BARBARIANS AT THE PLATE: TAMING AND FEEDING THE MODERN AMERICAN FAMILY

 

Is your family "just too busy" to have dinner together?

Does the phrase making dinner mean speed-dialing your favorite take-out joint....again?

Is the table set so you can all face the TV?

If you’re tired of chaotic mealtimes, help is on the way. This engaging, practical book offers easy ways to keep the family meal alive and well, without making everyone crazy.

-- From the back cover

 

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Barbarians at the Plate: Taming and Feeding the Modern American Family, is the culmination of the author’s 20 years as a newspaper reporter, freelance food writer, weekly columnist ("Food," syndicated nationally by United Media), and working mother of two. It profiles eight families (working parent/s and kids) from around the country, and includes hints, tips, strategies and recipes from many more.

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Parenting book or cookbook? The answer is both. It addresses the full range of parenting skills needed to get food to the table, including:

- Teaching supermarket behavior: "Shopping is a good time for a little tough love...Kids need to learn how to behave in public and a supermarket is a good place to start as any" (pages 205 -206).

- Cooking with kids: "Look at it from a child’s point of view: You get to make a mess and play with fire and sharp knives; it doesn’t get much better than that" (page 129).

- Encouraging good table manners: "’Sometimes I just had to look at my kids and say Sit up straight and eat.’" Advice from Matt Shippee, father of three (page 189).

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Strategy is key. Barbarians is organized by strategy to appeal to folks with a variety of cooking styles.

1) Strategies for planners -- using a slow cooker, cooking on weekends for the entire week, and freezing meals ahead of time.

2) Strategies for last-minute types -- making quick soups, salad suppers, skillet and pasta dishes, oven entrees and grilling.

Barbarians also includes two short chapters on EXTREMELY quick and easy side dishes and a few simple desserts, suitable for everyday meals or those evenings when you’ve had a temporary lapse of sanity and invited weeknight guests.

In addition, the six appendices are crammed with information on:

- Making meals healthier

- Shopping strategies

- Stocking the pantry (with a useful list of must-have convenience foods)

- Equipping the kitchen

- Great family cookbooks

- Food safety

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Other features:

- "The Cookbook Shelf" – recommendations for family-friendly cookbooks, scattered throughout the book.

- Shortcuts: how to make meals out of rotisserie chickens, how to civilize the take-out meal, and how to make a great pizza with of store-bought dough.

- What and how to freeze and nuke various foods that you may not have thought of as freeze-able (eggs) and nuke-able (lemons).

- How To Tips on feeing picky eaters, vegetarians, and other wild beasts.

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Barbarians at the Plate encourages all families, no matter how busy, to get back to the kitchen and put simple, wholesome, mostly-homemade food on the table. It can be done. It is being done.