Dad's Home for Dinner!
January 30, 2012
Cameron Stracher admits he's a Type A personality; so, when this lawyer/author/consultant realized how much time he was spending commuting and working, and how little time he was spending with his family, he came up with a plan: Eat together five nights a week for a school year and cook two and a half of those weekly suppers himself.
Oh, the compromises, adjustments, hard feelings, thrilling moments, wonderful meals, dishes thrown in the trash, lessons learned! In order to be home more, he would have to quit one of his jobs. In order to make up for the lost income, he...... well, I won't spoil it for you. I will just note that, being a Type A, he wrote a book about it all.
Here is one of the conclusions that come toward the end: "The most successful meals were the ones where my children participated in choosing the menu, prepping the ingredients, cooking the food. This is not always an easy thing to do — it requires patience, compromise, a strong stomach — but it works. Like life, the messy parts are often the most rewarding, but you have to get dirty first."
Mealtimes Matter Video
from Miriam Weinstein
About Miriam
Miriam Weinstein is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. As a journalist, she has won several awards from the New England Press Association. Her work has appeared in Boston Magazine, the Boston Globe magazine, Hope, and ParentSource. A former staff member for North Shore Weeklies and freelancer for Essex County Newspapers, she writes restaurant reviews and food columns as well as features on a wide variety of subjects. She lives in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with her husband and has two grown children.
The Surprising Power of Family Meals
In her book, The Surprising Power of Family Meals, Miriam Weinstein shows how this basic human institution helps nourish and strengthen our families today.