The DHX: The Doughtie Houses Exchange

By Jill Davis Doughtie
To whoever suggested make your own taco night: Thank you! They loved it. We had crunchy taco shells, corn tortillas and flour tortillas. We had grated mild cheddar cheese, chopped lettuce, hamburger, pinto beans, tomatoes and Pace picante sauce. It was nostalgic for me and G — we both grew up with [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Jack and I were at Kathy’s house after a parent-teacher conference. We’d gone together with G in one car, and we’d dropped off G. Jack needed a book he’d left at Kathy’s, so the three of us went back to her place together. Kathy invited us in and offered us ice cream. [...]

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Chowhound discussion thread: New Step-Mom & picky eaters: What’s for dinner?
Lisa Cohn: The Two-Refrigerator Solution: Teaching Tolerance in a Blended Family - “Actually, I struggled at first with the notion of two separate refrigerators. I thought families should gather each evening around the dining-room table and partake of the same meal. . . . Now, [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Bloody Marys are a long standing Christmas morning Doughtie tradition. We spend our Christmas mornings together, and now that I’ve joined the clan, we make Bloody Marys two ways: the hard core Clamato version, which is a recipe handed down from G’s mom, and the Spicy V-8 version, which comes from a [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

“Would you like some peanut butter cookies?” I asked the kids one day. I’d made them from my mom’s recipe. They’re one of my favorites.
“No thanks!” they both said politely.
Hmmm. I now had a whole plate of cookies to myself. This was good in some ways, but bad in others.
A few weeks [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Hot coals on the barbeque
This is based on a James Beard recipe G’s mom found years ago when G was still a kid. They liked it so much, they called it Platonic marinade, and it’s been a family favorite ever since. G barbecued chicken for me with it when we first started [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie
These chocolate chip muffins are adapted from Deborah Madison’s Basic Buttermilk Muffins recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Her recipe offers lots of fruit variations and doesn’t suggest using chocolate chips. Ritzy Chicken never uses up an entire 32 fluid oz. carton of buttermilk, so in the weeks that I make that, [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie
“Psychoanalysts have revealed some of the ways in which the tales represent our secret fears and preoccupations - from being devoured to having a mother or stepmother who either starves you or stuffs you with food in order to eat you up.” — A.S. Byatt, “Happily Ever After“
There’s something about feeding and [...]

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By Jill Davis Doughtie

Chris and Jack can be pretty selective about what they’ll put in their mouths, chew up and swallow.
I was no exception as a kid. I used to pick every possible fiber of fat out of any chicken I ate, strand by strand, with my fingers. Chicken fat revolted me. I wouldn’t eat [...]

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“When a man is small, he loves and hates food with a ferocity which soon dims. At six years old his very bowels will heave when such a dish as creamed carrots or cold tapioca appears before him. His throat will close, and spots of nausea and rage swim in his vision. It is hard, [...]

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