Mastermind for Food Writers

What's Happening This Week

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 06:02:14 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

We have our first guest speaker for our Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacfic monthly meeting.

I am delighted to announce that Felicity Spector, a British journalist, author of the book Bread and War and writer of a Substack publication Flour Power, will be joining us to talk about her book and about other things related to food in Ukraine.

DATE: June 17: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by Liza Debevec
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6dkmrvP4RFeYBZzv3q9loA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

I hope to see many of you in the meeting and if you can’t attend due to the time zone or other commitments, I will do my best to record the meeting and share the recording in a follow up post.

—

The Visual Language of Food Photography

In last week’s mastermind meeting, , Shelly Waldman, and I talked about how light, shadow, color, texture, styling, composition, and human elements can shape the story a photo tells.

Unfortunately, there was a technical glitch that prevented the meeting from being recorded.

The good news is that the three of us are teaching this same class for the Write Up Community later this month. So, if you missed the meeting today, I hope you’ll join us for this FREE class on June 30.

FREE: Intro to the Visual Language of Food Photography
This session is designed for food writers and recipe developers who want a deeper understanding about how to control the look and feel of their photos. You’ll learn how elements like lighting direction, styling, perspective, and the human element can influence the feeling of a photo and help communicate your brand, your recipe, and your story.

Visual Language of Food Photography

Two Class Recordings Available Now

SEO: Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

This recording includes the first 90-minute teaching session of our two-session course, SEO: Build a Bridge From Your Work to Your Readers. In this class, Rebecca Blackwell helps food writers understand SEO not as a technical burden or a game to be won, but as a practical way to help the right readers find your recipes, stories, newsletters, and posts. You’ll learn what SEO means now, how AI is changing discoverability, why human-centered content matters more than ever, and how to make small, strategic choices that help your work travel farther and keep working for you over time.

*The recording comes with a 28 page workbook to guide you through creating your personalized SEO strategy.

SEO for Food Writers

Creative Recipe Writing: How to Write Recipes with Voice, Humor, and Story

This recording includes the first 90-minute teaching session of our two-session course. In this class, we teach the techniques of creative writing that can infuse recipes with personality, point of view, humor, and story. We talk about why creative recipe writing matters more than ever in a crowded publishing landscape, how storytelling can deepen a reader’s connection to your work, and what it looks like to bend the traditional recipe form without losing clarity or usefulness.

Through specific examples from cookbooks, newsletters, and food media, this session offers practical ideas for bringing more of your humanity to the page and writing recipes that readers remember.

Creative Recipe Writing

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

Rebecca Blackwell is a writer, recipe developer and food photographer who publishes two recipe websites and a Substack newsletter. Her and her husband are nomads without a home base but with many modes of transportation, namely an RV, a motorcycle, and a sailboat. Rebecca write recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure.

Liza Debevec is a social anthropologist, African studies specialist, and career/life coach. She writes two Substack publications that bring together her love of stories, food, languages, and personal growth. Originally from Slovenia, Liza now lives in Lisbon, Portugal, after many years in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and other corners of the world. Her work is inspired by the ways people connect through meals, words, and meaningful conversations.

Next Week's Mastermind Meeting: Announcing a Special Guest

Liza Debevec — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 13:30:23 GMT

This month has been a very active one for the Mastermind group, as we’ve already had the first meeting of the Food Readers Book Club (and what a wonderful discussion it was) and the US time zone meeting. has been hosting a number of free workshops and now her and I have our paid two-part workshop on Creating a Value-Led Brand starting tomorrow, Friday, June 12th. You can still register by checking out the information in this post:

Mastermind for Food Writers

Everything Has a Shelf Life, Even Your Business

I have what might be an unpopular opinion: All relationships have a shelf life…

12 days ago · 25 likes · 15 comments · Rebecca Blackwell

This current post, however, is meant to promote another special event. We have our first guest speaker for our Europe, Africa and Asia-Pacfic monthly meeting.

I am delighted to announce that , a British journalist, author of the book Bread and War and writer of a Substack publication Flour Power, will be joining us to talk about her book and about other things related to food in Ukraine.

Felicity with her book (Source: Substack)

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

Meeting topic: Guest Speaker: Felicity Spector - Food and War in Ukraine followed by a Q7A and general discussion

DATE: June 17: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by Liza Debevec
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6dkmrvP4RFeYBZzv3q9loA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

I hope to see many of you in the meeting and if you can’t attend due to the time zone or other commitments, I will do my best to record the meeting and share the recording in a follow up post.

— Liza

Recording and Notes From The June 10 Meeting

Rebecca Blackwell — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 21:52:45 GMT

Hello everyone,

Thank you to all of you who were able to join us for this week’s Mastermind Meeting. If you weren’t able to be there, I have both good news and bad news.

Before we get to that, let’s start here…

In the meeting today, one of the things we talked about was understanding your brand and what you want to communicate in your images. This, of course, starts with you: who you are, what you like, what your message is, and how you want people to feel about your work.

This is a theme that has been coming up a lot for me lately. sent this article from to me this morning and it’s so good: Silence Is Not Violence. In the post, Adam lists his core values and what those values mean to him, then makes this point…

“You probably hold some of the same broad principles, but we may not be in lockstep on how to apply them. That’s to be expected. Most of our divides aren’t due to opposing values. They’re due to different views on how to live similar values.”

shared a vulnerable and powerful piece this week about overcoming despair, reclaiming creativity, and embracing the profound privilege of growing old. She writes…

“But I have learned that the path to any real peace starts with telling yourself the absolute truth. You have to be honest about what you actually want.”

And reminds us that the path forward is almost always filled with discomfort. It’s the discomfort that delivers the messages we most need to hear and our willingness to embrace it, to sit with it and try to understand it, determine the quality of the thing that comes after.

“get comfortable being uncomfortable with the goal of adaptation versus complacency towards the niggling feeling that the day to day is no longer working in your favor.”

Our values are the bedrock of our life, our thinking, our perspective, and our work. They can, at times, be in conflict with each other. And, they are the thing that attracts people to us. They come through in our writing, in our photos, and in our conversations.

In today’s Mastermind meeting, and I both shared stories of how, when we first started taking food photos, we tried to be something we are not. For both of us, there was a frustration… a feeling that the work we were producing didn’t quite fit somehow. Like we were trying to shove a round peg through a square hole.

It was only when we were able to embrace who we are and learn how to communicate that through light, shadow, and styling, that the discomfort eased.

But, acknowledging the discomfort and paying attention to it came first. It always comes first.

If this resonates with you, join Liza and me on Friday for this two-part workshop, Creating a Values-Led Brand.

Creating a Values-Led Brand

Then bring that work directly into your writing and your photography. And THAT is what we talked about in today’s Mastermind Meeting.

So, the bad news: There is no recording. I don’t fully understand what happened, but there was a technical glitch that prevented the meeting from being recorded. I’ve tried to recover it and have finally accepted that it’s a lost cause. 🤦🏻‍♀️

The good news: , Shelly Waldman, and I are teaching this same class for the Write Up Community later this month. So, if you missed the meeting today, I hope you’ll join us for this FREE class on June 30.

FREE: Intro to the Visual Language of Food Photography
This session is designed for food writers and recipe developers who want a deeper understanding about how to control the look and feel of their photos. You’ll learn how elements like lighting direction, styling, perspective, and the human element can influence the feeling of a photo and help communicate your brand, your recipe, and your story.

FREE: The Language of Food Photography

If you already know that you are ready to dive in to the full 2-part workshop, here’s where to find out more and register:

The Visual Language of Food Photography
This is a two-part workshop. The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:
How light and shadow create depth and texture
How color influences mood and emotional response
Styling choices that support your story and your brand
Composition, perspective, and visual flow
How incorporating human elements can make images feel inviting and alive

The Visual Language of Food Photography

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other Substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.
The Food Writers Business Lab is an online learning hub created specifically for food writers who want practical, affordable support for growing their businesses and expanding their reach.

About your meeting hosts

Rebecca Blackwell is a writer, recipe developer and food photographer who publishes two recipe websites and a Substack newsletter. She and her husband are nomads without a home base but with many modes of transportation, namely an RV, a motorcycle, and a sailboat. Rebecca writes recipes and stories for curious people who believe experiences are more important than things and who want more adventure.

What's Happening This Week

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 06:00:36 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

Creating a Values-Led Brand

Join and me THIS WEEK for a two-part workshop on what it means to create a values-led brand.

What if building your brand didn’t begin with strategy, visibility, or keeping up with everyone else, but with a clearer understanding of who you are and what actually matters to you?

For many food writers, branding can start to feel external and performative: the right bio, the right niche, the right content pillars, the right way to show up online. But the strongest brands are not built from the outside in. They are rooted in something deeper: your values, your strengths, your voice, your boundaries, and the kind of work you want to create over time.

In this two-part workshop, we’ll help food writers clarify the core values that shape who they are, how they work, and what they want their business to stand for. Together, we’ll explore both the personal qualities that are essential to your identity and the practical values that guide your long-term goals. Rather than treating values as abstract ideas, we’ll make them personal and actionable, so they can become a foundation for your brand and the impact you want to have on the world.

Creating a Values-Led Brand

June Mastermind meeting Dates and Registration

Two different meetings in two different time zones every month.

