“Cooking doesn’t have to be that serious,” she says. Her mother, a Tennessee native who worked full time and lightened up classic Southern recipes to accommodate her Type 1 diabetes diagnosis, gave Chambers an early education in healthy-ish, time-conscious meals. “Cooking family dinner and eating together was really important to her,” Chambers explains. That meant everyone pitched in. “It was in the chore rotation: Get dinner started.”
Chambers, who now lives in Carmel Valley, California, honors those roots by creating delicious, inherently cookable recipes that fit into busy lives. Not only are many of them low-prep and quick-cooking, but they often come with a laundry list of optional substitutions; dairy-free, gluten-free, kid-friendly, and vegetarian riffs abound, and she’s almost always got you covered with a swap if you forgot an ingredient at the store.
“Everyone follows recipes so strictly, like if you’re missing one spice you have to run to the grocery store. It makes it such a pain! None of that is necessary,” she says.
So who better to share tips for the joy-filled, mayhem-studded holiday season? G&G spoke with Chambers about the everyday cooking and hosting principles she follows that might be helpful for the chronically overwhelmed…