1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for garnish
1 slice thick-cut smoky bacon
½ large onion, chopped
1 medium piece celery, chopped
1 large carrot, peeled and chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary (optional)
1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes, a few tablespoons set aside
3 15-ounce cans cannellini beans, 2 cans with their liquid and 1 can drained and set aside
1 cup homemade chicken stock or unsalted store-bought chicken broth, plus a little extra for thinning out
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
In a large stockpot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over low heat and add the bacon. Cook 8 to 10 minutes, until the fat is rendered and the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the onion, celery, carrot, salt and pepper, and rosemary (if using) and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 8 minutes.
Add the diced tomatoes, 2 cans of beans plus their liquid, and the stock into the pot. The liquid level should be just barely above beans and vegetables. Bring to a simmer and cook until warmed through, about 10 minutes.
Turn off the heat. Puree with a handheld immersion blender or in batches in the blender (see warning). Add more stock if necessary and season with more salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the reserved can of beans, reserved tomatoes, and the bacon (crumbled into bits) and bring soup back up to a simmer. Garnish with Parmesan cheese and a drizzle of oil. Serve with crusty bread.
Warning: If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can use your regular blender. Blend in batches, keeping in mind you shouldn’t shut the lid tightly or the trapped steam may cause a bean soup explosion. Hold the lid with your hand and keep it slightly ajar so some steam can escape as you blend. Place batches of pureed soup into a large bowl as you go, and when you are finished, add the whole thing back to the pot.
2012–?
In Summation
Perhaps you have just read this book from cover to cover and you are now inspired to start a family dinner ritual in your own home. Congratulations! Sometimes the hardest part is making the choice and committing to it. Well, it’s also hard trying to figure out how you’re going to get home in time, who’s going to cook, what you’re going to do about your kids’ aversion to pasta and salt and water and eating. Okay, fine. There’s no part that is exactly perfectly easy when you are just starting out, but as I hope you’ve gathered over the course of reading the previous 293 pages, the more you do it, the easier it will get and the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.
About those 293 pages. That was a lot to process, right? I think it might help all of us to do a quick review of the material we have covered so you feel like you have a better handle on how to begin and what to expect.
Let’s review.
Rule 1: If you have a kid under three, you might not want to include him or her in the family dinner festivities just yet. Tending to a toddler at the table—his milk spilling, his green hating, his inability to articulate how multidimensional your marinara is—takes its toll on the rest of the diners’ satisfaction, especially the cook’s. You won’t be able to concentrate on any kind of conversation or enjoy what you just spent some time preparing, let alone be able to savor your family’s only unplugged moment of the day. You will, in fact, only be setting yourself up for failure. That can be hard to recover from and could have potentially fatal results for the ritual itself. Eating in shifts made so much more sense for our family. Even if the girls were eating microscopic bits of turkey with six pieces of steamed broccoli and, two hours later, Andy and I would sit down to lamb chops and quinoa, we had convinced ourselves it was family dinner. This was because a) we always prepared our childrens’ meal; b) we always sat with them while they ate; and c) we were training ourselves to get out of the office in time to do all this.
Rule 2: Don’t force yourself to cook every night. We are no longer living in the same world we grew up in—no one expects you to produce a hot made-from-scratch meal every night. But if you are one of those moms who finds it extremely satisfying to produce a hot made-from-scratch meal for your kids, then do it when you can and let it go when you can’t. (By this point in my parenting career, shouldn’t I know that telling mothers not to feel guilty is like telling Paula Deen not to use butter?)
Rule 3: Restaurants are your friends. After you’ve cooked a few nights in a row, reward yourself with dinner out—whether it’s a hot dog from a vendor at the park or takeout from everyone’s favorite falafel house or a sit-down affair at the fancy Italian place. Besides giving you a break, this will give you ideas for dinner when you are back in your kitchen wishing you were at the fancy Italian place.
