Grateful on Thanksgiving

Ahh, Thanksgiving--the most marvelous food and family holiday of the year. Of course, I am excited about the big get-together of friends and family (we usually have 25 or more at the table) and about the wonderful foods, both traditional dishes and new things to try. If you need inspiration, check out one of the many great Thanksgiving round-ups (to name a few, The Food Network, FN Blogger's #PullUpaChair, Food 52, The New York Times and One Hungry Mama). But I also find myself wistful as we approach the holiday season. Rather than wait until New Year's, Thanksgiving may be the perfect time to step back and reflect on what really matters, and how best to hold and cherish those priorities beyond the holiday season.

As I have previously argued, family dinner should not be just a once-a-year Thanksgiving event, but an everyday joy and blessing. If a fraction of the energy for the big T-Day could be somehow banked and re-invested into everyday dinners though the year, that would be a more healthy balance for everyone. Nonetheless, we might as well use the big day to inspire us and help us resolve to carry the spirit throughout the year. You might call it the "plan-ahead" method to new resolutions!

Looking past on this year, I have a lot be grateful for. First and foremost, the good health of my family and close friends, which can never be taken for granted. I am also grateful that I have met so many fantastic and like-minded people who care about good food and family dinner through EatDinner.org and Blog for Family Dinner. I am grateful to be a part of Blog for Family Dinner with my colleagues Billy and Kathleen and for all the bloggers who contributed to the effort and made it "easy" with their contributions of wonderful stories, tips and advice. I am grateful that the message of family dinner is one that keeps resonating and growing with more attention the important of good food and more impatience with the politics get in the way of important efforts to provide healthy school lunch and to establish fair and reasonable farm and food policies. Mark Bittman recently provided a great list of folks fighting the good fight.

So here's my small, grateful round-up in honor of Thanksgiving 2011: Thank you for your involvement and support of EatDinner and Blog for Family Dinner. Thank you for your friendship, enthusiasm and good work on good food and family dinner.

Grateful for:

All the #B4FD Bloggers: List of Featured Bloggers

Co-Founders of the #B4FD Project

Billy Mawhiney, Time at the Table

Kathleen Cuneo, Dinner Together

Supporters and Friends:

Laurie David and The Family Dinner Book

Food Day

Bettin Siegel, The Lunch Tray

Aviva Goldfarb, The Scramble

Stacie Billis, One Hungry Mama

Kia Robertson, Today I Ate A Rainbow

Jennifer Grant, Love You More

Food Day Dinner Party! A Virtual Progressive Dinner

Welcome to Brooklyn as we continue our Food Day Dinner Party!

I was thrilled to be invited to host a side dish in this virtual, progressive dinner party to celebrate Food Day with my real friends (though we all met virtually): Bettina (The Lunch Tray), Bri (Red, Round or Green), Jeanne (The Jolly Tomato), and my Blog for Family Dinner colleague Kathleen Cuneo (Dinner Together).

Today, Kathleen and I are hosting side dishes and together we are offering a Blog For Family Dinner T-shirt and the "Eat Real" Recipe booklet from Food Day as a prize.

I've been pretty excited about Food Day, which was Monday, October 24. Our Blog for Family Dinner project marked it as the culmination day for our Month of Family Dinners and a couple of us were able to represent B4FD in Times Square. More importantly, I think that family dinner is a gateway to the broader benefits of eating good food, namely, eating better for yourself, your family, and the planet, as I have noted here. Laurie David's post Family Dinner and the Food Movement, which was on her site and Blog for Family Dinner on Monday also hits many important points about the interconnections.

But enough about politics. This post is about the delicious benefits of real food and of sharing the table with friends and family. So far, this progressive dinner, first suggested by Brianne DeRosa of Red, Round, or Green, has featured a spinach salad appetizer from Bettina, lovely lamb chops and braised kale from Bri, and Kathleen is offering a side dish of sweet potatoes today on her blog. Please check out the amazing dishes and recipes. I love that we have all contributed dishes that have feature fresh vegetables: spinach salad, braised kale and sweet potatoes. The dishes, all unwittingly reinforce the statistic that families that cook and eat dinner together at home tend to eat more fruits and veggies!

I have one more veggie dish to add to this menu, and it's a family favorite: Broccoli with the Flavor. This side dish is both dinner party-worthy and easy enough for a weeknight meal, once you get the technique down. I find that many people have never had properly stir-fried vegetables and are amazed by the freshness and the "wok hay" (or breath of the wok), if you get it right. You need a good, well-seasoned wok (not an expensive one) and don't be afraid of the high heat! (Grace Young is a favorite cookbook writer to try.)


