Our annual trip to South Carolina has been the textbook definition of vacation. There are pools. There are beaches. There is kayaking and backhand-winner-ing and oyster shoveling. There is napping in the big chair on the patio, book splayed across chest. There is Making of a Murderer binge-watching. (OMG OMG OMG!) There is gin-and-tonic-ing. There is Cinnamon-Frosted-Pop-Tart-ing. There is running on… Read more »
My usual rule of thumb is that there should be one thing on the dinner plate that is fresh, as in a vegetable that is raw, crispy, uncooked, bright. It’s why we eat so much slaw in our house. Nothing cuts the richness of a pork chop quite the way a vinegary pile of cabbage can. But occasionally, we shake… Read more »
We think of it as the Eleventh Commandment: When entertaining, thou shall not make food that requires too much time away from your guests. And though it’s easy to forget this when the weather is warm and the parties move outside and the grill is up and running, the rule still applies. We learned this the hard way that one… Read more »
No, the word is not “yakitori,” though that is what you are looking at above, and that does play a small role in this post. A delicious role, actually…all scalliony and salty and glazy. No, yakitori, as good as it is on the grill, shared with friends on a Saturday summer night, that is not the word I want to talk about… Read more »
What we’re reading and eating this week: Everything you need for Memorial Day Grilling. “You might think running would wear you out and down, but it rejuvenates me and fills my tank. On the hardest, most trying days, a great run gives me the right mindset to take any and all of it on. On a day off, it brings me… Read more »
Who: The Usual Suspects, Andy, Jenny, Phoebe, Abby What: Family Dinner When: A Saturday night in early summer Where: DALS headquarters, Suburban New York Temp: High 80s, high humidity Obstacles/Activities/Extracurriculars: N/A, see: SUMMER 10:00 AM Walk to Farmer’s Market, procure Tuscan kale, baby cabbage, and a pound of Mahi Mahi from the fish guy. (And a dozen cider doughnuts, half of… Read more »
Every Friday, like clockwork, the text comes from the mom or dad of one of my 11-year-old’s friends. “The girls are asking for a sleepover. OK by me if OK by you!?” I got this exact message from my friend Annie late Friday afternoon while Phoebe, Andy, and I were sitting on the grassy berm beside the school track where… Read more »
When you picture dinner in my house, do you imagine two starving little middle schoolers, banging utensils on the table with both hands, and rolling their eyes at their mother as she snaps photos and re-positions garnishes just so? Or me shouting “one more second” from the next room waiting for the sun to sink to just the right place,… Read more »
On Saturday we found ourselves in an unusual predicament: It was 4:00 and we hadn’t decided what was for dinner yet. Oddly, if it were a normal weekday at home, this wouldn’t be an issue. But we were on vacation, and as anyone who has read my first book (or read the post “My Drill Sergeant of Leisure“) might recall, on… Read more »
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
One summer vacation during my elementary school years, I went on an overnight boating trip across the Long Island Sound with my friend, Andrea and her family. Three decades later, what I remember most about the trip was not the exhilaration of being on the open water for the first time — man vs. sea and all that. What I… Read more »
You should see our basement. No, actually, you shouldn’t. It’s not the face we’re interested in presenting to the world. It’s not even a face we’re comfortable presenting to ourselves. In fact, I think of it as the darkest corner of our psyche come to life. You never know what you will find down there. Yesterday evening, for example, our… Read more »
Jenny begged me to write this post. She begged me to write it because we have spent most of the last week on spring break and she has spent much of that time feeling guilty about not having posted. She keeps circling the laptop, turning to me and saying, “Should I post? Just something quick? Is it bad that we… Read more »
Guest-post from 10-year-old Abby: I am so sick of kale. Good thing I taught my family to like chard with this world famous dish. Well not world famous, but famous in my house. I love chard. The second I saw the rainbow-colored stems at farm camp growing in a garden with beautiful fluffy green leaves I knew that they would… Read more »
My sister called me the other morning. We were both in our cars — bluetoothing and dropping off our various charges — and figuring out a possible cousin sleepover when she said, with some urgency, “Oh! Did you get my message?” “No, what message.” “I left you a voice-mail with a lot of questions, but I really want to tell… Read more »
“Make Dinner Not War,” huh? The pacifist ethos may look good on a bumper sticker, and it may reign supreme at our family dinner table, but when it comes to, say, girls’ soccer or beach-kadima-fer-chrisskes or routinely kicking her husband’s arse in a “friendly” game of Clue? Jenny is not to be trifled with. It’s why I hesitate to tell… Read more »
Do you guys have that list? The I’ll-Deal-With-it-After-Vacation List? Earlier in August while scrambling to get everything organized before we dropped off the face of the earth for a while (real earth, not blog earth) I found myself keeping a mental list of all the things I’d just figure out once I got home. Taken on their own, in the… Read more »
I can’t promise you this will be a very usable guide to exciting eating. As you know, on vacation, you can toast a pop tart for dinner and it will make you as happy as a four-course meal at Cafe Boulud. (In fact, maybe we’ll try that tonight.) But, as you can imagine, we are getting seriously into our South… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and Dinner: The Playbook More
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