About Me

Originally started in 2015, Elle Jay at Home was a way for me to share food with loved ones who weren’t able to be in my kitchen. Now in 2020, this blog is my way of building a community of food lovers.

It doesn’t matter if you’re new to the kitchen or if you have a culinary degree, I want you here. I want you to comment, teach me what you know, and learn from each other. Together, I want to set a virtual table where we can all enjoy a good recipe.

You Should Be Here

If you love to cook, or if you just love watching cooking videos, this is for you. The recipes have been vetted by my kind-but-critical husband. I mean, he literally paused the other night to say, “Oh, I meant to tell you… I think the blondies had too much sugar and oil and not enough flour.” Thanks, baby.

So, on top of knowing that the recipes I have for you are tested and family-approved, know that I want to hear from you. This is about you, my friend.

Each post has tips on how to get the most out of the recipe, and some personal stories along the way. So, I want you to tell me how the tips worked for you, and I want you to share your life. Join my table!

The first thing you can do is Subscribe. I don’t spam. It’s just a little email every week to let you know when new posts go up. As I grow this business, I plan to let my subscribers in on freebies and fun newsletters.

Feel free to message me and tell me what you want to see in the future, either as a recipe or from the email list.

Why I Started Blogging in the First Place

My husband had finally complained long and hard enough that I couldn’t replicate something delicious a couple of weeks later.

“What do you mean you didn’t write down the recipe?!”

We had just moved in with my parents, temporarily. Hubs had lost his job, and we needed to get our bearings. One morning, I had plundered Mom’s pantry and come away with what I was calling a Warming Spice Coffee Cake. He took one bite and looked at me. It was a look I was becoming very familiar with. Write it down, woman!

So, I backtracked. I scribbled down the ingredients and the approximate measurements. I took a couple of semi-attractive photos of a half-empty cake pan. Then, I sat down at the computer and started a blog.

Where Does “Elle Jay at Home” Come From?

I called my blog “Elle Jay at Home,” and it didn’t take much thought to come up with that. My nickname growing up was LJ, which is just my initials. In college, I decided that if I ever made it to starting my own fashion line, I would call it Elle Jay.

So, holding on to the hope that I might still do that, I decided to clarify that this site was me “at home.” It also left the possibility open for my husband to volunteer gardening advice or DIY instructions. And, I still hope that Elle Jay at Home might expand into home gardening someday soon.

Fast Forward to 2019

Wait, so what changed? This year, I lost my job. It seemed like as good a time as any to think about what I actually wanted to do for work. Taking stock of what my dream job would entail led me to the realization that I want to be my own boss, live in my kitchen, and write about the delicious (or not so delicious) outcomes of my experiments. It’s crazy, but why not try?

So, here I am. My name is Laura. I live in Nashville with my husband, daughter, and cattle dog. My kitchen is almost never clean, and someone in this house is always hungry. It’s the best. I mean, yeah, who wouldn’t love to have perpetually clean counters? But good food doesn’t get made without a mess. I just have to remember…

It’s an adventure.