Here’s a preview from KCRF: Request a free sample lesson of the “Kids Cook Solo” program, so you can see if it’s a good fit for you and your family!

You can find all of our BONUS Educational Cooking Activities & Holiday Recipes right here!

In many parts of the United States, Labor Day marks the last long weekend before kids go back to school, which usually means it’s the last major cookout and grilling weekend for the extended family. It's also peak corn season; sweet corn is harvested late summer into early fall, and it's at its sweetest the day it's picked, slowly trading sugar for starch after that. So a late-summer ear from a farm stand is genuinely one of the best-tasting things you'll cook all season.

This activity doesn’t add a project to that day. It just slows the corn down for a few minutes. You’re cooking it anyway, so before it all disappears under butter, you set a couple of ears side by side and taste what heat actually does to them. Raw and snappy. Boiled and tender. Grilled and a little toasty. Same corn, three different results.

No special supplies, no extra trip to the store, and nothing that has to be perfect. Let it be light. Here’s how to turn the cob into a low-key kitchen lab.

🌽 Labor Day Sweet Corn Lab: The Science of Heat, Sugar & Char

Click the button below for a downloadable PDF worksheet for the Labor Day Sweet Corn Activity, and read on to set it up:

Labor Day Sweet Corn Lab Worksheet

Tools You’ll Need:

• A pot for boiling, and/or a grill or stovetop grill pan

• Tongs

• A cutting board and a knife (adult)

• Paper and a pencil, or the worksheet (optional)

Ingredients:

• Fresh corn on the cob (2–4 ears — more if everyone wants to taste)

• Butter and salt (for seasoning and eating the corn after — optional)

Learning Goals

This is science, cooking, and sensory play all on one cob. Kids get to see how heat changes the same ear three ways: raw and crunchy, boiled and tender, grilled and browned. Tasting them side by side also gives kids a reason to describe food out loud, reaching for words like snappy, milky, juicy, toasty, and sweet. That practice builds real confidence around trying new things and talking about what they notice.

The grilled ear is where the science lives. Boiling cooks corn in water, and water can only get so hot before it turns to steam, so boiled corn softens but stays pale and mild. A grill is much hotter and completely dry, and that high, dry heat makes the corn’s own sugars and proteins react and brown. This browning has a name: the Maillard reaction, the same process that gives toast, seared meat, and roasted vegetables their richer flavor. You can keep it simple for the younger kids: dry heat browns food, and browning is what makes it taste toasty and deep. And if they’d rather just taste and pick a favorite, that counts too.

Age Modifications

Younger Kids (Preschool–K):

• Let them peel the husks and pull the silky threads, a great sensory job all on its own.

• Use describing words together: crunchy, soft, sweet, toasty.

• Taste one raw kernel and one cooked kernel, and say which one they like.

Middle Grade (Elementary):

• Help decide what to compare: boiled vs. grilled is a good first test.

• Track color and texture for each version on the worksheet.

• Vote on the sweetest ear and the toastiest ear.

Older Kids (Upper Elementary–Middle):

• Run the taste test and record the results like a lab.

• Look at where the browning happens on the grilled ear, and explain why it tastes different.

• Try the “corn clock”: taste a just-bought ear against one that’s been in the fridge a few days, and compare how sweet each one is.

Parent Notes

Corn is forgiving, which makes this an easy one to keep relaxed. If the grill isn’t happening, boiled vs. raw works fine (you really don’t need all three versions). Let kids run the tasting even if kernels end up scattered everywhere; that’s part of it. And if someone just wants to eat their corn with butter and skip the “experiment,” that still counts.

If you only do one thing: cut a few kernels off a raw ear and a cooked ear, taste them together, and ask “What changed?” That one question is the whole lesson. Keep the youngest kids on husking and tasting, the boiling and grilling stay with an adult.

Activity Flow

1. Husk it together (and make predictions). Peel back the husks and pull off the silky threads. Before cooking, ask: “What do you think happens to corn when we boil it? When we grill it? Which one will taste the sweetest?”

2. Set up your test. Keep one ear raw. Boil one. Grill one (or use a grill pan). Even two versions is enough (don’t feel like you need all three).

3. Taste the raw kernels first. An adult slices a few kernels off the raw ear. Try them: are they crunchy, milky, sweet, or a little starchy? This is your starting point.

4. Boil an ear. Drop it into boiling water for 3–5 minutes. Watch the color turn brighter and more golden. Notice how the kernels soften.

5. Grill an ear. Lay it over the heat, turning with tongs, until some kernels brown and blister. Point it out: that browning is exactly where the toasty, sweeter flavor comes from. (The grilling and the boiling tasks stay with an adult.)

6. Line them up and taste. Try raw → boiled → grilled, side by side. Pause and talk: “Which is sweetest? Which is toastiest? Which is juiciest?”

7. Pick a winner. Choose a favorite and say why. There’s no right answer here — just what tastes best to you.

Happy Labor Day from all of us at One Potato!

Last week we pointed you toward What’s for Dinner?: The Summit, the free 3-day event our recent Order Up! guest Brett DuPree hosts every August. It wrapped on the 19th, and if you caught even one session in the middle of everything else going on last week, we’re glad you did. If the whole thing flew right past you, that’s the more likely story for most of us in late August, and it’s exactly why we’re sending this.

The sessions were free to watch live, each one up for 24 hours and then gone. But Brett keeps everything available afterward through the All Access Pass, and that’s open for just a few more days.

I want the All Access Pass!

What You Get, Whether You Watched Live or Not

Here’s the honest reason a pass like this earns its keep: a meal plan that never sticks usually assumed a version of your week that doesn’t actually happen. The whole Summit is built around that idea, a better rhythm for weeknight dinners instead of one more rigid system, and the All Access Pass is how you keep all of it on your own schedule.

The pass includes lifetime access to all 25+ expert sessions (the budget dinners, the freezer prep, the picky-eater strategies, the mental-load conversations), a bonus bundle from the speakers worth $600+, and the souvenir cookbook that pulls a recipe from every single session. It also comes with a free trial month of Brett’s Supper Club, where her no-cook “gateway” meals live.

So whether you want to rewatch the one session you actually caught, finally see the three you meant to, or just get your hands on the cookbook, it’s all in one place, on your time instead of a 24-hour window.

Keep the Whole Thing

The Summit is free by design, and the pass is the optional way to hold onto it past the weekend. If dinner’s been feeling like a nightly negotiation lately, a stack of real, tested ideas you can come back to whenever you need them may be worth it. It closes in a few days.

👉 Get the What’s for Dinner?: The Summit All Access Pass

And if you missed our conversation with Brett, her Order Up! interview and Parent Picks are still right here: click here to read the story behind the Summit, plus the recipes and store-bought shortcuts she’ll defend forever.

*Note: This newsletter contains affiliate links for Freaking Delish and What’s for Dinner?: The Summit. We had Brett on the newsletter this month because we genuinely love what she’s building, and we’d be pointing you her way whether the affiliate relationship existed or not*

🍽️ What’s for Dinner?: The Summit — a free virtual summit from Order Up! guest Brett DuPree, August 17–19 — is three days of real dinner solutions from 20+ food experts, timed right for the back-to-school scramble. Save your free seat

👨‍🍳 Want the kids doing more in the kitchen this year? The Kids Cook Real Food eCourse teaches them how to actually cook (not just follow a recipe!) so they build real life skills along the way. Learn more here

🥔 One Potato is a reader-supported newsletter - Subscribe for weekly Order Up! interviews delivered to your inbox!

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Get Ready for Back-To-School!

The lunchboxes are back in rotation, the mornings start earlier, and somewhere around five o’clock the same question turns up every night: what’s for dinner? Fall has a way of turning weeknight cooking into a logistics problem, right when there’s the least time to solve it.

So we did something we’d been meaning to do for a while. We went back through two years of Order Up! interviews — chefs, cookbook authors, dietitians, and a lot of parents in the middle of it — and pulled out the advice that’s genuinely useful on a Tuesday. Not the special-occasion stuff. The get-it-on-the-table, everyone’s-fed, nobody-cried version.

A few ideas came up again and again: cook one meal instead of five, take the pressure off yourself and your kids, and let the freezer carry some of the weight. Here’s what they told us.

One Dinner, Not Five

The quickest way to make a weeknight harder is to cook two dinners (or three. Or four). Almost everyone we talked to had landed on the same fix: make one meal, and build in a little room to customize.

Chef Kris Dovbniak, founder of the Healthy Mama Meals app, calls it a base meal: one shared foundation, then a handful of toppings so everyone builds their own plate.

“You start with one shared base: a grain like rice or quinoa or pasta, a protein like chicken or chickpeas. Then you offer a few mix-and-match toppings or sauces.” -Kris Dovbniak

Read the full interview right here:

Natalie Kotesova, creator of Wholesome Nat and mom of three, is blunt about it: separate meals just create more work. She cooks one dinner, then lets each kid adjust it with a drizzle of almond butter here, extra sauce there.

“Don’t make separate meals. Make one meal and customize it.” — Natalie Kotesova

Your job ends when the food hits the table

Half the weeknight stress isn’t the cooking — it’s the worry about whether the kids actually eat it. Two of our guests offered the same quiet reframe: decide what and when, and let them handle the rest.

Jennifer Anderson, the dietitian behind Kids Eat in Color, has a line she gives parents who are staring at a half-eaten plate and feeling like they failed.

“Your win is not when your child eats the food. Your win is when you put the food on the table. That’s your job as a parent. Your child’s job is to decide whether and how much they eat.” — Jennifer Anderson

Jessica Lawson, the recipe developer behind Big Delicious Life, zooms out even further, past any single dinner that goes sideways.

“My pediatrician always tells me: focus on the week, not the day.” — Jessica Lawson

Find both of their full-length interviews right here:

Cook Once, Coast Twice

You don’t have to be a full-on meal prep parent, but you can pre-cut a few vegetables or prep some snacks, and a number of our guests gave us a great tip to lean hard on the freezer. Batch what you can, and stash the surplus before you’re sick of it.

Chef Mareya Ibrahim Jones, “The Fit Foodie,” keeps weeknights simple by cooking in volume: a roast chicken, a pot of grains, a sheet pan of vegetables that stretch across several dinners.

“For families, it starts with planning simply. Think in volume and versatility.” — Chef Mareya Ibrahim Jones

Noah Galuten, cookbook author and chef-dad, has one freezer rule that changes the math on a hard night.

“Freeze things when they’re at their peak, not right before they go bad… The fourth night of minestrone is a slog. Freeze it. Pull it out in two weeks. Dinner’s ready. You’ll feel like a hero.” — Noah Galuten

Read the full interview here:

You don’t have to like it. You have to try it.

Picky eating outlasts any one dinner, and pushing rarely helps. The through-line from our guests: keep offering, keep it low-key, and play the long game.

Leigh Ann Chatagnier, modern Cajun cookbook author, traded total control for an 80/20 rule once her son started grabbing Chick-fil-A after practice.

“The goal isn’t that he eats everything I make at ten. The goal is that he’s an adult who’ll try anything.” — Leigh Ann Chatagnier

Marta Rivera Diaz, chef and author of Sense & Edibility, reminds us that it is all about patience and exposure.

“To honestly say a kid doesn’t like something, you have to offer it at least 10 times.” — Marta Rivera Diaz

Hand them a job

Getting kids into the kitchen is a back-to-school reset that pays off all year; not because dinner comes together faster, but because everyone slows down together.

Marc Forgione, chef and father of three, has kept the same setup by the stove since his son was a toddler.

“Since he was two or three, we’ve had this little foldable box he can stand on next to the stove so he’s at counter height. From the beginning, I’ve tried to involve him… But I’ve never forced anything on him.” — Marc Forgione

Nephi Craig, White Mountain Apache chef and father, frames the whole thing as something bigger than getting fed.

“Season the food with smiles, stories, and laughter. And when our kids help, it forces us to slow down.” — Nephi Craig

And on the nights it all falls apart

Because some nights it will. The plate gets thrown, the mac and cheese that was a favorite yesterday is suddenly offensive, and dinner is toast and apple slices at 7:15pm. Jamie Milne, the cookbook author behind Everything Delish, said the part out loud that every parent knows:

“No matter how busy our days are, we show up and eat together every night, even when Jack is being a little tyrant and throwing his plate.” — Jamie Milne

That’s the whole thing, really. Not a perfect dinner. Just showing up to the table together, one ordinary school night at a time.

This fall, we’d love to hear from you: pick a tip above and try it this week, revisit an interview that stuck with you, or tell us the one dinner that always works in your house. Leave a comment, send us an email, or hit us up on Instagram @onepotatobox. We can’t wait to hear from you!

Claim Your Free Spot

What’s For Dinner?: The Summit

At One Potato, we’re always on the lookout for resources that make family life easier, healthier, and a little more joyful. And when it comes to the nightly “what’s for dinner?” scramble, we’re big fans of Brett DuPree and the Freaking Delish community. We interviewed Brett this week (if you missed it, go back and read her Order Up! interview), and there’s one more thing of hers we wanted to put in front of you: the free summit she hosts every August, built entirely around making weeknight dinner easier.

What’s for Dinner?: The Summit is a free 3-day virtual event running August 17–19. Three days, 25+ food experts, and real, practical dinner help built around rhythm instead of rigid systems. This year’s theme is “a better rhythm for weeknight dinners”, which is exactly the sort of thing that’s hard to figure out solo at 5pm on a Tuesday. Summit experts include some One Potato friends you’ll recognize, including Katie Kimball of Raising Healthy Families and Jessica Lawson of Big Delicious Life!

I Want This for My Family!

Why We Love Freaking Delish — and Why You’ll Love What’s for Dinner?: The Summit

Brett started Freaking Delish to build a dinner rhythm where everyone cooks and everyone gets cooked for, moms included. Her readers loved how her recipes and routines made weeknight dinner feel doable, and she wanted to give them an easy way to tap into all the systems her fellow food bloggers use, too. That’s how the summit was born.

Now in its third year, it has already welcomed over 5,000 families in a single event. Every August, families tune in for three free days of sessions on everything from budget-friendly dinners and freezer prep to picky eaters, meal-planning burnout, and building a dinner rhythm that survives an actual busy week. And yes, there are prizes: this year’s BINGO game includes prizes from Souper Cubes, Plan to Eat, ThermoWorks, and Hey Grill Hey, plus a bonus tier from the speakers themselves.

For anyone worried about another few hours glued to a screen (we get it), each session is short and built to be practical. You can watch in the real pockets of a day, between school pickup and bedtime, and every session stays up online for 24 hours so you’re never stuck watching live. Even better, each speaker is live in the chat for the first 30 minutes their session airs, so if you have a real question about your kid’s picky-eating phase or your specific grocery budget, you can actually ask it and get an answer.

One of our favorite things is the timing. The summit lands right as back-to-school hits, right when the loose rhythm of summer gets swapped for early alarms, packed schedules, and dinner needing to happen faster than anyone has energy for. Instead of scrambling to sort that out solo in week one, you walk into the school year with 25+ new ideas already in your back pocket.

Tell Me More!

And the best part? All three days are completely free, with the option to upgrade to the All Access Pass if you want to keep everything past the 24-hour window. That upgrade adds $600+ in bonuses from the speakers, a printable souvenir recipe cookbook, and a free trial month of Brett’s Supper Club membership. When you register, you’ll get the full schedule and a BINGO card you can start playing the moment sessions go live.

A better rhythm for weeknight dinner is worth three free days in August. Here’s to making dinner easier, one night at a time.

👉 Get Your Free Ticket to What’s for Dinner?: The Summit!

*Note: This newsletter contains affiliate links for Freaking Delish and What’s for Dinner?: The Summit. We had Brett on the newsletter this month because we genuinely love what she’s building, and we’d be pointing you to her free summit whether the affiliate relationship existed or not*

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Earlier this week we talked with Brett DuPree, food blogger and host of What’s for Dinner?: The Summit, about the mental load of dinner, teaching a husband who couldn’t boil water, and why she calls no-cook meals the gateway drug to real cooking. Make sure you read that full interview right here, and grab your free Summit ticket today!

