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Dishing with Stephanie's DishHost of Emmy award-winning TV show Taste Buds with Stephanie, Author of "True North Cabin Cookbook," blogger at stephaniesdish.com, radio host of "The Weekly Dish", podcaster at "Dishing with Stephanies Dish" and contributor on Fox 9s The Jason Show. Author: Stephanie Hansen - @StephaniesDish
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Emily Maxson of @emilysfreshkitchen
Friday, 17 October, 2025
Welcome to "Dishing with Stephanie’s Dish." In this episode, Stephanie sits down with Emily Maxson—two time cookbook author, chef, and the creative mind behind @EmilysFreshKitchen. Emily shares her personal health journey, navigating Crohn’s disease through diet and lifestyle changes, and how that experience fueled her passion for approachable, healthy, and delicious recipes for everyone. Her New Book, “Real Food Every Day” (ships October 21) is a follow up to “Emilys Fresh Kitchen.”With real talk about creating cookbooks, food photography, adapting to dietary needs, and the ups and downs of life as a food creator, this episode is for home cooks, entertainers, and anyone curious about the connections between food, health, and community. Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Emily mentioned two influential books in the Podcast from her food journey:"Breaking the Vicious Cycle" by Elaine Gottschall"Against All Grain" by Danielle WalkerEmily shared her recipe for Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup from the “Real Food Every Day” cookbook that is available now for pre-order.Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter SoupGluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)PREP 10 minutes COOK 60 minutes TOTAL 70 minutes SERVES 6Roasted Carrot and Miso Butter Soup is one of my favorite soups to make in the winter. It warms you up and is very satisfying. The recipe calls for simple ingredients that produce layers of flavor. The Miso butter adds another depth of flavor and is worth the extra step, but the soup is still delicious without it.To adapt for dairy-free and vegan, use miso butter made with vegan butter.INGREDIENTS:* 2 pounds carrots* 4 Tablespoons olive oil, divided* 2 cups diced yellow onion* 2 Tablespoons minced garlic* 2 Tablespoons grated ginger* 2 teaspoons sea salt* 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper* 7-8 cups vegetable broth* 2 Tablespoons fresh lime juice* 2 Tablespoons Miso ButterDIRECTIONS:1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.2. Scrub the carrots and cut them into large chunks, removing the tops.3. Place the carrots on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.4. Coat the carrot pieces in 1 Tablespoon of olive oil.5. Roast the carrots for 45-60 minutes or until tender.6. Meanwhile, heat 3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat.7. Add the onions and cook until they are translucent, about 10 minutes.8. Add the garlic, ginger, salt and cayenne pepper and sauté for an additional 3 minutes.9. Add the roasted carrots and 7 cups of broth.10. Cook for an additional 2 minutes.11. Remove from heat and ladle into a blender.12. Blend the soup until smooth.13. Wipe out the pot and pour in the blended soup.14. Return the soup to the stove over medium heat, adding additional stock to achieve desired consistency.15. Whisk in the lime juice and miso butter.16. Adjust seasoning if needed and serve.17. Top with additional miso butter if desired.Miso ButterGluten-Free, Grain-Free (Adaptable for Dairy-Free and Vegan)PREP 5 minutes COOK 0 minutes TOTAL 5 minutes MAKES about 1/2 cupMiso Butter is made with only two ingredients:butter and miso paste. This compound butter is so versatile. You can add it to fish, chicken, steak, vegetables and potatoes. I add it to my roasted carrot soup on page_ and it adds another depth of flavor. Miso Butter is one of my favorite condiments to keep on hand.To adapt for dairy-free or vegan, use vegan butter.INGREDIENTS:* 8 Tablespoons butter, softened* 3 Tablespoons white miso pasteInstructions:Place the softened butter and miso paste in a small bowl.Using a hand blender or fork, cream the butter and miso paste together until smooth.Store covered in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.Transcript Episode Follows:Stephanie [00:00:00]:Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dishing with Stephanie's Dish, the podcast where we talk to people in the food space. And today I'm talking with another Minnesota favorite, Emily Maxson. She is the author of Emily's Fresh Kitchen. And you have a second book coming out that is Emily's real food every day, similar to Emily's Fresh Kitchen, but more goodness, more healthy for you recipes. Emily Maxson, welcome to the show.Emily Maxson [00:00:31]:Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks so much for having me.Stephanie [00:00:34]:So when we first started talking, you had your first