Eat

Let’s be honest: If you’re craving super-crispy, crunchy apple chips, baking them in the oven just isn’t going to cut it. The air fryer, on the other hand, will never fail to deliver. This recipe couldn’t be easier. You’ll start by thinly slicing an apple (any variety will work, though a red apple produces extra-pretty chips), and if you have a mandoline, use it: the thinner the slice, the crispier the chip.

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.

When your tidy bunch of bright-yellow bananas morphs into aggressively speckled and aromatic fruit, there’s only one course of action: Bake them into breakfast. You could bake a loaf of banana bread, of course, but we’re partial to these muffins, which come together quickly and are perfect for grabbing on the go. Plus, you (probably) already have everything you need to make them, and they’re sure to be a hit with the entire family.

I’m a mom of six kids, ranging in age from 10 to 21. My college sons live at home, so that means I’m cooking for a small army every night — and shopping for enough groceries to accomplish that. Being a mom doesn’t necessarily mean you know everything, and being a mom of six doesn’t mean that I have cosmic levels of knowledge (or patience, for that matter). Rather, parenting a large family has given me plenty of opportunities to grow and learn.

If there’s one thing harder than deciding what to make yourself for dinner, it’s coming up with easy dinner ideas for your kids. You want to get something on the table that’s fairly quick to make and doesn’t require a lot of effort. And you also want a meal that the kids (and ideally the whole table!) will devour, while contending with food preferences that can ping-pong from week to week. And it can feel even trickier when you have a picky eater on your hands.

At our sister site, Kitchn, our editors develop and debut brand-new recipes on the site every single week. But at home, we also have our own tried-and-true dishes that we make over and over again—because quite simply? We love them. And we decided to start sharing some of our absolute favorites with you. Here’s a peek into what we’re cooking and eating in our own kitchens. Homemade cookies are a regular occurrence at my house.

I could write a whole ode to the humble cream cheese sandwich. Cream cheese and jelly sandwiches got me through a particularly picky time when my daughter was in a nut-free preschool. And veggie cream cheese has become one the most reliable ways for me to get vegetables into my two kiddos. In fact, so much veggie cream cheese has been coming out of my kitchen that I make it in bulk and freeze it for future use.

When it comes to feeding her family of four, Joanna Goddard — the voice and founder of the much-loved lifestyle site Cup of Jo — is all about keeping it simple and ultra-comforting with weeknight dinners that she, her husband, and her small boys can love. Like us, she’s a big fan of Trader Joe’s and happily takes advantage of smart store-bought shortcuts to minimize time in the kitchen, as well as maximize time with her husband and adorable boys.

Whether you know this frozen dessert as Thai rolled ice cream, stir-fried ice cream, or even marble-top ice cream, its signature look and flavor are the same: Rolled tubes of sweet, milky, almost-chewy ice cream presented in a small cup with plenty of whipped cream and garnishes. Places that sell rolled ice cream make it on super-chilled flat tops or marble slabs specifically designed for rapidly chilling an ice cream base.

Toddler parents know this one thing to be true: A hungry toddler is a cranky toddler. And while we’re often in a rush to feed our littlest eaters before they melt down, we also want to make sure they are regularly trying new foods and getting balanced nutrition, too. Need fresh ideas? We got you. Some of my fellow editors (all parents!) and I brainstormed a massive list of our favorite easy and wholesome toddler food ideas — and below, you’ll find all of them.

Last year, thanks to my colleague Sheela Prakash, I fell madly in love with jacket potatoes. As Sheela explains in her ode to the British take on the classic baked potato, a longer baking time at a lower temperature makes Russet potatoes incredibly crisp on the outside and super fluffy on the inside. So when Martha Stewart shared a method for something similar using Yukon gold potatoes on her Instagram page, I knew I had to try it.

Love donuts, hate deep-frying? Same. Luckily, there’s a way to get around that. In fact, this method is so easy, and it uses an appliance we’ve come to love (and know that many parents love too). If you aren’t currently the proud owner of an air fryer, let this be the recipe that convinces you to buy one. (Here’s a list of our favorites at a range of price points.

When there’s a toddler in the house, it makes all the difference to have a handful of dinner recipes that don’t take long to pull off. Now that your kiddo is running around, you can’t turn your back for a second! And even more importantly, you need meals that will please the newly choosy palates of little eaters without boring bigger eaters to tears.

