Last week, when my Mom and I were dreaming up red-white-and-blue treats for our Fourth of July celebration, I talked a big game. There would be a flag cake, of course. But not just your garden-variety flag sheet cake. I was imagining cross-sectioned flag cakes, maybe even horizontally slicing a pound cake and re-assembling using red frosting or jam. Maybe I’d bake different sections in different colors and then re-assemble? But would the yellow cake be white enough for a flag cake? Was that unpatriotic? I know! I would bake a white, fluffy angel food cake. And maybe I would use a fresh strawberry sauce to paint stripes on each serving and then top with blueberries? The kids would love that. (more…)

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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. (Scroll to bottom for recipe.)

2. Holding a first draft of Dinner: A Love Story, the book in my hands. A very positively extremely roughly rough first draft, but a draft nonetheless.

3. Conjuring up image from last weekend of daughter flying down sideline with soccer ball.

4. Holes, by Louis Sachar. Note: it makes me happy to read such a well-written book. The book itself, which I’m reading to both girls (ages 9 and 7), is actually creepy and cool and not happy at all. At least not yet.

5. The large batch of granola that is baking as I type, and that will be ladled into cellophane bags for school teachers, piano teachers, soccer coaches, and Father’s Day honorees.

6. Getting real in the Whole Foods parking lot. So freaking genius. (Thanks, Grid!)

7. This promising development out of Palo Alto.

And now a few from Andy:

8. This story on Disney World, where we have never been, which is totally my fault, but something about it just kind of scares me.

9. The latest, crazy good, crazy funny piece of fiction from George Saunders, in this week’s New Yorker.

10. The fact that Louis CK’s show is about to start again — which we liked okay the first time around, but which showed glimmers of greatness and we love him so much, we’re betting it’ll work out.

11. This song, because… just because. I mean, please.

12. More good kid books — 12 a year — coming down the pike from McSweeney’s. Soon to be reviewed on DALS!

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It was late Saturday morning, Memorial Day weekend, and we were at all home, puttering. The kids were upstairs doing their thing, and Jenny was at the kitchen table, her face buried in her MacBook. I opened the refrigerator, and then the freezer.

“We have any butter?” I asked.

Jenny looked up. “Why?”

“I think I’m gonna make some snickerdoodles with the girls,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” she said.

“Why?”

“You can’t make snickerdoodles,” she said. She actually looked serious about this. ”And you definitely can’t write about it.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Snickerdoodles?” God, just the way she pronounced the word: chilling. “I just can’t let you do that. Too emasculating.”

I’m not going to get too deep into the subtext here, or any latent impressions Jenny may or may not have about men who bake — let alone bake snickerdoodles – but let’s just say it felt a little like the person I love very much and with whom I have had two children, was calling my sh#t out. Like, seriously? A guy wants to do something fun with the kids on a sleepy Saturday morning, and he gets hazed by his wife? The thing is, there’s a lot you do as a parent — or, okay, as a father of two daughters — that carries an unmistakable whiff of the surrender-monkey to it. Printing out and memorizing the lyrics to Lady Gaga’s new single: that would definitely be one of those things. Enduring Ryan Seacrest in silence: yup. Nursing a lifelong grudge against musical theater and yet pretending, without complaint, to be Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music when it is called for*. Getting a (small, cute) dog and naming it Iris. Applying toenail polish (no smudges!) in rainbow colors on one tiny foot, and then doing the other tiny foot in the opposite color progression. Over the past several years, I’ve done all those things and so, so much worse and — apologies in advance to all the bros out there who may be reading this — the truth is, I never really gave any of it a second thought. Don’t you kind of check your manly bona fides at the door when you have kids? I mean, isn’t that part of the point?

Given all this, was making a batch of cookies so bad?

“Yeah, I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I can be married to a guy who makes snickerdoodles.”

