Is eating with your family radical?

Did you know, according to this week's TIME magazine….


16% of men, and 13% of women eat pizza every single day!
Pizza's not a bad thing, but every single day?

Something tells me they aren't sitting around the table 
every night, eating that pizza with their family. 
….because if they were, they would have more variety.

And TIME also says, the TOP source of calories for the rest of us
(the ones who aren't eating pizza every single day) are baked goods, chicken, soda,
alcohol, and yes, pizza. The lovely standard American diet.

Did you know that while many people don't make dinner, cooking 
shows are at an all time high right now? It's like we want to
watch what we don't have. Like a nice daydream? 

Did you know there are 4 times as many farmer's markets as
there were 20 years ago?……but unlike 20 years ago, now only
1/3 of families eat at home at least 5 days a week?

And did you know not cooking is costing us money, good times, 
control, serenity, and vastly better health?



In last week's vegetable newsletter…..




…there was this quote in the upper left hand corner that I so wish 
every family believed: 



Not sure who the Radical Homemakers are, or what could be 
radical about eating around the table each night with your family. 
Or is being a homemaker considered radical now? Maybe so. 


 I checked Radical Homemakers out on Pinterest 
and I did find this little gem:

I like the concept of just going around in a circle…..
and then looking at where you left off each day.


CS Lewis was a very smart man.


As radical as this may seem.

Den was not sure I should post this. He thought it may offend people. 
I'm putting this on more for myself than anyone else. 
I need motivation because sometimes it's just easier to go out looking for food than making it at home. 
When in reality it takes less time just to eat here in our own little kitchen.

13 comments:

threelittlebackseatdrivers.blogspot.com said...

I have several jumbled thoughts on this post. I love this post btw. Now that I have a full day school kid, I'm really frustrated by the amount of time my kids are in school. It pushes every extra thing we need to do together to the afternoon and evening. Add in required homework that gets gets checked every morning and I feel like our world revolves around school. My point with this is that any extra curricular, healthy exercise or acitivities like tball or going to the park or riding our bikes gets relatively close to dinner time. So unless I use my crockpot for every evening meal, there is very little time for meal prep right before dinner. That said, I am inspired by cooking shows like Rachael Ray's 30 minute meals because it proves that if I prep enough during the day in between chauffering my Kinder to and from half day school, I can throw together a meal in 30 minutes. I'm really torn on finding that balance. We definitely eat around the table each night. But the grilled veggies from my garden and the marinated meats on the grill are saved for weekends. I have to admit we have pizza at least 1x per week, but now that sports 2x's a week are finished we are done with that. I think I do a really good job of getting a lot of fruits (pears, peaches, apples, bananas, oranges, etc) into my kids. They prob get five servings a day of fresh fruit. It's sneaking in the vegetables and greens that I have a harder time with. It is easy to give them corn or carrots with ranch. It's the spinach and kale and asparagas, green beans, peas. Those are the things I find difficult to incorporate. That may sound jumbled, but that is what I was thinking as I read your post. :)

Scrapally said...

Well I guess I am radical. I like family dinner time and home cooked meals! Thank you for sharing all the information...I love your posts!

Grandma Honey said...

Natalie…I hear you. It's a continual balancing act. When my kids were growing up we had pizza every Saturday night. But how does anyone eat it every day?!

SO good how you give them 5 fresh fruits a day! I was told back in the day that fruits and vegetables have similar nutrients and not to worry much if kids prefer the fruits. My boys didn't really get into vegetables as much until they were older.

Life would be so much easier if we didn't have to always be feeding everyone. But I think it's all part of the plan of life. The need to eat forces us to take the time and be together….or it's suppose to work that way I think. Even if we have to eat together on the run, or in the car….we are still forced to connect when we get hungry.

Grandma Honey said...

Scrapally…I agree! I think home cooked meals are highly under rated.

byBeckyJane said...

When I was in school studying to be a Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, I was stunned to learn the ketchup and french fries were considered veggies and are the most consumed 'veggies' in the USA.

Grandma Honey said...

