Easy Fall Dinner Ideas, Cozy Comfort Food & My Current Favorites

All on the Table with Katie Lee Biegel

Host Katie Lee Biegel shares a personal update as she transitions from summer in the Hamptums to the autumn rhythm in New York City. The epi

Key takeaways

• Katie is re-establishing a creative habit with a goal of writing 1,500 words every day for her new novel.
• A 'spaghetti pie' experiment was deemed a failure after her daughter Iris refused to eat it.
• The 'oven-fry' method for chicken involves cooking skin-side down in melted butter to render fat and ensure crispiness.
• She recommends 'trough salads' made by loading large metal bowls with seasonal leftovers and Primal Kitchen dressings.
• For autumn produce, she suggests pairing apples with cheddar or using them in savory pork chop glazes.

Main topics

• Personal life updates and family transitions
• Writing goals and literary interests
• Seasonal autumn produce and cooking tips

Notable quotes

September in the city is like going from zero to 60.

Conclusion

An inspiring and practical guide for embracing the cozy, culinary tran

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) The following podcast is a Dear Media production. Speaker 2 (0:20) It feels like it is officially fall now that it's October. September was kind of just a blur for me. I feel like we need to catch up. I haven't done a solo episode for a while. So here we go. September in the city is like going from zero to 60. So we came back from the Hamptons. Labor Day was really late this year, as you know. And it was like, let's start kindergarten. Let's... jump right into work a ton. I mean, really just like a blur. Kindergarten has been going great for Iris. I'm so excited for her. She's made little friends. We've had playdates. It's just been great to watch her. grow. I mean, of course, it breaks my heart simultaneously, but it's also just the absolute best to see her blossom and flourish in her new little school and with her little friends. And I mean, it's just the best. But, you know, for me, September is always like this real transition period. I always have a hard time getting back into the New York groove because I'm inherently like, I'm a small town girl, you know? I'm from West Virginia and I like my little small towns. I like my Hamptons time. I like being in the country. So it always feels like a shock to my system when I come back to the city after the summer. And I have like a real adjustment period of getting used to the noise. getting used to the dirt, getting used to the pace, the whole thing. So by October, I'm like back in my groove. I feel like I'm more in the pace. We had so much going on with the premiere of our documentary, Top of the World. We were really busy promoting that and it was really exciting and it was such a fantastic experience. If you haven't watched it yet, it's streaming on the CNN app. And it's available through Amazon Prime. It's actually getting ready to launch on HBO streaming. So you can check it out one of those places. But it was just great. It's been really great to be a part of. We are going to be in the Hamptons Film Festival that's coming up in a few days, which was a big deal for us. Excited about that. I'm getting ready to take a trip to Oregon for work that I'm excited about. And we just have a few good things coming up. I'm kind of shifting gears and not putting as much focus on Top of the World. I am ready to move into what's next, of course, here with the podcast and recipe development. But I want to really start devoting more time to working on my novel that I've kind of played with here and there, but I haven't. like focused my attention on it. I really think when you are writing a book that it's important to do it every single day to be in that creative habit. And when I wrote Groundswell, I would give myself a word count goal. So, you know, when you look at the bottom of Microsoft Word, it tells you how many words you have written. And my goal used to be 1,500 words a day. So that's going to go back to my 1,500 words a day goal. And what I would do if I didn't write the 1,500 words, the next day I would have to write 3,000 words. And I really didn't want to have to do that. So it was a good goal to have. And that is coming back for me. That's my October goal. I'm reading right now. I just started Emily Giffen's book, Love You More. I always enjoy her books and I can already tell that I'm going to love this one. The first chapter starts in the Hamptons and I am watching all of my housewives. This is a great time to be a housewives fan because we have Salt Lake City and we've got the new New York. If you have not watched Real Housewives of London, I would tell you. To start, I'm like, basically, like, don't say I never gave you anything because this is the greatest gift if you're a Housewives fan. Not to be confused with Ladies of London. This is real Housewives of London. Those women understood the assignment. They might even rival Salt Lake City for the best Housewives franchise. Speaker 2 (4:45) Now, lately, I have been cooking. I guess I should have told you all from the beginning. Today, we're having a fall catch up. I'm going to talk about seasonal produce, easy weeknight meals. I'm going to do some listener questions, and I'm just giving you a catch up on everything that I've been into. So what have I been cooking lately? Well, we had a spaghetti pie disaster at our house the other night. I have decided to like... cook some different kinds of meals. And if Iris eats them great, if she doesn't, that's her choice, but she's not getting anything else. So she had a couple of little friends over for a play date. And I thought I would make a spaghetti pie that they would get a real kick out of that. And that it would be like the biggest hit for kids. I made this spaghetti pie. You cook it in a springform pan. It's like ricotta cheese, eggs, ground beef, onions, garlic, marinara, parmesan. It's delicious. You mix it all together with spaghetti. You put it in a springform pan and bake it. It comes out and it looks like this beautiful spaghetti pie or spaghetti cake even. And I presented it to them. If Iris could have thrown it in my face, I think she would have. Her friends loved it, but she was so offended by this spaghetti pie, thought it was the worst idea ever. She didn't eat any of it. Her friends left and eventually she came around and was like, OK, fine, I'll eat it because she had no other choice. And it was funny because she tried it and I could tell she liked it, but she didn't want to admit that she liked it after she had. made such a fuss about not wanting to eat it. And so she said to me, I like it just about this much, just a little, little bit. She ended up eating it, which I guess reinforces the idea of if you give no other option, they will come around. She ate it maybe because she just wanted to have a special treat at the end. But it was truly like a disaster. And I don't know if I'll ever make the spaghetti pie again. But last night I had a real successful dinner. Again, she had a little friend over and I thought, you know what? I'm going to just make something easy and have this be a lot of fun for the dinner. So I did this baked chicken that I love to do. The kids ate every single bite of it. I got zero complaints. What I do is I get... boneless chicken breasts, but with the skin on. So having the skin will give you more flavor. It'll help keep those chicken breasts moist and juicy. So I take some flour and I add onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper to it. I season the chicken breasts on both sides with salt and pepper, and then I roll them in the flour. I take a sheet pan. I put half a stick of butter on the sheet pan, put it into the oven until it completely melts. Then I take those chicken breasts skin side down onto the sheet pan, 375 degrees for 20 minutes. Take them out, flip them back over, put them back into the oven for another 20 minutes until they get nice and brown and crispy and are cooked all the way through. What happens is when the skin is down, And in that butter, obviously, you're getting all the good butter flavor. And the chicken skin fat starts to render. So it gives off its own fat. And the chicken kind of starts to fry, oven fry, in its own fat and in the butter. And then you flip it and the other side gets done as well. And the skin just gets so crispy and nice. It is... Absolutely delicious. I think that's our family's favorite way to have chicken. Iris says that's her favorite thing that I make. So we had that last night. I got out my rice cooker. I love my rice cooker. I made some nice steamed white rice. I cut up a bunch of different vegetables in different bowls so the kids could pick what they wanted. I had avocado, peppers, cucumbers. I did some broccoli because I knew her little friend liked broccoli and I was hoping it would wear off on Iris. It did not, but I tried. And so everybody got to choose what went on their plate, which was also a good thing to do. And it was just delicious. It was an easy, easy dinner. The next thing