I Ate Like Chrissy Teigen & Taylor Swift For 30 Days

This story was originally published on March 9, 2016.

You know that toddler who's freaking out her parents because she only eats string cheese and dinosaur chicken nuggets? I'm basically that toddler, only at 26, no one is chasing me around with a bottle of PediaSure. I'm free to live off a strict diet of produce, salmon, baked goods, and frozen yogurt, not because I'm on some diet, but because everything else seems completely unappetizing to me. The extent of my cooking involves bimonthly ambitious Sunday nights when I throw some carrot sticks in the oven with a coating of Pam. Dinner-party prep has been usurped by my roommate, for the health and safety of my friends.

That said, I like to jump into new challenges. And, I wanted to cook more. Cereal, even fortified cereal, can only sustain you for so long. So, instead of mastering a single dish or learning to fricassee (that's a cooking term, I'm pretty sure), I decided to find a month's worth of dishes featured on celebrity Instagram feeds. Somehow it felt comforting to know that celebs had succeeded at creating these meals. It was like cooking with Hilary Duff and Oprah, which sounded like way more fun than cooking alone.

The plan was to make a different meal every night in February, but — full disclosure — I missed three days. I learned, I ate, and I bought more spices than I will use in this lifetime. This is my eat-like-the-other-half experiment, copycatting everyone from Aziz Ansari to Taylor Swift.