Rule 4: If you can, think about pushing bedtime later. My kids have always gone to bed on the later end (since we usually get home from work between six thirty and seven), and logistically I find this makes life a little easier around dinnertime. There are enough things going against you already with this whole endeavor—might as well control the clock. If your kids are starving and you can’t imagine how they will last that long, ply them with a healthy snack at five-thirty. If you can swing it, you can most likely give yourself a comfortable half hour to drink a glass of wine, talk to the kids, and get a simple meal on the table.
Rule 5: Employ the two-out-of-three philosophy. Everyone has his or her own criteria for what defines a successful family dinner, but these are mine:
1. Every member of the family is accounted for and seated, facing one another.
2. There is a wholesome meal on the table.
3. Everyone is eating (more or less) the same thing.
You may have other variables, like if the TV is off and no punches or peas are thrown between siblings, but the three above are the biggies for me. If I can honestly say that I’ve hit two of these three truths, then you better believe I’m marking it down in the Successful Family Dinner column. That means it counts if everyone is at the table eating a Domino’s pizza. If mom and dad are eating grilled mackerel while their kids are seated next to them chowing down on turkey burgers, that counts, too. If only dad is there, but you’re all eating grilled double-cut lamb chops and kale salad, you can also feel pretty good about your dinner situation.
Rule 6: In other words, stop looking at what you’re doing wrong and focus on what you’re doing right.
Rule 7: Cook within your culinary comfort zone. When you’re starting out, cook what you’re comfortable with. Remember, the name of the game is eliminating as many obstacles as you can—so really, why would you start with a quinoa pilaf that requires you to hunt down some sort of special smoked paprika? Start with something you can make without a recipe. Start with scrambled eggs. Or a hamburger made with really good beef. Or pasta with a no-cook tomato sauce. Or with your grandmother’s seventy-five-ingredient curry if you are capable of making it on autopilot. I find bobbing back and forth between a cookbook and a skillet while also trying to catch up with my children who I haven’t seen all day requires concentration powers I do not have—especially when a glass of wine is involved.
Rule 8: I’m not going to lie. It helps to eat good food as you do all this. The ultimate goal (at least in my house) is to make dinner a ritual, and putting together something that you want to eat—that you are excited to eat—is going to help a lot with establishing that ritual. If you cook good food, it will build on itself. Your family will look forward to it. You will look forward to it. You will get addicted to eating well and watching your family eat well. Is it essential that you braise an osso buco on a Tuesday night? Of course not. But is a market-fresh frittata going to be more satisfying than a frozen pizza? My hunch is yes. (And by the way, that frittata—takes the same amount of time as the frozen pizza. If only my children liked eggs.) But my point is, even though the most important part of family dinner is the family part, I do not want to dismiss the role of caring about what you cook in the equation. The
more you care, the more you’ll cook, and the more you cook, the better you’ll get, and the better you get, the more firmly the family dinner ritual will take hold. It’s probably going to be a long time before my kids recognize in a conscious way that eating a meal with someone who loves them satisfies some deep psychological need. But for now I’m pretty sure they’re psyched to show up just for the pork chops. And I have no problem with that.
Rule 9: Last, keep it in perspective. A few summers ago, I was having dinner at a friend’s house. She is about ten years ahead of me in the parenting game and I’ve always looked to her for advice on everything from day camps to birthday cake bakeries to how to best survive third-grade clique drama without ending up in the headlines. She has three daughters, each one more accomplished than the next. At the time of this dinner, the oldest was about to start her junior year in college, the middle one, a homebody, was getting ready to leave for her freshman year at a big school in the Midwest, and the youngest, a high school sophomore, had just returned from doing volunteer work in South America. None of them were at the dinner table with us. In fact, none of them were in the house—until about halfway through our delicious grilled salmon, at which point the middle daughter wandered into the kitchen and opened the fridge.
“Hi, honey,” my friend said. “There’s some salmon here if you want it.”
“Nah,” the almost-college-freshman said. “I’m going to Jack’s tonight.” Jack was her boyfriend. She wandered out of the kitchen and we heard the back screen door creak open then slam shut.
