Getting Farm Curious with Molly Yeh

Hello Sunshine, Hey bestie is today on the bright Side. We're headed to the farm. Y'all Food Network star and cokebook author Molly Ye is here to talk family recipes, go to sweet Halloween treats, and she's answering all the questions you've wanted to know about life on a farm. It's Monday, October twenty First, I'm Simone Boyce.

I'm Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello Sunshine, a daily show where we come together to share women stories, to laugh, learn and brighten your day.

On my Mind Monday is brought to you by missus Meyer's Clean Day, inspired by the goodness of the garden.

Happy on my Mind Monday, Simon.

Happy on my Mind Monday. What's on your mind this week?

Danielle Okay, I was scrolling Instagram like I do every night, Don't tell my Mom, and I came across this post by Elvest, which is an account that I love and learn a lot from. It was started by Sally Krawchek, who's a businesswoman and an advocate for women's financial empowerment, and she co founded Elvest, which is basically a digital investment platform designed specifically for women to talk about money and to close the gender investment gap. So everything on

And all the comments were, of course about money.

Oh you know, I am all about this idea, are you?

Yeah, of course I'm done with waiting as a philosophy, as a concept, as a life approach.

I just don't want to wait anymore. Life is too short.

I get these reminders all the time of just how precious and fragile and short life is. Yeah, why are we waiting till the end of our lives to do the things that we want to do?

It's really interesting you say that, because I saw this post and then got interested and curious about this idea, and I wanted to see if this was a one off thing or if young women were really talking about this and considering it. And I came across this story in the Wall Street Journal that doubles down on the idea. So the article explored how workers are choosing to spread their retirement over the course of their careers rather than saving it all for one big break at the end.

Okay, I do like the sound of this, but I also think that there's some financial risk involved, because there's a reason why we do save our money for the end of our lives. When we're not working, we're going to need that money. Did you find anyone talking about that aspect of this? Yeah, the comment section was a lot having to do with that. I think millennials in

But two things come to mind for me.

One is I have a mentor who used to say to me, if you don't plant roots when you're young, you tip over when you're older. And it's hard to think about that because you want the experience, you want the bag, whatever it is. But if you don't plant those roots when you're young, you do tip over. You have to plan. On the other hand, I think my father is a very wise person, and I ask him a lot of questions about what he would do differently, regrets, etc. And he said to me the other day he had

I'll do this.

And he said he didn't have enough experiences or fun along the way. He waited too long. It's a really weird balancing act. I don't quite know the answer. It's a really great reflection that your dad shared. I definitely do not want to end up at the end of my life with that regret, the regret of not experiencing enough or not traveling enough. I do try to do it some now, but I honestly think I could lean into it even more, like.

You would take more trips with your kids or alone.

I don't think my kids are old enough to bring along. They're just they're really a handful at this stage. But I think that's going to change in short order. You know. I do think that is a real consideration, and there are real reasons, valid reasons why people can't travel all the time or experience things. There's work, there's responsibilities. If you're co parenting, that's something to consider as well. Yeah, all in all, I really like the sound of this.

I was also wondering like this This girl took a six month mini retirement, as she called it, and I'm like, maybe you could just take like.

A two week break and still keep your job.

That's a vacation, Danielle, have you ever? Have you ever heard of one?

You don't really take them.

You need to take them, I know, but I'm just thinking, like, maybe there's a way to do both.

I don't know.

It feels I have had, you know, like in what we do, we're not always fully employed on a day to day basis, and so I have had times where I've been more free and I just feel anxious. I don't know if I could like go hike Mount Kilimanjaro.

Oh no, Danielle, this is no.

You can't be anxious while you're on your sabbatical, on your many retirement.

You gotta just be present.

I think the solution is being present, because if you're anxious, that means you're thinking about either the past or the future.

Yeah, I guess, I don't know. I still don't know how I feel about this.

I'm actually really curious what the bright side besties feel.

I wish we could do a poll.

Well why not, I mean, we'd love to hear what you think, hit us up on Instagram at Hello Sunshine, and on TikTok at the bright Side Pod.

One more thing I want to add.

