The One Breakfast You Know How to Make
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Total Time: Just enough to make you slightly late to work | Servings: More than you’ll end up eating
Ingredients:
Carbs
Eggs
Something healthy like spinach to curb your guilt
Slightly more milk than what’s left in the carton
Directions:
Combine ingredients in medium bowl to make a gelatinous paste-batter, which you will instinctively taste because you have a secret love of bitter, yeast-flavored gruel and not because it didn’t cross your mind that not all batter tastes like cake.
Cook in a skillet on medium heat. You’ll know it’s done when the heavens align in perfect cosmic formation. Enjoy your inevitably undercooked or slightly burnt meal.
Tip: Make this recipe on a Sunday evening and freeze individual portions to enjoy a week’s worth of pre-made breakfasts that you will only eat for two days and then ignore.
Fancy Lunch You Found on Epicurious Instead of Eating Leftovers
Prep Time: A gross underestimation | Total Time: All morning, starting immediately after breakfast | Servings: 1.5
Ingredients:
Small amount of meat
Vegetable
Trendy vegetable
Trendy vegetable that’s out of season
Something you can only find at Whole Foods
Rare imported item from a specialty foods store
Weird variant of normal food item
Directions:
Collect only the finest authentic ingredients, traveling within a 30-mile radius as necessary. This lengthy ritual affirms you’ve made it as a proper adult, one who makes lunch with more than three ingredients, several of which are organic and very expensive.
Combine well. Conclude that this must be what it’s like to be The Gwyneth, Holy Mother of Goop. Calculate the odds that you’re both simultaneously doing the same thing right this very minute. According to the multiverse theory, technically you probably are. Congratulations!
Let simmer for an hour, then spend 10 minutes searching your cabinets for an ingredient you forgot to buy. You won’t find it. Substitute something else at random.
Cook for another hour, pull out of oven, inspect, sprinkle with the smallest amount of Rare Expensive Item. Store Rare Expensive Item in a cool, dark place for the next tenant to find after you move out.
This dish is done when you are too hungry to conclude otherwise. Realize this was too much effort for bland food. You are not Gwyneth. You don’t even like kale. Starve until dinner out of spite.
Brunch After Your Friends Cancelled on You
Ingredients:
Booze
???
Directions:
Consume booze. Forget that there’s anything else to this recipe.
The Comfort Food Dinner
Prep Time: A gross underestimation | Total Time: As long as it takes to make you feel like a total failure | Servings: 6 (somehow), but you’ll wind up eating two servings and feeling guilty anyway. “Do normal, well-adjusted people eat portions this small?” you will ask. They do.
Ingredients:
1/4 of a vegetable that will rot in your crisper for the next three months
Inconvenient measurement of single-serve item
One ingredient you have on hand
Ingredient you’ve never heard of
Ingredient you don’t like
Lots of cheese
Seasonings you surprisingly do have on hand
Fresh herb that costs more than anything else on this list
Directions:
Commit to making this meal despite your hunch that you won’t like it. The Internet gave it five stars and you want to be the type of person who cooks five-star-tasting meals. Maybe then you could host dinner parties and bring something other than Pigs in a Blanket to potlucks. People would refer to you as The Person Who Makes That Amazing Dish. You’ll be expected to make it for every holiday party and work gathering lest you endure passive-aggressive whining from friends and coworkers. The responsibility to recreate this dish over and over again will consume your entire social schedule and later, your soul.
Screw it. Order a pizza.
Dessert You Picked Out at Random
Prep Time: However long it takes you to wash your measuring cup five times | Total Time: A few hours | Servings: too many for you alone, but too few for an event
Ingredients:
The zest of 4 lemons and the juice of 3.5
Assorted fruits
Egg
Flour
Several sticks of butter
Granulated sugar
Brown sugar (packed…no, more packed than that)
Confectioner’s sugar
Corn syrup
Directions:
Add lemon zest and juice. Take a stand by using ALL of the lemons and Every. Single. Last. Drop. of lemon juice. That’ll show those jerk recipe writers that you won’t be pushed around by vague units of measurement any longer.
Combine wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix together with an old (does that make it vintage?) hand mixer and all the arm strength you can muster. Use another bowl to mix frosting. It’s universally known that the more dishes a dessert requires, the better it is.
Bake for one extra minute than suggested, or until slightly burnt. Eat a small amount and then toss because you only taste lemons and sugar.
To repair broken ego, rant on social media and eat a box of Thin Mints instead.
