By Anne Louise Bannon
Your Family Viewer.com
Thought I’d mention one of the most important things you can do to build up your family – eat dinner together. Yes, I know, with parents working insane hours, kids going to 30 different activities every afternoon, meetings, chores, homework, it seems pretty hard to imagine that anyone could find time to make a real meal and eat it together.
But it is the one of the most important things you can do. Period. I propose that you set aside one or two nights a week and designate them as family nights. You can do Sunday dinners together and then have a mid-week break on Wednesdays. Everyone works together to make dinner and then you all spend your time eating it without the TV on.
The thing about getting the kids to help is that while they will fuss and groan, they will also learn important skills, such as how to cook, read recipes, and other stuff. It also makes it easier for them to find ways to tell you what’s going on in their lives. You’re just making dinner together and it so happens that instead of you asking Junior, “What happened at school today?” and getting the standard, “Nothing,” you don’t have to ask a thing and Junior suddenly comes up with some dumb thing her friend said and the next thing you know, you’re actually having a conversation with your adolescent.
If you’re not sure how to cook a meal, you can always tune in one of the endless re-runs of Good Eats on the Food Network. Alton Brown shows you the how and the why of cooking in some of the most amusing ways on the planet, including belching sock puppets. You can’t beat some of his movie parodies, such as the episode on potatoes, when he takes off on Misery.
That’s all for today. Tomorrow is trivia contest time and I’ve got a really nifty prize this month, so tell your friends.