She is now married to a guy who makes snickerdoodles. (more…)

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In the very early days of DALS, I wrote a short post about my Aunt Patty, who introduced us to the life-altering pleasures of (a) Marcella Hazan, and (b) Marcella Hazan’s milk-braised pork loin. Patty did a lot of things well in the kitchen, that rare person whose talents matched her ambitions. Porchettas; marinated, butterflied, grilled legs of lamb; real tiramisu with real, espresso-soaked lady fingers and hand-whipped cream; lemon-zested ricotta cheesecakes in spring-form pans: the woman could flat-out bring it in the food department. But like any artist, no matter how inspired, she had things she was good at, and things she was great at.

She was great at breakfast. (more…)

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Just about a year ago, my neighbor Helene walked into her midtown office at Bloomberg LP, where she was employed as in-house counsel, and told her boss she was quitting. She had two teen-agers at home and was tired of the grind, tired of her son’s friends asking him “So where does your mom live?” She wanted to be around more. To slow down. I’m sure her boss was shocked, but he couldn’t have been more shocked than I was. Because as long as I’ve known Helene, she’s been on the move. Seven years ago, during those magical moments nursing Abby at 5:30 in the freaking morning, I’d look out the window across the street and see Helene’s bedroom light on. What could she be doing at this hour…voluntarily??? A few months later, during our first winter on the block, there was a huge snowstorm that kept us all holed up in our houses —  but instead of bunkering up and breaking out the boxed mac & cheese like I had planned, she and her husband Seth invited half the neighbors to a multi-course dinner featuring a spicy Thai-style squid salad. (Did I mention they are also world-class cooks?) I got used to seeing Helene zipping around town in her pumpkin-colored mini-Cooper convertible, which, during the week, was always parked in the first spot at the train station. She got in early and worked hard and was always home for dinner. Long before DALS existed, I asked her what the secret was to raising such smart kids and — I’m not making this up! — her answer was: “We eat together every night.”

No, I couldn’t imagine her slowing down. I couldn’t even imagine her sitting down.

But we sat down for morning coffee soon after she left her job. “What do I do all day?” she asked, still sweating from the 8AM spin class she had come from. “I’m so confused!”

“Helene, it’s Tuesday, ” I told her. “You’ve only been home since Friday.”

I should’ve known better than to think that she was going to “take a breather” or devote her summer to, say, working out the kinks in her backhand. Before June was over she had signed up for a vegan baking class at ICE and started talking about opening up a gluten-free, dairy-free bakery. By July she had transformed her oven into her home office, churning out lemony pound cakes, sugar-topped raspberry muffins, fudgey brownies, gooey chocolate chip cookies, orange-almond cakes, coconut macaroons, vanilla and chocolate cupcakes (the girls’ favorite) then dropping them at our house for a taste-test with the command: “Be brutal! I can take it!” By September, I could barely walk the dog without seeing one of my other neighbors shuffling up the block cradling some delicious cellophane-wrapped, raffia-tied baked good. (“Good morning Eileen! Coconut Layer Cake today?”) By February, Helene had perfected her recipes, designed an awesome logo, signed a lease on her storefront, and by May, i.e. last weekend, she opened the doors to  By The Way Bakery.  As in, “This is delicious! Oh, and by the way, it’s also gluten-free and dairy-free.” You’d really never know the difference.

On opening day, she was working harder and moving faster than ever, but this time she was flanked by her two sons, who were manning the register and taking orders. A lot of orders. If you’re local, please stop by and see what the fuss is about. If for some criminal reason you do not walk out of there with a bag of chocolate-dipped macaroons (my favorite), I guarantee you’ll walk out of there with some inspiration. (more…)

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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 Monday’s pursuit of shrimp ended up detouring left, down a dirt road, around the rickety fence, following hand-written U-Pick signs to 10 acres and seemingly millions of strawberry bushes begging to be harvested. So what was going to be shrimp and grits or easy shrimp tacos with some lime and jalapeno ended up here, at strawberry pie. And I can’t say that anyone complained.

Jackpot! Would you look at this place. An entire farm to ourselves.

