Whole wheat spaghetti
Quinoa
Frozen spinach
Canned or frozen artichokes
Eggs
Onions
Option 1: Spaghetti with Spinach and Artichokes. Cook 1 pound pasta in a large pot according to package directions. Remove the pasta from the pot and toss it with a little olive oil to prevent sticking. In the same pot, add 4 tablespoons olive oil and half a chopped onion and cook until soft, about 3 minutes. Add a 14-ounce can (or 1 cup thawed frozen) artichoke hearts (drained and chopped), about ½ teaspoon lemon zest, a handful of frozen spinach (thawed, squeezed dry), salt, and pepper, and stir together until heated through. Toss with the pasta and a ton of grated Parmesan cheese.
Option 2: Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Caramelized Onions, Spinach, and Parmesan.
Option 3: Quinoa with Fried Egg, Spinach, and Soy Sauce. In my house, this has always fallen under the “After-Hours” category, as in: quick enough to make after they go to bed and only ever eaten by Mom and Dad. Subsequently, it only serves 2. (But can be doubled if your kids are more adventurous with quinoa than mine.) Bring 1½ cups water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add ¾ cup quinoa and simmer, covered, until tender, fluffy, and water is absorbed—about 15 minutes. Let stand, covered, off the heat for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork and divide into two bowls. While quinoa is cooking, add 2 tablespoons olive oil and a dash of sesame oil to a skillet set over medium-low heat. Swirl a halved garlic clove in the oil and remove after 1 minute. Add ½ medium onion (sliced) and a dash of red pepper flakes to the pan and cook for 8 to 10 minutes, until onions are slightly golden. Add 1 cup frozen chopped spinach, thawed, or 2 generous handfuls of fresh spinach and cook until heated through or wilted. Add 2 teaspoons soy sauce. If you have kitchen scissors, use them to chop the spinach while it cooks (unless you are using frozen). Remove the spinach from the skillet and place it on top of the quinoa. In the same skillet, turn the heat to medium-high, add another drizzle of olive oil, and poach or fry 2 eggs (over easy). Place each on top of the quinoa and spinach. Drizzle a little more soy sauce on top, and add a sprinkle of sesame seeds if you have them and a few drops of Sriracha if you want some heat.
Option 4: Spaghetti Omelet. Okay, I’m slightly cheating here, because this one involves leftover pasta. (Do not try it with freshly made pasta. It won’t work.) Use 3 eggs for every 1 cup of cooked spaghetti. Fry leftover, unsauced spaghetti in 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. Add some salt and cook for 5 minutes, until crispy on the bottom. Add 1 tablespoon finely chopped onions or scallions and 1 tablespoon chopped parsley, then flip over like a pancake. Whisk together some grated Parmesan cheese and your eggs. Add eggs to the pan and cook until they are done, 2 to 3 minutes. (You can also crack the eggs right into the crisped spaghetti in the pan.) Flip one more time. Serve like a pizza, cut into wedges.
Tip: To thaw frozen spinach quickly, add a block to a colander and then gently run water on top. When it has thawed, press spinach into the colander to squeeze out any excess water. You want to get out as much water as possible.
May 2004
Two Under Two
The best way for me to explain how thoroughly our two kids under two decimated family dinner, as well as all semblance of domestic order, is to take a walk through the girls’ two baby books. You know, those journals that allow you to chronicle every inch grown, pound gained, hour slept, limb kicked, book read, holiday celebrated, toy chewed?
We took Phoebe’s book seriously. To begin with, it’s very possible that we spent an entire afternoon searching for the right one—we definitely made a special trip from Brooklyn to Manhattan to stroll through my favorite paper store on West Eighteenth Street—a high-ceilinged temple to blank books and notecards and stationery and all things beautiful and right with this world. (Andy called it Jenny’s Porn Shop.) It was important to me to find exactly the right book—this was my firstborn we were talking about—and I didn’t want to settle for the generic, impersonal Winnie-the-Pooh kind they sold in the shop around the corner. Like many of the tasks on my “Planning for Baby” to-do list, the “Buy baby book” box was checked off a few weeks before Phoebe even entered the world.
