Good morning. Cheers to a new year! We have tons of exciting plans for 2025, and we’ll be sharing them first with you on the newsletter. Stay tuned.

Feeding yourself can be hard. Our goal is to help you cook well everyday.

• Let us know if you want to see anything specific from us this year — we’re here to help!

LIFESTYLE PROTOCOL 🤝

Grocery shopping w/o a list should be your 2025 resolution

Instead of shopping just for recipes, we recommend buying meal building blocks to cook meals with and reduce leftover ingredients:

Why?

Learning to cook for yourself based off available ingredients is one of the key unlocks to feed yourself every day without depending on a recipe.

• For most of history, people have had to make do with regionally/seasonally available ingredients.

• With modern day grocery stores, we have access to almost unlimited ingredients, which ironically, makes it more difficult to cook for yourself because of choice overload. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by options and not know where to start.

The solution? Give yourself constraints. Go to the store and buy a set of ingredients before knowing exactly what you are going to make with them. When you get home, you’ll be forced to use your creativity and learn to build meals by base ingredients (proteins, veg or starches, extras).

Sound scary? Follow our recommended grocery shopping framework, then use the recommended recipe collections below to help cook through your haul:

Meal Building Blocks

Start by shopping for the main components of potential meals.

• Protein (Choose 1-2)

• Vegetables (Choose 2-3)

• Starch Bases (Choose 2-3)

Meal Flavor Adjusters

Once you have the meal building blocks, these will help you season the meals and create variety as you cook.

• Sauces & Spreads (Choose 1-2)

• Aromatic Base or Garnish Upgrades (Choose 1-2)

• Sour/Pickled (Choose 1)

• Spices (Choose 1-3)

Now you’re ready to cook...

RECIPE RECOMMENDATIONS ✅

Substitution friendly recipes

You’ll never be able to make exact recipes with ingredient based grocery shopping, but thats the point. Don’t depend on the exact recipe list, but instead focus on the form factor of the meal for inspiration.

• You have total freed to switch a protein, vegetable, or even a starch base (the components of a pasta dish might go just as well over a rice bowl…)

Use whatever sauces, spices, or herbs/aromatics you need to use up to flavor the dish. Don’t feel like you need to stick to the specific cuisine:

FOOD TRENDS 🚀

Egg flights

Is this the new girl dinner for 2025?

Deviled eggs are awesome, and it’s a shame we only get them at family reunions and office parties once a year. There’s no reason we have to be deprived of the delight of snacking on a hard-boiled egg filled with flavorful ingredients.

TikTok trend took the concept of the deviled eggs and opened the door to any possible combo, without all of the effort. Take a lineup of eggs and top with with any condiment, garnish, or ingredient, without having to scoop out the yolk and pipe it back in.

• Examples we’ve seen are egg toppings inspired by BLT, kimchi, sushi, buffalo chicken, and loaded baked potato,.

We think this might actually be more than a trend and a viable meal option. Eggs are high in protein, and the “flight” model encourages people to use what they have on hand.

• It’s like a better egg salad lunch, but with less celery and less chopping.

We’re always on board with anything that helps people feed themselves with ingredients they need to use up at home. But we’ll let you guys decide the final verdict:

READER Q&A 🧠

Better vegetables at home

If you can cook vegetables well, you’ll eat a lot more of them. Here’s a few methods to make them more appealing, without needing to add a ton of extra sauces or calories:

1) Salt them properly. Vegetables with the right amount of salt actually taste amazing on their own. Think potatoes are bland? Why do people love fries — because potatoes naturally taste great with salt.

• Salting vegetables in advance can help season them evenly and also draw out some moisture, which concentrates their flavor. Pat them dry before cooking.

2) Sauté or roast vegetables on high heat so they caramelize and brown but before going mushy. These reactions create delicious flavors and textures on the surface of the vegetables.

3) Broil or grill vegetables until charred. Light blistering adds a pleasant bitterness, complexity, and smokiness that makes them taste like restaurant sides.

4) Finish with acid: a squeeze of citrus or a splash of vinegar makes the flavors pop, creates salivation on your tongue, and keeps you coming back for the next bite.

Once you’ve mastered these fundamentals, then you can experiment with flavor profiles by adding spices. But don’t make the mistake of thinking spices without proper salt, acid, and cooking technique can make vegetables taste good — they wont.

Level up: Try blanching your veggies before finishing them with high heat for light charring. This can help remove bitterness, preserve color & lock in texture, mitigating mushy vegetables.

Have a culinary question? Reply to send it in for a chance to be featured and get your question answered.

WINNING READER SUBMISSION 🏆

Steak salad

This week’s dinner winner is Maya T., who prepared a steak with roasted vegetables & salad, dressed with gochujang, honey, soy sauce, olive oil, and garlic.

• Intimidated by making steak? Watch Ethan’s 43-minute masterclass here.

Reply with your best home-cooked food photos for a chance to win & be featured!

EXTRA HELPINGS 🍽️

A read: What it's Like as a Barista at One of the World's Busiest Train Stations

In a minute or less: Cocktail shaker iced coffee

What we’re watching: Why Sushi Chefs Pay Up to $20k for These Knives

Food science: Food reactions 101: caramelization

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