A few weeks ago I got this letter from reader Catilin:
Dear Jenny,
So, um, DALS is one of the only things I read right now. I’m a lawyer (work about 65 hours a week), mother of two kids (3 and 1, oy) and have a great husband. Our life is really blessed, but as you can imagine, we do nothing but work and take care of our kids – literally NOTHING except that! BUT we both want to eat healthy food that gives us more energy (and less food coma), so we do eat frozen pizza sometimes, yes, but we also prep veggies, make soups [1] and chicken stew [2] and pot roast [3] on the weekends so we can reheat it most nights for dinner. And I make homemade hummus every week, not because I’m Laura Ingalls Wilder, but because I find when we have it in the house, everything else falls into place. Hummus becomes a base for us to eat well and choose foods that last in the belly, as opposed to quick, fatty, salty things. It was one of the first things I learned to make that changed the way I thought about how to eat for energy and to keep up with my kids. It keeps body and soul together.
I tell you all this because DALS helps me keep the faith that at some point we may actually have the time and space from our kids to make things in a more spontaneous way – right now “cooking” on weeknights (even if its only 20-30 minutes) is impossible. So, we’re settling for reheating homemade stuff during the week. Which isn’t terrible, but not as fun as throwing together Chicken Marsala on a Tuesday night. Sigh. Anyway, thanks for all the good cheer and parental commiseration.
Love,
Caitlin
Let’s count how many things I love about this letter:
1) She has no time for anything except kids and work (sound familiar?) and yet she’s making time for DALS (yes!)
2) She has the good sense to make things on the weekend that can be reheated during the week. (And they sound almost exactly like what I make on the weekend.)
3) She also has to good sense to realize that this is just a phase and pretty soon she will be spontaneously throwing together that Chicken Marsala on a Tuesday night. (See “The Years the Angels Began to Sing,” in my book [4].)
4) She is not beating herself up over falling back on a frozen pizza now and then. (I just did that last night!)
5) It’s so well-written!
6) She knows what her security blanket is — she knowns what she has to have on hand in order to feel that all’s right with her dinner world. For me, it’s homemade salad dressing [5]. For Andy, it’s Tuscan kale [6]. For her, it’s hummus.
What is it for you?
Thanks for writing, Caitlin.
Hummus
Phoebe learned how to make this hummus at camp last summer and we’ve been looking for an excuse to write about it ever since. I’ve tried a lot of recipes before, but this seems to have the right balance of lemon and isn’t overly garlicky. She throws everything into the bowl of an unplugged food processor, then I take over.
1 clove garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups drained chickpeas
1/2 cup tahini
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon cumin
juice of 1 lemon
water as needed
On a cutting board mince and mash the garlic to a paste with the salt. In a food processor, puree the chickpeas with the garlic paste, the tahini, lemon juice, scraping down the sides. Add olive oil in a thin drip until the hummus is smooth. Salt to taste.
Add water, if necessary, to thin the hummus to desired consistency and transfer the hummus to a bowl. Serve with pita or vegetable sticks.
For nut-free hummus, omit tahini.
Related: Two-minute hummus dinner [7].
Related: What’s Your Page-Turner?
P.S. An excerpt from Dinner: A Love Story [8] on Cup of Jo. Thanks, Joanna!