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Bare Minimum Cooking: 3 Tricks for Easy Meals During Busy Times

Over the past few days I have been having a lot of conversations with people about how overwhelmed they are feeling. I have come to think that for many of us September is a month of unexpected overwhelm. Here’s my best guess as to why September can be so brutal: for many of us September…

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How to Make Jarred Tomato Sauce Actually Taste Good!

A month or so ago I did a cooking demonstration and workshop where I talked about easy ways to integrate healthier alternatives into your daily diet. One of my props for that workshop was a jar of store-bought marinara sauce. Now, as many of you know, I usually make my tomato sauce from scratch, but…

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The Truth About Family Dinners: What it looks like in our house and simple guidelines that helped to make it better

We all know the benefits of family dinners— less picky eating, lower risk of obesity and eating disorders, higher academic achievement, lower risk of teen pregnancy and substance abuse, the list goes on and on. And we all have that idyllic idea of what it should look like—perfect table manners, no tension, everyone together, beautifully…

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The Night When I Should Have Ordered Delivery Pizza But Didn’t

Warning: This story contains injury, floods, smoke detectors, yelling and tears. And no pizza. Last week was a rough one at our house. My husband had major deadlines that resulted in his working late every night, including one almost-all-nighter (he got 2 hours of sleep, can we just call that an all-nighter at our age?),…

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The Sibling Factor: The perks and perils of siblings at the dinner table

Twice in the past month my younger son, who is a much more selective eater, has stunned us by happily trying and then falling in love with new vegetables (asparagus and artichokes). They are now two of his go-to requests when I check in with him about meals for the upcoming week. I wish I…

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Bringing Our Best to the Table: How my own stress messed up family dinners

There have been a lot of powerful posts going around recently about feeding kids. Two that really spoke to me were one about the pitfalls of pushing the “one bite” and another about the importance of focusing on making family dinners an enjoyable time rather than a time for pushing food or other table manner agendas. Both of these…