Seattle's Child: The Family Meal

September 2007

The Family Meal
What Does It Take To Gather ‘Round The Table?

Gig Harbor-based accountant Patti Larson believes in the power of sitting down to dinner together as a positive influence on her family’s health and well-being.

But actually making it happen every evening? That’s another story.

“I would say, at best, we have one sit-down dinner a week,” says Larson, a mother of two. “With everyone’s busy schedule, we just don’t have time anymore when everyone is home and can sit down and eat. I have tried everything from the dinners-to-go, where you go and make them up for the week or month, to having each member of the family have a night that they cook. But invariably there is someone missing because of sports, sleepovers or band practice.”

In the face of a household of conflicting schedules, however, Larson has not given up on the hope of physical, mental, spiritual and social “renewal” that author Stephen Covey attributes to family dining in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Instead, she and other local parents have redefined family meal to include breakfast, lunch or dinner – whichever schedules allow.

“I fix breakfast every morning during the school year for the kids,” Larson says. “It gives me a time to have some one-on-one time, albeit for only a couple minutes. I guess it is my way of making up (for missed dinner time).”

Terri Turner, whose three children are now of college age, grew up in a family that enjoyed a big farm-style breakfast together each day. In her own family, she made dinner a priority to ensure that her spouse was at the table.

“It’s important that everyone get together and talk about their day, that everyone get a chance to share. We have great memories. Mostly, we would laugh and talk and have a good time. Whoever was 14 at the time would just crack us up,” Turner says.

When an older godchild came to stay at Turner’s house, she instituted the twice a month rule – each person in the house had to cook twice a month. “They’d tell me ahead of time, and I would buy the stuff. They could order out, but they had to pay for it,” she says.

Turner has hilarious stories about kid-prepped meals … like the time one of her kids got tired of peeling potatoes for au grätin potatoes. “He sat down a dish with three potatoes in the pan and seven people at the table!” Turner recalls. “So, it was a learning curve, but they got the hang of it.”

For other families, keeping the tradition of end-of-day dining together means being flexible, especially about the timing of dinner.

“Dinner is a huge deal for us,” says Seattle’s Kelly Kipkolav, whose family includes her husband, 18-year-old stepson Yegor and 6-month-old son Ilya. “For us eating good, nice dinners, including a glass of wine, is one way of keeping our sanity through the craziness of having a newborn. We’ve always held to a family dinner, even if that meant eating at 9:30 p.m. when Yegor would come home from soccer. It’s that important to us, and we truly rarely miss the opportunity to sit down together to see what’s happening in (each others’) worlds.”

A SHORT TIME TOGETHER – WITH BIG BENEFITS

Dinner – or supper as it’s sometimes called – is also a daily opportunity to bolster family health, says award-winning journalist Miriam Weinstein in her book The Surprising Power of Family Meals.

“Ordinary, average everyday supper with your family is strongly linked to lower incidence of bad outcomes and to good qualities like emotional stability. It correlates with kindergarteners being better prepared to learn to read,” Weinstein reports.

“Regular family supper helps keep asthmatic kids out of hospitals. It discourages both obesity and eating disorders. It supports your staying more connected to your extended family, your ethnic heritage, your community of faith. It will help children and families to be more resilient, reacting positively to those curves and arrows that life throws our way,” Weinstein writes.

A considerable amount of research backs Weinstein up. In their recent Baylor College of Medicine study of social impacts on kids’ diets, Heather Patrick, Ph.D, and Theresa A. Nicklas, DrPH, concluded that the family that eats together enjoys better long-term health.

“Whether a family eats together can have important effects on children’s food consumption patterns,” the duo wrote. “A growing body of research demonstrates that children who eat meals with other family members consume more healthy foods and nutrients. Overall, children who have companionship at mealtimes tend to eat more servings of the basic food groups.”

Patrick and Nicklas’ review found that how often a family dined together made a difference in the foods they consumed:

“We found the frequency of eating meals as a family was positively associated with intake of fruit, vegetables, grains and calcium-rich foods, and with intake of protein, calcium, iron, foliate, fiber and vitamins A, C, E, and B-6. In adolescents, the presence of the family at the dinner meal has been positively associated with consumption of fruit, vegetables and dairy foods, and lower likelihood of skipping breakfast.”

WHAT’S IN YOUR CART?

It also reduces the chances of teenage smoking, drinking and drug-use, according to research by the National Center on Addition and Substance Abuse.

Bellevue-based Quality Food Center (QFC) stores have launched the “Family Dinners – Helping to Protect Kids” in-store awareness campaign based on these studies and are encouraging families to have dinner together at least once a week.

Despite efforts to encourage shoppers to eat together and to eat better, family dinners have largely morphed from those cooked from scratch to meals consumed at home, but cooked away from home. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that an average of one third of a family’s total calorie intake now comes from dining out. And the department says families are spending more and more on take-out, ready-to-eat meals and ready-made ingredients from grocery stores.

