Posts Categorized: Dinner

It is So On

Posted by Andy & filed under Dinner, Posts by Andy, Quick, Vegetarian.

The best thing we eat this summer will take us three minutes to minutes to make. It will involve only five ingredients, a serrated knife, and not a single charcoal briquette. I’m talking about the tomato sandwich. Not the bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich; not the grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich; not the tomato-mozzarella-and-basil sandwich: the tomato sandwich. Period. It is a thing of simple, summery, kid-friendly beauty: After enduring ten depressing months of the color-enhanced Styrofoam junk that passes for tomatoes at the Stop ‘N… Read more »

Chicken and Arugula Epiphany

Posted by jenny & filed under Chicken and Turkey, Dinner.

I have been trying to make this dinner since July 1993. I know that sounds ridiculous — chicken with arugula and tomatoes seems almost too basic to be named something let alone to have been stuck in my brain for that long, especially since my brain has seen stickier days. (I forgot to photocopy the immunization forms for camp, again!…Again!)… Read more »

Family Dinner Pep Talk, #428

Posted by jenny & filed under Kitchenlightenment, Rituals, Uncategorized, Vegetarian.

I’ve been a runner for over two decades now. That doesn’t mean I’ve been a runner consistently for two decades. Or that I’ve run marathons or get up early to run the Central Park loop every morning like my best friend and mother of three (including twins) has done for most of her adult life. Since I was a teenager,… Read more »

I’m Having Fish Toniiiiight!

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Rituals, Seafood.

For a good long stretch, when the girls were little, Finding Nemo was in the DVD 24/7 and quickly became the Annie Hall of my 30s — it seemed as though I couldn’t go a day without quoting Marlin the Clownfish or Bruce the Great White, who belly-belted the titular line of this post (you recognized it, right?) before attempting… Read more »

Table Manners for Grown-ups

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Rituals.

Last week I was having coffee with a friend and we ran into a dad she knows from her kids’ school. Jenny, she said, This is Tom. He is the best dinner guest. I learned also that he is a writer. A film professor at a nearby university. But that’s not what stayed with me. When I saw him the… Read more »

What We Can Learn From a Cast Iron Pan

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Quick, Vegetarian.

I bought this Lodge pre-seasoned cast iron skillet about seven years ago after writing a story for Real Simple about pots and pans. The 8-inch skillet costs only 17 bucks, is naturally nonstick, moves easily from stovetop to oven, has been the site of untold thousands of pancake and French toast fry-ups, and, not least, is always good for conjuring up… Read more »

MVP of the Picky Eater Arsenal: The Waffle Iron

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Picky Eating, Vegetarian.

You wouldn’t think that a gooey, melty grilled cheese would be too hard a sell on a kid, right? You also wouldn’t think that a grilled cheese is nutritious enough to warrant Kasparov-ian strategizing from that kid’s parents. But the Phoebe-wants-this-Abby-wants-that routine can wear on me (have I mentioned that each daughter requires her own brand of salsa when served… Read more »

Tea Party Dinner

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Pork and Beef, Quick, Rituals, Sides, Salads, Soup.

This is not exactly a traditional tea party spread, I realize. What you’re looking at is all the makings of one of my daughters’ favorite dinners: The BLT with Avocado on whole wheat toast. The girls get to assemble right at the table and it’s almost always good for a giggle: Sandwiches for dinner? Mom, you’re craaazy! On this particular… Read more »

How I Buy Meat, by Alexandra Zissu

Posted by jenny & filed under Kitchenlightenment, Pork and Beef, Uncategorized.

For the next installment in DALS’s How I Buy Meat series, we hear from Alexandra Zissu, author of The Conscious Kitchen, and the “Ask an Organic Mom” columnist at TheDailyGreen.com. The goal of the HIBM series is to share exact meat-buying strategies and philosophies from food industry insiders, environmentalists, public health officials, etc. who also happen to be parents. Last… Read more »

Quack & Cheese

Posted by jenny & filed under Pasta, Picky Eating, Quick, Vegetarian.

Just want to clear one thing up: My family does not all sit down to the same dish every single night. We do most nights. But like every house that is inhabited by humans born in the 21st century, there is the constant chorus of requests (an awfully nice way to put it) from the royal diners. I want spaghetti not… Read more »

DALS Giveaway (+ Some News)

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner.

A friend of mine said she saw one of my “Make Dinner Not War” bumper stickers on a car in Brooklyn last week. I can’t tell you how happy this made me. I’ve sent out hundreds of them — as far away as Vancouver, and as close as up the block — and sometimes at night I lie there imagining… Read more »

2 All-Turkey Patties, Special Organic Sauce, Greens, Cheddar, on a Whole Wheat Bun

Posted by jenny & filed under Chicken and Turkey, Grilling, Pork and Beef, Quick, Rituals.

Phoebe was about four years old the first time she walked into a McDonald’s. It was somewhere in Virginia, an I-95 pitstop on our annual 800-mile drive down to South Carolina from New York. I remember her wide-eyeballing the playground outside, the Wizard of Oz doll display inside. Before she had taken a single bite of food, she turned to… Read more »

Announcing: Kitchenlightenment

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Kitchenlightenment.

Is it clear yet how I feel about the dinner table? I think it’s kind of a big deal. And I don’t mean that it’s a big deal in the way all those studies tell us it is. Because for every study claiming that kids who eat with their parents do better in school and are less likely to be… Read more »

Rigatoni with Mushrooms I’d Never Heard Of

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Pasta, Vegetarian.

Last week, as you may have noticed on my visual market post-mortem, I came home with a pile of cool-looking maitake mushrooms from the farmer’s market. I probably sound like I know what I’m talking about, but in truth, I had never heard of maitakes before I spied them on a vendor’s table next to the Lion’s Manes (another new-to-me variety)… Read more »

Would Anybody Like to Play a Game?

Posted by jenny & filed under Chicken and Turkey, Dinner, Pasta, Pork and Beef, Seafood, Vegetarian.

Now, granted this might be hard because it involves some knowledge of my cookbook shelves pre-June 10, 2010. But the game is this: Can anyone guess what new cookbook has been added to my kitchen library? I’ll give you a hint. It’s wedged in between Ruth Reichl and Marcella Hazan, a few doors down from Martha Stewart and Bugialli and… Read more »

Detox Soup

Posted by jenny & filed under Dinner, Picky Eating, Quick, Sides, Salads, Soup.

  Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been doing a lot of eating in my house lately — and while we always try to keep it relatively artery-friendly, we frequently hit stretches where this is impossible. This past week, for instance, there was the burgers-and-dogs barbecue at a friend’s house, there was the baked-good bacchanalia during the ballet recital… Read more »

Candy-Crusted Grilled Pork

Posted by Andy & filed under Dinner, Grilling, Pork and Beef, Posts by Andy.

Last year, we hosted Christmas dinner for the first time – the full deal, too, with both sets of grandparents, brothers, sisters, kids, cousins, and an insane puppy, all wilding through the house. We needed a meal that everyone would like and were determined not to serve chicken fingers and crinkle cut fries. We discussed various festive options — filet… Read more »