book, and you and I were on a similar publishing schedule. And that book, your book did super well, I think, of self published cookbooks because you worked with publisher, my friend Chris Olsen. I think that you sold, like, way more than a lot of cookbook authors do.Emily Maxson [00:00:57]:I did sell quite a few, and I'm very grateful for that. I had built a pretty good online community, and I think a lot of people resonated with my health story of healing through diet from Crohn's. So I think that helped with sales.Stephanie [00:01:13]:I think too, the thing about your book that I loved so much was you get a lot of diet books or health books that come across the way in the business that I'm in. But yours felt very much like a real cookbook, like real food, real approachable, a way that you could heal your gut and the way that you could eat healthier, but also with, like, regular foods, not with, like weird supplements. And also the recipes were just delicious. Like you could feed them to your whole family, not just be making separate things for yourself. Does that make sense?Emily Maxson [00:01:53]:Yeah. Well, yes. Thank you. That is a huge compliment because that is my goal with both books. Just to make healthier food that's very approachable, very easy, and just to taste good and that you don't know you're eating something that is gluten free or dairy free, and it tastes the same as a traditional version of that recipe.Stephanie [00:02:13]:So can you talk a little bit about your health, about your health journey, how book one started, and then obviously you had more to say with book two.Emily Maxson [00:02:23]:Yeah. So my health journey, I was in my late 20s and I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease through severe abdominal pain. Had thought they thought I had appendicitis. Was rushed into the hospital for surgery. They found out I had diseased intestines and removed part of my small and large intestine. Diagnosed with Crohn's disease. So I spent about 10 years in and out of the hospital on lots of different medications. And then I approached it differently through diet and lifestyle changes.Emily Maxson [00:02:57]:And learned about a diet called the specific carbohydrate diet. And that is a diet where you eliminate you, you eliminate disaccharides and polysaccharides. It gets to the chemical structure of food. So basically you can only have monosaccharid because they're the easiest to absorb in your intestines. So meat, fish, nuts, seeds, vegetables, fruit. No starches, no grains, no lactose. The only sugar I could have was honey or fruit. So I followed that.Emily Maxson [00:03:32]:The theory is if you follow that for one to two years, you can reset your gut. And that's what I did. And fortunately for me, I was able to totally reset it after 18 months of following really strict program. And then now I can eat things that weren't allowed then. Like I can go out and have pizza. And it's not, it doesn't upset me and, but I mostly try to cook the similarly to the way I was on that diet at home so that I can enjoy things in restaurants and have treats and things like that.Stephanie [00:04:07]:And so that someone could use your book to follow to try and heal their own guts, as it were.Emily Maxson [00:04:13]:Absolutely. I have a lot of recipes that follow that diet and they're all labeled if it's specific carbohydrate, if it's vegan, if it's grain free or paleo. And I also recommend the book if somebody wants to try to do that. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet by Elaine Gottschel. That is the book that got me started and she outlines everything.Stephanie [00:04:36]:Okay, I'll make sure to include that link in the show notes. One other way I think that your book has been helpful for me is when I'm entertaining and I have someone that's coming with a certain dietary restriction. It just, I don't know when more dietary restrictions became on my radar or in the zeitgeist. But you know, I've been entertaining a long time and now it's customary to ask people like do you have any dietary restrictions? And when you ask, people always do. And if I'm stumped or I don't know, like, oh, what can I do here? Like one time I had a cocktail party that I was having and we had a gluten free, a dairy free, a vegan, someone that was allergic to nuts. Like it was really a long exhausted list where I was like, oh my gosh, what's left to cook?Emily Maxson [00:05:32]:Yes, I can relate to that. It is it all. It seems like in every family or every friend group there's one or two people with dietary restrictions. And I don't know if it's just that we know more today or our food has changed or what. What it is, but that's definitely very common. So it is helpful to have something at your fingertips to look through and find something that would hopefully fit all those.Stephanie [00:05:59]:I think it's a combination almost of both. Like, we do know more about our food, and