Okay, I am not a narcissist who thinks that you all want to know everything that I ate for two + weeks, or an entire year or whatever this turns into. But everyone needs some fresh ideas, right? I mentioned in my last post that I was going to try not to buy any new cookbooks in 2025, which if I succeed will be a major record (and money saver). So far I haven’t spent a penny on cookbooks, but I won’t lie to you and say that I haven’t perused the “Kindle Deals” cookbook section on Amazon. Can’t hurt to look, right?
My focus so far has been on cooking from books I already have and using the subscription cooking apps that I have paid up for the year (NYT Cooking and America’s Test Kitchen). I’ll give you my honest thoughts (so far) on these apps. I’ve been using NYT Cooking for over a year and use it constantly. My “want to cook soon” recipe file (I named it myself) is overflowing with 55 recipes, but I have also made lots and adore this app. The number of five-star recipes is large and there are tons of helpful, well thought-out comments on each recipe. As someone who wants nothing more than to eat cheesy beans for dinner most nights, I have not been disappointed by the recipes here. America’s Test Kitchen hasn’t given me quite the same number of “dying to try” recipes. The recipes are more aspirational than NYT Cooking, which is a great app for people who need a weeknight dinner. 2025 Mary is not as “aspirational cook” as 2011 early Chattavore (and early thirties) Mary, but ATK is still where I turn when I need a perfectly tested version of a classic recipe.
Anyway, let’s get to the meals. You’ll notice that Friday’s are left out…I usually eat solo (something from the freezer, leftovers, a quick pasta dish) or with my parents on Fridays since Philip works later on these days.
January 1, 2025: Porchetta Sandwiches with Smitten Kitchen’s Salt & Vinegar Cabbage
On New Year’s Eve, earlier in the week, I made America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe for porchetta, which we ate with roasted potatoes and green beans (my favorite canned brand, Allens). If you aren’t familiar, porchetta is basically an Italian-style pork roast (usually either pork shoulder or pork belly, I used shoulder) with a garlicky, fennel seed forward paste either rolled up into it or incorporated into pockets cut into the meat. ATK’s version was delicious (the smell was outrageously garlicky and amazing) but very involved. Definitely a special occasion dish.
Anyway, for this dinner I sliced it up really thinly like deli meat and we ate it on Le Petit Francaise baguettes, which I buy in the frozen section at Publix, with just a smear of mayonnaise. We ate it with charred salt and vinegar cabbage from the Smitten Kitchen Keepers cookbook, which I cannot recommend highly enough. Roasted cabbage may sound weird but I can assure you that this was delicious.
I’d link to the porchetta recipe, but if I link you to ATK, you’ll run into a paywall (unless you are a subscriber) and I couldn’t find a recipe where anyone else has made this.
January 2, 2025: Smitten Kitchen Pizza Beans & Garlic Bread
I make no bones about the fact that I love Smitten Kitchen, and her website and cookbooks are among my favorite places to get recipes. I made the pizza beans on New Years Eve so we had the leftovers tonight with garlic bread and some of the porchetta that I had thinly sliced the night before. Pizza beans are exceedingly simple: white beans in a tomatoey sauce, topped with a blanket of mozzarella (with some kale thrown in for good measure). Deb calls for gigante beans, but I would have had to special order these, so I just used cannellini, my standard white bean of choice.
January 4, 2025: Dinner Out At Malone’s
Dining out for dinner, especially on a weekend, especially at Hamilton Place, is not something that we do often…but Philip chose Malone’s to try for his birthday (which was on the 11th) with some friends. It opened a few months back and he had been wanting to go since hearing it was quite good. We found the food (grass fed filet, mashed potatoes, & Caesar salad for him, twin filets with béarnaise, Gruyere croquettes, and the Lexingtonian salad for me) pretty good, but it was pricey (I think about $170 including tip) and the restaurant was very crowded (not shocking for a Saturday night of course) and very loud, which is hard since Philip has a vocal disorder that makes it hard for him to talk in loud environments.
January 5, 2025: Homemade “Chili’s Chili Queso”
We ate dinner at my parents’ house this night, but for lunch I made Chili’s style chili queso after eating at Chili’s with my mom and sister earlier in the week and discovering that the queso that used to be $6 (I hadn’t eaten at Chili’s in years) is now in the $12 range. I used the recipe from Todd Wilbur’s Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 2 cookbook, which I have owned for nearly 20 years, but you can purchase the recipe from his website for $.79. I’ll let you in on a secret: the ingredients are a can of Hormel no-beans chili, a pound of Velveeta, the juice of a lime, a sprinkle of cayenne, and a bit of milk to thin it.
January 6-7, 2025: Loaded Sweet Potatoes With Black Beans and Cheese
This was a NYT Cooking recipe, and about as simple as they come. Cut sweet potatoes in half, brush both the cut and skin sides with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast. Drain and rinse some black beans and put those on top of the roasted sweet potatoes; sprinkle with cheddar cheese and bake to warm the beans and melt the cheese. Serve with a salad or a roasted green vegetable. So simple, but I never would have thought of the combo. NYT says that each sweet potato is 2 servings, but we ate 1 medium sweet potato each. One can of beans was enough for two nights. (Here is a post where someone else made the recipe)
January 8-9, 2025: Skillet Chicken Parmesan
Another Smitten Kitchen Keepers recipe. You guys, I cannot recommend that cookbook strongly enough. Probably my all-time favorite. Basically pounded-thin chicken thighs, breaded with panko and shallow-fried, topped with a simple tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese then broiled. We ate it with angel hair and some roasted broccoli. I sauced the leftovers on the second night rather than saucing them the night that I made them, which would have made them soggy.
January 10, 2025: Leftover Chili Cheese Dip
Is five days too long to wait to finish up your chili cheese dip? It turned out fine. I had planned on finishing up the chicken parm leftovers, but it snowed (a fairly substantial amount of snow for Tennessee) and Philip ended up being stuck at home with me (the horror!) so I had to regroup and figure out something to feed two people. We still had quite a bit of dip left, so there you go. Not a bad Friday night snacky dinner.
January 11, 2025: Pasta With Longer Cooked Broccoli (lunch) and Cast Iron Pizza (dinner)
I had a ton of broccoli florets that I needed to use up and because everyone was buying out the stores this past week, I elected to wait until after the snow event to do my grocery shop, so I was trying to use up what I had. I found this recipe for pasta with longer cooked broccoli on (you guessed it) Smitten Kitchen. I also heated the last of the chicken from chicken parm in the air fryer, cubed it, and threw it in with the pasta. Not a bad thrown together lunch!
Ever since my brother told me about Kenji Lopez-Alt’s cast iron pizza recipe a few months back, I’ve been making it on repeat almost every Saturday. The first comment gives the ingredient proportions for one 12-inch pizza and we get 3 meals out of this (I cut the pizza into 6 slices and we have one slice of pizza and a salad). I simplify my sauce by combining a small can of no-salt tomato sauce, a can of no-salt tomato paste, and salt and Italian seasoning to taste. I keep my toppings simple: low-moisture whole milk mozzarella and pepperoni. Perfect every time.
This was Philip’s birthday, so I also made his favorite dessert, creme brûlée. I used the immersion circulator to cook the custards in small mason jars and refrigerated them overnight.
This was a week and a half worth of mostly simple and all delicious recipes. I hope you got some inspiration from them – what has been your favorite thing that you have cooked so far in 2025?
