Remember that scene in Ratatouille when the ruthless restaurant critic Anton Ego takes a bite of Remi’s ratatouille and is instantly whooshed back to his mother’s country kitchen? His normally severe face melts into a kind of euphoria, and he drops his pen in the shock of recognition, in the transportive power of food. (As if to say, the feeling… Read more »
Though my mother is 100% Italian and an excellent cook, we did not have that kind of kitchen relationship that you read about in cookbooks with the word “nonna” in the title. She was too busy going to law school at night — and then, later, racking up the billable hours — to stand at the stovetop and tell me… Read more »
Forgive me broader readership, I’m going super local today. Many of you probably know that I live in Westchester County, which borders New York City to the north and is flanked by the sailboat-dotted Long Island Sound to the East and the mighty Hudson River to the West. With the exception of college in Western Mass and a decade in… Read more »
I am so pleased to hand over the mic to Katie Workman today. You might say the two of us are sisters in dinner — we met in 2013 at The Family Dinner Conference (yes, it exists), she’s blogged for years, and has two books out on the subject, the latest of which might be my favorite. It’s called Dinner:… Read more »
Over pork shoulder tacos one night, we told our daughters that we had an announcement to make. “Jeez, that sounds scary,” said Phoebe, as she held a massively overstuffed tortilla in front of her face. Little did she know. “Next week, we are going vegetarian,” we informed them. “Now: you guys are either with us or against us, and since… Read more »
Is one of these too much to ask for when I wake up on Sunday? What to eat when you’re pregnant. If I am to believe everything I read, the Spiralizer might just be the way to world peace? (Certainly zucchini pasta with fava bean pesto and grilled shrimp is reason enough to purchase.) Those long stretches I sit in the car… Read more »
A family-friendly Labor Day menu, including these ridiculously delicious spare ribs. (Warning: I’m going to make you read through an interview with Yours Truly in order to get there. #nofreelunch) The whole CiCi Bellis circus has everyone talking about kid prodigies — but what about adult prodigies? (There’s hope for us yet!) Six Easy Weeknight Meals that great chefs like to cook. (That… Read more »
We’ve been on vacation for the past week, a sort of calm-before-the-storm deal. From the moment we made our reservations a few months ago, I began thinking of it as our “Week Before” vacation: The week before school starts, the week before reality descends again, before work gets crazy again, before life morphs, as it seems to do every September,… Read more »
Sides and Starters Abby’s Famous Swiss Chard Vegetable Spring Rolls with Spicy Peanut Sauce The Accidental Broccoli Curried Red Lentils with Yogurt French Fries Curried Carrots with Butter Rosa’s Lentil Salad Bibb Lettuce with Summer Peas Romano Bean and Tomato Salad with Preserved Lemon Potatoes with Mayo, Chives, and Preserved Lemon Guacamole Steamed Little Necks Cheater’s Naan Fennel and Apple… Read more »
When you live with someone like Andy, it can be hard to know when he likes something and when he really likes something at the table. This is because his policy is to express how good dinner is if someone else has made it for him — I mean really express it — even if it’s maybe just mediocre. He’ll… Read more »
When we were kids, summer camp taught us a couple of basic life lessons: (1) Kool-Aid stains do not come out easily, while Cheetos stains somehow do; and (2) on overnight trips, when the counselors “hang out” by the campfire at night, they are not just “hanging out” by the campfire. Things are a little different with our girls, who… Read more »
If you asked our family what summer means, you’d get a few different answers. The girls would say tomato sandwiches, no school, and ice cream. (Seriously, it’s a physical impossibility not to eat a Flav-R-Ice or a scoop of mint cookie every day.) If you asked Andy, it would be tomato sandwiches and road-trips where you’re driving down some county… Read more »
Every year, right around this time, Jenny and I have the same conversation. We will have just finished dinner, and the kids will have disappeared upstairs to take baths or be mad because we are forcing them to take baths even though just they took baths last night, and Jenny will turn to me and say, “I think I could… Read more »
A Few of My Favorite Things Thank you for supporting Dinner: A Love Story. As a token of my appreciation, I’d like to offer you the chance to win one of these gifts. They aren’t just items — each one was chosen for this promotion because it fits right in with our philosophy of parenting and cooking. To be eligible to win,… Read more »
God knows, it’s not that I don’t love the kid. I have pledged my undying devotion to her here — she’s our firstborn, is kind to animals, has the soul of a poet, and is generally an all-around solid performer at the table. But Phoebe does not eat pasta. Phoebe, in fact, actively dislikes pasta. She hasn’t touched the stuff… Read more »
We could not have been luckier to find Ali, our current babysitter who comes twice a week in the afternoons while I attempt to piece together a freelance career. Beyond the fact that Ali has a clean driving record, always shows up on time, texts me with we’re-at-piano status updates all day long (no such thing as TMI in my… Read more »
Phoebe has been on a tear in the kitchen lately. I would love to say this is due to the fact that she’s watched her parents cook every night for her whole little life, and so now, at 9 1/2, her interest in cooking has finally kicked into high gear, but I think it’s more likely due to something else:… Read more »
Dear Jenny, This might sound paranoid, but one can never be too safe. I have this feeling that some kind of shadowy, proxy war has broken out in our house lately. It’s small, seemingly innocuous things that, when I add them up, suggest something more ominous might be afoot. It’s coming home every Saturday morning from the farmer’s market, unpacking… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and Dinner: The Playbook More
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