About Keep Your Diet Real

I learned to cook over fire because the first apartment I rented after college had a broken oven for eight months. A kettle grill and a cheap instant-read thermometer taught me more about doneness than any oven ever did. I still use both, and I write temperatures you can check, not "cook until done."

I care about carryover heat, lid-on versus lid-off, and the difference between a gas grate and charcoal. If a recipe of mine works under a broiler as well as on a grill, I say so, because not everyone has a backyard.

I have cooked vegetarian at home for twelve years, not as a brand, as a grocery bill and a habit. The recipes I write start with the vegetable that is actually in season or already in the crisper — cabbage, sweet potatoes, a tired bunch of kale — and build a meal around it instead of treating it as a side.

I am particular about texture. Overcooked beans and watery zucchini are how people decide they "don't like" a vegetable. I write the doneness cues I wish I had when I started: how the edge should look, how it should smell, when to pull it off the heat.

I cook for two and freeze for later, because I would rather wash one pot on Sunday than five during the week. I scale recipes with that in mind: what doubles cleanly, what does not, and which parts you should leave unassembled until the night you eat them.

I keep a running note of what lasted in my freezer and what turned watery after a thaw. Those notes become the storage lines on the recipes I publish. If a sauce splits when reheated, I tell you how to bring it back, or I tell you not to freeze it.

I live in a one-bedroom with a 24-inch range and four burners I do not trust equally. I cook almost everything in a 12-inch cast-iron skillet because I do not have the cupboard space for a Dutch oven and a sheet pan army. That constraint is useful: if a dinner cannot be done in one pan, I usually rewrite it until it can.

I keep a short pantry — canned tomatoes, chicken stock, rice, eggs, onions — and I build recipes from those first. If you need a garnish that exists only in a specialty shop, I leave it optional.

I cook for a household of four in a kitchen that is 10 feet wide. School nights, leftover lunches, and a Sunday pot that has to stretch to Monday are the jobs I write for. I do not assume you have a stand mixer or a second oven.

Most of my recipes start as something we actually ate last week. I write down the quantities after the fact, then cook the dish again from those notes so the published version matches what a tired person can follow, not what I improvised the first time.