I had a good coupon for prepared pizza dough, so I bought two and fed them to my unsuspecting children tonight. They were not fooled. A. thought it was fine, but G. complained that I keep changing around the types of crusts I use, when we’ve already found one he likes. That winner is a homemade dough, which I also like a lot. It’s only drawback is that he likes it less when I add whole wheat flour, in any proportion, to the mix.
Can you guess which side of the pizza the boys ate, and which one was mine? They had good old marinara and shredded mozzarella. My side included caramelized onions, chopped green olives, and havarti cheese. I’m still avoiding tomato sauce, so I can’t say for sure, but I’m willing to bet that my third tasted better.
My meal plans have changed a lot since school started in the fall. With an increasing amount of homework each year, we finally hit a point where I felt I needed to change the amount of family we had over during the week. For years, my mom or parents had come after school and stayed for dinner one weeknight a week, and some combination of J.’s family, including my 4 year-old niece, had come another night. Then we often saw them on the weekend, too. I loved having my kids grow up with so much family around, and selfishly I also loved having those nights to cook bigger dinners. The kids were occupied with their grandparents and cousin, and I had a willing group of adults to eat real food with me. It worked perfectly for everyone, until A. started having trouble getting his homework done with so much going on in the house (I don’t blame him — he just wanted to play with everyone else), and after-school activities became more frequent. This year, our family is only here sporadically mid-week, and though it was the right decision I do miss have the company to cook for and chat with at dinner!
For a time, we were in a sweet spot with several meals: grilled chicken tacos, baked ziti, and roast chicken were all dinners that made my boys happy. Now, one or both of them no longer care for those dinners, and I am back to a place where plain pasta seems like the only answer. Confounding that problem is that I have been testing out a low-acid diet for myself, to try to fix a nighttime coughing issue my doctor thinks is due to silent reflux. I’ve already given up carbonated drinks and caffeine (sob!), and I’ve seen some improvement. But now I need to get serious about eliminating tomatoes and tomato sauce, which is pretty big deal when your kids’ favorite meals for you to cook are pizza and pasta.
Certainly, as my kids get older and their schedules and tastes change, it’s normal for our dinners to change. I just want to make sure we’re evolving, not going the other way. Right now I feel stuck in neutral.
My menu is all over the place this week — some meals I can cook without a recipe, like comfort food favorite spaghetti and meatballs. But I’m also trying a couple of new vegetarian dishes, one based on white beans and the other on chickpeas.
Still, I am most excited about the baking I have planned. I’m trying Ina Garten’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake to take to a morning event early in the week. Then I plan to test out Chewy Butterscotch Graham Cookies, but I’ll use toffee chips instead of butterscotch. I am participating in a holiday cookie swap at the end of the month, so I need to figure out what I’m bringing. I may make a batch of Martha Stewart’s Pretzel-Shortbread Bars, as well, since I think they’d make a unique contribution to the swap instead. Either way, I need to make small batches before I decide which sweet will be multiplied to 6 dozen.
No picture this week, as J. grabbed our share just minutes before we headed out to our first Rosh Hashana dinner last Wednesday.
However, we had some good news from our farm: a large island of vegetables in the middle of an otherwise flooded field (from Irene) was cleared by a Cornell Cooperative Extension agent for harvesting, since they had remained uncontaminated by flood waters. The produce in that island includes cilantro, greens, arugula, salad mix, and head lettuce which will now reappear in our share.
We received 3 onions, 1 bulb of garlic, 3 huge beefsteak tomatoes, 6 plum tomatoes, 1 bowl of beets (no greens), a small bowl of salad mix, a small bowl of arugula, 1 bunch of chards, a small handful of cilantro, and 1 basket of green beans.
These beets are huge! I boiled half of them so we could use them in salads, and then wound up giving a couple to my mom to take home. Thankfully, both J. and I like beets a lot, because we’re going to be eating them for a while. The chard was absolutely gorgeous, and I’d planned on sauteing it, but J. has been adding it to his smoothies instead. J. also blended the cilantro into a vinaigrette that we used on Rosh Hashana, which made a beautiful light green dressing for a tomato and sweet corn salad.
I'm Dara, the Chick in the Kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two school-aged boys and husband. Feeding my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Read more about me and CITK, and keep in touch:
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Moroccan Chicken Tajine: I recently had a chicken tajine dish at Fig & Olive in Scarsdale, and wanted to recreate something similar at home. This is an Ina Garten recipe, and she never fails me.
I'm Dara, the Chick in the Kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two school-aged boys and husband. Feeding my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Read more 
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