Downtime With: Caroline Chambers

Note: Alisha is currently on maternity leave until the summer. In the meantime, Downtime is edited by Elise Hu. Our full weekly posts during this time are exclusively for paid subscribers. Upgrade here for full access. Thank you for your support!

I’ll admit I am a woman who rarely feels like cooking. But given my family of five, and especially during the pandemic, I play the role of short order cook more often than I’d like. Thank goodness, then, for Caroline Chambers, the chef behind the blockbuster newsletter, What To Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking, who I and thousands of others turn to for approachable, nourishing meal ideas that won’t break the bank.

While you may already know Caroline as a chef, we wanted to learn more about who she is as a woman existing in this frenzied, chaotic moment.

Below, Caroline gives us a glimpse into her mornings with her family of six, shares the skincare hack that costs less than $10, and dives deeper into the idea of raising your first child like your third.

Caroline’s 3 Good Things

1. Gap’s VintageSoft™ Sweats: I love a pair of fancy sweats but I always come back to the Gap VintageSoft. They have baggy pants, straight leg, jogger, crewneck, hoodie – pick your poison.

2. The “Nap Cap”: For new parents out there, when a baby is overstimulated and overtired they have a hard time falling asleep. You can pull a beanie over their eyes like an eye mask, then feed them or rock them, and nine times out of 10 they’ll pass out immediately. They just need help calming their little brains down! This is also the best trick if they’re able to fall asleep in a crowded place – pull their beanie over their eyes so that at the 45 minute mark of their sleep cycle when their eyes flutter open, they are met with darkness and likely to fall back asleep versus seeing all the action and waking up.

3. PanOxyl face wash: The hugest unlock of my late 30s. It’s just a cheap, super strong acne fash wash you can grab at the drugstore. And it’s changed my life. I used to have insane hormonal breakouts around every period, now I maybe have one tiny blemish. You can also use it to wash your armpits and it annihilates body odor! This $9 product has helped my skin more than any fancy skincare!

Downtime With: Caroline Chambers

Talk to us about where you’re from and what you do?

I grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I now live in Carmel, CA with my husband George and our four sons. I’ve worked in the cooking space for over ten years — I started out as a caterer and personal chef, then moved into a test kitchen in San Francisco, developing recipes for nationwide restaurants like Panera and Starbucks, then went freelance and ghost wrote cookbooks for celebrities and brands and magazines. During COVID I started sharing recipes from my own account and launched a Substack called What To Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking. I now have