the case for boring food

Keep It Simple, Stupid (talking to myself, here!)

"Simple ingredients prepared in a simple way – that’s the best way to take your everyday cooking to a higher level." – Jose Andres

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I briefly mused about this recently, but in 2026 I am leaving behind any notion or inclination about the need to constantly try novel new recipes every week. It’s been fun, we’ve had a good run, and more power to everyone out there churning out new food content regularly, but I am unsubscribing from the mental load. And I say this as someone who genuinely loves cooking and recipes and the whole process (and even has recipes on a blog!), but also I’m just downright exhausted and something’s gotta give.

We try to do family dinners most nights, and I find that when I’m constantly rotating in new recipes, my kids are less inclined to try things. Which leads to me feeling frustrated! Because in the words of Dorinda:

However, the past few months I’ve been rotating through ~20 recipes and whaddya know? My kids have been eating practically everything I’ve put in front of them. Some of the fan favorites: homemade chicken cutlets, beef stew, spaghetti bolognese, split pea soup + sourdough, Korean beef and rice bowls, white chicken chili, lentil and beef tacos, baked salmon with roasted veggies, breakfast for dinner, pizza, and other unglamorous but fan-favorite meals. And you know what else? It’s simplified grocery shopping and cut way down on my meal planning mental load.

I used to sit down on Sunday, armed with new TikTok and Instagram recipes I’d found, recipes from various newsletters, Pinterest saved ideas, and my Paprika app and be frozen like a deer in headlights. Making a grocery list felt like pulling teeth, and I had to force myself to write out a meal plan. And the thing is…

I don’t actually think we’re confused about what to cook for dinner. I think we’re overwhelmed by a million choices and paralyzed by the pressure to make every meal “interesting.”

Not every meal has to be Instagram-worthy and full of unique ingredients and flavor profiles. It’s ok if you want to cook roughly the same meals over and over again if that’s what your family likes! Barry Schwartz writes in his book, The Paradox of Choice — Why Less is More:

Autonomy and freedom of choice are critical to our well being, and choice is critical to freedom and autonomy. Nonetheless, though modern Americans have more choice than any group of people ever has had before, and thus, presumably, more freedom and autonomy, we don't seem to be benefiting from it psychologically.

You know when you want to sit down, chill out, and watch a movie, but open up your various streaming platforms and are suddenly bombarded with hundreds of thousands of options, so you end up deciding to watch something you’ve already seen before? Or get fed up entirely and opt to not watch anything, maybe even canceling everything in a fit of rage about the state of streaming? That’s how it feels cooking dinner these days. I feel beaten over the head with everything I should be cooking, could be cooking, would be cooking, if only I were more organized or more creative or just ~better~.

But food doesn’t always have to be exciting! It can be, like today’s quote, simple ingredients, prepared in a simple way. It feels like we’re drinking from a firehose of food content, and I fear that if I continue down my current path, I won’t ever develop really rockstar, signature dishes that my family comes to know and love because I rarely prepare anything more than once or twice.

It’s also entirely possible that this is a me issue, but judging from the world of SEO and Pinterest and social media, I find it hard to believe that I’m alone in feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of recipes that exist. I mean, just look what a quick search of “weekly dinners” in the cooking subreddit garners you. We’re driving ourselves batty, and for WHAT?!

Taste nails it in this article about “grandma cooking”:

Meanwhile, the proliferation in food media of recipes featuring a revolving door of trendy ingredients—offering little in the way of historical or culinary context and rarely any interconnection besides knocking us sideways with umami, spice, or acidity—have rendered us restless flavor magpies, ever seeking what’s next.

Granny cooking, meanwhile, yanks us squarely back home. Simple techniques—passed down and honed until they become muscle memory—lay the groundwork for many dishes that have become canon in food media. Long before restaurants touted $300 farm-to-table tasting menus and Sam Sifton extolled the joy of recipe-free cooking in the New York Times, family matriarchs cooked and preserved ingredients from their backyards out of necessity and frugality—and relied on look and feel over weights and measures.

