Food is never just food. For Yeo Min, pastry chef and author, every recipe is a story, every ingredient a memory, and every dish a link between past and present. In this episode of Clean Your Toilet, Barbara Latimer enters her kitchen of ideas to talk about heritage, identity, and what it means to preserve more than just flavors.

Most people think the hardest part of choosing a career is mastering the skills: the exams, the training, the hours of practice. But what if the deeper struggle is explaining why your choices matter at all?

Yeo Min’s story didn’t begin with cookbooks or pastry courses. It began with social work — a path she pursued out of care for people and community. But studying overseas in London brought unexpected questions. When classmates rejected her pandan cake for being green, such encounters nudged her wrestle with identity: was food just something to eat, or was it something more? Slowly, she began to see that cooking could be activism, storytelling, and preservation rolled into one.

Today, through her writing and the Museum of Food, she documents recipes not just as instructions but as cultural memory. Each dish is an archive of conversations with seniors, a record of techniques that risk being lost, a bridge between generations. Her work asks us to consider what’s worth carrying forward — and how easily the details of heritage can disappear if no one pays attention.

And that’s the tension at the heart of this conversation.

On one side: a world obsessed with food as content, aesthetics, and trend. On the other: the deeper calling to preserve food as memory, story, and truth. Between them lies the messy middle every culture must confront:

What parts of heritage are we willing to let go of?

Can preservation happen without becoming nostalgia?

How does food become both survival and identity?

Yeo Min speaks with candor and warmth about what it means to pivot careers, challenge expectations, and carry heritage in the most everyday of mediums: what we eat. Her story is a reminder that preservation isn’t passive — it’s active, creative, and deeply personal.

If you’ve ever:

Felt out of place because of what you carried from home

Wondered whether your traditions still matter in a changing world

Wanted to connect to your past but weren’t sure where to start

…this episode is your invitation to taste memory differently.

🧼 Heritage is the clean water.

🚽 Forgetfulness is the slow leak.

💩 Dismissal is the residue that erodes culture.

Pay attention, hold onto the details, and let what nourishes you also remind you who you are.

#CleanYourToiletPodcast #GetReal #InnerWork #PersonalMastery #WhatTrulyMatters #TrailBlazing

#FoodIdentity #CulturalPreservation #StoriesThroughFood #HeritageInEveryBite