As part of the research for that Summer Cooking Manifesto I worked on for the June issue of Bon Appetit — yes, the one with Gwyneth on the cover – I asked a bunch of editors the question you see up there in the title of this post: You Know it’s Summer When _______ is in the Fridge. There were basil-infused simple syrups (mixed into my Gin & Tonic, this has the potential to be my signature summer cocktail), there were chili oils amd chimichurris, and there was a sunny yellow ladolemeno vinaigrette that you pour over grilled fish (Holy. Freaking. Cow.) which tastes as bright and summery as it looks.  But the most special of all, I think, was this special sauce. Not only because it elevates any burger (we used it on our rolled-out California-style turkey burgers the other night) but because it elevates any cookout. Think what a rock star you will be if you show up to the Memorial Day burger-and-dog barbecue with a jar of this in your hand.

Special Sauce recipe at bonappetit.com. What about you guys? How would you fill in the blank?

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There’s a formula we deploy, in our heads at least, whenever we feed our kids something that isn’t exactly homemade, DALS-approved, crafted by the kindly elves who affix those green-and-white organic labels to everything — or, more to the point, good for them. Think of it as the The Tranformative (and Self-Justifying) Law of Retroactive Nutritiousness.

____________ + Side of Broccoli = Healthy Enough.

Convenient, right? Go ahead, and fill in that blank. Mac and cheese. Panko-encased shrimp tempura from T Joe’s. Grilled (yellow American) cheese and bacon. Strawberry jam sandwich on soft white bread. See how good that feels? How strangely virtuous? Do you see how the broccoli, by some metaphysical trick, just erases guilt? As Abby would say, it’s very magic! I often hear laws of science described by smart people as “immutable” and I’m never sure what that means, exactly, but I’m pretty sure this broccoli law is immutable, too. There’s danger in it, of course, and it should be applied with moderation, but it does make us feel a little better — or maybe a little less guilty — about ourselves when we, say, fry up an entire package of hot dogs in butter and serve them on toast with ketchup.

Ah, the hot dog sandwich. Please don’t think less of us because we serve these, somewhat regularly, to our kids. The hot dog sandwich was one of the first things — along with Steak-Umms, Beefaroni, and Toll House cookies — that I learned to make for myself. Growing up, my parents both worked which, in those regrettable early eighties days, when mulleted, unsupervised tweens roamed the earth, made me a full-fledged latch-key kid. Get home from school, knock off the homework, make a hot dog sandwich, watch The Jeffersons. That was the routine. I’ve kept at least one part of that past alive and, I know this won’t come as a surprise, but the kids really seem to enjoy it, if clean plates are any indication. Try them on a Saturday afternoon, after soccer practice. Or  on vacation, after a long morning on the beach. Or — and I apologize for this, as I know this is a family website — at 1 am after a few beers. Am I proud of this? Not particularly. But the broccoli has set me free. Now, if I could only figure out how to get it to work its guilt-erasing magic in other parts of my life, because I still have nightmares about missing that ballet recital. – Andy (more…)

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Since I think I’ve received a personal (practically perfumed) note from just about every DALS reader telling me how much you love Andy’s pork ragu, I assume you might be interested in some suggestions for how to stretch it out into two meals. Yes, this means that you’ll have to restrain yourself from eating the entire batch on Night One, but if you have the promise of enjoying it a second time around with a minimal amount of revival effort on a weeknight…wouldn’t that make it just a little easier to get through the week? You could do what my friend Todd suggests — dump your thawed ragu in a pie dish, cover with mashed potatoes, and bake (covered with foil) for…hmmm….20 minutes at 350° for a quick shepherd’s pie. Or you could do what I did last week: Make tortellini. I don’t think of tortellini as a vehicle for leftovers as often as I should.  Wonton wrappers make it so easy! And if you don’t have leftover ragu — or if you have kids who might turn their noses up at ragu tortellini — then you can always do a straight ricotta and top it with tomato sauce like the one I used for Chicken Parm the other day.

