TRANSCRIPT

Erin: Angie Kingston-- thank you so much for taking the time today to meet with me and talk all about your work. I'm so excited to draw and I'm so excited to see what we co-create together. Thank you. 

Angie Kingston: I'm very excited as well. 

Thank you. 

Erin: So we have a list of questions I'll go through. I'll probably just start from the top.

The thing that I admired the most about your work when I was doing a little bit of online sleuthing was that you have this sort of core interest in cooking and culinary work and the entrepreneurial things that you're doing on the side the work that you do with Thymeless Catering the events that you're involved with the Black Chef movement and then all this like culinary education, which I personally got to experience firsthand.

Can you tell me a little bit about your journey into discovering the culinary world?

Angie’s Journey: 

Angie Kingston: Of course! I guess you could say my journey, my whole culinary journey started, according to my mom very early when I was maybe five or six. My grandmother and I used to watch all of these cooking programs on channel 13. So I knew at a very young age that cooking was something that excited me.

That is something I really wanted to do in some capacity. Especially because some of my earliest memories of food just come with so much joy... and so much like happiness, and love. Every Sunday my grandma would make a huge Sunday dinner in addition to all of the people in the house that would eat.

She would just invite people. I just have such fond memories of food, bringing so much love and togetherness and like family. And so... that kind of basis of food and family and love led to a career in it, honestly. So throughout my earlier years I've always kept that interest in food. I've always wanted to be in the kitchen. I always wanted to be cooking.

Don't really remember a time where I've wanted to do much of anything else.

Even, going into high school I would always be like, ‘Mom, you should make this for dinner’ or ‘Mom, let's do this. Let's cook that, let's cook this’. Eventually we got to a point where she's okay, clearly this is something you wanna do, so you take over the kitchen.

Erin: You are now the chef. 

Angie Kingston: You are now the chef. Exactly. And so all of that and the continued like expansion of that desire led to me being a part of a nonprofit called CCAP, which stands for Careers through Culinary Arts Programs. 

Erin: Wow. 

Angie Kingston: I actually when I was definitive in the fact that I was going to do cooking in some form, I applied for a high school called Food and Finance. Which– honestly, I thought even at that time it was so cool that there was a high school dedicated to cooking.

And so unfortunately I did not get in for my freshman year, but in that same building, there was a high school called Hospitality Management. And so my counselor at the time suggested, ‘Hey, maybe you should start at this school and then reapply for food and finance in the 10th grade…at least you're still getting some of the hospitality experience by doing that’. I actually ended up staying at Hospitality Management. I liked the structure, I liked the students and all of the teachers at that time. And from there my mom was like, ‘okay, we can find you programs that'll supplement your desire for culinary arts'.

Erin: Trying to cultivate your interest more. I love that. 

Angie Kingston: Exactly. Exactly. And so we began to do that research and that's how I got to CCAP so they were already in the building working with students from Food and Finance. And they put flyers up around the school. And I came home and I was like, ‘Mom, this is so cool. Look at it, like I'm joining it’. And she was like, ‘okay, great’. And so with CCAP, we would do after school cooks clubs and job shadowing and all types of culinary arts programs and trainings. And so I was really able to like fortify and solidify a lot of my culinary desires.

Erin: Very busy. Oh my goodness. 

Angie Kingston: For-- now that I think of it-- for a high school student, I was very busy.

I was just like a very curious New York City teenager. I remember one of the programs being on Saturday. We would meet every Saturday, and we would also meet one to two times throughout the week. Imagine a high schooler wanting to go to school on Saturday! And it was such an amazing program!

Probably one of the first of its kind because we would learn nutrition and we would learn different culinary techniques and all of these different things that would be taught by professional chefs. And so during my junior year of high school, Johnson and Wales actually came to our school and they did a career fair kind of program.

And they explained to us that they offered this program called Early Enrollment in addition to that, you were able to simultaneously do all of the things for your senior year of high school while also taking the credits and the courses that you needed for your freshman year of college.

And because I was already so grounded in the fact that yes, I'm going to culinary school. And Johnson Wales was one of the schools, probably the school that I wanted to go to. 

