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Dinner Stories

Welcome to Dinner Stories!

Most recipe sites help you figure out what to cook, but I also want to help you find time to cook, even when your day doesn’t go as planned.

What are Dinner Stories?

Dinner Stories are short daily posts about real-life kitchen successes and challenges. Written to inspire you with ideas and solutions for getting dinner on the table—to enjoy more meaningful mealtimes.

I also want to help you learn to cook with “kitchen intuition,” so you don’t always have to rely on a recipe and can whip up something delicious in minutes.

From meal inspiration to easy dinner ideas, Dinner Stories chronicles finding solutions to common dilemmas, like finding the time to cook and managing last-minute dinner prep.

I’ll also help you stock your kitchen so you always have a quick dinner idea, because Dinner Stories are also about grocery shopping and ingredients—the first step to making easy and delicious meals!

Dinner Stories can help you learn to make fabulous meals without stress or strain. At Dinner with Caterina, I show you how simple habits can lead to a delicious lifestyle. And it’s a community I’ve created to help you live your delicious life!

Recent Dinner Stories

November 13, 2024
Easy Italian Meatballs

You may also be interested in reading: Finding Your Thumbs Up Family Dinners Easy Tomato Sauce The Ultimate Way to Serve Dinner

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November 11, 2024
The Apéritif Dinner Snack for Kids

A Rewarding Snack Before Dinner In a recent post, I discussed the apéritif — how this delightful custom can help maintain healthy eating habits and foster meaningful connections. You can read about The Apéritif — Return to The Table style here. In this post, I will show how to use the apéritif to appease kids […]

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November 7, 2024
Sole with Lemon Shallot Cream Sauce

Learning Simple Sauces from a French chef As I mentioned above, here is the original version of the recipe by Alain Ducasse. I hope this post not only gives you inspiration for a delightfully easy-to-make gourmet sauce but also sparks your intuition and ideas for how you can modify recipes into simpler to prepare versions.

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November 4, 2024
The Apéritif Return to The Table Style

Creating Healthy Eating Habits and Meaningful Moments In this post, I’ll serve up the idea of the apéritif and show you how this custom can support healthy eating habits and help create meaningful moments at the table—anytime. Let’s start by exploring this delicious tradition. What is the Apéritif? Traditionally, an apéritif is a light drink—alcoholic […]

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October 31, 2024
The Halloween Goblin: A Sweet Exchange

If you're okay with your kids enjoying a little candy on Halloween but want to avoid a big stach lingering around, here's a fun solution: have you heard of the Halloween goblin? Here's how it works. After trick-or-treating, let your kids choose a few favorites to keep and set the rest aside. Then, just like […]

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September 16, 2024
Dinner Stories: Chef Marie's Surprising Ingredient—Lemon Sorbet

Our routine stop last night at the Gelato shop on the corner of our Airbnb here in Florence sparked some delicious and exciting dinner ideas to share with you today.  Many years ago, I studied with a French chef named Marie, whom you’ll meet in my upcoming book. One day, Marie served me an open-faced crêpe […]

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September 15, 2024
Dinner Stories: Making the Most Out of your Bread

What About the Bread? Bread is controversial in the U.S. because some people are gluten-sensitive, and some others simply prefer to avoid white flour. I love bread, but honestly, most of the bread in the U.S. is not good, so gluten-sensitive or not, I agree we can skip most of it. If you like bread […]

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September 12, 2024
Dinner Stories: Mistakes of Modern Cooking

My friends in France and Italy often talk about buying “an American refrigerator” because of the extra space these offer and the modern options like an ice maker. Many of us in the U.S. can hardly recall a time before automatic ice makers, and our kids, like my son Alessio, may have never used ice cube […]

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September 11, 2024
Dinner Stories: Get Your Dinner Ideas from a Chef

Last Friday, I wrote Dinner Stories: Eating Out at Home, which is about using ideas from restaurants to help you figure out "What's for dinner?". Here’s another yummy example of how to draw inspiration from restaurants and gain more confidence in the kitchen. Plus, a tip on how to get children and other family members involved […]

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September 10, 2024
Dinner Stories: An Apéritif for Portion Control and Clamoring Kids

If I could meet you in person instead of writing to you, I’d invite you over for a little apéritif and tell you a Dinner Story. Maybe we’ll meet one day, but for now, today’s story is about the beauty and practicality of the apéritif. It is more than merely a delightful social custom. The […]

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September 9, 2024
Dinner Stories: Finding Your "Thumbs Up" Dinners

“What’s for dinner?” This question follows us every day, and everywhere. Even during our stay in Florence while my son, Alessio, is taking a design class, I still have to figure out what’s for dinner.  Wonderful restaurants surround us, but we can’t eat out every night. So I am still cooking dinner most days—for myself […]

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September 7, 2024
Dinner Stories: Making Two Meals More Meaningful

Cooking for kids can be complicated. They can be picky and don’t always want to eat the same meals as the rest of the family. I hear this complaint often, and that many parents' go-to solution is to make something simple for the kids to eat and to serve them first, such as microwaving chicken […]

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Student Success Stories

  • Now I Have Great Kitchen Intuition!

    "Finding you [has] truly inspired me to cook more and focus on quality ingredients. Strengthening my kitchen intuition has been key, it's how I know to roll leftovers into something new or I can see what I bought and come up with creative solutions.

    As a family, we always valued sitting down together for dinner but now it's done with so much less stress. I can be done with work and still make easy meals . . . amazing quality meals that are thrown together in a short time and we get to enjoy each other!"

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  • My Family is Closer Than Ever

    “Your suggestions are so priceless! Thank you for such valuable content. My family is closer than ever, thanks to you!”

  • BRAVO! I'm in!

    “[Caterina is], in 5 steps, hitting all the major points of what works in generational connection across all cultures. Families don’t just happen, they are grown and this is the sweet and lasting way to do that. Bravo and I’m IN!”

  • A Real Game Changer

    "We have made a lot of progress over here under your care. We are now all eating from the same “pot” which I was surprised how much my kids loved. They were so excited when I put the food in the middle of the table. They asked for it the next day, Can we do that special fancy dinner thing where we have a feast? It really is such a better ritual—passing the food around and all sharing from the same platter, a real game changer."

  • Accidental Weight Loss!

    “I don't know if I told you, but I accidentally lost about 8 lbs after cutting out most semi-processed foods!"

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