I taught middle school band for twelve years. At 38 I started lifting weights at the YMCA down the hill, mostly because my back hurt and my doctor suggested it. Somebody at the gym told me to track what I ate for a week. I did. I was eating 58 grams of protein a day, which is roughly one chicken breast and a lot of crackers.
Every plan I found told me to eat grilled chicken, rice and broccoli. I tried it for eleven days. I hated it. My husband hated it. My kids ate cereal for dinner twice.
So I stopped looking for diet food and went back to what I already cooked. Shepherd’s pie. Chicken and dumplings. Baked ziti. Breakfast that is not a shake. I kept the dish and changed the math: more of the protein, less of the filler, cottage cheese where it would hide, lentils in the ground meat, Greek yogurt instead of half the cream.
That is this whole site. Real food, same dishes, better numbers.
What 30 grams actually means here
Thirty grams per serving, and the serving is a real portion. If a recipe says it feeds four, it feeds four adults who are hungry, not four people splitting a casserole the size of a shoebox.
I put the macros at the top of every recipe, above the story, because I got tired of scrolling past somebody’s vacation photos to find out if a dish was worth making.
Why almost nothing here uses protein powder
I do not like the aftertaste. I also do not think you should need a tub of powder to make dinner.
A few dessert recipes use it because there is no honest way around it, and those are tagged. Everything else gets its protein from food: cottage cheese, Greek yogurt, eggs, lentils, beans, chicken thighs, ground turkey, canned tuna, tofu. Where a recipe can go either way, I give you both versions and tell you exactly how many grams you lose without the powder.
What I am not
I am not a dietitian, a nutritionist or any kind of medical professional. I am a person who cooks a lot and reads labels. The nutrition numbers on this site are estimates calculated from the ingredients I used, and they will shift with your brands and your portions. If you have a health condition or you are working with a doctor on what you eat, talk to them, not to a food blog.
My kitchen
Small. One oven. A twelve inch cast iron pan I got at a garage sale, a stockpot, a sheet pan that has seen things, and a chest freezer in the garage that is the single most useful thing I own.
Everything I publish gets cooked in that kitchen with groceries from the same store you shop at. If a recipe needs a specialty ingredient, I say so up front and give you a swap.
Winter is eight months long here
Which is why there are so many soups. Duluth sits on the edge of Lake Superior and the wind comes off the water sideways from October to April. Soup season is not a marketing concept, it is most of the year.
Say hello
If you made something and it worked, or it did not, I want to hear it. The recipes get better when people tell me what went wrong. You can reach me at [email protected]