What To Cook

For the grand finale episode of this season of the What To Cook show, I bring you a fajita feast!We’re headed to my backyard to grill up the most delicious summer spread of hanger steak, shrimp, and veg for fajitas, plus we’ll make a creamy charred jalapeño sauce and corn on the cob to finish off the meal. In this episode, you’ll learn about…* Grilling over direct vs. indirect heat* Using your intuition when you’re grilling a bunch of food that has different cook times* Cutting against the grain to make steak SO much easier to chew* How to prep all sorts of peppers* Much more!! I absolutely loved filming this first season and getting to SHOW you many of the things I tell you about all the time in the newsletter. Also to show you that my kids are in and out of my kitchen at all times trying to introduce me to lizards and climb on the counter and crawl at my feet. If you have kids, your cooking process likely looks similar, and I want you to know that we’re in it together! Have any of you become Cometeer diehards like me?! The fact that I can make myself a coffee shop-grade cup of coffee or iced latte at home in about 15 seconds flat has TRULY improved my life. Cometeer is what to make when you don’t feel like making coffee (or spending money at a coffee shop on a daily basis), and if you appreciate the ease of WTC recipes, I know you will love the ease of their product, too. THANK YOU, Cometeer, for supporting this show, and for fueling me with your delicious coffee every day! If you haven’t tried it yet, you must. Remember to go to cometeer.com/caro to get $20 off your first order!OK, that’s a wrap on this season of the show! Thank you SO much for watching. I’d love any feedback you may have. Did you like the longish-form format or would a shorter show be easier to watch? Would you be interested in watching more entertaining-style content, or anything else!? As always, I’ll be back in your inbox tomorrow with the recipe itself, including a bunch of notes and substitutions. Happy long weekend!xxCaroClick here to watch this episode on YouTube! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Hi! In this week’s episode of the What To Cook show, I’m making a deconstructed version of my favorite sushi roll and adding a secret summer ingredient to the mix!Watch this episode to learn how I get my kids to eat oatmeal, how to perfectly sear tuna, what the delicious secret ingredient is, and much, much more. Tomorrow I’ll be back in your inbox with the recipe itself, including all the notes and substitutions you expect here at WTC.Not a paid subscriber? Upgrade now to get this sushi-night-at-home recipe along with a new recipe every single Saturday morning — plus access to a HUGE archive with hundreds of complete-meal dinner recipes — for just $50 a year, aka less than an Uber Eats bill for ONE sushi night delivery.Click here to watch it on YouTube! Have any of you been streaming it onto your TV to tune in!? This series is sponsored by my fave coffee brand ever, Cometeer. There are days when I’m running around with the kids and don’t have time to even think about food or coffee for myself, but I know I’m going to need a little boost of caffeine to get me through the day. One of many things I love about Cometeer is that I can make amazing coffee in less than 30 seconds — no machine needed! I love to make a hot coffee in the morning, and come back to my kitchen for a half-caff iced latte in the afternoon. They brew coffee at 10x the strength and flash freeze it into little aluminum capsules that you keep in your freezer. All you have to do is melt the frozen capsule in water (for coffee) or milk (for a latte). I love it SO MUCH. Go to cometeer.com/caro and get $20 off your first order! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Hi, happy Friday! We’re back with episode SIX of the What To Cook show and today I’m cooking an easy peasy, absolutely delicious pasta. It’s pasta alla vodka, but we’re adding fresh in-season tiny tomatoes to the mix plus the spicy flavor bomb ingredient that I introduced in episode one of this series, Calabrian chili paste!I have excellent news: we are indeed publishing this recipe during Sungold season. So if you can track them down at your farmers’ market or grocery store, I highly recommend it. Do any of y’all grow Sungolds in your home garden? Give us your tips, if so! I set out to cook this pasta in 20 minutes. Watch to see if I can beat the clock!A full written recipe for this Calabrian chili cherry tomato alla vodka will land in your inbox tomorrow morning along with all the usual notes and substitutions we provide here at WTC.If you aren’t a paid subscriber yet, upgrade now so that you get it! Here are the salt pucks I’m obsessed with. And the recipe I mentioned from Make It Fast is on page 235! It’s the slow-braised skillet lasagna and it is gooood. Also…Click here to watch this episode on Youtube.This series is sponsored by Cometeer. I’ve spent years perfecting low-effort, high-reward dinner recipes, and I genuinely didn’t think that this concept existed for coffee at home, because absolutely no way, no how will you find me weighing grams and measuring water temperature in order to brew a perfect cup of coffee. The Cometeer team works with some of the best coffee roasters around the world, brews perfect cups of coffee (with all those finicky detailed measured to perfection), flash freezes them, and delivers them to your door in cute little aluminum capsules. You just pop one in your cup or mug, add water and/or your favorite milk, and get a perfect cup of coffee in seconds. Go to cometeer.com/caro and get $20 off your first order! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Based on reader feedback, this recipe has been retested and updated since its original release and this show was filmed! Click here for the new and improved recipe. In this week’s episode of the What To Cook show, I’m demoing my new one-pan green chile chicken and corn rice bake that will land in your inbox tomorrow morning!This dinner showcases the spirit of the “Walk Away” chapter in my new book What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast (OUT NOW and on sale, if ya haven’t heard!!). The recipes in it all require very little hands-on prep time, then have a longer cook time, letting you walk away from the kitchen and go do something else entirely. There are recipes that simmer, braise, roast, bake, and slow-cook for anywhere from an hour to, in some cases, four hours, and you don’t need to babysit a single one!In this walk-away-style recipe, we are popping rice, corn, chicken, diced green chiles, salsa verde, stock, shallots, and seasonings into the oven and return an hour later to find a cozy and delicious chicken, corn, and rice feast. Bonus points that your house will smell incredible while it cooks!Once you cook it (again, the full recipe’s coming tomorrow!), report back! I want to hear how you spent your hands-off time while dinner was in the oven!!! Did you read a book? Watch a show? Go for a walk? Pick some weeds? Break up fights between your kids?! Give us recs if you’re reading or watching something good right now!Links to a few things I mention in the episode: * Melty zucchini pasta* Tiny tomato pasta * 15-minute peanut noods* If you like the sound of “cook once, eat multiple times,” here 5 cook-once, eat-twice ideas* And here’s how to make lime pickled red onion!Click here to watch this episode on Youtube.This episode is sponsored by Cometeer! For anyone new here, Cometeer takes top-quality coffee brewed by coffee experts and flash-freezes it to lock in the flavor, so all you have to do is pop out the puck and melt it in hot water. It’s just coffee!! No fillers or additives included. And it takes just seconds to prep. Brewing delicious coffee is one of those surprisingly tricky kitchen skills, but Cometeer takes 100% of the guesswork out of it, which is hugely helpful on a crazy weekday morning when I just want a tasty cup of coffee in my body as quickly as possible. Go to cometeer.com/caro and get $20 off your first order! PS, have any of you tried Cometeer yet and also gotten hooked?! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

It’s time for EPISODE 4 OF THE WHAT TO COOK SHOW!!And because it’s PUB WEEK (!!!!!), today’s recipe is from the 15-minute chapter of Make It Fast! But I wanted to make it a little bit more show-off-y, so we’re leveling the recipe up in a few different ways, using the “Extra Extra” notes from the cookbook — AKA the tips that will teach you how to make the recipe a little extra!In this BBQ chicken and peach chop, we’re going to double the dressing and use half of it as a marinade for our chicken. We’re then going to grill that chicken along with fresh corn on the cob and peaches. AND we’re going to let the black beans marinate in the salad dressing for a bit, infusing them with flavor. The full recipe along with the inspo for this salad, how this version compares to the one in the book, and all the usual notes and substitutions will be in your inbox tomorrow.Want in on the full recipe? Upgrade to a paid subscription now so that it lands in your inbox bright and early tomorrow!!!I love this salad so much. The whole video crew LOVED THIS SALAD SO MUCH. We absolutely inhaled it!!!! I hope you’ll cook it this weekend and let me know if you love it, too!Links and more info for a few things I chat about in the show: * The Earthbound Farms greens I used * I am literally obsessed with Cometeer. Yes, they sponsored this show. But y’all, IT’S SO GOOD. I have become an evangelist. I had 10 people over for breakfast the other day and instead of making a pot of coffee, I made each of them a cup of Cometeer so that we could discuss it. I drink a hot coffee every morning, and I make an iced half-caff latte every afternoon. It is the best, best, best — trust me, you must try it. * Here’s my no-hangover marg recipe: Equal parts lime juice and tequila plus half part orange juice. For a single marg that breaks down to: 1/4 cup lime juice + 1/4 cup tequila + 2 or 3 tablespoons orange juice. Add ice and shake the heck out of it. It’s tart!!! Add simple syrup (I prefer it over agave) if you need it a little sweeter.