That dates back to actually me watching Channel 13 and there was a chef, and he used to wear this Johnson Wales jacket. And so from about six years old, I'm like, mom, I'm going to Johnson Wales. 

Erin: So I've been drawing a lot of empty plates.

My first question is what did your grandmother who cooked 

Angie Kingston: Yes. 

Erin: Can you name some dishes that I can fill these plates?

Angie Kingston: Of course. So one of my most memorable dishes. She would roast a whole salmon. Ooh. And I remember that so specifically because I don't know that prior to that I'd ever seen like a whole fish before. Usually you go to the fish market and it's already cut up, but she would roast a whole salmon for dinner in what's called casreep, which is like a burnt sugar sauce. And that was probably one of the most delicious memories I have from growing up. And so she would make that usually with, like, rice or some type of vegetable on the side. So that was like a big thing for us, especially on Sunday. And soup was very big in our household. And Erin, I'm gonna tell you, soup remained despite what the weather was.

So we ate soup, whether there was 80 degrees or 40 degrees outside, there was always soup on the stove. 

Erin: Okay. This is great. …because I did have a, I have a drawing here of like you next to a pot where I'm like... 

Angie Kingston: If it's me next to a pot, there's definitely soup in the pot!

Erin: Okay, got it. 

Angie Kingston: Lentil or split pea soup. It usually has vegetables or meat in it. Especially like oxtail [cow foot], which is super big for our household as well. 

Erin: Yes. Great. I'm trying to make a little dinner spread of what your grandma was putting together. So I'll just add that we've got rice. We've got the salmon. 

Angie Kingston: Yes.

Erin: And we have the soup.

Angie Kingston: So those were big staples for us also big staples for us, baked goods. Okay. Bread was a big thing like it's one of those things where if my grandmother bakes bread and anyone knows about it…we line up like it's still that big of a deal for us.

My grandmother would bake rolls and rolls. Dozens of rolls of bread either Saturday night, usually at some point between Friday and Saturday. So it was ready for Sunday. So you can imagine we got this big pot of soup. We got this salmon and all of this food on the stove and lots of bread and lots of family who were coming over to indulge. 

Erin: yeah. Like good food too. Like, oh my gosh. Any kind of bread. I'm just like it's done for me. I will eat the whole loaf. This is mine...

Angie Kingston: Absolutely. Absolutely. I can absolutely eat a whole loaf!

Erin: This is fantastic. I definitely was able to catch up and make...We're talking so much about food. I'm like, 'wait, there's, what specifically are we cooking and making?' But we've got rolls now. We've got, we have a little bit of a salmon moment in here too, which is good. 

Culinary School Journey: 

Angie Kingston: One of the things about culinary school is, and I'm sure that it's probably drastically changed, but it makes you feel like you're on this straight path. Yeah, you go to culinary school, you learn your skill, you refine your skill, you go into a restaurant, you work on the line, you work your way up, you become an executive chef. And maybe at some point you open your own restaurant. That is the path that it makes you feel like you have to do.

So I did that. And then for my second internship, I actually did an international internship. So I went to a very tiny island called Anguilla, which is right across the water from St. Martin. And I worked in a few different restaurants as a part of a resort. And so ultimately, all that to say about the time I graduated, I knew that the restaurant world wasn't what I wanted to do.

So by the time I graduated, I had a decent amount of actual restaurant experience, which led me to know that again, I did not want to do it. And that's mostly because part of the joy of food for me is being able to put a little bit of me on the plate. So when I put something in front of you, it should be reflective of something that I've created, something that I love and something that I'm passionate about.

And the reality is in restaurants, unless you are the executive sous chef or the owner, most of the things that you put on the plate is not a reflection of you as the chef who prepared it, but it is a reflection of whoever's vision it is. Which is awesome, right? That there's nothing wrong with that.

But I did know that was not something that I wanted for myself. I was staging for pastry. I knew I did not wanna be a pastry chef. But yeah, ultimately what I was doing was taking the work of the pastry chef who had done all the preparation that morning, assembling it, putting it together on a plate, and putting that up for service-- which in of itself was great.

