Putting "Family" back into Dinner

Remember the good 'ole days of the family dinner when mom, dad, brother and sister gathered around the table and enjoyed a home cooked meal altogether? In today's high paced life of work, extracurricular activities and fast food, who has time to share a meal with loved ones at a preset time and date? The answer is YOU do and I am going to give you some help in bringing back the family dinner.

First, here are some ways to get the whole family interested and excited in participating in a family dinner:

• Start off slow. Pick one night a week at a preset time. If there is a scheduling conflict, like tryouts for little league, make the night a family event. Everybody will go to the tryouts and then have dinner together afterwards.
• Take turns letting different family members choose the menu. If they have no ideas, give them options or ask them what their favorite meal was at a restaurant and try to recreate it.
• Assign different roles for each family member in the preparation (and cleaning up) of the meal. If you have a "trouble eater" who refuses to eat veggies, have them snap the beans or puree the cauliflower. More than likely, if they helped prepare the veggie, they will want to eat it.
• Take turns allowing your children to invite a friend or relative to the family dinner. It will make them excited for future meals.

Here are some more ideas on making the evening a success and stress-free:

• Keep the food simple. Instead of trying out new recipes, make family favorites that are so easy to prepare you could do it blind folded. Remember that this is an opportunity to reconnect with your family, not to audition for Top Chef.
• Use prepared foods to round out your meals. Instead of spending time making a bunch of different side dishes, buy prepared or frozen side dishes.
• Vary the way you serve the dinner or set the table to keep it interesting. One week, you can plate the meal. The next week, serve it family style on platters. Another time, you can do self service/buffet style from the kitchen.

The purpose of these family dinners is to bring everybody closer, so keep these things in mind:

• Find a topic to discuss and keep the conversation light. This isn't the time to reprimand, punish or argue. Great topics include: "What do you want to be when you grow up?", "Where do you want to go for your next vacation?", "What has been the best day of your life so far?" or any other question or topic that elicits a thoughtful and personal response.
• Theme your dinners around a certain cuisine and discuss the culture, geography or history of that culture. Everybody will learn more about another culture and sample new tastes and flavors.
• Browse cookbooks or cooking magazines with your family to get ideas and recipes for future family dinners. My favorite cookbook: How to Cook Everything. My favorite online recipe depository: The Food Network. My favorite cooking magazine: Cook's Illustrated.

Hopefully this will inspire you and your family to start eating together again at least one night a week. Let me know how it goes. Happy eating.