When Molly Yeh started her blog, My Name is Yeh, in 2009, hosting Girl Meets Farm on Food Network was the farthest thing from her mind. Studying percussion at The Juilliard School, Yeh used her blog to share life updates with family and friends as she studied music. Slowly, she started to share recipes, including food from her Chinese and Jewish ancestry. After meeting her husband Nick Hagen at school, the two moved out of Brooklyn, New York in 2013 to the Minnesota-North Dakota region where husband Hagen is currently a fifth-generation farmer on a sugar beet farm.
Molly on the Range: How a City Girl Moved to the Midwest
Once the couple moved to Grand Forks, North Dakota from New York City, Yeh found a ton of time on her hands according to Bon Appetit. She started to take recipe writing on her website more seriously, but she still wanted to learn more about the food world. So she picked up a job at a local bakery and learned how to frost cakes and put together beautiful wedding masterpieces. She also picked up recipe writing jobs contributing to cooking websites like Betty Crocker. At the same time, her blog started to gain traction, especially her pretzel challah recipe which called for using food-grade lye.
She started to develop recipes for Food52 and noticed her site's traffic started to skyrocket. In 2014 she was nominated for a Saveur blogging award and almost immediately she was contacted by agents contacting her for a book proposal. In 2015 the food blogger was named Saveur's "Blogger of the Year."
A year later Yeh produced her first cookbook, Molly on the Range: Recipes and Stories from an Unlikely Life on a Farm. The book follows her culinary exploration as she tells stories from her childhood in Chicago and how her half Jewish half Chinese heritage shaped her life. A picky eater as a kid (She loved macaroni and cheese, Lunchables, and Handi-Snacks!), Yeh's book showcases her favorite recipes filled with ingredients such as tahini and lots of rainbow sprinkles. Love everything bagels? Try her recipe for Everything Bagel Bourekahs.
Girl Meets Farm
During her book tour, Food Network reached out to Yeh about producing a cooking show. In 2018, the series, Girl Meets Farm debuted and was an instant success. Noted by Vox as the "millennial answer to The Pioneer Woman, with a dash of Office-style sass." Episodes are filled in her Midwestern kitchen and show glimpses of her life on the farm.
Favorite recipes on the home cooking tv show include hot dishes, casseroles, rhubarb, and lots of frosting. From brunch recipes featuring feta to crispy tacos, this cookbook author knows how to cook and eat delicious food. Look for her on The Best Thing I Ever Ate to learn about her faves. Hint: It's cheesy pickles.
Molly Yeh's Husband Nick and Baby Bernadette
Molly and Nick (whom she refers to as "eggboy" in her cookbook), recently celebrated their first child's first birthday in March. Nicknamed Bernie, Yeh shared the significance of her daughter's name Bernadette Rosemary Yeh Hagen in an interview with People:
"We are so wildly in love! Bernie is named after Nick's great-great-grandpa Bernt, who came from Norway and started the Hagen farm," Yeh said. "And my great-grandpa Bernard, who came over from Hungary. Rosemary was my mom's mom."
Will little Bernie be a percussionist or trombonist like her parents? We'll have to wait and see.
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