Easy Meals for Working Parents
or, an interview with Caroline Chambers of "What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking"
When I was prepping for my episode of A Day in Her Life podcast, I listened to a previous episode featuring Caroline Chambers. The blurb said she authored a weekly Substack called What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking, which honestly felt like a newsletter that almost every working parent I know needs 😂.
I’ll be honest, my husband does the vast majority of the cooking in our household—not only does he (usually) enjoy doing it, he’s extremely good at it. My primary culinary skills include: nailing the ratio of butter to milk in Kraft mac and cheese, overcooking chicken breasts, and under-salting the pasta water. Despite my best efforts to avoid the kitchen, there are times when I have to suck it up and cook. In those situations, I really appreciate a crystal-clear, easy-to-follow recipe. And this is what Caroline excels at.
Caroline is a recipe developer, food writer, and the author of Just Married: A Cookbook for Newlyweds. She’s also a mom of three boys under the age of 6 and her goal is to “develop recipes that dirty minimal dishes, use fewer ingredients, and require less time - but still absolutely rock”. Plus, her instructions are super easy to follow and always include a full list of substitutions in case you have allergies, picky eaters, or you just ran out of oregano and need to know what you can use instead. Enjoy our interview below!
Q: Let's say sh*t is hitting the fan. You got home from work late, the kids are fighting, and everyone is super hangry. What do you make when you have 20 minutes or less to get food on the table?
A: Frozen potstickers and broccoli with peanut sauce. It is the most reliable way to get protein and vegetables into my kids' bodies with zero whine attacks. I throw the potstickers (Trader Joe's pork or chicken) and broccoli florets into the steamer basket together so they cook at the same time for 5 to 6 minutes. While they're cooking I make a peanut sauce—mixing together creamy peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, and a TINY BIT of sriracha. They absolutely crush this meal.
Q: When you have a little more time, what's one meal that you're always excited to make?
A: Healthy-ish turkey bolognese. Again, a fantastic way to get tons of veg and protein into my kids, and it's so delicious that I'd make it for a dinner party. It's such a JOY when the kids, my husband and I can all enjoy the same exact meal.
Ingredients:
2 medium carrots, washed (no need to peel) and trimmed
3 celery stalks, washed and trimmed
1 medium yellow onion, peeled
4 garlic cloves
2 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 tablespoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg (you can omit this if you don’t already own it)
2 pounds ground turkey
1 (28-ounce) can tomato puree
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes
16 ounces cauliflower rice (fresh or frozen)
Kosher salt
1 cup half and half (or 1 1/2 cups whole milk, or 1 cup heavy cream)
Zest of 1 lemon (you can omit this if zesting a lemon sounds annoying to you right now, but it adds a nice freshness!)
1 pound pasta (I like a tubular pasta like rigatoni, penne, or radiatori for bolognese, but spaghetti or fettuccine are traditional!)
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Cut 2 medium carrots, 3 celery stalks, and 1 medium yellow onion into 3 or 4 pieces each and throw them in a food processor or blender along with 4 garlic cloves. Pulse until very finely diced. (If you have neither a food processor nor a blender, you can finely dice them all by hand.)
Melt 2 tablespoons butter (or oil) in a large, heavy-bottomed pot over medium-high heat. I actually used my 14-inch skillet — the more surface area, the better! Add the diced vegetables and 1 tablespoon dried oregano, 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes, and 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg and cook, stirring often, for 3 to 4 minutes.
Add 2 pounds ground turkey and cook, chopping into tiny crumbles, until cooked through and all moisture has evaporated, 4 to 5 minutes.
Stir in 28 ounces tomato puree, 28 ounces diced tomatoes, 16 ounces cauliflower rice, 4 teaspoons kosher salt, 1 cup half and half, and the zest of 1 lemon until combined.
Bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat to low and cook for 30 minutes to 3 hours. It will be best after 3 hours (the meat will become super tender!), but it will still be absolutely delicious if you only have 30 minutes.
As it cooks, stir the sauce every 20 minutes or so. It should only have a bubble every now and then, no rapid bubbles. If the sauce thickens so much that it’s starting to stick to the pot, simply stir in 1/4 cup water (or stock, if you have some lying around) at a time and keep cooking. At the end, the sauce should look like sloppy joe meat (very thick).
