Dishing Podcast

Vanessa Mota is the founder of My Dominican Kitchen, a bilingual platform that helps busy parents put together tasty, traditional Dominican and Latin-inspired meals.

Vanessa is passionate about creating quick and easy versions of the recipes she grew up eating. She loves to share them with those who want to cook meals filled with Latin flavors but that don’t take a ton of time to prepare.

It is her mission to show you how to make great, flavorful dishes at home without spending the entire day in the kitchen.

Husband and wife Eric and Shanna Jones are the creative team behind the Dude That Cookz food blog.

Eric Jones is a Louisiana native and self-taught home cook. He shares Southern and home style recipes using simple, and approachable ingredients.

Shanna was born and raised in Houston. She focuses on her passion for baking and food photography.

The couple's first cookbook, Healthier Southern Cooking, is scheduled for release on February 15, 2022.

JinJoo Lee is a passionate advocate and resource for Korean cooking through her food blog, Kimchimari.

JinJoo has a PhD in Computer Science and was a computer engineer for 15 years before starting her Korean recipe site Kimchimari in 2011.

JinJoo has been blogging full time since 2015. She started blogging at the encouragement of her only daughter when she was going off to college and wanted her mom to share recipes of Korean food she knew she would be missing at school.

JinJoo has always loved cooking and learning. She has taken a Culinary Techniques class from the French Culinary Institute, a class in Kimchi and Fermentation, and a two-month Korean dessert class from SookMyung Women's University Korean Food Institute, where she is also a Food Stylist Program graduate.

JinJoo helps people get acquainted with Korean cooking by providing extra information on her website such as how-to's on making Gochujang, how to ripen Kimchi properly, the differences between Korean and US cuts of beef and pork, and more. It is her dream to write a Korean cookbook that will not only curate good recipes, but will also serve as a solid foundation for anyone who wants to learn about Korean cooking.

Maria Doss is the recipe creator, photographer, and writer behind Kitchen at Hoskins.

Maria began her food blog Kitchen At Hoskins in 2016 to share easy baking, gluten free, air fryer, and instant pot recipes that are family friendly and loaded with flavor. 
 Born and raised in southern India, today she lives in California with her husband, two kids, and a dog.

Maria loves to create fusion recipes with innovative techniques. She is obsessed with eating healthy but loves to indulge in the occasional decadent treat.

Amy Estes is the owner of Pinch Me Good, a food blog where she shares easy, healthy-inspired, feel good recipes that anyone can make and everyone will love and want to eat.

Amy is an experienced home cook who is obsessed with eating healthy food but who also loves a good brownie. As she says on her site, "life without dessert does not work for me"!

She started her blog, Pinch Me Good, in 2017. Its primary recipes are focused on produce-inspired meals, snacks, desserts, and more. Amy's goal is to bring readers delicious yet very easy and simple recipes that they can make to feel their best everyday.

Amy is also a certified nutrition coach.

Pina Bresciani began her eponymous food and culture blog in 2015, focusing on authentic Italian cooking with a west coast contemporary twist. Since then, she has steadily grown her following and her audience engagement each year.

Pina was born in Canada, but grew up in Canada and Italy, where she spent childhood summers in her mom's hometown of Sperlonga. Deeply steeped in Italian food, language, and culture, Pina's philosophy is centered around creating content that comes from the heart, with an aim to inspire her followers to try her recipes and share them with their friends and family.

In addition to her growing recipe and lifestyle site, Pina has a well-established Instagram presence. She provides her followers with amazing food ideas intertwined with a personal touch through sharing background stories about her recipes, her family, and her favorite spots in Italy.

Pina has been featured in major publications such as Buzzfeed and Popsugar. Many of her followers have written her to express gratitude that they could connect with her recipes and learn more about Italian cooking.

Pina lives with her husband, Ben, in Vancouver.

Jeff Hawley is founder of HashtagJeff, where he and his team share a passion for developing tools to make SEO, digital content creation, and digital content management more successful for online publishers.

