About & FAQ

Welcome to This Week for Dinner^TM!  My name is Jane Maynard.  I don’t mind cooking but can’t ever come up with what to cook. I started this blog to keep myself on track and to get dinner ideas from friends…and it’s worked! Every Sunday I post my weekly dinner plan.  TWFD friends then post their menus in the comments section, providing me (and everyone else) with fresh ideas week after week!  I’m a working mom who loves good food…I keep it simple and delicious. I post other fun ‘foodstuffs’ throughout the week, including recipes and kitchen tips, talk a lot about food sustainability, and publish a podcast named (you guessed it!) This Week for Dinner.

Here’s a little FAQ for those questions that are, you know, frequently asked!

How long have you been blogging?
I started This Week for Dinner in January 2007 with no intention of starting a blog. I basically wanted to share my menus with my brother (who lived far away) and I wanted my friends who were more prepared than myself to tell me what they were cooking each day. Since then I’ve had amazing opportunities come my way, including some cool writing and editing gigs. In addition to my blog, I have written regularly for Cosmopolitan.com, Huffington Post, Alpha Mom, Cool Mom Eats, Mom2.com, Parade, Babble and more. To see related links, click here.

What is your favorite food?
I’m pretty much addicted to chocolate. H&H Bagels rule the world. Well, they RULED the world until they were shut down for tax evasion and destroyed the world as I know it. And you can’t tell me there’s a better cannoli than one from Modern Pastry in Boston. (Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you’ve been to Mike’s. So have I. Modern’s better. I’ll stake a cannoli on it.) Also, my death row last meal would be my own honey goat cheese pizza and these chocolate chip cookies, 10 minutes after they have come out of the oven. ALSO, I recently learned I’m allergic to wheat, which pretty much blows up all my favorite foods. Yay for allergies!

What is your personal background?
I live in San Diego. I’m married to a genius surfer dude scientist (Nate) who is doing crazy stuff with DNA. We have two adorable daughters and a son. All three are my toughest food critics. We’ve been in California the last 15+ years: San Diego, then the Bay Area, now back to San Diego. Nate and I are both from the East Coast, with ties to areas near New York and Boston. We met and fell in love on the steps of Widener Library at Harvard University, the perfect meeting point between the two schools we actually attended (Tufts and BU).

What is your professional background?
Pre-kids, I worked in a corporate public relations department for a wireless company. Post-kids, life got a lot more interesting! I went into freelance graphic design “full-time” (meaning part-time, but it’s all I did), in addition to writing and photography work. Along the way I’ve had all kinds of work related to blogging (editing jobs, starting a business connecting bloggers with companies, photography and writing work, and more) as well as maintained my graphic design business. I’m loving where this crazy road is taking me and grateful that you are a part of it!

What camera do you use?
I use a Canon Rebel T2i and the 50 mm f/1.4 lens (but, until October 2010, I happily used the 50 mm f/1.8, which is now being used by my mother-in-law) with natural light. If you want to read more about my camera, I wrote a long and very helpful (at least I think so!) post about why I chose the camera I did.

How can I contact you?
Please click here for contact information.

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