I’m so pleased to feature Uri Scheft in my ongoing DALS family ritual series. You might know Scheft as the man behind cult-favorite Breads Bakery in New York (and Lehamim in Tel Aviv), or because you were smart and listened to me last year when I demanded you mail-order his world-famous chocolate babka. But if you didn’t, fear not, you have… Read more »
Over the past few months, I’ve noticed an uptick in compliments aimed in the direction of my salads, even when they are of the run-of-the-mill leaf-and-tomato variety. “What is in this?” My friend Todd asked early on in the summer, referring to his bountiful helping of greens. “I need the recipe for this,” my neighbor (and genius filmmaker) Ed said,… Read more »
Look what showed up on my doorstep yesterday! To those of you who have pre-ordered How to Celebrate Everything 1) THANK YOU FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY FULL AND HAPPY HEART and 2) It should be arriving on your doorstep in a little over a week. (Had I known my advance delivery was arriving, I would’ve gotten a pedicure.) What else I’m reading… Read more »
In accordance with the Louis CK mantra of “It’s hard to be sad and useful at the same time,” I decided that instead of mourning summer’s end, I’d channel my woes* into something productive, namely, a Weekly Meal Plan that should help you get back into the lunch-making, shoe-tying, carpool-dreading, form-signing (form-forgetting?) crazy-making back-to-school routine. The line-up is below — as usual,… Read more »
Though my mother is 100% Italian and an excellent cook, we did not have that kind of kitchen relationship that you read about in cookbooks with the word “nonna” in the title. She was too busy going to law school at night — and then, later, racking up the billable hours — to stand at the stovetop and tell me… Read more »
Our annual trip to South Carolina has been the textbook definition of vacation. There are pools. There are beaches. There is kayaking and backhand-winner-ing and oyster shoveling. There is napping in the big chair on the patio, book splayed across chest. There is Making of a Murderer binge-watching. (OMG OMG OMG!) There is gin-and-tonic-ing. There is Cinnamon-Frosted-Pop-Tart-ing. There is running on… Read more »
Here on DALS, veteran readers might have guessed by now, I’ve attempted to solve a whole range of dinner quandaries, from the quick-and-dirty meals you need in your arsenal on a Tuesday night, to the turkey you need in the center of the table on Thanksgiving. Amazingly, though, in the nearly 950 (!) posts I’ve written here, I’ve never once… Read more »
In his Bon Appetit column this month, dessert guru and Superiority Burger founder, Brooks Headley coined a phrase that I can’t stop thinking about: Good Anxiety. “The impermanence of seasonal produce is one of the joys of cooking,” he wrote. “It gets the blood pumping. It triggers the good anxiety.” It’s exactly the sentiment I experience when I wander the… Read more »
We think of it as the Eleventh Commandment: When entertaining, thou shall not make food that requires too much time away from your guests. And though it’s easy to forget this when the weather is warm and the parties move outside and the grill is up and running, the rule still applies. We learned this the hard way that one… Read more »
Available at: Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound “I have been an ardent fan of Jenny Rosenstrach’s beautiful writing for years. I always know that every word of her books will be something to savor, and How to Celebrate Everything will strike a chord with anyone who enjoys family, friends, and delicious food.”—Ree Drummond, New York Times bestselling author of The Pioneer Woman… Read more »
A few weeks ago, under the category of “Nice Work if You Can Get it,” I was tasked with tracking down the best cookbooks of the spring for the Times. Those of you who made your way through that round-up (bless you, it was a lot), might remember one of the stand-outs: Tasting Rome, by Katie Parla and Kristina Gill,… Read more »
I’m not going to deliver my annual monologue on how heaviness and happiness so uniquely join forces in June. Moving on, moving up, stepping up, growing up, graduating, saying goodbye again and again, you know the drill. In fact, I think I’ve come to appreciate the amped up end-of-the-school-year craziness (I laughed out loud at this parent’s lament) because it… Read more »
I’m so excited to write these words: You are looking at my next book, How to Celebrate Everything, which will be published on September 20, 2016. I know I’m prone to overstatement, but when I say this is the most meaningful project I’ve ever worked on, I’m not lying. (And yes, I realize I’m saying this as somebody who can… Read more »
Eric Ripert’s accomplishments are endless and impressive: Michelin-starred chef at New York’s Le Bernardin. Longtime TV host of PBS’s “Avec Eric.” Author of several award-winning cookbooks, and, just this month, author of a riveting coming-of-age memoir, 32 Yolks. (Subtitle: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line) But for our purposes today, he’s a father, and like a lot of parents… 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 keep asking everyone: Have you seen rhubarb at the market yet? Have you? Have you? It’s not even that I love the stuff so much, it’s more that I love what rhubarb signifies: Spring. Farmer’s markets. Fresh herby salads. But yes, it does help that I haven’t been able to get the idea of a sweet and sour rhubarb… Read more »
It was only Tuesday, so in theory, there should’ve been options when I opened the refrigerator to figure out dinner. Didn’t we just go shopping, like, yesterday? At this point in my life, I’m no longer surprised to see Phoebe eat her way through a gigantic container of pineapple chunks before we’ve even finished unpacking groceries. But dinner staples? That’s… 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 »
Welcome! I’m Jenny, author of Dinner: A Love Story and The Weekday Vegetarians More
