The Short-Lived Sheet Pan Boycott

Photo by Melissa Walker Horn on Unsplash

When Lily woke up that morning, she decided she would boycott all sheet pan cooking. In fact, she thought if she saw even one more recipe for sheet pan chicken, she might scream. And she didn’t want to scream because then her neighbors might think there was something wrong. And there was absolutely nothing wrong, she just didn’t want to cook anything on a sheet pan.

She usually didn’t make such rash decisions that early in the morning. Normally, she’d just check the weather on her phone and maybe even read a news story. But she often found the news distressing, so she’d just scroll through some of her social media feeds to see what everyone was cooking that day. She had noticed lately that while casseroles had been out of fashion for quite a while, there was a new interest in sheet pan this and sheet pan that. When Lily thought about it, she realized that putting things in the oven to bake on a sheet pan was really just a casserole, but flatter.

Now, Lily loved casseroles growing up, even tuna casserole, but the thing she couldn’t abide in the kitchen was laziness. She understood how putting everything - meat, potatoes, maybe even some veggies and definitely some onions - in one pan and slowly letting it cook for hours, was an easy task. Usually, there would be some liquid, aka gravy, at the bottom of whatever was “casseroled” that could then be used as a tasty sauce to spoon on potatoes or rice or even noodles. Lily loved mashed potatoes, preferred jasmine over any other rice, and never met a noodle that she didn’t like.

After Lily made what she considered an important household decision regarding sheet pan usage, she informed both her husband, Allan, and her teenage daughter, Taylor, of her plan.

“How am I going to warm up pizza? Or make chocolate chip cookies?” Taylor asked.

Lily thought about this for a moment and asked whether brownies might be a tastier option. Then she suggested that pizza could be warmed up in a baking pan as well. Lily saw Taylor roll her eyes and suddenly she thought maybe it was a dumb resolution.

“We can’t just cook the way all these social media people say we have to cook if it doesn’t make sense!” Lily insisted.

Allan listened to her and nodded. “We’ll save money on parchment,” he offered.

This time Lily rolled her eyes since the box of parchment paper they had was nearly four years old, if not older, since she rarely used parchment, preferring to just oil a pan.

For dinner that night, Lily made a roast chicken and scattered a bunch of potatoes that she had seasoned with olive oil and rosemary beforehand into a big roasting pan. She didn’t feel the need, à la Julia Child, to place butter under the skin, since she knew there would be a lot of fat dripping off of the bird anyway. She started to wash some lettuce for a salad but then decided at the last moment to make some stuffed mushrooms, too. So, she washed the mushrooms, tore off the stems, and placed them in a rectangular baking dish.

She found some pancetta in the fridge that she dumped into a frying pan, along with some breadcrumbs. She made sure to keep stirring this mixture since the last time she had made stuffed mushrooms, she had burnt the stuffing which totally ruined the dish.

Thinking of burnt things though made her think about sheet pan cooking again. Lily knew what would happen when you use a sheet pan and weren’t paying attention. Things tend to cook a lot quicker on a sheet pan and there’s a lot of grease. But when the grease evaporates, you might be left with burnt edges – both on whatever you’re cooking and on the pan itself. And those burnt things are not the good kind - like when you’re barbequing something. Hadn’t she just read an article about basically incinerating a pork roast just to have “burnt ends?” Lily thought this was not only wasteful, but kind of stupid. Who wants to eat burnt food she thought? And why would you burn something intentionally?

When Taylor came home that evening, she went right upstairs to her bedroom without even saying hello. Lily wondered if there was something wrong, but before she could think about what the problem might be today (after all she was a teenager), her phone started beeping. She picked it up and her daughter had sent her at least six screenshots of sheet pan dinners. Sheet pan chicken with some greens seemed to be a popular favorite, followed by sausage, onions and peppers. Then there were at least four recommendations for vegetarian meals but when she looked closely at the picture, the recipes seemed to consist mostly of chickpeas or various types of squash. Lily sighed. She hoped her daughter wouldn’t suddenly decide to become a vegetarian.

Lily went back to stuffing the mushrooms with the mixture she had made. She grated some Swiss cheese on top and put the dish in the oven to bake. She went back to making a salad and even whipped up a quick homemade ranch dressing with some leftover buttermilk she found in the back of the fridge. Then she heard her phone beep again. She picked it up and looked at another picture Taylor had sent her; it was a chocolate sheet pan cake which made Lily laugh. Lily had never made a sheet pan cake and thought in horror that if she ever tried to make one, most of the batter would probably ooze out over the rim of the pan.

Lily heard Allan walk in the house. “Smells good,” he said.

Lily nodded.

“Sheet pan chicken?” he asked.

Lily looked at him.

“Just kidding!”

“Your daughter is not happy,” Lily offered.

“What now?” he asked.

“She apparently doesn’t think my sheet pan boycott is a good idea. She keeps sending me recipes.”

