Emily Ley’s new cookbook started as a big joke between her and her publisher. A bestselling author and entrepreneur leading a multimillion dollar business that helps women simplify their lives, Ley doesn’t enjoy making giant messes or spending hours chopping and cleaning in the kitchen. In fact, she doesn’t even like to cook.
But she does have three kids “who want to eat multiple times every single day, over and over again,” Ley told Nice News with a laugh. And eventually, the Pensacola, Florida-based mom had a lightbulb moment: Maybe that lack of cooking experience and aversion to slaving over a hot stove made her the perfect candidate to write a cookbook — for other beginner chefs like her, searching for easy ways to get dinner on the table quickly.
“It is full of, we call it ‘stupid easy recipes,’” Ley said. “We say, it’s recipes so easy, a 10-year-old could do it. Because I have two, and they make the recipes all the time.”
The Simplified Cookbook, released March 4, is chock-full of delicious recipes, most of which require six ingredients or fewer — like Game Day Chili and Pound Cake, both listed below. Ley, who rose to success with Simplified (a line of planners and other organizational products), knew she wanted the book to be laid out in “the most basic of the basic formats” to make readers feel as capable as possible in the kitchen. That’s “kind of what you get when planner people design a cookbook,” she quipped.
In addition to the food, Ley sprinkles in tips, tricks, and advice to help apprehensive home cooks, including a section of notes with titles like “Perfectionism Has No Place in Your Kitchen” and “So You Want to Love Cooking, but You Just Don’t.” A self-dubbed “recovering perfectionist,” Ley said part of her mission with this book is to help those like her overcome their fear of messing up.
“Pick one recipe that you can memorize and just make it once a week. Take the guesswork out of it. Make it easy on yourself,” she suggested as a start. “Cowboy Soup is a recipe that’s in the cookbook, and it is the first recipe my mom taught me that I ever cooked, like out of my head, not looking at a recipe card, when I moved out. So Cowboy Soup is a staple here. We have it all the time. I know exactly what to throw in, I keep all the ingredients in the pantry.”
She continued, “Having that one thing that you can absolutely knock out of the park every single time and not have to stare at the recipe every time, it just kind of builds up your confidence a little bit to step out and try the next thing. So go slow, give yourself some grace. And remember it doesn’t have to be perfect to taste good.”
That philosophy around relaxing perfectionist tendencies extends to Ley’s approach to mealtime. Sure, getting the whole family to sit down for dinner every night has its benefits, but Ley admits that’s not always realistic — or even really what matters.
“Some days it’s hard to even get everybody in the same room. And so I think that it’s okay to define what that looks like for you. For us, sometimes it’s like, eating a bowl of chili while two people are standing in the kitchen loading the dishwasher, and three are sitting at the island and we’re talking around the island,” she said, adding: “What matters is that you’re just in community with your people. You’re sharing about your day, you’re checking on each other, you’re talking about what’s coming up and what they did that day. That kind of connection matters more than ever.”
Game Day Chili
Ingredients
1 lb ground beef
1 yellow onion
1 (16 oz) can black beans (whatever type you like: we love black beans and kidney beans)
2 (14.5 oz) cans diced tomatoes with green chilies*
2 tbsp chili powder
Directions
- Spray a slow cooker with nonstick cooking spray.
- Brown ground beef over medium heat. Drain the excess fat and discard, and add beef to slow cooker.
- Chop onion and add it to slow cooker.
- Drain and rinse beans. Add them to the slow cooker.
- Add tomatoes with chilies and chili powder and stir.
- Cover and cook on high for 4 to 6 hours or on low for 6 to 8 hours.
- Top with your favorite chili toppings.
*If you like a little extra spice, swap the tomatoes for 2 cans of fire-roasted diced tomatoes with green chilies.
Pro Tip
Let everyone dress up their chili the way they like. Serve the chili with topping options like shredded cheese, sour cream, avocado slices, pickled jalapeños, cilantro, tortilla chips, and lime wedges.
Pound Cake
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray.
- In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar with a mixer, about 4 minutes. Add vanilla, then eggs one at a time as you continue mixing.
- Add flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix until thick and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
- Pour cake batter into loaf pan, and bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
- Let cool for 60 minutes before serving.
Recipes taken from “The Simplified Cookbook: Delicious Meals with Effortless Prep by Emily Ley Copyright © 2025 by Emily Ley. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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