“Who?” Phoebe asked when she heard her parents talking (rather animatedly) about the death of Osama bin Laden. “Osama bin Laden,” Andy said. “You know? The guy who made those two buildings come down? He’s dead.” To hear Andy oversimplify the most harrowing day in both of our lives like that made me think that maybe by now we should’ve… Read more »
A few weeks ago our friends Kate and Joel and their three girls came over for dinner. We were all vacationing on the same island together so the menu was as simple and fresh and kid-friendly as we could manage: asparagus salad (without eggs for the kids), campfire potatoes, and grilled chicken sandwiches with homemade slaw. Kate took one bite… Read more »
I often look at my daughters and ask myself “Whose children are these? How did they get here?” Sometimes this happens when I’m overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of parenting and the fact that I’ve brought two actual live human beings into this world. But most of the time it happens when I show up at the kitchen table with… Read more »
During the day, you’re a minivan-driving, soccer game-refereeing, steak pre-cutting, hair-detangling, Wiggles-listening, Wubzy-watching, spit-up-wearing, school lunch-preparing, diaper genie-cursing, mac-and-cheese-making shell of your former self. After the kids go to bed, though, when it’s time to relax on the couch with a box of Mallomars, and watch some 30 Rock on DVR…who are you, exactly? Sometimes it’s hard to remember. Herewith,… Read more »
How great is vacation? How great is the idea of having an entire afternoon dedicated to tracking down shrimp in a 200-year-old Spanish-moss draped Lowcountry town on the Edisto River? Only to discover that the dock is closed for business on Mondays so could you come back tomorrow? The thing is, we can! (What else is there to do?) And… Read more »
Now that the girls are getting older and relatively self-sufficient (minus the shoe-tying! Kills me!) it’s easy for me to romanticize the early years. I got a little teary the other day when Andy erased all 3,000 Backyardigans episodes on the DVR to make room for iCarly and American Idol. And carrying Phoebe’s little art table and chairs to the… Read more »
Two things happen to me when the weather starts getting nice: First, I don’t have the primal urge to cook up a bolognese for the freezer in the middle of a sunny day. Second, I want my dinner cold. This shrimp and avocado salad is a riff on a ceviche I had at Los Gemelos (website is somewhat bizarre, but… Read more »
We usually do our food shopping once a week, on Sunday afternoons, bolting to Trader Joe’s as soon as the final whistle on the final soccer event of the weekend finally blows. It’s our secular pilgrimage. We genuflect at the altar of dried fruits and granola bars, we load up the cart, we drive home, the kids go upstairs to… Read more »
Ever since we started tuning in to American Idol with the girls, I have caught myself saying something I don’t think I’ve ever said before: TGIF. Sometimes in the elevator out loud to a coworker, sometimes in my own head as I’m pulling into my driveway dreaming up quick dinner options. Cause even though the show is on Wednesdays and… Read more »
I know. Bummer. An entire post devoted to salad. Not a BLT salad or a wedge of iceberg with thousand island dripping in and around the crevices. But a yawn-inducing, omega-3-rich, good-for-you, raw bowl of nutrients that falls into the “leafy green” category. Thanks, Jenny! Thanks for the big bowl of homework! Go ahead, leave the page. Go lose yourself… Read more »
I think the surest way to ring the death knell on family dinner is to cook something different for every party present. It’s hard enough to get one dinner on the table let alone four, each of which may be greeted with groans or, worse, no comment at all. But considering that children (green-fearing, sauce-o-phobic, generally annoying children) are often the… Read more »
I’m not quite sure how this happened, but last Friday night, Andy and I managed to have a nice quiet dinner at home — just the two of us — even though there were six girls under nine years old in our house as we did so. It was Dinner-and-a-Movie night — P and A were allowed to invite a… Read more »
Last week, Jenny went away for three days to work on her book. I don’t know if anyone else out there finds this to be true, but we have this theory about parenting being easier — not better, mind you, just easier — when the spouse is away. The chain of command is clearer. Movements are more efficient. Decisions are… Read more »
I’d like to interrupt the relentless roll-out of pizzas and stews for an important — maybe even obvious — message. A few nights ago I was reading yet another article regurgitating what we probably all know by now about family dinner. This just in: All kinds of great things will happen if you just sit down with your kids to… Read more »
Here are a few of the dishes you might find in my Someday File: An authentic lasagna from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy (Someday I’ll have time to make pasta from scratch); That Post-it tagged lobster pot pie recipe from one of the Barefoot Contessa books (Someday I’ll be able to justify spending $25/pound on shellfish that gets lost in… Read more »
When the girls were little, my idea of celebrating a birthday was an 8:00 dinner reservation and a babysitter booked by Andy. It didn’t matter what restaurant we were headed to, so long as I didn’t spend half the meal kneeling under the table looking for a Polly Pockets shoe. But in the past few years, as the girls have… Read more »
To be filed under Weird But True: At least once a week I have to field the question “Why do you like Trader Joe’s so much?” To which I answer: “Have you seen the dark chocolate covered raisins? Have you seen the miniscule shopping carts for the kids? Have you seen the price tags?” I love Whole Foods — man… Read more »
Before kids we were mushroom-stuffers and tomato-scoopers. Before kids we weren’t afraid of the adjective “hot” before the word “appetizer.” I think when we lived in Brooklyn — when the girls were as distant on the horizon as the suburbs were — we might have even served a chilled avocado and cucumber soup as an amuse bouche for our friends Jeni… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
