Silas ate two full plates of this skillet before he stopped to ask what was in it. I told him it was ground beef and rice. He looked at me like I had hidden a secret ingredient somewhere in the pantry. I hadn’t. That’s the whole story. We’ve cooked in a lot of rental kitchens … Read more
The first time I made stuffed peppers, Silas took one bite, chewed for a really long time, and said, “Interesting.” That word is never a compliment. The tops were crunchy, the bottoms were swimming in water, and the filling tasted like plain meat in a pepper costume. He finished the whole thing anyway, which tells … Read more
Last month I pulled a sheet pan out of the oven and Silas asked if we were having charcoal for dinner. The chicken was dry. The potatoes were still hard in the middle. The green beans looked like they had survived a small fire. I had thrown everything on the pan at the same time … Read more
The first time I made teriyaki chicken from scratch, I stood at the stove and felt a little betrayed. Not by the recipe. By every bottle of store-bought sauce I had ever trusted. Silas and I have cooked in more tiny rental kitchens than I can count, and bottled teriyaki was always our “safe” dinner. … Read more
Silas has a rule about casseroles. If it comes out of the oven looking beige, he gets suspicious. If it comes out beige and mushy, he quietly pours himself a bowl of cereal. So when I told him I was making chicken broccoli rice casserole, I got that polite nod people give when they’ve been … Read more
This vegetable beef soup with hamburger passes with flying colors. It’s thick, hearty, and packed with so many veggies that I stopped counting after the first handful. The first time I made it, I dumped everything in the pot at once. The potatoes turned to mush, the peas turned gray, and Silas politely called it … Read more
I once ate three bowls of this soup in one sitting and blamed it on the weather. It was pouring rain, Silas was working late, and I had a pot of something creamy that smelled like butter and garlic. Nobody was around to judge me, so I went back for more. That night I figured … Read more
I made this honey chipotle chicken on a random Tuesday with no plan and a half-empty fridge. Silas took one bite and went completely quiet. That’s usually a good sign in our house. He’s a talker, so silence means he’s busy chewing. Then he asked if there was more. There was not. I had already … Read more
It was not. But the smell had already taken over our whole place, and he kept hovering like a dog waiting for a dropped sandwich. That was the day I finally nailed crockpot chicken and potatoes that tastes like someone actually cared. Juicy chicken. Potatoes soaked in garlicky butter. Almost no effort. It took a … Read more
Crockpot Mississippi: This is Mississippi Pot Roast, and if you have not made it yet, you are about to become one of those people who talks about it at dinner parties. I first tried this recipe on a random Tuesday when I had exactly one working brain cell and a chuck roast sitting in the … Read more