I hate buying stylish clothes because I get dressed up so rarely that they inevitably go out of style before I can wear them again. So I rent them.
I keep everything in Notepad: shopping lists, to-do lists, recipe tasting notes, my blog content calendar, recipe inspiration, blog-post drafts.
The first five years I lived in New York I was going out every night, to restaurants and album releases and parties.
Question: How do you make a plate of hummus filling enough for a bunch of big burly farmers? Answer: Put meat all over it.
I hate buying stylish clothes because I get dressed up so rarely that they inevitably go out of style before I can wear them again. So I rent them.
I had been blogging for a few years when Jonah Straus, my now-literary agent, reached out to see if I'd consider writing a cookbook. At the time, I didn't feel ready; I was still getting adjusted to life in the upper Midwest, and I was still finding my recipe voice.
I suddenly had all of this time on my hands, so I just threw myself into the blog and then worked on photos, recipe development and networking with other bloggers, growing a following and growing it into something that could be a business.
Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago and living in New York, it didn't even strike me as a possibility that a place could really exist without tons of Jews.
In most places in the Midwest, the best food is found in people's homes, on their farms, at church potlucks.
If people feel inspired to try something new and different in the kitchen then I'll have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.
My journey from the blog to my books to the show has been fueled by a love of food and sharing it with others, and being able to pursue my passions as a career is a dream come true.