Dinner: A Love Story

by Jenny Rosenstrach

  Preheat the oven to 425°F. Combine 3 cups whole small potatoes and 1 onion (chopped in large chunks) in a large baking dish and toss with 1 tablespoon olive oil, the leaves from 4 sprigs of fresh thyme, salt, and pepper.

  Place 4 sweet Italian pork sausages on top of vegetables. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes, until sausage is brown on top. Using tongs, flip over the sausage and bake for 10 more minutes.

  Meanwhile, chop 2 Granny Smith apples (unpeeled) and toss with a little more olive oil, salt, and pepper. Scatter the apples around the sausage, drizzle 2 tablespoons cider vinegar over the whole dish, and bake for 5 more minutes. Serve with dollops of spicy brown or Dijon mustard.

  And last, one more duty, this time for the Cook. When you have made dinner for seven straight nights, as well as replenished the toilet paper in both bathrooms, hung up the coats that were left on the bench, dragged the recycling bins to the curb, picked up the kids’ wet towels off the bathroom floor, and all those other small tasks that can easily go unnoticed (read: unappreciated), and you feel resentment creeping into your bloodstream, try to remind yourself of the fact that it’s never once occurred to you to cut the kids’ fingernails or replace the filters in the AC unit or sweep the strewn Cheerios from under the table after breakfast or drain all that weird rusty water out of the boiler in the basement. (What is that stuff?) Okay, fine, that’s my situation. But you get the idea.

  January 2003

  It Started with an Egg

  When Phoebe was little and just starting out on finger foods, we fed her chicken nuggets as a matter of course. Not those additive-free naked nuggets by the Blue Ribbon guys or the organic kind you can find at Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s and just about anywhere else these days, but the kind of nugget shaped like dinosaurs. The kind that listed “chicken” fifth or sixth in the ingredient list, behind things like magnesium oxide and ferrous sulfate. The kind that tasted like sawdust. In 2002, our closest supermarket was Key Food on Montague Street in Brooklyn. And those were the kinds of chicken nuggets that Key Food sold. Nothing natural, nothing organic, nothing real. So that was the chicken we brought back to our house, cut up into microscopic bites, and placed before Phoebe on her high chair tray. I don’t know if this makes things better or worse, but we reached for those nuggets with conviction. We grew up with Tyson and Perdue on our dinner tables—why wouldn’t we do the same for our kids? It didn’t occur to us to question this. Especially since Phoebe had such a varied diet—the notes in her baby book say her favorite foods were Cheerios, strawberries, sweet potatoes, broccoli, turkey, pancakes, pasta shells, any kind of bread, peanut butter, and American cheese. If I had looked at the label on my packet of American cheese, I might’ve noticed that there was no cheese listed in the ingredients, but why would I look at the label for any other reason than calorie counting? Why would anyone?

  This was four years before Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma was published, before it became mainstream to question everything on our plates—what was in it and how it got there. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser’s skewering of the industrialized food industry, had been out since 2001, but I didn’t get around to reading it until after Abby was born three years later. Though I hardly had time for pleasure reading, I think the real reason I let the book collect dust on my nightstand was because I wasn’t ready to hear the message. (Plus, I rationalized, it was about fast food like McDonald’s, not about the food I bought at Key Food, right?) And yes, while it’s true that the Real Food movement, the Organic Movement, and the Slow Food movement had all been around for quite some time (not to mention that the year I was born, 1971, marked the opening of a small restaurant in Berkeley called Chez Panisse) I was not a card-carrying member of any of them.

  But the food editor at Real Simple was. Her name was Jane and I worked with her very closely. She had a sweet set-up—she lived on a farm in Vermont and spent two days a week in our office. She raised organic chickens—long before anyone with a tattoo and a Williamsburg lease was raising organic chickens. In her spare time, she ran a program in her son’s school teaching children about where food comes from. “I want them to learn that an apple doesn’t grow in the supermarket,” she told me. My first thought: Why, exactly, is that important to know?

