Order Up! A Conversation with Jamie Milne, Food Influencer and Content Creator, Mom of Two, and Cookbook Author
The creator of Everything Delish on family food traditions, vulnerability online, and what it's like as a first-time cookbook author recipe-testing while pregnant.
Small Bites: Jamie's debut cookbook Everything Delish lands September 1st, and because preorders are what tell retailers a first-time author's book matters — shaping print runs and shelf space before release — you can preorder it now and have her grandmother's recipes on your counter this fall. Preorder on Bookshop.org or Amazon!
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Everything on One Fork: Jamie Milne on Flavor Combos, Family, Online Community, and Cooking With Kids
Jamie Milne can tell you the exact moment she cried over a tray of chicken wings. She was testing a recipe for her first cookbook — her Bubby Ruth’s shake-and-bake wings, all flats, the way she demanded them as a six-year-old — and when she finally got the breading right, she sat down and wept. She hadn’t tasted them since her grandmother passed, right before her wedding.
That’s the thing about Jamie, the creator behind Everything Delish: the food is never really just the food. She grew up in a Toronto Jewish home where Shabbat dinner was non-negotiable, the door was always open, and somehow there was room for twenty people at the table. Her grandmother pickled everything. Her mom put grilled pineapple next to honey mustard and made it work. Food meant everyone was welcome.
We talked with Jamie about all of it: the recipes she’s carrying into her own kitchen, the cheesecake-on-a-stick that took her from 10,000 to 100,000 followers in a matter of hours (before “social media influencer” was a known thing), the teacher’s brain she still brings to every recipe, and the gap between the meals she plates for the internet and the beige food her two-year-old actually eats.
Jamie isn’t sharing recipes to increase her follower count (but of course, go follow her on @Everything_Delish on TikTok and Instagram). She’s building the foundation of food, family, and memories of a table her kids will remember the way she remembers her grandmother’s.
A Conversation with Jamie Milne, Everything Delish
Introduce Yourself: I’m Jamie Milne, the creator of Everything Delish, and mom to Jack (2 years old) and Blake (2 months old!).
I’m a first-time cookbook author, and my debut cookbook — also called Everything Delish — comes out September 1st, 2026. My husband and I live in Toronto.
You grew up in a Jewish household where Shabbat dinner was non-negotiable. Is there a food memory that still shows up in the way you cook?
Both of my grandmothers were a huge inspiration. We come from a family that’s always together, and always together over food: Shabbat tables, Sunday brunch, an afternoon snack, all of it centered on community.
One of my grandmothers, who lived in Toronto, made the best shake-and-bake chicken wings. I still dream about them — lubby but crispy, with the most amazing breading. Everyone laughed because I needed my own tray at six years old, and they had to be flats. No drums.
She passed away right before my wedding, and I always knew she’d be part of Everything Delish somehow. My parents helped me recreate her recipe, and Bubby Ruth’s Shake and Bake Chicken Wings are in the cookbook (all flats in the photo, dedicated entirely to myself). When we finally nailed it, I cried. I hadn’t tasted them in so long, and it brought me right back to those Shabbat dinners. She pickled everything too, like strawberry jam, kosher pickles, red peppers I’d eat by the handful. She instilled that whole home-cooking atmosphere in me.
You’ve talked about how your mom has an instinct for unlikely pairings — grilled pineapple, honey mustard, cinnamon sugar. How do you know when a weird combo actually works?
Growing up, I’d look at my mom’s plate and think, why is everything touching? I didn’t get it until I started doing it myself, needing every flavor and texture in one bite. When I started talking about it online, I couldn’t believe how many people agreed.
Honestly, I never really think anything is weird, because everything on my plate feels intentional to me. But here’s a real one: when I was nine months pregnant, I was making a snack mix that I wanted to include something sweet, salty, and chocolatey. I had this wild craving for wasabi peas. I accidentally dropped in chocolate-covered raisins and thought, this does not go. Then I ate it and it was incredible! My husband looked at me like I was crazy, but the wasabi pea and the chocolate raisins somehow worked. Even the accidental combinations can turn into something delicious.
Are there recipes from your mom or from Jewish holidays that you’re carrying into your own kitchen for Jack and Blake?
