Latest / Dishing with Stephanie's Dish / Kelly Jaggers

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Kelly Jaggers · Dishing with Stephanie's Dish

0:15
SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish,
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SPEAKER_00: the podcast where we talk to cookbook authors and people generally obsessed with food.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Today we have a cookbook author and it is Kelly Jaggers.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the program, Kelly.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: Yes, so you wrote something that I find really fascinating.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: It's called The Ultimate Meal Planning for One Cookbook.
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SPEAKER_00: And you previously wrote The Ultimate Mediterranean Diet Cookbook for one.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: What got you into like cooking for one person?
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Because I did notice that you're now married.
0:49
SPEAKER_02: I am married.
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SPEAKER_02: So just because I'm married doesn't mean I don't understand the ins and outs of
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SPEAKER_02: what people who are solo might need.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: I do spend a few days a week at home by myself.
1:00
SPEAKER_02: My husband works.
1:01
SPEAKER_02: Um, sometimes he travels and on those dates, I'm just cooking for me.
1:04
SPEAKER_02: I don't have kiddos, just me and the dogs.
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SPEAKER_02: Um,
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SPEAKER_02: so it was important for me to learn how to scale down recipes so that I could enjoy
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SPEAKER_02: them just for myself without having excessive leftovers.
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SPEAKER_02: And that just really parlays well into the book series that I've been working on.
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SPEAKER_02: Um,
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SPEAKER_02: because it's kind of a,
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SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't say so niche,
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SPEAKER_02: but kind of overlooked audience for cookbooks thinking,
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SPEAKER_02: Right.
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SPEAKER_02: They're thinking about families, married couples, people with loads of kids are planning for parties.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: But what about those people who are,
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SPEAKER_02: for whatever reason,
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SPEAKER_02: cooking for themselves because maybe they're single or they have a spouse or an S.O.
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SPEAKER_02: or a partner who works multiple days away from home?
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SPEAKER_02: Or maybe they're on a special diet from an S.O.
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SPEAKER_02: And so like they're planning just for themselves.
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SPEAKER_02: Just lots of reasons why you might just be cooking for yourself.
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SPEAKER_02: So it's not just because you're a single, although you probably, maybe you are, that's also fine.
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SPEAKER_02: Like I don't judge, whatever.
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SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
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SPEAKER_02: it was important for me to kind of fill that gap and to help to fill out that
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SPEAKER_02: market a little bit.
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SPEAKER_00: I feel uniquely interested in this topic after just having spent two weeks with my mother-in-law,
2:04
SPEAKER_00: who's 92,
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SPEAKER_00: and she still does all her own cooking.
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SPEAKER_00: And every time I was going to make something,
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SPEAKER_00: she acted sort of horrified at my portions because she's used to cooking for just herself.
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SPEAKER_00: So she's always really keenly in tune to not cooking too much so she doesn't have
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SPEAKER_00: to eat the same thing for five days.
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SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
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SPEAKER_00: Yep.
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SPEAKER_00: Because leftovers are a problem when you're single.
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SPEAKER_02: I mean,
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SPEAKER_02: leftovers are great for one,
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SPEAKER_02: maybe two meals,
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SPEAKER_02: but like five meals of lasagna in a week or five meals of whatever it is that
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SPEAKER_02: you've made.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
2:41
SPEAKER_02: It can get a little...
2:41
SPEAKER_02: get a little depressing, right?
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SPEAKER_02: And it makes you not want to cook, make you want to reach for a takeout menu.
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SPEAKER_02: And that's so expensive.
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SPEAKER_02: So you're wasting food,
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SPEAKER_02: spending more on maybe delivery or takeout than maybe you've planned for in the budget.
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SPEAKER_02: So why not think about meals that are scaled for one to two portions?
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SPEAKER_02: I think that makes a lot of sense for people who are thinking about their budget,
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SPEAKER_02: thinking about ways to reduce food waste,
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SPEAKER_02: which is so important too,
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SPEAKER_02: right?
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SPEAKER_02: Food is so expensive these days.
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SPEAKER_02: If you go to the grocery store,
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SPEAKER_02: It's so high.
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SPEAKER_02: I don't want to be throwing that food away.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm going to eat what I bought.
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SPEAKER_02: So I want to plan for meals that I can make just in the portions that I want.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Your book is beautifully done in lots of ways.
