Home For Dinner

Has your family dinner table become a landing spot for junk mail, homework, and bills? Is scheduled dinnertime in your home 6:00 for mom, 7:00 or later for dad, and . . . are the kids even home tonight or do they have another activity to get to? Because with sports, activities, long hours, and commutes, family dinners seem to have gone the way of the dinosaur . . . And it’s time to bring them back--before it’s too late!Studies have tied shared family meals to increased resiliency and self-esteem in children, higher academic achievement, a healthier relationship to food, and even reduced risk of substance abuse and eating disorders. Written by a Harvard Medical School professor and mother, Home for Dinner makes a passionate and informed plea to put mealtime back at the center of family life and supplies compelling evidence and realistic tips for getting even the busiest of families back to the table.Parents looking to make family dinnertime more than just a fantasy will find inside this invaluable, life-saving resource highly relatable stories, new research, recipes, and friendly advice to help them:• Whip up quick, healthy, and tasty dinners• Get kids to lend a hand (without any grief!)• Adapt meals to the needs of everyone--from toddlers to teens• Inspire picky eaters to explore new foods• Keep dinnertime conversation stimulating• Reduce tension at the table• And moreBoth parents and kids need a family mealtime environment that allows them to unwind and reconnect from the pressures of school and work. More than just offering them nutrition and energy for another intense day of jet-setting about, the incalculable family therapy provided for all will far surpass the small sacrifices it took to gather around the table for a short time.

A teenager discovers that his single parent dad kidnapped him when he was a toddler and takes a harrowing journey across international borders to find the mother he thought was dead. b

Inspired by her beloved blog, dinneralovestory.com, Jenny Rosenstrach’s Dinner: A Love Story is many wonderful things: a memoir, a love story, a practical how-to guide for strengthening family bonds by making the most of dinnertime, and a compendium of magnificent, palate-pleasing recipes. Fans of “Pioneer Woman” Ree Drummond, Jessica Seinfeld, Amanda Hesser, Real Simple, and former readers of Cookie magazine will revel in these delectable dishes, and in the unforgettable story of Jenny’s transformation from enthusiastic kitchen novice to family dinnertime doyenne.

52 seasonal menus for nearly every occasion.

“There’s nothing dumbed down here, only honest cooking: simple stuff for everyday meals and gloriously rich, complex dishes for special occasions.” —Rick Bayless, James Beard Award-winning chef 2016 IACP Cookbook Award winner in Children, Youth & Family category JeanMarie Brownson has long been a beloved chef and food writer, from her time as the Chicago Tribune’s test kitchen director and associate food editor to her ongoing professional partnership with the iconic Rick Bayless (Frontera Grill, Topolobampo, Xoco). Since 2007, Brownson has chronicled her life of cooking in a series of Chicago Tribune columns, the best of which have been hand-picked to form her newest cookbook, Dinner at Home: 140 Recipes to Enjoy with Family and Friends. This book features inventive and easy-to-make recipe ideas, along with gorgeous full-color photography. Organized by course, Dinner at Home also devotes chapters to holiday dinners, party snacks, rubs and sauces, and “breakfast for dinner.” Readers will enjoy the seasonal menus, such as those for special occasions (Anniversary Dinner, Ultimate Father’s Day, and Sunday Brunch) as well as themed meals (Manhattan Cocktail Party, Saturday Night Beer Tasting, and Wish We Were in Ireland Supper). For Brownson, cooking for others ranks as one of life’s greatest pleasures, and her passion for creating trustworthy, approachable recipes is clear throughout Dinner at Home. This book is a must-have for home cooks who love the time spent gathered around the table with friends, family, and delicious meals. “This book shares flavorful recipes that are backed by years of solid testing and include straightforward nutrition notes. I’ll refer to this cookbook for years to come.” —Antonia Allegra, founder of The Symposium for Professional Food Writers

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • An “extraordinary” (The New York Times Book Review) tender and vivid memoir about the radical grace we discover when we consider ourselves bound together in community, and a moving account of one woman’s attempt to answer the essential question Who are we to one another? “Your heart will be altered by this book.”—Gregory Boyle, S.J., New York Times bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart Liz Hauck and her dad had a plan to start a weekly cooking program in a residential home for teenage boys in state care, which was run by the human services agency he co-directed. When her father died before they had a chance to get the project started, Liz decided she would try it without him. She didn’t know what to expect from volunteering with court-involved youth, but as a high school teacher she knew that teenagers are drawn to food-related activities, and as a daughter, she believed that if she and the kids made even a single dinner together she could check one box off her father’s long, unfinished to-do list. This is the story of what happened around the table, and how one dinner became one hundred dinners. “The kids picked the menus, I bought the groceries,” Liz writes, “and we cooked and ate dinner together for two hours a week for nearly three years. Sometimes improvisation in kitchens is disastrous. But sometimes, a combination of elements produces something spectacularly unexpected. I think that’s why, when we don’t know what else to do, we feed our neighbors.” Capturing the clumsy choreography of cooking with other people, this is a sharply observed story about the ways we behave when we are hungry and the conversations that happen at the intersections of flavor and memory, vulnerability and strength, grief and connection. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SHE READS

A year of eating locally results in a gastronomical journey through prairie food festivals, local food traditions and the infamous community dinners. A humorous, light-hearted chronicle of the writer’s love affair with good food, prairie traditions and flavours from her childhood with recipes peppered throughout. Fueled by nostalgia and her taste buds, she set out to rediscover the flavours of her childhood – the flavours of natural, local, farm-fresh prairie food. When she vowed to serve only locally produced food at her own dinner table for one year, the pursuit took on a life of its own. Beautiful photographs enhance Amy Jo’s mouth-watering menus, recipes and her adventures in the pursuit of home grown prairie food. It is not about miles, but a way of life. It is our community, our history and an opportunity to find ourselves in the food we eat. Prairie Feast is a love story, a celebration of every good thing this bountiful land has to offer. It will inspire all conscious consumers to follow their taste buds home for dinner. Go to the Prairie Feast page for event details and much more. Also, check out the author's blog.

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