Broccoli with the Flavor
1 Head of Broccoli, sliced into florets, retaining some stem
2 Tablespoons Canola Oil
2 cloves of garlic, sliced thinly or minced
1 teaspoon of soy sauce

Parboil broccoli: Cook in boiling water for 3 minutes. Promptly remove and run under cold water, spin dry in a lettuce spinner, if you have one. Otherwise, pat with paper towels to remove excess water.

Stir-Fry: Heat wok or saute pan until HOT. Add canola oil and quickly saute garlic for 10 seconds, careful not to burn it. Toss in dried broccoli, scraping up the bottom to mix garlic, oil and vegetable. Cook this way for maybe 1 minute. Lower heat and add soy sauce. Toss for another 30 to 1 minute and serve.

Step by Step:

1. Wash the Broccoli well. Boil Water.

2. Finely Chop 2 cloves of Garlic.

3. Parboil Broccoli for 3 minutes. Spin Dry before stir-frying!

4. Heat Wok to HOT on High Heat. Add Canola Oil, quickly saute garlic for 10 seconds, being careful not to burn it. Stir-fry dried Broccoli, scrapping pan and tossing with garlic for 1 or 2 mins. Lower heat and add soy sauce. Toss and cook for approximately one more minute.

5. The Beautiful Broccoli with the Flavor!

I hope you enjoy it. It is my youngest daughter's absolutely favorite thing to eat (it took a while to get there) but it's true.

Add your own favorite real food recipe below or share any thoughts about Food Day, family dinner, or creative ways you get more vegetables onto your dinner table! You could win!

The winner will randomly drawn from commenters on either this site or the Dinner Together site.

Join us for a Food Day Dinner Party!

Food Day is this Monday, October 24 and it's being touted as an Earth Day for food. There are over 2,000 events planned nationwide to celebrate real food and all the interconnections of real food, the food system, family, community, personal health and a healthier environment. It's a pretty exciting concept for anyone who, like me, cares about food, family, public health or public policy. How can you get involved?

Three Easy Ways to Get Involved in Food Day

1. Sign the Pledge

2. Find a local event near you.

3. Join us for a virtual #FoodDay #DinnerParty! (Or make your own!)*

I happen to be doing all three and I hope you'll join me in a virtual Food Day Dinner Party. Bri of Red, Round, Green has invited Bettina of The Lunch Tray, Jeanne of The Jolly Tomato and myself to join her in a virtual progressive dinner of real food recipes to celebrate Food Day over the week from 10.24 to 10.27. Monday will be our kick off with appetizers, followed by an entree on Tuesday, sides on Wednesday and dessert on Thursday. The whole idea is to keep thinking about and celebrating real food throughout the week, and maybe even the whole year!

Come join us for our Dinner Party, starting at The Lunch Tray on Monday, 10.24. You can add your own recipe ideas or thoughts on family dinner or real food and be entered to win some fun give-aways.

You can also host your own at-home dinner party and use the Food Day Dinner Kit (pdf) to spark discussion around the family dinner table.

*If you are a food blogger and want to share a recipe or story about Food Day on your own site, please let me know. Add your name and link to the comment section below and I'll do a round-up on all the bloggers who are doing real food menus in honor of Food Day. Use the hashtags #FoodDay #DinnerParty to spread the word.

See you at the party!

Free downloads and Information on the Food Day Resources Page

Blog for Family Dinner Food Day Press Release

Celebrate Family Dinner with #B4FD Teleseminar

Yesterday my B4FD colleague Kathleen Cuneo hosted a great teleseminar on "all things family dinner" to celebrate and promote the launch of Family Dinner Month (9.26-10.24.11) on the Blog for Family Dinner. It was great to be joined by Billy Mawhiney of Time at the Table, Aviva Goldfarb of The Scramble, Jennifer Schiff from The Family Dinner Book, and John Sarrouf from The Family Dinner Project.

Celebrate Family Dinner with #B4FD Teleseminar, 9.20.11 (audio recording)

We talked about current research in the field, including many studies that show that family dinner and communal eating is not just for kids. Indeed, everyone benefits, including parents, couples without children, seniors, and even college-aged students. We talked about tips and time-savers, like meal planning and getting everyone to chip in, and overall, about how best to make the commitment to family dinner.

