every holiday was based around the food

Impossibly pretty cakes feature prominently. (“If I had a free day to do anything I wanted, other than hanging out with Bernie, I would bake a cake and decorate it,” Yeh says, a confession that shocks no one.) But so do lighthearted takes on the Lunchables and forbidden cheese fries of her youth, the makings of her unmissable pizza night tradition, and her version of the hummus — and the über embarrassing story — that preceded Yeh and her husband’s first kiss.

Since Nick grows the ingredients that are processed into the wheat and sugar in Yeh’s cupboards, we know it all worked out in the end. They also raise chickens (all named Macaroni), so eggs are readily available. The garden and fruit trees on the property mark the seasons and

(when retrieved from one of her four freezers) make frequent appearances in Yeh’s recipes throughout the year.

“We have the apples that I always like using. We have our rhubarb patch that just pops up in the spring,” says Yeh. “Between the pantry samples that we have, and then all of our fruits and vegetables from the farm, and then also our eggs, I rarely have to leave and go to the grocery store because we have so many things that we can just grow here and use.”

She’s used to the rhythms of farm life now. But there was definitely an adjustment period when she arrived in 2013.

“I thought that you could walk through a field barefoot at sunrise and kind of, you know, pick something off of the plants and eat it. And it was just this very twee version of a farm and you can wear a sundress in the fields and it was very poetic and romantic,” she says, her voice simultaneously sunny and wryly self-deprecating. “And then when I got here I saw how muddy it is and how you would never want to be barefoot in a field, ever. And it's just so many hours, such hard work and it's so tied to the weather. That is just beyond anything I could have imagined before moving here.”

New to a community where many of her neighbors had known each other their whole lives — and with her partner spending long days in the field — Yeh found herself with an unprecedented expanse of free time on her hands. Her food career was planted in New York, but it bloomed in Minnesota.

She threw herself into her work. As she experimented with squeezing herself into the Betty Crocker mold as a recipe contributor and honing her baking skills during the early morning shift at the dearly departed Dakota Harvest Bakers, Yeh was developing both her blog and the hallmarks of her style.

Yeh’s blog writing is personable (and occasionally smart mouthed and silly), written all in lowercase and sprinkled with a generous dose of gleeful italics and exclamation points. Photos showcase each dish in soft, natural light. Her recipes combine breathless, utterly unrepentant food nerdery with a deeply pragmatic Midwestern streak, all while retaining her own uniquely joyful and occasionally irreverent voice.

Her food is flavored by ingredients that that previously seemed exotic to her Midwestern neighbors — tahini, za’atar, rosewater, dukkah. But living in Minnesota allows her to introduce readers across the world to her version of regional pleasures like the addictive fried pickles at The Toasted Frog, the meat-heavy pizzas at Rhombus Guys, and the proudly veggie-free cookie salad that’s beloved by potluck attendees but baffling to diners outside the Midwest. But for the ultimate introduction to Midwestern food, Yeh always recommends one thing. “Definitely tater tot hotdish,” she says. “Whenever I have friends come to visit from out of town who don't really know Midwestern cooking, I make them a hotdish with tater tots on it, and they love it every single time. It's just so good.”

LEFT: Yeh making sesame pretzels with za’atar mozzarella sauce on My Name is Yeh. Photo by Chantell and Brett Quernemoen

BELOW:

Yeh with Nick and Tom at a harvest party on Girl Meets Farm.

Her husband’s Scandinavian heritage has woven its way into her recipes as well, with Nick’s mom, aunt Elaine and great-aunt Ethel as her guides. They’ve made labor-intensive Norwegian blood sausage from scratch. She learned the exacting art of making perfectly thin potato lefse on her mother-in-law’s griddle. Food is a frequent topic of conversation.

“Nick’s mom’s church cookbooks have been really informational,” she says. “My favorite thing to talk about whenever I meet another one of his family members is their family recipes.”

Yeh is as excited about perfecting her first kransekake (a multi-tiered almond cake from Danish and Norwegian tradition) as she is about her newly planted raspberry bushes and discussing her next cookbook, which is in the earliest stages of planning and dreaming. These Scandinavian dishes join Chinese New Year dumplings and other culinary traditions that she looks forward to passing on to Bernie when she’s old enough to roll up her sleeves and tie on an apron.

“I want her to always feel creative in the kitchen,” Yeh says. “And so I think it would be really fun to make donuts with her, and then have her make her own filling, or decorate them herself or decorate cookies herself or, you know, make little gingerbread houses or, you know, come up with fun different ways of topping latkes. I'm all about making a mess in the kitchen, for the sake of creativity. I want her to feel like she knows our family recipes, but that she can also make her own spin on them.”

Molly Yeh has made a career of putting her own spin on family recipes. By writing passionately about her Chinese heritage and her early childhood food foibles, being a visible face of the evolution of Jewish cuisine, championing the flavors and ingredients of the Midwest and writing authentically and humorously about her own very specific food fascinations, she’s managed to sidestep narrow categorizations and enjoy broad appeal.

She feels like someone you know — or hope to. The readers who devour her kosher recipes in The Forward see themselves in her. So do the kids of ‘90s suburbia, the urban foodies who have followed her since the beginning, and the new neighbors who pass her in the grocery store, who are largely unaware that the cheerful, unassuming woman with a cart full of tahini, olive oil and butter is one of the freshest voices in American food today.

Molly Yeh has built an empire on specificity and authenticity. And she’s done it while being a homebody who lives 1,519 miles from the media center and food mecca where she got her start, switching between her roles as a television personality and larger than life food writer and her quiet existence as farm wife and new mother with apparent ease and good humor. Prepping Hanukkah food in October and other such time warps are just another part of this particular season of Yeh’s merrily unconventional life.

Clues