Karen Kelly
Karen Kelly builds list-driven recipe coverage that turns everyday cooking into comforting, approachable meals keyed to specific moments, seasons, and cravings. She is a nationally syndicated food and travel writer, recipe developer, and founder of Seasonal Cravings whose work in food is regularly featured by Yahoo. Her stories focus on practical home cooking - slow cooker dinners, dump-and-bake casseroles, gluten-free baking, and crowd-pleasing spreads - designed for busy cooks who still want flavor and warmth on the table.
Weeknight dinners and everyday comfort food
Much of Kelly’s Yahoo coverage revolves around easing the pressure of nightly cooking with recipes that feel familiar yet still satisfying.
She assembles roundups like “16 chicken dinners for when you're tired of making the same thing,” “If you're bored of chicken, these 14 recipes will fix that,” and “Ground beef casseroles that make weeknight dinners a whole lot easier,” all aimed at solving the “what’s for dinner” problem with straightforward options. In “17 simple comfort foods you'll crave when life gets chaotic,” she leans into classic, hearty dishes that promise ease as much as indulgence, foregrounding recipes such as Instant Pot chili and hamburger steak and gravy. Her lists consistently highlight short ingredient lists, clear cooking methods, and formats like slow cooker and Instant Pot that reduce hands-on time while keeping the results firmly in the comfort food lane.
Kelly’s descriptions center on how a dish feels to eat - warm, filling, nostalgic - rather than on chefly technique, reinforcing that these recipes are meant for home kitchens and busy schedules. In her coverage of ground turkey and weeknight dinners, she frames each recipe as a practical solution, emphasizing that they make “everyday dinners easier to figure out” and keep the process simple.
Across these pieces, the through-line is reliability: readers get a curated set of comforting options with enough variety to keep repetitive meals at bay, but nothing so complex that it feels out of reach on a typical weeknight.
Small-town, nostalgic, and church cookbook cooking
Kelly distinguishes herself by tapping into the tradition of church and community cookbooks as a source of nostalgic, small-town recipes.
In “Rediscover small-town cooking with these 24 church cookbook favorites,” she surfaces dishes such as easy hamburger soup, chocolate mayonnaise cake, Ritz cracker chicken casserole, and slow cooker BBQ grape jelly meatballs, presenting them as classic comfort food straight from small-town kitchens. Her write-ups stress the balance between coziness and practicality, describing how these recipes use familiar ingredients - ground beef, canned soups, simple batters - to deliver crowd-pleasing results with minimal fuss.
The collection also includes American chop suey, sausage potato soup, 30-minute dinner rolls, and Southern sweet potato pie, underscoring her interest in regional and heritage-style dishes that resonate across generations. Kelly’s tone in these pieces is steady and descriptive, focusing on texture, flavor, and serving context rather than trendiness, which reinforces her affinity for church-basement potlucks, family suppers, and the kind of food that feels “home-cooked” even when it’s built from time-saving shortcuts.
This small-town and church cookbook angle gives her coverage a distinct nostalgic edge compared with more generic recipe roundups.
Seasonal, holiday, and event-based spreads
Seasonality and occasion-driven cooking are another strong thread in Kelly’s work, both at Yahoo and through Seasonal Cravings. She assembles themed collections such as cozy chili recipes for cold weather, 30-minute fall meals, and Halloween drinks “to get the party spirits flowing,” all anchored in the idea that food should match the mood and moment. Game day appetizers “made for sharing from kickoff to the final whistle” further show her focus on entertaining-friendly spreads built from bite-sized, high-impact recipes.
In patriotic pieces like “14 red, white, and blue recipes that bring the fireworks early,” she leans into color, presentation, and celebratory framing to help readers turn everyday ingredients into holiday-ready dishes with minimal extra work.
Her brand Seasonal Cravings is described as a hub for “delicious recipes and travel tips,” and she explicitly positions it around approachable seasonal recipes that are realistic for everyday life. Reader favorites on the site range from roasted mini potatoes and caprese chicken to Slow Cooker Turkey Breast with Apple Cider and Creamy Tuscan Pasta with Sausage, illustrating how she translates seasonal cues - fall evenings, holiday gatherings, summer cookouts - into specific meal ideas.
Across these platforms, the emphasis is consistent: readers get curated lists of recipes that align with a particular season or event, making it easy to plan menus that feel timely without demanding professional skills.
