Jen Hatmaker - Feed These People: Slam-Dunk Recipes for Your Crew

FEED THESE PEOPLE. Copyright 2022 by Jen Hatmaker. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Published in association with Yates & Yates, www.2yates.com

Cover design by Laura Palese

Photography 2022 by Mackenzie Smith Kelley

Food styling by Maite Aizpurua

Prop styling by Taylor Cumbie

36 Gradients Prime Dsgn via Creative Market

Digital Edition OCTOBER 2022 ISBN: 978-0-358-53920-9

Version 08182022

Print ISBN: 978-0-358-53914-8

For my

people,

the greatest loves of my life.

I am the luckiest

girl in the world because

you are mine.

Look, sometimes life is weird and a girl named Jen Hatmaker ends up writing a cookbook. Is she a chef? She isnt. Does she have credentials? She doesnt. Did she go to culinary school? She didnt. Can she put down a double burger with mushrooms and onions and blue cheese sauce? She can, reader.

Im just a home cook, and to secure that title, the best place to start is by being an eater.

So if you eat, youre in this club. Welcome.

I had no idea how to cook when I entered adulthood. Mom didnt teach us because we were a pain in the ass and who would want us in the kitchen? Plus, I grew up in the 80s and food sucked then. Or at least it did in Kansas. I dont know what the teens in New York were eating in 1988, but we were eating frozen Tyson chicken patties and Veg-All. The Cold War table was a real gauntlet.

I continued this race toward mediocrity in the kitchen until one day I had a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a two-year-old and discovered this low-simmering rage toward their hunger, like a true psychopathangry at preschoolers for wanting dinner again. That year on New Years Day, not one to make resolutions because I already fail enough, thanks, I asked myself: What is one thing Id like to do slightly better this year? (Take note, achievers.)

I answered myself: Cooking. Because these jokers want to eat every day, apparently.

And just like that, I changed my mind about cooking. I decided to love it, on the spot. I decided to learn about garlic and red peppers and food that didnt come out of the freezer. I started watching the Food Network in the mid-2000s, and that became my culinary school. My instructors were Rachael Ray, Emeril, the Neelys, Paula Deen, Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, Giada De Laurentiis, Sandra Lee. I purchased a grown-up persons knife. I bought cookbooks like I was single-handedly bankrolling the industry. I used ingredients I had never even seen, like ginger (WTH, ginger??).

To stop being resentful of kindergarteners, I decided to make the cooking hour delightful, so I asked myself, What do you love? Well, I love wine. I love my music instead of listening to freaking Barney. I love these babies, but I love them in another room for a few hot minutes. So each night, having engineered an hour in the kitchen, Id pour a glass of wine, play Norah Jones (2004, turn up!), and teach myself to cook.

Would you believe I grew to absolutely, positively love it? Not tolerate it, not endure it... love it. Cooking wasnt the unmanageable beast I thought it was. It wasnt that precious. It wasnt that finicky. There were a million ways to dive in. The rules were actually sparse. Teachers were abundant because of the World Wide Web. It was just food, with minimal consequences, so a recipe could go sideways four times before righting itself and no one would die. Cooking was a low-stakes creative outlet that resulted in homemade pizza and French onion soup, so there were no losers in this endeavor.

But the clear winner was me.

What an absolute joy cooking has become. This cookbook? My favorite project ever, and this is my thirteenth book, what in the whole earth. Combining a love of cooking with a love of writing and being obnoxious? Dream. Food and the table are so central to my happiness now.

A little note: This cookbook was just a tiny baby idea, barely formed but already titled, when I lost my twenty-six-year marriage. I hadnt written a single word yet, but feeding my family was the center point of the whole project. I called my agents and publisher with my raw, brokenhearted story and asked what to do with this failed project, this failed life.

They said, Jen, do you still have children?

Yes. There are so many of them.

Do you still have siblings?

Yes. We are so loud.

Do you still have brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews?

Yes. Marrying into our wild family is a real ordeal.

Do you still have parents?

Yes. They survived us.

Do you still have best friends?

Yes. They are my life.

Then feed these people. Get busy cooking.

We feed the people we love. That is the end of the formula. Some of them are married to us, some of them were born to us, some of them got stuck with us, some of them picked us. But as surely as eating is the best prerequisite to being a cook, love is the only prerequisite to feeding the people. I eat and I love; this project was never failed after all.

So welcome to this little weird place. Thanks for indulging my swears and whatever janky instructions I snuck past my editor, Stephanie. Def read all the stuff at the front of this book, which will help you make sense of the rest of it (allegedly). Dont you dare skip the vegetarian chapter; my pizza recipe is in that one, criminy. Enjoy the stories. They are only mildly exaggerated. Dont email me because I wrote salt to taste too much. Those pics? That is my house and those are my people, the North Star of my life.

Hope this little book helps you feed yours.

Cheers, Jen

I was a real Nervous Nellie when I first started cooking. Positive it was all utterly precise, I was married to recipes, distrustful of any (dormant) instincts I had, unwilling to adapt for my familys preferences, and constantly worried I was getting it wrong. First of all, it is okay to be super crappy at something when you first start doing it, so never fear, new cooks. You can murder the crab cakes with lemon caper butter sauce at first, and who really cares. Its just food. Keep going.

But once I started cooking more, figuring out flavors and temps and combinations and ingredients, I moved solidly into the non-fussy category and never moved out. Youll for sure see that approach in the following pages, which some of you will love and others hate, but you already bought this cookbook, so its too late, man.