But what of dinner? What do we do when we sit down for this meal? With whom do we eat? For how long? Do we have phones out? When does dinner start and end? These seemingly small decisions and rituals can make a world of difference in our evenings and in our lives.
What follows are the 15 habits that made the most difference for me. Notice that none of them are particularly complicated.
For many folks, this is a process that takes less than five minutes to implement. Yet the evening is changed dramatically when they’re in place.
It doesn’t sound like much, but it is a lot.
Decisions are made one way or another, with or without input. At least that’s my experience. Often times I’ll ask someone what they want to do and I’ll either get a shrug and a “I don’t know,” or something we can’t do (ie. doesn’t involve ingredients we have on hand). So, I just make the decision. Asking them just added a step.
Once you’ve picked five dinners for the week on Sunday, ask if there’s anything anyone else would like. And that’s it. Resist the urge to check in further and trust the system.
This eliminates a source of daily friction (and a question you no longer have to answer every day).
You don’t need fancy meals on busy weeknights. You just need meals that get on the table.
Rushing and stressing out to make dinner defeats the purpose of coming home to a peaceful dinner. If it’s going to be a simple meal, make it without stress. A simple meal made in peace is better than a gourmet meal put together in a frenzy.
Try implementing two or three fast nights per week. Dinner just happens on fast nights.
I like slow cookers because they are a great option when you need to plan ahead. Slow cookers take the stress out of dinner time. Start your meal in the morning and come home to a hot, delicious dinner in the evening.
Family dinners where everyone is looking forward to eating together instead of viewing dinner as a problem to be solved at 6 p.m.
Choose one night a week to be your slow cooker night and stick with it. Within a month it will become so automatic that you won’t even think about it.
the phone was ringing. It wasn’t face down on the table. It was in another room.
I have found the first couple of weeks are the hardest. It feels so unnatural and intentional to start out with. After a few weeks though, it becomes the new normal.
Of course, there’s a difference between putting your phone face down on the table three feet away and putting it in another room, but I’m telling you, dinner tastes better with both of those out of the equation.
If one person practices this consistently, the other will likely pick up on it, and there’s no need to discuss it, as it’s just how mealtimes happen in your house.
I can’t cook two different dinners and have everyone eat at the same time. I turn into a short-order cook and then everyone eats whenever they’re done, which means I’m always last, and I’m tired, and it’s not relaxing. If we have the same meal, even if it’s very flexible, then dinner is an event we do together, not a logistical hurdle.
Build-your-own-taco or -pasta bars sidestep this problem and make almost everybody happy (and they’re quicker, since you’re not cooking two completely different dinners). Kids surprise you by adjusting to foods faster than you do, and suddenly everyone’s sitting down to a family meal again.
I want help in the kitchen but when I get help I correct everything that’s done so the help stops coming. Things aren’t chopped the same way.
You may do things in a different order than I do, and that’s fine. I might chop up all the ingredients and measure everything before I start cooking; you might prefer to measure each ingredient as you add it. Neither method makes a better or worse meal.
Assign tasks. Delegate one job to someone and resist the urge to hover. Accept that the dishes may be loaded in the dishwasher differently than you would do it, but they’re still being washed. Embrace the notion that done is better than perfect.
Involve your partner in cooking and it’s more likely to be an activity you do together, rather than one person cooking and the other waiting around. It’s fun, sociable and collaborative.
There’s nothing wrong with serving up a casserole. When it’s done well, comfort food can make for some truly special meals. A table full of people who are content with what’s in front of them has a very different vibe than one full of people who are just being polite.
Make meals that everyone will enjoy eating: cooking foods you know your family loves to eat will make meal time special and give everyone a reason to sit down together.
The last thing I want to do is stay in the kitchen to make sure everything’s ready, do the dishes, etc, when everyone else is sitting at the table ready to eat. It’s frustrating because by the time I sit down, dinner is already half over. I hate missing out on all the fun and games.
Everyone else will sit, so you may as well. Besides, the kitchen won’t go away for twenty minutes.
The dinner is not.
Of course you can multitask, catch up on scheduling, talk bills, plan the logistics of your lives, while you’re eating dinner together. But be careful you don’t turn dinner into your family’s standing meeting with food.
We tick off each item on the agenda and go home feeling like we didn’t talk about anything that mattered.
Reschedule any talk of logistics for another time. Save the discussion at dinner for catching up, reminiscing, and good-natured banter.
Talk isn’t important. The power of an empty agenda is that it changes everything about a conversation.
What are the little things? Cooking someone their favorite meal on a Wednesday night. Not because it’s special occasion, but simply because you remembered it’s their favorite dish and you want to cook it for them. It’s not about how much effort you put in. It’s about the fact that you noticed.
My favorite foods from around the world are rarely complicated. They’re the dishes I return to again and again, the ones that comfort me, remind me of people and places, that transport me back in time. Cooking them is like sending out a postcard: Thinking of you.
This is not just a recipe, this is a gesture. A big one.
Pick four or five recipes that everyone in your family loves and make those often. Don’t limit yourself to special occasions or wait until someone else requests them.
Food prepared at random times has a different flavor than food prepared for a specific occasion. For example, chicken prepared on a random Tuesday tastes different than chicken prepared for a birthday dinner.
But the Instant Pot isn’t really about wowing people with your cooking prowess. It’s about making it easier to get dinner on the table on those nights when time and motivation are limited.
It’s a great idea to incorporate it into your routine two or three times a week, rather than reserving it for “special occasions.” It’ll change your perception of what can happen on a weeknight.
Reducing the amount of time you spend cooking will give you more time to spend with your food. This doesn’t just mean eating it. It also means being at the table together, and enjoying each other’s company while you do.
Sunday is generally the day of the week that you have the most time to prepare a meal and least amount of stress. Use it. Take advantage of the day where you can really pay attention to cooking a meal instead of scraping by for the next day.
And then there’s the Sunday dinner, because nothing makes the following week feel more like a week than a Sunday dinner worth sitting down for.
That said, having a truly special Sunday meal makes the quick meals of the rest of the week not feel like quite such a cop-out. It all balances out.
I keep thinking this is a book meant primarily for entertainment, but it is not.
A bowl of something at 5:30 p.m. on the kitchen counter gives people a reason to wander into the kitchen. It also serves as a palate cleanser between the workday and the meal to come. And it gives everyone something to do while dinner is being prepared.
For starters, you want to have easy options: five minute dips, things you can grab and go. And you want to start serving them early on so that people know the party’s about to begin.
But what happens between those two sentences is hugely important.
And something, doesn’t have to be every night or anything too involved, at the very end of dinner that gives the whole affair a different shape than it would have otherwise.
Dessert is on the table a few nights a week, and even when it’s not, there’s still sweet reason to linger at the table a few minutes after the plates have been cleared away.
Dessert brings dinner to its natural end, but sometimes that means the meal’s end isn’t quite the night’s end. The minutes after plates are cleared away and the last bite of sweet stuff is consumed tend to be some of the most laid-back moments of the evening.
Dinner is ruined when someone’s perception of how the food they’ve prepared will be received by others seeps into the act of cooking itself. Whether or not a person says anything about how a particular dish has or hasn’t turned out, diners pick up on their self-assessment in the kitchen and it taints the experience of eating.
Dinners like these are why I love to cook. Everyone digs in, happy and full. No one’s keeping score except me.
Everyone should put their phones away and actually be present when they’re eating dinner together. And cooks should know that their food tastes better than they think it does.