It’s still hot AF, but our families (us included) have tired of crunchy raw salads for dinner so we’re bringing you a delicious and satisfying meal that—despite requiring that you turn on the stove—thankfully only requires one pot.

For many reasons, we like cooking with ground turkey: it’s lean, it’s versatile, it’s got a bunch of micronutrients like B vitamins and zinc (we learned that five seconds ago) and it’s currently significantly cheaper than beef. These meatballs borrow from Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines: a bit of oregano and fennel seed tango with turmeric, cumin, and smoked paprika. Combined with canned chickpeas, cherry tomatoes and greens, it’s a super tasty and perfectly square meal with a minimum of fuss.

Bon appétit!

Fanny + Greta

With summer fruit officially popping off, we are officially turning our attention to last year’s shortcakes: with juiced up peaches and strawberries, whipped cream (and no refined sugar) it’s the perfect summer sweet treat. Special enough for a gathering, easy enough for a regular ol’ weeknight.

Speaking of stone fruit, it’s our annual opportunity to draw attention to Mel Brooks’ 2,000 year old man and his love for the nectarine. Important stuff, folks.

These juicy, herby, spiced meatballs get layered with beans and greens in one pot which not only streamlines the cooking (and cleaning) process, but also infuses all the ingredients with each other’s flavors. Browning the meatballs first gives them gorgeous color, texture and flavor, but combining them with the chickpeas, greens, cherry tomatoes and lemon juice in the covered pot gently steams them, plumping them up even further and allowing the flavors to marry.

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What with the tsunami of tomatoes in the markets currently, we thought it was about time we get around to a recipe featuring the so-called Golden Apple—that’s the literal translation of the Italian word for tomato, “pomodoro,” in case you didn’t know (Fanny didn’t). There are a billion things you can do with an abundance of fresh summer tomat…

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If you’ve been reading the Green Spoon for any amount of time, it will come as no surprise whatsoever to learn of our devotion to Iranian cuisine. Between its rainbow of colors, array of spices and so, so many fresh herbs, we are always thrilled to tuck into a meal rich in Persian tradition.

And, like most people these days, we are hot and can…

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Summer’s in full swing! Kids are out of school! People are traveling! People are working! It’s chaos! It’s hot! Greta is currently indoors in a heatwave, huddled around a portable A.C; Fanny is currently indoors in Los Angeles thanks to a nearby industrial fire and huddling around an air purifier, and we need treats and easy breakfasts in equal parts.

When we first mentioned the idea of a recipe for a “breakfast donut” to our dear friend Hannah Goldfield, her reply was, “But aren’t all donuts breakfast donuts?” Reader, we are ashamed to say that Hannah’s excellent and obvious point hadn’t occurred to us. So, yes: all donuts are breakfast donuts. But are all donuts something you’d feel good about giving to your kids for breakfast every day before school or camp or a long day of travel? Maybe not.

So we set out to come up with a donut recipe that was packed with whole grains, nut flours, yogurt and eggs (substantial!) and topped with a simple glaze and sprinkles (treat-y!) Friends, we believe we’ve succeeded.

These are not yeasted and fried, so aside from a cheap donut pan, they require nothing special. Our kids are crazy for them. We’re crazy for them. You donut want to miss them. (The heatwave has degraded mental acuity, ok?)

Fanny + Greta

Because it’s so hot, we’ve been disinclined to do much “cooking”. This week’s menus have included just about everything in this “Dinner In A Flash” post, namely Pizza Beans on Toast, Umami Oats with a Fried Egg, Dukkah Cottage Cheese Bowls and, most clutch of all, Snacks for Dinner, which is what Fanny and fam ate last night.

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Today we are so excited to present the Cub Street Diet of Anastasia Miari, an Athens-based writer who has spent the last decade plus traveling the Mediterranean to cook with grandmothers and document their time-honed culinary traditions. She is the author of two books, Yiayia: Time-Perfected Recipes from Greece’s Grandmothers and more recentl…

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Did you see ’s post this week, “End-of-year reminders from your child’s preschool!” Here’s a taste:

If you also feel this deeply, we are are especially grateful that you’re taking the time to read this post between various mandatory ceremonies.