My mom’s house was like my grandmothers — we had an open-door policy. Anyone could come over for dinner, lunch, Shabbat, brunch, and help themselves to the fridge. The one thing she always made was her strawberry pecan poppy seed salad. My friends still ask for “Susan’s salad,” so I told them, don’t worry, it’s going in the cookbook.
That welcomeness is what I want in my own home. I had such a good relationship with food growing up because of how warm my parents were about it. Last year we hosted Passover for twenty people; honestly, they didn’t fit in our kitchen, but we made room. That’s why I build my recipes to scale: for one person, two, a whole family. I want everyone to feel like they can make it, for any occasion.
When did you realize Everything Delish was more than a side hustle?
This is wild to reveal now, but I was embarrassed of Everything Delish at first. It was almost a secret with my friends. I’d say, you can see my recommendations, but the public can’t.
Then I was substitute teaching, and there was this cheesecake on a stick at a food truck from Heirloom here in Toronto. It was a huge hunk of cheesecake, bigger than my face, smothered in milk chocolate, wrapped in Nutella and every nut you can think of. I made my sister-in-law come film it with me at 8 p.m. in the pouring rain. I didn’t think anything of it, and it went insanely viral. Literally hundreds of millions of views.
This was before the algorithm: no brand partnerships, no licensing. It was the wild west of Instagram. A few days later, 9gag, part of Unilad, reposted me to their 86 million followers, and I went from 10,000 to almost 100,000 followers within hours. I ran out of a seminar to call my dad and my boyfriend (now my husband) and said, “9gag just posted me.” They said, “gag what?” That was the moment I thought, I have something here. I started reaching out to brands like Unilever — no contracts, just e-transfers. That’s how it became a business.
You have a master’s in developmental psychology and education. Where does your teacher brain show up when you’re writing a recipe?
I say I’m teaching every single day. I want people to believe that if I can do this, they can too. In a saturated space, no one can replicate your story, so I lean into storytelling in my voiceovers.
The teaching shows up in the simplicity. I’m a home cook trying to reach home cooks, so I won’t grab a random spice no one can find. I try to keep recipes under twelve ingredients, and I always give swaps and variations because I want everyone included, not left out. I actually treat recipe development like lesson planning: organized, intentional. With two kids it’s harder now, but that’s still the goal: simple enough to reach everyone.
One of your viral videos was about anxiety and using cooking as an outlet. How did sharing that vulnerability become part of Everything Delish?
I always say people come for the food but they stay for the story. That’s how you actually connect. I don’t want people to think of me as someone cooking as just a face and hands and dishes on a screen who they know nothing about. I want you to know me.
COVID was a pivotal moment. I’m a hypochondriac and a germaphobe, and the state of the world was freaking me out. So I talked about my anxiety, and how I channeled it into content because cooking was my escape. I’d say it over a voiceover while I made something simple like tomatoes and burrata, whatever. People came for the food and stayed because they connected to what I was saying. I want you to feel like you’re talking to the girl next door, the built-in grandmother and college friend you want to cook with.
Plating beautiful food with a newborn and a two-year-old is hard. What does the gap between internet and reality look like for you?
There are content days, for sure — though honestly, I haven’t filmed since giving birth. I’m only going back this week, so my content might look a little different. Maybe not as aesthetically perfect.
When Jack’s in daycare, I have more flexibility to make things look nice. But the recipe is always simple at its core; it’s something I’d make on a weeknight, just plated a little prettier. Other times I’ve got my phone propped on the wall, I’m in stained sweatpants with coffee spilled on everything, cooking the actual dinner while Jack hopefully sits nicely beside me. I’m not throwing a dinner party for thirty-five and pretending I did it effortlessly as a mom of two. That’s not my page. If I can cook it, anyone can.
A lot of parents feel like failures the second their kid won’t eat what they made. Your whole job is making food look easy — what happens when Jack won’t eat?
Oh, I turn to social media and ask, what do you do when your child throws their entire plate on the floor and now the dog’s eating it? Welcome to my life.
It’s this crazy pattern. We’ll have two days of Jack eating everything and I’ll say to my husband, are we okay? And he says, don’t jinx it. Then the next day he won’t touch the mac and cheese he loved yesterday. Someone told me years ago: when food is your whole life, your kid will be the pickiest eater. That’s exactly what happened. My son is eating something beige 90% of the time.