I did learn a lot, I learned so much. However, nothing on that plate was reflective of Angelique. It was reflective of the chef and the sous chef and who had ever had come up with that menu, and the person who did all the prep work and did all the fine tuning and made all the garnishes. And once I grasped the concept that this is what it ultimately would be like, even if I was a line cook, even if I worked on the hotline, even if I did Garde Manger or Saucier or many of the other stations, most of the work that I was doing was a reflection of whoever the chef's vision was. And while that is beautiful, because I am a person who loves to dine out, loves to try new things. I just knew that it wasn't what I wanted to do particularly. I needed to be able to serve and give to people food that was reflective of Angelique and my culture and my learning and my training and my life. 

Collaboration towards Thymeless Catering: 

Angie Kingston: Eventually with one of my very best friends that I met in Johnson and Wales, she was also working in industry at the time.

And so we would chat and, one of the conversations that we had was we were both so talented and we were just trying to figure out how we would get all of the awesome food that we fed to our family and fed to our friends in front of a broader audience.

And with my Caribbean background, I don't know if I mentioned, but my family is from Guyana, South America. And so a lot of my knowledge of cuisine was rooted in that. In addition to everything I've learned in culinary school and learned from my travels. But that is the root and the basis of what I knew food wise.

And my business partner and best friend, she is Haitian. So that's what a lot of her food and her food knowledge was rooted in. And so we just began to chat and talk about how we could get the food that we know and we love to cook in front of people and not only us, family and friends would be like, 'you ladies are so talented, like you need to do this. Like you need to figure out how to put it into something. 

I remember for one of my mom's birthdays, we made her... like, this four course dinner. Each course had a drink, accompaniment pairing with it, and we did this for just like close family and friends. It was such a fond memory of mine that, and we had to be-- we were still in culinary school at this time. So we had to be like 18, 19 when we did this, but… 

Erin: Oh gosh, you've done so much in like your younger years building this...

Angie Kingston: Right?!? Sometimes I don't really realize it until talk about it 

So yes we did this at 18, 19 and we created this menu.

We costed it out. We went food shopping for it. We got all the ingredients. We got up super early. We prepped it... and we had so much joy in executing that. It's still one of my mom's, like favorite birthday dinners that she talks about, that people remember. And mind you, Erin, this is 12 years ago. She still has the menu from it and everything.

It's such a memorable time, because I think that's when we knew, 'okay, we really have something good going here'. We have the talent, we have the desire, we have some of the basic knowledge to do this-- so how do we get this in front of people? 

Erin: Yeah. 

Angie Kingston: And so that led to just, I guess our entrepreneurial journey after that.

It still took some time for us to get there. So we started off hosting these dinner parties. And we started on a platform called 'Eat With', which is still a very super dynamic platform that you probably would love. And 'Eat With' was a platform where chefs from around the world would host dinner parties ultimately for strangers.

Erin: Oh wow. 

Angie Kingston: You would log onto the platform, you'd choose your city, and they would show you a hundred chefs in your city that were hosting these dinner parties all throughout New York City. Christina and I actually went to one before we started the platform. Ultimately, you're at this large dining table, dining with strangers. And so it was such an awesome concept because you got to network, meet new people, meet the chef, speak with the chef, dine on delicious food and it was such a different concept from anything we had ever done before.

Because of all the restaurants that you've been to, I'm sure you can count on one hand the amount of times that the chef has actually come out to speak to you or to say hi. 

Erin: Very rarely.

Angie Kingston: Exactly. So this was just a completely different world for us. So that is how we started out with our entrepreneurial journey. We took all of the knowledge and everything that we had acquired from 'Eat With' and we were, and it's funny because I actually still have some of the 'Eat With' business cards that we created. But we took all of that and we channeled that into our own thing. We veered into the direction of catering. And so that's how Thymeless Catering was born. 

Erin: Ah, okay. 

Angie Kingston: So we played around with the name for a little bit. We wanted it to be obviously reflective of food as soon as you heard it. We wanted it to still make sense and be reflective of our vision. And so we played around, and then ultimately we got to 'thymeless'.