Tags: amanda duncil, food, humor, recipes
This would be my life, if I actually got around to trying the recipes I look up and nod sagely at.
Family Recipe From The Old Country
Prep time: Twice as long as your mother took to make it / Total Time: You could have booked a goddamn flight to the Old Country and bought this food from a local in less time / Servings: Never as many as Granny got out of this recipe, even though yours is the exact same
Ingredients:
You don’t have any of them on hand, and they’re only available at that one ethnic store that also sells pickled pig feet. But you’re going to buy them all anyway, because substitutions Just Aren’t Authentic.
Directions:
You have to boil something, a lot of somethings. Even if it’s bread. If there’s produce, dice it with the knife skills of a two-year-old. If there’s dough, just let it fucking crumble and accept your mediocrity. If there’s some exotic kind of meat, be prepared for any kids to scream at you about killing poor baby whatevers. Your kitchen will be full of steam and your dining room will be full of judgmental old people and you are always going to be a disgrace to your heritage.
how did you get into my life though, that’s weird
I have a “recipe” from my grandmother that is legit just a list of ingredients. Ingredients, I may add, that include “sauerkraut juice” as well as “prunes.”
My mother-in-law tends to do this. She (is American, from the Midwest, but spent a few years in Turkey and England) gave us a binder of my husband’s favorite recipes. One is just a list of ingredients, with the Turkish ingredients in one column and the American equivalent in the next column. Guess who got the columns mixed up and got like 3x more end product because American vegetables are enormous??
This last Christmas, I worked with my grandmother to compile all of her recipes into cookbooks as presents for the rest of the grandkids. I am very well acquainted with the list of ingredients masquerading as a recipe. When I asked Mema for clarification, she would say helpful things like “What do you mean what then? You cook it!”
And then, on the other side of the spectrum but somehow even worse, there are the recipes that were works-in-progress. The first version was clipped from a newspaper, maybe, or obtained long ago from a relative that was close enough to feel like sharing a recipe but not so close that they’d ever know their recipe had turned into a science project. Every measurement would be crossed out several times over. The marginalia would have the original text surrounded and outnumbered. One of these combinations is the key to a beloved family favorite – the other ninety-six are just recipes for sad-eyed dinner guests lamenting it Just Doesn’t Taste The Same.
This is why your grandparents are responsible for teaching you to cook before handing out the family recipes. Because at a certain point of proficiency, “you cook it” seems like the only logical answer, because it’s very easy to forget all the hard work of learning that led to that point.
TLDR- My nana taught me to bake starting at age 6 so her confusing family recipe cards actually make some sense to me.
You beautiful soul: this is every single experience I’ve had making any Nigerian/West African dish ever. Don’t forget the step where you desperately call your mother/grandmother/auntie for help, and they smack their lips and say, “HOW MUCH CAYENNE PEPPA? AH-AH, what kind of a oyinbo question is that? Just PUT SOME” as they make enormous gestures with their hands that have no correspondence to any American or metric unit of measurement whatsoever
My mother’s usual cooking instruction is “until it looks right.” Helpful.
“Hey, how much flour goes in this?”
“I use around 9 handfuls.”
??????????
That’s my grandmother. “Oh, about a handful.” My mom is constantly reminding her, “Ok, but Mom, MY handful is different than YOUR handful.”
It’s a futile attempt because you didn’t make it in cast iron cookware. And even if you did, you didn’t make it in antique cast-iron cookware. And even if you did, you didn’t season the cookware properly. And even if you did, you didn’t use free-range meat or organic produce. And even if you did, you didn’t do the thing that you have to do to certain ingredients that you can never remember the name of but basically involves letting it sit out on the counter and/or covering it and/or hitting it with things that you’d think don’t belong in the kitchen. And if you managed to do all those things, congratulations, you’re a foodie, but it doesn’t matter anyway because there are chemicals in the air and water that weren’t there when Grandma was still alive that make everything taste different and wrong, and also fuck you because you’re a foodie.
This makes me feel better about the Quinoa Disaster I created last night.
Oh, do tell. I made a breakfast quinoa disaster that still haunts me. *shudders*
One time I got back from a run and since I was obviously feeling all healthy and smug I decided to make and eat some quinoa before I showered. Then I spilled ALL the quinoa on my bare, sweaty legs, so I had to take a shower because quinoa sticks to sweaty legs and there was literally no way to get it all off.
