🥔 Order Up! A Conversation with Nicole Washington, food blogger, home cook, and mom of two
What it looks like cooking for her family, surviving cancer, and doing what you can, when you can.
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Feeding Your Family In the Real World, for Real Life.
Cooking for a family while working full-time, juggling schedules, and trying to take care of yourself can feel like a lot, especially when life doesn’t follow a neat plan. That’s why our conversation with Nicole Washington, the creator behind Brown Sugar Food Blogger, felt instantly familiar. Nicole is a working mom of two, a self-taught cook, a breast cancer survivor, and someone who shows up in the kitchen exactly as she is: honest, tired, thoughtful, and deeply committed to feeding her family well…without pretending it’s always easy.
Nicole’s approach to food is grounded in real life. She creates comfort-forward, soul-inspired meals that are quick, approachable, and made with ingredients you can actually find (and pronounce). Check out her recipes right 👉 here. But what makes her perspective especially powerful is how openly she talks about evolving as a person: how her cooking has shifted alongside motherhood, marriage, health, and the daily unpredictability of family life. There’s no perfection here, no rigid meal plans; just doing what you can, when you can, and giving yourself grace along the way.
In our interview, Nicole shares how a cancer diagnosis reshaped her relationship with food, why she’s become more intentional (but not obsessive) about ingredients, and how she balances nourishing her family with the realities of energy, time, and budget. She also gets refreshingly honest about takeout nights, PB&J dinners, kids who won’t touch vegetables unless they’re in a pouch, and why sometimes the most important skill in the kitchen is knowing how to improvise.
If you’ve ever stood in your kitchen wondering how to make it all work, Nicole’s story will feel like a breath of fresh air, and a friend reminding you that you’re doing just fine.
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A Conversation with Nicole Washington, Brown Sugar Food Blogger
Introduce Yourself: I’m Nicole Washington, the voice behind Brown Sugar Food Blog. I live in OH with my husband and our two kids: a nine-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter.
I create quick, simple, comforting meals for working families. Nothing over the top. Ingredients you can pronounce, ingredients you can use more than once, food that feels realistic for real life.
How did you get interested in cooking in the first place? Was it something you grew up doing?
Honestly? I was terrible at cooking growing up. I was not that kid in the kitchen. I could make PB&Js, ramen, tuna fish… and that was about it.
In my mid-20s, it finally hit me: I had to feed myself. I couldn’t survive forever on George Foreman chicken, broccoli, bread, and rice pouches. That wasn’t going to cut it. I’m being real. Cooking for me didn’t come from inspiration, it came from survival. I don’t have a beautiful origin story. I just needed to eat.
I actually started baking first. My blog didn’t even start as Brown Sugar Food Blog — I don’t even remember the original name. It was on Blogger, it had no purpose, no strategy. I baked cupcakes constantly, brought them to coworkers, took photos, wrote about them. Someone eventually told me, “You’re a blogger,” and I was like, Oh. I am?
Your blog has evolved alongside your life. How has becoming a working mom shaped the way you cook and what you share?
If you scroll my blog from the beginning, you can literally see my life unfold. Single. Dating. Engaged. Pregnant. Married. Kids. The recipes changed because I changed.
At first, Brown Sugar wasn’t about moms or quick meals at all. I was going to be Martha Stewart meets Carrie Bradshaw — but Black, obviously! I thought I’d write about dating, city life, and food I loved. And those posts are still there. Dating advice, messy thoughts, questionable takes. I keep them because they’re a snapshot of who I was.
Eventually, the blog and my food writing evolved with my reality. I leaned into cooking for people like me: busy, tired, trying to get something good on the table without losing our minds.
Did your relationship with food shift after your cancer diagnosis? How did that change the way you think about feeding yourself and your family?
Completely shifted. A million percent. When you hear “cancer,” something has to change. You start asking questions, especially when there’s no family history and nothing obvious to point to, which was what happened in my case.
Food kept coming up. Not as a guarantee or a cause, but honestly, as a factor. I learned that even when something is genetic, environment matters. What you eat matters. What you’re exposed to matters. That really stayed with me.
I’m not shopping all-organic produce, we’re not a perfect-eating family. But I started a garden. I’m growing produce, learning how to jar things, making more bread at home. I pay attention now in a way I didn’t before.
It’s not about fear; it’s about awareness and control. Controlling what I can.
You work full-time, parent full-time, and cook a lot. How do you actually balance all of it?
I don’t! I would love to tell you I meal prep every Sunday with a color-coded calendar. I don’t. My life is unpredictable and sometimes I just want to sit down and play video games and do absolutely nothing.
I reserve the right to check out.
I do what I can, when I can. Some weeks I bake bread on Sundays for lunches. Some weeks I don’t. There’s no rigid system, just give and take, and effort when it fits. Trying to practice kindness towards myself when I need to, I think.
For parents who feel intimidated or overwhelmed in the kitchen, what mindset shift has helped you the most?
I started asking myself hard questions, like why so many ingredients are allowed in our food here but banned elsewhere in the world. Why younger people are getting sicker. Why food keeps showing up as a common denominator.
That made me pay attention. Not perfectly, just intentionally.
I read ingredient lists now. I look for shorter ones. I swap where I can. I don’t wait for the government to regulate my food; I regulate my own house, what I put into my body.
And I remind people: recipes are blueprints. You don’t have to follow them perfectly. Use what works for you. Substitute what you trust. That’s still cooking.
Comfort food plays a big role in your cooking. How does that show up in your day-to-day meals?
I don’t cook big, old-school Sunday feasts every week. That’s just not how we eat or the time that I have available. But comfort food, familiarity, still matters. Maybe it’s pot roast and green beans. Maybe it’s something heartier on a weekend. There’s always a vegetable involved, always.
My kids struggle with vegetables, so I use fruit and veggie pouches. I don’t care what anyone calls them. If that’s how they get it, that’s how they get it.
When life feels overwhelming, how do you think about balance and getting dinner on the table?
I’m learning to give myself grace. If I need to order takeout, I do. If dinner is PB&Js, that’s fine too.
I’m very strict with budgets and plans — sometimes too strict — so learning when to loosen up has been a process. Now I tell myself: relax. No one is judging you. Everyone is doing their best. If I order takeout tonight, I’ll cook tomorrow. I just swap the plan. That’s it.
Do your kids cook with you?
Not really! And I’m okay admitting that. They make messes. They get distracted. If I’m trying to get dinner on the table on a weeknight, I don’t have the patience to teach and cook.
Sometimes on weekends we bake or do something fun. My daughter loves copying whatever I’m doing. Gardening was a promising activity to do together until bugs showed up and the kids ran! Ha!
They didn’t eat the potatoes we pulled, but they thought it was cool. I’ll take that.
What’s one cooking skill you think every home cook should learn?
Learning how to make side dishes and sauces out of nothing.
If you have pasta, butter, garlic, cream, salt, that’s a dish. Crushed tomatoes and tomato paste? You can make sauces, sloppy joes, dressings.
You don’t need boxed mixes. You need confidence. Taste as you go. Trust yourself. Nine times out of ten, you already have what you need.