North American and Europe Meeting: Wednesday, June 10 at 11am EST.
Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific Meeting: Wednesday, June 17 at 8am GMT

Mastermind for Food Writers: North America & Europe

This month’s topic will be all about Food Photography. , Shelly Waldman, and I will explore how light, shadow, color, texture, styling, composition, and human elements can shape the story a photo tells.

Wednesday, June 10: 11am, New York (Eastern Standard Time)
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DwvkWKkOQC-zfj-qz5BLYg
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

Meeting topic: More info coming soon!

DATE: June 17: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6dkmrvP4RFeYBZzv3q9loA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

In case you missed it, there’s some good discussion happening around this article…

Two Class Recordings Available Now

SEO: Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

*The recording comes with a 28 page workbook to guide you through creating your personalized SEO strategy.

SEO for Food Writers

Creative Recipe Writing: How to Write Recipes with Voice, Humor, and Story

Through specific examples from cookbooks, newsletters, and food media, this session offers practical ideas for bringing more of your humanity to the page and writing recipes that readers remember.

Creative Recipe Writing

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

Everything Has a Shelf Life, Even Your Business

Rebecca Blackwell — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:01:10 GMT

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

I have what might be an unpopular opinion: All relationships have a shelf life.

When you reach the expiration date, one of two things has to happen. The relationship expires and you both move on. Or, the relationship becomes something new. Everything changes and either the relationship evolves with the people in it or it doesn’t and it’s over.

This opinion is based on my own 31-year marriage, which has changed and evolved many times over, on my experience with friendships, some of which have evolved and some that have expired, and on my observations of the relationships of others. Some relationships serve a purpose for a while, and then they don’t. They were beneficial and now they’re not. Years ago a friend of mine expressed regret over the “failure” of her 30-year marriage. I interrupted and suggested that she had a successful 30 year marriage that ended. Forever is not necessarily the marker of success.

This is what I mean about a shelf life. And I think it also applies to businesses. All businesses have a shelf life.

How do you know when you’ve reached the expiration date? Burnout.

I’m not going to suggest that burnout is the only clue that something is past its prime, or that reaching an expiration date is always the cause of burnout. But I will go so far as to say that 9 times out of 10 the two are inexorably linked.

And look. I’m not talking about those times when you’re exhausted. The kids aren’t sleeping, you’ve caught a cold, your spouse is out of town, your car broke down, you’re behind on ten thousand different deadlines and you’re flat out exhausted. That sucks, we’ve all been there, but a hard week, even a hard year, is not burnout.

Burnout is when you find yourself in a constant state of apathy, where motivation is not just out of reach, it’s out of sight. You feel frustrated and angry about things that are only minor speed bumps. You don’t care about the business that you used to love and no matter what you do, you can’t make yourself care. You might be depressed or anxious, or you might have an overwhelming urge to quit everything, sell everything, cash out your 401(k), and go live on a boat.

Years ago, when I was a freelance consultant and copywriter, I spent an entire afternoon cleaning the tops of the cabinets in our kitchen. The tops of the cabinets towered 12 feet off the ground. No one could see them and the accumulated dust had absolutely zero impact on our lives. I did this on an afternoon when I was up against a deadline to finish the copy for a client’s website. As I stared at the blinking cursor on my screen, suddenly the dust on the top of our kitchen cabinets seemed like it was the most important, most pressing, most urgent problem in my life. That’s how much I didn’t want to do the job I once leapt out of bed for. That was the day I faced the truth: I’d reached an expiration date and something had to give.

Most successful creators start with a passion to create.

They take the spark, the idea, the impulse, the passion, and turn it into something real and tangible. Where there once was only an idea, now there is a creation. Then, sometime after they’ve been creating for a while, they wonder if they could make a business from their art. They think, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could do this all the time and get paid for it?

And it IS wonderful… and also now it is their job. The lines between their life and their job become wonderfully and terribly blurred because the thing they love to do is now also the thing they have to do to pay the bills. Or, I should say, to almost pay the bills because, let’s face it, making a living as a creator is not an easy task.

So, now there is pressure, a lot of pressure, to make more money from the thing they used to do for free, because they loved it. They are working more than ever, or maybe just doing the thing they love more than ever? Except it feels like work. And suddenly they resent the thing they used to love the most.

So, what if this is you? Or, an even better question: What if you can see this becoming you?

If you relate, there are a couple of things I want to tell you. First of all, EVERYTHING has an expiration date. In other words, burnout is normal. There’s nothing wrong with you, there’s nothing wrong with your work.

But, how do you get back to loving the thing you used to love? Or how do you know when it’s just not a good fit any more?

In most cases, the answer comes back to values.

At one point, when you were doing the thing you love because you loved it, it was pure. It was YOU. It sprung forth from the things you care about the most, from the things that make you, you. It’s not just that the thing was aligned with your values, it’s that the thing was inseparable from your values.

And then, in your quest to build a business, things got a little off track. You followed the advice and examples of other creatives, thought leaders, business coaches, or gurus promising to show you the money. It might not have been bad advice. But it might not have all been aligned with your values.

Perhaps it feels like this: One day, you wake up and look around you and realize you’ve invested all your time and resources building a modest brick ranch-style home in the suburbs when what you’ve always longed for is a row house in the middle of a big city.

Or, perhaps it feels like this: You try, every single day, to light the burner on your gas range and it never, ever lights because there’s no oxygen in the room. The spark is there, but it won’t ignite no matter how many times you try.

The spark hasn’t gone away because it’s part of your DNA. It’s who you are. The problem is that something about the structure and makeup of your business is out of whack, out of alignment with who you are and what you care about the most. The business of doing the thing you love is robbing you of the thing you love.

So, the real question becomes this: What needs to change in order to create the best environment for your creativity, one that lights that spark and fans the flame?

Maybe the question is not how can I create a thriving business?
Maybe the question is how can I create a business that allows me to thrive?

Here’s an example: Let’s say that flexibility and autonomy are at the core of who you are. You start a recipe website, it grows, you monetize it. You launch a Substack newsletter. It grows, it starts to generate revenue. You can’t do everything, so you bring on a contractor. Then another, then another. Business is good. You hire a full-time employee. Then another. Business is good, great even. But, you wake up every morning with a desire to clean the dust from the tops of your kitchen cabinets. Why? Because you’ve built a business with no flexibility and autonomy. The spark is there, but there’s no oxygen in the room. Your plate is full, so very full! But, nothing on it is nourishing you.

So, how do you scale a business when the business is you?

That’s what and I created this workshop to figure out.

Correction. That’s what we created this workshop to help YOU figure out: Creating a Values-Led Brand. Because we don’t have the answers, you do. What we bring to the table is a framework, a set of tools and resources and decades of experience to guide you as you identify your values and create a strategic plan for how to align your business, your brand, with who you are.

This is a two-part workshop. The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:

A clearer understanding of the core values that define your brand and creative work
A stronger sense of your innate value: the strengths, qualities, and perspective you naturally bring to your work
Language for communicating what you do and why it matters with more clarity and confidence
A values-based framework for making decisions about opportunities, collaborations, boundaries, and growth
A more aligned strategy for showing up consistently and attracting the right readers and opportunities

A strong brand is not just how people recognize your work. It is how your work becomes more honest, sustainable, and distinctly your own. It’s how you create a business that allows you to thrive.

Join us.

Creating a Values Led Brand

What's Happening This Week

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 07:03:16 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

Photo by Elin Melaas on Unsplash

If you missed it, this post has generated a lot of really great discussion. I love how phrased it… “Improving how I infuse myself into what I bake and cook is a skill I’d like to develop.” And commented, “A recipe is never just how to make something to eat.”

And I just loved this insight from : “You know, the whole point of my upcoming cookbook is to tell my story in an effort to invoke emotions at the table for the reader/cook. But duh, of course I want them to feel things while reading. My recipes aren’t exotic and new, so THAT is what will get them to turn the page.”

The FIRST Food Readers Book Club is this week!!! 🎉 I’ll be there! Will you?

June Mastermind meeting Dates and Registration

Two different meetings in two different time zones every month.

North American and Europe Meeting: Wednesday, June 10 at 11am EST.
Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific Meeting: Wednesday, June 17 at 8am GMT

Mastermind for Food Writers: North America & Europe

Wednesday, June 10: 11am, New York (Eastern Standard Time)
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DwvkWKkOQC-zfj-qz5BLYg
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

Meeting topic: General discussion - but you can always volunteer to teach - do get in touch if you have a topic

DATE: June 17: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6dkmrvP4RFeYBZzv3q9loA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

Free Class Recordings Available Now

Last week, Betty Williams, Kelsey Erin Shipman and I, taught a free class in Write Up about Creative Recipe Writing and how to write recipes with voice, humor, and story. If you weren’t able to join us, the recording is now available!

If this free class sparkes ideas for your own recipe writing, we’d love to invite you to join us for the next Food Writers’ Business Lab: Creative Recipe Writing: How to Write Recipes with Voice, Humor, and Story. In this two-part lab, we’ll go deeper into how food writers can bring more humor, story, and point of view into their recipes without sacrificing clarity or usefulness. The first session will be a recorded instructional workshop with homework, and the second session will be a hands-on workshop where each attendee will receive personalized feedback on their own writing, discuss roadblocks and challenges, and get their questions answered.