I've found that the best time to take extended breaks from life are whenever you're one chapter and starting a new one. So if you're coming to the end of a job contract, build in you a three month mini retirement so that you can really soak up life before you get involved in that next position.

Yeah, transition phases are good. That's a good call.

Well, our guest today knows a little something about stepping away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. I'm talking about The Food Network's Molly. Ye See, Molly always thought she'd be a classical percussionist. Her craft even took her all the way to Juilliard. But between the intense rehearsals and training there, she found her true love food blogging and recipe creation. And she also found her romantic

Yeah, a beat farm.

This is such a like, this is such a different path. So excited to hear this story.

I feel like if this or me, it would be like an episode of the Simple Life. I'm so curious to see where Molly's journey took her.

Well, doesn't it sound like a romantic comedy. I mean it practically just writes itself.

Yes.

She went on to become the host of the Food Network series Girl Meets Farm, which follows Molly as she embraces her life in the country and makes dishes inspired by her Chinese and Jewish heritage. And now Molly and her husband co own a cafe in East Grand Forks, Minnesota called Bernie's.

Plus. She's also a New York Times best selling author.

Wow, I can't wait to hear about all of this. And I'm bummed I missed this conversation, As you said, Simone, I was on a vacation. But I know it's going to be a treat no pun intended.

After the break my conversation with Molly. Ye, welcome to the bright Side, Mollie.

Thank you, Molly Gosh, what a.

First for us. You're our first guest who lives on an actual farm. So this is a huge rail.

Oh I'm honored.

Yeah, this is big, and we are really farm curious on this show. I think a lot of city dwellers are, so tell us everything. What does a typical day on your family's bet farm look like?

I was once farm curious myself. I still am farm curious myself, because even after almost thirteen years of living here, I feel like I don't even know the tip of the iceberg because every day it's different, and my husband's job is dictated by the weather or the wheat markets or tractor breakdowns. How like the seeds are growing, which again it's all dependent on the weather.

So it's just it's always changing.

No two days are alike, and I have to make something that can sit for a while for dinner. So there's a lot of soups and a lot of just like rice that can stay in the rice cooker, because who really knows if he's going to be in in five minutes or if he's going to be in an hour, And am I going to have to give the kids snacks so that they don't totally starve by the time he gets in. We're in between wheat harvest and beat harvest, which is a little bit of a caulmb before the storm.

What are the qualities that a good farmer has to have?

So much patience nimbleness, I mean the ability to kind of change what you're doing at the last moment, and that might mean canceling a family vacation in the middle of the summer because a bug has decided to eat your crops, or this summer there were a lot of groundhogs that all of a sudden Nick had to become an expert at getting rid of groundhogs because they were eating his beets. Yeah, it's ground talk.

Control.

It's learning about soil preservation so that the soil will be healthy for generations to come. It's knowing how to weld and fix a tractor, and being able to predict the weather. I mean, nobody is better at predicting the

Okay, Molly, I feel like we have to rewind a bit because you live on a beat farm now. But this is such a surprise twist and you're happily ever after. I mean, you grew up in Chicago, you moved to New York to study percussion at Juilliard. Tell me what happened next.

I fell in love with food when I moved to New York, like kind of discovered restaurants there, and food trucks were really big when I lived in New York. And Okay, so I played classical percussion, and percussion is

So I would leave rehearsal and.

Go downtown, go to go you know, food truck chasing, and try all these new things. And that was giving me so much creative fulfillment, and sometimes it was giving me more creative fulfillment than playing music was. So I kind of had to come to this realization of what is truly fulfilling me creatively and.

Is it the food? Is the music?

I didn't know when I graduated, And so when I graduated, I decided to stay in New York and pursue both and be a freelance musician and also take some little food writing gigs that I was starting to get.

And around that time I started dating Nick.

He was also a student at Juilliard, and at one point we both sort of realized that we really wanted to be back near our families in the Midwest, and he mentioned, Oh, my family has this farm in northern Minnesota, and I said, yes, let's go there. It is easy, yes for you, Yes, yes, it was why because at that point I was ready to be not living in a city anymore. I had moved out to Brooklyn, and I had this great, big, beautiful kitchen, big by New

Then, so you're saying Brooklyn is a gateway drug to farms one hundred percent, right, that's the pipeline, the Brooklyn to farm pipeline.

