Who We Are

Aaron Mattis started cooking as a teenager but didn’t really learn what he was doing until he took time off from college to work in a French bistro. While in the kitchen he loves baking bread and nibbling the crispy skin of a roasted chicken. His favorite food is Vacherin Mont d’Or and his favorite restaurant is Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge, MA.

Katrien Mattis, née van der Kuijp, pretends to cook Chinese food atypical of a half-Asian who grew up in the Bible Belt. The only professional restaurant experience she has is waiting tables at a Cracker Barrel in Texas. Her favorite food is mapo tofu and her favorite restaurant is Musashi's in Seattle, WA.

Why we are doing this

There are a lot of you out there like us: mid-20s, post-college, broke, lazy, and childless with real kitchens meant to be, you know, used.

Trying to figure out what to cook for dinner every night is a soul-sucking daily chore that usually goes something like this:

"What do you want for dinner?"
"I don't know. What do you want?"
"I don't know. That's why I asked you first."

... one hour later...

"This would have been cheaper/faster/better if we just went out."

To make deciding what to cook easier for you, we separate our recipes into helpful tags based on timing (Weeknight Dinners or Day Off Meals) and healthfulness (Healthy-ish or Indulgent). You can also browse our recipe index to see all our posts broken down by ingredient, cuisine, etc.

Basically, we're into simple, delicious food that doesn’t dip into too much of our paltry paychecks or Netflix marathons. We know that you are, too.