Kristin and Kate welcome the food director of Real Simple, Jenna Helwig, to discuss her newsletter, The Cookbookery Collective, and her thoughts on the current cookbook landscape. Jenna shares her career path, why she fell in love with food and how she paired writing cookbooks with working as a private chef. She talks about covering food at Real Simple, the role magazines play in our current food media climate and her thoughts on building a social media presence and how that led to starting her newsletter. After talking about assembling the massive list of Fall 2025 titles she shares some thoughts on marketing copy, subtitles, influencer cookbooks and the upcoming trends she's excited (or not so excited) to see. Finally she extends some advice and reveals her level of interest in writing another book.

Hosts: Kate Leahy + Molly Stevens + Kristin Donnelly + Andrea Nguyen

Editor: Abby Cerquitella
 

Mentions

Jenna Helwig

• Website
• Cookbookery Collective Substack
• Fall 2025 Cookbook list

Real Simple Magazine

Join The Local Palate Cookbook Club

Visit the Everything Cookbooks Bookshop to purchase a copy of the books mentioned in the show

• Bare Minimum Dinners by Jenna Helwig
• Baby-Led Feeding by Jenna Helwig
• Baking and the Meaning of Life by Helen Goh
• Dorie's Anytime Cakes by Dorie Greenspan
• Six Seasons of Pasta by Josh McFadden
• Recipes from the American South by Michael Twitty
• Good Things by Samin Nosrat
• Hot Date by Rawaan Alkhatib 
• Chesnok by Polina Chesnakova