In the final episode of “Anything’s Pastable,” the recipes are done — but they’re all in Google Docs. Now Dan has to bring them together into an actual book, with a cohesive visual style. So he hires an art director who scours flea markets for just the right props to bring the book’s personality to life. Then Dan heads to the Bay Area for the photo shoot, which means cooking nearly every recipe from the book one last time. When he has to pick the most important photo of all — the cover — the pressure is on. Will his publisher, and his family, judge his book by it?
Anything’s Pastable the cookbook is on sale tomorrow, March 19, but you can order it today (including signed copies), and see if Dan’s visiting a city near you on his tour of book signings and live podcast tapings with special guests! Follow Dan on Instagram to see photos and videos from the Anything’s Pastable journey. And if listening to this episode makes you want to go to Italy, now’s your chance! Dan has teamed up with Culinary Backstreets to create a tour that will take you to many of the same places, with many of the same people. Tour Rome with Katie Parla, take a cooking class in Lecce with Silvestro Silvestori, and eat pasta in Bari with Dan!
The Sporkful production team includes Dan Pashman, Emma Morgenstern, Andres O'Hara, Nora Ritchie, and Jared O'Connell, with editing by Tracey Samuelson and Tomeka Weatherspoon. Transcription by Emily Nguyen and publishing by Julia Russo.
Original theme music by Andrea Kristinsdottir, with interstitial music in this episode by Black Label Music:
- “Talk To Me Now” by Hayley Briasco and Kenneth J Brahmstedt
- “Layers” by Erick Anderson
- “Twenty 99” by Erick Anderson
- “Sweet Summer Love” by Stephen Clinton Sullivan
- “Private Detective” by Cullen Fitzpatrick
- “The Huxtables” by Kenneth J Brahmstedt
- “Mellophone” by James Thomas Bates
- “Silhouette” by Erick Anderson
- “Loud” by Yitzhak Bira Vanara
- “Lowtown” by Jack Ventimiglia
Photo courtesy of Dan Pashman.
View Transcript
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Previously on Anything's Pastable ...
CLIP (EVAN KLEIMAN): People are going to expect from you to open the door to the unexpected.
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): You are a great storyteller and you're a great writer and you're very smart, but, like, you even say you're not a chef.
CLIP (LILA PINO-BLOUIN FOR LUCA CESARI): Before 1949, there's no trace of a pasta dish known as carbonara.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Are .... They're fighting over whether or not to cook the pasta in advance? Or they're fighting over whether or not to scrape the bottom of the pan.
CLIP (ANTONELLO DI BARI): They're just fighting for everything [LAUGHING]
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): Becky, how would you describe how this looks?
CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): This kind of looks like a cry for help.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): I gotta be honest, I think I'm getting tired of eating pasta.
CLIP (JANIE PASHMAN): I think you're crossing over into culinary territory, chefdom.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): I know that this cookbook has been a lot of work for me and that's created stress for everybody, and I'm sorry for that. Is it worth it?
CLIP (BECKY PASHMAN): It depends on the pasta.
CLIP (DAN PASHMAN): [LAUGHS]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: This is The Sporkful, it's not for foodies, it's for eaters. I'm Dan Pashman. Each week on our show we obsess about food to learn more about people. This is the final episode of Anything’s Pastable, a four-part series giving you the inside story of the making of my first cookbook — by the end you'll never look at a cookbook the same way again.
Dan Pashman: And if you haven't listened to parts 1 through 3 yet, please go back and start there. A few quick notes before we get into it. Anything’s Pastable the cookbook is available tomorrow March 19th, but of course it’s available right now to order wherever books are sold! And I’m hitting the road for a series of live Sporkful tapings that are also be book signing events and I hope to see you there. Listen to this lineup. I mean, come on — New York City tonight, March 18th, in conversation with Claire Saffitz, Long Island tomorrow with Top Chef’s Gail Simmons, followed by Chicago with the Korean Vegan Joanne Lee Molinaro, then Twin Cities, Atlanta, Miami, D.C., and more! You can get all the dates and details at Sporkful.com/tour. And now, the series finale of Anything’s Pastable.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: We're starting somewhere a little unexpected ...
Jillian Knox: So this is one of my favorite spots because you literally never know what you're going to see. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: This is Jillian Knox. She's a food and prop stylist in San Francisco.
Jillian Knox: I think being a prop stylist is really fascinating, because your palette is objects. Your palette and, like, how you paint is through objects.
Dan Pashman: Jillian is at the San Pablo Flea Market, it’s an outdoor salvage yard. She’s here with her husband, Elvis Santoyo, who helps her out on a lot of projects.
Jillian Knox: There's these, like, bins. All the bins have dishes and cups and there's plates, like, stacked up into these bins. And you know, stuff sits here for a long time and then all of a sudden you discover it.
Dan Pashman: It's January 2023, and the reason Jillian's here is me! I've hired her as the food and prop stylist for the photos in my cookbook. She’ll also be the art director. So she's in charge of creating the book's visual aesthetic.
Dan Pashman: She and I have already had a bunch of conversations about how we want the book to look. Now the photo shoot is a month away, and Jillian is spending hours scouring flea markets and salvage yards to find just the right props. Of course, that means the plates and glassware you’ll see in photos, but also little items that could appear on the side, or in the background.
Jillian Knox: It's a porcelain egg holder for your fridge. But I love things like this because you can set it on the side of, like, a countertop. It just tells a story a little bit better — just these hints of life I think are kind of necessary for these projects. And then you read the recipe and the story and it all just like comes together. And I think you're able to, like, really soak in that story more than just making a pretty image of food.
Dan Pashman: At one point Jillian finds a whole door that she likes. She’s also looking for tabletops. She prefers them without the legs — it makes it easier to manipulate for a photo shoot. And then there’s the tile. Jillian can take a dozen pieces of tile, lay them out flat on a board, and in a close up photo, it’ll look like a tile countertop. In her work, Jillian uses a lot of tile …
Jillian Knox: What is that? 3x3 squares? But they're either marble or concrete. What does this box say?
Elvis Santoyo: It says marble.