Now for the practical half. From the no-cook dinner she’d hand any parent, to the Costco shortcut in her freezer right now, to the rice cooker that’s outlasted her whole marriage, these are the specific things that keep Brett’s kitchen running.

The one no-cook dinner recipe you’d hand a parent first?

Tacos, every time. Pulled pork tacos are the move. Grab pre-cooked pulled pork, warm it up, and load up tortillas with whatever toppings you’ve got.

A husband-proof meal, something with zero kitchen skills that still feels like a win?

A roast beef po-boy, and it’s no-cook. Grab the pre-made roast beef and the gravy, pile it on a hoagie bun with lettuce and tomato, and there you go. Anybody can pull that off and feel proud of it.

Three pantry or fridge staples you always keep on hand?

Tortillas, always. Beans, and I keep fresh ones in the freezer all the time. And stock or bone broth. I make my bone broth in the crock pot and I sneak it into everything, because gut health is a big deal to me.

An Aldi or Trader Joe’s find you’re obsessed with right now?

Trader Joe’s chimichurri. I cannot get enough of it. And I’m an Aldi girl through and through. I love a good dip, and Aldi has a great stock of them: grab the Mexicali dip or the street corn dip and turn it into a street corn pasta salad. Dips are the base for half of what I make.

A store-bought shortcut you’ll defend forever?

The Costco pulled chicken, the big vacuum-sealed pack. I break it up, freeze it in portions, and pull it out whenever I need it. It’s in my freezer right now.

A dinner both your boys will eat with no fight?

Weirdly, salad. It’s all about the crunchy lettuce. If the lettuce is crunchy, you can put anything on top: grilled chicken, taco-salad style, whatever you’ve got. I’ll throw some crushed Doritos on there and they’ll eat the whole thing.

One kitchen tool you always reach for?

My rice cooker, the same one I got at my wedding. It has outlasted everything. That and a salad spinner. I don’t wash the lettuce anymore, that’s the boys’ job. I don’t get the mail and I don’t wash salad.

You do cocktail Fridays. What are you pouring right now?

I’m a wine girl at heart, so usually a spritz. But my husband makes a mean Paper Plane, and I love anything with Aperol in it.

[One Potato note for readers: a Paper Plane is equal parts bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and fresh lemon juice, shaken with ice.]

Comfort food when someone in the house is sick?

Chicken and dumplings. Every single time.

A cookbook, creator, or account you love that isn’t your own?

Cookbook: Gwyneth Paltrow’s It’s All Good [Bookshop, Amazon]. I don’t cook especially healthy, but there’s a dressing in there, anchovies, lemon, and olive oil, that goes on anything.

For social media, Megan Keno of Homemade Home. She was on Next Level Chef, she’s been one of my summit speakers, and she can cook literally anything.

————————————————————

One last thing from Brett:

The important part isn’t the recipe, and it’s not what you cook. It’s making the time to sit down and breathe and regroup with your family at the end of the day. Even if it’s takeout, don’t beat yourself up. Just sit down, breathe through it, and try again tomorrow.

For more tips about balancing the mental load, and enjoying mealtimes with your family, be sure to check out What’s for Dinner?: The Summit running Aug 17–19 with 25+ food experts on budget dinners, picky eaters, the mental load, and freezer prep.

Learn More Here

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A Better Rhythm: Brett DuPree on Weeknight Dinner, Picky Eaters, and Real Life

Brett DuPree’s mother never wrote her recipes down. Not even the dressing, the one the whole family lived on for decades, the one they still can’t recreate six Thanksgivings after she passed. What her mom handed down wasn’t a recipe at all. It was a way of standing in front of an open cabinet and making something out of nothing.

That idea shapes everything Brett does now. She’s a food blogger, the host of What’s for Dinner?: The Summit, and a mom of two boys in Birmingham, Alabama. In a former life she worked as an immigration attorney, and then as an international adoption program manager for a nonprofit; international travel is still where her heart is. Her husband Greg, a food photographer, is a two-time cancer survivor, which is part of why food, and gathering around the family table, means what it does to her. They’re the husband-wife duo behind Freaking Delish.

Brett calls herself a dinner coach, not a chef, and she means it. Her whole approach starts from the idea that the hardest part of dinner usually isn’t the cooking. It’s the planning, the remembering, the invisible weight of being the one everyone looks at when they ask the well-known refrain, “what’s for dinner?”.

She talks with us about the year her mother’s cooking became her own, teaching a husband who couldn’t boil water (no joke!), why no-cook meals are the gateway drug to real cooking, and how she finally took a step back to notice she’d been carrying the invisible weight of dinner planning by herself when she didn’t need to be. Now, she helps other families come to that realization, and figure out the real, honest part of thriving around family meals.

A special note from Brett Dupree & our friends at What’s for Dinner: The Summit:

A Better Rhythm for Weeknight Dinner

Most meal plans fall apart the second real life shows up: the practice that runs long, the kid who suddenly won’t touch what they ate all last week, the night nobody has it in them to cook. That’s not you failing the plan. Brett DuPree built What’s for Dinner?: The Summit around that exact reality, because a plan only helps if it can survive an actual week.

It’s a free 3-day event (Aug 17–19) with 25+ food experts, each taking on a different piece of the puzzle: budget dinners, freezer prep, picky eaters, and building a dinner rhythm you can actually keep. Every speaker is live in the chat for the first half hour of their session, so you can ask a real question about your own family and get a real answer. 👉 Grab Your Free Ticket

A Conversation with Brett Dupree, founder of Freaking Delish

Introduce Yourself: I’m Brett Dupree, food blogger & creator behind Freaking Delish, host of the What’s For Dinner? Summit. My boys are 11 and 13, and my husband is a food photographer.

My husband is also a two-time cancer survivor; he’s had two different cancers over the past ten years, so that’s been a big part of our world.

First things first, tell us about What’s for Dinner: The summit. What is it, and why should our readers sign up?

I love this thing, it’s my baby. What’s for Dinner?: The Summit runs August 17th through 19th, and it’s free. It lives in August on purpose, right as back-to-school hits and everyone’s trying to get their game face on. It’s a one-stop shop for the mom who’s a little bit of everything, a little farm-to-table, a little freezer meals, a little quick-and-easy, depending on the day. This year the theme is: a better rhythm for weeknight dinners.

My whole focus is that it’s useful and actionable that night. You watch one session and you can go do the thing that same evening. We cover it all: what to actually feed your student athlete, how to use seasonal squash, how to make fresh bread, budget dinners, the mental load, picky eaters, freezer prep. It’s a little food court. You come sample everything and walk out with whatever speaks to where you are right now. And I run the whole thing myself, so I really do love it.

Let’s get to know you. What was dinner like growing up? Is there a dish or a memory that stays with you?

Growing up, food was everything in our house. We communicated through food. I’m a Southern girl from Atlanta, so barbecue is huge; my dad’s a pit master and a chili cook-off champion, a competitive foodie.

But it was my mom who really laid the foundation for how I cook with my kids today. The funny thing is she couldn’t cook a thing when she and my dad met! He taught her, and then she became the one who could make something out of nothing. She’d open the cabinet, and it didn’t matter what was in there, she could turn it into dinner. That one idea shapes everything I do: you don’t have to run back to the store, it doesn’t have to be perfect, no ingredient is sacred.

She never wrote anything down, though. She passed the year before COVID, and even her famous dressing, the one our whole family lived on, isn’t written down anywhere. We’re six or seven years out and we still haven’t managed a Thanksgiving that tastes like hers. If there were one recipe I could have back, it would be that one.

Going back to work, you were surprised to find you were still the one getting asked “What’s for dinner?”. When did you realize you didn’t have to carry that mental load alone?

It really hit when the kids were around preschool age. You step into this role as a mom and for a minute you forget everything else. For me that was doubled down, because I was also the caretaker at home. Then you come out of it and go, oh, right, I’m a whole independent person, and this whole household isn’t mine to carry alone.

There’s a saying I love: a marriage is never 50/50, it’s more like 30/70, and which way it tips depends on the season you’re in. When I started building the business, a lot of it was about separating myself from just being mom and getting back to Brett. And here’s the thing: I like to be cooked for, too. If someone makes me something, especially my husband, that’s the tops for me. Being taken care of matters to me just as much as taking care of everyone else.

You call yourself a dinner coach rather than a chef. Why does that word matter to you?

I definitely don’t think of myself as a chef. Any actual chef would look at me and go, no, ma’am. I like “coach” because so much of this isn’t the cooking. It’s the psychology of it, the mindset, the feelings, the roles everybody plays in your home. My philosophy is that it’s fine however you chop the onion. It’s fine if you don’t have that exact type of pasta. I don’t care what olive oil you use. It’s less about the recipe and more about getting everyone back around the table, and making it accessible enough that your partner can do it for you too.

That’s why no-cook meals are such a big part of my membership at Freaking Delish. I call them the gateway drug to real cooking, because anybody can walk into your kitchen and make them. If it’s you after a long day, if it’s your partner who swears he can’t cook, if it’s your teenager who can only work the microwave, that’s okay. They can still make dinner. They can still take on that mental load.

What do you mean by no-cook meals? Your free starting point is a set of no-cook rush hour recipes. For someone skeptical that no-cook can mean a real dinner, what does a no-cook night actually look like at your house?

Tacos. Honestly, pulled pork tacos. The protein is the hardest part, so if you’ve got that pre-done, you’re most of the way there. I don’t see it as a cheat, I see it as being strategic, looking at your real week instead of setting yourself up to fail. It’s like starting a workout. You’re not going to crush it hard every day for thirty days when you haven’t been moving at all. Let’s just walk this week.

So I buy the pre-cooked proteins (that’s a no-cook part!) and a sauce, and it goes over pasta, over rice, into a taco or a quesadilla. Everything can go in a quesadilla as far as I’m concerned. You heat the meat, throw on some salsa and cheese and whatever toppings, and it’s done. That satisfies me every single time.

You’ve said your husband legitimately couldn’t boil water. How did that change?

He couldn’t, no! He’s an incredible food photographer, he shoots for a publishing house that does Real Simple and Food & Wine, gorgeous stuff. But he was the golden boy growing up, taken care of, and he just never took cooking on as a skill. So we started at square one. The rule in our house now is everybody cooks. My youngest learned to make guacamole when he was ten, and now he’s the king of guacamole. We make omelets, we do the whole thing. These boys are going to know how to cook.

And my husband was 100% on board from the start, because he loves food. He made some wild mistakes early on, but he had his one clutch recipe, a seared pork tenderloin with a reduction that he was so proud of. Now he’s the king of tacos and makes a great chicken salad.

So much of your work is about the planning and the remembering, not just the cooking. How do you help a parent recognize that mental load?

The biggest part is just acknowledging it’s there. Putting a name to it. For so long I couldn’t even name it myself, this invisible weight that was just sort of there all the time. So I say it out loud, over and over, and I tell people: you’re not new at this, and you’re not bad at it. We’ve all felt this. And it still circles back around, so you might be fighting this one for a while.

You’ve said dinner can be a real source of stress on a marriage, which people don’t say out loud. Once you renegotiated who owns dinner, what changed between you and your husband?

Honestly, it was really him getting it. Being able to say, oh, that mental load is actually a lot. Even just the question, what do we have in the refrigerator? He knows not to ask me that anymore, because I don’t keep a catalog of the fridge in my head, and being expected to is its own weight. When he sat in that and thought, why would I ask her to hold all of that, the shift was so lovely. You feel seen. He gets it.

You’ve said the Etsy meal plans and Pinterest boards and cookbooks aren’t failing busy parents by accident. What do most of those tools get wrong?

My problem with the one-off plan is that it’s just more. It’s one more thing, one more download sitting in a folder that I never opened, one more little failure. So my whole approach is the opposite: less is more, and you can use what you already have. That’s an angle I lean into hard at What’s for Dinner: The Summit. You don’t have to ditch your family favorites to beat the boredom. You’ve got a great place to start, so start there.

I have a whole recipe redo philosophy, and it comes straight from how my mom cooked. New recipes are great, and here are some, but let me also show you how to redo the ones you’ve already got. You don’t need thirty new recipes for the month. I never want to add to the weight we’re already carrying. I want to lighten it and make it a little more fun.

When a parent joins your supper club, what shift are you really after: the recipes, or something bigger?

It’s the habit. I’ve had people tell me they’re embarrassed by how long it’s been since they actually cooked for their family. What helps them is the mindset that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Maybe this week you find two recipes and put them on the list, and that’s what happens. Then you wash, rinse, repeat next week, and maybe add a third. I don’t cook seven days a week either. It’s about getting back into the habit, it and building from there.

You talk about failure walks and ditching perfectionism. For a parent who feels like they’re failing at dinner, what do you most want them to hear?

That you’re going to feel like that a lot, and that’s just the gig. I don’t think there’s a way out of it, so the move is to embrace it. Sit with it. Some nights dinner is a bust, and you let it go and move on to the next thing. The biggest piece is not letting one bad night decide what tomorrow looks like.

Your boys are growing up in a house where dinner is genuinely shared. What do you hope they carry into their own homes someday?

Two things. First, my kids aren’t afraid to try anything, and I love that. Our house is a revolving door of neighborhood kids, and a lot of them will only eat a few specific things. I try not to frame it as picky, I just tell my boys that only letting yourself eat five things makes your world really small, and I don’t want that for them. They love to travel like I do, and for me the whole point of travel is the food. I want them in someone’s kitchen, eating something authentic, coming home to tell me they had the best fried rice of their life.

The second thing is that cooking and carrying the load is just normal for them. Not mom’s job, not something they should feel guilty about skipping. Baseline, it’s their responsibility too, and they’re lucky if they find someone to share it with.

Is there a cooking skill you use all the time that you think every home cook should know?

Two, and they compete because I lean on both constantly. One is the grill. If you can grill, especially proteins, you can batch cook so easily. I love cooking on the grill because there’s nothing else to clean up, which in summer is everything. The other is knowing how to cook one good skillet meal, a one-pot dinner where every single piece can swap out: the protein, the carb, the sauce. Master one of those and you can make it a hundred different ways.

Follow Brett on Instagram at @freaking.delish and make sure you sign up for What’s for Dinner: The Summit today!

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Earlier this week we talked with Natalie Kotesova about feeding her three boys without the pressure: the sweet peppers her oldest swears he hates, why she never makes separate meals, and how a hypothyroidism diagnosis sent her digging until food changed everything. If you haven’t read it yet, start there. It’s good context for how she stocks her kitchen.

Today we’re getting practical. Natalie walks us through the staples, tools, and shortcuts that keep her plant-based kitchen running: the sauce that gets her kids to eat almost anything, the frozen shortcut she won’t apologize for, and the splurge appliance she’d buy again. Quick, specific, and easy to steal.

Three pantry or fridge staples you always have on hand?

Bananas, almond butter, and maple syrup.

A kitchen tool you use every single day?

A high-speed blender. A million times over.

A store-bought shortcut you don’t apologize for?

Frozen rice. It’s overpriced now, which is insane. Sometimes I stand there wondering if I really want to pay five dollars for a small pack, or just buy three bags and cook it myself. But it saves the meal some nights.

A grab-and-go snack you always carry?

Bananas.

One weeknight meal you make on repeat?

Creamy pasta with broccoli. The sauce is cashews blended with water, garlic, and nutritional yeast. It comes out cheesy and creamy.

A main dish from childhood you still think about?

Molé, with rice. My grandma made it with chicken. Probably my favorite meal ever.

A sauce or seasoning trick that instantly makes your kids eat something?

That cashew sauce. You can turn it into a dressing, stir it into pasta, or use it to make almost anything richer. It’s my go-to.

A cookbook, app, or creator you turn to for inspiration?

