Once upon a time, I wrote in a cookbook about my own love for buttered noodles. Every recipe writer deserves a child that will simply not participate in their antics it keeps us humble! It’s the inevitable conclusion of our culinary hubris! But I did not, it turns out, conjure her out of thin air. We joke that she is the child I had coming. I want you to know that on what might be the sixth or sixteenth day, I’ve stopped counting, she has yet to request anything else. After the first week of trying to serve regular meals - food with variety and interest, the kind of stuff you might find on any page of the site but this one - I gave up and made buttered noodles every night. Our badger is cut from more stubborn cloth. It does the trick - she tires of it and begins to embrace what the rest of the family is eating. Her parents decide to give her exactly what she wants while the rest of the family eats poached eggs, green beans, and breaded veal cutlets. Have you read the book? In it, a very picky badger named Frances doesn’t want to eat any of the food her mother makes, she only wants bread and jam.

For the last four weeks my son, the child who actually likes and encourages my cooking, has been at sleepaway camp, leaving us home alone with the one I affectionately call Buttered Noodles for Frances.

Plain pasta with butter