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SPEAKER_00: So first of all, the design of it.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: I love they did such a wonderful job with it.
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SPEAKER_02: It's so, so pretty.
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SPEAKER_00: It's pretty, it's simple.
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SPEAKER_00: It's easy to follow.
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SPEAKER_00: You have pictures for most of the recipes.
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SPEAKER_00: You also have like calorie counts, fat, protein, carbohydrates.
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SPEAKER_00: So if someone is watching their calories, that's really helpful.
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SPEAKER_00: I've got it also broken down into proteins,
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SPEAKER_00: which we're kind of obsessing these days about if we're getting enough protein.
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SPEAKER_00: So I loved that.
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SPEAKER_00: I also really liked the size of it and the paper.
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SPEAKER_00: And it just feels like a manual I can pop in my purse and you've got shopping lists, meal plans.
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SPEAKER_00: It's really quite well done.
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SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
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SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
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SPEAKER_02: It was a labor of love.
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SPEAKER_02: I think that the most challenging part of the book was the meal plans is coming up
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SPEAKER_02: with the eight weeks of meal plans and the shopping lists,
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SPEAKER_02: because I wanted to make sure that the meal plans included a variety of recipes
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SPEAKER_02: from the book.
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SPEAKER_02: Nothing was too like Mexican every single night or like chicken every single night.
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SPEAKER_02: I wanted to make sure there was plenty of variety and to give an example for people
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SPEAKER_02: who maybe have never sat down to meal plan before to say like,
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SPEAKER_02: this is what you can do.
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SPEAKER_02: These are the kinds of recipes you can plan for.
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SPEAKER_02: This is an idea of what your week might look like, but feel free to plug and play, right?
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SPEAKER_02: Like, oh, I'm not such a big fan of this recipe.
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SPEAKER_02: I'd rather have this.
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SPEAKER_02: And you can just plug it into the meal plan and make it easy for you to customize
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SPEAKER_02: and individualize so that as you start this meal planning journey,
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SPEAKER_02: you have these great tools and you can just kind of utilize them week over week.
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SPEAKER_00: for yourself and the prep lists too were really thoughtful um I think when you're
5:04
SPEAKER_00: cooking for because I do cook from one a lot actually two um in my food life
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SPEAKER_00: because I'm doing recipe development I'm you know usually making recipes for two to
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SPEAKER_00: six yeah but my husband in the summertime lives at our cabin for the most part so I
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SPEAKER_00: am cooking for myself a lot and if I'm not eating
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SPEAKER_00: recipe leftovers,
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SPEAKER_00: which usually I end up giving to my neighbors because I don't really want to eat
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SPEAKER_00: what I just cooked.
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SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
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SPEAKER_02: I completely understand.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm the same way.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm a diverse creature.
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SPEAKER_02: If I've cooked it all day, I don't want to consume it.
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SPEAKER_02: I get it.
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SPEAKER_00: I photographed it.
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SPEAKER_02: I've been with it all day and I just don't want it.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: So I'm like always running around the neighborhood like who needs food?
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SPEAKER_02: Who's hungry?
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SPEAKER_02: I have meals.
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SPEAKER_02: Please take these foods from me.
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SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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SPEAKER_00: So like then I'm just myself and I'm like, oh, well, OK, what am I going to just make for myself?
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SPEAKER_00: And I always end up making too much.
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SPEAKER_00: So then I've got like food and I again, I'm very conscientious about food waste, too.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: But so I really enjoyed the way that the book was put together.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: How did you get into cookbook writing?
6:06
SPEAKER_00: Were you a blogger first?
6:08
SPEAKER_02: I was.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: I was.
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SPEAKER_02: So I had a blog.
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SPEAKER_02: It still exists out there.
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SPEAKER_02: I'm not updating it, obviously, but it was evil shenanigans dot com.
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SPEAKER_02: The shenanigans are evil because they're good for your taste buds,
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SPEAKER_02: but maybe not so great for your waistline.
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SPEAKER_02: And I started working on that blog when I went to culinary school.
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SPEAKER_02: I was going to culinary school to become a baker.
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SPEAKER_02: I wanted to open my own bakery.
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SPEAKER_02: I had these really grand plans.
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SPEAKER_02: And I walked into bakery pastry management, one of my last classes for my degree.
