Unfluencer Weekly: The Recipes Are Too Big
Plus: NYT, WYD? HBO, WYD? And another weird book!
Here’s a quick rundown of the things that I did this week. They’re mostly not new, but who has time to keep up with new things when there’s already so much stuff?
What I Cooked
This week’s I’m Stuck At Home With A Toddler And Need Something To Occupy Me For Several Hours meal was French classic coq au vin (or: wine cock). I’d never made it before.
It turned out well and wasn’t very technically difficult; it requires more active steps than other slow meals I’ve made recently, so it’s not as Stuck At Home With Toddler-friendly as, say, pho. Coq au vin does, however, use an entire bottle of red wine, a plus.
But there’s a problem. There’s too much coq au vin. It’s hogging valuable fridge space, giving my leftover-hoarding husband food wasting anxiety. I only made ⅔ of the portion that the recipe called for, and I’m still drowning in it.
I have a bone to pick with “classic” recipes in general. Why do they all yield so many damn servings? Who is regularly cooking meals for six to eight people from scratch in the year of our lord 2023, in the United States of America? Groceries are expensive, and this isn’t the 1950’s. I do not have four children running around, hungry mouths open like greedy baby birds. And even if I did have four children running around, wouldn’t coq au vin be a bit of a pearls before swine situation when the kids would be fine eating sheet pan drumsticks?