10-Minute Tortellini

Since you’ve been storing it in the freezer in a flattened ziploc (right?) first you thaw your frozen ragu under running water (since you’ve stored it in a flattened ziploc this should only take about 30 seconds). Stir your leftovers with a few dollops of fresh ricotta and freshly grated Parmesan in a small bowl. (You don’t want it to be very liquidy, so scooping ragu out of the ziploc with a slotted spoon might help.) If you are making ricotta ravioli, mix up another bowl with ricotta, Parmesan, and a few pinches of chopped spinach. Measurements are basically to taste.

Place a teaspoon of either mixture on top of a single wonton noodle. Fold into a triangle (you’ll need to paint the inside edges with a fingertip dipped in water to seal) and join bottom two corners to form tortellini shapes shown above. Repeat as many times as necessary. (I generally plan for 8 to 10 per grown-up, and 6 per kid.) For the ragu tortellini, you don’t need to do much else after you’ve boiled them for three minutes (your sauce is basically inside the pasta) so just swirl around in garlic and olive oil in the same pot they boiled in. But do this last step gently, wonton noodles are not as sturdy as traditional pasta. Serve ricotta tortellini with the sauce written up here.

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Full disclosure here: I think I knew the winner of my Go-to Weeknight Dinner Contest almost as soon as I spied the Sausage, Kale, and Bean Stew entry submitted by  “anna” on Day 1 of the contest. Every recipe that came in after this one, as far as I was concerned, had to pass the anna test — as in, is it as appealing sounding as anna’s stew? Because Anna’s Stew had all the hallmarks of a keeper in my house including:

1) A Quick Cook Time – from start to finish it took me about 20 minutes
2) A Forgiving Technique – For 10 of those minutes I was ignoring the sizzling sausages as I sat with my 7-year-old testing her on multiplication flash cards. It didn’t seem to affect the dish in the slightest.
3) An Easy Marketing Plan – It contained two solid ingredients that I could count on my kids eating without a fight (sausages and kale)
4) An Adventure Factor – It contained one (easily extractable) ingredient that I’ve been meaning to push on the kids (cannelini beans)
5) It was really f*%#@*g good!!!

However narrow-minded I was about choosing the winner, I remind you that one family’s keeper might be another family’s pet food, so please head over to the contest post to check out all 78 submissions (so awesome, btw — a big thank-you to everyone who sent something in) because there are a ton of delicious-sounding options. If I was giving out honorable mention, “bugawa” (#43) was a close second with her Jacques Pepin-inspired pork medallions in wine sauce — so tasty, but couldn’t compete with the one-dishiness of anna’s stew. And “Joanna’s” (#59) strategic two-in-one meal plan was incredibly hard for me to pass up (you can take the girl out of Real Simple) but sadly, included pasta, which my 9-year-old still won’t touch. (Why, God, why??)

Anna wins a $75 gift certificate to Allmodern.com. Thanks for playing everyone.

Anna’s Sausage, Bean, and Kale Stew
I halved the recipe for my family of four (if Abby ate 2 sausages, as called for here, she’d be eating about twice her own weight) but this below is written to serve 6 normal eaters or about 8 bird-like ones. Anna called for the sausages to be sliced into rounds after being browned — which might be more appealing for the kids — but I found it easier to crumble the meat with a fork in the first step.

Saute 1 onion (chopped) in Dutch Oven in a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat until softened. Add 2 garlic cloves (minced), salt, pepper, and a few flakes of crushed red pepper. Add in 8 links of Italian chicken or pork sausage (casings removed, crumbed with a fork) and cook until brown and heated through. Add one 32-ounce container chicken broth (add less if you like your stews more chunky, less brothy), a 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, and 2 14-ounce cans cannellini beans (rinsed and drained). Bring to a boil. Add 1 large bunch kale, simmer until wilted, about 3 minutes. Serve with a lot of freshly grated Parmesan and crusty bread.