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SPEAKER_02: And the teacher came in and she said, I'll never forget.
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SPEAKER_02: She said,
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SPEAKER_02: first thing she said before she even introduced herself was 90% of bakeries fail in
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SPEAKER_02: the first year.
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SPEAKER_02: It's about a million dollar total investment.
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SPEAKER_02: And I was like, and with that, I'm out.
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SPEAKER_02: I am risk averse.
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SPEAKER_02: I know how hard it is to earn my money.
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SPEAKER_02: And I was not interested in that.
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SPEAKER_02: So now what do I do with this education I've acquired?
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SPEAKER_02: I don't want to work in restaurants.
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SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to have that kind of like, you know, chefy lifestyle that that's not me.
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SPEAKER_02: The fear doesn't appeal to you?
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SPEAKER_02: No, no, I am a gentle soul.
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SPEAKER_02: I don't think I can handle it.
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SPEAKER_02: I would cry every day.
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SPEAKER_02: So I started writing a blog during my culinary school journey.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I just kind of focused in on that for a while, trying to figure out like, what am I going to do?
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SPEAKER_02: And about a year into working on the blog,
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SPEAKER_02: I received an email from a publisher asking if I was interested in working on a
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SPEAKER_02: book on pies.
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SPEAKER_02: And I looked around and said, are you sure you mean me?
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SPEAKER_02: And they did.
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SPEAKER_02: And so I wrote my very first book, which was the everything pie cookbook.
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SPEAKER_02: And since then I've had that.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: Okay.
7:31
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: And so since then I've written a number of books for my publisher.
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SPEAKER_02: I write a roughly one a year right now.
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SPEAKER_02: So I do the books and also the photography as well.
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SPEAKER_02: So on top of the books I write and shoot, I also shoot photography for other people's cookbooks.
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SPEAKER_02: So yeah,
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SPEAKER_02: So it's been a lot of fun.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just like a nice little transition from like culinary school.
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SPEAKER_02: I want to be a baker too.
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SPEAKER_02: Now I write cookbooks and study food for a living and it's the best and I love it.
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SPEAKER_00: And you're not doing, or you're not updating your blog at the same time.
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SPEAKER_00: So your whole focus is really on your cookbook each year.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: It's a labor of love.
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SPEAKER_02: It's one of those things that you've, I think, written a cookbook.
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SPEAKER_02: So I think you understand.
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SPEAKER_02: And developing recipes too.
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SPEAKER_02: It's one of those things where I want them to be right.
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SPEAKER_02: I want the recipes to work.
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SPEAKER_02: So I do spend a lot of time working on the recipes,
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SPEAKER_02: thinking about ingredients,
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SPEAKER_02: studying what's trending,
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SPEAKER_02: but also thinking about what will still taste good in 10 years and
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SPEAKER_02: So I want things to be up to date and current,
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SPEAKER_02: but I don't want them to be so up to date that people are like,
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SPEAKER_02: oh,
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SPEAKER_02: we're so over this,
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SPEAKER_02: you know?
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02: So I spend a lot of time thinking about those things.
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SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, that's that's what I do.
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SPEAKER_02: I do photography.
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SPEAKER_02: I do the cookbook writing.
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SPEAKER_02: And then I also do a little bit of light personal chefing and catering work in town.
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SPEAKER_00: OK, where do you live?
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SPEAKER_02: I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, nice.
8:49
SPEAKER_00: I was just doing a cooking demonstration yesterday from my cookbook and there's a
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SPEAKER_00: recipe in there for King Ranch chicken.
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SPEAKER_00: That was my mother-in-law's from Houston.
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SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I know in Texas, like everybody knows King Ranch chicken is like our wild rice soup.
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SPEAKER_00: And yes, everybody was just so impressed with this King Ranch chicken.
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SPEAKER_00: And I was like, people, I did not invent this thing.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, this has been being made in Texas for some time.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's from the King Ranch.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's from the King Ranch.
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SPEAKER_02: And it's yeah, it's very, very famous in the state.
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SPEAKER_02: We I think everyone grew up eating it that I knew.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00: And it is delicious.
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SPEAKER_00: So you can very tasty.
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SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it's one of those things you kind of can't go wrong with.
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SPEAKER_00: No.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: And,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: they were asking me all these intimate questions about like the tortillas and what
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SPEAKER_00: kind and how long they last.
