It feels like years since we last had friends over for dinner, but the last couple weeks have seen a nice return to conviviality. We hosted a revival of “book club” with a group of friends that first started meeting before Ben was even born. When the kids were little, we often hosted because it…
Category: Chef Ben Cooks!
Lean In
Had the blue-sky warm summer weather held even one more day, we probably would have gone with the last of summer’s bounty to cook this week, but Sunday felt like fall in Williamsport, so we put on sweatshirts and steamed up the kitchen windows roasting pork with fall veggies. Ben had been hankering for a…
Sandwich Generation
We were driving home from my Aunt Wilma’s funeral in Virginia when Ben requested cheesesteak sandwiches for our BDW meal. As I was just opening my mouth to speak, he couldn’t take a chance on anything other than a yes, so he threw in tater tots. “Ah,” said Phil, “he’s gone for your Achilles heel.”…
The Soup Counts!
Is soup a meal? According to Kenny Bania and Ben, it is not. Whenever I suggest making soup for Ben’s Day Wednesday, Ben finagles a way to add items to the meal or to avoid it altogether. This week I made his suggested grilled chicken and veggie pitas one day and had him join me…
Reverse
We are on the cutting edge here at BDW. Most food bloggers attempt to create unique dishes that reflect original recipe ideas, but we are so ahead of our time that we instead tried to copy our favorite Lean Cuisine frozen dinner. I believe this is best known as the old “switcheroo” and can be…
Everybody’s Got a Hungry Heart
This week we made taco smash burgers, or at least that’s what we are calling them because they involve smashing a burger with a tortilla, and then flipping it over and folding it in half like a taco. When I saw it on a cooking show that I was watching when very hungry – dangerous…
Truth or Consequences
Unless there are extenuating circumstances, Ben is allowed to eat out for lunch once a week. Pizza with bowling doesn’t count, and he usually gets two lunches a week where he volunteers, so that takes him down to one day of packing a lunch per week, and one day of eating out. Sometimes, Ben decides…
Going on a Bear Hunt (and a game!)
This week I suggested to Ben that we make sausage rolls. If you haven’t been to the U.K., it is possible you don’t know about this staple of museum cafes and quick lunches on the fly in the British Isles. I have consumed many sausage rolls, but until I looked into recipes, I didn’t realize…
Performance!
Saturday Ben told someone that he was planning on crying the next day for the production of Finding Nemo Jr. because it was the last show. True to his word, when Phil dropped him off to prep for the matinee show on Sunday, he was weepy. We received a dispatch from his sister that he…
May Day!
No, not Mayday, the distress signal. I’m talking about the first day of May. Does anyone remember the May Basket tradition? When I was a kid, I remember making a decorative little paper cone on May Day, filling it with flowers I had picked, then hanging it on the doorknob of an elderly neighbor’s door,…