A chef, author, and founder of a cookbook lending library, Alicia Shevetone is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

-Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

With a law degree and a long corporate career, she didn't consider herself creative, but that belief began to change with her, quote, acceptance of an evolved self.

Now the author of three cookbooks and the founder of a groundbreaking cookbook lending library, Alicia Shevetone, Chef and creator of Dink Cuisine and Distilled Spices, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

(Alicia Shevetone) Thank you, Amber.

So nice to be here.

-We could go on with how many titles there are for you, but I want to start off with what in the world happened that allowed you to become or consider yourself a creative person?

-You know, I owe it in large part to my husband.

You know, you do things throughout your life--you have a career and you get involved in so many different activities and events and you have, you know, your family--but I never really viewed myself as a creative person until my husband and I had a conversation where he said very kindly, like, Yes, you are creative.

You cook, you decorate our homes, you have a very creative life, the way that you dress, your makeup, all these different things.

And so it was more of an identity that I had to grow into and a belief that I had to have in my myself, thanks to my husband, which was a very nice thing to happen.

-Why pursue cooking as, I believe, your first entrance into this creative world?

-You know, I've always enjoyed cooking.

It's the one thing that sort of calms me down, where I can be alone in my kitchen, and I just appreciate globally inspired cuisine, different types of flavors, learning about new ingredients.

And it brings me such a sense of satisfaction that I started to think of myself as someone that could actually inspire others.

So if I could have this epiphany, perhaps it's something that I could be able to pass on to others as well.

And that was a really great thing for me.

-So Dink Cuisine is your website.

Dink stands for?

-Dual income, no kids.

-When I tell people that who have kids, they take a second and then they think about the reality of, okay, two incomes, no kids, and it's like a light goes off in their head.

Wow!

-Yeah.

-You told me a story off camera about a former coworker who told you what about that, when you first learned the term?

-So I was working for a staffing company in Silicon Valley where I was born and raised, and on a Friday afternoon, my CEO had asked me, What are you and Mark going to be doing this evening?

What are you going to do tonight?

And I said, Well, we might go to Vegas tonight.

And he said, You might go to Vegas?

It's Friday at four o'clock.

You might just decide to go to Vegas?

You don't know if you're going to go to Vegas tonight?

And I said, Yeah, we might just go down to the airport, you know, hop on a plane and go to Vegas.

And so his response was, You guys are such dinks.

And I had never heard the term before, so I actually had to look it up and realize dual income, no kids.

So that's, that really describes us to a T. We have the freedom to be able to do, you know, have a bunch of fun at any given time, and so, yeah, that kind of became an identity where I was able to translate that into cooking for two.

And it's not just for couples, for example.

So it could be for roommates.

It could be for empty nesters, somebody caring for an aging parent.

So there's a lot of different dynamics of households of two that are really applicable for this type of cuisine.

-Yes.

Someone I know is a single mom with a son, and this would totally apply.

-Absolutely.

Single parents, for sure.

-Have you found that there are a lot of dinks out there that you didn't know about?

-Yeah.

There are actually over 40 million dinks just in the U.S.

alone.

-How do you know that number?

-I researched it.

I researched because I wanted to see what my demographic is, right?

-Well, who keeps these kind of stats?

-The U.S.

Census, of course, monitors households and whether or not, you know, people have children or if they're married or, you know.

-True.

-Yeah.

So, yeah, that's where I managed to actually pull some data.

It's a pretty significant demographic.

The average household in America is 2.53 people.

So when you see, especially a lot of cooking shows, you see people cooking for very large families or with farm as a major theme of the show or like ranches and those sorts of things.

But the average lifestyle in America is actually smaller format than most people realize.

So that's been very fun to be able to find that out.

-And perhaps that's what has inspired some people with very loud voices to say, We're not having enough kids.

-Right.

-Have you faced any of that for promoting this lifestyle?

-No.

You know, it-- I think, you know, there's an evolved sense of-- And a lot of people struggle with having children, and there's a lot of, you know, fertility complications and issues and challenges and so forth.

So you can never really judge anybody in terms of their lifestyle choices.

It may not be-- People might not be dinks by choice.

They may be in a situation where they can't have children, they've chosen not to adopt.

So there is a lot of freedom and understanding and acceptance in the lifestyles that people have.

But thankfully, no, no one's given me any, you know, flashback for that.

-That's a great point that you make.

The acceptance term that we've been using in this discussion, when did that happen for you?

What allowed that to happen, the self-acceptance?

-Well, my husband, who's actually in the studio-- -Yes, he's off camera.

-Yeah, we just celebrated our 25th anniversary.

And you know, for us, it was more of a, Hey, listen, I really think that I might not want kids, you know?

And we had the discussion, I mean, before we got married, and Mark said the same thing.

And we sort of said, well, listen, we might change our minds.

Let's, let's just sort of have, you know, an open heart and see if our lifestyle might, you know, become something in the future where we have, you know, the, the house or the, the freedom to be able to, you know, to pay attention to children and to have that life.

And we just never changed our minds.

And so here we are, 25 years later.

And I'm 54, so that ship has sailed.

-Yes.

But I guess more the acceptance of you, when you talked about the self-acceptance of, I am creative.

-Oh, the acceptance of, I'm creative.

You know, I think that-- -Maybe we already answered this with your husband.

-Yeah.

You know, we did.

But I will say that, you know, the identity as a corporate person who's always been very upwardly mobile--you know, I was the CEO in my last position--you really have to understand that there are different parts of yourself and that you can-- it's an "and," it's not an "or."

So I can be corporate, and I can also be creative.

