For better or for worse, when I’m trying to decide what to have for dinner — especially a weekend dinner — I’m hardwired to start the brainstorming with the main dish. And for better or worse, the main dish is usually a pile of protein. On Saturday morning, as Andy and I wandered the farmer’s market, that was implicit in… Read more »
Continuing along this week’s theme of Things Jenny Cooked from Cookbooks While on Assignment, I’d like to present to you one last mind-blowing recipe: Joe Beddia’s Asparagus Pizza with Lemon and Spring Cream from his new book Pizza Camp. I don’t think it should come as a surprise to you that we eat a lot of pizza in our house…. Read more »
I’m beginning to think that my kids are never going to warm up to tofu. Though I guess I can’t blame them considering that I never served it until relatively recently…and also because I never really ate it myself, unless a little silky white cube in my miso soup accidentally slipped onto my spoon. In the last few years, though,… Read more »
For my birthday last month, I asked for two things: A Shake Shack picnic dinner at our local Hudson River waterfront park — a success by all accounts — and a family vegetable garden. By “vegetable garden” I did not mean one-clicking a few raised bed kits on Amazon and calling it a day. I meant that I wanted everyone in the… Read more »
For the last few weeks, when dinnertime rolls around I haven’t found myself where I like to be the most, namely sitting around a table with my family, downloading the day’s events over a plate of something quick and fresh. Instead, I’m sitting in a parking lot or on bleachers or walking around a track waiting for a practice to… Read more »
On vacation in South Carolina last week – one for the books I might add – the girls and I were riding our bikes over a bridge, the golden marsh stretching out for miles on both sides of us, Abby turned to me and said “What if for dinner tonight we turned pizza into a salad?” “You mean salad pizza?”… Read more »
So there’s news on the Dinner: A Love Story front: I am one step closer to world domination, having taken actual, physical, tax-deductible office space outside my house, roughly two miles from my front door, and two miles plus ten feet from my kitchen. I share a space with six other enterprising businessmen and women, all of whom you will… Read more »
Back in the fall, Christina Chaey, an editor at Bon Appetit presented me with a challenge: How would you stretch $30 at Whole Foods into five family dinners? My first reaction: HAHAHAHAHAHA! Can’t be done. (Whole Paycheck anyone?) My second: You know…this kind of use-it-or-lose-it exercise is always useful, no matter where I’m shopping. Plus, I had just returned from… Read more »
The other day, Abby came barging through the front door, shedding backpack and winter layers in big thwunks on the floor as she made her way to the kitchen, and asked what was for dinner. “Some kind of chicken and and some kind of broccoli,” I told her. “Oh mom, can it be the kind of broccoli that is super… Read more »
This post has been in my queue for six months now. I added it back in March, was when I was madly cooking my way through spring’s cookbook offerings so I could write about the best ones for The Book Review. As you may recall, the dinner table was getting a major shot of adrenaline during the testing phase. There were… Read more »
Who: The Family DALS What: Dumpling Dinner When: Wednesday Early Evening, Day 4 of a 6-Day, 90-Plus Degree Heat Wave Where: Somewhere in Suburban New York Why: Try them 6:30 I guess I should think about dinner. 6:31 Open fridge. Summer spinach, almost wilted, staring at me. Quick scan reveals heel of cabbage, bag of organic (yet still tasteless) shredded… Read more »
Two things today. First: Big huge apologies for all the ridiculous spamming action happening on your feedly feeds and on my homepage here lately. I’m not sure who or what is behind it, but one thing is clear: I have been hacked. And though I’m not exactly going to tell you it’s been fun, I will say that I’m touched… Read more »
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 »
I don’t know about your neck of the woods, but here in New York, the magnolia trees and forsythia are in full force, baseball has taken over my 1010 WINS sports report, and the market is slowly but surely becoming more plentiful in the asparagus department. In honor of that, I thought you might like a pizza recipe that takes… Read more »
Sl0w-cooker evangelists, maybe skip the next few sentences please, because I know how you feel completely betrayed whenever I say something with even the whiff of negativity about your beloved crock pots. And I get it: What’s there not to love about a meal that involves minimal prep and cooks itself all day long freeing you from your dinner shackles… Read more »
When I drew up a list of Pros and Cons way back when we were trying to decide to leave the city for the suburbs, the entry on the Con side, after “commute” but before “leave alllll my friends” was, naturally, hummus. As you likely know by now, we were moving from Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood bordered on the southern… Read more »
A lot of you checked in with me via instagram or email to see how we fared with our Big Blizzard Bo Ssam Dinner, and my answer is…well let’s just say I wouldn’t be too upset if the forecast called for another two feet of snow this weekend. It wasn’t our first attempt making Bo Ssam — Momofuku’s famous sweet,… Read more »
Am I the only one who finds it really irritating that New Year’s and all its attendant cayenne-spiked-lemon-water dieting resolutions happen to fall right in the dead of winter…precisely when the weather is demanding you soothe yourself every night with stewy braised meats over creamy polentas or potatoes? Polished off with the brownies that your kids made earlier that afternoon… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
