Realistic food for a busy family.

That’s what this website and blog are all about.

You’ve found the place for all of my fresh family meals, easy recipes, cooking tips, meal planning, school lunch packing, and loads more. I’m best known for my school lunches, but I’ve got lots more too. We are a busy family of six so simple + healthy meals are what I’m all about.

This isn’t your typical food site - this is more of a personal blog with a lot of helpful stuff mixed in.

Yes, I do have some recipes that I hope you’ll like. And I have shared thousands of packed lunches over the years. But you’ll also find a lot of useful tips for a busy family, meal planning tips, kitchen shortcuts and hacks, and thoughts about life and parenting in general.

If you want to try out some of my favorite things, I’ve got a custom Amazon shopping page where you can find all of my top recommendations.

New! Download some of my favorite printable tools and my new ebook. I’ve set up a new store section of the website where you can find all of my available downloads.

What you won’t find here is staged food or recipe photos.

I’ve got four kids. I don’t have time to make food just to take pictures of it. The food you see here is something I have cooked for my family, it’s the real deal. The school lunch pictures are all actual lunches I have packed for my kids. The recipes I post include pictures from actual meals we are eating.

I hope you spend some time browsing around the site. You can use the main navigation at the top to find your way around, or use these quick links to get you on your way, or keep scrolling for more content.

Have a question or want to chat?

I love to chat about food and family, packing lunches, cooking tips and shortcuts. I’m active on Instagram and Threads, you can find me on both at @whatlisacooks, or just click the social links below.

The latest from Instagram:

Dinner tonight is my California take on chicken and dumplings. With homemade chicken stock and rolled dumplings with black pepper and herbs (parsley, thyme, sage) from the garden. Don’t @ me about this not being traditional. I’m not tradi
Moroccan inspired slow cooker chicken. This was one of the tastiest and easiest meals I’ve made in a long time - a put it all in the slow cooker and walk away kind of dinner. In my slow cooker I layered: two cans of garbanzo beans with their li
Dinner bowl: spring mix with seared ahi tuna, salt & pepper tofu, edamame, tomatoes, scallions, marinated cucumbers. Recipes for the tuna and tofu are on the blog.
Crispy salt and pepper tofu. It seems like no matter how much I make, it’s never enough, it gets devoured. My recipe is on the blog.
Thin, crispy, sourdough crust, with tomatoes and basil from the garden, cooked on a baking steel at 500 degrees.
Some of my people prefer thick crust pan pizza, with sauce and cheese all the way to the edges.
Seared ahi tuna for dinner. Marinated for about an hour with soy sauce, sesame oil, and white pepper, and then quickly seared in a very hot pan for just 30 seconds each side. So yummy.
Dinner from a couple nights ago. I tried something new - chicken meatball Parmesan. I made the meatballs with 2/3 ground chicken and 1/3 ground pork, eggs, seasoned bread crumbs, garlic salt, and Parmesan cheese, and I rolled them in more bread crumb
With the pasta and salad for dinner last night we had some simple roasted chicken breasts. These were seasoned with Dijon mustard, lemon juice, garlic, a little garlic salt, and olive oil. Cooked for 30 minutes at 350 convection. I cooked lots extra
Tomato & avocado salad, with tomatoes and basil from the garden, diced shallot, balsamic vinegar, lemon olive oil, and some big flakes of salt.
That baked pasta from dinner last night. (You can look at the earlier post for details)
Here’s another really simple birthday lunch for you. This one is pancake sandwiches (one of my favorite breakfast-for-lunch ideas!) cut in quarters on a fun little cocktail pick (because kids love food on sticks!) with a strawberry. On the side
Headed for the oven for dinner tonight: I made a quick cheese sauce (which is just a white sauce with a bunch of cheese melted in), added a package of frozen riced broccoli, mixed in two different shapes of leftover cooked pasta, and dumped it all in
We had a birthday this week, so I thought I’d share with you a fun throwback birthday lunch. Making lunch a little extra special for a big day doesn’t have to be complicated. This lunch is PB&J cut in a quick heart shape, and the numb
Still here with my salad obsession. This one has @earthboundfarm herb salad, which is their spring mix plus a bunch of fresh herbs, strawberries, blueberries, pickled red onion, @wonderfulpistachios salt and vinegar pistachios, turkey, bacon, and a l
Saturday night we had shawarma with tzatziki, lemon tahini dressing, and a carrot hummus. I’ll be linking some of the details and recipes when I post our menu from the week, so make sure you’re signed up for the newsletter to get the deta
A big salad to go with Friday pizza. This one has bacon, turkey, boiled egg, salami, tomatoes, cucumber, pickled red onion, pistachios, and my lemon vinaigrette, on spring mix.
Another simple tomato salad with tomatoes and basil from the garden.
Salami, mushrooms, and onion pizza on my homemade sourdough crust.