Dishing with Stephanie's Dish

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Stephanie A. Meyer has the basic formula for how to eat and create satiety and life long healthy eating without deprivation Sep 05, 2025

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She provided a formula for all the nutrient-dense foods your body needs, at a calorie count that seemed doable while still creating Satiety.Here’s the basic, per-meal formula (adjust according to your weight and health goals and your calorie needs). Are you ready? Write this down:30 grams protein + 40 grams carbs (5 or more grams of fiber) + 2 colors of non-starchy plants + 15 grams of healthy fatDo that for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo.You can (and should) read the whole post here and subscribe to her newsletter…It was like a lightbulb went off, and I knew I needed to talk with her for the podcast.Get Stephanie’s RecipesOriginal Episode Transcript Follows:Stephanie Hansen:Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. Sometimes it's cookbook authors, sometimes it's people that make things, Sometimes it's chefs. And today I am talking to my friend Stephanie Meyer, who you all may know of as Fresh, Tart Steph and as now, Stephanie Meyer, a. I always get it wrong. Stephanie.Stephanie A. Meyer:Stephanie A. Dot Meyer. But yes, got it.Stephanie Hansen:And Stephanie has been in our friend group for a very long time and a friend with me for a long time. And Stephanie is always. I feel like a trendsetter. Do you know that you're a trendsetter?Stephanie A. Meyer:No. That's amazing. I don't think anyone's ever called me that before, but. Well, that's really.Stephanie Hansen:Here's what I think. Like, you're not in the trends, like people would think of trends, but you are thinking about things before other people are thinking about them. Because I think you're super well read. You're very bright. You spend a lot of time thinking about science things. So you were the first person that I came across in the food space that was really thinking about blogging in a robust way.Stephanie A. Meyer:Sure. Wow. That was a long time ago.Stephanie Hansen:It was. But that was what you were doing, and you were bringing bloggers together and creating community, which was amazing. Then you were writing a cookbook about Twin City chefs, which also seems probably like a long time ago, but I just picked it up the other day, and the stories and the heartfelt feelings about the Twin Cities chef community was still there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Love it. Thank you.Stephanie Hansen:Then you sort of started thinking about healthy eating and healthy food, and your green broth kind of blew up before anybody else was really talking about that. And you've really gone full circle here into this food journey, as many of my peers start to enter the midlife, menopausal middle, trying to think about not only foods in terms of health, but also some of us have been packing the pounds on over the years and just really like, you wrote something the other day, and I follow you on substack and I follow all your stuff, but you wrote something the other day that just, like, leapt off the page at me. And I sent it to a friend and I thought, I have to podcast with her, and I'm going to see if I can find it here, because I'm going to read it, because I think it will really resonate with food people, but also people that might be in the menopause space, which. So you are on trend, because when Oprah starts talking about Something that you've been talking about for a long time.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right? It's, I mean that. It's very true. And honestly, in this sense, a lot of it is just sort of following what people ask me for. So maybe my, maybe my clients are the trendsetters and I'm just answering their questions.Stephanie Hansen:Okay, so here is what you wrote as we'll say, a nutritional coach. You said, write down this solution and implement it today. Here's the basic per meal formula and adjust according to your weight and health goals and calorie needs. Are you ready? She said, write this down. 30 grams of protein plus 40 grams of carbs, 5 or more grams of fiber, plus 2 colors of non starchy plants and 15 grams of healthy fat. Do that for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A snack is half of that, but still the combo. And I was like blown away that nobody had ever just like spelled that out in a way that felt so clear to me.So can you talk a little bit about your journey and how you got there and how you got to this specific metric and why it's working for people?Stephanie A. Meyer:Oh, I love it. Well, I call that particular formula, I call it the satiety formula. That's how you pronounce that word, by the way. Like, often people will just write back and say, oh my God, huge relief because I was saying satiety. Satiety. I wasn't really sure how to say it. Whatever. So anyway, it's satiety.Right, satiety. And so it is satiety. So that could be your little word nerd, you know, for the day and the week. And it's a very powerful word. And, and I just am kind of hooked on it. And I keep repeating it and I keep hoping that people get on board with me, but I call that the satiety formula. Because when I work with clients, I have been able to see that the thing that gets in people's way is that they're hungry. And, you know, perimenopause, menopause makes you hungrier.Stephanie A. Meyer:And a lot of women notice it. They think it's. Oh, it's because of, you know, hormones. That's it. That, you know, estrogen and progesterone directly affect your appetite. That's not really exactly. It's not that direct. However, it is true because as, as you know, perimenopause sets in.We know what happens. Sleep disruption. Nothing, nothing affects your appetite more than sleep. And you have a bad night of sleep. We know that the average person eats like 3 to extra, 3 to 500 extra calories the next day without trying or knowing it. And so a lot of women come to me and say, I'm doing exactly what I did before. This is like this mysterious 10 pound weight packed on and, and, and I think it's because of estrogen. And then we dive in.I have them take a look at what they're eating, we talk about their appetite. And what I just saw over and over and over again is, oh, women are just hungrier. So we need to get more knowledgeable about what makes you full and a little bit more purposeful about it. And then along came Ozempic and made it all kind of make sense, because ozempic works, or GLP1 medications work because they decrease your appetite. And all of a sudden people realized, oh, I was eating much bigger portions than I realized. Oh, I have a naturally bigger appetite than my sister. I didn't realize this is how she felt. I didn't realize what it feels like to not think about food all day.I didn't realize what it feels like to not, like, be hungry after dinner. And I, and Oprah even said it, she's like, wait a minute, is this what normal people feel? And I have been beaten up my whole life for like, you know, being overweight and having a bigger appetite. And it's just my biology. And so knowing that biology is happening, appetite is bigger. What can you do about it? Maybe a GLP1 medication is an answer. Lots of people don't want to go that route right away. They would rather experiment with creating satiety, which is what GLP1 medicine medications do. Creating satiety with food.Because we naturally have GLP1, we naturally have other satiety hormones. We can eat very specific foods in combination to, like, elicit as much of that, that release of satiety hormone as possible. It's not as powerful as meds, but it's a good experiment. And a lot of people are like, okay, I have a lot of clients. I just met with one this morning who said, I'm too full. And so let's adjust. I love it when I get people there. It's like, oh, now I'm too full.How do we fix that?Stephanie Hansen:It's funny because my first thought after reading your formula was thinking about, I see the plates of food you eat a lot on Instagram. So I was thinking about, like, okay, thinking about what Stephanie's plates look like and then thinking about, like, if I actually ate that amount of food three times a day. Yeah, I haven't eaten that much food since like the fifth grade.Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Stephanie A. Meyer:Right.Stephanie Hansen:It felt like, wow, would this be what that felt like? And I'm not sure. I'm always on the search and you know, people probably think I have an eating disorder and maybe I do and I don't even know it, but I feel like a lot of women, we are conditioned and we think about food a lot. When it's your business too. I'm always thinking about creating and food is like my art. So it's hard for me to separate the creation of food and wanting to express that way through. They're actually making recipes or thinking about recipes or gardening or creating a beautiful table. Like I'm always thinking about that and then the actual eating piece of it and it gets kind of all mixed up. But some ways in a beautiful way, some ways in a way that feels onerous.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yes, very well said.Stephanie Hansen:And I just think about it all the time and I eat way less than I think about because if I ate all the time, like, But I know, like I have a friend right now who she has an eating disorder and has her whole life. And for the first time as a 55 year old woman, she feels like she's really got a handle on it because she's back to, I hate to say it, but calorie counting. And she was afraid of calorie counting her whole life. Exactly. Like you said, she's like, I wasn't eating enough. I was eating one meal a day. I was eating all the wrong things. And now that I'm like more managing that, eating throughout the day and eating more fruits and vegetables and just like not being so hung up on it, she's like, I feel so much better.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah. Yeah. Wow, you said a lot of great things there. I don't think you have an eating disorder. I mean, welcome to being a woman in the United States. It is just relentless. And then social media has probably made it worse. Although frankly, it wasn't all that great, you know, pre social media.So I don't know. There's, there's a lot of good info. I see a lot of better info. Maybe it's because of the way I curate, curate my social media feed, but I feel like the messages are shifting and changing and I think that's good. But you're right, I mean, it's just, it's insanity and it's really difficult. Calories, you know, matter, like buried in that formula is, you know, carb or macros, the macronutrients of protein, carbs and Fat, they each have calories associated with them. So carbs have 4 calories per gram, protein has 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per. And so when you build a meal around the satiety formula, there is, there's calorie control kind of built into it.And so that meal, if you put together that exact formula of a meal, is going to come out to around 400 calories. 400 calories per meal is a pretty good place for women to start. I mean, it's probably not enough. And I say that in that, in that particular essay. 400 calories per meal, if you only ate three meals a day, would obviously be 1200 calories. A lot of women historically have been aiming for 1200 calories a day and it's not enough, right? It backfires because you end up so hungry that you do overeat in the evening and invisible ways. It's not enough nutrients to, you know, build muscle. And muscle is really how you keep your metabolism ticking along, especially as we age.Uh, so 1200 calories, isn't it? That, that's the calorie count for like my three year old niece, that's how many calories a day she should be eating. So not a grown woman. Unless of course, you're, I don't know, Sue Ellison, you're like 4 foot 10 and you're, you know, an older age. Like she doesn't need a ton of calories and I'm quite sure she probably doesn't eat a ton of food because she's just like an adorable tiny little thing. Um, I'm six feet tall and I'm super active and 1200 calories a day would be insane. Lots of bad things start to happen if you do that. Your hair falls out, you start to lose muscle, you start to lose bone, you start to have low energy. It's depressing.You compromise your gut health. Like, we're not going there. Nuance is very hard to portray on social media. And you know, anywhere the nuance is that yes, 1200 is too low, but most Americans are actually over consuming calories and our food environment is high calorie, low satiety. You just, we know that that's what restaurants tend to sell. It's what snack foods are. It's what, you know, most of our food environment, kind of the ultra processed food stuff. And so once you know that, you can start to push up against it.And most women, I find this, really feel like they are going to gain weight if they're full, which is a Little bit getting at what you said. Like, you look at that plate of food that I put on Instagram, most of those plates of food are, like, between 300 and 400 calories. Like, they're not even that many calories. But I'm really good at getting a lot of food packed into 400 calories so that you can experience satiety, but also the nutrient density part of it. It's a lot of color, a lot of veggies, a lot of fiber, you know, the right amount of protein, that kind of thing. And I think that's a really. It. It's a worth thinking about.Wow. I have been programmed to feel healthy when I'm hungry and to feel like I'm doing things right if I'm hungry and that if I'm satisfied and full, then I'm going to gain weight. That's a very real fear. And it's not just for people who have an eating disorder. It's. I would say it's pretty typical for all American women. So you hit on it.Stephanie Hansen:We're always trying to balance not only for our. Our health, for ourselves, but also our partners, our children. You know, a lot of women are the caregivers, and we're putting this food out there.Stephanie A. Meyer:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen:And wanting to also, like, I don't want. Just speaking for myself, I don't want food to be, like, depressing, not fun. Like, also creating an environment where food can be celebration and all those things. How, like, okay, so I know you're coaching all these women and they're having all this success because they're feeling more full, they're eating more well balanced, they're following your formula. But then it feels like real life enters in sometimes and we have that third glass of wine, or we're going out to dinner on Friday and Saturday night. My challenge, like, I could never calorie count because if I go to dinner at a good place on a Friday night, the calories in that food, I know I can't even keep track of because they put so much butter in it. Or it's just you. You don't know how restaurant food is made and why it tastes so good.Stephanie A. Meyer:And all those things you fear are true.Yes. It's so true. I have that conversation actually with my clients because we strategize around. Okay. There's a couple of ways you can approach it. One, if you are going out for dinner too often, obviously it's a little bit of a job hazard for someone like you and our friend group. But if you're eating out too often then then you're going to have to make some decisions about the food that you order in restaurants that are probably more restrictive than what I wo…

Full show notes at the publisher

Live Dinner Party Prep with Stephanie Hansen Jul 18, 2025

Show notes

I popped on today to plan, prep, and cook for my gal pal's dinner party. Of course, I wasn't prepared, and my mini chopper would not work, but…

We prepped some great dishes for my ladies’ dinner party.