20 minutes before you’re ready to eat, boil 1 pound of rigatoni in heavily salted water. Cook until al dente. Seriously, the pasta should still have a “bite” to it — aka feel uncooked in the center. We’re going to keep cooking it!
Scoop 1 cup of pasta cooking water out of the pot and reserve it. Drain the pasta in a colander and return it to the empty pot. Stir 4 cups of the bolognese, 1/2 cup pasta cooking water, and 1/2 cup grated Parmesan into the pasta over medium-low heat. Stir constantly until the pasta is cooked to your liking and the sauce has thickened and is sticking to the pasta. You might need to add another splash of pasta cooking water to get the perfect consistency. Taste before serving — you might want to add more cheese, more salt, more pepper! This serves 8-10, so freeze half!
Q: I'm going through a lunch rut. What are your favorite work from home lunches?
A: When I have 15-20 minutes, I make a stir fry with with whatever veggies and meat I have in the fridge + sesame oil, soy sauce, rice wine, and sriracha. Maybe some fresh cilantro and chopped peanuts on top if I'm feeling wild. I throw some rice in there if there's leftover in the fridge. When I have NO TIME, I always have some sort of salad kit and deli turkey in the fridge—it's the most foolproof way to shovel vegetables and protein into my body. I “juuj” them up with extra veggies, maybe some cheese, a little extra lemon juice, salt and pepper. Here's how I fancied up a chopped Asian salad kit:
Q: What's a great meal to make with your kids?
A: Drop biscuits. Leave the chives and cheddar out for a plain biscuit you can serve with butter and jam. They love squishing the butter between their fingers, playing with the dough, throwing flour all over the place. On that note, keeping a Dyson stick in the kitchen has allowed me to truly love cooking with my kids. IDGAF about the mess, I just swoop in with the Dyson afterwards and it takes 5 seconds to clean up.
Lightning Round
Your ultimate comfort food... My mom's mac and cheese. The recipe is in my first cookbook.
Most underrated ingredient... Salt. It's the most important player on the field, but it never wins MVP! I feel like that was a boring answer, so I'll also say almond extract. Add a tiny tiny tiny bit to recipes that call for vanilla extract (in addition to the vanilla). It's heavenly (especially if you're a marzipan lover).
Top tips for picky eaters... Keep offering all of the foods. Don't give up. Put a little bit of everything on their plate. One day, they will eat it again. My almost-5-year-old went through a phase where I swear he was surviving on raspberries and a few big gulps of air. I totally gave up for a few months, and then I went hard on giving him a diverse plate, even if he never touched it (I try to never force the kids to eat anything). One day (it took MONTHS!) he just started taking little nibbles of the other things on his plate other than his safe foods (chicken nugs, potstickers, bolognese, pretty much). He gets so excited when he tries something new and loves it. Yesterday he ate sungold tomatoes for breakfast! That never would have happened 6 months ago. Stay strong and don't let it ruin every meal, it's not worth it. They will not go to college eating only chicken fingers.
Favorite piece of advice for working moms... I thought about giving some "we got this, we are better because we work, and our kids are better because we work!" advice but, nah. My advice is -- build a MASSIVE babysitter list. Like, more than you could ever possibly think you need. Save all of their "workplace" in your phone as "XYZ location sitter" i.e., "Winston-Salem sitter," "Carmel sitter" so that when you search in your contacts in your phone, it pulls all of their names up into an easy list and you aren't constantly going "shit, what was that girl's name?!"
My number one frustration being a working mom is all of the sick days. I work from home, so I am the default parent who stays home with the kids when they're out sick. This is one of the biggest sources of contention in my marriage, despite the fact that I recognize that it's what makes the most sense for us. You need to have options for sitters to call in when they're out sick. And finding someone last minute who is available to babysit your kids is damn near impossible. So increase your odds by building that sitter list! I ask all of my friends, random women I meet at events, normal-looking high schoolers I see at the pool. My list is huge. P.S. high schoolers have crazy class schedules, so it's always worth asking them! That's who usually comes through for me on a weekday.
