Taking Care of Wilted Kale Salad with Suze Heller - No. 16
And tips on taking care of yourself in the hospitality industry.
Welcome to Vegarie! A newsletter full of interviews with women in food—friends, family, line cooks, restauranteurs, writers, or food marketing experts—all with unique stories, generously willing to share their passion and heart through food. Occasionally, I include some recipes for dips, spreads, and other accouterments that will absolutely tickle your tongue. If you’re still wondering if you should subscribe… I suggest pondering these questions. Do you religiously feed your sourdough starter? Have you given her a name? Do you dream of the perfect swirl when you pull said sourdough loaf from the oven? Have you, on occasion, woken in the middle of the night with cold sweats trying to solve the impossible equation of hours in the day divided by the number of NYT cookie recipes you have bookmarked? Have you solved for X? And if so, have you factored in the concept of repeat bakes? How many times is too many times to bake the legendary gochujang caramel cookies from Eric Kim? If you can relate to any of this, you’re my kind of person and you might like to hear from other people who are just as nerdy-passionate about food. Subscribe now (while it’s free) and you'll receive my biweekly newsletter on Tuesdays, chock-full of interviews with your people.
This week’s post features Suze Heller—baker, marketing extraordinaire, and creative mind behind one of my favorite food Instagram accounts @wiltedkalesalad. Currently in culinary school, Suze uses Wilted Kale Salad as a creative outlet to share her bakes, perfect or not. In fact, the name for her account came about as a joke, as Suze ate a kale salad every day for lunch when she worked from home—even if the leaves had wilted. Something I love about Suze is exactly that. She doesn’t take herself too seriously. Her voice comes across as honest, curious, and comfortable in her skin. I love seeing what recipes she’s trying and the beautiful ways in which she shares her experiments. Together we talk about pastry school, her unique relationship to food, and—a great follow-up to my last post on burnout—she shares some tips on self-care while working in the hospitality industry.
Suze grew up in a very small town in New Jersey right outside of New York. Her parents are Ashkenazi Jews, so naturally, as food plays a major role in Jewish culture, so it did in her upbringing. For her, it wasn’t so much about the type of food that her parents or extended family cooked but the community and time shared over meals. Her parents loved to go out to eat, try new things as a family, and travel to experience new cuisine.
“My favorite activity was going to the grocery store with my dad because it was always a full-fledged event. We would go to three different grocery stores just for nicer produce, or for a specific kind of fish, or spices—he got really into going to Korean markets for a while.”
In 2013, she went to Syracuse for her undergraduate degree to study magazine—that’s right, not journalism, but magazine—who knew that was a degree? From there, she interned at Business Insider and “made something like $12 an hour,” until she found a full-time position in New York City. At Business Insider, Suze met her current partner and after years together in the city, eventually moved to Ashville North Carolina. Able to keep her marketing gig in New York City and work remotely from North Carolina, she remembers spending multitasking during Zoom calls, “rolling out croissants on a shitty card table while coordinating marketing efforts day after day, for far too long before realizing something wasn’t right.”
“No matter how many times I make a recipe, I learn something new. Absolutely every time. It’s something with baking that I never got with marketing, that tangible evidence of growth and improvement.”
Dreaming turned into longing, which turned into tweeting…about wishing she were at pastry school instead. It was then that Suze heard about the pastry program at Ashville’s Community College. Having not taken the route of culinary school myself, I asked Suze about their process to apply, to start, and to transition their life from corporate marketing to pastry. For her, the key to this transition was flexibility, ease of access—community college being inexpensive—and support. Ramping up slowly, Suze started with part-time schooling but is now coming toward the end of their degree and attending full-time. “Right now I’m spending somewhere around 25 hours a week on my feet, in the campus kitchen. With really long days, I’m able to experience all the joy and fun…but also the exhaustion of being in a kitchen, without being paid.” Regardless, Suze is happy with her choice because she feels it has given her the time to learn on the job, be corrected on the job, and make mistakes without ruining anyone’s reputation.
“I remember my first stage at a bakery before I’d started pastry school—I came in totally unprepared; in jean shorts and a t-shirt, having never seen a convection oven. I was completely unbeknown to all that went into working in a bakery. They told me they didn’t have the time or flexibility to give me the training I needed, at first I took that really personally, but now I know that had nothing to do with me.”
This summer, she plans to do her work-study at West End Bakery—which funny enough was the bakery of her first stage, jean shorts and all.
“Oh, everyone at school makes fun of me for taking photos in crazy places. Running around the kitchen, putting my cake on the floor for natural light…and people in my cohort will ask, like, oh no, did you drop your cake?! And I’m like no, actually, some of us have a niche Instagram food account to keep up with.’”
