Posts Categorized: Chicken and Turkey

Shake ‘n Bake, New ‘n Improved

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 »

If You Cook it, They Will Come

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 »

The Someday File

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 »

The No-Fight Zone

Last Thursday, I started hating myself a full hour before my morning coffee. If you must know, I started hating myself at precisely 8:04, which was the first time I yelled at my kids who were in danger of missing the 8:09 bus. Yelling Where are your shoes and yelling Where are your gloves and Did you brush your teeth and… Read more »

Chicken Chili: Always the Right Answer

On any given winter day in my house, if I ask the innocent question cooks across the earth are asking — i.e. What should we have for dinner tonight? — I can pretty much always count on Andy suggesting some kind of healthy, simple seafood; I would bet the house on Abby requesting — please, Mom, puh-leeeeeeze, I’ll kiss you 99 trillion… Read more »

Finger Food Family Dinner

About fifteen years ago, Aunt Patty scribbled her recipe for chicken wings on an index card and clutched it into my hands with the urgent instruction Don’t Lose This. The way she said it and the way those wings tasted, I figured it was some secret family recipe that went back generations. I didn’t lose the recipe, but I never… Read more »

The Show-You-Care Casserole 2.0

A few months ago, I got this email from reader Rebecca: “I have no idea what to give to new parents or the bereaved–you know, those occasions in life when a casserole is all but mandatory.  I want so badly to show that I care by offering simple nourishment, and all I have in my repertoire are a tired lasagna or straight-out-of-the-1950’s… Read more »

Sunday Dinner. On Thursday.

How did we celebrate our re-entry into the meat world? With a classic roast chicken dinner. (Oh, and there also might have been a bite or two or five of roasted pork at Roberta’s the other day.) We ate the chicken last night, which was Thursday, which is also known in our house as “Big Fat Nothing Day.” No activities,… Read more »

Start Here

I got the nicest email from a reader this week. His name is Marc and he just discovered DALS. This is what he wrote: So much happens at the Dinner Table. I came out to my parents at the dinner table, my brother and his girlfriend told our family they were engaged at our dinner table. Normally I eat in… Read more »

The Six-Kid Crowdpleaser

A few weeks ago my friend Vanessa invited my family to her house for dinner. She and her husband cooked the most delicious meal — not to mention presented a perfect starter plate (prosciutto-wrapped bocconcini and halved fresh figs) that I’ve already stolen and passed off as mine in my own house. Twice. But the real highlight of the evening… Read more »

Restaurant Replication

The first time I made this chicken and broccoli for Abby she bestowed upon me the highest form of praise: Mom, how’d you get this to taste like the one we order from the Chinese restaurant? Now, granted, this is no fancy Chinese restaurant. It’s so not fancy, actually, that we’ve never even seen the inside of the place. But… Read more »

Wax-On Wax-Off, the Kitchen Edition

My friend and Time for Dinner co-author Pilar Guzman has a theory about cooking from recipes (as opposed to improvising with what you’ve got in front of you). She calls it the Wax-On/Wax-Off theory. Remember how the Karate Kid had no idea he was developing muscle memory for defensive blocks until Mr. Miyagi took away the car-waxing cloth???  Pilar believes… Read more »

Back-Pocket Bolognese

. Meet Turkey Bolognese. This recipe has been in the rotation in our house for almost two decades. It was the sauce we cooked together in Andy’s first apartment (in 1994, in Brooklyn, when the only restaurant on Smith Street was The Red Rose) and the same one he made when we first came home from the hospital with a… Read more »

Dinner in the Morning

I mentioned my dinner-in-the-morning strategy last spring when I asked you to marinate drumsticks in buttermilk before heading off for the day. (Meanwhile, if Abby had her druthers, she would subsist on that buttermilk “fried” chicken and that buttermilk “fried” chicken alone for the rest of her life.) The strange science behind the idea is this: If you take one… Read more »

The Rule of Three

When it comes to family dinner, unanimity of approval is the dream. Over the past few years, we’ve developed a pretty solid rotation of meals – shrimp with feta, pork chops, grilled cheese — that achieve something close to 100% satisfaction around the table, that elicit not a squeak of protest when plate hits table. But that rotation, like the… Read more »

Chicken and Arugula Epiphany

I have been trying to make this dinner since July 1993. I know that sounds ridiculous — chicken with arugula and tomatoes seems almost too basic to be named something let alone to have been stuck in my brain for that long, especially since my brain has seen stickier days. (I forgot to photocopy the immunization forms for camp, again!…Again!)… Read more »

2 All-Turkey Patties, Special Organic Sauce, Greens, Cheddar, on a Whole Wheat Bun

Phoebe was about four years old the first time she walked into a McDonald’s. It was somewhere in Virginia, an I-95 pitstop on our annual 800-mile drive down to South Carolina from New York. I remember her wide-eyeballing the playground outside, the Wizard of Oz doll display inside. Before she had taken a single bite of food, she turned to… Read more »