Welcome to the free issue of Between the Layers: An honest conversation about life through the lens of cooking and baking. For more recipes, consider becoming a Paid Subscriber. When You Hate to Cook - No. 149A simple but good skillet mac & cheese might change your mind.
Writing this newsletter on 9/11 was a sad reminder of that day, 21 years ago, when the world stopped. Blue skies, normal lives, then it all changed. We will remember. And I found it hard to keep my eyes off the news this past week following Queen Elizabeth II’s death. This Thursday, I try my hands at a lovely British pudding to ‘’honour’’ her.
When I fall into a cooking rut, I go grocery shopping. I know, it’s counter to everything experts tell us about impulse buying, but for inspiration I head to a farmer’s market, Trader Joe’s, a corner greengrocer, or even Costco to experience the sights, smells, and temptations. (Sadly, I don’t feel this way at my local Kroger where shopping is more of a military exercise than sensual experience.) Just a week or so ago, a new subscriber named Sarah writes in the comments, ‘’I do love to read about food because I love to eat 😊 And I am very lucky in that after I had our first child eight years ago, my husband took over all the cooking (it was either that or starve, as I just couldn't do it all) and it has become one of his serious hobbies. I try to give him a break when I can, once or twice a week, which is why your Costco post was so impactful—I make lots of modified Costco meals and the new ideas were so helpful.’’ You think I don’t read your comments? I love your comments, and I didn’t realize my cooking strategy involved ‘’modified Costco meals.’’ But it does. As much as I love being in the kitchen measuring, smelling, tasting, and watching the cakes bake, I love a good shortcut. But I don’t hate cooking. I cook for the same reason Sarah cooks when she has to. I love to eat.
Peg, on the other hand, hated to cookA clever advertising copywriter in Portland, Oregon, Peg Bracken wrote the I Hate to Cook Book in 1960. She would have rather dined out than bake a meatloaf at home, or more to the point, rather wrapped her hand around a dry Martini than wet flounder. So like some feminist Don Draper (is that possible?) she took to the kitchen with her friends she called the Hags and instructed us in good humor how to cook when you hate it. I don’t know about you, but when Peg talks, I listen. Essentially, Peg Bracken’s plan was to fake it, stay in the kitchen long enough to make dinner, or at least look like she was making dinner. Many recipes are based on cans of soup, indicative, too, of the ‘60s, and she masqueraded store-bought rolls as her own. Who cares? (Did she pop a Stouffer’s lasagna into her own 13- by 9-pan as I have done on one occasion?) As an author, I’m gobsmacked a woman who abhored the kitchen could create 180 recipes and have them kitchen-tested by other ‘’housewives who used to feel hostile to the kitchen,’’ too—an organizational feat!
Peg didn’t want to get too good at cooking enchiladas or her husband wouldn’t take her out for them. She didn’t know tomatoes and basil were meant for each other, and even if she had been told, she said she would have forgotten it. And she didn’t know the size of her mixing bowls - I only know the size when it’s printed on the bottom - so why all the exactitude in recipes, she wondered. And no cooking utensils for Christmas, said the Grinch. In order to make it into the book a recipe had to pass her test: taste good, be easy to make, involve a meat and vegetable in one dish, be made ahead if possible, and never call for bouquet garni. Here are some of Peg’s best dinner ideas. My comments are in parentheses:
Leftover food comes with guiltIf you can’t bring yourself to dispose of it, Peg said, ‘’put it in the refrigerator, and there it stays, moving slowly toward the rear as it is displaced by other little glass jars half full of leftover ham loaf and other things. And there it remains until refrigerator-cleaning day, at which time you gather it up along with its little fur-bearing friends, and with a great lightening of spirit, throw it away.’’ What about leftover cake?
What do you cook when you don’t feel like cooking?
Sarah’s Peg Bracken move is what she calls "snack dinner.’’It’s ‘’basically an unfancy charcuterie board with whatever's on hand for two small children and two adults. Always cheese and crackers, olives, and cured meat, with whatever else I can find to throw on there.‘’ Not quite in the mood to cook dinner, I reached for a copy of my book, The Dinner Doctor. Every trick I had was in that book, the ways I got three children to eat supper, and how I made cooking for company look so easy, beginning with just a box or bag of something. But, you know, cooking isn’t easy. You’ve got to want to do it because of the time involved, the expense, and the boredom that can set in if you cook the same thing over and over. But this is why we have food newsletters! And cookbooks! And magazines and good friends and those inspirational ltrips to the store… To end on a high note, I just read a lovely piece over on Mark Bittman’s newsletter, written by Mike Diago, and apologies if there is a paywall. Mike is a social worker in a high school in northern Westchester County, New York. He started working with troubled teens during the pandemic, and he’s continued to get to know a group of students who enjoy cooking. They formed a cooking club. Cooking may seem like drudgery to some, but to others it’s a balm for their mental health. I don’t know what I would have done without cooking and baking to make me more confident as a pre-teen. Cooking is creative, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Just like we don’t have to be either. And maybe that’s where Peg and I are more alike than different. I’ve always cooked for other people who needed to be fed. (I bet she did, too.) It’s part of my story, and I instinctively share recipes with others. I’m sharing a skillet mac and cheese with you today. Peg shared recipes, too, when she wrote this cookbook, which sold more than three million copies. Like I said, Peg was clever.
Coming Thursday for Paid Subscribers
My tribute to Queen Elizabeth II. It’s called A Queen of Puddings. I’ve been baking so many meringue pies working on this baking cookbook that attempting unknown territory on a random Thursday didn’t seem difficult to tackle…I could have shared a recipe for Coronation Chicken, that’s a goodie. It supposedly was the chicken salad (with curry seasonings) prepared for the Queen on her coronation in 1953. I’ll bet my British readers know it! Thanks to Nashville artist, author, and fabric designer Anna Maria Horner who texted me over the weekend because she was making this mac and cheese to go with salmon and a green apple salad recipe she had been served in Sydney, Australia. I added the sliced tomatoes in an attempt to try something new, and I’ll bet knowing Anna Maria’s eye for color, that’s what drew her in. Hope you have a good week! - xo, Anne
My Skillet Mac and CheeseChildren gladly offer their opinions of food if it doesn’t suit them. I learned this by trying to please my children with homemade mac and cheese. Saucy, baked, crispy on top, doctored up from the box, I just never seemed able to make a mac and cheese that suited them. Until I created this recipe blueprint that uses the pasta you like, enough sauce to make it saucy enough for those not patient enough to allow mac and cheese time to bake in the oven, and crunchy bread crumbs that garnish a baked mac and cheese for those who do. And when sliced tomatoes are placed underneath the bread crumb topping, well, it’s a beautiful site to behold! Promise your kids will love it, plus, it goes straight from oven to table! Makes 8 servings Prep: 40 to 45 minutes Bake: 10 to 12 minutes
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