Holidays are busy for restaurants and for home cooks. Thanksgiving kicks off the holiday season, and Christmas is just as much a celebration of food as it is a time to gather with friends and family. 

Hari Pulapaka, executive chef at Cress restaurant in Deland and associate professor of mathematics at Stetson University,  says at this time of year there’s no better gift than a well cooked meal.

He sits down with Intersection to talk about the challenge of finding new flavors in the saturated media landscape of food, trying different cuisines and cooking sustainably.