We love to travel. We love to eat out. And so we decided that we would take what we know, and fuse it with what we've learned. And so that's how the Caribbean fusion part came from our travels and just education, you come to understand that food is so interwoven between all of the cultures.

That there are so many ways to like interwork things. We laugh when we say it now, but every culture has a dumpling. So whether that's an empanada from Spanish culture, or an actual soup dumpling from an Asian culture we're again, Guyanese and Haitian, we make patties, but it's all some type of meat filling in a crust.

So whatever that looks like, every culture has one. And so if you think about it in that sense, it just shows you how food is so interwoven despite what the culture is. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Angie Kingston:  And so it was so easy for us to be able to take what we knew, what we grew up with, what we learned, and fuse that with things that we learned from our travels, things that we learned in culinary school.

And so we took that technique, and applied it to ‘Thymeless Catering’, and that's how that baby was born. 

Erin: First baby, 'Thymeless Catering'. Do you have a dish that's like your favorite that you've made within 'Thymeless Catering'. 

Angie Kingston: Yes. So I have quite a few, but one of them again, that goes back so much to the blending of cultures.

So we made pepper pot soup dumplings. So pepper pot is a stew that we eat in Guyanese culture. But it's traditionally only eaten during Christmas. So it is a super exciting, like luxury dish that has beef and cow foot and all of these meats in it. And it's cooked in this spicy broth which has casreep what I mentioned to you earlier, which is like…a burnt sugar, you eat it with bread.

It's ultimately a stew. It's black. So, it can be a little off-putting when you first see it because it is literally black. 

Erin: Oh, I wonder if this is it. I'm gonna send you a little clip that I found...I wanna get this one right. Let's see if I can put it in the chat. Does that look right? 

Angie Kingston:  Let's click on it and see-- Guyanese pepper pot. Yes, that's exactly it. Perfect. Alright. And you see the big loaf of bread right next to it, right? 

Erin: Oh yes. Really tasty. Okay. This is great. Oh, I'm on a roll now. 

Angie Kingston: Absolutely delicious.

Erin: That's actually, I dunno, it looks quite tasty. It looks like it might even have a chocolatey [texture]. 

Angie Kingston:  Honestly, almost because it's made with a lot of spices, so you stew it down with cinnamon and cloves and so it does have almost like a chocolatey essence to it. Absolutely. But it's also made with burnt sugar, so it has some sweet. You do put scotch, bonnets, and peppers in it, so it is spicy. It truly is something that's out of this world. And we were hosting a dinner, and the client gave us pretty much full autonomy to make whatever we wanted. And so we decided to, how we would go about it is we would pick a culture or a cuisine that we wanted to do the fusion with. 

And then we would work backwards. So we decided, okay, we want to do Asian, so we did the pepper pot soup, dumplings. So ultimately, we made the pepper pot, and then we added gelatin so that it could coagulate. Once we put it in the dumplings wrappers and we steamed it... then it was 'liquid-y' again. So when you've bit into it, the soup or the pepper pot would come out. So similar to any type of Asian soup dumpling that's usually made with some type of Asian flavored broth and meat. We did the same thing, but with the pepper pot and... again, it was our first time doing it and it was very successful. I actually will send you a picture. I have a picture of it. 

Erin: Thank you actually. I can draw that. That's perfect. 

Angie Kingston: Yes. And so it was just like a full circle moment because we had soup dumplings on multiple different occasions.

Pepper pop was something I grew up on. I shared it with Christina. She fell in love with it. And so just the fact that we were able to mend those two things together and create this super different awesome product was such like a beautiful moment-- for the two of us. And we presented it to the client and they absolutely adored it.

That was a big highlight for us to be able to blend and create those fusion flavors together. Yeah. So that's probably one of, one of my favorite things that we've done. 

Thymeless Catering Classic: 

Angie Kingston:  Then we have our love child. So our love child is what I call it because it is a fusion of Guyanese and Haitian food. We Guyanese, we make a traditional dish called Cook Up Rice, so think of cook up rice as like a Caribbean paella.

