A Quick Bite With….Jenny Rosenstrach, founder of Dinner A Love Story

After spending more than ten years working in magazines (including the beloved Cookie), former magazine editor Jenny Rosenstrach launched the website Dinner A Love Story, with dreams of helping fellow parents with the daunting daily task of prepping dinner. Aside from time-saving solutions and upbeat advice, her posts are always brimming with her infectious humour, sound advice and jaw-dropping photography. Her book, Time for Dinner, hit shelves last fall. She talks to us about bumper stickers, Momofuku and what delicate carb terrifies her.

Q: How did Dinner A Love Story come about?

A: I got fired! No really, I lost my job at Cookie and had spent 10 years in magazines writing stories about solving the “what’s-for-dinner” problem. I wanted to try a different tack. Getting family dinner together for my two kids is always hard, but it was always worth it — and I found that the “worth it part” was getting lost in the conversation. All I ever read about were the scary stories — about how you must eat dinner with your kids or else they’d be drug addicts. I wanted to write about how fun dinner with kids could be, how many fun places it could lead to. How in love with it I was.

Q: Your “Make Dinner Not War” stickers are amazing. What prompted the idea?

A: I actually came up with it when we were brainstorming titles the cookbook I co-authored with my Cookie editors. (Time for Dinner) I loved it so much and pushed and pushed for it, even though I knew it wasn’t right for this book. So I took my consolation prize — I turned the slogan into bumper stickers. I made 25 and gave them to co-workers, then kept getting more and more requests for them so finally, just last month started selling them on the website. I love picturing people across this country spreading the word.

Q: Why is sitting down and enjoying dinner with your family so important right now?

A:I was so important to me when I was working full-time (now I’m working part-time) because that was the only real chance I had to sit down and connect with my kids all day. I put so much on that 7 minutes! It’s important to me now because I feel like I am programming them to report to dinner no-questions-asked for later down the road, when they are teen-agers and want nothing to do with me anymore.

Q: What’s your earliest memory of food?

A:Cooking scrambled eggs in kindergarten with my teacher. Which is ironic because neither of my kids will touch eggs.

Q: Salty or sweet?

A: Um, both combined? One word: Momofuku.

Q: What’s your default, throw-together-and-wow-everyone meal?

A:I love this Pasta with Caramelized Onions, Yogurt, and Spinach. It’s a riff on a recipe I found in the Times about ten years ago. Problem is my kids won’t eat it. And also, you have to go to a sort of specialty store to find the sheep’s milk yogurt (Whole Foods has it — look for Old Chatham Sheep Farm brand), but every time I make it, jaws drop. And it’s incredibly easy and always in season.

Q: What’s the one meal you would love to cook but fear it’s too complicated?

A: Indie Jones is to snakes as I am to puff pastry. I am completely terrified of any recipe that includes it. The good news is that I felt that way about yeast a few years ago, but am now a Jim Lahey, No-Knead Bread Baking machine!

Q: If you could have any one person over for dinner (the sky’s the limit) who would it be?

A: My grandparents. All four of them died before I was born so I only know them through stories. I never really thought about how much I was missing out on until I had my own kids and realized how special the relationship is between them and their grandparents. And while they were there, I’d think I’d ask them to do the cooking. Can’t go wrong with old-school Jewish and Italian cooks in the kitchen.