Time for Dinner
by Jennifer Cooper, posted on August 20th, 2010 in Cooking, Guest Posts
Today I’m sharing an interview with a former Cookie editor about her new cookbook.
Why am I posting an interview about a new cookbook when my goal here is to get you exercising your family’s creativity? Because when researchers looked at families where children were able to think creatively (not artistically, craftsy or any other misappropriated definition of creativity, but rather the ability to use divergent and then convergent thinking to produce something original and useful) they found that creativity flourishes when there is stability in the home.
What is one way to provide stability? Share a meal together as a family.
I recently had the chance to speak with former Cookie magazine food and features editor Jenny Rosenstrach about the new cookbook Time for Dinner she and fellow creative Cookie editors Pilar Guzmán and Alanna Stang co-wrote.
I appreciate Jenny’s non-judgmental approach to inspiring families to re-connect over a meal. On her blog Dinner A Love Story, she offers advice, simple recipes, and sharing ideas for getting the family talking. It’s not just about the food, it’s about the connection; the stability.
Why did you want to write a cook book? What do you hope readers take away from it?
When I worked at Cookie, Alanna, Pilar, and I would talk about dinner nonstop. Every morning before Pilar went to her own office, she’d stop by mine and ask me what we ate, what the kids ate, what we were planning for the next night. I’d always get emails for story ideas from Pilar that were sent at 7:00ish saying “Mix and Match Dinner! Remind me in the morning!” or “So you have some…Miso! Let’s do it for October!” So we were constantly talking about food and the food pages at the magazine were very popular (especially that “So You Have…” column which allowed you to follow recipes visually flow-chart style across a page, i.e. if you have pasta go that way, if you have a head of lettuce, go this way) so it was an idea that came about very naturally. There are 20 expanded pages of the “So You Have a” column in the book, by the way. It’s pretty great.
The title of your blog is Dinner a Love Story. When did this love story begin?
I suppose it started when I was little (I grew up in a house where family dinner was a command performance) but it really took off when my husband and I had kids. I didn’t want the blog to position dinner as a problem. It is, of course — a big, complicated one that has lots of tentacles (including picky eating, overscheduled kids, long work hours, no help from a spouse, etc) but if you can change your mindset a little bit and focus on how rewarding it is — and how many benefits it reaps — then I think readers and parents will be more willing to commit to it. Telling parents that their kids will be on drugs by age 12 if they don’t do family dinner doesn’t seem to me to be a very nice way to get them to commit.
It’s interesting to think about eating together as a family as a modern tradition. Why do you think it’s so important to bring back this ritual to modern day life?
I can’t speak for everybody, but in my life, it’s pretty much the only time we are all sitting down in the same place attempting to engage with each other. The important thing about it for me is that it forces us all to stop moving. It doesn’t have to be some three-course gourmet spread with discussions about current events. It can be completely restorative for me when dinner is 5-minute flatbread pizza with a 10-minute discussion of Mad-Sad-Glad. I also think that the modern day family dinner has to be more of a communal effort. And with so many two-working-parent homes and the 24/7 office, it’s unrealistic to set the bar at family dinner 7 days a week. That’s just setting people up for failure. Pilar, my co-author, has a strategy to address this called “If I Could Just Make it to Wednesday” and in fact that’s the name of Chapter 3 in our book.
It can be difficult to prepare meals while keeping the kids occupied. Any tips for keeping the kids entertained while we cook?
On the blog I address this a lot. If it’s a weekend and I have time, as you know, I make paper dolls and craft projects with my daughters with the sole purpose of starting them off on a long game of imaginary play…which usually gives me enough time to make something. For parents with toddlers, we recommend putting together a “Babysitter in a Box” for the kitchen filled with food-related items so they feel like they are “helping” mom in the kitchen…when really it’s just one more example of parallel play. The book has detailed instructions on how to assemble one.
What is your fondest meal memory?
That is a tough one — there are so many. I will say that one of the most pleasurable moments of my life was being greeted with the most unbelievably delicious rum punch when I arrived at an Anguilla resort for my honeymoon a dozen years ago. (Should I worry that my fondest meal memory is in fact a drink memory?)
When does Time for Dinner become available?
It’s available right now and my friend just texted me a photo of it in bookstores. Hooray!
Time for Dinner co-authors: Pilar Guzmán, Jenny Rosenstrach, Alanna Stang. Jenny Rosenstrach was the food and features director at Cookie magazine. She is the founder of Dinner A Love Story, a website devoted to family dinner, and lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband and two daughters.
For essays and more thoughts on food (plus a link to print out the popular lunchbox menus designed by Jennifer Vallez), visit our Food Issue.