Jillian Knox: Yeah, so they're like tumbled marble, and that's kind of how you get smooth and matte and rough at the same time, so I'm gonna fill up a crate, man. These are dope. [LAUGHS] I just love them so much. They're so useful. And they just photograph so beautifully, you know?
Elvis Santoyo: You've got 53 of them.
Jillian Knox: Sick. Okay, cool. Just — here, let's put a fourth one. 54. That's for good luck. All right. [LAUGHS]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: All this work that Jillian's doing means we've arrived at the final stage of creating my cookbook: photography and design, turning a bunch of Google docs of recipes and stories into something with a cohesive visual style.
Dan Pashman: Now, of course, that means making the food look delicious, but frankly, that’s not that hard. There are a million people on Instagram doing it every day without scouring flea markets, right? Great food styling expresses something more about the recipes and the person behind them.
Dan Pashman: I spent months meeting with potential photographers and stylists and nothing was really clicking. Then one day, I was getting ready to interview Illyanna Maisonet about her cookbook, Diasporican. I was looking through it and thinking, "I love the photography in here, it has so much personality!" I love that there are crumpled paper napkins next to plates of half finished food, crumbs on the table, hands coming in to grab things, crushed beer cans. It wasn’t messy, just real. It made me feel like there was a real person behind this book.
Dan Pashman: And that is how I found Jillian. She was the food and prop stylist for Illyanna's book, and one of the photographers she worked on that book with was Dan Liberti. Now, they're part of the increasingly large team of people who are helping to make my book happen.
Dan Liberti: Can we do a couple more tries and get a little more tomato?
Jillian Knox: Yes. Let me add some more … All right, cool!
Dan Liberti: We got a shot.
Dan Pashman: Jillian and Dan are based in the Bay Area, so in February 2023, I fly out there and meet them at Dan’s photo studio. It’s a small converted apartment so it's got a kitchen, which of course is key. When I arrive, they’re already at work. And right away I see Jillian's talents on display.
Dan Pashman: There's some crumbs that made it onto the cutting board, there's some little spills here and there, but in order to make those crumbs look just right ...
Jillian Knox: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: I saw you employ tweezers ...
Jillian Knox: Yes.
Dan Pashman: At least one brush ...
Jillian Knox: Yes.
Dan Pashman: Then you guys looked at it and you were like, "Those crumbs don't look right."
Jillian Knox: Yeah. The crumbs are in a straight line. We cannot do — [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Right, cause that's not now crumbs get spilled.
Jillian Knox: They're too perfect.
Dan Pashman: Right!
[LAUGHING]
Jillian Knox: Exactly.
Dan Pashman: Do you enjoy that part of it?
Jillian Knox: I do.
Dan Pashman: What do you enjoy about it?
Jillian Knox: I mean, I can just be as, like, hyper focused on the smallest thing, and I just think it's so fun, like, to just be like, "I don't like that sesame seed," [LAUGHING] You know?
Dan Pashman: So Jillian's placing every single sesame seed to ensure that they don’t look like they’ve been individually placed. Meanwhile, our photographer Dan is thinking about lighting.
Dan Liberti: We decided to go for a fairly hard light and that means you're going to have crispy shadows. We want it to look like it's in somebody's house and typically people's houses have one light source, whether that's a window or like a pendant light.
Dan Pashman: So we're going for normal people vibes.
Dan Liberti: Normal people vibes.
Jillian Knox: Real food for real people.
Dan Pashman: Like I feel oftentimes when pasta or Italian food is depicted in cookbooks, it's meant to more, like, to transport you to Italy.
Jillian Knox: Yeah, right.
Dan Pashman: And there's the hills of Tuscany ...
Jillian Knox: Right.
Dan Pashman: And the nonnas caked in flour.
Jillian Knox: And that's beautiful and all, but like, we're not trying to transport people to Tuscany.
Jillian Knox: Right. We're trying to transport to the couch.
Dan Pashman: Right. [LAUGHS]
Jillian Knox: That’s where we’re going.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: We've budgeted eight days for the photo shoot, which is tight. We need to photograph 75 dishes, which means cooking 75 dishes, having them ready at the right times, and figuring out how each one should be presented. That’s a lot of cooking and styling. But Jillian won’t be doing it alone. Fellow food stylist Malina Syvoravong has also joined the team, she drove up from L.A. for the shoot. Jillian and Malina are cooking each dish so they look true to the recipes. And that means we won’t be using some of the food photography tricks you may have heard of, like filling a bowl of cereal with glue instead of milk, so the cereal doesn’t sink into the bowl. Jillian insists that every dish remain completely edible and actually delicious, because she doesn’t like to waste food.
Dan Pashman: She’s brought boxes and boxes of plates, glasses, utensils, napkins, tile and other tabletops — it’s all stacked up filling the entryway of the studio. So once again, the process will require a seemingly infinite number of tiny decisions.
Dan Pashman: What kind of plate should this pasta be on? What kind of glass should be next to it? Is it a fancy wine glass? A pint of beer? Are the utensils set just so, or are they a bit off kilter? Has someone already taken a bite of the food? Now, I know you may not notice all these details when you look through a cookbook, but I promise that they affect how the book makes you feel.
Dan Pashman: Periodically, Jillian asks me, “What’s the situation when you’re eating this dish? Where are you? Who are you with?” This helps her to create a scene using all her props. All of this is a lot of work, and in eight days Malina and I are going home, Jillian and Dan are moving on to their next projects. We’ve got to get it right.
Dan Pashman: Cool ...
Jillian Knox: So looking good?
Dan Liberti: You want a five star that one?
Person 1: Yeah.
Dan Liberti: Make it green.
Person 1: Green.
Dan Pashman: Sorry, so when you say five star that means like highlight that one as the one?
Dan Liberti: That's our select.
Dan Pashman: Did I just witness our first successful photograph?
Jillian Knox: Yeah!
Dan Pashman: Wow!
Jillian Knox: First one in the book!
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: All right! [LAUGHS] Only 612 more go.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: In my experience on TV shoots, on the very first day, everyone's like, let's take some time and do three different versions of this to make it look really beautiful. And then by the end of the third day, everyone's like, "Screw it! Just click record and get onto the next one! We're two hours late!"