that's great. But also, you know, since the 70s, they've been putting a lot more processed food chemicals into our food. There's no, you know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, I don't think, to like, correlate the rise of obesity and the rise of the packaged food industry and what people have been putting in our foods. And now you can see with Ozempic, you know, that 7 to 10% of the population are on GLP1 medications. And we're seeing that the packaged food industry is having to change again. And. And obviously recessionary thoughts, tariff pricing.Stephanie [00:06:42]:We're seeing product sizes shrink, too. It's interesting that I'm just. I've. I do a lot of work and hear a lot about restaurant culture because of the radio show that I do. And there's now like a whole subset of restaurants that are making like, mini versions of things so that people that are on medications and not eating as much can still enjoy coming to their restaurant and have something for them. It's so crazy how food becomes so fashionable and trendy.Emily Maxson [00:07:11]:I know that. I agree with you and I agree with the processed food and that impacting our health. And that's part of my second book, Real Food Every Day, where I talk about the difference between processed and unprocessed food. And, you know, it's great the. The things that we can do today, the. But we also are hurting a lot of our food, stripping it of nutrients and adding chemicals that are causing damage to our health, our microbiome and things.Stephanie [00:07:43]:I think too, one thing about your book that I really enjoyed and I'm a huge fan. Can you tell it also isn't hard, like, if you're not. I think sometimes if you're not a cook or you don't cook a lot, you feel like certain books are intimidating. Your book is very approachable, and that is something that was important to me with mine. Like, I'm not a fussy cook. I'm not a fancy cook. Your book feels really like I can make all the recipes in it. And it's not like weekend project cooking, which has its place you know, sometimes it's fun to do a recipe that takes two or three days and you're gonna have a special event, but for the most part when you're eating, you just like want something.Stephanie [00:08:25]:And the reason I think that people eat poorly is a lot of times due to convenience and just speed of our lives.Emily Maxson [00:08:32]:I agree. And that's why the majority of the recipes are very simple. Simple ingredients, easy to prepare. I joke that because I did go to culinary school, I am a chef, but I say I'm a chef turned home cook. I keep it nice and simple, focus on whole foods, real ingredients, and doesn't have to be complicated to make good.Stephanie [00:08:54]:Your food in the book is so beautiful. And you have a really close relationship with the person who photographs your books. And I'm assuming she's doing a lot of your edit, editing, video work too. Do you want to talk about Baylin a little bit?Emily Maxson [00:09:08]:Yes. Balin Fleming B Photography. She is phenomenal. I've worked with her for seven plus years now. She's just one of the most talented creatives I know. She takes all the beautiful photographs in both of the books. And when we've worked together, we have so much fun. She's great to collaborate with.Emily Maxson [00:09:32]:She has lots of great ideas and how to style the food. She always loves to hear the story behind the food and that just helps set the stage. Stage. We. I'm very grateful. It's been such a blessing in my life to have that relationship with her because as you know, Stephanie, writing your books, when you write a book, it's a very, it's a very lonely solo mission, other than maybe your husband's, your taste tester or your kids, but otherwise, you know, you're not working with a lot of other people on it. So to have a photographer who I have a close relationship with, who's really talented is great because I can bounce my ideas off of her and it doesn't feel so like such an isolating project.Stephanie [00:10:14]:You. I think that's a really good point. And I think that a lot of my extroverted activities, like I always look super busy and I always look like I'm doing a million things. And of course I am, but so is everybody else. Right? The, the actual process of making food and creating recipes and writing a substack and posting beautiful pictures, like, it's all very solitary and it is kind of lonely. And when you kind of do the entertaining piece, it feels like, oh, it's so nice to share that because a lot of times you're Just running from house to house trying to give them food to get it out of your kitchen.Emily Maxson [00:10:55]:Yes, yes, definitely. I agree.Stephanie [00:10:58]:When you think about this career, because it's a later in life career for you. Later in life career for me. Are you glad you landed on it? Has it been joyful?Emily Maxson [00:11:09]:Yes, definitely, it has been joyful. I, yes, I