I am so behind on Thanksgiving this year. In a perfect world I would have been contemplating our menu for the past month, clipping recipes, testing new dishes, and piecing together elements to make a final, fabulous meal. That, my friends, is my idea of fun.
Alas, this is not a perfect world.
Newsflash: I have a sweet tooth. That is probably not a shocking revelation to anyone who knows me even in passing. I love me some baked goods.
I try to contain my love for all things dessert to the weekends, when I’ll try a new cake, cookie, pie, or cobbler recipe. I always aspire to give away or throw away the leftovers by Monday, and occasionally I even do it.
Two weeks ago something remarkable happened. After five years of providing three meals a day for her, my kindergarten-age daughter, Rosa, made lunch for me. And man, was it good: spicy barbecued shrimp and chicken, tangy coleslaw, and scrumptious corn muffins.
She’s a prodigy, right? A chip off the old block.
I love Mark Bittman. His cooking philosophy and flavor favorites really resonate with me. So I feel a tad guilty saying that sometimes his food politics articles turn me off… a little too preachy and reminiscent of Michael Pollan to feel fresh and original to me.
His Op-Ed in today’s Times, though, was terrific. He started by busting the myth that fast food is cheaper than “real”, home-cooked food. He continued on to dismantle the other common excuses for fast food’s popularity:
- fast food is cheaper on a per calorie basis
- people can’t afford real food
- people don’t have access to fresh food
- people don’t have time to cook (Actually, as Bittman notes, “The average American watches no less than 90 minutes of television a day.”)
I am ALWAYS looking for good chicken breast recipes. Many of my personal chef clients prefer chicken breasts to any other protein, and it’s a challenge to keep my rotation fresh.
Last spring the editors at Parents Magazine asked me to be a “dinner coach” for two area moms. Like most of us, these moms struggled with having the time and the ideas to put a fresh, healthy, and satisfying weeknight dinner on the table for their families day in and day out.
The recipes I developed for the Parents project appear in the September and October issues. But even more fun was working with the women directly and coming up with plans of attack to help them.
It’s back to school this week in NYC and my little Rosa’s first day of kindergarten on Thursday. She’s (moderately) excited to head back to school. Last year’s pre-K was essentially full-time, so she’s used to the schedule. One change this year: she’s asked us to pack her lunch every day.
I admit it, last year I took the easy way out. I packed her lunch the year prior to pre-K when she was at Montessori school and there was no other option. Last year, I gladly took the school up on their free lunch offer with nary a twinge of guilt.
Frankly, though, it came back to bite me.
When I was growing up the only way we ate pasta (really, the only way… at least until the early-mid ‘90s) was with tomato sauce.
So I still get a little internal thrill when I eat pasta with a different kind of sauce/topping. One of my favorites is my mother-in-law’s pasta with rapini and Italian sausages. OMG that is good (and a great weeknight meal…recipe to come in the next couple weeks).
But lately I’ve also been really into what I’m calling presto veggie pasta.
Ever since Rosa was a baby I would fantasize about the adventures we’d have together in New York City when she was older. We would hop on subways and explore hidden corners of Queens, have tea at a fancy hotel, and try fun new restaurants together. We’d be partners in crime, especially on the culinary front (at least until she started to hate me as a teenager). And we’ve already had a few small adventures together, including visiting Rosa’s beloved sushi conveyer belt at the Whole Foods on Second Avenue.
But today was a milestone — a true culinary adventure. We decided to eat lunch by sampling different pork buns in Chinatown. I set an itinerary, largely thanks to my awesome friend Nina, packed water bottles in my purse, and we took the F train into Manhattan where we walked from restaurant to restaurant. Rosa, who is five and a half, trekked around Chinatown like a pro without a single complaint.
Me, Rosa, and my mother-in-law
I just saw a headline from last year that declared that more women would rather visit the gynecologist than see their mother-in-law.
That’s harsh.
I’m a lucky girl: not only do I love my mother-in-law, she feeds me well too!
