In The Kitchen with Anja Tyson

Anja Tyson is a writer, creative consultant, and mother whose work explores the deep, nourishing connections between food, identity, and care. For this In the Kitchen With feature, Anja invited us into a weekend ritual: making pancakes with her daughter. Photographed at home, the moment is sweet, simple, and full of meaning—an everyday act of intimacy that speaks to something bigger.

Timed to coincide with the release of her beautiful new zine, Food Is a Mother, this feature feels especially poignant. Curated annually in collaboration with Mother Tongue Magazine, the publication brings together diverse voices exploring caregiving through the lens of food. Proceeds support Little Essentials, a Brooklyn nonprofit serving families with young children living in poverty.

Q&A with Anja

1. Kitchen confessions time - Are you team "mise en place" with everything perfectly prepped, or more of a creative chaos cook? And the ultimate personality test: do you clean as you go or leave a glorious mess for later?

Glorious mess describes so many aspects of my life, cooking included. My friend Laura Ferrara is my ultimate muse and idol in this regard; she’ll whip up the most delicious meal you’ve ever tasted, and the whole time she’ll be talking with you and fully present, and while everything is not just so, it’s not really a mess, either. There is a comfort and caring in a little mess, like someone cares more about what they’re doing for you than how neat it is while they’re doing it. 

2. What drove your styling in the selection of PORTA products for your delicious, adorable and fun breakfast?

Each summer we visit the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the colors and sort of naive lines of my Porta pieces remind me of the seaside restaurants we visit while we are there. I know seafood and pancakes don’t mix, but as the person who is cooking these family meals every weekend (and other times as well!), I think it’s fair to prioritize whatever will keep me in a dreamy mood.

3. Your annual zine "Food Is a Mother" explores caregiving through food. How does cooking with your daughter connect to the broader themes of nourishment and care in your work?

Food is one of our most important sources of life as humans, but it’s also a source of anxiety, generational knowledge, love, care, and sometimes fear. For my daughter, it’s important to me that she knows how to nourish not just herself but the people around her, because feeding someone is an act of love and an important role in any size community. Now that she is old enough to grasp abstract concepts, I also talk with her about the origins of food - why pickles exist, where the concept of canning comes from, what seasonal foods are and how helpful it is to eat locally - so that she understands the difference between what has come from of thousands of years of life developing on earth and what is represented by the last 100 years of industrialization. A lot of my work with clients is about figuring out how to demonstrate value to a user or consumer. It’s really hard to demonstrate value when people become more and more disconnected from vital information in this culture. Food can be such a source of that connection.

4. This pancake recipe you're sharing today - does it have any special story behind it? Have any family cooking traditions shaped how you approach food? What inspired "Food Is a Mother," and how has bringing together so many diverse contributors and their food stories influenced your own relationship with cooking and nourishment in general? 

When my daughter was born, I hadn’t expected that I would have to raise her alone, and in order to do that I needed to quickly reorient my life around raising a child on one income, which was incredibly rough. It took me years to financially get my head back above water, and the years in question were some of my daughter’s most formative. So I really focused on things I could do inexpensively at home to make things feel magical. Pancakes are relatively cheap to make, you can pour them into funny shapes and they’re a great carrier for different fruits, preserves, and sauces. 

Having regained my footing as a mom, I remember acutely every day how challenging it was to turn a limited amount of money into nourishment for two people, and the reality of it is that nearly half a million kids in NYC alone are living in poverty. That’s however many hundreds of thousands of parents who are stressed about feeding their families, and the long term effects of that stress carries through generations of DNA.

I serve on the advisory board of an incredible non-profit called Little Essentials, who specifically supports families living in poverty with children under age 5, and so this zine, which is at its core just a bunch of friends sharing their interpretations of care through the lens of food, was designed to give back to Little Essentials. Once Mother Tongue got involved and offered to facilitate sales, it became possible to offer the zine to more people, exponentially increasing the impact of anything I could have achieved alone. 

The kind of care that is represented by cooking pancakes for my daughter is Intimacy - closeness and love between two people, which is actually very easy. The kind of care that I am aiming for with the impact of this zine is Collective - I think we need more of, considering the state of world affairs. 

In the intro bio, I plan to focus on Food is a Mother, but please let me know if there is anything else that you would like to highlight. I will of course also mention that your daughter has been cooking these pancakes since she was 7...!

When I make bacon, I save the rendered fat from the bottom of the pan to use for exactly this purpose—it's a high burn point and great for cooking. Most bacon takes about 13 minutes in the oven at 450°F, and if your companions eat meat, it’s an easy thing to throw on a simple baking sheet and forget about until your timer goes off. I love the way it looks to serve pancakes, bacon, and even some fried eggs all on the same generous platter for everyone to take from. Pancakes taste great with maple syrup, but you can also make a quick berry compote in a saucepan without stress—just boil a cup or two of berries (I used raspberries here) with two tablespoons of sugar, two tablespoons of water, and one tablespoon of fresh lemon juice, stirring consistently until you get a nice warm compote.

This weekend, I made boiled eggs because that’s what I was in the mood for, but making a nice egg, however you prefer it, takes only a few moments after the pancakes are done frying and goes a long way on the plate! Kids can make this pancake recipe, and once they taste it, they will never want mix again. My daughter started making these pancakes with me when she was about seven years old, and now at age eleven, she can make them unsupervised and serve breakfast—she is going to be very popular in college.

PORTA offers a uniquely honed edit of homewares from Europe bringing unique character and thoughtful design to your table and home in a way that simultaneously celebrates tradition while embracing contemporary style. Through our travels, interests and obsessions we bring storied traditions and histories to light so they can be engaged with in new ways. Many chefs explore and play with similar interests and ideas through food, and in our seriesIn The Kitchen With…we hope to highlight the joy and creativity that happens from stove to table by inviting chefs to whip up something wonderful on (or accessorized by) PORTA products. Each chef is generously sharing their recipe with us so that we can all recreate the magic at home, and answering a few questions about their love of food and approach to bringing people together around the table.