The Menu

* Bootleggers - the Minnesota Cocktail

* Miso Glazed Salmon (exclusive Substack recipe here)

* Roasted Potatoes with a garlic scape, basil pesto drizzle on a bed of yogurt cream (1/3 cup cottage cheese - 1/3 cup whole fat Greek yogurt- 1/4 cup chopped pickles - 1/4 cup feta cheese, 3 Tbsp Feta brine, one teaspoon kosher salt, blended until smooth)

* Roasted Pepper and white bean salad with basil and balsamic (exclusive Substack recipe here)

* Green salad with hard-boiled eggs and lemon vinaigrette

* Zukes and Squash gratin (Recipe from True North Cabin Cookbook Vol. 1)

* Plum Fruit Buckle

Miso Glazed Salmon

Ingredients:

* 8 (4-6-ounce) skin-on salmon fillets, about 1-inch thick

* 2 teaspoons Kosher salt

* Freshly ground black pepper

* 3 Tbsp honey

* 1/4 cup Hikari minute miso

* 3 Tbsp rice wine vinegar

* 3 teaspoons soy sauce

* 1 garlic clove, grated on a microplane

* 1 teaspoon ground ginger

Instructions:

Preheat oven to Broil

In a small bowl, whisk together the salt, pepper, honey, miso, vinegar, soy, garlic, and ginger.

Arrange the salmon skin side down on a sheet pan.

Brush the mixture over the salmon. Let marinate for 20 minutes while the oven comes to temperature.

Broil until the salmon is opaque and cooked through and the glaze is toasted, about 6 minutes. Internal temperature should be about 135-140

Roasted Pepper and White Bean Salad with Basil and Balsamic

Ingredients:

4 peppers

2 cans of cannellini beans, drained

1/3 cup Basil leaves torn into pieces

1/3 cup olive oil

3 Tbsp Balsamic vinegar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 teaspoons lemon zest

2 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Instructions:

Roast 4 peppers -Heat the oven to 425 degrees. Place 4 whole bell peppers (any color) on a sheet pan, drizzle with olive oil, and roast for 35 to 40 minutes, rotating halfway through, until the peppers are blackened and collapsed. Remove the peppers from the oven and let them cool.

Carefully peel away the skins and discard the core and seeds. Pull into 1/4 inch strips

Drain beans and add to peppers in a large bowl

Tear Basil and add to bowl

Mix the vinaigrette and add to the beans

Let sit for 30 minutes at room temperature, marinating before serving

Variations to consider:

* Adding feta or small mozzarella balls

* Subbing oregano for Basil leaves

Here is how the dishes came out

These were the flowers I added from my Home Garden.

Thank you to everyone who tuned in to my live video! I will plan for more live videos if you enjoyed it.

Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

Chef Suzanne Vizethann has two cookbooks, with the latest featuring brunch recipes, and two restaurants Jul 11, 2025

Show notes

Besides having a new baby, two restaurants and two cookbooks @chefsuzannevizethann made time to chat with me on the podcast about her beautiful brunch cookbook.Stephanie Hansen:Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Dishing with Stephanie's Dish podcast. We are here today with Chef Suzanne VizethannChef Suzanne has written a book called Brunch Season, and the subtitle is A Year of Delicious Mornings from the Buttermilk Kitchen. And I love a book that takes, like, a single subject but really, like, elaborates on it, because I think when you think of brunch dishes, you have, like, you know, the top five in your mind, and you really have done a comprehensive guide here of how to explore brunch from not just like, egg dishes, but all the way through seasonality. So for me, I love books that either give you seasonal guidance because, like, I'm in summer right now, so how do I make a brunch for friends and what ingredients do I use? I love the way you organize this book. Did you. Is this your first book?Suzanne Vizethann :It's our second book. You know, the first book, “Welcome to Buttermilk Kitchen” Was more of a restaurant focused book, like 100 recipes from the restaurant. So this. This book is, you know, more of a standalone book. It's definitely recipes that you would find maybe as specials in the restaurant, but more as me as a chef, like, my voice as a chef.“Welcome to Buttermilk Kitchen” Stephanie Hansen:So let's talk about that for just a second, because I think a friend of mine, Gavin Kaysen from the Twin Cities, he has, like, a book called At Home that's more of his, like, personality and style. And then he has the restaurant books, which are highly stylized. Obviously, it's a beautiful restaurant. What, after writing the restaurant book, made you want to kind of bring that home into your point of view?Suzanne Vizethann :I think that I love. Well, first of all, I love cooking, and I love sharing recipes with people. And, you know, like you said kind of, you brought up a really good point that chef recipes and restaurant recipes are just that. They're restaurant recipes, and they're sometimes really difficult to pare down to something small and make them accessible in the home kitchen. And so while we attempted to do that in the first book, I think that this was more of an opportunity to say, okay, hey, this is something that I might cook at home, or, you know, this is something that I like to cook in the summer or in the fall, and kind of really bringing that, like, you in my home with me.Stephanie Hansen:So can you tell me a little bit more about your restaurant?Suzanne Vizethann :Sure, yeah. So we actually have two the original restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia. It's been open almost 13 years. You know, brunch focused restaurant, open in the morning, you know, breakfast and lunch primarily. And then I actually just opened a restaurant up in Maine. I live here full time up on the mid coast in a town called Camden. And we have, we took over an 81 year old diner and opened another Buttermilk Kitchen here. And that one's called Buttermilk Kitchen at Mariners to honor the old name.Suzanne Vizethann :So, yeah, same, same style, you know, still a breast brunch driven restaurant, but a little bit more of a coastal flair since we are right on the water.Stephanie Hansen:And did you have a, did you have a move that precipitated opening in another location? Because I'm fascinated by how people can run restaurants. A one and then two, like in two different states. I just don't.📸 Angie MosierSuzanne Vizethann and her restaurant Buttermilk Kitchen serve up some of the tastiest biscuits in the south. Yields 12-14 biscuitsINGREDIENTS4 Cups of all-purpose flour2 Tablespoons sugar2 Tablespoons baking powder2 ½ Teaspoons salt½ lb of cold unsalted butter, grated2 ½ Cups Banner Butter buttermilkINSTRUCTIONS* Mix together all dry ingredients (everything from flour through salt) into a mixing bowl.* Add grated butter and mix into dry ingredients until crumbly and fully incorporated.* Slowly add buttermilk until a sticky dough consistency is achieved (start with 2 cups and add a ½ cup more if needed).* Scoop biscuits onto a pre-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 350 in a convection oven for 10 min (you might need to add time if using conventional oven).* Rotate and continue to cook another 10-12 min until golden brown and ready to eat.Suzanne Vizethann :It's challenging, I'm not gonna lie to you. It is hard and. But I'm very, you know, blessed that I have great people working for me. And I think that because I waited so long to open the second one, I was able to really establish a great team under me that can handle a lot of the heavy lifting when I'm gone. And, you know, I come back, I try to travel back like six to eight times a year to check on them. But I am primarily in Maine and this restaurant's very new, so it requires more of my attention and time. But, you know, I really just am a firm believer that if you attract great people and you treat them well and you pay them well, that they'll be very loyal to you. And, you know, obviously everything's not perfect and.Suzanne Vizethann :But you've gotta relinquish some of that control and trust other great people around you.Stephanie Hansen:So it's changed a lot in the restaurant business. You've been at it for a while. Like, I just remember the days of like the chef, you know, yes, chef, and the really aggressive screaming and you have to be here 22 hours a day in order to be taken seriously. Like, that culture has changed. And I'm wondering for you if that feels like a refreshing change because you've been in it a long time.Suzanne Vizethann :Yeah, no, it definitely does. You know, started off in fine dining, kind of working late, late nights. And I always was really fond of breakfast and kind of breakfast service because not only did it allow you to have your nights free, which I always loved. I'm a morning person. I think too, what I learned very quickly is how important work, life, balance is. And it is, it is A really tough industry and a tough job. And as you know, the, the gen. The next generation coming up is just.Suzanne Vizethann :Is different and you talk to them differently and they have different needs and different wants. And I don't think it's a bad thing. I just think that you. I've learned that, you know, you just have to be accepting of those changes and learn something from that new generation.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah, it's a very feeling generation. They're very oriented towards having feelings, wanting to share those feelings, wanting those feelings to be heard. Which is probably not surprising when you look at the rise of social media in the last 15 years, where that's what we do. We share over share and share again and share some more and really feel like. And I'm guilty of it too. Like, I really feel like everyone needs to know my feelings at all times. It's very interesting when you put that into a setting of a restaurant, because a restaurant is such a living, breathing microcosm of society or whatever is happening at the time.Suzanne Vizethann :Yes. And it's, you know, my first kitchen job, I worked silently. I made $7 an hour. You know, you never challenged the chef. You never challenged anyone around you. You know, you kept your head down and just kept going.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah.Suzanne Vizethann :So it's different for me, for sure. But, you know, I really embrace this younger generation and their needs and wants because I do think it is important to speak up and, you know, value your life and, and have a balance. So we. And we find that when we're flexible with people that it just creates a much better work environment for everybody. And it's challenging. I'm not going to say it isn't because it is challenging to be flexible in restaurants. But, you know, overall, I think that's a reason why we've been so successful is, you know, when. When we do have the daytime and we just try to treat our people really well.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. And I think it shows. When you talk about your book in particular, did you do all the photographs? Because they're stunning.Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, I wish. No, I'm not that talented. No. I have a photographer, Kelly Berry, who's. We've worked together a very long time and she shot the book. And then my good friend Tom Driver was the stylist and he's so great. Phenomenal. He's phenomenal.Stephanie Hansen:So great.Suzanne Vizethann :Great time doing it.Stephanie Hansen:What I want people to know about with this book, because honestly, if you have a person in your life that's into brunching, because there's sort of that brunch crew, this book should Be number one on your list. It's brunch season, and not only do I love the way it's organized in the pictures, but you have very approachable recipes, and also it feels very modern. So kale and mushroom frittata. Obviously, everybody's got a good cinnamon roll recipe, including you. Pumpkin glaze coffee cake. I have a cookbook that has literally, like 10 pumpkin recipes in it because I'm obsessed. Pecan and cranberry chicken salad. I was kind of surprised to find on a brunch menu, and I loved it.Stephanie Hansen:Also, you've got drinks in here. Summer squash omelette, corn pancakes, and the chia pudding that has been more popular in the last couple of years. What are some of favorite recipes in here or ones that you just think are not to be missed?Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, gosh. So in the summer, I love the. The squash blossoms. They're like a pancake battered stuff. Fried stuffed squash blossom. So hard. Yeah. And it's, you know, I know not everybody knows what a squash blossom is or has worked with one before, but I thought it was just a fun.Suzanne Vizethann :First of all, they're beautiful, and you can only get them in this, you know, small window. And they're, of course, you know, the flowers on the. On the squash. And most people will, you know, stuff them with ricotta or do some sort of, like, Italian preparation. And I was like, I'd be really fun to do some sort of, like, brunch twist on that. So we had a lot of fun doing that. And that was kind of like one of my ideas that actually worked right away. You know, a lot of times I'll have to edit a dish and do a dish many times over.Suzanne Vizethann :And that was like, the one dish I was like, on the first try, I was like, oh, this. This worked out exactly how I thought it was going to work out. So that was really fun. I'm trying to think. I really like the winter chapter. I love the chicken soup. You know, especially up here in Maine, we have a lot of cold days and nights.Stephanie Hansen:Your topography is very similar to Minnesota, where I'm from.Suzanne Vizethann :Okay. Yeah. It's was a big change moving from Georgia, but I. I do really love that chapter. Just being cozy. And there's a lot of. There's some chocolate crepes and again, like.Stephanie Hansen:That chicken soup, a meatloaf slider, felt.Suzanne Vizethann :Meatloaf sliders with persimmon chutney. So again, you know, I'm really. I'm A lot of the recipes, I'm trying to take a familiar dish, like A slider, but then teaching you how to work with a persimmon that most people probably haven't really worked with. So, again, it's just really about going to your local markets, supporting those farmers, and then finding a way to bring that into your home in an approachable way.Stephanie Hansen:Your cinnamon rolls looked really doable. A lot of times, I think when we see cinnamon rolls in books, you know, they look so puffy. And, like, I just. I know that when I make those at home, that's not how they turn out because they don't proof like that. So I felt like yours literally looked like something. Something I could make.Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, awesome.Stephanie Hansen:Good.Suzanne Vizethann :Well, you should try to make them for sure. You know, baking's like. I feel like baking is one of those things that you can actually really follow the recipe, you know, because in. In cooking, like, even day one culinary school, we're taught recipe is just a guideline. You know, interpret it the way you're going to interpret it. Use your common sense, use it as your baseline. But it's okay to, you know, something doesn't taste salty enough, add a little more salt or add this or add that. But with baking, baking, it's very scientific and exact.Suzanne Vizethann :So I feel like if you're somebody that likes to follow a recipe, you know, baking can be a lot of fun.Stephanie Hansen:Who are some of the people that inspire you or books that you find yourself going back to?Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, gosh. I love cookbooks, but there's so many choices. But I. I've always been a really big fan of Donna Hay. I don't know. Yeah, that is, of course, of Australia. And I always. Just when I was really young, when I worked in for a catering company, my boss had a bunch of her books.Stephanie Hansen:They're so gorgeous.Suzanne Vizethann :I would just get lost them.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah.Suzanne Vizethann :I love just her stylistic approach. You know, I love just. I not only do I love, like, preparing food, I love styling food. I love making a plate look beautiful. So I feel like she does that really well. I love anything Jamie Oliver, I think he has such a way, approachable way to cooking. Gosh, I'm, like, looking over at my cookbooks right now. You know, Thomas Keller books.Suzanne Vizethann :Any, like, any of the classics.Stephanie Hansen:Have you ever cooked anything from a Thomas Keller book, though?Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, definitely. I have more, like in culinary school, when I was, like, deeper into it. But yeah, again, I think as I get older, the less pretentious my cooking gets and just the more like, stripped down and relatable it gets, because now it's more just about like, oh, what do I want to cook for at home or on my day off or. I work in a very casual restaurant. So I feel like that's kind of what's made us successful is, you know, kind of marketable. Marketable dishes, you know. Yeah, they gotta taste good, but, like, they gotta grab the. The customer's attention as well.Suzanne Vizethann :So.Stephanie Hansen:Yes, I think, too, when you look at cookbooks and how they're packaged, there's the aspirational books or the books you go to for inspiration, and then there's the, like, oh, I'm really gonna cook out of this one. And.Suzanne Vizethann :Oh, yeah.Stephanie Hansen:Right away, yours was in my pile of. I'm going to call.Suzanne Vizethann :Thank you.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. Cuddled eggs and shired eggs. And eggs and little ramekins are always, like, such good brunch dishes when you get them, but then, like, they're kind of hard to do when you're making brunch at home. Do you have any, like, tricks or what makes your coddled egg better than most?Suzanne Vizethann :I don't. I mean, I don't know if it's better than most, but it is.Stephanie Hansen:Looks amazing.Suzanne Vizethann :I think the big thing with it, with a coddled egg, is just trying to cook it correctly, you know, not over, like, deciding kind of how you like your egg. Do you like it runny or do you like it more set? And then for there, just keeping an eye on it, you know, making sure. I like mine a little runny.Stephanie Hansen:Me, too.Suzanne Vizethann :So.Stephanie Hansen:But.Suzanne Vizethann :And then, of course, like, you know, I'll tell. I tell chefs this all the time, especially home cooks. Take a look at your equipment that you…

