On November 15, 1996, people woke up that morning and realized that the day's Dilbert strip was about me. (Well, me and quite a few friends. We travel in packs whenever possible.) They made a beeline for the fax machine, and by the time I got to work on the west coast, there was a stack of them on my desk.
The same delightful qualities of my personality that caused people to think of me when they saw this strip have been on display since I got word that my daughter's soccer practice will be from 5:30 - 7:00 this season.
I think this blog makes it obvious that dinner is hugely important to me. I generally talk about the food, but the reason I care about the food is because eating together is good for us.
I'm going to quote from my favorite parenting site here:
"Kids who eat dinner with their families regularly are more emotionally stable and are less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. They get better grades. They have fewer depressive symptoms, particularly among adolescent girls. And they are less likely to become obese or have an eating disorder. Family dinners even trump reading to your kids in terms of preparing them for school. And these associations hold even after researchers control for family connectedness, which means that the benefits of family meals go above and beyond being close-knit as a family."
Here's the whole post about dinner.
So you see, dinner is more important than soccer. More important than piano lessons or homework or cleaning your room or playdates. And while I could give in and decide that eating dinner separately once a week isn't so bad, it feels like a slippery slope to me. My husband has to miss dinner at home sometimes for work, and as they get older, the kids' activities will get later and later.
So I say, "Either arm, let's go." We're having dinner together every night, even soccer nights. Bring it on, soccer. I'm going to win this one.
That's a challenge, though. We can wait until she's home and eat together, but all of us (especially me) will be about to faint from hunger by that point. We're going to have to snack sometime between 4:00 and 6:00, and we'll all stuff ourselves with goldfish crackers if I don't have a better plan. The challenge is to provide everyone with a hearty enough snack that we can survive until after soccer but still have room to eat a small, late dinner.
I've been scouring cookbooks for ideas, and I think I've got some good ones. I'm planning to post the week's "hearty snack" every Monday. I think this is a good time to serve some things that are not on the Lipitor-friendly diet that usually characterizes dinner. Small portions! Once a week! (I'll conveniently throw out the slippery slope thing on this one.) Get ready for beef and cheese.
This week, we're having Apple Cheddar Chutney buns, an idea I got fromFood52. It couldn't be simpler: small buns (in my case Trader Joe's mini-hamburger buns), sliced cheddar cheese, sliced apple, and chutney. Use a pretty thick slice of cheddar -- if there's too much chutney you can't taste the cheese. Honestly, the Trader Joe's mini buns aren't that good, but they are awfully convenient. These cry out for mini-brioche or my Mom's wheat rolls, but I don't have time to turn this into some massive project. If possible, I recommend warming these up in the toaster oven.
As a side note, my soccer player (who probably needs the snack more than the rest of us) doesn't like cheese. (Who doesn't like cheese?!) I made some for her with tofu. She still doesn't like them of course, but she likes so little, I don't care. I'm going to try again with jelly instead of chutney. My other child (who has soccer practice at a very civilized 3:30) loves them.