Jillian Knox: 100 percent.
Dan Pashman: Yeah.
Jillian Knox: Absolutely accurate. Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Even though a ton of planning has gone into this shoot, Jillian and Dan told me that a lot of decisions would be made on the fly. There are some things you just can’t figure out until you can see them in front of you. On the first day, we set up to shoot a pasta salad with cavatelli, fresh corn, tomatoes, ricotta salata, and mozzarella. The warm pasta just barely cooks the corn so the kernels are still crunchy and juicy. It’s all a little creamy but also sweet and summery.
Dan Pashman: And one of the ways Jillian and Dan sometimes make a scene feel more real is to show the dish somewhat in process. In this case Jillian wants to have a few of the corn cobs, stripped of their kernels, sitting next to the bowl. But there’s a problem.
Jillian Knox: Are they in the garbage?
Malina Syvoravong: Yes. I do have corn ...
Jillian Knox: We can rinse them off. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Yeah. That's fine.
Jillian Knox: That's fine. [LAUGHS]
Malina Syvoravong: That's a food styling trick right there.
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Malina Syvoravong: Is going through the garbage.
Jillian Knox: Exactly. Just, you know ...
Dan Pashman: This is live audio of Malina looking through the garbage. I'll help you dig, Malina, let's ...
Malina Syvoravong: Okay, I should wear gloves.
Dan Pashman: No.
[SEARCHING THROUGH GARBAGE]
Malina Syvoravong: Oh, there we go.
Dan Pashman: Oh, we got them.
Malina Syvoravong: It's not even that bad.
Dan Pashman: No, these are in good shape. That doesn't even really count as the garbage.
Malina Syvoravong: I'll still rinse them, though.
Dan Pashman: Okay, we're gonna be fancy. People are gonna see this cookbook, I want you to know, when you see the corn cobs in the cavatelli and corn and tomato salad, Malina and Jillian and I took those out of the garbage ...
Malina Syvoravong: Yup.
Dan Pashman: And washed them off for the picture.
Jillian Knox: Sure did.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: With the corn cobs in place, Jillian sets up an action shot. She wants to capture the bowl of pasta being mixed, but we got to make sure you can see all the ingredients clearly. She arranges everything on that tumbled marble she found at the salvage yard, placed so it looks like a countertop. Dan shoots some photos, they adjust, and he shoots some more. We take a look at the photos on his monitor.
Dan Pashman: And that one or ... Yeah.
Jillian Knox: That one.
Dan Pashman: I think that one.
Dan Liberti: That one's pretty good.
Jillian Knox: That's good. There's a nice little hunk of mozzarella in there. It's
Dan Pashman: Yeah, you get the — it's all there.
Jillian Knox: It's just cascading down.
Dan Pashman: Yeah.
Jillian Knox: Ugh, I love it.
Dan Pashman: And now, just so I have it for the record, Dan, how many test shots were there? Just like setting up the lighting and everything and getting the lighting right?
Dan Liberti: Yeah. Thirty-five.
Dan Pashman: And then once Jillian started scooping and we actually were trying to get the scoop just right and the cascading, how many shots did we take?
Dan Liberti: Sixty-three.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: And in the end we ended up with one.
[LAUGHING]
Jillian Knox: But it's the one.
Dan Pashman: But it's good. It's really good.
Jillian Knox: Yeah, exactly.
[LAUGHING]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: After the first few photos, we start to get into a rhythm. As shots are finalized, Dan prints them out and hangs them on the wall of the studio, organized by chapter. This gives us a big picture look at what we’ve done so far, and ensures that we vary the styles and setups and colors as we go.
Dan Pashman: I’m also learning that since every dish we photograph needs to be cooked, this process doubles as one final extra recipe test. Sometimes Malina or Jillian is confused by an instruction, or something isn’t coming out quite right, so I open up my laptop and make small tweaks to wording as we go. I’m trying to make sure every recipe will be foolproof. And several days in, I take a walk through Berkeley.
Dan Pashman: I'm extremely happy with how it's going. I really — it's been incredibly exciting just to see — first of all, some of these dishes I cooked eight months ago. So to see them again and taste them again and see how good they are again is very exciting, but then also just, like, to see them brought to life by these super talented folks who not only cook them but also make them look so beautiful. That's really exciting and very gratifying — makes the book feel more real, like I can really kind of picture thumbing through it now.
Dan Pashman: Halfway through the shoot we have a guest assistant joining us — recipe developer Asha Loupy, a.k.a. the Saucy Spicetress! She happens to live in Oakland and knows her way around a cookbook shoot. She's here to help with a very special dish ...
Asha Loupy: Today, we're shooting the keema bolognese, which is my favorite recipe!
Dan Pashman: We shared some of Asha’s story in an episode in February. We heard about how she cooked the Indian dish keema a lot when she was a kid. The spiced ground meat of keema mashes up perfectly with Italian bolognese sauce.
Dan Pashman: And you brought in a specific pot ...
Asha Loupy: I did.
Dan Pashman: For it to be depicted in.
Asha Loupy: Brought in a handmade kari pot that's from Tipoy. And it is a traditional clay pot to cook in. And it's just one of my favorite vessels to cook in and serve in.
Dan Pashman: What do you love about it?
Asha Loupy: I love that, like, it's so handmade that the lid of the pot doesn't fit on any other pot.
Dan Pashman: It feels special to include an object that really means something to one of our recipe developers. For this shot, since we’re mashing up a classic Indian dish with a classic Italian dish, I wanted to play with that combination visually. I had the idea to use some of the tropes of a classic red sauce joint, you know, red and white checkered tablecloth, with Asha’s kari pot placed where a heaping pile of spaghetti and meatballs might normally go. Jillian immediately got the idea and took it to the next level, adding a bottle of chianti and some nice candles. Meanwhile, Asha has thoughts about how the noodles should be piled on the plate.
Asha Loupy: So not having them overly sauced so that they're weighed down, but having them, you know, be lightly sauced. I think there's a saying in Italy that you're not serving sauce with pasta, you're serving pasta with sauce.
Dan Pashman: So Jillian, you are placing clusters of meat over the naked noodles.
