About lunchbox | recipes

Where this site came from

Over the past 15+ years I have carved a path learning how to cook a variety of meals. I have always thought of creating an interactive reference for myself of the best ones I have collected. Many of these are meals I have made dozens and dozens of times. I know all the ways to mess each one of them up and how to really nail it.

If you are like me you really value a checklist. ☑️ Today so many recipes are available and so easy to find many variations but there are some serious drawbacks to the general online experience.

1. Pop-ups. There are so many pop ups and things you have to swat away to even view the content of the recipe on so many of these sites!
2. The recipe is buried in so much explanation and front matter.
3. Of course you find different recipes from different sites and they are all laid out in different formats and orders its tough
4. We freeform all of these in our own way. Right? So we need to log what we are doing if we ever want to have a chance of creating that standard again! Also as we adjust or create variants over time I'd like to have a running standard to ad notes too. Lessons learned types of things.
5. I'd like to share this vault of recipes that we have collected with our variants with my friends and family!

How I cook

Like anything I really focus on the fundamentals of things and principles then build out from there. Fundamentals (salt, fat, acid, heat, knife skills, timing, parallel, cleaning, sensory, roux) things transfer. I can never really get good at one topic until I know how all of the sub skills add up.

I look for inspiration online and at restaurants we visit. We have some really neat cookbooks as well. A recipe is a starting point: I add our own flavors, or cross two ideas together based on what's in the pantry and what needs using up. My stainless pans have lasted a decade, and the cast iron stands in for the grill I don't have yet. Lots of butter, lots of olive oil, and a good amount of heat.

Favorite Cuisines

• Mexican
• Italian
• Indian
• Chinese
• American

How this site is built

Recipes live as markdown notes in my Obsidian vault. A small Node.js script parses them and renders this site. No database, no tracking, no ads. Just static files. There might be a helper mouse or two around though!