have really enjoyed it. There have been hard times, writer's block, lack of creativity, but it always comes again and I'm really enjoying it. It's so fun to have this new thing later in life because I think when you're younger, you think, these are the years I've got to get it all in and think of, you know, for me, I'm 55. That's old. Well, you know, it isn't. I don't feel old. And there's still so much more to do.Stephanie [00:11:41]:Yeah. What has been the thing you hate the most about this journey?Emily Maxson [00:11:46]:Oh, that's a great question. I think sometimes I have a hard time with the writing of the non recipe content or like, how to put. Put my thoughts into words. I have this information that I really want to share with and it's finding the right words to say it.Stephanie [00:12:08]:And it is like, if you think about a cookbook, the way that I think the best cookbooks work is there's a narrative, there's a through line. So if your through line is this health journey and starts with health, then, you know, how do you make that not boring? How do you turn that into a story? How do you make that feel personal to you but yet relatable to someone else? And then like, sometimes, let's just be honest, I'm staring at a recipe, I've made the recipe, I like the recipe, I like the pictures. It's all coming together. And then I have to write like a head note. Like, how many times can you say, you know, grandma's sugar cookies are the best sugar cookies in the world, made with real butter. And like, I just don't even have the words to get you excited about this thing. And then you have to still come up with it and then a story to go with it. And it can be just challenging to find the words.Emily Maxson [00:13:04]:I, I agree. That is my biggest struggle too. And like, how many times can I say simple to make, so delicious family and yeah, how, how can you reword that and how can you. Yeah, I know, I agree. I struggle with that as well.Stephanie [00:13:23]:When you think about the actual making of the recipes, like, how many times do you test each one and is it always the Same because for me it's not. Sometimes I'll make something once and be like, this is great, I love it. I know it's going to work. I make something like it all the time. Let's just be done.Emily Maxson [00:13:41]:Yeah, I have a handful of those. But then I get concerned like, oh no, this is, this is how I do it. I want to make sure that I've got it written out clearly for somebody else to do it because I'll have, I've had in the past, people say, when I'll make something, just somebody be over, well, tell me what you did with that and I'll send them the recipe. They'll be like, it didn't turn out like yours. So I want to make sure. So I would say I on average make a recipe three or four times. And it depends. There are a handful where I just do one like, oh my gosh, this is, this is spot on.Emily Maxson [00:14:20]:And it's simple enough. That you know, But a lot of them are things I make regularly at home anyway. So I am just cooking. Well just for my husband now or when my kids are home.Stephanie [00:14:32]:Right. When you, when you go back, like, have you had any recipes where there's been an error or like the way you wrote it isn't the way that someone else experience it and it's in the book and you're stuck and you're like, oh, oh, shoot.Emily Maxson [00:14:48]:I, I taught a cooking class at the Fox and Pantry, a holiday cooking class. And it was one of my newer recipes. And I did these molasses grain free molasses cookies for dessert. And I had baked them ahead of time to serve as dessert. I was demonstrating other recipes and then I gave the, the, the people in the class the recipes and I had a woman email me and say, I made your molasses cookies. And they didn't turn out at all like that. And I just panicked. And so I went to make them again.Emily Maxson [00:15:17]:I said, let me get into it, I will get back to you. And I made them. And I think I, I forget what it was off the top of my head, but I had one of the measurements incorrect. Like a third of a cup instead of two thirds or a quarter instead of three quarters. And so I was able to correct it and email her back like, so sorry, this is what the mistake was. I haven't found one in my book yet. There's always mistakes, but that was good. I'm glad that I got that corrected because that is in my new book.Emily Maxson [00:15:47]:So I'm glad that she tested it out.Stephanie [00:15:50]:It's funny, too, because I just cooked something from my first book that's now, I guess, three years old. And I'm at my cabin, and I had a bunch of tomatoes, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna make the tomato pie here. And I have a really bad oven at the cabin. It's a new stove, but it's just. It's beyond terrible. So I'm, like, looking at the instructions, and it says to cook it for 30 minutes. I ended up cooking something for 50 minutes. And I don't