04-14-2022 Howard Magazine - Flipbook - Page 38
Hadeed’s guests share recipes and stories about food. Hadeed cooks and photographs the dishes and adds a bit about her
experience making it. PHOTO BY KIM HAIRSTON
BY CHRISTINA TKACIK Howard Magazine
L
ate at night, while feeding her
newborn son, Becky Hadeed flipped
through books on photography and
her world opened up. Years later, the
mother of four is a podcaster, photographer
and blogger who tells stories through food.
From her bedroom turned recording studio
in Highland, Hadeed and her Storied Recipe
Podcast have traveled from a remote village
in Ukraine to the Ivory Coast and northern
Iran. Since 2019, she has explored these places
through interviews centered on food.
“I just think it’s such a carrier of culture and
family and tradition,” Hadeed said. “Basically,
any story a human has to tell can be told
through their food.”
The podcast now has listeners across the
world, from “every continent except for
Antarctica” Hadeed said.
In her show, she interviews some wellknown and some not-so-well-known people
in the culinary world about “cherished food
memories.” Tony Scotto, an Italian immigrant
who owns THB Bagelry, shared his love for
spaghetti and clams while Adrian Miller,
38 | SPRING 2022 | howardmagazine.com
the James Beard award-winning soul food
scholar, offered a favorite recipe for ice box
pie. In another episode, she interviews her
own husband, John, the son of Palestinian
immigrants, about his affinity for homemade
spinach pies.
Some subjects she finds through Instagram,
others have authored cookbooks she loves. Her
only criterion: “I want to know more about
their story.” In particular, she’s found that her
readers and listeners love “ordinary people with
extraordinary stories.”
Hadeed approaches the interviews like
“coffee with a friend,” she said. “I’ve had a
couple people tell me that coming on the
podcast is like going to therapy.”
Conversations tend to get personal, touching
on parenting philosophy or how to pursue one’s
lifelong dream. One woman shared a story of
finding her grandfather’s long lost family in
the same country her own adopted sons came
from. Each subject shares a recipe close to their
hearts, be it Ukrainian varenyky (pierogies) or
Persian smoked eggplant.
Online, Hadeed posts the recipes along