Megan Brooks

Megan Brooks grew up in the modest, tree‑lined suburb of Dayton, Ohio, where the kitchen was the family’s unofficial living room. Her earliest memories are of the clatter of cast‑iron pans and the scent of her mother’s simmering tomato sauce drifting through the hallway at dusk. The house’s only oven was a battered, 30‑year‑old gas unit that never quite reached the promised temperature, forcing Megan to learn the art of timing and improvisation before she could even spell ‘al dente.’

After high school, Megan left the Midwest for a stint as a line cook in a bustling New York City diner, where she fell in love with the rhythm of a kitchen that never slept. It was there she rescued a chipped enamel skillet from the back of the prep room—a relic that now sits above her stove as a reminder that beauty and utility often share the same scarred surface. The skillet became the vessel for her signature chicken pot pie, a dish that blends the hearty comfort of her Midwestern roots with the bold, layered flavors she discovered on the East Coast.

Today, Megan channels that blend of nostalgia and daring into KitchenByDay, a site that houses more than 200 recipes ranging from Sunday‑roast classics to inventive weeknight fixes. She describes her work as “a love letter to the meals that gathered our family around the table,” and it is that devotion to community and memory that drives her to experiment, share, and keep the hearth alive in every click.