Ellen Fisher. She doesn’t make videos anymore, but I learned so much from her old “what I eat in a day” content. She has a great podcast now.

Besides the green smoothie, your go-to breakfast for energy?

Homemade muffins. I make them with almond flour and oat flour, with almond butter and yogurt in the batter, then add whatever veggies we have or some chocolate chips. The boys love them.

A kid-friendly food you secretly can’t stand but tolerate?

Nuggets. We’re plant-based, so it’s the Impossible or Beyond ones. You can make healthier nuggets at home, but every once in a while these just hit different.

A healthy-ish convenience food your kids are obsessed with?

Potato chips. We buy the ones made with avocado oil, the cleaner brands. They don’t add much beyond being a fun, crunchy snack, and that’s okay.

One splurge kitchen appliance you love?

My Nama milk maker. It was expensive, but it makes the milk so creamy and good.

Anything you’re working on that we should know about?

I want to put together a little ebook of kids’ birthday party food. Birthday parties are usually a free-for-all of junk, and it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve been making mindful party food for my kids for seven years, and people always ask me to bring what I made or make it for them. I think it’d be worth gathering in one place.

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Helping Moms Serve Nourishing Meals: Natalie Kotesova on Pressure-Free Feeding

When Natalie was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, her doctors told her there was nothing to be done. She’s a self-described research junkie, though, so she went looking anyway. Food was what changed things. “I have never in my life felt this good,” she says.

That’s the story underneath her recipes. Natalie shares the meals her three boys actually eat, and she cooks from a place a lot of parents will recognize: wanting the best for your kids without turning every dinner into a fight. You can find her recipes on her Instagram @wholesome_nat and in her recipe book (in Español and English). She has real opinions, like rethinking the sweets you reach for instead of fearing them, and being honest about how much of a mom’s stress around toddler eating is her own instead of her child’s.

Her boys are almost eight, five, and two, and the food at their table pulls from her Mexican roots, her husband’s Russian side, and the Japanese meals the kids fell for on their own. Running through all of it is one steady belief: picky eating is normal, taste buds keep changing, and the job is to keep offering without the pressure.

In our conversation she gets into the sweet peppers her oldest swears he hates (and now adds as a pizza topping himself), why she never makes separate meals, and the green smoothie that starts most mornings. It reads less like a set of rules than a way of paying attention: to what kids like, to how food makes them feel, and to the difference between a hard day and a real problem.

A Conversation with Natalie Kotesova, digital creator behind Wholesome Nat

Introduce Yourself: I’m Natalie Kotesova. I’m the content creator behind Wholesome Nat, and I share recipes my kids love to eat. I have three boys, and feeding little ones is basically what started this whole passion. They’re about to turn eight, five, and two.

What’s a favorite food memory from growing up?

I grew up at my grandparents’ house. My grandma had nine kids, so she was in the kitchen all day. Watching her cook is where my love of food started. It wasn’t the same style I cook now. She was feeding as many people as fast as she could, and I’m more mindful about every ingredient. But that’s where it began, just watching her go.

Is there a family recipe you’re holding onto?

There’s this orange pound cake. Every time you smelled it in the oven, it got everybody excited. When I started my wellness journey, that was the first flavor I wanted to capture again. Growing up, I thought it was the best thing you could ever eat. So I worked on that recipe until it felt right.

You’ve said the meals your kids love most are the simple ones. Was that always your instinct?

It started when I got more aware of what I was putting in my own body. It made no sense to feed myself the best food I could think of and not do the same for them. So it really started with my first son. New parents tend to overthink everything with the first one anyway.

Now that they’re older, I’m learning to work in their own preferences. They’re vocal about what they like, especially when they see other kids eating something. But for me it’s about giving them the basics so they can make their own decisions later. When I go back to the standard American diet on a trip, I don’t feel as good, and I always come back to how I eat now. That’s what I want for them, to notice how food makes them feel.

Was there a specific moment that turned you toward eating this way?

I have an autoimmune disease, hypothyroidism. When I was first diagnosed, they basically told me there was nothing I could do about it. But I’m a research junkie. My husband says I overdo it. I started digging for ways to feel better, and food helped. It was a transformation. I’ve never felt this good in my life. That’s what pushed me to look deeper into nutrition and pay attention to what we all eat.

A lot of parents struggle to get kids to eat the healthy stuff. You say picky eating is normal. How do you encourage other parents?

My number one thing is that I don’t love every vegetable or every fruit myself. So I can’t expect my kids to love everything either. I try not to pressure them into liking something. Even as adults our taste buds change all the time, so of course theirs are still evolving. You put a plate down, and sometimes they like it and sometimes they don’t. Some days you’re just not in the mood for soup.

I lean on gentle encouragement and a few boundaries. I’ll say, this is what mama made, and it’s okay if you don’t like it, but this is what we have unless you want to grab a banana. Usually they’ll go grab the banana, then come back to the soup, because something just shifted. You don’t have to force it, and you don’t have to give up on it either. A little “oh, it’s so crunchy, you’re going to love it” is often enough to get them to try it. They don’t have to love it. They just have to try.

Can you think of a recent moment where one of your older kids dug in?

My oldest swears he doesn’t like sweet peppers. Everything I make, he says he doesn’t like it. But lately I’ve been sneaking them into dishes where they’re not obvious. We made a big veggie pizza and I chopped the peppers really small. Then I made fajitas with super thin pepper strips. He built his tacos, piled on guacamole, and said it was the best taco ever. Same with the pizza, he said I’d added something so flavorful. My husband said, those peppers are so sweet, and my son goes, wait, there’s peppers? I said, yeah, so I guess you like them now, Noah. And he goes, oh no, absolutely not. But we didn’t make a big deal of it. The next week we made pizza again, and he was adding the peppers himself.

People say their kids don’t like salad, but little ones just don’t love chewing greens. That’s normal. My oldest started asking for greens around six, because he saw me eating my salads. Now he loves them. So I’m not rushing my two littles. They’ll ask eventually, probably sooner, because they want to be like their big brother.

Is there a feeding worry you see other moms trying to fix that doesn’t need fixing?

The fear of sweets. Kids crave sweet things, and honestly so do I. I just reach for the better sweets. I offer a lot of fruit. There’s this fear of fruit going around that I don’t understand. I’ve never felt better than when I’m eating plenty of fruit. If my kid reaches for strawberries over cucumbers, I don’t stress about it. We naturally lean toward sweeter tastes. You don’t need to fear the craving. You just need to rethink the sweets you’re reaching for.

How much of toddler eating struggle is really about the kid, and how much is the mom?

Oh, it’s high. I catch myself in it too. He barely ate today, something must be wrong, I need to pack more veggies into the smoothie. Then I step back and remember it’s one day. I don’t eat all my fruits and vegetables some days either. It’s hard not to overstress, because we want them to thrive. Unless the bad days outnumber the good ones consistently, it’s usually fine. Go back to your instinct. They see you eating it, they’ll reach for it. Set up the environment. If you don’t want them reaching for cookies, don’t buy the cookies. Relax, start small, and look at what’s around them.

You do a lot with repurposing leftovers. How did that start?

I really hate food waste. We’re a big family, so leftovers are usually just a little bit, and I try to use every bit. I keep a base of meals I know the boys will like. I start with a starch or grain, a potato or something. Then a veggie they love, like broccoli. Then a fun vegetable they’re not sure about, which they can pick out or try. After that I focus on fats, because their brains need fat to develop, so I add more for them than for me and my husband, usually in a sauce or a dip. And I always add a fruit for the vitamins and minerals.

I keep a handful of recipes memorized, so if I’ve got cauliflower in the fridge I know I can make tacos, cauliflower sandwiches, or cauliflower rice, then build the rest around it. That’s how it works in my brain.

What’s your favorite smoothie in the house?

My green smoothie. Start with frozen bananas for the best texture and flavor. Then frozen mango, a little pineapple, one or two stalks of celery, and a tiny piece of ginger if your kids can handle it, for flavor and for your gut. For greens, kale can be too bitter for little ones, so I go with spinach or something softer. You have your nourishing meal first thing, your belly’s prepped, and you feel energized. It’s the best way to start the morning.

You’ve written, “freedom is realizing you’re the parent and you can make the rules.” Is there a rule from your own upbringing you kept or let go of?

Home cooked is best. There’s so much out there labeled wholesome and clean, and those standards aren’t always good ones. At home you can always control what goes into your food and your body. I grew up eating a lot of homemade meals, and that’s the one I kept.

Your food pulls from a few cultures. What are the influences?

I’m Mexican and my husband is Russian, so there’s already a mix. And my boys love Japanese food. It happened naturally. It was never, here’s Japanese food, you have to love it. It was more, mommy, I love this sushi, can we have more? So we do a lot of Japanese meals at home, some Mexican, and my husband loves potatoes. I also fold in the pizza and nuggets they see other kids eating, just not all the time.

You mentioned a recipe book. What’s in it?

It started because I had a bad habit of making something great and never writing it down, then forgetting what I did. So I started writing recipes for myself. It has ten breakfasts and ten easy lunch and dinner meals, plus sweets. It’s gluten-free, plant-based, and mostly soy-free, since that’s how I eat. Everything’s easy and approachable. The link’s in my Instagram bio.

What’s your advice for a tired mom whose kid is a picky eater and who’s out of dinner ideas?

Don’t make separate meals. Make one meal and customize it. I cook mostly oil-free and fat-free for myself, but for the boys I add their fats right on top, heavy on the sauce, a sprinkle of seeds, some avocado or coconut. Their pancakes are fat-free, then I drizzle almond butter on top, and they like them better that way. Layer it. Pancakes take toppings, tacos take fillings. Two separate meals just adds to the problem.

Is there a cooking skill you think every home cook should know?

Know how to cook your basics. Your own grains, your own beans, your own sauces. Once you have those down, you can build any meal from there.

Follow Natalie on Instagram at @wholesome_nat

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Earlier this week we talked with Elkey and Will Zandstra about “Breakfast Around the World”, the Sunday ritual that’s carried their family through 45 countries, and the bicultural table where Indonesian rice meets American cereal. You can revisit their interview right here.

Now we’re getting practical. From the one Indonesian condiment they think every kitchen should stock, to the cookbook Will calls a bible, to the grazing “dinner” that replaced dinner entirely, here are the staples, tools, and shortcuts that keep the Zandstra kitchen running.

Of all the countries you’ve cooked through, what’s an ingredient you didn’t grow up with that you now keep on hand?

Ghee. A hundred percent.

Three pantry or fridge staples you always have on hand?

Garlic, eggs, and flour. Eggs because it’s breakfast, and most people do eggs. And flour, because almost every country has some version of fried dough or a carb to start the day.

Elkey, even though Will does most of the cooking, is there one Indonesian ingredient, condiment, or sauce American kitchens should know about?

Elkey: Kecap manis, which is sweet soy sauce. And sambal, though sambal’s going to be tough for kids (it’s a spicy chili sauce).

Will, a kitchen tool you genuinely reach for all the time?

Will: My immersion blender. That’s my favorite. After that, a little whisk. Best hand tool there is.

One store-bought shortcut you don’t apologize for?

Bouillon or broth. And canned tomatoes, though honestly, we don’t even call canned tomatoes a shortcut. That’s just normal.

A snack you always have on hand to head off a meltdown?

Whole fruit or nuts. We always have apples and nuts around.

One cookbook or creator you turn to when you need a real recipe?

The Food Lab by Kenji López-Alt [Bookshop, Amazon], the giant white book, super thick. It’s a cooking bible. He breaks down the science and explains why things work. That’s why we think everyone should have it.

A kitchen splurge that was actually worth it?

A smart toaster oven. We don’t use a microwave in our house, so a good one is a solid investment. Steam, reheat, whatever you need, perfect.

A family dinner everyone eats, no negotiating?

Hear us out: we don’t really do dinner. We turned it into a grazing snack board. The kids wake up from their nap around 3:30 and graze until about 5 on carrots, fruit, cheese, crackers, and a vegetable juice, then go to bed at 7. We do the same. That’s dinner. We made the switch a while ago and haven’t looked back.

Will, a comfort meal you make when someone’s had a hard day?

Will: Pho. Or bubur, Indonesian rice porridge, which is our day-or-night staple. But if I had to pick one, it’s pho. It’s what I make after a birth.

Elkey: He’d make a batch ahead of time as a postpartum meal. For our last two kids, I had a bowl right after delivery while he held the baby.

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One Core Memory at a Time: Inside the Zandstras’ “Breakfast Around the World”

Every Sunday, a globe gets spun in a kitchen outside Seattle, and a five-year-old or a three-year-old calls out a country. By the next weekend there’s a flag drawn on the window, a passport waiting for its stamp, and a breakfast from somewhere new on the table.

That’s “Breakfast Around the World”, the ritual Elkey and Will Zandstra have now carried through 45 countries. Elkey grew up in Indonesia, where rice anchored every meal. Will grew up on American cereal, with Eggs Benedict reserved for holidays. Together they’re raising three kids: Emray, Ezrah, and an eight-month-old, in a household that’s part Indonesian, part American, where two food cultures meet on one plate.

What started as Elkey’s plan to give Will, who cooks nearly all their meals, a morning to rest turned into something the Internet fell for. But talk to them and the polish falls away fast. The big displays are the part they add for the camera, while the reality is about love, connection, and something that’s much more doable for everyone. Will gets lost in Indian supermarkets. The real magic, they’ll tell you, is taking food outside on a rare sunny afternoon.

We talked about feeding kids across two heritages, why they keep history out of breakfast for now, how to frame an unfamiliar dish so a kid will actually try it, and the one cooking skill Will swears most home cooks skip. Their anchor is the phrase that lives in their bio: creating one core memory at a time.

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A Conversation with Elkey & Will Zandstra, Mom & Dad Creators of “Breakfast Around the World”

Introduce Yourselves: I’m Elkey, and this is my husband Will. I work full-time at a tech company, and for the past two years we’ve also been busy with posting on social media. We have three kids: Emray is five, Ezrah is three, and our baby boy is eight months.

Elkey, you grew up in Indonesia. What did breakfast look like in your house, both everyday and for special occasions?

Elkey: Almost always rice. If rice isn’t on the table, it doesn’t count as a meal. Rice, meat, eggs, and a lot of fried things, for better or worse. Or bubur, which is basically a rice porridge. Rice is the foundation of every meal.

And Will, what did food and family meals look like in your house growing up?

Will: Cereal. That was breakfast. A pretty classic, traditional American upbringing. Our pantry was always stocked with the parents’ cereal and the kids’ cereal, and you’d pick whatever you were feeling that day. Special occasions or holidays, we’d do something nicer. Always an Eggs Benedict for holidays.

When you started having kids and imagining your own table, what carried over from your upbringings, and what didn’t?

Elkey: I grew up with my grandmother in the house. My mom always worked, but both she and my grandmother loved to cook for the family; it was their love language. My grandmother would wake up at 3 a.m. with my mom and make an individual dish for each of us. I have three siblings, and we all liked different things. They spoiled us. I can still feel the love and the effort they put into those meals, and that’s how I want to feed my kids, homemade meals. Beyond the love, you can’t beat the nutrition of making things from scratch, where you know exactly what goes into every dish.

Now that you’re in Seattle raising kids in a household that’s part Indonesian, part American, how does that show up on a normal Tuesday, not the polished version?

Will: It really comes down to pre-thinking and pre-prepping. I’m always thinking at least a day ahead and keeping a rough routine. For example, the kids know oats are coming the next morning, it’s a reliable staple. Predictability helps them adjust. Our household blend leans more Indonesian. I grew up on cereal and was never a huge fan, so I’d much rather actually cook, especially Asian dishes. Rice is everything, and there are a lot of spices. The kids have different palates. Ezrah handles spice better than my oldest, so there’s some catering to each, but I still try to make sure they’re all eating roughly the same thing. I don’t go as far as their grandma making separate dishes! I want them to know this is what we made.