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Oh man, Pete Wells! I was so sad to read that this week’s “Cooking with Dexter” column (“Busy Signal”) is going to be his last for the New York Times Magazine. I’ve always appreciated how honestly he writes about the way food and family intersect — as you’ll read in his swan song, he never pretended cooking dinner for his kids with a full-time demanding job (in addition to writing this column, he’s the editor of the Times Dining Section) was easy or in any way regular. His wife has the more flexible work schedule so she’s the one who keeps the weeknight dinner train running. And most of the time, Wells concedes, he isn’t there for it. Or, when he is, he sometimes finds himself spending a harried half hour dredging fish fillets in homemade breadcrumbs instead of doing what he should be doing: heating up something from the freezer and chilling out with his kids. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself in this position. It happens less now — now that I’m the wife with the flexible work situation, and now that the kids are older and not as whiny about wanting to eat right this second — but when it does, I think the same thing: Who am I supposed to be connecting with here? The kids or the chicken thighs? Which inevitably leads to Tomorrow night is Trader Joe’s Pizza Night. (more…)

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From the Mail Bag! Reader Robin writes:

I don’t know if you get tired of people telling you stories about your site, but I had to share this one with you:

I made the Belgian Beef Stew tonight.  As I was finishing it up the girls came in to the kitchen and were grumbling things like,  “GROSS…I AM NOT GOING TO EAT THAT! That looks disgusting! Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted for dinner?” etc, etc.

So I said, “I actually made this dinner because the woman that wrote the recipe made it for her 7 & 8 year old daughters. And they loved it. There is a grown-up version and a kid’s version.  I showed them the picture of the two plates from your post.

It worked like a charm. We happily all ate dinner without one complaint!

Couple things about this one. For starters, I never ever ever ever get tired of people telling me stories like this! Ever! So please send yours. Next, it reminded me of my friend Sue telling me a while back how much comfort she got from seeing our dinner plates laid out split-screen style, which is to say, laid out truthfully. Lastly, it reminded the old point-and-cook strategy — showing kids what a new meal is going to look like before springing it on them — and how most of the time it really works. So follow Robin’s lead and show them the beef stew — or this one, a super simple pot roasty number that is just right for a winter weekend. (more…)

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Spoiler alert: If you come over to our house for dinner any time between now and the first day of spring, there’s about a 90% chance we’re going to cook this for you. The pork shoulder ragu you see above is our new obsession. It’s the ideal dish for Sunday dinner, or even better, an informal winter dinner party: It’s warm, it’s hearty, it smells insanely good, it goes well with red wine, and my God, is it tasty. But none of those are the main reason we’re so obsessed with this right now — no, the best part of this one is that, once the guests arrive, your work is already done. All the prep — what little of it there was — is four hours ago, a distant memory. Which is increasingly the way we like it. It seems like the older we get, and the more cooking we do, the simpler we want our entertaining to be. For sure, there was a day when we would have spent the afternoon, Martha-style, frantically scooping out little cucumber cups with a mellon-baller and filling them with creme fraiche and topping them with smoked salmon and dainty sprigs of dill, when we would have been stirring (and stirring) risotto and mandolining three different kinds of potatoes and being distracted, instead of hanging out with our guests. But then kids happened, and our tastes changed, and those days are gone. These days, I love nothing more than a one-pot meal — I am a braising machine! — and this really basic pork ragu over pasta is where our heads are at right now. It’s an instant party: you just take it out of the oven, shred the pork, boil some pasta, and you’re done. If the kids don’t like pork, they can eat the pasta; if they do like pork, then I love them, and there’s still plenty for everybody. Though I should add that, as good as this is on a cold winter night, it’s even better for lunch the next day. If it weren’t for a little thing known as coronary heart disease, I would eat this every day for the rest of my life. –Andy (more…)

