Smoky Saucy Chickpeas with Spinach
We were eating dinner with friends on Friday, and their son sighed and said, “I love beans. If I could, I’d eat beans every night.” I watched Ben and Birdy to see if their pleasant good natures would crack open to emit a geyser of steaming culinary rage and boredom: “Are you crazy? We eat beans [...]
Chile Tortilla Eggbake
Michael’s brother Keith used to live in Denver, and we used to visit him and eat a lot: mostly at the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant, where the food was outrageous and the cook treated Keith like a beloved and very small child in need of feeding–but also at the homes of his wonderful friends, [...]
Yeasted Waffles
I feel a little bad to post this waffle recipe today because a) It’s Monday, and the next luxurious, communal weekend breakfast feels years away, b) I am aware that this column has turned into something of a carb-fest, c) there’s not a very good New-Year’s-resolution type of application here (More waffles in 2011!), and [...]
Perfect Oatmeal Cookies
You know when your kids have been sick, except then it’s day three of being home from school and they’re up and about, munching crackers and introducing the Pretty Ponies to the Playmobil Vikings, so you kind of forget they’re sick, only then you hear a terrible keening wail and when you run upstairs to [...]
Macaroni and Cheese
Sometimes you need to offer a comforting dinner. For example, say baby Anna comes to visit you on the banks of plum creek and she tears up all the paper dolls so you tell Laura to let her play with Charlotte, her beloved rag doll, only then Anna doesn’t want to give Charlotte up, and [...]
Chocolate Pudding
A friend of mine once appeared especially exhausted during an afternoon play date when the children were babies, and when I asked about it, she said, “Oh, yeah–I stayed up after the kids went to sleep to make goldfish crackers.” And then she pointed to a bowl of what looked really, exactly, like Pepperidge Farms [...]
Finger-licking Ribs
Yes, I am the kind of person who plies you with eggs and hummus for weeks on end in my cheap, de-facto vegetarian way, and then throws you this pricey, carnivorous curve ball. That’s how it is for me in the duck-duck-goose of dinner preparations. Sometimes the fact of an early June Friday evening with [...]
Dad’s Spaghetti Sauce
Oh, fiction writers, you are so lucky. You can turn your dreadful old boyfriend, Dan–the one who hitchhiked to Taos every other minute to play frisbee–into your novel’s egomaniacal hacky-sacking “Stan” who train hops to Santa Fe. And all you have to do is add one of those These are fictional characters dredged from the brilliant [...]
Crunchy Oven Fries
Ben is ten, and he asks many questions that begin this way: “If you had limitless wishes…” What would you wish for first? (Justice.) How many wishes do you think it would be before you wished that poop didn’t smell bad? (Never. Poop smells bad so we’ll stay away from it, which helps keep us [...]
Cranberry Sauce
I am a great admirer of gelled and gelatinous things–gummy worms, Jell-o salad, even yucky aspic–so believe me, I love the sight of that can-shaped jiggle of ridged ruby tartness unmolded onto a plate. I like the way it slices up into firm, cloudy-red disks; I like the way the flavor is always exactly how [...]