Eat Me: Good Food For Your Brood

All In Together
cooked up by karen

I am a firm believer that families should eat the same food for dinner, at the same time. Not only does this allow a busy family to sit down and spend time with one another, but it enhances another firm belief that I have – that your children should have to suffer through endless questions about their day and their life as payback for all those sleepless nights. Oh yeah, and that as parents, it is up to us to model good eating habits for our children. If that means that you have to suck it up and learn to love your veggies or how to put up with the often anarchic table manners of a toddler, then do it. With a smile...

This doesn’t mean that each member of the family isn’t allowed to have their preferences – we are individuals after all, but if you introduce a wide range of food to your kids early on, it should be easy to come up with meals that everybody loves with little or no substitutions necessary due to pickiness. That said, I also give us leeway in the form of the two-thirds guide: if my kids like and will eat two-thirds of the healthy meal I’ve put in front of them, I will be happy and consider the meal a success. And if they don’t want to eat any of it? Well, at least I’ve tried, and will try again tomorrow. A small child’s eating whims (or outright refusal to eat anything at all) usually pass quickly.

Here’s another reason that I think it’s nice to eat together – your kids are vital, important, worthy members of your family. Why should they eat plain spaghetti and frozen corn at 5 o’clock while you dine on steak at 7? How ‘bout you meet in the middle and have fish at 6?

Sounds good to me. Here’s a recipe that’s easy, healthy and yummy, and is prepared in no time.

No more excuses. Tonight, you’re not just setting the table for two.

(s)Mothered Haddock
Prep time: 15 minutes (30 if you’re being harangued by a toddler the whole time), plus 20 minutes for marinating

Cook time: 12 minutes

4 generous portions

1 lb fresh wild haddock filets
1 leek, diced
1 med. tomato, diced
2 cloves garlic, smushed
1 tbsp. olive oil
1 tbsp. lemon juice
dill, salt & pepper to taste

- Preheat oven to 425
- cut haddock into pieces
- combine remaining ingredients and smother haddock with them
- marinate for 20 minutes
- bake for 12 minutes or until fish flakes easily

I served this atop a scoop of quinoa, with a side of steamed spring asparagus garnished with almond slivers  Deelish!

*SoundBITE*
Haddock is found to be lower in mercury (approx. 0.031 parts per million) than many other white fishes, including halibut (approx. .252 ppm), but a good rule of thumb regarding mercury levels in fish is to try to stick to coldwater, wild choices.

Source of data: FDA 1990-2004, "National Marine Fisheries Service Survey of Trace Elements in the Fishery Resource" Report 1978,_"The Occurrence of Mercury in the Fishery Resources of the Gulf of Mexico" Report 2000

Comments

[daysgoby]

This sounds great! And I'm pretty sure I have some haddock in the freezer....

[kittenpie]

I'm with you! My family always ate together, and we do too, except for the nights I work late, and then the others do. It's a nice connecting time, and some days, the only really good solid meal that all three will eat!

Our firmest rule is that you have to TRY everything. You don't have to love it, if you hate it, trying it is enough, but you have to take one bite before you refuse it. That, and staying in your chair. The fork, we're still working on. Oy.

[motherbumper]

We eat together but OMG it's a struggle. We are going to make a real effort to stop the short-order cook syndrome. It's a path taken that I must veer off. Word.

[Sandra]

I'd love to have a family meal each night but that's not how it rolls at my place. The hubby doesn't get home in time for dinner ever because of his job. And on those rare nights that he does, we have totally different diets (me a vegetarian whose allergic to seafood and he a hard core shellfish loving carnivore). On the weekends we cook 2 different meals but eat them at the same table. It works for us and the end result is my little guy is exposed to twice as much and isn't finicky (though he has definite vegetarian leanings - yay).

Great idea for a column and I love the name!

[nomotherearth]

You're absolutely right, of course. We haven't managed to do this yet - mainly because The Boy is starving by 6pm, goes to bed by 7:30pm and I'm not hungry till 8pm or later. Plus, 6pm has been one of the few times I can fit in a run. BUT family dinners are important, I know, and it's what we're working towards by the time the Little Guy is on to real-ish food.

[Gabriella]

We usually eat together, but like MB above, I've taken to being the short order cook...will have to work on trying to get the 3 of us to eat the same meal...even if it involves 3 temper tantrums...it is frustrating though.

[chicky chicky baby]

Hooray! Food porn suitable for the whole family!

Wait, that didn't sound good.

[Mac and Cheese]

I don't even think I qualify as even a short order cook at this point. I'm gonna try it your way.

[Don Mills Diva]

I am definitely going to start having Graham eat with us every night. We haven't been doing that so much because a nice dinner together with how hubby and I wind down together but dinner is just getting too late...