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I did everything in my power to screw up this braised pork loin. Not on purpose, of course. But seriously, what was I thinking taking a work call during homework hour, a time when Abby absolutely must know immediately if 348 + 218 is indeed 9,843? And then, since it was approaching 5:00 and I wanted this pork to simmer down for at least 2 hours, I went ahead and started audibly sizzling the 2-pound slab of meat without telling the nice young man on the other end of the line, who was pre-interviewing me for this CBC report, that maybe I should call him back in 5 minutes? When Phoebe started asking me if she could fry a pineapple in cinnamon (???) as though the telephone on my ear was merely a decoration and not something that I was talking into, I headed upstairs and locked myself in my bedroom to continue the conversation in peace. Only to come down 15 minutes later to a piece of meat that was blackened on one side and completely raw on the other. And though I didn’t even remember adding onions, there they were, burnt beyond recognition. I browned the other side briefly, then reached for some wine for my braising liquid. Only a few drops were left, so instead I reached for the jar of pomegranate juice that just so happened to be sitting on the counter alongside an angry Abby, who was still seeking math approval. I poured in the juice, shut the lid, then hoped for the best.

It was the best!!!! Including Phoebe’s fried pineapple, a classic accompaniment to any pork, but particularly so when that pork is as tender and flavorful as this one turned out. Even the burntness of the skin and those black onions somehow gave the dish a little extra dimension. (She says convincingly.) The lesson? Besides the fact that the sitcom-y harried mom cliche is a cliche for a reason? You cannot screw up when you are braising. In fact, when a dish so disastrous in the making turns out this delicious, it actively encourages negligence. Please, go screw this one up tonight.

Pomegranate Pork Loin with Cabbage (The Proper Way)

In a large Dutch Oven set over medium-high heat, add a few glugs of olive oil. Brown a 2-3 pound pork loin on all sides so you get a nice golden crust — about 3 minutes per side. Remove to a plate. Add one large onion (chopped), one clove garlic (minced), salt, pepper and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Add pork back to pot, then add a dash or two of soy sauce, and any combination of red wine, pomegranate juice, and water (I did about a third/third/third) to allow liquid to come a third of the way up the loin. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 2-3 hours, flipping once half way through and adding a little more liquid as you go if the level has reduced too much. The longer it simmers the better. About 10-12 minutes before you serve, add a handful or two of shredded cabbage to the pot. Remove pork and slice. Bring the braising liquid to a boil, until it is slightly thickened, about 2-3 minutes. Serve pork with braising liquid and cabbage spooned on top, and also with roast potatoes and Phoebe’s cinnamon pineapple spears.

Note: Andy would like to add that if he were to braise a pork loin, he’d do the simmering down in a 350°F oven for up to 3 hours instead of on the stovetop. (With the pot still covered.)

Phoebe’s Cinnamon Pineapple Spears

Melt a pat of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add pineapple spears (or just pineapple chunks), sprinkle with a dash of cinnamon, and fry until slightly brown and golden.

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We’re not a winter family. Certain families, when the temperature drops below zero and the sky goes gray, just know how to get it done. They bundle properly. They have gear. They layer well, and have Thules on their cars and, in general, seem to be impervious to the elements. But us? We don’t do well in the cold. We’ve only gone skiing once, our ice-skating skills fall short of limited, and we’ve yet to find the magical combination of coat, gloves, and hats that will keep our less-than-hardy kids from whining about, as they like to say between (what I suspect are hammy) shivers, “turning into ice cubes.” Jenny wears my ratty old fleece and wool scarf inside the house pretty much from November through April, and not a day goes by when she doesn’t come down in the morning and announce — as though our house, on that particular morning, is any colder than any other winter morning in the last seven years – that, “Oh my god, it’s FREEZING IN HERE. Is the heat on?” So we tend to be inside a lot during the winter – loooooong days reading or puttering around, making fires, playing Monopoly, drinking hot chocolate, making strange things from clay, writing blog posts, and cooking. I love the summer, and I love the grill, but winter cooking has its own rewards, too – namely, lots of braising meats, one-pot meals, slow-cooking ragus, and, my personal favorite, Belgian beef stew. We adapted this one from a Mark Bittman recipe about ten years ago, and we’ve been wearing it out ever since. Phoebe enjoys the whole package, Abby just the meat and potatoes. The best part, for the grown-ups, is the Dijon mustard you drizzle on at the end, and the tangy, beery broth you can drink with your spoon. It’s very basic, very tasty, and it’s warm. Until we learn to ski, it will have to do. –Andy (more…)

