Cozy recipe bonanza 🍲 & goodbye, spooky season [Like You Know Whatever]

Hi friends!

Happy November! How are you doing? I hope you’re taking care of yourselves. If you celebrated Halloween, I hope you had a completely goofy, silly good time. Friends of ours had a house party, and it was a blast. I dressed up as Janis Ian from Mean Girls, painstakingly recreating her outfit and attempting her overly complicated hairstyle. This is not a dig at Lizzy Caplan, but I think my hair was too clean. I had just washed it, and as much Got2be Glued as I put in it (IYKYK), it did not look stringy enough. I think my hair was also too highlighted, as hers is basically black. But I had fun! Maybe too much fun, since it turned out to be a “drunk grilled cheeses at midnight” kind of night.

My husband Ross wore Heath Ledger Joker makeup with a green t-shirt and purple hoodie. I helped him with the makeup – can you believe he thought he could do all of the Joker’s black eye makeup with just mascara? How would that have even worked? I shudder to think. (By the way, if you ever need a truly black eyeshadow base, I highly recommend about-face’s matte fluid eye paint.) The funniest part, though, was when I woke up the next morning day at noon to see Ross examining the traces of eye makeup still on him in the bathroom mirror. “I look like a one-night stand,” he said. “I look like the guy from My Chemical Romance.” I couldn’t stop laughing.

To get in the spooky mood on Halloween, I threw on a Halloween playlist in my AirPods and went on a long walk all around my neighborhood to look at all the decorations. People really do it up out here! I counted three 12 foot Home Depot skeletons. One place had a whole Dracula story playing out on two sides of their house. And so many fake spiders, so many skeletons in all shapes and sizes, so many silly tombstones on lawns! I also held my own personal contest for Most L.A. Halloween Decorations. The winners were:

Third Place: A skeleton holding a well-loved surfboard

Second Place: A skeleton in a SAG-AFTRA t-shirt

First Place: Two skeletons doing yoga on the lawn

Also, the citrus trees in Los Angeles smell absolutely incredible right now. I know I looked like a total weirdo just walking around sniffing all of them.

I have been cooking up a storm lately, so most of this newsletter will be dedicated to all the cozy meals I’ve been making. But before we get into that, let’s get into a few things:

- The Today show recently reported that people who put up their holiday decorations earlier are happier, according to ~science~! Last year, Ross and I put up our Christmas tree on November 19, and I have no regrets. My main complaint about the holidays is that they go by so quickly. The end of the year is always such a busy blur for me. I find that if I don’t make an effort to do some festive/seasonal things, before I know it, it’s all over and I’ve missed out. We are putting off putting up our tree this year because we have two big trips booked between now and Christmas, and our cat loves to attack the ornaments when we’re not around. She has broken a few before, and we wouldn’t feel safe leaving her alone with the temptation. I am already listening to holiday music and looking forward to crappy Netflix Christmas movies, though!

By the way, a quick note so that you can plan accordingly: I am most likely going to pause paid subscriptions in December, because my posting schedule is going to get all jacked up due to travel. I can promise you that you will still get newsletters with my personal bests of 2023, a resolution recap, and a best-of list of the recipes I made this year (you can read 2022’s year-end posts here, though they’re paywalled). I just do not know at the moment when 2023’s lists will land in your inbox. It will depend on many things, not least of which is jet lag. But I’m really looking forward to writing them, so stay tuned!

- The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix). I know, I know, spooky season is over, but it took me a minute to finish this horror miniseries inspired by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe and helmed by writer/director Mike Flanagan (of The Haunting of Hill House & many others). As I’ve stated before in this newsletter, I’m a big fanagan! (Sorry.) (Again.) Usher is about an incredibly wealthy family who built their money in the pharmaceutical industry, largely on the sales of an addictive opiate. The show explores the recent mysterious deaths in the family while also giving an insight into the rise of the family’s patriarch.