know, like, I think it's my terrible oven that's 75 degrees off.Stephanie [00:16:22]:But I was just like, oh, gosh, you know, I hope it isn't the recipe itself, because when I've made it at home, like, it worked fine. But also, like, that's weird, too, when you're calibrating different ovens or you're cooking different places or in stoves you're not familiar with, it's just like. That's why when you see, like, 20 to 25 minutes on a baking time, it used to bug me, but now I'm like, oh, I get why there's that range.Emily Maxson [00:16:47]:Yeah. I mean, it's bound to happen. You test the recipe multiple times. You have a. You have a copy editor. You proofread it multiple, multiple times. There's always. I've heard this from writers.Emily Maxson [00:16:58]:There's always going to be an error.Stephanie [00:17:00]:And there's like, my husband's a fiction writer, so there's always pages that there's a spelling error or a pronoun that's used incorrectly. So I guess that's just part of the. Part of the journey. So you have the cookbooks, have you, like, let's talk about the whole creator, Emily Maxson. Like, are you doing, like, substacks? Are you doing cooking clubs? Are you really leaning into all these other ways of monetizing your brand now that you are on your second book?Emily Maxson [00:17:31]:Current? I mean, I am not. I have my website and I post recipes there and tips and things there and social media, but I have not tapped into the substack or other things yet to generate revenue. I also help with our. We have a fireplace manufacturing company, and I do some work with my husband there, so I haven't had put as much time into that. But I. There are. There are products I'd like to recreate and do more with it, but I'm not yet. I have a few ideas, but.Stephanie [00:18:09]:Yeah, because I imagine with this health angle, like, there's ways to really get more into that and to help people on that journey, do nutritional or health coaching or, you know, meal plans if you're on specific type of restrictions or. I would imagine that there's a lot of gold to mine there, should you decide to. But do you feel pressured by that? Like, because, I mean, for a lot of us, this starts as a side hustle, and then it, like, becomes your thing. And, you know, groceries are expensive. It's not producing a lot of revenue. Usually people make money from books, but it's usually the second, third, and fourth books, not the first.Emily Maxson [00:18:53]:Fingers crossed on the second.Stephanie [00:18:56]:Yes.Emily Maxson [00:18:56]:But I know there is a little pressure because, honestly, I love creating recipes. I mean, I like that part of it, and I think the meal planning with dietary restrictions would be a good avenue for me. But, yeah, there is a little pressure for that. And with the other things going on in my life, sometimes I think, I don't know if I can do it, but if. Hopefully there'll be a window that will open up.Stephanie [00:19:23]:Are you a. Like, type A, where you're only going to do it if you can do it to the maximum degree of wanting to do it, or are you, like, more like me, where you'll do everything and it all might be just a little sloppy, but you'll just put as much work out there as you can.Emily Maxson [00:19:40]:I would say more type A. Yeah.Stephanie [00:19:42]:I. I wish I was more like that because I think I would be more refined in all the offerings that I have. But I get so excited about so many different things. I'm just like, oh, yeah, let's do this. Oh, yeah, let's do that.Emily Maxson [00:19:55]:But I love that about you. I love your approach. I love seeing you everywhere and all the things that you do and you're so casual about it, and just you. You produce good products, and people are like, yeah, I can do that. I think that's awesome, the way you approach it.Stephanie [00:20:10]:Thanks. Because I would say casual is how I showed up for the podcast today, because I'm at my cabin. I don't. My husband basically lives up here in the summertime, and I'm doing reverse commuting because of filming of the show. And I literally have, like, there's one day off a week that I have, and it's Sundays. And so, like, when I'm up here, like, okay, I have to do this podcast. I used to do audio only, and then everybody wanted video, so I'm like, okay, fine, I'm gonna video it, but I'm gonna have dirty hair, and I'm not Gonna put lipstick stick on. And it kind of just is what it is because I also want to live the quality of life that I want to live.Stephanie [00:20:49]:That feels good to me, and it's honest and it's authentic to a fault, probably because, you know, sometimes the dog will bark in the background, even when we're doing the TV show. Like, I don't know, and never say never. But that TV show that we do came sort of by accident, and it happens in my kitchen. It's my real life. My dog barks. My husband runs to the bathroom in the background. I don't know if I know how to do things any other