An Interview with Tara Sowlaty Lehrer

EVERYONE EATS | SEPT 10, 2020

Tara Sowlaty Lehrer

CO-FOUNDER OF HOW YOU GLOW

As a trained natural foods chef, holistic nutritionist, and certified yoga teacher, Tara Sowlaty Lehrer is a healer by trade and lifestyle and wellness journalist by day. As the co-founder of the popular lifestyle website How You Glow, she shares the glow with vibrancy-seekers alike, through her online editorial and social media content platform. She encourages women to live a more vibrant lifestyle⁠ through traveling the globe, discovering the best health trends, inspiring individuals, restaurant reviews, city guides, fitness classes, fashion and style, and overall nourishment and wellbeing.

Tara's days are spent creative directing her various brands, where she launches products, develops recipes and designs accessories. She also leads wellness workshops that integrate her yoga and breath-work training with creativity and art. Tara lives in Los Angeles with her husband, film-maker Brian Lehrer, and her cutie shiba inu pup Soba.

INTERVIEW BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOLLY CRANNA

TARA'S HOME IN LOS ANGELES

Tara welcomed us into her beautiful home to discuss her newfound pregnancy cravings, her sweet tooth and some of her best food tourism experiences.

BREAKFAST

Breakfast is usually around 9am. I try to focus on protein, especially now that I’m pregnant, every meal pretty much has protein. So it’s either hard boiled eggs with hummus and greens and avocado or I scramble eggs with tomato and some herbs, or I’ll do toast with cream cheese and turkey and capers on top. Or if I’m not super hungry, I’ll do a clean protein bar that I have from Elemental – it’s their spirulina mulberry cacao bar. It’s just seeds and nuts and stuff like that. It’s really good, not too sweet and nice and filling.

LUNCH

Lunch usually involves some sort of green salad with some protein and veggies. I try to keep them seasonal – whatever vegetables I have from the farmers market in my fridge. Or I’ll do a really loaded green smoothie. I use Malibu Mylk flax milk, frozen cauliflower, frozen spinach, almond butter, really clean protein powder, a date and some banana. I’m a really big snacker. I’ll have some sort of nuts, or a spoonful of hummus with some veggies, I’ll have dried fruit, some tomatoes, some avocado. I’m always snacking.

DINNER

Dinner is a little bit more of a free-for-all. It might be me making a pasta dish with some protein. I always try to have some greens, just to up my fiber intake. Or I’ll broil fish with some rice. Or we’ll order in. I love ordering from Joan's on Third, Escuela Taqueria for my favorite burrito, Jon and Vinny’s, AOC and La Scala. I’m the cook in the house, my husband doesn’t really cook at all, but he’s really good at ordering. We’re both very skilled in those two different departments.

DESSERT

I have a huge sweet tooth. My husband does not, which honestly I'm grateful for because if he also had a sweet tooth it would be really bad. What’s funny is that ever since I became pregnant, I lost my sweet tooth. At least, for the first trimester. It was such a weird identity crisis for me. Normally, not one day goes by without me having something sweet.

I love chocolate. Lately what I’ve been doing is making yogurt bowls with really yummy fruit and granola. Or I’ll have dairy-free ice cream. I love cookies so I’ll make some and keep them in the freezer. Generally, it’s something chocolaty after dinner.

SPEED ROUND

Recent food discovery?
Monty’s dairy-free cream cheese. I don’t know how they make it so delicious, but I highly recommend.

Dream dinner guest?
Anthony Bourdain. Or my husband.

Any foods you avoid?

I don’t love raw onions or raw garlic. It ruins my day.

Any vitamins or supplements?
I take a prenatal, a few different strains of probiotics, calcium, iron, B12, DHA and folate.

Best snack between meals?
Nuts, hummus and fresh fruit. (I always pair my fruit with some nuts so it sustains me and doesn’t let my blood sugar go up too high.)

Go-to comfort food?
Pasta. Definitely. I love creamy pasta. I love tomato-y pasta. I love veggie pasta. It’s all just so comforting. My ultimate dream pastas are made at Madeo in Beverly Hills. Or the spicey fucili from Jon and Vinny’s is so yummy. And the bolognese from Marvin.

Go-to market or grocery store?
Sunday farmers market. And Erewhon is a big part of my routine.

Biggest pregnancy craving?
Dumplings.

Go-to cookbook?
Ottolenghi’s books. And I really trust Ina Garten and Smitten Kitchen’s recipes.