I thought there were some really great performances – Bruce Greenwood, Mark Hamill, Carla Gugino, and Carl Lumbly were fantastic. I am actually surprised to say that I thought Zach Gilford (forever Saracen from FNL to me) was miscast as a young Roderick Usher. I adore him, but Roderick is a ruthless man. I think Gilford does his best work when he plays a flawed guy with a heart of gold (Midnight Mass). Let me know if you agree. Regardless, I am absolutely obsessed with Kate Siegel’s PR princess Camille and her HR nightmare of a relationship with her assistants. Such great satire of “boss bitch” culture.

If I had to rate the Netflix shows in the Flanaverse, it would go:

1. Midnight Mass

2. The Haunting of Hill House

3. The Fall of the House of Usher

4. Midnight Club

5. The Haunting of Bly Manor

I think they’re all worth a watch though. Except for maybe Bly Manor. I couldn’t get past the first episode when I tried to watch it, but I might give it another go.

A cozy cooking bonanza

I have been making an effort to cook more lately because I’m still unemployed and the cost of GrubHub has gotten truly ridiculous. Unfortunately, so has the cost of groceries. And while cooking at home saves you money in the long run, those savings don’t slap you in the face the way a three-figure grocery receipt will. You know what I mean? Fuckin OUCH, dudes!

Although, I realized this week that I am actually pretty privileged when it comes to cooking. I was on r/Cooking and someone made a post asking, “Would you still cook if you didn’t have to/could afford not to?” I thought, duh, of course! I love cooking, I find it so creative and relaxing, almost meditative. I love to totally zone out while chopping or stirring or plucking fresh herbs off of stems. That’s probably why I was shit at every food service job I’ve ever had; I was always too slow, and cooking at the speed you need to in a professional setting made the whole process unenjoyable for me. I assumed that the vast majority of people reading r/Cooking would feel the same way, that they were there to find inspiration because they genuinely enjoyed cooking.

Well, turns out I was totally wrong! So many people wrote in to say that the first person they’d hire if they won the lottery would be a personal chef. That’s when I realized that my relationship to cooking is a very privileged one, because I only cook two to three nights per week, and I cook for a household of two, so we usually have leftovers. I can see how if you’re in, say, a family of five with multiple children, you need to provide nutritious meals on a schedule, and getting takeout regularly could be prohibitively expensive. Nobody likes to HAVE to cook. There are definitely days when all I want to do is veg out and order pizza but I have an expensive ingredient about to go bad and man, I have to dragggg my ass to the kitchen.

This is all just to say that at the moment, I cook 70% for pleasure, 30% to save money, and if the things I’m making seem too complicated, I remind you again: I am unemployed. In the past two weeks, I made one very expensive, time-consuming, indulgent dish, and several other much simpler, more nutritionally balanced, cost-conscious dishes. For the latter, I want to recommend Budget Bytes, which if you’re not familiar, is a recipe blog geared toward making tasty, cost-efficient meals. Every recipe comes with a price breakdown for the ingredients, with a total cost per serving and for the whole recipe. I’ve made a lot of great recipes from them over the years – their chorizo and sweet potato enchiladas have become one of my go-to weeknight meals (although I always add half a diced onion and a bunch of Mexican spices when I’m cooking the filling for flavor). I made a couple of their recipes this week, which I’ll point out.

I also had one major cooking FAIL. Saving the best for last! Now, onto the cozy dishes!

1. As I mentioned in one of my paid subscriber-only emails, I have been craving a big, time-consuming cooking project lately, so the Saturday after I sent my last newsletter, I finally tackled the Smitten Kitchen short rib onion soup. This dish is basically a combination of French onion soup and braised short ribs. I have been wanting to make it since Deb posted the recipe almost two years ago, but was always too intimidated by all the steps and the fact that I’ve never made short ribs before. Now, after having made it to my culinary Mount Everest base camp, I must say: it’s actually not that difficult to make, skill-wise. It just requires time and patience. (And money – I don’t know what short ribs are going for by you, but the three pounds this recipe called for cost me almost $30, yowch.)

