Your Everyday Dinners Questions Answered!

​ ​ ​ Hi hi - ​ I'm excited to be answering some of your questions about the making of Everyday Dinners today!! This is my third book, so you'd think I'd have it all figured out but I'm definitely still learning as I go. I hope you guys love the 100+ dinner recipes (including 40 meatless recipes!) in the book that come together quick and are a hit with the whole family. Keep scrolling for some behind-the-scenes realness! ​ ​ ​ How do you come up with the recipes? I get asked this all the time and honestly, I call it my recipe brain. It's just how my brain works!! I've been doing this for 13 years now, every single day, so essentially I "practice" recipes every single day. I'm always getting inspired by the seasons and trends, and I write down ideas constantly in a huge running list. I have a list of hundreds of recipes in my phone, a notebook filled with ideas, random notes everywhere. Sometimes I'll use an idea three or four years later, it just depends. I'll take my idea or inspo and play around with it for a while until I get the final product just right. I just love seeing something come together from start to finish. ​ ​ ​ Did you take all your photos for the book? Yes! Just like on the blog, I shoot all the book photos myself, in my home kitchen. It's a ton of work but I love being so involved in the process. And honestly - shooting book photos is SO much easier than shooting them for the blog! When it comes to photos for the book, I really only need ONE good finished photo. The final dish, if you will. On the blog, I try to shoot a few process shots, so it takes a lot longer to get photos done. ​ For my last two books, I have had help styling the photos, which is my biggest challenge. My friend Erin, who is an incredible photographer and has a food blog herself, called The Almond Eater, has helped me style the photos. She was a lifesaver on long shoot days when my brain was jumbled and I couldn't put the final dish together! ​ How'd you pick the cover? Covers are such a tricky thing!! In all honesty, authors don't really get the full say on choosing the cover. It highly depends on the publisher's wishes, trends, colors, graphics and usually includes the art and design team. This cover came about after the publisher sent me a few of their favorite shots that I had done for certain recipes. I needed to take those recipes and reshoot them, in order to make space for the title, name - all the required copy on the front. It takes a few hours to nail down the cover shoot, with a lot of back and forth in the moment, making sure I had things lined up exactly to fit the cover! For this book, we really wanted the cover to depict the variety of delicious dinner recipes inside. ​ ​ ​ How do you choose what goes in the book? This is by far the HARDEST part for me! I am used to a high turnover of recipes when posting on the blog - I post a new recipe four or five days a week, and I can always go back and edit a really old recipe as I learn new tips and tricks. When it comes to a book, it's so stressful! First, the process takes so long, that the book recipes are chosen at least two years in advance. Making sure that certain foods and recipes will still be on trend is difficult! This is why I try to stick to modern twists on the classics - recipes that I know that I'll always love. I sit with my lists of recipes for my books for months. Sometimes I change a few at the last minute. ​ ​ ​ How long did it take? The traditional publishing process is long! I had about a full year to write and photograph the book, then nearly another year for the publisher to edit the book. From the day I signed the third book deal to the day it will be released will be about 2.5 years total. That being said, I can probably bust out a cookbook in 6 to 8 months - meaning writing the manuscript and taking all the photos. The rest is mostly on the publisher's end - edits, design, etc. Once all the recipes are written and tested, we do long photoshoot days and try to make and shoot at least ten per day to get those final photos. ​ ​ ​ How do you do it with two kids and a third on the way!? This might be my number one question I get from you guys!! I definitely thrive when I have more work. My dad has always told me "the more you have to do, the more you get done!" It's so true. I am a pro at batching my work and am very efficient now that I have kids. And of course, I have help all around - with work, with the kids - it's the only way I can work the hours I do. My team is the best and of course, this means that there are people around to enjoy all of the food we make so nothing goes to waste. ​ I hope you got all your questions answered!! You can always hit reply if there's something else on your mind. I love sharing everything with you guys. Most of all, THANK YOU and I can't wait for you to get your hands on Everyday Dinners May 4!! ​ ​ Thank you!​ ​ Jessica Merchant founder of How Sweet Eats​ ​ ​ ​ ​Unsubscribe | Update your profile | 113 Cherry St #92768, Seattle, WA, 98104-2205 ​ ​