Eating Healthy and Living Happy with Serena Wolf, Author of The Dude Diet

Author of The Dude Diet, Serena Wolf

Chef, blogger, author - those are just a few of the hats Serena Wolf wears. A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, Serena is the creative mind behind the blog Domesticate Me and the author of The Dude Diet cookbook and its sequel, The Dude Diet Dinnertime. Serena’s mission is to make healthy cooking accessible to more people by revamping comfort food favorites into recipes that are both healthy and fun to make!

Check out our interview with Serena below to learn about her journey in the culinary world, the process behind publishing The Dude Diet, and how you can incorporate healthy cooking into your lifestyle.

1. Tell us a little about your journey to becoming a (healthy-ish) chef. What led to you start your own food blog?

Funnily enough, nobody in my family cooks (my mother burned things from time to time when I was growing up), so it’s still deeply hilarious to my friends and family that I ended up in the food world. I went to culinary school on a whim in the midst of a mild post-grad existential crisis in 2010 and unexpectedly fell in love with food and cooking. I started my website while at Le Cordon Bleu Paris with no goal in mind other than to casually share some of the skills and recipes I was learning with other new/aspiring cooks (i.e. my friends at home, who I assumed would be the only ones interested in reading it). There was a lot of pink, Julia Child quotes, and Blackberry photos on domesticatemoi.blogspot.com back in the day, but I had a simple goal: Help others get their act together in the kitchen. And make it FUN! The site has come a long way over the years, but that original goal remains the same. 

2. Could you tell us about the inspiration behind the blog name Domesticate Me?

When I enrolled in culinary school, my college friends were wildly surprised because I was the “least domestic person ever.” The name Domesticate Me was really poking fun at myself, and I hoped it might attract kindred spirits who might not ordinarily fall into the domestic god/goddess category. 

3. How has Domesticate Me evolved over the years?

I think the site has really grown and changed as I’ve built my career in the food space. In the early days, the blog was purely creative outlet for me and not something I ever imagined would become such a large component of my career. When I moved back to NYC after culinary school and was working as a private chef, I began taking the blog more seriously. I posted consistently, and the site served so many purposes. It was a training ground for my own recipe development, food writing and photography. A live resume to attract possible clients. A way to build a community (Instagram was still in its infancy). And a source of revenue via ad sales and brand partnerships. In the earlier years, the site was purely a food blog, but it evolved to include content relating to other things I’m passionate about—from skincare to mental health. Since I started devoting more time to book writing, teaching, consulting and social media partnerships, I haven’t posted as regularly on the blog, but it remains a hub for my best recipes, favorite things (there’s now a Shop!), and information on my books, cooking classes, and events. 

4. What advice would you give to someone who wants to start cooking healthier?

Keep it simple, lean heavily on produce, and don’t be afraid to experiment! Focus on learning simple techniques that build your culinary confidence. For example, mastering how to roast and stir-fry vegetables, cook a few types of proteins and grains, make a great frittata, and whip up a couple staple sauces will allow you to create a variety delicious, nutritious meals with whatever you happen to have on hand!

5. How do you find inspiration for new recipes?

Ooooh, so many places! Sometimes I’ll taste something at a restaurant and want to recreate a similar dish at home, or I’ll stumble across a fun flavor profile while traveling or see a combination of ingredients that I’m inspired to riff on in a cookbook or magazine. My husband is also a constant source of recipe ideas (our texts are basically pictures of various sandwiches and barbecue feasts he’d like me to recreate ;)), and I’m so grateful to my community online who regularly submit recipe requests!

6. What inspired your cookbook The Dude Diet? 

The Dude Diet started as a column on my blog. I wrote a one-off post about my then boyfriend (now husband) Logan’s worrisome eating habits and how I was convincing him to eat a little bit better by recreating his favorite comfort foods with with more vegetables, leaner meats and whole grains. My goal was to convince him that eating meals made with whole foods could elicit the same extreme excitement and satisfaction associated with things like pizza or burritos. The concept of being able to eat more healthily without giving up comfort food resonated with so many people (men, women and children!), that the post became a regular column on the blog and eventually spawned the cookbook. 

7. The Dude Diet was your first cookbook, what was the process of putting that together like?

Honestly? Bringing The Dude Diet to Life was a very long, stressful, awesome, horrible, hilarious, and illuminating learning experience. It took about 2.5 years from proposal to publication. I spent about a year developing the 125 recipes in the book and writing the front matter and headnotes for each recipe, followed by a year of editing and post-production (design, marketing, etc.). I truly had no clue what I was in for, so I was learning on the fly. I wrote a series about it on the blog called Making the Cookbook, in case anyone wants to peek behind the cookbook publishing curtain. 

8. What are your plans for the future? You’ve released The Dude Diet Dinnertime, which is a sequel to The Dude Diet; are you planning to write more cookbooks?

Honestly, I’m not sure what the future holds. I try to remain flexible with my vision for my future because so many things in my career—from writing the cookbooks to becoming a virtual cooking instructor—have come about through in unexpected ways. I’d absolutely love to write more cookbooks that aren’t under The Dude Diet umbrella, and I’m really enjoying teaching virtual classes at the moment, so I’m hoping to continue to grow my wonderful community of students. 

9. What’s one moment in your career that has really stood out to you?

The call from my agent that I had gotten my book deal. It was a mixture of elation, pride, and panic that I actually had to write a whole book—I’ll never forget it. 

10. If you had to recommend one recipe from The Dude Diet for someone to try, which one would you recommend? Cheeseburger Quinoa Bake. Trust me on this. 

11. Last show you binge watched: The West Wing! (For the second time…)

12. Favorite form of self-care: Sunday pizza with my husband. But a good medium-trashy novel in the bath is a close second. 

13. If you could have lunch with any woman, who would it be? Julia Child! 

14. One item from your bucket list: Gorilla trekking in Rwanda.