Full show notes at the publisher

Maggie Hoffman is a Host of the Podcast and Substack, "The Dinner Plan" Jun 27, 2025

Show notes

Stephanie Hansen:Hello everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people that are obsessed with food and they come across their obsessions through cookbooks, podcasts, content writers, and today we're talking with Maggie Hoffman. And I was excited because I said I don't get to talk to fellow podcasters very often. Congratulations on your podcast. It is the Dinner Plan podcast. Maggie is the former digital director of Epicurious. She also has many newsletters. So I'm excited to talk to you about that. The Dinner Plan plus What to Drink , plus The Vintage Table Maggie Hoffman - You are my person.Maggie Hoffman:Maybe too many newsletters. We'll see.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah, I'm sure it's a lot. So where should we jump in first? Let's just, let's talk about your newsletters because you already commented on my background. I have a lot of vintage pieces in the background. How did you start the Vintage Table or what was your first newsletter?Maggie Hoffman:Well, it's a little bit complicated, but I actually started with what to drink. In sort of a previous life, I was mostly a cocktail writer. I used to review bars for the San Francisco Chronicle. And I've written two books about cocktails that were published by Ten Speed. The One-Bottle Cocktail: More than 80 Recipes with Fresh Ingredients and a Single SpiritBatch Cocktails: Make-Ahead Pitcher Drinks for Every OccasionAnd so that's like a whole side of my life. And I was running a drinks newsletter for Epicurious when I was there. And when I left, that was sort of the, the going independent. I was able to send one newsletter to that audience and say this is where I'll be.So, you know, I don't update that one as often, but I do have. I like to talk about what I'm drinking, you know, when I'm trying new non alcoholic beers, or sometimes I'll share cocktail recipes from new books I'm reading. So that one was actually first. My main gig is the Dinner plan, which is a podcast and substack. It's sort of a living, breathing system. So the podcast goes Every week I interview a cookbook author every week. We talk about inspiration and where they find dinner ideas and the books they love. And then at the end of every show, someone calls in and shares what's in their fridge and the cookbook author guest comes up with a dinner idea for them.And usually these folks are people with cookbooks, often new cookbooks. And so in the substack each week, we share all of the links to all the recipes that they have talked about so people don't have to like, take notes. Anything they've recommended, it's all there in the newsletter. And then we reprint a recipe from Their books. You can get a little preview of the book, and that's why you should sign up for the newsletter. Someone told me they were taking notes on the show, and I was like, oh, no, no, no, you don't have to do that.Stephanie Hansen:You have such good notes on the episodes.Maggie Hoffman:And, I mean, I listen to these things over and over.Stephanie Hansen:You have, like, attached and linked every single recipe idea anyone's ever discussed in the pod. I mean, it's extensive, you guys, you gotta follow.Maggie Hoffman:And then I have a big list, which I think is really fun, of every book that has gotten recommended. So each person comes with, like, two or three ideas. Well, that has become a very big list. We're getting close to 50 episodes, and each person. I mean, you do the math. So, yeah, that's the main project, and then the vintage table is a little side project, and maybe they'll get merged at some point, but I just cannot buy every piece of vintage tableware that I love. And so I thought I should probably start sharing the links so that I get. Maybe other people will take them off the market.Stephanie Hansen:That is smart, because once you start, like, in that Facebook marketplace or Etsy channel of looking for vintage things, ebay, they find you. Yeah, yeah.Maggie Hoffman:So there's usually, like, a theme, you know, sort of beachy things for summer or, you know, whatever is the thing that I'm sort of obsessing over. And that's just for fun, but it's a lot of fun.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah, I. I find it very fun. When you were so how long were you the digital director at Epicurious?Maggie Hoffman:I think I was there a total of four years. I started as the senior editor under David to Markin, who's at King Arthur Flour now, and I took over running it when he left.Stephanie Hansen:And we're probably better off now because we have so many different avenues for creators. Right. Substack has really, like, democratized the creating world. From podcasting, did you find, like, you know, when you work for a big company, there's resources and podcast studios, and then all of a sudden you're on your own and you have to figure it all out. Substack makes it so easy.Maggie Hoffman:Yeah, substack and all the other ways. You know, I think everyone's ability to sort of launch their own independent media is truly exciting, and people are doing it in all sorts of, you know, not just substack, but also their own websites and Patreon and, you know, people have huge success.Stephanie Hansen:Do you think that that is. I mean, I feel sad about that. I think it is cutting into traditional magazine resources, digital resources, digital archives, because people don't necessarily need that to be seen anymore. They can create their own engines. But I also, like, every time I get a magazine, it's a little bit thinner. I think, like, oh, don't wait. Because I still love some of those traditional printed forms and I love linear television, and I also like terrestrial radio still. Like, I want there to be all those things and not have it be just one thing.Maggie Hoffman:Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little more complicated. I wouldn't blame independent creators for the shrinking of food media. I think that has a lot more to do with, you know, everything moving to digital and then sort of being flooded with ads and then search changing so much. I mean, there's just so many things that have shaped that. And I think it's incredibly sad to see, you know, so much of, you know, both book publishing and magazine publishing struggle. It has to do with ad dollars. And, you know, those are places where there are the resources for everything to be tested and tested again. And, you know, I think there's going to have to be a question of how many independent creators people can support.And I don't think advertising is over. I think that is a way to fund some of this as well. You know, if an advertiser wants to support an independent creator, I think that's great. The budgets are going to be smaller than what they were paying for something else. And maybe it can all coexist, I'm.Stephanie Hansen:Hoping, because I think it ultimately, if it raises all boats right. But I mean, we are consolidating in a pretty rapid clip with the top seven media companies and social influencers. But when you think about your podcast and when you conceived it and knew who you wanted to talk to, what did that look like? Like, did you know right away what you were going to zero in on?Maggie Hoffman:Did I know? I was at the beach and was taking a long walk with my husband and sort of saying, were to do this thing, what would it be? I had gone through the process of pitching a show to Conde, which they decided they didn't want, and so I was pretty heartbroken and kind of had lost confidence. I've been in food media about 15 years now, a really long time. I actually worked in book publishing before that and blogging, and I was at Serious Eats in very early, exciting years. And. And I love being a part of that community. I love being able to see what's coming soon. Like, one of the biggest joys when I first started at epicurious, was I showed up and there was this stack of cookbooks on one of the, like, files sitting on one of the file cabinets. And people would sort of say, hey, does anybody have a copy of this? Does anybody have a copy of that? I was like, this is where I'm supposed to be like, you know, I mean, you can see the.Stephanie Hansen:Yep.Maggie Hoffman:Stacks of cookbooks continue. And so I sort of was like, what will be Feel like it sort of captures some of that excitement that I could do independently, and what would it take to do independently, and who would I want to talk to, what new books are, am I excited about? And, you know, just what would that conversation be? And I knew I didn't want it to be a podcast, really, about feeding kids. That's really not what it is. It's really for all cooks, and it focuses a lot on that moment of inspiration. And, you know, I was really burnt out, and it was affecting my cooking. And I think everyone who works really hard can feel that affecting their cooking.Stephanie Hansen:I'm just coming off a cookbook launch or getting ready to launch, and I'm like, sometimes the idea of what to eat, I'm just like, all I've done is cook this week. Like a million places for a million people, for a million things, documented it all. And I just want a piece of peanut butter toast.Maggie Hoffman:Yeah. And that's fine, I think. But, you know, even if you don't work in food, I think if your job is stressful, the world is stressful. Everything, you know, everything feels like it's on fire. Cooking can be really nourishing, sort of mentally and, you know, spiritually, or it can be a thing that causes stress. And how do you get to a place where it feels like it is soothing, where it feels like it's a meditation. Meditation. Whatever it is you need from cooking, how do you get to a place where your dinners make you happy, where you're delighted by what you eat? And so we talk a lot about that.And so I think that came out of. I had written a story about cooking burnout during the days of the early pandemic. And it was something I kept getting notes about where people would be like, oh, my gosh, this is totally me. And so that's the thing I come back to, and people's answers are very different. I sort of wondered, like, if we kind of bring up this topic with so many different food people, is it going to start to get repetitive? But sometimes someone will just floor me with a totally different response to this problem. And so that's been really interesting.Stephanie Hansen:During the pandemic, I've had a radio show about food for, gosh, 18 years, I think. And during the pandemic, we did a lot of that. We called it pantry panic because you were going into the grocery store with your mask and your cart or your bucket, whatever you were putting your groceries in, and you were just literally like throwing staples in just because you didn't want to run out of yeast or flour or sugar and beans and rice and whatever you had. And then you'd get home, you'd be looking at your pantry and like, oh my gosh, how am I going to actually turn this into a meal for cooks and home cooks? You know, that was what we do. Like, okay. But for a lot of people that were two working families had really relied on a lot of convenience type of foods, that was a really new experience for them. To be staring at a bag of split peas and figuring out how to get that to the table.That was such a great. For me as a cook, it was such a great reorienting of how we look at our food systems and how to help people. And it reinvigorated my love of cooking and wanting to write cookbooks that would be for everybody necessarily. Not like, you know, I'm from the Midwest, we cook pretty. Basically, we don't have access to a lot of the fresh stuffs on either coast, but we do have these great grains and we have all these things that are in the breadbasket of the United States. It that pandemic, silver lining for me was going back to actually cooking.Maggie Hoffman:Yeah. I also think we saw the rise of a lot of small businesses that are making things to make life easier and to add flavor. You know, there's. There's so many more companies selling various, you know, sauces and seasonings and things. You know, I think I was in a moment where I was like, oh, man. Like you had to replace restaurant food with home cooked food. And was I really going to do something complicated? And that's where, you know, I just am really cheering for these small businesses because it can be so amazing to have those on hand. And you can usually mail order them.Stephanie Hansen:And just thinking about, like, the condiments, like chili crisp is a condiment that has been around for a long time, but just came into the zeitgeist in the last five years. You know, obviously the proliferation of hot sauces, but also like sumac and za' atar and some of these more world spices that we weren't familiar with necessarily. It's really brought a whole new way of looking at your basic home cooking.Maggie Hoffman:And, of course, some people have been cooking with those things forever, for sure. But I also think there, you know, the cookbook publishing industry is very slow because it takes two years for books to come out. Right. It's a very slow process. And so I think you're finally seeing so many more books from so many more voices, and so you have a guide. You're not just blindly using something you've never seen before.Stephanie Hansen:Along those lines, are there, like, a handful of books that have come across your desk recently that you're like, yes.Maggie Hoffman:I mean, so many. That's, like, my whole thing. Let me think. I mean, there's so many, I think, of the recent one. Zaynab Issa, Third Culture Cooking, is really wonderful. She was a Bon Appetit, and it's just incredibly talented with flavor. She does a lot of development for NYT Cooking now, and that's a good place to find her recipes. But that book's really lovely.Norma Rod's book, she was at Yotam Ottolenghi, and her book is called “Lugma, Abundant Dishes and Stories From My Middle East”, and she's from Bahrain. And that book is just. You just want to cook everything in it. Just really, really. I mean, the photography is stunning. Oh, my gosh. What else? Rick Martinez's new salsa book, “Salsa Daddy, a Cookbook: Dip Your Way Into Mexican Cooking” is really fun and really just, like, a smart thing. If you are feeling bored with sort of, you know, your rotation of, like, protein.Like, if you are doing rotisserie chicken, can of beans, pasta, like, if you were doing that rotation, the answer. When I talked to Rick, he was talking about how when you make salsas, like, so many of them, you could freeze. And so then you can mix and match. You can pull one from your freezer. You can, you know, toss that rotisserie chicken with a green salsa one night and a different salsa the other night. And that was just, like, so exciting to me.Stephanie Hansen:Do you use your freezer a lot? I mean, I find, like, cooks. I have two freezers, and they're always loaded, and I'm trying to eat out of the freezer constantly with the very little success.Maggie Hoffman:That's always the challenge. You really have to keep a list. You really have to put, like, a freezer night on your schedule. My husband travels a lot, and so I try to eat from the freezer when he's gone. So it's like, this is super easy when I'm juggling. I use the freezer for all kinds of things. You know, I do try to put sauces in there. But he had that problem of, like, chucking half of the can of chipotle is in the freezer.Stephanie Hansen:You never get to it.Maggie Hoffman:One thing, I did have one sort o…