Your $99 registration includes both live sessions: Wednesday, June 4 and Wednesday, June 18, from 12:00–1:30 PM CDT. You can learn more and register here:

Creative Recipe Writing

Creating a Values Led Brand Replay

A couple of weeks ago I taught a free class over in The Food Writers Business Lab about what it means to create a values led brand. The class was an introduction to a comprehensive 2-part workshop and I are teaching in June.

If you missed it, here’s the replay. And, if this topic resonates with you and you want to dive in and get to work creating a values led brand for YOUR business, join Liza and I for this hands-on workshop in June: Creating a Values Led Brand.

Available now in the Food Writers Business Lab

SEO: How To Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

This week will wrap up the first SEO workshop offered in The Food Writers Business Lab. The workshop dives some of the most important concepts including how to think about SEO as a layered approach and how to create an SEO strategy that works for you!

Participants received a 28 page workbook and clear, step-by-step instructions for how to build their own personal SEO strategy - a strategy that is practical and connects directly to their business goals and their bottom line.

If you weren’t able to join us for the live workshop, the recording is now available to purchase at half price the LIVE workshop! You’ll receive the entire two-hour class + the full 28-page workbook!

SEO for Food Writers

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

Mastermind Meeting Recordings

Rebecca Blackwell — Thu, 28 May 2026 15:07:30 GMT

Here’s where you’ll find the recordings from past Mastermind Meetings!

If you’re new here, there are two meetings every month to accommodate the fact that we are scattered all over the world. Find the date and time that works best for you or join them both!

Meetings are usually on Wednesdays and last 90 minutes. The North America/ Europe meeting is at 11am EST. The Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific Meeting is at 8am GMT.
North America/ Europe meeting is usually recorded. You’ll find many of those recordings below.

All meetings are free. To attend, simply subscribe then watch your in-box for the monthly meeting invite.

Creative Recipe Writing

May 13, 2026

In this meeting Betty Williams, Kelsey Erin Shipman and discuss:

How being yourself is your unfair advantage
Creative recipe writing is: your point of view, your values, your expertise, your experience, your personality
Experience, opinions, and personal insight makes your work harder to replicate
How recipes can be genre mashups
How to harness your voice to write recipes that are distinctly YOU

More on this topic: Eat Your Feelings (Recipes are more about how we feel than what we make)

Bonus! Creating a Values Led Brand for Food Writers

This is a free class that taught for The food Writers Business Lab.

What if building your brand didn’t begin with strategy, visibility, or keeping up with everyone else, but with a clearer understanding of who you are and what actually matters to you?

More on this topic: In this LIVE discussion, and discuss how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue.

We also talk about the importance of being able to communicate your values to your audience, the difference between your values, strengths and talents, how to know when to push through and when to re-evaluate and pivot, how discomfort and fear can be indicators that you’re on the right track and why building your brand around who you are and what you really care about takes courage.

Bonus! Introduction to SEO For Food Writers

This is a free class that taught for The food Writers Business Lab.

Your audience is everywhere. They are scattered around the world and across the internet. You know they’re out there, but finding them can feel overwhelming. You feel like you’re publishing into the void, pouring your heart and soul into your work and then hoping the right people will discover it. And, sometimes they do! But, our job as food writers isn’t just to create good work. It’s also to help people find it.

More on this topic: How To Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

All about Substack Recipe Cards and creating a strategy that goes beyond Substack

April 1, 2026

We talked Substack’s new recipe card functionality and its benefits for food writers. A few of the topics we covered:

How to use recipe cards to create a dedicated, reader friendly recipe section.
How using the recipe cards can improve SEO and make content more discoverable on platforms like Pinterest and Google.
The process of extracting existing recipes from newsletters to create standalone recipe posts.
Challenges with the recipe card feature including limited print functionality in the app

We also talked about our individual reasons for being on Substack and our desire to build something real in an increasingly AI driven world.

Besides the recording, I assembled my notes and some additional thoughts into this article: Using Substack Recipe Cards to Organize Recipes, Improve Discoverability, and Build a Long-Term Strategy

Editorial Planning for your Substack

March 4, 2026

In this month’s meeting, Mira Dessy shared her process for editorial planning and scheduling, and the tools she uses to significantly cut the amount of time she spends on administrative and repetitive tasks. It was incredibly valuable.

We also talked about scheduling, the pros and cons of sending newsletters on a set day and time, finding a rhythm between scheduled writing and inspired flexibility, the significance and insignificance of open rates, Substack’s new recipe card feature, how to embed one post within a different post, and more!

Building Community Beyond the Platform

Building your community and brand platform across different technology platforms without burning out!

February 18, 2026

In this month’s meeting, Barbara at Projectkin and Stephanie Moon taught us about building our audience across platforms and doing it without burning out.

If you weren’t able to join us, you’ll find the recording below. It’s packed with ideas, inspiration, and valuable information! Here are just a few highlights from my notes:

Be yourself. Be yourself. Be yourself.
Do what works for you, not the platform.
It’s important to own your content, your domain, and your list. Export your list and your content on a regular basis and keep it somewhere safe.
Substack is an email distribution platform for your work. Substack is not your work.
If you are attracting readers off-Substack, it’s important to teach those readers how to use and navigate Substack.
Sometimes it feels like we are putting stuff out there into the void, but it’s important to remember that we don’t know who it’s reaching and we often don’t know who they are sharing it with.
Platforms aren’t about numbers, they are about trust. A small, highly engaged audience is more valuable than a huge audience with low engagement.
Consistency beats perfection.

On that last point, Stephanie wrote a great post last December about just getting started: Start Now.

Pitching to Magazines + Organizing a Writing Schedule + Collaboration Opportunities

January 21, 2026

A HUGE thank you to this month’s mini-masterclass teachers and Amie McGraham, and to Mira Dessy and Elizabeth Pizzinato who are working to create collaboration opportunities for interested members of this group!

If you weren’t able to join us this week, you’ll find the recording below and it’s packed with great information!

Halona started us off with a meaty class about what it takes to successfully pitch articles to magazines and other publications. Then Amie showed us how she organizes her schedule to write TWO substacks, a book, freelance projects, and still take time off every week.

How to Write a Cookbook Proposal

December 10, 2025

A HUGE thanks to Kelsey Erin Shipman who somehow managed to teach us an incredible amount about how to write a cookbook proposal in under 90 minutes.

The Dream to Deal: Book Proposal Intensive: I () took this workshop and it was incredible. If you’re interested in hearing more about my experience, feel free to reach out.
If you’re not subscribed to Kelsey’s substack, Cheese Toast with White People, it’s truly one of the best things I’ve read all year.

What Is The Core Value Of Your Brand?

This week’s mini-masterclass was all about clarity. We set out to answer questions such as… What am I about? What is my message? Is my message reflected in my bio? Who is my message for? What do they feel and what do they want?

Here is the slide show from ’s presentation:

What Are We Doing Here (2)

660KB ∙ PDF file

Download

How To Get Published with Dianne Jacob

This month’s meeting was so, so good, thanks to our special guest, Dianne Jacob!

Dianne spent the entire 90 minutes with us, answering questions about how to get published in major publications outside of Substack, what it takes to publish a cookbook, the importance of author platforms, the future of food writing, and finding your voice, audience, and niche.

If you are not already subscribed to Dianne’s Substack, where she shares trends, best practices, advice and more about food writing, here’s where to do that: Dianne Jacob’s Newsletter

About your meeting hosts

Eat Your Feelings

Rebecca Blackwell — Thu, 28 May 2026 11:35:23 GMT

Years ago, my grandparents spent months typing up my grandma’s recipes and compiling them into binders which they gifted to all their children and grandchildren for Christmas. To this day, it’s one of my most treasured possessions, for obvious reasons. When my husband and I sold our home and moved into an RV, I had to make some difficult choices about the books I’d bring along. Most of my cookbooks didn’t make the cut, but that binder of recipes was never in question.

You know what else was never in question? Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan, Roasting: A Simple Art by Barbara Kafka, and The Colorado Cache Cookbook.

The first two books in that list are fantastic in their own right. But I didn’t choose them because they are excellent books. I chose them because I am emotionally attached.

I learned how to bake by baking my way through Baking With Julia, treating its pages like a textbook for the pastry school I couldn’t afford to attend. Roasting taught me how to feed my little family with efficiency and thrift, while teaching me the absolute pleasure of a well-roasted chicken and tender potatoes dripping with the flavor of a perfect roast beef.

The third isn’t even a very good cookbook. First published in 1978, it’s a compilation of recipes from the Junior League of Denver and while there are a handful of good ideas in there, the recipes are dated and tired, and more of an interesting, revealing peek into what white, middle-class women in the 1970s found exotic and impressive.

But every single member of my extended family had a copy - my mom, my aunts, my grandma. They all cooked from it often and there are several recipes in there that I remember eating frequently. The book is pure nostalgia for me and when I open its pages, I feel some kind of sepia-toned mix of nostalgia, comfort, and familiarity. THAT’s why it’s on my bookshelf.

As a cook, baker, and recipe reader, I know that recipes are more than a set of instructions on a page. Recipes make us feel things. We get attached to them. The ones we love the most become familiar, woven into the fabric of our lives and our family folklore.

