WelcomeHiiiiii!! Welcome to
The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook! Can I take your coat? Are you thirsty; do you want something to drink? Water, wine, a cocktail?
Let’s go sit and get comfy. So what’s been going on; what’s new? I wrote a book! And you’re reading it right now!!! Kinda crazy, can you believe it?
Anyway, I’m so happy you’re here, and I’m so excited to share these recipes with you. Whether this is our first time meeting, or we’ve known each other since I was selling olive oil cakes out of my parents’ house (or God forbid longer): Hi, I’m Meredith!
I like to think of myself as a professional hostess. And as for you, my reader and my guest, I promise to take the utmost care of you as we venture our way through the wonderful world of Wishbone Kitchen *together.*
What you’ll find here are recipes for every season of life. Yes, seasons as in spring, summer, fall, and winter, but also like television seasons, or loosely strung together moments with new characters, plot lines, priorities, challenges, and celebrations. So no matter what season you happen to be in—within this year or within this lifetime—I promise that you’ll always have the perfect thing to eat. Because when you have the perfect thing to eat, the moment becomes the memory.
How We Got Here The story of Wishbone Kitchen starts with my mom, who never let a day go by without feeding us a delicious home-cooked meal. Every day after school I’d belly up to the kitchen counter, where I’d start tackling my homework. My mom would be in the kitchen, too, of course, preparing dinner and watching her favorite cooking shows. She’d expertly carve our weekly roast chicken, extracting the wishbone with ease and setting it aside for the two of us to split after dinner. My eyes would inevitably wander from my notebook to her cutting board, and an endless slew of questions would follow. My childlike curiosity and dangerously short attention span got me in a lot of trouble as a kid, but now I see these qualities as my superpower.
I’ve never stopped questioning why, why not, and how. Following the rules and sticking to the status quo never sat right with me. This is not an intentional act of rebellion, but something I feel to my core. This mindset is what led me to start my own private chef business at the age of twenty-three.
I was working full-time as an assistant at Vogue, a few months out of culinary school, and had just started working part-time with my first private chef clients. Which, at the time, was only supposed to be temporary, since my end goal was to land a job in food media. After getting a mix of rejections and non-responses from hundreds of job applications, I quickly grew more and more frustrated. As it turns out, it took a global pandemic and getting laid off from my corporate job for me to take the leap and start building my business.
“If no food media companies will hire me, I’ll make my own” I said to myself. I named my imaginary (at the time) company Wishbone Kitchen, as an ode to my mother who inspired my love of home cooking. I started an Instagram page, built a website, began publishing recipes, and started booking more and more private chef gigs to pay the bills. Success did not come instantly. It rarely does. There are plenty of undocumented years of me hauling hundred pound bags of groceries through the streets of New York with negative $200 in my checking account, a maxed-out credit card, and 117 followers on social media. I experienced countless moments where I wanted to give up and take a line-cook job for a steady paycheck. It was in these moments that I would remind myself: if Ina and Martha could turn their small catering businesses into culinary empires, then so could I.
Driven by my naive sense of invincibility, common in most early twentysomethings, and a supportive family who I knew would catch me if I fell, I persevered. I was scared shitless, navigating uncharted territory that culinary school never could’ve prepared me for. I think of my years as a private chef fondly. And while there are a million and one stories I could tell you, let’s just say it wasn’t always sunshine and hydrangeas. Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, and (luckily) the world kept on spinning.
All of this is to say, your journey in the kitchen will also be messy. You’re not always going to get it right on the first try. There will be moments when you feel as though you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and there will be recipes that feel like too tall of a task.
Just remember, people can do hard things and failure is a necessary part of the process. After dinner was over, our plates were cleared, and the kitchen was clean, my mom and I would grab on to the wishbone, we’d close our eyes, make a wish, and pull, snapping it in two. The winner being the one left with the bigger half. I know she would secretly always let me win, and this book is proof that all of my wishes have come true.
Like the name, the vibe of this book is also inspired by memories made over meals with family. Casual weeknight dinners of Shake ’N Bake. Over-the-top four-course holiday meals complete with sticky toffee pudding. Or a shared bucket of seafood pasta, devoured while we were still in our bathing suits with salty, sun-soaked skin.
Those laid-back, belly-laugh-filled suppers are my North Star because they instilled in me from a very young age that the best ingredients aren’t always the most expensive, that good food doesn’t have to be measured down to the last teaspoon, that luxury is a full glass and a sunset, that no moment is too small to celebrate, and that there’s never a wrong time for oysters and good tequila.
Xo, Meredith
Copyright © 2025 by Meredith Hayden. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