Jillian Knox: Yes.
Dan Pashman: And then you're gonna add sauce, is that right?
Jillian Knox: Yes.
Dan Pashman: So this is interesting, you separated the more liquidy part of the sauce from the ground meat.
Jillian Knox: Right.
Dan Pashman: And why do you do it that way?
Jillian Knox: I just want to have a little bit more control over, like, where it’s all going and then I can apply the sauce exactly where I want it to be.
Dan Pashman: All right, we've done a number of trials. We've adjusted the yogurt. There was not enough. We put on more. It looked too perfect, so we smeared it. Then we wanted color on it, so we added some of the saucy oil. Now, Jillian is holding a noodle and and further smearing the yogurt around to make it look kind of oozy with the sauce. We're getting close. What do you think, Asha? Do you think we got it?
Asha Loupy: I think we got it. I mean, it looks like I want to dig into it.
Dan Pashman: Do we have enough peas in there? Do you want a couple more or you think we got that?
Asha Loupy: I think we could maybe add a pea, like, right here in this saucy area.
Jillian Knox: More sauce?
Asha Loupy: A pea.
Jillian Knox: Oh, yeah.
Dan Pashman: We're now at the point where we're like, "It's close, but it needs one more pea."
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: And, and Jillian is dipping — she has tweezers. She is dipping a single pea into the sauce ...
Jillian Knox: Yeah, right there.
Dan Pashman: That it looks naturally sauced.
Dan Liberti: That’s beautiful.
Asha Loupy: I love it.
Jillian Knox: Woo! I love it! Aww.
Dan Pashman: All right, We got it?
Asha Loupy: Got it.
Dan Liberti: I think we got it.
Jillian Knox: It's brilliant. Mark it!
Dan Liberti: Five stars.
[LAUGHING]
Asha Loupy: Okay, now that all the pictures have been taken, I get to take my first bite of this. My personal plate. I won't be sharing, but I can make other people plates.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Asha Loupy: I’m just gonna be in my corner eating.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: I'll turn the microphone off to give you privacy.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Asha isn’t the only special guest joining me at the shoot. Janie and the kids also make the trip out, so their hands can appear in a few of the photos. After all, they're key contributors to the book. And one area where they continue to have strong opinions is the title.
Dan Pashman: You might recall that we debated title ideas back in episode 1. My leading contenders then were "Beyond Bolognese" and "Put It On Pasta". We ended up nixing both. Janie likes "Saucy" and "Pastabilities".
Becky Pashman: So what's the title of the cookbook gonna be?
Dan Pashman: Still discussing.
Becky Pashman: Well, there's always room for improvement, so I feel like knowing you, you're always gonna be unsatisfied.
Dan Pashman: Do you think that's what I'm like?
Becky Pashman: It depends on the thing. Some things that you really don't care about, you're like, I couldn't care less. Leave me alone. But then things that you care about, like the cookbook, then you get really passionate about it, so …
Dan Pashman: At this point I tell the kids that I have selected a title. Emily provides the drum roll …
[EMILY PASHMAN PLAYS TABLE DRUMROLL]
Dan Pashman: Anything Is Pastable.
Becky Pashman: Interesting.
Emily Pashman: But it's kind of like the Mission: Impastable thing.
Dan Pashman: I'm very happy with Anything Is Pastable.
Becky Pashman: I'm happy for you. I'm just saying, if it were me, I would go with "Beyond Bolognese", but that's just me.
Dan Pashman: I'm starting to think my kids have inherited Janie's well-honed skepticism. But Anything's Pastable is a clear winner to me. It’s fun, cheeky, and also really conveys what the book is about: the idea that you can turn almost anything into a pasta dish. Emily’s right that it’s reminiscent of Mission: ImPASTAble, our series about the making of cascatelli, but to me that’s a nice call back.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: So the cover will say Anything's Pastable, but what will the photo on the cover be?
Janie Pashman: The name is not as important as the look of the cover. Like, people are buying cookbooks now, like, they're beautiful. It's like a coffee table book. So, the name is important, but also, like, just having it look really nice and pretty.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Will my book have the cover Janie thinks it should have? Uh, no. No, it will not. I’ll tell you all about it after the break, stick around.
MUSIC
+++ BREAK +++
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Welcome back to The Sporkful, I'm Dan Pashman. In addition to putting finishing touches on the book, I've also go to start thinking about the launch of the book. I reach out to folks at Blue Apron. I’m friendly with them because they’ve done some meal kits with cascatelli. And I ask them if they’d want to do a meal that features one of the recipes in my cookbook. I figure this could be a way to get eyeballs on my book, and a cool collab for them. And that’s how I end up at the Blue Apron test kitchen in Brooklyn.
Dan Pashman: So now another dish just appeared in front of you, John. Is this your whole day? [LAUGHS]
John Adler: Uh, a lot of the day. Yeah, it is a lot of the day.
Dan Pashman: I'm here with John Adler, the SVP of culinary. And the recipe that John wants to include is my pasta pizza! That’s the one you heard me work on in episode three, where you take a mixture of cooked pasta, egg, and olive oil, spread it out on a sheet pan, and bake it till crispy so it acts like a crust. Then you can top it like a pizza, then cut it up and eat it like a pizza.
Dan Pashman: In my recipe, I encourage you to add whatever toppings you like, so John and his team are doing just that. I look on as Lauren Katz, a senior culinary manager, tests out the recipe. One tweak they’ve come up with is to add cheese to the mixture of cooked pasta and egg before it bakes.
Lauren Katz: Yeah, so John actually suggested it just to help keep the crust nice and crispy. It's a little more foolproof and it just provides some more structure.
Dan Pashman: It's grated parmesan?
Lauren Katz: Yes.
Dan Pashman: Okay, now my kids are going to need me to test that for them.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Oh, pasta pizza crust coming out of the oven. Oh, look at that!
Lauren Katz: Crispy!
Dan Pashman: Are we doing pepperoni and is it hot honey?
Lauren Katz: Yeah, so we're doing …
Dan Pashman: This is like the hottest trend in pizza.
Lauren Katz: I know.
Dan Pashman: It's so good.
