Molly Cranna

EVERYONE EATS | APR 1, 2021

Molly Cranna

PHOTOGRAPHER

Molly Cranna is a professional photographer, trained at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, who specializes in portraits, fashion and still life, with an emphasis on interesting faces and interesting things. She focuses on problem solving with color and finds visual catharsis in straight lines and unexpected moments. Past clients have included Adidas, Google, Rosie Assoulin, Teen Vogue and Beats by Dre, among many others.

Molly splits her time between New York and Los Angeles, or you can find her on Instagram at @mollycranna.

INTERVIEW BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ROSIE ELLIS

MOLLY'S LOS FELIZ OASIS

You couldn't ask for a dreamier California home – floor to ceiling windows, an open kitchen and a swimming pool surrounded by palm trees. Molly let us peek inside her fridge while we discussed her true love for anything hotdog adjacent.

BREAKFAST

I’ll preface this entire piece by mentioning that I’m many, many, many years into eating disorder recovery and although I’m outwardly a fairly “normal eater”, each meal is still a certain level of struggle, depending on the day. I go through phases with certain comfort foods and I’m really working on intuitive eating, which is great in theory - tougher in execution. But I find that if I really focus on which foods sound good and allow myself some time to prepare them, I’m able to relax more while consuming them.

Based on this mentality, my current breakfast of choice is smoked salmon on toast. I start by chopping up chives and adding them to cream cheese and then I spread that on toast with thinly sliced shallots, smoked salmon, and sprouts. I could eat this every day forever. It leaves my hands and breath smelling awful all day, but something I’m willing to deal with. I also drink 2-3 cups of coffee in the morning – just drip coffee with 2% or half and half.

LUNCH

Lunch is particularly tough and on harder days it gets overlooked/combo-d with breakfast, but on good days it’s a homemade panini or a takeout salad/bowl. I also looooove to eat cold split pea soup out of the can, but my inner quality-of-life barometer / my nutritionist’s voice in my head tells me that it’s a bad vibe.

DINNER

Neither my fiance nor I love cooking, but we try to take turns doing it. For a while, it was very focused on hitting all the food groups and creating a balanced meal, but I realized recently that that regimented thinking (protein, vegetable, grain - kill me) was part of why we both hated cooking, so I’ve been trying to bring my intuitive eating mindset into our dinner planning as well. I’m getting better at cooking seafood - mussels, salmon, shrimp, scallops and love making any kind of pasta. And you know what else I fucking love? Corn. I could eat ears and ears of corn. On nights we don’t feel like cooking we’ll do takeout – Italian (Blairs or Osteria La Buca), Mexican (El Condor), sushi (Sugarfish or Noshi), or Indian (Agra). And honestly, my favorite nights are when we make hotdogs at home. We each have two, one with a bun and one without.

DESSERT

I’m generally full post-dinner, but if I’m at a restaurant (a distant memory), I’ll usually order whatever the chocolate option is – I don’t do cheesecake or tiramisu. I do really love baking if there’s a reason to, like a birthday or holiday. I’m big on cake baking and am pretty good at it, but still have a ways to go on my decorating skills. I’ve made some incredibly fucked up looking cakes in my day.

SPEED ROUND

Dream dinner guest?
I don’t really get off on social eating, but I would love to get a PLATONIC DRINK with Timothee Chalamet.

Recent food discovery?
I’m way late to this hot tip, but I found out this year that mortadella is just socially acceptable sliced hotdog meat and I’m just … I mean.

Go-to cookbook?

I’m kind of a Google-what-you-want-to-make person.

Cooking playlist?
Either showtunes or late '90s / early 2000’s alternative.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
My daily workout is HIIT, but after a big meal I like a nice long walk.

Any allergies or foods you avoid?
I developed a very bougie allergy to quinoa in college, so I avoid it out of caution. I also don’t fuck with any pate or liver mousse/spread – gamey stuff makes me short of breath.

Cocktail of choice?
Dirty gin martini or Scotch on the rocks.

Favorite neighborhood restaurant?
Blair’s in Silverlake is my favorite neighborhood spot when I’m in LA.

Favorite restaurant?
Bavel in the LA Arts District.

Whose routine would you love to see on Everyone Eats?
Timothee ... Chalamet ...

Food Celebrity crush?
This is gross, but I think Bobby Flay is so fucking hot.

What’s the best dish you make?
I make a really incredible Atlantic Beach Pie and I also made some adjustments to Katherine Hepburn’s brownie recipe (replace vanilla extract with dark rum and add shredded coconut) that make them even better.

Any vitamins or supplements?
I’m sort of a vitamin denialist...sometimes I remember to take D3 and I should probably take iron, but who has the tiiiiime?

Five items always in your kitchen:
Coffee (we mostly brew Peet's), milk (2%), cottage cheese (Alta Dena or Knudsens - also 2%), smoked salmon (not picky about brand, but I really recommend placing an order with Oven Head Salmon Smokers in New Brunswick), peanut/almond butter (any brand, but no added sugar).

Secret food hack?
Literally just spread mayonnaise on everything.

Go-to comfort food?
Cucumbers. The flavor and texture bring me so much comfort and also don’t make my brain crazy, so it’s a win win. I also go crazy for cold tofu. My mom fed it to me as a baby and I grew up thinking it was a totally normal thing to eat cold and raw.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
My mother-in-law used to work for Williams Sonoma, so I’m pretty loyal to them. For tablescape stuff, I like finding vintage glassware on Ebay or Etsy.