It's rice. And it has black eyed peas traditionally, or some type of pea or bean. It's made with coconut milk and herbs and spices. It usually has, again, depending on what your family can afford. Shrimp, chicken, beef, Turkey, pork, whatever is the desire of the chef. And so we took that, which is our paella version.

And then Haitians have a dish called Djon Djon, which is spelled D-J-O-N-D-J-O-N… 

Erin: N-D-J-O-J. So it's just DJON twice? 

Angie Kingston: Yes. It's actually Djon Djon, which is like black rice. That's what it's called. But it's rice that's made from a mushroom. And the liquid from the mushroom is what makes the rice black.

We fused together Caribbean and the Guyanese Cook Up Rice with the Haitian Black Rice. But we add in the coconut milk and we add in some of the meats that you would put in traditional cook up rice, usually with some of the meat, a chicken or beef that you would put in black rice.

And so we fused that all together. We call it Black Rice Cook Up. And it is absolutely phenomenal. If there was a dish that was representative of Thymeless Catering, that's what it would be. 

Erin: Black Rice Cook Up. Ah, okay. Are there vegetables in this 

Angie Kingston: There can, yeah. We usually put some veggies in there.

Depending on the client, how we make it. We've made it for my family a million times, her family a million times. It's truly a favorite. Like my mom can attest. It's the first time I made it for her it was like...you ever seen those cartoons where like the top blows off the character? That's exactly what her reaction was. Because again... traditionally, cook up rice is not something that they, the Haitians, eat.And black rice is not something traditionally that Guyanese people eat. It's so similar to make, and so we just meshed together. And it has just become such a popular favorite for anyone who's indulged, loves it. 

Erin: How is this usually plated? 

Angie Kingston:  Usually just in a nice bowl. Like you would do any type of rice... piled really nice and high. And then we usually save some of the meat to put on top. And we've actually, one time we turned it into a paella . Yeah. So we, one time did it with clams and shrimp. Cool. And sausage. So we've done a black rice paella before as well.

Erin: Okay. All right. I'm adding it to a bowl. 

Black Chef Movement

Erin: Oh, this is so good. I could definitely just keep talking through the specific foods that you've been creating within your catering business. 

Angie Kingston:  There is quite a repertoire for sure. 

Erin: Yeah. I would love to talk a little bit about the Black Chef Movement. How did you get involved with Black Chef's Movement, and what drew you to the mission? 

Angie Kingston:  So -- fast forward to 2020. We're catering, we're doing all these popup shops. We're expanding, we're learning, we're growing, we're getting clients, and then 2020 comes and so does the pandemic. 

Like when you say 2020, you think about it and you're like, oh my gosh, that was five years ago. So, much like every other person in the world...in this very strange, dark place, and you're just trying to make sense of life as it is at the moment. And so a friend of mine from college, Rasheeda McCallum, founded it during the height of the pandemic, so this had to be like maybe April or May of 2020.

And so she puts out this call to action on social media and it basically says all of my chef friends, anyone who's a cook, 'I am preparing food for the protestors with the George Floyd movement. And I would love any contributions.Please, reach out to me. Let me know we are taking any type of good sandwiches, fruit cups.' And at that time, I saw that, and honestly, it was like a spark for me because as a black woman and seeing all of my people suffering and in this movement, it was very trying and very hurtful and very sad for me.

And so once I saw the way in which she was helping, there was no question about it for me because I'm like, this is how I can help. I cook, I'm good at it. I can help feed the people who are on the front line that are marching and making movements and advocating for change, and I can help fuel them.

Erin: Yes. 

Angie Kingston:  So that is the origin of how that got started. So I reached out to her, and I was like, 'Hey, I would love to help. How can I help?'. And so for the first time I created anything, I think I did like little crudités cups. I remember going to BJ's, like buying a bunch of crudités and making crudités cups with dip and guacamole.

They used them to fuel the protesters and that was the start of that. So it started with the crudités cups. Another time I made wraps and sandwiches and another time I made something else. And so I would create these meals and these foods, and then show up to the protests to help her distribute the food to the protestors and the people on the front line.