I mean usually it's like Brooklyn to Hudson Valley, right exactly.

Yeah, you just hop the title of zip codes.

Yeah, War States kept driving the minivan a little.

Bit further west.

Okay, can I be nosy about the Juilliard chapter for just a minute, because I wonder if our timing overlapped. I worked as a reporter on Fox five News in New York, and I actually did a lot of stories at Juilliard. I was a theater kid, my mom was an actor, and like from the outside looking in, I always had this fascination about Juilliard and I felt like whenever I went there, it was like pulling back the curtains at ODZ because it is the most prestigious performing

No, I love it at you because it's it's exactly that terrifying, Is it really?

Yes? I mean it's I will say it's a lot.

Of extremes because you have people who are just at the top of their game and they're all in and they they don't do anything else other than pole in the aircraft.

And then you have those other people that work hard and also play hard.

And I fell into that category.

And then Nick was more of like the do nothing except trombone and don't even sleep and play trombone for twenty four hours.

A day, like Whiplash, like that movie Whiplash. That's what it's. That's the mental image I have in my mind.

So in with Blash, there are a couple of scenes where Miles Teller gets singled out for playing the wrong thing in you know, his band that he's playing with, and that is the most terrifying feeling.

And I almost had to turn Whiplash off because.

You do not want to be singled out in front of the orchestra for playing the wrong thing.

That's terrifying. There were a lot of terrifying moments.

There are a lot of creatively fulfilling, satisfying moments. And I also made some of my nearest and dearer's closest friends there. Yeah, but it was intense. If you didn't bring your a game one day, you really felt it.

And so that taught me a lot of things that I use now.

Teaching how to perform under pressure was just one of the biggest things that I could have learned there, And so that was that was huge. And just becoming comfortable with confronting your weaknesses, that was.

Always fun, always fun, my favorite, the best.

I recommend weakness training. We love it.

Yes, you actually attended Juilliard with a truly elite class. Danielle Brooks, John Batis, Philip Asu, Hannah Nielman, who we all know as Ballerina farm Don't you think it's a little wild that you both ended up choosing the farm life?

So wild?

And I just I love her. I love her bacon. Their bacon is so good.

Oh, I gotta try it. I haven't tried it yet.

I mean, all those people that you just named are are so freaking sweet and so good at what they do you just have to love them, and so it is incredible to see them achieving these incredible things. Because Yeah, when Daniel Brooks was on Oranges, the New Black I Soccer character, and I was like, that is so authentic and that is.

Who she is in real life.

She is that good, ubly, wonderful human and just made me love for even more.

Did you grapple at all with mourning the sunk costs of your music career, like investing so much time into being a classical percussionist only to make this hard pivot and walk away from it.

No, Because I truly did feel like, and I still feel like this way, that the skills in the training that I did when I was a musician are completely transferable to cooking food, creating recipes and performing on camera cooking food for people.

There are so.

Many skills that I still use today that just yeah, I wouldn't have honed if I was in a musician.

You are such a like emblematic success story when it comes to nonlinear careers.

Thanks.

I just think it's so cool that, like, you thought you were going to do this one thing and you end up becoming wildly successful at this other thing that takes you like so far away, both physically and just figuratively away from that initial dream.

For me, it's all about the creativity and finding what is creatively satisfying.

It's the same feeling that I get playing a.

Piece of music that I'm really into, as I get from creating a cake recipe that I'm very proud of. It's not completely separate in my brain. It's that same sort of feeling that I'm trying to achieve. At the end of the day, if you fail, you still have hopefully and edible batchup cookies. Another thing, if you fail, you hit some wrong notes and you're.

Like, what do I have to shell for this? And you're hungry. You hit the wrong notes and you're still hungry. That's the problem.

So you and Nick, your boyfriend at the time, you both leave New York. You move back to his family's farm, where Nick is a fifth generation beat farmer. I have this idea of farm life being very demanding but also very tranquil.

