Family Restaurant

When my children where small, they had requested pizza for dinner, I am not a big fan of the frozen pizza, I had went into the kitchen and started making the dough from scratch before I knew it I had my girls in the kitchen rolling and stretching the dough. This family pizza party, turned out to be so much more than just pizza, we had spent time together, working together, talking, sharing and enjoying each other company. Before long a simple dinners on Saturday turned into a family affair, plus one or two extra kids from the neighborhood. I do think that dinners we did together as a family tested so much better than the ones I did by myself.

Why not get your gang into the act and serve up some short-order kitchen fun?

Can you say globally eating?
Let your kids pick a foreign country and suggest tempting ethnic dishes to make together. I was surprised to learn not only did we try new foods with this one but we also learned a few words of the language, some of their customs. Such as"bing qi lin" which is ice cream in Mandarin.

Hats off to the chef's!
Pick up all the ingredients that your kids will need to make a dinner, then encouraging them to develop a signature dish from the recipe that had been picked. My youngest daughter created Berries and cream pancakes. By asking to do brunch one Sunday morning, her recipe became one of our beloved breakfast on holidays to make as a family. She had started with her grandmother's recipe for buttermilk pancakes added two teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of vanilla. Then she took 8 oz of cream cheese a enough heavy cream and whipped them together until the cream cheese was slightly runny. She placed the cream cheese in a squeeze bottle. Make the pancakes like you normal would but before all the bubbles could burst she would squeeze the cream cheese all over the pancake then add berries right before she would flip the pancakes. She served her signature pancakes with warm berry compost and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Dunking for your dinner!
Fondue fun, have a few pots of different fondues going as well as have meat, vegetables, bread and fruit cut up and ready to be dipped. Next come up with a penalty for whoever drops their food from the fondue fork into the pot of fondue. Such as they have to sing a song, make up a funky dance or tell a joke.

Go to school, yes you heard me go to school!
One weekend we as a family attended a cooking workshop, on dessert making. The rest of the weekend we spent trying our hand at everything we learned. Thank goodness we had a freezer to freeze all the wonderful desserts we had learned how to make.

Build your own.
Every now and then I would chop, dice cut different meats, cheeses, veggies then bake large potatoes and then each person would create their own baked potatoes. It was a rule that you had to give your potato a name and everyone got to vote on which one was the best for that dinner. The winning potato recipe would get added to the "family recipe book". We also did the same for sandwiches every now and then one of the kids will call and say "Mom, I need the recipe for that potato or sandwich" .

Black Tie
Every now and then we would fix a 4, 5, 6, and even a 7 course dinner which we would dress up for. This also gave a wonderful chance to teach the girls about etiquette of formal dining.

I came to learn that not only were we cooking and eating more as a family, we were becoming closer all the way around. Keeping track of our eating habits and the habits of our children I soon realized that the girls eating habits were changing they were making better food choices. Last but not least we as a family were learning things that we never dreamed we would learn.