Kitchen Chronicles¶
Teddy Warner| Sep 2025 | 5–6 mins
I moved into a new apartment a few months ago. It’s got a pretty bangin’ kitchen.
I’ve always loved cooking. I’m roughly two-thirds certain that the dexterity developed in the kitchen catalyzes hardware development and vice versa (most of the best machinists I’ve met are great cooks). So, seemingly working on your chef skills is a productive means of improving your work (if in the kitchen) and, additionally, you get some tasty rewards for doing so, win-win!
Whether people admit it or not, I’m certain everyone has some objective downtime (no matter how brief) throughout their day. Presumably, people spend this on their phones? or through some unproductive leisure (see Learning to Juggle)? I actually feel somewhat naive about what people do all day. Regardless, there’s some downtime, and one of the most delightful ways to spend these brief segments of leisure is cooking!
By pivoting into kitchen tasks with your downtime, you can take on some pretty in-depth meals, namely because you can afford to prep “all day”. I wake up in the mornings and often prep for dinner a bit. Get back from the office and prep a bit more. Get back from the gym and Boom! It takes me all of 15 minutes to finish cooking. Pretty awesome.
People seem to performatically hark on how they “don’t have time to cook” or convince themselves their unable to fit it in the day. If all these 996 twitter warriors spent half the time they did tweeting in the kitchen, San Francisco would be 100x better fed. Don’t let these preformative preachers guilt you into ordering DoorDash, nine times out of ten, cooking yourself is one of the most productive pastimes you can hold. You’re going to have some downtime, everyone does - don’t waste it on doomscrolling, cook!
Scrapbook¶
Since moving into my new place, I’ve been documenting every meal I’ve cooked in a scrapbook I keep on my fridge:
Recipes¶
I’m usually quite a bit of a proponent of “vibes-based” cooking. No need to follow a recipie to a tee or preplan meals. 90% of the time I just start throwing some stuff together and a meal pops out (I find this substantkially reduces the mental overhead of cooking and saves me some greif in my prep work). That being said, I’ve certainly collected some great recipes over the years. Here are some of my favorites:
Greek Yogurt Mac and Cheese, Marry Me Chicken, Rosemary Focaccia, Baked Feta With Honey, Sheet-Pan Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, Stuffed Mushrooms, French Onion Soup, Skillet Fried Plantains, Banana Pancakes, Chocolate-Chip Banana Bread, Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin, Ginger Beer-Glazed Butternut Squash With Gremolata , Baked Beans, Beef Short Ribs With Red Wine and Chile, Fried Okra With Rémoulade, Neapolitan Pizza Dough, Spinach Artichoke Dip, Mediterranean Chicken Thighs, Southern Collard Greens with Bacon, Dutch Oven Bread, Pickle Fried Chicken Recipe, Pork Carnitas, Oven Baked Ribs, Mediterranean Roasted Cauliflower, Hollandaise Sauce, Old-Fashioned Beef Stew, Lamb Biryani, Garlic Tahini Sauce, Short Ribs With Red Wine and Chile, Gochujang BBQ Ribs With Peanuts and Scallions, Chimichurri, Zhug, Basil Pesto, Crispy Rice With Salmon and Avocado, Baked Potato Soup, Blueberry Syrup, Ricotta Pasta Alla Vodka, Vermont Curry, Chicken Katsu, Cuban Sandwich, Beef Bourguignon, Brown Stew Pork Shoulder, Gochujang Buttered Noodles, Vietnamese Caramel Pork and Eggs, Rosemary Rack of Lamb With Crushed Potatoes, Crispy Gnocchi With Burst Tomatoes and Mozzarella, Plantains With Jammy Tomatoes and Eggs, The Ritz-Carlton’s Blueberry Muffins, Sour-Cream Coffee Cake, Classic Zucchini Bread, Pumpkin Bread, Classic Apple Pie, Parker House Rolls, Cranberry Lemon Bars, Crispy Mushroom Focaccia, Praline Pecans, Sweet Spiced Pecans, Thai Tea Tres Leches Cake, Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies, Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies, Roasted Rhubarb Cobbler, Olive Oil Cake, Lavender and Orange Blossom Cookies, Rum-Raisin Carrot Cake, Hush Puppies, Creamed Spinach
Even if I don’t want to fully commit to a recipe, I find skimming over this block of favorites almost always provides some nice inspiration.