When it comes to summer cooking, we have a pretty strict family policy: Do everything you can to avoid turning on an oven. Which is all well and good except that it clashes with our other family policy: Eat pizza once a week. By pizza, we don’t mean the takeout pie from Tony’s on Main Street or the personal pans… Read more »
I’m going to start this story with a personal note to my Women’s Studies professor from college: Please do not continue reading. OK are we good? Are we alone now? Because I’m about to venture into some serious damsel-in-distress territory here. I can’t grill. From May through September, I depend on Andy – my totally evolved, equality-minded husband – to… Read more »
Beautiful, ain’t he? I mean, if you can get past the dreary little jacket of rust, and the melted plastic handle, and the whipped-dog, eyes-averted, kind of sad posture of a guy that has been forced to spend his life outside, alone, on a patio. In the fall, he catches dying leaves and plays home to a colony of spiders…. Read more »
I’ve gone on record saying that there is no such thing ever as a gimme meal when it comes to cooking for kids. But I’m just going to come right out and say this: If ever there was a gimme meal, these ribs are it.* Not only because they are so melty and gooey and quintessentially summer, but because they… Read more »
Are you the lucky person in charge of figuring out dinner for the Fourth of July Celebration? (Yes, I meant “lucky!”) Check in with DALS this whole week for a line-up of crowd-pleasers and show-stoppers. Andy is even threatening to weigh in with a post titled: The One Object Every Serious Griller Should Own. Aren’t you curious? Come back and… Read more »
Which recipe style do you like better? RECIPE STYLE 1: Conventional The style most magazines and cookbooks go with where all ingredients written in a list before the instructions. Like this delicious looking tagliatelle I will be making soon. OR RECIPE STYLE 2: Casual Ingredients are integrated with instruction using casual estimates for measurements (“a handful of walnuts” or “a few… Read more »
I’ve been feeling a little badly about something. I re-read my post about last weekend’s Grilled Lamb Feast and had the thought: I don’t know if I would like me if I didn’t know me. Who calls their own number on a dinner party? If Phoebe read it, she might have called me “braggy.” The truth is, I was thrilled… Read more »
Here’s a question: how do you get your kids to try something new? We’ve deployed various methods over the years, including but not limited to: bribery (eat this, get that), blackmail (you don’t eat this, you don’t get that), begging (dear god, I am begging you, just one bite), guilt (but poor mommy spent twenty minutes making these fava beans for you!),… Read more »
I was deep in dreamland on Saturday morning at 6:00 when the dog woke me up with her howling, but still, my first thought was Why am I so happy? And then: Holy s*%t did we rock dinner last night! Does that ever happen to you? When you are so pleased with the food you prepared for someone that the… Read more »
Besides the fact that it’s Friday and that we have a grilled leg of lamb on the menu tonight, what else is making me happy today? 1. Finding a ridiculously easy way to frost the ridiculously easy mud cake I make for every birthday. The one above was for my dad’s 75th — don’t worry, I eventually added the “birthday,” part…. Read more »
I have no problem cranking the oven to 425° in June if the dinner I’m cooking for the kids elicits a cheer. A cheer. Literally. Twice-Baked Potatoes Bake Idaho potatoes in a 425°F oven for an hour. (We estimate 1 1/2 potatoes per grown-up; 1 per kid) Meanwhile, chop scallions and fry bacon. (We estimate about 2 slices bacon per person… Read more »
And Jenny evaluates Andy…
There was a time in my life when Sunday meant sitting down with my Dinner Diary and mapping out a meal plan for the week. Like this line-up from June 14-18, 2004: Monday: Fried Sole with Green Beans Tuesday: Ravioli with Green Salad Wednesday: Fajitas with Black Beans and Cheddar Thursday: Curried Chicken with Apples Friday: OUT (always in caps, always!) I remember… Read more »
Which is more exciting? a) Eating dinner at Per Se, at a table overlooking Central Park, on a warm spring night, holding a tasting menu that looks like this (only five of about thirteen courses shown): OR b) returning home from that Per Se dinner and finding this note stuck to your front door… Here’s a hint.
As a kid, the perfect ending to a good day was when I’d walk into the kitchen at about six o’clock, after a long afternoon of backyard pyromania and brain-melting Q*bert sessions, and see the big Pyrex baking dish on the counter. Inside that dish were four or five or six pork chops — bone in, sourced from our local… Read more »
The first time I had “asparagus ketchup” I was sitting at a sidewalk table at Bar Pitti in the Village with my Time For Dinner co-authors Alanna and Pilar, and our editor, Lia. We had split a bottle of 2006 Toscana Castello di Ama rose, the name of which I remember only because I emailed myself a photo of the… Read more »
Every time I make this roasted chicken with barbecue sauce I say to myself: Why don’t I do this meal on those nights I reach for the box mac & cheese or frozen pizza? It’s fresher and healthier than most things you’ll pull out of a box (Don’t worry, I still love you Trader Joe), but more to the point,… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