The book we settled on was red and blue, with charming little watercolor animals dancing across the cover. It had all the requisite fill-in-the-blank pages: Place baby shower invitation here, Place baby announcement here, Place envelope with first lock of hair here, Place front page of newspaper here (headline in the New York Times the day Phoebe was born: “Enron Had More Than One Way to Disguise Rapid Rise in Debt”), and as Phoebe grew, I completed each of these tasks with the precision and punctuality of a kindergarten teacher.
Her baby book also contained dozens of blank pages for freestyle recording, and boy, did we ever take to freestyle recording. It seemed there was no detail too insignificant to document for eternity. Week 15: First grabbed her foot and extended it. Weeks 17–18: Right now she has her entire fist in her mouth. Weeks 19–20: She’s playing in her saucersizer but she needs a few more inches before she can really bounce around in it. There were, of course, significant details, too, like this obvious favorite from weeks 24–25: We put her in her high chair this week while we ate dinner. She’s so much happier sitting up there with the grown-ups than in her bouncy seat on the floor.
We bought Abby’s baby book from a paper store in a strip mall in what was more or less a hit-and-run mission. The trip was early in the morning—timed so we could be home for Phoebe’s afternoon nap, which, if the gods were smiling on us, might overlap for at least an hour with an Abby nap. (But, dear Lord in heaven, I’ll even take fifteen minutes, as long as there’s just some overlap.) Abby was already about four weeks old and it wasn’t that we forgot about the book. It was that we were lost deep in the land of Two Under Two, also known as the Void, also known as Dante’s Tenth Ring of Hell. From what I recall, there was no to-do list lying around reminding me to buy her baby book. The reminder came from Andy, in the form of: “Holy s*%t! I can’t believe she’s four weeks old already and we have yet to record a single note about her life! Are we terrible parents?”
The only baby book in the strip-mall store that wasn’t decorated with fake sepia photos of rattles was . . . a Winnie-the-Pooh baby book. Every page was emblazoned with a chipper little title across the top: “Wonder-filled Days” and “Great Adventures!” and “I Can Do Anything!” And even though the tone was decidedly out of sync with the way I felt on a daily basis, it was going to have to do. We should’ve probably just gone with a blank book, because with Two Under Two, there weren’t many afternoons when I found myself leafing through the themed pages thinking, I can’t wait to write down her first words! Her first plane trip! Her first time crawling. Most afternoons I was sitting around in a zombie-like state, dead in the eyes, dreaming of sleep.
Abby woke up two or three times a night until she was almost twelve months old, which meant that Andy and I were waking up two or three times a night, which meant that for the rest of the day all we thought about was how to catch up on our sleep. On my morning commute, I gave up on reading the newspaper, choosing instead to snooze the whole thirty-three minutes to New York. (There were many mornings when the conductor announcing “Last stop, Grand Central!” didn’t do anything to pull me from my slumber—but Andy’s elbow in the ribs would usually do the trick.) I went to bed as soon as we finished dinner, having learned that if I let myself sit on the couch to watch even one minute of The Bachelor, there was a 100 percent chance I would crash out, fully clothed, teeth unbrushed, contacts in, the day’s mascara caking up my lashes.
Without sleep, everything seemed more dramatic than it actually was. If I couldn’t find my office card key, I’d feel like crying. Once, at work, I had to restrain myself from lunging at a coworker who had no kids and who claimed she was “exhausted” from being at a bar so late the night before. “She should be arrested for using that word in that context,” said Andy when I relayed the story to him later.
It took about eighteen pots of coffee to get me to the point where I could put a sentence together. And once I got to that point, the sentences I put together for Abby’s book, instead of being about first checkups and first baths, were mostly about sleep—hers and mine. All the titles and prompts (“My favorite place to walk,” “Our first vacation together”) were crossed out and replaced with a maniacal stream-of-consciousness monologue that could stand in history as the official document of exhausted motherhood. Where once I might have spent a few pages describing the moment the baby first started kicking in her crib, now, it seemed, the first thing I brought up was how tired we were and how poorly Abby was sleeping. One entry began: Best night yet! Followed by one that began: Never get cocky.
