Welcome to Smart in the Kitchen!
Here's what to look forward to on my brand new Substack
Welcome to the Smart In The Kitchen Substack. If you’ve joined me over the years on my blog, my online cooking school, or on Instagram, I’m excited to welcome you to this new Substack newsletter series. If you are brand new to Smart In The Kitchen and found me through Substack, thank you and I hope you like it here! You can find out more about me here.
This is a very laid-back corner of the Substacksphere, full of ideas to save time and try to pull off delicious weeknight meals that don’t cause a pile-up of dishes. But along the way, there’s always teaching, tips, knife skills and general cooking know-how I like to share because at my core I’m a culinary teacher.
The mission of my business is to help more home cooks plan and pull off family dinners.
I want you to be able to feed your family in a way that is sustainable in terms of effort, cost, and general energy input and output. I want you to have more consistent family dinners that create a lasting and loving memory. That might seem like a romanticized view of dinner, and if your house is anything like mine, not all of your family dinners feel particularly loving or joyful. Sometimes it can feel like a slog. And now that I only have two more years of teenagers at home before they fly the coup for college, our family dinners feel like they’re on a countdown clock. But there’s always dinner, every single day, 365 days a year.
How can I help you? If you’re looking for specific types of recipes, just let me know. Thank you for joining us and subscribing and we hope you will love the meal plans, shopping lists, recipes and cooking lessons that you learn here.
MEAL PLANS
I will share a meal plan once a month, with the first one coming up soon. For almost a decade, I’ve shared these for free over on my blog, and you can access the full archive of those meal plans here.
Over the years, many of you have asked for a shopping list to accompany the plan and we’ll be able to include those in our Substack monthly meal plans for paid subscribers. The meal plan will be included as a PDF so you can print and save it or take it to the store. All the posts and meal plans will be saved in the archives so you can revisit them at any time.
VIDEOS
My goal is to include a teaching video in every newsletter, and for our first go, I’m including one from way back in the archives. This is a knife skill you use in SO many recipes, and if you can practice it you’ll save a ton of time and energy in your prep! In other words, add a little pep to your prep. Lol, maybe not so much if you cry when cutting onions. But I do believe that a sharp knife is your cure for crying: A clean slice with a sharp blade means you are less likely to shed tears.
COOKING SCHOOL
On my cooking school site, I have several freebie resources, such as meal planning workbooks, recipe ebooks and cooking guides. You can check them all out here and sign up for as many as you’d like. I also have a cooking school membership if you’re interested in cooking with me on Zoom once a month. The membership comes with a separate members-only recipe newsletter with about 6-12 monthly recipes that coincide with our focus.
TRAVEL GUIDES
In my former life as a magazine editor and freelance writer, I would write the occasional travel blurb. I love a travel post, and this will be a great place to share itineraries, round-ups and the like. You can check out my Paris guide and stay tuned for other travel guides very soon.
That’s it for today! I hope you enjoy the Super Bowl. Let’s be honest, I’m only watching for the snacks. And Taylor.