  One day she brought me a dozen eggs from her farm. I was delighted and took them home to fry up for a weekend breakfast. Then I cracked one open. The yolk of this egg was yellow, like really yellow—orangey gold almost. It was not the customary pale color I was used to finding when I broke open my supermarket eggs. And I have to say—it terrified me. I thought something was wrong. I showed it to Andy.

  “Do you think this egg looks okay?” I asked.

  “Oh yeeeaaaeah, baby! That’s what an egg should look like! Fry it up!”

  This was 2002. Which means, the first time I tasted what an egg is supposed to really taste like—that is a real, fresh, eggy, organic egg—I was thirty-one years old. Thirty-one! And I had loved eggs my entire life. But these farm-fresh organic ones seemed to deserve a food category unto themselves—they were rich and flavorful and gorgeous, and came in all different colors and sizes. Which made a lot of sense—why hadn’t I ever questioned the fact that every single egg from Key Food looked exactly the same?

  Those eggs and that question busted open the door of a whole new world for us. Because once we asked that, the next logical question was: What other kitchen basics could be upgraded and change my life the way my organic eggs had? Which led to: What is the difference between all-natural and organic? And soon after: What exactly were those nuggets we were feeding Phoebe? Was there any actual yogurt in the Go-gurt? Should I worry that I can’t pronounce five of the seven ingredients in our Jif peanut butter? (Related: Was life without Jif peanut butter a life worth living?)

  But most important: Once I discovered the answers to all these questions, how was I supposed to apply that information to the family dinner table?

  One of the great things about working at Real Simple was that whenever I had questions like these, I had an expert at my fingertips to help me figure out the answers. It stood to reason that if Jane was the one to send me out into this new land with its strange new language—cage-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free, free-range, naturally raised, grass-fed, humanely raised—she was certainly going to be the one to guide me through it, too. Soon after Jane brought me my eggs, we started working on a story together called “Upgrade Your Pantry.” We wanted to tell readers about small tweaks they could make to their shopping list that would make almost everything they cooked taste better. Not surprisingly, a lot of products Jane recommended were organic, all-natural, and unprocessed foods. She recommended buying peanut butter that was made with two ingredients: peanuts and salt. She advised replacing iodized table salt with cleaner-tasting kosher or sea salt. She recommended cooking with real organic butter every now and then, instead of cooking with light butter (made with chemicals) all the time. She told me that real Parmesan cheese came from one region of Italy and had “Parmigiano Reggiano” stamped on the rind—anything else, namely the powdery stuff that came in the green cans, was inferior tasting and not authentic. She also, of course, recommended buying organic eggs. The flavor, she wrote in the story, is “full, rich, and downright eggy.”

  I edited a lot of stories at Real Simple, but that one, more than any other, would have the most lasting effect on the way I cooked and thought about food. I reworked my weekly shopping list (organized by aisle, a classic Real Simple move) to reflect what I had learned and I barely noticed that I had officially launched Phase One of our home’s own private food revolution.

  Come to think of it, we barely noticed Phase Two either: Identify the foods our family ate all the time—chicken, peanut butter, yogurt, milk, strawberries, and bananas—and try to keep those clean. With these products, whenever possible we avoided pesticides, hormones, additives, and anything labeled with unpronounceable ingredients. We had absolutely no problem transitioning away from store-bought chicken
nuggets to homemade breaded chicken cutlets (see Grandma Jody’s Chicken), especially when we took pains to make them extra crispy. For peanut butter, we began the transition by mixing Jif with organic, then gradually increasing the amount of natural until Jif was completely out of the equation. And since there was no going back to nonorganic eggs after tasting the real deal, that was an easy switch as well.

  Phase Three (shop at the farmers’ market as often as possible) and Four (know the provenance of your meat) would come in the next five or six years—a period where the conversation about where our food was coming from was growing too loud to ignore. And it wasn’t until fairly recently that we could say our family kitchen was stocked with mostly wholesome, unprocessed ingredients. Unless you count the Mallomars in the fall. And Flav-or-Ices in the summer. And if there is no Gatorade in the refrigerator for Andy after he runs in the morning, I fear he might short-circuit. In other words, we’ve been mostly good. And so far, that’s been good enough.

