Anne Fishel - Home for Dinner: Mixing Food, Fun, and Conversation for a Happier Family and Healthier Kids

There are magical opportunities for tenderness, courage, healing, laughterand almost everything else it means to be humanwhen the people we love come together to eat the food we love. This remarkably wise, engaging, lovely book is an invaluable guide for all of us in creating this magic. Give yourself the pleasure of reading it and join The Family Dinner Project.

Richard Weissbourd, Faculty Director of the Human Development and Psychology Program, Harvard Graduate School of Education

Anne Fishels warmth, wisdom, and humor are the ingredients that make this book such a delight to read. I recommend it to anyone who has the opportunity to eat with othersnew couples, parents, and grandparentsbecause while it delights you, it will also convince you that we can and should eat well and do it together.

Paula Rauch, MD, Director, Marjorie E. Korff PACT Program (Parenting At a Challenging Time); Program Director, Family Support and Outreach, Red Sox Foundation/MGH Home Base Program; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

Anne Fishels book Home for Dinner is simply delicious. It is filled with helpful suggestions about family dinners rich with fun and good food. The book is packed with recipes for food, conversation, and community building. Anyone can read it, enjoy the completely engaging style, and learn to reap the health, mental health, and family benefits of family dinners.

John Sargent, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics, Tufts University School of Medicine

Anne Fishel serves up a sumptuous banquet of compelling science, clinical wisdom, family psychology, delicious recipes, and a lively, personal style into a single book that will nourish families in mind, body, and spirit.

Martha B. Straus, Ph.D., Professor of Clinical Psychology, Antioch University New England; author of Adolescent Girls in Crisis: Intervention and Hope

Home for Dinner offers a feast of insights, hands-on advice, and mouthwatering recipes that will equip readers to turn the necessity of eating into an opportunity for growing family relationships, building childrens intelligence and social skills, and nourishing healthy bodies and minds. Research-based, story-sprinkled, and supremely practicalan enlightening read.

Abigail Carroll, author of Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal

Anne K. Fishel, Ph.D.

FOREWORD BY

Michael Thompson, Ph.D.

Bulk discounts available. For details visit:
www.amacombooks.org/go/specialsales
Or contact special sales:
Phone: 800-250-5308
Email: specialsls@amanet.org
View all the AMACOM titles at: www.amacombooks.org
American Management Association: www.amanet.org

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Fishel, Anne K.
Home for dinner : mixing food, fun, and conversation for a happier family and healthier kids / Anne K. Fishel, Ph.D. ; foreword by Michael Thompson, Ph.D.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8144-3370-6 (pbk.) ISBN 0-8144-3370-7 (pbk.) ISBN 978-0-8144-3371-3 (ebook)

1. Families.2. Dinners and diningSocial aspects.3. Dinners and diningPsychological aspects.I. Title.

HQ734.F448 2014

306.85dc23 2014036476

2015 Anne K. Fishel
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.

This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of AMACOM, a division of American Management Association, 1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
The scanning, uploading, or distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the express permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this work and do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials, electronically or otherwise. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

About AMA
American Management Association (www.amanet.org) is a world leader in talent development, advancing the skills of individuals to drive business success. Our mission is to support the goals of individuals and organizations through a complete range of products and services, including classroom and virtual seminars, webcasts, webinars, podcasts, conferences, corporate and government solutions, business books, and research. AMAs approach to improving performance combines experiential learninglearning through doingwith opportunities for ongoing professional growth at every step of ones career journey.

Printing number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my sons, Gabe and Joe,
and
To my husband, Chris,
For all our dinners at home

I imagine that the readers of this book will come in two flavors: those looking for affirmation and those in need of remediation. The affirmation folksand I can only imagine them because I havent met manyhave picked up this book in order to compare dinnertime parenting notes (and recipes) with Anne Fishel. These people dont have psychic conflicts about food that are left over from childhood. They eat a balanced diet, have control over their work schedules, already cook quite well, never stop at fast-food restaurants, and their children have a sane schedule of after-school activities. Furthermore, Mom and Dad dont answer their cell phones at the table, and there is no sibling taunting at mealtimes. I am filled with admiration for the people in this group. You are amazing (and quite possibly Europeanmaybe even French). You should keep doing what you are doing. No doubt you need support because parenting asks a lot of all mothers and fathers. You will find great comfort in Anne Fishels delicious writing and her unique combination of experience as a family therapist, mother, and cook.

Then there are the rest of us, the majority of Americans. We need a lot of help in this area. We are not, as Anne explains,... actually having regular family dinners. We cannot get away from work at a predictable hour, our commutes are too long, or we travel for work and try to stay in touch using Skype or FaceTime. We rush our children from dance lessons to violin recitals to soccer games, grabbing dinner at McDonalds with such frequency that the discarded containers that once held French fries are starting to collect in the back of the car. Or, if we eat at home, we order takeout. One journalist in New York reported that just after he said to his three-year-old son that it was almost time for dinner, his son disappeared from sight. The dad found him standing at the front door waiting for the delivery person to arrive with the food.

My children are now mostly grown up. One of my biggest regrets about ourmyparenting, is that we did not have more family dinners. I traveled too much, and our daughter played too many sports. And, frankly, my wife and I had complicated feelings about family dinners from the start. My mother was a dreadful cook who yearned to live the high life in New York, meaning that she left my brother and me with maids, who did a terrible job of preparing the unfamiliar recipes Mom left them (and a great job of preparing foods, like chicken jambalaya or fried plantains, from their own countries). My wifes devoutly religious mother turned dinnertime into an occasion for her martyrdom and disappointment in her children. We did not inherit great models of happy dinners. Like most couples, we did the best we could. We averaged one or two family dinners per week. The rest of the time we were on the runeating in pairs or trios, or grazing while standing at the kitchen counter. We also missed opportunities for collaborative food preparation, which can lead to those unexpected shoulder-to-shoulder conversations with teenagers. Too many memories of our family dinners are on vacation or in restaurants and too few at home. We never made the commitment to share stories over our dining room table that I wish we had made.