This whole magazine is built around the idea of agency and exploring and creating. Recipes are no different. By taking away the crutch, you are encouraged to guess. Experiment. See what happens. Feel free to go at it cautiously or get wild and throw a whole pepper in.

The point is to use your brain. And think about what you are doing. And why. Then make a choice. Use your agency.

(Ok, fine, there might be some for a framework cause we need to know how much we’re making. These are GUESSES for amounts. Starting points. Please take this as encouragement to have some fun. What’s the worst that could happen? You get stuck eating eggs on toast?)

VOCABULARY & CONCEPTS

Mire Poix: usually a combination of onion, carrot and celery (traditionally 2/1/1) used as the base for soups and stews or sauces. The fun part though? Changing things out. You can change the type of onion for different flavor profiles. White, yellow, red, shallot. Some are sweeter some are more tart. Smaller onions? stronger than their larger counterparts. Want to go in a cajun direction? swap the carrots for bell peppers? How about another direction and swap in jalapeño and tomato for the celery and carrot. Suddenly we’re feeling a little like a vacation.

Taste and Season: Wild this needs explaining. And tasting is the ONLY way to ensure your food is seasoned properly. And yes, your food needs seasoning. You are not a heathen. And no one but you can decide what is the right amount. Start by getting a clean spoon and TASTING. Salt and pepper are there to enhance the flavors present not overwhelm. So start slow if new.

Chili probably isn’t most people’s first pick when it’s over 100 degrees out but the best part is you can make it in the morning and let it really meld during the day or you can do a faster version with a pressure cooker. The ease of prep and pots just feels like you’re doing less and when it’s hot…..no one wants to cook. This is fast, it’s delicious and you can really customize it with whatever you have on hand.

Sweet with a little spicy afterkick from the ginger and sriracha, your friends will be asking you to bottle them up some to take home.

What you should eat. What you should wear. Where you should live. How productive you should be. How to decorate your house. Raise your kids. Spend your weekends. Find love. Heal. Hustle. Rest. Become the “best version” of yourself.

It’s exhausting.

Maybe that’s because “should” has never felt like an invitation. It feels like a grade. A measurement. A quiet reminder that there’s a right answer—and that if you aren’t living it, you’ve somehow fallen behind.

I’ve spent enough of my life chasing should. These days, I’m much more interested in could.

Could I learn to make pasta from scratch?

Could I take a road trip to somewhere I’ve never been?

Could I hang art on a wall because it makes me smile instead of because it matches the couch?

Could I photograph strangers? Read poetry? Grow tomatoes? Learn to surf at forty? Start over? Stay put? Make friends differently? Love differently? Build a career that doesn’t look like anyone else’s?

Not because I have to. Because I could. That’s the thread running through every page of this magazine.

You’ll find people making things simply because they wanted to. Places worth exploring. Recipes to try. Artists to discover. Conversations that might shift the way you see something. Ideas you may completely disagree with. Others that might quietly change your life.

None of it is meant to tell you what you should do. It’s simply another possibility. Because we can’t choose from options we don’t know exist.

Maybe you’ll turn the page and discover a hobby that becomes your favorite Saturday ritual. Maybe you’ll read about someone whose life looks nothing like yours and realize there’s more than one good way to build a meaningful life. Maybe you’ll close this magazine without changing a thing.

That’s okay too. This isn’t about becoming someone else. It’s about remembering that your life belongs to you. You only get one. I’d hate for any of us to spend it following a script we never stopped to question.

So here’s to curiosity. Here’s to possibility. Here’s to asking a different question. Not, “What should my life be?”

But…

“What could my life be?”

It's also insanely delicious, fast, and pretty darn healthy. Your kids will fall in love with the sweetness of the sauce. Your adult taste buds will appreciate a more sophisticated protein than the usual chicken (nuggets).

I serve mine with steamed rice and some veggies for a meal that could impress even the fanciest date.

Also, I have no association with Paprika 3 but I definitely recommend it. A lot of my recipes are lost to time- can we all have a moment of silence for the dead links…but with Paprika 3 you can save the recipe and cut out all this fluff about kids and dead links. And keep your recipes safe forever.

Oh, and the reason it’s NOT salmon? Cause it’s TROUT. Steelhead to be exact. When you’re on a budget, steelhead is often significantly cheaper, looks the same, tastes the same, cooks the same and supposedly is healthier. Not a food expert. But if you prefer salmon, use salmon.