Now that’s a strawberry. (more…)

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I didn’t make this cake for my nine-year-old’s Secret Agent Party. I had the local bakery write the birthday message in “code” (see if you can crack it!) but that’s where my confectionary contribution ended. I opted to buy the cake instead of bake one from scratch because by the time I was thinking about this last piece of the party puzzle, Reasonable Mom (Secret Code Name: Make-it-Easy-on-Yourself Mom) was losing to Unreasonable Mom (Secret Code Name: Who-Exactly-Are-You-Trying-To-Impress Mom). In fact, for this particular party  – with its three-floor, ten-clue scavenger hunt, hand-stenciled tablecloth, and late-night phone consultations with my friend Marcie, who threw her own spy party a few years ago — Unreasonable Mom was crushing Reasonable Mom. For this party, Unreasonable Mom was leaving it all on the field.

It was Unreasonable Mom who, two weeks earlier, forced me spend an hour designing the invitation for the party on my computer, even though the 9-year-old honoree herself was downstairs playing Angry Birds on the iPad. (A major violation in our house! Reasonable Mom always makes sure the birthday girls are as involved in the process whenever possible. Reasonable Mom does everything in her power to protect me from being on the other end of the silent accusation: Who’s this party for anyway? The mom or the kid? ) (more…)

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I never go to Paris — haven’t been there since way back in the 20th century, when Andy and I stayed in a friend’s 300-year-old apartment in the Sixth. (Even just writing that sentence I worry about how unsophisticated I sound: Did I phrase it wrong? Is that how people say it? “The Sixth?” Am I going to lose whatever credibility I have left in the food world — or at least with Orangette – by admitting this?) But the good news is that somehow I always know someone who is going to Paris. Just in the last year: my friend Yolanda, who maintains it’s the world’s best city for kids; my friend Juli, who took her daughter there to celebrate her 12th birthday; and my friend Laurie who let Phoebe and Abby babysit her chihuahua-terrier mix Violet, while she spent the week eating saucisson in the Third. Why is this good news for me? Because all of them were nice enough to honor my request and make a pitstop at le supermarche to pick up a bar of this unassuming looking bar of Nestle chocolate. It’s 52% cacao, un-Google-able Stateside, and has a recipe for the world’s best chocolate mousse — or “moose” as Phoebe spells it — right on the wrapper. My friend Simone (another lucky duck!) was the one to turn me on to it. And so, as much as I’d like to be strolling through Luxembourg Gardens this Valentine’s Day, hand-in-hand with mon amour, this dessert will just have to do. (more…)

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I’m not sure how often I’ll be chiming in between now and 2011, so I wanted to be sure to point you in the direction of anything you might need in the next 12 days. (What did Dorothy say: “If you’re looking for your own heart’s desire, don’t go further than your own backyard?”) So here it goes. If you are looking for ideas for…

Afternoon Baking with the Kids: Classic Christmas Cookies, Gingerbread Cookies (courtesy of Caroline at Devil & Egg; while you are there, please check out her website’s awesome makeover)
Afternoon Cooking with the Kids: Pork Dumplings
Bake-a-Gifts: Zucchini Bread, Olive Oil Granola
Last-minute Gifts for Kids: Our Favorite Books from Newborn to 10 Years Old.
Apres-Ski Menu: Belgian Beef Stew, Monogrammed (!) Chicken Pot Pies, Easy Pork Tacos, Turkey Chili
A Birthday Ritual that Happens to Fall Near or On Christmas: Birthday Pancakes
Visiting New York City with Kids: A Rockefeller Center Strategy (Scroll down to “Christmas Cheer”)
Self-Serve Soups and Dinners: Minestrone, Grandma Turano’s Meatballs, Butternut Squash Soup
How to Get Lost For a While if Your Kids Will Let You: Freedom, Just Kids, Open, The Wife, The Post-Birthday World
A New Year’s Eve Dinner Party: Braised Short Ribs, Cranberry-Port Marinated Beef Tenderloin, Pomegranate-Braised Pork Loin, Marcella’s Milk-Braised Pork Loin
A New Year’s Day Detox Soup: Avocado & Cucumber Soup

I also wanted to take a second to express gratitude to my loyal readers. Every time I read your comments (I read every one — even if I don’t respond to them) I kinda can’t believe how heartfelt and thoughtful they are, and subsequently, what a devoted bunch of readers and family cooks you are. So thank you. My sincerest wish in 2011 is that you will continue to find ways to turn the dinner slog into your own family love story.

Happy Holidays from the DALS team,
Jenny, Andy, Phoebe & Abby!

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Santa: Hello? [To elf] I don’t think this thing is working. There’s no one… [Into phone] Hello? Hello?

DALS: Hi, Santa. Santa? I’m here.

Santa: Oh, okay. [To elf] It’s working now, Shorty. Go wrap. [Into phone] So, what can I do for you?

DALS: First, I just wanted to say it’s an honor talking to you and thanks so much for taking a few minutes of your time today. [All chipper-like] How’s everything going up there?!

Santa: I’m buried, man. It’s busy. You know.

DALS: I can’t even imagine.

Santa: No, you can’t. It’s a ton of ground to cover, let’s put it that way. I don’t want to complain, but yeah: it’s a lot. My back is killing me, bro. Bag’s heavy. Lotta Franzen requests this year.

DALS: Like I said, I can’t even –

Santa: Eh, you know what? Who cares. I don’t wanna complain. That’s the deal, right? I mean, this is what I signed up for.

DALS: Right. Well, thanks again for taking the time. It’s a real honor.

Santa: What’s this interview about, anyway? My publicist tells me nothing.

DALS: Okay, real quick: this is for a family dinner website and –

Santa: Family dinner? Wait, let me guess: You went to Brown.

DALS: [Confused] Brown? No, actually. I, uh, I was hoping to talk to you for a few minutes about food, and, you know, the sense of community we kind of create around it.

Santa: [Silence]

DALS: Hello?

Santa: Yeah, I’m here. I really don’t have a lot of time.

DALS: I know, I know. I’m sorry. I was just wondering if maybe you could share a holiday food tradition with our readers. Is there one thing that sticks out in your mind?

Santa: Hoo boy. This is serious? Okay, here’s my tradition: I come down the chimney and eat whatever is there, and then I move on. Hold on a sec. [Covers phone with (more…)

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In the mid-90s, my father and I worked two blocks away from each other — he was on 47th and Third, and I was on 45th and Third, toiling away at my first Big City job while simultaneously trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. We’d regularly meet for lunch — at sushi bars, bagel shops or whichever cafe had a good Prix Fixe that day. But the most memorable lunches were three blocks south of us in Grand Central Terminal, which, to me is not only one of the most architecturally stunning buildings in New York, and not only synonymous with the warm, happy feeling of Going Home (I grew up taking Metro North in and out of the city), but the place where I learned my father’s Randy Pausch-esque philosophy on Absolute Value.

When I say we’d have lunch in Grand Central, I mean, of course, we’d have lunch at the Oyster Bar. It served my father’s favorite soup, Manhattan Clam Chowder, and the waitresses, who recognized us after a while, would always give us extra (free!) biscuits for the sopping. We never ate in the main dining room — it was way too expensive compared with the menu at the snakey counter that was always packed and had no discernible system or line for seating. (We came up with our own system: Hone in on empty soup bowls, hover, descend. Did I mention my dad is a born and bred New Yorker?) Occasionally we’d splurge on their too-delicious-to-ask-questions French fries or an overpriced green salad which somehow always had bright red tomatoes even in the dead of winter, or the special white bean soup with rock shrimp (a few dollars more than the chowders), but for the most part, the lunch was the same: biscuits, chowder, career counsel, check. Then, of course, dessert. But not at the Oyster Bar. We would walk right by the pastry and cake display up front — a veritable carnival of fruit fillings and meringue — and head to the Grand Central Market, to the newly opened branch of the famous Li-Lac Chocolates.

“We’ll take two dahk chocolate mah-zipan bahs,” my Dad would ask the aproned woman manning the register. (You can take the man out of the Bronx…)

The dark chocolate marzipan bars (pictured above) were about the size of a small person’s index finger. They cost $3.25 EACH! To someone who had just skipped making the zucchini bread because she refused to shell out the cash for the jar of ground cloves ($5.99!), this was an astonishing price to pay for such a miniscule dessert. And especially after we were so careful about not spending too much on lunch! (more…)

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Let me just start out by saying there was some science behind figuring out the winner of DALS’ First Annual Holiday Ritual Contest. I poured through the 50+ submissions (thank you everyone!), selected my favorites, then read each finalist aloud to my daughters — separately, so they couldn’t influence each other. They were responsible for grading each submission, with A+ being roughly equal to “A Ritual I Really Really Want You To Start Right Away Mom, OK?” (See scorecard above.) I’m pleased to announce that this year, this honor is bestowed upon Carrie W. who, like many of us, makes a batch of gingerbread cookies every year, but goes the extra step and decorates them to look like the neighbors and family friends who will be receiving them. I think the idea of making a cookie version of Aunt Patty and Minty Pea Todd was too fun for my decidedly sweet-toothed panel to pass up. I do encourage you to read all the rituals that were submitted — the four runners-up below, as well as those in the comment fields and on the DALS facebook page. Just because they didn’t make the cut doesn’t mean they aren’t all in their own way kinda magical.

Carrie wins a $75 gift certificate to CSN stores and Christina, Katie, Randi, and J.J. take home my MDNW bumper sticker. Which — stocking stuffer alert!!! — will be on sale right here on DALS in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

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Halloween Night: Eat until face falls off
Lunch next day: Two candies
After dinner: Four candies
Tuesday lunch: One
Tuesday after dinner : Three
Wednesday after dinner: Two
Thursday after dinner: Two
Friday after dinner: One
Saturday at any point: One
Sunday: Done*

*Parents should find ways to surreptitiously either eat a good portion of the candy themselves, or throw it away in a manner that does not raise suspicion.

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…to have family dinner: When my kids are 16 and 15 (instead of 8 and 7) and we are dealing with friendship dramas, SATs, sexting episodes, and God only knows what else (Parents of teen-agers: please refrain from telling me what else) dinner will be so firmly established as my family’s 6:30 Magnetic North, that my kids’ hormone-raging, eye-rolling, parent-resenting bodies will be hardwired to come home, sit down, and talk to me anyway. In other words, I will have them right where I want them. (more…)

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Cupcake Tic-Tac-Toe

The party officially began at 6:00 and ended at 8:00, but at 5:58 I had already checked my watch twice, counting down to its finish. Why do minutes feel like centuries during birthday parties in your own house? Or at least they do for me. But its sorta like having a baby, I guess. Because I forget the pain as soon as the last kid walks out the door with her goody bag. And then I live off the high for a solid few weeks. Before that blessed moment, though, I deal with the chaos the only way I know how: I make a schedule, always underestimating the time it takes for each activity because there’s no panic quite like the one that grips you when you look at your watch and realize you have 30 minutes left and 14 cupcake-fueled kids to entertain.  Below was the itinerary for Abby’s Game-Themed Party. I am not too proud to admit that it was written down on a piece of paper that I kept in my pocket and referred to several dozen times throughout the evening. (more…)

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It’s a miracle if I bake something from scratch even once during the course of my child’s birthweek. And if I’m going to do it, it’s going to be Rosa’s Mud Cake for the actual birthday party. But for the classroom party? No chance. A few years ago I debuted this Dunkin Donut Cake at school and was actually embarrassed by how slap-it-together it was. But the kids went bonkers when I removed the foil and pretty soon I started getting emails from parents. Sean wants some donut cake for his birthday and told me to ask you? What’s this I hear about a donut cake? My friend Sue told me that your daughter had some cool cake in class? Erin told me to ask you about the munchkin cake. Do you know what she’s talking about? If so, can you pass along instructions?

Here they are — make sure you are paying close attention because it’s kinda complicated: Cover a concave platter with tissue paper. Stack three Dunkin donuts in the middle and shove your candles in the top one. (The top one should be festive with sprinkles.) Dump 75 assorted munchkins around the stack.