Just a lil’ Quinoa Disaster story to make you feel even better.
CURSE YOU, QUINOA!
This story just made my afternoon FYI.
D-:
WHAT IF IT SWELLS UP IN YOUR DRAIN AND CLOGS IT? “Sorry, Ms/Mr Plumber, I don’t know WHY my bathtub drain is stuffed with stinky grain products!”
If it’s the “final straw” for your tub a quarter inch drill auger will push it through in under an hour. Be sorry for your innocent pocketbook.
On the plus side, you now know what to name your band: Quinoa Disaster.
I have some sort of Grain Jinx going on these days – after years of cooking rice and quinoa and whatnot like a fucking champ, all of a sudden I’m producing sodden gluey messes and cannot for the life of me figure out why.
!! Either your stove is breaking down and now heating things differently, your water has changed significantly, or your supplier has changed their supplier. Or some combination of the three. At least, those have been my experiences.
Pasta Carbonara: They make it look so simple and effortlessly luxurious on TV. You had this one plate of the stuff when you were in Italy that was just to die for. You follow the instructions to the letter. But somehow you still end up with what feels suspiciously like raw egg on pasta.
I will never figure out carbonara, though I have the opposite problem of ending up with egg that’s been cooked too much.
There’s a Michael Ruhlman recipe in his book Egg that has never failed me. It’s not “authentic” in that in contains cream, but who cares, it works perfectly and you get creamy delicious egg-parm sauce for your pasta.
This is my brother’s favorite meal and I have actually figured out how to make it (eggbeaters and keep the burner on after you drain the pasta) BUT I will share with you my easier, healthier alternative: use goat cheese instead of cream, eggs, and Parmesan. It is delicious.
carbonara is satan
This is amazing and hilarious and such an accurate description of my cooking life that I am not sure whether to laugh or cry so I settled on both and now everyone in the office thinks I’m weird.
We here at The Toast think you’re weird, too. But with us it’s a high compliment and a requirement.
My favorite dinner recipe is Looking At Food Porn Cookbooks While Eating Noodles And Ketchup.
I have definitely made all these things, though I usually have the recipe with the extra frozen servings for lunch.
It wasn’t even a fancy recipe or anything, I’m just terrible at cooking. The idea was that the quinoa would cook in a pot along with a bunch of other stuff (beans and tomatoes etc) but it totally did not cook properly and I was in a rush to leave the house so I attempted to eat three-quarters cooked quinoa and it was preeeetty terrible so I made the executive decision to throw it out and eat a granola bar.
The realest part of this is the dinner serving size. If it says it serves four, my two-person household will consume it with negligible-to-zero leftovers.
But also, who doesn’t want to be the person who always brings pigs in a blanket to potlucks?
This is one of many reasons I love Yotam Ottolenghi’s recipes– he actually understands how much food people eat. Unfortunately though, I’m so used to needing to always double a recipe if I want a significant amount that I have ended up buried in mountains of eggplant before I learned to trust him that 4 servings= 4 servings.
omg I had two cups of coffee and no lunch and now I am thinking about Ottolenghi and specifically this barley and feta thing from Jerusalem and I think I need to go eat
I really like his recipes, but I hardly ever cook out of his books, mostly because (I’m thinking here of Plenty and Plenty More specifically) no one dish makes a meal and I have a hard time pairing things from those books up for some reason.
Also, and this is only tangentially related, but I need to go on record and say that I am Over chickpeas. Fuck them and their weird skins and the way they never seem to be quite cooked enough. Go home, chickpeas, and call me when you’re hummus.
I tend to make big batches of some kind of fancy vegetable thing and eat it for lunch with an easy-to-cook protein like chicken sausage, so Ottolenghi works great for that. But yeah, they all are kind of very specific spice combos so I can see it being tough to pair things up with.
I’m with you on the chickpeas; however, the hummus recipe from Jerusalem is fantastic.
That seems like the approach that would work best; spouse doesn’t eat meat though so it gets a little tricky. Although the saffron couscous cakes in Plenty More are freaking addictive and I make a quick tomato sauce and steam some spinach with them and it’s Very Good.
Oooh I have not made those yet. Back in my veg days I did the same approach except with that pre-packaged baked tofu stuff instead of chicken sausage.
i feel the same way about the not-quite-a-meal thing with ottolenghi, BUT there is this one recipe from jerusalem for pea and yoghurt pasta that is to die for and i could eat it forever. i suggest you go and make it at once.(recipe here: http://orangette.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/told-you…
Ugh I find exactly the same thing. I DO NOT HAVE TIME to make two dishes, I just want dinner.