Gluten-free, health-conscious, and recipe development beyond Yahoo
Beyond her Yahoo coverage, Kelly’s own recipes and external bylines extend her focus into gluten-free and health-conscious cooking while keeping the comfort food frame. On Seasonal Cravings, she develops dishes such as gluten-free donuts, gluten-free banana bread, gluten-free bread machine loaves, and easy spicy tomato soup, alongside mains like roasted mini potatoes, easy hamburger soup, baked teriyaki salmon, and slow cooker copycat dishes.
These recipes show a pattern: familiar comfort foods reworked to be gluten-free or slightly lighter, but still straightforward to execute.
Her recipe work for other food outlets includes sheet pan salmon, roasted cod with tomatoes, cucumber and corn steak tacos, coconut chicken curry, vegetarian roasted cauliflower bowls, and multiple gluten-free desserts and baked goods. Here she continues to prioritize efficiency and accessibility - sheet pan dinners, overnight oats, and simple brownies - while folding in more overtly healthy elements like vegetables, lean proteins, and alternative flours. Professionally, she is described as a nationally syndicated food and travel writer, health coach, and co-founder of The Roam Report, and her work has been featured by organizations such as the Associated Press, MSN, Taste of Home, The Seattle Times, NBC, Fox, Apple News, and the San Francisco Examiner. Taken together, this portfolio marks her as a recipe developer and curator who consistently brings a health-aware, gluten-free-sensitive lens to classic comfort dishes without sacrificing ease or familiarity.
4 more food journalists.
Aaron Guerrero
Aaron Guerrero is head of the digital department at Miami’s Community Newspapers, where he pairs restaurant coverage with community-facing content. He focuses on how Miami-area restaurants evolve, celebrate, and experiment through new concepts, menus, and neighborhood-focused dining experiences. He reports on restaurant openings, such as an Italian food hall at Plaza Coral Gables, new executive lunch menus, and wood-fired Latin steakhouse brunches, explaining what sets each venue apart. He also covers awards, like a Wine Spectator honor for an Italian chophouse, and events that turn dining rooms into social hubs. His bylines extend to features on sports-themed gatherings, civic renamings, local visits to restaurant programs, sponsored community pieces, and official notices. His work is straightforward and descriptive, helping readers and local businesses connect around specific openings, promotions, and dining experiences.
Aarron Fleming
Aarron Fleming reports on how courts, jails and public safety systems work over time. He is a reporter at The Daily Memphian covering public safety, the local court system, suburban news and business developments in North Mississippi. His work follows trials, sentencing, appeals, plea deals and judicial decisions, including major cases tied to Tyre Nichols and rapper Young Dolph. He also covers jail conditions, inmate deaths, crime data, prosecution units, trafficking, shootings and public-order incidents. His suburban reporting examines cannabis businesses, restaurant openings and how commercial growth affects communities such as Olive Branch. Fleming previously covered education in the same newsroom. He uses clear, unadorned prose to explain legal steps, deadlines, institutional problems and the political, commercial and community effects of public-safety decisions.
Alana Al-Hatlani
Alana Al-Hatlani is a food writer and editor who treats recipes, restaurants, and food features as ways to explore culture, community, and the business of eating. She works on the food team at Southern Living, overseeing and contributing to print recipes and reported features. Her pastry-focused, restaurant-tested perspective comes from time in restaurant and bakery kitchens. She helps plan and write monthly food packages, including “The South’s Most Treasured Desserts,” and wrote “8 Summer Recipes Our Editors Make Every Year.” She also writes recipe tips, ingredient explainers, restaurant guides, and reported stories about workers, owners, and communities. Her subjects include regional specialties, dining scenes, kitchen basics, and food industries. Her work has appeared with OpenTable and Yahoo. She reports on the ground, explains techniques clearly, and connects specific dishes and places to larger stories about food and livelihood.
Alana Edgin
Alana Edgin is a business reporter whose strongest focus is food, restaurants and consumer-facing businesses. She works at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal and has also had work syndicated across AOL and Yahoo News. She covers new openings, closings, expansions and franchise growth, along with retail, health, services, corporate news, data incidents, business support programs and sponsorships. Her reporting includes detailed roundups of new restaurants and businesses, coverage of El Pollo Loco’s opening, and stories on burger trucks, dessert shops, Vietnamese sandwich restaurants and gourmet markets. She also contributes to food and drink reviews, including fall coffee and jerky comparisons. Edgin reports with practical “what, when, where” details, structured comparisons and clear explanations of how offers, partnerships and business changes affect consumers and the local economy.