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Alison Stewart: This is All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The deputy food editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Margaret Eby, wrote in her new book, eating is a basic need, but by putting things together to make something to eat, that has challenges. After going to culinary school and working at a glossy food magazine, one day she found herself in a rut. No creme fraiche or herbes de Provence could get her her excited. There were other concerns.

She writes, "The deeper issues of our food system related to climate change, the welfare of the many laborers who pick crops and package meat, the neighborhoods in America where finding fresh food is impossible or ridiculously financially onerous and global food insecurity. It's a lot. It's overwhelming. No wonder sometimes it's just easier to eat a spoonful of peanut butter, provided, of course, that you can shut out the voices telling you that peanut butter is bad for you and you're buying the wrong brand."

Margaret took her feelings to the kitchen and came up with a simple slogan that became the mission of her new cookbook, which is titled You Gotta Eat. In it, she shares her recipes for how to create good meals but not exhaust yourself doing it. As one reviewer put it, the book is "concise, cheeky and a reassuring guide for people who want to cook but can't quite manage the effort." Margaret Eby joins us for our Food for Thought segment. Hi, Margaret.

Margaret Eby: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, do you have a kitchen hack that you want to share with us? Do you have a go to meal that doesn't take a long time? Have you been taking something from your kitchen and matching it with something else and getting magic? Our Phone lines are open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can call or text to us at any. While we wait for people to call in with their magic in the kitchen, I want to ask you, what left you feeling meh about cooking?

Margaret Eby: Various points in my life, I think despite being someone who is so excited about cooking most of the time, I found myself just with no energy. One of those times was during the pandemic. It was post the wave where I had my sourdough starter and I had restarted my scallions in a jar. I was just faced with the prospect of having to make food over and over and over again. It just felt like this Groundhog Day level nightmare rather than something I was excited about. I remember buying an economy pack of Bagel Bites, I believe, and that is what got me through some of the hardest weeks of the pandemic.

Alison Stewart: When you sat down to write the book, you learned that easy was a bit of a fungible word. What makes an easy recipe, but it's actually not so easy?

Margaret Eby: That's so right. I think when you say something is easy or simple, part of the question is, is it easy or simple for you? Who is it easy or simple for? There are so many wonderful cookbooks out there with quick, easy recipes, but often they're written by people who have more time on their hands to go to the grocery store or to go to the farmer's market. Or, sure, it's a one bowl or a one pot wonder, but then you have all these utensils to clean up and a cutting board and a sheet pan. It spirals pretty quickly.

When I was putting together this book, I wanted to be really conscious not just of what things are easy to put together, but what things are easy on your energy resources and your mental health. Also, I know when I'm really exhausted, there are certain things in the kitchen that I just instinctually avoid. Like, for me, I don't know why, but sometimes getting a cutting board and a knife out, urgh, it's just torture. You have to clean the knife, you have to clean the cutting board, this whole thing. I found the solution is kitchen shears.

Alison Stewart: Kitchen shears? Explain.

Margaret Eby: Kitchen shears are wonderful, and you can do so much with them. Like, rather than having to chop herbs on your cutting board, you just snip them off the bunch with your shears. You can use it to cut up chicken. You can use it to snip little tomatoes in half. I love my kitchen shears. I have two or three pairs always in rotation because I'm always misplacing one of them.

Alison Stewart: When you sat down and you started to work on this cookbook, who was it for? Who did you think, "This is the person that will pick up my cookbook and feel seen."

Margaret Eby: I have a lot of friends who are incredibly wonderful and do many creative pursuits and just absolutely don't have time for cooking. They love food, and they chat with me excitedly about all my projects, but they maybe are just not kitchen people.

When I was writing this, it was, hopefully, in the tone of writing a letter to a friend, writing a long email to someone who's having a hard time, just explaining some pretty basic kitchen things that can help out. In some ways it was also written for me to get through times in my life when it was a little harder for me to get it together to cook. My hope is that anyone who's going through a bit of a hard time, whether you're too busy or burned out or stressed or whatever else, it'll help you across that dinner finish line so you can get something on the plate.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Margaret Eby. We're talking about her cookbook, You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible. Listeners, do you have a kitchen hack you want to share with us? Do you have a go-to meal that just does not take a long time? Maybe you figured one thing for your kitchen, you can use it somewhere else and it makes magic. Our phone lines are open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. I see we have a call from Melissa in Manhattan. Hi, Melissa.

