Lauren Masur

All of our tomato-y picks, all in one place.

When in doubt, bring food.

One fix is in effect ... right now!

Think your favorite snack is out of stock? Think again.

A week of delicious, no-cook meals from this family.

There is a time and a place for jarred pasta sauce: The time is all the time and the place is my kitchen. (Can someone print that on a wooden sign and sell it in Home Goods? Thanks.) That’s not to say that I don’t have a deep love and appreciation for the homemade stuff, which pretty much courses through my Italian American, New Jersey-born veins. It’s just that in a pinch, jarred pasta sauce feels like a gift from up above.

Name: ConstanceLocation: Winchester, MAAge: 38Number of people in household: 2 adults and two 5-year-oldsOccupation: Project AssistantHousehold income: $30,000 Grocery budget: $200 for two weeksGrocery stores of choice: Costco, Stop and Shop, and the farmers marketStop and Shop is just down the road from our house so it’s the most convenient location for us to buy groceries from.

After everything that’s happened over the past 15 months, Alice Choi is choosing to look at the positives — and cooking at home has been one of them. For purely practical reasons, it makes sense! Alice is the blogger behind Hip Foodie Mom, which saw a boom in readers this past year when more people were finding their way around their home kitchens than ever before. (She’s also a member of the Kitchn Collective, a team of food writers and parents.

Across the board, 2020 has been a year when parents and children have spent more time together than pretty much ever before. Stay-at-home orders, lapses in safe childcare options, and transitions to online school have forced new routines that have taken family time to unprecedented levels (in both good and bad ways). A clear side effect: Parents having to field way more “I’m hungrys!” than usual.