Listen to the latest episode of ESSENCE Podcast Network’s podcast Yes, Girl! on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.
So far, 2020 is bringing us all-things Kelis and we are 100% here for it. 4/20 gave us the premiere of her new Netflix show, Cooked with Cannabis. The cooking competition is structured around exploring and de-stigmatizing the many (delicious) uses for the once-taboo plant. And the top of the year began what we pray is a long trend of Kelis allowing all 525,000 of her Instagram followers to watch her live out the dream none of us knew we had: living and thriving on a serene, spacious farm just outside of Los Angeles. Though the singer and Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef is a long way from her hometown of Harlem and a few miles from L.A. where she and her family lived full time until recently, she doesn’t regret the move at all.
“We have a lot of space. It’s a farm, but we’ve eliminated the roughing-it elements. It’s funny, because… We’d been looking for farm land for so long. I was like, “Okay, I’m going to sell my house.” I had my house in L.A. We were very comfortable. We first got out here and I had a moment of sheer panic: “Oh my God! What have I done? Did I just play myself? Is this crazy?” I definitely had a moment of “Abort mission. Let’s go back,” Kelis says.
“If you had asked me 10 years ago, I’d have been like, “Girl, bye. No way I’m doing that,” but now I’m like, “What’s wrong? This is amazing. I love it.”
In this episode of Yes, Girl! Kelis breaks down…
…THE HILARIOUS DIFFERENCES OF LIVING ON A FARM
“Every day it’s something else. This morning I was on a call and I’m like, “Hold on a second. Get the chickens!” Because they keep escaping, which is a whole other thing. But things like that that you just never … When was I ever yelling, “Get the chickens?”
… THE BASICS OF GOOD COOKING
“I would say, as far as ingredients go, every culture has their sofrito, their starter. Onion is a real universal one. You should always have a yellow onion. Garlic, and then, for me personally, I would opt for peppers over carrots generally. If you like more European or French cuisine, then you would go with celery, carrots, onions. If you’re more like me and you go for the spicier, colorful, heartier things, then you would go with onions, garlic, peppers.”
…WHY ‘COOKED WITH CANNABIS’ IS MORE THAN A COOKING SHOW
“It has been taboo. It was also branded and labeled. It became an ethnic issue. I was really cognizant, because I wanted to make sure that, yes, it’s lighthearted and it’s fun and it’s all these things, but just because we’re able to make money from it and prosper and do all these wonderful things from it now, there’s still a lot of suffering behind it. There’s still a lot of things we touch on. I thought that was really important.”
Listen to the latest episode of ESSENCE Podcast Network’s podcast Yes, Girl! on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.