“Creating one core memory at a time” is in your bio. Where did that phrase come from, and when did you realize you’d build your content and your parenting around it?

Will: It’s been an evolution. We’d been doing these things for a couple of years, making content and adding a little glitz for social media, but keeping it uniquely us, stuff we’d actually do on our own. The core-memory part came from the reaction. People started commenting, “This is going to be such a core memory for your kids.” It resonated, it took off, and we realized how much people connected with it.

Elkey: It’s also a blend of who we are. I see Will as an artist. He likes to work with his hands, and a lot of our activities are things he builds himself. He made the Hobbit house from The Lord of the Rings out of a cardboard box, just because he loves doing activities like that. And for me, it goes back to my childhood. My parents did their best, but they worked a lot, so I don’t have many memories with them outside of everyday things. Part of this is healing the inner child in each of us. It’s also beautiful to watch. Will and I come from two different cultures, so we’ll ask each other, “What did you do as a kid?” He taught our three-year-old to fish, something I never experienced. Getting to see his childhood in how he’s raising our kids is a beautiful thing.

Beyond the big activities, are there small rituals you suspect will become your kids’ core memories, even ones you’d never make a video about?

Will: A hundred percent, though I remember the most random stuff from when I was a kid, so what sticks for them might be lost on me as the parent. Honestly, I think it’s our outside time. We live in a really special place, and we’re constantly outside, hanging out on the lawn or making little picnics. Any chance we get, we take food outside. That’s a Seattle thing too. We hibernate for months in the winter, and the summers are exceptional. It doesn’t get dark until 10pm, so you enjoy being outside while you can.

For someone meeting you through this interview, walk us through a “Breakfast Around the World” morning. Who spins the globe? Who’s cooking?

Elkey: Will usually preps the meal the night before, and I print the menu and set up the passports, with a stamp for each country. I set up the “classroom,” too. I draw the flag on the window, write the country, and look up a fun fact. Most of the prep happens the night before, so the morning is mostly heating up the dish and making tea, for example, if the country calls for it. Then we eat together. We talk about the country, the continent, the language, sometimes the colors of the flag, which is good for color recognition, and the fun fact. Then Will explains the dish: what it is, the background, how it’s traditionally served, whether you eat it with your hands or share from one dish. The kids take turns spinning the globe. One week it’s my son, the next it’s my daughter.

Why breakfast? Why not lunch or dinner?

Elkey: It started because Will cooks 99% of our meals, and I wanted to give him a chance to sleep in on a Sunday. I don’t really cook, so I wanted to make it special, maybe making up for not being the one who meal preps. It began with random things: a special bagel day where I’d make bagels from scratch, or pancakes on a train that circled the table so the kids could grab them. A couple of months in, I ran out of grand ideas, and finally thought, what if we just pick a country and go from there? The kids loved it, the internet loved it, and it evolved. We’re 45 countries in now. It started as a way to give Will a rest, but then I got pregnant with our third and was postpartum, so he took the meals back over.

Will: I don’t rest well. It feels awkward to me.

Was there a week that surprised you, something the kids really connected with?

Elkey: A few caught us off guard. It’s evolved over time, because now the kids know something different is coming every Sunday, so there’s real anticipation and eagerness to try new things. Ukraine did really well. We made syrniki, those cottage cheese pancakes. Anything with carbs, they love. For Italy we did biscotti and warm chocolate milk, and my daughter said it was “the most perfect breakfast in the whole wide world.”

Do you feel like you’re raising little world travelers?

Elkey: I hope so. Will and I traveled a lot before kids. I lived in six different countries, so we both come from a background of loving culture and travel. We can’t do as much now, so this is our budget-friendly way of introducing them to other cultures from home.

Will: To be fair, Emray and Ezrah have done a decent bit of traveling for their age. They’ve both been to Europe, Emray has been to Indonesia, and we’re traveling again next year. They do great, honestly fantastic for young kids, and I always see them wanting to do more.

Will, the Malaysian nasi lemak and teh tarik week got picked up by press in Malaysia, and it was your first time pulling tea.

Will: Most of the time I’m learning as I go. The biggest thing with this series is that I try my best to be as accurate as I can, but we don’t always have the right resources. The important part is getting the spirit of the culture. It might not be 100% authentic, but I want the kids to have at least a decent representation of the country, the dish, the culture. Sometimes the pressure’s on. Some of these are way out of my wheelhouse.

When I was shopping for the ingredients to cook Indian breakfast, I’d been to plenty of Asian supermarkets but never an Indian one. I was in that store for 45 minutes, wandering the aisles trying to find everything I needed, getting a lot of stares, probably because I looked so lost.

Elkey, you’re usually the one educating the kids, explaining the country and its background. Without an early-childhood-education background, how do you decide what to share, especially for a country with a complicated history?

Elkey: I keep it light and fun, at a level they understand. I research with AI assistance a lot, to be fair. I’ll ask for kid-friendly fun facts, it gives me ten, and I pick something fun they can relate to. They’re five and three years old right now. History can come later. Right now they’re in this magical early-childhood bubble where everything is fun and kind, and that’s what we need to nurture. I try not to get into the politics or the complicated history. That’ll come when they’re ten, maybe a separate “Breakfast Around the World” then. For now I’m just meeting them where they are.

When you’re filming, it’s rarely one-and-done. Kids make messes, things get complicated. Any breakfast with a crazy story behind it?

Elkey: After 45 weeks, the kids are so used to it. There are times they get wiggly. Right now it’s spring, so they’ve got a lot of energy, and they’ll start squirming and not listening. But this isn’t just a breakfast thing; it’s how we run our whole day. We pause and say, “Okay, take a chance to wiggle your body. Let me know when you’re ready.” Then we start again. Honestly, nothing too crazy has happened.

Some of these breakfasts are pretty far from what a typical American two-to-seven-year-old eats. How would you advise another parent on framing an unfamiliar dish so their kid will actually try it?

Will: Keep it high level. You don’t have to overcomplicate it or over-explain. For Myanmar I made mohinga, a fish soup over rice noodles with lots of vegetables. It’s a complex dish, probably the most complex one I’ve made in the whole series. But for the kids, it’s just a noodle soup. They know what noodles are, they know what soup is. Introduce it at a level they can associate with, keep it simple, and let them try it.

Elkey: It helps that we make one meal for everybody. We’re having what they’re having. And for something like mohinga, traditionally you mix everything together, but for the kids we separate it: dry noodles here, fish broth there. Taste the components. We give them the option. If they want to try the broth, great. If not, there’s a noodle for them.

Is there a country whose breakfast everyone secretly fell in love with that’s now in regular rotation?

Will: That’s tricky. There are ones where we said, “We need to make this more often.” But keeping a routine on the breakfast schedule matters with kids, so I don’t mix up their usual breakfast very often, which makes it tough to pull from the traditional ones. Panama was probably my favorite: salchicha guisada, a sausage stew, amazing. The kids loved most of the European ones. Anything with carbs. Burkina Faso was really good too.

So what’s your standard weekly breakfast?

Will: This morning they had avocado, eggs, fruit, and smoked cod. We do porridge or overnight oats, and one day a week I’ll make a teff-flour pancake for the kids, since we’re on a bit of a different diet these days. The carbs rotate, but the fruit and protein stay. There’s always fruit, and smoked cod is usually the morning protein, with whatever carb is in rotation.

In a bigger-picture way, when your kids grow up and someone asks what food was like in their house, what do you hope they say?

Will: That it was amazing. We do breakfast differently than a lot of people in America. We do a larger breakfast, always. Ever since Emray was little we’d almost do a full charcuterie in the morning: eggs, toast options, meat, cheese laid out. We’ve condensed it since, but it’s the same idea: a wide variety to round out the morning and fuel the day. And the effort matters. I get up at 5:30 every morning to start breakfast.

For a parent who feels like they don’t have the bandwidth for a weekly ritual like this, where’s a low-effort place to start?

Elkey: Honestly, it is low effort. The passport stamps and big displays are the extra we do for social media. What we always try to do is inspire people toward things that are attainable. You don’t need a massive display. You can pull out a map, pick a country, and talk to your kids. The whole thing happens over a week: they pick a country, and you’ve got a week to grab what you need and figure out what to make. None of it happens in a single morning. Once you have a system, it becomes low effort. I have a Canva template for the menu that takes two minutes, and Will’s dish takes an hour or two depending on how complex it is. It looks like a lot, but with a system in place, it isn’t.

As home cooks, what’s a cooking skill you use all the time that you think other home cooks should make sure they know how to do?

Will: The number one thing most home cooks skip is properly preheating the pan. People throw a pan on and immediately crack an egg. You want the pan hot before anything goes in. I’ll let it sit on the heat for about two minutes, then add my grease right before the eggs. Especially with fish: always start with a hot pan. That’s a home-cooking sin. People don’t realize what they’re doing wrong when things don’t come out right.

Follow Elkey and Will on Instagram at @elkeyzandstra and @williamzandstra and on TikTok @thezandstras

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Earlier this week in our Order Up! conversation, Nephi Craig talked about surviving nearly two decades of addiction and building Café Gozhóó, a restaurant and training kitchen for people in recovery, all in the same week his memoir, Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef, came out [Bookshop, Amazon]. It’s worth checking out that interview, especially as an intro to picking up a copy of his book. Head on over.

Today we’re getting practical. The three spices he won’t run out of, the weeknight dinner his kids actually ask for, the knife he’d give as a gift — these are the things that keep his kitchen running, as a chef and a single dad of three.

An Indigenous ingredient more home cooks should know about?

Here’s the thing: most home cooks are already cooking with Indigenous ingredients and don’t know it. I’d say almost 75% of the ingredients you’ve used your whole life are Indigenous cultivars. Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, cacao, chiles, beans, squash. Start there.

Three pantry or fridge staples you always keep on hand?

Salt, pepper, chili flakes. That’s it. Don’t under-season your food.

A kitchen tool you actually use almost every day?

My old wooden butcher block. I’ve had it 24, maybe 27 years. It’s big and heavy, and I use it every single day. It’s my favorite tool at home.

A go-to, realistic weeknight dinner you’ve been making a lot?

Baked chicken, steamed veggies, and steamed rice. Simple, and the kids love it.

One store-bought shortcut you’re not ashamed to use?

Store-bought bone broth. I’ve used it to fortify my pho broth at home — once. Okay, three times. Who has hours to simmer bone broth on a weeknight?

A snack your younger kids are into right now?

Berries, always. Since they were small, I’ve thought of buying their snacks like buying medicine. I’ll get the organic version when I can. Blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, for the polyphenols. When I pick the kids up from school, I’ve packed berries or fresh fruit for them every day.

A favorite cookbook you turn to, or like to gift?

Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia [Bookshop, Amazon]. It’s an old classic I dug back out. Since 2020 I’ve been deep into noodle soups, especially pho, so I keep going back to it for dipping sauces and broths. We’re actually doing a ramen night this week, four different kinds.

As a single dad, how do you think about meal prep? Cook as you go, or batch cook on Sundays?

A little of both. If I make the baked chicken, broccoli, and rice, I’ll cook extra rice for the next day or two. I cook from scratch and keep it simple, and I add new foods in slowly instead of forcing them.

My kids are adventurous eaters. They love pho, and they won’t eat it without basil. I’ll catch them picking out the greens and remind them: we can’t have pho without basil or cilantro. Something quick and nutritious, so I get more time with them. That’s always the goal.

A favorite food gift to give, or a shout-out you want to make?

A good knife. An eight-inch classic chef’s knife, or a Japanese-style Santoku, something someone will take care of and cherish for decades. And if you can’t swing a good knife, give them a pepper mill.

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You can visit Café Gozhóó: 5624 N 1st St Whiteriver, AZ 85941

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Landscape Is Destiny: Nephi Craig on Indigenous Food, Family, and Healing

Nephi Craig’s first book comes out today. It’s a memoir, Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef, and the title is close to literal. There were long stretches of his life when cooking was the only thing holding him up.

He’s White Mountain Apache on his mother’s side and Diné on his late father’s, and he runs Café Gozhóó in Whiteriver, Arizona, a café and training kitchen built around recovery, where he coordinates a nutritional recovery program. He’s cooked all over the world, but the work he cares about most happens here, up in the mountains, a few hours northeast of Phoenix.

He started out baking with his mom and selling baked goods off a wagon. At eighteen, a judge gave him a choice between prison and work, and he ended up in a culinary program where an instructor told him Natives “cook, but it’s not cuisine.” He spent seventeen years in addiction, then stayed quiet about a decade of sobriety before he felt ready to talk about it.

Nephi’s connection to food, family, and his land is what brought him home, when he could have continued to travel the world as a chef after culinary school. He talks about feeding a family when you’re running on empty: cooking in survival mode, treating his kids’ snacks like medicine, and learning to see recovery as a human process rather than just an addiction story. This interview is only a small taste of his story; you can read more in his memoir. Trust us, you’ll definitely want more.

A Conversation with Nephi Craig, Creator/Chef of Café Gozhóó

Introduce Yourself: My name is Nephi Craig. I'm White Mountain Apache and Diné, coming to you from the White Mountain Apache Tribe, here at Café Gozhóó.

I've been cooking professionally for 28 years. I started straight out of high school in 1998. I have three kids: my oldest is 22, and I have a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son.

Who was feeding you growing up?

Mostly my mom. My dad was more of a utility cook. He was a Marine, a goulash master who’d throw whatever together. But my mom did a lot of cooking, and I learned through baking with her. We baked partly for treats, but also to sell and make a little extra money. People knew that when they saw me with the wagon, we had something for sale, and I loved their enthusiasm.

It was also an escape — one-on-one time with her when she had so much else keeping her busy. She’d tell me stories about growing up, about where she got her cookbooks. And a baking session made everyone in the house happy. Food really does bring people together.

Your mom is White Mountain Apache and your late father was Diné. Did the food traditions show up differently?

Very differently: culturally, linguistically, and in the kitchen. Up on Navajo land, the stews are based on mutton. Lots of mutton stews, fry bread, pozole and hominy. Hearty, homey cooking. Down here in Apache land, it’s more beef. Beef stews, beef gravies, fry bread, tortillas, cornbread.

What’s interesting is that nobody really talked about how we got sheep, or cows, or flour, or lard, none of which are indigenous to the Americas. My dad knew history and politics, so my parents would bring it up on the side. By the time I started thinking seriously about food, I already had those reference points. But there wasn’t really much education around it at all, not even as Indigenous kids. Two distinct styles of cooking, two distinct cultures.

You use the phrase “landscape is destiny.” What does it mean?

For Indigenous people, it means our ancestral landscapes are a mirror of who we are. For thousands of years, the land shaped our language, our diets, our clan system, our whole cosmology. Colonialism shattered that mirror and displaced people. And when you lose access to land, you lose the nutrition, the agriculture, the rivers, the hunting and fishing, all of it.

So when we reconnect to land, we have ‘access to care’. That’s how I frame it clinically. When you see the “land back” movement, that’s real, but to me it’s also access to care, because the land holds all the healing that was here before colonization.

And it applies to everyone. Wherever you live, if you dig into the true history of your region, not the American narrative but the real social history, you understand where you are much more deeply. Hopefully that changes how you treat the land, how you shop, how you build traditions with your family.

At 18, you were in trouble with the law, and a judge gave you a choice: prison or work. You chose culinary school. What made you stick with it?

I ended up going to school as a full-time culinary student and working full-time in a cooking job simultaneously, out of necessity. People usually expect a lovely “cooking with grandma” story, and part of that’s true for me. But I went out of pure necessity. My grades were bad. I was a rowdy skater, hip-hop, punk rock kid whose only plan was to land a skateboard sponsor. When that didn’t happen, I looked at it logically: I’d been cooking my whole life, so I’d try cooking school.