On the inside of the front cover, I glued an article Andy wrote for GQ called “The Waking Wounded,” where he talked about the condition as though “we’re trapped in the remix version of the Great Human Sleep Deprivation Experiment.” He went on to write the phrase that, for me, defined the first five years of parenting: “We no longer get tired; we are tired.” The inside of the back cover attempts to connect what I ate for dinner with how Abby slept every night, thinking maybe the answer to a Glorious Eight Hours lay not in the white noise machine or the perfect swaddle but in the quesadillas with hot jalapeños spiking my breast milk. (Perhaps I should’ve been looking more closely at those eighteen pots of coffee.)
My favorite page in Abby’s baby book is titled “We’ll Never Forget!” At the bottom, there is a picture of Piglet snoozing like an angel, while a bee buzzes the quote “Sweet dreams, little one” over his head. The warm-and-fuzzy prompts (like “My cutest gestures . . .” and “Favorite stories about me . . .”) are Xed out and replaced with a beleaguered hour-by-hour chronicle of our typical day—from Abby’s first squawk at five thirty in the morning, until grown-up bedtime sixteen and a half hours later. I must’ve at least had the clarity of mind to recognize that someday everything that had to happen in the course of twenty-four hours with two kids under two would be fascinating to read back.
But I know I didn’t have the clarity of mind to recognize that these days were going to get easier. If someone had just said to me, You know, Jenny, your days will not always look like this. Someday you’ll walk in the door after a productive day at work, you will say hello to your children and they will say hello back. You will change into something comfortable, then cook dinner while your girls keep you company and, on good days, say, “That smells good, Mom. What are you making?” You won’t have to immediately change a diaper, nurse the baby, change the diaper again, dance to “Old King Cole” on your new Music Together CD while attempting to steam broccoli and slice turkey. You won’t have to lap the dinner table to soothe a witching-hour baby while your spouse spoon-feeds your toddler. (At least we were all “around” the table.) If someone had just told me that bath time and bedtime wasn’t always going to resemble a scene from Upstairs Downstairs in double time, with Andy and me darting in and out of the girls’ bedrooms, filling water cups and bottles, reading books, searching under the cribs for loveys and pacifiers, nursing, lullabying, changing another diaper, barely even grunting hello as we passed each other in the hallway or headed in opposite directions on the stairway. If someone had told me I wouldn’t always have to wait until nine o’clock to eat my own dinner, after which I’d immediately wash the dishes and go right to sleep. If someone had just told me that someday I might even miss all this chaos . . .
. . . then I still, in a million years, wouldn’t have believed them. With Two Under Two, we were in the trenches and the only moment of our day that resembled home life as we once knew it was our brief window of adult-only dinner time after the kids were asleep. Needless to say, during this period of dinner-time decimation, there was a special place in my heart for two things:
The postwork cocktail. I think this is when Andy started referring to his Manhattan and my gin-and-tonic as our “medicine.”
Any recipe with the word quick in the title or that promised to limit ingredients and hands-on time.
I let my Gourmet subscription lapse but kept renewing Cooking Light, mostly because of its Superfast column, which seemed to speak directly to me. At Real Simple, it finally clicked why the Fake It, Don’t Make It section I edited was so hugely popular. And suddenly, everywhere I looked, there were fifteen-minute dinners, three-ingredient recipes, and quickened versions of classics that seemed to understand that there was no room in my life for a coq au vin recipe that called for hacking up a whole chicken and igniting cognac.
The ones that follow were particularly beloved: They are quick, delicious, and tailor made for parents whose sleep-deprived brains are temporarily incapacitated. In other words, they are mind-numbingly easy.
I know how this is going to sound, but parenting can be hard. Really, really hard. Man, I need a drink.
