Domenica Marchetti would never recognize herself from this description: a woman who seems to have the secret of how to juggle the work/homelife balance. An Alexandria resident, she has a 12 year-old son, Nick, and a 10 year-old daughter, Adriana, yet she's also published two cookbooks - the latest, Big Night In just released, for which she's doing signing sessions and publicity. Publisher's Weekly nominated it recently as one of only three top new cookbook picks - alongside Rachel Ray's latest tome! Her earlier one is The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy.

For the rest of us, she's someone to admire. But like so many working moms trying to be all things to all people, she doesn't see herself as an achiever. She says, "I feel the pressure when one [kid] forgets to study for a test, or they miss a math assignment. I feel I've let them down."

She admits she's not an early riser, not a writer hunched at dawn over the kitchen table producing the next masterwork as the household sleeps. It's a drawback, she says. "I don’t get anything accomplished before the kids go to school except lunch boxes. 9 o'clock school starts, then I make the beds, clean the house. I'm not a very disciplined person. I get distracted by laundry that needs folding, or the grocery shopping - nothing to do with what I ought to be doing in the kitchen or computer."

Sounds like the rest of us. Except we haven't written two cookbooks.

She gives her husband much of the credit for her getting her latest one in on time. "What a great husband! My deadline was approaching. It was Easter break and the kids were off from school. So my husband took some vacation and took the kids out."

To get a cookbook published means not just thinking up a theme that appeals to publishers flooded with unsolicited manuscripts. If the proposal is accepted, it means cooking each recipe again and again till your family cries out, "Per Bacco, no more lasagne!" "I test the recipes three times each," she says. "Then I have other people - friends who are home cooks - test most of them. Some I don't worry about, like the lentil soup. I've been making that my whole life."

A reporter not a chef by training, she grew up in New Jersey in an Italian family, spending her summers in the Abruzzo region. Her mother was a wonderful cook, she says. She and her own mother taught Marchetti how to make ravioli, pasta, and classic sauces like Bolognese. "I never thought I was going to be food writer," she says. "I thought I was going to be a foreign correspondent, because wanted to live in Italy."

Instead she found herself on the Detroit News. When she married and moved to DC, she joined the Chronicle of Philanthropy, contributing freelance pieces to the Washington Post Food Section. But then she started a family.  "Having kids made it really difficult to work at my job. They were very accommodating, but it required a lot of hours, then picking up the kids at 6 o'clock. They were toddlers. It was very stressful - a long day for them. I thought, I can write and cook. So I made the decision to quit working full time and become a freelance food writer."

Her two books are filled with the kind of family-friendly recipes that are accessible to even the tentative cook, meals that can't fail to tempt and comfort demanding guests. They come with colorful anecdotes, like the one in Big Night In that heads Arrosticini - skewers of grilled and marinated lamb:

"As teenagers, my sister and I would drive with our friends up into the hills searching for the telltale aroma of meat grilling on a wood-burning fire, which meant that an open-air restaurant was serving the regional specialty. We would devour dozens of these skewers, and with them, platefuls of grilled bread and piles of roasted postatoes." Just reading it is a holiday.

She's divided the main course section by technique, as in From The Grill and From the Stove Top, and she's added links to what goes with the courses. There are suggested menus and a bonus Brunch chapter for guests who may have come for a Big Night In - but stayed over for the next Marchetti-style meal...Any working parent feeling order and calm are somewhere out of reach will find cooking from the book a lifesaver.

domenicacooks.com.

Here's where you'll find Domenica in person over the next few weeks, promoting her book: 

Saturday, November 15, 7 p.m. Big Night In Book Signing and Tasting at Food Matters, Alexandria, 906 Brenman Park Dr, 703  461 3663; www.foodmattersva.com.

Tuesday, November 18, 5:30-8:30 p.m. National Press Club Annual Book Fair
14 and F Sts NW, 202 662 7516; www.press.org.

Saturday, November 22, 2-4 p.m. Book signing/tasting at Hill's Kitchen
713 D Street SE, Washington, D.C. 20003 (202) 543-1997; www.hillskitchen.com.

Saturday, November 29, Cooking demonstration/book signing at The Seasonal Cook
416 West Main Street, Charlottesville, VA. The time is still to be announced, but call 434 295 9355 for details; www.seasonalcook.com.

Wednesday, December 3, 5:30-8 p.m. University Club of D.C. Meet the Authors Night and Book Fair, 135 16th Street NW;  202  862 8800; www.universityclubdc.com.

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