致不愛做飯的你大綱

Though I'm a woman with children, I should confess that I'm not the target mom-reader for the latest avalanche of family cookbooks, which bear titles like "Dinner: A Love Story" or "The Family Cooks." This is my shortcoming: Where I ought to have a lively intellectual curiosity about food preparation, I generally have a despairing blank.

雖然我是個母親，但我必須承認自己並非《晚餐：一個愛的故事》(Dinner: A Love Story)或《家庭廚師》(The Family Cooks)最近這一大堆家庭烹飪書的目標讀者。這是我的缺點：我本該對烹製食物產生強烈的求知慾，但通常我只感到絕望的木然。

"Have you figured out dinner yet?" my daughter Susannah, who's 5, asks me. Figure out. Not "fix" dinner; not "make" it. She gets that phrase from me. A vague neural itch sets in around 5 p.m. when I recognize that something must happen, and soon, involving plates and macronutrients. I do not move. Dinner preparation is all mental around these parts: I figure out who's had enough protein or carbs for the day, who can bear eating the other's favorite food, or whether I must figure out two meals; figure out which is more endocrinologically devastating, highly processed soy milk or not-entirely-organic lactose-free cow's milk.

“你想好晚飯做什麼了嗎？”5歲的女兒蘇珊娜(Susannah)問我。“想好”。不是去“弄”也不是去“做”晚飯。她是從我這兒學會這個說法的。下午5點左右，我隱隱感到不安，覺得需要趕緊做點什麼，這事跟盤子和大量營養素有關，但我沒有行動。這個階段的準備工作都是在頭腦中進行：我要想清楚今天誰攝入的蛋白質或碳水化合物已經足夠了，誰能忍受吃另一個人最喜歡的食物，還是說我需要搞出兩道菜；我還要想清楚，從內分泌角度講，深加工的豆漿和不完全有機的無乳糖牛奶哪個危害更大。

Then comes the real intellectual heavy lifting, revisited like a private, pointless Fermat's Theorem: Why is food such a big part of rearing children? Why me? And why can't I just crack open a half-dozen Clif bars and keep playing with my children?

然後纔是真正的精神折磨，它像毫無意義的私人費馬大定理一樣不斷糾纏我：爲什麼養孩子過程中要花這麼多時間做吃的？爲什麼非得我做飯？爲什麼我就不能撕開幾個克利夫能量棒(Clif bar)充飢，然後繼續跟孩子們玩呢？

Cooking! Aren't we past that? In 1982, Jessica Lange as Julie, the glamorous single working mother in "Tootsie,” became my ego-ideal when she sexily told Dustin Hoffman's character that she was a "born defroster." Lord, how I loved that expression. Women of the '80s did not sweat meal prep for their little Amys and Scotts. They defrosted. They took children to diners and bars. They ordered pizza.

做飯！我們不是已經不用做飯了嗎？1982年，傑西卡·蘭格(Jessica Lange)在《窈窕淑男》(Tootsie)中飾演的迷人單身職業母親朱莉(Julie)成了我的偶像，她性感地對達斯汀·霍夫曼(Dustin Hoffman)飾演的角色說，自己“天生就只用解凍食物就行了”。天哪，我愛死這句話了！80年代的女性不用大汗淋漓地給小孩子做飯。她們只要解凍就行了。她們可以帶孩子去小餐館和酒吧吃飯。她們也可以點披薩外賣。

That was ages ago. And I imagined that matters would only improve from there. By the time my son arrived, I vainly believed that I should be able to not just defrost food but conjure it — by means of the web or a 3-D printer or at least a game male, close at hand, whose ego had been serendipitously formed by Emeril or "Top Chef.” But instead, to my horror, home cooking had made a hideous comeback. Noble food philosophers preached the retro virtues of slow, real food instead of the quickie, frozen stuff that had once spelled liberation to me.

