Hi there! I’m Erin, creator of State of Dinner. Born in Topeka, KS, I moved to the Dallas/Fort Worth area when I was 3. Even though I had a 10-year stint in Oklahoma, I consider myself a Texan through and through.

From a young age, great food and cooking were passions of mine. At the age of 13, I selected a wok as a birthday gift from a family friend and was excited at the thought of all of the meals I could make with it. Through my teenage years, I had a hobby-business selling homemade whole wheat bread, pumpkin rolls, and decorated cakes.

In 2010, cooking took on a whole new meaning. I became wife to Matt, and mom to 10-year old, Naomi. I now had the responsibility of planning and preparing meals on a daily basis and discovered that cooking isn’t quite as much fun when it’s something you have to do. Over the next few years, my children, Levi and Cora, were born, and I learned cooking is even less fun when you have 2 under 2.

Cooking systems, shortcuts, and dinner staples became my lifesavers. I discovered menu planning hacks and easy meals that I could throw together at the end of a long day. It was always important to me that I put a well-rounded meal on the table for my family. But depending on my stage of life, or even the state of the day, the actual meal, and how it came together, varied greatly.

In March of 2020 cooking took on a new role in my life, yet again. Faced with the global pandemic of COVID-19, baking became my therapy, and cooking became home economics class for my kids, who were now schooling from home. We began a project of cooking iconic meals from the states across our nation. We decided to share our journey with the world, thus, the birth of this website! So regardless of the state of your current dinners, whether from freezer to microwave, or something more gourmet, we invite you to join us as we cook our way across the states. We hope that you will find inspiration that ignites some fun in your kitchen along the way!

The journey begins here!