Meet the Food Nanny
Hayden's late for soccer practice. Haley's dance class ran over. Mason wants -- desperately -- to hang out at his friend's house.
Such is the scenario in American households far and wide, and there's not a thing you can do about it.
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Why stop at one? If you're planning to roast chicken for dinner, make two instead. Save the second to serve later in the week in a different way.
Eggs aren't just for breakfast. In omelets or frittatas, poached, hard-boiled or scrambled, eggs can be the centerpiece for a super-quick supper.
Make friends with your slow cooker. It can be the difference between whether you get dinner on the table or not.
The meatballs you make to top spaghetti one night can be the filling for a hardy sandwich another night.
So, it's super-important for families to gather together, preferably around the table to connect. That's why Liz Edmunds, on a boot-camp-style mission to unite sibs and their folks, wrote The Food Nanny Rescues Dinner: Easy Family Meals for Every Day of the Week (Palmer/Pletsch Publishing, $24.95).
Equal parts meal-plan-minded cookbook and mentality check, it's replete with tips for grocery shopping with ease and creating dinners people of all ages can look forward to. As if that's not enough, the book also dishes up conversation starters to get familial juices flowing.
Mind you, the idea for the book didn't come out of nowhere. Edmunds -- a Utah-based mother of seven and wife of an oft-out-of-town airline pilot -- knew she had to do something to keep her own family in check.
"I realized everyone wouldn't always be in the same place at the same time," she admitted. "But when everyone who was available committed to meeting at a certain time, it made a world of difference."
As a result, Edmunds advocates other families do the same.
"Kids see their parents connecting," she said. "Parents can see -- in the most natural setting -- what kind of day their kids have had, if they're excited or down and out."
And while enlisting a nightly cooking ritual may seem daunting, Edmunds' book shows precisely how to avoid the takeout trap. Her Web site, www.thefood nanny.com, then offers up free grocery and menu planning templates.
"You can get chopping out of the way in advance," she said, pointing out meals should be planned -- and actually written out -- at least a week ahead. "Or you can prepare half of the meal before you leave for work in the morning and finish it off when you come home."
When possible, Edmunds says, dishes should be made the night before so they can simply be baked at dinnertime.
Intended as a springboard, the book is neatly organized into "theme" nights -- think comfort food on Mondays, Mexican night each Thursday -- with suggested variations to customize meals or remove meat from the equation. Edmunds shows how effortless it is to speed up preparation (i.e. use prepared marinara sauce in creamy tomato-basil soup), while touching on how fun cooking -- and eating good food -- can be (readers may check out the fruit-adorned, smiley-faced pancakes on Page 102).
"These days, a lot of moms and dads work," Edmunds said, noting that the moment kids are old enough, they can -- and should -- start helping in the kitchen. "The problem is, if kids don't learn how to plan meals or cook, they miss out on the camaraderie and the great smells. The kitchen doesn't get used. What's worse, they don't know what they're missing."
Of course, Edmunds knows not all days are created equal.
"Sometimes your day goes to heck in a handbasket," she said with a laugh.
She goes on to tout the merits of stocked pantries vs. pizza delivery.
"Even if you can't go through with what you planned, homemade pancakes or waffles with eggs, toast and sausage, in the end, are great backups for dinner," she assured.
Jennifer Olvera is a local free-lance writer.