How to Start A Family Dinner Tradition

With a longing for regular family connection and newfound realization of the fundamental role that good food plays in our overall health and quality of life, more and more people are returning to the tradition of the family meal. Want to start regular family dinners in your household? Here's how.

Instructions

1. Keep it simple. If you feel pressure to prepare elaborate, gourmet meals, chances are you'll make yourself--and your family--stressed. A stressed stomach is not a happy stomach. Instead, keep your meals simple and delicious by using the freshest ingredients. A local, organic chicken breast doesn't need more than to be sautéed with salt and pepper in olive oil. Fresh broccoli doesn't need anything more than a quick steam. And a strawberry in season doesn't need anything at all.

2. Make family meals a priority. How many days a week can you commit to dining together? Three? Five? Every day? Make eating together a priority above work, social outings and favorite television shows. You'll be glad you did. One hour shouldn't feel like a burden if you plan ahead. Get the family together, decide on the time and have everyone put it on the calendar. Then, commit!

3. Cook together. Have everybody participate in the meal preparation whether by chopping ingredients, tending to the main course, cleaning up the little messes that get made as the meal is prepared or setting the table.

4. Make it festive. Put on music, light candles, say some words of thanks before eating, enjoy each other's company, savor your food.

5. At the end of the meal, plan your next. What do you want to eat at the next family meal? What shopping needs to be done? Who can do that shopping? Who will prepare what? Get excited about the next meal by allowing everybody to have input and by giving everybody some responsibility.

6. Clean up together. Dishes and mopping go faster--and are a lot more fun--when done as a crowd.

7. Be consistent. Remember: routine and ritual is what matters, not perfection. Not every meal will taste delicious; not all conversation will be inspired and flowing. In fact, some family dinners will be boring, bland or even disastrous. This is OK. What matters is that you show up again and again on a regular basis. That's how you build tradition.

8. If you don't have a live-in family, get friends together for regular meal nights. There's no better way to build community than around a dinner table.