This week’s recipe is everything we—and we’re imagining you, too—want for dinner at this time of the year: something that’s bright, new and easy. We’re sick of our normal go-tos, but too burnt out to embark on a new recipe whose novelty requires us to pay extra close attention. This is also a great (and again, easy) way to introduce new flavors to your kids in a very safe space (i.e. in close proximity to noodles). Despite the buttered noodle hegemony, we do actually find that kids are often game for big, zingy flavors like the ones in this recipe, so it’s at least worth a short!

This striped-down take on a Vietnamese Steak OR Tofu Noodle Salad threads that needle beautifully—there’s a dead easy version if you’re tapped out or a more maximalist version if you’re in the mood for a slightly more involved cooking project. Either way, it’s delicious.

School’s out,

Greta + Fanny

We were together in New York this week working on an exciting project—and enjoying the freedom that comes with age when you no longer give a rat’s ass about looking derpy while selfie-ing on the Brooklyn Bridge (see below). We’ve also been making a ton of Breakfast Cookies, Cherry Coconut Granola and Breakfast Popsicles because we need easy wins at breakfast and we need them now.

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As you might remember, Greta has been cooking bi-monthly family style lunches for her daughter’s 3-year-olds class since the school year started in September (check out chapter one and chapter two ). Since we’re in the waning days of the ‘25/’26 academic year, we wanted to give you the dramatic final installment, which features everything fro…

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A few years ago, we published our first granola recipe for easy breakfasts and crunchy—albeit crumb-y—snacking, and we are proud to say that we stand by it entirely. It’s a super energy-packed formula that nourishes and sustains. We are also proud to say that as avowed granola lovers, we believe there are always new granola frontiers to discover and new granola depths to fathom—in other words, we have a new recipe for you!

So, for round two of Green Spoon granola, we’re using all of the same criteria—not too sweet, packs a nutritional punch—with fewer ingredients than the first recipe (because there’s a time and a place for maximalism, and there’s also a time and place to just get it done). This recipe takes a mere 5 minutes to prep and about 30–40 minutes of passive time in the kitchen: perfect for when you’re futzing around or getting dinner going.

Since summer is around the corner and we have camp and travel (and all of their attendant snacking requirements) on the mind, we’ve also included a clutch optional ingredient to add if you’re looking to optimize your granola batch for bigger, snack-worthy clusters.

Speaking of: any specific requests for summertime recipes from us? We’d love to hear ‘em!

Fanny + Greta

We said it before but we’ll say it again: summer is comin’ and snacks are on our minds, so we’re looking back through our posts of yore to dig up our favorite snack recipes and lists of off-the-shelf snacks, too. This one has a recipe for DIY Chex Mix, “nutella” energy balls and nine packaged snacks we like, while this one has a recipe for Magic Butter Stuffed Dates and more packaged snacks we like.

We’ve also been turning to our favorite garden salad taco recipe more than usual—both for our kids and ourselves. A bright and crunchy salad wrapped in a cheesy, warm tortilla? Easy peasy lunch perfection.

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You may recognize the name from a myriad of mentions in The Green Spoon, or from her contribution to Our Favorite Things of 2025 post last year, or maybe you already subscribe to her wonderful Substack or follow her on Instagram. In any event, we’re thrilled to have Mia here today to tell us about how, what, when and where she feeds her two…

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You might recall that one of Greta’s biggest successes in her bi-monthly attempt to satisfy fourteen 3.5-year-olds was a taco bar: the kids could choose between a crunchy shell or a soft quesadilla and could fill it with brown rice, black beans, shredded cheese, avocado and a purple cabbage and apple salad. (Washed down with a breakfast cookie.) They loved it: the choices, the agency, but most of all, they loved the crunch. Of course they did.