Spicy Shrimp with Yogurt
This dinner is one of the most popular ones I’ve run on the blog. It takes about 10 minutes from start to finish–and closer to 5 minutes if you have the spices mixed already. When Phoebe got older, she requested the dish often, so we periodically prepared a stash of the smoky-cinnamony rub to have it ready to go. The spice mixture even gets its own special jar painted with her name. Below are the spice amounts to sprinkle over a shrimp dinner for four. Triple or quadruple if you want to make a stash to have on hand for the next time. Total time: 10 minutes
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon smoked paprika
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon curry powder
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
1¼ pounds shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 tablespoon butter
Accompaniments: toasted whole wheat naan bread (such as Kontos brand), plain yogurt, cilantro, lime sections
In a small jar, mix together the spices. Sprinkle over the shrimp and toss.
Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the shrimp to the pan and sauté 5 minutes, until done, sprinkling on a little more spice as you flip them around to cook.
Serve the shrimp with the accompaniments.
The very definition of a nice problem: A dinner that comes together too quickly, allowing for no time to savor a glass of wine while one prepares it.
Apricot-Mustard Baked Chicken
This chicken takes about 10 minutes to pull together and then about a half hour of hands-off time in the oven. In theory, you could time things so the chicken is ready as soon as the kids go to sleep. But if you can’t for the life of you figure out a way to steal the few minutes needed for prep while the kids are awake, then just take care of step 1: Preheat the oven. Total time: 40 minutes
6 to 8 skin-on chicken pieces (thighs or drumsticks), rinsed and patted dry
Salt and pepper
¾ cup apricot jam
1 tablespoon grainy mustard
¼ cup water
Leaves from 2 sprigs fresh thyme
Preheat the oven to 400° F.
Place the chicken on a rimmed cookie sheet or baking dish lined with foil or parchment paper, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and bake for 10 minutes.
While the chicken is baking, whisk together the jam, mustard, water, thyme, and a little salt and pepper in a small saucepan over low heat for about 3 minutes. It should be slightly syrupy.
Pull the chicken out of the oven and pour the sauce on top. Continue baking for another 15 minutes. For the last 3 minutes, place the chicken under the broiler on the top rack so it gets golden and crispy looking.
Cacio e Pepe
In addition to being a classic after-the-kids-go-to-bed meal, this dish also holds the honor of being Andy’s go-to meal when he’s on his own. You can add a touch of cream when you whisk the oil and cheese for a little decadence. We’ve never gotten the kids on board with this one, so this only serves two. Total time: 15 minutes
½ pound spaghetti
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
12 generous grinds of pepper (hence the “pepe”), plus more for serving
Salt to taste
In a medium pot, prepare the pasta according to package directions. Reserve ¼ cup of the pasta water before draining the spaghetti. While the pasta is cooking, in a large bowl, whisk together the oil, Parmesan, pepper, and salt. Add half of the reserved pasta water gradually, whisking so it becomes emulsified. Toss the spaghetti into a medium bowl, and if cheese isn’t distributing evenly, add the remaining pasta water until it does. Top with more cheese and pepper and serve.
Flatbread Pizza with Arugula and Prosciutto
This is also excellent prepared on the stovetop using storebought pizza dough. Use the pan-fried pizza as a guide. Total time: 10 minutes
4 pieces flatbread (or naan bread)
1¼ cups shredded Italian fontina cheese (or mozzarella or aged provolone)
Few handfuls of arugula
5 to 6 thin slices prosciutto, pulled into pieces
Shaved or shredded Parmesan cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil, for drizzling
Broil the flatbread (or toast it in a toaster oven) until golden, about 3 minutes. Remove and flip over. Add the fontina cheese to each untoasted side and return to the toaster oven or broiler until the cheese is bubbly, 2 to 3 more minutes. When the toasts are ready, top with bunches of arugula, a few pieces of prosciutto, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and a drizzle of oil.
Tip: Other excellent options for the After-Hours dinner: Quinoa with Fried Egg, Spinach, and Soy Sauce, and anything in the freezer from Three Nesting Recipes.
Dinner: A Love Story Page 11