Lauren Katz: We're not original for doing it.
Dan Pashman: It doesn't matter. No, but I love that you're doing this. I think this is a fantastic addition to pasta pizza!
Dan Pashman: I was wrong. It’s not pepperoni, it’s sopressa, sliced nice and thin. Even better, to be honest. I take my taste …
Dan Pashman: This is making me want to make pasta pizza again.
Lauren Katz: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: This is a winner.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: And for the meal kit, Lauren’s pairing it with a butter lettuce salad with a creamy ranch and pickled pepper dressing, plus tomatoes, cucumber, and crispy onions. And this whole meal kit is available to order now. Plus, we worked it out so so the folks at Blue Apron will give you 20% off the first four weeks of a new subscription when you order it. You can all get your pasta pizza meal kit at BlueApron.com/sporkful, and make sure you go to the menu for the week of April 8th to order it.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: We have come to a very big moment.
Dan Pashman: I'm back in the photo studio with Jillian and Dan ...
Dan Pashman: We are about to shoot the cover of the cookbook. I feel a little bit nervous. I have total confidence in all of us, but it just feels like this has higher stakes. You know, like if one of the photos for one of the dishes on page 143 isn't perfect, like it's okay. The cookbook could still be great. But people do judge a book by its cover. This is also the only thing that the publisher they have to approve. There's more people who have a say in this, more people for us to please.
Jillian Knox: Take a deep breath, Dan.
Dan Pashman: [TAKES A DEEP BREATH]
Jillian Knox: Yep. It's all right.
Dan Pashman: It's gonna be all right.
Jillian Knox: It's gonna be okay.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. Okay.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: I’ve already told Dan and Jillian that I want to have three dishes on the cover — that’ll help communicate that there are so many different kinds of dishes in the book. Jillian's been putting thought into what color the tabletop in the cover shot should be, which is a big decision, because that will essentially be the color of the cover.
Dan Pashman: You both were very quickly in agreement on a rather daring choice. Which is?
Jillian Knox: Aubergine. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Dan Liberti: Purple.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Liberti: I like the eggplant purple choice, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Now, I would call this dark purple.
Dan Pashman: Jillian likes it because she thinks it’s striking but not distracting, and it makes the food really pop. She also says purple is not a color you see on many cookbook covers, so she likes it for that reason. And I'm game, but I’ve also heard lots of stories from cookbook authors about just stumbling onto a cover image during the photo shoot.
Dan Liberti: It's nice to get that kind of creative inspiration and just go with it ...
Dan Pashman: Right.
Dan Liberti: And have it work out.
Jillian Knox: I think, you know ...
Dan Pashman: But I’m sure it also happens sometimes that people go into a shoot with a plan for the cover, and then that is what ends up being the cover.
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: And it's good.
Jillian Knox: I mean, sometimes.
Dan Pashman: Right at this moment my mind flashes to another photo that we took a couple of days earlier …
Dan Pashman: It happened, like the other — when we were shooting the cacio e pepe with chili crisp, and we were doing these sort of, like, long mafalda noodles draped over chopsticks. They were, like, hanging down almost like a wall of pasta, and we were all, like, "Oh my god, that looks amazing." And we looked at it, we're, like, "That could be a cover."
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: You know? I'm still a little stuck on the, like, three dishes, but I wouldn't rule it out.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: Enough chatting — it's time to get down to business. Jillian brings out the larb cascatelli, inspired by the Thai Laotian dish that has a lot of herbs and a lime garnish. Then comes the spinach artichoke lasagna pinwheels, a baked pasta dish that just looks really cool.
Dan Pashman: Jillian has her blowtorch out to make the cheese look extra fresh and cheesy.
Dan Pashman: Finally, comes the scallion oil bucatini with a runny egg on top.
Dan Liberti: You ready to pop?
Dan Pashman: All right. So this is a very exciting, momentous occasion. We are about to pop the egg yolk that is going to run down on the scallion oil bucatini that's to appear on the cover of the cookbook.
Jillian Knox: Alrighty.
Dan Pashman: We're actually going to put one more drop of egg yolk on a different part of the egg.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Liberti: The golf announcer voice is just killin’ it?
Dan Pashman: A hush has fallen over the crowd.
Dan Pashman: I’m gonna let you in on a little food styling secret. Jillian actually takes a bit of egg yolk from a second egg to increase the amount of runny yolk in the photo, make it look more decadent. But we can’t go overboard or it’ll look unrealistic.
Jillian Knox: I think that’s good,
Dan Liberti: I think that’s max, yeah.
Dan Pashman: Do we like the scallions floating in the yolk?
Dan Liberti: I do.
Jillian Knox: I kind of do.
Dan Pashman: Okay.
Dan Pashman: Dan’s able to do a quick and dirty photoshop job, laying the title in over the photo so we can see roughly what it will all look like as a cover.
Dan Liberti: I think it’s beautiful, I think the color choice is amazing, the golden pasta looks great on top of it.
Dan Pashman: The purple background you mean?
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Liberti: Yeah. with the pasta on it.
Jillian Knox: Yeah. It’s very inviting and comforting but also just like, "Wow! What? That's ... I didn’t know I could make that." You know?
Dan Pashman: Right.
Jillian Knox: Wow!
Dan Pashman: As I said, the cover is the one image that the publisher, William Morrow, wants to approve. They’ve given us free rein to do whatever we want in all the other photos. And I want their approval, at this point I’ve been working with my editor, Cassie Jones, for over a year, I really trust her judgment. We email the cover mockup to Cassie, and to a designer there named Ploy Siripant. And now, we wait.
Dan Liberti: This is the stressful part, because we think it looks amazing ...
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Liberti: And there's always that slim chance where it's like, "Guys, what are you thinking?" Just shoot it on white. It's like, oh, don't shoot it on white.
Jillian Knox: Right.
Dan Pashman: Right. Let me check my email.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: We don’t want to break down the spread until we hear back, because if they have notes or tweaks to suggest, we got to those changes and reshoot. Once this gets broken down and the food gets eaten, we're not gonna have time to do this all over again later. So we keep waiting.
