It's Liz Parker

We had butter, flour, milk, and a teacher telling us to KEEP STIRRING. Apparently, we were making bechamel. Nobody called it that in my middle school classroom. That was entirely too fancy for us.

Okay, so who knew - HOLLA!

I love to cook. So why the heck am I suddenly posting all these ridiculously easy Lazy Girl Dinners? 😂

You would be absolutely right if you said, “Liz, you LOVE to cook.” I do. But here’s the story behind them.

Since April, I’ve been helping a widowed mom by watching her little one one to three evenings a week. ❤️ On those days, I’m still working my regular job, I need to get dinner figured out for Brian and me, and then I need to go pick up my little buddy.

Could I plan ahead and throw something elaborate in the Crock-Pot? Sure. Could I meal prep every Sunday and have everything beautifully organized for the week? Also sure.

Am I going to? Probably not. 😂

Especially when it’s been hotter than the surface of the sun here and the last thing I want to do at the end of my workday is heat up my kitchen.

So somewhere along the way, Lazy Girl Dinners were born.

And honestly? I’m loving them.

Last night’s was ridiculously simple: frozen seasoned chicken wings in the air fryer and leftover potato salad.

THAT WAS DINNER.

And Brian and I absolutely loved it.

That’s also just where life is now. Kenna is away at school. Connor isn’t home for dinner very often anymore. Most nights it’s just Brian and me, and making some giant production out of dinner for two people doesn’t always make sense.

Sometimes I want to cook something fabulous.

Sometimes I want dinner on a plate in 20 minutes.

Both count.

So Lazy Girl Dinners aren’t going anywhere. As long as I’ve got evenings with my little buddy, you’re probably going to see plenty more of them.

Because eating well doesn’t have to mean cooking everything from scratch every single night.

Sometimes the smartest dinner is simply the one that fits your actual life. ❤️

xoxo, Liz
Still Sweet. Just Smarter.

Apparently we’re having a Lazy Girl week around here, and I am completely okay with that. 😂

After my Lazy Girl Potato Salad, I started thinking about how many meals I already make that require almost no effort but are still REALLY good.

And then I remembered this one.

I wanted something warm, cozy and filling. What I did not want was a sink full of dishes, a cutting board covered in ingredients, or an hour-long relationship with my stove.

So here’s the formula:

Dump. Simmer. Crack. Eat.

That’s it.

Frozen gyoza go straight from the freezer into chicken broth. Toss in some shredded cabbage and frozen edamame. Once everything is hot and the gyoza are tender, crack a couple of eggs right into the soup.

And because I’m me, the whole thing gets finished with chili crisp oil. 🌶️

That little bit of spicy oil on top takes this ridiculously simple bowl of soup from pretty darn good to where has this been all my life?

Lazy Girl Gyoza Soup

Makes 1 big, satisfying bowl (this doubles well if you’re cooking for 2)

* 2 cups chicken broth
* 4 frozen chicken gyoza (if you want to save on carbs, 2 goyza cut in half)
* 1/2 cup shelled edamame
* 1 cup shredded cabbage
* 2 large eggs
* Salt and pepper or your favorite Asian-inspired seasoning, to taste
* Chili crisp oil, for finishing

Bring the chicken broth to a simmer.

Add the frozen gyoza, edamame and shredded cabbage. Let everything simmer together for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until the gyoza are cooked through and the cabbage has softened.

Crack 2 eggs directly into the simmering broth. Let them cook until the whites are set and the yolks are as done as you like them.

I like to break mine up right in the soup so that egg gets mixed throughout that gorgeous broth.

Spoon everything into a big bowl and finish with chili crisp oil.

That’s dinner.

No thawing the dumplings.
No chopping a bunch of vegetables.
No separate pan for the eggs.
No elaborate sauce.

And most importantly, no pretending I wanted to cook when I absolutely did not. 😂

This is what I’m realizing about my Lazy Girl recipes: they’re not about eating boring convenience food.

They’re about finding the shortest possible route to something I genuinely want to eat.

And THAT I can get behind.

xoxo, Liz
Still Sweet. Just Smarter. ❤️

Let’s talk about AI for a minute.

I received a comment on one of my pizza posts telling me to “stop using AI,” and I’m going to address it once because authenticity matters a great deal to me.

Yes. I use AI.

I use it as a tool to help me create graphics that otherwise would take me hours to create, organize ideas, work through captions, calculate recipe macros, brainstorm, and turn the things I create into content I can share with you.

But here’s what AI does not do.

It does not stand in my kitchen.

It does not develop my recipes, decide whether something needs more liquid, change the pan when the first one isn’t working, watch a crust that isn’t browning, taste the finished product, decide something needs another test, or feed it to my family.

And it does not create the food photographs I present to you as something I made.

If I tell you I made it, I made it.

The pizza that prompted the comment was particularly funny to me because I tested that recipe with four different flours. I photographed the process and the results in my own kitchen. I ate the damn pizza. 😂 Then, yes, I used AI to help turn my photograph into a polished graphic for my page.

I have never pretended otherwise.

I’m a 56-year-old woman building something new, learning new technology, creating recipes, running a website and growing a business. I’m not embarrassed that I use a tool that helps me do more of that. I’m actually pretty proud that I’m willing to keep learning.

Women my age have spent our entire adult lives adapting. We went from typewriters and landlines to PCs, email, smartphones, social media, websites, and now AI. Why on earth would I suddenly decide this is the technology I’m supposed to refuse to learn?

You don’t have to like AI. I completely understand that people have different feelings about it.

But please don’t confuse using AI as a tool with using AI to fake the work.

Those are not the same thing.

