This is a story about a Kennewick-based food blogger who built a worldwide online following. It’s also a tale of how her recipe site got tangled in an illicit drug ring. And how a seemingly harmless podcast appearance resulted in her losing every single one of her Facebook followers.

But at its heart, this story is about a local woman who rose to internet stardom through crockpot meals, casseroles, comfort food and nostalgia, only to find herself burned by bad actors.

Let’s go all the way back to the pre-heating stage, when Kennewick’s Laura Ashley never had a real formula for launching her media company, Dinner in 321.

Weeks before the pandemic, Ashley was a registered dietician, diabetes educator, former restaurant owner and raising two young adults with her husband.

“I saw my son making a boxed mac and cheese in the kitchen and I just said, ‘Hey bud, I can show you how to make a really good mac and cheese. It’s super easy if you want me to teach you.’”

The 20-year-old was home from college on Christmas break and so Ashley taught him to begin with a roux.

“I was just grabbing cheeses out of the fridge, and I made the cheese sauce and the pasta. He loved it. The next day, I came downstairs and he was making it by himself and he tells me, ‘You need to make TikToks – this is going to be the next big thing.’ So, it literally started there.”

While not every person would need just a single suggestion to start making online cooking videos, it wasn’t so unfamiliar for Ashley, who was used to presenting at her full-time job and had once sold Pampered Chef products.

“I’ve always done demonstrations, teaching,” she said. “It comes natural, so I thought, this will be fun. I’ll just teach people how to do these things.”

She began posting cooking videos on TikTok and Instagram and within a week, she added Facebook because her friends and family weren’t on the other platforms quite yet.

“For the first year, all I really did was social media,” she said. “I wasn’t monetized yet.”

Still, the growth was steady enough that by the end of that year, her husband, Mark Johnson, a Bechtel executive, suggested building a website.

Ashley hired someone from a gig website, or site where you can find freelancers for hire. She trusted the webmaster to create it and manage the technical side while she focused on adding content.

More than a year into the project, despite hundreds of thousands of followers, the site wasn’t performing, and Ashley couldn’t figure out why no companies were interested in placing ads on her site. Since her son was studying computer science, he and a friend took a closer look at dinnerin321.com.

“He said, ‘Did you know there’s an underground drug trade on your website?’” Ashley recalled.

The developer had used hidden URLs on her domain to peddle drugs, adding a “tail” to the end of the web address that you couldn’t navigate to from the home page. You would have to have known it was there or be directed in from somewhere else.

“They knew nothing about how to do an actual website. They just were using my platform to sell drugs,” she said. “I trusted they knew what they were doing.” Without the technical knowhow, there wasn’t a way for her to have gotten wise to the scheme sooner, but it explained why she wasn’t yet monetized.

Ashley immediately fired the webmaster and changed passwords. Barely two years into life as a food blogger, this was the first major breakdown, but it wouldn’t be the last.

After shutting down the compromised site, Ashley was at a loss. She was still doing her full-time job and trying to determine her next move.

She reached out to another food blogger, someone Ashley didn’t know personally, but she felt would be open to helping mentor her. “She said, ‘Let’s have a call tomorrow,’” Ashley remembered. “I had no idea how much you can make on a website. And she said, ‘I made $80,000 – last month.’”

The new blogger friend explained how website monetization worked and connected Ashley with someone who could rebuild her site properly.

“She said, ‘Your website’s a mess. Here’s the person who can help you.’ She gave me a contact, and I reached out to him that same day. He said, ‘You’re going to have to retype all your recipes,’” Johnson said.

Undeterred by the challenge, it took her three days to input all 2,000 recipes she had previously uploaded, this time using a new format intended for recipe sites. Ashley said she had prided herself on not having a website that required you to navigate through ads, with the recipe placed at the bottom of the page, but she realized that’s the way the website makes money, with its “scrollability.”

‘Simple recipes, instant joy’

By February 2023, dinnerin321.com was monetized. You might say the recipe to success was a combination of social media traffic and a properly structured page that finally unlocked the business model she’d been unknowingly working toward. Its tagline is “simple recipes, instant joy.”

This was three years after her modest beginnings, back when the first recipe was an autumn harvest salad. “It had fried chicken on it. The second or third was like a ramen bowl from scratch and a Mongolian beef.”

Ashley records all the videos herself on her phone using a small tripod and editing with an app. As 2023 came to a close, she left her dietician job to focus on this passion full time and had just started lining up brand deals.

Laura Ashley’s slow cooker ham and potato soup features six ingredients and can be pre-pared in 10 minutes. 

| Courtesy Dinner in 321

A hijacking

Pitched all the time to partner with podcasts, Ashley accepted an invitation to go live on one in spring 2024.

“I'd been emailing with this podcast for like a week and a half. Everything was legitimate. We talked about questions we were going to talk through and had this call scheduled to set up the logistics,” Ashley said.

The plan was essentially a simulcast – Ashley would go live on her Facebook page at the same time the podcast was broadcasting, with the whole thing set up over a virtual meeting.

“While I was on the call, it was fine. I talked with them. I got off. I missed a call from my friend, so I called her back really fast. And when I hung up with her, my Facebook was gone. It said ‘Dinner in 321 page not found.’ Weeks later I found out, while I was in the Zoom call, they somehow created a new page.”

During the seemingly benign setup of the simulcast, the hacker masquerading as a podcaster had led Ashley into a trap that let them take full control of her page.

“They put themselves as the admin, took me off, deleted my page and migrated all my followers to that page,” she said, recalling the devastating blow. “It was a major hit. In 20 minutes, I lost half-a-million followers.”

She opened 41 support cases with Meta, paid thousands for a cybersecurity consultant, reported the incident to multiple agencies including the Better Business Bureau and the FBI’s cybercrimes unit – nothing worked.

Beyond the emotional toll, the financial impact was severe. Facebook had been the primary driver of traffic to her website.

“Not only did I lose the money I was making with Facebook, but I also lost all of the traffic from Facebook,” she said.

By the numbers

Eventually, Meta restored her original @dinnerin321 handle – but not her followers. Four years after her food blogging debut, she had to restart on Facebook with zero likes.

“As of today, it’s at 858,000 followers,” she said.

Impressive numbers for the platform where she now sees 44 million page views in a four-week span, 10.4 million on Instagram.

The growth came from relentless consistency. Ashley posts daily, creating 10 to 12 new recipes each month while resurfacing older ones. She tries to stay authentic with followers while keeping up with the 1,000 direct messages that hit her inbox daily.

She avoids trend chasing while still trying to stay ahead of changing algorithms on search engines that can make her videos easier or harder to find. Her copycat version of a Dolly Parton creamy vegetable soup was her most viral to date, and she’s never even tried the original version of the dish.

Full-scale operation

Her Kentucky roots are evident in her dishes, which don’t skimp on the kind of stuff a nutritionist would typically advise against. “I don’t make nutrition-forward content,” Ashley explained. “I just make food people want to eat.”

This includes looking for new opportunities. “I realized I don't have anything key lime on my website. I wouldn't do key lime pie. That one would be too hard to rank for; there's too much competition. So, you have to think of something different, like key lime bars.”

Today, Ashley runs a full-scale operation with eight people as support staff, including a search engine optimization strategist, Pinterest manager, email and social media specialists, kitchen assistant, talent agent and attorney.

She also sells seasonal recipe cards, which have grown significantly year over year and have to be created many months in advance for the holiday season. Not to mention, it can take up to eight hours to complete a single recipe with all of the efforts that go into making it and uploading it and promoting it.

“I work longer than a full-time job,” she said.

Followers noticed when she moved from Houston to Kennewick last summer, which came with a whole different kitchen to record in. Winter months in the Tri-Cities means she also plans around the limited natural light available for recording.

Despite all she’s been through, Ashley says the grind doesn’t get her down, and she never runs out of ideas.

“I always feel inspired,” she said. “I’ve got a running list.” Her recipes come from family, church cookbooks, memories and everyday conversations.

“I make my memaw’s and mom's recipes. I mean, it could be my mom having a homecoming at church and she told me something somebody made and I’m like, ‘You know, I haven't done that yet.’”

Her mom sometimes makes an appearance on her channels, teaching Ashley’s followers how to make some of her own tried and true creations from her own kitchen in Kentucky. “I want them to feel like they’re part of my family,” she said.

She’s frequently recognized when she’s shopping for groceries locally or just going about her business.

It’s a far cry from that first box of mac and cheese. But, the recipe hasn’t really changed: keep cooking, keep posting and keep going.

Go to: dinnerin321.com.