Success has been sweet for food blogger and cookbook author Phi Kelnhofer. But behind each recipe the Milwaukee foodie cooks up are support and inspiration from her biggest fans — husband Nick and baby Ben.
In addition to working for a natural products company, Phi started her Sweet Phi blog in late 2010. She’s a prolific writer, and the popularity of a series of simple recipes helped lead to Fast and Easy Five Ingredient Recipes, a cookbook she published in 2016.
Phi and Nick, an electrical engineer, have lived in Milwaukee for eight years, and welcomed son Ben into the family this past June. She was kind enough to dish on her background and offer up some tasty recipes along the way!
What drew you to cooking?
I grew up cooking. I come from a family of six, and we cooked dinner every night. I continued cooking and as I started hosting my own dinner parties, friends and family started requesting my recipes after-the-fact. I would sit down and type it all out and email it. Then my husband said, “Why don’t you just put the recipes online and then send people the link so you don’t have to type it out each time?” And that’s how my food blog was born!
What type of cooking or recipes do you prefer?
I prefer recipes that are on the simpler side, ones that don’t take hours upon hours to make, ones that taste good. While sometimes it’s nice to make something fancier that has a bunch of things that need to be prepped or made as separate components and uses every dish in my kitchen, I tend to be drawn to the recipes where the end result doesn’t seem to require a cleaning crew for my kitchen!
What is your husband’s favorite recipe? How about your son’s?
This is a question I get a lot, so I actually had him answer it and included it in my about page! Nick’s top five favorite recipes are bacon cheese dip, butternut squash gnocchi, black bean pie, beer brat and caramelized onion pizza and salted caramel chocolate chip cookies. He also said that the whole bowl and tomato tarts needed to be included on his list.
I’ve just started feeding my son more solid food, and it’s been so fun! He has had every fruit and vegetable under the sun and I’ve started introducing spices. He likes a mixture of apple/quinoa/cinnamon. Or eggs! I make him these little egg cups and they are a combination of eggs, ricotta, sweet potatoes and a little bit of cheese. The whole family loves them.
What’s your go-to recipe during a busy week?
I have so many! I love a good quick pasta dish like this one or this one. I really love making food with ground turkey as the protein. I make Asian ground turkey bowls all the time as well as turkey burgers. And for Christmas I got an Instant Pot (pressure cooker) and I’ve been loving making soups in it like potato soup.
Congrats on your cookbook! How did that project come about and what was it like to put together?
Thank you so much! It still is such an amazing thing to talk about, because having a cookbook has been a dream, and is one of those situations where everything seems to have lined up, yet at the same time seems like it took years to all come together.
I was in fact working on a cookbook and was going to be self-publishing, but there was something keeping me from finishing it. I had the concept, about ninety-five percent of the actual work done (testing recipes, photography, recipes, more photography and more recipes) but just couldn’t bring myself to wrap it all up. During that time, I was approached by a publisher and nothing came of it, so I kept on keeping on and working on my idea. And then a second publisher contacted me, and after meetings, proposals and contracts, my cookbook had a publisher and was going to be published! I worked with my editor to fine-tune the details so that it could be a cookbook that (I hope/think) will stand the test of time and actually be useful!
The cookbook is based on my Five Ingredient Friday series. It contains over one hundred recipes, all five ingredients or less, all with big beautiful photos (always my favorite part of cookbooks) and contains my favorite easy recipes for busy people.
After becoming a mom, I can tell you firsthand that I use my cookbook more than ever — I seriously make something out of it at least once a week!
What do you like most about blogging?
The connection to others and sharing stories and recipes. I love connecting through food and helping give people ideas for the age old question, “What should I make for dinner?”
Why do you choose to raise a family in Wisconsin?
After having lived all over (I grew up in Chicago, went to college in southern Illinois, went to grad school in New York and then lived in North Carolina before moving to Wisconsin), I feel such a sense of “home” in Wisconsin. I love the landscape, I love the proximity of Lake Michigan, I love that there are cities and small towns and rolling farmland. And the cheese!
What’s a recipe you’d recommend for winter?
In the winter I’m all about comforting and warm recipes that can be made in the slow cooker. I made this chicken and potato gnocchi soup [pictured above] and it is so yummy. And my husband said he thought I should include the link to the chili we make and love.
Photos courtesy of Phi Kelnhofer.