A few weeks ago, Greta found herself in that all too-familiar place: a cooking rut. Did everyone in her family really need to eat dinner again? Hanger was approaching and creativity was waning. She needed a W, and fast. She needed…a crunchy taco bar.

Reader, it worked. Like, it really worked. Fanny’s family loved them so much they’ve been promoted to vaunted “Weekly Rotation” status. Give these tacos a shot and let us know how they go down!

Greta + Fanny

For an at-home taco bar, we follow a basic formula:

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Before we dive into the lighthearted, link-heavy romp that is our annual Mother’s Day round up, we wanted to start by drawing your attention to a very special mother who is in need of support. Israa Al-Dariny is a Palestinian mother of three girls whose lives have been upended and torn apart by the war in Gaza. Israa lost her leg in an airstrike in a field hospital and her youngest daughter Mira withstood a traumatic brain injury after getting shot by a drone. Mira miraculously survived and the family has been safely evacuated to Mexico City, but now they need help to covering continued medical care and rebuilding their lives from scratch in a new country. Spare what you can and please share Israa’s story widely.

Read more about Israa and her family + please donate what you can!

There’s simply no way to tastefully segue from Israa’s story to kvetching about drawstring, so we hope you’ll forgive our clumsiness as we acknowledge that this post contains the multitudes, for better or for worse! Ok, onto the romp…

We’ve gathered a whole bunch of clickable wisdom by asking other moms about kids and travel and…pants. (Plus, a 20% off sale on annual Green Spoon subscriptions). Read below for crucial intel from both of us, editor of The Believer Natalie So, novelist , senior writer for The Strategist Lauren Ro, writer and editor , journalist Clare Malone and actress Heléne Yorke.

And for those of you looking for a last minute gift for your mom, your friend or yourself…

Annual subscriptions to the Green Spoon are 20% off between now and Sunday May 10th at 11:59pm!

(click the above link to redeem offer)

For this installment of our round-up series, we asked each contributor the following four questions:

1. What’s your favorite organization that supports moms and kids?

2. What’s your best travel hack, piece of travel gear, or travel toy that has proven to be clutch when schlepping with kids?

3. Name a trick or tool that helps you organize some aspect of your life.

4. And the most important question of them all: what are your favorite pants these days? (i.e. where looking good and feeling good meet.)

Enjoy, friends. And happy Mother’s Day!

Greta + Fanny

FAVORITE ORGANIZATION THAT SUPPORTS MOMS + KIDS

I give monthly to Women for Women International, an organization that came onto my radar in the early days of the war on Gaza, where they’ve been focusing considerable resources and working actively with local organizations. Since WFWI was founded in 1993 it’s helped more than half a million women rebuild their lives after conflict with everything from direct financial aid, to counseling, literacy, rights awareness, health education and small business development. In August 2025, they launched their core “Stronger Women, Stronger Nations” program in the Hebron H2 area—one of the most militarized zones in the West Bank—adapting their curriculum for active conflict conditions.

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Ahhhh, the peanut, that most illicit of nuts when it comes to school lunches, airplanes, and other large gatherings in which a peanut allergy is invariably lurking (one of Greta’s kids is allergic to peanuts so we say this with hearts full of empathy). And yet, it’s a great nut—well, legume, really, if we’re being scientific about it—it’s sup…

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There are glamorous recipes for trying and there are workhorse recipes to usher directly into your family’s pantheon of beloved weekly rotation recipes. This one is the latter.

After Fanny stumbled into this dead-simple, always-delicious technique for making broccolini—or regular ol’ broccoli works, too—one night when she was especially short on time, it immediately became How Broccoli Is Made in both her and Greta’s households. We’re not roasting or boiling anymore—and we’re certainly not boiling then roasting again—we’re doing this. And our kids are loving it (multiple times a week). They’re even requesting more of it at the end of the meal, thus sending us back to the kitchen to produce another “dessert round.” Sounds coo-coo, but it’s true!

Sure, there are sexier sounding recipes out there, but you know what you’re not going to do? Make those sexy sounding recipes more than once in a blue moon (at most). This broccoli recipe, however… You’re gonna make it. And you’re gonna make it a lot.