I ended up loving it. Everything was new: the language, the culture of the kitchen. I was blown away by the set of knives I had to buy. I’d carried a pocket knife my whole life up here in the mountains, but this was a different world. I didn’t know what a bistro was, or a risotto.

What I realized was that I was good at it. There were kids with nicer cars and more money than me (I didn’t even have a car, I got around on my skateboard and hopped rides), but I could cook, work hard, stay organized, and not complain. My knife skills were good. I loved the rigor: being fast, being tough, and still making this beautiful art you could eat.

When did you realize you were working with ingredients native to the Americas, like tomatoes, cacao, and amaranth?

It started in culinary school. They were force-feeding us French and Italian techniques, all very Eurocentric, and I’d grown up on two reservations where food was communal, out of necessity. Natives aren’t restaurant-culture people. The restaurant is a colonial construct.

So I asked my instructor, “Chef, is there such a thing as Native American cuisine?” His answer was dismissive: “I know you make fry bread and boil stew.” I took it as: you cook, but it’s not cuisine, it’s less than. I didn’t say anything, but my intuition knew otherwise. Our creation stories, our clan system, our ceremonies all involve food.

So I started asking my own questions. What did we eat before Americans came? Where does our food come from? I went to the library, asked family and friends, pieced it together. And when I found out that cacao, amaranth, quinoa, potatoes, and tomatoes are all indigenous to the Americas, it gave me a pride and strength I didn’t have before. Growing up here, we didn’t know that. The disconnect was that deep. It opened up doors of creativity and possibility. It gave me hope.

Café Gozhóó is a café and a training kitchen for people in recovery. Why did you start it?

For years I networked and promoted Native American cuisine, and helped run conferences for the Native American Culinary Association in the spirit of ceremony, so we could see each other and know we weren’t alone. As they grew, they got too commercialized, and the audience became more non-Natives consuming this ancestral knowledge than us. So I pulled back.

That came right as I got sober. From the time I was a kid until I was 31, I dealt with addiction, about 17 years of ups and downs. I’m a high-performing addict: I can do very well until it all crashes, and it crashed often. After my dad died, I decided to go down a path that mirrored my own life.

I remembered how many chefs dismissed addiction, stigmatized you, dehumanized you if they knew you were in recovery. And I’d seen firsthand how working with Native foods changed people. All of that distilled into the nutritional recovery program I coordinate now. When we launched the concept in 2017, we were already past the conversation everyone’s having now about racism, glass ceilings, and abuse in kitchens. I never set out to come home and work at my tribe’s treatment center. But following the foods brought me here, right into the heart of one of the toughest reservations in the country.

For parents stuck in survival mode, fighting picky eaters or feeling like nothing’s ever good enough, does any of this translate to family life?

It does. Survival mode means fight, flight, freeze, or disappear. In that high-stress state, our bodies can’t even absorb nutrients well, because the blood and energy go to our extremities. So the little food we feed our kids isn’t being maximized.

Creating safety at home and in the kitchen is our job as parents. Season the food with smiles, stories, and laughter. And when our kids help, it forces us to slow down. I get it. Sometimes I’m hungry too and just want them fed. But letting them help passes on the skills.

When I talk about recovery, I don’t just mean drugs or trauma. Recovery is human: psychological, spiritual, emotional, and hands-on. Getting out of survival mode is maybe 90% behavioral. The healing is in the doing, not the talking. Food is a great way to do it, because it equalizes everyone and makes the house feel warm. That’s powerful, and not just with Indigenous foods. It’s food for all of us.

You call yourself a practitioner and a student, not an expert. For parents who feel like they should know more about food, what would you want them to take away?

Cooking with your kids is something special. They’ll remember it for the rest of their lives, and cooking is a life skill, not just a profession. It lets kids feel independent, expands what they know, and lets them internalize a little of you. It’s literal, edible education that’s emotional, physical, and spiritual.

You don’t have to sit your kids down and explain all that. You just know it’s happening when you turn on the stove. Season the food with a smile and some humor, and for those couple of hours, keep it safe and peaceful. Turn off the TV, cut the distractions, enjoy it. They might not say anything when they’re young, but they’ll remember. And there’s a strong chance they’ll do the same with their own families.

Does your oldest son cook?

He’s 22 now, and he grew up when I was still in active addiction, so it’s a night-and-day perspective for him. One of my proudest things as a dad is that he’s watched me make it through hard things with some dignity, without using pity as a crowbar, without “poor me, I’m a single dad.”

He’s out on his own and works at a ramen spot in Flagstaff. He never said he wanted to cook, but he’s gotten into it, and I’m happy with that. My dad never forced me to be like him, but I picked up a lot of him anyway. I hope it’s the same for my son. I told him I want him to teach me about different ramen broth techniques.

Is there a food tradition you’re passing down to all three of your kids?

Always blessing the food. Turning off the TV, no phones at the table. To me, prayer is the behavior of gratitude. It doesn’t matter what you’re praying to. Saying out loud what you’re grateful for matters. We bow our heads real quick at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

It’s not about organized religion. It’s about nurturing our own sense of spirituality. My 22-year-old’s version will be different from mine, and I don’t want to force mine on him or on the little ones. But if they carry that behavior into their own families, it’ll bring them closer and make them healthier.

Your memoir is called Our Knives Will Save Us. Where did the title come from?

We threw around a lot of titles, but settled on this one because it’s the honest truth. Many times I used this chef uniform as an excuse to mess things up. But when everything fell apart and it got very dark, I knew at least I could cook. At least I knew how to use a knife. At least I could eat somewhere if I had a job. My training wasn’t just in restaurants. It was on the streets, in institutions, in recovery circles.

I use it in our recovery groups all the time: your mind is like a knife. Keep it sharp and take care of it, and it’ll last for years — you can feed your family, protect yourself, do a lot. But a knife can go dull, and your mind can become a weapon that destroys. Which side do you want to be on?

What was the hardest part of the book to write?

A lot of it. I’ve never felt this vulnerable in my career. For ten years, I never spoke about being sober, partly because I’d relapsed so many times, and partly because of the stigma. I wanted to prove to myself I could stay clean for a decade before I said it publicly. So that’s what I did.

I wanted the book to be about cooking and colonization and a chef’s life. It has my world travels, Navajo Code Talkers and Apache Scouts, the French Laundry, Michelin and other renowned restaurants in it. But at its heart, the hardest part was telling a story about addiction and recovery without glamorizing it. I wanted it to be a story of survival to survivance, because there were many times I was down and out and found a book that made me feel less alone. I wanted to leave that for someone else.

Is there one cooking skill you think every home cook should know?

Run the dishwater first. Clean as you go. If you let the dishes pile up, everyone’s miserable at the end. Work clean, and cooking gets a lot more enjoyable.

Follow Nephi Craig on Instagram @nephi_craig

& Don’t forget to follow US on IG @onepotatobox ❤️

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Earlier this week in our Order Up! conversation, Marta Rivera Diaz — chef, author of Sense & Edibility, and founding member of Eat the Culture — talked about cooking through food insecurity as a kid, writing recipes that meet people where they are, and finally letting “done is better than perfect” run her kitchen. Check out this week’s Order Up! interview with Marta here.

Today, we’re getting practical. From the three pantry staples she refuses to run out of, to the freezer meal she’d put in any new parent’s hand, to the splurge that’s always worth the money, Marta shares the ingredients, tools, and shortcuts that keep her kitchen running.

Three pantry staples you refuse to run out of?

Can I do six? Three perishables and three non-perishables.

Perishables: Onion, Garlic, and Ginger.

Non-perishables: Unsalted tomato sauce, Chicken stock (or whatever stock you have), and Adobo or sazón — a seasoning blend.

You can do almost anything with those.

One homemade pantry essential every parent should try making once?

A spice blend. If you make your own adobo, you’ve covered all the bases — garlic, onion, salt, pepper, color. It’s seasoning in one shake.

If you already keep spices in the pantry, you have what you need to build your own blends. And it’s going to taste better than the store-bought one. I promise.

The freezer meal you’d put in a parent’s hand?

Probably my pastelón. It’s sweet, it’s savory, it’s a complete meal in one — picadillo and plantains layered up. Add a green salad and you’re done. Kids love the sweet-savory thing. You can tell them it’s “Puerto Rican lasagna” if it helps. (It’s not — but they’ll go for it.) It bakes off ahead, freezes beautifully, and reheats well, which is why it’s the one I always brought to new moms in my husband’s unit.

If not pastelón, then my five-cheese mac and cheese.

One kitchen tool you’d buy twice?

An immersion blender. It purées soups, makes dressings, builds sauces, even whips cream. They are not expensive anymore. I especially recommend them for people with dexterity issues, college kids, or single parents — anyone who doesn’t have the space (or the energy) to lug a full blender out every time.

Grocery store shortcut you don’t apologize for?

Boxed stocks. They are what they are. If you need to fortify them, add a little bouillon. You will rarely catch me hovering over a stove making stock from scratch. I do it sometimes, but if I don’t have to? I have a degree. I don’t have anything to prove.

All-time favorite cookbook?

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat [Bookshop, Amazon]. She killed it. That book is going to become part of the canon. It’s an expert book.

The cocktail you order anywhere — and want every bartender to know how to make?

The Gin Rickey. It’s a classic, and it makes me mad how many bartenders don’t know it. (I feel so cultured saying, “I’ll have a Gin Rickey, my good man.” It’s just cute.)

Birthday dessert your twins always requested?

Cheesecake, any cheesecake [Marta’s Classic Cheesecake Recipe]. I’m a New Yorker, I know how to do cheesecake. One year, even though their birthday is in early July, they asked for pumpkin cheesecake. So I went looking for pumpkins. (That was peak “I have to do everything from scratch” energy. It also taught me to roast pumpkins in the fall and freeze them for later. I’m a big freezer person.)

Kitchen splurge that’s always worth it?

A good knife. Spend money on your knives, and please don’t put them in the dishwasher. With one good chef’s knife that fits your hand and a paring knife, you can do almost anything.

And if your hands aren’t on board with that, a food processor.

The dessert you make as a comfort gift?

My banana pudding [recipe on her website here!]. It has graham crackers and vanilla wafers, homemade pastry cream, and homemade whipped cream. It’s a labor of love. There’s a purity to it because nothing is artificial — no shade to anyone using pudding mix, but pastry cream made from scratch is a different thing.

Anything else you want parents to know?

Eat the leftovers. Stored and reheated properly, they’re often better the second day. And try to be intentional about being at the table together. We do something at our house called You’ve Got a Chef at Home: every Friday, we pick a restaurant meal we want to recreate, shop for it during the week, and cook it together. It’s cheaper, inclusive, and it teaches the kids technique while I supervise. Build in one night a week where you’re intentional about being together over a meal.

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Real Beats Perfect: Marta Rivera Diaz on Cooking Through Scarcity, Grief, and a Lifetime of Unlearning Perfectionism

Marta Rivera Diaz still owns the Good Housekeeping cookbook she taught herself to cook from at nine. The lemon meringue pie page is unreadable now, smeared with stains from her first attempts. Her parents were both active-duty Air Force, the chores were non-negotiable, and somehow cooking dinner for a family of five became her job. That cookbook gave her the first rule she still hands every reader: read the recipe.

We’re running this conversation in July, which is Disability Pride Month — marking the month, in 1990, that the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. It’s a time to recognize disability not as something to pity or “overcome,” but as a normal, valued part of human life. Marta is the fourth of five people in her family diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, and in 2024 a flare took the feeling in her left arm and hand. She now writes recipes for cooks whose hands don’t always cooperate and intentionally makes sure her recipes are mindful of all abilities — adding visual, sound, and sensory cues, alt text for screen readers, budget swaps, allergy substitutions — because she knows what it is to be the person a recipe writer forgot to think about. She’s vocal about that, the same way she’s vocal about cultural respect as a founding member of Eat the Culture, the nonprofit for Black culinary creators in food media.

And like all of us, Marta is more than any single part of her story. She’s a chef, a writer, a mom of twins, the wife of a disabled veteran, a New Yorker transplanted to San Antonio, a pastry chef who will happily argue for homemade adobo. A month on the calendar is a good prompt to pay attention, but people don’t live their identities one month a year — they carry every piece of themselves every day. We wanted to talk to Marta about all of it. [Find Marta on IG, YouTube, and TikTok at @senseandedibility]

What we wanted to ask wasn’t about her resume. It was about that long road from feeding a family on powdered milk to a kitchen where “I’m not cooking tonight” is sometimes the most honest answer at the table.

Our conversation moves through cooking under food insecurity, the gap between culinary school and a home cook’s reality, what changed after her 2024 MS flare, accessibility, cultural respect, and how she raised two kids who’ll try almost anything once.

A special note from our friends at Raddish Kids:

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Here’s the part that sets it apart: each recipe comes with its own skill lesson, written by educators, that folds a little math, science, and reading into the cooking itself. You’re not pulling up a video or working through an online course — the lesson is right there in the box, ready for kids 4 to 14 to follow at their own level. Ingredients aren’t included, so you can shop from the emailed list and adapt anything for allergies or preferences. Right now a 6- or 12-month subscription comes with a free Raddish apron. 👉 Subscribe Here

A Conversation with Marta Rivera Diaz, Chef and Creator behind Sense & Edibility

Introduce Yourself: I'm Marta Rivera Diaz, chef and author of Sense & Edibility — a food site where I teach people everything they need to know about cooking, baking, and cocktail making.

I'm also the wife of a disabled veteran who served in the Army for 26 years, the daughter of two airmen who together served the Air Force for over 50 years, and the mom of fraternal boy-girl twins who turn 21 in July. They're basically my husband and me, reincarnated.

You started cooking dinner for your family at nine. What got you stuck with the job — and what did you actually learn?

In active-duty military families, chores are non-negotiable. For some reason, mine was meal prep for a family of five. I think my older brother and sister tanked their cooking on purpose, because I “showed proficiency” — which really meant I got stuck. My main teacher was the Good Housekeeping cookbook. I still have it. Open it to the lemon meringue pie page and it’s smattered with stains, because that was one of the first desserts I tried. I didn’t understand that a recipe isn’t a suggestion. I’d let egg yolks fall into the whites I was supposed to whip into meringue. The lemon curd flowed right out of the slice. I ate it anyway. It was disgusting. Now I can make a lemon meringue pie like nobody’s business, but the lesson I learned at nine is the one I still give every reader: please read the recipe. It’s written for a reason.

Both of your parents were active duty. How did food insecurity shape what dinner looked like at home?

A lot of people don’t realize the military is sometimes considered the working poor. The government tells you where to live, when to leave, how fast to get there — and the pay doesn’t always match. We were a family of five, and we ate accordingly. I learned to stretch a pound of ground beef. I learned powdered milk wasn’t pleasant but it would sustain you. I cooked with minimal fresh ingredients, often under pressure, in a home that was sometimes very chaotic. My first real “house meal” was spaghetti with green beans. I had a handle on it, so I made it again and again.

Then you went to culinary school. What was the gap between how you grew up eating and what you were learning at Baltimore International?

The gap between the haves and have-nots is massive, and we were peacefully residing in the have-not section. My dad retired right outside Andrews Air Force Base, and I was lucky to attend a vocational-technical high school with a culinary arts program. I’d been working in professional kitchens since I was 13 — bussing, dishwashing, expediting. Culinary school was a struggle. I worked a work-study job and two part-time jobs, woke up at 3 a.m. for the bus into downtown Baltimore, and got home near midnight. It’s odd, but I was basically starving — the places I worked didn’t comp meals, so I ate whatever we made at school and hoarded what I could. What I got out of it was fundamentals. Technique. The why behind every step. I went in expecting to graduate a chef and fell in love with pastry — partly because it’s meticulous, partly because nobody bothers you in a pastry kitchen. The biggest thing I took away: most people who say “I can’t cook” really mean “I was never taught the fundamentals, so I don’t have the confidence.” Once you have those, you can do almost anything.

You started Sense & Edibility in 2014, in the middle of an extremely hard season. Why then?