Jillian Knox: Well, you know ... Does anyone have tents? We can pitch a tent? We can .... Sleeping bags?
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Let me see. Should I text Cassie also? Just emailed you a pic of where we're at with the cover, comma, let me know your thoughts when you can, exclamation mark. I mean, maybe we should move forward. I mean, I feel — we all feel really good about this.
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Cassie has been generally — like, every single photo that I've sent her from the shoot so far, she's had nothing but positive feedback. So, it's hard for me to imagine that she's gonna suddenly look at this, and be like, "What? That's not working at all," like, that seems unlikely. Oh wait, you guys? I just got a text from Cassie. It says she's looking now. She's looking at the email. Let me refresh my email.
Jillian Knox: Does it have the three dots?
Dan Pashman: Look, it has three dots! It's the three dots.
Jillian Knox: Oh!
Dan Pashman: Look, what's it gonna say? Oh god, the suspense is killing me.
Jillian Knox: Oh my god.
Dan Pashman: Imagine if they’re just like, it’s awful. [LAUGHS] No, it wouldn't be.
[LAUGHING]
Jillian Knox: Oh wait! That means she's sending. She's sending something.
Dan Pashman: It's coming.
Jillian Knox: Oh god.
Dan Pashman: Oh! My quick reaction is that I love everything but the purple.
Jillian Knox: AHHHHHHH!
[ALL DISAPPOINTED]
[LAUGHING]
Dan Liberti: Dang!
Jillian Knox: Burn! [LAUGHS] It's fine. Let's switch it to yellow.
Dan Liberti: Aw, okay.
Jillian Knox: What is she thinking?
Dan Pashman: She says it's a super unusual cover color ...
Jillian Knox: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: Which, happy to consider it, but it's traditionally not thought to be saleable, so I would want other options.
Jillian Knox: Mm-hmm.
Dan Liberti: Okay!
Jillian Knox: But we can switch real quick. The lights are still there.
Dan Pashman: Jillian swaps in a blue surface to start.
Jillian Knox: Purple is better.
Dan Liberti: Purple is better.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: A few minutes later we try red, which we like well enough. And then ...
Dan Pashman: All right, this is — now we're trying green.
Dan Liberti: I think the team is pulling for purple and red.
Dan Pashman: I'm torn because it's like, I get that purple is not a common color and so the publisher sees that and they're like people won't buy this and it's too weird and different. And part of me says, well, yeah, everything's weird and different until someone does it and it works. On the other hand, like I was scarred by my first book, which I wrote in 2014. And the reason why it's been so long, between my first book and my second book is that nobody bought the first book. [LAUGHS]
Jillian Knox: What was it called?
Dan Pashman: It was called Eat More better. The problem with it was that it was too weird and different, and it was — I could never explain it to people exactly what it was, so nobody bought it.
Jillian Knox: Hmm.
Dan Pashman: And so they're — you know, these publishers are not dummies. Like they make a lot of successful books. And if no one buys this book, I probably won't get to make a third.
[LAUGHING]
Jillian Knox: I understand what they're saying, but I'm also like, your book is different. Like, that's, like, also the point of this pasta book is that it is different.
Dan Pashman: I send all the versions with all the different backgrounds to Cassie.
Dan Pashman: Okay, so I got the final word from Cassie and Ploy. They said, "Of the options we sent, overall it looks great," and they agree that we can definitely get the cover from what we've shot. So, at the very least, we can feel good that we have shot the cover.
Dan Liberti: Yay.
Jillian Knox: Amazing.
Dan Pashman: Details TBD. And Cassie agreed that we will not abandon the purple at this time. You didn't love it the first second you saw it, either.
Dan Liberti: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: So, I can understand. On the other hand, you kind of want the cover to not need to grow on people.
Dan Liberti: Exactly. Yeah.
Dan Pashman: It kind of has to grab them instantly.
Dan Liberti: Agreed, yeah.
Dan Pashman: You have like 0.1 seconds
Dan Liberti: Yeah.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: By the end of our eight day shoot, we’ve gotten every photo we need. Overall, I think it was a huge success. The photos have the vibe I wanted them to have and the whole process made the book feeI more real to me, which is very exciting. In the following months, while Dan touches up photos, I make last minute revisions to the recipes, and the book gets proofread by a copy editor.
Dan Pashman: In May 2023, with the text pretty much locked down, I've made a decision on the cover. Jillian, Dan, and I hop on a Zoom so I can update them.
Dan Pashman: The design folks put together a few different options using a couple of different colors, including the purple one that we liked, a couple others, different fonts, different things. We were supposed to, like, give feedback to the publisher. So I — my agent said like, let's talk first. So I got on the phone with him. And he said, "I like all these options. They're good, but none of them seems, like, great."
Dan Pashman: My agent’s basic point is that the cover looks like a lot of other covers. It's not distinctive enough. It doesn't feel as fun and different as the book itself. It doesn’t feel like me. As I tell Jillian and Dan, for him to have this opinion carries a lot of weight for me, because in my experience, agents are mostly cheerleaders. This may be the first time an agent has ever told me that anything I did could possibly be improved.
Dan Pashman: I realize he’s right ... And it’s my fault. I was insistent on showing three dishes. But when you do that, you got to shoot them from overhead. So you get an overhead shot with three beautiful plates of food and despite Jillian and Dan’s talents, it’s always going to look like a lot of food photos you’ve seen before. As I told them …
Dan Pashman: So we went back to the drawing board a little bit.
Jillian Knox: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: But Dan, do you remember we snapped a certain photo of a different dish and at that moment I turned to you and I said, "That actually could be the cover."
Dan Liberti: Was it the pasta? The — hey, everything was pasta.
Jillian Knox: [LAUGHS]
Dan Liberti: But was it the hang ...
Dan Pashman: Right, right.
Dan Liberti: Was it the hanging pasta …
Dan Pashman: Yes, Dan, it was the pasta!
[LAUGHING]
Dan Liberti: The main menu was pasta. The hanging pasta, the cacio e pepe.
Dan Pashman: Yes, it was the cacio e pepe with chili crisp.
Jillian Knox: Oooh!
Dan Liberti: Right.