Melissa: Hi. I have a real easy Bolognese sauce recipe that can be used with frozen meat, any kind of ground meat. You chop up some onion, not very much, lots of garlic. As that's coming together, just put the meat on top, let the meat wet through the onions and garlic and chop that up, spice it, put your tomato sauce in, and 10, 15 minutes later, it's ready.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Thanks for the call.

Margaret Eby: [inaudible 00:06:51]

Alison Stewart: Yes. Let's check in with Ellen from Queens. Hi, Ellen.

SpeakerE Ellen: Hey, how are you doing?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

SpeakerE: So nice to hear from you. I'm happy to call. Listen, Dorie Greenspan's almond cookie recipe. It's sugar almonds, egg, and you're done. You cook them and they're fabulous.

Alison Stewart: Love that. Thank you so much. I love that idea of only four ingredients. Margaret, when we're talking about the kind of things you can do with your cookbook, it was really interesting, because one of the first things it says is that you might not want to use-- How can I put it? You might not want to use measuring cups. [chuckles] You might just use what's available to you. What are some of the ways and what are some of the things we can do to measure using our own hands?

Margaret Eby: Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of cooking is a lot more flexible than it might look like when you're looking at a recipe, and it feels daunting, you need to have exactly half a cup or something like that. Truthfully, so much of cooking, if you have a little bit more than that or a little less than that, it's going to turn out just fine. I like to eyeball things when I'm going around the kitchen. There's a guide in my book about how to do that exactly. I think the real message that I wanted to get across is that it's not a disaster if you have a few fewer noodles or a few more noodles.

In some kinds of baking and some kinds of cooking, precision is really important, but the truth is, a lot of it is just very generous. You can add a little more spice or a little less spice. If you have an extra carrot, if you have an extra potato, then your soup is just going to have a little extra potato in it, and it's just going to be delicious. It's still going to be dinner. I think that's a big part of what I wanted to get across in the book, because I think sometimes you can get so paralyzed wanting to do a recipe exactly right, wanting to make sure that the thing is perfect. The truth is, there's not any such thing as perfection when you're making a meal. There's just something that's going to be delicious and nourishing to you, unless you're working in a Michelin star restaurant, which most of us are not.

Alison Stewart: You have a section titled Open Something. You write in the section, "Do not be afraid of beans. Beans can be your best friend." What is a simple way to present beans that isn't like beanie?

Margaret Eby: [laughs] I really like to toast them. I like to crisp up beans, especially chickpeas, so then they become these delicious little snacky treats. If you're someone who's being curious but also a little bit afraid of them, white bean goes really, really well into a sauce and usually folds in there. That's often something I do when I'm making, say, a pasta is throw an extra can of cannellini beans in there, particularly if I have no meat around, because it dissolves in the sauce. It gives you a little silkiness and a little extra protein, a little extra oomph to it. There's also a recipe in the book for a very, very easy black bean soup where you put cans of black beans and a jar of salsa in a blender and let her rip. You would be shocked at how delicious and easy it is.

Alison Stewart: For fun, you talk about getting out a die, like a dice from [unintelligible 00:10:21]. You have a list of beans, dressing, vegetables, extra. I throw the dice and what do I do?

Margaret Eby: Then you assemble whatever the dice says. You don't have to be as strict with it as that. I like the idea of having a way of cutting through when you have decision paralysis. You're like, "I have all these ingredients. I guess I could combine them. What do I do?" Well, if you use some dice, I guarantee that beans are very friendly. If you add a dressing, if you add a sauce, if you add some crunchy vegetables, it's a bean salad, and no one can tell you otherwise.

Alison Stewart: Let's take a call. Margaret is calling in from New Jersey. Hi, Margaret.

Margaret: Hi. Thank you for taking my call today.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Let's hear what you make.

Margaret: Absolutely. I wanted to talk about a way that I ramp up a simple soup and make it into a full meal. I use any carrot ginger soup recipe. Doesn't matter which one it is. There are a thousand online. One day I decided to add a protein to it. I added a [inaudible 00:11:25]-

Alison Stewart: Oh, did we just lose her?

Margaret: -and it was really tasty. Really tasty.

Alison Stewart: You just what? Tell us what you added again. You blacked out for a minute.

Margaret: Oh, I'm sorry. One cooked sweet Italian sausage.