My friend rolled her eyes. “You know, when they were little, dinner was such a pain in the ass. All the kids did was complain about what I cooked. It was such a thankless job.” She went on, “Now that they’re older I’ll cook anything they ask for. I’ll cook five different meals if it means they’ll all sit down with me for dinner.”
I call up this scene all the time. Whenever I catch myself in a dinner table standoff with one of the girls. Whenever I’ve spent an hour making something that ends up getting scraped into the dog’s dish. I call it up and then force myself to think: Lucky. Feel lucky. They are sitting at the table. They are seven and nine years old. They still get excited about a jungle gym with monkey bars and sprint into my arms if I haven’t seen them all day. If my daughter doesn’t eat those beautiful, just-caught sweet scallops that I cooked to absolute perfection, I need to just take a few deep breaths . . . and let it go.
It’s just a scallop.
Acknowledgments
I found that writing a book was a lot like being a parent—I spent a lot of my time looking around at everyone else who has done it before me, wondering how on earth they seem to manage it so effortlessly. The book you have just read was an absolute labor of love, with an emphasis on the labor part. I don’t know how it would have happened without the support of the following people:
My Dinner: A Love Story readers: I knew what I was writing was interesting to me, and the three people around my dinner table, but I had no idea that tales of pork chops mixed with reviews of childrens’ books mixed with family living would mean something to you guys, too. I love that for every “Yum! This was delicious!” you write comments like “Thank you for bringing peace to an otherwise no-good day.” It’s hard to overstate how much that real-world feedback (and such well-written real-world feedback) means to a lonely blogger sitting in her pajamas at the kitchen table banging out 300 words on mashed potatoes. A thousand thank-yous.
My editor and friend, Lee Boudreaux: I’m married to a book editor so I know how many authors and launches and pitches and bidding wars and writer complaints you are juggling on an hourly basis. And yet, not once since I landed on your doorstep, have I ever felt like I was anything but the only person in your orbit. Thank you for your tireless enthusiasm, your thoughtful reads, quick turnarounds, and your diplomatic reassurance whenever I was ready to lose it.
My agent, Elyse Cheney: For pushing me in directions I would never think to take. And for taking one look at my dinner diary back in 2009 and saying “I will represent this project,” even though the blog was months away from launching and neither of us had any real sense of what “this project” even was.
The team at Ecco: Dan Halpern, Abigail Holstein, Rachel Bressler, Allison Saltzman, Leah Carlson-Stanisic, Mark Ferguson, Michael McKenzie, Leslie Cohen, Samantha Choy, and Ben Tomek. Thank you all for believing in the blog, the book, and the bumper stickers!
Yolanda Edwards: I’m waiting to discover the boundaries of your generosity—whether it’s as small as hand-me-downs and flea-market finds or as huge as photography counsel, design feedback, and personal cheerleading. I feel lucky to have you on my speed-dial.
Rory Evans: Thank you for making everything I’ve written cleaner and better—not just this book (which I could’ve never published without your stamp of approval), but all those stories about garlic and coffee and how to get ahead for the holiday right now. And a huge thank-you for reading my blog so religiously and for commenting on posts with such heart.
Pilar Guzman: For letting me piggyback on your shooting star; for telling me my jeans were too big and my ambitions too small; for encouraging me to be a writer as much as an editor; for teaching me everything I know about design; for always coming through for me when I need you.
Adam Rapoport: For letting Andy and me be Bon Appetit’s Bro-Viders! For guest-posting on DALS before DALS was really even DALS, and for teaching me (among other things) that tonic should be superfizzy, a burger should be loosely packed, Bud should be in a can, and music should come on loud immediately following a toast—and should preferably be the Rolling Stones.
