Leanne Ely - Saving Dinner: The Menus, Recipes, and Shopping Lists to Bring Your Family Back to the Table: A Cookbook

More important, memories are made for both adults and children. One day, your child will look back with fondness on all those dinners around the family table. One day, you will look back wistfully, actually missing the chaos of trying to get everyone to the table while the meal was still hot! Unfortunately, todays family dinner table is all but missing from the home. We have sacrificed our family table for all manner of activities, and, way too often, our meals are situated around the blue glow of the family television. Conversation is limited to pass the salt and stony silence prevails while the blare of TV fills the room. But thats not the only problem.

Actually making the meals is a big issue, too. Women are busy, exhausted, and overwhelmed with responsibility. Mom works hard at the job or at home all day and then takes on another job schlepping kids to lessons, rehearsals, and practices. Making the weekly menu to post on the refrigerator has become a relic of the pastwho has the time? And going to the grocery store is something that happens several times a week, because there is no plan and a list hasnt been made. Grocery shopping usually entails buying overpriced, processed convenience foods. Or worse, showing up at the grocery store with a couple of cranky kids right after work to get something quick.

Or even worse, skipping the whole thing and driving through for fast food. The result: guilt over the money spent and the nutrition lost, and a strong sense that somehow, because of all this, the family is suffering and missing out. Saving Dinner is the younger sister of Menu-Mailer, my online menu service (www.menumailer.net). Menu-Mailer was born out of a strong desire to help bring back the family dinner table. As the Food for Thought columnist for FlyLady.net, I help Marla Cilley (the FlyLady) with all things pertinent to food and its preparation. Marla regularly challenges the ladies on her list to clutter-bust their homes, but this time was taking on a bigger, two-week decluttering challengewhat Marla calls the Super Fling Boogie.

So we put our heads together to come up with an idea to help the ladies with dinner. Marla thought a weeks worth of recipes would really help because the ladies wouldnt have to think about dinner. I agreed and said it would be even better with a grocery listthats the hard part. We sent out the first menu with the grocery list and the ladies went crazy! The second week, we did it again, and by then there was a frenzythey wanted the menus and the grocery list on a regular basis. I was reticent due to the amount of work involvedI would do only recipes that met the following criteria: (1) healthy, (2) easy to prepare, and (3) something Id actually eat! A lightbulb went off in my head. Menu-Mailer was born and became a paid subscription service, with the website soon following.

And while Saving Dinner meets all the criteria of a Menu-Mailer, its being in book form gives me an opportunity to offer a lot more information, important how-tos and what fors, equipping you to confidently answer that all-important question, Whats for dinner? The ladies who use my service and read my books are kindred spirits. They are women who, like me, need real-life solutionsnot another make-it-quick dinner book. Saving Dinner is a quantum leap beyond a mere bookits a real tool that offers reliable help to get you beyond frustrated and guilty, to being a champion in the kitchen. It is in that spirit that I offer Saving Dinner as my contribution to your family. I can promise you thisthe book you hold in your hands right now will make dinner happen if you use itthe family fellowship part is up to you. Remember thismenus arent just for restaurants.

They deserve a special place of honor in every familys home. You now have what you needlets get busy.