I didn’t even know food blogs existed. I had a shelf of cookbooks and never thought to search for recipes online. So when a friend told me to start a food blog because I write the way I talk, especially my explanations for people in the kitchen and following a recipe, I was confused. But the timing made sense. I’d been my mom’s full-time caregiver for six years before she passed. I was homeschooling the twins. My husband was getting deployed again and again. And nobody was hiring me — military spouses get jobs the least, because employers don’t want to invest in someone who’ll move in three years. I wanted what was in my head to live somewhere outside of it, a legacy for my kids and grandkids, and I wanted to use the degree I’d worked so hard to pay for. I named the site Sense & Edibility because Jane Austen was my mom’s favorite author and Sense and Sensibility her favorite book. When the name hit me, I knew it was right — and the people who get it, get it. That’s when I realized I was made to do three things: be my kids’ mom, be a chef, and be a writer. The last two finally dovetailed.

You’ve talked about coping with grief by sending cookies downrange to your husband’s soldiers and freezer meals to new moms in the unit. Looking back, was that avoiding grief or moving through it?

That is a question and a half. Grief is wild. Between 2010 and 2014, I had two losses to mourn. The first was my pre-diagnosed self — I’m the fourth of five people in my family diagnosed with MS. I’ve watched what it does in two of my aunts, my mother, and another family member after me. And there’s no worse illness for a chef, because the whole profession requires you to stand and use your hands. I had to grieve that. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t. Then my mom passed and I had to grieve losing her. You don’t go from being someone’s caretaker — feeding them by hand, bathing them, giving them medication every two hours — to that just ending and being okay. So the grief hit hard, and it got dark. I actually stopped taking my MS medication out of stupid rebellion. I didn’t care — until 2024, when I had a flare and lost the sensation and the ability to feel temperature or texture in my left arm and hand — and that’s a big problem when you work with hot things. I’m learning to cut all over again. So in my grief, I caused more damage. I’ve been in therapy about two years now, and it’s helped. What I tell people: grief is going to come for you one way or another. It’s like the bill collector. You may as well do the work early. You only grieve what you once loved or what held meaning. There’s no shame in that.

You’re vocal about cooking with a disability and writing recipes that are actually accessible. What do you wish home cooks understood — including when it’s their own body that isn’t cooperating?

I lead from the front, so let me be honest. Part of my work in therapy is undoing a false sense of perfectionism. When you grow up the way I did, perfect was the standard, and missing it carried shame. I love food photography and styling a plate. But I always remind my readers: done is better than perfect. You have to eat. I take the picture so you’ll want to make the dish. Yours won’t look like mine, because you didn’t spend six weeks on plate presentation, and that’s fine. What I want is to hold your hand through the recipe — I won’t let you wing it. I have my kids test my recipes from the printed instructions, and they catch what I left out, like how long to stir until the custard sets, or what set custard looks like. It’s okay to mess up. One of my top-ranking recipes, a Puerto Rican pastry, took me three years to develop… and I’m a pastry chef, for crying out loud! So it’s okay if your béchamel takes a couple of tries. Last night I told everyone I wasn’t cooking. Then I corrected myself: I’m not sorry, I’m just not cooking. There are three other able-bodied adults in this house. Peanut butter and jelly with Doritos counts as dinner. (Unless your kid has a peanut allergy. Then don’t.)

Where do well-meaning recipe writers get accessibility wrong?

They don’t think about it. No judgment — you don’t realize how many things are inaccessible until you’re the one with the issue. A lot of developers don’t even consider that someone can’t see the picture they’re describing. If you’re not adding the alt text or the audio cue, you’re limiting your audience. People have already checked out, because you’re not meeting them where they are. When I write a recipe now, I’m thinking about people like me, who don’t have full dexterity in their hands. People who can’t see, who can’t hear, who have allergies, who can’t always afford the long ingredient list. I add visual, sound, and sensory cues. I tell people to buy the pre-cut onions and peppers, use the food processor. I hate calling it a cheat — it’s an option. Accessibility extends to money, too. I’ll teach you to make something in bulk and freeze it, because I learned freezer meals as a military spouse. If you have an allergy, I’ll show you how to pull the almonds and still enjoy the dish. The whole goal is: I want you to know how good this recipe is, so I’m going to make sure you can actually make it. Most writers only write from their own perspective. That’s understandable, but it costs you a community.

You’re a founding member of Eat the Culture, the nonprofit for Black culinary creators in food media. For a parent cooking a recipe from a culture that isn’t theirs — say, arroz con pollo from a Puerto Rican creator because their kid loved it at a friend’s house — what does respectful cooking actually look like at home?

Oh, I love this question, because I get heated about appropriation. People want to remove the creator from the dish. You can’t. Without me being a Puerto Rican cook, you don’t have an authentic Puerto Rican arroz con pollo to feed your child. So the recipe is the opportunity. Sit down with your kid, read the headnote everyone wants to skip past. Where does this come from? Who eats it, and when, and why? Educate your child. Don’t use words like “we’re elevating this.” Our cuisine doesn’t need to be elevated, even by us. If my ancestors could cook these dishes over open wood fires, what am I doing on my little gas range that’s special? I’m carrying it on. That’s all. And no — somebody from Wisconsin doesn’t have an authentic arroz con pollo passed down in their Swiss-German family. Pretending otherwise removes the people, the culture, and the struggle from the dish itself. If you’re not from the culture, the only respectful way is to learn from someone who is. Sit in a space of learning, then translate that to your child. Do that, and you’re raising a really dope human being — a cultured kid eating food from outside their own culture and respecting where it came from. [Check out this podcast interview with Marta: Eat Blog Talk, Diversity and Inclusion in Content Creation - How to be an Authentic Ally with Marta Rivera Diaz]

Real talk: when your kids were younger — homeschool, twins, deployments, your own chef brain — what did weeknight dinner actually look like?

It was about a year ago that I realized my kids have had a personal chef their entire life. They are not amused when I bring it up. When they were little, my daughter was extremely picky — she didn’t like meat, didn’t like bananas. But one of my jobs back then was cooking at a child development center on an Air Force base, where five-year-olds will tell you your tortillas suck. Humbling. It taught me that to honestly say a kid doesn’t like something, you have to offer it at least 10 times. I learned to be creative — I’d pretend we were on the Food Network and have the kids tossing salad or stirring rice. My go-to was rice and beans, cheap and filling, with whatever protein I could afford. They hated my Merlot-braised short ribs, but it didn’t matter; they didn’t have allergies, and we weren’t rich. Sometimes you eat what’s there. Still, I was a stickler for vegetables, soups, and dessert (all the things I didn’t grow up having) and for exposing them to different cuisines, which is how they got an expensive sushi habit at 13! I ended up raising foodies. My daughter, who refused to eat anything, will watch a nature documentary and ask, “I wonder what that tastes like.” Our rule: don’t yuck other people’s yum. They love liver and pig stomach. They’ll try anything twice. For parents whose kids are picky right now: be patient. They might surprise you.

A lot of your most-visited recipes (pastelón, pan sobao, quesitos, your homemade adobo) are deeply tied to your Puerto Rican heritage. Are there dishes you hope your kids will carry forward?

My daughter’s favorite is the quesitos. She can smell them baking from her room. She says they’re warm fuzzies — they connect her to me, and to Puerto Rico. My son loves the chuletas. Fried pork chops were my mom’s favorite meal: pork chops, white rice, black beans, salad with no dressing, and a warm Dr. Pepper, because the ice hurt her teeth. Every August 16th, on her birthday, I make that meal. It’s become one of those dishes that means home. There’s also my Merlot-braised short ribs, which always welcomed Hector home — from training, school, deployment. That was the meal he wanted when he came back. I ask my kids sometimes: which dish, when I’m gone, will you make to think of me? The ones they name are the ones I keep cooking.

What’s a cooking skill or technique you use constantly that you think every home cook needs?

Can I get two? Season your food, and caramelize. Marination is so underrated. Even in restaurants — if I bite into a chicken wing and there’s no flavor in the meat itself, I’m mad at you, because you had the time. Season the meat the night before you plan to cook it. It pays dividends. The other one is caramelization. Color equals flavor. Take the time to sear. Don’t be afraid of it — the pan’s going to smoke and look crazy. But when you flip the meat and see that brown sear, you know you’ve added flavor. Then you deglaze, break up those brown bits, and you’re building a sauce. So: caramelization and seasoning your doggone food.

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Here’s a preview from KCRF: Request a free sample lesson of the “Kids Cook Solo” program, so you can see if it’s a good fit for you and your family!

You can find all of our BONUS Educational Cooking Activities & Holiday Recipes right here!

The 4th of July is one of those days with a lot of waiting built into it. Waiting for the grill, waiting for the parade, waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks. Somewhere in that stretch, kids get restless and the kitchen gets hot.

Here’s a small thing to do in that gap. You put cream, a little sugar, and vanilla in a bag, drop it into a bigger bag of ice and salt, and shake. A few minutes later the liquid is ice cream (OK, sometimes a lot of minutes later…). No machine, no churning, no oven — just a bag, some ice, and hands that get a little cold.

It’s also a real science moment hiding inside a snack. Kids get to watch a liquid turn solid in their hands and feel why the salt matters. You can make it red, white, and blue if you want by adding strawberries, blueberries, or some drops of food coloring for festive holiday colors, or leave it plain. Either way, you end up with something to eat.

💐 4th of July Bag Ice Cream Lab: Shake a Liquid Into a Frozen Treat

Click the button below for a downloadable PDF worksheet for the Fourth of July Bag Ice Cream Activity, and read on to set it up:

4th of July Bag Ice Cream Lab Worksheet

Tools You’ll Need:

• 1 small zip-top bag (sandwich size) — this holds the cream

• 1 large zip-top bag (gallon size) — this holds the ice

• Measuring cups and spoons

• A clean kitchen towel or oven mitts (the bag gets cold to hold)

Ingredients:

• ½ c. half-and-half, whole milk, or heavy cream — whatever you have

• 1 Tbsp sugar

• ¼ tsp vanilla

• About 3 cups ice

• ⅓ c. salt (table salt or rock salt both work)

Optional: a few berries to stir in, or a drop of food coloring if you want to go red, white, and blue.

Learning Goals

Kids see a liquid become a solid right in front of them, which usually feels a little like magic until they do it themselves. The salt is the surprising part: ice on its own isn’t quite cold enough to freeze the cream, but salt mixed into the ice makes it even colder, so the cream firms up. Kids can feel the outside bag go from cold to really cold, and they can taste the difference between still-soupy and scoopable.

There’s nothing to get right here. Even noticing one thing — that the bag got colder after the salt went in, or that the cream got thicker the longer you shook it — is the whole point. It’s science, but it tastes like dessert.

Age Modifications

Younger Kids (Preschool–K):

• Let them do the shaking and the feeling — cold, colder, thick, frozen

• Help them spot the moment the liquid stops sloshing

• Skip the measuring; just let them pour what you hand them

Middle Grade (Elementary):

• Let them measure the cream, sugar, and salt themselves

• Have them guess how many minutes of shaking it’ll take, then check

• Compare the consistency of the bag before and after the salt goes in

Older Kids (Upper Elementary–Middle):

• Try making two bags side by side: one with salt in the ice, one without. Which one freezes? (The plain-ice bag usually won’t.)

• Time how long the shaking takes and write it down

• Ask them to explain, in their own words, why the salt makes the ice colder

Parent Notes

This one is messy in a good way: cold hands, a little salt water on the counter, maybe a bag that wasn’t sealed all the way. None of it ruins the activity. If you want fewer moving parts, use one bag and skip the side-by-side salt test. And if a kid loses interest halfway through the shaking, that’s fine too — you can finish it for them and still have the taste-test conversation.

If you only do one thing: right after you add the salt, have everyone touch the bag and say whether it feels colder. That one moment is the whole science lesson, and it takes about ten seconds.

PHOTO

Activity Flow

1. Mix the cream. In the small bag, add the cream, sugar, and vanilla. Push the air out and seal it well. Ask: “What do you think will happen to this when it gets really cold?”

2. Build the ice bag. Fill the large bag with ice, then add the salt right on top. Before you seal it, have kids feel the bag — cold, but fine to hold.

3. Tuck the cream bag inside. Nestle the sealed cream bag down into the ice, then seal the big bag.

4. Shake. Wrap the bag in a towel and shake, squish, and toss it for about 5–10 minutes. Trade off when arms get tired — this is a good team job.

5. Check it. Open the big bag and feel the cream bag. Still liquid? Getting thick? If it’s still soupy, seal it back up and shake a little longer.

6. Feel the difference. Have kids touch the outside of the big bag now. Ask: “Is it colder than before we added the salt?” That extra cold is what freezes the cream.

7. Scoop and taste. Open the small bag, scoop into cups, and add berries on top if you want. Talk about what changed from when you started.

Happy Independence Day from all of us at One Potato!

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Earlier this week, we talked with Jamie Milne, one of the original food influencers and the creator of Everything Delish, about the Toronto table she grew up at: Shabbat dinners, her grandmother’s shake-and-bake chicken wings, her mom’s strawberry-pecan salad, and the open-door welcome that shaped how she feeds her own two kids. As always, you can revisit that interview right here! And preorder your copy of Everything Delish on Bookshop or Amazon.

Today we’re getting practical. From the three things always in her fridge to the store-bought shortcut she swears by (reluctantly), the tool that lives on her counter, and the soup she makes when she needs to feel warm and loved — these are the picks that actually make Jamie’s kitchen run. Tired-parent approved.

Three pantry or fridge staples you always have on hand?

Dijon mustard, mayo, and olive oil.

You call yourself a “schmear enthusiast.” What’s your current favorite schmear, dip, or spread?

Whipped feta, hands down. It’s a dip, it’s a schmear, you can just plate it — it goes with everything. It’s basically my personality.

The realistic dinner you make for the family without even thinking?

Oven-roasted salmon. It’s super simple: just Dijon mustard, olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. I serve it with a black kale salad with currants and toasted pine nuts, and an easy dressing of olive oil, lemon juice, rice wine vinegar, and honey.

A store-bought shortcut you swear by, no apologies?

Okay, I’ll admit it: jarred garlic. I really don’t love it, but if you’re making something super garlicky and you don’t feel like getting your hands all garlicky, it’s there in a pinch.

Favorite kitchen tool?

Right now, my microplane and my mandolin. The mandolin has a hand guard, so it’s actually safe to use. The microplane saves me on garlic, and I use the mandolin to slice onions really thin — I love keeping a big jar of pickled onions in my fridge.

Pregnancy craving with Blake?

Nothing to do with pickles, surprisingly: Honey Bunches of Oats with really ice-cold milk and ice cubes in it. It had to be freezing cold. I ate it constantly.

Your husband, Brandon, is a great cook too. What’s his specialty?

Meats. He’s amazing at it and loves to smoke them. We have a Traeger and love having family over to smoke any kind of meat. He makes the best ribs and steak.

Grab-and-go toddler snack you keep stashed for hangry moments?

A pouch. We love our pouches; the Serenity Kids ones are great. But I also make a homemade granola and put it in a bag for Jack. It’s one of the few things I make that he’ll actually eat. He’ll ask, “Are there chocolate chips in it?” and I say no — it’s a raisin, but he’ll never know.

A cookbook author or creator you always turn to?

Two I love. Adeena Sussman — an incredible cookbook author, a huge mentor and inspiration to me [Bookshop, Amazon]. And Carleigh Bodrug from PlantYou, a close friend for years. She brings such a great flair to vegan recipes and makes me want to be more innovative about working plant-based options into what I do. [Order Carleigh’s book PlantYou Quickies: 140+ Nourishing Plant-Based Recipes for Busy People on Bookshop or Amazon]

Your favorite seasoning, sauce, or finishing touch?