Dan Pashman: Where we had like that wall of noodles hanging down?
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Liberti: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: This really is one of my favorite photos from the shoot. It's James Park's recipe. James, aka the Pasta Translator. He wrote a whole cookbook on chili crisp -- and this recipe is cacio e pepe e chili crisp. We paired the sauce with mafalda, a long flat noodle with ruffles along both edges.
Dan Pashman: And that one is a great photo. It's just more viscerally grabby.
Jillian Knox: Mm-hmm.
Dan Pashman: So, we went back to that image and came up with something like this.
Jillian Knox: [GASPS]
Dan Liberti: Yeah.
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: Jillian says she loves this cover because it's so different, so graphic, and striking. She just wants to jump onto the page and eat it — as do I. Most of all, as compared to the first cover ...
Jillian Knox: It's like more fun.
Dan Liberti: Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure.
Dan Pashman: Yes. That's what it is. It's more fun. That's all — yes. I just spent 20 minutes saying what you just said in two seconds.
Jillian Knox: [LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: Which is that the first one wasn't fun enough and this is more fun.
Jillian Knox: Yeah.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: So my photography team is on board. My agent also tells me he approves, and so does the publisher the same. There's just one other group of people whose opinions matter to me.
Dan Pashman: I have here potential covers for my book.
[FAMILY GASPS]
Dan Pashman: My family.
Dan Pashman: Now girls, I know you've been learning since kindergarten that you can't judge a book by its cover. But it turns out that's not true ...
[FAMILY GASPS]
Dan Pashman: In the case of actual books.
Becky Pashman: My whole life.
Dan Pashman: I have this whole plan about how I'm going to reveal the cover to them. Even though the decision is made, I’ll tell them I want their input, because surely they’ll agree with my final choice, and then they’ll get to feel like they picked it. So first I show them a few versions of the earlier, rejected cover, so they can share their displeasure with it.
Janie Pashman: I really like the purple-y one.
Dan Pashman: Uh-oh. Janie and the kids actually like the rejected cover. So I explain to them, I just don’t think this cover conveys my personality. And there’s actually another photo that I’ve decided to go with instead. Hearing that I’ve actually already made the decision provokes a near riot in the living room:
[FAMILY CROSS TALK]
Emily Pashman: Now that I think of it ...
[FAMILY CROSS TALK]
Janie Pashman: Wait, so you just asked us to choose all these and to tell us that you're not using any of them?
Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Emily Pashman: This looks like a good cover, so I'm gonna make a whole different cover instead of just like ...
Dan Pashman: I wanted your opinion two months ago, but we weren't able to all get together and talk, so I had to make the decision on my own.
Becky Pashman: Yeah. Well, obviously, you should have asked our opinion [Dan Pashman: No.] when you were taking photos instead of waiting until everything was done to ask our opinion?
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] All right, do you want to see the cover of the book or no?
Emily Pashman: Yeah.
Janie Pashman: Yeah, but do we have opinions or this is definite?
Dan Pashman: This is definite. This is a mock up of the final. Ready?
Emily Pashman: Wow!
Becky Pashman: I hate it.
Emily Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Becky Pashman: I actually hate it. Oh my god, why would you ...
Janie Pashman: Are you serious?
Emily Pashman: That's so mean.
Dan Pashman: Yeah.
Janie Pashman: Is this a joke?
Dan Pashman: No, it's not a joke.
Janie Pashman: I mean that — like I can't even tell what that is.
Becky Pashman: Oh my god, it's so bad.
Janie Pashman: This is harder to read than the other one.
Emily Pashman: I feel so bad for you.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Janie Pashman: Are you joking?
Dan Pashman: No, I'm not joking.
Janie Pashman: You think this is better, Dan? Look at this from a distance. This on a thumbnail looks like vomit.
Emily Pashman: That is so mean!
Janie Pashman: Like that was my first thought. This looks so pretty.
Dan Pashman: This is not my personality.
Becky Pashman: Dad ...
Emily Pashman: Flip it!
Dan Pashman: This is not the style of the book.
Becky Pashman: Dad? Dad? Dad? We don't care what your personality is. We care about what's going to be appealing to people's eyes and this is not.
Dan Pashman: You know, I showed the pictures to …
Janie Pashman: You showed this to people and people thought this looks better?!
Dan Pashman: When we made this switch every single person at the publisher and the photo team agreed that it was better.
Janie Pashman: Part of me — I feel like the Eat More Better cover, you wanted that to be silly and it just people — I don't know. I don't know what people ...
Dan Pashman: This isn’t silly.
Becky Pashman: And how many people bought it? A record 20 people and they were all in our family.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS]
Emily Pashman: That is so mean! You are just crushing his dreams!
Janie Pashman: That’s all right, but I …
Becky Pashman: Did you know how people rub their thighs when they're nervous? And that's what you just did?
Janie Pashman: I don't know, I guess we shouldn't even keep talking if you've already ...
Dan Pashman: Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and hit stop on this recording. Thanks everyone.
Dan Pashman: This is obviously not the reaction I wanted. Even for my family, who are often my toughest critics, this was a real drubbing. But then again, Janie’s telling me what people who buy cookbooks want, meanwhile, she doesn’t buy cookbooks! We’ve been together for 20 years and I can’t think of a single proper cookbook she’s ever bought. All her recipes are scribbled on scraps of paper and shoved inside a black and white paperback cookbook from 1990 called That Hungarian’s In My Kitchen.
Dan Pashman: Still, my confidence is shaken. I go back to Jillian and Dan and tell them about Janie’s concerns. They insist the cover is great. I go back to my publisher and say, “Are you sure this is a good cover? Are you sure you like it?” They have more meetings and discussions and my editor Cassie reports back: “Yes, we love it.” She says it really stands out, and if some people can’t tell exactly what it is, that will be alluring, it’ll make them want to learn more. So in August, I have my last stand with Janie.
Janie Pashman: What did they say about your book? You said they were looking at pictures. Are they changing the cover?
Dan Pashman: I expressed all your concerns to them and they respectfully disagreed.
Janie Pashman: Really?
Dan Pashman: You know?
Janie Pashman: Did they have any, like, focus groups or anything?