Best snack between meals?
I like anything dipped in cottage cheese. Crackers, chips, anything. Also any smoked fish dip. (Again, bad breath, but whatever.)

Go-to market or grocery store?

Whatever is closest and has parking.

If you were a food you’d be [blank]?
Potato chips, creme fraiche, and caviar – sort of a high/low deal.

Last thing you ordered for delivery?
I’m newly living in NYC right now, so I’m still figuring out my take out spots. We recently got some really really good Indian food from a place in Kips Bay and last night we had Italian from Parm.

Caffeine of choice?
Coffee with milk or half and half – tonally it should look like a brown paper bag.

Most overrated food trend?
Non-dairy milk substitutes for non-lactose intolerant people.

Favorite food family tradition?
My mom has made the same chocolate cake every year for my birthday and my Dad’s birthday and it’s honestly just the best cake ever. I grew up hating chocolate cake (I was a really fun kid) and this was the only one I would eat.

Biggest food splurge?
Oh god, I’m so stingy. I literally compare price per oz on the labels at the grocery store to determine what I buy. But I also keep smoked salmon stocked at all times, so, you know ... we all contain multitudes.

Where do you feel most like The Regular?
This is such a poignant question because this year has really messed with my (everyone’s) routines and comforts, but getting coffee at Kaldi in Atwater Village (in LA) is when I feel most at home.

THIRD SCOOP

You’ve spoken very openly about dealing with an eating disorder when you were younger. In a society that admires weight loss, what guidance would you give to other women hoping to feel more comfortable with their own bodies?

I wish I had a great answer for this, but I’m afraid I’m not fully there yet. And to be honest, I’m not sure if anyone ever is. It’s hard because on one hand, women are constantly told (explicitly and subliminally) to look a certain way, which is generally not achievable. But on the other hand, we’re also told that if we don’t love our bodies, we’re doing something wrong, which is just as shitty and it’s really hard to win.

I guess I just try to take baby steps when I can. At the start of the year, I declared 2020 “the year of sizing up” (this was pre-COVID/sweatsuit abundance - incredibly prescient!) and decided to start buying clothes a bit looser. I admitted to myself that I’m triggered by the feeling of a tight waistband or sometimes even the general feeling of fabric against my skin and decided that I didn’t want to deal with it anymore. I also stopped wearing two piece bathing suits because having an exposed stomach was so distracting to me that I was just like “WAIT, WHO’S IN CHARGE HERE”. I don’t consider this to be me giving in to my insecurities or trying to cover up my body - it’s more about finding what I think I look good in that’s also comfortable against my skin and nurturing to my mind.

Look, ultimately, your body is your body and there’s really only so much you can do to change it. Even when I was at my sickest, I still had super broad shoulders and a generally athletic build because that’s in my DNA - end of story. I’m 5’5” and I’m never going to be a supermodel and honestly, I really don’t care.

Oh, and the last thing – one hot little tip is that any time you’re looking in the mirror, tugging at some piece of skin or furrowing your brow about some random limb, try to stop yourself and ask what you’re actually feeling bad about. If you can connect with whatever that is (a fight with your mom, an unreturned text, a weird comment from a coworker, lack of career success, uncertainty about your future, etc.) and then try to connect with something positive, often your reflection will start to shift for the better. (But also, stop looking in the mirror so much.)

You recently redesigned your home, and more specifically a stunning kitchen. How did you think about building your dream kitchen from the ground up?

I certainly never set out to build a dream kitchen, as far as appliances are concerned, but I did want to create a space that could handle the inevitable crowd that always forms in that zone. Our original kitchen was super narrow and had a small window to peek through into the main living space. We wanted to make sure we opened that window up so that whoever was cooking in the kitchen was also a part of the rest of the house. We also added a counter with bar stools so that you can sit on one side of the wall and chat with the people in the kitchen. When it came to appliances, we just wanted shit that worked well and didn’t take up a ton of space, since our place is pretty small. We also made the purely aesthetic choice to use honed marble (a more matte look - not glossy) for our countertops, which unfortunately is pretty porous - so we have to be super vigilant about using cutting boards when working with acidic foods (or pouring alcoholic drinks) or else we end up with a lot of staining.

As a self-proclaimed tubed meat authority, can you advise on what to do with these specialty products and how to acquire the best of what’s out there?

Omg there are millions of options and the exciting thing is that there are NO WRONG WAYS. I love a turkey and pork hotdog (they’re the cheapest, sweetest, pinkest ones) on a toasted bun with ketchup and mayo; nothing more. If you’re feeling bitchy about quality, then beef is OF COURSE fine and there are endless ways to deck it out. A nice little hack if you don’t have any buns left (8 dogs per pack, 6 buns per pack...I think we’ve all run into this issue before) is to slice your hotdogs length-wise and lay them flat on some toasted bread for a sandwich. Naturally, I’ve also whipped up all sorts of variations on hotdog pasta and, again, you CANNOT go wrong. If hotdogs aren’t your thing, any form of wurst is also a winner in my book. Bockwurst, weisswurst (I know it’s uncouth to openly praise veal, but la-di-da here we are). Boil any of those up, give them a brief pan fry, and serve with a horseradish mayo (or any mayo, really).