What exactly is “The Dude Diet”?
“The Dude Diet”, despite its title, was a very apt description of my husband who is sort of the consummate dude, but I am also from Southern California, and grew up calling everyone “dude,” and it’s really more of a mentality to me. “The Dude Diet” is not for men, it’s for people who really do want to eat these traditional happy foods. It’s happy food, it’s feel-good food for anyone of all ages. The great thing is it’s turned out to be very popular amongst children as well, so it’s really just accessible, healthy eating.
Is “The Dude Diet Dinnertime” just dinner recipes?
Yes, exactly. The original Dude Diet, it’s broken down. We do have breakfast, cocktails, and desserts in there, in addition to foods that could be served for lunch, or dinner, but the original Dude Diet also covers all the basic comfort foods that you really think of. I know I mentioned lasagna, meatballs, but things like cheesesteaks, chicken parm, cheeseburgers, and … mac and cheese, these standard comfort foods [are] really covered in “The Dude Diet.”
There are a lot of foundational techniques in there — how to make an easy frittata, how to cook a perfect chicken breast — things that you can then build on because that’s always my goal is to help people build this culinary confidence so they feel better about experimenting with different types of techniques, different flavors, being able to take a couple of foundational techniques, and create their own nutritious meals.
“The Dude Diet Dinnertime” is basically broken down by types of dinners. You have one-pot dinners, you have dinner salads. There’s a meat chapter and a fish chapter and a sides chapter, so you can mix and match to create different meals, and then there also is a breakfast for dinner chapter in there in case you do want to work in some breakfast. I know that is a lot of people’s favorite meals, so that’s in there, too, but yes, it is very much dinner-focused. I do make sure in “Dinnertime” to highlight recipes that are 30 minutes or less because I don’t include recipe prep and cook times in my books, which tends to upset a lot of people, but also, I’ve never found a cookbook that has accurate prep times because I would rather note recipes that are 30 minutes or less by anyone of any level. That’s how we go about it in “Dinnertime.”