* Car/breakfast meatball recipe — find it near the bottom of that post* BBQ chicken meatballs, broccoli, and tomatoes with cheesy rice* Five ingredients I always have in my house: Canned beans, boneless, skinless chicken thighs, Duke’s mayonnaise, white cheddar cheese (ideally Unexpected Cheddar from TJ’s), and honey. What are yours?!Click here to watch this episode on Youtube or Youtube TV!Tell me if you watched the episode! Did you learn anything? Favorite part? Mine is when Jess clearly thought the salad dressing was too tart LOL. I loved making this show and I want to keep doing it — let me know what you think! I’ll send someone who comments my favorite gigantic wooden salad bowl!This series is sponsored by my actual obsession, Cometeer! Cometeer works with some of the best roasters from all over the world — including Onyx, Intelligentsia, Counter Culture and Black & White from my home state of North Carolina. There are so many different coffees on their menu, all brewed to perfection and flash-frozen so you can make hot or iced coffee just by melting it. I love rotating through different roast levels and flavor profiles. They also have a ton of great half-caff and decaf options, so I can have an iced latte as an afternoon pick-me-up without then being up all night. Go to cometeer.com/caro and get $20 off your first order! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Hi! Woah. I leave for the East Coast to start my Make It Fast (please for the love of ME, pre-order it!!!) book tour in less than 48 hours. My literary agent just called to check in on my mental state and I’ll tell you what I told her— I’m honestly feeling great. I haven’t started packing, but I’ve got a million outfit options strewn about my closet, and I’ll get there eventually. The flights are booked and the hotel reservations are made. It’s go time, baby. I’m also thrilled to announce that I have officially entered phase 5 of the creative process:With my last book, I was firmly still in phase #4 (“I suck”) until the book had actually been published and all of you started to cook from it and share your photos and reviews and love of the book. But with Make It Fast, I hosted a party and gave the book to my friends and family two weeks before pub day! I created an Illegal Bookclub and roped in my friends all across the country to share advanced copies of the book with their communities! And, comically, Indigo (the main Canadian seller of the book) accidentally sent all of the pre-orders like two weeks early, so all of the Canadian What To Cookers out there have had their books for a week now! And Canadians are so nice — they are sending so much positivity my way!So there are a LOT of people out in the world, people who I love and trust, who have already seen it, and cooked from it, and told me how much they love it. Thus launching me into phase #5 (“this might be ok”) a few weeks earlier than my last book publishing cycle. I guess, if I’m being honest, what I’m saying is that I require external validation to feel good about my work? Is that pathetic? I don’t think so. I think it’s a real, honest part of most (all?) people’s creative process. It feels really scary and vulnerable to launch a piece of work that you’ve worked so hard on out into the world. It feels a little bit like dropping your deeply feeling, sensitive, absolutely incredible child off at Kindergarten for the first day of school. Will he make friends? Will the teachers understand how creative and kind and cool he is? Will they be patient with him and let him finish his art project because he really doesn’t like when he doesn’t get to finish his art project? Will the world love him as much as I do? This analogy is not random: I am dropping my deeply feeling sensitive child off at Kindergarten for his first day of school tomorrow, and the jitters and unease of that feel so akin to publishing a book. By next Wednesday when I send this newsletter, Make It Fast will be in your kitchens, if you’ve pre-ordered (have I mentioned I’d really love it if you could pre-order?). I’ll have already been on Good Morning America two mornings in a row (bless them, what an invitation!), spoken with Jenna Bush Hager in front of an audience of you in Brooklyn, yapped with Dan Pelosi in Boston, chatted with Kerry Diamond in DC, and I’ll be en route to Charlotte where I’ll be in conversation with our very own Molly from What To Cook. I am excited, and I am nervous, and just like I’ve been telling my five-year-old, it’s OK to feel both of those things at once. And Phase 6 (“this is awesome”) is just around the corner for both of us. There are lots of other book tour dates — check them all out here!Today’s So Into That is sponsored by FP Movement. We’ve talked about our love for their Carpe Diem shorts many times