Is that true?

Like, how do you think being on the farm changes your brain?

You just hit it on the nose, really, because yes, because you go outside and you look around and you see land.

To the end of the horizon. You see the huge sky.

There is never any traffic where we live, and it's it is tranquil. But at the same time there's Nick trying to harvest his fields before the snow falls, and there is a time crunch for that. And so it is this interesting sort of paradox that happens on a daily basis. And if I ever say, oh, living out here is peaceful, Nick will correct me it's not. And but I think it just it. It's rejuvenating and it's energizing for me. It's not that way for a lot

And that's okay.

And for me, if I would have tried moving here even five ten years earlier, it could have been a very different story.

But I was ready for this energy, shall we.

Say, because it I look at this as my own practice room. Of course, in the city, it was a little four foot by four foot room that I would stand in all day and practice and xylophone. Here it's this big farm where I stand in all day and practice cake recipes. But if you want there to be no distractions, there are no distractions.

We read that your husband promised you that this new life that he was bringing you into would be exactly like Gilmore Girls. Did it end up being true?

Yep, Oh yeah, yeah, it's totally gilmirls.

It's funny.

I just was watching gil Mere Girls yesterday when I was making a plumcake.

It's a lot colder than Gilmar Girls.

There's a lot more snow, but this small town energy is certainly there.

This life that you're living now. I kind of threw out that term farm curious as a joke, but I think there's something deeper behind it. I think a lot of people are either farm curious or small town curious after the pandemic. You know, people who always thought they would live in big urban city centers. How has being part of the fabric of a small town changed you.

It feels like you're always surrounded by family. Sometimes I literally am, because my husband's family is connected by blood to like half of this town.

But there's always somebody that you know around.

There's always somebody to the other day, I was lifting my two year old out of the grocery cart and getting her in the car and trying to get the cart back into the little trolley and this couple was walking by and they said, Oh, we'll take this cart for you, don't worry about it. And oh, by the way, our son went to school with your sister in law,

I think one of the reasons why your show has been so successful is because you have such a unique voice as the daughter of a Chinese father and a Jewish mom. If you could only communicate with a stranger, someone you were meeting for the first time using recipes, what's the one family recipe that you would show them that defined your childhood?

Black sesame, bobka hmm, because black sesame is one of my favorite flavors, and that's something that's so nostalgic for me whenever we would go out for Chinese food, and it's such a huge dessert flavor in Chinese food. And then bobka, which is from my Jewish side, and.

It comes together in a fun, swirly loaf.

And I feel like black sesame was meant to be bobkaized. If that's a part, it's a mashup that really works on a flavor level, on a texture level, and it shows that part of me that is so near and dear, which is my heritage.

Recipes are they're almost like these historical artifacts in a sense because there's such a story behind them. When I think of the recipe that defined my childhood, it's my mom's apple cobbler, And I just recently discovered that there

Is a recipe hand written on a milk card, it's handwritten. Recipes teams better.

They do, You're right. Why is that is that? Because they've been perfected over the course of years, there's that lung in there.

And I mean, I think if you're talking about the story, if your mom is telling you about what she had to do to get this cobbler recipe as your Heck, yeah, it's gonna taste better for.

Sure because you know that there was some elbow grease that went into it. Yes, it's time for another quick break. We'll be right back, and we're back with Food Network star and cookbook author Molly Yay. So earlier you mentioned how the weather and the seasons are so integral to life on the farm in Minnesota, fall is here. The seasons are changing all around us. Are you a fall girly?

One hundred million percent? I have been waiting for sweater weather. Sweaters and soups are my happy place.

So take me into like the Minnesota food world during this time of year. What are some of your favorite food related traditions.

We're in such a great season right now because tomatoes and zucchini and corn are kind of coming to it and so I'm getting sick of fresh tomatoes just at the right time. And my squash craving is starting to really grow and it can see my squash growing in the garden, so it's almost squash soup season.

As soon as the weather cools down, we're going to be ready to roll.

