{"id":26389,"date":"2017-10-20T03:37:37","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T10:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=26389"},"modified":"2017-10-19T23:51:35","modified_gmt":"2017-10-20T06:51:35","slug":"blogging-about-food-farm-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/10\/20\/blogging-about-food-farm-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Blogging about food, farm life"},"content":{"rendered":"

While food blogger Molly Yeh loves vegetables, she said she feels she has \u201cmore to contribute in the world of cake.\u201d (photo by Chantell Quernemoen)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Blogger Molly Yeh, 28, is the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Chinese father. She grew up in a Chicago suburb in a house with great cooking by her mom and great music by her dad, giving her a lasting love and appreciation for both arts, even though it is food that has become her profession.<\/p>\n

An accomplished percussionist, Yeh first pursued her musical passion, enrolling in Juilliard School in New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I discovered when I got to New York was how amazing the restaurant scene there was,\u201d she told the Independent<\/em>. \u201cThat really inspired me to get into food and tasting new things. I started cooking as well. I\u2019d call my mother and ask her to send recipes … and I started baking a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she started her blog, it was somewhat an extension of her diary. \u201cI basically just used it as a scrapbook of adventures around the city and hanging out with friends and stuff,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt quickly became clear that I only wanted to blog about food. So, I started doing recipe development and learning about food harvest and such. And then, four years ago, I moved from New York to the border of North Dakota and Minnesota, where my husband grew up. He\u2019s a fifth-generation farmer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we first moved here, I had a lot of time on my hands. I didn\u2019t know that many people, I was working at the bakery in town…. But, other than that, I just worked on my blog a bunch and turned it into something that could become a business.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt became my full-time job and then I also wrote my book, Molly on the Range<\/em>, which includes a lot of the recipes from my upbringing in Chicago, to my time spent in New York, and then a lot of the recipes that I learned when I moved to where I live now.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a kid, Yeh had a penchant for starchy cuisine like challah and rugelach. At home, they marked both the major Jewish holidays as well as Christmas but, Yeh stressed, \u201cI am Jewish. It\u2019s an important part of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mom cooked Ashkenazi and Chinese food. \u201cWhen she first married my dad, she took a dumpling- and dim sum-making class,\u201d recalled Yeh. \u201cSo, I grew up with a stack of recipes she got from that class. Those sort of became the traditional recipes we\u2019d make. On Christmas, we\u2019d make our own Chinese food, and those were the recipes I grew up with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeh met her now-husband at Juilliard. He was a trombonist and they shared many of the same school friends. They began dating after they both graduated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn school, he was the quiet studious type,\u201d said Yeh. \u201cI was more the loud partier type. But, after we graduated, we started hanging out a bunch and I thought he seemed pretty cool. After a few years of dating and living in the city, we were both kind of ready for a slower pace of life … ready to be closer to family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeh joked that, when they went to visit the farm on which her husband spent his childhood, she told him, \u201cOK. I\u2019m moving here, whether you\u2019re with me or not. I love it here! Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back, Yeh said, \u201cIt was a pretty easy decision, because we were just kind of ready after five or six years of living in New York City, going out every night, trying new restaurants every night and going to concerts and parties…. I was just ready to cook in a nice, big, sunny kitchen and have a garden, and not have to choose between 100 different pizza places. He grew up on the farm with a good relationship to it, but, because he was also playing trombone, he never saw himself going into farming full-time.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, both of us, while we were at Juilliard, separately made the decision that we didn\u2019t want to be in an orchestra full-time,\u201d said Yeh. \u201cWhen you make that decision, there are still so many options for how you can have music in your life. We both like doing lots of different things, not just music.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the opportunity to farm came up, he felt strongly about carrying on the family tradition and keeping the farm in the family. None of his cousins or sister expressed an interest in taking over the family farm, so I think that there was big pull for him to come back and make sure it was carried on through the generations.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main crops they grow are sugar beets, wheat, soybeans and navy beans.<\/p>\n

Yeh is an avid diary keeper, so when she learned that having a diary online was possible and that it was easy to put photos with it, she jumped at the idea of starting a blog. These days, her blog is primarily about food, but much of it is about travel, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI share a lot of recipes that are influenced by Jewish cuisine, Israeli cuisine, and also cuisine in this area, in the upper midwest,\u201d she said. \u201cI also have recipes influenced by my Chinese heritage. I try to do recipes you wouldn\u2019t really find anywhere else and recipes that tell a story, that are meaningful to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also just like keeping it in a diary format, so talking about what\u2019s happening on the farm and my life these days.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yeh loves baking cakes, mostly because she gets to decorate them and they become edible art. She also likes making food that is celebratory, that people might bring to a party or share with others.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s totally a blog for everyday food,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a blog for recipes you might enjoy on a weekend, at a party, or when you\u2019re splurging. I love making food that\u2019s inspired by food I\u2019ve had in Israel, because it\u2019s so delicious and also healthy. I make a lot of hummus and salads, but I don\u2019t blog that much about salads. I feel like I have more to contribute in the world of cake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most of Yeh\u2019s followers hail from English-speaking countries \u2013 from the United States, England, Canada, Australia, Germany and Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love keeping the blog,\u201d said Yeh. \u201cEven if it wasn\u2019t my job, I\u2019d still keep it up. I see myself doing the blog forever. But, the landscape is always changing. Right now, people want more video. I can see videos really help people learn recipes, so that\u2019s something I\u2019m starting to get into.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe book was really a great experience. I\u2019m working on a smaller book right now. As long as it has to do with making food and being creative, then I\u2019ll be excited about it. Who knows what form that will take on in the future?<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to give a shout out to the few blog friends in Vancouver. I\u2019ve always wanted to do the cruise that goes from Vancouver up to Alaska. Vancouver just seems like the coolest place ever. One day, I\u2019ll visit.\u201d<\/p>\n

To learn more about Yeh and her endeavours, visit mynameisyeh.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rebeca Kuropatwa<\/strong> is a Winnipeg freelance writer.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While food blogger Molly Yeh loves vegetables, she said she feels she has \u201cmore to contribute in the world of cake.\u201d (photo by Chantell Quernemoen) Blogger Molly Yeh, 28, is the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Chinese father. She grew up in a Chicago suburb in a house with great cooking by her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[3797,7476,6073,7475],"class_list":["post-26389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-baking","tag-blogs","tag-food","tag-molly-yeh"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}