Emergency Salmon, Fruit Punch Toothpaste + Desecrated Strawberry Cornbread
Clare de Boer's Cub Street Diet
Hi friends,
This week, we are thrilled and honored to give you a Cub Street Diet from the legendary Clare de Boer.
Clare is a four-time James Beard nominated chef and writer, a co-founder of the beloved New York restaurant King, and the brains, heart and palate behind the Hudson Valley restaurant, Stissing House. (Check out their line up of summer programming here: quilting by candlelight, line dancing, cooking classes and more!) She is also an exceedingly lovely person, and mom to three sons, Abe (4), Bob (2) and Benno (1). How?
We don’t know, frankly. But we do know that we love her and relished this peek into her family kitchen. (We also relished the chance to host a big dinner party with her last week—but more on that in a few days…)
In her ample free time, Clare also authors one of our favorite Substacks, The Best Bit, which you should subscribe to immediately if you like the idea of perfect asparagus, coconut scones, ginger-y miso poached fish, the platonic ideal of a birthday cake with mascarpone frosting, or ratatouille. In other words, you should subscribe if you have a pulse and enjoy food.
And on that note, we give you… Clare de Boer!
Greta + Fanny
Wednesday
It’s 5:15am. I make all three boys bottles of warm water with a scoop of goat milk powder to conceal the probiotics I mix in, and make myself a coffee. I sit on the playroom floor in the spot I do every day and they lie on me like cubs drinking their drinks while I drink my small coffee from a cup that’s so large it can’t spill on them.
By 6am everyone’s moaning and knocking down each other’s magna-tile towers. I take advantage of their hunger with raw walnuts. Benno wants in, so I chew and spit them out for him because he doesn’t have many teeth yet. Bob also chews and spits some out for him but the pieces aren’t quite small enough.
An hour later, breakfast: 6 scrambled eggs (dry enough to hand hold), 1 cut up avocado, 1 punnet of blueberries, 2 slices of buttered toast.1
Abe has a packed lunch that our au pair makes for him, I don’t know what’s in it. Bobby and Benno have leftover ditalini with lentils.
No snack before the playground because I’ve defrosted salmon for dinner and want them hungry. I use a few pieces of dried mango to get them out the door, but that’s it.
Dinner becomes an emergency—we stayed late at the park and played so much tag they’re starving. I pan-fry the salmon—80% of the way on the skin side so it’s audibly crisp—and defrost a ziplock of cooked brown rice (I freeze bags flat so it only takes 5 mins in a saucepan to make like new) with some finely chopped, un-pick-outable chard. At the table I make a show of removing and eating the skin from Abe’s and Bob's salmon filets. I’m all “wow, so salty and crisp”. They beg me for the skin and I tell them to ask nicely. They say “please”, a minor fight breaks out over whose skin is bigger, then silence for the rest of the meal.
Dried mulberries are involved in a negotiation to get them into the bath.
Thursday
It’s 5am and Abe and Bob have eaten the whole tube of their fruit punch toothpaste. The consequence is no milk powder in their hot water. Benno gets his usual.
We take our new wagon out for a spin. They split a banana on the way to Hungry Ghost where they have King David tacos. Lots of fingers in my cappuccino foam.
I’m out for the day cooking a dinner with Greta & Fanny, so I leave roasted sweet potatoes, boiled broccoli, and farro. I line everything up on the counter with a block of feta and text my husband and our au pair a photo.
I get home at midnight and the food’s still sitting there. Luke took them for pizza at Pino’s instead.
Friday
Milk, coffee, raw walnuts, followed by 6 scrambled eggs, cheese trim I took home from the dinner, baby cucumbers, toast.
For their lunch I boil the hell out of the sweet potatoes, broccoli and farro to kill anything off, then cool it quickly with a bunch of ice cubes so I don’t have to blow.
I head upstate to cook a wedding at Stissing House and Luke takes the kids for BBQ and dancing at Hometown. I get this picture and have total FOMO.
Saturday
Luke drives the kids up from Brooklyn first thing in the morning and they pick up bagels in Armonk. They arrive and car seats are spread with cream cheese. I’ve baked cornbread with strawberries and they desecrate it on the lawn.
Lunch is chicken and mushrooms roasted in vinegar and a pot of borlotti beans. Bob props up the pan so he can spoon-drink the rosemary and sherry-flavored juices. I’m proud of him.
We have friends over and the kids make popcorn and each seasons his/her own bowl with nutritional yeast and salt.
For dinner I pour some water into the unwashed chicken pan, boil a little rice in there and shred in the one remaining chicken thigh, add a ladle of borlotti beans and some chopped parsley to count as veg.
Sunday
Everyone’s up at 5, except for me, so by the time I come down at 6 I’m being heckled for breakfast. We make waffles every Sunday but that would take 10 minutes too long. I scramble 6 eggs and give them some cheese.
Snack is a chicken club at a coffee shop. Abe eats the bread, Bob eats the bacon, Benno eats what he can get.
For lunch I make pasta fagioli in a bid to use up the beans. It’s so hot but I don’t want to ruin the consistency by icing it, so the boys attack the parmesan while they wait.
They suck the salt and vinegar off of a little gem salad and polish off the strawberry cornbread for dessert.
Dinner was going to be leftover pasta fagioli but the kids are farting like banshees so I defrost some slow-cooked lamb shoulder leftover from Easter and cut up some potatoes and broccoli very small so they boil quickly.
Back to Brooklyn.
Groceries generally come from Farm to People, flourishes from Un Posto Italiano, and out-of-season berries from Union Market.
Awesome stuff, a ton of actionable take aways (didn't even know what mulberries were) -- also inspired to take my 2.5-year-old to Hometown and attempt driving by myself with her (kinda sad I haven't done this yet I know) ... can we please have the recipe for chicken and mushrooms roasted in vinegar and a pot of borlotti beans?! Will try to figure out the ditalini with lentils... shout out new vocab; un-pick-outable & punnet... my only critique is Pinos, the Sbarro of Park Slope, oye... I think you all should team up and open a kid friendly restaurant in her neighborhood!
lol farting like banshees!!! that's me sometimes