Carla Lalli Music - That Sounds So Good: 100 Real-Life Recipes for Every Day of the Week: A Cookbook

Thank You

I wrote and produced this book in 2020. It was a tumultuous, difficult, humbling time. Thank you to the first responders who kept my city alive, and to the protesters everywhere for fighting for justice. Their respective work gave me hope for the future.

Thank you to the friends who keep me whole. Colu Henry, for our regular meeting and a lifeline to sanity. Leslie Robarge, for relentless compassion and acceptance. Vanessa Holden, for resilience. Chandra Kelemen and Delia Kelemen, for sisterhood. Ross Twanmoh, for strength. To my treasured collaborator Molly Baz, for love and confidence. To the brave and powerful Rachel Karten and Emily Schultz, Maaaa girlzzzz forever. Thank you to Rick Martinez, for your moral compass, and to Amiel Stanek, for comrade-erie. To my paisan Scott DeSimon, for always sending texts at the right time.

Thank you to everyone who tested recipes for me: Alex Beggs, Sohla El-Waylly, Jen Fiore, Sarah Jampel, Christina Gregory Jones, Rachel Karten, Carole and Nina Lalli, Kaitlyn Murphy, and Luke Sand. Your notes and feedback were invaluable! To Courtney Harrell and Sam Polito, for happily accepting early drafts of my recipe attempts and keeping the lights on for Peggy and King Jeffrey. Thank you to Michael and Jaclyn Varland, for a kitchen Ill love for the next 20 years.

Thank you to my friends at DArtagnan, California Olive Oil, Lucini, Rancho Meladuco, and Vermont Creamery for sending me ingredients to create recipes with. I am very grateful for all the purveyors who kept their wheels turning during uncharted times: The employees at Baldor Foods, Fresh Direct, Hayden Flour Mills, Kalustyans, King Arthur Flour, FedEx, UPS, and the USPS made it possible for me to carry on my work and life from home. In Brooklyn, Bravo Supermarket, Greeneville Garden, Mr. Coco, Mr. Mango, the Meat Hook, Marlow and Daughters, Provisions, Foragers, Wegmans, Leon and Sons, Gnarly Vines, and the producers and workers at New York City Greenmarket adapted so that shoppers like me could get what we needed.

Creative projects are not solo ventures, and I am lucky to be surrounded by people who elevate my ideas. Thank you to Zan Goodman, for funning it up big time. To Andrea Gentl and Martin Hyers, for love and the best light. To Frankie Crichton, for holding it down. To the extraordinary and unflappable Susie Theodorou, the most exceptional food stylist I know. To Cybelle Tondu, for bottomless amounts of skill, care, and attention. Thank you to the crew at Lost & Found prop house, for inspiring all of us on set.

To Doris Cooper, for bringing this book into the Clarkson Potter family, and to Francis Lam, for your exceptional edits and guidance. Thank you also to Aaron Wehner, for investing in me. I am honored to work with Katherine Cowles, who is forever ten steps ahead of me. Your loyalty and professionalism are unmatched.

This book would be impossible without my family. My parents, Frank and Carole, raised me in a household of abundance, where delicious-tasting food and long-running jokes are the magnets that hold us together to this day. For Cosmo and Leo, my hungry bunnies; I love feeding you. My sister, Nina, is funnier than I am, has a better eye, and is the sole reason I havent gone off the deep end. I love you! Thank you for bringing Ben into this family. I not only got a partner in puns, but more important, we all got the joy of Gia.

Finally, to Fernandomy heart and my partner. There were many days when tea in bed was the only reason I could get out of bed at all. Your unconditional love gives me the strength to take risks in this life. Thank you for being my person.

Menu Ideas

Mostly Make-Ahead

Vegetarian

Picnic Party

Outdoor Main, Indoor Sides

Fall Holiday

Best Friends Birthday

Chapter 1

ABC: Always Be Cooking

Heres how to celebrate and embrace the act of cooking and eating in your everyday life, no matter what

Cook in this moment, whichever moment youre in

This book is organized by situation and occasion, rather than by ingredient or recipe type. Ive divided a typical week into two buckets: Monday through Thursday, and Friday and the Weekend. My life looks a lot different on a Tuesday eveningafter finishing work and catching up with a family thats been scattered all over the placethan it does on a Saturday afternoon, when I might have enough free time to let one of my cats take a nap on my chest. But no matter what day of the week it is, a girls gotta eat! Within the weekday and weekend sections of this book, the individual chapters are devoted to the sorts of everyday scenarios you and I might find ourselves inan effort to capture the types of meals that will fit into your actual life.

In the weekday chapters, youll find stovetop suppers and dinner salads, and a chapter on the healthyish recipes that I crave after a weekend of eating and drinking and sleeping in. With many of us juggling work, school, housekeeping, caretaking, and commuting, these weekday dishes make the most of short active times. Half an hour of effort can add up to a complete meal if you know how to prioritize your prep and cook times.

By comparison, the weekend section is mostly devoted to recipes with longer cook times and some with larger serving sizes: soups, stews, braises, roasts, and things to grill. That said, even when you do have the downtime to afford to park something on the back of the stove or in a low oven for a couple-few hours, I dont want you to spend more than about half an hour of active cooking time to get that meal going or finish it up. (Grilling is a bit of an exception, since its one of the few times that cooking overlaps with hanging out. But there are many grilling recipes here that can be made before your friends arrive, if thats how you like to party.) I love having people over, but my overambitious-entertainer phasewhen I could be found piping out gougres at 2 a.m. the night before a holiday partyis behind me. My kind of weekend food isnt annoying, complicated, or technically challenging. I treasure my time off, and I dont want to spend every minute of it standing in one spot, staring at a cutting board. There are also plenty of weekend recipes here for the kinds of weekends where you are really feeling lazy.

By all means, make whatever you want on any day you like! I dont bake during the week, which is why the desserts chapter falls in the weekend section of the book, but if you want a cobbler on a Tuesday, Im not going to stop you. Some of the big salads found in the weekday section make excellent, uncomplicated additions to a mellow lunch on the weekend, and can also be treated as quick-to-prepare vegetable sides to go with a big braise. Theres a set of suggested menus on that I put together to help you mix and match meals from the recipes throughout the book.

Monday through Thursday:

Your time is precious. How to get big payoff from short active times

The recipe instructions in this book are written chronologically, which means that I will rarely call for things to be already prepped in the ingredient list (i.e., 1 cup chopped onions). Instead, youll see whole ingredients listed, and Ill cue the most efficient moment in which to prep them in the recipe method itself. I am all about balancing inactive and active times, and using inactive time to your benefit when cooking. Despite what you might have heard chefs say about their restaurant mise en place, it doesnt always make sense to prep every single thing before you start cooking. Ive set up my recipes so you start the longest-cooking item first, and while that is in process, youll use the downtime (inactive time) to prep the things that go with it. If Im going to have rice with a meal, I put that on at the top, then use the 18 minutes it takes the rice to cook to make whatever else will be on the table (see the recipe for Gingery Ground Beef with Lime and Herbs on , Ill prompt you to get that going, then turn to the other ingredients.