Welcome to Home Cooking Diary, a newsletter on my journey as a home cook—the successes and failures alike. Cooking log, photo diary, and recipe recommender. This is a recurring installment in which I recap my month of cooking and highlight noteworthy meals. Note: if you’re reading this as an email, you may want to read it in your browser, lest it cut off at the end.
Oh boy, I am so deeply behind. By way of explanation—in some respects, the first two months of 2024 were not great, emotionally. I let a lot of things get in my head and stick in my craw. It turns out that the first year of being a small business owner is an emotional tornado. Regulating my emotions is an unrelenting challenge.
Sidenote: You can tell someone is a relatively new parent when they begin talking about emotional regulation. No matter how hard I try to avoid this therapy jargon, it creeps in. It’s a useful way to describe something I didn’t have words for until I had a child—that thing being… not losing your shit, by somehow having the presence of mind to control your response to whatever is triggering you, to behave in a way that is respectful and not scary or whatever. The awareness that I, along with my partner, am now tasked with teaching our son how to do just that—mainly by modeling how to respond when we are stressed or angry or sad—is absolutely one of the most intimidating things about parenting. I feel pretty conflicted with this concept on a micro-level. When I’m extra attuned to my way of being, as seen through my son’s eyes—whether by guilt or insecurity for letting him see me get visibly angry or frustrated—I fear that by putting myself on eggshells and moderating my behavior, I’m not being myself. That an obsession with perfection, not showing him my messy side, obscures the real me, and actually hinders our attachment (see me spiral?). But I do think it’s a useful concept for bringing awareness to our behavior and how children learn by mimicing what they see adults doing.
The process of opening an independent bookstore*…and learning how to run it….and figuring out how to sustain it…and maybe make it profitable, is arduous and vulnerable. There is so much I could say about the unfolding of this process and its effect on the psyche—and some of my dms and texts to friends from the past 3 months paint a picture, no doubt—but I don’t have the coherent words now. My emotional as well as physical well-being keeps the lights on. It’s a lot of pressure. During these gloomy winter months I slipped into some bad habits, including but not limited to: drinking too much coffee and wine and not enough (any? :/) water; having zero boundaries with my phone; I could go on. I think I can chalk most of this up to wintertime and its challenges—but that’s where I’m at. I’ve long used cooking as a way to ameliorate my angst, but these challenges have gotten in the way of my cooking. I’m excited to eventually become more engaged in planning ahead and more organized about bookmarking recipes I’d like to try. Lately I’ll be at the grocery store racking my brain trying to remember what cooking video I was watching the day before, or what recipe I read that sounded so good, and can’t for the life of me remember.
Despite all of this vaguely coherent rambling…I’d love to talk about what I DID cook. I always begin the year with some version of Edna Lewis’s Black-Eyed Peas with Greens, and this year was no exception. I made it while sipping champagne. I was very very pleased with a chicken salad I made with a combination of mayonnaise and sour cream, with capers and red onions, and lots of lemon. Maybe a little vinegar too. We didn’t have celery around so I used fennel. On saltines. It was a rare lunch we ate as a family—me and Reed standing around Tycho in his high chair. It was so good.
I’ve already praised Sohla El-Waylly’s START HERE enough here, but I’m really enjoying her accompanying video series for NYT Cooking too. So far she’s done episodes on Eggs, Rice, and Chicken—great supplementary material to the book. Ever since the Egg episode I’ve been making seven-minute eggs and putting them on top of leftover grains (shout out to Sohla’s Spiced Tomato Pilaf) or soup or beans.
Otherwise I’ve been making a lot of soup! Having very little capacity for breaking out of habit I returned again and again to Alison Roman’s soup recipes. What else is new? These months I made many pots of her Squash and Lentil, her Split Pea, and her Pork noodle soup. They hit every time. Oh and I like the mushroom orzo soup too, but it’s easy to mess up! Since the mushrooms and spices are all that’s flavoring the soup, take great care to thoroughly sear them and develop the fond at the bottom of the pot before adding liquid. I was distracted the first time I made it, and it was flavorless without the patience required to brown. It was incredible the second time, when I got it right. The soup-adjacent standout might just be Molly Baz’s Many Beans Chili though. I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s beautiful, with the cherry tomatoes and beans and spinach, and the flavor combination is super unusual—I had never cooked with dried mint before. Also: I’m very happy that I now know canned cherry tomatoes are a thing!!!
I loved her Chicken Au Poivre as well. Colu Henry’s Shells with Sausage and Greens hit the spot in so many ways. Like her turkey meatballs, and sausage sugo, this recipe is permanently on my list.
