Dinner: The Playbook A 30-Day Plan for Mastering the Art of the Family Meal



Stuck in a rut? Ready to reboot dinner? Whether you’ve never turned on a stove or you’re just starved for inspiration, this book is your secret weapon.

Three signs you need this book:

 
1) Chicken fingers qualify as adventurous. (Hey, they’re not nuggets.)
2) You live in fear of the white stuff touching the green stuff.
3) Family dinner? What’s family dinner?
 
When Jenny Rosenstrach’s kids were little, her dinner rotation looked like this: Pasta, Pizza, Pasta, Burgers, Pasta. It made her crazy—not only because of the mind-numbing repetition, but because she loved to cook and missed her prekid, ketchup-free dinners.  Her solution? A family adventure: She and her husband, Andy, would cook thirty new dishes in a single month—and her kids would try them all. Was it nuts for two working parents to take on this challenge? Yes. But did it transform family dinner from stressful grind to happy ritual? Completely. Here, Rosenstrach—creator of the beloved blog and book Dinner: A Love Story—shares her story, offering weekly meal plans, tons of organizing tips, and eighty-plus super-simple, kid-vetted recipes.

Jenny Rosenstrach is the creator of the blog Dinner: A Love Story and author of the book Dinner: A Love Story. She has appeared on NPR’s Weekend Edition and NBC’s Today. She and her husband, Andy Ward, write “The Providers” column for Bon Appétit. They live in Westchester County, New York, with their two young daughters.

“Jenny Rosenstrach has truly mastered the art of the happy family dinner. This is the most sensible advice on cooking for kids I’ve ever seen: no gimmicks, no tricks, just practical advice for working parents. I wish this book had been around when my son was small.”

—Ruth Reichl
  
“This book is for anyone who loves the promise of a home-cooked dinner but gets bogged down by the day-to-day reality of it: picky kids, picky spouses, the extinction of the nine-to-five workday, and the pressure—oh, the pressure—to get it on the table before everyone collapses into a hangry (hungry + angry) meltdown. Which is to say that this book is for me, me, me. And I bet it’s for you too.”

—Deb Perelman, author of The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook
 
“Well, Jenny Rosenstrach, on the behalf of my whole family, thanks for the most practical—and yet still inspired—cookbook on our shelf. You are singularly responsible for my return to the kitchen.”

—Kelly Corrigan, author of Glitter and Glue
  
“As a mother of two young children, I was always racked with guilt when serving hummus and crackers for dinner or suggesting yet another night of scrambled eggs. But this brilliant guide is—no exaggeration—changing my life. I was more than happy to let Jenny be my boss for thirty days and whip me—and my family’s dinner—into shape. Think of this book as the world’s most delicious boot camp.”

—Joanna Goddard, blogger, A Cup of Jo

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