It is an error that needs correcting that in the near-20 years of plugging recipes into this url, only a few truly star cucumbers — and highly unrepresentative too, given that we are probably eating some format of cucumbers at half the nights of the week with dinner, and snacking on them throughout all of the other days. Crunchy, cold, hydrating, inexpensive, and taking well to any region of ingredients you wish to apply, I don’t need to sell you on their appeal, especially as we slog through our nth heat wave of the summer. I suspect that the lack of cucumber representation in the archives has more to do with the fact that little about cucumber salads brings out my inner obsessive recipe finetuner; usually I’m just throwing it together.

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Do you ever look around at the ingredients available to you, the energy you have to give to the cooking process — or, as I recently explained to a medium-sized child shortly before I got uninvited from future family events, the amount of fudge you have left to give from your, uh, bucket of fudge — and decided to boil spaghetti, toss it with garlicky olive oil, and call it dinner?

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One of my most exasperating traits — or, perhaps one that makes me ideally suited for this space I invented, coincidentally, to suit my collection of traits — is that I have a terrific amount of random ingredient preparation ideas in the overflowing file cabinet of my brain that will spill into conversations the second I hear the triggering keyword.

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I’ve been pining for a springy way to combine leeks and lentils in an unfussy, one-pot, weeknight-friendly meal but would get stuck on one thing: how annoying leeks are — and I say this from a place of adoration! I think leeks are one of the most stunning vegetables, an ombre of chromatic ringlets from buttery yellow to pea green and back to a pale shade of lima. They look exactly like spring (even though it’s climatically July outside but will be March again next week), and taste even better: Oniony but not harsh and silky, wonderful, and a little sweet when braised. They should be everywhere, but first we need to address the fact that if you go to the store or market for a bundle of leeks right now, you have no idea how much leek you’re getting.

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If you want a homemade pizza that requires no kneading, no special flour, or long wait time (because who among us has ever said “what I really crave is pizza that will be ready 1 to 3 days from now”), you should really, really be making more pan pizzas at home. You might even consider it a worthwhile addition to your 2026 cooking bucket list.

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I’ve craved this specific salad all month and finally caved.

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My strongest opinion on Thanksgiving sides is that whenever possible, they should come in a casserole dish (or its chic French cousin, a gratin). I don’t mean that your sides should be limited to things that swim in cream, cheese, butter, or a happy combination of all three — although one dish in this category is highly welcome on my table — I simply mean that sides like this, that is baked in dishes with walls, tend to excel at holding up to resting times, reheat well, and stay warm longer.

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Although spinach gnudi — soft, pillowy cheese dumplings fried in browned butter and sage — are traditionally more of a spring or summer food, I’m here to make the argument we should eat them right now, in prime soup-and-sweater weather. Because did you hear the part about warm cheese? the puddle of brown butter? the earthy sage? It’s a symphony of delicious fall things and if you tell me you don’t want to curl up on the plate and take a nap in it, fine, I’ll believe you but I do think you’re in denial.

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Every September, I step up onto my soapbox to report for my self-appointed duty — one part desperate, one part cantankerous — to remind us that summer isn’t over yet. I beg us to put away the decorative gourds and pumpkin spice for just a tiny bit longer. It’s a slippery slope from “hooray, scarves!” and “look at that perfect rainbow of a tree!” to a very long winter where I forget what warmth feels like on my skin and I am beseeching us not to wish it away. Or, I struggle with change? Hm, it’s hard to tell!

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I didn’t mean to get so carried away making focaccia over the last few months, but don’t I always say that? As if I forget how easily I get consumed with a very specific idea for what a recipe should be and cannot let it go, even when it’s past time to move on. As if it was someone else who made blueberry muffins 25 times one summer until she found what she was looking for. Thus, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised but I still am: I’ve made an obscene amount of focaccia this spring and summer trying to find the recipe I’ll want to use forever. Here are five things I learned along the way:

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Last summer, a friend came to a barbecue and said, “We had soccer and then a birthday party and I had no time to make anything but I brought this” and started unloading items from a grocery bag. There were no clean cooking utensils so she and I proceeded to use our hands to break open balls of burrata and spread them on a plate, smash open cherries and pit them, sprinkling them over, crushed pistachios with the bottom of a pot, and finished the whole platter with olive oil, lots of sea salt, black pepper, and fresh mint we picked from sprigs. We lined the plate with rounds of storebought crostini, I snapped a picture and later when I shared it, dozens of you messaged me to demand a recipe or tutorial.

