On June 2, 2015, I emailed Whitson Gordon, then editor-in-chief of Lifehacker, about a freelance writing opportunity on a fairly new, food-focused blog called “Skillet.” Eight years, five EICs, four corporate owners, at least as 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 was not looking to leave Lifehacker (nor was I laid off or fired). For the last eight years, I’ve felt lucky to have a job that I look forward to doing every day, at a website full of people I adore. With the exception of Beth Skwarecki (who started as a full-time staffer the same day I did), I’ve been here longer than anyone else; I’ve seen a lot of writers and editors come and go, and I still consider a startlingly large percentage of them to be good friends. I will miss chatting, writing, and hacking lives with them every day, and I will miss my union comrades outside of Lifehacker.
I will also miss you, the readers who made the job so entertaining, and oddly exhilarating. If my writing was the meal, your clever suggestions, witty comments, and combative emails were the seasoning. As far as comment sections go, this site has one of the best on the internet, and I want to thank you for that.
I always tell people that working in service journalism made me a better, more thoughtful food writer. Behind everything I wrote (well, almost everything) was the goal of helping someone cook better, or cook faster, or live more deliciously, and I hope I was at least partially successful.
I don’t know what else to say, so I’ll leave you with some of my favorite life hacks—two for each year, because I’ve written over 3,400 articles on this website, and picking eight was impossible.
My Aunt May was a petty woman who hated her in-laws. “She cooks pretty, but I cook good,” she would say, referring to the parents of her son-in-law. These brussels sprouts are proof that I can cook pretty and good, and they happen to be a Thanksgiving favorite of both Meghan and Joel. [This is true, you should make them. —Joel]
It was really hard to pick a favorite installment from Will it Waffle?, but cheese won out, because it is cheese, and because this one was written during the height of the pandemic, when we were all losing our minds, and the thoughtful absurdity of waffled brie just made sense.
I wish the photos were better in this blog, but I have no regrets about the copy. This casserole almost killed my lactose-intolerant boyfriend, but it did taste good, and it illustrates a larger point: I was given so much freedom to do so many things that other, “proper” food sites would have killed in the pitching stage, and I’ll be forever thankful; Whitson, Alan, Melissa, Alice, Jordan, Virginia, Joel, and Meghan let me publish some truly unhinged content.
I have never met or spoken to Meghan’s husband, but he has been my muse (or at least one of my muses) for many years. “That’s a Mike article,” we’d say, usually when the article involved pickles, but Mike articles had a certain je ne sais quoi that was hard to explain, but easy to spot. This is the ultimate Mike article, and his second favorite hangover cure.
This is Mike’s number-one hangover cure, because he is a man of taste. Like Mike, I love McDonald’s, but I also love creating fast food dupes, and this is one of the easiest to nail: You make a little puck of Canadian bacon (or bologna), egg, and American cheese, nuke it, then slide it onto a toasted English muffin. Perfection.
Any time Beth compliments my work, you can’t tell me shit 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 happen to think I make a lot of good points.
I did not invent taking baths, but I am good at it. Bathing and cooking are seemingly unrelated activities, unless you look at them through the lens of indulgence, then everything—including my “whole deal”—makes sense.
Speaking of “my whole deal,” I think this little blog sums it up beautifully. It’s a fucked up idea, but there is a logic to it, and anyone who is mad is just jealous they weren’t fucked up enough to think of it first.
It was Joel’s idea for me to write this, and it was a good one. It was one of the only slideshows that felt important to me—and I do think old porn is important. Since writing this, I’ve started a podcast dedicated to the subject, but the 17 films on this list are still some of my favorites.
While I don’t think anyone would ever describe me as “elegant,” I appreciate elegant solutions to modern problems. This is my favorite kind of simple hack. It minimizes waste, involves Bonne Maman jam, and ends in a beautiful, delicious cocktail.
This was the first video I ever made for Lifehacker, and the barrage of angry emails and comments was like nothing I had experienced before (and like nothing I have experienced since). My views on the subject have not changed since the backlash: If you are OK with eating a sterile little chicken tender out of neat styrofoam packaging, you shouldn’t have any moral qualms about the contents of this video. The pig was humanely raised at 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 something died to feed you.
Frico (fried cheese crisps) are big on TikTok, but I’ve been letting my frico flag fly for at least five years (it started with the frico egg). The crispy cheese-wrapped fries are silly, almost to the point of being obnoxious, but—like all the other obnoxious recipes I’ve published—they taste really good.
Everyone yelled at me when this video came out, and several annoying men slid into my DMs, offering to make me a “real martini.” This was before the dirty martini’s recent surge in popularity, and adding MSG to dirty martinis is now pretty commonplace. I was right, is what I’m saying, just ahead of my time.
This article isn’t even a little unhinged, but it is useful, and sometimes that’s more important. I set out to write the guide I wish I’d had when I started smoking meats, and I think I nailed it.
The brownies I made with this method knocked me on my powerful ass. Even if you don’t follow the whole procedure exactly, you should de-carb your pot with an immersion circulator, especially if that pot is past its prime. (It keeps your home stink-free, and that is valuable.)
I’m Lifehacker Food Editor Claire Lower and this is how I eat
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I loved the entire How I Eat series, but we are talking about me right now, so I’ll leave you with this one. Reading it over, I was surprised by how little has changed. I’m no longer a “big gin drinker,” or much of a drinker at all, but I still love eating corn dogs for breakfast, I still guzzle too much Diet Coke, and I will never stop eating Maldon salt flakes as a snack.
I am, at my core, a creature of habit, which makes leaving Lifehacker difficult. This is where I honed my voice, along with my culinary skills, and I couldn’t have done it without the many skilled editors I’ve worked with over the last eight years.
I leave you in competent, well-floured hands—Allie understands how to cook (and bake, which I was never a fan of), but she also understands the Skillet voice and, more importantly, the ethos of service journalism, and she is just a lovely person overall. In fact, the entire Lifehacker staff, past and present, are lovely people, and I will always be proud to have written, organized, and hacked lives alongside them. If you want to see where I end up next, be sure to follow me on Instagram. (I would say “and Twitter,” except I was banned from that wretched site a few weeks ago. I think it was for the best. I’ve read three books since then.)