Half an Onion and a Bad Attitude: The Books That Keep Me Fed

September is chaos in a sweater. Everyone’s out here posting pumpkin spice lattes, and I’m in Nebraska wondering if I need a fan or a fleece. Somewhere between those temperature swings, I start thinking about my mom. She’s been gone twenty-two years, but every September, I end up making her chili, because grief, apparently, runs on muscle memory.

So while that pot’s simmering, I’m talking about five books that actually get food. Not diet tips, not glossy cookbooks—books that understand food as love, loss, and survival. M.F.K. Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf is pure defiance; Laurie Colwin’s Home Cooking is chaos disguised as comfort; Tamar Adler’s An Everlasting Meal is meditation with butter; Dwight Garner’s The Upstairs Delicatessen is curmudgeonly brilliance; and Ruth Reichl’s Save Me the Plums is the fairy tale that remembers to show the hangover.

It’s not fancy. It’s not influencer cooking. It’s one person with a wooden spoon, too many cans of tomatoes, and five writers who remind us that food is memory and memory, inconveniently, never really goes away.

Nick's Mom’s Chili

Ingredients:
2 pounds ground chuck
1/3 green pepper, cleaned and diced
1 large onion, diced
4 stalks celery, diced
4 (15 oz) cans tomato sauce
1 (15 oz) can V8 juice
2 large (28 oz) cans diced tomatoes
3 cans dark red kidney beans
1 cup ketchup
1 envelope taco seasoning (the trick)
Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
1. In a large pot or Dutch oven, brown the ground beef with the diced green pepper, onion, and celery. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
2. Once browned, drain off any excess fat.
3. Add the tomato sauce, V8 juice, diced tomatoes, kidney beans, and ketchup. Stir to combine.
4. Sprinkle in the taco seasoning and stir well.
5. Taste and adjust seasoning with additional salt and pepper if needed.
6. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat to low and let cook for 2–3 hours, stirring occasionally.
7. Serve with: crackers, shredded cheese, or whatever comfort looks like at your house.

:: Chapters ::
00:00 – September in Nebraska: False Fall and Full Humidity
00:27 – The Month My Mom Haunts My Kitchen
02:00 – The Recipe, the Memory, and the Smell That Undoes Me
04:00 – Why Food Writing Actually Matters (and No, Not for the Recipes)
07:45 – M.F.K. Fisher – How to Cook a Wolf: Defiance with a Wooden Spoon
10:45 – Laurie Colwin – Home Cooking: Chaos as Comfort Food
12:39 – Tamar Adler – An Everlasting Meal: Finding Peace in Leftovers
13:57 – Dwight Garner – The Upstairs Delicatessen: Snark, Snacks, and Sentences
15:46 – Ruth Reichl – Save Me the Plums: Ambition, Burnout, and Butter
17:00 – The Chili’s Done (and Somehow I’m Still Standing)
19:30 – What Food and Story Keep Alive (Spoiler: Everything)
20:08 – Closing Thoughts: Five Books, One Pot, One Messy Heart

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