In my first book, Dinner: A Love Story, I wrote a letter to my former, newly engaged self, walking her through a wedding registry and advising on the items that would earn their keep and the ones that would end up selling for two bucks at a future garage sale. It was satisfying to read the round-up again a decade later because… Read more »
We had a few families over for dinner this past weekend, and in the days leading up to it, when they inevitably asked “What can I bring?” I told them all the same thing: dessert. There would be ten kids in all, and I figured it would be fun to have an all-out, sugar-infused, Thanksgiving-style bacchanalia. Everyone marched in with… Read more »
Just a quick post to point you towards this fun read from the folks at Epicurious. It’s the understatement of the year to say I’m honored to be on any list that includes Marcella Hazan, Famous Amos, and Joan Didion. (Yes! Joan Didion!) Back to regularly scheduled programming tomorrow. (And P.S. It reminded me that my house needs to get… 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 »
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 »
Thank you to everyone who noticed that Dinner: A Love Story was down all day Friday. It was frustrating, but the sheer number of “I can’t log on!” messages I received through social media channels warmed my heart. (They read me! They really do!) In addition to the nightmarishly long phone conversations I had to have with my web host,… Read more »
I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I started obsessing — maybe it was around the time both of my girls were fully enrolled in middle school, which was right about the time the feeling of clutching their hands on the way to the elementary school bus stop began to fade, no matter how hard I tried to conjure it. I… Read more »
Last week I was on the N train between 42nd Street and 34th street when I got a text from my friend and stylist extraordinaire Victoria. (It’s still surprising to me that I can get a signal in those deep, dark tunnels.) She wrote “Go to Prop Workshop on 30th and Broadway.” She knew I was looking for plates to… Read more »
How do you write a to-do list? If you’re like me, you’re doing it all wrong. There’s a story in Charles Duhigg’s new book on productivity, Smarter, Faster, Better about the first bullet train, the train invented in 1950s Japan that ran between Tokyo and Osaka, at a then unheard-of speed of 120 miles per hour. That train, and the others that… Read more »
“Is there any practice less selfish any time less wasted than preparing something delicious and nourishing for the people you love?” – Michael Pollan, from his new Netflix 4-part series Cooked. (Available February 19.) Who’s watching with me? Here’s the official trailer…
“The theme I revisit more than any other is families. Most of what we learn about food happens when we are children – when we’re sitting at the kitchen table (if your family is lucky enough to have one), being fed. Every bite is a memory, and the most powerful memories are the first ones. At this table, we are… Read more »
What we’re reading and eating this week: How Ample Hills, a true mom-and-pop ice cream shop, landed an endorsement deal with freaking Star Wars! (Not to mix movie metaphors but…If You Build it They Will Come) Baked potato latkes or shredded potato latkes? I don’t need a whole lot of convincing one way or the other. At one point last week, Phoebe, Abby,… Read more »
When you finished Catcher in the Rye as a teenager, did you feel like someone finally understood your misunderstood self…OR were you captivated by Holden Caulfield’s go-to restaurant order: “a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted milk?” When you read (or saw) Silence of the Lambs, were you amused by Hannibal Lecter’s famous line — “I ate his liver with some… Read more »
A million years ago, when I showed up at the fancy department store with a clipboard to register for our wedding, I very religiously recorded SKU numbers for all the shiny cooking gear before me, dreaming of the day in the not-so-distant future that these items would replace our dusty old cooking gear. Nowadays, I put a premium on that… Read more »
If you are a human being with human friends, chances are you frequently find yourself in the kitchen, scratching your head saying things like “I wish there was something I could do.” When we’re lucky, this can mean a new baby — What can I do to help you get some rest? But when we’re not so lucky, it means… Read more »
I know — it seems like this is all I talk about anymore, but I wanted to direct your attention to a special report airing on Anderson Cooper tonight. It’s called #Being13: Inside the Secret World of Teens. Academics and researchers tracked hundreds of eighth graders through their social media accounts over a two-year period to find out what exactly… Read more »
Sherry Turkle, an MIT professor who has been researching the effect of technology on relationships and behavior for thirty years, first got my attention a few years ago when her book Alone Together was published. If our kids are always tethered to their devices, she said in one interview (I’m paraphrasing), if they don’t know how to be alone with… Read more »
What we’re reading and eating this week: “I quit smoking and I quit drinking…all I have to look forward to is dinner.” David Sedaris on the (sometimes pants-less) family meal. Why Family Dinner? A Review! Mint, basil, cilantro, pork: This summery main is so up my alley. Another entry in the “Are We Pushing Our Kids Too Hard?” category. Why use… Read more »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
