Guest-post from 10-year-old Abby: I am so sick of kale. Good thing I taught my family to like chard with this world famous dish. Well not world famous, but famous in my house. I love chard. The second I saw the rainbow-colored stems at farm camp growing in a garden with beautiful fluffy green leaves I knew that they would… Read more »
If I can’t get to Tulum anytime soon, at least I can make Hartwood‘s skirt steak with roasted plantains. (You can just tell from the photo that it’s going to be easy, right?) The Knork reminds me: it’s a fine line between ridiculous and genius. Rebecca Lee should be more famous than Pharrell. (No offense to Pharrell.) Last week, I heard her read the… Read more »
Marcella Hazan, who changed the way Americans think about Italian cooking, and who feels like family in our house even though we knew her only through recipes, died yesterday. She was 89. Here is a beautiful obituary in The New York Times. Here is a tribute I wrote this morning for Bon Appetit. Here is her famous Bolognese. Here is… Read more »
I’m pretty sure I’ve overused the phrase “I’m a purist” when it comes to burgers. That’s because Andy is in charge of them in our house and I’d go so far as to say “grills perfect burger” is right up there on the “Reasons to Keep Him Around” list with “can do ponytails” and “knows how to set the DVR… Read more »
Keeper. It’s one of the more beautiful words in the language of Dinner. (As in “Yes, dear, this pretzel chicken? It’s a keeper.”) But for anyone who’s cooking for a family, it’s also one of the more elusive words. Because families are usually made up of kids, and kids are usually made up of really weird genetic coding that makes… Read more »
Do you guys have that list? The I’ll-Deal-With-it-After-Vacation List? Earlier in August while scrambling to get everything organized before we dropped off the face of the earth for a while (real earth, not blog earth) I found myself keeping a mental list of all the things I’d just figure out once I got home. Taken on their own, in the… Read more »
If we were playing word association (since we just got back from vacay, there has been a lot of this game going on in our house) and we started with say, short ribs…Where would you go from there? “Winter?” “Braise?” “Dutch Oven?” “Anna?” I’ll tell you where I wouldn’t have gone: “Grilling.” Call me naive, but it never would’ve occurred to me to… Read more »
This is how a conversation went with my new friend Sarah, the first time I met her a few months ago: Sarah: I really love your blog, it gives me hope. Me: Hey, thanks. I’m so glad. Sarah: But I don’t cook from it. Me: Oh…you don’t? Sarah: No, I don’t cook. I can’t do anything in the kitchen. Me:… Read more »
It’s been so long since it snowed in our neck of the woods — and by “snowed” I don’t mean the one-inch dusting that disappears as soon as the sun rises, or the icy kind of snow that lands in October on trees with autumn leaves still clinging to them. (What was that?) The snow I’ve missed so much these… Read more »
I lied to Andy last Thursday. I called him from the car at about 5:00, which was two hours into a four-hour pick-up and drop-off marathon, and said I hadn’t had a second to think about dinner. I had thought about dinner. I had thought about it several dozen seconds that day — in the morning before I left for… Read more »
“I’m tired of pretending.” These were the words I heard from my husband while we sat by the edge of an closed-for-the-season swimming pool in South Carolina over the holiday break. The kids were getting dressed in the locker room after an hour on the tennis court. It was the last week of December and the sun was white in… Read more »
I realize I’m not going to win any awards from the American Heart Association with this statement, but you pretty much can’t go wrong when you make a pizza from a leftover charcuterie plate. You know — the cured meat and cheese platter you put together for your holiday party that you kept buying more for because you were positive… Read more »
Five days after Hurricane Sandy pillaged the Eastern Seaboard, I was on the phone with my Dad. Neither of us had our power or heat back yet, so we were both trying to wrap up the conversation quickly to conserve our cellphone batteries. The sun was going down and I was running down a mental list of which friend’s… Read more »
I’d like to introduce you to a new word: DALSian. It is defined as follows: [DAHLS‘-ee-uhn] adj – used to describe a recipe displaying hallmarks of blog Dinner: A Love Story; simple, fresh, un-intimidating, frequently strategy-driven and generally requiring key ingredients found in non-fetishy food person’s pantry. Naturally, I’d like to think every recipe on DALS is DALSian, but there… Read more »
I’m just going to ask you point blank: Do you know about marinating? Do you know how marinating has the power to change your dinnertime? (Which is to say, of course, your life?) Do you know that marinating can be a working parent’s best friend?…That I, Jenny Rosenstrach, take thee marinating to be my lawful wedded…. Yes, I’m sure there’s… Read more »
From the mailbox: Dear Jenny, About a month ago we were having chili for dinner. Our son hates chili. All types. Tomato, white bean chicken, we have battled over it all. I have pushed, he has pursed (his lips tightly). I have threatened (which I know is not the way to promote healthy attitudes toward food), he has cried (I’m… Read more »
I should probably be stripped of my food blogging rights for telling you to do anything with summer corn besides eat it on the cob with a little salt and butter, but you know I can’t resist the urge to share the discovery of a new deconstructible dinner. Last week was not the first time we’ve eaten this corn, chicken… Read more »
I remember this vividly. When I was six years old, I was in the basement of our house on Aldenham Lane, playing with my dad. Our basement was the kind of basement I feel bad that my kids don’t have today – a concrete floor, an old wooden workbench, high metal shelves sagging with caulk and stains and Maxwell House… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
