Category: cooking with kids
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Whole Grain Pumpkin Bread & Parenting Pre-teens
My bedroom door swings open. “Jamie, please knock next time,” my husband tells our 12 1/2 year old. A shrug. “So, you want to know something weird?” This is one of Jamie’s lead-ins. He appears most nights, often remembering to knock, after the other kids are asleep. Sometimes he has a specific question (“Can you… Read more
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Pumpkin Pudding (Persian Halwa) & Falling in Love
I might be falling in love. Never met the person, never will. And yet. The mix tapes! I was always a sucker for a great mix and my basement can prove it – boxes of cassettes titled “Driving Mix ’92” or “Is She Really Going Out with Him?” or the ambiguous “Let’s See.” There are… Read more
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Tomato-Cheddar Cornmeal Crust Tart & Hurricane Pie
Q: What happens when you visit the in-laws for vacation but the East Coast shuts down because of Irene*? A: You come home with four kids and a hairy beast and a soggy husband and scrounge. The shelves look like Soviet markets circa 1982 or my older brother’s fridge that first year out of college… Read more
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Farmer’s Market Gazpacho (Raw-Vegan) & Perspective
“Are you making sauce?” Julia asks. “It’s actually soup,” I say. “Actually, it’s ketchup,” Will says. He’s 4 and everything is better with ketchup. “It’s soup.” “The cold one?” Julia raises her eyebrows while I nod. “It still looks like sauce. You could use it as sauce.” And thus, the gazpacho sauce was borne. We… Read more
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Apricot-Ginger Chocolate Chip Scones & Teaching Small
“Uh, Mom? How do you close an ironing board?” This, from Jamie, age 12. I remember how this action baffled me as a kid. You press where? And do what? Perhaps I was or still am challenged by the mechanics. Or maybe no one showed me. I remember my mother teaching me how to iron… Read more
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Labneh (Middle Eastern Yogurt Dip) & Loving Summer
Fall was always my favorite season. Maybe it will be again but when I became a parent I realized the freedom of summer. Do my kids miss homework? They do not but I believe I miss it even less than they do. I fit my work in where I can all year-round but in… Read more
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Semi-Sweet Breakfast Loaf with Carrots and Zucchini & A Threeway
I’m the kind of baker who likes the load a bunch of foodstuffs in a bowl and see what happens. This is the School of Anti-Baking. Sometimes this results in oven explosions or brownies that resemble moose turds but most of the time I have enough of the science down to have it work. “What’re… Read more
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Cold Cucumber Soup with Peas & Imagination
4-year-old Will and 12-year-old Jamie and I rode the T into downtown Boston this weekend. The journey, as they say, was the destination. Will loves trains, the slurring scenery, the tickets, the immovable seats, the automatic doors. We exited at the park and went for a ride on the Swan Boats. “There’s a guy on… Read more
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Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies & Lost & Found
Have I mentioned that I love a good yard sale? That flea markets are second only to food and farmer’s markets for me? History, humor, treasures all in one place. This spring my son Daniel and I went to a flea market fundraiser at his school. He sorted through albums (“I mean, what would you… Read more
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Frozen Banana Pops & My Slutty Past
I used to get around a little. One time here, another there. Always the dream of what the next guy could do, how he could fulfill my desires. No, not that way! I was…a hair slut. My friend, Jen, was a jean whore. She’d constantly covet the jeans I wore, or the jeans on that… Read more
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Cottage Blueberry Crumb Cake & Broken Hearts
My 12-year-old holds a heart in his hands. “Do you like the blue?” he asks. We’re in Venice, a place known for glass beads and tiny fragile animals. I nod. Jamie has always associated me with blue as he knows it’s my favorite color. “Who is the necklace for?” Jamie’s dad asks him and Jamie… Read more
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Breadcrumb Flounder & Learning to Cook
“How do you roast a chicken?” my housemate asked. We were living in a small house on the outskirts of Oxford, England, commuting to tutorials by bike or foot or, in my case, used Vespa. I had an enormous helmet that made me look like a misshapen bee or person from the future and yet… Read more
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Stone Fruit Crumble with Shortbread Topping & The Perfect Chair
For my father’s birthday, he asked for a fruit dessert. This is partly because he has always loved tarte tatin and other sugared fruits but also because he knows I like to cook with what’s available. Right now, we have cherries, small green sour plums that shine bright as limes when rubbed on your shirt… Read more
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Oven S’mores & A Hairy Beast
Inevitably, the subject of pets comes up at various points – college, for example, or pre-school parent chit chat or little league chit chat or pediatrician appointments. “Any pets?” “Yes, a dog.” “Oh, we want one but my husband’s allergic/my kids won’t take care of it/we don’t have the space/I like cats.” “We have a… Read more
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Chocolate Pudding Cake & A Free Cup of Coffee
I go through phases of buying coffee. Most of the time, I’m too frugal to treat myself to a 3$ misto and it’s more convenient just to set the pot up the night before at home. This year, during TYOTS, eating became a real chore for me. So did making anything, including coffee. Sometimes I… Read more