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SPEAKER_00: And I just I thought,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: oh,
9:38
SPEAKER_00: this is when you write a cookbook,
9:40
SPEAKER_00: you're writing it in your own vacuum,
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SPEAKER_00: essentially.
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SPEAKER_00: And these are the kinds of questions that cooks have that I wasn't thinking about
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SPEAKER_00: when I wrote the recipe.
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SPEAKER_00: So I'll get better on the second book about thinking about some of that.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: But I think with each book, you get better, don't you think?
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
9:57
SPEAKER_02: It's it's the first book's a challenge.
10:00
SPEAKER_02: You kind of don't I hate to say you don't know what you're doing, but you write recipes.
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SPEAKER_02: You know how to develop recipes.
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SPEAKER_02: But have you written a book before?
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SPEAKER_02: No, no.
10:07
SPEAKER_02: I ended up writing my first book over the course of basically a week.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: We had a snowstorm in Dallas that year and it basically shut the entire city down.
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SPEAKER_02: All the roads were frozen over.
10:18
SPEAKER_02: We were actually hosting the Super Bowl that year too.
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SPEAKER_02: So it was kind of like this thing where I was watching the news where they were like,
10:24
SPEAKER_02: can we even have it?
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SPEAKER_02: It's all snowed in.
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SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, it's like a quarter of an inch of snow.
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SPEAKER_02: It's so small.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: And we were laughing at all of you.
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SPEAKER_00: Just like, oh my God, what is going on in Dallas?
10:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, we don't have the infrastructure in place.
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SPEAKER_02: And also we can't, we drive aggressively anyway.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: So I ended up getting stuck at home for a week and I'm like, well, I guess I'll just work on the book.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: And so I did writing and testing and writing and testing that whole week.
10:48
SPEAKER_02: And by the time the week was over, I had about 110 pies in my kitchen and in the fridge and freezer.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: And the majority of the book done, like it just was one of those things.
10:58
SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh, how, how will I ever write another one of these?
11:01
SPEAKER_02: This has been such a board
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SPEAKER_02: deal but as you get into it and you learn like your own process you it gets easier
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SPEAKER_02: and you also think about those questions like what do i do with the excess
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SPEAKER_02: ingredients of this and what will they do with these leftovers and could they turn
11:15
SPEAKER_02: them into something else and what suggestions do i have for substitutions um maybe
11:20
SPEAKER_02: for our vegan friends or for people who don't eat these kinds of proteins maybe you
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SPEAKER_02: don't eat shellfish or pork like you know you think about those things and like
11:27
SPEAKER_02: little tidbits you can include in your recipes to make it better for your audience
11:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: And you have a lot of that in the book, too, like in at each page there.
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SPEAKER_00: If you have some suggestions, like here's some variations on ways to use grits.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: Here is a tartar sauce that goes with this crispy fried shrimp, like how to freeze seafood.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Like I like that.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was really thoughtful, too.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: What are some of your favorite cookbooks that you find yourself getting inspiration from recently?
11:58
SPEAKER_02: um basically anything from nigella lawson she is the domestic goddess and basically
12:04
SPEAKER_02: my favorite food person i adore nigella lawson um i love um any of the books that
12:11
SPEAKER_02: deal with like specialty one topic cooking so i love to read books on like
12:16
SPEAKER_02: specifically books on like vegan cooking or like how to cook with chickpeas or like
12:20
SPEAKER_02: a specific
12:21
SPEAKER_02: culinary areas,
12:22
SPEAKER_02: like say books like on Israeli cooking or Russian cooking or German cooking,
12:27
SPEAKER_02: I love to learn about different food ways.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: So I spent a lot of time studying Asian food culture.
12:33
SPEAKER_02: And now I'm kind of getting invested in more of like my own background.
12:38
SPEAKER_02: So learning about Germanic, Austrian, a little bit of northern Italian food ways.
12:43
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, I love reading cookbooks from my home state of Texas.
12:47
SPEAKER_02: So I have a number of cookbooks from people who are in the state who are just masters of their crafts.
12:53
SPEAKER_02: So books on barbecue books on Southern comfort food books on Tex-Mex and then even
12:59
SPEAKER_02: drilling down books on Austin cuisine on Dallas cuisine.
