PITTSBURGH — Tracing blogger and author Jessica Merchant's career is almost like charting the history of the internet itself.

An early food blogger, she started her site, How Sweet Eats, in 2009, only 5 years after Mark Zuckerberg started "The Facebook" for his Harvard classmates.

"There was no Instagram, there was no Pinterest," Merchant recalled from her home in a new and growing Irwin, Pennsylvania, development. Some lots still lie empty around the Westmoreland County site. Construction vehicles are parked in a grouping at a neighbor's house; an in-ground swimming pool is perched precariously above ground, waiting for installation at another house.

"There was obviously no TikTok," she said.

A new wife when she began, Merchant added new platforms as they came along, taking her own photos, videos, writing the blog and developing recipes. But today, she says, her blog is still her biggest platform, a place where she highlights her style of modern twists on classic comfort food.

These days she boasts 571,000 followers on Instagram, 558,000 on Facebook and nearly 535,000 on Pinterest.

"It's hard because you can't take anything away," she said, though she has in recent years let Twitter/X fall to the wayside since it wasn't adapted to her visually focused work.

And of TikTok, she said, "I don't like to jump on the TikTok trends or [other] trends... I'm pretty stubborn in that I don't want to do what someone's telling me to do."

How Sweet readership grows alongside her

Her large light-filled kitchen — too much so at times, she later notes, tugging at blinds — is dominated by a 7-by-12-foot marble kitchen island that seems big enough to land a small aircraft on. She says with a wry smile that when she and her husband, Ed Hunt, were planning the house, she didn't have a good idea of its proportions.

She's had to make adjustments to the new homes she's occupied on her journey (most recently she moved from nearby North Huntingdon) and adapt as she and her husband added one, then two, then three children who are now aged 3 to 10. Similarly, Merchant's audience has grown alongside her — and seems to like where she's landed.

Her most successful cookbook so far was the result of the demands of a young family on her time.

"When I started this, I would make anything: I would make homemade croissants... I would make dinners that might take three or four hours."

Having a baby and a small child underfoot did not allow time for that. The resulting book, "Everyday Dinners" (Rodale Books, $15.81), featured meals that took only 20 to 30 minutes to prepare.

Her audience said "amen."

And though she wrote it earlier, it came out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2021, which Merchant feels contributed to the book's success.

"COVID has been devastating in so many ways, but I think one of the great things is that it has forced people to learn how to cook at home more," she said. "I definitely think that grew my base because people were looking for meals at home — easy meals."

Building on the popularity of "Dinner"

Her newest and fourth book — "Easy Everyday" (Rodale Books, $29.99) — builds on the success of "Everyday Dinners."

But unlike "Dinners," which focuses on only one meal, her new book has everything, soup to nuts: breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, snacks, appetizers, cocktails and nonalcoholic drinks. Most take 30 minutes or less to prepare, with the exception of, say, soup, which may have to simmer but does not require a lot of hands-on time.

On her latest, she was sure to retain a popular feature of "Dinners."

"In ['Everyday Dinners'] and my new book coming out, I included just a few meal prep tips and secrets with each recipe," she said. To her surprise, this was a reader-favorite feature.

Instead of recommending two hours of weekly meal prep work on Sunday like some meal-planning pros, she makes it simple by adding to each recipe a time-saving 10-minute prep-ahead idea: It could be chopping a few vegetables, or making a sauce or salad dressing ahead.

Which brings us to what she calls "my favorite chapter in this book," on sauces and dressings. (She avers that she is not a fan of bottled dressings.)

"There's a chili lime vinaigrette. You can use it on shrimp, you can use it on chicken, you can use it on tofu. It's just so versatile."

With this combination of practicality, positivity and inspiration, Merchant has been able to keep and increase her readership — social media trends be damned.

"I really feel strongly that the more you cook, the easier it is to cook," she said. "I just don't think there's any way to learn except to do it."

Chicken Tortellini Soup with Fire-Roasted Tomatoes

PG tested

This soup relies on prepared ingredients like tortellini, rotisserie chicken and fire-roasted tomatoes to make it a more-than-hearty dinner offering. You can sub in vegetable stock and one or two cans of white beans or chickpeas for the chicken to make this a vegetable-based soup.

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1 medium sweet onion, diced

4 garlic cloves, minced kosher salt and black pepper 1 tablespoon tomato paste

28 ounces crushed fire roasted tomatoes

1 1/2 cups cooked, shredded chicken

1 Parmesan rind, about 1 inch in size

4 to 5 cups chicken stock

1/2 cup heavy cream

4 cups chopped kale or other greens you have on hand

8 to 12 ounces cheese tortellini

grated Parmesan cheese

crushed red pepper flakes, for serving

Heat the olive oil in a large stockpot over medium-low heat. Stir in the onion, garlic and a big pinch of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring often, until the onion softens, 5 to 6 minutes.

Stir in the tomato paste. Cook for a few minutes, allowing the color (and flavor) to deepen. Pour in the crushed tomatoes, chicken, Parmesan rind and 4 cups of the chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce it to a simmer and cover, then simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, stir in the heavy cream, then the kale. Stir in the tortellini and cook for about 5 minutes, until it's tender and cooked through. This is the time to decide if you want to add the remaining cup of chicken stock. If so, add it. Remember that the tortellini will soak up the liquid as it sits.

Taste the soup and season with additional salt and pepper if needed. Serve immediately, sprinkled with Parmesan and red pepper flakes.

10-minute meal prep tip: The chicken can be cooked and shredded ahead of time, or pulled off a rotisserie chicken and stored in the fridge. The entire soup base can even be made ahead of time, and then reheated for cooking the tortellini.

Serves 4 to 6.

— Adapted from Jessica Merchant, "Easy Everyday"

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