Cocktail of choice?
Extra dirty martini with extra olives.

Favorite neighborhood spot?
AOC – their spanish fried chicken is my favorite thing.

Cooking playlist?
João Gilberto and Stan Getz.

Secret food hack?
I love using hummus and high quality jams in my salad dressings. I’ll also add hummus to my pastas to make them creamy without using dairy.

Food celebrity crush?
I idolize Jon and Vinny. I think that they’ve done such a good job at building a food empire. It’s not pretentious. It’s super delicious. It’s not overly fluffy food. Just yummy, craveable food. I think that's hard to do.

Favorite family food tradition?
My mom is an amazing self taught cook. When we go to her house on Sundays she makes the most elaborate, delicious dinner. To her, a chill dinner is like five dishes. Everything she does has kind of a Persian flair to it.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
I just try to stay active during the day, especially if I know I'm gonna have a big meal that night.

Last meal on Earth?
It would be a dream compilation of everything I love: the most insane sushi, the best pasta (there’s this outrageously delicious zucchini pasta from Lo Scoglio in Italy), my mom’s crispy Persian rice tadig, some caramelized meat situation. And then obviously dessert.

Caffeine of choice?

I love coffee, matcha and tea equally. I rotate.

Five items always in your kitchen?
Good olive oil (Oracle is my favorite), flakey sea salt, lemons, really good fresh cracked pepper and hummus from Brothers Products.

Where do you most feel like The Regular?
My kitchen.

THIRD SCOOP

What has been your best food tourism experience?

Genuinely, when I travel, I plan everything around my meals and the food. Like a psychopath sometimes, I used to be really crazy. (As I've gotten older, I’ve chilled out a bit.)

I've been to Japan four times, and my first time I was on a full-on schedule. It was insane. We went to crazy Michelin meals but then really cool hole-in-the-walls and everything in between, in Tokyo and Kyoto. In Tokyo there’s a little udon spot called Udon Yamacho that I’m obsessed with. They don’t speak any English. There are no menus in English. We just stumbled upon it.

In Copenhagen, I did an insane foodie trip and went to Noma and a bunch of other amazing restaurants. That was so life changing. Rene Redzepi was the absolute coolest and so friendly. He took us to this taco spot the next day – it was probably the dreamiest food trip ever.

And Italy in general - every meal is the best meal of your life, and I got married in Italy. There’s a place in Capri called Il Riccio and they have a room that’s literally filled with dessert, called the temptation room. It’s like Willy Wonka on steroids, but Italian desserts. It’s the most insane thing in the world. So yeah, I would say Tokyo, Copenhagen and Italy. Definitely those three if you're looking for the best food of your life.

What inspired you to start How You Glow? How has being an entrepreneur changed your lifestyle?

How You Glow started from a desire to find the absolute best that life has to offer – the things that will add vibrancy to your life. So that’s everything from food, to fitness, to beauty products, and travel. We share that with people through guides and features. I think it's the exchange of information that is what is so exciting for me. It's about doing the research and then sharing that with people to allow them to have a better life.

Working for myself is the absolute dream. I went to business school, where I studied entrepreneurship. I always knew I wanted to work for myself and after I went to cooking school and nutrition school I just wanted to find a way to accumulate what it means to live a healthy life and build that into a business. So that's really what How You Glow has come to be. It's really awesome because every day is a new adventure. Every day is learning something new and sharing it.

What has changed about your diet since you became pregnant?

I’m really focusing on upping my protein intake. Before, I didn't really think about it, but now I'm very conscious about trying to get enough protein and iron and things like that. I've noticed that I'm craving a variety of foods and I think it's nature's way of trying to get in as many nutrients as possible.

I weirdly lost my sweet tooth. It’s coming back now, but I’m kind of forcing it back. I feel like life is so much more fun when you can indulge in some sweets. At the beginning of my pregnancy, anything sweet made me really, really sick. Even fruits. I couldn’t even eat a blueberry. Even lemon was too sweet. It was bizarre.

Because, obviously, a baby takes a lot of iron from your body (and I run anemic) my doctor told me to eat more liver. I guess I'm not bold enough to just buy liver and saute it, so I did some research and I found this awesome company called Force of Nature. They pre-grind beef with liver, so I make an easy bolognese out of it. I'll do sliced shallots with fresh tomatoes and some garlic powder on the meat, and I’ll let it get really brown and caramelized. It’s really, really good.

Tara Sowlaty