For quite some time, I’ve been admiring a lot of these really cool, effortless and stylish recipes in Bon Apetit magazine, and often the recipes contributed by Alison Roman in particular. The first recipe I made of hers was those “internet famous” chocolate chunk short bread cookies that were all over instagram last fall and they were completely amazing. Best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had. Right after the holidays this year, everyone was making her coconut curry and chickpea stew which took on the same insta-fame as the cookies. At the same time, I was in bed with the flu for just over twenty four hours and all I wanted to do once I regained my strength was make the famous stew. It was just as good as I had imagined and actually incredibly simple!

For some reason, I was slightly intimidated by Alison Roman’s cookbook “Dinning In”- it just seemed so cool. Cool recipes. Cool photos. Cool serving utensils. The cool people eating the food in the photos even have cool manicures. “I am not cool enough for this book” I thought, but I was so curious about other recipes I may be missing out on, that in the middle of another dark, very dark, Michigan winter I ordered myself “Dinning In” and…let it sit on my shelf for about two months before finally just picking a recipe, picking an audience (thanks Christopher!) and going for it.

My brothers and I are, like everyone else, obsessed with Game of Thrones. So on the Sunday of the season eight premiere, I had my older brother over for a celebratory dinner/viewing party. My older brother Christopher is a great guinea pig for trying out new recipes because he’s a pretty adventurous eater and will respond enthusiastically enough that I know when the food is good, but not so enthusiastically that I feel like Rachel in that episode of friends when she made that tragic custard-beef trifle situation which everyone either scarfed down or threw out the window to avoid hurting her feelings. So on about the chillest Sunday I’ve had since summer vacation, I spent all day “putzing” around the house while I roasted the tomatoes for Roasted Tomato and Anchovy Bucatini from “Dining In”. I paired the pasta with what is basically a “Creamsicle” salad also from the book and let me tell you -it was very good. Both dishes felt a little fancy, a little impressive, but I was able to make a pretty gorgeous meal with so little stress that I was already relaxed and enjoying the food before we even sat down.

I have absolutely no idea why I thought I “couldn’t” cook from “Dinning In”. I wasn’t wrong about it being cool. It is. Each recipe seems to have some interesting element that makes me want to make the dish and snap a fabulous photo before devouring it. But the five (!) recipes I’ve made from the book so far have been completely simple and doable, and absolutely delicious. I went on to make a salad from the book for our Easter dinner and plan to treat my little brother to a similar dinner party when he comes home from college for an episode of “Thrones” in a few weeks.

I plan to challenge myself to cook more from Dinning In, and from all of my cookbooks and old issues of Bon App too. I’ve noticed that with Pinterest if I’ve had to plan a menu, I’ve logged on a scrolled for hours completely ignoring a pretty great collection of cookbooks and dog-eared pages of magazines that I’ve subscribed to for years. Our entire Easter menu was selected from my print collection and was pretty amazing- so far so good.

This school year has been something else, and I’m sitting here looking out my window at all of the plants popping up around my new garden and dreaming about cooking, grilling, staying up late…is it June yet?