Maldon salt, for sure — you’ve got to finish with it. And I love making a quick dressing for everything, even just an herby oil with fresh herbs, garlic, and oil. It takes an extra five to seven minutes, but it’s worth it, especially on proteins.

Your comfort meal — when you’re sick, or just need to feel warm and loved?

Matzo ball soup, for sure. With really fresh challah on the side.

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Everything on One Fork: Jamie Milne on Flavor Combos, Family, Online Community, and Cooking With Kids

Jamie Milne can tell you the exact moment she cried over a tray of chicken wings. She was testing a recipe for her first cookbook — her Bubby Ruth’s shake-and-bake wings, all flats, the way she demanded them as a six-year-old — and when she finally got the breading right, she sat down and wept. She hadn’t tasted them since her grandmother passed, right before her wedding.

That’s the thing about Jamie, the creator behind Everything Delish: the food is never really just the food. She grew up in a Toronto Jewish home where Shabbat dinner was non-negotiable, the door was always open, and somehow there was room for twenty people at the table. Her grandmother pickled everything. Her mom put grilled pineapple next to honey mustard and made it work. Food meant everyone was welcome.

We talked with Jamie about all of it: the recipes she’s carrying into her own kitchen, the cheesecake-on-a-stick that took her from 10,000 to 100,000 followers in a matter of hours (before “social media influencer” was a known thing), the teacher’s brain she still brings to every recipe, and the gap between the meals she plates for the internet and the beige food her two-year-old actually eats.

Jamie isn’t sharing recipes to increase her follower count (but of course, go follow her on @Everything_Delish on TikTok and Instagram). She’s building the foundation of food, family, and memories of a table her kids will remember the way she remembers her grandmother’s.

A Conversation with Jamie Milne, Everything Delish

Introduce Yourself: I’m Jamie Milne, the creator of Everything Delish, and mom to Jack (2 years old) and Blake (2 months old!).

I’m a first-time cookbook author, and my debut cookbook — also called Everything Delish — comes out September 1st, 2026. My husband and I live in Toronto.

You grew up in a Jewish household where Shabbat dinner was non-negotiable. Is there a food memory that still shows up in the way you cook?

Both of my grandmothers were a huge inspiration. We come from a family that’s always together, and always together over food: Shabbat tables, Sunday brunch, an afternoon snack, all of it centered on community.

One of my grandmothers, who lived in Toronto, made the best shake-and-bake chicken wings. I still dream about them — lubby but crispy, with the most amazing breading. Everyone laughed because I needed my own tray at six years old, and they had to be flats. No drums.

She passed away right before my wedding, and I always knew she’d be part of Everything Delish somehow. My parents helped me recreate her recipe, and Bubby Ruth’s Shake and Bake Chicken Wings are in the cookbook (all flats in the photo, dedicated entirely to myself). When we finally nailed it, I cried. I hadn’t tasted them in so long, and it brought me right back to those Shabbat dinners. She pickled everything too, like strawberry jam, kosher pickles, red peppers I’d eat by the handful. She instilled that whole home-cooking atmosphere in me.

You’ve talked about how your mom has an instinct for unlikely pairings — grilled pineapple, honey mustard, cinnamon sugar. How do you know when a weird combo actually works?

Growing up, I’d look at my mom’s plate and think, why is everything touching? I didn’t get it until I started doing it myself, needing every flavor and texture in one bite. When I started talking about it online, I couldn’t believe how many people agreed.

Honestly, I never really think anything is weird, because everything on my plate feels intentional to me. But here’s a real one: when I was nine months pregnant, I was making a snack mix that I wanted to include something sweet, salty, and chocolatey. I had this wild craving for wasabi peas. I accidentally dropped in chocolate-covered raisins and thought, this does not go. Then I ate it and it was incredible! My husband looked at me like I was crazy, but the wasabi pea and the chocolate raisins somehow worked. Even the accidental combinations can turn into something delicious.

Are there recipes from your mom or from Jewish holidays that you’re carrying into your own kitchen for Jack and Blake?

My mom’s house was like my grandmothers — we had an open-door policy. Anyone could come over for dinner, lunch, Shabbat, brunch, and help themselves to the fridge. The one thing she always made was her strawberry pecan poppy seed salad. My friends still ask for “Susan’s salad,” so I told them, don’t worry, it’s going in the cookbook.

That welcomeness is what I want in my own home. I had such a good relationship with food growing up because of how warm my parents were about it. Last year we hosted Passover for twenty people; honestly, they didn’t fit in our kitchen, but we made room. That’s why I build my recipes to scale: for one person, two, a whole family. I want everyone to feel like they can make it, for any occasion.

When did you realize Everything Delish was more than a side hustle?

This is wild to reveal now, but I was embarrassed of Everything Delish at first. It was almost a secret with my friends. I’d say, you can see my recommendations, but the public can’t.

Then I was substitute teaching, and there was this cheesecake on a stick at a food truck from Heirloom here in Toronto. It was a huge hunk of cheesecake, bigger than my face, smothered in milk chocolate, wrapped in Nutella and every nut you can think of. I made my sister-in-law come film it with me at 8 p.m. in the pouring rain. I didn’t think anything of it, and it went insanely viral. Literally hundreds of millions of views.

This was before the algorithm: no brand partnerships, no licensing. It was the wild west of Instagram. A few days later, 9gag, part of Unilad, reposted me to their 86 million followers, and I went from 10,000 to almost 100,000 followers within hours. I ran out of a seminar to call my dad and my boyfriend (now my husband) and said, “9gag just posted me.” They said, “gag what?” That was the moment I thought, I have something here. I started reaching out to brands like Unilever — no contracts, just e-transfers. That’s how it became a business.

You have a master’s in developmental psychology and education. Where does your teacher brain show up when you’re writing a recipe?

I say I’m teaching every single day. I want people to believe that if I can do this, they can too. In a saturated space, no one can replicate your story, so I lean into storytelling in my voiceovers.

The teaching shows up in the simplicity. I’m a home cook trying to reach home cooks, so I won’t grab a random spice no one can find. I try to keep recipes under twelve ingredients, and I always give swaps and variations because I want everyone included, not left out. I actually treat recipe development like lesson planning: organized, intentional. With two kids it’s harder now, but that’s still the goal: simple enough to reach everyone.

One of your viral videos was about anxiety and using cooking as an outlet. How did sharing that vulnerability become part of Everything Delish?

I always say people come for the food but they stay for the story. That’s how you actually connect. I don’t want people to think of me as someone cooking as just a face and hands and dishes on a screen who they know nothing about. I want you to know me.

COVID was a pivotal moment. I’m a hypochondriac and a germaphobe, and the state of the world was freaking me out. So I talked about my anxiety, and how I channeled it into content because cooking was my escape. I’d say it over a voiceover while I made something simple like tomatoes and burrata, whatever. People came for the food and stayed because they connected to what I was saying. I want you to feel like you’re talking to the girl next door, the built-in grandmother and college friend you want to cook with.

Plating beautiful food with a newborn and a two-year-old is hard. What does the gap between internet and reality look like for you?

There are content days, for sure — though honestly, I haven’t filmed since giving birth. I’m only going back this week, so my content might look a little different. Maybe not as aesthetically perfect.

When Jack’s in daycare, I have more flexibility to make things look nice. But the recipe is always simple at its core; it’s something I’d make on a weeknight, just plated a little prettier. Other times I’ve got my phone propped on the wall, I’m in stained sweatpants with coffee spilled on everything, cooking the actual dinner while Jack hopefully sits nicely beside me. I’m not throwing a dinner party for thirty-five and pretending I did it effortlessly as a mom of two. That’s not my page. If I can cook it, anyone can.

A lot of parents feel like failures the second their kid won’t eat what they made. Your whole job is making food look easy — what happens when Jack won’t eat?

Oh, I turn to social media and ask, what do you do when your child throws their entire plate on the floor and now the dog’s eating it? Welcome to my life.

It’s this crazy pattern. We’ll have two days of Jack eating everything and I’ll say to my husband, are we okay? And he says, don’t jinx it. Then the next day he won’t touch the mac and cheese he loved yesterday. Someone told me years ago: when food is your whole life, your kid will be the pickiest eater. That’s exactly what happened. My son is eating something beige 90% of the time.

I do try to sneak things in — I’ll cook mac and cheese in bone broth, add cottage cheese or a blended cauliflower sauce. He’s randomly obsessed with peas, so I lean into that, plus chicken and turkey burgers and meatballs. But sometimes my husband and I are making two different meals, one for us and one for Jack. That’s the reality.

After more than a decade of social media, what did writing a cookbook let you put on the page that a feed can’t?

The cookbook process was daunting. People made me nervous about it, told me I had to finish it before I had kids. Honestly though, I loved it! It brought me back to cooking; I fell in love with it again. By the time it comes out, it’ll be almost four years since I started.

With social media, we test everything, but it doesn’t go through the same execution and testing as a cookbook. When you’re writing a cookbook, there’s a whole team and so many more eyes. You’re also thinking about swaps and variations you don’t always consider for a quick video, such as dairy-free, vegetarian, and so on. And it made me sit and ask where my inspiration actually comes from: how I grew up, what I loved in my mom’s cooking. The hard part was keeping it a secret. On social media I ask my community what they want that week — a cozy stew, a soup. With a cookbook, you don’t have that.

Did Jack’s presence change the recipes, or what you considered simple enough to include?

I was pregnant while recipe testing, so I just kept getting more uncomfortable as my due date got closer. If something was too tiring to make at four or five months pregnant and in pain, I didn’t want it in the book; I wanted simple, nothing that keeps you on your feet forever. And I was hungry and impatient, so no, I’m not proofing dough in the fridge for twenty-four hours. How do we get that proofing down? How do we make pita at home faster, because that’s my craving and I want it now? Without realizing it, being pregnant shaped so much of what recipes made it in.

Your mom didn’t sit you down to teach you to cook — she just cooked, and you absorbed it. Will you be deliberate about teaching Jack and Blake, or let them absorb it the same way?

Because I absorbed it naturally and it was never forced, I really hope they fall in love with it on their own. It’s funny — Shabbat dinners are annoying when you’re a teenager and want to go out with your friends. But what I’d do now to be back at my Bubby’s apartment, taking in every moment.

When I left teaching to become a blogger — and that many years ago, “content creator” wasn’t even a term yet! — my parents said, what are you doing? But they supported me when a lot of other people didn’t, and that shaped the kind of parent I want to be. I want my kids to pursue whatever they love. And I hope they love my food. My son and I already love my husband’s, he’s an incredible cook.

When they grow up, how do you hope they’ll describe your food?

My husband would say cheesy, saucy, and snacky. But I want it to be filled with warmth and love, the kind of food I grew up with. Both my parents worked and we still had a full meal on the table every night, together. My husband grew up the same way. No matter how busy our days are, we show up and eat together every night, even when Jack is being a little tyrant and throwing his plate. That’s the beautiful part of parenthood right now.

You were pregnant with Blake while getting ready to launch the book. Did that feel different than when you were pregnant with Jack?

Funny story I haven’t shared online yet. My original publication date was March 3rd, 2026. I found out I was pregnant in September, and my OB told me I couldn’t go on a national book tour in the U.S. at 31 or 32 weeks pregnant. So I’d just peed on a stick and had to call my entire publishing team — two days before I was supposed to announce the book to the world.

My team is all women and they were incredible: “No sweat, Jamie. This is beautiful.” They pushed the date to September 1st. Having that extra time, knowing the book would land while I was postpartum, made me work right up until I delivered. A lot of what I was putting out became postpartum- and pregnancy-friendly. Now I’m one month postpartum, filming for the first time tomorrow, and I see recipes from the book in a whole new light.

Tell us a cooking skill you use all the time that you think every home cook should know?

Barbecue. For so long I watched my mom grill — she was “girls who grill,” four-foot-eleven, out there in the Canadian winter making sure food got on the table no matter what. I was always a little anxious around the barbecue, but watching my husband enjoy it got me into it, and now I can’t wait to grill dinner tonight.

Once you know how to turn it on and off and understand the gas lines, it’s so simple and so flavorful. It doesn’t have to be a huge hunk of meat. You can grill romaine for a salad, put salmon on a plank, do fruit and veggies. We’re about to enter Jamie’s grilling season, where I make every bowl possible with everything from the grill...and everything in a bowl. Stay tuned!

Follow Jamie at @Everything_Delish on TikTok and Instagram

& Don’t forget to follow us on IG @onepotatobox ❤️

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Earlier this week, we sat down with Danny Freeman (cookbook author, stay-at-home dad, and the voice behind @dannylovespasta) for an Order Up! conversation about grief, second careers, raising kids who eat vegetables on their own terms, and the bowl of handmade pappardelle his grandmother used to slip him at family dinners. You can check out that interview right here.

Today, we’re getting practical. Below, Danny shares the three pantry staples he always keeps stocked, the appliance he’d defend forever (it’s a bread machine, and yes, it’s back), the comfort meal he makes when someone in the family is having a hard day, and the one thing he tells Italian-American purists they’re allowed to buy in a jar. These are the picks of a guy cooking for two young daughters and a vegetarian husband in real time: useful, opinionated, and refreshingly free of “from-scratch or bust” energy.

One dish from your grandmother that you make exactly her way, no changes?

I make several different tomato sauces. The Marcella Hazan butter-and-onion sauce for a quick weeknight pasta. A cherry tomato sauce in the summer. But on the weekend, I make my grandmother’s. You cook sausage right in the pot with the tomato sauce and basil and let it simmer for hours. That’s the one I don’t change.

Three pantry staples you always keep on hand?

Kosher salt and flaky salt, always both. Balsamic vinegar, for dressing vegetables, sandwiches, anything. And yeast, because I like to make bread at night when I’m not driving to the store.

The obvious ones (flour, sugar) are always there too. But yeast is the one I’d panic without.

The one dried pasta shape you always have on hand, and the sauce you most often pair with it?

Rigatoni. I always buy rigatoni. I pair it with that same Marcella Hazan butter-and-onion sauce, or just butter and cheese, fettuccine-style. [Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking Bookshop, Amazon]

Kitchen tool worth having around all the time?

A food processor. I use it constantly, including for pasta dough. I don’t always mix by hand the old-fashioned way; I throw it in the food processor.

And a garlic press. I know some chefs are against them. I use mine all the time.

One big kitchen appliance splurge?

A bread maker. They were peak in the ‘90s and fell out of favor, but I love mine. I have the Zojirushi: really good quality, really good bread. Dump it in, two hours later you have a loaf.

Store-bought item you don’t apologize for?

Frozen vegetables. I always have bags of them in the freezer. And the taco seasoning packets. I know I could mix my own spices, but the little packets are easy.

Weeknight dinner everyone will eat without negotiation?

Minestrone soup, especially in cold weather. I make a vegetarian version so my husband can eat it too. It’s a use-up-whatever-vegetables-you-have meal: I throw in pasta, rice, barley, whatever I’ve got.

Thing you tell people they don’t have to make from scratch, even though Italian food culture says they should?

People will disagree with me on this, but I think it’s totally fine to use a jar of pasta sauce when you need something quick. A homemade tomato sauce is easy to make. But if you’re making lasagna, stuffed shells, anything with a lot of other components, just use a jar. It’s fine.

A favorite cookbook besides your own?

Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian [Bookshop, Amazon]. Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking [Bookshop, Amazon]. Those big encyclopedia-style cookbooks where you can look up basically anything and it’s there.

For inspiration, I love Frankie Gaw’s First Generation: Recipes from My Taiwanese-American Home [Bookshop, Amazon]. Beautiful, creative, very personal.

When someone in your family is sick, sad, or had a hard day, what’s the comfort meal?

For everyone except my husband, chicken noodle soup. I make my own broth using a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. Since the chicken is already cooked, you can get a really flavorful stock in a couple of hours of simmering. So much better than buying broth in a carton.

One thing you’d tell your 2020 self?

