You're allowed to eat what feels right to your body. Five Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Style Family Meals, plus a please-all pasta recipe from Jenny Rosenstrach's new book.
I too have been thinking about our podcast conversation often!! I absolutely love all of this, and it resonates so deeply with my mission with Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD - we all have the right to make our own decisions about food (after all, we are all completely unique, so the foods that best serve our bodies will be unique to each of us). When it comes to kids, I think we as parents get to provide the framework, but there's so much more freedom and ease when we give kids the agency to pick and choose within that framework (which is why I love serving family style and build-a-bowl meals - the kids get to choose what goes on their plates, although our rule is that they have to at least try everything, as long as they don't have a valid food allergy or restriction). I LOVE your "choose-your-own-adventure" meal ideas! It's such a helpful way of feeding a diverse family of eaters, but ALSO of getting away from strict recipe-driven dinners (which can feel so overwhelming). Choose-your-own-adventure gives everybody at the table more freedom, even the cook. Here's to more conversations to come, Sarah!
Your wisdom and beautiful balance between order and freedom is a wonderful model, Nicki. I so appreciate and value our conversation and your thoughts here and in your last few back-to-school newsletters.
So many good points in this piece! I'm going to be revisiting it soon so I can fully digest all the juicy morsels, but I feel like this quote really hits it for me: “All humans crave the dignity to be able to make their own decisions about what goes on and into their bodies.” Of course, it gets complicated when we're feeding and raising children, and there is so much pressure to do it right. I so wish I could rewind time and do over dinners when my kids were younger. I made so many mistakes, and I know so much more now about feeding frameworks and best practices with kids. I didn't realize how much my own food baggage influenced my family. Of course, I'm still figuring it out, but I fully support this idea that there isn't one right way to do family meals AND our needs as a family change. I'm a quasi-empty nester now with just one teen here and my husband traveling more, and I'm working through the best way for us to eat together now. Do we need to eat the same thing? Can we do some meals through subscription services? Is it ok that some nights it's mac and cheese? Still so many things to think about!
I too have been thinking about our podcast conversation often!! I absolutely love all of this, and it resonates so deeply with my mission with Mind, Body, Spirit, FOOD - we all have the right to make our own decisions about food (after all, we are all completely unique, so the foods that best serve our bodies will be unique to each of us). When it comes to kids, I think we as parents get to provide the framework, but there's so much more freedom and ease when we give kids the agency to pick and choose within that framework (which is why I love serving family style and build-a-bowl meals - the kids get to choose what goes on their plates, although our rule is that they have to at least try everything, as long as they don't have a valid food allergy or restriction). I LOVE your "choose-your-own-adventure" meal ideas! It's such a helpful way of feeding a diverse family of eaters, but ALSO of getting away from strict recipe-driven dinners (which can feel so overwhelming). Choose-your-own-adventure gives everybody at the table more freedom, even the cook. Here's to more conversations to come, Sarah!
Your wisdom and beautiful balance between order and freedom is a wonderful model, Nicki. I so appreciate and value our conversation and your thoughts here and in your last few back-to-school newsletters.
So many good points in this piece! I'm going to be revisiting it soon so I can fully digest all the juicy morsels, but I feel like this quote really hits it for me: “All humans crave the dignity to be able to make their own decisions about what goes on and into their bodies.” Of course, it gets complicated when we're feeding and raising children, and there is so much pressure to do it right. I so wish I could rewind time and do over dinners when my kids were younger. I made so many mistakes, and I know so much more now about feeding frameworks and best practices with kids. I didn't realize how much my own food baggage influenced my family. Of course, I'm still figuring it out, but I fully support this idea that there isn't one right way to do family meals AND our needs as a family change. I'm a quasi-empty nester now with just one teen here and my husband traveling more, and I'm working through the best way for us to eat together now. Do we need to eat the same thing? Can we do some meals through subscription services? Is it ok that some nights it's mac and cheese? Still so many things to think about!