Full show notes at the publisher

Sally Ekus is the "Not So Secret Agent" Jun 13, 2025

Show notes

Stephanie:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to cool people in the food space. We talk to a lot of cookbook authors, and today I'm excited to talk to Sally Ekus. She is a literary agent, which, if you've written books or you're trying to get a book published, you know how important the agent process is. She leads a boutique culinary and lifestyle division via @JVNLA and is the lead agent at the Ekus Group. Did I get it right?Follow Sally’s Substack Newsletter Not So Secret Agent Sally Ekus:Oh, I was just gonna say, yeah, I lead the Ekus Group. So we're a culinary and lifestyle division within a broader agency.Stephanie:And the Ekus Group was started by your mom.Sally Ekus:Yeah.Stephanie:A legend. Your mom has, like, one of the largest cookbook collections that I'm aware of.Sally Ekus:In fact, the largest, according to Guinness. Yes.Stephanie:A couple of months ago, I think maybe it was on your Instagram page, someone posted a picture of her library of her home that is literally looks like a library that you would see in New York city or Washington, D.C. or somewhere fancy with just walls and walls of books. It was so gorgeous.Sally Ekus:Yeah, It's a two store, all cherry wood, gorgeous library. She built the edition. It was a dream edition. It took a lifetime to build. And it is filled with cookbooks, almost exclusively cookbooks. Her fiction and children's books and other personal books are scattered elsewhere around the house. But the library is almost entirely culinary with over 6000 titles. It's really cool.Stephanie:It's amazing. And your mom's name is? Lisa. Please, can I ask you a question? I'm going to go all over the place here, but sure, please. I have a daughter and only one daughter and no sons. So my only child. And there are things that we have in common about cooking and about food, and I always think, like, oh, maybe she'll follow in my footsteps. But then she is quick to point out, like, no, I'm never doing that. But then she's sort of leaning sort of my way.Stephanie:How did that work with you and being in the publishing space?Sally Ekus:Yeah. So how old is your daughter now?Stephanie:26.Sally Ekus:Okay. Yeah. So growing up, my mom had this vibrant culinary business. At the time, it was a PR agency before we did agenting, and it was never supposed to be a family business. She never pressured me or said, you know, maybe one day. In fact, it was just like. If you had asked me before I started working with her, what does Lisa do for a living? I would have said something with books and something in food. So I was like, growing up in this.Sally Ekus:And I was immersed and sort of absorbing by osmosis. And, you know, in the, in my younger years, I would be like, collating press kits for PR campaigns and, you know, I was like earning a allowance, mailing catalogs and whatnot. But it wasn't, it wasn't something she was really like, whatever you want to do, follow your heart. I was on a different path. I went to school for counseling and I was about to go for a master's in social work. And I deferred. I broke up with a bad decision, moved home, started helping out at the agency and realized that I'd been informally training for this my whole life. I really fell in love with it.And I was very fortunate to step into the legacy of her reputation. And then also, once we decided this is something I wanted to do, talk about what the succession plan would look like and really carve out my own, you know, vibe and skill set and cultivate my own list, supporting her list. And so it was really a unintentional natural progression that then became quite intentional and, you know, quite effortful. So I think that's kind of why it worked out. And if, you know, but it's hard to say in hindsight.Stephanie:It's funny too. You talk about this like being in training of knowing this thing and you not even really realizing that until you've left and gone to do something else. And also, it does track that you were going to be a social worker.Sally Ekus:Absolutely.Stephanie:And now you're an agent.Sally Ekus:Yeah. I somewhat sarcastically but realistically acknowledge that I was trained in crisis counseling, active listening, and negotiation. So all of those things play a very big role in the work that I do as a literary agent working with books. But, you know, at the end of the day, it is a book. It is you know, not somebody's. Well, it is somebody's mental well being, but in a. In a different light. So I get to utilize those skills all the time.Sally Ekus:And it feels, it feels quite, quite lucky. And, you know, it's really the client management and author care and author advocacy that I love so much. And that has kept me, kept me in this, in this business for as long as it has.Stephanie:What is it about cookbooks in particular that makes you solely focus on that?Sally Ekus:Well, that I stepped into, you know, that was Lisa's area of expertise. She was one of the very first cookbook publicists. Publicist. She essentially created the category of culinary publicity before there were massive agencies handling, you know, influencers and brand campaigns. And so that was her area of expertise. So that's what I stepped into and was hyper mentored in. And I also equally just felt in love with it. I mean, there are many different things that bring people together, and at the end of the day, it feels like food is that one.Sally Ekus:Through line. Everyone has some relationship to food, recipes, cooking, memory, good, bad, complicated, probably somewhere in the middle. And so to have a little. To have a role in helping to bring that to fruition in published form is a tremendous honor.Stephanie:You are the publisher, or the agent, actually, of Entertaining 101 with Beth Lamana.Sally Ekus:Yeah. Yes.Stephanie:We just talked with. With her last.Sally Ekus:Yeah, I listened to that. It was such a fun conversation.Stephanie:Yeah, she was pretty great. And the weirdest thing happened to me the other day. I was at my radio partner's office, and we were talking about a project, and she had a stack of cookbooks, and I was like, oh, what are you working on? She's like, oh, I'm. I'm helping our friend from Muriel, Karen Tomlinson, put her proposal together.Sally Ekus:Oh, my gosh.Stephanie:Oh, that's interesting. And she goes, yeah, she's got a really great agent already. And I'm like, who's her agent? And it's you.Sally Ekus:Yes, it is. Yeah. I'm so excited to be working with her. Yep. Yeah.Stephanie:Her point of view on food and her storytelling of the purveyors that she works with and her just completely beautiful recipes. I'm so excited for you, and I'm so excited for that book.Sally Ekus:Thank you. Yeah, I mean, that's a great example of really early development. You know, I often say that I work with people, not proposals. You know, we can get to the proposal. I help guide people through that process as an agent. And, you know, this is a great example where it's like, you know, I'm so captivated by the food and the media attention and the accolades and the intentionality of what is happening from the farm to the plate. And so, you know, sometimes chefs work with writers or collaborators to help bring that to the. To the printed page.Sally Ekus:And that's where we're at with that project. So it's in very early stages, which is super exciting.Stephanie:Yeah. You're going to not be disappointed. She is just a great person. She's a great storyteller, and that you had a really good eye to pick her up, because I think she's.Sally Ekus:Thank you.Stephanie:What other projects do you have on the docket right now that you're excited about? I see Potluck Desserts behind you.Sally Ekus:Oh, yeah. Justin Burke, Potluck Desserts. Justin's book came out the same day as Beth's just a couple weeks ago. And I try to rotate in my background the books that are sort of newly rotating. So The Meathead Method over here, that is Meathead's second book. His first book called Meathead, came out almost 10 years ago. And it's all. Both books are all about the science and art and science of barbecue and grilling and outdoor cooking.Sally Ekus:I have books in a bunch of different levels of activity, so that's also fun because I have something that's like, you know, proposal and development and then things that are coming out. So it really, it really runs the gamut. I just saw Frankie Gaw, whose Instagram handle is @littlefatboyfrankie. He's up for a James Beard Media Award, and he just turned in the manuscript for his second book called Asian Americana. So I'm really excited about that. So it's really all levels of development over here.Stephanie:Once someone does their first book, is it easier to market them the second time around?Sally Ekus:Great question. I find that yes, because really, once that first book is to, you know, publishers need you to have or want you to have a big platform to warrant signing a book deal. And then the book helps sort of level up that platform, promotion, name recognition, certainly moving beyond like the core community of that author. It helps introduce new readers, new cooks, new fans to that person's work. And so I find that that second book, third book, fourth book, 10th book, really helps just keep that momentum going.Stephanie:You wrote something recently on your substack that people should follow you because you're a good follow that I really have spent a lot of time thinking about, and I'm probably going to get the name of the author wrong. So you may have to come.Sally Ekus:We can figure it out together. Yeah.Stephanie:The idea of it was is that a new cookbook writer launched a book tour in a way that was a little unconventional and in some ways maybe controversial because instead of the usual like going out to the booksellers and having a Q and A and talking, she hired her friend who is a comedian and really created more of like, I'll call it in air quotes, like a Real Housewives type in person cooking experience. That there was cooking demonstration, there was talking about the book. Do you know who I'm talking about?Sally Ekus:No, actually. Was it one of my clients or maybe a reshare?Stephanie:I think it's a reshare because she has been on the New York Times bestseller list now with her book for a couple weeks and it was the literary agencies kind of looked down on what she did a little bit because it was unconventional and maybe a little.Sally Ekus:I mean, I love unconventional.Stephanie:I kind of did too.Sally Ekus:Oh, yeah.Stephanie:I wanted to ask you about that because I'm, you know, I'm getting ready to launch my own tour and thinking about, like, locations and. Yeah, it really blew my mind to think, like, for me in particular, and people that have really strong performing skills, like, you know, I am, I would say I'm more of a performer of cooking content than I am of necessarily creating recipes. I do recipe development, but it's more about the presentation of it. And I think that's so cool to think about that we're bringing books into this digital age in that way.Sally Ekus:Absolutely. So my overarching advice with every anything in publishing is it depends and you do you like, what fits for one person is not one size fits all for the other book or other campaigns. And so I love to share information, whether it's on my substack not so secret agent or on my social or just with my clients. Like, I like to share. Here's an example or here's five examples of what another author has done, what is helpful, what resonates with you, and like, move on from the rest. You know, how can you evolve this into your own campaign? And cooking is such a tactile experience. It's so experiential in and of itself. It's such a connector.Sally Ekus:It also can be so beautiful alone. Like, do what feels right for you, your book, and share in a way that feels true to you. Because that's what I think really attracts people to come out first and foremost and like, spend their free time and free re and any sort of additional resources they may have and make it fun and memorable. You know, I mean, I think more and more we see brands and individual authors and companies just evolving. You know the term like activation into experiences, into just moments that matter.Stephanie:You mentioned your substack not so secret agent, and I'm wondering if substack is changing or improving the landscape for cookbook authors.Sally Ekus:I think substack's changing all kinds of things. You know, it used to be that at least as a cookbook agent, we would sort of scout on Instagram or TikTok. And now substack is certainly a major player and there's a ton of food content and creators on substack. But even just a year ago when I got on, there's a lot less and I think there's still a lot more room because there's so many hyper focused areas of interest in foods that you have this opportunity. You know, maybe you can't land a publishing deal, but if you can build a community of the people that want your recipes, your voice, your food, whatever it is in that specific space, go for it. I mean, you can be so hyper focused and really build this, this beautiful community. And I love the Substack ecosystem. It's been incredibly generous to me and I try to give back as much as possible.Sally Ekus:Like the recommendations and resharing and discoverability aspect of Substack has been a really beautiful thing to experience.Stephanie:They've really democratized the idea of podcasting too. I've been podcasting for seven years. Actually longer than that, maybe even closer to like nine.Sally Ekus:Wow.Stephanie:Well, I was a broadcaster so it makes sense to go from radio to developing a podcast space and just the ease of ability of doing it now, you know, before you had to have special equipment and people to host it. And it's just gotten so much simpler. And we're also seeing that, I think with video that's making it so easy to go live. You don't necessarily need 10,000 watch hours on YouTube or 3,000 subscribers or whatever, you know.Sally Ekus:Yeah, most of my readers come like my email goes to their actual email inbox though people find me through substack and so it's been fun. I'm not by any means a seasoned or polished content creator, but I've been doing videos as one means of explaining other things about publishing and just kind of seeing how that resonates with people in their inbox versus other mediums. And it's been really fun. They are super lo fi and quite off the cuff. But most people that are not tuning in live to me on Substack, they'll find it in their inbox the next morning, which has been really fun too.Stephanie:I think the lo fi aspects too are almost what people are looking for.Sally Ekus:I hope so.Stephanie:I have not the TikTok algorithm and I are not friends, probably never will be friends. And I don't understand it at all because I can produce like something that looks great, tastes good, you. It's just mouthwatering to watch. And then I can post like a picture of my dog and that will be the thing that.Sally Ekus:Right. Well, I think animals will always outperform us on, on the socials as they should at this point.Stephanie:You know, it's so crazy. It's so crazy. A single subject book has popped into the zeitgeist that I'm really. I think it's a really great book. Sesame, it's called.Sally Ekus:Yeah.Stephanie:And it's like a single ingredient versus and they take that. She…

