Main Street News

Above photo by Christian Harder

“Cooking is my love language,” said Catskills-based chef and food influencer Alexis deBoschnek. “Whether that’s making a meal for my family or hosting a dinner party for friends, I relish in bringing joy to people through food. On the flip side, I also love teaching people how to cook and how to cook in a way that’s smarter and more accessible to them.” 

Alexis’ life has followed a unique path; she grew up on a farm in Delhi, NY, and attended the Fashion Institute of Technology before deciding to make the switch to food media. She worked for various digital food media platforms, published her first cookbook To the Last Bite in 2022, and now runs Uplands Farm, a regenerative farm located in the same place where Alexis grew up. While the hustle and bustle of everyday life looks different in rural Delaware County than it did in New York or Los Angeles, it’s the magic of everyday life that inspired Alexis to publish her second cookbook, Nights & Weekends, which will be released on August 12, 2025. 

One road leads to another

Alexis deBoschnek had dreamed of attending the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan for as long as she could remember. In her third year at FIT with multiple internships under her belt, she began to feel that the fashion industry wasn’t everything that she had been dreaming of throughout her adolescence.  

“During an internship at a trend forecasting company, I distinctly remember a meeting where they were talking about how Pantone’s color of the year – Mango Tango – was groundbreaking, and that was somehow the last straw for me,” she recalled. “I couldn’t pursue a career where the color orange was considered revolutionary.” 

That summer, Alexis had been reading Garlic & Sapphires by acclaimed chef, food writer, and editor Ruth Reichl. She credits that book with opening the door to a whole new world of career opportunities – food. 

“While I’d always loved food and cooking, I didn’t know that there were any food-related jobs outside of being a chef. At that moment, I decided I wanted to be a food writer,” she said. 

Despite having very little experience in the food industry, Alexis landed an internship at Eater, a digital media brand dedicated to all things food and dining, just when the site was beginning to really take off. It didn’t take long for her to be reassured that she made the right choice. At her internship, she was introduced to the world of chefs and restaurants, and at home, she was reading food memoirs and cooking as much as she could. 

After graduating from FIT, she landed a job at Tasting Table as an editorial assistant in the test kitchen, where her responsibilities included grocery shopping, writing and testing recipes, and interviewing chefs. “While I had thought of myself as a proficient home cook, the truth is that I was 22 and had so much to learn,” she shared. “One month into the job I signed up for culinary school. I thought if I wanted to be taken seriously in this industry, I needed to have the credentials to back me up.” 

So started Alexis’ daily schedule of working from 9am to 6pm, and then walking two blocks up the street to the International Culinary Center (formerly the French Culinary Institute) to attend night classes from 6:30pm to 10:30pm. “While it felt crazy at the time, it was the best thing I could have done for my career.” 

Coming home to the Catskills and settling into farm life

After spending a few years in Los Angeles working for various digital food media companies, including BuzzFeed’s Tasty, Alexis and her husband, Ryan, moved back to her family’s farm in 2020. Alexis’ mom has owned and run an Icelandic horse farm in the Catskills since 2004, which Alexis and Ryan have taken over the management of. 

Ryan is a director of photography by trade, but has long had aspirations of having his own farm. As Alexis and Ryan settled into their life in the Catskills, the desire to own his own farm became harder for him to ignore. As such, they started Uplands Farm, located in Delhi, NY, in 2024. At Uplands, Alexis and Ryan raise pastured poultry, tend perennial gardens, and grow flowers in rhythm with the seasons.  

“Last year we did 300 birds, which is tiny in the scope of farming, and this year we’re raising 900!” Alexis shared. “It’s been amazing to see how the chickens have benefitted the land. Since we raise our chickens on pasture, their manure fertilizes the soil, which in turn, provides more robust grass that the horses eat. It’s a full cycle!” 

Of course, getting to cook and eat animals that they’re raising in the best conditions is another major perk, too. Alexis has always tried to cook as seasonally as possible, regardless of where she is. When the garden is in full bloom in the height of summer, she’s cooking produce that they grow. For the remainder of the year, she’s making a trip to the farmers market once a week to pick up goods from other local farmers. 