Sometimes recipes make me feel like the smartest person in the room. Some make me feel like I have my shit together on days when I absolutely do not. Recipes make me feel accomplished, efficient, happy, relaxed, envious, distracted, and deeply satisfied.

I’m not just talking about the food that is the end result. I’m referring to the recipe itself. Have you ever noticed how recipes themselves make you feel?

As food writers, one of the most valuable things we can remember is that recipes evoke an emotional response. Not always, but often.

How are people feeling when they make YOUR recipe? Why are they feeling happy or sad or angry or frustrated or nostalgic?
What is the emotional reaction they are having to your writing? And why are they having it?

There are an absurd number of recipes out there, most of them free for the taking. Why should someone care about yours?

The answer to this question has little to do with whether the recipe is good. That’s a given. It’s because your recipe is good AND makes them feel something that they want to feel. It’s because all these feelings, bubbling up to the surface as they stir, chop, and eat, also give them a connection to you, the writer.

And, don’t we all go back to the people we feel connected to? Don’t we share the things we love? Don’t we make space for them on our shelves and in our lives even when space is limited?

This is just one of the things , , and I will explore in our upcoming workshop, Creative Recipe Writing: How to Write Recipes with Voice, Humor, and Story.

Besides writing a recipe that’s technically correct, we’ll talk about how to identify the feelings behind the recipe. Why does this recipe bring you joy? Why are you creating this recipe? What is it about this recipe that motivated you to create it?

Most importantly…

How does it make YOU feel and how can you pass that feeling along to your reader?

Many of the recipes that stay with us do more than work well in the kitchen. They carry voice, personality, humor, and point of view. They do more than tell us what to cook. They make us feel connected to the person behind the recipe.

We’ll talk about what makes a recipe memorable, how titles and headnotes can do more meaningful work, and how writers can infuse recipes with personality, emotion, and point of view. We’ll look at examples from cookbooks, newsletters, and food media, and consider how recipe writing can become a place for more than just great food.

This is a two-part workshop.

The first session will be instructional and will include homework. The second session will be a hands-on workshop where we will roll up our sleeves and get to work. You will come away from this lab with:

Ideas for writing recipe titles and headnotes with more voice and purpose
Ways to use humor, story, emotion, and sensory detail intentionally
A better understanding of how to bring your own personality and perspective to the page
Permission to bend the traditional recipe form without breaking the recipe itself

Because the best recipes don’t just help readers cook something well. They make them want to return to your voice, your work, and your table again and again.

Join us.

Creative Recipe Writing

June Meeting Dates

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 25 May 2026 06:02:36 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

June Mastermind meeting Dates and Registration

Two different meetings in two different time zones every month.

North American and Europe Meeting: Wednesday, June 10 at 11am EST.
Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific Meeting: Wednesday, June 17 at 8am GMT

Mastermind for Food Writers: North America & Europe

Wednesday, June 10: 11am, New York (Eastern Standard Time)
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/DwvkWKkOQC-zfj-qz5BLYg
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

Meeting topic: General discussion - but you can always volunteer to teach - do get in touch if you have a topic

DATE: June 17: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/6dkmrvP4RFeYBZzv3q9loA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

Free Class Recordings Available Now

Your $99 registration includes both live sessions: Wednesday, June 4 and Wednesday, June 18, from 12:00–1:30 PM CDT. You can learn more and register here:

Creative Recipe Writing

Creating a Values Led Brand Replay

Have you registered for the first Food Readers Book Club Meeting?

I started reading the first selection for the book club this week, Around the Table by Diana Henry, and it’s so good! I can’t wait to hear all of YOUR thoughts about the book in the first book club meeting on June 3rd. If you’ve not yet registered, here’s where you’ll find all the information…

Available now in the Food Writers Business Lab

SEO: How To Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

SEO for Food Writers

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

What's Happening This Week

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 18 May 2026 06:02:42 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

In last week’s Mastermind Meeting, Betty Williams, Kelsey Erin Shipman and I, talked about Creative Recipe Writing! If you weren’t able to join us, here’s where you can watch the recording.

OR, even better, join us this Thursday for a FREE class in the Food Writers Business Lab on the same topic!

We’ll talk about how to use the techniques of creative writing to infuse recipes with personality, point of view and humor. We’ll talk about why creative recipe writing matters more than ever in a crowded publishing landscape, how storytelling can deepen a reader’s connection to your work, and what it looks like to bend the traditional recipe form without losing clarity or usefulness. Through examples from cookbooks, newsletters, and food media, this class will offer practical ideas for bringing more of your humanity to the page and writing recipes that readers remember.

FREE Class: Creative Recipe Writing

🌶️ This class is part of our free introductory series for the Food Writers’ Business Lab. These sessions are designed to give you a useful introduction to the topic, a feel for the teachers, and a taste of the kind of practical, food-writer-specific support we offer inside the Lab. If you enjoy this class and want to go deeper, we hope you’ll join us for the full two-part paid lab, Creative Recipe Writing: How To Write Recipes with Voice, Humor, and Story where we’ll spend more time on hands-on strategy, examples, discussion, and personalized guidance.

Creating a Values Led Brand Replay

Last week I taught a free class over in The Food Writers Business Lab about what it means to create a values led brand. The class was an introduction to a comprehensive 2-part workshop and I are teaching in June.

Have you registered for the first Food Readers Book Club Meeting?

Mark your calendars for the June Mastermind meetings

Two different meetings in two different time zones every month.

North American and Europe Meeting: Wednesday, June 10 at 11am EST. This month’s topic will be all about Food Photography. , Shelly Waldman, and I will explore how light, shadow, color, texture, styling, composition, and human elements can shape the story a photo tells.
Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific Meeting: Wednesday, June 17 at 8am GMT

Registration links coming soon!

Available now in the Food Writers Business Lab

SEO: How To Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

SEO for Food Writers

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

Recording and notes from the May 13 Meeting

Rebecca Blackwell — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:21:25 GMT

Hello everyone,

In yesterday’s meeting, I mentioned that I was working to get past meeting recordings uploaded to an unlisted YouTube channel. We’ve covered so many great topics over the past year, and I’ve been trying to think of a better way to make those past recordings easier to find and watch. recommended a private YouTube channel and I thought this was a great idea.

I’ve uploaded yesterday’s meeting to the new channel and will work on getting most of the past meetings uploaded there as well.

In yesterday’s meeting , and I, talked about…

How being yourself is your unfair advantage
Creative recipe writing is: your point of view, your values, your expertise, your experience, your personality
Experience, opinions, and personal insight makes your work harder to replicate
How recipes can be genre mashups
How to harness your voice to write recipes that are distinctly YOU

We will also be covering much of what we talked about in yesterday’s meeting in this FREE class on Thursday, May 21:

FREE: Creative Recipe Writing

In case you missed it…

and I hopped on a Substack LIVE earlier this week to talk about what it means to create a values-led brand. We discussed how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue.

Watch the replay here:

FREE: Creating a Values Led Brand

Join us TOMORROW, Friday, May 15, for a FREE introductory class where Liza and I will look at how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of why this clarity matters if you want your writing and business to feel more aligned, intentional, and distinctly your own.

FREE: Creating a Values Led Brand

🌶️ This class is part of our free introductory series for the Food Writers’ Business Lab. These sessions are designed to give you a useful introduction to the topic, a feel for the teachers, and a taste of the kind of practical support we offer inside the Lab. If you enjoy this class and want to go deeper, we hope you’ll join us for the full two-part paid lab, Creating a Values Led Brand, where we’ll spend more time on hands-on strategy, examples, and personalized guidance.

Join us for the First Food Readers Book Club!

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.
The Food Writers Business Lab is an online learning hub created specifically for food writers who want practical, affordable support for growing their businesses and expanding their reach.

About your meeting hosts

How To Create a Values Led Brand

Rebecca Blackwell — Tue, 12 May 2026 22:31:37 GMT

Thank you to everyone who joined us LIVE today for this discussion about what it means to create a values-led brand. We discussed how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue.

We also talked about the importance of being able to communicate your values to your audience, the difference between your values, strengths and talents, how to know when to push through and when to re-evaluate and pivot, how discomfort and fear can be indicators that you’re on the right track and why building your brand around who you are and what you really care about takes courage.

If you are focused on creating a business that is aligned, intentional, distinctly your own, AND financially sustainable, please join us for this hands-on workshop:

Creating a Values-Led Brand for Food Writers

In this two-part workshop, and will help food writers clarify the core values that shape who they are, how they work, and what they want their business to stand for. Together, we’ll explore both the personal qualities that are essential to your identity and the practical values that guide your long-term goals.

Rather than treating values as abstract ideas, we’ll make them personal and actionable, so they can become a foundation for your brand and the impact you want to have on the world.

A clearer understanding of the core values that define your brand and creative work
A stronger sense of your innate value: the strengths, qualities, and perspective you naturally bring to your work
Language for communicating what you do and why it matters with more clarity and confidence
A values-based framework for making decisions about opportunities, collaborations, boundaries, and growth
A more aligned strategy for showing up consistently and attracting the right readers and opportunities

Because a strong brand is not just how people recognize your work. It is how your work becomes more honest, sustainable, and distinctly your own.

