Jas Brechtl is the author of the Balkan Comfort Food cookbook and the owner and creative director of All That’s Jas food blog, a website dedicated to authentic international foods made simple and accessible while preserving their true flavors.
Jas Brechtl is a Bosnian expat who has been living in Northern Indiana since the summer of 1998, following a six-year exile in Germany. She is writer, cook, photographer, and an avid cheesecake lover.
Jas grew up in a traditional European family, the kind of family that sits together for big weekend lunches. Those lunches always began with some kind of soup. It isn’t a big lunch unless you begin it with a spoon.
Based on her blog now, you’d never know that as a child Jas barely ate. Food didn’t interest her in the least and actually disgusted her. She would eat enough just to survive, and even then it would be just a few things such as bread and soup….rather, broth. And there better not be anything floating in it or she wouldn’t touch it.
Jas suffered from anorexia throughout her childhood, but not because she had issues with her weight. It wasn’t that she didn’t WANT to eat food, she just physically couldn’t. She never actually felt hungry.
This promptly changed when Jas became pregnant with her daughter. Today she believes that pregnancy hormones changed something within her body, which in turn affected her metabolism. Suddenly, she found herself ravenously hungry and loving everything. Soon after that, the war in Bosnia started, and now that she wanted to eat, there was no food. Everything was scarce, and meatless bean soup (grah) would be the family’s only meal for many days in a row.
Still, Jas was changed. She vowed that once her family escaped the war, food would be her medicine. She started experimenting with flavors; her daughter was her guinea pig for many new creations.
The seed was planted and Jas’s American Dream realized once she was able to pursue blogging full-time from home. Now her family finds Jas in the kitchen most of the day. It’s her happy place and her escape.
There are so many dishes in other countries you would never try if you didn’t travel. Traveling somewhere new opens your eyes and your taste buds to a whole new range of authentic flavor profiles and foods that you wouldn’t otherwise experience.
Jas believes the kitchen is a place where you can travel to any country without ever having to leave your house.
Jas Brechtl Show Notes
Contact:
All That’s Jas
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Books:
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Balkin Comfort Food – Jas Brechtl
The Vatican
66 square feet – Marie Viljoen
Gear:
Mentions:
Questions:
What did you do before you became a food blogger?
When you worked for Citibank, and cooked for people, did you do it in your spare time?
Did you have some guilt about not cooking for them anymore?
Did you ever find out why you gagged as a child when you were trying to eat?
Why did you start blogging?
When did you start blogging?
How did you pick the name of your food blog?
Did you think of any other names or was that a one shot deal?
How long was it available for people to look at?
When you first started, how many times a week did you publish a post?
When did it change that you went down to the two?
Did you find it was more work because you were trying to do quality?
Do you have anybody that helps you with your blog?
How many drafts do you have ready to be published?
How long did it take you to start making money?
What do you love about blogging?
What do you find is the hardest thing about blogging?
Is there any advice that somebody gave you who knows blogging that you wish you had heeded?
And you’ve seen some results?
Do you do your own SEO?
Do you like doing it?
What is your favorite marketing tool?
Why do you like Tailwind?
What is your favorite social media platform and why?
What is your most popular post?
What is your biggest food failure?
Why?
Was there anything redeeming about it?
What is your favorite cuisine?
What would your last meal be?
Do you have a favorite cookbook?
What kind of camera do you have?
What is your go-to lens?
You can find it on Amazon?
What are the three languages you speak?
Jas has such an interesting story and also a tough one, escaping a civil war, what an ordeal! Yet she has succeeded in establishing a life and family in the USA and she seems fine. Loved this episode and Jas is such a friendly gal!
Thank you Patty! I appreciate your comment!
Another good one Elaine! Jas has had a fascinating life!
Thanks Beth! Yes, she has!