Dinnertime

create the tradwife content you wish to see in the world

If you’re havin’ meal problems I feel bad for you, son

I got ninety-nine problems but a dish ain’t one

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Hi there and welcome to my cooking channel! If we haven’t met, I’m Krista, and I fucking hate cooking and cannot believe??? that every night of our adult lives, we have to figure out how to feed ourselves again. What utter bullshit!! Who has time for this?!

For eight months of the year, dinner is blessedly not my problem, and I never have to think about it. That’s because I’m married to Davin, who is the chef of our house.

Davin loves to cook. He lives to cook. He relaxes by turning on our ancient, grease-spattered under-cabinet radio, flipping a small towel over his shoulder, and chopping up vegetables into tiny, identically sized pieces. He makes methodical grocery lists, organized by his memorized layout of grocery store aisles, and he ignores me when I say things like “ugh, i hate mushrooms” and watches my face as I take a bite of the dinner he’s just made and yell, “THIS IS DELICIOUS JESUS CHRIST,” keeping his expression carefully neutral as he says, “oh you like it? it’s mostly mushrooms.”

So I live in heaven for eight months every year.

For four months of the year, however, I live in hell.

That’s because Davin works for the Minnesota State Senate. And for roughly four months of the year, the Senate is in session.

And that’s when cooking becomes my job.

It’s my job because Davin can’t do it – he simply is not home. For these four months, the only time I ever see Davin is on weekends (sometimes, and only if he’s not working) and when he climbs into bed at night, often long after I’ve ~retired~. In the mornings, I wake up and the bed is empty; a faint scent of soap in the bathroom and a car missing in the driveway offers the only hint he was ever there. At night, if I do see Davin before bed, he staggers in at 8, 9, 10 PM, carrying three to five separate cloth bags, along with his briefcase and six manila folders full of papers slithering out, his face grey, his tie askew, his head bent to the phone balanced on his shoulder as he says things like “…yeah I just got home, I know, they didn’t even send the changes on the bill for review until Thursday, did you see the new language? …[huge sigh] sure, I can hop on a Teams meeting, gimme a sec.”

Then he vanishes upstairs and takes another meeting, still in his suit coat. It’s bananas.

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The day before each annual Senate session begins, Davin sadly loads the largest-size box of Cheez-Its available at the grocery store into his cart. He adds a huge container of trail mix, several packages of fancy ramen, and dozens of protein bars before tossing in a three-pack of family-size Pepto Bismal bottles. At the checkout line, his eyes begin to take on the fathomless, far-away, hunted look of someone who has seen terrible things. Someone who’s going back to see more of them; someone who knows exactly what a Senate session will do to him.

When the Senate starts up again, I flip into tradwife mode. It’s an overnight thing; one minute, I’m carefree, a person who has no idea whether we’re out of peanut butter and cherry tomatoes; the next, I’m googling "easy crockpot meal plans” and “healthy recipes a child could make.” Davin takes such incredible care of me, always, that when he needs some help and care? Bitch hand me my little checkered apron. I’m over here ironing his white dress shirts; I’m doing all the cleaning, all the laundry, all the shopping, all the appointments, all the dishes, all the lunch-packing, all the dog walks. The car needs gas? No, it doesn’t – filled it up last night. Did I remember it’s trash and recycling day? LOL both bins are already at the curb, YOU THINK THIS IS A GAME?

I take a huge amount of pleasure in taking care of someone who has consistently shown me with their actions that they take pleasure in taking care of me. Our partnership – like most people’s – is not 50/50; someone is always giving more and someone is always receiving more. And it works great! For us! It’s only when the balance starts to feel more permanently skewed that we run into problems, and then we gotta talk about it, you know? Davin was my tradwife the entire time I was working full-time and researching and writing my book. And he was working full-time, too! My home memories during that time are hazy, but I remember that clean clothes just appeared, folded and put in my drawers. Steaming dinner plates were silently placed in front of me; I’d look up from glaring at my laptop screen to see Davin tiptoeing away and gently shutting the door behind him.

And that’s how I want us to be: I’ll cover for you and you cover for me. One of us offering more to the person who needs it, when it’s needed.

But that brings me back to dinner. Cooking is my nightmare and grocery lists are my hell and I’m not good at any of it, but dinner’s on the table almost every godforsaken night of Senate session, and I’m proud of my ability to to do it. To help!

And one of the ways I do it is looking up my favorite category of cooking: the dump and bake.

What’s a dump and bake, you ask?

I’m so glad you asked! A dump and bake recipe is a full meal with a gross name baked in a 9x13 casserole dish. All – and this is important – ALL of the ingredients go in 100% raw, and when they come out, they are a delicious dinner.

Dump and bakes are a miracle. I found out about them years ago when I was scrolling through mom blogs, looking for easy things I could make. Turns out dump and bakes are perfect for my cooking skill level, which is set forever at “assembly-type meals only.”

Now: because I’m fully in tradwife mode right now, I am going to give you the recipe to the greatest dump and bake of all time. Make it for dinner tonight! It’s so easy! You’re going to be mad at how easy it is!