那都是很多年前的事了。我以爲從那以後情況只會變得更好。到我兒子出生時，我還以爲自己應該不僅能解凍食物，還能召喚食物——通過互聯網、3D打印機，或至少通過一個盡在咫尺、心甘情願下廚房的丈夫——艾梅里爾(Emeril)或真人秀節目“頂級大廚”(Top Chef)意外地讓他以當奶爸爲榮。但可怕的是，家庭烹飪捲土重來。高尚的美食哲學家們鼓吹慢慢做成的真正的食物的好處，把能快速做好的、原本讓我看到解放希望的冷凍食物打入了冷宮。

And worst of all, as the mother-cookbooks make painfully clear, the daily work of feeding children doesn't fall to the sages. Neither does it, notably, fall to the dads, whom the cookbooks commend for having signature dishes or being grill-masters, but not for punching the clock at breakfast, lunch and dinner. No, cooking belongs, inevitably, to the moms. I've tried to find outrage among my sister mothers about this reactionary development. But here's the unkindest cut: It turns out that other women — traitorously — now like to cook. They find cooking expressive and fascinating. No one but me wants to be a born defroster anymore. "I hear you, but I like to cook," said one feminist the last time I tried my bold association of foodism with rank misogyny.

最糟糕的是，就像母親烹飪書所明示的那樣，餵養孩子的日常工作不是聖人們的責任。顯然也不是爸爸們的責任，那些烹飪書鼓勵爸爸們有幾樣拿手菜或者擅長燒烤，但是沒讓他們定點做早餐、午餐和晚餐。做飯必然是媽媽們的事。我想從其他媽媽那裏也聽到對這種後退的憤怒。但是我被非常不友好地打斷了：現在其他女人居然喜歡做飯！她們覺得做飯有意義，也很有趣。只有我還想做“天生的解凍者”。上一次和一位女權主義者交談時，我大膽嘗試把食物嗜好症與可惡的厭女症聯繫在一起，結果她說，“我明白你的意思了，但我喜歡做飯。”

"I like to cook"? What about "I like not working and having no opinions and being everyone's handmaiden"? Hasn't women's false consciousness about their "preferences" always been a part of the sexist equation? Or is theirs the true 2014 consciousness — the liking to cook — and I just would have fared better in the heyday of Salisbury steak? (Dr. J. H. Salisbury, wouldn't you know: Civil War-era food faddist and earliest known carb-hater.) Among my newly foodie friends, I couldn't get a witness to my bewilderment. At the same time no MakerBot is going to roll in and cook for my family. I'm going to have to find an apron and make real food happen daily for my children, lest they be poisoned by phthalates, dextrose and heavy metals while I'm pretending to be Jessica Lange.

“我喜歡做飯”？你怎麼不說“我喜歡不工作，沒有思想，當所有人的女僕”？女人對自己“偏好”的虛假意識不一直是性別歧視者理念的一部分嗎？還是說喜歡做飯是她們在2014年的真實感受，而我更適合生活在索爾斯伯利牛肉餅盛行的時代（你不知道J·H·索爾斯伯利博士[Dr. J. H. Salisbury]嗎？他是內戰時期的食療信徒，是已知的最早憎恨碳水化合物的人）？在我新結識的美食家朋友中，沒一個人理解我的困惑。與此同時，也沒有3D打印機來爲我的家人做飯。我必須去找個圍裙，每天給孩子們烹製真正的食物，以免在我把自己假想成傑西卡·蘭格時，孩子們被鄰苯二甲酸鹽、葡萄糖和重金屬毒害。

Thus we get the mother cookbooks, stuffed like Cornish hens with their whimsical anecdotes and their photos of stylish children helping to cook like cheerfully indentured galley slaves. These books do much more than prep you to opine grandly on nutritional fallacies. They bark out actual marching orders for making meals. The lively food seminar, which only demanded that I read and talk, is over; the dread hard labor of cooking has begun. Not only are these women (or their trusty co-authors) ace home cooks, they have also figured out dinner once and for all and are extraordinarily self-assured about their axioms. They heard the clarion call of real food a decade ago and resolved (for Empire?) to work tirelessly over hot stoves to save our sons and daughters from the packaged and the processed and the highly destructive myth of low-fat.