way. I'm just not that good at being that polished, I guess.Emily Maxson [00:21:24]:I think people love real life. That's why, I mean, keeping it real. It's very approachable, and that's why reality TV is so popular. People want to see. Yeah. How people are really living and how people are doing and hear the dog bark in the background, because that's what's happening in their homes.Stephanie [00:21:42]:We can be real. The real cookbook writers of the Twin Cities. Wouldn't that be funny?Emily Maxson [00:21:47]:Yes. I love it.Stephanie [00:21:48]:Okay. Another weird thing that I discovered, and I'm curious if this for you. Like, I cook a lot. I just. I do. I cook a lot. I cook a lot for my family. I'm cooking for the shows.Stephanie [00:21:59]:I'm cooking for tv. I'm doing all this cooking, but I really have anxiety about cooking in front of people. And you would think that, like, TV would be people, but it's not. It's two camera people who are my friends now, and there's no anxiety about cooking in front of them. But, like, when I'm going, like, people want me to do cooking classes, and they want me to do all this cooking in front of them, and I'm realizing it really causes me a lot of stress, and I don't love it, and it doesn't give me joy. I have so much anxiety. I wake up in the middle of the night before the class, wondering. I don't.Stephanie [00:22:36]:I'm not a professionally trained cook. I'm not a chef. I didn't go to cooking school. So I feel like people are going to be looking to me for answers to things that I have no business giving. I have so much impostor syndrome around the actual cooking, and yet I have this whole life that's building up around this being a cook. Do you have any of that?Emily Maxson [00:22:58]:Definitely. I have the same thing. I don't. I get nervous. I get anxious about Cooking in front of people. Even when I'm on TV shows where it is just a couple cameras, I still am. I still get nervous, and I think it is that pressure. You want to give people the right information.Emily Maxson [00:23:16]:And I did go to culinary school. It was a long, long time ago, and I still have imposter syndrome. Like, what do I know? Yeah, but. But this is how I do it. And you share it with people and. But I do. I get that as well.Stephanie [00:23:30]:Yeah. And then people will be like, well, I know I have terrible knife skills. Do you have good knife skills?Emily Maxson [00:23:35]:I don't think so. I mean, I know what to do. I mean, sometimes I look at the pictures of my chopped up cilantro, and I'm like, ooh, a chef would look at that and say, that's not so good.Stephanie [00:23:45]:Yeah. And, like, you know when you're making, like, a mirepoix, and it's all like, my carrots are 16 different sizes instead of just, like, unifor and batons. Right. So I took. I actually took a class, and I did learn a lot, but I'm finding now that I'm not good at staying with it or practicing it because it requires, like, practice. Right. And if you were in a classroom setting or being judged on it, you would keep going. And now I'm just like, oh, I know I'm supposed to hold my hand this way, but I really got to get these carrots chopped.Emily Maxson [00:24:17]:Exactly. Yeah.Stephanie [00:24:19]:So it's kind of funny. Are there people that inspire you that are in the cookbook or the cooking space?Emily Maxson [00:24:27]:Oh, that's a great question. I mean, there's a lot of great cookbook authors out there.Stephanie [00:24:33]:You.Emily Maxson [00:24:33]:You're an excellent author. I love your book. I ordered your second one. I'm excited to get that. I mean, I remember early on, early in my culinary career, I just had so much respect for Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, because he was just so different than everybody else. And I still have a lot of respect for him. And he's put out a ton of.Stephanie [00:25:03]:And he's changing too, which I also love. Like, you know, he went from. He's just. He's evolved, I think, as a chef, and he's really gotten more to the space where I think he's feeling the most comfortable in his skin, too, in his own kitchen, cooking for his own family. He's a very rustic cook, actually, versus, like, when you see him doing more of the chefy things that he started with. I just. I really like him too, and I like how much he simplifies. Things.Emily Maxson [00:25:33]:Yeah, he's insanely talented, but he brings it down to our level and I appreciate that. It's, it's. He. He's very approachable and just real. So, yeah, I really like him a lot. He's good. And Danielle Walker, who wrote Against All Grain, she has, I don't know, maybe five books out now. She was.Emily Maxson [00:25:54]:Her first book, I remember getting that. And I had done the specific carbohydrate diet and was writing my own recipes and doing some blogging, and that was the first book that I was like, you know what? I could do this. And so I think she's been inspiring to me because