As a kid, there were few things more exciting this time of year than the annual tradition of baking holiday cookies with my family. From pressing my fingers into dough to make thumbprint cookies and adding the chocolate kiss to the peanut butter blossoms, to decorating sugar cookies and even pouring the chocolate chips into the bowl, there was always a way for me to get involved.

When I was growing up, we didn’t eat meat on Fridays. Instead, in our household, the sad alternative was usually fish sticks. I don’t have particularly fond memories of them from back then — the standard ones we often bought were usually pretty bland and soggy — but nevertheless, we ate them for dinner and got on with it. I now can honestly say that frozen fish sticks don’t have to be sad. In fact, they have come a long way since the days of my youth.

In January of this year, back when we were all children, I read a tweet from author Jennifer Lynn Barnes about the prolific romance novelist Nora Roberts. Barnes recalled, “One time, I was at a Q&A with Nora Roberts, and someone asked her how to balance writing and kids, and she said that the key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some are made of glass.

Now and then, a girl needs a little magic to get through the day and fly above it all. While moving a mile a minute isn’t my preferred way to live, it’s been a reality. At times, I move so fast that I forget to eat, and I get clumsy and frantic. That’ll knock the wind right out of a lady’s magic fairy wings. To make sure I stay on top of it all, I need a nourishing and energizing breakfast. For years, the smoothie routine was yogurt, orange juice, and frozen fruit.

Last week I asked some fellow parents how they’re feeling about the looming holiday. Henry, a coworker, said something that got our virtual heads nodding: “Right now I would appreciate other voices saying that it’s OK to not have a real ‘celebration’ this year.” Did you nod too? Are you still struggling over whether to gather with your parents?

I was raised as a Muslim. There are no celebrations in the Islamic faith that do not center reverence for Allah—but for my family, Thanksgiving was an exception. On the hour-and-a-half bus ride to my aunt’s home in South Philly, my mother would remind us to make sure that what we put on our plates did not contain any “swine,” her favorite word to use describing anything pig.

Thanksgiving is almost here and, if you’re like me, you’ve probably barely started on your holiday meal planning. Those of us who are parents—especially if your kids are small, like mine—are busy enough already, and it’s been a tough season. I have found it hard to get jazzed up about cooking for a holiday that will just be my immediate family. But then today I kind of shook myself and said, Why so glum?

I spent the spring eyeing Chrissy Teigen’s spicy miso pasta, a combination of one of my favorite dishes (carbonara) with extra umami from miso and a hit of spice. Photo after photo popped up on Instagram, my Twitter feed seemed to taunt me with its popularity and its savory, carb-y heat. The internet seemed to be obsessed in general, but also a lab designing my favorite food could only have come closer by somehow working in a little ice cream at the end.

If you count up the whole year, every day of lunches, from now until summer break, did you know that back to school means packing 180 school lunches? I’ll let you sit with that for a moment. Whether your district started back to school virtually or you’re adjusting to a new normal in person, getting your kids to help with lunch will obviously make your life a little easier. Just like any new skill, teaching your kids to prep and pack their own lunches takes time and patience.

A banana split for breakfast? Oh, yes! This quick, easy breakfast takes a dessert classic and lightens it up for the morning with ultra-creamy Greek yogurt and a warm drizzle of jam. It’s also a perfect antidote to those fussy mornings when your child doesn’t want to eat anything.No, there’s no ice cream involved. (Ice cream for breakfast—that seems best saved for birthdays, eh?

Salads are a staple of healthy eating. Add in the fact that a good salad requires zero cooking, and I’m won over. But I am a salad-lover who is also a mom of two. And when guests come over, they are often surprised to see me making salad for my kids—and more surprised to see the kids eating it. How do I do it? The answer is actually simple: I make finger salads.

Snack boards are my never-fail, super-easy appetizer—and a clever way to serve dinner on busy nights. Take this Halloween snack board, for example: It’s perfect for a party (when we’re not in a pandemic, of course), but doubles as a quick meal before trick-or-treating (again, in non-COVID times) that will delight kids and adults alike.

