This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m joined by photographer, content creator, and newly minted cookbook author, Lindsey Baruch. Her debut book Something Delicious is a love letter to everyday cooking, filled with flavor-forward recipes and the kind of real-life strategies that make dinner actually doable. We dive into her Five Rules for Grocery Shopping that Make Dinners Easy: From Post-it notes on the fridge to forgiving your fishmonger, her approach is equal parts practical, personal, and built on a deep love of food, farmers’ markets, & feeding yourself well.

I still remember my mom walking me through the grocery store the day before I left for college, showing me how to pick a ripe melon and avoid the sad lettuce in the back of the case. It wasn’t formal, but it stuck with me, and it’s probably why I still love the ritual of shopping for food. These days, it’s the LA farmers’ market that lights me up. There’s nothing better than being surrounded by peak-season produce and letting the ingredients tell you what to cook. Whether it’s radicchio or fresh figs or some unique squash I’ve never seen before, that moment of inspiration, that little spark at the stand is where the meal starts.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with content creator and photographer, Lindsey Baruch, whose new book Something Delicious: 100 Recipes for Everyday Cooking is out now. She shares her five rules for grocery shopping that makes dinner easy. We chat about how to organize your fridge through personal notes to yourself, how having a plan is important, but how being open to pivoting can make a meal magic, and that shopping for yourself doesn’t start in the grocery store—it actually starts at home. It is a great way to set yourself up for success, whether it’s for dinner or any meal that you cook at home. So let’s get into the rules.

Lindsey, it’s so nice to meet you. Congratulations on your beautiful first cookbook, Something Delicious. It is an incredible tribute to learning how to cook. Thank you. From your family, starting with your grandmother, what is a fundamental that she shared with you that still guides you today?

A fundamental that she taught me is to just stay present and to have a good time. She taught me how to enjoy our time together in the kitchen, cooking together. We would always bake cakes together when I was sick from school. She lived next door to me, by the way—amazing—so I would just hop right next door. We would make tea and pound cakes. She had those indented molds, you know what I’m talking about? We would cook those together. So I feel like that’s something that she really just taught me—to be present and enjoy cooking by myself and enjoy cooking with other people.

It’s such an incredible way to learn how to cook and have it be such a natural part of your life from childhood. As you get older and cooking goes from a fun activity with Grandma to something that you have to do every day, it can get a little stressful. Oh yes. You kick your cookbook off with that question, “What are we going to eat?”—which has got to be one of the most vexing questions of anyone who’s got to feed themselves or their family. I know.

What is your advice for flipping that to something that you look forward to? Or are there just days when it’s going to be a struggle? I have a list of recipes where it’s: I don’t know what I want to eat, but here’s my list of things that I can whip up. I’m a list girl. So I just have a list in my notes of “I’m hungry, what can I make with what I have in my kitchen?” Oh, I can make tuna most of the time. I can make pasta most of the time. I went to the market and I got yogurt and granola or something like that. So I always have those essentials to make sure that I’m set up and I’m always able to eat something delicious. No pun intended—but it is pun intended. I love it. Puns allowed.

I never thought about having a list. I have one meal that I always go to when I’m at the grocery store. Oh yeah? What is it? Pork chop, potatoes, and whatever vegetable is in season. Ooh, that sounds amazing. Yeah. But the idea of having a list of five dishes that I could just look at and be like, “I’m going to cook this,” is such a great tip. Thank you.

Born and raised in LA, you talk about being inspired by so many different ingredients and cuisines. How do you pull all those different inspirations together to inspire you to cook at home? I love the farmers markets. I feel like that keeps things really creative and fresh and not stale. That’s why I do like to go to the farmers market, because it does allow me the opportunity to explore what’s available. And that keeps ideas flowing and you don’t have to repeat the same patterns and the same recipes. So I feel like that always keeps things fun and exciting when I’m cooking—and recipe developing too.

That teaching of what ingredients to shop for and how to shop for them—Grandmother did that for you. My mom taught me how to go grocery shopping the day before I left for college. But for those who don’t have someone who’s taught them how to shop for food, I’m excited for you to share your five rules for grocery shopping that make dinner easy. All of us have gone to the supermarket hungry. All of us have gone without writing anything down. It never turns out well. No, never. Every time I think I can ad-lib or I’ll remember everything, I come home and I’ve forgotten the mayo, the broccoli, something like that.