“Now that we’re raising chickens, it’s amazing to be able to make a full meal that we raised and grew from start to finish. It feels really empowering to me,” she said. “We have dreams of adding more animals to the farm; pigs and sheep are on the horizon, and my husband is hoping to add beef cattle down the line.” 

Alexis and Ryan are currently selling chicken on the Uplands website and at the Delhi Farmers Market on Wednesdays between 10am and 2pm, and they ship throughout New York State. “A lot of small farms offer whole chickens, and we do too, but what I think is particularly exciting about Uplands is that we offer a full range of chicken parts for all of your cooking needs, because let’s be honest, you don’t always want to roast a whole chicken on a Tuesday.” 

Writing, testing, and bringing Nights & Weekends to the table

While balancing life and work on the farm, Alexis noticed her life becoming increasingly hectic – a theme that she saw happening to her friends, too. “It’s normal that as we get older we take on more responsibilities. From having kids to moving into more demanding jobs, or in our case, running a farm, it feels like everyone has less time on their hands,” she explained. 

A lack of time combined with the need to continue to nourish yourself and others through food was the concept that drove Alexis to write Nights & Weekends. 

“I firmly believe that you can still make a great dinner with limited time. Two thirds of the book focuses solely on weeknight dinners that come together quickly with limited ingredients, and the remaining third are recipes to make on the weekends or whenever you have a little more time on your hands,” she said. 

Alexis notes that although much of her cooking falls into the “weeknight cooking” category these days, she still enjoys hosting dinner parties. Because of that, it was important that she include recipes that will carry the reader through the entire week. 

“Maybe you’re not looking to make dessert or roast a chicken for three hours on a Wednesday night, but on a Sunday afternoon, you might have a little more time to take on a bigger project.” 

Alexis had eleven months to write, develop, and test 110 recipes – which is a pretty tight turnaround. Though she is a veteran recipe developer, it was most important to her that all of these recipes were thoroughly tested so that they would work for home cooks. 

“Once I thought each recipe was in a good place, I tested it three times on my own before sending it to my recipe tester. Then I made everything again for the photoshoot, so needless to say, these recipes really work,” she mused. 

Additionally, as Nights & Weekends is her second cookbook, Alexis has taken some of the knowledge that she learned writing her first cookbook, To the Last Bite, and applied it here. 

She started writing To the Last Bite in 2019 when she was living in Los Angeles with “little responsibility,” in a new relationship, and had a ton of accessibility to ingredients. Nights & Weekends came to fruition in 2023 while Alexis’ life was in a totally different place – she was married, living in the Catskills, running a farm, and managing so many more things in her day-to-day life. 

“Somewhere along the line, I heard the advice that you should write every cookbook like it’s the only one you’ll ever write, and I took that to heart with To the Last Bite. I wanted to showcase the Catskills and how growing up here influenced my point of view with cooking,” she explained. 

“In retrospect, a good portion of the recipes in that book might have been a bit too aspirational. I mean, I’m not curing egg yolks with any regularity, so I can’t expect home cooks to do that either! It really gave me the perspective of wanting to create a book that was practical, that people could use more regularly.”

The recipes in Nights & Weekends are simple, but “really deliver big flavor.” Alexis noted that they are the epitome of “low-effort, high-reward recipes.” 

“Whether it’s incorporating dishes into their weekly rotations or just picking up on techniques and tricks to get dinner on the table faster, I really think everyone can benefit from Nights & Weekends,” she said. •

You can order Nights & Weekends via Alexis’ website alexisdeboschnek.com. To order a signed copy of the cookbook, visit the Oblong Books website oblongbooks.com/alexisdeboschnek. Alexis also pens a weekly newsletter on Substack called Side Dish, where she shares even more easy weeknight dinners, dinner party menus, and the occasional story about what it’s like to run a farm in the Catskills. Sign up for her newsletter at alexisdeboschnek.substack.com and keep up with her on Instagram @alexisdeboschnek.