Full show notes at the publisher

Beth Le Manach has the delightful new cookbook "Entertaining 101" May 30, 2025

Show notes

I had a real fun time chatting with Beth La Manach, whose new cookbook, “Entertaining 101” just released. Beth’s YouTube channel is wildy entertaining and she is also on Substack so you can follow her Entertaining with Beth Now since Beth makes it so easy lets all get to Entertianing!EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Stephanie Hansen:Hello, everybody. Welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish. I'm Stephanie Hansen and I like to talk to people obsessed with food. In particular, I enjoy cookbook authors and today I'm with Beth Lamonic and she is the author of a cookbook that just the title alone, I feel like holy cats. That's so intimidating. It is called entertaining one zero one. Beth, that just makes you, like, right on the level of Martha Stewart in my brain. Were you nervous about calling it one zero one?Beth Le Manach:No. Because the way that I'm thinking about the title is it's really targeted towards beginners or veterans who just need it to be easier and quicker. And I think everybody loves a one zero one entry point because they know it's not gonna be intimidating. It's gonna be accessible.Stephanie Hansen:Well, you are not a one zero one in your chops. You have over 662,000 followers on YouTube. They were like, oh, she has a a YouTube channel. And I went to look. I was like, holy cats. Tell me the name of your YouTube channel because I forgot to write it down. Recipes for entertaining. Was that what it was called?Beth Le Manach:No. It's called Entertaining with Beth.Stephanie Hansen:Got it. Okay. So you also are very fascinating, but I'm gonna get to that part in just a second. Take me through, like, your journey of, like, the how you started the YouTube and how we are that you're just is this your first book?Beth Le Manach:Yes. It isn't my first book. I know. I've been in a long time. I know exactly. Yeah. So it's kind of a long story, but I'll give you the highlights. I started my YouTube channel because I was by trade a producer for television, lifestyle television, and I got my start with the Scripps network.Beth Le Manach:So Food Network, HGTV, Fine Living, I was producing a bunch of content for them. I saw everything going online, digital. So I was like, I wanna produce digital content for the web. I got a job at a company that had a huge order for YouTube. So this was right around 2011 when YouTube started getting grants to media companies to produce quality content so they could get the advertisers to actually advertise against it. Because up into that point, it was a lot of, you know, skate board tricks and cat videos and stuff like that. Yeah. And so since I had come up with all of this kind of lifestyle content, my boss was like, okay. Create a YouTube channel that women will love. And I was a new mom. I had two small kids, and I was into all this lifestyle content, but I knew nothing about YouTube. So I had to really learn what it was, and little by little, we started to just create content. That was food content, fashion, beauty, all the things that I thought, like, women would be interested in.And then one day, my boss came to me and said, you know what? We are, like, really behind on the hours here that we have to deliver. We gotta pep this up a bit. What do you got? And I was like, I think we should do, like, entertaining shows, like, thirty minute shows, like what we used to do for TV. Like, let's do the perfect dinner party. He's like he was like, well, who are we gonna get to do that? And I was like, me. I love to cook, and I have a lot of recipes. And at the time, I just bought a house, and I was like, you know, come to my house. You don't have to pay me.You're already paying me, and let's knock off a few of these episodes. So we did about 16 of them, and then my boss was like, you know, this is really resonating with people. Like and and it really hit me at that point that I thought, how is this new information for people? Because I had grown up with Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, and I just thought that everybody was watching this. But people at the time on YouTube were just getting into, like, all the beauty gurus, and those girls were now aging up and sort of, like, having their first apartment and getting married. And they weren't suddenly gonna go offline and go look at magazines and books. They were staying online.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah.Beth Le Manach:And I think that's where it really resonated. And so long story short, I did that until I started to do it full time, and now the channel is mine, and I just do it full time.Stephanie Hansen:It explains lots of things. One, how prescient of you to see this digital age coming. So very smart.Beth Le Manach:Yeah.Stephanie Hansen:Two, I always talk about first mover advantage. And whenever there's a new platform or something, I always make sure that I log on. I save my handle. Even if I don't know if I'm gonna use it or do anything with it, I I believe that being the first in a space or in in a being a handful of first in a space is part of what gets you that first mover advantage. So note to self people because there's gonna be a lot of social enterprises that are coming in our future. And then also, like, sometimes the keeping it simple is the best. Like, you just assume that everybody knows how to, you know, make a delicious apparel spritz, but necessarily they don't. So that what you can offer in your most authentic way is, valuable.And that's, I guess, why you did this as your first book because you seem like you really are taking and packaging a lot of this in a way that feels authentic to you, and that's what people want.Beth Le Manach:I think they do. I mean and I think that's what YouTube has really taught me is that there are thousands of chicken Parmesan recipes on YouTube, but people will still ask me, but we want your recipe. Not because my recipe is gonna be better than anybody else's recipe because there's only a couple of ways around making a chicken parm, but because they want my point of view. And I think that that's what makes YouTube so human, and that's why they called it YouTube because it is about you and how you how I prepare chicken parmesan recipe could be different than how you prepare it. And the things that we're gonna highlight could be different based on our own lived experience, and I think that's what makes it really human and really fun.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. Your show is also very beautiful. I just started doing a TV show, with Fox here locally, and lighting is so important. And my own YouTube is horribly lit and embarrassing. Yours is incredible.Like, do you have my normal lights set up?Beth Le Manach:No. My gosh. You know what my light setup is now? No lights. The light setup is no lights because I went round and round, and I have, you know, a lot of different experience. Like, I started with the big crew of seven people people that would come, and then I would go back, like, after COVID, and there was no people. And then I had to learn it all myself, and then I moved to France, and I was like, I can't carry all this stuff with me. I have gone back and forth on the lighting, and I always go back to the fact that, like, natural lighting for food is just the best lighting, and then just adjust the camera settings. Like, you're much better off doing that and know which angles of the kitchen give you the best softest light because that you can always reproduce the camera, but you can't always reproduce the exact temperature and light. And, like, that just was making me crazy. So I just decided to finish the lights.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. That is really the tip. Yes. I like it. You mentioned this move to France, and I I you have through the course of your channel and through the course career here. Also, you had a like, it sounded like a rental in France that you made into a full time home.Beth Le Manach:Yes. Exactly. So my husband is French, and we had been coming to France every year or so when we were married. And then we took a break when we had kids, and then we started to bring the kids when they were, like, five and two.Stephanie Hansen:So you and your husband moved to France, and he's French. Yes. So he's like your Jeffrey.Beth Le Manach:Yeah. You could say that. Yeah. He, he he definitely, has inspired me a lot, I think, with the French lifestyle and French cooking. And we would come to France every summer just to vacation, and then we thought, okay. Let's stop renting all these houses. Let's buy a house and then become the renter like, become the person renting. That was a better investment for us.Beth Le Manach:And then, I don't know, we just he got to a point in his life where he was like, I see all my friends retiring in France. That's where I wanna be. And I think that's the blessing and the curse of marrying a foreigner. At one point, they're gonna wanna go back, and you just have to be ready for that. So I was always ready for it because I've always loved France, and I just thought, like, that's a fun experience. Yeah. Let's go do that.Stephanie Hansen:Do you read David Leibovitz's blog?Beth Le Manach:Yes. I do. I love him. Yeah. He's great.Stephanie Hansen:I've learned so much. I have, relatives that are from Montreal, which is not France, but they've spent time in France. And Yeah. He just talks a lot about the difficulties of living in France and being an American transplant living in France.Are there things that you have found that you're just like, oh, I just wish I could get this or something that you're craving to miss?Beth Le Manach:Prepared broths and stocks. Like, you know, when you go in The States, you go to the grocery store and you see, like, a million organic chicken broth, beef broth, like, in every brand that takes up practically a whole file. Here, you cannot get that. You can get the cubes where you're making it, but it's like you're wasting a whole cube for two cups of broth, and you may not need the two cups of broth. Like, I love those little one cup ones that we can get in those days. That, we cannot get here. And I I don't know why. A lot of me thinks, like, it just takes up too much space on the shelves, and maybe the little cubes are better, but I do miss that.Stephanie Hansen:Do you have that better than bouillon product?Beth Le Manach:We don't have that. I have not seen that. Uh-uh. Like, there's a lot of different kinds of these little broth cubes too, and I've been trying all of them. Some of them are horrible, and some of them are okay, but there's nothing like the Swanson's chicken broth. Like, I really kinda miss that. I love that. And Land O'Lakes spread the butter.Beth Le Manach:Land O'Lakes butter. Even though we have a million wonderful butters here in France for baking, nothing is quite like the Land O'Lakes salted butter in my opinion.Stephanie Hansen:I live in Minnesota, the home of Land O'Lakes, so that makes me real happy. Alright. So entertaining one zero one is about simple, easy ways to start your entertaining life, whether it be like a signature cocktail for mom's brunch or an egg bake for Christmas or, just a simple, like, Friday night dinner party. What are some of your favorite entry points for entertaining?Beth Le Manach:Yeah. Well, I think brunch. I think brunch is the beginners, like, home run because there's no fancy roasts that you have to learn how to carve. It's pretty inexpensive because you're not serving a ton of wines and cocktails. It's fairly cheap too because of what you're making. It's eggs and bread and fruit. And it's easy because you can, like, prep in the morning, and then people come at, like, eleven. And it doesn't take the whole night.Beth Le Manach:Like, it's not gonna go on for hours and hours. Like, people usually leave around two or three. I just think it's a great entry point for people. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, once you get into the holidays, like the Thanksgiving and the Christmas, you wanna get a few brunches under your belt, maybe a few dinners. I always say start with four, then have six, but don't ever start having 10 guests, which is what Thanksgiving is. So don't start there. Yep.Beth Le Manach:Because people usually get themselves so stressed out for entertaining because I think they don't start at the right entry point. And then they never wanna do it again because it was a big mess and, you know, it was so stressful because I think they didn't work their way up to it. You know what I mean?Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. I never thought about that, but that's really a clever way to think about it. I also think too choosing, like, the main dish and then building from there is helpful. Like Yes. I I don't know why I was afraid to cook salmon for forever, but, but, really, roasting a whole side of salmon is a great dish for entertaining.Beth Le Manach:Super easy, beautiful, super delicious. Yeah. I I think that people feel like they get sort of stressed out at all of the organization, like, the the timing of it. Because most people don't have, like, restaurant cook experience where everything is timed. So my philosophy is always, like, one or two things, two max that's, like, active cooking, The rest, assembly and the rest, premade. So, like, if you balance out the portfolio of dishes so that they're not all active cooking, it's just gonna make your life so much easier.Stephanie Hansen:And so Don't you think too, like, what I always discover with entertaining is people are just so delighted to come, to be invited to something. We don't do this enough.Beth Le Manach:We don't do it enough because I think people are afraid of how it's gonna go because maybe they had one or two bad experiences or because, you know, for better or for worse, I'm probably contributing to this, but there is so much food media out there between the blogs and the Instagram and the Pinterest and television and books that, like, it can get very overwhelming. What do you serve and, you know, where do you begin? That I really wanted to create, like, here are the hundred and one recipes that, like, everybody should just know how to make. Like, it's just should be part of your repertoire. Like, get the basics down first and get the ones that you crave. So, like, of course, everybody wants to know how to make a turkey at Thanksgiving or a key lime pie at Easter or barbecue chicken in the summer. Like, these are the things we are all sort of craving perennially. And if you can get those right, then you go to, like, one zero two, which is, you know, the more sophisticated flight files and that kind of thing.Stephanie Hansen:Second book, are you already thinking about it?Beth Le Manach:Oh my gosh. No. Because I'm still recovering from the first book. You know, you're a good book author. I had no idea how all consuming it is. In a good way. Of it taken. It was a definite two year project, you know, between the testing, the writing, the photography, like, all of it.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. What part did you love, and what part did you hate?Beth Le Manach:I really love the testing. You know? Like, really taking the time to test each recipe and getting excited about being able to share it, thinking of all of my subscribers that I've had over the years and thinking, oh, this person's gonna love this, and, oh, that person is really this is really gonna help that person. I love that. I love the writing. I didn't think I would love that as much, but I really love that, the stories and the tips and the kind of bringing the recipe to life. As much as I lov…