What is your rule number one that shows that shopping actually starts at home? The first rule is to have a plan. You can’t aimlessly go to the store. Maybe I will for fun, but if I want to have a plan for dinner and I want to actually cook, that is where I need a plan. So what I’ll do is on a Saturday or a Sunday or even Friday, I’ll kind of think: What am I vibing with this week? What’s in season? What am I feeling? Am I feeling like a salmon? Am I feeling like a chicken? So I’ll start with the protein and then I’ll be like, “Okay, I want a salad with that or roasted potatoes.” Then what I’ll do is I’ll make a categorized list—fruit, vegetables—and then also location too. I’ll go to the butcher for my meat and then I’ll go to the farmers market for the produce. That is definitely my favorite, very first step to really making sure that I have my ideas down. I’m not going aimlessly to the market. And I have my grocery list, so when I’m there, I can just check it off right away.

There is something so soothing about checking off that list and knowing what’s growing at that time. Building that list around what’s fresh and delicious—which ties directly into your rule number two.

Rule number two: shop seasonally. And this doesn’t mean you need to go to the farmers market. You know, at most markets, they’ll have persimmons popping up really soon that aren’t there in the summertime. I find when I’m getting good in-season produce, I’m able to do less to it too. Just salt and pepper—I don’t need to zhuzh it up as much. It’s just tasty on its own versus like, a winter tomato needs more love.

Thank you. Sometimes what stops me from buying so much fresh food or something seasonal is that I’ll open up my fridge and I forgot about some tasty tomato or an apple or a bunch of herbs that have gone to waste. Your third rule talks about how you can avoid having food go bad.

After I’ll have my plan and I’ve gone grocery shopping, I’ll come home, clean out the fridge—sometimes even do that before—but I’ll organize it. And it doesn’t need to be, “Oh, I see everything,” because in this next rule, I’ll write down what I bought and what I plan to make with it. But I kind of do like to have a more visual cue for it. I’ll put a magnet on my fridge. Oh, you can do a Post-it note inside your fridge or on the table. I’ll write down everything that’s in the fridge—mint, parsley, cucumber, chicory. I’ll write down the ingredients and then I’ll write down what I plan to make with it. I love this. I bought chicken from the butcher and I bought chicory from the farmers market. I’m going to make a one-pot chicken chicory dinner. Be right over. I write that down so I’m not going in my fridge on Monday night and I have chicory and I have chicken, but I forgot I had the chicory and I didn’t have my plan. Now, I’m not only having my plan from step one, I now have it written down and I’m executing on the plan. And I find that allows me to have the execution to actually cook dinner without having to think of what I want to make for dinner—it’s already been planned. But also it saves waste where I would forget that I bought that ingredient.

On the other side of the fresh ingredients and things that can go bad immediately is the pantry. And I can’t tell what is worse—having a full pantry and forgetting a fresh ingredient or having all the fresh ingredients and missing something from the pantry. True.

What’s your rule number four? Rule number four would be: having the canned goods ready. Having my olive oil. I use a lot of vinegars. I’ll have all my vinegars stocked and ready to go. Also, vinegar is so versatile. If I want to change it up and change the vinegar, change the flavor—I have all of those there. I have different types of olive oil, different types of seasonings and spices. So I’m pretty much not shopping. I’m not going to the grocery store. I’m making tacos tonight and I spent $100 on a recipe for one night of tacos. I kind of am able to streamline the whole week’s worth of dinner by having those fundamentals in my pantry.

We’ve talked a lot about planning. We’ve talked about the rules of how to shop to make dinner easy. This could stress people out and it could feel like if you don’t go in with a plan, you won’t have any sort of success—you need the list, you need the organization. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative and you can’t call an audible when you’re at the market or in the grocery store, which is a direct inspiration for your rule number five.

Rule number five: allow yourself to pivot. Yes. If I am at the farmers market and I was making tomatoes and chicken, but I saw really gorgeous leeks, I would just change it to leeks. Or let’s say I was planning to make grilled shrimp, but the fishmonger only has halibut—I will make those adjustments. If you don’t get your shrimp where you are, don’t go to the ends of the earth. Just let it go. If you have a purveyor you love and trust, and they don’t have what you want, there’s probably a good reason. True. So don’t go and try and substitute it unless you have some sort of backup. True. That’s a great tip. We’ll call it a bonus rule.

I know it sounds so far like I have this strict regimen and I can’t go off track—I know—but I have the plan and I’m open to be flexible and change it up. And I think that’s also something that I share in the book too. Use your fundamentals, use your intuition, and you can mix and match and change different things. And it’s okay.

Lindsey, congratulations on everything. Thank you so much. Something Delicious is out now, available where all books are sold. And please remember to support your local independent bookstore. If people want to follow you for recipes or content coming out of the book or just see what you’re working on, where can they go?

You can go on Instagram at @lindsayeats and also on my website at lindsayeatsla.com. I can’t wait for people to hit the grocery stores and to cook something delicious for themselves every day. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

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