"I'm Competing With the Pure Joy of Being Home Alone"

Carla Lalli spent over two decades married, built a career as a Bon Appétit test kitchen star, wrote cookbooks, and raised a family. Then her marriage ended. The first year of being single, she says, was thrilling—not because of new freedom in the romantic sense, but because she finally had time alone. "When you're part of a family, you don't get a lot of time alone," she tells host Jay Gauntlett on Expense Account. "I really love being alone." That honest admission sets the tone for a conversation about divorce, dating, and the psychology of feeding yourself through emotional upheaval.

The Book That Wasn't Planned

Lalli's new book, Food Is a Feeling, emerged not from a publisher's brief but from lived experience. Five months into her separation, she found herself eating "olive oil fried bread and personal pots of beans" and realized she wanted to write about it. The result is half memoir, half cookbook—a format she felt was overdue in a food media landscape that typically markets recipes as problem-solvers for celebratory occasions. "It presumes that every time we cook it's like yay," she says. "Whereas for me and I think so many people, we eat even when you're sad, out of sorts, annoyed. Good day, bad day. We eat through all of that time."