before (a truly perfect athletic short at a very good price point!), but FP Movement has many more athleisure pieces we love. From Molly from What To Cook: I’m on vacation at the beach this week and have been living in this dress and shorts combo when I’m not in a bathing suit. It’s so so comfy and easy to throw on for beach walks — it’ll also be great to wear on the sports sidelines when it’s 100 degrees outside. I’m a shortie (5’3”) and had to shorten the straps a tiny bit (worth the effort!). We also love these biker shorts with this boxy short sleeve and this oversized long sleeve! * Dr. Becky invited me to plan the menu for a REALLY special dinner celebrating Good Inside Baby on Monday in LA. I got to hang with MALLY K. GOLDMAN and Megan Roup and Elaine Welteroth and so many incredible, smart women who make motherhood safer, more fun, stronger, and more fashionable. The dilly feta salad with feta brined shrimp, flank steak with elote salad, and bbq chicken are all straight from the book! My menu concept was elegant California BBQ and I think we nailed it! PS If you’re in LA, Heirloom catered and they rule. PS because I know you all want to know, Becky is awesome IRL. She is a fellow insomniac romance book lover, she values her female friendships so highly and they come up in conversation all the time (this is always a green flag for me when I meet new people), and she’s just so incredibly smart, insightful, and cool. This is not sponsored but we’ve swapped codes for each other in the past and my Good Inside code still works — you can use code WHATTOCOOK to get 20% off a subscription to Good Inside if you could use a little parenting assist (like with how to get your deeply feeling kid to dread the first day of school less!). * I recently worked with Groundwork to hire a new team member (woohooooo, Meg!) and it was such an incredible experience that I wanted to share. Three in four U.S. workers are also caregivers, and as that caregiving work collides with mid-career years, most end up forced to choose between staying all in at real personal cost or stepping away entirely — becoming a hugely qualified, "off-market" talent pool that's actually eager to work, just on slightly different terms. Groundwork connects people like that with employers building smarter, more flexible teams. In my case, I knew I needed help in a certain space but had no idea how to define the role or find the right person. They sat down with me, helped flesh it out, wrote the job description, sourced candidates, and ran interviews, and took it all off my plate. And brought me the most INCREDIBLE CANDIDATES! Like lights out brilliant women. If you're a small business owner stuck in hiring limbo, or you're job hunting and sick of the LinkedIn black hole, Groundwork is worth a look.* From Molly: A go-to breakfast of mine this summer has been avocado toast inspired by some Caro made for our team last time I was in Carmel. Mashed avocado seasoned with salt and pepper, slathered on a thick slice of GOOD toasted sourdough, and topped with chili crisp, pickled red onions, flaky sea salt, and fresh cilantro. So good.* From Molly: I’ve been slathering on this body oil after time in the sun this week — it’s very luxurious feeling and makes my skin glowy! From Caro: Oh I love this too!!! It really does not make you feel oily at all, it absorbs so nicely.My publishers are dropping a few more advance reader copies of Make It Fast in the mail to some of my media/Internet friends this week, and I told them to save some for WTCers!! We are going to mail three of you a copy of Make It Fast, along with a Butter Pants spatula and a Caraway kitchen timer! To enter to win, comment on this post with the meal you cook most often when you absolutely do not feel like cooking. It doesn’t have to be from scratch! For example, mine has historically been frozen dumplings and peanut sauce, and Molly’s is pasta with Rao’s marinara and frozen meatballs. Comment between now and August 10 — we will randomly select three winners next Tuesday, August 11, and alert them by Substack DM! Every week, we dig into the What To Cook archives to see what we were cooking this time in years past — the recipes worth bringing back into your rotation. Here’s this week’s lineup. 