It's Every Day: What's For Dinner?

When my three daughters were still living at home, I'd get the same burning question from at least one of them late in the afternoon each day.

If I was in the bathtub, they'd ask me. If I was perched on a ladder cleaning muck from the gutters, they'd ask me. If I was hosing out the fish tank, washing the dogs, sanding or repainting stairway spirals - yes, they'd ask me.

Like many moms, I became so tired of being queried that I began responding to the mind-numbing question with the same prosaic answer.

Here's how it usually went:

"Hey, Mom, what's for dinner?"

"Food."

"What kind of food?"

"Good food."

"That's not funny, Mom. Really, what's for dinner?"

"Really good food."

"Oh, never mind!"

Apparently the what's-for-dinner DNA strand was passed on to the girls through their father's genes.

Case in point: After a weekend of primitive camping in the humid Florida wilderness with teenagers, building latrines, inhaling campfire smoke and enduring two days of no bubble bath, I would have been delighted to come home to fried chicken in a bucket.

Instead, I'd walk in the door and the first three words out of my then-husband's mouth were, "What's for dinner?"

See what I mean?

With the emptying of the nest and three less chimes of "What's for dinner?" my cookbooks, micro-planner and garlic press have hardly been retired. You see, I love to cook. Even sans children.

Of course, there were adjustments to cooking for two. The first several years, I tended to overbuy and cook more than enough food as I adjusted from having to satisfy the appetites of ravenous teenagers to those of middle-aged parents trying to maintain healthy weights.

Cooking for two now, I'm also adding more exotic and expensive foods to my menus.

OK. I still have to lug bags home from the grocery store and scrub pots and pans, but there's no way I'd give up eating tasty, home-cooked meals. "Good food!" is still my answer to that question.

I recently was given a copy of Nigella Lawson's "Forever Summer" cookbook. Every recipe I've made so far has received a rave review. Even though it's now fall, I'm hooked on this recipe for slow-roasted garlic and lemon chicken. Lawson describes it as gloriously easy.

She's right. The wonderful thing is you just put the chicken, garlic, chunks of lemon and fresh thyme into a roasting pan and leave it to cook in the oven.

SLOW-ROASTED GARLIC AND LEMON CHICKEN

1 chicken, (approximately 3 1/2 to 4 pounds), cut into 10 pieces

1 head garlic, separated into unpeeled cloves

2 unwaxed lemons, cut into chunky eighths

Small handful fresh thyme

3 tablespoons olive oil

10 tablespoons white wine

Black pepper

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees

Put the chicken pieces into the roasting pan and add the garlic cloves, lemon chunks and thyme; just roughly pull the leaves off the stalks, leaving some intact for strewing later. Add the oil; using your hands mix everything together, and then spread the mixture out, making sure all the chicken pieces are skin-side up.

Sprinkle over with the white wine and grind on some pepper, then cover tightly with foil and put in the oven to cook at flavor-intensifying low heat for 2 hours.

Remove the foil from the roasting pan and turn up the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the uncovered chicken for another 30-45 minutes, by which time the skin on the meat will have turned golden brown and the lemons will have begun to scorch and caramelize the edges.

Serves 4 to 6.