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Kelly Jaggers
Manage episode 438495536 series 1132382
In this episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish," we had a delightful conversation with the talented cookbook author Kelly Jaggers. She shared her insights about her latest creation, "The Ultimate Meal Planning for One Cookbook," and her journey as a cookbook writer.
Kelly's passion for creating recipes perfectly scaled for one person's enjoyment shines through her work, making her books a treasure trove for solo diners. She has 4 books currently in the “Cooking For One” series including:
Join us as we delve into Kelly's culinary background, her inspirations for writing cookbooks, and her love for food, hockey, and dogs. So, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and join us in this engaging conversation with Kelly Jaggers.
COOKBOOK GIVEAWAY
I have two copies of this cookbook to give away. To be included in the giveaway, send me any comment here, and I will contact the winner via email and mail the book to your home.
FINAL TRANSCRIPT:
Stephanie [00:00:15]:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to dishing with Stephanie's dish, the podcast where we talk to cookbook authors and people generally obsessed with food. Today, we have a cookbook author, and it is Kelly Jaggers. Welcome to the program, Kelly.
Kelly Jaggers [00:00:27]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Stephanie [00:00:29]:
Yes. So you wrote something that I find really fascinating. It's called the ultimate meal planning for 1 cookbook, and you previously wrote the ultimate Mediterranean diet cookbook for 1. Mhmm. What got you into, like, cooking for 1 person? Because I did notice that you're now married.
Kelly Jaggers [00:00:49]:
I am married. So just because I'm married doesn't mean I don't understand the, ins and outs of what people who are solo might need. Yes. I do spend a few days a week at home by myself. My husband works. Sometimes he travels. And on those dates, I'm just cooking for me. I don't have kiddos, just me and the dogs.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:06]:
So it was important for me to learn how to scale down recipes so that I could enjoy them just for myself without having excessive leftovers. And that just really parlays well into the book series that I've been working on, because it's kind of a I wouldn't say so niche, but kind of overlooked audience for cookbooks.
Stephanie [00:01:23]:
For sure.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:23]:
Thinking right. They're thinking about families, married couples, people with loads of kids or planning for parties. But what about those people who are, for whatever reason, cooking for themselves because maybe they're single or they have a spouse or an SO or a partner who works multiple days away from home or maybe they're on a special diet from an SO. And so, like, they're planning just for themselves.
Stephanie [00:01:44]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:44]:
So lots of reasons why you might just be cooking for yourself. So it's not just because you're a single, although you probably maybe you are. That's also fine. Like, I don't judge. Whatever. So, yeah, it was important for me to kind of, kinda fill that gap and to help, to fill out that market a little bit.
Stephanie [00:01:58]:
I feel uniquely, interested in this topic after just having spent 2 weeks with my mother-in-law who's 92, and she still does all her own cooking. And every time I was gonna make something, she acted sort of horrified at my portions because she's used to cooking for just herself. So she's always really keenly in tune to not cooking too much so she doesn't have to eat the same thing for 5 days.
Kelly Jaggers [00:02:25]:
Exactly.
Stephanie [00:02:26]:
Yep. Because leftovers are a problem when you're when you're single.
Kelly Jaggers [00:02:30]:
I mean, leftovers are great for 1, maybe 2 meals, but, like, five meals of lasagna in a week or 5 meals of, whatever it is that you've made. Yeah. It can get a little get a little depressing. Right? And it makes you not wanna cook, make you wanna reach for a takeout menu, and that's so expensive. So you're wasting food, spending more on maybe delivery or takeout than maybe you've planned for in the budget. So why not think about meals that are scaled for 1 to 2 portions? I think that makes a lot of sense for people who are thinking about their budget, thinking about ways to reduce food waste, which is so important too. Right? Food is so expensive these days. If you go to the grocery store, it's so high.
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:09]:
I don't wanna be throwing that food away. I'm gonna eat what I bought. So I wanna plan for meals that I can make, just in the portions that I want.
Stephanie [00:03:16]:
Your book is beautifully done in lots of ways. So Thank you. First of all, the design of it
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. I love They did such a wonderful job with it. It's so, so pretty.
Stephanie [00:03:29]:
It's pretty. It's simple. It's easy to follow. You have pictures for most of the recipes. You also have, like, calorie counts, fat, protein, carbohydrates. So if someone is watching their calories, that's really helpful.
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:45]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie [00:03:45]:
We've got it also broken down into proteins, which we're kind of obsessing these days about if we're getting enough protein. So I loved that. Yeah. I also really liked the size of it and the paper, and it just feels like a manual I can pop in my purse and, you've got shopping lists, meal plans. It's really quite well done.
Kelly Jaggers [00:04:08]:
Thank you. Thank you. It's, it was a labor of love. I think that the most challenging part of the book was the meal plans is coming up with the 8 weeks of meal plans and the shopping lists because I wanted to make sure that the meal plans included a variety of recipes from the book. Nothing was too, like, Mexican every single night or, like, chicken every single night. I wanted to make sure there's plenty of variety. And to give an example for people who maybe have never sat down to meal plan before to say, like, this is what you can do. These are the kinds of recipes you can plan for.
Kelly Jaggers [00:04:37]:
This is an idea of what your week might look like, but feel free to plug and play. Right? Like, oh, I'm not such a big fan of this recipe. I'd rather have this. And you can just plug it into the meal plan and make it easy for you to customize and individualize so that as you start this meal planning journey, you have these great tools and you can just kind of utilize the week over week for yourself.
Stephanie [00:04:58]:
And the prep list too were really thoughtful. I think when you're cooking for because I do cook from 1 a lot, actually, 2. Mhmm. In my food life, because I'm doing recipe development, I'm, you know, usually making recipes for 2 to 6. Yep. But my husband in the summertime lives at our cabin for the most part. So I am cooking for myself a lot. And if I'm not eating recipe leftovers, which usually I end up giving to my neighbors because I don't really wanna eat what I just cooked.
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:29]:
I don't know why. Completely understand. I'm the same way.
Stephanie [00:05:31]:
I'm a
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:31]:
first creature. It. Cooked it all day. I don't wanna consume it. I get it.
Stephanie [00:05:35]:
I photographed it. I'm just saying
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:37]:
with it all day, and I just don't want it. Yes.
Stephanie [00:05:39]:
So I'm, like, always running around the neighborhood, like, who needs food?
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:43]:
Who's hungry? I have I have meals. Please take these foods from me.
Stephanie [00:05:46]:
Yes. So, like, then I'm just myself and I'm like, oh, well, okay. What am I gonna just make for myself? And I always end up making too much. So then I've got, like, food and I again, I'm very conscientious about food waste too. But so I really enjoyed, the way that the book was put together. How did you get into cookbook writing? Were you a blogger first?
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:08]:
I was. I was. So, I had a blog. It still exists out there. I'm not updating it, obviously, but it was evil shenanigans.com. The shenanigans are evil because they're good for your taste buds, but maybe not so great for your waistline. And I started working on that blog when I went to culinary school. I was going to culinary school to become a baker.
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:26]:
I wanted to open my own bakery. I had these really grand plans. And I walked into bakery pastry management, one of my last classes for my degree, and the teacher came in and she's I'll never forget. She said, first thing she said before she even introduced herself was 90% of bakeries fail in the 1st year. It's about a $1,000,000 total investment. And I was like, and with that, I'm out. I am risk averse. I I know how hard it is to earn my money, and I was not interested in that.
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:50]:
So now what do I do with this education I've acquired? I don't wanna work in restaurants. I didn't wanna have that kind of, like, you know, chef y lifestyle that that's not me.
Stephanie [00:06:59]:
The beer doesn't appeal to you?
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:01]:
No. No. I am a gentle soul. Soul. I don't think I could handle it. I would cry every day.
Stephanie [00:07:06]:
Yep.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:07]:
So I I started writing a blog during my culinary school journey, and so I just kinda focused in on that for a while, trying to figure out, like, what am I gonna do? And about a year into working on the blog, I received an email from a publisher asking if I was interested in working on a book on pies. And I looked around and said, are you sure you mean me? And they did. And so I wrote my very first book, which was the Everything Pie Cookbook. And since
Stephanie [00:07:29]:
then had that. Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:31]:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so since then, I've written, a number of books for my publisher. I write roughly 1 a year right now. So I do the books and also the photography as well. So, on top of the books I write and shoot, I also shoot photography for other people's cook books.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:46]:
So, so it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. Just like a nice little transition from, like, culinary school, I wanna be a baker, to now I write cookbooks and study food for a living, and it's the best, and I love it.
Stephanie [00:07:57]:
And you're not doing or you're not updating your blog at the same time, so your whole focus is really on your cookbook each year.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. It it it's a labor of love. It's one of those things that, you've, I think, written a cookbook, so I think you understand. And developing recipes too. It's one of those things where I want them to be right. I want the recipes to work. So I do spend a lot of time working on the recipes, thinking about ingredients, studying what's trending, but also thinking about what will still taste good in 10 years.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:25]:
So I want things to be up to date and current, but I don't want them to be so up to date that people are like, oh, we're so over this. You know?
Stephanie [00:08:31]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:32]:
So I spend a lot of time thinking about those things. So, yeah, that's that's what I do. I do photography. I do the cookbook writing, and then I also do, a little bit of light personal chef and catering work in town.
Stephanie [00:08:42]:
So Where do you live?
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:44]:
I live in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex.
Stephanie [00:08:46]:
Oh, nice. I just, I, I was just doing a cooking demonstration yesterday from 1 from my cookbook, and there's an recipe in there for king ranch chicken that was my mother in law's from Houston. And, you know, I know in Texas, like, everybody knows king ranch chicken is like our wild rice soup. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Was just so impressed with this King Ranch chicken. And I was like, people, I did not invent this thing.
Stephanie [00:09:12]:
You know? This has been being made in Texas for some time.
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:15]:
It's called the king ranch. Yeah. It's from the king ranch, and it's, yeah. It's very, very famous in the state. We I think everyone grew up eating it that I knew.
Stephanie [00:09:24]:
Yeah. And it is delicious. So you can Very
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:26]:
tasty. Yeah. No. It's it's for that.
Stephanie [00:09:28]:
It's one
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:28]:
of those things you kinda can't go wrong with.
Stephanie [00:09:30]:
So And, you know, they were asking me all these intimate questions about, like, the tortillas and what kind and how long they last. And I just I thought, oh, this is when you write a cookbook, you're writing it in your own vacuum, essentially. And these are the kinds of questions that cooks have that I wasn't thinking about when I wrote the recipe. Yeah. So I'll get better on the second book about thinking about some of that. But I think with each book, you get better. Don't you think?
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:55]:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's, the first book's a challenge. You you kinda don't I hate to say you don't know what you're doing, but, like, you write recipes. You know how to develop recipes. But have you written a book before? No. No. I ended up writing my first book over the course of basically a week.
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:11]:
We had a snowstorm in Dallas that year, and it basically shut the entire city down. All the roads were frozen over. We were actually hosting the Super Bowl that year too, so it was kind of like this thing where I was watching the news where the they were like, can we even have it? It's all snowed in, and I'm like, it's
Stephanie [00:10:26]:
a quarter
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:27]:
of an inch of snow. It's so small. Yeah.
Stephanie [00:10:29]:
And we were laughing at all of you. Just like, oh my god. What is going on in Dallas?
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:34]:
Well, we don't have the infrastructure in place, and, also, we can't we drive aggressively. Anyway, so I ended up getting stuck at home for week. And I'm like, well, I guess I'll just work on the book. And so I did writing and testing and writing and testing that whole week. And by the time the week was over, I had about a 110 pies in my kitchen and in the fridge and freezer, and the majority of the book done. Like, it just was one of those things. And I was like, oh, how how will I ever write another one of these? This has been such a ordeal. But as you get into it and you learn, like, your own process, you it gets easier.
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:07]:
And you also think about those questions. Like, what do I do with the excess ingredients of this? And what will they do with these leftovers? And could they turn them into something else? And what suggestions do I have for substitutions, maybe for our vegan friends or for people who don't eat these kinds of proteins? Maybe you don't eat shellfish or pork. Like, you know, you think about those things and, like, little tidbits you can include in your recipes to make it better for your audience.
Stephanie [00:11:31]:
Yeah. And you have a lot of that in the book too. Like, in at each page, there if you have some suggestions, like, here's some variations on ways to use grits. Yep. Here is a tartar sauce that goes with this crispy fried shrimp, like Yep. How to freeze seafood. Like, I like that. I thought it was really thoughtful too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:50]:
Thank you.
Stephanie [00:11:51]:
What are some of your favorite cookbooks that you find yourself getting inspiration from recently?
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:58]:
Basically, anything from Nigella Lawson. She is the domestic goddess and basically my favorite food person. I adore Nigella Lawson. I love any of the books that deal with, like, specialty one topic cooking. So I love to read books on, like specifically books on, like, vegan cooking or, like, how to cook with chickpeas or, like, specific culinary areas, like, say, books, like, on Israeli cooking or Russian cooking or, German cooking. I love to learn about different food ways. So, I spent a lot of time studying Asian food culture, and now I'm kind of getting invested in more of, like, my own background. So learning about Germanic, Austrian, a little bit of Northern Italian foodways.
Kelly Jaggers [00:12:43]:
And then, of course, I love reading cookbooks from my home state of Texas. So I have a number of cookbooks from people who are in the state who are just masters of their crafts. So books on barbecue, books on southern comfort food, books on Tex Mex.
Stephanie [00:12:58]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:12:58]:
And then even drilling down books on Austin cuisine, on Dallas cuisine. Like, these books are so interesting to me. So I love to I read them like textbooks. Like, I love to just study them. Right? I could just sit there and read a cookbook like most people read a novel. So yeah.
Stephanie [00:13:14]:
Same. I just I don't know why I'm even telling you this, but it's kind of a cute story. I was traveling, and a woman contacted me, and she was cleaning out her mom's house. And we do a cookbook swap every year, with my radio show. And she said, I've got all these books, and I know you have the swap. She said, can I bring them to you? I said, yeah. You can bring them to me. Here's my garage code.
Stephanie [00:13:32]:
Just put them in my garage. And she was like, wait. You're just gonna give me a garage code? I'm like, yeah. Just put the books in there. She goes, I can't believe you're just all she goes, can I do anything else while I'm at your house? Can I bring in the mail? I'm like, sure if you want to. So I've got home from the cabin and the books are in the garage. And I started looking at them and they were real, like, treasures. Like, a lot of old Lutheran church cookbooks.
Stephanie [00:13:57]:
And there was one cookbook that was Minneapolis Restaurants that I only knew of 3 of the restaurants in the book. So it's gotta be, you know, 75 years old. Yeah. And it was just full of treasures and her notes, and there was a box, a wooden box that has actual recipes written in it by hand.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:17]:
Oh my gosh.
Stephanie [00:14:18]:
And so I'm just like and there's 3 boxes of this person's life, you know? And I just I feel like so honored that this woman gave me the boxes of the books, and I've been kinda paging through them at night, like, reading the recipes and thinking, okay. This has olio and shortening. Can I find a way to do something different with it? And how does that work? But, yeah, I get jazzed by the same things.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:43]:
I have my old, I don't wanna date myself too hard, but I did grow I did grow in in the elementary school in the eighties. And, I had a cookbook that our PTA put together for our elementary school, and I still have a copy of that, like, construction paper bound
Stephanie [00:14:59]:
Yes.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:59]:
Spiral bound cookbook from the elementary school, and the kids all submitted recipes. And most of them, the parents, obviously,
Stephanie [00:15:07]:
you
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:07]:
know, helped. But, occasionally, it was a kid who, like, made up a recipe for the cookbook. And I loved to read through the book, and just kind of, like, remember, like, all my friends and the teachers and, like, you you know, all that stuff. It's just it's such a treasure. Like, no one else appreciates it than me, but I love it. It's it's to me, it's priceless.
Stephanie [00:15:23]:
When you what one of the things I liked about this book too is that you have a lot of baking recipes. People don't think about baking for 1, and you I'm just looking. You have a whole cook book about baking for 1.
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:34]:
I do. I do. Yeah. My first book that I did in the series was the baking for 1 cookbook. I did go to culinary school for pastry. So my my background is, well, my education is in pastry. That's not to say that I'm not educated on other forms of cooking. I did take a bunch of extra extracurricular cooking classes for, like, American cooking, French cuisine.
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:52]:
I learned how to make the omelette, the whole nine. But, yeah, I I love baking. Baking is my passion. And so when they, were talking about, like, what books are you interested in? I said, I'd love to do some more baking books. And, like, what about baking for 1? And I'm like, I'm your girl. So
Stephanie [00:16:06]:
I mean, that's a cake for 1, creme brulee for for 1. These are not easy things to make. I love it.
Kelly Jaggers [00:16:11]:
Yeah. Scaling them down was a challenge, especially for things, you would think you just cut especially, like, things like cookies and cakes. Oh, you just cut it down by, like, a quarter. You don't. You really have to think about your ratios of fat, how the leavening is gonna work with these ingredients. Do I need to add less liquid, more liquid? It's it's a little bit challenging to scale down baking recipes. So that was a fun one to work on just from, like, my nerdy food science brain that, like, I really enjoyed sitting down and working on that book. That was a good
Stephanie [00:16:40]:
Yeah. The desserts look exceptional. Also, like beef short rib pot roast for 1. Great. I mean, everybody loves that recipe, but it's makes a huge quantity.
Kelly Jaggers [00:16:51]:
It does. And short ribs are perfectly portioned. Right? Like, you think of a short rib, generally, the kind you get in the grocery store have the bone on and a big chunk of meat on top, that's that's already portioned for 1 person. So that's a little bit of work, and then the extras can be wrapped up, stuck in the freezer, and you can braise them another day or make more pot roast or whatever you wanna do.
Stephanie [00:17:09]:
And, lobster mac and cheese for 1. I mean, Paul Lee's.
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:14]:
Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna have mac and cheese, why not have some too? Right?
Stephanie [00:17:19]:
Like Like, you're only if you just make it for 1, here's you know, because I'm always obsessed with how much I'm eating. Like, I can't overeat it. Right? I can't eat half the pan because I've only made the portion for 1, so I like that too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:32]:
But, like, you get the satisfaction of eating the whole pan. Yes. It's a shortcut. It is a shortcut. It's a little brain hack too. Like, I get to eat the whole thing, and then you eat the whole thing.
Stephanie [00:17:44]:
I love Yes. All by myself. Okay. Do you do social media?
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:48]:
I do. I do. You can find me on Facebook, evil shenanigans. I'm on x. That would be Kelly Jaggers. Instagram, Kelly Jaggers. On, threads, Kelly Jaggers. So you can find me on on all the major socials.
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:03]:
I I don't TikTok. I I'm on there, but I don't actually do anything on TikTok. So, you you know, it's not not for me, but that's okay. Not everything.
Stephanie [00:18:10]:
It, but it's it's I don't know. It's it's like I have a love hate relationship with it. When you are
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:15]:
I just doom scroll through to to TikTok all the time.
Stephanie [00:18:20]:
Yes. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Hold on one second.
Stephanie [00:18:24]:
Mhmm. My dog is barking. So I'm just gonna pause one second. Alright. So when you open your, let's say, Instagram Mhmm. And a reel pops up from someone, who do you love to follow and love to, like, watch their stuff?
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:39]:
So I follow such a wide variety of people. My Instagram is is strictly curated to be food, hockey, and dogs, like my three favorite things in life.
Stephanie [00:18:49]:
Are you a hockey person? That's so funny because my social media state.
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:53]:
I I'm a huge hockey fan of the Dallas Stars. I also like the Calgary Flames. I have lots of lots of teams that I like to follow, but I'm a diehard Stars fan. So it was
Stephanie [00:19:02]:
I gotta be honest. Every time I hear someone say the Dallas Stars, it it still have, like, a pain in my heart because they were the Minnesota North Stars.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:12]:
North Stars. That's right.
Stephanie [00:19:13]:
That's right. Still are, like I don't know. Just in my heart and in my, like, growing up childhood, and I don't know. I'm like, Mike Madonna and just I know. I know. They all come back here too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:27]:
I know. Well, Mike Madonna works for the wild now, so that's exciting for him. But we got it we have a statue down here
Stephanie [00:19:33]:
in Dallas anyway. He was my neighbor.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:35]:
Was he really?
Stephanie [00:19:36]:
Yeah. He did live in Minnesota. But Mhmm. When he came here as a kid in I think it was probably high school or junior high to play Mhmm. He stayed at our neighbor's house. They, like, kind of helped raise him and knew his parents and actually dated my sister for a hot minute. So Oh, wow. Big fans of his and his wife, and they've done so much good work too.
Stephanie [00:19:56]:
That's crazy. Well, yeah, he's
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:58]:
he's he's he's kind of a great guy. We we like him down here too
Stephanie [00:20:02]:
a lot. So Oh, that's so funny.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:04]:
Okay. So, yeah, so reels that I'd wanna see. So anything from, some of my favorite fiction authors. So like Deanna Rayburn, Tess Gerritsen, I love to see reels from the authors I love. I love to see reels from, like, New York Times Food, from Tasty. I love to watch those little quick videos where they put things together. I know it's unrealistic on the timing, and it makes it look a little easier than it is. Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:27]:
Hands and pans. But I'm kind of addicted to watching them. They're so satisfying to watch it, like ingredients to completion. Obviously, I we talked about Nigella Lawson before. I will talk about Nigella Lawson until the end of time. I adore Nigella Lawson. But then, like, all of my friends, you know, people that I've known for years who work in food, I'm just thrilled to see what they're doing and the content they're producing. So bake at 360, my friend, Bridget, or 3 bake at 350.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:53]:
I'm sorry. Bridget, she's one of my favorite, like, dessert bloggers. She makes the most beautiful cookies. And so, like, she'll post reels about, like, you know, dessert. She's making cookies. She's decorating. I love to see those kinds of things. Yes.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:06]:
So, yeah, like, it it's just basically, like, all of my friends and people who work in food. And then, of course, dogs. We rate dogs is another one. Like, if if there's a cute puppy to be seen, I want to see the puppy. So Yeah.
Stephanie [00:21:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. I've sort of become obsessed with animals eating.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:22]:
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Stephanie [00:21:23]:
Like Sure. The hamster eating a carrot or Oh.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:26]:
The little crunch crunch noises. It's just oh my gosh.
Stephanie [00:21:31]:
Love it. Absolutely. It's so cute. Yes. And also there's one where there's, like, a monkey that's feeding a rabbit. And I don't know why, but that's what I've become obsessed with.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:43]:
Yeah. There's there's one, Instagram account that I like to follow, and it's a person and they have these 2 very wild little beagles And they set the a table up, and they make food for the beagles. And then the beagles jump on the table and eat the food, and he's trying to stop them. And it's it's hilarious. And I know it's all set up, but every time, I I get sucked in and I laugh every single time. So
Stephanie [00:22:04]:
There's also the one that's like that where it's a pit bull that has hands with gloves, and it's made it. Yeah. Like, the food, but it looks like the pit bull's making it, and he has really funny kind of expressions on his face.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:17]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And see, that that combines 2 loves, the food and the dogs. So Sure.
Stephanie [00:22:22]:
You know?
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:23]:
Yeah. No. It's Absolutely.
Stephanie [00:22:25]:
The the
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:25]:
the stuff you see on there is is pretty wild. But, yeah, I
Stephanie [00:22:28]:
love fun talking with you.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:30]:
It's been so nice to talk with you. Thank you for having me.
Stephanie [00:22:32]:
Yeah. It's the ultimate meal planning for one cook book, and your publisher sent me a couple. So I'm gonna do a giveaway with 1 when I put the podcast together. So I'll give, one away to someone, and it's been lovely to see you. When you get your next book going, give me a shout back. I love talking to cookbook authors and hearing about their process. And, again, I really thought your book was super thoughtful. You did a great job.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:55]:
So glad you liked it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Stephanie [00:22:58]:
I did. Thanks, Kelly. I'll see
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:59]:
you soon. You. Take care. Bye bye.
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
459 episodes
Manage episode 438495536 series 1132382
In this episode of "Dishing with Stephanie's Dish," we had a delightful conversation with the talented cookbook author Kelly Jaggers. She shared her insights about her latest creation, "The Ultimate Meal Planning for One Cookbook," and her journey as a cookbook writer.
Kelly's passion for creating recipes perfectly scaled for one person's enjoyment shines through her work, making her books a treasure trove for solo diners. She has 4 books currently in the “Cooking For One” series including:
Join us as we delve into Kelly's culinary background, her inspirations for writing cookbooks, and her love for food, hockey, and dogs. So, grab a cup of your favorite beverage and join us in this engaging conversation with Kelly Jaggers.
COOKBOOK GIVEAWAY
I have two copies of this cookbook to give away. To be included in the giveaway, send me any comment here, and I will contact the winner via email and mail the book to your home.
FINAL TRANSCRIPT:
Stephanie [00:00:15]:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to dishing with Stephanie's dish, the podcast where we talk to cookbook authors and people generally obsessed with food. Today, we have a cookbook author, and it is Kelly Jaggers. Welcome to the program, Kelly.
Kelly Jaggers [00:00:27]:
Thank you so much for having me.
Stephanie [00:00:29]:
Yes. So you wrote something that I find really fascinating. It's called the ultimate meal planning for 1 cookbook, and you previously wrote the ultimate Mediterranean diet cookbook for 1. Mhmm. What got you into, like, cooking for 1 person? Because I did notice that you're now married.
Kelly Jaggers [00:00:49]:
I am married. So just because I'm married doesn't mean I don't understand the, ins and outs of what people who are solo might need. Yes. I do spend a few days a week at home by myself. My husband works. Sometimes he travels. And on those dates, I'm just cooking for me. I don't have kiddos, just me and the dogs.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:06]:
So it was important for me to learn how to scale down recipes so that I could enjoy them just for myself without having excessive leftovers. And that just really parlays well into the book series that I've been working on, because it's kind of a I wouldn't say so niche, but kind of overlooked audience for cookbooks.
Stephanie [00:01:23]:
For sure.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:23]:
Thinking right. They're thinking about families, married couples, people with loads of kids or planning for parties. But what about those people who are, for whatever reason, cooking for themselves because maybe they're single or they have a spouse or an SO or a partner who works multiple days away from home or maybe they're on a special diet from an SO. And so, like, they're planning just for themselves.
Stephanie [00:01:44]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:01:44]:
So lots of reasons why you might just be cooking for yourself. So it's not just because you're a single, although you probably maybe you are. That's also fine. Like, I don't judge. Whatever. So, yeah, it was important for me to kind of, kinda fill that gap and to help, to fill out that market a little bit.
Stephanie [00:01:58]:
I feel uniquely, interested in this topic after just having spent 2 weeks with my mother-in-law who's 92, and she still does all her own cooking. And every time I was gonna make something, she acted sort of horrified at my portions because she's used to cooking for just herself. So she's always really keenly in tune to not cooking too much so she doesn't have to eat the same thing for 5 days.
Kelly Jaggers [00:02:25]:
Exactly.
Stephanie [00:02:26]:
Yep. Because leftovers are a problem when you're when you're single.
Kelly Jaggers [00:02:30]:
I mean, leftovers are great for 1, maybe 2 meals, but, like, five meals of lasagna in a week or 5 meals of, whatever it is that you've made. Yeah. It can get a little get a little depressing. Right? And it makes you not wanna cook, make you wanna reach for a takeout menu, and that's so expensive. So you're wasting food, spending more on maybe delivery or takeout than maybe you've planned for in the budget. So why not think about meals that are scaled for 1 to 2 portions? I think that makes a lot of sense for people who are thinking about their budget, thinking about ways to reduce food waste, which is so important too. Right? Food is so expensive these days. If you go to the grocery store, it's so high.
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:09]:
I don't wanna be throwing that food away. I'm gonna eat what I bought. So I wanna plan for meals that I can make, just in the portions that I want.
Stephanie [00:03:16]:
Your book is beautifully done in lots of ways. So Thank you. First of all, the design of it
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:23]:
Yeah. Yeah. I love They did such a wonderful job with it. It's so, so pretty.
Stephanie [00:03:29]:
It's pretty. It's simple. It's easy to follow. You have pictures for most of the recipes. You also have, like, calorie counts, fat, protein, carbohydrates. So if someone is watching their calories, that's really helpful.
Kelly Jaggers [00:03:45]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Stephanie [00:03:45]:
We've got it also broken down into proteins, which we're kind of obsessing these days about if we're getting enough protein. So I loved that. Yeah. I also really liked the size of it and the paper, and it just feels like a manual I can pop in my purse and, you've got shopping lists, meal plans. It's really quite well done.
Kelly Jaggers [00:04:08]:
Thank you. Thank you. It's, it was a labor of love. I think that the most challenging part of the book was the meal plans is coming up with the 8 weeks of meal plans and the shopping lists because I wanted to make sure that the meal plans included a variety of recipes from the book. Nothing was too, like, Mexican every single night or, like, chicken every single night. I wanted to make sure there's plenty of variety. And to give an example for people who maybe have never sat down to meal plan before to say, like, this is what you can do. These are the kinds of recipes you can plan for.
Kelly Jaggers [00:04:37]:
This is an idea of what your week might look like, but feel free to plug and play. Right? Like, oh, I'm not such a big fan of this recipe. I'd rather have this. And you can just plug it into the meal plan and make it easy for you to customize and individualize so that as you start this meal planning journey, you have these great tools and you can just kind of utilize the week over week for yourself.
Stephanie [00:04:58]:
And the prep list too were really thoughtful. I think when you're cooking for because I do cook from 1 a lot, actually, 2. Mhmm. In my food life, because I'm doing recipe development, I'm, you know, usually making recipes for 2 to 6. Yep. But my husband in the summertime lives at our cabin for the most part. So I am cooking for myself a lot. And if I'm not eating recipe leftovers, which usually I end up giving to my neighbors because I don't really wanna eat what I just cooked.
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:29]:
I don't know why. Completely understand. I'm the same way.
Stephanie [00:05:31]:
I'm a
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:31]:
first creature. It. Cooked it all day. I don't wanna consume it. I get it.
Stephanie [00:05:35]:
I photographed it. I'm just saying
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:37]:
with it all day, and I just don't want it. Yes.
Stephanie [00:05:39]:
So I'm, like, always running around the neighborhood, like, who needs food?
Kelly Jaggers [00:05:43]:
Who's hungry? I have I have meals. Please take these foods from me.
Stephanie [00:05:46]:
Yes. So, like, then I'm just myself and I'm like, oh, well, okay. What am I gonna just make for myself? And I always end up making too much. So then I've got, like, food and I again, I'm very conscientious about food waste too. But so I really enjoyed, the way that the book was put together. How did you get into cookbook writing? Were you a blogger first?
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:08]:
I was. I was. So, I had a blog. It still exists out there. I'm not updating it, obviously, but it was evil shenanigans.com. The shenanigans are evil because they're good for your taste buds, but maybe not so great for your waistline. And I started working on that blog when I went to culinary school. I was going to culinary school to become a baker.
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:26]:
I wanted to open my own bakery. I had these really grand plans. And I walked into bakery pastry management, one of my last classes for my degree, and the teacher came in and she's I'll never forget. She said, first thing she said before she even introduced herself was 90% of bakeries fail in the 1st year. It's about a $1,000,000 total investment. And I was like, and with that, I'm out. I am risk averse. I I know how hard it is to earn my money, and I was not interested in that.
Kelly Jaggers [00:06:50]:
So now what do I do with this education I've acquired? I don't wanna work in restaurants. I didn't wanna have that kind of, like, you know, chef y lifestyle that that's not me.
Stephanie [00:06:59]:
The beer doesn't appeal to you?
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:01]:
No. No. I am a gentle soul. Soul. I don't think I could handle it. I would cry every day.
Stephanie [00:07:06]:
Yep.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:07]:
So I I started writing a blog during my culinary school journey, and so I just kinda focused in on that for a while, trying to figure out, like, what am I gonna do? And about a year into working on the blog, I received an email from a publisher asking if I was interested in working on a book on pies. And I looked around and said, are you sure you mean me? And they did. And so I wrote my very first book, which was the Everything Pie Cookbook. And since
Stephanie [00:07:29]:
then had that. Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:31]:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. And so since then, I've written, a number of books for my publisher. I write roughly 1 a year right now. So I do the books and also the photography as well. So, on top of the books I write and shoot, I also shoot photography for other people's cook books.
Kelly Jaggers [00:07:46]:
So, so it's been a lot of fun. Yeah. Just like a nice little transition from, like, culinary school, I wanna be a baker, to now I write cookbooks and study food for a living, and it's the best, and I love it.
Stephanie [00:07:57]:
And you're not doing or you're not updating your blog at the same time, so your whole focus is really on your cookbook each year.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. It it it's a labor of love. It's one of those things that, you've, I think, written a cookbook, so I think you understand. And developing recipes too. It's one of those things where I want them to be right. I want the recipes to work. So I do spend a lot of time working on the recipes, thinking about ingredients, studying what's trending, but also thinking about what will still taste good in 10 years.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:25]:
So I want things to be up to date and current, but I don't want them to be so up to date that people are like, oh, we're so over this. You know?
Stephanie [00:08:31]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:32]:
So I spend a lot of time thinking about those things. So, yeah, that's that's what I do. I do photography. I do the cookbook writing, and then I also do, a little bit of light personal chef and catering work in town.
Stephanie [00:08:42]:
So Where do you live?
Kelly Jaggers [00:08:44]:
I live in the Dallas Fort Worth Metroplex.
Stephanie [00:08:46]:
Oh, nice. I just, I, I was just doing a cooking demonstration yesterday from 1 from my cookbook, and there's an recipe in there for king ranch chicken that was my mother in law's from Houston. And, you know, I know in Texas, like, everybody knows king ranch chicken is like our wild rice soup. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Was just so impressed with this King Ranch chicken. And I was like, people, I did not invent this thing.
Stephanie [00:09:12]:
You know? This has been being made in Texas for some time.
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:15]:
It's called the king ranch. Yeah. It's from the king ranch, and it's, yeah. It's very, very famous in the state. We I think everyone grew up eating it that I knew.
Stephanie [00:09:24]:
Yeah. And it is delicious. So you can Very
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:26]:
tasty. Yeah. No. It's it's for that.
Stephanie [00:09:28]:
It's one
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:28]:
of those things you kinda can't go wrong with.
Stephanie [00:09:30]:
So And, you know, they were asking me all these intimate questions about, like, the tortillas and what kind and how long they last. And I just I thought, oh, this is when you write a cookbook, you're writing it in your own vacuum, essentially. And these are the kinds of questions that cooks have that I wasn't thinking about when I wrote the recipe. Yeah. So I'll get better on the second book about thinking about some of that. But I think with each book, you get better. Don't you think?
Kelly Jaggers [00:09:55]:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It's it's, the first book's a challenge. You you kinda don't I hate to say you don't know what you're doing, but, like, you write recipes. You know how to develop recipes. But have you written a book before? No. No. I ended up writing my first book over the course of basically a week.
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:11]:
We had a snowstorm in Dallas that year, and it basically shut the entire city down. All the roads were frozen over. We were actually hosting the Super Bowl that year too, so it was kind of like this thing where I was watching the news where the they were like, can we even have it? It's all snowed in, and I'm like, it's
Stephanie [00:10:26]:
a quarter
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:27]:
of an inch of snow. It's so small. Yeah.
Stephanie [00:10:29]:
And we were laughing at all of you. Just like, oh my god. What is going on in Dallas?
Kelly Jaggers [00:10:34]:
Well, we don't have the infrastructure in place, and, also, we can't we drive aggressively. Anyway, so I ended up getting stuck at home for week. And I'm like, well, I guess I'll just work on the book. And so I did writing and testing and writing and testing that whole week. And by the time the week was over, I had about a 110 pies in my kitchen and in the fridge and freezer, and the majority of the book done. Like, it just was one of those things. And I was like, oh, how how will I ever write another one of these? This has been such a ordeal. But as you get into it and you learn, like, your own process, you it gets easier.
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:07]:
And you also think about those questions. Like, what do I do with the excess ingredients of this? And what will they do with these leftovers? And could they turn them into something else? And what suggestions do I have for substitutions, maybe for our vegan friends or for people who don't eat these kinds of proteins? Maybe you don't eat shellfish or pork. Like, you know, you think about those things and, like, little tidbits you can include in your recipes to make it better for your audience.
Stephanie [00:11:31]:
Yeah. And you have a lot of that in the book too. Like, in at each page, there if you have some suggestions, like, here's some variations on ways to use grits. Yep. Here is a tartar sauce that goes with this crispy fried shrimp, like Yep. How to freeze seafood. Like, I like that. I thought it was really thoughtful too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:50]:
Thank you.
Stephanie [00:11:51]:
What are some of your favorite cookbooks that you find yourself getting inspiration from recently?
Kelly Jaggers [00:11:58]:
Basically, anything from Nigella Lawson. She is the domestic goddess and basically my favorite food person. I adore Nigella Lawson. I love any of the books that deal with, like, specialty one topic cooking. So I love to read books on, like specifically books on, like, vegan cooking or, like, how to cook with chickpeas or, like, specific culinary areas, like, say, books, like, on Israeli cooking or Russian cooking or, German cooking. I love to learn about different food ways. So, I spent a lot of time studying Asian food culture, and now I'm kind of getting invested in more of, like, my own background. So learning about Germanic, Austrian, a little bit of Northern Italian foodways.
Kelly Jaggers [00:12:43]:
And then, of course, I love reading cookbooks from my home state of Texas. So I have a number of cookbooks from people who are in the state who are just masters of their crafts. So books on barbecue, books on southern comfort food, books on Tex Mex.
Stephanie [00:12:58]:
Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:12:58]:
And then even drilling down books on Austin cuisine, on Dallas cuisine. Like, these books are so interesting to me. So I love to I read them like textbooks. Like, I love to just study them. Right? I could just sit there and read a cookbook like most people read a novel. So yeah.
Stephanie [00:13:14]:
Same. I just I don't know why I'm even telling you this, but it's kind of a cute story. I was traveling, and a woman contacted me, and she was cleaning out her mom's house. And we do a cookbook swap every year, with my radio show. And she said, I've got all these books, and I know you have the swap. She said, can I bring them to you? I said, yeah. You can bring them to me. Here's my garage code.
Stephanie [00:13:32]:
Just put them in my garage. And she was like, wait. You're just gonna give me a garage code? I'm like, yeah. Just put the books in there. She goes, I can't believe you're just all she goes, can I do anything else while I'm at your house? Can I bring in the mail? I'm like, sure if you want to. So I've got home from the cabin and the books are in the garage. And I started looking at them and they were real, like, treasures. Like, a lot of old Lutheran church cookbooks.
Stephanie [00:13:57]:
And there was one cookbook that was Minneapolis Restaurants that I only knew of 3 of the restaurants in the book. So it's gotta be, you know, 75 years old. Yeah. And it was just full of treasures and her notes, and there was a box, a wooden box that has actual recipes written in it by hand.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:17]:
Oh my gosh.
Stephanie [00:14:18]:
And so I'm just like and there's 3 boxes of this person's life, you know? And I just I feel like so honored that this woman gave me the boxes of the books, and I've been kinda paging through them at night, like, reading the recipes and thinking, okay. This has olio and shortening. Can I find a way to do something different with it? And how does that work? But, yeah, I get jazzed by the same things.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:43]:
I have my old, I don't wanna date myself too hard, but I did grow I did grow in in the elementary school in the eighties. And, I had a cookbook that our PTA put together for our elementary school, and I still have a copy of that, like, construction paper bound
Stephanie [00:14:59]:
Yes.
Kelly Jaggers [00:14:59]:
Spiral bound cookbook from the elementary school, and the kids all submitted recipes. And most of them, the parents, obviously,
Stephanie [00:15:07]:
you
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:07]:
know, helped. But, occasionally, it was a kid who, like, made up a recipe for the cookbook. And I loved to read through the book, and just kind of, like, remember, like, all my friends and the teachers and, like, you you know, all that stuff. It's just it's such a treasure. Like, no one else appreciates it than me, but I love it. It's it's to me, it's priceless.
Stephanie [00:15:23]:
When you what one of the things I liked about this book too is that you have a lot of baking recipes. People don't think about baking for 1, and you I'm just looking. You have a whole cook book about baking for 1.
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:34]:
I do. I do. Yeah. My first book that I did in the series was the baking for 1 cookbook. I did go to culinary school for pastry. So my my background is, well, my education is in pastry. That's not to say that I'm not educated on other forms of cooking. I did take a bunch of extra extracurricular cooking classes for, like, American cooking, French cuisine.
Kelly Jaggers [00:15:52]:
I learned how to make the omelette, the whole nine. But, yeah, I I love baking. Baking is my passion. And so when they, were talking about, like, what books are you interested in? I said, I'd love to do some more baking books. And, like, what about baking for 1? And I'm like, I'm your girl. So
Stephanie [00:16:06]:
I mean, that's a cake for 1, creme brulee for for 1. These are not easy things to make. I love it.
Kelly Jaggers [00:16:11]:
Yeah. Scaling them down was a challenge, especially for things, you would think you just cut especially, like, things like cookies and cakes. Oh, you just cut it down by, like, a quarter. You don't. You really have to think about your ratios of fat, how the leavening is gonna work with these ingredients. Do I need to add less liquid, more liquid? It's it's a little bit challenging to scale down baking recipes. So that was a fun one to work on just from, like, my nerdy food science brain that, like, I really enjoyed sitting down and working on that book. That was a good
Stephanie [00:16:40]:
Yeah. The desserts look exceptional. Also, like beef short rib pot roast for 1. Great. I mean, everybody loves that recipe, but it's makes a huge quantity.
Kelly Jaggers [00:16:51]:
It does. And short ribs are perfectly portioned. Right? Like, you think of a short rib, generally, the kind you get in the grocery store have the bone on and a big chunk of meat on top, that's that's already portioned for 1 person. So that's a little bit of work, and then the extras can be wrapped up, stuck in the freezer, and you can braise them another day or make more pot roast or whatever you wanna do.
Stephanie [00:17:09]:
And, lobster mac and cheese for 1. I mean, Paul Lee's.
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:14]:
Mhmm. Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna have mac and cheese, why not have some too? Right?
Stephanie [00:17:19]:
Like Like, you're only if you just make it for 1, here's you know, because I'm always obsessed with how much I'm eating. Like, I can't overeat it. Right? I can't eat half the pan because I've only made the portion for 1, so I like that too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:32]:
But, like, you get the satisfaction of eating the whole pan. Yes. It's a shortcut. It is a shortcut. It's a little brain hack too. Like, I get to eat the whole thing, and then you eat the whole thing.
Stephanie [00:17:44]:
I love Yes. All by myself. Okay. Do you do social media?
Kelly Jaggers [00:17:48]:
I do. I do. You can find me on Facebook, evil shenanigans. I'm on x. That would be Kelly Jaggers. Instagram, Kelly Jaggers. On, threads, Kelly Jaggers. So you can find me on on all the major socials.
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:03]:
I I don't TikTok. I I'm on there, but I don't actually do anything on TikTok. So, you you know, it's not not for me, but that's okay. Not everything.
Stephanie [00:18:10]:
It, but it's it's I don't know. It's it's like I have a love hate relationship with it. When you are
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:15]:
I just doom scroll through to to TikTok all the time.
Stephanie [00:18:20]:
Yes. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Okay. Hold on one second.
Stephanie [00:18:24]:
Mhmm. My dog is barking. So I'm just gonna pause one second. Alright. So when you open your, let's say, Instagram Mhmm. And a reel pops up from someone, who do you love to follow and love to, like, watch their stuff?
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:39]:
So I follow such a wide variety of people. My Instagram is is strictly curated to be food, hockey, and dogs, like my three favorite things in life.
Stephanie [00:18:49]:
Are you a hockey person? That's so funny because my social media state.
Kelly Jaggers [00:18:53]:
I I'm a huge hockey fan of the Dallas Stars. I also like the Calgary Flames. I have lots of lots of teams that I like to follow, but I'm a diehard Stars fan. So it was
Stephanie [00:19:02]:
I gotta be honest. Every time I hear someone say the Dallas Stars, it it still have, like, a pain in my heart because they were the Minnesota North Stars.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:12]:
North Stars. That's right.
Stephanie [00:19:13]:
That's right. Still are, like I don't know. Just in my heart and in my, like, growing up childhood, and I don't know. I'm like, Mike Madonna and just I know. I know. They all come back here too.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:27]:
I know. Well, Mike Madonna works for the wild now, so that's exciting for him. But we got it we have a statue down here
Stephanie [00:19:33]:
in Dallas anyway. He was my neighbor.
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:35]:
Was he really?
Stephanie [00:19:36]:
Yeah. He did live in Minnesota. But Mhmm. When he came here as a kid in I think it was probably high school or junior high to play Mhmm. He stayed at our neighbor's house. They, like, kind of helped raise him and knew his parents and actually dated my sister for a hot minute. So Oh, wow. Big fans of his and his wife, and they've done so much good work too.
Stephanie [00:19:56]:
That's crazy. Well, yeah, he's
Kelly Jaggers [00:19:58]:
he's he's he's kind of a great guy. We we like him down here too
Stephanie [00:20:02]:
a lot. So Oh, that's so funny.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:04]:
Okay. So, yeah, so reels that I'd wanna see. So anything from, some of my favorite fiction authors. So like Deanna Rayburn, Tess Gerritsen, I love to see reels from the authors I love. I love to see reels from, like, New York Times Food, from Tasty. I love to watch those little quick videos where they put things together. I know it's unrealistic on the timing, and it makes it look a little easier than it is. Yeah.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:27]:
Hands and pans. But I'm kind of addicted to watching them. They're so satisfying to watch it, like ingredients to completion. Obviously, I we talked about Nigella Lawson before. I will talk about Nigella Lawson until the end of time. I adore Nigella Lawson. But then, like, all of my friends, you know, people that I've known for years who work in food, I'm just thrilled to see what they're doing and the content they're producing. So bake at 360, my friend, Bridget, or 3 bake at 350.
Kelly Jaggers [00:20:53]:
I'm sorry. Bridget, she's one of my favorite, like, dessert bloggers. She makes the most beautiful cookies. And so, like, she'll post reels about, like, you know, dessert. She's making cookies. She's decorating. I love to see those kinds of things. Yes.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:06]:
So, yeah, like, it it's just basically, like, all of my friends and people who work in food. And then, of course, dogs. We rate dogs is another one. Like, if if there's a cute puppy to be seen, I want to see the puppy. So Yeah.
Stephanie [00:21:17]:
Yeah. Yeah. I've sort of become obsessed with animals eating.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:22]:
Mhmm. Mhmm.
Stephanie [00:21:23]:
Like Sure. The hamster eating a carrot or Oh.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:26]:
The little crunch crunch noises. It's just oh my gosh.
Stephanie [00:21:31]:
Love it. Absolutely. It's so cute. Yes. And also there's one where there's, like, a monkey that's feeding a rabbit. And I don't know why, but that's what I've become obsessed with.
Kelly Jaggers [00:21:43]:
Yeah. There's there's one, Instagram account that I like to follow, and it's a person and they have these 2 very wild little beagles And they set the a table up, and they make food for the beagles. And then the beagles jump on the table and eat the food, and he's trying to stop them. And it's it's hilarious. And I know it's all set up, but every time, I I get sucked in and I laugh every single time. So
Stephanie [00:22:04]:
There's also the one that's like that where it's a pit bull that has hands with gloves, and it's made it. Yeah. Like, the food, but it looks like the pit bull's making it, and he has really funny kind of expressions on his face.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:17]:
Yes. Yes. Yes. And see, that that combines 2 loves, the food and the dogs. So Sure.
Stephanie [00:22:22]:
You know?
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:23]:
Yeah. No. It's Absolutely.
Stephanie [00:22:25]:
The the
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:25]:
the stuff you see on there is is pretty wild. But, yeah, I
Stephanie [00:22:28]:
love fun talking with you.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:30]:
It's been so nice to talk with you. Thank you for having me.
Stephanie [00:22:32]:
Yeah. It's the ultimate meal planning for one cook book, and your publisher sent me a couple. So I'm gonna do a giveaway with 1 when I put the podcast together. So I'll give, one away to someone, and it's been lovely to see you. When you get your next book going, give me a shout back. I love talking to cookbook authors and hearing about their process. And, again, I really thought your book was super thoughtful. You did a great job.
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:55]:
So glad you liked it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Stephanie [00:22:58]:
I did. Thanks, Kelly. I'll see
Kelly Jaggers [00:22:59]:
you soon. You. Take care. Bye bye.
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