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Very few things make me happier than discovering a dinner that:

a) does not require every pot and pan in the kitchen.
b) runs no risk of instigating a whinefest at the table.
c) can be prepared in the same amount of time (or less) that it takes for my second and third graders to do their homework at the kitchen table.

I’m not sure this last point was what Giuliano Bugialli had in mind when he dreamed up the delicate braciole de maiale con cavolo nero (Pork Chops with Kale) in his 1977 classic Fine Art of Italian Cooking. Unless he was cooking for high schoolers who had a full load of AP courses — because his version takes over 60 minutes and this adaptation takes under 30. Is it as good as it would be if I made it the way he instructed? Of course not. Is it a sacrilege to subject the recipe from a master to my compulsive corner-cutting impulse? Definitely. Will I be corner-cutting this recipe again soon on a night when I must get something delicious on the table quickly? Absolutely.

Pork with Kale
Adapted from Fine Art of Italian Cooking

Wash and cut 1 bunch of kale into 2-inch pieces. Boil for 15 minutes in salted water. Meanwhile, heat a few glugs of olive oil in a deep skillet. Add 1 garlic clove and cook over low heat, just enough to flavor oil without burning, about 2 minutes. Turn heat to medium and add 4-6 pork chops (butterflied, or pounded thin) that have been salted, peppered, and sprinkled with a little fennel seed (optional) and brown for 2 minutes on each side. Using a metal measuring cup, scoop out 1 cup of hot water from the kale pot and pour into a heatproof bowl. Whisk 1 tablespoon tomato paste in the hot water then add tomatoey liquid to the pork chops. Cover skillet and simmer until pork is cooked through, about 15 minutes. In final 5 minutes, add kale to skillet and let it drink in the liquid. Serve with brown rice if you need it. (The Trader Joe’s fully cooked kind to make life easier.)

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Once upon a time, Brooklyn, New York was not a cool place to live. Back in those days – the late seventies, actually — in an unhip and unironically aluminum-sided neighborhood known as Borough Park, in the windowless basement of a plain row house with a concrete yard and a Madonna in the living room, a 95-year-old Sicilian woman named Vitina Turano toiled at a stove, four burners blazing. She was my great grandmother. Four and a half feet tall, clad in house dress, slippers, and homemade apron, bent of spine and hairy of chin, Great Grandma Turano was busy making meatballs.

A horde of us were gathered, as we did once or twice a year, at an enormous table covered in floral-print oilcloth that ran the length of an entire wall, a long wooden bench on one side, a humming furnace at the end. My parents and brother, my Aunt Patty and Uncle Julian, a few of my mom’s cousins and second cousins, none of whom I ever really got to know but all of whom had names like John and Sal and Paul and Mary and Anthony and Tony and… Anthony and Tony. (There was even a girl named Toni, no joke.) The men would all sit, drinking Gallo from a green jug, as the li’l matriarch did her thing, with an assist from the younger Turano women, until it was time to eat – at which point, steaming platters of food would magically appear before us, exist for a few perfect moments, and then be devoured.

Great Grandma Turano died when I was seven years old, so my memories of her, and of these epic dinners, live on now only in glimmers and shards: her heavily accented English, utterly baffling to my untrained ears; her basement lair; her folding lawn chair out back, where she would sit and motion for me to come over – “cuh me-uh,” she’d say, curling a crooked finger at me, “cuh me-uh” — so she could hug and kiss me, which in retrospect was a small thing I should have happily given in to, but in the moment felt kind of scary and to be resisted at all costs, despite my mother’s prodding.

