experiencelifemag.com Print › | Back › Fast Food for Career Women (and Men) Bon Appétit’s new cookbook solves an ongoing dilemma for busy working people: how to create simple, delicious meals on the fly. By Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl May 2009 Growing up, I spent many summers with my family at a cabin whose bookshelves were filled with old paperbacks abandoned by previous guests. That’s where I first discovered popular feminist texts like The Second Sex at a ridiculously early age (I was maybe 12). From these books, I quickly concluded that if — by some odd turn of events — I was ever to become a “woman,” I would bypass all existential misery by simply choosing to have a career, thus preventing my soul from being crushed by the need to put dinner on the table for children. So at 13, I nabbed a summer job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and I’ve been working ever since. Today, I’m a restaurant reviewer, an editor, a television chatterer — a career woman! Which makes it sort of ironic that I spend many hours every week rushing through my days wondering, “What can we put on the table for dinner for the children?” These days, I don’t particularly see this as a feminist problem, partly because my husband does much of the heavy lifting, and partly because I have some historical perspective. I’ve witnessed plenty of Utopian dinner solutions over the years — frozen meals, fast food, grocery-store take-out — and found them all lacking. “What to feed the children” is no longer a feminist question, but rather a central human one. Do I overstate it? No doubt. But when I received my copy of The Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook: 1,200 Quick Dishes for Everynight Cooking (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), I realized just how healthy and delicious even simple dishes could be. Turkey and pinto bean chili flavored with a bit of chocolate — genius! Canned pinto beans are an obvious choice for someone looking to eat healthy and fast, but I never know what to do with them. Steamed tilapia with ginger, lime and cilantro — brilliant! It’s widely regarded as one of the most eco-friendly fish you can eat, but again, I’m never sure how to prepare it. Nearly every one of this book’s 770 pages seemed to speak directly to me. So I tried to call up the author, Bon Appétit’s editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild, to talk about it. She was at a conference, her public relations director told me, but she would call me from the airport. Nope. Then she was crunching to put out an issue and would call me as soon as she could. Nope. Then she was at another conference and would . . . but the phone never rang. After a month of phone calls, I had become rather friendly with her PR flack. “I think you should just take care of yourself,” she told me. “You need to move on.” The irony of one stressed-out career gal mediating between two other stressed-out career gals on their quest to help still more stressed-out career gals was not lost on me. Later that day, I realized my favorite big-box store carried wild-caught Alaskan salmon, a delicious fish from one of the world’s most sustainable fisheries. I had just been admiring the Fast Easy Fresh recipe for seared salmon on baby spinach, so I threw some in the cart, and then grabbed a bag of the greens. I called my husband and put him — and our 3-year-old son, who delights in measuring ingredients — in charge of a side of brown rice. After grabbing our daughter from daycare, I went home to prepare dinner. In no time flat, we had a delicious, nutritious meal. As I tucked the kids into bed, I thought of the questions I had planned to ask Fairchild: “How do you and your staff manage to come up with fresh perspectives on all these common ingredients?” And, “Isn’t it astonishing how much mental freedom we can reclaim by outsourcing some of our everyday worries (like what to make for dinner) to professionals who perceive these angst-provoking chores as fun, interesting and creative challenges?” Though I never got to ask Fairchild these questions, I found that I was grateful for her work and insight anyway. And as I considered the many challenges that busy women and men face, I concluded that what I’d already gotten was good enough. How oddly lucky: I set out looking for new ideas for dinner and got fresh perspectives on so much more. Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is a celebrated food and wine critic. Nominated seven times for James Beard Foundation Awards — the Oscars of the food world — she has received four awards for her restaurant and wine columns. Since 2001, her work has been regularly featured in the Best Food Writing anthologies. For more recipes from The Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook, including the Thai Tofu Stew and Curried Quinoa Salad With Mango pictured above, see the Web Extras! at the top right of this page.