Fred Woodward, Jennifer Livingston, Mike Paterniti, Sara Corbett, Naomi Nista, Lori Leibovich, Melissa Vaughan, Chelsea Cardinal, Laurie Sandell, Lia Ronnen, Ava Savitsky, Devin Friedman, Kendra Harpster, Kristina DiMatteo, Kate Porterfield, Joel Lovell, Alanna Stang, Melissa Roberts, Sally Schultheiss: Each of you let me use your personal stories, your photos, your illustrations, your ideas, your massive social media networks, or your wise counsel for one reason: You believed in what I was doing and you wanted to help. Coming from magazines, I’m somewhat used to the idea (only somewhat) of being surrounded by so many talented people, but what really amazes me day after day is being surrounded by talented people who are also capable of such big acts of kindness.
Ed Nammour: For spending an entire day shooting (and many more days thinking about and putting together) the official Dinner: A Love Story video, which, I might add, rocks because of you. You went way beyond the job description of “neighbor” and for that I will be eternally grateful.
Joanna Goddard, Deb Perelman, Brooke Reynolds, Caroline Fennessy Campion, Gabrielle Blair, Phyllis Grant, Carina Schott: For being instrumental in building my audience when my daily readership was in the double digits, and for being so inspiring with your regular roll-out of high-quality content. With you guys around, the relentlessness of blogging seems not just more manageable, but way more fun.
Jennifer Causey: For the beautiful photographs and for your calm, cool, collectedness on our shoot. Thank you especially for making my day-to-day life look like its best self—the world you shot here in these pages is definitely a place I’d like to live every day.
My friends at the Dobbs Ferry Public Library and the Hastings Station Café: You all somehow convinced me that I had a place to report to every workday—regardless of whether I showed up or not. And Avi—the only reason any of these sentences make sense is because you brew a badass cup of Barrington. Those caffeine hits fueled at least 75 percent of the words in this book.
James White: For your patience teaching this old dog all your cool new tricks; Griffin Waldau and Ava Savitsky (again) for the website’s signature logo and design; Heather Jones for your thorough recipe testing; and Lauren Palmieri for your testing, your cooking, and your Babbo-level pasta twirling!
My loyal locals: Anne Scharer, Todd Lawlor, Bonnie Stelzer, Jonathan Abady, Susan Dominus, Jennifer A
aronson, Carolyn Bloom, Robin Helman, Jenny Gold-stock, Liz Gould Vales, Tom Vales, Shannon Johnson, Mary Salke-Roth, Marcie Cuff, Cindy DeRose, Catherine Kelly, Jeff Gordinier, Julie Schrader, Claudia Heitler, Lori Slater, Helene and Seth Godin: Don’t ever stop grabbing me at the farmers’ market or Old Navy or the school hallway to tell me how much you loved the ragù or the Avgolemeno or the dumb joke I made in last week’s post. Your encouragement and friendship has been nicer than I could have imagined and keeps me going!
The Original Original DALS team: My parents, Jody and Ivan Rosenstrach; Andy’s parents, Emily and Steve Ward; my sister, Lynn Zerbib; my brother, Phil Rosenstrach; my siblings-in-law Nick Zerbib, Trish, and Tony “Tony’s Steak” Ward. Plus, a big humungous thank-you to the next generation of supercool DALS eaters: Sophia, Aidan, Luca, Alison, Amanda, Owen, and Nathan—each of you in your own special way has given me grist for the mill.
Phoebe and Abby: Everything—not just dinner—seems more fun when I see it through your eyes. This book would literally not exist without you. Thank you for waiting at the table while your mother takes forty-five pictures of the cheeseburgers that you are starving for. Thank you for being so game for anything and everything. I love you very much, and I forgive you for not liking eggs.
Andy: Your daughter said it best when she noted that the moment you enter the house after work is like the part in every song when the beat finally kicks in. I couldn’t have said it any better, except I might extend that metaphor to my life in general. I won the lottery that day in 1992 when I met you in your Yankee hat, and not a day goes by that I don’t thank my lucky stars for finding someone whose favorite form of procrastination is to braise a pork shoulder, to nail the perfect tagline, to pour his heart into writing 1,000-word blog posts, and to build me up while asking for nothing in return. This book is as much yours as it is mine.
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