Around here, the food is real. The testing is real. The successes are real. The occasional kitchen disasters are very real and I share those, too. 😂 And the woman behind all of it is most definitely real.

That’s all I have to say about that. ❤️

xoxo, Liz
Still Sweet. Just Smarter.

I was feeling extremely lazy, but I wanted potato salad. Those two things usually don’t go together. 😂

I did NOT want to peel potatoes. I didn’t want a giant pot of boiling water on the stove. I didn’t want to boil eggs and then stand there peeling four of them. Basically, I wanted homemade potato salad while exerting the least amount of energy possible for the biggest flavor payoff.

So I started thinking… why am I making this harder than it needs to be?

Sooooo - I scrubbed 5 potatoes, poked them with a fork and put them whole into the microwave. Once they were tender, I simply left them in there to cool while I went about my morning. When I came back, they were cool enough to handle and the skins peeled right off with my fingers.

No potato peeler. No boiling water. No draining. NO dirty dishes to wash.

Then came the eggs. Instead of hard-boiling and peeling 4 eggs, I cracked them into a greased dish and cooked them. Chop them up and into the bowl they go. You can do this in the microwave, which is actually how I make eggs for breakfast all the time, or use the air fryer.

And because apparently I had committed to doing as little actual cooking as humanly possible, I made the dressing in the blender with cottage cheese.

The result?

One of the best potato salads I’ve made. 😂 Creamy, tangy, full of egg and pickle flavor, and absolutely nobody eating it needs to know how little effort went into it. Best part? My dressing is higher in protein than your normal run of the mill mayo dressing.

Lazy Girl Potato Salad

Ingredients

* 5 medium potatoes
* 4 large eggs
* 8 oz Good Culture cottage cheese
* About 1/2 cup milk
* 1 Tbsp apple c***r vinegar
* 1/4 cup dill pickle relish
* 4 Tbsp Greek yogurt
* About 1/3 cup finely chopped sweet white onion
* Light drizzle of avocado oil
* Salt and black pepper to taste

For the potatoes: Scrub and pierce the whole potatoes with a fork. Microwave until fork-tender. Let them cool until comfortable to handle, then slip off the skins with your fingers and chop.

For microwave eggs: Lightly grease a microwave-safe dish. Crack in the eggs and break the yolks. Microwave in 30 to 45-second intervals, stirring or rotating the cooked portions as necessary, until completely set. Cool and chop.

Or use the air fryer: Crack the eggs into a lightly greased air-fryer-safe pan and break the yolks. Loosely cover with foil and air fry at 300°F for about 10 to 14 minutes, or until just set. Remove immediately, cool and chop.

For the dressing: Blend the cottage cheese, yogurt, milk, apple c***r vinegar, salt and pepper until completely smooth and creamy.

Add the potatoes, chopped eggs, relish and sweet onion to a bowl. Give the potatoes a light drizzle of avocado oil, add the cottage cheese dressing and gently fold everything together. Taste and adjust your salt and pepper, then refrigerate until chilled.

And because this was Lazy Girl Dinner, I served it with hot dogs and corn on the cob.

🌽 Bonus lazy-girl trick: Two ears of corn go into the microwave for 7 minutes. Done.

Was this fancy? Nope.

Was there a single pot of boiling water involved? Also nope.

Did we have a really good Labor Day dinner?

You bet we did. 😂

Sometimes smarter isn’t about reinventing dinner. Sometimes it’s just figuring out how to get the food you actually want on the table without making a whole production out of it.

xoxo, Liz
Still Sweet. Just Smarter.

Okay, I have a confession. I do not have a picture of this keto-friendly, low-carb pizza whole. 😂

And I’m actually kind of mad at myself about it now, because when I pulled this thing out of the oven, I was SO excited that the King Arthur Keto Wheat Flour version actually worked that apparently all food-content-creator responsibilities immediately left my body.

I just stood there looking at it like…

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME.

If you’ve been following my 24-hour pizza experiment, you know I decided to take the exact same pizza concept and see what happened when I changed the flour.

First came the bread flour version then the traditional all-purpose flour version.

Then gluten-free.

And finally, I decided to really push my luck and try King Arthur Keto Wheat Flour.

I honestly didn’t know what I was going to get.

Would it rise?
Would it brown?
Would the bottom get crispy?
Would it have an actual pizza texture?

Most importantly…

Would it taste like PIZZA?

Well. YES. 😂🍕

I used my lower-sided cast-iron tortilla pan for this one. After the 24-hour cold rise, I let the dough come to temperature, spread it into the pan, topped it and baked it using convection at 400°F, which reduces it to 375°F.

At about 25 minutes, it was beautiful. Golden. Crispy. Great structure. Really good flavor.

And it didn’t feel like I was eating some sad substitute while everybody else got the “real” pizza.

This WAS pizza.

The funniest part is that I got so excited about how beautifully it came out that I apparently skipped the very important step where someone who shares recipes is supposed to TAKE A PICTURE BEFORE CUTTING IT. 🤦‍♀️😂

So you’re getting the slice.

Thankfully, the slice tells a pretty darn good story all by itself.

And here’s the thing I keep coming back to with these experiments: I’m not interested in making something lower-carb just for the sake of being able to call it lower-carb.

It still has to be worth eating and this one absolutely was.

And now that I’ve made the same 24-hour pizza with bread, all-purpose flour, gluten-free flour AND keto-friendly flour, there is only one thing left to do…

Put all three side-by-side and talk about what REALLY happened. 👀🍕

That comparison is coming next.

And trust me, I have thoughts. 😂

xoxo, Liz
Still Sweet. Just Smarter. ❤️