I also cooked from lots of my own recipes. Keek’s Potato-Leek Soup, my Sausage and Lentil Soup, and Spaghetti with Sausage and Peppers and Onions* have all been in heavy rotation. I also made my version of Pasta e Patate, which will be the subject of my next newsletter for paid subscribers.
No baking. None! I wish baking relieved my stress. I think I jinxed myself by making such a big deal out of my sourdough starter.
Xo AV
*If you’re new here and would like to learn more about my bookstore, check us out on Instagram and on Bookshop, and visit us next time you’re in the Hudson Valley.
**FYI - due to a Substack glitch, my recipe for Spaghetti with Sausage and Peppers and Onions did not appear in the feed, so if you’re a paid app user you may have missed it.
Everything I cooked…all winter!
1.1.24 / Lucky Black Eyed Peas with Greens
1.2.24 / Snack: bowl of black eyed peas with olive oil drizzle and chili flakes; Dinner: Pasta Puttanesca
1.5.24 / Oatmeal with peanut butter and strawberry jam
1.7.24 / Butternut Squash and Lentil Soup (Alison Roman); Hummus from leftover chickpeas; Dinner: Pork noodle soup (Alison Roman)
1.8.24 / Dinner: Squash soup made the previous night
1.9.24 / Spiced Tomato Pilaf (Sohla El-Waylly’s START HERE); Lunch: Pilaf with a fried egg on top
1.10.24 / Chicken Broth (I drank several mugs-worth throughout the day/week); Honey-fermented garlic; Chicken soup; Immunity Bombs (Eden Grinshpan)
1.11.24 / Pot of white Rancho Gordo beans (eaten as a snack with olive oil drizzle and chili flakes)
1.14.24 / Pork Noodle Soup again (Alison Roman)
1.16.24 / Split Pea Soup (Alison Roman)
1.17.24 / 7-minute eggs according to Sohla’s method (START HERE/this NYT Cooking video); Lunch: white beans with two 7-minute eggs on top, w/ lots of sea salt
1.18.24 / Chicken au Poivre (Molly Baz) with an arugula salad
1.19.24 / very brothy white beans with 7 min eggs again; Cheesy Tomato Spaghetti (Sohla El-Waylly, START HERE)
1.22.24 / Squash and Lentil Soup (Alison Roman) with a dollop of sour cream on top
1.23.24 / Yogurt and berries with honey drizzle; Leftover rice with two fried eggs and chili crisp drizzle
1.27.24 / Keek’s Potato-Leek Soup
1.29.24 / Chicken Soup with large chunks of vegetable (Keek’s again); Many Beans Chili with Spinach (Molly Baz)
1.30.24 / Chicken Soup; Bolognese (Alison Roman)
2.2.24 / Toasted waffle with butter and honey and fermented garlic
2.3.24 / Mushroom and orzo soup (Alison Roman)
2.5.24 / Yogurt with raspberries and honey drizzle
2.5.24 / Keek’s Potato-Leek Soup; Spiced Tomato Pilaf (Sohla El-Waylly, START HERE)
2.6.24 / Yogurt with berries and jam; 7 minute eggs over rice pilaf; Split Pea Soup
2.7.24 / 7 min eggs over rice pilaf
2.12.24 / Squash and lentil soup (Alison Roman)
2.13.24 / Pasta e Patate (recipe coming soon!)
2.14.24 / Simple pasta with pepper and cheese
2.15.25 / Turkey Meatballs with Zucchini and Mascarpone (Colu Henry)
2.16.24 / Angel Hair with Sausage and Onion (my recipe)
2.19.24 / Chicken salad with saltines; Squash and Lentil Soup (Alison Roman)
2.20.24 / Yogurt and berries with jam and honey drizzle
2.21.24 / Waffle with Winter Jam (Strawberry and Cranberry)
2.24.24 / Spaghetti with Sausage and Peppers and Onions (my recipe)
2.25.24 / Shells with Sausage and Greens (Colu Henry)
2.27.24 / Chickpea and parlsey salad with sardines
2.29.24 / Golden Mushroom Soup (Alison Roman)
I love that one so much too 🩷
I, too, love those 7 minute eggs! On any thing, any time. I first experienced them at the Art Institute of Chicago dining room. Gordon, an AIC aficionado, talked me into having a ‘nice’ lunch and we ventured up and away from the cafeteria. The 7 minute eggs were in the salad and we both went nuts over them. I’m so happy to see they are popular with you too, Angie. I know they are not to everyone’s liking🌼