I followed this recipe pretty much to the letter, except that I let the short ribs simmer in my Dutch oven on the stove for two and a half hours instead of putting the pot in the oven. It was the coolest day of that week, but the high was still in the 80s here in L.A., and I was not about to have our oven on for nearly three hours. There are other options for braising short ribs including slow cooker and Instant Pot options that I found in the recipe notes for this short rib recipe. I was also driven slightly mad by one ingredient in Deb’s recipe: “1 large carrot, chopped (about 1 1/2 cups).” I’m sorry, how fucking enormous is your (1) carrot that when chopped, it fills 1 ½ cups?! I used baby carrots, because I always have them on hand for snacking, and it took nearly half of a 16 oz. bag to come up with 1 ½ cups! Please show me any single carrot that weighs 8 oz! Deb, you crazy for this one!

All in all? I thought the flavors were gorgeous and complex. I love all the different layers (pun always intended) that onions can bring to a dish. French onion soup is a peasant dish, yet it contains a world of flavor. This definitely feels like a distinctly winter/cold weather dish, though, and I wish that I had had the patience to wait until December or January to make it. Also, at the end of the day, it’s just a fancy soup. It took me about five hours to prepare, including some passive cooking time, but not as much as I thought. Next time I spend half a day making a dish, I would like it to be more impressive-looking.

2. The next day, Sunday, our friends invited us over for a little watch party for a big F1 race. They recently got into car racing after watching a show about it on Netflix. I knew they were making chili, so I decided to bring my mom’s baked mac and cheese. It was a hit! It was very nice of them to host, but I don’t know that they made much of an F1 fan out of me. The race was very long (like two hours?) and unfortunately, pretty predictable. I’m used to watching horse racing with my dad where the races last less than two minutes and it’s truly anyone’s game. But whatever, it was great to see our friends and their little dog who we adore, they had mimosas, and I actually won the bingo game they’d made out of it, so I got a Starbucks gift card!

3. Last Monday, Budget Bytes posted a recipe for chicken and dumplings that looked so good, I knew I had to try it immediately. I’ve never made or even eaten chicken and dumplings before, but the recipe was very easy to follow. And talk about cozy! It had a very similar flavor profile to chicken pot pie, but was much less fussy to make. The only tweak I made to that recipe was using fresh thyme, rosemary, and sage instead of dried, since I already had them on hand for another recipe. The dumplings were fluffy heaven, and the leftovers were a real treat as well. Delish!!

4. Part of my cost consciousness has been trying to cook with less meat, so I also made one of my favorite meatless dinners last week, Spanish-style spinach and chickpeas, which I happily file under “accidentally vegan.” The fussiest part of that recipe is making the fried bread mash, but do NOT skip it, it provides all the flavor and texture of this incredible dish. It binds the chickpeas and spinach together and makes a light, almost creamy sauce. I would also highly suggest adding at least a half teaspoon of smoked paprika to the chickpea mix at the end, even if you plan on sprinkling some on top. It really makes the dish. And, of course, serve it with crostini. I also like to sprinkle crumbled feta on mine, or top it with some serrano ham or prosciutto, but that de-vegans it.

5. Last Thursday, I made this one pot lemon chicken and orzo. It was absolutely delicious! Why don’t I cook with orzo more? Oh right, because I can never fucking find it at my grocery store. One tweak: I was worried about the chicken thighs being cooked through after just pan frying them, so I added them back to the pot after adding the stock and mustard at step five, and let them simmer in the liquid, covered, for about 10 minutes. I removed them again, did the orzo and kale etc., and then put them back in the pot at the very end. With all the fresh herbs, my apartment smelled fucking amazing. The lemon flavor was lovely and not too strong, but I was definitely glad I had the zest in there, otherwise, I don’t know if it would have come through. I will 100% make this again! After all, who doesn’t love a one-pot meal?

