Hannah Fairchild

Hannah Fairchild grew up in the modest suburbs of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the kitchen was the family’s informal living room. Her mother, a schoolteacher with a penchant for canning, turned the pantry into a laboratory of flavors, teaching Hannah that a good broth could coax stories out of even the most stubborn vegetables. The scent of simmering tomato sauce on a rainy Thursday became the soundtrack of her childhood, a reminder that comfort can be measured in spoonfuls.

It was at her grandmother’s farmhouse, perched on a hill outside Des Moines, that Hannah first understood the power of ritual. Every Sunday, the extended family gathered around a battered cast‑iron pot to stir a beef stew that had been simmering since dawn. The ritual of ladling broth into chipped mugs, listening to the clink of wooden spoons, taught her that food is as much about timing and togetherness as it is about taste. She still carries that pot’s seasoned handle as a talisman in her home studio, a quiet nod to the generations that shaped her palate.

Today, Hannah translates those memories into the digital kitchen of CookWithMum, a site she launched in 2024 to archive more than two hundred family‑tested recipes. Her philosophy is simple: food should be accessible, nourishing, and unmistakably familiar, even when the cook is juggling a career and a toddler. What drives her now is the belief that a well‑crafted comfort dish can bridge the gap between a hectic weekday and the warmth of a home‑cooked meal.