1. salmorejo, 2025Oooh, this is such a good one. Traditional salmorejo! From José Andrés! If you have boatloads of ripe tomatoes that need to be used up, make this creamy chilled tomato soup. It gets its creaminess in part from blended artisanal bread, so if you have any leftover sourdough from this week’s summer shrimp panzanella, use it here! 2. skillet cheddar turkey burgers, 2024Juic… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to episode three of the What To Cook show!Today we’re making a 30-minute sheet-pan panzanella salad with warm roasted summer veg (corn! zucchini! tomatoes!), a tangy vinaigrette, and perfectly cooked shrimp to make it a complete meal.In this episode, you’ll learn my favorite magic trick for bringing any salad to a dinner party or potluck, meet our new pals Midnight and Scales, see George saunter through the kitchen half sedated, and watch a gorgeous summer supper come together in 30 minutes (or not!!?).Links to a few things I talk about or show:* The kid-safe knife that Cash is using* The nakiri knife I’m using* My cutting board * My favorite bread shop* And my humongous salad serving bowlThe full recipe will land in your inbox tomorrow morning! Thank you to the sponsor of this series and the makers of my favorite coffee: Cometeer! Cometeer capsules hold flash-frozen coffee from some of the world’s best coffee roasters. I love using them to make iced lattes (my coffee drink of choice!) at home — no coffee shop run or espresso machine required. Just thaw a capsule and drizzle it over milk and ice, and voila! I used to try making iced coffees by just refrigerating a hot batch, and it always ended up tasting like... flat, stale, coffee-flavored water. This is nothing like that! It’s brewed fresh and flash-frozen at peak flavor, so it tastes like it came straight from my favorite cafe for a lot less money. Go to cometeer.com/caro to get $20 off your first order!Click here to watch today’s episode on Youtube or Youtube TV. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Hi guys! I’m so excited to be back with episode two of the What To Cook show!Today I’m sharing a sneak peek of a 30-minute vegetarian summer pasta from my new cookbook Make It Fast (pre-order today and it’ll be in your mailbox August 11th!!!!). This episode stars a very special sous chef: Calum, my wonderfully creative, lizard-hunting 5-year-old (though he got the boot midway through the episode for spouting off potty words and invading my personal space lol).Watch to see how to uniformly slice an onion, what perfectly sautéed zucchini looks like, my favorite hack for grating Parm, if I actually finished cooking dinner in 30 minutes, and much more!The full written recipe will hit your inbox tomorrow morning!Not a paid What To Cooker yet? Upgrade now so the full recipe for this melty zucchini pasta lands in your inbox tomorrow.Links to things I yapped about:* Disco di Sale* Carmel Valley Creamery* Excellent dry shampoo* The hair supplement that helped me postpartum* Merritts in Chapel Hill and the pimiento cheese BLTs inspired by it* My fave high-quality balsamic vinegarWatch this episode on YouTube/YouTube TV here! Huge thank you to Cometeer for sponsoring this series! I am drinking a cup right this second as I write this! One of the many, many reasons I love Cometeer is that their aluminum capsules are plastic-free and recyclable. Cometeer flash freezes a perfectly brewed cup of coffee into capsules, which you can use to make whatever kind of coffee you want — a hot coffee, an iced coffee, an iced latte, etc. They brew the coffee at 10x the strength and flash freeze it to lock in the flavor, resulting in the most consistently delicious cup of coffee I’ve ever had! Go to cometeer.com/caro to get $20 off your first order. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Thanks to everyone who joined for today’s Substack live cooking demo — if you couldn’t make it, find a full replay above!In the demo, I cooked smoky mole chicken enchiladas with lime crema, a recipe that turns a few humble pantry staples (peanut butter, chocolate chips, tortillas, tomato paste, spices, and chipotles en adobo!) into a delicious weeknight dinner. The only fresh ingredients you’ll need are chicken breasts, white onion, a red bell pepper, some shredded cheese, sour cream, and a lime!Recipes that rely heavily on pantry staples are easy to make on nights when the fridge is mostly bare — they can also be more budget-friendly, since the cost-per-use of ingredients like peanut butter and spices is often quite low.Thank you to Thrive Market for sponsoring today’s live cook-along, which allowed us to make it free for all subscribers! Thank you also to Thrive for making it so very easy for me to keep my pantry stocked up with high-quality ingredients (at an excellent price point!).In addition to pantry staples, Thrive is my go-to source for kids snacks and clean home products — I love that everything they sell is free from more than 1,000 artificial, synthetic, and GMO ingredients. I also LOVE their app and use it to immediately add ingredients to my cart as soon as I finish them, so that I don’t have to write them down or try to remember later.Sign up here to get 30% off your first order (STOCK UP!) and a free $60 gift. Now’s a great time because everyone — new and existing members — can get 25% off many products right now during their Friends & Family sale, which runs through Saturday, May 2nd. Also FYI that new-to-Thrive What To Cook Insiders get $100 off their first four orders!While we’re talking pantry staples, here are a handful of ingredients that pack a TON of flavor that I always keep on hand. We’ve linked WTC recipes to cook with each! * Coconut milk — Coconut milk’s a great dairy-free sub for cream that you can use in curries, smoothies, and soups. In my house though, it’s most often used to make coconut rice! * Chipotles en adobo — We used these smoky, spicy peppers today for our mole chicken enchiladas! You can also use them for chipotle black bean enchiladas and cheesy chipotle shrimp tacos. Rarely does a recipe use the whole can, so store your leftover peppers and sauce in an airtight bag in the freezer.