The mail came just as I was leaving to pick up the girls at school. Catalog, catalog, bill, catalog, bill…Hey! A PACKAGE addressed to me! Inside was A Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, by Christopher Healy. I knew it was coming — Chris was Cookie magazine’s main childrens’ book reviewer and I worked closely with him and Myles McDonnell… Read more »
And by free we mean, um, sort of free. Here’s the deal: We like dinner. We also like books. And while Jenny’s upcoming book, on its every (“masterful,” says her husband) page, honors the meals we’ve made together for the past fifteen years, there is not a single word in it devoted to books — our love for them, or… Read more »
And so the question is, what does one have for dinner the night after she swears off eating for a year? The answer: Fish in Parchment Paper. We had a ton of vegetables left over from the shoot (if anyone needs to borrow an onion, I’m your lady) so Andy sliced them up, arranged them on a cutting board, then asked… Read more »
At the end of an eight-hour Paris wander session that began in Luxembourg Gardens, took us down rue Mouffetard, and ended up in the Marais, I collapsed on our sofa and began to scroll through the photos on my camera. There’s Abby feeding the remains of last night’s baguette to the ducks. There’s Phoebe gaping at the 6-month-old monkey at the… Read more »
There was a time in my life when Sunday meant sitting down with my Dinner Diary and mapping out a meal plan for the week. Like this line-up from June 14-18, 2004: Monday: Fried Sole with Green Beans Tuesday: Ravioli with Green Salad Wednesday: Fajitas with Black Beans and Cheddar Thursday: Curried Chicken with Apples Friday: OUT (always in caps, always!) I remember… Read more »
One of my biggest pet peeves about a lot of recipes and cookbooks supposedly geared towards families, is the multiple appearances by this sentence: “And your kids will love it, too!” It is usually tacked on to the end of a recipe intro as though the phrase alone will make the scrumptious looking Crab and Kale Cakes (with Rouille!) magically… Read more »
In the console between the front seats of our family vee-hicle is a stack of the CDs we keep on hand to entertain the kids while driving. Most rotate through after a few months, or get thrown out, either because we – the parents – get so incredibly sick of them (see: Thriller, Free to Be), or because they – the kids… Read more »
I was thinking of adding a new category on the right over there called “Meals That Are Impossible To Photograph Because My Daughter Can’t Help But Eat The Subject.” Because don’t you think it’s saying something about the deliciousness of a meal when I have to instruct my poor, hungry, 8-year-old model “Stop eating your dinner!” as she mauls what’s… Read more »
Sides and Starters Asian Cabbage Slaw with Peanuts Asparagus with Chopped Egg and Onion Baked Potato Bar Beet and Carrot Slaw Beets with Oranges and Feta Bibb Lettuce with Summer Peas Broccoli Slaw Carrots, Roasted with Garam-Masala Yogurt Sauce Cauliflower, Roasted with Anchovy Breadcrumbs Chard, Sautéed with Horseradish Chicken Wings Chilled Napa Cabbage with Cilantro and Pickled Shallots (Alice Waters)… Read more »
It didn’t take us long to figure out that, when it comes to rolling out a new product at the family table, so much depends upon the marketing campaign. I doubt our kids would have gone within a mile of cauliflower had we not first introduced it to them as “white broccoli.” They wouldn’t have sniffed brussels sprouts had we… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
