People tend to fall into one of two camps when you announce you’re getting divorced. There are those who offer an enthusiastic “Congratulations!” and those who grab your arm with a horrified gasp and whisper, “That’s so sad!”
In the early days, I found it strange to cook dinner for three, or two, or just myself, rather than for our family of four. I wouldn’t call it sad, exactly. It was unfamiliar. It was quieter. It was simply different.
Once my ex-husband and I decided that I would remain in the family home, I spent a lot of time thinking about how this new arrangement looked from my younger son Cosmo’s perspective. Dad lives at his own place. His brother is off at college. And now he gets to have dinner alone with his mother. From where I sat, I was still adjusting to not seeing Cosmo during my off weeks, and I worked hard not to funnel all of my attention onto him whenever we were reunited. Be chill, Mom. Normalcy means not being interrogated for updates every time you see a parent. Even with that restraint, we never struggled to find things to talk about over dinner. A few seats at the table were empty now, but that meant Cosmo no longer had to witness tension between his parents. He didn’t have to compete for airtime with his older brother. And I still cooked the whole pound of pasta. No one would have chosen this situation, but it could have been far worse.
From that point forward, the more one-on-one time we spent together, the deeper our relationship grew. Because this duo dynamic had never really existed between us before, there were no pre-existing scripts to follow. We had the freedom to invent something new as we went along.
Cooking for a mother-and-child pair was objectively simpler and more affordable. Working with a smaller volume of ingredients also took less time. On top of that, my definition of “dinner” loosened considerably. Hard-boiled eggs and toast with a few slices of salami and a generous salad? That’s a meal. The inner voice telling me this should be a miserable period gradually went quiet as I settled into a rhythm and recognized how liberating it was to improvise on a Tuesday evening, rather than panicking at four o’clock because I hadn’t stocked enough protein.
I once had a boss who liked to say, “There are no problems, only challenges.” He used the phrase to discourage complaining, and I think he would have been gratified to learn it also worked as a motivator for our evening meals. I became willing to set up a three-step breading station to make chicken cutlets on a weeknight. There were fewer breasts to pound, less breadcrumb mixture to prepare, and the entire process moved faster. Preparing cutlets midweek feels like a genuine indulgence. Cutlets are, quite simply, the best.
One afternoon, I picked up a vacuum-sealed rack of lamb chops for the two of us. The price per pound was steep, but the total poundage was small. Eating lamb always carries a sense of occasion, and I wanted every moment with Cosmo to feel special. We no longer waited for a reason to light candles. Candles simply became part of the basic table setting, alongside forks and knives. Afterward, we played with the pools of wax that flooded the wicks and dripped down the sides. I loved doing that as a child, and I loved sharing it with my child.
Other rituals took shape. A simple pesto pasta became our Monday night tradition, which eventually evolved into TV dinner night. That was unthinkable when we were a family of four, but it felt sweet as a duo. We’d perch hip to hip on the floor of the TV room, our bowls balanced on the coffee table in front of us. We cycled through Bob’s Burgers, The Office, and Parks and Recreation. We discovered that Cosmo had outgrown his childhood aversion to fish sauce after I added some to a beef marinade. The resulting stir-fry became another weekly staple. Instead of dessert, we ended our meals with a ritual round of negotiation: “Are you in the mood to make a deal?” The terms were always the same. How would we split the dishes? Who would take the dog out for the final walk? Who was responsible for bundling the cardboard recycling? This was our thing, and it existed only within our little unit. It grew richer and shifted depending on the flair one of us brought to the after-dinner wheeling and dealing. For the record, I’d much rather load the dishwasher than complete yet another dog walk.
So no, it’s not sad. It’s just different.