13:03
SPEAKER_02: Like these books are so interesting to me.
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SPEAKER_02: So I love to, I read them like textbooks.
13:07
SPEAKER_02: Like I love to just study them.
13:09
SPEAKER_02: Right.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: I can just sit there and read a cookbook.
13:11
SPEAKER_02: Like most people read a novel.
13:12
SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Same.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: I just, I don't know why I'm even telling you this, but it's kind of a cute story.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: I was traveling and a woman contacted me and she was cleaning out her mom's house
13:22
SPEAKER_00: and we do a cookbook swap every year with my radio show.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And she said, I've got all these books and I know you have the swap.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: She said, can I bring them to you?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: I said, yeah, you can bring them to me.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Here's my garage code.
13:32
SPEAKER_00: Just put them in my garage.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: And she was like, wait, you're just going to give me a garage code.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, yeah, just put the books in there.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: She goes, I can't believe you're just she goes, can I do anything else while I'm at your house?
13:44
SPEAKER_00: Can I bring in the mail?
13:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, sure.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: So I got home from the cabin and the books are in the garage and I started looking
13:51
SPEAKER_00: at them and they were real like treasures,
13:54
SPEAKER_00: like a lot of old Lutheran church cookbooks.
13:57
SPEAKER_00: And there was one cookbook that was Minneapolis restaurants that I only knew of
14:04
SPEAKER_00: three of the restaurants in the book.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: So it's got to be, you know, 75 years old.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:10
SPEAKER_00: And it was just full of treasures and her notes.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: And there was a box, a wooden box that has actual recipes written in it by hand.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh, my gosh.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm just like and there's three boxes of this person's life,
14:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
14:23
SPEAKER_00: and I just I feel like so honored that this woman gave me the boxes of the books.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: And I've been kind of paging through them at night, like reading the recipes and reading.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: Thinking, okay, this has oleo and shortening.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Can I find a way to do something different with it?
14:39
SPEAKER_00: And how does that work?
14:41
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I get jazzed by the same things.
14:43
SPEAKER_02: I have my old,
14:44
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to date myself too hard,
14:46
SPEAKER_02: but I did grow,
14:47
SPEAKER_02: I did grow in the elementary school in the eighties.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: And I had a cookbook that our PTA put together for our elementary school.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: And I still have a copy of that like construction paper bound spiral bound cookbook
15:00
SPEAKER_02: from the elementary school and the kids all submitted recipes.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: And most of them,
15:06
SPEAKER_02: the parents obviously helped,
15:08
SPEAKER_02: but occasionally it was a kid who like made up a recipe for the cookbook.
15:11
SPEAKER_02: And I love to read through the book.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: Um,
15:13
SPEAKER_02: and just kind of like,
15:14
SPEAKER_02: remember like all my friends and the teachers and like,
15:17
SPEAKER_02: you know,
15:17
SPEAKER_02: all that stuff.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: It's just, it's such a treasure.
15:19
SPEAKER_02: Like no one else appreciates it than me, but I love it.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: It's it's to me, it's priceless.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: When you, one of the things I liked about this book too, is that you have a lot of baking recipes.
15:29
SPEAKER_00: People don't think about baking for one and you,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm just looking,
15:31
SPEAKER_00: you have a whole cookbook about baking for one.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: I do.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: I do.
15:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: My first book that I did in the series was the baking for one cookbook.
15:38
SPEAKER_02: I did go to culinary school for pastry.
15:40
SPEAKER_02: So my, my background is, well, my education is in pastry.
15:44
SPEAKER_02: That's not to say that I'm not educated on other forms of cooking.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: I did take a bunch of extra extracurricular cooking classes and,
15:50
SPEAKER_02: for like American cooking, French cuisine.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: I learned how to make the omelet, the whole nine.
15:55
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I love baking.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: Baking is my passion.
15:57
SPEAKER_02: And so when they were talking about like, what books are you interested in?
16:01
SPEAKER_02: I said, I'd love to do some more baking books.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: And like, what about baking for one?
16:04
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, I'm your girl.
16:05
SPEAKER_00: So I mean, cheesecake for one, creme brulee for one.
16:09
SPEAKER_00: These are not easy things to make.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: I love it.
16:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
16:12
SPEAKER_02: scaling them down was a challenge,
16:14
SPEAKER_02: especially for things you would think you just cut,
16:17
SPEAKER_02: especially things like cookies and cakes.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: Oh, you just cut it down by like a quarter.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: You don't.
16:22
SPEAKER_02: You really have to think about your ratios of fat,
16:24
SPEAKER_02: how the leavening is going to work with these ingredients.
16:26
SPEAKER_02: Do I need to add less liquid, more liquid?
16:29
SPEAKER_02: It's a little bit challenging to scale down baking recipes.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: So that was a fun one to work on just from like my nerdy food science brain.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: Like I really enjoyed sitting down and working on that book.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: That was a good time.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the desserts look exceptional.
16:42
SPEAKER_00: Also, like beef short rib pot roast for one.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: Great.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody loves that recipe, but it makes a huge quantity.
16:50
SPEAKER_02: It does.
16:51
SPEAKER_02: And short ribs are perfectly portioned, right?
16:54
SPEAKER_02: Like you think of a short rib,
16:55
SPEAKER_02: generally the kind you get in the grocery store,
16:57
SPEAKER_02: have the bone on and a big chunk of meat on top.
16:59
SPEAKER_02: That's already portioned for one person.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: So that's a little bit of work.
17:02
SPEAKER_02: And then the extras can be wrapped up,
17:04
SPEAKER_02: stuck in the freezer,
17:05
SPEAKER_02: and you can braise them another day or make more pot roast or whatever you want to do.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: And a lobster mac and cheese for one.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, please.
17:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:15
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you're going to have mac and cheese, why not have some lobster too, right?
17:19
SPEAKER_00: Like you're only,
17:21
SPEAKER_00: if you just make it for one,
17:22
SPEAKER_00: here's,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:23
SPEAKER_00: cause I'm always obsessed with how much I'm eating.
17:25
SPEAKER_00: Like I can't overeat it.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Right.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: I can't eat half the pan because I've only made the portion for one.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: So I like that too.
17:32
SPEAKER_02: But like you get the satisfaction of eating the whole pan.
17:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a shortcut.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: It is a shortcut.
17:40
SPEAKER_02: It's a little brain hack too.
17:42
SPEAKER_02: Like I get to eat the whole thing and then you eat the whole thing.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: All by myself.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you do social media?
17:48
SPEAKER_02: I do.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: I do.
17:49
SPEAKER_02: You can find me on Facebook, Evil Shenanigans.
17:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm on X. That would be Kelly Jaggers, Instagram, Kelly Jaggers on threads, Kelly Jaggers.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: So you can find me on, on all the major socials.
18:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't TikTok.
18:05
SPEAKER_02: I'm on there, but I don't actually do anything on TikTok.
18:07
SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's not, not for me, but that's okay.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: But it's, it's, I don't know.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: It's, it's like, I have a love hate relationship with it.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I just doom scroll through TikTok all the time.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
18:21
SPEAKER_00: Yep, yep, yep, yep.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
18:23
SPEAKER_00: Hold on one second.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: My dog is barking.
18:26
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just going to pause one second.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: All right.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: So when you open your,
18:31
SPEAKER_00: let's say Instagram and a reel pops up from someone,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: who do you love to follow and love to like watch their stuff?
18:40
SPEAKER_02: So I follow such a wide variety of people.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: My Instagram is strictly curated to be food, hockey, and dogs.
18:47
SPEAKER_02: Like my three favorite things in life.
18:49
SPEAKER_00: Are you a hockey person?
18:50
SPEAKER_00: That's so funny.
18:51
SPEAKER_02: I am a hockey fan.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm a huge hockey fan.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: I love the Dallas Stars.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: I also like the Calgary Flames.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: I have lots of teams that I like to follow, but I'm a diehard Stars fan.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: I gotta be honest.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Every time I hear someone say the Dallas Stars...
19:07
SPEAKER_00: It's still have like a pain in my heart because they were the Minnesota North star stars.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: Still are like, I don't know, just in my heart and in my like growing up childhood.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I'm like Mike Madonna and just, I know, I know they all come back here too.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: I know.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, Mike Modano works for the wild now.
19:29
SPEAKER_02: So that's exciting for him.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: But we got it.
19:31
SPEAKER_02: We have a statue down here in Dallas.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, he was my neighbor.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Was he really?
