food
You’re Invited: Laurie David’s Family Dinner
Laurie David, author of The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time, believes the family dinner is a ritual worth fighting for. The book, which hits bookstores November 3, is packed with recipes, ideas, and suggestions for fabulous family dinners. Laurie and chef Kirstin Uhrenholdt talked with CulturePOP about how the family dinner can bring beauty and art into families’ lives each day, one meal at a time.
CP: Why is beauty an important part of the family dinner?
LD: When things are beautiful, it makes you happy. Life is hard. It can be challenging. At the end of a day, beautiful things soothe and inspire your family.
CP: What are some ways to bring beauty to the table?
LD: Cut butter in thin patties and press parsley into it. Or take a pitcher of water and add some berries, sliced lemons, or a sprig of an herb. Your family will think, Oh my God, someone loves me. Someone is thinking of me.
KU: Go outside with your kids and find something that you can use as a centerpiece: a little snowman that you can watch melt, a branch that will blossom. In the book, we talk about tons of ways to do this, but one that I particularly like is a special bowl of treasures. Keep a bowl on your table and find something to add every day. Kids’ pockets are full of stuff — toys, beads. You’ll start to see how others see something special in a thing you think is ordinary.
CP: Why is the family dinner so important right now?
LD: The time that the family comes together to purposefully be a family is sacred. Whomever you sit down to dinner with is your family. It doesn’t just relate to children. Our current modern life is tearing people apart. Computers connect us but they also disconnect us. There’s an enormous amount of research on how much the family dinner provides self-esteem and resilience. If you’re eating at home, you’re eating healthier food. Your sense of belonging grows. Your confidence improves. You develop your palate. You see other people model manners. Debating, arguing, and resolving conflict all happen at the dinner table. The more that we use electronics, the more we forget how to connect and converse.
CP: How can we restore conversation?
LD: Conversation is an art form — and it’s an art form that’s endangered. The dinner table is a place to rescue that. I’m an old-fashioned newspaper girl. I bring clippings to the table. Obituaries. They always have a life lesson in them about people who have done interesting things. With little kids, I play a game called What I Like About You. Everyone tells something that they like about each person. You get all these sweet, tender moments that you wouldn’t get if you just asked how school was. Shifting the conversation away from dead-end topics or things that are stressful gets everyone relaxed and having a good time.
CP: What if you’re short on time or money?
LD: You don’t need talent, time, skill, or money to make things beautiful. Dinner is love. The act of preparing it is love. The act of sitting down together, the simple little things you do — finding a flower, folding a napkin — these are all expressions of love. There are a lot of ideas in the book for how to do this quickly. Maximize your time. You don’t need three courses and an apple pie in the oven. Use your imagination. Plan ahead. Do it with PB&J if you have to.
KU: Shift your perspective a tiny bit.
LD: Start with Sunday dinner as your ritual meal if that’s all you can do. You’re doing it for your family but also for yourself, because the rewards are so gigantic. Make it a priority.
CP: This interview makes me look forward to dinner.
LD: That makes me happy.
For more foodie delights during the month of November, check out the OvationTV.com’s The Art of Food site at for exclusive clips of Eating Art and After Hours with Daniel Boulud and to share food-related art with Ovation community members.
Michelle Fiordaliso, MSW, is a writer, psychotherapist, coauthor of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Ex, and 2008 recipient of a PEN USA award for fiction. She has been featured as a relationship expert on TV and radio shows such as Today, Tyra, and Oprah & Friends and believes that true bliss lies in bringing creativity to the quotidian acts of life.
Book cover: Grand Central Publishing
Photo: Maryellen Baker
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