Try it out!

Fanny + Greta

Blanching vegetables in salty boiling water is a wonderful way to ensure they’re loaded with with flavor from the inside out, but it takes both time and premeditation to boil a big pot of water—two things we don’t generally have in the hangry early evening hours of most weeknights. This technique, though, is a salty-blanch-steamy- garlicky-sauté hybrid, which gives you the best of all worlds and yields a thicket of broccolini that’s tender, crunchy and bursting with flavor. And it’s done in 15 minutes or less.

Is the garlic press necessary here? No, you can of course mince it finely instead, but we have to say—if you have one of these, or if you’re on the fence about getting one, it’s a kitchen tool we have both come to absolutely love (and obsessively evangelize).

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We are delighted to give you a taste of Zahra Tangorra’s Italian-American childhood in Long Island!

When she was 25 (!!!), Zahra took an insurance settlement from an accident and used it to open her beloved Cobble Hill restaurant, Brucie. Brucie was the perfect neighborhood restaurant: tasty, fun (there were Beyoncé-themed menus) and a place …

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Gather round, we’re back on the lunch beat.

In honor of Earth Month, we’re partnering with our pals at PlanetBox again to celebrate the best in reusable (and sustainable) plastic free lunch gear—and it’s all 15% off until April 30th!

Read on for a whole slew of lunchspiration, a few easy lunch-y recipes, and the results of our hard-hitting expe…

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We’re thrilled to be sharing Chloe Schama’s Cub Street Diet today. Chloe has been a dear friend of ours for over a decade and we’ve watched in awe as she has become a mother to four kids between the ages of four and twelve and hands-down the most organized person we know (the former probably has something to do with the latter). It is also Greta’s great good fortune to live around the corner from Chloe, which means she has been the lucky recipient of neighborly bounty like killer hand-me-downs, lactation cookies, shared Ubers home, advice about the seven week post-partum hormone dip, last-minute pizza dinners with the kids, and loaned travel cribs—not to mention, you know, friendship.

Chloe is also a senior editor at Vogue who whose work has covered everything from perfumes that tell stories to Italian wildlife preserves, Alexander Calder and Gigi Hadid. Most recently, she’s been wrangling her latest invention: the Vogue Global Spa Guide. We have learned so much from Chloe over the years that the chance to share a glimpse into her kitchen (and mind) feels especially sweet!

Enjoy,

Greta + Fanny

My father—a writer—mostly worked from home when I was growing up, and he always said that he ran out of steam after about 4p.m. So, that was the hour for visiting the butcher, the fishmonger, the greengrocer, then picking me and my brother up from somewhere before he made us all dinner. It was just the suburbs in the 1990s, but describing it now it feels like a quaint village existence from 100 years ago. My life doesn’t look like this. But that idea of making and sitting down for dinner most nights has stayed with me as a grounding force in family life—even with two professional parents, four children (three boys, ages 12, 10, 8, and a 4-year-old daughter), and many more Fresh Direct deliveries than trips to local grocers. Still, I try! Read on for the tribulations and a few triumphs when I least expect them.

Thursday dinner

I’m the kind of psycho who likes to cook a meal after a long flight, who would (occasionally!) make do with a pound of dried pasta in a shoddy Airbnb kitchen rather than order delivery I know won’t be delicious. So even though I was just back on my feet after a virulent case of strep throat, I want to celebrate my vertical status by cooking dinner.

My mother- and sister-in-law are visiting from out of town and, unlike my children, are always gracious about what I cook, so there is added incentive. It is the tail end of the kids endless (two-week) spring break, which has messed with all our schedules and made our diets pretty gnarly, so I also want to get us back on some kind of track that didn’t entail eating a dinner at 11pm that is made up of regret and airport nuts.