  The egg epiphany was particularly timely because during this phase of parenting—when we’d want to put together a quick healthy meal for two as soon as the baby went to sleep—egg-based dinners were in heavy rotation.

  Ricotta and Chard Omelet

  Serves 2 Total time: 15 minutes

  3 eggs

  Dash of water

  Salt and pepper

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  2 tablespoons butter

  1 garlic clove, halved

  Handful of Swiss chard leaves, washed, stemmed, and chopped into small pieces

  3 large dollops ricotta

  In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, water, and salt and pepper. Add the oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter to a large cast-iron or nonstick skillet over medium heat. Swirl around the garlic halves and remove them before they brown. (This gives the oil a quick garlic infusion.)

  Add a handful of the Swiss chard to the skillet and cook until slightly wilted, about 2 minutes. Remove the Swiss chard from the skillet and set aside.

  Melt the remaining tablespoon of butter in the skillet and add the egg mixture to it, tilting the pan to spread evenly. Cook for about 1 minute and then spoon the ricotta and a few cooked chard leaves into the center in a row. (The egg on top should still look a little runny.) Fold one-third of the omelet over the fillings and then fold the other side on top. Cook another 1 to 2 minutes and slide onto a plate. Split in half and serve with any extra chard.

  Dinnertime Breakfast Burritos

  Serves 2 Total time: 15 minutes

  2 8-inch whole wheat tortillas

  1 15-ounce can black beans, rinsed and drained

  1 bay leaf

  1 avocado, chopped

  Handful of shredded sharp cheddar cheese

  Handful of cilantro, chopped

  Sour cream

  Salsa

  3 eggs

  Salt and pepper to taste

  4 to 5 dots of cream cheese (optional)

  Glug of olive oil

  1 tablespoon butter

  Hot sauce (optional)

  Preheat the oven to 300°F.

  Wrap the tortillas in foil and place in the oven.

  Heat the black beans in a small saucepan with a bay leaf. Set out the avocado, cheddar, cilantro, sour cream, and salsa.

  Whisk together the eggs, a dash of water, and the salt and pepper. Add dots of cream cheese if you have it. (I find this makes them fluffy.)

  Add the oil and butter to a large cast-iron or nonstick skillet that has been set over medium-low heat. Add the eggs and scramble until the cream cheese melts into them and they reach desired consistency. (I like mine slightly wet.)

  Top each warmed tortilla with eggs, hot sauce (optional), and desired toppings. Wrap and serve.

  Spinach Tomato, and Feta Frittata

  Total time: 25 minutes

  1 tablespoon olive oil

  2 tablespoons chopped onions or shallots

  Salt and pepper to taste

  Handful of fingerling potatoes, thinly sliced into “coins” like thick potato chips (about ½ cup)

  8 to 10 grape tomatoes, chopped

  1 garlic clove, minced

  2 cups washed and roughly chopped fresh spinach

  4 eggs

  1/3 cup crumbled feta, plus more for sprinkling on top

  1 tablespoon chopped fresh herbs, such as parsley or chives

  Preheat the broiler. In a cast-iron (or ovenproof) skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add onions and salt and pepper and cook about 1 minute.

  Push onions to the side of the pan and add the potatoes in a single layer. Cook another 5 minutes, until the potatoes are crispy and mostly cooked through. Add tomatoes and cook, stirring for 1 minute. Add the spinach to the pan and stir until the leaves wilt.

  Whisk together the eggs, cheese, and herbs in a small bowl. Pour the egg mixture into the pan and stir lightly to make sure the spinach and potatoes are evenly distributed.

  Let cook without stirring for about 2 minutes. When eggs are mostly cooked around the edges, sprinkle more cheese on top and transfer to the oven. Broil for 1 to 2 minutes, until eggs are cooked on top and cheese is slightly golden. Serve cut into pizza-like wedges.