This brings me to where I found Suze, through her food Instagram @wiltedkalesalad, and while I was drawn in by the natural lighting in her photos, the goofiness of her captions, and the fun makes—and remakes—of NYT recipes I also loved, like the aforementioned gochujang caramel cookies (above), it was a story about her struggle with disordered eating and a fear of food that spoke to me most. Suze shared cinnamon-date buns from @sohlae and the caption, slightly shortened for conciseness, is below:
Growing up, cinnamon buns were my favorite food, but after I developed an eating disorder I rarely (if ever) ate them for nearly a decade. Somewhere in May 2020, when I began to truly recover; I made cinnamon rolls for myself. These days, that’s just a Tuesday morning, but when I was sick I didn’t have the energy to bake or the desire to honor my cravings.
In the kitchen for the first time in a long time, I felt like Bambi learning how to walk. Uneasily going through the motions of my old hobby. I used what I had: self-rising flour and a glass brownie dish. I was too anxious to go to the store, let alone experiment with yeast. Since then, I’ve made cinnamon buns more times than I can count because, seriously, they’re that good. If I’m being honest, I’m still regularly astonished by my progress — when it comes to baking, eating, or otherwise. Every batch of buns still feels like a milestone for me. From the increasingly tight coils to the way I dollop frosting and lick the spoon without a second thought. And why should I have one? I have a lot of lost cinnamon rolls over the years to make up for.
Having felt similarly at multiple points growing up, I appreciate Suze’s vulnerability when it came to the work she still has to do to see food differently. I share her account…sometimes with specific people who I hope will stumble upon this story and find strength in the idea that they are not alone. Now that pastry is Suze’s life, I asked if her role in the food industry has helped or hindered her recovery.
“When I was in an unrecovered mindset, I don’t think I would have ever been able to work with food in this way. It took years of work before I could have considered being in this industry. Now, with a healthier relationship to food, I’m able to learn so much more in school and look past any fears I would have had about tasting different pastries for example—I allow myself to make, learn, and taste all these different things, and I’m empowered to have that ability.”
Noticing how comfortable Suze is with herself, I wanted to hear more about how she got to that point and how she takes care of herself each day to maintain her happiness. She places a lot of the credit toward exploring her passions, identifying as queer, working on her physical and mental health daily, aaand falling in love (she’s now engaged!).
“I spent a lot of my life doing all these things that I thought would make me feel happier, better, cooler, just by their perception and not by what I wanted. Whether that was going to a private university, which of course was a privilege, or living in New York, or name dropping and working for these big companies…shopping at Everlane—whatever—things I thought would make me feel good. Realizing I don’t have to do those things and that I can just be who I am, has been so valuable. I have had so many food Instagrams throughout the years that I’ve made and deleted because they weren’t true to me, and that’s why I love Wilted Kale Salad because it’s just silly. And it’s me.”
Sometimes, she says that she still feels like she’s recovering from burnout in the journalism industry. However, her tips re: self-care are as follows:
Redefine self-care. Social media, movies, and other outlets often represent self-care as putting on a face mask, taking a bath, or having a glass of wine, and while that may work for some people, it isn’t the answer for everyone. Ask yourself what would make you feel better and do that. For Suze, it’s the baseline maintenance that is key to self-care and she makes sure to do all of those things first, before going to get her nails done or any of the cliché “self-care,” to-do’s.
Develop a strict self-care routine. Now that you’ve redefined self-care, you know that this doesn’t mean being strict with yourself. What it does mean is putting your physical, mental, and emotional health first. Especially in the hospitality industry where we are on our feet 10+ hours a day, lifting heavy things, standing over 300 degree stoves, so on. Your routine can look like going to the doctor, doing restorative yoga, staying hydrated throughout the day, having a full meal, and taking your full break at work. Mentally, this can look like going to therapy, journaling, going for long walks, and putting a priority on time spent with people you love. Sounds simple, but these take a toll on our bodies if we forget to include them.
Be kind to yourself. Speak kindly, put less pressure on yourself, and remember, especially if you are new to this industry, that you are truly starting over. It will take time to feel confident, perform well, and learn all the skills.
“I remember being so uptight and type-A during my undergrad in journalism. Joining all the clubs, cramming in all the internships, and setting plans for which companies I’d work at from graduation until 35, when I told myself I’d finally be at a good enough point in my career to date. I feel so differently now. That was all the professional pressure I’d put on myself before I knew I was queer or before I had taken the time to learn about myself—to see what falling in love and changing industries could do for my happiness.”
What’s next for Suze, you ask? Well, the perfect combination of journalism and food, of course! In the long term, Suze says her goal is to ghost-write or edit a housewives cookbook—we’re talking real housewives, celebrity cookbooks, and things of this sort. This is mainly because she’d love to develop recipes and write in the voice of the character. That’s right. If any of the real housewives cast members are reading this, Suze is available! She is your gal.
Suze, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to share your experience with me. If you’re reading this and have a woman in your life that has a unique food story to share, reach out! Send me a message!