Just embrace it. I spent a lot of time then (and a few years after) being really nervous. Did I throw away my life as a lawyer? Am I going to fall on my face? Being a content creator is precarious in a lot of ways. You can be successful one day and flop the next. But I’d say: embrace whatever comes. It’s all part of the process.

Note: This newsletter may contain affiliate links from our friends & sponsors.

Danny Loves Pasta [Bookshop, Amazon]

Italianish: Modern Twists on Classic Italian Flavors [Bookshop, Amazon]

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The Pasta That Started It All: How Danny Freeman Turned Grief Into a Cookbook Career

As we close out Pride Month and a June (Father’s Day month) full of conversations with dads we admire, we’re honored to share our final Pride 2026 Order Up! with cookbook author and stay-at-home dad Danny Freeman, the voice behind @dannylovespasta on IG and TikTok and YouTube. (And if you missed our first Pride interview this month, you’ll want to check out that interview too: Order Up! A Conversation with Justin Burke, Pastry Chef, Queer Food Writer, and Author of Potluck Desserts.)

Before Danny was Danny Loves Pasta (before the cookbooks, the TikTok account with millions of followers, the colorful Peppa Pig ravioli), he was a picky little kid in his grandmother’s kitchen in upstate New York, watching her quietly hand him a bowl of cavatelli she’d made just for him. That bowl, in a lot of ways, is where his whole story begins.

Danny was a housing attorney at a nonprofit when his first daughter was born in July 2020. His Italian grandmother died a few months later, in early January, the same week his paternity leave ended. So at night, after the baby went down, he started making fresh pasta using his grandmother’s recipe. Kneading dough was the thing that kept her close. When he finally posted a video about why he was really making pasta, the response wasn’t about the dough. It was about the grief: other people were trying to learn their grandmothers’ recipes too, even when their loved ones were no longer with them.

What followed was a slow pivot: out of law, into a full-time creative career, into two cookbooks (Danny Loves Pasta and Italianish), and into the dad life upstate with his husband and two young daughters. In this conversation, Danny talks about coming out to a loving Italian-American family that stayed close, the chosen family of his twenties in New York, why he doesn’t sneak vegetables, and what he hopes his girls will one day remember about family meals.

Danny isn’t trying to preserve his grandmother’s exact recipes for his daughters. He’s trying to preserve the feeling of being fed by someone who loved you, and pass that feeling on, one slightly imperfect kitchen night at a time.

A Conversation with Danny Freeman, Cookbook Author and Stay-at-Home Dad

Introduce Yourself: I'm Danny Freeman. Online, I'm Danny Loves Pasta. I'm a stay-at-home dad, a cookbook author, and a content creator. My husband and I have two daughters: a five-year-old and a two-year-old

I've written two cookbooks, Danny Loves Pasta and Italianish, and done a bunch of TV cooking segments. But most of the time, I'm home with my kids, developing recipes and making videos.

What’s one memory of cooking with your grandmother?

I was a picky kid. My mom’s a great cook, my grandmother was a great cook (Italian side of the family, lots of food), but I didn’t eat much of it. Holidays were big at my grandparents’ house. Christmas Day, all this seafood and meat. The kids sat at the kitchen table, and right before dinner, my grandmother would pull me into the corner by the fridge and hand me a bowl of cavatelli with marinara. “This is for you. Don’t let anyone see this.”

It was handmade pasta, made just for me. I felt sneaky and special at the same time. Looking back, that was her considering me, putting something extra on the table because she knew I wouldn’t eat the rest. It made me feel really loved.

Your daughter was born in July 2020. Your grandmother passed away in early January. How did sharing recipes online come out of that time?

We didn’t go home for Christmas that year because of COVID, the first Christmas of my life away from family. So I made fresh pasta at home, just for me and my husband, using my grandmother’s recipe. A couple weeks later, in January, she died. The same week, my parental leave ended and I had to go back to work. New baby, no sleep, couldn’t see anyone. It was a lot all at once.

Making fresh pasta was the thing that helped. It’s meditative (kneading the dough, working with my hands), and it made me feel close to her. After my daughter went to bed, I’d go to the kitchen and try different doughs and shapes. I started posting pictures on my personal Instagram, then made a TikTok account just for me. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t show my face. It was just, “This is the dough I made today, this is the shape I tried.”

About six months in, I posted a video where I talked about my grandmother and why I really started making pasta. That was the video that went viral. People commented that they were trying to learn their own grandparents’ recipes, or had lost someone and wanted to keep that food alive. That’s when it took off in a different direction. Less novelty, more story.

You grew up in an Italian-American family that didn’t moralize food. What carried over into how you feed your own kids?

I never thought about this until you asked, but my parents didn’t do the “eat your yucky vegetables first, then you can have dessert” thing. They didn’t talk about food as good or bad. But we still ate well: always a salad, baked chicken cutlets, my mom made pasta sauce every Sunday. Very little takeout, almost no frozen meals.

I try to do the same. I don’t say “three more bites of broccoli and then you can have cake.” Food isn’t junk. Some things are just sometimes foods. Before dinner, I’ll put out a plate of cut-up vegetables and let the kids snack on those. I picked up the neutral framing from my mom without realizing it.

You moved to New York after college, came out, and spent your twenties in a different food world. Did any of that shape how you think about food and family now?

Yeah. I wasn’t cooking a ton in my twenties (we had a tiny kitchen), but food and community went together. Happy hours after work. Dinners at a friend’s apartment. My husband and I would each meet our own people and sometimes converge later. The point wasn’t where we ended up. It was being with people.

When I was a kid, food was family. In my twenties, it was chosen family. Now I’m back to family, living the dad life upstate. I appreciate that whole arc more now than I did at the time.

Your grandmother got to meet your older daughter once. What was your coming-out like in your family, and how did that shape what you wanted to pass down?

My coming-out was relatively smooth compared to a lot of stories. The harder part was internal. My grandmother was always loving and accepting; she got to know me as a whole adult. Both my grandparents spoke at my and my husband’s wedding. My grandfather turned 101 this year!

When my grandmother died, it hit me so hard that my daughter would never know her. She met her once at about a month old, in masks, outside. There’s a picture. That’s it. There was a little desperation early on: how do I keep her alive for my kids? Over time, that’s shifted. It’s less about her specifically and more about the feeling she gave me. The values, the traditions. When my kids look back at holidays and gatherings, I want them to feel something like what I felt.

You were a housing attorney at a nonprofit before any of this. Does any of that show up in how you cook or talk to families online?

I used to think of those as two separate lives, but nothing really is. The court work helped me get more comfortable speaking. I’m a shy person, but standing in front of a judge every day forces you to just go and do. I’m actually more comfortable doing live TV than recording myself at home. On TV you can’t second-guess yourself.

The other thing is empathy. All my clients were low-income families facing eviction. For us as attorneys, court is our day-to-day. For them, it’s terrifying. I had to learn to slow down and see people outside their worst moment. That carried into everything: being a parent, being a person online, remembering that everyone is dealing with something.

Was there a moment you knew you weren’t going back to law?

I went back after parental leave on Zoom courts, juggling my daughter’s nap schedule with hearings. Steve and I tried not to schedule meetings at the same time, which was basically impossible. I took a year of unpaid leave to figure it out. By the end of it, I’d had my first brand deal (Hidden Valley Ranch, a thousand dollars) and thought, “Okay, maybe this can be something.”

Even when I told them I wasn’t coming back, I was nervous. But if it didn’t work out, I could always apply for legal jobs later.

What’s been the hardest part of being a stay-at-home dad?

Practically, the sleep. My daughters are not great sleepers and I’m the one who gets up with them, multiple times, every night. But the bigger thing is how fast it goes. I look at pictures of my daughter at three and she’s five now. I love who she is at every stage, but I want the old ones back too.

I carry some guilt around the cookbook years. We had part-time help, and I’d spend that time writing instead of with her. Even though I’m with her 80% of the time, I look at the 20% I wasn’t and wonder if that was the trade I wanted. I try to stay present now, because I know I’ll feel this way about right now, eventually.

Your first book, Danny Loves Pasta, is full of colorful, playful pasta: Peppa Pig ravioli, tie-dye dough. How much of that came from your older daughter?

A lot of it. I wrote the first book during her nap time, back when she wasn’t in school. When she woke up, I’d give her a ball of dough on one side of the counter while I tested recipes on the other. The Peppa Pig ravioli was the first character one I made for her. That started a whole run of playful shapes.

She still makes pasta with me. I give her colors and a rolling pin and she rolls out animals, and then she always wants to cook them. They come out as thick, weird blobs. We cook them and try them anyway.

The second book, Italianish, came out of a stretch with a colicky baby and a picky toddler. What did writing that book teach you that the first one didn’t?

After my second daughter was born, I didn’t have nap time to work with. She only slept on my chest. We survived on takeout and vegetables out of the fridge for a while. When I started cooking again, I needed quick meals that still felt fun for me. I get bored making the same thing every night, even if my daughter wouldn’t.

Italianish merges that creative energy with real, everyday cooking for kids. Things my mom would make. Flavors my older daughter likes (spaghetti and meatballs, basically), twisted just enough that I’m not bored. A quick bread with meatballs on top instead of pasta with meatballs. Same flavors, one step sideways.

The book has separate indices for sauces and meatballs. Was that always the plan, or did it emerge?

My original plan was to organize the book by cook time: 15-minute meals, 30-minute meals, weekend projects. We didn’t end up doing it that way, but I kept some of that practicality: a time index up front, plus a sauce index and a meatball index with five different meatballs, including a vegetarian one for my husband. People can mix and match without flipping through the whole book.

There’s a lot of “kids will only eat this if you sneak it in” content online. What’s a feeding hack you’d actively warn parents away from?

Neither of my kids is especially picky, so I’m not going to come for parents doing whatever it takes. Hidden veggies are fine. I have one recipe that blends vegetables into a cheese sauce, and I’ve recommended pureeing a red pepper into pasta sauce when a friend’s kid is really struggling.

But I don’t lean on it. I want my kids to absorb quietly that vegetables are good in their own right. I remember when I was a kid, on a lot of kids’ TV shows, the bit was “ew, yucky broccoli.” The good thing is, I don’t see that being done anymore. I don’t want my kids absorbing that. We do a lot of vegetable plates with balsamic to dip. My older daughter eats cherry tomatoes for a snack. After school they want ice cream. Sometimes we get ice cream, but I bring a bag of cut vegetables or blueberries too. The bet is that if vegetables aren’t framed as the gross thing, they’ll just be part of the rotation later.

If both daughters are in the kitchen at the same time, is it total chaos, or managed?

It’s managed chaos when we’re baking. My five-year-old cracks the eggs (pretty good hit rate) and the two-year-old adds the flour. When I’m cooking something hot, they’ve invented this thing where they pull baking ingredients out of the pantry and make their own “dough.” Half a box of baking soda, some tapioca balls from the back of the shelf, anything they can talk me into. They roll it out, shape it into cookies, ask me to bake it. 100% failure rate.

Steve will sometimes say, “Why do you let them do that?” because it’s a giant mess. But they’re occupied, they’re being creative, and I can keep an eye on them. I’m probably more lenient with kitchen mess than most.

What’s one cooking skill you think every parent should have in their back pocket?

A simple stovetop mac and cheese. The boxed kind is great (my daughter loves Annie’s), but stovetop mac is a dump-everything-in-the-pot meal. Whatever cheese needs to be used. Whatever quarter-box of pasta is left from another night. My daughter loves it with peas or broccoli. You can add pepperoni or leftover meat. It’s cheesy, so kids will go for it, and it cleans out the fridge at the same time.

Follow Danny and all his content on all the things: TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube under the name @DannyLovesPasta.

& Don’t forget to follow us on IG @onepotatobox ❤️

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A Note for Father’s Day from Ted: How a dad takes care of his family…making sure they are fed fully!!

The gyro is Greek historical/classic street food of layered of meats cooked on a vertical rotisserie, sliced thin and served in pita w/ the traditional toppings. In America, mass-produced gyro (think the gyro cone w/ pressed meat) was created in Chicago in the 1970’s and since then, has become the quintessential Greek food, the Gyros Sandwich!

The beef burger is my connection to Chicago’s history of being the center of America’s meat packing industry, where innovation like refrigeration & revolutionary processes helped transform food in America, all the while employing waves of immigrants.

The tzatziki is my mom’s recipe that she always made for us, and of course, my favorite!

There are so many things I love about this elevated concept. I love the way that it brings together my heritage’s archetypal sandwich with Chicago’s meat history with my mom’s recipe … tying my culture & home town & growing up in Chicago and visiting family in Greece. I love how it’s piled HIGH, but still very supported and doesn’t fall over … like Chicago is the city of big shoulders, each component of this burger supports each other to elevate it!

It’s the typical way that a dad takes care of his family…making sure they are fed fully!!

Serve it with loaded Greek fries. These fries are topped with crumbled feta and some dried Greek oregano. Greek street food will often have a few fries in it; I wanted to showcase them next to the burger.

And just like every Greek, we always ask for a little extra tzatziki on our gyro sandwich, so I served up a little extra on the side.

This Gyro Burger w/ loaded Greek Fries is something I would serve at any of my tailgates and inside any stadium. Enjoy!

Gyro Burger w/ Loaded Greek Fries

Recipe by Ted Pappas

This burger version of the classic Gyro Sandwich will have your tastebuds saying “Opa!”. The homemade Tzatziki provides the perfect balance to the well spiced ground lamb and ground beef mixture.

Servings: 3 Burgers

PREP TIME: 20 min. | COOK TIME: 10 min. | TOTAL TIME: 30 min.

Ingredients:

For the Burgers

• 3 Brioch Buns

• ½ lb ground lamb

• ½ lb ground beef – 73% lean / 27% fat

• 1 tablespoon onion powder

• 1 tablespoon garlic powder

• 1 tablespoon dried Greek oregano

• ½ tablespoon ground cumin

• ¼ teaspoon ground clove

• ½ teaspoon Kosher salt

• ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

• 1 Cucumber, thinly sliced

• 1 Beefsteak tomato, thinly sliced

• 1 Red onion, sliced into thin strips

For the Loaded Greek Fries

• Your favorite Fries (Frozen)

• Crumbled Feta

• Dried Oregano

• Olive Oil

For Yiayia Nancy’s Tzatziki

• 1 English cucumber

• 3 cups full fat Greek yogurt

• 3 tablespoons fresh dill

• 2 teaspoons fresh mint

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

• 1 tablespoon Greek Extra Virgin olive oil

Directions:

1. Bake your fries: While your going to be making your burgers, pre-heat your oven and bake your French fries according to the package.

2. Make your gyro: In large mixing bowl, thoroughly combine lamb, beef & all spices including the salt & pepper.

3. Shape your burgers: Divide lamb & beef mixture into three equal portions and form into round patties. Press the meat together firmly enough that it holds together, but do not overwork the meat mixture. Making an indention into the center of the patty will prevent it from puffing in the center while cooking.

4. Grill your burgers: Place patties on medium-high grill. In order to achieve a good sear, make sure to not move the patties until ready to flip. Flip each patty after approximately 4 minutes.

5. Remove from grill while medium-rare (approx. 130-135 degrees) and allow to sit for 1-2 minutes. Removing the burger from the grill and allowing it sit will ensure it is not overcooked and all of the juices do not run out. While resting, toast buns directly on grill.

6. Assemble your loaded Greek fries: Remove fries from oven and load with feta. Crumble feta and drizzle w/ olive oil & dried oregano to your heart's desire. Add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

7. Assemble your burgers: Assemble with lamb & beef patty, tzatziki, tomato slice, cucumber slices and onions.

Tzatziki (prepared in advance)

1. Grate cucumber, on a course grater, into a tea towel or cheese cloth. Strain out all liquid and set aside.

2. In large mixing bowl, combine yogurt, cucumber, dill, mint, garlic, lemon juice, 1 tbsp of the Greek olive oil, and salt & pepper.

3. Top with remaining 1 tbsp of Greek olive oil.