A What to Eat pad (from KnockKnock) has been sitting in my basement for over a year now, wedged in between a pile of cookbooks and other assorted items marked “Tag Sale.” Of course when I say “marked” I mean not with a Sharpie or a label or anything, but in the back of my own mind; and when I say “Tag Sale” I of course mean “Event that I’ve been
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What to Cook Tonight? Well, I guess my first question has to be: What kind of night is it? If it’s the kind of night where work/soccer/train ran late, and you need something fast, you might want to check out: Chicken Sausages with Kale and Baked Beans Pasta with Peas and Country Ham Quick Miso-Glazed Salmon Sloppy Joes Pan-roasted Chicken with Mushrooms Black Bean and Goat Cheese Quesadillas Shrimp Tacos
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Friday Night Spicy Chicken Sausages with Baked Beans and Kale Salad 1. Procure 6-8 good quality Italian-spiced chicken sausages. 2. Fry in a skillet for 10-12 minutes until brown and cooked through. 3. Pour wine. 4. While sausages are frying, chop up some kale into shreds. Toss with olive oil, tablespoon or two of chopped shallots, handful grated Pecorino, squeeze of lemon, salt, pepper. 5. Heat up some canned baked
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For my grandmother’s 80th birthday, her best and oldest friend in the world, Midge — fellow bridge clubber, golf partner, drinking buddy, all-around Golden Girl — hosted a dinner party, on the Wedgwood china, in her big brick house on Forest Avenue. Jenny and I were in attendance, as were my father, two widows — Mary and Shep, both in their mid-eighties — and a couple of cranky daschunds named
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It’s not that I don’t inhale what’s left of the frozen shrimp tempura from my daughters’ plates. Or that I didn’t grow up eating Stouffer’s creamy chicken pot pie once a week. Or that I have anything against a slice or two of Trader Joe’s quattro formaggio frozen pizza. My feeling is…if you can’t break out a good junky frozen dinner every now and then, well, I have to ask:
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O, haricot verts, how it pains me to say this, given all that you have given us (nay, done for us), but I have grown tired of you. For eight years, you — the basic steamed and salted version of you — were there for us, a rock in our rotation, a reliable side dish we could count on. You made us feel better about ourselves, because our children loved
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Our poor side dishes. Always getting buried at the bottom of a post that stars some showstopping piece of meat. But as anyone who is putting together her holiday party outfit knows, it’s all in the accessories, and so herewith, a round-up of some of our favorite unsung sidedish heroes. 1. Gingered Green Beans Add a couple handfuls of green beans (about 2 cups or what’s shown above) to boiling water
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So we may not be the only ones posting a Holiday Gift Guide this week, but we’d like to argue that DALS is probably going to be the only place you can stop by for a Family Dinner Holiday Gift Guide. Which is another way of saying that every gift, recipe, ritual, moment you see here is either family-related, dinner-related, family-dinner related, or, in keeping with the spirit of the
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The pork loin I braised in red wine last Tuesday night was pretty freaking delicious. I can say this because most of the credit goes to my coworker — remember the one who was plotting her own pork and lentil stew in the slow-cooker while I was plotting drumsticks? After she told me that one, it was on the brain for 24 hours and I knew the only way to
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I’ve learned the hard way that when it comes to kids, don’t make a promise you won’t be able to keep. Don’t promise a trip to Barnes and Noble this weekend if you know it’s going to take some logistical heroics to squeeze it between all the games and practices and trips to the mall to buy new boots. (Again! Why am I always buying boots?) Don’t promise you will
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Every spring, growing up, my elementary school would put on a fifth grade Science Fair. They’d clear out the gym, bring in a bunch of those long cafeteria tables, and the fifth graders would file in early, groggy and grumpy, to set up their exhibits. Later that day, we’d take our places behind our posters and dioramas and baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes, as the rest of the school filtered through, pretending to be
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Day Before the Eighth Birthday Abby: Mom, I don’t want it to be my birthday. Mom: What? Why not? Abby: Because then it will be over and I’ll have to wait a whole ‘nother year for it to come again. We have this same conversation every year — which is amazing to me, because between the classroom doughnuts, the annual restaurant-picking ritual, the party with friends, and the cousins-and-grandparents get-together, we
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I love the idea of a recipe having a secret ingredient. When the girls were little, I would steal away to the corner of the kitchen to add a secret ingredient (sugar) to my magic hiccup potion (water). My friend Andras puts a shot of bourbon in his scrambled eggs. My old co-worker Myles adds a spoonful of peanut butter to his chili. (Maybe, using that trick, Andy would’ve taken
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There’s this thing Abby and I do, before every soccer game. She’s usually sitting on the wooden bench by our door, in her too-big uniform, and even though she’s in third grade, I’m enabling…I mean, tying her cleats. When I’m done, I give her a pat on the knee and look into her eyes. “You ready?” I ask. “Yeah,” she says. The affect couldn’t be more flat. She has heard this before.
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We’re not the types who keep the Weber burning all year long — something just doesn’t feel right to me about grilling a leg of lamb while wearing a parka. Which means that this past Saturday night, when the sun was on its way down before the girls’ muddy cleats had been kicked off, may have just marked our final grilled fish dinner of the season. But it was a
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I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “Excuse me?” I asked. “What’s up with the flat bags?” I heard her right. The question came from the photographer’s assistant during the DALS Book photo shoot a few weeks ago. She was in her twenties, hailed from Williamsburg. I didn’t get a peek at her iPod, but I feel certain it would be loaded with songs by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and the New
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It’s hard to know who was more excited when the Amazon box landed with a thunk on our doorstep last week, Phoebe or her parents. We knew from the heft what was inside: All 640 pages of Brian Selznick’s new book, Wonderstruck. We’ve spent many dinners and car rides and bedtimes discussing Brian Selznick. His last book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, for me, was one of those books where you
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At what point do I stop feeling that pit in my stomach, that gnawing sense of dread, when summer ends? Is it me, or was last week officially the longest four-day week in history? Okay, maybe that’s overstating things, but still: I was hurting, in a real back-to-school way, and I’m a grown-ass man. Back behind my desk, staring at the screen. School lunches to be packed. Bills to be
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