My grandmother would tell me the dough was ready, and I would ask ready how.
She would say you will know. I never knew. I just nodded and hoped, and pulled things out of the oven too early for about ten years.
She was right that cooking is mostly attention. She was wrong that you cannot explain it. This site is my attempt at explaining it.
Hi, I’m Eliana Carter
Welcome to My Kitchen Mates. I’m a self-taught home cook in Texas, and this is where I keep the recipes I come back to.
The site started in 2019 as a place to dump recipes my friends kept texting me for. I was tired of typing out the same instructions to ten different people every week, so I put them all in one place and sent a link. It grew well past that.
These days I write in two kitchens. This one, which is everyday home cooking, and Eliana Eats, which carries my own name and is where I do the copycat restaurant work. If you want the longer story about my grandmother, San Antonio and how I ended up doing this, that is where I told it.
The Rules I Write By
I have no culinary degree and I am not going to pretend otherwise. What I can offer you is a recipe written properly, and after years of following badly written ones I have strong opinions about what that means.
So every recipe here follows the same rules. You can hold me to these, because you can check them on any page of this site.
- Describe the target, not just the timer. Fifteen minutes means nothing on your stove. Golden at the edges and smelling nutty means something on any stove.
- Never write “season to taste” and walk away. If that is genuinely the instruction, I tell you what you are tasting for.
- Only ingredients from a normal grocery store. No specialist shopping trip to make a Tuesday dinner.
- Say where it can go wrong. If there is a step that trips people up, the warning goes in the recipe rather than in the comments underneath it.
- Be honest about time. If it says 30 minutes, that includes the chopping. I am not going to quietly leave out the ten minutes of prep.
- Write it the way I would say it out loud. No filler, no life story stacked on top of the ingredients, no scrolling past four hundred words to reach the part you came for.
What Is in the Recipe Box
Weeknight dinners that are done in under 45 minutes. Slower weekend cooking for when you actually want a project. Breakfasts, soups, salads, breads, air fryer favorites, party snacks and the desserts my kids request by name.
This is the everyday site. It is the folder of things I actually cook on a Tuesday, plus the round-ups and ideas I put together when I want to give you options rather than one answer.
What you will not find here is copycat recipes. Working out how a restaurant gets a particular flavour and rebuilding it at home is a different job, and it takes over a kitchen when I am doing it, so it lives on its own site now. If that is what you came for, everything from Olive Garden to Starbucks to Chick-fil-A is over at Eliana Eats.
About the Photos
A photo on this site is meant to answer a question, not decorate the page. Does my dough look like that. Is it supposed to be this loose. Have I gone too far or not far enough.
That is why the step photos exist, and why the awkward middle stages get shown rather than only the finished plate. You should never have to stand in your kitchen guessing.
A Free Gift From My Kitchen to Yours
My 30 easy high protein recipes eBook is the shortlist I fall back on when I want something filling without losing the whole evening to the stove. Yours free for a limited time.
👉 Download your copy before it is no longer free.
Tell Me When Something Breaks
If a recipe of mine did not work for you, I want to hear about it more than I want to hear that it did. A confusing step is my fault, not yours, and it is the only way I find out that something needs fixing.
Write to me at contact[@]mykitchenmates.com. I read everything, even when the reply takes a while.
You can also find me here:
Now go make something delicious.
Eliana Carter
FAQs
Are your recipes hard to make?
No. Everything here is written for home cooks, not professionals. If a step is tricky, I walk you through it rather than assuming you already know the trick.
Do I need special ingredients or equipment?
No. Regular grocery store ingredients and the pans most people already own. If a recipe genuinely needs a particular piece of equipment, I say so at the top rather than halfway down.
What if a recipe does not work for me?
Email me and tell me where it fell apart. Ovens vary, pans vary, and sometimes a step I thought was obvious simply is not. I go back and rewrite when that happens.
Do you have quick dinners for busy nights?
Plenty. Look for the weeknight dinners that come together in under 45 minutes. They are there for the evenings when you are tired and just need to feed everyone.
Can I request a recipe?
Please do. Send me the dish and I will add it to the list. I cannot promise every one gets made, but plenty of what is on this site started as somebody’s request. If your request is a restaurant or coffee shop dish, send it to me at Eliana Eats instead, which is where I do the copycat work.
Do you run any other sites?
Yes. I also write at Eliana Eats, which carries my own name and is entirely copycat restaurant recipes — the drive-thru sauces, the coffee shop drinks, the chain soups and bowls. My Kitchen Mates is everything else.
Where can I follow you?
I am @eliana_carter_ on Instagram, Threads and X, plus Bluesky and Tumblr. The same accounts cover both sites.
Do you use AI?
For image editing, yes, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. A bright, appetising photo is what makes somebody stop scrolling, and hand-editing every image is not realistic for one person. The cooking and the writing are mine.
