left: Abby's plate, right: Mom & Dad's plate

People ask me all the time if I’m interested in having a third kid. The answer (for now, at least) is: Why would I when a cake mixer has two beaters to lick and a chicken has two drumsticks to serve? (Shouldn’t I take it as some sort of sign that the girls are both crazy about the legs while Andy and I are perfectly content with the breast and thighs?) Anyway — I would say a roast chicken is the recipe I get the most requests for from my friends. One of them — Lori — has even gone so far as saying she feels that being able to roast a chicken should be a requirement of motherhood. If that is the case, then I was not an official mother until I came upon this recipe two years ago. It requires no flipping from breast to back — once it’s in the oven, it’s in. I love that. And the carrots it roasts upon drink up all the chicken fat, which the girls love. They pass on the barley arugula salad I made with it last week, so I just let them have a roll. But as far as I’m concerned, it still counts as One Meal.

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When we bought our house in 2003, the kitchen was terrible (think avocado counters, not of the charming retro variety), This was exciting to me for one reason: In a few years, when we could maybe afford to renovate, we could create the perfect family kitchen from scratch. Of course, as anyone who has lived through a renovation can attest, “perfect” means one thing to someone and another thing altogether to that someone’s spouse. (A story which deserves another post/Lifetime drama all its own.) But the idea to have an illustrator (the amazing Gina Triplett) paint recipes on the inside of an upper cabinet door was universally loved by all the decision-makers in the house, especially the kids. The only tricky part was figuring out which recipes were deserving of such an honor. Ultimately, to qualify for “cabinet door” treatment, we decided the recipe needed to be both steeped in family history and, of course, be delicious. The line-up: One recipe from each of our grandmothers  (Grandma Catrino’s biscotti, Great Grandma Turano’s meatballs)  “Rosa’s “mud cake , which my best friend’s mom served at every one of my best friend’s birthday parties when I was little, and Marcella Hazan’s milk-braised pork, which Aunt Patty made the first time I met my husband’s family in 1992. Now we have a private living memorial to those who have influenced me in the kitchen, and my kids will grow up with a certain reverence for these dishes. Guess that means I’m never moving.

The How-To: Triplett started by giving the door a coat of paint similar to the outside color. (This allowed her to paint over any mistakes she made along the way.) She then sketched out the words in pencil and went over them using a superfine paintbrush dipped in black paint.

PS: I’m thinking of expanding this project to a few more kitchen cabinet interiors. Does anyone have any good ideas? I was thinking of painting William Carlos Williams’ “This is Just to Say” but what happens when plums aren’t in season?

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