Jeff has always been a free spirit. He realized early in life that he didn’t like to be told what to do without understanding why. That didn’t always go over well with a father in the military.

As a kid, Jeff’s self-determination translated to an entrepreneurial mindset. He liked working for himself, and he was always looking for different ways to make money. By the time he went to college, he still didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted to own his own business. During his final year, he decided to learn as much as he could about digital marketing because he felt it would serve him no matter what business he pursued.

Little did he know his future business would be digital marketing itself.

Following college, Jeff worked for himself almost exclusively. He founded a small SEO agency that was acquired by a much larger agency, where he continued working for a few years to get experience with big businesses. In order to become as much of an expert in digital marketing as possible, he also joined a large auto dealership for a short time to gain experience with the paid side of search engine marketing.

When Jeff started working with bloggers between 2016 and 2017, he quickly realized they were his tribe. Within a few months of auditing a number of lifestyle and food blogs, he began making plans to go out on his own again.

Today, Jeff focuses 100% on digital publishers who primarily monetize from online traffic. They consist of food, DIY, travel, finance, and general lifestyle websites. Jeff performs site audits and teaches site owners and their teams how to incorporate SEO into their processes to increase site visibility and revenue.

Jeff prides himself on making SEO more approachable for his clients.

Mirlene and AJ love to create delicious Haitian foods and international dishes they’ve enjoyed from other parts of the world. Their two-fold goals are to introduce their followers to Haitian recipes and to show how Haitian dishes can be used as part of other international cuisines.

Both were born in Haiti, and they completed all of their schooling in the United States, where they have been blessed with careers that allow them stability and growth. But Mirlene’s dream and passion is to be at home in the kitchen, in her “own world,” sharing her creativity.

This works out well for AJ, who loves to eat!

Mirlene and AJ are avid coffee drinkers and foodies. They are also proud parents to four beautiful souls (one of whom is four-legged).

Christina Shoemaker is the creator of The Whole Cook, a food blog that focuses on quick easy meals for busy weeknights.

Christina’s obsession with food started from the moment she was born. Or so she imagines. She never misses a meal and spends an inordinate amount of time fantasizing about the next one. As a mom of two, she understands the desire to feed your family well without spending hours in the kitchen. It’s her mission to show that it can be done.

Christina originally started sharing her family’s meals on Instagram without knowing whether there was an audience for them. Turns out there was! She then launched the website thewholecook.com as a place to publish her recipes. This food journey has since turned into a full-time job that she is immensely grateful for. Every day she is honored to share her passion for cooking with her community.

At The Whole Cook you’ll find lots of healthy recipes for the whole family. Christina's recipes feature whole foods which means you’ll see fresh ingredients, no ingredients you can’t pronounce or that aren’t actually real food, and very little sugar.

Christina is also the author of the Clean Paleo One-Pot Meals cookbook, which includes 100 one pot/pan meals that can be made in about 30 minutes.

Monica Lensink is the founder, recipe writer, and photographer behind Nourish and Fete, a website with fresh, fast, everyday recipes tailored for home cooks and busy families.

Monica is a former diplomat and intelligence analyst who began blogging as a hobby in 2016. As her career evolved and her family grew, Monica transitioned her website from a casual "mom blog" to its present focus on food -- and got more serious about making it a professional source of income.

The recipes at Nourish and Fete are designed for home cooks who value convenience and time, yet still want to create high-quality meals and love making things from scratch. One of Monica's core beliefs is that home cooking can be easy and rewarding, despite or even because of the crazy pace of modern life. Her goal for Nourish and Fete is to be a resource and inspiration for readers to eat well and celebrate the everyday.

Born and raised near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Monica currently lives outside of Washington, DC, with her husband, two young children, and their beloved dog, Cookie. Her two grown step-children live nearby and are pescatarians, which explains the growing collection of plant-based and seafood recipes on her site.