Family Cook Rules!

Cooking for your family takes work. Here are my suggestions for keeping it a job worth doing.

• Prepare foods you like. It takes effort to prepare a meal, especially dinner after a day working, so only take suggestions or requests for foods at special occasions like birthdays.
• Schedule take-out meals. Knowing that every Thursday night, for example, you are getting some take-out makes preparing dinner on Wednesday a lot easier.
• Try new foods. Cooking should be enjoyable for you. Bringing new experiences into it will broaden your skills and introduce you and your family to different cultures and cuisines via food.
• Add the finishing touch. Plating what you have made allows you to enjoy it too. Adding some fresh, green, flat leaf parsley to nearly any food will brighten it up a lot.
• Use your best dishes. What are you saving them for? Live in the present and enjoy yourself. A set table is appealing. If you are cooking for little kids, use appropriate dishes of course, but still keep them pleasant. You eat with your eyes too.
• Don't act subservient! This is my most important suggestion. It isn't the role of a cook to serve. Each member of your family can get themselves a beverage or anything they need. Once you sit down to eat, eat! No up and down, and up and down.
• Include your family in the ritual. A meal is a ritual. Setting the table, preparing the meal, eating, talking about your day, listening to your family, clearing the table, and doing the dishes, are all apart of it, but they are not all the responsibility of the cook.

Being the family cook is an important and powerful role but you probably won't (or don't) enjoy it unless you respect your efforts by sticking to certain "rules".

Susan