I initially started gardening because I was fascinated by the wide variety of vegetable seeds available to home growers that never hit grocery store shelves —typically heirloom varieties that aren’t up to snuff in the eyes of produce buyers, or because they don’t have that long shelf life that maximizes ~shareholder value~. So instead of jumping around, frantically trying every new recipe I see that strikes my fancy, I’m kicking it old school like granny this year. Using what we have, what’s in season, and cooking what my family likes, algorithms be damned.

This year, I’m giving myself permission to be boring. I’m cooking the same meals on repeat, and have printed out my tried-and-true ones and started assembling a binder that I can use, instead of pulling up various apps and websites. I’m simplifying our grocery shopping and shaving dollars off the budget there. I’m going to nail the household classics, instead of chasing novelty. Our weeknight dinners don’t need to be fancy and unique, and my kids don’t need the latest NYT recipe —they need consistency and reliable home-cooked meals, prepared with love, and not the latest “it” ingredient of the year. That’s not to say I’ll never try new recipes! But I’ll do them maybe once a month or so, ensuring that they don’t add to my mental load, but are a fun endeavor on a Saturday or Sunday when I have time.

So if you’ve been stuck in the scroll, frozen in meal-planning hell, drowning in bookmarks and “must-try” links, then join the club. Pick 15-25 meals and make them on rotation until you know them by heart. Life feels hard enough these days, so the last thing that should be stressing us out is what to make for dinner.

Until next Friday,

Amy

Based on Worcester, MA data

Sunrise: 6:53 am | Sunset: 5:09 pm | Day length: 10 hours, 16 minutes | Moon phase: Waning Gibbous | Weeks until last frost: 14

I solemnly swear that this weekend, I will tidy up my basement seed starting area and sit my butt down and place my seed orders. I’m getting the gardening itch, especially from the past few weeks’ of Master Gardener lectures around soil science, plant nutrition, and composting — I’m an eager little beaver to get out in the garden this spring!

But alas, we have a cold snap headed our way yet again this weekend, with the feels-like temperature slated to be -30ºF. Frankly, it’s just rude. We still have about 1.5’ of snow on the ground, and allegedly we’ve got 6 more weeks of winter in store. I may bite the bullet this spring and order a soil blocking tool, as I’ve been thinking about it for the last four years. That and all of my seed trays are buried in my garden under said 1.5’ of snow.

Towards the end of the month, I’ll plant my onion seeds, and maybe an early round of cabbage and kale varieties. But if you aren’t starting anything yet, don’t worry! You’ve got all the time in the world.

I’ll keep these links here for the next few weeks so they’re easy to find if the mood strikes:

• The Ultimate List of Trusted Seed Companies Recommended by Real Gardeners

• Starting Seeds Inside: A Beginner-Friendly Guide

• How to Start a Vegetable Garden as a Total Beginner

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

Botany for Gardeners: An Introduction to the Science of Plants by Brian Capon

• Adding lentils to anything and everything. Ross from Friends voice, “Have you seen the price of ground beef?!” Enter: the humble lentil. I use them to beef up taco meat, sloppy joes, meat sauce, in curries, honestly anywhere. Stretch your dollar and get some extra fiber? Win-win, I say.

• Watching old episodes of Martha, Ina, and Julia Child. The ultimate comfort shows, IMHO, and my own personal trinity.

• Having a weekly house cake on a cake stand. My 3.5 year old son is an avid little baker and loves to do mostly everything himself, so I’m rolling with the punches and following his lead. The current favorite is a lemon olive oil cake, but we recently made the classic French Gâteau au Yaourt. See, a classic! That you can memorize and adapt with your own flair!

The MAHA Women Who Refuse to Give Up Their Botox [The Cut]

What’s the Deal with Quince? [Brand Panic]

Potatoes have their roots in ancient tomatoes [Science News]

It’s Peak Orange Season—How to Choose the Best for Juicing, Snacking, and Cooking [Serious Eats]

‘It’s just a weird, weird bird’: Why we got the dodo so absurdly wrong [BBC]

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