You might think that with four kids, I would rely more on routine. I tried it: having the same dinner on Mondays, the same dinner on Tuesdays, and so on. Setting up the auto-order for groceries; the same Honeycrisps staring you down each week. I felt my soul slowly dying in the process. So we have our staple dishes—maybe ten sort-of-basic but also basically nutritious main events that I can cook without a recipe, about half of which I have the ingredients for at any given time. And by “dishes,” I mean like: roasted salmon or meatballs. I got fancy tonight and added some cherry tomatoes and black olives (which my four year old calls “Olafs”) to the fish. I am also a bit of a sucker for whatever The New York Times delivers to my inbox at panic-o-clock in the afternoon, so I decided I’d make this pea and kale and risotto dish, too, that looked vibrant and delicious.

I am working at home today (still on the mend), so I get to dealing with the kale, which is not a small thing for me. You know how they say people cut themselves most when their knives are dull? Turns out they can do it when their knives are sharp as well! I know because I cut off the tip of my finger last spring while dealing with another demanding brassica. (Read all about it, and how it made me think hard about the value of paying attention.) It took a while, but we’re back on OK terms, me and kale. Because I was feeling the joy of the newly well, and because we had some herbs that were languishing after our week of spring break travel, I decided to do a salsa verde as well. Because salsa verde goes with anything! In the end, the meal was…fine. (The kale felt over-cooked and bitter in the rice dish, notes I will not be adding to the NY Times comment section, where I like to lurk and never contribute.) There is snacking—on yogurt and pineapple—while I’m cooking.

It may sound counterintuitive, but the blessing of four kids is that there will never be a meal that they all love. Basically if three out of four eat a decent amount, it’s a victory. The meal was about par for the course on that front. The four-year-old did enjoy the Olafs. As for me, I couldn’t really swallow much because of the aforementioned lingering strep, and I was pretty exhausted by the time the plates went on the table. A lesson you’d think I’d have learned much earlier in this parenting adventure: Ambition will more often than not get the best of you.

Friday

The morning is, shall we say, a mess. Sometimes when parents say they didn’t sleep, I think non-parents think they mean they were “tossing and turning for a bit.” No. I was up, entirely awake, between 3 and 7a.m. cleaning up the tail end of several G.I. incidents that struck my daughter. It was a night to forget.

My husband rushes my 10-year-old to his spring break soccer camp, while I stumble down at 9a.m. to try to get something together for the other three kids. Every once in a while, I buy these technicolor bagels that are full of all kinds of dyes I’m sure are illegal in California—I’m sort of delighted by their vibrancy. Even after a night of gastric distress the appeal of a tie-dye bagel holds strong, I can report. The three kids eat a good half each, after I told them, “Don’t take a whole one unless you’re going to finish it.” I manage to wash some out of season berries and get those into them as well. I eat a piece of toast and some mouthfuls of The Coconut Cult, an intensely probiotic yogurt with an original marketing strategy, to try to restore some of the intestinal balance that the antibiotics are currently obliterating.

I have no clue what they eat for lunch. I am hiding in my study, trying to make up for the lost sick days and the very late start to the workday. I hope their aunt feeds them.

By dinnertime I am feeling more like myself, so I decide we’re all going to be humans again—only naturally bright colors this time! I make this easy stunner of a whole-chicken meal from Naz Deravian, in which the rice absorbs all the lovely chicken juices and a sunny yellow color comes from saffron and turmeric. I use up the rest of the kale, add some baby spinach, microplane some rainbow radishes and yellow carrots, add sesame seeds and sliced almonds and half a cut-up avocado for a salad. To dress it, I use the Green Spoon’s white miso dressing, which they really should bottle and sell—it is simply the best salad dressing ever. And I’m not just saying that to suck up to them! I’m already here! I also microwave a bag of pre-cut green beans because I love to force my kids to eat at least one of the green things on the table by giving them the fallacy of choice. What do you know?! Four out of four kids eat quite a decent meal! Mom’s back in business!