* Creamy peanut butter — My house is never without a jar! Again, we used it here in our mole sauce, but I also love mixing it with soy sauce, rice vinegar, and honey for a peanut sauce to serve on noodles or alongside potstickers. This peanut veggie curry is delightful, as are PB&Js, apples with peanut butter, smoothies bulked up with PB… the uses go on and on!* Curry paste — Curry paste packs SO MUCH flavor into just one spoonful! Keep your pantry (or fridge, once you’ve opened it) stocked with red curry paste (Mike’s is my favorite) and you can cook thai chicken chops, one-pot pumpkin chickpea curry, and thai tofu curry noodle soup! * Jarred marinara/tomato sauce — You could make a homemade marinara… or let someone do it for you! I’ve written many recipes with store-bought jarred marinara/tomato sauce listed as an ingredient because if you get a high-quality brand (my favorite is Rao’s), it really does taste homemade and will save you so much time and effort. Stock up on a jar to be able to cook 30-minute chicken Parm meatballs, messy meatball sliders, shortcut shakshuka, and 5-ingredient eggplant marinara. What flavor-bomb ingredients is your pantry never without?! For a complete rundown on what I consider to be a perfectly stocked pantry, click here. And for a fun take on this topic, read “If My Pantry Were to Disappear, Here’s What I’d Restock Immediately” — a Bon Appétit article written by Alaina Chou that I recently weighed in on! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe

Hi! Carmel Valley schools are operating on a half-day schedule all week, and we’re in the middle of an extreme heat wave, so it feels like a mini spring break before real spring break is upon us in April. I know a lot of your kids have spring break this month (my friend Mary Pell is visiting from North Carolina right now for her daughter’s spring break!), so today we’re sharing a few spring break-related things, should it be on your radar right now, too.Whether or not you’re in a spring break time of life: spring as a season will be official on Friday! To celebrate, Saturday’s new recipe includes my favorite spring vegetable, asparagus, but in the meantime, we wanted to share our team’s personal favorite super-springy recipes from the archives to welcome the new season. And lest you forget: there’s a whole “spring” section in the What to Cook recipe index — along with many, many more categories based on cook time, protein, and mood. If you’re ever needing inspiration for dinner, let the index be your guide. Also worth noting if you’re a Substack app user: we are VERY happy to report that the WTC index is pinned again under “posts” when you’re on the WTC homepage within the app. The pinned posts went missing for a few weeks but they’re back, baby!Caro’s: sheet-pan spring salmonThis is perhaps the springiest weeknight dinner recipe I’ve ever written. Dilly sauce, asparagus, roasted potatoes, and salmon with lots of lemon… it’s so fresh and delicious. It’s also both gluten- and dairy-free as written and is delicious served either right out of the oven or at room temp, so you could cook the entire meal ahead of time, let it cool, and store it covered in the fridge. Bring it out 30-ish minutes before dinner to let it come to room temperature, then dig in! It’s a total crowd pleaser. There’s an even simpler version of this meal — it omits the potatoes — in WTC the book on page 40! Jillian’s: crispy artichoke and chicken saladArtichokes are one of my favorite spring vegetables! This is a good-all-week salad that combines roasted marinated artichokes with chicken that you marinate in the artichoke brine, a can of white beans, kale, homemade croutons, and the most addicting, springy lemon-Parm dressing out there. I typically eat vegetarian and highly endorse the mushroom vegetarian riff that Caro suggests! Molly’s: roasted asparagus farrottoI cooked this meal one day last week after the time change and it was a perfect springy experience. I sipped a glass of white wine (the same wine I used later for the recipe!) while the asparagus and farro roasted away in the oven and the evening sunlight (!!) poured through the windows. It’s VERY tasty, and Caro’s asparagus-roasting hack in this recipe — you cook it on an inverted pot lid! — always makes me feel like a pro. Do you have a favorite springy WTC recipe?!Whether you’re traveling this season or not, these “vacation house” meal plans will get you in the springy and/or spring break spirit! Version one + version two. I’m taking my older boys on a very adventure-heavy spring break trip with