Caroline Chambers: Author of What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking and Recipe Developer

Second Life

Clique Media, Female Founder, Entrepreneurship, Career Change, Career Pivot, Fashion & Beauty, Hillary Kerr, Personal Journals, Who What Wear, Clique, Career, Arts, Business, Careers, Second Life, Career Advice, Self-made, Entrepreneur, Mydomaine, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 February 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Caroline Chambers is an author, recipe developer, and the creator of the popular Substack and cookbook What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking. Caroline began her career in advertising in New York City, and to make ends meet, she also started a floral design business, delivering flowers across the city by cab. After a few years, she felt like the city—and the advertising industry—wasn’t for her. When her boyfriend (and eventual husband) relocated to San Diego for work, she took the opportunity to join him and resolved that, when she did, she’d also pivot to an industry she was truly passionate about: food. Over the next few years, she worked in catering, restaurants, test kitchens, and more, before finding her niche as a freelance recipe developer. She then began to grow an audience on social media, which culminated in the launch of her Substack What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking in 2020. Readers loved her quick, delicious, unfussy recipes, and her community grew quickly. Today, she has over 409,000 subscribers and is the #1 Food & Drink Substack. Last year, she expanded her culinary universe even further by publishing the What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking cookbook.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, everyone. I'm Hillary Kerr, the co-founder and chief content officer of Who What Where,
0:11.0	and this is Second Life, a podcast spotlighting women who have truly inspiring careers. We're talking
0:19.6	about their work journeys, what they've learned from the
0:22.0	process of setting aside their doubts or fears, and what happens when they embark on their
0:27.9	second life. Today on the show, I'm chatting with the writer of the popular substack and cookbook
0:33.8	What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, Caroline Chambers. For all the career planning
0:39.7	we can try to do, sometimes it's circumstances or fate, that help us pursue our passions.
0:46.9	Caroline started her career in marketing in New York City. To make a living in the city on an
0:52.2	entry-level job salary, she also started a floral design business.
0:57.4	After a few years, she realized that she liked marketing and advertising but didn't love it, and living in New York was just tough.
1:05.1	She moved to San Diego to be with her then-boyfriend, now husband, and pivoted to pursue a career that she was truly passionate about
1:12.7	food. She worked in catering, test kitchens, appliance startups, the New York Times cooking section,
1:20.0	and more, searching for the niche that worked for her. Eventually, she went freelance and published
1:25.9	her first cookbook in 2018.
1:28.5	Over the next few years, she began to grow an audience on social media, which culminated in the launch of her Substack, what to cook when you don't feel like cooking, in 2020.
1:39.0	She was an early voice on Substack, and people loved her frank, unfussy, delicious recipes. It paid off. She now has
1:47.7	almost a half a million subscribers, and the What to Cook universe has expanded to include a best-selling
1:54.6	cookbook published last August. I absolutely loved chatting with Caroline. Her honesty about her strengths and her weaknesses
2:03.1	and how she's made this career happen was incredibly inspiring and also just a lot of fun. Now,
2:10.8	on Second Life, it's Caroline Chambers. All right, girl, are you ready? Ready. Okay, good. So we like to start this podcast at the
2:22.5	beginning. So what did you study in school? And much more importantly, what did you think you were
2:28.5	going to be when you grew up? Oh, I love that. My college major did not pan out to the career where I am today. I went to
	...

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