Posts Categorized: Dinner

Shake ‘n Bake, New ‘n Improved

Last week, Jenny went away for three days to work on her book. I don’t know if anyone else out there finds this to be true, but we have this theory about parenting being easier — not better, mind you, just easier — when the spouse is away. The chain of command is clearer. Movements are more efficient. Decisions are… Read more »

If You Cook it, They Will Come

I’d like to interrupt the relentless roll-out of pizzas and stews for an important — maybe even obvious — message. A few nights ago I was reading yet another article regurgitating what we probably all know by now about family dinner. This just in: All kinds of great things will happen if you just sit down with your kids to… Read more »

The Someday File

Here are a few of the dishes you might find in my Someday File: An authentic lasagna from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy (Someday I’ll have time to make pasta from scratch); That Post-it tagged lobster pot pie recipe from one of the Barefoot Contessa books (Someday I’ll be able to justify spending $25/pound on shellfish that gets lost in… Read more »

The Family Cheese Plate

Before kids we were mushroom-stuffers and tomato-scoopers. Before kids we weren’t afraid of the adjective “hot” before the word “appetizer.” I think when we lived in Brooklyn — when the girls were as distant on the horizon as the suburbs were — we might have even served a chilled avocado and cucumber soup as an amuse bouche for our friends Jeni… Read more »

Anything Plus Broccoli

There’s a formula we deploy, in our heads at least, whenever we feed our kids something that isn’t exactly homemade, DALS-approved, crafted by the kindly elves who affix those green-and-white organic labels to everything — or, more to the point, good for them. Think of it as the The Tranformative (and Self-Justifying) Law of Retroactive Nutritiousness. ____________ + Side of Broccoli =… Read more »

10-Minute Tortellini

Since I think I’ve received a personal (practically perfumed) note from just about every DALS reader telling me how much you love Andy’s pork ragu, I assume you might be interested in some suggestions for how to stretch it out into two meals. Yes, this means that you’ll have to restrain yourself from eating the entire batch on Night One, but… Read more »

The No-Fight Zone

Last Thursday, I started hating myself a full hour before my morning coffee. If you must know, I started hating myself at precisely 8:04, which was the first time I yelled at my kids who were in danger of missing the 8:09 bus. Yelling Where are your shoes and yelling Where are your gloves and Did you brush your teeth and… Read more »

A Winning Weeknight Dinner

Full disclosure here: I think I knew the winner of my Go-to Weeknight Dinner Contest almost as soon as I spied the Sausage, Kale, and Bean Stew entry submitted by  “anna” on Day 1 of the contest. Every recipe that came in after this one, as far as I was concerned, had to pass the anna test — as in, is… Read more »

Chicken Chili: Always the Right Answer

On any given winter day in my house, if I ask the innocent question cooks across the earth are asking — i.e. What should we have for dinner tonight? — I can pretty much always count on Andy suggesting some kind of healthy, simple seafood; I would bet the house on Abby requesting — please, Mom, puh-leeeeeeze, I’ll kiss you 99 trillion… Read more »

Finger Food Family Dinner

About fifteen years ago, Aunt Patty scribbled her recipe for chicken wings on an index card and clutched it into my hands with the urgent instruction Don’t Lose This. The way she said it and the way those wings tasted, I figured it was some secret family recipe that went back generations. I didn’t lose the recipe, but I never… Read more »

Not Just a Sandwich

Have you seen Black Swan? I haven’t. True Grit? Nope. And, god, wasn’t Colin Firth mind-blowingly good in The King’s Speech? Actually, I wouldn’t know, because I haven’t seen a second of it. Not even a preview. The sad truth is, we haven’t seen a single one of the movies nominated for an Oscar this year. It pains me to… Read more »

Cook Once, Eat Twice

Oh man, Pete Wells! I was so sad to read that this week’s “Cooking with Dexter” column (“Busy Signal”) is going to be his last for the New York Times Magazine. I’ve always appreciated how honestly he writes about the way food and family intersect — as you’ll read in his swan song, he never pretended cooking dinner for his kids… Read more »

Special Today: Coconut Shrimp

When I was little, shrimp did not qualify as seafood. Seafood was the stuff my mom picked up at the dreaded fish market (my twin brother and I used to hold our noses in protest whenever she made us go in with her) and was what she might have made for people coming over for dinner once her bratty brood… Read more »

School’s Closed? Pass the Butter.

There are some nice things about waking up to the automated phone message: Schools Closed Due to Inclement Weather. Sleeping in, for starters. (Though the novelty of this wears off at 8:01, which is usually about the time I first hear “Mom, I’m borrrrrred.”) Another nice thing: The realization that I was fired last year, so I am no longer required… Read more »

Salmon if You’re Sick of Salmon

If you’ve been following this blog for a little while, you know by now that salmon was the first fish our kids ate. Which was fine by us — it was healthy, flavorful, and one of the few foods (in general) that we could all eat the exact same way at the dinner table. So we ate a lot of… Read more »

Split Screen Dinners

From the Mail Bag! Reader Robin writes: I don’t know if you get tired of people telling you stories about your site, but I had to share this one with you: I made the Belgian Beef Stew tonight.  As I was finishing it up the girls came in to the kitchen and were grumbling things like,  “GROSS…I AM NOT GOING… Read more »

Mega Fries and a Mega Statement

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 »

Instant Dinner Party

Spoiler alert: If you come over to our house for dinner any time between now and the first day of spring, there’s about a 90% chance we’re going to cook this for you. The pork shoulder ragu you see above is our new obsession. It’s the ideal dish for Sunday dinner, or even better, an informal winter dinner party: It’s… Read more »