This Week's Food

Doing Good in the Neighborhood

Being a business owner is like being a mom. In theory, you aren't allowed to play favorites but everyone knows that's total malarkey and that the favorites exist. (Sorry, Joe and other middle children of the world!)

Unabashedly, my favorite Family Dinner delivery is to a place called Centerboard in Lynn, MA. Each week we send them a bag full of local grass-fed beef and organic pork for their residents' dinners. Each week we charge them zero dollars.

Posted on October 16, 2026

Joe Grotto

Pie in the Sky

Hello All,

This week we are confessing our love to CommonWealth Kitchen. We have been eyeing this amazing organization from across the room for many years and it's time to make it official.

Posted on October 10, 2026

Joe Grotto

Family Dinner Hits the Big Apple

Good morning friends!

Bit of housekeeping: we're having some weather this weekend! This will mean we'll likely be a bit slower with deliveries this Saturday. (Safety first!) Hooray for our intrepid drivers. A bit of patience would be splendid.

We spent the past few days at Climate Week in NYC nerding out about sustainable agriculture, food systems and the good work of Family Dinner.

Posted on September 25, 2026

Joe Grotto

Shoulder Season

Stamp your passports, folks. We are entering Shoulder Season.

Shoulder season is that magnificent time between late summer and winter harvest where the world is your oyster. You get all the summer goods like scallions and delicate greens like arugula but also some autumnal harbingers like squash.

Posted on September 18, 2026

Joe Grotto

Food Nerds Unite!

Good morning friends,

We hope that this week has been calming, settling. Kids back in school, vacations wrapped up, Allston Christmas is over and no one got humiliated by a Sturrow-ing on Move-in Day (right? did I miss something? I do love a good Sturrow-ing). We are all back in the swing of it.

Posted on September 11, 2026

Joe Grotto

Who doesn't love a snack pack?

Happy Friday All,

If you are a person of a certain age, the words "Snack Pack" harken back to a wonderful/questionably problematic scene from Billy Madison; " I thought I was your snack pack!". Though most films from the 1990s, including this one, age like egg salad in the hot sun, they are infinitely quotable. And while I appreciate the infinite deluge of content that we can consume at any given time across a million platforms I miss a time where we all swam in the same pool of bad trope-filled films that gave us quips like those. I miss times where, whether you liked it or not, you have seen the Big Lebowksi or the Royal Tenenbaums 3-4 times and were at least moderately fluent in their lexicon. Those were simpler times. ("There's a beverage here, man!")

Posted on September 04, 2026

Joe Grotto

Back to School

Happy Friday All,

Only Odysseus, at the end of his epic 10 year journey home, could understand the relief of parents of young children as September, and hence the start of the academic year, rises on the calendar.

Summer has been long, camp-ful and well... sticky. It will be good to hose the children off, throw them on the bus and actually enjoy a complete thought for what feels like the first time since our hero left the isle of Ithaca.

Posted on August 28, 2026

Joe Grotto

A Perfect Summer Salad

Morning friends,

I am going to be nuzzling up to this perfect summer salad this weekend, nothing fancy but totally riffable. The NYT's Sheela Prakash offers up the delightful Hot Smoked Salmon Salad in today's paper. (Yes, I said "paper" I was born before Adam and Eve ate that damn apple.)

Posted on August 14, 2026

Joe Grotto

In a pinch? Or a pickle?

Hello friends,

This week we have pickling cukes from our good pals at Kitchen Garden Farm and bunched pearl onions from Pete's Greens. Both are ripe and ready for your pickle jar.

Posted on July 31, 2026

Joe Grotto

Three Women Fighting the Fight

As it turns out, cancer is no fun. Like zero.

In June I was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer after several months of mystery symptoms and various trips to the ER. I was sick, stubborn and frustrated. Luckily, I had wonderful loving people around me and received some excellent care and support. I had surgery in mid-June and it looks like I get to employ the past tense and say I "had" colon cancer. However, tests found it had taken up residence in one (just one!) of my lymph nodes so the standard is to treat with chemo which I start next week. The next 6 months should be a pure picnic.

Posted on July 24, 2026

Joe Grotto

Jonesing for Pie

Good Morning,

It's summer in New England. Have you noticed? Maybe we've mentioned it once or twice?

Near the top of my summertime "get it while the getting's good" list is always pie. Above, my nephews, now 15 years older, stare longingly at the treats our dear friend Cobrina made for my wife's and my wedding. No wedding cake. Wedding pie.

Posted on July 17, 2026

Joe Grotto

Some Light Reading

A reminder!

Joe has been busy building out the store for folks with fun seasonal add-ons.

Garlic scapes, tomatoes and mozz, a pickle kit (it's a really big dill!) and more.

Posted on July 10, 2026

Joe Grotto

Pedaling Petals

Hello friends,

Happy Almost 4th of July and Happy Birthday to Erin's Mom Sally MacDonald who has received the formal ecclesiastical status of sainthood for putting up with Erin all these years.

We know you have kids to slather in sunscreen, hot dogs to eat and cold beer to wash all your stresses away so we will get right to it:

Posted on July 03, 2026

Joe Grotto

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