Find Out More

FREE: Creating a Values Led Brand

Join us on Friday, May 15 for a FREE introductory class to the topics we’ll be covering in the full two-part workshop.

Together, we’ll look at how values influence your voice, your messaging, your boundaries, and the kinds of opportunities you choose to pursue. You’ll leave with a clearer sense of why this clarity matters if you want your writing and business to feel more aligned, intentional, and distinctly your own.

🌶️ This class is part of our free introductory series for the Food Writers’ Business Lab. These sessions are designed to give you a useful introduction to the topic, a feel for the teachers, and a taste of the kind of practical support we offer inside the Lab. If you enjoy this class and want to go deeper, we hope you’ll join us for the full two-part paid lab , where we’ll spend more time on hands-on strategy, examples, and personalized guidance.

What's Happening This Week

Rebecca Blackwell — Mon, 11 May 2026 06:02:55 GMT

Hello everyone!

Here’s what’s happening in Mastermind For Food Writers this week!

Mastermind for Food Writers: North America & Europe

Meeting topic: Creative Recipe Writing: How to write recipes with voice, humor and style, taught by Rebecca Blackwell, Betty Williams, and Kelsey Erin Shipman.

—> Mastermind meetings are FREE to join but do require advanced registration.

Wednesday, May 13: 11am, New York (Eastern Standard Time)
Meeting hosted by Rebecca Blackwell
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tlpa6hKtQs-tvIp__dQsSA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.

Coming up in the Food Writers Business Lab

FREE Class: Creating a Values Led Brand for Food Writers

Join us on Friday, May 15, 1pm Eastern Standard Time

What if building your brand didn’t start with strategy, but with clarity about who you are and what matters most to you?

In this free introductory class, food writers will explore how core values can shape not only what they create, but how they show up, make decisions, connect with readers, and build a business that feels sustainable over time. Instead of treating branding as something external or performative, this class offers a more personal starting point: understanding the qualities, beliefs, and strengths that are already guiding your work, whether you’ve named them yet or not.

Creating a Values Led Brand

SEO: How To Build a Bridge From Your Work To Your Readers

Last week I had a blast diving into some of the most important concepts of SEO in this live workshop. We talked about how to think about SEO as a layered approach and how to create an SEO strategy that works for you!

SEO for Food Writers

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.

About your meeting hosts

Notes From May 6 Meeting

Liza Debevec — Thu, 07 May 2026 13:07:39 GMT

First things first, the group agreed unanimously that we will no longer be recording our Europe/Africa/Asia-Pacific calls, unless someone will do a masterclass, in which case we will record and share it, so others can benefit. We believe that the conversations we’re having feel intimate and meaningful and that recording would feel like we’re on a talk show and none of us want that. So I really want to invite you to join us and take part in these conversations.

Donkeys from Lamu Island, Kenya (Photos: Liza Debevec)

There were six of us on the call today, including a new member , and several regular participants: , , , Bruce from and myself, .

The conversation started with speaking about the values of bread and how it has been getting bad rap recently, and even people who don’t have gluten intolerance seem to refuse to eat bread these days. I think most if not all of the people on the call are Team Bread. Amela, Wendy S and Lizzie have all written posts about bread and you can check them out here:

Imaginary Recipes

Bread: The Companion of Life

Why Bread…

2 months ago · 41 likes · 27 comments · Amela Marin

Coffee in the Square

The Wheatly Bulletin

Ash Wednesday this week marks the start of Lent. This is a time when many people decide to review their lifestyle and to give up over-rich or unhealthy additions to the diet that might have crept in over the year. Never a fan of giving up anything, and knowing far too much …

4 months ago · 8 likes · 8 comments · Wendy Shillam

The Downsizing Diva’s Substack

What are the Food Giants doing to our bread, and does it matter?

The Downsizing Diva’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber…

a year ago · 112 likes · 37 comments · Lizzie Wingfield

We talked about taking small, donkey steps, towards our Substack goals, about how to show up on Notes, and about the confusing space that Substack editing/setting area can be. Here is a video of what donkey steps could look like on the Swahili island of Lamu, off the east coast of Africa.

In the end, after expressing how frustrating it can be to get our friends and family to subscribe or press a like on our posts, and how painful it is to see the unsubscribes after sending out a new post, we talked about letting go of that and considered what could be a healthy way of doing that. And I remembered a post I read recently, by , that offers a EFT session to deal with the frustration of low subscriber numbers. Check it out:

Mindset in Mayhem

EFT TAPPING TUTORIAL | Flip Your Mood When Substack Stats Steal Your Mojo

“Come to Substack,” they said…

10 months ago · 10 likes · 3 comments · Carla Mardell

If you’re reading this and have thoughts on bread, donkeys, EFT tapping or anything else we mentioned, do share them in the comments. And consider joining next month, if your time zone allows it.

If you are not lucky enough to be in a time zone compatible with our meeting, there is the US time zone meeting next week, Wednesday, May 13 at11am New York (Eastern Standard time) hosted by . You can register at link inside this post:

Mastermind for Food Writers

May Mastermind Meeting Dates

Here’s what’s coming up in May…

2 months ago · 10 likes · Rebecca Blackwell and Liza Debevec

Until next time, may you take donkey steps, eat bread if you fancy it, and, most of all, enjoy life.

Around the Table

Liza Debevec — Wed, 06 May 2026 07:31:10 GMT

Welcome to the first essay for the Food Readers Book Club here on Mastermind for Food Writers. In this post, we, and , give you a little background on the book we’ll be reading in our upcoming first meeting and share some of our personal reflections on it.

We will be meeting on June 3rd at 4pm BST, 5pm CET, 11am EDT, 8 am PDT and you can find the registration link here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_lEgoI5yShOJHbk_kUaBkw [NB: Registration will close 24h before the meeting and you will receive a personalised link to enter the call- make sure to save that email]

We understand that this time is not convenient for our members in large parts of Asia-Pacific. Because of this we want to invite members to use their newsletters/publications to write their reflections on the book, tag our group and also other readers, so we can make this book club into more of a moveable feast.

And now to our selection for this first meet up:

Diana Henry is an award-winning food writer and the author of almost a dozen cookbooks, including How to Eat a Peach, Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, and Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons. Known for blending recipes with evocative storytelling and a strong sense of place, she has built a loyal readership through her long-running column for The Telegraph in the UK, as well as contributions to several food magazines.

Diana Henry (Photo source: thegannet.co)

Her work often moves between the practical and the poetic: one moment offering precise, usable recipes, the next reflecting on memory, travel, and the emotional life of food. She grew up in Northern Ireland and, as a child, travelled widely in her imagination to places her family could not go—an early habit that continues to shape her writing, where curiosity about the world and a deep attachment to home cooking coexist. Her books frequently invite readers not just to cook, but to think about why we cook, who we cook for, and how food connects us to places, people, and different moments in our lives.

We will be reading her book, Around the Table which came out in 2025 and is a collection of 52 essays about food, some of which were previously published in magazines, cookbooks and elsewhere.

From Liza:

I discovered Diana Henry through her book How to Eat a Peach, probably in late 2018 or early 2019, at my friend Margaret’s house in Nairobi. Margaret has, like me, spent most of her life living in Sub-Saharan Africa, her career dedicated to supporting research and policy in the field of nutrition and agriculture. Unlike me, she is still living there and has, with her husband Peter, built a beautiful home in Nairobi, with a gorgeous kitchen and a library full of books, including amazing cookbooks.

I remember being intrigued by the title of the book, the feel of the cover—which actually feels like peach skin—and the concept of the book, which, unlike many cookbooks, is organised around menus rather than main food groups. When I moved back from Ethiopia to Europe in the spring of 2020, this was one of the first books I purchased. During the pandemic, I started baking her olive oil chocolate cake and delivering it to friends’ doorsteps while we were not allowed to socialise in person. To this day, that is the recipe I have made the most times, and I shared it in a post here in December (and no, I am not a baker nor a food photographer, and my cake doesn’t look as good as it tastes):

Sharing Secrets (and Other Useful Stuff)

Three Useful Secrets - Holiday Edition

6 months ago · 22 likes · 8 comments · Liza Debevec

Over time, I raved to people about Henry’s recipes, bought another one of her books, Simple, and kept thinking about how to justify buying all the other ones I had come across in Margaret’s cookbook library over subsequent visits. I have made the olive oil chocolate cake and mango cheeks in ginger and lime syrup for the ladies in the Nairobi women’s book club while they discussed James by Percival Everett. I have made pears poached in hibiscus flower syrup for friends in Nairobi on several occasions, and they are always an absolute hit.

Pears poached in hibiscus based on Diana’s recipe (Photo: Liza Debevec)

So, you can say I’ve been a fan of Henry’s recipes for a while. It is no surprise that I lobbied for her book of essays Around the Table to be on the selection for our Food Readers’ Book Club, and I was delighted to see that it was the top selection in our poll.

While many of the essays are not new and have been featured in her cookbooks, they are all an absolute delight to read. I was transported to places I have known and loved, as well as to places I had never heard of, and to dishes I would never have considered making or eating. I love the imaginative and curious tone of the pieces and the pure love for food and cooking that oozes out of every page.