Becky…Wasn't it one of our presidents who claimed ketchup as a vegetable? I can't remember which one.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for posting this! I agree with the importance of sitting down as a family to eat but for years found it very difficult. My kids are 10, 8, and 2 and up until this August, my husband had traveled 4 days a week for work. He changed jobs this year and does not travel anymore which means we eat as a family each night. In the past, when I was solo-parenting those 4 days were brutal to teach piano after school (I teach 26 kids), pick up and drop of my kids from activities, fix dinner and clean up, and then homework and our bedtime routine. Dinner was a moment for me to have some quiet when all my kiddos were busy eating. The older ones usually ate in by the tv (being honest here, a little embarrassing) and my youngest was in the high chair by me at the table. But now, with that extra set of hands at home, we are eating 5 days a week together at the table. Tuesdays are the worst for us and I usually give in to fast food and then we eat out once on the weekend. It still is a challenge at times because my kids seem to be picky eaters but I can tell us eating together has empowered me to try new recipes. And, in turn, my kids are trying new foods. Also, I love the cleaning chart...I'm going to print that out and give it a try! Thanks again!
Peggy in Iowa

Grandma Honey said...

I can so relate to your comment Peggy. When I was raising my boys my husband was only home for dinner about once a month because he owned his own business, etc. So I just considered "family dinner" with me and my sons….that's just how it had to be back then. And it was a struggle getting food on the table with all their activities, etc. But looking back I'm glad I was determined and just kept trying. I know some families who never eat together. They don't know what they are missing. Often what we struggle with, we don't see the benefits till much later.

Heidi G. Ballas said...

I would LOVE to be cooking at home every night. I like buying the ingredients, knowing what's going into my food and just generally think home cooked meals taste better and are better for the budget. But by the time I get home from work, walk the dog and wear him out, it's 6:30pm. My husband gets home around 7pm and by the time we eat and do the dishes and take the dog out before bed, that's our whole evening. Maybe we can also do a load of laundry if we're lucky. I think it's very hard to have regular healthy home cooked meals when both partners work full time. You both have to be very committed. We try as best we can to balance quick and convenient with healthy and low cost. We celebrate the good meals and forgive ourselves for the bad, knowing that we're getting a little better at it all the time. But, also, we're in a place where we're paying down a lot of debt and can't afford to live any closer to my husband's workplace than we currently do, and his commute is almost an hour, one way! We also only have one car, so while he's commuting two hours a day and working 9 hours, I'm doing my commuting and any errands by foot. So if we don't get meal planning and grocery shopping done on the weekend, it's very hard to squeeze it in on a week night.

Hopefully soon we will be able to live in a way that allows one or both of us to be home more (and eat better and cheaper) I have the best times when my little family is all home together and miss them so when we're apart!

Heidi G. Ballas said...

Also! I loved family dinners growing up. When my mom couldn't cook because of school and work, my dad took over so that we could all eat together. My husband and I do eat dinner together every night. I just wish we had more time to grocery shop and cook for ourselves. Our go to right now is chicken sausage with brown rice and a fruit and a vegetable. It's more expensive than cooking from scratch, but less expensive than eating out. It is also very quick and convenient and not TERRIBLY unhealthy. We buy the pre-cooked chicken sausage from the store (like Aidell's) and Uncle Ben's packages of 90 second microwavable brown rice. While those are cooking, we cut up some fresh fruit and veggies. We can get dinner "made" at home in 15 minutes this way and it feels like a good compromise for nights when cooking seems too hard.

Grandma Honey said...

Heidi, I've often wondered through the years HOW a family gets dinner on the table when they are both gone all day. On days when I am not here, I can't do it…So I sure don't pretend to have the answers. Wouldn't it all be so much easier if we didn't need to eat!

I remember this day many years ago….I think I had a long doctor appt with McKay. Anyway, I asked your mom if she would look in on Logan and Tyler and she invited them over for dinner. I don't remember what it was she made for them, but i know it included some fresh fruit cut up. Simple idea, but it made an impression on me and then I started adding cut up fruit to many of our dinners. It sort of rounds out a meal. Sometimes I think I make things harder than they need to be.

Susan Anderson said...

Pretty ironic, and very interesting, too. It all makes sense psychologically, doesn't it? We don't do what we used to do, so now we imagine doing it.

Not quite the same thing, I fear.

=)

Heidi G. Ballas said...

Yes! I do that too! We often slice up an apple, grab some carrot sticks (we like to dip them in hummus) and really only worry about cooking whatever meat is on sale at the store. So much more relaxing than trying to follow a complicated recipe, at least for us, on a week night. Since Jim is not from California, the abundance, quality and lower cost of produce here is wonderful and novel to him - makes me appreciate it so much more, too. So glad I visited your blog and was able to turn inward and find gratitude for these things in my life!

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