Why is it that if you put anything into slider form, it tastes better. I put a tray of these BLT sliders on the table for lunch at my sister’s beach house and they disappeared fast. Too fast. The person I actually invited for lunch at the beach only got one. BLT Sliders (Like you really need a recipe?) Assemble… Read more »
In the summer of 1996, I was walking west on East 86th Street holding a baguette that I would eat with dinner that night in my studio apartment one block north. I was wearing a black waffle fitted polo with a khaki wraparound skirt and a pair of black pointy-toed Nine West mules, which may have been the most unattractive… Read more »
1 It’s summer. 2 It’s summer. 3 It’s summer. 4 It’s summer. 5 It’s summer. Enjoy the weekend. Summer Blueberry Galette If you have extra crust and extra berries, add them to a ramekin to make a mini pie. Warning: If you have more than one child, this may result in an epic eye-scratching battle. Best to avoid altogether or make enough minis to… Read more »
I remember exactly where I was when I read the short story, “Pastoralia,” by George Saunders: I was finishing lunch at my desk, back when I had hair and worked at Esquire magazine on 55th Street. As soon as I finished, I copied it and – this was 2000, remember – faxed it to a couple of the writers I worked… Read more »
My friend Sara is a genius for a lot of reasons (the iPad birthday cake she baked for her eight-year-old comes to mind immediately), but I think her idea to repurpose pizza dough as naan has got to be my favorite. You just roll out a ball of storebought dough, then fry it in about a tablespoon of oil over… Read more »
In some ways, I feel like my mother’s philosophy of raising children can be distilled into two of her favorite expressions. The first one is this: Only boring people get bored. This was not so much an expression as it was a response to the “I’m booorrred” cries from my brother, sister, or me when we’d be driving somewhere or… Read more »
Here at DALS we believe the only thing that screams “summer” louder than a tomato sandwich is an afternoon on a hammock curled up with a good paperback. (Or a nice icy cold iPad.) That’s why this July, in addition to getting recipes for grilled steaks and fresh summer salads, you’ll be getting what we think are some pretty cool… Read more »
Last week, when my Mom and I were dreaming up red-white-and-blue treats for our Fourth of July celebration, I talked a big game. There would be a flag cake, of course. But not just your garden-variety flag sheet cake. I was imagining cross-sectioned flag cakes, maybe even horizontally slicing a pound cake and re-assembling using red frosting or jam. Maybe I’d bake different… Read more »
When it comes to summer cooking, we have a pretty strict family policy: Do everything you can to avoid turning on an oven. Which is all well and good except that it clashes with our other family policy: Eat pizza once a week. By pizza, we don’t mean the takeout pie from Tony’s on Main Street or the personal pans… Read more »
I’m going to start this story with a personal note to my Women’s Studies professor from college: Please do not continue reading. OK are we good? Are we alone now? Because I’m about to venture into some serious damsel-in-distress territory here. I can’t grill. From May through September, I depend on Andy – my totally evolved, equality-minded husband – to… Read more »
Beautiful, ain’t he? I mean, if you can get past the dreary little jacket of rust, and the melted plastic handle, and the whipped-dog, eyes-averted, kind of sad posture of a guy that has been forced to spend his life outside, alone, on a patio. In the fall, he catches dying leaves and plays home to a colony of spiders…. Read more »
I’ve gone on record saying that there is no such thing ever as a gimme meal when it comes to cooking for kids. But I’m just going to come right out and say this: If ever there was a gimme meal, these ribs are it.* Not only because they are so melty and gooey and quintessentially summer, but because they… Read more »
Are you the lucky person in charge of figuring out dinner for the Fourth of July Celebration? (Yes, I meant “lucky!”) Check in with DALS this whole week for a line-up of crowd-pleasers and show-stoppers. Andy is even threatening to weigh in with a post titled: The One Object Every Serious Griller Should Own. Aren’t you curious? Come back and… Read more »
Which recipe style do you like better? RECIPE STYLE 1: Conventional The style most magazines and cookbooks go with where all ingredients written in a list before the instructions. Like this delicious looking tagliatelle I will be making soon. OR RECIPE STYLE 2: Casual Ingredients are integrated with instruction using casual estimates for measurements (“a handful of walnuts” or “a few… Read more »
I’ve been feeling a little badly about something. I re-read my post about last weekend’s Grilled Lamb Feast and had the thought: I don’t know if I would like me if I didn’t know me. Who calls their own number on a dinner party? If Phoebe read it, she might have called me “braggy.” The truth is, I was thrilled… Read more »
Here’s a question: how do you get your kids to try something new? We’ve deployed various methods over the years, including but not limited to: bribery (eat this, get that), blackmail (you don’t eat this, you don’t get that), begging (dear god, I am begging you, just one bite), guilt (but poor mommy spent twenty minutes making these fava beans for you!),… Read more »
I was deep in dreamland on Saturday morning at 6:00 when the dog woke me up with her howling, but still, my first thought was Why am I so happy? And then: Holy s*%t did we rock dinner last night! Does that ever happen to you? When you are so pleased with the food you prepared for someone that the… Read more »
Besides the fact that it’s Friday and that we have a grilled leg of lamb on the menu tonight, what else is making me happy today? 1. Finding a ridiculously easy way to frost the ridiculously easy mud cake I make for every birthday. The one above was for my dad’s 75th — don’t worry, I eventually added the “birthday,” part…. Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