I do try to sneak things in — I’ll cook mac and cheese in bone broth, add cottage cheese or a blended cauliflower sauce. He’s randomly obsessed with peas, so I lean into that, plus chicken and turkey burgers and meatballs. But sometimes my husband and I are making two different meals, one for us and one for Jack. That’s the reality.
After more than a decade of social media, what did writing a cookbook let you put on the page that a feed can’t?
The cookbook process was daunting. People made me nervous about it, told me I had to finish it before I had kids. Honestly though, I loved it! It brought me back to cooking; I fell in love with it again. By the time it comes out, it’ll be almost four years since I started.
With social media, we test everything, but it doesn’t go through the same execution and testing as a cookbook. When you’re writing a cookbook, there’s a whole team and so many more eyes. You’re also thinking about swaps and variations you don’t always consider for a quick video, such as dairy-free, vegetarian, and so on. And it made me sit and ask where my inspiration actually comes from: how I grew up, what I loved in my mom’s cooking. The hard part was keeping it a secret. On social media I ask my community what they want that week — a cozy stew, a soup. With a cookbook, you don’t have that.
Did Jack’s presence change the recipes, or what you considered simple enough to include?
I was pregnant while recipe testing, so I just kept getting more uncomfortable as my due date got closer. If something was too tiring to make at four or five months pregnant and in pain, I didn’t want it in the book; I wanted simple, nothing that keeps you on your feet forever. And I was hungry and impatient, so no, I’m not proofing dough in the fridge for twenty-four hours. How do we get that proofing down? How do we make pita at home faster, because that’s my craving and I want it now? Without realizing it, being pregnant shaped so much of what recipes made it in.
Your mom didn’t sit you down to teach you to cook — she just cooked, and you absorbed it. Will you be deliberate about teaching Jack and Blake, or let them absorb it the same way?
Because I absorbed it naturally and it was never forced, I really hope they fall in love with it on their own. It’s funny — Shabbat dinners are annoying when you’re a teenager and want to go out with your friends. But what I’d do now to be back at my Bubby’s apartment, taking in every moment.
When I left teaching to become a blogger — and that many years ago, “content creator” wasn’t even a term yet! — my parents said, what are you doing? But they supported me when a lot of other people didn’t, and that shaped the kind of parent I want to be. I want my kids to pursue whatever they love. And I hope they love my food. My son and I already love my husband’s, he’s an incredible cook.
When they grow up, how do you hope they’ll describe your food?
My husband would say cheesy, saucy, and snacky. But I want it to be filled with warmth and love, the kind of food I grew up with. Both my parents worked and we still had a full meal on the table every night, together. My husband grew up the same way. No matter how busy our days are, we show up and eat together every night, even when Jack is being a little tyrant and throwing his plate. That’s the beautiful part of parenthood right now.
You were pregnant with Blake while getting ready to launch the book. Did that feel different than when you were pregnant with Jack?
Funny story I haven’t shared online yet. My original publication date was March 3rd, 2026. I found out I was pregnant in September, and my OB told me I couldn’t go on a national book tour in the U.S. at 31 or 32 weeks pregnant. So I’d just peed on a stick and had to call my entire publishing team — two days before I was supposed to announce the book to the world.
My team is all women and they were incredible: “No sweat, Jamie. This is beautiful.” They pushed the date to September 1st. Having that extra time, knowing the book would land while I was postpartum, made me work right up until I delivered. A lot of what I was putting out became postpartum- and pregnancy-friendly. Now I’m one month postpartum, filming for the first time tomorrow, and I see recipes from the book in a whole new light.
Tell us a cooking skill you use all the time that you think every home cook should know?
Barbecue. For so long I watched my mom grill — she was “girls who grill,” four-foot-eleven, out there in the Canadian winter making sure food got on the table no matter what. I was always a little anxious around the barbecue, but watching my husband enjoy it got me into it, and now I can’t wait to grill dinner tonight.
Once you know how to turn it on and off and understand the gas lines, it’s so simple and so flavorful. It doesn’t have to be a huge hunk of meat. You can grill romaine for a salad, put salmon on a plank, do fruit and veggies. We’re about to enter Jamie’s grilling season, where I make every bowl possible with everything from the grill...and everything in a bowl. Stay tuned!