And so what I thought just started out as something for that movement at the time blossomed into this amazing food justice network. And so in August of 2020, Rasheeda realized that she was going to expand on the Black Chef Movement she reached out to me and asked me to come on board as the director of events to help put together events that would continue to service the communities in need and continue to do the work that she had already begun.

And so myself, in addition to a network of other chefs, would band together to create these meals for the different events. And so what would happen is other organizations, especially nonprofit organizations, would reach out to us and say, 'Hey, we are doing this march on this day', 'we're doing this sit-in', 'we're doing this social justice movement', can you help supply food for it?'. 

Erin: Yeah. 

Angie Kingston:  And so we would go to our band of chefs within that network and we would put out the call and say, ‘hey, we need sandwiches, we need wraps, we need crudités, we need cookies’. And it was just beautiful to watch because again, everyone's home at this time. You have a bunch of men and women who are expanding on their own culinary journeys. You, I know that you remember like the baking that everyone was doing and the cooking that everyone was doing. So at that time, we were really able to band together. To provide food and beverages for all of these different protests happening throughout New York City at the time. It was the birth of something extremely beautiful. As we headed into 2021, people had to get back to work.

People had go back into the office. And so unfortunately some of what we were able to receive during the height of the pandemic in terms of volunteers and people being able to cook and all that stuff had dwindled just a bit.  We broadened, I should say, our horizon on what it is that we wanted to do. And with Rasheeda kind of taking the rest and pivoting to what the needs were of the community, then we branched to more food injustice and figuring out how to create programs that would feed the people in these communities that needed it. Because again, just because the protests had died down did not mean that the need for the food had died down.

Pivoting within the Black Chef Movement

Angie Kingston: We pivoted to not just protests and movements and things like that, but now we are feeding the first responders, the doctors, and nurses, firefighters, and the police officers. We're feeding the essential workers and everyone who still needed to go to work during this time. And now we are banding together to feed students who are in need of food, and we're finding that there are all of these food deserts in certain communities. And so now we are working together to fill the community fridges so that people can come and grab a meal. We're partnering with other nonprofit organizations to donate coats and food to communities in need.

We've expanded that even more. And so now we're doing back to school give backs, and we are partnering with other organizations to do health fairs and educate the community on nutrition.

That led to now cooking classes and us working with the youth and being able to teach them. And so this baby that Rasheeda has started has now blossomed into this beautiful mutual aid. It partners with other organizations to combat the food insecurities by redistributing food into the places that it needs to go.


Erin: I think sometimes the hardest part about starting new initiatives is finding people to generate that awareness. So beautiful to start with a really strong network that already practice collaborating with one another and we're now seeing transition and apply that to these very, important initiatives. 


Angie Kingston:  So top of 2022, Rasheeda, myself, and another program partner of ours, Avery Martinez-- we are again always assessing what is the need here. We noticed that despite the need, there were people that we were trying to offer food and clothes to who just did not want to take it. And so you understand that there's a whole other socioeconomic and psychological thing that goes into that, but that does not stop the fact that there is still a need to get these products and these resources into the community. So we stopped for a moment and we brainstormed how we can give to people in a way in which they can take at their convenience? We came up with a program called 'Fill the Fridges'. 

And a community fridge is literally just what it sounds like. It's a refrigerator that's usually in front of some type of business or on some type of busy block that gets filled with produce hot meals. Depending on who's sponsoring the fridge. Sometimes it can even have dried goods, like a little pantry area. Some of the fridges had clothing and it was open to the community. And so the idea behind it is, if you need something, take it. If you have extra, leave it. 

We decided Black Chef Movement and partnership with another organization called stuff4good, that we would band together to fill these community fridges on a monthly basis with fresh produce and meals.

