Three Things

A week of easy dinners, apple recipes galore, teaching your kids the art of conversation

Greetings eaters and readers! We were in Vermont this past weekend where it felt like we checked every box on the official New England Fall Bucket List: Hiking through technicolor woods, visiting fall street festivals and roadside pumpkin patches, eating our weight in cider doughnuts, watching some college soccer, and of course apple picking. We hit an orchard that specialized in the sweet-tart, juicy Esopus Spitz variety, and now I don’t know if I can ever go back to ye olde honeycrisps. (The fruits of our labor, of course, are in recipe form below.) Vermont, you are absurd, and I love you for it! ✨ In other travel news, there are still spots for the Mexico tour I’m hosting in the spring of 2025. You can click here for itinerary and registration information, but we’ll be exploring Mexico City and Puebla under the guidance of on-the-ground locals and culinary experts, learning about local produce and craftsmanship from the people who know it best, tasting classic street food, visiting Michelin-starred restaurant Pujol, taking a private cooking class and so much more. The dates for the trip are March 31 – April 7, 2025 and I would love for you (and maybe your partner? Best friend? College roommate group?) to join me…

One more thing before your Three Things. Subscribers! This Friday, I’m excited to share the next menu (plus shopping list) in my dinner party series, one that is 95% make-ahead, and 1000% on-point for Cozy Season. If you don’t want to miss it, you can subscribe here:

And now, your Three Things…

1. What’s for Dinner This Week

With travel and book events and other decidedly excellent activities that I’d be crazy to complain about, my fall has been busy, and I’ve had this week mentally circled on the calendar for a while as the one where I get to relax a little. Of course, by relax I mean cook a few simple dinners in my own kitchen, maybe even in front of the Yankee game. (I know, I know, who even am I?) For tonight’s game, I’m thinking Three-Bean Chili with all the toppings since it’s a one-bowl number, the most crucial qualification for any TV dinner; Next, I think I’ll make a batch of veggie burgers and serve those alongside some of Andy’s fried potatoes, stashing the extra burger patties in the freezer for weeks where things are more hectic; I definitely plan on resurrecting Shaved Brussels with Walnuts, Pecorino, and Currants, the breakout star of last winter that has somehow yet to appear on this year’s table. I love salads like this because they’re showstoppy enough to let you go simple on the main (remember Gap Clothes, Prada Accessories?) so I’ll probably serve the Brussels with something basic, like a butter-fried salmon or a roast chicken, the little black dress of dinner. Lastly, about that photo up there: It’s Odette’s Chopped Pasta Salad which I’ll be bringing to a soccer game tailgate this weekend, but there’s no reason I can think of why you shouldn’t consider it for a quick-and-easy weeknight dinner, especially since it’s easy to make vegetarian, if that’s how you’re rolling these days. It’s a goodie.

2. Apple Pie with Walnut Crumble

I know this sounds crazy but it feels like something of a miracle every time I come up with a new recipe given how much of a creature of habit I am…and also because I’ve secured such a solid rotation of favorites that honestly, I think I’d be perfectly happy relying only on those favorites for the rest of my life*. This is especially true when apple season rolls around. The only place my mind wants to go when I return from an orchard excursion is in the direction of the apple crisp I’ve been making for decades, or maybe towards my ole reliable apple-stuffed apple cake; or if we’re talking savory apple applications, Chicken with Apples and Curry, one of the first recipes I learned how to make when I was living on my own, 30 years ago. But alas, like the shark that must keep swimming forward to stay alive, I came up with a new one this week (you’re welcome!): Apple Pie with Walnut Crumble, a mash-up of a basic apple pie and the walnut-cinnamon crumble from a memorable Yossy Arefi coffee cake. It’s especially bring-on-the-fall with morning coffee after a run in the park, just saying! Here’s your recipe:

Dals Apple Pie With Walnut Crumble

121KB ∙ PDF file

Download

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I’ve got about 20 more apples waiting to be baked, sauced, buttered, fried, candied, whatever! — so please, send suggestions if you’ve got ‘em.

*I smell a cookbook idea

3. From the Archives: Teaching Kids the Art of Conversation

Nearly ten years ago, I picked up a book called Reclaiming Conversation, by Sherry Turkle that I still think about all the time, especially when I sit down to dinner with my family. Turkle is an MIT professor and social scientist who has researched the effect of technology on relationships and behavior for decades, and her book was about the crisis of face-to-face conversation in a world of constant online connectivity. It was also a call to arms for teaching empathy and connecting in real life, and the dinner table, she said, plays an important role in that. Naturally I needed to hear more, so I interviewed her for Dinner: A Love Story. Here are the parts that have stayed with me ever since:

JR: Why is family conversation at the table so important?

Turkle: Here’s what happens during family conversation: The first thing is you imagine other minds, you imagine the minds of your family, and over time you learn to empathize. The conversations allow adults to model listening, to show children how listening works. It’s in family conversation when children learn that it’s comforting to be heard and understood, when they learn the pleasure of being heard and understood. So in that way, these talks are the most important building blocks for empathy. And the reason why dinner conversation is an important part of this is because ideally, it happens one night and then it happens again, and then it happens again. It has that quality that most conversations don’t. You can talk things out, work things through, without acting out on your feelings.

JR: Sometimes it feels like if we could just teach our kids how to be empathic, a lot of the world’s problems would be solved.

Turkle: Empathy is in crisis. It’s a skill. You learn it. You’re born having the capacity for it, but you’re not born with an empathy “chip.” Or if you’re born with a chip, it needs to be allowed to unfold and practiced. It’s in family conversation where children go through the exercise of learning to put themselves in other peoples’ shoes, and it’s often the shoes of the sibling. When a sibling says this is what’s the matter, you get to hear what’s the matter, you get to hear what the sibling is saying and how he or she is saying it. All these things are key for developing empathy.

If it’s not practiced, then you don’t learn that eye contact is the way to see how someone is feeling, and that face-to-face conversation is how you connect with someone. You don’t learn how to listen and take turns. You don’t learn to let someone speak their piece, and you don’t learn to be interested. Maybe it makes you anxious to listen? That’s ok! Listen some more — that’s a value. It’s through family conversations where you learn that all kinds of feelings are both acceptable and interesting. They don’t have to be hidden, they don’t have to be denied. What matters is that they’re there.

JR: So what do we do?

Turkle: There are really simple things that can turn it around particularly when we’re talking about kids. Dinner is one of those things. It doesn’t matter if you’re unpacking fast food or if you’re really into cooking. Food prep and eating together and going out to eat together…it’s all the same as far as conversation is concerned. It’s around food where people relax, where people talk,  where people look each other in the eye, and where they say “We’re ready and we’re listening.” And you don’t want to mess with that.

Have a great week,
Jenny

*interview has been slightly edited for clarity

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