所以我們就有了這些母親烹飪書，裏面除了康沃爾菜雞，還有很多奇聞軼事和時髦孩子的照片，那些孩子像苦力一樣快樂地幫廚。這些書不僅讓你能對營養謬論侃侃而談，它們還大聲發出做飯號令。只要求我閱讀和發言的活躍的美食研討會結束了；可怕的烹飪苦役開始了。這些女人（或者她們值得信任的聯合作者們）不僅是一流的家庭廚師，而且已經一勞永逸地想好了晚餐做什麼，並且對自己的理念很有信心。她們在十年前聽到關於真正食物的感人號召，下定決心（爲了帝國？）在熱爐竈旁不懈努力，使孩子們免受打包或加工食物以及非常有害的低脂神話的毒害。

I find discouragement, typically, on Page 1. In the introduction to “100 Days of Real Food,” Lisa Leake calls my hasty, anxious, food-delivery way of figuring out dinner "fall[ing] prey to" the lure of convenience. That is indeed what I feel like at dinnertime: prey. Instead of hunting down healthful, real, inconvenient food, dinner-shirkers like myself are menaced, in Leake's dark vision, by such predators as restaurants, takeout, "cans of cream of mushroom soup" and what she calls "even the occasional frozen dinner." That includes virtuous-enough-seeming Amy's Kitchen burritos and Health Is Wealth chicken nuggets. (Die, born defrosters. Your glory days are over.)

我往往是看完第一頁就讀不下去了。在《100天真正的食物》(100 Days of Real Food)的引言中，麗莎·利克(Lisa Leake)說我以匆忙、焦慮以及配送食物式的想法思考晚餐是在圖省事。那的確是我在晚餐時間的感受：像個獵物。利克陰暗地認爲，像我這樣圖省事的人不是在追逐健康的、不省事的、真正的食物，而是被餐館、外賣、“罐裝奶油蘑菇湯”以及她所說的“偶爾的冷凍食物晚餐”這樣的獵食者嚇倒了。還包括貌似健康的艾米廚房(Amy's Kitchen)的墨西哥玉米捲餅以及“健康就是財富”(Health Is Wealth)的雞塊（天生解凍者，你完蛋了，你輝煌的日子結束了）。

Leake outlines her own Puritan conversion narrative in which she progressed from a bleak existence, blinded and hobbled by the Standard American Diet (SAD, so sad); through faith healing at the hands of the real-food evangelist Michael Pollan; to a wholehearted embrace of organic living and her own blog-and-cookbook ministry. A version of this conversion informs several of the family cookbooks, and the story never fails to move me. I want to eat these women's dinners, sure. But more than that, I covet their confidence.

利克概述了自己改變美食信仰的經歷：最初她被標準美國飲食（Standard American Diet，真是悲哀）矇蔽，活得悽悽慘慘；後來在真正食物傳播者邁克爾·波倫(Michael Pollan)的引導下改變了信仰；最後全心全意投入到有機生活和自己的“博客加烹飪書”的事業中。有好幾本家庭烹飪書都講述了這樣的轉變，但這樣的故事從未打動過我。我當然想吃這些女人做的晚餐，但我更多的是羨慕她們的信心。

"I don't think there is ONE THING MORE IMPORTANT you can do FOR YOUR KIDS THAN HAVE FAMILY DINNER," is how Ruth Reichl, of Gourmet, is quoted (italics and caps not mine) in "The Family Dinner," by Laurie David, with recipes by Kirstin Uhrenholdt. Pomposity of this kind abounds in Laurie David books, and ultimately the books' apotheosizing of home cooking is more memorable in its aggression than the somewhat meeker recipes (Easy Cheesy Dinner Frittata, Turkey Meat Loaf, Your Favorite Grilled Cheese). No one thing more important for children than family dinner? I might have put "send them to school" or “hug them occasionally" at the top of that list.

