Matt Terrell’s New Cooking And Lifestyle Show Demonstrates Fun, Simple Ways To Live Your Best Life

April 15th, 2021

“Living the Dream” is a four-episode pilot season of a cooking and lifestyle show produced by Atlanta artist Matt Terrell.

Courtesy of: Matt Terrell

Matt Terrell describes his new cooking and lifestyle show, “Living The Dream,” as “Martha Stewart meets Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” The chef brings fun and creativity to his genre, with a cooking philosophy of “minimum effort with maximum pleasure.” He also brings a lot of Atlanta into the mix, with guest roles played by his friends and neighbors, and featuring appearances by popular local entertainers like Amber Nash and Lucky Yates; even puppets and animations. Terrell is also the author of “The Magnolia Bayou Cookbook,” a fictional Southern cookbook, He joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes over zoom to share more about his whimsical world.

Interview highlights:

Matt’s approach to cooking:

“I’m not going to be toiling over a hot stove, sweating and smelling like onions any day of my life,” said Terrell, laughing. “There’s an idea from the Italian renaissance and baroque era called sprezzatura … which means working hard to make it look like you’re not working at all. So a lot of my recipes in my show involve a lot of pre-work so that when you do go to actually make dinner, it’s really just throwing a few things together and heating it up.”

Sources of inspiration:

“I would say some of the favorite dishes my mom and I make today are things that we had when we’ve traveled through Europe and through Mexico, even in the U.S. Those dishes are really a great way to recreate and remember those times traveling with my mom. [The mole sauce at Pujol, Mexico City] was so interesting and deep and refreshing and exciting, that we had to recreate it when we got home,” said Terrell.

“I spent a lot of time by myself as a kid … I think I was 8 when we got Food Network, it debuted where we lived in Mississippi. I was watching Food Network all the time,” said Terrell. “So there’s a lot of things in my cooking show that do come from my mother, particularly gumbo, but I would say that I have a more ‘cheffy’ outlook that comes from the TV that I watched growing up.”

The new show launches today and can be streamed on Goddessblessyou.com.