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Is it too hot to cook? Does the thought of even turning on the microwave feel like it might tip you too close to the surface of the sun? We are long overdue to talk about my favorite heat wave meal, one I’ve been holding out on you for five too many summers. As the president of Overthinkers Anonymous, I had my reasons. What if you’re not as obsessed with inhaling a pound of fridge-cold cucumbers as I am? What if the mere whiff of peanut sesame noodle dressing doesn’t make you want to climb into a vat of it? What if my favorite salad tofu — firm silken — isn’t your favorite salad tofu? What if you don’t have a favorite salad tofu? [Six question marks in a paragraph might be a record!]

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Everyone needs a recipe for classic, foolproof skillet french toast, even stubborn people like me who, despite making it at least once a month and more often when there’s leftover challah, are so easily bored by and restless with simple recipes that I’ve resisted writing this up for almost 19 years. I’ve filled the french toast vacuum on the site instead with customizations: casserole-style baked french toasts with cinnamon sugar toast and, uh, bailey’s (ah, the child-free years). There’s even a fancy french toast akin to individual crème brûlées. But eventually, through a combination of friends texting on random weekend mornings [“Do you seriously not have a challah french toast recipe?!”] and the existence of a teenager, who I cannot teach to make french toast for us if I haven’t written it down, I’ve come to my senses. I mean, mostly.

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Do you have a big, neglected cabbage in your fridge awaiting the right inspiration? I had a feeling you did. The way I figure it, the sidewalks are currently covered in pink and white petal confetti, the ramps are here, and the asparagus is close, thus I’m crossing my fingers that this can be our last hurrah with heavy winter vegetables until at least November. We’re going to make it a good one.

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Eighteen years is long enough for a website to go without a potato leek soup recipe, don’t you think? I’ve always been a bit torn about it — it’s thick, pale, and can be a little sleepy. And yet if there is any time of year that’s going to bring out my cravings for filling and uncomplicated soup, if there’s any time of year when my nostalgia kicks in for the thick, hearty vegetable porridges I had in Ireland with brown bread and ale, if there’s any time of year when I’d happily act and eat like a slumbering bear in a childhood fairytale, it’s January. January is biting cold and generally irredeemable unless your only commitments are to comfort and coziness. I’ll do my best to keep us covered.

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I realize, after 18 years as a part of it, that the rules of the food internet in the week before the American cooking superbowl we call Thanksgiving dictate that everything should relate back to turkey, stuffing, or pie. But friends, we have that abundantly covered in the archives, and the newsletter. So let me tell you what I’ve been making a lot lately to feed myself what I crave, and that is sheet pans of mixed vegetables roasted until almost charred, finished with a balsamic vinaigrette, and studded with heavenly, salty, crispy pillows of halloumi.

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I hadn’t planned to spend most of the fall to date making skillets upon skillets of baked, gooey, decadent macaroni and cheese, though given the state of things right now, perhaps this steady dose of comfort food was some unintended brilliance on my part. But mostly it started because we had baked mac and cheese from The Smith one night. My kids fought over the last scrapings from the pan and I reminded them — I honestly don’t even think they realize it sometimes — that I could make it for them, too. And so the next night, I pulled up my trusty Martha’s mac-and-cheese, a forever SK and internet favorite, and it immediately …irked me. Start with cooked pasta? Warm the milk for the bechamel? So many pans, so many bowls, so many steps. On a Tuesday, no less. It felt unacceptable.

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“I was looking for a simple roasted carrot recipe on your site and couldn’t find one,” a friend told me a month ago and I immediately put “simple roasted carrot recipe” on my sprawling, decades-long To Cook list because sometimes I forget myself, too. Spoiler: I was never going to write a simple recipe for roasted carrots.

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Last summer, when my younger child joined my older child at sleepaway camp for a month for the first time, leaving us unmoored and a little restless, we made a list of restaurants we’d been meaning to try and friends we don’t see enough and took this task on like it was our job. I barely cooked once. By the end of the third week, everything hurt and we realized our template for a child-free life (going out late, cocktails on weeknights, and generally behaving despicably) was based on our age and energy level when we were last child-free, which (I’m sorry as this fact seems to upset you guys as much as it does his actual parents) was almost 15 years ago.

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Even though my kids are not yet on summer break and even though I, as an adult, do not have a thing called a summer break, I’ve apparently helped myself to one. I’m sneaking off to the beach on weekdays (oops), reading novels, gorging myself on cherries and crisp-from-the-market cucumbers, playing midday tennis like a lady who lunches, and getting vexed when I receive work-related emails and texts. [“Alex, why are they texting me on a Sunday?” “Deb, it’s Tuesday.”]

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