Fast Food for Career Women (and Men)

Bon Appétit’s new cookbook solves an ongoing dilemma for busy working people: how to create simple, delicious meals on the fly.

Growing up, I spent many summers with my family at a cabin whose bookshelves were filled with old paperbacks abandoned by previous guests. That’s where I first discovered popular feminist texts like The Second Sex at a ridiculously early age (I was maybe 12).

From these books, I quickly concluded that if — by some odd turn of events — I was ever to become a “woman,” I would bypass all existential misery by simply choosing to have a career, thus preventing my soul from being crushed by the need to put dinner on the table for children.

So at 13, I nabbed a summer job as a dishwasher in a restaurant, and I’ve been working ever since. Today, I’m a restaurant reviewer, an editor, a television chatterer — a career woman! Which makes it sort of ironic that I spend many hours every week rushing through my days wondering, “What can we put on the table for dinner for the children?”

These days, I don’t particularly see this as a feminist problem, partly because my husband does much of the heavy lifting, and partly because I have some historical perspective. I’ve witnessed plenty of Utopian dinner solutions over the years — frozen meals, fast food, grocery-store take-out — and found them all lacking.

“What to feed the children” is no longer a feminist question, but rather a central human one. Do I overstate it? No doubt. But when I received my copy of The Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook: 1,200 Quick Dishes for Everynight Cooking (John Wiley & Sons, 2008), I realized just how healthy and delicious even simple dishes could be.

Turkey and pinto bean chili flavored with a bit of chocolate — genius! Canned pinto beans are an obvious choice for someone looking to eat healthy and fast, but I never know what to do with them. Steamed tilapia with ginger, lime and cilantro — brilliant! It’s widely regarded as one of the most eco-friendly fish you can eat, but again, I’m never sure how to prepare it. Nearly every one of this book’s 770 pages seemed to speak directly to me.

So I tried to call up the author, Bon Appétit’s editor-in-chief Barbara Fairchild, to talk about it. She was at a conference, her public relations director told me, but she would call me from the airport. Nope. Then she was crunching to put out an issue and would call me as soon as she could. Nope. Then she was at another conference and would . . . but the phone never rang.

After a month of phone calls, I had become rather friendly with her PR flack. “I think you should just take care of yourself,” she told me. “You need to move on.” The irony of one stressed-out career gal mediating between two other stressed-out career gals on their quest to help still more stressed-out career gals was not lost on me.

Later that day, I realized my favorite big-box store carried wild-caught Alaskan salmon, a delicious fish from one of the world’s most sustainable fisheries. I had just been admiring the Fast Easy Fresh recipe for seared salmon on baby spinach, so I threw some in the cart, and then grabbed a bag of the greens. I called my husband and put him — and our 3-year-old son, who delights in measuring ingredients — in charge of a side of brown rice. After grabbing our daughter from daycare, I went home to prepare dinner. In no time flat, we had a delicious, nutritious meal.

As I tucked the kids into bed, I thought of the questions I had planned to ask Fairchild: “How do you and your staff manage to come up with fresh perspectives on all these common ingredients?” And, “Isn’t it astonishing how much mental freedom we can reclaim by outsourcing some of our everyday worries (like what to make for dinner) to professionals who perceive these angst-provoking chores as fun, interesting and creative challenges?”

Though I never got to ask Fairchild these questions, I found that I was grateful for her work and insight anyway. And as I considered the many challenges that busy women and men face, I concluded that what I’d already gotten was good enough. How oddly lucky: I set out looking for new ideas for dinner and got fresh perspectives on so much more.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl is a celebrated food and wine critic. Nominated seven times for James Beard Foundation Awards — the Oscars of the food world — she has received four awards for her restaurant and wine columns. Since 2001, her work has been regularly featured in the Best Food Writing anthologies.

For more recipes from The Bon Appétit Fast Easy Fresh Cookbook, including the Thai Tofu Stew and Curried Quinoa Salad With Mango pictured above, see the Web Extras! at the top right of this page.

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