Welcome to Gentle Foods

A new newsletter about cooking how you want to feel

Hi and welcome to the newsletter I’ve been wanting to start since 2021 and am finally introducing to the world in 2023 because creative work and working for yourself are HARD!

First, an introduction: I’m Christina Chaey (though many people just call me Chaey). You may know me from my work on Bon Appétit, where I was a magazine section editor, senior food editor, video host, podcast guest, and a million other things for about seven years (yes, including those years). I left Condé Nast in 2022 to become a freelancer, but not before helping to form the Condé Nast Union, which is still and maybe forever my greatest professional accomplishment.

While at BA, I used to write a weekly newsletter for the brand’s wellness vertical Healthyish (RIP) called What’s Chaey Cooking?, which began as a log of whatever I was cooking at the moment, but increasingly explored my relationship to the intersection of food/cooking/mental health/toxic diet and wellness culture. As my interests shifted and evolved, I heard from more of you who related to what I wrote or wanted to deepen the conversation, which made the work feel all the more meaningful. Gentle Foods picks up where that newsletter left off, as a place where I can continue to explore my own relationship to food and share those thoughts with all of you.

Squishy black sesame rolls are definition gentle food

So what are gentle foods, you ask? The maybe-infuriating answer is that gentle foods are whatever you want them to be. But a less infuriating answer might be that, to me, gentle foods are the ones that are like a blanket. They’re nourishing, intuitive, and often quite simple. They’re not based on a grocery list so much as what your body wants to consume. Gentle foods are more a way of life than a prescriptive list of foods or dishes. For me, the term invokes steam-fried eggs, simple dashi-based soups with wilted greens and dumplings, bean stew with sourdough toast, poached fish bathed in oil-sizzled aromatics. And always, always dessert.

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This newsletter was born from my desire to explore what it means to feed myself in a kinder, gentler way that prioritizes listening to myself, my body, and the cues around my world, all while deprioritizing notions of how to perform “health” as dictated by modern toxic diet and wellness culture (there will be so much more on this topic in weeks and months to come).

This being a newsletter about cooking, of course there will be plenty of recipes—four brand-new recipes a month for paid subscribers, and one to two per month for free subscribers. My first recipe is dropping later this afternoon, so if you subscribe now you can expect that delivered right to your inbox.

For the next couple of weeks, all of my recipes and posts will be free to everyone. After that, some of my work will go behind a paywall. When that happens, you’ll have two options to subscribe (and I hope you will):

Free subscribers will get one to two brand-new recipes per month inspired by what I’m cooking right now, plus occasional non-recipe posts. You’ll also be the first to know about any pop-ups, talks, classes, and other events I’m doing around town.

Paid subscribers ($7/month or $70/year) will get a brand-new recipe every week inspired by what I’m cooking right now, plus the following:

• Personal essays (if you were a regular reader of my Healthyish newsletter back in the day, this is the kind of thing you can expect)

• Conversations with thoughtful food friends who are doing cool things in the industry

• Recommendations for pantry goods, cooking tools, books, restaurants, and other things/places I genuinely love

• Mailbag posts! Because I love to answer your cooking questions

• Access to comments so we can talk about whatever we please in a fun safe space

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I’m so glad you’re here.

–CC