A big theme was re-defining family dinner so that it works for you. Don't be intimidated by the rosy, nostalgic idea that family dinner has to be a 3 course meal with homemade apple pie at the end (though that's always nice!) A realistic weeknight meal is more like soup and salad, easy one-pot meals, or quick pasta dishes. What is important, really, is finding time together and making the family table a safe, consistent gathering place. Setting a routine and sticking to it helps, be it 3 days a week or every single day.

The teleseminar will be available for listening (free) on the Blog for Family Dinner website through the month promotion (now until October 24, 2011) and also available to subscribers of Kitchen Table Parents.

If you believe in family dinner, please be sure to add your name to our subscriber list and to follow our blog posts next month. You can also check in with Facebook or Twitter (@blog4famdinner). More ideas to spread the word about #B4FD here. Thank you for your support!

Back to School, Back to the Family Table (#B4FD)

September is "Family Dinner" month which is perfect timing in one sense: as kids get back to school, we naturally begin to re-think routines and priorities. Yet, it is terrible timing in another sense: the fall is often crammed with new schedules, new transitions and new commitments. This may be the busiest time of year, and without a clear plan, family dinner may be the first thing to go or the last thing you want to add to a crammed schedule. Nonetheless, when the crazy-iness dies down, family dinner can be there to provide structure and sanity, and to give you and your kids a good foundation all year.

Remember, family dinner is not bad-tasting medicine. It can combine family connectedness, laughter, and even healthy, delicious food--what's bad about that? Family dinner is also one of the only public health solutions that has ever been shown to have consistent positive effect on multiple health and social issues, such as obesity, underage alcohol and drug abuse, social disconnectedness, low school performance, and unhealthy relationships to food.

That's why Joseph Califano set up Family Day with CASA over ten years ago, and celebrated this year on Monday, September 26, 2011. After a lifetime of studying health problems, including the debilitating affects of drug and alcohol abuse, he wanted to trumpet family dinner as a positive step that every family could take. In 2011, my colleagues and I are spreading the word and connecting with families in a new way: Blog For Family Dinner, a month-long promotion from September 26 to October 24, 2011. We know that drug abuse prevention is not the only "good thing" that comes from family dinner. There are a whole host of "here and now" reasons as well as other long-term benefits to family meals and family connectedness.

I hope you will join us in the Family Dinner movement by supporting and following the B4FD project. Talk about family dinner with your friends and colleagues, talk about what it means to you, how you make it work, what challenges you face, and offer support and lend advice to one another. Sharing ideas and excitement can help you make the commitment to family dinner.

Read more about the importance of fitting family dinner into the back-to-school routine in this profile:

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? by Kim Seidel, Fall 2011

Cherish Family and Family Dinner (#afundforjennie)

Not too long ago, I wrote a post called "Why Family Dinner" which outlined many of the "big reasons" why family dinner is important, such as reducing childhood obesity, preventing alcohol and drug abuse among teens and helping people see value in real food and sustainable food systems. The post title leaves off the question mark because I was making a statement, rather than posing a question: family dinner matters and here's why.

Recently, I've been reminded of the small miracle of family dinner and what it means simply to the people sitting around the table. It means everything.

Many of us have been shocked and saddened by Jennifer Perillo's story of the sudden death of her beloved husband Mikey. Even in her grief, she has managed to find the courage to write beautifully about him and the life they had together, a life that was clearly full of love, good food, family and many dear friends. She has somehow found the grace to inspire us and remind us to take the time to hug close our loved ones, to cherish every moment.

There is no better reason than this for family dinner.

The blogger community has responded overwhelmingly to show Jennie love and support. (A short summary is on Storify.) Thousands of well-wishes have been sent via Twitter, hundreds of comments have been made on many beautiful memorial blog posts, and countless homemade peanut butter pies (#apieformikey) were baked and shared with loved ones.

Now, Bloggers Without Borders, a new non-profit collaboration by Maggie of Three Many Cooks, Erika of The Ivory Hut, and Aimee of Simple Bites is harnessing that virtual love into something more tangible. Their "A Fund for Jennie" project (#afundforjennie) is collecting donations (through auctions and direct contributions) to help Jennifer and her young children with needed financial assistance. I am honoring Jennie and the memory of Mikey with a donation. I encourage you to do so as well. Just click the button below or go to the BwoB website for more details. Every little bit will help.

Bloggers Without Borders How to Help

Thank you!

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