So I got this nice note from a reader the other day: I have to tell you I did my first real deconstructed meal the other night where I was not catering to the kids. It was so easy, such an epiphany! My husband and I made Chicken Tikka Masala with browned cauliflower and frozen peas in it. Before adding the (jarred) sauce, I loaded up plates with juicy sauteed
Read more

[Read more →]

. It occurred to me a few weeks ago that every time we go on a trip — whether it’s Santa Fe, Austin, San Francisco, Paris — we tell you what we’ve done, where we’ve eaten, what our kids loved the most. And yet, in the four years we’ve been writing this blog, we’ve given you hints and peeks into Our New York, but have yet to deliver a family
Read more

[Read more →]

When I heard Matt Hranek — acclaimed photographer, William Brown Project blogger, Barbour-jacketed man-about-town — got his own TV show, my first thought was OK, so someone was smart enough to make that official. Because as long as I’ve known Matt (and his wife Yolanda), the guy has been a one man show, regaling us with tales of what he’s seen and tasted in his travels across the country on
Read more

[Read more →]

A few weeks ago, my friend Christy, mother of four, sent me a link to a pork chop recipe she was thinking about for dinner. “So I am going to make this tonight, but what bothers me is that two of my kids will put A-1 on it no matter what.” I felt her pain — soy sauce and ketchup have both been A-1 equivalents in our house — and
Read more

[Read more →]

It will not come as a surprise to anyone out there that I love my freezer. There is no greater mom-porn moment for me than transferring a big batch frozen pork ragu to the fridge before work, knowing that by the time I walk in the door at dinnertime, it will be thawed, and all I have to do is boil some rigatoni to make dinner happen. But recently, I’ve
Read more

[Read more →]

Do you guys have that list? The I’ll-Deal-With-it-After-Vacation List? Earlier in August while scrambling to get everything organized before we dropped off the face of the earth for a while (real earth, not blog earth) I found myself keeping a mental list of all the things I’d just figure out once I got home. Taken on their own, in the rosy glow of pre-vacation denial, all those tasks seemed so
Read more

[Read more →]

Our next guest in the DALS Summer Reading Series is Michael Paterniti, a man who needs no introduction (and not only because we just introduced him last month). Besides being the father of three voracious readers, he is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Revenge, Betrayal, and the World’s Greatest Piece of Cheese, and joins us today to tell us about his two
Read more

[Read more →]

If we were playing word association (since we just got back from vacay, there has been a lot of this game going on in our house) and we started with say, short ribs…Where would you go from there? “Winter?” “Braise?” “Dutch Oven?” “Anna?” I’ll tell you where I wouldn’t have gone: “Grilling.” Call me naive, but it never would’ve occurred to me to associate short ribs with backyard barbecuing — until a week
Read more

[Read more →]

I think once a week since the Atkins craze seized us in the 90s, I’ve told myself that I’m going to try to limit the carbs — and at dinner have two vegetable sides instead of one vegetable and one bready-ricey-potatoey thing. Problem is, I like those bready-ricey-potatoey things a lot. And so do the kids. So I barely make it through one meal before I’ve fallen off the strach
Read more

[Read more →]

A few years ago, when I was working full-time and the girls were 3 and 4, a dad-friend of ours invited Andy, Phoebe, and Abby up north to his ski-house for some winter wonderlanding. Just dads and kids. No moms. I should’ve been offended, but I wasn’t. Almost as soon as Andy told me about the invitation I started making a mental map of all of the ways in which
Read more

[Read more →]

You could get him a robe. Or another something-or-other that could be categorized as a “gadget.” Or a bottle of gin for his gin & tonics. You could get him a charcoal chimney or grilling tongs monogrammed with his nickname. You could get him any number of things that would make him happy…OR…you could give him something that will directly, immediately, deliciously benefit you and the kids all summer long
Read more

[Read more →]

I have been waiting soooo long to post this photo. It came from reader Abby with a note that read, in part: Just wanted to say thank you. I’m sure you hear this a lot, but wow do I love your blog and your book even more.  I have four children five and under (just turned 5, just turned 3 and 16-month-old twins.) I have always been totally committed to
Read more

[Read more →]

A DIY Dessert Dish Clock: How is it possible that people this creative exist in the world? Is gussied-up bacon having a moment? Ina Garten included those maple-y carmelized bacon bits in her last book and I just came across Chocolate (!) Bacon (!) on Susan Spungen’s blog. Wow. Just wow. Speaking of Susan Spungen (aka Martha Stewart Living’s onetime seminal food director), check out her entertaining manifesto What’s a Hostess to Do? which I’ve
Read more

[Read more →]

Want to learn how to cook but don’t know where to start? Miss the last 600 posts on Dinner: A Love Story and don’t know how to catch up? Looking for something to read while anxiously awaiting dispatches from the Supreme Court? Look no further. Herewith, a list of one hundred definitively DALSian (which is to say totally unofficial, ridiculously subjective) rules of dinner. 1. “Acid” is usually the answer when you
Read more

[Read more →]

Last year, “Tony’s Steak” Tony came through our house on his way from Hong Kong to SXSW in Austin and one of the first things he did after his trans-global traveling was open the refrigerator for a snack. In the life of a refrigerator, it was the optimum time to be opened: Sunday afternoon, aka post-Trader Joe’s Shop. All our sliced fruit sliced, stacked and glistening in their containers. Egg
Read more

[Read more →]

This is how a conversation went with my new friend Sarah, the first time I met her a few months ago: Sarah: I really love your blog, it gives me hope. Me: Hey, thanks. I’m so glad. Sarah: But I don’t cook from it. Me: Oh…you don’t? Sarah: No, I don’t cook. I can’t do anything in the kitchen. Me: Yes you can. Sarah: No I can’t. I. Really. Can’t.
Read more

[Read more →]

I’m gonna come right out and say something pretty crazy right now. Please don’t think less of me, OK? Ready? Here we go: I really don’t like coming home to a dinner that’s already made. Or one that just needs to be reheated in the oven at 350°F for 20 minutes. Or ladled out of a crockpot. Right about now the vinyl should be screeching. What the…? Hey, aren’t you
Read more

[Read more →]

A cherished ritual seems to have sprung up in this house, without us ever consciously putting it into effect: we go out to a local restaurant, just the four of us, every Friday night for dinner. The culinary options in our neighborhood being somewhat…limited, we usually end up at a sushi place run by a super friendly Japanese man who I will call Bob. Bob works as hard as is
Read more

[Read more →]