I am so happy to have Toya Boudy back on the show.
We first had Toya on a few years back, and my dad and I had so much fun with her. She is so transparent, and so unapologetically herself — when I finally grow up, I want to be just like Toya.
Toya’s first job was cooking at the corner store — and in New Orleans, the corner stores offer a huge variety of different foods. She was 15. That’s how she got her start cooking, and she hasn’t stopped since. She’s appeared on plenty of TV, like Guy’s Grocery Games, TLC, and the Food Network, and her first cookbook, Cooking for the Culture, came out in 2023. Her new book is Cooking from Scratch, and it was written in the wake of tremendous upheaval in Toya’s life: divorce and selling her house and moving, her mom’s serious health struggles, and just the every day taking care of her three kids, the oldest and youngest of whom are 20 years apart. Life is a lot!
And so the book is a rebuilding book — a “written elder,” as Toya calls it — a community in cookbook form, a shoulder to lean on when you don’t have the energy to reach out.
Enjoy the interview, and be sure to check out the handful of recipes we’re featuring from Cooking from Scratch.
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