Some evenings, we have stand-up dinner at the kitchen island: steamed frozen dumplings and edamame tossed with sesame oil and black pepper, multiple rounds of quesadillas, or Mexican takeout from our neighborhood spot. Other nights, Cosmo comes home late and cooks for himself. I want to observe, but I force myself not to hover, mostly because I can’t bear to watch the inevitable mess unfold. He emerges with steaming ramen eaten straight from the saucepot, perfectly fried eggs he photographs and texts to his friends, and exquisite grilled cheese sandwiches with golden, lacquered crusts that he parades under my nose. “The secret is mayonnaise and low heat,” he informs me when I beg for a small bite.
Big change is uncomfortable, a piece of therapy wisdom I repeated to myself throughout that transitional period. Cosmo and I talk openly about what has been hard for him about moving back and forth between two households. He finds it annoying to repeat the same information for each parent, and the first holidays and vacations we spent apart carried an undeniable awkwardness. These are the fixed and unavoidable downsides that accompany divorce. I can’t control how he’ll ultimately feel about these shifts; I can only commit to being present when we talk. What happens at our table, though, is something we both have a say in, and we share a common objective. One way or another, we always know how to get fed.
*****
Lemony Chickpea Stew With Rice
From Food Is a Feeling: Recipes & Stories, With Love by Carla Lalli
Serves 4, or 2 with leftovers
For the Stew
2 lemons
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
6 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 celery stalks, cut into small dice
2 medium leeks, sliced into ½-inch-thick rounds, rinsed and blotted dry
Kosher salt; freshly ground pepper
2 (15.5-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, crushed
1 teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon dried mint
3/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup long-grain white rice, rinsed
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
For the Magic Green Sauce and Serving
Ice
4 big handfuls of mature spinach, trimmed and roughly chopped
2 cups mixed loosely packed herbs, such as cilantro, dill, and/or chives
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove
Kosher salt; freshly ground pepper
For Serving
Greek yogurt
1 lemon, cut into wedges
Olive oil, for drizzling
Crushed red pepper flakes
Kosher salt; freshly ground pepper
Make the stew:
Use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest in wide strips from 1 lemon. Squeeze 1/4 cup of juice from that lemon, and possibly 1 more. Set zest and juice aside, separately. Heat a heavy deep skillet with a lid or 4-quart Dutch oven over medium. Add the olive oil, garlic, celery, and leeks. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, until the vegetables get juicy, about 3 minutes. Cover the pot and cook until the leeks soften, 3 to 5 minutes.
Uncover, allowing steam to drip back into the pot, and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring, until the garlic is light golden. Lower the heat to medium, add the chickpeas, and stir to coat. Add the coriander, dill, mint, pepper flakes, and strips of zest. Stir to bloom the spices. Stir in the rice. Add the stock and 2 tablespoons lemon juice (save the rest of the juice for the sauce).
Bring the liquid to a simmer, then cover the pot, lower the heat to medium-low, and cook gently until the rice is tender, about 15 minutes.
Make the Magic Green Sauce:
Place two ice cubes into a blender jar and top with the spinach, herbs, nutritional yeast, olive oil, and the remaining 2 tablespoons lemon juice. Finely grate the garlic right into the mix and season with salt and pepper. Blend until smooth and emulsified, about 2 minutes (the ice helps keep the mixture green). Add water by the tablespoon if needed to get the blades turning. Transfer the sauce to a bowl; you should have about 1 cup or a bit more. Taste and season the sauce as needed.
Check the stew for seasoning; loosen if desired with more stock or hot water. Serve the stew topped with a big spoonful each of yogurt and Magic Green Sauce, lemon wedges, a drizzle of olive oil, a pinch of pepper flakes, and some salt and pepper.
Carla Lalli’s wonderful new cookbook, Food Is a Feeling, will be released on September 8th. In this book, she shares treasured recipes and heartfelt essays about the transformative chapter that followed the end of her 24-year marriage. A former editor at Bon Appétit, she currently publishes the newsletter Food Processing.
(Excerpted from Food Is a Feeling by Carla Lalli. Copyright © 2026 by Carla Lalli. Photographs copyright © 2026 by Lucia Bell-Epstein. Published in the United States by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.)