Last month, I conducted my own nonscientific review of groceries purchased in three Seattle-area grocery stores by 20 adults with children in tow. I found that the vast majority of food purchased by these shoppers was pre-cooked – pizza, frozen vegetables, canned soup, deli dishes, dry cereal and frozen entrees being the most popular items.

“I just don’t have time to make lasagna from scratch,” said one frazzled mom lugging twin toddlers and a 8-year-old through the Shoreline Top Foods store. “I’ve gone from being totally organic before kids to anything from a box in 10 minutes or less for most meals.”

EATING LOCALLY

While the vast majority of the local families I interviewed sheepishly admitted to eating frozen or pre-cooked meals several times a week and to dining out once or more per week, most said they worried about nutritional value and wished they had more time to cook from scratch. At least three shoppers said they were eschewing these less nutritious packaged meals and finding ways to ensure that their one daily meal shared together is one a nutritionist would bless – using organic products and fresh ingredients.

“This summer I am managing family dinner by committing to a CSA (Community Support Agriculture program),” says Mary Yglesia, a Seattle mother of three. “After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I decided that I would reinvest my money and my intentions to eating locally and regionally.”

To solidify her commitment, Yglesia “plunked down my membership dues and each week I get a surprise bag of local bounty – veggies and fruits and eggs.

“After I see what is in the bag, I figure out what we will eat,” she explains. “This makes me be creative and seek out new recipes that will maximize the use of these lovingly grown gifts. I’ve gotten very clever with kale! This week our package included new summer squash, onions, carrots, kale and chard so I made pasta fagiole. One big pot equals several dinners. The eggs with some potatoes and veggies is at least one more dinner of a frittata á la farm.”

Other families are embarking similar paths as the number of CSAs in the region continues to grow. In August, dozens of families signed up to participate in Sustainable Ballard’s 100 Mile Diet challenge. Interested in reducing the distance between food source and plate and supporting local and organic farming, these families have pledged to consume only ingredients that were grown or produced within 100 miles of their home.

This interest in locally grown food is also the foundation for a growing number of weekend farmer’s markets in communities throughout the county.

“Saturday is our big family meal night, and we want the best local ingredients,” said Greg, a Lynnwood father of four during a recent trip to the Edmonds farmer’s market. “We shop here in the morning and spend the day preparing for dinner. It’s a tradition that my kids wouldn’t miss. Even when they are sick, they want to be at the table.”

DAD IN THE KITCHEN

For most of the 22 families interviewed for this story, the stereotypes of Mom as primary cook in the family and Dad as Grill Master remain.

However, Greg, Sasha Kipkalov, and Kenmore father Gary May are all dads who do the bulk of family cooking.

“My wife is a midwife and keeps strange hours, so the family dinner has become my responsibility, which is OK because I love to cook – just not all the time,” May says.

May describes his cooking style thus: “It’s like Iron Chef America with cursing … you know, that show where chefs have to cook a meal using a single secret ingredient except in my case all the ingredients are secret.

“I never plan a meal. I just come home, open the fridge around 5 p.m. and try to figure out what I can make with leftover roast chicken and lettuce that the kids will eat. We all have our obsessive habits. For me it’s cooking by the seat of my pants,” he says. “I’m a culinary MacGyver making a four course meal from chocolate chips, eggs, frozen beans, leftover grilled flank steak, stale bread, an onion, hot water and canned tomatoes.” In May’s kitchen those ingredients translate into thin-sliced steak on bamboo skewers, seared beans with onions, bruschetta on crostini and chilled chocolate pudding.

“I can usually pull off one multi-course meal a week, and the rest are old stand-bys: homemade pizza, make-your-own tacos, make your own pasta, grilled whatever. My daughters help out sometimes, but it’s hard to give them tasks when I’m making it up as I go,” May adds.

TEACHABLE MOMENTS

Many experts say that a key to successfully integrating family dinner into family life is getting the kids involved. By allowing kids to choose and cook meals, their interest in healthy eating is enhanced, along with their knowledge. Start young and stick with it, experts advise. Jen Costigan, a Montessori teacher and mother of 3-year-old Will, has taken that advice to heart.

“Instead of keeping Will occupied while I throw dinner together, the idea is for him to participate with me in the preparation,” she says. “He can usually do something to help prepare the meal, whether it is slicing tofu or grating cheese or juicing a lemon.

“Now that Will is 3, I’m sure that what he is capable of is going to change, but the past two years I was having him do some portion of his lunch preparation too. He loves to peel and core apples with his hand crank apple machine. He can make sandwiches and put fruit into his lunch containers,” Costigan says.

Will is now old enough to wait for his dad to arrive home and to complete the family table at 6 p.m. “I can imagine that once the summer light is over, we will be able to sit in candlelight and share food together as a family,” says Costigan. “That is until he is old enough for music lessons, soccer class…”

Even when busy schedules intrude, eating together is possible, insists Cameron Stracher in his new book Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table. Stracher turned his commitment to getting home by dinner time five days a week for a year into a humorous, common sense guide for hard-working parents.