And there are 24 hours in a day, and there are weekends, there are evenings, there's lunch hours, there was different, you know, time periods in our life where we can dedicate our passions.

And that sort of also helped me gain the acceptance of this new identity that I can have, you know, both a corporate career and a culinary career.

-What has it been like combining your corporate experience with now a nonprofit?

And tell us about your nonprofit.

-Thank you so much.

As a cookbook author, my most recent cookbook is $40, a hardcover cookbook, and I realized that can be a luxury item for some people that might not necessarily be able to justify that expense, but it doesn't mean that they shouldn't benefit from the knowledge.

So I wanted to create a place where people could go to pick up a cookbook and learn how to make a healthy recipe, maybe learn about new ingredients, things that they can make for their kids, maybe at home, and just sort of get excited about cooking.

And I figured that I would investigate whether there are any nonprofit cookbook libraries, and it turns out there isn't.

So I founded Nice Nice Bite, which happens to be America's first nonprofit, registered 501(c)(3) cookbook lending library in America.

It's multi-branch, it's self service, and we actually have membership in the American Library Association.

-How many branches?

-We are going to be opening our third branch in just a little over a year.

-Where are you currently located?

-So currently we're at Palate, which is a restaurant in the Arts District, Downtown Las Vegas, and our library is tucked into their lounge, which is they've got these beautiful bookshelves.

We're also in the Multigen Recreation Center in Henderson on Green Valley.

And then our third one is going to be at the Obodo Collective, which is a Nigerian nonprofit in West Las Vegas.

And that's going to be opening soon, in a few weeks.

-What has the response been like?

-It's been phenomenal, particularly from some very well-known chefs who are cookbook authors, who have restaurants and run hospitality teams here in the Las Vegas area: Wolfgang Puck; Lidia Bastianich, for example; Bobby Flay.

We have received Michael Mina.

They've all donated cookbooks.

So my pitch to them was, Listen, you are benefiting from, you know, the tourism in Las Vegas, the hospitality talent here in Las Vegas.

It would be wonderful to be able to give back and be a part of our cookbook library and sort of put your individual stamp on it.

And so many chefs have really made that happen for us, which is amazing.

-What's your ultimate goal with this nonprofit?

-Well, if you're familiar with the little libraries where you can go through neighborhoods and you see people have almost like, it looks almost like a little bird, you know, bird house on their front lawn where there are little libraries and people could take a book and leave a book and those sorts of things.

There are actually over 100,000 little libraries globally now.

So I would love to be able to expand this outside of Las Vegas and go nationally into some other markets, and particularly to serve underserved communities where we really think that we can make an impact and make culinary content more accessible to those types of communities.

So through the help of our sponsors-- We've had some fantastic sponsors.

We do have a fundraiser coming up in a couple of weeks where Southern Glazer's has actually donated the wine, which has been phenomenal.

Other corporate sponsors like Stingray Spot Remover and Desert Ready Mix, on and on, not to mention donations from the community for cookbooks and financial donations.

-Wonderful.

I want to get back to your personal life a little bit.

And you have talked about your husband.

I also read that he convinced you to begin calling yourself chef.

-He did.

-That you struggled with that.

-I did.

-Why?

-Well, I grew up in a very academic household.

And, you know, going through undergrad, I was an English major.

I got a law degree in 1997.

I came up, obviously, through the corporate route.

And I sort of had this image in my head of, you know, chefs go to culinary school.

They are-- You know, they grew up, you know, in a restaurant environment or at least a catering environment, something of that nature, where they are immersed in food and they've earned that particular title.

And my husband, you know, kind of questioned that, and he just said, Well, you know, if you're cooking professionally and you're doing events and you're on TV and you're doing all these other things, you've really earned the right to be able to call yourself that.

You should embrace it.

If other people call you chef, just go with it.

It's fine.

So it was something that I had to almost grant permission to myself.

And thanks to my husband, I was able to do that.

-And how do you go from-- Okay, you talked about the success that you've had in past articles.

You talked about your mom really pushing you, because at one point in your life you were trying to do the bare minimum.

-Yes.

-How do you go from that to this?

-Well, the bare minimum, I would say, was kind of rebellious in that danger, because I was, I was, you know, getting good grades and, you know, excelling in school and taking AP classes and, you know, being in the honors program and all these different types of things.

You sort of burn out.

Even as a kid, you can burn out.

And there was a time where I tried to sort of, you know, phone it in so that I could stay, like, in a lower level math group, and my teacher found out.

This was like in 5th grade, so it was a long time ago.

Well, my teacher found out, and then, she had to call my mother, and then they had to do a conference with me.

And it was just, it was a little bit embarrassing, because they both looked at me like, What are you doing?

You're not going to get away with this, so just stop it.

So, but yeah, but that was, yeah, that was a, yeah.

-And so she implemented grander achievements, I think I read?

-Yeah.

Well, you know, she just-- It was very important to her that I had goals and that I could continue to progress to actually live up to the potential that she saw in me.

And my mother, my mother is a PhD.

We actually went through school together.

So when I was in undergrad, she-- Actually, when I was in high school, she completed her undergrad.

When I was in undergrad, she got her master's.

And when I was in law school, she got her PhD.

-Wow!

-Yeah.

So we went through school together.

So I think it was also sort of a motivator for her that, Okay, Alicia, you can't slack off because I don't want to slack off, so you're going to have to-- We're doing this together.

-Wow!

Okay.

We have run out of time, but people can watch you on Sin City Kitchen.

-Sin City Kitchen, my show, yes.

Yes, my streaming show.

-Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you, Amber.

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