This Is Cooking But Keep It Casual

By Annie (Garcia) Lucey

This Is Cooking, But Keep It Casual

Hi hey hello! Welcome. And thank you for being here! This is Cooking But Keep It Casual, my little hub on Substack where I’ll share mostly recipes, along with things I love in and out of the kitchen.

On Casual Cooking

One of my favorite Sunday rituals is roasting a chicken, mostly to dunk a crusty baguette into the jammy onions, garlic, and lemons at the bottom of the roasting dish. I’m a professionally trained cook. In my childhood, there were raviolis, tortillas, tamales, Sunday sauces, and platters of my dad’s garden tomatoes with grilled bread. I’ve built my career and life around food and I tend to plan my travels around it too. The farmstay I’m sending you to in Sicily? It’s going to take you several days to get there but the local ricotta is so good you might cry. More on that in another newsletter. I want to make food that tastes like the season we’re in. I daydream about contrasting textures and flavors in a dish. How cara cara oranges look more luscious cut into segments, scattered with buttery smashed Castelvetrano olives. Always with a glug of olive oil and flaky salt to finish. Everything in my life brings me back to food.

And alas, despite the romance, my cooking style is surprisingly laid back. I feel the pull of real-life demands. Working, being a new parent, and limited childcare. Some days I’m DRAINED and nothing sounds worse than cleaning another dish. But! A girl’s gotta eat and I want food to be a bright spot in my day, not a burden. That’s where my recipes come in. The cooking steps are uncomplicated so that we can just enjoy the acts of cooking and eating. My recipes give you options that feel romantic in flavor and casual in technique. It’s not always going to be one pot and thirty minutes, though many of my dishes turn out that way (and that’s kind of what I need in this season of life). But! It’s going to be well thought out. Practical without compromising on the pleasure of cooking. 

Perhaps most importantly, I want you to cook based on your mood. For me, weeknights are for simpler recipes. A quick stovetop dish of creamy white beans and burst tomatoes. On weekends it’s a short rib ragu that braises for hours as we stir, taste, and adjust. Submit to your cooking mood and find something that fits it here. I’m keeping the cooking casual and I hope you’ll join me! Maybe you’ll even dunk a crusty baguette in the chicken drippings along the way.

On Things I Love In And Out Of The Kitchen

In my kitchen, there’s olive oil. So many forms of tomatoes. Salted butter. Vintage glassware. Wine. My ride-or-die kitchen workhorses, looking at you, 8.5” chef’s knife. There’s almost always a playlist on. If there’s a product I swear by I’ll recommend it to you. If there’s a trick for finding the juiciest lime in the grocery store I want to tell you about it. You want to grab a lime that feels heavy for its size and has smooth skin, by the way. Beyond recipes, I’ll be sharing things I love in and out of the kitchen. Come for the recipes, stay for the product recs, playlists, and food and travel guides. If we’re talking out of the kitchen, who knows, we might even get into the baby books my 7-month-old is obsessed with, my California native plant journey, and the people I love following on the internet.

On The Logistics

And now for some housekeeping! My Substack is free. Maybe one day that will change and for now this is what feels best. I work full-time and I’m a new mom. This phase of life is a little chaotic and I don’t know exactly how often I’ll share here yet. If and when I get to a point of having a more predictable publishing cadence where I can promise what I’ll deliver and when - perhaps that will change!

If you’ve been a reader for a while you know I share recipes on my website, and you might wonder how this space is different. Substack subscribers will get first access to all new recipes before they go live on my website. New recipes will have deeper dives into relevant cooking tips, products, and maybe some video tutorials woven in when helpful. You’ll also get access to the community here with the chat feature! I’ll be starting chatrooms to open up cooking questions to the community. And! For all of you to connect because if my DMs on other social platforms are any indication, everyone is pretty like-minded and I think we’d all be friends IRL. Thanks for letting me pour my heart out here before the first recipe drops tomorrow. Now! Is this thing on? Let’s get cookin!