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When Phoebe first started pre-school I started a ritual. I’d pick her up after school every Friday (my day off from work) and take her and Abby to lunch at our local diner. Every time I’d walk into the classroom the teacher would say the same thing: “Phoebe! Look who’s here! It’s mommy!” I should note that this was about six or seven years ago, during the golden era of the Working Mother Manifesto — I was probably reading I Don’t Know How She Does it with my morning coffee and falling asleep with Perfect Madness splayed across my chest. So the way the teacher’s greeting registered in my overly sensitive ears was more like this: “Well I’ll be! Look who decided to show up today!? It’s your Mommy, Phoebe! Can you believe it?” Had I been a little less self-involved it might not have taken me four months to notice that she greeted all the parents with the exact same line.

But that was four months after the Friday Phoebe said to me in between bites of her diner grilled cheese,”Mom, I love Fridays. They feel more special to me than other days.”

“I know what you mean,” I told her. “I feel the same way.” Then I ate a fry and my heart began its rapid descent to dark, paranoid places. Hold it a second. Why exactly does she think Friday is so special? Cause I’m home? Cause we’re eating lunch together? Since when is Mom’s presence considered a special occasion? Is this bad? Is our diner ritual calling even more attention to the fact that I’m abandoning her the other four days of the week? What am I setting myself up for here?

And that was it for our ritual. From that point on — or at least until I matured a bit — the goal for Friday was to make it as routine as every other weekday. Lunch at home. Nap. Maybe a playdate. Let’s keep “special” where it belongs — on holidays, anniversaries, birthdays.

Birthdays. Maybe this is why in our house they are now more appropriately described as birthweeks. Because after the annual monogrammed pancake ritual (above), the classroom party, the “Pick a Country, Any Country” dinner ritual, the party for their friends, the party with their grandparents, and the sleepover with cousins after the party, we’ve logged some serious hours celebrating. So this week, since Abby is turning 7, you’ll be reading about the various ways I like to overcompensate for my maternal shortcomings make a bonafide special day…special. And then, I promise you, we’ll be right back to the everyday routine.

Monogrammed Birthday Pancakes

Fry up a nice stack of pancakes using your favorite recipe or mix. (We use a mix of Trader Joe’s buttermilk and Trader Joe’s Multi-Grain.) Monogram the top one with squeezable icing and decorate with appropriate number of candles. Note: you should probably not do this with piping hot pancakes because it might cause the candle bottoms to melt a bit into the top cake. If this does happen, just surgically remove the affected areas.

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A few years ago my coworker Alex was describing a friend of his — let’s call her Anya. While Alex sat in Anya’s kitchen he watched as she removed a homemade pie crust from the freezer, rolled it out, peeled and sliced a few Cortland apples right into the middle of the dough, sprinkled them with cinnamon, butter, sugar, nutmeg. A little more sugar. A little more cinnamon. Hmmm, maybe a squeeze of lemon. Yeah, that works. Then she folded the crust around the little pile and popped it in the oven. And the whole time Anya was improvising her baked apple pastry she was engaged in a conversation with Alex about Frank Rich and Thucydides and also her novel that — whaddayknow! — just hit the New York Times bestseller list. OK, I’m making that last part up. But in my mind this Anya woman has become something of a goddess to me. Even though I’ve never met her and even though her name is probably not Anya. She just embodied that person who I want to be in the kitchen — the person for whom everything comes so instinctively and effortlessly. The person who doesn’t bake a pie in a pie dish or even use a bowl to mix sugar into apple-pie apples! Needless to say, from that moment on, it is the only way I’ve ever made an apple pie, which is technically known as a galette, which in my house is now technically known as a gazette because that’s what Abby called it by accident and it just seems so much cuter. Don’t you think?

Anya’s Apple Gazette
My favorite thing about this recipe is that it does not yield a whopping monstrosity of a dessert that sits on the counter and gets picked at all week long. It’s just the right size for a family of four to each have a single modest serving. (more…)

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