Dinner A Love Story Cookbook

LilSugar: How drastically did your kitchen routine change once kids were in the picture?

Jenny Rosenstrach: Pretty drastically! We [Jenny and her husband, Andy] always had a ritual in place. We always sat down at the end of the day together. We didn't put a lot of pressure on all sitting together when the kids were little, as that would have been totally unsatisfying. When we had two kids under 2, we'd feed them their dinner — something really basic, like turkey or chicken with broccoli and strawberries — do the bath time/bedtime routine, then we would start our own dinner. Our ritual took on a whole new meaning for us. It was the first time in the day that we could exhale. To me, it still counted as family dinner. . . . That was still the end goal.