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Audio Montage: Love now and fall in love. I love... love stronger than anything. For the love of love. And I love you more than anything. You're still love.

Anna Martin: From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin. This is Modern Love. And today I'm talking to chef and cookbook author Carla Lalli Music. Carla loves food. She's been a line cook, a home cook, an on-camera cook in Bon Appétit videos that did crazy numbers. She developed a fan base of people who really liked her vibe. Her recipes were accessible and flavorful. And when you watched her in the zone making something delicious, she really looked like she was having fun. But while her career was taking off, behind the scenes, Carla felt her connection to food slipping away. Then her 24-year-long marriage ended. And after decades of feeding other people and teaching other people to feed themselves, Carla had to figure out what truly fed her. As a newly single person, she poured all of this into her new cookbook, which is honestly sort of half cookbook and half memoir. It's called Food Is a Feeling. Today, Carla tells me about the specific pleasure of following her own cravings and why tomatoes are the sexiest food. Carla, welcome to Modern Love.

Carla Lalli Music: Thank you for having me.

Anna Martin: Carla, you have been in the food world for a long time now. You're a chef. You write recipes, but I want to go back in time. Can you tell me about a bite of food you had where you were like, "Oh, this is it. Like, I'm in love."

Carla Lalli Music: Wow. Um, yeah. As a younger kid, I grew up in a house with an amazing cook for a mom. One of my most beloved memories is a piece of hot toast with a shellac of butter that is still melting. So, it's like partially melted, but you still see there's more butter than can be absorbed, pooling in the crannies of the toast. And this was on like a sick day when I was home from school. Um, and I don't remember the part about being sick at all. I only remember the toast that she brought into my bedroom. And just we always had room temperature butter on the counter always. And growing up, you realize like that's that's why the butter was always perfectly melting cuz it was ready to pool in your toast. But yeah you're just eating for pleasure and for sustenance and fulfillment and so that's that's what I remember just being able to eat something like that.

Anna Martin: It is so good. I will also say I've never heard the word shellac sound so appetizing. I mean, to me the pools... the pools. Okay, so this was toast from mom. Delicious toast from mom. As you started to cook for yourself, were you easily able to recapture that?

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, I think I was and I I write about this as well because there's a recipe for pasta fagioli which I grew up eating and I loved it. But so when I started cooking for myself, I knew good food. I just didn't know how to get there. So like I knew when it wasn't right, but I didn't know how to fix it because I didn't have the grammar of cooking yet.

Anna Martin: When you became a mom yourself, did you imagine you'd be cooking like your mom was for you? That kind of matriarch in the kitchen. Was that what you pictured?

Carla Lalli Music: 100%. Yeah. I remember actually being so blown away by having a newborn um that I was breastfeeding because I had literally become the food. Whoa. It was wild. I was like, I am I'm keeping this human alive with my body, like my own body. And that was wild.

Anna Martin: I want to dig into that. I I I haven't heard someone describe having a baby like I am the food quite like that. I have not heard that. Tell me more about that transition. To go from the chef is now food.

Carla Lalli Music: It's sort of, you know, when you are nursing, you have to take care of yourself and being, you know, the thirstiest and hungriest you've ever been in your life. But also feeding a baby, nourishing this child with your body. And I took on this very motherly role of like, I have to take care of everyone and I have to be the one to feed everyone. And so I really took on the cooking in the household to the point where I wouldn't let anyone else cook.

Anna Martin: No one else was allowed?

Carla Lalli Music: Yeah, it was like my domain. And it was this idea that, you know, the cook is the mom and the caretaking is my job. But it also had this martyrdom attached to it of like, well, no one else is going to do it, and no one else can do it as well as me.

Anna Martin: And over time, cooking wasn't just home life, it became your entire career. Your work at Bon Appétit took off in a massive way. You looked so happy and at ease on camera. But in the book, you write that behind the scenes during that era, your personal relationship with food was actually deteriorating?

Carla Lalli Music: Yes. When cooking becomes your full-time, high-pressure job, the nature of it shifts. In the test kitchen, you are constantly developing, testing, producing hit recipes; and on camera, you have to perform and be "on." Every dish is dissected intellectually: Is there enough salt? Is the acid balanced? Are the instructions clear for home cooks? By the time I got home, I was completely depleted. I had zero sensory desire left for food. Food became a to-do list, a set of deliverables, and I completely lost touch with eating for simple joy.

Anna Martin: You were feeding millions of viewers on camera, then coming home to feed your family, all while carrying the identity of a professional chef. How long did that state of 24/7 feeding others last?

Carla Lalli Music: For many years. Cooking had become the primary pillar of my self-worth, but in that process, I emptied myself out. I was always asking what everyone else wanted, what nutrition my kids needed, what the audience was looking for, but I never once paused to ask: "Carla, what do you actually crave right now?"

Anna Martin: Around this time, your personal life underwent a massive upheaval. Your 24-year marriage came to an end. What did coming to the decision to separate look like for you?

