Cooking Like Most People
Cooking is part of what drew me to reintroducing the Housedress into the modern day. I spent most of quarantine in various vintage versions of housedresses and muumuus, shuffling around in slippers with a kitchen towel hanging from my shoulder and smashed garlic casings in my pockets. While I love to be in the kitchen experimenting with new dishes, I never… and I mean NEVER… invent my own recipes. In fact, I hardly even make a recipe that doesn’t show a picture of the final result. I rely solely on my cookbooks, to which I am so incredibly devoted, and a very dense, years-long list of mostly unmade recipes on Pinterest. I admire the videos on TikTok of young chefs whipping up their versions of hummus or one-pot pasta. They make it look so effortless and beautiful, when what I experience in the kitchen is a far cry from that; Dish Mountain teetering in the sink, crumbs and spilled droplets all over the counter, one gas burner that doesn’t light, and a dog-eared cookbook that has the remnants of the last five recipes I’ve attempted splattered across the pages.
My fiancé is from Long Island and I have spent many holidays and weekends there while living in New York City. This kitchen towel belonged to Jo from my previous journal post.
The point I’m trying to make is that I cook like most people cook; with help from a cookbook or in real pinch, the internet. I cook almost every night, but I also have a full-time job, run this business, upkeep my home, travel, try to stay social, maintain my mental health, and carve out “me-time”. I’m not going to pretend like any recipe I use is my own… they are definitely not. I am always grateful for the cooks who take the time to curate their recipes so people like myself can cook with any level of skill when we don’t have the time or knowledge to create our own. I’m going to share my most favorite, tried and true recipes and the people who created them here with you on the TIMH blog. Perhaps you will find joy in their flavors, simplicity or complexity, or make a memory around a meal.
My favorite llama tchotchke from Arizona and a $4 bottle of wine to accompany our smothered pork chops the day after we moved into our house in LA.
Smothered Pork Chops
I’ve made these bone-in pork chops from Katerina Petrovska’s blog Diethood at least once a month for the past three years. I attempted it back when I wasn’t actually cooking that much pork (other than bacon) and thought this was an easy way in to learning the protein. Three years later, it is still probably one of only a handful of pork recipes I consistently cook, mostly because it is so easy. The sauce comes out a little different each time, as I tend to play around with the amount of onions, stock, sometimes I add mushrooms, etc. I also have added a Greek yogurt sauce to accompany it, which is basically just globs of Greek yogurt, a little water, and whatever seasonings speak to me that day.
This is also the first meal I cooked in my new LA home when all we had was a cast iron pan and a pair on tongs. We ate off paper plates while seating on beach chairs in our bare living room. I was wearing my housedress, as always, wondering when the rest of my clothes would finally arrive.
I’ve linked the recipe below. I hope you get to try and enjoy. Happy cooking and happy Housedressing!