50 Things We’ve Learned About Feeding Kids

This photo was taken in spring of 2011. It ran alongside one of our first “Providers” for Bon Appetit — a column all about cooking for kids – and was shot by Peter van Agtmael, a Magnum photographer whose name is more commonly associated with war zones in the Middle East. I remember we all laughed recreating the thought process of the photo editor who assigned him — Hey, let’s send a war photographer to document what happens in the family kitchen – before we got down to the serious business of shooting those vinegary pork chops you see in the foreground. Our daughters were seven and eight years old at the time, requiring stools to reach the stovetop; they spent a good part of their day climbing on counters and furniture, and spent a good part of their days “talking” their Playmobil dolls.

I refuse to get too nostalgic here, but it’s hard. The current issue of Bon Appetit (March 2017) includes our final Providers column and I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks revisiting these early snapshots of our girls, who now cook their own meals, stream Scandal and Jane the Virgin on their laptops, and babysit for kids who are the ages they were here. I’m not going to make you come along for my weepfest — my happy weepfest, of course  – but I did want to point you in the direction of our last column, a little list of our hard-won kitchen wisdom: The Top 50 Things We’ve Learned cooking for those little monkeys. Check it out and feel free to chime in with your own thoughts.

We still hope to contribute to BA now and then, but in the meantime, big shout-out to our editors — Adam Rapoport, Meryl Rothstein, Hugh Garvey, Carla Music — for the privilege of piggybacking on their shooting star these past few years. If there are any DALS readers who don’t subscribe, A) why not? and B) here you go.

P.S. One thing that has most definitely not changed: How often we eat those pork chops.