This is not exactly a traditional tea party spread, I realize. What you’re looking at is all the makings of one of my daughters’ favorite dinners: The BLT with Avocado on whole wheat toast. The girls get to assemble right at the table and it’s almost always good for a giggle: Sandwiches for dinner? Mom, you’re craaazy! On this particular… Read more »
For the next installment in DALS’s How I Buy Meat series, we hear from Alexandra Zissu, author of The Conscious Kitchen, and the “Ask an Organic Mom” columnist at TheDailyGreen.com. The goal of the HIBM series is to share exact meat-buying strategies and philosophies from food industry insiders, environmentalists, public health officials, etc. who also happen to be parents. Last… Read more »
Just want to clear one thing up: My family does not all sit down to the same dish every single night. We do most nights. But like every house that is inhabited by humans born in the 21st century, there is the constant chorus of requests (an awfully nice way to put it) from the royal diners. I want spaghetti not… Read more »
A friend of mine said she saw one of my “Make Dinner Not War” bumper stickers on a car in Brooklyn last week. I can’t tell you how happy this made me. I’ve sent out hundreds of them — as far away as Vancouver, and as close as up the block — and sometimes at night I lie there imagining… Read more »
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 »
Is it clear yet how I feel about the dinner table? I think it’s kind of a big deal. And I don’t mean that it’s a big deal in the way all those studies tell us it is. Because for every study claiming that kids who eat with their parents do better in school and are less likely to be… Read more »
Last week, as you may have noticed on my visual market post-mortem, I came home with a pile of cool-looking maitake mushrooms from the farmer’s market. I probably sound like I know what I’m talking about, but in truth, I had never heard of maitakes before I spied them on a vendor’s table next to the Lion’s Manes (another new-to-me variety)… Read more »
Now, granted this might be hard because it involves some knowledge of my cookbook shelves pre-June 10, 2010. But the game is this: Can anyone guess what new cookbook has been added to my kitchen library? I’ll give you a hint. It’s wedged in between Ruth Reichl and Marcella Hazan, a few doors down from Martha Stewart and Bugialli and… Read more »
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been doing a lot of eating in my house lately — and while we always try to keep it relatively artery-friendly, we frequently hit stretches where this is impossible. This past week, for instance, there was the burgers-and-dogs barbecue at a friend’s house, there was the baked-good bacchanalia during the ballet recital… Read more »
Last year, we hosted Christmas dinner for the first time – the full deal, too, with both sets of grandparents, brothers, sisters, kids, cousins, and an insane puppy, all wilding through the house. We needed a meal that everyone would like and were determined not to serve chicken fingers and crinkle cut fries. We discussed various festive options — filet… Read more »
Big plans for today’s market bounty: sugar snaps, maitake mushrooms (holy s do they smell amazing), Tart Red Cherry Stomp from Red Jacket Orchards, some crazy looking pointy-ish mint, some sort of interesting iceberg, and strawberries, strawberries, strawberries!
I’m sure you knew this one was coming — you’ve only seen the confetti-like pearly grains (that are technically not grains, but it’s just so weird to say confetti-like pearly chenopods) accessorizing my dinner plates for the last three months. All I have to say is this: Once you’ve tried quinoa, you will forever question your couscous and rice habit… Read more »
I feel like I owe you guys an apology. I’m sure when you read last week that this was Grill Week on Dinner: A Love Story, that you were picturing sizzling ribeyes, creamy slaws, fatty ribs — Not a bunch of healthy lean meats and omega-3-rich fish. (It’s only Thursday, and it’s only May, so don’t worry, there’s still plenty… Read more »
[Photo and Recipe updated August 2022] We never used to grill chicken. It was… eh. Never quite satisfying. We were always throwing it back on the grill (“does this look cooked to you?”) because we were paranoid about getting sick, or complaining that it was too dry, or overwhelming it with some ketchup-y four alarm KC BBQ sauce that,… Read more »
Just wanted to let everyone know that we’ve been firing up the Weber all week long in preparation for…Grill Week!!! starting on Monday here on Dinner: A Love Story. So whatever your Memorial Day plans are — whether you’re feeding kids, grown-ups, kids and grown-ups, bosses, or just your own darling little monsters, come back next week for some inspiration…. Read more »
Last week on my Babble blog I asked readers what they thought of Michael Ruhlman’s HuffPo rant about parents being too “busy” to cook for their kids. Actually, that was only a subset of the rant. Most of Ruhlman’s anger was directed at food editors, cookbook authors, and Food Network stars (even Jamie!) for giving rise to the 30-minute-meal industrial complex…thereby… Read more »
I know better than to apply logic to the process of feeding kids, but there I was doing exactly that a few weeks ago when I spied the perfect recipe for sesame noodles (aka peanut butter, spaghetti, sesame, etc.) by my friend and mother-of-two Melissa Roberts. The logic went as follows: If Peanut Butter = Guaranteed Consumption, and Noodles =… Read more »
The recipe for these sweet, braised meatballs is written on a notecard with company letterhead from Andy’s first job. It’s written in shorthand — I can picture him in his beige, cookie-cutter cubicle fifteen years ago, scribbling down the instructions as his mom dictated the exact amounts of peppers, onions, and beef over the phone… her standing in his childhood… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