Lonely Planet Journeys (formerly known as Elsewhere, the travel company that sent me on the Camino and to Patagonia!) next month. It’ll be my first real trip with kids that isn’t a plop vacation by the pool/beach — we are going to be making our own chocolate from native cacao! Snorkeling in cenotes! Exploring ancient ruins! We are all so excited and grateful for the opportunity.That said, my typical spring break plan is to go somewhere that I can plop in front of a body of water (pool, beach, lake, etc.) with the kids, and have easy access to a house or hotel room with all the creature comforts we may need. Other years, we hang at home and go to the pool after work and/or on local outings that we can’t usually do when the kids are in school. Whatever your plans may be, here’s a random collection of spring break tips and things we are loving.* I’ve said this before but one of my favorite vacation tricks is shipping a Thrive order to the rental house with pantry staples, kids snacks and meals (like Goodles!), and any other miscellaneous things we’ll need during the trip like sunscreen, dish soap, diapers, etc. I love that when I’m filling my Thrive box I don’t have to study the ingredients lists — they have a strict vetting process to ensure that everything they carry is organic and free from more than 1,000 artificial, synthetic, and GMO ingredients. It also saves me money!!! The membership’s only $5 a month, they run sales all the time within their membership, and the items are already priced up to 30% off retail. Click here to get 30% off your first order and a free $60 gift of your choice when you sign up. And as a reminder, new-to-Thrive WTC Insiders get $25 off their first four orders (plus lots of other perks)! * I got this suit in black for Mexico and it’s a really nice middle ground between mom suit and sexy suit. It’s definitely VERY SNUG in my normal size, so size up if you’re on the fence about going up or down!* At the pool this week three of my friends had this sun hat and it looked so good on everyone! I’m a ball cap person but I know I need to become a sun hat person for more coverage, ugh. * I continue to be obsessed with this glowy face sunscreen. It’s honestly helping me remember to wear SPF every day because I love the way it brightens up my face when I’m not wearing makeup!* Loeffler Randall gifted me a really great travel tote bag and it got a lot of use in February. I love that it slides onto the handle of my roller bag and actually stays in place, it fits under the airplane seat nicely, and has tons of storage compartments. And it’s nylon, so it transitions from airplane to poolside splashes nicely.* Speaking of roller bags, I just got a new one and I’m VERY into it. I really prefer a hard shell when I’m trying to cram WAY too much stuff into a carry-on (like for my 10-day business trip in February!), and this one has tons of great storage compartments and glides really nicely.* I just ordered these Bermuda shorts! In black. I’m very excited about them!! * From Molly: I went shopping at Vuori this past weekend in NYC and found another pair of my all-time favorite shorts, the Villa, in this new color. I wear them everywhere — exercise classes, my kids’ sports practices and games, and as a coverup at the beach and pool. They have a wonderfully roomy thigh, dry quickly, and are just the comfiest. I also got this tee — I’m a shorty and the crop hits perfectly with high-waisted bottoms like the Villas. (From Caro: I’ve been thinking about ordering these!! We love a roomy thigh. I’ve been getting a lot of wear out of my fave $20 shorts but they’re more athletic looking than the Villa. Also, FYI that we have heard from multiple readers that these are a great Target dupe!)* Speaking of coverups…* From Caro: I’ve been wearing this button-up dress to the pool (and around town) all week (and I wore it all last summer while pregnant and postpartum!).* From Molly: I shared this Quince coverup last year but can update that it held up well all summer (and we live at the beach so I wore it a ton!). It stretches out/gets weighed down a bit when it’s wet, but shrinks back up once washed and dried. I love this one, too, that’s similar but collared. I’m also excited for an order from this sister-owned small business to arrive soon — I’m trying to invest in more UPF-50 coverups!* From Molly: One last staple I’ll be packing for beach outings this spring: my Reefs! The back strap makes them easy to walk through soft sand in (I hate it when flip flops fling sand up my legs!), and you can hose them down afterward.Every week, we dig into the What to Cook archives to see what we were cooking this time in years past — the recipes worth bringing back into your rotation. Here’s this week’s lineup.1. farro fattoush, 2025Here’s another springy good-all-week salad that will hold up well in the fridge for days! This one packs farro, chickpeas, tons of herbs, cr… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit whattocook.substack.com/subscribe