Slate: Why family dinner makes working parents (especially moms) feel better.

An article in Slate magazine talks about the results of a recent study that shows that eating as a family makes parents happier. My working mom was always good about making a family dinner. I was always starving because she wouldn't let us snack before dinner. My childhood experience and my experience living in Belgium and France sealed the deal for my family eating two meals a day together.

When I was 18 years old, my Belgium host family ate breakfast together. When I lived in France in my twenties, my French friends didn't throw keggers, they had dinner parties!

It is noteworthy that although longer work hours predicted significantly greater perception of success in work life, work interference with dinnertime predicted lower perception of success in work life," Jacob and her co-author write.

Eating together in the morning takes about 10 minutes. It's nice to have that moment of calm before the day begins. And in the evening, Mikey loves the direct attention that he gets from the both of us.

My sister told me once that she couldn't figure out why her girls weren't eating, and then she started eating with them and their eating improved. "Now that we're eating together, I can't believe we weren't doing it before," she explained.

Why we cook

It is easy to lose site of why we cook. Like fashion, food recipes need to be original and fresh. Recipes can't be repeated and they certainly can't be boring. But what about teaching people the basics. Don't get me wrong, I love to watch Ina Garten and Amy Finley on the Food Network. I enjoy seeing the tools that they use and how they slice and dice. I watch for their techniques more than for the recipe. I can't help but wonder if all these cooking shows are actually scaring people out of the kitchen because the food is just too complicated. I would love to see Food Network produce a cooking show about cooking the basics like rice and oatmeal. I would also love to see more food nutrition incorporated into the shows. Um! Maybe I should write them a letter.

The basics of eating is to sustain life. Let's cook with that goal in mind.

The Business of Being Born: order it on Netflix!

Thanks to my son, Mikey, I am reconnecting with real food. I am also discovering other aspects of life that need rediscovering like childbirth. This week, I saw a pre-release showing of Ricki Lake's film, The Business of Being Born. Ricki researches the past and present of childbirth. The best part of the film was seeing childbirth out of a hospital setting. I came away from the film feeling like I too could have a home birth.

Mikey was born by cesarean. The whole experience was so traumatic that I can't talk about it without crying. I believe that everyone in my delivery room was doing the best that they knew how to keep me and Mikey safe and grant me a natural birth, but even knowing this, I am still upset. The sad thing is that the women who have witnessed my embarrassing breakdown, say that they feel the same way about their birth experience.

In the film, Ricki Lake offers another point of view. By using some shocking images, she captures the viewers attention. And then, she urges us to realize that our bodies know how to have babies and shows us that having a baby is not a medical condition that needs treatment. Her film gave me courage and the extra push to try for another natural birth.

Maybe it was my cesarean surgery that made me realize that I need to listen to myself and believe in what I know is right instinctually for me and my son. It gave me the strength to go against the grain with nutrition. It sounds a bit like Al Gore's message on climate change. The human race cannot continue on the path that it is on. We can't continue eating poor food, we can't continue having children by drugs and/or major abdominal surgery, we can't continue stressing our fragile ecosystems. Each individual person has the power to make change at least for themselves and their children. Let's take responsibility for our health, our children and our earth. It is not someone else's job, it is our job.

The Business of Being Born
http://www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com/about.htm

International Cesarean Awareness Network
http://ican-online.net/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1

Trail Mix: Obama offers healthy food option at his rally

My dear friend Kate and I waited two and a half hours to see Barack Obama give a well-worth-the-wait 30-minute speech last night and we got hungry! So hungry that I was prepared to eat the boxed pizzas that I saw people bringing back to their seats. To my surprise, when I arrived in the lobby, I spotted a table with a woman selling homemade trail mix, pistachios, yogurt covered pretzels and other healthy options. She had clearly packaged these herself because they were all in plastic baggies. I don't think that I have ever been to an event with six thousand people where I could find a healthy snack to tie me over. I bought a bag of trail mix and a water and headed back to my seat.

Hooray! to Obama for offering us change away from unhealthy vendor food.

About me: why I started this blog

I'm a San Francisco mom and writer with a son named Mikey who was born in May 2006. I care deeply about what Mikey is eating. In 2007, I started this blog to document my journey to reclaim control over my family's food by cutting out processed foods [95% of what's in most grocery stores]. When Mikey started eating solids, I made him baby food from scratch using recipes from Ruth Yaron's bestselling Super Baby Food book. I’ve since become obsessed with relearning how to cook and shop for food [not boxes]. I’m reading everything and anything on eating healthy, and I’m creating my own recipes. I believe in eating simply, so I try to keep my recipes and explanations of nutrition simple!

I also write a blog for the San Francisco Chronicle about all things related to motherhood.

My granola bars, called Nate Bars, are sold at Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco.