cookbook

short stack yogurt is out!

in ,

She’s here!! My new little yogurty child is officially out in the world and I can’t wait for you to meet her!! I’m so excited I could cannon ball into a pool of yogurt. Well, maybe actually more like a hot tub of yogurt soup because it’s still a little cold outside.

And with this book you can make yogurt soup! And yogurt pita to dunk in it! And yogurt soda to wash it all down! Basically just a lot of yogurty things that *might* not employ the most obvious uses for yogurt because showcasing these uses was a huge priority in writing this book. I mean, you all know how to put yogurt in a smoothie or layer it in a parfait, but maybe you’ve never put it on a pizza or in a chipwich or used it in its powder form before, and I hope this book encourages you to do all of those! The name of the game here is trying new things while having fun (and maybe also regulating your digestive system in the process).

If you haven’t ordered your copy yet, you can order it here!

Because there are no photos in the book, Chantell and Brett, Lauren, and I shot a bunch of the dishes to share here, and I’ve also been sharing a lot on Instagram with #shortstackyogurt. The dishes above are (in order): olive oil grapefruit poppy seed loaves with yogurt glaze, homemade yogurt pretzels, yogurt ranch salad pizza, harissa braised chickpeas with grilled lemon and feta, scallion marinated labneh balls, wild rice chicken soup with yogurt and saffron, mujadara with spicy yogurty lava, whipped cheesecake chipwiches with cookie dough and sprinkles, soft yogurt cookies with raspberry glaze, a kale, za’atar, and white cheddar frittata, and yogurt egg creams. Below you'll see some ~lazy b mac and cheese~. Some of my other favorite recipes from the book that aren’t pictured are: blueberry labneh scones, challah french toast with pickled onions and sumac yogurt, labneh grilled cheese with tomato thyme jam, and pistachio rosewater cake with labneh frosting.

🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️🥛❤️

I am forever grateful to everyone at Short Stack Editions for allowing me to write about one of the best dang ingredients on the planet (buy all of their editions!), and also to all of you for letting me talk about yogurt until the cows come home. I cannot wait to hear what you guys think of these recipes. Tag your posts with #shortstackyogurt so that I can see them and also use the yogurt emoji liberally, please. 🥛🥛🥛🥛!!!

And! If you’re local, come celebrate this week at one of three launch events!! Thursday (3/15, 5-7pm) at Kittsona Lifestyle in Grand Forks and Saturday (3/17, 3-5pm) at Kittsona in Fargo will both be free, open to the public, and filled with yogurt cake. And on Saturday morning, Randi and I are hosting our Yoga + Yogurt event at her studio and I think it’s jussst about sold out but there might be one or two more spots left, so get to it.

Hooray!!! Enjoy Short Stack Yogurt, everybody!! 

-yeh!

Egg cream and mac and cheese photos by Lauren V Allen, Yogurt cookies photo by me, all others by Chantell and Brett!

P.S. Want to win a copy of both Short Stack Yogurt and Molly on the Range?? Leave a comment here! 

~yogurt book outtakes~

molly on the range bonfire outtakes + links!

in , ,

i am ketchuping. 

1. putting ketchup on everything because i:

          a) like ketchup a lot, and

          b) am mourning the loss of my summer tomatoes

2. catching up on various exciting things like mail (fall cookbook season, fuck ya!) and friends (you're dating who?? you've birthed a what?! when are you moving to l.a. again??) and sleep, and unexciting things like laundry and showers because i am home for a week! 

i had such a wonderful time in minneapolis this past weekend and now i have a few days before i leave again so i am savoring this bit of time at home, cooking dinner for eggboy and spending my evenings watching silicon valley on the couch. on tuesday, i am off to the west coast! is it still warm there? do i need to shave my armpits? i just found out that akhnaten is going to be in l.a. when i'm there and i am so wildly excited for this, i've got to remember to pack my opera glasses...

right now on the farm, we are in the calm that comes between the end of beet harvest and the beginning of winter. eggboy and eggpop are cleaning up the tractors so that they can go into hibernation, and macaroni have begun to slow their egg production. finally we can keep up with their eggs!

today i'm sharing some outtakes from one of my favorite sections in molly on the range, the bonfire party! almost exactly a year ago, i had my fargo friends and grand forks friends come over in their flanneliest selves and we roasted wienies and made s'mores. the whole thing was inspired by this phase that i went through in high school where every single day my friends would come over after school and we'd sit around a fire in broad daylight, roasting wieners and having senioritis. for the book, i updated the s'mores with homemade rosewater marshmallows and the wienies with jerusalem bagel dogs and harissa ketchup. adrianna made the jerusalem bagel dogs on her blog, so head that way for the oven method recipe! (the bonfire cooking method is in the book.) and below are some more recipes that my friends have made from the book. their posts, as well as all of the instagram and facebook posts that you guys have shared of adventures in molly on the range, have brought me so many happy tears it's like why do i even wear mascara anymore? i know i am bad at being mushy and lovey dovey but i am so gosh darn grateful for the support and excitement that molly on the range has received, i want to give you all one giant squeeze. 

michelle made italian rainbow cookie salad // sherrie made all of the alliums fried rice // jeanine made cauliflower shawarma tacos //sarah made the chocolate scone loaf and added orange! // billy made lindsay lohan cookies // nik made marzipan mandel bread // jessica made gruyere mac and cheese with caramelized onions // cindy made sprinkle cupcakes // betty made scallion pancake challah // brandon made walnut and brie mac and cheese // lyndsay made chocolate tahini cake // elizabeth made sprinkle cake // katherine made halva and added pumpkin spice (!) // tessa made sprinkle cake // jonathan made mini tater tot hot dishes // francesca made chocolate tahini cake // marie made chocolate tahini cupcakes // laura made baked oatmeal with maple cream and hawaij // brett made challah

...and if you've made something from molly on the range, remember to post it on instagram by the end of the month with #mollyontherange and #8daysofgiveaways to enter to win all of these fun things!

-yeh!

all photos by chantell quernemoen!

molly on the range is out!

in

it's out! it's out! molly on the range is officially--after 2 1/2 years of thinking about it and doing things about it--out. and i'm so happy it is because it's allowed me to do all these fun things this past weekend, like babble on the radio and hug all of my new york friendsies and eat hummus every single day. i've had such a swell time here, and it's only just beginning because tonight is a party and tomorrow is another one and the next day i have a flight later in the day so guess who's gonna do a tequila shot on wednesday night, me. it's me. 

how does it feel to have a book out, molly?? is a question i've gotten a few times and the answer is usually "like i need a red bull habit" or "grrrrrreat!" and then i'm like, huh, that's kinda dumb. let's analyze this further. so here's how it feels:

1. it feels like a million bucks! i get to schmooze with all you people and also have a conversation topic that is more fun than the weather, less scary than the election, and fulfills one requirement to pass the bechdel test. and i have tattoos to hand out! my five-year-old cousin put them all over her belly, it was the cutest gosh darn thing. 

2. it feels like i kinda want to do it again? like i've forgotten all of the pain and insanity and wouldn't really mind another large project to think about now that i know that i can actually complete a large project. i mean, maybe it'll be a book project, maybe it'll be raising a goat or a pig, but a book sounds less muddy. and i feel like even in the time since i submitted my manuscript, my tastes have changed and i've discovered so many new ingredients that i want to play with. like preserved lemons, i could never imagine writing a book these days without plastering it with preserved lemons. and yet there are none in molly on the range.

3. cool and good and great and all of the positive feelings. i've had so many scrapbooks and moleskine diaries throughout my life, and this is just like that but bound nicely and illustrated and, as the kids say, legit. i am so happy with it and so excited to share stories that go deeper and weirder than my everyday banter on this here blog. 

so i made a cake about it. i was going to make one layer of every cake from the book and stack them on top of each other, but then i counted them and that would have been 13 (thirteen!) layers, and structurally i'm just not confident in that. so this is a "greatest hits" cake. speculoos, vanilla cardamom, chocolate tahini, sprinkle, and pistachio. it was good, we ate it at the little pizza party that i threw for my grand forks and fargo friends who helped with the book. eggpop dug out the whole chocolate layer and futureeggbrother (did i mention eggsister got engaged??!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) dug out the whole pistachio layer. i love watching people getting physical all up in my cakes.

all of these cake recipes are in the book! but, if you're looking for some recipes today, here are some that my very good blogger friends have made from the book in the past week or so!!

lily made coconut malabi with persimmons (!!!), a genius seasonal variation since the one in the book has roasted rhubarb. and also she made me nostalgic for our "camp" days.

dani made mac and cheese and took this insanely stunning ingredient shot that i'm obsessed with. i love how real it is, how all of the ingredients look like they were pulled straight from the fridge and *just woke up that way*. 

matt and beau made mandel bread and answer the question "what even is mandel bread!?" perfectly. and made me even more excited about going on a trip to boise next week, because i just found out they're coming!!!! what should we do in boise, friends??

stephanie made burger slider cakes and added cake fries and a shake!!!!! i had such a cute attack. i screamed.  

sonja and alex made fried rice and have me pretty much convinced that i should road trip out to indianapolis right after my third chicago event. right?? right. 

alexandra made mandel bread for dorie greenspan's #cookiesforkindness project, which is so sweet!!!! (sidenote: i met dorie yesterday and she is such a gem!!) <3 <3 alexandra's family miiight have eaten them all before she could share, hehe, it's ok i would have too. 

shelly made mac and cheese and made a reference to amelia's notebook that hit the nail on the head!! amelia's notebook was such an inspiration for me and i am so happy that molly on the range shows it. 

cynthia made fried rice and i just loved seeing this dish through her amazing styling eyes. it's such a simple dish that i had to reshoot a couple of times for the book because rice is hard to photograph! but cynthia made it look soo beautiful. 

alana made a scone loaf and added sprinkles! because she knows me better than i know myself. and then she and her man took that loaf to europe! knowing that i am playing a part in the plane snacks of my close friends makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. 

have a great week, everybody!!!! 

-yeh!!

 

developing the cover of molly on the range

in

as a serial book-by-its-cover-judger, determining the cover of molly on the range was more difficult than picking all of the first day of school outfits from my past, combined. in the beginning, about two years ago while i was working on my proposal, i was really drawn to the idea of something painfully minimal, inspired by the covers of vintage church cookbooks and rose bakery's breakfast, lunch, and tea. when i was little i hoarded plain white t-shirts and absolutely refused to wear any clothing item with a brand label showing, so i suppose this was very on brand. 

this is breakfast, lunch, and tea, the book that made me fall in love with food photography. source: little growing lights

"but, molly, how will people know this is a book about food??"

is a question that was raised by my publisher with the correct concerns that people might think it's a book about cow-wrangling or folk music or go-go dancing on top of a stove range.

"also, we want to put your face on the cover!"

well, hmmm. i wanted something timeless, and maybe something that you could even put on your coffee table as eye-popping room decor, and with my goal of becoming a blonde in 2016 already in the works, i did not consider a brunette 26-year-old kind-of-puffy-because-i-had-just-spent-a-year-recipe-testing-layer-cakes me to be a timeless image for the cover. 

so i did some noodling around on the internet and decided that a very empty cover with a few homespun illustrations of cooking-related objects and chickens could be nice, timeless, and informative. with my publisher, we narrowed down our list of illustrators and started doing mockups. i loved folk-y, earthy illustrations that didn't feel at all trendy or too flashy. i wanted something that would be ok getting a little roughed up by soy sauce splatters and mustard stains. i was very excited about this.

but still, i was told, my face would be going on the cover!  

oof da!! how would that work? how could a photo with an illustration look timeless and minimal and not like a third grade art project? we looked at various book covers that had done this recently, like the portlandia book. it worked for portlandia, but i definitely didn't see it working for molly on the range. i wanted to really try it though and see how it could work, because maybe there was something i was missing, so we even went so far as to hire an illustrator to do a draft, complete with super adorable chickens, loaves of challah, and an egg cracked open at the bottom of the cover. it was so fun but in the end it simply didn't mirror the content of the book. 

i became more and more eager to figure out a cover that would welcome you. there was a lot of back and forth with my extremely patient publisher, and then i think it was at a barnes and noble in phoenix where i slowly began to see things from their perspective, re: my face on the cover. as eggboy, eggpop, and eggmom perused the american history, agricultural business, and novel sections, respectively, i placed myself in the cookbook section and judged covers. love and lemons made me want to go to the farmers' market and buy vegetables, home baked made me want to cream some butter with some sugar and eat a slice of cake and then learn to take pictures like yvette and oof. the books with smiling faces on the cover made me want to knock on those people's doors and sit in their kitchens while they not only cooked whatever they wanted to cook for me, but also talked to me about their stories and thoughts behind whatever they were cooking. and that's what this book is, it's narrative. one day i'd love to write a book about cakes or baking or one very specific group of foods, and for that, a cover with no face would make more sense i think. but molly on the range is you coming into my home and me telling you about my ex-boyfriends and the real eggboy story and farts, it's one side of a theoretical pen pal-ship, and the recipe selection has a little bit of everything.

so i said to my publisher, ok let's put me on the cover, but please can it be minimal. 

they obliged, but by this time the cover design was already way, way late, so we scrambled for inspiration. we loved the kinfolk table and this and that, and wanted to make sure it was as warm and happy as possible. i booked chantell to come that week, picked up a white background from a farm down the road (made new friends in the process!), and altogether tried to stop eating salt in an effort to look my best. luckily (!!!) the sprinkle cake that appears on the last page of the book was still in my freezer and ready to be a cover model. 

we had three wardrobe options:

the first one was eliminated almost immediately because it was too holiday-specific. and between the second and third one, it was collectively decided that the blue chambray shirt was more farm-y and timeless. bingo! so they airbrushed out my fly away hairs and away we went! 

lisel jane ashlock's hand lettering for the subtitle gave it a kind of homespun quality that i love, and rae ann, my book designer, took to my obsessive requests for "a slightly more brownish grey/maybe more black than grey/maybe a little lighter but still really dark" font color with the patience of a saint.  

and there it was, just like that!

it truly took a village and i am so happy with it! it was far from what i expected when i began writing the beast, but i feel that it represents me and the feeling that i want you to get from this book.

we weren’t finished though! we still had the spine and back cover to do, but it was a total walk in the park compared to the front cover process. it was almost like this, verbatim:

"molly, what color spine would you like?"

"yellow yellow!"

"ok! and how about the back cover?" 

“can it be blank… like literally nothing except for maybe a blurb or a chicken?”

“nah, let’s put a photo on the cover. something that will tell people that it’s not exclusively a cake book.”

“oh. ok sure, what the heck!”

“how do you like these?”

“hotdish! perfect.”

“ok actually we like it but think that the tray would be more descriptive of the book’s contents.”

“umm hmmm errrrrrrm. ok”

“this good?”

“yes, perfect.”

and just like that, molly on the range was dressed and ready for the first day of school and beyond. phew!! and i've gotten the sweetest feedback from you guys! so thank you for that. just one more month until she hits the shelves! eeeeeeee it’s almost here!!!! 

-yeh!

(please preorder if you haven’t already!!)