Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Wild mushroom stuffing, please... even if I'm the only mushroom eater in the house.

Dorie's holiday cake!

Homemade pasta and marinara

I had a huge collection of children's cookbooks, so I can't really remember which one was first. Somehow, though, I always picked out the recipes that my parents disapproved of - either because they sounded terrible, or because they had hard-to-find or expensive ingredients (who puts such things in a kids cookbook?). I distinctly remember some sort of casserole with cheese and Spam, and my dad poking at the uncanned meat to see it move...

I think it's cute, and I'm also a fan of snacking on frozen peas, so I'm totally in.

Olives, bread, and wine. Oh, to be alone for a meal...

Learning to go out to the back yard and pick asparagus from the asparagus patch and strawberries from the strawberry patch with my mom.

any non-traditional pizza. my current fave is red chile and chorizo.

Any other Santa Feans out there?

I agree with Zach, and think it's only to a restaurant's advantage to do this. Sure, I can take my baby out to a restaurant at 5:00 on my own, no special program required. It will be nearly empty, I can contain any chaos (or sweep up the crying child and get out of there as necessary), and it's a good learning experience; the earlier I start teaching my child how to behave at a restaurant, the better.

But do I do this? Very, very rarely. It's so much easier to eat at home or arrange take-out. (Since having a baby, I learned that almost any restaurant, except for the very highest tier, will happily let you pay for a meal packed directly into to-go boxes.) However, if a restaurant reminded me that I was welcome, at a convenient time for them, I might just be lured back into the outside world...

Challah. So much fun to shape.

This was great. I was worried that it wouldn't be filling enough for dinner, but the lentils added bulk... and as was mentioned in the intro, the sausage, cheese, and balsamic combined to make it nice and hearty. Adding it to my file.