  March-August 2003

  Sunday Shopping Is the New Date Night

  I think there are two kinds of people in this world: the kind who would bestow sainthood upon the founder of Fresh Direct and the kind who enjoy shopping for food—whether it’s at a summer market in Aix-en-Provence or the Stop & Shop on Main Street. In case you couldn’t guess by now, Andy and I fall into the second category. (There’s a third category, which comprises at least one member: my friend Jane, a mom of four under four, who hates cooking but loves grocery shopping because she does it alone—alone being the operative word—at 10:00 p.m., after all her kids are asleep.)

  The truth is, once Phoebe was born, picking up the carton of milk at Key Food practically qualified as date night for us. It was part of our Sunday morning ritual, which also included a menu-planning session with the dinner diary, a strong cup of coffee on Montague Street, a stroll through the Heights with Phoebe in her Snap N’ Go, then some Frank Rich reading on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, with its stunning view of downtown Manhattan. It’s highly possible I am over-romanticizing this period in my life, since there were also middle-of-the-night feedings, teething tantrums, crying-it-out sessions that lasted until 5:00 a.m., and weeks on end spent with the song “Victor Vito” in my head.

  And for Andy, there was also the schlep home. Our cozy apartment, as romantic as it was with its exposed brick and roof deck, was a fifth-floor walk-up. And carrying a week’s worth of groceries ten blocks and then up five flights of stairs gets old even for a category 2 shopping person like him. (I was busy holding our twelve-pound baby.) I think the day we started talking about a house in the suburbs with a driveway where we could park our car was the day Andy came home with our shopping bags, sweating and grumpy, walked straight into the bathroom, stepped on the scale, and determined he was holding 60 pounds of cereal and Goldfish crackers and diapers and jarred baby food. He looked at me and said one word: “Pelham.”

  There was another large factor that made us think about leaving Brooklyn for the greener pastures of Pelham or Montclair or the “Rivertown” suburbs on the Hudson: finding out I was pregnant with Abby. A week after celebrating Phoebe’s first birthday (the cake was decorated with a big yellow duck, honoring her first word), I took a pregnancy test. Even though every fourth person had warned me it’s a myth you can’t get pregnant while breast-feeding, and even though I have a college degree, which would indicate I’d be smart about heeding this kind of advice, I was both shocked to see the results (I assumed another baby would take a while like it had with Phoebe) and proud. (I hate failing tests.) Andy’s reaction was totally different: He was wistful thinking about Phoebe, who would only get nineteen months of our undivided attention.

  To clear our heads, we went to Atlantic Avenue, grabbed some spinach and lamb
pastries from one of our favorite Middle Eastern markets, then called our real estate broker, Steve. Steve—not my parents, not Andy’s parents—was the first person we shared our news with. We needed a three-bedroom apartment ASAP, which, we quickly discovered, we couldn’t afford in Brooklyn.

  And so just before Abby’s arrival, we moved twenty miles up the Hudson River, to the suburbs, to the land of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and supermarkets with parking lots! To a Dutch Colonial with (seasonal!) views of the Hudson and a drive-in garage that connected to our kitchen via one flight of stairs. For Andy, I don’t think the novelty of this will ever wear off.

  But the one thing that never changed was the Sunday morning shopping ritual. Even though the coffee wasn’t quite as strong, even though the drive through the strip malls and big box stores wasn’t quite as romantic as a stroll down charming Brooklyn streets, even though our grocery list was beginning to reflect a more unprocessed, sustainable diet, and even though we now had two daughters under two conspiring to prevent us from reading Frank Rich (or anything else) ever again. In spite of all these things, we still had our date night every Sunday morning. And the girls—first in Baby Björns, then in the flip-down cart seat, then with pretend mini shopping carts, then venturing off to the next aisle by themselves to hunt down the salsa, then helping us pack the bags at check-out—tagged right along with us.

  Six Items That Are Always on the Shopping List

  Before I go shopping, I make sure I have a healthy supply of these six long-lasting pantry friends in the kitchen. I find that even if I have nothing else (except for maybe a few basics like olive oil, soy sauce, and Parmesan cheese), I can almost always churn out a fast healthy meal.