One of the great benefits of having the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in the area every other year for more than the past decade has been the number of celebrities available to inspire young people in the community. One of those celebrities who generously donated their time during this year’s event was former model, chef, author, television personality, and all around great person, Carla Hall.
After her hour-long cooking demonstration for more than a hundred food fans, we had the opportunity to catch up with Ms. Hall to ask about her career advice for young people, her Michigan ties (by marriage), a her approach to cooking as told in her 2018 book, Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration.
Q: During the events leading up to the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship in Benton Harbor, you were among several accomplished people to share career-focused advice with area youth. What was that advice?
A: One, you don’t have to plan the end of your life right now. It’s about getting experience. It’s about having an experience. It’s about taking a job and spinning that into something else. You’re meeting people. You’re talking to people. It’s about communication skills. It’s about knowing that you have options – realizing that every step you take informs the next one.
I wasn’t one to stay in a job forever. I think my mother was in the same career for 50 years. I think gone are the days that we have a job for 50 years at a time. The jobs are also there to help you learn something about yourself. A lot of young people don’t know how to have a job, so it may inform what jobs you have. And if that employer is patient, if they understand how to tell you how to show up for a job, showing up on time, maybe your first job, honestly, is just about learning how to show up on time, how to learn, learning how to have your clothes all cleaned and ready to work.
It’s also being an ambassador to that job. I’m saying that because a lot of kids will say, ‘Well that’s not my job.’ If I have hired you, anything that someone asks you, you are the ambassador for this place. So it doesn’t matter if it’s not your job. If it’s not your job then you’ll say, ‘Excuse me, let me find out.’ That’s how you learn how to have a job.
Q: You have a stack of books here that you’ve signed for area students. What’s the book and what’s in it?
A: This is Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration. It came out in 2018. What makes this book still relevant today is I’m showing the difference between everyday soul food and celebration soul food. A lot of times people want to put soul food in one box and I’m trying to tell people that every culture has its celebration dishes that are not meant to be eaten every day. So what are those ingredients and dishes that are lighter where you can still celebrate the culture?
When I was doing this book, I went to the farmer’s market, and I reverse engineered it. I went to the farmer’s market, I cooked, and then wrote the recipe. A lot of the recipes are in response to what I found at the farmers market. So it’s approachable, they are recipes that are fresh, and not only am I thinking about cooking, but I’m thinking about helping someone else’s business and community by shopping at the farmers market.
Q: You also mentioned during your cooking demonstration that you didn’t cook much when your grandmother was still alive, but that after becoming a chef, you reverse engineered her recipes. How?
A: It helps that I ate so much as a child and I loved my grandmother’s food. By being someone who’s in culinary arts, I can taste food and understand what process it went through. So if I’m trying to figure out my grandmother’s banana pudding, I will have a pudding and I’m like, ‘Oh wait, that needs to be lighter. So what makes it lighter? Oh, cream, whipping cream. Oh, but it has another taste. What is that? Oh, it’s vanilla extract.’ So you’re trying to get at the flavors and sometimes you have to be connected not only emotionally but also with your palate because a lot of times we give too much of our power to what’s written on paper and we are disconnected mentally. We just read it. We do it and it doesn’t come out because you’re not connected to the dish. When I reverse engineer something, I am emotionally connected to it – I’m looking for a flavor (and) it doesn’t matter what’s written on the paper. I’m thinking about adding something to get closer to that flavor that’s in my head.
Q: You’re from Tennessee but you mentioned you have ties to Michigan. Help us understand how?
A: Oh, my husband is from Kalamazoo. My in-laws are here. My husband also went to Western Michigan. And so he’s always pulling up the hand, you know, and pointing to the western side, you know. And I’m from Tennessee, so I pull up my forearm and I point to the center because I’m from Nashville.
Q: Is that (forearm gesture) what people from Tennessee do?
A: They don’t. They don’t do it. (My husband’s) always saying, ‘That’s not a thing.’ I’m like, ‘I want to make it a thing because you have a hand.’ And so I had really enjoyed coming here. Mario Batali is a really good friend from being on The Chew and so I’ve gone to Traverse City and further north. And I’ve really enjoyed coming here for the last 19 years.
ABOUT CARLA
Carla Hall has competed on Bravo’s Top Chef and Top Chef: All Stars. Carla spent 7 years co-hosting ABC’s Emmy award winning, popular lifestyle series “The Chew”, and is currently featured on the Food Network in shows such as Thanksgiving, Holiday and Halloween Baking Championships and Worst Cooks in America.
Her latest cookbook, Carla Hall’s Soul Food: Everyday and Celebration, was published in 2018, landing on annual Best Cookbook lists across the country and receiving an NAACP Image Awards nomination. Hall published her debut picture book, Carla and the Christmas Cornbread, in November 2021. It’s described as, “…a heartwarming tale loosely based on Hall’s childhood growing up in Nashville, TN, that celebrates family traditions, old and new, and also includes a child-friendly Christmas cornbread recipe perfect for the holidays.”
She is active in many charitable endeavors and says she focuses her participation in organizations where she can make an impact advocating for children. She’s been involved with 4H, Pajama Program, GenYouth, and Helen Keller International. In addition, Carla volunteers time to promote other non profit organizations such as: The James Beard Foundation, FEED America, the Jacques Pepin Foundation, The Smithsonian Institutes and their membership of museums, and others.