And so at first it started with us making sandwiches collecting produce from other organizations who had surplus that would donate it. And so we would choose a few fridges every month, and we would go to the fridges and stock them up with produce and the sandwiches. As the program began to gain some momentum, we ended up partnering with a wonderful woman and her husband, [Your Pasta, founded by Alisha Bennett and David Kaplan] and she owns a pasta company [Your Pasta]. She started donating to us monthly fresh pasta. And so we would take the fresh pasta in addition to the produce and go back to our band of chefs and drop off the ingredients. The chefs would cook it, make a meal out of it, and then we would take those meals and now be able to stock the fridges with them. That is how we continued to do the work in the community-- even when we weren't doing a huge program, we were still able to feed the community in that way.

Erin: Also making me realize like, oh, what does a fridge look like? 

Angie Kingston: When you think about it. I think that's actually so cool, especially from your perspective, because I still draw my sun in the corner of the paper. Oh. So yeah. 

Erin: I think it's and it's also good to just hear these kind of details of oh yeah, there's pasta. And this one member of the community has one particular resource, and we can bring it back to the group of chefs and they can actually prepare it into something that can be shared and placed into the fridge.

Culinary Educator

Erin: We have also your work in education. I think that like teaching is at the heart of building strong community and giving people access to knowledge, So when it comes to your culinary education work, what does it look like for you? Are you in a classroom, are you in a Zoom call?

Can you describe what a typical experience is like? 

Angie Kingston: Of course. My mom would tell you when I was younger in parent-teacher conference, they would be like, 'she's always trying to teach the class, which is wonderful...sometimes we just need her to like–sit down and be a student'. And so... a true testament to something that's always been a major part of my life. I've always been a sharer of knowledge. If I have a set of information and you need to know it, I am fully inclined to tell you. Share it with you, show you how I got there, show you how I figured it out-- it's always been something that's innate in me. 

I've never looked at myself as being a teacher. However, back to the pandemic 2020 came, my mom's talking to me: "you need to be like, keeping your mind going...I found this.Use this platform, it's called 'Take Lessons'. I think that you should create a profile and you should teach cooking'. 

And I'm like 'okay'. I created this profile. I put it out there and a day or two, I got my first student. 

Erin: Oh, great. 

Angie Kingston: And so I started teaching this 12-year-old girl, and within the first two classes I was like, 'okay, clearly this is something that I need to be doing because I love it'. Just being able to watch her get more comfortable with ingredients, get to a place where she's [saying], ‘oh my gosh, Chef Angie, can we make this? I found this recipe. Can we do this?’. 

That for me I understood why teachers love it. I realized how fulfilling and amazing it is to be able to impart knowledge onto someone and watch them take it, and make it their own.

And so that is how it started.

Originally, it was ultimately like a zoom call. We were one-on-one. I would buy the ingredients. You would buy the ingredients, and then we would take it step by step and go through this recipe. 

So at one point I had probably 13 or 14 students on my roster that I was rotating. 

Erin: Incredible, 

Angie Kingston: And again, this was beyond my wildest imagination 'cause it was never something that I thought that I would be doing. I went from teaching this 12-year-old girl how to cook, and how to provide meals for themselves and for their families. And then I would get students that were like 45-year-old men who would tell me like, 'I am recently divorced. My wife did all the cooking, and so I need this life skill.' And so that turned into, 'oh wow, cooking and just being able to feed yourself is such a fundamental part of your life'. I did not stop to think that there are people who did not know how to prepare a meal for themselves. And so once I understood that this is not only just an additional extracurricular activity, I began teaching with Black Chef Movement and we did it like a kids class. And then at one point, one of my cousins, she's the director of an afterschool program, so she had me come in and teach the kiddies for a summer.

Erin: What did you teach the kiddies? 

Angie Kingston: So I taught the kiddies, they actually weren't 'kiddy kiddies', they were sixth graders. But I taught them knife skills. We did some basic knife skills and each week we would create a different recipe. We did quesadillas, pizza, chips, guac and I had them like make their own tortilla chips. I always, anytime I teach, I try to impart some type of nutritional education in there as well. I was working inside of a school, so I was limited to an air fryer and a toaster oven and a microwave. So I had to figure out recipes that worked for those things. So it also taught me a lot as well. 

And so sometime around 2023, I was like, 'I love teaching online. I love teaching in general, but I miss real person interaction'. Ultimately that path led me to Hudson Table where I had the amazing pleasure of teaching you.