Sometimes I would say, “Oh, I know this place she’s writing about,” and for a moment I feel like I, alone, have an intimate connection with Henry. It is as if the two of us are sharing a special, food-related secret. When I read that she had travelled to a destination in France in a very roundabout way just to spend a night at a hotel in Chinon so she could try their famous jam collection, I yelled out, “Oh, that is Jaime Schler’s hotel!” And I know Jamie because she joins Mastermind calls I convene. You may laugh, but I somehow felt closer to Diana Henry and her writing.

So, for me, reading Diana Henry always feels like an invitation into an intimate space, filled with tea and oranges, with cakes and roasts and soups and so many other things. She is really like Suzanne from Leonard Cohen’s song, which I listened to on repeat as a child because my father loved Cohen.

From Linda:

I first became acquainted with Diana Henry through How to Eat a Peach, as well. Over the past few months, I picked the book up time and again to luxuriate in Diana’s casual, comforting tables, and to imagine the tastes of food cultures I had yet to experience.

Cooking is storytelling. It connotes how we savor the splendid and the everyday, and the celebration of gifting others with our time and our creativity. There is always a story to tell.

For me, Diana’s expression of food abundance – and global ingredients and foodways – converge with Alice Waters’ dedication to the rich simplicity of a single ingredient. Each writer shows us her refined, yet unmistakable enthusiasm for the flavor of a perfect piece of fruit.

Yet, Diana introduces us to warm spices and savory fruit pairings with emphasis on regional, seasonal dishes. She helps us to imagine flavor, to imagine what a dish might become. Her inherent talent, gently guiding us into imagining what our own foodways offer, aligns with one of the commitments I express to my own readers.

The expression of the Food Readers Book Club as a moveable feast shows our intention to include readers everywhere in the world, encouraging their comment and narrative participation as an expected component of the club structure.

Liza and I are thrilled to support the synthesis of international food writers’ perspectives on that which we know to be common to us all.

We also reached out to Diana, by slipping into her Instagram DMs, and she kindly responded with some points of reflection that we want to share with you here:

“Just a few thoughts on what was interesting/challenging in putting the book together.

Did I edit pieces that were years old or did I leave them as they first appeared?

I initially thought it was both honest and ‘pure’ - faithful to the text - to leave them. Then I decided to put a couple of essays together. I had written about pumpkins several times and had also found out things since the essays had appeared. I did truncate a couple of essays and added to them if I thought it gave the reader more. I did this a few times but that was all. I think your ‘honesty’ is an issue, to a certain extent.

There was one piece on spices, which had been written for Crazy Water, that felt overlong and confused. Again, was it honest to change this essay? It was the only piece I had written for any of my books which I thought was just overlong and convoluted. I cut it down and I think that was the right thing to do.

This is much more practical - should I refer to my now ex-husband as ex-husband or husband. That’s to do with the person you are now and the life you now lead. It seemed to be dishonest in a different way. I referred to him as my ex-husband.

There was one more thing that bothered me - most of the early stuff was very enthusiastic, it sounded young. It was by a person who no longer exists. I wanted to play down the Pollyanna-ish voice. I wouldn’t let myself do that. It was written and you can’t go back and erase your voice. I wonder what your readers would think of that.

As a writer it is a very enriching exercise - you learn a lot about how your voice has developed. One of the good things about that is that you are pleased - proud, happy - of your work (not all, but most).

I read some pieces and thought ‘Did I really write that?’ ”

Diana ended her email with these words: “Thrilled that you have chosen my book and I hope that you get a lot out of it.”

We said that we want this book club to be more about presence and dancing in the moment kind of discussion, than elaborate preparation, but we still wanted to share some possible discussion/reflection questions before the meeting. Here they are:

Was there a particular essay or a passage that stayed with you after reading? If there were many, maybe you can choose a few of your top ones that you can bring to the discussion.
Diana Henry often writes about food as a way of travelling, across places, memories, and moods. Did any of her essays transport you somewhere familiar or unexpected?
How does her way of combining recipes with personal stories affect how you experience the food she writes about? Does it make you more or less likely to cook her dishes?
Was there a dish, ingredient, or place mentioned in the book that you felt particularly curious about?
Henry’s writing often carries a sense of intimacy, as if you are being let into a private moment. Did you experience that? If so, where did it show up most strongly for you?
If you were to write a short food essay inspired by your own life, what memory, place, or dish would you begin with?

We invite you to bring some reflections on these questions to the Book Club Meeting on June 3rd. And if you feel like it, do share in notes and posts and you are welcome to tag us in them. We would love to read about your experience reading this book.

Some additional resources for anyone who wants to go down the rabbit hole:

Diana Henry’s Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/dianahenryfood/
An interview with Diana Henry on a podcast: https://thetraveldiariespodcast.com/episodes/diana-henry-food-writer/ [note: there are about four minutes of ads at the start that you can fast-forward through]

On Substack: for those who have a paid subscription to India Knight’s Home newsletter, there is a post about Diana Henry’s desk here:

Home

Me & My Desk: Diana Henry

This is the seventh instalment of a series called Me & My Desk, which exists because I find other writers’ work routines and work environments fascinating. All the other writers’ desks are here…

8 months ago · 511 likes · 39 comments · India Knight

Also, is hosting a food writers’ workshop with Diana Henry herself in October. Check this post on Substack for more information:

Mark Diacono's Abundance

Food writing retreat with Diana Henry and Mark Diacono

Diana Henry and I have been teaching food writing together for a dozen years or so, and have just released this year’s dates…

3 months ago · 33 likes · 6 comments · Mark Diacono

We hope to see many of you on June 3rd, and until then we look forward to your posts and thoughts about the book popping in our Substack feed. Happy reading, happy cooking and happy eating to you all!

Linda & Liza

Creating a Values Led Brand

Rebecca Blackwell — Tue, 05 May 2026 09:01:12 GMT

What does it actually mean to build a values-led brand as a food writer? That’s what and will be talking about in this Substack LIVE conversation.

We’ll talk about why branding starts with knowing yourself and how your values shape the way you write, the stories you want to tell, the opportunities you say yes or no to, and the kind of relationship you want to build with your readers.

This will be a relaxed discussion about what it looks like to create a brand that feels personal, clear, and sustainable. We’ll also share why this kind of clarity can make it easier to make decisions, communicate your work, and build a business that feels more aligned with the things that are most important to you.

If you’ve been thinking about how to define your voice or build a brand that feels genuinely like you, this conversation will give you a starting point. It’s also a preview of the ideas we’ll dig into more deeply in our full two-part workshop, Creating a Values-Led Brand.

Here’s how to join:

When: Tuesday, May 12 at 2pm EST (7pm BST)
On May 12 at the start time, click this link to join us for this live discussion:
https://open.substack.com/live-stream/188535?utm_source=live-stream-scheduled-upsell

About your hosts

Rebecca Blackwell

is a writer, recipe developer, food photographer, with two recipe websites and a Substack newsletter that’s read across all 50 states and in 91 countries. In 2020, Rebecca and her husband sold their Colorado home, moved into a 5th wheel RV, and began traveling full-time across the U.S. In 2025, they added a sailboat to the mix, spending summers on the water. Her nomadic life shapes most of the recipes she creates and readers can be assured that if they work in her tiny kitchen, they’ll work in theirs! She’s been cooking and baking professionally for nearly 30 years and published over 1600 recipes. In addition to writing, Rebecca teaches weekly cooking classes on Substack and leads a monthly mastermind group for food writers.

Liza Debevec

is a life and career coach with a PhD in Social Anthropology and over 25 years of experience across academia and international development. Her work has focused on agriculture, water and natural resource management, and gender equality and social inclusion. She now coaches individuals and runs workshops focused on helping people identify their core values, create a meaningful vision for their lives, and reconnect with a sense of purpose. Alongside her coaching practice, she has written extensively, including dozens of academic articles and papers, and now writes two Substack publications where she explores personal reflection, values, and lived experience. Drawing on both her coaching and writing, she supports people in translating what matters to them into clear, authentic expression. Originally from Slovenia, Liza has lived and worked in Scotland, Sweden, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Portugal – experiences that continue to shape her perspective on culture, identity, and storytelling. She runs the Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific meetings for the Mastermind group and co-leads the Food Readers’ Book Club on the same platform.

An Introduction to SEO for Food Writers

Rebecca Blackwell — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:36:53 GMT

A bridge over one of the many canals in Amsterdam. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell.

If the idea of SEO makes you want to run the other way, I understand.

For a long time, SEO was presented as a rigid set of rules, formulas, and tricks for pleasing Google. For food writers especially, it felt like you had to game the system to succeed, muting your unique voice and personality and pumping out cookie-cutter content that mimicked every other recipe site on the web.

I’ve never been interested in playing that game and I’ve talked to hundreds of food writers who share my aversion.

That understanding of SEO was always incomplete, and now it is even less useful than it used to be, thankgod.

Today, SEO is better understood as simply this: building bridges that help your readers find your work. For food writers, that means helping readers discover your recipes, stories, expertise, and perspective wherever they are searching—through search engines, Pinterest, AI answers, image-based search, social media, and newsletters.

The point is not to game the system. The point is to understand that it’s our responsibility as food writers to not only create good work, but to help our readers find it. Good SEO is not separate from good creative work. It is the part that helps the work connect.