Full show notes at the publisher

Jenna Helwig's Cookbookery Collective is a community for cookbook lovers on Substack Apr 18, 2025

Show notes

Welcome to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish," the podcast for everyone obsessed with food, cookbooks, and the stories they tell. Today, host Stephanie Hansen sits down with Jenna Helwig —a true powerhouse in the cookbook world. You may know Jenna as the creator of the Cookbookery Collective newsletter but she's also the food director at Real Simple magazine and a prolific cookbook author herself. In this conversation, Stephanie and Jenna dive into their mutual love for cookbooks, discuss the enduring charm of print in a digital world, and explore the evolving landscape of cookbook publishing, from celebrity chefs to everyday cooks and influencers.Jenna shares insights from her career, talks about the resurgence and diversity of cookbooks, and lets us in on what it’s like to balance her editorial roles at Real Simple and her Substack. They chat about memorable cookbooks from childhood, the pressure (and freedom) of home cooking, and the unique joys of discovering new recipes and makers. Whether you're a cookbook collector, home cook, or just love a good food story, this episode is packed with inspiration, nostalgia, and plenty of practical wisdom. So grab your favorite cookbook, get comfy, and join us for a delicious discussion!FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT FOLLOWS:Stephanie Hansen:Hello, everybody, and welcome to @DishingwithStephaniesDish, the podcast where we talk to people that are obsessed with food, cookbooks, and all things in the food space. And today, I'm speaking with Jenna Helwig, and I kinda came across her mostly on Substack, which I think maybe will make her be surprised. I found her as the creator of the cookbookery collective cookbook newsletter, and I was like, hey. You're into cookbooks. I'm into cookbooks. Let's talk about cookbooks. And we got the call set up, and then she said, oh, and by the way, I am the food director of Real Simple magazine. And I was like, oh, just that small detail that I literally did not even know about you.I'm so embarrassed. Welcome to the program.Jenna Helwig:Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And I'm thrilled that you found me through the substack because that's a newish thing for me, and I love that, you know, people are reading it.Stephanie Hansen:Yes. And I was so like, I'm just obsessed with cookbooks, and I am a cookbook writer. I'm on my second book that's coming up, and I read a lot about trying to get published and different points of view of cookbooks. And we have quite a few good cookbook authors that hail from the Midwest in the Twin Cities here. And you had, I think, done an interview with my friend Zoe from Zoey Bakes, which probably is how I found out about you.Jenna Helwig:That is probably right. Yes. Zoey. Also, I think of Amy Theilan. I know she's not right there, but she's, you know, in the vicinity. Right? So yeah. For sure. And Pinch of Yum, aren't they based in Minneapolis? So yeah.Jenna Helwig:They are. A good a good food thing going.Stephanie Hansen:Yes. And the Food Dolls just published their book. They have, like, 8,000,000 followers.Jenna Helwig:Amazing. I guess I've been through that interview. Yeah. And who is that?Stephanie Hansen:Sarah Kiefer, do you know her?Jenna Helwig:Oh, yes. Of course. Her cookies, baked goods. Yeah.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. We are all from, the Twin Cities, and most of them have, like, specialty angles. Like, I am just a home cook, so that's sort of my point of view on the Midwest. But it has been a really great market to be in. And one of the things that I started a radio show about seventeen years ago, so we've talked a lot of these people along the way. And right when we started the radio show, you know, Facebook and Instagram were launching, and it's been such an interesting trajectory to see cookbook authors in particular. And, like, everyone's like, oh, print is dead. Like, magazines are dead.Publications are dead. And yet, you know, cookbooks are, in some respects, doing better than ever.Jenna Helwig:Yeah. I agree. I feel like they are thriving. I also feel like, you know, at least for me personally, and I do notice this though with a lot of other people that we are on our screens all the time, and we're kinda tired of it. So whether it's a cookbook or even a print magazine, like, there's just something so lovely about turning pages, just, like, shutting out everything else. No other notifications are popping up on your screen. So print is very special.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. And it feels like you can have, like, personal one on one time with it because you can set your phone down and really immerse yourself in the story.Jenna Helwig:Yes. Exactly. We all need more of that.Stephanie Hansen:I think so. My food magazines too, you mentioned that you're the food director of Real Simple, and you guys are having your twenty fifth anniversary. Yes. And I literally before you sent me that text, I was, like, reading it. And I'm a subscriber, so I'm gonna hold up my copy here. Because I really I love food print too. I worked in the newspaper business, and I'm kind of a tactile print person also. And you had a really cool feature this month about what's the best takeaway you've ever gotten from Real Simple because you guys are in your 25th birthday. So I thought I'd ask you what your best takeaway is.Jenna Helwig:Oh my gosh. That's such a hard question. Alright. I I'm sure it's going to be food related, and I'm kinda gonna cheat and pick something from that month. I worked with Molly Ye on the beautiful birthday cake that's on the cover. And, you know, one of the things she did that I feel like I've used in other in other applications, but never for frosting, was she used instead of food coloring, freeze dried raspberry powder to make the beautiful pink frosting. And I just hadn't done that before, and it was so easy and such a kind of natural way to make something look so lovely.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. That's funny because, yeah, and the cake, it's a it's a lemon poppy seed cake, and then it has like a a raspberry pink frosting on the outside and then raspberry jam on the inside. It really it also gives you a little bit of that raspberry flavor in the frosting, but it's not like super wet like it would be if you used real raspberries or also, like, super overly sweet if you used just jam.Jenna Helwig:You know what? That is exactly right because it lends that little bit of tartness to it too, and so it's just such a nicely balanced frosting.Stephanie Hansen:So you are a cookbook writer yourself.Jenna Helwig:Mhmm.Stephanie Hansen:I'm forgetting the name of your books. It's Minute Dinners or Dinner andJenna Helwig:“Bare Minimum Dinners.” The most Bare minimum. Yes. “Bare Minimum Dinners”. Stephanie Hansen:I'm all for that. And you've had, a number of cookbooks, I think. Aren't you? Like, you've had a few more of that too.Jenna Helwig:Yes. So I've written five books. Three of them were more in the, like, family baby toddler space. I used to be the food editor at Parents Magazine. Sure. And so that was really how I kind of got into cookbook writing. I started with real baby food and then wrote one called baby led feeding. And I will say that is by far my best selling cookbook.Jenna Helwig:You know, it's still something we actually did a reissue a couple of years ago, so I did an updated version. It's still something that parents are finding, and that just makes me so happy.Stephanie Hansen:My neighbor who just had a baby, she's gonna be two, was obsessed with that book because I just she knows I write cookbooks, and I film a TV show in my house too. So I'm always bringing them food. And when she first had the baby, she showed it to me, and she was like, have you ever heard of this book?Jenna Helwig:And it was yours. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Well, that's so great. I'm I that's a really hard time of life as I you know, just, like, trying to figure out no one really tells you how to feed your baby, which is strange. And so I think anything that I could do to make it just less stressful, that was always my goal with those books.Stephanie Hansen:And I think that there's so much to be said about just getting dinner on the table. Like, it's almost a political act these days just to, like, be working, be taking care of your mental health, be worrying about your social time with your kids, your family, your family, aging parents, and then all of a sudden every day someone is supposed to, like, be putting all these elaborate meals on the table, like, sometimes just even surviving a day without the food, and then you have this whole other stressor on top of it.Jenna Helwig:I could not agree more. I mean, which is why I thought of bare minimum dinners. Like, it's this idea, and we do this also in real simple. You know, it's very similar. They're like I call fussy the f word. I'm like, nothing fussy, you know, especially when we're talking about recipes in the magazine. Skip the garnish. Like, you know, there's you're not putting on a show for anyone.You know? Just do what you can. That's really you know? But is it better or good is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. Just get it done.Stephanie Hansen:And some people, like, because they feel like they're trying to live up to something in a Instagram photo, it prevents them from having a dinner party or, making food for a neighbor because maybe it's, like, not good enough. You know, just the sheer act of eating and providing food for your family, whoever your family looks like, or even just for yourself, you are gonna eat better. You're gonna have more control over what you eat. I have eaten at a million restaurants in my life, and I just find that I always feel so much better when I'm cooking at home.Jenna Helwig:I agree. I love to go out to eat. However, then if if I do that too much, I'm like, okay. I just need to reset at home. And, you know, I've also noticed that in some cookbooks, there has been this trend towards the food not being overly styled or the author doing that themselves and thinking about, like, Julia Tershen with her last book. You know, she photographed that herself, and the food looks great, but also real.Like, you could do it. And, also the book Chinese Enough that I just featured in Cookbookery Collective. You know, those recipes just don't feel like nitpicked to death. You know? They're just very naturalStephanie Hansen:looking. I feel like we might see more of that. I photographed my own book, but it was simply out of necessity because I didn't have $20 to pay someone. So I said to the publisher, well, if my Instagram's okay, I'm gonna do, like, similar to that. Is that okay? And they were like, sure. Oh, great. As we look at cookbooks as a genre, things have changed a lot because it used to be that you were a professional chef or you were a restaurant chef and you were writing about your restaurant or you were a small group of people that were super experienced in cooking, and maybe you had, you know, 10 books that you were writing in the different genres. You did vegetarian and gluten free and then dairy free.Now, like, the cookbook space is really kind of being taken up by regular people or influencers in a lot of respects. Does that, open the door for more excitement or is it sometimes do you worry that maybe the books aren't as good? Oh,Jenna Helwig:Oh, that's a tough question. I think that anything that gets people cooking is good. So I am you know, if the it is someone without a lot of cooking experience who has a book, but it still excites people to get into the kitchen, fantastic. So that's really my main goal. I do think, you know, where I am in my life, like, I really wanna learn something new from a cookbook. So that's what I personally am looking for, but there are cooks of all different, you know, ability levels and experience levels. So I think that having a variety of cookbooks that can reach everyone where they are is probably the answer.Stephanie Hansen:There is so much diversity too in cookbooks now. Like, the no offense to the old beautiful Asian cookbooks that you would get, but, you know, you didn't really feel like you could make a lot of the things out of there because maybe you didn't have the ingredients or you weren't familiar with technique. The the more recent diversity in cookbooks, it feels like you can actually make some of these things.Jenna Helwig:Well, I think that's right. Some of the things do feel more accessible. And, also, we just have access to so many more ingredients now, which is amazing. Just even at, like, regular grocery stores. My parents live in Colorado and, like, in the suburbs, and I was, you know, just driving by where I used to live. And there was an H Mart, you know, which I like, my jaw just, like, fell on the floor. There's no H Mart there when I was growing up. So the fact that I could have had access to all of those ingredients, and now the people who live in Broomfield, Colorado do is a miracle.Stephanie Hansen:That's so funny because I'm actually reading crying in H Mart right now for my book club, and it's just a delightful memoir about a woman who's experiencing the loss of her mother through the Korean cooking and heritage that she had growing up, and it's really a delightful book. It's so good. When you are thinking of what you wanna write about for your substack, because I'm in some ways, I'm surprised that you still find this topic and this genre interesting after having worked at Real Simple for five years because I've I it's almost like feels like is it too much of the food, but it it really is steeped in you. And how do you pick, like, what you wanna feature on your Substack versus what would maybe be a potential something in the magazine down the road, or is it just all the love and all of the same?Jenna Helwig:So I for real simple, you know, obviously, I get to kind of put a lot of myself into there and, you know, kind of direct that coverage, you know, pitch what I think we should cover. But I'm always doing that through the lens of our audience. You know? What and I she's usually a she. You know? What does she want? How much time does she have? What's gonna make make her life easier? So I really hyper focus on that. And a lot of it does kind of mirror my life because I am, you know, kind of similar to the real simple reader, but that's primary. I feel like with the substack, I can just do whatever I want. It's really, like, the books and the authors that speak to the me the most. It's nice to kind of have that, you know, freedom even if it's something that maybe we wouldn't cover in the magazine or might be a little more obscure.Jenna Helwig:You know? It's just fun to be able to follow my passions and my interest. And I do love food, and I really love cookbooks. So it's it's funny that I spend even extra time with them, but it really makes me so happy.Stephanie Hansen:I am hoping that in substack's evolution that we get more information about who our readers are. Because when you're, like, at a magazine, you know, you have a deep dive in your target market and the radio show, they know exactly who your p ones are. In Substack, you have followers, but you don't exactly know that much about them except basically where they come from.Jenna Helwig:That is such a good point, and I'm sure you also know so much more about this than me. I'm still I'm such a newbie. I've b…

