Kitchen Notes

Notes from the family table.

Writing about the part of cooking that has nothing to do with technique — feeding picky eaters, packing lunchboxes, building a weeknight rhythm, putting dinner on the table when nobody has the energy.

Kitchen Notes

Pasta nights for picky eaters: a parent's playbook

If you have a small person at the table who renegotiates dinner every evening, pasta is your friend — but only if you stop trying to outwit them. Here's how we get fussy eaters to actually finish a bowl.

Kitchen Notes

The 20-minute weeknight dinner formula

On a Tuesday in Dubai, you do not have time to be creative. You have time to follow a formula. Here is ours — five steps that have got dinner on the table on the worst evenings, and have made every recipe we publish faster.

Kitchen Notes

Five pasta dishes you can pack for the kids' lunchbox

Cold pasta in a lunchbox is a parent's quiet superpower. It travels well, keeps the food cold, doesn't stain, and comes back empty more often than a sandwich. Here are five we've tested on actual school days.

Kitchen Notes

Why dinner together matters more than what's on the plate

We sell pasta. So we have a vested interest in saying that the meal matters. But after years of cooking for our own families, we've come to believe that the bowl is almost beside the point. What matters is everyone being at the table.

Kitchen Notes

A guide to building a no-stress dinner party menu

The best dinner parties we've ever hosted were the ones we underplanned. Here is the menu structure we use now — three courses, one of them pasta, almost no last-minute work, and zero risk of standing in the kitchen while everyone else is at the table.

Kitchen Notes

What's the difference between our three ranges — and which is right for your kitchen?

Three ranges, every kitchen — that's the line. But what does it mean for a parent standing in the pasta aisle on a Wednesday? Here is the honest, range-by-range answer to which pack to take home.