Saturday

Saturday is the day that I try to sneak out to an early-ish morning yoga class and pretend I don’t have children. So, no idea what they ate for breakfast—probably cereal that the 12-year-old “made” for them. But of course I feel guilty about this, so I bring them back hot cross buns and cinnamon rolls from Otway, which is one of the absolute best bakeries in Brooklyn. On the way home I stop off at Winner, where I try to impress the hipster butcher with my hefty order— “Yes, the whole lamb shoulder, you don’t need to cut it down,”—but he doesn’t care. Someday I will crack him.

I have to go into Manhattan to see a matinee preview of The Fear of 13 for work, so I make myself and the kids a sort of hearty early lunch of scrambled eggs, mangoes, and hot cross buns. To distract them while I am cracking and whisking approximately 52 eggs, I let them make the mango “porcupines” but the mangoes are a little too ripe and the whole enterprise is a bit sloppy. Turns out that the kids aren’t that hungry anyway. (See: untold bowls of cereal.) Oh well, I take my antibiotic on a full stomach and head out.

We order delivery from a new place for dinner and it’s surprisingly delicious. It seems like an impossible quantity when it arrives, but we do some decent damage, ending up with just about 4 pots of white rice and some Chinese broccoli left over. During dinner one of the kids excitedly says “Tomorrow is Easter!” which means: candy, which I have definitely not yet procured. After they’re in bed, I make a late-night, last-minute trip to Walgreens.

My daughter and I have small, elegant glasses of rum raisin Häagen-Dazs without telling anyone after dinner.

Sunday

The kids have toaster waffles, chicken sausages, and some clementines for breakfast—it’s a rush. The plan is to take them to the Quaker meeting house in Brooklyn for the Sunday Easter services, which means getting out of the house by about 10:30. All but Calliope (the 4-year-old) attend a Quaker school and loosely identify as both Quakers and Jews, which I highly recommend as a confusing but delightful combination.

I have some work I need to finish before Monday, and also a lamb shoulder to start roasting, so I stay behind. I’ve of course forgotten to get the ingredients for the marinade, so I make another trip to the store across the street (we are seriously lucky to live about 100 feet from a small supermarket), and then blitz everything into a paste. I’m using a recipe from my hero . I know that’s very 2010s of me, but I will never abandon him—he has yet to fail me.

There is what feels like 29 minutes of quiet while I make their Easter baskets (“The easter bunny may be a little late this year,” I had warned them). The other thing that you don’t realize at the start when you have four kids is that the jig is never up. The older brothers sweetly want to preserve the fantasy for their little sister, and so we have several more years of these shenanigans. The Easter Bunny fills their baskets with a suspicious combination of the Made Good snacks that seems just a little too junky for everyday and not-Easter-without-it Peeps.

The kids have Shake Shack for lunch on their way home with my husband. We have, you could say, different styles when it comes to sustenance. Marriage is a compromise!

The lamb cooks for 6 hours and is really good. I forget to take a picture of it when it is done because we are all so excited to eat it. My husband makes some crispy roast potatoes and we have a salad.

Monday

Thank heaven for the work week. I’m desperate for some routine and to get these kids out of the house. I wake up around 5:30a.m.. I swear I am not a shill for an annoying meme, but there really is something to having just a few minutes to yourself at the start of the day that helps establish a bit of calm before the storm. I am off coffee because of the state of my post-antibiotics stomach, so I make a cup of PG Tips, and eye the espresso machine longingly. (We’re loyal to Partner beans and get them delivered weekly.)

This pre-wake-up period is for unloading the dishwasher, and then, if I have 3 more minutes, cutting up some fruit for the kids. I’m upstairs at 6:15 to start the process of prying the boys from their beds. It’s a school bus morning, which means we will all be out of the house no later than 6:50 so they can make it to the bus stop by 7a.m., where my daughter and I will wave them off. That doesn’t leave much time for breakfast, so I try to get at least some fruit and a piece of toast into them; they mostly consume the toast on the short drive to the bus stop. They eat—or at least I hope they eat—the rest of their breakfast at school. (It’s basic, but totally dependable, and the whole school community is invited, which is really lovely on the days I drop them off.)

Lunch for the boys is also a school affair—you’re not allowed to bring anything in for general equity and allergy reasons, which leaves my mind blissfully devoid of any consumption-related concerns for the three boys for much of the day. Earlier this year there was a fourth-grade-led uprising about the lunch options that turned into a teachable moment about collective action, and was altogether very impressive. These kids demanded free-range access to the salad bar! I was already pretty checked out from any school-hour food-related concerns, but I took the enthusiasm shown by the students and the parents (so many texts about Greek yogurt in the WhatsApp chat) as permission to direct my energies elsewhere. Seems like other people are on it.

I throw some stuff in a bento box for my daughter once we are back from the bus and give her some more toast. Honestly I am over making lunches—I’ve literally been doing it for more than a decade. Here’s a not-cute picture of what it looked like.

By 2p.m. I am thinking about dinner. It’s strange to follow the onset of spring with a very winter-y recipe, but I want to try this vegetarian pot pie recipe I stumbled on. There is something retro and comforting-seeming about it, and also possible to make with an almost empty fridge. It is weirdly easy to make, and even leaves some time for me to go over homework and hear the entire plot of a “movie” my eight-year-old is “filming” with his friends while it bakes. We eat it with a really simple salad, and make a pretty decent dent. My kids are tired of me trying to take pictures of dishes with them in the background. It might be time to wrap this diary up.

Thanks so much for reading today’s post! We love developing, testing and publishing recipes so that you have one less thing on your plate (but can still reliably make something delicious for your family). If you’ve been enjoying the Green Spoon, please take a moment to like, comment or share this post, or even consider subscribing! Your engagement makes our work more visible—plus we love to hear from you! Tell us what you’ve been loving to cook, what pieces you’ve loved to read most, and what you’d like to see more of. Thanks again for being here!

We recently had a version of this curry at our friend Heather’s restaurant Botanica for the launch of the beautiful new book, The Diaspora Co. Cookbook, by Diaspora Co. founder, Sana Javeri Kadri and recipe writer . Known in Kerala as Meen Moilee, this lovely, mild curry is ubiquitous in Syrian Christian households. It developed as a fusion of local Kerala traditions—using fresh fish, coconut milk, and curry leaves—and Portuguese influences, which introduced milder, stew-like cooking methods to the region. The dish is believed to have originated when Portuguese settlers in Kerala found the curries too spicy and a local cook (often referred to as ‘Molly’) adjusted the recipe by reducing the chili and introducing creamy, aromatic coconut milk to create a gentler dish. “Meen” is the word for fish in Malayalam, while “Moilee” is thought to derive from the Portuguese word molho (sauce) or the Tamil word molee (mild), or perhaps just after the eponymous “Molly”??

The chili-averse Mollys of our households (our kids) love this curry—and it’s an especially delicious vehicle for an often contentious ingredient (fish). We’ve adapted the recipe quite liberally to make it a bit easier and more likely to pass muster at a family table—and our kids have been loving it. (Us, too.)

For anyone hungry for more beautiful, spice-filled recipes, pick up a copy of Sana and Asha’s gorgeous, inspired cookbook. At the minimum, it’ll give you an excuse to stock your pantry with an array of fragrant, delectable spices from Diaspora Co.!

Fanny + Greta

Greta’s latest late-winter cooking rut was defeated mercilessly by a batch of farinata: the crispy, savory chickpea flour pancake of our (and your, probably) dreams. It’s easy—just chickpea flour, water, oil and salt—and the perfect go-to when you’re too bored of pasta, rice, polenta and potatoes to conceive of another batch.

Traditionally made with a flaky white fish, we’ve subbed in salmon instead (our kids love salmon; we love salmon; it’s delicious in this recipe). We’ve also added zucchini to give it a bit more heft, though other spring vegetables (snap peas, asparagus, broccolini) would make for nice additions, too.