a similar health journey and did it. And I was the one person who I was like, okay, I think I can do this.Stephanie [00:26:16]:So you know what would be cool? Not that you need more ideas, but I'm going to give you one because that's how I think it would. Like there. There's a woman, her name's Carolyn Chambers, and she's a cookbook writer and she's a family cook. We'll say, like, lots of variety. And the thing that she does that really resonates with people is she has all the substitutions in a recipe. So, like, she'll make a rice salad, but she'll give you all the different grains you could substitute for the rice. And if you can't have rice vinegar, there's the five other vinegars you could use. One thing that would be cool, that I would love to see is if you, like, took a recipe that you liked and you made it so that it could be healthier or in a way that more people could enjoy it.Stephanie [00:27:00]:So, like, my recipe book, for instance, is not at all diet, not at all. It's. It's whole, it's regular ingredients, it's not weird stuff. But, like, I think that could be a real interesting thing to follow for you.Emily Maxson [00:27:16]:I have done that with some recipes. Like in my Real food, every day, I have my strawberry shortcake recipe, which is grain free, which I loved growing up. My mom would make the Bisquick. Yes, Strawberry shortcakes, and I loved. It was the perfect balance of sweet and savory. It's a little salty. And so I wanted to re. I mean, that was a recipe I did multiple times to try to recreate that, so things like that.Emily Maxson [00:27:41]:But I love your idea. I could just cook through a book and try to do a version that would fit the different dietary guidelines.Stephanie [00:27:49]:Yeah. Or even just picking different recipes from different books and like filming that, like here's because when you have a cookbook that you like or when you're looking for inspiration, you probably pull out this recipe and you look at it and you think, oh, I have these six things. I don't have these three. You know, and especially I think about this because I'm at the cabin a lot, and I. It's 20 minutes to get to a store and a boat ride and a car ride, and it's complicated. So I will want to make something, but I'll have to really improvise a lot of times on the exact ingredients and figure out how I'm going to get it all to go. So I think that could be really interesting and also educational for people that are on a dietary journey, that maybe it's new for them and they do know some cooking, but they haven't cooked in the way that is maybe more helpful for them. Yeah, this is a weird thought, too, but I've been spending a lot of time at the cabin, and there's all these people that come and go and they bring all their groceries and then they leave.Stephanie [00:28:49]:And I keep looking at this refrigerator full of food, and I, I, I feel like, oh, I'm gonna have to make dinner here now for the rest of us that are left, but there's not, like, food you can eat. Like, it's so much like processed food and cheese spreads and salsas and condiments and breads that, like, there's just so much food that I actually wouldn't probably eat. And it's fascinating to me how people grocery shop.Emily Maxson [00:29:19]:Yeah. And I suppose too, if they're coming to your cabin as a guest, they're on vacation, so they're eating maybe more treats or processed foods that they eat on a regular basis. So it's their snacks and things like that.Stephanie [00:29:34]:Yes, that's like, what I'm left with. And I'm like, oh, okay, now I have to make a meal. It's a Sunday night. Which is why we make a lot of pizza, because we're using up all those dribs and drabs. And I hate to waste things. So, like, sometimes I have this horrible salsa that tastes like just a sugary mess. I'm like, what am I going to do with this? And I've got tons of vegetables in the garden. I was like, well, I could probably use a cup of it to make a soup.Stephanie [00:29:59]:And if I fortified it enough with vegetables and broth and it wouldn't be so terrible to have this sort of super sweet base. But yeah, that's my life.Emily Maxson [00:30:16]:I like your soup idea. That's a great way to use up the salsa.Stephanie [00:30:20]:All right, so where can people follow you? And how can they get the book?Emily Maxson [00:30:24]:Okay, my website, emily'sfreshkitchen.com the book is on Amazon. It will be in local stores. Five Swans, Gray and Excelsior. The Fox and Pantry, Golden Fig. Yes. So I love it.Stephanie [00:30:42]:Well, thanks for spending time with me. Emily and I will see you around. And maybe we'll do a taste bud episode together. You never know.Emily Maxson [00:30:49]:I'd love it. Thank you. Always good to see you.Stephanie [00:30:51]:Yeah, same. We'll talk soon. Thanks.Emily Maxson [00:30:54]:Bye. Bye.Stephanie’s Dish Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. 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