In the simplest possible terms, SEO strategy has two steps:

Create the best content you can for your readers.
Help them find it.

I’m certain that you’re already doing the first part. It’s the second part that gets a bit tricky.

AI is reshaping how people search and generic content is easier than ever to produce. For food writers, I think that’s good news because readers (the very real people on the other side of the screen) are increasingly drawn to work that feels unmistakably human.

In HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing Report, nearly half of marketers said AI is making content so easy to produce that it is becoming less effective overall, while 63 percent said they need more unique, human content to stand out. To me, the takeaway is clear: your voice, your experience, your testing process, your photography, and your perspective are not extras. They are part of what people are looking for.

SEO Is More Art Than Science… But Please Don’t Ignore The Science

SEO used to be more science than art but over the past few years that’s reversed. To be clear, there are technical best practices that are essential to your work being found online. But beyond that, it’s about observation, strategy, experimentation, and figuring out how to meet your readers where they are.

The goal is not to follow someone else’s template. The goal is to develop your own understanding of what helps your work connect with the people who are looking for it.

My husband and I looking out onto the town of Bruges, Belgium, from the balcony of a medieval castle.

What Has Changed About Search

Older SEO advice often rewarded sameness. Writers were encouraged to study top-ranking results and imitate them closely. That led to formulaic blog posts, recipes, and articles, copycat intros, and repetitive structures.

It also rewarded a lot of thin, low-value content whose only purpose was to capture search traffic. One of the clearest examples is the era of mass-produced “how to” articles answering the simplest possible questions—content designed to catch searches like how to peel a potato or how to slice a banana. That strategy generated huge page views for a while for the writers who were willing to create it. But it was never a sustainable long-term strategy. Now, when people ask basic questions, AI usually supplies the answer directly. Content built on that model becomes much easier to bypass and all those sites who built their entire growth strategy on that tactic are left with hundreds (or even thousands) of pages of content that no one is reading.

The safest long-term strategy is not to create more generic content. It is to create work that carries your voice, your point of view, and your real-world experience.

And isn’t that exactly the kind of work you want to produce?

I know I do.

Search systems are more sophisticated now. They are better at understanding language, context, images, video, and relationships between ideas. People are also searching differently. They ask longer, more conversational questions. They search with photos. They use AI tools to compare options, request substitutions, or refine what they want.

This means visibility is no longer just about ranking for one exact keyword in a list of blue links. Discoverability can happen in a recipe carousel, an AI-generated answer, a visual search result, Pinterest, Google Lens, a newsletter recommendation, or a social post that answers the right question at the right moment.

For food writers, this means that clear, useful, human-centered content has become more important, not less. It may seem counterintuitive, but the growing sea of AI generated content just might elevate human-created art as something worth seeking out.

How Search Engines Understand Your Content

Modern search relies heavily on natural language processing, or NLP. In practical terms, that means search engines are better able to understand language more like people do. They can recognize related phrases, interpret context, and distinguish between vague language and precise meaning.

NLP is why Google understands that “vegetarian curry” and “meatless curry” can be used to describe the same recipe. It’s how it knows that when you type “lemon cookies with butter” you’re probably looking for a recipe for shortbread. It’s why you can type disconnected phrases into search, filled with misspelled words, and Google will still usually know what you’re trying to find.

Brown butter citrus shortbread cookies. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell.

With this understanding, one of the best SEO strategies is to help your reader know immediately that they are in the right place. You can do this with carefully crafted headlines and thoughtful introductions that help readers know immediately that they’ve landed on what they were looking for.

Keyword research is still very important. But how you shape the context around those keywords is where the magic lies. Keyword research is about discovering clues about what readers are trying to solve, make, learn, or eat.

For recipe writers, this means answering some key questions through carefully crafted headlines, titles, and intros:

What type of ingredient is used?
What type of ingredient is not used?
What kind of cooking vessel is involved?
What meal type is this?

These questions help reveal the attributes that matter to readers. They also help you write with more clarity. A reader wants to know not just that a recipe is for muffins, but whether they are bakery-style, freezer-friendly, make-ahead, or topped with streusel. They want to know whether a chicken recipe is for thighs or breasts, whether it is a skillet dinner, whether it suits a weeknight, and whether leftovers hold up well.

That specificity improves the experience for readers and gives search systems stronger signals about what the content actually is.

In practical terms, this kind of research does not have to be overwhelming. A tool like KeySearch can help you see how often a phrase is searched and how competitive it is and the other phrases people are using to search for a specific recipe or topic.

The Rise of Multimodal Search

We live in a multi-media world and search now includes text, image, video, and voice. Google and other AI systems are getting better and better at interpreting these signals together.

A person might snap a photo of a restaurant dish and search for a homemade version. Someone else might upload a screenshot and ask for a dairy-free variation. Another user may search visually for recipes similar to a dish they have seen online.

That means the visual side of food writing matters in new ways. Descriptive file names, helpful alt text, accurate captions, process shots, and instructional video all support discoverability. They also support readers directly by making your content easier to follow and understand.

Food writing has always been visual. Now those visuals are part of how search systems interpret your work too.

A Layered Model For SEO

French Napoleon Pastry. Photo by Rebecca Blackwell.

One useful way to think about SEO is as a layered system rather than a single tactic.

At the foundation is your brand. Brand is not just your logo, fonts, or colors. It is your perspective, your expertise, your values, and the throughline that makes your work uniquely yours. It shapes what you publish, how you frame recipes, what kinds of stories you tell, and why readers return to you instead of someone else.

On top of the brand, we want to layer clear, NLP-friendly writing for humans. This is the language that helps readers and search systems understand your content quickly. It includes strong titles, specific introductions, descriptive subheadings, and useful supporting copy.

Layer in some visuals: hero images, process shots, and video. These help clarify the recipe, demonstrate method, build trust, and support discovery across visual platforms and multimodal search experiences.

And then there’s the layer that ties everything together: personal insight and lived experience. This is the texture that generic AI-generated content struggles to replicate. It includes your personal experience, the lessons you learned while testing, why a technique works, what can go wrong, and the small details that make a reader trust you.

Going Deeper

If this is resonating with you, I invite you to watch the recording of a class I recently taught, Introduction to SEO for Food Writers.

In this 60-minute class, I present SEO not as a technical burden or a game to be won, but as a practical way to help the right readers find your recipes, stories, newsletters, and posts.

We dive into topics such as:

The importance of the intro
Internal links as reader pathways
Why structured data matters
The long term approach: A healthy SEO strategy is not about traffic for traffic’s sake. It is about building a stronger, more resilient business over time.

A Better Way to Think About SEO

For food writers, SEO is not about tricking an algorithm. It is about clarity, usefulness, and connection.

It asks you to understand your audience, communicate what your content is with more precision, and present your work in a way that helps both people and platforms recognize its value. It rewards brand clarity, strong writing, thoughtful visuals, and lived experience.

In an AI-shaped landscape, that kind of humanity is not a weakness. It is the advantage.

Your audience is looking for you. The future of SEO for food writers belongs to people who create something real and know how to present their work in a way that helps their readers find it. In other words, they understand that their responsibility is not only to create good work. It is also to build the bridge.

Think of this as meeting your reader where they are. The more clearly you communicate what your work is, who it is for, and why it matters, the easier it becomes to build that bridge.

And that, really, is the job.

But let’s take a moment to talk about WHY this functionality is suddenly available for food writers at all. Why has Substack invested resources in creating it? Food writers have been publishing recipes here for a while. So, why now?

I don’t have an inside track to the answers to these questions, but as someone who’s been publishing recipes online since 2013, I have some educated guesses.","cta":"Read full story","showBylines":true,"size":"lg","isEditorNode":true,"title":"Using Substack Recipe Cards to Organize Recipes, Improve Discoverability, and Build a Long-Term Strategy","publishedBylines":[{"id":126756528,"name":"Rebecca Blackwell","bio":"Nomad, cook, baker, food photographer, and passionate people watcher. Optimist to the core even when life is unbearable. Driven by new experiences, creativity, and words.","photo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!l3xr!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5a786e92-bb47-4aa7-8b65-00ccc2f3ddde_1200x1600.jpeg","is_guest":false,"bestseller_tier":null}],"post_date":"2026-04-01T20:56:34.875Z","cover_image":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Tla0!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F68191379-9102-4f82-a508-07734687268c_1200x1200.jpeg","cover_image_alt":null,"canonical_url":"https://www.mastermindforfoodwriters.com/p/using-substack-recipe-cards","section_name":null,"video_upload_id":null,"id":192870225,"type":"newsletter","reaction_count":18,"comment_count":18,"publication_id":4928070,"publication_name":"Mastermind for Food Writers","publication_logo_url":"https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!9eQq!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa02e2181-f7bd-443f-b2a4-1ef86b7b7222_1200x1200.png","belowTheFold":true,"youtube_url":null,"show_links":null,"feed_url":null}">

Introducing The Food Writers Business Lab

The Food Writers Business Lab is an online learning hub created specifically for food writers who want practical, affordable support for growing their businesses and expanding their reach.

This collaboration between Mastermind for Food Writers and Write Up offers classes and workshops for food writers, taught by food writers. Because who understands this expansive, ever-changing industry better than the talented, hard-working professionals who built it?

