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Dalai Mama Dishes

by Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Dalai Mama Dishes

Catherine Newman cooks for the family

Instant Oatmeal

Posted 1 week ago
For the sake of appearances, I put four bowls in the photo even though Michael would sooner fling himself under a train than eat oatmeal.
If I could brush my teeth with oats, believe me, I would. In fact, I was going to write, "I'd take a bath in them," and then I remembered that I actually had: once when I was covered in a welty poison oak situation, I put oats in the bath, and it was lovely: slippery and soothing in a very porridgy kind of way. Or maybe I'm confusing it with the time the Partridge family got sprayed by skunks and had to bathe in tomato juice? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I know this is not the first oat-based breakfast recipe I've offered you--what with the muesli, and the granola, and the granola bars. But November means hot-cereal season. Well,
for the kids and me at least. Not for Michael, who gags at the mere sight of hot cereal. Being the way I am, I like to shovel into his psyche to dig up… Read More
11 people found this post helpful 2 Comments

Roasted Cauliflower Salad

Posted 3 weeks ago
We ate the salad at 10:30 in the morning. That's how desperate we were.
Saturday afternoon, in the middle of a happy, energetic Halloween day, Birdy said, suddenly, "Mama, will you take my temperature?" Let me just say--and this is not hindsight talking--I did not have a good feeling about it. You know how it is. Only when you sit your child down do you see the peculiarly fluorescent rosiness of her cheeks, the damp stringiness of her hair, the dry and peeling lips; a hand to the forehead offers immediate clamminess and then… Read More
14 people found this post helpful 3 Comments

Crunchy Oven Fries

Posted October 26, 2009
They are totally addictive.
Ben is ten, and he asks many questions that begin this way: "If you had limitless wishes..." What would you wish for first? (Justice.) How many wishes do you think it would be before you wished that poop didn't smell bad? (Never. Poop smells bad so we'll stay away from it, which helps keep us healthy.) Which wish do you think would go the least like you'd meant it to? (No mosquitoes. Then all the bats would die and the… Read More
10 people found this post helpful 9 Comments

Homemade Fancy Crackers

Posted October 19, 2009
Don't these look like those super-fancy ones you can refinance your house over?
I know I'm heading into crackpot territory here--what with the making of commonly available consumables and the listing of such comically earnest ingredients as "spelt flour." But there it is. Crackers. The thing is, we eat a lot of crackers. Which means that, until recently, we have purchased a lot of crackers. And I don't like it. I don't like how expensive they are, for one thing: a box that weighs, like, one nano-ounce, most of which is taken up… Read More
11 people found this post helpful 21 Comments

The Soup of 1000 Vegetables

Posted October 05, 2009
Okay, so maybe it was the soup of 15 vegetables. But still.
"When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement."

Those are lines from the Mary Oliver poem, "When Death Comes," which is a favorite of mine. I'm thinking of her because my children and mother and I went to hear her read last week, along with 2000 other amazed people, everyone with their souls flung open. Well, make that 1999. Birdy was too busy accidentally dropping her after-dinner mints on the… Read More
7 people found this post helpful 11 Comments

Granola Bars

Posted September 28, 2009
These are chewy, salty, tangy, sweet. Four of my favorite flavors. (What? Chewy isn't a flavor? Sure it is.)
Okay, so his self-marinating single-serving pouches of sardines flopped, but inventor Stanley Mason enjoyed a great deal of success with the squeezable ketchup bottle, the disposable diaper, the Playtex "Wow" bra, and the granola bar. Were you born yet when the first granola bars came out in the 70s? I was, and it felt a lot like getting away with something, those Nature Valley double-pouches of health-sanctioned sweetness. They were cookies, but they weren't cookies, and you could tuck them… Read More
14 people found this post helpful 17 Comments
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About Catherine Newman

Catherine Newman is the author of the memoir, Waiting for Birdy: A Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family, available online and in bookstores nationwide.

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