Transcending The Table - with Samah Dada

Cooking Up Consciousness Podcast

Zoe speaks with Samah Dada, cookbook author and founder of her blog DADAEATS, about her childhood love of dolphins, the power of representation in food and beverage media, her current love of Harry Styles and Justin Bieber, and the many food experiences that have shaped who she is.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Sometimes we need to look outside of our own world in order to recognise that people like ourselves exist, and that they thrive. The world is bigger than we sometimes believe it to be.
• There’s nothing glamorous about working every hour of the day, although there seems to be this perception in the media, and through influencers. Life is about caring for yourself.
• When you find the thing you love to do in life, it’s never a job. It becomes a passion – a force that drives us, and money becomes less important than this drive.
• When we take our place in front of the world, we are empowering those like us – we are reassuring them that they too can find their own place.

BEST MOMENTS

‘It transcends more than what you’re putting on the table. It’s the intention behind it’

‘It showed me that the word’s a bit bigger’

‘When you’re being present – doing something because you love it – it stops being work’

‘I love that you’re bringing your culture back, and using your platform to be a guiding light – to be a representative for other young women who look like you’

VALUABLE RESOURCES

Samah Dada Twitter - https://twitter.com/dadaeats

Samah Dada Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/dadaeats

Dada Eats - https://dadaeats.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Zoe Adjonyoh is a writer, chef, and food justice activist from South-East London on a mission to bring African food to the masses. As a mixed-race, Black queer woman born to a Ghanaian father and Irish mother from a working-class background who works at the intersections of food, culture, identity, and politics, Zoe Adjonyoh is driven to create change in the food landscape. Zoe has taken her fresh interpretation of classic Ghananian flavours to venues across London, Berlin, Accra, and New York and become a leader in the new African cuisine revolution. Through her supper clubs, kitchen residencies, mobile catering, a former restaurant space in Brixton, her highly successful cookbook, Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen: An Introduction to New African Cuisine - from Ghana With Love, and a thriving e-commerce spice business, Zoe has sought to inspire African food entrepreneurs, cooks, and chefs from the continent and the diaspora across the world. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoe has held events, demonstrations, and talks in addition to launching a crowdfunding campaign to support some of the most vulnerable in her community. In 2020, Zoe founded the thought leadership platform Black Book for Black and non-white people working within hospitality and food media. Join Zoe as she dismantles, disrupts, and decolonises the food industry while supporting marginalised communities and building a more equitable food system.

NOTES

Thank you for cooking up consciousness with me! Love & light- Zoe Adjonyoh

Follow Cooking Up Consciousness on Clubhouse for conversations and community and visit www.zoeadjonyoh.com to subscribe to all of Zoe’s consciousness-raising projects including Black Book and Ghana Kitchen. For more about Zoe and her work, follow @zoeadjonyoh on IG and on Clubhouse. Please visit Patreon to support this self-funded podcast from as little as $4 per month.

CREDITS

Executive Producer, Creator, and Host- Zoe Adjonyoh

Producer- Dani Dillon of Lunch Group

Graphic & Website Design- Sara Held

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zoeadjonyoh/?hl=en

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