Through a mix of free introductory classes and in-depth paid workshops, The Food Writers Business Lab provides content-rich, highly actionable education designed to help participants immediately apply what they learn to their own work.

Here’s where to find out more:

The Food Writers Business Lab

Announcing the Food Writers Business Lab

Rebecca Blackwell — Fri, 01 May 2026 14:33:13 GMT

Happy Friday everyone!

And, it really is a happy Friday because today is the official launch of the Food Writers Business Lab. This idea been percolating in my mind for a while and I am astonished and nervous and excited to see it actually come to life.

Every month I am struck by the sheer amount of talent and expertise of all the food writers in this group. We are all showing up every single day and doing what we do with passion, talent, and pure hard work. It’s not easy to do what we do. And yet, here we are, doing it with excellence.

I realized during one of the first Mastermind meetings that anything any of us wants to learn or improve could be taught by someone in this group. I want to learn from people who are actually doing the work and I think most of you do too.

I envisioned a series of classes and workshops covering the topics that are vital to creating a successful, thriving business as a food writer. Topics like SEO, food photography, creative recipe writing, creating a values led brand, how to build a relationship with your readers while also making a living, how to write a cookbook proposal, how to create financial stability, and how to work with publishers.

And I envisioned every single one of the classes and workshops taught by food writers who are walking the walk not just talking the talk.

But, the delivery of these classes and workshops was tripping me up.

So, a couple of months ago, when offered to host these classes and workshops within the community of writers she started with , I jumped at the opportunity.

Write Up! is an online community for writers pursuing traditional publication of their first book, with workshops, expert-led sessions, and resources inside our Circle community. It’s a protected, private space just for us. AND it’s free to join.

For the past couple of months, Kelsey has been creating a space in Write Up for the Food Writers Business Lab. And today, that space is open to anyone who wants to check it out. 🎉

A couple of quick important details:

To access The Food Writers Business Lab, you’ll need to create a free account on Write Up! As I said, this is a private, protected space just for us. But also, there are a LOT of really cool things happening in Write Up! and you’ll have access to all of that as well.
Every workshop in the Food Writers Business Lab starts with a FREE introductory class so you can get to know the instructor, explore a topic, and decide whether you want to dive deeper.
I taught the first free intro class earlier this week: Introduction to SEO for Food Writers. If you joined me for that class, you already have an account for Write Up and can log in and check out all the workshop listings including the SEO for Food Writers which starts next week! If you missed it, here’s where you can find the recording: Introduction to SEO for Food Writers.
You’ll find 4 workshops listed in the Food Writers Business Lab right now on these topics: SEO for Food Writers, Food Photography, Creative Recipe Writing, and Creating a Values Led Brand. More workshops are in the works and will be added soon!

Ok! Here’s where to go to create your Write Up Account and check it all out:

The Food Writers Business Lab

Once you’ve created your free account, log in and you’ll see The Food Writers Lab on the left side of the page. At the top of the page, you’ll see the Events tab. This is where you’ll find the free introduction classes and all the classes offered in Write Up

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or feedback. We are literally making this up as we go along and YOUR input is vital to making this space as valuable as possible for all of us.

May Mastermind Meeting Dates

Rebecca Blackwell — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 10:03:33 GMT

Here’s what’s coming up in May

There are two 90-minute Mastermind Meetings each month in different time zones. Meetings are held on Zoom and require pre-registration. Registration links below.

Wednesday, May 6: Mastermind Meeting Europe/Africa/Asia-Pacific), 8am UK/9am CET with host
Wednesday, May 13: Mastermind Meeting, 11am New York (Eastern Standard time) with host Rebecca Blackwell

Mastermind for Food Writers: Europe, Africa, Asia-Pacific

Meeting topic: General discussion - but you can always volunteer to teach - do get in touch if you have a topic

DATE: May 6: 8am BST / 9 am CET
Meeting hosted by Liza Debevec
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/VtHXq7qTRSWxrfs0_vDyHw
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.
Please register a day in advance if possible, to make sure you get the meeting link on time and to avoid ‘waiting at the door’.

Mastermind for Food Writers: North America & Europe

Meeting topic: Creative Recipe Writing: How to write recipes with voice, humor and style, taught by , , and .

Wednesday, May 13: 11am, New York (Eastern Standard Time)
Meeting hosted by Rebecca Blackwell
Follow this link to register for this meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tlpa6hKtQs-tvIp__dQsSA
After you register for the meeting, you will receive an email that will allow you to add the meeting to your calendar in your time zone.

Coming Soon! The Food Writers Business Lab!

The Food Writers Business Lab is an online learning hub created specifically for food writers who want practical, affordable support for growing their businesses and expanding their reach.

This collaboration between Mastermind for Food Writers and Write Up! offers classes and workshops for food writers, taught by food writers. Because who understands this expansive, ever-changing industry better than the talented, hard-working professionals who built it?

We are working out the kinks and getting the first set of classes scheduled as we speak! More information about The Food Writers Business Lab coming soon!

Links and Resources

If you’d like to volunteer to teach a mini-masterclass at an upcoming Mastermind Meeting, please sign up here!
If you’re not listed in the Directory, leave a comment on the Directory with your name and publication and I’ll get you added!
Community Resources: A revolving list of resources from food writers for food writers
Collaboration Network: Find other substack food writers to collaborate with
The Mastermind for Food Writers chat is a great place to connect with other food writers on Substack.
The upcoming Food Readers Book Club: a quarterly meet up starting in June

About Your Meeting Hosts

Book Club Survey Results and Announcement of the First Meeting

Liza Debevec — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 11:09:47 GMT

We are really excited to finally make the formal announcement of the Mastermind for Food Writers Book Club. We think it should be called the Food Readers’ Book Club.

As some of you may know already, the idea was born while I () was reading a Diana Henry book of essays over a glass of vermut in Barcelona. So many of you responded positively when I asked about this in the Chat. (By the way, if you are not familiar with the Chat section of the Mastermind for Food Writers, here is the link to it: https://substack.com/chat/4928070). who writes stepped up to support this venture as a co-host and here we are.

A couple of weeks ago we did a survey to which 32 of you responded (Thank You!) and we found out that most of you love to read anything food related (meaning: food essays, food memoirs, food related fiction and cookbooks).

Your preferred food related reading

The majority of the responders preferred the quarterly meetings, and that is what we will be doing.

Preferred frequency of meetings

We discussed the choice of books. We each proposed some titles we had either read and loved or were curious about. Linda did the grunt work of finding out which of the books were available though the US library system or for purchase on websites that were not Amazon related. We offered you the choice of 18 books with a request to select your top five choices; here are the results:

Top choices for the book club selection

As you can see, the book that inspired the creation of this book club, Diana Henry’s Around the Table, actually came in as the top choice for the majority, followed closely by Apricots on the Nile by Collete Rossant and Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin.

Diana Henry’s essay collection was the top choice (Photo: Liza Debevec)

We are happy to announce that our first Food Readers’ Book Club session will take place on Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 8 am PDT, 11 am EDT, 4pm UK time and 5 pm CET.1 We will meet for 90 minutes and we will be reading Diana Henry’s book Around the Table: 52 essays on Food and Life. After that, we will meet the 1st week of September and the 1st week of December when we will be reading Collete Rossant (September) and Laurie Colwin (December).

We will do a short write-up for each of the books; for now, we are sharing the guiding principles of this book club, inspired by ’s principle 8 of the nine core principles from her book Emergent Strategy: Less prep, more presence.

With this in mind, we (Linda and Liza) will be guiding the book club by offering our presence and full attention, but may not always come prepared with specific questions or topics for discussion (and sometimes we may come with many of them). We will be paying attention to topics that emerge from the conversation; we invite all the book club members to embrace the idea of presence over preparation. This means that you are welcome to come to the discussion even if you only just purchased the book and have not read it, or if you have read the book five times and have taken a ton of written notes.

In the sessions we will be facilitating the conversation in ways that will be inclusive of all and mindful of different styles of communication. We may opt to create breakout groups to facilitate small group discussions. When in plenary we will ask people to raise their hands before speaking and be mindful of the time they take to speak, so that those of us who are chattier (like Liza) do not make it impossible for less talkative people (like Linda) to express their thoughts. That said, you do not have to talk; you could just come and listen, if that is your vibe.

We may, at times, invite members to help co-lead a discussion, and if you are very keen to support us in this way, feel free to reach out to us via DMs.

As a way of offering support to readers for whom new book purchases may not be budgeted, may we suggest a post by a U.K. writer entitled “Library Access for Everyone.” Several U.S. libraries offer digital library cards to international readers for an annual fee, though not every library can be assumed to have every title. For everyone else, we encourage you to find a way to support independent/small bookstores. There are a lot of great alternatives to Amazon everywhere, if we make an effort to look for those.

This is all we have for you for now. We will share the registration link for the meeting in early May when we share our shared post with some of our thoughts and notes on the book. We hope many of you will join and until then we wish you Happy Reading!

We understand that this time is not convenient for our members in most of the Asia Pacific time zones. If you’d like to make the case for an additional meeting that serves those time zones, let us know by sending us a DM. It would be great if you could consider (co)hosting such a meeting, as that would make it easier for us.