HOWEVER: before we get started, it is important to note that a recipe is not a dump and bake recipe if it requires ANY cooking beforehand. If you search for dump and bakes online, you’ll find hundreds. But read them through – if you see any mention of searing meat beforehand or precooking pasta or needing cooked rice, run. That is not a dump and bake – that’s cooking!!! and that is not what we signed up for!!!

Finally, please be warned: this dump and bake is so good people will pester you for it. Make it once, and you’re doomed to make it dozens of times. It is the perfect thing to bring to someone who is sick, someone who’s just had a baby, someone who’s freezing their ass off this winter, or someone who is really, really missing living in the Midwest.

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The original recipe is here, and I am forever grateful to the author, but I’m gonna write it out with lil’ comments and additions and pictures for you, because I need you to get this right the first time so you can agree with me that this is perfect!!

Dump-and-Bake Chicken Broccoli Rice Casserole

Ingredients

Serves 6 people officially or 4 really hungry people.

• 1 (10.5 oz) can condensed cream of chicken soup (not diluted) - any kind of “cream of” soup works here, including mushroom if you’re a vegetarian. All “cream of” soups work the same way.

• ¾ cup water - I use one cup of water.

• 1 cup uncooked long grain white rice - jasmine or basmati works here, don’t try and get crafty with brown rice, here, it’ll fuck the whole thing up!

• 1 lb. uncooked chicken breast or tenders, diced - eh, whatever amount of chicken comes in one package works fine. Doesn’t have to be a pound. Chicken thighs work, too. Extra firm tofu works for a veg substitute, but not, like amazingly well.

• 1 (12.6 oz) bag frozen baby broccoli florets (or cuts) - sure, but what if we had way more broccoli? Double it, i’m pretty sure this original amount is designed for families with children who think they don’t like broccoli.

• Optional topping: ½ cup – 1 cup grated cheddar cheese - “optional” in the way your beating heart is optional!!!! Any firm cheese works (we love goat cheddar on this), and it is not optional!!!

• NOT LISTED IN RECIPE and highly recommended by me: Breadcrumbs or crushed crackers or crushed potato chips – any kind of crunchy topping will work, and i do mean any kind, including crushed GF croutons, a handful of old Doritos, and (the favorite at our house) panko crumbs mixed with a little olive oil and garlic salt.

• Kosher salt and ground black pepper, to taste - why is this ever even in recipes? You need salt and pepper, obviously.

• Other spices – do whatever you want! You know what’s good, you probably cook all the time!!! I put garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning in here.

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C). Spray a 9 x 13-inch baking dish with cooking spray.

• Add cream of chicken soup and water to the prepared dish. Whisk together until completely combined.

  • Don’t let anyone who will be eating this dump and bake see you do this step, it looks fucking disgusting.

    

    we can’t have witnesses

• Stir in uncooked rice, uncooked chicken, and frozen broccoli. Season with about ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper (or add other herbs and spices to suit your taste). This is where you add garlic powder and onion powder and Italian seasonings or whatever. Stir again.

  

  it will look like this after you’ve stirred it a lot and it looks… raw, but i swear to god it’ll be delicious at the end

• Cover tightly with foil and bake for 1 hour, or until the liquid is absorbed, the rice is tender, and the chicken is cooked through.

  

  this is how it looks when everything’s cooked, but you gotta add the toppings!

• Then REMOVE THE FOIL. Sprinkle the top of the casserole with the grated cheese first and the crunchy topping on TOP of the cheese (don’t be an idiot like me once upon a time and do this the other way round), then return to the oven, uncovered, for a few more minutes (6-8 minutes, to be exact), until the cheese is melted and everything is golden browny and crispy.

ok now it’s done, and it looks very Minnesotan

And look! Here is a full dinner, all ready! And YES I know it looks a lil’ yellow (we only had a huge brick of Tillamook cheddar when I made this) and YES I know this is literally called a dump and bake and we’re not over the name, but GODDAMN is it good! I mean, look at this! You gonna turn this down when you come home starving and it’s 16 dang degrees outside? No ma’am!

Picture it: your adorable trans husband comes home at 9 PM from a hard day of fighting for affordable housing and reproductive rights. He left the house at 6:30 AM, and he has not had a lunch break, or any food at all, for that matter, since 2 PM. Some truly bad people have spent their entire day trying to make sure he can’t get anything done; they were working overtime to ensure that people cannot access things that should be basic human rights.

He is wearing a crumpled grey suit, and he smells bad, and he cannot go to bed, because he has to listen to the judiciary committee discuss contentious bills over Zoom for the next three hours. He has to get up to do it all over again in less than six hours.

You hand him a steaming dinner plate, filled with this – the best dump and bake in the world – and for a second, he looks like he might burst into tears. He is the personification of “pathetically grateful.”

You are a king. You are a hero. You have produced dinner, again.

You have ninety-nine problems, but a dish ain’t one.