Yeh - Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from An Unlikely Life on a Farm

Molly Yeh is the food blogger behind Saveurs 2015 Blog of the Year, my name is yeh. She has been featured by the New York Times, Food & Wine, and New York magazine and has contributed to Vanity Fair, Lucky Peach, Food52, and as a columnist to the Jewish Daily Forward. Molly was Yahoos 2014 Blogger of the Year and part of Apartment Therapys 2016 Top 10 Under 40. She holds a degree in classical percussion from the Juilliard School and lives on a farm on the North DakotaMinnesota border with her farmer husband and their little flock of chickens.

Mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities in this book does not imply endorsement by the author or publisher, nor does mention of specific companies, organizations, or authorities imply that they endorse this book, its author, or the publisher.

Internet addresses and telephone numbers given in this book were accurate at the time it went to press.

2016 by Molly Yeh

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

Book design by Rae Ann Spitzenberger

Page numbers listed below refer to the print edition.

Photographs by Chantell Quernemoen: ii-iii, xv, xvi, 12, 15, 36, 42, 49, 55, 56, 86, 88, 91, 106, 122, 131, 132, 138, 143, 154, 159 (left), 160 (top), 163, 188, 191, 192, 199, 202, 234, 268, 274, 284

All other photographs by Molly Yeh

Illustrations and lettering by Lisel Jane Ashlock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the publisher.

ISBN-13: 9781623366957
ISBN: 9781623366964 e-book

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PART IV
DESSERTS

Hi! My name is Molly. I live on a farm in the upper Midwest with my husband, the Internet, 12 hens named Macaroni, and a plump rooster named Tofu.

Im originally from the suburbs of Chicago, where I led a childhood of hosting lemonade stands, writing in stacks of Hello Kitty diaries, and every so often pulling out all of my moms pots and pans to play a drum solo with her spoons and whisks. My existence was fueled by Lunchables, Handi-Snacks, and macaroni and cheeseany food that was white, orange, or brown, and no food that wasnt.

There was always music around the house. My dad played the clarinet and my older sister, Stoopie, played the piano and violin. In fourth grade, I followed my love for hitting things, and enrolled in the school band as a percussionist. I fell so wildly in love with classical music that when I graduated high school, I moved to New York to study at Juilliard.

Manhattan is the most exciting place to live for a suburban teenage bean! Every night there were concerts to see, neighborhoods to explore, and new restaurants to try. The city swallowed me whole, and the only way out was to try every slice of pizza and every fancy cheeseburger, and to make up for lost time spent on a picky childhood by seeking out obscure tasting menus and hidden izakayas.

In 2009, the diaries that Id kept since childhood morphed into an online blog, because that was an easy way to pair photographs with my entries and then share them with my family and friends. I no longer had to pretend that aliens in the future digging up my notebooks from an underground safe were my only audience. With colorful fonts and saturated photos, I blogged about my everyday life, little adventures around the city, and all of the new food that I was having so much fun trying.

After graduating from Juilliard, I moved out to Brooklyn and spent my days writing, playing music gigs around the city, working part time at Juilliards newspaper, and in my off time, eating and blogging for fun. I had a kitchen that was sunny and spacious (for New York) and I never wanted to leave. More and more my blog started filling up with recipes and styled food photos.

Around that time, I reconnected with an old college classmate: a slightly older trombonist who had spent a few post-graduation years on his familys farm on the North DakotaMinnesota border but had just moved back to the city to play music. His name is Nick, but eventually he earned the nickname , and we fell in wuv.

Together we discovered our fierce inner homebodies and began spending our weekends inside or playing catch in the park. We were the worst New Yorkers ever. We missed the Midwest and wanted to be closer to our families, so after a lot of thinking and thinking, we packed up all of our things and moved west to Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Fearing that I would go into shock over the drastic change between city and farm, Eggboy and I got an apartment in downtown Grand Forks, which is like Stars Hollow but way colder, like 30F. Eggboy went to work farming sugar beets and wheat with his pop, I got a job at the town bakery, and since I didnt have any friends for my first few months of living here, my free time was spent working on my blog and growing a following beyond my mom and Eggmom.

Eventually, through working on my photos and recipes and using websites like Pinterest to drive traffic to my site, I started picking up work developing blog posts for other sites and partnering with brands to create content for my site, and blogging became my full-time jobwhich was exciting because working from home and never having to shower is one thing I really like to do.