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he didn't live in Minnesota.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: But when he came here as a kid in I think it was probably high school or junior high to play.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: He stayed at our neighbor's house.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: They like kind of helped raise him and knew his parents and actually dated my sister for a hot minute.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: So fans of his and his wife and they've done so much good work too.
19:58
SPEAKER_00: That's crazy.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, he's kind of a great guy.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: We like him down here too a lot.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's so funny.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
20:05
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, so reels that I'd want to see.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: So anything from some of my favorite fiction authors.
20:11
SPEAKER_02: So like Deanna Raybourne, Tess Gerritsen.
20:13
SPEAKER_02: I love to see reels from the authors.
20:14
SPEAKER_02: I love to see reels from like New York Times Food, from Tasty.
20:20
SPEAKER_02: I love to watch those little quick videos where they put things together.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: I know it's unrealistic on the timing and it makes it look a little
20:26
SPEAKER_02: the hands videos hands and pans um but i'm kind of addicted to watching them
20:31
SPEAKER_02: they're so satisfying to watch it like ingredients to completion um obviously i we
20:36
SPEAKER_02: talked about nigella lawson before i will talk about nigella lawson until the end
20:39
SPEAKER_02: of time i adore nigella lawson
20:41
SPEAKER_02: But then like all of my friends,
20:42
SPEAKER_02: you know,
20:43
SPEAKER_02: people that I've known for years who work in food,
20:46
SPEAKER_02: I'm just thrilled to see what they're doing and the content they're producing.
20:49
SPEAKER_02: So Bake It 360,
20:51
SPEAKER_02: my friend Bridget,
20:52
SPEAKER_02: or Bake It 350,
20:53
SPEAKER_02: I'm sorry,
20:53
SPEAKER_02: Bridget,
20:54
SPEAKER_02: she's one of my favorite like dessert bloggers.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: She makes the most beautiful cookies.
21:00
SPEAKER_02: And so like she'll post reels about like, you know, dessert, she's making cookies, she's decorating.
21:04
SPEAKER_02: I love to see those kinds of things.
21:05
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
21:06
SPEAKER_02: so yeah like it's just basically like all of my friends and people who work in food
21:10
SPEAKER_02: and then of course dogs we rate dogs is another one like if there's a cute puppy to
21:15
SPEAKER_00: be seen i want to see the puppy so yeah yeah i've sort of become obsessed with
21:20
SPEAKER_00: animals eating like the hamster eating a carrot or the little crunch crunch noises
21:28
SPEAKER_01: it's just oh my gosh um
21:31
SPEAKER_01: Love it.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: It's so cute.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:34
SPEAKER_00: And also there's one where there's like a monkey that's feeding a rabbit.
21:38
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know why, but that's become obsessed with
21:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: There's,
21:44
SPEAKER_02: there's one Instagram account that I like to follow and it's a person and they have
21:48
SPEAKER_02: these two very wild little beagles and they set a table up and they make food for
21:53
SPEAKER_02: the beagles.
21:53
SPEAKER_02: And then the beagles jump on the table and eat the food and he was trying to stop them.
21:57
SPEAKER_02: And it's, it's hilarious.
21:58
SPEAKER_02: And I know it's all set up, but every time I get sucked in and I laugh every single time.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: So there's also the one that's like that, where it's a pit bull that has hands with gloves and
22:10
SPEAKER_00: And it's like the food,
22:12
SPEAKER_00: but it looks like the pit bulls making it and he has really funny kind of
22:16
SPEAKER_00: expressions on his face.
22:17
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, yes.
22:19
SPEAKER_02: And see that that combines two loves the food and the dogs.
22:22
SPEAKER_02: So yeah, no, it's the stuff you see on there is it's pretty wild.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: It's been fun talking with you.
22:30
SPEAKER_00: It's been so nice to talk with you.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's the ultimate meal planning for one cookbook and your publisher sent me a couple.
22:38
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to do a giveaway with one podcast together.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: So I'll give one away to someone.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And it's been lovely to see you.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: When you get your next book going, give me a shout back.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I love talking to cookbook authors and hearing about their process.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: And again, I really thought your book was super thoughtful.
22:55
SPEAKER_00: You did a great job.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad you liked it.
22:56
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate it.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: I did.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Kelly.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: I'll see you soon.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Take care.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: Bye.