probably saw that I changed my handle to @museroomtable. I am diving into something that I’ve always loved and that is food. Cooking is something that has fascinated me since I was a child and it’s something that makes me really happy. So from here on out everyone you hear from on this podcast will be somewhat related to the world of food - whether that is an avid home cook, professional restaurant chef, food blogger, you name it.

Welcome back to the podcast and hello from Nashville, Tennessee! 

In this episode I am sharing a conversation that I recorded back in April with the founder of Coven, Miranda Scott. In our conversation we talk about her journey into spirituality, witchcraft, and her ancestral work. It is a long conversation with tons of takeaways so listen closely.

DISCLAIMER: In our conversation we touch on some topics that may be triggering for some people. We touch on grief, loss, abuse, suicide and mental health. If you'd like to skip through that part of the conversation, it begins around 32:54 and goes through about 47:21. It does come up in bits and pieces throughout the whole conversation so if that is something you would rather not listen to, I totally understand and support you.

Topics we discuss:

-Having an identity outside of being a mother

-Her brief excursion into Catholicism

-The loss of her parents

-Her journey into witchcraft and spirituality

-Doing the ancestral work to break the cycle of abuse

-Stepping fully into her identity as a queer women and witch

Enjoy!

How to connect with Miranda:

Welcome back to Muse Room! I am so excited to share this week's episode with you. I'm talking with Rachael from Shore Society. Rachael is just lovely. She's smart, creative, intentional and so driven. We sat at her dining room table in her beautiful home and chatted about all things Shore Society. Tune into Episode 35 to hear about how she got into design, how she started her business, her creative process, what inspires her, and so much more.

Topics in this episode include:

+What currently is inspiring her

+How creativity came into her life

+Studying graphic design at Kent State University

+The trajectory of her business

+The line between inspiration and being too influenced by something

+Balancing a full time job and a full time business

+Her design process

In this episode of Muse Room I sit down with Jackie Wachter, the co-founder of FOUNT. If you're unfamiliar FOUNT is a creative studio here in Cleveland that focuses on creating leather goods that are of the highest quality and are also sustainable for the environment. Tune in to hear my conversation with Jackie where we talk about fast fashion, sustainability, timing, how FOUNT started and how it has evolved and so much more.  Enjoy!

Welcome back to the podcast! I KNOW. It has been a while. But I am SO excited to be back!. Today I am sharing a conversation that I had with Ally and Caroline, the best friend duo behind the blog called Oh So Graceful. These gals have been long overdue on the podcast. I mean, they're perfect for Muse Room. They're creative, hilarious and the friendship that they share is so inspiring. I am so grateful to have had the chance to hang out with them. We talked about female friendship, having an identity outside of being a mother, how the blog came about and the woes of social media. 

Enjoy the episode!

If you would like to connect with Ally and Caroline, here's how:

In Episode 32 I am joined by journalist, editor, and founder of Modern Cle, Jillian Kramer. Modern Cle is an email newsletter dedicated to telling the stories of North East Ohio. For just $3 a month you can purchase a subscription to Modern Cle and get a high quality article send straight to your inbox every month. In this episode Jillian tells us all about how she decided to become a journalist, what that path was like, crime reporting in Alabama, living in New York and then moving back to Ohio to start Modern Cle.

Today's episode is a long one and it is a good one. This week's muses are Gia and Alexis, the leaders of Creative Babes Cleveland. I met up with them both for coffee back in October because I was curious about what they were doing and I immediately felt a connection towards them. Since that coffee date I attended two of the Creative Babes Cleveland events and I really just can't get enough. It's like a sleep over but for adults...and without the sleeping over. Words that I think of when I think of hanging out at Creative Babes are cozy, warm, gooey and magical. If you haven't been to one I highly recommend it.

I was filled with so many good feelings when they both agreed to come and chat with me on the podcast. We ended up meeting up at Alexis's house on a Sunday morning and it was very on brand. Cozy and magical. We sat on the couch, drank coffee and chatted all things Creative Babes. I'm so excited for you to hear our conversation. Enjoy!

Some of the things we talk about in the conversation are:

-How Gia and Alexis met and how they fell in friendship love

-How Creative Babes was born and how they got the idea to bring it to Cleveland

-What it is like being a creative, trying to figure out what you want to do with your life...the options are endless!

-Their current inspiration

-What it is like working with your best friend

-Female friendship

AND MORE

If you would like to connect with Gia and Alexis here's how:

And we are back with part two! In part two of my conversation with Janae we dig into how her business got started. She gives us some advice on branding and tells us about her newest project, Creatively Stocked. If you haven't listened to part one go back and listen before you tune into part two!

