Dinner Time

Recently I had to watch a movie for my food and nutrition class and write a paper on it and I did some major reflecting on my family and our daily interaction with food. Not only do I want to pull out my kitchen aid (have Devin fix it) and start making bread again, but even more so I realized how much I have allowed my busy life to get in the way of healthy eating for my family. It is WAY too easy to open a box of corn dogs and say “here is dinner” when I am running behind on a school assignment or jetting out the door for class, well let’s face it.....anytime I'm being lazy. Is it really worth it?? I think its fine once in a while, but we do it WAY too much over here.

Another HUGE influence on some of the changes I am making around here is the TV show Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. EVERYONE should watch this show: it really makes you stop and take a look at what we are feeding our kids. ALL 5 of my kids in school have put on weight this year and I am convinced that 90% of it is because they eat school lunches! We made huge changes a long time ago to the snacks we keep around the house for our kids (which were not even that bad to begin with, it's not like they had a box of cookies for an after school snack), but that’s a whole other post!

Back to dinner time; not only am I cheating my family on healthy eating by not preparing my own healthy meals, but I realized how much I am missing out on quality time with my kids by having them help. ALL my kids love to help cook, so I created a chart that contains the days of the weeks: meal for that day, the ingredients, the helper and an overall shopping list. I can't wait to start doing this! I think I am more excited about the time that I will get to spend with each of my kids; I don't want them to ever feel like they don't get time with mom so I am looking forward to eating healthier meals and spending time together.

(I'm also curious about how many times I use things out of a box or can, that I could make myself? Hmmmm, that’s a whole other post too!)

P.S. I tried to figure out how to attach a word document to give you my chart for meals but wasn’t successful. Let me know if you want it and I can email it to you. :)