Posts Categorized: Rules

The Art of Showing Up

I woke up in a cold sweat one night a few years after my 1997 wedding. It wasn’t for the usual reasons—my toddler crying for me from her crib, the baby inside me kicking and inducing nausea or sciatica or both. It was because I had a sudden memory of my friend David.  He was standing in the grand entranceway… Read more »

50 Things We’ve Learned About Feeding Kids

This photo was taken in spring of 2011. It ran alongside one of our first “Providers” for Bon Appetit — a column all about feeding a family — and was shot by Peter van Agtmael, a Magnum photographer whose name is more commonly associated with war zones in the Middle East than with pork chops and market greens. I remember we… Read more »

10 Golden Rules of Entertaining

Keep the Cocktails Simple, Check Your Instagram Feed, Outsource, Crash Clean Only The Rooms That Matter, Have a Few Fallback Conversation Starters Up Your Sleeve, Do Whatever You Can Ahead of Time, and (maybe most important) Remember: No One is Expecting You To Be Jackie Kennedy. For all the details, and way way more, head over to Joanna Goddard’s ridiculously addictive… Read more »

Mother Knows Best

Our mothers are both 70-something. They both wore shoulder-padded silk blouses to their full-time jobs in the 80s; they’re both skeptical of salt that is not iodized and turkeys that are heritage; and both made it clear when we were growing up that family dinner – which, yes, was centered on an old-school Italian repertoire, and supplemented by a little… Read more »

Restaurants with Kids: The Rules

Having young kids doesn’t mean giving up on restaurants. Head over to Bon Appetit for advice on how to dine out with the family—and maybe even enjoy it. {This is our Providers column for the Restaurant Issue of BA. While you’re there, check out The Hot 10: The Best New Restaurants of 2015, and — what the heck — why not… Read more »

Thank You, Teachers

As our kids head into their last week of school, teacher thank-you notes in tow, it got us thinking: What about our teachers in the kitchen? What about all the little voices that instruct us as we whip our cream, brown our chops… and overcook our dry-aged ribeyes? I’m not only talking about the Marcellas and the Julias and the Bittmans,… Read more »

50 Rules of Vacation

1. You can never, ever pack too many bathing suits. 2. Make a pot of really good coffee before bed, pour immediately into glass pitcher, put said pitcher into the refrigerator, and — voila —  you have a steady supply of high-test iced coffee for the next morning. This could not be more crucial in re vacation happiness. 3. Exercise… Read more »

21 Rules of Entertaining

One of the more fun parts of my “job” is that I have an excuse to reach out to people I’ve been secretly stalking for decades.  Take that time, for instance, when I met Susan Spungen for breakfast at a Union Square coffee shop. Spungen spearheaded the food section at Martha Stewart Living twenty years ago. We have her to… Read more »

100 Rules of Dinner

Want to learn how to cook but don’t know where to start? Miss the last 600 posts on Dinner: A Love Story and don’t know how to catch up? Looking for something to read while anxiously awaiting dispatches from the Supreme Court? Look no further. Herewith, a list of one hundred definitively DALSian (which is to say totally unofficial, ridiculously subjective) rules… Read more »

How to Blog: My Rules

I hear from a lot of you that what you like the most about our site is that you never know what you’re going to find from one post to the next. I love getting this note — because it confirms that a) you guys are paying attention, and b) because it allows me to write inside-baseball posts like this… Read more »

R.O.D.

In my next life, I want to be Brooke Reynolds, creator not just of the inspired family blog inchmark, but of the kind of life where kids have hand-sewed mongrammed ballet and book bags; where families have color-coordinated reunions (and seem to genuinely like each other); and where there is no such thing as a detail that is too small to… Read more »