Three Things

Easy dinner ideas, superhero muffins, a marriage memoir

Good morning friends. What’s for dinner tonight? Last night we had Hetty McKinnon’s Palak Khichdi (Spinach, Rice, Lentils), which turned out to be exactly the stewy, warm-your-bones vegetarian meal I was craving to usher in this wintry New York week. Over the weekend, and under the category of “Nice Work if You Can Get it,” I spent some time preparing for a conversation I’m having with author Nicki Sizemore at Rizzoli Books (Wednesday, January 14) about her beautiful new cookbook Mind, Body, Spirit, Food. I like it when making salmon bowls (above), drizzled with Nicki’s drinkably delicious Miso-Maple Sauce qualifies as “homework.” If you live in the New York area, I would love it if you joined us. Last thing before your official Three Things: I’m so sad to report that my father’s beloved sister Selma died last week. She was 96, called me “doll” un-ironically; loved sweets, New York City, her adoring family, including her brother (my father); and possessed a lev shomea, the Hebrew phrase I learned from the rabbi’s eulogy, which translates to “a listening heart.” Meaning, she didn’t just passively partake in conversations, she engaged deeply, she heard you. I’ll be taking that one with me. Rest in Peace, Aunt Selma.

Here are Three Things I’d like to tell you about this week…

1. Lazy Bolognese for Littles

In what’s shaping up to be something of an annual ritual, over the holidays, we babysat for our cousin’s three young daughters, sending their exhausted parents out the door with the instructions to see a movie or have dinner or take a long nap in the minivan, whatever they wanted! Meanwhile, we did our best impersonations of Fun Aunt and Uncle, planning the afternoon the way we used to hyper-schedule a birthday party with organized activities including, but not limited to: “building” and coloring a cardboard playhouse; beading friendship bracelets; reading an old favorite kids’ book; hiding-and-seeking for what felt like hours, even though there are approximately two places to hide in our two-bedroom apartment; playing with my daughters’ beloved Schleich figurines, which we dug up from their “treasure chests” stored away in the basement (😭). And of course, we made dinner. Last year was Cheater’s Mac & Cheese, a shortcut version that skips the whole bechamel thing, and this year we went with another throwback: Rigatoni with Turkey Bolognese (aka Lazy Bolognese), a recipe we used to make on autopilot back when the girls were little. Breaking news: The meal rules.

Rigatoni with Lazy Bolognese

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pound good-quality ground turkey (preferably dark meat)
1 heaping tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 cup wine (optional, red or white preferably dry)
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
8 shakes of dried oregano
1 pound tubular pasta (rigatoni, penne, ziti)
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for serving

Add the oil to a medium saucepan set over medium-low heat. Add the onion, garlic, pepper flakes, and salt and pepper and cook for about 3 minutes, until everything is slightly wilted.

Push everything to one side of the pot, turn up heat slightly, and add the ground meat, breaking it up with a fork as it browns. Once most of the pink is gone, stir it together with onion mixture.

Add the tomato paste, fennel seeds, sugar, two tablespoons of water, and the wine (if using) and stir everything together. Raise the heat to medium-high and cook until most of the liquid has been absorbed, about 3 minutes. Stir in the crushed tomatoes and oregano. Bring the sauce to a boil and then turn heat to low and simmer uncovered for at least 30 minutes and up to 1 hour.

While the sauce is simmering, prepare the pasta according to package directions. Toss the drained pasta with sauce and serve in bowls topped with freshly grated Parmesan.

In case you missed it: Last week’s vegetarian meal plan was devoted to Solo Cooks suffering from Uber Eats Addiction Disorder. Subscribe to get the Monday-to-Friday Meal Plan, including a beautiful, and beautifully hearty vegan soup.

2. From the Mailbox: Superhero Muffins

Those of you who have been with me a while might remember The Great Superhero Muffin Phase of 2017. The muffins — made with almond flour, maple syrup, oats, cinnamon, raisins — were based on a recipe from the cookbook Run Fast. Eat Slow, cowritten by Olympic marathoner Shalane Flanagan and her University of North Carolina running teammate (turned educator) Elyse Kopecky. I’d regularly bake and freeze the muffins by the dozen back in my daughters’ high school sports days — the goal was to have a quick, wholesome breakfast or snack that would power the girls through school and practice, but I’m pretty sure I was the one who ended up obsessing over the things the most. And apparently, I was not the only one. The carrot-cake-like snacks gained such a following that Kopecky decided to launch a line of dry mixes. I was lucky enough to receive a little promotional pack in the mail, and you wouldn’t believe the speed with which I raced to the kitchen to test a batch of Apple Cinnamons then Chocolate Bananas, all the while conjuring up my sports mom glory days. They took five minutes to throw together (24 minutes in the oven) and were just as tasty as their Superhero homemade cousins. Into the freezer they go! You can order Superhero Muffins directly from their website.

3. Strangers, by Belle Burden

Belle Burden, author of the new memoir Strangers descends from Vanderbilts and Paleys (iconic socialite Babe Paley was her maternal grandmother), owns homes in New York and on Martha’s Vineyard, and moves in the rarefied circles of private tennis clubs, private planes, and boarding schools. She has the kind of social life where she and her husband, James, a hedge fund executive, decide early in the week which weekend dinner invitations she will accept or decline. But in March 2020, at the very beginning of quarantine, James abruptly walks out on the family after an affair with a work colleague comes to light, and Burden is left to face the bewildering wreckage of her marriage, questioning everything about the life they built together over twenty years. And through this intimate, unflinching retelling, we’re right there with her. The day after James has fled, he tells Burden coldly “I thought I was happy but I’m not. I thought I wanted our life, but I don’t.” He ghosts the family, abandoning them during the pandemic and beyond, eventually turning the second bedroom in his new two-bedroom apartment into an office, ensuring that none of their three kids would ever be able to stay over.

Burden’s memoir is not revenge literature — though a very large part of you will want it to be, given her ex-husband’s infuriatingly cryptic behavior — it’s more the mourning of her twenty-year marriage, and a careful examination of the larger role that generational betrayal played in its demise. James (not his real name) had twisted the narrative of their ending in a way that made him comfortable, and Burden is merely taking her story back. She tells it with graceful, pointed precision, which is not to be confused with restraint or propriety. It’s the shedding of that part of her, the rejection of what’s expected, that makes Strangers so wildly readable.

“There was something growing in me,” she writes, after deciding to fight back during divorce proceedings, “an almost nihilistic desire to set flame to the remaining structures of my former life, to the very safety I clung to, to the fiction that I could depend on anyone other than myself for protection, to the idea that being quiet was the only way to be good. And a deepening of an instinct, within me since the first days after James left, that truth was the only possible foundation for what would come next.”

Strangers is out today. And P.S. my friend Liz loved the audiobook, which is narrated by the author.

Have a good week!
Jenny

P.S. Oh wait, one more book thing: My pal Adam Roberts just launched the Amateur Gourmet Book Club, where every month he asks someone in the food world to discuss a food-related memoir or novel — and guess who his inaugural guest is? Yours truly! We’ll be reading Julie and Julia, a book I owe so much of my career to and one I’ve been meaning to revisit for decades. Mark your calendars for our live discussion on Tuesday, February 3 at 1:00pm ET, and follow along with Adam. He’s 100 pages in and has already made Julia’s Boeuf Bourguignon. Because of course.

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For more easy, approachable vegetarian recipes, check out my New York Times bestselling books The Weekday Vegetarians and the follow-up: The Weekday Vegetarians: Get Simple. 🍳🌿