What I Learned From Dinner: A Love Story

Recently, I read Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstarch.  It had been lauded by some fellow bloggers and I snatched it up when I saw it at our local library. The book itself is a really lovely combination of memoir, cookbook, and meditation on what it means to be a family with a hectic life. Rosenstarch is judgment free and she chronicles her journey from a single woman with a busy career who ate a lot of takeout to a wife and mom of two who cooks dinner for her family every evening. I loved reading along as she tried out beloved family recipes, figured out how to cook on nights when she and her husband both got home late, and dealt with having picky toddler eaters.

While I loved reading the story, the recipes didn't do too much for me. At first this made me frustrated, but then I realized what it meant. Many of the recipes in the book are on the simpler side, like egg dishes or four ways to customize a homemade pizza dough recipe. I finally figured out that the recipes didn't grab me because I had grown as a cook.

I honestly had to push myself to write those words. I'm a cook. I'm someone who cooks (and bakes) for our family most nights. I bring homemade food to parties and events. I make cookies and breads that I made from scratch to people who are sick or going through tough times. But somehow I still have trouble with the concept. I never grew up as one of those kids who helps out in the kitchen. Husband and I got married when I was 20 and D was born not long after that. I cooked because someone had to and my schedule was more forgiving than my husband's.

That's not to say that there haven't been bumps along the way. I will forever laugh at the time when I didn't understand what a clove of garlic was and added an entire bulb to our salad. My lovely husband was doing his best to eat through the pain when I took my first bite, spat it out, and yelled "Why are you eating that?!?"

Now I am comfortable making (or at least trying) almost anything. I tend to shy away from recipes that call for obscure ingredients that I will never use again, but anything else is fair game. I bake homemade bread every week or two and I've made seafood a few times. I've made gnocchi from scratch.

                     

I've made pies with a homemade crust. I have a go-to macaroni and cheese recipe and sometimes I put that delicious cheesy pasta inside of portabella mushroom caps, because I can. 

So I want to thank Jenny Rosenstarch and Dinner: A Love Story for making me realize that I can cook. I might even be a good cook. Just don't look at my disaster of a kitchen after dinner, ok?

Cookbook Thoughts: The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

Every few months, I feel stuck in a rut. It seems like I am just recycling the same meals, so I start looking for new ideas. I usually turn to the internet, but this time I decided to pick up some cookbooks from the library.

I am a frequent cook and I enjoy doing it. Cleaning up and doing dishes is a different story. I'm usually pretty comfortable tackling a new recipe, but I try to keep in mind that I am cooking for myself, two small children, and a hubby with some dietary restrictions. Not every recipe will work for us. It's also very difficult to make a dinner with 72 steps when you have a toddler clinging to your leg and a first grader shouting for help with his homework.

The first cookbook I checked out from the library was Deb Perelman's The Smitten Kitchen. I have used many recipes from her blog and I thought this would be a good pick for our family. Perelman admits that she started cooking (and blogging about it) not because she attended cooking school in Italy or came from a proud tradition of chefs. Instead, she started cooking because she was picky. In fact, she calls herself "an obsessive home cook."

She shares pictures of her tiny New York City kitchen and writes about the quest of every home cook - "Will the time and effort of making this dish be worth it?" There are even sections about the items you must have in your kitchen and how to throw a dinner party that won't make you hate cooking altogether

The Smitten Kitchen is a beautiful book. It's one of those cookbooks that you might just leave on your coffee table because it's too beautiful to put up on a kitchen shelf. I meant to take lots of pictures before I took it back to the library, but I forgot. Whoops. Trust me when I say that the photos are gorgeous and I really appreciated that Perelman includes photos of the steps instead of just one of the final product. (See these pictures from her website for a Carrot Graham Layer Cake recipe.)

              

             


The book is divided into breakfast; salads; sandwiches, tarts, and pizzas; vegetarian main dishes; main dishes with seafood and meat; sweets; and party snacks and drinks. Each recipe gets an introduction as Perelman describes her love for a certain food or the experience that led her to experiment in the kitchen.

I'm especially excited to make a marbled pumpkin gingersnap tart and the cheddar swirl breakfast buns.



What cookbooks are you using lately?