6. Last Friday morning, I went back to Budget Bytes and made their apple cinnamon baked oatmeal recipe. I have been really struggling with breakfast this year. Whatever I choose to eat always ends up feeling like either too much or not enough, so I often don’t eat anything at all until after noon. Plus, I’m not a morning person, so I really need something grab-and-go. But I’m working on it, and part of that is trying to batch cook things I can eat for breakfast several days in a row, to remove the decision fatigue. Hence, this baked oatmeal. It was very easy to make, but I thought it was just okay. I kept feeling like I was eating a dessert that wasn’t sweet enough. My husband, on the other hand, liked that it wasn’t too sweet. I suppose I could have added some maple syrup on top or something. I probably will not make this again, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad recipe.

7. Another batch breakfast recipe I tried was these savory zucchini and cheese muffins. The only tweak I made to that recipe was adding a few good shakes of garlic powder to the dry ingredients in step two. They were REALLY good! Like savory scones, but moist from the zucchini, and so much easier to make. The hardest part was waiting for them to cool once they got out of the oven, because they smelled incredible. I will definitely be trying out some other savory muffin recipes in the future.

8. On Halloween, I decided that we needed a sweet treat in the house, so I made these salted brown butter crispy treats. Honestly? I don’t know that browning the butter made such a big taste difference – I would say the inclusion of salt made a bigger one. But Rice Krispies treats are always good, and they’re one of Ross’s favorites, so it made him happy. Plus, is there anything easier to make? If you’ve never made them before, you really must, they take all of five minutes and you don’t even have to turn your oven on.

9. I found a super easy recipe for honey garlic pork chops that turned out so tasty! I served them with a pear, blue cheese, walnut, and arugula salad that had me questioning why I rarely make my own salads besides the simple kale and broccoli Caesar that we eat like once a week. We almost always have a salad with dinner, but it is usually a bagged one. I also made rosemary mashed gold potatoes and roasted carrots with fresh dill, but that salad was the true star of the show.

10. And finally, time for a FAIL. With all the cooking I’ve done in the last two weeks, I was well overdue one. On Halloween night, I attempted the Smitten Kitchen winter squash and spinach pasta bake. It sounded incredible: pieces of butternut squash and spinach baked with flat pasta and three cheeses until it becomes a decadent casserole with a crispy top? Seasonal AND delicious! I loved how simple the prep was, that I basically just had to mix everything together and pour it into a dish. However, I fucked up. Or maybe the recipe fucked up? You’ll have to make the call. The first way I fucked up was by not reading the bake and rest times for this recipe carefully enough before getting started, because they turned out to be way longer than I expected (a total of two hours!), and I should have started the whole thing earlier. That one was my bad. 

Deb baked hers in a deep dish nine-inch pie pan, but said you could also put it in a 9x13 inch casserole dish. I chose to do the latter, because something bothered me about the idea of making a round baked pasta. That just don’t sit right with me. However, I made the rookie mistake of blindly trusting the bake times in the recipe and not even checking in on the dish while it was baking to see how it was doing. That was very stupid. What can I say? I was having a Halloween beer and making a lemony parmesan kale salad as a side and picking away at this newsletter in between. Unfortunately, when I took the casserole out of the oven for the final time, it was definitely overbaked. I was bummed, because I’d been waiting for that fucking thing to bake for an hour and a half! We still ate it, and Ross actually seemed to like how “crispy” it was, but this is definitely one I’m going to have to remake another time and watch like a hawk. So, be forewarned, if you make this in a 9x13, you likely won’t have to bake it as long.

Alright, Jesus H, that’s enough! Next week I will send out this month’s newsletter for paid subscribers, but even free subscribers will be able to read the intro part before the paywall.

Don’t forget to like, comment, and share this newsletter if you’d like–you can use the buttons at the bottom or the top. You can also upgrade to a paid subscription if you want more content–there’s a special button for you at the bottom of this email!

Until next time—make yourself something cozy.

Love,LizXOXO