But for Minnesota, Minnesota can grow anything and everything. The only parameters that Minnesota really has is the short length of the growing season. There's such great soil, really great conditions. Mine is a pretty bad, sad garden. Everybody has a rhubarb patch, a lot of people have apple trees. So many things grow here, which I think kind of gets forgotten when you think of all the snow that also

There's a reason that pickles are so big here because you.

Know, before tons of refrigeration and processed food and shipping in fresh vegetables, people got their nutrients through pickling their vegetables from the garden. So I really love leaning into the pickle scene here and getting in my kimchi and sauerkraut in the winter when so much it's so good.

I love it.

But yeah, I love eating with the season too, because they are so defined and things taste so much better.

When you just feel, you feel better.

It just feels correct to be craving squatched right now.

Okay, we've got Thanksgiving coming up.

I don't know about you, Molly, but when I became a mom and I started the holidays, I felt completely overwhelmed and bamboozled. I was like, my mom did this every year, multiple times a year. Like, the amount of work and preparation that goes into it is mind blowing. So please, if you have any hacks that you can share to help your girl out, please let me know.

Okay, hold on, I was just thinking about this amount. Do you know what I just realized just yesterday. Our moms they did it seemingly so easily when we were growing.

Up holiday kids. They're three and four.

Okay, so you don't remember your holidays from when you were three and four, right, You remember your holidays from probably when you were ten, eleven, twelve. So like, imagine how much more comfortable you're going to be hosting. Yeah, in five, six, seven, eight years, we remember the version of our moms after they had gotten ten years of experience hosting under their.

Belt and past the toddler phase.

Yes, because after the toddler phase, we won't have little kids hanging onto our knees, while we're trying to chop onions. Yeah, or like kids climbing up onto places high places where they shouldn't be and we have to drop everything that we're doing every five minutes to go and peel them off of the piano.

One day, they're going to be so much more independent.

They might be able to help us out in the kitchen, or they might be occupied with their other things.

I think at this point, I'm all about lists.

Yeah, I'm all about prepping stuff in advance, so I take full advantage of freezer space. Like I'm starting off three days in advance, just doing little bits here and there, and then knowing that they'll be fine in the refrigerator or the freezer until the big day.

Molly, before we let you go, I have to ask you about this dream of yours that I've read about that you want to become a summer camp counselor at your summer camp. I too, am obsessed with summer camp. I had such a magical experience at summer camp. I just love everything about camp. Like I've thrown my kids camp themed birthday parties. My kids room is camp themed. I just I love it.

I want to visit that's please so fun.

Everything about it, except for the bucks, everything about it is the best.

And so when my kids are old enough to.

Go to summer camp, we've been actually preparing by watching The Parent Trap.

Oh we just watched it. We just watched it the other day, Lindsay Lohan or oh Linda, of course. Yeah, it's so good. But it's perfect a one hundred percent.

It so holds up beautifully, And now that my girls are into it, I'm over the moon.

So as soon as they're old enough for summer camp.

I am applying to become any sort of counselor or teacher that they have room.

This sounds great.

You know. Another option is they do have family camps now, which this is something that I want to do where you can go as a family to a camp, like when they're not hosting a bunch of kids and you just get to like be with your family there and hop on the blob and go on the lake. I want to do that the blob. Yes, the plot. That's so fun, Mollie. This has been so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us on the bride side.

This is so much fun. Thank you so much. I'm honored.

Mollie Ya is the host of the Food Networks Girl Meets Farm, a New York Times best selling author and the owner of Bernie's, a cafe in East Grand Forks, Minnesota.

Her new book, Sweet Farm, is out next March.

That's it for today's show.

Tomorrow, we're talking all about Reese's Book Clubs Lit Up Program, a fellowship that uplifts and supports unpublished and underrepresented.

Right now, we're joined by mentor Laura.

Taylor Nami and mentee Chatham Greenfield to talk all about the program and its impact.

Join the conversation using hashtag the bright Side and connect with us on social media at Hello Sunshine on Instagram and at the bright Side Pod on TikTok oh, and feel free to tag us at Simone Boye and at Danielle Robe.

Listen and follow The bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

See you tomorrow, folks, Keep looking on the bright side.