From my Polish grandmother’s kitchen
The Only Dinner Guide You’ll Need
Ten nourishing dinners. Four sides.
The short rotation a busy family can actually repeat.
Why This Guide?
Most dinner guides give you 80 recipes you will never cook.
This one is the list on my fridge.
The same ancestral meals I grew up with — chicken soup, kapusta, pot roast, hidden liver meatballs — and the ones I still put on the table when the day is loud. A stay-home version if you are at the stove. A morning version if you are not. Leftovers that become lunch. Costs for conventional and pasture-raised, so you can start where you are.
Not more recipes. Enough.
What’s Inside
10 staple dinners, written for a family of four
4 sides, including my grandmother’s sauerkraut and lacto-fermented pickles
15–30 minutes of hands-on time for most meals
A stay-at-home version and a working-parent version (Instant Pot or slow cooker) for the roasts, soups, and meatballs
Cost per serving, conventional and pasture-raised, plus what leftovers do to the weekly number
The farms and pantry staples I actually use
How I get organs into meals kids will eat
4 recipes from my Polish grandmother I have never posted
The Dinners
Simple Cast Iron Roast Chicken
Pastured Osso Buco with Gremolata
Tender Pastured Beef Bottom Round with Onion Gravy
My Grandmother’s Polish Chicken Soup
Easy Chuck Pot Roast
Kapusta - Stewed Cabbage with Pork
Hidden Liver Meatballs
Polish Beet Soup
Kotlety Mielone — Pork and Beef Patties
Polish Mushroom Barley Soup
The Sides
Mizeria — Creamy Cucumber Salad
My Polish Grandmother’s Sauerkraut
Polish Lacto-Fermented Pickles
Polish Lacto-Fermented Pickled Beets
Beet soup, mushroom barley soup, kotlety, and the grandmother recipes I held back are in the guide only. The rest live on the site if you want to try one first.
More About the Guide
For the days you are home. And the days you are not.
If you are at the stove, there is a Dutch oven or cast iron version.
If you work, or you just need dinner to happen without you: load the pot roast, the round, the osso buco, the soups, or the meatballs in the morning. Walk in to it.
Same food. Two ways to get it on the table.
What it actually costs
Pasture-raised looks expensive if you only look at the meat sticker. It looks different when one cook covers dinner and lunch.
Every recipe has a cost per serving for a grocery-store version and a pasture-raised version, so you can see the number before you shop. You do not have to buy from regenerative farms to use the guide. You can start with what is in your store and trade up one thing at a time.
Who it’s for
Moms who are tired of starting from zero at 5pm.
Working parents who need a morning version.
Anyone who wants ancestral food — organs, ferments, bone broth, low and slow — without an 80-page binder.
If you want a new cuisine every week, this is not it. If you want ten dinners you can repeat until your kids know them by heart, it is.
A note from me…
I hated the smell of kapusta as a kid. I never invited friends over on vinegar-mop Saturdays. My parents didn’t have the internet. They just knew chemical cleaners and ultra-processed food were not what they wanted in the house.
I do the same things now. My kids may not thank me yet. That is still the food I want them to grow up knowing how to cook.
This guide is that rotation, written down so you don’t have to build it yourself.
— Catherine Reyes, M.S. Nutrition
Frequently Asked Questions
Still have questions? Take a look at the FAQ or reach out anytime.
-
Good. The guide is the system around them: which ten, both cook methods, costs, the farms, and the four I don’t publish.
-
No. Every dinner has a stove or oven version. The Instant Pot notes are for the days you leave the house.
-
The recipes are written that way. The cost pages include a conventional number so you can cook them either way.
-
Short on purpose. One page per recipe. This is the only dinner guide I wanted on my own counter.