Justine Cooks, I Snack
Musings on my five favorite meals from Justine's cookbook, Justine Cooks, plus what I'm hobbying with right now.
Welcome!
Unlike my culinarily-inspired better half, I am not a big cooker. I also don’t work in anything related to food, but I do enjoy eating the things that Justine makes, and I think there is an interesting opening for the partners of food creators to provide our own thoughts on the creations that we eat throughout the week. On top of that, I also want to use this space to talk about some of the other things I’m doing in a week. These usually will be focused around streaming TV and podcasts, video games I’m playing, and things I’m building. If you’re reading, then welcome! This space will be a little all over the place, but I’m excited to go through it with you.
Let’s Talk About Food
Justine’s cookbook came out back in October, but my friends from college were recently discussing our New Year’s resolutions, one of whom said he wants to eat better this year, though he has limited time to make meals. Considering this, he asked what Justine’s top five recipes are for a guy in Tennessee who only has 30 minutes to make dinner. I, like a good friend, ignored the part where I was told to ask Justine and instead took the opportunity to insert my top recommendations from her book. As the creator, Justine often gets the questions about the food, but as the in-house eater, I felt like I had a unique perspective to offer. Following my recommendations, which I promise will be coming soon, the same friend suggested I start a “Subsnack” to talk about this very topic, so here we are.
The Fantastic Five
My first recommendation to my friend was to meal prep some proteins on Sunday to use as a complement for these recipes throughout the week. Justine is a plant-forward pescatarian, but I eat everything and like to supplement in with the meals she makes using things like chicken thighs and salmon filets that are easy to batch make in the oven.
From there, the first recipe that I recommended was the spoon salad (pg. 122), featured on the Today Show. If the salad can be put together while morning show hosts are rapid-firing questions during a short segment, then it can be made in 30 minutes. The salad is great with cubes of halloumi cheese that get lightly toasted and would put most cheese curds I’ve had to shame. The second recipe also came from the salad chapter, specifically the baked kale salad with chili quinoa (pg. 113), which is a bit similar to the baked kale salad with crispy quinoa found on Justine’s website. The quinoa here is spicy and the combo with the kale really makes it so you can eat this on its own with a lot of protein.
Beyond the salads, I think there are two pastas that are pretty simple to make, one of which I’ve even made myself. The first, and probably my dark horse favorite from the cookbook, is the shatter-top cauliflower orzo (pg. 195) found also on Justine’s Instagram. This recipe really surprised me with how the cauliflower just disappears behind layers of cheese - coincidentally also how I would like to disappear. It works great as a meal throughout the week and is a perfect compliment to the proteins I talked about earlier. The second pasta is the one I’ve made, which means quite literally anyone, including our cat Gladiator, could make. It is of course the brown butter tahini pasta (pg. 199), also found on Justine’s YouTube. The tahini is nutty and brown butter has never made something worse.
Finally, I care about my friends, and breakfast is in fact the most important meal of the day, so I made sure to round out my recommendations with the stewed apple oats (pg. 74). These can be replaced with other fruits, but I think the best tip I’ve learned from Justine is to add in the whites of two eggs as the oats are finishing. This not only makes a fluffier oat, but it also adds protein and helps to keep you full longer.
Let’s Talk About The Rest
TV and Movies
So “the rest” this week are the other things that I’m digging right now with a slight addition of my favorites in each category looking back at the previous year. Justine and I just finished watching Netflix’s second season of Squid Game. For those who watched the first, I think there is a lot here that is great. We were watching multiple episodes a night, and the new arcs that they’ve introduced were really enjoyable. I’ve said it multiple times to my circle of friends, but my best watch last year of movies and TV is easily the second season of Arcane. Half the soundtrack will end up in my Spotify Wrapped this year and the story was just incredible in every way from character development to animation. If you aren’t typically an animated series enjoyer, I’d highly recommend giving this a shot. My barometer of animation enjoyment is typically if Justine will also watch it. She watched two animated series with me last year, being Arcane and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End (also highly recommend as Evan Call’s Zoltraak was in this year’s Wrapped).
Podcasts and Videogames
I spent some time today on a walk listening to The Besties on Spotify talk about their video game of the year. Some of their tops this year include Animal Well, Helldivers 2, and Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. I like The Besties as they tend to cover a good range of Indies as well as games that got the mainstream hype. My personal game of the year would probably go to Elden Ring’s DLC Shadow of the Erdtree, but I also enjoyed the feeling of slamming my head into a wall repeatedly for a few weeks to clear that content at launch, so your mileage may vary. As far as what I’m playing right now, I’m really enjoying Path of Exile 2. The game is an Action Role Playing Game (ARPG) like the Diablo series, but with a bit more detail in the class building area. It took me a minute to find a class that I really liked, but finally landed on Witch and have been mostly following Kripp’s Sniper Explode Infernalist build on Mobalytics to get over the anxiety that PoE2’s skill tree causes me.
Gundam Plastic Model “Gunpla”
In the spirit of getting all my interests covered in this first edition, I recently built a High Grade (HG) Calibarn Gundam from The Witch from Mercury anime series - picture included below. Witch from Mercury has been my favorite Gundam series, and probably my second favorite mecha anime behind 86 Eighty-Six. Justine did not watch either of these, so there is once again varying mileage for readers here, but in retrospect she would probably enjoy Witch from Mercury. I’m thinking my next build will be the Real Grade (RG) Crossbone Gundam, which is pirate-themed (rad) from the Mobile Suit manga of the same name.
Books
Finally, I’m finishing up Jay Kristoff’s second book in the Empire of the Vampire series, Empire of the Damned. I’ve got about two hours left according to my Kindle, and plan to get back into Brandon Sanderson’s third book in The Stormlight Archives, Oathbringer. I like reading high-fantasy the most, so that will be most of what I recommend and read. Sticking to my recent favorites, I’d have to say last year’s was probably James Islington’s The Will of the Many. This book was great; magic academy book that felt a bit like Pierce Brown’s Red Rising with heavy Roman Empire influence.
For those of you who got to the end of this, thanks! I hope some of these topics are interesting enough for you to read the next edition. If you made it all the way, then please enjoy this small treat picture of Justine with her new puzzle hobby discovered during our holiday vacation.
Happy snacking, watching, gaming, crafting, and reading in the New Year,
-Eric