What I Made for Dinner: A Memoir

From the author of The Natural Mother of the Child, an exquisite memoir about an amateur home cook’s hard and fast descent into an obsession with food celebrities, including Dessert Person Claire Saffitz, Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman, Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond, and Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa

When the pandemic sends Krys Malcolm Belc and his young children home to live their lives on laptops, he turns to internet chefs for comfort and inspiration. It begins with Stella Parks and her 46 YouTube videos in which she teaches viewers how to make classic, nostalgic American treats like Cheez-Its, Klondike Bars, and Texas sheet cake. But the recipes aren’t enough—Belc needs to watch her showcase each ingredient, explain its importance, and weigh each item on a scale. His fixation on recipe videos, and the women who produce them, start to feel like the only thing that makes sense.

Most of life has been put on pause, but food is the one thing that continues to change day to day, season to season. Belc captures the joy and pleasure of cooking for a large family, as well as the mundane reality and occasional frustrations that come with simply getting food on the table. In the midst of it all, he feels a spark of inspiration to carry a second baby, a decision that forces him to confront how he has used both the internet and cooking to cope and distract.

Following a trans man whose life is largely structured by keeping the family household running, What I Made for Dinner asks the question we all might ask ourselves while elbow-deep in a roasting chicken: Is having the opportunity to cook meals for your family every day a blessing or a curse?

About the Author :
KRYS MALCOLM BELC is the author of The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood, and of the flash nonfiction chapbook In Transit. His recent essays have been featured in The Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, The Arkansas International, and elsewhere. Krys is the memoir editor of Split Lip Magazine. He lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota and is the current Edelstein-Keller Writer-in-Residence at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

Review :
"A charming reflection on food and identity . . . Belc proves a funny, generous guide who remains self-aware about his obsessions without undermining their sincerity. There’s plenty of sustenance in these pages." —Publishers Weekly

“A moving and often funny account of how one man provides for his family, What I Made for Dinner feels both quietly radical and deeply comforting. In Krys Malcolm Belc's hands, the dailiness of parenting and meal-making becomes what it truly is: a ritual of nurturing life, of meeting one another with care and respect. Neurodivergent, queer, and full of love, I missed this book whenever life took me briefly way from its pages.” —Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, author of The Fact of a Body

“What I Made for Dinner is a tender, deliciously readable memoir told in intimate vignettes, tracing one family’s life through food during the pandemic. Writing as a transgender man and father on the brink of welcoming his fourth child, the author captures how cooking becomes an act of care, survival, and becoming—of feeding others while finding yourself. I laughed, I cried, I cried again—and I devoured every page.” —Hannah Howard, author of Plenty: A Memoir of Food and Family

“What I Made for Dinner is a captivating exploration of domesticity, parenthood, and queer family. With food and the women who make it his lens, Belc examines the complex contours of identity and isolation, masculinity and femininity, race and class, community and care. Both meditative and urgent, funny and profound, this is a deeply human story about the choices we make and the paths we take—of finding joy in the mundane and making meaning in the daily acts of service that build a family and a home. This book made me want to cook—to make Marcella’s Bolognese and pick fresh herbs in Ina’s garden, and invite all my friends to dinner. It also made me want to eat. To be in Belc’s kitchen is not just to watch a perfect roast chicken or chocolate cake come out of the oven, or to imagine the first exquisite bite; ultimately, it’s to feel cared for—like you’re sitting at the table, watching your friend cook, waiting to taste every beautiful thing he’s made.” —Melissa Faliveno, author of Tomboyland and Hemlock