Allan started to laugh, and even more so, when Lily picked up her phone to show him some of the pictures. Their laughter was interrupted though when their daughter came downstairs to tell them that she was eating over at a friend’s house. When Lily replied, “but I made a chicken, you love roast chicken!” Taylor’s response was a sneer, followed by one word, “Later.” So, Lily and Allan ate the chicken by themselves.

The next night, when Lily came home from work, she heard a noise in the kitchen, followed by the smell of something cooking. Was it fish? And moreover, who was cooking? Taylor, it seemed, had decided to take matters into her own hands and show her mother that she could cook. Which is how Lily found Taylor arranging some shrimp on a sheet pan and scattering some crumbled-up feta around the pan as well.

Lily knew better than to interrupt, so she just said, “Hi.” Since Taylor wasn’t immediately hostile, Lily took that as a good sign. Lily wondered whether she should offer to help, but before she could even do so, Taylor informed her that she was making dinner.

“Okay,” Lily said.

“And everything will be sheet pan cooked,” Taylor added, slowly enunciating the last three words just to make sure that Lily heard exactly what she was doing.

“I see,” Lily managed to say, hoping she didn’t sound too sarcastic. But what she really wanted to ask her daughter was “even the salad?” But she didn’t.

Instead, Lily began to unload the dishwasher and started to put everything away because she wanted to hang out in the kitchen and see what else Taylor was concocting. Lily watched as her daughter tossed some tomatoes and red onions alongside the shrimp and then doused everything on the pan with dried oregano, basil, and a generous pour of olive oil.

Lily wasn’t sure what else her daughter had up her sleeve, so when Taylor took out some store-bought pizza dough and tore off little balls of the dough and then flattened them with her hands as if she were making tacos, Lily bit her lip. She didn’t want to laugh out loud and she knew Taylor would be angry if she did. But still, she couldn’t help but wonder, had her daughter kept her cooking skills a secret? Did Allan know? Was Taylor just showing off, Lily wondered? Or had she spent the last day researching how to prepare the dishes she was making?

“Pizza, too?” Lily couldn’t help but ask.

Taylor nodded. “I still need to wash the spinach. It’s going to be spinach, ricotta and provolone.”

Lily didn’t want to tell her that it would be a very “cheesy” meal between the cheeses on the pie and the feta in the shrimp, so she just kept her mouth shut.

“Do you want me to make a salad?” Lily asked.

Taylor shook her head no. “We have spinach, remember?” she said pointing to the pizza.

“Right,” Lily confirmed.

Lily watched as Taylor plopped a large tablespoon of ricotta on each of the pizza rounds she had laid out on the sheet pan. She then washed the spinach, tore the leaves, and sprinkled them on top of the ricotta. Then she layered some thin slices of provolone cheese on top of the spinach and sprinkled some red pepper flakes over each one.

“Just needs some spice,” Taylor said.

Lily nodded and saw Taylor go over to a kitchen cabinet and reach for a box of brownie mix. Lily kept her mouth shut and wondered if the brownies would be made on a sheet pan too - all keeping with Taylor’s theme of not honoring the boycott.

Lily got an egg out from the fridge and handed it to Taylor.

“Thanks,” she said.

Lily watched her daughter crack the egg into the dry mix. She added some oil, then stirred the batter a couple of times and then reached into a cabinet for a square baking pan. But Lily couldn’t resist. “No sheet pan?” she asked.

“Mom,” Lily said. “Do you want a thick, gooey brownie? Or something that looks like a cracker? Have you ever seen a cracker brownie?”

Lily had to think about it for a moment.

“Exactly, so just stop,” Taylor said.

Lily looked at her 15-year-old and wondered first of all, how did she get to be so old? And geez, wasn’t she just a baby?

“Is culinary school in your future?” she asked quietly.

Taylor frowned. “No.”

“Have you thought about college at all?”

Taylor looked at her. “No.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of scary, your father and I haven’t either.”

Taylor decided to just stare at her for a while before she dumped the brownie batter into the baking pan. She pretended to lick the spoon which Lily had always told her not to do. Lily couldn’t help but laugh and say, “I didn’t know you knew how to cook!”

“I don’t,” Taylor said. “I’m just copying stuff I saw people making online.”

Lily nodded and wondered if she needed to go to college at all. Maybe she’d be one of those kids who just learns stuff on their own.

“So, your boycott is stupid,” Taylor continued.

“Why is that?”

“Because everyone is making stuff just using sheet pans.”

“Okay,” Lily said. “But that doesn’t mean I have to.”

“Why do you always have to be different?” Taylor asked.

“Why do you have to be so difficult?” Lily countered.

But then Taylor looked at her. “I can cook dinner tomorrow night, too,” she offered.

“Yeah?” Lily asked.

“I was thinking spaghetti.”

Lily watched as Taylor took out a box of spaghetti and just threw it on a sheet pan.

“What do you think?” Taylor asked.

And when Lily looked at her daughter, she realized she was cracking up.

“I think we have way too many sheet pans,” Lily said.