Tag Archives: family dinner

The Question of the Day

Walking my kindergartener to the bus stop this morning, she mused, “The question of the day today is – Do you like reptiles?” As context, her class takes attendance by placing popsicle sticks with their names on them in the appropriate answer column to an ever-changing question of the day. Apparently, one of her classmates had chosen this question because he has quite an affection for reptiles. Ella, not so much.
She then said, “Know what I asked when it was my turn to choose the question? I asked ‘Does your family eat dinner together?”  Now this is a child who knows the way to her mother’s heart! After I gave her a big hug and told her how much I loved her question, she told me that nearly everyone had said that they did eat dinner as a family. There were just a few who did not. And with that, she was off to play with her bus stop cohorts and begin her day. And I was left thinking again about how much our actions as parents matter.
I’ve blogged before about the importance I place on the family dinner.  I’m glad so many of her classmates are experiencing this ritual, too, because it can be such precious time for families to spend together in the midst of our hyper-scheduled lives. If you’ve gotten away from the practice because life’s become too hectic, maybe it’s time to give it a try again, even once or twice a week. Find a way to gather around your table as a family and share a meal. The benefits are enormous and well worth the coordination effort it takes to pull it off.
Do you eat dinner as a family? It’s the question of the day.
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A (semi-failed) vegan experiment

My husband is very cooperative with my healthful eating experiments. VERY. He will cheerfully try anything I make and 99% of the time he finds something good to say about it. However, he met his match with the Vegan Pizza I tried last week. Poor guy.
Here’s the story. I had a Groupon for Whole Foods about to expire. I decided to use it on all the things I THINK about buying but rarely actually do. Things like:
You get the idea. Things a little off the beaten path. So one night, I whipped up a vegan pizza. Vegan crust, tomato sauce, Daiya vegan cheese (mozzarella style, so the package claimed), diced fresh vegetables, a few olives. Heated up the pizza stone. Popped in the pizza. Made a salad. Set the table.
We all thought it looked great as I cut slices for everyone. This cheese’s big claim to fame is that it stretches like mozzarella. Which it sort of does. So after saying grace, we each took our first bite with anticipation. But for at least one of us, the first bite would also be the last.
Now, in full disclosure, our three-year-old loved it. Seriously.
My 6-year-old said it was not as good as our usual “pizza cheese,” but nonetheless happily chomped through her slice.
I said that if I ever WERE to be a vegan, I could eat this. But I’d certainly prefer mozzarella.
The baby didn’t get any. Just gnawed on her plastic spoon in teething bliss.
My husband quietly ate his salad and left his slice with one big bite taken out of it on his plate. All the way through the meal. Never picked it up again! He was excruciatingly tactful so as not to give the kids license to do the same. But when I asked him what he thought, he simply said, “I’m not eating that.”
In our entire ten-year marriage, I believe this was a first! For him the deal breaker was the texture of the cheese. It was creamy, sort of like cream cheese, instead of stretchy and chewy like mozzarella. It just didn’t work for him.
So, since we’re not vegan, and since I value harmony in my marriage, mozzarella will clearly remain the cheese of choice in our house.
That said, what’s the lesson? If you think it’s “Don’t make vegan pizza”, you’re missing the point. The point is to keep experimenting. In ten years, this was the first experiment that proved inedible. And that was only for one of us.

Experimenting in the kitchen is fun. You have your whole life ahead of you and if you live it with only the same eight dishes currently in rotation at your house, you’ll miss out on so many wonderful foods. Think about all the things you tried for the first time in the last ten years and actually liked! Keep experimenting.

And while you’re at it, I highly recommend the Cocoa-dusted goji berries. Yum.
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A Thanksgiving Mindset

This Thursday most of us will find our way to the homes of family and friends (or they to ours). We will roast turkeys and mash potatoes and ladle gravy and pour wine and slice pies. We will toast to our blessings. We will reminisce. 

Thanksgiving comes with high expectations of a Norman Rockwell meal around a perfect table with a perfect meal and a perfect family. It can be riddled with challenges when those expectations aren’t quite met. It’s also a holiday almost entirely about food, which makes it my very favorite holiday, but poses challenges of its own. For some of us, family conflicts, absent loved ones, and opportunities to overindulge at every turn can be a recipe for a very stressful day. Ideally, though, Thanksgiving is a day for simple abundance and for counting our blessings. 

I’m often asked for tips to avoid diet disaster at Thanksgiving and I do, of course, have some. But the most important thing to me is to preserve a Thanksgiving mindset. To be thankful. To set aside the conflicts, competitions, and long-standing grudges and simply to be with whomever you’ve chosen to be with on this special day.You are blessed. This is a day to honor that.

If you’re still itching for those practical tips, here are just a few:

1) Eat the things you dream about all year.
No one will tell you that stuffing is health food, but how many times a year do you actually EAT stuffing? So enjoy it’s annual appearance on the Thanksgiving table and savor every morsel. Skip the things that you eat routinely (dinner rolls, perhaps) in favor of the special dishes.

2) Remember, it’s just dinner!
Exercise a little portion control; build a dinner plate instead of a mashed potato mountain and you’ll leave the table feeling pleasantly satisfied, rather than dealing with impending food coma. 

3) When it comes to dessert, have a bite.
Be choosy about desserts – have a bite or two of your favorites but save the slice of super-colossal-triple-decadent-whatever cake for a day when you haven’t just eaten Thanksgiving dinner. Ending a meal with something sweet is delightful; and the first few bites are always the best.

4) Find the “uppers.”
Spend your time on Thursday with the people who lift you up and make you feel great! Avoid the people who bring you down or make you feel small. You know who they are – so seek out the uppers and invest your time with them. It’s a day for feeling good; don’t complicate this. Emotional stress will just make you want to eat more.

5) Move it.
Just because it’s Thanksgiving doesn’t mean you have to sit all day. Find a local 5K or 10K to run (Cincinnati readers: the Cincinnati Thanksgiving Day Race is a GREAT one and you can register on race day at Paul Brown Stadium.) or go for a walk before the day swings into motion. Or, organize a post-dinner walk or game of touch football. You’ll return refreshed, energized, and ready for planning your day of Black Friday shopping! 


So with those few tips and a commitment to preserve a positive Thanksgiving mindset, may you have a delightful and truly satisfying holiday!

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