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 »
. Guess what I did when I saw Shalane Flanagan, the first American woman to win the New York City marathon in 40 years, cross the finish line yesterday? Well, if we’re being truthful about it, I teared up a bit, because Flanagan was crying, and is there anything better than watching a professional athlete accomplish something seemingly superhuman in… Read more »
If I was a smarter blogger, I would’ve posted a good old-fashioned downloadable back-to-school menu for you today (like I did when I was my best blogger self back in 2013) complete with strategies, under-30-minute tricks, and cook-once-eat-twice kind of ideas that make up the backbone of family cooking. You have my word that I will try to be smarter… Read more »
Welcome to our annual guide for everything we want, covet, crave, and, yes need this holiday. (I don’t know about you, but in my world, little tiny spoons qualify as essential.) As always, the round-up was compiled with cooks, eaters, readers, kids, and parents in mind, and as always, there are lots of free little treats and discounts for YOU sprinkled throughout, so… Read more »
This post has been in my queue for six months now. I added it back in March, was when I was madly cooking my way through spring’s cookbook offerings so I could write about the best ones for The Book Review. As you may recall, the dinner table was getting a major shot of adrenaline during the testing phase. There were… Read more »
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 »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and Dinner: The Playbook More
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