Though the tagliatelle/panko/mushrooms/cream dish from Plenty is on regular rotation at my place, because unf.
I am not over chickpeas, though, sorry.
I just read back what I wrote and I think I am being guilty of Fancy Dinners? Also I was wrong about the tagliatelle, it is actually papardelle: http://gratineeblog.com/2013/06/yotam-ottolenghis…
But there’s always the possibility that if it says it serves four, the two of you will have a big bowl each for dinner that day, and another big bowl for lunch the next day, and then be eating leftovers far, far beyond the point where you are utterly sick of them, or maybe shove them in the freezer and take them out 6 months later and go, “I *think* those are lentils in there,” and throw them out and order pizza.
This is why I barely read food blogs/sites anymore. The breakfast one gets me every time. I think oooh something different than toast that might not make me hunger by 9am but I read through it and know that’s exactly what it would be like.
It’s why I love reading Nigel Slater cookbooks. Makes feel like I could just throw handfuls of stuff I have in my house into a pot and end up with dinner. Sometimes it even works out like that.
Damn you, I had just this morning made a declaration that I will Save Money By Not Buying So Many Books this month, but I had never heard of Nigel Slater and now I want ALL THE COOKBOOKS. Oh well. That was a stupid goal anyways.
Have you read his memoir, Toast? I don’t cry when I read but that one had me sobbing. And hungry. And weirdly horny.
I just want to report that over the last couple of years I have actually become a Person Who Makes Nice Breakfasts For Themselves and Makes Nice Dishes To Eat As Leftovers for Lunch all week, and it’s just as satisfying as everyone imagines. I’m so smug I barely even feel the need to show up for work. Once I made a Mason Jar Salad! Who needs a 401(k), I AM GROWNUP.
Isn’t it satisfying?! I do fancy (not cereal or toast) breakfasts for myself most Saturdays. I also make about three meals a week and eat leftovers for other dinners and lunches. So time/cost efficient (so long as you don’t use the expensive ingredients, I’m a huge fan of cabbage right now)
So satisfying! My ‘fancy breakfast’ cheat is two fried eggs on toast, with one extra thing to make it feel truly fancy like goat cheese or kimchi or pesto or avocado spread. And I usually cook a big batch of a few things over the weekend and eat that for lunch all week (this does tend to lead to some misery when I’m sick of the thing and it’s gotten lame and mushy by Thursday or Friday but, baby steps).
Being a member of the Park Slope Food Coop has also dramatically improved my fanciness because I can actually count on that one weird fancy ingredient actually being available and affordable. And obviously being a member only increases my smugness. I am BASICALLY GOOP.
Fried eggs on toast is my favorite breakfast (hence my user picture here).
Sometimes I get fancy and make soft boiled eggs.
Unless I’m having a Horrible, Horrible Week (TM), I’ve become this person also, and it’s GREAT! Internet high five!
High five right back at ya! The downside is it makes your Horrible Weeks kind of extra horrible because you’ve become so dependent on your food routine. :/
I don’t do breakfast because eating early in the day makes me gag, but I do cook good stuff for dinner and am actually quite a good cook, so we usually have tasty leftovers for lunch too, and it kind of rocks. I also plan my meals ahead of time and go to farmer’s markets. I can’t pay a parking ticket on time, mind you, but I have my grocery and dinner situation sorted.
Yeah I’m wearing my underwear inside out because I’m too lazy to do laundry but lunch was a Southwest quinoa salad with chicken sausage, avocado and dandelion greens. It’s all about your priorities, and realizing that the only real priority in life should be food.
Oh my god my laundry situation is a fucking disaster.
Good cooks, bad laundresses: My people! (I am a foodperson and basically the antithesis of this post.)
yeah, i realized a couple years back that since I love to eat good foods, I better learn how to cook ’em all. The cooking end I give myself full adult cred….the cleaning end is OK but I’ll let a pan linger a day or two
Oh, yes, pans. They are The Devil. Many a ‘wiped clean’ pan has sufficed for dinners in my house.
I’m CRYING this is too real.
(if I ever get either my food *or* laundry situation under control, it will be my food one, and then I will give up in a pile of happy crumbs.)
I am a champion laundry manager. I enjoy handling textiles. But I do not cook. Ever. Never will. But I like to eat. I eat all the things. Would you cook for me? I could do your laundry.