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Let's Go to Sicily with @DefinedDestinations Apr 04, 2025

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Welcome to another exciting episode of "Dishing with Stephanies Dish." In this episode, I am joined by my fellow travel enthusiast, Michael Kenney from Defined Destinations, as we dive into the world of adventurous group travel. Fresh from their trips to Croatia and Asia, they're setting their sights on a new journey to Sicily, Italy. Whether you're a seasoned traveler or a wanderlust-driven explorer, you'll discover the unique experiences that Sicily promises, from breathtaking historic cities to mesmerizing volcanoes and, of course, delectable Italian cuisine. Join Stephanie and the Michaels for a delightful conversation about the joys of traveling with a group, the thrill of meeting new people, and the authentic charm that awaits in Sicily. Whether you're considering joining their next adventure or simply living vicariously through their tales, this episode offers a captivating glimpse into the magic of defined destinations. Let the journey begin!Stephanie Hansen:Hello, everybody. Welcome to the podcast, Dishing with Stephanie's Dish. I hope you're doing great today. I am here with my friend, Michael Kenney, and Michael and I have been traveling together a couple years now. Right, Michael?Michael Kenney:Yeah. We've had, two trips under our belt. So it's, a trip to Croatia and, just recently that Cambodia Vietnam trip. So we've been we've been putting some miles down, Stephanie.Stephanie Hansen:I actually actually was somewhere last night and ran into someone from our trip, and we were comparing our bracelets from when we met the Buddhist monk because both of us still have ours on. Yes.Michael Kenney:Mine, like, just kinda fell apart.Stephanie Hansen:It was such a Oh,Michael Kenney:I woke up in the sun.Stephanie Hansen:Trip. Yes. I'm I'm gonna keep it on as long as I can. It was such a life changing trip. Asia was somewhere that I'd always wanted to go and really didn't have the confidence to do it by myself. So you gave me confidence. Going with other people gave me confidence, and we ended up having such a great time. Pretty good.Stephanie Hansen:I have had another great trip with you. We went to Croatia, and that was an awesome trip. We were on kind of like an exclusive private yacht with, Stan, our tour guide, who was probably one of the best tour guides ever.Michael Kenney:For sure.Stephanie Hansen:And you're going back there to Croatia this summer, aren't you?Michael Kenney:Yeah. Personally, I'm not. I'm gonna have somebody else. I'm a little envious because, yeah, that that trip was straight out of a dream. And, you and your, listeners, followers, they were so much fun.Stephanie Hansen:So Yeah. We did have a good time.Michael Kenney:Yeah. It was great.Stephanie Hansen:So I wanted to podcast with you because people ask me all the time about these trips and, like, how it works and what we do and, you know, like, are you, like, checking people's passports? I'm like, no. Silly. I'm not. But we have a trip coming up to Sicily, a taste of Sicily, which you have so sweetly on your your background there. That's smart. October 14 through the twenty second. And our final payments, I think, are due in June. So we're kind of in the hunt for getting everybody signed up and confirmed.And I wanted to talk with you. I've been to Italy a lot, actually, but I've never been to Sicily. So I'm excited about what that area is gonna be like and you've been. So I thought, alright. Let's just talk a little bit about this and get to know a little bit about how these trips work. So, I like to do trips with people because I like to travel with others. And people always ask me, well, are they food trips? Yes. They are food.Like, we eat food. We enjoy food. We talk about food, but it isn't, like, exclusively a food trip. We know that when you're going to some of these historic destinations that you also wanna see some of the beautiful sites. So we try to mix in some food things like special tastings, special wine events, or special dinners, but we also wanna give you some time to explore the region on your own so that you can go to the restaurants that really appeal to you. And, you know, when you're going with the group, sometimes it's not easy to go to some of these really exclusive special places because you have a larger group. Our group on a trip like this would be, what, would you say, like, less than, like, 26 probably?Michael Kenney:Yeah. It this group size will be anywhere from 20 to 30 maximum on this trip. So it's a real nice, you know, size group for sure.Stephanie Hansen:And you've been to Sicily before. When was the last time you went?Michael Kenney:I was with a group two years ago in Sicily. So I've been there three other times. So just most recently, just two years ago.Stephanie Hansen:And you and I like, I kinda gave you my short list of places. And you asked me about Sicily, and I was like, oh, well, I don't know. I've never really thought about that. And you were like, oh my gosh. It's one of your favorite places in Italy. So tell me what it is that you love about Sicily in particular.Michael Kenney:Yeah. No. That that that's a great question. You already mentioned you've been to Italy several times, and we get a lot of people that have been to Italy. And they're like, alright. I've already done that. Or maybe you haven't, you know, seen the the Colosseum and Venice and things like that. Sicily is is Italian, but it's an island in the middle of the Mediterranean.Michael Kenney:So it's just it's it's it's similar, but it's different. I think everything is elevated. Their food, their sites. I mean, the history has a whole Greek, northern the Arabs. It's a Spanish influence in Normans. They've all kinda come to this island in the middle of the the Mediterranean and put, like, their best foods, their their best everything. And it's kinda mixes and makes a Sicilian dish, which is really cool. So it's it's similar, yes, with their pastas and things like that in Mainland Europe, but it's it's a different notch.Michael Kenney:I think it's above, regular standard Italian food. It's just the flavors, the the spices, everything like that is just it's so good. And that's just the food side of it. And then, of course, I already mentioned with with the Greeks in the Spanish and the Normans, they have their own architectures that they brought, a mix of different languages. So you really feel like you're in a whole another country. It says in Italy, but the Sicilians say we're Sicilian first, then we're Italian.Stephanie Hansen:That's funny.Michael Kenney:So it's it's really so different, of an experience on that end. And I even have, a couple of friends going on this trip, and they've never been to Europe before. And they're saying, hey. We're we're gonna join you on this trip because it sounds lovely, but we've never been to Europe. We've never seen the Colosseum, things like that. Like, is this a good trip for us to take? I go, for sure it is. I mean, you don't have these, you know, the Leaning Tower Of Pisa, but once you get get to these places, you'll say, oh my gosh. I mean, a church that's, a thousand years old, or the little villages that are, you know, 500 years old and just oozing with this with charm.So you're really, having this real great Italian Sicilian experience, but maybe not knowing the sites, but it'll kinda resonate even better when you come back and tell your stories. It's just a beautiful, beautiful trip.Stephanie Hansen:And I think, you know, I've been to Rome. I've been to a lot of the little Italian islands on sailing trips with my husband. And we've been to Naples. We've been to Venice. We've been all over, really. And each of Italy has its own uniqueness, but the islands themselves are just something different because you really did get a lot of influences of people coming through and the trading that happened. And they also weren't as involved in the wars because they were sort of moving to the mainland. So you get a lot of different preservation possibilities, and the culture just held up because they weren't impacted by the wars in the same way.Michael Kenney:Exactly. And I think even early on, Sicilians were were very poor as well. So a lot of things just really, held. So they didn't, you know, knock down buildings and build new skyscrapers, things like that. It's like you're being, on the set of The Godfather, which was filmed there too, part of it at least. And, it was, like, set in time, and you're going there and just really experiencing the the feel, the taste, the smell, even you could call, like, the grit of, like, Palermo. I mean, it has this edge to it in a sense, like, this is a real living city. It sound like all spruced up to be perfect, like, on a set, but that's what makes it so so fantastic.It it's it's real. And I don't think you always get that experience that you're in in Central Rome, and they they, you know, it's all beautiful up. Again Palermo and all these cities that will visit are extremely beautiful but it has it's just a different edge to it and every group that I've ever been there with Stephanie if they've come back and said wow this is a dream. Not just the food, the sites, the experiences, the people. The people are real. They're they're fabulous. So it's it's a real real, just an amazing immersion, if you will, to Sicily.Stephanie Hansen:One of the things that people ask me about too, and I'll be honest with you. I'm not really, like, someone that you would think of as a group traveler. I like a certain amount of, alone time. I don't love to have every single thing coordinated for me. My husband, as you know, is a big adventurer and explorer. He's always the first one to do anything crazy on these trips. But it having a group is it's so nice when it's a smaller group like this because you do get to meet new people. You do get to create a community amongst your travelers.And I'll tell you, my friend Laurie Bargini that went on our Asia trip with us, she was very she's a big traveler too, and she was like, I don't know about this group thing. I was like, just give it a try. Like, Asia's a good one to test it out because it's probably a destination you wouldn't go alone. And she signed up right away for Sicily. She was like, I loved the group elements because when I wanted to, I had a group of friends and it was fun and we could hang out together and do fun things, but also when I wanted to be alone, I could do that too. It she thought it added a whole another layer to the travel experience than you just get either with you and your spouse or you and your friends because you have this whole other dynamic of people that for the most part is pretty great.Michael Kenney:Yeah. I know. And I and that's great. And Laurie was great. I'm glad she signed up because on the flight back from Asia, she sat next to me on the flight, and that's a seventeen hour flight. And if she wants to go back, then that that that's great.Stephanie Hansen:Yeah. It's good. Well, you know she talked to you the whole time probably.Michael Kenney:No. I tried to again, maybe it's like the group element. You know, have time on, time off. So I'm glad that was brought up. And I've been doing group tours for twenty eight years now, which I I I can't believe. And I I first started getting into tourism because I wanted to see sites. I'm like, I know I can't pay for it, so I need to be a tour guide and and going from that. I didn't realize the whole experience and having shared experiences with others was gonna be my highlight.And to this day, that's my favorite part is going to meet people that I've never met before and going having these shared experiences with. And and sometimes, you know, you build friends for a lifetime off of that.Michael Kinney:I think especially our last group too, we we really, built that with several of the the travelers, which is great. So and I so if you're hesitant, like, well, I'd like to this trip sounds great or any of our trips, but I am kind of worried about that. We really try to balance all our tours out. It's it's it's imperative that we have that balance of, some of the group time to have these, shared experiences to leisure time so that you can go and have your own adventures. And that is so crucial to all of our trips. That's why our hotels, and we can talk about that later, are centrally located. So once we go out and do, say, our city tour, our our our food tour in Palermo and walking around, you'll have, like, the remainder of the day to go explore on your own or some of those new friends that you met. Maybe you can go out and have a glass of wine with them.But again, it's all about that balance. And we each and every itinerary that we put together, we really work on making sure we have that balance in in the trips itself. Because I think that is the success of it. So we don't pack the days all day long on, like, seeing this, this, and this. We give you the nice highlights, and we'll have some other fun inclusions. But again, each place that we go to centrally located hotels, we have that free time too. So you can do your own thing or jump on with a group that you've met and have cocktails, Aperol spritzes in the main, Piazza later on. So it it's so fun, but it it really comes back.You register for a trip, but you don't know you're gonna meet some great people. And at at the end of the trip, it's typically these, these people and these, shared experiences come back, and that's where the meaning of the the trip comes in. It's so it's it's so much fun to see them build together.Stephanie Hansen:On each of the trips that I've done with you, we've had solo travelersMichael Kenney:Mhmm.Stephanie Hansen:Which I think people are like, oh, you know, I don't know. I don't have a partner to go with or my friend can't go. And that to me has also been super fun, like the solo travelers and the friends that they've made. And, like, one of the gals I saw from our Asia trip, I saw our friend Annie last night, and she was a solo traveler. Ended up pairing up with Laurie in a room and sharing, actually, actually, which a lot of solo travelers don't wanna share. I get that. But in this case, they both did, and they are like fast friends.Michael Kenney:That I mean, that's that's so much fun to see that. First off, if, you know, we all have it like your maybe your husband or wife or friend they don't want to go but you're like interested in this trip. We get that on all of our trips and we specifically specifically have, several single rooms set aside for those, adventure traveler seekers to have that. So you can pick your own room and go as a single or maybe you want us to to pair you up. We can do that too and get you in contact with another solo traveler like lorian annie did and that typically works out really well too but it's it's I think the like minded people looking for adventures you'll never feel like you're by yourself on any of our trips So, like, oh, I'm a third wheel. Never ever ever. And sometimes that's the best way to travel because you don't have to make sure your traveling partner is having a great time. You only can worry…

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@SetTheTablePhotography Mar 14, 2025

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Follow Rachael White's Blog at https://www.setthetablephotography.com/

or follow her on Instagram @setthetablephotography

Watch the episode of "Taste Buds With Stephanie" that Rachael styled

Get the @FoodDolls cookbook "Pretty Delicious"

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit stephaniehansen.substack.com/subscribe