In part two of Episode 29 we talk about:

-What she liked so much about branding when she was first starting out

-All of the elements that go into creating a brand

-Why she named her business Auden & Company

-What small business beginners should focus on when creating their brand

Welcome back to the podcast! I left you guys for a week and I was actually really down about it. This week I am back with a conversation I had with Janae Bryson. Janae is an incredibly intelligent and successful woman and she is ONLY 25! I am always in complete awe of what she does. We had this conversation about a week and a half ago and guys, you're going to love it. It was actually such a long conversation that I decided to break it up into two parts. In the first part you will hear about what is inspiring Janae currently and we dig DEEP into her adoption story. I am so grateful that Janae was willing to share her story with us and she was incredibly vulnerable and open throughout the entire conversation.

In Part One of this episode we talk about:

    -How the thought of never working for anyone else inspires her to go full force into her business

If you have listened to my solo episode, you'll know that one of the intentions I have this year for the podcast is to interview more creatives outside of Cleveland. So that is what this week's episode is. I am joined by Rachel Wentworth, Co-Founder of the lingerie shop, Forty Winks, and host of Keeping Shop Podcast. I discovered Rachel through her podcast a few months ago. On Keeping Shop, she interviews a wide array of brick and mortar shop owners. It's a really inspiring podcast to listen so I urge you to check it out when you're done listening to this episode.

In our conversation we talk about:

-Rachel's inspiration to let go and how she got through a period of burnout.

-How being an older sibling prepared her to be a good leader in her business.

-What it is like having a business partner.

-The importance of having a business plan.

-What she went through to open a brick and mortar and advice she has for others looking to do the same.

-How body positivity plays a role in curating the items for the store.

-Why she started a podcast.

And so much more!

Lauren reached out to me back in November and I'm so glad she did. She mentioned she was the Vice Chair of Brite Winter Festival and I was intrigued. I had gone to the festival earlier that year and it was the most unique music festival I had ever been to, so to be able to chat with someone that is involved in the planning was an opportunity I just could not pass up. We got together at Limelight Coworking and had a great conversation about her career, what inspires her, female friendship and mentorship. Enjoy the episode!

In this episode we talk about:

-Lauren's resolutions and intentions for 2019 and how a lot of them are influenced by her late best friend, Nikki Delamotte who passed away late 2018. She tells us how the loss of her best friend was devastating for so many reasons but also an inspiration for so many reasons.

-The magic of female friendship

-The importance of mentorship and how to find a mentor

-Her time abroad in Germany

-How she got involved with Yelp. It was a very serendipitous opportunity

-How she got involved with Brite Winter Festival and how the festival got started

-Why she is so passionate about Cleveland

Other notes from the show:

-A quote by Zelda Fitgerald that she lives by, "She refused to be bored simply because she wasn't boring."

-A book she is loving this year is "The Phantom of 5th Avenue" by Meryl Gordon

-Some of the artists you can expect to see at Winter Festival include Smallpools, Ezri, Ray Flanagan and the Authorities, Uptown Budha, Ottawa, Mimi Arden

This week on the podcast we have Molly, the owner of Beet Jar which is an incredible juice shop here in Cleveland. Molly recently lost her father so she talks a lot about grief and what her grief journey has been like and how self care helps her through that journey. Self care is very important to her and she tells us what it means to her. She also really is tired of the actual term “self care” so if you have any ideas on what we can call it that would be greatly appreciated ;) In our conversation we also talk about how Beet Jar got started (with the help of Steph from The Cleveland Flea) and how it has evolved. Molly is an inspiration and her passion and intention is truly genuine. Enjoy the conversation!

To connect with Molly:

In Episode 24 of the podcast I bring on Lisa Quine. She is a Cleveland local known for her hand lettering and murals. She has been featured in Cleveland Magazine and Pressure Life among other publications and has appeared on multiple podcasts. She was even asked to travel to France to paint a mural which she tells us all about in this episode. I met Lisa at a networking event at Our Creative Clubhouse. Ever since, we have stayed in touch on social media and she has always been super supportive of this podcast. 

Some things we talk about in the episode:

• How creativity first entered her life
• How she got into lettering
• How her career took off and how she decided to transition out of a full time job
• Comparison on social media
• Creative blocks

And more!

If you would like to connect with Lisa, here's how:

Hi everyone! Welcome back to the podcast. We are kicking off Season 2 of the podcast with a solo episode. I wanted to get on the mic and tell you a little more about myself, my journey, why I started a podcast and my goals. So here it is! Let me know what you think. :)