Your Cooking Resolution Matchmaker Is Here
After I asked readers to share their 2025 kitchen resolutions with me last week, some familiar goals made their way into my inbox: Make better use of the cookbooks that crowd our shelves (same); work new recipes into our routines (ditto); and eat more vegetables, period (likewise).
Some of you were specific (Belinda wants to eat 30 different fruits and vegetables each week!) while others went broad (Sarah wants to cook at home more!). But nearly everyone asked for a little help. So below are a handful of resolutions from readers, along with some recipes to get them — or you! — started.
Laurie would like to eat more vegetables for breakfast. It’s a cinch to nestle greens around morning eggs, as Lidey Heuck does with her asparagus-potato hash and Sarah Copeland does with her Swiss chard-packed green shakshuka with avocado and lime.
Green Shakshuka With Avocado and Lime
In the cooler months, a savory porridge is a great vehicle for start-your-day vegetables, as demonstrated by Hetty Lui McKinnon’s butternut squash congee, Vallery Lomas’s grits and greens, Rick Martínez’s roasted vegetables and buttermilk grits and Ali Slagle’s kimchi rice porridge (just be sure to use a vegetarian kimchi).
Mia would like to expand her grain consumption. Namely, she’d like to cook more regularly with farro and quinoa. Ali’s new recipe for one-pot beans, greens and grains provides an easy template for doing so, with plenty of wiggle room to personalize and improvise so that you never get bored. “This is a gem of a dish,” a reader wrote in the recipe’s comments.
Ali also incorporates whole grains into her vegan farro and bean chili; the farro has “a similar rubble as ground meat, a nutty flavor that’s natural in chili and starches that thicken the surrounding liquid,” she writes. And if you’re boiling farro or quinoa in batches to enjoy throughout the week, you can throw any leftovers into Ali’s dense yet bouncy grain frittata with chile, lime and fresh herbs (just replace the fish sauce with a little soy sauce or a vegan seasoning sauce like Yondu).
Erika and her daughter are giving vegetarianism a go for the month. But they don’t have a lot of time to cook, so they’re looking for easy, satisfying dinners — appealing labels year-round! Andy Baraghani’s 35-minute crispy artichoke pasta harnesses the power of punchy canned artichokes — a worthwhile pantry staple — to restaurant-worthy results. Hetty’s charred bok choy and cannellini bean salad also makes expert use of a pantry workhorse, canned beans, alongside smoky, crisp-tender greens and fresh herbs.
Erika mentioned she enjoys fruits, vegetables and legumes, but allow me to suggest tofu, if it isn’t top of mind already. Quick to prepare, it’s ideal to have in the fridge on busy weeknights for dishes like Melissa Clark’s miso-chile asparagus with tofu.
And Donne would like to make soup once a week. This might be one of my favorite resolutions. So, for Donne, we have a soup for every season: Lisa Donovan’s warming pozole verde to combat the winter chill; Melissa’s golden beet borscht at the first signs of spring; Hetty’s cold tomato and kimchi soba noodle soup for when the summer heat reaches its peak; and Alexa Weibel’s celery-leek soup with potato and parsley to ease you into your favorite fall sweaters.
Lastly, a resolution — and a reminder — from Karen: “To cook for myself more. I am worth cooking for.” Without a doubt. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.
Pozole Verde
One More Thing!
I leave you with one final reader resolution, from Stephen, which reads more like poetry.
“I have been married for 42 years to a woman possessing many, many talents. I have been the beneficiary of these talents in ways both large and small. Perhaps chief among them is that she is profoundly gifted in the kitchen, so much so that I have long since given up trying to compete.
She is seldom dismissive of or condescending to my efforts, but the futility of my work approaches the laughable. But here in my 67th year I resolve yet again to master some recipe that she will find impossible to improve upon. It is the least I can do for someone who has changed my understanding of what food is and should be.”
May we all find a love like this! And in the meantime, Stephen, few recipes deliver like the original plum torte, which readers have made with all kinds of in-season fruit.