YES PLEASE. At first I was like ‘hm that wouldn’t balance out financially’ but when you consider all the hand-wash only and dry-clean-only clothes that I bought in massive fits of moronic optimism and have festered in my hamper ever since, I think we’d break even.
Cooking is my therapy, so the deliciousness of my meals is inversely proportional to how I feel about the rest of my life. I am living abroad and incredibly homesick and sad and wracked with anxiety, but dinner last night was pan-fried gnocchi with home made tomato sauce, so.
I have recently learned to poach an egg, and I feel more legitimately grownup now. Achievement unlocked!
WOW. That I cannot do. I tried a few times and it involved empty soup cans and vinegar and it was just a giant disaster
The other week, I actually looked at my pinterest food board before I went shopping, bought everything on my list, and made both dinner and dessert off it. And both recipes worked.
*bows down*
I hate you.
show off
Back when my fiancée and I had just started dating I made this horrible eggplant disaster. He ate it and said it wasn’t that bad, which was how I knew he loved me.
Reader, etc….
i love that you don’t have to finish that last sentence for everyone to know exactly what you’re talking about.
(also, sounds like you found a keeper. 🙂 )
It took me a long time, but I did!
Also, love your username – did you actuallybuild your own house?
TBH, I don’t need friends to cancel on me to declare Booze for Brunch. Or Dinner.
Reminds me of the time I made grease water with chicken and mushrooms.
guys, legitimely, bake eggs in muffn tins and then you have a not disgusting easy breakfast EVERY DAY.
or as many damn days as you have until your boyfriend eats all of them. (and or you eat a couple for breakfast and a couple as afterwork snacks. but mostly that first part.)
LOL. This is the one that always gets me.
Kale salad to start your new diet
1 Bunch kale
1/4 cup cranberries
Crumbles of goat cheese
Bottled dressing — no! That’s processed! Make your own! Mix balsamic vinegar, oil, agave together. Taste. Grimace. Maybe it will be better on the salad…
Take photo of salad. Eat one bite, two bite. Slowly cover each piece with more and more goat cheese. Serve yourself a piece of bread and butter to complement the salad.
Stop eating salad. You fucking hate kale.
Kale is terrific but I seriously do not understand why people are torturing themselves with it. A little bit of roughage can go a long way if you’re not a crazy person like me who thinks that chopped up cabbage is a meal.
THE RECIPE CALLING FOR MORE ZEST THAN THE JUICE YOU NEED. This ruins me every time. That, and needing 3 egg yolks but only 1 egg white. I know there are ways to save these things and use them later, but why can’t they just be eveennnnnn
UGH the egg thing drives me INSANE! Or when it’s like like x whites and 1 yolk. JUST USE THE WHOLE THING, PLEASE.
This is alarming accurate.
I love foodgawker and pining recipes, but they might as well be called “foods that I will never make because screw it I’m ordering pizza that I will be eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next three days.”
I always worry about whether my brown sugar is packed enough.
My contributions:
Basic Keto Recipe: A shitload of bacon, crumbled; a shitload of shredded cheese, just about any type except American because it’s Satan’s smegma; some vegetable that you’d otherwise never eat. Mix it all together and nuke it for a while and then mix it again and shove the whole mess down your throat while you tell yourself that all those before-and-after pics on the keto subreddit can’t be lies.
Basic Chocolate Dessert: As above for Dessert You Picked Out at Random, but at one point you melt some chocolate chips and you wipe away a stray strand of chocolate with your pinky and lick it and then you dip in your index finger up to the first knuckle and then you realize that you’ve still got half a bag of chocolate chips left and it’s all a little hazy after that.
ahahaaa!!! i had to explain "this tastes like i hate myself" to my partner the other night. i thought i was being super smart using fruit flavored sparkling water as a mixer. so bad! he took a sip and the look on his face confirmed that he now understands the meaning of the phrase.
Have you read his memoir, Toast? I don't cry when I read but that one had me sobbing. And hungry. And weirdly horny.
oh my god, I have a comfort food side dish (and it is actually easy, if anyone is interested) but I’ve grown to despise making it because I am asked to bring it to every. single. family meal and social function. It’s my official Signature Dish That I Hate.
OK pretty curious what it is, even though I’m not sure I want to invite this on myself.
My grad program is full of vegans. So many lentils, so much sadness.
OK pretty curious what it is, even though I'm not sure I want to invite this on myself.