Zen Breakfast
There has been a lot written over recent years about the research showing the importance of the “family dinner.”
As most of you know, I grew up in a home where the family dinner was not only sacred space, but for lack of a better word, a nightly “routine.” Looking back, I can see how much I learned over the dinner table. As a parent, I tried to recreate that own experience for my own children — thus my love of slow cooking.
But I recognize that in today’s modern lifestyle, for some parents, the family dinner has become an elusive dream.
In Bruce Feiler’s book, The Secrets of Happy Families, I was intrigued to learn that additional research has shown that there is nothing magical about dinner. The magic is in getting the family together, sharing conversation and keeping in touch with each other. It doesn’t really matter when it happens during the day. It just needs to happen with some frequency during the week. This opens up two more family meal options. For many families a shared morning meal (or at least a highly overlapping one) before everyone heads off for the day, can be much more achievable. In fact, Bruce Feiler writes that in his own family, breakfast not dinner was where their connection began.
Many of the same writers picking up on the benefits of conversation over family meals also note the benefit of family traditions – things that bring the family together and create happy memories. These family traditions don’t have to be elaborate. When my husband was growing up, Saturday night dinner often featured pancakes, with topping options that included maple syrup, honey, gravy, jellies, jams and fruit sauces as toppings. It wasn’t overly complicated, but as kids they LOVED it – part for the food, part for the tradition.
Weekend breakfasts can be a similar event. It could be Dad’s French toast Casserole from the slow cooker, or Mom’s slow cooked overnight oatmeal, with brown sugar, raisins and chopped nuts as topping options. All it takes is a little preparation the night before, some frequency/repetition, and soon, “Who’ll be up for one of [Dad or Mom’s] Saturday breakfasts tomorrow before we….” can help rally the kids out of bed on a Saturday morning. This potential to create family traditions is the reason we are sharing our healthy Zen breakfasts this month.
Back to school is a great time to start new traditions for your family. We’d like to help. As we continue to grow, we are collecting our readers’ “Zen Stories.” If you have a breakfast recipe that you would love to share please send it along!
Author’s Note: We’re also excited to highlight the recent breakfast book, Rise and Shine, by Jane’s dear friend, Katie Morford. She is also the author of Best Lunch Box Ever.
Zen Moment
In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you help family members create, by the memories you share, by the commitment of time, caring, and love you show to one another, and by the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.
Marge Kennedy, The Single Parent Family