And her meatballs. I do remember those meatballs. Though it’s hard, this far on, to say whether I remember the ones she made specifically, or the ones my mother made for us – using Great Grandma Turano’s recipe, of course, which she had been forced by her family to commit to paper before she passed away – pretty much once every couple weeks for the first eighteen years of my life. Talk about a staple of your youth: This was mine. Pasta and meatballs with a green salad and some crusty bread? Damn. I can picture those nights perfectly now, the pot of extras simmering on the stove, waiting to be pillaged for seconds. We’ve managed to keep the tradition going strong in our house, too, busting these badboys out on Sunday nights in the fall and winter for the past almost twenty years. Hell, they even made it onto our recipe door. The kids have gotten into the act lately, too — Phoebe performed half the work on the batch you see here, rolling the balls by hand, and helping to brown them. Five generations and counting…

Grandma Turano’s Meatballs Recipe (more…)

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Rachael Ray would call a recipe like this a 30-minute meal. Cooking Light would call it “Superfast.” Gourmet (RIP) would have called it “Gourmet Everyday.” But when I was working on the food pages in magazines, I used to call it a classic Tuesday Night Dinner. Because in my mind, Tuesday is the night when you need the surefire shot of confidence the most. Tuesday is not Monday, when you either have a stash of leftovers to build on from Sunday’s meal or feel pumped up about the idea of dinner since it’s only Day 1 of the 5-day grind. Tuesday is when you need a dinner that is quick-and-dirty, down-home-and-delicious, and if at all possible, universally praised tableside. And then, when you nail Tuesday, the rest of the week is cake.

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One-dish dinner!

I’ve only watched The Simpsons a few times in my life, but I vividly recall an episode where Homer stands in front of his bathroom mirror shaving. As soon as he puts down the razor and towels his face dry, his six-o-clock shadow emerges as gray and shady as it was before he began. I mention this here because I, like most parents, contend with my own Homer’s Beard every day, i.e. the clutter…i.e. the beading kits, the book order catalogs, the cheese stick wrappers, the Monopoly money, the paper dolls, the general detrius of family life, which keeps coming back bigger and stronger and darker and shadier no matter how forcefully I fight it. Like it’s freaking alive. It’s not even like my kids are that messy — they’re just busy and into things. And when you’re busy and into things and you are not yet paying you’re own rent…well, it would take some convincing to get me to clean up the wikki stix too.

The Sisyphean struggle is annoying every day, but it is particularly annoying every other Wednesday when the house is professionally cleaned, the sink scoured, the floors mopped, and the stovetop is sparkling in the sunlight with nary a grease speck in sight. I devote my whole being to protecting the illusion of a peaceful, orderly house as long as possible…which usually amounts to about 20 minutes. My friend Frances, who attempts this feat of daring as well, has managed to carve out an oasis of calm in the one spot her young kids are not allowed to touch: the stovetop. On cleaning day, she makes baked sausages because it’s all done inside the oven, involves minimal countertop work, and keeps the stovetop area clean and mess-free. For one night at least.

Baked Sausage with Apples, Potatoes, and Onions
I originally thought this might work as a one-dish and a no-chop meal, which is why I bought tiny potatoes and cippolini onions. But it can be annoying to peel those tiny onions (no matter how sweet the reward) so you should feel free to use a regular onion.

Preheat oven to 425°F. In a large baking dish, toss 2 cups small whole unpeeled potatoes (or 3 to 4 medium potatoes chopped), 1 medium onion (chopped artlessly in chunks), and leaves from 2 sprigs of fresh thyme with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes, then toss in 2 to 3 apples (unpeeled, preferably baking apples such as Cortland, Granny Smith, Jonathan, Northern Spy) that have been cut into large chunks, and 4 uncooked sweet Italian sausages (about 1 pound). Turn heat down to 400°F and bake another 30 minutes. During the last 5 minutes of cooking, stir 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar into vegetables. Serve with dollops of grainy or Dijon mustard.

