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Food The Tastemakers:

Impatient & Imperfect Foodies

I often call myself a food lovin’ freak but foodie would also do. And I’m definitely a little impatient: I want what I want, when I want it, and it has to be just so as I hold myself to the highest standards. My expectations are a little ridiculous—call me a perfectionist, if you will.

Well, I recently met my match in the Impatient Foodie herself: Elettra Wiedemann. She’s another lady who swoons over creating a killer meal. After over ten years of modeling, she decided to try on some new hats, founding a non-profit called One Frickin’ Day and opening a pop up restaurant called GOODNESS. The food world hooked her, leading her to launch a series of cooking videos and the Impatient Foodie blog, which she describes as her journey to figure out “how to grow, cook, bake, make, and preserve my own food, all while living in NYC and navigating a severe lack of patience and goldfish attention span.”

The title alone is brilliant, so to meet her and find that she was as energetic and fun as I’d hoped was icing on the cake. And speaking of cake—that’s just what we got down to! When I first reached out to Elettra about cooking together(nervously—I must admit) , she thrilled me by instantly saying yes and suggesting a crepe cake right off the bat. She’d been itching to try one out since tasting the infamous crepe cake creations from Lady M, and knew it would fit perfectly in the “Worth it or Not Worth It?” section of her site. Honestly, I was pretty nervous—a 20 layer crepe cake? When I’d never even made a crepe? I worried that it might be just a little too laborious for Eye-Swoon’s style.

But doubts aside, I was pumped to have Elettra in my kitchen! She arrived that morning, her sweet little dog in tow, with a massive jar of crepe batter that had needed to sit for 24 hours prior. I had worried the night before that I didn’t have the right tools—a crepe pan, for example, but Elettra’s sheer excitement calmed my nerves.

Well, it wasn’t entirely smooth sailing. Our first few attempts at a crepe resulted in burnt fingers and a sloppy, un-flippable mess. We remained confident, trying out different tools, but, sadly, the next…ahem…FIFTEEN crepes yielded one giant mess. We were so worried that we walked to West Elm Market to attempt to buy a proper crepe pan—but even that failed. But just as we began to consider this a “Not Worth It” attempt, we gave it one more shot with a new metal spatula we picked up.

To our surprise this little tool saved the day! It also required Winnie (my swoony photographer) stepping out from behind the lens to show us how it’s done. She delivered our first whole and flippable crepe and, finally, we were off!

Three hours later, with ten pretty good-looking crepes, we had succeeded. By this point we were just giddy—a sugar rush, perhaps? In the end, ten crepes was actually the perfect amount for a swoon-a-licious cake. We devoured it, giving each other high fives for turning things around. I hope this reminds you that, while the final pictures might look great, our cooking journeys are definitely not without bumps. We aren’t simply impatient foodies, but imperfect foodies, too—and with each other’s support, that felt totally okay.

Feeling inspired to make your own crepe cake? Check out the Lady M recipe here and on Impatient Foodie!

Signing off,
Imperfect Foodie xx

Photography by Winnie Au.

Elettra's Swoonisms

mastermind behind the impatient foodie

A LOOK INTO ELETTRA'S FOOD WORLD

Can you share your journey into the food world?
It all happened rather circuitously and so it’s a long, complicated answer. Suffice to say, cooking really started for me when I moved away from home to go to college and also when I started modeling. Basically, I started cooking when I had to fend for myself and since then my relationship to cooking and food has been ever evolving and expanding.

Cooking makes me feel…most of the time, cooking makes me feel really happy, but sometimes it also makes me feel frustrated and bored. On those days, I just order Seamless.

What are you most impatient about when it comes to food?
There is not one particular thing I feel impatient with, it’s more about the over all process of a recipe. I think that many recipes I see on the web or in cookbooks are overly complicated and not tailored to home cooks. My goal with Impatient Foodie is to share recipes that yield yummy results without overly complicated processes or paraphernalia and never a recipe where you have to stand over a pot and sing to it for 5 hours.

What’s your go-to meal that you could make with your eyes closed?
Anything involving pasta.

How about a showstopper dish that you make to wow guests?
I’ll get back to you on this when I have a house I can actually entertain in.

The ingredients you couldn’t live without/that you always have on hand?
I always, always have extra virgin olive oil in my pantry and I use it on almost everything. Apart from that, food staples in my house include yogurt, eggs, butter, bread, grains, various pastas, flour, honey, canned beans, tahini, and cheeses. Everything else revolves in and out depending on the season and my mood.

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