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] As much as we like to joke about, you know, your skepticism, like, you know, I want you to be excited about the book.
Janie Pashman: Yeah, I am. I just want, I want other people to be excited about it, so ... No, yeah, I mean it does look better now. Like, I love the tagline: 81 Inventive Pasta Recipes for Saucy People.
Dan Pashman: I think that's the biggest endorsement I'm gonna get.
Janie Pashman: I don't know, I mean, I think it's gonna be great.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGH] All right. Thanks, babe.
Janie Pashman: You're welcome.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: It takes a few more months to bring the book together into a cohesive final layout, and triple check everything. In the fall of 2023, the book goes to the printer in Thailand. All I can do now is wait. On January 4th, 2024, the first hard copies arrive at my house. The family all gathers in the kitchen.
[UNWRAPPING]
Dan Pashman: All right, I’m opening it up.
[UNWRAPPING]
Dan Pashman: You ready? I’m nervous, I actually didn’t expect to be nervous.
Janie Pashman: Sasha’s squeaking with her toy. Oh wow. It looks really nice. Oh, the back looks really nice.
Dan Pashman: Yeah. [LAUGHS]
Dan Pashman: Holding the book in my hands is satisfying, but I’m also struck by the feeling of, like, "All this work and it’s so small!" [LAUGHS] Three years, and I could misplace this thing under a pile of mail. For a moment, the accomplishment feels insignificant.
Dan Pashman: But then I think about being in my kitchen and cooking from this book. My mind flashes forward many years, when the kids come home from college and ask for their favorite pasta dish, and I pull out this same book, the pages crinkled and stained. It may be small, but it’s permanent. Becky picks it up and starts flipping through.
Becky Pashman: This one was good, the prosciutto one.
Dan Pashman: That one was so good.
Becky Pashman: Oh, this one was really good, too.
Dan Pashman: The miso butter?
Becky Pashman: What's mac and dal? Did I eat that one?
Dan Pashman: I think so.
Becky Pashman: That looks good. That looks good, too. How does everything look so good?
Dan Pashman: Becky, what are your thoughts on seeing the book and holding it in your hands for the first time?
Becky Pashman: It’s really cool.
Dan Pashman: How so?
Becky Pashman: Because it's real. Like before it was just like something you were talking about, like something you wanted to do. But now it's actually like a real thing, you know?
Dan Pashman: And how does it make you think about, like, looking back on all the testing we did and, like, the discussions and the debates and the eating and re-eating?
Becky Pashman: [LAUGHS] Well, it makes it seem like — well, not that I think it wasn't worth it, but, like, it is worth it because it's, like, if you want to do something and you actually put in the effort, like, it'll happen.
Dan Pashman: Sounds like you might have learned something in this process.
Becky Pashman: Maybe so.
[LAUGHING]
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: To me, like, one of the things that's really exciting about holding this in my hand is just to know that, like, all three of you also contributed really, really importantly to this book. Like, this really was like a family effort. Especially in the past few weeks as I've been working on the podcast series and listening back to all the recordings we've made and just thinking about like how much feedback you had and testing the recipes and putting your hands in the pictures and you know, I feel like this is something that our whole family did. I mean, mostly me.
[LAUGHING]
Dan Pashman: But also you guys.
Becky Pashman: Well, at least you've got the self-confidence thing down.
Janie Pashman: Put it next to Eat More Better. See how it looks on the bookshelf.
Dan Pashman: Well, nobody else is going to have that experience because no one else bought Eat More Better.
[LAUGHING]
Janie Pashman: Our family bought it.
Becky Pashman: Bro roasted his own book.
Dan Pashman: It looks nice on the bookshelf.
Janie Pashman: Yeah.
MUSIC
Janie Pashman: It looks really nice. I love the spine. It has a good spine.
Dan Pashman: [LAUGHS] It has a good spine.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: And with that, I’m pleased to announce that Anything’s Pastable officially goes on sale tomorrow, March 19th. But of course, you can order it right now wherever books are sold. You can also order a signed copy, get the info for all that at Sporkful.com/book. I hope you like it. It has a really nice spine.
MUSIC
Dan Pashman: And another way to get a signed copy of the book is to come see me on tour! I’m doing live Sporkful tapings and book signings all across America over the next couple months in conversation with some incredible folks. There’s a good chance I’m gonna be somewhere near you. Get info and tickets at Sporkful.com/tour.
Dan Pashman: Remember, that if you want to see pictures and videos from my cookbook journey, from recipe testing with the family to trekking across Italy, follow me on Instagram @TheSporkful.
Dan Pashman: And if you want to eat pasta with me in Italy, I’ve teamed up with the folks at Culinary Backstreets to create a tour where you're gonna get to do just that! You’ll eat many of the same pasta dishes that I ate on my research trip, with many of the same people. I’ll even be there with you in Bari to eat spaghetti all’assassina together. The link is in the show notes and there’s more info at CulinaryBackstreets.com.
Dan Pashman: And one final request — if you’re new to our podcast and you’ve enjoyed this series, please take a minute to go to your podcasting app, go to our show page, and hit Follow or Subscribe or whatever it is in your app. You can do it right now while you’re listening, then we can hang out more! Thanks. We’ll be back in two weeks with another episode of The Sporkful.
Dan Pashman: I want to say a big thank you to the people who you didn’t hear in this series but who played a part in helping me make this cookbook: Nelson Lau, Marina Freytes, Caitlin Beyer, Royce Burke, Elvis Santoyo, Natalie Christian, Andrea Nguyen, Andrew Janjigian, and all the incredible folks at my publisher William Morrow, including Cassie Jones, Jill Zimmerman, Melissa Esner, Taylor Turkington, Sarah Falter, Ploy Siripant, Renata de Oliveira, Shelby Peak, Jennifer Eck and Anna Brower.
CREDITS
Janie Pashman: Part of what I'm feeling is, like, I don't want you to be hurt by the press as if, like, you feel like this is your last chance. It's not as much doubtful as protective.
Dan Pashman: You're protecting me?
Becky and Emily Pashman: Awwww!
[LAUGHING]
Becky Pashman: That was so cute!
