Blog For Family Dinner

It's been a busy month behind the scenes of EatDinner.org, as is often the case when days stretch out between blog posts. I have been working to launch a new project: Blog for Family Dinner, which is a collaboration of Billy Mawhiney of Time at the Table, Kathleen Cuneo of Dinner Together and myself. I am thrilled to announce that the project website is up and running. Woo-hoo! I hope you’ll check it out and lend your support.

Blog For Family Dinner (B4FD) is about creating a community of people who believe in the power of family dinner—bloggers, writers, parents, researchers, health organizations, and just about anyone who can see the far-reaching benefits of family meals. We are starting with a month-long promotion, from September 26 to October 24, 2011, that will feature daily blog posts from popular and emerging bloggers. We hope to highlight compelling stories, tips, advice and recipes, and most of all, inspiration for readers to make a commitment to family meals in their life.

We are collecting submissions now, please to add your voice to the community. It can be a brand new post or one you’ve posted before. It can be a personal story about what family dinner means to you or a diatribe about how hard it is to pull off. You can let us know how the work of your organization helps support families value healthy meals or how the latest findings of your research center help us to better understand the problems parents face. Your post, personal story, or organizational report will be reviewed and considered as a Featured Blogger for Family Dinner. We even have a nice badge for you to include on your website.

Join us! Add your name as a supporter, share your URL to become part of our Blog Roll, spread the word of Blog for Family Dinner via Twitter, Facebook, or your own platform.

Thank you for supporting Blog for Family Dinner!

#B4FD

Eat Dinner May 2010

I started this blog (eatdinner.org) in November 2007 and the posts have waxed and waned a bit over the time, covering all manner of topics related to food and family dinner: family dynamics, local food, organic food, access to food, obesity, health, wellness, fitness, politics (of course!), and everything in between. I never wanted this to be strictly a food blog, outlining what me and my family had for dinner. There are many beautiful, inspiring food blogs out there, but I wanted to explore the idea of family dinner as a topic related to health (in a very broad sense), culture, society, education, and personal and family well-being. Through it all, I realize that the main message I want to convey is that families need to commit to having meals together and that many good things stem from this basic lifestyle commitment to food and family.

Many people "know" that family dinners are a good idea. But many people also chalk it up as "too hard" or demanding in today's busy lives. Worse is the notion that family dinner is a "middle-class" luxury. I want to rededicate this blog to expressly exploring the benefits of family dinner across all kinds of families and the barriers that are in the way of more people adopting family dinner as a way of life.

Stay tuned for more research, support, and advocacy targeted at issues surrounding family dinner.

Join the discussion! I'm now on Facebook and Twitter and you can email me at grace [at] eatdinner [dot] org.

Food for Thought: Work-Life balance

Over the last few weeks, I've been balancing my extensive network of non-paying jobs with a paid job. Not even counting the big job of being a mom to three, which is paid though indirectly, my non-paying jobs include being an involved parent at my kids' school, being a community gardener, and of course, being, the "eat dinner with your family" blogger. This past week was a trifecta of obligations with the school's big fundraiser, the neighborhood greening day, and the usual assortment "can't miss" parent events, like my son's track meet and a parent meetings on "health" (aka need-to-know stuff on puberty, drug use, and other adolescent adventures.) On top was the paid job I took writing a grant for a very important topic that won't be named here (way too depressing).

I was very excited to get the opportunity to work freelance in my field (public health policy), and especially happy since it was a time-limited gig (the hard deadline was May 15th). It was interesting work and I hope the grant is ultimately successful, but the most important things I learned were about how I might balance a full-time job with my real life in the future.

First, I think my family can handle it. I had to get a lot of extra babysitting (and needed extra housekeeping), but in general, the older kids and even my two-year old adapted very well. My two girls were actually playing "get dressed up to go to a meeting" this morning instead of the usual princessy dress-up. That is a totally new phenom in my house.

Second, we still had dinner together every night and there were no major melt-downs from anyone, myself included. True, that might be hard to sustain, but I was glad that we had enough "systems" in place so that this relatively minor schedule change didn't derail us completely.

Last, and perhaps most importantly in this forum, I missed blogging on my favorite topics--food, health, and family dinner. I really enjoy this platform and the process of reading, learning, writing, and advocating for family dinner. I hope my readers enjoy it too. The challenge is sustaining it and moving forward, financially and professionally. But I'm up for it. I think it's worth a shot, so stay posted!

