Cook Like Nobody's Watching

I have a photo taped up above my stove. This is the same photo I’ve had through three apartments– above the tiny, charming stove on Dean Street, behind the slightly-larger but not as charming stove on a different block of Dean Street, and now behind my positively charmless yet incredibly efficient stove on redacted Street.  It’s not food– I only allow food art in the form of oil painted still lifes–  but a sort of nondescript tight shot of healthy, bright green cacti set against the brightest blue cloudless California sky. 

Like a recurring character on your favorite sitcom, this photo appeared in every episode of Home Movies and eventually, similarly to the tiny closet, people started to ask what it was and why it was there. To answer your question: It was taken in 2016 by Michael Graydon while he was going for a morning walk in the Hollywood Hills, near the Airbnb I had rented for shooting my first cookbook, Dining In. In all honesty, it was never taped up with any sort of intention. I had a white wall that needed adornment, and of the few printed photos I had, this was one. So I taped it up. 

When I moved apartments to a different block on Dean Street, I knew it had to come with me to be taped up behind my newer, bigger stove in my bigger, brighter kitchen. I had become attached. I looked at it every day. The longer I had it taped up, the more I thought of my first cookbook shoot and how it felt to make that book, how I felt making it. This was now ten years ago, long before I knew what it was like to really succeed or truly fail, before I knew what it was like to have anyone care about what you were doing– for better or for worse. 

Yesterday, while in a mutual downward spiral about The State of The World, in a fit of drama, I told a friend that the overwhelming online popularity and subsequent crowding of my favorite things (cooking, writing a newsletter) had stripped me of the joy they once brought me. Like any good friend-therapist, they asked me what about “the internet of it all” was the thing stopping me from feeling the way I once did, to which I didn’t have a satisfactory answer. 

The more I’ve sat with it (and I have SAT with it), I figure I have this (perhaps misguided, or not) sensation that things are more fulfilling when they’re created in a vacuum. When there’s not an endless well of source material in the literal palm of your hand for which to compare yourself, feel inspired by or rip off, each creative percolation somehow feels more pure, more useful, more authentic. When I was cooking (or writing), like nobody was watching– because nobody was watching– I felt free and energized by the simple act of making things without the potential of praise or critique, absent of any attachment to the outcome. Without a constant barrage of external pollution, the vision was clear, the intent was pure. This is a half-baked thought, but stay tuned as I work through this over the next decade or so.  

Almost six months ago to the day, I published my fourth cookbook, Something from Nothing. It’s a love letter to simple, pantry-based cooking, a mix of old favorites and new classics, a restrained book that doesn’t boisterously promise to change your life (though it still might). I wrote it during a period of pregnancy and post-partum, the latter during which I felt especially detached from the world, not leaving the house much and staying off the internet as much as I could. I spent a lot of this time holding my tiny baby, trying to figure out how to get more milk to come out of my body, writing, editing and crying (not all at the same time, though sometimes). 

Counterintuitively, my brain felt especially focused during this time. My thoughts were potent and clear– I knew exactly what this book hoped to be: a useful tome full of quietly inspired recipes to help make you a better, more confident cook. I spent almost zero time worrying about what this book ought to be, how it would translate to an audience online, if there was any potential for “viral recipes,” what might “make a great video.” I certainly wasn’t fishing for an award, but only because I had never received one. It’s my favorite of all the books I’ve written, and I have a feeling it will become the most “classic,” once it's eligible for such a distinction. 

This week, Something from Nothing was nominated for a James Beard Award in the General category for cookbooks. This is my first nomination in that category and second James Beard nomination ever (my first book, Dining In, was nominated for photography in 2018). 

For context, I’ve been working in food media for fifteen years and writing cookbooks for ten– I only bring this up to illustrate that having a solid career in whatever you do is not defined by awards and it’s possible to thrive without the recognition you so desperately crave (Paul Thomas Anderson only won his first Best Director Oscar in 2026, which my husband loves to bring up). To be clear….I am THRILLED to be nominated. Being recognized at a grand level by the highest arbiters of excellence in your field is an extreme honor. 

But, I’d be remiss not to say it’s also important to “dance like nobody’s watching,” as it were, and tape up the picture that reminds you to do so. Roast a chicken because you don’t get to eat the best parts if you don’t make it yourself. Write a recipe because your sister-in-law needs an egg-free waffle to feed her son who’s allergic. Have people over because babysitters are expensive and honestly, the food might be better. Write the cookbook of your dreams with lots of monochromatic recipes because not everything needs herbs, the book with a whole page dedicated to radishes and butter because even after all these years, you still have something to say about radishes and butter, the cookbook with Shallot Pasta inside it, a recipe that anyone can find online but think– this deserves more than the internet. This recipe deserves a page in a book. 

Make the work for yourself, according to your own tastes, standards, desires and whims. Build more of what you want to see in the world. Believe in it, even if nobody sees it, reads it, watches it, hears it, eats it. It’s worth it– Promise. It might take a while (years, even), but the rest (and even maybe an award) will come.