Good morning. Top of the week at the end of the month, the high holidays gone and Columbus Day hull-down on the horizon, dawn coming a little later now, sunset earlier. In some precincts: Anxiety’s rising. Fall’s meant to be a new start, just as it was when we were all children off to a new grade, new notebooks, new classes, new schedules, new responsibilities. It can be disconcerting for adults to live in a world where that doesn’t happen, where a clear line of demarcation fades into a smudge of days, Monday to Friday, same as they ever were. Where’s the chance for a new beginning, a new way to see the world?
Maybe it’s in the kitchen. Maybe cooking more often could be your new thing. There was news not long ago that Americans are eating out less, that 82 percent of meals in America are now made at home. Cynics nod savagely: “That’s because we’re broke.” Maybe. But it’s also true that cooking for yourself and others is a way to provide joy along with sustenance, a way to strengthen bonds between family members, friend groups, neighbors, neighborhoods.
How often do you cook each week? Add a meal to that total, and see how it goes.
You could start tonight with cacio e pepe (above), a dish to reward 10,000 preparations, getting better, amazingly, each time. (Here’s Mark Bittman’s advice for your first through 10th times.) It’ll be fantastic from the start.
Then later this week, when your enthusiasm’s waning, take a look at this collection of recipes for crazy-fast dinners, ready in 20 minutes or less.
Or join me in cooking Melissa Clark’s recipe for veal Parmesan. It’s a real treat.
You could make pot roast one night or in your slow cooker one day. You could make chicken curry with sweet potatoes and coconut milk. Or pork chops with shiitake mushrooms. You see what I’m saying? You can make what you like. (You’ll love, I think, Meera Sodha’s recipe for red lentils with kale, coconut and lime, which our Tejal Rao brought to The Times last year. Serve it with hot rice and plain yogurt.)
Come browse NYT Cooking for thousands and thousands more ideas for what to cook this week, next week, every week. (You’ll need a subscription.) Come visit us on Facebook and Instagram for even more (and follow me on Twitter and Instagram for dumb jokes and blurry photographs).
And please do be in touch if anything goes sideways when you start to plan or cook, either with the recipe you’re using or with the technology that we use to run the site and apps. Just write: cookingcare@nytimes.com. We’ll come for you like Johnny Gage.
Now, it’s a great distance from the world of alliums and top-flight American charcuterie, and it is almost impossibly sad, but you should read this Rob Delaney piece on Medium. He is a beautiful writer, conversational and pure. It will break your heart.
A little less intense: Kathleen Purvis, one of the nation’s best reporters on the food beat, on secret ingredients of the Southern kitchen, in Garden & Gun. (Some fine no-recipe recipe ideas in there.)
Last Monday brought quite a headline to the police blotter of the Steamboat Pilot & Today in Steamboat Springs, Colo.
Finally, I hope you’re Internetting With Amanda Hess just as much as you can. Enjoy your dinner tonight. I’ll see you on Wednesday.