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As far as omens go, it doesn’t get much worse than this.

On a Wednesday evening a couple weeks ago, at about 7:30 pm, I proposed something radical: how about we eat on the couch tonight, while watching… Game One of the American League Division Series! This was greeted with surprising enthusiasm. Abby and Phoebe marched over with their plates and plopped down next to me. Hey, great: they finally want to watch with me! We’re going to watch a baseball game together! I’ll teach them the basics, maybe work up to some nuances, even instill some passion – you know, pass down a little of what my father passed down to me when I was a kid. (My dad still goes outside and sits in his car at night, by himself, to listen to the Yankees on AM radio because it’s the only place he gets decent reception). Before long, they’ll be reading Ball Four and trolling ebay for Ron Guidry rookie cards! As Abby’s magic eight ball might say, all signs were pointing to yes.

Then the Yankees took the field.

“Daddy,” Abby said. “Who are the Jets playing?”

And just like that, the dream died. (more…)

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OK, Valerie….I mean Readers….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 new baby — which we then stored in freezer bags alongside bags of expressed breastmilk. It is not only forgiving with measurements, but with schedules, too. It’s workable on a weeknight if you have a 40-45 minute window (about half that is hands-on time) or, if you wake up on a Sunday feeling particularly SuperMommish, you can cook up a batch to freeze and cash in on later in the week. (more…)

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Guest Post by Todd Lawlor, aka Todd of Todd’s Minty Peas, aka Big-10 Blog Man, Hoopraker.

Jerusalem Artichokes. Bacon. Onion. Arugula. These four ingredients tossed with a good-quality balsamic vinaigrette work together to make one of the tastiest dishes I’ve had since the Clinton Era.* The showstopper here is the Jerusalem Artichoke. You might also know it as the Sunchoke, a much better description of the bulbous, knotty, goofy looking tuber since it has absolutely nothing to do with Jerusalem, is absolutely nothing like a green artichoke and everything to do with, well, the root of a sunflower plant. Maybe you’ve seen them rolling out of a farmer’s market basket or suffocating under plastic wrap in your supermarket looking like a horribly mutated potato or a gigantic hunk of ginger and thought something along the lines of What the hell am I supposed to do with that thing? Well this is what your supposed to do with it. We’ve just met, but trust me on this one.

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7:30 Kids watch Fantastic Mr. Fox; parents take turns running on the beach.
10:00 Pool: Work on touching the bottom of the 9-foot deep end with hands, holding underwater handstands for at least 5 seconds, and tightening up jack-knives off the diving board.
1:00 Lunch. Tomato Sandwiches. Leftover Shrimp & Grits.
1:30 Quiet Time: Dad reads Freedom, Phoebe reads Utterly Me: Clarice Bean, Abby plays paper dolls, Mom marinates a pork tenderloin in bourbon, soy, brown sugar, olive oil.
3:00 Beach
4:30 Discuss the differences between a Snowy Egret (black beak, yellow feet) and a Great Egret (yellow beak, black feet) then seek out real-life examples on our bikes.
6:00 Yardarm. Mom prepares potatoes, peaches; Dad prepares the grill.
7:00 Family Dinner…

Grilled Pork with Peaches

A few hours before dinner (after the pool, before the beach?) marinate pork tenderloin in 1/4 cup bourbon, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 tablespoons brown sugar, a few glugs of olive oil, a 2-inch hunk of peeled ginger cut into chunks.

Dinnertime: Slice three to four peaches as shown and brush with either melted butter or canola oil and a sprinkling of brown sugar.

Grill pork for about 15-20 minutes, turning every 5 minutes, until the middle is firm but not hard to the touch. During the last 5 minutes, grill peach slices, turning so they don’t burn. Serve with campfire potatoes.

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