Feeding a crowd is mostly about picking the right dish. Soups, stews, beans, and braises hold well on low heat, scale up without much extra work, and don't mind if people show up late. Season near the end. A big pot can taste saltier once it cooks down. Then set out toppings: herbs, cheese, hot sauce, lime, sour cream. Everyone builds their own bowl, and you get to sit down too.

Support the people building and maintaining your Nostr infrastructure. @nostr.build offers free services, but the work and costs behind them are real. Storage, maintenance, development, and support all have to be paid for. A small paid account helps keep those services available for everyone. We can relate to this at Zap Cooking. We’re self-funded too, with no grants, donations, sponsorships, or ad revenue. Like many others here, we’re putting our own time and money into something we want to see exist. If you use these services and have the means, support them. We all want a better internet experience. It takes a village to build it and keep it running. View quoted note →

What's the potluck dish people ask you to bring? The one where, if you showed up with something else, someone would ask where it was.

Feeding a crowd this weekend? Red beans and rice is a good place to start. This one serves 12. It's from the community, shared as the author's late partner's recipe. Chef Darin spent 30+ years cooking Cajun and Creole food. Their advice: make it exactly as written the first time, then adjust. And don't cheap out on the andouille. Louisiana Red Beans & Rice

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A few things that help soup freeze well: Cool it quickly before it goes in the freezer. Shallow containers help. Leave some room at the top. Liquid expands as it freezes. Freeze it flat in bags if you're short on space. They stack like books. Hold back the pasta, rice, and cream. Add them when you reheat so they don't go soft or grainy. A full freezer on Friday is a quiet gift to a busy week.

What do you bring when someone needs a meal? A new baby. A move. A hard week. The dish that travels, reheats, and says what you didn't know how to say.

At Nostr Valley, we missed our friend and a Zap Cooking Founders Club Member @Pickle Dan 🥒 but we gave him a shout out and credit for the pickle feed concept. True. Pickles is one of the topic feeds on Fresh, the relay we built for Zap Cooking. So is Soups, which feels right this week. The food feed is free. Topic feeds are a membership perk. wss://feed.zap.cooking in your favorite client, or

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A parmesan rind is one of the best things you can drop into a pot of soup. Aged cheese is rich in glutamates, the compounds behind umami, and as the rind simmers, some of that savory flavor moves into the broth. Bones help in a different way: simmered long enough, their collagen turns into gelatin, which gives broth body. Broth from water and vegetables can taste thin. Add a rind or a few bones and it tastes rounder and fuller. Keep a bag of rinds in the freezer. Some of the best flavor comes from what you almost threw away.

We’re still pushing forward.

Food. Friends. Freedom. That's been the idea behind Zap Cooking from the start. Food, because everyone eats. Friends, because the best recipes get passed from hand to hand. Freedom, because the recipes you share on Nostr belong to you, not to a platform. When a recipe works for you, you can zap the person who shared it. A small thank-you, sent straight to them. And the code is open source, so anyone can see how it's built.

A few things that travel well to a potluck: Dishes that taste good at room temperature, like grain salads, roasted vegetables, or a vinegar-dressed potato salad. Anything that holds in a slow cooker: chili, beans, meatballs. Food that's easy to serve with one spoon. A small card with what's in it helps the friend who can't eat nuts, dairy, or pork. The best potluck dish is the one that's still good an hour after you get there.

This morning's post, in a pot. This gumbo from the community starts with onion, bell pepper, and celery, plus a roux cooked low until it's chocolate brown. It's the authors' take on a recipe learned from a grandmother and a mom, who would spend hours making gumbo for the first cool evening of the year. Their tip: watch the roux closely. It can go from perfect to burnt in a moment. Rupert and Kajoozie's #Nostr Famous Gumbo

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lot of great soups start the same way: onion, carrot, and celery, cooked slowly in a little fat before any liquid goes in. Italian cooks call it soffritto. French cooks call it mirepoix. In Louisiana, with bell pepper instead of carrot, it's the holy trinity. Gentle heat softens the vegetables and brings out their sweetness, and the fat carries that flavor through the whole pot. Tossed straight into broth, they taste boiled. Cooked slowly first, they taste sweet and deep. The quiet part at the start is where the soup gets its flavor.

What's the first soup you make when the weather turns? The one that tells everyone in the house it's fall.

Almost anything in your fridge can become an omelette. That's the idea behind this one from the community. The author learned it from their dad, who'd fold leftover takeout, taco fillings, or extra pizza toppings into eggs and top it all with cheese. Their tip: keep the heat moderate and take the eggs off a little early. They keep cooking after they leave the pan. The Anything Omelette

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A recipe shared on zap.cooking - Food is Open Source

Searing doesn't seal in juices. When people have tested it, seared meat usually loses about as much moisture as unseared meat, sometimes a little more. What searing does is build flavor. The browned crust tastes deeper and more savory, and that's reason enough. A juicy steak comes from not overcooking it. A great-tasting one comes from the sear.

Nostr Valley III is today. Noon to 4 PM at Happy Valley Brewing Company, State College, PA. We're proud to sponsor this one. If you're in Happy Valley, come say hi.

Nostr Valley

Nostr Valley III · October 17, 2026 · State College, PA

Third Annual Nostr Valley. Pennsylvania

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If you could have one food feed, what would it be? All cheese. All pickles. All garden. Fresh members get custom topic feeds like Cheese, Pickles, Garden, Japanese, Cakes, Homestead, and 40+ more, plus full history. Which one are you opening first? And which one are we missing?

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If someone else planned your dinners for a week, what's the one rule they'd need to know? "Nothing over 30 minutes on Tuesdays." "One kid won't eat anything green." "Leftovers count as dinner." The rules are usually what makes planning hard.

Breakfast is what you make of it. View quoted note →