One of the best ingredients in the southern Indian culinary repertoire is the fresh curry leaf, and the recipe that inspired this one included a whopping 20 leaves—half go in with the aromatics to fry in the beginning, the other half go in fresh toward the end. If you can find curry leaves (available in many specialty Indian, South Asian, and international markets and on…Etsy?!), use them! They add a dimension of flavor and aroma that lends considerable depth to this dish, and any dish, frankly. But, because curry leaves can be difficult to source in many places, we’ve written the recipe below to include cilantro leaves and lime zest instead—a different vibe, but you still get that little herby oomph at the finish that makes this curry sing.

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Is there a man, woman or child on this green earth who doesn’t love a crumble top muffin?

This week’s recipe is one we’ve been tinkering with for a while, and we think we’ve finally gotten it. These muffins have the whiff of Duncan Hines-flavored nostalgia we yearn for, with the not-too-sweet, could-be-breakfast ingredient list we want.

They’re especially great as a snack that’s as tasty as it is portable (well, if you don’t mind a wee bit of stray crumble, that is), and are a welcome addition to consecutive days of packed lunch. Surely you don’t need more convincing than that?!

Blueberries for Sal,

Fanny + Greta

With Spring Break upon us and the threat of 19 hour TSA lines looming in some of our futures, we’ve got travel snacks on the brain. If there’s a chance we’ll have to entertain a 20-month-old in a two-hour line, we’re dipping back into our snack archives for:

• Garlic and Dill “Chex mix”

• “Nutella” Energy Balls

• Sweet + Salty Trail Mix

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We know we’ve already tried to sell you on the merits of homemade Jell-o, but we’re back at it because our daughters are now old enough to assist in the making and the experience was way more fun and seamless than we thought it would be. It’s also—if you buy some cute Easter-themed silicone molds—a thing you can very easily pass off to your c…

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This week we’re bringing you a new favorite pasta of ours, a dish we’re calling Fettuccine Caulifredo™. Inspired by the plates of Fettuccine Alfredo that we devoured at various branches of the Olive Garden whenever our high school sports teams traveled for tournaments, this version is an homage to the original but—in our humble opinion—has got a lot more going on flavorwise.

In case you were unaware, the OG Fettuccine Alfredo was born not in a professional kitchen, but out of a husband's panic. In 1908, Roman restaurateur Alfredo di Lelio created the dish to coax his nauseated pregnant wife back to the dinner table by offering her a souped-up version of the only pasta dish that ever appeals to anyone under the weather: buttered noodles. Di Lelio combined a heap of fresh fettuccine with generous amounts of butter and a shower of Parmigiano, and tossed it all together with a little starchy pasta water until it was silky, smooth and delicious. It was simple, restorative, and revelatory enough that he added it to the menu of his restaurant on the Via della Scrofa. The dish only really took off in 1920 though, when legendary silver screen sweethearts Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (considered to be the original Hollywood power couple) discovered it during their Roman honeymoon and returned to America singing the praises of….. buttered noodles (done the right, i.e. Italian, way, that is). It became a viral sensation 100 years before the likes of TikTok and yet, like many pastas, went through a few wee changes upon arriving stateside (enter: heavy cream). The rest is history.

Our Fettuccine Caulifredo is dead easy, savory, and creamy and, though it’s made with a braised cauliflower base, will fully satisfy your spiritual longing for a bowl of nostalgic Fettuccine Alfredo. You know what else it will likely satisfy? Your whole damn family. Pasta, vegetables, and comfort, all in one bowl.

Mangiamo!

Greta + Fanny

The tail end of cold season means our kids still have runny noses and the dreaded Night Coughs, so we’re continuing to lean on our favorite immune-boosting lotions and potions—for them and for us! And because a Night Cough also means No Sleep, we’re especially keen on making our breakfast crumble after bedtime to have it ready to reheat in the morning. Ditto to the factually best Overnight Oats you will ever try.

P.S. This recipe isn’t fully dairy free—it’s been a long winter in New York and we need the butter and Parm—but it’s not majority-cream either. Great news for the lactose sensitive among us! If you’re vegan, you can make some easy subs (which we’ll note below).

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