The No Car Diet

Wow....another article about bloggers' deadly lifestyle in the Sunday NYT this weekend: Writers Blog Til They Drop. Seeing the headline, my son actually said to me, "You're not going to die, are you Mommy?" I think he was kidding. Maybe he thinks there's a weird virus that you get when you stare at the computer screen too long. I don't think he needs to worry, though. My blog is hardly written under 24/7 deadline pressure. And just to set the record straight, even though I blog about food and family dinner, I'm not overweight. I do wish I could find more time to exercise, but I'm pretty healthy. Living in Brooklyn, with three kids, a dog, and no car, I do quite a bit of walking and biking.

My daily walking routine clocks in at roughly 3 miles or more. Plus there's schlepping groceries, pushing the stroller, and carrying the weary toddler to add to the "weight" training.

I often joke that you should forget your "no-carb" diet and get a "no-car" diet.

It's pretty simple: Incorporating regular exercise into your day, be it a bike commute or walking your dog, helps burn calories. The NYC Department of Health found that Manhattanites were more healthy that other New Yorkers because of all the walking they do. It's the same in Downtown Brooklyn, if you can eschew the car and get around on foot. Not only do you get more exercise without a car, you experience the city in a whole different way. Instead of looking for parking, you stop in shops as you pass them. My daughter is quite proud that she bikes to school every day with her Dad. Not having a car is near impossible anywhere outside of a city, but you can try to reduce your car dependence and walk and bike more. Good for the environment, good for you health.

Speaking of transportation and lifestyle alternatives: Today may be the day that they vote on congestion pricing for NYC. Doesn't look good, but our family is hoping for a "yes" vote. We think it is a fair policy that will relieve traffic congestion in our busy neighborhood and get more money for public transportation. More information on this topic and on livable streets can be found at Streetsblog.com. Support Congestion Pricing! Call your state assembly member today!

Sorry the topic is only tangential to family dinner today; it is certainly a big topic of conversation at our family table!

In a Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Til They Drop, Matt Richtel, NYT 04.06.08
Taking Back the Streets, Jeff Byles, NYT 04.06.08

More Food Blogs

Here are some interesting food blogs I found this week.

Leftover Queen Lots of great stuff here on food, food blogs, and eating well.
Dinners for a Year and Beyond Meeting the challenge of family dinner with some very impressive entrees and recipes.
Food on the Food Start with the "Intro to her Cookbook," posted in Feb 2007, which explains her project, a recipe from her American Immigrant cookbook every Friday. She's still regularly posting on a wide variety of family, food, and foolishness.
Ed Levine's Serious Eats The infamous Ed Levine searching out good eats throughout New York City.
Feeding the Kids Tips on feeding kids healthy food; promotes recently published book.

Leap Year Cocktail Since it's a Leap Year Day (2.29.08), and a Friday to boot, here's a wacky cocktail to try. Happy Friday!

Random Thoughts on Food Blogs

When I had the idea for starting this blog, I looked around to see what else was out there. The Food Blog Blog says it lists over 2000(!) sites, so that’s a lot of people writing and reading about food!

Here's some interesting ones I've found.

Cooking With Amy Lots of recipes, writings and musings on good food. She even has some cool contests.

Dinner with Dad His tagline: Can a dad make dinner, or just a mess? Cameron Stracher decides to use family dinner as a way to reconnect with his family. Read more about his story.

Julie and Julia OK, so this is no longer a blog; it was a blog that's now a book. The author decides to attack Julia Child's classic over one year--pretty cool. We still use the family copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking that belonged to my husband's mother. The pages have the original stains on the Beef Bourguignon recipe he remembers eating as a child. He made the recipe last night, in fact. It was a fairly idyllic family project with the older kids helping braise the onions and brown the mushrooms. Not typical, but maybe they'll want to help out with the project the next time too.

The Fanatic Cook is a little intense if you are a "casual" food person, but the site has interesting and in-depth information if you like to delve into the health, science, and politics side of food.

Deb 's Dinner at Home has read some great cookbook recommendations and has some nice stories about making dinner at home, and the balance of modernity and domesticity. She may be on hiatus.