Alison Stewart: Oh, nice. Very nice. Actually, you have a lot of soup recipes, Margaret, in your book, and they're along this line. You just make the soup. There was a-- What is it? Tomato soup you had?

Margaret Eby: Yes. There's a recipe, actually if you have a jar of tomato sauce, like spaghetti sauce, you can turn it into tomato soup. I love soup, particularly this time of year, because it's so generous and comforting, and because you can really use whatever you have knocking around in the fridge. Plus, it is really a good way of zhuzhing it up. Adding sausage is an incredible idea. I also like to find anything that's a little flavorful and crunchy to add on top of the soup. Like if you have leftover potato chips, if you have crackers. I found some toasted coconut flakes in the back of my pantry the other day, and I added them to some lentil soup.

It's really a format of meal that you can put together pretty quickly. Often it makes a lot, so you can have leftovers and not have to worry about making food again the next day. It can accommodate so many kinds of food preferences and eating restrictions. Whether you can't eat gluten, whether you can't eat meat, whether you're trying to avoid certain things, soup is wonderful.

Alison Stewart: Your sandwich ideas are wild, especially around peanut butter. How did you come up with PB and sriracha.

Margaret Eby: I would say trial and error, and also being a poor college student. [laughter] [unintelligible 00:13:23] is a lot of those sandwiches. I think some of them sound pretty bleak to other people, like a potato chip sandwich. Potato chips on a sandwich, fine. If that's all you have, it might not be particularly filling. Sandwiches are another wonderful way of putting something in your body when you need food and you can't figure it out. Who's to say what is and isn't a sandwich, aside from the great is a hot dog sandwich debate?

I think you can really make your own rules. There are so many examples in the book of people doing that. The one that I think people are most shocked by is the canned pineapple and mayonnaise sandwich. Hear me out, it's worth trying because the acid in the pineapple and the fat of the mayonnaise and adding a little salt and pepper is quite delicious, particularly when tomatoes aren't in season.

Alison Stewart: And you also have a section in your book about cheese boards, but the kick is you leave the cheese out.

Margaret Eby: Yes. I think there are a lot of very beautiful and aspirational cheese boards online. On Instagram, that was such a huge trend. I don't always have an array of gorgeous cheeses in my fridge. That requires a lot of effort and going to the cheesemonger. No one can really police what you put on a board and call dinner. One of the central motivating theses of the of the book is there's a lot of ways we would eat dinner. Say you're out at a party, and you just eat some pigs in a blanket, and you just eat some grapes, and you eat some, I don't know, some dried fruit or maybe some charcuterie. That's dinner. If you did it at home, somehow it's a struggle meal. Context is everything. I think there's no real reason that you can't just decide that it's a party meal at home and put things on a board and eat it.

Alison Stewart: Let's take some more calls. Sarah, thank you so much for calling All of It.

Sarah: Hi. I'm so excited to talk to you. I wanted to call and share an almost embarrassing meal that I make with my five-year-old. My partner and I both work when we have two kids and very frequently dinner. I like to cook, but I'm not good at it and I don't have time to do it. My husband's Korean, so we eat a lot of stews and things like that. We started making this soup that is, you throw-- you get a big pot out.

We put some beef broth in there. We put in some frozen mandu, frozen dumplings. We put in some frozen veggies. We might put in tofu, we might put in some tofu. We cook it all and we make some rice on the other side of it. My kids call it soup rice. That's a staple in our house and they love it. Actually my five-year-old can basically make the whole thing himself because we've done it a few times. That's our basic meal. I'm loving this conversation because it makes me feel less bad about it.

Alison Stewart: I'm so glad you're liking the conversation. Let's talk to Cliff from Staten Island. Hi, Cliff.

Cliff: Hello. Great show. I have a tip, I guess you call it. Like your guest, if someone doesn't like to chop up vegetables and so forth, they sell pre-prepared fresh vegetables that are already cut up in a lot of markets, such as the onion that you don't want to chop up and makes you cry. You can get a little bucket of chopped up onion, or you can get garlic that's already peeled or already even cut up and minced. You can probably make a whole spaghetti sauce like that without ever bringing out a cutting board.

Alison Stewart: Love it. Let's talk to Minette. Hi, Minette.

Minette: Hi.

Alison Stewart: Hi.

