Raising my daughter, and now that it’s just my husband and I, we do have dinner together nearly every night. However, it’s not something put together by me, but by everyone. The whole thing, from preparation to the meal itself to the cleanup is a family project – time spent together nearly every evening.

Granted, I do most of the planning… I do the menus and shopping and such. And often, I do most of the cooking, with other family members acting primarily as prep cooks. But sometimes we switch off, them cooking while I do prep work. Or one person makes one dish while another makes another. General food prep for other meals happens in this same time period, back when daily lunches were packed for school or work I did them during dinner prep. Or if I have melons to cut up for snacking or want to hardboil eggs for lunches or such. Even if I have food preservation to do, I tend to dehydrate, can or freeze foods during this same time every day – planning to do big prep jobs when dinner itself is leftovers or such.

When my daughter was learning to read, she’d read to me while I cooked. And sometimes we did homework while dinner was happenning. My husband dislikes reading aloud, so we’re more likely to share a movie or an audiobook or some music. But always, always… the family conversation occurs.

It’s about two hours spent together every day. And other than an hour or so spent going through ads and planning menus, and another hour shopping, it’s *all* the time I spend cooking, even though I cook nearly everything from scratch including many gifts and do loads of food preservation.

Making the whole project a family affair makes it a *social* event, rather than just another chore on my plate.

COMMENT from MD EADES: And that’s what it’s all about!

I wanted to pass on to you a website for getting people cooking dinner – http://www.savingdinner.com –

I have been using their menu mailers for two years and it has been a wonderful way to cook with ease for my family. Best of all they have a low carb menu mailer and for the most part it is consistent with all my needs for lowcarb cooking. Every Tuesday I get an email with 6 recipes and a shopping list for the week. All I have t o do is print it off and make one trip to the store and I am good to go for the week. I take the leftovers for lunch the next day and I love this service. Please take a look at the site – you might find that you know people who would really benefit from this service. By the way, I have your cookbooks and love them – when I want to cook for fun I dive into cookbooks and plan menus – for the regular day to day cooking I use the saving dinner menu mailers.

COMMENT from MD EADES: Thanks for the tip. I went online and gave it the once over and it really does look like it would be a fantastic time saver. I may do a quick blog on it.