Thank you to those of you who reached out about “ A Love Letter to My Dutch Oven ” in the New York Times last week. (That’s a gift link if you missed it and would like to read.) The essay, about how my 5 1/2-quart enameled-steel Le Creuset watched me grow up, was a lot of fun to write, but even better were all the texts and emails I received from long-lost friends. And since apparently a 1000-word

A week ago, Andy and I were both packing for separate trips — me to Seattle for fun, and him to Boston for work — when the subject of dinner came up, as it tends to do. Should we just do takeout? He asked. It was tempting. I had a lot to do before my 4:45 am wake-up the next day and I didn’t want to deal with cooking and cleaning, and the agedashi tofu and spinach goma-ae from our favorite Japanes

I know what you might be thinking: Bolognese is not a sheet-pan dinner. Bolognese is not a simple dinner, a shortcut dinner, a dinner conducive to the very American instinct of under-30-minute-ing. If you’ve ever made Marcella Hazan’s famous recipe for Bolognese from Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking — the one where you and your pot sit patiently while the meat first absorbs a whole cup of win

When it comes to restaurants, the Upper West Side of Manhattan is famously casual and family-friendly…and a little slim on destination spots, but that does not mean we haven’t found our go-tos since we moved to the neighborhood from the suburbs last year . Here’s a run-down of places we patronize regularly for coffee, specialty shopping, casual breakfasts and lunches, takeout, pre-theater, cocktai

Greetings eaters and readers. Today, I’d like to get back to basics a bit, and present a recipe for my Potato Salad with Green Goodies. It’s one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-this-before kind of dishes that I accidentally discovered after leftover potato salad and leftover spring vegetables ended up getting along famously in the same Tupperware container. Here are the kind of people who will like

A few months ago, during the holidays, when my whole family was under the same roof at the same time — a somewhat miraculous feat these days — I told the girls to save the next night for dinner at home. It was December in New York, so we were all being pulled in different directions, and I wanted to make sure we carved out some time to sit down together, eat good homemade food, and be, you know, i

Happy Near Year, Readers and Eaters! Just wanted to let you know that I’m heading up a 2025 Weekday Vegetarian challenge over on Substack this month. The first week’s meal plan went out just after the new year, but you can start any time you want all year long. Every Friday in January, subscribers will receive a meal plan with five hand-picked-by-me nourishing vegetarian dinners that you can cook

Hello faithful blog readers. Can I tell you how much I love that you are still here, almost 15 years after I wrote my first post ever on the Dinner: A Love Story blog? Honestly, sometimes I can’t believe it myself. But then I think about my dinner table and how much it has evolved over the course of that period — from feeding my little grade schoolers to being an empty nester to taking care of our

Maybe it’s because I’ve been wearing my Operation Connect Goggles all the time lately, but when I flipped through Luisa Weiss’s new book Classic German Cooking last week, my first impulse was to invite someone over for dinner and serve them a pot of Linsensuppe Mit Pflaumen (Lentil Soup with Sausage and Prunes) or Wiener Servietteenknödel Mit Pilzgulasch (Bread Dumplings with Mushroom Goulash) or

I have such a crush on Carolina Gelen . And I have ever since my daughter forwarded me her hugely popular instagram account during the pandemic a few years ago, writing only “omg you will love her.” My daughter knows me very well. Carolina grew up in Transylvania, cooking by her mother’s side, and following a very tracked career path in computer science until a passion for cooking derailed her pla