“Going home for dinner wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t all that difficult either,” Stracher writes. “I found it required commitment and wherewithal to say ‘No thanks’ to the late phone call, the garrulous client … my own laziness.

“It was not unlike training for a race, with its good days and bad days. I just had to do it,” he adds.

Cheryl Murfin Bond is a Seattle-area writer and mother of two.

HELPFUL BOOKS

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, by Stephen Covey, (Golden Books, 1997).
• The Surprising Power of Family Meals, by Miriam Weinstein, (Steerforth Press, 2005).
• The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan, (Penguin, 2006).
• Dinner with Dad: How I Found My Way Back to the Family Table, by Cameron Stracher, (Random House, 2007).

One Mom’s Quest for Tonight’s
Family Dinner – and Tomorrow’s Lunch

by Lori Proulx-Burns

I grew up in a traditional home where dinner was served at 5:30 every night.

Dinner always included meat, typically beef (or game), a dinner salad made with iceberg lettuce, a veggie, potatoes and homemade dessert. Because there were seven of us, we rarely went out for dinner. A casual dinner included frozen Banquet fried chicken heated in the oven, and an extra special treat was a trip to McDonald’s for the original Big Mac wrapped in what looked like a crown. This very special meal was served only when my mom and dad were headed out for one of their dinner parties.

Fast forward to my family.

The one thing I have in common with my mom is preparing a meal and eating it together as a family. Aside from that, I differ in almost every way. Meat was the focal point of her meals, although all food groups were represented. My focal point is the opposite: When meat is included, it is in smaller, leaner portions. Fish and vegetarian dishes are part of our normal cuisine. And everyone eats salad every night.

I am passionate, but finicky, about food and I am committed to a family dinner during the work and school week. I typically cook at home, we rarely do take out, and I do not do fast food.

The start of the school year for me is what New Year’s is to other people. We purge old clothes and replace them with new ones, buy school supplies and plan for the upcoming school year. I also clear my pantry shelves and stock up for winter and the start of school. I freeze fresh organic fruit, so that I have quality, inexpensive fruit in the winter. I buy whole, fresh halibut and salmon in the summer and have it filleted, so that we can eat it in the winter months, and I buy and freeze extra organic meat and poultry when it goes on sale.

The biggest thing for me to remember: Pull something out of the freezer so it is thawed and ready when I get home! If I’ve not done that, fish is the quickest thing to thaw and cook for dinner.

I rely on Trader Joe’s for quality prepared food if I am in a hurry. It will be the base-food that I build from – be it adding fresh veggies to a frozen mix or whole grain pasta to make the dish feed six instead of three. Having a “starter” makes putting something together quick and easy.

In the cooler months, I make soup on Sunday and have leftovers on Monday, the difficult transition day. A crock pot is great for this.

My favorite kitchen helpers are not people. They are:

• The George Forman grill, which I use one to two times a week. I can cook three large boneless chicken breasts in six minutes. Fish is even faster – a skewer of shrimp or fillets of tilapia for quick fish tacos take three minutes.

• My $15 rice cooker, which can have a nice grain ready in 10 to15 minutes, depending on the type. I cook lentil, quinoa, brown rice and grain medley (such as orzo pasta, baby garbanzo beans and red quinoa blend) in it. If I start it as soon as I get home, or better yet, have one of the girls start it, we can eat in no time.

• A pot of boiling water. If I don’t know what we are going to eat and someone beats me home, I often ask that he or she boil water. I have several varieties of whole grain pasta at home, any of which can be turned in to a quick dinner.

• A garden to give me fresh greens year round.

People are helpful too. I do need someone to empty the dishwasher. I hate this job, and I like the kitchen picked up before I start to cook, so emptying the dishwasher is my number one daily request.

I have taken the time to teach a few targeted recipes to one of my daughters. Thirty-minute lasagna in a pan and meat loaf are her specialties. These and other easy recipes are located in a specific location with ingredients usually on hand. At a minimum, I’ll ask someone to put together the salad for dinner.

We eat dinner together each night, even if it is as simple as “breakfast for dinner” as in eggs and pancakes. It is too expensive for a family our size to eat out, and I prefer to eat a simple, yet balanced, meal at home. Our 2-year-old eats far better when we sit down to eat as a family. He is less inclined to get up during dinner. He and his 6-year-old brother also eat what we eat, making them really good eaters of a variety of fruits and veggies.

Every evening meal becomes the start of the following day’s lunch, so part of dad’s kitchen clean-up routine is putting items in lunch containers for the following day.

Lori Proulx-Burns is a research nurse at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the mother of six kids, ages 2-21, three of whom live at home and three of whom cycle in and out, depending on college schedules.

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