Even though it looks very different this year, Halloween is here — and secretly, I think it’s the most amazing time for food-lovers and their kids. Why? You get to play with your food! Our collective digital feeds are filled at present with cute spider sandwiches and bat-wing cookies, but this is not a modern phenomenon. For nearly a century, there has been pressure on parents to rise to the occasion of Halloween.

At 5, my youngest has officially left the toddler years, but the struggles of feeding a toddler are not too far away from my memory. Toddlers bounce from happy and inquisitive to tired and cranky easily without the capacity to tell us that they are hungry and headed for a meltdown. All of this is to say that after a day, or a week, or even hours of extraordinary emotional highs and lows and generally wrestling a wild, stubborn 2-year-old, you are tired. And you all still need to eat.

I’ll be honest with you: Classic snickerdoodles are one of my least favorite cookies. I love their crunchy cinnamon-sugar coating, but I’ve always wanted something more—something to really kick them up a notch. So in an attempt to reimagine the snickerdoodle into a cookie I would actually get excited about, I added an additional layer of flavor to the mix, completely transforming them into a brand-new treat that’s bold, delicious, and unexpected. My secret ingredient?

Do you remember the absolute joy you’d feel when your mom would pop open a can of biscuit dough and a package of bite-sized sausages — meaning pigs and a blanket were on the horizon? Our version embraces that exuberance, but we’re upgrading the whole thing. Thanks to our smart technique, you don’t have to individually wrap 50 tiny sausages to create the perfect bite of flaky, buttery pastry and smoky sausage (but more on that later).

Hello, and welcome to the first recipe in my new column, But First, Breakfast! I’ve been thinking about the idea for this series for a long time, probably ever since I started touring to promote my breakfast cookbook, Whole Grain Mornings, and readers told me how much they longed for really simple weekday breakfast ideas. This series is about real-world, make-ahead breakfasts that you can actually fit into your busy, everyday life.

For all the times I have ordered chicken lettuce wraps at Chinese restaurants like P.F. Chang’s, inhaled entire “appetizers” by myself, and sighed with happiness while licking sticky sauce from my fingers, it never once occurred to me to try making this dish at home. Partly, lettuce wraps have always felt like an indulgence that needed restriction to restaurant visits only.

Getting kids to try new foods is simply an exercise in marketing. Case in point: When I made falafel for dinner one night, I called them chickpea nuggets instead of falafel and my children gobbled them right up. They asked for chickpea nuggets again and it got my mind churning with an idea for an actual chickpea nugget recipe — one with all the flavors and textures of chicken nuggets, but baked and egg-free.

Packed with vitamin-rich sweet potatoes, this simple soup is a quick family meal that ensures a dose of veggies even in a relatively small portion. The natural creaminess from the potatoes provides a pleasing texture for kids and is delicious topped with everything from crumbled bacon to a dash of hot sauce for parents. The red lentils are more subtle in flavor than their brown and green counterparts, and they cook about three times as fast, so they’re ideal for weeknights.

This is the macaroni and cheese recipe I grew up on — creamy sauce, chewy pasta, and plenty of cheese. It always felt like a special treat to us kids, although I suspect my mother liked it more because it was an easy stovetop dish that requires just five ingredients and almost no thought to pull together at the end of a long day. Whatever the reason, whatever the occasion, a bowl of this mac and cheese will always spell comfort.

When you come home extra late after a crazy day at the office, it may seem like your only options for dinner are takeout, those questionable leftovers in the fridge, or scrambled eggs and toast. You’re starving and cranky and you need dinner fast, after all. Luckily there’s a fourth option: these 10-minute tacos. Yes, making tacos in 10 minutes is absolutely possible.

Five simple ingredients tag team on a dinner that everyone at the table will love — including mom and dad, given all of the veggies tucked inside!

Oh, avocado toast — the perfect shortcut meal for any time of day. And one of my absolute favorite ways to serve up a meal that works for the entire family, even the wee ones. Avocado toast is the perfect example, too, of the type of food I am sharing this week for DIY Mama; simple, adaptable meals that with a few adjustments are equally delicious and nutritious for mama and toddler.

Because you know, drinking your greens always feels good.

Every one of these is kid-approved.

Whether your kids are at school or at home these brilliant lunchbox ideas will shake up your stuck-between-bread routine.