While getting the tutorials ready for Housewife 101 I spent some time on the blog of one of my twitter peeps Mindy Lockard and I noticed a fabulous section she calls Take it the Table Tuesday. I love the concept; it remained me of an article I read in one of Jaime Oliver’s magazine about his plan to bring back ‘the Sunday Roast’.
It is a sad fact of modern life that family meals are rapidly being erased from the home, thanks to hectic family schedules and many families choosing to watch TV while they eat. In a recent article in Time, I read that the more a family eats together the more they look forward to it and the more conversation that accompanies meal time; that would explain how easy it is to wake up one day and find it all but gone from your home, since the less you eat together the more likely it is to fall from your list of priorities, and the less likely conversation will flow freely at your table.
With the mad rush to buy school supplies, plan autumn activities and get that last summer holiday underway before the hustle and bustle of the new school year begins, here are a few interesting facts to remind you why it is in everyone’s best interest to keep your dinner table full with friends, family and hot food:
Benefits young children: Researchers at Harvard found that family dinners are more important than play, story time and other family events in the development of vocabulary of younger children.
Benefits teenagers: Your teenager is less likely to take up smoking, drinking and using drugs if you frequently site down for a family meal together. Also, frequent family meals often result in better grades in 11 to 18 year olds.
Benefits a health relationship with food: Researchers at the University of Minnesota have found that positive family meals served with a variety of foods encourage health eating and reduces the chance of your adolescent daughter developing an eating disorder.
Family meals in our home generally come in the evening, and brunch at the weekends—there is nothing that delights my family more than brunch, and a family dinner. The oven has not really had a look in since we arrived (who needs an oven when you can cook on the pavement?). So this morning when we awoke to rain (glorious rain) we opened the windows, turned down the air conditioning and turned on the oven.
Cooking a proper fry up with all the delights that breakfast can offer is the one meal where I know I can sit at the table and hear nothing but sighs of delight as the children devour what is on their plate. Without fail the end of the meal is topped off with generous smiles all around, the laughter, the conversation and the full bellies leaves everyone is great spirits. The only thing missing was a homemade cup of coffee (and Sexy Lexy).