Carla Lalli Music: It was a long, painful awakening. We had been together for 24 years, raised two children, and built a life that looked solid from the outside. But over time, an insurmountable distance grew between us. We were great co-parents, but as romantic partners, the deep connection had evaporated. Admitting that a marriage of a quarter-century is no longer working takes immense courage, because it means dismantling the entire world you built.

Anna Martin: What was the dynamic in the kitchen and around the dining table during that unraveling phase?

Carla Lalli Music: The dinner table became a stage to perform normalcy. Preparing dinner every night was a mechanical ritual to keep up appearances. I cooked to keep the household running, but the silence and emotional tension around the table were suffocating. Food lost all flavor; it was merely functional fuel to keep routine intact.

Anna Martin: After the divorce, you moved into your own apartment and started living alone. Can you describe what it felt like the first time you cooked solely for yourself?

Carla Lalli Music: It was totally disorienting. For over two decades, I had never stepped into a kitchen without catering to someone else's preferences, allergies, or schedules. At first, I felt almost panicky. The fridge was bare, and I stood there thinking, "Who am I cooking for?" And then the realization hit: just me.

Anna Martin: And what happened next? What did you make for yourself?

Carla Lalli Music: It was peak summer. I went to the farmers' market and bought dead-ripe heirloom tomatoes. I came back to my apartment, toasted a thick slice of crusty sourdough, slathered it with Duke's mayonnaise, laid thick slabs of tomato on top, and hit it with flaky sea salt and lots of freshly cracked black pepper. No complicated technique, no fancy plating. I stood over the sink, took a bite, and tomato juice ran down my wrists. In that instant, it felt like an electric shock—a pure sensory awakening. I thought, "Holy shit, this is heaven." In that moment, I reclaimed my primal craving for food.

Anna Martin: Eating a tomato sandwich over the sink with juices dripping down your wrist—that imagery is so vivid. You write in the book that tomatoes are the sexiest food on earth. Why do you say that?

Carla Lalli Music: Because a truly ripe tomato is visceral and sensual! The aroma of the vine, the burst of juice, the tender flesh, that perfect tension of sweet and acid. You cannot eat a ripe tomato politely or with restraint; you have to surrender to it, let the juices run. It demands that you drop all your defenses and be completely present in that sensory pleasure.

Anna Martin: That gets right to the core of your new book, Food Is a Feeling. So many traditional cookbooks focus on technique or rigid meal prep, but yours is structured around emotional and physical cravings. Tell me about that philosophy.

Carla Lalli Music: We are conditioned by so many dietary rules: what to eat at certain times, macro balances, worrying about carbs. But we forget that appetite is the body's direct conversation with the subconscious. After decades of suppressing my desires to accommodate others, I decided to abandon those rigid scripts. If tonight I crave a hot bowl of rice with a huge knob of butter and a splash of soy sauce, that is the most perfect dinner. There is no guilt required. Feeding your true cravings is the ultimate form of self-care.

Anna Martin: Hearing you say that, it feels like much more than just cooking—it's a complete shift in how you make decisions. Going through a divorce involves endless painful, agonizing deliberations, but in your kitchen, you started handing the steering wheel over to intuition and bodily instinct.

Carla Lalli Music: Exactly! After enduring so much denial, hardship, and heartbreak, I thought: "Why would I continue to punish myself?" If something tastes amazing and brings me comfort, I should eat it with complete abandon and give myself that gift.

Anna Martin: As you stepped back into dating and meeting new people, what was it like to invite someone back into your kitchen?

Carla Lalli Music: It was fascinating and vulnerable. In the past, my kitchen was a fortress of control and sacrifice. But now, when I cook for someone I care about, it's not an obligation; it's a genuine gift and an act of shared delight. And even more importantly, I've learned to sit back, let someone else cook for me, and receive their care.

Anna Martin: "Put the butter in the rice." That unapologetic self-compassion is such a liberating permission slip for everyone.

Carla Lalli Music: Truly. There are very few things we humans do that are both pure pleasure and life-giving—it's basically sleep and food. So why take one of the few things that gives you life and resist it? Lean all the way in.

Anna Martin: Carla, thank you so much for this conversation. I so appreciate it. It truly made me hungry, and I think that is the highest compliment. Thank you.

Carla Lalli Music: Thank you for having me.

Anna Martin: The Modern Love team is Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Lin Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis. This episode was produced by Sarah Curtis. It was edited by Lynn Levy. Our mix engineer was Daniel Ramirez. Our show was recorded by Mattie Miello, Nick Pitman, Kyle Grandillo, and Samantha Winter. Special thanks to Brooke Mentors. Original music in this episode by Marian Lozano, Rowan Nemoto, Pat McCusker, and Dan Powell. Dan also composed our theme music. The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones, and Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects. If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to the New York Times, we have the instructions in our show notes. I'm Anna Martin. Thanks for listening.