Posts Categorized: Books, Gifts, Culture

Mother’s Day Deal!

Quick post today to let you know that our friends at Mouth, assemblers of the coolest indie food gift baskets ever, are having a storewide sale as we speak. Use code SPRING30 for 30% off everything, including the deliciously delightful Mother Nature or Easy Like Sunday Morning pictured above. Check out all their Mother’s Day gift boxes here.

It’s Curtis Sittenfeld Day

This is a very exciting day for me. Not only do I get to tell you about Curtis Sittenfeld’s brand new short story collection — You Think It, I’ll  Say It, my favorite of all the books she’s written — it is the day that the real life Curtis Sittenfeld makes a cameo on Dinner: A Love Story. Yes, that’s right…. Read more »

Cabin Fever Consumption

Last week, we here in the Northeast found ourselves trapped in the clutches of some pretty fierce negative single-digit winter weather. Remember that love letter to my Fitbit I wrote less than week ago? It’s still on my wrist, but all I will say is that as of Thursday morning, when the first storm hit, it was in zero danger… Read more »

My Favorite Thing to Give

. When I was a kid, my family had an account at the local bookstore, a privilege I don’t remember enjoying anywhere else in town. I felt so cool stopping in, picking up the latest V.C. Andrews novel, then then telling whoever was working behind the counter, Just charge it to “Rosenstrach.” I never felt guilty piling two or three… Read more »

The Family Summer Reading List

. We have just returned from our annual South Carolina beach pilgrimage, where among other things, we stockpiled our Duke’s mayo, grilled and cooked the usual suspects, and did our best to pretend that summer vacation is not over in two weeks and one day. How can it be that, as of this morning, half the house has staggered off to… Read more »

33 Things I Learned From This Season’s Cookbooks

I’m pleased to announce that, as of Monday, my annual cookbook round-up for the Times Book Review is live and ready for your reading pleasure. As you know, I always love this assignment, not only because I get to pore over beautiful books all spring, but because it really forces me to cook outside my comfort zone, to seek out new… Read more »

Play it Forward

Happy spring everyone! Happy daffodils and forsythia! Happy April Showers! Happy start of soccer and lacrosse and baseball season! Happy too-much-pressure, too-much-driving-to-practice, yelling-at-the-ref season! I’m kidding. Sort of. You know how much I love sports, especially after I’ve seen what they have done for my daughters, but I’m the first to admit that organized youth athletics can very quickly spiral out of… Read more »

Amy Krouse Rosenthal (1965-2017)

For many years, the back page of Real Simple featured an excerpt from a book, an inspirational quote, or some final words of wisdom. In 2002-ish, when I was working as a senior editor there, we ran this: How you been? Busy. How’s work? Busy. How was your week? Good. Busy. You name the question, busy is the answer. Yes, yes,… Read more »

Friday Reading

I have only one item on today’s Friday Round-up, but it’s a good one. Those of you who have been with DALS from the beginning know that we are guilty of playing favorites when it comes to certain authors. One of those authors is George Saunders. Through the years, we’ve talked about his masterful short story collections (Andy was lucky… Read more »

Your Doorway into Christmas

Jeanette Winterson, the British author perhaps most well-known for her coming-of-age autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, has a sacred Christmas ritual. Every Christmas Eve, at 3pm, she listens to a service on BBC radio, broadcast live from Kings College in Cambridge. There are Bible readings from the Old and New Testament and in between, the choir sings carols… Read more »

Three Baking Hacks

As the season of Olympic baking is upon us, I thought I’d share a few hacks I will be relying on through the end of the year — and likely beyond.  Just a warning: If you are the type of person who has an arsenal of pastry tubes and tips, who knows your way around fondant, you might want to… Read more »

Uri Scheft’s Shabbat Dinner

I’m so pleased to feature Uri Scheft in my ongoing DALS family ritual series. You might know Scheft as the man behind cult-favorite Breads Bakery in New York (and Lehamim in Tel Aviv), or because you were smart and listened to me last year when I demanded you mail-order his world-famous chocolate babka. But if you didn’t, fear not, you have… Read more »

This Week in Page-Turners

Did any of you read “The Brain That Couldn’t Remember,” yesterday’s cover story in the New York Times Magazine? It was an excerpt from the book you’re looking at here, Patient H.M., by Luke Dittrich, and it’s about Henry Molaison, the most studied patient in the history of brain science. The short version: As a young man, Henry suffered from debilitating epileptic… Read more »

Small-Batch, Big-Hit Gifts for Dad

Those of you who follow me on instagram have already been reminded, but wanted to make the rest of you aware of the fact that DALS readers get 15% off at Mouth this week. Mouth, purveyor of independent, artisanal foods, has been a longtime partner of Dinner: A Love Story, and if you want to know why that is the… Read more »

The Season’s Best Cookbooks

You should see my office right now. Well, scratch that. Even if you could be there, you wouldn’t actually be able to see it because of the piles and piles of cookbooks threatening to wall me out. One of the perks of being a food blogger — besides the obvious prestige that comes from telling people I am a, ahem,… Read more »

14 Summer Reads

My friend Liz Egan is so funny. You might know her from Glamour magazine where she’s the Books Editor. Or you might remember her from a post she wrote right here on DALS about her insane, yet totally adorable lunchbox note ritual. But I am lucky enough to know her as a friend, in real life and in Facebook life…. Read more »

Sundays with Eric

Eric Ripert’s accomplishments are endless and impressive: Michelin-starred chef at New York’s Le Bernardin. Longtime TV host of PBS’s “Avec Eric.” Author of several award-winning cookbooks, and, just this month, author of a riveting coming-of-age memoir, 32 Yolks. (Subtitle: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line) But for our purposes today, he’s a father, and like a lot of parents… Read more »

For Your Mother-in-Law

I have a lot of favorite moments in Katherine Wilson’s hilarious memoir, Only in Naples, but my most favorite is when she describes her Neapolitan mother-in-law, Raffaella, staring at a ring of measuring spoons in Wilson’s American kitchen “as if they were an archaeological find.” Cooking in Naples is a feel-as-you-go expression of love, not an exercise in precision, just as… Read more »