My home kitchen, feeding myself, my family and friends
About Chez JK
Chez JK is my running notebook for cooking, eating well, and paying attention to what actually works in real life.
By Jonathan Katzman
The Short Version
Chez JK started with a very simple idea that still holds up: Eat food. Mostly vegetables. Not too much. Cook. Exercise.
That sentence is still the center of gravity here. I love food. As my brother says, "Never waste a meal." I like cooking too much to reduce it to macros and rules. The point is to eat real food, cook often, move your body, sleep enough, and keep noticing what makes life feel better.
How This Started
Years ago, after getting curious about the Four Hour Body and slow-carb eating, I started changing what I ate and how I exercised. I dropped wheat and sugar, leaned hard into vegetables, quality protein, beans and lentils at first, and then found my way toward a Paleo/Primal approach. The weight change was real, but the bigger surprise was how much better I felt: steadier energy, better sleep, less tension, and a stronger body.
That early phase was useful because it gave me structure. It also taught me that reading about food can become its own hobby, while only doing the thing actually changes anything. Chez JK grew out of that mix: practical notes, recipes, kitchen experiments, and a little encouragement to stop overthinking dinner.
What Has Changed
I am not trying to preserve a perfect 2012 version of Paleo. After many years of n=1 experiments, my version is more flexible and more personal. I still default to whole foods, lots of vegetables, good protein, real fats, and avoiding wheat, sugar, and seed oils most of the time. But I also eat safe starches, white rice, potatoes, some legumes, excellent cheese once in a while, summer corn, restaurant meals, and whatever makes sense when friends are at the table, especially if someone else is hosting me.
The durable lesson is not that one strict rule set wins forever. It is that defaults matter, habits matter, and cooking changes your relationship to food. When I shop for good ingredients, prep vegetables, and cook a real meal, I naturally eat in a way that feels more satisfying and less frantic.
What You Will Find Here
Chez JK is about delicious everyday cooking that happens to lean Paleo/Primal. Expect vegetables in volume, roasts and braises, salads big enough to be lunch, eggs over greens, fermented things, tinned fish, good olive oil, coconut oil, ghee, pastured eggs when possible, wild fish when possible, grass-fed beef when possible, and plenty of practical substitutions.
This is not a medical site, and it is not a purity contest. It is a kitchen notebook from someone who has tried a lot of things, kept what worked, and learned to leave the edges flexible enough for real life.
How I Hope You Use It
Use Chez JK as a place to find dinner, get unstuck, and borrow defaults. If you are just starting, do not try to learn everything first. Cook one real meal. Walk more. Get to bed. Throw out the oils you never should have bought. Buy more vegetables than seems reasonable. Repeat.
The rest can evolve as you go.