Image Credit: Kate SommersThe issue of time - specifically, how long it takes to cook and eat fresh, local, and organic food and how little time most people have - comes up again and again in my discussions with parents and friends who are considering making a change in their eating habits. (Not surprisingly, the other topic that comes up again and again is the cost of good food. Much has been compellingly written about the true cost of cheap food, and I encourage you to check it out.)
I think a lot about the choices we make when it comes to our schedules and the things we're willing to schedule and spend time on. Time and time again, people tell me that they just don't have the time that preparing and eating good food requires - shopping, cooking, sitting down to eat, and doing the dishes (nevermind growing the food) just take too dang long. And I agree - being mindful about our food choices does take time.
But let's take just a minute to consider what we choose to do with our time instead. So many of us race from activity to activity every day, from soccer practice to play practice to book club to the gym to whatever. These are all worthwhile activites - every single one of them. I don't want to give them up either. But what I realized was that, no matter how hard we try, we will never have enough time for all of the things we want to do. And I find this incredibly freeing.
I find it freeing because it reminds me that we are constantly choosing priorities, and that we're always giving something up. Here's an exercise I'd love to see more people do: when you create your family calendar, schedule dinner like it's an activity, even a priority. Give it 2 whole hours. Schedule whatever you want before or after - hockey, gymnastics, chess club, blog writing - but give dinner its due.
When I consider what I most value in my life, the things that are most important to me, my family is always at the top. Not playing my guitar, going to the movies, riding my bicycle, traveling - not even sustainable food. It turns out that, when dinner is an activity, the probability that my whole family will be involved is pretty high. We pick potatoes from the garden together. We wash and peel carrots together. We sometimes cook together. We eat together.
All right, I'll admit to overstating my case to make a point. There are nights when my wife and I put the kids in front of the TV while we make dinner, and others when one of us works late and the other serves up hot dogs. But we eat together as often as we can, and we make it a point to consider dinner a family activity, even if it means having to skip something else.
How about you? Do you consider dinner an activity worth making time for, or is it something you do on the way to something else that's more important?
Comments
Dinner is definitely worth setting aside the time for. My friends often ask me how I have the time to make dinner most nights and the answer is in your post - I make the time. It's great to put on some tunes and work away in the kitchen.
Thanks Crystal. Ah, those tunes! I always ask my friends what they're doing instead of findsing time for food, and invariably there are so many activities... important ones, at that (TV can be important too, I'm no snob!). I just find that giving my meals their own space on my calendar is a huge help. Thanks again!
This question is right up my alley! I am a wife of an entrepreneurial husband and business man, mother of four active children spanning from high school to kindergarten. They are involved in school, sports (basketball, soccer, dance), church, and music. Busy family right? I have like, no time! On top of all that I have started blogging!
I have to admit there are definitely nights the frozen pizzas go in! Most nights however I try to make it a priority to get "real" food served on the table. I do feel to cook a healthy meal for my family shows them that I value them and their health. Also, although some night we eat in staggered shifts there are a few nights during the week we eat at the table.
My tricks are to start early in the day if possible, even if that means chopping onions during breakfast. I am known to throw in a roaster chicken with carrots and potatoes-it cooks itself nearly. And, I have been know to make a meal or at least prep for it on a night I have time for the next day.
It's not easy though to make a meal, let alone blog about it with our schedules!! Um, life is a journey right? I'm still learning to balance my time and value meal time more!-Chris Ann
Even without kids, I find my weeknights to be incredibly busy so the key for me is getting the menu down & the shopping done on the weekend. That way I know what will be made and that I have everything in the house to do so. Sometimes I also need to do some prep on the weekends and I make sure the every meal I make will have at least two extra servings left over, for either lunch or dinner another night.
Thanks Chris and Kris! Great input - both of your perspectives are much appreciated. Maybe you help me understand cooking in the context of some other actvity, like hockey practice or "Beer Fest" ;-). Why is it that hockey gets its 2 focused hours in a row, but cooking has to be handled in between everything else, a little bit at a time?
The "true cost" of cheap food notwithstanding, when you can afford to buy enough cheap food to keep you fed til the next paycheck, or enough good food to feed you less than half that time, the cheap food is going to win out. Why do you think poor folks are less healthy than ones who make more money?
I'd love to be able to afford to eat "real" food instead of the crap I can actually afford to buy, but when one meal of healthy food costs as much as two days of the processed junk, it doesn't leave me much of a choice.
Thanks Kimmie, point well taken. I get that the cost of health care in 10 years is not much of a concern when the issue of dinner is staring us in the face. But there's more to our decisions than cash, yes? Real food takes time to grow and time to prepare, and most of us - affluent or not - aren't willing to put in the time. This post has less to do with whether we buy organic carrots or "industrial" carrots and more to do with whether we're willing to take the time to wash, peel, and cook the darn things once we've got em. What do you think about the time issue?
Lee - I agree that often it is about the time as much as it is about the cost. And then there is often the case where you didn't grow up in a household that prepared and cooked food and therefore the idea in itself is daunting. Heck, I think of myself as a pretty good and daring cook, but I'm still often intimidated finding "new" foods at the farmers market. I think, "what in the world would I do with this?" If you don't know and don't feel you have the resources to find out you'll probably stick to what is known and safe.
On the cost issue, I'd be very interested to see the results of someone buying "real food" vs "cheap food" for a family of four for a week (as an example). I thought about this over the weekend as I was leaving the farmers market, mentally tallying what I'd spent, and realizing that the two bags I was carrying came to about the same amount a friend of mine recently estimated it cost her to purchase a bag of food at the grocery store. Now, I don't know how the contents of her bag would have compared to mine, but I'm pretty sure there was some cheap, and certainly processed, food in hers. Mine was going to take some more leg work on the other hand.
Great points, and well put, Kris. Did you end up spending much of your weekend working with the bounty of foods to bought at the market? If so, do you think it was a worthwhile way to spend your time?
I spent some time, although not as much as some other weekends (i.e. when I had untold pounds of tomatoes to chop & freeze or puree & freeze). Some of the time was active (reducing a nice head of cauliflower into florets for a casserole and washing a huge bunch of spinach to be ready to eat) while some of it was more passive (partially baking a squash for easier chopping to go into a pinto bean chili). I enjoy my time in the kitchen, knowing that by starting with whole foods (including the process of turning dried beans into cooked, ready to use beans) I have more control over things such as sodium and preservatives.
Kris, you are a rockstar. Thanks fror sharing.
Great post- Scheduling dinner first reminds me of a demonstration from my Sunday School when I was little. The teacher would fill jar with rice (like filling your day with activities) and then when she tried to fit in a penny (prayer, in this case), it didn't fit. But when she put the penny in first, all the rice somehow fit in, too. Great parable for setting all kinds of priorities in life.
Thanks Liz, that's a great anecdote, true for so many things in life. Especially true with food, in my experience. Hope to see you soon.
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