What I Made for Dinner - A Memoir

From the author of The Natural Mother of the Child, an exquisite memoir about an amateur home cook’s hard and fast descent into an obsession with food celebrities, including Dessert Person Claire Saffitz, Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond, and Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa

When the pandemic sends Krys Malcolm Belc and his young children home to live their lives on laptops, he turns to internet chefs for comfort and inspiration. It begins with Stella Parks and her 46 YouTube videos in which she teaches viewers how to make classic, nostalgic American treats like Cheez-Its, Klondike Bars, and Texas sheet cake. But the recipes aren’t enough—Belc needs to watch her showcase each ingredient, explain its importance, and weigh each item on a scale. His fixation on recipe videos, and the women who produce them, start to feel like the only thing that makes sense.

Most of life has been put on pause, but food is the one thing that continues to change day to day, season to season. Belc captures the joy and pleasure of cooking for a large family, as well as the mundane reality and occasional frustrations that come with simply getting food on the table. In the midst of it all, he feels a spark of inspiration to carry a second baby, a decision that forces him to confront how he has used both the internet and cooking to cope and distract.

Following a trans man whose life is largely structured by keeping the family household running, What I Made for Dinner asks the question we all might ask ourselves while elbow-deep in a roasting chicken: Is having the opportunity to cook meals for your family every day a blessing or a curse?