“我覺得你能給孩子們做的事情中，最重要的莫過於做一頓家庭晚餐，”勞麗·大衛(Laurie David)在《家庭晚餐》(The Family Dinner，書中的菜譜是希爾斯廷·烏倫豪爾特[Kirstin Uhrenholdt]寫的)一書中這樣引用《美食家》(Gourmet)的露絲·雷切爾(Ruth Reichl)的話。這樣的炫耀在勞麗·大衛的書中隨處可見，結果這本書對家庭烹飪的神化比其中略顯平庸的菜譜（簡易晚餐菜肉餡煎蛋餅、土耳其肉糕和你最喜歡的烤奶酪）更令人難忘。對孩子來說沒什麼比家庭晚餐更重要嗎？我倒是可能會把“送孩子上學”或“偶爾擁抱他們”排在前面。

Such bunk continues in "The Family Cooks," another production by David and Uhrenholdt, who turns out to be David's private chef. (Aha, the secret to "The Family Cooks" is . . . the family cook.) This time the book has Katie Couric laying down the law: "The single most powerful thing anyone can do to protect their health, to live a healthy life and to have a healthy future is to go into their own kitchen and cook food themselves." As if to blow all these superlatives away, David eventually brings in the master stylist and vegetarian-food thinker Jonathan Safran Foer for the coda to "The Family Dinner." Foer's own "food is everything" aria does not disappoint: "Every meal," he writes, "is a chance to get it right or get it wrong, to approach or withdraw from our ideals. Does anything in our lives matter more than how we set our tables?" I tried hard to connect this question to the Easy Cheesy Dinner Frittata but couldn't. I'm telling you: I'm not cut out for this.

烏倫豪爾特後來成了大衛的私人廚師，她們後來又合著了《家庭廚師》（The Family Cooks，啊哈，《家庭廚師》的祕密是……家庭廚師）。這一次，大衛引用凱蒂·柯麗克(Katie Couric)的話來動員讀者：“要想保持健康，過上健康的生活，擁有健康的未來，任何人能做的最有用的事就是走進廚房，自己做飯。”好像是爲了避免這些極端的說法，大衛在《家庭晚餐》的結尾部分請來了文體大師、素食思想家喬納森·薩弗蘭·福爾(Jonathan Safran Foer)。福爾“食物即一切”的詠歎調沒有令人失望：他寫道，“每一餐都可能做好，也可能做砸；有可能更接近或更遠離我們的理想。生活中還有比佈置餐桌更重要的事嗎？”我努力把這個問題與簡易菜肉餡煎蛋餅聯繫在一起，但是沒有成功。我告訴你吧：我不是這塊料。

As the high priestess of family cooking, Jenny Rosenstrach, author of "Dinner: A Love Story" and “Dinner: The Playbook," aims to bring about conversions in her readers and not just chronicle her own. In the opening to "Dinner: A Love Story," Rosenstrach recounts how a friend broke down in tears admitting that she never once cooked for her children. This is evidently not the first such overwrought disclosure with which Rosenstrach has been entrusted.

《晚餐：一個愛的故事》和《晚餐：遊戲手冊》(Dinner: The Playbook)的作者、家庭烹飪的女祭司珍妮·羅森施特拉赫(Jenny Rosenstrach)不僅記錄自己的轉變，還想讓她的讀者們也發生轉變。在《晚餐：一個愛的故事》的開頭，羅森施特拉赫提到一個朋友承認自己從未給孩子們做過飯時流下了眼淚。這顯然不是羅森施特拉赫聽到的第一個過於傷感的傾訴故事。

"No one has it all together," Rosenstrach observes, with gentle condescension. The typical mom, she believes, too often sees dinner as "a referendum on her own self-worth." Alas, for me, Rosenstrach's path out of guilt is not to drop the guilt but to drop the no-cooking. You must start, as her sobbing friend did, with Rosenstrach's introductory absolution. Don't "put so much pressure" on yourself, she writes, elsewhere assuring the reader, only slightly facetiously, that mothers who don't dine nightly with their children won't necessarily make them "meth addicts." So that possibility is out there, too.

“誰都不是一下子學會的，”羅森施特拉赫帶着幾分優越感寫道。她認爲，有太多母親視晚餐爲“自我價值的全民公決”。天哪，對我來說，羅森施特拉赫的方法非但沒能讓我不再愧疚，反倒讓我再不想做飯了。像那位哭泣的朋友一樣，你得先獲得羅森施特拉赫的寬恕。她寫道，不要給自己“太大壓力”，她還在其他地方半開玩笑地安慰讀者，就算你不是每天跟孩子們共進晚餐，他們也不一定會變成“癮君子”。也就是說，他們還是有可能變成癮君子的。

After that thin buck-up speech, you're encouraged to embrace Rosenstrach's strategies for cutting up onions and enlightening picky eaters, along with her recipes for Sweet Barbecue Salmon and Beluga Lentil Soup With Anchovies. That is the way out of wretchedness and into grace. Dinner: Go and Sin No More.

在難以令人信服的動員講話之後，羅森施特拉赫鼓勵你用她的方法切洋蔥，滿足挑剔的食客，嘗試她的菜譜——甜味烤三文魚和白鱘鳳尾魚扁豆湯。那就是從悲慘走向恩惠的方式。晚餐：做吧，不要再愧疚了。

Figuring I wasn't going to experience a spiritual revelation about the sanctity of family dinners at this late stage, I dropped the conversion-narrative books in favor of some that sound like brass-tacks science. "Super Nutrition for Babies: The Right Way to Feed Your Baby for Optimal Health," by Katherine Erlich, M.D., and Kelly Genzlinger, C.N.C., C.M.T.A., with a foreword by David Brownstein, M.D., author of "Overcoming Thyroid Disorders," seemed with all those enigmatic letters to fit the bill. As did "Super Baby Food: Your Complete Guide to What, When and How to Feed Your Baby and Toddler,” by Ruth Yaron. (Dr. Alan Greene calls the original "Super Baby Food" a "monumental breakthrough.”)

我知道自己不會在這麼大年紀對家庭晚餐的神聖產生頓悟，所以我放棄了這些描述思想轉變的書，轉向一些聽起來像基本科學事實的書。《嬰兒超級營養：爲實現嬰兒最佳健康的正確餵養方法》(Super Nutrition for Babies: The Right Way to Feed Your Baby for Optimal Health)似乎具有符合條件的所有神祕字眼。這本書是醫學博士凱瑟琳·埃爾利赫(Katherine Erlich)和註冊營養顧問、註冊代謝類型顧問凱利·金茲利傑(Kelly Genzlinger)編著的，《戰勝甲狀腺功能紊亂》(Overcoming Thyroid Disorders)一書的作者、醫學博士大衛·布朗斯坦(David Brownstein)爲該書撰寫了前言。另外還有露絲·亞龍(Ruth Yaron)的《超級嬰兒食物：餵養嬰幼兒的完全指南》(Super Baby Food: Your Complete Guide to What, When and How to Feed Your Baby and Toddler，艾倫·格林[Alan Greene]博士稱具有原創性的《超級嬰兒食物》是“不朽的突破”）。

These books remind me of the extruded foodstuffs in packages festooned with the names of medical doctors that real-food ideologues now counsel against. You can really taste the research. But the books, unlike Clif bars, didn't help me skip any steps. In fact, they introduced many, many new steps, including making yogurt.

這些書讓我想起了那些遭到排擠的盒裝食品，它們上面提到的醫學博士如今遭到真正食物理論家的批判。但是那些研究結果你真的可以細細l你攻略。但是這些書，不像克利夫能量棒，不能幫我省去任何步驟。實際上，它們還介紹了很多很多新步驟，包括做酸奶。

D.I.Y. is Ruth Yaron's way. "After years of trying to find the easiest, most effective and 'least dishes to wash' method of making yogurt," Yaron came up with a regime that involves organic soy milk enriched with calcium and vitamin D, dry milk powder, a yogurt thermometer, a "homemade yogurt towel bag," yogurt starter, a small sterilized glass baby-food jar, sterilized utensils and about six hours from start to finish. Another hot tip for the new mom making yogurt in her down time: Make sure you don't bake bread on the same day, lest the yogurt is invaded by airborne yeast particles. That's interesting. When I discovered my own easy, effective and "least dishes to wash" method of procuring yogurt — buy it — it took me only 15 minutes, with no worry about yeast invasion. Maybe I'm doing something right after all.

露絲·亞龍的方法是自己動手做。“多年來，我一直努力尋找最簡單、最有效、佔用廚具最少的做酸奶的方法”，後來她想出了一個方法，需要用到有機豆奶、鈣、維生素D、幹奶粉、酸奶溫度計、“自制酸奶毛巾袋”、酸奶發酵劑、無菌玻璃嬰兒小食品罐和無菌餐具，從頭到尾約需六個小時。新媽媽在休息時間做酸奶的另一個可靠小貼士是：一定不要在同一天烤麪包，否則酸奶會被空氣中的酵母微粒入侵。有意思。我在尋找簡便、有效、佔用廚具最少的獲取酸奶的方法時想到的是購買，只用花15分鐘時間，而且完全不用擔心酵母入侵。也許我終於有一點做對了。

In "Super Nutrition for Babies," D.I.Y. is not celebrated for its own sake. Rather it is a paranoid strategy for those who live in terror of the Toxins. The book argues that there is a war on children's health going on, and that the enemy army includes pesticides, pollution, heavy metals, medications, industrial waste, chemicals, bad tap water, dyes, artificial ingredients, preservatives, sugar, refined grains, antibiotics and wrong ratios of macronutrients. As budding foot soldiers for health, mothers are taught to fear food that is Chemical, Removes body's nutrients, is Addictive and Processed. CRAP, in the book's scheme. Everywhere.

在《嬰兒超級營養》中，自己動手製作是因爲考慮到其他因素。那些生活在毒素恐懼中的疑神疑鬼者用它來作爲對策。那本書認爲兒童健康保衛戰正在進行，敵軍包括殺蟲劑、污染、重金屬、藥物、工業廢料、化學制品、劣質自來水、色素、人工製劑、防腐劑、糖、細糧、抗生素以及大量營養素的錯誤比例。作爲初出茅廬的健康衛士，母親們被教育要小心含有化學制劑或添加劑、破壞身體營養以及經過深加工的食物。它們無處不在。

"Super Nutrition" instructs readers on avoiding diabetes, optimizing immunity and reducing inflammation. There are not too many recipes here, although there are incoherent juxtapositions: Blueberry Breakfast Crepes With Raspberry Syrup, with coconut and ghee, runs up against Yorkshire Marrow Custard, which uses marrow bones and heavy cream. This is for babies, remember. Bone marrow and heavy cream for infants. It doesn't ring right. But I'm learning to distrust my intuition. And yours, too.

《嬰兒超級營養》指導讀者們預防糖尿病、增強免疫力、減少炎症。關於這一點書中給出的食譜不是很多，不過有些食譜與此相矛盾，比如，法式藍莓早餐薄餅，含樹莓糖漿、椰汁和酥油；約克郡骨髓蛋奶凍，裏面含有骨髓和濃奶油。別忘了這是給嬰兒們吃的。讓嬰兒吃骨髓和濃奶油。這聽起來可不怎麼對。但是我正學着懷疑自己的直覺以及你們的直覺。

Trust no one, least of all yourself — that's the takeaway from these new family cookbooks. These books don't expand on Benjamin Spock's great 1946 injunction to mothers to trust themselves; instead, they're a brisk, homemade, garden-fresh antidote to it. Don't trust hot dogs, don't trust children's preferences. Don't trust the carb-poisoned food pyramid. Don't trust vegetable-fruit mixes, because they're mostly apples, and don't trust apples because they're the dirtiest of the "Dirty Dozen" fruits. Everything, especially the apples, is trying to sabotage you.

不要相信任何人，尤其是你自己——這就是這些新家庭烹飪書的理念。這些書沒有詳述本傑明·斯波克(Benjamin Spock)1946年給母親們的偉大忠告：相信自己。相反，這些書簡直像是這一忠告的解藥——一劑家庭自制的、新鮮採摘的清新解藥。不要相信熱狗，不要相信小孩子喜歡吃的東西。不要相信碳水化合物含量太高的食物金字塔。不要相信蔬菜水果混合物，因爲裏面大多是蘋果；不要相信蘋果，因爲它是“十二種骯髒的”水果中最骯髒的。所有這一切，特別是蘋果，正在謀害你的性命。

Nothing in these latest family cookbooks, with their conversion narratives, their personal-chef lifestyles, their nervous science and their strained insistence on the supremacy of family dinner has done anything to quiet my brain on the subject of why it's my problem — and that of the world's mothers — to make nightly sense of this ideological convulsion over food. If anything, they fuel the panic; they are the panic.

這些最新家庭烹飪書——對思想轉變的描述，私人大廚的生活方式，神經兮兮的科學，對家庭晚餐崇高地位的捍衛——一點也沒讓我的大腦平靜下來，它們沒有回答我的問題：爲什麼每天晚上爲食物感到精神緊張是我的責任，是全世界母親們的責任。它們只是讓我更恐慌；它們是我的恐慌之源。

The silver lining is that when they (and I) stop perseverating on food anxiety, the cookbooks — especially the ones by Rosenstrach, and also "Bébé Gourmet," by Jenny Carenco — feature dozens of extraordinary-sounding recipes. Carenco's Baby Beef Bourguignon, with its dry ham and caramelized chestnuts, looks like a dream. And Rosenstrach, especially, never seems to go wrong: Her Buttermilk Oven-Fried Chicken lets you use highly processed, shelf-stable Kellogg's Corn Flake Crumbs along with cayenne and four cups of buttermilk. Also glorious-sounding is her Pork Shoulder Ragu With Pappardelle.

慶幸的是，當她們（和我）不再糾結於食物焦慮時，這些烹飪書——尤其是羅森施特拉赫的書以及珍妮·卡倫科(Jenny Carenco)的《貝貝美食家》(Bébé Gourmet)——還是提供了幾十個聽起來很棒的菜譜。卡倫科的嬰兒勃艮第紅酒燉牛肉——裏面還有幹火腿和焦糖栗子——看起來誘人極了。羅森施特拉赫似乎從來都不會出錯：她的脫脂牛奶烤雞肉允許你使用深加工、耐儲存的家樂氏(Kellogg's)玉米片以及辣椒和四杯脫脂牛奶。她的豬肘醬寬面聽起來也很好。

For a time, I stopped trying to figure out dinner and just stared at the recipes, with their line breaks like poetry and the unpretentious photographs, most of which do not seem styled. Just braised pork, being pulled off the bone with a fork on a wooden cutting board. Wow, it looks so delicious. I sure wish some mother would make it for me.

有一段時間，我不再努力思考做什麼晚餐好，就只是盯着那些食譜，它們的換行符看起來像詩歌，裏面的照片也很樸素，大多看起來不是很藝術化。我燉豬肉，在木案板上用叉子把肉從骨頭上弄下來。哇唔，它看起來很美味。我當然希望有個媽媽給我做這個吃。