Listen people, I think we can all guess by the title that cooking is not my thing. When I was in high school I once sobbed in my kitchen because I burnt rice-a-roni and thought I would never be able to move out and live on my own because I wouldn’t be able to survive. Yikes.
My entire family can cook (for the most part) and they do it well. My aunt is a professional chef, my cousins love cooking and make Thanksgiving dinner every year, and nothing makes me feel more at home than my mom’s cooking. Everyone is into it, except for me.
I think it began as laziness and morphed into this weird complex where I have just always believed I am bad at it and I always will be bad at it. Plus, I fucking love food. I know good food. So my standards are high and I just know that I can’t quite meet them.
Now, to be clear, I am not totally helpless. I can make the basics (salmon, pasta, eggs, etc.) and have been actively cooking at home and meal prepping for the last couple of years. But it wasn’t until a couple of months ago when I moved into a bigger place with a spacious full kitchen that I decided I want to learn to cook. And I want to be good at it. I want people to say “Sheila please bring your famous eggplant parmesan, it’s superb!” and to shower me in compliments. Is that so much to ask for?
Being in a new, much bigger, home has inspired me to start getting domestic as hell and I’ve been making it a point to try new recipes every week. I eat pretty healthy during the week but also love a big bowl of pasta on the weekends so I’ve been trying recipes that are both good for your body and your soul (hello cheese).
I wanted to share my experience with learning this new skill that should have already been a skill a long time ago, here on the blog. Any and all tips (or compliments) are welcome! I’ll also be posting in the moment content on my Instagram stories (@shesmilesallday) if you’d like to see me fail in real-time 🙂
So here is a recap of the recipes I’ve made over the past few weeks (they’ve all been pretty great, which is a testament to how good they are because I def made some rookie mistakes and they were still delish) and a brief overview of what I learned and where I effed up. Enjoy!
SPAGHETTI WITHOUT THE GO AND GETTI
Okay, so I 100% saw that line on a bus in some sort of food delivery ad but is it not the best?
I kicked off my new career as a mediocre chef with a spaghetti recipe I got online from a delish restaurant in the Mission district, Delfina. I am not someone who gets overly excited about spaghetti but this spaghetti was different. I knew I had to make it.
So I had a girlfriend over and we spent two hours making fucking spaghetti while guzzling red wine (I am def an amateur but also this recipe was quite involved) and the results were…soupy.
Not sure if I didn’t let the sauce cook down long enough or if I added too much water. Either way, as my celebrity crush Paul Hollywood would say, the flavors were there but the texture was…not. Oh well! Still ate it and caught a sweet buzz.
Check out the recipe here!
COCONUT LIME SHRIMP
I am a huge fan of Carissa Stanton, the cool lady behind the Instagam account and blog @broccyourbody (check out her blog here). She is a huge Trader Joes fan and creates delicious, super easy healthy recipes using ingredients that aren’t impossible to find. The majority of these recipes are from her so get use to it.
This coconut lime shrimp recipe was SO FUCKING GOOD WOW. So flavorful and easy! I made it with a date so we doubled the recipe and added waaaay more spices than what was called for in the recipe but it turned out great so don’t be afraid to use a liberal amount of the spices she uses.
Our only mistake was adding a third can of coconut cream, it made the sauce a little too oily but it wasn’t terrible. It ended up being so delicious and also really healthy! I made cauliflower rice instead of regular and it soaked up the sauce really well. I can’t wait to make it again!
Find the recipe here!
LIMONE
This was truly my most impressive cooking experience thus far and that’s because this recipe is pretty much idiot-proof so I can’t even be that proud of myself. Looks freaking legit though.
I had limone for the first time at a restaurant called Lil Frankie’s in NYC with my cousin a couple of years ago and it is one of those dishes you have and you dream about forevermore.
Finally, I got tired of drooling over the restaurant’s Instagram pics and googled the recipe. I found one from Bon Appetit and was pleasantly surprised by how simple it was.
Limone is a lemony, buttery, cheesy spaghetti dish was tons of cracked pepper. It is an absolute dream and feels very elevated and fancy when in reality it is so easy to make and only has 6 ingredients. If this fool can do it so can you!
I also cheated for the rest of the meal and bought focaccia from Trader Joes and their lemony cheesy brussel sprout kit. I had a girlfriend over for dinner and definitely made her think I was a chef. It was my shining moment.
You must make this! Get the recipe here.
WHITE CHICKEN CHILI
This is just the kind of homey dish I’m looking to make this time of year. Plus, this is a crockpot meal! Woo!
I may not be able to caramelize onions perfectly but ya girl is great at dumping ingredients into a giant pot. That is my secret talent.
I decided to cut this recipe in half because I’ve found that a lot of Carissa’s recipes create more servings that they claim to and I just can’t possibly eat all of it in a week and I hate wasting food. I like to meal prep and needed this to stretch across 3-4 meals. I had two sizable containers leftover at the end of the week that I had to toss soooo if you’re also a lady cooking for one most of the time, I would recommend doing even less than half of the ingredients it calls for.
It was, however, delicious and hearty and very minimal work.
Check out the recipe here!
ZUCCHINI BOATS
These little guys are BOMB. Now I know what you’re thinking. This is another lame “pizza” replacement that tastes like sadness and garbage. If you want pizza just eat pizza. But let me tell you, you are incorrect.
Don’t think of this as a pizza replacement. Think of this as making zucchini taste like a pizza and calling it lunch. These are honestly so easy and truly delicious! Plus you can put whatever you want on them. I did pepperoni, vegan cheese, and black olives. They’re hands down the easiest meal prep of all time so I highly recommend giving them a try.
Find the recipe here!
TOSTADAS
Another super easy and super delicious recipe that was pretty fail-proof. It was, however, another one that left me with waaaaay too many leftovers. I still have a solid stack of tortillas in my fridge and I made these a couple of weeks ago.
I love that you can make the chicken in the crockpot and the rest of the assembly is super easy and quick. Although I did have so much chicken leftover, so next time I think I’ll make just one chicken breast and freeze the other one for a future meal.
Check out the recipe here!
SPAGHETTI SQUASH PARMESAN
This is definitely another one of my favorites because hello, cheese!
I had never tried spaghetti squash before and honestly, I am sold. The texture of the “noodles” has such a nice crunch to it that it is very similar to pasta. I will say cutting these big boys in half was a bit of a challenge so I’m glad I made my boyfriend do it. (Like how I casually slid that in there, eh?)
They made for some excellent meal prep and were still just as delicious heated up throughout the week. Plus anything with fresh mozzarella has my name on it.
Find the recipe here!
GREEK LEMON CHICKEN SOUP
I was most looking forward to making this soup because it’s clearly one of Carissa’s most loved recipes since I’m always seeing her followers tag her in pictures of it. I get a similar soup at this restaurant called Souvla here in the city and it’s one of my favorites! Who doesn’t love lemons?!
I will say I had to zest and juice three lemons to really get the flavor in there and the recipe only calls for one so I would recommend using more. I definitely messed up the part where you whisk the egg into some of the hot broth (?) so they don’t scramble. I ended up with just some chunks of yolk floating in my soup which now that I’m writing this out sounds pretty gross. It was fine though! Just not exactly how it was supposed to go.
I will definitely be giving this another try because ultimately it was delicious and super healthy. I sadly made it on a week where we had a random heatwave in San Francisco so I want to make it again on a colder week so I can really feel the cozy soup vibes.
Get the recipe here!
What are your favorite easy recipes? Tell me in the comments below!
Xo,
She
