Feeding the beasts: Cook offers tips to keep hungry men full

LUCINDA SCALA Quinn knows how to handle a hungry man. She has four of them at home, three sons and a husband, with formidable appetites all.

Her men, and men like them, inspired her to write "Mad Hungry, Feeding Men & Boys" (Artisan, $29.95), a lively and down-to-earth tome that delivers a heaping plateful of recipes, strategies and survival techniques geared to making tasty, nutritious family meals that don't cost a bundle. Or as Quinn puts it "Civilizing the wild beasts in your life, one meal at a time."

"I've taken some flack for separating the sexes in the title," said Quinn, who works full-time as the senior vice president of food and entertainment for Martha Stewart Living. "Of course, the book is for everybody. But come on guys, men and women are different, and we eat differently. Women will eat a really average salad because it's a salad. We're supposed to eat it. A guy is just not going to do that. It can be 95 degrees outside and my husband wants beef stew or [roast] pork shoulder - and all I want is a piece of steamed fish."

Surrounded by brothers and male cousins growing up, and now the lone woman in her household, Quinn has observed the phenomenon she calls "mad hungry."

"Once you have more than one hungry male, you have an urgent situation," she said. "And if you aren't prepared for that, it just isn't fun. You don't want to face that every day."

Quinn's aim isn't to serve her men but to raise boys into men who understand food and know how to cook it. She's already achieved that in her own family - "my boys like to cook" - and she wants to spread the word.

"There's a lot of noise out there that just adds to everyday stress," said Quinn, who will sign books at Chester County Book & Music Co., in West Chester on Nov. 10. "I promote more of a system, a strategy to cooking that anybody can do.

"For me, I shop every Sunday morning at 8 a.m. I get home, unpack, clean my lettuce, maybe start a soup or lasagna, and by 10:30 or 11, I'm pretty well set up. I have a schedule of meals for the week, and I enlist everybody's help in getting it done."

That might mean marinating meat or chicken the night before, or cutting and prepping vegetables in the morning so that all you have to do is put everything in the oven later. "From that point, you have a 30-minute meal," she said.