I’ll Take the Check When You Have a Minute

On June 2, 2015, I emailed Whitson Gordon, then editor-in-chief of Lifehacker, about a freelance writing opportunity for a fairly new food blog called Skillet. Eight years, five EICs, four corporate owners, at least that many CEOs and two union contract negotiations later, I’m moving on. I’m just as surprised as you are.

I want to make it clear that I had no intention of leaving Lifehacker (and I was not fired or fired). For the past eight years, I’ve been fortunate to have a job that I look forward to every day, on a website full of people I adore. With the exception of Beth Skwarecki (who started full-time the same day I did), I’ve been here longer than anyone else; I’ve seen many writers and editors come and go, and I still consider a surprisingly large percentage of them to be good friends. I’ll miss talking, texting, and hacking with them every day, as well as my fellow union members outside of Lifehacker.

I will also miss you, the readers, who made this work so interesting and, oddly enough, inspiring. If my articles were the food, then your smart suggestions, witty comments and combative emails were the seasoning. When it comes to comment sections, this site is one of the best on the internet and I want to thank you for that.

I always tell people that working in service journalism has made me a better and more thoughtful food writer. The goal behind everything I wrote (well, almost everything ) was to help someone cook better, or cook faster, or live more deliciously, and I hope that I was at least partially successful in that.

I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite life hacks – two for each year, because I’ve written over 3,400 articles on this site and choosing eight was impossible.

These roasted Brussels sprouts are a real Thanksgiving highlight.

My Aunt May was a petty woman and hated her relatives. “She cooks great, but I cook well ,” she said, referring to her son-in-law’s parents. These Brussels sprouts are proof that I can cook beautifully and well, and they have become a Thanksgiving favorite for both Meghan and Joel. [It’s true, you should make them. — Joel ]

Damn it, let’s fry some cheese

Was it really hard to pick a favorite part from Will It Waffle? , but cheese won because it’s cheese, and because it was written in the middle of a pandemic when we were all going crazy and the thoughtful absurdity of waffle brie just made sense.

This Super Bowl casserole is a home run.

I wish the photos on this blog were better, but I don’t regret the copy. This casserole nearly killed my lactose intolerant boyfriend, but it tasted good, and it illustrates a larger point: I was given so much freedom to do so many things that other, “proper” food sites would kill at the serving stage. and I will be forever grateful; Whitson, Alan, Melissa, Alice, Jordan, Virginia, Joel, and Megan have allowed me to post some truly insane content.

Put cucumber in your shitty beer.

I have never met or spoken to Megan’s husband, but he has been my muse (or at least one of my muses) for many years. “This is Mike’s article,” we would say, usually when the article talked about pickles, but Mike’s articles had a certain je ne sais quoi that was hard to explain but easy to spot. This is Mike’s best article and his second favorite hangover cure.

Make an even better Egg McMuffin in five minutes

It’s Mike’s number one hangover cure because he’s a man of taste. Like Mike, I love McDonald’s, but I also love making fast food dupes, and this is one of the easiest ways to succeed: you make a small puck of Canadian bacon (or bologna), egg and American cheese, blow up nuke her and then slide over her. it’s on a toasted English muffin. Perfection.

Can I just enjoy that damn Diet Coke without being ashamed of my health?

Every time Beth compliments my work, you can’t say anything to me for at least a week because Beth is the smartest person I know. The fact that Beth likes this rant of mine is the only reason I needed to include it, but I think I make a lot of good points.

How to Perfect the Art of Bathing

I didn’t come up with the idea of ​​taking baths, but I’m good at it. Bathing and cooking are seemingly unrelated, and unless you look at them through the lens of pleasure, then everything, including my “whole deal,” makes sense.

Make a “Pervert’s Magic Shell” using chocolate and duck fat.

Speaking of “my whole business”, I think this little blog sums it up perfectly. It’s a shitty idea, but there’s logic to it, and anyone who’s crazy is just jealous that they weren’t so screwed up to think of it first.

17 Golden Age Porn Movies You Should Watch With Your Partner (Or Alone)

It was Joel’s idea to write this and it was a good one. This was one of the few slideshows that felt important to me – and I do think old porn is important. Since I wrote this, I’ve started a podcast dedicated to the topic, but the 17 films on this list are still some of my favorites.

Use a nearly empty jam jar to flavor your cocktail.

While I don’t think anyone would ever call me “elegant”, I appreciate elegant solutions to modern problems. This is my favorite kind of simple hack. It minimizes waste, includes Bonne Maman jam and ends with a beautiful and delicious cocktail.

Will it be sous vide? Pig head

This was the first video I’d ever made for Lifehacker, and the outpouring of hate mail and comments was unlike anything I’d experienced before (and nothing like since). My views on this topic haven’t changed since the backlash: If you’re okay with eating a small, sterile chicken fillet out of a neat Styrofoam package, you shouldn’t have any moral qualms about the content of this video. The pig was humanely raised on a local farm, and using the whole animal is more respectful than throwing its head in the trash because you don’t like being reminded that someone died to feed you.

Heads up: I’ve revolutionized cheesy fries.

Fricos (fried cheese chips) are a big hit on TikTok, but I’ve been letting my frico flag fly for at least five years now (it all started with a frico egg ). Crispy cheese-wrapped fries are stupid, almost to the point of nausea, but – like all the other disgusting recipes I’ve posted – they actually taste good.

Make an absolutely disgusting MSG martini.

When this video came out, everyone was screaming at me, and several annoying men came into my private messages and offered to make me a “real martini.” This was before the recent surge in popularity of the dirty martini, and adding MSG to a dirty martini is now quite common. I was right , that’s what I’m saying, just ahead of my time.

How to Smoke Your First Pork Shoulder on a Charcoal Grill

This article is not crazy at all, but it is useful and sometimes more important. I decided to write the guide I wish I had when I started smoking meat, and I think I succeeded.

Sous vide your old, dried grass

The brownies I made using this method baffled me. Even if you don’t follow the entire procedure exactly, you should decarbonize your pan using an immersion circulator, especially if it’s past its prime. (This will keep your home odor-free, and that’s valuable.)

I’m Lifehacker food editor Claire Lower and this is how I eat

I loved the whole How I Eat series, but we’re talking about me now, so I’ll leave you with this one. Re-reading this, I was surprised at how little had changed. I’m no longer a “big gin drinker” or a big gin drinker at all, but I still love eating corn dogs for breakfast, I still drink too much Diet Coke, and I’ll never stop eating Maldon saltines as a snack. .

At my core, I’m a creature of habit, so leaving Lifehacker is difficult. It’s where I honed my voice as well as my culinary skills, and I couldn’t have done it without the many seasoned editors I’ve worked with over the past eight years.

I’ll leave you in competent, experienced hands – Ellie understands how to cook (and bake, which I’ve never been a fan of), but she also understands the voice of Skillet and, more importantly, the spirit of service journalism, and she’s just a wonderful person overall. In fact, the entire Lifehacker staff, past and present, are wonderful people, and I will always be proud to have written, organized , and hacked lives with them. If you want to see where I end up next, be sure to follow me on Instagram . (I would have said “and Twitter,” but I got banned from the damn site a few weeks ago. I guess that was for the best. I’ve read three books since then.)