In the Spotlight

Want to make mealtime something everyone looks forward to? Make it fun by involving everyone — little ones AND grown-ups — in the process. After a while you’ll find that certain family members gravitate to different parts of the meal preparation, but everyone (as safety dictates) should be able to take a shot at all stages of making a meal. Before you know it you’re connecting with your family, eating delicious food, laughing, crying and looking forward to doing it all again tomorrow!

Together, one meal at a time, you can make family dinner the regular ritual it was always meant to be. Sacred time. Time to purposely be a family. Time that belongs to you and your family; time that is so important no one will dare mess with it. (more…)

A well-stocked kitchen will save you money in the long run, especially if you buy in bulk, but more important it will save you time. So take a look in your pantry and throw out the old, the dusty, and the unknown. Take your list of must-have pantry items (and a canvas bag) to your grocery store. If you can buy in bulk, great. If you can buy from bulk bins, even better! You get to go home and put everything in your own containers. We prefer the big glass canning jars, mostly because they are inexpensive, but also because they are so cool looking and practical. They keep your food safe from invaders (bugs, not kids), and you can see exactly what it is and how much you have. (more…)

How do you teach kids to be grateful when their life experience affords so much immediate gratification and when we do so much for them that they really should be doing for themselves? It’s an everyday quandary — how to foster gratitude and ensure that our kids are going to be able to make it on their own in the big and more challenging, constantly shifting and less forgiving real world.

One eye-opening gratitude exercise is learning about how much food costs (literally and figuratively). If you’re getting your children involved in cooking and kitchen chores, shopping should be part of the drill. Take them with you and make them look at and compare prices. Is cheaper always better? How much food do you need to feed the family for a week and how much does it cost? Better yet, give them $25 and tell them to shop for a nutritious, balanced dinner themselves and see what they come up with. They will appreciate meals so much more when they know firsthand the work, time and money that go into them.

One thing is for certain: There is no downside to getting those “gratitude muscles” in shape, and the dinner table is an effective place to start.

I leave you with these two gratitude tips for this week. One is a game, the other a recipe. Tonight when you sit down for dinner go around the table and ask everyone to name one thing they are grateful for, and why. This is a great way to get conversations started and little and big minds to thinking about what it truly means to be grateful.

Second, here’s a great end to a meal –  a sensational and simple dessert you can make with the kids: Fruity Frozen Yogurt. We hope you enjoy it!

Thanks to our partner Foodily.com

Here is a simple truth: Dinner spreads love. That is one of the great motivations for starting and maintaining the ritual of family dinners. And, it’s one of the main reasons why nine times out of ten, people grin ear-to-ear when recalling childhood family dinners. Food pioneer Alice Waters put it perfectly when she said, “My mom wasn’t a very good cook but one of my fondest memories is of being three and watching her in the kitchen with a big pot of boiling apples. I couldn’t wait to eat that applesauce. It’s a pure love memory.”

As a family, you don’t need dozens of rituals to help you stay connected, but you do need a few. There is something so powerful about the accountability of committing to come to the table most nights that works. Family dinner acts as a motivator, a deterrent, and a safety net. Because we interact with one another every night, no one can get too upset, depressed, or confused without someone in the family noticing. And that gives us a chance to help and be helpful when we need it.

Join us and have family dinner tonight, your own version. Start with whatever you have on hand in the fridge and the pantry. You can do it with take-out food, bowls of cereal or peanut butter sandwiches. When everyone is involved in the meal, they become invested in it in a new way, and are more excited to sit down and have fun. Everyone learns to be more appreciative, too!

Like everything worthwhile in life, dinner gets better the more you do it. Every day you get a chance to practice and experiment.

Here’s a great and easy experiment for this week. Try it and see if it doesn’t get gobbled up off their plates. Add kale, spinach or chard to this dish and you have the healthiest, tasty dish in the land, but if the kids in your life draw the line at cooked greens, then throw in some vegetable they love like corn or peas.

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes with Quinoa and Greens