@KatherineWants Feb 21, 2025

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Welcome back to another episode of "Dishing with Stephanies Dish," where today's conversation centers on love, food, and the evolution of a dynamic partnership. Stephanie is joined by the charismatic duo, Randy and Katherine Feltes, the creative minds behind @KatherineWants. This episode delves into their unique journey through life's intertwined paths of romance and culinary passion. From serendipitously reconnecting after years apart, to building a family and launching their new "Ultimate Date Night Cookbook," they share how their love for food enriches their relationship and social media community (follow them on TikTok! @Katherinewants) and shope their cute merch at @Katherinewantshsop Tune in to hear about their adventures in the restaurant business, their vibrant social media presence, and their candid insights on balancing career, creativity, and family life. Whether you’re looking for inspiration in the kitchen or in your personal relationships, this episode is sure to serve up a hearty helping of both. Here is a recipe they shared from the “Katherine Wants: The Ultimate Date Night Cookbook” for the ultimate Sea ScallopsSEARED SEA SCALLOPS with CELERIAC PUREE and CRISPY GUANCIALE 2 SERVINGS • PREP TIME: 10 MINUTES • COOK TIME: 12 MINUTESIngredientsCELERIAC PUREE (MAKES 2 CUPS)1 small (8- to 12-ounce) celeriac (aka celery root), peeled and diced1 apple, peeled and diced2 cups milk1 clove garlic, halved2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 teaspoon kosher saltScallops3 ounces guanciale or pancetta, cut into matchsticks (about 1 cup)6 dry-packed sea scallops (U10/20 size), “feet” removed1 teaspoon kosher salt1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted⅛ teaspoon ground black pepperInstructions1. Make the celeriac puree: Put all the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a gentle simmer, then cover and continue to simmer for about 10 minutes. When the celeriac is tender, transfer the contents of the pan to a blender and puree until smooth. Adjust the seasoning if needed.2. Place the guanciale in a small frying pan along with a splash of water. Over medium heat, render the fat as the water evaporates. Continue cooking until the desired crispness, then remove with a slotted spoon and set aside.3. Preheat a 12-inch cast-iron frying pan over medium heat.4. Meanwhile, dry off the scallops on some paper towels and season with the salt.5. When the pan is very hot, pour in the olive oil. You’ll know the oil is hot enough if it smokes a little. Gently place the scallops in the hot oil and do not touch until a crust appears on the bottom edge, 2 to 3 minutes. Give a flip and repeat. Remove to a plate and let rest for 2 minutes.6. To serve, spoon ¼ cup of the celeriac puree into a small pasta bowl and top with three scallops and half of the crispy guanciale. Garnish with half of the toasted pine nuts and pepper. Repeat to make a second serving.Note:To get a proper sear on your scallops, make sure you dry them very well with a paper towel and have your pan good and hot.📸@katherinewantsLISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:Stephanie [00:00:11]:I am here with Randy Feltes and Katherine Feltes, and they are the social media creators and content creators, really, because you guys have lots of assets outside of social of Katherine Wants, and your latest initiative is a cookbook. You've got restaurants. You've got cookbooks. You've got kids. You've got a marriage. You've got a dating situation.Get our listeners caught up to, like, how you guys started because your story resonated with me so much because it was kinda like my story. My husband nightclub. I was a cocktail waitress, and that when I was 19. Oh. And we've been married thirty years.Katherine Feltes [00:00:51]:Wow. Okay. So super similar stories.Randy Feltes [00:00:55]:Restaurant people. Right? Like, we like to stay together, and I think it's the love of food that actually keeps us together. And, you know, you just don't find those type of people outside of the business. So Mhmm. Katherine, do you wanna tell how we how we got toKatherine Feltes [00:01:07]:we yeah. So Brandy was the chef and owner of Oscar's, which, you know, people still talk about Oscar's in our town to this day. But anyways, it was a fine dining restaurant in Barrie. And I had a big crush on him and we finally, you know, started this relationship and I was young and dumb and I went on this trip with my ex boyfriend. Anyways, it's a long story.Randy Feltes [00:01:34]:You messed it up.Katherine Feltes [00:01:35]:I messed it up. I messed it up and we broke up and then, you know, there was a big period of time like fifteen years? Fifteen?Randy Feltes [00:01:44]:Thirteen thirteen years.Katherine Feltes [00:01:45]:Thirteen years in between. Anyways, I got married to somebody and Randy got married to somebody and then we both found ourselves divorced at the same time living down the street from each other. And well, I found us actually both divorced because I immediately was like, I have to jump in his DMs and, like, make this happen because I just I just knew we were meant to be all those years, and here we are.Stephanie [00:02:14]:Do you think that if you would have stayed together the first time around?That you would have made it? Because sometimes, like, I I my husband, I didn't meet him till he was 29. If I'd have met him when he was 19, I'd been like, no way. You're old.Katherine Feltes [00:02:30]:Listen. I'd like to think that we would. I'd like to think maybe that we wouldn't because I want to believe that everything happens for a reason, of course. But being together now, sometimes when I think about it too much, it makes me really sad that we didn't get all those years because I I just we have so much fun together. And, you know, we were only together kind of a short period of time before we decided that we were gonna procreate because we're both getting older.Randy Feltes [00:03:03]:And listen, I'm I I'm a different I think that everything happens for a reason, and now I can hold it over Katherine's head that she messed it up the first time around. And, you know, I kinda get get in the jail free card. And, you know, we would never trade the happiness we have now, and so you really can't play that game of if we went back.Stephanie [00:03:23]:Yeah. And you guys you got together then, and you had a kid, and then you, right away, kinda have had another kid.Randy Feltes [00:03:30]:Mhmm.Stephanie [00:03:31]:Yes. How is going from a family of two to three to four in a somewhat short period of time?Randy Feltes [00:03:38]:Well, Katherine has well, I have a a son as well from my first marriage. So there was Katherine was, like, a part time stepmom. And then, like, when we first got together, Katherine was like, oh, I guess how old were you? Thirty Thirty six. 30 six. And Katherine's like, oh, I'm not interested in kids. And I was like, like, I don't believe that for a second. And I wanted more kids. So then it was only about a month later.Randy Feltes [00:04:01]:Katherine's like, would you consider I was like, absolutely. So we got right into it, and and then came Libby. And so, yeah, the family has grown quickly, and we're really feeling it this time around with Romy because the house is it just gets more full. ButKatherine Feltes [00:04:18]:Yeah.Randy Feltes [00:04:19]:There's a lot of juggling going on.Stephanie [00:04:21]:Yeah. And you guys so you are active restaurant tours, and you also have this social media presence with TikTok and Instagram that really blossomed through the COVID times. And now you've taken, some of that content, the recipes that you developed, and put it into this book that is real cute. It's called the ultimate date night cookbook. And it is a cookbook and a great cookbook with lots of great photos and good recipes, but there's also this element of having the, the dating, tips and the how to keep the romance spark alive and some of those fun elements that you don't usually see in a cookbook. Mhmm.Randy Feltes [00:05:05]:We really didn't wanna write a traditional cookbook in that sense. Like, I don't think anyone needs to learn how to make a chicken stock. And if you do, you probably have 10 cookbooks that all have a chicken stock recipe in it. So we just skipped right over that part and went right to the goods. Like, the all star stuff from Katherine Watts. And then we're like, you know, this is basically just a page in our life. And when we wake up in the morning, the first thing we we talk about is what we're gonna have for dinner or where we're going for lunch. And so it's always based around food.Randy Feltes [00:05:33]:So when we when we started stripping it down and putting the chapters together, they wrote themselves. It's like, okay. Break the ice is the first. It's a cocktail one. And then it's the first date. Right? And then it's the morning after the first date.Stephanie [00:05:45]:You have a lot of morning after breakfast recipes. It made me wonder.Randy Feltes [00:05:49]:How many of the afters you had?Katherine Feltes [00:05:52]:You know what? The the for me, the cookbook is I mean, Randy's a chef, so it was really fun for him to, you know, finally be able to realize that sort of part of his career. But for me, the cookbook is more, like, something for couples or just people, friends, family to do. Like, rather than saying, oh, I better get the cookbook because I wanna make this. It's like, I'm gonna get the cookbook out because we're gonna have a date. Right? Like, it's something that that brings two people together or, you know, in the in certain, chapters, what what would you make when you're meeting the parents or for for bigger groups of people. So it's kind of like a fun, like I feel like we should sell it at, like, where they sell board games.Randy Feltes [00:06:42]:That's funny. They should they should definitely do that.Stephanie [00:06:45]:Not a bad idea, actually. What I did, as someone who's written a lot of recipes myself, I was surprised, Randy, because when I first got the book and I read the story and I was like, oh, a chef. Sometimes chef cookbooks are too and too hard for the home cooks, and I felt like yours is very accessible.Randy Feltes [00:07:06]:Thank you very much for bringing that up, Stephanie. I've been, I also do a lot of daytime TV over the last fifteen years. So we have a very popular show here called City Line, and I was on the on there for fifteen years, just as a like a kind of a what do they call us?Katherine Feltes [00:07:22]:Guest. Expert.Randy Feltes [00:07:23]:Guest expert. Guest expert. That's right. And I really learned that if you wanna resonate with the general public, you kinda have to simplify things and get away from the cheffy stuff. The simple things go and they work. Nobody wants a cookbook that they're just gonna look at the pictures and go, I'm never gonna make that. There's too much steps and it takes too long. You want things that you can actually achieve.Randy Feltes [00:07:42]:And so all of the recipes in the book, we bought the groceries at the grocery store. We didn't use the restaurants. Right? And then we executed them at home, and we shot them ourselves and styled styled it ourselves so it's attainable and it's achievable. And the whole point is that, you know, if somebody is having a hard time dating and they grab our book, the hard part shouldn't be cooking for the date. It should be the date itself. Yeah. Right?Stephanie [00:08:07]:And I thought the way that the recipes were were organized was cute, but also, like, you had all the prep in there. Did you guys shoot the book, or did you have someone shoot it for you? Because it felt personal.Katherine Feltes [00:08:19]:This is a really, really fun part of of our stories. So, I mentioned that I was married before and my ex husband is way better at photography than he is at being a husband.Stephanie [00:08:35]:Yep.Katherine Feltes [00:08:35]:So we hired him and and you know what it was it was Randy, myself, and Honza, my ex husband, who's from the Czech Republic. It was the three of us in the kitchen, and I was cleaning up after them. It was just like good old times. You know? That's hilarious.Stephanie [00:08:53]:I love it. I love it so much. But that also shows, I think, a certain maturity about your relationship too, like security and not having to be all, like, weirded out about that stuff. When you talk about, like, during COVID that the social media kinda blew up, how did you know you had something? Like, what was do you remember that first video where you were like, oh, this is something?Katherine Feltes [00:09:19]:Well, it was just sort of like a build up. Like, you know, people kept asking, can you share the recipe for that? And then we did that one video of me eating king crab and just using a fork. And people went crazy. And it was like, okay. Well, maybe this is a thing.Randy Feltes [00:09:39]:It's like we found our people, you know. It's like all of a sudden we have this whole audience that loves food as much as we do and is actually interested in what we're cooking and what we're talking about. And then we had the other recipe, the one pan potatoes, which is the simplest recipe in the world. You just simmer the potatoes in water and evaporate them until they get crispy. And it went bonkers. Right? And it's that kind of idea, the same as the recipes in the cookbook, that make it simple. It's like if you can achieve it, then they're gonna share it because they're gonna share that along the way. And then we're like, this is so much fun.Randy Feltes [00:10:10]:Just one little kitchen hack can get, like, millions and millions of views.Stephanie [00:10:14]:Mhmm. Did it does has it ever felt overwhelming, like, that this whole voyeuristic piece is, like because sometimes I think, like, you we share so much as creators, and then, like, what do you keep for yourself?Katherine Feltes [00:10:32]:Yes. But I don't know if maybe it would feel different if we didn't have little kids. Not because I'm I'm not and I respect the people who don't wanna show their children. I don't I'm not very, like, big on it. I don't hide them, though. But it's just overwhelming sometimes maybe more than more than anything. It's just finding the time to share, and it definitely seemed way easierRandy Feltes [00:11:01]:Without children.Katherine Feltes [00:11:02]:Without children. Yeah.Stephanie [00:11:04]:And even just, like, I also, I think the algorithms are changing and that they're favoring content that's less produced.Randy Feltes [00:11:12]:Mhmm.Stephanie [00:11:13]:And then so, you know, like, you're working on this thing, and you're gonna put this thing out there, and it's gonna look a certain way and feel a certain way. And then, like, some other random thing that you put up is the thing that goes viral that you weren't even planning on. OrKatherine Feltes [00:11:27]:Right.Stephanie [00:11:28]:So all of that is changing, and the mediums are so different. I think what gets seen on TikTok is very different than what Instagram favors.Randy Feltes [00:11:37]:Agreed. Mhmm. And we've really tried hard to figure it out, and we don't have a clue.Stephanie [00:11:44]:Me neither. And no one else does do that. Of it.Randy Feltes [00:11:46]:And I think what you have to do is sit back and kind of enjoy that and just go, we're just gonna do what we want and try our best. And if it works, that's great. And if it doesn't, that's f…

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