My overall plan for this newsletter is to publish essays on a variety of topics. In addition, one week each month, I will post a meal-preparation plan. These are not recipes exactly – they are project plans that have recipes embedded in them.
The essay below provides the genesis of this project and explains the newsletter title; it was originally written in response to a writing group prompt titled, “Expertise.” My dear friend, Shelly, is our esteemed writing group leader. She develops the most interesting and inspiring prompts for us, usually a one or two word topic followed by a series of questions to help us think and write freely. The results from our group members are always varied, creative, moving. I will leave it to Shelly to develop a Substack of her own to publish her own writing and her excellent educational materials for writers!
With the Dinner at Eight newsletter, I aim to inspire both home-cooked meals and interesting dinner conversations. I hope you will comment on these posts and let me know me how they worked for you, make requests for future dinner menus, and tell me what your dinner conversation entailed.
Bon appétit! ~ Stephanie
Introducing Dinner at Eight
I grew up in a large extended Italian American family. Gatherings for picnics, informal dinners, and formal holiday feasts were frequent. Everyone prepared their delicious home-cooked specialties, and there was always a thoughtful balance of snacks, main courses, side dishes, desserts, and drinks1. The same philosophy of preparation and balance prevailed for daily dinners at home – there was no “winging it” for meals in my family.
The preparation of dinner had a distinct rhythm and efficiency. Dad got home from work first and would clean vegetables, make a salad2, pre-heat the grill, and marinate a flank steak or chicken breasts. When Mom arrived, they would cook together and talk. My brother and I set the table. Dinner hour was sacred – TV off, music on.
The rhythm of holiday meals for 20 to 30 people was more complicated. Things started well. Menus were discussed and decided several weeks ahead, and dishes assigned to each family. Christmas Eve was usually at our home. My parents focused on the dishes they would prepare, decided table settings and serving platters, and cleaned crystal and silver. But on Christmas Eve morning we all went into action with our own idea of the order of things. As evening fell, guests would start to arrive and one of my parents would inevitably exclaim, “I need to go get myself ready!”
One year, I dared to propose a solution to the Christmas Eve preparation chaos. Working backward, I created a schedule that ended with everything being ready and all of us showered, dressed, and sipping a cocktail at the appointed hour of our guests’ arrival. It worked like a charm! I knew my parents appreciated my interference when, the following year, they asked me to create a similar plan for the upcoming feast.
Many years ago, I was working with a personal trainer three days a week after work. I would get home at 8:00, shower and change, then make dinner. We ended up eating at 9:30 or 10:00 – too late to be well rested for work the next day. My husband offered to cook and have dinner ready when I got home…with a caveat.
Joe is very precise. He follows recipes to the letter. His diced vegetables are gorgeous. The meniscus of his measured liquids is at the very level of the desired amount. But he found it challenging to make all the elements of a meal arrive at the table at the same time. At the time, Joe was a flight instructor accustomed to working from checklists, so he requested that I create a checklist for him to prepare our favorite meals.
I combined my project planning and cooking skills to develop a series of menus he could have ready when I arrived home from the gym – hence, “Dinner at Eight.” For each meal I created a project plan based on the timing of the recipes and with an exact start time. Considering how long each recipe required, when it required being “hands on,” and what could be done during the down time in each recipe, I integrated the preparation of several dishes into a single set of instructions. I made sure to include the steps that made each meal an event – when to open wine, fill water glasses, set the table, and set out condiments and other accoutrements. I had learned to prepare meals over years of trial and error; writing it down was challenging but made me think carefully about the steps I took to put a meal on the table.
The meals were a success – the plans were easy to follow, the meal ready when intended, and the food delicious. Joe was happy. I was delighted. I told some friends about the project and how wonderful it was to come home to the aroma of dinner after a long day at work and a hard workout. I hadn’t realized that meal planning and preparation is a common challenge – my friends begged me to share the plans to help them (or their spouses) prepare meals. As it always does, our routines eventually shifted, years passed, we retired and moved, and the notebook of menu project plans sits in a drawer unpublished and unshared.
It makes me happy to revisit these plans now and share them more widely with my community of readers who might find these plans helpful. I know that many more people began cooking more frequently at home in recent years, and some of these plans might seem very basic. But I hope all my readers will find these fun, inspiring, and somewhat flexible based on their own preferences and skills in the kitchen.
My parents recently revealed to me that our all-day picnics on Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day (and any other reason for an enormous clan gathering in the outdoors) included large bottles of Screwdrivers and Bloody Mary’s, both heavily disguised as these events were almost always held in a municipal park that did not allow alcohol. Who knew? I only remember that we were allowed to eat as many doughnuts as we wanted, and the time my cousin Neil carelessly jumped off the see-saw with me in the air and I couldn’t breathe for what felt like 10 minutes after I hit the ground with an enormous thump that brought all the adults running.
We had a simple green salad following the main dinner course every day. The dressing was vegetable oil and red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. I didn’t know bottled dressing was a thing until an embarrassingly advanced age (high school). Perhaps a story for another time.
This is a delightful idea! Lovely how you and your husband’s strengths and gifts complemented each other’s so well. My partner does a lot of cooking for us, and he would love precise plans like your husband for how to coordinate a meal and all its parts to be together. He his also very detailed oriented.
Looking forward to your following posts!