Krys Malcolm Belc wrote a new book so he could stop worrying about his last one.

The St. Paul, Minnesota, man’s new memoir, “What I Made for Dinner,” comes five years after his first, “The Natural Mother of the Child.”

“When my book came out, I asked some writers, ‘What is the best way to deal with the anxiety of having a book out?’ And they said, ‘Well, you need to have another project,’ ” recalled Belc, 39, who relocated to St. Paul from Philadelphia three years ago, along with wife Anna and their four kids.

One problem: It was during the pandemic, and there was not much to write about.

“I thought, ‘The only thing I really think about is food because I have to make it every day.’ So I started making myself wake up early in the morning, before getting ready for work, and writing about what I made for dinner the night before,” said Belc, who also teaches memoir writing at the University of Minnesota.

A theme that quickly emerged is that Belc has some serious obsessions with food celebrities: the Barefoot Contessa (otherwise known as Ina Garten ), the Pioneer Woman (Ree Drummond), and Bridget Lancaster and Julia Collin Davison from “America’s Test Kitchen,” to name a few. “What I Made for Dinner” contains chapters devoted to how each food guru’s roasting and baking spoke to him at specific moments — including the difficult months when the trans man stopped taking testosterone so he could get pregnant with his and his wife’s fourth child.

While Belc sipped a Spyhouse caramella coffee and wore a t-shirt emblazoned with drawings of fancy cheeses, he spoke about life events, problematic chefs and pancakes (the interview was edited for clarity and concision):

Q: The book changed a lot over the course of its writing because you changed so much?

A: When I really started dedicating myself to writing it, my fourth child was an infant, so I didn’t have a perspective on having postpartum depression and experiencing this big shift in my ability to manage all the responsibilities in my life. But once I had a draft, I thought, “I do think I’ve healed enough to have perspective, and it all organizes nicely into a plot. Imagine that!”

Q: You wrote the chapter on Ree Drummond first, although it’s not first in the book. Why?

A: I had fairly simple thoughts about her, as opposed to Alison Roman, for instance. She cooks like my mom, I have her cookbooks, I watched her in high school. The essay about Sara Moulton was early, too. I remember her from when I was very young. Once I had two of them, I thought, “This is a mode I can use. I can structure them quite differently — the one with Claire Saffitz is organized around one show she did with her brother-in-law, for instance — but this should work."

Q: And writing a memoir that’s also about food stars is a way of hedging your bets, right?

A: I’m like, “Well, if they’re not interested in my deep feelings, perhaps readers will be interested in that one time Ina Garten and her husband, Jeffrey, broke up for a month.”

Q: You’ve written two, but it seems like you’re ambivalent about memoirs?

A: I have never met a memoirist who doesn’t agree that it’s a deeply uncomfortable way to engage with art-making. I don’t have a remarkable life: I’m a guy. I have a family. I haven’t escaped a cult. I haven’t even had a profound experience of grief or overcome remarkable adversity.

Q: Does being a memoirist put pressure on you to do something big — steal a diamond or whatever?

A: I don’t think I’m going to steal a diamond. I hope nothing remarkable happens to me. I think there has to be some big shift in my awareness that would make me want to write another memoir, and I hope not to have one of those for a while.

Q: If Drummond was easiest to write about, was Roman (who was briefly semi-canceled for racially charged remarks) the hardest?

A: I am someone who assumes best intentions, perhaps to my detriment. It might have to do with growing up in a huge family. There are six of us, and I’m the oldest, so I’m in a natural peacemaking place: “Maybe they didn’t mean to do that.” But, yes. Having to write about someone who makes me angry was harder than writing about the immediate aftermath of childbirth and the depression I was dealing with.

Q: There’s definitely more affection than criticism in the book.

A: Stating my displeasure with someone is not my natural way of acting around people, which is probably why I ended up in the Midwest instead of Philadelphia, a very angry city where people love to harshly criticize one another at all times.

Q: Since you’re not wild about Roman, did you also dump her recipes?

A: There is no force on earth that would stop me from baking her buttermilk cake. It’s a staple.

Q: I bet people will relate to the grind of figuring out what to make for dinner every night. It’s constant!

A: Until my youngest is 18, I assume. She’s 3½, so it’ll be a minute. My oldest is 14 so, hopefully, he’ll help cook at some point. I actually like cooking and being a provider and being useful, but it weighs on you. You have to not think about the fact that you have to do it every day, if you want to get through it. I don’t feel like people talk about that enough.

Q: Do you have a go-to you’d recommend for when you don’t feel like cooking?

A: My wife would say a fancy dinner is pasta and a nice bottle of wine. My kids’ version of that is chocolate chip pancakes, so when I’m phoning it in, if I make French toast or waffles, they think I’m a gourmet chef.

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What I Made for Dinner

By: Krys Malcolm Belc.

Publisher: Catapult, 370 pages.

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