Erin: Yeah!

Angie Kingston: I got to Hudson table and in-person classes with students, with guests rather. And within Hudson table we also teach children too.

We do kids camps and kids classes. But that was how I got there, just starting off with one little girl, one 12-year-old little girl and climbing my way to whole entire 16 to 24 people classes.

Erin: In the class that I remember, we all had very different skill levels.

Angie Kingston: Yes.

Erin: Doing that, in addition to sous chefs or folks who were supporting that too. That's a lot of coordination. 

Angie Kingston: Yes, it is. Yes it is. 

Erin: Oh, fantastic. All right, we are at the end. Wrap up questions. Yeah. What's on the horizon for you? 

Angie Kingston: Yeah, so honestly, because I'm in this space of teaching and educating, expanding on that is big on my horizon. One of my students that I currently have at the moment, he has autism and he truly one of my favorite people ever. 

So taught me so much because I've had to adjust a little bit of my teaching in order to allow him to understand. And so I do know that in some way, form, or shape I want to expand on teaching children with disabilities or anyone with any kind of learning curve.

Erin: Yeah. 

Angie Kingston: I recently, within the last year, got into food styling which it's awesome. Especially because I love fashion, I love art. And so food styling is really a blend of all of that.

I've had the absolute pleasure of working with some super amazing stylists and creating, one of my be most beautiful accomplishments of last year is I was able to work on a shoot for Chopt the salads.

Erin: Oh, cool. Yeah, 

Angie Kingston: Erin, it was awesome. It's very meticulous because you need to make sure you're matching the specs and making sure that it's bright and it's colorful needs to do what an advertisement is supposed to do. After we'd done the whole project, one time I was with a friend, actually, we were just coming back from getting pizza and I walked past the ad and I was like, oh my goodness.

Erin: Yes. 

Angie Kingston: I did that and, or at least I assisted in that. Yeah. And it was such a moment for me and I was like, it was like a rush. I guess that's what people feel like if they see like their selves on a movie poster or something or some type of billboard. It's oh, that's me. That's part of something that I've done.And so I definitely want to expand in my food styling and that food styling goes hand-in-hand with like menu and recipe development. So that's another avenue that I'm looking to branch out in, 

I'd love to be good at helping chefs or helping companies find these really cool ways to develop their menus, develop their recipes, do it in a timely manner. As well as always just tying in food justice and helping the community. That's something that since I began doing it, I know that is truly like a calling and a purpose in my life. I, I can never stray from it because I'm always trying to think, I. How can I take this and help redistribute it? And sometimes that looks like me being able to orchestrate pans of food to redistribute to the community, connecting my church with a pantry that donates bread so that once we do the weekly pantry donation to the community, they can also add bread to the things that they distribute.

But one of my goals is to be able to actually run a food truck that will be able to provide hot meals to people who are in need. 

Erin: Oh, I love it. I need to draw a picture of the actual truck, but I'm putting an outline Yes, please. That I make sure to do. 

Angie Kingston: Let's manifest it together.

Erin: My final question, if the truck could be any color, what would it be? 

Angie Kingston: So let's think about a color that's like welcoming and inviting. You want it to be like, something that's drawn to people maybe like purple.

Erin: Ooh, that's so funny. I'm using purple right now. 

Angie Kingston: That, okay. So clearly that's what color this truck needs to be. Okay. Maybe purple. 'cause purple is like regal and it's royal, but it's like welcoming it's not like harsh usually. So let's go with a violet kind of purple.

The End

Erin: Angie, thank you so much. 

Angie Kingston: Oh my goodness. I'm so excited. Thank you so much. I've never done anything like this. And truly, this is probably one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Like being able to just see it visually is there's something special about it. And I really hope that whoever else you do this with, it feels this kind of magic 'cause it's truly a beautiful combination. 

Erin: Great. I'm so happy to hear that. And just thank you so much for your time, Angie. Like I really appreciate it, just thank you, taking the time, trusting this process. I don't have a lot of case studies to show what the goal is and I feel like you just really understood it and yeah, just thank you. Thank you so much.