Minette: I want to talk about a Filipino dish that I just made. It's called arroz caldo, and it's a Filipino congee. It's chicken and rice. You make it by sautéing garlic and onions and ginger, putting chicken in, putting the rice in some water, and then just letting the whole thing cook. It jumped to my mind when I was listening to this episode because I made it Sunday, and I've been sick the past few days and that's all I've been eating.

Alison Stewart: Oh, first of all, I hope you feel better as well. My guest is Margaret Eby. The name of the book is-- Did I say that right, Margaret?

Margaret Eby: Oh, Eby.

Alison Stewart: Eby. Thank you. Eby. You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible. Got a text says, "My husband's on a PB and pickles kick." Okay. I want to spend some time on ramen. How can I make ramen feel special, not like I just pull it out of my dorm room?

Margaret Eby: Ramen is incredible as a staple, but I understand that if you just make it per the packet directions, you get sick of it. I have. There are so many easy ways to zhuzh it up, though. One of the counterintuitive things that I learned from a Korean friend is just putting a slice of American cheese on top, which you might not think would work, but with spicy ramen, it's so delicious. I would also say if you're already boiling water, you can probably boil an egg or put an egg in the microwave and add it. Then just hunt around your kitchen and see what interesting things you have.

Sometimes I find some wilted spring onions and I throw them in there. Sometimes I just find a jar of ginger garlic paste, and I can stir some in there. Also, your spice cabinet is your best friend in those moments, too, because there's no reason you can't experiment. Obviously, there are some flavor profiles that are a little more intuitive than others. You could add a little hot sauce, you can add a little curry powder or curry paste. It's an incredible place to just kind of spelunk about and then add things, and you might discover something really delicious that you haven't found before.

Alison Stewart: Also something you spend time on is different preparations than what's on the bag. The example you give is when you realize that ravioli doesn't have to go necessarily in boiling water, that you can fry it.

Margaret Eby: Yes, this was something that changed my life forever. You can treat ravioli like dumplings, and you can treat dumpling like ravioli, as our caller just rightly noted. I love to just singe ravioli a little bit in a pan so it gets brown. Then add frozen peas and a little bit of water and let it steam out, and then put it in a big bowl with salt and pepper. If I have some sour cream, it's very delicious. If you have bacon, and if you eat bacon, chopping up a little and cooking it in the pan before you put in the ravioli is so good. Then you have a beautiful riff on peas and pancetta. It takes about 10 minutes, and it really does only take one pan to do the whole thing, which is fantastic.

Alison Stewart: This text says, "So appreciated this approach to cooking. I'm a single mom with cancer and a small business owner. Cooking for my teenager has been really hard for me right now. This book sounds like a lifeline. Lately hack has been bulgogi bowls. Fast, easy, you can use any leftover veg, and my kid loves it. As long as there is sriracha mayo, he'll eat anything." Another message says, "You go, you get a grilled chicken breast from your prepared case, you put it on a bag of arugula with fresh cherry tomato, warm the chicken, wash the arugula, drizzle with olive oil. Enjoy." That's another text we got. For you, you say microwave something. Microwave can be tricky. What's a good example of something that is microwavable?

Margaret Eby: I mentioned this before, but making scrambled eggs in the microwave is actually really wonderful and easy, because a microwave is basically a tiny steam oven. When you steam eggs, they get gorgeous and fluffy. Think about those McDonald's eggs that you get on a biscuit. My aunt, who is a chemistry professor, introduced me to this. Basically, you just crack an egg into a mug or a Pyrex, and you scramble it. Add a little milk, salt, and pepper, microwave it for 30 seconds, stir it, microwave it another 30 seconds. Voila, you have an egg.

Alison Stewart: Our last question, if you have dessert in mind, what would you pick?

Margaret Eby: Ooh, gosh, I love dessert so, so much. I have a recipe in there for a very easy mug cake, if you want to have some cake. I also really love a s'mores cone, which is just when you fill a sugar cone with marshmallows and chocolate chips or whatever candy you have running around and microwave or toast it and eat it just straight from the cone like an ice cream.

Alison Stewart: You have been full of terrific examples. My guest has been Margaret Eby, You Gotta Eat: Real-Life Strategies for Feeding Yourself When Cooking Feels Impossible. Thank you so much for sharing your writing with us. We really appreciate it, Margaret.

Margaret Eby: Thanks so much for having me on. Thank you to everyone who called in with their amazing tips.