Braised chicken with tomatoes and cherry peppers

Cooking with 4-year-old twins is certainly not the fastest way to make dinner.

There is, among other issues to settle, the question of who will stand on the best stool. Then there is who had the longest turn cutting onions. And who will get to put the peppers in the pot.

All of these things must be debated, negotiated until a just balance is reached, and on occasion when there is no balance to be had, there are elbows thrown.

This is all done, we can't forget, in the presence of large, although often not well sharpened, knives.

So why, one might ask, do you cook with twins?

Well, besides the fact that I now have better management training than some people get in MBA programs, I do it for the passion. There is nothing that makes a dish taste better than the grubby enthusiasm of two 4-year-olds. When you cook with people who want so badly to put the peels in the trash, who greet every tomato with passion (and thievery), who jockey for rights to the mixing bowl, there is little chance to wallow in the drudgery of yet another mid-week meal.

And things tend to get better, if not neater. You are on heightened alert. (Knives, where are the knives.) And that tends to do nice things to creativity. Plus, there is little time to think, and thinking is often the downfall of my cooking.

So, although I wouldn't want to do it every night, here's to sharing the kitchen with two never-a-dull-moment girls.